极品道具。

这是许多玩家打BOSS时想到的东西。渴望获得新的和更多强大的东西是许多玩家玩游戏的强大动力；因此，许多游戏都非常强调道具。经济其实基本上也是关于“东西”的——获得、制作、交易、出售和购买“东西”。

在本系列的第3篇文章中，我打算谈谈道具以及它们在经济中的作用。（请点击此处阅读本文1、2篇内容）

什么是道具？

为了卖弄学问，我要定义一下道具。所谓的经济道具就是指，在游戏中所有可以被玩家占有或操作的游戏内物品；比如时装、食品、武器、矿物材料、书籍、装备等都是道具。怪物，除非它们是可以被玩家占有和控制的（作为宠物），否则就不是道具。至于场景中的部件，比如梯子、门、岩石，因为不能被玩家操作或拥有，所以不属于本文所讨论的道具。

道具和货币

正如我在本系列的前两篇文章中所说的，大部分游戏中的货币都只是首个的表现形式。如果道具可以转化为货币，且如果货币可以再次换回道具，那么货币就是道具的一般表现物。这是很显然的—-货币的存在意义就是避免直接的物物交换系统，而用更加一般性的东西替代它。然而，许多设计师仍然经常犯这样的错误，即把道具和货币区别对待，特别是当说到经济平衡时。

道具和货币本质上是相同的东西。没有功能上的差别，除了由设计师强加的。

道具来源

游戏世界中的道具可以是任何类型的虚拟物品，只受到设计师的想象力的限制。物理上说，道具的出现主要有两种方式：自然实体化（“刷出”）或交换。

自然实体化就是道具刷出来（这个过程不需要移除另一样物品）。常见的自然实体化有：

新手道具（和角色一起产生的）

任务令牌/奖励（由NPC任务发放者在响应某个句子或触发器时产生的）

刷出（自然出现在某地方，或从怪物身上掉落）

收集（成功地使用技能如砍树、挖矿或锻造）

召唤（法术施放生成的东西）

道具还可以通过交换产生：

将多个道具组合成新的道具（手工艺）

任务令牌交换（给任务NPC某种东西换到另一种东西）

购买（给NPC商人钱以购买道具）

当然，自然实体化是最常见的，对经济的影响也是最大的。如果道具持续且随意出现，游戏世界就会变得非常拥挤，进而造成道具膨胀。

道具膨胀

道具膨胀是所有在线游戏的祸害——这也是让人觉得老服务器“老”的部分原因。当新服务器开放时，大部分玩家是新手，每个人都在做相同的事。一天又一天过去了，总会有少数几个人得到大BOSS掉落的魔法能量球。

但6个月后呢？是的，所有人都得到那样魔法能量球了。事实上，魔法能量球已经过时了，现在所有高级玩家都想获得神秘方块了。该死，魔法能量球太常见了，甚至新手都不要它们了。

但为什么会变成这样？这几乎是财富积累过程的必然环节，甚至是在真实的人类社会中也一样——随着社会发展、技术越来越先进（类似于在冒险世界中寻找到更多掉落物品），所有人都通过“涓滴效应”（游戏邦注：这是指利益在社会阶层或体制中从上往下传递的现象)获益（尽管开路先锋们总是这些利益的首要占有者）。

事实上，这正是开放经济（新商品的引入不受旧产品的存在的限制）自然而然产生的副产品。大家不仅不破坏这个过程，甚至希望它发生。

涓滴效应造成心理冲击

游戏世界的财富增加造成了严重的问题，既有机制上的（平衡被打破）也有心理上的（玩家对变化中的世界的反应）。当有些玩家看到其他玩家靠游戏中的“富朋友”获得好处或甚至更糟，老手练新号（一人玩多号、高级角色带低级角色），就会觉得极大地“不公平”。许多玩家认为游戏世界应该是一个公平竞争的场所，所以当他们看到别的玩家等级不如自己却穿着比自己还高级的且不是自己“打来的”装备时，就会大叫“太不公平了！”，就好像蓝领工人看到有些大学生开着“富爸爸”买给他们的宝马。

