Ideas for gold sinks and IG credit prices

Aegoth

Atalkez said:

With ahmetite I can get 130k an hour. With golden braid and ahmetite, 160-170.

I don't think anyone is popping 200-250k an hour unless you're using rageblade. 

Jhui is absolutely right, though. The number of people selling credits versus the number of people buying credits is substantially lower. If it was higher, we would have lower prices. It's simple economics on that point.

It's the same as minerals. When 1 person is making them, the price is dictated by them. When 100 people are making them, the price is crowdsourced and it drops due to competitors. It's the same with credits. As less people sell them, and more people look to buy, the value/cost is going to go up. 

I definitely did 250k+ an hour on one Ahmetite/Braid run (one hour roughly). UW itself was around 130k. Then Annwyn is about 80k for Sidhe, and 75k for Unsidhe. You're not bashing efficiently if you're not getting that much with braid and ahmetite

Edit: Also, who the hell is paying 60-90k per mineral? lol. I never pay those ridiculous prices. Maybe 15k at most, and I get them quite regularly. 

Skarash

sure there is - it's the frictional cost.  They have to go through the conversion themselves - including the uncertainty of whether cfs will not be at 7k but some value 7k+.  Cr and gold aren't totally fungible at any set rate because of that. Although I will take a 7k conversion rate - others may not - but it makes total sense why they don't.

Valkyn

If there were enough credits up at 7k per the real question they could ask is why don't you buy them at 7k per and just trade the credits? Most people offering gold want to offer below the credit market rate, that's what I've found.

Atalkez

Aegoth said:

Atalkez said:

With ahmetite I can get 130k an hour. With golden braid and ahmetite, 160-170.

I don't think anyone is popping 200-250k an hour unless you're using rageblade. 

Jhui is absolutely right, though. The number of people selling credits versus the number of people buying credits is substantially lower. If it was higher, we would have lower prices. It's simple economics on that point.

It's the same as minerals. When 1 person is making them, the price is dictated by them. When 100 people are making them, the price is crowdsourced and it drops due to competitors. It's the same with credits. As less people sell them, and more people look to buy, the value/cost is going to go up. 

I definitely did 250k+ an hour on one Ahmetite/Braid run (one hour roughly). UW itself was around 130k. Then Annwyn is about 80k for Sidhe, and 75k for Unsidhe. You're not bashing efficiently if you're not getting that much with braid and ahmetite

Edit: Also, who the hell is paying 60-90k per mineral? lol. I never pay those ridiculous prices. Maybe 15k at most, and I get them quite regularly. 

There is no way you cleared all of Unsidhe and Sidhe and the DKs in one hour without the Rageblade, unless you have a level 3 pendant and had a monstrously good critical run.

Dunno who would pay that much for them. Anything more than 25k and it's a losing investment.

Antonius

20ish minutes for Sidhe, 13 for Unsidhe, leaves about 25 minutes for DKs. Sounds feasible to me.

Aegoth

Atalkez said:

Aegoth said:

Atalkez said:

With ahmetite I can get 130k an hour. With golden braid and ahmetite, 160-170.

I don't think anyone is popping 200-250k an hour unless you're using rageblade. 

Jhui is absolutely right, though. The number of people selling credits versus the number of people buying credits is substantially lower. If it was higher, we would have lower prices. It's simple economics on that point.

It's the same as minerals. When 1 person is making them, the price is dictated by them. When 100 people are making them, the price is crowdsourced and it drops due to competitors. It's the same with credits. As less people sell them, and more people look to buy, the value/cost is going to go up. 

I definitely did 250k+ an hour on one Ahmetite/Braid run (one hour roughly). UW itself was around 130k. Then Annwyn is about 80k for Sidhe, and 75k for Unsidhe. You're not bashing efficiently if you're not getting that much with braid and ahmetite

Edit: Also, who the hell is paying 60-90k per mineral? lol. I never pay those ridiculous prices. Maybe 15k at most, and I get them quite regularly. 

