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Obliterating Inflation

S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
I like that, a lot, x-amt per shard, same price for every shard, to slow x-sharders, great sink, imo
 

Velvathos

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I say add 4 currencies rather than just having 2.. Copper, Silver, Gold and Platinum, would knock off a couple zeroes..

1 BILLION should not be a term used in UO let alone the million range.. This is a medieval/fantasy game, yet everyone lives as kings and queens when it should be a world full of hard living and farmers with pitchforks, this game always had realistic approaches in the beginning, it is what made it such a great roleplaying game, but an unrealistic economy destroyed the game.. The UO people want back is the dark, gritty one full of hard living.. I believe Britannia in general needs a re-vamp and should be closer to medieval Europe as far as looks go..

It needs to be hard to get "good" items as well, but they should not be overpriced either..
 

Meatbread

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
I say add 4 currencies rather than just having 2.. Copper, Silver, Gold and Platinum, would knock off a couple zeroes..
If you want to knock some more zeroes off the base numbers you'll need to come up with some currencies above platinum, or just move the decimal and make platinum worth 1000 gold instead of 100. In all cases it's critical that players have the same amount of "gold" after the conversion as before, otherwise they'll feel they've been robbed.

In any case the fact that Velvathos made this post displays the psychological effect of having the default economic unit exist in quantities of millions and billions. Whatever economic shenanigans are going on behind the scenes, walking into Luna and seeing "Here is a hat for 98,000,000 million jillion zillion gold!" just sticker shocks and scandalizes people.
 

Black Majick

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Yeah I'm the fool. With dumb ideas like this you really need to keep your trap shut.
I was not saying that any ideas you had were foolish. I was implying that you saying because I do spawns or I do other things in game and earn gold (whether by working a spawn or raiding) is cheating. But glad I am back in town to reply now.
 

Black Majick

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
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.
Ill agree that yes. Some guild do require you to run those programs. I have been in guilds where people do run them (not a guild requirement). On the same foot I do not run them by choice. I ping 65-75 to the shards I play and rarely have a problem killing people. If I die, I die. But by saying that someone is cheating for his reasons is ridiculous.
 

Black Majick

Certifiable
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
If you want to knock some more zeroes off the base numbers you'll need to come up with some currencies above platinum, or just move the decimal and make platinum worth 1000 gold instead of 100. In all cases it's critical that players have the same amount of "gold" after the conversion as before, otherwise they'll feel they've been robbed.

In any case the fact that Velvathos made this post displays the psychological effect of having the default economic unit exist in quantities of millions and billions. Whatever economic shenanigans are going on behind the scenes, walking into Luna and seeing "Here is a hat for 98,000,000 million jillion zillion gold!" just sticker shocks and scandalizes people.

As I see it making a new currency does not fix the massive amounts of gold in the game. It just makes it easier to store and handle. I just turned 1000 gold into 1 platinum piece. Ya. I can not turn my 1 billion gold into 1,000,000 platinum. The same guy is still saying "Selling Slither for 85m or 85k Platinum". Inflation is still there, it is just easier to handle your money now.
 

Meatbread

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
I like how I can explain that a particular point is "only psychological" and a procession of people will type long-winded posts explaining to me that it is, in fact, only psychological. Meanwhile the part where I flat-out told a developer to invade the holding accounts of sellers and delete their gold just gets ignored.

In any case it's just as well that the devs are going "Wait and see, wait and watch!" while the UO economy spirals off into Zimbabwesque insanity. I don't trust this dev team. They haven't added anything that wasn't an ill-incentivized point-decaying pain in the ass for years.

I wouldn't want anyone touching the economy who couldn't figure out the whole "Whoops I just repeatedly listed Hephaestus as FC2 because I didn't realize shields have an inherent -1 FC" thing.
 

Izzy MBC

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
I will no doubt regret posting this, but whatever.

tl;dr It can't be fixed, at least effectively. "Ultima Online 2012 Edition" Game Design now just doesn't really allow it. In my opinion, all of this is my opinion.

I'm starting to the think the Features employed over time have just made it practically impossible to solve the Inflation. It's gotten easier and easier to grind Mobs for Gold without interruption (LRC, Bags of Sending etc.), means there's no stopping the individual player that's kitted out. Items that cost 30Mil+ are probably way over powered (I don't really follow that high tier "market"), some of the Screenshots I saw of Major Artifacts in another thread were quite frankly, plain stupid in attributes, and probably cost a stupid amount. The fact it's got to this level of Item Attributes and Statistics (Like managing all these "new" features like MR, DCI, insert every other acronym here), enabling us to define characters that "Ownage" in most circumstances, when really they shouldn't need to be! They shouldn't at all.

