Healthy Economy in MMO-RPGs: Professions, Auction House and Questing
There are a few challenges in MMOs that can be solved by using modern approaches to the auction house, questing and, above all, game economy:
- Big worlds require a lot of content, making quests repetitive and stale.
- Auction Houses are slow, encouraging players to sell to vendors to avoid item-management logistics.
- Profession systems that stop requiring low level items makes low level content lose its relevance, while vertical profession systems can be bad in servers with low population (forcing high level players to farm low-level materials).
This can be solved by connecting these systems.
Summary:
- Instead of designing the Auction House around SELL orders, design it around BUY orders.
- Use a vertical professions system, in which high level profession masters require resources farmed by low-level players. For this, they post [Want to Buy] orders in the AH for materials they need.
- These WTB orders can be picked up by players like quests, replacing filler quests and generating dynamic content for low level players to engage with, farm, level up and earn money (all at once).
- When players arrive at a town, they can quickly sell off items to the best BTW orders available (faster).
Detailing in the comments.
Linked from:
@Mr.NobodyAuction House for posting Buy orders instead of Sell orders
In most MMOs out there, the Auction House only allows users to post items for sale, inspired by eBay.
The problem is that, in gaming, it is very tiresome to create sell orders for each and every item found by players, while also forcing players that have no real interest in economy to engage with the system (or sell to vendors at heavy losses).
It also makes it hard to players to procure rare items: if an item is not bought regularly, players stop posting it on the AH (because of the fees), which makes the items not be available for buyers when they need it.For RPGs it many advantages to have an Auction House designed for Buying orders:
- Players procuring items for professions, can post buy orders based on the max price they are willing to pay for those items.
- Players returning from quests, can quickly sell off items for the best price available. No more waiting days for an item to sell.
- The whole selling process is faster/easier, allowing players to get back to doing dungeons quicker.
- It does not force anyone to engage with posting orders if they don't wish to.
- If no buy order is available, it can be automatically matched with default vendor prices of that town (without having to run to a different NPC).
- Players crafting rare items that require hard to find materials, can post orders for rare materials in the Auction House. This is much better, since it doesn't force high-level players to farm low-level areas, while making the world feel more alive for low level players.
- Lower level players can see those orders, form groups and engage in content to find those items to make good money while at it.
- In reply toMr.Nobody⬆:@Mr.Nobody
Make quests relevant, by replacing filler-quests by Auction House Buy Orders
Players in MMOs tend to skip quest texts, because so many of them are so repetitive. This is bad because often very good, immersive and interesting quests are glossed over because so many filler quests tend to show up.
The solution for this is to divide the questing system in different types of quests:- Scripted quests: with story, interaction, surprises and engagement. These are the main story-arches, the "protect the city" or "become a hero" stories etc where devs really want players to pay attention and not rush through them.
- Filler quests: these have no story, they are just based on a demand for materials in a region and are generated by Auction House Buy Orders.
How do these filler quests work:
- Higher level players in a region need lower level materials to create items, and they have the gold to pay for them. So instead of farming those materials themselves, they can generate Buy orders in the Auction House.
- Players can look at the "bounties" of the town (which is basically the Auction House) and see what quests they can engage with to earn money.
- If a high level player needs a rare material (to craft a magic sword, for example), he can post that [want to buy] order in the Auction House, and a special quest is generated, in which lower level adventurers are offered the chance to procure a rarer item.
Advantages:
- Filler quests don't have unnecessary stories attributed to them.
- Real quests become a special ocurrance, making players really pay attention to them.
- Instead of having quests like "kill 20 of something" the quests change to "procure 20 of a certain item" (wolf hides, for example).
- This avoids players receiving quests like [Kill 20 wolves] right after coming back from an adventures where they already killed off the exact same type of wolf the quest requested. The player would already be carrying the wolf-hides, and could instantly sell them off at the town's Auction House at a good price while at the same time completing a quest.
- High level player requirements for enchantments, crafting etc, generate special quests for low level players, that can earn nice rewards from questing and feel part of the world by doing so.
- Players can leave "permanent orders" open, that generate permanent quests in an area. For example, an enchanter could generate an order for "always refill my materials, so I always have a minimum of 20 of a material".
- MOST OF ALL: this encourages exploration, since players don't need a specific quest to explore an area. They can simply go and see what they can find, and through that exploration stumble on rare materials that can be useful when they come back.
- In reply toMr.Nobody⬆:@Mr.Nobody
Professions
With the Buy-orders-centric Auction House in place, and the filler quests being dynamically generated, the game can adopt a much more interdependent profession system, in which high level materials need lower level ingredients to be created, while also allowing for certain materials to be required more often:
- Sharpening stones can generate quests for low level players to procure materials.
- Enchantments can be re-applied from time to time, to keep the economy running.
- etc
Not going much deeper into this here, other comments explained this part already.