无论这种现象是否合理，都让一部分玩家对这些“特权阶级”和游戏本身产生怨恨。这未必是毁灭性的后果，但我确实看过有玩家因为“进不了特权阶级”而离开游戏，因为他们不想在游戏中遭遇与现实世界中一样的社会问题。

道具膨胀和财富积累造成的社会问题和心理冲击可能成为隐患，很大程度上因为它是完全看不见的。机制问题可以分析、量化和调整，但无形的问题如玩家的情绪却是难以鉴定和控制的。

涓滴效应造成机制问题（平衡性）

理论上说，设计师会根据不同玩家的预期等级和装备设计出完善的战斗。如果当装备了具有X力量的道具的玩家打6级的兽人有困难，那么6个月后，装备了X力量+N（涓滴效应）的道具的玩家就可以轻易放倒这些兽人。

这是一个严重的问题，因为对这些玩家来说，游戏现在不再具有设计师所意图的挑战性了。对于其他玩家而言，打兽人仍然很难，因为他们没有“大号”的帮助或为了原则而拒绝“一人多号”。大部分玩家介于这两者之间——他们可能通过交易、运气或别人的慷慨而获得一两件强力道具，但总体上他们仍然使用适合他们这个等级的装备。

这是一个很难解决的问题。如果设计师全面提高所有怪物的属性点，那么所有玩家都会受到影响，甚至是那些“非大号练小号”的玩家。动态难度调节系统太迟钝了，且容易出错，所以使用它是不现实的。可以限制道具的使用等级，但这么做也有它自己的缺陷。

等级限制

等级限制太人为了，完全破坏了大部分玩家的沉浸感；因为在玩家看来，某把剑居然因为一些未知的、奇怪的理由而“无法使用”——你无法挥舞它或者即使能使用，它的杀伤力也大减。好吧，现在你拿到这种牛逼的道具，游戏却告诉你禁止使用。

这当然会激怒玩家。他们拥有这种道具了，无论是通过什么方式获得的，现在它就躺在仓库里，能看能摸能闻，但就是不能用！不止如此，这个道具可能还是通过“公平的”手段获得的—-高级玩家购买转赠的，或用大量低级道具交换来的，或自己辛苦存钱买的。玩家觉得自己被骗了，因为他认为他获得了那样道具，就应该能够使用它。这就好像得到了一份红利却不能使用，除非你退休了。

不仅如此，而且玩家当然不可能把这个他目前无法使用的道具丢掉。它会一直躺在仓库里直到可以使用的那一刻。或者他把它拿去跟其他玩家换自己能使用的道具或直接卖钱后再买其他道具。所以等级限制其实并没有把这种道具移出经济系统，而只是让玩家更不便于使用它。

等级限制是不管用的。它至多是一条包扎表面伤口的绷带，同时惹怒玩家且破坏了活跃的游戏经济的关键特征。等级限制实质上是使用简单的数字来强制解决与之并不相干的“公平性”问题，但它并不能堵住问题的源头：这种道具应该离开这个经济系统。

防止道具膨胀是一个艰难的任务，要么移除道具，要么防止它们产生。

移除道具可以直接解决问题。不想让新手获得弑神之剑？好吧，那就删除它！但以不激怒玩家的方式删除它，还是有点儿复杂的。

道具损耗

解决问题的第一个建议是让道具可损耗。也就是，每一次使用道具，它的耐久度就会下降一点儿——或者干脆给这种道具设置一个计时器，当计时器走完，这个道具就会消失。虽然这是一个相当野蛮的做法，可以有效地移队道具，但玩家对此的反应是可以预料到的——相当糟；玩家会不停地囤积这种道具，这直接导致资源的争夺。

那么，如果不是让道具直接消失，而是允许玩家花一些钱修复它们呢？这么做的好处是增加了一个消费点，但还是有缺陷的。对于新手，如果是由玩家提供修复服务，那么就不一定能创造消费点——钱只是流转了，并没有消失。为了让钱消失，必须让钱回到系统中，通常是通过NPC。但如果NPC提供修复服务，或者哪果NPC是唯一的修复部件的供应者，那么你就激怒练习工匠技能的玩家，因为这些玩家认为修道具应该是他们的垄断产业。

