Items in the Economy

[Flailer]

So one thing we've discussed is how in NS4, finding items after a while sort of becomes worthless. Meaning, after a while, everyone sort of has their stock of items that they collect, on mules or otherwise. So, short of a wipe, items never get removed from the world/economy and it eventually becomes pretty easy to get items from other people (or your own mules) rather than buying them or going out and finding them yourself.

So, we've discussed different ways of removing items from the economy to keep it from becoming stagnant.

What sort of ways would make the most sense to use to have items removed?

In addition, NS5 will have new ways of bringing items into the game, including the design of your own items and purchasing Artifacts from rare and hard to find vendors.

[Lorkar]

Another way would be to "imprint" the owners tag onto it so it is only usable by the one that picked it up and ID'd it, no matter who else comes across it in the future.

[MLoki]

In NS3.5 certain powerfull items can't even be carried by lower level toons (ie Mules). This means that you actually have to level a character just to be able to hold some gear. This at least slows down the muling process some. Also, I have seen on some servers, Auction Houses or Persistant Merchants that you can buy and sell drops in. If you do use some kind of depreciation it would be nice to be able to sell off items or pick up "used" items for a hefty price.

With these additions you could also make certain unused skills viable in repairing worn out items for a price (ie Craft Armor and Craft Weapon) or even being able to adjust prices in the stores (ie Appraise, Persuade or even Bluff). Both of these things would also serve a dual purpose in helping keep the Gold economy in check as well. Perhaps instead of Mules players would be making Blacksmiths who's sole purpose would be to pick up used items to repair.

[Zierham]

I voted that items not be removed from the economy. Here's my justification: Why do they need to?

The first time a player plays through, they will (most likely) be doing it from scratch. They will experience the world anew, and have the experience of doing it sans gear.

The next time they make a toon and begin leveling, they may (or may not) have some lower level items stockpiled. They will probably not have all the "best" gear, unless they explicitly farmed for it, but they will likely have something to make the leveling easier. Why is that a problem? This isnt the same as powerleveling -- the player has gear that they could have legitimately gotten if they had grouped in the right area and gotten lucky with the drops, it doesnt mean mobs fall at their feet. As a player has 5+ high level toons, they likely have a stockpile of "basic" lower level gear and mid level gear, and perhaps a decent amount of higher level stuff. Still, if my experience on NS4 is any indication, some items are rare enough they dont just get muled... Books, +7 weapons, etc...

What about the converse? Assuming this is meant to be a true item-sink (rather than a round-about gold-sink), you have the following situation: True new players die more frequently than higher levels (or do not have a proper strategy to deal with Rust Monsters). As such, they lose their gear more quickly than do those with better gear (to help them survive) or experience enough to properly deal with rust monsters, or who have a Blacksmith toon to keep their gear in perfect condition. In essence, you punish those WITHOUT the stock of items, because if their crap breaks, is stolen, or what not, they just lost their life-line.

Even if you set it up so that non-use deteriorates gear, how would this work? Someone who cant log in every day comes back to their gear being rusted out? If it is just time in game, this still doesnt fix mules, just frustrates legitimate players who would carry different gear for different situations ("Crap! I havent been fighting bludgeoning monsters for a while, and now my Bludg gear is all broken!").

And what of the highest-level, uber-rare gear? You've just killed the God of Dragons or some such beastie, and gotten a Sword of Snicker-Snack +32. Unfortunately for you, two days later you end up encountering a mob of mean Jabberwockies, which kill you and steal your sword (or something similar, under the given rule set). How can this be intended, if items will be even half as rare as some of the stuff in NS5? Or god forbid rarer, given the use of artifacts and the custom item system?

Once again, control item-bloat by making the highest level items extremely rare, and as they become more common by pure virtue of time, introduce slight upgrades as you add areas (or just modify the drops and make the bosses a touch harder). You hit a certain amount of mudflation, but it should still take you 5+ years, if you add a few new zones which is an amazing lifespan for a mod. As for the lower level stuff? Who cares? The first-time player will have the rush of discovering a lot of gear, awesome! The second and third time through, he's probably still not got a huge stockpile -- he still finds new stuff off the Spider Queen he skipped his first time, or in the Gnolls he didnt know about before.

