Think Tank: Upgrade Ideas
Have a great idea on how Fantasy Master Online could be improved? Chances are you do, and we haven't thought of it yet. Post it in here and discuss it with your fellow members. Once an idea has been fleshed out, if enough people like it, we'll consider adding it to the site.
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Nicholas
Paladin
1029 posts
Jan 24, 2004
12:27 PM
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 Stock Market
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I'd like to see a stock market incorporated into FMO, but I'm kind of at a loss on how to work it into the storyline. They didn't exactly have centralized economies in the Medival world. Any thoughts?
Nicholas Bostaph
Fantasy Master Online Developer
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Luap
Knight
331 posts
Jan 24, 2004
1:31 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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A stockmarket like the one in the real world requires large corporations and those were unknown in medival times. Of course since this isn't the history of Earth, and since the inclusion of magic would greatly alter many things it isn't out of the question to include them. The problem, though, is that large corporations wouldn't fit well with the player owned stores. The players all owning little stores seems to exclude the existance of massive industries because if they exist there's no reason for the player stores to exist. It would also negate the usefulness of the item creation skills. Therefore it seems to me that a stockmarket would need to deal with something other than businesses. One possibility would be merchants. There could be a number of merchant princes who send out great trading fleets. Merchants is the closest equivalent to medival corporations I can think of. The players could invest money in the merchants, and those investments would be worth more if the merchant was having luck with his trade and be worth less if the merchant was doing poorly. Their are certainly problems with this. Another possibility is to have a section of the world that is being fought over by a number of different kingdoms. A section very rich perhaps in gold perhaps. The players could invest money in different kingdoms, which the kingdoms would spend warring over the land. Success in battle would lead to the conquest of gold mines, which would generate money, which would increase the value of the player's investment. You could explain the stockmarkets away as magic...maybe certain crystals hold magic power and as the cosmos move around different crystals gain more magic and others lose their magic...The players would buy large quantities of crystals and hope they get more magical and therefore more valuable....just a couple of ideas...none that I absolutely love, but possible solutions to the problem. I'll give it some thought today and see if I can think of any better systems.
There's nothing 25 skill points of fire magic and a fire pillar spell can't fix.
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Nicholas
Paladin
1029 posts
Jan 24, 2004
3:38 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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I actually like those ideas, but they all face a similar problem...one that I've been trying desperately to avoid. Back when I spent a lot of time on Neopets' stock, a lot of us neo-investors talked about the one major flaw: everything was random. Would BOOM go up today? When would DROO crash? Don't try doing research or analysis, because it's all just based on some random number that the site generates. That makes it feel so useless...shallow in a way. It's hard to explain, but it really bothered us.
So I was hoping to allow players to invest in things such as the company that runs the Ice Magi game, or the Golden Arrow competition. stock price would be based on how much the game is played (more or less than average). Players could invest in the auction house, and stock price could depend on number of bids, or something similar. Betting games, like the slot machine or Flame Dice, could have a stock price based on their net win/loss compared to their usual.
This way prices would be based on the actual in game economy. Did you notice that arrows recently dropped in price? Hurry up and buy into the Castle Nightscape Armory! Your investment will do well when other players notice the new pricing and start buying more. It seems much more fun and much more meaningful this way. What do you think?
Nicholas Bostaph
Fantasy Master Online Developer
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Luap
Knight
331 posts
Jan 24, 2004
10:24 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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There are a couple problems I forsee. First of all, the games played probably aren't going to fluctuate too much once the player base is a decent size. The popular games are going to stay popular usually and the unpopular ones are going to stay unpopular unless there is some major change. For example, if golden arrow is changed to pay out double its going to get more popular. Any new game is going to immediatly have a boost in popularity and then fall to normal levels. In these cases success wouldn't result from careful research, they'd result from happening to log on right when a change is made. The same is true with your example of the arrows going down in price. A simple cause and effect will wind up rewarding the players who are on more than everyone else. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it makes sense to reward people who are dedicated to the game, but I think the idea in making a stockmarket fun is to make it unpredictable too, and the research not obvious.
