i agree with Xenthos. i don't buy credits over 4000, that's what I accept them as when they're used for payment in sparkle transactions. I made one exception once at 4100 cause there was like 1000 for sale and I was waiting for the prices to go down since they tend to cause people liek that wanna sell their credits in a hurry. but they didn't and there was only a few hundred left and I wanted them all. I think I'm poor but others just slap me when I say it I definately think manses and ships are too expensive along with everything else.

There are two things to note on capping credit prices or anything that artifiicially lowers the price and liquidity of credits that many people don't think of:

1) Supply is just as important as demand in the equation; just looking at making credits more affordable via gold looks at the demand but not the supply. If the price drops and if the market is less liquid, it's less desireable to sell credits for gold, so fewer people will be willing to offer credits for sale. This means you will have fewer credits in supply to purchase with gold, less people being able to buy credits without using real dollars. As a real world analogy, think what happened when the government capped gas prices in the 1970s. (No, I wasn't alive then either.) Gas producers moved their product to other markets or just slowed/stopped producing gasoline (moved production resources to other things like motor oil or plastics) since it wasn't as worthwhile to produce gasoline anymore, creating a shortage in the US. Ultimately there were insanely long lines at the gas pumps that went dry by the time you got to your turn. The gas was cheaper, but instead of people being able to afford more gas as the price caps were intended to do, many people who were previously able to afford gas now had to go with less gas by virtue of not being able to find as much on the market.

2) You don't have to buy credits for the sake of consuming them. Credits are sometimes used by players as a store of value to protect against price inflation of the gold currency. (Ironic since in the real world gold is used to protect against inflation!) If you are stuck holding large sums of gold, that gold typically loses value over time vs. consumables (herbs, potions, weapons, etc.). It hasn't happened much in Lusternia yet, but I expect it will over time as we've seen in other games, especially Achaea. Capping the price of credits effectively pegs it to the value of gold once it reaches that limit and so will suffer the same loss of value that gold does in an inflationary market, eliminating the ability of players to have a real store of value. Using real world parallels, think of the government inflating the monetary supply via defficit spending, resulting in the value of that currency going down; then people buy precious metals and real estate, or (for more risk) stocks and bonds to own something that stores intrinsic value somewhat independent of the value of the always-falling fiat currency. If you expect gold price inflation (in credits or anywhere else), the rise in credit prices does not make you poorer if you always convert gold into credits, even if it's just 2 credits, and then convert them back to gold when you need gold. Similarly you could convert gold into herbs, weapons, whatever else and keep them forever in a storeroom if you think they will hold value better than gold and credits. But that's more difficult since you need to buy a shop and have to pay shop taxes, etc. Only works for the rich player. Since there is no cost to entering and exiting the credit market, credits are really the poorman's way to protect against gold price inflation for youe character's equipment.

That's nothing.

Eh, I do it too. Who are you to determine who will "actually use them", though? I don't know of a single person who has every artifact, therefore, I can still always use them.





I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but what would happen if we change the way that banks work? I haven't thought the whole system through, but what if they gave you money, like a real bank did, instead of stealing your gold for storing it there (IRE banks are idiotic)? Especially now that we don't drop gold upon death, few people want to keep money in banks, but if they had an incentive... Maybe it'd be a gold sink, people would save, there'd be less gold floating around, people would spend less (I think) on credits, overall, and that would in turn drop credit prices.

If nothing else, banks just plain need reworked, but would this affect credit prices?

I think that might just encourage people to save up vast sums for the interest, especially since they could go inactive for long periods and come back to lots of gold

Interest should probably be something semi small and be based on years.. unless we also open money markets *cackle* cant touch the gold but better interest.. if you try to take some you take a large penalty

Make interest only available per X amount of time actually playing the game?

No, interest should be based on the financial status of the nation.

And it'd be like 1.5% per year. That'd be me only making 15k if I had a million gold sitting in the account. (real life interest rates are comparable to this, I believe)

This would make price of credits rise ~ 1.5% per year. I think. More gold = more demand.

Having the banks pay a percentage rather than take a percentage would not work as you think it would because it would be putting MORE gold into the market. This would further encourage the price increases due to the large supply of gold in the market. Increasing the supply of gold could subsequently increase the demand on credits. There's also the issue of easy ways to abuse such a system to gain free money. I can just see someone sitting there spamming triggers to put gold in and take it out for hours if you got even 1 gold for every 100000 you put it.

I should have used the term 'utilize', I guess.

