Game Economy Speculation

[chumbucket]

I have no clue what that one guy is going on about.

The idea was to not only control inflation but increase player interaction by forcing gold to stay in circulation. No one can horde gold effectively since gold is taxed. Thus, players can either let the tax system return it to the wild or put it into circulation among players by buying their goods or return it to the wild by buying from NPCs for reagents and the like. People could still be wealthy by having stockpiles of resources and so on. Indeed, you might even let NPCs sell unlimited reagents and other uncraftables.

Perhaps the new player problem could be partially solved by actually giving new players a decent start on skills at say 70 in three different skills and a small but useful sum of gold, say, 5k.

[Stromverbrauch]

Concerning inflation/deflation: I know that back in 98/99 my brother had a "rainbow shirt" on Europa, which was supposedly crafted out of the "rainbow cloth" that was spawned in Occlo once at the start of the server and such was a true unique item.

Back then with alot of people hoarding alot of gold I do remember that the highest bids were getting close to around 10 million gold.

I was just looking what UO accounts go for these days and there are alot of accounts being offered with hundreds of millions of gold, one going up to a billion gold. Usually being offered with one million ingame gold going for 0.30$.

So you actually have a heavy inflation of gold, but at the same time there is a kind of deflation going on: Gold is not worth much anymore, the real assets are rares and such.

You have people with hundreds of millions in the banks but newbies still spawning with 100 gold (as far as I know ?) and NPC prices that are set in stone. So you actually will get the snake to bite its own tail since people who have large amounts of money usually end up realizing that all this money is not worth anything and they rather invest in into some kind of rare item because history shows that prices for rares will always increase if there are not more getting onto the market.

So all these people are pushing their money into the rares market, but that market itself is getting smaller and smaller because people who own such rares then themself don't see any point in selling theirs because getting large amounts of gold is simply useless.

[Budner]

Brilliant analysis!

[GleepGlop]

So all these people are pushing their money into the rares market, but that market itself is getting smaller and smaller because people who own such rares then themself don't see any point in selling theirs because getting large amounts of gold is simply useless.

Rares and new uniques are introduced all the time on OSI, plus all gold is pooled together as anyone can transfer items and gold between servers. New items get put in as well through expansions and skill/crafting updates, and every new dungeon is full of spawning rares. There are thousands of new items introduced after T2A for rich people to buy and trade constantly, and there are very very few items (like less than 10) of which there is only one across all servers. OSI in a way doesn't have issues due to inflation, new players get handed millions in gold by vets and in a month or less with the ridiculous new character templates they can make characters that farm tens of millions of gold per week.

[Stromverbrauch]

So all these people are pushing their money into the rares market, but that market itself is getting smaller and smaller because people who own such rares then themself don't see any point in selling theirs because getting large amounts of gold is simply useless.

Rares and new uniques are introduced all the time on OSI, plus all gold is pooled together as anyone can transfer items and gold between servers. New items get put in as well through expansions and skill/crafting updates, and every new dungeon is full of spawning rares. There are thousands of new items introduced after T2A for rich people to buy and trade constantly, and there are very very few items (like less than 10) of which there is only one across all servers. OSI in a way doesn't have issues due to inflation, new players get handed millions in gold by vets and in a month or less with the ridiculous new character templates they can make characters that farm tens of millions of gold per week.

Interesting, didn't know they introduced so many new "rares", but it still renders large sums of gold useless.

[testuseraccount]

That's because they generally removed the ability for non-gold items to decay.

Gold heaps would exist if it were the only form of currency that did not suffer from ageing, as it is similar in real life.

[Budner]

So all these people are pushing their money into the rares market, but that market itself is getting smaller and smaller because people who own such rares then themself don't see any point in selling theirs because getting large amounts of gold is simply useless.

Rares and new uniques are introduced all the time on OSI, plus all gold is pooled together as anyone can transfer items and gold between servers. New items get put in as well through expansions and skill/crafting updates, and every new dungeon is full of spawning rares. There are thousands of new items introduced after T2A for rich people to buy and trade constantly, and there are very very few items (like less than 10) of which there is only one across all servers. OSI in a way doesn't have issues due to inflation, new players get handed millions in gold by vets and in a month or less with the ridiculous new character templates they can make characters that farm tens of millions of gold per week.

Ummm I would like to know how to farm tens of millions of gold per week. I don't think that can be done actually.

