It already exist: monthly paid Vault Storage...
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now let us solve inflation
- Thread starter Lindae Lives
- Start date
- Watchers 9
Vault storage is a JOKE... and not nearly enough. I'm just saying if they really wanted to give us something we want... and remove gold ... they could.
This remind me of that old joke...
A general ask to a mudcrawler:
- "Soldier! How is the food in this Army?"
The soldier replies:
- "Disgusting, Sir! And not enough, Sir!"
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gwen
Slightly Crazed
Why would developers want to remove gold? It doesn't disturb them in any way.
@SteelRust Vault storage need sovereign. Tokuno ship placed on water need 120k gold and visits every week.
By the law of supply and demand I mean if the supply is constrained with fixed demand, the prices will rise. And as long as live people are involved, it does not matter that the economy is a game mechanic. The pricing and buying/selling decisions are made by humans.
Imagine: AI trading algos used to speculate on the UO Rares future market.
Oh, the horror, the horror...
I really wonder if some of these ideas are about "fixing" inflation or advocating punishing some players to the advantage of other players.
If it's an economics problem/question, then who do we want to discourage and remove incentive from? For me, if I was going to experiment with the current equilibrium in the UO economy, I would look at dropping a few nukes on gold and items for cash sellers. Maybe it's forbidden to say this exists directly, but the truth is, you can log into any shard (aside from Siege ruleset) and within moments you'll see a general chat spam for gold and item selling websites. The fact that it's out in the open like this and in action, completely unpunished implies approval.
Let's say you're a "hobbyist" level player, and gold farm 50k gold/hour. You set a goal of raising 10 million gold to buy something. That's 200 hours of your game time.
We could look at the cash conversion rate and make a guess if it might be worth just buying the gold for real world cash, and not surprisingly, the real world cash value might not be worth the 200 hours of time. If you want to argue this, let me know if you personally will work 200 hours of in game time for that cash value amount.
There are plenty of easy and obvious suggestions that would allow for the quick and efficient seizure and deletion of cash seller accounts. I really doubt I'm the first one this thought has occurred to, so the question to me is, why has something that is so obvious been implicitly endorsed and approved? What would be the impact of the change if this implied but never stated policy was changed?
So is the "economics problem" some guy that has a shard transfer token, or someone spent time merchanting over the years and now has a plat? Not to me. If you want to buy, collect, or trade the rare glitched text upside down underwear of the platypus, this also doesn't "get in my lane" as a hobbyist level game player, new player, or elite player, not in my opinion. So for the opportunists that want to lobby for someone's punishment for their own satisfaction, my suggestion is check yourself. If UO is causing you this level of envy and ill will to others, maybe it's time for you to take a break.
So we really need to be honest about what are the classes of players that we want to either maintain or encourage, and what are the classes of players that we want to create disincentives for, from where we stand in the current equilibrium/dynamic.
Is it really "inflation" when the numbers change and you add zeros to it, but you can still attain items that have a fairly consistent value in terms of game time played? If I can raise the money to buy what I want by farming an item, instead of farming only gold, then that seems like a "not quite as bad" compromise. You just add a step of having to sell the item you farmed, rather than buying the item directly. Also, as far as gold directly, you can look at the various expansions and see how OSI itself used inflation to create player interest. Why should I farm the "old" monster for 500 gold when the "new" one at the same level produces 2,500 gold? That example by itself is 400% inflation. Like real world inflation it benefits the people that get in first.
If it's an economics problem/question, then who do we want to discourage and remove incentive from? For me, if I was going to experiment with the current equilibrium in the UO economy, I would look at dropping a few nukes on gold and items for cash sellers. Maybe it's forbidden to say this exists directly, but the truth is, you can log into any shard (aside from Siege ruleset) and within moments you'll see a general chat spam for gold and item selling websites. The fact that it's out in the open like this and in action, completely unpunished implies approval.
