Lemme consolidate some stuff and see if I can get a bead on the goldsink thing so we can split that off, since I think this topic has drifted more than a Chinese-British sailor.

More Aetherspace stuff, Premium bashing zones, Gnafia Hijinks, Manse Stuff, Buyable Blessings, Ponzi schemes, Timeshares, Beachfront Property in the Skarch, Bridges to Tarabithia, and feeding it to Shulamit. Have I missed anything?

Yes. Make some artifacts available for gold instead of credits. Wouldn't that be a good gold sink?

Also, return gambling with credits. non-bound credits.
Reduce the amount of gold people can get via hunting? Wasn't the amount of gold increasing you can get causing this? Stem the flow a bit.

EDIT:
Also, why not increase the amount that offering gold at shrines will give in terms of essence a bit?

Goldsinks aren't going to fix things. It might lessen demand slightly in the short run. It isn't any sort of even mid-term solution. But even if they did work, it wouldn't matter unless the speculators bit on the sink hard enough to prevent them from speculating.

If this is decided to be an actual problem, the first step is to stop speculation cold. Yes, this may come at the cost of people buying gifts, but honestly, that's pretty tertiary, and can still even be accomplished by real life purchased credits. Or they could just allow artifacts to be purchased for others with bound credits.

Again, if the market is a problem, any solution that doesn't address speculation first is like putting a bandaid on the paper cut of someone also suffering from a gunshot wound to the neck.

I see the market as a symptom of a bigger disease: influx of gold into the system. Right now, there's basically no steady gold sinks. How often do you buy a clan? How often do you buy a manse? How often do you buy from Bob? How often do you have books made? How often do you make seals? From the top of my head, those are the only gold sinks I can think of. Buying credits on the market, buying stuff in shops, etc. just shifts the gold around, it doesn't get rid of it.

This, this, this, this, THIS!

Create gold sinks that will encourage consistent drain of gold from the system, versus either onetime, or cosmetic, or unuseful sinks.

Also, though I doubt it could ever go through, the ability to BUY BOUND CREDITS AT MARKET AVERAGE, which would sink gold out of the system in exchange for BOUND credits. This reduces the benefits of speculation, while simultaneously providing outflow of gold from the system. I ponder the comparison to Facebook credits, etc.

I love the bound credits idea but there'd have to be a stopper in it otherwise people would sell a bunch of credits for 1 gold per dropping the average then buying a crapton of bound credits.

Selling that many credits at 1gp wouldn't drop the price below 1gp and would result in a massive net loss, especially when conversion bonus is factored in. Those credits would likely be picked up and resold as well. And given that 2cr = 19 lessons and 2 bound cr = 12 lessons, at an equal cost/lesson ratio, credits would still be worth buying above market average. Additionally, a cap on how many market average credits could be purchased within a given time period would further prevent gaming the system.

As a solution posed to the spectators, why not make them more gold savvy to begin with at novice hood? If we could each have a guide, with each commune and city, regarding proper ways to make gold without buying and reselling for a 500 gold profit. I mean, if we can show novices how to make money to the start with, wouldn't then more people be less likely to play with the market?

I have a feeling that it's not novices that need 500 gold that play the market, but rather people that already sit on a fair amount of money. They must, after all, first be able to afford the credits, and second not mind not having the gold for a while.

Oooh, how about renting Artifacts? Say for so much gold a day, you could rent any artifact... like trade skill ones... maybe do a rent for 100 gold per credit it would usually cost? So say you wanted to rent gloves of master, 400 credits, it would cost 40000 gold per weave. You could only rent it for one weave, then would have a processing period where you could not rent that item for so many days, to stop people from just renting over buying. Maybe like you can only rent one artifact every IG year, or something along those lines.

Some artifacts might have to be exempt from that (such as keg/cube-runes, along with, of course, changeling, lips, rift-artifacts, etc), but some (if not most) could certainly work. Might even increase artifact sales; you'd be able to see how the artifact works without having to invest the entire cost.

Whoa, that's actually -really- brill. Combines all of the advertising of artifact bandits, with a gold sink. I think 250/credit value for a day would be more reasonable than 100 though. Though really, there's probably no reason to restrict anything that isn't single use like lips, bubbles, etc.

Changeling would definitely be out. After all, why would people buy 100-credit daggers instead of borrowing a 250k changeling (which would be a fifth of the cost with todays credits)? There are probably other similar cases.

I guess my initial question that started this thread is based on two concerns.

First of all, are people still paying the game in real world cash for credits or some kind of payment. That's the bigger macro concern because if they aren't buying credits and not paying IRE in some alternate form (artifact packages or elite memberships), then that can have a negative effect on the game, since it means business is down.

Secondly, if the first isn't applicable, do the credit promotions (Facebook and Digg, the Wheel) and alternate business (elites, arti packages) prevent the previous distribution of credits? This is a lesser concern but still a concern. Lusternia as a business can afford to have players who don't spend a dime because of the "whales" (to borrow a casino term) who do pay, and that's why there's a credit market. But, if there are less gold purchasable credits on the market, it could have a effect by lessening the population and making it a slow downward spiral, so I am wondering if all the extra promotion could have hurt in the long run.

