Oh, the economy! We could take off the next year to devote to the economy but that really isn't feasible. I agree tweaks to help goldflation should be looked at, but I also think it would necessarily need to be incremental. I am to blame for the lack of gold sinks insofar when I initially designed Lusternia I wanted everything to be designed by players rather than buying items from shops (Bob is the only exception but that was really just for newbies).
Anyway, there's a lot of great ideas here, some random thoughts:
Reserve Currency: I don't really like this. We have so many currencies in-game already that adding another one just seems like asking for trouble.
Remove Gold Drops from Mobs: I like this but am not convinced having them drop items (like claws, etc.) would be any better. Adding more items to the game just creates a new set of issues on figuring out what to do with items (and the inevitable bloat of said items). We could just remove gold drops (or drastically reduce the amount dropped--say, no more than 100 gold for largest mobs and only sentient mobs). Gold from quests wouldn't change which would be more incentive for questing.
Offering Gold for Favours: I really like this idea and will definitely explore it.
Crafting Items: Some people mentioned completely redoing the crafting system. I find that impractical, at least as a first solution. However, increasing or adding gold costs for every item made may be doable.
Commodities: We could simply reduce the amount of commodities generated. Or we could add gold costs for cities to get commodities from villages, i.e., cities could have the right of first refusal to buy the commodities at a wholesale price, and if not, the commodities go for sale to individuals at retail. Commodity quests could give discounts to cities rather than increasing commodity production.
Runes: I think that's opening a can of worms since runes make items permanent and those items can be customized for credits. This would be a very messy situation which I'd rather avoid.
Gold Sinks: I liked some of the ideas Shaddus suggested. We're always on the look out for gold sinks!
These are just some initial observations. I really appreciate your well thought out suggestions. Again, I'd prefer incremental changes rather than anything that would require starting from the ground up (which may be necessary, who knows), but again I'd rather start small and work up if necessary.
On the topic of reducing gold drops, I think the player's level should be factored in - So when hunting for gold you'd be able to generate a reasonable amount at any level by hunting level appropriate areas, but would get minimal amounts when trying to farm areas below your level.
Personal designs decay. You have to pay a small fee every 90-180 days or so for each design you wish to keep. Decayed designs become inactive and can't be made until re-upped.. If a design is inactive for 180 days, it is deleted.
Have a very slight issue with this, in that I know it'd end with me unable to make half the designs I'd ever made, especially if this gets combined with taking away gold sources. Not because I don't want to upkeep them, but because I'm near constantly broke trying to buy credits to maybe get myself approaching the crystal/artifact/lesson list I need to start being a pest in pvp rather than just a nuisance.
Though if something like this were added, (without the personal upkeep part), having it be an honour purchasable perk to add a tradeskill slot for families wouldn't be out of line. Might not make a bad essence sink too. Out of slots for the year? 5,000 essence can get you another. 12,000 can get you two, and 20,000 buys you four of them. (Adjust numbers to compensate). Point being, I'd rather see a large upfront cost to design something than a smaller cost to design coupled with an upkeep.
My take on it though is make it so you can only have 1/2 tradeskill(s) active, but are able to design for any that you want, then if you want someone to make something for you, attach a gold price to have a pattern/recipe/blueprint made that's consumed on creation and decays.
While we're on the subject of designs, I'd like to make designing slightly more rewarding by creating an outlay, and giving a tiny portion of that outlay back to the original designer on public patterns. (Like, 5% at most). Allow designers to sell the rights to the pattern itself and take a cut of the transaction. Maybe even make it so if you add pattern upkeeps, and the designer fails to pay to keep it, the pattern goes public instead of private.
Personal designs decay. You have to pay a small fee every 90-180 days or so for each design you wish to keep. Decayed designs become inactive and can't be made until re-upped.. If a design is inactive for 180 days, it is deleted.
Have a very slight issue with this, in that I know it'd end with me unable to make half the designs I'd ever made, especially if this gets combined with taking away gold sources. Not because I don't want to upkeep them, but because I'm near constantly broke trying to buy credits to maybe get myself approaching the crystal/artifact/lesson list I need to start being a pest in pvp rather than just a nuisance.
