Obliterating Inflation

[Meatbread]

All right, no preamble, here's the plan.

A) All gold is converted into a character or account specific statistic rather than a physical object. The devs have mused upon this before. It is important that all gold everywhere, in houses, on inactive accounts, everywhere, be converted at once. There must be no way to hoard unconverted gold. Let a script dump all house-stored gold onto the house owner's account.

B) Currency is expressed as gold and platinum, with 100 gold equaling one plat. In other words 150 gold is displayed as 1p 50g. Psychologically it is VERY important that gold remains part of the system. We don't want people to FEEL like they now have 100 times less money. Heck you can have money display as gold only at first, and have players check a box to toggle on displaying in platinum.

C) Platinum will become the standard means of expressing wealth. Saying you have a million gold will soon sound as odd as someone with a $50,000 salary saying he makes five million pennies per year. There will thus be fewer "millionaires" and "billionaires" and the overwhelming STICKER SHOCK that plagues the UO economy will be diminished. Sure this is all just psychological, but economics is always largely about psychology.

D) There will be no limit on the amount of currency an account can store.

E) Woops when we ran the conversion script it accidentally capped currency at... oh some arbitrary high number that no honest player has, but lots of goldseller storage accounts have. You know, some account has 500 billion gold, wham now it has 100 billion. Review logs of the conversion script and figure out the right level at which to start "accidentally" losing people's money.

F) Suddenly the actual currency supply is diminished substantially as well. Readjust the loot monsters have to whatever it should now be.

 

[Cirno]

That might remove some unseen extremes, but it wouldn't obliterate it

 

[Warpig Inc]

just remove the last digit from every gold pile. check and vendor holdings. something that was selling for 10 mil is now 1 mil. gold dumps from champs and gold loot adjusted to number players there.

 

[Tazar]

All right, no preamble, here's the plan.

A) All gold is converted into a character or account specific statistic rather than a physical object. The devs have mused upon this before. It is important that all gold everywhere, in houses, on inactive accounts, everywhere, be converted at once. There must be no way to hoard unconverted gold. Let a script dump all house-stored gold onto the house owner's account.

Just out of curiosity... how would you deal with guild funds in a guild-hall? The homeowner gets it all? What about people who play other shards storing their gold in a friends house? Somehow - I don't see this as being a very easy thing...

 

[Phoenix_Mythic]

UO's economy is a very interesting puzzle and there is no silver bullet that can solve all of the perceived issues with it.

I believe that the value of gold in UO is actually kept artificially high right now, simply because moving large quantities of it around is so difficult. Massive amounts of it are stored on player-run vendors and in chests full of checks. I'd bet that if all that cash were to suddenly become fully liquid, we'd see an absolutely staggering level of inflation overnight.

Now, I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. But, a great deal of wealth in UO is stored up in non-currency form. If gold were to suddenly inflate or deflate by an order of magnitude or more, a bunch of people will take big baths either way.

I believe UO still has the problem of insufficient gold sinks. I also think that due to the extreme amount of gold in the game already, we must find a drain big enough to remove a large portion of those enormous reserves. The problem is, with gold's value being artificially high, it will be difficult to create such a drain because its cost will be seen as obscenely high. Plus, if large drains like that actually worked and started to bring the value of gold in line with reality, then the prices of big-ticket gold sinks would become truly outrageous.

Having the system dynamically adjust the price of big gold sinks could work, but I do believe that the portion of the playerbase holding most of the gold would collude, either explicitly or implicitly, to game them into ineffectiveness. Basically, if you have a lot of gold, then you can put upward pressure on the value of that gold simply by keeping it out of circulation.

As always, this is a subject that the team is aware of and we're always talking about different things to do. Of course, any game-changers related directly to UO's core economics must be approached with extreme caution...

 

[OvenBird]

I think this came up in another post, and I don't play myself so I could have dreamed it, but don't more than a few games implement this? 100,000x = 100y = 1z etc. I think WoW was mentioned.

 

[Viquire]

Do community collections now accept checks for face value? They should, that would be hitting the "easy" button. Clean Up effort could take checks as well at a point per GP ratio that seems acceptable.

 

[hungry4knowhow]

Awesome post as usual Mike "The Scatman" Moore

 

[Driven Insane]

UO reminds me alot of the real world where a small percentage of the population has 98% of the wealth. And I'd say that the majority of that 2% got it through less than honest means.

