Experienced Points: The Broken Economy Is Your Fault

By Shamus Posted Sunday Oct 18, 2009

Filed under: Column 37 comments

Neglected to link this on Friday.

You know how RPG economies are always broken? Well, I blame you.

 


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37 thoughts on “Experienced Points: The Broken Economy Is Your Fault

  1. Jon says:

    As a few people have already suggested (on The Escapist), reducing the amount a player can carry would go a long way towards solving this problem. I personally would greatly appreciate a game that required you to think about whether an item is worth taking up valuable space in your backpack. I love RPGs to death, but my sense of immersion gets broken when games tell me that a stack of 10 gold bars takes up as much space as a single flower. I’m happy to see many games moving towards more realism; however, the backpack is still one realm where the laws of physics seem to collapse.

    I’m not suggesting every game adopt this idea – after all, where would Mario be if he could only jump two feet in the air? There will inevitably be some outraged people who will want to pick up every single worthless item they can get their greedy hands on, and there will certainly be traditional RPGs that appeal to this type of player. But as for the rest of us, who crave more realism and more challenge, could we please continue on this wonderful track headed towards backpack simulation?

  2. General Ghoul says:

    While not perfect, I like how Atari’s Temple of Elemental Evil (with big modding assist from the Circle of Eight) handled the economy. Leather worker pays more for leather goods, less for other items, blacksmith pays more for weapons and armor, less for other items. There is a woodworker (shields, bows, spears) gemcutter, tailor, and a cleric and wizard for magic items. After completing a hard quest the smith will sell you better items. There is a visit to a larger town with better merchants, although I probably unloaded hundreds of swords, axes, and chainmail on the smith, he seemed to more them along after a few game days. Where does a small hamlet ship all the excess supplies I brought to town?

    Although I never reached a point were I had any excess money, as there was always better magic to buy, or make yourself.

  3. Daniel says:

    While none of the games you mention get an economy exactly right, I think sevreral get within hand-waving distence. By the latter parts of Morrowind, for example, the player charecter runs several major guilds, owns a productive estate and is a hero to the entire contentent. It is perfectly justifiable for the player to be ridiculusly wealthy. Sure, in reality your wealth ought to come from revenues from your various offices rather then from selling endless supplies of armor to Creeper, but the end result is the same and, consequently, doesn’t bother me that much.

    Here’s a really half-baked idea: if you were moddling supply and demnd as you discussed earlier, one effect of selling massive amounts of loot would be to make it cheaper to equip an army. The result of the higher supply of swords could be to drive down the prices for all weapons, leading to all player opponents being better equipped. If this were made explicit, it could address *some* of the reality problems of a auto-adjusting difficulty a la Oblivion — sure, the bandits are in great armor now, but that’s only because you flooded the market with that armor and now they can afford it. If the oddly fancy bandits in Oblivion had been presented as a logical consequence of my looting instead of just appearing as an unexplained punishment for leveling, I would personally have accepted them much more.

    What do y’all think?

  4. BFG9000 says:

    Daniel: Sharp idea. I also would have accepted the “you ruined everyone’s livelihood by flooding the market, now the bandits are badasses” argument better than I reacted to “Congratulations on leveling! Nothing changed, relatively!” Part of the fun of rpgs is to go back and one-shot some goblins that were giving you are hard time at an earlier level. But if it were my own stupid fault they are well equipped now I wouldn’t be mad with Bethesda, I would be mad at my money-making self.

    Shamus: Dug the article, but I wonder if those examples really count as a “broken” economy. As you say, the hero is a force of nature, murdering like none other before them. Doesn’t it make sense that this guy/girl should be loaded compared to the 9-to-5 shopkeeper? Anyway, for me, economies don’t make the game. Grinding simply for money is boring (anyone remember buying the “Bottle” in Final Fantasy 1 for the NES? Painful) and some games, while their economies seem poorly balanced for the later stages, they really aren’t. Take Oblivion: Sure, you could go around buying everything you wanted, but the stuff you could buy started to be garbage compared to your arsenal of enchanted weapons gathered from dungeons throughout the land. Who would want a “longsword + 1” when you are carrying a “longsword of the swamp king +99” that you picked up after killing said king? People will claim money becomes worthless, but all you really buy is potions to continue the adventure, and no one wants to bother with the nickel and dime process of budgeting for potions… I dunno, I guess I see a hero that is constantly stuggling to make ends meet as not appealing either.

