Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
"Player-driven economy". It seems most mew multiplayer/MMO games have this as a checkmark. It seems to me more often than not it's a buzzword-compliance checkmark, or done so poorly as to amount to no more than one. But when done well, it can add a great deal to a game.
A player-driven economy is oftentimes a primary driver to a sandbox game environment; where competition and cooperation between players is necessary for them to achieve any sort of meaningful mechanical progression or sustainment, and then story elements, and especially RP, derive from it.
To me, it's clear multiplayer roleplay needs a motivation to build on. It can happen without it, of course, out of the sheer creativity of players, but I've seen it devolve into recitations of carefully contrived background to each other, to almost endless and meaningless bar-room banter, or soap-opera romantic entanglements, love triangles, and more complex love-hate polygons. None of these are bad in and of themselves, but I feel they're thin gruel to build a roleplay community off of. Hence, my interest in sandbox game systems, which in turn leads back to a player-driven economy as one means to drive it.
I am wondering then, using Thain as a stage for the thought-experiment (and only a thought experiment), how we might create a player-driven economy using the building and design tools from NWN to do so?
As a starting point, I would put a computed control on the game-currency, gold. There would only be so much of it, and if you got some by killing and looting an NPC, then that gold came from the total gold that faction had, and then there was less to loot in the future, unless that faction got more somehow. Goods would not be potentially infinite. A merchant would have a fixed amount of gold, and if players sold enough loot to them, the merchants would stop buying until they got more gold from players buying their goods. I suppose prices could be set dynamically from this too. Perhaps a gold-supply constraint is only loosely enforced; for instance, the server just watches how much all the players who've logged in the last month have, and throttles gold drops and prices globally to keep it steady. In any event, the economy responds to what players do.
There's lots of areas for ideas. How to create/destroy gold, or to cycle it around. Where to simple resources come from, how are goods made and services performed. What are the 'goods', exactly? Do need upgrades or repair, and replacement? Is there an analogue to plant&equipment? If so, who makes those? How about knowledge, skill, and especially specialization? Is there a separate NPC economy that actually runs, or is this simulated or grossly modeled at some high level? How do the player and NPC systems interact, or should they?
Now, a reader might reasonably say, Thain doesn't have this kind of problem. We have lots of creative players and active DMs to generate story motivation. And that reader would be right. Thain doesn't need this, though far be it from me to say additional sandbox elements of some sort on Thain wouldn't be a good idea. But since we all know Thain and NWN, I feel it's the right medium for discussion. So, please use Thain or NWN examples as talking pieces, but everyone please understand this thread isn't really about Thain. This also means there's no need to build up anger or fear that Thain or anyone's RP or gameplay in Thain is endangered by this discussion in any way.
Registered Member #23859
Joined: 2:55:57 pm GMT 06/24/14
Posts: 409
I have seen this concept in action elsewhere and have a successful merchant.
There is a merchant guild you can buy a license for. You can control what your merchant sells. You can have them only buy things and then keep them or sell them yourself. You can control the buying and selling percent. Adjusts can be made anytime.
This is interesting stuff. I have suggested player run economy stuff in the past. There is one complaint from the player side, and one from the staff side.
From the player side I have seen a lot of worry about grinding. People don't want to grind materials to trade with, make equipment with, and so forth. They don't want weapons that expire after their durability run out.
From the Staff side the complexity of building the system would be the problem.
Registered Member #1593
Joined: 12:25:12 pm GMT 06/30/10
Posts: 451
I think the ultimate concern is not that people don't want a player-driven economy, but that its complexity is of concern. Who is going to program it? Ideally, it sounds excellent, but that also sounds like a lot of work for someone that has to work 40+ hours a week not to mention if they have a family.
Registered Member #633
Joined: 3:59:33 pm GMT 10/24/05
Posts: 1173
If I recall, there was already a sort-of scripted economic tweak some years ago, wherein certain merchants sold/bought at lower/higher prices than others in order to make certain all/most of the merchants got traffic (used to advertise this on signs all over Thain, if I remember).
