CotHinomics

[SachikoMaeda]

I was talking with a few other CotH players then eventually Kretol about the IC economy of CotH and its OOC mechanics. I threw around a few ideas that I felt would work, but seemed to be disliked by GMs. Well since I don't want to force one method onto the playerbase, I mus ask the community:

Do you want to have an IC currency and economy system?
If so, how would you like to see it handled?
If not, why not?

Would you like it mandatory or find an optional approach?
Please try to bring forward actual arguments and comments. "No because I said so" wouldn't cut it just as "Oh yeah lets do it" won't. I've been seriously thinking about the CotH economy for a while and I need more input than just my own and the GM's/Admin's. this is a community choice (if you ask me) and should have some community input!

[Harmonic]

Considering how often this has been talked out, I don't think it will work. Our server is waaaay too small to make a viable economy, unless it's extremely forced, which would be a pain for everyone involved.

I like how it's simulated with the IC currency--- even though most people think it's "useless", I use it solely to judge my own character's monetary worth.

Or in the case of The Grey Militia, their guild funds, ICly. I put restrictions on myself with that, and try to reach specific goals over time.

Edit: There's also the immortal truth of economy. Time = Money. That would mean that those that have time to constantly grind out the IC/OOC mechanic system would have the most wealth, something I consider extremely unfair given the fact that I'm prone to severe time restraints personally, as I know a lot of other people are.

To summarize, if something is implemented, it shouldn't be mandatory. The idea of having to manage that stuff OOCly and ICly would be a pain if people didn't expressly want to do so.

[rentreality]

I think that the idea would stimulate RP, but I also don't think that it would work. As Rensin said, it's a matter of population.

I also worry that it would concentrate financial power unreasonably and unrealistically, and it might even lead to OOC tension. A character who plays a frequently demanded niche (say, a smith, or the like) would not be very unique in term of in-game smiths: there are tons of NPC smiths. But if they were the only player smith, they would get a lot of RP, and collect a lot of wealth. This could lead to unhappiness if, after a time, someone else rolled a smith character and cut into their collection of wealth and RP time.

[Reigen]

I'm going to be very honest when I say I don't like IC currency systems, never has been my thing. That being said, I'll list my issues with it.

1. Not everyone wants to use it.

In order to make an IC currency system really work, everyone has to be on board with it otherwise it will just end up failing in the end. If not everyone wants to use it, then that currency they have will just end up adding to inflation when they hand it out to friends. Making the system mandatory is the last thing I want to do because then its just going to punish the people who don't want to use it, but want their characters to dress outside of starting equipment. Yeah, we're a bit spoiled with .addrpitem, but the ability to play dress-up is half the fun of making a new character. If we make this mandatory or limit what people who don't use it can do, then they're just going to spend that time trying to gain the real item.

2. There is no set value of items.

So far the only idea we have of value is...the conflicting opinions that everyone has. To some people, a gold is their families entire ten year life savings, to others, a gold is something you toss into a fountain and forget about. We don't have a true set guide that sets up values either. We have suggestions, but nothing that says "A house of this size would cost 8g". Some people out there ICly ask to get paid anywhere from 7g a week to 10g, which is like saying you're giving them enough to buy a house every week if the last value sheet is correct. It may be as simple as saying X is worth Y, but someone is always going to think that X is worth Z.

3. IC currency = OOC grind time.

How do we properly value how much a character would logically earn a week with IC currency? Not every profession nets the same amount. Would we have to make a gathering quest for each profession to make it make sense? Nix out the quest to get currency all together and just give a starting amount? Either way, to gather that currency, it requires picking up some plants OOCly and takes away from time RPing just so people can say they have some sort of income. It could also mean people grind for non-BOP items to 'sell' to another player.

4. Not every character has the same wealth.

Yeah, I'm bringing this up. Nobles have more money than merchants that have more money than commoners that have more money than peasants. Everyone has an idea in mind about how much their characters should have over how much they are given for their starting quest. Right now everyone starts out the same at five gold, but not every character would have five gold on their person. Nobles would have a lot more, commoners a lot less. Either your character is richer than intended, or poorer than intended. I know I personally have an idea of how much money my character has, I don't like the idea of a standardized system telling me otherwise.

5. Representation

Not every job is a crafting job. How are we going to monitor how much raw material a crafter has before they have to go out and buy more? How would we even represent the materials that they need to make an item? It seems to me that an IC currency system would only really benefit crafting professions over anything else. Bounty hunting is almost impossible because no one really wants their characters to die, even if they did something to deserve it. The best that can be done is mini-events of beating up invisible NPCs for money, which in the end isn't very satisfying. Some players specialize in raw materials and selling them to the crafters, but how would they keep all that money when they'd logically have workers to pay who are gathering these materials. How would these workers be represented?

