New Gold Sinks

Kresslack

A version of a CCG in Achaea would be pretty exciting, especially if players could build a sort of maybe 20-40 card deck and go head to head with each other. Perhaps denizens could also have a small chance of dropping a card when killed. Such as the red dragon being killed and has a chance to drop a card resembling him.

Cooper

Hmm. Mandatory clan dues of 250 gold per clan, ooc or ic, that just disappear after being paid. 

Tecton I will take .1% of all that gold for stealing the idea. 

Grandue

Cooper said:

Hmm. Mandatory clan dues of 250 gold per clan, ooc or ic, that just disappear after being paid. 

Tecton I will take .1% of all that gold for stealing the idea. 

This would not work. This is a negligible tax that would only devalue gold. Taxing common items and necessities isn't a solution, it just lands us right back where we started. 

Cooper

Grandue said:

Cooper said:

Hmm. Mandatory clan dues of 250 gold per clan, ooc or ic, that just disappear after being paid. 

Tecton I will take .1% of all that gold for stealing the idea. 

This would not work. This is a negligible tax that would only devalue gold. Taxing common items and necessities isn't a solution, it just lands us right back where we started. 

The point was to get me tons of gold, though.

Kez

I'm not sure why people are so opposed to necessities costing gold. Ultimately, the need to spend gold on other things is what keeps its value. If you target gold-rich characters with high cost toys, maybe they fall for it and spend 300k on some random fun instead of 50 credits. If you target everyone with low-cost necessities, 500 characters spend 6k on the same thing as everybody else instead of 1 credit. In the long term, fun toys lose their shine. How much gold has been spent on marionettes compared to vials? You may be aggravated by the thought of spending half your gold on things you have to have instead of things you want to have, but that's making the gold twice as valuable and, by extension, making the want-to-haves more available.

Sena

Because if you increase the value of gold while at the same time increasing everyone's costs, it ends up not having much effect. It primarily benefits the people who don't actually need those necessities. If vials were made to cost 3k each, it would mostly only help those who don't bash or fight (or who have remedies for on-demand refills and can get by with fewer vials) and thus get the benefit of increased gold value without the extra cost to offset it. It might lower credit prices for those who need vials too, but that just shifts their costs energy around, so it's unlikely to be more than a slight net positive for them.

Also, part of the problem is the disparity between newbies/midbies and experienced players. Players who can only earn 1-5k per hour are competing against ones who can earn 30-50k per hour, or more. Increasing the static costs of necessities for everyone hurts the low end, but doesn't matter as much for the high end.

Aktillum

Folks need to understand that a gold sink is literally something that makes gold disappear from the game. Gold exchanges between players, such as from trading CCG trading, are not gold sinks. The gold needs to vanish entirely from existence, and in large quantities, for it to be a gold sink that has any real impact on the economy.

A CCG would be fun in Achaea as far as stamp-collecting goes, but it wouldn't be a great gold sink because they'd likely be tradeable and it would just turn into gold being exchanged between players as super-rich players would just bash up tons of gold to buy them from people. If they weren't tradeable and were designed as a "gold sink" (ie: you give a denizen craptons of gold for card-packs) I don't think it'd be as popular as people think.

Like @Cooper said, my "artefacts for rent" idea would likely NEVER be implemented for business reasons, but on paper it would be a fantastic gold sink because A: Its a highly desirable item, B: People would plunk down tons and tons of gold over time, gold that would vanish into thin air from the game economy.

I think the most realistic of my proposals was a subdivision in Delos, which nobody commented on, and I think that has actual potential as a decent gold-sink since plot sales wouldn't go anywhere. You could further dramatically enhance its gold-sink potential by making things in Delos sub as "gold only", like building a room costs 300k (the equivelant of 50cr @ 6k). People would buy credits OOC to sell for gold, then build a giant mansion in Delos using nothing but gold, and millions of sovereigns would silently disappear into the night.

Nim

I could imagine some cards or card packs being sold for gold.

Furthermore, it'd give the admins to lower gold drop rates on some enemies to compensate for the card drop rates, or whatnot.

Finally, any activity players can do instead of just straight up bashing gold reduces the number of people bashing for straight gold at any given time.

