Would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

Jxb1a · March 2012

Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

For example if MMOGame #1 had iron ore. And, it was predetermined that there would be about 1 billion in-game metric tons. Would the fact alone that there is a finite amount of iron cause people to be more careful with how they mine? Would they just hoard the iron? Would iron be more carefully priced because of the limited supply? If there is a correlation between iron and in-game currency, how would it be reflected? Would there be guilds soley created just to become a mining operation? How would the price of other commodities change if Iron was a basic resource from everything to weapons and armor, to buildings and steel.

I'm just curious about the subject. No flaming or anything just food for thought plz.

laokoko · March 2012

ya finite resource is pretty bad. Since eventually you'll depelte the 1 billion ton of iron. And a few years from now, there's no longer any iron in the game.

You probably need to limit it to a fix amount per week. for example 1000 tons of iron can be farmed per week. I played a game where there's a fix amount of certain material that you can mine per week.

RefMinor · March 2012

Originally posted by Jxb1a

Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

For example if MMOGame #1 had iron ore. And, it was predetermined that there would be about 1 billion in-game metric tons. Would the fact alone that there is a finite amount of iron cause people to be more careful with how they mine? Would they just hoard the iron? Would iron be more carefully priced because of the limited supply? If there is a correlation between iron and in-game currency, how would it be reflected? Would there be guilds soley created just to become a mining operation? How would the price of other commodities change if Iron was a basic resource from everything to weapons and armor, to buildings and steel.

I'm just curious about the subject. No flaming or anything just food for thought plz.

No, I don't think it would work you would get as much out of the ground as possible and sell it slowly at high price or hoard if others were selling cheap, however I think shifting finite resource finds combined with territory control mechanisms would be great?

gilgamesh42 · March 2012

finite is such a weird words why can't you just say limited like normal people>.>

waynejr2 · March 2012

Originally posted by Jxb1a
Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

For example if MMOGame #1 had iron ore. And, it was predetermined that there would be about 1 billion in-game metric tons. Would the fact alone that there is a finite amount of iron cause people to be more careful with how they mine? Would they just hoard the iron? Would iron be more carefully priced because of the limited supply? If there is a correlation between iron and in-game currency, how would it be reflected? Would there be guilds soley created just to become a mining operation? How would the price of other commodities change if Iron was a basic resource from everything to weapons and armor, to buildings and steel.

I'm just curious about the subject. No flaming or anything just food for thought plz.

I think the FIRST MENTAILITY would kick in and everyone would mine and hoard until it ran out.

What would you do when food runs out in that game?

I wouldn't work in a traditional mmorpg. It might be fun, if you created a game with it in mind AND a server ran until a limited time and everyone would have to start over.

Castillle · March 2012

Then the hoarder with 50% of the resources stops playing and everyone else is hit with poverty. Oh like IRL! :O

dronfwar · March 2012

I don't understand. The iron doesn't dissappear it is still ingame. It only changes its form. If you destroy an object it gives you the resources it was built from. You might need a junkyard for scrap metal.

Does someone hoard the iron in his pocket (100000000000 x iron)?

The iron needs to be physically present in the game and not just be an icon.

GTwander · March 2012

I used the idea for a thread based on a game concept of mine in the dev corner. Essentially, it's a zero-sum economy, which is absolutely plausible via game theory (nash equilibrium). Some people may hoarde the majority of goods, for sure, but if there is any incentive to build/craft with things they do not possess - then they *will* trade for it at a value assessed by the general consensus price. The issue is new Players jumping in once the excising of materials is long over with, in which case, they will have to whore themselves out to get an initial investment that can roll over to more (if they are savvy traders).

Another thing to keep in mind is the ability to salvage goods back to their exact material specifications. Then you can attribute loss via death, or some other factor, to being a way to spread wealth once it's all been set in place.

In the end, it's a game where there are clear winners - the moguls of the server. From there, people will end up working for them for their scraps, and while that may not be an ideal form of incentive to play, it really adds to the social nature of things. It's a perfect candidate for a game with a community sharing a socialist kind of nature, where enclaves pool wealth, or a representative holds it all, and others hold his pocket lining as need be.

~The *biggest* problem, though, is what happens to resources left in the hands of a character that's gone long inactive. Even more so as many players log out for the last time (ever) with their chunk of the pie intact. I never figured out a safe way to deal with that... without outright taking it from an inactive account and reseeding it, or allowing some kind of siege to claim them (offline or not). It's a hard issue to tackle.

