[MUD-Dev] Economic model..

[cruise]

Brian Thyer wrote:

> At any rate, any thoughts/feedback/ideas would be helpful.  As you
> can tell, it's very much a player run, player driven economy.
> Players mine the resources (or hire NPCs to mine for them),
> players craft the items (and the coinage.through the player and
> NPC run towns), and players set the prices and exchange rates for
> goods and resources.  One thing that some of you may be thinking
> of (which I forgot to mention) is arbitrage.  Arbitrage is where
> you buy an item in one market for a price, and turn around and
> sell the item in a different market for a higher price.  This is,
> obviously, possible.  However, it is currently in the plans to
> restrict travel.  Not to restrict where players can go, but rather
> by the speed and safety by which they can get there.  Making it
> unsafe to carry large quantities of merchandise/resources across
> distances without many armed guards, or simply by making it a
> hassle to the average player to transport items from place to
> place on a regular basis, I hope to keep each separate
> town/village/city/kingdom economy just that, separate.

Why? Surely one of the main things that keeps currency moving is
trade between areas of specialisation? Taking your example of the
town with farmland and the village in the woods, while, yes, wood
and hide are more valuable in the town, grain and fruit would be
more valuable in the village - NPC's in the village would use the
money from elling hide to buy the grain they need from the town, and
vice versa. Surely trade between these areas is to be encouraged?
And if your economic system is working well, if too many players ply
a particular trade route, then the price for what they're selling
automatically drops, so players can't bankrupt a town by
over-selling some rare product there.

Certainly carrying large amounts of goods through the wilderness
would be dangerous - this is why caravans always have guards - but I
don't see why it is a bad thing.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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