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Finite Currency


Oblivionburn

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On 7/10/2019 at 2:58 PM, Oblivionburn said:

Most mmo's have attempted to compensate for this inevitability by having 'money sinks' or regularly introducing new currencies to keep the market from flooding and prices skyrocketing to absurd levels. However, money sinks and new currencies always fail since they underestimate the speed at which players can amass currency (especially when working together in large numbers). I would like to see a mmo do the right thing and learn from the mistakes of the thousands of mmo's that have failed at this in the past, and the solution is simple: cap the currency.

 

 

Oh I've seen this for sure in another MMO before, STO, market is so saturated with what we call "space whales" essentially players who amassed high insane amounts of the currency...

 

It's so bad that the developers are at now at I believe 3 main currencies...

 

Energy Credits

Dilithium

ZEN

 

With at least 30 sub currencies.

 

12 from 12 different reputations

Like 3 or 4 for Fleet (Organizations) currencies

Lobi (a sub-currency obtained from ZEN a la lottery roulette gamble style lootboxes)

GPL - a gamble like currency

 

 

Essentially a pay-to-win model as well, players with money are able to buy bundle and bundles of these.

 

 

 

I do want to see what other details NQ gives us in the upcoming AMA and Podcast, should be an interesting read/listen about the economics in DU... If they do discuss it of course.

 

 

 

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11 hours ago, Eternal said:

Fiat money in real-life has no intrinsic value

Of course it does. The same government that issues it requires that you use it to pay taxes. And if you don't pay taxes there are serious real-life consequences (thus the intrinsic value).

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10 hours ago, JayleBreak said:

Of course it does. The same government that issues it requires that you use it to pay taxes. And if you don't pay taxes there are serious real-life consequences (thus the intrinsic value).

No it doesn't! Fiat money is not a commodity, so how can it have intrinsic value?

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money

It is a useless object that is being used as a medium of exchange and how it works is due to people's trust on the monetary system that I highly believe, after learning more about it, is a scam. I can discuss how corrupt the world's monetary system is, but that's for a different discussion.

 

The point that you are making--which is the same as mine--is in order for quanta to have intrinsic value(literally "importance"), this game needs to add some quanta-sink! Look at Ragnarok Online, the NPCs right there sell Blue and White Pots(SP and HP Potions), Blue Gemstones which some classes need(Resurrection Skill of Priest requires this, Warp Portal Skill of Acolyte requires this, etc.), and other useful consumables. In order to upgrade Equipments as well in Ragnarok Online, you not only need Oridecons/Elluniums, the Refining NPC as well will charge you a zeny fee every refinement try. In order for Quanta to have "importance", add importance! This game have no quanta-sink at all! -- that's our point!

 

A market can never demand something that is completely useless! In order to have a demand for something, that something needs to have "use"! Look at intrinsic value for god sake!

 

I cannot demand quanta at all when I see that it has no use! It's fool's gold!

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Commodities and services then, but not fiat. The solution is really simple, since the monetary system in real-life is corrupt, you will not replicate that in the game, you will add quanta-sink via NPCs to add "real" value to the quanta so in this case we will use it as a medium of exchange. Back it with real value!

 

Now that it's real, you don't need to cap it by removing and re-introducing bots. Try to see this holistically, they(Commodities, Services, Quanta that you can spend on NPCs) are all things with value -- they are all the same thing! Don't cap the quanta but add sinks!

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A finite currency sounds wonderful on paper, and for some good reasons:
1. It would have a stable price, no runaway printing of currency that drastically lowers the price and destroys the economy.

Just kidding, that's probably the only good reason that everyone could agree on.
It still has the problem of people accumulating loads of wealth and never spending it, and the value of it would still fluctuate pretty wildly as the market figures out its value, especially since its not backed by anything, and inflation would be non-existent.