Let's say you're a "hobbyist" level player, and gold farm 50k gold/hour. You set a goal of raising 10 million gold to buy something. That's 200 hours of your game time.
We could look at the cash conversion rate and make a guess if it might be worth just buying the gold for real world cash, and not surprisingly, the real world cash value might not be worth the 200 hours of time. If you want to argue this, let me know if you personally will work 200 hours of in game time for that cash value amount.
There are plenty of easy and obvious suggestions that would allow for the quick and efficient seizure and deletion of cash seller accounts. I really doubt I'm the first one this thought has occurred to, so the question to me is, why has something that is so obvious been implicitly endorsed and approved? What would be the impact of the change if this implied but never stated policy was changed?
So is the "economics problem" some guy that has a shard transfer token, or someone spent time merchanting over the years and now has a plat? Not to me. If you want to buy, collect, or trade the rare glitched text upside down underwear of the platypus, this also doesn't "get in my lane" as a hobbyist level game player, new player, or elite player, not in my opinion. So for the opportunists that want to lobby for someone's punishment for their own satisfaction, my suggestion is check yourself. If UO is causing you this level of envy and ill will to others, maybe it's time for you to take a break.
So we really need to be honest about what are the classes of players that we want to either maintain or encourage, and what are the classes of players that we want to create disincentives for, from where we stand in the current equilibrium/dynamic.
Is it really "inflation" when the numbers change and you add zeros to it, but you can still attain items that have a fairly consistent value in terms of game time played? If I can raise the money to buy what I want by farming an item, instead of farming only gold, then that seems like a "not quite as bad" compromise. You just add a step of having to sell the item you farmed, rather than buying the item directly. Also, as far as gold directly, you can look at the various expansions and see how OSI itself used inflation to create player interest. Why should I farm the "old" monster for 500 gold when the "new" one at the same level produces 2,500 gold? That example by itself is 400% inflation. Like real world inflation it benefits the people that get in first.
How are you counting population? I can go to luna bank on ATL in the evening, my time and there are a surprising number of bank sitter zombies. I can go to Siege, log in play and interact for a few hours and quickly make the gold to buy something that would be unattainable by game play. I wouldn't necessarily say Siege is better, but it is different. On a "regular" shard, I can do stuff without pk interference, and even if I go in an area that allows pk, at the worst I'm out insurance money, so you can kit yourself out much differently. Anyway, my point is maybe #'s logged in isn't the only metric to decide if a shard is "active".
Personally, I don't think it's bad that Atlantic has become the defacto trading hub for things. On other shards you see people ask if you want something moved sometimes, and some guilds do this as a service/feature for their members. With different shard population sizes, you can decide if you want to live in the "big city" or the "remote wilderness" or somewhere in between.
tldr: I don't think Siege is "empty" and you could easily talk to 15 to 20 zombies logged in to Atlantic and get no reply.
It's honorable of those guilds, yet it's only a workaround for a deeper problem. It took me playing other MMOs but eventually I realized the most value in travelling between servers (i.e. shards) is connecting with people and doing events with friends. Sure, moving an item for a trade or something is nice, but the big deal is moving your actual character (in UO terms with all your skills, power scrolls, stat scroll, etc. pp).
I think UO ever since is shooting itself in the foot. I would have liked to connect with my EU friends once every while, but the prospect of $10 or $20 each week for transfers was as discouraging as the thought of having to build and supply two characters on different servers
Do you think lack of this function is a contributor to in game inflation?I would have liked to connect with my EU friends once every while, but the prospect of $10 or $20 each week for transfers was as discouraging as the thought of having to build and supply two characters on different servers
You could, of course, create a character wherever you wanted to go, but then it seems like it turns to the discussion of what amount of time and effort should be needed to get a character to a certain level.
