Goldflation

Estarra

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2633
Date: 8/11/2016 at 5:15
From: Estarra the Eternal
To : Everyone
Subj: Goldflation

With a game as mature as Lusternia, one issue that we’ve been circling around is goldflation or the glut of gold that has been accumulating through the years. We’ve been monitoring the gold production and decided to try to curb gold received from influencing, bashing and quests. Last week, we tested for a few days what would happen if we lowered gold output across the board. However, not only did a universal reduction impact lower level players or more casual bashers, but it didn’t really give us the results because it was really only a handful of players who were outliers that were inflating daily gold generation.

Therefore, we are instituting a throttle on gold production on those players who generate 50,000 gold or more in a 24 hour period. For the vast majority of you, you won’t notice any difference. But if you are one of those who bash, influence or quest huge amounts of gold, you will notice gold generation scaling back once you accumulate a certain amount of gold.

As we continue to monitor and tweak the gold throttle, I’m also going to consider how to better utilize gold sinks, probably through increasing the cost of commodities or maybe even a gold cost for crafting. Again, the aim is to get at least a small handle on the goldflation issue which I hope we can all agree would be a good thing for the economy.

Please take some time to see how the gold throttle works and let me know what you think! Also, any feedback or suggestions on gold sinks would be welcome!

Dylara

In my very tired state of mind I read this as GODflation and got very very confused, but thankfully it's just about gold. I fit in the casual basher area so I don't see this having much to do with me, hope this works out!

Yarith

Goldencookies tho.

Shaddus

I like the general idea, but I'd much more prefer to see goldsinks as opposed to gold throttling.

Ayisdra

@Estarra How does this work with things like the wheel, curio rubbing or maps that make gold for you?

Breandryn

I'd just like to point out that the gold-to-credit ratio isn't entirely a bad thing. I know in IRE games it's usually a pain point, but if you look at it from ANOTHER angle, ie people selling credits vs buying them, it is very favorable. A new player coming into this game can spend like $20 (cheap!) and get a nice amount of gold for things they need.

Prices for goods will need to be pushed down if that option is to continue; if the cost of a sword, for example, suddenly relatively doubles, the game economy is now a lot more hostile to new entrants. The issue is twofold: first, the change itself will shake up credit prices, which will affect new players (this seems risky to explore when we are currently in the middle of an influx of players) and second, when prices for goods aren't pushed down, because enough existing players with legacy gold still provide a demand for services - tonic, cookies, etc will likely fit this ticket.

I do not think it's wise to implement a knee-jerk change in an attempt to lower credit prices due to the influx of new players (perhaps I am mistaken on the impetus behind this change), without fully exploring all of the facets of prices. From a commercial standpoint, the high credit prices are actually a draw for people who spend RL money on the game, and tanking that price can hinder credit sales. From an IG economic standpoint, this will not do much without a goldsink to accompany it, to flush out the existing gold from the system.

Everiine

"If the cost of a sword, for example, suddenly relatively doubles, the game economy is now a lot more hostile to new entrants."

This is exactly what happened a few years ago. Literally. All designs had their commodities doubled, which was a killer on new warriors especially who already needed to fork out tens of thousands of gold to equip themselves with the basics. It affected newbies and lowbies and did nothing to curb gold inflation.

There are plenty of ways in which gold is just too plentiful right now. Example: Hifarae Hills is a low/midbie area, and because of the gold "build up" that happens when a mob/creature isn't killed in a while, I've made thousands from just the 8 spirits there. Mobs dropping more than a couple hundred gold is just too much. And with so many artifacts designed to purposefully circumvent a gold-dependent economy, gold just about literally falls into people's laps. @Ayisdra has a very valid point.

Ssaliss

One comment re: gold sinks: Please don't up the cost of commodities. This will only make it harder for newbies to get into the game by upping the entry cost; it won't really affect older players, since they already have ways to make lots of gold. In the same spirit, if you add a gold cost for crafting, make sure it won't make armour and swords double in prices; rather, add the larger outlay costs to luxury items like artisan goods, clothing, and bookbindings. (Also, if a gold cost for crafting gets introduced, add a royalty for designers, so if someone crafts something with a gold outlay of, say, 300 gold, said designer gets 100 of that gold.)

Another way to go with gold sinks is to add gold-buyable buffs. For 100k gold, you could get +10% damage for an hour, or a regen buff, or higher resistances, etc. Tie it into masochism to make all buffs strictly PvE. Yes, it makes you bash quicker, but odds are you won't break even on the gold. It might also help level the playing field a bit during world games; while the artied-out person will always run around with 13/13 resistance in everything, those who can't afford said arties might reach those levels during the hour of the world game by paying out a million or two in gold instead.