Now instead of built in currency, I'd suggest letting players, or bigger factions just print their own currencies instead. Let the players determine the value of the currencies, and punish irresponsible groups for making their own currency worthless Germany style. I'd imagine this would players handle how their own currency works; one group could experiment with the finite currency, another could back the value and quantity of their currency based on a certain resource, or just do a fiat currency. This is truly the only way to figure out which is best, as we could cite examples from other MMOs that handle the early game and resources much more differently from DU all day long, until novaquark just makes a decision on their own.

 

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Lets make this a technical thing.

DU start has 100% quantas with 50k players and there will never be more

so every player has about 0,002% 

with time there are some people or organizations that do this math with me and the sell everything they can and within no time to get about to have 10% of the quanta in an organization of about 10 people, leaving 90% for the rest. But what happens, DU grows in no time to 1000k players, so now 90% is devided over a million, 0.00009% per player.

Now the "quanta"org does not use their cash as they envision power as the amount of quanta you have and depriving others of it grows their power and within time they even get 40% of the quanta by just grinding mining and industry, providing only the most expensive stuff.

Now we have a single small organization with almost half the quanta and no intention to ever use it and a population of about a million with all only 0.00006% of all quanta. 

Now lets presume we all get 5k to start with. -> 250.000.000

in the end the organization holds 100.000.000

and all the other people in DU are left with 150 Quanta per person.

 

Mind you, the organizations planning this are already build and working on this principle, best response would now be "No, that will not happen"

 

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Just to add insult to injury, we have to consider how many people may just stop playing on day 1 for whatever reason. In addition to the more wealthy playerbase just eventually leaving. Both of those just further reduces the available quanta as a whole. Not just widening the wealth gap, but making "trickle down" economics impossible.

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6 hours ago, Fenrave said:

Just to add insult to injury, we have to consider how many people may just stop playing on day 1 for whatever reason. In addition to the more wealthy playerbase just eventually leaving. Both of those just further reduces the available quanta as a whole. Not just widening the wealth gap, but making "trickle down" economics impossible.

People who "leave the game on Day 1" will have no effect on the economy, because they'll have no quanta.

 

People that stop playing (or take a break) after playing for a few months will affect things though, because all their accumulated quanta goes out of circulation.

 

NQ will probably monitor the money supply, and reactivate their buy-orders whenever the "active quanta" falls below a certain threshold.

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@NanoDot
I was speaking in reference to Aarons post, where he posed a situation that everyone at the launch, would get roughly 5k quanta to begin with.(I presume, regardless of playtime) Hence:

20 hours ago, Fenrave said:

Just to add insult to injury, we have to consider how many people may just stop playing on day 1 for whatever reason. In addition to the more wealthy playerbase just eventually leaving. Both of those just further reduces the available quanta as a whole. Not just widening the wealth gap, but making "trickle down" economics impossible.

 

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Good point Fenrave.

I do understand the points in the discussions here and most are valit. creating a monitary system with no cash drains and npc to add cash through quests, or mobs who drop it through death is a complex system that could probably be solved by a few creative implementations. Problem in that is that quanta is a term from the arc, so even if you would find an ancient lootbox containing treasure, it would not contain quantas if the game is true to its lore. Technically only old human settlements and old arc ships could hold lootable quantas, with regard to lore

 

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On 12/5/2019 at 8:09 AM, Fenrave said:

I was speaking in reference to Aarons post, where he posed a situation that everyone at the launch, would get roughly 5k quanta to begin with.

We have no idea whether a newly created character will get "free quanta".

 

It's obviously something that's wide open to possible exploits and abuse, which will be extremely hard to counter. The more difficult it is for players to get quanta in a game, the more likely it will be that players will try to "game the system".

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 10/24/2019 at 5:36 AM, DevisDevine said:

Well regardless of faucets a player could earn money in other ways, like designing a ship and selling it. The faucets are the ways the economy as a whole would earn isk. 

