Another Share - A UO Unbound Benchmark

[Tresdni]

I was driving to work thinking about how out of wack the UO economy gets after some time of being online, and started thinking of an innovative way to fix that before it ever happened on Unbound. What I came up with is quite a great idea in my opinion, so I started coding away.

What I've come up with is a global scalable economy, which is based on the number of accounts and the amount of player owned gold in the world.

How does this work then?

It works much like any real world economy would. More gold owned by the players essentially makes the gold worth less, in turn, they sell their rares and goods at higher costs. Vendors will now do the same.

More gold in the world will scale vendors prices on items to match that of the economy's, completely automated. Not just vendors though, I've went a bit on the extra mile with this. As the economy grows, so will things such as vendor upkeep, town upkeep, guild foundation costs, etc.

Now, just like a real market, a player even has the opportunity to buy vendor goods when the market is low, and sell when it is high, because even the "vendor sell" prices scale with the economy size. Want to get vendor prices lower? Spend your gold! The less gold there is in the economy, the more it is worth and the vendors will adjust back down to normal costs.

Now for the future of Unbound, even if someone were to make millions upon millions, they would spend it at a rate in which the economy would still be normal, and once spent, it will look normal as well.

Anyways, I wanted to let you guys know about this exciting system I'm developing, I have a bit more testing to do, but my algorithm is looking spot on at the moment

If you would like to catch more updates on what I'm developing for Unbound, feel free to visit us and sign up on our forums! We still do not have an ETA on release yet, but we are getting closer and closer folks.

www.uounbound.com

 

[Milva]

I agree this has happened on many servers Excellent idea your idea should help to keep a balance!

 

[Hank]

UO economy sure is difficult to balance in the late game, I like this idea better then doing massive gold sink ideas or item sinks (clean up brit)
There is no final solution on mmo's when it comes to economies just like the real world. But every step in the right direction can help preserve these virtual currencies for extended times.

a player even has the opportunity to buy vendor goods when the market is low, and sell when it is high

This is beautiful and it reminds me of Eve online. I can't say more, great idea.

Want to get vendor prices lower? Spend your gold!

What happens if all the rich players decide to dump their gold all at the same time? is there a safe guard or can they really screw up the system if they wanted for a short or extended time. making things virtually worthless in a manner of speaking.

 

[Tresdni]

What happens if all the rich players decide to dump their gold all at the same time? is there a safe guard or can they really screw up the system if they wanted for a short or extended time. making things virtually worthless in a manner of speaking.

Then the global prices would drop to adjust to the economic change, starting player gold would drop, guilds would then be cheaper to establish, and some of those that didn't sell out in time would lose vendor value of their goods, just like a real stock market drop

I am still tweaking with my algorithm, and I am about to start on the housing market. In this, my equation will consider the number of homes in the world as well. More homes, equals less space to place a home, essentially making that space more valuable.

While I know that no economy can be perfect, as in real life, this is one hell of a jump forward for Ultima Online's. The reason it works so well for a shard like Unbound, is that we don't have auto looters, or massive gold drops, or things of that nature...but also I am writing the system in a sense, where if I were to distribute this package that I'm writing (haven't decided yet, and it wouldn't be for awhile til after Unbound is up and going), that it will be easily adjustable to suit a shard's needs.

Another thing to note, is that I am not scaling loot drops. That would defeat the purpose of the scaling to begin with, because gold would then just go up, up, up, forever. This system is more based on how much money is in people's pockets style. Spend that money, it makes it more rare, hence its worth more, and costs less to buy goods with.

 

[Kalamus]

I'm not trying to bash this idea in any way as I really like it but I'd really like to see how this plays out over a long period of time. Sounds almost foolproof but I can't help to think what this might do for new players that come in really late.

People will hoard, it's what people do. Overtime I see people getting stocked up with what they need and then they just start hoarding. Once this happen and gold isn't being drained out as much everything is going to be too expensive for new players too afford anything. The only thing I can think of is still having some kind of gold sink balance to help with this matter. Meaning there are things players 'must' buy all the time, kind of like regs (LRC has to go!).

Anyway, keep up the good work. Really like the direction this is heading and hope you do distribute this package or share your algorithms for us geeks once you get it finished

 

[Tresdni]

We do indeed have many gold sinks in place as a counter. On Unbound, players can literally landscape/design their own cities, which costs gold. We have a custom Merchant's guild people must join to place a house in Luna or Zento, we will be offering donation coins for gold for those that cannot afford to donate (this will be a big one), etc, etc.

Many factors in play here

Oh also, if things got way too out of wack, I could literally just open up an options gump, and change the scale.

 

[IanSmellios]

What a great system! I can't wait to see it in action!
Great job @Tresdni !!

 

[Kalamus]

Good to hear. Knowing you have those gold sinks in place then it should play out rather well. It's one thing to have gold sinks, its another when those gold sinks constantly change prices depending on how much gold is in the market . Like I said, sounds foolproof.

 

[Tresdni]

Just wanted to note also, this morning I wrote a new subclass for gold, which will be given to new characters, instead of starting them with normal gold. Normally, players can just farm new accounts and rack up gold like mentioned before...not anymore.

This new gold type is spendable anywhere just like regular gold. It doesn't affect the algorithm for the market scale, and it cannot be transferred to other players, or even dropped on the ground. It cannot be converted to regular gold in any way. The character that gets it when created, must be the one to spend it

Now, without limits, I can scale this "New Player Gold" to match the current market at time of character creation, and each new character even down the road will have the same start as any other created before him/her.

Pretty rad!

 

[Hank]

Normally, players can just farm new accounts and rack up gold

They do? lol scrubs...
How much gold are you giving new players? even 1000 starting gold isn't enough to be worth farming at the risk of being banned. most shards have a rule against "farming" starter gold.
I could start a new character and make 5 or 10 times that in an hour to two hours easy.

 

[Tresdni]

They sure do. Lol...I like your style Hank.

 

[Hank]

They sure do. Lol...I like your style Hank.

is that sarcasm I'm sensing?

I guess another detail that eludes me is how many accounts are you going to allow players to have? Even if they had 4 accounts with 7 character slots. They could only make 28k every 7 days.
unless you have reduced the amount of time it takes before a character can be deleted.

 

[Tresdni]

Wasn't sarcasm at all...I've been drinkin a bit tonight. Farming gold is mostly done by players that use proxies and create over 100 accounts. I've had to deal with this a LOT in the past.

 

[Hank]

Wasn't sarcasm at all...I've been drinkin a bit tonight. Farming gold is mostly done by players that use proxies and create over 100 accounts. I've had to deal with this a LOT in the past.

have a sip for me!
I wasn't aware people would take it quite that far. I guess I'm just not that devious minded. thanks for bringing this kind of activity to my attention.