NOTE: This is about the economy in I:TQE and not I:B. Have a nice day… and we apologise for the inconvenience
Deep down we all know that an MMO economy has to work. There are plenty of MMO’s out there and they can mostly claim to work. Most also have issues with the likes of hyper-inflation. If you’re new to this can I suggest having a read of this slideshare. {For sanity’s sake - these are not my slides but they do provide an introduction to MMO economies. They are referenced “as is” without warranty to their spelling, grammar or factual accuracy; all readers are assumed to supply their own grey-matter}
For those of you that remember the epic thread from the old forum I’ll give a short recap of my thoughts:
The economy should be “massive” and players can influence but cannot railroad it. The faucets and drain should be huge and players can swing the flow; drop rocks in stream, that kind of thing. Take the players away and the whole thing will balance itself out.
NPC should be a “commodity” that wants trading; people want to vacation or emigrate. Age profiles of populations impact the type of consumption.
The crafting system needs to be a web; one raw material has many outlets (each faucet has several potential drains). This tends to result in systems with dynamic equilibriums that are harder to throw out of kilter.
I know the focus is on the kickstarter , and so it should be, this is just a big thing to sort out before I:QFE.
“It’s the economy, stupid” - misquoting Bill Clinton
At start, i have read the economy consists of escorting freighters that generate money when they arrive.
Money can be shared between the players then they can buy better weapons/ships.
I don’t know if ever such a thing (i think you mean an economy like in eve) will be implemented. Maybe in a mod such thing is not intended to be in the first stages or ever in the gameplay from what i have read …
The OP is referring to the galaxy-wide MMO that is the (very) long term goal of I-Novae Studios. This kind of thread can be misleading to new members who have only heard of Battlescape…
Now this is something that will irk me quite a lot, especially that last quote.
There is no such thing as a “free market balancing itself out”, all of our modern economic bubbles and scandals should be more than sufficient to get convinced otherwise.
Also, there’s a lot I’d say on your slides (apart from regular confusion between “there” and “their” and the big, bold “Hording” mistake). Probably the biggest part is that I fail to see how transposing PvE earnings to PvP is going to change the inflation problem.
I’m also surprised you didn’t analyse Eve Online or Guild Wars 2. Especially GW2, in fact, because it highlights a surprising fact. They started the development of GW2 with a professionnal economist from the start. Despite all their good will, the economy became quickly a kind of wreck… because of bots and exploits.
If the I:QFE gets out, I don’t want a trading module to it, I don’t want a Diablo 3 when it had a market. Interactions between players shouldn’t be limited on the sole PvP or money base.
Not my slides so flame away. Just felt they saved me a lot of background typing. If you weren’t in the previous forum I think we 80+ pages discussing the economy, how traders decide on routes, etc. etc. etc.
Rinse, repeat. Feel free to critique those slides, I don’t think they’re perfect; spelling, grammar or content. But hey if you know nothing about MMO economies they’re a good place to start. (To start, not finish)
If you had been on the previous forum we were trying to not “balance it out”; more like a pond on a windy day and let players throw stones. When the players stop throwing, the ripples fade away but the pond doesn’t evaporate. Apologies, I confess to a tendency to flowery analogies ;-/
And the one thing that was a hot topic before was about balancing risk and reward. If you have fight your way through bandit raiders to make deliveries you earn more than playing safe in the Cores.
In the end you know what you don’t want and that, my life experience tells me, is a good place to start.
and we apologise for the inconvenience