Though if something like this were added, (without the personal upkeep part), having it be an honour purchasable perk to add a tradeskill slot for families wouldn't be out of line. Might not make a bad essence sink too. Out of slots for the year? 5,000 essence can get you another. 12,000 can get you two, and 20,000 buys you four of them. (Adjust numbers to compensate). Point being, I'd rather see a large upfront cost to design something than a smaller cost to design coupled with an upkeep.
My take on it though is make it so you can only have 1/2 tradeskill(s) active, but are able to design for any that you want, then if you want someone to make something for you, attach a gold price to have a pattern/recipe/blueprint made that's consumed on creation and decays.
While we're on the subject of designs, I'd like to make designing slightly more rewarding by creating an outlay, and giving a tiny portion of that outlay back to the original designer on public patterns. (Like, 5% at most). Allow designers to sell the rights to the pattern itself and take a cut of the transaction. Maybe even make it so if you add pattern upkeeps, and the designer fails to pay to keep it, the pattern goes public instead of private.
One of the things this other IRE has is a tome with design slots where you can perm X amount of designs, and then pay for upgrades to perm more.
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.
I really hate the "no gold drops from mobs". Most of my gold, and there isn't much of that comes from gold drops from mobs, because bashing is something I can do from anywhere. I don't have time to invest in quests for 4 hours a day to make 300 gold.
I would rather see more gold sinks than restrict people's ways to generate gold.
Just an idea, lower the regeneration of wild herbs to next to nothing. Create a farm aetherplex room that can only be purchased with gold. Create a seed store that sells seeds to replinish manse herb growth. I'm unsure if this could be applied to other things or not. Basically you're making manse farms.
Mayhaps more Arena tournaments are called for? Something said Organisations can run themselves with a some kind of special reward that acts as a gold sink and is only obtainable via the Organisation spending some of its gold to create. The Org can then decide to open such events to Anyone, Org only, city/commune only and or to non-enemies. Hell even random Divine generated Tournaments could work with a Gold entry fee with no gold payout but again trinkets for placing.
This would be a nip (not a big one mind you) into a boredom issues for older pvpers while providing a means for newer layers to get their toes wet in the pvp scene as there is no exp loss in arenas. It would also generate another gold sink which is a start to fixing the economy.
I Would love to see Cartels remain but for people who design an item to have the option to keep it themselves (ala Achaean style) or to submit it as a design for their Cartel or as a fully public Design. This would create a bit of a better competitive field in this respect.
Heraldry would be a nice addition to Lusternia, Want family Arms? Well better be ready to pay out the ear for a one time gold Sink. Want personal Arms or Organizational arms? Same thing then you add in a cost for them to be emblazoned on items. Oh look Customization + another Gold Sink! (shh I just want to have a reason to come back and I friggin love Heraldry IRL ok.. do not JUDGE ME)
Thought of this for heraldry after, Instead of traditional lesson uses in order to obtain the ability to use this skill have a gold cost to learn it from an npc that gets more expensive the further in you learn. New quasi trade and another gold sink created! Might need to be substantial enough to discourage it from being a thing everyone Grabs but not so steep that no one takes it.
I just copy pasted this from my response to the leaving Lusternia thread as Estarra asked I post theses suggestions here.
Just an idea, lower the regeneration of wild herbs to next to nothing. Create a farm aetherplex room that can only be purchased with gold. Create a seed store that sells seeds to replinish manse herb growth. I'm unsure if this could be applied to other things or not. Basically you're making manse farms.
As someone with herbs but no manse, that would effectively price me out of using my ability. And, let me tell you, there's not all that much point to using it now, so don't make it worse!