也就是说，道具修复是一种可行的移除道具的方法，因为它不仅直接破坏道具（通过磨损），而且间接地移除了它们，因为玩家为了挣修理费就要出售自己打怪得来的东西。

如果道具的初始“磨损因素”只够使用到某个力量阶段，当玩家“过度使用”它，它自然应该被损坏——限制它的寿命和价值，以防玩家把它转赠给其他人继续使用。如果修理成本足够高，道具的新主人（低级玩家）就不可能出得起修理费——就像你的祖父把一辆1983年产的保时捷留给你，你却发现日常保养费太高了，你根本不敢再开它了。

除了通常的损耗或磨损，你还可以使用“垃圾回收”功能，也就是NPC或系统会不停地把地面上无人认领的道具（垃圾）移除。这是一个有效的道具消耗方式，可惜可能移除那些被人认为没有经济效用的道具，所以它没有使经济收紧，而只是清理掉垃圾。

道具交换

另外，你可以通过强制道具消耗以产生新道具或执行服务（如法术施放要消耗药水），最常见的一个例子就是工匠技能——比如用四块钢锭做成一顶钢盔；用一顶钢盔、两颗宝石和一瓶魔法药水可以做成一顶神秘之盔。这虽然不能移除高级道具，但方向是正确了。有时候，这种交换会失败（工匠技能失效），这时作为材料的道具会直接离开系统。

如果我们把最好的道具作为任务奖励和/或工匠技能的产物，而不是作为怪物掉落物品，那么我们就有了一个方便的循环系统。如果适用于某角色和等级的最好的剑需要消耗X数量的其他道具，那么我们就得到X：1的压缩率。

这个办法可以运作得很好，但需要设计师做大量计划和工作，还要大量的小说化元素，因为任务其实用最强力的道具取代了怪物掉落物品中。当然，当玩家开始把高级道具给他们的低级角色使用时，会出现一个很棘手的问题。

财富膨胀和控制

最后，有一个“财富上限”的问题。在某时候，玩家可能拥有了所有他可能得到或想要的道具——这时，他的所有财富开始“溢出”到经济系统中，因为他不需要多余的财富。对于游戏设计师来说，幸运的是，只要有更好的东西出现，玩家就会继续花时间和钱去获得它，即使这种更好的道具的额外效用或价值并没有高太多。我们在现实生活中也时时见到这种现象——人们花50%或以上的钱在房子上因为它的“邮编好记”或者花双倍的钱买一辆车因为它跑得更快一点点。

然而，甚至当有更多东西要购买时，仍然会因为不成比例的财富分配而出现一个平衡性问题。如果你存钱打算买一部价值250万美元的车，那么花500美元买夹克衫就显得太多了。你花那么多钱给朋友买生日礼物却没有想到这一点。这在游戏经济中也一样发生——这是人类的本性。强大的有钱的玩家不会再三考虑要不要“赞助”朋友，如果他们的慷慨解囊只占他们的总财富的一小小部分——富有玩家冒险一天挣的钱要能比他的低级朋友一周挣的还多。出于明显的理由，这可能脱离了许多设计师对新手财富的假设。

刷道具

游戏世界中最常见的行为之一就是“刷道具”，也就是玩家一直守着某个区域或某个刷出点，等到某道具出现时立即获得。这是健康的玩家经济造成的自然副效应，但令人恼火。

防止道具产生：封闭经济

如果从流通中移除道具太麻烦了，那么为什么不通过执行封闭系统（游戏邦注：具有固定数量资源的经济系统，这样在旧单位被循环、破坏或移除或移除以前就不会有新道具产生）来防止它们产生？

从概念上说，封闭经济是很简单的。设计师决定当前游戏世界中有100把剑。这种强制的稀缺性具有内在价值。假如，有150个角色，总是有人会想要那把剑，所以那些没有那把剑的玩家就要拿具有相对等价的东西来换它。

不幸的是，这是不管用的。强制的稀缺性导致囤积，而囤积进而导致循环率减少，最终阻碍新道具的引入。因为张三拒绝交易他的任何道具（因为可能一出手就再也要不回来了），这整个经济现在就被冻结了。你可以鼓励张三把道具放归系统（出售、破坏等等），但必须他本人的配合。或者你可以使用道具磨损，强制道具回到流通中，但之后这个做法仍然继承了它原来的问题。

