Copying from a thread @ F13:

kaid
The only truly broken economy is one where either every single item in the game is so easy to come by there is no need or reason to trade

Oh, well. This could be a broken economy but it’s a very good game for sure.

See, everyone is missing the point because you really shift the focus on how to build a decent economy while I think Haemish point of view is way more worth of attention: You should shy away from creating and balancing a real economy.

I won’t go back with the discussion between “real simulation” Vs. “fun arcade” because it’s not the point. The point is that whatever you are going to build is still something that will involve “gameplay”. This gameplay could be a simple monster whack or a complex interaction but at the end the gameplay must be compelling and interesting. This is why I still find more fun and compelling to find the tools I need, like the equipment, along my normal play. With vendors and drops. It’s way more fun than trading. Remember that, often, trading is a way to bypass the game. Considering EQ or WoW you can see that what you need (loot) comes directly from your experience and normal play. If at some point the economy collapse with the inflation it will mean that you are able to max your equipment with very little money. And this means that noone will care about PLAYING to achieve what they need. You can sit and pay but you are also killing your own fun because what was hard and challenging has been now dumbed down by the money. The active gameplay has been erased.

This is why the economy brings more problems than benefits to the game. In the real world the economy born to exchange different resources. In the real word peoples specialize themselves in an activity (and then gain and use money) because someone else is doing something completely different. And there’s interdependence. In a mmorpg more or less everyone plays the same game, in the same way. The fact is that there’s no need to shift the resources because you aren’t FORCED to work (play), but you should love to do that. And you DON’T WANT someone else to do the work at your place. Because the point and the aim IS THE GAMEPLAY, and not just the loot at the end. If that loot is the result of a play session you have a good game. If the loot can then be achieved just by trading you are killing once again the fun. In DAoC the players are able to craft insanely powerful equipment and that asks just a ton of money. Well, this destroyed the epic quests. What required gameplay now requires just money. And the game is just more fucked up!

Economies, real or faked, aren’t needed in a game simply because there’s no sense in adding this layer of complexity. In a game like EQ or WoW the economy (a real one) simply doesn’t fit, because it has no purpose aside creating a tons of disasters.

Recently Mythic demonstraded how much the ideas about economic systems in games are completely messed. They introduced powerful objects (artifacts) very hard to gain, impossible to trade or sell, impossible to obtain again and STILL decaying and disappearing from the world. Where’s the sense? Why you need to erase an object from the world if it doesn’t circulate nor can be re-gained?

Sanya
Q: Why do artifacts decay?

A: We don’t ever want to put items into the game that don’t decay at all. Getting an item into a game is essentially a function of time. Without removing items somehow, an economy becomes completely clogged, and special things are no longer special.

Many people who have made something of a hobby out of game world economies have written essays on “mudflation” (MMORPGs have their roots in Multiple User Dungeons � text based games)

Now someone could explain me what relates artifacts to the economy? Or, even worst, MUDflation?

This is the whole point. Economies are unnecessary if the game itself doesn’t offer a very strict specialization in the possible activities. In a game like WoW, DAoC or EQ the economy is simply a burden and every attempt at adjusting it will destroy a bit more the fun in the game. The more the economy works the more the game will bleed. In other games (like Eve), the economy simply works because you have 80% of the game painfully boring. So that trading acquires a meaning. And this demonstrate how much a real economy defines an horrible game with faked depth.

My opinion is that the less the economy is real the better is for my fun. Let’s say that as I enter the game in WoW I have a friend that dump me a ton of money. Who the fuck cares? I’ll still be restricted to use equipment for my level and the difference between my twinked character and someone else with no external support will still be minimal. Rejoice! The fucking economy cannot screw me beyond every limit! THAT’s a working economy. An economy that doesn’t continuously enter the game to hinder my fun at playing it. Harvesting money ad infinitum is stupid and boring. Questing to achieve something valuable is WAY MORE FUN. If at the end you are able to put in the market what you achieved with the gameplay perhaps you are building an economy but you are also DEMOLISHING the game.

This is why I consider WoW’s economy one of the best in the market. Trading and crafting is damn FUN. At the same time the equipment is level restricted and usually bound to you. Yes, items don’t degrade simply because there’s no need to build a fucking economy. And I’m having fun because of it.

The slogan is: WE DON’T NEED THIS CRAP.

To conclude, let’s say that we don’t really want to develop another monster-whacking game and we’d like something deeper. Well, the resources (man-work I mean) are still not infinite. I think there are a tons of ideas that would require a lot of work a experimentation. So better use those resources at best, not at worst.

Dundee
I don’t really have an issue with anything else you wrote, if the goal is to create a realistic real-world style economy. I just disagree that it is necessary, or even a worthwhile goal, really.

/agree.

Destro
MMOG economies are broken because they aren’t fun.

No. When you aren’t having fun you can be sure that there is an economy perfectly working.

And since you like to babble about exploits and dupes: they are still the side-effect of a game where money has become more important than playing. Reduce the importance of the money and you’ll have an equilibrate game where duping and cheating aren’t even an issue. Because the aim of the game isn’t being rich.

—

And then Raph replied and I agree with him completely:

Hmm, I think that one thing that people who want to just axe economies are misisng is that economies can and DO provide gameplay. There’s strategic gameplay, large-scale cooperation gameplay, PvP gameplay, and other types of gameplay that kill-the-foozle doesn’t offer.

We may quibble all we want about whether harvesting is currently as fun as it should be (it isn’t), the act of crafting is as fun as it should be (it isn’t), or the juggling of inventory is as fun as it should be (it isn’t). But it’d be dumb to say that running a business in a game can’t be a fun endeavor or add gameplay–there’s entire single-player genres of game based on it, and they are some of the most popular games in the world–Rollercoaster Tycoon, anyone?

The reason to have game economies that have complexity to them is the same reason why you have PvE combat with complexity to it–to have it meet the minimum threshold bar of fun. Worrying about wwhether dupes unbalance your economy is the same as worrying about whether buffs are overpowered, frankly. It’s just another axis of gameplay.

Does your game NEED it? No. But given that it is one of the axes of gameplay that makes use of persistence, and persistence is one of the key things these games offer that other games cannot , well, leaving it out may be considered to be at least underutilizing the genre. Not a bad thing if you have a specific other area of focus, but not the One True Way either.