Economy and gold.. update needed

[The Zog historian]

they could still sell these items, just at whatever price the npc sells them for..
so basically then you condone price gouging and scripters?

there is no reason that 1 10 charge bottle of pof should be worth 250k-500k.. yet on atl i bet you that is all you will find. if you can even find any for sale at all..


and the reason the prices are so high is because someone goes around and buys them all up, then puts them back on a vendor for twice what they bought them for..

this does not help the economy at all.

Now on that topic of "price-gouging": if it's gouging, then why are people buying at those prices?

If someone is able to sell something for twice the price, then the original purchase price was low, and it's still worth that gold to someone.

Don't like it at that price, then don't buy it.

P.S. Did you ever consider that if players sell at the same price as your NPC proposal, then there would be no reason for buyers to bother looking for a player vendor? Even a difference of 5% might not be enough to have a player bother looking for a player vendor, not when an NPC is ready to sell something out of an infinite supply. You may think a jar of powder isn't worth 130K (a 10-pack on Atlantic is going for 1.3 million), but somebody does. You're being outbid on a commodity of relative scarcity.

And what about in the future when gold is worth even less? Will NPCs be programmed to increase prices, like with ingots and boards? Or will you think "there is no reason that 1 10 charge bottle of pof" should be worth more than, what, 50K or 75K?

 

[aarons6]

commodity of relative scarcity

you said the problem..

 

[Captn Norrington]

someone suggested earlier in the thread that they need to make 10 or 100 million gold checks, NO please no, look at how much gold has been duped with 1 million checks existing, hundreds of billions in duped gold, if not trillions. if they made 100 million checks...imagine the impact on the economy...an item that's 100 million now, would end up being about 500 million or even a billion gold with all the duping that would occur. my suggestion is that they reduce all gold that exists to a smaller amount, for example, turn all checks into 10% of their value, all million checks become 100k checks, the economy will not be affected in any way since everyone will still technically have the same amount, and it will allow offshard players to store more gold in their bank, as the original post was talking about.

 

[Wenchkin]

Inflation isn't a result of player pricing. It's simply an inevitable outcome of an economy with a daily currency pool increase. Gold is constantly being created, and rary being destroyed so invariably the value of a gold piece drops. Items still have the same relative value, the value of currency has just changed.

No merchant is forced to charge so much that a player cannot carry or bank the gold. No player has to enter into a deal which they feel is unfair. Gold might be spawning constantly, but I don't set my price based on the richest 2 players of my shard. I don't charge a price which means the player has to farm or trade so much that they fill a bank of gold just for a single transaction. If I did, I'd expect other players to laugh at me or refuse the trade. There may be a lot of gold on our shards, but it doesn't automatically land in the banks of every newbie, returner or casual player who logs in. By the time they earn the gold to pay silly prices they probably forgot what they wanted to buy. I don't think making bigger cheques is the best solution. What on earth would I do with so much game currency anyway? If I was handling billions of gold in UO I'd be cursing that I'd earned it in a game and not in RL where it would actually pay for something.

If you just let it go the relative value of items won't change, people will just be forced to find a new form of currency such as legacy tokens or something.

No player is forced to do anything.

All that is really needed is a currency exchange (including on monsters), as the problem of inflation is purely aesthetics and logistics.

Or some common sense. Remembering that UO is a game and players actually want to have fun not grind making gold all day. There are other games where getting dressed is not some huge undertaking like it is in UO. If we want new/returning players and casual players to actually stick around then this sort of economic silliness doesn't make UO attractive. I don't see any how increasing cheques or bank gold storage is going to make UO more appealing as a game. I think it'll get bumped up, then prices will rise to the new limits and sooner or later we'll want more increases.

Wenchy

 

[Uvtha]

No merchant is forced to charge so much that a player cannot carry or bank the gold. No player has to enter into a deal which they feel is unfair. Gold might be spawning constantly, but I don't set my price based on the richest 2 players of my shard. I don't charge a price which means the player has to farm or trade so much that they fill a bank of gold just for a single transaction. If I did, I'd expect other players to laugh at me or refuse the trade. There may be a lot of gold on our shards, but it doesn't automatically land in the banks of every newbie, returner or casual player who logs in. By the time they earn the gold to pay silly prices they probably forgot what they wanted to buy. I don't think making bigger cheques is the best solution. What on earth would I do with so much game currency anyway? If I was handling billions of gold in UO I'd be cursing that I'd earned it in a game and not in RL where it would actually pay for something.


No player is forced to do anything.

Or some common sense. Remembering that UO is a game and players actually want to have fun not grind making gold all day. There are other games where getting dressed is not some huge undertaking like it is in UO. If we want new/returning players and casual players to actually stick around then this sort of economic silliness doesn't make UO attractive. I don't see any how increasing cheques or bank gold storage is going to make UO more appealing as a game. I think it'll get bumped up, then prices will rise to the new limits and sooner or later we'll want more increases.

Wenchy

Obviously no one is forced to do anything, I am only trying to explain why they do price items so high.

Compare Siege to Atlantic. On Atlantic there are trillions of gold pieces in circulation. On siege there are far far less. So on Atlantic a PoF costs 200k, while on Siege it costs 50k. It's not cheaper on Siege because people are nice and price it low. It's cheaper because currency is more valuable than it is on Atlantic.

On the other side of that coin when PoF sells for 200k you can amass a million gold much quicker on Atlantic than you can on Siege. So in the end 200k and 50k are the same value.

And as you can see currency is very hard to move around at high numbers, and it has not stopped prices from rising. Conversely making currency easier to move around at high numbers will not increase prices any faster than they would regularly be increasing.