Maybe there could be some design discussion about "locking" account slots or some sort of design idea to address that. By that I mean, you could have a 1 char on all shards by locking one (or 2 or some number) of your account slots on every shard. That would at least offer a give and take on it. You currently get some sort of functionality by waiting 14 years or paying for a transfer token, as you point out, but maybe there is some room for design improvement and enhancement.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Don't farm gold. Farm items or ingredients. Killing 20 weak lizardman in Despise will give you 50-60k gold depending on your race and if you have harvester blade or not
The problem is that they have tried to ban said spammer many, many, many times... however said spammer, of course, uses throw-away accounts to spam all day... those aren't the ones that have any money or items on it... it's just a garbage account...
While I did give them suggestions on how to seriously get rid of him... I rather doubt they are. So yeah... but I do know that they spent many an hour banning his spammers... but when he just makes a new one in 10 min that doesn't much stop him.
Can't really do much about that one. Since they can't delete his scripts he just has a new one set up in no time at all... and yeah you can say IP ban him etc... but with the new age of VPNs and all well you know how long that will last... 10 seconds.
About goldsinks and deleting gold
In order to stop or reverse inflation you have to change your spending habit
All you can say for sure is how much gold you have and what a change to your goldpile would do
How much of your gold have to be deleted in order for you to change your behaivor
For me when i was playing UO
1% ? ( this makes no different at all)
10%
20% (maybe sting a little but probably business as usual)
50% (for sure this would change my behaivor)
whatever number you choose that is how big the goldsink has to be to have an effect (it is the gold you are not comfortable giving away that will have an effect)
This is why i think goldsinks have a hard time working people just like their gold
In order to stop or reverse inflation you have to change your spending habit
All you can say for sure is how much gold you have and what a change to your goldpile would do
How much of your gold have to be deleted in order for you to change your behaivor
For me when i was playing UO
1% ? ( this makes no different at all)
10%
20% (maybe sting a little but probably business as usual)
50% (for sure this would change my behaivor)
whatever number you choose that is how big the goldsink has to be to have an effect (it is the gold you are not comfortable giving away that will have an effect)
This is why i think goldsinks have a hard time working people just like their gold
gwen
Slightly Crazed
RMT has nothing to do with ingame gold inflation.
those who are buying gold from them buying not gold but items. Usually being too lazy to farm themselves. Or having no idea how to get several mil for a powerscroll or gear.
I was shocked when I found crystals shards my lumberjack was getting are really sold 50k (or 35k) per.
Then I uncovered that people agree to pay several mil for a set of Medusa keys. And I was finally able to get my bard 120 power scrolls !!!
Before this I was really considering to buy PS from RMT. So it was not inflation problem, but lack of information I had.
Actually rmt has a lot to do with inflation, the gold sellers script house placement so no one else can place, they then charge what they want because they have control of the market which then forces people to buy gold so they can afford the cost.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Ho
My current house on ATL costed me 1Yukio earrings. House on Asuka - just normal 18*18 placement cost.
They charge sums people can afford. Otherwise they will just stay with their houses and paid accounts forever.
Nothing can force me to buy a castle or keep on ATL Which I just cannot afford.
Housing is limited on ATL only. All other shards: place where you want.
My current house on ATL costed me 1Yukio earrings. House on Asuka - just normal 18*18 placement cost.
They charge sums people can afford. Otherwise they will just stay with their houses and paid accounts forever.
Nothing can force me to buy a castle or keep on ATL Which I just cannot afford.
Find the account with the items and gold. Freeze and delete the account. Keep repeating until you get to the level of illicit selling you consider acceptable.
Even with the garbage account spam all you need to do is make a tool where it's easier to delete the account or permanently mute it than it is to create a new one. That way, over time the cost of "advertising" increases. Keep doing things to "tax" the cost of behavior you don't want. Not because of the spam, but to "tax" the pay to win seller and drive up his or her cost of doing business.
The idea of "helplessness", I have a bit of skepticism about. It seems like politics, "we" can't do anything, but as soon as it's at a politician's front door it's a problem that gets solved fast.