People would purchase the manse rooms to generate herbs to generate revenue. It would increase the cost of herbs, but it would be a gold sink. An initial surge of gold for rooms and a constant sink on a consumable would provide a controlled gold sink. Any decent gold sink is going to sting the entire player base. That is the point. The downside is how much it would actually increase herbs, curatives, etc. The reduction of herb regeneration and the cost of seeds, fertilizer, etc could directly control the cost of herbs. Let's say sparkle went from 18 gold per to 40 gold per. If the cost to generate a sparkle was 20 of the increase then the gold sink would be 20 per sparkleberry. If the "hole" is too big and too much gold is being removed then just increase wild herb regeneration, and decrease the seed, fertilizer, etc gold cost. This would sink gold from virtually every Lusternian. The wealthy would invest in farms (big instant sink). All would purchase herbs (small slow sink).
Oh, the economy! We could take off the next year to devote to the economy but that really isn't feasible. I agree tweaks to help goldflation should be looked at, but I also think it would necessarily need to be incremental. I am to blame for the lack of gold sinks insofar when I initially designed Lusternia I wanted everything to be designed by players rather than buying items from shops (Bob is the only exception but that was really just for newbies).
Anyway, there's a lot of great ideas here, some random thoughts:
Reserve Currency: I don't really like this. We have so many currencies in-game already that adding another one just seems like asking for trouble.
Remove Gold Drops from Mobs: I like this but am not convinced having them drop items (like claws, etc.) would be any better. Adding more items to the game just creates a new set of issues on figuring out what to do with items (and the inevitable bloat of said items). We could just remove gold drops (or drastically reduce the amount dropped--say, no more than 100 gold for largest mobs and only sentient mobs). Gold from quests wouldn't change which would be more incentive for questing.
Offering Gold for Favours: I really like this idea and will definitely explore it.
Crafting Items: Some people mentioned completely redoing the crafting system. I find that impractical, at least as a first solution. However, increasing or adding gold costs for every item made may be doable.
Commodities: We could simply reduce the amount of commodities generated. Or we could add gold costs for cities to get commodities from villages, i.e., cities could have the right of first refusal to buy the commodities at a wholesale price, and if not, the commodities go for sale to individuals at retail. Commodity quests could give discounts to cities rather than increasing commodity production.
Runes: I think that's opening a can of worms since runes make items permanent and those items can be customized for credits. This would be a very messy situation which I'd rather avoid.
Gold Sinks: I liked some of the ideas Shaddus suggested. We're always on the look out for gold sinks!
These are just some initial observations. I really appreciate your well thought out suggestions. Again, I'd prefer incremental changes rather than anything that would require starting from the ground up (which may be necessary, who knows), but again I'd rather start small and work up if necessary.
Thanks for reading and considering feedback. The only thing I want to push back on - and I probably didn't explain well to begin with - is the reserve currency. I wasn't actually suggesting a new currency. I was suggesting using an existing currency with a more stable value as a stronger backdrop against inflation AND effectively a gold sink. (Autocorrect wanted to change that to golem sink, now I want to play a game with so many golems they need golem sinks...).
For example, set up a system whereby a person can buy BOUND dingbats from the game for 20k gold. This is actually a worse deal than you can get if you're patient and willing to trade with other players, but you set a backstop, so gold will never be worth less than 20k gold = 1 dingbat. Since we're buying from the game, that money exits the economy. By itself, this won't fix everything, because you still have money printing cloud mantas who carry a thousand gold coins in their gizzards or whatever, and you might reasonably worry about existing gold (people can give friends gold to buy BOUND dingbats, and eventually people have 'enough' dingbats so they lose some value, but if you're limited to existing currencies...)
You could put a limit on those transactions per day to slow the initial shock.
anyway! Just wanted to be clear that your particular response was not applicable and explain better what I meant in terms of the application of economic theory to Lusternia. You can still reject it because you don't want to or don't like the theory, but rejecting because it's a separate currency would be a misunderstanding.
On other comments: I knew the runes suggestion would be unpopular, but that kind of proves the point. You could still allow the runes whose main purpose is nondecay and change those that are ancillary effects to not give non-decay. If people have durable goods, they stop participating in the economy.
Heraldry: I don't think one time sinks like this are anything more than band aids. You pay your gold for coat of arms, then bash it back and move on. If the influx of gold and continuous economic stagnation remains the same, you have fixed nothing.
