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Gold inflation
Over the last month or so, the credit market has been fluctuating quite heavily. On several occasions, there were not even any credits for sale. I think part of the reason is that there are not too many things to spend gold at except credits and there's not enough incentive to sell credits to earn gold. Curatives are cheap, vials will no longer be produced en masse, and the cheapest mounts costs a few hundred gold.
I would like to suggest implementing some medium-to-high gold sinks, stuff that people will consider selling credits in order to get. The more gold is needed, the more credits will put up for sale, which, theoretically, should mean that people who are more focused on learning their skills than obtaining shiny gadgets could get credits at a more affordable rate.
Here's some suggestions to consider:
I've discussed the gold economy with a few people in different clans recently, and there seemed to be a consensus that the credit market is suffering because people earn gold and have no real ways to spend it except buying credits. I could be really wrong about the situation, but I still felt this would be some neat additions to the game (heck, some of the items would be decent as credit artifacts).
At first, I wanted to suggest lowering gold drops in Tiyen and other endgame areas, but this is actually where most people start hunting once they reach endgame and there just need to be some reliable ways to earn decent gold. Anyway. If anyone else has opinions about Aetolia's economy and its current state, I'd really like to hear tham.
I would like to suggest implementing some medium-to-high gold sinks, stuff that people will consider selling credits in order to get. The more gold is needed, the more credits will put up for sale, which, theoretically, should mean that people who are more focused on learning their skills than obtaining shiny gadgets could get credits at a more affordable rate.
Here's some suggestions to consider:
- Remove gold interests from banks, instead making deposited gold pay off as bound credits. This also means that bank interest could scale in different tiers, so that someone depositing 50,000 gold would get 2 bound credits in interest whereas someone with 500,000 in the bank would get 4. Newer players simply can not spare 900,000 gold to get interest out of the bank, and they're the ones that need it the most. Also, let's assume 100 active characters earn max interest each Aetolian season. That's three million gold (which could buy 600 credits at 5,000 per) being put straight into the game every 12 days just for logging on, with no other effort being involved. Even if it's not that many, it's still a considerable amount of gold being added to the game.
- More gold minipets, costing 50,000-150,000 each or so. There's some of us that want to collect them all, and minipets of particular importance (the centipede was popular with Iosyne's followers) will sell quite well. Something really cool would be a menagerie that sells different minipets, but retires old ones and updates with new ones every 4-5 real life months.
- More neat ylem-related items being discovered in Delve and delivered when turning in gathered mists:
- A 500,000-1,000,000 gold item that will make transmutations last 3 or 4 hours instead of one. Many people would make that bulk investment if it meant they could actually use the transmutations on a regular basis.
- A level 1 weapon rune that decays with your weapon (meaning you have to get a new one). Weapon classes tend to require more of a credit investment to reach not only peak power, but base level combat efficiency as well. 25,000-40,000 gold for a temporary level 1 weapon rune seems like it could really benefit those people wanting to get into the combat scene but are unable to afford artifacts. Basically, something along the lines of amulets. If you're feeling bold, add level 2 weapon runes for 75,000-100,000 gold.
- With the release of eld and the Shattered Vortex, there's now a fair amount of mobs that are immune to critical strikes. I want to suggest an artifact that provides a damage bonus against critical-immune mobs based on your critical strike rating. My initial idea was just converting your critical rating into a direct damage modifier against those mobs, but perhaps something like half of your critical rating would be more sensible. This sort of artifact should cost 1,000,000-1,500,000 gold.
- A trophy board for something like 350,000-500,000 gold. Whenever you kill something (mobs or players), it is recorded on the trophy board. You could use the 'TROPHY' command to see all of your kills (25 ferocious boars, 182 xorani guardians, 93 yellow butterflies, 5 @Borscin, etc), or you can use the 'TROPHY ' to search for specific creatures. 'TROPHY ANIMAL' would show all mobs you killed that have 'animal' as one of their main nouns, 'TROPHY NAZETU' would show all different nazetu mobs, etc. 'TROPHY PLAYERS' would show all other players you have killed. Pretty neat, huh?