They have access to all the data and server information, as well as the ability to observe players. They have a team of developers that take on projects. All the tools are in place.
I think the truth is that UO is ok with pay to win, because, they do it themselves with some items they sell and it generates a certain number of subscriptions. Inflation is acceptable to them, because people always have the option of buying whatever they want, at the expense of being able to do things within the game.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
@Ascalon we are discussing inflation here. Not illegal activities.
In this game gold comes from 2 sources:mobs and NPC vendors. Farming gold become very easy with nowadays equipment. You can solo champ spawn or kill balrons/fan dansers/troglodytes 24/7.
People are rich, nobody is looting mobs on champs spawns. Ingredients (useful ones) and items cost a lot. Services like imbuing - too.
Then it is better to make clear why we wanna solve inflation? To make Cameo cost less AFK Balron kills ? Or just to help new /returning players to gear up? If helping, then information on how to make gold in game will be enough. Folks will play and prosper.
In this game gold comes from 2 sources:mobs and NPC vendors. Farming gold become very easy with nowadays equipment. You can solo champ spawn or kill balrons/fan dansers/troglodytes 24/7.
People are rich, nobody is looting mobs on champs spawns. Ingredients (useful ones) and items cost a lot. Services like imbuing - too.
Then it is better to make clear why we wanna solve inflation? To make Cameo cost less AFK Balron kills ? Or just to help new /returning players to gear up? If helping, then information on how to make gold in game will be enough. Folks will play and prosper.
Kill and loot 1 trog every second generate about 1,6m/h
That is 60m every working week (40h)
maybe you could do that with a loot macro/script I donno
anyway 60m for a working week is not reasonable and if you loot by hand (drag drop) then you get about 20m
That is not reasonable (ex one of the better 1st year vet rewards cost 75m someone said in this thread)
Gold farming is only for afk scripts
Do not tell new and returning players to do that they quit the game or go insane
I dunno about that. I play LA and placed a Villa Crowley house right at the Brit Crossroads. I know Malas is virtually barren and much of Tram is as well. Not sure on Fel.
You mean illegal things like duping, scripting, and selling UO gold and items for cash? I'm just curious how all those things have had no effect on the in game economy, in your view, if that's what you're trying to imply. I thought this was an honest and open discussion. It's like saying you have a drug problem in your community, but you can't talk about drug dealers.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Agree. And for returning players there are solutions. But I been there like 2-3 years ago. Struggling to make gold for placing L-Shaped house. With awful gear. Even troglodytes were trouble for me.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
No. It is like discussion of high real estate prices in Manhattan where fresh graduate cannot afford a house. And assumptions that prices are high because of drug dealers. While some of them criminals actually can buy houses there, they are not driving force of price increase.
Just yesterday I checked provisioner in Brit Tram on ATL. 100GP per arrow. Do you think illegal gold dupers have something to do with this ? Players are so powerful now that 100GP arrow makes you way more gold. So rich that 50k cost to refill a quiver is not a problem at all. Poor players can go kill centaur and sell arrows.
To find such ways you need to play game, learn supply and demand. RMT customers don't want to do this. They want to skip all that leveling, running with so-so gear etc..
I think you both have totally missed the point, I am talking about Atlantic where prices of all items are controlled, not just property but property there ties to all other prices, as in any Economy. It doesn’t matter that they don’t bother with less populated shards because there is very little trade there anyway. Control the Atlantic property prices and they can control pretty much anything. Who wants a house on a less populated shard anyway ? There is no demand for it therefore there’s no point in controlling it. All the new and returning players go to Atlantic and that is what they will buy gold for.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Lots so available spots on ATL for small tower. Place vendor, sell stuff (500+items) , buy better house. Raise your level n game by your own. Or stay with small tower forever by learning how not to pile tons of junk you will never use.
Trust me when I say, if they are not exploiting it, it’s not worth exploiting.