Also, I hate Achaea's Heraldry (or at least the initial implementation, maybe it's changed in the what, 15 years since release?). At least at the time, a non-Herald looking at a coat of arms could tell tell the griffin was facing 'sinister' but had to pay credits to know it was facing left. Obviously, a lay person actually seeing a coat of arms would be the opposite! You'd know the griffin was facing left but lack the knowledge to describe it in proper fancy language. I raged so hard at this. Please, please do not do this (in the same way).
I'm still a proponent of automated raffles/lotteries every week or two. Prizes should mostly be consumables that are relatively hard to get now, like goldentonics. Maybe ikons, since those are in a wierd place where they're kind of consumables and kind of collectables. Put one or two big prizes in every raffle, like a discontinued doll (or make a new set that is exclusive to prizes). Could also do raffle-only beasts or whatever. There's lots of options. You can occasionally slip in a special thing like a custom ikon or a bigger artifact if you want, but honestly I think a consistent drip of rare consumables is more appealing.
Any sufficiently advanced pun is indistinguishable from comedy.
@Ejderha The one time sink is to learn it,, then a 1 time sink to have a set of Arms made. However to have those arms emblazoned on your items (which decay) costs another gold fee. It would be another slow trickle and given the cost for emblazoning itself is not intended to be super cheap but still rather pricey, and that the gold would not go to the herald well not for long as it gets consumed on the emblazoning it acts as a slower sink in the long term. Also I've seen a thread asking about Org Flags soo this would be a neat way to represent that in game.
Here's an idea, partially from another ire game It may be rough/painful, but try this in this order.
Anyone who has a trade that is able to have designs can now submit their own designs, at a 5k gold cost. These designs are private to that person. Maybe gate this beyond Virtuoso or so skill level.
Delete non-org cartels. Anyone who was in that cartel when It is deleted gains a copy of that design in their repertoire. Deeded cartels' designs are added to their org' s list.
Personal designs decay. You have to pay a small fee every 90-180 days or so for each design you wish to keep. Decayed designs become inactive and can't be made until re-upped.. If a design is inactive for 180 days, it is deleted.
Designers can pay gold to add a noun to their design. You want to make a wall mirror as an artisan? Add "mirror" to your designed wallfeature for 10k gold before you submit it.
See bolded italics: Please no.
As someone with several cartels (and I know I am not the only one), each of my designs are personal / for family / for friends / gift designs - though I am planning to start using them to have unique designs submitted / submit more public designs. Each one has meaning, they may not be made too often, but I shouldn't have to pay gold when each of them have already cost 5000 gold to submit in the first place.
Maybe put a cost of 2500 gold per public design submitted, instead, and up private to 10,000 (or keep at 5000 being double of public).
-
I do however like your other ideas of the following goldsinks:
A travelling beast merchant that sells a stock of rare beasts. Can't be collared, rotating stock.
Renting artifacts with gold.
Ability to purchase power with gold. Powerblocked? Just need a quick burst of power in the middle of a domoth battle? Over your limit of power but you really need 50% for your masterplate? Boom, pay for Power.
Allow orders to set prices for people to buy favors. Your god is inactive but you really need a tf? Pull out the e-wallet at their fulcrux.
The ability to stable beasts for more than 36 months.
Being able to gamble on figurine battles.
Custom hair/beard curios. Maybe a merchant that sells premade ones as well.
Zimoru your beast for gold. Possible appearances that aren't accessible by normal zimoru.
Customise your beast with gold. Requires admin approval, must conform to what the beast could possibly look like. (Edit to explain what I mean. For instance, an admin wouldn't let me pay 50k gold to turn my "plain, unordinary penguin" into "Snaggletooth, Penguin of Slaughter". They would, however, allow me to customise it into something like, "a muddy, snarling penguin" or perhaps even "an undead penguin of ghastly hues" if I paid enough. Maybe a way to customise your beast using the already awesome set up we have for basic customs, but the admin look at the design and make a quote on how much they'd charge the player to do it, or reject it if it's too close to an actual custom pet.)
