Do you want to save Wyvern?

There's been a lot of totally understandable griping about the changes I've been making to the economy -- buying, selling, loot drop rates, etc.

I want to put some perspective on this problem to help you understand where I'm coming from. This is not an angry post (far from it) -- but it's a serious discussion and I hope you'll read it carefully.

If Wyvern doesn't start making money, it's going to die. I'm not talking about a hundred bucks here and there, or a thousand bucks here and there. I'm talking about millions of dollars. If it doesn't start making millions of dollars, it will disappear forever. I can't predict exactly when, but it's approximately late 2017 or early 2018. The millions aren't for me -- they're for the company I need to build in order to sustain this game for you.

I have put over $400,000 of my own money, out of my own pocket -- no outside investors -- into this game over the past 20 years. I've put over $120,000 into it this year alone, and it'll be $150,000 by New Year's Eve. I've made some decent money at Google, but I'm blowing ALL of it on this game. I don't have a backup plan.

Moreover, I work 40 to 50 hours a week on it. That's in addition to my day job, which is 40 to 50 hours. I have no life. Even when I'm telling you I'm watching football, I'm fixing bugs while I do it. And I've been working 40 to 50 hours a week on the game since early 2013. That's four years -- as long as high school. These nonstop 80- to 100-hour weeks have put stress on my job, on my marriage, on my health, and most definitely on my bank account. It is not sustainable for much longer.

So if you're thinking, "Gosh, you don't need to make millions. Just keep it the way it is now!" Well, think again. Because I'm not going to continue spending $150,000 a year and 50 hours a week on this game for much longer. Firstly because I'm running out of money, and secondly, because I'm running out of time. Literally. I am getting old.

The economy of Wyvern is an existential threat. If it's not solved, the price we pay (all of us) is Wyvern's very existence.

That means that when we think about how the economy works, I think it would be very helpful if you would think less about how much YOU are enjoying making money hand over fist through clever loopholes, and start thinking about whether you want the game to live or die.

For the game to live, gold has to be scarce. Really scarce. You know I'm a big proponent of not making this game pay to play or pay to win. I want free play for people who are on a tight budget. But it needs to be convenient to buy coins, and you should want to buy coins, even if ultimately you decide that you personally can't afford it and you prefer to grind.

Under the current economic rules, it's way too easy to make money as a low-level character. You've found dozens of clever ways to do it. A lot of it stems from the drop rates, which are based on single-player games like Nethack and Borderlands, and they're not well-suited for a multi-player game. In Nethack, sure, you can find dragon mail on level 1, but you're also very likely to die 20 moves later, permanently.

In a game like Wyvern where there are hundreds or thousands of players who can never die permanently, loot accumulates, wealth accumulates, and ultimately money becomes valueless if you don't take deliberate steps to create scarcity.

A big part of the fun of the game is being able to find lots of loot, so I don't really want to change that too much -- though, I do think it's broken that a level 3 player can pretty easily find a couple of DSMs a day. The drop rates are going to be completely overhauled when I make the new loot system, likely in Q1 of next year. There will be lots of loot, but it will be scaled to your level.

Keeping lots of loot around means that my only option, in the context of keeping money scarce, is to make it so that you can't turn around and sell the overpowered loot you're finding for massive amounts of money. Yes, you have been doing that, but I have been personally footing the bill out of my real-world salary, and that has to stop.

So if you want Wyvern to live a long and healthy life, and as an added bonus, establish a level of challenge that keeps it playable for years, then you'll help me find the money-transfer and big-money loopholes, so we can fix them before launch. All of them. No exceptions. We need to identify and close them.

Here's what I have in mind right now:

1. Don't allow auctioning stuff you buy from a shop. Period.
2. Put a level-based cap (adjusted by merch skill) on how much you can receive from a sale. So if you offer a GDSM for min, and the buyer pays min, you may only receive a small portion of the proceeds: just a little more than you'd get from selling to the shop. The difference between what the buyer pays and what you receive is chalked up to "tax" or "transaction fees". As long as it beats the shop on both sides of the transaction, people will keep doing auctions, even with lower margins.
3. Don't allow buying from, or selling to, more than one individual per day. When we have thousands of players this should have no effect on legit buyers and sellers. But it will dramatically cut down on your ability to funnel funds to your friends and alts, without cutting it off completely. (There is no need to cut it off completely. We just need the path of least resistance to be either grinding for yourself, or buying coins.)

These are the changes I have in mind, but others may be needed, and I could use your help in figuring out what works.

Remember that the basic mechanic of this game is kill monsters, get their loot, and sell it to the shop. That's the "working class job" in Wyvern, and it's the way I play the game, and the way I expect people to play the game. Everything else is gravy, and is optional -- even auctions, which didn't exist in the old MUDs (which were really well balanced, by and large.) I'd love to keep some of the gravy, but we have to make it work.

Thanks for reading! Feedback welcome. I don't need a bunch of thank-yous for the time and money I've put in. I should be thanking you for playing the game, and my wife and I both appreciate and cherish all of you for it. But we have a serious, game-threatening issue to solve together, and I'd love to have your help with it. Thanks.

submitted by /u/rhialto to /r/wyvernrpg
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