New currency types to revitalize Wurm markets and economy mechanics

[elentari 2,660]

My proposal is fairly simple and convoluted at the same time. Nice clear start am I right?

 

I suggest the following. Instead of endlessly debating what do to with the Wurm economy atm, which is based on the silver- real life money - in game demand for items relationship, I propose to introduce two new currency types in wurm to revitalize the economic interactions in Wurm.

 

Thew new currency types, conceptually would be something like:

 

1.  Magic tokens  (pick another name if you want) - These would work as follows. Let's say we create an NPC institution that spawns quests similar to mission. Something like a Trader's Guild of Npcs or An Enchanter's Guild. These would offer various quests to donate items to them, both in terms of bulk materials and specific items, such as armor sets, weapons, spices, etc.

 

The rewards for these "quests" or whatever you want to call them would be in the form of magic tokens. These Tokens can only be used at Guilds in starter towns to buy stuff from the respective guild. The tokens will be non - drop (altough they can be banked), non -tradeable, and non-buyable through the store. They must be earned by each player.

 

What can you buy with these tokens? I've been thinking a while on this and one of the cool things you could buy would be time-limited enchantments, infusions and boost.

 

Example #1 The enchanter's guild is working on a secret project to extract the magical properties from rare items. Donate - a rare weapon, a rare tool and a rare armor piece. The reward will be 500 magic tokens. Once the items are donated, they will be effectively destroyed from the game.

 

So you got 500 magic tokens now, what does the Enchanter's guild/Trader's Guild offer for them? Let's say the Enchanter's guild offers short term enchants or infusions that can be bought with said tokens. For example A) an infusion of Dexterity : You feel your mind race as it makes new connections much faster than before and you feel much more dexterous than before. For the next 10 minutes, all your crafting actions will be shortened by 50% timers.

B ) A carrot on a stick, that can be fed to a horse to give it a 25% speed boost increase for 15 minutes.

C) A mysterious elixir that is said to make one stronger in combat : Provides +5 CR for 5 minutes, good for hunting.

D) A crystal of attunement : Temporarily gives + 1 action (10 ML points ) for 15 minutes.

E) Etc.  You get the idea.

 

Example # 2 The Trader's Guild is in search of new business opportunities. To that end it needs new bulk materials to reach new markets .  Same idea as enchanter's guild but the rewards will be different. You still get tokens, but you can either name them "trader guild tokens" that can only be used with the Trader's guild, or keep them the same as "magic tokens" to be used for enchanter's guild and the trader's guild.  

 

The trader's guild items that can be bought with in game money could be related to the business of business itself. E.g. : A) The Coinkeeper's Sprint  : Increases vehicle speed by 30% for 10 minutes.

B ) The merchant's pouch : A finely woven pouch to keep your coins. Holds silvers, magic tokens and other currency. Non impable.

C)  Tradesman's touch : Increases ship hold capacity by 20% for 24 hrs.

D) Sailor's skill : Increases ship speed by 30% for 24 hrs.

E) Miner's Might  - One mining action gives 2 ores instead of 1. Lasts 20 minutes.

 

The idea behind magic tokens, or w/e nomenclature you want to assign to them is that you can only earn them. They provide short term boosts that improve the quality of life for various actions. Ideally some should be disabled for pvp to prevent any exploits or new metas. The cool part about them is that you can now get rid of many of your items that are probably loitering around in your chests with no use since no one is buying them. A rare leggat might be nice or a rare spoon, but with no real practical use. This way, you can trade some things for more useful things to improve the gameplay experience.

 

2. Dragon coins . "A round coin with the engraving of a dragon. It seems to be made of an unknown material, and is almost weightless." 

 

Unlike magic tokens, these could be bought from the store, but cannot be traded in game. They can be banked but cannot be used to pay for upkeep and such.

 

How to earn them? Besides obviously buying them from the store, one way to earn them is through completing certain challenges of skill. These challenges could be similar to Journal goals, albeit they can have a repetitive nature similar to valrei missions. Earning them can be tweaked based on difficulty and RNG in the longrun. But what do they do? What does one do with such coins? One thing to do with them is the ability to use them to purchase vanity items such as cloaks, special tabards, titles, etc. These items shouldn't provide any game breaking bonuses or maluses but they could provide an opportunity for people to acquire new stuff to individualize  their characters.

 

Also the ability to temporarily trade with a dragon for such coins could be added in game. For example a dragon could request an unusual items in exchange of parting with some of its prized hoard of dragon coins. An item such as a supreme longsword, or a fantastic item. Perhaps an offering of many horses to sate its hunger or special runes the dragon uses for some nefarious purpose.

 

3. New currency types for new purposes? You suggest.

 

One of the core ideas behind adding new currencies is to alleviate the burden of every item being valued around silvers. Sure you could try selling that rare rake. But perhaps donating it to the enchanter's guild might prove more beneficial in the long run when you take a look at what they can offer in exchange, yes? Or maybe you're tired of your hoard of weapons and armors and tools you'll never use and think to yourself that maybe it's better to trade them to another guild in exchange for some bonuses.

