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Other => FOnline:2238 Forum => Archives => Suggestions => Topic started by: gorkser on September 29, 2010, 11:50:45 am
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Hello everyone!
I´ve been playin Fonlin for a while and noticed some "problems" and also thought about solutions.
In this topic I want to make some suggestions about Fonlines Economy and currency system.
Main problem is in my oppinion that caps are quite rare, large ammounts of caps are therefore hard to earn.
Description of the problem
Reason for rareness of caps is, that they can only be created by
-shoveling dung
-selling brahmins and slaves
-lifting boxes
-maybe some quests
-interest on bank account
Caps are removed from the Fonline world by
-buying mercs/dogs
-buying brahmins
-buying bases/mines
-learning professions
-buying caravans/cars
-buying books
As you all know you don´t get much caps for shoveling dung, lifting boxes and from quests. Selling brahmins and slaves don´t make you a millionaire either.
At least it will take a long time.
Buying and learning all the things you only get for caps is realy expensive expensive on the other hand.
In addition caps are hoarded by higher level players, or stored on a bank account and therefore removed from circulation in the economy.
About caps and the monetary system in Fonline
Currency system of Fonline is (at the moment) Fiat money, that is money created out of nothing.
That is the system we actually have in real world. So caps, exactly like Dollar, Euro etc. has no inherent value.
So why should it be an accepted currency, why should anyone accept caps as legal tender?
Applying real world logic the answer would be, because someone powerfull forces the people to accept it as legal tender.
In Fonline world this could be the NCR, Enclave, BOS, or other factions powerfull enough. It would be somewhat reasonable that NCR money/caps is worthless outside the NCR, because it is unlikely that all Factions would agree on a common currency.
In reality caps are accepted currency because the Fonline programmers programmed the software the way that it is.
Why monetary system in Fonline is flawed
Problems arise because the amount of money in circulation is growing much slower than amount of goods.
It is easy to craft allot of valuable stuff in short time, but caps are not created in a similar ammount. So the ratio caps/goods is getting more and more out of balance.
Applying real world mechanisms there would be a serious deflation. Today 100caps could buy a 10mm gun, tomorrow the same 100caps (when saved) could buy an assault rifle, and the next week a improved plasma rifle plus combat armor.
As this does not happen (because Fonline economy is not created that way) caps become realy rare and often not available at all (from merchants).
Ways to improve monetary system in Fonline
I see two methods to fix the monetary system.
1. Keep Fiat money sytem, but change controll over it.
At the moment Brahmin herders and slave traders controll money system and creating way to much caps. That would be like the FED prints only 500$ every year.
personal remark:
I´m ignoring the interest topic in this thread, as I don´t want to start a discussion about real world economy problems.
So it would be a very easy solution, if the game masters supply the merchants with significant ammounts of caps from time to time manually. This could be also solved with a caps respawn programmed, but would need checking from time to time.
2. Change monetary system from fiat money to gold stuff standard
In the past most currencys used to be backed up by gold, the so called "gold standard".
So you could take your money to the bank and exchange it to a certain ammount of gold. As gold is existing only in small numbers in fonline, and (as far as I know) has no real use in fonline, it would not solve the problem to base caps on gold. It wouldn´t be very reasonable from a ingame point of view, and I guess total ammount of caps would be also to small and slowly growing.
But as I don´t know how much gold is created everyday (and this can be changed from the programmers) it would be possible to implement a working gold standard. Wouldn´t be 100% logical, but could work (and that´s most important).
I would prefer (and therefore I propose) to base fonline caps monetary system on "stuff".
Merchants dont need to have the item "caps" in their inventory, but just a button for balance the deal with the apropriate ammount of caps.
This is basicly giving the merchants an unlimited ammount of cash, but making their caps deposit unlootable (don´t know if you can loot merchants of their stuff, never tried this).
Explanation (I ingore barting and merchants profit):
Now: Player sells a 10mm gun to a merchant, he could get a 10mm gun in the same condition in return (I know this would be senseless).
Or he could sell it for 100 caps, if the merchant does have enough caps.
Vision:
Caps based on stuff means that caps are a coupon for stuff, so
1. you could still trade your 10mm gun for a 10mm gun, but
2. you could also give the merchant your 10mm gun, for a coupon/voucher for another 10mm gun.
That coupon would be 100 caps.
