Gold Sink Suggestion - Let us Fix Our Economy

[Zosimus]

I will make my point clear.

I said ------> possible fixes?

Did not mention Seige or going back to an older time period.

Was not my intent to make it into a Siege debate.

I have suggested many times in other threads that UO needed a new currency and make gold worth the least. That doesn't float well here and the devs wont do it.

My ideas and suggestions are not the popular kind that current players like to here. With all what UO has to offer, with the new dungeon revamps, items easily to get, imbuing, and repairing items, it is silly to me that max durabilty can't be changed to a lower number at least.

The game shouldn't be about how much gold a person has or can get. It should be about fun and having a healthy trading economy. May as well print more gold and make it worth nothing. When bags of sending ever get to the price of a million gold then players may understand that gold is out of control.

 

[Mirt]

I will make my point clear.

I said ------> possible fixes?

Did not mention Seige or going back to an older time period.

Was not my intent to make it into a Siege debate.

I have suggested many times in other threads that UO needed a new currency and make gold worth the least. That doesn't float well here and the devs wont do it.

My ideas and suggestions are not the popular kind that current players like to here. With all what UO has to offer, with the new dungeon revamps, items easily to get, imbuing, and repairing items, it is silly to me that max durabilty can't be changed to a lower number at least.

The game shouldn't be about how much gold a person has or can get. It should be about fun and having a healthy trading economy. May as well print more gold and make it worth nothing. When bags of sending ever get to the price of a million gold then players may understand that gold is out of control.

The eliminate insurance, that is a key part of Siege. Another is that everything has uses and breaks. The key difference in what two of your suggestions are is simply make siege but remove the all fel and have NPCs with normal prices and that buy things. I simply put up that those suggestions would likely make things far worse as many players would no longer be able to play. The real issue with the economy is scripting and an excess of currency leading to massive inflation. Unless scripting is dealt with any attempt to fix the economy is doomed to failure sadly. I remember when being a miner could get you a decent life in UO. It can't anymore because ingot values are nothing due to scripting. Lumberjacking is the same way. As long as that occurs anything else is really just rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic as it were economically. I am not saying that your ideas about decreasing max durability are without merit because I think they are, but I do strongly disagree about insurance because while I might be able to go and get another suit many people can't. Those players that can't will eventually leave and then with few people the economy will be in even worse shape.

 

[Uvtha]

Actually, besides monster loot and selling items to NPCs, what are the other main ways for gold to be actually created by the game?

And if somebody wanted to lower the amount of gold in game by reducing the amount coming in through monsters/NPCs, they'd have to be patient. It would take a while before you'd see a noticeable difference since there is so much gold currently in the game. Not to mention that the moment such a plan was introduced, people would begin hording gold. You'd have to be really patient, we're talking a year or more.

Chests have a lot of gold. Gold rains at champ spawns im guessing are one of the big culprits as well. It doesn't really matter. When you can farm gold with no danger 24/7 its gonna add up quick no matter what.

As for patience, that's why I say just do a currency conversion. Easier. Painless if done right. Then you could put in some lottos and some other random gold sinks, switch gold to Agapite coins 1 for every 1000, then work to develop systems that offer expendable value.

It would be a step in the right direction.

 

[Uvtha]

Interesting idea, an official lottery? Or perhaps an official gambling house, games or chicken fights. I'd find it more fun than the arenas for sure.

Ive seen other games do it. I don't see why it would be a bad thing.

 

[Uvtha]

If you lower the amount of gold entering the game through monster loot and NCP sales you significantly hurt new player experience as they will not be able to collect enough gold to compete with the gold amounts already accumulated.

I started this tread to generate ideas on how to take some of the gold out of the game while possibly adding more content without actually messing with the game mechanics.

I understand that inflation will always be an issue and I don't see that as a problem as it is understandable that senior players will always have more gold if they actually care on making it. My only concern is that new players don't get a chance to compete with today's economy without giving up their life to farm gold in UO.

I started this tread two days ago and already made 6 mil since then but that is only because I have 6 fully trained characters. New players don't have this privilege and will leave the game after month or two of playing as they can't afford basic things to progress their characters without spending eternity farming skeletons or doing escorts in New Heaven.

Changing currency is not an answer as it would impact commodity sales. Adding additional currency could help gold storage issues so that we don't bog our banks and homes with it.