- Other benefits that some people would be happy to pay for include immunity from mobs stripping defenses (would be inactivated during player combat and doesn't protect against shield-breaking attacks), not being attacked by aggressive mobs, and so on and so forth.
- A 500,000-1,000,000 gold item that will make transmutations last 3 or 4 hours instead of one. Many people would make that bulk investment if it meant they could actually use the transmutations on a regular basis.
- Consumables being sold for gold. One of my ideas was to sell the weaker version of chocolates (the bonuses listed in announce post #2093) for something like 25,000-50,000 gold per. That is, 75% experience bonus, 25% extra damage to NPCs, +1 to all stats, and +5% to health and mana -- this is half of the bonuses of the chocolates found in giftbags and cryptic chests. This lessens the gap between people that have lots of chocolates from whatever promotion is going and people that can not afford to buy chests or giftbags. It would presumably also add a fairly effective gold sink to the game.
- Remove the gold drops entirely from elementals spawned with globes of elemental energy. They drop more than pretty much all other endgame areas, and for something coming out of cryptic chests, the easy experience is good enough in itself. To compensate, maybe add some duration to the buffs (making it possible to summon more elementals).
I've discussed the gold economy with a few people in different clans recently, and there seemed to be a consensus that the credit market is suffering because people earn gold and have no real ways to spend it except buying credits. I could be really wrong about the situation, but I still felt this would be some neat additions to the game (heck, some of the items would be decent as credit artifacts).
At first, I wanted to suggest lowering gold drops in Tiyen and other endgame areas, but this is actually where most people start hunting once they reach endgame and there just need to be some reliable ways to earn decent gold. Anyway. If anyone else has opinions about Aetolia's economy and its current state, I'd really like to hear tham.
2
Comments
If some of the items found in chests were available for gold (perhaps with half duration or something) I would definitely spend on that as well. Toss a few half-chocolates at a noob, give them out for a particular impressive interview or a good showing at a lesser. And at least in my case, let's be real. If I want gold, I'm buying credits with real money and selling them on the market. I don't bash. That means money for Aetolia.
Devaluing globes, in my opinion, will most definitely impact chest sales. I would not buy nearly as many as I have/do if I didn't consider a reasonable chance of getting globes, selling them and breaking even. There's probably an argument that they're one of the biggest draws to chests, and I swear the % has already been lowered. Anymore and you're pushing into 'not worth' territory, at least for me.
I mostly like everything you said above, @alexina.
I'd love to see some sort of gold item that does allow an increase in time of transmutations. Even if the cost is 1,000,000 gold as I've spent about 500k+ on transmutations alone, because they only last an hour. And its bothersome that it only lasts an hour. So this would be a great gold sink, even with the time increased.
Likewise, a lvl 1 artifact rune much similar to amulets would be an absolutely GREAT implementation to introductory PK status. Hell, if someone really wanted to learn to fight and they were upset they didn't have a rune, I'd buy them this level 1 rune just to get them started. Its not a great rune, but it would give them +6 speed/damage to their weapon or choice. So this is a definite plus in my book.
An artifact for uncrittable mobs being hit harder (although would be great), would be counter intuitive for the way the uncrittable mobs are supposed to be. I mean, I hit for 2300 on a regular basis and have a 50% crit rate (that will likely get higher soon), so with a 25-50% increase, I'd be hitting for 2800-3400 every 2.9s, which would really destroy almost every uncrittable mob in few hits. Not exactly the most balancing thing. So I'm going to say no go on this, just my personal opinion.
A trophy board could be fun, but mobs numbers would be hilariously high. So, maybe/maybe not.
Chocolates available via gold would be great and oh so much fun.
I don't agree with gold drops being removed from the elementals as they are the reason why they cost so much, because you're paying for gold AND xp. If you remove the gold, the prices for globes will decrease. Now, you don't get anywhere near the amount of gold you get for paying for them with credits, but you still have that avenue of gold gain.
My biggest suggestion would be chocolates, runes, and transmutation gold sinks. Of course, I'd also like to see gold artifact auctions and maybe some personal buffs at the cost of gold, but thats probably getting greedy.
