Higher comm prices == even more new people shying away from warrior because of the cost. I sell credits when/if I need gold, not a big deal to me. But for folks without access to OOC credits, good bashing, etc, getting the required comms for masterweapon/s and plate just becomes a much larger boulder to push up the hill.

More pertinently, there are the new guards. Bashing guards en masse for extra gold isn't something new players can readily take advantage of, and is an extra source of new gold that greatly widens the min-max earning potential gap.

Perhaps it may be just as prudent to remove gold drops from the guards, much like how the administration removed gold drops from linked astral mobs long ago.

Increasing your earning potential is something that anyone who puts in the effort can achieve. Again, penalizing achievers in order to reduce the gap between them and those who don't want to put in the IG effort to reach the same state, is probably the worst thing you can do. At demi, especially since damageshift equalized the disparity between bashing ability for different classes, everyone has roughly similar gold output capacities.

While I agree that there should be a difference between those that put in an effort and those that don't (whether it be an effort in knowledge or labour), it shouldn't be a massive difference. I doubt I'd be able to make more than 10k an hour bashing, not knowing virtually anything; when people are able to make 500k an hour, that's a bit too much of a difference.

If you look at the correlation between total XP earned to reach a level, and the respective increase in gold income that higher crit rates induce, you can see a very clear proportional correlation between the rise in total XP earned (effort put into increasing one's ability to bash well) and the crit rate (capacity to earn gold). If anything the increased gold intake is a little less than proportional to the increased effort required to reach that point. And nobody can make 500K an hour. Not even close. Not even a fifth of that. For a good demi basher you can expect anywhere from 50/60K up to 90K as an outlier. At Level 50 I can pull down about 20-30K in an hour. Lvl90/91ish marks the 1/4th point on the way to demi, XP-wise iirc. Level 99 marks the 1/2 point.


Even at lower levels, with the right knowledge, a very significant goldflow can be achieved, as well. These numbers indicate if anything, that investment in gaining improved bashing ability follows a pattern of diminishing returns. Penalizing players who have struggled through diminishing returns to scrape for every last bit of bashability they can deserve to be rewarded, not punished for their efforts.

Changing the gold supply will effect the literal price of credits that you see, over time. However, it will not impact the true cost of credits.

The ratios look like this:

Credits/Credit Price and Gold/Time

Where the first ratio represents the credit market price, and the latter represents gold earnable per hour.

When you find gold such that Gold is equal to Credit Price, then you can remove both and have Credits/Time.

Because gold is ultimately a malleable medium used as currency here, in a fully functional market, you won't change credits/time by just flatly removing gold from circulation. Again, the price you see may get smaller, but the actual credits gained over time will remain the same.

Of course, if you tinker with the methods of gaining gold, you disrupt the Gold/Time ratio, meaning ultimately the Credits/Time ratio may change. But pretend everything in the game just got a zero added on to the end of its gold drop. You would probably eventually see credit prices be ten times what they are now. But what you're doing to get them would not change.

Altering the gold supply changes the value of gold itself. Now, you can do social engineering backflips to try and determine who can get what kind of result for their efforts, but that's an entirely different can of worms.

Furthermore, if we see the supply of gold go down, and the value of it consequently go up, all it does is incentivize people to hoard it even more. It makes the people who already have a TON richer, and puts new entrants at a disadvantage.

The expanded access to gold in the game is the flashiest factor in the nominal aspect of credit prices, but in truth it actually favours newer players, who can now potentially earn gold at a higher than historical rate, while the stock piles of existing players, would, without interference, remain the same, thus devaluing the existing stock pile and making the game that much more accessible to then newer player!

This, among other reasons, are why gold sinks are a band aid fix at best. If anything, the admin could adjust the fixed prices in the game to react to the increased cost of gold- starting a clan/cartel, marriage/divorce, etc. All of these become easier when gold is plentiful. But doing stuff like that is probably not popular, nor would it really have an impact.

The culprit is something other than just the gold itself. My guess is still speculating. You cannot "fix" anything else about the market until you address that, because you can't have a clear picture of what is wrong with the market until you address the potential for buying, holding, and riding the price up of credits that comes with speculating.

While while decreasing the supply of gold, and thus increasing the value of a single gold and thus decreasing the "market" price of gold might stop speculation buying in the short term while the market finds its new equilibrium, that is all it will be. Short term. Eventually, it will stop dropping, and speculation can begin anew, only now they would have the massive stockpile of gold generated from speculation when the prices were high available to pour in to the new, lower equilibrium.

