Don't like city rank decay at all, that's really unfair to people who did a lot of work for their org and then went inactive, or people who don't generate gold regularly.
I like the personal tax rate. Seems odd that city leaders wouldn't be able to see tax rates or reward those with high tax rates, however. Agree we would have to make it very clear that any "punishment" or requirement for a personal tax rate would have the heel of Estarra's shoe come down on them. Maybe city ranks could slowly go up, the more taxes go to city coffers. Maybe if you don't contribute any taxes, your rank begins to decay. (Can always favour people to bring them back up if they do other city work.
I agree with others stating that we should not be able to see tax rates. I think the best middle ground would be one line per day per person (either at weave or month change) that says: Individual has donated X gold (same as any other donation, imo). The org does not need to know tax rate, how long the person was hunting for, etc; all that really needs to be known is that that person donated X gold and can be rewarded appropriately for that.
I do really like the idea of being able to set a rate and have the gold go in automatically, I just do not like the potential for oversight / heavyhanded tactics it could enable (also, I do not really like automatic demotions for people who do not do it, it is up to orgs to incentivize participation, should not be the game itself making it feel mandatory).
Where does that gold go then? You'd have villages tax orgs who then tax citizens? That's a really roundabout way to funnel gold. Or do you have it all go into the city coffers to sit and go to discretionary? What would prevent a city from gaming a system that gives rewards for high tax rates? So I donate 100%, get the rewards, and then have the city transfer me my gold back. And Talan is right, any checks a city would have would be kind of invasive.
Um, if the rewards are handed out by the org (as per my post), I cannot see any org going: "Awesome! Here, have a cookie for your hard work. Also, have your gold back. You can keep the cookie, too."
Getting gold out of org coffers is enough of a headache (have to transfer it through three different accounts to even get access to it) that I can't imagine anyone willingly subjecting themselves to it for no benefit at all (would be easier to just not reward donations).
And if you read my post I'm talking about a mechanical reward. So if the cities do generate the rewards themselves then that stops the abuse. If it is all mechanical rewards, CR gain and buffs, then there really isn't anything to stop abuse of the system. And no, the admins are not enough. It's too easy to get something past them because they don't have the time to read the gold logs of every city.
Edit: I made my post the same time as yours if that helps your confusion.
Eh, as long as organisational drains are static (1k per village etc) and not based on their citizen's gold income, then there's no reason to record a citizen's tax rate. Just log their contributions as a number, like the way power contribution is logged, end of story. It's gotta be voluntary and opt-in, or it's just going to be nasty. Any logging has to be because the org wants to reward players, not so they can tell them what to do with their online time.
How much time does it take a city Matron/Matron to notice someone withdrawing a large amount of gold from the city accounts and shoot off a message saying "Yo. That's a lot of gold. 'cha up to?" Don't think Admin are even limited to the boardroom(s) to make the check like Steward/Chancellor/Councils are.
Why not rent artifacts out for x gold/hour, prices varying based on the artifact. Obviously some would have to be excluded; anything that is consumed on use or "permanently" alters the character's race, stats, whatever. Limit the number available for rent so people who are lolmadeofgold still want to buy artifacts because they won't always be available. Add 10% of cost for each additional hour bought with a maximum of 4 hours, and put a cooldown after the item returns for the total amount of time rented x8.
This allows people to spend gold to temporarily use something for a special occasion, or just try out an arti to see if they like it before buying, but the cost and cooldown should be balanced such that people can't just coast through renting a cubix their entire lives.
Potentially use an algorithm to automagically update the cost of an hour's rent for each arti that procs each day. Simple example: a rentable anklet with the 15% h/m/e buff power on it is basically permanently rented out because people love it so much. Have the price for an hour increase at a mildly accelerating rate until it reaches equilibrium. If the anklets become unpopular and are spending all their time on the shelf the price begins to decrease at a mildly accelerating rate until the new equilibrium is achieved.
Introduce competitive gambling to the basin. Make some poker-like games that players can sit down at and play against eachother similar to limit hold em or something and give the house a rake.
Create a charity organization, like some sort of sisterhood that cares for wayward finks/gnomes or something, have them give out small xp buffs (5-10%) or 1% crit buffs for donations of gold or whatever the fotm commodity is. Annually hand out an honors line to the player that donated the most (Her philanthropic deeds were unmatched in year xyz)
@Synkarin er... I did, then there were 50 posts about taxing organisations / players telling other players that we shouldn't create more things for players to spend gold on.