Elaborating on the idea of selling chocolates for gold. Except make them slightly stale, so that they also add a -100% gold drop modifier. So, in essence, you can nom nom your chocolates for gold, but won't be generating any gold from critter drops while under the influence of them. It's possible that it would basically not work unless people were in a Great Hunt or trying to grab some awesome experience, since the majority of people bash for gold, but it would be an interesting twist to make chocolates more readily available without ramping up the pressure of the gold fountains, thereby introducing more gold into the game via their use. Random though.
If you're wondering why I think this question is important, it's simple that adding more expensive things to cause gold to vanish will turn Aetolia primarily into a game-driven economy, similar to how MMOs operate. That doesn't solve the gold inflation problem, it only causes it to get worse and worse over time until the disparity between the super hardcore players and the casual players is unreachable.
If the game is RP focused, then things that are taken for granted in a game must have their importance reinforced. Things like food, clothing, healing items, taxes, expenses, and other things otherwise overlooked. The warmth/cold changes and future hunger changes seem to indicate this is how the admin want to go moving forward.
If you want both, having the big expensive items to sink gold and the rp stuff, you would need to adjust how the economy works entirely. This means having an economy focused on circulating the gold, rather than earning and losing done with NPCS. Have city-run shops take in funds directly to the coffers (for example, the general goods, stables, and generally how the commodity shop operates) and likewise have gold giving options within the city, such as vermin sellers and other quests (like a job). Give cities power to restrict this portion of the gold used for these projects so it doesn't threaten the general workings and even set caps on earnings (only 50k a year from pinchering). I'm speaking madness, but have shops actually get taxed in real time, where .03-.10 is charged with every sale and directly deposited into the coffers of the city, rather than a yearly tax system. This will allow the chancellor to adjust it, giving room for dictators (like Loch) and hippies (like Duiran) to encourage shopping in their respective communities. You can have the tax as an addon to sales (not affecting shopkeepr, like real life) or as result of sales (eating directly into their projects, not recommended).
Limit the amount overall given by external sources, such as hunting and quests. Allow the sale of these big-time expensive items to be cityrun, so cities have a lot more economy to work with and a lot more options for jobs (or city-designed questing) to be created. Allow for credits to be sold to the city directly (with a limit) and available for purchase from the city is a way to encourage credit purchases for gold too. This can create merchant rooms for this process, so it can exclude enemied players.
I'm throwing this together from ideas I've been brewing for a while and if anyone can latch on to my thought process and provide some expanding commentary that would be great. From those who actually code the game, providing insight into the difficulty of such an idea and perhaps helping to figure out simple ways to get the same effect would be helpful too.
This way, the rich and pour their money into the city in various ways, and directly encourage expansion and growth of everyone else. The only gold sinks here would be from city-required costs, such as guards, building, repairing, war, etc.
If the solution to having too much gold is to throw it all away for a temporary boost in X, Y, Z, sounds like a problem in itself. If you only find certain aspects of Aetolia enjoyable, perhaps adding other aspects you may enjoy or enhancing the ones present to make them attractive is a better solution.
With that said, adding the items in will not solve the problem, but still add them because it would at least appear a portion of the population who are directly affected by this situation.
I'm sorry but I don't really get most of your post.
Edit: To clarify, personally at least, if I'm shelling out real money for credits, it's either a good promo or I have something in mind I want to acquire. I can bash myself up some gold on my own so unless it's a big thing (like an auction), my real money is better spent elsewhere.
It sounds like todays credit markets aren't even a playable thing. Idk how many millions I made from buying low and selling slightly higher, but it was substantial... till I blew it all of cryptic chests.
I would tend to agree that there needs to be more interesting things to do with gold but I don't see any easy option. Because of how tedious it is to earn, the only rich people are very productive merchants, bashers, and credit salesmen. It creates this disparity where people who don't like those 3 things go broke replacing armors, vials, cures, ect.. or just have an unspendable amount of coins.
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin
I remember, involve me and I
learn.
-Benjamin Franklin