@Keno
hmm. Raising the price of food and water by three times is ineffective, especially in the long-term. As for coin decay, that can work. And over time, I don’t see how the bank can store said player’s ‘10 million platinum pieces.’ Decay or perhaps paying a monthly or weekly fee to bank & city guards on the banked coin, with fees scaling to amount. For example, storing a lot of coin in a bank could get very expensive.
Anyway, these are some thoughts. Thanks for conv.
Syrif said:@Keno
hmm. Raising the price of food and water by three times is ineffective, especially in the long-term. As for coin decay, that can work. And over time, I don’t see how the bank can store said player’s ‘10 million platinum pieces.’ Decay or perhaps paying a monthly or weekly fee to bank & city guards on the banked coin, with fees scaling to amount. For example, storing a lot of coin in a bank could get very expensive.
Anyway, these are some thoughts. Thanks for conv.
what is the problem that some player with the passage of time can accumulate 10 million coins of platinum?
@Elki
Overabundance of coin (over time) that can ruin the market as has been seen in mmorpgs. 100 million? Can a bank even hold that? The thread also addresses RMT. I see some kind of a control being able to help out. Since the problem has already been addressed, what ideas do you have?
@Elki
Very simplified reason it is bad for someone to have 10mil currency. There are prices set in game which are in turn balanced against the amount of cash the game generates in a given amount of time. As cash accumulates in the system the relative value of the cash goes down so the effort to gain the same relative value goes up. New players coming into the system will need to earn a great deal more value than old players.
Cash sinks are required in order to make the increase in server cash only a small % per a given time period. Cash value stability leads to a more stable player trading economy and keeps cash achievements relevant.
There are endless ways you can introduce coin sinks into the game in meaningful ways that don't involve potentially losing the items I have worked to earn. Consumable items only available from vendors are the easiest one. If there is a mail system you could implement a postage levy. A Bazaar/Auction House could have trade fees.
There will always be players trying to amass as much coin as possible though. Larger numbers aren't inherently a problem. Everquest never implemented any sort of inflation controls or plat sinks until it was far too late, but in today's game, even if you have millions of platinum, you can't really do much that's useful with it other than buying Krono, which is not something I presume VR will have an analgous item for.
Trasak said:Very simplified reason it is bad for someone to have 10mil currency. There are prices set in game which are in turn balanced against the amount of cash the game generates in a given amount of time. As cash accumulates in the system the relative value of the cash goes down so the effort to gain the same relative value goes up. New players coming into the system will need to earn a great deal more value than old players.
Cash sinks are required in order to make the increase in server cash only a small % per a given time period. Cash value stability leads to a more stable player trading economy and keeps cash achievements relevant.
Usually the only thing players need large amounts of coin for is buying items from other players. Anything you strictly need platinum for in order to progress (like buying spells) you can earn fairly easily just playing normally. There aren't actually a whole lot of actual uses for coin in most MMOs outside of twinking alts.
i'm actually ok with this. bdo has a system in which there isn't a huge amount of different equipment, however, you have to upgrade them. when you do, it loses max durability, in which case you have to have the same item to repair the max durability.
item damage is fine, but i think there should be a way to repair it. say someone with blacksmithing skill with the proper reagents can perform a max durability repair. it would make lifeskills pretty valuable.
Syrif said:@Keno
... How is overabundance of coin prevented if not for decay? ...
I wish I had a problem on "overabundance of coin" as I am always the poor/broke player.
One idea that would help make things affordable for newbies, while still removing substantial coin from circulation (which I agree needs to happen to help combat crazy market inflation like you see in any MMO with any age to it):
Item cost is set, not at a flat cost (which favors those with money and hurts those without), but rather cost n% of your total coin (with a minimum cost that must be met, can't sell for free). Where n is a very small number. It wouldn't matter who's buying it, everyone is paying the same %, so it's fair. Cheap items would have an extreamly low %, other a bit more, the rare purchacable items would have a higher % cost.
May not be a perfect system, but it is a alternative to decay, and one that doesn't punish people for not being on all the time.
Leachim said:Syrif said:@Keno
... How is overabundance of coin prevented if not for decay? ...
I wish I had a problem on "overabundance of coin" as I am always the poor/broke player.
One idea that would help make things affordable for newbies, while still removing substantial coin from circulation (which I agree needs to happen to help combat crazy market inflation like you see in any MMO with any age to it):
Item cost is set, not at a flat cost (which favors those with money and hurts those without), but rather cost n% of your total coin (with a minimum cost that must be met, can't sell for free). Where n is a very small number. It wouldn't matter who's buying it, everyone is paying the same %, so it's fair. Cheap items would have an extreamly low %, other a bit more, the rare purchacable items would have a higher % cost.
May not be a perfect system, but it is a alternative to decay, and one that doesn't punish people for not being on all the time.