You can alway bring the 100 caps back and buy your 10mm gun, or whatelse is worth 100 caps.
This should be simple and working, without need for mantainance by the programmers.
Drawbacks
-If you kill the merchant and loot him of his stuff (if this is possible), you would have the caps and the stuff.
This problem is created by the merchants coupon/caps are accepted by everyone in fallout.
I see two solutions to this problem:
1. make merchants invulnerable or not lootable.
2. Give those unlimited caps only to few institutions.
Maybe make caps the official currency of the NCR, accepted also in the rest of the wasteland (except for enclave).
You can trade all stuff you want to a NCR (federal) bank, or army official (ingame explanation: NCR is buying for their arsenal, or ressources for their industry.) who stores all stuff in a perfectly safe vault, not reachable for anyone, in plain speak destroying the items. So you could sell everything to this NCR bank for caps, but you cannot buy anything from them, nor loot/steal.
This would also reduce the problem that merchants inventory is overgrowing with radios, bb gun ammo, 9mm mauser pistols and other stuff.
I will open another thread regarding this problem.
I hope my suggestions are read and prove somewhat usefull.
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Did you just entirely forget that merchants turn old stuff in their inventories into caps?
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I did not know this is done. I´ve read the manual and alot in the wiki, but found nothing about this.
The merchants of course don´t notify me about this when doing it and I don´t see other players transactions too.
If this is the way it works, than this is great news (for me).
Then replace my suggestions with this:
-Make merchants turn old stuff in their inventories into caps earlier.
-And maybe let them consider their stock condition somehow. So if they have 60 radios in their stock, let them turn 40 of them into cash immediately.
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Did you just entirely forget that merchants turn old stuff in their inventories into caps?
I never knew that. Brings a smile to me face though :D Do you know how long it takes for items to become 'old' ?
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-Make merchants turn old stuff in their inventories into caps earlier.
Won't solve anything unless they turned the stuff into caps in like one minute. The players sell so much useless farmed crap that freshly spawned caps are usually gone in about 30 minutes.
I'd rather have caps given to players mainly via quests. It encourages players to go after the rules of wasteland rather than farming and filling shops with gecko skins and other crap which nobody buys. It's just quests do not have any consequences - except shit shovelling which cleans up places.
Other way would be that merchants only buy stuff which some player could also buy. The stuff is turned into caps probably because npcs buy them, but honestly why do they buy everything? Shopkeepers already have some favourite items they want to buy but it's not helping. Players go around this with high barter or simply exchange stuff with differend merchants and finally turn it into caps. Our economy needs more player interaction since it's MMO. It would be completely acceptable that players sold useful stuff to merchants when they can't find a player customer at the moment and it was later bought by players again.
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I wonder if its possible to change timers per category.
i.e. Make the last tab where the millions of radios are to become caps every 1 hour. The medicine/food/drinks tab every 3 hours, ammo and weapons every 5 and armor every 6.
Also I would suggest the alternative of it happening slowly over time... ie every 5 minutes 4-5 items (or a percentage) of items become caps.
The effects are that people dont wait until a vendor ends up brimming with caps (like 5 - 10k) and go and sell a truck load of crap and horde it but that there is usually a trickle of caps that makes it wortwhile to actually hang around in the city.
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I love it. "I've been played for a while and now I'm gonna spam forum with my brilliant suggestions!".
Stackable radios, well well well, nobody figured it out before. More caps in stores - uh, I didn't know that they are spawning every 6 hours now. And so on, and on.
I'm not against suggestions at all, I'm against suggestions from people who play/test game for a month or week.
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God forbid people bring in new ideas and a fresh perspective and thins they notice after 1 week/month of playing.
wait... isnt an open beta supposed to be open?
If Devs only want the veterans opionion they can just close the beta and only give access to the 20-30-50 people that still play since the beginning of development.
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Dude, if he suggests something already suggested many times (stackable radios) or done (caps respawn), what else I can say?
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I like the idea of more often but smaller capsitazation? When people see there are caps they go to the tent all the junk. Replenishment over time would actually make it worthwile to hang around town, socialize whatever.
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@Wichura
If you read my opening post thoroughly, you would notice that my suggestions go way beyond that what is already implemented.
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The idea of balancing a trade with caps was used in Fallout Tactics and it was cool. Well, they didn't use caps but some kind of paper money, but in FOnline it would work with caps. I also like the idea of trading stuff in NCR.
