If you want to drive down the prices on the credit market you either need a new gold sink (like manse' were) or a large influx of new people to the present gold sink. Muds have a semi-finite population. After a while every one who can will have put as much as they want into the gold sink.

As a note, credits bought from an organization would probably also still be unbound, as well as credits earned from various other things (guiding, building, whatever). There would still be unbound credits floating around for use / selling, above and beyond the ones that are bought and put on the credit market.

Any ideas that could get things working well would be nice. Think of a credit market with no credits on it.. then recall you HAVE to get credits for artifacts, this eliminates the power for IG workers to get artifacts and forces the buying of credits.

Make a cap or make them bound when bought.. (way to stop speculative sales would be nice as those people tend to drive up the market at the cost of everyone else but those effects stay long term).


Divine intervention anyone?

Achaea also gives Cities, Houses, etc. the option to transfer Bound credits intead of regular Credits. As usual, you can still earn bonus lessons this way. As sample of their market right now:


160 credits at 6100 gold per credit.
15 credits at 6297 gold per credit.
100 credits at 6299 gold per credit.
100 credits at 6300 gold per credit.
30 credits at 6400 gold per credit.
39 credits at 6649 gold per credit.
3 credits at 6650 gold per credit.
21 credits at 7000 gold per credit.
1 credits at 8000 gold per credit.
1 credits at 8500 gold per credit.


It seems the same, but as far as I know it's still recovering from the 7.1k days (when the admin let you IMAGINE away old vials as gold. 1 vial averaged 2k, so the market exploded).

This has happened many times before. Often, someone buys out all the decent credits and then holds onto them a bit before putting them up 3000 higher than they were, or just immediately puts them back on.

The credit market being "empty" isn't the end of the world, since it means that the price will go up and more people will be tempted to sell what they have. Conversely, the people with a lot of money will be less tempted to buy the market out unless they actually need those credits for something. It's self-limiting in this way.

Out of curiosity anyone happen to know the average number of players is for Achaea at peak times?

I know Lusternia is in the 95-110 range.

Am I the only one who doesn't think there's a real problem with the credit market at the moment? 5k seems on the highish end, but nothing that requires an overhaul of the current system; it's not like Imperian or Aetolia are selling at 2k (are they? ) Speculating seems like a bad thing to me, in general, but there's a line between speculating and investing, and credit-market-bound-credits removes that option to buy credits and hold on to them for a month or two then resell, because you think the price might go up (or, conversely, converting all your credits into gold and storing it in a bank because you think a price drop is coming).

It's not like we'll run out of credits on the credit market. There's always going to be people willing to spend real money on Lusternia (and if there's not, we're in bigger trouble than high credit prices) - and everything you want to do with credits you can do with bound credits, as far as I can see, except playing the market (or gifting them to poorer/newer players or friends, I guess).

One sentence summary: Introducing a credit-market-sells-bound-credits system would limit speculation but reduce dynamism, which is bad, and would be an attempt to fix something that isn't broken in Lusternia as far as I can see.

Credits on Imperian hover around 7k.

Which isn't as bad as it sounds...I've bought several credits there in-game. Gold is so easy to get.

The credit-gold dichotomy is fine.

The biggest flaw with Lusternian economy that I can see is the vast disparity in labour value, ranging from almost nonexistent (enchanting and alchemy) to the excessive (forging).

Please do not do anything with the credit market untill all the monk guilds are out.

Give it time, new guilds = new demand for credits

It's been said before but....

A credit cap? I don't know... the only reason I am uncomfortable with all this theorizing is that I didn't see anyone state the third currency: $USD. Gold can buy credits... so can dollars. People with lots of dollars can buy credits and sell them for exhorbant prices. People who DON'T have lots of dollars can farm gold and pay for credits... but then they must pay the exhorbant prices. After all, they are not the ones setting the priceline.

That creates the problem, the problem is continued by the fact that those with little dollars--if they want to resell credits for whatever reason--will feel the urge to sell at those same high prices. Perhaps a little cut here ar there for a healthy economy. But then again, in a game with only 150 people... maybe 200, MAX, we don't have a LOT of activity, so things don't balance out anywhere near as quickly as they could.

Is there a solution? No. I see the fact that you can buy credits with dollars as being the cause of the problem. Perhaps if all OOC purchased credits arrived as bound credits (but were slightly cheaper than they are now) then we might see a falloff. But as someone said before, doing something like that could easily cause a spike in prices and then a dryup of the market.

I honestly don't have the smarts to think of why the credit sale cap would not work, so I'll leave that one for smarter peoples.

-Krys

Say it with me... exorbitant. Thank you.

And, yes, we pay them, and we like it. Pay no attention to the whining naysayers!

If all OOC-purchased credits were bound credits, the ONLY way to get credits would be to purchase them OOC. There would be no credit market.

Bah.

I don't think it's asking for OOC purchased credits to be bound.

It's asking for IC-purchased credits (ones bought off the credit market). OOC purchases / guiding / building / prizes would all still be sellable.

Okin was responding to Krys, I believe.

Indeed, I was. Also, I didn't consider guiding/building/prize credits.

Having bound credits on the market is a good idea. Or maybe a separate bound credit market. I know I would use it.

You can't really compare credit prices (in gold) from Achaea or Imperian to Lusternia, because each game has a different value for gold based on how hard it is to earn. We could make all mobs drop 100k+ gold and credit prices would skyrocket, but there would be no real change in the time required to earn the gold to buy a credit if you were bashing for gold.

A raise in demand without a raise in supply makes prices rise.. not fall.. this will make prices go up and speculators may realize this and also boost it farther.

@Morgfyre: True enough, I think its the fact our only control is supply and demand yet if supply seems to lull in Lusternia due to credits and lessons you will still demand them all the same for the most part, will just cost more.

As a note yes I realize you have to be able to afford it for you to have demand. But 100K for credits at 4K per is ALOT better than 5400 per.