Perfumes/colognes, smokeables with custom ambiances.
Custom demigod enter/exit/look/teleports.
And also please to the below as idea for goldsink:
I'm still a proponent of automated raffles/lotteries every week or two. Prizes should mostly be consumables that are relatively hard to get now, like goldentonics. Maybe ikons, since those are in a wierd place where they're kind of consumables and kind of collectables. Put one or two big prizes in every raffle, like a discontinued doll (or make a new set that is exclusive to prizes). Could also do raffle-only beasts or whatever. There's lots of options. You can occasionally slip in a special thing like a custom ikon or a bigger artifact if you want, but honestly I think a consistent drip of rare consumables is more appealing.
On the topic of reducing gold drops, I think the player's level should be factored in - So when hunting for gold you'd be able to generate a reasonable amount at any level by hunting level appropriate areas, but would get minimal amounts when trying to farm areas below your level.
I think this might be one of the better ideas I've seen in the thread. As a high end whale, I will freely admit to going through lower level areas I know are less frequented and mowing everything down for the easy gold over sticking to the the higher level areas, which are often more consistently farmed and cost me more resources (thus making them less appealing).
I wouldn't support removing gold drops from mobs. I make little to no gold questing because most quests with any real reward are so long and complicated that I don't even bother. The only honours quest I've ever completed is the Stewartsville Mansion quest, and let's face it, it's the easiest one.
I would definitely like to see weapon and armour stats return, since that would make forging a little more relevant
I agree with comments against removing gold drops - ESPECIALLY from questing/hunting, without also establishing additional goldsinks, otherwise you are further perpetuating that problem of the rich remaining rich while the poor remain poor since they no longer have means available, or have fewer options available to earn gold that have been available to older parts of the playerbase for numerous RL years.
I also strongly oppose suggestions of removing private cartels. Currently I am a member of numerous private cartels, a lot of them being order ones which are intended in a way as an exclusive perk to being an order member - being able to design patterns and use patterns that only fellow order members have access too, though they can be sold through aether/personal shops.
Adding the ability to link city/commune shops to the aetherplex was a great idea and if I'm not mistaken, has been a decent goldsink, given that I have seen a fair few city/commune shops linked and at 2mil a pop, that quickly adds up. I've recently submitted an IDEA requesting a method to add bins to city/commune shops since you can add them to aethershops via dingbat artifacts, but can not add them at present to city/commune ones, even through city patron requests. Perhaps a command that sends a request to the city chancellor, which upon confirming it, draws a sum of funds from the city coffers and adds a bin to the shop (this could go either way, whether it be permanent or it disappearing when the shop changes hands - though if it was the latter, the price would have to be lower than the more permanent dingbat bins)
I think one thing that should be considered is removing player stables (refunding those that have purchased them) and increasing the upkeep for maintaining pets a little bit. Paying 5400 gold every 36 RL days is a negligible sum, even for lower level players and can be bashed up in short order. It could probably be safely doubled without doing a heck of a lot of harm, while draining a bit more gold out of the economy.
While it is a bit of a band-aid fix, I would recommend removing the chance of getting further free crystals from the cornucopia - given that statistically over a period of time you are eventually guaranteed to get some of them, people are effectively getting a substantial sum of free credits, or being able to create other wonder-items for no charge. One good gold/credit sink would be adding crystals to the ASHOP, rather than having people need to wait until the next promotion if they are new/er to Lusternia, or having to buy off people that have been lucky enough to pull multiple crystals from cornucopias - the biggest thing that keeps putting me off getting crystals is the RL cost of crystal packages and also limited credit supply - most of my credits have come from IG sources admittedly and it has been a LONG time since we have had a great hunt or anything along those lines. Due to RL expenses, I simply can't justify forking out the amount it works out to in local currency - it works out roughly to being able to keep my car filled with petrol for a WEEK.
Also removing non-decay would be more trouble than it is worth, especially given that the primary use of non-decay is to keep customised and sentimental items permanent, which people have already sunk credits into for the customisation. It begs the question how one would let people re-skin the customisation onto a new item once the old one goes poof, since you can guarantee that no one would pay 50 credits for a customisation that is going to just disappear in an arbitraty timeframe.
