AfterWorld Survival Forum

Nothing new here, just going over the basics for the clarity's sake.


So, why economy? There's lots of games with no ingame economy, ppl come there to have fun, shoot stuff n this works just fine.
If the goal is to make loot desirable and meaningful you have to create a basic economic system.
If the ultimate goal is to create a complex and truthful virtual model of the reality, the more so.


For anything to be desirable it has to have a certain ingame value. If supply surpasses the demand the item value drops to zero. If all you can possibly loot from a mob or mine from the ground is worthless you have failed to create a working economic system and have to rely on other motivators (eg skills) to keep the ppl interested and game going.


Game economy is just another word for a set of balancing mechanisms. Game world's population is always relatively small compared to the real one. Games are relatively small closed systems therefore their economy is never "free" but carefully regulated. Those regulations are not visible for the untrained eye, creating an impression of free market and player-driven economic trends but ultimately it's only a artificially created illusion.


Basics of balancing.
Our goal was to provide (additional) motivation for the players to collect loot (and consume the resources while doing it). To achieve this we have to have some items/resources that have high value. "High" here is relative, it's somewhat higher than the total value of resources spent while trying to get those desirable items/resources. The only reason for this is the (relative) rarity of those items/resources (demand higher than supply).


In the big picture you now have certain resources you want to keep in high demand, regardless of the decisions and actions of any single player at any given moment and the trends of what your whole playerbase tends to do in the game in general.
It is improtant to understand that those actions are highly random, dependent on factors you can't possibly predict or control. Consequently, you can't rely on static loot tables to keep resources at desired level of supply. Static loot tables inevitably lead to oversupply and deficite.


A working balancing mechanism relies on the feedback from the game (could be done manually or could be a script that at certain intervals runs a database query and modifies a certain variable). (Over)simplified example: if the total reserve of a certain resource exceeds a treshold stops dropping from the mobs / can't be found in a mining claim. (In reality it's better not to monitor the total result but the average price paid in trades, and the balancing action works better if it's a gradual decrease not an instant cut-off... for the reasons that are going beyond the topic at hand)

Now we have a situation where certain resource(s) were dropping from a certain mob, but now have stopped dropping to avoid oversupply. The mob should still provide some loot with the total (average) value close to the value of the resources spent to kill that mob (or: find that mining claim).
Apparently we have to have a "filler loot", something that "fills the gap" and has no controlled maximum amount (and therefore relatively worthless).


What to do with filler loot? We create a loot sink for it.
Suppose one of our filler loots is animal blood.
1. We can make it refinable. Either with some other filler loot, or by itself (like wood refining works currently, allowing endless re-refine). To motivate players to do that we provide something relatively cheap and useless for it. Some secondary skill that increases HP in huge amounts, or we make it drop a pnote now and then, etc.
2. We can include it in the crafting recipes. Making HK's would require huge amount of animal blood (or big amount of something refined from a huge amount of animal blood). Or even include it to the really massive crafting recipes like making of ammo or refining stones. Could be an additional measure used with those described in #1.


As a result, we will have mechanisms that keep the whole system recycled and balanced regardless of any players actions. In fact it's so powerful that if u would release this system to the aftereffects of the totally unbalanced economic system like we have it in AW, it would effortlessly eat it all up and not even cough.


If you don't have such an economic system, what good would the manual wipe of certain resources do to you? It will only postpone the next wipe...
I mean, you either have it or you don't. In our case, regretfully, it seems you don't. Maybe it's a good time to start .... think ing about creating one, sometimes in the future... ? 




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[size=78%]Disclaimer: I'm not talking about RCE here. It's the simple working game economy based on ingame currency. If that currency is convertible to real world currency is a whole another question.[/size]

The description of the 1st tasks and their priorities are exactly the same as i have imagined. Confirms the project is back on the solid ground and managed by professionals.



Great news!


Propose the next steps. It's probably the right moment to contemplate about the basic concepts.


Open world - we already have it and it's definitely the right way to go. Maybe balance the confusion of endless possibilities by providing some quests/missions to give some sense of direction for the newcomers (and low level players).


Infinite (uncapped) skill-system.
On one hand it solves many problems (like the problem of: "So now i reached the skillcap, there's nothing left to achieve so i will leave the game").
On the other hand it creates this endless grind towards the endgame... that'll never arrive. I call this system "Search for the Holy Grail"-type game.
There's already different areas for different levels of players (with different levels of mobs and resources) and it definitely helps. Maybe also add inside there special PvP areas that upon entering will automatically level everybody down to the same level, eg: an area that levels everybody's attack and defense skills down to, say, 20-ish skill level, another for 30, 40, 50 ... etc.
Player with average skill level ~30 will be equal with everybody else in lvl 20 and 30 areas. He can also enter the 40 and 50 areas but he will be in clear disadvantage there... something like that.

