Haven And Hearthonomics (also fuck Diablo 3)

[brohammed]

http://mises.org/daily/6435/A-Virtual-W ... Game-World

That article discusses hyperinflation in the popular and shit game Diablo 3. I don't really know much economics, I only have a chemistry degree. But it was a very interesting read and made me remember H&H.

I've played H&H for 600 hours, since W3, which is admittedly not as much as some of the heroic nolifers here, but it's still quite a lot. Most of it was hermitting and exploring and mapping (in-game mapping, ink and parchment, not that scripted lark). But a bit of it involved that mechanic most inherent to a proper MMO: cooperating with other players within a village and trading with other players outside the village. Economics! Nothing is quite as satisfying as cooperation for mutual benefit.

Anyway, the diablo 3 article talks about the various interactions between real money (USD), in-game gold, gold faucets and gold sinks and botting, and how that lead to hyperinflation. The haven and hearth economy works in a different way, so I wondered if maybe we could talk about how it differs.

We've had jorb talk about why in-game coinage and why nobody uses it. My understanding is that in the H&H economy, the thing at the bottom of it all is high q clay due to how it's sourced (immovable land controlled by villages with vclaims) and how the crafting trees work (high q clay ultimately necessary for high q anything else). But the other interesting thing, mentioned in "why nobody uses coins" is the way many trading threads list fungible "points". When I last played, a pearl was generally 1 point. So there is a kind of currency, it's just not "coins". Also, nobody traded gold, at least not openly in those threads. Gold was extraordinarily precious.

Trading (and ownership, and stuff) works differently in H&H because it has to be carried out by a player character, moving items between definite locations in the game world. Even if it's just an alt, porting between villages. It's not just magically done by menus and databases. This also means there is no one market, it's geographically distributed. Due to the low player base there's scarcely any gold farming either. Botting is obviously an issue, but how does it specifically affect the economy?

[It is my understanding] in the mid-game trading takes place because there are so many resources, unequally distributed, and players have some but need others to progress, so they trade the ones they have to get the ones they need. In the late game, villages/factions are so large they have every kind of resource at the highest level, but the boost in supply they get by trading helps them get the edge over the other late-game factions they're fighting with.

I haven't played in a while and at my highest point I was barely mid-level, so please correct my wrongs and put forward your explanations of H&H's economic system.

[DeadlyPencil]

i think h&h has alot of things going for it:

-unlimited levels - you can raise stats as high as you want
-unlimited crafting quality - farmed items can keep going up and up
-coins in h&h can be melted into metal bars so they have a dual purpose - coin trading has worked a couple of times in h&h's history, it usually requires a semi peaceful superpower to be in the game though
-experience is done by consuming items
-stats are raised by consuming food
-everything is crafted, you cant kill a bear and get a item drop (some unique axe)


so in h&h, all your items can always be replaced with something better. your never going to get "the best" item in the game and have it stay that way, its going to become crappy after awhile.

if you are interested in how game economies work, you should also look at Path of Exile. its '"currencies" are all consumable just like H&H. it does still have inflation though and this is because items dont have to be crafted, you can find them. so even though all the currencies in the game can be used in crafting, in path of exile people tend to hoard them, causing the price to go up slowly over time.

i must say, out of all the games i have played, h&h has the most stable economy i have ever seen.


edit: what you said about having to physically move around to trade was very relivant as well. even though i view the h&h economy as stable, if you were to have an auction house or something, i could see more people botting in the game and flooding the market with certain items.

[Poly1212]

Worlds 4 through 6 economy pales in comparison to W3.

[L0dest0ne]

It was my assumption that the reason nobody used coins was that it required steel to make a coinpress, and that it is far easier to make a village idol and trade with the point system than build a minehole and an idol and trade with coins.

[Potjeh]

Coins didn't see much use because they were too unwieldy. Better stall interface would've made them a common currency.

[saltmummy626]

I wouldn't say your wrong or anything, but the way I see it is that the high power factions generally trade for small things they cant spare the time between fights getting themselves. such as cavebulbs and rare curios. back in w3, most stuff was based on the price of metal, as it was the most strictly controlled by large factions. back then, you had to trade large numbers of bricks, chants, blueberries, cavebulbs, and/or animal carcasses to get even a couple bars of metal. then the free mines came along and I sort of dropped off the trading for w4, though I didnt stop playing. from what I understand, gold, silver, pearls, and high quality tools and food were the resources mostly traded for. I kind of dropped out of H&H for a good portion of w5 and up until very recently, I wasn't playing w6 either.

as for not using coins, they were mostly used by very high power factions who got bored and wanted to set up market places in which you traded for coins, then spent the coins you traded for to buy things from the villages stalls. the only real influx of new money was when a decently set up village with access to certain metals made their own coins. which you would hope they would come spend at your stall. back in w3, having your own mine and a coinpress was good for buying things from nople or bottleneck market.

trading of tangible goods is generally thought to be (by me at least) the best way to go. the points system ive seen so far here on the forums is a great way to go, but god forbid someone decides to undercut the prices of other merchants for products that are the same quality. people still trade foragables for what they need, if they cant get it themselves or get it fast enough.

I realize now that maybe ive babbled off on what I think about trading and not actually explaining anything...

also, fuck diablo 3 indeed.

[dagrimreefah]

In my opinion, coins aren't used because metal (particularly gold and silver) is too common.

[Potjeh]

Coins have inherent value, because metal has inherent value, regardless of availability of mines. You can set your stalls to let's say q90 bronze (I have no idea what's decent metal q these days), and smelt any excess coins into bars for steeds. And yeah, large factions mostly want those small things, which is precisely why coins would work so good. You need a really big trade to make it worth your time. With automated trading via stalls, it doesn't cost you any time (well, it does, but that's down to horrible stall interface) to do any sort of trade, so newbs can do small trades which is more convenient for them. And you kinda need something like coins to get the required price resolution for that, pearls etc are just too valuable. Anyway, my point is that what we currently have is whole-sellers only, and no retail. Stalls, if their interface was half-decent, would serve to fill the retail outlet role. And I'm pretty sure that you get a lot more fluid economy with retail than without it.

[Arcanist]

DIS tried to do retail for a while, with the AfO market.

I would imagine that done differently (ie nobody know where the market itself is) and a bot to oath anybody that partys him it could work quite well.

Until somebody makes a vandal alt and destroyes it, that is.

[Potjeh]

It could work fairly well with Salem-like defences. This is the true tragedy of Seatribe economies - they have all the needed parts for fluent economy, but they're split between the two games to a point of complete non-functionality.