I also disagree that we earned it brokenly. I already stated earlier that this gold cap change would have barely affected me. I have collected my gold over the years at a slow and steady pace and it just kind of builds up. I am not generating hundreds of thousands a day. Painting everyone with the same brush here is pretty bizarre. We do not all play the game the same way.
If you want to "level the field," then give us something worth spending on. Don't tar us all with the "abusing a broken system" label.
If the system is broken enough to need fixing, that inherently implies anything earned in that system is likewise broken.
Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
What I'm against is the idea that to correct an issue simply must involve us maintaining the status quo; everybody maintaining our e-numbers as we always have. An actual Economy Overhaul doesn't seem out of the question, to me.
We have to be open to all options, not just the convenient ones.
Nobody is suggesting keeping the status quo. You are, however, the only one suggesting punishing people for having played the game for a long time and accumulating resources. An economy overhaul done well will balance resources in the system out over time, and should not require punitive measures based upon past actions.
I also disagree that we earned it brokenly. I already stated earlier that this gold cap change would have barely affected me. I have collected my gold over the years at a slow and steady pace and it just kind of builds up. I am not generating hundreds of thousands a day. Painting everyone with the same brush here is pretty bizarre. We do not all play the game the same way.
If you want to "level the field," then give us something worth spending on. Don't tar us all with the "abusing a broken system" label.
If the system is broken enough to need fixing, that inherently implies anything earned in that system is likewise broken.
This is flat-out inherently wrong. The only way it can be right is if there is only one way to earn gold, but there is not. There are many, many ways-- some more broken than others. I mean, our real-world economy is broken in many ways, but the dollars I make are not themselves "broken" (Sure, they are perhaps less than I would like, but I am certainly not getting rich doing nothing). Just because part of a system generates far more resources for certain individuals than everyone else does not mean that all those others' gains are equally abusive to the system.
I'm just thinking out loud here and riffing on some other ideas being thrown about. What if wheel spins, gifts, curios, etc. no longer give out gold or commodities or potions. Rather, they give out varying degrees of essence dust. Essence dust can be converted at the nexus into specific essence (shadowy, silvery, etc.) usable for power quests. It also can be used as an ingredient for specialty potions (fruit pizzazz, kiwi punch, golden tonic, argleblaster). Maybe also a special consumable in cooking? Any other ideas what it could be used for?
Sounds pretty neat actually, I might be more willing to use those specialty potions if we had an in-game way of generating / creating more. Would be way better than an exceptional present that contains crotamine or whatever (which I actually did just receive).
My question is would we rather reward someone for being around for a year, building up their wealth by getting gold half an hour a day, or someone who is new and spends a whole month gathering gold for six hours each day?
I am one of those long-view players. I invest on things based on what will happen over an extended period of time. I also really doubt that many new players are getting to 100,000 gold in six hours every day during their first month, so are not really hitting the harder curve of this change. As such, both benefit mostly equally (which is good!).
I assume that's what you are trying to get at, at least.
I also disagree that we earned it brokenly. I already stated earlier that this gold cap change would have barely affected me. I have collected my gold over the years at a slow and steady pace and it just kind of builds up. I am not generating hundreds of thousands a day. Painting everyone with the same brush here is pretty bizarre. We do not all play the game the same way.
If you want to "level the field," then give us something worth spending on. Don't tar us all with the "abusing a broken system" label.
If the system is broken enough to need fixing, that inherently implies anything earned in that system is likewise broken.
This is flat-out inherently wrong. The only way it can be right is if there is only one way to earn gold, but there is not. There are many, many ways-- some more broken than others. I mean, our real-world economy is broken in many ways, but the dollars I make are not themselves "broken" (Sure, they are perhaps less than I would like, but I am certainly not getting rich doing nothing). Just because part of a system generates far more resources for certain individuals than everyone else does not mean that all those others' gains are equally abusive to the system.