ElderRat · March 2012

Originally posted by Jxb1a
Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

For example if MMOGame #1 had iron ore. And, it was predetermined that there would be about 1 billion in-game metric tons. Would the fact alone that there is a finite amount of iron cause people to be more careful with how they mine? Would they just hoard the iron? Would iron be more carefully priced because of the limited supply? If there is a correlation between iron and in-game currency, how would it be reflected? Would there be guilds soley created just to become a mining operation? How would the price of other commodities change if Iron was a basic resource from everything to weapons and armor, to buildings and steel.

I'm just curious about the subject. No flaming or anything just food for thought plz.

Depends - can you re-use the iron that is in game? Can you forge a sword and then later melt the sword down and make a plow ? Of course then it would not be as finite as if you could only have 1 use. Make a sword and it is a sword forever. Just asking.

maplestone · March 2012

Something to keep in mind about real world mining is that there is huge curve of different difficulties (costs) in getting minerals out of the ground from site to site and so many huge deposits just sit there waiting for the global supply of easy minerals to get depleted to make the harder, less pure ones economical to tap. So the real world rarely hits a wall on any resource - it's more like a slow, steady nerfing of the drop rate.

Also, throughout history when one resource becomes depleted, it sparks a wave of innovation as people try to replace it with some other material. For example: it is believed to have been tin stortages driving up the price of bronze in the ancient world is what lead statuemakers to substitute marble as the "cheap alternative" and smiths to experiment with iron alloys, eventually discovering steel superior to the original bronze. You would need to decide how research and technology was going to be handled in the game: is it possible to research alternative crafts (not always superior, just using different resources) if they get motivated enough or are people stuck with the patterns the game starts with.

Akulas · March 2012

It's happened in other games and the mines have to be reset, forests get cut down, animals get extinct etc which would lead to price rises. Eventually there would be nothing in the world so for the short term it might work but unless there is a way to renew what you take out then it won't really work that well.

Hybridvampyr · March 2012

This is a really interesting idea and somthing that would add a huge amount to a game. There are however a couple of issues with implementing an idea such as this.

The main issue that comes to my mind is what would this system do to the game world and new players down the line. Say a player joins 1 or 2 years down the line and the resource is already gone/near gone. You could end up with a system where the old guard of players are totally untouchable and no matter how much a new player works they could never match what the old players have.

GeeTeeEffOh · March 2012

Nope

Never work,

Would mirror the real world.

History would repeat itself.

Middle class slowy disappears while the rich become super wealthy and the poor become more and more poor as those who have will hoard.

gaeanprayer · March 2012

It's an interesting concept but not one I see working. If the resources are finite then the things you use them for are as well, and eventually you'll end up with a situation where large portions of content are innaccesible depending on what that resource was used for. Think about what resources are typically used for; to build stuff. In building things, you also tend to get stronger in your craft which allows you to make more things. If the resources are gone and you can't do this, then the developers have spent a lot of time and money making a game that's not unplayable. That doesn't make a lot of sense.

The only way to incorporate finite resources into a game that I see is why creating a game intelligent enough to evolve with the resources and either create more, or give players the ability to work their environment in ways that haven't necessarily been programmed. This is how it works in real life; we run low on a resource, scientists come up with ways to use new resources for old technology (i.e., the research that's gone into corn/water-powered vehicles), or discover new ones. But I'm not sure that kind of intelligence in a video game is something we'll see within our lifetime. It would be a monumental feat and games are pretty low on the totem pole in priority for something that useful.

ignore_me · March 2012

well a pre-order item is a finite resource. It's the only example I could think of besides special items introduced during events. Like a really nice mat as a special item for Holiday Event XYZ.

MustaphaMond · March 2012

Originally posted by Jxb1a
Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

I don't think it is valid to ask if it *would* work, because it already has....

Every resource in SWG was randomly generated off of master types. We defined “iron,” and gave it statistical ranges. Different kinds of iron would spawn with different names, but they would all work as iron in any recipe that called for such. This meant that you might find a high-quality vein of iron, or a low quality one.

Even more, it might be high quality only for specific purposes.

