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2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/biz/ - Business & Finance

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254868 No.254868[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

How would you stop inflation in MMORPGs?

>> No.254880

At its most basic you'd have to balance drop rates with NPC fees.

>> No.254884

>stop making gold so easy to get
>create massive, mandatory gold sinks

>> No.254916

Slowly increase the quality of drops so that the existing gold sinks are still enticing to players. Make sure marginal gold spent = 0 for every gold sink. Introduce new gold sinks if people still aren't spending gold.

>> No.254914

do whatever path of exile is doing

>> No.254951

Runescape introduced "construction", which was an extremely expensive skill to level, and it allowed you to build fancy houses in-game. People poured absurd amounts of money into it for the prestige of owning expensive homes, just like people do in real life. It was basically designed to waste rich peoples' money.

>> No.254987

>>254914
eliminate gold altogether?

>> No.254995

>>254951
this.

People love to show off, and people pay ridiculous amounts of money to get shit that nobody else has.

>> No.255066

>>254951
I spent my entire savings (I think about 500k?) on that shit.

>> No.255085

Cosmetic gold sinks. Maybe raise transactional and maintenance costs (eg: auction fees, repairs, ammo)

>> No.255101

Taxes.

Every time you enter a major city. They take some money. Mail money? They take a cut.

>> No.255114

>>254951
>waste rich peoples' money.

ding ding winner

>> No.255162

>>254868
making death/profit ratio more addictive, also raising late game difficulty to a level where reaching the top is nearly impossible.

>> No.255163

>>254868
Increase interest rates and reduce money supply.

>> No.255242

>>254868
doesnt exist. MMOs are a perfect economy. Everyone is a price taker

>> No.255283

By regularly introducing expansions that fuck up the entire economy?

>> No.255309

>>255283
That definitely works. Devalue the currency and raise the price of everything correspondingly. Makes any glitched gold in the system worthless.

>> No.255329

Easy. Permadeath and 100% inheritance tax.

>> No.255336

Gold sinks, like flying in WoW. In Mists of Pandaria's first patch, Blizz added that super expensive yak mount. They need to add more of those and keep mobs' gold drops low. The main problem however is auction house barons just re-earning their 120k or whatever. I don't think they can do much against that except reduce the amount of gold the average player can get.

>> No.255345

>>254868
breakable equipment, nothing lasts forever.

>> No.255353
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255353

>>255101
but rich people would use that shit just as much as poor people

>> No.255375

>>254868
Hugely expensive vendor items were introduced at the start of Wrath to help curb inflation.

>> No.257626

Yeah, I'd have to say reduce the rate of drops. Offer them upgrades, preferably comedic or something to show off.
Don't inflate the economy...

>> No.257630

>>255242
Except for the whole "creating money from thin air by killing goblins" thing and the fact that the highest-value transactions are for exclusive items that are sold between players and don't take money out of the economy

>> No.257710

Permdeath. You can't take it with you.

>> No.257735

>>257710
Permdeath is not possible in "typical" MMOs like WoW, where you have to grind months for new equipment.

>> No.257763

blah blah blah demurrage

>> No.257905

>>254868
Have an algorithm that adjust gold drops and NPC sale and buy prices to keep the money changing hands between players more or less the same.

>> No.257942

Have a grand exchange and take a percentage of every transaction. Adjust the drain as necessary.

>> No.258009

You could always make the game world a closed system, only adding more wealth via the success or failure of the economies of the cities within.

>Players in the early game will amass wealth through running first raids, can invest in cities.
>Newfags join the world by taking control of newly born NPC's. (Prevents rapid deflation)
>Invasions can be very profitable, over-extended empires can crumble from butt-hurt newfags who assassinate leaders covertly or French revolution style.

>> No.258026
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258026

>bringing oomkins to brutallus

Sure is 3.0 around here

>> No.258052

first of all bliz doesn't want people to be poor/ deflate secondly..
all you have to do is increase the sales of npc vendors ..

business people have no idea what the fuck they are doing. we got perma death.. ya that will make subscriptions go up. .. we got stop making gold.. smooth we could deflate the economy back down to zero with that one... taxes .. jebus christ god no.. Increase interest rates.. on WHAT? the game doesn't loan money out

>> No.258255

Money Sinks seem to be the only real solution, but I guess it's really hard to balance them right so that it takes just the right number of gold.

>> No.258493

I would keep playing Entropia Universe. A MMORPG with a real money linked economy. where the 'gold' is tied to the USDollar at 1;10 ratio. So there is no way for them to dilute it, it only rises and falls with the amount of money people put in or pull out of the game.

There are better games, but if you are into GAMBLING and no INFLATION, then this is where it is at.