It's probably easier to just restrict the flow of coin than it is to come up with complicated systems for taking it back out of the game.
As an example, in Classic Everquest, you could reasonably make somewhere around 100 plat an hour at max level just casually farming.
In Live Everquest today, at the same level, you can make 100p in single item drops from some mobs.
Why?
That inflation was entirely unnecessary and reflects an inattention to the amount of coin being added to the game, or perhaps more charitably, an ill-advised attempt to solve the problem of coin inflation by making coin more available to newer players instead of introducing plat sinks that would take coin out of the economy.
Just give us things to reasonably and regularly spend plat on other than the inventories of other players and you can pull a lot of coin back out of the game without cumbersome mechanics or systems that feel punishing.
Leachim said:Item cost is set, not at a flat cost (which favors those with money and hurts those without), but rather cost n% of your total coin (with a minimum cost that must be met, can't sell for free). Where n is a very small number. It wouldn't matter who's buying it, everyone is paying the same %, so it's fair. Cheap items would have an extreamly low %, other a bit more, the rare purchacable items would have a higher % cost.
You clearly do not understand basic economics. 10% of $1 is a far more painful percentage than 10% of $1,000,000. You can do far more with the remaining $900,000 than you can with $0.90. Flat costs as this only punish those with less money.
Item costs supplied by vendors are set, affected only by faction, race, possibly class and religion as well. Players can take steps to minimize or eliminate such effects.
Also, how would the system know how much money I have? Per character? Per account? I can think of several methods by which I could easily exploit a mechanic like this to my own benefit, the primary one is by using a money mule. I would only ever carry the minimum amount of coin for any possible transaction to make that percentage cost as low as possible. Act poor, but be rich.
I personally think item repair is dumb and too transparent a coin sink, but as long as there's no threat of actually losing my equipment, and instead just making it temporarily inoperable or prohibitively ineffective, I can't argue with it being a consistent and all-encompassing way to pull coin out of the economy.
Leachim said:Syrif said:@Keno
... How is overabundance of coin prevented if not for decay? ...
I wish I had a problem on "overabundance of coin" as I am always the poor/broke player.
One idea that would help make things affordable for newbies, while still removing substantial coin from circulation (which I agree needs to happen to help combat crazy market inflation like you see in any MMO with any age to it):
Item cost is set, not at a flat cost (which favors those with money and hurts those without), but rather cost n% of your total coin (with a minimum cost that must be met, can't sell for free). Where n is a very small number. It wouldn't matter who's buying it, everyone is paying the same %, so it's fair. Cheap items would have an extreamly low %, other a bit more, the rare purchacable items would have a higher % cost.
May not be a perfect system, but it is a alternative to decay, and one that doesn't punish people for not being on all the time.
In the rest of my quote I mention two ideas. Coin decay as one, the other as paying a weekly/monthly fee to the bankers/city guards. The fee would scale with amount, where keeping a lot of coins in a bank could get very expensive. People who aren‘t on all the time are not punished in the latter, as their fee would be minimal.
Interesting thoughts you have. There are controls that can help counter RMT.
Syrif said:In the rest of my quote I mention two ideas. Coin decay as one, the other being paying a weekly/monthly fee to the bankers/city guards. The fee would scale with amount, where keeping a lot of coins in a bank could get very expensive. People who aren‘t on all the time are not punished in the latter, as their fee would be minimal.
Interesting thought you have. There are controls that can help counter RMT.
And if I don't use the bank my coin shouldn't decay, so I'll use a money mule to hold all my money. It isn't like the banks pay interest anyway so putting coin there has no real benefit. I can just as easily access my money mule as I could a bank. Oh, and I'd avoid those ridiculous fees. Heck, I could even use item mules. Nothing says I have to use a bank, especially when those banks are local, not global. I can easily afford enough accounts to put money/item mules in every racial city.
I really don't like the idea of coin decay.
Chanus said:I personally think item repair is dumb and too transparent a coin sink, but as long as there's no threat of actually losing my equipment, and instead just making it temporarily inoperable or prohibitively ineffective, I can't argue with it being a consistent and all-encompassing way to pull coin out of the economy.
i'm not okay with item loss either. if the item is a 100/100 durability normally but was transferred 20 times, the maximum loss would be 10/10 losing 20 max dura with each xfer.
if i wanted to repair the max durability up to 100 again enter blacksmith if its weapon or metal armor, if its cloth a seamstress, etc etc with special reagents.
i wouldn't go full hardcore mode where if the item or money sits it degrades though.
Keno Monster said:Frankly I don't understand posts like these. There isn't going to be item damage, and there are many many other ways to take coin out of the economy.
Yup tons, like guild funding, tradeskilling is a huge money investment, all you really need is something that will always require money, like guild funding oh wait I alrdy said that lol.
