Ideas for gold sinks and IG credit prices

Kez

Sure you can.
HIDE ME

Medi

There could be a gold for lessons, for X amount of lessons. (like 2000, similar to the discount website package). And still I wouldn't put it at less than 1,000 per lesson. That would make it the equivalent of 6,000 per credit, which right now, for 2,000 lessons (333 credits), would save some newbie 333,000 gold. I can understand the admin not wanting to 'fix' the market, but I think it's held somewhat steady enough over the years that we can really say the players have decided on a 6k/cr minimum. And, this doesn't really stop the market from going lower, it could just provide -another- discounted source of lessons.

Edit: Or something in English x_X

Matias

Medi said:

There could be a gold for lessons, for X amount of lessons. (like 2000, similar to the discount website package). And still I wouldn't put it at less than 1,000 per lesson. That would make it the equivalent of 6,000 per credit, which right now, for 2,000 lessons (333 credits), would save some newbie 333,000 gold. I can understand the admin not wanting to 'fix' the market, but I think it's held somewhat steady enough over the years that we can really say the players have decided on a 6k/cr minimum. And, this doesn't really stop the market from going lower, it could just provide -another- discounted source of lessons.

Edit: Or something in English x_X

That would still lead to people paying for credits for their first 1000 credits to get the bonus which would be 8.5 lessons per credit.

Medi

Yeah, and obviously all of the existing credit avenues would still exist and be used just as much. Newbies would just get another helping hand and this would be another gold sink that would hit every player (who wouldn't buy 2000 lessons at a cheaper rate than CFS?).

Lessons aside, what about taxidermy for pets? (HOW ABOUT A PET SINK!?!?!?!)

Aerek

A pet sink is a great idea.

Grandue

Matias said:

Lessons for gold wont happen without a heavy restriction because it will take away from the bottom line. I like playing achaea, so I am cool with this because as was stated they are a small company, and they need to earn the money they earn.

Of course nerfing quests will work to reduce the gold in realms. If you turn down a faucet, less water will be present. The question is will it be noticeable. I wont be happy because I get quite a lot of gold when I hunt from throwing my corpses at quest denizens, but sometimes you just have to take it on the chin, I wont be going hungry after all.

I hear a lot of "but the newbies, wont somebody think of the newbies!", but honestly, the newbies will be fine with however it is. Iron elite makes it very affordable to get cheap credits/lessons, the no-brainer packages are a godsend, and for those who cannot use a credit card/afford these things, there are org credits. I also feel that the poor newbie angle might be more self-serving than it appears, but regardless, newbies will be "competing" with upper level bashers for credits, just like they always have.

As to the point of people saying the credit market is unwieldy, check yourself before you wreck yourself! It is a fluid market, there is no entitlement to a credit price. As the CFS price rises, this is GREAT for the people who sell on CFS. Why should it only be the people who buy that are considered when it comes to these things? If the price is too high for you, don't buy. Seragorn said he hasn't bought because it is too high for him, so it is obviously possible. You can either look for a bulk deal on market, or wait patiently for a potential return to "normalcy".

There are five main groupings of people. 

1. Those who purchase credits to buy artifacts. 
2. Those who purchase credits to convert to lessons. 
3. Those who purchase credits to sell for gold.
4. Those who spend gold for credits for artefacts.
5. Those who spend gold for credits for lessons. 

You may belong to more than one of these groups and you may switch back and forth between them over time. 

Changing lessons to be purchased only by gold and not credits would not "take away from the bottom line". It would possibly add to it. Here is why. 

Group 1 would not be affected, they don't hunt for gold to buy credits. They buy credits from IRE to turn into toys to play with. They would still have to purchase exactly the same amount of credits as before. 

Group 2 would not be affected. They are used to turning RL money into lessons. The only thing this would change is that they would need to first put those credits up on the credit market (increase in supply) in order to get the gold for the lessons.

Group 3 would be affected. Credit prices would go down so they would need to buy more credits from IRE to get the same amount of IG gold. This is one of the reasons this could increase IRE sales. At 6700g per credit they would normally buy 150cr to get a million gold, if credit prices dropped to 6000g they would need 166cr to get a million gold. (They would essentially need to buy 10% more to get the same amount as they currently get) It is in the best interest for IRE that this group be monitored because if credit prices continue to skyrocket then purchases by this group will go down. For example is credit prices rose to 8000g they would only have to buy 125cr to get a million gold. 

