[Jonboy]

At first, when I read Istanbul's suggestion of adding vanity rewards for earning pointless amounts of cash, I was annoyed that he wanted recognition for something so mundane as credit generation. To my mind, the mini-game of generating cash in Jumpgate is very like work. You are forced to do it so that you can do the things you really would rather be doing. I appreciate the idea that hauling can be a fun way of enjoying the game, and that your wealth stat is a marker of how much you've enjoyed it - except that people exploit the game so that marker is meaningless. So... If money is meaningless, I mean REALLY meaningless, surely we can design the game without it....

Now, here's the part where i get to use the word 'Gedankenexperiment.'

Would *I* play the game if there was no money?
What place does money have in the RPG genre?
Isn't it just a crutch - borrowed from real life - something to assist trade?
Is the minigame of wealth generation important?
Where would we be better off without it?
How would we cope without it?
What are the side-effects?

And you came into this thread just to see if I was gonna rant about farming again, didn't you?

Okay, obviously if there was no money in the game, we'd use an alternative form of trade, bartering. But bartering means there is no need for a virtual representation of wealth, the wealth is accumulated as the stuff you have bartered for.

What would haulers do? The same as they've always done... haul stuff around and make things. You'd still need them, you still need a powerplant to fly, so you still need people to move stuff around.

How would PvPers cope? Well, without money, equipment could be free. PvPers wouldn't need to grind money to do what they want.

Interestingly, pirates would suffer the most, as there would be no way to PoD people. They'd have to steal something worth bartering - maybe something heavy.

How do you cope with things like buying large items, like POS? You could have them require real work, so you have to get 500 items which each take 500 other items to put together.

How would you deal with storage space? I'd require people to build it with.

======

Honestly, the biggest problem I have is finding something for the PvPers to use to convince the haulers to haul stuff for them.

Money should only be useful to actually buy stuff. Accumulation of it really is silly in a combat game, to my mind. the most important function it should serve is for people to buy other people's services. I can pay you to stock my station far more conveniently with real cash than with anything barterable. If the game could be made fun, and with lots activities and viable trade without money... then add money back, but only for convenience, I think the game would be better off.

[vorlon31]

An interesting StarTrek like notion but lots of people do like the sub game of acquiring wealth and its a common theme in most games because of that. Besides, in your vision there would still be currency, it would just be something else, some highly sought item which would lead to hoarding of that and not the otherwise useless credit.

[Anvil]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

Money should only be useful to actually buy stuff. Accumulation of it really is silly in a combat game, to my mind. the most important function it should serve is for people to buy other people's services. I can pay you to stock my station far more conveniently with real cash than with anything barterable. If the game could be made fun, and with lots activities and viable trade without money... then add money back, but only for convenience, I think the game would be better off.

First off your assuming Jumpgate is just a Combat Game. That is saddening to see. Log in right now and I bet you anything the vast majority of players are NOT military flagged and are NOT interested in fighting you in real space right now. If they remove money from Jumpgate it would be the death toll. It would completely remove ANY sense of realism. They might as well just make the Simulator really good and forget Real space.

Anvil

[ELPIRATA]

Kind of strange a suggestion like this coming from a sol :P

Its all about competition. How about asking for PvP not be in the game? Kills can be exploited as well, you know that. Asking for a part of the game that 'carebears' look forward to just "because" doesnt make sense IMO.

In the end... even when exchanging items... those items become the new money, you'll never get rid of it. Its just how it works, must be there.

ELP

[Istanbul]

I wouldn't mind an experiment in this regard. My only point was that the accumulation of wealth has no real point atm past the purchase of POSs, and that if we're going to have it, there should be something to do with it.

[netburnr]

Very intersting idea, however I see a lot of people being against this.

[Eraser55]

nothing is free... Why would a trader give me free equipment so i can blow it up in few min, when he used hours to make it?

why would miners mine when they can get ore for free? if everything was free then everything would need to be available all the time without the need for players to "work", because most will not "work" for free.

But ofcourse long time ago there was no money, because people traded things for other things. The problem with this is that you need different things for different people. Lets say you need 500 flashfires. If you want to "buy" it from an oct, you would need the equip he is asking for, and if you want it from another oct or quant or sol, you would need something entirly different, because they may not want what you have. If you get what I mean.

Credits/Money are made to make all this trading much easier, so why remove it and make trading in games a wastage of time.

[Wild_Bill]

Money/credits were "invented" as a simple way of not having to try and carry a cow around in your pocket. Same reason farmers in the western part of the fledgling USA turned surplus corn into whiskey; whiskey was more portable than corn.

Trading/bartering is a cumbersome way of contracting commerce. Credits/ money is much easier and, because it reflects RL, is vastly simpler for most folks to understand. I'm not talking economics here such as Duodecimal excells in, but plain buying & selling.

As Istanbul and others have pointed out, counting credits is a non-violent way of counting coup/keeping score. I would hate to see it leave the game. It's bad enough to have to fly all over everywhere to assemble the stuff to make other stuff. If I had to trade for commodities or equipment just to make other equipment to trade for what I want, I would simply give up.

It's not that bad an idea for a PvPer (MT style or old HG), as long as gear is given or assigned to them without charge, but would suck for virtually everyone else.

[Elmdor]

Diablo 2 essentially had no currency. One item(Stone Ring of Jordan) became the measurement of value for everything. A currency will form on its own. A better solution is to have money sinks to prevent inflation. (like WoW) This of course is annoying as hell to the player but is better for the game economy.

[Jonboy]

Well done on not reading what I actually wrote. It's a thought experiment. no more. what would happen if...? I don't really expect this to be implemented in any way.

But it is a useful thought experiment. The end result of it was that if money is largely pointless in a game, then you should balance around fun. The money is really there only to facilitate trade. The money could be in the unit of aardvarks, it doesn't make any difference. Make the game fun. If the mission you are trying to get people to do is fun, it'll get done. Earning game-money should be an aside - a complement to what you were gonna do anyway.

But conversely, if the game is combat-based, there should be no reason to expect people to have any money at all.

[netburnr]

Originally Posted by Jonboy

Earning game-money should be an aside - a complement to what you were gonna do anyway.

You nailed this on the head. I play an online card game, and there is an ingame money system to buy more cards.

However, noone sits there and plays to get more credits to get more cards, you just happen to get credits while your playing trying to level your cards, etc etc...

[Tritian]

hmmm, I like the idea of building a station actually taking effort, and hauling your own stuff/making the parts/deploying them yourself.

I also like the idea of someone who is completely broke, still being able to produce equipment by mining, then making the equipment himself. Possibly in some kind of neocron-ish blueprint research/construct method. such a method should be very easy to accomplish.

I dont see the need to completely abolish credits though. I dont think they would be good for the games economy, or people who deal solely in that aspect of gameplay.

I think a better idea would be to find ways to make the mini-game of making money MUCH more enjoyable, and not a choir. But that is difficult without causing mass inflation.

In Jumpgate Classic, i always though it should of been possible to get rich off PvP'ing if you are good, but even someone who dies a lot should still be able to make enough to get by. Unfortunately, the MT system has several user-interface obstacles which make it not very friendly to use.

For example, if i go out and kill 5 enemies, i should get paid for that wether i had the damn missio