I know I'm the only one to suggest this so far; it's the only reason I even bothered to speak up in the first place. I think it's an important angle being overlooked.
I really think we need not to think of such things as a "punishment". You yourself said it would do nothing. Somebody is going to be unhappy, no matter what happens.
But yes, all gold does indeed not glitter the same.
Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
I said it would do nothing useful. It would, however, irk quite a few of us... and I can see no good reason to tick off players by doing something that does not even help. That is pretty much exactly what punishment is, so telling us to avoid calling it that is silly. We are going to think of it as exactly what it is. :P
The problem vis a vis gold stockpiles and high earners is (in part) that there are no incentives for that gold to circulate and eventually drain out.
The way to deal with stockpiles is to get that gold to move elsewhere and eventually sink out of the game, not to flat take it away. Again, one of the methods for doing this could be to restructure organizational gold costing activities, so that they're more inclined to generate tax revenue and offer reward structures for dumping gold into org coffers on a case-by-case basis. This is one tool that could be used to touch non-org stockpiles 'intelligently' instead of as a blanket patch that might cause unexpected results.
There are currently only two issues with giant player stockpiles: it makes it difficult to price any pay-gold-for-rewards effects, which will be a necessary part of fixing the economy in general. In other words, it's not an issue now but it probably will interfere with fixing other things that are current issues. The second problem is that it helps to reinforce "gold doesn't matter" in that people with even minor stockpiles (a few hundred thousand gold) have no incentive to move other people's gold around. In other words, they don't need to charge anything for economic activities, stymieing people who have an investment in generating income for trades and so on.
As far as pricing goes, good incentives for spending it should help those stockpiles regulate over time-- that is how I would like to see it. As such, you don't really have to take them into account for pricing consumables (which is great, because we have seen what happens when they are taken into account for one-off purchases).
Yeah. I meant more for pricing gold sink effects, stuff that is intended to take gold out of the game en masse without being a) overpowered or b) punitively expensive. The stockpiles do affect player good pricing, but the effect tends to be that consumables are priced cheaper.
I said it would do nothing useful. It would, however, irk quite a few of us... and I can see no good reason to tick off players by doing something that does not even help. That is pretty much exactly what punishment is, so telling us to avoid calling it that is silly. We are going to think of it as exactly what it is. :P
That it would irk you does not mean it wouldn't help. Being unwilling to see that it could help you, just for the sake of temporarily hurt feelings, is the only thing keeping it from helping. IMHO.
Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
We're not going to remove gold from people or remove throttle (though I may loosen it). Don't really think either discussions on those lines will be productive.
Would be interested in constructive feedback on essence dust, especially ideas on what it could be used for!
I said it would do nothing useful. It would, however, irk quite a few of us... and I can see no good reason to tick off players by doing something that does not even help. That is pretty much exactly what punishment is, so telling us to avoid calling it that is silly. We are going to think of it as exactly what it is. :P
That it would irk you does not mean it wouldn't help. Being unwilling to see that it could help you, just for the sake of temporarily hurt feelings, is the only thing keeping it from helping. IMHO.
Uhhh, no. You cannot magically wave your hands and say "Hey, you know all that gold that you are not spending anyways? If we remove it from you it will totally help the economy!" and expect anyone to believe it. I am unwilling to believe it because it is just flat-out unbelievable. There is no chance that taking that gold away will help anyone.
I said it would do nothing useful. It would, however, irk quite a few of us... and I can see no good reason to tick off players by doing something that does not even help. That is pretty much exactly what punishment is, so telling us to avoid calling it that is silly. We are going to think of it as exactly what it is. :P
That it would irk you does not mean it wouldn't help. Being unwilling to see that it could help you, just for the sake of temporarily hurt feelings, is the only thing keeping it from helping. IMHO.
Uhhh, no. You cannot magically wave your hands and say "Hey, you know all that gold that you are not spending anyways? If we remove it from you it will totally help the economy!" and expect anyone to believe it. I am unwilling to believe it because it is just flat-out unbelievable. There is no chance that taking that gold away will help anyone.