No one really makes gold by farming monsters anymore. You make gold by hunting something that other people will pay a lot of gold for. But either way you have to grind for wealth, and you always have had to. That is the way it should be, and yes, earning enough to get the things you want IS part of the fun of UO.

There will always be items that are more relatively scarce and thus more relatively valuable. The thing you really dislike is how the numbers look. We could (and probably should imo) chop a bunch of zeros off of all currency and lower currency incoming by that same margin, so that uber suits would be worth 1m rather than 100m... but that will only change the relative value of the numbers. That new 1m will be just as hard to get as that 100m was before, the currency will just be easier to store and move.

So no... people don't HAVE to price their items in the hundreds of millions, but it makes sense that they do.

 

[Theo_GL]

someone suggested earlier in the thread that they need to make 10 or 100 million gold checks, NO please no, look at how much gold has been duped with 1 million checks existing, hundreds of billions in duped gold, if not trillions. if they made 100 million checks...imagine the impact on the economy...an item that's 100 million now, would end up being about 500 million or even a billion gold with all the duping that would occur. my suggestion is that they reduce all gold that exists to a smaller amount, for example, turn all checks into 10% of their value, all million checks become 100k checks, the economy will not be affected in any way since everyone will still technically have the same amount, and it will allow offshard players to store more gold in their bank, as the original post was talking about.

This is absolutely the dumbest arguement I have ever heard on the boards against gold checks and you are not the only one to bring it up.

IF (and a big IF) a dupe exists to dupe gold checks - there is not a limit to how many times you can do it - so duping 100 1m checks two times is no different than duping 100 2m checks. By your theory duping would be better if we had only 500k checks. Its a completely flawed arguement.

I would argue that gold check dupes rarely exist and its far more likely to get scammed on a large purchase where you can't hand over the checks then the economy to be borked by gold check dupes.

Ultimate solution is all money is carried in a number in a bank box. Interim solution is 5m checks.

 

[the 4th man]

Here's my way of looking at it........if one doesn't horde gold, one wouldn't need so much space. What's the underlying purpose of having so much gold in the first place?

The need to buy.......must have it right away?? Cannot work for it or wait for it??

As it stands, I having been around, 10 plus years, have seen the prices of items rise so high, it borders pathetic. Allowing third party sites to advertise and sell gold, didn't help. UO is like real life, Americas economy is so shot, there's no quick fix, ditto for UO.

 

[Theo_GL]

Here's my way of looking at it........if one doesn't horde gold, one wouldn't need so much space. What's the underlying purpose of having so much gold in the first place?

The need to buy.......must have it right away?? Cannot work for it or wait for it??

As it stands, I having been around, 10 plus years, have seen the prices of items rise so high, it borders pathetic. Allowing third party sites to advertise and sell gold, didn't help. UO is like real life, Americas economy is so shot, there's no quick fix, ditto for UO.

Thats not a realistic arguement. What if there were no checks in life? Would you be mad at someone who hoarded 500,000 in $20 bills to buy a house? How inconvenient would it be to drag $500,000 in $20 bills to a house closing? Well, thats what we have in UO. The issue is that things cost that much because they cost that much.

Why has the economy gotten out of whack? Extremely simple:

1 - Developers INCREASED the gold drops on monsters 2x about 5 years ago which immediately doubled how fast gold was created in net new gold.
2 - Additional content created quick to kill monsters with larger gold potential - Swoops, Undead Guardians (1k each for 2 hit kills) etc etc.
3 - Players leaving the game and IDOCS. All IDOCS should be deleted and not redistributed items/loot. This is by far the largest amount of inflation in the game. When you decrease the playerbase by 80% and the remaining 20% has all the stuff from the 80% - you just exploded the inflation.
4 - Dupes over the years where items/gold were duplicated with no effort essentially inflating the economy.
5 - Lack of viable gold sinks to balance newly created or existing gold. Sinks include collections, vendor fees and death tax/insurance. This is nowhere near how fast gold is created. More and more gold - prices will rise.

There are a myrad of ways to better control or 'fix' parts of the economy but many of the ideas in this thread are short sighted and not as simple as you would think. Its amazing how many people just want to say 'economy is borked' but yet aren't economists or really understand it.

As a side note I was a finance major in college and took my share of econ courses. The UO economy is actually fairly easy to understand and measure should the dev team choose to do so. A few SQL scripts and I could daily monitor overall gold gold per shard, gold per active player, gold generated per day and gold spent per day. You could monkey with various systems and take gold out of the economy as needed.

One of the problems is no one on the dev team seems to understand and/or pay attention to gold stocks and the economy.

 

[Lorax_Pacific]

Introduce platinum coin. You tell the banker to give you 2 platinum and they take your gold and divide by 100m gold and give you 2 platinum coins.

If they did this I hope they make 1 platinum large enough to easily see since I cant even see those copper shillings in my chest.

-Lorax

 

[virtualhabitat]

Third party gold sellers actually perform a valuable service to the UO economy, to wit, they set the price of gold in dollars. As players see the price of gold change the prices of items sold for gold change inversely.

 

[Uvtha]

Here's my way of looking at it........if one doesn't horde gold, one wouldn't need so much space. What's the underlying purpose of having so much gold in the first place?

This again comes back to the matter of regular play, and expected play. People are expected to buy and sell things, peoples are expected to use gold as a barter medium, people are expected to pay more gold for items that are scarce.

The need to buy.......must have it right away?? Cannot work for it or wait for it??

I don't really understand what you mean by this. Is amassing gold not working and waiting?

As it stands, I having been around, 10 plus years, have seen the prices of items rise so high, it borders pathetic. Allowing third party sites to advertise and sell gold, didn't help. UO is like real life, Americas economy is so shot, there's no quick fix, ditto for UO.