That 2% then controls everything and can control markets.


All I know is that I've played this game for 10 years and never had more than 50 mil. Never scripted, never cheated. So telling me that I have to lose some of my gold because others have to much..... yeah screw you.

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

And I'd say that the majority of that 2% got it through less than honest means.

Seriously? Nah. I know ALOT of folks who would more than likely be considered in that 2%, none of which are dishonest. Just because folks took a different path in game than you did, made more gold than you did... does not make them dishonest.

UO reminds me alot of the real world where a small percentage of the population has 98% of the wealth.

That 2% then controls everything and can control markets.

I will be SO glad when {or if} they find a way to fix it in game. Personally I am tired of having to see the class warfare jargon in game, seeing it in the real world is bad enough.

 

[Driven Insane]

Seriously? Nah. I know ALOT of folks who would more than likely be considered in that 2%, none of which are dishonest. Just because folks took a different path in game than you did, made more gold than you did... does not make them dishonest.

Every ultra rich person I've met in UO is either:

a) a cheater
b) benefits from cheaters (rents vendors to cheaters, brokers for cheaters, runs with cheaters monopolizing Power and Stat scrolls, etc)

You have no idea what they're doing on their computer. Just because it's some sweet 50 year old housewive doesn't mean she's not script mining, renting vendors to people who always have 1000's of every resource, etc.

 

[Vince]

Sounds like people are accumulating wealth because the game doesn't really have a way to liberate this wealth from the players.

Perhaps a healthy discussion on Mudflation would prove beneficial?

 

[Kylie Kinslayer]

Every ultra rich person I've met in UO is either:

a) a cheater
b) benefits from cheaters (rents vendors to cheaters, brokers for cheaters, runs with cheaters monopolizing Power and Stat scrolls, etc)

Ummmm, maybe you need to pick a better class of person to meet *shrugs*

Just sayin'

 

[Orgional Farimir]

UO's economy is a very interesting puzzle and there is no silver bullet that can solve all of the perceived issues with it.

I believe that the value of gold in UO is actually kept artificially high right now, simply because moving large quantities of it around is so difficult. Massive amounts of it are stored on player-run vendors and in chests full of checks. I'd bet that if all that cash were to suddenly become fully liquid, we'd see an absolutely staggering level of inflation overnight.

Now, I don't necessarily think that is a bad thing. But, a great deal of wealth in UO is stored up in non-currency form. If gold were to suddenly inflate or deflate by an order of magnitude or more, a bunch of people will take big baths either way.

I believe UO still has the problem of insufficient gold sinks. I also think that due to the extreme amount of gold in the game already, we must find a drain big enough to remove a large portion of those enormous reserves. The problem is, with gold's value being artificially high, it will be difficult to create such a drain because its cost will be seen as obscenely high. Plus, if large drains like that actually worked and started to bring the value of gold in line with reality, then the prices of big-ticket gold sinks would become truly outrageous.

Having the system dynamically adjust the price of big gold sinks could work, but I do believe that the portion of the playerbase holding most of the gold would collude, either explicitly or implicitly, to game them into ineffectiveness. Basically, if you have a lot of gold, then you can put upward pressure on the value of that gold simply by keeping it out of circulation.

As always, this is a subject that the team is aware of and we're always talking about different things to do. Of course, any game-changers related directly to UO's core economics must be approached with extreme caution...

Personally I think you guys have a LOT more to worry about in UO than inflation. I don't think I have heard of one person saying they are quitting UO because of inflation.

 

[Meatbread]

As always, this is a subject that the team is aware of and we're always talking about different things to do. Of course, any game-changers related directly to UO's core economics must be approached with extreme caution...

At this point goldsinks won't do anything but send the UO middle class running to goldsellers so they can have a shiny new title or whatever. The goldselling industry has all the gold and doesn't care if it's mules are Viscounts or not. Break those sites by deleting their trillions, increase monster loot to whatever it takes to let regular players get by, or else you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

And yes, I have seen plenty of newbs and returning vets turn right back around and leave as soon as they got to Luna and did the "Price of anything good / the loot on any monster = HAHA WTF" calculation.

