How would you balance the economy?

[Suhuy]

Player solutions:

Stop expecting the code to do all the work for you. Stop thinking in coded terms at all, in fact. If your character concept is born and raised in the slums, then be from the slums. No matter how much you know about the code, don't let it influence your character's poverty. Regardless of how much your character has, make a point of complaining about the high prices of water these days. Stop complaining about players who amass huge amounts of coin and just let it sit there in the bank. Maybe they're saving it for a rainy day. Maybe they have a long term plan with it. What makes you think for one instant that they should be out there spending their tens of thousands every single time they log on? That fancy cloak your character owns which offers no coded advantage whatsoever is a RP tool that allows you to be expressive with the character you play. Coins are also a RP tool. You can keep expecting the economy to be "fixed" somehow, to make it more of a challenge to earn coins, but there will always be a learning curve to this which is overcome at some point. And then coins are no longer a challenge. To you, the player. But they should always be a challenge to you, the character. Staff can "fix" the economy over and over, but at the end of the day we are the authors of our character's lives and it's up to us to create some of the struggles they are going through. The code can only do so much.

Note: I am not saying there aren't coded changes which could help better simulate an actual, functioning economy, but I am saying no matter how much you implement, it will only go so far. Some of the responsibility is on our shoulders as players, and that's really all I'm getting at.

Coded solutions:

Code weapons and armor (and other tools) to break down periodically to better reflect the inferiority of such objects in a near metal-free world. Then test the code to make sure it isn't too extreme and won't immediately kill a 60-day warrior the very next battle they are in. Not until this has been fully tested and you're certain there is a reasonable, but modest difference, then and only then release it to the public, offering fair warning well, well in advance. I remember a good 10 or so years ago there were changes implemented to the way steal works. I had an elven pickpocket with absolutely incredible agility. I trusted his skills and knew what he was capable or and what he was not capable of. The very next time he tried to steal something, he died within seconds. I'd be thrilled if swords had a very finite lifespan (they're made out of bone for crying out loud!) but a change like this also requires certainties put in place so that very skilled warriors don't suddenly find themselves going from Conan to Sitting Ducks the instant some new code rolls out.

On that note, any change implemented should start with much smaller variables, rather than much larger ones. I doubt anyone would complain if they had to pay to stable their mounts for longer periods of time - if and only if the change introduced miniscule differences, rather than astronomical ones. The code helps to reinforce realistic conditions, but keeping them as small changes only helps balance the IC from the OOC world. I've seen a sword break before. Once. Ever. In my entire history of playing the game. So the code is there, only the variables need to be changed (from almost never to occasionally -- not from almost never to suddenly and miraculously every second battle you're in). Or if they do break quite frequently, have a sword snap and turn into a half-sword, rather than making the character instantly and immediately unarmed the moment their weapon is destroyed.

I see fancy violins and other instruments described as flawless masterpieces and think, how was that made so beautifully without metal? I see taverns filled with furniture and think, how are the tables and chairs held together without metal? I see entire wagons wheel past me and think, how the heck is that thing kept together without any metal? There are workable alternatives, but they are inferior alternatives which would degrade quickly. Imagine what the difference between the meaning of the word "smith" is on Zalanthas compared to any time period in Earth's history. And if the code were implemented in such a way that better fit our almost metal-less world, characters would need to be buying a whole heck of a lot more often as part of routine maintenance.

That's what I would do anyway.

[Revenant]

I don't, personally, think the problem is with indies having coin. When I've commented on the worthlessness of coin before, it's because many powerful clanned people are "too rich to bribe", when it really counts. Now some may accept a bribe because it's just good rp and a chance to get some corruption in, but when a <redacted>? Hmmm, maybe I have a mistaken impression of what that role is supposed to be about. You need to have ten or twenty large to bribe people these days, at least, depending on who you go to, if you're an independent, that's a LOT, and a bit of a tremendous money sink, consider, also, that you lack the protection and influence of clans and it starts to seem like the economy is just fine, on one front. I agree GMH wages and the like need to be looked at.

EDIT: Edited to remove what might possibly be considered IC info.

