The Treasure System

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Dennis
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Dennis »

Right, that's the intent of discussion, it shapes and changes the ideas as it gets discussed. I opened with supposing a purely single source (combat) of the alt coin and you returned issues with valuation of existing currency. Before we get too wrapped up in the back and forth I want to put forth the baseline of where I'm approaching this from. I'm not an economist but here's a brief summary of game economies I stole from a textbook.

Four Economic Functions
Economies commonly include four functions that affect resources and move them around. These are mechanics called sources, drains, converters, and traders. We describe them here. Again, this is a summary; for further details, see Chapter 10 of Fundamentals of Game Design.

Sources are mechanics that create new resources out of nothing. At a certain time, or upon certain conditions, a source will generate a new resource and store it in an entity somewhere. Sources may be triggered by events in the game, or they may operate continuously, producing resources at a certain production rate. They may also be switched on and off. In simulation games, money is often generated by a source at intervals, with the amount of money created proportional to the population. As another example, some games that involve combat automatically regenerate health over time.
Drains are the opposite of sources: They take resources out of the game, reducing the amount stored in an entity and removing them permanently. In simulation games in which it is necessary to feed a population, the food is drained at a rate proportional to the population. It does not go anywhere or turn into anything else; it simply disappears. In shooter games, ammunition is drained by firing weapons.
Converters turn resources of one kind into another. As we mentioned, in Warcraft, trees (a tangible resource) turn into lumber (an intangible one) when the trees are harvested. The act of harvesting is a converter mechanic that converts trees into lumber at a specific rate: A given number of trees will produce a given amount of lumber. Many simulation games include technology upgrades that enable players to improve the efficiency of the converter mechanics in the game, causing them to produce more of the new resource from the old one.
Traders are mechanics that move a resource from one entity to another, and another resource back in the opposite direction, according to an exchange rule. If a player buys a shield from a blacksmith for three gold pieces, the trader mechanic transfers the gold from the player’s cash entity to the blacksmith’s and transfers the shield from the blacksmith’s inventory to the player’s. Traders are not the same as converters. Nothing is created or destroyed; things are just exchanged.

When we're looking at the riln economy, we can identify that riln is a resource that's converted at the market or obtained from raw sources like looting bodies or treasure chests. Crafters exchange their goods for riln. What you're referring to is the trading of riln from one individual to another through an exchange of goods, e.g. buying that large animal shed from toxtli for 50 thousand riln. Drains are npc shops that take riln out of the game permanently, such as when buying a farm animal or a warhorse.

By creating a parallel economy you aren't disrupting the exchange because all of the aforementioned economic exchanges are still occuring. What you have is an alternate economic currency that has a significantly smaller volume being moved. Alt. coins, or even rare resources like the one that Rias mentioned, are simply the same thing but you're looking at smaller volumes in scale because the converters and sources are smaller. It's like saying bitcoin is the only thing people will accept for a car. Bitcoin is an alternative at a specific dealer, but largely people are still using the standard currency of their country!

I do want to say that much like with individual intentions like when CvC was discussed, valuable items and how they're valued and who values them in what manner isn't necessarily something we can foresee from where we are right now.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
Acarin
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Acarin »

My point is that the problem comes when riln is easy to get and only used to sustain basic functionality and a secondary currency is the only way to acquire unique, rare or interesting items... this will artificially deflate the value of riln and result in a drive to make transactions only in the new currency. In order for both currencies to continue to be meaningful, both currencies need to be "exchangeable" or able to be used to purchase more valuable commodities/items. If you can only spend riln on basic supplies and upkeep, getting paid some riln for a service is no longer going to be meaningful once you hit a reasonable amount in your account (meaning post-level 20). Too many games with multiple currencies get ridiculous fast and quickly devalue their primary currency.
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
Ephemeralis
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Ephemeralis »

Perhaps consider adding some more 'bespoke' customization items to the treasure system? Dyes are a good example of this in that they only seem to come from chests, but could be expanded to include other things that might modify the appearance of weapons like varnish/finishes for wooden items, tints for metals, special heads that allow detailed embossing and other things that might let crafters create more intricate designs by allowing them to write custom descriptions, things like that.

Very rare and small bits of rare treasure-chest only materials could be interesting too. Wurm Online had something similar in moon metals, which only came from events or time-gated rewards that made extremely good gear. Because WO also needed raw materials of the same type to repair tools made from them, there was always demand for them and they stayed valuable throughout the better part of a decade.