This is not, nor has been, the entirety of my point. Rather I am trying to emphasize just an aspect of solutions we have historically been completely unwilling to look at. Because we have to maintain things as they are, but why? Though this is devolving into competing strawmen anyway, so I'll drop it.
Dust seems an interesting alternative, at least for its flexibility, but honestly it doesn't seem practically different than adding more gold into the system, as we're already doing anyway. It's just calling it something else.
It really seems important to me to figure out how to take things out of the system, rather than adding more to it.
Mayor Steingrim, the Grand Schema says to you, "Well, as I recall you kinda leave a mark whereever you go."
Everyone is agreeing that the game's economy is not healthy, and that it is literally impossible these days for a shopkeeper to turn a profit, but just making gold itself more valuable isn't going to help.
To a degree, it actually will. Right now, shopkeepers are having a hard time turning a profit because there are too many trans tradespeople who don't value gold at all; they'll make stuff for people and even supply the comms, simply because they have no real interest in making gold.
By increasing the actual value of gold, and giving it a purpose, you will also reduce the number of those tradespeople. A larger amount of shopkeepers will start charging a decent amount for their goods, and people will simply have to pay that amount. Will it increase the cost for clothes, weapons and armor? A bit, perhaps, but in the long run, I think it'll be healthy for the economy.
I don't really think it follows that making gold more valuable (by making it more scarce) will reduce the number of trades people. You have to directly combat the problem of a huge number of tradespeople who have no interest in making profit. I think you can start by:
1) Remove the (big) user-only combat benefits from trade skills, particularly the big trans trade benefits of Tailoring, Tattoos, and Forging. These combat perks encourage people to learn the skills even if they have no investment in the economic aspect of the trade skills. This leads to a host of tailors who only incidentally make clothing, and do so at or below cost.
2) Make trades opt-in. Require a credit investment to join a crafting skill, and discount the lesson cost by some similar amount. Again, that might encourage only people who actually have an interest in supplying the economy to buy in.
Hopefully, if it becomes more reasonable to accrue existing gold at rates comparable to those at which you can simply generate new gold by bashing, it will become possible to make back your credit investment in a reasonable time frame, putting profit on shopkeeper's radars.
Part of that is making there be some reason to want to accrue gold outside of purchasing credits, because it may never be possible to reasonably make back your credit investment with gold wealth through shopkeeping. In other words, there needs to be enough value in gold independent of credits to be potentially equivalent to the credit investment of being a tradesperson.
Throwing this out there: please do not lump Tattoos in that category. Tattoos as a tradeskill is very different from the other two because you likely only sell to one customer, one time, and that's it. People don't switch tattoos often, and I don't know of anyone (and if you are someone feel free to contradict me) who is regularly making a lot of gold at tattooing. I'm not using this as a format to complain about Tattoos. I think it works fine as is. Without the combat aspect of Tattoos though, I doubt a lot of people would take it. Also worth noting here: Tattoos currently gives less armor than basic armor most people can wear. If it weren't for the 2/7 buffs monks get from using tattoos instead of normal armor, there would be incredibly little reason to take the skill as is!
I don't think anyone is suggesting we do away with the throttle entirely. It's just that in its current implementation it is far too restrictive and is too disincentivising for those of us who do want to bash/influence/quest for more than 30 minutes a day. There's a balance to be struck and I think we've gone too far the other way.
The problem with trying to create gold sinks is that unless these come in the form of things that the people hoarding all of this gold wants, the stockpile that has already been built up will not be affected in any way. The problem is that the types of people who have these stockpiles are also the types of people who probably already have everything they need. They're likely already sitting on full buffs/resistances and won't need any of the things like blessings that have been suggested.
There are already gold sinks in the game. Travel curios are basically endless gold sinks. Aetherships/manses can also take a lot of gold to make.
