In the two previous parts I’ve mentioned the matter of diversity: why is it important, what groups of things promote diversity and the importance of consumer goods. Now I’ll look at the issue from the trade’s perspective, presenting also a few examples of implementations which are not promoting diversity.
To call a thing as something promoting diversity, it should be worth acquiring for some part of the characters of the world. In In particular it shouldn’t be:
– not wanted by anyone or almost noone
– wanted by everyone
The first thing is very easy to explain: when the item is desired by noone, then it will be manufactured just by a few eccentrics around the world, so almost none of the players will meet them when playing the game. It’s just wasted time of Resources Department.
But why a thing shouldn’t be desired by everyone? It means that every character will try to posses such item. In the short term it means high demand and very significant distinction between people having it and the rest. But soon after the demand is satisfied and everyone in the neighbourhood gets the item, then people will start completely ignoring that detail.
Of course the worst situation is when the item is durable or requires only repairs, because it kills not only diversity, but also demand (for resources needed to manufacture it). Soon it turns out that more were produced than currently active population and the sense of its existence disappears: it’s just as good as if benefits of having such item were an inherent trait of every living character.
A sketch of relationship between number of people desiring a thing and diversity. Of course maximum doesn’t necessarily stay in the middle
From this point of view shields as a whole category will never bring more diversity, because almost everybody considers them necessary. But concrete types of shields could potentially be able to do it.
Let’s look at the resources. They are the most common trade good in the game, even though the trade in the large part of the world has died some time ago.
Diversity encourages trade. When one man requires a resource to produce an item, and has something invaluable for him, but necessary for somebody else, then they can trade. Quite obvious.
When a resource is available everywhere, then there’s absolutely no reason to trade it. Everyone can get possession over it by pure work, so why should it be worth getting to bother selling something else, to get something we can obtain without moving at all? A good example of such a resource is water. A well can be built in every location, so the sole reason for selling day-of-work of water for day-of-work of something else is possibility of getting it for free in the solar still.
When the resource is available almost nowhere, then it’s hard to decide how expensive should it be. It’s hard to compensate spending a few years for travel and collecting some amount in potentially dangerous area by even ten times days-of-work more of limestone mined in a quiet settlement by a group of mute golems.
* * *
The article above comes from http://cantr-mmorpg.pl/en_US/blog/roznorodnosc-w-cantr-cz-iii/