How to create a successful server economy for your playeworld

[konidias]

I'm going to describe my ideas for how to make a successful economy on a Graal server below. This is just my spin on how an economy should operate and also what wrong turns have been taken by servers in the past.

Step One - Establish a "real" currency

What I mean by "real", is a currency which can base it's value on a real life currency for comparison. For example, on my server a gralat has the value of 10 cents US currency. This lets me better gauge my prices for items and values for things in the game as I can use real world prices for things such as rent, clothing, food, tools, etc. and convert them into my server's currency. So by using the 10 cents = 1 gralat standard, we can calculate something like this:

1 meal costs roughly $3.50 US for me. So since 10 cents = 1 gralat then:

1 gralat x 10 = 10 gralats = $1 US
10 gralats x 3 = 30 gralats or $3 US dollars
Since 10 gralats = $1 US then 5 gralats = 50 cents us.

So the cost of a meal on my server would be roughly 35 gralats.

Of course since I'm using such an easy ratio I can just say that whatever the US dollar amount is for an item, I can just move a decimal place over to the right to get my gralat amount for an item.

Example:

$1.00 = 10.0 gralats
$20.00 = 200.0 gralats
$32.50 = 325.0 gralats

Making this method very easy to use while also allowing for items to have realistic pricing in your game.

Many servers have made the mistake of pricing items based on whatever value the current currency holds. For example, if people have very few gralats on average, then items would be priced for less. But if the majority of players have accumulated thousands of gralats, then item prices would rise. This is an inefficient and crude form of pricing. It's like supply and demand in reverse.


Step Two - Establish shops with limits

A shop without limits equals a neverending supply of products. This might seem like a simple solution to making sure everyone gets the items they want, but the downside is that eventually your economy will collapse and items will have no value since everyone has many copies of the same thing. For example. If Barney's Tool Shop sells shovels to players and the shop never runs out or changes prices, then everyone will quickly own a shovel and there will be hundreds to thousands of shovels on the server and little need for Barney's Tool Shop.

Also with hundreds of thousands of shovels no longer in the shop, the value of the shovel will be next to worthless. Who needs a shovel when everyone already has one? One solution is to have shovels "break" so that players must continue to buy shovels if they use them. This is good for some things (though nobody enjoys having a tool break) such as tools, but what about clothing? Clothing can last for decades... so "breaking" them is not an option.

So how to stock permanent items like clothing? Several servers in the past have attempted the "rarity" method by stocking a limited supply of an item in a shop. The only way for the item to restock was via a staff update. This can work short term but it's not a long term solution. Eventually you will have so many items to stock that it will become a bother to update all the quantities and release the items. Not to mention that all past restocks have been done at completely random times, so that a lot of players hoping to get a certain item never got the chance, as they were not online to do so.

A better solution would be to create shops that base their items on demand and amount the store can spend. Each shop in your world that sells items such as clothing should start with a bankroll. Basically they start with an amount of money they can use to run their business. (buy items to stock the shelves) You simply give the shop an amount of money to start with and then script a way for the shop to use that money in a way that will make the business profit.

Each shop should have a "catalogue" of items it can select for it's shelves, each with a base price. (a price for which the shop owner must pay for the item) This way, shops don't just have an endless supply of items. They must make profit in order to have money to restock their shop.

After the npc shop owner has randomly selected items to stock, it must then price the items in a way which will make it some profit. If a "black hat" costs the shop owner $8 to buy, then the shop might sell it for $10, and thus a $2 profit.

When an item is out of stock, the store would then "order" more of that item. Giving a time span in which this item will be temporarily unavailable. This allows for rarity while not making an item permanently unavailable. The store would also note that since it ran out of the item, it must mean there is demand. Thus, the amount of items to order for the shop would be greater than it was initially. Also a small price increase would occur.

So if the shop stocked 20 "black hat" items for $10 initially and they sold out, the shop would then restock possibly 25-30 "black hat" items for $11-$12. The shop would need to check on a "daily" or "weekly" or "whatever you choose" basis to see how the item sales are doing. If the black hat stock hardly changes over the course of several checks, then this means nobody is buying this item and that it might be priced too high. The store would then lower the price from $11 or $12 dollars to $10 or $11 dollars, and so on. However since there was a base price of $8 per hat, the store will never go out of it's way to lose profit by selling it for less than $8.

If an item gets to the point where the store is selling it for as much as it paid, then the item will be temporarily "discontinued" for an X amount of time. This means that the public shows no interest in buying this item for it's base price and that it's possible there are too many in circulation. By discontinuing the item it allows time for demand to increase again. Eventually the item will be recontinued and by then, the rarity of the item will have risen enough to where people will gladly pay more than base price for it.


Step Three - Establish ways to remove excess money

Unlike real life, players who earn money in the game do not have to spend that money to live, such as renting a home, eating food, healthcare, education, bills, etc. I believe that this was never factored in to any economy on Graal to date. Which is a large reason why most if not all of Graal's economies fail.

In order to factor this in, you need to figure out the cost of "living expenses" for a character in the game. Then work out a formula that will subtract these expenses from the amount of money earned by players. This would mean players would make significantly less money than they do now. You need to make sure that the living expenses you are subtracting are not part of your game. So if your player does indeed need to buy food to not die in your game, then you should not factor this in as a living expense to subtract.

But since most Graal servers are fantasy based, players do not need to worry about a lot of everday expenses. Because of this, players accumulate wealth very quickly and money and items lose their value. If any of you work a real job and live on your own currently, you'd understand that a lot of the money you make goes towards keeping you alive and sheltered.

If nobody in the world had to worry about paying for food or rent or bills than we would all have millions of dollars. As you can see, this can be quite troublesome for a playerworld. But it's exactly what happens in the majority of cases.

With all this being stated, it still does not resolve the issue of "more money coming in than going out". You need to fix this by creating things that will take money from players without giving them back something in which they can sell. Things such as paying for a ticket to enter an area, renting a house or building, buying perishable items such as food or items that break or can be destroyed, paying to enter an event... all of these things will take money from players while not giving them back money or items, but instead providing a service or entertainment.


Step Four - Pay attention to where the money is coming from

Make sure you're monitoring your staff so that there is no corruption and nobody giving out tons of free money or items. Also make sure you check for bugs and ban anyone who abuses them while also removing any items or money they may have created from the bug abuse, and of course fix the bugs! Make sure there is no way for people to easily cheat using a 3rd party program to add money or items to their account. Log all transactions having to do with money or items so that you can always know where the money and items are going and coming from.