Economic Reforms for Multiplayer

[Tom Cantine]

I have here a set of reforms aimed at making the in-game economy more playable, robust and realistic, as well as addressing certain problems that tend to emerge on any server that runs long enough.

 

It’s assumed that Rusty Gears (RG) are the intended currency in the game, as they’re explicitly used as such by the NPC traders. And that’s fine; any arbitrary item can be used as a basis of trade/barter. But the problem with that is that there is in principle no limit to the number of RG that can exist. Precious metals like gold and silver have been used as currency for thousands of years because they are relatively rare, but a mob farm can generate about as easily as any other commodity can be farmed. So RG can accumulate at rates which have nothing to do with the amount of goods they can be spent on.  (In fact, if anything, it’s an inverse relationship: the more time and resources players spend on farming RG, the less they are spending on farming those other commodities. More money chasing fewer goods is the very definition of inflation.)

 

Now, it is also worth pointing out that you do not need RG to pursue your goals in game. Sure, there are a few things you might want that can only be bought from traders, but for the most part you can build a sprawling estate and farm all the crops and livestock you need, mine and process all the ores, craft all the gear and prosper just fine, and if you ever do need RG for that chandelier or elk, there are ways to obtain them. But note that in this sense, RG are really not so much a currency as essentially a crafting ingredient. A trader is just a kind of production station where the inputs are RG, and where you can convert certain select items into RG.

 

And that’s why RG don’t really act like a currency: they’re not. They’re just a commodity that has its uses, and can be traded like anything else. Why do we accept them in trade? Well, we DON’T, unless we perceive we might have a use for them ourselves. That use might be simply trading them to other people for stuff we want, but again that brings us to why those other people might want them?

 

This is a problem with money generally. Why would anyone accept it in trade? Once upon a time most currencies were backed by something of intrinsic value, precious metals usually (or bushels of grain, perhaps), but today we mostly use fiat currencies. At first glance we all accept these just because everyone else does so we know we can use them in trade, but there must be more to it than simply a collective agreement to recognize them as valuable?

 

You’re not going to like the answer: taxes. Ultimately, the thing that makes money valuable is the knowledge that you’re going to need to pay some obligation to the sovereign government, and that sovereign government will ONLY accept its own sovereign currency in satisfaction of that debt. This is the insight behind Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). (I would add that there’s one additional related point: the courts recognize and enforce debts in the sovereign currency as well. If I sue you in tort or contract, the courts will recognize your debt as discharged if you pay in the sovereign currency, whether I want to accept them or not. But this is still a function of the sovereign state in declaring by fiat the money to be worth something). Another way to explain it is by analogy to an electrical current: you need to have a voltage, a cathode and an anode, somewhere the current flows FROM and somewhere it flows TO. Taxes are the anode, the drain that keeps dollars and euros and yen in demand. So sovereign governments, which can print all the money they need, raise taxes not to pay for stuff, but to ensure that the people need the money it prints.

 

Of course, there is no obvious Sovereign in VS, no one who issues RG and collects anything like taxes and enforces judgments. Or is there? I would suggest that it’s the server itself, and it absolutely does perform at least a certain kind of enforcement function: land claims. If I claim a plot of land in the game, the server actually protects my exclusive right to use that land as I see fit.

 

What I am suggesting, then, is a form of PROPERTY TAX. When you create a land claim, there should be a cost in RG. I haven’t worked out a formula for how this should be calculated, but this could all be system-configurable to allow different servers to experiment with the right balance. Factors to include in the formula could include size of the claim (volume), proximity to a trader, proximity to working translocators, proximity to other claims, and so on. Maybe there’d be a big discount for setting permissions for All to Use.

 

I would also suggest that this property tax be periodic; you need to come up with enough RG to renew your claim every IG year or so. This would also provide an answer to the problem of abandoned claims. As we know, players drift away from the game from time to time, and just never log in again, leaving their claims idle but unusable by anyone else. Or some players may have several claims and simply lose interest in one of them. A modest property tax model would provide an organic way to retire old claims, and this could be structured to allow a variety of succession regimes.