The game has become materialistic, we shouldn't even want all this uber Weaponry and Armour. Or if we wanted it, we never should have been given it. Every thing's torn out of balance. We shouldn't be battling monsters with close to 160% Skill points and 1000+ Int as I saw in the Coveteous thread. Even if they are hard as hell now, I bet they won't be in 4-5 years when the "Long Sword of Shimmering Light of Lord British" is rewarded in some ridonkulous quest allowing us to pwn out 500 physical damage (Yeah, they'll raise any caps to amply suit the rising level of Weapon enhancements).

The fault of the Game (And every other MMO?) is to constantly increase the power of the Goods awarded against the Increasing difficulty of Mobs. The correct solution is to present new Story/Event content (Lots of it) that genuinely interesting and/or gets so challenging to a point where it's unbeatable unless there is 30-40 players participating. Encouraging team work and community. What's wrong with having a Boss that is practically unbeatable? I can imagine the excitement of the boards here; upwards of a 100 players uniting at a specific time to overcome a challenge so tall it requires such a feat of many players operating together, to the point of a Shard grinding under the pressure.
Rather then now, it takes a Tamer with a GD, a Sampire and whatever other template cods-wallop (Not bashing any templates, just saying we're all Overpowered) to take down the most challenging of Creatures.

Increase the power of Monsters, the diversity of them with different abilities to keep it exciting BUT keep a variety of Weaponry/Armour/Spells that remains consistent in strength, encouraging team work.

But whatever, I've gone way off topic in a manner of speaking... but I just think all of this reflects why Gold has inflated. It's too easy to acquire, even if Duping and Scripters disappeared 5 years ago, it's been too easy to acquire lots of Gold per individual for too long (Edit: Also we'd never have to trade higher grade goods over lower grade, there practically wouldn't be Grades/Levels of goods). In fact, under the system above, Gold wouldn't even be as important, people would be more inclined to trade in pure Goods, as none of it would have 255 Durability and it would be steadily consumable. Not to mention having no Insurance would introduce the need to replace things upon death in some situations.

Why am I still here, UO? Maybe I'm talking rubbish, I probably am, likely to have missed some massive oversight. Then again, I'd like to think I'm describing something similar of UO's first years, and regrettably I wasn't here for the first ~3 :/

Random Last Note: Balrons, Ancient Wyrms and the like should never have been Solo-able. An entire Dungeon should never have been conquerable by One Person.
 

Meatbread

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Honestly, I think at this point they should probably just...

A) Display player currency as platinum (or whatever) at a ratio of 100:1.
B) Convert the NPC economy, house customization fees, vendor fees, cash rewards, and everything else in the game to platinum at a 1:1 ratio.
C) Convert monster loot to platinum at a 1:1 ratio.
D) If they're really worried that the inconvenience of handling coins is the only thing keeping the economy from exploding, keep coins as a physical object and just allow players to turn in gold in order to get new platinum coins.

The net result is that income and expenses remain exactly the same as they are now, proportionately, but stockpiled hoards of money become much less important. It's exactly like we divided everyone's cash by 100, except since everyone still has the same amount of "gold" there shouldn't be as much rage as all that.

The economy will still be inflating at the same rate, but it should be much less inflated. In other words we're still driving down the inflation highway at the same speed, but we're a hundred miles behind where we used to be. Let someone come along in 2022 when we're back where we started and convert all the platinum into uranium coins or some crap.
 
S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
Another consideration to implementing any of this is the coding aspects. I'd bet adding a new currency into the game would be a pretty major thing. Easier approaches might get a greater chance of happening. Something simpler, such a BOD book for checks is quite a bit of work - considering it can be placed on vendor, requiring more coding there. 'Stackable' checks (60,000 per stack) might be a quick way out, I haven't seen that mentioned in a long time.

Gold has become a nuisance, like Bods, and certainly needs addressed, but I don't understand why "economy" is brought up in regards to gold storage
I think a lot of 'horded' gold is GOOD. Doesn't it mean people are Playing the game? Gold generally only comes into this game, legally, by killing mobs.
So if more people are in doing Hack n Slash, it affects the economy? BS, the more people in doing that means they're probably having fun, it means people are doing something in the game they enjoy. And they're really all doing the same thing,and it's exactly what the Devs want, they Log In.

