The Big Economy Thread

[DanteSignas]

How about you limit the amount of gold an account/character can have. Once you are nearing your limit you get a message and can adjust accordingly as far as vendors etc.

Not to say you erase anyones current gold, but put the limit in and once a character/account dips below the threshhold they are now held to the cap.

You could also introduce some limited time big ticket items for folks to get rid of gold on if they so choose.

Also, one thing that blew me away as far as economy is when I started playing WoW is that you have to EARN your gear for the most part and their were level requirements for gear. For example, right now you can start a new char and go buy an orny and tangle and wear it and USE it without a problem. In wow you start poor, you CAN get gold but you can't just buy all the uber level gear in the world. You can get some select items but if you want awesome gear you need to EARN them in dungeons and raids etc no matter how rich you are.

Also gear scales with the current content. You can have the best gear available today but when the next big content comes out you need to start rebuilding that gear through quests, crafting, dungeons etc.

In short, no gear is permanent forever. You will ALWAYS need to upgrade to be at the top of your game and you can't buy your way there you have to earn it.

 

[Hell's Ironworks]

So, with enough bless deeds and bless bags I wouldn't ever have to worry about losing anything or insurance costs?

well lets say you spend a total of 300 mill on blessed bags and bless deeds. How many times do you think you would have to die to equal that amount?

Insurance cost is not a gold sink. It only affects poor players. Cleaning them out sometimes of the few gold pieces they have. Rich or even middle class players budget isnt affected by insurance cost, + they tend to die much less often.

edit : I agree that for the bags , there should be a limit of 1 per char

 

[BlissMarie]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

If you made the ship based on a Percentage of gold on the shard, then you would address different shards. The ship should be shard bound.

You will have to be very thoughtful about the economy of a shard and the economy of all shards.

Bounding gold to shards in my opinion is good idea. But I dont think that would float. To XSHARD, 20% of all gold is removed in your transfer.

I haven't finished reading this thread, but I want to comment on this, before I forget.

I don't think anything should be shard bound. I don't want a restriction such as that to be part of my game play.

Perhaps companies could sell or rent more cars if we weren't allowed to take vehicles across state borders. Na, that kind of thing won't work.

I transfer often. I want to be able to take what I own anywhere I want to take it. Transfer tokens are expensive. There shouldn't be a tax, fee or any additional charge on transferring. The cost of the token is more than enough.

BlissMarie

 

[Madrid]

capitalism is also a failed economic path with out checks and balances. as we can all see and basically thats what uo has become the super rich and the poor and when people feel they cant compete they quit. Im not saying go the socialism way but wealth distribution has to a part of all society's irl and igl

Capitalism is not failed however I agree checks and balances are in order.

What is needed is new player quests:

1) Buried Treasure Quest - One time per character player quest...chain link quest like Cloak of Humility but much easier which nets the player 1M gold.

2) Full LRC Suit and Spellbook of choice Quest- Decent suit with some Mods and LMC and full LRC.

3) Warrior Quest - suit of decent armor + Weapon of Choice that is decent..has Mana Leech and SSI on it. Maybe a choice of a soulseeker or some other weapojns that are very beneficial to a new player.

4) Similiar Quests for tamers, Archers, Ninjas, Throwers. Perhaps some unique pet to help a tamer out that requires little taming but can still whoop buttox.

I agree new players are getting shafted and it can be hard as hell when starting out without some decent gear.

Once you can start farming Peerless/Champions or even SA monsters for ingredients it isn't that difficult to start amassing large quantities of gold. I'm talking millions...a decent character with some decent equipment could easily farm some SA ingredients, lowball the competition and sell for a decent amount of gold. Rinse and repeat and now they have a chip in the big game.

I'm all for helping new players out even if it's extravagantly so they don't up and quit the game out of frustration but that's what the Devs should be doing rather than soliciting ideas for gold sinks when they just increased ways for gold to enter the game.

As far as items being capped at 125M that's baloney. That's why we have brokers for the ultra rare items.

The economy while not perfect is fine as it is and I for one don't want to see too much intervention.

Some of the things I find stupid and this may be OT:

Why can't I goto a NPC Tailor shop and gets items repaired or a blacksmith shop. Maybe they should charge and arm and a leg to promote going to players for the service instead but the option should be available.

There are just so many other things that warrant the attention of the Devs in this game and "gold sinks' doesn't make the grade. There's a boatload of things that should take precedent over this stupid thread.

Sad...very sad.

 

[Vlaude]

implemented part of the Magincia Housing Plot Lottery in such a way that it has the potential to eliminate billions of gold.

In my opinion, this was a really good idea for a gold sink. Although it may not appeal to everyone, those whom it does appeal to will spend gold on it, potentially very much. More ideas like this geared to appeal to certain groups of players at different times (eventually having something that can appeal to everyone) could be very helpful.

 

[longshanks]

i find this thread fascinating.

question. what do you consider to be rich? our we talking players with excess of 1 billion gold?

i would consider myself more item rich than gold rich. i try to stockpile things i need rather than stockpile gold. i have only played just shy of 4 years so i would think my situation something different from some of you salty dog's that have been around since server up.

i'd love to see some figures on what percent of the uo population lies in the upperclass vs that of the middle or in effect the poor.

also in looking at gold as it relates to the economy is the uo economy currently awash in runaway inflation?

i dont believe this is so.

something that could be looked at is making it viable that all characters must start eating again. Get rid of the make food spell on the mage and have players go out and buy or farm food. many will wind up farming food but many will resort to paying for it.

 

[retrorider]

...I am pretty sure many players are kept away from this game as new players because of the difficulty to generate any positive cash, which seems open only to the last tier of players.

This seems to be the paradox. How do we fund new players while keeping inflation from getting worse. I am pretty sure "the last tier of players" don't hunt Monsters in order to get their gold but still, not sure how to do this with out making things worse.

Gold sinks are a limited way of removing currency...

The Britannian ship was only a gold sink for what, a month or two? Most people will spend the $13 over grinding weeks to get 150 million. ....

This is what I did. I spent the RL cash instead of trying to scrape together donation points or pay with gold. I was resigned to just not having one until I saw that they were for sale on uogamecodes.

...What gets me, to me blunt, was the announcement during the video HoC that the Team wanted to INCREASE the amount of gold on Mobs. This will make the situation worse....

As I said above, I am not sure this would guarantee and increase in inflation but it would need to be approached carefully. Million GP checks on Ogre Lords would be a bad idea and would certainly increase inflation, but our new players need to be able to make bank enough to buy the LRC, 70's suits sold by my Guildmates.

...Aside from dozens of worthwhile gold sinks or a complete gold wipe, this is a lost cause. However, one way to spread the gold around a bit more equitably is to end the Team's support of monopolies (i.e. giving a damn about 'property values' in Luna) by creating a shard-wide vendor search.

Ok, difficult maybe but a lost cause, no.

Yes to worthwhile gold sinks...home deco, mounts, housing tiles, etc...

I don't know about the whole monopoly thing but a shard wide vendor search engine sounds like a good idea.

 

[Woodsman]

I think that for any discussion, it needs to be clear that duping and scripting are no longer an issue. Duping may not be an issue any longer, but scripting...see below. Unless those are no longer an issue, it's hard to discuss the economy.

A look needs to be taken at the gold sellers. When somebody can offer a 100 million or more in gold on just about every shard and can claim to keep that much in stock all the time, does anybody here really think they earned that legitimately without botting/scripting? One shard, yes, but a dozen or two dozen shards? They have a real-life financial incentive to cut corners every way they can, up to and including scripting.