It is for reasons, and others I won't bore you with because I've already typed another text wall, that factors like speculation have to be dealt with before anything else, or you're just opening a pandora's box that could EASILY make the problem worse in the long run.

I am all for making credits bound on purchase from the market, OR, making them flagged so that they at least can't go back in to the market system once taken out. The other consequences of doing this (artifact gifts, etc.) can be dealt with seperately, and should not forego the viability of this solution.

You must also consider the correlation of a lower ratio of credit/gold will result in a higher ratio of credits/time, as the gold needs continue, but require the resale of more credits to achieve them. By producing desirable and meaningful gold sinks you accomplish this, simultaneously reducing the gold in the system without punishing those putting for a great deal of effort to earn it, while at the same time stimulating both the OOC purchase and resale of credits. At current rates, I only need to buy a 50cr pack to buy myself a clan. If I wanted one back when credits were 5K per, I had to buy a 100cr pack to get it. This is why it's also in the administration's best interest (from an economic standpoint) to see the reduction of IG credit prices, and the increase in meaningful IG gold sinks.

I'd have to say I disagree with you on more or less all points, given how lopsided gold gain is currently. You say, for instance, that "it actually favours newer players, who can now potentially earn gold at a higher than historical rate", when it's the old-and-knowledgable players that actually come out ahead; new players don't have that much higher gold gain than they've always had. This fact also solidly punches a hole in the "credits cost the same time as it always has" theory you have; I don't make more gold than I always have done, which means that, for me, credit prices have doubled, whether you go by gold cost or by time investment.

Regarding speculation, this requires one major thing: People must be willing to purchase at the higher credit prices. There have always been speculation on the credit market, but it has never soared as it does now. Sure, if we put a stop to speculation, we might see a small drop in credit prices; however, like I've always said, I see the credit market as a symptom, not as the disease. Dealing with speculation wouldn't do anything to fix the underlying cause at all.

EDIT: That was, of course, to Rainydays post.

On the first part, check out my post on the proportions of effort invested to bashing yields received. Though, honestly, I haven't noticed any significant change in gold/time. It takes roughly as long to bash 50K as it did before any of these changes, despite the illusion of higher gains due to larger individual drops. However, when you have a constant, if steady, influx, and and little outlet to an economic system, wild inflation becomes inevitable over time as stockpiles become available to use in market manipulation.

On the second part: +1

Increase the rate of outflow to equal or exceed influx and you will drop credit prices over time, both encouraging increased OOC purchase sizes, and increased resale volume.

No, guards and guard drops definitely favour people with artifacts and other toys that inflate their tankiness, while opening up a significant gold gain that would not exist otherwise. A higher critical rate is nice, but doesn't matter if you need to invest more time fleeing and healing between volleys than all of your competitors. Similarly, damageshift is only great if you actually have it. I'm talking about new players, not old players on alts or whatever.

A better argument to the contrary would be that the higher tiered bashers will still get the lionshare of the gold in the guarded areas, or that they'll just move into other gold bashing areas that they didn't bother with previously.

People who buy with real money are going to get these sorts of things faster and will still have an edge, the question is just how big the gap should be, sensibly. I'm still of the opinion that removing guard drops would make more sense than just cutting drops globally.

Eh, I'd just move to equally profitable areas that don't have guards. I mostly bash guarded areas because I'm lazy and they're convenient, and safer. Which in turn increases the desparity, because most good cashing grounds at lower circle have lots of guards, while the dangerous high end stuff doesn't. Meaning we have the option to go elsewhere. The new people... deal with guards but no gold.

Gold drops don't need to be cut at all. It's only effect versus creating new and desirable gold sinks? Pissing off the higher end bashers who put the effort in, versus providing something interesting/nice to invest in while simultaneously solving the market problem.

A sink signifigant enough to actually require significant increases in credit market sales to provide gold for the sink would have to be absolutely massive, and even if it were, gold is amassable enough through non-credit avenues to cover all but the most aggregiously aggressive gold sinks. Anything that would garner that sort of response would have to be so potent as to be a balance issue in itself.

Even if it wasn't, again, the thing is moot in its entirety if speculation is unaddressed first.