There is a real problem with merchants giving away all their money accepting unbuyable items. I already made a suggestions to add new jobs so there are many more ways to create money. Right now the brahmin shit/boxes system does not work I think. Quest money rewards are ok, but maybe there aren't enough quests. The solution however would be to change the economy system (like you have suggested) and/or adding new jobs.
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Why not make caps craftable?
They could be highly restricted. Requirements similar to third level of proffesion and nescessity to pay lot of caps for licence. Cooldown and material requirements making it less profitable than crafting and selling stuff.
With that players would be able to regulate caps economy on need basis.
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Economy is pretty well balanced coz u missed 1 big money income feature:
town lockers... each town makes 1500+ caps per hour (longer control more caps, i remember the time when we got about 20+k caps per hour from BH).
Big TC gangs spending this money to buy weapons ammo and armors from crafters(each big gang have it's own permanent stuff supplyers).
If u really want to become reach, join big deals in black market.
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Economy is pretty well balanced coz u missed 1 big money income feature:
town lockers... each town makes 1500+ caps per hour (longer control more caps, i remember the time when we got about 20+k caps per hour from BH).
Big TC gangs spending this money to buy weapons ammo and armors from crafters(each big gang have it's own permanent stuff supplyers).
If u really want to become reach, join big deals in black market.
lol 1.5k an hour is terrible and you'll lose at least 30 times that just doing TC. Luckily for me I play when everyone else sleeps so i have unrestricted access to every merchants cap supply all night but if you play during the day everything gets drained too fast.
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lol 1.5k an hour is terrible and you'll lose at least 30 times that just doing TC. Luckily for me I play when everyone else sleeps so i have unrestricted access to every merchants cap supply all night but if you play during the day everything gets drained too fast.
The point is not in loosing stuff during TC. The point is what TC provide whole server with unlimited amounts of cheap caps. =)
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The point is not in loosing stuff during TC. The point is what TC provide whole server with unlimited amounts of cheap caps. =)
More like it provides the biggest gang with a tiny amount of caps compared to what they already have from more profitable endeavors.
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The point is not in loosing stuff during TC. The point is what TC provide whole server with unlimited amounts of cheap caps. =)
But the ammo you shoot and stuff you lose while controling the town is worth more than the town you control fives back so you actually destroying stuff and turn it to caps just like vendor but worse...
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check my suggestions http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=9661.0 :P
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i support this idea... theres a really big gap between the number of players and the number of caps available
unlimited amount of caps in npcs is the right thing to do, u may argue, but you would be wrong.. my proof? its easy.. the real world
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The real world doesn't have unlimited money. The 2238 world has lots of money already, its up to players to get their share of it.
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@Solar
That is just not true, as I explained in my opening post.
There are different types of "money", such with inherent value (Goldcoins for example), money which is backed up by real value (gold standard, stuff standard, whatever), and money which has only value, because government tells you it has (forces you to use and accept it). Last type is "fiat money", relatively new type of money and our actual money system in western countries. Fiat money system is failing right now, but that is not the point.
Fiat money is unlimited. You, the devs could insert unlimited ammount of money to every player if you wished to (don´t do it!).
This would lead to "none items available everywhere", as inflation (rising prices, due to lack of goods and/or abundance of money) is not implemented in Fonline (except for mercs etc.).
Real world governments could create "unlimited" money also, though it would loose its worth, as goods are never unlimited.
The US and european governments are doing this right now, so we will see inflation in the coming years. Dollar, Euro, and british Pound will become more or less
worthless! I´ll bet 2000€ this will happen the next 10 years.
So much for fiat money.
If money/caps would be backed up, or made out of gold nuggets (gold caps), then money would be limited by gold nugget production in Fonline.
If money/caps would be backed up by "stuff", then total ammount of money would be limited by ammount of stuff crafted/savenged/whatever.
You could back up caps with weapons also, or every other item.
Someone mentioned already that Fallout tactics had merchants with unlimited money (so they had stuff based currency).
And this concept was just working fine. Less anoying, faster and you didn´t became too rich to easy.
You could create your legal stuff based money in real world.
Start accepting stuff (whatever) by people and don´t pay them money, but give them an I.O.Y.
I.O.Y. a Car-Radio for example. This person with your I.O.Y. could go to the local bakery and might be able to buy some buns for this I.O.Y.
