Original Post
Note: My examples, obviously, are from the games that I have played enough to realize how they work. That's why only EVE, Earth and Beyond, and Anarchy Online ever get used as examples :). I've been pondering ideas for item systems within MMORPGs for a while, and IMO, item systems seem to be what can make or break a game. And by item system, I mean the whole deal--everything from the loot drops and the vendors to the crafting system. Because its all related--one minor flaw can have far-reaching consequences, easily disrupting the rest of the system. An "ideal" item system would have: 1. A way to limit competition. For example, lets say that everyone could manufacture every item in the game with only a small initial cost (for a blueprint, etc), and that the items were easy to get (as in, for example, EVE, where everything uses an amount of each of up to 8 minerals, which are all easily buyable on the market), the prices would be so close to the cost of building the item that no one would make any profit, and tradeskilling would be relatively useless. In some games this has *almost* happened, but usually there was one solid limit preventing this. Some examples: a. EVE: The massive cost of the initial blueprint (at least for battleships, for example) helped stem competition. In addition, the fact that the market wasn't a global, automatic market--you can only view deals in your region and must actually go and pick up the item--allows higher priced items to have a chance. b. Earth and Beyond: The fact that people eventually would only buy 200% quality items limited the competition for items whose looted version (loot versions can be analyzed and then built) were commonly available. And of course, items that were rare obviously couldn't be built by everyone and their dog. c. Anarchy Online: This game simply relies on making most of the important parts loot only or require very high tradeskills, yet again stopping everyone and their dog from making items. Whether its low availability of blueprints, low availability of components for tradeskilling, or a regional market like EVE, an item system *NEEDS* a limit on competition. 2. But an item system also must allow everyone who wants to build items/tradeskill to have a chance, rather than limit production to the top percent of players with either very high skills, easy access to tradeskill items, or a guild with enough influence to get them the blueprints. However, at first glance, this looks as if it would contradict with the above! Not necessarily. In fact, to make an ideal item system, IMO, one MUST have these not contradict! Some ideas: a. EVE's system seems to work, but requires by definition a game in which travel times are long. IMO long travel times are never a good thing. b. Have a near infinite number of loot items (randomly generated in the fashion of Diablo 2) and make them "analyzable," as in Earth and Beyond. However, this may run into the same problem as before, as most of these random items will be worthless and the elite players will end up with the best blueprints anyways. I haven't been able to come up with a solution for this problem, but something keeps telling me that there must be one out there. If anyone has any ideas for this, post it here--more knowledge for the development community is always a good thing, and I'd love to see a game for once that has a decent item system. 3. An open economy is part of an MMORPG. Since today's MMORPGs can't fully simulate the economy including NPC aspects, money must enter the game at some point (through looting money, selling loot to NPC vendors, quest rewards, etc), and then leave the game (through buying stuff from NPC vendors, etc). However, in most games that I have seen, far more money enters the game than leaves. While this doesn't affect mass-produced items, it causes incredible inflation in terms of the prices of items that can't be readily acquired (i.e. rare, loot-only, etc). This alienates pretty much all new or non-hardcore players, as they can't afford these insanely inflated prices. It is CRITICAL to avoid having the inflation rate rise too high above the rate of player population growth. Some examples of not-enough-money-sinks: a. Earth and Beyond: Early on in the game, there was generally enough of an influx of money into the game to cause gentle inflation, but not too much to cause a huge disparity between the rich and the poor, as I described earlier. But about 6 months after release, new MOBs were placed in Antares. While the loot didn't stack (i.e. making it easy to carry hundreds of pieces back to a vendor), it still was worth so much that hunting there could provide up to ten times the number of credits per hour of fighting. When previously ten million credits was a large sum and paying 200 million credits for anything was unthinkable (as not even the top traders had that much)... now they were in reach. A week hunting in Antares could push a high level Warrior into the triple-digit millions. And suddenly, the rarest items in the game weren't trading for 50 million--they were trading for 500 million. 750 million. Eventually certain items became so valuable that people refused to trade credits for them--as credits had become so worthless in comparison to the value of these incredibly rare items. b. EVE Online: This game has always had a major money sink problem, as money rarely leaves the game! Since all items are player-sold, when a player buys something, the money goes right back to the playerbase. The only times money ever leaves the game are when people buy NPC-sold skills (which in general don't cost that much), when people buy NPC-sold blueprints (which do cost a lot but not enough to offset the huge influx of money), when people leave the game and leave their money behind, and in a few certain rare cases such as delivery mission failure/loss of collateral. What makes this worse is how fast money does come into the game. Whenever a ship is blown up (which probably happens once every minute or less in EVE Online), the player is rewarded with the insurance money (40% of value for autoinsurance if they didn't buy any, up to 100% if they did buy insurance). But notice--the entire ship was built by players. The minerals were mined, and the miners were payed by refiners. The refiners refined the ore, and sold it to manufacturers, who used a factory (which costs a minimal amount to rent) to build that ship that was lost. In the process, through trade taxes and rentals and such, no more than 1% of the money leaves the game. But when that ship is lost, the player gets a free 40-100% of the ship's value (although its more like 40-70%, as insurance costs money)... out of the blue! While for the player they've lost money, in actuality no money has disappeared--it has only left their hands. Hopefully the new Shiva expansion will add enough money sinks (in the form of deployable stations, etc) to minimize inflation. c. Anarchy Online: The only money sinks are players leaving the game and vendor-sold items. 'nuff said. Similar to Earth and Beyond, rare items simply skyrocket in price. So what do you think about this? Agree/disagree with my analysis? Have any ideas? My main problem ATM is trying to come up with a working way to limit competition, but still allow everyone to be able to profitably build items if they wish (as I stated above).