Aside from hireable stock manse dwellers that may offer services, it might be worth reviewing the demesne artifacts to see how popular they are.
I could never justify a terrain adjustment with credits as an example, but it might be more attractive as a gold purchase that works out to be less. If others feel the same then they might not be selling that well(idk) and in turn that could be something to consider. The terrain stuff is one of the things that makes me slightly less enthused about my manse expansions.
Oh, at the right price point I would entirely hire some denizen that like... gives karma blessings without me having to scale Avechna.
Home shrines have come up multiple times over the years, which is also a convenience option and potentially something artisans could sell (The sketches could have a god field to specify which design they're for) . Not as convenient as the artifacts of course, but it has the potential to be slightly better than finding the shrine in your org (or scaling avechna for @hoaracle >_>) and with some fiddling they could probably cost a decent amount.
The issue is that I'm the sort that goes in for these aspects (I've even bought credits to fund my manse expansions in the early days), so I can't really say what would make the people that aren't as interested invest their gold in a manse.
A crazy idea, but after seeing how much discussion has gone into trying to figure out how to fix the gold issues at the source, maybe it's worth conceding that the MUD economy makes this problematic and painful, especially with existing artifacts. Maybe just address the worst of the symptoms?
The credit market seems to be the biggest issue, and the one which will discourage people from investing in the game. What if there were two new, separate credit markets? One for personal credits, one for orgs to purchase from. I don't know what org credit levels are like, but I've been in small guilds in other IRE games and we struggled with credits, especially with promos like the artifact cart, as they don't give orgs a kickback. These credit markets would be set by admin (or maybe generous people could sell there). For the individual one, all purchases would be bound. Either put a yearly cap on purchases, or only let people buy from this if they haven't hit the conversion bonus cap yet. For the org market, credits would go into a "newbie" pool, and they could only be transferred, bound, to people who haven't hit the conversion bonus. This would let people and orgs spend gold to "sponsor" newer players, and would let newer players buy credits IG at a much cheaper rate.
Similar symptom addressing could happen on the tradeskill side of things - instead of looking at it from a "These will never be profitable because of comm glut" perspective, what if we simply acknowledged that and instead highlighted the creative elements of crafting? Newer crafters could find their services sought out if they were able to stand out by making cool items people want. More RP items (Aetolia has a good example of how pure fluff tradeskills can make a lot of money by selling to RPers), more design templates (periodic introduction of new design types would favor active crafters, instead of encouraging people to just resell existing public designs), better UI (something like Aetolia's attire is nice, for example, as it really lets the items you are wearing shine, and encourages people to be more thoughtful with what they buy to wear).
Just a crazy look at the situation from the inverse side of things.
I think those are great ideas. And they certainly are a case of "why not". But at the same time, it is fairly obvious that the continued pumping in of gold and commodities without gold sinks is also not a good idea. Painful as it may be, those solutions cannot, and should not, be abandoned. They should be implemented alongside these UI upgrades that highlight and create value in writing and trade creativity. They should be coded and put in at the same time as urging a cultural shift toward more value to the RP side of things instead of just looking at cold hard numbers.
Neither set of changes, be it the painful ones aimed at introducing gold sinks (either aimed at hoarders, or personal player stashes, or at balancing gold inflow on a daily basis) or the ones that are aimed at creativity and RP, need to be done in a vacuum. We can do all of these things. Maybe not all at once, but with the eventual goal that all of it will be put in and will work together.
I would avoid making all credits auto bound, maybe an upcharge to keep unbound if absolutely needed.
I bashed most of my credits, I used them to get dings, crystals, etc. I don't like the idea that nonbuyers would never be able to do that potentially again.
Oh, I was just talking about making them bound when purchasing/giving from the 'secondary' newbie markets I suggested, to prevent people from reselling.
I know the conversation has been over aethermines so far, but while it is on my mind I'd like to bring up another comm generator: gnewpies.
I bring it up because I never really had the spare time to regularly upkeep mines the way I'd want to, but I do own like two dozen some commodity producing gnewpies and have really benefited from them. They don't produce as much as mines potentially can, but you don't need to upkeep them - just collect once a month. There, you are done.