Another problem is that players will try to manipulate any system. Its sort of a law of games  . Especially if the playerbase gets substantial, you're going to wind up with people who'll try to take advantage of the rules. If the system is based on how many times a game is played, they'll start large guilds and post messages in forms to tell people not to play a game one day and then to play it the most they can the next day. The stock will crash the first day and they'll all buy it up, and go through the roof the next. Repeat each day and you've got a nice money making machine. Look at the stockboard at neopets, they've said a number of times that volume of sales doesn't much matter anymore to stock price, and you still have people trying to get everyone buying a particular stock.
I agree though, purely random stockmarkets aren't much fun. I played the neopets stockmarket and was starting to do good, but I'd never put any time into. I'd go onto the site, check my stocks- if any were above 40 I'd sell, if I had more than 15,000 I'd buy 1000 of a stock selling at 15, then I'd logoff. I made lots of money that way, but it wasn't fun or anything. It was just a couple minutes effort each day. I never had to put any thought into it, really, a simple computer program could've done what I was doing just as easily as me.
Just an interesting little idea, it might be cool if somehow a smallish (100 or so) group of players controlled the different parts of the stock market...Either running different businesses or merchant fleets or warring kingdoms. That way there's a genuinely unpredictable but not random element to the stockmarket. It could require a restrictive quantity of gold to participate, or only be open to "heroes", or the people with the 100 most successful stores or whatever. Then players could look at how the player has done in the past, or how often he logs on, or how dedicated he appears to be to the game by the number of posts he's made on the forum, or talk to him, or what have you and get an idea who they think will do well. The problem obviously here is that you need to make a whole different system before the stockmarket. It could be an interesting idea to work off of though.
Just some thoughts. I'd really like a cool stockmarket-esque system in this game. I was also disappointed in the neopets one.
There's nothing 25 skill points of fire magic and a fire pillar spell can't fix.
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Nicholas
Paladin
1029 posts
Jan 25, 2004
11:46 AM
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Re: Stock Market
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You made some good points there, which I've been thinking over since last night. As of right now I'm still leaning toward the original idea of making games and the main shops a kind of stock market. Games would still fluctuate, and keeping an eye on the history graphs, as well as external factors that could affect gameplay, could allow you to make a lot of gold as a reward for your research.
Of course, I agree that the two problems that remain are the storyline integration, and the fact that some people may attempt to cheat. I would hope that the site would be big enough that one or two people wouldn't be able to seriously affect a stock price. As for people trying to post to get others to buy into a stock, hoping it will go up. Well, that happens in the real stock market. I would see if a lot with penny stocks (which I played with a bit).
So I'm still at a loss on where to go with this, but wanted to get some of my thoughts out there. Anyone else have any ideas/suggestions?
Nicholas Bostaph
Fantasy Master Online Developer
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Luap
Knight
331 posts
Jan 25, 2004
2:02 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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Story integration shouldn't be too huge an issue. The existance of the games is already established, being able to buy part of the company (or guild, or merchant bank, or whatever) that owns them isn't too far a stretch from there. As for trying to manipulate the system to give great payouts, no, certainly 1 or 2 people wouldn't be able to directly affect the system, but its not out of the question that they couldn't get enough support to do so. Whether you include clans/guilds in game or not they'll probably start popping up, and clans can get rather large. If a clan gets all its members together (and perhaps enlists the help of a couple other guilds) it isn't unreasonable that they could affect a great enough change to make a decent change to the percentages. Guilds wouldn't even be prequisite, its certainly possible that the change could be effected just through the forums.
I suppose any system like this will require more people then we have right now. I mean, realistically an individual could probably totally change the percentages with our current player base. Its 2:00 and triple yahtzee has only been played once And I suppose once there's that sort of player base we'd be able to see how much the games are played and the change gameplay goes through from day to day, and how realistic it is that a group of player could cheat the system.
Just another of my 2 cents
There's nothing 25 skill points of fire magic and a fire pillar spell can't fix.
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Nicholas
Paladin
1029 posts
Jan 25, 2004
10:50 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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Luap, you're probably right on all counts. I'm trying to get the ball rolling now because by the time we figure out the right way to do it, I actually manage to program it, and we take the time to test it for a few weeks, we will probably have a large enough community to implement it. I definitely want to get this up there in some form though.