 

On 12/1/2019 at 4:49 PM, DevisDevine said:

If you try and criticize me please dont quote me out of context.  As I specifically said regardless of faucets and sinks in the instance you are quoting from. 

As a player, I dont need the isk I make to directly come from a faucet, I can still earn isk from doing things for other player that have it.

This was a direct response to someone stating that if ore buyers are the only faucets the mining would be the only way to make isk. 

 

As for you method of making isk in Eve, I knew a guy who single handed did what you are talking about rose the price of plex from about 250 to 350 mil just to pay for a new station. Ofcouse typically he made his isk by spending thousands a month on the GTC to replace motherships he stupidly lost. 

Well this doesn't look like it is out of context (in bold first quote), as the entire thread is about "finite currency".  So the part I underlined (2nd quote) is either completely irrelevant to the thread or you really don't know how eve economics work. Your previous 2 posts made me think you did, but then you quoted me saying "players can earn other ways". The money has to come from a source and that would be a faucet, which as of right now,  even with the recent podcasts, mainly ore buy orders and possibly npc missions. This sounds like an environment that people who plays the market in Eve can abuse in the deflationary environment to the detriment of the player base and I concur with you abusing it, as I will too. This is what I was referring to with the "fear of finite currency over infinite" as the only people that makes this argument comes from theme park mmo's (which I think you would agree). So I think you might have misunderstood my initial reply out of context when you were quoting me. As I think the the only source of injecting cash into the game via ore buy orders is ludicrous if not retarded to put it bluntly. 

 

Also you were responding to me and yes they said only ore buy orders at the time for a faucet. People aren't going to trade currency if it is hard to come by and the same people on this thread that are complaining about infinite currency, are also going to be the same people complaining about having to mine a freighters worth of gold for 10 Quanta bucks. The previous owner of those 10 Quanta bucks is also going to be the trader that is just flipping all the goods and making that currency easy, if not just use the Nova bucks to buy it.

 

As for the guy you referenced and depending on the time frame, it came from either mission runners or bounties. Him getting isk for plex/gtc's is just transferring isk from one player to another and you are correct, it was abuse-able until CCP cocked it up by making everything plex. So now you can see everything in a chart and easily tell if there was/is price manipulation. But with that mothership he can make more in comparison to other activities if he wasn't retarded. It was until the Oct or Nov that the bounty faucet was axed by CCP.

 

 

On 12/4/2019 at 8:09 AM, Fenrave said:

A finite currency sounds wonderful on paper, and for some good reasons:
1. It would have a stable price, no runaway printing of currency that drastically lowers the price and destroys the economy.

Just kidding, that's probably the only good reason that everyone could agree on.
It still has the problem of people accumulating loads of wealth and never spending it, and the value of it would still fluctuate pretty wildly as the market figures out its value, especially since its not backed by anything, and inflation would be non-existent.

Now instead of built in currency, I'd suggest letting players, or bigger factions just print their own currencies instead. Let the players determine the value of the currencies, and punish irresponsible groups for making their own currency worthless Germany style. I'd imagine this would players handle how their own currency works; one group could experiment with the finite currency, another could back the value and quantity of their currency based on a certain resource, or just do a fiat currency. This is truly the only way to figure out which is best, as we could cite examples from other MMOs that handle the early game and resources much more differently from DU all day long, until novaquark just makes a decision on their own.

 

No, it would never be good on paper as you want inflation so people keeps spending money, as DeviseDevine said it leads to hoarding. The point of currency is that it is a fiat a medium for the exchange of goods/services and if it rarer then the gold or copper, then what is the point of having the currency. In my opinion, I think what everyone misunderstands, is that theme park mmo's it really is irrelevant if you have run away inflation. Every real economy has inflation, but they keep it capped at a certain % and I am sure someone who is much better at economics can explain that as I am no market guru. I am just now finally mastering market pvp, which sadly this game is already snuffing out.   