The uo store should just under cut the rmt sellers until they vanish it costs them nothing would generate income
Sadly the only people that this will produce income for is EA not BS/UO. Also a lot of the old timers have accepted that cheating/RMT is a part of UO and if those accounts closed UO would no longer be here., kind of like being stuck between a rock and a hard spot or damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Legal marijuana in Calif has done nothing to stop the illegal sale of it, in fact it has increased because the dealers are undercutting the state/shops.
My solution was closer to kill all drug dealers, at least that's what I was going for (and hoping for). I'd rather be a Duterte of UO than a Kate Brown, because I'd rather live in a UO Philippines than a UO Oregon.
Anyway, I do like the comparison to either drug dealers or I'd also compare it to street prostitution vs legal brothels. Meaning the UO store is a legal brothel and the gold sellers are street prostitutes. That would leave the buyers as johns, I guess, if they still use that word. Just like that model, everyone has the option to not participate.
The free needle exchange (vet rewards and gifts) and cheap heroin vending machines (UO Store) are somewhat already in place. Why would you buy the My Little Pony mount from a street dealer when you can get it from the pharmacy? There's no opportunity in buying whatever that rainbow unicorn is called and then trying to resell it for profit because you can't beat the official store's price (unless duping broke loose again). UO seems to have done a good job on hammering down on duping and exploits, with the actions they did take to take the incentive out of it and remove items. So yeah, I would have to say, UO's legal brothel or heroin vending machine (UO Store) seems to be working. There are some things I've already taken economic action against with UO Store. I won't buy the thing that increases the spawn rate of the new rare colored nightmares. Game design wise, this seems too close to pay to win, to me. So my small contribution to collective action is don't buy it, so you don't encourage more bad game design decisions. Personally, for the few times I've farmed them, it's a grind sorting through the spawn. The number of hours spent made it not fun. Still I'd rather have that be the game design issue than create an incentive for UO to sell more pay to win items.
As far as Everyone LOVES Atlantic, not really. It just happened to turn out to be the trade hub. With the addition of the vendor search, it makes it viable to open a small obscure vendor house. I like the shards where there's a community that adds to the game, but it's not so overpopulated that you can't do anything without having 15 people already there. Are there a few vendors for stuff that I can't easily obtain myself, maybe an auction house, a few guilds of different play styles, the ability to place a large tower somewhere after a few days searching, and can I find a time where I can go turn over a spawn without having to negotiate how to split it or do the passive aggressive jump in and see who gets tired of it first thing. Also, ping time. I'm adding about 70ms latency if I go to Atlantic compared to a West Coast Shard, for where I'm at right now. I wouldn't mind that for trading or merchanting, but I really would notice it for some other game activities.
As far as house flipping on Atlantic, the limiter seems to be there. I can not buy and then the house flipper has a paying account blocked with a house they can't sell. It gives options on both sides. As a buyer, I can choose to not buy and continue seeking spots myself, and consider downsizing. Instead of a Large Tower, maybe I'll place a Fieldstone House. I can still place a couple vendors on it, and if I want to place one of the small shop style houses I can place a few more. At some point, the prices will stabilize and balance. If it's for placing vendors, the game also has the ability to rent out vendors.
I think it's sometimes underrated how small individual actions create a major outcome, in the UO economy, as well as in the real world economy. Maybe the only solution needed is to collectively pledge to not use gold sellers and make some small efforts to help others so they are not stuck with the dilemma of something being so unobtainable that it becomes appealing. I think people can do that. The closest example I can think of is doing personal trades or gifts of helpful items. Another example that doesn't quite work for what I'm thinking is pet selling. Start lowering the prices of them, so you set the floor lower and encourage people to buy and enjoy them. Maybe even offer mid-tier pets with mid-tier scrolls on them already. If the market is flooded with options that are (somewhat) comparable, fewer people will turn to illicit sources to get unobtainium items. Maybe there's an opportunity for some fixes by "insurgency" rather than wait for "central authority and planning".