Things like treasure maps (go to a certain wilderness tile and dig with a shovel to pull up an extra hard lockbox filled full of good stuff), ruin keys, custom-skinned ESP crystals (maybe even crystals that people can embed/attach into gear to have that item be their ESP one?).

The economy is a bit of a different topic but on that front, there needs to be wayyyyy more riln sinks. Horses should cost more to maintain, maybe more house offerings in town that require greater riln upkeep? Work orders that let crafters convert time and riln (via special purchasable materials) into reputation with their faction could be interesting, and possibly even influence their strength in coded CvC stuff.
Dennis
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Dennis »

Warning: long and has a back and forth element that addresses multiple discussion points:

Yeah, and not to take away from the original intent of the thread, I'm going to loop it back real quick.

Treasure chests yields are at the moment the same regardless of level difficulty of the creature you kill for it. A tiered system was proposed to increase distributions across player levels for satisfaction. There was a general consensus as to this but alternate valued items to avoid riln bloat was proposed.

What contents are included was suggested as rarity based loot so frequency of objectively high value items are seen more often in high level chests compared to low level chests, e.g. ruby vs quartz.

We also discussed possibly a secondary currency or commodity exchanged token, rarer and with lower volume that would be given its own subset of merchants. You described a fear that players would stop valuing the natural riln as a currency because the alternate coin would render it worthless. You also supposed that by locking it within chests it is rendered as the only exchange method causing the riln to lose value.

That's how we got to where we are now in the thread, analysis of game economies.

While I agree that there is too much volume of riln created stemming from having too many converters and sources as compared to drains, or rather that drains and traders are heavily weighed against crafters. But a lack of content is just that, and while combat characters don't have much of anything to spend their riln on, that is a separate issue looping back to your statement there's nothing valuable to spend your money on. I'm of the mind that over the years, content will appear where you can spend your money if you're willing to let it go.

To refute your statement that no one will take riln and only seek the alternative coin, there are many measures to take into account to reduce these risks. For one, you can time limit the tokens so that they're only present for exchanges at certain times of the year. See: genshin impact's lantern festival, where the event currency is only obtained during the event time, and exchanged only at event vendors whereby afterwards, they are deleted from existence or lose their value.

Alternatively you could make the alternative coin untradable, so that only items exchanged at merchants can be exchanged on the market while the currency itself is locked for one reason or another, e.g. blood bound. The items you exchange for will have an intrinsic value without necessarily replacing the purpose of the crafter, like one time use items and boons or average equipment of sturdy materials.

A modest proposal to give crafters a source other than players and tasks is a currency exchange that would net negative riln in exchanges, with fees included to increase the number of drains. The only way to retain riln value in any economy is to have more drains than sources!

I suppose my point is to say that such an alternative economy drives riln prices and empowers it, rather than detracting. The controlling authorities, like the devs, are able to subtly remove riln from circulation this way.

Now I do note that many combat players dabble in crafting so they can reduce their costs and reduce the need to trade among each other. This is most often handwaved with "there aren't people when I need them" but I believe that the extremes of "only crafts never combats" and "only combats never crafts" are far and few in between.

Also lastly is to say that these exchanges and conversions are already happening. Currency is just a base label I'm using to refer to exchanging one thing for another thing. anomalum chalk is being used in exchange for magic, etc. I suppose you could say they tie back to the central exchange so it would be reasonable that any alt coin would do the same. Even if a merchant was created to only take rubies as exchange, for example, it would not result in everyone only accepting rubies as payment.

But I stand by the original statement that I don't want to see excessive riln to be the standard reward for being a high level player. I make a point to say that rubies are only valued highly because they exchange for high riln. By creating an item with an indirect converter you are avoiding bloating the primary currency of riln while introducing new content accessible by everyone. The items exchanged for can be sold on the market exchange. Yes, they may have high trading costs associated due to assumed rarity and that's fine! Just because someone says a golden statue of poop is worth a million riln doesn't mean someone is going to buy the golden statue of poop. Values will be determined through market movement. By no means do I want any single item exchanged to be extremely limited in volume with exceptions, I want a healthy loop developed to support the central one.
Last edited by Dennis on Mon Mar 22, 2021 7:36 am, edited 6 times in total.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
Dennis
Posts: 218
Joined: Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:46 am

Re: The Treasure System

Post by Dennis »

Ephemeralis wrote: Mon Mar 22, 2021 5:54 am Perhaps consider adding some more 'bespoke' customization items to the treasure system? Dyes are a good example of this in that they only seem to come from chests, but could be expanded to include other things that might modify the appearance of weapons like varnish/finishes for wooden items, tints for metals, special heads that allow detailed embossing and other things that might let crafters create more intricate designs by allowing them to write custom descriptions, things like that.

