Balancing Economy

[sigmantium]

@ptschile contribution from discord:

Control hyper-inflation of items:

I think items should expire. Maybe disable the feature of repairing items, and all the items should be decreased in durability. Dont know how to, but i think in the same proportion items are generated or found in loots, items should be broken in the same rate or almost same rate. And i mean every item, protections, GM items, weps, armor, etc.

Hyper-inflation of Gold:

I think we need to control the amount of gold generated by players macro.
i think every resource that can be get by macroing like (mining,lumber,begging) should not be able to sell to NPCs.
So we can avoid people having like 5 chars in the night mining to sell ores, etc.
We need to find a way to control TIME versus GOLD making. Hunting should be a primary source of gold, since the player needs to be online to get it.

So, my idea its to re-implement the player market, kinda like Albion online.
Change the playervendor NPC, so the npc lists all items of all players, an open market that can adjust the price of stuff itself. when you say buy u should see like 10 options of iron prices, each one of each player, and you just pick the cheapest.
for example, If there is too much iron for selling in the player market the prices becoming to drop, and vice versa. So maybe you should invest in produce another resource that to sell in the market that is more valuable itm
if you really want money right now, u could post to sell items cheaper etc.
of course if the player wants tons of iron he could do it, to try to sell in the player market, but the price he gets will be adjusted itsfelf by the market. (if the item its easy to get, its automatically evaluated by the market)
Class dependence and economic impacts of each class:
In my opinion i like the dependence of the classes, like, we kinda need a crafter to make your weps and armor if you are a warrior.
You have to need a bard to collect reagents if you are mage
you need a mage to produce potions if you want to go hunt etc.
ranger should be responsible to refill the mount in the npcs or in the player market, so if there is no ranger taming mounts, the prices will go UP, and you will not have a mount for just Buying in NPC for 320gp that worth nothing.
So every class should have their contribution to economics of the shard somehow.

Invincible players in PVP:

I really dont like the idea of invencible players. I mean, right if your are 1vs1 and you are more equiped than the other, its ok that you have advantages on PVP and kill more easily.
But i dont like the fact that one guy invencible, could kill an entire newbie guild in dungeon, like 1vs4, an this happens.

So i think a possible way to prevent this, its to put some cooldowns for protections.
Example, you can have a FreeAction item, but when someone casts a paralyze in you, this item protects you for the first time, and starts its cooldown to be activated again.
Just like protections, you could have a great item 150% prot agains fire, the first cast of a player will actually heal you, and this is great, but with cooldowns you will not be INVENCIBLE.

U can have freeaction and lot of stuffs, but 3 lvl3 players should be able to kill some very well equipped since they can 'break' its items on cooldown.

PVP more durable:

Another stuff that i think its kinda boring in ZH is that PVP dont last long. lvl5 war against lvl5 mage, its kinda 2 hit pvp, who hits first wins. its toomuch damage.
Need to rebalance that so, ok a lvl5 char should be insta kill and lvl2, but the diference betwenn lvl5 and lvl4 should be closer, and so on.

i have a lot more of ideas, about PVP but i think this is too long to type here and needs a lot of real testing and PVPing.
I was trying different kinds of shards Outlands, and another mmo games like Albion, EVE online, Shroud of the Avatar, etc to get some INFO etc

[sigmantium]

So something that could be considered for the player crafting system to help balance it out (I am just spit balling, they aren't all winners).

• Reducing the amount of resources that drop in an area
• Creating resource zones that are affected by individuals so that if an area is mined out by an individual it only affects them. From this the resource rates could be dropped and this would encourage resource collectors to need to move around more to get more resources
• Increase the amount of resources needed to make an individual item.
• Stop individual items from being able to be sold to vendors.
• Individual items can be packed into bulk deeds and those can be sold to vendors, but the gold returned compared to current is a lot less.

With the amount of gold able to be produced by resources being reduced, gold from loot needs to be reduced as well. Hopefully this will increase the value of gold in the economy.