[Narf]

Player solutions:

Stop expecting the code to do all the work for you. Stop thinking in coded terms at all, in fact. If your character concept is born and raised in the slums, then be from the slums. No matter how much you know about the code, don't let it influence your character's poverty. Regardless of how much your character has, make a point of complaining about the high prices of water these days. Stop complaining about players who amass huge amounts of coin and just let it sit there in the bank. Maybe they're saving it for a rainy day. Maybe they have a long term plan with it. What makes you think for one instant that they should be out there spending their tens of thousands every single time they log on? That fancy cloak your character owns which offers no coded advantage whatsoever is a RP tool that allows you to be expressive with the character you play. Coins are also a RP tool. You can keep expecting the economy to be "fixed" somehow, to make it more of a challenge to earn coins, but there will always be a learning curve to this which is overcome at some point. And then coins are no longer a challenge. To you, the player. But they should always be a challenge to you, the character. Staff can "fix" the economy over and over, but at the end of the day we are the authors of our character's lives and it's up to us to create some of the struggles they are going through. The code can only do so much.

Note: I am not saying there aren't coded changes which could help better simulate an actual, functioning economy, but I am saying no matter how much you implement, it will only go so far. Some of the responsibility is on our shoulders as players, and that's really all I'm getting at.

One of the main barriers for me in playing a character that is openly poor is that there's usually someone, and sometimes multiple someones in any given situation that will try to codedly "solve" your poverty for you. Maybe they toss a heap of coins at you. More likely they'll tell you that you should get salting or join a clan. Quickly the conversation veers more towards things you can do to get permanently out of poverty rather than the game you wanted to play about surviving in a state of poverty.

Granted it's not the majority of players that do this, but there really only needs to be one in a given situation to cause problems.

[Delirium]

"Salting?! You crazy? With all them nasty beasts out there, and the sun and the sand? Might as well tell me to go jump off a cliff!"

[Beethoven]

Also don't forget:


Ivory-Salt Sickness                                                 (Disease)

   Also called Gambi Sickness for the flies whose bites cause this
ailment, Ivory-Salt Sickness is the bane of treasure hunters trying to
traverse the Salt Flats for the fabled riches of long lost Steinal.
Starting with the bite of a gambi fly, this illness advances rapidly
with headaches, blurry vision, tremors, and drowsiness following in a
matter of hours and lasting up to days. Only very rarely fatal in
itself, the temporarily debilitating symptoms of this disease can be
lethally crippling to those trying to cross the perilous expanse of the
Salt Flats. It is common for those taking part in a Salt Flats
expedition to take particular care to cover every patch of skin to
prevent gambi fly bites, and some have been known to carry a pungent
smelling sachet intended to ward away the flies, while others drink and
eat noxious combinations of food to make their blood unpalatable to the
flies.

[Beethoven]

It would not fix the economy in any sense of the phrase, but one very small thing I would do that I think would help would be to make you able to junk coins. I know you can give them to NPCs or whatever and pretend you junked them, but it would be so much simpler and more elegant if you could just junk them and pretend you gave them to your VNPC family, had them stolen by a VNPC elf, gave them to a VNPC whore, spilled them and had them picked up by scrambling VNPC urchins, etc. A lot of people would not do this, sure, but it would be a great start just to make it easy to do it for people who want to. Because realistically, there are virtual money sinks out there.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

All mounts would age and die.

Mounts can already age to the point where you'd rather slaughter them than deal with it anymore.

Really? That's cool - never seen that.

[Alesan]

It would not fix the economy in any sense of the phrase, but one very small thing I would do that I think would help would be to make you able to junk coins. I know you can give them to NPCs or whatever and pretend you junked them, but it would be so much simpler and more elegant if you could just junk them and pretend you gave them to your VNPC family, had them stolen by a VNPC elf, gave them to a VNPC whore, spilled them and had them picked up by scrambling VNPC urchins, etc. A lot of people would not do this, sure, but it would be a great start just to make it easy to do it for people who want to. Because realistically, there are virtual money sinks out there.

I think there are people, like me, that prefer the coin sinks to be in-game. To a certain extent, virtual RP just doesn't satisfy the feeling of playing an interactable game. It's the same reason I don't really enjoy solo RP. Sometimes I get the feeling that makes me a bad RPer, but it's just how I feel.

Junking coins sounds nice for people who can enjoy that sort of thing, though.

[BadSkeelz]

All mounts would age and die.

Mounts can already age to the point where you'd rather slaughter them than deal with it anymore.

Really? That's cool - never seen that.

I think you have to leave the mounts un-stabled for that to happen. The stable code generates a technically new mount with random stats every time you pull one out.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Hrm, and logging out with your mount and logging back in doesn't?

Well, no more stabling old Pakrat.

