Swappable Gifts Update - Artefact Trading!

[John]

I've locked my child's Easter Egg Artefacts for now; they'll become available again next Easter!

And I've created a Artemis Badge to commemorate the Artemis II mission!

[Furbisms]

What determines when the locked artifacts get cut off by the way? Because I have a bunch more locked ones than what is shown in my posts.

Also, on the new page, it would be cool to somehow see what unlocked artifacts are in circulation. I would love that so I can find more. The recent artifact thing is really nice though.

[Melooon]

I was thinking it might be fun to allow artifacts to be "enchanted" enchanting an artifact would allow you to attach a CSS snippet to it that applies to the whole site when you have the artifact "equipped" as one of your top 6 artifacts. Enchanted artifacts could then be traded, meaning you could trade CSS mods on the forum (maybe other sites too) that change how the site functions. @Dan Q largely inspired by your shenanigans.

From my thinking artifact enchantments would only apply to the person with the artifact (not to others seeing that person), but if there's a safe way to expand that, it would be fun.

[Dan Q]

I was thinking it might be fun to allow artifacts to be "enchanted" enchanting an artifact would allow you to attach a CSS snippet to it that applies to the whole site when you have the artifact "equipped" as one of your top 6 artifacts.

That's a cool concept. I think a limit on the length of the enchantment would act as an interesting limitation (I've enjoyed seeing what I can squeeze into the chat box!), perhaps.

The biggest risk would be the hijinks. If I made an artifact enchanted (cursed?) with body { display: none !important; } and then give it to you as a gift, you wouldn't be able to drop or re-enchant it! So a given gift should never be auto-promoted to the "held" one(s).

But so long as there's an "audition" button so you can try holding an artifact (applies its CSS to the next page load, shows you its CSS, and shows a button to "equip" it indefinitely, that should be safe. And by the time you're that far, you could even allow people to "audition" other people's artifacts (might be useful before they trade for them!). Just a thought!

[Melooon]

and then give it to you as a gift

My plan for that is to make it so that you can only enchant your own artifacts, e.g. you have to make it yourself, then enchant it, then put it up for swap - you cant gift an enchanted item directly. So whatever it does, you have to suffer for at least a while

I also think enchanting length could could be swap credit limited. E.g. every 100 chars of enchantment costs 1 swap credit or something.

We still have an economic issue surrounding credits, where once you have them its really hard to get rid of them!

[pepper]

I love the idea of enchanted artifacts    I don't know how that would work in terms of breaking the site either by accident or on purpose, but at least requiring a user to use the CSS before putting it up for trade helps. Seems fun though!

I was also wondering about the economy thing. I spent all my credits a while back on Dan Q's artifact because I just kinda dig it lol. But I realized then that I ran out of credits and the only way to get more, far as I can tell, is to make an artifact for trade. I don't wanna make shovelware artifacts, though, and want what I put into the system to be unique and special, so I made one just now as a custom sprite of my sona which took some effort. But if I'm not mistaken I won't get any credits unless it is adopted? If I wanted to participate in the system, currently I kinda can't, which means that you have a user (me) that wants to engage with the trading system, but can't, slowing down engagement with the feature. I support the idea of a user's engaging with the site automatically resulting in credit generation, but far as I can tell that isn't a feature (yet?)

[Melooon]

far as I can tell that isn't a feature (yet?)

Yep, its not in yet, I've done more or less all the backend work to make it easy to add credit earning from interactions, but it kinda needs someone to sit down and figure out exactly what actions should really generate credits, and how many credits it should generate; and it needs to be balanced and take into account how people actually interact with the site, while also not gamifying posting in a negative way.

Its kinda a complex call basically! There were some good suggestions made by people in this thread, so if you or anyone else who's good at stat balancing (its not my strongest point) wants to figure out an interaction-to-credit plan that would be a huge help

[Dan Q]

Yep, its not in yet, I've done more or less all the backend work to make it easy to add credit earning from interactions, but it kinda needs someone to sit down and figure out exactly what actions should really generate credits, and how many credits it should generate; and it needs to be balanced and take into account how people actually interact with the site, while also not gamifying posting in a negative way.

This is horrendously and infamously a hard problem when inventing an artificial economy. You see it a lot in massively-multiplayer games: you "get" gold by doing quests, you can "spend" it at NPC shops to get weapons and gear... and that economy is broken because unlike the real world, the supply of gold is infinite and weapons don't wear out and the players with the better weapons can do the harder quests and bring more gold into the economy and now the player-run part of the economy has a runaway inflationary effect and boom! The economy's broken. Whoops.

So you take the Puzzle Pirates approach and have equipment wear out over time and vehicles need repair. But now you've got a different problem: in the real world, when people die their assets remain real and get divided up amongst the state, their next of kin, or whomever. But in a virtual world a player can vanish for days, months, years, or indefinitely, and you might never be sure whether or not they're coming back, and when you scale that up to large numbers of players... boom! You're got an economic shock risk and the economy's broken. Whoops.

Or you take the Linden Labs approach and charge ground rent for "space" like some sort of Georgist's nightmare. But all you've done is replaced equipment with land and introduced a new problem that land has to be able to vanish (or otherwise be reclaimed) depending on how its "owners" exert their rights (or, indeed, vanish from the game world and stop paying for it). Now you've either got a problem where land has to be valueless (and you've got the same problem as the original world) or where land has value but can vanish from and reappear in the economy on a whim (and you've got the same problem as the second world). Boom! Broken economy again. Whoops.

Basically, it's an unsolved problem. If you make a virtual world mirror the real world, its economic systems are challenged by the fact that virtual worlds aren't like the real world and people don't treat them as if they are. If you make a virtual world distinct and different, you need to manually keep turning the dials on your "sinks" to keep the economy afloat (and there's a whole lot of examples of that!).


Keep it simple. Keep it light. And if need be, add only one variable at a time. That'd be my advice. Add a way to gain currency. Add a way to lose it. Sit back and monitor for a while. Then consider adding others. Slow and steady. There's no rush!

Aiming for perfection while trying to solve a demonstrably-unsolvable problem will lead to heartache. Aim for enjoyment. Aim for personality. Aim for creativity. Those are achievable goals.