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
I think making useful artifacts that can only be bought with gold, really big amounts of it, is the way to go. Those should never get a credit equivalent or the ability to be goopskinned. I know it sucks from a RL business perspective but I firmly believe it is the best way to massively raise gold value without stepping on too many toes. A lot of other ideas I have seen feel like they punish those with little gold, while those with a ton can more or less ignore it, which while maybe solving the issue is sure to lead to frustration. This would encourage getting rid of your gold but not punish you for being new to the game, or not hunting to cap every day.
I had a similar idea which was to make a really nice artefact - let's call it the Fickle Rune of King Dingaling - and have an (IG) annual gold auction for it. Each year it resets in preparation for the next auction.
Another idea: You know how the wonderbrazier 20 ability uses charges you get from burning esteem? Make an artifact or wonder item that uses a small amount of gold to power its abilities.
Another idea: You know how the wonderbrazier 20 ability uses charges you get from burning esteem? Make an artifact or wonder item that uses a small amount of gold to power its abilities.
Please no more wonderitems. If it has to be a new item, make it something that does not require investing in crystals or forming curios.
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Another idea: You know how the wonderbrazier 20 ability uses charges you get from burning esteem? Make an artifact or wonder item that uses a small amount of gold to power its abilities.
Please no more wonderitems. If it has to be a new item, make it something that does not require investing in crystals or forming curios.
Like I said an artifact would work for it, maybe even one you buy initially for gold
The only honours quest I've ever completed is the Stewartsville Mansion quest, and let's face it, it's the easiest one.
You've obviously never done Crumkindivia. >.>
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.
On the topic of reducing gold drops, I think the player's level should be factored in - So when hunting for gold you'd be able to generate a reasonable amount at any level by hunting level appropriate areas, but would get minimal amounts when trying to farm areas below your level.
Gah this idea is good. I didn't even think about that. I freely admit for bashing areas far below my level for the EZ gold. That could be one factor in "balancing" out gold so that lower level folks aren't freakishly poor while crazy ass Lorina sits on her mountain of gold, dragon style.
Biggest issue now, though, is gold sinks. Hopefully, injecting a new form of repetitive gold dropping into an event could bolster our trades people out there. Something I would like to mix with gold sinks is a new form of PK. I'm thinking of something like a tournament folks can pay to enter, buy artifacts with gold inside the tournament zone to enhance them (maybe) and allow them to fight for the glory of their city/commune. Hopefully, they burn through a bit of gold on entry fee, curatives, and fake-tifacts. The winner can receive a prize, and I liked the idea of a rare consumable. Goldentonics, or those wacky scarves.
tl;dr'ed myself on that one. I don't know. You smart kids think of something for PK and gold. We want more PK avenues, and we got a buttload of gold. Oh, god let's shoot gold at each other.
EDIT: I will pay the big cash money cow to have a fake Ascension arena event to play as Ghani... And have multiple people take on one buff person. Thanks. >_>
I'd be against adding costs to designs for people who have private cartels as they already spent 500,000 gold for a clan and then another 500,000 gold to upgrade it to a cartel, then an additional 500,000 in gold for any additional design permits. I think that in and of itself is a fairly big gold sink. Add in the fact that you need a cartel per trade skill, some people have 5 or 6 or more private cartels, they've sunk 10-12M gold in designing. I think that is pretty fair from a cost for people to have private cartels.
It really, really depends on the person. I'm most of a sporadic basher, filling time when I am bored. I can get around 50k in an hour without too much effort, but I don't really push it because the main reason I bash now a days is to help other people gain levels/essence, since I'm gold bloat and scared of gold cap.
Comments
Anyway, there's a lot of great ideas here, some random thoughts:
These are just some initial observations. I really appreciate your well thought out suggestions. Again, I'd prefer incremental changes rather than anything that would require starting from the ground up (which may be necessary, who knows), but again I'd rather start small and work up if necessary.
