Item Pricing and Economy

[instantz]

Are there any tutorial/read on how the items should be priced in-game economy? I am assuming there must some sort of formula to calculate the price based on the rarity and chance of items being obtained.

Super interested to see how you guys design your in-game economy.

 

[Design1online]

It's all about supply and demand. For a really good economy you need a way to balance those. Ie, generating or harvesting resources which are used to create materials. When supply for something goes up the price goes down. When supply for something goes down the price will automatically go back up. Then you actually don't have to set any prices, the market economy will dictate the price of goods all by itself.

I apply a similar concept with an MMO I've been working on forever. The supply and demand of resources in the game economy affect the conversion rates and prices of goods in the markets. Taking an economics class online might help you out when you're trying to come up with your own type of economic system that makes sense for your game.

 

[Boltgreywing]

Are there any tutorial/read on how the items should be priced in-game economy? I am assuming there must some sort of formula to calculate the price based on the rarity and chance of items being obtained.

Super interested to see how you guys design your in-game economy.

@instantz: Well designing a good working economy is a bit on the tricky end. Depending what you are trying to create this can be easier or harder. When I was developing my Duelingpets website I didn't really take this into account and so I made the amount of points that a user received quite small compared to how much the items cost. Basically the pets kept dying and users ran out of points to bring their pets back to full health to fight monsters.

Originally I was giving players 10 points for each submission they created be it art, music, or story. I also gave users 3 points for each item to created. However the cost of healing items was about 65 points. On top of that the players got no reward for posting on the forums. Monsters destroying the pets basically caused a lot of users not to stick around as the 200 point limit on initial user accounts was not enough to cover the cost of multiple pet battles failing.

On top of that there was a lot of bugs that plagued the old site. So yes not my strongest effort but it was my first interaction with creating a virtual pet site. There was a lot of variables I didn't take into account.

Now with the new way I am designing the site I am giving each user 0 points to their initial account. However if they create an artwork, music, or video they will receive 200 points after it being approved. On top of that the users will receive points on top of that for each follower.