There are actually quite a few emoji on the forums; far more than are available from the dropdown. Like this one:
I wish there was a list of them all, but you can get a few matches by typing : followed by a letter. For instance, :a will bring up angry ( ), anguished ( ), astonished ( ), naughty ( ) and rage ( ). It's darn cumbersome though, and hard to get a complete list of them that way.
I just found a website that has a bunch of the old ones (and even some from the old old forums!).
Anyways, Goldflation.
Avurekhos says, "Dylara's a PvP menace in my eyes, totes rekting face."
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable. Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
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SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
New conflict systems are really ranging far from the matter at hand. Indeed, we've tossed around some of these ideas before! That said, we could have maintenance fees for controlling villages and aetherspheres (and domoths?). If the org fails to pay, they would just go into play early.
Conflict systems with maintenance would seem to be part of the matter at hand. Source of commodity valuation by continued (potential) expense. Mind you, I like conflict but this also has potential to cause grief. Making villages cost comms when they donate comms seems strange. Constructs could cost commodities to maintain, maybe bursts every year or they fall apart? Formerly constructs COST power to maintain, now they donate a huge amount.
Perhaps you could bribe individuals though for village feelings, I like the RP of that.
No, no, I was thinking gold cost upkeep, not commodities.
What about bribing them to increase village feelings?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
How about minor buffs that organisations can buy with gold and some power. These will probably double up a bit with domoth and other buffs though. Things like a 1/10 to all influencing types or 5% experience gain for 24 hours at the cost of 100k gold and 1k power.
If I were a CL, I'd pay org gold to give everyone favors, xp bonuses and such.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
As long as whatever you're paying the gold for won't generate more gold, it's generally speaking a goldsink that we can explore adding. Whether it'll be efficient enough to justify the coding effort is a question that I think, can be addressed by prioritizing which to add over time. I think wanting more new things isn't a bad idea - it's not like having new shiny things are bad, unless they create more gold (which we're trying to not do).
It's the same with the new currency idea. It's shiny and new, and complicated, but it certainly can play a part in reducing the amount of gold that is generated in the system. We can skip the new currency and get the same results if we want, of course, but that raises the question of what to do with gold generating artifacts like mines, genies and maps.
At the end of the day, the new currency is a way to continue to give these old artifacts that are being a part of the endless gold generation problem some continued value in the future, especially if refunds are not possible.
Gold upkeep for villages is not a bad idea, as long as the individual player doesn't see the cost coming out of their own pocket. I think we have enough org funds to handle that. Streamlining the process will help. Making it automatically deduct from the org's bank accounts, turning some of the more manual ways of generating org gold to automatic ones (so Culture Ministers don't have to harangue their citizens to keep doing things) etc etc.
For example, right now, shop taxes are paid manually. If org funds become needed to maintain villages, then the org coffers will need to be kept constantly filled up. (Not that they're in any danger of being emptied at the moment, but still, bear with me for a moment). If the CL has to constantly tell people, "Pay your taxes, you scringes, or we will LOSE VILLAGES OMG!" it's going to eventually make people go "god damn, this is irritating, I've already played my part to capture the damn village, why do I have to do another stupid command to maintain them?"
But if the shop taxes are automatically deducted from the owner's bank account etc, you could go for years without even realising there is such a village upkeep fee, because it's not happening in an obvious way. It'll constantly drain gold from the game, and no one would be any the wiser. Despite the fact that the same gold is being taken away, it'll be an addition to the game that doesn't generate negative feelings.
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SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
As a Chancellor, I'll say I like shop taxes because they inform me on whether or not a shopkeeper is active. There's also a minimum inventory request in Hallifax as well, but generally speaking, we determine which shops to close based on who isn't paying taxes. If they can do so from a bank, I imagine it's more convenient to own a shop, but it's also more difficult to determine which shopkeepers are, well, still keeping shop.
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
Well, you could keep the shop taxes manual - was just a suggestion to lessen the hassle of a village gold upkeep. I mean, if people aren't going to get too angry, then coding in a tax re-write could fall into one of those "Whether it'll be efficient enough to justify the coding effort" things I mentioned in the start of my post.
It's really a case of, "all of these will contribute to resolving the problem, but we don't want to spend too much effort on every single one". Village gold upkeep alone won't be enough to make a difference, but alongside nerfs to artifact-gold-generation, bashing gold throttling, mob drop nerfs, new (non-gold-generation) buffs that are bought with gold or a gold equivalent etc etc, will all lower gold generation and increase gold drainage and eventually stabilize the value of gold to a certain extent, or slow down the eternal inflation to a rate that is not so out of control.
