Kalok said:stellarmind said:Kalok said:Trasak said:8) Equity Tax
Are you saying that people should be taxed at such a rate that would make everyone's "in-game" "income" "fair and equitable"?? That's a really bad idea. It reminds me alot of what is going on in current politics how some politicians want to tax certain people DISPROPORTIONALLY more just to make things "fair and equitable".
is this something like if i studied really hard and got a perfect 100, but my score drops to a 70 because the teacher wants all the students to be averagely equal?
Apparently.
soo.... equity tax that is suppose to make things fair and equal actually recreates.. inequity... because you're taxing someone that works harder? the fudge muffin? am i understanding this right?
Well, to be fair, I think we are talking outrageous amounts that have the power to exploit the market. And then there’s RMT, which can be a part of that too. I think when we see levels like that is when it works against the game (thus necessary controls).
Racial currency is a nice idea on paper but in reality it would be a huge disadvantage for all but one or two of the races. A world accepted currency WOULD become adopted as a form of emergent gameplay based on factors like regional convenience. Much like cities in the real world grow and become rich because their location makes those cities a hub for trade, the same will be fleshed out in game, leaving all the races and zones who don't have as much access to what will amount to being the US dollar at an extreme disadvantage. Just as an NPC vendor in examples above would charge more if they weren't getting a currency they wanted, players will do the same, leading to a singular currency dominating regardless. When a huge % of the player to player trade happens in the EC tunnels, the freeport currency is going to dominate the game, for example.
I favor a self-sufficiency model over a currency-based one.
Want a dropped item? Go get one for yourself.
Want a crafted item, strike a bargain with a crafter or craft it yourself.
Much of this may not be achievable by yourself and this is what your guild mates are for, mutual assistance.
But, currency will most likely be an unfortunate feature to deal with. So I’ll leave it to the monetary enthusiasts to hash things out.
@OP, I do like the idea of being robbed when mobs defeat players. Seems like fairplay for the mobs!
stellarmind said:Kalok said:stellarmind said:Kalok said:Trasak said:8) Equity Tax
Are you saying that people should be taxed at such a rate that would make everyone's "in-game" "income" "fair and equitable"?? That's a really bad idea. It reminds me alot of what is going on in current politics how some politicians want to tax certain people DISPROPORTIONALLY more just to make things "fair and equitable".
is this something like if i studied really hard and got a perfect 100, but my score drops to a 70 because the teacher wants all the students to be averagely equal?
Apparently.
soo.... equity tax that is suppose to make things fair and equal actually recreates.. inequity... because you're taxing someone that works harder? the fudge muffin? am i understanding this right?
According to what he, Traask seems to be saying, yes.
HemlockReaper said:I took the Equity tax to be a tax based on the total value of your assets, sorta like the way 2 people at the check out line both pay the same tax rate, but having more items means paying more in taxes.
Again... Why should you be disproportionally taxed for being willing to work hard? You sound just like those politicians.
Holy crap, need to not post a juicy idea then not look at the forums the rest of the day.
Equity Tax
I didn't get into it because I thought everyone hated the set cash idea I was more throwing out AN idea.
I thought about writing Liquidity tax and not Equity, I am terrible at using the wrong word in key places. The basis of the idea is that we do not want someone sitting on an extremely large pile of cash as it can do wonky things to the system if we have modulating drops and vendor pricing. Relatively if the Player Cash value is higher than the target then inflation is high. Adding the tax on stored cash will take some of the burden of righting the system balance off the day to day transactions which is where most of the cash moves around in.
Technically when they system is charging a Liquidity tax it is making the remaining gold you have more value-able as it is contributing to also lowering NPC pricing and you will still have a huge percentage of the system cash.
For the record I was envisioning the system to be something like the following.
The system attempts to have 100 gold in the system per account with characters that have logged into the server in the last month.
