Damage shift, if anything, helped to spread the gold around by moving bashing towards a more equitable balance between archetypes. Because more people can be more effective at bashing the new, more profitable (but tougher) mobs, more of the potential gold yield across the game in any given weave is being gained.

So there is more gold output, but other resources have not increased in quanitity. Therefore, the costs of these resources in terms of gold go up. I would wager however that say, the value of X amount of esteem in terms of credits has remained the same however.

In other words, the time/yield in terms of credits, taking gold out of the equation, should remain where it was, all else being equal. That is, credits cost more, but gold is easier to get.

Were I in charge of managing the Lusternia "economy" so to speak, my focus at this time would be ensuring that there is equitable access to gold across the various orgs/archetypes/damage types, as well as across general bashing "levels" so to speak.

Just because the pinata has more candy in it now doesn't mean we deserve more credits. We certainly don't need some fixed "buy credits with X gold" situation. That would be disastrous in the long run, especially with what seems to be the ever slowly expanding gold supply. It would not only give the game's bashing chain-saw types a massive credit boon without real restriction, it would also mean that the incentive to spend real money on the game to buy credits would be adversely impacted- "I can bash for T hours for gold, with which to buy C credits." Or, "I can pay X amount of real money to get C credits". As C/T gets larger relative to C/X, people would be increasingly disinclined to buy credits with money, which is ultimately what is supporting the game.

The credit market should be left to its own devices, save perhaps cases where people try to game it- buy, hold, re-sell. With a market like the credit market with relatively few participants, this can be digustingly harmful. I would be all for credits bought from the market being flagged not as bound, but rather, as not being able to be put back on the market once purchased off of it.

Which would lessen the credit amount in an even more marked amount. While the market -can- be gamed due to its size, placing restrictions directly onto the currency flow itself would also be quite a large change, and might be more harmful than whatever nefarious credit trust is conducting business, if that's true.

I agree with you that it should not become easier to buy credits ingame. However, it also should not become harder. While some will indeed be more inclined to buy them with money, others will find other avenues to get to them. Or worse, leave the game. And that means they will never buy credits anymore.

Yes, we need more sinks for the "old money" caches. I call them old money because they are on veteran players. These players will probably not buy credits anymore because they already got what they want. It also means when they do need them, they can pour that whole supply into high prices and not care. Which as destabilize the market, because it is such a limited one.

However, from my experience, even with all the buffs I do not gain more credits per hour than I did before. Even though my levels and skills have increased since then. When the mob changes were first implemented (more hits to kill / more gold and xp per individual mob), yes, then the increase went up, but ever since the prices went to 10k that stopped being true. This is, of course, based purely off of my perception of the situation. I think the best judgement here would come from someone who's been Demi for a long while and recalls their credit per hour calculations well.

True - but it's a well known fact that Adam Smith hates your guts. We must struggle against the game's economy! There is nobility in our desperation!

Can someone tell me what this does and how it is useful for mages? Sorry I am lost on it...

If you kill a mob with a critical, it takes all of the overkill damage and transfers it to the next guy you hit within a certain timeframe. Quite useful.