 

[Manticore]

Converting any gold to the next higher currency is a bad idea. Why, because they will just start duping the next level of currency. Keeping 1 mil checks and holding the limit of bank items to 175 or packies to 125 are still the best strtegies to control massive currency dupes. Here is an example to refresh your memories, remeber it was the dupers back then that actually started duping 1 billion checks until UO stopped them. I guess with players come and go many have forgotten how bad it had gotten at one point. If it was up to me, I'd give everyone 30 days and force them to spend all their checks on items from an in-game set up UO store (sort of like the cleaning up system) and after 30 days wipe out all remaining gold from all accounts and start a new currency that limits the checks to 10,000 max. Call it something else like platinum or white gold checks etc.. That would ensure no trade ups from existing piles of duped gold and forces all the duped gold to be spent on UO items that exists in game only. Sure the dupers will have a stock pile of items but its really not differnt than them having 500 transfer tokens or 7000 pairs of glasses etc.. at least the gold will be wiped out from all the empty vendor gold storage people and everyone gets a fresh start.

 

[Woodsman]

I believe UO still has the problem of insufficient gold sinks. I also think that due to the extreme amount of gold in the game already, we must find a drain big enough to remove a large portion of those enormous reserves. The problem is, with gold's value being artificially high, it will be difficult to create such a drain because its cost will be seen as obscenely high. Plus, if large drains like that actually worked and started to bring the value of gold in line with reality, then the prices of big-ticket gold sinks would become truly outrageous.

Having the system dynamically adjust the price of big gold sinks could work, but I do believe that the portion of the playerbase holding most of the gold would collude, either explicitly or implicitly, to game them into ineffectiveness. Basically, if you have a lot of gold, then you can put upward pressure on the value of that gold simply by keeping it out of circulation.

Wow, awesome post!

Have you all discussed how the gold enters the game? These days it seems like it's much easier to generate more gold. I'm not talking about people doing illegal things or the Tram/Fel discussion before anybody brings those up, but just in general it seems easier to obtain gold.

I know that with an older population, a lot of us know all of the tricks to make a lot of gold, or we've got everything we need, and things that we used to buy from NPCs we no longer do (such as regs), but ultimately gold is generated by the system - players can't whip up a batch in their homes, so all of these millions are coming in from somewhere.

 

[Woodsman]

Example: If there is a goldsink I want, and I have 5 million the bank, and I spend 4 million on that goldsink, I'm not going to spend the next 6 months living off of that remaining 1 million, I'm going to go out and farm it or mine and lumberjack and then sell to other players get it back.

Either I'm going to be getting that 4 million back directly from the system through my own efforts, farming monsters, or I'm going to go mine/lumberjack or whatever to sell something to another player(s) who has went out and obtained the gold directly from the system.

Is it really a goldsink if I started the month with 5 million, and ended the month with 5 million, and in-between I've bought into several goldsinks?

Wouldn't it become a timesink instead? I may not be making sense.

 

[Cirno]

Is it really a goldsink if I started the month with 5 million, and ended the month with 5 million, and in-between I've bought into several goldsinks?
Wouldn't it become a timesink instead? I may not be making sense.

There's as many circumstances as there are players.
Some would buy into the gold sinks and not bother replenishing.
Some would buy into the gold sinks and replenish.
Some would buy into the gold sinks and replenish, and then gather 4 million more, ready for the next gold sink.

Then, there's the people that wouldn't buy in for whatever reasons.
Personally, I find the freedom to buy in to gold sinks is more rewarding to me than the rewards from the gold sinks.

In the long run, I think gold sinks exist to counter the "gold created over time" with a "gold deducted over time".
You can't "fix" the excessive gold reserves people have, without a clean slate, which would serve to nullify accomplishment of honest players.

As a collateral effect of gold sinks; for a player that buys in to a gold sink and thus needs to earn more gold, they have a goal, which is a fundamental part of enjoying the game.
A quest, or mission, if you will.

 

[Viquire]

Maybe we should find a way to turn on the ancient AI of the whole world. Dragons, as I recall, like gold. It is something they would gravitate towards. I don't think we've ever had a dragon invasion.

 

[Meatbread]

Converting any gold to the next higher currency is a bad idea. Why, because they will just start duping the next level of currency.

Dude. Let me quote the first sentence of the proposal again.

All gold is converted into a character or account specific statistic rather than a physical object.

Under this system duping your money makes about as much sense as trying to "dupe" your fame or karma.