Also feels nice when you can pull 10,000$ out of a game without ever putting any in. But that is for the rare few, most go degen mode and keep depositing just like slot machine players.

>> No.258501

Control resources and create gank organizations like EVE online did with mining and goonswarm

>> No.258514

>>258501
but EVE still has huge fucking inflation.

>> No.258533

>>258493
i play runescape a little bit every now and then and there are people that have made any where from $10,000-$250,000 from it just buy gambling in game. It's pretty crazy that virtual game items can be worth that much.

But what's Entropia all about? I usually just gamble in runescape by staking because thats the only fun thing left to do imo

>> No.258540

>>258514
It's still one of the most intricate economies to ever pop up in a game.

>> No.258563

A player controlled economy with jobs that require interaction with other professions. Creating an intricate web of resource trade between every profession not unlike a glorified rock-paper-scissors, so that no job will be useless. An easy to use market place that can be stocked and left while offline, large resource nodes controlled by guilds. Smaller shifting resource nodes for newbies. Powerful guilds hire non guilds for reasorce gathering, attacks on other guilds, and other player group stuff.

Weapons and armor with simple stats and progressions. A sword made from Iron is weaker than a sword made from Steel, but its cheaper, easier to find, and wide spread. Materials and skills determine equipment strength.

NPCs trade for player made goods at a reduced price.

Immersive money sinks like thirst and hunger, inns to sleep, sales tax, looting of bodies from PvE and PvP. Expensive fast travel, expensive mounts and transportation. Challenging PvE with high reward, plentiful PvP with long term rewards.

All set in Sengoku Period Japan.

>> No.258603

Don't place the setting in some crazy ass mystical land where magic blows up everything.

>> No.258606

>>258533
I never played runescape so i can't really compare. Other than i know it is a cash based eco also. Second life is another but that shit is just stupid to me.

Entropia is just a glorified casino. Of course they dont call it that. It is a skill based virtual world to them. So you do get skills that help you use more advanced items, but this only helps you save money in the long run, or hunt/mine bigger.

You can Mine Hunt Craft. Each activity has its reward of risk. mining for example you'll throw 100$ into the ground and maybe pull out 80$ in return and get 10$ in markup to auction (because mining ingots always gets premium as it is used for crafting, they have a variance of rare to junk) Or you might loot hundreds or thousands cash value in a single pull. Mostly thou you just have a tiny loss and try to manage it with markup.

The game is free to play as in the fact that there is no user fee. you can rome around but garnishing items or doing any of the mining hunting crafting will cost $$$ obviously. Just like a slot machine costs money.

There are free activities, but its like collecting pennies and you'll end up making 1$ an hour if ur lucky. Back when i joined many many years ago these free activity were more profitable but they have been diluted over time. It's better now to bring 500$ or something small into the game and do not mine / craft / hunt. but to buy and sell items for profit on the auction system in the game.
Few years ago they launched a money share program where you can buy 'deeds' and each one gives you a revenue share. You could have bought them directly from the company when they first laucnehd at 100$ a piece. now they are selling for 140$ a piece and give about 2$ a month revenue share on avg. But i stay away from that.

>> No.258616

>>258606
Reads like a big ass scam.

>> No.258624

>>258606
hmm sounds like it actually might be kind of fun, might check it out some time. So when you say you make $1 an hour, do you mean you actually make $1 or you make $1 worth of in game money and then have to sell it? With Runescape, selling your in game money for real life money was against game rules, but so many people did it because you can make so much off gambling against other players.

>> No.258673

>>258616
is going to a casino a scam? casino lets you in free, you have to pay to play. Casino takes a small juice. the house edge. Simular to this game they take a small fee.
It is sketchy but so was fulltilt poker, a 450 million ponzi scheme. They still were able to pay out players however, until they couldn't.
This game is around for over 10 years now and never changed their 1:10 ratio. The only dilution you can see is from the USDOLLAR.

>>258624
When I said 1$ an hour. It was a rough estimate on the free in game activity you can participate in. For example there are texture stones laying on the ground. You see them by walking and not running. If you find some of the rare variety and a large stack. You can sell it for a few bucks. So you'll have to find someone or put it on auction and wait for someone to buy. They will pay you in PED (Project entropia dollars) and it will go onto your PED CARD.

When you get it down to PED it is basically $$$$ at a 1:10 ratio. so if you get 10 ped you'll have 1$. However i think withdraw limit is 100$ so there is that cetch. And withdraw is not instant it takes many weeks.

>> No.258684

>>258616
Also to elaborate on what i do, I'll go mining from time to time when i build up nice profits. But my main activity is trading.
And let me show you why its not a scam but actually a well managed risk trading tool.

