MMO Economies - How to Manage Inflation in Virtual Economies - Extra Credits

[@lostingames5657]

I'd like to point out what runescape has done. They have a hole that you literally just throw away money into. There's a full leaderboard set up for who throws away the most money.

[@Septimus_ii]

LostInGames that's a pretty blunt solution, but it sounds like it works

[@sasuke1212naruto]

You also have money sinks in runescape like construction training.

[@coalcreekdefense8106]

It's a blunt solution, but I mean, the problem itself has a sort of bluntness to it. The issues that bring about hyperinflation in games have no remote connection to the real world. They're utterly gamey, so it stands to reason they require a gamey solution.

[@iirosuvanto8996]

If you just sent money to other player it is not money sink. Even that would cost 20 millions to you.

[@l0lwutwtf]

@@iirosuvanto8996 lostingame is taking about the well of goodwill, the gold dumped in there is gone from the game. You can even drop in items as well, so it serves as both a gold and item sink.

[@asbest2092]

Everybody in Skyrim - has no more than 7 gold coins Traders in Skyrim - sell apples 100 gold coins per pieсe

[@e1123581321345589144]

I've never had a problem with currency on Skyrim, but then again I usually use potions as currency rather than gold.

[@y.z.6517]

​@@e1123581321345589144 Skyrim V currency is terrible. In early game, you cannot afford anything you want, and almost nothing affordable is worth the cost. The only exception is iron ore. In late game, nothing is worth buying, and your money just snowballs.

[@SMon42]

@@y.z.6517 yep, once you max out enchanting and alchemy, and get the transmute spell to turn on iron ore into gold ore, you can just make the most insanely valuable magic items, I am so valuable you need a mod that gives npcs 20,000 G and restock gold as soon as the trade window closes just to sell more then one magic item/for it's full value,don't get me started on the places if you max out speech and have speech and price enhancements enchantments. (Almost have a million gold so yeah I'm abusing the system.)

[@twiddlerat9920]

@@y.z.6517 Theres a mod that adds inflation, And demand

[@vicentetemes5793]

10/10 Not enough ties.

[@r.pizzamonkey7379]

+Vicente Parker Or swords

[@nicksteiner8250]

My favourite one is the hot dog one!

[@milescolasurdo6563]

bacon

[@deuseldesu8819]

Red ribbon! * -- *

[@jorge1582]

Gay ties

[@evan.s8805]

Runescape has the weirdest economies in games gold and gems are worthless but paper is worth billons

[@ChristianCTaken]

What paper? Or are you referring to bank notes?

[@evan.s8805]

+Kenpokid4 paper hats like paper hats aka party hats are like a few billon what is a huge amount of money

[@ChristianCTaken]

Evan Is My Name Oh right, don't know why party hats didn't occur to me.

[@JM-us3fr]

Do other games have things like the Grand Exchange? I haven't played many MMOs

[@VeryEpicComputerGuy]

The vast majority have something very similar in my experience. I have never played an mmorpg without one

[@Gamechamp3000]

Economy in MMOs is actually a topic I'm super interested in, so yeah, if you have anything more to cover on the subject I'd love to see more videos on it. :D

[@megaagentj2248]

Wow, a channel without 2 billion likes, must be because you’re unverified (that sucks)

[@SuperDestroyerFox]

Hello gamechamp

[@InuMiroLover]

This artist needs to come back. Those ties are hilarious.

[@xaghi9832]

And also Tai.

[@Lishtenbird]

No, mountains. Mountains are hill areas.

[@Reshiram1330]

Did anyone else notice that Daniel's magic changing tie

[@ekimmak]

Yes.

[@5nefarious]

I was just about to comment on that...

[@harrisondalrymple6053]

Bacon tie FTW

[@SirRichardKingOfCringe]

at one point he had a fez and a bow-tie :)

[@Dice12K]

I like the time he had Tai as his tie. xD

[@VRichardsn]

Eve Online is a game that seems to have some incredibly interesting social interaction. Who doesn´t know the story of the greatests cons ever pulled in a videogame? Like that guy who owned a bank and sold all the credits (deposited by _other people than him_) to another person for a couple thousands Austrlian dollars (to pay for his daughter surgery, he claimed) and many similar stories... Or the many Ponzi schemes around... or that infiltration operation that took almost a year to perfect and brought down one of the most important corporations of its time. Extra Credits should definitely make a video about them one day.

[@JimmySawFinger]

+Richardsen Hopefully one day somebody will publish the Eve Online histories. I would love to learn all there is to know about the South in Eve, never knew a day in that game when the south was not on fire. Bah this makes me want to go join a group camp HED-GP and alpha pods all day.

[@avd7288]

How Band of Brothers got disbanded is a unique piece of gaming history. There also was an attempt on the Ships of Eve lottery. Or the 15 bil frig which was shot down 4 days after plex got transportable. (plex went for 300 kk that time) Man I really miss this backstabbing spacegame of con artists and murderers :P

[@VRichardsn]

Jimmy SawFinger Actually, there is a nice recollection of stories here.

[@DarkBykeTwitch]

+Richardsen Yeah, a video on psychopaths?

[@VRichardsn]

DarkByke Twitch Who wouldn´t watch it? :]

[@Anonymous-zk6wl]

This solution would not be immediately popular for players, but could be interesting. Make inflation an actually acknowledged part of the game. Make it a thing that the game world knows exists, and is not blind to. Include quests that only unlock after a certain level of inflation or deflation. Add a game event that triggers when a certain threshold is reached that makes the currency issuing faction either multiply or divide the currency by a factor equal to what is needed to bring the currency back into its normal range. Instead of treating the economics as something the game world would be blissfully ignorant of, make it a proper system that elements of the game respond to. That way the problem is no longer a problem, but a part of the game experience.

[@Polyglot_English]

GENIUS

[@vodam6970]

literally transform a problem to a feature

[@diablo.the.cheater]

That would not solve the problem, just add a gimick to a problem

[@nathandamaren2093]

Sounds interesting. Good idea

[@Dudenob123]

@@vodam6970 the best features start as bugs and problems.

[@Mitsurugi2424]

I wish I was alive in 1850, the Prius is a really nice car....and I have a few nickels

[@e1123581321345589144]

yeah, I bet you could have also bought a Tesla sedan for a couple of dollars. Those were good times to be alive.

[@datoneguy2361]

Another thing about 1850 is how medical treatments were unable to actually help people vaccines weren't invented yet surgeons didn't wash their hands and stepping on a rusty nail meant certain death

[@verisimilitudeteller]

You forgot gambling, Asheron's Call had gambling dens, they worked pretty well as you would get items to exchange for xp rather than just resellable loot, You could hoard a lot of them and send them over to a newly rolled character who would then not have to go hunting mobs to level, as such they're also not getting loot while hunting either.

[@loudtuber6635]

And then there's Gaia Online who has an item that can recolour any item once... FOR A FEW SEXTILLION GOLD.

[@Zeivusgaming]

Gaia's economy is a mess. They had to change the in game currency in an attempt to fix the Hyperinflation.

[@KnakuanaRka]

Gaia’s economy is a hot mess thanks to the pure gold generators like Flynn’s Booty.

[@infodeprived3119]

5:51 POTION SELLER IM GOING INTO BATTLE, AND I NEED YOUR STRONGEST POTIONS

[@Qururuka]

I like your tie

[@Skywolve1998]

TheJackw13 Which one? The fish was my favorite ^_^

[@BuriedFlame]

PokéGamer Banana tie!

