For the health of the game as a whole, I honestly think we need more gold sinks (or rather, more enticing ones). As it stands, there are very few actual gold sinks; off the top of my head, they are:

• Buying comms/mounts from villages
  
• Keeping mounts in stables
  
• Bookbinder seals
  
• Manses/aetherships
  
• City/commune guards/shopkeeping
  
• Parley (you know that thing where you pay gold to get unenemied, in case anyone still does that).
  

That's it, as far as I can tell right now. I might've missed some, of course, but among them, most can be ignored; you rarely buy mounts, the gold cost for a RL day is only 150 gold per mount, seals aren't really used, most people aren't interested in manses, cities/communes don't really buy a lot of guards most of the time, and the drain for shops is only 5k per shop in a city/commune (which can generally be bashed up by a demi in a couple of hours), plus 10k for desc-change/1k for title-change (which really only happens on ownership-change, if even then). Compared to the gold influx from bashing/begging, this is virtually nothing; while plenty of gold can change hands refilling/recharging/buying herbs/etc, that gold is still in the system, and never actually leaves it. This is extremely apparent when it comes to the credit market: It's extremely unstable when something happens, since gold is relatively worthless. We saw credits being sold at 40k per credit last week, and during an auction, they generally go up to 20k for the duration, mostly because the people that buy credits don't really need the gold from selling them anyway (there are some exceptions, of course, and those are the ones that end up on the credit market).

So what's the solution? The "obvious" solution of making everything more expensive isn't very appealing to anyone; you only have to look back to when the comm-requirements changed some years back. It doesn't really affect gold influx a lot either; even if a ring increases in cost to 10k per ring, that's nothing to the amount of gold bashed up during its lifetime, and really only makes getting the rings much harder when you're a newbie.

Instead, I propose a new system of blessings, that will vary in cost depending on their power and duration. For instance, a blessing that increases XP-gain might cost 4k per percent and hour, so if someone wants a 20% increase in XP for three hours, they'd need to pay 240k gold (which, from what I'm told since I don't bash, is more than a demi could sustain from bashing gains). The blessings would need to be chosen carefully though; they should never affect PvP, and they should never create a situation where you'd gain more gold than the blessing cost from a blessing. Here are some blessings I propose:

• XP boost: No change in bashing at all, aside from the fact that you get more XP from it. It eventually becomes obsolete though (so it might not be that enticing for True Ascendants whose names begin with X), but it takes a long time for that to happen. Plus, even at that point, they lose essence when they die which needs to be gained back.
  
• Bashing DMP: Doesn't make you bash faster by itself, although it might make you tanky enough to bash harder areas which might net you more gold. Still, it's very unlikely the extra gold you'd make from that would overshadow the cost of the blessing.
  
• Bashing damage increase: A bit harder to balance, since this one would actually make you bash faster, and thus gain gold faster.
  
• Influence strength increase: Same as above, really.
  

Some blessings I've thought about and discarded, and why:

• Increased health/mana/ego/stats/sip: Needless to say, this would have an impact on PvP, which these blessings shouldn't have.
  
• Increased esteem gain: While not the exact same thing as increased gold drops, it's close enough in my eyes. Sure, you can offer it or defile/sanctify with it, but many influence purely to sell it.
  

Since I'm not a basher, it's hard for me to properly judge these blessings though. Would people be interested in them (as a concept, that is, since we don't know what they'd cost)? Are there any other blessings you'd like to see? Anything else you want to add?

Oh, and as for why this is beneficial to the game as a whole (I missed this in the beginning of the post):

First, it would make people interested in gold. This would start draining the gold reserves, and would have a positive (for buyers) effect on credit prices, meaning newbies would have an easier time getting them.

Second, the people with a lot of gold would finally have something to spend that gold on, and would gain an edge in various portions of the game, so they will come out ahead when it comes to that.

Third, once the gold reserves are drained, there would be an increased interest in buying credits purely to turn them to gold. This means more credit sales, which (of course) the admins would enjoy.

Profit to be had by all!

Fourth, it would make newer players more able to enter into the economic stage. It's easy to forget that a lot of the easy gold is really only available to people who are on the upper end. To those people, the gold is worthless an they have lots of it. To littles, gold is worthless (so it doesn't buy much) and harder to come by.

As a general rule, I think, we avoid "bashing only" buffs. I think they'd come across as a bit weird, especially PvE DMP (why is /just/ this DMP this way?).

Not that I think we're opposed to more gold sinks. I'm sure we'd love some suggestions!

Sure, bashing-only buffs isn't the "optimal solution". I just can't see a better one at the moment; if these blessings are made both PvP and PvE, then there will likely be a lot of crying about that (although if people think that'd be a good idea, then I'd be all for it, since I don't do PvP). That rules out one of the biggest portions of the game, and frankly, bashing is the only other area I can see that people would pay to get ahead in. Trade skills? There are already artifacts for them, and no one would pay gold to create more items unless they created more items than they paid. Manses are interesting, sure, but not everyone is interested in a manse, and those that are generally already have enough gold to cover that (and then some). Perhaps if there was a way to buy certain manse upgrades with gold instead of credits, but that'd also become weird, unless a completely new set of upgrades were made.

I'd pay some $$$ to get that clover buff. I don't care about gold, I just want to bash up essence for Divine faster. :)

I like the idea that you can get XP boosts and Karma blessings with gold. (I know that wasn't your suggestion exactly)

I also think that Auras or enter /exit messages could be purchased for large amounts of gold.


Another option, is the possibility to convert Gold to Essence for both demigods and shrines?