  5. *cough* Mount & Blade. */cough*

    That is all.

  6. rofltehcat says:

    Mount & Blade is more of a strategy game than a roleplaying game when it comes to the economic system. When you get more money you normally can afford a bigger army, etc.
    You don’t ‘spend’ all that money on one person (you can, but 1vs300 is still a bit risky), you spend it on your army’s upkeep.
    I think it would be comparable if in Morrowind you actually had to pay all the guards, workers and clerks needed to run your guilds and towns.

    I think one other good way to balance this whole economical problem out is to simply devalue the loot or reduce the amount of loot dropped. What bandits living in the woods have swords? Maybe 2 or 3 of them have axes, a few more have knifes and their leader maybe has a sword. The rest of them will be using blunt weapons made of wood, rope and stones. Maybe add in a few low quality bows. No trader in his right mind would buy that stuff. Also, which trader would buy some leather armor that is full of holes and blood? Maybe someone planning to make rags out of it… or a bandit going to ‘fix’ it. Either way you won’t get much money for it, have to find the right person first or even risk your reputation or life by trading with them.

    Another way to fix this is to simply limit the amount of crap someone will buy. A blacksmith might buy a dozen low quality swords if they can be repaired into something he can earn on or if he can melt them into bars. But unless he is having a industrial size furnace he won’t be interested in your 200 rusty/shabby/nogged swords.

    Overall in some games I think being able to take so much stuff with you and especially being able to know how much money something is worth (extra skill for that maybe?) ruins a part of the game’s flair.
    You spend a large amount of time looting and taking stuff with you that you in reality wouldn’t even bother to look at. Quickly looking through the stuff dropped by 5 enemies and taking some good boots and a sword is much more interesting than throwing out some stuff (that you already looted before) to make room for everything that is worth a little bit more than what you carry in your carriage-sized backpack.

  7. Craig says:

    Another interesting prospect is to change the gameplay itself to make a realistic economy feasible. Battles are longer in-between with the main gameplay being setting up the encounters, detective work, etc. etc. With rarer battles, two things happen; one, economy makes sense, and two, battles make sense. The whole idea that one person in their military career can kill hundreds and thousands of people personally is a bit strange to me (though it hasn’t stopped my roleplaying). I like the idea of a game where the actual death is the culmination of a lot of other work and adventuring in and of itself to instead of simply being higher level, the set-up guarantees success. An actual even fight would be the rarest challenge, akin to boss fight.

    Of course, this brings up the additional challenge of making compelling non-combat gameplay in an rpg which is as entertaining and sell-able.

  8. Magnus says:

    The Witcher handles this relatively well, if only because it doesn’t allow you to pick up everything.

    There are also plenty of ways to spend your cash, so you never feel like you’re super rich. (not to mention people trying to rip you off on purpose)

    I always thought the Baldur’s Gate games handled it fairly well also, since you could pick up most equipment, but it was only worth a few gold, which would have been fine, if you’d been a farmer or labourer but isn’t enough to buy adventuring equipment. Also, the best stuff was found on the bodies of your enemies, rather than in a shop.

  9. LintMan says:

    Having more money than you know what to with by mid-game doesn’t need to be fixed by monkeying with the shop economy. In the real world you can never have too much money, so why not make the game like that? Instead of trying to limit how much money you can get, the game should provide more things for you to spend your money on.

    Expensive things. Fantastically expensive things. :
    A very pricey create-your-own-magic-item-and-spell system. Diablo II’s magic item gambling system. Invest in a shopkeeper to expand her product line. Buy a new home for the orphanage. Buy up an entire town. Rebuild a town destroyed by the bad guys. Finance a town militia to defend the town from recurring pirate raiders and keep the local roads safe. Donate money to in-game charities that make a visible difference. Buy your way into the governorship of a province. Buy a castle and staff it. Craft ($$$) a mighty and upgradeable ($$$) golem to accompany you. Build your own mage tower and outfit it with nifty toys. Finance a war or defense against another kingdom. Back BOTH sides in a war of neighboring cities. Once you reach a certain “richness” threshold, you would gain a reputation as a tycoon, and the game could start opening up these possibilities.

    Fable did a little of that, but I think being able to do this kind of stuff on a larger scale would be pretty damn cool and really make you feel like you can have an impact on the game world.

  10. Bret says:

    Hundreds of people killed in a short span of time?