[@zulkifliyes]

TheJackw13 I like the pencil tie at the end

[@sheebadeebers]

The Hot Dog Tie.

[@krim7]

+TheJackw13 HOT DOG!

[@pokepok3265]

Favorite guest artist yet

[@lockland1764]

pokepok3 agreed

[@mapledavis6989]

Dey all be so derpy!

[@lauraschantz9058]

I especially like how the novelty tie changes with each cut back and forth.

[@tink5488]

His tie changes 6 times during this video. This is what it changed into. Piano keys Bacon A Tongue Hotdog Bowtie w/ hat Pencil Clever, I really liked that.. oh and the video too!

[@Bransbow]

Bowtie w/ hat (fez) was 11th Doctor.

[@l0lwutwtf]

You forgot Tai (haha) from digimon.

[@FulgurHalcyon]

Tink A banana.

[@thomasweisgram4373]

Forgot fish

[@tasertag7513]

There were some other ties.

[@SirKickz]

Path of Exile from Grinding Gear Games had an interesting solution to inflation: Currency in that game is consumable. Instead of gold, you would collect scrolls and orbs that could be used to permanently modify your equipment, or bartered away with other players in exchange for goods.

[@caulifex]

At this rate, MMO’s should be created with the purpose for scientist to study social science

[@ASpaceOstrich]

I'd love to see an MMO where the money in the economy is set. Enemies don't drop money unless they'd somehow stolen it from somewhere, and nowhere ever just generates money. It'd make money very valuable and drive very interesting quests or player interactions.

[@alexxx4434]

That would in theory lead to deflation, as the amount of goods produced would outweight the money volume. That also depends on the number of players. People would just pick an alternative more available currency.

[@Pizzarugi]

If IRL capitalism is anything to go by, a handful of rich players is going to own the vast majority of the wealth or even all of it and only trade amongst other wealthy players.

[@empireyouth5791]

@@Pizzarugi I won hundred percent agree it would be extremely punishing to new players to walk in and see all their grinding is doing nothing since all the money in the system is already owned by the top player. The only way this system would work is if top players got taxed out the ass just for existing and that sounds like a very horrible play cycle for them. Basically this sounds like a horrible idea

[@OverseasMadman]

How does the money start then?

[@solsystem1342]

Ftd does this (although it's a single player game mostly and definitely not an mmo). The world has a reserve of resources and as it is depleted the resource zones refill slower. Until battles destroy resources which are fed back into the resource zones. This however, this would not work in an mmo as each player who leaves the game takes some of the money with them. Or, you end up adding in more money as players you thought had left the game return. It might work better in something like Eve but, if one group ever controls more than half of the resource generation then they become unstoppable unless internal conflict breaks them apart. Since any fight will funnel more back into their pockets than to the rest of the player base.

[@Pizzarugi]

My problem with tying money sinks into making gear degradable and costing huge sums of money to repair is that it only affects the already poor players who can barely scrape up any money together. Meanwhile, the wealthy and high leveled players who are already well-to-do will be earning far more money than repairs can take out. Runescape suffers from this a great deal.

[@techmage89]

Matthew Barker I think it could be balanced. Just make expensive, good gear used by high-level players require much more expensive maintainence, or use consumable charges.

[@alexxx4434]

Just like with monetary policies in real life ;)

[@creativeandfunnyname3744]

2 things: 1. This guy's art style is f***ing adorable. 2. Notice how Dan's shirt/tie changes every cut. For one shot he has a Digimon shirt.

[@JaSTgamers]

anyone else noticed how his tie changes during the video?

[@keithingbrigtson8565]

I saw that too.

[@ZeLionmane]

About halfway through I noticed it change too. From a piano style to a hot dog to dr. Who, and more. Crazy animators right?

[@Zennistrad1]

At 3:38 his tie becomes Tai.

[@GldnClaw]

Piano key, Hotdog, Fish and pencil ties

[@EdwardBerner]

Zennistrad1 That's just golden! I recognised the character but didn't remember his name, so the joke went way over my head. Thanks for reminding me :D

[@Volcanis3D]

I was watching and I noticed the ties kept changing. Then I noticed instead of a tie they used Tai from Digimon. I was like "Why did they use Tai from Digimon?" Then I slapped myself across the face.

[@patu8010]

Daniel Goncalves Hah, clever. :D

[@Thomas_H473]

yep, they also did a dr. who reference inside this joke, by even adding a fez to the red bow tie at 5:54

[@mergele1000]

Thomas Hudl And if I remember correctly ist the only accessory that remained after a cut. Guess someone is a fan.

[@jcnot9712]

Time stamp? I've been trying to find it for 5 minutes now lol

[@jcnot9712]

jaden coleman nvm found it. 3:38. Took me like 15 minutes lol

[@darkdudironaji]

You could also put a limited amount of currency in the world to begin with. The money you get from killed monsters, comes directly from the money people spent on in game vendors and services. A bunch of different problems come with that, but it's still feasible.

[@RazacxX]

darkdudironaji Players that leave the game would effectively be taking money out of the economy. So if you're taking that route, you will need to add in more currency on a regular basis to compensate for those (new) inactive users.

[@Roxor128]

RazacxX You could do that by charging a fee for inactive accounts. Every month that goes by without a login takes 10% of the account's gold.

[@RazacxX]

Ever heard of mathematical limits? You'll never get all that gold back in the economy with that 10% rule.

[@darkdudironaji]

RazacxX If you take 10% of the total they had to begin with, you could. Say they had 100 gold. Instead of taking 10, 9, 8, etc. You just keep taking 10.

[@RazacxX]

darkdudironaji That's not how he worded it though :p. But I don't think that this would be a solution to the problem anyway. No customer would like it if their possesions were taken away. (a lot of times people come back to a game after some time)

[@MagicalMaster]

This actually reminds me of Runescape, they had a problem with insane inflation and their answer was the Player Owned Houses. They cost insane amounts of money to get up, even if you find tricks to up the skill. It still just destroys your cash, and it provides something that all Members want.

[@tatooine0]

The best cash sink in RuneScape ever. Too bad it doesn't remove as much cash in the game as it used to because people stopped building houses and just rushed to 99 Construction cheaply. Still, Construction and the Well of Goodwill have slowed inflation, they've never been able to stop it.

[@Xershade]

It's worse now, because people will buy form Vendors, but then go sell those items in some cases for DOUBLE the value.

[@Dottlet1]

That's not exactly a problem. Rather, it's a good thing. Buying from vendors takes gold away from the economy, and if they sell for double that value on the GE then that gives motivation for players to buy them. Which effectively causes deflation and provides the market with items of value.

[@hikarisama306]

7:11 - This alternative can create, a massive gap between veterans & new players, the higher the value of the training, the bigger the imbalance become.

[@fatimaibrahim9044]

Hence the idea of exponential cost, the key balancing act is to make sure the cost beyond the initial few bonuses is so unproportionally expensive that grinding for these upgrades is ridiculously untenable but at the same time players who have literally everything else would prefer having an edge over some excessive gold stockpile.

[@serdarcs3373]

Maybe these stats should be the ones that wont benefit you in pvp but maybe in other ways?

[@haveiszalfaroqie]

Well... this is basically like Payday 2's infamy. Although, let's be real at here, you can't trade items via auction like most RPGs. Thus, no inflation at the first place.

[@crazyfox55]

Cookie Clickers

[@RobarthVideo]

5:52 Potion seller, I'm going into battle and I want only your strongest potions...

[@darkartsdabbler2407]

Ha, "Pane in the Glass"... that's great.

