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PaoloEmilio

Ingame money

77 posts in this topic

I'll break up my thoughts on this idea based on each mode of play:

 

SSP

  • We aren't going to see NPCs any time soon, so who would you trade with?  
  • Coinage would be completely useless in SSP for lack of value.  

Communal SMP (where everyone works together)

  • There are other people, but are you really going to implement an economy for your little village?
  • More importantly, currencies only work when they have value.  Your non-tool metal coins are pretty much play money.
  • If you use tool metal for coinage, then you can't use that metal for more useful things like tools and armor.  
  • You're probably designating all resources as community-owned anyway, so what good is money?

Public SMP

  • There are other people out there being hermits, so there's opportunity for trade.  That's a plus.  
  • Still, currencies only work when they have value.  Your non-tool metal coins are still pretty much play money.  It doesn't matter how precious the metal is in RL, people won't want it.  
  • If you use tool metal for coinage, then you can't use that metal for more useful things like tools and armor.  
  • You're probably better off using charcoal as a currency since it has inherent value and tends to be traded for a lot anyway.  

Overall, the main issue with this idea is that coinage doesn't have any inherent value separate from the metal used, and it would not be commonly exchanged.  

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A question, won't coins still just be another item for barter? Coins only have value because someone (or government) says so, and that value fluctuates based on demand. So, having coins does not eliminate the barter, it just brings in another, perhaps common, medium for the transactions. You'd still need, I think, a "value chart" showing how much any given item costs, and in that case you can just take items of a similar value (or multiple of one for a single of another) and trade directly rather than use the coins.

EXACTLY

 

and honestly, things only have value, because people want them because they are usefull in some way or another, and that person has trouble getting said thing

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A question, won't coins still just be another item for barter? Coins only have value because someone (or government) says so, and that value fluctuates based on demand. So, having coins does not eliminate the barter, it just brings in another, perhaps common, medium for the transactions. You'd still need, I think, a "value chart" showing how much any given item costs, and in that case you can just take items of a similar value (or multiple of one for a single of another) and trade directly rather than use the coins.

 

Coins made from useful metals have value because you can use the metals.

 

EXACTLY

 

and honestly, things only have value, because people want them because they are usefull in some way or another, and that person has trouble getting said thing

 

You're not even wrong. A copper coin can contribute to the making of a copper tool, but even a dollar bill (that has no utility) still has value.

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Then why not trade using tool metal ingots?  Or some other commonly-used commodity?  

 

As for dollar bills, fiat money has no *inherent* value, and what value it does have depends on how useful it is at obtaining other things that do have inherent value.  In other words, just because a government can say RL fiat money has value, that doesn't mean that the average person would be able to replicate that on a whim.  You're basically looking at adding NPC traders (or something of equivalent purpose) who will accept your money for useful items.  

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Need ingots for tools? Then you could use lead, silver, gold, bizmuth or zinc coins? And you don't want coins? Just don't make them and let the others enjoy them. Or earn them from me... If you want, coins can be coded to be smelted in a forge to recover the metal. And not, i am not keen on using nuggets. You don't want coins, but I do. Sorry.

 

You misunderstand me.  I'm not saying "I don't want coins to be implemented in the game!"

What I'm saying is that if coins were implemented in the game I wouldn't accept them for trade, they'd be useless to me.

 

As it's been said at least twice, if the coins are made out of useless metals like lead... I wouldn't want them.  If they were made out of useful metals like iron it'd be more of a hassle for me to take the coins and melt them down into an ingot... I mean... that's silly... "Hey, I have an ingot and you need one?  First let me use up coal to melt my ingot and break it into little pieces to give to you so that you can then melt all those little pieces and make an ingot out of it."

 

If there were two people who wanted to trade with me and one offered me an iron ingot while the other offered me an iron ingot's worth of coins... I would always take the iron ingot because it means much less work for me.  If i were going to take the coins I'd charge more for my trouble.

 

I understand your desire to have an economy.  I suspect that you also have a desire for folks to have to depend on one another and trade... one person produces metal goods, another produces crops, still another produces lumber... that's neat when it happens.  But these ideas, as you've presented them, have gaping holes in them and folks are telling you what they are.We're telling you that your money idea doesn't work as you've presented it.  You might get a handful of folks trading with your coins but most folks will recognize that the coins are less valuable than the metal they're made of and want ingots... or else want more coins for their trouble.  The only people who'll use the coins will be folks who haven't figured that out or else the rare individual who uses them just because they think it's a fun idea.

