Breaking Credit Market

Skarash

I'll throw a wild one out there just to get the discussion restarted- grossly increase the demurrage currency fee charged by banks to disincentivize large pools of gold from accumulating.  Currently I believe this is set at 50 basis points or 500 gold for every 100k. Sure there are ways around it - most notably not using a bank altogether. 

flame away

Cooper

Jarrod said:

Jinsun said:

But credit prices went up more after you put in the cap. How is this even the argument still?

Do you just make up information to try and make a point? Credit prices dropped from ~9500 avg (hitting 10k on occasion) to ~8500 avg after the cap was dropped to where it's at now.

Too many variables in play. It dropped 1k in just a few days after the credit promotion was put in place. The cap had been put in long before that, and was being played with while the market kept rising. But demand for credits has also been higher due to multiclass and more recently artefact armour. But gold was also in demand due to the auctions. Penwize, by far biggest basher, also stopped playing. 

So it's pretty hard to tell exactly how big the effect the cap had. It might have helped lower the credit price by 100, 500, 1000, or nothing at all. 

Jarrod

Regardless, average has decreased since it was put in, never gone up for more than standard small (<24hr) spikes.

Keorin

The admin have always seemed incredibly reluctant to do anything like that, and I suspect they'll just dismiss it again, which is way too bad.

It always feels like it's hard to even suggest the game to people because I know that a good fraction of the cool things that they could do will be unavailable unless they throw down about a hundred dollars or grind/fish whatever for a long time. At least keeping lesson prices from rising even more would be a huge help to this, and heck, they could even scale lesson costs down for people still finishing their first set of class skills. 

Feeling like you're working towards something is pretty much impossible at low levels with these prices, and that's really important. And it's the people who could get into things that this hits the hardest, given completely anemic gold output at lower levels. I don't know if I'd have stuck around at all if it weren't for the free credits from logging in or posting on the website making it feel like I was getting somewhere, and that was when credits were reliably under 6k. 

Jarrod

That's what the no brainer stuff is for. Level 90 or 100, both no-brainer lesson packages, is tri trans and change iirc. Still has a cost, but it definitely gets you started.

The reason for no gold->lessons is because it establishes an approximate gold->credit cost, which is something they've stated many many times they don't want to do. They want you to be able to spend $ on either arties or lessons, so that means tying either directly or indirectly lesson and credit cost.

Tydas

Jarrod said:

That's what the no brainer stuff is for. Level 90 or 100, both no-brainer lesson packages, is tri trans and change iirc. Still has a cost, but it definitely gets you started.

Initial lessons is 170, plus 15 from tutorial learning session, for 185.
Level 5 to 100 is 95 levels, times 5 for 475 lessons.
Bound credits received as part of levelling is 291, times 6 for 1746 lessons.
Achaean History Quest is 5 credits, for 30 lessons.
No-brainer lessons is 2000 lessons.
Total lessons: 4436

A transcendent skill requires 1738 lessons.
Tri-trans requires 5214.
Missing lessons: 778.
Unbound credits required for tri-trans: 92, with the 2.5 lesson bonus, 130 without.

One month of Iron Elite gives 100 bound credits with approximately 150 lessons, for 750 lessons. Almost enough to cover it, but not quite.

No brainer credits will get the job done at 1800 lessons.

Jinsun

Jarrod said:

Regardless, average has decreased since it was put in, never gone up for more than standard small (<24hr) spikes.

But the cap did not stop player-caused fluctuations. It didn't at all, or else they wouldn't be putting in anti-speculation restrictions. Thus, the cap had no actual affect on the player effect on the market and driving it up. The argument was moot before it was put out there because the facts are clearly out there. Your hostility is unwarranted, as usual.

Jarrod

The trend before the cap was continually upward. The cap after was continually downward. You can argue that other things impacted the change more, but you can't argue the change.

@Tydas ah ok, so relatively close but not quite tri trans. Definitely an investment of time, but at least something that you can work towards.

Xaden

Downward trend came with the creditsale, not the cap.

Jarrod

Trend has definitely been downwards since before August.