Anyway, sorry for all the long posts. I still like UO and the UO community after all these years, so it's an interesting and important topic for me.
Killing the dealers does no good two more take thier place. I'm an inter city youth i can work at McDonald's for minimum wage or sell crack to yuppies and make 5k a week easy choice. Now killing users that's a great plan
Let's try it for 5 years then, to test the theory. After RWDS them for 5 years, there should be at least double the amount, right? If you look at places that have severe penalties and do actual enforcement, why does it result in the outcome of fewer drug dealers? Streets of LA vs Streets of Singapore.
So we could create a campaign to identify and explicitly report gold seller websites to UO, by creating a list and emailing them, then inquiring by email on the status of the investigation every month. If nothing else, it would flush out a little more of the truth on Is it an implicitly approved business? Maybe there is a "3rd Option" choice, just like with legal weed. Have UO Approved Resellers program, but then submit to UO price fixing, quantity controls, and rules. That way they could have an intermediate step and it wouldn't be all or nothing. Like with legal weed where some growers went legal and the profitability and scale is known and measurable.
Rtm sellers are making money or they wouldn't be around. If they were going to close them down it would have happened long ago it's not hard go to one site buy something and start banning unfortunately it's all delivered with EJ accounts. So you need to go after the people buying things again not hard watch for them where the rmt do delivery...
One thing this reminded me of, is that there is precedent for UO yeeting sellers. They took out GM Darwin and they took out Markee Dragon. I did a search on Markee Dragon and it seems that he moved on to being a reseller for other games too. I think he was finally taken out for being involved in one of the big duping exploits. It's hard to tell, because I didn't spend a lot of time wading through all the online search results on him to know if he didn't just return later to being a reseller.
Here's one general article that's somewhat recent (for UO's timeline). Ultima Online fires employee over cheating scandal | Massively Overpowered
Here's one general article that's somewhat recent (for UO's timeline). Ultima Online fires employee over cheating scandal | Massively Overpowered
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Database changes can be journaled, so you could track an item. You could create chain of custody for characters, vendors, and even if you dropped something on the ground and someone picked it up. Also freezing and deleting everything on an EJ account, or the handoff account to the EJ account would add to the cost of doing business. If you did "prostitution stings", what would you propose as a penalty for the buyer and the seller? Maybe UO could handle it outside of game and get resellers banned from being able to process credit cards. This would still leave crypto options, but it would reduce the number of people willing to participate and create an obstacle to the process. You could also create item lotteries to incentivize people capturing reseller items by reporting transactions. Plenty of things could be done to make it more difficult and as a result less profitable without raising prices.
I guess I'm more on the "carrot" incentive for buyers to not participate, and "lethal injection" incentive for sellers to not participate. I think, if anything that points out the need for a more group consensus where everyone is a little unhappy, but everyone also thinks it is an improvement for where things are at currently.
So, essentially, my characterization of your perspective was accurate and I honestly don't see the relevancy here. A lot of things can be true if you take them at a high level of abstraction.
It also occurs to me that I've allowed myself to stray from the topic the post began with, which is that inflation in UO is a "problem" that can be "solved." I repeat: The economy of UO is not an economy, it is a game mechanic. As such it doesn't need to work as an economy, it only needs to work as a game mechanic. All of the things that plague RL economies (ranging from inflation, to excessive concentration of wealth, to the use of a means of exchange to purchase non-economic goods like power, to unemployment, and so forth), do not matter. All that matters is if there is still a means for players and their characters to obtain what's needed to be effective.
It rather bewilders me why this is such a controversial point.
If it requires 10,000 gold to become viable, whereas it used to require 1,000 gold, but that 10,000 is relatively easy to get, then what's the problem? If it requires only 500 gold to become viable, but that 500 gold is impossible for all but 4 players to get, then that's an issue.
Are you saying that NO economic principles apply to UO ? Because that sounds like what you are saying.