On 12/5/2019 at 9:14 AM, Aaron Cain said:

Good point Fenrave.

I do understand the points in the discussions here and most are valit. creating a monitary system with no cash drains and npc to add cash through quests, or mobs who drop it through death is a complex system that could probably be solved by a few creative implementations. Problem in that is that quanta is a term from the arc, so even if you would find an ancient lootbox containing treasure, it would not contain quantas if the game is true to its lore. Technically only old human settlements and old arc ships could hold lootable quantas, with regard to lore

 

I don't think a lot of the points are worth merit, as it looks like one person before I first posted actually has an idea of how insane it is that the studio is solely relying on "npc buy orders". I believe that in game economics is semi complex as the real economy does require a lot of learning in my opinion.  If you know how to read the Eve Economic report you can actually get a detailed blue print on top of the Eve wiki of how they jump started their economy post launch. 

 

I don't think they are going to stick to closely to lore unless they want to have their "civ building game" to fail.  As for lore items, I would think that it would provide old tech or cool trinkets that one can sell on the market. It would create n new occupation called "Archaeological theft".

On 12/6/2019 at 7:58 AM, NanoDot said:

We have no idea whether a newly created character will get "free quanta".

 

It's obviously something that's wide open to possible exploits and abuse, which will be extremely hard to counter. The more difficult it is for players to get quanta in a game, the more likely it will be that players will try to "game the system".

Giving players free quanta is not going to be game breaking, as the game requires a sub and I honestly believe if you are going to spend money, it is going to be with their "Nova bucks". As for exploits/abuse it is always going to happen, but the difference is that they aren't taking the "alpha clone" route. Coming back to Eve now it is almost day/night how things are both positive and negative (more on the latter imo). 

 

As for making quanta more difficult I can guarantee you that players won't try and game the system, it is going to happen even if Quanta took only 30 secs of effort. It will only kill the game like other pvp sand box mmo's as people won't be able to replace their losses. If you make the game more difficult to get Quanta, then those same people are going to have to grind more to get the currency to purchase whatever goods/services they want. The chances of them getting that quanta gets closer to impossible when people would rarely spend it as they expect the money to appreciate in value. Why would I spend 1 quanta for 100 ore blocks when I can get maybe 150 if I wait a little longer? Well it is going to suck for that person who can't afford "nova bucks" when it takes 1 hour to mine 20 units of ore.

 

I am going to add this video link so everyone at least gets on the same page before adding to this thread. 

Edited by plmkoi
Added video link of Eve economy explanation
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  • 1 month later...
On 12/31/2019 at 5:36 PM, plmkoi said:

No, it would never be good on paper as you want inflation so people keeps spending money, as DeviseDevine said it leads to hoarding. The point of currency is that it is a fiat a medium for the exchange of goods/services and if it rarer then the gold or copper, then what is the point of having the currency. In my opinion, I think what everyone misunderstands, is that theme park mmo's it really is irrelevant if you have run away inflation. Every real economy has inflation, but they keep it capped at a certain % and I am sure someone who is much better at economics can explain that as I am no market guru. I am just now finally mastering market pvp, which sadly this game is already snuffing out.

Inflation is an influx of money into circulation, which isn't something you want in a stable economy. When those that sell goods recognize there is an increase in spending power, they raise prices since they know people can afford to pay it. What once costed 10 quanta suddenly costs 15 quanta, and then 40 quanta, and then 100... not because of anything natural like demand increasing for something that's in short supply, but simply because there is more money. This is money losing its value. When a money supply can increase indefinitely, such as when there is no material constraint or limited supply to maintain its scarcity (and thus its value), those that can amass it quickly will cause hyperinflation, which is when the value is dropping so quickly that prices skyrocket beyond what anyone can afford aside from those that were causing the inflation to begin with. This is what causes the poor/rich gap, and should be something we, as players of this game and participants of its economy, should want to avoid.

