This article collects information regarding the conceptualisation of the gameplay of The Mana World
This article is currently only a proposal
The features or design guidelines described in this article are only a proposal made by one or some persons. It has not been evaluated or accepted by the core development team yet. Feel free to add your personal opinion about them or make counter proposals.
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Trading among players
In addition to trading with merchant NPCs, the players will be able to trade amongst themselves in different ways. The idea is that this can be more attractive than trading with an NPC. This not only makes the economy more dynamic but is also increases interaction between players, making the game more fun. See also the Wikipedia article on a player-run economy.
Direct trade
Any player will be able to request a direct trade with another player. This can be used to directly exchange any items carried in their inventory as well as currency. After the stuff that's being traded is specified, both players will have to push a confirm button to complete the transaction. Whenever there is a change, any confirmation is canceled. Whenever both players have confirmed, the transaction takes place.
Because one of the players could change something and quickly confirm between the time the other player sent his confirmation and the arrival of this confirmation, we'll either have to add a "revision" ID to the confirmation or make the confirmation a two-stage process as seems to be done in Ragnarok Online. I think I would prefer using revision IDs.
Marketplace
Almost every city will have a marketplace. Player will be able to buy and sell common items here like ingredients and food, but the availability and buy/sell price will be determined dynamically. Any item you can buy at the market will first have to be sold to the market. The buy and sell prices will depend on how many are available. To keep this under control each item will have a minimum and maximum value.
The marketplace cannot be used for selling most of your equipment, you'd have to go to a more specialized store for that and these prices will be probably be far less economy driven, if at all.
To the right you can see a graph showing the idea behind the prices on the marketplace. The two dashed lines are the minimum and maximum item prices, which are used by regular shops. The green area shows the difference in buy/sell prices at the market, and how these prices change with availability (the amount of items of that type present at the market). The formula might be written down as:
<math>buy\_price = \frac{1}{\frac{availability}{X} + 1} \times (max - min) + min</math>
<math>sell\_price = \frac{3}{4} \times buy\_price</math>
Note that I didn't try to plot this graph yet so it's likely that I've made an error somewhere or that this is not the desired graph. Also, the value of X will still need to be determined. X is supposed to be the availability at which the item has lost about half its value (not entirely true because of minimum price).
Note also that the difference between buy and sell price is much smaller at the market than at a regular store. This is intentional, yet maybe this difference is still too small, we could use a factor 2 for example.
Putting your items on display (name of service?)
Some cities will have a place where you can, for a small fee, put your items on display. This means leaving your item there with a price tag and hoping another player will come along and buy it. You can then return to collect your money, retrieve your item or set another price. The idea is that players will try to sell the more rare items for more money than they'd get from selling it at a store, but cheaper than the price you'd pay for buying it at a store. Some items here may not be available from regular stores at all.
Note that it would be annoying for players to have to keep returning to check whether an item sold. To solve this we could provide the players with a mailbox where they'll receive notices about such a sell taking place. A mailbox would be available at their local post office, but would also come with their real estate.
Auction house
The auction house is where you can drop items that you'd like to be auctioned, setting a starting price and a time for which the auction will run. Players can visit the auction house to see what's being auctioned and place bids. When the auction period for a certain item is over, and at least one bid has been placed, the highest bidder has the exclusive right to pick up his item (and pay the bid) during the cause of 24 hours. If after this period the bidder still hasn't returned to check whether he got the item, the seller of the item is free to pick up his item too. If the highest bidder did return, the seller will still need to return to the auction house to pick up his money.
Similarly to the service described above, the auction house could offer to send notices about bids and the status of the deal, allowing the player to keep track of stuff from a central place and not travel needlessly.
Player-run store
Players with high enough merchant skill and the necessary equipment can start a small "shop" anywhere, except explicitly disallowed places, like most indoor places but also some areas of a city. They will be able to specify things they will buy and things they will sell, and at which prices. The idea is that they can then trade with multiple other players at the same and without the need for further interaction, but the merchant won't be able to do much while being a shop (for example it is not possible to walk at the same time). Their inventory will be limited like that of any other player.
Players with very high trading skill and enough money could even buy a real store in a town. For this they will also need to hire an NPC that handles the selling/buying process, which will cost them a daily fee. The job of the player would then be to keep the shop's inventory interesting for the customers and to set the buy/sell prices on the items. If the fortune of the merchant is no longer sufficient to pay the wage of the NPC for a certain amount of time, the shop will automatically go bankrupt and become available for buying again. Customers will be able to leave messages for the merchant, which will be delivered to his mailbox when available.
NPC traders
NPC traders have a stockpile of products and raw materials. They buy and sell both. NPC traders convert raw materials to products at regular intervals. They always try to maintain a fixed reserve of each. When the stock of a ware is under the reserve treshold its price increases. When the stock of a ware is over the reserve treshold its price decreases. The difference between selling price and buying price should be large (NPCs want to make profit, too).
To avoid abuse by selling a large number of items and buying them back for a lower price after the NPC corrected its price the price should be calculated separately after each sold unit and the difference between buying and selling price should always be larger than the price difference which can be archieved by selling or buying one unit.
TODO: formulas for buying and selling price
Currency of the world
The Dynamic Economy System allows the trade and currency values of the world to be altered by the present state of politics. Each kingdom has a currency, as well as a rank in overall prosperity. The rank in prosperity determines the price of items inside that city, as well as the trade value of that nation's currency.
1st - 25% item cost, 400% currency value in other countries 2nd - 50% item cost, 200% currency value in other countries 3rd - 100% item cost, 100% currency value in other countries 4th - 150% item cost, 75% currency value in other countries 5th - 200% item cost, 50% currency value in other countries 6th - 300% item cost, 20% currency value in other countries
Also, item types are divided into certain categories. The more items of one category a merchant in the city buys, the lower items of that type will cost (within certain limits) Likewise, the more of a kind are bought, the more items of the type cost.
Note: only generic items are affected by this system. Rare items are made by players and can be gotten from the auction system.
See Currencies
