[CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[Andreas Vogl]

Hm... some very interesting topics

in reply to Mark W.:

>
     
      > > But is weight of the money any real issue?
     
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      [...]
     
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      But are gems really that hard to use?
     
     
I think weight of money is okay. The problem with gems is
they are hardly better than money. AFAIK, all standard gems
are in the price range of 3-5 platinums.
The special gems like "flawless beauty" cannot be used
for most game-mechanisms (e.g. altars) because their
special title is not recognized. 

Hence, two things could be done for gems:
1. make standard gems cost more (of course adjusting
   the amount of random-gems in the process)
2. make titles be recognizeable by altars and exchange tables

>
     
      > I said the rent should have to be paid every time
     
     >
     
      > a player logs in,
     
     
I think banking-systems, apartment/town fees, gambling and
second-hand stores, those are cool ideas but they will gain
only a small deal for the money problem. 
Mainly, it is hard to scale such fees for player levels
properly. Most likely it would add too much trouble for
lowlevels while leaving high levels without any concern.
(This tends to happen for a lot of things)

>
     
      One question may be - what do people in general think of 
     
     >
     
      having some of the random artifacts available for purchase?
     
     >
     
      I know with the removal of potions, the idea is that we
     
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      wanted players to have to go out and find items. That is 
     
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      now the case, but doesn't leave anything to be bought.
     
     
Please don't put artifacts for sale.
We have removed potions from shops, because it was obvious
that anything which is available for money is like
available for free above level 20.
If we put artifacts for sale, I believe we would worsen
the effects of the broken economy.

>
     
      The biggest problem is just the large amount of money 
     
     >
     
      available at higher levels.  That is what really needs
     
     >
     
      to get cut down.
     
     
Come to think of this, I believe the main "switch" in a
players life is the point when he starts to kill titans
and dragons. Before he can do that (<= lvl 20), he hardly
has any money. After he can do it (>= lvl 20) he can get
all the money he can carry, anytime, anyplace.

Maybe we could improve the system a little by just
reducing the average drop-value for red/elec dragons,
titans and big wizards?

>
     
      Note that one of my long range goals would be to change the 
     
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      game/movement so to go to wolfsburg, you would buy a boat
     
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      and have to navigate it yourself to wherever you want to
     
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      go. Thus, you now have some real travel time, and you 
     
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      would chew up money buying a boat.  Some of the very old 
     
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      ultima games did this.
     
     
Yes, I also greatly prefer the idea of "adventurous travel" 
versus "instant travel" with teleporters.
 
>
     
      > You could have a set of statues that could be modified for 
     
     >
     
      > a price. Every time someone makes a change, the price to
     
     >
     
      > change that one again goes up.
     
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      [...]
     
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      some of these points requires the players to care.  Eg, 
     
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      if I don't care about having a statue with my name on it,
     
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      that doesn't suck any money out of me. 
     
     
I believe you underestimate the value of pride. :-)
The statue-bidding idea seems quite exciting to me.
At least I've heard of people who played night-and-day
just to beat someone else's highscore! ;-)

>
     
      > Item repair is a great idea - it works well for
     
     >
     
      > another game I know of.
     
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     >
     
      I think we are somewhat agreed that this is a good
     
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      starting point. We should really do this first and see
     
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      how it effects cash for the players.
     
     
Yeah, I believe that would really have a good effect
on economy. It would greatly help with balance too.
And there's not much to loose or fear about it.

>
     
      > Training is an old standard - you pay to level up once
     
     >
     
      > you got the xp. Would be tricky to implement perhaps.
     
     
Hm yes, why not. This could be another good way to
leech money out of those high-level pockets.

>
     
      > [...] having a player get to level 99 in three months
     
     >
     
      > is aceptable for a singleplayer campain type game but it
     
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      > pretty bad if you are shooting for a multiplayer persistant
     
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      > type world game.
     
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     >
     
      Are people getting to level 110 because monsters give too 
     
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      much exp?  Or is it they can just go to the right dungeons
     
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      where there are 300 of the right monster?
     
     
This is indeed another one of the "root problems" in CF.
Guess I already said that, but the leveling problem is
definitly caused by the lack of experience gaps between
higher levels.

After level 50, the amount of exp you need to gain levels
does not rise anymore. It stays around 3 million, which is
FAR too low. In other words, once a player reached level 50,
he can gain any other level in a linear amount of time.
But the penalty for dying does not increase either.
So in fact, it is even worse: The player needs less time to
gain additional levels because he gets stronger in the process.

Obviously, increasing the experience gaps between levels
would be a good thing to do.
However, I believe one of the underlying problems here are
limitations in length of variables, or not?
Would it be possible to just raise the amounts of exp without
running into an overflow?


Andreas