Umm, I'm not sure what you mean by "economic principles" here....Let me try this a different way:
Because UO's economy is a game mechanic, not an economy, attempting to judge or alter it as though it were an economy is a bad idea. Rather we should try to judge or alter this game mechanic as though it were a game mechanic.
And I'm very confused as to why this is so controversial a point.
If you want to analyze UO's in-game economy using the academic field of Economics I guess I couldn't stop you. I'd certainly write a negative review of such a study, on that basis, but it'd be up to where-ever you submitted your study to make the decision.
What baffles me is that you seem to think they are mutually exclusive of one another, yes it’s a game mechanic because yes it’s a game but also yes it works as a functioning economy too with market forces that apply to it. There are buyers, there are sellers, therefore there are markets. If there are markets then there is an economy to which rules and principles apply however “artificial” they appear to be because they exist as part of a game. At high level investment banks there are market simulators for all the different trades that can be made. Because it’s synthetic and not organic does that mean that the results in the simulator cannot be used to dictate the strategy of the bank ? The economy of UO is actually very complex and really is comparable to RL economies. All of those examples you used in RL have parallels in the game. Right down to government intervention in some instances. In the basic sense, the simple laws of supply and demand which are economic principles (railshot was trying to explain this) mean that this is indeed a working economy. That really is all that is required for it to be defined as an economy.
I have to agree it is an economy. Siege has its own economy.
It was designed to be an economy or we would have not been able to trade gold.
Just because the game mechanics allow it to be an economy does not mean it is just game mechanics.
There is even NPC competition on items they sell. Prices go up as demand increases. Pet scrolls, everything during covid, vet rewards when IDOCs changed.
How can you argue this is just game mechanics. Players changed prices based on economic principles.
It was designed to be an economy or we would have not been able to trade gold.
Just because the game mechanics allow it to be an economy does not mean it is just game mechanics.
There is even NPC competition on items they sell. Prices go up as demand increases. Pet scrolls, everything during covid, vet rewards when IDOCs changed.
How can you argue this is just game mechanics. Players changed prices based on economic principles.
I think i get what you are saying
That it is game mechanics that determine how rare an item is,how much gold there is in game,how good stats an item have....... and therefore it is a game mechanic
But it is still a player that need to make the decision the best the game mechanics in UO today can do is push the players in a certain direction
Same is true IRL if the world is telling you to fix your roof but you choose to put a bucket on the floor instead of spending money on the roof that is your decision
When you put an item on a vendor the game price it for you then it is game mechanic if the player type in the price then it is the player that decide (always have to be a direct link)
When comparing UO to real life you can not compare it to something like the food market (we need that to stay alive)
compare it to something like luxury item market
Fixing inflation could be done many different ways problem is it will always hurt some more than others and that is why it will be so many different opinions on the subject
If people farmed the stuff people wanted/needed instead of farming gold, then they would have more gold. Right now it really feels like the people complaining are the same ones that want $25 an hour working in fast food.
Really the only principal that applies here is inflation. With no way to remove large sums of gold from the game, we have more to spend on stuff.
How about the devs put cosmetic gear on vendors for 1-2 plat, in colors mesanna hates that we love. Glacial doublet with the tag [goldsink].
Really the only principal that applies here is inflation. With no way to remove large sums of gold from the game, we have more to spend on stuff.
How about the devs put cosmetic gear on vendors for 1-2 plat, in colors mesanna hates that we love. Glacial doublet with the tag [goldsink].
I am not sure that this is a problem that needs to be solved. UO is an extremely top-heavy game and for the vast majority of players the inflation has zero effect. The rare new players cannot earn enough gold to buy a sampire suit by solo killing ettins, true. But they probably would not have been able to do it 15 years ago either. They can engage with other players and start going on communal hunts however. Any sellable drop they get would put them into the bracket of people for whom inflation is irrelevant. So, is it worth it to annoy the devs with this superficial non-problem, knowing that even if they do decide to fix it, they will probably break something way more serious along the way?