If interest from bank accounts were coded, it would have to be based on time money sat in the account. There'd be no triggered spamming to make money, and money would be removed from circulation (at least initially) because you'd have to leave it in the bank to make any interest at all.

I think it might be usefull to make Banks in Lusternia a type of CD.

You add gold to your bank account. In 1 IC year, you gain 3% interest on that money.
Every time you add gold to the bank, the 1 IC year counter resets.

Every time you remove gold from the bank, it takes the usual 2%.

So for example, you deposit 100 gold on the first of Estar.

on the first of estar next year your account has 103 gold.

If you deposit 100 gold then on the 1st of urlachmar, then it would become 206 gold on the 1st of urlachmar.

Someone else said this and is correct. Paying interest will increase the speed at which gold devalues, which will mean a faster rise in prices for all things, including credits. Having more gold does not make you richer. Having a greater quantity of things to buy with the gold is what makes you richer and makes thing cheaper when measured in real value rather than in the number of gold coins it takes to buy it.

So interest paying banks would have the impact of making people poorer who do not use the banks while not really enriching those who do use the banks unless the banks also created and purchased bonds where you pay the bank interest on a loan. That is tricky because then how do you handle players who go idle or just refuse to pay, etc.? Bear in mind that real banks use your savings account to make loans to people, invest in businesses, etc., and give you a cut of the interest, dividends, and capital gains they earn. Thus in real life, banks overall suck up money rather than being a net producer of currency. The way Lusternia banks operate is similar to how the original ancient banks operated: they safeguarded valuables for a fee. They didn't start paying interest until they figured out they could loan it to others. That actually still exists today. If you ever get a safe deposit box, that's the way banking was in the beginning.

As an aside, one idea I've always thought was cool but just not important enough to ever get priority is an equities trading market. The village shops could decide to "go public" and sell shares on the open market. They could periodically offer buy-back programs or sell dilluted shares based on how well it's going. They would also pay dividends based on how well the shop's sales went. Since players can impact how many commodities they produce, you could bet on the market based on which org you think will win the village and also be likely to support the village well. If Celest has a good reputation for pumping production and buying the commodities in the villages it owns, then rival citizens could buy up shares of that village's store to get the profits. Then if Celest discovers the rivals are profiting from it then its citizens may start boycotting the village, causing its stock price to plummet due to a dip in earnings.

Why wouldn't my idea work?

It would give people more gold, but only at the price of keeping gold out of the economy. Shouldn't that decrease the availability of gold now and only increase the wealth later? Those who don't use the banks won't be worse off because the banks are only for people who have gold they don't need to spend. Sort of like a high intrest CD.

With enough money in the bank, it would be easy to turn your yearly interest into your primary income. Let's say the Serenwilde Trust sets the yearly interest rate at 2%. If someone were to amass a million gold (not unreasonable if you don't spend much and earn diligently), you can get 20,000 gold every in-game year, more than enough to refill vials, buy food, and still have some left to spend on replacing decayed items or buying more manse rooms. If you have more money in the bank, you could earn even more interest, the excess of which could even be saved to give you even more interest. Sort of like how rich people don't need to work because they have their money work for them.

Plus, what's to stop someone from depositing all their money in a bank and going on vacation, or depositing all their money in the bank right before interest ticks?

Interest would tick a year from the moment the gold was deposited, whenever that is. Every time you deposit more gold, it resets all the interest.

But yes, thats the general idea. From levels 1 - 80 you amass billions of gold while bashing, and later in life you can just PK and not worry about bashing to make more gold.

I think the point is that gold doesn't spontaenously generate when a bank pays out an interest rate. The bank has to make more money than it pays out, usually through investments or loans. In other words. You give the bank 1000 gold, the bank makes 1020 gold (through loans or investing it in real estate or some venture) and subsequently pays you 10 gold in interest (pocketing the other 10 gold).

If banks pay out interest rates, this means they are investing gold somewhere. What if the investments turn sour? They'd have to cover with fees, or worse yet, go bankrupt and lose everyone's money! Should each bank have a banking minister in charge of overseeing the investments? Would they invest in villages per Roark's idea? Would they invest in gnome corporations in aetherspace? Again, would you be willing to deposit gold in a bank knowing there's a possibility it could go bust and all your money would disappear?

That would be awesome.

On the other hand, you could fund the banks with the casinos, and if the casinos run out of money, the banks no longer pay interest.

i was under the impression that the casinos have an unlimited source of gold. So they actually create money for organizations since I also heard that the treasurer can collect funds gained by the casino, which would be any gold lost by players.