Gold blessings for Critical hits?

A good gold sink affects a starting player little, but is highly sought after by people starting 80+. Why not Demi? Because a lot of people are content to have their characters and alts at that stage.

First of, an idea I have had for a while would be the renting of arties, exceptions of course applying! Renting a cubix wouldn't be such a great idea, but renting a magic damage rune may be interesting. It'd still need a limit, so people don't permanently run about with a rented artifact, so maybe 1 hour resets would be nice? Maybe hard cap it at one renting per RL day, or x number of times during an ingame year. Rented arties ofc would not stack with permanent ones. But it does offer the option of having a temporary artifact, either for testing or a little boost. The advantage of this system is twofold, first of people with a lot of gold could keep renting, and secondly people are more inclined to spend money when they get to try something (Apple stores revolve around this very theory).

Secondly, collectible stuff always does well. If you regard gold as 'worthless' then it is easy to spend it on a nice shiny thing that costs something and adds some status. I noticed this myself with the curios, before I was like ugh this is a drain and then suddenly I was like oh hey drowning in wealth, let's be shiny like all the big people :D

Thirdly, maybe make the offering of gold more on par with buying esteem and offering that? Esteem should be higher (else nobody will buy it anymore), but if gold is brought more inline, it may be offered directly in a pinch and thus disappear. Although maybe Demis can still get corpses very easily so I dunno :(

Fourth, what I've learned from "playing the market" in other games, I've found that people are lazy and exploiting that brings in currency like you wouldn't believe it. Sell something at a central hub for twice the price and people line up. So anything like that could help.

Fifth, I'm interested in seeing a richer (for lack of a better word) economy develop. Been musing on the idea of players investing into the villages that their org holds. Maybe for every x gold invested, you / your org / both get something. It'd not be a true drain, but if it locks down gold for a while and then the investment + profits are paid out, it take sums out of rotation at least.

That's all I got for now :)

Oooh, a way to bribe the hall of records to decrease the time it takes to adopt , or to falsely increase the size of your family :P

Calixa:

Thirdly, maybe make the offering of gold more on par with buying esteem and offering that? Esteem should be higher (else nobody will buy it anymore), but if gold is brought more inline, it may be offered directly in a pinch and thus disappear. Although maybe Demis can still get corpses very easily so I dunno :(

I was going to make that suggestion but I thought it'd be scoffed at.

I'd also like to see more of an interaction with the villages, besides just a commodity tithe or a place to buy commodities.

At this point, the actual value of a commodity is close to zero for the majority of people, and the gold sink of buying from villages is very low, as you can just buy from a nation's enormous stockpile. That freezes up gold too, but in a less permanent fashion.

Unfortunately, I'm not really sure what form that increased interaction could take within the current system. I seem to remember that admins were looking at a rewrite for villages as a big project.

EDIT: In other words, the mentioned change to commodities didn't do anything to increase gold sinks, it just made orgs soak up more gold, and penalized crafters.

You currently get 5 essence per gold you offer, which means you'd need to offer 20 gold to match one esteem. That's not horribly out of line, but could perhaps be buffed to 7 gold per (meaning 14'ish gold to match esteem), but still give esteem an edge with levelled figurines. Doesn't sound too bad, I guess, but it's not horribad as it is.

Ssaliss:

You currently get 5 essence per gold you offer, which means you'd need to offer 20 gold to match one esteem. That's not horribly out of line, but could perhaps be buffed to 7 gold per (meaning 14'ish gold to match esteem), but still give esteem an edge with levelled figurines. Doesn't sound too bad, I guess, but it's not horribad as it is.

Right, I was thinking more of converting gold to essence for Demigods.

daganev:


Right, I was thinking more of converting gold to essence for Demigods.

He was putting forward more information on one of Calixa's ideas, not twisting yours into something else.

I just had a thought that would extend the blessings a bit. Only they wouldn't be blessings, they would be an entourage of minstrels! The same effects and duration though (you go to a guild and pay an appropriate amount for a minstrel of a certain skill that will follow you for a certain period of time), although with two major differences: It would impact both PvP and PvE, but the minstrels would run away hear the cries of a damsel in distress and run to assist said damsel whenever you enter an org-controlled area where you are enemied or an area in contestation (villages in play, bubbles flaring or domothed). When you leave the area, the minstrels would get out from behind that appropriately-placed rock return from their successful exploits and start following you again. This means that the PvP side of it is more or less completely nullified, but if you're attacked in any other area, the effect is still there. It also means you won't get buffs while kicking guards or some such.

Let us buy aetherspace crews. Like Achaea's ship... stuff. I actually don't know anything about it, but... yeah.
Anyone play Achaea? >.>

Heh. I'd love that, but it might be a bit... much :P It'd mean more aetherhunts though, so that's good!

Another idea. Pay X gold, and you get the MAP commands for your manse so everyone can see how you envision your map or aethership to be laid out.

I like the map for manses idea and the renting artifacts idea

The problem with maps for aethermanses is it's not really how the map system is setup, and the maps would become jumbled the moment people move rooms. Worse, people are likely to deliberately jumble manse maps to screw with anyone who gets in illicitly (via ramming or the aetherplex or what have you).

I really doubt we'll see 'buy demi-essence with gold!'. It doesn't really make sense.

Any thoughts on non-direct buffs (bashing, PvP DMP, damage boosts, etc etc being direct buffs)? Maybe something for manses/ships that doesn't currently exist?

My concern about ship crew NPCs is that it'd encourage solo aetherbashing for what are intended to be group xp gains.