It's not pathetic, it's simply inflation, a natural and completely inevitable outcome for the kind of economy UO has. Luckily for UO its economy is extremely simple, and unlike a real life economy, it's comings and goings don't hold the lives of millions of people in their sway. The economy in UO is simply a tool for structuring occupation. Thus it can freely be altered without it mattering a whole lot.

The ONLY problem when it come to currency is that its a pain in the butt to move around. That's it. A problem that is easily solved by a) de-itemization of gold b) currency exchange or c) making bigger checks, or any combo of those 3.

 

[Uvtha]

Introduce platinum coin. You tell the banker to give you 2 platinum and they take your gold and divide by 100m gold and give you 2 platinum coins.

If they did this I hope they make 1 platinum large enough to easily see since I cant even see those copper shillings in my chest.

-Lorax

1m to 1 pc may be a BIT extreme

I think the 90% reduction mentioned by an above poster is pretty good. Along with it they should look into where currency comes from as was also mentioned its completely stupid how much gold some 5 second kill monsters drop.

 

[The Zog historian]

you said the problem..

Why is it a "problem"? Such items require work to produce, just as in the real world. There's no "problem" just because you can't buy all the PoF you want for a low price.

"Relative scarcity" doesn't necessarily mean something is hard to find. It just means there isn't such a great supply of something relative to demand. That's where a price system comes in. If the same item costs 10 times more in Siege, it's not just a difference in purchasing power, but the difference in supply and demand.

 

[The Zog historian]

No merchant is forced to charge so much that a player cannot carry or bank the gold. No player has to enter into a deal which they feel is unfair. Gold might be spawning constantly, but I don't set my price based on the richest 2 players of my shard. I don't charge a price which means the player has to farm or trade so much that they fill a bank of gold just for a single transaction. If I did, I'd expect other players to laugh at me or refuse the trade. There may be a lot of gold on our shards, but it doesn't automatically land in the banks of every newbie, returner or casual player who logs in. By the time they earn the gold to pay silly prices they probably forgot what they wanted to buy. I don't think making bigger cheques is the best solution. What on earth would I do with so much game currency anyway? If I was handling billions of gold in UO I'd be cursing that I'd earned it in a game and not in RL where it would actually pay for something.


No player is forced to do anything.

Or some common sense. Remembering that UO is a game and players actually want to have fun not grind making gold all day. There are other games where getting dressed is not some huge undertaking like it is in UO. If we want new/returning players and casual players to actually stick around then this sort of economic silliness doesn't make UO attractive. I don't see any how increasing cheques or bank gold storage is going to make UO more appealing as a game. I think it'll get bumped up, then prices will rise to the new limits and sooner or later we'll want more increases.

All exactly correct. There's a joke in microeconomics about a shop owner with only product: a dress priced at $1 million. In his frustration that nobody would buy it, he told a friend, "I only need to sell one!" (The joke's a little dated because the net wouldn't go as far today, but the basis still stands.) It's never a matter of what any given buyer is willing to pay, but the highest any potential buyers are willing to pay. With additional factors of time preference and search costs, a seller naturally can't even pick the highest price anyone would ever be willing to pay.

The old economics question "How does Paris get fed?" applies as much to UO as in real life. How did a farmer somewhere know you wanted to go to a grocery store that day and buy a cucumber or other piece of produce? Nobody knows exactly how many frostwood boards, valorite ingots or PoFs to produce and sell, just as farmers don't know how many tomatoes to grow and ranchers don't know how many heads of cattle to raise. So in both worlds, we produce what we think others will like, with the exception of the rare individual who wants to be a hermit.

 

[The Zog historian]

No one really makes gold by farming monsters anymore. You make gold by hunting something that other people will pay a lot of gold for. But either way you have to grind for wealth, and you always have had to. That is the way it should be, and yes, earning enough to get the things you want IS part of the fun of UO.

The total amount of gold must continually be increasing, however, because the increasingly available amounts of gold must come from somewhere. It isn't just a higher velocity of money leading to an increase in prices.

Dupers? Monster loot?

There will always be items that are more relatively scarce and thus more relatively valuable. The thing you really dislike is how the numbers look. We could (and probably should imo) chop a bunch of zeros off of all currency and lower currency incoming by that same margin, so that uber suits would be worth 1m rather than 100m... but that will only change the relative value of the numbers. That new 1m will be just as hard to get as that 100m was before, the currency will just be easier to store and move.

Zimbabwe tried that, you know, by a factor of one trillion. It doesn't cure the underlying problem of inflation, but as I've said, I accept UO's inflation.

Once upon a time, mongbats didn't carry any gold at all...

 

[The Zog historian]

3 - Players leaving the game and IDOCS. All IDOCS should be deleted and not redistributed items/loot. This is by far the largest amount of inflation in the game. When you decrease the playerbase by 80% and the remaining 20% has all the stuff from the 80% - you just exploded the inflation.

Actually, no. You're confusing net wealth with income. If a rare item recovered at an IDOC, perhaps now the only one of its kind, is valued at 1 billion gold, it's because there's so much gold already floating around. If there's a total of 1 trillion in gold floating around, and this new item is offered for sale, the money must come from an existing, albeit growing money supply. (The exception would be if you found gold checks, which are an increase to the money supply.)

The mere act of introducing a new, highly valuable item into an economy, of any scale, causes no more inflation than a newly constructed Boeing jet causes inflation in the real world. Consider, for example, the diamond that sold at auction in Hong Kong for $30 million. That didn't cause inflation, but a continually higher price could be reflective of inflation.

Now consider that loot from an IDOC can help bring prices down, if someone finds a lot of ingots, boards or ethereal mounts, then wants to sell them quickly for gold.

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output." - Milton Friedman

 

[Wenchkin]

Obviously no one is forced to do anything, I am only trying to explain why they do price items so high.

