the real gold sink

[burnttrees]

if mythic ever decided to make a gold sink in the game that was 100% guaranteed to have an effect then they should lower lrc to 70% this requires players to go and buy the regents this would have a major effect on the game also as in fel you would have thief's stealing regents to slow the mages down and giving the thief's something to do

sadly i know this is going to bring mass complaints and other issues from the players but i would like to point out that lrc works for magery necro and also chiv meaning this effects almost every one

 

[Desolation87]

LRC for chiv? Errrrrr....

 

[Chad Sexington]

The only way to have a 100% gold sink is to introduce gambling type games. But others have said that's not possible. I don't really know why. I can pull some examples from other games where you get items based on something random.

I'd like to see it introduced in the Priate Expansion... but that's just me.

 

[burnttrees]

Desolation87 there is a way to have a full 100 lrc suit on a paladin and with 100 gold in tithing points to have the suit pay for it all you just need the tithing points for the spell your trying to cast and the suit will negate the cost this is listed on uo guide

unless this was changed at some point since that was written on uo guide

Chad Sexington true gambling would in fact add a gold sink of a type BUT there is no way to make ANYONE play so in fact it only effects those will to play the lrc you have no choice but to accept

 

[Eslake]

Reagents would have to become costly to make any impact even if LRC were completely removed, and consider what that would mean to new players.

The problem with finding a functional gold sink is that virtually anything that would work also gives game advantages to those with 100s of millions of gold over those with a few thousand. Any such advantage will only prompt further farming of gold to reach/maintain that advantage.

With LRC in the game, the only thing that takes gold out with regularity is insurance. But PvP shuffles the fees around as much as removing it, and being able to farm 100k/hour while losing 10k to insurance every few hours isn't really having an impact.

It is actually quite funny that the best gold sink so far hasn't been one implimented, but the result of not having one.
The abundance of gold has caused it to have so little value that 10s or 100s of millions of it are left unlooted to decay every day on most shards.

Tho not technically a sink since that gold never enters the game economy, I have no doubt that more gold is left to decay than is actively spent to NPCs in a given day.

Reducing gold to scarcity would have helped if done 8+ years ago. Mongbats now carry more than demons ever should have, and most creatures should not have gold at all. (do wolves and birds have pockets or what?)
But to do so now would only mean that those without would remain without, and those already wealthy would have a continually larger advantage.

 

[UOKaiser]

Reagents would have to become costly to make any impact even if LRC were completely removed, and consider what that would mean to new players.

The problem with finding a functional gold sink is that virtually anything that would work also gives game advantages to those with 100s of millions of gold over those with a few thousand. Any such advantage will only prompt further farming of gold to reach/maintain that advantage.

With LRC in the game, the only thing that takes gold out with regularity is insurance. But PvP shuffles the fees around as much as removing it, and being able to farm 100k/hour while losing 10k to insurance every few hours isn't really having an impact.

It is actually quite funny that the best gold sink so far hasn't been one implimented, but the result of not having one.
The abundance of gold has caused it to have so little value that 10s or 100s of millions of it are left unlooted to decay every day on most shards.

Tho not technically a sink since that gold never enters the game economy, I have no doubt that more gold is left to decay than is actively spent to NPCs in a given day.

Reducing gold to scarcity would have helped if done 8+ years ago. Mongbats now carry more than demons ever should have, and most creatures should not have gold at all. (do wolves and birds have pockets or what?)
But to do so now would only mean that those without would remain without, and those already wealthy would have a continually larger advantage.

You hit it right on the pin. Gold sink now will just benefit the ones that already have gold and make there gold worth more, while those that dont have gold or less than the top 1-5% of uo will be in desperate need for more essentualy spliting the wealthy into 1 category and the rest into the poor category whith almost no possibility for the poor to catch up.

 

[Spree]

Gold sinks should be something that people want but dont need and has to be replaced. Pet or hair dye that cost 1 million gold but wears off in a week. a rideable polar bear that can't be bonded and dies in 1 week.