 

[lit2fly]

in the next publish, all gold will decay.To stop the decay, you will need to login your char once a day and the tram/fel moons will align and protect you!

 

[Black Majick]

Every ultra rich person I've met in UO is either:

a) a cheater
b) benefits from cheaters (rents vendors to cheaters, brokers for cheaters, runs with cheaters monopolizing Power and Stat scrolls, etc)

You have no idea what they're doing on their computer. Just because it's some sweet 50 year old housewive doesn't mean she's not script mining, renting vendors to people who always have 1000's of every resource, etc.

So pvping and raiding champ spawns is cheating??? Assuming this is what you are talking about monopolizing. That or you are talking about. If so...you sir are a fool. If player versus player combat is cheating then i cheat daily as i pvp daily.

I just reread again and you are a fool. Scripting is cheating but calling somone else a cheater because they rent a vendor to a guy or they buy or resell.....

 

[Black Majick]

All right, no preamble, here's the plan.

A) All gold is converted into a character or account specific statistic rather than a physical object. The devs have mused upon this before. It is important that all gold everywhere, in houses, on inactive accounts, everywhere, be converted at once. There must be no way to hoard unconverted gold. Let a script dump all house-stored gold onto the house owner's account.

B) Currency is expressed as gold and platinum, with 100 gold equaling one plat. In other words 150 gold is displayed as 1p 50g. Psychologically it is VERY important that gold remains part of the system. We don't want people to FEEL like they now have 100 times less money. Heck you can have money display as gold only at first, and have players check a box to toggle on displaying in platinum.

C) Platinum will become the standard means of expressing wealth. Saying you have a million gold will soon sound as odd as someone with a $50,000 salary saying he makes five million pennies per year. There will thus be fewer "millionaires" and "billionaires" and the overwhelming STICKER SHOCK that plagues the UO economy will be diminished. Sure this is all just psychological, but economics is always largely about psychology.

D) There will be no limit on the amount of currency an account can store.

E) Woops when we ran the conversion script it accidentally capped currency at... oh some arbitrary high number that no honest player has, but lots of goldseller storage accounts have. You know, some account has 500 billion gold, wham now it has 100 billion. Review logs of the conversion script and figure out the right level at which to start "accidentally" losing people's money.

F) Suddenly the actual currency supply is diminished substantially as well. Readjust the loot monsters have to whatever it should now be.

The best way to handle imo is cut all gold by 1/10 and then set the gold drain higher than faucet can put it out there. I rarely buy anything from npcs so the 1m i picked from champs just sits til i buy something from a player. Give us good gold sinks and a reason to have to buy from npc vendors.

 

[SlobberKnocker]

it would seem to me that we're trying to fix the barn after the horse has long run out of it.

1st. how did this massive amount of gold get into the game, i.e. was it by less than ethic methods?

if so i would think you would have to close up the means for this to continue. once doing that than
some sort of a purge would have to take place.

purging without fixing the means by which gold enters the game accomplishes nothing.

 

[Driven Insane]

The best way to handle imo is cut all gold by 1/10

Yeah I'm the fool. With dumb ideas like this you really need to keep your trap shut.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

Under this system duping your money makes about as much sense as trying to "dupe" your fame or karma.

So how does one spend their account statistic ?
Every conversion is at some ratio, 100:1? so my 100gp item i now sell for 1p, what's the difference, beside changing bulk?

 

[Picus at the office]

15 years later and we've all been farming gold, of course there is piles of it. I've had 500+ mil for the last 5+ years doing nothing. I spend as I please and it's never dropped. Save for the odd item from a vendor there is nothing to spend the money on in the first place. I never understood why there wasn't a market for items such as runic kits at 10% higher than the player markets. 50mil for transfer tokens or what not?

 

[Redxpanda]

All right, no preamble, here's the plan.

A) All gold is converted into Federal Reserve Notes

B) These Notes are legal tender for all debts, private and public

C) You can get your gold back on demand at anytime

D) There will be no limit on the amount of currency an account can store.

E) Woops you can't get your gold back

F) Suddenly the actual currency supply is diminished substantially as well. Readjust the loot monsters have to whatever it should now be.

 

[Meatbread]

So how does one spend their account statistic ?
Every conversion is at some ratio, 100:1? so my 100gp item i now sell for 1p, what's the difference, beside changing bulk?