 

The point here is to implement a pull on RG, a reason why you need them, especially if you have a claim in a relatively populated area. Nothing would stop you from just homesteading way out in the wilderness without even bothering to establish a claim, other than the risk of being griefed way out there. You can be as self-sufficient as you want and never touch a rusty gear. But the system I’m proposing would help to transform RG from just another commodity with its random booms and busts, and a genuine CURRENCY that would provide a bit more stability in developed areas of the server.

[OktoberTheYeen]

I think this could be a good idea, but in my opinion it absolutely would require some sort of grace period where the first in game year or two are free, as like you said most people don't persue RGs all that much other than occasional trader use. A grace period allows people, particularly new players, to learn the game and not have to rush to earn money right away.

 

Also, if this were to be implemented there should be a block to deposit the RG into, and it should support the full stack size of RG - (1,000). That way you can stock it up once and not have to worry about it for a long while.

 

The reason I bring up these points is because for servers that are always active and therefore always running, even at 30 day months an in game year is only merely 2 irl weeks. I wouldn't expect a new player to not only grasp all the core aspects of the game while also hustling for RG for their land claim

[Tom Cantine]

2 minutes ago, OktoberTheYeen said:

I think this could be a good idea, but in my opinion it absolutely would require some sort of grace period where the first in game year or two are free, as like you said most people don't persue RGs all that much other than occasional trader use. A grace period allows people, particularly new players, to learn the game and not have to rush to earn money right away.

 

Also, if this were to be implemented there should be a block to deposit the RG into, and it should support the full stack size of RG - (1,000). That way you can stock it up once and not have to worry about it for a long while.

 

The reason I bring up these points is because for servers that are always active and therefore always running, even at 30 day months an in game year is only merely 2 irl weeks. I wouldn't expect a new player to not only grasp all the core aspects of the game while also hustling for RG for their land claim

These are excellent points.

I did not go into detail about how to calculate the basic property tax, but this is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind when I mentioned server-configurable variables for the formula. A player's first claim certainly could (and probably should) be free, if that's the kind of grace period you meant. The other grace period I'd recommend would be when introducing such a system onto an existing server, so as not to suddenly make a whole lot of claims disappear because their owners hadn't had reason to budget for this.

I love the idea of a block to deposit RG into for this purpose, not only because it'd be way more convenient for claimholders but also because it would perform exactly the function this proposal is meant for: effectively removing RG from circulation. It occurs to me that it might be useful to also allow anyone to add RG to it, whether they own the claim or not, AND to allow the claimholder to withdraw RG from the block. It'd act like a hopper for players to pay each other when they're not both online at the same time. 

As for the period of 1 year, that was just a placeholder; I probably shouldn't have specified a time period. I'm aware that on TOPS a year is only 12 days, and also that six RL months is a reasonable time to declare a claim abandoned. I certainly wouldn't advocate that claims disappear after only 2 weeks of inactivity.

Indeed, I had another suggestion on this forum about idle claims that I probably should have referenced here. It was about server-configurable triggers (e.g. the player hasn't logged in for some period of time, or the player hasn't set foot in the claim for some period, or X number of OTHER players have set foot in the claim, attempted to open a door, etc.) and included notice requirements in any event. So if one of your claims is getting near expiring, you'd get notice and a grace period within which to renew the claim. And after that grace period is up, the claim wouldn't necessarily disappear, but might go up for auction. The deposit block you suggested could administer the auction. Players deposit their bids, and when the auction closes the claim would be transferred to the winner, and the losing bids would be available to pick up free of charge from the block (or perhaps from a trader).

 

[OktoberTheYeen]

I don't know if I'd support the additional features like auctioning off land claims and such mentioned in the follow-up reply, but I think the 1 in game year is a totally reasonable timeframe to use. Even with TOPS (or any other always running, 30 day month server) and 1 Game Year being 2 irl weeks, at a totally arbitrary 20 RG upkeep cost a full stack of 1,000RG lasts 50 cycles, or 100 irl weeks. And for another arbitrary amount, an upkeep cost of 100RG per 1GY would have a full stack of 1,000RG last 10 cycles or 20 irl weeks.