I realise what you're trying to do, but this is UO. There may be some folk making complex calculations and considering the economy when they price. But many are copying others, guessing, taking advantage of those who shop in Luna for convenience. Or simply charging as much as they can get away with Even in RL some folk have no clue how to work out the cost of their materials, time and overheads and include some profit when they're selling stuff they make by hand.

No one really makes gold by farming monsters anymore. You make gold by hunting something that other people will pay a lot of gold for. But either way you have to grind for wealth, and you always have had to. That is the way it should be, and yes, earning enough to get the things you want IS part of the fun of UO.

Some players do earn gold by farming monsters because they don't have the uber templates and gear to hunt the top end bosses and farm those. Even if you trade your way up, that takes time too. I don't want stuff for free by any means, that's not what I'm about at all. But there comes a point where it passes a reasonable effort and reaches silliness. I just couldn't justify spending that much time chasing pixels in a game or enjoy grind that much

Wenchy

 

[Lord Frodo]

Obviously no one is forced to do anything, I am only trying to explain why they do price items so high.

They price things so high because people out there will pay 200M for 1 wep/piece of armor. If nobody would pay it then they would not try to price it that high. It is called simple greed. No way did it cost them 200M to make it.

 

[Uvtha]

I realise what you're trying to do, but this is UO. There may be some folk making complex calculations and considering the economy when they price. But many are copying others, guessing, taking advantage of those who shop in Luna for convenience. Or simply charging as much as they can get away with Even in RL some folk have no clue how to work out the cost of their materials, time and overheads and include some profit when they're selling stuff they make by hand.


Some players do earn gold by farming monsters because they don't have the uber templates and gear to hunt the top end bosses and farm those. Even if you trade your way up, that takes time too. I don't want stuff for free by any means, that's not what I'm about at all. But there comes a point where it passes a reasonable effort and reaches silliness. I just couldn't justify spending that much time chasing pixels in a game or enjoy grind that much

Wenchy

I get what you are saying, but I disagree that a) making bigger checks would cause a boost in prices any faster than normal, and b) that NOT making bigger checks will stop said practices from continuing and amplifying.

And while I agree that pricing is a consensus matter, but those prices are related to how much money people have and how easy it is to make money, and obviously supply and demand on the specific items.
If people won't regularly pay a certain amount for an item the price goes down, consensus regulates price. If people didn't regularly have tens of millions to spend, the prices would drop because no one would make regular sales. It wouldn't work the otherwise.

I also think people are getting bogged down by the numbers they see. You say you don't like the grind of earning so much gold, but 100 million is as hard to get todays as 100k was 15 years ago. The only difference is that before you got the gold from the bodies of creatures and now you get it from selling stuff to other players, and you don't need to farm bosses or have uber gear to do it. Anyone can gather imbuing stuff. Anyone can kill style shame monsters for good sellable loot. Anyone can work bods and get runics/Pof etc.

 

[Uvtha]

They price things so high because people out there will pay 200M for 1 wep/piece of armor. If nobody would pay it then they would not try to price it that high. It is called simple greed. No way did it cost them 200M to make it.

I don't think that is greed, its simply supply and demand. If demand is not high the the item will not sell for that price. The price isn't related to what it cost to make, its related to the scarcity of the item being sold (supply). If everyone has those items, they would not sell for 200m.

And again... no one is forcing anyone to pay these prices. You can live and play pretty much perfectly without 99th percentile 200m a piece gear, no one needs rares, etc. Many people have chosen to highly prize those items, thus... they sell for a lot.

 

[aarons6]

ok so we can go on and on and on about why things cost as much as they do, or how does one get so much gold, or even if one should have that much gold.. thats not the issue.

the real issue is, things cost more then you can hold.. this is quite simple.

if i want to say, buy a decent house spot on ATL, or even one of those new 15 yr vet tigers.. i cant..
because i am LIMITED to how many 1m checks i can have in my bank..

this isnt as big of issue on a home shard where you have a house already.. and you trust the person you are buying the item from that he wont take off when you hand him the first bag of checks.. or will hand you the item once you buy the 10 extremely high priced bandages from his vendor.. but it is a real problem.. a huge problem to those that play multiple shards.

 

[Uvtha]

if i want to say, buy a decent house spot on ATL, or even one of those new 15 yr vet tigers.. i cant..
because i am LIMITED to how many 1m checks i can have in my bank..

Agreed. It's clearly time to increase check size or make gold a number rather than an item, imo.

 

[Theo_GL]

Actually, no. You're confusing net wealth with income. If a rare item recovered at an IDOC, perhaps now the only one of its kind, is valued at 1 billion gold, it's because there's so much gold already floating around. If there's a total of 1 trillion in gold floating around, and this new item is offered for sale, the money must come from an existing, albeit growing money supply. (The exception would be if you found gold checks, which are an increase to the money supply.)

The mere act of introducing a new, highly valuable item into an economy, of any scale, causes no more inflation than a newly constructed Boeing jet causes inflation in the real world. Consider, for example, the diamond that sold at auction in Hong Kong for $30 million. That didn't cause inflation, but a continually higher price could be reflective of inflation.

Now consider that loot from an IDOC can help bring prices down, if someone finds a lot of ingots, boards or ethereal mounts, then wants to sell them quickly for gold.

"Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output." - Milton Friedman

Agreed on the items but I've been to plenty of IDOC's where vendors dropped with gold checks on them and people also store gold checks in houses. There are also consumables that can be sold to NPCs for money etc. Remember the old 'make shields from shadow ingots and sell' routine?

