In game economies

[Omnires]

Because of things like school and work I don't have time to play games like I use too. I just can frame for a few hours for the money and rare sources I need to so things. Because of this in some games I'm at a stopping point. I can't move forward in them because I don't have the gear I need but to get the gear I need to spend a lot of time grinding, time I may not have. I could try market but there is a reason why I don't use markets in almost every MMO that doesn't have a few good tradesmen guilds. Hyperinflation kills any hope of me buying the things I need from other players because there is no way I save up enough buy it within a reasonable time before the price jumps up again. In some games I play I am always poor. Even if I'm a high level end game player I'm always because I don't have the time keep up with the hyperinflation.

My question is how is this game going to deal with the economy and stop things like hyperinflation from ruining the markets?

 

[Ronyn]

Very little has been revealed about Em-8ER's potential economic model up to now. Other than knowing that the game's progression system will revolve around collecting resources and crafting, not much has been said. I am not certain when Grummz will ready to talk about that aspect of the game. It might have to wait a little while, we shall see.

 

[Nevyn]

Hopefully they are going with a consumable based economy rather than a durability based economy.
Consumable based economies are much more natural and let people set their own level of 'living' for a particular play session, while durability based economies lock you into the WoW style gear grind.

For an example of Consumable based economy.
You have a Gun, it has ammo. Your gun provides up to 50% of your attack power, your ammo provides the remaining 50%. So if you are just wandering around casually, you use cheap ammo that day, if you are going on a hunt for a super hard group achievement, you use the best ammo.

The advantages here (assuming the 50/50 balance) are that new players can rapidly gain power in short bursts via the ammo, allowing them to take part in much harder content early on, but at a significant (& probably not sustainable) price.
It also means that once you've put those long hard hours into upgrading the gun, you don't have a constant huge repair bill associated with it.
And most importantly, you have constant turn over on the market of the consumables like ammo, but if someone isn't doing well, they aren't utterly screwed with broken gear.

 

[Silv3r Shadow]

Yeah... I was one of the one who got quite wealthy in Firefall, it frustrated me when everything became soul bound from release, anything I used or even equipped would be un-tradable making a generic mmorpg economy.

Creating custom gear pre-launch on the market was great, I put max durability modules in all gear above 900q+ when I created 4 listings at least 2 would sell within 8 hours.

Since launch items for sale on the market on release were all stacked and very low variation between epic 40 and epic 40.
I had an add on called ARES Texchange which was really good pre-launch, you could find exactly what you want and find items.

Being able to see the sellers profile and other listings could of been a great feature

 

[HumanTrainingBot]

For an example of Consumable based economy.
You have a Gun, it has ammo. Your gun provides up to 50% of your attack power, your ammo provides the remaining 50%. So if you are just wandering around casually, you use cheap ammo that day, if you are going on a hunt for a super hard group achievement, you use the best ammo.

The advantages here (assuming the 50/50 balance) are that new players can rapidly gain power in short bursts via the ammo, allowing them to take part in much harder content early on, but at a significant (& probably not sustainable) price.
It also means that once you've put those long hard hours into upgrading the gun, you don't have a constant huge repair bill associated with it.
And most importantly, you have constant turn over on the market of the consumables like ammo, but if someone isn't doing well, they aren't utterly screwed with broken gear.

Reminds me of the systems in Dark Souls and in Skyrim. You can have the bow and arrows you pick up off of enemies, or you can buy/craft your own higher damage weapons and ammunition.

 

[EvilKitten]

Why do we need to have a traditional "economy" in a game that is supposed to be abandoning the "traditional MMO" design. This game is intended to have minimal vertical progression, and Grummz has already stated that gear will have a certain amount of maintenance cost and that is it. I certainly hope we do not have the crazy resource design that Firefall had (down with "ore quality"!). I still say that to maintain a shooter first mentality we need to not have player gear/consumables be the main resource sink in the game. Technically speaking the biggest resource sink in the game should be the companies the player works for taking the lions share of any processed ores recovered.

Of course that doesn't involve any player agency so what could visibly suck down the resources should be the job that the player's character is actually hired to do, world development and maintenance. If players have to build and fuel the means of expanding and holding habitable area's then you have a potentially limitless resource sync that can be carefully managed. It also gets rid of the reason to horde resources. If there isn't a need for "super rare resources" and you don't need to worry too much about not having gear due to running out then why hold onto them? Spend them to expand the world so you can unlock new area's.