0
SylandraJoin Queue for Mafia GamesThe Last Mafia Game
Oh absolutely, was just pointing out an extra aspect of the manual shopkeeping taxes that might not easily come to mind. Your reasoning was quite sound on how it affects upkeep hassle!
"Oh yeah, you're a naughty mayor, aren't you? Misfile that Form MA631-D. Comptroller Shevat's got a nice gemstone disc for you, but yer gonna have to beg for it."
I still don't understand the reason for the throttle. I do not understand why you would want to limit how much people play the game. And forgive if you have answered this before and I just missed it (All I found was 'the gold throttle isn't going away' which doesn't really answer the question):
@Estarra Why shouldn't I be able spend my X hours a day on lusternia doing nothing but bashing and earning the gold from such (and xp, which the current cap I don't think does the a good job but that is a different topic)? What if what is fun for me in Lusternia is doing nothing but bashing, killing the mobs and getting the gold from that.
Regarding the gold throttle, I empathize with those who enjoy nonstop
bashing for gold, but it does impact the economy. Why should the game’s economics
be skewed by the handful of outlier players who take advantage of the system?
And really, many just run autobashing scripts so it’s not like it takes a lot
of skill, just monitoring the computer (at least I hope you’re monitoring the
computer--we still don’t allow afk autobashing!). Anyway, you are looking at what
is best for you, as an individual, while I’m looking at the large macro picture
of the game economy which is why the gold throttle is going to remain. BTW,
this gold throttle was spearheaded in another IRE game to good effect and strongly
recommended for us (we even adapted the code to Lusternia). Hope this answers
your questions!
Rather than punishing orgs for doing well (which is what upkeeps on villages/bubbles/domoths would do), alterate idea:
Right now, there's a 1 bubble : 1 construct thing going on. How about we add a mechanic that allows more constructs on a bubble, with commodity costs?
An additional 1 construct would cost 1,000 comms. The 2nd would cost 2,000, so on and so forth. Basically, it's still better to spread constructs across more bubbles, but it's also possible to have more and thus drain a bit of comms.
Then, villages can invest gold into their villages to increase commodity output. Something like 50k for 50% increase, 100k for 100% more, up to 200k for 200%?
The numbers can be tweaked based on the current gold/comm flowing into the game to make this a viable gold/comm sink. The idea is to make it possible to use, but not recommended at higher levels (ie all 5 constructs in just the nexus world). Sort of like the increasing power costs for VAs.
EDIT: The comm cost on additional constructs would be per RL day, by the way.
It's not unrealistic that controlling a foreign territory should cost money. It's weird that this is not already the case.
You are already getting "buffs" in the form of power, comms, and access to an ikon quest from holding a village.
Unsurprisingly, people are far more likely to be happier spending their money than having it taxed away from them and really, taxes seem to be the main focus of this discussion. (it seems primarily, taxes that discourage holding too many villages or using discretionaries too much)
A village tax may not be unrealistic but it is also another org "stick" when there aren't really any "carrots" being discussed, which really just leads to a pessimistic mood about the entire thing.
Right now there isn't anything new for people to actually spend their gold on or any real discussions about improving existing features to make them more attractive. Sure, we're adding in a new currency that's entirely separate from gold which is going to cut gold generation and provide benefits to those able to acquire that currency but what about the excess gold that's still generated?
Unless the org taxes are severe enough that we need to be consistently throwing personal money at the org, well we still haven't changed that well you kinda get to the point where you're just generating more money than you spend and there's nothing to sink it into. (Though the posts from @Xenthos are making me kinda wish we could have a money pit for manses which shows you how much money you've put into it... maybe with a dive option to swim around in it >_>)
Of course the other option is to check out the org banks, find how much needs to be taken out of them, push the halli and gaudi monks out (without guilds), then charge each org a bunch of gold for the mysterious final archetype.
To clarify, this is mostly a joke, while I would entirely love to see this archetype (still hoping for a dae'Seren class) I'm aware that the dev time and effort has other places to be right now. Though it could be a future adjustment.
Regarding the gold throttle, I empathize with those who enjoy nonstop
bashing for gold, but it does impact the economy. Why should the game’s economics
be skewed by the handful of outlier players who take advantage of the system?