 

Pleeeeeenty of time to top up the stack, even with the super large upkeep cost. And that's just with arbitrarily large upkeep and player funds as examples, they'd both probably be much lower to be more realistic, but for those that do actually have a lot of RGs and want to claim a lot of land it would still be viable.

[PanzerOfTheLake]

  

On 7/20/2025 at 8:46 PM, Tom Cantine said:

This is a problem with money generally. Why would anyone accept it in trade? Once upon a time most currencies were backed by something of intrinsic value, precious metals usually (or bushels of grain, perhaps), but today we mostly use fiat currencies. At first glance we all accept these just because everyone else does so we know we can use them in trade, but there must be more to it than simply a collective agreement to recognize them as valuable?

I use ingots, nuggets, gears, and food that have long shelf life like grain for currency on my multiplayer server.
There is no need for a collective agreement. Those resources are valuable. The person pressuring the trade defines what currencies is accepted in the trade.

I believe coins would fit into the game as long as they can be smelted down to their respective metals. 
Metal-based currencies are self-regulating because if the value decreases too much, the money will be used in tools and products, decreasing the availability of the metal, which in turn increases the value.
The primary issue with metal-based currencies is currency conversion. For example, if there is a collective agreement to the value comparison of there is a large supply of gold, but a deficit of copper. The gold would be traded for copper, causing the supply of copper coins to run dry.

I think that the coolest solution is to use banks. (Coins not necessary.)
A bank can receive currency and trade it for "paper money". (e.g. a note describing which bank issued the note and value)
The bank could offer a "money" value of the resources deposited instead of stating what was deposited. Allowing for a simple money mechanic and letting the banks regulate the value of resources and what can be used as currency. 

This would allow taxes to use a recognized value and allow prices of Metal-based or other currencies to shift slightly across cities.
One issue with the whole tax is the collection. I see two solutions: either withdraw from an inventory (player or player's chest) where coins could be converted using a designated central bank. Or if banks had accounts, the taxes could be withdrawn from there.

This whole thing can mostly be performed today, with the exception of the paper notes / "paper money" using player-operated banks.

[Thorfinn]

Why was I absolutely certain from the first couple paragraphs this was leading up to MMT?

No, taxation is not a necessary element to a currency. Currencies pre-exist anything we would recognize as states by at least thousands of years. At least Neolithic. Pretty good argument for Paleolithic.

Edited July 23, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

This feels more like something for a mod than base game. 

For one I reject your premise that any sort of currency is even needed on most servers. Let alone when its arbitrarily assigned.  I have been on so many servers both public and private where very, very few people are interested in doing anything that generates gears. 

A system that all but enforces players to engage with content they have no interest in is just a bad design, especially in a sandbox. 

 

And again most servers by choice are often either bartering based, shared pool, or somewhere between the two and this works just fine. 

[Tom Cantine]

14 hours ago, PanzerOfTheLake said:

  

I use ingots, nuggets, gears, and food that have long shelf life like grain for currency on my multiplayer server.
There is no need for a collective agreement. Those resources are valuable. The person pressuring the trade defines what currencies is accepted in the trade.

I believe coins would fit into the game as long as they can be smelted down to their respective metals. 
Metal-based currencies are self-regulating because if the value decreases too much, the money will be used in tools and products, decreasing the availability of the metal, which in turn increases the value.
The primary issue with metal-based currencies is currency conversion. For example, if there is a collective agreement to the value comparison of there is a large supply of gold, but a deficit of copper. The gold would be traded for copper, causing the supply of copper coins to run dry.

I think that the coolest solution is to use banks. (Coins not necessary.)
A bank can receive currency and trade it for "paper money". (e.g. a note describing which bank issued the note and value)
The bank could offer a "money" value of the resources deposited instead of stating what was deposited. Allowing for a simple money mechanic and letting the banks regulate the value of resources and what can be used as currency. 

This would allow taxes to use a recognized value and allow prices of Metal-based or other currencies to shift slightly across cities.
One issue with the whole tax is the collection. I see two solutions: either withdraw from an inventory (player or player's chest) where coins could be converted using a designated central bank. Or if banks had accounts, the taxes could be withdrawn from there.

This whole thing can mostly be performed today, with the exception of the paper notes / "paper money" using player-operated banks.