    Check. Look up Simo Hayha some time. Dude killed more Russians before breakfast than the cast of Red Dawn managed in an average day.

    Seriously, the guy makes most FPS heroes look like they aren’t trying.

  11. Daemian Lucifer says:

    You can always limit what the player can carry.I really would like to see a person able to carry three full plate males,10 tower shields and 7 two handed swords just in their backpack and pockets.

    Once they start paying for mules and such,you can add bandits that snatch them while they are in dungeons,thus theyd need to hire npc guards as well.And food and water and equipment for them as well.So,theyll either spend tons of money on those,or just loot the small valuables.

    Also,if 99% of enemies have crap or common equipment,therell be no need for players to haul those around.And if you add some law,and players end up fighting someone well known in the city,they wouldnt be able to just sell his stuff to anyone.

    It really isnt that hard to rein in your players.

  12. Audacity says:

    Yeah, but Hayha didn’t haul all their crap with him through the snow back to the nearest town.

  13. Helm says:

    Yeah, but Hayha didn't haul all their crap with him through the snow back to the nearest town.

    Chuck Norris would have

  14. Chris says:

    Take the supply and demand model from Acheron’s “Patrician” as the basis:

    * Each unit of X good purchased/sold drives up/reduces the asking price of the rest. Cornering the market can get expensive really quickly…
    * Flooding the market with good Y drives the asking price below production cost of said good.
    * Manufacturing goods yourself lets you equip units/supply bulk purchasers at cost price.
    * Oh, and people, beasts of burden, ships, teleportation magic, etc should *all* have load limits.

    Elaborate/make fantasy-specific from there. Just retain the basic ‘more of available = cheaper’ rule.

  15. Sheer_FALACY says:

    Limiting the amount that people can carry isn’t fun. In the worst case, items are worth carrying back to town and selling, and you end up with the player spending more time travelling than killing enemies. This is a bad thing. If items aren’t worth the weight, then players won’t pick them up, and you might as well not have dropped them at all.

    And a system where players LOSE items from their inventory if they don’t pay an upkeep cost… that’s just TRYING to piss people off. If something has an upkeep cost it better be awesome.

    Obviously there needs to be SOME sort of limit, but it shouldn’t come up frequently unless they pick up absolutely everything.

  16. JKjoker says:

    im with Sheer_FALACY, carry limits in games are NOT fun, particularly in hoard driven games, they only really make sense as a game feature in survival games, limits on other kinds of games only annoy the player and force them to make even less logical action, like expending hours loading and unloading crap every time they finish a dungeon or making stockpiles in strategic points (usually ridiculous ones like the front of the elevators like in system shock 2 or the middle of the street, or a barrel somewhere) to reduce commute time or forcing players to not use cool things (like potions) because you can only carry one and “you might needed later”, or forcing players to choose weapons for their kills/ammo-limit ratio rather than because they are fun to use since they can only carry 1 or 2, games need to deliver fun, not realism, we have real life for that and we are playing games to get away from it

    i had this problem recently with Red Faction Guerrilla, you are given 3 weapons slots, but you are “required” to carry the demo charges and the nano rifle (you need to blow crap up after all, the only possible replacement for the demo charges is the termobaric missile but you cant restock them without running back to base), so you only get one slot, BUT your ammo limit is criminally small so you are going to take one of the enemy weapons (most likely the heat seeking rifle or the regular rifle) so you can pick up ammo while fighting… the end result: you get 0 slots, all the extra weapons you can unlock and the rarer enemy weapons… all awesome but impractical (well some suck because of the damage balance but you get the idea), the game effectively prevents you from using them because their kill/ammo-limit ratio is too low to last you between ammo restocks

  17. Kaeltik says:

    As many above have said, encumbrance is the traditional solution. I’m fairly simulationist, so this was my solution back when I DMed.

    I once ran a campaign where the party needed to hunt down and defeat a much larger force. They hired mercenaries, one of whom was an experienced campaigner. He was delegated the logistics (how many troops, how many horses, how much food, will you need to bring firewood, can troops look after the beasts, or will you need grooms & farriers, etc.). The party and their little army found and defeated the bad guys, but with losses, including the logistics NPC. The enemy commander escaped.

    Forced to handle their own logistics while tracking fugitive, they made mistake after costly mistake. Eventually, their prey set a false trail over difficult terrain and they followed, leaving mounts and supplies behind essentially unguarded. The enemy doubled back, stole the best, and slaughtered or burned the rest.