And really, many just run autobashing scripts so it’s not like it takes a lot
of skill, just monitoring the computer (at least I hope you’re monitoring the
computer--we still don’t allow afk autobashing!). Anyway, you are looking at what
is best for you, as an individual, while I’m looking at the large macro picture
of the game economy which is why the gold throttle is going to remain. BTW,
this gold throttle was spearheaded in another IRE game to good effect and strongly
recommended for us (we even adapted the code to Lusternia). Hope this answers
your questions!
Let me asked another set of questions to get an idea of where you want the gold economy to be then:
How much gold do you think a player should have on them at a given time? How much gold do you think a player should spend in a week/month/whatever timeframe? tieing into the second question: How much gold do you think it should cost to buy credits? to buy comms/trade-made items? (to buy X, where X is something a player would buy that is more than a one off thing) How much gold should be in the system all together at a given time?
@Ayisdra: not sure what point you're trying to make but I don't think your questions are really answerable or relevant. The goal would be for the amount of gold generated to equal the amount of gold consumed on average. Of course, that would never happen but we can certainly move more in that direction.
It's not unrealistic that controlling a foreign territory should cost money. It's weird that this is not already the case.
You are already getting "buffs" in the form of power, comms, and access to an ikon quest from holding a village.
Unsurprisingly, people are far more likely to be happier spending their money than having it taxed away from them and really, taxes seem to be the main focus of this discussion. (it seems primarily, taxes that discourage holding too many villages or using discretionaries too much)
Well right now the admins are saying 'The market is broken. We can fix it by ruining a lot of peoples fun times and do a blanket clean, or we can approach the community and ask how they think we could implement this in a way that could be somewhat fun for them and not feel like it's all being taxed away for no reason other than it needs to be done.' I'll be happier spending my money on something that makes sense than having it vanish because Estarra decided her shoes needed a gold refinishing.
I'd say with treasure maps, curios, dingbat mines, treasure maps, ur'traps, years of experience, dedication and treasure maps, we have plenty of carrot and not enough stick in the gold department.
@Ayisdra: not sure what point you're trying to make but I don't think your questions are really answerable or relevant. The goal would be for the amount of gold generated to equal the amount of gold consumed on average. Of course, that would never happen but we can certainly move more in that direction.
It was more for me to understand where you wanted to be in the long term (and to a lesser point for trying to think up goldsink ideas besides adding gold costs to existing things. )
But it was also to see that if you think a person should be making a million gold in just over a week and spending 75% on extra gold costs for various things, for example. That then some might think the extra gold cost on X thing might not be worth doing anymore and we are back to the problem of gold hoarding (unless the stockpiles people have are not something you are worried about as the generation). If extra gold costs are the only way we have to go, then having an rough of idea of how much this is going to cost players who use such things would be nice to think of where exactly to put these costs.
It's not unrealistic that controlling a foreign territory should cost money. It's weird that this is not already the case.
You are already getting "buffs" in the form of power, comms, and access to an ikon quest from holding a village.
Unsurprisingly, people are far more likely to be happier spending their money than having it taxed away from them and really, taxes seem to be the main focus of this discussion. (it seems primarily, taxes that discourage holding too many villages or using discretionaries too much)
Well right now the admins are saying 'The market is broken. We can fix it by ruining a lot of peoples fun times and do a blanket clean, or we can approach the community and ask how they think we could implement this in a way that could be somewhat fun for them and not feel like it's all being taxed away for no reason other than it needs to be done.' I'll be happier spending my money on something that makes sense than having it vanish because Estarra decided her shoes needed a gold refinishing.
I'd say with treasure maps, curios, dingbat mines, treasure maps, ur'traps, years of experience, dedication and treasure maps, we have plenty of carrot and not enough stick in the gold department.
However, the context here as far as I understand is that treasure maps, curios, ur'traps, presents, the wheel, etc all won't be a factor in the system any more and will be sequestered away in their own little corner.
Also all of the things that you've mentioned aren't the "carrot" in this discussion, the carrot is something that removes gold from the game in sufficient quantities by providing an incentive to players. Manses are a carrot, but they're not exactly looking like a great one right now given the posts in this thread. Furniture, Clothes, Jewellery (aside from runes/enchants) similarly are smaller carrots.
If you make the carrot actually appealing then you don't have to worry as much about the stupid stick that only exists because there is too much gold, instead people are spending money and generally feeling good about it. I personally would rather not have to lose a village because we can't afford it, that's not exactly great for morale.
edit: changed the second last paragraph for clarity.