Group 4 would be affected in a positive way. Credit prices would drop. Using the same numbers as above, if they had to bash up a million gold for 150cr at 6,700g per, if credits dropped to 6,000g they would only have to bash up 900k to get 150cr. These people were not purchasing credits from IRE to begin with, so the "bottom line" is not influenced.

Group 5 would be influenced in a positive way. They would not be competing for credits on the market (so price would not be driven up). Novices would be able to continue to make steady progress on their class skills without their number one means of progressing being constantly influenced by whatever promotion is going on, credit auctions, high-level bashers making a push for transcending another class or buying another artefact. I don't think the cost of learning your skills should have a direct relationship to how much Seragorn and Penwize are bashing or what type of promotion is going on that month. 

Exelethril

Jhui said:

It's a pretty small player base so myself penwize seragorn or whoever averaging 50cr in gold a day can substantially change CFS the moment we are active 

Skarash

Hmm, after much reflection, I've actually drawn the conclusion that the foundation of this thread is incorrect. We all know that too much (printed) money (gold) can cause inflation (appreciation in credit price).  But it doesn't necessarily follow that the drastic increases in credit price are caused exclusively by  overly abundant gold supply. In this case, I would actually say that what's causing credit prices is spike is that certain individuals have a much higher buy threshold then the widely accepted 6k/cr exchange rate.  This is causing price volatility but it's not necessarily inflation.  AND as mentioned by several people, including Tecton, there is a dip in the market supply of credits due to the non credit promo- which does put upward pressure on cfs.  I don't think that, the supply dip is the main culprit, nor do I want to demonize anyone, or name and shame - a lot of this is speculation and hearsay, but note that while there are a lot of people shouting "there's too much gold in the system - its causing inflation" BUT there are very few examples of people actually having Smaug-like mountains of gold. Sure the very high end bashers can and do accumulate a princely sum bashing, especially compared to the average.  Does this mean changes do or don't need to be made - I don't know - certainly I myself don't think any drastic changes need to be made at this time.

Sobriquet

Give it a week or so after the promotion ends and we'll be back to normal.

Finkle

Daeir said:

It isn't a terrible idea, it doesn't directly hurt your margins.

It directly takes away from credit sales which is a source of income which qualifies as a margin.   Whether it takes away a small fortune or 40 dollars it takes away from a margin of income.

And the same over time small scale things that take away from that margin might add up over time to negatively impact them.    Whether that is as small as rent that month for a server or over long term sorry we cannot afford to hire someone to help out.  

As much as I would love to be able to pour gold into lessons I would rather them not alter their bottom line.

Aegoth

Finkle said:

Daeir said:

It isn't a terrible idea, it doesn't directly hurt your margins.

It directly takes away from credit sales which is a source of income which qualifies as a margin.   Whether it takes away a small fortune or 40 dollars it takes away from a margin of income.

And the same over time small scale things that take away from that margin might add up over time to negatively impact them.    Whether that is as small as rent that month for a server or over long term sorry we cannot afford to hire someone to help out.  

As much as I would love to be able to pour gold into lessons I would rather them not alter their bottom line.

This is absolutely false, and shows you haven't been reading the thread at all. In fact, there was a very thorough post made by @Grandue stating exactly why this view is wrong, and even @Seragorn lauded the idea. This myth that it will "kill the bottom line" is absurd.

Sanna

Daeir said:

The administration would do well to at least comment on the gold for lessons paradigm suggested multiple times by multiple people  in this thread.

It isn't a terrible idea, it doesn't directly hurt your margins, it makes Achaea a "complete" game from a mechanical perspective (you can proudly advertise that regardless of CFS status, full class completion and potentially multiclass is 100% doable via in-game means instead of it being contingent on people willing to exchange credits for gold) and introduces a massive gold-sink into an economy desperately in need of one.

Pretty sure you can figure out their opinions by looking at what Sarapis liked.

Sarapis

You can already buy lessons with gold. Go to the credit market, buy credits with gold, convert to lessons. Boom.

Aegoth

Sarapis said:

You can already buy lessons with gold. Go to the credit market, buy credits with gold, convert to lessons. Boom.

It's comments like these that really make me question investing further into the game with my money.

Amranu

People are deluding themselves if they don't think the gold to lessons idea isn't going to affect the bottom line.

Aegoth

Amranu said:

People are deluding themselves if they don't think the gold to lessons idea isn't going to affect the bottom line.