[Francois424]

Ummm I would like to know how to farm tens of millions of gold per week. I don't think that can be done actually.

Would like to know too...
Big Housing (ie: Brick/Patio and up) is inflating almost as fast as I make money (~50k/week), and it's p*ssing me off, lol.

[testuseraccount]

If you guys aren't willing to fully get rid of 3rd party automation, and are not going to put the effort into making your own limited automation programs to offset the current addiction to razor/automap/etc; I would suggest balancing the world a bit more with GM's as I have previously stated.

There is no other way for this community to provide a better experience otherwise.

This will provide a more stable economy and lessen the flow of gold between entities as well as lessening the flow of converted resources/materials to end products, which will pull the price of items higher, making money relatively less inflated.

[Stromverbrauch]

Pirul made a good point in another thread:

This is not "Play here and feel like you're playing in 1999 OSI", this is "Play here and do what you could do in 1999 OSI".

The only way to actually recreate the feeling of 1999 OSI would be to be innovative because the biggest point of OSI at that time was the mysterious surrounding UO and its mechanics.

14 years after, the situation is much different: Everything has been explored and analyzed to death. Especially with the setting here that very hard tries to copy the rule set at that time point with few expectations.

Map ? Explored. Every inch, every dungeon, every mining spot.
Skills ? Explored. Every mechanic, every aspect of any skill gain. Want to be a GM thief ? Download this macro, turn it on, do it for XX hours. Done. Want to be a GM tamer ? The first spot to tame is here, then use this macro there, with skill 60 go there and use the next macro.

I feel like most people are not so dead set that they want to experience the "T2A"-Era down to every little detail, but rather the "T2A" open gameplay style. I wonder how you guys feel about it, but wouldn't you think that for example a new land mass or change in the current map would bring some great addition to this shard ? Of course it would have to be done in check with the "T2A"-Era style, and not this Ninja/Bushiod/Flying Dragon bullshit that OSI has gone with.

[corruption42]

I feel like most people are not so dead set that they want to experience the "T2A"-Era down to every little detail, but rather the "T2A" open gameplay style. I wonder how you guys feel about it, but wouldn't you think that for example a new land mass or change in the current map would bring some great addition to this shard ? Of course it would have to be done in check with the "T2A"-Era style, and not this Ninja/Bushiod/Flying Dragon bullshit that OSI has gone with.

Not if you want to maintain mechanical accuracy. Thats the tradeoff -- do you take mechanical accuracy, or do you take innovation? This shard chose mechanical accuracy. Its not that the concept wouldn't work with T2A mechanics; its that this shard is not intending to become a game development job for the devs, its intending to be a mechanical recreation, which gives them a defined end-game from a development perspective. That doesn't include room for expansion or innovation. Regardless -- that wasn't really the point of this thread... this was speculation about an altered economy, where in fact your concept could fit in well.

[Braden]

The inevitable truth is that we do not have fiscal controls on the server and eventually there will be hyper-inflation. This will mean that houses will end up costing millions of gold like they did on EA. The problem is that unlike in real-life where wages go up mostly in-line with inflation, the amount of gold a player can get from PvE is still the same. A monster drops the same gold now as it did when the shard came into being. Therefore, as the shard ages, newer players will become more and more at a disadvantage.

This is era accurate though.

[Jay]

There aren't massive amounts of players here like on OSI... The population would have to dramatically increase for house prices to raise that much. Houses fall left and right here and there's plenty of open spots still.

If this server exists 5 years from now... It will be largely the same.

[WiseOne]

I don't think houses will keep rising in price. The nature of the freeshards is that sooner or later almost everyone lets their houses drop. We had a good winter population wise so homes got more expansive but based on the previous years, summer usually correlates with a population drop which I am sure will also clear up some nice plots of land.

If I am wrong you can catch me selling my castle for 50 castle deeds this time next year

[Francois424]

Well, I'm rather new (1 month) and based on what veterans told me privately, It appears that am a victim of that inflation.

As many know, I am looking forward to a patio house (or maybe a large brick, we'll see).
Not so long ago, 2xDeed (or 2D+50k) would've nailed me one in a pretty good location.
Nowadays it's more like 3xDeed... sometimes even more (makes me wanna go for a 800k tower instead )

Hopefull it'll stabilise soon(tm). It's quite expensive and requireing lots of work.
Not giving up tho, almost up to 2x deed saved at the moment.