Vandraad said:Syrif said:In the rest of my quote I mention two ideas. Coin decay as one, the other being paying a weekly/monthly fee to the bankers/city guards. The fee would scale with amount, where keeping a lot of coins in a bank could get very expensive. People who aren‘t on all the time are not punished in the latter, as their fee would be minimal.
Interesting thought you have. There are controls that can help counter RMT.
And if I don't use the bank my coin shouldn't decay, so I'll use a money mule to hold all my money. It isn't like the banks pay interest anyway so putting coin there has no real benefit. I can just as easily access my money mule as I could a bank. Oh, and I'd avoid those ridiculous fees. Heck, I could even use item mules. Nothing says I have to use a bank, especially when those banks are local, not global. I can easily afford enough accounts to put money/item mules in every racial city.
Perhaps there is a moderate but realistic cap on how much coin a player can hold at once, to where it exceeds encumbrance limit. Thus, making a bank necessary (if you plan on trying to accumulate an overabundance of coin). The bank would have a fee that scales to amount. Fee goes to banker/city guards. The higher the amount the higher the fee. It makes sense since item slots are limited but coin is essentially unlimited. Holding too much coin in bank can get expensive via fee.
You can't really limit the supply of coin such that it could potentially run out, or what's to stop me from going into a low level zone and slaughtering everything until the coin runs out, leaving none for the players that are level-appropriate for that zone?
You could restrict coin drops to be level appropriate, then what's to stop me getting there first at appropriate level and slaughtering everything until the coin runs out?
Or why are we punishing people for being on West Coast and Oceanic Time Zones such that by the time they get on to play, there's no coin left for the day?
Syrif said:@Vandraad
Perhaps there is a cap on how much coin a player can hold at once, to where it exceeds encumbrance limit. Thus, making a bank necessary (if you plan on trying to accumulate an overabundance of coin). The bank would have a fee that scales to amount. Fee goes to banker/city guards. The higher the amount the higher the fee. It makes sense since item slots are limited but coin is essentially unlimited. Holding too much coin can get expensive via fee.
tax the rich? ehhhhhhh that's fine i'd put my coin into other high value mats or something.
bdo virtually has no rmt issues, but the economy is heavily controlled. tax on marketplace, no item or money transfer p2p, decentralized banks with transfer cost from one bank to another. globalized marketplace.
i guess you can take some things like:
tax on marketplace.
max durability damage to items transferred p2p with special hard to get reagents(can't be sold or transferred) to recover max durability and you need someone specialized to fix it.
if we have globalized banking then you can tax items being transferred in and out of the banks.
Chanus said:Didn't they say in one of the streams that coin wouldn't have weight because of things like griefing by handing a player so much copper they can no longer move?
Even if coin isn’t counted as weight, it can still be capped as to how much each character can hold at a time; making banks a useful tool (with a fee that scales to amount).
Players with little coin aren’t punished, and such a system makes it more difficult for RMT and exploitation of market. Mind you, it doesn’t eliminate the problem but it sure helps.
You could implement an effective VAT system by making all crafting recipes require at least one vendor-bought component.
I don't like the idea of coin decay, as it is unnecessarily punitive for me to lose coin simply because I can't play for a period of time, but I'm not wholly opposed to small banking and trade transaction fees. They don't have to be outlandish. Even a small amount pulls something back out of the economy with every transaction.
Food/water are effectively little more than coin sinks.
Cosmetic items and vendor-bought reagents needed to apply/remove them. Augments with the same.
There are plenty of ways to make coin disappear without simply taking it away from me for no reason.
Syrif said:Chanus said:Didn't they say in one of the streams that coin wouldn't have weight because of things like griefing by handing a player so much copper they can no longer move?
Even if coin isn’t counted as weight, it can still be capped as to how much each character can hold at a time; making banks a useful tool (with a fee that scales to amount).
Players with little coin aren’t punished, and such a system makes it more difficult for RMT and exploitation of market. Mind you, it doesn’t eliminate the problem but it sure helps.
you can make it where coin isn't xferreable p2p
Syrif said:Chanus said:Didn't they say in one of the streams that coin wouldn't have weight because of things like griefing by handing a player so much copper they can no longer move?
Even if coin isn’t counted as weight, it can still be capped as to how much each character can hold at a time; making banks a useful tool (with a fee that scales to amount).
Players with little coin aren’t punished, and such a system makes it more difficult for RMT and exploitation of market. Mind you, it doesn’t eliminate the problem but it sure helps.
It's not the worst idea, I just don't think it's necessary, and it has drawbacks for the player economy I don't agree are necessary. If you cap how much coin I can carry, you effectively cap what I can pay for items from other players, so value of items becomes relative to the cap, rather than supply -- but at the same time if I can still store money in the bank, I will eventually always have the cap amount of coin on hand.
It makes the system cumbersome but doesn't stop me hoarding coin in any way.