Master TMO Posted Jun 25, 2015, 6:45 pm	First off, I'm going to preface this with a caveat- I'm new, < 1 month playing. It's *entirely* possible something I'm going to post won't work in the larger world of Darkwind. But hopefully the idea will spark something among the experienced, even if there's some problems with the original. I've built a shadow economy in an MMO before. Players sold to PC merchants instead of NPC shops for a bit more than the shops would pay, and bought from the merchants for a bit less. And rare or unique items stayed in game rather than disappearing when characters left because being sold to a shop would have destroyed it. It was a fairly simple, straightforward game economy. Here, that won't work. Scavs have no money to work with. Everything seems to be done by trade. But, for inspiration, I went back to the first banks, not the modern ones. Ones like the Knights Templars, and maybe some from the Wild West. You made a deposit at one branch, got a letter of credit, and could turn that in at another branch for the same value. Eventually, the letters of credit themselves became tradable and valuable. To start a bank, you must have goods. Letters of credit (will just call them creds) here are only worthwhile if there's anything worth buying with them. To use the bank, you would turn in goods and receive a receipt proving that you earned X creds from that bank. You could then accumulate more creds to buy something larger later, split them up for smaller purchases, or even trade them to another player in exchange for something else. Multiple banks could easily exist, and possibly even be willing to accept creds from another bank. There could be an exchange rate, or just use 1-1. Depends on how complicated people are willing to get. How to design the system? I'm envisioning a webpage, hopefully on DW.com. It would keep track of bank account balances of the players at each bank, and players and owners can each check their amounts. When a transaction happens, the system issues a receipt for the exchange, so that there's no way for an owner to invisibly scam his patrons. A basic system-wide values of goods would have to be determined. Each bank could set some modifiers for specific goods or locations. If a certain chassis is very rare, or very desirable, a bank would up the rates paid and sold for it. Or if getting goods to a town is very hard, or very easy, likewise. This would allow banks to have different specialties and provide competition. Damaged goods: chassis and weapons can be damaged. I haven't tested this formula yet, but I would use (health%/90)^3 for the actual value of a chassis, and (health%/100)^3 for weapons. For chassis, it means 90% is the baseline. A 100% chassis would actually be worth 137% of the baseline creds. While an 80% chassis is at 70% value. Profit: How do the banks make a profit? First off, when buying, the banks would pay 93% of the value of an item in creds (same as what seems to be the standard in towns). And sell it at 100%. This is all math the website could do for the bankers, so there wouldn't be any effort or calculators involved. The profit is in a growing stock of goods that people could buy from them using creds. Also, if the bank has good mechanics, they can buy damaged goods for low rates, fix them, and then list them for higher values. Fraud: I believe it was Eon where a player spent years building up a banking service for the other players and then absconded with all the virtual money and spent it all on an invulnerable spaceship. That particular scam couldn't happen here, because there isn't anything a scav gang can do with the items in their stock, other than use them, give them to someone else, or trash them. About the worst that could happen here is a bank's creds could become worthless if the player quits or dumps all their stock. Ideally, a quitting banker could transfer all stock to another bank, who would then agree to honor the creds from that bank. Is this complicated? To start with, yes. But given some trial and error to smooth out the bumps, and a large enough population of scav gangs, I think it could work. Ideally a website would handle all the grunt work. I don't have the skills necessary to do that, I'm afraid. My web work days are long behind me, and I was never that advanced at it. I could probably make a spreadsheet to do it, but not everyone has Excel, and its vulnerable to hand-editing fraud, and it couldn't handle multiple users at once.
*Brunwulf* Posted Jun 25, 2015, 6:57 pm	WOW. In my first month of playing, I hadn't even worked out how to buy and sell between NPCs! Most of what you wrote is waaaaay over my head- but just wanted to say that it's awesome when new players put so much time and effort into thinking about new DW ideas- bodes well for the future!!!!! Cool stuff Master- anything you need in SCAV- let me know, and keep up the ideas factory.
Bolt Thrower Posted Jun 25, 2015, 8:28 pm	I don't think DW is big enough to warrant this kind of work, but if you are interested in a barter economy and what it looks like in game, look at Path of Exile.
Master TMO Posted Jun 25, 2015, 8:41 pm	*Brunwulf* said: ...just wanted to say that it's awesome when new players put so much time and effort into thinking about new DW ideas- bodes well for the future!!!!! I have an hour commute one-way to work, and no interesting landscape to look at.  I have two hours every day where I have to think or be bored.  *Bolt Thrower* said: I don't think DW is big enough to warrant this kind of work,... That is a valid problem.  If there isn't enough population to support an economy, growing it would be exceedingly slow, and probably no one would have the patience to build up a bank.  Not to mention not being worth the time to build the tools to support it.
psychomyke770 Posted Jun 25, 2015, 10:32 pm	Honestly as far as logistics would go creating this as a website could be pretty darn easy. As far as bankers go, you could bypass having live bankers even and just have a moderator or two to work the website an hour or two a week to make sure it isnt bugging out. You would bypass this by, I apologize if you are reading this Sam or other Mods, creating a robo player through the website to buy and sell goods on scav marketplace. If a player wanted to buy something then they would go onto the bank website and process a purchase agreement form which would automatically process if that user had enough cred built up. As for selling to the bank, you could say that it automatically picks up anything in the market for sale without a set password. Then it would add this purchase to a log set to alter the cred logs for players. If this doesn't make sense or you want more ideas please send me a message. I like working/thinking on these things.
Master TMO Posted Jun 25, 2015, 11:51 pm	psychomyke770 said: Honestly as far as logistics would go creating this as a website could be pretty darn easy. As far as bankers go, you could bypass having live bankers even and just have a moderator or two to work the website an hour or two a week to make sure it isnt bugging out. I don't think this quite fits the Scavenger mold.  That much automation and they might as well have access to the regular norm market.  I think it's more in the spirit of Scavenger to keep it all in players' hands.  Just my opinion though.
*goat starer* Posted Jun 26, 2015, 7:54 pm	great ideas... i have to say that if sam had had the value of an 8 year beta then the game economy might have always looked rather different.
*StCrispin* ce.services.mh@gmail.com Posted Jun 26, 2015, 9:59 pm	there does need to be a better organized and simple way to offer goods for what you need other than hoping someone is around who you can trade with and spamming the lobby looking for what you need If I could trade XYZ food/water to a Merchant Facilitator for a letter of credit, and then redeem that credit for ammo he is holding for player ABC (whom I may never even see or know plays scav) it would make things more efficient for sure. Other than the fact a lot of us all need the same items like MMG ammo. It may still remain elusive... Rather than "Banker" I like to think of it as a "Trade Facilitator"
*goat starer* Posted Jun 26, 2015, 10:59 pm	so long as the bank doesnt create items i dont see a problem with it. Just having a market where you could list items with the trades you will accept would do the job for me. so i list a HGG and select 10 water from a list... another player accepts and gives me 10 water... bingo
*Brunwulf* Posted Jun 27, 2015, 1:29 am	goat starer said: so long as the bank doesnt create items i dont see a problem with it. Just having a market where you could list items with the trades you will accept would do the job for me. so i list a HGG and select 10 water from a list... another player accepts and gives me 10 water... bingo Yep- Excellent idea