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158 votes
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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 ...
DMGregory's user avatar
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86 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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
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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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
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33 votes
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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 ...
DMGregory's user avatar
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27 votes
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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. ...
MSalters's user avatar
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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 ...
Loren Pechtel's user avatar
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 ...
Wrzlprmft's user avatar
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9 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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
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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 ...
Peter's user avatar
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8 votes
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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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
  • 118k
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 ...
Pahlavan's user avatar
  • 339
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 ...
Dmitry Grigoryev's user avatar
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 ...
Vaillancourt's user avatar
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5 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 ...
DoubleDouble's user avatar
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) ...
Theraot's user avatar
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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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
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5 votes
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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 ...
ctietze's user avatar
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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 ...
bpgeck's user avatar
  • 424
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 ...
Jessica's user avatar
  • 149
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 ...
Foxwarrior's user avatar
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 ...
DMGregory's user avatar
  • 132k
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 ...
Philipp's user avatar
  • 118k
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 ...
Stig Hemmer's user avatar
3 votes

Is it feasible to create a blockchain to use as a market place game mechanic without extreme inflation?

Let me first clear up some misconceptions you seem to have. The thing a block chain (by itself) provides is a way of cryptographically proving that no-one tampered with previous records. That is, if ...
Elva's user avatar
  • 3,203
3 votes

Finding the Balance - Income vs Expenditure

Incremental games (not sure if you are making one) make use of a multiplication factor between building upgrades. The ideal factor is within 1.07 and 1.14 for these ...
Madmenyo's user avatar
  • 1,959
3 votes

Why should I forbid real-money trading in my MMO?

While other answers are thorough in possible reasons, it is worth addressing the alternate: Not all games forbid real-world trading. World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings Online are two examples ...
Gnemlock's user avatar
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3 votes

How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?

First of all, an observation - you show "the bank" as independent from "the shopkeeper" - since there is free exchange between those, I'm not sure why you would do that? Just a thought. If it were me,...
AMADANON Inc.'s user avatar
3 votes

How to deal with "Scrooge McDucks" in my fixed-currency-amount game?

In the vein of Josh Petrie's comment on your original post, hoarding need not be an insurmountable problem in the first place. It's a matter of the value of gold relative to other goods. With ...
Platedslicer's user avatar

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