Jacen

Just because gold exchanges between players is involved, doesn't mean it won't also function as a gold sink. As you said, booster packs would be a good gold sink, as well as stasis card jackets, official game tables for player/org housing, not to mention tournament entry fees and such.

Aktillum

Nim said:

Finally, any activity players can do instead of just straight up bashing gold reduces the number of people bashing for straight gold at any given time.

This hinges on the idea that enough of the population would stop bashing to sit around and play card games. I don't think the people who are true bashaholics, like Penwize, and who pump the most amount of bashing gold into the economy, would stop doing what they do because of a card game. I could, of course, be posting from my own biased perspective (I personally don't enjoy CCGs) and it could be like, the hugest gold sink in the history of Achaea, as people sell their firstborn children to buy titanium-plated hologram Zsarachnor cards. The only CCG I've ever gotten "into" was Pokemon, and I never learned to play the game, I just sold the rare cards to other kids in middleschool...seriously a kid paid me $100 once for a holographic charizard.

Jacen said:

Just because gold exchanges between players is involved, doesn't mean it won't also function as a gold sink. As you said, booster packs would be a good gold sink, as well as stasis card jackets, official game tables for player/org housing, not to mention tournament entry fees and such.

The problem is that if it motivates people to bash up gold and then trade that gold to other players, it totally destroys the point of the intended gold-sink, and possibly you get a reverse intended outcome, since more players are bashing up more gold to trade cards with other players.

Again, I'm willing to concede that it could be a huge success if there was enough interest in the "extras" that go along with CCGs, like card jackets and game tables like you said.

In any case, it'd be a fun, its a fun idea, a CCG in Achaea would be a great addition whether or not it had gold-sink potential. Can we please talk about a subdivision in Delos now.

Kez

Sena said:

Because if you increase the value of gold while at the same time increasing everyone's costs, it ends up not having much effect. It primarily benefits the people who don't actually need those necessities. If vials were made to cost 3k each, it would mostly only help those who don't bash or fight (or who have remedies for on-demand refills and can get by with fewer vials) and thus get the benefit of increased gold value without the extra cost to offset it. It might lower credit prices for those who need vials too, but that just shifts their costs energy around, so it's unlikely to be more than a slight net positive for them.

Also, part of the problem is the disparity between newbies/midbies and experienced players. Players who can only earn 1-5k per hour are competing against ones who can earn 30-50k per hour, or more. Increasing the static costs of necessities for everyone hurts the low end, but doesn't matter as much for the high end.

Using your example my suggestion was to add a gold cost to making elixirs, not to raise the price of vials. I specifically said the solution was not to raise the price of vials, but to target the trade skills that have zero costs associated with them.

Currently, it costs 160(20*2*4) gold as an ingredient to make a vial of restoration using concoctions, so it's not exactly unheard of. Is this not the case in remedies?

Ingredients: 2 parts gold
                   2 kuzu roots
                   1 valerian leaf
                   1 bellwort flower
Inpotting gold works slightly differently. You will always inpot in increments of 20 gold. Obviously, you must have at least 20 gold on your person. INPOT 3 GOLD IN pot123 would put 60 gold in the pot.

Adding that cost to every elixir/salve made with either plants or minerals would be a gold sink.
Requiring harvesters/gatherers/extracters to buy gloves that wear down with use would be a gold sink.

It would be minor per person but something that everybody needs gets funneled through it, so overall it would have a large impact on gold.

Sena

(Mostly @Aktillum) If what you care about is the value of gold relative to credits, then something that transfers gold between players can still be very helpful, even if gold isn't removed. Tying up gold away from the credit market by keeping it moving between players in other ways will help with credit prices much like an actual gold sink. It's probably harder to pull off, and it's less effective as a long-term solution because it does nothing to fight inflation, but that doesn't mean it's not worth considering.

Also, gold doesn't actually have to be removed from the game to be removed from circulation. Gold that's stockpiled and never transferred to other players isn't contributing to inflation (yet, at least), it's as good as removed from the system even if it's really still there. A lot of city/house funds fall under that category.

Aktillum

@Sena Thats true, but like you said, it'd only be a temporary solution and once the bubble pops, you risk all that gold going right back into the credit market, putting us back at square 1.

