I think we need to encourage spending. People ignore the current agoran economy too much. People don't ignore the real economy because they need to eat. My vision is to have it be completely impossible to meaningfully participate without paying for it, thus forcing economic participation.
I also think we need inflation to match new players coming in. And we need more incentivisation of inter-player spending, rather than just player-agora spending. The few businesses people have set up right now (Celestial Fire-Fox's vote-buying thing for example) just aren't being used. On Sun, Sep 24, 2017 at 8:14 AM, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> wrote: > > > There's two separate issues: > > 1. How fast should a brand new player be able to catch up with an old player; > > 2. How much consistent advantage should an officer have over a non-officer. > > It's confounded because most old players are officers, but given the welcome > package I think it's mostly a problem of (2) not (1). > > On Sat, 23 Sep 2017, Nic Evans wrote: >> On 09/23/2017 04:47 PM, Cuddle Beam wrote: >> I think a good way to analyze the game design is to guess in how much >> time the average player (eith average activeness and skill) will achieve a >> win (or dictatorship) given their join date. >> >> If its not the same (or very similar) for someone who was around at the >> start than someone who joins later, then its Gerontocratic imo (on that >> front). For example, the case where the total capital >> of all active players, in comparison to what a newcomer has (Welcome Pack), >> grows over time. >> >> >> New players shouldn't have such a handicap that they overcome consistently >> good play from existing players. And the stamp win isn't restricted to >> one-time. New players can still win with as much work as >> old players, but the old players have a lead by virtue of starting sooner. >> >> On Sat, 23 Sep 2017 at 22:26, Kerim Aydin <ke...@u.washington.edu> >> wrote: >> >> >> On Sat, 23 Sep 2017, Owen Jacobson wrote: >> > As for the gerontocracy argument: Money is an inherently >> gerontocratic system. >> > It abstracts value from labor in a way that allows arbitrary >> allocation. >> >> Ok, I've been mulling this over for the past week or so, and some >> broad thoughts. >> >> I think we should step away from thinking of this in terms of >> Economies and >> think of it in terms of Game Design. >> >> On the supply side, what we have is classic exponential asset growth. >> Base >> assets let you get things which then let your assets grow faster (I'm >> particularly thinking of the recent Agoraculture here). This can be >> very >> fun - the fun part of the grind games is when your properties start >> *really* >> producing. But the problem is that it leads to early determination of >> winners versus losers, and if the game lasts too long, it's a >> frustrating >> slog for the losers. In a game with no fixed end (e.g. real life), >> this is >> the gerontocracy. >> >> It's greatly exacerbated by the fact that distribution of valuable >> assets >> is via Auction. Auctions are inherently exponential (a slight lead in >> your base asset leads to you winning a big valuable asset). Moreover, >> right now, the auction properties are far too rare, so you have to >> compete >> directly with the gerontocracy to buy in. My main reason to hoard >> right now >> is to have any chance in an auction. >> >> I think the solution is some minimum income, and drastically reducing >> the >> buy-in difficulties for auctions (I'd do that through increased land). >> >> On the spending side: quite frankly, we don't have enough diversity of >> things that actually buy game advantage to be worth spending on. We >> need >> to add different pathways to accumulation and specialization. >> >> There's a few ways to organize adding things to buy. I personally >> would >> add permanent political buy-in based on our old Oligarchic system, and >> simultaneously re-form the Speaker position as we talked about last >> week. >> This would be entirely separate from land. (there are other things we >> could >> invent to buy, this is one obvious addition). I'd also think about >> specialized >> roles (e.g. only allowing Farmers to own land, and you can't easily >> change >> whether you're a farmer or not). >> >> The total portfolio of things to buy should have a unified game >> balance and >> different pathways to riches/success, and not just be a grab bag of >> random >> investment instruments (e.g. stamps, bonds, whatever). >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> -- >From V.J. Rada