 

This way, items that normally would never leave circulation , can now "be deleted" from the game by player choice AND they can be rewarded for it in the form of other currencies that do not break the value of silvers.

 

 

 

 

[Daryan_AT 75]

Ideas from Elentari? I would give it a try +1

[Nordlys 1,424]

Ive already touched this in another suggestion regarding another feature. Sadly people seemed to focus more on the other feature and the currency suggestion didnt get much attention.

 

Thats a +1 from me.  

[Majqo 107]

+1

[Bloodscythe 2,225]

+1

[Gladiator 968]

well thought out suggestion but it will never happen. Wurm will never get NPCs and doesnt need them nor does it need currencies. The market is dead for other reasons.

[elentari 2,660]

I really do not understand the hatred towards NPCS in this game. They DO not make 100% of the game, but can be used as leverage to improve gameplay. Wurm is and remains a player driven game.

[Gladiator 968]

wether u understand it or not, it won't happen

[Mclavin 3,704]

They do this on haven and hearth actually, the kingdoms can "smith" currency and hand it out to the people and the king in charge sets prices for stuff. 

[Flubb 773]

I like the idea but the title seems a bit misleading. The incentive appears to steer more towards item sinks for rewards, rather than encouraging trade between players, especially with said tokens to be non-tradeable. Item sinks may help the market in some roundabout way but I doubt anyone's gonna buy a rare pickaxe for silver just to give it to the trader's guild. Might work for bulk though.

 

We already have Valrei missions to drop our everything and focus our attention to them instead. So the traders should have constant standing offers so that it's an addition to our preferred gameplay more than another outlet for the game to tell us what to do. The rewards should constantly change though to keep it interesting. Preferably even based on what has been sold to the traders recently. Sorry, no attunement crystals at the time, nobody sold us enough silly hats to perform the ritual for them. Or stone chisels to carve them from frozen sheep.

This could encourage some form of server wide cooperation to work towards certain rewards becoming available. This is where someone might commission certain goods from another player to help push for a certain desired reward to become available, if the system gives the right incentives. (Just to come back to the idea of revitalizing the market between players.)

 

Beyond bulk and rares, I think it'd also be useful that traders generally buy tools and pay by quality level. This way you can combine grinding your preferred skills effectively with earning tokens.

 

Also:

1 hour ago, elentari said:

A carrot on a stick, that can be fed to a horse to give it a 25% speed boost increase for 15 minutes.

You fool, the idea is specifically not feed the carrot to the horse. Have 90s cartoons taught you nothing?

[Mclavin 3,704]

See i would trade a Rare pickaxe in for a mission if the mission was to give 6k karma. That's 6s, the pickaxe is likely around 4, so i get a non tradable item in return for a tradeable item but save myself 2s if i were to go to somebody with cash, It also sinks the item out of the economy over time could lead to demmand more than we can supply.
Following the missions from Epic; if giving a supreme pickaxe gave me 30k Karma and gave me points towards rolling towards a tome, I would trade that in also.

 

Edited February 28, 2019 by Mclavin

[Etherdrifter 2,515]

+1

 

Sure, sounds like a good item sink.

[ArthurHawkwing 176]

what we need are more one use items that people can make and sell, like wands (having a set number of charges) scrolls, potions, and more rare resources and nodes, metals, new gem types, plants and trees, yew trees for special bows, currency too maybe. Also think maybe Alliances on Freedom Isles could make their own wagon types like Kingdoms on Chaos? 

[ArthurHawkwing 176]

Also +1 for the starter topic, hehe. Also I think the DEVs are not seeing the new players are used to much more things to do in game beside just craft, craft, and craft. There needs to be some form of quests, or I have even suggested creating an Epic Like server with Valrei Pantheon driven quests and dungeon crawls that would encourage a certain starting set of players for a group to begin and limit it too maybe twice a month a player can participate. These groups would start a questline that would lead them to retrieve some artifact that would help a certain Valrei Diety. At the end a random reward would be given.

[Themystrix 376]

What we need is more players and marketing the game. That will boost the overall morality of the community and enhance the current market with new needs of supply......... but

 

your idea is nice, so why not give it a try +1

[elentari 2,660]

Thank you for the feedback, personally I don't see at this point what Wurm online has to lose by attempting to implement such a system. Give it a try? Who knows, people might love it. Adds more layers of complexity.

 

As for karma and missions, tbh, besides pvp , there is little to no incentive to do missions on freedom other than sleep bonus. But often times, missions have such a high scale of difficulty that you'd spent hours and hours just to get 40 mins of SB. Not everybody does missions. Usually it's just a small % of population.

