IDEAS FOR RYZOM

While I was away from Ryzom, I have been looking at some other games and I noticed that some games have implemented a strategy to make the ingame currency have a certain value. It combats people that sell ingame currency for money and gives the ingame currency a certain stability.

With this introduction, I would like to see an NPC in the cities that sells you a token that you can redeem for a subscription.

My idea would be: You could sell the token at the city welcomer. Every city has one, and the newbie missions always make you visit him/her. You can then buy a token that's worth 2 weeks of subscription time for an amount of dappers that still has to be tweaked. Something you can do with 1 "easy" and 1 "challenging" profession on "professional" level if you turn in the results for 14 days should be an initial goal.

The next step would be that you go to the leader of any city and ask them to validate your token. That way you could e.g. collect tokens while you pay for the subscription and when it runs out you can extend your game time for 2 weeks with those tokens.

What would be the result? First, the economy of Ryzom would stabilize. You can directly convert the ingame currency into a fiat currency like USD and wonder if you really want to buy e.g. a QL 250 Excellent Sarina Seed for $1,99 a piece. Selling your loot on the open market suddenly makes sense again.

What do you think? Discuss.

Ryzom seems to be split between "old money" (people with high levels in craft, that can easily make millions on a good day), and "newbie money" (people who can't or don't want to bother with money, making just enough for TPs and such).

If you gear the prices for the former crowd, everyone else is left muttering that it's unfair (say.. making a token cost 5 million). If you make it too cheap, well, a good portion of the server could get a subscription for years before running out of money.

The idea is interesting, but personally I don't see many ways to balance it between the two crowds and everyone in between.

Subscriptions are the only income of Ryzom. With that money we can barely pay the server and one (and a half) Dev. I think the last thing we should do is reduce the money Ryzom gets from that. Also since some time you can still play when your subscription runs out with reduced levels and get your full character back when you resubscribe.

In-game currency revitalization yeah, but if we do it like that I fear we can soon say goodbye to Ryzom

What Siela said.

The ingame economy is limited to a inflationary cash-flow.

1. Millions of dappers can be generated every day by only one single player. There's no income limit for high level players, there are no taxes, and no social funds, nothing that must be payed in order to earned money.

Fact: Every day the currency loses it's value, because the amount of currency will grow controlless.

2. At the other side there are not many possibilities, to raise the ingame currencies worth by selling something nessecary. You can pay dappers for one appartment or a guild (endless building grounds won't raise appartements - or storage - worth), one mount, three packers (endless available pets won't raise in worth), a civilization membership, transporter pacts, guards for op fights (not so neutral players), drillers, for the gubani wheel. But this and some more things are not enough, to stabilize the ingame currencies worth.

At this point there could be the consideration, if Game-vs-Players-economy could be orientated on the players financial success by paying not a fixed amount. Instead of paying "1.000.000 dappers" there could be a price of "25 Percent of earned money, minimum 1.000.000 dappers".

But in fact this will raise the need of earning dappers, and only more dappers must be earned.

3. Financial transactions between players are limited by the traders limit of the maximum of 9999% of an fixed item worth. So the traders are only a kind of added storage for 'not so worthy items', but not a place, where tradings could make a economical sense.

At one side there are billions of dappers - at the other side there are the abilities, to earn this dappers by producing very good items, and sell them e. g. for better materials for crafting (OP materials). But for less dappers noone would love it to sell his perfect items, cost and income isn't very good balanced by fixing a maximum price at the traders.

In fact this will mean, very good items will rarely be sold on a trader. In other games there are market places - if anyone wants to sell something special, he'll pay for his store, and put his sales in it. New players will see the growing prices, and if they are'nt in a guild, they 'd start to complain about the ingame economy again. Here a higher price for the players store, depending on the worth of sold items, could regulate too high prices for the sales in it.