Very rare and small bits of rare treasure-chest only materials could be interesting too. Wurm Online had something similar in moon metals, which only came from events or time-gated rewards that made extremely good gear. Because WO also needed raw materials of the same type to repair tools made from them, there was always demand for them and they stayed valuable throughout the better part of a decade.

Things like treasure maps (go to a certain wilderness tile and dig with a shovel to pull up an extra hard lockbox filled full of good stuff), ruin keys, custom-skinned ESP crystals (maybe even crystals that people can embed/attach into gear to have that item be their ESP one?).

The economy is a bit of a different topic but on that front, there needs to be wayyyyy more riln sinks. Horses should cost more to maintain, maybe more house offerings in town that require greater riln upkeep? Work orders that let crafters convert time and riln (via special purchasable materials) into reputation with their faction could be interesting, and possibly even influence their strength in coded CvC stuff.
Separate post so it's not lost in my big ol D grade essay.

Oh for sure. I'm a huge advocate for adding content instead of subtracting it! More content items like bespoke skins/versions of existing weapons and armor, treasure hunts to delay gratification and add adventure, alternate ways of exchanging riln for rare resources like reputation are all fantastic ideas. To be concise I suppose we were just talking how many hoops you'd need to jump through to achieve them, and fears of rung climbers trying to skip hoops and thereby causing an artificial bottleneck. Hmm.

I think more upkeep costs either in time or riln especially for single purchase things like warhorses would help with increasing places to spend riln on, like if stable, heal, and maintainable costs for horses were scaled to the horse value. That is to say, much like how there is a constant time cost to owning a farm animal there should be one to owning a warhorse such as cleaning shed and feeding, with the size of stable needed/quality of feed being smaller for cheaper horses. But that's probably a separate discussion. Time costs are just as valuable if not more valuable than riln costs as it reduces time spent earning riln.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
Dennis
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Dennis »

But wait, there's more!

Because I hate talking in vague terms, I put together a hypothetical time limited currency, merchant, and items to use as a talking point. Disclaimer of "I'm a player who is just vomiting content ideas, and not staff" applies here.

Item: Bandit Crests, obtained through chests, as a rare drop from killing highwaymen, or a rare drop from completing special event delivery tasks.
Merchant: Bandit Crest Collector, a strange armored warrior wearing glimmering chitinous armor, who is at the Hanged Man Inn (in this example, let’s say the month of May)

Bandit Crest Exchange:
(Carapace is just effectively ridgeleather fine+ armor)

Item - cost
Carapace Helmet 2 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Gorget 2 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Breastplate 5 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Vambraces 1 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Gauntlets 2 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Legging 3 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Boots 2 thousand riln + 100 Bandit Crests
Carapace Shards 10 Bandit Crests
Energy Tonic 10 Bandit Crests
Anomalum Chalk 5 Bandit Crests

In this example there’s a content item given that has an associated value that uses both central currency and collectible items to achieve it. This has a modest face value cost for a single player who wants to obtain every armor piece, and creates a content item that is only repaired through exchanging these tokens obtained through the chest system. However, the merchant is also offering incentives for players who aren’t using the carapace armor in the form of one-time expended items. Innocently, the merchant is also offering an item that normally already has a riln cost, and people will subconsciously assign the value of Bandit Crests off that exchange rate even though the exchange is single-directional only. This creates a downward pressure on cost/value of the token, while emphasizing the value of the central currency without ever directly exchanging riln for item. Surprised pikachu face, there is no value to this token! There is no source for it from the direct converter market. You can also plan for future value of armor by taking into consideration things like: do I want to make this a one time merchant? What happens as scarcity of repair materials occurs? A possible solution would be to introduce, when supply is scarce, player crafted solutions that cost time and riln to produce.

These tokens lose all value during the time when the merchants are absent, therefore there is no incentive to accept only the token as currency.

In this example there exists a loop whereby players who are using carapace gear are going to want to use their crests in order to maintain it, and will pay crafters to do so (or if they have the skill themselves, do it themselves.) If you want to mitigate a low skill investment repair of the content, you can skill-threshold repairing to 200 or 300+ so that only people who have significantly invested into the crafting tree can do so.

Do I foresee people solely exchanging services for bandit crests? No, because there are a lot of things that you need riln to buy, and bandit crests are only exchanged during these particular times of the year or for these particular items. I believe that people may barter to exchange bandit crests for services, yes, but they could also very well just exchange riln for the end result item to bypass the entire collecting phase.