Cooper

Jarrod said:

The trend before the cap was continually upward. The cap after was continually downward. You can argue that other things impacted the change more, but you can't argue the change.

@Tydas ah ok, so relatively close but not quite tri trans. Definitely an investment of time, but at least something that you can work towards.

This is 100% not true.

The cap was put in on May 2nd. The average credit price in my logs during the few days before that was 7200-7700. The price continually rose throughout all of May and June, to a high of 9500. The credit market took a sharp turn down within days of the credit sale start in July.

Jarrod

July wasn't a credit sale, unless you meant August then sure.

Credits haven't been under 8k for any extended amount of time in a very very long time though.

Early March was when they first started breaking 7k average. Initial gold DR got put in beginning of May. Lowering of the gold DR was towards mid/end of June (based on posts on it). Credit prices were over 9k before July.

Initial cap didn't change anything, and very very few people actually noticed it. Priced dropped from the adjusted cap to sit around 8500 from where they were always over 9k prior to the change. The July promo was artefact cart, with the auctions that only 1 person bid on initially to affect CFS (aka not at all).

Cooper

I actually meant July because I thought there was a 30% bonus on credit purchases, but apparently that was just for artefact purchases.

Credits first reached past 8k (for a short period of time) on April 40th of this year. I'm not sure 3.5 months is a very very long time. Before January of 2016, they had been roughly stable at 5.5k on the low side to 6.8k on the high, most of the time around 6k-6.3k side for years.

My logs go back to 1/19/2014 where the average price was 5972. I don't have a record of average CFS being higher than 7k until January 11th, 2016.

Jarrod

The initial cap put in in May was relatively high (600k+ if memory serves) and people rarely hit it. I remember people commenting that they think they'd found it, but they weren't sure. It had basically no impact at all on prices. Middle/end of June the cap got dropped to where it is today, and immediately a lot of people hit it. Resulted in the big "Gold Generation" thread. Prices started dropping from there, albeit slowly, to sit around 8500-9000, which is lower by a decent amount than it was prior to the change.

Szanthax

I find our assumptions and speculations weak at best. It's easy for us to say the price has gone up or down.... But do we know that stats really? I think the only people with the facts behind changes are those with the means to change them. Business makes business etc. 

Ps where can I get the 800k bashing o scripts

Keorin

Jarrod said:

That's what the no brainer stuff is for. Level 90 or 100, both no-brainer lesson packages, is tri trans and change iirc. Still has a cost, but it definitely gets you started.

I think that most people would look at you crazy if you told them that they'd need to spend at least 45$ and spend the amount of time it takes to bash to dragon text-grinding to get their class skills in an MMO.

And let's not forget that you're not even going to be able to meaningfully participate in combat without survival.

Jarrod

I don't think people would be surprised at all about that in a lot of MMOs. No-brainer credits means you just have to hit Logosian, which is really easy if you have people helping you with information.

I can tell you I've spent way more time in some MMOs to get 'ready' for entering levels of content.

Tahquil

Remove credits for lessons. Have lessons purchasable purely by gold. People can then still earn lessons via IG means and the credit market will be relegated to the optional extras of life such as artefacts and customisations.

Seragorn

Sarapis said:

Seragorn said:

, I think someone who wants to spend 6 hours hunting up 500k should absolutely be allowed to, and I think its healthy for the game to have those people doing it.  =

Healthy how? How is someone running a script for 6 hours to generate gold while they do something else healthy for the game? I can certainly tell you how it's unhealthy: It devalues the effort of everyone who is not just running a script to generate gold, and virtually everybody who was generating that kind of gold was just running a script to do it. 

I use some automation in my hunting like the vast majority (I follow fixed paths, and auto target, and use tones for the most part to save me reading the walls of brain-dead text and I move with macro keys forward/back).  But I guarantee I will respond when questioned while doing it, I'm attentive and NEVER AFK, I've invested to much to become permanently leafy for a little extra gold. 