DFS: After so many years wasted on WOW thinking: "There has to be more to gaming than this..." I finally found my MMO. The first MMO I ever played was UO and I was hooked onto that like a heroin addict but slowly the effects faded and now I feel myself shooting up again... Any ways, I've been playing for about 2 days now going the purist route and not depositing but I think I'm going to have to bite the bullet and just do it for now, hell I waste money on stuff I don't even want so why not spend it on that Slepnir that I really really want.

AxeMurderer: ... and for years I am wondering why people play WOW and other MMOs when there is Entropia Universe

The quotes above are from a different game (EU's Planet Arkadia) but in a big picture they're relevant to AW as well.
It seems the WoW generation is growing up...

Would be cool to have improved versions of all mining scanners. If the crafters would try reach v10 with their ASPs it would use up lot of loot and speed up the economy.
Even if the mod scanner would only have it's max skilling/sau gain rate shifted a bit higher - that would be a good reason  to make them desirable. I think it's better for the game if miners could rise their skills more by actually mining and wouldn't have to spend time with picking/refining huge amounts of sar stones to reach a decent skilling rate on the next scanner. If there's some other improvement, say a slightly faster reload time - all the better.


I hope i'm not trying to break in through the open door here, can't be sure the mod versions aren't already implemented, but afaik nobody has tested it lately and i have this gut feeling that atm after v10 with the scanner ASP there comes nothing. If anybody has more info thou, feel free to share!

Tried the Surgut defender/tallfooter spawn for few days, 2-3 mobs per square kilometer is too few.
Tried the scrats spawn behind the Sar-W antenna, too sparse.
I'm skilling with F2100, smaller mobs don't last more than a few shots with it... and suddenly this became a nuisance.


Then i remembered, there was warthogs near Mugen, which is lootable PvP now. Allright i thought, if there's nothing anywhere else then lootable PvP area should do.
Few hundred meters east from Mugen village i found a nice warthog/bear spawn, whole 6 mobs in radar and not too small too, both young to gatherer. Killed em, and while shooting the last warthog the radar filled with new red dots. Finally a decent spawn and respawn is super too - spawn like a dream, what else could a hunter wish for!
When i killed the mobs second time it was all over. No more respawn.


There was a few smaller spawns on behind the river, in dark matter area. Same story there, one respawn cycle and the spawn disappears.


Reloged several times, ran all over the area south of Surgut came back to check the same spots hours later... nothing. Looks like all these mobs are extinct species now. I know, overhunting is bad thing and i'm very sorry.


The big question is, what to do now? I'm hunter, gimme 3 warthogs that can respawn and i'm happy. Is this really impossible right now?


 

First of all, fantastic work! The level of detail and the overall quality of design is simply awesome. The following is just a few thoughts about possible improvements. There's probably much more important things to do, so... it's just that, a few thoughts.

Today while looking at the

Saransk video

i had the feeling, something's wrong.
Then i realized what seems wrong - there's brand new street lamps everywhere and they are all lit, although the street lamps at the bridges are bent, corroded and not lit.
It's not in contradiction with the background story or anything - there's also several well maintained service stations in the city.
Still, for the sake of the style i would prefer if most of those street lamps were broken and some would only flash erratically.
And the ravens are missing. All abandoned cities at this latitude have raven colonies. Wildlife in the dead city makes the houses seem even more lifeless - the law of contrast.
If i already started dreaming, wouldn't mind an odd wandering warthog or a lonely bear, busy inspecting the waste containers in the southern part of the Saransk. The unwary colonist eaten by a bear on a remote city street... cool stuff!
No but seriously, these small and insignificant details would add a lot to the overall (post-apocalyptic) atmosphere.

Actually, the same goes for the power lines in villages - the electric posts at streets full of abandoned houses are asking for at least some missing and overhanging power cables.

Last but not least: the railways. All the railway tracks are looking so straight, fresh and well maintained. Does the back-story really say that the railway's still in use? 


Again, no pressure, just some thoughts. I know, in the virtual world it's much harder to make things look old and decayed than whipping up straight and clean stuff. That's why it's also much more valuable...

The decay is beautiful! 

No idea how it's called, but i call it Tambov after the big wolves roaming around in and around it.
It's very easy to find it - when you go from Muggen to Surgut, there's a crossroad before bridge - a small road turns left.





Saransk West has become a big nice village too, with it's own little graveyard and all.

* How Tambov connects to a big mean wolf? Russians have saying "Тамбовский волк тебе товарищ" ("Tambov wolf is your comrade")... you get the idea.