@Riluna : You should not drop it because of "strawmen," you should drop it because Estarra said it is not happening and it is diverting from the actually relevant & useful part of the conversation (and I am stating this because even after you said you are dropping it, you ended your post with a sentence that I literally cannot reply to without starting it again).
Just let it go, please, and let's focus on more productive things.
I support pretty much anything that takes gold out of presents and whatnot. Converting dust into Triple Junction drinks is good. I don't know that anyone would ever turn it into essence when there are alternatives, but I don't see any reason not to include the option.
Alternatives to drinks:
Single shot Lirangshan mist, for all the times when I influence the wrong guy in a quest and need to wait out a reset. Price it at a point where it's too expensive to have much of an impact on revolts.
Old dolls. We can get them from presents anyway, but the odds of getting the one you want are tiny. Make it a choose-your-own-doll deal.
Czigany curio pieces. The ones that only come from presents/wheel/etc.
Single shot astral node refiller. Doesn't put any more power into the game than an equivalent amount of essence, but putting it in a node is a lot more useful than taking it as essence.
Ikon packs where we can specify the group and/or rarity.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
Forgers can use essence dust + commodities to create temporary enhancements for a weapon.
Bookbinders can create empowered origami with dust to grant 1/5 mana buff.
Jewelers can make a piece of jewelry extra shiny with dust + some comms to increase the prestige, and make it output in colour when someone LOOKs at the player wearing it.
Throwing this out there: please do not lump Tattoos in that category. Tattoos as a tradeskill is very different from the other two because you likely only sell to one customer, one time, and that's it. People don't switch tattoos often, and I don't know of anyone (and if you are someone feel free to contradict me) who is regularly making a lot of gold at tattooing. I'm not using this as a format to complain about Tattoos. I think it works fine as is. Without the combat aspect of Tattoos though, I doubt a lot of people would take it. Also worth noting here: Tattoos currently gives less armor than basic armor most people can wear. If it weren't for the 2/7 buffs monks get from using tattoos instead of normal armor, there would be incredibly little reason to take the skill as is!
Tattoos is in that category potentially, but suffers from other problems related to usability and durability of goods that date from its conception. The original Tattoos thread has long screeds on the topic that I am sure are still relevant. It's just a pain to get all the tattoos you want or need designed, and it takes so long to get them actually tattooed on you. After that point, you never have to pay another gold sovereign to any tattooist, so all of the business is new players. Of course, the buffs have been nerfed and are not necessarily well known to truly new players so the customer base is even smaller: new characters of existing players who are interested in really min/maxing a character and who haven't already done so with someone else.
@Xenthos has touched on part of this problem lightly as it pertains to all of the crafting skills: The cartel and design system is such a clunky pain in the ass that it's often not worth it to try and make a profit when you need to deal with the state of the economy AND fight tooth and nail with the designing system as well.
The solution to the problem is to fix combat effects on trades and fix said trades.
I don't think anyone is suggesting we do away with the throttle entirely. It's just that in its current implementation it is far too restrictive and is too disincentivising for those of us who do want to bash/influence/quest for more than 30 minutes a day. There's a balance to be struck and I think we've gone too far the other way.
The problem with trying to create gold sinks is that unless these come in the form of things that the people hoarding all of this gold wants, the stockpile that has already been built up will not be affected in any way. The problem is that the types of people who have these stockpiles are also the types of people who probably already have everything they need. They're likely already sitting on full buffs/resistances and won't need any of the things like blessings that have been suggested.
There are already gold sinks in the game. Travel curios are basically endless gold sinks. Aetherships/manses can also take a lot of gold to make.