One final note -- if the problem contemplated here is Guild-based stockpiling, if possible, then set up the system so that items are Lore (where you can only have one of the item on you). Perhaps allow 2 for rings/weapons (or not...) This prevents stockpiling 20 of them from one run and having every new member to the guild having every piece as they begin. It essentially distributes the farming such that if you want a piece, you either need to trade for it, or farm it yourself -- the other person would only have one, rather than 20, and thus be less likely to just give it away. Additionally, if an "Attunement" system is possible, that could work too - the first time you put on a piece of gear, it becomes no-drop. You can stockpile all you want, but as soon as you wear it with your new cleric, you have to find a new one instead of just passing that one back to the mule when you outgrow it.

As I said, I dont think the above is necessary because its not a big deal, but it could be a sort of mid-point between outright item destruction and the NS4 system.

[Mops]

ITP: Panic! Someone wants to take away my items!

Calm down. Drink some tea. Have a crumpet.

There is a high need for removing both items and gold from the economy to stop hyperinflation caused by stockpiling gold and valuable items*. Whatever we decide be assured that (most likely, estimating about 97%) the most rare and powerful items will be outside of this system (or systems) as to avoid randomly taking away some characters most prized possession. On the other hand removing replaceable items and hefty sums of gold helps to keep a healthy economic balance**. That's one, the second is enforcing more cautious play from players by applying the "carrot and stick" motivation paradigm***.

*) See NS3.5 and NS4
**) See Ultima Online
***) See Diablo

[Flailer]

Here's a couple of quotes from some online game development reads I usually find useful:

Online game economies are hard
A faucet->drain economy is one where you spawn new stuff, let it pool in the "sink" that is the game, and then have a concomitant drain. Players will hate having this drain, but if you do not enforce ongoing expenditures, you will have Monty Haul syndrome, infinite accumulation of wealth, overall rise in the "standard of living" and capabilities of the average player, and thus unbalance in the game design and poor game longevity.

from http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml

Item Decay

Any open-ended virtual economy that does not provide for the decay and loss of items will always overflow. This is also related to uncontrolled cash inflation, since a society of millionaires has no incentive to try and sell off their collections of expensive crap if they don't have to pay taxes on them. Insufficient item decay equals powerful item inflation equals player power inflation, and you eventually have a situation where most of your content becomes a joke, as your entire playerbase is outfitted in top of the line stuff handed down by hoarding patrons. Naturally, they'll still hoard the stuff they don't even use, taxing your server and your patience.

The sort of item decay people think (and whine) about most is the decay of weapons, armor, and other battle gear. Realism provides us with yet another good reference. The day after a battle, a soldier who had survived more or less in one piece was spending most of the next day fixing his stuff. Battles are hard on equipment. It only stands to reason that armor and weapons have limited lifespans, and you can only grind down a sword blade (the only way to keep its edge) so many times before you have a piece of wire with a handle. Weapons with wooden handles are cheap, but they get snapped more frequently than all-metal ones, and the best way to keep your spear functional is to sharpen the head again (if there's enough metal there) and fit it onto a new shaft. This, of course, requires a crafting model robust enough to allow for multiple components (get the shaft from a woodworker and a spearhead from the smith).

Shields are a special case. Shields are always mishandled in fantasy RPG's, unless you happen to playing GURPS with every little impossible to find variant rule in the book. Shields were considered disposable items. A typical shield was made primarily of layered wood, edged with metal to absorb chops to its sides, and maybe reinforced with bands, though this made them cumbersome. The proper use of a shield was as an angled deflector to shove kinetic energy to the side, or (if you were feeling lucky) you might try to catch an incoming swing on the metal bands to catch or break an enemy's weapon. Regardless, you can only punish a shield for so long, and they were generally discarded after one battle. The all-metal shield model so popular in fantasy imagery would be too damn heavy to lug around on the field, let alone carried on a mountain trek. A buckler might be made primarily of metal, but bucklers are exceptionally small and require great skill to use effectively, and still aren't indestructible.

In any case, it is to the advantage of the game world to allow for the destruction and loss of anything. Items can be assigned hit points and similar ratings, and (if your engine really rocks) variable damage types. A fireball might recrystalize a piece of steel, but say goodbye to that apron. Things may be repairable to a degree, but every time you patch something up, you weaken it. Eventually, you need to outfit yourself again, discarding your ruined gear, and helping the economy along in the process.

from http://mu.ranter.net/theory/index.html

However difficult it is to create, it's in the best interest of the world's economy to have both gold and item sinks. So, it's really a matter of what sort of item restrictions come into play.

The single owner approach isn't a bad idea.