Resource types were finite. You could literally mine out all the high quality iron there was. It would just be gone. A new iron might be spawned eventually (sometimes, very eventually!) but of course, it would be rolled up with different characteristics.

And in a different place. Resources were placed using freshly generated Perlin noise maps.

Crafters gambled with their resources, generating items of varying quality that were partially dependent on the resources and the recipe.

Crafters could lock in specific results as blueprints, but that forced a dependency on the specific finite resource that was used, meaning that blueprints naturally obsolesced.

All of this meant that a merchant could never rely having the best item, or the most desirable item (indeed, “most desirable” could exist on several axes, meaning that there were varying customer preferences in terms of what they liked in a blaster). Word spread through informal means as to the locations of rare ore deposits. People fought PvP battles over them. People hoarded minerals just to sell them on the market once they had become rare. And of course, they organized sites like the now defunct SWGCraft.com, which monitored all of this fluctuating data and fed it back out in tidy feeds for other sites and even apps to consume, such as this one, which was widely used by hardcore business players much like a Bloomberg terminal is by someone who plays the market.

~ From Raph Koster's most recent blog post about SWG's economy: "Do auction houses suck?"

Distopia · March 2012

Originally posted by laokoko
ya finite resource is pretty bad. Since eventually you'll depelte the 1 billion ton of iron. And a few years from now, there's no longer any iron in the game.

You probably need to limit it to a fix amount per week. for example 1000 tons of iron can be farmed per week. I played a game where there's a fix amount of certain material that you can mine per week.

You could always replace one resource with another in a sense, like say copper becomes scarce. So bronze slowly is introduced to the world, later iron, steel etc. Keep it dynamic and evolving.. As new lands open (further devlopment) introduce new supply of old resources, cycle repeats.

karmath · March 2012

It all depends on what said resource is used for. In a grind system like WoW where you pump out stacks of worthless stuff that no one wants it would not work. In a system that only used the resource for things people actually wanted and would pay more than what the raw resource was worth it would work. Reverse engineering like a few ppl have said would also make it more viable.

waynejr2 · March 2012

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

Originally posted by Jxb1a
Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

I don't think it is valid to ask if it *would* work, because it already has....

Every resource in SWG was randomly generated off of master types. We defined “iron,” and gave it statistical ranges. Different kinds of iron would spawn with different names, but they would all work as iron in any recipe that called for such. This meant that you might find a high-quality vein of iron, or a low quality one.

Even more, it might be high quality only for specific purposes.

Resource types were finite. You could literally mine out all the high quality iron there was. It would just be gone. A new iron might be spawned eventually (sometimes, very eventually!) but of course, it would be rolled up with different characteristics.

And in a different place. Resources were placed using freshly generated Perlin noise maps.

Crafters gambled with their resources, generating items of varying quality that were partially dependent on the resources and the recipe.

Crafters could lock in specific results as blueprints, but that forced a dependency on the specific finite resource that was used, meaning that blueprints naturally obsolesced.

All of this meant that a merchant could never rely having the best item, or the most desirable item (indeed, “most desirable” could exist on several axes, meaning that there were varying customer preferences in terms of what they liked in a blaster). Word spread through informal means as to the locations of rare ore deposits. People fought PvP battles over them. People hoarded minerals just to sell them on the market once they had become rare. And of course, they organized sites like the now defunct SWGCraft.com, which monitored all of this fluctuating data and fed it back out in tidy feeds for other sites and even apps to consume, such as this one, which was widely used by hardcore business players much like a Bloomberg terminal is by someone who plays the market.

~ From Raph Koster's most recent blog post about SWG's economy: "Do auction houses suck?"

I don't think you understand what the OP meant by limited with you pushing swg down our throats.

Quenchster · March 2012

A MMO with finate resources might end up with gold farmer issues unless the game is like Minecraft or Terraria.

ignore_me · March 2012

Originally posted by waynejr2

Originally posted by MustaphaMond

Originally posted by Jxb1a

Yeah, would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

I don't think it is valid to ask if it *would* work, because it already has....

Every resource in SWG was randomly generated off of master types. We defined “iron,” and gave it statistical ranges. Different kinds of iron would spawn with different names, but they would all work as iron in any recipe that called for such. This meant that you might find a high-quality vein of iron, or a low quality one.

Even more, it might be high quality only for specific purposes.