There is no way you cleared all of Unsidhe and Sidhe and the DKs in one hour without the Rageblade, unless you have a level 3 pendant and had a monstrously good critical run.

Dunno who would pay that much for them. Anything more than 25k and it's a losing investment.

well I DID have luckbinder

Kez

Vials - 300 gold per

Used to hold 50-60 sips. I carried 200 vials. 60000 expense.

Changed to hold 200 sips. I carried 40 vials. 12000 expense.

Introduction of liquid rift. I carry 12 vials. 3600 expense.
Vials should probably decay much, much faster now to compensate, but to fully adjust they would need to decay at a rate nobody would ever want to deal with.

Forging - I didn't buy armour or weapons back then because I was magi, but I assume these things lowered the gold costs drastically

Introduction of smelting.

Removal of stat chasing. (don't get me wrong; I think this is a hugely positive change)

Mining. Costs of commodities dropped by up to 85.6% (varies by commodity, only obsidian costs more to mine than it did to buy in comm shops at minimums, and stone just barely). In a lot of cases, lode output could be halved and it would still be cheaper than comm shops were.

Gathering - flat costs from Rurin

Reduces ink gold drain to cost of ink mill for unlimited inks.

Diamond dust used in concoctions and enchantment goes from 85 per to free.

Scripting produces gatherers with no value on time because they aren't doing it - their computer is, raising supply, dropping price, and removing Rurin as a reasonable choice for most.

I think that those three topics represent a major change to gold economy. There's almost nothing you *need* to spend your gold on compared to when credits were 2k per. Why wouldn't anyone spend most of their gold on credits? Why would anyone need to sell credits for gold, when all the gold that any character needs to send out of the economy is less than the cost of one credit in a real month? The only thing keeping cfs at 4 digits is people remembering how much credits used to cost.

Basically, if you don't like credits being expensive, they need to not be the only thing everyone needs to spend gold on, which is also not removing gold from the game.

I think achaea is at a point where gold drops from hunting should probably go away. We'd still have a ton of other gold generation methods, like rats, butterflies, fish, diving, questing, ship trades, sea monsters, holy gods the list goes on.

Kiet

Um, gutting gold generation is just going to grief newbies. No thanks.

Penwize

Gutting gold generation is not the answer, but @Kez does bring up a good point that general maintenance has decreased in gold cost as time has progressed.  That's an inverse relation to gold production, which has increased.

There are ways to handle that, without gutting gold generation.  I've already suggested a few, but I wouldn't be opposed to additional ones.  Vial costs are one potentially small change, and they'd make artefact vials more appealing (important now that liquid rift is in place).
Weapon/armour upkeep could be improved, cost-wise, but that's largely a player transfer of gold, and with the current commodity market it may as well just be free labour.  Mining fixes I suggested earlier would tackle that, but some additional strictly gold cost to forging, or perhaps a maintenance cost, would also be a small change that would fix this.

I think ultimately the economy problem here is the victim of death by a thousand cuts.  There are several potential gold avenues that have all been reduced or eliminated, which compound to a lack of value on gold.  Restoring these would be a first step, but adding large sinks would also help significantly.

Aesgar

Kez said:

Vials - 300 gold per

Used to hold 50-60 sips. I carried 200 vials. 60000 expense.

Changed to hold 200 sips. I carried 40 vials. 12000 expense.

Introduction of liquid rift. I carry 12 vials. 3600 expense.
Vials should probably decay much, much faster now to compensate, but to fully adjust they would need to decay at a rate nobody would ever want to deal with.

Forging - I didn't buy armour or weapons back then because I was magi, but I assume these things lowered the gold costs drastically

Introduction of smelting.

Removal of stat chasing. (don't get me wrong; I think this is a hugely positive change)

Mining. Costs of commodities dropped by up to 85.6% (varies by commodity, only obsidian costs more to mine than it did to buy in comm shops at minimums, and stone just barely). In a lot of cases, lode output could be halved and it would still be cheaper than comm shops were.

Gathering - flat costs from Rurin

Reduces ink gold drain to cost of ink mill for unlimited inks.

