A hypothetical gold/credit change for discussion.

Mihaketi

So this came up on Discord earlier and I'm curious to see what people think. I do want to stress that it's hypothetical only, and I'm aware that there are plenty of issues with IRE's credit policy (ie. all credits should be paid for with real money) that would prevent it ever happening, but I think it's a solid idea worth consideration anyway. Compare and contrast EVE Online's plex and whatever that one admin-controlled commodity is. Here goes:

Add a vendor to a neutral IC location like Esterport that will sell a certain number of bound credits per RL week (maybe a hundred) per character, for a large sum of gold (something like 15-20k per at least initially due to the amount of gold in the game).

The (hopeful) results of this:
- The market now has a hard admin-controlled cap on what a credit is individually worth in gold, but allows leeway for reselling/playing the market based on the percieved value of the convenience of the credits being unbound. If people just need credits, they don't have to worry about people inflating prices to insane heights. If the admin want to mess with gold, they can do it directly via modifying the price of bound credits.
- There is now a direct and immediately useful gold sink for people hoarding it with nothing to spend it on. This might even end up causing people to spend money on more credits to supplement what they can get IC as only needing to spend twenty bucks to get that 250cr artie you want would be more appealing than having to drop fifty. Microtransactions!
- There is now a viable route to learning skills and getting some low end artifacts without having to spend real money on a game that is advertised as 'pay for perks' rather than 'pay to do anything but basic tasks'. This is a lot more important now that the credit market has completely died. I'm aware that cities still do credit sales sometimes but that's pretty situational and from what I've heard not very common these days (also not available if you don't have a guild or city, ree neutrals).

Problems with this:
- Credits are available for something other than real money. Shouldn't be an issue IMO because of the other benefits and precedents, but I appreciate that the existing policy doesn't really allow it.
- Gold sources will need to be rebalanced, particularly fishing. As it is currently fishing is crazy profitable and would become a direct upgrade over bashing in regards to gold output if an IC method of purchasing it became available.
- More artifacts and lessons in circulation might impact combat unpredictably? Not a PKer so I have no idea there.

I'm sure there are both issues and benefits that I'm missing so please post if you have thoughts. I really think that the potential boosts to both the gold and credit economies would be significant, especially since lowering the access barrier to artifact, talent and skill purchases would encourage people to drop money into the game to supplement their IC resources (see: every game that has cosmetic items bought with ingame currency).

Zaila

I have considered this sort of system, too, and thought that the benefits (decent gold sink and more credits in circulation) would ultimately negate the cons, but I figured IRE wouldn't go for it for financial reasons.

Vaskar

This kind of thing will never happen because they want to encourage people to spend money on credits so that their staff can continued to be paid.

What they don't want is for everybody to be able to crank the handle on the Infinite Gold Generator and generate credits instead.

Mihaketi

Vaskar said:

This kind of thing will never happen because they want to encourage people to spend money on credits so that their staff can continued to be paid.

I'm aware that there are plenty of issues with IRE's credit policy (ie. all credits should be paid for with real money) that would prevent it ever happening

Vaskar said:

What they don't want is for everybody to be able to crank the handle on the Infinite Gold Generator and generate credits instead.

Gold sources will need to be rebalanced

Oleis

My one input, as I don't want to stifle your discussion -- If the gold payout/uptake was suitably rebalanced to be able to support what you're describing, gold would probably be valuable enough to support the existing credit market once again.

Rhyot

I get where you're coming with the compare/contrast to EVE Online's plex system, since I was able to utilize it myself. However, here's the issue with the hypothetical situation.

1) If you start offering up 100 credits per RL week at a value of say, 30k gold, then it becomes useful for a little while. Sure, it's a great way to remove the MILLIONS of gold from the game in the first year (let's be real here, some players have 10M+ gold stockpiled). After that year's up, gold will become difficult to obtain UNLESS you buy with real money because EVERYONE is going to be going around snatching up yo questlines, stealing up yo fishing holes, and clearing all yo bashing areas. Where only those who are online during the low hours will see the highest pay out.

2) With artifacts at the prices they are, this would be a great investment for all us rich Scrooge McDuck players but once we have all the artifice we want and all the classes we want. Then what? Credits lose their weight as a haggle tool because EVERYONE has them. "But I used to pay 20 credits and could get a few chocolates." "Doesn't matter now, I have all the credits I want, I want straight gold now and it'll cost you 45,000 gold for these chocolates." Once again, this makes the gold market detrimental.