I think we've already established long ago that you can't do economics. 'Nuff said

Froh

Shirszae said:

Froh said:
1) RP stuff, customizations, status symbols.  It's not clear to me that a significant number of players want to either continually accumulate bling or to pay rent on bling.  They certainly like a certain amount of bling but a continual sink that eventually puts them on a treadmill of not amassing wealth?

I think you'd be surprised. Though in the end it would depend on how exactly anything is implemented, I very much think a great majority of players would spend a lot of gold on things like that.

Oh, they do, but is it just one-offs or is it actually a continual drain which approximates the amount of gold people are raising?

Looking at gold, credits, crowns, and the exchange rates over a span of years, there's a consistent trend in the exchange rate.  Further, certain types of things (such as curatives) are less expensive than they once were (deflation in that case, but the result is that top tier people presumably need to spend less on upkeep to go bashing/etc., leaving them with more gold sitting around looking for a purpose).

Atalkez

Sarapis said:

You can already buy lessons with gold. Go to the credit market, buy credits with gold, convert to lessons. Boom.

You're right, but you're not addressing the actual issue that was brought up.

Currently with multiclass being a scaled effect, your third class costs ~1670 credits to tri-trans. That's on top of your second class costing ~1200. If you want 4+, you're looking at 2000+ for each one.

It's an excellent credit sink, but it's gutting the credit market of the game by doing so. Swapping it to gold-only and removing the credit>lessons conversion won't make it less of a credit sink, it will open up the viability of anyone that wants lessons to not have to compete with the Penwize's of the world who are generating gold at a double or triple rate.

Right now: Buy credits from website > Convert credits to lessons -- Prior to multiclass, this credit purchase was for an artefact or an auction or some such, and the credits stayed in the economy until the person spent them. Also, most of your artefacts are priced at a point where you can't buy only that amount. You're forced to buy a lesser package if you have credits on you, or a higher package if you don't, which means you have a credit surplus. Those credits, traditionally, can end up on the market.

With being able to buy credits to convert to lessons a thing, those excess credits aren't going into the economy they are getting wiped out by being put into lessons, because of how crazy lesson cost for multiclass. We're seeing this decline in credits-to-purchase and how it is increasing the current price of a credit in terms of the in-game currency of gold.

Moving the cost to gold, will not affect the "bottom line" much, I don't believe. The person that wants to tri-trans their class immediately isn't going to spend 12 million gold to do it. They're going to buy the credits to do so, sell them on the market at the current rate, and then buy their lessons. The person that wants to grind it up gets to purchase those credits from the person that went ham on the credit card. The same purchase is still happening, the same influx of capital is coming in. You turn multiclass into a gold sink -and- a credit sink at the same time, depending on how the person handles it.

Really not seeing how this change has a negative effect. Would you elaborate on how you believe (if you do) this change would alter the current economy?

Edit: Also, as I did the math earlier, a 1000 gold per lesson cost is the same cost gold-wise as it would be credit-wise, if you take the "base" credit price of 6000. It's 10,000,000 gold to tri-trans the second class. It's nearly three times the price of a normal players first ship purchase. That is a ton of gold per person to potentially remove from the market with no downside that I can see.

Froh

Aegoth said:

Amranu said:

People are deluding themselves if they don't think the gold to lessons idea isn't going to affect the bottom line.

I think we've already established long ago that you can't do economics. 'Nuff said

He's right, though, and that mirrors what Sarapis has hinted at with posts and likes.

The supply of gold is elastic, not fixed.  If gold was more valuable for lessons, people would bash/fish/etc. more to get it.  So some fraction of lessons that were formerly bought via the cash->credits->lessons route would now be done via the bash/etc.->gold->lessons route, which doesn't provide cash IRE.

You could try to regulate that via tuning gold drop rates over time for ingame activities and fiddling with the gold:lesson ratio, but that's really complicated and if you want to make the whole thing cash revenue neutral to IRE that's going to be some traumatic changes for the playerbase in many aspects of the economy.

Jacen

You don't even have to remove the credit->lesson conversion. Just base the gold price of lessons at a small (~5%) discount from the gold->credits->lessons conversion, to make it a more attractive option. You get a gold sink and a mechanism to drive the credit market down.

