The Broken Economy Is Your Fault

[Fearzone]

Economics are like PvP, such a game is only interesting if the seller can "play." You mosey up to the seller: "Hi I want a stack of potions." The seller says "50 gold please." You are like "what they were only 75 silver at level 8." The seller says: I know but I see you have 55 gold now, and you will probably need at least two healing potions in the next boss fight, looking as how you are geared. You want to finish this game right? So I want 50 gold for the stack, I know you are good for it. How about I throw in a couple of mana potions and a scroll of teleportation?"

It might be fun if annoying but the AI would have to be substantial. Better to just let it be.

 

[Knight Templar]

I like the way Baldur's Gate did an economic system; by acknowledging that yes, your large amount of gold and loot does indeed screw over the economy. It doesn't affect you but it's still pointed out.

lol nerds

You are aware of what site you are on right?

 

[scnj]

It's annoying in Oblivion when I've got a useless Daedra item that I can only sell for about 2000 gold, around 10,000 less than it's worth, because the shopkeepers can only pay that much.

 

[Spoon1138]

I really enjoyed the article. Got me really thinking about in-game economies...then as I finished it and realized how silly it really is.

If I wanted to play an RPG with an intricate economy I would try Wallstreet.

 

[Pseudonym2]

Except there's usually know reason why they shouldn't give you stuff for free. If you're working for the king and you need to save the world it's in the shopkeeper's best interest to give you free stuff.

 

[bjj hero]

Easily fixed.

1: Realistic carrying capacity, no more carryin 47 swords.
It makes things like gems a better option. although most enemies will wear armour and carry weapons they wont all be carrying tonnes of currency, gems etc, things that you can actually carry away. You will probably carry away the best weapon and armour you find then leave the rest. We have just cut the players income. If we are going to be a real dick, we can make the player take armor back to the smithy and pay to have the size alterered before it can be used. Losing money and again limiting what can be carried/sold.

It would be easy to introduce a system similar to modern FPS's. You could have slots, 2 large weapons (sword/bow/shield), one small weapon (knife/cosh), a suit of armour, 1 back pack that can carry a large item (spare armour etc), 4 potions and a purse with a max carry. It can carry 50 coins, whether silver or gold or 50 gems. A Best value button would save manually throwing silver to take more gold.

Our FPS space marines no longer carry 99 grenades, 5 pistols, 4 rifles, 6 heavy weapons, a grapple gun and a chainsaw. Can't our RPG knights move on too?

2: Wear and tear on equipment.
Either weapons etc. need replacing every now and again or you need to by components to maintain them. This syphons off more money.

3: Cost of living.
Pay for food, lodgings, clothes, stables etc. This cost should grow as the player becomes a celebrity and as his party grows. This will again eat into earning. Throw in taxation if you want to be dirty.

4: The most simple answer: No more infinately spawning enemies.
This puts a cap on earnings.

Problem solved without taking an economist on for your company.

 

[Teh_Doomage]

A perfect in-game economy would be a game in and of itself. Which would be epic...just not likely.

Great great great article...got a few good laughs out of it.

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Easily fixed.

1: Realistic carrying capacity, no more carryin 47 swords.
It makes things like gems a better option. although most enemies will wear armour and carry weapons they wont all be carrying tonnes of currency, gems etc, things that you can actually carry away. You will probably carry away the best weapon and armour you find then leave the rest. We have just cut the players income. If we are going to be a real dick, we can make the player take armor back to the smithy and pay to have the size alterered before it can be used. Losing money and again limiting what can be carried/sold.

It would be easy to introduce a system similar to modern FPS's. You could have slots, 2 large weapons (sword/bow/shield), one small weapon (knife/cosh), a suit of armour, 1 back pack that can carry a large item (spare armour etc), 4 potions and a purse with a max carry. It can carry 50 coins, whether silver or gold or 50 gems. A Best value button would save manually throwing silver to take more gold.

Our FPS space marines no longer carry 99 grenades, 5 pistols, 4 rifles, 6 heavy weapons, a grapple gun and a chainsaw. Can't our RPG knights move on too?

2: Wear and tear on equipment.
Either weapons etc. need replacing every now and again or you need to by components to maintain them. This syphons off more money.

3: Cost of living.
Pay for food, lodgings, clothes, stables etc. This cost should grow as the player becomes a celebrity and as his party grows. This will again eat into earning. Throw in taxation if you want to be dirty.

4: The most simple answer: No more infinately spawning enemies.
This puts a cap on earnings.

Problem solved without taking an economist on for your company.

