What are the main key things to create an successful economy?

[cpvr]

I know, as a former content manager, I sometimes found it hard to create a well-balanced, successful economy. Not only were a lot of the items non-usuable, a lot weren't being used at all - were sold in shops, but nobody bought them...

Then we introduced a quests system, which helped out a lot, but still we couldn't say that we had an successful economy...

Now that I look back on my past experience, I believe I missed a lot of things when trying to do and I believe they were as followed:

-Released items that didn't have any use.
-Not enough games
-Too many items being released, not enough points going into the game...

Maybe those were the reasons, but I'm not sure...
So, if your pet site has an successful economy, what steps have you taken in order to do it?

[kobe]

The problem is with a small community, people will drop the price of items dramatically. And because the community is small, the item usually sits in the shop, others see it, and lower their price as well. With bigger communities it isn't to much of a problem. That's one reason why NP has a good economy.

[cpvr]

Yes, but if the community is small, isn't there a few steps that can be taken to try and create a balanced community?

[Dazitov]

The problem is with a small community, people will drop the price of items dramatically. And because the community is small, the item usually sits in the shop, others see it, and lower their price as well. With bigger communities it isn't to much of a problem. That's one reason why NP has a good economy.

Neopets economy is hugely inflated, its stable, but inflated.

Its stability lies in autobuyers :)

As for making a small community stable, the key lies in having a method of control, somehow, there has to be an object whose value does not fluctuate that can some how be used as currency. There are other ways as well :)

[Awakening]

Stable economies come with large playerbases.
Want a stable game economy? Wait.

[m3th]

It's all dependant on what users are buying, selling and the main way of making money.

[Patrick]

Managing an economy is a difficult thing to do. It took us a while to get it going pretty good on Rescreatu.

You need the following things:
- Good rarity/restocking system
- Users participating in reselling
- Quests to give users incentive to find items
- The more users you have, the easier this is all to do

[Awakening]

Patrick hits the nail on the head.

Although larger playerbases are still key.

When my first game had about 2000 users, the economy was terrible. Items were being sold at ranges of 1000g-5000g. Without any price changes, at about 14000 users, that same item type stabilized to an even 2500g.

[cpvr]

Stable economies come with large playerbases.
Want a stable game economy? Wait.
How many players do you think it'll take to establish a successful economy?

[Maki]

I know I didn't start noticing the economy on subeta until stuff I wanted started stocking (more specifically the introduction of minions). I liked to collect them and so did a lot of other people; I would spend a good bit of money to get them. Others collected plushies and such because they could get a trophy among other things.

This post may or may not have helped. xD

[Lunarflight]

A pet site economy is based on two things: Money coming into the economy and money going out of the economy.

Money comes into the economy through ways the users get money: Games, quests, battle systems being the main ones.

Money goes out of the economy by users spending their money on site related tings: Items, training/healing costs, things like that.

User's personal shops, while the best indicator of what the economy is doing, don't actually affect the economy as a whole. Remember that in user shops, money is neither leaving nor entering the economy. Money is circulating between user hands and some users may successfully get richer while others get poorer, but the amount in the economy itself is unchanging in regards to user shops.

In petsite economies, you want to have the amount of money coming into the economy GREATER than the amount leaving the economy most of the time. This allows users to get richer the longer they play. If you're getting poorer the longer you play, then it's not much fun. :P

Granted, gaining money is pointless for many players if you have nothing to do with it. This is where the money out point is important: There needs to be something to do with money other than get more of it. This means items or features that are interesting and worth getting, including high, HIGH priced items so that the very rich have goals and can do something with all their moola. New items need to regularly be introduced to keep the purpose of money. And items are worth more if they DO something or have some use.

And I think I've rambled enough for now. :E