 

The trouble you've got to get over is that there is no advantage to folks like me.  Why in the world would I want your coins?

I'm sorry, I don't even have any suggestions.  You're not talking to a big ol' meanie who hates everything.  I'm actually initially inclined to want coinage and specializations too.  However, I honestly can't see a way to make coins useful.  If there were NPCs that might change things.  Or if there was some sort of governmental structure in place.

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Actually, while I don't see coinage in TFC's future, that doesn't mean you can't put TFC and other mods together to implement a working economy based on coins for currency.  I'm planning on using Custom NPCs and a money+wallet mod I commissioned to implement this on a public server.  The only catch is that the mod I commissioned, by design, does not allow players to mint their own coins or melt them down into base metal.  If that's a dealbreaker, you can just use Custom NPCs to add crafting recipes to your liking.  

 

Or you could just use one of the other money mods out there that do more or less what you're asking for.  There's actually quite a few of them out there -- the only reason why I didn't use one of them was because I wanted a very specific set of features for my server.  

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With the stamping idea at the top of this page the stamps could be made and only coins with the correct stamps could be real and all the others where countefiet.

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With the stamping idea at the top of this page the stamps could be made and only coins with the correct stamps could be real and all the others where countefiet.

 

This would require for stamps to have non-duplicate names. For example, if you make a stamp named Dollar, you can't craft another with the exact name. Such a solution would work, as only one source of money would be present - a leader or an admin, whatever you decide about it.

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You misunderstand me.  I'm not saying "I don't want coins to be implemented in the game!"

What I'm saying is that if coins were implemented in the game I wouldn't accept them for trade, they'd be useless to me.

 

As it's been said at least twice, if the coins are made out of useless metals like lead... I wouldn't want them.  If they were made out of useful metals like iron it'd be more of a hassle for me to take the coins and melt them down into an ingot... I mean... that's silly... "Hey, I have an ingot and you need one?  First let me use up coal to melt my ingot and break it into little pieces to give to you so that you can then melt all those little pieces and make an ingot out of it."

 

If there were two people who wanted to trade with me and one offered me an iron ingot while the other offered me an iron ingot's worth of coins... I would always take the iron ingot because it means much less work for me.  If i were going to take the coins I'd charge more for my trouble.

 

I understand your desire to have an economy.  I suspect that you also have a desire for folks to have to depend on one another and trade... one person produces metal goods, another produces crops, still another produces lumber... that's neat when it happens.  But these ideas, as you've presented them, have gaping holes in them and folks are telling you what they are.We're telling you that your money idea doesn't work as you've presented it.  You might get a handful of folks trading with your coins but most folks will recognize that the coins are less valuable than the metal they're made of and want ingots... or else want more coins for their trouble.  The only people who'll use the coins will be folks who haven't figured that out or else the rare individual who uses them just because they think it's a fun idea.

 

The trouble you've got to get over is that there is no advantage to folks like me.  Why in the world would I want your coins?

I'm sorry, I don't even have any suggestions.  You're not talking to a big ol' meanie who hates everything.  I'm actually initially inclined to want coinage and specializations too.  However, I honestly can't see a way to make coins useful.  If there were NPCs that might change things.  Or if there was some sort of governmental structure in place.

 

[this is just a example]

 

Well if person A has a cow and a axe, person B has two sheep's and person C has a pickaxe and some coins

 

Person A wants Person C pickaxe

Person C doesn't want neither a cow or a axe

Person B wants a axe but person A doesn't want any sheeps

Person C wants a sheep to grow wool

Person C trades his coins for one of person B sheep

Person B trades her new coins with person A, person A refuses "Those are just small bits of metal!"

Person B says to person A that these coins are worth an pickaxe

Person A trades his axe for the coins person B has

Person A trades his coins for person C pickaxe and goes home and takes a glass of milk

 

Coins/currency/money eliminate the need for having the right stuff to trade with, and money is just something a community agrees about the worth, now this example I just did don't work really well in minecraft as everyone has equal opportunities but you see the point, yes?