I have seen concern before that right now in Lusternia the more you win, the more you win. I'm now seeing concerns that people will be "punished" for winning more.
I don't think both of those concerns can be addressed at the same time.
I feel a bit awkward that the gold issue is being used to address those concerns to some degree actually.
There are people that don't like that orgs use discretionaries so now we're discussing a tax on it, there are people that seem to want to force more balance into villages and bubbles so we're taxing that as well.
It also seems like there may be an expectation that these taxes will be felt, causing you to think twice about that discretionary or costing you a village, which seems like it could lead to a potential "the more you lose, the more you lose" scenario.
The tax on villages could easily be "once you're above x villages, they start costing more due to, I dunno, corruption works I guess". This'll start to get taxing on orgs owning half of the villages of the basin, but there'd be absolutely nothing that would stop any orgs from trying to take a village in play if they don't have any. The same can be applied to discretionaries; the more villages an org has, the higher the cost for discretionaries.
The same can be applied to discretionaries; the more villages an org has, the higher the cost for discretionaries.
I'm not sure where I fall on the gold costs for either of those things yet (unsure on villages, mostly in favor of discretionaries), but please no to this. That seems like tying things together that don't need to be tied together. It's much easier to tweak and balance things that don't cause chain reactions elsewhere.
So like... the south decides they don't like the current situation and raid the north with the express goal of making them use their discretionaries until they can't afford villages any more?
Well, the stance that you don't want to discourage people from taking part in a conflict (because winning gives you nothing more than losing, or maybe even causes you to lose more stuff than actually losing) is one that we certainly need to keep an eye out for.
At the end of the day, a village tax won't affect personal gold much (and it probably shouldn't, or it'll wander into the lose-more-if-you-win-than-if-you-actually-lost-the-contest zone) and that concern is also valid. Draining org hoards is not really an equivalent drain for the gold that is being pumped into the system by people bashing gold.
However, it IS a drain, which can possibly have a downward pressure, or at least a dampening effect, on credit price inflation over the long term. For the huge amount of gold that's being pumped into the game on a daily basis, and with the huge hoards that have developed over time, any drainage out of the system will play a part. Maybe it won't really make a difference - maybe it will.
I think we shouldn't throw Talan's idea of a village gold upkeep away - we just need to make sure that it's implemented in a way that doesn't cause grief and frustration. If it's not going to make a difference, then at least it shouldn't cause people to feel like they are losing - make it in the background, make it as invisible as it can be. If it then helps to push down credit prices alongside all the other measures in place, then we can all have a toast. If not... it's not a big deal, because no one is feeling (or seeing) the pinch.
If you want to make it possible to build extra constructs ON TOP of the drain (for even more additional gold costs), I mean, that's not a bad idea too. Just gotta make sure it's not something that will help generate, or speed up the generation of, gold. Of course, even if it doesn't boost gold generation, the effects of constructs and their PVP influence... might not make them the best choice to implement. Perhaps, as a variation of that idea, allow orgs to buy "upgrades" to whichever construct they build, and boost it in some RP way - for example, the free immolation construct. You can build it as per normal (and only one construct per bubble as per normal), but you get the option to dump 500k gold into it to activate an area-wide ambience effect whenever someone is immolated. This effect lasts for 1 IG year, and you have to pay 500k to enable it again. Throw in customisation options by using expanding the newly coded customisation system (maybe an org can pay 100k to write their own message, valid for only 3 activations before it automatically expires, and therefore, they have to pay another 100k to "resubmit" it again etc.) and you've got yourself a large scale, org based hoard-drain.
Tada, you get RP buffs that don't add more gold, can be meaningful and cool (just need to find a badass writer to write a really cool message) and drains chunks from the org hoard. If it's an actual FUN addition (unlike upkeep taxes) then Culture Ministers can do stuff like running donation drives for it. Where an upkeep tax for villages or bubbles would neccesarily need to be silent and automated and invisible if possible, a fun extra that doesn't create frustration can (and probably should) be loud and visible, because it's a game.
Comments
Anyways, Goldflation.
The eye of Dylara materialises in your hands and flings itself around your neck, tightening incomprehensibly until it is irremovable.
Perfectly clean, this eyeball has been wrenched from the socket of Dylara. It has been animated by some unusual force, constantly looking around itself as if in shock or fear. It is bathed in a light covering of white flames that roll endlessly over its surface. A single chain of empyreal metal pierces either side of the eye, allowing it to be worn around the neck.
Whoah you're right, @Ssaliss.
