Gold Sinks

Bluef

Shecks said:

Really I can't think of a better possible gold sink than paying 300-500k for an extra stat for a couple of days.  For most people, that's two days straight of bashing, or more, just for a single stat.  To put that in perspective, I can get two stats from a purple ink and a runewarden.

I'm a dragon and I can't bash 300-500k in two days. Maybe you're assuming people want to go to islands or can even reach them via their own private vessel (which is a huge gold sink it itself since you need to pay for the upkeep plus pay off the pirates to sail safely!). For those who don't bash UW and Annwyn, they're competing with every other aspiring Dragon. The hunting grounds barely drop 10k when I do my usual round. Maybe if I bashed it nonstop for 3 consecutive days straight I could garner that much gold. In summary, I think this already exists anyway. It's called a vial of <whatever> and we just need a way to buy Crowns IC to purchase them via Shop of Wonders. 

Shecks

@Bluef thanks for reading 5% of my post.  The other parts talk about lower level/midbie bashing, the already existing stat vials, and buying MCs in game for gold.

Bluef

Shecks said:

@Bluef thanks for reading 5% of my post.  The other parts talk about lower level/midbie bashing, the already existing stat vials, and buying MCs in game for gold.

@Shecks I read the part that someone else had quoted. The point still stands. Not every dragon can make 300-500k in 2 days. Sorry if you're offended that I disagree with you.

Shecks

Actually, they can.  Maybe they just don't.  A dragon can make 300k in 2 days without touching UW or annwyn.

Bluef

Shecks said:

Actually, they can.  Maybe they just don't.  A dragon can make 300k in 2 days without touching UW or annwyn.

@Shecks I'm an avid hunter. I spend little time doing anything else. I don't bash PK zones. I don't bash islands. I don't make 300k in 2 days. So let's agree to disagree. 

Shecks

You can't and you don't aren't the same thing. Since I've broken 700k in one day three times in the last week, I'm gonna have to assume you're doing it wrong. And that's with people chasing me around bothering me, in most cases.

That's doing annwyn though, so I think 300k is fair. Also, islands are great, you should try them. I'm also betting you don't use meropis. There are several areas there with ridiculous gold rates for their difficulty. (Not that difficulty is a factor in dragonform)

Anyways, how much you, personally, bash isn't really that important, because between the top 5 gold bashers, we're probably generating well over half the gold in the game. I'm guessing it's about 1.5 - 3 mil a day, which eats up CFS pretty damn fast.

Bluef

Shecks said:

You can't and you don't aren't the same thing. Since I've broken 700k in one day three times in the last week, I'm gonna have to assume you're doing it wrong. And that's with people chasing me around bothering me, in most cases. That's doing annwyn though, so I think 300k is fair. Also, islands are great, you should try them. I'm also betting you don't use meropis. There are several areas there with ridiculous gold rates for their difficulty. (Not that difficulty is a factor in dragonform) Anyways, how much you, personally, bash isn't really that important, because between the top 5 gold bashers, we're probably generating well over half the gold in the game. I'm guessing it's about 1.5 - 3 mil a day, which eats up CFS pretty damn fast.

Yes, I'm bashing wrong. You're right. I'm wrong. Even though I said repeatedly I don't bash Annwyn or UW. 

I'm incredibly impressed that you're in the top five gold bashers. How about we drop it now and once again agree to disagree. 

Shecks

I am convinced you never read past the first line of posts. Suit yourself, keep bashing gnolls in dragonform for all I care. But don't get preachy about gold sinks and/or bashing if you're going to refuse to listen to people who know what they're talking about.

Accipiter

Please either define 'day' using the length of time you are bashing or STFU about it and get back on topic.

Gold sinks don't need to be huge, a billion gold item is probably going to remove much less than a 10k item if the 10k item is desirable and replaceable. Having more gold-based events/auctions is interesting because it will lead to gold hoarding which takes the money out of the economy because if you are saving for a regular event you won't want to convert gold to credits only to change it back when the crash comes. But they have to be on a semi-predictable schedule or it ruins the opportunity and you have to know that specific people are going to 'win' the events each time they come up.

