Ideas for gold sinks and IG credit prices

Kiet

And yet gold has steadily gotten to pretty big inflation levels. You can't say CFS isn't a good marker in one post, then cite CFS as proof of your argument in the next. Compare, say, how much shops are worth today and then in the early 2000s. Even by CFS standards, we've like doubled the price from when I started playing. If it hadn't been for ships, it'd probably have gone even higher, since it showed no signs of stopping at the moment. This, of course, proves that keeping it under control is an active and continuous effort, not something you just say 'well whatever it's worked so far' to.

We are not at Lusternia levels, sure. But Lusternia is basically a horror story of the worst case scenario. We've been pretty okay so far, but pretty okay won't last forever with an unnerfed golden braid/ahmetite (thankfully, those are getting nerfed, apparently, proving once more that there are steps to take!) and more people getting dragon basically weekly.

As a thief I have a pretty good grasp on how much gold people have, and whereas once upon a time even 10-20k was a good chunk of gold, nowadays it's considered pretty worthless.

Goryllin

Hey Guys. Lets turn this back into the thread title. Ideas for gold sinks.

A list of the more agreed upon ideas:

• Put a gold price on certain Shop of Wonders items. (Especially the ethereal shrouds and heron feathers).
• Create more mundane talismans that have cosmetic or roleplay benefit (instead of tangible benefit increasing more gold gain)
• Allow the hiring of NPC Denizens with Maritime skills (like Helm or Weapons) to assist in seafaring

Sadly 9 pages of arguments and we have 3 viable ideas for ADDITIONAL gold sinks.

Kez

Well this isn't a gold sink but...

If someone couldn't buy credits(from cfs) while they have credits on cfs or within 5 minutes of taking them down, would that help against cfs speculation without inconveniencing everyone else too much?

Penwize

• Create more mundane talismans that have cosmetic or roleplay benefit (instead of tangible benefit increasing more gold gain)
  

Additional talismans added could certainly have a tangible benefit as well, especially if they're consumable.  Long-term artie-like talismans, akin to the headdress or elder talismans, are still a fantastic benefit to everyone as well, though.

I gave a handful of other seafaring additions earlier that would function as additional gold sinks as well, and I do think a gold-paid instanced hunting ground (but not completely protected or closed off like diving is, invasions of it could be a really neat conflict ground.   Think Dark Souls.) with non-gold rewards would be a pretty good addition as well.

Or, you know, additional end-game goals beyond simply bashing for gold to get credits to advance your character's power via artefacts.

Tahquil

I'd like to see hunting/questing areas that the people inside only speak and respond to their racial langauge. While the xp and gold drops would be rotten the quests would be the main money maker. Get people investing in langauge lessons a bit more.

Ahmet

Tahquil said:

I'd like to see hunting/questing areas that the people inside only speak and respond to their racial langauge. While the xp and gold drops would be rotten the quests would be the main money maker. Get people investing in langauge lessons a bit more.

There's some interesting racial-only rewards for certain quests, though I'd like to see some areas where language is a barrier (the bloody horrible Zaphar Isle accents don't count).

Skarash

Kiet said:

And yet gold has steadily gotten to pretty big inflation levels. You can't say CFS isn't a good marker in one post, then cite CFS as proof of your argument in the next. Compare, say, how much shops are worth today and then in the early 2000s. Even by CFS standards, we've like doubled the price from when I started playing. If it hadn't been for ships, it'd probably have gone even higher, since it showed no signs of stopping at the moment. This, of course, proves that keeping it under control is an active and continuous effort, not something you just say 'well whatever it's worked so far' to.

We are not at Lusternia levels, sure. But Lusternia is basically a horror story of the worst case scenario. We've been pretty okay so far, but pretty okay won't last forever with an unnerfed golden braid/ahmetite (thankfully, those are getting nerfed, apparently, proving once more that there are steps to take!) and more people getting dragon basically weekly.

As a thief I have a pretty good grasp on how much gold people have, and whereas once upon a time even 10-20k was a good chunk of gold, nowadays it's considered pretty worthless.

There are other reasons why prices can go up or down aside from inflation is the thrust of my argument. Here let me give an example.  

This year beef sells at 100 dollars a head.  During calfing season, Mad Cow Disease breaks out killing half of the herds.  The next year beef is selling for 200 dollars a head.  Is the increase in cost due to inflation? No it's because beef became scarcer. 

Here's another one.  This year an acre of farmland in North Dakota is selling for 100,000 dollars.  In the fall, an oil prospecting crew determines that thar's oil in dem der hills.  The same acre of farmland is now selling for 500,000 dollars.  Once again price appreciation but not due to inflation but due to a change in perceived value of the land.