[@Kuchenjaeger]

Very, VERY interesting video. Also, this is the funniest guest artist you ever had :D

[@IndustryOfMagic]

In all the history of informative videos, this by far meets triple-A university standards even as a conceptual material for class lesson in economics. Eight minutes of pure education.

[@Mudclippa]

this is the best channel I've found in a while

[@LapidApiary]

5:54 Fezzes are cool. Bowties are cool. You are cool.

[@decimater75]

Oldschool runescape does some interesting things. 1.)They allow players to put stakes up for pvp fights (usually used as a gamble, essentially, rather than actual skill fights via use of restrictive rules) and whoever wins loses 1% of their winnings to a tax. 2.) There is a minigame called kingdom management where you can deposit gold into a coffer and it gets consumed over time, giving you resources instead (herbs, logs, ores, fish, etc.). To train a skill called construction, a player must take logs to a lumber mill to make planks which costs gp, players can build things w/ planks in their POH to gain construction xp. 3.) Many stores stock a certain amount of valuable items (as the stock of the item gets bought out, the price goes up, so people only buy them down to a certain point) so NPC shops are constantly being bought out by players seeking to earn a profit. 4.)Players can pay an npc to combine herbs and vials of water into unfinished potions (only have to add the secondary ingredient), saving a lot of time training. 5.) Players can play a flat fee for numerous things (changing your respawn location, changing the teleport location of teleport items, moving the location of their POH, building new rooms in their POH). 7.) Upon dying at certain high level PvE content, players must pay a fee of 100k to reclaim their items. 6.) I'm sure I'm missing many things...there are a lot of gold sinks in osrs.

[@cislordsoyblue1349]

Jagex is truly the only central bank that works.

[@arkhamcreed4326]

I think Guild Wars 2 has an interesting system in place here. In that game you can convert in-game gold into gems; the currency used in their real-money shop for buying cosmetic items and account upgrades like character slots. While you could just drop a few bucks to get these things quickly, more high level players with more gold than they know what to do with will happily flush hundreds if not thousands of gold out of the economy for something like an extra bank tab or a non-trade no-stats suit of appearance armor. And as an added effect you can sell these gems to other players for gold, this is partly a currency neutral thing as you're just moving gold around, not creating it, but more importantly it can also cause gems to increase in value. Back when the game started you could get 100 gems for about 1 gold, not it takes anywhere between 15 and 20 gold depending on the market. This means that when someone buys gems they are flushing even more gold out of the system than before. Add to that the recent addition of achievements for collecting cosmetic weapons that can only be bought with tickets (rare drops from chests that need keys only obtainable with gems) and players will be dropping thousands of gold out of the game just to get one ticket for one one weapon from one collection. And with over a dozen collections and each needing 19 weapons to complete, we're going to be seeing tons of gold just vanish.

[@kutaoizumi4189]

That looks like an interesting system.

[@MastaGambit]

Good idea... but then how would they be making money off of those cosmetics that would otherwise be purchased with $?

[@arkhamcreed4326]

MastaGambit Because players without much gold, like myself, will still fork over some real cash every now and again. They do well enough, considering that the game is now in its second year and the population is only growing, and during a "season" they offer new story updates every two weeks. Gold is actually pretty hard to amass in GW2 unless you're an established high level player willing to do a bit of farming. So while the forums and whatnot are full of people talking about how they have more gold than they know what to do with, the average player (or middle class) doesn't have that problem. Arena Net makes money from them, while the high level gold hoarders effectively get all the cash shop stuff for free. Gems aren't actually created when you pay gold, but are rather sold by players who bought them with real money. This is how they can have a fluctuating gold value. So what is actually happening is high level players with tons of gold are giving it to lower level players willing to spend real cash. This moves the gold down a rung to the players more vulnerable to gold sinks and who often have to pay large sums to gear and re-gear their developing characters. Basically the system takes gold away from the players who hoard it, and gives it to the players who use it for things that don't feed back into the economy.

[@devtheguy]

I really like what GW2 is doing with its currency, but inflation is still rising pretty dramatically. I'm wondering if it will ever level out.

[@ViceDellos]

it will never level out, the question is how much inftation do you want i think average is something like 2% per year for what is considered healthy perhaps in games you want something a little higher even or lower i re4ally dont know, but deflation also has a lot of negatieve things associated with it

[@AliJardz]

Absolutely fascinating, hope you come back to it.

[@loyalitiy]

Wow, never saw anything about it before. You made me think about the economy of games I played before. This is a true gem!

[@PoisonedElite]

How many more times will I fall down the rabbit hole of watching 50 episodes of EC in row before I stop it?

[@gstreetfee]

So I might get flack for this but il try anyway. There was a game once upon a time by the name of puzzle pirates. This game in my opinion had the best economy of any MMO. The reason the economy was so good is because there were so few NPCs. almost all of the money circulated through the player base. if you bought a sword, or a boat or anything you directly paid another player to have that item made for you. the game also had in game gambling. 8 people sitting a poker table is one sure to way get some of the people to lose their money. And perhaps the best thing the game did was offer a ton of fun money sinks, from cloths to houses, boats and weapons. There were also status symbols. if you walked around in black or gold clothes everyone know you were rich because they costed so much more than white or tan or clothes. The game had more money sinks than it did money generation. But alas it was a 2d puzzle game so it eventually died

[@dlscorp]

very late reply, but you totally missed the point that transactions between players are economically neutral

[@crystalswinford8203]

@@dlscorpol

[@diablo.the.cheater]

sounds like super inflated hot garbo, you need nps to destroy money not players, NPC

[@fattytan1377]

@@diablo.the.cheater players can do the trick willingly, the game I played (a mobile game, don't flak me) has 2 types if currency, cash and gold bars, one is used primary with NPCs, and gold bars has very limited source, roughly 4000 per day. The rest come from microtransactions. You can sell items to the players which has auction fees. The currency is in check aligned with the players. Because people want more gold, they sell items, which sinks money, and with fairly limited income (because apparently all 10 bucks can give is like 5000 gold which is garbage) the currency never inflates too out of hand

[@thechip2727]

thank u for this. never been more applicable than life now in 2022

[@Marbo12f]

One peculiar example of an MMO economy was Final Finatasy (11) online. By peculiar, I mean the complete absence of "Vendor Trash" or items that existed only for the sake of selling to vendors when it didn't make sense for the monster to have pure money on it. So essentially almost every item was a trade material, spell, or equipment certainly worth more than the single digit returns of a vendor. A peculiar quirk on top of that was the fact not every encounter was guaranteed to be rewarded with...anything. Thus slowing inflation with the trickle from mobs who generated money or selling to vendors for "pennies on the dollar" when the fee of the auction house and the very limited number of slots you had for said Action (people had alternate characters purely to have more slots) was a price too high to pay.

[@shinrafugitives3880]

Marbo12f can you still buy and play ff11 offline?

[@Marbo12f]

ShinraFugitives Afraid not. After 16 years it is actually still going on the PC.

[@shinrafugitives3880]

16 years from now or 16 years after the servers shut down?

[@Marbo12f]

ShinraFugitives The official servers are still active and there unfortunately exists no offline version.