Nothing. That part just makes it look less appalling. The real purpose is making gold a stat rather than an object so that the total supply can be manipulated more easily. If you want you can leave the 'display as platinum' box unchecked, pretend nothing has changed, and go around telling everyone how you have fifty million pennies.

 

[Woodsman]

So how does one spend their account statistic ?

The same way they do in just about every other MMORPG that has gold as a statistic and not as a pile of pixels in your bank box.

Piles of gold are one of those things unique to UO. Very unique.

 

[Woodsman]

50mil for transfer tokens or what not?

EA would not take something that makes them actual money that accountants can count and add to the bottom line and make it something that can be easily bought with virtual pixels. Somebody has to pay for that token with real-life money somewhere.

 

[Coldren]

The problem is, with gold's value being artificially high, it will be difficult to create such a drain because its cost will be seen as obscenely high.

A little creativity might help with this. Of course, this is in lieu of the engineers and designers being able to make it happen, but here goes.

What UO needs is a sort of "Public Works" that requires a large upfront investment, and continuing upkeep, with the possibility of loss. Whether it is at the shard level, faction, city, alliance, or guild level, there needs to be something that everyone can add resources to, everyone benefits, and what is returned isn't as "valuable" as what went in, but is still a tangible benefit that people would not appreciate losing. Making it also a competitive thing also helps.

UO has come close with a few things. One of which is the moonglow zoo. The problem is, that's tied to a specific skill, and people don't really benefit from it. Another was the city rep. If instead of mindlessly hauling NPC's away (A real pain if you don't have gate travel, BTW), I could have contributed large amounts of gold, or crafting ingredients towards the city armory, it could have been an effective gold sink. Especially if you had made it competitive, where perhaps the people who had donated the most in resources, gold, or time (arrests/fires) would be the only ones eligible to purchase and use the higher ranking titles for that month (Which had to be repurchased if qualified.), with some special titles only available if you had held the highest levels of rep for X months. The other library collections don't work because you just get individual items that are typically outclassed a few patches later.

Picking something the whole community will rally behind can be tricky, particularly for UO. I remember in DAoC people would dump OBSCENE amounts of platinum into upgrading keep doors, guards, and maintaining a large guild house. RvR keep costs were especially effective because, sure enough, someone would come break down your door, then you'd shell out time and money to either take THEIR keep, or take yours back, and upgrade it all over again.

Why did they do this? Realm pride and braging rights were always a plus. The relics were also another nice small bonus. The other was the more you controlled, the longer you had access to Darkness Falls. Sure, people would go there to farm gold, items, and resources for crafting, but without realizing, they'd end up spending a portion of whatever farmed to help keep the privilege of being able to go there and keep farming.

Something along these lines would be a welcome addition.

UO will be tricky because (I hate to say this.. I know I will be flamed for it, but it's my opinion) they simply don't like the risk of losing anything, and they don't like conflict they aren't guaranteed to overcome.

You have to look at it as a cost/time/benefit equation. Part of the problem with UO is that (Hopefully) people are going to keep playing, and keep amassing. So the element of time is covered. The problem is, there's nothing that costs anything that removes resources from the economy (Most is money just changing hands) that befits in a meaningful, but non-indefinite way. And personally, I don't think things like LRC helped in this matter. Right now in UO, people can get to a certain point, and farm as long as they please with no reason to ever spend a dime of what they get, because there's nothing really to spend it on that isn't eternally persistent.


But I'll leave it as food for thought, and let the professionals do what they do.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

The real purpose is making gold a stat rather than an object so that the total supply can be manipulated more easily.

ooh, ok, i understand. If you'll remember, I started a thread just a few back, something like "Gold - worthless?". It was a good starting point, but wasn't quickly accepted.

People want...
to see and feel it
they want to put piles of it, or stacks of checks, in their house, And save it in the regular bank, if they want to.
It needs to remain something that can be stolen/looted - tangible
It shouldn't be auto deposit, You must still take it to the bank. Get heavy, you will still need to make bank runs, or use BOS, etc.

Hey, I'm with you on it being a stat. Ditch the ratio conversions. Ditch the limits.
Click a banker, Transfer Gold, Receive gold - similar to getting gold off your vendor, except sub stat bank for vendor)
gold to points - points to gold
You got the old, and now you got the new, you can spend from either.