6. OOC want turns to IC decisions.

"Hng, my character would let this less well-off person buy this but I really want this item because it would look so cool on my character. Oh heck, I'll bid 8 gold! Yay, I won!"

Not too much to say here beyond that OOC want takes over IC decisions when IC currency is involved. I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else. Heck, some items I bought for fun simply because I had enough currency to do so. Didn't matter of my character would logically guy something or not. That money was burning a hole in that there pocket!

In theory, IC currency can be a rather fun idea, but in execution I haven't experienced the fun in it. I know that making it mandatory could solve a lot of the problems, but that is the last thing I want to do. I also agree with Rensin that we just don't have the current population needed in order to sustain a proper economy. Maybe down the line, if everyone is willing and we have a larger population, it can be done and done well. I'm just not seeing it right now.

[Harmonic]

There's also one more thing I forgot to mention--- the idea of "Why do we need it?". The current problem, and what will always be the problem, is the usage of IC currency beyond OOC. The reason it'd almost never stimulate a real economy is that the money has no real tangible worth in game--- ICly, sure, it's a great way to stimulate RP, just as it would be if you were using monopoly money on a board game, you can do things you normally wouldn't due to the fact that it's not -real-, and spending it doesn't have an effect on you in-game.

Normally in the wow setting, you have to pay for everything. Broken armor, upgrades to said armor, mounts, materials to make stuff, flight paths---and all those things add up. You have to be more careful with your money, and when purchasing things, there's more of a distribution among players rather than the missing numbers that'd go into an IC currency.

Again, this is a matter of numbers. If we had the player base to hold this sort of system, then we might as well encourage the use of actual gold--- but in order for it to work properly we'd have to go to a lot of the old ways of WoW, relying on the gear from the AH, encouraging people to grind and do dungeons, and all that Jazz that a majority of us would rather not do.




Sorry if I'm sorta being a downer, but, I think what's in place now is the best solution. It gives the option to those who want to use it, while not curb-stomping those who don't wish to or don't have the time to.


Edit: REEGONE beat me to the point, lol. She summarized it in #2, methinks.

[Holynexus]

In theory in could be fun. In practice I'm not sure. Reigen has summed up my main problems, mostly 1) and 6). We don't want a paladin withholding from giving money to a beggar because the player beneath the Paladin wants to keep his gold to get his mount or something.

This is still an idea to encourage crafting, if it's needed, but maybe it shouldn't be forced upon the players. Still, I'd love to see more crafting involved in here Maybe this could be changed, for instance making certain items only obtainable in this fashion, though again it requires to force the whole server. Maybe a side mechanic would work, though.

[CappnRob]

The elements of OOC grinding and OOC desire overriding IC choices basically just makes IC currency a second, redundant form of the in-game gold we already have.

Hell, we even have to do dailies for them.

[Rigley]

I pretty much have to agree with Rensin and Reigen.

While it may have already been covered, the biggest flaw I see in an IC currency system is what that currency is going to be spent on.

Now, follow me for a moment here. In the grand scheme of things, we'll compare weapons or armor to clothes IRL; they're more expensive than most other purchases, but you don't buy them nearly as often. A good coat you won't replace until it gets worn out. Now, looking back at any given month, how much do you typically spend on clothes?

They cost more than most goods, but they generally aren't the main draw of your cash. Usually the most cash you're spending is on food, taxes, gas, etc; while some of those don't apply quite as hard in a fantasy setting like WoW, the point is that more often than not you're not going to go to an IC smith regularly to buy stuff, or an IC tailor. You don't need clothes that often, nor do you need a new sword-- this is even reflected in RP, since I think most characters have a specific look they like to sport, with armor and weapons.

More problematic are the little fees that add up. Do we say you need to delete X amount of cash for upkeep on a character? Otherwise you'll have characters earning and accumulating cash to an inordinate degree, since we're really not going to expect everyone to deduct cash for their day to day spending. We wouldn't want to expect people to take out cash for their meals or the like, since then it's less fun and more work. Really that's a problem in general-- coming to the point where earning cash wouldn't feel like work imposed on people in order to keep their characters as wealthy.

I think that covers my main issues with economics in a community like CotH. I can elaborate more if needed; generally though my feeling is that it's much more trouble than would be gained from imposing it, and that it wouldn't be received well if it were forced onto people.