For example if you go out mining and bring back 100 ped of minerals. you'll need to go to auction and sell them to get the mark up
now lets assume you have 100 ped of this certain item. its value is based on a scale that starts at 100% mark up. so 100 ped at 100% would be 100 ped. at 105% it would be 105 ped.
Now knowing this. You can be a buyer on auction and buy these minerals that are near 100% such as 102 103 104% for example. And these minerals/items will move in eb and flow so for example some might pop to 115% and you dump for profits. But because you buying at 102% your risk is capped at 100% and you can always dump for 100%. 2% risk is no scam. You can take bigger risk on items that might be 120% or 130%. there are even rare and volatile things that are in the 200%+ and can go as high as supply and demand will allow.
Ive seen items and traded them myself that ran from 120% to 2000%
I've also got burned on items that might go 400% to 200% which is a 50% loss on capital invested. But that is the game. However looking at my 102% example you can see how risk can be managed. Or you can go buck wild if you want also.
This game has hundreds of millions of $$$ traded back and forth yearly. Its up to you to profit from the spreads and moves, or to just be a chimp gambler degen delux.

>> No.258776

>>255345
The rate at which is gain gold far surpasses the rate at which your equipment deteriorates

>> No.258839

Why even have an economy in an mmo at all? Why not just ban player trading and have npcs.

Npc's can run shops better than players. The interface for an npc shop is much easier and quicker than spamming trade. This means less time shopping and more time actually playing.

Consiquently more time playing and less time shopping means players can party with each other more often. Which actually increases player interaction

The price's of items can be adjusted according to whatever needs the game has (because NPC's don't need to obey laws like supply and demand).

Having no player trading would destroy gold farmers. The company could spend its money on actually developing the game rather than making bot-detectors.

I've played PoE,d2, and other economically intense games for years and have never seen any reason to have player trading. (inb4 trading is fun. if you actually enjoy trading you should go on the stock market or ebay and trade where you can make real money instead of virtual money)

>> No.258843

>>258839
Player trading creates an option other than grind all day for gold to buy something

>> No.258881

>>258843
no it doesnt.
You can't trade at all if you didnt acquire some drops by grinding.

An npc shop keeper would also fufill the exact same roll but with all the benefits I mentioned

>> No.258883

>>258839
If the economy involved player interaction, then the fun could be had.

Think about the crappy pirate ship games where you could pvp a trader and take his shit. Then sell it to another country.

And I think that Gunzu did the marketplace the best, if any of you guys remember that game, its very /biz/ friendly. Basicly the ground floor wasn't hard to accsess, so you could level up your skills and produce like the pros in time and make mad money. You could also go to smaller "castles" and do some buy low sell high trading.

>> No.259017

>>258883
the point of video games is to do things you can't do in real life.

This is why for instance, in driving games, you are are doing racers, driving expensive or scifi cars, and have big open roads instead of being stuck in traffic and waiting on a red light.

This is also why trading in games is a shitty idea. If you want to buy low and sell high than do it in real life. The rewards are much better (real money).

The use of virtual cash to buy better weapons and gear should be quick, efficient, and not a signficant part of a game. If you really enjoy trading more than dungeon crawling and monster slaying than try buy real items and flipping them or learning the stock market.

This is why NPC merchants are a better concept than player merchants.

>> No.259066

>>258616
You want to see a true scam. Where you can pay in BIG with no chance to get any $$$ out.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/about-the-game

This games constant fund raising continues to mind boggle me.

I was ready to pay in but on deeper research they have no cash economy that you can withdraw to real dollars. Only put in big dollars to get your different level of packages. The more early you got in the better. By now they are just cleaning up on people who want to nerd out. Selling more and more promises with every million raised.

>> No.259884

>>258563
Age of wushu

>> No.260420

Just make it like in the real world. You only get a certain money per day (or more, if you craft things or do daily quests).

>> No.262846

Why not scratch money all together? All consumables would be for free (you just have to unlock the vendor) and equip gets dropped.

>> No.262866

Vanity gear / titles that do absolutely nothing but cost $1 million each.

>> No.264868

>>262866
No one would buy that.

>> No.264891

>>254951
Any answer other than this is wrong.

>> No.264911

Surely the problem isn't gold. The problem with inflation in wow is the numbers? hitting for 50 billion is meaningless. Never had a problem with too much gold as there is nothing to buy anyway. All the top gear and mounts are earned.

>> No.264922

>>264911
This is the problem and was one of the things Fagex ever did right; Construction was a drag. Grinding costed money. Most every industry developed around gathering mats for skills.

WoW never had anything like that. Player owned real-estate is the best bet. Buying services from the server is also an option (Battledawn is an MMORTS and allows you to use "energy" to broadcast messages). The transport network in WoW wasn't nearly expensive enough.

Wider support and infrastructure for large guilds is also a good idea.