I think the Britannian ship was too high as an in-game gold sink. It was desirable for many players, as evidenced by how many bought them when they started selling for $13, but I think it was just too high cost wise to really function as a widespread gold sink.

Taxes..they will just get passed on to the buyer. You can talk about taxing the buyer and seller but the seller will just raise their prices to account for it if it's too much, just like in real life. It'll just annoy people, and people don't want taxes in games - if they want that, there are other MMOs that offer it. It takes you out of the sandbox if you start getting some kind of tax system put in place.

Account-bound items. I think there needs to be more - I think it would function as a much better gold sink if more expensive items were offered in-game and were account-bound. Pretty much anything offered through the museum collections should be account-bound, because that's a very tempting scripting target. Account-bound items would reduce the targets that the scripters have.

The main ways gold legitimately enters the game is through either monster loot or NPCs buying from players. Tying into my theme of reducing targets the scripters have, NPCs should not be able to buy back nearly as much as they do, or at least in the quantities they do. I think the NPC situation on Siege helps prove this to an extent. Gold should not be as easy to get as it is, especially for the scripters.

I've wondered why EA didn't hire some people whose sole jobs it was to just keep adding content to the UO Game Codes store every month or two because that's a money maker. On that same thought, some of the things in the UO Game Codes store could be offered within UO through a special NPC for a decent price and if those items were account-bound, you'd be cutting a lot of the scripters out of the loop and reducing gold at the same time.

LRC suits. Ditch them.

In the end, I think you need to reduce the targets for scripters through NPC changes and account-bound items and reduce the amount of gold coming into the game, while at the same time offer more big-ticket items that are not necessary to gameplay, but desirable. If they are out of the reach of most or not desirable because the cost is too high, then they are useless.

 

[TullyMars]

I read a good amount of the posts before my head started hurting.

I wanted to chime in with a couple thoughts of my own and observations before I take a second stab at reading every post in detail.

I'll start with a rather unpopular idea/system
I like the saltpeter system. I think more things should use the commodity pricing system so things can change with the times. I now don't even bother putting saltpeter on my vendor I sell directly to the NPC thus avoiding vendor fees. Even though I could get a little more from a player, I am happy for the quick sell. I think almost every item should move directly to this system. My only reserve would be reagents. And I flip flop constantly on if they should be included too. But I mean all items even stuff like tailor items and smith items that bod runners just buy up to fill their normal bods.

UO needs to stop re-spawning vendors. When I say re-spawning, I mean vendors that start their prices anew every day. The travelling gypsy camps of ilshenar and the termur vendors come to mind immediately. Do you realize I can buy 1000 empty potion bottles from the termur alchemists for 5000 gold, throw them in my beetle, head off to another town and sell them for 40000 gold or more, go back and buy another 1000 bottles for 6000 gold rinse and repeat until the profit margin is no longer there. Then the next day the bottles that raised in price are back down to 5 gold each again?! And actually it used to re-spawn the vendors 3 times a day but I am not sure this happens anymore. I believe this type of activity needs to stop. And saying this puts me at a disadvantage because my potions vendor sells potions in the bottle and I might lose the cheap bottles I use that keep my potions affordable.

Speaking of affordable, players need to show restraint in pricing. I guess they are asking for such high prices because they can get them, but to me that is like gas price gouging. For example, I sell blackrock stew. I sell it at 5k a pop. I might even consider lowering it from this price to say 800-1000. My nearest competitor on ATL, that I have seen, has his priced at 35k. Some vendors still try to sell it at 500k or more. Crazy.

Along this same lines, everyone says you need XY million for a good suit. What about a decent suit. The instant gratification personalities of UO pluck my nerves. You can find a decent suit for 100k to 400k on many vendors. You can also commission suit pieces from many an imbuer for next to nothing but you have to spend the time gathering the resources yourself. As I tell many a new player if they start to complain about prices, you can get most of the items yourself if you try! And you earn up some gold hunting to blow when you decide you don't want to put in the effort.

Anyways, I better get back to reading the rest of the thread. I won't even throw out an idea for non-iron ingots vendors.

 

[retrorider]

...Honestly the only reason many have tons of money is either from illegal ways or from selling the ill gotten gains of others or from the rares trade which is also full of ill gotten gains.
...

This is painting with far too broad a brush.

There are vendors at my vendor house that make millions every week selling only soulforges and LRC suits.

Other vendors that sell powerscrolls obtained from fel champs make hundreds of millions every week and all legit.

 

[Visago]

I'd like to make a suggestion that may kill a couple of pet peeve birds with one stone. Allow us to rent buildings within existing cities. How many of the original cities are empty except for the occasional visitor to the bank or stable? How many buildings in the existing cities are just vacant buildings with no purpose?

What I would suggest is an initial lottery system like Magincia system where 1 house within any city can be owned by an account. The winning account must then pay X amount of gold as rent/taxes/what ever to maintain it within the city. If the player would like to expand the house to hold vendors then there is an increase in rent based on the number of vendor slots to a max limit. If for what ever reason the player is unable to pay their rent, then the building resets and goes back up into the lottery for people to bid on again. This also doesn't have to be limited to buildings, but could extend to other types of structures such as gardens, docks, farms, etc....

What this can potentially do is create a perpetual gold sink like the one off Magincia lottery as well as a gold sink in a purposeful rent system that requires players to maintain their holdings. It also drives players into the existing cities and breathes a little more life into them. People have a reason to go there other then banking and stabling their pets cause they actually live there!

Another gold draining system I'd like to see is something tied specifically to guilds. Give guilds the ability to accumulate gold and something for them to spend it on. Perhaps make the above house lottery/rent system a guild specific system and that is where the money goes and is drawn from.

I'm curious if there are any numbers that the dev team has in regards to how much gold is in game, how much gold is generate daily, and how much gold goes out of the system in a day. Does the dev team gather this type of data, and if not could it be gathered? It would go along way to finding a solution if people know how big a beast we are dealing with.

 

[Ezekiel Zane]

Here's an idea for a gold sink;

Renting a 2nd house.

Make it so that an account can place a 2nd house plot on any server but that this secondary house costs a continuous RENT. A lot, if not all players, have asked for the change to allow for a 2nd house on accounts. With the space available on most shards and the declining player base, there is no problem with overcrowding or or crazy high house prices like 8 or 9 years ago.

Modify the housing rules and enable the opportunity to place a 2nd plot at a recurring, weekly or monthly charge.

Obviously there is the possibility some players may close an extra account and keep a house using ingame gold. I don't think most would thou. I would still be maintaining the same 4 continuously active accounts that I always have and very likely would pay rent, in gold, on a 2nd house on each account

Anyway, just throwing this out there as we are always saying that a true gold sink needs to meet two basic criteria, desirable by the player base and recurring as in not a one time payment deal.

Thoughts?

 

[Nimuaq]

UO economy is not so much based on the gold farmed from the mobs as it was before, it is based on the changing hands of the already available gold in the game. Thus, I think gold sinks will help.

However, the main frustration of a new player is seeing items in vendors for 2m, and comparing it to the 1k gold he currently has and 50gp he farms from each skeleton. A quick math reveals that he needs to kill twenty thousand skeletons just to have enough gold to buy that item. We all know it doesnt work like that and the item in consideration is probably quite easy to obtain without buying, but he/she doesnt know that.

