How to calculate the economy for the game?

Question

Game development

Online game. Main currency - c.u. c.u. you can earn money by working at various jobs, being in factions and from cases, and a couple of other ways, just c.u. can be bought with real money. You can spend on buying houses, clothes, cars, upgrading them, clothes, business and much more. At the moment, the main problem is the correct distribution of money among the players. What salary to issue for different work, what price to charge for certain goods.
So, I ask you to help with articles, instructions, videos, books in any language on this topic.

Answer 1

Depends on the use of this item and the use of money, so to speak.
There is a default sword that everyone can afford with a salary. Let's say $100
There is a bonus sword that can be bought for the same money. $100, but it has top-end features.
The promotion lasts a week. After the end, the bonus cannot be bought.
Also, players have the opportunity to sell on the market to other players.
Accordingly, some comrades will sell this bonus sword for $ 150 in the hope of making money on resale and buying something else valuable or upgrading.
If you hold promotions every week. THEN the market will not work. Fuck buying a bonus on the market if its system sells for 100. You need to think about this moment, like many others.
What can he buy with his salary? what use are these items? can he sell them? what is their rarity? etc.
See how gear is sold on Steam, in DotA, etc.
There are no cases on compiling the economy.
Everything is relative.

Answer 2

You can't just calculate a "stable economy".
1. Critically affects online - the purchasing power, the demand for certain professions and the amount of competition may depend on the number of players.
2. The economy cannot be perfect because the balance of the game cannot be perfect. You will need to be able to influence the balance of the game without breaking the gameplay too much, pushing the players in the direction that you want to develop now.
3. In addition to point 2, it is also impossible to implement a game in which all aspects of the gameplay are interesting to all players. Some people like one more, some the other. Depending on your online and the audience of the game, in fact it will be possible to see which direction you use more and how to change it.
How to calculate - the standard way to translate everything into time.
Test standard user cases for the extraction of specific things - houses, clothes. Estimate the time spent and set prices relative to this time.
Think over the purchase for real money especially carefully, at an unsuccessful price you can throw out entire directions from the game, in which players will not even go if there is another, easier way to get what they want.

Answer 3

It is important to understand what money is and how it works. A simple and positive explanation from the "jolly milkman" https://youtu.be/7OVTzCnAX7U?list=PLz2be7z5MhMfwUC...

Answer 4

Take any popular game: farm, city development, clickers and look at their odds?

Answer 5

There is a great channel on YouTube ( Extra credits ), which contains an incalculable amount of information and analysis of various aspects of game development, including economics / balance, etc.

Answer 6

It's just impossible to calculate on the knee. Even such giants as EVE Online have dedicated specialists for this. One of them later became the Minister of Finance of Greece. And even despite this, they are constantly rebalancing the economy and trying with all their might to slow down inflation, which is inevitable.
I would suggest, like the author of the answer above, to translate the cost of all items in time or in "man-hours" and build on this. It is necessary to build tables in Excel and look at production chains so that there is no bias in the production or consumption of certain things.
The most important thing is that the amount of money that appears in the game out of nowhere (mining resources, drops from monsters, etc.) is balanced by the amount of money disappearing from the game (destruction, wear of items, etc.).
Start by balancing one chain, then get involved and begin to better understand how to balance the rest.