The item degradation/decay stuff isn't my personal favorite, but I can see it making sense. Particularly if it's combined with the single owner system and requires some sort of crafting investment to repair it (or better yet pay an in-game repairer to keep your item in good shape). Maybe weapons that give a higher crit range would be more susceptible to damage? Regardless, I would imagine that Artifact level items are artifacts precisely because they've been around for a long time and are more durable. However, item degradation is difficult to enforce with the NWN engine.

Or, maybe a single owner system with limited storage on the player would be enough to make you make decisions about which items to keep and which to get rid of.

I don't think the argument to deal with gear hording is to make better and better items holds up. Items need to be very carefully balanced otherwise players will gravitate to whatever the 'best' item is in the game (anyone remember the old Lagnar's Hammer in NS4?). And, if your gear keeps getting better and better, all the monsters will need to be scaled in order to make them competitive also. Round and round she goes. And all this happens a lot faster than you'd think it would.

[Zierham]

@ Mops -- Not getting panicked by any means, just want to impress on the Dev's my view of item decay as it affects newer players. Do me the favor of not being condescending, or belittling my points by claiming I am speaking from selfish greed or unconsidered alarm. I'm speaking from the position of someone new to NS4 (about 3 months in now?) Who doesn't have a level 40, but has several alts who have benefited from some stock-piling, and who very clearly remembers the work he put in to his first toon. If you had a system in place which had destroyed my gear periodically, in one way or another, as I was leveling, the road would have been much more arduous... And remember, for a new player to the server, the world and it's systems already seem fairly intimidating.

With Diablo, if I recall correctly you could get your gear repaired with no long-lasting penalty? Correct me if I am wrong, as it has been -many- years since I played the first. This would be a gold-sink, which I dont have a problem with in the least, if it is properly balanced. I didnt play UO or NS3.5, but NS4 follows the "nothing destroyed" system (except perhaps from PVP disarms) but also doesnt have the concomitant gold-sink system. Also look at such massively successful games as EQ, EQ2, WoW, etc. All of them use a gold-sink system, rather than an item-sink model, and have lasted a good link time (though I do not defend these games from cries of mudflation...)

DAOC I think is a good example in your favor though, it had a system of item decay that was repairable, but which repairs gradually degraded the item. The rarer an item was, the slower that irreparable decay occured. Having said that, once reaching a high level in DAOC, as a casual player, much of my time in game was spent farming easy crap for cash so I could afford the next suit of tailored leather when I broke the other suit from raiding. I eventually quit because I didnt have the time to farm the cash to support raiding while still having a chance to actually enjoy the fruits of those raids (Yay, I got an awesome hat, but I cant use it on raids because it'll get ruined, and if im not raiding, all I have time to do is farm cash so I can replace this tailored robe that is breaking down).

Frankly those who play the most are the ones who gather the largest stockpile of items. If someone has played years and has 20 level 40 toons, why SHOULDNT they have accumulated a vast stockpile of stuff? Dragons do it...?

@ Flailer -- With regards to the latter 3/4 of the blurb from the article discussing destructability of gear, if it is the intention of the Devs to make NS5 more "true to life" than existent modules and games, then by all means make Shields be destroyable, but remember we're in a land of magic, where Dwarves and Elves can work Steel and Mithril with magic to make them extremely strong and light. As far as the "need" for a drain to insulate against either mudflation (forward looking) or stagnation (in the present), that may be entirely accurate in light of the Neversummer realm. As not a lot has been released about all the minutiae of NS5, I'm going to assume it is largely similar to NS4, just in a new system, realm, etc. If PVP is intended to be a significant part of the "end game", in conjunction with raiding extremely high level targets, what I said about the stagnation of items holds. From my (admittedly limited) experience, Demonwasp Rings, and Death's Rapiers dont seem to be flooding the economy. The highest level gear is (and should be!) excessively hard to come by, such that people have a reason to continue to play once they hit 40. If a 40 could just take a group and hit 5-6 bosses, who are all guaranteed to drop the peice they need, People wouldnt have much incentive to play beyond that. Under the current system, however, I recognize I will have to work hard towards attaining half, let alone all, of my "dream pieces". In the mean time, why force the time-sink of constantly refarming my lesser gear?

