If you plan on making a RolePlaying game or even worse.. an MMORPG, you''d best be ready to dish out some economy to your lands. Far too many games lack this KEY element to reality. Why do monsters always have cash on them? And why do some monsters who aren''t even in a tribal society have cash? A very rare few, perhaps.. if they picked it up off a dead person. But honestly.. where does this endless money supply idea come from? If you make a game, realize that shopkeepers need to be a dynamic entity. As they run low on weapons, prices change. There was no fixed market, government-controlled marketplace back then! The guy looked at his weapon, appraised it, figured in how long it would take to replace it if he had to make a new one, and how many more he had.. and then told you a price. There''s a lot that goes in to that. Far too many games lack some kind of dynamic ability here. Either they assume the shopkeeper has unlimited supplies, or they just don''t care if they run out. Another thing to be wary of is the change of economy between towns. Especially in a medieval roleplaying game. Many towns had their own currency, and the bankers would trade in your money, often at a very poor rate. But they''d have to think about it.. "am i ever going to this place where this money is used?" well, probably not So chances are, you''d get nothing for it. If you find someone else wanting to go over to where you came from, they''d most likely do a fair trade for you. But there''s no gaurantee The money supply is something that you should closely watch in a game and make sure it''s not out of hand. In DragonRealms, you could play as a trader and make almost unlimited money. One guy had SO MUCH money, he auctioned his character on EBay for over 1000 dollars CASH! That''s right, somebody paid for his character!!! That''s what happens when you let the money supply go to hell J

Nice to know other people are thinking about the same things I am. You really liked Letter From A Dungeon, didn''t you Landfish?
A lot of these ideas I''ve had myself. I''m really interesting in making highly dynamic worlds, including the economy(ies), towns, clans, regions, etc... Worlds in which towns grow and shrink, economies boom and bust, orc clans rise and are killed off. You get the idea.
However! (I emphasize this for a reason) the ony issue that I''ve come up with so far, is that of stability. If we create a world who''s elements change based on a number of variables, we get emergent behaviour, and it become difficult to keep the system from fluctuating wildely and possibly collapsing. It would require constant supervision and ''tweaking'' to ensure that no one element of the game become too out of balance.
Now, I''m not talking about an orc tribe wiping out a town or two. That would just be cool I''m talking about total economic collapse, which would quickly make people loose interest in the game. Cycles like the economy in real life span generations, and no one on a game wants to wait that long for a depression to end. Basically what it comes down to is energy management. We have to make sure the energy levels of the game don''t cycle too wildly, or stick to extremes for long periods of time.
So here''s the question: how do we implement a system to monitor these variables, and make sure they don''t get too crazy? Ideas, anyone?

Was just debating with a friend, and I got an idea.
Making a ''moderator'' which looks for certain types of emergent behaviour would be insane, because in complex systems the types of emergent behaviours become belligerent and numerous. So, how about evaluating and monitoring the energy levels of the various entites in the world, and looking for spikes. By my thinking, it would be easier to correct energy spikes than to correct high-level behaviours.
Example: a player finds some weapon which makes him so powerful he can slay dragons by himself (you know, imbalance stuff). This would cause his ''slaying'' energy to spike (or something like that). The game could then send a nasty-assed dragon to go correct this ''error''. If you waited for the emergent behaviour to appear, in this case the slaying of everything around him, it would be much harder to naturally correct.
How about that for theoretical crap?

"Example: a player finds some weapon which makes him so powerful he can slay dragons by himself (you know, imbalance stuff). This would cause his ''slaying'' energy to spike (or something like that). The game could then send a nasty-assed dragon to go correct this ''error''."

That is horrible game design! Players should never be punished for using items found in the game. I was in a D&D campaign where we played using the actual rules. I was god soon enough. There was no in game way of beating me. The correct thing would have been for the DM to change/take away my spells (patch the game). However he tried to deal with me in-game. He had two options: send hard challenges at me, or send unreasonable challenges at me. Since the latter is essentially cheating (if I''m too strong just take my power away) he had to do the former. Of course each encounter just made me stronger until I was invincible which ruined the game completely.

The message is good design and testing with patches when neccessary is the correct way to do things (but try to finish the game before release, I don''t want to play another EverPatch). Do not rely on some sort of monitoring system to punish things that get out of hand. If he does get that sword that lets him slay dragons so easily just fix the sword or take it away, don''t crush him!

Ok.. on the idea of too powerful weapons. If it can slay dragons, send a demon either way.. don''t use a super-powerful dragon.
What you should do, instead of patching, is to find an in-game way of beating them. Perhaps make a GM character which will challenge the guy to combat. Or have a theif steal it.. hehe This way they loose it back to the game, and you can tweak all future versions of the weapon.