In principle you could absolutely do the paper notes thing today. I once played on a Minecraft server where we did just that: a trusted player stored iron ingots in an enderchest, and issued signed books he promised to redeem for the specified number of iron ingots. So long as other players are willing to trust that promise, the books were usable as money. And VS allows us to sign/transcribe documents, so they're just as unforgeable. 

There's no reason you couldn't set up a town and have any kind of tax system for the residents you wanted. No reason, that is, except for the limits of the /land claim system. I mean, you could claim a large plot of land and build a whole town in it, assign permissions to a group and then charge taxes to remain a member of the group. But this isn't what I'm talking about, and those "taxes" would be no different in principle from, say, a feudal obligation to provide one fatted cow every year. What I'm proposing would be more integrally coded into the /land claim system itself. 

 

11 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Why was I absolutely certain from the first couple paragraphs this was leading up to MMT?

No, taxation is not a necessary element to a currency. Currencies pre-exist anything we would recognize as states by at least thousands of years. At least Neolithic. Pretty good argument for Paleolithic.

I should have included the word "fiat". Fiat currencies depend on taxation, but those backed by gold or some other commodity do not. Still, I am not sure I agree about states, but then I would recognize as a state-equivalent for these purposes any community with established norms for deciding when a debt exists and what constitutes payment.

That does hint at an important point: since RG have intrinsic value (in that they can be "crafted" into valuable items at an NPC trader), why should they need a drain in the form of property tax? And strictly speaking, no they don't need a drain to support their value as currency. But that's not the only reason I'm suggesting this property tax model.

First, although they have some intrinsic value, their value in trade (that is, with other players, not as an NPC-mediated crafting ingredient) fluctuates WILDLY. Those players who choose to focus on generating RG through mob farms can amass vast quantities of them, which isn't a huge problem if all they do is hoard them in their basements, but if they actually USE them their buying power advantage over players who do not concentrate on mobfarming is huge, and price inflation results. Again, this isn't necessarily a huge problem insofar as other players can just opt out of the RG-based economy and live off the land, so to speak. That should always be an option, of course, but so should meaningful participation in the RG economy; it shouldn't require mob farming. 

And that brings the second point (something else I should have mentioned in my original post): There DO need to be more worthwhile ways to earn RG besides mob farms. In particular, the NPC traders' inventories and limits are quite well balanced for single player, but they don't make a lot of sense in a bustling server context. They simply don't buy enough stuff. A player who devotes their time to farming should be able make a decent income selling turnips. 

Idea: what if a trader's supply/demand inventory scaled with the number of distinct player land claims within a certain distance? So, for example, if you go way out into the wilderness and set up your homestead near a lone trader, well, the basic single-player trader inventory balance would apply. ("Why would I buy all those turnips? I can't eat them before they rot!"). But if other players show up and build claims nearby, a town starts to develop and the lone trader's buying capacity increases accordingly; presumably they're buying to supply some virtual residents of the area.)

Third point: The property tax proposal isn't just to drain RG. It's also to provide a mechanism to deal with abandoned claims, instead of requiring players to petition admins to release a claim. As I mentioned in a comment above, this should also come with some enhancements to the claim system itself, such as ways to transfer ownership (say, by designating an heir). I've long thought there needs to be some kind of succession system in place, ideal with some customizability and different levels of access/control. Maybe abandoned claims don't get totally freed all at once, and they go to /grant all use first. But that's a subject for a different thread.

 

Edited July 24, 2025 by Tom Cantine

[Lugh Crow-Slave]

1 hour ago, Tom Cantine said:

First, although they have some intrinsic value, their value in trade (that is, with other players, not as an NPC-mediated crafting ingredient) fluctuates WILDLY. Those players who choose to focus on generating RG through mob farms can amass vast quantities of them, which isn't a huge problem if all they do is hoard them in their basements, but if they actually USE them their buying power advantage over players who do not concentrate on mobfarming is huge, and price inflation results.

And this is just one reason why most servers don't use them as the default to facilitate trade. But as I added in my last comment. We don't need a currency to begin with. Definitely not one that requires such a shift to the base game as your suggestion imposes. 

