158
votes
Accepted
How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?
Fees & Taxes
One common way to deal with this in real economies is to add a periodic fee that redistributes hoarded wealth back into the community. A few forms this can take:
Wear on gear items ...
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85
votes
How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?
There is a critical flaw in your system. You assume players will play forever. In the real world, this is the case. "Players" keep "playing" the game until they die, and then their remaining wealth ...
- 111k
58
votes
Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world?
The problem with this system is that it just fights the symptom, not the cause.
Inflation means that money loses value, because players have too much of it. It's not the items which become more ...
- 111k
33
votes
Accepted
AI for auction bids in the Monopoly game
To determine an auction bid, you need the AI to be able to estimate the value it expects to be able to earn from that property.
First then, we need an estimate for how many rounds the game is likely ...
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27
votes
Accepted
Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world?
Publilius Syrus clearly stated it already in ~100 BC: Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it. Adam Smith explained why: prices represent an intersection of supply and demand curves.
...
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17
votes
Accepted
How do I fairly distribute new powerful cards to players in a collectible card game?
Some suggestions to bring more cards into the game:
When a player wins a match, reward them with two cards: One from the losers deck and one newly created one. You might also consider giving a ...
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17
votes
AI for auction bids in the Monopoly game
DMGregory gave you a lot of ideas on how to value property. However, your starting point should back up a bit:
Design your game engine from the ground up to permit running all-AI games that simply ...
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14
votes
How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?
Background
In the real world, there are (almost) no Scrooge McDucks. Instead rich people invest most of their surplus money, i.e., they lend it to other people.
Suggestion
Let x be the amount of ...
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12
votes
What's the economical design difference for a global auction house or seperate auction traders?
This basically boils down to basic economic theory, more specifically the concept of market transparency.
When someone wants to buy or sell a fungible good (like most items in a common MMO game), ...
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10
votes
What's the economical design difference for a global auction house or seperate auction traders?
Nickson104 already wrote a pretty nice summary in his comment.
I've been playing the game since early beta and I prefer the small AHs, so this might be a bit subjective, but overall the most ...
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9
votes
What makes MMOs with real-money economies legal?
My question is why are there not more games which take this approach
of a game economy tied directly to real money?
I think the answer lies in what a game is. To most people, a game is something ...
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8
votes
Accepted
Designing a trade / market system
A far simpler, easier to implement and easier to balance solution than the other one I proposed before (although with less gameplay depth):
Have a function ...
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8
votes
What makes MMOs with real-money economies legal?
When you allow players to not just pay you money but also get out money, your game can easily fulfill the definitions of both banking and gambling which are both heavily regulated in many ...
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7
votes
balancing a building game
EDIT: Since you added to your question that the resources are static, I’ll talk a bit about that specifically. I’ll leave the previous answer below the line as it might be useful to other people.
If ...
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7
votes
How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?
Provide your Scrooge McDucks with an alternative commodity they could hoard instead of money. E.g. sell super-expensive unique items from time to time, or give people visible achievements for ...
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6
votes
Designing a trade / market system
The most easy is to empty the market, wait for the price to adjust, then sell everything back.
This implies that if the price for a unit of coal while there is 100 ...
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6
votes
Dual Currency vs. One Currency in social games economics and monetization
Having a single currency is not simple at all for monetization. This is because you would have to implement many efficient money sinks in the game to stop players from grinding their way to unlocking ...
5
votes
If a MMORPG does not have a limit on the number of players, will all players eventually focus on the same server?
New answer
Due to the comments, I will assume that network latency is not a problem, and forget about the server side.
At the end it depends on whatever or not the developers facilitate (or enforce) ...
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5
votes
How to prevent crafting costs and selling prices to converge in economies?
The reason is often that the crafting process itself has no cost. If crafting is nothing but pressing a button, then you can not expect players to pay each other just to press that button.
If you ...
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5
votes
Accepted
What are good ways to keep the player spending in a single-player RPG?
Most RPGs provide a ton of loot to sell. In 'Gothic', you didn't have money, but traded magical ore as hard currency aka sound money. But if the supply of tradeable items with a vendor was up, tough ...
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4
votes
What's the economical design difference for a global auction house or seperate auction traders?
Keeping in mind that in a perfect market, one has to know everything about the market (this includes of course price and quantities available):
With a local market:
More chances to get ripped off (...
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4
votes
Internal Game Economy
Well why not model your economy system after a real economy? Maybe have a supply variable that for each item in circulation (i.e. if you sell ten bushels of wheat ...
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4
votes
How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?
Look at the Circular flow of income model used in real-world Economics.
One of the best ways to redistribute money is to look at supply and demand. Do the players with most of the wealth have an ...
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4
votes
Can letting players take resources from others prevent inflation despite the lack of money sinks?
The average winrate between a player who loses all their pieces and one who gains all those pieces is 50%, but the player who loses all their pieces then goes on to make a new account, so now amongst ...
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4
votes
Accepted
How to deal with players having too much money (or any large numbers)?
I read somewhere that you shouldn't compare floats
Beware programming by hearsay. This is a good way to make mistakes for reasons you don't understand. Instead, ask for clarification.
The full ...
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4
votes
What are good ways to keep the player spending in a single-player RPG?
Put a limit on how much money there is in the game. You can accomplish that by avoiding any sources of money which can be exploited over and over again (like respawning enemies which drop money or ...
- 111k
3
votes
What makes MMOs with real-money economies legal?
Note that Diablo 3 had the real-money auction house. (before it was removed)
How it worked: Players could purchase in-game digital items from other players using real money. There was a similar, but ...
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3
votes
Can inflation exist in a fixed price Mmorpg world?
Nowhere in your description is there a source of silver/gold. There would be no money for anybody to buy anything. In the end, it would just be a single-player game of crafting. This was probably not ...
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