Point noted: NEVER make a weapon like this. If you do, you''re screwed. It''s your fault for making it, so changing it seems a bit messed up. That''s why i support taking it away. Heck, roleplay it. Have a god come down upon this guy, and demand that he sacrifice the weapon because the weapon is too powerful. If they don''t, then you can set them up to be going crazy by the power of the sword. Even if they''re just a powergamer newbie.. you can make people hunt them down. Have the god demand the town they''re in bring the sword to him. If the sword is not brought, then a terrible wrath will plague the city. THAT is roleplaying a solution. And as the creator.. that is your job.. to ROLEPLAY with your people. Accentuate the PLAY with your people part You rule them.. you can do as you want to them.. so simply make up a way to get the sword back. It''s cursed.. a demon sword, and no mortal should weild it. If they refuse to give it up.. then play it up a little. Have the god communicate to the local clerics.. start with one cleric, then two. Meanwhile, let this guy try to find some dragons to slay. The dragons, having heard of this demon sword which has possessed this man to kill all of them.. will of course flee to somewhere he cannot go USE YOUR BRAIN on things like this As the clerics get visions of this angry god.. they''ll form hunting parties to hunt this guy like a dog Heck.. even have the god speak to one high-level (or low level if you like to make newbies crap their pants) and to LEAD them to the guy with the weapon. This makes the game so much more involved, and gives you reason to pluck people from their ordinary life and make them do all sorts of wicked quests hehe.
You can even use this to make other types of quests. Have a warrior god speak to a "chosen one" and have him perform tasks for you.. hehe. Tell him he must get a cleric and go somewher and perform some ritual. PLAY WITH YOUR PEOPLE if you can''t be imaginative, you don''t need to be in this business of MMORPGs.

J

Great ideas, Niphty. I like the way you think.
However, the point I was trying to make was not how to fix one specific instance of game imbalance, but to present a concept that could be used to fix ALL game imbalances. And not just imbalances presented by poorly designed weapons/rules, but those that appear when you have a complex system like a realistic economy.
I admit that the dragon-slaying sword was a bad example. I had just come up with the idea, so give me a break
Ok, better example: some set of conditions causes the entire economy to collapse (completely plausible given that the system is open, in this case anyway). Now if you design the system properly, it should correct itself over time. But in the meantime you have a whole bunch of players that are stuck in a depression. They''re not going to want to wait till the system recovers. Small dips in the economy would be tolerable (and cool), but a complete collapse...depression BAD!
So to prevent this, we monitor the economic energies of the entities in the game (players, shopkeepers, kingdoms, etc...). Then, if we see any spikes (extreme changes), we can institute some correctional system. Like send a thief after the guy who just found a horde of gold This would (in theory) allow gradual changes in the system, while preventing extreme ones that could throw the system out of check.
Following me yet?

Morbo, I wasn''t meaning that towards you, nessicarily. I was talking to the anonny.. He seems to have the same views as the rest of the established gaming community, in that you should patch or "take away" a weapon to powerful. This to me is a POOR EXCUSE. You as the designer have created a faulty item. Perhaps a programmer created it on accident.. or for fun, and it fell into the wrong hands. Taking it away is VERY OUT OF CHARACTER (OOC). This to many roleplayers is a sign of poor management. You as a designer should plan for problems. If you lack creativity, ask your staff what they think should be done about it! This way the staff feels involved, and you find a solution. This prevents players from being irked by the fact that YOUR problems become their problems.

Landfish, i think that would work well in a single to eight player RPG style game, but i don''t think it''s very well for MMORPG, except the goblin bit The whole evil king part is very cliche. And we all know cliche is bad (bad landfish, bad landfish.. no cookie!). So.. what should we go for? humm.. if you wanted a TRUE system, let players run kingdoms, and if they want to act the cliche bad ruler.. then they can be ousted. I''d love to make a game like this, but for my first.. it''s Lord and Lady for me and my girl We might have a council.. that''s left to be said though. We sat down and outlined a good portion of the design doc today.. i feel much better about things. We''re deffinately getting it shaped into an awesome game whee!

As far as watching the spikes in economy.. good luck programming it. It should be easy in some respects (ammount of gold overall, ammount of gold in kingdom A, B, C) but some of it will be hard. Especially if you have some sort of goods trading/barter system between lands. Players may determine the values on stuff they buy, but a shopkeeper looking at a sword made in a different kingdom might not be willing to pay a fair price Just something to think about.. loyalty.

J