封闭经济不管用，无论是在理论上还是实践中。

非掉落物品

一个引诱玩家按设计师意图的方式玩游戏的伎俩是，把某些道具指定为非掉落物品——它们不能掉落或被交易，只能损坏或从流通中移除。与等级限制一样，非掉落物品是另一个“治标不治本”的策略，意图用它解决许多表面问题，但事实上不能根本解决问题。

例子1：某种道具对低级角色来说“太强大了”，所以设计师担心这个道具落入低级玩家之手。这些道具被指定为非掉落物品，以防止它们流转到那些不能“打到”它们的玩家手上。

例子2：某种道具被用作任务令牌，即任务完成的“证明”（游戏邦注：这是比硬编码角色的核心数据结构更方便且普遍的任务管理形式）。然而，当任务令牌可以出售或通过设计师意图之外的方式获得时，这些道具就会被滥用。

例子3：有些道具太有价值了，刺激玩家“收集”它们用于之后的交换或出售。

非掉落物品带来两个大问题，可能甚至比被“解决了的”问题更严重。第一，它严重影响玩家交易，既破坏经济，又破坏玩家的沉浸感。如果牧师张三有一个光之强力弯刀，而战士李四有怒击之杖，他们想交易，如果这两种道具都是非掉落物品，那么这场交易就不可能成功。第二，它无意中煽动了关键道具的争夺，导致可以获得该道具的地区人满为患。牧师张三在冒险时获得光之强力弯刀，但他自己使用不了又不能拿来换钱买自己能用的道具——所以战士李四只能自己想办法搞一把了。如果二人可以通过交易获得自己想要的东西，那就皆大欢喜了，并且其他疯狂杀怪想得到光之强力弯刀的玩家看到李四有那件道具，也不会觉得生气。

传说道具

按《无尽的任务》的说法，每个角色只拥有一件这样的道具（这种道具可能有某些相关的背景传说，所以是独一无二的）。这就防止玩家通过囤积相同的道具用于交易了，但同时，仍然允许玩家交易。所以，事实上，传说道具是解决非掉落物品问题的比较温和的方式。

从实用的角度说，传说道具没有太多缺陷，除了给玩家带来不便。例如，如果你可以同时使用两把武器，但你不能同时使用两件相同的传说道具，这样你就不得不使用不同的副武器。更令人生气的是，你甚至不可能暂时持有两种相同道具，假如，你自己装备了一个力量之球，而你的朋友让你转交另一个力量之球给另一个朋友，那你就做不了这个“送货员”了，因为你拿不了两个。这虽然不是致命的问题，但令人恼火。

玩家/道具标签

一个解决办法是把拥有或拾取道具的能力记录到角色历史上。每一次角色拾取一个传说道具，角色的记录中就会出现一个标签，防止他再次拾取那个道具。这个办法乍一看很合理，但实际上非常麻烦，因为：

1、如果玩家以正当的方式遗失该道具，正在寻找另一个道具呢？

2、如果玩家卖了该道具，现在想买回来呢？

3、当玩家组队而不是单人执行任务时，系统如何分配掉落物品？

甚至还有更加极端的例子，没有什么显然的解决方法是完美的。道具收集的大问题多少是解决了，但对玩家来说更加不方便了；囤积总是成为游戏世界的惯例，因为玩家们担心自己再也得不到那种道具。

交易和道具膨胀之间的张力

玩家交易和道具膨胀之间有一个根本的协同效应。不可能抑制一方的同时，又不阻碍另一方，因为二者是密切相关的。如果某种道具有是价值的，其他玩家就会想要它—-这意味着有些玩家会发现尽可以多地把这种道具引入经济系统是有利可图的。等级限制、非掉落物品和传说道具都能抑制道具收集和“大号养小号”，但与此同时，也阻碍了不同玩家之间的交易。

我还没有想到任何解决办法能既允许玩家交易又不导致道具膨胀和收集。

工匠 vs. 环境

当类似的道具通过玩家行为（工匠技能和交易）或随机刷出进入经济系统时，工匠和“环境”之间的竞争就加剧了。这可能衍生出更多关于整个经济和玩家乐趣的问题，但我留在以后的文章中详细分析。现在，我只想指出明显的一点：如果有价值的道具可以从环境中“免费”获得，那么工匠就会觉得自己被边缘化了。

总结

道具和货币是衡量游戏经济的基本单位。玩家需要和使用大量的道具，控制道具的流入和流出是一件棘手的任务。经济可以迅速达到自动催化的极端，或者停止在另一个极端，这取决于经济的“水龙头”和“排水管”管理得有多好。甚至小小地改变道具和交易机制也可能对整个游戏世界造成巨大的连锁效应。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

The Design of Online Economies

by trac.bookofhook

Part 3: Items

Phat l00t.