No. That's not at all what gold sinks are for. @Xenthos has made this point, and he's correct: those people with really giant stockpiles aren't necessarily the actual problem here. You need to have game wide gold drains that everyone will want or need to buy into to a) lower the amount of gold in circulation (which true hordes are not) and b) create incentives for circulating and redistributing gold so that the best way for a given (non-horded) character to accrue significant sums of gold gold is no longer adding gold to the game, but doing things to collect that gold from the low grade generation of other players. As the existing gold sinks are really niche items and the best way to get gold for them is to bash, most of the game's gold just sits around or lazily circles. If there is less gold generation from bashing, players who are interested in big ticket items have more of an incentive to soak up gold from other players and sink it out, instead of just generating the gold through time spent bashing.
Travel curios are kinda useless niche items that take so much gold to gain any use outside of potential spins. Because the pool of people trading the pieces is so tiny, you basically need to complete any given curio entirely on your own, and at that point a lot of people who might have been interested stop. The bar of entry is way too high for most casual investors.
Manses are a weird case. Personally, I have zero interest in a tiny area that is an utterly unstructured, partially OOC area, that only I or people I drag am likely to see. It's a lot of cost to bugger off and play your own game divorced from most of the rest of the game. It has a niche sink use as aethership terrain.
@Estarra, One thing I was wondering about is if we could build some services into guilds that they charge for money (getting a portion of it and the rest disappearing). Like it would provide a new sink and help guilds/factions raise funds which seem like more assured candidate for dropping the money on newbie packs or dropping large sums out of the system by upgrading/expanding their territory.
One thought I had was if you could hire a dweller from each guild, it could have a decently sized initial investment along with money that you pay the dweller over time. Maybe the dweller from each guild could offer the suggested extra perks to the person who has hired them? Could also have them require their own room in a manse (maybe one that's free of other stuff like mines/crafting tables etc) which would provide additional costs, especially if the dweller only provides their buff to the person that hired them.
There might also be other manse, or otherwise, services that guilds could provide which also provide additional fees.
Regarding essence dust, I'm thinking it would take gold to transfer dust from one player to another. Let's say it costs 10 gold to transfer 1 dust to another player. Thus, 100 dust would cost 1000 gold to transfer. Of course, you could charge the transferee some agreed upon amount. Transferring 100 dust for 2000 gold, for instance, would net you 1000 gold. Anyway, I'm thinking something along those lines.
Could possibly expand it to charge gold for transferring dingbats or credits as well, including a gold tax in the credit market. Let's say there's a charge of 1000 gold transferring each dingbat or credit. It's high but not a ridiculous amount (imho) and would be feasible gold sink.
A gold tax on the credit market stops people from flipping but with a throttle in place and the prices how they currently are, someone will be lucky enough to bash a credit, let alone 2 daily before the tax comes in. Edit: it's probably fine though.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
Comments
Look forwards to where we want to go.
I assume that's what you are trying to get at, at least.
I really think we need not to think of such things as a "punishment". You yourself said it would do nothing. Somebody is going to be unhappy, no matter what happens.
But yes, all gold does indeed not glitter the same.
The way to deal with stockpiles is to get that gold to move elsewhere and eventually sink out of the game, not to flat take it away. Again, one of the methods for doing this could be to restructure organizational gold costing activities, so that they're more inclined to generate tax revenue and offer reward structures for dumping gold into org coffers on a case-by-case basis. This is one tool that could be used to touch non-org stockpiles 'intelligently' instead of as a blanket patch that might cause unexpected results.
There are currently only two issues with giant player stockpiles: it makes it difficult to price any pay-gold-for-rewards effects, which will be a necessary part of fixing the economy in general. In other words, it's not an issue now but it probably will interfere with fixing other things that are current issues. The second problem is that it helps to reinforce "gold doesn't matter" in that people with even minor stockpiles (a few hundred thousand gold) have no incentive to move other people's gold around. In other words, they don't need to charge anything for economic activities, stymieing people who have an investment in generating income for trades and so on.
Would be interested in constructive feedback on essence dust, especially ideas on what it could be used for!
Dust seems an interesting alternative, at least for its flexibility, but honestly it doesn't seem practically different than adding more gold into the system, as we're already doing anyway. It's just calling it something else.
