Vintage Story — Economy

Vintage Story

This is an investigative writing assignment in which I describe the economic environment of the game “Vintage Story” and how trading and currencies have changed over time. I also examine trading largely from the perspective of FSFTC (Finnish Small Fox Trading Company). (I am the sole owner of the company and the only person who runs the entire system’s foundation.)

I am personally very interested in in-game markets and how player-to-player markets work and could be improved — for example, how one could create a currency that functions entirely outside the game and has no separate inflation, which usually results from in-game money-printing mechanics.

Vintage Story is a game built from the ground up to be extremely difficult and slow-paced. Doing, producing, processing, or even surviving anything in the game is intentionally challenging and time-consuming. Because of this, almost every product has value — if an item has a use, it means another player doesn’t have to do that work themselves.

In general, people want to enjoy the game in different ways. When trade can connect players of different professions and allow them to play in the way that suits them best, the economic system works well.

Economic Environment

The game’s economic environment is remarkably diverse considering that the game itself is quite small — especially the specific server discussed here (TOPS – “The Official Public Server”), which has a maximum population of 75 players at a time.

I believe the main reason the economic environment has been able to develop so extensively is largely due to the fact that many players spend long periods of time on this server and are deeply attached to the game and to the property or items they have made or produced.

In Vintage Story, players can also create all kinds of beautiful pixel art, into which many have invested hundreds of hours. This gives their creations strong emotional value. Building houses is also its own art form in this game.

Almost every product in Vintage Story has some use or function. Factors that add value to products include usefulness, difficulty of obtaining them, infrastructure requirements, and the enjoyment of production.

For example, the item “Rot,” which is mold that appears when food spoils — everyone inevitably has it, because eating food in the game is critical. Therefore, there is an excess of Rot, and many players simply throw it away, believing it to be useless.

However, Rot actually has value — it can be turned into the game’s best soil, which is excellent for growing crops. For this reason, I buy Rot in my store even though many players think it is worthless.

The opposite example is “Sturdy Leather,” the best leather in the game, used to craft the largest backpacks. Backpacks are expensive because the process to make them requires several ingredients that are relatively difficult to obtain, and the processing itself is time-consuming, which increases the product’s price.

VINTAGE STORY MARKETS

History

In Vintage Story, trade between players has existed for a long time. In the past, trading was mostly as simple as a player saying, “I’m selling X amount of item Y — if you want it, offer me something I think is worth about the same or more, so that I’ll want to give up this item.”

With this kind of old-fashioned trading, it was common for more experienced players to take advantage of newer players — the experienced player would set a price for an item but intentionally keep the buying price low so they could purchase it cheaply. Because new players often didn’t know the real value of items, they would usually go through with the deal, unaware that they were being paid only a fraction of the item’s true worth.

About a year ago, inflation had not yet taken over the in-game currency, so many items were still relatively cheap when measured in “game money,” that is, in “RG” (Rusty Gear). When the value of RG was still high, people trusted its usability and believed everyone would accept RG as currency. However, many who understood what mob farms do — that is, mass enemy slaughterhouses that produce hundreds of RGs per hour — no longer saw RG as valuable. Many even stopped accepting RG entirely, as they did not want to deal in a currency whose value constantly dropped.

Trading has long been difficult because both parties always had to separately agree on the quantity of items to be traded, the price, the time and place of the trade, and on top of that, trust that the other person actually had the items they claimed and that both would show up.

Adding to this difficulty is the fact that players tend to live scattered around the game world and rarely want to leave their homes or bases unless necessary, which makes trading quite inconvenient.

The most common meeting place for deals is the “spawn” point — the coordinates 0,0 — which is where all players start the game, so nearly everyone knows how to get there. But even so, for many players, traveling to spawn can be too far a trip for a small purchase or sale.

Larger deals usually happened from one player’s base to another’s, with the buyer often being asked to come pick up the item from the seller. This often caused frustration with logistics — traveling long distances several times takes time, and most players dislike traveling.