I would however argue that there is *some* level of inflation from more items for the valuable ones as people have tons of everything and thus concentrate their disposable income on the harder to get and more desired items. IE - I wouldn't have alot of money to spend on a house if I was busy buying food and clothes. But when I have all the food and clothes I need - I can spend more money and thus higher bidding wars on houses.

Change out the objects here to UO. I will spend more money to acquire transfer tokens and artifacts if I already have all the resources, raw materials, armor, weapons, house, house add ons that I need. I can then put 100% of my disposable income to bidding up the price of a scarce item. So while the value of many items approcaches zero (try running a reg vendor or a run of the mill armor vendor) - there is high inflation on the other items.

It comes down to balance. Look at Diablo. Repair costs for good items are taken from gold and when you get kicked around and die alot - it gets damn expensive. UO could do something like that. No one in UO is making a living off of selling 50gp repair deeds. If you are - you are a moron. You can kill mongbats and make more money. So get rid of repair deeds and repairing through players and have NPC's charge to repair. The higher the value your item - the more to repair it. Like Diablo a death costs you 10% durability on your items. Death might actually mean something then when your repair bill becomes 55k. That would suck out gold pretty quick.

But again - disposable income debate actually affects alot of prices. Too much of lower level stuff floating around means you don't need to spend money on it. We need more things to wear out, decay etc. If we had an expanding player base and population it would soak up expanding money supply and items. But as everyone now has stuffed there houses full of every item imaginable - why do you even want gold in general? I actually store alot of my value in items becuase its easier than gold to store. Gold is a nuisance and not inflation proof.

 

[aarons6]

Agreed on the items but I've been to plenty of IDOC's where vendors dropped with gold checks on them and people also store gold checks in houses. There are also consumables that can be sold to NPCs for money etc. Remember the old 'make shields from shadow ingots and sell' routine?

I would however argue that there is *some* level of inflation from more items for the valuable ones as people have tons of everything and thus concentrate their disposable income on the harder to get and more desired items. IE - I wouldn't have alot of money to spend on a house if I was busy buying food and clothes. But when I have all the food and clothes I need - I can spend more money and thus higher bidding wars on houses.

Change out the objects here to UO. I will spend more money to acquire transfer tokens and artifacts if I already have all the resources, raw materials, armor, weapons, house, house add ons that I need. I can then put 100% of my disposable income to bidding up the price of a scarce item. So while the value of many items approcaches zero (try running a reg vendor or a run of the mill armor vendor) - there is high inflation on the other items.

It comes down to balance. Look at Diablo. Repair costs for good items are taken from gold and when you get kicked around and die alot - it gets damn expensive. UO could do something like that. No one in UO is making a living off of selling 50gp repair deeds. If you are - you are a moron. You can kill mongbats and make more money. So get rid of repair deeds and repairing through players and have NPC's charge to repair. The higher the value your item - the more to repair it. Like Diablo a death costs you 10% durability on your items. Death might actually mean something then when your repair bill becomes 55k. That would suck out gold pretty quick.

But again - disposable income debate actually affects alot of prices. Too much of lower level stuff floating around means you don't need to spend money on it. We need more things to wear out, decay etc. If we had an expanding player base and population it would soak up expanding money supply and items. But as everyone now has stuffed there houses full of every item imaginable - why do you even want gold in general? I actually store alot of my value in items becuase its easier than gold to store. Gold is a nuisance and not inflation proof.

punishing people for dying is not the way to go.. it would really hurt new players.

giving people a way to purchase items that are often expensive and ONLY traded by players is a better way.
that way instead of money exchanging hands, its deleted.

 

[The Zog historian]

They price things so high because people out there will pay 200M for 1 wep/piece of armor. If nobody would pay it then they would not try to price it that high. It is called simple greed. No way did it cost them 200M to make it.

To add to what Uvtha pointed out, it's entirely about demand relative to supply. The only bearing that production cost has is that if someone can't sell something for what it cost to make, then the person will stop producing. This was the basis for the "marginal revolution" in the late 19th century, when the labor theory of value was discarded by mainstream economists.

An old-time player may have done a horrible grind for a long time to get something. A newer player may have gotten lucky to get something quickly. Regardless, a potential buyer will value the item at a certain price point, and if a seller can get a high price, then why not? It's the thought of profit that drives nearly all people to make things in the first place.

Personally I find that buying 10 of most essences is considerably cheaper than the time it would take me to collect them, even doing chests. Does that make me greedy for not paying what would have been a fairer price?

 

[The Zog historian]

Agreed on the items but I've been to plenty of IDOC's where vendors dropped with gold checks on them and people also store gold checks in houses.

As I said, that's a genuine increase in the money supply. Even so, that money had already been earned. When the player left UO, that gold left the money supply, along with someone's willingness to pay higher prices. The IDOC did not create new money but merely returned it to circulation.

There are also consumables that can be sold to NPCs for money etc. Remember the old 'make shields from shadow ingots and sell' routine?

I don't. I never did such things.

I would however argue that there is *some* level of inflation from more items for the valuable ones as people have tons of everything and thus concentrate their disposable income on the harder to get and more desired items. IE - I wouldn't have alot of money to spend on a house if I was busy buying food and clothes. But when I have all the food and clothes I need - I can spend more money and thus higher bidding wars on houses.

No, there's still no inflation just because something is priced high. You need to differentiate between "inflation" (a general increase in prices) and certain items simply being expensive. In your example, what drives the price isn't the introduction of any new items, but because of an increase in available money. At some point a person has increased income to satisfy all basic wants, and his increased income facilitates the purchase of other things. Then enter in those who are in a similar situation, perhaps even cutting back on other expenditures.

Change out the objects here to UO. I will spend more money to acquire transfer tokens and artifacts if I already have all the resources, raw materials, armor, weapons, house, house add ons that I need. I can then put 100% of my disposable income to bidding up the price of a scarce item. So while the value of many items approcaches zero (try running a reg vendor or a run of the mill armor vendor) - there is high inflation on the other items.

