How about being able to buy Roarkian favors? Or any god really, I'm just not aware of Roark actually favouring people to date. With exponentially increasing gold costs for the strength of the favor you want. Like, as arbitrary figures, maybe 200,000 gold or more to have a truefavor for an IG day. Way more than it would be good to just have on you all the time, but able to be gained by people who need a favour in an emergency, especially for those without an active pantheon or for whatever other reason they find themselves without favours all the time. But maybe it wouldn't work if a God's real favour is already on you, or it's restricted to once a twice a year or something.

Or, perhaps more controversially, being able to buy (at even greater expense) a similar disfavour on suspects, in line with karmic curses? Or, for that matter, being able to bribe Avenger into strengthening curses somehow so they're more than just a brief lol?

Or maybe, in line with the other avenues of griefing rampant in this game, be able to bribe village guards? Lots of ways you could implement it. Perhaps for more laughs, WIELD 100000 GOLD, THROW GOLD N (at the guards wherever they are, when you're a room away). The poor, underpaid, and likely very bored guards are now scrambling to line their pockets with the gold all over the floor. This makes them too busy to notice you slip past them, until they're finished with the pile. (maybe ten minutes or so?) Of course, once their pockets are heavy enough, they start remembering their honor, and there's a random chance they'll just ignore the gold and still attack you on sight anyway. Especially if people do this a lot, then more of them would be less occupied with the shinies, and more interested on who is throwing it. Nothing stopping an org from doing the same thing for their own guys too from time to time, either, to help them feel more appreciated and less underpaid or something, thus increasing their immunity to enemies trying to bribe them.

While a lot of people won't like that idea, I'm sure, it could go a long way to decreasing total village lockdowns, allowing people to actually do the village feelings stuff by influencing or comm quests or whatever. This would create another gold sink, since you can't charity influence the guards (so the gold literally just disappears), and also go a long way to encouraging less utter reliance on mechanics to lock places down, too, thus encouraging more proper vigilance from players to stop people from doing it instead.

How about some ideas that don't affect combat in any way.

But why? Combat is evidently what drives people more than anything else here, and would therefore be what they are most likely to actually spend gold on repeatedly, just like credits. Things that don't solely buff the winner further, but are available to everyone fairly, with reasonable restrictions, would go a long way to increasing overall balance, not decreasing it, wouldn't they?

If they're not free, but instead take a significant time investment (or credit purchase, which of course also helps the game) to have a small step toward evening the playing field, even if only temporary, how would that be a bad thing?

Let's not add in more ways to invalidate the use of guards, they are already of questionable worth. This wouldn't be leveling the playing field, it would be allowing already richer/more powerful players to become even richer/more powerful as they disregard guards. Player x, who has long been the bane of your org/lots of orgs and who spends all of their time bashing for massive gold return comes and harrasses you. Threats mean nothing to player x, godly threats mean nothing to player x. You try to remove player x from your org with force via guards, but player x throws gold at them and continues to harass you.

I like the idea of making karma curses more than an old joke (same with Avenger, really), but it doesn't make any sense to do this via gold - Avechna's justice pays no heed to who is richer.

Wheel spins for gold. Do it.

Sojiro:

Wheel spins for gold. Do it.

Lessons, critical hits, and ___ for spinning with gold?

I would be for this. I don't want dingbats or anything, just those beautiful lessons. ;_;

I'd actually be down for buyable Roarkian favours. TFs already are obtainable, this would just level things out for people who want to stay loyal to inactive gods, etc.

The best part of the TF (15% damage reduc) also doesn't stack, so it's not like having multiple TFs is that bad.

Myrkr:


Lessons, critical hits, and ___ for spinning with gold?

I would be for this. I don't want dingbats or anything, just those beautiful lessons. ;_;

Random herbs/commodities, maybe? Or XXX amount of potion(s) added to your liquid rift.

Artifact rentals: Get temporary use of certain artifacts for gold, lasts a week or something.

Minor artifacts for gold, for keeps. Examples could be the rift expanders, ghodak board, etc. Maybe the minor arty sales are here and there with different arties. Buy now or you might not get another chance!

Faster Transportation: Standing at a nexus you could REQUEST TO . Costs gold to take, arrives rather quickly.

Bounties/Contracts system. Clearly we need mechanics to back assassinations. Plz?

Interior Decoration: Can hire a denizen who gives special messages for manse rooms. Perhaps might give temporary wp/end regens etc. People like shinies, why not make them more available but temporary. Could also allow otherwise unavailable things, like statues of you inside the manse (cannot be enchanted).

Lottery ;)