[LauraMars]

yeah the npc is different.  that's why sometimes your mounts are "bleeding lightly" when they come out of the stable - their endurance score is higher than what they went into the stable with and they need to regen the extra hp.  if you see a mount bleeding lightly you should be happy because it probably means they have a bit more stamina.

[Molten Heart]

Some stables save a mounts stats, but not all of them.

[CodeMaster]

yeah the npc is different.  that's why sometimes your mounts are "bleeding lightly" when they come out of the stable - their endurance score is higher than what they went into the stable with and they need to regen the extra hp.  if you see a mount bleeding lightly you should be happy because it probably means they have a bit more stamina.

I wish I could reroll my character for 20 coins...

[Beethoven]

I would like more coin sinks to be in-game, but it certainly wouldn't hurt anybody to have the OPTION to junk coins. There have been times when I have seen an echo of a vnpc beggar gripping at my heels and begging for coins, and I've kind of wanted to give him some whatever reason. If I drop 'em, somebody else will just pick them up. If I give them to an NPC, it kind of pulls me and others present out of the scene. If I just emote forking over the coins but don't actually do it, it seems kind of like cheating.

Yeah, it'd be a bandaid and not everyone would want to use it, but for people who want to keep themselves "artificially" poor--and judging from this thread there are a few--it'd go a long way.

Being able to junk coins would make things a lot easier in crash situations, too, when you might end up with a duplicate pack. (Yes, you can junk packs with coins in them, I think, but some of the items in the pack may be duplicates and others may not be...I've had this happen to me before, and the staff had to manually delete the coins at the end of my junkfest.)

[LauraMars]

yeah the npc is different.  that's why sometimes your mounts are "bleeding lightly" when they come out of the stable - their endurance score is higher than what they went into the stable with and they need to regen the extra hp.  if you see a mount bleeding lightly you should be happy because it probably means they have a bit more stamina.

I wish I could reroll my character for 20 coins...

finally, a solution for fixing the economy

[solera]

As a lone, low strength rinthi scavenger I found it a bit of a struggle to keep my sids low. She bought spice to swap for favour, and I did offload small onto a shop keeper. In retrospect, I should have given it to the muggers, and hope that didn't trigger their aggro code.

[musashi]

I don't, personally, think the problem is with indies having coin. When I've commented on the worthlessness of coin before, it's because many powerful clanned people are "too rich to bribe", when it really counts. Now some may accept a bribe because it's just good rp and a chance to get some corruption in, but when a <redacted>? Hmmm, maybe I have a mistaken impression of what that role is supposed to be about. You need to have ten or twenty large to bribe people these days, at least, depending on who you go to, if you're an independent, that's a LOT, and a bit of a tremendous money sink, consider, also, that you lack the protection and influence of clans and it starts to seem like the economy is just fine, on one front. I agree GMH wages and the like need to be looked at.

EDIT: Edited to remove what might possibly be considered IC info.

Too rich to bribe? I'm really confused about this as a concept. The American political system as it currently stands is based on bribing people who are already too rich to bribe is it not?  News stories about money in politics (from internet based news mind you ... corporate media pretends like the bribery does't exist at all) often focus around how cheap politicians are to bribe compared to how much money they already have.

Shouldn't the insatiable nature of greed cancel out this "too rich to bribe" concept like it does IRL? I would think that if someone isn't taking your bribe the more likely reason for them not doing so is that the favor you're asking for goes against a bigger fish than you who they are already preferring.

[Revenant]

I don't, personally, think the problem is with indies having coin. When I've commented on the worthlessness of coin before, it's because many powerful clanned people are "too rich to bribe", when it really counts. Now some may accept a bribe because it's just good rp and a chance to get some corruption in, but when a <redacted>? Hmmm, maybe I have a mistaken impression of what that role is supposed to be about. You need to have ten or twenty large to bribe people these days, at least, depending on who you go to, if you're an independent, that's a LOT, and a bit of a tremendous money sink, consider, also, that you lack the protection and influence of clans and it starts to seem like the economy is just fine, on one front. I agree GMH wages and the like need to be looked at.

EDIT: Edited to remove what might possibly be considered IC info.

Too rich to bribe? I'm really confused about this as a concept. The American political system as it currently stands is based on bribing people who are already too rich to bribe is it not?  News stories about money in politics (from internet based news mind you ... corporate media pretends like the bribery does't exist at all) often focus around how cheap politicians are to bribe compared to how much money they already have.

Shouldn't the insatiable nature of greed cancel out this "too rich to bribe" concept like it does IRL? I would think that if someone isn't taking your bribe the more likely reason for them not doing so is that the favor you're asking for goes against a bigger fish than you who they are already preferring.