My idea of removing two zeros from all the currently available gold in the game is based on those considerations. It is not suggested to remove the gold from the game, but to increase the importance of gold as a loot from the mobs and to give 1 million gold a meaning again. All the npc vendor prices and gold from the mobs stay as they are. What do you think?

 

[Macrophage999]

I would just like you to think about this. If a new player comes in and joins up with some friends... goes to champ... gets an item in demand... they can sell these things from 1 million to 75 million. With game play, they join the economy. They have to play, not kill mongbats.

I make money selling other peoples items. Lots of it. Anyone can do it, if the learn how to play a mechant.

Well that money you make from trading isn't money introduced in the economy. It's just money already in the system that changes hands.
You made the assumption that the new player would have friends and go to champs. When I was a new player I had absolutely no friends in game and made my way the hard way mining and gathering hides... Even if the new player could kill legacy monsters it will take him unsane amount of time to catch uo because of the cost of insurance.

 

[Wojoe]

I have some idea's....

The ability to rent vendors inside of any town, like brit or glow...you could charge extra taxes and/or limit the duration they stay up...it would be a great gold sink and also help re-populate all the towns like vesper.

I wouldn’t want to see every town jammed with vendors but im sure it has some great potential...


Umm Another gold sink could be shard transfer gates. 10 million a trip or 20% whatever is less. You would need a min. amount on this one for sure...LOL, and also limit accounts ability to prevent tele-storming.

You could also charge people to Tither LRC..this has great potential to...



Ill think up more stuff later...

Wojoe

 

[Macrophage999]

I d also like to say that on my server (Europa), prices tend to deflate a lot. For example the most valuable PS lost 50% of its price in since last summer. I think it would be interesting to have actual figures of how much money is introduced to the game daily and how much is destroyed. Does inflation really exist?

 

[G.v.P]

I'll come back, have to skim at the moment, but I just wanted to say, in response to the OP, no taxes please. No taxes please! lol unless you give us something specific, like, say, a ship auto-refresh, like, making a ship like a vendor, so that you can keep them afloat without worries at a premium. Hell, maybe even player vendors on ships! That would be sweet. Or a second account-bound house at a premium? But taxes would suck for non-premiums.

 

[phantus]

Simple and un-complicated:

1.) Create a new currency

2.) Create ways to spend money. Then, and this is the most important part of this plan, change them and update them on a regular basis.

That is it. The rest of this thread can be left to the warren buffets of the UO world to ponder and scheme.

 

[Ender76]

*puts on flame retardant suit*

Do away with LRC! Make people use regs!!!

This.

You need to make it so gold is consumed during gameplay. Make LRC so you can just keep the regs in your bankbox or something but you still need to buy them somewhere. As it is, playing a mage is cheap once you have your equipment.


Idea #2. If you are in stat, allow players to pay 15k gold to get out of stat immediately. Faction players would gladly pay if it's a crucial time in a spawn, etc.


Idea #3. Make special moves consume gold (like how chiv spells use tithing pts.). This would make it so playing a dexxer consumes gold as well


Idea #4. Limit free soulstone usage to once per day per stone, and charge 5k per additional use. As it is, you really just need one full soulstone and an empty toon and you can just swap away.

 

[Tane Darkbane]

Gold needs to be controlled in the same way money is in real life - currently more and more money is created from a bottomless pit.

All currency on a server needs to have a fixed total - if players have all the gold then the mobs don't have any - the only way to refill the pot is through players spending the money in the ways that already exist.

Money could be acquired by mobs through raids on banks, ships and caravans heading between towns

Player moneyy + NPC town money + mobs money = x Billion gold

 

[UOKaiser]

Me and RavenWinterhawk and other players like us deal usually exclusively with the economy of UO. There is misconceptions and viewpoints all over the place. Many don't understand how UO gold works. Back in the days having 100k made you rich because gold came from monsters. Though with all thats has occured during the years gold naturaly increased. The easier to obtain the gold the more it increases. But even monster gold reletively remained the same so these avenues of obtaining gold is the same as fighthing monsters for wearable items now a waste of time.

Any new player or player that doesn't have gold can obtain the level of current inflation by selling to us the players that being here for all this time.
Many years ago I came back after losing everything to idoc with but 1 mil gold saved in bank. Within 3 months I was over 100mil because I have the knowledge of the game and know how to resell. buy low sell high for the proper price. It's a simple process but takes having interest. Unlike real life you don't have to worry about all the paperwork/taxes and government intervention to keep you down from making your gold.

Then we have convertions. Each shard has a different level of economy. While you might have onle have 10mil in seige you can easily give the 10 mil to a broker and he will give you 100 mil in a production shard minus some gold for fees and depending on current conversion levels. Same thing vice versa you have 100 mil in production you can trade it for 10mil in seige. Naturaly people in seige are like wow 100mil is too much even though a 100mil in production only =10mil in seige.

Then we have the opinions depending at what level you on. When you only have 10k to your name you think 100k is a huge amount when you ahve 100k then you think 1mil is too much 1mil then 10mil too much 100mil 1 billion too much and so on. The more gold that is aquire the easier it is to aquire more. Usually the first million is the hardest to get. As there knowledge increases they know that in order to make gold it is not to aquire the gold from the system. It's to aquire the gold from other players that have more than they do. So that the gold trickles down to them by offering items those veteran players need.

Now comes the issue in the past the harder the item was to aquire the more useful it was for vets. So they payed gold to players that had no gold to aquire them for them. Since many changes from imbuing to uselessness of aquiring items from monsters to runic and bod reward a waste of time and making it simple for vet players to aquire items on there own without much hassle the younger/poorer players that hunt and do crafting/ gathering things arent much use to us vets. So we don't spend gold on there trouble. There is still essence that we do spend gold on for imbuing but the players need to have already builld up characters for such hunting. Even so it's still only 1 type of item out of the thousands in UO that is worth for us vets to spend gold on. Other things like iron ingots,dull runics,regular leather which is pretty much more useful than any high end harder to obtain items we spend gold on. But it's so low end that it's abundant and we dont need to spend much at all to get it. "Except recently that i notice pacific and there 90k dull runic compare to atlantic and there 12k dull runic still investigating if something happend to the crafters in that shard"

Either way we vets used to spend 8mil in a piece of moster looted armor,weap,ring. 20mil-100mil on runic crafted items, 50-100mil on artifacts,And we used to spend huge amounts on gold buying from players high end runics,barbed leather,high end iron and high end wood. Huge amounts on small daily/monthly spawns.
Now most of our gold stay in our hands. Trickle down is much slower as there is much less a player can sell to us to transfer our gold to them.These days 5-10mil and my suit that will last over a year is gotten instantly. Normaly I would of have to spend years looking for the right pieces and 100's of millions to get them. High end resources and high end crafter items we don't need them anymore. The best high non crafter related items can be gotten for a little silver from factions for all thats holy and the system is totally corrupted.
A poorer/younger player have to concetrate on the only few things that us vet players still buy the rest of sosaria is a waste of space.

Reselling does not have this issue but you need gold to make more gold. You can resell with as little as 10k but you won't make much return untill they resell enough to make more gold. Best way to do it is hunt for essence sell those and use the gold you get from that to buy underpriced products to sell for a higher amount. Or take a shot at something rare but useful and needed to sell for people who want it. Will have to find the market.