Additionally, the burden is unfairly distributed -- On-Death based item destruction? You just penalized the explorer/adventurer who tries to see the world at his own peril. You've penalized the group of 5 people who know they probably cant defeat the Orc Lord, but want to go give it a shot just so they can say they tried. On-Hit based item destruction? You just made the fighters of the world poor, and the wizards of the world rich. Consider games with repair costs on death, and how this has resulted in exorbitant repair costs for the Main Tank of a raid (often, many times in excess of the repair costs of those who arent on the front lines). Rust Beasts? Same thing, you just shift the burden to those who have to get within range of the rust ability, or are not front-end DPS loaded, such that they cant destroy the rust-beasts before any significant harm is done. Time-Based Decay? Sucks to be the guy who can't log in for a week or two because of finals, and if items decay based on time in-game, how would that have any effect on mules? You'd just force people to mule the crap faster, so it wouldnt decay in a box in their inventory.

I guess, to sum it up as best I can, item destruction based resource sinks are essentially a round about way of adding a time-sink. If you know your sword is going to be destroyed (or is already almost there), you just spend 3 hours re-farming the guy who dropped it (and to the detriment of others who might want to kill him in a group for the challenge and loot). Similarly, if you are in a party with 3 others who need said sword, and you already have one, you have the consistent incentive to roll against them, so you can stock pile a few for the long haul.

Basically, players already have an acknowledged necessary time-sink -- Gold. It costs money to travel about, it costs money when you die, and a system could be put in place where it costs money to have your gear repaired (this is a GOLD SINK even if it is accomplished through items, unless items are outright destroyed). Just tweak that system -- make item repair costs significant enough that people sell the Golden Mithril Sword they found so they can afford to repair their crap, instead of hording it because the gold is nearly worthless. Make gold and vendor drops less such that throwing down 100k to repair gear and another 20k to get somewhere is significant.

Either way, you force people to farm to support themselves, whether it's gold or items, but at least a properly tuned gold-sink system would allow players to decide where they grind -- not just be forced to go back to the same area over and over because the Royal Sickle drops there, and its the best item for my build. If i've done Skara a bunch and need gold? Let me run Amazons, let me run HoD with a big enough group. Dont make me sit in Skara because my Royal Sickle broke and I need another.

With outright item destruction/loss, you disincentivize people from playing "weak" builds that arent 100% uber and thus safe. You disincentivize people from "going for it" in the face of substantial risk. You disincentivize exploration. Reference http://www.nsrealm.com/public/ns/viewto ... &t=1001574 . You had a person asking for tips on an AA build and essentially being told archers are too expensive, try it later when you can horde enough money to afford it.

Sure, you'll still have players that play the disincentivized builds, but not as many as you otherwise would...

Last thing -- This is, of course, in the capable hands of the NS5 devs. I just want to put some arguments out there for consideration -- if you weigh them and find them inaccurate in your greater experience, so be it. If you weigh them and decide that even if they are valid points, countervailing pressure suggests otherwise, so be it. Just consider them, and remember that the role of the game is to be fun for the players. Same as with the death system, make sure whatever you decide to do doesn't inject more necessary "grinding" than is... necessary.

[Ajantis.]

All I can say is, I've never been in a situation where gold was too plentiful, or precious items were in abundance. I don't think I've ever had more than 500k, and when I did, it disappeared fast.

I've heard of people having millions of gold, but I think that's just from making a consorted effort to stock pile it and not spend it. My gold goes to my archers, and whats left goes to traveling. It goes really fast....

The same can be said for items and muling. I can just say for the CLAD mules, items in there rotate in and out often, and there isn't a stock pile of valuable items. They come and go, for what ever reason, and items that are valuable to everyone else on the server are valued to the guild as well (and its not because we want to keep it from others, there is a genuine need for many 30+ equipment) There is quite a few items that have been used by many of our guild members on their various toons, and are put back when no longer needed, and that's including lvl 9-30 stuff. I don't say this as an advocate for the muling system, only to stress the fact that there isn't enough to go around, and we often have to go on farming missions.

If NS4 is an example, I don't feel its economy is inflated by any means. But I don't know the structure of NS5 to understand what you may be contemplating here.

[Mops]

With Diablo, if I recall correctly you could get your gear repaired with no long-lasting penalty? Correct me if I am wrong, as it has been -many- years since I played the first. This would be a gold-sink, which I dont have a problem with in the least, if it is properly balanced. I didnt play UO or NS3.5, but NS4 follows the "nothing destroyed" system (except perhaps from PVP disarms) but also doesnt have the concomitant gold-sink system. Also look at such massively successful games as EQ, EQ2, WoW, etc. All of them use a gold-sink system, rather than an item-sink model, and have lasted a good link time (though I do not defend these games from cries of mudflation...)