 

[burnttrees]

there is one BIG flaw with that way of thinking and i will give 3 examples

1) vine cord sandles
2) the shrouds that where made into monks robes
3) valorite hammers

the prob with creating things people WANT but don't need is that it create s a demand for more then what people can get or need ie it gives the dupers something to desire and also to try to use

the only way to create a sink and make it work is to nail the things people need, and cant get around in the long run or people will always look for a way the exploit

and i will admit that it doesn't look as tho the regents would really cost allot in the beginning but it would add up

also on the point of costing the younger players more then the rich the sad fact is that they have no choice but to buy 100% of there regents as allot of them do not have a 100% lrc suits

 

[Sunrise]

Poor bears. How about they dont get bonded...then after a week they go wild again....

 

[Edina Monsoon]

How about a real estate tax? Since most rich have 18x18's you can tax them on their real estate or their house decays.

Also since most new and poor folks don't have homes, they wouldn't be made to pay anything until they have the funds to do so.

Just a random thought.

"I don't want more things, sweetie, I want better things"

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

How about a real estate tax? Since most rich have 18x18's you can tax them on their real estate or their house decays.


And get nothing but a punishment in return? No thanks. Been suggested before and turned down every time.

Want to charge me a monthly fee for owning a house? Fine... give me something for that fee that I DO NOT ALREADY HAVE.

A "stablehand" NPC that has to be paid monthly? Sure. My own Banker NPC... ok. Extra Storage? Definately.

Pay extra to keep what I have had for over 10 years? No thanks.

 

[Lady Michelle]

LRC for chiv? Errrrrr....

works on the tithing in the chiv books. If you have 100 lrc none of the tithing points are used.

 

[Eslake]

Uh oh! you said Tax. I hope you're wearing the asbestos undies today.
I've suggested it in the past, and it has a tendancy to really make people angry.


The short and simple of it is that no fix to the economic structure in the game will do any good unless they also delete all of the gold already there.

And while most will agree the economy is completely broken due to the abundance of gold, none want a fix that will 'fix' them out of their wealth.


If they COULD delete existing gold, a lasting fix to the economy would be relatively simple.
Eliminate gold from drops all together.

Gold should not come from monsters. Even if they have the intelligence to use currency it wouldn't be the same sort we use.

Perhaps a small amount on dragons (due to that mythos) and peerless/champion level creatures, but Very little.

Selling those Junk loots we've complained about since AoS to NPCs should be the primary inflow of gold into the game's economy.
Other changes would have to be made to account for this, regs reduced to 1 gold each and stable fees repaired and ramping based on the pets power, and so forth.

But the end result is that gold would become a tool for dealing with NPCs, and players would be more inclined to deal with other players for trading items rather than buying/selling everything for coins that have no lasting value.

 

[Cear Dallben Dragon]

but then people could 120 magery in a day unattended. that would SUCK!

 

[Spree]

How about a real estate tax? Since most rich have 18x18's you can tax them on their real estate or their house decays.

This is bad idea then only the rich would have houses. I have houses on 2 shards. Because i RP on one shard and never had over 4 million at one time there. I should have my house taxed out from under me?

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I've always wondered how a system like FFXII would work in an MMOG like UO.

Personally, I'd LIKE to see a HUGE nerf to monster loot after an item rebalance. Lower the overall gold influx, lessen the amount of junk, but make it a bit better than it is now.

Then add in a few uncommon to rare drops across the board that can be used for either crafting, to redeem for special items (like ToT or the Spring Cleaning), or to be able to be enhanced onto gear... maybe get rid of non-artifact "magic" loot altogether and have crafters build suits from materials from various monsters instead (where a store bought weapons/armor piece could only hold so much power while a GM Exceptional could hold much more and a Legenadry Exceptional hold the most in terms of enhanced addons).

There are plenty of directions to go with PvM rewards that will make them enjoyable and lessen the influx of gold into the game.

Then of course there will need to be a SIGNIFICANT effort at actual gold sinks that people will WANT to use gold on to get the old gold out of the game. The rewards of which SHOULD be useful, but do not have to be overpowering. Most should be consumable as well.