We as players don't really have the tools to measure aggregate gold supply, nor to determine whether gold supply is rising or falling.  But because high school ecomics drilled it into our heads that inflation is caused by increasing money supply, when we see prices rise, we had a tendency to go 'inflation!'

But based on @Sarapis statements about faucet and sink economies I'm guessing the Garden does have some measurement tools available.  Further, the garden does have levers it can pull to siphon gold out of the game.  Lotteries, Itinerant Bazaars, and Gold Auctions are all examples of these.  Increasing upkeep costs on shops, mines, and city improvements are examples of subtler recurring tools.  And of course they could just restrict gold supply further by nerfing drops. 

Do we need more gold sinks? Maybe, maybe not.  But my personal take away from this thread is that the Garden keeps a pretty good handle on the gold supply.  Others may feel differently - which is totally fine.  

All that being said if @Tecton and @Sarapis want to introduce new for gold features to sink gold into, I'm down.

Morsul

Actually, it's possible that given the opportunity to buy lessons for gold as a one-time thing (akin to the $10:1000 lessons deal) may actually improve Achaea's bottom line, provided that it's set at the right price: people who can't afford the gold cost RIGHT NOW would instead buy OOC credits, sell them at the market for gold, and buy the package.

Citrus

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.

I'm pretty sure the majority of people complaints will be gone when the next promotion starts.  The inflation this month is only because of March's promotion advertising Wheel tickets instead of credit purchases.  Credit promotion = low CFS prices, non-credit promotion = high CFS prices.  It's not rocket science.  Predict these ups and downs and it can even make you money.

Goryllin

Hey Guys, help me remember something. I remember there being a type of challenge that one could take, where you were whisked off plane to face some monster and it was scaled to depend on your level. It would just be one person *couldn't be followed* and it was like 4 rooms. However I don't remember anything about it, if it was part of a quest, or what.

Matias

Goryllin said:

Hey Guys, help me remember something. I remember there being a type of challenge that one could take, where you were whisked off plane to face some monster and it was scaled to depend on your level. It would just be one person *couldn't be followed* and it was like 4 rooms. However I don't remember anything about it, if it was part of a quest, or what.

Leadership points?

Goryllin

That's exactly what that was! Thanks. So anyways, it seems like the Leadership Points challenges already scale on level and are able to take us to a special off plane area. Could we not adapt that to provide a unique hunting experience for those who have reached bashing end game status.

Antidas

Goryllin said:

That's exactly what that was! Thanks. So anyways, it seems like the Leadership Points challenges already scale on level and are able to take us to a special off plane area. Could we not adapt that to provide a unique hunting experience for those who have reached bashing end game status.

Probably could, but adding instanced hunting without changing anything else would only make the problem being discussed in this thread worse, not better.

Penwize

Antidas said:

Goryllin said:

That's exactly what that was! Thanks. So anyways, it seems like the Leadership Points challenges already scale on level and are able to take us to a special off plane area. Could we not adapt that to provide a unique hunting experience for those who have reached bashing end game status.

Probably could, but adding instanced hunting without changing anything else would only make the problem being discussed in this thread worse, not better.

Unless it costed gold and rewarded non-gold, yes.  If it produced extra gold, it would be problematic.

Matias

Costing gold, but generating other things would be very cool. You pay and you get dumped into a random level appropriate zone, which depending on the quests within, can reward you with comms, inks, talisman pieces, heron feathers etc. 

Aerek

I would have no interest, myself, and I dislike instanced bashing as a rule, but that's probably the best idea so far. Large, one-time purchases like CoAs aren't really effective as gold sinks, because you buy them once and then go back to amassing gold. (Ships' release and massive gold auctions haven't had any discernible effect on the economy that I've noticed.) Desirable repeat purchases are were the "sink" comes in, the trick is just making a temporary purchase desirable enough to keep buying it.

No-gold, talisman-only bashing grounds actually isn't a bad place to start, having to choose whether you wanted to generate gold or gather talismans, but not both. That would only affect high-level players, and they could do that right now if they wanted; if dropTalisman == true then dropNoGold() end. Maybe it's time for the revolution, Tir Murann, Istarion, and Prin move toward a barter system where private citizens carry no currency, just these little trinkets they trade for goods and services...

Skye

Aerek said:

 Maybe it's time for the revolution, Tir Murann, Istarion, and Prin move toward a barter system where private citizens carry no currency, just these little trinkets they trade for goods and services...

Yeah the dismembered pieces of dead dragon bodies

Sarapis

Antidas said:

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.