3) Why in the world would I even BUY credits at this point if I can just bash up 30k/week and buy 100 credits? Who in their right mind even WOULD buy credits? I'll just bash more and more to get to the point I need and just buy the 100 credits and save up. And if I know I would do it, I know for sure everyone else would too. This is the exact reason why they got rid of gold conversion to cryptic chests. Because people, myself included, were turning gold income into -direct- credit returns. There was no reason to when you could bash for 2 hours and buy a cryptic chest for a return value of 50+ credits.

In the end, even this hypothetical situation would do nothing but damage the game on a business scale. Even if you reworked the gold model, it would still damage the game on a business scale. Love the idea, really do.... but the game couldn't support it.

Mihaketi

1. 30k a week is extremely low for the kind of system I'm talking about. Even at a low figure I would be suggesting a cool million per hundred cr, if not more. I'm aware that gold is relatively easy to get but I'm not sure your examples are particularly accurate when the value is substantially higher.

If there aren't enough gold sources in the game to support the playerbase actively pursuing them, rather than spending their time idle, surely that's an issue to be resolved by adding more content or adjusting cooldowns, rather than something inherent to this suggestion - what you're describing would be a problem with literally any system that gives gold some form of value.

2. Let's go for a quick hypothetical - let's say you want to save for level 3 xpgain, one of the cheaper multi-tier artifact powers. That's 1750cr, or sixteen weeks of buying the suggested maximum of 100cr every week. Drop the maximum to seventy five or fifty and it naturally rises. Say you want a hood of elusion - a bit under half a year at 100cr/w. Level 3 magic_potence? Seven months. Credits are not realistically going to be devalued to the point you're suggesting, especially considering that transferrable credits retain utility that bound credits from this source wouldn't have.

3. See points 1 and 2. The smallest value in my post was 15k per, not 3k. If you can make five hundred thousand gold in 2 hours of bashing I would suggest that there is something wrong with the gold returns rather than the idea of credits for gold itself.

I don't agree that this would damage the game on a business scale if it was handled and implemented properly. As I stated earlier, the increased accessibility of artifacts might even make people spend money that they wouldn't have normally spent to boost their IC stockpiles to the point that they can afford something cool. Plenty of MMos use a microtransaction model coupled with IG mechanisms to earn the currency, and Aet -already had- a direct gold to credit conversion prior to the recent crash.

Oleis said:

My one input, as I don't want to stifle your discussion -- If the gold payout/uptake was suitably rebalanced to be able to support what you're describing, gold would probably be valuable enough to support the existing credit market once again.

Apologies, I don't think I quite understand what you mean. I missed most of the fuss around the credit market crash so there may be some context there that I don't have.

Rhyot

Ooooooooooooook..... so let's iron some things out then. For one, you can't exactly go and say that 30k is low for the system you're talking about when YOU were the one who said 15-20k initially for 100 cr from this hypothetical vendor. I bumped it up to 30k for peace of mind. Secondly, if you bump it to one million plus, only those of us who are multi-millionaire Scrooge McDucks will even be able to do this AT ALL. So this will become the age old argument of "Who is the 1%?"

Let's play your game of hypotheticals though. 1 million for 100 credits. Uh, can you bash/fish 1 million gold in a week? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No. You can't. Not anymore. So microtransactions become a moot point because the only way to obtain a level 3 xpgain, would be to *le gasp* buy credits. Your vendor becomes useless.

To your point of number 3, this was back before gold drop nerfs that you could bash up a few hundred thousand gold within a few hours. Nowadays you can't do that because of the gold nerfs. Though I'm sure if I really tried, I might be able to get pretty close to somewhere in the high marks.

Again, either way, your hypothetical vendor is either useless because the gold prices are too high or the credits are too readily available and people just won't buy with real cash. Aetolia is a business just as much as it is a game and the business can not afford losing out on every player not buying credits, simply because they can buy it with IG gold. No cashflow = no game. It's just how business works.

Mihaketi

Rhyot said:

Ooooooooooooook..... so let's iron some things out then. For one, you can't exactly go and say that 30k is low for the system you're talking about when YOU were the one who said 15-20k initially for 100 cr from this hypothetical vendor. I bumped it up to 30k for peace of mind. Secondly, if you bump it to one million plus, only those of us who are multi-millionaire Scrooge McDucks will even be able to do this AT ALL. So this will become the age old argument of "Who is the 1%?"