Trey

Honestly, @Penwize is probably the best person to talk about hunting. I do like the idea @Shecks had regarding Mayan Crowns. I'm not crazy about putting a fixed cap on the cost, since I've made a decent bit before buying low and selling higher, but the idea is sound in principle, and I'd be willing to take a hit on my earnings wheeling and dealing in order to help put measures in to fix the credit market. The only problem I see arising is that frankly, there's a reason I'm sitting on 20 Mayan Crowns right now: a lot of the stuff you can get is lackluster at best.

Shecks

BOUND Mayan crowns. Can't be sold.

Edit: day = 10ish hours.

Trey

Shecks said:

BOUND Mayan crowns. Can't be sold. Edit: day = 10ish hours.

Yes, but what I mean is why would someone buy higher than 300k if they can get them for 300k? I can't get them in a promotion and sell them higher than that if they are available always for a set price. Not that I'm arguing that your idea shouldn't happen, just further clarifying.

Nim

Trey said:

Shecks said:

BOUND Mayan crowns. Can't be sold. Edit: day = 10ish hours.

Yes, but what I mean is why would someone buy higher than 300k if they can get them for 300k? I can't get them in a promotion and sell them higher than that if they are available always for a set price. Not that I'm arguing that your idea shouldn't happen, just further clarifying.

Could be increasingly expensive if you buy multiple within a certain time frame, that way there's a precedence to sell them for a bit over the price whenever someone is just like, GRARR I NEED ALL THE SHOP OF WONDERS ITEMS RIGHT NOW.

I'm not convinced that Shop of Wonders items were necessarily worth 300k to begin with, though, so I wonder how effective of a gold sink it'd be. I mean, @Shecks says that most people apparently earn that much in 20ish hours of bashing, but back when I poured 6-8 hours of bashing a day into getting a band, it still took me a month to earn it by bashing, and that was with city credits, loans, and gifts. I was under level 80, but going by rankings, so are most people.

Veldrin

For the bashing thing, I think I read somewhere else that Shecks add talismans into his figures and aren't talking only gold drops which everyone else probably is, hence the difference in numbers. But I can earn about 20k to 40k an hour on just gold drops

Outside that I agree, bound mayan crown for gold would be awesome.

Shecks

I don't add talismans into that at all.  I only stated that I get talismans on top of what I earn.  Counting talisman sales, at relatively low values, I have done over 1mil per day 5 times now, since I've come back from dormancy.  By all accounts, that is hardcore, all-day bashing UW/Annwyn/LHG, on loop, runed, with some arties.

However, I firmly stand by the fact that an unartied dragon, who is good at high efficiency bashing can easily pull 300k on a workday, without touching DKs/Annwyn.  I say that because I got on earlier and did over 45k an hour two hours straight (46k and 49k), on the main plane, just to prove it can be done.  That was sticking to Nuskuwe, Moghedu, Morindar, Manticores (once), Meropis, Delos, and a few other smaller places that actually hindered my efficiency, do to better places being bashed out.  These are areas that I don't have routes firmly established for, which can significantly increase gold per time.

I'm willing to venture a guess that many people just don't bash efficiently.  I have put a lot of time into careful route planning, queue all of my attacks and movement serverside, speed-walk everywhere, and waste absolutely as little time as possible.  For instance, my Sidhe run including 4 in the forest is 10.5 minutes, Unsidhe is 8.  I see dragons do Sidhe in 20+ minutes regularly, which is just time (and gold) being wasted.

Alrena

Shecks said:

I don't add talismans into that at all.  I only stated that I get talismans on top of what I earn.  Counting talisman sales, at relatively low values, I have done over 1mil per day 5 times now, since I've come back from dormancy.  By all accounts, that is hardcore, all-day bashing UW/Annwyn/LHG, on loop, runed, with some arties.

However, I firmly stand by the fact that an unartied dragon, who is good at high efficiency bashing can easily pull 300k on a workday, without touching DKs/Annwyn.  I say that because I got on earlier and did over 45k an hour two hours straight (46k and 49k), on the main plane, just to prove it can be done.  That was sticking to Nuskuwe, Moghedu, Morindar, Manticores (once), Meropis, Delos, and a few other smaller places that actually hindered my efficiency, do to better places being bashed out.  These are areas that I don't have routes firmly established for, which can significantly increase gold per time.