It is the real response. If you want to buy lessons with gold, there's been an avenue to do that since, I think, sometime in 1999. Therefore, what people are really asking for has nothing to do with buying lessons for gold, per se. They're either asking for cheaper lessons (nevermind that they've gotten cheaper every single year of Achaea's existence) or have decided, somewhat irrationally, that a ~12% variation in the value of gold is a big emergency and are freaking out and have decided that the only fix for this is selling lessons for gold, while simultaneously ignoring the pretty obvious fact that price is determined by supply and demand, and that supply of credits is currently a lot lower due to the nature of the promos the last couple months.

Would making lessons cheaper lead to slightly higher retention? Maybe. Of course, making credits available for a penny each would probably have a greater effect. Does that mean it's a good idea, or that retention is the only thing that matters? Certainly not, in both cases.

Regardless, we're not looking to discount lessons more than we already have in the past couple years, and are not looking to intentionally bring in less revenue.

Sarapis

Froh said:

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.

Best post in the whole thread.

Medi

I notice a lot of people putting forth effort trying to generate ideas for revenue or content for game, only to be told that it's not really a focus at this point in time, or flat-out not something that will be considered. I wonder, if people are going to be so persistently helpful, what are some general areas that the admin feel Achaea could use some brainstorming?

Sarapis

Kiet said:

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.

It's been referred to as 'mudflation' since the early to mid 90s. There's no known bulletproof solution to it in faucet and sink economies that I know about or have read about, which have to exist because "real" economies are just not fun for most people (who wants to be a lowly-paid service worker doing repetitive tasks in Achaea? Nobody. You might effectively start that way, but if you can't advance past it, you're probably going to quit the game.)

Mudflation differs from straight-up inflation in a couple key ways:

• Players in MUDs/MMOs tend to demand the ability to always get more powerful/more effective, naturally. Who wants to suddenly be super poor in game? Few people. In terms of currency (gold in our case) generation, that equates to being able to earn currency more efficiently as you progress up the power ladder. Ultimately, that is no different from real life, where folks like Bill Gates become wealthy beyond the ability of most of us to really even comprehend, but in MUDs, everybody has to have the theoretical ability to become Gates. Upward mobility has to be extremely high.
  
  
• Players in MUDs can affect the currency supply directly, as they're the ones producing it. That's not how, say, the US economy and its dollar currency work, however. Bill Gates can't produce new currency and directly devalue the dollar thereby. He has no ability to produce currency, barring illegal counterfeiting. In the US and other governments we have governmental bodies control the money supply. This is a huge difference. In MUDs, players are able to create money supply. In functioning modern economies, they aren't. Of course, we could control this. We could say, "Nope, nobody can earn gold for awhile because there's too much of it in the game" but you guys would not be very happy about that.
  
  
• MUDs/MMOs have far, far less sophisticated and comprehensive systems for permitting/enabling productive investment and economic growth than MUDs do. Economic growth doesn't even really mean anything in the faucet and sink model insofar as it's basically written into the system that it's easy to just get wealthy enough to liberate yourself from having to earn money. And ultimately it kind of has to be. How many of you who are Dragons wish you still had to save up to buy a batch of 10 vials, for instance, or how many house owners here wish they had to pay constant maintenance and property tax costs on it? Few and far between.
  
  (There are a ton of other differences too, obviously.)

Mudflation has different pain points than inflation too. Inflation largely affects people who are holding reserves of currency or whose wage increases don't keep up with inflation. In real life, inflation is reflected by or caused by, however you want to look at it, rising prices, and steady inflation is desirable. Here's the US dollar's devaluation from inflation over the years for instance. The key takeaway is that inflation is not inherently a bad thing. 


In MUDs/MMOs, we tend to have a mixture of competed-for items (meaning they're in the free market, like credits or talisman pieces or whatever) and hardcore communist-style fixed prices (denizen vendors), so that newbies don't get priced out of being able to buy things like vials or packs. What that means is that since we also control gold generation rates, we can know that the gold generation ability of a newbie has some fairly constant rate vs. the cost of the things in denizen vendors.

Resources that get competed for are a different story, and in mudflation newbies get hit with a dual wallop of their 'wages' (gold earning potential) not increasing as the gold supply goes up, but also the fact that items in the free market economy do inflate in price as the gold supply goes up.

The problem in Achaea goes back to what Froh correctly mentioned: gold production capacity is extremely elastic. Gold sinks that aren't ongoing costs don't tend to have much of a long-term effect, because people just ramp up gold bashing to pay for them. And you guys tend to really not like paying for things that have significant ongoing costs, which is understandable as that then forces you to look at Achaea as something of a job where you're going to "lose your house" if you don't log on and earn gold. 