It really seems important to me to figure out how to take things out of the system, rather than adding more to it.
The problem with trying to create gold sinks is that unless these come in the form of things that the people hoarding all of this gold wants, the stockpile that has already been built up will not be affected in any way. The problem is that the types of people who have these stockpiles are also the types of people who probably already have everything they need. They're likely already sitting on full buffs/resistances and won't need any of the things like blessings that have been suggested.
There are already gold sinks in the game. Travel curios are basically endless gold sinks. Aetherships/manses can also take a lot of gold to make.
Just let it go, please, and let's focus on more productive things.
Alternatives to drinks:
Single shot Lirangshan mist, for all the times when I influence the wrong guy in a quest and need to wait out a reset. Price it at a point where it's too expensive to have much of an impact on revolts.
Old dolls. We can get them from presents anyway, but the odds of getting the one you want are tiny. Make it a choose-your-own-doll deal.
Czigany curio pieces. The ones that only come from presents/wheel/etc.
Single shot astral node refiller. Doesn't put any more power into the game than an equivalent amount of essence, but putting it in a node is a lot more useful than taking it as essence.
Ikon packs where we can specify the group and/or rarity.
Forgers can use essence dust + commodities to create temporary enhancements for a weapon.
Bookbinders can create empowered origami with dust to grant 1/5 mana buff.
Jewelers can make a piece of jewelry extra shiny with dust + some comms to increase the prestige, and make it output in colour when someone LOOKs at the player wearing it.
@Xenthos has touched on part of this problem lightly as it pertains to all of the crafting skills: The cartel and design system is such a clunky pain in the ass that it's often not worth it to try and make a profit when you need to deal with the state of the economy AND fight tooth and nail with the designing system as well.
The solution to the problem is to fix combat effects on trades and fix said trades.
Create temporary one-way portal from an aetherbubble to aetherplex.
Temporary omniscience.
Temporary tattoos.
Empowered vitae potion, can be used to resurrect a corpse, costs 10p on use.
The ability to turn a LOT of essence dust into a czigany coin for when you obtain them from non-wheel sources.
An item to increase the odds for you to generate a tradecurio.
(which true hordes are not) and b) create incentives for circulating and redistributing gold so that the best way for a given (non-horded) character to accrue significant sums of gold gold is no longer adding gold to the game, but doing things to collect that gold from the low grade generation of other players. As the existing gold sinks are really niche items and the best way to get gold for them is to bash, most of the game's gold just sits around or lazily circles. If there is less gold generation from bashing, players who are interested in big ticket items have more of an incentive to soak up gold from other players and sink it out, instead of just generating the gold through time spent bashing.
Travel curios are kinda useless niche items that take so much gold to gain any use outside of potential spins. Because the pool of people trading the pieces is so tiny, you basically need to complete any given curio entirely on your own, and at that point a lot of people who might have been interested stop. The bar of entry is way too high for most casual investors.
Manses are a weird case. Personally, I have zero interest in a tiny area that is an utterly unstructured, partially OOC area, that only I or people I drag am likely to see. It's a lot of cost to bugger off and play your own game divorced from most of the rest of the game. It has a niche sink use as aethership terrain.
One thought I had was if you could hire a dweller from each guild, it could have a decently sized initial investment along with money that you pay the dweller over time. Maybe the dweller from each guild could offer the suggested extra perks to the person who has hired them?
Could also have them require their own room in a manse (maybe one that's free of other stuff like mines/crafting tables etc) which would provide additional costs, especially if the dweller only provides their buff to the person that hired them.
There might also be other manse, or otherwise, services that guilds could provide which also provide additional fees.
Could possibly expand it to charge gold for transferring dingbats or credits as well, including a gold tax in the credit market. Let's say there's a charge of 1000 gold transferring each dingbat or credit. It's high but not a ridiculous amount (imho) and would be feasible gold sink.
Edit: it's probably fine though.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it