[@Alpharius93]

Very interesting video! :) From EVE Online, I think we could mention another way of removing money from the game: item destruction. A ship is destroyed, and then it's irrevocally destroyed, no matter how much did it cost. Any removable items on it, such as modules and stuff on the cargohold, has a 50% chance of being destroyed too, or remain in the ship's wreck instead. That way players can lose enormous investments permanently, while still be able to salvage from the wreck and maybe get something cool from that player you just blew up. For the actual player characters, your escape pod can be destroyed too, and you killed off for real and your conciousness sent to a clone. If you had any expensive cybernetic implants on your previous clone, they're gone for eveyone. Additionally, all of this adds to the "risk vs reward" theme of EVE. I've been playing it for several years, I can tell you it does work!

[@Ogmobot]

The EVE economy is so different to WoW-like economies that it deserves its own video. Ship destruction actually introduces currency into the system (contributing to inflation) because you get an insurance payout, and you replace your ship and modules by trading with other players (a currency neutral activity). That's not to say that there are no NPC vendors to help control inflation (sleeper loot, blueprints), but most of the market is player-controlled, so that the economy ends up in a very different shape to WoW-like ones.

[@RGDumpingGround]

Alpharius93 It may have slowed inflation but it has definitely still gone up a fair bit. PLEX has gone up a lot from 5 years ago. Although a large portion of that is likely due to the addition of incursions making it easier to acquire isk with next to no risk. Can you still lose SP if your clone isn't up to date?

[@Alpharius93]

Rowan Gates About the clone question: not anymore. Clones automatically update (there are no more clone tiers). They did that because it felt too relying on just having the player remember to update, with no actual reward or gameplay related to it.

[@RGDumpingGround]

Alpharius93 Ah, well I guess that is a good thing. Makes pvp less damaging I guess. Presumably part of an attempt to get more people into null. I think they shot themselves the foot a bit in regards to that with incursions.

[@jgroth3906]

I think they were talking about the item destruction. They could have mentioned that EVE online is also full of other money sinks. repair fees, jump clone fees, sales tax, broker fees, manufacturing fees, corporation fees, wardec fees etc. etc. CCP also sometimes tries to manipulate the price of Plex.

[@marinhrabric6162]

i just noticed that your character in the video changes ties every time it's on the screen and i love it

[@badunius_code]

It's strange that there's not even a slightest hint on removing vendors and switching game economy to be player-driven. Like money-sink is an answer to every problem and the only question is how vast it should be at any given moment of time =/

[@patrickhoeing9781]

taxes on trades of all kinds that are calculated in realtime and take into account how many people logged in over the past 30 days and how much % of the whole economy your wallet makes up

[@caiofernando]

+Roman Markoff (badunius) Dofus had an interesting system where all healing items are player-crafted and sold in auction houses. This doesn't really helps controling inflation, though, because the resources still can be gathered for free and the money sinked in auction taxes are way less than spent buying consumables from NPCs.

[@pliniosalgado9051]

Devs of Neverwinter should see this video. The economy in this game is so fking crazy, there you have 1 player with 30 characters farming like 10kk Astral Diamond weekly.

[@catwif7376]

Plínio Salgado you got me, I'm one of them

[@Giacon]

ad exchange used to be half of what it is now lol, it benefits zen buyers more than anyone else

[@gg.4178]

I quit Neverwinter because of the economy.

[@dELTA13579111315]

One of my friends and I took over the sales for a couple items on the auction house in WoW for a while. My friend brought the price of a type of fish up from a couple gold to a peak of over 100 at one point, and I had a monopoly on a certain mount and brought the price up from 2k gold to 15k for like a week

[@TheGerogero]

I was hoping Path of Exile's system would have been brought up.

[@ARSP333]

Yeah, all of the currency items are usable. So many players use the items to improve their items rather trade them.

[@shingaming4788]

This system is doubly effective because the players with the most currency often sink it the fastest. Eternal/exalt crafting is what I'm talking about here. A casual player may never have access to an exalted orb, let alone an eternal orb. While these extremely wealthy players will sink hundreds of exalted orbs and dozens of eternal orbs trying to make the perfect 'GG' item.

[@ThinkingReality]

ShinGaming Exactly. A player trying to craft "that perfect crit dagger" or "That 600PDPS bow" (note: a bow with more than 300 PDPS is considered endgame viable; a bow with more than 400 is considered pretty much godly; 600 is just ridiculous) will run through more currency in a day than I've ever seen playing that game. And of course, the endgame content itself is consumable (instances are run via "map" items that disappear after use), and in order to keep a decent pool of maps, you need to invest even more currency into them. It's almost ridiculously efficient as an endgame currency sink.

[@carlosmolina880]

I was hoping that too. Every time I see streamers using 500+ fusings to 6L an item or 30chaos on endgame maps... all that currency gone so quickly. It's actually really effective.

[@JM-nothing-more]

i was just about to bring it up when i found this comment

[@SiblingRivalryZX]

Yes, we found it interesting. More please!

[@Wowwhut]

5:58 did you just go all Doctor Who on us? Fezzes and bowties, gotta love 'em

[@spyzebyo9466]

I think path of exile has one rly great economy. Instead of gold that is essential useless you trade with usable items. The currency is basically Chaos orbs and exalted orbs, arguably mirrows. The thing is that all of these get used all the time. In Standard for example an exalt holds an extremly stable value in the past. Obviously in season you got some inflation at the start, around 300 percent over a week or two, which then stabelises

[@Ladadadada]

The biggest thing that halts inflation in PoE is the leagues. Everyone wants to play in whatever new league is current and in order to join that new league you have to leave behind all of your collected items and currency. You start with nothing (and so does everyone else). Several countries have actually done similar things over the years when inflation got out of control; launch a new currency and swap the old one for the new one at a 1000:1 ratio. (Zimbabwe and Poland spring to mind.) Of course in countries only the currency was swapped, you got to keep your stuff. Some other factors that really reduce inflation in PoE: *Hardcore league*. One death and you lose everything. (You still technically have it but you're in the wrong league now so players who want to be in hardcore league start again in hardcore with nothing.) *Bag space*. Currency takes up space which is unusual in MMOs. After a while, people stop bothering to pick up lower currency items like scrolls at all unless they need to use one. *Using the currency to roll items*. You mentioned that every currency item has a use other than buying things and that use is a very big sink, and more importantly it's a bigger sink for players with more currency because it's always a gamble. You can put hundreds of orbs into crafting a six-link and then hundreds more getting the colours you want, only to corrupt it into a worthless item. The more currency you have the more you'll be willing to risk on an action like corrupting an item. Players with less currency will be happy with just the coloured six-link. For players with even less currency they might stop at a 5-link with four good colours. The currency needed to get a great item increases exponentially (maybe factorially now that I think about it) but the item is only slightly better than what other people have. *Vendors pay very little*. An item that you may have sunk 200 chaos into crafting will still only get you a few orbs of alteration from a vendor. Trash gets you almost nothing.

[@innerg_92]

there is WAY more too it than that. but that IS the gist of it.

[@HaydenX]

It's interesting that there was no mention of purely aesthetic goods that are only purchasable from NPCs. Picture an item called "Top Hat of Lordship" All it does is allows your character to replace their helment (aesthetically) with a top hat, and allows for you to gain the title "lord". It could cost a ridiculous amount of in-game currency and change nothing about the mechanics of the game.

[@lucromel]

I remember the Spider mount in WoW pretty obviously was put in for this. A huge sum of gold for a mount that was no different than any other mount except it looked cooler.

[@therationalist43403]

More please....more....I'm not even joking I would watch 100 of these videos. Hell just start an MMO Extra Credits channel.

[@ClubbingSealCub]

Loving those sick ties

[@DigitalFumbles]

My oh my, what fancy ties. 6:00 :U ...Bowties are cool.