The Player/NPC cash balance is intended to be 50/50
While the Player balance is below the target then NPC will drop and reward a greater amount of cash
While the NPCs are below the target value certain costs will be higher until the target is reached
NPCs will be seeded with the appropriate cash value at the end of the initial server month.
After both cash values have hit their target then the average account login is tracked to derive the target system value month to month.
If the Player Cash value begins to exceed the NPC cash value then correction factors will initiate.
An Housing and Item storage rent increase will be the first rate to increase.
The second rate to increase will be NPC Goods and Services
The third rate is Liquidity tax: If the account holds more than an average of 0.01% of total system gold then charge 3% tax on the gold monthly per 0.01% on the account.
This is purely to help keep the total cash value in the system the same and to try and keep inflation steady. This will also encourage people to spend money rather than horde it though I am sure true whales will find ways to stay under the 0.01%.
The majority of the actual economy should be player to player transactions, the NPC transactions just help set what denomination that is done in CP, SP, GP, PP or spirit stones.
P.S. I have been reading tons of Wuxia web novels in the last year and in that mythology you can either meditate to gain power or consume spirit stones. Spirit stones also become the primary currency in these novels. How interesting would it be if mobs did not award Exp directly but instead dropped XP stones that needed to be consumed but also was the only currency in the game. RMTs on stones would need to be heavily policed sadly.
@Keno,
I don't disagree that one currency would be the defacto player to player currency, most likely based off the easiest/most convenient local (EC style) but I do think it could still potentially offer emergent benefits. I would envision the system as an enhanced version of the playermade EQ system like... Since I was troll warrior in Unrest, I paid people to sell my items for me, and take a consignment basically out of the coin so I could continue adventuring but not lose all my platinum. Or, I would do the same trading 9000 gold for 100 plat, etc. etc.
In this instance, if I didn't have the faction, or I was hated in a city and I needed the currency - I would do similar. Also, there's nothing to say that the vendors, trainers, etc. would only accept their own racial currencies versus the defacto player chosen one, or, if you had a different one, maybe had a markup price for the item. Also, I could also see some nefarious shady swashbuckler type character that would offer cutthroat currency exchange rates for people with poor faction that may not want to travel further. And, just because there's one defacto currency ultimately, doesn't mean people wouldn't still be affected by the exchanges.
Would some races/classes be penalized - sure - but it would be another choice to make. Would some zones potentially offer more plat if it dropped the defacto currency? Sure. Want to make the most potential plat - play a human enchanter. Want to go to the zone to make the most coin - go to Befallen which drops plat - to me, those iare the emergent choices that weren't intristically offered when the game was released that makes the world feel more alive - that's the type of emergent gameplay I want to see.
End of the day, I'm ok with EQ inflation if no system was in place, but I can admit that it could be improved - it wasn't really an issue from Launch - PoP when I played the most, but inflation was extremely evident when I played last - seeing normal-ish items being sold for hundreds of thousands to upwards into the millions of plat. And, if a system was used, I'd much prefer it to be realistic that enhances the feeling of a virtual world than some artificial restriction.
Trasak said:
Holy crap, need to not post a juicy idea then not look at the forums the rest of the day.
Equity Tax
I didn't get into it because I thought everyone hated the set cash idea I was more throwing out AN idea.
I thought about writing Liquidity tax and not Equity, I am terrible at using the wrong word in key places. The basis of the idea is that we do not want someone sitting on an extremely large pile of cash as it can do wonky things to the system if we have modulating drops and vendor pricing. Relatively if the Player Cash value is higher than the target then inflation is high. Adding the tax on stored cash will take some of the burden of righting the system balance off the day to day transactions which is where most of the cash moves around in.
Technically when they system is charging a Liquidity tax it is making the remaining gold you have more value-able as it is contributing to also lowering NPC pricing and you will still have a huge percentage of the system cash.
For the record I was envisioning the system to be something like the following.
The system attempts to have 100 gold in the system per account with characters that have logged into the server in the last month.