So any further thoughts/ideas from anyone are welcome...
Nicholas Bostaph
Fantasy Master Online Developer
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Luap
Knight
331 posts
Jan 30, 2004
2:12 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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Having listed many potential problems, perhaps I should start being constructive and offer some potential solutions . First of all, I'd suggest a system of diminishing returns just for practical purposes. The system has to be pretty sensitive to give any money for the normal changes in game play. Usually you're not going to have a change of more than a percent or two I imagine. However, I'm sure drastic things will occasionally occur, such as changed returns or odds that'll quickly change a games popularity. If you have a system that rewards decently for a percent or two change, then when some major event changes it by a great deal, the owners of the stock will be very quickly very rich. If each subsequent percent change rewards less money, then the big changes will be very profitable, but not ridiculously so. This does bring up a problem however. If a game jumps up 100 players/day users one day, then goes down 10 players/day each subsequent day this system of diminished returns would make the stock worth less after the 11 days then it originally was, even though the players/day is the same. As a remedy I'd propose having stock values calculated with the diminishing returns, but also calculate stock value with a simple "x players=x gold", then slowly add or subtract to the actual stock price until it equals the stock price calculated the simple way. This would create another force in the market the players could try to use to their advantage and make everything less simple. Additionally, this would help to fight people manipulating stock prices through odd game playing. If stock prices are directly proportional to the number of times the game is played, no people playing one day, then everyone playing the next would create a huge profit for people who bought the stock the first day, but if the price change is delayed over time with the diminishing returns (and perhaps a maximum change per day based on stock price) then the group would need to not play the game for a number of days, and then play it every day for a number of days. Each successive day would make it harder to keep everyone playing or not playing.
Another thing that could be taken into consideration is stocks purchased/stocks sold. Presumably the player can always buy stock. That implies that there isn't a finite amount of stock, but rather an infinite amount. Its more of an investment into the company or person that owns that particular game. You can only sell so much stock, but you can take as much investment as you want. Therefore supply and demand wouldn't exist in the stock market, which is good, because that'd make cheating easier. If someone could start a buying frenzy they stock would soar through the roof, then they'd sell as it got high, and a selling frenzy would occur, rewarding greatly those who got in early and irreprably harming those who didn't. Instead of supply and demand, the system could work that the more a stock is bought, the less the stock price changes. If 100,000 stock are purchased, then the returns have to be spread out among that many more people. Presumably the value will rise now because of all the investment given, but it'll take a little while for the capital to be converted into increased profit. Therefore the purchases would slow down the rise of stock value. What would this do for the game system? Obvious changes to stock value, such as improved odds in a game, would make lots of people buy the stock. The more people that bought the stock, the slower that any change would come about in the stock market. Therefore people who bought stocks very obviously about to go through the roof wouldn't make a killing, because everyone else would be too and the returns would take a while. Of course, if it turns out that the change in players is permanent then the stock price will continue rising (if slowly) and the player will make the large profit. This system would reward players who really do a good job analyzing the game world and history and games and see stocks that will improve that other people don't.
Just some suggested solutions instead of suggested problems for a change
There's nothing 25 skill points of fire magic and a fire pillar spell can't fix.
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Luap
Knight
331 posts
Jan 30, 2004
3:15 PM
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Re: Stock Market
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hehe, one of these days in the near future or so I'll learn how to post a short, to the point, concise, noncircumlocutory, message free of extraneous and unnecessary words or phrases.
*rolls eyes at his own bad joke*
There's nothing 25 skill points of fire magic and a fire pillar spell can't fix.
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Nicholas
Paladin
1029 posts
Jan 30, 2004
5:54 PM
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Luap writes:
hehe, one of these days in the near future or so I'll learn how to post a short, to the point, concise, noncircumlocutory, message free of extraneous and unnecessary words or phrases.
*rolls eyes at his own bad joke*
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I didn't think your post was that bad...thought a paragraph or two would have helped. ;)
You had some really great ideas in there though, and I think it would go a long way toward stabilizing the system. I'm working the equations in my head right now. I'll probably try posting again tonight with what I come up with and maybe we can hammer it out a little more from there.
Nicholas Bostaph
Fantasy Master Online Developer
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