Diamond dust used in concoctions and enchantment goes from 85 per to free.

Scripting produces gatherers with no value on time because they aren't doing it - their computer is, raising supply, dropping price, and removing Rurin as a reasonable choice for most.

I think that those three topics represent a major change to gold economy. There's almost nothing you *need* to spend your gold on compared to when credits were 2k per. Why wouldn't anyone spend most of their gold on credits? Why would anyone need to sell credits for gold, when all the gold that any character needs to send out of the economy is less than the cost of one credit in a real month? The only thing keeping cfs at 4 digits is people remembering how much credits used to cost.

Basically, if you don't like credits being expensive, stop demanding they be the only thing everyone needs to spend gold on, which is also not removing gold from the game.

I think achaea is at a point where gold drops from hunting should probably go away. We'd still have a ton of other gold generation methods, like rats, butterflies, fish, diving, questing, ship trades, sea monsters, holy gods the list goes on.

I think everything will eventually balance out.

I'm no economics expert, but from what I know government intervention, or in our case divine, doesn't usually go well.

Free markets are designed to balance themselves out. Slight tweaks from the admins may help, but I don't think we need any big changes such as removing gold drops, halving mine lodes, etcetera.

No need to panic over a slight change that occurred with a monthly promo showing up. My guess is with a lot of crated pets floating around, people are making transactions with more credits than usual rather than gold, and not selling them on CFS as frequently.

Therefore supply to CFS decreased, demand is likely constant if not increased, either way resulting in a price increase (more so if demand for credits increased which it likely did). 

Just drew a basic supply/demand diagram and that's what I came up with anyway. Again, I'm no economist. 

Also @Hellen, price ceilings in a nutshell  

Rangor

Gutting gold generation from hunting would lead to newbies being on even footing. Rats, butterflies and all that. No one wants to do that though, so you'd have to keep and reintroduce many hunting based quests for gold. Might even make a way for tradeskills to generate gold into the realm. Similar to fishing. Hunting is the most fun and efficient way for me to make gold, but it is one of the major reason new players can't afford overpriced credits. No way they can generate the same amounts of gold. Only reason they can manage to play the game is because commodities and curative production greatly outpaces consumption.

Rangor

If gold was needed in the game again, ire could even make dollars because people would want to turn credits into gold. Add a denizen that you can sell credits to and ire..... Nvm. Plz don't.

Skarash

Aesgar said:

 

I think everything will eventually balance out.

Everything is balancing out - that is reflected in the high end of cfs going up

Kiet

Literally every videogame economy has benefited from developer intervention vs developers ignoring it entirely, as far as recent mmo history has shown.

Aesgar

Kiet said:

Literally every videogame economy has benefited from developer intervention vs developers ignoring it entirely, as far as recent mmo history has shown.

Yeah. That's why I said small tweaks. Nothing major

Sanna

Yeah. Sure the free market will balance out, but that doesn't mean it will balance out at a reasonable place. The market doesn't care about novices or the poor. 

Kiet

"The free market" isn't actually some kind of untouchable Good Thing that every economy should have, much less the economy of a videogame made for fun. Big changes would be fine, only issue would be jarring playerbase rather than somehow ruining the sanctify of the free market.

Sanna

Really the problem is the 1%. They control too much of Achaea's wealth, and ordinary adventurers are suffering.

Atalkez

Sanna said:

Really the problem is the 1%. They control too much of Achaea's wealth, and ordinary adventurers are suffering.

Hi Bernie

Sanna

For many, the Achaean dream has become a nightmare.

Skye

Penwize said:

 Talismans had a huge amount of potential, and if they replaced gold in a lot of places they could have had the ability to drastically alter the gold and credit markets.  However, that wasn't the direction the admin decided to go with them, and that's something I really disagree with but that's their call.  I think features like talismans (or more talismans) that are useful to the players while costing gold to generate (even via bashing), rather than generating gold, are a good solution to limiting the production of gold.