    Because they thought of their mounts and gear as cheap and expendable, the enemy gained an insurmountable lead and reached distant allies. Between this and a series of strategic blunders, the PCs were forced into another, more costly battle and nearly failed the campaign altogether.

  18. Armagrodden says:

    Given the amount of fun I’m having with the real world economy, I’m strangely comfortable with a game’s economy showering me with riches that make no sense.

  19. Dev Null says:

    I don’t know; I’m fine with just limiting the amount they’ll buy. Your average village has, what, like 3 people who both want and can afford to pay cash for a single longsword? So you can sell 3 to the smith here and after that you can maybe trade a few more for apples or other useful things. Sure, it cuts back on the packrat enjoyment factor, but we started this conversation complaining about realism, and ludicrous packratting isn’t realistic. Limit recycling (melting down the rest to put the entire metalworking industry out of business) because it really _isn’t_ that easy to pound a half dozen tempered swords into a plowshare, and limit inventory space so you can carry only a semi-ludicrous truckload of crap back to town after the adventure. (This, by the way, is always one of the most immersion-breaking details in RPGs for me. I’m an occasional archer, and I know for a fact that 50 arrows is a large, awkward, heavy bundle. 1000 arrows – pocket change in most RPGs – would fill a U-Haul. A spare set of plate mail is NOT an easy burden, much the less 10 of them.)

    But you’re right, the player is an infinite money-making machine because they make stuff out of nothing. To balance this, you have to give them expenses to eat their cash. The problem is that you don’t want to make their gear constantly fall completely to bits about them, so that they’re replacing a weapon after 2-3 swings. I think a version of Fallout 3’s “use bits of what you find to repair your gear” works pretty well, but I’d almost make it automatic (not sure about that.) And maybe you can use mismatched parts for a lesser effect (so you can destroy this entire chain mail shirt for the couple of dozen rings you need to fix your plate, kinda thing.)

    I actually think it would be fun to have an RPG have a “completely realistic” economy, where eventually the massive inflation caused by the PC causes everyone to go bankrupt and be unable to feed themselves – except the farmers, who have to retreat to armed camps, fending off the newly-formed (and extremely well-armed) bandit packs. Let the player see the consequences of their actions… but I’m kind of a nut that way, so I don’t expect much wide audience appeal.

  20. Dev Null says:

    An interesting side note; I once played in a MUD with a closed loop – if somewhat gross – economy. Weapons and armour degraded, and produced ore when smelted which could be turned by smiths into more weapons and armour. Corpses produced (the gross bit, and don’t ask me how) alcohol, which was sold by taverns to grant healing. So you had to sell gear to get more gear, and sell bodies to keep making more bodies. All of these processes were controlled by player-run shops, with prices set by the players. Over time, the economy balanced out – with occasional prodding during the settling – so that the spoils of fighting were just about enough to keep you in slightly improving gear and to top up your ever-increasing total of hit points. The slight profit margin – and the incentive for doing all this – went into buying mostly cosmetic improvements to your shop.

    (And if anyone else out there remembers Moral Decay; I ran the Alice-in-Wonderland-themed bar, The Rabbit’s Hole. Geeze that Cheshire Cat cost me a fortune.)

  21. Bruce says:

    Assuming a stable economy, money is neither created or destroyed, it just moves around. Taking Iron swords as the example, lets assume there is a set amount of them in the world (i.e. they rust/break/get lost at the same rate they are created). Lets take the shops as the repository of spare swords. If the system generates an iron sword on an opponent, it disappears from a random shop (I mean the bandit had to get it from somewhere. If he stole it, the guy he stole it off had to buy a replacement). When you go to sell the sword, it’s value depends on the number of swords in that area. If there’s a lot, the value is a bit less. If there’s not many it’s worth a bit more. An individual shopkeeper will have a set limit of stock he will hold. If he’s got a full amount, he’s not going to buy it at all. “Sorry mate, can’t shift them…” If you want to spend your time shifting swords from low value area’s to high value area’s to make some money, fair enough. That’s how it works in real life.

  22. BikeHelmet says:

    LintMan nailed it.