But like I said, the idea wasn't widely accepted a couple wks ago so I abandoned the thread, so good luck with that, you got My vote tho

 

[Picus of Napa]

If EA had a transfer(or other token) on a luna town NPC at 300% higher than average Luna vendor prices I bet they would see a increase in the amount of "legit" credit cards that are used to purchase said tokens at the EA store thusly increasing sales....just a thought.

 

[Thav12]

Glad to read that post by Phoenix_Mythic. Even happier to read that the team regularly talks about and evaluates options. Happiest to read that they understand how precarious the economy in UO really is and how multifactorial the problem is at the moment, making them proceed with extreme caution. Good. I do think the devs could engage in discussion with us about these issues and perhaps be a bit more aggressive in trying to manipulate the economy into behaving a bit better, but then again, I don't stand to loose much, as I don't have excessive cash or property. Liked Coldren's post as well. Best sink is a sink that people feel is not a sink. Bragging rights (or post counts ) are good examples. non-transferable items or titles are possibilities also, if they provide people with enough bragging rights of course.

The OP is delusional or just ignorant about the economy. Basic economics should be taught in school.... I have read so many of these lets change gold into something else (silver, copper, plats, account bound virtual points or whatever). Also, I have read so many posts suggesting to erase the wealth of the top 5%. That has nothing to do with inflation. Issues like closed economies, faucets, tax, RMT's, sinks, no scaled value of labor (i.e. all labor ultimately is just a simple function of time spent clicking, there is not one thing inherently more difficult than the other. this is the core issue with scripts and why they can bring so much cash into the system) These things are so important and have been understood by the UO development team dating back to 1998. A recent thread on this topic had a great link to a write up on the failing of the UO economy dating from 1998 (by a UO dev at the time).

I am with Woodsman in this thread, in that coins and checks are so part of UO as a game, we should keep it.

 

[Thav12]

Example: If there is a goldsink I want, and I have 5 million the bank, and I spend 4 million on that goldsink, I'm not going to spend the next 6 months living off of that remaining 1 million, I'm going to go out and farm it or mine and lumberjack and then sell to other players get it back.

Either I'm going to be getting that 4 million back directly from the system through my own efforts, farming monsters, or I'm going to go mine/lumberjack or whatever to sell something to another player(s) who has went out and obtained the gold directly from the system.

Is it really a goldsink if I started the month with 5 million, and ended the month with 5 million, and in-between I've bought into several goldsinks?

Wouldn't it become a timesink instead? I may not be making sense.

you are making sense.
A sink may work, if the faucet gets addressed as well at the same time. But ultimately the lack of scaling in the value of labor (clicks, time) is what makes this a tough proposition and is likely to turn this into a time sink either way. In my opinion, you hit the nail on the head with your observation. The effect of increasing the sink and decreasing the faucet may have a lot of unwanted effects though and may drive prices up and make the economy unsurvivable for the lower and middle class. In turn this may lead to non-gold trades and sort of a black market alternative currency using some other token or item as trade balance. This happened at several occasions in the real world economy as well over the course of history.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

The goldselling industry has all the gold and doesn't care if it's mules are Viscounts or not. Break those sites by deleting their trillions, increase monster loot to whatever it takes to let regular players get by, or else you're just rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

This. The problem is always going to be though, that 1 legitimate guy with 408979037409327409374023974089702397402974089374089374098740987827632761547129372-032183324392y432428790`128127823764t gold among his 412 accounts he can't seem to get rid of. It's easy to say "People that handle UO don't care!" but in actuality almost every MMORPG out there is ATE up with RMT in varying degrees, from straight up currency to items to power leveling it's all there, in almost every game. Personally, I've played World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Lineage 2, Star Wars Galaxies (pre new game enhancements), Final Fantasy XI, Vanguard Saga of Heroes, EverQuest, EverQuest 2, Rift, mish mash of free to play games, and probably tons of others I can't even think of right now, I'm somewhat sleepery and need some coffee. Anyhow the point I'm trying to make it's easy to seems as if the developers are not just standing still but standing back and just letting it happen, but doing the "right" thing is virtually impossible because as everyone knows, you can't do right with everyone on this subject, and when it comes to money which happens to be one of the most basic primal driving forces in these types of games people tend to get REALLY pissy when you start messing with their stack.

(Ninja after edit)
Also, it is not the right thing and sit back and watch it happen for 15 years vastly unchecked either.

