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[JoshuaFH]

Yes yes SC, I know all that, but what makes the money valuable besides simple scarcity?

[Servant Corps]

Nothing really.

[JoshuaFH]

Exactly. So what I was thinking was, to have a lot of small useful items that stack in large amounts (food, cloth, metals, wood, etc) and let bartering and the society balance it out. I'm not an economist though.

One thing that eludes me however is exactly how to make a crafting or gathering system work. I ask this because I abhor the idea of crafting, but I can't help but see it as essential for a player run economy to function.

I don't like the idea of "crafting" levels that you have to work at to get better at. That reminds of me the types of MMO's that are incredible time-sink grindfests, and that sends a chill up my spine because I KNOW how horrible that is.

What I'm thinking: there are trades, and each trades has several Masters (NPC's). These masters are spread out over the game world, very far apart from eachother and in difficult to reach places. Talking to a master increases your skill by 1, and enables you to perform a certain level of work in that trade. Skill would max out at 4 or 5, but it would produce enough scarcity for high quality goods as to keep them valuable, and would reduce redundancy by having the player explore the game world and do interesting things in order to get better.

The problem with 'guards' is that there will be high-level players who can and will take them out, unless these 'guards' are angelic guardians protecting the world from griefers.
 Because it would be strange to be able to defeat the lord of the sky castle but unable to take on a few guards.

Well, I wanted to address this comment because it just misunderstands the point I was trying to get across. There wouldn't just be a "few" guards, ideally, there would be small armies in every civilized area. So if you think of punching a newbie in the gut and taking his things, 10-20+ NPC's will jump on you and work to repair the offense. Also, I already stated that there wouldn't be levels, so "high-level" players wouldn't exist.

[Servant Corps]

But if you let batering occur, it would lead to ineffiencies. Person A may have food and want clothing. Person B wants food, but only have metals. Person B will have to go to Person C who has clothing and try to buy clothing from Person C, so that he can use that clothing to buy food from Person A. But Person C does not desire metals, he desires wood. So, Person B will has to go to Person D, who has wood and want metal. Then Person B will take that wood, go to Person C to trade that wood for clothing, and then go to Person A and trade that clothing for food.

This batering system is just ineffienct. It would take a pretty long time.

But, by having a money system, all Person B has to go is give money to Person A, and Person A can then buy clothing from Person C. It saves a lot of time. That's all.

It just my inner ECN202 disliking batering.

[JoshuaFH]

Efficiency Shmefficiency, it would just force players to be even more civil towards eachother, as communication would be even more vital, and there'd be no absolute degree of wealth, so the type of wealthy person that lords over the poor would be less likely to spring up.

[Cerej]

The best way to counter the glut of items player crafting creates is to have a similarly high rate of item decay.  The biggest reason MMO markets have massive inflation is because production of items vastly exceeds consumption.  However, this is likely to create a niche for wealthy merchant barons with vast social influence.  Non-durable items will create a functioning and vibrant market economy, with all of the exploitation and class structure that's a necessary by-product.

ADDED: One very key adjective.

[JoshuaFH]

Ah, I mentioned that in my opening post, and I wanted to bring that up, how would item decay work best?

On a time basis, will rob players of items they never use but want to keep. Kind of like Puzzle Pirates, where most things have a life span of 1 month, then it vanishes from the face of the earth. I can see this being good for food, where players need food, but you can't horde food because it spoils after so long. Other items may also apply to be treated like this.

By use, weapons and stuff that have limited use will cause players to resent the developers for only giving their sword 500 swings or somesuch. I have a memory though, of a game based on samurai that gauged the durability of your weapon based on a meter, where with every strike or parry, the meter goes up a little, and if it fills up, then the sword breaks a little, and the meter becomes shorter, and thus the sword is less durable.  Once the last bit of the meter has broken, the sword breaks, and you have to get a new one. You worked around this meter by being conservative, and if the meter becomes almost full, then you stopped striking, and the meter would empty itself.

I think something like that would work well, for weapons, and perhaps for shields and armor and stuff like that.

[Errol]

If you have limited weapon durability, then you ought to be able to fix them. From the (temporary) duct tape solution if you are in dire need of a weapon to a proper fixing by an experienced smith. Broken swords shouldn't be completely useless either (other than, say, broken bows)

While duct tape solutions tend to be extremely undurable, they should work as something provisory. Re-smithing should, at worst, make the weapon slightly worse and less durable. You could also use magic to fix it, or a runesmith-player (who would be able to make it nearly as good as new, obviously). Point is, regardless how often you fix a weapon, eventually it'd be worn out. You could use magic to prevent decay, you could resmith it countless times, you could fuse it with magic... but at some point, it simply shouldn't cut it anymore.

And yes, durability shouldn't be 375/500 swings or something.