Lavinya

It would also be nice if we could offer larger amounts of gold to divine. You might find people willing to drop a lot of gold into that.

Saran

Kinda echoing the comm price concern. Sure, it really doesn't affect me, it only hits the lowbies.

I've mentioned it before, but I'd personally really love a... well gold sink in my manse :P. More options to expand and improve them (either compatible with ships or not... I have one of each >_>). Though my dream of upgrading my manse into a village (you'd have the manse as a manor and then could build up the "surrounding areas") that you can attract mobs to (like terraria/starbound) is both niche and too complicates :P

Twytch

Lavinya said:

It would also be nice if we could offer larger amounts of gold to divine. You might find people willing to drop a lot of gold into that.

Buy esteem!

Falaeron

So I just handed a bunch of aslaran to the krokani cook in the Moors. Each should give 100 gold and I was up to about 125k gold for the day. My results: 17, 16, 1, 3, 21, 24, 15, 19, 2, 4, 20, 6, 6, 3, 18, 5, 20, 21, 13, 7, 8, 22, 11, 16

This kind of confirms my theory that starting at 50k your gold drops will be multiplied by a random number within certain limits that decrease as you get more gold.

Personally I think this is currently way too steep. It also completely nerfs gold buffs from things like golden cookies, poteen and even the artifact commandant's shoulderknot. It also does absolutely nothing for the gold already in the game.

Saran

Wouldn't the various gold gen buffs then derive value from helping you generate the 50k more quickly? If you wanted to go above that then you'd need to... well get money from other players (credits, trades, selling services)

I just want something to spend the gold on really.

Falaeron

When you have to spend gold to make gold up to a certain (very low) point, then you might as well not spend it.

Lerad

Perhaps it's time to repurpose the gold buffs to something else, then. Maybe a buff that shortens the user's beast attack beast balance cost (while leaving other PVP beast effects the same, etc) If not, then just "delete" them by making them do the same thing as an exp/essence or other existing buffs. Of course, more goldsinks in addition to this throttling will probably be a good idea too.

Ciaran

Or make the gold buffs modify the point where you start seeing diminishing returns.

Falaeron

I think one side effect that was probably missed is that a lot of these people who were the outliers also spread the gold around. They would give large sums of gold to novices so that they could buy all the necessities. Unless prices of these things go down we're going to see a lot of novices struggle to make the gold necessary to stock up. I don't think that's healthy at all.

Ssaliss

A newbie won't make 50k per hour (at least no real newbie will), so they won't be affected by this at all. The people who made a lot of gold will still make a lot of gold, and they'll still be able to spend it on newbies.

And yes, while I agree that this won't do anything about the gold already in the system, that can't really be used as an excuse. "Oh, the oil spill is pretty large, so it doesn't matter if we keep pumping in more oil". Yeah, no. Do we need more stuff to spend gold on? Absolutely. Reducing the gold income is also needed though.

Ciaran

I agree @Ssaliss. It's one step in a many-step solution. I think this is actually a nice way of starting to deal with the problem because it helps fight the concentration of wealth. It sucks for the hard-core earners like yourself Falmiis, but in broader terms it's good for the game

Saran

Seems like two different issues though.
1. Novices/lowbies should be able to reasonably get sufficient money to set themselves up in their class. (has anyone tried recently to see how difficult it is?)

2. Older characters don't have enough things to spend gold on (or those things aren't attractive enough).

Dropping prices to fix 1 also means a bit of extra gold for 2

@Ssaliss it's 50k a day :P (might have been a typo)

Falaeron

I mean, I used to just give 50k to newbies to get them started like it's nothing because I know how difficult it can be as a relatively recent newbie myself. I probably won't be able to do that anymore. That's all I'm saying.

Ssaliss

Ooh, it's 50k a RL day. For some reason, I thought it was 50k per IC day (I blame my insomnia and only having slept like 3 hours)... Yeah, that's perhaps a bit low; it could easily be upped to 100k at least. It'll still cut those who make that much per hour short, and I doubt any real newbies will reach 50k a RL day either, but yeah.

And yeah, those two problems is a real issue. That's why I proposed gold buffs and layouts for luxury items; they aren't needed by newbies, but older players with gold to spare can use it as a gold sink.

Saran

If only we could tax the rich, I would entirely be happy to spend that money on guild/org enhancements

EDIT: Though also, once again suggesting that we should have an easy way to purchase copies of published books. Maybe we could request them from the library, a percentage goes to the author, another percentage goes to org, and then the remainder goes off into the ether?