As others pointed out - two things can be true at the same time.
I don't know what you mean by "need". Are you saying devs can force it to work as something other than economy? As long as players are allowed to set prices and make buying and selling decisions, there will be an economy.
I don't know, many certainly do consider an "excessive concentration of wealth" in UO a problem. And players certainly have engaged in "use of a means of exchange to purchase non-economic goods like power."
It's not controversial, it's simply not true. UO posesses it's own economy, like pretty much any MMO out there. And these economies is subject to the same basic economic laws as the RL economy. Devs can influence things just like the Fed does, but they can't nullify the laws of supply and demand.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Game should have some ways to teach people how to make gold. Now we have 500gp quests in New Haven. They call it easy gold. While just buying bolts of cloth and cutting it can double/tripple your gold in 1 second.
How noob person can easily find pawn shops in Magnicia bazaar? How to find that doing trade runs and selling pinks can make you fortune?
Town crier window you see when logging on has totally obsolete information. At least game must tell new folks that starting on low population shards is very hard, push them to more popular ones.
gwen
Slightly Crazed
Killing lizardman can make you fortune. Easier to kill then Ettins. I know this but I don't do it : I have gear to farm higher stuff. How can new player find it?
You can make lots of money by turning dull copper into gold. Or by trade runs. Or farming SA, or even TerMur weak demons for void orbs.
Game need better how-to guides. Otherwise prices seem really high for a newbie.
I can not speak for john but regulating what the top price an item can sell for is not that hard to do
for example if every top end item was on sale on a npc vendor at a fixed price then that would be the top price those items could sell for
Would you call that an economy or game mechanics ?
(problem with that example is that the solution is worse than the problem it devalues actually goinng out in the uo world to do content more than what (high prices)does for the same problem)
Devalues actually going out and do different content
This is IMO the problem with UO prices today in order to make alot of gold you need to play a certain way (and no getting one drop will not get you anywhere close to top tier)
So you could redo the entire game so everything the game has to offer is relevant today or you can fix the economy ( out of those 2 the later one is the easy one to fix)
Out of all the solutions I have seen slashing a couple 0 would be the most democratic and least destructiv for the game but UO PLAYERS already have said a hard NO to that so many times in so many threads so I think that is out of the question (and yes you could say what about super increase the gold on monsters like a greater mongbat now drop 13 platinum that would delete most old gold but I consider that pretty much the same thing as slashing a couple 0 )
There may still be a solution that everyone is OK with and uo would be a better more diverse game because of if I just have not seen it yet
The good part of UO economy is that you can mold this far more than you can do with an IRL economy (this last line of text is what I think Johns point is )
gwen
Slightly Crazed
@Herman selling items on vendors is bad idea. If item is expensive and available in game more people will go to farm it.
If item is useless it will cost nothing or will go to trash points. Check Cameo and Mocapotl sword. All are roof drops. 200+mil and 50-100k for a sword.
Tinker legs are farmed still in SA.
If item is useless it will cost nothing or will go to trash points. Check Cameo and Mocapotl sword. All are roof drops. 200+mil and 50-100k for a sword.
Tinker legs are farmed still in SA.
yes I agree it would be bad for the game
it was mostly just an example of one way how you can creat a max price for what an item can sell for
The top price is irrelevant. The market price is what matters. If the fixed price was higher than than the market price, you'd still have players selling it for less and ignoring the NPC players. If the fixed price was too low, everyone would buy from NPC, and nobody would farm the item. All these interactions are subject to economy rules and are a game mechanic.
I assume you don't really mean divide all the money in game by a 100 as that would include the loot drops, etc. You mean - just take most of the gold away from players who have it. I am not sure how you can think that being democratic or least destructive. It will disproportionately punish the most active player for no benefit to the game (remember the duping bit?). What's more, regardless of what you call this, it's flat-out theft. And it would probably result in a bigger player exodus than cancelling one of the game clients.