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Comments
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.
Hey Guys. Lets turn this back into the thread title. Ideas for gold sinks.
A list of the more agreed upon ideas:
Sadly 9 pages of arguments and we have 3 viable ideas for ADDITIONAL gold sinks.
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?
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.
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.
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...
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.
Best post in the whole thread.
Mudflation differs from straight-up inflation in a couple key ways:
(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.
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.
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.
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.
Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."