[CF List] The 'dis'economy of crossfire

[Mark Wedel]

Peter Mardahl wrote:

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      2)  And players will have millions.  No matter what.  Unless
     
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      you put a prohibitive cost on "repairing" artifacts....
     
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      And then, my opinion is that the game will be ruined by
     
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      burdening the player with either constant money-grubbing
     
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      (no fun) or having no effect other than wasting their time
     
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      spending a little of their excess dealing with an annoying
     
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      hassle.
     
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      I do NOT think it is realistic to think that you'll
     
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      be able to balance this perfectly, so it'll turn into black
     
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      and white:  EITHER players will have way too much money
     
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      OR they will never have enough.  Reason?  Simple.  I
     
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      don't think that you can balance things to within 10 percent.
     
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      10 percent of millions is still way too much money.
     
     
  That is probably true - achieving perfect balance is impossible to happen. 
And the idea of perfect balance would still be impossible simply because 
different races/classes would have different advantages.  Eg, the dragon player, 
who doesn't rely on equipment as much as others, obviously won't be spending as 
much getting his stuff repaired.


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      I fundamentally think that this problem is insoluble.
     
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      Successful players will naturally be filthy rich, unless
     
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      you hang some annoying, un-fun burdens around their necks.
     
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      And those same burdens will perhaps cripple low-level players....
     
     
  I guess some of the goal is to try to at least reduce the amount of money high 
level people have.  At least so they need to spend money occasionaly for something.