As with the real world, it's because your income has increased such that you can bid more. It isn't the introduction of the items, but your greater ability to pay.

It comes down to balance. Look at Diablo. Repair costs for good items are taken from gold and when you get kicked around and die alot - it gets damn expensive. UO could do something like that. No one in UO is making a living off of selling 50gp repair deeds. If you are - you are a moron. You can kill mongbats and make more money. So get rid of repair deeds and repairing through players and have NPC's charge to repair. The higher the value your item - the more to repair it. Like Diablo a death costs you 10% durability on your items. Death might actually mean something then when your repair bill becomes 55k. That would suck out gold pretty quick.

Diablo doesn't have the vibrant player-driven economy that UO has, however.

With NPC-based repairs, what price will you set? One hundred gold is nothing, even 1000 considering the infrequent need for repairs. Ten thousand? One hundred thousand? You'll have people switching characters for repairs, or perhaps using a soulstone.

But again - disposable income debate actually affects alot of prices. Too much of lower level stuff floating around means you don't need to spend money on it. We need more things to wear out, decay etc. If we had an expanding player base and population it would soak up expanding money supply and items. But as everyone now has stuffed there houses full of every item imaginable - why do you even want gold in general? I actually store alot of my value in items becuase its easier than gold to store. Gold is a nuisance and not inflation proof.

It's not just "disposable income," but the total money supply and people's willingness to pay.

I tend to spend a lot of gold on resources I need, nor do I buy anything ultra-expensive, so I'm perfectly comfortable with storage of anything.

 

[Herman]

This is absolutely the dumbest arguement I have ever heard on the boards against gold checks and you are not the only one to bring it up.

IF (and a big IF) a dupe exists to dupe gold checks - there is not a limit to how many times you can do it - so duping 100 1m checks two times is no different than duping 100 2m checks. By your theory duping would be better if we had only 500k checks. Its a completely flawed arguement.

I would argue that gold check dupes rarely exist and its far more likely to get scammed on a large purchase where you can't hand over the checks then the economy to be borked by gold check dupes.

Ultimate solution is all money is carried in a number in a bank box. Interim solution is 5m checks.

I could have wrote what C.N wrote what is it that you think is so dumb with that

In your example -There is no limit to how many times you can dupe- (the average dupers time and the numbers of items he can hold is the limit)

And there is no inconsistency in his post
EX reduce value of gold by 10 VS 10m checks

controll ..........................1m duped 10 times = 10m = 10m old money
Reduce value by ten.......100k duped 10 times = 1m =10m old money
Bigger checks .................10m duped 10 times = 100m = 100m old money

So the only thing left that you think is so dumb you base on no proof at all only your speculative assumtion that gold duping do not exist or have no impact at all

So
All 3 of uss are dumb as a rock?
or
Non of uss are ?

 

[Uvtha]

punishing people for dying is not the way to go.. it would really hurt new players.

giving people a way to purchase items that are often expensive and ONLY traded by players is a better way.
that way instead of money exchanging hands, its deleted.

That's just not a good idea. If the prices of these new npc sold items are much lower than what they sell for now, then players would only be able to sell those items at that price or lower, (probably ONLY lower because why hunt around on vendors when an NPC is selling it all in one place) and if those prices are so much lower that functionally means that players will no longer sell those items because it wouldn't be worth their time to do the work to get them.

If all the valuable stuff is sold on an npc it takes away a HUGE part of the game. If this npc sold runics... well that would basically mean people have nothing to sell but like potions, and no real reason to hunt monsters, because if you could get a cheap never ending supply of runics everyone would have the uberest suits ever in short order.

And for what? To combat inflation? Thats like killing a fly with an atomic bomb.

Especially when you consider that all items that are not rares are accessible to any player who wants to put in the work to get them... which is basically what the game is.

 

[Uvtha]

I could have wrote what C.N wrote what is it that you think is so dumb with that

In your example -There is no limit to how many times you can dupe- (the average dupers time and the numbers of items he can hold is the limit)

And there is no inconsistency in his post
EX reduce value of gold by 10 VS 10m checks

controll ..........................1m duped 10 times = 10m = 10m old money
Reduce value by ten.......100k duped 10 times = 1m =10m old money
Bigger checks .................10m duped 10 times = 100m = 100m old money

So the only thing left that you think is so dumb you base on no proof at all only your speculative assumtion that gold duping do not exist or have no impact at all

So
All 3 of uss are dumb as a rock?
or
Non of uss are ?

Then make gold a number in your bank not an item that you trade. Boom. Duping of gold is 100% gone.

 

[Herman]

Then make gold a number in your bank not an item that you trade. Boom. Duping of gold is 100% gone.

Is that a certain?
Is it not possible to alter the number in your bank box in any way possible

 

[Uvtha]

Is that a certain?
Is it not possible to alter the number in your bank box in any way possible

I do believe that was the whole reason the topic was broached by the dev team. Regardless, you can't be so afraid of dupers scripters and other cheaters that you cripple the game or refuse to even try to solve problems that arise. Whats the point?

 

[Herman]

I do believe that was the whole reason the topic was broached by the dev team. Regardless, you can't be so afraid of dupers scripters and other cheaters that you cripple the game or refuse to even try to solve problems that arise. Whats the point?

I know it was a reply to (100% gone)

Nothing is 100 % in a guessing game

I do think dupers played a far bigger part in the gold situation we have now than most people think but yes you are correct make any system so user friendly as possible

However even with gold as a number in bank box I still think gold have to be reduced by 10
rewarding people that actually play the game and not people that did play before but now only sit on gold

 

[Uvtha]

I know it was a reply to (100% gone)

Nothing is 100 % in a guessing game

I do think dupers played a far bigger part in the gold situation we have now than most people think but yes you are correct make any system so user friendly as possible

However even with gold as a number in bank box I still think gold have to be reduced by 10
rewarding people that actually play the game and not people that did play before but now only sit on gold

I also support currency conversion to make it look better.