 

[Nevyn]

Because you can't infinitely unlock new areas. Because the Devs have to make them. And they need to be different enough to justify their unlocking also.

Companies taking 80% (Example number) of the resources isn't a resource sink also, it's just a slowing of the gathering process, which you could do by starting with 1/5th the volume per 'node' also.

Not that that makes either of them a bad mechanic. Though from player happiness you want to make the 80% behind the scenes rather than actually visually removed from inventory. But they aren't suitable sinks for the entire games lifetime.
I certainly don't want the traditional MMO economy of grinding ever increasing quantities of ever 'rarer' materials either though. I'd like to see the economy tied primarily to a few standard easy to find resources, then you add a tiny amount of a rare resource to make a particular variant of something, as a general rule.

 

[EvilKitten]

Companies taking 80% (Example number) of the resources isn't a resource sink also, it's just a slowing of the gathering process, which you could do by starting with 1/5th the volume per 'node' also.

Not that that makes either of them a bad mechanic. Though from player happiness you want to make the 80% behind the scenes rather than actually visually removed from inventory.

Yes that sort of thing would be implied, part of the story immersion (NPC's complaining, monthly "pay stub" lines etc.), but not really shown.

Because you can't infinitely unlock new areas. Because the Devs have to make them. And they need to be different enough to justify their unlocking also.

That is why you have facility maintenance costs, the more area you unlock the more resources will be required to *keep* those area's unlocked. It's a form of checks and balances based on player population. As a population grows the area able to be continually maintained will also grow and vice versa. And a larger population also means more income that the dev's will have to build and design these new area's.

As for what is in the new area's, new bosses, storyline elements and of course to get away from the larger population. Mobs could be a little deadlier and perhaps the further away you get the larger quantity of resources you are capable of discovering (assuming your THMPR is large enough of course).

 

[Nevyn]

The problem with facility maintenance costs is you can't force a particular player to pay them, and they are a penalty, not a bonus. Sure it's not a bad plan to regulate play space vs play population, but why is it not covered from that cut the corps take to start with anyway? Assuming the population grows and is active that 'corp tax' will be larger.
Especially if you are gating storyline elements behind it, server not doing so well, well you can't finish the story? That doesn't seem fair.
And if you can get larger quantities of resources, one of two situations happens. Pay 2 Minerals to get 3 minerals. Infinite expansion. Pay 2 minerals to get 1.5. No-one really bothers at all because it's not worth the time.

Again, not against the idea as a side sink to unlock new areas in the initial server start up, and to maintain them, but it shouldn't be the primary sink for at least the reasons I've listed across the posts.



The advantage to personal consumable items being a primary sink is that players gain a direct feel good benefit from using the consumables. And you have also tied player power directly into consumable items as well which means that if a player wants to be super powerful all the time they are going to be needing to be buying from other people a lot assuming crafting is balanced right, which stimulates the market and provides constant opportunities.
It also means that the weaker consumables still have a market for people on a bit more of a budget who don't need that last 10% power anyway for whatever they are doing.

Obviously you still have some permanent gear progression, but the permanent progression isn't 90% of it all, maybe 50% is potentially permanent, and 50% is temporary.

(The other alternative that feels like players are rewarded for their resource spending is that all gear is permanently destructible on death, and I'm guessing most people don't want that, hence my push for a consumable economy instead)

 

[EvilKitten]

This is supposed to be a shooter, not a gear grind. Very rarely should the player ever need to focus on gathering a resource.

In fact, to be honest, I question whether the player should ever actually handle resources directly. Resources may be represented "on paper" but they could never actually be put in your inventory. Instead you could set multiple resource goals and everything you gather sans gear maintenance would go straight to those goals. This would keep the focus away from micro managing resources and maintain the focus on shooting and exploring the world. It would also mean you could get away with only a handful of distinct resources in game, say 4 or 5 at most. Special resources you might need to build some gear or advanced base components would instead come from quests/missions which would give the player total control over when they get them.

 

[Mahdi]

That's tough to aim for though, Kitten. FF pre-launch was massively geared for thumping and the entire clan I rolled with was all about thumping. Its the main thing I am looking forward to. Some of what you say cuts hugely into others that look forward to it. Its why I had posted some where on the forums about how to reward various play styles. Despite the obvious downer of all this talk being academic this early on, I still have full faith this game will fire on all cylinders for this community in all styles of gaming.