What the dev job should be focus at to get the economy right is to make sure thiings that are harder to get has more use than things that are easier to get. Don't introduce anything new and fix the items and resources that are currently available to be useful. And introduce something that is usefull but would appeal to vets and will take alot of gold to get without making anything else worthless. The boat was a good step but you offered it for sale for cash which ruin the chance. Never offer anything thats aquirable in game for cash.

Remmeber that different economies exist per shard and especialy between siege type shards and production type.
Remmeber that pvp is opposite of everything else. PVP want everything quick in order to get in the game to pvp "items,gold,skills". The starting and end goal of PVP is to PVP they do not enjoy the trammel aspect as they put it. Everyone else end game and goal is the act of aquiring skill,gold,items. If you make it easy to do these goals so that people can PVP you effectively destroy the goals and point of the game for everyone else. Of course PVP sees it as a nusance but to non-pvp players it's the reason to play,The goals, the challenge they made for themselves.

Oh last thing imbuing is not crafting. Crafting is when you are proud of your work when your name on a piece is unique cause only you crafted that piece not that there is a million other pieces the same like artifact or imbued items. Imbued items are what we crafters are forced to do now our pieces are not uuniques they can be made by another imbuer with equal skill in minutes. Our name does not matter on the imbued items.
So to recap Imbuing is not crafting.

I hope you take my words into consideration. We vets that seen the start of this game and embraced the entrance of trammel and stood around this long hope that UO dont go the way of the others.

 

[Lord Essex]

I have to agree with what was said before.. fascinating thread to read & I'm glad Phoenix created this thread.

I first have to say is the economy in UO fubar?! I believe so and I think it has been for a long time. its not just one thing however, UO has been around for a very long time and as patches & new ideas have been implemented, the impact on the economy has taken a back seat as to what needed to stop a dupe or what Mr./Mrs. So & So feels is the best thing since sliced bread.

LRC & Regs - Personally I have to say I love LRC.. For no other reason then it used to be such a pain to die, run around to get rezed, run back and find the monster/person that killed you looted your reg bag and now your screwed.. (I still keep a backup pouch in my back w/ 50regs each to this day.. Old habits die hard) HOWEVER because of this and its been mentioned before.. The use of regs has pretty much vanished.. Yes we use them to make potions n such but that was a huge gold sink that pretty much dried up. It would be completely unfair to just do away with LRC.. however 1/2 all existing and future LRC values on everything would be one way to bring back the need for regs.. even if on a limited scale.. Max LRC could be capped at 50% requiring the caster to always have at least some amount of regs on hand.

Cooking - I Agree completely make it so eating and drinking actually mean something again.. Here is an example

Stuffed = Normal total Hp/Mana/Stam Regeneration (Including all item bonuses)
Full = 3/4 of your characters total Hp/Mana/Stam Regeneration (Including all item bonuses)
Satisfied = 1/2 of your characters total Hp/Mana/Stam Regeneration (Including all item bonuses)
Hungry = 1/4 of your characters total Hp/Mana/Stam Regeneration (Including all item bonuses)
Starving = Bare minimum Hp/Mana/Stam Regeneration (Including all item bonuses) [Aka 1 Reg of each]

Also increase the amount required to eat to advance from each level.. More then just one or two fish steaks

Gold Sinks - Are a great idea, that has been imo poorly implemented.. The Britannia Ship is a prime example (Not to beat a dead horse.. Or mare) I understand EA wants to sell codes for $$.. Its one of the things the helps them keep UO profitable and allows us to still play on our shards.. But why not produce some items just as gold sinks in game.. The ship would have been perfect.. It didn't need to be account bound either.. at 150mil even the billionaires out there could only a handful.. If anything make the ones obtained through codes the ones that are account bound, allow people who've pay the gold to get a slight extra bonus. (Ok so I went there after I said I would.. Sorry!!)

Gold Sink Cont. - The Magincia Plots are a step in the right direction though, (More info would be nice) but keep doing things like this.. & So were the collection libraries & the zoo..
As its been mentioned many times Gold Sinks the provide tangible benefits to certain people only aren't going to appease the masses.. stat bonuses etc.. But house/boat decorations, unique rares, new classic houses.. Increase the cost of placing homes..
To Start W/ A Little Plot: (Sorry if my numbers are slightly off)
7x7 (2 Story + Roof) = 33,000 Gold to place.. or
7x7 = 49 Square Tiles Go ahead and multiply that by total levels (2+Roof=3)
49x3 = 147.. Take the placing cost of 33,000 & divide that by number of tiles
33,000/147 = 224 & Change.. So each square tile initially costs 224 gold
To Finish W/ A Large Home:
18x18 (3 Story + Roof) = 187,000 Gold to place.. or
18x18 = 324 Square Tiles Go ahead and multiply that by total levels (3+Roof=4)
324x4 = 1296.. Take the placing cost of 187,000 & divide that by number of tiles
187,000/1296 = 144 & Change.. So each square tile initially costs 144 gold

It shouldn't be cheaper per square foot, it should be more expensive

Now take for example a castle.. Having owned a castle and been frustrated by the lack of floor space.. I can say there are 1620 square tiles between all the levels.. (Yes I've counted) Here is the math..

31x31 (Castle) = 865,000 Gold to place.. (Remember there is A LOT of wasted space) or
1620 Square Tiles (Counted multiple times)
Take the placing cost of 865,000 & divide that by the number of tiles
865,000/1620 = 533 & Change.. So each square tile costs 533 gold

(On a side note.. please let us have a few more classic options.. I know y'all have em hidden in some secret file somewhere.. )

Yes there is the cost of walls included and depending on your 18x18 design the pricing could be equal, but by increasing the initial price to place larger homes, and making it non-refundable would be another gold sink, its not drastic but over the course of time it will have an effect.. and I think that is a big key in all this.. There is no overnight fix.. Its not the difference between the blue pill and red pill.. Small adjustments are needed and by doing it slowly the effects felt by all would be less drastic.. less drastic = less feathers ruffled.. This could be expanded on further by eliminating the refunds people get for redoing their homes.. Once a design is implemented and the money spent.. Thats it.. its gone no refund when you decide to turn your sprawling custom built fort/castle into a garden or small hut w/ a fishing pond..

Gold Drops/NPC Sales/Item Levels - There is huge potential for this area to become a gold sink.. Any gold spent on NPC sales helps eliminate gold. Why would someone EVER purchase say a katana from a npc blacksmith, when a brand new blacksmith character can create the same thing for a couple ingots, NPC items need to have some quality brought back to them.. They should be atleast equivalent to GM quality. The pricing of items is a problem to.. When the game started.. kill a lich by yourself was an accomplishment.. your reward.. a couple hundred gold and a few items you could sell for a bit of extra cash.. Lets say you really need a couple bags from the Provisioners 6gp a piece.. so lets say 18 gold.. and you really wanted a dye tub n some dyes because that blue color robe is buggin ya.. there is another 64gp.. and gotta have arrows or else you can't shoot right 7gp a piece.. 50 of them cost 350gp and don't forget about recall scrolls those weren't cheap 55-60gp per.. Before you knew it you'd spent most of what you'd earned.. Today w/ all of the GODLY weapons we have just about anyone can kill a lich in a couple hits or a few energy bolts.. Yet NPC prices stay the same.. its immensely easier to obtain gold, yet its value hasn't changed to reduce it. Here is the thing thats the best/worst part.. We've had all these new indrediants and resources and recipies introduced.. (I'm a fan for the most part).. 99% of them all come from monsters/loot.. The local lumberjack in Brit sells normal wood, but he doesn't sell oak, ash, yew or any of the others. In one sense yes this does help the little guy who is out there chopping wood and selling it, however if also means people are trading money between themselves and non of it leaving. IMO the NPC system is the single biggest gold sink we ever have and we still do.. its not being used.. We don't need to invent the wheel we just have to lube up the axles.. its right there for us..