Some additional money sinks

• Bank interest rates.
• Introduce inflation for purchases. So things like arrows and reags go up in price the more they get purchased.
• Housing land tax.
• Increase the cost of creating a guild and require a minimum number of unique ip's signed to the guild before it can actually be created (stops 1 man guilds).
• Guilds could set guild membership fees.
• Introduce guild banks which aren't a physical bank window but a system that stores gold and raw resources.
• Guilds can build guild centric things from those resources/funding.
• Stop gold from being able to be stored in houses, only in banks.
• Introduce bank robberies (by players or as a npc event).
• Food related resources go off and become worthless. Hopefully stuff decays if they've been macroing all night to sell fishcakes.
• Make skill increases a purchasable thing. e.g. you train the skill up by doing it, but first you need to pay to unlock the skill increases. So if you've only paid up to 50 swords, you can't increase the skill above that until you've paid a vendor to teach you how.
• Pay gold to get an auction membership, otherwise you don't get notifications. Implement an auction house sync to discord and players and pay premium to join that so they can auction whilst away from game.
• Introduce a no recall zone around banks OR stop recalling in or out of town all together. So players will have to leave town all together to get away. This coupled with not being able to store gold at a house, and gold having real value could introduce some interesting situations.
• Calculate a total skill to average procurable income and try to set targets/ratios based on that. Charge for guards membership based on their proposed income level.

[schaukoski]

"Introduce a no recall zone around banks OR stop recalling in or out of town all together. So players will have to leave town all together to get away. This coupled with not being able to store gold at a house, and gold having real value could introduce some interesting situations."
True!!!

"Introduce inflation for purchases. So things like arrows and reags go up in price the more they get purchased."
Very intersting idea

[jabinb]

As an aside I think this is a good overview of the fundamentals in a video game economy: https://departmentofplay.net/the-principles-of-building-a-game-economy/

I think items should expire. Maybe disable the feature of repairing items, and all the items should be decreased in durability. Dont know how to, but i think in the same proportion items are generated or found in loots, items should be broken in the same rate or almost same rate. And i mean every item, protections, GM items, weps, armor, etc.

I think the principle is a good idea; not necessarily disabling repairing of items completely but making the durability losses greater and permanent over time so the item breaks eventually. It's the same principle just with a time delay and probably less player backlash. You could track the average life-time of items before being destroyed and tweak the durability loss rates until the tap roughly matches the sink.

I think we need to control the amount of gold generated by players macro.
i think every resource that can be get by macroing like (mining,lumber,begging) should not be able to sell to NPCs.
So we can avoid people having like 5 chars in the night mining to sell ores, etc.
We need to find a way to control TIME versus GOLD making. Hunting should be a primary source of gold, since the player needs to be online to get it.

Totally agree with making money useful again.

However one thing I think we're missing is the actual insight into real-time mechanics of the economy. We're able to control both the taps (or faucets) and sinks in the game, however we have no real-world metrics into either, i.e. how much gold is being generated by all sources (loot, and vendors being the main generators) or how they're taken out.

I think that should be one of the first systems we add before implementing any ideas otherwise we will have no real way to track whether what ideas we implement actually work. A very simple system would just be to log to a JSON lines file every transaction or gold generated. We can easily analyze that using python pandas to extract the metrics about where gold comes into and leaves the economy.

{ "type": "loot", "source": "a Golden Dragon", "amount": 2401, "timestamp": 1613218094 }
{ "type": "vendor", "source": "Fish Steak", "amount": 12400, "timestamp": 1613218094 }
{ "type": "vendor", "source": "Mandrake", "amount": -3000, "timestamp": 1613218100 }

@schaukoski maybe could be something you can implement on your POL shard?

I really dont like the idea of invencible players. I mean, right if your are 1vs1 and you are more equiped than the other, its ok that you have advantages on PVP and kill more easily.
But i dont like the fact that one guy invencible, could kill an entire newbie guild in dungeon, like 1vs4, an this happens.

Another stuff that i think its kinda boring in ZH is that PVP dont last long. lvl5 war against lvl5 mage, its kinda 2 hit pvp, who hits first wins. its toomuch damage.

Yeah this is a big problem, from a player perspective it's always been who strikes first, there's not much nuance. However I wouldn't want it to turn into WoW PVP where it can sometimes reach a stalemate were no one can kill each other. Not sure quite how to approach balancing the PVP but prots seem to be the main culprit of turning people into unkillable machines. Personally I don't think there should ever be greater prots than 50%, let alone prots making a damage type heal you (unless its a skill with a long cooldown or something)

Bank interest rates.
Stop gold from being able to be stored in houses, only in banks.