That is what many online gamers think of when they’re about to embark on their next “epic” trip to kill some hapless monsters. The need to acquire new and more powerful stuff is a strong urge with many players, and for this reason a lot of online economies place a very large emphasis on items. Economies, in fact, are basically all about “stuff” — acquiring, creating, trading, selling and buying “stuff”.

In this part of my series on online economies, I’m going to talk about items and their role in an economy.

What Is An Item?

For the sake of pedantry, I’ll define an item. An economic item is any in-game object that can be owned or manipulated by a player. Clothes, food, weapons, iron ore, books, and armor are items.

Monsters, unless they are owned and controlled by a player (pets), are not items. Pieces of the scenery — ladders, doors, boulders — that cannot be manipulated or owned are not considered items for this discussion.

Items and Currency

As I discussed in Part 1: Currency and Part 2: NPC Merchants, currency in most online economies is just a proxy form of items. If an item can be converted to currency, and if currency can be used to reacquire that item, then currency is a generic representation for an item. This is obvious — the whole point of currency is to remove the need for a direct item-for-item exchange (barter) and replace it with something more generic — yet many designers still make the common mistake of treating items and currency differently, especially when it comes to economic balance.

They’re the same thing. There is no functional difference short of arbitrary ones enforced by designers.

Item Sources

Items can come into the game world using different types of fiction, limited only by the imagination of the designers. Mechanically, items appear using one of only two core methods: spontaneous instantiation (“spawning”) or exchange.

Spontaneous instantiation is when an item just shows up (another item is not removed in the process). Common examples of spontaneous instantiation include:

newbie items (created with your character)

quest tokens/gifts (created by an NPC quest giver in response to some phrase or trigger)

spawning (item just appears somewhere, including loot drops off monsters)

harvesting (item appears after successful skill use, e.g. lumber, ore, or foraging)

conjuration (casting a spell creates an item)

Items can also be created by exchange:

combining multiple items to create a new item (crafting)

quest token exchange (give quest NPC some items, receive others in return)

purchase (currency is given to an NPC merchant and an item is received)

Of these, spontaneous instantiation is the most common and influential to an economy. If items show up continuously and arbitrarily, the world becomes flooded, creating item inflation.

Item Inflation

Item inflation is the bane of all persistent worlds — it is partly what makes old servers feel, well, “old”. When a new world/shard is launched, most PCs will be newbies, and everyone gets to struggle along the treadmill together. On day one, it is highly unlikely that someone will acquire the Magical Power Sphere from the Grim Dragon Groblo.

But six months later? Yeah, well, everyone has the Magical Power Sphere, in fact, it’s pretty old news, and now all the cool kids want the Mystical Cube of Pain. Hell, the Magical Power Sphere is so common that even newbies just drop them.

But why does this happen? This is an almost inescapable part of wealth advancement, even with real human societies — as a society progresses and becomes more technologically advanced (analogous to finding more loot in an adventure world), the entire population benefits through “trickle down” dynamics (although the trailblazers will almost always still enjoy the brunt of the benefits).

This is, in fact, a natural by-product of an open economy (where the introduction of items is not gated by the exit of existing items). It’s not only not broken, it’s absolutely expected.

Psychological Impact of Trickle Down Dynamics

The wealth advancement of an online world imposes significant problems, both mechanically (balance is now out of whack) and psychologically (player response to a changing world). From the point of view other players, it is considered grossly “unfair” when others benefit from the generosity of in-game friends or, even worse, different characters used by the same player. Many players consider online worlds competitive and desire a level playing field, so when they see someone below their own level zipping about in high level equipment that wasn’t “earned”, they suffer from the equivalent reaction to a blue-collar worker watching some college freshman driving around in a new a BMW that Daddy bought them. “It’s just not fair!”