Players - Lets not forget UO has unfortuantly lost a lot of players, some shards thrive while others are beginning/have for time looked like ghost towns.. As players leave what do a lot of them do.. Give away there stuff.. Fewer Players W/ the same amount of stuff.. Means the people that are left have more.. & we all know most people who play UO tend to be hoarders.. (Ok again my personnal opinion.. But I have seen proof..)

Insurance - Again another nasty little thing that all though its a conviance has decreased players cost.. Why would someone go out and buy another awesome shield if they could just hang on indefinitely to the one the already have.. (Insurance + PoF).. Either increase the price of insurance or getting rid of it is the only way to go.. Its part of life.. you win some, you lose some.. Can't get back to your body before it decays and vanishes thats a lose, but the days you do then hey its a win.. Right now it doesn't matter one bit because because know hey it was insured I can sit here for next 3 hours go get rezed and still have all my things.

Character Transfers - One of the single worse items produced I've ever seen and unfortuantly there is no going back.. But why not limit the amount of transfers.. Say maybe twice a month per account!? There is no reason people need to be jumping from one shard to another other then the rich to get richer.

Titles - We have Karma/Fame.. Why not have a set of titles based on charity..
0 - 5mil - None
5mil - 25mil - Generous
25mil - 100mil - Gracious
100mil - 250mil - Charitable
250mil - 500mil - Benevolent
500mil - 1bil - Philanthropic

These could be tied into donations setup around Britannia for each town. A town that have experianced significant donations could have reduced npc vendor prices for a short time, or some other benefit.. or skip town donations all together and have them benefit the something else.. Have them at dungeons where the at certain levels the loot from spawns can be effected.. higher amount of donations the better the chance of rare drops or such for a time.

Bless Deeds/Cloth Bless Deeds - Bless deeds were hard to obtain for a reason.. Then along came clothing bless deeds, which at first weren't really a problem because people used them to bless just that clothing they didn't want to loose.. Then at somepoint we put bonuses on clothing.. Not EVERY SINGLE PERSON has a CC or a tangle.. but 9 outta 10 who do have them blessed and never worry about losing them.. Items like this shouldn't be common place.. Minus Siege (Sorry Guys) how often do people find they can loot things like CC's and tangles off people??

Taxes/Storage/Checks - I'm not a huge fan of taxes, and I don't see anyway to implement them correctly.. & Few are the people who actually want to be taxed.. (Yes we'll raise taxes on everyone but those of us who are creating the new taxes.. JK) But I do see the benefit of charging write checks.. Not so much in a percentage of the check, but create them more like a commodity deed.. Better yet.. make check books that allow us to write so many checks.. are not rechargeable and can only be purchased from NPCs. OoOo & I would leave max 1mil checks and them still taking up storage.

I got more.. But for now I'll get this up and cont. later.. ^^

 

[Pfloyd]

Before you try and fix or address the economy you have to address cheating imho. If you don't want to talk about cheating or ways for people to get gold and items at an advantage different from knowledge and skill in the game then you aren't really wanting to fix the economy...

 

[silent]

In a nutshell you need to find a way to give people with gold an incentive to spend it without hurting the players without as much gold. Taxing or taking away gold from people that have it would be a bad idea. Many of us with gold have been in the game for a long time and deserve every gold piece we have.

 

[Fat Midnight]

I think the real issue is that it is difficult for a new player to start out on there own. This has little to do with the economy, and is only a little worse than it was back when I started.



The first char I made was killed by everything I ran across that I dare attack. Cows, dogs, mongbats, sewer rats pwnd me.

Il quote from a previous thread:

I do not understand the argument that it is hard to "catch up" and get rich. It is very easy to get your fortune if you watch what items go for a good amount, are fairly easy to acquire, and always in demand.

Start catering to the market, and revenue will follow.

It is not hard to make large sums of gold in UO. Even my mediocre melee char, no PS and stat scrolls, no high end gear, and nothing introduced since ML can easily pull a mil an hour out of the abyss.

 

[Phoenix_Mythic]

what is the goal here?

This is the question, isn't it? It's actually a whopper. We're all trying to answer it here, and this thread has brought out an impressive number of long and detailed responses.

But when I read that line of your post, it occurred to me that finding the most succinct answer would serve everyone very well. So I spent a bit of time today thinking about it, trying to find the very essence of the issue at hand.

My answer is simply this: To fight entropy.

 

[Tina Small]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

3> This is probably most important: the market must set the price. The value of gold changes with the situation. Some shards are more inflated than others, some players don't place high value on hoarding gold. One person's petty cash is another person's fortune. So this means that whatever price the development team chooses for a gold sink, that price is virtually guaranteed to be wrong.

As an example of #3 above, I don't think many will agree that the Britannian Ship as bought from the Community Collection was priced correctly. It's largely a matter of opinion anyway, so there's little point in debating it. However, for the Magincia Plot Lottery, each player is free to buy as many or as few tickets as desired, and the ultimate total price for all the land is purely a function of market conditions.

Do you have any plans to do things any differently for Siege and Mugen or to at least try to deliberately elicit ideas and feedback from players on those shards before any drastic changes are put into place?

I'm still very much the newbie on Siege, but even to someone like me, it's pretty obvious inflation is not the huge problem there that it is on other shards. That's not to say that everything about the Siege ruleset is perfect, but least the economy on Siege seems to be in far less trouble than elsewhere. Kinda makes me think perhaps there are some things that are unique about Siege/Mugen (e.g., being excluded from the character transfer system, no insurance) that might, with some modification, help improve the economy on other shards.

I hope you'll consider at least trying to open up a separate discussion just for Siege and Mugen. As you may know (I hope), the forum for Siege Perilous here on Stratics is one of the busiest, with more new threads/posts than UHall on some days. I'm sure you would get an overwhelming response if you were to kick off a thread like this in that forum. (I'm sure the Japanese team could help you figure out how to get the attention of Mugen's players.) To be perfectly blunt, I'd say the time invested in giving a pittance of attention to Siege and Mugen through a discussion thread before you wreck their economies with ideas meant to rein in problems on the other shards would be a small price to pay to keep these shards afloat after you guys bailed on the idea of adding a classic shard. These shards may not appeal to all the people who said they would come back for a classic shard, but I suspect they're helping you hold on to a fair number of people who have grown very weary of how things have turned out on other shards. Please don't alienate those people and the people who've been dedicated to Siege/Mugen since their very beginnings by forcing them to swallow medicine designed for the ills of the "prodo shards."

 

[Woodsman]

In a nutshell you need to find a way to give people with gold an incentive to spend it without hurting the players without as much gold.

You also have to keep that gold out of the economy - it does us no good to have gold sinks that may cost 20 million gold if we can turn around and re-generate that gold fairly easily.

If a player can earn that gold back quickly, then the only thing that's been impacted is the player's time.

 

[UOKaiser]

You also have to keep that gold out of the economy - it does us no good to have gold sinks that may cost 20 million gold if we can turn around and re-generate that gold fairly easily.

