MadCamel wrote:The wording may not be the best, but you do realise that if it is rewritten the way Mistakes proposes, I could setup one automated grinder on each and every map without breaking the rules. This would allow me to make millions of GP per day, thereby re-igniting the inflation problem and causing even more changes to content making things more expensive and GP harder to get.
And you know people will do this. If the rule is changed, I will be the first.
But you make it so no families can be in the game and playing at the same time. Every family is guilty before they are innocent. If you want to make this server ever take off, you will have to remove that rule. It will make the gm's do something they don't want to. There will be a called of abuse. It will pit the gm's against innocent families. This will get ugly. It is just a matter of time before before this rule bites someone in the butt.
But you do make a good point, the current system can not support the communities needs. There is no difference between 10 people using 10 characters each and 100 characters using 1 character each. If you can not program the server to be able to hold against the 10 people with 10 character each, then you are completely screwed with the 100 people with 1 character each.
When we start to get around 300 people, we will start using guilds more. The guild will be set up where the more you give to the guild, the higher your rank in the guild. You will have 100 people are focusing wealth into one pot, it will be 1000 times worst then any multiboxing. So unless you are going to stop group working together to form wealth, your rule is going to fail anyway. It is why my clan has soo much stuff, we share everything. We all work together. You are completely screwed when more groups like mine, using only one character per player, and can do everything you are trying to prevent. With out ever breaking the rule. The really funny part is that my clan has very little money. It never did have any. We never collect it.
The last part I want to touch on, "This would allow me to make millions of GP per day." I know you are a programmer so I will try to tell you how to fix this if you are role playing. The Game Master controls all aspects of the game. Money is worked like this.
Money reserve->Game Master->Quest items->player->expenses->game master-> Money reserve.
The game master controls every aspect of money in the game.
For example. If a character wants to cash in 1000 items, the computer only accepts 100 items per ip per day. This way a family can play but is limited to what they can collect at one time. The family is not guilty of anything because it is a limitation on everyone. There is not gm incursion because it is done by the server. It is immutable.
The game master can also limit the number of items collect by the person, after a certain point, per day, the drop rate slows down. Once again, done by the server, can be made by ip.
The game master also controls the price. The price that I am willing to buy items is directly related to how much cash I have already entered into the game. If there is too much cash, the price paid per item depends on the total cash in the system. If you need to reduce the cash, you just simply buy the item for less. If there is to much cash, item A now sells for less.
This is just a few ways to limit the gold going into the system. With out proclaiming people as guilty.
Lets now talk about how to get money from the player to expenses.
When you screw up the first part and you allow the players to have all the gold, like this server did, so they could start magic. You need to remove it.
Best way to remove the gold is to simply steal it back. A simple quest saying all the gold was stolen by a wizard, you go find the wizard and the gm allows only the limited amount to be recovered. It is not really the best system but it does work.
You can limit the amount of gold per person. If you only allow a character to carry no more then 10,000 gold at one time. The rest must be stored in the bank. All transfers for selling items go into the bank account, issued to the character as checks. Characters can get checks from the bank, that can be used to trade. In no pen and paper role playing game ever created, has one character ever been allowed to carry more then a 10,000 gold. Why, because of the weight of it. Once you have the gold only in bank accounts, you can properly tax it. Rates can go has high has 50% per ip account. Once again, done by the server.
How costly something is depends on how much gold the ip has. If the ip has a large amount of gold, then the prices for things go up. If the ip has a small amount of gold the prices go down. Simple and effective.
Next is to offer the carrot. This game has an insane attachment to rares, but with a simple and basic economy ultra rares makes people bot to get the items. A lot of people mass collect rares during special events. These people then drive up the price and sell these items. This is only allowed because the items can not be gotten any other way and you do not control how many character per ip can do the quest. A family needs to be able to play the quest, but there has to be a limit. There needs to be a balance between ip and rares collected from quests. You also need to stop items from being unobtainable. You need a better economy before you can have ultra rares.
The next best way is to allow trading of items for items. Money only works because it is universal. If you made it so the players could trade items for items, you would create a system that did not need cash for the lower levels to game items. For example, for a character under the level of 20, they can trade an npc 20 maggot slimes for a piece of clothing. 30 gloves for a piece of armor, ext. You can limit it by level. This will create a second level of money that is not used by the upper levels.
As for your mass botters, like you said, they need to be controlled. The server keeps tracks of all the kills and item picked up. After a certain point, the server starts to do server sided limitations. See above. If they character continues to go down that road, tax rate can be increased on stored money. Taxes on items in storage, taxes on character items when they log back in. They have to pay x dollars to keep the items, held up by the law enforcement. At a certain point they have to get a permit to hunt for items, they have to check in all items before they can sell them or trade them. If that does not slow you down, the Game Master will simply start to break your weapons and armor. Trust me, I can keep this up, until you want to change your mind.
If you enforce all these rules, I guarantee you could not get a million gold per day. You would actually created a system in which your character would end up poor.
But see my way requires two things. First, you do not blame the people making the money. You only make the system more flexible to them. Two, complexity of the system will be make it impossible for people to abuse the system. You need to program your way out of this problem because as more people play it, you will start literally having 1 bot per map. When groups start to pool their resources, you will have a failure of the system. When the first family to get banned for rule number 7, you will have a failure of the system. When people stop playing the game because it is nearly impossible under the current rules to get anywhere, you will have your first failure.
I made a promise I would keep my mouth shut. But I just hate to see one stupid rule cause the failure of the game.
) could help on the problem of multiboxing.