Have a stable economy

[Eywa]

Yes I know, that's awfully vague and not at all helpful. But I am really looking forward to this game, and as a fellow game designer and also someone very interested in game economics, I've done much studying on the subject and know what happens when you have a poor economy even in an otherwise decent game *coughflightrisingcough* Even though that game has many game mechanics different from yours, it goes to show what happens when you design a game with the focus on unique mechanics and gives no thought to the economy.

Whats wrong with having an unstable economy?
1. New players are hindered from establishing themselves.
2. Only a handful of players can upset the balance
3. Encourages goldselling and buying
4. Encourages botting
5. May cause players to stop using the currency, and start using their on version. Leaving the economy almost totally out of your hands.

Without having a clearer picture of your game, I can't give specific suggestions to give the economy some stablity, but I can give you guys some guidelines to follow.

1. Keep in mind the sink & faucet principle
a. A Faucet is any time money is created to enter the game(eg. selling to a vendor, completing a quest)
b. A Sink is any time money is taken from the players(eg. buying from vendor)
c. The money entering should stay around the same amount as the leaving per player, a slight increase over time is normal and natural.
2. Use both optional and required sinks. But careful with what you make required and so you don't accidentally make something a chore
a. A optional sink is a farm or bag space upgrade
b. A required sink is a farm tax
3. Have lots of both sinks and faucets. Dynamic if possible so that you can make small adjustments as needed(aka, vendors pay varying prices on items where Price Paid is dependent on a few factors(eg. amount sold in past day,player activity,gold distributed).
4. If you are going to allow a cash shop think carefully on if players can buy items for each other, if cash items are tradable, or if cash currency is tradable. And if so, think how this might affect the market should a player decide to drop $50, $100, or $1,000 at a time and plan accordingly. A player should benefit from cash items, but should never be able to single-handedly modify the price of any item on market no matter how large a purchase.

Some things that are not needed, but would be nice features(you can consider these my suggestions :P):
1. Allow a player to have access to a Single Player option upon character creation. This should allow them to access ALL items of the game through vendors or crafting, but not allow them access to trade with other players.
2. Don't have a system wide auction house. Yes it's convenient, but your targeted player base has already shown they will do what it takes to organize a trade. Auction houses make it easier for botters and other automated ways of working the market. There are many ways to allow easier and safe methods of trading besides auction houses.
3. Allow every player to have a chance to get every item, even if the chance is very, very slim(gachapon machines are good for this, also mod run contests)(paying for the chance to get said item is fine)(having limited items, eg 2 in existence at once, is also fine as long as the holder can't potentially hoard forever)
4. Hard work should equal more pay to be fair, but there should be a rate of diminishing returns to prevent botters and to allow casual players a chance.


What needs to be done during early alpha testing for the economy(tests should last 1week, preferably 1 month)
1. Give players no money to start
2. Give players ALL the money to start(about 1/4th of your cap ought to do it)
3. Give only some players lots of money
4. If you have cash shop money, repeat with the above.

tl;dr - A stable economy makes a game feel fair and fun. Allowing all players, new and old, a fair chance at obtaining the items they need with a decent amount of work and also preventing players from hoarding money, or having too much money and nothing to spend it on.

This is by no means a detailed report on even general game economics. It's a very basic overview that should help point in the right direction

[Eiburine]

I think the trick to having a stable economy would be making the players WANT to spend their money :3
...At the money sinks I mean.

For example, in Pokemon, there is vendor that sells Ribbons for your Pokemon. Your Pokemon can get Ribbons for entering contests, maxing out potential stats, clearing the elite 4, etc...

But this vendor sells very pretty Ribbons. A Gorgeous Ribbon, a Royal Ribbon, and a Gorgeous Royal Ribbon. These Ribbons are a super expensive, but I like to buy them because they look nice XD

If there were some pretty things to buy, purely for bragging rights, BUT ONLY OBTAINABLE THROUGH VENDORS AND NOT OTHER PLAYERS, I think players would wanna spend their money.

Another example is in Kid Icarus. You can offer hearts to the goddess, but it doesn't do anything. It keeps track of how many hearts you offered, and the goddess walks closer and closer to the screen. I just like to offer hearts because hey, it's probably what my character would do.