Also, we keep saying "gold transfers between players" when in actuality it would be "credit transfers between players", people never sell anything of real value for just gold. So what CCG trading would actually do is just dump more bashing gold into the credit market.

Talismans are a good example of this effect- people who very rarely bash simply purchase entire sets of talismans from other people for hundreds of credits. Or people bash a crapton, don't find many talismans, but pump all their bashing gold into CFS to purchase talismans from other players.

Sena

@Kez I'm not saying it wouldn't be an effective gold sink, just that it would be removing gold from the wrong places and partially counteracting the benefits of a gold sink.

Kez

The impression I'm starting to get from this thread is along the lines of:

We need things to spend gold on so the cre--WAIT WAIT NONONONO DON'T TAKE MY GOLD

Aktillum

Kez said:

The impression I'm starting to get from this thread is along the lines of:

We need things to spend gold on so the cre--WAIT WAIT NONONONO DON'T TAKE MY GOLD

I agree with this part of an above @Sena post: "Also, part of the problem is the disparity between newbies/midbies and experienced players. Players who can only earn 1-5k per hour are competing against ones who can earn 30-50k per hour, or more. Increasing the static costs of necessities for everyone hurts the low end, but doesn't matter as much for the high end. "

Think of it like this. I have $1000. You have $100,000. The government suddenly puts a 50% tax on gas. Its going to effect me a lot more than you, right? Now say it effects so many people, that only the people with $100,000 can buy gas. Gas suddenly becomes an abundance because only the rich people are buying it, so while it may go down in price due to huge supply and small demand, its more likely that the rich people will likely just buy up and hoard all this new cheap gas for themselves. The poor guy now has to ride a bicycle to work, while the rich get richer turning a profit on their gas.

The best gold-sink that removes large quantities of gold from the game is one that is highly desirable and aimed at the richest populace of Achaea. Ships, for example, were such a huge gold-sink in their day, that credit prices altered overnight upon their introduction.

Kez

Sure, but as it is, I'm drilling that gas for free and selling it to you.

Aktillum

Kez said:

Sure, but as it is, I'm drilling that gas for free and selling it to you.

Technically you're not drilling that gas for free, because you invested real life money, or gold for credits, into transcending Oil Drilling. You had to put down an investment to see a profit, and you had to work for a while before you made your return on investment.

I do see what you're saying about making a gold sink out of the actual brewing elixirs part, plunking gold down into your concoctions pot, but that would just result in higher prices for the consumer. Anything that makes manufacturing more expensive just results in higher market prices, which in the end, only effects the low-wage consumer. The only way it would be a gold-sink if you could only brew concoctions for yourself, and everyone who didn't have concoctions had to go to Seasone.

And can we PLEASE talk about a subdivision in Delos.

Riashain

I would pay small amounts of gold to be a humgii racing jockey.

Caladbolg

nvm thought I read entire thread turns out everyone already said what I had to say

Klendathu

The issue I see with plots in Delos is that when you're suggesting housing can only be upgraded using gold, you're pegging the value of gold against the value of room credits and so, by extension, dictating the price of credits on the credit market.

Aktillum

Klendathu said:

The issue I see with plots in Delos is that when you're suggesting housing can only be upgraded using gold, you're pegging the value of gold against the value of room credits and so, by extension, dictating the price of credits on the credit market.

Yeah, thats true. Scrap the idea of building houses with gold. Still though, a Delos sub would be a gold sink from plots alone.

Kresslack

Ok, I went back to the drawing board and think I came up with something that might work. Bear with me here. What if....










.....shrines could only be defiled with gold. Boom. GD, Kresslack, you've done it again.

Grandue

Kez said:

The impression I'm starting to get from this thread is along the lines of:

We need things to spend gold on so the cre--WAIT WAIT NONONONO DON'T TAKE MY GOLD

Not quite.

A lot of the things that have been not-so-favorable have been so because they don't actually fix anything. 

For instance, using grossly made up number just for example purposes, let's say that a person bashing for 100 hours brings in 600,000 gold. Let's say that between tattoos, refills, runes, food, resistance rings, herbs, armor, weapons, etc. they end up spending 100,000 gold on supplies. At 6k/credit they'll walk away with 83 credits and a little bit of gold left over. 