At least if you are well known to the bakerys personell and they trust you.
Same thing with real world money. You can buy your food with Dollar, Pounds, Euros, whatever just because the seller is trusting the value of the money.
He believes/is sure that he can buy tomorrow stuff with "money". But that is not guaranteed by physics laws, but just by state laws.
And every paper based currency always declined to the materiel worth of the money, sooner or later.
As caps are just bottle caps if nobody accepts it, real life money is just a sheet of paper, or a piece of cheap metal, if it is no longer acceptet.
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By the way losing money during TC is not a bad thing... you lose money when you are out leveling too... the reward comes from actually playing the game. MMOs are repetitive but ussually fun (because you interact/kill another person and not a computer AI which makes it inherently more challenging).
As for the economy emulating it into a game is kind of impossible.
And although real life merchants dont have "endless money" they could just as well have because in real life a consumer rarely offers products in return. Your employment pays you money and those money you give to the merchants.
In FOnline you kill things, steal things and scavenge things and then try to sell them to a merchant for caps or other things. Hence it would be better for the economy if the merchant ALWAYS has money.
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In Diablo 2 , the normal gold (money) wasnt worth shit unless for some people gambling nonstop at the trader. Trading was done with usefull items or items like Gems or Runes which could enhance items or even "craft" new ones.
I could imagine ammo to become the new currency, like 10 10mmJHP is 5 10mmAP, 10 10mmAP is 5 5mmJHP and so on or something like that.
Don't see any reason for money in this game anyway. After a war money is worth shit and someone with 10 million caps cant do something with it if the other one cant see any use in this money and wants ammo or food instead.
I think the money in Fallout (not Fonline) was just created to enhance your wealth without using up too much carry weight.
As for me i would delete bottle caps from the game. Any caps needes would be made into item-requirements (EW 1 "bring me X electronic parts")
Ah remember this is just thinking and dreaming what could be, i know it would need some requirements to work and some would not like it and what devs say, well i dont give a shit, this is just a little idea i wanted to share.
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Fiat money is unlimited.
I was TL:DR the rest after this. Money is not unlimited in the real world in practise. A government could produce as much as it liked sure. We could also churn out as many caps as we want, but restrict it in the ways we all already know.
I'm not saying its perfect now, I'm saying the volume coming in is more than sufficient. We could do with much better ways of distributing it, sure.
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The real world doesn't have unlimited money. The 2238 world has lots of money already, its up to players to get their share of it.
yes but theres more money than "players" :P
the point is that they wont share it becouse money, like the founder of this topic said, is used for many other importante things: buying base, mercs, cars, blah blah blah... so if u look at things if theres more ways to spend than to earned it
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yes but theres more money than "players" :P
the point is that they wont share it becouse money, like the founder of this topic said, is used for many other importante things: buying base, mercs, cars, blah blah blah... so if u look at things if theres more ways to spend than to earned it
In Diablo 2 , the normal gold (money) wasnt worth shit unless for some people gambling nonstop at the trader. Trading was done with usefull items or items like Gems or Runes which could enhance items or even "craft" new ones.
I could imagine ammo to become the new currency, like 10 10mmJHP is 5 10mmAP, 10 10mmAP is 5 5mmJHP and so on or something like that.
Don't see any reason for money in this game anyway. After a war money is worth shit and someone with 10 million caps cant do something with it if the other one cant see any use in this money and wants ammo or food instead.
I think the money in Fallout (not Fonline) was just created to enhance your wealth without using up too much carry weight.
As for me i would delete bottle caps from the game. Any caps needes would be made into item-requirements (EW 1 "bring me X electronic parts")
Ah remember this is just thinking and dreaming what could be, i know it would need some requirements to work and some would not like it and what devs say, well i dont give a shit, this is just a little idea i wanted to share.
i was thinking about a way to encourage people in investing in a black market with other "item" as a currency, the problem is the weight, ammo could be a the right way to go but the problem is the weigh
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yes but theres more money than "players" :P
the point is that they wont share it becouse money, like the founder of this topic said, is used for many other importante things: buying base, mercs, cars, blah blah blah... so if u look at things if theres more ways to spend than to earned it
Theres already a few million caps on the game, as I say, the amount is fine (or even too much).