Z

Its not that hard to make money with any level of character. Yes, it will take a while to learn the game, learn what is valuable and how to acquire this things. But generally few people get rich off of monster looted gold. They get rich off of selling other stuff they find on monsters like artifacts, rares, imbuing ingredients.

Heck every time there's a holiday there's usually something a newb could sell for a fair hunk of change dropped directly into their bags.

 

[Uvtha]

I hate to say this but anytime someone suggests turning the rest of the shards into a version of siege do they realize the population that siege has? The folks on siege are good people but unless you plan on drastically changing the nature of the game the end of insurance is the death knell for any casual player in UO. Dropping POF and max durability might help but still it will not really help all that much and scripter’s will simply keep going. To fix the economy one gold needs to drop less. This would hurt me personally but it might be good to seriously reduce the amount of gold that drops after a spawn. Also something needs to be done about BOTS and scripter’s. The only idea from siege that I could see coming in is having durability on the items but I still don't think that would help all that much as most players do have a mule like you mentioned that is one of the issues that your going to have with a 15 year old game players will have developed most of their characters fully.

I don't think removing or at least changing insurance would kill the game. I don't really think its insurance that keeps that many peeps off of siege.

Limited insurance I think is a good idea. I had an idea once where you would get some kind of "soul charges" or whatever you wanna call them, and every player has 10 to use. For each one you use on an item it has a 20% chance to stay with your ghost. Adds risk, rewards the brave, leaves a safety net for people, but still allows reasonable item loss.

I think tool wear like siege is a good idea, gives people another thing to buy sell or trade. Wont make you rich but its rewarding to feel useful.

And as I said above I don't see the point of altering monster drops without dealing with the currency already in the system. But a currency change would be a simple fix, and wouldn't disrupt anything in the slightest, unless they chose to do it in some stupid manner.

 

[tiggertessa2007]

i was over bods in the 1st 24 hrs of their release lol, but im not a crafter. u wanna know who holds the gold in uo? the people who can afford to pay 6 billion for a statue....ur collectors duh!.........uo could take a clue from WOW on this one...instead of a darkmoon faire we could have traveling gypsies who roll into town once a month and offer rare new mounts , or paintings, or any kind of deco or pet.....just over price the hell out of em and change it to something different every month....even if you just re hue it...people will sink a butt load of gold into it........problem solved!

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Hello everyone,
I came back to UO about 8 months ago after few years with about 3 mil between my characters. I already had most of my characters developed so after some work I now have a small egg nest of about 50 mil which is ridiculous as it took me 5 years to get 3 mil.

I have been reading lots of posts and the most common complaint is that there aren’t enough Gold Sinks in the game and I see publish after publish getting trash talked as they don't include new and innovative gold sinks.

As I do agree that the gold is easy to obtain and that there is so much of it around I am also grateful that game is getting constant updates.

I believe that gold sinks could be implemented easily without effecting new player experience and unbalancing the game.

My suggestions is to add new NCP vendors with expensive deco and other helpful things that would not unbalance the game in any way.

For example:
New dyes or dye tubs.
New decorative potted plants that you have to water and that could bloom.
New mounts.
T-Map books / Scroll of Alacrity Books
New Clothing (Similar to Abyssal Cloth)
New decorations for different holidays.

List can go on and on and on with items that rich could want and afford to show off their status and better their playing experience without unbalancing the game for new players.

If these items have starting price of 10 mil and go over 100 mil people will sink their gold. I would personally play more to get another 50 mil to spend on T-map book that could store 500 maps.

I hope that the rest of the community will add and expend on this tread with their ideas on what to add to the game that would not unbalance New Player or PVP experience and help us fix our economy before it reaches the state of the real world economy.

Thank you for reading and thinking about the future of UO.
Z

There is no need for a gold sink. The economy is quite healthy. You just seem to have an issue with zeroes on checks.

The 3 million you referenced would have seemed ridiculous for the entire first few years of UO. Whats your point?

 

[Uvtha]

There is no need for a gold sink. The economy is quite healthy. You just seem to have an issue with zeroes on checks.

The 3 million you referenced would have seemed ridiculous for the entire first few years of UO. Whats your point?

In comparison to how the economy could be working, its not really that healthy.

I do agree about inflation obviously, but the range of items bought and sold and the regularity is not that great now a days.