Its a fair point from a practical stand point to say "new players won't know how to gain gold quickly." That is an entirely different vairable to throw in- information. One which I'd rather not cro-bar in to the issue really, as it can be surmounted with a few good forum posts and really muddies the topic.

Nearly everything drops more gold in my experience thus far. From rockeaters to bonesharks, deformed lucidians to moose. I have not changed by behaviors since the gold increase, and I do a wide variety of things, most of which aren't really considered "gold grinder" activities, or are only incidentally. And my gold gain has substantially increased. I have to wonder what you are doing that yours has not done so.



If you're engaging in anything other than fixed reward turn ins, your gold gain should be largely increasing. Even my little alts feel the increase, and I'm not doing anything that requires "holy cow, seekrit bashing knowledge"- mountains, sometimes orcs, etc. I'm not raking it in at disgusting levels, but at low-mid alt state, should one really expect to?

By "new player" I will clarify- I do not mean fresh from the portal. I mean, decently set up character that can engage in some sort of average range of the bashing activities associated with the gold grind. A new player in that bracket will benefit from an increased gold generation, exactly as I said. I should have been more clear in my initial post, that's my bad. But if we count every level 50 tiny tim and such, we're doomed to finding inequities behind every christmas caroler and chain rattling ghost.



If you put a stop to speculation, you put a stop to the artificial market equilibrium generated by buying credits, which restricts the supply, and forces prices up, before putting them back on. You put a stop to the artificial aspect of the market price, and you can see the true price being generated. It would be a far more authentic solution than a gold sink, that would run a risk of being anything from ineffectual, to backfiring, to, if a "meaningful" enough sink, quite possibly a balance problem in its own right.

I've seen nothing, including my own suggestions, so far in terms of gold sinks that I think would actually be effective at lowering the true price of credits.

*Further on speculation- we saw this in real life with the oil market. Investment firms buy up large quantities of crude. Like, VERY large. They buy storage facilities of massive tanks, and just load up the oil. And then, they leave it there. They just let it sit. They're powerful enough to influence the market price, and then they can sell when it hits a point they like.

Someone with a lot of gold could do the same here, in fact, even easier here- buy up every credit they could, and keep doing it, until natural demand forces the market price up. Then they can re-sell at their leisure. Its not just riding the market, it is influencing it. The same effect happens if several people do it with smaller amounts. IF THE SPECULATION EXISTS then stopping it would have a much more authentic impact on prices than a gold sink. Now, if the speculation does NOT exist, stopping it would of course, do nothing.

Given that the highest sustained gold intake I've ever seen anyone else pull off over a 10 hour period was 50K/hour, the gold sinks wouldn't need to be nearly as massive as you'd assume. I doubt you can name more than 3 players in the game that bash 10 hours a day or more at high-end bashing speeds.

A prospective gold sink that offers a benefit for 500K cost and lasts 24 hours will completely negate the influx of the most dedicated high-end bashers in the game. The artifact bandit-esque rental concept in the other thread could easily accomplish this, and more, as could a plethora of other gold sink concepts.

If you can find people who would actually bite that hook. I never would, for 24 hours, and I can rake it in when I actually need to. (For example, lets say 500K for a moon-laser that lasts 24 hours. Moon-lasers usually sell for 2000 credits. Even at current prices, I could just take that 500k and be well on my way to a moon-laser of my very own. So very roughly, I could have a moon-laser for a fleeting series of 24 hour periods. Or, instead of those days, I could have one permanently, with not a horrific amount of patience considering a 2000k arti.



And again, assuming my belief that speculators exist is correct, that must be fixed first or it is completely moot. Not having access to the sort of information that could tell me if people do speculate regularly (I know from conversations people that have been doing it for RL years, just not sure as to the scale at this point in time) obviously, I can't say definitively that they exist.

But if they do? Even if a gold sink worked, it wouldn't fix the problem so long as speculation was there to drag the price back up over time.

You'd be looking at 40 days of 10 hour shifts constantly bashing before you could afford that cubix at current market prices. I'd bite that hook. Even with my own compulsive bashing, doing it constantly for 40 days at 10 hours a day... that's a bit crazy. In fact, I don't know -anyone- who can maintain that pace. Sure, I do drop some 24 hour or longer shifts here and there, but everyone needs to take a break and rest from bashing/aetherbashing/influencing.