    I also think Fallout did a good job with its weight system. You really had to think about what you wanted to keep – but there were plenty of places to store things, so it worked out okay. If you were a pack rat, like me, you had to sacrifice some stats to get that way. ;)

    In my opinion, the “sell 100 of anything to this Blacksmith” thing is unrealistic. I’d like a more realistic economy where shops only buy what they are interested in – but that same economy would have an equivalent to pawn shops, or black market fences, so if you didn’t want to dedicate the time, there’d always be a sell-all shop you could go to.

  23. Palette says:

    @10:

    Simo Hayha also had his jaw shot off near the end of the war. It put an end to his military career, whereas in an FPS or RPG, that would be a mere speedbump.

  24. ehlijen says:

    The Fall – Last Days of Gaia had an interesting take on the economy: There was no money. The only trades was straight swapping of items. In the harder modes, it wouldn’t even tell you how much each item was worth giving only clue statements like ‘I like this deal’ or ‘what a rip off’ from the shopkeep, making the player actually ‘haggle’ over what he had to give up for that M46 Helmet.

    Throw in that it was hard to have random encounters (you had to deliberately not assign guards while camping) and the whole economy actually felt like a closed system.

    It was broken beyond believe anyway, though. A good hunter could kill all the game in a given area, take it out and give it to a decent trader in the same area and bingo:
    In exchange for destroying the food chain their supply was based on, they’ll gladly give you all they own…

    And to carry weight limitations I’ve got mixed feelings: The kotor system of ‘no weight and we can teleport it in when needed’ was a bit cheap. On the other hand, I can’t count how many times I’ve tortured myself by climbing in and out of the Sierra Army base to load its entire item load into the car only to trigger the ‘too many items bug’ when getting back to New Reno to sell it. Also, Vic and Sulik hated getting loaded up with a metric ton of gear each to help me make less trips, thanks to them just getting teleported along on each sector switch (and to stop them from running into my line of fire once I realised how well that trick worked…).

  25. David V.S. says:

    For those who don’t like using weight to limit carrying, there is the pictorial solution from Deus Ex to limit what can be carried.

    For the “realism” crowd, we can think a bit more… Since a hero can’t carry the loot from an entire bandit camp what would really happen after his rumor of his legendary battle-prowess spread was most of the village trekking along in his wake, greedy to loot the bodies of his foes a second time for everything the hero did not judge worth carrying. We could imagine an RPG where you, as the “good guy”, had to protect a growing horde of nearly impoverished followers as you cleaned up the countryside.

    Alternately, the hero fights monsters and the horde stays small. If there is no alchemical use for dragon heads, some farmer is going to cart it home and put it over his fireplace. Maybe a dozen follow you and fight over it, unless they know another dragon is on your to-do list soon.

  26. Rowan says:

    Ironic that you (Shamus) actually have had a solution (that has been mentioned in the comments at least once) for some time now: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=1077

  27. Heron says:

    @David V.S. (25):

    That’s the same system used by Diablo II, which I rather liked.

  28. Falco Rusticula says:

    The fairly obvious solution (and one that is unlikely to occur to any game designers) would be to have a limited number of potential opponents -as in, once you kill an enemy or monster, you do not automatically get another one springing up. The game starts out with a few hundred enemies, and once you kill one of them, you are at (starting number minus one) for the remainder of the game. For additional realism, each enemy has a fixed (sensible) amount of cash.

    Unlikely to happen…but it would work!

  29. Heron says:

    @Falco:

    The first Diablo did that, you’ll recall: each level has a fixed number of enemies, and once you kill them, they’re dead. If you want to kill more things, you have to go deeper into the cathedral/cave/thing.

  30. Changeling says:

    The Gothic/Risen games did a good job to avoid this problem (well, it was not impossible to become rich, but not insanely rich):

    1. Enemies are finite. There were monsters and bandits in fixed areas and at the beginning of every chapter additional enemys spawned, partly wildlife, partly bound to the plot (after I opened a temple with lizardmen inside, several lizardmen patrols were spawned shortly after)

    2. Only a few human enemys. Besides some bandits most enemys were local beast or nonhuman races. Wildlife granted only loot with the right skills (like skinning) and some raw meat. Bandits had mostly cheap weapons and orcish weapons were not very valuable, because they were to heavy and clumsy for most humans.

    3. Learning is expensive. A level up granted no automatic skillpoints or better stats, but instead lerning points. These could be spent at a trainer to raise stats and to lern new skills. But the trainer demands a fee for his services.