The Player/NPC cash balance is intended to be 50/50
While the Player balance is below the target then NPC will drop and reward a greater amount of cash
While the NPCs are below the target value certain costs will be higher until the target is reached
NPCs will be seeded with the appropriate cash value at the end of the initial server month.
After both cash values have hit their target then the average account login is tracked to derive the target system value month to month.
If the Player Cash value begins to exceed the NPC cash value then correction factors will initiate.
An Housing and Item storage rent increase will be the first rate to increase.
The second rate to increase will be NPC Goods and Services
The third rate is Liquidity tax: If the account holds more than an average of 0.01% of total system gold then charge 3% tax on the gold monthly per 0.01% on the account.
This is purely to help keep the total cash value in the system the same and to try and keep inflation steady. This will also encourage people to spend money rather than horde it though I am sure true whales will find ways to stay under the 0.01%.
The majority of the actual economy should be player to player transactions, the NPC transactions just help set what denomination that is done in CP, SP, GP, PP or spirit stones.
P.S. I have been reading tons of Wuxia web novels in the last year and in that mythology you can either meditate to gain power or consume spirit stones. Spirit stones also become the primary currency in these novels. How interesting would it be if mobs did not award Exp directly but instead dropped XP stones that needed to be consumed but also was the only currency in the game. RMTs on stones would need to be heavily policed sadly.
So I was right... You ARE wanting to tax people for being successful. You want to force people whop have been successful to spend their cash rather than saving it up for something. Talk about punishing those who work for it....
Taxing people like what is being suggested I think is a bad idea. I understand what you guys are trying to do but the reality of it is some people have more time on their hands so they will have more currency and items. I don't have more time and yes I am a bit jealous that they do but that doesn't mean they should be punished for it. They shouldn't be taxed because of this or because another person decides to purchase more currency. All this does in my mind is artificially limit the amount of time someone is willing to invest into the game, once that happens people will just leave. You start taking what some people have actively worked for and they will leave.
A limited pool of money is a bad idea as well. Once again you have people who have a lot of time on their hands and you want to artificially limit the amount of time they spend in game by limiting what they can farm? I can't agree with it and think some of these ideas are trying to fix something that really isn't that big an issue by introducing a system that will cause more problems than it solves.
Trasak said:
Holy crap, need to not post a juicy idea then not look at the forums the rest of the day.
Equity Tax
I didn't get into it because I thought everyone hated the set cash idea I was more throwing out AN idea.
I thought about writing Liquidity tax and not Equity, I am terrible at using the wrong word in key places. The basis of the idea is that we do not want someone sitting on an extremely large pile of cash as it can do wonky things to the system if we have modulating drops and vendor pricing. Relatively if the Player Cash value is higher than the target then inflation is high. Adding the tax on stored cash will take some of the burden of righting the system balance off the day to day transactions which is where most of the cash moves around in.
Technically when they system is charging a Liquidity tax it is making the remaining gold you have more value-able as it is contributing to also lowering NPC pricing and you will still have a huge percentage of the system cash.
For the record I was envisioning the system to be something like the following.
The system attempts to have 100 gold in the system per account with characters that have logged into the server in the last month.
The Player/NPC cash balance is intended to be 50/50
While the Player balance is below the target then NPC will drop and reward a greater amount of cash
While the NPCs are below the target value certain costs will be higher until the target is reached
NPCs will be seeded with the appropriate cash value at the end of the initial server month.
After both cash values have hit their target then the average account login is tracked to derive the target system value month to month.
If the Player Cash value begins to exceed the NPC cash value then correction factors will initiate.
An Housing and Item storage rent increase will be the first rate to increase.
The second rate to increase will be NPC Goods and Services
The third rate is Liquidity tax: If the account holds more than an average of 0.01% of total system gold then charge 3% tax on the gold monthly per 0.01% on the account.