Do mind that this system is already in place, in COGG! You can loot husks from tarruks, a collectible item used to exchange for healing items through ability conversions. The husk itself has no value at market but the resulting produced item does. It is also produced at such low volume that there is incentive to drive individuals to seek it.
"Always remember that we are a community before anything else. Before being a 'game' or a 'world' we are a bunch of folk who get together to have fun."
Acarin
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Acarin »

Dennis, I entirely understand the suggestion. This type of approach works great when you're trying to make an item event exclusive or sell in game currency for real money but I don't think it works here. My point is that everyone quickly reaches a level where they have enough riln to deal with maintenance and then just accumulate riln without appropriate sinks.

The intent behind another currency it would be to make it rarer/higher value for purchase of more special or rare items. If my riln cannot purchase any special/valuable items after I get that shiny warhorse, then I will be almost exclusively looking for the new currency. In your example, you provide a common item type that is not desirable to all (only to dreadnoughts and guardians, maybe?) and some other items at a very low cost. In this case, the new currency is not valued by most as they don't need heavy armor and the other temp items are super cheap. Aside from this feeling very cheesy, the new currency would not be valued because it provides less value than riln unless you specifically want that armor set. If a variety of options and interesting items were available that appealed to all and these items were not available by means of riln, then I think the result would be different.

I do get this type of economics in video games (MMORPGs are often ridiculous with these currencies and only include them so they can sell currency packages and make money) but really think it should be avoided here.

Like I said, I think it would depend on how it was implemented. If you make it too valuable, it becomes the only thing people will accept because they already have a riln surplus. If it's not valuable enough, no one wants it.

I would rather see efforts be expended on developing an expanded treasure system that makes people want to hunt harder mobs, and stimulates more player trading... along with rare item merchants as a riln sink.
You reach toward ((DEV Rias)) ... Pull(d225([1]x)):214 vs Mark(d1100):714 = -500 (-222%)
You notice ((DEV Rias)) glance your way, causing you to quickly withdraw your hand from his wool
drawstring pouch (open).
Roundtime: 5 seconds.
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nobody
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by nobody »

I started to fall into the trap of trying to make a game economics argument but really the more I've thought about this the more my answer has leaned toward: If you can make interesting and compelling lore around there being a second currency that some groups use, then go for it. If you can't support the system with lore, it isn't worth debating about the economic ramifications.
Dennis
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Dennis »

Thanks for deflating my ego, I was on a monologue extreme there!

I would say if nothing else I like my cheese, and I challenge the idea by suggesting that you can keep the novelty of treasure tokens up by changing out what event items are offered throughout the year and what tokens are collected.

You're right in that I'm not proposing that the alternate coin be a high value resource, it is merely a mechanism by which to give it a common type low value. If your mechanism by which value is determined is based on the assumption of value in riln it circulates back to the originating problem!

Anyway I think we both made our points on that clear! This was only addressing 1 part of the treasure system altogether. Thanks for letting me learn something new!

I think interesting items being of a very rare gacha pull would be nice. Some items I'd suggest:

Melee item equivalents to the quivering bowstring, e.g. quivering x blade, quivering y head.
Fortifying potions, drink to increase max energy for a while stacking with other max energy increasing abilities.
Ommin-Di's protection charms, wear to gain protection from cold, only lasts a few bells and ticks down from the moment it's acquired.
Spell tapestries, where you can draw the occult diagram and it will protect the symbols until you roll it out and step on it.
Elementally charged weapons, flaming swords, ice aura spears things that could be enchanted and recharged by an arcanist.
Poisons and oils to apply to your blade to deal additional effects.
More crafting recipe components e.g. planks, worked furniture items, armor component pieces, potent herbs, ingots, coal, tin, recipe cards
alternate skins of ammunition like iron sling skulls.
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Rias
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Re: The Treasure System

Post by Rias »

Small steps toward this, but from recent changelogs:

- The Loot Luck mechanic is now influenced by the combat difficulty of looted mobs, or local mobs in the case of scavenging. Tougher mobs will have increased chances of more and better loot in their lockboxes.
- Added more gem types to the treasure system.
- Added more potential colors/asterisms to existing gem types.
- Gem value is now more heavily based on the gem's rarity, and now also factors in the rarity of the gem's specific color/asterism/etc.
- Gems generated by the treasure system no longer commonly have varying sizes: Gems of the same type should always be the same size, and will no longer include the size in their short description. Rare exceptions may occur.
- Gems generated by the treasure system will now always be Average quality or better.
<Rias> PUT ON PANTS
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