Justified or not, this engenders resentment towards those players (“twinks”) and the game itself. It’s not necessarily a devastating effect, but I have seen players quit a game because they weren’t part of the “in” crowd and didn’t want to deal with the same social annoyances online that they encounter in the real world.

The societal and psychological impact of item inflation and the wealth advancement curve can be insidious, due in large part to its completely intangible nature. Mechanical problems can be quantified, mined, and analyzed, but intangible problems such as player sentiment are hard to isolate and identify.

Mechanical Impact (Balance) of Trickle Down Dynamics

In theory, designers sit down and work out the perfect types of encounters for different players based on their expected level and equipment. If the level six orcs are a challenge when fighting players armed with items of power X, six months later, the orcs will be slaughtered by facing players armed with items of power X + C (the trickle down effect in action).

This is a serious problem, because the game now no longer presents the intended challenge for some players. For other players, it’s still just as challenging because they lack high level benefactors, or they just refuse to be “twinked” on general principle. Most players fall somewhere in between — they may receive one or two powerful items through trade, luck, or generosity, but by and large they’re still using the gear expected for their level.

This is a difficult problem to fix. If the designers just universally jack up the stats on all the monsters then all players are impacted, even non-twinks. A dynamic difficulty adjustment system is too cumbersome and error prone to be practical. Level limits on items can be imposed, but this has its own set of drawbacks.

Level Limits

Level limits are artificial. They completely break the immersion for a lot of players, because for some unknown, strange reason, this sword “doesn’t work”. You can’t wield it, it just stops working or is so degraded in power that it’s useless. Okay, that sort of fixes the power problem, but now you have this awesome item the game is telling you is off-limits…for your own good.

And that irritates players. They have the item, they acquired it somehow, it’s in their inventory, they can look at it and touch it and smell it, but for some reason they can’t use it. Not only that, but the item might have been acquired “fairly” — as payment from a higher level player for an important sevice, or in exchange for many lower power items, or just through saving up a lot of gold to buy this one thing. The player feels cheated, because as far as he’s concerned, he earned that item, and still cannot use it. It’s like getting a Christmas bonus at work you can’t spend until you’ve retired.

Not only that, but it’s not like a player will toss an item he can’t use right this second. It stays in a safe place until the very moment it can be used. Or he trades it to someone for an item he can use or even just gold, which he uses to buy something else. So level limits don’t even really pull the item out of the economy or reduce power definitely, they just make it less convenient for the player.

Level limits just don’t work. They’re a bandage, at best, addressing the problem tangentially, pissing off players and ruining many key characteristics of a vibrant online economy. They’re a simplistic number that attempts to enforce disparate ideas of “fairness”, but they don’t address the root cause of all this: the item should have left the economy a while ago.

Stopping item proliferation is a difficult task, achieved by either removing items or simply preventing their creation.

Removing items, via item sinks, solves the problem directly. Don’t want junior to get that Sword of God Killing? Well, then, just delete it! That’s easy. But doing it in a way that doesn’t aggravate players is a bit more involved.

Item Decay

The first suggestion is usually something like wear-and-tear. Every time an item is used, its durability drops a bit — or hell, just set a timer on the item, and when that timer expires, poof!, the item disappears. While a rather brute force approach, it can be effective at removing items, but the reaction to this is predictable and bad — players end up stockpiling items that they deplete, which leads directly to contention for resources.

What if, instead of just letting items die, we allow them to be repaired for some fee? This has the benefit of introducing a money sink as well, but, again, there’s a downside. For starters, if PCs are performing the fixing, it’s not necessarily a money sink — money just moves around, but it doesn’t disappear. For money to disappear it has to get back into the system, usually via an NPC. But if NPCs are performing the fixing, or if NPCs are the sole supplier for components necessary for repair, then you annoy PC crafters that feel that item repair should be strictly in their domain.

That said, item repair is a viable method for removing items, because it not only destroys items directly (through wear), but it also removes them indirectly as players sell back loot in order to make money to pay for repairs.