This is purely to help keep the total cash value in the system the same and to try and keep inflation steady. This will also encourage people to spend money rather than horde it though I am sure true whales will find ways to stay under the 0.01%.
The majority of the actual economy should be player to player transactions, the NPC transactions just help set what denomination that is done in CP, SP, GP, PP or spirit stones.
P.S. I have been reading tons of Wuxia web novels in the last year and in that mythology you can either meditate to gain power or consume spirit stones. Spirit stones also become the primary currency in these novels. How interesting would it be if mobs did not award Exp directly but instead dropped XP stones that needed to be consumed but also was the only currency in the game. RMTs on stones would need to be heavily policed sadly.
here's my exploit for the system in play:
real estate my wealth through high value items
what ends up happening is npc prices will inflate to adjust for the loss of currency and fresh blood won't even be able to buy anything
i would suggest at having a 1:10 ratio of wealth to npcs
you want your money in circulation and not in banks
eh it's really tough to pan out a system. here's the dilenma:
all players want to 'feel' like they are money. the best solution is the player based printing press. i've already discussed the flaws for it.
i think the op and i agree with a voucher exchange for money:
issues is that camps can be monopolized. this really isn't favorable for a pve system as there is no solid way to contest camps.
lets just say my guild has 5 groups locking out 5 different vouchers.
goblins max voucher 5000 conversion to 10 gold per 1
dragons 100 ~ 100
rats 10000 ~ 1
a system like this does give economic control to the devs though. meh i dunno -_- i can tell you how i would exploit the system. i can suggest edits to your proposed system. it's more or less what type of system majority of the player base wants to play.
i don't think economic system is a make or break deal for a lot of players, but it'll be a determining factor or long term player retention.
Kalok said:
So I was right... You ARE wanting to tax people for being successful. You want to force people whop have been successful to spend their cash rather than saving it up for something. Talk about punishing those who work for it....
Kalok
I hear your concern but that's not how the math works out. By decreasing the total supply each individual coin becomes more valuable and so the remaining amount is likely nearly the same “value” just a lower cash number. The tax is the last of three correction factors that activates and will be the first to fall of further increasing the value of stored cash. I would just put the “tax” on everyone all the time as a way to have a standard decay that everything else responds to but that will punish the people who cannot play hence I wanted to put a threshold on the tax.
This will keep the relative value of the cash at the same value across the games life. The standard drops and rewards will stay as rewarding as the day they were made.
The other option is to have NPC Values (both generation and consumption) tied to a portion of the global cash value for the server. If the server has twice the intended currency on it then all item costs, housing/rent costs and vanity costs will also be doubled. Likewise all vendor buy, npc drop and quest rewards will be double the base value. This will lead to a constantly fluctuating value of gold as cash enters and leaves the system.
The first option favors new players and weaker players though experienced players will try to move some of their wealth to non taxed commodities which is fine. The point is not to penalize the rich it is to stabilize the currency.
The second version is standard capitalism and that's fine as well but it favors the super rich, as does capitalism. Its not politics its just math and econ 101.
stellarmind said:
here's my exploit for the system in play:
real estate my wealth through high value items
(this is fine, we are trying to control inflation not penalize wealth)
what ends up happening is npc prices will inflate to adjust for the loss of currency and fresh blood won't even be able to buy anything
(if the cash in the system drops then so will npc costs. Basically the NPC costs to drops ratio will stay the same no matter what. In theory then the "drops" to item value ratio will also stay the same even if the cash value is different though once the system stabilizes that should not shift again)
i would suggest at having a 1:10 ratio of wealth to npcs
(the only value that actually matters now that I think about it is the player held cash and the target player held cash per active account. The NPC value is a derived value and not a controlling value.)