I'm also happy to be critiqued by anyone who's ever asked for my help and not received it, be it on how to hunt, combat, scripting, anything.  Talking to novices in the house and bringing them up thru the ranks also takes priority, I'll stop hunting to help people when required, if you question the value of someone like that being logged in then frankly I find that a little disconcerting, we're the people who help build community, inspire and teach others.

I do agree someone who is completely afk and auto hunting to generate gold is negative for the game, but to be honest I don't think theres many around doing that who are not contributing to the game.  Don't get me wrong, I'm just stating my opinion, I understand theres a business side of things and I'm only trying to suggest things that I believe are going to be a net benefit to IRE, but I do also recognise I have no true understanding of the financials from your side so I may be way off track.  I'm not going to quit as a result of any decision either way, just trying to be constructive.

Tahquil

In regards to hunting alone, what amount of effort do you put into it?
1 being auto pathing, auto targeting, auto hitting hands off hunting and 10 being completely manual but with server side curing?

i don't think it's a case of "but automation lets us do other things" criteria of value but the degree of effort you put into hunting itself as a stand alone activity .

Sarapis

Jinsun said:

Yep. It's also a much more complicated issue than "automation good" or "automation bad". I couldn't care less about people automating some things. What I do care about are people using automation to hurt other players while benefiting only themselves, and that is exactly what running bashing scripts to generate huge amounts of gold does. If you bash for a coupe hours using a script and generate 50k gold, no problem - that's within the design of the game, and is something a player not scripting could easily do as well. If you run that script for 12 hours a day (we have seen players do exactly this) so you can generate 800k gold/day and then use that gold to drive up prices for everybody else, well, that's not ok and I have not heard a single compelling argument as to why we should allow it. Not one!

But credit prices went up more after you put in the cap. How is this even the argument still?

I have no idea where you guys get some of this. No, they did not. They started dropping within days of the system going in. We log all this stuff, and don't have to guess or depend on memory, which is unreliable.

Reduction of supply = increase in value. I'm not even sure you can call that Econ 101, since it's so basic. 

Szanthax

Sarapis said:

Jinsun said:

Yep. It's also a much more complicated issue than "automation good" or "automation bad". I couldn't care less about people automating some things. What I do care about are people using automation to hurt other players while benefiting only themselves, and that is exactly what running bashing scripts to generate huge amounts of gold does. If you bash for a coupe hours using a script and generate 50k gold, no problem - that's within the design of the game, and is something a player not scripting could easily do as well. If you run that script for 12 hours a day (we have seen players do exactly this) so you can generate 800k gold/day and then use that gold to drive up prices for everybody else, well, that's not ok and I have not heard a single compelling argument as to why we should allow it. Not one!

But credit prices went up more after you put in the cap. How is this even the argument still?

I have no idea where you guys get some of this. No, they did not. They started dropping within days of the system going in. We log all this stuff, and don't have to guess or depend on memory, which is unreliable.

Reduction of supply = increase in value. I'm not even sure you can call that Econ 101, since it's so basic. 

My memories is like a fine older wine.... it.. yes... it does those things. 

ps my roommates hate me because I just dont care about what they have to say because i know better....

Sarapis

Seragorn said:

I do agree someone who is completely afk and auto hunting to generate gold is negative for the game, but to be honest I don't think theres many around doing that who are not contributing to the game.  

Whether you're afk or not is not really relevant to the effect that gold generation has on the economy though. They're two separate things. The problem here isn't afk bashing - it's bashing to a level that virtually nobody will do manually, consistently. One single player was generating enough gold by just running a script to be buying double digit percentages of all credits that went on the market, for instance. The top five players were buying a lot larger % of credits on the market than that. 

Every other player has to compete with those people for credits, in gold auctions, in shop sales, etc etc. Income inequality has real, negative consequences for everyone who isn't at the top, and we're trying to ameliorate that somewhat, which has so far been moderately successful. 

Sarapis

Jarrod said:

The trend before the cap was continually upward. The cap after was continually downward. You can argue that other things impacted the change more, but you can't argue the change.

Correct.

Skye

Tahquil said:

Remove credits for lessons. Have lessons purchasable purely by gold. People can then still earn lessons via IG means and the credit market will be relegated to the optional extras of life such as artefacts and customisations.