If an item’s initial “wear factor” factor is set at a point just slightly large enough to get through a particular power band, it should naturally wear out about the same time the player “ougrows” it — limiting its lifespan and value when handed down to someone else. If the repair cost is high enough an item’s new (low level) owner won’t be able to afford its repair — sort of like inheriting a 1983 Porsche 911 from your grandfather, but you find out that routine maintenance is so expensive that you’d probably never drive it anyway.

Aside from standard decay or wear and tear, you can have “garbage collection” where NPCs or the system at large go through and start removing unclaimed items from the land (litter). This is an effective item drain, unfortunately it is only removing items that someone has decided has almost no economic utility, so instead of making the economy tighter, it’s literally just cleaning up messes.

Item Exchange

Alternatively you can get rid of items by forcing their destruction to create new items or perform services (such as reagents consumed by spell casting). The most obvious example of this is crafting — four ingots of steel are consumed to make a steel helmet. A steel helmet, two gems, and a magic potion make a Mystical Helm, etc. This doesn’t do much to get rid of high powered items, but it’s heading in the right direction. Sometimes the exchange will fail (botched crafting attempt) at which point an item simply leaves the system.

If instead of just finding looted items all the time we make the best items quest rewards and/or crafted items, then we have a handy recycling system built in. If the best sword for your particular character and level is available only by cashing in X number of other items, then we get X:1 compression.

This can work reasonably well, however it involves a lot of planning and work on the part of the designers. It also requires an extreme amount of fictionalization, since quests effectively replace drops for the most powerful items. And, of course, there will be the rampant problems that result when players start trying to get higher level items for their lower level characters.

Wealth Expansion and Cap

Finally, there’s the problem of a “wealth cap”. At some point a player may have every conceivable item he could possibly obtain or want — when that happens, all his wealth starts “spilling” into the economy because he has no need for it. Luckily enough for game designers, as long as there is anything better to acquire, players will go to great lengths and cost to acquire it even if the additional utility or value of a better item is marginal. We see this in real life all the time — people that spend 50% more on a house because it’s “in the right zip code” or they spend double for a car because it is marginally faster.

However, even when there is something more to be purchased, there is a balance problem due to disproportionate perception of wealth. If you’re saving up to buy a $250,000 car, then spending $500 on a jacket doesn’t seem like much. Hell, you’d spend that much on a gift for a friend’s birthday without thinking about it. This happens in online economies as well — it’s just human nature.

Powerful and wealthy players won’t think twice about “twinking” a friend if the amount of wealth they’re donating is an insignificant fraction of their total net worth — what the wealthy player makes in a day of adventuring is likely more than his low level friend would make in a week. This can, for obvious reasons, throw off a lot of a designer’s assumptions about new character wealth.

Item Farming

One common activity in online worlds is “item farming”, where players stay around one area or a specific static spawn and “farm” it for a particular item, over and over. This is a natural, but annoying, side effect of a healthy player economy — the item has value, therefore players want as many of that item as they can get their gauntlets on.

Preventing Item Creation: Closed Economies

If removing items from circulation is such a chore, then why not just prevent their creation by implementing a closed system (i.e. economies that have a fixed number of resources such that no new items are introduced until old items are recycled, destroyed or otherwise removed)?

A closed economy is conceptually simple. The designer decides that for his population that there will be one hundred swords in the world, period. This is enforced scarcity, providing inherent value. With, say, 150 characters, there are always people that want a sword, so those without swords need to find something of equal value to trade.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work. The enforced scarcity leads to hoarding, and hoarding in turn leads to reduced recycling, which eventually freezes the introduction of new items. Because Ed the pack-rat refuses to part with any goods he acquires (because he might never see those goods again) the entire economy is now frozen. You can encourage Ed to put items back into the system (sell them, destroy them, whatever), but that requires his cooperation. Or you can use item decay to force items back into circulation, but then you inherit all of its problems as well.

Closed economies don’t work, in theory or practice.

NODROP

One notable hack to get players to play the way designers intended is to flag some items as NODROP — they can not be dropped or traded, only destroyed or otherwise removed from circulation. Like level limits, NODROP is another design sledgehammer, intended to address a wide variety of perceived problems…but without actually fixing any of them.