 

[Woodsman]

Would be interesting to move away from "physical" gold to having it attached to you, like pretty much every other MMORPG.

It would stop the duping of checks (if there are any means left to do so). If you could make it so that the gold was shared between all of the characters on an account per shard, that would be incredibly handy. It would be hard for people to argue against that aspect.

It would also help new players out quite a bit, especially those who don't have houses and who need to currently move money between characters.

While we are discussing it, what about having a shared bank box between all characters on an account per shard? Say 750 items (if you added them all up among 7 characters, yes it's more, but a lot of us have duplicate items between our characters). Even if you didn't move gold from physical to stat-based, just the idea of merging bank boxes would help a lot of people out, especially people who play second and third shards without houses, and especially for new players.

There are going to be people who argue against moving gold to a number attached to your account rather than piles of gold or checks, but it would be hard to argue against a shared bank box as long as it held a substantial amount.

 

[Uvtha]

All right, no preamble, here's the plan.

A) All gold is converted into a character or account specific statistic rather than a physical object. The devs have mused upon this before. It is important that all gold everywhere, in houses, on inactive accounts, everywhere, be converted at once. There must be no way to hoard unconverted gold. Let a script dump all house-stored gold onto the house owner's account.

B) Currency is expressed as gold and platinum, with 100 gold equaling one plat. In other words 150 gold is displayed as 1p 50g. Psychologically it is VERY important that gold remains part of the system. We don't want people to FEEL like they now have 100 times less money. Heck you can have money display as gold only at first, and have players check a box to toggle on displaying in platinum.

C) Platinum will become the standard means of expressing wealth. Saying you have a million gold will soon sound as odd as someone with a $50,000 salary saying he makes five million pennies per year. There will thus be fewer "millionaires" and "billionaires" and the overwhelming STICKER SHOCK that plagues the UO economy will be diminished. Sure this is all just psychological, but economics is always largely about psychology.

D) There will be no limit on the amount of currency an account can store.

E) Woops when we ran the conversion script it accidentally capped currency at... oh some arbitrary high number that no honest player has, but lots of goldseller storage accounts have. You know, some account has 500 billion gold, wham now it has 100 billion. Review logs of the conversion script and figure out the right level at which to start "accidentally" losing people's money.

F) Suddenly the actual currency supply is diminished substantially as well. Readjust the loot monsters have to whatever it should now be.

The only step that would do anything to slow inflation is step 1. And that only slows inflation by stopping duping (presumably). You have to alter the ingoing to outgoing ratio to actually alter inflation.

This is more a list about making currency easier to deal with, which I think is a good idea over all.

 

[Sauteed Onion]

Also, if gold is turned into a non-physical "stat" as in other games is it a stat shared on characters on that server per account? Is there a "mail" system implemented to tag along with it? Or if you make a new character he starts with his customary 1k gold and random chosen skill related newbie equipment and must at that point accumulate his own gold? Or do you trade some of our gold "stat" to another player or 2nd account and that person funnels it to new character? The gold stat works in WoW and other similar games because you can stop at a mailbox and mail yourself some of the non physical gold, or send it to a friend trying to get his epic flying mount riding skill or whatever. Simply just changing it to a stat requires secondary and thirdidary (hehe) considerationisms. meow, which I'm not doubting those in charge are incapable of.. there is a track record of things that get "missed" in implementation though.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

While we are discussing it, what about having a shared bank box between all characters on an account per shard?

"I" would certainly be for that, but "I" have 100% control of all characters, all shards - some families may not, having mixed household members on the same shard. (of course, that could promote account sales growth - which I think they should offer a discount for multiple accounts, like my car insurance does.)

 

[Slickjack]

. And I'd say that the majority of that 2% got it through less than honest means.

That 2% then controls everything and can control markets.

This statement is ridiculous.... and the "screw you" was rather tasteless.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

I was thinking about this again... Inflation... typically, your income stays the same but item prices rise= inflation.
NPC prices have remained fixed, income has risen, so there's actually Less to No inflation, the rate is negative and dropping.
If you're talking about the "old days", and making gold worth more, easy... most all slayers go poof; armor AR maxes at a little over GM made;
no cu's, no 'greaters'. not such an easy UO now, that way gold will be hard to obtain just like in the day, and 'worth' something.
The easy buttons for players make it what it is, be careful what you wish for.
I still vote stat bank, but leave inflation alone, the 'old days' were simply, Old. I'll stay w/ the new and newer days, thanks

 

[Woodsman]

Also, if gold is turned into a non-physical "stat" as in other games is it a stat shared on characters on that server per account? Is there a "mail" system implemented to tag along with it?

