4 ms·

"I mean that when a tax or rent is paid in EVE, this does not cycle back into the economy, it just magically disappears. In the real world, when a property tax

by hedvig 9y ago

"I mean that when a tax or rent is paid in EVE, this does not cycle back into the economy, it just magically disappears. In the real world, when a property tax is paid it cycles back into the economy through expenditures on public infrastructure such as education and road maintenance" " Interesting - there's not a way to develop something in the game that could cycle it back in?

ztjio 9y ago
There are plenty of 'taxes' in game that are cycled back in. What is being referred to here are fees that deter certain gameplay styles such as not ever joining a real corp. That said, there are some currency sink fees that are used to help maintain reasonable economy stability as well. That's needed in any game with an important economy aspect.
MaulingMonkey 9y ago
There is and there has been! Simply cycling it back in is certainly doable, and arguably already done (or approximated) - I'd argue it's more the local infrastructure deterioration/modeling that isn't (fully) simulated in EvE, for NPC infastructure. A couple of gamedev terms: - Cash faucets - sources of currency generation / magically introduced into the economy, functionally equivalent to the bank printing currency in the real world. - Cash sinks - places where currency is magically destroyed / taken out of the economy, functionally equivalent to the bank destroying old currency in the real world. If your cash faucets and sinks exactly balance each other out, you could look at it as the bank simply reinvesting the currency instead of creating and destroying an exactly equal amount - externally, the net effect is identical. Of course, this is rarely the case - both in games and in real life. For the currency to be "healthy" and serve a purpose in a player economy, you want to avoid faucets outnumbering sinks to the point that you have extremely inflation. E.g. in Diablo 2, one would barter in known rare items - gold is effectively worthless, there are few effective sinks to sink it into. (Games of course usually use an impossible number of magical faucets and sinks - the kind of centrally planned economy that would require a star trek style post-scarcity environment run by complete and utter LARPing fanatics to ever pull off, contrasted to our current real world where you maybe have a single state bank trying to carefully control inflation with a currency printing lever.) Returning to EvE online: They still have a bunch of magical zero-maintenance infrastructure in "high security" space, but they've also added a lot of player buildable infrastructure that generally needs fueling and defense. If you don't pay for a road's upkeep in real life, it starts to get a few potholes. If you don't pay to maintain and defend your player owned stations in EvE online (be it through your money or your material and your time), someone's going to blow it up or take it from you - for amusement, profit, or both. This is a much stronger deterioration of infrastructure than you generally see in real life. (I forget how much of this player buildable infrastructure predates this article, if any.)
- Mashimo 9y ago
  And here is a graph about the cash sinks and faucets: https://images.contentful.com/7lhcm73ukv5p/2mCQPkfNbWw0K2E64awEWw/86249411c0b1835a6897ecc26d22f56d/9a_sinksfaucets.png https://images.contentful.com/7lhcm73ukv5p/2mCQPkfNbWw0K2E64... Taken from the monthly report: https://www.eveonline.com/article/p3j6gs/monthly-economic-report-january-2018 https://www.eveonline.com/article/p3j6gs/monthly-economic-re...
erikb 9y ago
Of course it's possible. But in a game you don't want to create the most detailed real world simulator but an abstraction of the real world that feels real enough while at the same time is a lot easier to implement than the real thing. In MMO economies that usually means you have magic money creation boxes (mostly killing monsters or mining resources for unlimited sources) and money destruction boxes (e.g. repairing your items or paying tax/rent for different things). If you have more creation than destruction you have inflation, which is fine to a limited extend.

by hedvig 9y ago

ztjio 9y ago

There are plenty of 'taxes' in game that are cycled back in. What is being referred to here are fees that deter certain gameplay styles such as not ever joining a real corp. That said, there are some currency sink fees that are used to help maintain reasonable economy stability as well. That's needed in any game with an important economy aspect.

MaulingMonkey 9y ago

There is and there has been! Simply cycling it back in is certainly doable, and arguably already done (or approximated) - I'd argue it's more the local infrastructure deterioration/modeling that isn't (fully) simulated in EvE, for NPC infastructure. A couple of gamedev terms: - Cash faucets - sources of currency generation / magically introduced into the economy, functionally equivalent to the bank printing currency in the real world. - Cash sinks - places where currency is magically destroyed / taken out of the economy, functionally equivalent to the bank destroying old currency in the real world. If your cash faucets and sinks exactly balance each other out, you could look at it as the bank simply reinvesting the currency instead of creating and destroying an exactly equal amount - externally, the net effect is identical. Of course, this is rarely the case - both in games and in real life. For the currency to be "healthy" and serve a purpose in a player economy, you want to avoid faucets outnumbering sinks to the point that you have extremely inflation. E.g. in Diablo 2, one would barter in known rare items - gold is effectively worthless, there are few effective sinks to sink it into. (Games of course usually use an impossible number of magical faucets and sinks - the kind of centrally planned economy that would require a star trek style post-scarcity environment run by complete and utter LARPing fanatics to ever pull off, contrasted to our current real world where you maybe have a single state bank trying to carefully control inflation with a currency printing lever.) Returning to EvE online: They still have a bunch of magical zero-maintenance infrastructure in "high security" space, but they've also added a lot of player buildable infrastructure that generally needs fueling and defense. If you don't pay for a road's upkeep in real life, it starts to get a few potholes. If you don't pay to maintain and defend your player owned stations in EvE online (be it through your money or your material and your time), someone's going to blow it up or take it from you - for amusement, profit, or both. This is a much stronger deterioration of infrastructure than you generally see in real life. (I forget how much of this player buildable infrastructure predates this article, if any.)

Mashimo 9y ago
And here is a graph about the cash sinks and faucets: https://images.contentful.com/7lhcm73ukv5p/2mCQPkfNbWw0K2E64awEWw/86249411c0b1835a6897ecc26d22f56d/9a_sinksfaucets.png https://images.contentful.com/7lhcm73ukv5p/2mCQPkfNbWw0K2E64... Taken from the monthly report: https://www.eveonline.com/article/p3j6gs/monthly-economic-report-january-2018 https://www.eveonline.com/article/p3j6gs/monthly-economic-re...

erikb 9y ago

Of course it's possible. But in a game you don't want to create the most detailed real world simulator but an abstraction of the real world that feels real enough while at the same time is a lot easier to implement than the real thing. In MMO economies that usually means you have magic money creation boxes (mostly killing monsters or mining resources for unlimited sources) and money destruction boxes (e.g. repairing your items or paying tax/rent for different things). If you have more creation than destruction you have inflation, which is fine to a limited extend.