I'm willing to venture a guess that many people just don't bash efficiently.  I have put a lot of time into careful route planning, queue all of my attacks and movement serverside, speed-walk everywhere, and waste absolutely as little time as possible.  For instance, my Sidhe run including 4 in the forest is 10.5 minutes, Unsidhe is 8.  I see dragons do Sidhe in 20+ minutes regularly, which is just time (and gold) being wasted.

How much of that time is spent bullying people away from "your" bashing grounds? I'm sorry, but I'm really, really annoyed that you're telling people they're bashing wrong, when whenever I try to hunt Annwyn or UW, I get a tell from you saying, "You're ruining my route!" and then followed by various insults. I'm pretty sure i'm not the only one. When that fails, you bring out the backstabs, or a friend, not to mention personal tuned totems which you use against anyone and everyone. There's open pk, and there's plain bullying. If you want to fight over the area, that's fine. But sending insulting tells is kinda sad, especially when you get attacked over it (in an open pk area) and then complain about it!

Besides that, not everyone spends 10 hours bashing. Other people also rp, pk, or just hang out and talk. Some people simply don't HAVE 10 hours to play each day. 

And on topic: I agree on more goldsinks, and the crown idea sounds good. Temporary arties would also be neat, like minor stat boosts, health regen. Maybe even temporary harvesting gloves, hammers of forging for the less avid harvesters/forgers? 

Shecks

Any insults I threw your way were based on your practice of calling in the Eleusis squad (Exelethril, Iakimen) to run me out of my bashing areas whenever you want them.  Me asking you to leave is me being nice, not me being mean.  If you want to see mean, keep skewing the facts on the forums.

It gets old, having my ideas skewered because people don't like my character.

Alrena

Shecks said:

Any insults I threw your way were based on your practice of calling in the Eleusis squad (Exelethril, Iakimen) to run me out of my bashing areas whenever you want them.  Me asking you to leave is me being nice, not me being mean.  If you want to see mean, keep skewing the facts on the forums.

It gets old, having my ideas skewered because people don't like my character.

I would never send anyone at you, when I'm perfectly capable of fighting you myself. Furthermore, both those two attack you for their own reasons, certainly not because I asked them. Keep making up stories though. I don't dislike your character, I dislike your attitude. It's really, really bad. Please stop assuming things. I sincerely hope you realize that I'm saying this because I hope you'll rectify your attitude, and then you'll find people more willing to look at your ideas. Bets are I'm wasting my time, so I'll stop after this post.

Plus I think I mentioned I'm actually in favour of your MC for gold idea. Maybe you should read the things you threw at Bluef and apply them to yourself?

Iakimen

Shecks said:

Any insults I threw your way were based on your practice of calling in the Eleusis squad (Exelethril, Iakimen) to run me out of my bashing areas whenever you want them.  Me asking you to leave is me being nice, not me being mean.  If you want to see mean, keep skewing the facts on the forums.

It gets old, having my ideas skewered because people don't like my character.

Please don't. The only times I've attacked you in Annwyn was when I had a contract, or in the latest event, you attacked me first. I was just hunting.

In fact, from what I recall, that time when you attacked me first was the only time we ever fought in Annwyn. The other time I waited for you to leave your loop so you could duel me at NoNT.

Sure, I'll come for aid if an Eleusian calls for it, but Alrena has never called for aid 1v1 - at least, not me.

Sylvance

Wow... I guess I didn't realise the strength of feeling that people have about Gold Sinks.

Bluef

Shecks said:

Any insults I threw your way were based on your practice of calling in the Eleusis squad (Exelethril, Iakimen) to run me out of my bashing areas whenever you want them.  Me asking you to leave is me being nice, not me being mean.  If you want to see mean, keep skewing the facts on the forums.

It gets old, having my ideas skewered because people don't like my character.

No. As someone who occasionally talks a little smack in Achaea (but usually only when people initiate the same toward me), I have to say that the logic of this argument is flawed. It posits that because @Alrena did something wrong (not saying she did, just stating your claim), which was as bad or worse than insulting people in tells for hunting "your" grounds, your conduct shouldn't be criticized or noticed as out of the ordinary. This is an attempt to focus the attention elsewhere, and nothing more. 

It is also wholly inappropriate. You threaten to be mean to @Alrena and others who "skewer" your ideas here. These are forums and their sole point of existence is to share, debate, and discuss ideas.

Sarapis

Mayan Crowns for gold are not going to happen, and wouldn't have any substantial long-term effect anyway.

