ИДЕЯ ДЛЯ РИЗОМА

I realize this might be a rather radical idea, but the very organic nature of "dappers" and materials seems to suggest it.

The very concept of "planned money decay" is based on the idea of "money growing on trees" - which is, incidentally, a major problem for every MMORPG thus far. It's way too easy to earn money, it's as if game itself threw them at you. Thing is, there's really nothing to spend them on. The nature doesn't really work this way, though: most biological resources you gather will eventually decay, losing their value in the process. Why should the dapper be any different?

The point behind "nature economy" and decaying money is to incite people to spend and invest their money, to let them circulate instead of hoarding them - thus setting the economy in motion, while also creating a natural "dapper sink". It encourages activity: Don't let your dappers dry up, invest them. Don't let your materials rot, craft gear for resale instead. Keep those vendors stocked up all the time!
For further study, I suggest http://www.joytopia.net/ (German), English summary is available in PDF: http://tinyurl.com/naturaleconomypdf (edited to fix broken URL due to the system including random spaces in it)

The game would of course require some way to facilitate easy and painless money transfer between characters, as well as some way to invest our money. Perhaps a stock market, with a possibility of buying outpost shares? An option to start player-run businesses, like courier services, mercenary agencies or trekking escorts - businesses that'd actually HIRE other players as workers? Or perhaps even a store or market of your own, with a hired NPCs to sell your crafts? Privately-owned, NPC-ran stables with mounts for hire, paying up dividends to their shareowners? Buying land, investing into city development? Global projects, requiring the cooperation and investments of many homins in order to complete?

Hmm, I like it :)

If it applies to dapper as well as materials and other resources, it would take care of hoarding as well.

I'm only afraid that implementing it now would alienate too many players - this is really something so different that it should be implemented from the start...

Well said, Marelli.

I personally like the way that dappers aren't worth much of anything. It keeps out the goldsellers which are the real problem in any mmo that has an economy where the currency is scarce and prices are high.
If you make 100 gold a day and need 5000 for buying some skill or tool you need for your current level (which is a very real example, I've experienced it more than once in mmos), the lure of the goldseller is real and for many irresistable.
In Ryzom, there's no such problem as
1) prices are low enough you hardly ever are short of dapper
2) if ever you are broke (say you just bought 400 q250 sup mats Binarabi placed on a merchant for storage at 9999%) someone's always going to offer to help you out.


What'd there be to "invest in" anyway? If there were meaningful things to spend dappers on, many of us would do so without the threat of them disappearing from our wallet.
But that doesn't include the overpriced "player auction" system many mmos feature, where something that the crafter can create for next to no investment is offered for sale at such prices most people simply can't afford it (and those that do offer it cheaply find their items purchased and resold at those inflated prices).
That's a sure way to destroy the player economy as well as the economy by creating classes of "haves" and "havenots" where the havenots can never gain quality gear because they lack the resources to farm the mass amounts of gold to buy them from the haves and the haves aren't going to help the havenots acquire that gold.

Just need something to spend it on. College tuition would be great ..... earn ya master in Anklets and then ya can buy levels.... but only in same tree (jewelry). Say Level x 10,000. That would be 2.5 million for level 250 or 24.5 million to master from 240. Crafrting to master earns you about 50 million minus "usual" expenses of playing. So if ya master anklets, you could afford to "buy" your way to masters in rings and bracelets from level 110.

That would eliminate the most boring activity in Ryzom .... diging and digging and digging for no XP cause you have already mastered digging in all lands. Heck, if that's thought of making it too easy .... make it like occupations in that ya can only "buy" the mats for one level every 24 hours.

In other MMO's the gold usually goes to repair, but that is no option...
So I was thinking of rent! Apartments should have some kind of rent cost, same for guild halls. Also maintenance costs for every outpost the guild has...

Dappers are in short supply for beginners in low levels, especially if you play the hard way and try to not accept a passing character's present of 5mil ;-)

And I tend to agree to Jala: Keep the gold sellers out. I need all my money anyway for that Stuffed Yubo...

Btw, Ulykus/Thaxl once added code to cause mats in your inventory to degrade over time. I only know because he posted in the forums (I think in German only, though). The problem was that now every mat in the database (server side) must have another attribute for its level of degradation. Wth full guild halls, that's a lot of additional stuff to keep track of and I'd assume also increases network bandwidth. If that's an issue, I cannot judge. For various reasons I'm not aware of I believe he never made the code public. So maybe you can start a petition with him ;-)

I rather like the mat degradation. Although it should generally be slower than "normal Atysian time" which would make some Bolobi eyes rot in less than a real-life week. Others may actually like that additional digging/slaughtering->crafting challenge...

Dont like the idea. It would result in people bulking themselves in TP's. F2P people already have limited space. This would only make it worse.

Instead of decaying - a better idea would be to actually make more stuff you can only buy for dappers. So far it's mostly TP's, Tools and Gambling tokens ...

Has none of you noticed to superbly high prices of the Tattoo and Hair industry? You can easily save dapper a lifetime just to get a tattoo. I dislike the idea, just because i like the way it is. Perhaps can bring in something worth buying, as well as raising the price of apt's and GH, or lowering the selling price of raw materials, but no need to change the dapper itself.