 

If the developers are going to control how much money is in circulation by turning on/off faucets in order to maintain a level of the money's scarcity/value, it sounds like a decent idea and would basically be a variable cap... not a fixed amount, but a maintained percent or ratio of something. With ore being the foundation of the economy, it would make sense to use that with some ratio like 1 Ore = 0.002% of money in circulation, or whatever ends up feeling like a good "Goldilocks" zone for the economy to be in. This sort of thing would take some time and experimenting to figure out. 

 

Ideally you want the highest percent possible of the money supply to be in circulation, and not just sitting in a vault or in someone's wallet. As people have pointed out, hoarding is something that happens, but I think occasionally turning some faucets on would adequately combat that. However, what if one of those hoarders suddenly dumps all their money by buying up huge amounts of a particular resource, like Iron or something, in order to build some sweet Death Star? Then we run into a dramatic iron shortage and a bunch of jobs get created in order to increase the iron supply, since good markets always seek equilibrium. That's how businesses form and interesting stories happen. It's the drama of "events" like this that will keep the world feeling interesting and alive, driven not by some theme-park plot that everyone goes through, but player agency. It would be cool, but it would also cause inflation as that money makes its way back into circulation and causes prices to artificially go up. There would have to also be a sink that can occasionally be turned on, like a tax on trading or something, in order to pull that money back out and thus maintain the variable cap on the supply.

 

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  • 3 months later...

Its not currency that should  be limited, it’s currency divided by the number of players. if with every player that enters the game, new currency is added (most likely by means  of a starting amount), then the currency keeps its value and inflation or deflation is prevented. This is of course only true if market bots don’t delete resources but resell them.

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This is a simple solution. No sink or faucet is needed that way, and advancement still occurs, as quanta become more valuable when the amount of resources that have been extracted grows. therefore, later in the game you will be able to buy item n with x quanta that before might have cost 10 times as many quanta. However, as the supply of item n increases due to more resources being in circulation, its value drops, so in the end it all balances out. yes, that was a bit redundant, but i just wanted to make that concept very clear. because of it, civilization in DU will advance, simultaneously fueling the need for more technology to be “developed” and keeping NQ’s employees employed.

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  • 3 weeks later...

To have a functioning economy, DU will need to have faucets and sinks.  I am personally of the opinion that NPC buy orders for ore are probably the worst faucet, and that market fees paid to the arkship during market transactions are probably the best sink.  The reason I dislike ore buy orders so much is that ore is inherently valuable by itself, regardless of the value of quanta.  In fact, with some time and effort, that ore can be increased in value by orders of magnitude.  I would rather see a faucet that requires high end manufacturing and effective resource management.  One idea I liked was for territory claim units to generate a small amount of quanta per hour, like maybe one or two.  This would give concrete benefits to claiming land, and also make for an easy way for NQ to regulate the economy.  Since anyone can acquire and place a TU, it democratizes the faucet somewhat, while still rewarding those that do the work necessary to turn ore into TUs.  In the end, the economy is still built on the harvesting and transport of ore, however, it allows manufacturing to be more than just a necessary parasite to making money, rather than the vehicle by which ore is turned into money.  As far as having a finite amount of money in the game, that would rapidly evolve into a barter economy using various ores as commodity trade items, and clogging up everyone's inventories with random crap.

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Come on folks don't try to over think this problem with economic theory and Game theory of money etc... Its nothing more than the bathtub metaphor of simple economics..   Credits or whatever kind of money  flows into the tub and if the tub over flows you get inflation so you open a drain in the bottom...If the amount in the tub reaches a point of almost empty you get a depression where very few have credits to spend. (not enough in circulation) The proper balance of keeping the bath tub half full (Optimum) is the balancing act of the amount of people playing and how many are using the market. This data is only held by the dev's so it falls in there paygrade to devise means to maintain it... Its not hard just has to be done by them... Good Hunting All..

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