Resource types were finite. You could literally mine out all the high quality iron there was. It would just be gone. A new iron might be spawned eventually (sometimes, very eventually!) but of course, it would be rolled up with different characteristics.

And in a different place. Resources were placed using freshly generated Perlin noise maps.

Crafters gambled with their resources, generating items of varying quality that were partially dependent on the resources and the recipe.

Crafters could lock in specific results as blueprints, but that forced a dependency on the specific finite resource that was used, meaning that blueprints naturally obsolesced.

All of this meant that a merchant could never rely having the best item, or the most desirable item (indeed, “most desirable” could exist on several axes, meaning that there were varying customer preferences in terms of what they liked in a blaster). Word spread through informal means as to the locations of rare ore deposits. People fought PvP battles over them. People hoarded minerals just to sell them on the market once they had become rare. And of course, they organized sites like the now defunct SWGCraft.com, which monitored all of this fluctuating data and fed it back out in tidy feeds for other sites and even apps to consume, such as this one, which was widely used by hardcore business players much like a Bloomberg terminal is by someone who plays the market.

~ From Raph Koster's most recent blog post about SWG's economy: "Do auction houses suck?"

I don't think you understand what the OP meant by limited with you pushing swg down our throats.

Cause you're not supposed to talk about SWG, should be some sort of penalty for mentioning it even though this thread is craft oriented and that game had a very robust crafting system.

lifesbrink · March 2012

So the basics of how this system would work, both garnered from previous points and my own thoughts:

1. Said resources should dwindle slowly, i.e. several years, not a few months.

2. Resources that are finite should never EVER fade out of game in any way, but rather change forms.

3. Accounts that hold any finite resource that cease to log in should start losing resources at some rate through least valuable resources first to the most valuable in the end. People who choose to use this to troll by holding a ton of resources hostage but login only periodically should lose them all if discovered to be doing this (Community ALWAYS figures people like this out, trolls smell too much)

4. As resources become harder to get, alternate means of resources should be discoverable to make up for it all.

5. Players ingame should be able to have their resources stolen somehow. This way, those players who try to run a server by withholding all the resources and basically acting like moguls are not impervious to attack.

6. Again, it should be impossible to destroy a finite resource off the server.

7. Nothing is soulbound.

8. Profit?

GTwander · March 2012

Originally posted by Quenchster
A MMO with finate resources might end up with gold farmer issues unless the game is like Minecraft or Terraria.

...but that would also clear up the stated issues of wealth hoarding. People aren't going to buy resources from gold-farmers just to sit on it - plus - once they sell their personal reserves, what is the business plan after that?

Gold-farmers would walk from it at some point, because there is no way to farm what is already banked by others. To act as 'resellers' means dealing with such a small profit margin that it's not worth doing.

MustaphaMond · March 2012

Originally posted by waynejr2

I don't think you understand what the OP meant by limited with you pushing swg down our throats.

Newsflash: "Finite" means the same thing as LIMITED.... /facepalm

And... WTF!? I am not pushing SWG down anybody's throat!

FYI, I've never even played SWG (though I wish I could have) and I just so happened to remember Koster mentioning FINITE resources in his blog post about SWG, so I thought my response was perfectly on topic and addressed most of the OP's questions:

Would finite resource ever work in an MMO?

Would the fact alone that there is a finite amount of iron cause people to be more careful with how they mine?

Would they just hoard the iron?

Would iron be more carefully priced because of the limited supply?

If there is a correlation between iron and in-game currency, how would it be reflected?

Would there be guilds soley created just to become a mining operation?

How would the price of other commodities change if Iron was a basic resource from everything to weapons and armor, to buildings and steel.

Just take a moment to reread what I posted (and maybe even Raph's entire post about SWG) and consider that it relates to all the above questions. It doesn't outright answer some of them, but it is an actual game that had finite resources... resources, I might add, which people hoarded, waited to sell until they became rare, used for crafting special items (which commanded higher prices), and were mined competitively (even to the point of resource exhaustion). ALL of these things are directly related to what OP was asking.... =/

If you don't see the connection between OP's question and SWG, lrn2readingcomprehension FFS...

lifesbrink · March 2012

Mustapha, just ignore the guy. Trolls are always trolling.

Fadedbomb · March 2012

Worked for SWG. I don't see why it wouldn't work again.

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