I just wanted to bring this bit up... I would actually pay for an instanced Safari Zone for dragons if all they dropped were dragon talismans. For example >_>

During the last Q&A (or maybe the one before that) I asked about the potential for more mundane 'collectable' talismans for ordinary items. I think there's a lot more potential for such things to at least complement the current gold/credit market. The only other thing I see being shifted with any regularity apart from curatives is talisman pieces.

Ismay

No offense to anyone, but threads like these rarely result in positive changes to these games. Almost always the changes made end up being frustrating to most players. I'd suggest caution. 

Aesgar

Kiet said:

"The free market" isn't actually some kind of untouchable Good Thing that every economy should have, much less the economy of a videogame made for fun. Big changes would be fine, only issue would be jarring playerbase rather than somehow ruining the sanctify of the free market.

Okay I'll quote my post again

"I'm no economics expert....."

and then at the end.. "Again, I'm no economist."

Skarash

Ismay said:

No offense to anyone, but threads like these rarely result in positive changes to these games. Almost always the changes made end up being frustrating to most players. I'd suggest caution. 

Im really not sure that any structural  change is needed either. except perhaps at the very edge of the extreme stacking effects. Really,put another way - the bleeding edge of cfs is a function of power creep.  It's not like the first tier bashers havent put the work in and certainly many if not all of them have made significant credit purchases as well. From the business perspective, what's under pressure is the free-to-play model and its still intact - it just cost more 'time' as people now have to earn 6k for a credit rather then 7k. And that's the high end - a quick look at cfs at precisely this moment shows a few cr at 6,5k.  It wasn't my intent to demonize the Bashing Machine's of the world they're doing the smart and logical thing. I do however, think the stacking effects of rageblade, ahmetite, relics, arties, etc. needs some looking at. 

Kiet

We don't need huge-huge changes.  Just adding more goldsinks and maybe deleting golden braid/relics in general/ahmetite would work

Skarash

I also want to point out that consumables like plants and herbs aren't actually gold sinks.  They're transfers.  The gold isn't "sunk" until they leave the game. So a vial is a gold sink (albeit a neglible one).  But when you buy an herb from another player, your gold hasn't left the game.  The number one gold sink in the game are cities - suprise! Specifically - credits spent in a way that the gold spent on them is destroyed - an example of this is city taxation via organizational credit sales.  A city sells you a credit at a certain rate x.  The city then uses this gold to pay for services such as guards and city improvements.  This gold is then 'sunk' as it disappears.  

Skye

                                                     

Sarathai

Kiet said:

We don't need huge-huge changes.  Just adding more goldsinks and maybe deleting golden braid/relics in general/ahmetite would work

I think adjusting how relics work and are controlled would help, at least in that area.

For example, only allowing a person to hold one relic at any one time would definitely kill the Braid + Rageblade + Luckbinder trifecta. It'd have the benefit of spreading relics around, and keep their power while cutting down on the issues of one person holding enough of them to be an unstoppable murder machine until they're logged out for long enough that the relics start to reset.

Call it a "no single mortal can adequately wield more than one Protean relic at a time" rule or something. After all, these things are supposed to be God-weapons created by Sarapis' other half for immortal use back during the Chaos Wars, until he decided to lock them away for whatever reason.

It wouldn't fix the issue of artiedragons who can still easily gather 100k+ gold in a bashing trip without relics (admittedly I am guilty of this), but it would eliminate them as a major problem in that area.

Skarash

uhh that's one way - each guard is 25k after all - you can eliminate a lot of gold in a hurry by killing a lot of guards. There are others of course- anything bought from "Rurin" from vials to ships, gambling losses, org upgrades, clans and upgrades such as history. heraldry,  commodities purchased from the game. crafting fees, restoration vials, the aforementioned city improvements, delos bank fees, shop taxes (5k of it only).  Hmm I think that's actually all of them.  That list seems vanishingly small on examination - Im sure I must be forgetting something - can anyone think of any others?

Skarash

Oh forgot room repair from raiding, which is 20k per room. Although, part of that might be offset by the amount gained by the successfully raiding party - not sure if that gold is 'created' or subtracted directly from the city coffers/