I think these are two ideas combined together that will work well, there should be some kind of 'estate tax' where if you have over X million gold you start to get taxed at say a 10% rate. This stops people hoarding it as it's better for them to be spending gold rather than letting it evaporate.

Introduce bank robberies (by players or as a npc event).

While probably not going to change the economy too much this is pretty fun, or even heists where security guards send a convoy from Minoc Bank to Vesper Bank and you can high-noon them.

Housing land tax.

I like this, or implementing a Rust style upkeep system where you need to place raw materials into a bank box to keep the house from decaying. example: a large castle needs 200x wood, 50 iron ingots an hour. This would make players have to leave their houses to gather resources or purchase them from a crafter, giving crafters another way to make money.

Introduce inflation for purchases. So things like arrows and reags go up in price the more they get purchased.

This was already in the last ZHA's check scripts/ai/merchantEconomy.inc, it sent fish steaks predictably to 1 GP each, but reags were exempt i think as they would just cost an insane amount. However this could be how farming can be brought back into create supply other than the vendors.

[Andries1985]

My 2 cents regarding your post @sigmantium

• Control hyper-inflation of items:
  Regarding item repair/expiring. If the loot system is strict this would work.
  Perhaps make crafted gear worth something by having increased durability. Or reduced durability loss based on the crafter level.
  Add a special monster attack (ex: acid spit) that damages gear. On old ZHC the razz (slime) did it.
  This would force people to use ranged weapons thus making combat a bit more tactical.
  GM armor and weapons could have extra durability but similar a bit less damage than stygian vanq/devastation.

• Hyper-inflation of Gold:

• I think we need to control the amount of gold generated by players macro.
  You will need to restrict the amount of accounts per player.
  Harvestable resource shouldnt directly sell for gold. The player will need to craft stuff with it in order to get the gold.
  Don't use the original ZHC sell prices because the current macro tools allow for a much better efficiency.
  Remove or severely reduce the amount of reagents/arrows/bandages etc from vendors. This will allow for a player economy to evolve. Farming and crafting should become important jobs.

• Change the playervendor NPC, so the npc lists all items of all players, an open market that can adjust the price of stuff itself.
  This is briliant.
  Option 1:
  If a player puts up reagents for sale it should be listed in the shop of all alchemists/mages/etc.. Same with arrows showing up in fletcher stores.
  Make crafters the suppliers and Vendors the resellers. Could even regulate the buy and sell prices based on supply and demand this way.
  If theres too much arrows in the game the fletcher/bowyer will not accept anymore or at a very low price.
  If theres not much nightshade in the world the sell price will be high.
  Option 2:
  As you mentioned. Have multiple listings from players show up in the different shops. The issue with this is that there will always be clever people trying to play the market. Making it hard for new people to earn gold.

On a side-note:
Make sure you balance the gold that's being placed inside monsters as well. Same goes for SoS chests. These can cause major issues.
Begging shouldn't be giving gold at all. In fact this skill should be redesigned. On my shard there were tons of accounts just begging for gold.

• Invincible players in PVP:
  The hardest part of any ZH shard is the balance between classes in PvP.
  Rangers usually have the upper hand because they can spend some off-skills in magery and then teleport and run around while shooting their target.
  Add in the fact that a level 5 ranger is just silly. If you have blackrock bows added as well then it's not even called PvP anymore. It's a massacre.
  Old ZHC was far from balanced so this needs to be reviewed. On my ZH shard we removed the blackrock weapons entirely.
  Then there's assassin (double damage versus humans). This can also ruin PvP.
  Add in the fact that weapon switching is super easy now you can basically use a perma poisoned weapon and then switch to your blackrock and most powerful weapon.
  We split the damage dealt to players and monsters. Players will deal reduced damage to other players. Splitting damage dealing between NPCS and PC's is advisable.
  Turning it into a global command allows for easy testing as well.

Changing Absorption, Reflection and Free action to charge based items would be advisable as well. Perhaps you can recharge them with rituals.
Elemental protections should be max 95%. Don't go above this or you will get people healing themselves with greater explosion potions etc.
I recommend having set bonusses as well. For example a full lavarock will give 95% fire protection. Removing a piece will drop this considerably.
It's an issue when you have players using 1 piece of gear for the resistances and then mix them up so they have max in every resist. a Silver dragon piece even gives free action so that will save you another jewelry slot.
Blackrock and Moonstone jewelry should also be reviewed. Perhaps make it charge/durability based as well.

