Well for one thing, orgs could use the gold to buy commodities in thier comm shop.

I mean, I'm no econ major, but doesn't our current economic situation more or less resemble what it's supposed to? We have villages subservient to and tithing to monetarily driven feudal states who in turn serve the interests of an oligarchical few. If one were to consider exactly how many denizens there must be behind the scenes in Lusternia, making up the population of the world that don't have a say in these economics, the whole "uneven distribution of wealth" makes perfect sense.

With the exception of credits generated by OOC money being placed in the works, we actually have a very realistic economy. Seems to fit the early middle ages economies with the 75% uneven distribution of material and monetary wealth. What everyone seems to be looking for is an unrealistic and inexplicable drain on the economy that can counter our own ever-multiplying wealth.

Medieval rulers gambled their money in something called "war" but we won't have any of that in Lusternia, and the idea of being able to forcefully overpower and make other organizations politically and economically subservient (as well as the villages) doesn't really solve anything. That, and players can't die, so theoretically you have an undepletable source of military manpower. Realistically speaking, if war were the solution to our economic problems, I can see alot of people just quitting.

And no, I don't have any earthshaking ideas for what will essentially be a new kind of money drain.

I like the idea, and also the idea of buying village improvements with gold to increase comm production... but ultimately, the product of these investments is just money. I think a bunch of us are trying to get away from this steadily upward-spiraling economy, and investments that will generate further disproportionate wealth aren't much of a solution.

Maybe provide a denizen controlled comm shop? Perhaps some gnome traders bring regular stocks of commodities from the far reaches of aetherspace, and sell them at a rate that makes sense for two out of the four orgs to be coerced into buying from them.

I'm not expecting world shattering, I'm expecting things like your last paragraph. I think that's a great idea, and I think it can even be built upon. What about little aetherbubbles (or rooms in cities) that resembled factories? What if (for example, hypothetically), they created a mine area in the Razines that every-so-often spawned (or maybe you could do a quest, or some mind-numbing activity, MINE FOR BLAH) some raw commodity that you could take to a factory to have processed into a sellable commodity (different from village commodity quests) and how long it took to process, and how many commodities were created were dependent on the state of the citizenry (NPC citizenry) which could be determined by wages, etc. etc. etc.

I can see it getting complex and possibly interesting while being both an economic stimulator and a gold sink! (I can also see it being tedious and no fun, but hopefully with good planning that could be mitigated).

I have no idea how economies normally work or anything but just wanted to comment on some things.
Most people make all their money off of killing things and is that a realistic economy base? Why are sharks dropping 250+ gold each? Maybe you don't need gold sinks, but just need to reduce gold drops. Although that's not too interesting I suppose...


Eh, I like the idea of a cartel fee except that people wouldn't reforge cartel designs repeatedly anymore for good stats. They'd be more 'rare' sure but on average probably lower quality than the public ones people would be more willing to spend time on. 5 gp isn't alot I know, but I would of paid 25k+ to Treerippers by now if this was in place . It would probably still work great with the other tradeskills though I guess. Having a minimum price would be nice, except that people could sell in person anyways. I don't know why they would want to undercharge, but people do. I bought a greatsword from a shop in seren once just because it only cost 15k or something. Made 20k gold in commodities from smelting that


Hmm how does the goverment of the organization controlling villages affect stuff? If you want to make economy more interesting maybe that would be a good place to improve things. Have an economic ministry (if there isn't one already) deal with villages they control somehow.

Sorry but I don't get the factory thing. Why would they work for you? Would it be players owning their own gnome (who resemble children...) sweatshop or are they just taking jobs from anybody? It might be interesting if you could own your own business and had to worry about wages and stuff.

Lets see.. for the most part the economy is fine, even more perfect than standard. Work = capital, not always true in the real world since you might not always have work. Trades CAN be lacking in demand, and in some cases offered FAR cheaper than others.

For instance, I have gloves of mastery, I get twice the power from a stone.. that means one powerstone is 200 power. Now if I base charge 10 rings I can rechage them quickly from the cube. This saves me a fair bit of time, if the cube is runed it also saves me power. These all equate to better gold gain for me, which it does in fact do.

