Crafting, Items, and Economy

Item economy remains a difficult concept for many MMOs to handle. This is a hard thing to manage for many reasons. First, like a real economy, it isn't a simple numbers game. There are a lot of factors to manage. Second, since there needs to be an (apparently) endless supply of monsters to kill, there is a constant influx of goods (items, cash, etc.) that needs to be balanced. The longer a game is around, the more stuff that floats around, and everything but the rarest items become devalued. It makes a lower skilled crafter worthless.

Item decay is the first step I think, and many systems have this. However to limit frustration, item decay is seldom significant enough to balance supply. I think to support a good economy, things should decay rapidly with use. Things could be repaired with additional supplies, but they'd never be as good as the original, and eventually would wear out entirely. This also helps get rid of hand-me-downs that end up devaluing the more basic crafted items.

Item sinks (typically cash sinks) are also used to help balance this. Things like material cost for guild houses, maintenance of the same, paying for skills, etc. all behave as drains that remove excess goods from the economy. This needs to be employed to a high level in order to help stave off the growing influx. Warehouse fees should be used -- make it cost money to keep things under lock-and-key.

Selling items back to NPCs is a common way of converting stuff into cash. This is almost always done at a significant loss to help keep the economy in check. Any conversion of stuff from one form to another should be done at a loss for this reason (crafting raw materials into items, salvaging items into raw materials, etc.). Selling items to PCs is also a common way of converting stuff into cash at a better rate than selling it to NPCs. If there is a commission charge for this (I think Horizons did this), then you continue this concept. Many games also utilize no-drop/no-trade items, though generally to prevent people from bypassing quests it also has the effect of removing items from the economy.

Tailor-making items is another way to keep values up. If there are one-size-fits-all suits of armor out there then one suit is as good as another for any character. Instead have tailor-made items. If you want to hand down or sell your armor to another character, then they would either need to salvage the materials (at a loss of course) and make a new suit, or at least require a refitting (costing additional materials).

In almost every MMO, the longer you are in a game the richer you get. Higher level critters drop more cash and/or more expensive items, and it costs more to get higher level items. This is done to keep lower level characters from having access to the best stuff. However it does create twinking. Level caps are often employed to reduce this effect as are no-drop/no-trade items. I think this experience=rich is enevitable, but can be kept in check with better items costing more to maintain.

In a real economy, technology often plays a part. The "new, improved" widget is better than the old widget, so everyone is going to want to upgrade to it. This is probably one of the most difficult things to manage, and probably is beyond the capabilities of most games. Things like Copper->Bronze and Bronze->Iron are major progressions, and most games treat it as if low skill crafters can only work with the older technology. If periodically a technology upgrade occurred, then both crafters and consumers across the board would need to move forward to stay competitive.

The last way to help crafters stay in business is to have unique items. Suppose each crafter gains the ability to make a particular unique item after they've progressed far enough in their craft. No other crafter can make their unique item, and the item has some special effect. This would require a lot of work on the game designers and developers, but would go a long way towards placing a high value on the work of a crafter.