 

[phantus]

Regs = lousy gold sink.

Any kind of tax = ********.

Gold sinks need to be created in Tiers. They need to be made for the different demos UO has. Scale them to 1 Billion gold and down. Change them every 3 months. Money will drain out of the economy in no time. Sell powerscrolls. Yes, I said it. If we gonna come up with ideas people don't like then let's lay them all out on the table. Instead of tossing around money for scrolls or artis allow them to be bought from a vendor. Sinks. Not money changing hands.

I swear, some people act like this fictional economy has been left to fester for a decade and expect some drip to fix what needs a levee.

 

[Wallenstein]

if mythic ever decided to make a gold sink in the game that was 100% guaranteed to have an effect then they should lower lrc to 70% this requires players to go and buy the regents this would have a major effect on the game also as in fel you would have thief's stealing regents to slow the mages down and giving the thief's something to do

sadly i know this is going to bring mass complaints and other issues from the players but i would like to point out that lrc works for magery necro and also chiv meaning this effects almost every one

That's a really good point man.. Never thought about a LRC cap.. The mages will argue this one until the world's end, but if mages can have a 100% LRC suit then why can't archers have a 100% Lower Ammo Cost suit? I understand quivers can assure you you won't lose arrows when you die, but archers still must purchase arrows/bolts nonetheless while mages never need to purchase regs with 100% LRC.

 

[burnttrees]

sadly i have to say i have heard alot of things

tax = problems for the lower players who do not have the time to play in game to pay for there house

deleting the economy = not a long term fix and sounds more like an "I am poor and want everyone else to be the same as me" (no offence but that is what it sounds like)

i also would like to point out that yes the prob is the money coming into the game and that there is no actual outlet the lrc is just a real simple fix that hits almost every play style as for adding things into the game for people to buy yes the resources from bosses is a nice option and also at the same time you could also add ingots to the list (dull copper all the way to valorite) and also gems (sadly gems would effect fishing because of white pearls) also sell wood (oak to heartwood) the prob is like it was mentioned this would remove alot of the reason for players to go collect it (then again i dont buy anything i can get free)


i would also like to state for those who want hte rich to be lvled to the poors lvl sorry but the rich stay rich for a reason and sadly with out messing everyone over they will stay that way till the game ends or they leave the game ( same as in real life)

 

[Ozymandies]

LRC balances insurance. Dexxers can insure their weapons, mages cannot insure regs, but can insure lrc pieces instead.

Yes, it would be nice to give thieves something to steal, but why nerf just mages? You can steal bandages but not chiv regs.

I had an idea once that there should be some sort of bonus for casting off of a scroll. People could keep their lrc, but use regs to make scrolls to get the bonus. Scrolls are stealable, craftable and available as loot.

OZ

 

[Lariat]

Chad Sexington true gambling would in fact add a gold sink of a type BUT there is no way to make ANYONE play so in fact it only effects those will to play

So, what you do is find a gambling game they'd want to play. In another game I used to play, they put in a system where 2 players wager an amount of currency against each other. Say, 100k each. The wager is made and the pot is 200k. RNG is used to pick one of the two, and that person wins the pot, minus the house's take, which removes the currency from the economy. Let's say it's 5%. That would leave a prize of 190k for the winner, with 10k being removed from the economy. Now, you may say "10k? Big deal!" but the prospect of instant riches is VERY alluring, and VERY addictive. The game is always very active in the other MMORPG. You gotta be quick to take someone's wager before someone else does. Little by little, it leeches a ton of money out of the economy every day.

 

[Jhym]

*shrug* Drop LRC and LMC entirely. Bad decision, bad implementation.

There, problem solved, don't you feel better now?