FSFTC History and Purpose

Originally, I was just a small merchant who wanted to sell my goods at the center of the world. Trading seemed to be going relatively well until I noticed that I was starting to have more items for sale than I could carry. That’s when I began to think — maybe it would be a good idea to open a store.

At the same time, I wanted to buy many things myself, so I thought — why not also accept other goods as a form of payment?

From that idea came the concept of my barter system, which is now known as BT (Bartering Token). BT is somewhat like a currency, but it is not a physical item in the game — rather, it is a number that represents the value you have. You can use this BT in my store and within my ecosystem for trading purposes.

BT has made it possible for me to accept almost any product at some value, and in return, I give BTs that can then be used for trade within the FSFTC system.

I mainly recommend that customers bring in goods worth about as much as they plan to buy, or close to that amount, since holding extra BTs in their account is not recommended for value security reasons. However, despite this, many of my customers like to keep money in their accounts for various reasons — such as convenience (it’s easier to spend when you already have funds) or because they locked in good selling prices during large transactions but haven’t yet decided what to spend their money on.

The purpose of FSFTC is to provide my customers with information about product prices, to offer a wide selection of goods to buy and sell, and to make trading easier overall.

I also offer a player marketplace where customers can trade with each other — even with products that I don’t personally buy or sell. My store is located right near the 0,0 point, at coordinates 300,100, which has helped a lot with visibility, since almost everyone notices it or can easily find it by walking around the central area.

Each customer has their own personal account (also known as a deposit box), which basically consists of the required signs for identification and ordering, and one chest for picking up ordered goods and making payments.

OCM (Open Commodities Market) is an add-on to the account that allows the customer to list their own products for sale, letting them set their own prices. The seller keeps 95% of the selling price (compared to the game’s built-in player-to-player market, which charges a 10% tax and several other fees).

OCM is therefore much cheaper for trading, especially for large transactions. Customers can also create item purchase requests, meaning they commit to buying a set number of a specific product at the price they set in their purchase request.

Vintage Story’s Economy Compared to Other MMO Games

Vintage Story itself is not technically an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online game), but it still has several mechanics originally inspired by well-known MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (WoW) or RuneScape.

For example, the game has an AH (Auction House) — an in-game player-to-player marketplace that allows players to use RG to buy items from each other. This also removes RG from the ecosystem to help control inflation.

Other features include NPC (Non-Player Character) merchants who also accept RG in exchange for items. This too helps remove RG from the economy and keeps inflation under control.

These mechanics have kept inflation in check relatively well, even though players have developed money-printing devices (mob farms).

Nevertheless, the game’s trading and product values remain surprisingly healthy, because Vintage Story is designed to be time-consuming — obtaining, processing, or transporting any product is difficult and takes effort, which adds value to everything, as long as the product has some purpose — which most do.

A good example of RG’s devaluation versus the stability of other goods is this: about 6–12 months ago, a steel ingot cost around 5 RG, and a stack of 64 charcoal also cost around 5 RG (charcoal being a critical part of steel production).

Nowadays, I sell steel ingots for about 13 RG and 64 charcoal for about 13 RG as well. From this, it is easy to see that the value of RG has roughly halved in a year.

That’s why I prefer using my own BT system for trading and keep almost no RG in storage — it’s an asset that continuously loses value.

It doesn’t help that some players on the server are sitting on thousands or even tens of thousands of RG in reserves, flooding the market with money whenever they feel like it. This makes life difficult for the average player, who doesn’t have access to the same money-printing setups, while rich veteran players can simply generate hundreds of RG per hour and then pay others for labor using money they effortlessly printed by running their “printers.”

For this reason, I offer a public money printer (mob farm) under my shop, which anyone can come use to print as much RG as they need for their gameplay.

I personally benefit from RG inflation, as it raises the value of all other goods relative to RG, which in turn makes NPC trader goods cheaper — helping everyone.

The only negative effect of RG inflation is the drop in the stored value of RG, which mainly harms the rich players. Personally, I’m quite satisfied that they have to face the consequences of their actions.