[Ormica]

I'm going to throw my own two cents in here. I'm a big fan of IC gold because simply... I get as a grunt with -one- profiled character over 100 gold a day... very unrealistic. I think why it won't work is the whole "This price for this" and then some one says "No it's this price?". So many issues there... if we could get the whole community to agree on a price range it'd be much more fun. It's just that one road block for me because I've always thought of the playerbase here on CotH as just normal people that are better (If that makes sence to anyone). By that I mean I've thought that copper should be a bigger deal as you can see in my newest guild thread. I just always thought it was worth more and that players should be going of starter zone prices except when dealing with higher quality items. For instence, a normal average sword should be in my mind 1-4 -silver-. I may just be ranting here though... I will and always will try to use the IC money system though as long as it stays :/

[Psychyn]

Making it mandatory? Not an option really.

Encouraging others to use it? That's what the Union has been shortly doing, which worked out decently. By decently, I'm more referring to the guild as whole rather then the currency used. We discussed values for the goods OOC-wise and stuck with those. My personal problem with the system is that people earn so much; It's easy to get and thus there's no reason to worry about replacing the currency spend. 8 gold on an item? Sure, why not. Do the daily quest twice and you got it replaced.

I've seen it in action, rolling about from toon to toon only on small scale. Meline gathered quite a bunch in fairly short time, but then lacked the people to spend it at apart from to her own merchants. Protection would have been more useful for example; Or actually paying for the goblin stalls in RotR. There however, I ran into the issue of GM's not wanting to put a price on said stalls. Which I can understand, but it just shows how conflicting it all turned out to be.

Do I like the idea? Quite. I've grown weary of infinite wealth characters; That doesn't mean I want it forced however. We've tried to encourage people by making a good amount of GHI/TRP2 items; But the question keeps coming down to; "Why do we use it?" I mean, such an item is neat to have; But I've rarely seen anyone use any of it in RP. (Linking to it in-game, using it with right clicking, etc)

I only see it 'working out' on very small scale, and even that isn't constant. We lack people taking up IC professions/jobs for it to be constant, as some concepts just aren't fun to RP out 24/7. They get dull real quick, and then the RP is stopped for a more interesting toon. (Logical really)

All in all; I don't think it would affect many of the playerbase if it were removed. It's nice to have, but to me the easyness of obtaining it renders it's value to be nil. To give it a real value, it would need to be forced and limited; Probably a whole system put into place where you get x amount of currency a week, decided upon by your IC job/task and that's just not doable. It's somewhat of a redundant feature, but on the other hand; Removing it entirely isn't a necessity either. People use it on small scale, enjoy using it; There's no point in removing something that's harmless and enjoyable to those people.

Tl;dr; I'd love to see it used more; But I don't see it happening.

[DaveM]

I would gladly put all of my characters in a

Only-render-IC-services-for-IC-currency group.

And that's all I could do as a ley player, really.

Why only services? Because the effort to make items is not IC. In the rare cases that it is, products too.

[Krent]

http://www.conquestofthehorde.com/Thread-COTHonomics

That being said, I'm still a strong believer in setting up an IC economy. I'd use it, and I'd do everything I could to facilitate it.

[Caravan]

Though I've been a big supporter of the IC Currency in multiple channels (promoting IC Professions, creating a Banking Guild with Rowgen'n'Sol, profession things with TLE) I think that it'd probably be best if it was just done away with. I had set out to create a currency guide a few months ago to try to reconcile the two existing (yet outdated) guides but the fact of the matter is that even if there was a set standard you cannot force people to use IC money. Maybe it's unpopular because no official guide was released with its introduction (pardon me if I'm wrong, clearly the currency came out B.C.) and so the whole "Fend for yourself" nature of the system has led to confusion and distaste.

Every time the IC Currency is brought up, there's a majority of "It should be the playerbase's responsibility to popularize the system" and propositions of that variety but it has yet to take any serious foothold. It's a lovely idea, I wish it would've worked.

Moving forward, I don't see why in-game currency can't be used as legitimate IC currency. It was good enough for me on retail, and that's something that can be used more freely.

[Zhaei]

I don't see why in-game currency can't be used as legitimate IC currency.

Because thanks to my obsession with profiling each character I play, I had a little under 18k gold across my entire account. Some people still struggle for Bronze Tokens.

At our state, IG currency is used too much for other things (tokens, OOC gear etc) to be relevant. It would need a major reform.

[Delta]

What I wanted to express has already been said. Essentially, if an economy can be opted out of, it's not an economy. It's just a representation of compensation for services rendered.

The only time matters of money arise in a story is when the characters don't have enough (or have it in abundance), and getting it (or losing it) is usually part of the adventure. Actual economies don't have much place in fiction, unless monetary matters are brought to the forefront and presented as a hook or major component.

In other words...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxyB29bDbBA