Herbalists try to hike prices, as a result people selling cheaper get most of the sales. Supply and Demand states people will pay at any level but the demand is lower at higher prices. What would really help is if herbs were well guarded and growthed, while they would be plentiful a solid price would be more established as a basis. Why would you sell an herb for 4-5 gold when everyone else can sell at 9? The only real answer I hear is AFKers. Automated harvesting makes it as though it didnt take you any time at all.

Dont get me wrong, people AFK, thats a fact.. forgers should NOT have to sit there HOURS to forge something to spec. I dont AFK by definition when I do robes or cubes, but I can be on forums and watching my client run. I am not at that point away from keyboard, I am doing more than staring at a repetitive window.

I like the ideas of crafted goods getting a manufacturers cost. The gold from producing said items would go to the cartel leader. The assigned cost is set by the leader themselves, in this way an item could be made one of a kind by simply placing the cost of the item to a HUGE number, such as 500K gold. The cartel leader would be immune to having to pay this, and as a result only the leader would be able to craft it without a huge drain.

If cities/communes produce gold too fast increase the costs of things such as guards, constructs, publishing, taxes etc. Cities should by definition in Lusternias case make money so that they could enter projects (like new guilds..). Additionally it should be made public what a city can get. Would you pay say 1 million gold to get a room have willpower regeneration? Would you pay 500K to get a denizen who can repair armor? What about a city denizen for cows? Leather or meat or milk could be paid for by the city itself and sold under the village. The city makes a gain in gold, but perhaps the denizen charges labor on top of paying for the cow.

As for village effects... allow cities and communes an economic stance that doesnt touch titles. It makes less power and more commodities, more power and less comms, a balance of both, or perhaps you can get HUGE amounts of power or comms if you take nothing or near nothing in the other. Along with this however there would need be a counter balance. If you average passively making 4000 power (domoths can kind of make numbers rather high now) make constructs or such take this into account. If you make 2000 power without anyone doing anything, why wouldnt you drop power to massively up comms tithed?

There should be increased sinks to cope or else slight increases with a slight decrease. I would be all for being able to buy artifacts in pure gold, that means credits give FASTER artifacts, but they can be earned other ways. As is gold production > credit balances = inflating credits, and if they get out of control learning without spending actual money will be crazy if theres no standardizer (like credits not sellable over 5K or there are always credits available directly for X amount). Honestly while it isnt in standard IRE op if they had some kind of advertising or something built in where a flat fee was paid, then it would be like your time helps show more people the ad, which shoudl mean increased income to IRE, which means they might be able to AFFORD selling credits for gold themselves (your hard work gets you credits for your loyalty.. and clicking that ad from runescape or something dont hurt either!).

Anyway those are just some ideas, and as usual I am missing some.

Oh please, removing gold drop for bashing would be stupid.

Some -good- ideas of gold sinks would be to add gold sinks to most power draining city abilities. I mean, not -everything- needs to cost power. Some things should have a gold drain! Like constructs, I think the power rate should be dropped by about 25% and add a 10,000 gold a day gold cost to each construct. That's a start. Then adding a 50 gold cost per day per guard would be another great gold sink. Most cities/communes hold LOOOTS of guards via the prime org/nil-celestia/ethereal, and villages. That would be another great gold sink.

OI, ninjad by Malarious. Although Malarious did bring up a -great- suggestion.

There should be city upgrades purchasable. Not over powering upgrades, but small ones. Like, for 1,500,000 gold, you can purchase level 1 willpower regeneration for one room in the city. Of course, more than one room can have it, but additional costs for this power will still cost 1,500,000 gold. An upgrade for a level 2 willpower regeneration will cost 3,000,000 gold for one room.

Power Level 1 Cost Level 2 Cost
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Willpower Regeneration 1,500,000 gold 3,000,000 gold
Endurance Regeneration 1,500,000 gold 3,000,000 gold
Health Regeneration...etc...

Would be interesting.

You know, a daily/monthly/whatever gold charge per guard would make sense too. After all, even guards gotta eat, right? Pay for their robes and armour, their housing, buy food for their pets, whatever. It makes sense that a city or commune would pay their guards is all I mean. And it'd add up to a nice gold sink cause there's so many guards all over and all.