I have no idea what to suggest for them either, and I vaguely feel like I might be one of the few people who cares or has them.
Gnewpies? Not genies? I know genies produce comms, but didn't know about gnewpies. If we do go with the new currency, they would fall into the same category as generating the new pokemondust, in my opinion. Not sure what Estarra (or the rest of you think, of course) but my thought is that if it creates commodities endlessly without some kind of gold draining upkeep associated with its use, we should probably repurpose it into giving out a reward that doesn't generate gold instead.
I'm not sure Gnewpie dolls are a huge issue. You can't get them anymore, they don't produce very much - sure they do add to the problem, but are such a minor thing, I personally feel like it's not going to break anything. That said, if we're doing an overhaul of it all, why not include them? Could just deactivate them, and put them in the 'retired artifact' list (there's no issue with them being traded there, as I think you could only trade one doll for another - so if you have a doll now, it means you had a doll before, unless I'm overlooking something).
Being that I don't like any of the 'dust' ideas, I won't endorse that as an alternative.
I am against making credits force bound. I buy a lot of credits from org sales and then I give them out as needed to people who can not afford credits or are just starting out.
An admin brought me this idea and I'm mulling over it and thought I'd share it with you:
1. Multiply cost of all goop items by 10,000. 2. Any player currently with goop gets their goop multiplied by 10,000 3. Goop is the official "promotion" currency but would function as we were discussing with dust.
Basically, it just let's us re-purpose goop without need of adding a new "currency".
The only thing I'm thinking right now that you can do with goop: 1. Create potions in alchemy (goop+gold) 2. Create candy in cooking (goop+gold) 3. Purchase goop items (natch) 4. Transfer goop to others (with gold tax)
Goop then is the main prize in presents and wheels spins.
You can also get goop using genies, maps, coin rubs, ur'traps, gnewpies(?!), stockings - BUT with a RL day cap on how much you can 'earn' this way.
I think that's a decent idea. It also "solves" the problem many people have with goop, which is that if you are sitting on an odd number of it it can be very difficult to get to a round number so that you can actually use up whatever you had to begin with.
Do you have any idea what you would set the cap on the amount of goop you can get through these things might be?
Comments
I agree with others stating that we should not be able to see tax rates. I think the best middle ground would be one line per day per person (either at weave or month change) that says: Individual has donated X gold (same as any other donation, imo). The org does not need to know tax rate, how long the person was hunting for, etc; all that really needs to be known is that that person donated X gold and can be rewarded appropriately for that.
I do really like the idea of being able to set a rate and have the gold go in automatically, I just do not like the potential for oversight / heavyhanded tactics it could enable (also, I do not really like automatic demotions for people who do not do it, it is up to orgs to incentivize participation, should not be the game itself making it feel mandatory).
Getting gold out of org coffers is enough of a headache (have to transfer it through three different accounts to even get access to it) that I can't imagine anyone willingly subjecting themselves to it for no benefit at all (would be easier to just not reward donations).
It's a good idea from @Shedrin. Just make it a line item.
Ex:
Ciaran based god donated 19000 gold in taxes this month.
Shedrin is a slacker and donated 1337 gold.
Falmiis is totally useless. Descend him.
Edit: I made my post the same time as yours if that helps your confusion.
This allows people to spend gold to temporarily use something for a special occasion, or just try out an arti to see if they like it before buying, but the cost and cooldown should be balanced such that people can't just coast through renting a cubix their entire lives.
Potentially use an algorithm to automagically update the cost of an hour's rent for each arti that procs each day. Simple example: a rentable anklet with the 15% h/m/e buff power on it is basically permanently rented out because people love it so much. Have the price for an hour increase at a mildly accelerating rate until it reaches equilibrium. If the anklets become unpopular and are spending all their time on the shelf the price begins to decrease at a mildly accelerating rate until the new equilibrium is achieved.
Introduce competitive gambling to the basin. Make some poker-like games that players can sit down at and play against eachother similar to limit hold em or something and give the house a rake.