 

[Theo_GL]

I also support currency conversion to make it look better.

I support it too since currency conversion only hurts those people who keep their wealth in gold and I don't keep my wealth in gold. What do you do with things that cost less then 10 gp like regs?
You would also have to reduce monster loot by 10 and all gold generation by 10 if you reduce gold stocks by 10.

In this game many items 'value' are an opportunity cost of acquiring it yourself.

Take PoF. What makes it worth 125k?
The fact that by the time I collect bods, bribe one up to a POF deed and then mine the ingots (shadow, Dull, gold or aggy) to fill it and turn it in - I could have made 125k in gold killing monsters. Its an opportunity cost.

If you reduce peoples gold by 10 but yet they can still earn it back just as fast so lower end items still have the same value as before. However, if I have 100 POF deeds stored in a book and you have 12.5m in gold - after the 'devalue' I still have 100 POF deeds and now you have 1.25m in gold. Can you still buy all my POF? No. Will I sell them at 12,500gp? No because you will be able to earn that too quickly to compensate for the value of my POF bod. I'm richer and you are essentially poorer.

This is why just lopping zero's off of gold stocks is not a realistic idea. And by the way if anyone knows it is coming - they will spend every last gp buying items off vendors because regardless of how much gold is left in the economy after the wipe - wealth will be protected because you can't reduce the items someone has.

I'm a billionaire but I don't keep it in gold. That would be foolish.

 

[Theo_GL]

I do believe that was the whole reason the topic was broached by the dev team. Regardless, you can't be so afraid of dupers scripters and other cheaters that you cripple the game or refuse to even try to solve problems that arise. Whats the point?

Exactly. We should not drop any event items because holy crap - someone might dupe it!!! Lets get rid of doom arties because holy crap someone might dupe it!!! It just an idiotic argument.

Think about the value the US banking system plays. I would hate to have to keep my wealth in a stack of $20 bills. The bank holds hundreds of thousands in a little tiny number in a computer. So much easier when I want to spend $40k on a car to write a check instead of taking $20 bills to pay for it.

UO economy is what it is. Given they can handle 1,000,000 checks - its one small coding change to allow 5m.

Utlimate solution is the bank box currency you can share across your account and characters just like a real live bank.

 

[Herman]

Exactly. We should not drop any event items because holy crap - someone might dupe it!!! Lets get rid of doom arties because holy crap someone might dupe it!!! It just an idiotic argument.

.

A bit over the top to give you perspective

To affect the same amount of people duping items you would have to dupe every single item anyone could ever want same amount of times you did dupe gold for... duping items and duping gold to be the same thing

 

[aarons6]

A bit over the top to give you perspective

To affect the same amount of people duping items you would have to dupe every single item anyone could ever want same amount of times you did dupe gold for... duping items and duping gold to be the same thing

if they made it so vendors can tell duped items and not accept them, why cant they make bankers not cash duped checks?

 

[Uvtha]

I support it too since currency conversion only hurts those people who keep their wealth in gold and I don't keep my wealth in gold. What do you do with things that cost less then 10 gp like regs?
You would also have to reduce monster loot by 10 and all gold generation by 10 if you reduce gold stocks by 10.

In this game many items 'value' are an opportunity cost of acquiring it yourself.

Take PoF. What makes it worth 125k?
The fact that by the time I collect bods, bribe one up to a POF deed and then mine the ingots (shadow, Dull, gold or aggy) to fill it and turn it in - I could have made 125k in gold killing monsters. Its an opportunity cost.

If you reduce peoples gold by 10 but yet they can still earn it back just as fast so lower end items still have the same value as before. However, if I have 100 POF deeds stored in a book and you have 12.5m in gold - after the 'devalue' I still have 100 POF deeds and now you have 1.25m in gold. Can you still buy all my POF? No. Will I sell them at 12,500gp? No because you will be able to earn that too quickly to compensate for the value of my POF bod. I'm richer and you are essentially poorer.

This is why just lopping zero's off of gold stocks is not a realistic idea. And by the way if anyone knows it is coming - they will spend every last gp buying items off vendors because regardless of how much gold is left in the economy after the wipe - wealth will be protected because you can't reduce the items someone has.

I'm a billionaire but I don't keep it in gold. That would be foolish.

Well first of all, its a 100% cosmetic change. Secondly I would ideally take a look at all gold creating sources, because some of them are clearly imbalanced in terms of how much how easily, like was mentioned earlier some two hit kill monsters drop over 2k gold. Thats silly. It makes the rewards for hard to kill monsters so much less satisfying.
Obviously the amount of the new currency drops would also have to be lowered to try and keep inflation rate low as possible so you dont have to do it again in 3 years. Also you would obviously have to adjust the value of npc items and turn in costs etc accordingly as well.

As far as item wealth vs gold wealth there would be no difference either way. Lowering the gold numbers changes the value of the currency so if all gold is converted a 100m rare is now a 10m rare or whatever the conversion rate is, so it wouldn't make any difference. A 100m rare wouldn't retain that same number value when the currency value has changed, its worth in gold would change accordingly. So he PoF would have the same relative value, but the currency value would be lower. I'm sure it would take a while for prices to normalize.

This wouldn't be to stop inflation. You can't stop it without adding in a lot of forced gold sinks, but then again as I have said inflation is not a real problem, it's just cosmetic. I just think it looks better when a valuable item is 100k rather than 1m. Just looks less daunting to new players, and feels less extreme.