It's a problem essentially all MUDs/MMOs with faucet+sink economies (which is virtually all of them) face due to the nature of what players expect. We've done an excellent job of maintaining the value of gold over the years, and a 15% swing is not concerning. We also have tools that can be easily deployed that can fix the problem of a money supply growing too rapidly, though they will be unpopular with a small percentage of players. 

Sarapis

Medi said:

I notice a lot of people putting forth effort trying to generate ideas for revenue or content for game, only to be told that it's not really a focus at this point in time, or flat-out not something that will be considered. I wonder, if people are going to be so persistently helpful, what are some general areas that the admin feel Achaea could use some brainstorming?

Class leads, ship leads, and of course there's the ideas command in-game!

The thing is, ideas are easy. Everybody has a thousand of them. It's combining a deep understanding of what you're talking about with ideas born from experience where they start to have some value. So, for instance, things like usability fixes tend to be good things to suggest, because they're something you guys have intimate experience with. Same with classleads, where you have more intimate experience with it than most of us do (well, those of you that know combat really well), or even just talking about things you'd pay for.

However, none of you really have much visibility into the economics of our business, and none of you have any real experience running a viable MUD company (that I know of at least!), so it's really difficult for you to be productive on the idea front there.

Penwize

Sarapis said:

or even just talking about things you'd pay for.

This is why I've mostly tried to limit my suggestions to things I'd pay for instead of some of the more sweeping changes suggested.  A couple of pages back I outlined the sorts of things I would pay for instead of credits, or things I think would draw more interest (and thus expenditure) if changed; is that the sort of thing you're looking for?  New or additional features to the game to act as sinks for gold, credits or lessons, so it can translate to actual revenue for you?  I'd assume so, but sometimes I think we misunderstand each other here on the forums.

Sarapis

Well, I'm not actively seeking anything on the idea front really. Everybody has a thousand ideas and myself and the folks I work with are no exception. It's an opportunistic thing. Occasionally spot an idea that is a good tradeoff between time/monetary investment and impact? Easy win. 

Micositu

Yes to bound crowns for gold. I have no argument for this other than it is completely self serving. (please)

Alaskar

I really thought the gold for cosmetic items on ships or people was a great idea, as well as the alternative hunting zones that drop such items instead of gold. 

Sarapis

Alaskar said:

I really thought the gold for cosmetic items on ships or people was a great idea, as well as the alternative hunting zones that drop such items instead of gold. 

Sure, and I agree on the cosmetic items, but creating enough content for that kind of thing in a way that people would pay substantial amounts of gold for them is not something you just snap your fingers and make happen. Same with new hunting zones.

Antidas

Sarapis said:

Antidas said:

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.

It is the real response. If you want to buy lessons with gold, there's been an avenue to do that since, I think, sometime in 1999. Therefore, what people are really asking for has nothing to do with buying lessons for gold, per se. They're either asking for cheaper lessons (nevermind that they've gotten cheaper every single year of Achaea's existence) or have decided, somewhat irrationally, that a ~12% variation in the value of gold is a big emergency and are freaking out and have decided that the only fix for this is selling lessons for gold, while simultaneously ignoring the pretty obvious fact that price is determined by supply and demand, and that supply of credits is currently a lot lower due to the nature of the promos the last couple months.

Would making lessons cheaper lead to slightly higher retention? Maybe. Of course, making credits available for a penny each would probably have a greater effect. Does that mean it's a good idea, or that retention is the only thing that matters? Certainly not, in both cases.

Regardless, we're not looking to discount lessons more than we already have in the past couple years, and are not looking to intentionally bring in less revenue.

Whether or not the ideas were bad and your response was the only "real response" has absolutely nothing to do with your attitude and how you chose to respond to said bad ideas. I'll say again, if you want people to behave a certain way on forums, you yourself need to be a model for that behavior. I am 100% sure that there have been posts from admins at some point about not shaming people for posting bad ideas, because its not constructive and leads people to want to post potentially good ideas less, but that is exactly what you did with your post.

You are (obviously) entitled to tell people an idea is bad, and you probably have a better idea of what is and is not good for the game than most of us, but that doesn't mean you have to tell people their ideas are bad in a condescending manner. You could instead simply post what you said in your response to me (quoted directly above) in the first place; a decent explanation of why this is a bad idea for the game as opposed to the "lolidiots" that you posted at first.

And yeah, I get that you can't always take the time to write out a detailed explanation of why every single idea that comes up on forums is good or bad, but on the other hand, if you can't afford the time to post an actual explanation, then maybe just not responding at all would be a better bet.

Aerek

I think you're out of your depth, Antidas.

Jarrod

People getting "That's not the response I wanted" and "That was a bad response" confused.