[Thorfinn]

11 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

Fiat currencies depend on taxation, but those backed by gold or some other commodity do not.

This might be partly true under modern sensibilities, but historically, no. If the king says use pancakes for currency or be put to death on the rack, you will use pancakes for currency. Whatever he says goes, because his torturers are fine with exacting a pound of your flesh.

Inflation is nonexistent in the game, at least at present, precisely because the traders have what they have and nothing more. Their prices have nothing to do with how many gears exist. They don't buy whatever you bring them, so mob faming can be a source of gears, but so what? Most stuff can be purchased for a dozen gears or less, and it doesn't matter how many thousand gears you farmed, they still have not one more item. And it's not like you need Acorns or Maple Seeds or Cranberries or yet another Shepherd's Pants or your 12th linen sack.

Mob farming soon becomes a colossal waste of time. That is, UNLESS you start incorporating ideas like they will buy what you bring them, and they will take orders. At that point, Katie bar the door. The game morphs into another one-trick pony, where there is an optimal method for "success".

Edited July 24, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Tom Cantine]

55 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

This might be partly true under modern sensibilities, but historically, no. If the king says use pancakes for currency or be put to death on the rack, you will use pancakes for currency. Whatever he says goes, because his torturers are fine with exacting a pound of your flesh.

Inflation is nonexistent in the game, at least at present, precisely because the traders have what they have and nothing more. Their prices have nothing to do with how many gears exist. They don't buy whatever you bring them, so mob faming can be a source of gears, but so what? Most stuff can be purchased for a dozen gears or less, and it doesn't matter how many thousand gears you farmed, they still have not one more item. And it's not like you need Acorns or Maple Seeds or Cranberries or yet another Shepherd's Pants or your 12th linen sack.

Mob farming soon becomes a colossal waste of time. That is, UNLESS you start incorporating ideas like they will buy what you bring them, and they will take orders. At that point, Katie bar the door. The game morphs into another one-trick pony, where there is an optimal method for "success".

The pancake example works only so far as you really have fully compliant and loyal underlings. Otherwise there will always be black markets and emergent standards of exchange as part of the "real" economy. Our modern sensibilities include the notion that you can get better compliance through ergonomics.

I am not advocating that traders should buy whatever you bring them, nor that they should take orders. Only that the amounts they buy should be adjusted to reflect the multiplayer environment. Moreover, much of my argument is not even really about the traders themselves, except as a means of expanding somewhat the ability of players to earn RG through something other than mob farms. 

In any event, there's a reason I said these things should be server-configurable. You want to run a server with zero property tax? Great, have at it. You want to configure a property tax that encourages centralized towns, or one that rewards self-sufficient homesteading? Emergent capitalism? Feudalism? Go for it. 

What I'm suggesting is that the code accommodate all these approaches, and I feel that the model I'm suggesting would be a relatively simple thing to implement, as most of the components (traders, /land claim, etc.) already exist.

[Thorfinn]

59 minutes ago, Tom Cantine said:

The pancake example works only so far as you really have fully compliant and loyal underlings.

Nah. Count Vlad is an excellent example of how little one might have to do to make their decrees stick. Assyrians knew how to impale people such that they could live for several days. Same with crucifixion. You do not need a compliant people if you kill off all the troublemakers in public in a grisly enough fashion.

 

1 hour ago, Tom Cantine said:

Our modern sensibilities include the notion that you can get better compliance through ergonomics.

Not even remotely true. People are compliant out of fear. People pay taxes out of fear of having their stuff taken from them, plus the fear of "the process is the punishment", plus the threat of taking away years of your life in prison for non-compliance. Fear. It's why this whole scam works.

 

But as applies to the game, there are vastly easier methods. Don't log in for a month? Your claim gets the "Traversable" priv, another month, "Lootable", another month, "Unclaimed". Should be easy enough for an admin to take care of. If you want to turn the game into some economic sim, mod away.

Scaling the traders' goods for number of players does not do what you think it does anyway. It just makes more reason to farm gears to buy up everyone else's share of the stuff that's worth having. It may not have been worth it to take the chance to travel to see if you can buy a lantern, but if it's a dozen or more? Off to do more mob farming.