It could totally be shared between characters on that server per account. Mail...The only thing like that is the emergency notification system thing that they had for the Magincia lottery. There are already things that are tracked across all characters per shard per account - housing is the biggest, vet rewards, etc.

 

[Jhym]

This silliness about how much gold there is and how easy it is to get (really, TRUTHFULLY, it has NO impact on you or anyone of us that somebody has billions) is just a smokescreen.

The underlying issue is that there is nothing substantial that these people WANT to spend the money ON.

Does someone want a particular widget that makes their house glow green? Ok, one million gold. Poof, suddenly everyone has it that wants it, and it becomes less desirable. This has happened over and over, largely because the devs either underestimate how quickly people can get what they want or because they overestimate the number of people who will actually WANT said items.

People then go into how the game needs gold sinks, but don't seem to be able to explain WHY people with billions would throw money down them and how that would help those of us who don't have the money to waste (and can't afford it when prices go up ridiculously, like high seas materials). They have billions, they obviously want the money, and they're good at getting it. Are they going to throw it away on turning their hair different colors every day? Would they be likely to buy some mega artifact that implodes after 20 minutes for 20 million? No....

This is clear and undiluted envy.

The most money I've ever had in this game was about 5 million and that was because I managed to do some good commodity trading. Do I bemoan the fact that something is priced for 20 million on a vendor? No, I just won't buy it. Do I envy someone who can? Nope, because I'm an adult.

There is no "inflation", as people can buy what they need to play the game with some work on their part. The straw man of newbies being disappointed at what they can buy and leaving is ridiculous. If that's the case, then every single newbie would leave EVERY SINGLE GAME OUT THERE as soon as they entered it. Complete rubbish.

There's no need to reduce or change the money supply in UO. There IS a need for real goods that people want to purchase.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

EA would not take something that makes them actual money and make it something that can be easily bought with virtual pixels.

Agreed, EA wouldn't, but Devs would, it's really already there, it's called Trashcan Points. I'd guess gold & checks are excluded (and should be) from the recycling process and immediately deleted. I haven't done the math yet, it just seems if many more High End items were added to the menu list, equiv of 50mil, 100 mil, and higher, that it might make both a gold Sink, and 'inflation' control mechanism, in-game and out.

 

[Warpig Inc]

Also take the imbue weight of an item add a zero to the end. That is what that items insurance is. Gold sink in PVM and a heavy cost or prize to PVP in uber gear. Clasic knight getting rolled by gang of street urchin. Bump the turn in bless deed cost to cover that gold sink. Blessed item avoid insurance but should still have base imbue weight cost without the zero on the end.

 

[PlayerSkillFTW]

So pvping and raiding champ spawns is cheating??? Assuming this is what you are talking about monopolizing. That or you are talking about. If so...you sir are a fool. If player versus player combat is cheating then i cheat daily as i pvp daily.

The problem is, that ALOT of these PvP/Champ Spawn guilds, run cheats. Hell, i've even seen quite a few PvP/Champ Raid guilds that REQUIRE you to run at least a speedhack before they'll recruit you. They even have the links to the cheat sites right on their guild recruitment webpage. I've seen entire guilds of scum that use every single cheat/exploit they could get their hands on if it granted them even the slightest advantage in PvP.

But yeah, the only way they're going to "fix" UO's economy, is if they finally do something about all the damn duping/scripting.

 

[Lady Storm]

Well there is a solution to the inflation that is running rampant in UO... but idk if your all willing to do it.

One of a kind items - say Mesanna makes a good handfull of cute and desired items and puts up in Britain a NPC vendor on every shard. The price for these things should be at what a single Super rare is going for 500 mill to 1 billion or more. Now the point being is this, millions is going to go poof. NOT recurculated... not sitting in some banks or houses but gone poof! In 10 items per shard (more for atlantic or higher priced there) your able to wipe off 5 billion to 10 billion gold in a quick swoop. Players/Collectors will be happy and the gold will greatly reduce off the shards in very large amounts.

Now this is only an idea.....