If we bump the cost of inks/refills/commodities/enchantments/whatever (and by increasing the cost of production you WILL increase the price of the refill) by lets say 50%, they'll have 150,000 gold tied up in supplies. Now, there will be less gold available since people will have less gold after restocking their supplies so they'll be able to afford fewer credits. And even though historically the credit market has basically stayed the same even when there have been fluctuations in the amount of gold readily available, let's say that this change actually effected the credit market, but they realistically wouldn't fall drastically because the value (not price) of a credit hasn't changed. Let's say it drops a whole 10%. They'll walk away with the same exact number of credits. 

The only safe way to remedy this is to increase the volume of credits in the marketplace and the only way you'll do that is to create a gold sink that people DESIRE to spend gold on. For artifact Joe who rarely ever bashes, increasing the price of elixirs, inks, armor, etc. won't really effect him at all, he isn't going to be purchasing more credits with USD so he can sell them to get the gold he needs, and for Basher Bob who is trying to save up for shiny new arties, he isn't going to be selling credits to support himself, no he is going to use the gold he is picking up from bashing to refill his vials and ink new tattoos. The way to lower the price of credits in the credit market is to increase the volume of credits being sold or give another option to those people who don't really need gold but don't really need credits either, and the only way to do that is to create a way for people to spend gold on a luxury/entertainment, not a necessity. It is only by people spending their excess gold on a gold sink that we'll see the price of credits drop IG AND more people buying credits with RL dollars. 

Penwize

Grandue pretty much captures it exactly.  I'd also like to add that this can come in different forms as well.  Changes that divert gold intake in favour of some other form of reward will have a similar effect if that reward is transferrable/tradeable.

I'll use an example that's already in-place but not really tuned or exploited well enough: butchering.  If there was a large demand for fish scales, then bashing fish to butcher for scales would become a goal.  If these fish did not drop gold, then that is bashing time diverted toward fish scale production rather than gold production.  Those fish scales are sold to other players, netting the basher the same sort of income as gold would have before, but with a net neutral effect on the economy.  Since that's reducing the inflow of gold into the economy, it actually has a roughly equivalent effect as adding an outflow equivalent to the amount of gold that basher would have produced.

This sort of solution can take all sorts of forms for commodities of high demand.  Quest rewards could come in the form of talismans or commodities rather than gold, butchering can be expanded, etc.  With the changes to tradeskills that have happened recently, there's a good opportunity here to create demand for non-gold commodities which will divert income generation away from gold.  It will also allow the admin to decrease the amount of gold dropped by denizens in favour of alternative reward systems.  That, and it's a damn far sight more interesting than say, KILL DEATHKNIGHT, GET GOLD.

Aedin

Make every class like a jesters props! Tons of bloody gold is spent just testing stuff to get it right... 20gold for each mickey and itch powder and balloons and 500 for a blackjack shit adds up yo... That's not counting the comms need to make anything or the amount needed for tarots! We do got up pricey upkeep.

Edit: typo fix

Bluef

Aktillum said:

Folks need to understand that a gold sink is literally something that makes gold disappear from the game. Gold exchanges between players, such as from trading CCG trading, are not gold sinks. The gold needs to vanish entirely from existence, and in large quantities, for it to be a gold sink that has any real impact on the economy.

A CCG would be fun in Achaea as far as stamp-collecting goes, but it wouldn't be a great gold sink because they'd likely be tradeable and it would just turn into gold being exchanged between players as super-rich players would just bash up tons of gold to buy them from people. If they weren't tradeable and were designed as a "gold sink" (ie: you give a denizen craptons of gold for card-packs) I don't think it'd be as popular as people think.

Like @Cooper said, my "artefacts for rent" idea would likely NEVER be implemented for business reasons, but on paper it would be a fantastic gold sink because A: Its a highly desirable item, B: People would plunk down tons and tons of gold over time, gold that would vanish into thin air from the game economy.