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[this is just a example]

 

Well if person A has a cow and a axe, person B has two sheep's and person C has a pickaxe and some coins

 

Person A wants Person C pickaxe

Person C doesn't want neither a cow or a axe

Person B wants a axe but person A doesn't want any sheeps

Person C wants a sheep to grow wool

Person C trades his coins for one of person B sheep

Person B trades her new coins with person A, person A refuses "Those are just small bits of metal!"

Person B says to person A that these coins are worth an pickaxe

Person A trades his axe for the coins person B has

Person A trades his coins for person C pickaxe and goes home and takes a glass of milk

 

Coins/currency/money eliminate the need for having the right stuff to trade with, and money is just something a community agrees about the worth, now this example I just did don't work really well in minecraft as everyone has equal opportunities but you see the point, yes?

I know how currency works.

 

Your last line undermines your argument.  "this example I just did don't work really well in minecraft as everyone has an equal opportunities"

This is the issue which submarines your idea; these people can all just go out and get whatever they need.

Also... these people would all be better off accepting ingots in trade rather than coins... say you can make 100 coins out of an ingot... so you start with an ingot... gather the fuel to melt the ingot... use up clay to make a mold... take the time to make the coins... you just spent time and resources changing an ingot from a useful form into a less useful form.

Why not just trade with the ingot?

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Currency for big servers, like it, small bits of metal, seems easy to implement too (I would go with 10 metal worth coin, stackable up to 64 or easy saying just like small ores!) I can see cassiterite, and all othe alloyng metals coins getting pretty valuable (you can do 13 ingots of bronze with 12 cass coins) I can see people working like crazy to make charcoal to that guy buying charcoal with rose gold/sterling silver coins!

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What is the economy in TFC actually lacking (if you play on Roanoke stop reading now.. you have been warned)? I say its an external market.... you gather resources, sell them to a buyer and whooosh!..... they are never seen again but, you have some lovely coins in hand now :) There is a horrible surfeit of resources in TFC (all minecraft really) because players work hard and (even worse) are very clever. There is no feasible way to utilize the bounty of the land as the chests fill up, ennui grows, purpose is lost and the server dies (insert sad, sad music). I feel the wastage created by "exporting" goods to a hypothetical market (, rich people, corporate criminals, aliens) would serve several functions:

 

1. Make every ore body worth something as it can be mined, transported, stacked and sold for profit.

2. Farming would become meaningful as crops are grown, harvested, stored and sent out to feed a hungry world (somewhere).

3. Value added products like brick blocks, leather, cloth, booze (hic), tool heads, etc. could be made and sent on their way.

4. Exports would generally put pressure on all aspects of the economy to produce much needed demand.

 

Note, the goods would in fact be merely eliminated (when logs leave where I work I never see them again... as if they vanished!)

 

What is done with the coin? Use yer 'magination. Land auctions, buy vanilla items from a store, bribe senators, pay taxes..... lotsa possibilities.

 

Mad idea I know but there ya go.

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Why don't you just use gems? That's what my server does. We all have our professions which we stick to, and we all have a sluice box or two to generate gems for trade...Gems are even tiered from chipped to exquisite...they practically serve as TFC's currency as is.

 

As it stands now gems really only have one actual use and in a well established settlement, their use becomes a near moot point...so we just display them in frames and trade them for goods.

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We aren't going to see NPCs any time soon, so who would you trade with? 

NO. NO. NEVER.

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Well, I don't see other use for coins instead of buy charcoal, or massive amounts of resources,

I can see endgame players selling high alloys for charcoal, but you need a massive amount of charcoal to worth an ingot of red/blue steel, or even for its components, red gold and sterling silver.

or this same player could buy small amounts of low tier ores from players on the begining of iron age for alloys whitout have to explore after it.

 

commerce is all about demand, and terrafirma provides it already, when you whitout something like high alloy metals, any bit of it will get great value, I see terrafirma have mostly little servers but an ingame trade Item and sistem (if possible something like a trading table, a GUI, 2 grids, ok buttons, trade done!) probably will please most of players, plus it will automatically boost metal value on server (just the option of splitting ingots existence already lower the metal offer, people will try some profit)

 

Just getting to the point, it probably won't get used on Singleplayer, but will be helpfull on server trades!

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I'd say mold for copper coins, and anvil&plan/stamp for gold/silver coins.

