Talking about MMO economy on Raph Koster's blog

(Original).

Economy is just another thing that I like to point back to older MMOs and go "...why does what we have now suck so bad compared to what we had a decade ago?". That said, I'm still a fan of hefty risk/reward systems that get my adrenaline going, such as item drop on death. Color me niche.

I'm not sure that the typical "auction house" system (i.e. being able to access all available items instantly) is inherently bad. I think it's more the game systems surrounding this concept that suck. For one, this fake durability that has started to emerge: where items cost upkeep as you use them, but never actually go away. This of course lead to "bind on equip", because items would never get cycled apart from new players buying and binding equipment (thus removing it from circulation). This leads to a stale economy for end-game players who no longer purchase gear from one another, because once they buy it, they have it for good. So they have to seek gear elsewhere. And thus the economy of trade-able, purchasable gear has a clearly defined limitation as the developers have to work around this concept; pretty much all significant endgame gear you get is "bind on pickup" - i.e., zero interaction from other players was possible to get this gear (aside from stuff like players helping one another, i.e. raiding). It'll be interesting to see how the established concept of an auction house works with Diablo 3, as D2 still has a pretty lively economy that is entirely player-run.

Personally, I was completely happy with the concept of being able to buy generic items from NPC vendors, and better items from players, and all of it eventually crumbling into dust and having to be replaced. Maybe there is a way to mesh this system with an endgame, goal-based non-decaying gear system. I'm not sure. Perhaps having the gear be permanent, but some kind of items that modify it wear off over time (i.e. enchantments or gems wearing out). The line between "meaningful economy" and "boring moneysink" can be very blurry.

I also love the concept of real, location based merchants/shops, although I don't think this is a necessary step towards having a meaningful economy. But some of my favorite experiences in UO were definitely based around concepts like "hey, if you want to stock up on some grandmaster heavy crossbows, soandso's got them on sale just outside of Vesper!" or "have you seen the new vendor mall/rune library outside of town?". Stuff like this just contributes so much towards making a game world really feel alive and breathing, and it's a total shame that the most socialization that happens in a game like WoW is people spouting out memes and arguing.

"Getting" is definitely the core idea here, and it is addicting enough to pose the question of if there should even be any boundaries when it comes to players buying equipment (heck, in many F2P games we are seeing people able to just pull up a store and buy gear instantly, from anywhere - although that's another can of worms). Still, I can't help but feel that putting more behind the acquisition of items plays a huge role. I mean, this is fantasy, right? And who doesn't like going to quaint little book and antique shops? Sure, they may be dying off because in real life, we just don't have the time to waste looking for things so we flock to sites like Amazon or Ebay... but we play these games for fantasy, and escape. Are we so addicted to working and the idea of having a job that even in our fantasies we can't have fun shopping around?

Fighting game community

Something I've wanted to rant about for a long time on an article comment on the Penny Arcade Report.

This article's message is kind of silly. "The fighting game scene is very accepting... and by that I mean not accepting at all!" Lots of mixed words here, and the overall counter-point of "but we have cool clips of competitive matches!" really has nothing at all to do with the topic at hand.

I'm a huge fighting game fan but I've always a had a bone to pick with the American community. While it's commendable in a way, the community has this sense of camaraderie that is almost too much to bear, and the culture itself has a kind of ignorance as a result: whereas FPS or RTS comptitive communities can and will stand up for themselves and the games they love (i.e. FPS gamers rejecting new games and sticking with Quake 3), the fighting community seems to just take whatever comes their way as Divine Truth, and the way the culture as a whole acts seems more akin to a riot tearing its way through a city block rather than a civilized group of people. Something that has really irritated me of late, although it's not related to the topic at hand, is the wanton acceptance of whatever the new "official" fighting game is: the fighter community will never accept games that may be better, if they are not official, and Capcom has done a frankly awful job of delivering good fighting games lately. But, simply because it's Capcom and it's the newest, it's the gold standard. I'd love to see the FPS or RTS communities reactions if a major company tried to pull what Capcom did with UMVC3.

I'm sure a lot of this attitude has to do with the fact that fighting games on a whole are just a much more personal affair, and so everything is instantly more intense and passionate, be it acceptance or disapproval. As the article states, online fighting gaming has only recently become a thing, and as usual the real-life "riot group" of fighting gamers are quick to dismiss it as fake, unimportant. Given the up-close-and-personal "arcade" mentality of the scene, it's easy to understand why, as location has a huge role to play in fighting game supremacy. Whereas some other gaming communities see this at times, it's usually on a much "smaller" scale where it's country vs. country (i.e. Starcraft, which for a long time was "Korea vs. the world"), fighting games tend to create this automatically, with this locational rivalry appearing on scales as small as arcade vs. arcade down the street. Again, it's commendable in a way, but it really is prohibitive towards growth and I'm not really sure if anything can be done for it.