1. Carrying capacity doesn't usually work out, in order to make money you have to be able to carry huge amounts of junk for selling, maybe a litteral horse and cart? Gems would be a better money maker, but then again the best gems would only be bought by jewelers in the big cities.
2. Realistically, armour and swords can't be repaired with a hammer and a nearby rock, you need a proper forge to repair the rends in your armour and bent swords, these are usually found in towns.
3. Food and clothes can be salvaged from the dead bandits you hack up, helpful tip #144; Aim for the head.
4. They arn't infinite but giant rats and goblins have insane reproductive cycles. Always seem to be plenty of bandits laying in wait, the poor and downtroden will always look for a way to make a quick coin and in fantasy settings there seems to be no end to their numbers.

With Oblivion, at level 1 raiding a bandit cave would net you maybe 200g, then you go to an inn and get charged 20g for 1 night and 6g for an apple. The economy is broken because storekeepers are greedy.

 

[Ridonculous_Ninja]

Reminds me of the original Final Fantasy where you are tasked with killing the pirates who have taken over the town. I spent hours grinding (before grinding was even a term) for gold because you absolutely HAD to upgrade your gear to stand a chance and everything was incredibly expensive.

I've always wanted to see the npc merchants validate their choices. Something like a side-quest where the hero has been tasked with dealing with a werewolf problem. The weapons merchant in town has silver weapons, but won't even give you a discount on the extremely high prices. This, of course, is because the merchant turns out to be the werewolf you've been sent to kill.

Maybe it's just best to leave problems like this alone. At least until we come up with a valid reason for the hero entering every home they see to look for items of use....

The pirates have only one 2 health, ANY person can one shot them.

If you get first turn you shouldn't be able to lose.

A fighter is basically imba there.

OT: I love how Shamus just said that whole rant was pointless and a waste of time at the end of the article. That was great. >.>

Looting the enemies is only a problem to the economy because a lot of their gear is actually worthwhile to pack around, and you have the ability to so why not?

A real battle field would be littered with shattered, notched and cracked swords, instead of the magical, rare and perfect condition ones dropped in RPGs.

Real life you could neither care nor sell any of those. Only jewelry and personal items would be scavenged as nothing else would have any real value.

Shields were most likely shattered in battle too, unless you were lucky or rich and had an actual metal shield. Then it was most likely just in dire need of repair.

So one of the problems is that you can sell the loot at all.

Although then you are limited in how you obtain mystical weapons. Blacksmiths aren't likely to carry them, although they would be the only reliable source for decent quality non-mystic weapons.

And reducing the carryable amount would just piss off everyone, so there's no real perfect solution to the problem because nobody wants a real life style system for carrying equipment.

Baggage trains aren't generally seen in RPGs for the main character's inventory, but that is what you would need to hold everything you generally carry in your backpack. =P

 

[Pink_Pirate]

you know, while having a realistic in game economy isn't really viable for a single player RPG, it is totally viable for an MMORPG, just look at EVE Online, which uses an open market economy, which due to player interaction behaves just like a real economy, with inflation, deflation and production being influenced by the various wars and actions of the actual player base.

 

[Kermi]

The best was to keep the sword-economy from destroying the world is to determine the impact of sword-loss on their true source: digitally generated enemies. If I kill four hundred bandits or whatever, why are they still coming after me? If I am effectively a one man army, why do the forces of evil never seem to get whittled down? Eventually my sword supply will run down because the only people who have them are people who are melting them down to make cooking utensils and belt buckles.

 

[Raithnor]

When I saw the title to this article I thought it was about MMO economies, not standard single player RPGs.

The big reason why the economies are the way they are is to keep things interesting but not really detract from the main point of the game. In RPGs stores serve little purpose beyond disposing older equipment and making available better equipment, adding the versimiltude of a real-world economy would detract from the main point of the game which more or less boils down to "Save the world from Evil". Some games are built around the idea of an active economy but those are more like simulations with RPG elements.

While playing KotoR I came to a realization, if I spent enough time I could make all the money I ever needed winning at Pazaak. However I also realized this would be exceptionally tedious, so I used a save game editor is skip the middleman and just create all of the money I would ever need. Did it eliminate the challenge from the game? Not enough to detract my enjoyment from playing the main story. Was I done with the game faster? Not exactly. It took less time overall, but most of that time was spent in the boring part of the game. None of the ingame merchants sold One-Shot kill weapons or armor that protects from everything, but I did have the freedom to tweak the inventories of my characters as I saw fit.

For what it's worth I didn't find this necessary to do in Fallout 3, half of the fun in the game was scavenging out an existance. Once you find all of the people who will pay X caps for a specific item/service the money just rolls in.

My point is if an economy is built on grinding monsters, it's not an economy so much as a time sink and may a way to manage the difficulty of the game by buying back less that what they sell a product for.

 

[hansari]

Why don't RPGs have decent in-game economies?

Have you ever played Mass Effect Shamus?

I only just started, but the oppurtunities to gain money are very few. Those that are available offer only small awards. And the price of gear that actually bring notable improvements to your stats are very expensive.