you want your money in circulation and not in banks
(basically this, certain items may maintain a high value if the market is not flooded but so long as there is a limited supply of cash then only so much can be liquidated at once without taking a loss)
I personally don't see the need for a secondary currency when the primary currency is already a representative currency (all digital and paper money is) and not hard currency (true real life objects of intrinsic value)
Trasak said:stellarmind said:
here's my exploit for the system in play:
real estate my wealth through high value items
(this is fine, we are trying to control inflation not penalize wealth)
what ends up happening is npc prices will inflate to adjust for the loss of currency and fresh blood won't even be able to buy anything
(if the cash in the system drops then so will npc costs. Basically the NPC costs to drops ratio will stay the same no matter what. In theory then the "drops" to item value ratio will also stay the same even if the cash value is different though once the system stabilizes that should not shift again)
i would suggest at having a 1:10 ratio of wealth to npcs
(the only value that actually matters now that I think about it is the player held cash and the target player held cash per active account. The NPC value is a derived value and not a controlling value.)
you want your money in circulation and not in banks
(basically this, certain items may maintain a high value if the market is not flooded but so long as there is a limited supply of cash then only so much can be liquidated at once without taking a loss)
I personally don't see the need for a secondary currency when the primary currency is already a representative currency (all digital and paper money is) and not hard currency (true real life objects of intrinsic value)
total money in the system is based off population.
npcs are the central bankers and money sinks.
example:
population 10 = 1000 gold
target is 100 gold per person
one person decides to real estate his wealth. that person now creates a bubble. lets just say he acculimates over 500 gold worth of items. the system is going to raise the costs to find that 500 gold.
it has no one to tax because investor has doesn't have over 1% of the currency(i know my numbers are wrong)
essentially i'm robbing the other 9 in my population by npc proxy assuming the items i invested in are needs.
eh i'm talking a bit over my head. i'm going to bow out now XD
I just caught up with the thread. Hard work will be rewarded with high-end items and hard quests. And with farming/crafting too. Hard work will be rewarded.
However, I don’t want to see 10 people manipulating and exploiting the market either. And they could be a part of the RMT black-market for all we know.
Clearly, controls will be needed on outrageous sums of coin. Otherwise, it’s a threat to the society and market of the game.
Syrif said:I just caught up with the thread. Hard work will be rewarded with high-end items and hard quests. And with farming/crafting too. Hard work will be rewarded.
However, I don’t want to see 10 people manipulating and exploiting the market either. And they could be a part of the RMT black-market for all we know.
Clearly, controls will be needed on outrageous sums of coin. Otherwise, it’s a threat to the society and market of the game.
as long as p2p trading exists, rmt will exists.
man maybe i've been reading too much of the kybalion...
stellarmind said:one person decides to real estate his wealth. that person now creates a bubble. lets just say he acculimates over 500 gold worth of items. the system is going to raise the costs to find that 500 gold.
it has no one to tax because investor has doesn't have over 1% of the currency(i know my numbers are wrong)
essentially i'm robbing the other 9 in my population by npc proxy assuming the items i invested in are needs.
eh i'm talking a bit over my head. i'm going to bow out now XD
I see what you are getting at and when I originally wrote it as Equity you would be right but I rephrased it as Liquidity which I was attempting to mean actual cash currency only. The items in question would only have a value of 500g on the player marked and not on the NPC market. At best a stack of items could have its vendor value attributed to it to add to your total liquidity value but with item storage costs being the primary money sink then I think thats getting taxed twice on the same thing.
Also remember these correction values will only be in place while the system is flooded with cash. If the system cash is bellow a certain target then all the tax values will shut off.
In a game that I used to play, I spent many years crafting and selling items to players for reasonable prices. I didn't gouge, and in fact my prices were often some of the lowest on the market. I developed a strong reputation for quality and selection, and every week I would get requests for custom orders. I spent quite a lot of time crafting, probably nearly 2/3 of my play time in that game. When I finally stopped playing the game about 5 years after its launch, I was one of the 20 richest people on the server, simply through the money I had made over those years.