Create a charity organization, like some sort of sisterhood that cares for wayward finks/gnomes or something, have them give out small xp buffs (5-10%) or 1% crit buffs for donations of gold or whatever the fotm commodity is. Annually hand out an honors line to the player that donated the most (Her philanthropic deeds were unmatched in year xyz)
Aside from hireable stock manse dwellers that may offer services, it might be worth reviewing the demesne artifacts to see how popular they are.
I could never justify a terrain adjustment with credits as an example, but it might be more attractive as a gold purchase that works out to be less. If others feel the same then they might not be selling that well(idk) and in turn that could be something to consider. The terrain stuff is one of the things that makes me slightly less enthused about my manse expansions.
Oh, at the right price point I would entirely hire some denizen that like... gives karma blessings without me having to scale Avechna.
Home shrines have come up multiple times over the years, which is also a convenience option and potentially something artisans could sell (The sketches could have a god field to specify which design they're for) .
Not as convenient as the artifacts of course, but it has the potential to be slightly better than finding the shrine in your org (or scaling avechna for @hoaracle >_>) and with some fiddling they could probably cost a decent amount.
The issue is that I'm the sort that goes in for these aspects (I've even bought credits to fund my manse expansions in the early days), so I can't really say what would make the people that aren't as interested invest their gold in a manse.
The credit market seems to be the biggest issue, and the one which will discourage people from investing in the game. What if there were two new, separate credit markets? One for personal credits, one for orgs to purchase from. I don't know what org credit levels are like, but I've been in small guilds in other IRE games and we struggled with credits, especially with promos like the artifact cart, as they don't give orgs a kickback. These credit markets would be set by admin (or maybe generous people could sell there). For the individual one, all purchases would be bound. Either put a yearly cap on purchases, or only let people buy from this if they haven't hit the conversion bonus cap yet. For the org market, credits would go into a "newbie" pool, and they could only be transferred, bound, to people who haven't hit the conversion bonus. This would let people and orgs spend gold to "sponsor" newer players, and would let newer players buy credits IG at a much cheaper rate.
Similar symptom addressing could happen on the tradeskill side of things - instead of looking at it from a "These will never be profitable because of comm glut" perspective, what if we simply acknowledged that and instead highlighted the creative elements of crafting? Newer crafters could find their services sought out if they were able to stand out by making cool items people want. More RP items (Aetolia has a good example of how pure fluff tradeskills can make a lot of money by selling to RPers), more design templates (periodic introduction of new design types would favor active crafters, instead of encouraging people to just resell existing public designs), better UI (something like Aetolia's attire is nice, for example, as it really lets the items you are wearing shine, and encourages people to be more thoughtful with what they buy to wear).
Just a crazy look at the situation from the inverse side of things.
Neither set of changes, be it the painful ones aimed at introducing gold sinks (either aimed at hoarders, or personal player stashes, or at balancing gold inflow on a daily basis) or the ones that are aimed at creativity and RP, need to be done in a vacuum. We can do all of these things. Maybe not all at once, but with the eventual goal that all of it will be put in and will work together.
I bashed most of my credits, I used them to get dings, crystals, etc. I don't like the idea that nonbuyers would never be able to do that potentially again.
I bring it up because I never really had the spare time to regularly upkeep mines the way I'd want to, but I do own like two dozen some commodity producing gnewpies and have really benefited from them. They don't produce as much as mines potentially can, but you don't need to upkeep them - just collect once a month. There, you are done.
I have no idea what to suggest for them either, and I vaguely feel like I might be one of the few people who cares or has them.
How should they fit into the equation?
Being that I don't like any of the 'dust' ideas, I won't endorse that as an alternative.
1. Multiply cost of all goop items by 10,000.
2. Any player currently with goop gets their goop multiplied by 10,000
3. Goop is the official "promotion" currency but would function as we were discussing with dust.
Basically, it just let's us re-purpose goop without need of adding a new "currency".
The only thing I'm thinking right now that you can do with goop:
1. Create potions in alchemy (goop+gold)
2. Create candy in cooking (goop+gold)
3. Purchase goop items (natch)
4. Transfer goop to others (with gold tax)
Goop then is the main prize in presents and wheels spins.
You can also get goop using genies, maps, coin rubs, ur'traps, gnewpies(?!), stockings - BUT with a RL day cap on how much you can 'earn' this way.
Do you have any idea what you would set the cap on the amount of goop you can get through these things might be?