I suppose the post may be confusing if you skim it. I said '15-20k per', as in, per credit. Not per 100. The state price is, as written in the OP, that high initially to soak the stockpiled money. The point of such a high price is to ensure that there's wiggle room for people reselling credits or buying them from org sales. As time goes on and gold stockpiles drop, and gold sources are tweaked, the price could also be tweaked. I assumed that I had made this clear, I apologise if it wasn't.

Rhyot said:

Let's play your game of hypotheticals though. 1 million for 100 credits. Uh, can you bash/fish 1 million gold in a week? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No. You can't. Not anymore. So microtransactions become a moot point because the only way to obtain a level 3 xpgain, would be to *le gasp* buy credits. Your vendor becomes useless.

See the first part of this response. Additionally, you're coming across as very hostile and I'm not certain why. I'm sorry if something in my post has been taken badly.

Rhyot said:

Again, either way, your hypothetical vendor is either useless because the gold prices are too high or the credits are too readily available and people just won't buy with real cash. Aetolia is a business just as much as it is a game and the business can not afford losing out on every player not buying credits, simply because they can buy it with IG gold. No cashflow = no game. It's just how business works.

I really don't feel like you're giving my posts a thorough read before responding, because everything in this quote has been previously addressed. To restate for clarity, the high prices would be placed initially to soak the gold stockpiles and then through an interative process of tweaking gold sources and credit prices, be brought to a manageable/effective point.

Aishia

Prolly just need to give it time to rebalance itself out.

Zaila

Rhyot said:

You can't exactly go and say that 30k is low for the system you're talking about when YOU were the one who said 15-20k initially for 100 cr from this hypothetical

I had read their original post as "15-20K gold per credit with a maximum of 100 credits purchase-able per howling."

Mihaketi

Zaila said:

I had read their original post as "15-20K gold per credit with a maximum of 100 credits purchase-able per howling."

RL week rather than howling, but otherwise yes.

Vaskar

Rhyot said:

Ooooooooooooook..... so let's iron some things out then. For one, you can't exactly go and say that 30k is low for the system you're talking about when YOU were the one who said 15-20k initially for 100 cr from this hypothetical vendor.

I assume he meant "15-20k per credit".

Rhyot

Here's another question for your hypothetical situation:

What's to stop a Scrooge McDuck player from just holding onto their gold and waiting until the admins drop the credit prices? Because I know for sure I aint gonna spend 15-30k on a single credit, I'll just hoard my gold like I have been and wait til they're dirt cheap. As I'm sure most other players would do as well.

Furthermore, I doubt the admins really want to dig into the whole 'Your real life money is only worth this much gold' debate. It's why they've left the credit market open to player control (for the most part). Because if that was the case, what's to stop the admins from just saying, "Ok guys, $40 will now get you 750k gold directly."

No matter how you spin it, I personally feel like this would be an absolutely terrible idea. If for no other reason than the fact that it would directly cut into credit sales.

Zaila

@Mihaketi - Oh! Thank you for that clarification, my bad, that restriction sounds much better than once-per-RL-day.
I would actually argue that with this system the admin would not ever drop this gold-to-credit price. Never. Make it set forever. Not unless the gold-accumulation gets butched again. This both stops people from hoarding with hope of lowered costs, and lets the economy stay more stable.

@Rhoyt
If you wouldn't spend your gold on this, that's fine, but I would if there were no credits on the market and there was something I wanted to buy. So, although you have plenty of gold that could use sinking, you're not really the target consumer for this hypothesized system.

Additionally, with the current state of the credit market, whatever money you spend IRL is almost guaranteed to net you the-current-average-credit-cost on the market. So, at the current average, 40$ (100 credits) is pretty much guaranteed to net me a solid 633K gold if I put them on the market- this is not a new feature of the game, this has always been a possibility.

*edited for spelling and because I missed something earlier which changed my point.

Toz

Plus literally, it's GOING to net you 633k +/- 30k or not anything at all since there's a mechanical cap on how high/low you can sell stuff.

Mazarine

@Rhyot
Then the answer is that you only get lower credit prices after you've spent X amount of money.

Let's say after every million gold you spend, you get 8% off the base price they set to a max of 32% off? 40% off? That way you're guaranteeing that if people want to get those low prices, they have to go through 4 million or 5 million to get them.

