>>And really, we're going to trot out the 'reduce money flowing in' argument again?

I'm not saying that's the solution, but I think it's important to recognize that having someone buy one or two or three of something isn't going to solve the long term issue, as much as it will instead just temporarily delay it at best.

I mean, I think a selling a few multi room houses for 25k platinum or something is a great idea, and can definitely reduce the current amount of coins in the game.

But, what happens when those people earn the money back? Then what? We're back at the same problem. People who want to give a dozen, two dozen, or three dozen characters the same top-tier stuff aside (since I would imagine they're an incredible minority), once someone has something for their character, they rarely need a second one.

---

"You always have to be a know-it-all. And you don't. Know. It. All." - GERSTEINJ2

50k+ plat for special combat techniques that let you look cooler in combat. No mechanical bonus per se, just looks. Like a pre-made alteration for combat or something.

__
You hear the voice of Jaedren exclaim, "Look! I'm Leilond!"
You notice Jaedren come out of hiding.
Jaedren shimmers out of sight.

There will never be a "long term solution." There will always be potentially infinite earnings for people dedicated to maxing their earnings, or who are able to spend 8+ hrs daily playing the game. Scaling down income will not fix this, it will just change the magnitude of the values, not the disparity between those who have the time/focus and those who don't. Period.

I don't understand why this conversation continues to happen. To me it is like the "why is there no search function" discussion. I've seen the "broken economy" as a thread more times than I can count with my hands and toes, and I'd wager Apu probably couldn't count the number of these discussions he's been involved in.

We have an imaginary currency that isn't tied to a real world currency, (until recently, and even then the conversion rate is arguably absurd, which is why this thread started in the first place) or a finite resource. The economy will always "be broken" because of design decisions based on playability over realism.

Nobody really wants plats tied to RL currency either, because it would bring the game even closer to "play to win." That said, having nice fluffy stuff people could spend 10s of thousands of plats on would at least give high income characters something to spend their plats on, and MIGHT subsequently allow for a wider variety of people having "a legitimate chance" at winning auction items.

But if anybody thinks that shrinking loot payouts could in anyway correct the disparity people like to complain about, they're deluding themselves. It would just make 1kp "impressive" again as opposed to 10+kp it is now. And the people with a few hundred plats now, would wind up with dozens, because they can't scale down loot values on just the high end. It would be unbalancing and discouraging for HLCs and people who want to climb the criter/loot ladder. Earnings have to scale with difficulty/level. The number of 0s in the number is irrelevant. At the end of the day, real life and game design combine to create economic disparity based on time and commitment to earning coin. And again, even then, new EXP allows everybody to reach the high end faster, and when you reach the point where everybody has 10s of thousands of plats, it typically boils down to "who values it most" more often than "who has the most coins."

>>I don't understand why this conversation continues to happen.

The conversation keeps happening, because the solution is so incredibly simple and easy. Take all the cool items that GMs design for payquest prizes, and make those available for large numbers of plats. Done.

It's not rocket science. But it would lower Simu's profits if they sold items for plats instead of $$, so there probably won't ever be anything worth buying with ingame coins

Apu
_
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

>>I just said "high priced items" isn't the solution, either, because it doesn't solve what I believe to be the actual issue: people amassing great amounts of wealth as a result of not having things to buy.

What in the world? Of course "having things to buy" is the solution to "not having things to buy". Even Gonif's suggestions about buying a million short swords for 1 silver each makes more sense than this.

I mean yeah of course you can't just release a couple items one time and then never release anything else, and expect that to solve the problem. But there is no shortage of great ideas coming from GMs for awesome items that people would pay tons of plats for (for examples, see payquest prize lists)

Apu
_
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

Have another one of those sight unseen auctions. That was fun. You can bid big and flop or get something awesome. was that premie only or everyone I forgot

I'd also pay plats to prevent memory loss when dying and departing shortly after.

My thoughts

Portable crafting equipment: Medium cost and low/no upkeep
- Rent from correct society/get ticket
-- It is set on cart/wagon
-- Tap ticket at location renter wants it brought to and set up
- Daily/Weekly/Monthly rental prices
- Usable only when renter on cart or in wagon
- Undeed item for additional fee

Home crafting equipment: High cost and medium upkeep
- Purchase from correct society/items placed in home or home workshop
-- Monthly/weekly/usage upkeep to keep equipment in pristine condition
- Undeed item for additional fee


What is needed are items added to the game with 10s of thousands of plats in initial costs with hundreds of plats in monthly upkeep costs for high plat income players and items with thousands of plats initial costs with tens of plats in monthly upkeep costs for medium plat income players. Items that if a person doesn't maintain, is removed from the game once the unpaid maintenace costs exceed a percentage of the initial price. But they should definately have a wow/convenience factor appropriate for the costs.

I don't own one, but it sounds like boats had a good initial price at the time to remove plats from the game, but their maintenance costs sound like they are too low to keep removing plats as fast as people earn them. They also persist even if a person doesn't maintain them. New boats are also no longer available. Since conditions for removal of these resource hogs weren't written in from the start, and new boats are no longer available, I think its safe to say that as a plat sink, they fail.

I see my ideas appropriate for medium plat income players. I don't have a high plat income, so I don't know what a player of high plat income would want or would be willing to pay a lot for. Whatever the costs though, they should not be limited items. They need to be items readily available to anyone who feels they can afford the initial costs as well as the upkeep, and still be available later in case they fail to keep up with the maintenance. Perhaps these items could also have a buy back ability that will refund part of the initial costs, minus depreciation and upkeep, in case the player no longer wants to or can afford to maintain said item.