Gold sinks like you guys are talking about will be ineffective over anything but the short-term, whether it's Mayan Crowns or Also keep in mind that we're agnostic about the price of the credit market. There's no right price as far as we're concerned - when person A spends less gold to buy credits, that means person B gets less gold for her credits, and vice-versa. What we are concerned with though is that people have things they want or need to spend gold on, as gold needs to retain value.

The core issue is that the money supply is only sort of under our control. (*See below for more color here.) There is a theoretical maximum that's a product of how much xp per hour (a product of xp value and reset rate) the collected bashable denizens in Achaea can produce. You guys will never be able to harvest that money that quickly but it's a ceiling that 'presses down' on the generation of the money supply, so to speak. In fact, as a playerbase, you probably only harvest single digit %s of the available xp, because of all the inefficiencies involved (primarily that most people don't spend most of their time here bashing). 

But, when things that you find attractive, especially one-off things, are suddenly available for gold, the percentage of that theoretical maximum that you harvest goes up, because more people are spending more time bashing. 

Then there's the fact that it's possible for the actions of a few people to turn on an enormous faucet of gold. 

Shecks highlighted the problem earlier. "between the top 5 gold bashers, we're probably generating well over half the gold in the game."  I don't actually have any idea if that's true, as we don't track individual peoples' gold generation that way, but certainly the top bashers generate a disproportionate amount of gold. 

TL;DR so far: The supply side (faucet) is at least as big of a problem as the demand side (sink).

What's the thing to do when the faucet is pumping too much gold into the system? 

Reduce the supply of gold.

We're pondering ways to do this, and it's likely, bluntly, to hit the high-end bashers the most, as they generate such a disproportionate amount of gold. 

First thing that will happen is that we're going to reduce the gold drops from denizens that have a chance of dropping talismans by 25%. We made bashing more lucrative when we added talismans, so reducing the gold drops there is reasonable.

Beyond that, there are a number of potential courses of action, all of which are going to piss some group of people off, just like nothing will piss some group of people off. The problem is that many of you have two competing desires. 

1. Reduce the cost of credits expressed in gold.
2. Maintain or increase your gold generation capacity. 

Those two desires are directly at odds with each other.

Possible other ways to throttle the gold faucet are:

• Change gold generated to be level-relative. If you're high level, you'd only get the 'full' gold drop by bashing other high level things. This would cause Dragons to generate very little to nothing in areas like Moghedu.
  
  
• Reduce peoples' gold generating capacity past a certain amount generated via bashing each rl day, relative to level (the higher the level, the higher the capacity). So you can still bash for 10 hours, but after generating X gold (based on your level), your gold generation capacity starts to decrease every minute for the rest of the day, until it resets again. 
  

Like I said, guaranteed to upset some people.

I'm also working on designing a large addition/revision to part of the economy that will create additional ongoing gold sinks, and additional comm sinks as well, but I believe the real issue with gold inflation is the supply side more than the demand side (though the latter does need work). 

* The real reason why we can't have nice things is because in Achaea, like most MMOs, everybody wants to be rich, and we can't have broad swathes of people not able to afford to buy things like nice clothes, nice food, health and mana vials, etc etc. People don't play games to be poor. This ends up entailing that the gold faucet is turned on strongly enough that everybody can get enough gold to get a lot of stuff. You need a destruction economy like Eve Online's, where huge amounts of value people have poured into stuff that can be destroyed, to really make it work. (That and maybe an economist on staff, like they have!)

Accipiter

I think people are missing a larger point here. If you ignore all of @Shecks' posturing and insults, he is saying that the most lucrative places to bash produce about a million gold per day. If you add in everything else, that means each day could potentially add 3-4 million to the economy. I am sure @Sarapis or @Tecton have better numbers, but if we take that as an estimate, to keep the economy stable at current levels, assuming a gold auction every 6 months it would need to remove 540-720 million per auction.

I don't have numbers from any auctions, but I seem to remember the last had 4 items for gold, all going for tens of millions. I am sure someone could correct me there, but if that is true, auctions don't happen with anywhere near enough regularity to have any effect on inflation.

Mithridates

I'll totally work for you guys as an economist. I think it would be tons of fun!

Kyrra

Please no.