No, no, I was thinking gold cost upkeep, not commodities.
Vive l'apostrophe!
It's not unrealistic that controlling a foreign territory should cost money. It's weird that this is not already the case.
You are already getting "buffs" in the form of power, comms, and access to an ikon quest from holding a village.
Vive l'apostrophe!
It's the same with the new currency idea. It's shiny and new, and complicated, but it certainly can play a part in reducing the amount of gold that is generated in the system. We can skip the new currency and get the same results if we want, of course, but that raises the question of what to do with gold generating artifacts like mines, genies and maps.
At the end of the day, the new currency is a way to continue to give these old artifacts that are being a part of the endless gold generation problem some continued value in the future, especially if refunds are not possible.
Gold upkeep for villages is not a bad idea, as long as the individual player doesn't see the cost coming out of their own pocket. I think we have enough org funds to handle that. Streamlining the process will help. Making it automatically deduct from the org's bank accounts, turning some of the more manual ways of generating org gold to automatic ones (so Culture Ministers don't have to harangue their citizens to keep doing things) etc etc.
For example, right now, shop taxes are paid manually. If org funds become needed to maintain villages, then the org coffers will need to be kept constantly filled up. (Not that they're in any danger of being emptied at the moment, but still, bear with me for a moment). If the CL has to constantly tell people, "Pay your taxes, you scringes, or we will LOSE VILLAGES OMG!" it's going to eventually make people go "god damn, this is irritating, I've already played my part to capture the damn village, why do I have to do another stupid command to maintain them?"
But if the shop taxes are automatically deducted from the owner's bank account etc, you could go for years without even realising there is such a village upkeep fee, because it's not happening in an obvious way. It'll constantly drain gold from the game, and no one would be any the wiser. Despite the fact that the same gold is being taken away, it'll be an addition to the game that doesn't generate negative feelings.
It's really a case of, "all of these will contribute to resolving the problem, but we don't want to spend too much effort on every single one". Village gold upkeep alone won't be enough to make a difference, but alongside nerfs to artifact-gold-generation, bashing gold throttling, mob drop nerfs, new (non-gold-generation) buffs that are bought with gold or a gold equivalent etc etc, will all lower gold generation and increase gold drainage and eventually stabilize the value of gold to a certain extent, or slow down the eternal inflation to a rate that is not so out of control.
@Estarra Why shouldn't I be able spend my X hours a day on lusternia doing nothing but bashing and earning the gold from such (and xp, which the current cap I don't think does the a good job but that is a different topic)? What if what is fun for me in Lusternia is doing nothing but bashing, killing the mobs and getting the gold from that.
Right now, there's a 1 bubble : 1 construct thing going on. How about we add a mechanic that allows more constructs on a bubble, with commodity costs?
An additional 1 construct would cost 1,000 comms. The 2nd would cost 2,000, so on and so forth. Basically, it's still better to spread constructs across more bubbles, but it's also possible to have more and thus drain a bit of comms.
Then, villages can invest gold into their villages to increase commodity output. Something like 50k for 50% increase, 100k for 100% more, up to 200k for 200%?
The numbers can be tweaked based on the current gold/comm flowing into the game to make this a viable gold/comm sink. The idea is to make it possible to use, but not recommended at higher levels (ie all 5 constructs in just the nexus world). Sort of like the increasing power costs for VAs.
EDIT: The comm cost on additional constructs would be per RL day, by the way.
A village tax may not be unrealistic but it is also another org "stick" when there aren't really any "carrots" being discussed, which really just leads to a pessimistic mood about the entire thing.
Right now there isn't anything new for people to actually spend their gold on or any real discussions about improving existing features to make them more attractive. Sure, we're adding in a new currency that's entirely separate from gold which is going to cut gold generation and provide benefits to those able to acquire that currency but what about the excess gold that's still generated?
Unless the org taxes are severe enough that we need to be consistently throwing personal money at the org, well we still haven't changed that well you kinda get to the point where you're just generating more money than you spend and there's nothing to sink it into. (Though the posts from @Xenthos are making me kinda wish we could have a money pit for manses which shows you how much money you've put into it... maybe with a dive option to swim around in it >_>)
To clarify, this is mostly a joke, while I would entirely love to see this archetype (still hoping for a dae'Seren class) I'm aware that the dev time and effort has other places to be right now. Though it could be a future adjustment.
How much gold do you think a player should have on them at a given time?