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I do not know but should really be the greatest challenge in getting a profession finding some merchant with caps? It seems more to me that primary requirements are skills and stats. I spend two hours searching every trader in guarded and unguarded towns for caps. And i found only something around 2k caps.
And if there are only few milions of caps ingame i can see the problem. The richest people of gang can usually accumulate few hundreds of thousands of caps.
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u need caps?
speak to this guy
http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=9650.0
belive me he has the caps as many as u want,
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I think the current system with caps is okay.
There are caps regularly in certain shops.
Also you can trade items for other items, for instance ammo so you don't have to go mining regularly.
I would be much more interested in seeing different pricing based upon geographical location on top of pricing based upon the interest of the trader.
For instance uranium ore costs 125 in BH and BH caravans, but would cost 175 in NCR, 225 in Junktown, 250 in the Hub, 300 in Adytum, etc.
Towns like NCR with mines would have normal prices for anything craftable from normal minerals and ore, but higher prices for stuff made from hq ore and minerals.
Meat and hides would be cheaper in Modoc than everywhere else, hq and the stuff made from it would be cheaper in Gecko, BH and Redding, drugs and medical supplies would be cheaper in VC, etc.
Stuff like skins and scorpion tails could be the same price in all towns they're close too, but more in SF where they're further from.
Also as raiders mostly get stolen stuff, everything should be cheaper there.
All of this includes both buying and selling.
Downside is that I think this is hard to build in.
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well for any manger changes in the Economy i think it woud have to be done after the whip for buying meaks gun that use and lilike say for the 14m user 300ap ammo and a 14mm gun the hire wooed take the scruples ammo and sell it in her in
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Why not implement barter to haggle base prices, not only increaseing the amount of prices goods are sold and bought for, but maybe even make a profession under the name "Caravaneer" where a character can become the caravan leader and make trips across the wasteland with his/ or her band of Mercenaries, slaves, players, and an occasional dog.
I just have so many Ideas I cant begin to describe them in less then 100,980,654,343 hours!
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Ill quote myself. I also firmly believe the economy is not fixed at the moment.
Everybody knows hows the shops you visit like: tons of radios, and other non stackable items and of course no caps. Im so grateful for an economy one needs to camp or travel through many towns just to acquire currency, ironically though to travel fast enough one needs a car now (bought by caps you nor vendor has). The demand for caps raised with implementation of cars but supply remains constant and also, its almost impossible to find caps in southern towns at any time, which means you cant progress in game not risking being killed (caps are demanded like a basic thing but acquisition of it is troublesome). An one more thing... the economy is now, is not really player-based because of farmed weapons in shops....thats why I suggest following:
Either make some NPCs drop not weapons but caps or more of it or:
1) make a division of vendors in towns:
- Standard vendor- buys/sells only brand new items (excluding radios) and HAS caps replenishment - requires Ch3 (the oldest item disappears)
- Pawn shop vendor - buys/sells new and deteriorated items and DOESNT HAVE replenishment - requires Ch1
That way economy can be player-based. New items are crafted and crafters are rewarded by new items or caps. At standard vendor people could only pay with new items or caps, that way, we would have some real shop, caps would flow from players more often.
2) Profession trainers' fee could be paid in caps or items the NPC demands, for example:
Gunsmith lvl1 (1500 caps or:)
- 10mm pistol (0% det) x 2
- shotgun (0%) x 2
- 100 10mm JHP
- 100 slugs
Gunsmith lvl 2 (3000 caps or:)
- desert eagle x2
- Tommy Gun
- Grease gun
- 500 magnum FMJ
Gunsmith lvl 3 (4500 caps or:)
- Assault Rifle x2
- Combat Shotgun
- FN FAL
- 14mm AP x 500
Of course items could vary, so it would be like quest-like. The problem now is that when theres not enough caps you cant progress with the game, youre stuck (in other words, if you play in peak time = youre fucked)
3) Faster caps replenishment at vendors
I already wrote about that (http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=9824.0), but its one of the things that in combine with previous two points would make it even better:
4) NPCs buying all the shit for caps:
We could have vendors buying useless crap for caps. They would buy things for 5% of the value, so it would be like last resort to get caps. Im not in favor of this solution as it can increase caps superficially (but it would also destroy useless crap spammed at vendors)
5) More varied recyclable NPCs
I liked the idea in junktown NPC buying spears for 50 caps, just imagine radio seeker NPC!
6) ?? Your suggestions!