Maybe if there is a fountain or something in game, the player can throw in a couple coins or something. Whether it gives some kind of random daily buff or do nothing at all is up to the devs, but its another fun money sink that players can use.

I can think of more sinks like donating money for a festival. The more money is donated, the bigger and better the festival will be. A good reason to donate.

[Angerfish]

I agree that the economy of the game has to be handled carefully. Because PO is designed to be a community experience through it's economy, then that means that balance is really important.

I also like the idea of a gachapon like system. Having those goodies tradable between players could pose issues because of obvious inflation reasons. That's on of my concerns for the game: that new players will have extreme difficulty assimilating into the community if older players have established inflated prices as the norm.

A farm tax could be interesting, but then they'd have to consider what the repercussions are of not paying the tax. Would the player loose their farm/property? Where would their belongings go? And also, when would taxes be issued? I think the PO crew have said in a stream that your farm will essentially be put on "pause" on days you don't play, so having taxes issued by date would run counter to that design.

The latest Harvest Moon game Story of the Seasons has in interesting money sink system: Fatigue. Your player has 5 hearts of stamina, which deplete in halves. At the beginning of the game, your given a small but fair amount of money. However, simply plowing upto 4-5 patches of land can leave your player close to their breaking point in stamina. So what this does is essentially encourage players to pace themselves, but also spend money either at the clinic or restaurant to replenish stamina. There's no concrete (leveling up) way of increasing your stamina either. Instead, you can build superior tools that will use less of your stamina. Building costs money, since you have to buy blueprints, so there's another incentive to spend money. And as you get more obtain more fields, you'll still blazing through your stamina, so food is still relevant.

[Eiburine]

The latest Harvest Moon game Story of the Seasons has in interesting money sink system: Fatigue. Your player has 5 hearts of stamina, which deplete in halves. At the beginning of the game, your given a small but fair amount of money. However, simply plowing upto 4-5 patches of land can leave your player close to their breaking point in stamina. So what this does is essentially encourage players to pace themselves, but also spend money either at the clinic or restaurant to replenish stamina. There's no concrete (leveling up) way of increasing your stamina either. Instead, you can build superior tools that will use less of your stamina. Building costs money, since you have to buy blueprints, so there's another incentive to spend money. And as you get more obtain more fields, you'll still blazing through your stamina, so food is still relevant.

The thing about stamina though... SoS is a one player game so the player can take as much time as they need, and just rest and wake up the next day. But in PO I'd assume it's all real time, so the player won't be able to rest, instead just wait for the next real world day. It seems to me if there was a big stamina cost in the game, a new player who has little money and has run out of stamina would be at a huge disadvantage to players who have established themselves and made lots of money, as the older players would be able to buy more food. The newer players would have shorter play sessions than the older ones if stamina replenishes the next day.

However, I just thought of a wonderful money sink to counter this. :) Maybe if there was sort of a food bank... for newbie players. The older players could anonymously donate and give food to this bank, which only the new players have access to. Lets say... until they have 10000 gold or so in assets or something. A bit like the soup kitchen in Neopets XD I feel like people would be more inclined to donate because they understand the new players, as they were in their shoes once. They understand what its like to run out of stamina. :) Not only that but it certainly reinforces the community aspect of the game :D

As a side note... this isn't necessary, but I think in order for the money sink to work, the newbie player has to eat the food immediately, so that the value of the food (the money) would disappear from the economy. That way the food wont be taken and traded back.

[Shaggy]

I wonder if this is what went wrong with Runescape when it introduced the Grand Exchange. It was an auction house like deal that made buying and selling things a breeze, but merchant clans could get together and set prices for things through the GE which made some thing more valuable or worthless than they would be without the GE.

The GE also cut a lot of "face to face" interaction with players since they didn't even need to now the names of the people they bought stuff from. At least on Ebay I can see who I buy stuff from and decide if I want to continue using their shop, but in Runescape through that community killing auction house, you just let the computer wait and get or give your stuff for you when you throw money into the GE or put an item into the GE. It's just so boring and ruins the community feel.

I hope everything is face to face trading and an auction house like system is never even thought of let alone implemented.