I think the most realistic of my proposals was a subdivision in Delos, which nobody commented on, and I think that has actual potential as a decent gold-sink since plot sales wouldn't go anywhere. You could further dramatically enhance its gold-sink potential by making things in Delos sub as "gold only", like building a room costs 300k (the equivelant of 50cr @ 6k). People would buy credits OOC to sell for gold, then build a giant mansion in Delos using nothing but gold, and millions of sovereigns would silently disappear into the night.

De-value the Tharosian Estates and Quackers gets it.

Just kidding. This a great idea, except I think Delos is already too often a draw for PK and theft though and this would only increase the likelihood for that. Shopkeepers, who pay a hefty price for their storefronts, are currently at the mercy of thieves without any regional support beyond the Delosian clan, which isn't exactly militarized.

Speaking from personal experience as someone who leases housing there now, that is the major drawback to housing in Delos that I routinely hear from the people whose characters 'live' there. Sure, there are no city laws to deal with, but unless you're confident in your ability to ward off intruders, or you simply don't care if someone is spying/intruding, this kind of thing can quickly devalue the investment you made.

To clarify the point I'm making, PK there isn't necessarily a bad thing but when people purchase a house they are generally looking for a little spot of respite from that kind of thing and housing in Delos could end up all just being empty because no one wants to mess around with it.

Conversely, it could lead to Delos becoming a huge PK hub with theft, fights, and the like constantly taking place (the way old Hashan used to be when everyone who lived there was a rogue or estranged from an org in a former city). I'm not against this because, duh, I'm a rogue and anything that brings people closer to that way of life again would benefit my character. But when I look at the goals of the Delosian clan, I wonder if this would really fit with the mission to bring prosperity to Delos. I'm not sure.

Bluef

Bluef said:

De-value the Tharosian Estates and Quackers gets it.

Ignore everything I just wrote beyond ^this^ point.

Sorry, I'm incredibly tired. After drinking a large, caffeinated beverage and reading my own post, I realized it was bollocks. This is a great idea. People would stampede Delos to lay claim to a subdivision plot. It's an absolute gold sink because houses will lead to housing servants, which also cost gold. 

Are there downsides? Sure. But not to Delos itself. Even if there's more home invasions there, that only leads to more Mark contracts, which are in part eaten up in the system, or more conflict, which inevitably costs everyone more gold in one way or another. That's what this thread is about after all: Gold sinks!

The only real downsides I can come up and at this moment (and granted I'm sleepy as hell) are that:

a) I could see people who don't live in the subdivision using it as a place to hide out in the same way that Dajio and others use the wilderness now. That could de-value the homes and become a pain in the ass for admin who have to deal with complaints about it, but not really related to the question of it being a gold sink. 

b) City subdivision plots would become "poorer player housing." Delos homes would be coveted and therefore more expensive to purchase each time they're turned over (as long as the aforementioned security issues didn't result in a diminishing return). Although I don't think everyone would just up and sell their houses in cities, there may be some of that and those who can afford to do so would likely try to buy plots out of the cities. That's not great for the cities, but good for Delos. It doesn't really affect the gold sink discussion either since no matter where people are buying housing if they're buying it, it is a gold sink.

I am off to drink more caffeine now. Great idea, Aktillum. Sorry for being a Debbie Downer earlier. 

Jurixe

I'm not really sure about Delosian plots being a great gold sink because - let's say plots go for an average of 50k (maybe 100k cos it's Delos) - sure that's a great sum of gold, but it's a one-time purchase and once you buy it, the only thing you use gold for in terms of housing is room desc/title changes (1000 gold), and the purchase of servants (10k each). I'm just not sure that's really that large of a sum of gold to have a significant long term impact on the economy, which is what I imagine an effective gold sink would do.

Ships are different because they are -very- expensive (1.5mil at the cheapest) and if I'm not mistaken, all their upgrades also cost gold and are also significantly expensive. After the initial rush, though, it seems like the market has generally absorbed the impact and things aren't much different. I was under the impression that we'd be looking for something that was more of a constant drain and would be appealing enough to a wide base of players without hurting those already on the low end of the income spectrum, hence my suggestion of furniture/housing related stuff in general.

Just the observations of someone not economics-savvy, however - do feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Nim

Houses for rent or whatnot would be better gold drains than houses for outright sale.