As such, Mass Effect accomplishes what you said at the end of the article. I eventually noted the difference between the game and other RPG's...then I stopped focusing so much on getting credits and delved more into the gameplay and story.

(which is alot better in terms of realism...I mean, if your suppose to be in this deep world...you shouldn't be concerned with picking up credits off of dead baddies...)

 

[The Rockerfly]

Very interesting article. I've never realised how broken the economy was in so many games. I will have to pay me attention to the economic world in video games from now on

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It's annoying in Oblivion when I've got a useless Daedra item that I can only sell for about 2000 gold, around 10,000 less than it's worth, because the shopkeepers can only pay that much.

That seems less annoying than realistic. A fence/bookie would have the same real-life reaction. For most items I'd expect the shopkeeper to be making a decent profit on each, which means buying for much less than offered so he can pay his rent/food/guards.

 

[Terramax]

Really made me think. Good thing this isn't the way it is IRL.

I wish it were. I could just go out, beat a fox to death, get 200 gold coins from its stomach and repeat to be a millionaire in not time.

P.S. I have nothing against foxes or any other animal for that matter.

 

[Silva]

It's annoying in Oblivion when I've got a useless Daedra item that I can only sell for about 2000 gold, around 10,000 less than it's worth, because the shopkeepers can only pay that much.

That seems less annoying than realistic. A fence/bookie would have the same real-life reaction. For most items I'd expect the shopkeeper to be making a decent profit on each, which means buying for much less than offered so he can pay his rent/food/guards.

I'm sorry, but I think scnj has a point here. That IS annoying. You're right that it's realistic, but whoever thought that realism is always fun, had the wrong idea.

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

It's annoying in Oblivion when I've got a useless Daedra item that I can only sell for about 2000 gold, around 10,000 less than it's worth, because the shopkeepers can only pay that much.

That seems less annoying than realistic. A fence/bookie would have the same real-life reaction. For most items I'd expect the shopkeeper to be making a decent profit on each, which means buying for much less than offered so he can pay his rent/food/guards.

I'm sorry, but I think scnj has a point here. That IS annoying. You're right that it's realistic, but whoever thought that realism is always fun, had the wrong idea.

But...As Shamus said...if you want fun, then you're going to have a broken economy. Not even the banks can have fun with that much all their money IRL.

(Though the idea of driving a Kingdom into a cottage crisis does have it's appeal...)

 

[HK_01]

In Oblivion I really did not have the feeling that I could buy everything until very late in the game and in KotOR I really didn't see the point in using my money at all, except on med packs because the loot was the best stuff in the game anyways. And in Fable(one) I was a poor hero(that might be because you couldn't loot the bodies).

 

[HalfCaptainRob]

Hm.

As far as the Oblivion/Morrowind economy goes, well, you're never really a part of it after the first quarter (or sixteenth if you know what you're doing) of the game. Really. By then none of the stores have items that are equal to the loot you... well, loot from dungeons, so really buying is cut down to pots and repairs. But then, alchemy is easy to level, so really soon you're making your own pots. Armorer skill goes up quickly, you are a walking smithy. Very soon in the game, you have an untapped resource pool of goods sold, because there is almost nothing that a store in either game would otherwise provide. So when you make the rare bribe (if you're not into speechcraft) or buying a house (Oblivion), you're entering this economy you no longer much take a part of.

Seriously, to all you hardcore Morrowind players who got into awesome end-game, do you even remember what level stores became redundant to you? For me. Well, damn, I almost want to say level ten. Almost before that. But it's because you're an adventurer, you're not a normal part of society. You'll leave civilization for weeks at a time, scavenge, fight off disease and creatures and notorious baddies wanting you dead. Of course you'll be self-sufficient.

And to be honest. In a game as open-ended as Morrowind, who actually bought things? Once I discovered that with a little patience and a short time of grinding the sneak skill would reward with anything I could ever want in my materialistic little heart, I went that way. Need that fancy glass armor? Steal it. Need a key from someone. Steal it. Need to resupply arrows? Steal them. Want to loot that entire shop, taking even the keys and pocketchange so that you can ruin the hapless npc's life? Steal it. Selling it was just. I dunno. Not as important. Especially when in Morrowind, rare items were rare, and there was only ONE suit of Daedric armor. I lost the gloves, because I had a storehouse in almost every town. To this day, no idea where they went.

Anyways, sorry for the wall of text. But one more thing, which I noticed as odd.

In DnD, there is the copper/silver/gold/platinum system in increments of 100. But it's terrible. How terrible?

A typical peasant makes 1 silver a year.

An ox costs 7 silver.

A backpack costs 2 (or 3) GOLD. As in. Two to three hundred SILVER for a BACKPACK.


Makes perfect sense.