Regarding cooldowns:
It could work if the cooldown is based on the character and not the item. You will have people switching gear like crazy otherwise to rotate cooldowns.

• PVP more durable:
  If you want PvP to last longer. Making choices will be necessary. Will you allow Powerplayer class? Will you allow rangers to teleport, will you allow rangers to shoot long distances?
  Do mages get to wear mage armor (this makes mages also lose gear instead of reagents)? All classes should be viable and should be able to lose stuff. If a class doesn't lose any gear he should not be used in PvP.
  Summons/Pets/Golems/etc could also play a nice part in PvP. Perhaps even allowing crafters to PvP by constructing Golems and getting mages to enchant them.
  Golem crafting on ZHC was never completed. You needed 100 magery and 100 tinkering to create one, but it was basically useless.

---

More ideas & suggestions.

• Crafters
  Have miners use prospecting tools to dig for certain ores. mines around the world should contain ores of various levels. Safe zones should be iron only.
  Enhance golem crafting.
  Make the crafter class play a major part in the economy.
  Could even have them build houses and maintain them. People have to pay the crafter to repair their castles and such. The crafter would use his carpentry skill and resources to fix it.
  Crafters will be hunted by other players. Find a way to make them more resilient. I suggest a better report murderer system or my bounty system/guild idea (see PvP section below).
  Enhance bulk order deeds.
  Smelting system: A system that allows you to smelt down gm armor for ingots then using a special hammer found in loot and a shrine location located on the map (could even broadcast it so you can initiate PvP between players).
  Example: You could rehammer darkness plate into chainmail etc and allow you to salvage unused gm armors to generate shields to benefit pp (if you decide to go with PP class) as well as other spec classes.

• Mages
  Make farming reagents a possibility (could also be added to another class to improve player economy, ex crafter becomes farmer.).
  Mages should stand to lose gear in combat. Having mages just lose reagents is silly. Add mage armor to increase their spell damage.
  Rituals should play a major part in item crafting/upgrading/maintaining. Having multiple mages participate in the ritual allows for greater rituals to be done.
  Failure should come at a cost. You could even designate specific ritual spots and broadcast when someone is attempting a ritual to promote PvP interactions.
  Equipable spellbooks with bonuses. Perhaps even spellbooks that can be enhanced? Spellbook of Devastation (increased magic damage). Loses enchants on death.

• Rangers
  Having them use teleport is risky. They fly around all over and can shoot like crazy too. Make sure you balance around this. ex: max range of 13 and anything beyond that is 1/4th damage.
  Blackrock bows is a big nope. Same with Stygian Assassin Bows of Devastation. Also consider splitting up poisoned weapon damage. Make it so non-thieves deal reduced poison damage. Weapon switching is your enemy. Perhaps add a delay.
  Make pets more useful by allowing pets to have the same movement speed as their untamed counterparts. Finding a balance could be nice. Perhaps make it so bonded pets can be resurrected and improved upon.
  You could even go more crazy and start sub-classing, every level you pick a mastery thus allowing for more customizing. Ranger -> Pet mastery/archery mastery. Mage -> necro/druid/priest..

• Thief
  A major issue right now with thieves I have on my shard is that only other thieves can detect them. (I changed it so mages and certain NPC's can detect them as well now).
  What they do right now is use thieves as "Camera's". They dual-box and plant thieves in front of dungeons and other points of interest.
  After someone passes by they call their guild mates and begin the hunt. This is a major source of player loss. Be warned!
  Poisoning should do more damage for thieves and should be their main way to deal with NPC's. As i mentioned before splitting damage up between NPC and PC's will benefit you again here.
  Thief poisoned weapons should be used by thieves only. Giving them to other classes should be avoided. Let them use the perma poisoned weapons found from monsters.
  Stealing/Snooping can get out of control as well. Make sure you regulate the amount of gold they can steal from NPC's if any at all.