[@adolfodef]

Much more if you combine it with a red fez . =)

[@DigitalFumbles]

Argamis Quite so, Argamis. Quite so.

[@Kentanimationnnnnnnnn]

it was so distracting

[@luspearsoram1507]

This was very interesting. Keep making more videos about game economy. I don't know very much about the economy but this video was great about explaining it in a way I can understand. I finally really understand what "inflation" is. Now I know why herbs, ore and leather cost an arm and a leg in WOW. The wealthy and experienced players are willing to spend a lot of money in crafting materials. I take advantage of this. I like to play solo and quest through the game. I don't like crafting in town because it's boring. I figured I can make money by collecting materials from the field and sell them in the auction house. It is lucrative, convenient and fun. It effectively takes advantage of players who want to craft powerful items, but don't want to gather their own materials. Among my characters, every body skins and farms cloth. Then depending on the individual character, they gather herbs or mine ore. There are interesting ideas about how to prevent inflation. 2:58 LOL! Poor tank. Perhaps to be more fair, there should be gold sinks for other classes. Maybe there can be a fatigue value created by doing damage and healing. The more effects that are done in batle, the higher the fatigue, which weakens the effects of subsequent attacks. The way to remove fatigue is to go to a special in game spa. The player has to pay the NPC spa owner to use the spa. The more fatigue it removes, the greater the cost is. Perhaps another way to deal with invlation is to have all items be buyable from an NPC vender. The vender has a set price. So if a player tries to gouge on rich players, the NPC will outcompete them and keep them in check. I just came from the video about first turn advantages. I got this insane idea. There is a permanent purchasable upgrade in player speed. When a player goes first in a turn based game, they have an advantage. When there is a speed stat, it becomes more manageable and fair. Whichever player has a higher speed gets to go first. Players will want to invest in player speed, since it gives them a bigger advantage. In order to get a greater player speed, they will have to pay for it. So they will be willing to pay. Rich players will pay a ton of money, just to keep one step ahead of other rich players, who are also paying a ton of money. Hopefully it will help with both the first turn advantage and the economic inflation issues.

[@deadnoobie2859]

Anyone else find themselves feeling bad for that poor green guy through most of the video? :P

[@tobiaspetersson6446]

Dead Noobie lol

[@nastrael]

What if you made a game economy based on bartering mats? Make every item useful by allowing you to deconstruct everything for mats which you could then trade for other mats or services? Like; I'll enchant your pantaloons if you'll make me a new hood.

[@TheCrimson147]

+Nastrael Rowe There are already games like that. You can have harvesting, alchemy, tailoring, blacksmithing etc.

[@DavidRodriguez-dy1er]

+TheCrimson147 There are very few and even fewer good ones still.

[@aaronscott7467]

you could substitute material for money. have one vendor that trades one type for a different type, plus a profit margin for him, and then you create an economy where there is a perfectly usable money sink, as well as a use for all that stockpiled material. you can make weapons, or modify them, and you just don't need to worry about money storing up over time, as the materials might s well not exist. in auction houses, you would be offering different quantities of materials, and the seller would get his pick. you could even encourage direct bartering of items, so that one thing can have slightly different stats to another, but have a slight disadvantage in another area.

[@tcoren1]

Nastrael Rowe sounds like 'path of exile' to me. There is no "gold" in path of exile, all the currency in the game are items you use to upgrade your equipment in various ways (just to be clear, the community refers to these items as currency). Stuff like upgrading the tier of a piece of equipment (normal->magic->rare item), adding another line of random modifiers to the equipment (up to a limit based on it's tier), changing the number and what type of skill gems (think metiria from final fantasy 7) you can equip on the item, or scrolls that identify random unidentified loot dropped from enemies. The currency items drop from enemies, and some of the lower tier ones can be gotten from vendoring unwanted equips, but the system has a natural money sink in the form of using the items on equipments, and the effectiveness of the money sink is inversely proportional to it's value as a currency item (the more expensive an item is, the less you want to use it on your equip, and the cheaper it is, the more easily you'll spend it), which really helps to stabilize the economy and avoid inflation

[@xaghi9832]

Why do I enjoy these MMO economy videos so much?

[@Jonathan-kb6vs]

5 years later Thanks KZbin

[@Diceyed]

not just MMO, i mean look at TF2 Economy, we work of of metal, it used to be that keys were used as the high end value system because you could buy keys but they were costly each, and the keys were used for one thing, to be wasted on the most frequent drop in game. But then Buds came along, and bill hats, and then they dropped the key worth and changed the whole marketplace. soon enough everything was flipped around.

[@Diceyed]

Like I said at the beginning "NOT JUST MMO" i was making a parallel to each others market systems, not to each other game genres.

[@TBotAlpha]

Cloud Seeker No, he's relating the lessons in the video to TF2's "Mannconomy", which works on the same wonky principles as an MMO's. In TF2, players periodically get random items given to them for free by the game. Sometimes these items are hats, sometimes they are weapons, sometimes they are locked crates containing random loot. Players can combine the weapons they get to make "Scrap Metal", which can be combined to make "Reclaimed Metal", which in turn can be combined to make "Refined Metal". Combining Refined Metal gets you a hat. When the Mannconomy first launched, everyone wanted hats, but they were extremely rare. Players could either play for ages hoping for one to randomly drop (which was, and still is, very rare), craft one themselves (which took a lot of time, waiting for weapons to drop so they could be processed into Scrap Metal), or they could trade with another player for one. Since it took 27 Scrap Metal, 9 Reclaimed Metal, or 3 Refined Metal to craft a hat, hat traders used to value different hats in terms of how much of the different types of metal they were worth. They were, for a time, the main currency among players. The way this relates to the video is that the random weapon drops, and by extension the metal being crafted, are effectively created from nothing. Every weapon drop is a free piece of raw material, a free lump of value, injected straight into the economy. The various types of metal were doomed to continually slump in value, as more and more people crafted away their weapon drops, and more and more metal entered circulation. Similarly, the value of hats was also doomed, as more metal means more hats being crafted, means more hats in circulation, etc. TF2 traders have tried a number of ways to work around inflation. One of the most enduring schemes has been to use certain types of hats, that were given out as promotional items and are thus finite in number, as high-end currencies. If you see someone talking about trading in "Bills" or "buds", this is what they mean. It's effectively a re-invention of the gold standard, where traders can do business safe in the knowledge that the promo hats they're passing around have a fixed value, backed by their own inherent scarcity. And it works! Mostly. A lot of these promo hats have ended up pooling in the pockets of a trader elite, who prefer to sit on their wealth instead of spending it, artificially driving up the scarcity (and by extension, the value) of the promo hats. But that's more a problem of capitalism running wild than anything inherent to TF2. I could go on, but my point is: there's a lot of stuff in this video that is totally related to TF2's absurd hatconomy, and which is totally worth discussing and exploring here.

[@weeseet]

I quit playing TF2 late summer 2012, and just picked it back up recently. When I left, keys went for 2.33 ref. Now they're up to 8-9 ref each. I was shocked when I saw that.

[@Diceyed]

weeseet a agree, same happend to me. i do a little tradeing but not as much as i used to. and WOW this one comment of mine brought a HUGE amount of messages.

[@TBotAlpha]

William John Goodwater Nah, I just didn't want anyone to dismiss TF2's economy out of hand, even though it's a great case study for how online videogame economies can develop, and the different measures people take to keep the system working.

[@remkirkthegamer1157]

The art style makes everything look absolutely adorable!

[@monocleenthusiast2381]

Those ties though.