IMO, some people have extra accounts just to hold gold, and these successful players are being penalized, victims of their own success. If I run out of space to put my winnings, i WILL become a TOS breaker, and more likely, just stop playing. An 18x18 holds about 2 billion. Perhaps a 2nd home entitlement could be purchased with in-game currency?
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Look our porblem is not in the uo gold system. House prices didnt go up, at least the drop down tool price anyway. Our problem is us. We sent the prices skyrocketing. The minute a EM event is over and all the drops/gifts are gotten you can bet your bottom gold coin that it will be on a vendor on Atlantic for 100 mill or more. Why? Answer is easy, Get the most you can before hte bottom falls out or finds out there was more then 10 of them given out.... Pfft! Greed............pure and simple.

I have watched many items I have bought for my museum bounce in price like a rubber ball. Many collectors have seen this. First it was 25 mill then the 50 mill now the minimum is 100 mill. At the Rares Fest its worse... 200 to bilions is asked for and in some cases gotten for that odd piece that is only 1 of in all of uo..... It's not inflation, its not needed, when you got greed going for you. Worse off its not something you can get rid of.

GO ahead and change curency... it will just happen in that one too. Oh it might take a bit but I guarantee before the UO doors close that too will be so high and uncontroled its not funny. As long as there are trinkets being handed out like candy to the good children of the game and they garner high costs you will not control the gold. We anchients didnt have this trouble, oh we had high cost items.... vanq's invun, etc... and the dailys we got were a small fee for purchase if you couldnt get one yourself. But that was it. You knew if you got off your tail and tried you could very well get one all on your own. I knew the minute that damn Dev team shut off the dailys they were opening a can of worms.......
You see, you limit the avalibility of an item.... you make it valuable..... You can see the reverse in action today.. what was the going rate of a valorite hammer 2 years ago??? Today.. that hammer is 5 mill or less. Now if we can only teach this to the EM's and the Dev......
We might get gold under control. I said in another thread have the Dev make a npc put on it items of great value for one of a kind items and put a high cost to them. Only thing is how to pay a half to 1 billion gold for one when the banks only hold a 175 million at one time with all the %increeses. Oh well. We can argue this till we are blue in the face... but it boils down to us as the cause of it.
 

Meatbread

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Another consideration to implementing any of this is the coding aspects. I'd bet adding a new currency into the game would be a pretty major thing.
Converting gold from a physical object to a nonphysical stat and making that stat work in place of physical gold is bound to be challenging, but since it's something the devs have openly mused about in the past, it must certainly be possible. Actually converting gold into platinum once that's done, however, is utterly trivial and would take only a few lines of code. You're literally just moving a decimal point two spots to the left and adding a new display filter.

Look our porblem is not in the uo gold system. House prices didnt go up, at least the drop down tool price anyway. Our problem is us.
Oh nonsense. All you're really saying is "Some items in this economy have really high demand!" as if that's not something that happens in EVERY SINGLE ECONOMIC SYSTEM EVER.
 
S

Sevin0oo0

Guest
Actually, what I have resigned to do is formulate the idea(s) to a likeable/acceptable form, then submit or send it to a Dev (just in case they missed it, or missed the point), but they read a lot already.
I'll feel like I did my part, they rest is up to them. and usually if nobody says anything, I'm gonna take it to be an acceptable thing. Every little wrinkle doesn't need to be ironed out, that's part of their job too.
 
W

Woodsman

Guest
Look our porblem is not in the uo gold system. House prices didnt go up, at least the drop down tool price anyway. Our problem is us. We sent the prices skyrocketing. The minute a EM event is over and all the drops/gifts are gotten you can bet your bottom gold coin that it will be on a vendor on Atlantic for 100 mill or more. Why? Answer is easy, Get the most you can before hte bottom falls out or finds out there was more then 10 of them given out.... Pfft! Greed............pure and simple.
Actually the problem is in the UO gold system. We may have "sent the prices skyrocketing" but the fact that the gold is easy to obtain, regardless of the influence of scripters, is the root of the problem since it allows players to spend enormous amounts of money.

If you could go back and tell my 1999 self that gold would be less than 50 cents per million, I would be wondering if my 2012 was on drugs or drunk.