Telrenth

>All of which are player managed, and subject to the vagaries of player availability. Which is why the demand isn't there. There are (real or imagined) concerns about supply.

Pretty much this. I'm not really interested in having to track a player down every time I want to travel, or getting stuck somewhere when my AG dies, etc.

>>A high level hunting ground on the mainland thats easy to get into and doesn't have any weird attacks, where you get skins, boxes and coins - Pay to get in.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I thought we were trying to come up with ideas on what people would be willing to pay for that would remove plats from the system. So your thought is to have them develop another money making area and add a fee to get in? Only way that would remove plats from the system, is you pay for a specific amount of time, and the fee is guaranteed to be higher than what can be earned from said skins, boxes, and coins. Would you really want to hunt there and lose money when there are places that are off the mainland, or difficult to get into, or have weird attacks that can make you a lot of plats? Thats akin to just dropping the level of payouts on hunting. Then again, perhaps you and others would like an easy place to train, and would be willing to lose money doing it.


Telrenth

I was also thinking about contests as a way to suck platinum out of the system. Although, maybe not as a way to get a single player to drop 50k. But perhaps it could get 50 players to drop 1k? Not really sure. So here it is...

I've always loved the idea of a "Great Hunt" or something of the like. Most of the fantasy literature has something like this, weather with nobles-only or something that is regional. With all the talk about group mechanics, this could really shine and might have to wait for a system like that to come out first.

We could have a Guildleader or other important NPC ( my original idea years ago was for Scynn and his wife but I don't think that's going to happen) rally up interested players, have them pay for their chance to participate. In return they might be able to get some rare skin/hide/etc or perhaps a chance for the critter to drop one or more of the "treasure" boxes.

I think it would be cool, but as I said it might have to wait on improved group combat.

---

System Announcement: The Night Sun has been snuffed. It's dark again. Now the scary stuff comes out.

>You can easily buy almost anything you want second-hand. It costs extra, but since people apparently have hundreds of thousands of plats available, I don't think this is a problem.

I hate to say this, but the obvious solution most games come to is bound to character items. Only way to get another is from the primary source, secondary sales are almost impossible excepting bugs and wholesale character sales. DR has this script already, not sure if it would kill the game to have millions of bound-to-X items running nonstop. But it does solve a few problems.

Bring on the gladiators....

A pay-plats-to-enter Gauntlet like area. The "reward" for entering would be your name on a list, similar to guild registers. No coins for the winner, just bragging rights. All guilds allowed to enter, and a kill by your "pet" would count as a kill as well <hence allow both empaths and necros to enter>. Only your name and whatever "title" you're wearing at the time would go up on the board, not your guild. and only the "prestige" board type thing would be open to the public, so how you killed the critter would be your own "secret". There might be some that could elect to be viewable as well.



/---
Oh and last one, DR at any given time has a population of weenies that will criticize at the drop of a hat, don't take things personally it happens to everyone.
Leucius

>Bring on the gladiators....

Uh...People would use this once, as a novelty. It wouldn't suck plats out of the game, because they wouldn't be constantly pushing the thing like people did with arcade machines back in the day, they'd do it, say 'all right, I need XYZ ranks' and then come back when they had them.

How about....

A very serious, very big casino where you can buy special prizes like quest items and auction items with credits, but the odds are rigged such that players will blow massive amounts of plat trying to win?

Casinos are one of the greatest money-sinks in the world, after all. The house always wins!

>>My post was in response to Apu, saying that he wanted to be able to buy quest prizes for plats. I was pointing out that he already can. I personally don't think binding quest prizes is necessary.

Yes I can, and have, spent tens of thousands of plats on payquest prizes that were originally purchased by someone else with $$. I also can, and have, sold tens of thousands of plats to other players for $$ in order to then turn around and spend that $$ on payfest admittance (which can be rationalized as "paying plats to get into Hallows Eve")

But this is terribly unbalanced game design when the only worthwhile items that can be purchased with plats involve transferring plats between players, and transferring $$dollars to Simutronics. The only time a significant amount of plats ever leave the system is during festival auctions, which have far too few items and are far too infrequent to even put a dent in inflation

Apu
_
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

>>Arguably that's good game design for Simu

Yeah at first I typed "bad game design", which is subjective depending on your viewpoint. It is extremely "good" design if the goal is to fleece remaining customers of as much money as possible with no regard for designing a balanced game. But I think no matter your goal, everyone can agree that this is unbalanced game design

Apu
_
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Apu

Raffles are a good idea, and it kind of relates to my casino idea. Gambling is a proven business model for draining peoples' money. Selling people a chance to win something is a great way to fleece them of large amounts of money.

Open up a swanky, high-rolling casino somewhere. Maybe even charge a membership fee just to enter it. Pay out in chips that are redeemable for plats or rare prizes. People who have money to blow will blow a lot of it. It's proven to work in real life. Some people will strike it big, but if it is tuned right, it will be a massive plat sink overall.

I like the idea of penny auctions!

Raffles seem like a decent idea. The player-run raffles seem to generate tens of thousands of plats.

Monthly raffle - August 2012

Grand Prize (1 winner): 5 volumes tyrium, Keishalae alteration voucher
Second Prize (2 winners): 5 volumes vardite
Third Prize (3 winners): 10 volumes kertig


September 2012:

Grand Prize: one of those obsidian-shard weapons
Second Prize: racial weapon
Third Prize: treasure map

Some such things. Nothing game-breaking: ultimately, 5 volumes of tyrium being won a couple times a year won't make much difference, I think, but should still be good to drain thousands of plats every time it's done.