[@1_GigaWaffle]

Perfect World tried to fight inflation by decresing prices on all of the mob loot and by making players to burn through starting levels at light speed. Last time I was there(4-5 years ago I think), new player would blaze through first 40-45 levels by doing specialized quests barely generating any money in the process. Which means that when they reach 60(first major milestone level) they don't have money to buy proper equipment nor they lack an ability to farm resources needed to make that equipment. Most players just have to pay for premium currency because it's the fastest and the most painless way to get in game currency. Mobs rarely drop anything and what little does drop, has no in game value. It was so bad for some, that I saw 70lvl players sitting near 29-59lvl dungeons and offering "guns for hire" services for lower level players. When I started playing about 8 years ago it was vice versa. 70-80lvl players would beg you to take them into lower level dungeon, they would give you all the loot and sometimes even some extra cash. Because XP was worth more then coins. Then devs made XP worthless and made coins near impossible to obtain. Ended up giving my 81lvl priest to some girl who played second priest in our party and who died a lot because wasn't equiped properly. It was so painful to watch...

[@user-xw1yh2py4j]

That game used to sell 1 gold for 100,000 coins. The last I checked, it was in the millions.

[@1_GigaWaffle]

3.14159265358979323846 26433832795028841 I went back in a few days ago. It's worse then ever. Even quests don't give you in game coins, loot literaly costs 1 coin and armor droped by monsters costs no more then 150. Also quests have no grind in them anymore. You know, how you have to slaughter 100 wolves to get 10 teeth? No more of those. Need 10 teeth? Kill 10 wolves. And xp rewards are so big that I'm at 46 already. All early bosses got so nerfed that I could kill them alone. Tbh I still don't know where to get money for lvl 60 or 70 gear since there are no clear ways to earn in game currency. Probably will quit before I figure that out... oh, and 1 gold is about 800-900k now, at least on russian servers.

[@CardamomYGO]

Here in american server, gold is about 3m. Also, when you hit lvl 80 quest start to give you money. For exemple, I was questing in that levels, and afther doing like 15 non-repeatable quest I had 2m on my satchel. That was very cool xD And, now, uprading weapons cost a lot of money... r8r to r8rr cost 80m plus mats. Omg, just omg xD

[@NONAME9283]

Derpy Hooves well, right now, on the official servers, 1 gold is 7-8m coins... everytime there's a sale, inflation skyrockets, but after the sale, it calms down... armor is relatively easy to get but still, getting g16 will cost you a lot. And then, there comes r9 and g17...

[@Turnpike04]

I like the idea of pvp affecting the economy of a faction. The thing this would need to work is that players should have a daily maximum for how much they can sell to vendors. As an example we could have places like tol-barad and wintergrasp where factions duke it out and the players of whichever side wins are allowed to sell more stuff. It would make sense lore-wise. The alliance just won in alterac valley, and they get the resources from it, those resources come back to the vendors and then the vendors have more money. Because the vendors have more money, players are able to sell more.

[@LianSirenia]

Very interesting thing to look at, and I love how these games can be an interesting lens to look at human societal behavior through even going into typically complex topics like economy. Aside from just being fun, games could definitely help us learn about our own tendencies as humans and as a human society, then we can hopefully use that new-found understanding to better our own situation and that of others as well.

[@whoaminow100]

yes, would be interested in more n this topic thanks

[@ryanviningtube]

The staggering death cost in Eve Online is a resource sink from player mined materials, but not a currency sink. Every death actually adds currency to the economy through insurance (even if you are un-insured you get a little)

[@boltstrikes429]

lol i like that you changed the tie so munny times

[@VxlvetCece]

He's wearing a bow tie and fez in one... Because bow ties are cool.

[@JonFawkes]

How could you discuss virtual economies and over-inflation without mentioning Gaia Online?

[@swishfish8858]

+JonFawkes Easy, by not knowing or caring about it.

[@IVChan]

+Labia Majora's Mask What happened? I wanna know!

[@JonFawkes]

+Lightless The Reaper At some point they introduced "Gold generators" which you could buy with real money. This introduced so much gold in the market that they had to remove the hard cap of 2 billion gold on each account. Some items inflated in price to the hundreds of BILLIONS, some in the tens of trillions. Someone calculated the inflation rate at almost 10 MILLION PERCENT. That's not an exaggeration. The yearly increase on the gold cost of some items went up by factors of not tens but millions of times their old price. You can read more about it here: www.reddit.com/r/truegaming/comments/2f5vn9/a_case_of_hyperinflation_in_a_virtual_economy/ knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/hyperinflation-in-gaia-online

[@IVChan]

+JonFawkes Dang. That must've been catastrophic to Gaia Online. How did players react? Are the efects of the gold generators still there? do people even still play it? sorry for all the questions ^^

[@JonFawkes]

+Lightless The Reaper I have no idea. As I know, the site is still up, I don't know what they've done with the economy or who still plays it

[@thisiswhatilike54]

Yes, please! I'd like to watch what else you'd have to say about in-game economics if and when you decide to visit this topic again.

[@pordilos]

7:36 way out of time? SIR you have not reached the 10 minute mark!

[@ordoordo8917]

this was a time when channels didn't care about the 10 minute mark

[@jeffdaking]

yes more economics!!!! im an economics major :D

[@calebmiller9746]

represent, my brotha

[@phoenixking62]

Path of Exile has one of the best currency sinks... mainly cause they don't actually have "currency". The main thing that people trade with are special orbs used for crafting. There aren't any gold or useless currency, so all the crafting orbs can be used to make better items. That gives Path of Exile a unique situations where better items become *less* expensive as time goes on.

[@yukiteruamano5585]

Please do more on in-game or MMO economies! Super interesting stuff, and it really does explain things that game developers don't take the time to spell out. Not that they necessarily should, but it's cool learning why exactly skills take money to learn (and at an ever-increasing cost)!

[@TrindyForce]

The idea that the U.S government prints its own currency is hilarious.

[@RunCreeperRun]

You mean like any other nation that doesn't use another countries currency?

[@TrindyForce]

RunCreeperRun I'm commenting on the corruption of the federal reserve.

[@Pablo1517]

RunCreeperRun You have comletely no idea about the world you live in :D. No, not all countries print their own money. As for USA, guess what, institution responsible for printing dollars is ACTUALLY in private hands, it's called FED, and they are breaking the dollar for about 100 years now ;)

[@lolmandos]

Pablo1517 Altough, to separate the FED from the US Government is a longshot from saying they are not part of it. The FED may not be part of the US government, but it sure is heavily and directly ruled by it. There is another funny thing about this topic. All participating countries in the Bretton-Woods system link their currency value to the dollar. So not all countries are free to print a shitload of money - that would make their currency worthless in relation to the dollar, which is no good. But when the US prints money, they are simply allowing every government to feel ok about their inflation, because they can now buy dollars. But nobody eats dollars - this is why inflation is a worldwide increasingly problematic phenomena.

[@Xidnaf]

Pablo1517 Eh, I wouldn't call it "private" exactly. No one really "owns" it. I like to think of it as "that part of our government that runs the economy and we have no way of holding accountable."

[@homerunproduction]

I played RuneScape a lot as a kid, and watching this video makes a bunch of things make sense in that game. Like building a house, each house slot cost in game money.