 

My proposal wasn't just for item sinks, but also new small one time use boosts that can be bought that improve various actions in wurm. Sailing faster, smithing faster, less fails on imp, temporarily increasing health so you can hunt that pesky champ troll that killed your horse, etc.

[wipeout 1,355]

1. Won't happen Rolf has made it clear that anything in wurm is made by players(granted no longer true with certain things >.>) he and the community at large always supported the idea of limited to no NPCs in the game and adding in a currency like that that is an item sink for short term goals will not fix anything we the players can spam thousands of items a week this will just lead to more op items and accounts after a short "grind"

Basically have a look at sindusks server  with the issue he has with his new type of "currency" it was great at first but due to some unforseen things its now broken as hell

 

2. "Cash shop coming soon -retrograde" we have been asking for capes for ages adding in a currency based on kills+money is not a good thing and although enticing as it seems to make for more "fun" games often focus around these sooner or later after implementing them as when devs see the money they make they want more(mobile games are a good example with all the clones)

Plus in a day and age where "premium currency to buy cosmetics" has the gaming community divided into 2 groups(1 with money 1 without) with one for and 1 against doing this would be bad as people will assign a dollar value to it and will try to gain money out of vanity items on Accounts once said vanity item isn't sold and they are selling their accounts

 

You really want to revitalize the market you don't do it by making a new currency (check history books for detailed explanation why this doesn't work long term) you do it with research into why its "broken" and into what counts as a "good" economy standard and go from there to tackle the problem

 

In the case of wurm we went from 5k+ active subscription a few years ago(when the economy was seen as working) to around 2-3k with a bit lower average online add in years of skilling then those who once worked to get money to get items can now make said items but can't sell them thus market = broken to them but they are just late

 

What we need as stated before is more people more new people the ratio of old vs new is so out of whack that its no surprise the market is  "broken" and with player retention being so low as it is (as well let's face it wurm doesn't have a good tutorial even now it doesn't) it is hard to get new blood and new wallets into a market of 90% self sufficient players

[elentari 2,660]

Yeah but isn't getting say 3000 new players just a bandaid solution? With so many crafters on the market, how long till those players quickly buy what they need and the market slowly dies again. In rl, a person replaces his toothbrush once every 2 months or so? Then he buys a new one. In wurm one imps a toothbrush to 90 ql and a player never needs another one. There's the demand issue.

 

As for your argument about, history, I'm actually curious (no sarcasm implied) if you can provide a few examples on why new currency types don't have an impact?

 

The research why wurm's economy is broken isn't much to know about, one of the main reasons is that items never go out of circulation, unlike real life. The demand goes away when everyone is self sufficient. Question is, is there any fix beyond the "we need more players" refrain?

[Nordlys 1,424]

The only way more/new players would help is if the old and quitting high end toons are drained out aswell - which isnt gonna happen with the current (and long standing) mentality. There simply needs to be a flow of players, in and out.

I think its great that these kind of suggestions pops up, and then we can just sit back and hope that the Devs likes what they see.

[Arishok 92]

Examples of special currencies are present in almost all mmorpgs.  They are used primarily to keep the main economy balanced by funneling specific types of players out of the main economy. 

 

By creating PvP currency, you can delink PvPers away from crafting economy by creating a currency earned and spent on PvP items only.  

 

money in, money out.  Faucet and drain.  

 

Despite known opposition, tying in game currency to real world currency is a known and viable way of controlling inflation.  Deflation in wurm is a result of over production, and near limitless storage and preservation of goods, while it is further exacerbated by less demand for said goods (which produces calls for new players, but would not solve overarching issue). 

 

What works for games like EVE, which ties currency to real world currency, is destruction.  Easy come, easy go: e.g. The drain, or sink.  

 

Quantity is easy in WURM.  Very easy.  Quantity is necessary due to amount needed to earn another currency: skill.  There is no sink in WURM for skill.  

 

There is NO destruction of goods and products.   At least not on a scale that makes an impact.  Who is sitting on 10k carrots and has a plan to get rid of it that does not involve selling it?

 

Who wants 10k carrots? Someone with 100 backpacks with 1k frying pans to make thousands of meals no one will eat.  And when thats done? Plenty more carrots.  

 

Then we talk about lumber, iron, swords, ships,  carts, etc.  

 

WOW is an example of runaway inflation and horrible mistakes with economy.  As well as MANY now defunct MMOs.  WOW is a good example of how different methods work and dont work.  

 

+1 for effort and ideas.  

-1 for new type of currency (not with out a change in culture, improved destruction, and a lively, robust PVP arena). 

 

Keep the suggestions coming!

[Wargasm 1,926]

TL:DR - A for effort, but we got something similar with runes and rift loot.  

 

Rift loot had a negligible impact on the economy. 

 

9 out of 10 people that say the economy is broken are people that just want to hoard silver.  And no, a gazillion new players isn't going to fix the economy, because half of the new players will also be selling bulk to find their financial feet (as I once did).

 

There are two ways to get rich -. Earn more or want less.