Now, I'm not even remotely competent at economics. I can see that there's a possibility for credit market to tank, if everyone sells. However, since credits have a limited supply and will still be in demand for artifact purchases, i don't think it would ever reach disaster levels. I could definitely be wrong though.

Atalkez

Jacen said:

You don't even have to remove the credit->lesson conversion. Just base the gold price of lessons at a small (~5%) discount from the gold->credits->lessons conversion, to make it a more attractive option. You get a gold sink and a mechanism to drive the credit market down.

You do, because the entire reason behind the change would be to get the credits (purchased off the website) that are being spent on multiclass onto the market. With a credit>lessons conversion, they never see the market.

Antidas

Sarapis said:

You can already buy lessons with gold. Go to the credit market, buy credits with gold, convert to lessons. Boom.

No offense, but thats not exactly a constructive response haha. If you want people to behave a certain way on forums, you as the owner need to be the model of that behavior. You could easily have responded to the ideas with something along the lines of "I don't think this is a great idea because it will cut into our profits and we can't afford that" or "it won't fix the problem because of x and y" or literally anything that is more constructive than just being snarky and telling everyone what we all obviously already know.

Goryllin

I wanted to experiment with the demand. I put 50 credits on the market at 6800 and it was gone in a second. 1 person purchased 45, and one person purchased 5. I then did other sales but they were gone so fast that the demand was higher than I was pumping out and thus the people selling for over 7k had no reason to change their prices.

I failed at influencing the market even with a substantial amount of credits.

Jacen

Atalkez said:

Jacen said:

You don't even have to remove the credit->lesson conversion. Just base the gold price of lessons at a small (~5%) discount from the gold->credits->lessons conversion, to make it a more attractive option. You get a gold sink and a mechanism to drive the credit market down.

You do, because the entire reason behind the change would be to get the credits (purchased off the website) that are being spent on multiclass onto the market. With a credit>lessons conversion, they never see the market.

That's why I mentioned the discount. It provides incentive to selling credits (driving the market price down) because it results in more lessons than a credit->lesson conversion. At least, after the 8.5 lessons/credit bonus.

Matias

It is entirely possible that some rich people are buying up cheaper credits and putting them up again at the 7k mark, or something similar.

There is also the point that the admin has stated that there is no price for a credit IG. What they go for on CFS is the right price. They wont interfere to "bring the market down".

You're all being very selfish about this, just because you want to pay 6k. 7k is better for a seller. If there are not enough credits being sold, and the price goes up, then that is even better for the seller.

I say this stuff as almost an exclusive buyer, not a seller.

Amranu

I think the only thing that's been proven in this thread is that the majority of the forum population is desperately in need of taking an intro to economics course.

Close this thread already.

Froh

Matias said:

It is entirely possible that some rich people are buying up cheaper credits and putting them up again at the 7k mark, or something similar.

There is also the point that the admin has stated that there is no price for a credit IG. What they go for on CFS is the right price. They wont interfere to "bring the market down".

You're all being very selfish about this, just because you want to pay 6k. 7k is better for a seller. If there are not enough credits being sold, and the price goes up, then that is even better for the seller.

I say this stuff as almost an exclusive buyer, not a seller.

I've been a net seller of credits for gold over time.  It's the opposite of being selfish to point out that a higher gold price for credits is nice for experienced players who are already sold on the value of the game but discouraging for new players who came in under the "Free to play" expectation and are trying to advance a few skills and buy a few basic arties before they've seen enough of the game over time to feel good about paying for it.

Skarash

Amranu said:

I think the only thing that's been proven in this thread is that the majority of the forum population is desperately in need of taking an intro to economics course.

Close this thread already.

heh so it seems - people  blame cfs price spikes on inflation the way Harry Potter blames Snape every time something goes wrong 

Kiet

CFS spiking here or there isn't that big of a deal. The problem is that over time gold will only continue to accumulate with the current system.

The other IRE games and many, many mmos have proven why this is a problem, as people have pointed out. Gold has in various other games become completely worthless except in ridiculous quantities that a new player can never ever hope to amass. Achaea isn't that bad, yet, but without continuously suggesting new ways to address the problem, it will be.

Whether people are crying about CFS or not does not make this issue less true.

Skarash

except that Achaea is a almost 20 rl years old, anddddd cfs are stll around 6k (well 7 today) and the oldest IRE game by far - and yet gold is not completely worthless (see examples cited about Lusternia)- this shows a pretty good tangible  history of excellence of execution when dealing with inflation I'd say