Now you could claim that the problem is with us since many support the efforts of the scripters by RMT, but in the end the gold is easily obtained by somebody.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
Well, I can tell you one thing that needs to be done, is the recent absolutely massive duping needs to be addressed. The perpetrators need to have their accounts banned, and all of their possessions and gold deleted from the game. And the trail of gold and items needs to be traced from one account to another. If those responsible for "policing" the game don't have the tools they need to do this, those tools need to be developed - 10 years ago. Basically all the good things that have happened recently to help reduce inflation, including the massive removal of gold from the game with the Magincia housing plot lotteries, was reversed in a period of a few weeks, a couple of months ago.

Until the devs create effective tools to track individual items, and gold and cheques in the game, including transfers across accounts, and the creation of one item from another, such as the binding up of sot's, or the cashing and recreation of cheques, every time there is a dupe bug, and it will happen again, most of the players involved will walk away with thousands of real life dollars, and few, if any consequences, and the UO economy will suffer massive inflation, and those that play the game by the rules, with honesty and integrity, will find all their efforts devalued in every way in the context of the game.
 

MagicStar

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Well, I can tell you one thing that needs to be done, is the recent absolutely massive duping needs to be addressed. The perpetrators need to have their accounts banned, and all of their possessions and gold deleted from the game. And the trail of gold and items needs to be traced from one account to another. If those responsible for "policing" the game don't have the tools they need to do this, those tools need to be developed - 10 years ago. Basically all the good things that have happened recently to help reduce inflation, including the massive removal of gold from the game with the Magincia housing plot lotteries, was reversed in a period of a few weeks, a couple of months ago.

Until the devs create effective tools to track individual items, and gold and cheques in the game, including transfers across accounts, and the creation of one item from another, such as the binding up of sot's, or the cashing and recreation of cheques, every time there is a dupe bug, and it will happen again, most of the players involved will walk away with thousands of real life dollars, and few, if any consequences, and the UO economy will suffer massive inflation, and those that play the game by the rules, with honesty and integrity, will find all their efforts devalued in every way in the context of the game.
Is that how this guy in help channel is selling a billion gold for $250?
I dont know how many billions he has but i was wondering how he got so much?
He advertises .30 cents a mil $250 per billion
Lol his chars name is simply gold seller
Kinda disgusting
 

Meatbread

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
There's enough gold sitting in goldseller holding accounts to make everyone in UO a billionaire. What actually goes on in terms of players killing monsters or whatever is irrelevant at this point. That's why they need to turn it into a stat and delete the gold from obvious holding accounts.
 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
Well, I can tell you one thing that needs to be done, is the recent absolutely massive duping needs to be addressed.
Hmmm, a glimmer of hope? Maybe I just needed a little patience for a change?

 

Llewen

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Campaign Supporter
There's enough gold sitting in goldseller holding accounts to make everyone in UO a billionaire. What actually goes on in terms of players killing monsters or whatever is irrelevant at this point.
You're wrong, it isn't irrelevant to the large majority of players in the game. Your average player hasn't exploited bugs in the game, or used scripts to make billions, and there are plenty of billionaires who have earned their billions through many hours of in game, honest effort. The cheaters would like you to believe "everyone's doing it", or that what they do doesn't really matter, but there are still plenty of basically honest players out there, and players who have to work hard and play smart to earn their gold without resorting to cheating.

I personally have great fun, I'm competitive in pvp, and I've never used any form of cheat to make gold. I've also never had in my possession at one time, on all my characters on two accounts combined, as much as 100 mil in gold or cheques. I see gold lying around after a champ spawn, I scoop it up and count myself lucky, as do many others.
 

Lady Storm

Grand Inquisitor
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Exactly Llewen...
I have never passed up on getting the gold when we go out to do champs or hunt t chests when others leave it behind, every piece of armor or junk others toss sells or unravels to make resources that sell. I have pets who hunt well and make me a good amount of gold. I have never sat on gold checks to the point of having a 100 mill. Not saying I have not had that much cause I have alot of times but in my uo play I shift gold to items and back so much in stock for my vendors ... well to pin down that much gold is not in the best interest of my having fun.
not long ago in uo history it was hard to keep a mill in the bank.... nowadays I can pull 30 to 50 mill off my vendors in a blink of the eye. This was done by hard work and being crafty in my buying/sales on those vendors.
 
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