I wasn't "playing" markets or doing RMT. I was simply crafting, and selling items. I did a lot of my own gathering to keep costs down, but there were plenty of times where I bought things that I needed from other players as well.
I understand the concern about people using large quantities of money to manipulate the market but I can tell you right now that if that game had started "taxing" me for my success, I would have stopped playing it much sooner. I'm not one of those people who look at money as a score, but if I earn it, I want to decide where and how to spend it.
I am not opposed to money sinks that apply proportionally to all players. I'll happily pay maintenance fees on housing, or for additional bank space. I'll be quite pleased to go buy new cosmetic outfits from time to time, even if they're pricy. I'm fine with having to spend money on supplies from time to time (as long as everyone else does too). That's all cool. Heck, I'll even drop money into NPC-driven "donation" campaigns if it leads to a cool server event or something like that.
There's a difference between those things and what is being proposed.
I am not really invested in the idea at all personally. Inflation will happen and it is up to VR too keep their drops and cash sinks appropriate to the server inflation.
A cash tax would be required to keep a capped max currency functioning but I don't think people would like a capped max currency system anyway. My posts were really more of If you want X, then you need Y or the system breaks down, not really advocating for the system.
Honestly a floating monthly rate on storage space and housing plots will likely be more than enough to keep the cash balance reasonable and being paid by those with stockpiles of cash rather than the newbies. Limiting the number and amount of cash dropped by NPCs will also prevent the cash balance from growing out of control. As I posted earlier I think it would be great if all the drops were actually an ingredient for one recipe or another and the real money was in selling finished goods to NPCs.
Nephele said:In a game that I used to play, I spent many years crafting and selling items to players for reasonable prices. I didn't gouge, and in fact my prices were often some of the lowest on the market. I developed a strong reputation for quality and selection, and every week I would get requests for custom orders. I spent quite a lot of time crafting, probably nearly 2/3 of my play time in that game. When I finally stopped playing the game about 5 years after its launch, I was one of the 20 richest people on the server, simply through the money I had made over those years.
I wasn't "playing" markets or doing RMT. I was simply crafting, and selling items. I did a lot of my own gathering to keep costs down, but there were plenty of times where I bought things that I needed from other players as well.
I understand the concern about people using large quantities of money to manipulate the market but I can tell you right now that if that game had started "taxing" me for my success, I would have stopped playing it much sooner. I'm not one of those people who look at money as a score, but if I earn it, I want to decide where and how to spend it.
I am not opposed to money sinks that apply proportionally to all players. I'll happily pay maintenance fees on housing, or for additional bank space. I'll be quite pleased to go buy new cosmetic outfits from time to time, even if they're pricy. I'm fine with having to spend money on supplies from time to time (as long as everyone else does too). That's all cool. Heck, I'll even drop money into NPC-driven "donation" campaigns if it leads to a cool server event or something like that.
There's a difference between those things and what is being proposed.
You aren’t who we are worried about. I‘d rather not have outrageous inflation and an exploited market. And sorry - even if that means you cutting back some on crafting.
There should be “shortcuts” for no one. Hard work will be rewarded even moreso.
Syrif said:Nephele said:In a game that I used to play, I spent many years crafting and selling items to players for reasonable prices. I didn't gouge, and in fact my prices were often some of the lowest on the market. I developed a strong reputation for quality and selection, and every week I would get requests for custom orders. I spent quite a lot of time crafting, probably nearly 2/3 of my play time in that game. When I finally stopped playing the game about 5 years after its launch, I was one of the 20 richest people on the server, simply through the money I had made over those years.
I wasn't "playing" markets or doing RMT. I was simply crafting, and selling items. I did a lot of my own gathering to keep costs down, but there were plenty of times where I bought things that I needed from other players as well.
I understand the concern about people using large quantities of money to manipulate the market but I can tell you right now that if that game had started "taxing" me for my success, I would have stopped playing it much sooner. I'm not one of those people who look at money as a score, but if I earn it, I want to decide where and how to spend it.