It's much more realistic to go, "Wow, I just got in a hard day of bashing yesterday. Whoa, I can rent a cubix for the day? Sweet. Raiding time!"

Versus bashing 10 hours a day for 30 days, burning out, QQing 10 days short and never buying a cubix. Or for the truly unhinged, making it the full 40 days, buying a cubix, and then QQing when it finally sinks in that you just spent 40 days doing -nothing- but bash in order to afford your cubix that you only use during raids.

So yeah, I'd bite on that. In a freaking heartbeat.

Why on earth would it have to be constant? It would just be a goal to work towards over time, like anything else worth having. Nobody bashes from newton to demi in one constant solo drive. The ones who made it there that way set a pace they were comfortable with, and stuck to it, and got there. And many of them are still around and not burned out. Interjecting "nobody is going to do that much bashing without burning out" is a non sequitur.

And, to my sensibilities, saying:

"Wow, I just got in a hard day of bashing yesterday. Whoa, I can rent a moonlaser for the day? Sweet. Raiding time!""

is far less realistic than saying "Wow, I just got in a hard day of bashing yesterday. I think I'll buy credits and stow them away so I can have my own moon-laser."

I don't assume to possess everyone else's sensibilities, but neither should you. I don't feel mine are that unusual. In fact, there are, of people who's habits I'm familiar enough with to feel comfortable saying so, at least a few demi, arti'd people who put even my thrifty spending habits to shame.

For my two cents, I feel it's a non starter. There may be SOME kind of market for it, but I don't think it would be substantial enough to operate as a gold sink at a level where people would use it enough to matter.

I did a test just now. In ye olde days, I could kill an astral bull in five hits, and got, on average, 175 gold per drop. Now, I kill them in about six hits, and get an average of 225 gold (ranging from 200 gold to 300 gold). Perhaps just bad luck on my part in this test, but I certainly don't see the "large increase" you spoke about, especially not since I now have to hit them one more time to kill them. I'm a very far cry from double the income though, as the credit prices would indicate.

Which is one reason I believe speculation exists. There is going to be some increase in the credit price because there is more gold out there, but it doesn't account entirely for the credit market price. The difference between what the price could be accounting for the increase in gold, and the higher amount it is now, could be attributed in part to the impact of buy/hold speculation behavior.

If speculators don't exist, its something else. But "people have too much gold" as a general statement? I won't buy it.

In your particular case, from what you've said in this thread, you might say "SOME people have relatively too much gold compared to others, and this extends beyond what "effort" accounts for, as well as seemingly being a recent development compared to how it used to be."

But if there are no unnatural forces at play with the credit market (meaning, I'm wrong and speculators are just a phantom economic boogey man in my head), then the current market is at more of a natural equilibrium, and something more fundamental changed that you're on the wrong side of. If that's the case, the answer isn't to introduce even more new stuff (gold sinks), but rather, figure out what changed, and argue to change it back or otherwise alter it in some sort of just way.

(for my own non sequitur- I wouldn't use astral for that sort of thing for a bunch of reasons. I mean, a great measure would be "I made this much gold in prison/hive runs before the gold changes" compared with "I make this much gold in prison/hive runs now" because there is a certain set of denizens involved, and there are a lot of them. But even that might not account for other areas.

Not enough creeeeedits. That's the problem! I know a couple of people that could buy out the entire supply on the market, right now. Myself included.

Not sure how more goldsinks will make that problem better. The people with the moolah will just go hunt for the gold, since, as we noticed, gold drops are nice and big nowadays.

Will they buy credits to sell with real world money for temporary boosts? Don't think so.

I mean, seals were a big goldsink right? But by now, I would definitely place them in the Shamarah's old, "New stuff that we forgot about" thread.

I've always said that some people (apparently you included) make much more gold now than they used to. Not everyone make much more gold though (myself included). The price for esteem, for instance, have stayed pretty constant, meaning influencers don't make much more gold than they used to (which I, personally, believe is the cause of a shortage of demand, and does not have to do with the influx of gold; you can compare this to the price of herbs, refills, etc. which have also stayed constant and has a huge supply). Credits, however, are always in demand, and the people raking in the big money can afford to buy the higher-priced credits. Personally, I've not bought a single credit in a few months. You can blame speculation all you want; however, the simple truth is that speculation fails if no one is willing to buy at the higher price. And why would speculation make such a huge difference now, when it hasn't before?