A Gold Sink Idea....

[Tovladian Soltyr]

I was taking my personal thoughts on Gold Sink that if I was a game developer I would introduce, a few ideas actually. Cause in my opinion a "Gold Sink" is something that takes gold out of game and gives something that can't be resold or isn't going to effect the balance of the game.

Bribing:

Well Obviously most people know what a bribe is, giving something to get something in return that you wouldn't normally get. Kinda like in real life you house doesn't meet code to be sold but lets say the inspector turns his head for a minute and $500 end up mysteriously on his clip board and all of a sudden your house meets code.

Ok and in game use for this would be like at the stables masters. Say you give him 200k or so gold and you can now stable an extra pet (A Max of 3 Additional slots paying for each one). This is something that doesn't massively effect the balance of the game but gives a few more slots to tamers to hold more of the different colored tamables and allows the normal character (Non-tamer) to hold 5 packies in the stables etc...

Another Bribe would be again to the stable master to have them give you a special "Insta-Bonding" piece of food that will instantly bond your pet after taming so you don't have to wait a week of fear of death to start training the pet and working skills up.

(Yes yes I know so far the Ideas are mainly taming stuff, come'on my main character is a tamer )

Another Bribe would be to a Gypsy to give your to give you a Perminate 100 Luck upgrade that can only be done once per character.

It's just an Idea and I'm sure it could be ran with I think.


A Wishing Well:

This would be something you can drop gold of X amounts to get certain buffs.

Some Buffs from "Wishes":

+5 Perma Stat (Increasing you to 260 total stats if you have all the other given)

An Account Tied Item that can't be dropped on the ground/traded etc...(Like something that has one charge and when you die it give you a rez and if you have more then 1 in your pack it uses all of them so it's a waste of time to get many of them all at the same time).

I think people will like this next wish Basically in essence it's Power Hour , you have increased Skill gain for 1 hour but you can only do it once per character per week. That way this doesn't kill the Devs work put into Aclarity scrolls.

This is just a couple ideas *shrugs* like them, hate them. I personally like them but I'm bias

 

[hawkeye_pike]

While the ideas are not bad, I think gold sinks have to be something that isn't a one-time investment. Gold has to leave the game in a regular basis, like insurance money does. Bribing someone once and then be done with it, won't really take much money out of the game.

 

[Maplestone]

I'm a little uneasy about "end-game gold sinks" giving a functional advantage (not saying there shouldn't be gold sinks that give an advantage but for many of us, powerscrolls are already our end-game gold sink - our gold goes into Luna and never comes out). I lean towards decorations for rewards.

I do think they should be competitive so they can expand to consume any amount of gold that gets dumped into the game.

What about a collection system that used rankings similar to faction points with a reward at the end of each year? You donate gold and get a rank within the collection that depends on how you are doing relative to other people and get a title that shows your status amongst high-end merchants:

rank 10: top donation
rank 9: top 0.1%
rank 8: top 0.3%
rank 7: top 1%
rank 6: top 3%
rank 5: top 10%
rank 4: top 20%
rank 3: top 30%
rank 2: top 50%
rank 1: bottom 50%

End of the year you get a "rank X reward banner" marked with the year as am additional reward (to allow your shop to show its longevity of service to the community).

 

[Tovladian Soltyr]

The point of a gold sink is to get the gold out of game, kinda like the US government burning old money to get it out of circulation. Maple I like ya bother but Powerscrolls are not a gold sink cause it's players making the gold not the gold disappearing.

If you make a gold sink where you get an item in return that can then be sold it's basically using the items as the currancy instead of the gold. Kinda like the stock market doesn't see Beef as beef and Gold as Gold and Oil as Oil they see it as Dollar signs basically making those items money.

To me the point of a "Gold Sink" so to speak is to get rid of the gold and to take it out of the circuit. But not put something esle in game that would be seen as an item of value or sold. Cause it's basically keeping gold exchanging from person to person, A person might lose 100k+ fighting for a PS but end up getting a 120 Magery and making mils off of it. There for making the idea of PS's being a Gold Sink pointless cause the amount of gold lost isn't any really cause the gold just goes to the person that kills them.

 

[Maplestone]

Maple I like ya bother but Powerscrolls are not a gold sink cause it's players making the gold not the gold disappearing.

Yeah, I knew I was going to get called on my wording there. I've got a big post forming in the back of my head about the whole flow of gold in the game economy and the challenges non-merchants face, but I didn't want to distract this thread with it. I just meant to say that many of us are not overflowing with gold - we have no problem whatsoever getting rid of it.

It would be an interesting test of Marxist theories about the flaws of a closed capitalist system to turn off gold drops for a month and see what happens to the game economy

edit: It's not really the amount of gold that something costs that's the problem - it's the number of hours of play it costs.

 

[Tovladian Soltyr]

While the ideas are not bad, I think gold sinks have to be something that isn't a one-time investment. Gold has to leave the game in a regular basis, like insurance money does. Bribing someone once and then be done with it, won't really take much money out of the game.

*Nods* Those are just Mere examples, I'd leave it up to the Development team to make it a constant. I just came up with the idea, Unless I'm getting paid why take the time to get really in depth with it and making money for someone else .

The the Rez thing for the 2nd example of the wishing well, that would be a continuing form of gold sink cause you'd only be able to hold one on you at a time or be wasting gold and you would have to continue to get them. Those would merely be a time saver thing other then running around for an hour (Depending on where you are, sometimes it's seconds and minute, I know) looking for a healer.

 

[Nexus]

The Effective gold sinks went out the window with AoS. Insurance and LRC took their place. Granted Trammel had a big hand in inflating the economy, but everyone that used magery still used Regents, and still on occasion had to replace gear. Another sound hit was when they stopped people from being able to loot bones in Trammel (For those who don't know or don't remember for a long time you could loot other players corpses in Trammel after they changed to bones) further reducing the need for players to buy items from other players.

The only way to get the economy back in check isn't only to develop effective gold sinks but to spur the player driven economy back to a point where crafters are useful. Runics have killed this effort, they need to either make a viable solution to Runics that non-powergamers can use (maybe embuing) or rework the BOD System so that it is easier on casual players with the end result for flooding the market with good gear to offset the handful that are controlling the market, making a global player to player trade system work again.

It's not just about removing gold it's about distributing it around the player base also.

 

[Hanna]

The Effective gold sinks went out the window with AoS. Insurance and LRC took their place. Granted Trammel had a big hand in inflating the economy, but everyone that used magery still used Regents, and still on occasion had to replace gear. Another sound hit was when they stopped people from being able to loot bones in Trammel (For those who don't know or don't remember for a long time you could loot other players corpses in Trammel after they changed to bones) further reducing the need for players to buy items from other players.

The only way to get the economy back in check isn't only to develop effective gold sinks but to spur the player driven economy back to a point where crafters are useful. Runics have killed this effort, they need to either make a viable solution to Runics that non-powergamers can use (maybe embuing) or rework the BOD System so that it is easier on casual players with the end result for flooding the market with good gear to offset the handful that are controlling the market, making a global player to player trade system work again.

It's not just about removing gold it's about distributing it around the player base also.

There was not an effictive gold sink before AOS just less farming and less duping. The 2-4k a day taken from mages was in no means an effective gold sink, and certainly not better than the 6-8k taken on every death for insurance. Having one playing take gold or items off another player is not a gold sink in any way shape or form.

The OPs ideas are actually some of the best gold sink ideas I have heard.