I am not opposed to money sinks that apply proportionally to all players. I'll happily pay maintenance fees on housing, or for additional bank space. I'll be quite pleased to go buy new cosmetic outfits from time to time, even if they're pricy. I'm fine with having to spend money on supplies from time to time (as long as everyone else does too). That's all cool. Heck, I'll even drop money into NPC-driven "donation" campaigns if it leads to a cool server event or something like that.
There's a difference between those things and what is being proposed.
You aren’t who we are worried about. I‘d rather not have outrageous inflation and an exploited market. And sorry - even if that means you cutting back some on crafting.
There should be “shortcuts” for no one. Hard work will be rewarded even moreso.
You missed the point of my little story, Syrif. VR cannot go down the path of "taxing" people simply for being successful. It will drive legitimate players from the game. I cannot say it more bluntly than that.
I agree with trying to protect the economy from manipulation, and with measures to prevent market manipulation, but those things cannot constitute a penalty, and they must apply equally to everyone.
Personally, I think that market manipulation will be much harder to accomplish if VR goes with regional markets as they have hinted in the past. Sure, you may still have a local monopoly where someone buys up all of a commodity in one region, but to do it in all regions would be much more difficult to accomplish than when there's a single, global market. So while I get the concern, I don't believe that this will be as much of an issue in Pantheon as you fear - at least, not if VR sets things up well.
Nephele said:Syrif said:Nephele said:In a game that I used to play, I spent many years crafting and selling items to players for reasonable prices. I didn't gouge, and in fact my prices were often some of the lowest on the market. I developed a strong reputation for quality and selection, and every week I would get requests for custom orders. I spent quite a lot of time crafting, probably nearly 2/3 of my play time in that game. When I finally stopped playing the game about 5 years after its launch, I was one of the 20 richest people on the server, simply through the money I had made over those years.
I wasn't "playing" markets or doing RMT. I was simply crafting, and selling items. I did a lot of my own gathering to keep costs down, but there were plenty of times where I bought things that I needed from other players as well.
I understand the concern about people using large quantities of money to manipulate the market but I can tell you right now that if that game had started "taxing" me for my success, I would have stopped playing it much sooner. I'm not one of those people who look at money as a score, but if I earn it, I want to decide where and how to spend it.
I am not opposed to money sinks that apply proportionally to all players. I'll happily pay maintenance fees on housing, or for additional bank space. I'll be quite pleased to go buy new cosmetic outfits from time to time, even if they're pricy. I'm fine with having to spend money on supplies from time to time (as long as everyone else does too). That's all cool. Heck, I'll even drop money into NPC-driven "donation" campaigns if it leads to a cool server event or something like that.
There's a difference between those things and what is being proposed.
You aren’t who we are worried about. I‘d rather not have outrageous inflation and an exploited market. And sorry - even if that means you cutting back some on crafting.
There should be “shortcuts” for no one. Hard work will be rewarded even moreso.
You missed the point of my little story, Syrif. VR cannot go down the path of "taxing" people simply for being successful. It will drive legitimate players from the game. I cannot say it more bluntly than that.
I agree with trying to protect the economy from manipulation, and with measures to prevent market manipulation, but those things cannot constitute a penalty, and they must apply equally to everyone.
Personally, I think that market manipulation will be much harder to accomplish if VR goes with regional markets as they have hinted in the past. Sure, you may still have a local monopoly where someone buys up all of a commodity in one region, but to do it in all regions would be much more difficult to accomplish than when there's a single, global market. So while I get the concern, I don't believe that this will be as much of an issue in Pantheon as you fear - at least, not if VR sets things up well.