 

But anyways, unless npcs that trade in coin appear(and they won't, at least not for a really long time) coins will be useless.

I only see 4 ways for coins to be useful without npcs.

1. if all players agree to barter in coin(same way money works IRL, really)

 

If all players agree to trade in coin, coin will be useful because it will now have value as a trading material.

2. If coins can be melted back into ingots and tools.

 

If coin can be melted into ingots/tools, it'll just be like trading with ingots/ores, except it opens up more trade options (if you do't want to trade 1 ingot for a piece of mutton, but need food, you can just give one copper coin instead)

3. If a admin/server owner takes coins for items, and takes items for coin.

 

If admins give items for coins, that will give coins a value as it can be turned into items, via admin trade. This means coin is worth having, which also means it's worth trading for.

 

4. If a weight system is implemented.

One reason coin is so useful is because it is light and easy to carry. In TFC, we can trade, oh a 100 cubic meter of stone for a anvil, because they don't take up much space, and is easy to carry. This kind of trade IRL, will need some sort of wheel barrow/cart, or a really strong person, due to the sheer weight of the objects being traded. If a weight system is implemented, trading with lightweight, easy to carry items(coins) will be much more preferable than carrying around heavy items to trade

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In my honest opinion, I don't think commerce should play that great of a role in TFC. It's all about surviving, right? While trade is important, the implementation of currency isn't going to be much use to the game. TFC is revolved around surviving, not commerce, and who wants to count how much money they got to buy that steel pickaxe when they can simply just search and mine for iron and forge it? The latter is more fun and addictive compared to the former, and I know that you know you don't want to grind for money just to get that steel pick.

 

In the end, while commerce and currency sounds fun and all, in the end, it just won't work out on a massive scale. Currency won't even work, no matter the scale, but in the case of bartering, you might have some small trade posts here and there, but like I stated before, TFC is centered around surviving. Getting desirable resources requires exploration and mapping, and that can be fun, if executed right. On the other hand, grinding relentlessly for money just you can purchase one steel pick is dull and boring. There are some things in real life that just can't be emulated in a survival video game, such as the Minecraft mod TFC.

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In my honest opinion, I don't think commerce should play that great of a role in TFC. It's all about surviving, right? While trade is important, the implementation of currency isn't going to be much use to the game. TFC is revolved around surviving, not commerce, and who wants to count how much money they got to buy that steel pickaxe when they can simply just search and mine for iron and forge it? The latter is more fun and addictive compared to the former, and I know that you know you don't want to grind for money just to get that steel pick.

 

In the end, while commerce and currency sounds fun and all, in the end, it just won't work out on a massive scale. Currency won't even work, no matter the scale, but in the case of bartering, you might have some small trade posts here and there, but like I stated before, TFC is centered around surviving. Getting desirable resources requires exploration and mapping, and that can be fun, if executed right. On the other hand, grinding relentlessly for money just you can purchase one steel pick is dull and boring. There are some things in real life that just can't be emulated in a survival video game, such as the Minecraft mod TFC.

 

Ya, ok, your right, but there is a simple simple problem with what ye said

 

You can't survive forever. You will evetually have food, a shelter, stuff... Are you survivng when you have steel, my question is? No, by that times you are living cozily, not surviving. And to have a comfort life, trading is needed. To have food guaranteed, you don't necessarily have to farm for it forever. Eventually you can buy it. For me TFC means surviving only in early game. The rest is proper life, and proper life has trading.

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You don't need to trade to live a cozy life. Since you've probably reached the middle-end game, you probably already have the essentials needed to live one. All you have to do is work for it to keep it that way.

 

The real problem, however, lies within the lack of depth in much of TFC's features. We are still in early development, and it is probably going to take five more years, at the most, to finish the mod. I imagine that much of the early, middle, and end game features will already be properly fleshed out, added, and tuned to make TFC a really great mod.

 

Surviving forever all really depends if you want to just settle down and live a comfortable life in TFC. Me, I would do both; build a sustainable (and defendable) homebase, and then begin exploring my world, mapping out the regions for potential resources and locations, while I survive the wilderness.

P.S. - I apologize for being nitpicky, but that question of 'Are you surviving if you have steel' is a little too vague. I could only have one steel bar and still be trying to survive in the wilds, or I could have multiple steel tools and armor and simply consuming the resources of my world. Moral of this little sentence: Try to be specific as much as you can.