Exelethril

@Shecks : Alrena isn't skewing facts, the only time me and Alrena teamed you was when you attacked us by yourself in Annwyn(lolsoclever), then you brought Jinsun later. 

The only other time I attacked you(with Alrena following but not attacking) was because you were attacking the Unsidhe we had already started attacking and taking the gold, repeatedly. Your character is 300 years old, pretty sure you should be aware of HuntingEtiquette101 by now.

Now, if I were given a credit for every time you backstabbed me while I was hunting in Annwyn/Underworld.. runes and level 3 arties can only do so much for you!

Cooper

What areas do you consider 'dragon level' Sarapis?

As of right now there are very few things that only dragons can kill extremely more efficiently than non-dragons. DKs, sidhe, unsidhe, some things on islands (not everyone can or wants to go to islands/Meropis to bash). LHG is actually harder in dragonform for some classes (those with active healing - transmute, hands, priestess, vigour, etc) if their lesserform has a decent amount of con.

If you remove/extremely nerf gold from areas like Moghedu you're going to need to add a lot of areas so that dragons can still get gold somewhere. Expecting dragons to bash on islands, off plane/free pk areas, or not make any gold is extremely unreasonable. Those areas are SUPPOSED to be more profitable due to the time required to get there or the danger involved in bashing there.

Sarapis

Oh, I don't have any specific list in mind. We'd have to cap any loss of gold production too since penwize. (Meaning we have no mobs that scale to his kind of level and can't have people able to outlevel their ability to earn gold.)

Penwize

Interesting bit to note about island bashing: of the islands I've tried to bash (read: all of them), none of them have a very significant gold production via bashing.  A couple islands produce a lot of gold through questing, roughly equivalent to Tenwat, but no island produces a high amount of gold through bashing alone.  The highest two I've found would be Ageiro (which requires a nonstandard way of bashing to even get the decent targets/gold), and Prin (which is very high level, and hurts a lot).  Other islands just don't produce a whole lot of gold over time that I've found.  I'm also not even sure the outer island bonus is noticeable at this point: I certainly don't get more xp over time in Prin than I do in certain other high level areas across Meropis (or indeed UW/Annwyn), and I really feel like I should.

Dragons don't have a significant advantage with islands since the gare change.  Only two of them (maybe three, Zaphar can hurt) are actually close to dragon level for bashing.  The questing is available to anyone, so anyone can get that big quest gold from the islands.

There are only a few places that I would say produce too much gold through bashing.  UW and Annwyn are big offenders, despite their open PK status they're still incredibly easy to farm.


With regards to Sarapis' suggestions: I would be okay with seeing a decrease in gold production on things that produce talismans, but do bear in mind that talismans are dropping in value pretty steadily.  As it stands, as talisman inflation goes up, most talismans are dropping to dirt cheap, with a few notable exceptions rising in price (gold teeth/blue scales, wtf is up with those?). 

I really dislike the notion of scaling gold production based on level, because it's effectively punishing people for leveling up, which sounds horrible.  I already have a significant issue with people non-dragon level encroaching upon dragon level bashing areas, and the idea of punishing us for going to other place and not the opposite concerns me.

I also really dislike the idea of capping the amount of gold people can produce in a given time frame.  That's again just punishing people for wanting to bash constantly, versus any other activity.  Are you going to cap PvP xp per day?  Limit the number of forges per day?  Limit inks milled, herbs gathered or minerals transmuted per day?  That aside, why shouldn't someone who wants to do something for 8 hours get the full 8 hours of benefit of that activity?  And why only bashing, when questing is probably the more significant contributor to gold production (and the one that's accessible to people who are not dragons). 

Overall, why punish people for hitting dragon?

Personally, I would suggest you take an alternative route: decrease gold production by giving us an alternative resource to gather to produce gold that way.  I already hunt a lot of places that give crap gold but yield butcherable corpses, because the reagents I butcher make it worthwhile to hunt.  Likewise with talisman pieces.  I'd expand upon that, so that bashers produce less gold directly, but more of another resource that can be traded (or kept for its own value, like talismans and inks). 

Jacen

@Sarapis I know you said you don't keep track of individual's gold generation, but do you have a record of total gold in existence? It'd be interesting to see how that relates to various events, like how sharply it rises during Great Hunts, and how it reacted to the bashable talisman introductions.