    4. You didn’t want to sell everything. Most herbs and meat had the ability to heal and were often refineable (is this even a real word?). Many other loot could be used for crafting or quests. Magic weapons were very rare, mostly unique (there is a mental barrier that keeps most roleplayers from selling unique but useless junk…).
    Fortunately there were no inventory restrictions…

  31. jubuttib says:

    Palette: Almost, but not quite. His jaw was merely crushed/shattered depending on the source, it was his left cheek that was blown off. Apparently before he went out like a light he managed to shoot the guy who got him. Häyhä was a legend and we owe a lot to guys like him.

    We’re “working” (might see light someday, probably not. We’re mainly gathering ideas and working on how we would implement those features) on an rpg computer game based on our d&d gameworld, and pretty much from the start we decided that we’re not going to have random and unlimited spawning bandits etc. It would be possible to pretty much eradicate them completely if you want. This would mean that there won’t be an endless supply of stuff to sell, since they won’t be spawning all the time by just running around in the forest. Of course new bandits could appear if people notice that there aren’t any around and decide that it’s a viable way to earn some extra income.

  32. Dix says:

    Shamus, please make game with economy as described in column. MAKE GAME NOW. SOUNDS AWESOME. MUST HAVE. MAKE NOW!

    That is all.

  33. MuonDecay says:

    Mount and Blade actually simulates supply and demand if I remember right. It also simulates regional pricing and differing prices for items based on a merchant’s specialty.

    It is however also more of a RTS with RPG elements than a true RPG. The focus is leading an army and building up an estate.

    If you fight alone like in an RPG (and you can kill a totally unreasonable amount of fairly equipped enemies all by yourself) then I think you can still earn an absurd income from doing so.

  34. Blackbird71 says:

    While it was more of a parody of other games, I enjoyed the way The Bard’s Tale handled loot. You had no real inventory. When you killed a creature, you would automatically loot whatever they had, which would briefly appear in the lower corner of the screen, then instantly be converted to an amount of gold coins. This meant no picking thorugh what to keep or leave, no hauling junk back and forth to sell, etc.

    Also, since the items looted were useless anyway, they became rather humorous in nature. I recall looting many sets of “monk pants” and “souveneir Stonehenge snowglobes,” as well as many other ridiculous and worthless items. The humor in riffing off the typical RPG was definitely the charm of that game.

  35. NotYetMeasured says:

    Are we talking MMORPGs or single-player?

    From an MMO perspective you can think of the money you make looting mobs as a wage. You are working for X hours and making Y gold. (If some classes or builds have a *much* bigger Y than others, this can be a problem).

    The system is then balanced by money sinks. Some of them might be mandatory (gear repair, travel costs) and some might be optional (cosmetic items, net-loss hobbies).

    There’s no reason these same concepts can’t be applied to creating a balanced economy in single-player games, but I think there’s more incentive to do it in the MMOs where players can interact financially.

  36. tussock says:

    The solution to kill-loot-sell is to realise that the people you kill had to buy their weapons (or steal them from someone who did). As you suck the money out of the system by reselling these weapons over and over (to people who buy them, then are killed by you) more of the currency becomes tied up in your hands.

    That’s called a depression. Soon enough no one but you has money for anything but the basics, and some not even that. The basics become expensive, while no one will buy your recovered weapons.

    To put money back into the economy, you’ve got to spend it on things that spreads the money around, like constructing canals, or providing clean drinking water to big cities, or buying up food reserves for when the bad years drive up prices.

    Hey, look at that, you just became the government, which is kinda how it worked historically for the men who killed people and took their stuff.

    Of course, there’s also a possibility that someone is already busy being the government and won’t like the competition. These days they have what they call “law enforcement”, but in the old times they just had a hundred buddies armour up and come kill you.

    MMOs are crazy, they let everyone get rich without doing anything to the economy. That’s called hyperinflation IRL, eh, and it’s very, very bad for people. Quite where all the gold comes from in the medieval types is anyone’s guess.

  37. Nefrai says:

    One thing I liked in the older MMO: Shadowbane, was how it handled loot. Your clan built a city and built stores, then clan members would sell any dropped loot to the clans stores. Other clannies/strangers needing equipment could go to the store and buy what people had sold there. It makes money for the clan, and helps outfit members needing things.

    Shadowbane is the only MMO I’ve played that used that idea and I thought it worked really well. It was nice to know that equipment would be circulated through the game, not get sold and disapear/get destroyed. I’m surprised more MMO’s don’t let you stock up stores with loot from mobs.

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