Global Currency or Item for Item Barter?

[joexxxz]

For example:
There should be a fix amount of gold in the game. Gold can be mined, or scavanged. But it should have a cap.
Once the cap is reached, u can no longer mine it, or scavange it.
Money should be printed by banks, or tribe personnel, and the gold should be kept in a tribe bank.

[mrcalhou]

The end part of your graph shows exactly why that idea would be a problem.

[Xx1327]

add more options to your poll and i might vote

[Tybalt]

add more options to your poll and i might vote

What other option would you suggest? blood debts? XD
No, really, if you have another option you would like to suggest. I would love to hear it.

[Xx1327]

minting and currency treaties

[Tybalt]

Sorry Tybalt, Let me try again. You keep somthing very valuable that will backup your currency. I used tar or oil as we don't know what will be hard to come by and become a high value consumable. You use that high value consumable to give value to what ever currency you pick, Be it bottle caps, buttons, or what ever you wish to use. The bottle caps is just a stand in for the high value consumable item(s). Say my tribe sets the value at ten to one, So for every ten bottle caps you can buy one unit of oil. This gives value and meaning to my tribes money.

Unless I am missing the point and what we are realy talking about is how do you keep things like bottle caps, buttons, or what ever from flooding into the game with the way it is now?

Ok, I think I get what you are suggesting. The only problem I see in that idea is. If your tribe has all the oil, and decide that caps are the currency they want to use. What about my tribe that deems them worthless? If I take the 30 million caps we have been throwing into stockpile bins, and we take them to your tribe for trade. How does the amount of oil you have to back up your cap currency effect me? We could just trade all our caps that are worthless to us, and buy up your oil.

I don't think an Gold standard system would serve any real purpose in this game's economy at this time. Well, Not for items that can be scavenged that is. The Gold Standard system is designed to give value to a nations manufactured legal tender. Not another resource.

[Tybalt]

minting and currency treaties

Those are very good ideas.

But... they are not really separate options.
Minting is just the form of production of a Global/National Standard Currency.
And a Currency Treaty would just be an agreement made by to bodies towards the value of their decided mutual currency.

With the options you have suggested, I believe you would be more inclined towards a Global standard.

[mrcalhou]

A standard would have to be backed by a non-player controlled source otherwise there would be too many means for it to be abused.

If money is backed by a finite resource, such as in Joe's suggestion, then players would be rewarded for not spending the money. Because as new goods and materials are entered into circulation the same amount of money would be needed for larger and larger transactions, driving the value of the currency up relative to the price of goods.

My final in my American Government class was on economic policy. I got a B on it. So anyway, the following is going to stem from what I learned.

Having a non-player controlled means of generating and taking currency out of circulation is the only reasonable way I can think of that will keep a monetary system, in a game like this, stable. My final suggestion on this topic is a modification of one of my earlier ideas.

There will be non-player controlled trading posts scattered about that can buy and sell an infinite amount of resources. It can also buy crafted goods, but only for as much as it would pay for the base resources to make the item, not any resources used to modify or repair it. Items below a certain durability percent could not be sold to it. The prices of these items will be fixed. It would cost more to buy a resource than someone would get from selling resources to it. To help keep inflation down, any, but the most basic of, player created items should have high degradation rates to encourage resources to be cycled through the system.

There would also be player controlled trading posts where individual players can set their own rate for items that other players would then be able to buy. The items availible would be shop dependent. A tax would be added to all player-to-player transactions through this trading post. Part of the tax would go to the player or tribe that owns the building and part of the tax would disappear out of the system. This system would also have an anti-inflation method. The part of the taxes that disappear out of the system would vary slightly based on the amount of money in circulation to encourage players to use money. As more money is being circulated the tax percent would go down slightly making each unit of money slightly more valuble since less can be used for more. The converse would be true too. As less money is being circulated taxes would go up; meaning the people that are hoarding money are loseing value on it since the same amount of money would be used to buy less goods. Perhaps have it so that the base rate is 3% that would go to the tribe or person that owns the building, then another 2%-12% tax rate that would disappear from the system.

Finally, players would be able to trade face-to-face without having to use currency and where no taxes would be taken out.

This system allows the player-base to have control over the amount of money and resources in circulation, while also providing a way for money to be entered into the system without giving any one person or tribe too much power.

It would be similar to having the government in control of the money supply, like how the federal reserve controls monetary policy or how Congress controls fiscal policy in the United States based on what citizens do with the money.

Any player controlled means would be subject to player abuse and therefore eventually render the currency worthless as no one would be bothered to use it.

[Tybalt]

The only flaw I see in that plan is me. =D
I would build my tribe right next to the trade post and my members sole task would be to harvest and sell all resources not used in building the tribe defense. I would stockpile currency because I am a pack-rat at heart and would attempt to wrest control of all the static trade posts from other tribes. The goal being to be in control of the only resource both rare and valuable. These Trade post would become the catalyst for tribal pvp and nothing more. The Economy would crash because more effort would be put into obtaining control of these nodes then using them to stimulate the economy.

[mrcalhou]

The developers should hard code it so that areas in a decent size range around these posts would be off-limits to pvp or have some sort of non-player retaliation system in a similar vein to what Eve has. I know people think having non-pvp areas in a game makes it less hardcore, but what really makes a game less hardcore is when there are only a few people playing. Then it's just a giant arena game.