I really like the way this idea is shaped and think there could be some merit to it.

Leana

Toz said:

Plus literally, it's GOING to net you 633k +/- 30k or not anything at all since there's a mechanical cap on how high/low you can sell stuff.

For now, but then it goes up. The only cap mechanically is that it can't go up drastically in one go, but will go up or down over time. If I spent $40 on 100 credits and put it up at the max, then I'd of raised the average sale to that and so on. At one point the average sale was 7500. It isn't out of the realm to see the market going back to a higher number.

Axius

@Leana

I'm going to have to partially disagree with you, if only on the grounds that if there is no infusion or any sort of attempt to bring the Credit market back to life, then there's probably not going to be a chance for that to happen, since, as others have mentioned to my asking about it: The credits are usually snapped up quickly for whatever price they are, and rarely are they ever re-sold in any sort of manner.

Leana

Axius said:

@Leana

I'm going to have to partially disagree with you, if only on the grounds that if there is no infusion or any sort of attempt to bring the Credit market back to life, then there's probably not going to be a chance for that to happen, since, as others have mentioned to my asking about it: The credits are usually snapped up quickly for whatever price they are, and rarely are they ever re-sold in any sort of manner.

You missed the point. If they are snatched up quickly, then that means the system is working. If I set them for the max, the average goes up. You can't just say, 'Whatever price they are' as if that's not important. It is. You set the price, higher or lower, the average raises or drops and that in turn raises or drops the potential sale price. Anyone buying credits now and not reselling it are doing that because credits are worth more than gold.

The solution isn't to stimulate with more credits, it's to give gold more value. We can do that by adding more gold needs and benefits. They've started this with vials decaying quickly and having comm prices go up due to the loss of the war system, which makes crafted goods more expensive. The economy was broken for so long that so many are spoiled on 1 gold herbs and refills, less than 500g enchants, and even cheaper armor and weapons.

When mercantile is finally implemented and the number of people capable of making cures drops, prices will go up and create a more thriving economy. If I had to suggest one thing to fix the economy, above anything else, it would be to finish the limit on mercantiles to one. Even if you possess a class with one (Since class revamps are not happening anytime soon). This will put -more- value on Ascendril/Sciomancer(Not sure if this affects Syssin/Sentinels) class since they're going to be the only ones able to specialize in it. I know the argument is that the skillset is bad because one is dedicated to a crafting skill - it's been like that for ages and the revamp holding back this change is hurting the overall economy. Offer them full refunds if they rather be a concoctionist/reanimator/forger/venommilker. This is how Aetolia was in its early day, with cures locked down by the druids and sentinels.

Also, I'd love the suggested hunger system to eventually come out. That'd put more umph on food and spending gold on food.

Toz

I think the cap needs to be removed as well though - free market's the only way you're going to realistically see it being used again IMO - right now, if I think credits should sell at 10k per, I just sit on them. I'm not going to sell at a loss, and unless someone comes along and for whatever reason values credits 4k lower than me, but slightly higher than average, for a month? I'm never going to be able to sell. It puts this weird requirement that you sell over/under their actual value for a long time in order to reach that actual value, meaning that half the equation is being ripped off no matter which way you slice it...

If you take the cap away, and someone sells at 20k and someone sells at 10k, that's 100% valid to me. Granted, there should be a value for gold placed elsewhere in the game, otherwise that number's just going to continue to shoot up.

Leana

@Mihaketi

I forgot to mention this in my previous posts, but the NPC or vender will only kill the actual credit market. No one will sell credits lower than the NPC sells them. If the NPC sells them at the current average, it will only hinder the real money credit sales (which is what the credit market is for).

I also love EVE and the only thing that would be possible in Aetolia that mirrors that system is the creation of an item you can buy with gold that gives Elite Membership. The gold price would have to fluctuate and reflect the average sale price of credits on the credit market times 75, rounded up to the nearest 25,000. With current price, that makes 475,000 gold for one month of elite membership. Or you adjust the numbers. As a wild idea. For some people, that may be cheap and may need to be adjusted, but it would need testing to see if 475k or what variant it turns into, is even possible to be earned in a month's time.

Jensen

EVE has the playerbase and diversity for its economy to be what it is. It's hard to compare one of the best in game economies with Aetolia.

Aishia

Honestly this might be one of the few situations where just letting the status quo ride out is the surest way to let it fix itself.