 

[EvilKitten]

And you will still thump @Mahdi, my suggestion wouldn't change that functionality at all, but instead of thumping randomly at anything with a high Q level, instead we can get rid of that approach and focus more on the actual event itself rather than wandering around hoping you find the resources you need. In fact by setting goals beforehand you can actually get AI assistance on potential thumping area's that might most benefit the goals you have set for yourself.

Rather than having Aero shout out anytime you come within a half mile of a mission the AI could instead only focus on those missions that would benefit you the most. What you would be doing is setting goals, milestones and objectives for yourself to achieve and accomplish, rather than retroactively using resources you have already gather to cobble together your gear. You can design exactly what you want and the game could itself point you in possible directions to accomplish this.

 

[zdoofop]

And you will still thump @Mahdi, my suggestion wouldn't change that functionality at all, but instead of thumping randomly at anything with a high Q level, instead we can get rid of that approach and focus more on the actual event itself rather than wandering around hoping you find the resources you need. In fact by setting goals beforehand you can actually get AI assistance on potential thumping area's that might most benefit the goals you have set for yourself.

Rather than having Aero shout out anytime you come within a half mile of a mission the AI could instead only focus on those missions that would benefit you the most. What you would be doing is setting goals, milestones and objectives for yourself to achieve and accomplish, rather than retroactively using resources you have already gather to cobble together your gear. You can design exactly what you want and the game could itself point you in possible directions to accomplish this.

I would find this interesting, except I'm not sure I understand fully. Can you give an example?

 

[EvilKitten]

I would find this interesting, except I'm not sure I understand fully. Can you give an example?

Alright, so lets say you decide you want to build a sniper...the sniper you want costs 100 resources of A and B. You also are working on a base and want to assist with building say medical facilities The Medical Facilities cost 250k of resource B and 250k of resource C. Now lets go find some resources. Because your primary build requires resources A and B, the in game UI will highlight 3 missions within 500m that includes resource A as a reward and one that includes resource B. However a significant pocket of resource B has also been surveyed nearby.

So you decide to go thumping and you locate said pocket of B and run through a thumping event. When you get back you discover that you have mined 150 B's, 20 A's and 60 D's. If you look at your build planner again you will discover that your sniper is now fully satisfied for resource B and still needs 80 resource A's, 50 resource B's also went towards building the medical wing. Because you did not have any use for resource D it was sold to your parent company for "cash". You decide to spend that "cash" to buy another 30 A's which go towards your sniper, leaving you with 50 A's left to acquire. Now you can go check out those "A" missions to pick up the remaining resources required.

Lets say you do 2 of those missions and as a reward you gain 40 A's from the first one and 30 A's from the next. At the end of the second mission you will get a notification that your sniper rifle has been completed. After a few moments a UAV will fly past and the sniper will be deposited into your inventory. As you gained 20 A's that had nothing to go towards they were converted into cash. The medical wing now becomes your primary build target, but you can always add in another item and you can change the order of priority at any time.

(Note: You could have more than 2 items in your build list, I merely use 2 for the example)

 

[zdoofop]

Alright, so lets say you decide you want to build a sniper...the sniper you want costs 100 resources of A and B. You also are working on a base and want to assist with building say medical facilities The Medical Facilities cost 250k of resource B and 250k of resource C. Now lets go find some resources. Because your primary build requires resources A and B, the in game UI will highlight 3 missions within 500m that includes resource A as a reward and one that includes resource B. However a significant pocket of resource B has also been surveyed nearby.

So you decide to go thumping and you locate said pocket of B and run through a thumping event. When you get back you discover that you have mined 150 B's, 20 A's and 60 D's. If you look at your build planner again you will discover that your sniper is now fully satisfied for resource B and still needs 80 resource A's, 50 resource B's also went towards building the medical wing. Because you did not have any use for resource D it was sold to your parent company for "cash". You decide to spend that "cash" to buy another 30 A's which go towards your sniper, leaving you with 50 A's left to acquire. Now you can go check out those "A" missions to pick up the remaining resources required.

Lets say you do 2 of those missions and as a reward you gain 40 A's from the first one and 30 A's from the next. At the end of the second mission you will get a notification that your sniper rifle has been completed. After a few moments a UAV will fly past and the sniper will be deposited into your inventory. As you gained 20 A's that had nothing to go towards they were converted into cash. The medical wing now becomes your primary build target, but you can always add in another item and you can change the order of priority at any time.

(Note: You could have more than 2 items in your build list, I merely use 2 for the example)

I think I get it. Interesting.