It wouldn't grab much, but I can't be the only one who would kind enjoy building their own library in their manse. (okay, maybe I am whatever :P)

Breandryn

Again, as a "newbie" to the game, who buys credits (I would think I'm the desired market?) - this change seems unappealing. I very much enjoy the credit to gold ratio. Why would you cater to the people who aren't buying things with real money over those who are?

Daraius

You're making a weird assumption that top gold earners/hoarders aren't buying credits.

Breandryn

I'm not? I'm saying that newbies buying credits will see less value for them...

Edit: Over newbies who are buying credits IG. Sorry, thought that was clear. This seems to be why the change was made.

Xenthos

No, goldflation is not solely related to the credit market. It affects a lot of things (the entire economy). Raising commodity prices is a bad idea, to me, but reducing the gold coming into the game and increasing methods to get gold out of the game is not a bad thing. As long as it does not involve higher commodity prices (which negatively impacts lowfolk far more than established players), it should be generally good all around. Yes, a specific player might get less gold per credit, but a more balanced market is really for the best.

Note that I do not say a cheap market; recently our market has been pretty barren of credits in general. Efforts to make it more vibrant and healthier are needed & appreciated imo.

Luce

Breandryn said:

I'm not? I'm saying that newbies buying credits will see less value for them...

Edit: Over newbies who are buying credits IG. Sorry, thought that was clear. This seems to be why the change was made.

I've seen this argument a few times, and want to point out that in a niche community like ours, trying to balance the in-game economy based on disposable real-life income probably isn't the healthiest option. Sure, you might be able to 'generate' 500K gold by spending ~10 USD, but A- that same 500k came from the in-game economy and it takes some players weeks to build it up and others a couple of days; and B- not everyone can spare the $10US whenever they need gold.

I'm going to echo the idea that gold outlays for necessities might not be the route to go. Newbies are the ones who really need those things more than established players, who oftentimes have at least one or two repurchasable items (robes, plate, clothing, or jewelry) runed and therefore permanent, resetting, and no longer a drain on that player's resources (except maybe to re-enchant them if the player isn't the right flavour of enchanter and doesn't know one with a powerplex jewel). Even if the outlays paid royalties to the designer so that 90% of the gold left the economy per design made, A-10% doesn't, and B-established players often know what to put into a design to make it attractive, and will, again, see more returns from this than a newbie ever will.

Lavinya

Give me more incentive to spend my gold. I don't really need credits right now, so I have a lot of gold. Leeching it by increasing gold outlays is unappealing. Increasing comm prices won't hurt anyone but newbies - my rift is overflowing thanks to genies, and I have manse comm farms, as do others who sell them super cheap. It won't hurt me to add an extra 50 gems to designs, but it will hurt the newer crafters who don't have the same resources.

Perhaps the new disposable candies could be purchasable with gold? I'd probably be more inclined to use them if I knew I could go and buy more -not- for credits. Or bring back the tonics for high gold prices? Blowing disposable income (my in game gold) on disposable buffs is something I'd enjoy.

Everiine

What about making some current credit/dingbat only items also available for a super high gold price, even for a limited time? Buying them with credits would still be the easier, cheaper, desirable way, but for people with obscene amounts of gold, who are probably the ones buying lots of credits with RL money anyway, it could give them a reason to part with the gold they don't need anyway.

Shedrin

A few thoughts:

A small amount of inflation is good, as it provides an incentive to spend, as otherwise the value of the gold you have decreases over time compared to things you could buy. However, right now, there is very little to actually spend gold on for most players.

Gold sinks are good to manage the rate of inflation, however there's only a few actual gold sinks. Buying things from player shops, or credits on the credit market is not a gold sink, it just transfers the gold from one player to another. The biggest gold sinks are manse-related, the demand for that goes down significantly over time. There's only so many manse rooms and aetherships a player or org needs. Further, the aethermanse shop does not change price with the economy, so it doesn't provide that pressure to spend.

Increasing commodity prices does very little to decrease the amount of gold in the game. Most commodities nowadays are from village tithes, manse commodity producers and presents.

I don't really like the idea of limiting how much gold a player can produce per day. Instead I'd look at adjusting the gold buildup on mobs, and especially the gold produced by things such as maps.

I do like the idea of introducing temporary buffs sold for gold.

Idea: Create an NPC that would sell temporary buffs for gold. These buffs can be used immediately, or can be worked on by tradeskills to improve them, with an additional commodity cost. This should provide some more value to both gold and commodities, if the buffs are compelling enough and the cost is right.