Though if something like this were added, (without the personal upkeep part), having it be an honour purchasable perk to add a tradeskill slot for families wouldn't be out of line. Might not make a bad essence sink too. Out of slots for the year? 5,000 essence can get you another. 12,000 can get you two, and 20,000 buys you four of them. (Adjust numbers to compensate). Point being, I'd rather see a large upfront cost to design something than a smaller cost to design coupled with an upkeep.
My take on it though is make it so you can only have 1/2 tradeskill(s) active, but are able to design for any that you want, then if you want someone to make something for you, attach a gold price to have a pattern/recipe/blueprint made that's consumed on creation and decays.
While we're on the subject of designs, I'd like to make designing slightly more rewarding by creating an outlay, and giving a tiny portion of that outlay back to the original designer on public patterns. (Like, 5% at most). Allow designers to sell the rights to the pattern itself and take a cut of the transaction. Maybe even make it so if you add pattern upkeeps, and the designer fails to pay to keep it, the pattern goes public instead of private.
One of the things this other IRE has is a tome with design slots where you can perm X amount of designs, and then pay for upgrades to perm more.
I would rather see more gold sinks than restrict people's ways to generate gold.
This would be a nip (not a big one mind you) into a boredom issues for older pvpers while providing a means for newer layers to get their toes wet in the pvp scene as there is no exp loss in arenas. It would also generate another gold sink which is a start to fixing the economy.
I Would love to see Cartels remain but for people who design an item to have the option to keep it themselves (ala Achaean style) or to submit it as a design for their Cartel or as a fully public Design. This would create a bit of a better competitive field in this respect.
Heraldry would be a nice addition to Lusternia, Want family Arms? Well better be ready to pay out the ear for a one time gold Sink. Want personal Arms or Organizational arms? Same thing then you add in a cost for them to be emblazoned on items. Oh look Customization + another Gold Sink! (shh I just want to have a reason to come back and I friggin love Heraldry IRL ok.. do not JUDGE ME)
Thought of this for heraldry after, Instead of traditional lesson uses in order to obtain the ability to use this skill have a gold cost to learn it from an npc that gets more expensive the further in you learn. New quasi trade and another gold sink created! Might need to be substantial enough to discourage it from being a thing everyone Grabs but not so steep that no one takes it.
I just copy pasted this from my response to the leaving Lusternia thread as Estarra asked I post theses suggestions here.
And, let me tell you, there's not all that much point to using it now, so don't make it worse!
For example, set up a system whereby a person can buy BOUND dingbats from the game for 20k gold. This is actually a worse deal than you can get if you're patient and willing to trade with other players, but you set a backstop, so gold will never be worth less than 20k gold = 1 dingbat. Since we're buying from the game, that money exits the economy. By itself, this won't fix everything, because you still have money printing cloud mantas who carry a thousand gold coins in their gizzards or whatever, and you might reasonably worry about existing gold (people can give friends gold to buy BOUND dingbats, and eventually people have 'enough' dingbats so they lose some value, but if you're limited to existing currencies...)
You could put a limit on those transactions per day to slow the initial shock.
anyway! Just wanted to be clear that your particular response was not applicable and explain better what I meant in terms of the application of economic theory to Lusternia. You can still reject it because you don't want to or don't like the theory, but rejecting because it's a separate currency would be a misunderstanding.
On other comments: I knew the runes suggestion would be unpopular, but that kind of proves the point. You could still allow the runes whose main purpose is nondecay and change those that are ancillary effects to not give non-decay. If people have durable goods, they stop participating in the economy.
Heraldry: I don't think one time sinks like this are anything more than band aids. You pay your gold for coat of arms, then bash it back and move on. If the influx of gold and continuous economic stagnation remains the same, you have fixed nothing.
Also, I hate Achaea's Heraldry (or at least the initial implementation,
maybe it's changed in the what, 15 years since release?). At least at the time, a non-Herald looking at a coat of arms could tell tell the griffin was facing 'sinister' but had to pay credits to know it was facing left. Obviously, a lay person actually seeing a coat of arms would be the opposite! You'd know the griffin was facing left but lack the knowledge to describe it in proper fancy language. I raged so hard at this. Please, please do not do this (in the same way).