On the other hand, my system allows almost any item to be sold — meaning that as long as a player has goods, they are already wealthy, regardless of what those goods are. Of course, each product has its own value, which constantly fluctuates, and some are generally much more valuable than others.

For instance, gold is about seven times more valuable than copper (when buying), or ten times more valuable when trying to sell, depending on price variations.

WHY VINTAGE STORY’S ECONOMY HAS SUCCEEDED

Vintage Story’s Economy Compared to Minecraft

The economic foundation of Vintage Story is far more stable than that of Minecraft.

This was already made quite clear during Vintage Story’s design phase. At the moment, almost every item in Vintage Story has economic value because, in the game, nearly all items have — if not one, then several — different uses, and producing each item always takes time and depends on the situation (since different materials are found or grow in different regions).

The anti-automation aspect of Vintage Story’s economy is a fascinating example of how a much more stable economic system can be achieved when players must actually do something for every product instead of just sitting still — as happens in Minecraft with mob farms.

Minecraft, on the other hand, allows and even encourages mob farming, which floods the market with products and causes significant inflation in those goods.

Minecraft also lacks any official currency base, so in many cases, players are forced to rely on bartering and somehow figure out the relative value of items on their server. This is often very challenging because trade rarely happens — gathering or obtaining items is usually too easy. (Minecraft Forum 2011–2014.)

Using metals as currency in Minecraft is also a bad idea, since it’s easy to cause inflation there too. Mob farms can mass-produce certain metals, leading to oversupply. The only material that stays somewhat stable in value is diamonds, because they are relatively rare and hard to obtain in large quantities — but even diamonds experience inflation over time, as players keep mining more from the ground.

Trading with diamonds is also inconvenient because their value is so high, and most players are reluctant to sell them since other items are rarely as valuable.

For new players, joining the diamond economy is difficult because acquiring the currency is made hard — players are encouraged to buy diamonds, and there’s always high demand, while selling diamonds is discouraged.

Vintage Story, in contrast, has its own kind of mass production — mob farms that mainly produce currency (RG). These are, however, tightly controlled through anti-inflation mechanisms (“sinks”), such as trading taxes in the Auction House system and NPC merchants that convert RG into items.

This differs greatly from Minecraft’s free-for-all approach to mass production.

What I Have Learned from Vintage Story

As a game developer myself, I have learned many design methods that help maintain balance in a game’s economic system — and also what can go wrong if players are given too much freedom to automate everything.

Vintage Story, in my opinion, is a very well-designed and well-executed game that deserves much more recognition than it currently has.

Its product value system is extremely fascinating and valuable, because everything in the game is made intentionally difficult and time-consuming. This means that when a player wants to buy something in large quantities, it costs a fortune — which helps maintain item value far better.

If mass production were possible from every direction, item values would drop significantly.

I have also learned a lot about currencies and their histories, and about how the laws of supply and demand affect item values in video game environments — and how one can use trade to determine the true value of goods without losing too much profit.

Most of this I have learned through running FSFTC and its internal BT ecosystem.

By operating this system, I learned how critical easy access to money is for a healthy economic environment. Many players, especially new ones, struggle to earn their first RG, which they need for trading. Some also accept metals, but mostly only silver and gold — which have to be mined separately and usually require bombs for faster extraction.

Meanwhile, my BT ecosystem accepts almost all basic items as a form of payment and also sells nearly all basic products, which makes it much easier for everyone to access currency and reduces the power of rich mob-farming players who hoard RG in front of newer players’ noses.

I also learned that well-paid work generally produces much better results than poorly paid, low-effort work — because well-paid, independent workers invest in their productivity, which helps them create far more and faster than anyone else.

For this reason, I only provide estimates for what you might earn if you do certain jobs; I do not offer fixed employment. Everyone is independent and responsible for their own work and productivity.

In this way, my system lets everyone experience small-scale entrepreneurship — and if they wish, customers can even establish their own shop and set their own prices.