If a player can earn that gold back quickly, then the only thing that's been impacted is the player's time.

Regenerating gold from the system is not easy so it's nothing to worry about. It takes a while for 1 player to gain 20mil gold from monsters only. Champs spawn would speed up the process if they have total control of the spawn. Still takes time.The only thing that brings gold into the system that can even effect the amount of gold we currently have is a gold dupe or type of gold dupe or check dupe and those are very rare. Only being a few gold dupes in the history of UO. Those are not likely to occur again on purpose and only if the dev make a major coding error.

 

[UOKaiser]

I think the real issue is that it is difficult for a new player to start out on there own. This has little to do with the economy, and is only a little worse than it was back when I started.



The first char I made was killed by everything I ran across that I dare attack. Cows, dogs, mongbats, sewer rats pwnd me.

Il quote from a previous thread:



It is not hard to make large sums of gold in UO. Even my mediocre melee char, no PS and stat scrolls, no high end gear, and nothing introduced since ML can easily pull a mil an hour out of the abyss.

Quick question are you talking about pure gold from the abyss in a hour?

 

[UOKaiser]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

Do you have any plans to do things any differently for Siege and Mugen or to at least try to deliberately elicit ideas and feedback from players on those shards before any drastic changes are put into place?

I'm still very much the newbie on Siege, but even to someone like me, it's pretty obvious inflation is not the huge problem there that it is on other shards. That's not to say that everything about the Siege ruleset is perfect, but least the economy on Siege seems to be in far less trouble than elsewhere. Kinda makes me think perhaps there are some things that are unique about Siege/Mugen (e.g., being excluded from the character transfer system, no insurance) that might, with some modification, help improve the economy on other shards.

I hope you'll consider at least trying to open up a separate discussion just for Siege and Mugen. As you may know (I hope), the forum for Siege Perilous here on Stratics is one of the busiest, with more new threads/posts than UHall on some days. I'm sure you would get an overwhelming response if you were to kick off a thread like this in that forum. (I'm sure the Japanese team could help you figure out how to get the attention of Mugen's players.) To be perfectly blunt, I'd say the time invested in giving a pittance of attention to Siege and Mugen through a discussion thread before you wreck their economies with ideas meant to rein in problems on the other shards would be a small price to pay to keep these shards afloat after you guys bailed on the idea of adding a classic shard. These shards may not appeal to all the people who said they would come back for a classic shard, but I suspect they're helping you hold on to a fair number of people who have grown very weary of how things have turned out on other shards. Please don't alienate those people and the people who've been dedicated to Siege/Mugen since their very beginnings by forcing them to swallow medicine designed for the ills of the "prodo shards."

Thats the thing Tina. The currency rate of seige is comaparable to the production. Once you aquire 1mil on seige remmeber you can trade it for 10mil in production. Or once you aquire 10mil in production you can trade it for 1 mil in seige. The problem is if this was the currency rate and the item's in seige was the same price as production or the items in production is the same price as seige.

 

[Malagar T'sarran]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

Do you have any plans to do things any differently for Siege and Mugen or to at least try to deliberately elicit ideas and feedback from players on those shards before any drastic changes are put into place?

I'm still very much the newbie on Siege, but even to someone like me, it's pretty obvious inflation is not the huge problem there that it is on other shards. That's not to say that everything about the Siege ruleset is perfect, but least the economy on Siege seems to be in far less trouble than elsewhere. Kinda makes me think perhaps there are some things that are unique about Siege/Mugen (e.g., being excluded from the character transfer system, no insurance) that might, with some modification, help improve the economy on other shards.

I hope you'll consider at least trying to open up a separate discussion just for Siege and Mugen. As you may know (I hope), the forum for Siege Perilous here on Stratics is one of the busiest, with more new threads/posts than UHall on some days. I'm sure you would get an overwhelming response if you were to kick off a thread like this in that forum. (I'm sure the Japanese team could help you figure out how to get the attention of Mugen's players.) To be perfectly blunt, I'd say the time invested in giving a pittance of attention to Siege and Mugen through a discussion thread before you wreck their economies with ideas meant to rein in problems on the other shards would be a small price to pay to keep these shards afloat after you guys bailed on the idea of adding a classic shard. These shards may not appeal to all the people who said they would come back for a classic shard, but I suspect they're helping you hold on to a fair number of people who have grown very weary of how things have turned out on other shards. Please don't alienate those people and the people who've been dedicated to Siege/Mugen since their very beginnings by forcing them to swallow medicine designed for the ills of the "prodo shards."

AGREEEED

 

[UOKaiser]

This is the question, isn't it? It's actually a whopper. We're all trying to answer it here, and this thread has brought out an impressive number of long and detailed responses.

But when I read that line of your post, it occurred to me that finding the most succinct answer would serve everyone very well. So I spent a bit of time today thinking about it, trying to find the very essence of the issue at hand.

My answer is simply this: To fight entropy.

The gold in the shards are there. If you want to get rid of gold give people something to spend it on. If you want redistrubution of gold to the newer/poorer players from us Vets then look at my post.

 

[Bill Gates OSD]

I wont go into an elaborate essay on the subject , but will give you my thoughts and ideas on the subject.

For me the best gold sinks are expensive desirable items that one cant resell.

Brit galleon was a good idea, but it only appeals to a minority of players. And now you can get them for 12 bucks on UO codes anyway so in the end, its a big fail as a gold sink.

Have NPCs sell more account bound items that everyone will want

- Personnal bless deeds @ npc scribes for 20-25 mill. ( i only have about 15 mill in bank and i would gladly save my pennies for those )

- Blessed bags @ npc tailors able to hold 5-10 items / 50 stones

- Bod books for any kind of deeds @ npc scribes

- Special wood flooring tile set @ npc carp

The possibilities are endless, the key is to have them account bound , and desirable by most of the players. Even the non-billionnaires.

If alot of players are saving to get one or more of these items, 2 things are happening :

1- they have less gold to spend on other stuff, forcing the prices down

2- they are making millions of gold disapearing


just my 2 cents..

Those are some great ideas! Account bound special objects like that would be fantastic gold sinks!

 

[Raptor85]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

Thats the thing Tina. The currency rate of seige is comaparable to the production. Once you aquire 1mil on seige remmeber you can trade it for 10mil in production. Or once you aquire 10mil in production you can trade it for 1 mil in seige. The problem is if this was the currency rate and the item's in seige was the same price as production or the items in production is the same price as seige.

That's wonderful, except you're missing the point. (and incidently actually proving it) We lack inflation. A newbie can come in on the shard, kill some mongbats and orcs for a day, and buy a suit of armor from the gold gotten from that. Killing monsters here, even lower level ones, is still a VERY viable way to fund yourself. 1 Million on siege is a LOT of gold, you must realize.

 

[UOKaiser]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

That's wonderful, except you're missing the point. (and incidently actually proving it) We lack inflation. A newbie can come in on the shard, kill some mongbats and orcs for a day, and buy a suit of armor from the gold gotten from that. Killing monsters here, even lower level ones, is still a VERY viable way to fund yourself. 1 Million on siege is a LOT of gold, you must realize.

The gold is comparable 1mil in seige is 10mil in production. I can make 10mil in production and come to seige with 1mil to start with. The items sold by players keep up with the seige economy. Monsters do not keep up with the economy. A newbie cannot wack mongbat and ogre to get the same value for there money in production. Because thats not the way to make gold in production. Thats the way to make gold back in pre-trammel days before anybody else even had 1mil gold to there name. Though newbie would not be playing seige so they would know what to do already before ever setting foot there. Most newbies in production are not pvp they are pvm and adventure. Making or getting there suit is there reason to play not what is needed to play.