 

[Uvtha]

if they made it so vendors can tell duped items and not accept them, why cant they make bankers not cash duped checks?

Good question. It may have an answer, but who knows.

 

[Herman]

if they made it so vendors can tell duped items and not accept them, why cant they make bankers not cash duped checks?

If they ever can get it to work right now it is not

 

[Lord Frodo]

Is that a certain?
Is it not possible to alter the number in your bank box in any way possible

You would have to hack UOs servers to do this.

 

[Uvtha]

If they ever can get it to work right now it is not

How do you know that?

 

[Herman]

You would have to hack UOs servers to do this.

I think any event that alter the number of gold in bank box could be a source of duping gold

All it takes is a bug (to put money in and keep it at the same time) + a script

 

[Herman]

How do you know that?

If u want to know more you probably should ask the rare collectors they probably know this better than i do


But if the tangle I wear ingame realy is a dupe i eat my shorts it was given to me by a friend right after tangles was new...(i have had it on while transfering around to other shards I think that is why it get flagged as a dupe)

 

[Uvtha]

I think any event that alter the number of gold in bank box could be a source of duping gold

All it takes is a bug (to put money in and keep it at the same time) + a script

It's just an awful big assumption that it WILL happen.

 

[Herman]

It's just an awful big assumption that it WILL happen.

Maybe so but it did happen in another game I use to play for years people said money hack is impossible because it is server side what the cheaters did was to take advatage from a bug that did cancel a building and when the building got destroyed you got money back do that many times in a row and you have unlimited cash


But i do not argue against money as a number in uo any system is better than what we have now worst case we at least got a short while that is dupe free before the cheaters find a new way

 

[aarons6]

all of these close minded people is whats holding this game back..
everyone is like "dont change anything, because people will stop playing"
well i know many people that already have stopped playing..

they need to can the classic client.. its the main source of scripters and im sure the bugs in it is what allows duping.

they need to optimize the game for the enhanced client. this will fix lag.. on atl i ping 90 and i get such lag spikes i cant move for several seconds.. sometimes even get disconnected because of it.

they need to figure out a way to open up the shards.. some are so dead you wont see another person for hours. those transfer shield things were a good idea but at such a high year vet reward they are not practical.

they need to put a way to purchase from npcs items you cant regularly get, yes the ones that script and price gouge will complain but in the end the game will be more fun to play..
i would love to log in my crafter, go to npc and buy some barbed leather, a bottle of pof and a runic kit and go to work crafting..
not spending hours trying to find some leather, trying to find someone to sell me a bottle of pof and then finding a runic kit, and trust me many days i just log out cause i cant find said items. or when i do they are way more then a fair market price cause someone had bought them all up and put them on for twice as much.

they also need to increase gold checks and put deposited gold as a non weighted number in your bank.. so there is no limit..
so if someone wants to sell a house for 250m i dont have to " trust " them to buy it.

im almost guessing that the reason they havent done it yet is due to the classic client.. so step one would solve all the problems.

 

[old gypsy]

...they need to can the classic client.. its the main source of scripters and im sure the bugs in it is what allows duping..

You need to can the comments about canning the classic client. This subject has been done to death endless times. Both clients have players who prefer them. Live with it.

 

[cazador]

What about this as a gold sink...a trade in system..say if you have a tangle you would like as an obi like you can get from the new dungeon..we'll at a trade officer you can trade in your current artifact plus say 25mil as a tax to the king


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[The Zog historian]

all of these close minded people is whats holding this game back..
everyone is like "dont change anything, because people will stop playing"
well i know many people that already have stopped playing..

Who has said anything of the kind? There are a number of proposals here about increasing check maximums, or as I think the game needs to go, making gold a number.

You made proposals, opening the door for others. You can't just accuse anyone who points out flaws of being "close minded."

they need to can the classic client.. its the main source of scripters and im sure the bugs in it is what allows duping.

You don't know any of that, and scripters will find a way with the EC, if they haven't already.

And if you think lots of UO players have quit now, wait till we're pushed toward a client we just don't like. I have repeatedly tried the EC and just don't care for its layout, and that UOA doesn't work with it.

they need to optimize the game for the enhanced client. this will fix lag.. on atl i ping 90 and i get such lag spikes i cant move for several seconds.. sometimes even get disconnected because of it.

So because problems are on your end, you want to push people toward a solution you think will work but won't?

they need to figure out a way to open up the shards.. some are so dead you wont see another person for hours. those transfer shield things were a good idea but at such a high year vet reward they are not practical.

We've had many a thread on this. Are you also going to say "shard sheilds unbalnace the game, if you can't see that mYbe you need to go back to school and take some finace/economy type courses"?

they need to put a way to purchase from npcs items you cant regularly get, yes the ones that script and price gouge will complain but in the end the game will be more fun to play..
i would love to log in my crafter, go to npc and buy some barbed leather, a bottle of pof and a runic kit and go to work crafting..

I've already laid out the economic reasons this can't work, and the practical reasons it shouldn't be implemented.

not spending hours trying to find some leather, trying to find someone to sell me a bottle of pof and then finding a runic kit, and trust me many days i just log out cause i cant find said items. or when i do they are way more then a fair market price cause someone had bought them all up and put them on for twice as much.

Instead of "spending hours," why didn't you just collect some yourself? Or start doing BODs?

they also need to increase gold checks and put deposited gold as a non weighted number in your bank.. so there is no limit..
so if someone wants to sell a house for 250m i dont have to " trust " them to buy it.

Now you're talking something sensible.

im almost guessing that the reason they havent done it yet is due to the classic client.. so step one would solve all the problems.

Nonsense. This could be a context menu as easily implemented as in the EC.