Example 1: certain items are “too powerful” for low-level characters, and so designers worry that the item is getting into the hands of the wrong players. These items are flagged NODROP, preventing their distribution to other characters who have not “earned” the item.

Example 2: certain items are used as quest tokens, i.e. they are “evidence” that a specific quest was completed (this is a cheap, more general form of quest management than hardcoding flags into a character’s core data structure). However abuse becomes rampant when the quest tokens can be purchased or acquired through means unintended by the designers.

Example 3: some items are valuable enough that it encourages players to “harvest” the item for later trade or sale.

NODROP introduces two substantial problems, quite possibly even of greater magnitude than the problems being “solved”. First, it significantly impacts player trade, which hurts both the economy and player immersion. If Clara the Cleric has a Brilliant Scimitar of Light and Frank has a Club of Seal Bashing and they want to do an even trade, NODROP would render this impossible if either weapon was tagged as such. Second, it inadvertently encourages competition for key items, leading to overcrowding in areas where that item can be acquired. Clara the Cleric can’t even use the Brilliant Scimitar of Light she acquired during a normal day of adventuring, and worse yet she can’t trade it to someone else for an item she can use — so now Frank has to go get it for himself. If they had simply traded with each other the two players would have been happy and many other players, busy killing things in search of the Brilliant Scimitar of Light, wouldn’t be irritated when Frank shows up looking for it as well.

LORE Items

In Everquest parlance, a LORE item is something that a character may only possess a single instance of (the item is supposed to have some kind of lore associated with it, i.e. it’s supposed to be unique due to some fiction). This prevents item harvesters from stocking up on the same item over and over in an effort to trade them (see Example #3 earlier), but at the same time still allows player trade. So, in effect, LORE items are a gentler attempt at solving some of the same problems as NODROP.

Pragmatically, LORE items don’t have too many downsides, other than player inconvenience. For example, if you can wield two weapons at once, you won’t be allowed to wield two of the same LORE item, you’ll have to have a different secondary weapon. Slightly more aggravating is that you can’t even temporarily hold two of the same item, e.g. if you have an Orb of Power and someone wants you to give their Orb of Power to someone else, you can’t act as delivery boy since you can’t hold both. Not the end of the world, but annoying. It’s not like grabbing an extra burger at the drive-thru.

Player/Item Tags

One solution is to control the ability to own or loot an item as a function of the character’s history. Each time a character picks up a lore item, a flag is set in the character’s record, preventing him from looting that item ever again. This seems reasonable at first, but in practice ends up becoming cumbersome due to many reasons:

what if the player legitimately lost the item and is seeking to replace it?

what if the player sold the item and now wants to reacquire it?

how should the loot system handle drop determination when there’s a party of adventurers, not just a single character?
There are even more corner cases, and none of the ostensible solutions are perfect. The larger problem of item farming is sort of fixed, but player convenience plummets, and hoarding will often end up becoming the norm as players become worried they’ll never be able to own the item again.

Tension Between Trade and Item Inflation

There is a fundamental synergy between player trade and item proliferation. It is impossible to discourage one without discouraging the other as they operate hand in hand. If an item is worth having the other players will want it — which means that some players will find it very advantageous to introduce as many of those items into the economy as possible. Level limits, NODROP, item upgrades, and LORE all discourage item farming and twinking, but at the exact same time discourage or prevent player trade.

I’m unaware of any solution that allows free player trade without inadvertently pushing item proliferation and farming.

Crafters vs The Environment

When similar items enter the economy through the actions of PCs (crafting and trade skills) or arbitrarily (spawning) then competition between craftsmen and “the environment” develops. This can have broad ramifications on the entire economy and player enjoyment, and will be covered in more depth in a later article. For now I just want to point out the obvious: if worthwhile items can be acquired “for free” from the environment, PC crafters will find themselves marginalized.

Summary

Items and, by proxy, currency are the fundamental units of measure for an economy. Players need and use a wide range of items, and controlling the influx and outflow of items is a tricky task.

Economies can quickly reach a point of autocatalyzation at one extreme, or grind to a halt at the other, depending on how well the economy’s “faucets” and “drains” are managed. Even small changes to items and trade mechanics can have drastic ripple effects on an entire world.(source:trac.bookfhook)