[@OstadPapa]

Well lads, It's that time of the year again. R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

[@iambored2006]

I have a general question: in MMOs, the problem is twofold- you have new players constantly joining, and they have to be supplied with the same gear that was available for new players a month ago; on top of that, you have the problem of inflation presented in the video. In real life, though, only the first problem necessarily exists. While the second one can be avoided by not printing too much money, you can't really stop the growth of the population. I have no understanding of economics, as you can clearly tell, so I ask- what are we doing in real life to prevent population growth from being a strain on the economy? With finite resources, how can the economy support the growing population?

[@Jackpkmn]

Nothing. We call attempts to control the population at higher levels Eugenics and religious groups press to slow and stop the personal level of population control we know as birth control. And as a result just like in populations of wild animals human populations always end up in a death spiral crashing hard and burning for a while before returning again.

[@iambored2006]

Jackpkmn But I figured economics are more intelligent than that. Aren't there any mechanisms in place to handle the growing population, at least economically?

[@Jackpkmn]

Yes, we call it death. As ugly as the truth may be, infinite growth on finite resources isn't sustainable and will always result in loss of life. If people could grasp this more thoroughly and could accept it rather than trying to rationalize it away or run from it then it would not even be a consideration. But alas idealizing about smarter people isn't productive either.

[@iambored2006]

Jackpkmn Right, but we have plans, for example, of how to deal with huge meteor landings, and other such improbable catastrophes. Since the population growth is such a pressing issue, and since economics is actually one of our more intelligent inventions, I figured this is something we actually have figured out, at least to some degree. I guess this is just another thing to be depressed about.

[@ViceDellos]

I think most plans focus on stopping populationgrowth( which really only happens in developping countries, most western countries have actually less births that deaths but that is compensated by immigrants) usually by improving medical facilities and service ( lower child mortality has always lead to fewer births) also of note is that there is no clear answer what population is too big of a population, some say we can easily sustain twice the earth some say it would be better if there were slightly less ppl already. economics as a science is in many ways still in its infacy because it's so incredibly complex and volatile that we do not nearly have a complete enough understanding. You can look at it a little like classical mechanics, it works for a lot of average things, but when you look at big or small stuff it just breaks completely. Eventually we figured out quantum physics and relativety to also handle those things and in doing so became a lot better at understanding and predicting the world(however we also discovered even more we dont know which we can focus on figuring out now) however in economics we still have to fire out so much, because it is a lot more complex than physics

[@chancewilder9924]

Love the different ties you wear when it shows you

[@syelallouch]

So many ties!

[@lillianlasenna2826]

well then.....

[@BuenDude]

And a Tai too.

[@BOBTHEBERT]

I know I'm always one that goes back to Runescape whenever you guys bring up MMOs, but you can't forget about skills that completely take away cash from the economy. Specifically, Runescape's Construction skill. All these logs coming in to the market? Specifically hardwoods that you make furniture out of? You need to pay the Sawmill Operator to turn them in to planks, so you can turn them in to furniture, but you can't trade the furniture around unless it's in it's flatpack form, which is nigh-worthless on the grand exchange because nobody wants to buy them and is worth even less at the general store. Even if you have Lunar spells and the plank make spell, it still takes gold out of your money pouch to make the planks, albeit less than you'd have to pay the sawmill guy.

[@AzuraSkyy]

RuneScape's Bond system (essentially the equivalent of Flux) does it's part too. It ties to a real world value and costs money to activate after being traded. Money Sinks FTW

[@BOBTHEBERT]

AzuraSkyy That too, but the problem there is that, while it doesn't technically introduce money in to the game, it did leave a sour taste in a lot of players mouths, mine included, because of Jagex's long war against real-world traders, and the similarity between bonds and buying gold. There isn't really anything INHERENTLY wrong with it, but when Jagex did originally say that they didn't want real-world economic status to be able to influence in-game enjoyment, especially because it can basically buy your way to victory, especially in things like PvP, but since PvP was basically dead, yeah...

[@imoutofnames1]

Suitaloo They also did a good job with the degrading mechanic. (excluding degrade to dust items) A lot of equipment slowly degrades and needs gold to repair it. It isn't tied to death (though death does take a chunk out of the equipment) but rather simply using it means you need to repair the damage done.

[@FortWhenTeaThyme]

I always loved RS's economy. Well...before the Grand Exchange happened =/

[@BOBTHEBERT]

FortWhenTeaThyme Well, I will say one thing, it did teach me typing better than any mavis bacon bullshit could teach me in school. If you wanted to sell anything, you had to type fast and type accurately.

[@Subtleflashbang]

I think ESO's sinkholes are pretty clever. The best one is their guild trader system where you compete with other guilds in bidding wars in order to control traders in a city. The advantage of having a trader in a city is that players will likely purchase from your guild through thrse traders because it's convenient. This effectively taxes guild members for a better chance at selling their goods.

[@dwalsh6779]

Why was dan the doctor at 5:54?

[@nullnull3438]

It is the 12th doctor.

[@Drunkenvalley]

Perhaps games should start seeing gold drops decrease, ie there's literally a finite amount of gold that can exist in the game, so the amount of gold given to players deflates rapidly, and increases again as players spend gold on NPCs, etc. Though then a problem becomes those that hoard the money...

[@FlyingJetpack1]

Which cause deflation in lower levels, killing them off completely on the market. I personaly think they should make diffrent economies for diffrent ranges of levels. When you are in a low level tier, you will get a coin. When you are in a higher level tier, you will get (I donno..) Crystals. When you stand around the middle of the first and second tier you will get both of them, getting more from the area you are closer to by mob level. and keep that structure until the level cap, there the trades will be made with real value items that are stackable, making them a good corrent (or a well worth item that you get from max level raids). By seperating the economies, you won't trade with high level players as you don't have the same coin, so it will self contain itself, and make controling the money much easier for the devs.

[@tomaalimosh]

Actually, this system would work if you put a tax on hoarding - for instance if you have more than 10K gold in the bank, you start losing 0.5% of the excess each day. That way you will be hard pressed to spend the money. This system could even work in the real world, with real money. It would definitely help with the economic inequality problem...

[@MilesMetal]

Ushio01 That would only really solve the problem of high level players having the most money... but it would also turn the problem 180 and make the low level players the ones who own most of the money.

[@kingkukujiao]

tomaalimosh That's just fucking stupid. Yes let bill gates lose 0.5% of billions everyday.

[@Green815]

Deflationary currency has been proven time and time again to be a bad thing for economies. If there's a limited amount of gold in the game world, what's to stop somebody farming all of it and then sitting on it forever and never actually spending it? Inflation is actually a great thing for economies, since it keeps things moving.

[@Rose_Harmonic]

The first time I was killed in Eve Online, I had experience terror and panic because I had found and entered a wormhole on the second day that a player was camping on the other side and once I respawned in my station I was worried that I wouldn't be able to replace what I had lost or continue. Luckily it was no problem but man, I was so hooked for a very long time. Also I always like the wars that cost an equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars in stuff lost. Love it.

[@aetranm]

+PhiliChez As a wormholer, I tend to give a free 10-15m away to any new players that I catch for this very reason, as well as give them some pointers.

[@CazMeister]

Was I the only one who noticed that Daniel's tie looked like a fish?

[@janvermaak87]

It kept changing :D

[@UnknownXV]

I've always figured that NPCs in the world should mostly only drop very cheap gear that breaks down fast but can't be sold to NPCs, it could only be broken down into base parts for player crafters to use. Gear should have a set durability limit that will cause it to eventually break permanently (though this could be removed for the highest echelon of gear). I think a good middle ground to this, however, would be crafters who can repair them instead of NPCs. How do you fit a gold sink into that? Simple, crafting vendors would sell an item you can't get elsewhere that is necessary to repair gear. This would create immense value for crafters while still having a gold sink in play. Beyond that, killing monsters can give some gold, but it shouldn't be massive. It depends on the game, and you'd have to have a lot of statistical data on player behavior to know exactly how much mobs have to drop with the ideal goal being no inflation or deflation. It's a very curious topic though, no doubt.