There doesn’t have to be a cap. There does need to be controls when coin gets out of control to outrageous levels - you know this. And you mention equality; it’s not even remotely when a few people at the top exploit the market. Some of them may be intentional abusers, and it gives them far more power to screw up the game. No thank you. They can be very problematic for EVERYONE else, especially when they are abusing the system. I do NOT want extreme inflation nor exploitation driven by a very small group of people. Obviously, it may not be eliminated, but there must be controls at that point and you know it.
Add: Carry on discussion. I’ve said all I have on it, and the ideas from people are very interesting.
Add: @Nephele I agree regional markets are a good thing. I’m all for it.
Syrif said:
There doesn’t have to be a cap. There does need to be controls when coin gets out of control to outrageous levels - you know this. And you mention equality; it’s not even remotely when a few people at the top exploit the market. Some of them may be intentional abusers, and it gives them far more power to screw up the game. No thank you. They can be very problematic for EVERYONE else, especially when they are abusing the system. I do NOT want extreme inflation nor exploitation driven by a very small group of people. Obviously, it may not be eliminated, but there must be controls at that point and you know it.
Add: Carry on discussion. I’ve said all I have on it, and the ideas from people are very interesting.
Add: @Nephele I agree regional markets are a good thing. I’m all for it.
Snipping out the excess quotes just to save space :)
I think the two issues you mention can and should be dealt with seperately. Trying to design a single solution that addresses both of them leads to something that's going to do more harm than good.
In terms of inflation, the best way to prevent this is to take a multi-pronged approach.
1) Insure that itemization is set up in a way that insures constant demand for anything and everything, so that it's harder to get into oversupply situations on the market.
2) Normalize money faucets - ie, the things that inject coin into the game. Monitor to see where players are getting money from, and whether that is within the intended design. If something pays too well for too little effort, either nerf it or increase the effort required.
3) Establish a web of money sinks - some required, some optional - that pull money out of the economy on a regular basis. Required things might be paying for additional bank space, or money spent on trainers. Optional things can be more expensive luxury items - housing, mounts, cosmetics, etc. At least some of both should be recurring in some way.
4) Insure that circulation of money throughout the economy is encouraged, and that the circulation spreads out the money over time. This can be accomplished to a large degree by strong interdependency.
Those are just a starting point, but the point is, if the game's economy is designed to be resilient, inflation can be minimized and controlled. In most games, inflation occurs because no one stops to think about how changes to the game over time will effect the economy, or what will happen when players spend years pouring money into the system from the money faucets. Pantheon has the advantage of being able to look at other MMOs that have gone through multi-year inflationary cycles and learn lessons from their problems.
As for exploitation - bluntly, no matter what rules are in place, people are still going to try to do it. Even if the game limits the number of transactions they can make with a single account, or something along those lines, they'll still set up out of game networks to accomplish their goal. Imagine a guild that uses a discord server to coordinate market activity between multiple players to buy up all of a resource. The real problem here is that VR can only set up restrictions within the game itself and those restrictions simply can't have enough teeth to stop someone who's truly dead set on market manipulation for whatever reason.
BUT, while they can't make it impossible for this to happen, they can make it far more difficult, without resorting to harsh penalties or limits. As I mentioned, regional markets is one component that could help. There are other systems as well. For example, taking a page out of EVE's book and implementing a contract/auction system side-by-side with traditional consignment-based selling. Or doing something similar to what FFXI did with a reverse auction system where the buyer enters what they're willing to pay, and the seller gets that assuming that their price is met. There are lots of different things that could be explored to help make it difficult for people to do market manipulation without preventing someone from being a successful seller (or even reseller) if that's what they want to do.
I submit to you however that the problem to address FIRST is the inflation issue. If supply and demand can be counted on to remain relatively balanced long-term, and inflation can be controlled that way, then it's far easier to prevent market manipulation from occurring. If supply and demand are destined to be out of whack over time then it doesn't matter what you do, the economy will eventually tailspin regardless. Most games have economic problems not because of evil RMT companies doing market manipulation, but because they fail to account for the fact that all players level up over time and pool at the top when they're designing everything.