Sometimes, like when the highest-paying merchant was in a remote/dangerous area, this could generate SOME RP or group play, but not very much.
While I think it would be a great dose of realism to see what happens to an economy based largely upon theft, pillage and looting, where currency seems to materialize out of thin air and never run out (you'd think the US government was running Thain's economy) -- especially a closed economy, like on an island -- when it suffers from inflation/deflation, I'm not certain as to how to turn that into a workable system that's fun.
Besides, most people hardly bother to think of economics in any context beyond "I need gold to buy _____", or whatever their immediate goal is.
I'd be more interested in an economy of ideas between players. Which gets a little more complex, but probably more cooperative and fun. I'd elaborate, but I haven't finished my coffee yet, and I have to think a bit more about it, too. Suffice to say there's more to an economic system than just money and things: there's currencies of intellect, too.
Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
It surely is a lot of work; and it would take a lot of scripting and data generation. The beauty of a thought experiment is we can sort of wave our hands and ignore how difficult the coding would be, since we're just discussing the principles. But certainly the coding overhead is significant, and it's one more reason why this is purely theoretical; if I were overseeing Thain's development zots, this wouldn't be one I'd encourage builders to work on. But from a theoretical direction, I think it's a good topic to discuss.
One of the things a vibrant player-drive economy needs is a mechanism for players to buy and sell the goods they make without needing to meet up in person. Meeting up and doing a one to one exchange in person should have the lowest overhead for any kind of transaction; no tax, no rented merchant stall, no guard to hire, and so on. But it lacks convenience. Being able to rent a stall and fill a store their with one's goods and set prices is the minimum, imo. MMO's usually go to full-scale auction houses, and these I think are usually too much. They ignore transport of goods and coin and act with too much fluidity. Eve does this better than most, each auction house is confined to one location. In the context of Thain, if there were auction houses, they'd be local to specific cities. A player's personal trading stall would be very much local and more limited.
Grinding is a problem too. Personally, I hate it. Sometimes I am looking for simple repetitive tasks I can do for a little while as a diversion, but I don't want my entire gaming experience to be driven around it. I had another idea in mind to solve this, but it's not really part of a player-driven economy discussion; it's more in terms of what the player-character's role is in the game world.
So, conceptually, and without that idea I just mentioned, I think the grinding aspect would need to be really low-end. But we can turn this over upside-down; it may not take much iron or tin to make the one ingot a player needs to make a widget, but the ore is found somewhere fairly remote and takes some time or adventuring to get to. Often, there's a crafting system one must skill-up through tedious repetition, surely crafting can be leveled up without making a thousand practice widgets, and the practice widgets wouldn't then be around to flood the market for widgets, such that once you know how to make them well, no one needs or wants any. That sort of skill-grinding is not only tedious but actively undermines an economy.
Bonesly did put in a merchant pricing system, but it was purely staff-driven, if I remember right. I think he reviewed log files, determined which merchants were getting the least business, and adjusted their prices by hand. Someone on the building staff today could probably look into that if players wanted it. Could it be done semi-automatically? Maybe.
Inflation is a problem, even on Thain. This is largely due to imbalanced sources/sinks of gold in the infinitely-open game economy -- the economy where endless spawns of monsters and continually refreshing chests create gold without limit, and where players don't need to spend much once they have the gear they need. The main sink of gold in these economies is when players quit playing or deliberately throw gold out (I've done this a few times on Thain).
As a side issue, this is very hard to balance, and a well-meaning change can turn an inflating game-economy into a deflating one.
