Also reminds me of min/maxing in a multi-player game with an economy.
Some times in a balanced game a new min/max strategy is found in a game like this that it quickly becomes the dominant form of wealth generation in the economy. Asset inflation typically explodes in this scenario driving prices for everything way up.
The game itself typically becomes less fun at this point as min/max is now the only valid economic activity, hence intervention by the gods in the form of a patch. But while this fixes the exploit it does not fix the economic ruin. Players that made massive amounts of wealth in the event can have strangle holds on the economy and cause stagflation as material prices only drop slowly. New/poor players are hobbled with poor purchasing power.
It would be an interesting study on how many of the effects in this article could be studied by gamifying these situations.
Some times in a balanced game a new min/max strategy is found in a game like this that it quickly becomes the dominant form of wealth generation in the economy. Asset inflation typically explodes in this scenario driving prices for everything way up.
The game itself typically becomes less fun at this point as min/max is now the only valid economic activity, hence intervention by the gods in the form of a patch. But while this fixes the exploit it does not fix the economic ruin. Players that made massive amounts of wealth in the event can have strangle holds on the economy and cause stagflation as material prices only drop slowly. New/poor players are hobbled with poor purchasing power.
It would be an interesting study on how many of the effects in this article could be studied by gamifying these situations.