... constructs already have a gold cost to maintain. I have to keep diverting funds to the Power Ministry or we lose it. Remember when Celest lost their first Construct because they didn't have money in the Power Ministry, and those icky mobs kept spawning on their Manifestation?

We don't really need more organizational gold sinks, we need more personal gold sinks that people want to keep throwing their own money at. Once the money goes to the organization, it tends to just sit there, it doesn't go back out into the economy again most of the time. The issue is pulling more gold out of the economy, not dealing with gold that isn't moving around any more.

Feh, I win the noob award for today.

Organizational gold sinks to have an effect on personal gold sinks, imo. Not a LARGE impact, but an impact, yes. After all the gold gets there via the players, no?

Usually only during credit sales, which only happen when players buy credits to begin with. If the players don't buy credits, there are no organizational credits for the players to deposit their gold for. It's not quite the same thing as something existing at all times for people to be able to continually dump their gold into for "some purpose"-- it's a limited resource (and rightly so, if credits weren't limited, they'd be worth nothing). A limited resource isn't that good as a gold sink, unless the gold taken out is very, very high-- but most organizations sell their credits at a discount.

I didn't read a lot of this so I'm not sure if it was said yet, but it'd be kind of interesting to see credits cycled in to the credits for sale. My reasoning for this mostly came from thinking where all the credits in the game come from. They're almost all purchased by players or earned by players via the bardic/artisinal, guiding, building, ectera. The one's the admin add are the occassional festivities via gifts and fun stuff and the 2%/5% (unsure on the % guilds receive from player purchases) that orgs and guild gets for credit purchases. I initially thought they could just set a standard high gold price 15k, 20k, however high really. It'd probably be real tough to work out. Maybe they could add 100 credits every now and again, bit randomized once a month, once every 2 or 3 or however months, put them on the credit market at the average credit price listed. Prices will keep rising. It's just the basics of economy when it comes to credits. Buyers and the sellers want the lowest and the high price and it meets at an equilibrium. Demand I'd say is constantly increasing for credits and supply always decrease as they're bought from the market. Draw the basic graphs and you get a raise in price. On the occassions where supply increases, it lowers prices slightly or just stabilizes them for that period of time until we deplete it again.

Though manses are a great personal gold sink. It'd also be interesting to see more of the manse things being purchasable by gold. I think people would love to build manses with gardens and ambience and things. Artisan crafts was a great idea. People love to decorate the manses, especially when it's available via gold because getting credits at a nice price is pretty frustrating sometimes. If people could get a garden for gold, I bet a lot more people would save up for one. Obviously it'd be things that wouldn't really affect balance in the game. I think of manses for the most part as more like souvenirs and personal toys. With a lot of things really combat oriented, manse artifacts only really cater to a smaller proportion of the population, but if some items are created or available to be purchased by 500k or 1 million gold (which even at nows prices would get you at least 150 credits, but also cause the prices to keep going up) then people would save for that. I mean, in reality, it'd probably be very difficult to switch some of the current artifacts to gold prices, especially since some have been bought, but what if we brainstormed things that could be bought, things people would like to decorate a home with and add them? Add them to the artisan craft if they fit, add them to the aethershop if they don't.

Rising prices are only really a problem for two reasons. First, it messes with investments or purchase of durable things-- for instance, rising gold prices means I didn't really anticipate, several years ago, some things costing as much as they're costing now. Second, it's a problem for distributional reasons-- if one group of people are facing faster rising prices than others.

Why are people worrying about the economy? The first one's not really that big a deal, I think, if you can adjust your expectations accordingly. Inflation is natural. You shouldn't expect that 1k now will buy you as much as 1k two RL months later. This is annoying for people who go inactive and come back. The second problem is the thing that matters most in a game. It should be 'unfair' that all else equal, people that take on certain trades are less worse off than people that take on different trades, or people that play the game a little differently.

Who's being hurt most by the rising prices? I don't know. What do you think? My gut tells me it's nonbashers, for the most part. A plausible solution might be to redistribute a little bit the amount of gold from hunting to things like influencing, or questing.

(you'll just have to trust my credibility on economic stuff)