The fun aspect is hard to balance as well. If a game is set up as a mandatory-participation high-fidelity economic simulation, that's probably not fun for most people. But one that's too poorly set up doesn't provide much drive for events and interaction. Surely there's a happy medium somewhere? Maybe there's specific items or services that lend themselves better to being set up as player-driven economics? How about potions, wands, and scrolls? I would contend these already have a player-driven economic side to them, though it's heavily linked to the gold source/sink economy. Take potions for example, could one put together a potion system such that the brewer didn't have gold just disappear to make one? That gold cost represents something, could that something be made real? Could it be something that other players could do for the brewer, and at an appropriate cost/trade?
Last night I saw other players discussing the price of scroll ingredients (Dragon's Blood). Stock NWN only has required ingredients for a few spells; and in some modules, you just buy vials of dragon's blood from the vendor. How might one create a economic system around these?
One of the key principles that drives economics is "competitive advantage", where a person or a group of people become especially good at an activity. In a lot of multi-player games, it's possible to be good at everything in one character, which really negates any effect from this. Are any one mage's scrolls better than another? No, not really, unless they're created at a higher level. Does any one mage have the ability to create scrolls, or certain scrolls at a lower cost or effort? Can any one mage make scrolls more quickly? In the real world, I buy my car from a car manufacturer, because due to their expertise, invested equipment, talented workforce, and task organization, they can make a car in a lot fewer total worker-hours than I ever could hope to. (I would take infinite hours.) They can do so even better than a small garage of expert mechanics; those tend to be relegated to specialty vehicles because they cannot compete with large scale producers making consumer goods.
I don't think I want to see industrial conglomerates in a NWN PW, but shouldn't a few player-smiths be able to get together, jointly rent a smithy, invest in better tools and so on, and make the islands best swords at a good cost? Morren and Keane watch out! I dunnoh, maybe some things do make sense to leave to NPCs.
Registered Member #633
Joined: 3:59:33 pm GMT 10/24/05
Posts: 1173
Buffledonner Industries to the rescue!
Remember our motto:
"Spend your gold here, because....economics".
I've seen tax and toll systems, entry fees upon entering a city, NPC groups charging franchise/licensing fees to perform certain activities, and even on one server a plot wherein a certain group of characters developed a Gold Curse where a single coin passed a curse on to all others it came into contact with, rendering gold (temporarily) worthless (and attracting monsters), but that was a special circumstance involving a faction fight between the Cult of the Dragon and a temple of Waukeen (we don't do temples here).
These, however, are not true "economies", more like gold sinks, one-off plots, and something that was quite fun temporarily when it reduced player-to-player transactions to an old-fashioned barter/haggle system (how many and what type of gems do you want in return for that Wand of Fireball? or You want me to kill WHAT in return for this service?).
Something that might be fun is the concept of the old English coffee houses (which eventually evolved to become the modern Stock Exchanges) where speculators got together to discuss investments in sometimes wild ventures (mostly related to the New World). Players could choose to invest in a venture which either succeeds or fails miserably in execution, and while this is simply another form of gold sink it does have the advantage that there's at least some RP possibilities involved for the creative.
Registered Member #1029
Joined: 11:45:04 am GMT 04/18/07
Posts: 732
AmberOfDzu wrote ...
One of the things a vibrant player-drive economy needs is a mechanism for players to buy and sell the goods they make without needing to meet up in person. Meeting up and doing a one to one exchange in person should have the lowest overhead for any kind of transaction; no tax, no rented merchant stall, no guard to hire, and so on. But it lacks convenience. Being able to rent a stall and fill a store their with one's goods and set prices is the minimum, imo. MMO's usually go to full-scale auction houses, and these I think are usually too much. They ignore transport of goods and coin and act with too much fluidity. Eve does this better than most, each auction house is confined to one location. In the context of Thain, if there were auction houses, they'd be local to specific cities. A player's personal trading stall would be very much local and more limited.
Just to pick up on this one point, wasn't this sort of shop set up in the past? I'm thinking of the magical goods shop at the Cobblewall Inn. I thought this was there to sell PC crafted items with some sort of mechanism to get the money (minus some commission I assuming) back to the crafter.