As someone with several cartels (and I know I am not the only one), each of my designs are personal / for family / for friends / gift designs - though I am planning to start using them to have unique designs submitted / submit more public designs. Each one has meaning, they may not be made too often, but I shouldn't have to pay gold when each of them have already cost 5000 gold to submit in the first place.
Maybe put a cost of 2500 gold per public design submitted, instead, and up private to 10,000 (or keep at 5000 being double of public).
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I do however like your other ideas of the following goldsinks:
And also please to the below as idea for goldsink:
I would definitely like to see weapon and armour stats return, since that would make forging a little more relevant
Add more RP demi powers
Remove weights from RP powers
I also strongly oppose suggestions of removing private cartels. Currently I am a member of numerous private cartels, a lot of them being order ones which are intended in a way as an exclusive perk to being an order member - being able to design patterns and use patterns that only fellow order members have access too, though they can be sold through aether/personal shops.
Adding the ability to link city/commune shops to the aetherplex was a great idea and if I'm not mistaken, has been a decent goldsink, given that I have seen a fair few city/commune shops linked and at 2mil a pop, that quickly adds up. I've recently submitted an IDEA requesting a method to add bins to city/commune shops since you can add them to aethershops via dingbat artifacts, but can not add them at present to city/commune ones, even through city patron requests. Perhaps a command that sends a request to the city chancellor, which upon confirming it, draws a sum of funds from the city coffers and adds a bin to the shop (this could go either way, whether it be permanent or it disappearing when the shop changes hands - though if it was the latter, the price would have to be lower than the more permanent dingbat bins)
I think one thing that should be considered is removing player stables (refunding those that have purchased them) and increasing the upkeep for maintaining pets a little bit. Paying 5400 gold every 36 RL days is a negligible sum, even for lower level players and can be bashed up in short order. It could probably be safely doubled without doing a heck of a lot of harm, while draining a bit more gold out of the economy.
While it is a bit of a band-aid fix, I would recommend removing the chance of getting further free crystals from the cornucopia - given that statistically over a period of time you are eventually guaranteed to get some of them, people are effectively getting a substantial sum of free credits, or being able to create other wonder-items for no charge. One good gold/credit sink would be adding crystals to the ASHOP, rather than having people need to wait until the next promotion if they are new/er to Lusternia, or having to buy off people that have been lucky enough to pull multiple crystals from cornucopias - the biggest thing that keeps putting me off getting crystals is the RL cost of crystal packages and also limited credit supply - most of my credits have come from IG sources admittedly and it has been a LONG time since we have had a great hunt or anything along those lines. Due to RL expenses, I simply can't justify forking out the amount it works out to in local currency - it works out roughly to being able to keep my car filled with petrol for a WEEK.
Also removing non-decay would be more trouble than it is worth, especially given that the primary use of non-decay is to keep customised and sentimental items permanent, which people have already sunk credits into for the customisation. It begs the question how one would let people re-skin the customisation onto a new item once the old one goes poof, since you can guarantee that no one would pay 50 credits for a customisation that is going to just disappear in an arbitraty timeframe.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
Biggest issue now, though, is gold sinks. Hopefully, injecting a new form of repetitive gold dropping into an event could bolster our trades people out there. Something I would like to mix with gold sinks is a new form of PK. I'm thinking of something like a tournament folks can pay to enter, buy artifacts with gold inside the tournament zone to enhance them (maybe) and allow them to fight for the glory of their city/commune. Hopefully, they burn through a bit of gold on entry fee, curatives, and fake-tifacts. The winner can receive a prize, and I liked the idea of a rare consumable. Goldentonics, or those wacky scarves.
tl;dr'ed myself on that one. I don't know. You smart kids think of something for PK and gold. We want more PK avenues, and we got a buttload of gold. Oh, god let's shoot gold at each other.
EDIT: I will pay the big cash money cow to have a fake Ascension arena event to play as Ghani... And have multiple people take on one buff person. Thanks. >_>