Market makers have been communicated to be a temporary feature and likely to be removed further down the line, however, I’d like to argue for how market maker might be essential long-term.
The reasons are deflation and inflation.
Deflation:
This topic has come up regularly in the community. In May 2019 the currency in game per company was around 30k (see Money sources thread). One of the arguments is that a high quantity of commodities is being produced while money in circulation does not reflect this increase making it hard for people to trade. Additionally I would like to argue:
- As the complexity of commodities increases this might be an issue as well, e.g. player build ships were communicated to possibly be in the millions. If building one ship has a cost equal of half the money in circulation, that would be prohibitive.
- What if long-term player based production of consumables is insufficient for supplying the whole player base (players might not be interested in being self-sufficient and producing all DW / RAT themselves and it might even be infeasible if this would require multiple bases per player just for DW / RAT production). This would result in players being forced to buy consumables from the MM draining money out of the system possibly resulting in uncontrollable deflation.
MM BUY orders help to bring money into circulation.
Inflation:
MMOs have a risk of a hyper inflating economy. Player generate ridiculous amounts of money by selling things to NPCs (in our case MMs). At some point inflation might be as high such that people might need to move to a different currency. Imagine a post-apocalyptic pruniverse where people trade in DW.
However, here MM SELL orders can alleviate the issue. In the following lets consider the DW MM:
- Money is anchored to the price of the DW MM Sell order. No matter how much your currency inflates, you will always be sure to get something of value which, in this case, is DW which is necessary for all of a player’s production.
- Removing money out of circulation: Imagine the currency inflates so bad that it is not worth to sell DW below MM Sell order. In that case people would buy from the MM directly. Let’s play around with some numbers: Right now at peak times slightly above 150 people are online simultaneously. Let’s assume that 200 players play actively (probably more). Moreover, let’s assume that people have around 2 - 3 bases in average, requiring around 100 DW per player (This will be higher with an older game world). If all DW is bought off the Market Maker, this results in 1.5m of currency being removed from circulation daily.
MM SELL orders provide a significant money sink.
Bottom line: MM buy and sell orders can be adjusted to add and remove money from circulation, however, they will need to be carefully balanced to ensure a healthy ingame economy.