It's true seige doesn't have as much inflation because the dupes never made it there as well as lack of players and no transfers. Still these perticular shards are a drastic different world compare to production. What is good in production is not good in seige and what is good in seige is not good in production.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Control gold After generation

More things for players to spend money on
Item binding
Obsolescence of items
Higher decay rates
Decay (causing needed repair) on All items, incl housing
game Rented vendors in every city
item destruction during use
Progressive vendor fees based on price
Shard-Wide vendor search to halt open market
NPC's selling services, items, expansions, and content
skill decline, but can be re-purchased
Bank robbery
Pixel crack

 

[virtualhabitat]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

That's wonderful, except you're missing the point. (and incidently actually proving it) We lack inflation. A newbie can come in on the shard, kill some mongbats and orcs for a day, and buy a suit of armor from the gold gotten from that. Killing monsters here, even lower level ones, is still a VERY viable way to fund yourself. 1 Million on siege is a LOT of gold, you must realize.

I don't play on siege, but as I understand it, players are constantly adding goods to the economy. Goods people want to buy.

I would be willing to bet over the lifetime of the siege shard, the amount of gold on that shard has grown quite a bit. I would also wager that the amount of goods people want to buy has kept up with that increase as well.

On a regular shard, players cannot react to the demand of goods in a significant way because most of the goods people want are controlled by the RNG.

On Siege, demand is met by people who can react immediately to the whims of demand.

 

[Tina Small]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

Thats the thing Tina. The currency rate of seige is comaparable to the production. Once you aquire 1mil on seige remmeber you can trade it for 10mil in production. Or once you aquire 10mil in production you can trade it for 1 mil in seige. The problem is if this was the currency rate and the item's in seige was the same price as production or the items in production is the same price as seige.

Are you absolutely certain that the currency rate of Siege is comparable to that of production shards?

I would venture a guess that many popular commodities/items on other shards are considered useless or near useless on Siege because of the lack of insurance and/or because acquiring them from a location with no recall just isn't worth the hassle for most people. As a result, I don't think you can set prices, fees, costs, or whatever at one rate on the non-Siege shards and then multiply that price/fee/cost by some factor for Siege and call it good.

Also, keep in mind that not everyone who plays on Siege plays somewhere else. I've met quite a few people there that have only played on Siege for many years. I'm sure they have no interest whatsoever in trading in their gold on Siege for gold somewhere else or vice versa.

 

[UOKaiser]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

Are you absolutely certain that the currency rate of Siege is comparable to that of production shards?

I would venture a guess that many popular commodities/items on other shards are considered useless or near useless on Siege because of the lack of insurance and/or because acquiring them from a location with no recall just isn't worth the hassle for most people. As a result, I don't think you can set prices, fees, costs, or whatever at one rate on the non-Siege shards and then multiply that price/fee/cost by some factor for Siege and call it good.

Also, keep in mind that not everyone who plays on Siege plays somewhere else. I've met quite a few people there that have only played on Siege for many years. I'm sure they have no interest whatsoever in trading in their gold on Siege for gold somewhere else or vice versa.

Items are not comparable in seige "It's way to vastly difference and dynamic". Items have different prices per shards as well. When it comes to items there are cross traders that made there gold by buying low a perticular items on one production shard and transfering to another production shard.

Im talking about pure gold for seige is comparable which remain pretty stable because of how much average gold seige players have as a whole. There are brokers who do these transactions. Some very rich people in the production shards made there gold by gaining it on seige first then either becoming brokers or trading there seige gold with even richer players for 5x-10x times the price for there production gold. Other players who wish to try seige don't like to start with nothing so they trade some of there production gold for seige gold to start out well of there.

 

[Tina Small]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

I don't play on siege, but as I understand it, players are constantly adding goods to the economy. Goods people want to buy.

I would be willing to bet over the lifetime of the siege shard, the amount of gold on that shard has grown quite a bit. I would also wager that the amount of goods people want to buy has kept up with that increase as well.

On a regular shard, players cannot react to the demand of goods in a significant way because most of the goods people want are controlled by the RNG.

On Siege, demand is met by people who can react immediately to the whims of demand.

A lot of those goods get used up. As an example, did you realize that using an axe to lumberjack actually destroys the axe? Using scissors destroys them. Using tools/weapons to shear animals destroys the tool or weapon. You get about 100 or so uses out of an axe and then it poofs. As a result, some things like the Melisande corroded hatchet or a butcher's war cleaver are pretty pointless to make, acquire, or try to sell on Siege.

You also lose stuff because there is no insurance. Get clobbered somewhere where you can't easily get back to your body? Say goodbye to 99% of your stuff. Someone took a dislike to you and clobbers you? Well, your suit might just go bye-bye too when they pull out the scissors and go snip, snip, snip. Not to say that either thing happens to everybody on a daily basis, but I would bet that a fair amount of "stuff" poofs out of existence on Siege because of character death than ever happens on other shards. Because of RoT, I also have a feeling that Siege players aren't sitting on and gathering nearly the same amount of resources as on other shards because players don't need as many resources to complete trade skill training.

Also, as with other shards, a lot of people have quit the shard. Most of them probably didn't leave bags of checks sitting in their houses. No, it was in their bankbox and as a result, out of the economy unless and until those players actually return.

I agree with you though that there are likely some people on Siege and Mugen who have a decent amount of gold stashed away and wouldn't be averse to having some new ways to spend it. But I have a feeling those people are probably the exception, rather than the rule. I have a feeling that many of the old-timers on the shard are not as rich in relative terms as their counterparts on other shards because many of them go way above and beyond what I've seen elsewhere to help newcomers get started on the shard. A lot of items collected from IDOCs, spare power scrolls, etc., are donated to the NEW guild and passed on FREE to players new to the shard. Believe it or not, I've met people on Siege who regularly do champ spawns who are unfamiliar with the concept of using scroll binders to aggregate power scrolls and SoTs in order to be able to turn around and sell them at an obscene profit.

For many people who play on Siege, the game doesn't seem to be all about trying to be the guy/gal on the shard who has the most of everything. It's about having fun and making sure the people around you that you play with every day are also having a good time and want to stick around with you for a while. I'd sure hate to see all that ruined by a raft of changes needed on shards where the primary goal for many players seems to be outdoing each other in a bidding war for the latest new rare, overpriced artifact, or yet another castle.

 

[virtualhabitat]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

I agree with you though that there are likely some people on Siege and Mugen who have a decent amount of gold stashed away and wouldn't be averse to having some new ways to spend it. But I have a feeling those people are probably the exception, rather than the rule.

I wasn't suggesting that siege needed more stuff for people to spend gold on, quite the opposite. You see, it appears that on siege money is flowing through a greater number of individuals. the rich are still rich, but the money has reason to spent -and spent often. So it circulates around because there is no great incentive to stockpile gold waiting for that chance to buy that eleventy million gold piece trinket.

The rich are still rich, but everyone gets in on the circulation when there are things to buy. And there are always things to buy because people, not an RNG, are responsible for recognizing what other people want and how much to produce.

Production (supply of goods people want) in UO will either come from the RNG or another player.