How much gold do you think a player should spend in a week/month/whatever timeframe?
tieing into the second question: How much gold do you think it should cost to buy credits? to buy comms/trade-made items? (to buy X, where X is something a player would buy that is more than a one off thing)
How much gold should be in the system all together at a given time?
I'd say with treasure maps, curios, dingbat mines, treasure maps, ur'traps, years of experience, dedication and treasure maps, we have plenty of carrot and not enough stick in the gold department.
Ixion tells you, "// I don't think anyone else had a clue, amazing form."
It was more for me to understand where you wanted to be in the long term (and to a lesser point for trying to think up goldsink ideas besides adding gold costs to existing things. )
But it was also to see that if you think a person should be making a million gold in just over a week and spending 75% on extra gold costs for various things, for example. That then some might think the extra gold cost on X thing might not be worth doing anymore and we are back to the problem of gold hoarding (unless the stockpiles people have are not something you are worried about as the generation). If extra gold costs are the only way we have to go, then having an rough of idea of how much this is going to cost players who use such things would be nice to think of where exactly to put these costs.
Also all of the things that you've mentioned aren't the "carrot" in this discussion, the carrot is something that removes gold from the game in sufficient quantities by providing an incentive to players. Manses are a carrot, but they're not exactly looking like a great one right now given the posts in this thread. Furniture, Clothes, Jewellery (aside from runes/enchants) similarly are smaller carrots.
If you make the carrot actually appealing then you don't have to worry as much about the stupid stick that only exists because there is too much gold, instead people are spending money and generally feeling good about it.
I personally would rather not have to lose a village because we can't afford it, that's not exactly great for morale.
edit: changed the second last paragraph for clarity.
I'm now seeing concerns that people will be "punished" for winning more.
I don't think both of those concerns can be addressed at the same time.
There are people that don't like that orgs use discretionaries so now we're discussing a tax on it, there are people that seem to want to force more balance into villages and bubbles so we're taxing that as well.
It also seems like there may be an expectation that these taxes will be felt, causing you to think twice about that discretionary or costing you a village, which seems like it could lead to a potential "the more you lose, the more you lose" scenario.
At the end of the day, a village tax won't affect personal gold much (and it probably shouldn't, or it'll wander into the lose-more-if-you-win-than-if-you-actually-lost-the-contest zone) and that concern is also valid. Draining org hoards is not really an equivalent drain for the gold that is being pumped into the system by people bashing gold.
However, it IS a drain, which can possibly have a downward pressure, or at least a dampening effect, on credit price inflation over the long term. For the huge amount of gold that's being pumped into the game on a daily basis, and with the huge hoards that have developed over time, any drainage out of the system will play a part. Maybe it won't really make a difference - maybe it will.
I think we shouldn't throw Talan's idea of a village gold upkeep away - we just need to make sure that it's implemented in a way that doesn't cause grief and frustration. If it's not going to make a difference, then at least it shouldn't cause people to feel like they are losing - make it in the background, make it as invisible as it can be. If it then helps to push down credit prices alongside all the other measures in place, then we can all have a toast. If not... it's not a big deal, because no one is feeling (or seeing) the pinch.
If you want to make it possible to build extra constructs ON TOP of the drain (for even more additional gold costs), I mean, that's not a bad idea too. Just gotta make sure it's not something that will help generate, or speed up the generation of, gold. Of course, even if it doesn't boost gold generation, the effects of constructs and their PVP influence... might not make them the best choice to implement. Perhaps, as a variation of that idea, allow orgs to buy "upgrades" to whichever construct they build, and boost it in some RP way - for example, the free immolation construct. You can build it as per normal (and only one construct per bubble as per normal), but you get the option to dump 500k gold into it to activate an area-wide ambience effect whenever someone is immolated. This effect lasts for 1 IG year, and you have to pay 500k to enable it again. Throw in customisation options by using expanding the newly coded customisation system (maybe an org can pay 100k to write their own message, valid for only 3 activations before it automatically expires, and therefore, they have to pay another 100k to "resubmit" it again etc.) and you've got yourself a large scale, org based hoard-drain.
Tada, you get RP buffs that don't add more gold, can be meaningful and cool (just need to find a badass writer to write a really cool message) and drains chunks from the org hoard. If it's an actual FUN addition (unlike upkeep taxes) then Culture Ministers can do stuff like running donation drives for it. Where an upkeep tax for villages or bubbles would neccesarily need to be silent and automated and invisible if possible, a fun extra that doesn't create frustration can (and probably should) be loud and visible, because it's a game.