Quite possibly. I must admit my own ignorance in all of these situations, but I've seen it numerous times. Someone gets their undies all bunched up and decides to go nuclear over, -seemingly- very little. I've managed to buy the time to escape most of them, but the hopes of ever fixing most of them are kind of dashed. I mean, it really depends on the players involved and their priorities and personalities, I suppose, and my own PC's priorities at the time, and my PC's personality, how the situation pans out. I admit, when they don't pan out in my favor, I think, "I could have done that a bit more cleverly and in a less than honorable fashion.", but, hindsight is always better than foresight. It's why I prefer playing weaker characters, they're never the types to stand up to potential pain, and come up with alternate strategies.

[musashi]

I understand.

In the last leadership role I played, my character was very amendable to bribes but from my vantage as the person being bribed rather than the person doing the bribing ... man ... lowly commoners seemed to have enormous grandiose expectations that went along with those somewhat paltry bribes by comparison.

I mean like ... a thief in the dungeons wanting to give you a small, or the promise of five small because he doesn't have the money on him right now ... in order to let him go ... that's whatever. There are no social consequences attached to my character no matter what I decide to do so in those cases ... really 25 coins would do it. I never bothered pressing people for more money or scoffing at what they offered. It was all 100% reward with 0% risk for me.

But a lot of the other times, outside of that prison circumstance ... I would have an indy merchant coming to me wanting to offer me like, 1,000 coins in exchange for total protection from the GMH he was intending to be in direct competition with.

Dude ... you think my PC gets to have meetings with the head of Kadius and give that NPC marching orders? Get the fuck out of here. 

[Eyeball]

I'm not too sure I'd do anything to the actual economy. I mean, nothing to vendors, banks, etc.

But I would create code so that everything wore out. Almost everything, that is.

All foot-wear and clothing, including packs, belts, etc, on a room-counter adjusted by quality and material. Repaired clothing would bear the repaired flag. Packs which were allowed to go to the farthest reachs of wear would become unusable. Sandstorms, by the way, would alter the room-counter a lot. You might go into a blinding storm with new clothes and come out of it with most of your new, unflagged gear now tattered.

All weapons, on a hit counter, obviously determined by quality. Only some weapons could be repaired - those that were would bear the repaired flag. I'd also add sharpening kits to repair edged weapons. Blunt weapons would generally not be repairable.

All armo ... wait, that's fine. I'm good with this. Also, add a room-counter.

All food would go bad, based on a IC-time counter. Raw food would go bad far faster. Dried food and nuts would remain good for the longest.

All liquid would evaporate on an IC-time counter.

All mounts would age and die.

All wagons would require repair via the wagon-crafting skill, based on a room-counter. Walla, use for wagon parts AND the skill.

All pet objects would age and die, based on an IC-time counter.

All hides would have to be tanned within an IC week, or spoil. This mirrors RL by the way, but is way more lenient. 'Tool' required for tanning hides? Salt, or brains. This is also a mirror of a real method, and the one most likely to be used by our Zalanthans.

Wood would rot, based on an IC-timer AND usage-timer. So your chair would eventually break a leg and you'd need to go buy another.

Jewlery would become dull, and require a polishing kit to return to an un-flagged status.

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, but you get the idea. Simply by eliminating anything that lasts forever, you create a giant money sink and you allow people to visually see the harshness of the world. You create business for everyone, and uses for things previously considered flavor.

Too grindy. Why not put some positive things to use money on in, instead of spinning wheels to fight dilapidation.

[Eyeball]

Better Houses options...On most other muds these days you can do all sorts of cool things with housing. Its a huge money sink, just buying simple tables and chairs..more furnishing options would be a plus. A mud I tried out recently pulled coin out of your bank account to auto pay for feeding animals or servants you could buy. You could build farms which had a yearly upkeep cost as well and actually grow things. I -never- had enough coin in the game. I felt like I was always always struggling for enough coin to eat and feed my chickens with. In that same vein let pcs that have a proper social rank ( the Great/minor Merchant Houses or Nobles) to keep a slave have guards or just an npc servant to stand around the house. It would give Borsail something to sell more often and be something rich pcs could throw money at. Hit their account by x amount of coin each month to afford that npc servant or whatever.

+++

Add in that the good word of a Templar or Noble is needed before a house can be purchased; that should stir the pot.

[Barzalene]

A line of lifelike dead thind that can be sewn to clothes.

And a level.