The real difference on a regular shard is that there are quite a number of people with gold, but they can't spend it on what they need or want. Not until the RNG creates it.

Obviously, insurance has a lot to do with the tyranny of the RNG on a regular shard. From what I gather, siege people don't dare run about carrying 7 or 8 artifacts lest they lose them to some ambitious procurer of such items. These are not what people are saving money for. These items are not the demand of their economy.

 

[Tina Small]

Re: On Gold Sinks and Pricing

I wasn't suggesting that siege needed more stuff for people to spend gold on, quite the opposite. You see, it appears that on siege money is flowing through a greater number of individuals. the rich are still rich, but the money has reason to spent -and spent often. So it circulates around because there is no great incentive to stockpile gold waiting for that chance to buy that eleventy million gold piece trinket.

The rich are still rich, but everyone gets in on the circulation when there are things to buy. And there are always things to buy because people, not an RNG, are responsible for recognizing what other people want and how much to produce.

Production (supply of goods people want) in UO will either come from the RNG or another player.

The real difference on a regular shard is that there are quite a number of people with gold, but they can't spend it on what they need or want. Not until the RNG creates it.

Obviously, insurance has a lot to do with the tyranny of the RNG on a regular shard. From what I gather, siege people don't dare run about carrying 7 or 8 artifacts lest they lose them to some ambitious procurer of such items. These are not what people are saving money for. These items are not the demand of their economy.

Ah, okay. Sorry I misunderstood what you said! Thanks for explaining further.

There's something else about Siege that might be worth mentioning. Since you only have one character per account there, I believe it isn't all that unusual for someone who has chosen to have a red character find themselves in the position that they must rely completely on other players for any NPC purchases they might need. Yes, it is something they should have thought of when they decided to clobber folks and risk getting murder counts. However, if EA decides to add some kind of gold sink in the form of a highly desirable account-bound item that you purchase from an NPC, don't forget that a red character on Siege won't be able to buy it unless some kind of special programming is put in place. There will be no option on that account for the player to use a blue character to make the purchase.

 

[Fat Midnight]

Quick question are you talking about pure gold from the abyss in a hour?

No not pure gold, I also included the (conservative) value of imbuing ingredients. This doesnt even include stuff I would unravel.


I know my point could be argued to be not valid to the discussion at hand. To me, it is valid, because the entire discussion is based on a large percentage of the populations perceived inability to make it big.
IMHO, the disparity in the distribution of wealth is no worse than it was during the Second Age. The first few months I played, I could bairly afford GM armor and weps. Then I learned certain items were in demand, ingots, leather, lumber etc. At that point my wealth grew, and with it, I gained my first house, and started collecting crap. At the same time, I knew of players with multiple castles, a collection of true rares, and more gold than I could imagine.

Its not really that much different from today.
Don`t wait for it to trickle down.
This isnt real world capitalism. Go out there, and get it for your self.

 

[UOKaiser]

No not pure gold, I also included the (conservative) value of imbuing ingredients. This doesnt even include stuff I would unravel.


I know my point could be argued to be not valid to the discussion at hand. To me, it is valid, because the entire discussion is based on a large percentage of the populations perceived inability to make it big.
IMHO, the disparity in the distribution of wealth is no worse than it was during the Second Age. The first few months I played, I could bairly afford GM armor and weps. Then I learned certain items were in demand, ingots, leather, lumber etc. At that point my wealth grew, and with it, I gained my first house, and started collecting crap. At the same time, I knew of players with multiple castles, a collection of true rares, and more gold than I could imagine.

Its not really that much different from today.
Don`t wait for it to trickle down.
This isnt real world capitalism. Go out there, and get it for your self.

Just checking because the conversation was about gold being introduced to the system "the abyss creatures generate very little gold not even close enough for 1/2 mil in gold a hour" and the only way that occurs normaly for even 1 gold piece to enter is selling to npc,turning bods in, and monster hunting "did I miss any others?" All other gold is distrubuted using the UO trickle down effect getting resources/items from loot/craft to sell. Get things that others with gold want so they can trade you the gold in the system that they have to you. No gold has left the system or enter the system. Theres a hell alot of more ways gold is removed from UO than introduced as I think i named them all.

 

[Tina Small]

Just checking because the conversation was about gold being introduced to the system "the abyss creatures generate very little gold not even close enough for 1/2 mil in gold a hour" and the only way that occurs normaly for even 1 gold piece to enter is selling to npc,turning bods in, and monster hunting "did I miss any others?" All other gold is distrubuted using the UO trickle down effect getting resources/items from loot/craft to sell. Get things that others with gold want so they can trade you the gold in the system that they have to you. No gold has left the system or enter the system. Theres a hell alot of more ways gold is removed from UO than introduced as I think i named them all.

You forgot completing quests.

 

[Kat]

I don't really like the idea of gold sinks that give something valuable in return. A good amount of gold has been created from duped items and I just can't stomach the thought of those folks being rewarded.

My idea could possibly use some tweaking, but here is the basic concept: Implement a virtual currency. Do away with gold, silver, checks, everything. A players worth would be part of the character inventory at all times. Their currency could possibly be accessed or traded via some sort of gump. A characters insurance rate would be based on a formula which includes a basic value for each item the character is wearing AND on that players wealth. Insurance fees are charged once per real world day, instead of per death. Of course, depending on several factors, the daily rate would likely be significantly higher than current fees.

In an effort to prevent players from storing currency on junk characters for lower fees, insurance fee's are deducted each real world day for each character on an account, whether logged in or not. Inactive accounts are not assessed insurance fees.


*Crawls into a bunker with a Dr Pepper and tub of popcorn!*

 

[UOKaiser]

You forgot completing quests.

Ah I felt I was missing something. Thanks.

 

[Woodsman]

So lots of disagreements, but let's talk about what we do agree upon.

It seems like most of us feel LRC were a huge mistake as far as the economy and removing gold from it.

 

[UOKaiser]

I don't really like the idea of gold sinks that give something valuable in return. A good amount of gold has been created from duped items and I just can't stomach the thought of those folks being rewarded.

My idea could possibly use some tweaking, but here is the basic concept: Implement a virtual currency. Do away with gold, silver, checks, everything. A players worth would be part of the character inventory at all times. Their currency could possibly be accessed or traded via some sort of gump. A characters insurance rate would be based on a formula which includes a basic value for each item the character is wearing AND on that players wealth. Insurance fees are charged once per real world day, instead of per death. Of course, depending on several factors, the daily rate would likely be significantly higher than current fees.

In an effort to prevent players from storing currency on junk characters for lower fees, insurance fee's are deducted each real world day for each character on an account, whether logged in or not. Inactive accounts are not assessed insurance fees.


*Crawls into a bunker with a Dr Pepper and tub of popcorn!*

I disagree. Either way just want to add some info on your initial paragraph that caught my attention.

Gold dupes occured a very long time ago and those behind it where UO workers and there friends. They not around anymore so the only one you trying to punish are everyone that sold any item in the last decade as well those who received gold from others and homes. Im sure that player that spend 8 months in doom everyday trying for a hat of magi when doom first came out and sold it for 70mil to another player who got his gold from probably spending 5months himself trying to aquiire a orny and sold it to another player that gold from etc.etc.etc.etc. to finaly the origin of the dupe wont appreciate losing there hard earn gold. Finaly item dupe is not gold dupe no gold gets into the UO system that way. It makes the item worthless though. Those who did item dupe just had existing gold in the system transfered to them.