So, in fact, binding the ingame worth of the ingame currency to a real-life worth will not make the ingame-situation better or more balanced. But only a few mathematical ingame additions, like

- a central bank to fix every day, what 9999% of a item could be worth in dappers at a certain time (e. g. dependig on the value of dappers / sold items at the server),

- a central auction institute for players vs players transactions that are'nt limited to "item-vs-dappers", or

- racial currencies, that must be changed in order of an racial central bank with the dapper currency to buy something at the racial traders,

can give the the economical side of this game a great impulse forward.

+1 Siela

The ingame economy is broken, but this doesn't sound like a good solution to me either. I would propose an auction house to shift dappers around, also money sinks for example upkeep for apartments, guild halls, outposts. However players should not lose aps or GHs when behind with their rates, just have to pay a (limited) amount to get access back.

This can be balanced with skills or playtime, so a starting player pays less? Just some random thoughts.

arc

I totally agree with Siela.

+1 Arc

A rent/mortgage/utilitiy/condo fee payment for Apts and GH would be cool.

Maybe a smaller veternary fee for mounts and packers.

In general, I find that Supreme mats are the currency for any items that are worth buying/trading. Those are much more rare for the common person (although like RL 1% of popluation has excessive amounts :) ) and are used up more frequently.

"The economy is broken." I hear that a lot, and it's true if you think of "the economy" as being defined by dappers.

But it isn't, it never has been, and there is absolutely no need for it to be. Several people have pointed out that the real economy is a barter economy with high quality items being traded for high quality (somewhat rare and desirable) materials.

However, unless you need those super-ultra items, one can get along fine with asking people to help you and giving them the materials for the things they craft. Most high level crafters will be happy to make things for a homin that has the materials.

Thesis: This is exactly as it should be in a post-scarcity economy.

Atys is an infinite source of raw materials. Basic, fine, choice, and excellent harvested materials are easy. Basic and fine looted mats are easy.

Supreme harvested materials are less easy, as are choice, excellent and supreme looted materials, but there is still an infinite supply of them. There is even an infinite supply (albeit at a much reduced rate of production) for OP materials.

Any attempt to make dappers "worth something" will run up against that problem. To make them "worth something", the economy must be adjusted to make them, or something else that dappers can be converted to, be "rare". In other words one must introduce scarcity into a post-scarcity world.

I fail to see that as desirable in any way.

I'm with Bittty on this. I see no benefit to trying to turn Atys' economy into something that more closely resembles that of the industrialized portions of 21st century Earth.

Atys operates differently in so many other ways, why not have the economy do so as well?

Maybe we can mitigate some of the issues by giving the option of making buy orders as well as sell orders. It would possibly be a pain in the butt for the devs to create, but I think it might be something that allows the "old money" to shift towards the "new money". Essentially, the older people say "somebody get me some Q250 Excellent Sarina Seed" and offer some money for it.
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Also, what happens if the game time tokens could be bought for Fiat money only and traded for dappers? Newbie buys 5 tokens, sells them for X amount to old player and viola, money flows from the old to new players, too. Not efficient, but might be another way to pay those servers.

Due to the problems associated with dappers described by many people in this thread, why would anyone want to turn RL cash into worthless dappers?

As readed above you want to "bring" our faulty "human" economy into this parallel universe... well I am against that with all my guts and here are my reasons:
1. This world is pre-industrial (LORE) in the sense that if you "forget" about super technology of Karavan everything is like in the middle ages so we should respect that, not only for the sake of roleplay but also for the fact that we already know that our "human" economy is not working (see the crisis).
2. It is normal and necessary that a skillful player to have more dappers "he work more" and for longer time than a "refugee". Nevertheless any time when a newcomer cames to mainland usually he is welcomed by old-players who usually give him a startup dappers for the ML economy (happen to me) and I did the same several times.
3. To put RL money in game will transform it into a "Brat" oriented game, in the sense that a RL rich dude (being lazy) will have better mats than someone who is confronting Kirosta Patrol in PR for the Exe and Supr mats so you know what I mean!!!
4. For the newplayers there are always way to produce money and once arrived in mainland you have the Overseers who are giving you missions for money nevertheless the OCCS that you get both Racial fame points and Dappers