I guess normally I wouldn't think about this except there's been a HUGE influx of alternate promotions, such as people likely spending OOC money on those crates and casks, and the wheel gave pretty large sums of Free and Bound credits from that. I'd be curious to see if the other 4 realms are having similar market fluctuations. The economy has also not been good, and that's also a concern.

The other reason is that all of the sudden, there are rather huge shortages of credits and the prices being asked do not fit what used to be the standard method of inflation. I can't see suddenly somebody wanting the jack up the price that high (especially if gold is very easy to come buy as well as free credits). The only other possibility is somebody is hoarding credits, maybe preparing for auctions (likely) or even to deny others from getting them (a stretch IMO but there's precedent for that behavior--I remember back when people were draining astral to supposedly prevent Demigods from being born--back when we only had 1 or 2 and they had a lot more power--which ended with the Insanity effect after one Wild Nodes was introduced--maybe somebody is hoarding them for that reason).

My biggest concern is if Lusternia is economically healthy right now first and foremost, though I also do have concern for the players having a health in-game credit economy.

Im just bitter because I have millions in gold and can't buy the 900 credits I need.....

A gold sink attractive enough to stop speculation and drain millions and millions of gold out of the system routinely would also screw anyone who doesn't have that kind of money. If there is a huge wealth disparity, it's really hard to make a sink for it; WoW is having this problem too. It's also why another across the board comm cost increase would do nothing but screw novices again.

The reason you want something purchasable with gold that's really really attractive, is so that people want to pour money into it, and thus buy credits to sell to get the gold to purchase the cool "gold-cost only" stuff. *sagenod*

@Sylphas:

(Gold) Wealth disparity can only come from 3 sources. Lack of time. Lack of effort. Lack of willingness to make OOC purchases (to sell).

Novices don't stay novices forever, and I highly doubt a novice is going to need something like that. It'd by necessity be something far more in the concerns of an endgame player, as they're the ones we need wealth draining out of.

To complain about wealth disparity is to complain about either being unable, or unwilling, to put in the time or effort needed to generate wealth. Killing the credit market isn't something that should be done to console that situation. I can sympathize with people, who just don't have the time to play due to RL obligations, but you cannot honestly expect the efforts of those who do to yield less in compensation. There's always the option of buying credits OOG and reselling them. Which is the point of the entire concept.

Believe me, anyone, and I mean anyone, can earn enough in-game to compete with anyone else. Two weeks is the time it takes to get to demi if you're willing to exhaustively grind influence, go through the difficulty of learning to pilot -and- bring together a crew during the few hour window each day that it's possible, and bash hard. A demi of any class, with time and dedication, can generate a healthy surplus of cash.

After all, someone must be able to, if there's this much gold floating around.

And if you believe that people who buy on average three figures of USD worth of credits a month like myself and many others have an inexhaustible supply of IG wealth, that's not true either. The presence of a continual and large gold sink would force resale prices to fall, as gold is -worth- something again, and we can't afford to just let a tiny amount slowly trickle in for absurd prices, especially with many others 'cutting in line' so to speak by putting up creds at a slightly lower price. We'd have to sell at rates that go in a reasonable timeframe, which means that, unlike right now, 100cr will definitely no longer equal 1million to 1.5million gold.

To quote Matt Mihaly, Founder of Iron Realms Entertainment:



In this case, a clear and demonstrable need for intervention has appeared, I think. Lusternia has a vast surplus of desirable objects to be purchased with credits. Far more than any other IRE game, afaik. However we have very few desirable objects to be purchased with gold. I have no clue what the opinions of the administration are, but even as a regular paying customer, I must admit, the market has become intolerable.

I mentioned this in the other thread, but I felt it should be placed here, with minor editing



Now, to add to that, assuming I am correct that this is a supply issue and not some speculation issue--I'm not sure what the admin can do short term to fix it. Anything involving credits has to be decided by IRE as a group, so it's not solely in Estarra's hands.

This seems to be a side effect of the very generous packages that were given over the summer, and I don't think it has affected the game's bottom line, since the OOC purchases appear to have been drifted towards the special packages instead of standard credits. (If it did I'll bet there'd be some immediate cutbacks). Even if they did decide something, you can't force people to purchase OOC credits to sell to those who buy with IG currency, so if it is a supply issue, the only possible thing they could do is encourage people to buy regular credits and cut out the special promos for a while.

The only other thing they could do is set a ceiling price, but I would only recommend that if you can truly prove that it's some concentrated speculation effort, and can also prove it will be detrimental to the game.

I think that's really the core issue right now: Not enough on the market. I've never seen a market so barren. Why aren't people selling them is the question that comes to mind.

You could argue a lack of gold sinks. You could argue any of a number of things, but I think that's the key of what we need to examine and figure out right now. If we can address the shortage, we can address the market.

Used to be that if you needed that many credits, someone would sell 'em...