13 Sep, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 41st comment:
Votes: 0
DavidHaley said:
What happens to a (semi-)closed economy when one or more people sit around hoarding stuff, if anything because they don't care to junk it? Will mobs and newbies forever be unable to have swords? Like you say, this is a big challenge… :smile:


To some degree, players attempting to hoard will be self-defeating, simply because if an area becomes depleted, people and mobs will move on to greener pastures. I suggest things being semi-closed, because you would want things to gradually replenish themselves unless you have an admin staff that is creating new content at an incredible pace.

Interestingly, I think if you had four newbie villages to start from, and one of them gets resource depleted due to mob extinction and player hoarding, most new folk will get warned to create in one of the other villages, but those who like a challenge may seek out the leaner areas.

I would probably start trying to implement something like this by setting some replenishment rates for various materials, and then "stock" the area with a certain amount (both in refined goods and raw mats). If the stock gets depleted, it recovers at the slow rate to simulate residents mining ore, plants slowly regrowing, etc. On the OTHER side, if the stock rises to a certain point, replenishment stops. Too much ore means the miners won't bother pulling any more up, the harvesters will stop planting, etc. Thus, you prevent just having infinite amounts of materials continue to accure.

I'd probably also keep both global rates/stats AND regional ones. There should be an overall cap in the world, but also local caps and replenish rates. That way, you can have one super-rich region producing so much that other regions around it stop producing, even though they're depleted. THAT makes for regional trading, which is always a good thing for a player economy. :)

But yes, it's not something that can be figured out and designed in a few weeks. I do think it would be worthwhile though, and if anyone gets a stable system working with a couple hundred players, the MMO folks might be at their doors with checkbooks. Inflation of the economy is the biggest problem of faucet/drain economies, and all the graphical MMO's would love a way out I suispect.
13 Sep, 2008, quixadhal wrote in the 42nd comment:
Votes: 0
Vladaar said:
Well you can have an AWESOME political, house, religious, clan system in a game, but if you don't have
players to use it, it will sit and rot. I would someday like to expand to have a house system and political
system in my game, but right now don't have the player base for it. I am using clans with npc leaders
that induct/outcast give gear to players.


Actually, you provided your own answer. :)

Build a complex, player driven political system, but put NPC's into all the positions as seeds. As players do whatever they need to do to move up in the political ranks, they will gradually start to displace the NPC's and take over their functions, gaining their abilities as they do so.

I realize many people can't stand the idea of doing work when nobody seems to care, but in many cases, you can't ask people to play a game and totally change it under their noses. If you start up a standard diku and start adding "weird" new features, your playerbase will wander off since they WANTED a stock diku. OTOH, if you code all the new ideas, people will wander by and poke their noses in to see what's up. A few will stay and bring friends. If they see you're actively adding new content, they'll talk about it and get more people.

It all depends on your reasons for running a mud. If players are the most important thing, you'll probably let ideas take a back seat and focus on making stuff to keep the players happy. If ideas are more important, you'll be lean on players until you've convinced enough of them to stick with it, through your continued attention and actions.
13 Sep, 2008, Vladaar wrote in the 43rd comment:
Votes: 0
I don't know what to say to that Quix other then your right.
40.0/43