In Diablo upon death you suffer loss of all the possessions you had on your character at the moment of death. That keeps you from dying repeatedly - a chance that if you die here and now you might lose all your gear, at least temporarily.

[--Ashe--]

I think it would be nice to implement a sensible gear wear system. Make elemental attacks give a small percentage of chance of damaging equipment. Force people to pay for upkeep and repair of items. Acid etches metals, fire burns cloths/scrolls - melts coins, cold shatters glass vials, lightning overloads charges on items, poison contaminating food/potions, disease infesting cloth. Collect repair items... metal ores, bolts of fabric, gemstones for magic charges, etc. Make things have more uses.

I think one of the ways to confront gold in the economy is to assign weight to it. Characters are always concerned about weight, especially the dex happy builds. How can you reasonably carry millions of coins on your person without being weighted down.

Assign a penalty to move silent if you have too many items. Millions of clanking coins... items clacking together in your pack are going to be heard by a deaf ogre at 100 paces by even the best stealth specialist.

Create a rudimentary bank system (think Templar Knights and their system of 'banking' in medieval times where you took your gold to one station, they wrote you a 'note' and you could travel safely without fear of being robbed, take 'note' to another Templar station for redemption.) Perhaps the Gnomes or dwarves have decided to capitalize more upon their hordes with investments by manipulating gold stores.

Create a vault system in these "banks" to replace mules. Limit the amount that can be vaulted by weight and price. Charge a steep fee regularly from the account, sell items if they do not pay (or place the items in a communal raid vault). One vault per account. Guilds also get one vault each.

Create a Bank Robbery system (similar to the relics) where the bank system can be robbed of % of gold (spread evenly across all accounts since the Bank Gnomes will never accept taking the loss). Create opportunities where DMs can randomly 'attack' the bank with creatures (dragons, mad scientist seeking some vaulted item, etc.) where if the players fail to defend, they equally lose. Also allow guilds opportunities to attack treasury of enemy guild accounts. The greedy gnomes may also change fee rates regularly based upon jealousy over horded wealth - naturally you can kill the gnomes, but their replacements just assess burial handling fees on all account holders for the trouble.

[Bargeld]

I'm not an avid NWN2 fellow, but I think that this line of discussion is all for naught. Adding 'a system' for item wear and/or economy dynamics is something that can only slow down a player in their pursuit of the new and unknown. Time by devs to build could be better used elsewhere.

I can't help but think of those DMs when I played PnP who rationalized the same things with regards to carrying items and coins clanking, etc. It was always something that stopped the dice rolling and started an argument, wasting precious time on our campaign.

[cRaZy8or5e]

I voted for leaving items alone.

Ditto to Zierham and Bargeld's posts.

I don't see the point of trying to balance an economy on a persistent world. Inflation always arises, people always find ways to amass wealth, inflation always happens. Either ignore it, embrace it, but trying to limit it will just give devs and DM's headaches. I seriously think this is a lost cause that will serve to hurt the casual gamer and only briefly slow the meta-gamers.

[Flailer]

Many good points made in this thread and we'll consider them (and others that keep coming).

I don't claim that we'll ever be able to have a perfectly balanced economy - no more than I think we'll ever have perfectly balanced classes. But, just because that's the case doesn't mean you don't take some reasonable approaches to not let things get totally out of whack.

Whatever rules we come up with will ultimately be in place to enhance fun and gameplay, not just be for the sake of rules. But, games are fun because rules are in place. I would be disappointed if you guys didn't hate anything that smelled like a nerf...

[Zierham]

The Northern Coalition wholeheartedly supports nerfs!.... to wizards and sorcs

[SkotG]

I think the system currently in place is fine. I for one am in the same boat as Ajantis, "what extra money?" by the time i travel craft and buy heal potions, i'm usually broke. Most of the high level areas include someone who is a disarmer and so weapons get jacked alot.....Case in point after searching for a few months to upgrade my dorf crafted sword to SOMETHING! or ANYTHING else!......I had to trade for my moleman king sword about a month ago, well on a nice trip thru HoK the Sphinx disarmed me and another member in my party as it wiped us all out...no mole king sword now, @#$%@#% so i think that about sums up my feelings about having another way to lose some coveted item.....