Registered Member #279
Joined: 4:17:59 pm GMT 09/25/04
Posts: 5460
Twirlip wrote ... Just to pick up on this one point, wasn't this sort of shop set up in the past? I'm thinking of the magical goods shop at the Cobblewall Inn. I thought this was there to sell PC crafted items with some sort of mechanism to get the money (minus some commission I assuming) back to the crafter.
Yes, that was the School of Magic's shop, I think.
If I remember right, the problem was that it didn't get used a lot, and since it was a very nifty system, why wasn't it used? I remember checking it a time or two, and the sorts of items my character would have wanted weren't there; in fact, it was a pretty sparse inventory. Seeing that once or twice is sure demotivation to making a trip there to see what's in the store. And then the vicious circle sets in.
I think a big part of the problem with the magic store specifically, and player-run economies in general, is creating an environment where there's demand for goods and services, but that demand creation doesn't feel unfair or unfun to players. For example, we could increase the demand for new items rise by making all worn items wear out. But who really thinks that's fun in an NWN context? And what about unique personalized items and rewards? Should those wear out? Would that be fair? Probably not. So, there needs to be a thriving demand for essentially consumable magic for a player-driven magic store to work. From the consumer side, should I spend my hard-earned gold on a consumable item? Does it have marginal value in terms of my ability to earn gold or avoid gold loss?
That last point may be key. If something costs 100g, what value do I get from it? Will it make me able to loot more than 100g extra for the time it's active? Most of the time, no. Would it help me avoid death? Perhaps, but death doesn't have a big cost, and I can avoid death by being careful and using good judgement in my travels. It may help me in special circumstances, such as a specific boss fight, or to overcome a particular bad event (like using a clarity scroll -if- one of us gets hit with a mezz.) These don't create sustained demand, just occasional demand.
I have two ideas that might address these issues. First, have ways to have long-term augmentation of items and gear that are inexpensive, long lasting, but which wear out. The details would be tricky, I admit. But say a mage could create a potion or polish that could put a temporary long-duration effect (I'm thinking eight or twelve real-hours) but modest sized buff on a main armor. Maybe it pluses the AC by one, or adds saves, or bonuses a stat, something useful. But it wears out. If it were at the right price point, people would be using it all the time, and this would justify a production and sales chain that would support some volume. Then, add a simple consumable that gives a player character a noticeable buff for a reasonable period. Maybe it resets, or partly resets, rest limits. Maybe it boosts str or con by a point. Yes, this is a lot like food and drink systems from other games. But I would add one more attribute -- it's perishable, even if it's unused. So, when this is made, it has a shelf life, and needs to be used before that date. This would make it a steady commodity, that people wouldn't just fill ten bags with and never need to buy again. I would also reset that perishability from the moment it first changes hands from its maker to another player, and set the perishability while it's in a merchant's inventory.
Once there's a few really useful commodity items in a store, that attracts consistent traffic, and then there's customers to buy those scrolls, wands, and potions.
Registered Member #633
Joined: 3:59:33 pm GMT 10/24/05
Posts: 1173
Or you could just goose the loot scripts so that consumables are no longer dropped by monsters, or turn up in loot chests. No potions, no scrolls, no wands. You could also make healing items obtainable in fewer locations.
There. Market created. Problem solved.
Additionally, a better crafting system that allowed for the production of specialized (limited use) items by magic-using characters would go a long way to circulating some gold. The current system, frankly, sucks eggs mostly because it makes very little sense (but then again, a camel is supposed to be a horse designed by a committee, they say, so it's shortcomings are understandable).
And yes, I do have (I think) better ideas in that regard, and would even be willing to script them to the best of my (presently limited) ability.
I have to do this:
DISCLAIMER: this is all a theoretical discussion.
ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: No, none of that was sarcasm.
[ The Island of Thain ]
Player Driven Economies