Because of multiclass, credits for lessons is, unfortunately, probably one of the biggest reasons for buying credits OOC or IG at this point. Divorcing lessons from credits is pretty unlikely to happen especially if coupled with turning lessons into a purely IG commodity.

One way to make credit prices drop would simply be to remove the ability to make credit transactions between players and force them to use the market for quick gold. A lot of us still sit on credits because they're treated as the safest mode of transaction. Admin (seem to) take disputes more seriously if they involve transfer of credits and players use this as some sort of insurance. 

Szanthax

Sarapis said:

Seragorn said:

I do agree someone who is completely afk and auto hunting to generate gold is negative for the game, but to be honest I don't think theres many around doing that who are not contributing to the game.  

Whether you're afk or not is not really relevant to the effect that gold generation has on the economy though. They're two separate things. The problem here isn't afk bashing - it's bashing to a level that virtually nobody will do manually, consistently. One single player was generating enough gold by just running a script to be buying double digit percentages of all credits that went on the market, for instance. The top five players were buying a lot larger % of credits on the market than that. 

Every other player has to compete with those people for credits, in gold auctions, in shop sales, etc etc. Income inequality has real, negative consequences for everyone who isn't at the top, and we're trying to ameliorate that somewhat, which has so far been moderately successful. 

Maybe open the top 10 gold generating players to PK and have them drop ALL their gold when they die (no banks for you mother fwarkers) ... unless i'm like 10... then it should be the top 8.

Cooper

Sarapis said:

Jarrod said:

The trend before the cap was continually upward. The cap after was continually downward. You can argue that other things impacted the change more, but you can't argue the change.

Correct.

Not correct. The average on May 2nd, the day the cap was implemented, was at 8k or very slightly under it.

Are you seriously saying that we are all imagining the credit prices that went over 9k for a big part of June?

We're currently sitting above (ignoring Zulah's crazy antics) the average of where the credit market was when the gold cap was put into place.

Here's my grep data:

<div>Total credits for sale: 1132 shown (9360 total) (Average sale price: 7757)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div><div><br></div><div>Total credits for sale: 8916 shown (8977 total) (Average sale price: 7981)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div><div><br></div><div>Total credits for sale: 863 shown (9006 total) (Average sale price: 7981)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div><div><br></div><div>Total credits for sale: 850 shown (9078 total) (Average sale price: 7981)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div><div><br></div><div>Total credits for sale: 856 shown (8999 total) (Average sale price: 7755)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div><div><br></div><div>Total credits for sale: 846 shown (8989 total) (Average sale price: 7829)</div><div>Use CREDITS BUY <number> AT <max gold per credit> to purchase.</div>

Sarathai

Skye said:

Admin (seem to) take disputes more seriously if they involve transfer of credits and players use this as some sort of insurance. 

I prefer them because they're easier to transfer around.

Rather than actually sending a letter with gold, or veildelivering, or whatever, I can just use the transfer command from wherever I am, even if the person isn't logged in. Simple, quick, and easy. And yeah, the insurance part helps too, even if gold is also mentioned in the scamming help file.

Jarrod

The adjustment to the cap that actually impacted players (in late June) had a very noticeable impact on credit prices.

I don't think the May change (when the announce post was made) did anything except confuse some people about whether they hit it or not.

Sarapis

Cooper said:

Sarapis said:

Jarrod said:

The trend before the cap was continually upward. The cap after was continually downward. You can argue that other things impacted the change more, but you can't argue the change.

Correct.

Not correct. The average on May 2nd, the day the cap was implemented, was at 8k or very slightly under it.

May 2nd was when the change was officially announced. Early July is when it actually became meaningful, due to an oversight in the code that was rectified as almost nobody was hitting the cap. Virtually immediately thereafter, the price began to drop. 

I have no idea why you have such a hard time with the basic, virtually indisputable concept that reducing the supply of something increases its value. You can look around the world (real or virtual) and see a billion examples of this in practice. Why you think Achaea's gold supply is any different beats me, but it's not.