[@coastersplus]

Maybe crafters could have an energy bar that decreases as they craft stuff. It would replenish very slowly, so that they would have to buy an energy potion or something of that sort if they wanted to repair lots of stuff for people. It definitely is a curious topic; I wish it was more feasible for indie developers to get into the MMO field so that a bit more experimenting could go on.

[@UnknownXV]

coastersplus As long as that energy bar isn't capped daily (as in those potions would not run out of stock) and / or it wasn't some micro transaction thing. I agree. The problem is that MMORPGs are very high budget. It just costs so much to make them. I'm not certain why. Servers aren't really the problem, they aren't that monumentally expensive anymore.

[@tmoore121]

In your economy, however, gold is more or less meaningless with the exception of that one use. As such, gold won't be the currency: the crafting mats that items break down into will be the currency. So you would see the inflation in that rather than gold. Much like in Diablo 2, where the currency was PGems, SOJ's, runes, and X slotted items.

[@UnknownXV]

eightsixsevenfivethreeohnine Gold would be useful to buy stuff from each other. Just like currency in real life serves only that function. There isn't a place you can go to in real life and exchange money there to buy an endless quantity of epic mounts or change your professions/specialty and so on. :P

[@UnknownXV]

deltaxcd Only basic gear would permanently be destroyed. Gear you can buy. Crafted gear would not. Crafting would be exceptionally important.

[@bip901]

1:35 That "well" picture cracked me up xD

[@VreelDanelli]

I have an interesting idea. What if someone made an MMO where money did not come from killing mobs, but solely from trading with NPCs and other players? Moreover, what if the NPCs had actual inventories and coin counts? This would result in money not being created or destroyed through NPC transactions.

[@ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek]

Antonio Danelli NPC merchants would quickly run out of money due to the amount of unused stuff being thrown at them. Everybody will have stuff to get rid of, either from drops that are worse than their current ones or replacements of their old equipment. This is especially important in MMOs because loot is one of the major aspects of the reinforcement loop that keeps people playing. So what happens when an NPC vendor runs out of money and has bags full of crap nobody wants? In most games, they just magically destroy it at the same time they regain their inventory, either immediately after you close the window (WoW) or in a few in-game days (Skyrim, Witcher 3). In this universe, though, they can't. Vendors then become useless.

[@VreelDanelli]

+ajjdgj6tmgedvnmtmek Yeah, I had already considered this, but didn't put it in my original comment. NPCs should not buy a ton of items that they already have or that are unrelated to their profession/shop. They should have basic AI to decide whether they should or should not buy items (as well as how much they should offer based on their own individual inventories). It's not too difficult to program (I'm majoring in CS) Another interesting idea would be allowing NPCs to craft things with the items they buy. For example, new players may make early money bringing a blacksmith NPC iron ore. The smith, meanwhile, reforges and recrafts the ore into fine wears bought by more advanced players.

[@minnion2871]

Antonio Danelli So basically every time an NPC gets X number of X trash item it "deletes" the trash items and generates a more valuable item based on the trash items from which it was made?

[@danielsjohnson]

but what happens when more players join your game? The set amount of gold will be spread thinner across more and more players.

[@minnion2871]

danielsjohnson Well what if the game was set so there was a formulated "Gold to player" ratio based on the size of the player-base?

[@Pierre-Jonqueres]

Merchants can also have limited money, not being able to buy too many stuff from players

[@lercameron4297]

just watched the south sea bubble episodes on extra history back to back with this one and it was interesting to see how some of the same economic theories played into both.

[@Gameknight2169]

Please realize that his tie changes every time he appears. Please.

[@FamousOnChains]

He says that death penalties aren't enough to fix the problem but i must disagree. Death penalty is something is one of the most important things in a MMO and it's one that is ,for the most part, done wrong and people don't even care about it.

[@seanjordan6549]

+FamousOnChains dark souls... my god all it is is death and it does it might not be an a very big mmo but it still is an mmo to an extent

[@MrMarinus18]

Well having a harsh death penalty pushes the skill level of the game up quite a bit and will deter a lot of players.

[@MannyXVIII]

I also like the Path of Exile item, where currencies are items that can and often will be used to improve equipment, and since the change to get a good roll, or even the perfect roll you wanted, is very low you are quite effectifly draining money from the system. In hard core your character will be thrown into standard if you die, taking everything with it what you had on your character at the time, thus creating demand even for low level items

[@71kimg]

In real world - most money is made by banks by creating debt.

[@alecnolastname4362]

No!

[@FurryMurry7]

OMG I ROFLED AT 3:37 AT THE "TAI" TIE!!! XD

[@pixelsdeadchannel]

List of ties: 0:06 - Normal 0:22 - Piano 0:57 - Bacon 2:47 - Fish 3:00 - Banana 3:21 - Tongue 3:38 - Anime 5:34 - Hot dog 5:54 - Bowtie + hat 7:34 - Pencil

[@masterofdoom5000]

I wonder if a system where currency is segmented into levels would work, not by itself but in conjunction with a system to ensure that a lv 100 hunting his lv 100 opponents wouldn't get 4k gold for the whole economy, but rather 4k ascended gold that is only useful for the higher level equipment and items. This would stop all this excess currency from the higher levels leaking into the lower levels of the game and making it nigh unapproachable, starting off in a game with high inflation is painstakingly difficult, every purchase makes you uneasy. if I knew that this currency only proved useful up to a certain level point, I could relax and essentially start my wealth attainment over with each new threshold.

[@ziliath5237]

that has an issue with buying low level stuff for "upgraded" gold in which you spend all your time getting "upgraded" gold and have no regular stuff, you would have a Lowest amount that would be indivisible into lower forms of money and yet trying to buy something thats worth less than a single "upgraded" coin would result in players having to get Many forms of money to buy all the stuff, and if you could exchange it, it would flood the economy.

[@Foxpawed]

Hi, Valor Points.

[@masterofdoom5000]

well naturally it wouldn't be exchangeable, and the game would have to be designed that you don't really touch the lower brackets after getting past them, always looking forward to the next section. commonplace gear for that bracket would be cheap so you'd just kill a few monsters and be done with it, its the rare drops from monsters and quests that would see any sort of issue

[@ziliath5237]

masterofdoom5000 true, it can be made that way so that you needn't touch lower brackets. but people like to get vanity stuff all the time... it be a hassle for them.

[@masterofdoom5000]

This is why it was just a brief thought, a well constructed system in place could work out the kinks rather than try to have so many sinks and super rare unbelievable items thrown in that cost so goddamn much, I think it has potential and just needs to be looked at in further detail from someone more familiar.

[@codmv2]

a video on game economics, but doesn't mention Path of Exile... tsk tsk tsk

[@youreverydayrae]

i dont even play MMOs and i'm not that into economics but for some reason I find this topic really interesting and would like to see more on it.

[@hugo-garcia]

Price control will never solve the problem. The only solution is to stops printing

[@convenientlamppost8914]

So then, the monsters wouldn't drop any gold? What you're suggesting works in the real world (sometimes), but in MMORPGs, I highly doubt it.

[@dillanurban8352]

soo u wanna have a empty map or do you prefer a map full of mobs that dont give you anything?