You're making this sound more complicated than it is. Remember, currency is non-physical under this system and the only thing "platinum" changes is how the number is displayed. You can sit there checking and unchecking the box and watching the display go from "1,000,000 gold" to "1,000 platinum" over and over if you want, it's all the same number in the end. Both currencies are accepted everywhere because really they're the same thing.
I understand the idea, its part 4 of your plan I was referring to: "The entire NPC economy, the housing system, everything, begins taking platinum instead of gold". That makes gold valueless. The game can TELL you 1000 gold is worth 1 platinum, but if 1000 gold cant do what 1 platinum can do, then its not. If that is not what you intended, then ignore that point.
Okay slam on the brakes, full stop. Prices today are NOT based on how much work it takes to farm the gold. At all. Nobody would ever kill 17,000 dragons to save up for a barbed kit or whatever. Prices today are based on the total amount of gold circulating in the economy after nearly 20 years of farming and duping. That's why killing monsters for their gold is virtually worthless now, and that's sort of the entire point.
1) Barbed kits don't cost 17m. They cost like 2m-3m. In fact I can buy a Valorite hammer CHEAPER on Atlantic than I can on Siege (5.5m vs 7m) despite a vastly smaller currency pool, because in part currency is much harder to get on siege, and of course supply is lower. My point is that average wealth is only one factor, supply and demand I would say are larger factors, especially in a world without needs.
Honestly the only things that cost a stupid amount of money (100m+) are either elite pvp gear, or vanity items like cool housing spots and uber rares. No one
needs these things, and its perfectly fine that they cost stupid amounts of money.
On the other hand, if a system like mine went into effect and prices BECAME at least somewhat based on the amount of work it took to farm the money, that would be a HUGE IMPROVEMENT. Nobody could go out there and ask 17,000 dragon kills worth of money for a barbed kit like they do now. Nobody would do it, nobody would pay it. You'd HAVE to lower your price, or else just stare at your pile of barbed kits for another 20 years.
No, you really wouldn't have to lower your prices indefinitely. No one NEEDS to sell anything, and if you don't make a profit for your time, you will like I have said take barter, or simply stop selling. Now I think prices WOULD be lower, just not a ton, and not for all that long, and certainly not by the correlating currency conversion rate, if you leave income rate the same.
Trade flourishes because prices are pushed down to levels that are more attainable by farming. You can't charge 20,000 or 50,000 dragon kills worth of money for an item if people actually have to kill the dragons.
Let me put it this way: If all you could get for a rare artifact was an amount of gold that someone could reasonably farm... would you personally still spend all of the time and effort going after that artifact? Or would you just farm the weak monsters?
People will
always need to get that relative profit margin, or the economy will stop function for those hard to get items. Deflating wealth WOULD drop the numbers but the margins would stay the same. If something costs a lot now, it will still cost a lot after such a change.
Also I don't know why it would come down to just looted gold with this change. I don't see why things would be any different than they are now, where the most profitable thing to do at low levels is sell minor commodities, not loot gold off of monsters.
Also, of course, like a fair tax ,the lower your wealth, the more the negative impact, so I think your probably just going to be making it harder for people who are already having a hard time.
territory.