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Surviving forever all really depends if you want to just settle down and live a comfortable life in TFC. Me, I would do both; build a sustainable (and defendable) homebase, and then begin exploring my world, mapping out the regions for potential resources and locations, while I survive the wilderness.

P.S. - I apologize for being nitpicky, but that question of 'Are you surviving if you have steel' is a little too vague. I could only have one steel bar and still be trying to survive in the wilds, or I could have multiple steel tools and armor and simply consuming the resources of my world. Moral of this little sentence: Try to be specific as much as you can.

 

Hmmm... you're very clever... Well, when I said "having steel" I meant  being in steel age (I prefer to call it medieval age due to Blast furnaces invented in XIV century :) ) Because in the end, the only way to have a steel ingot and living uncomfortably is robbing it. By the time you have a bloomery you are living cozily already in my opinion.

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Hmmm... you're very clever... Well, when I said "having steel" I meant  being in steel age (I prefer to call it medieval age due to Blast furnaces invented in XIV century :) ) Because in the end, the only way to have a steel ingot and living uncomfortably is robbing it. By the time you have a bloomery you are living cozily already in my opinion.

Or you could be like a couple of guys on my server, running around with andesite tools and weapons having the cozy life with barely more than a few dozen cows, a fire pit, and the king of all caverns. While everyone else struggles in a small town that is in mid iron age. It is such a different scale that the guys living off of cows in the arctic with stone gear actually export food and materials to the town. Having metal does not actually make life easier in TFC, its all about how you play and plan.

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I never thought on that sincerely, but surely you are right.

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I like your idea!

the cost is simple. example:

copper coin: 1

bronze coin : 5 

iron coin 10 ... 

etc..

I think, in a multiplay game, can be useful!

 

 

(sorry if  I wrote something wrong, I don't speak english)

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James, you shouldn't revive such threads if you basically post just to agree. Still, since you've already done it, I'll have a go at the whole thing.

Going through the thread it seems that major issue is not really the currency and trade as much as lack of things to do late-game - trade is just to make it more comfortable to get stuff one doesn't really need, apparently.

Regarding money themselves, however, I don't really think it'll work. If trade is to be done between players, setting up stiff ore requirements and value of currency won't do. On one server someone may give away treasures for a copper coin, on the other a handful of copper ores may cost one a fortune. In addition to that, given there probably wouldn't be a system ensuring worth of currency, it'd have to be artificially encouraged to be of value. Otherwise some other player may simply claim that he does not need your coins as yet another player who offers some goods he may be interested in does not accept currency either.

As mentioned earlier - like IRL, money have value because people decided for it to be so. However, players have less of a reason to do so in TFC.

The only items of solid value in TFC are those where that value is intrinsic. Raw resources, livestock and finished goods. Just like in good 'ol times with the exception of fact that there's no real reason to turn your load of iron into some bond or stack of coins because if you want you can haul all those ingots to the market yourself and exchange goods directly. It's actually not a problem for me - it works very well, possibly better than coins would (for reasons mentioned above) and trade based on physical goods exchange fits the general theme quite well.

If some server needs currency, they can easily adapt some random, raw, basic resource as a common denomination of worth without any need to implement money. I know of one server where, if player didn't want to peddle and trade his posessions in particular, he could use coal, charcoal and metal ores as money. As the resources were used by most players, even if in processed form (tools) only, they had some - lesser, greater - worth nearly for everyone, so there wasn't much of a problem with accepting those as a currency. Prices fluctuated, better or worse deals were made, some players were able to specialize and live off it - in a word, working economy.

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This whole thread is silly, because you people are only talking for the most part about 2 forms of trade

Barter, and backed currency - you forget the idea of a fiat currency completely.

 

Benelli said it best, gems are wonderful for this. They may as well be printed paper cash.

But really, you can use anything that's hard to obtain in large quantity, but not worth much practically. You can even use actual pieces of paper if you like, assuming that the leader of the town tightly controls sugarcane growth and therefore market saturation.

But honestly, you can use dirt of a certain foreign stone type if you like - anything will do, as long as Joe Schmo can't just go find a billion of them in the wild with only an hour's work.

If the people doing the trading all agree upon a certain preset value (roughly), then the possibilities are endless.

 

Coins are superfluous.

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