Introduction
A lot of people e-mailed me about my other MMO related articles, and expressed their wish to do a follow up with an article about setting an MMO economy, and here you have it. But first a disclaimer:
This article is for your information only, and you should not trust everything you read here. Some advice might work for you, and some might not, therefore it is up to you to decide which, if any, methods you want to implement in your game. Many people complain about Eternal Lands economy, so please be advised that, although I do have years of experience in this field, I, like any other human, make mistakes.
Now that we are done with the disclaimer, let's focus on the real thing. In most MMOs, regardless of the genre and type (text only, browser-based, independent client), we have resources (items, money) coming in and going out of the game. Ideally, the ratio should be 1/1, that is, for every resource coming in the game, something of equal value must go out. Obviously, a perfect 1/1 balance is often impossible to achieve, but there are some tips that can help.
Tools to Use
The carpenter has the hammer, the navigator has the compass (or satellite-assisted navigation system), and the chef has the stove and pots. It is obvious that each profession requires, or can be facilitated by some tools. Designing an MMO economy is no different. Here are your tools:
1. An office suite such as OpenOffice, which is a free and a multi-platform alternative to Microsoft Office. A document editor is important for writing your design document and formulas. A spreadsheet can be useful for quickly testing formulas, and determining the ingredients price, experience gained and so on.
2. A program to draw diagrams and UMLs. Dia is a free, multiplatform program that is relatively easy to use. Making diagrams of how your economy is supposed to work can be very productive both for you and for those who work with you. Sometimes you can also show it to the players so that they will have a better idea on how the economy works.
3. A note-taking program. I am using Evernote , which is a shareware Windows program. The reason why a note taking program can help is because it just sits quietly in the system tray, waiting for you to use it. If you quickly come up with some idea while doing something else, you just click on it, write down whatever you need to remember, then return to what you were doing, knowing that the information will stay there, readily available when you need it.
4. A text (ASCII) editor. If you plan to store your economy-related files in a text format (such as XML), a document editor such as Word will not do, because such programs do not usually output a pure text file. I use Textpad , a Windows only shareware program. You can of course use Notepad, or various other free or commercial programs, but for me Textpad is the be-all-end-all text editor.
5. An 'in house' tool made by someone in your team that can digest economy related information, and give you a quick look on how one change in a formula affects another. While making such a program is by no means trivial, it can be very helpful in the long run. What this program would do depends on what kind of MMO you plan to make, and how much time your programmers have. One example of a task where it would help is determining how much time it would take a player to make a sword, if he does everything by himself (mining the ore, smelting it, molding the sword, etc.). The program would take into account factors like the time needed to harvest each ore, the time to smelt the ore, make the sword, let it cool. One other task could be to determine how many monsters of a certain type some player must kill in order to advance to some level. Or, perhaps, simulate a fight between two players where you manually introduce the data (skill, racial modifiers if any, weapons, armor). This way it is easier to test new weapons and armors.
In's and Out's
Before we start with the economy, we need to determine how the resources come in the game, and how they leave the game. Note that we will focus only on the items that actually enter and leave the game, not on the items that a player loses or gains. For example, if two players barter, they will both lose and gain some items, but no new item entered the game, and no old item exited the game. If a player drops an item when he dies, the item is still in the game; it can be picked by some other players. Please keep in mind that this list is not exhaustive and obviously, depending on the game mechanics, some methods of entry and exit will not apply. In the second part of the article, I will elaborate on some of them.
Points of Entry
1. Monster drops. Perhaps the most common, it includes both the normal drops (such as bones, meat, some gold coins) and the rare drops.
2. Collecting resources from the environment. Mining would be one example. Usually the resources are infinite, but a cap can sometimes be placed so only a limited quantity can be extracted per day, or perhaps per player.
3. Items made by players. Those items are usually made by combining two or more items.
4. Daily allowance. Some games give every player a certain number of resources every day or turn. The number of resources given to each player can be the same for everyone, or it can depend based on various factors such as experience, items the player has, virtual estate and so on.
5. Quests. Once a player completes a quest, there is usually some reward. This is not to say that the only possible reward is some money or some item.
6. NPCs. That is usually the case with the merchant NPCs, where the player sells or buys items. Generally, some item is lost and another item is gained.
7. Real life. A few games officially sell in-game items for real money. If a player sells gold to some other player for real money (gold farming), there is no new item entering the game; it is just transferred from a player to another. Therefore, if the game is properly designed, gold farming shouldn't be a big issue.
8. Contests. The contests are different than the Quests because they are usually a one time event with a limited number of winners. The prizes are often given directly by the developers/game masters by using 'artificial' means (some admin command). Sometimes players can organize contests, and give their own possessions as prizes, so no new item enters or leaves the game.
9. "Hand of God". This includes every item that artificially arrives in the game via an admin command, and is not a contest prize or bought for real money. Examples can include holidays (where the developers give gifts), a reward for finding a bug, an item meant for testing purposes, etc.
Points of Exit
1. Items used for mining/gathering resources. A player can be required to use some pickax each time they mine iron ore (the pickax breaks). Other items such as flowers can be mined without spending anything.
2. Items made by the player. Resources need to be spent in order to create items. Furthermore, you can make it so that sometimes the player loses the ingredients while failing to create the item.
3. Taxes. A virtual taxation system can be imposed in a game, where a player will have to pay a tax for each virtual estate they have, maintenance fees for the player based factories, salaries, etc.
4. Quests. Not all the quests will give you a reward in resources. Sometimes you will have to spend some money or items in a quest, in order to get something greater (experience, unlocking of a secret area, the possibility to start some other quest, etc.)
5. NPCs. No matter if you buy or sell something to an NPC, some item will exit the game. If you buy, the money will exit, if you sell the item you sell will exit. Other NPCs can charge you a fee to restore your health, give you a blessing, let you cross a bridge.
6. Broken items. Stuff breaks. We are talking about weapons, armors, ammo (if you can't reuse it after being fired). A 'natural disaster' system can be incorporated in the game as well, but more about it in the second part.
7. Natural decay. Some items have a limited life span: the food getting stale or items that are left unattended for a while being stolen by some virtual thief (that is, the server just destroying it).
8. Used items. A very common exit 'destination', it includes potions that are drunk, magic rings that are used, books that are read.
9. Fines. Sometimes, when a player is caught doing something wrong, part of the punishment depending on the circumstances can include an in-game items fine. You curse in a public channel, you need to pay 1000 gold coins, or else you get banned for a day. This can be a pretty effective deterrent, no one likes spending their hard earned money because they have a "dirty mouth".