• Bard
  Beneficial Songs should target party members only. Attack songs should target enemies only.
  Make sure they don't become buff-bots.
  Begging should be redesigned. Don't allow them to gain gold or you can say goodbye to your economy. I have tons of beggars around npcs in my shard doing nothing but making gold.
  Get rid of newbiefied instruments. This will avoid the issue that they .suicide and then run to the end of the dungeon and provoke stuff on the bosses.
  I've allowed class weapons (meaning weapons that don't require a combat skill in order to hit and do damage). Shepherds crook and bows have been added to them. But that's only because their songs aren't worth using.
  You will want to find a way to add multiple song/verses books. so they can do damage with those instead of weapons.
  The issue with bard is that they don't do single target damage very well.
  You will have to figure out a way to make them lose gear when they die.
  Don't make them become a second mage either.

• Warrior
  Probably the most tricky class. Make them too strong and they wreck everything. Make them too weak and they lose the most in terms of gear.
  Based on earlier decisions (blackrock, resistances, tankiness, etc...) you will need to find a way to balance them. IMO they should be balanced the last.

• PvP
  Bounty Hunter guild:
  A guild where people can sign up (perhaps add a daily tribute cost?). Players will be able to use the bounty hunter chat and will be able to use the bounty hunter board.
  Targets will be put on here once someone "reports" them. Reporting a target will cost an amount of money (taken from the bank of the victim as an action he can pick on the death gump).
  The duration someone stays on the bounty board is based on the amount of gold that was put on the target head.
  Lets say 0.1-10k gold per day based on the level of the victim.
  A bounty hunter may start hunting a (.hunt command) target and it will report the targets coordinates to you, similar to tracking.
  This only works if the target is inside a dungeon or at other points on interest (town, mine, other populated area).
  Perhaps add bounty hunter points where you get points based on targets you've captured(killed). You could use these points in a special bounty hunter shop to buy specific items/gear.
  After a bounty hunter catches(kills) his target the target will end up in jail. Based on the amount of murders he has committed he will be forced to do forced labor to be released.
  For example the murderer has killed 20 different people (murder count = 20). That means he will have to mine x*20 ores/wood/etc...
  Afterwards he will be released and the murder count will be lowered by x.
  A target (aka murderer) is able to lower his murder count by purchasing a certain item from a black market dealer.
  This will have an extremely high cost though. Lets say 1 mil to reduce one counter. That way the murderer will think twice before killing newbies.

Karma fame system:
Karma/Fame could allow people to enter certain zones. For example a Good aligned character can enter the Valor dungeon. Evil aligned ones can't. By doing this you can give newbies some respite.
The longer a shard stays up the more assholes/bored players you will get that want to ruin the fun for others.

• PvE
  SoS bottles shouldn't be spammed at the same location. Sea monsters should spawn to make it difficult for the player.
  Tmaps shouldn't be cheesed by having locations near bodies of water where players can plant boats. Preferably add higher level TMap spots in dungeons. This will increase chances of PvP.
  Anti-class monsters should be added. Examples are Mage hunters (vs mages), Shadows (vs melee).
  Super Bosses should be in boss rooms where you can only leave once the boss has been slain. High risk high reward.
  Consider forms of currency that can only be attained by hunting. This way you can force players to be active.
  Dungeon chests should be a fun addition too. Could make high level chests trapped as well and make them broadcast when they get triggered.

• Powerplayer class
  Could opt to have a powerplayer class that can be used to spec into other classes instead of being all classes without class bonusses. Real hardcore players can level multiple classes then and switch between them (with a delay/cost).
  This way you can limit the amount of characters/accounts.

[schaukoski]

wow, so much good ideas, thank you for sharing.
I think we think in a very similar way, agreed 100% with almost everything, i will reply it later when i have more time to read again.

what is the name of your shard?

[Andries1985]

Good to hear :) It's Zuluhotel Omega

[schaukoski]

ahhh, Nagash is that you? Ive played there! hhaha!

[Andries1985]

Haha yeah it's me :) Good to hear that you've played on my shard ! It's been pretty quiet now lately. Only 20 people on atm. There is just not much to do and players are waiting for a wipe. I don't want to wipe without adding something new though and all my developers are on a hiatus. To be honest I'm frustrated with the POL spaghetti code and lack of support. POL has decided to move onto a new compiler as well that won't work with what we have right now. So that was kinda why I just typed Zuluhotel on github and found you guys! Good on you for getting me excited again! Gotta love like minded individuals..