 

[Vyrquenox]

sadly i have to say i have heard alot of things

tax = problems for the lower players who do not have the time to play in game to pay for there house

deleting the economy = not a long term fix and sounds more like an "I am poor and want everyone else to be the same as me" (no offence but that is what it sounds like)

i also would like to point out that yes the prob is the money coming into the game and that there is no actual outlet the lrc is just a real simple fix that hits almost every play style as for adding things into the game for people to buy yes the resources from bosses is a nice option and also at the same time you could also add ingots to the list (dull copper all the way to valorite) and also gems (sadly gems would effect fishing because of white pearls) also sell wood (oak to heartwood) the prob is like it was mentioned this would remove alot of the reason for players to go collect it (then again i dont buy anything i can get free)


i would also like to state for those who want hte rich to be lvled to the poors lvl sorry but the rich stay rich for a reason and sadly with out messing everyone over they will stay that way till the game ends or they leave the game ( same as in real life)

why don't we just do it like the real life socialists my generation fawns over, and set up a sytem where the top 2% of gold earners every week get a fifty percent tax and 25% of that money is redistributed to the bottom 20% who are sitting at their house watching tvs made of folded cloth, 15% is used to finance distribution of free arties to those who can't get them due to the oppression of the rich, 5% is used to finance the construction of a giant pit, and the last 5% is thrown into it.

oh, wait, the end result of that would be accountants and lawyers, or people just not bothering to make that much money.

 

[HD2300]

I believe there already is an effective gold sink.

Its the Barbed Runic Kit vendors. Why do you think EA doesnt ban them?

 

[aarons6]

what i would like to see is a npc type weapons dealer.
one that has way better weapons then the regular npcs.
with CHOOSABLE mods.. one that would be equal to the highest runic kit but instantly made by the weapons smith npc. the intensities could be random, but you get to pick what you want by a drop down menu. DI would have the exceptional 40.
this weapon can be very spendy, say 5m or even more.. have several to choose from.
you can very the price on the mods, so if you cant afford the best you can lower them.
say 2 mods is 1m , 3 mods is 2m , and 4 mods is 5m.
or every wep is a 4 mod wep but 20% to 40% intensities is 1m, 40% to 60% intensities is 2m and 60% to 80% intensities is 5m.
something like this would be very useful and is much needed in this game.

here is the deal about this wep..
non insurable..
it would be personal blessed.. like a talisman (owned by) so it cant be sold to someone else.
it cant be fortified or enhanced.
when its repaired down to 0 you buy a new one.
for an average player this would last a couple months.

 

[Cogniac]

I can pull some examples from other games where you get items based on something random.

I can pull an example from UO: Every single damn thing in the entire game.

 

[UOKaiser]

Once again its too late. And then lets think about this really 1mil equals the same amount that maybe 100k a few years back equal and a 100k equals maybe 10k years back. It doesnt really matter things dont cost more they cost the same. If every player ends up whith at least 100mil in there pocket then things will cost 1 billion and up. Like wise if the desdtroy all gold in the system then things that cost 1 mil now will cost 10k after that and monsters like peerless champs will give 100 gold while balrons will give 10 gold and mongbats no gold the rest something in the middle.

It really doesnt matter any player can easily make 1mil gold just like any player back in the days can easily make 10k gold and that pretty much the equvilent. Motives for this is pretty dubious at best. Even whith gold sinks as people call them rich people will remain rich and poor people will get poorer just because people who have lots of gold know what there doing and have the time to put in. While people struggling for 100k gold spend too much,dont have enough time to play, or have absolutly no clue on how to play the game to make gold. Hell some just roleplay beggers and make more than a player trying to get gold but doesnt know on what to do.

I dont care what anybody says killing mongbats for a few hours a day aint gonna make you rich. As well as hunting balrons all day and you spending everything you get on stuff you probably never need. Invest your gold wisely on something that will give a return and youre on the first steps up the ladder.

 

[monnie101]

The only way to have a 100% gold sink is to introduce gambling type games. But others have said that's not possible. I don't really know why. I can pull some examples from other games where you get items based on something random.

I'd like to see it introduced in the Priate Expansion... but that's just me.

Tis against da law because the EA allows selling of virtual items in this game and allowing item gambling would be same as real life money gambling since people can sell the items.

I only know this because others games. In EQ2 they have gambling games. You can bet on piggie races. You can play the GiggleGibber Goblin's lottery. But you can only do it on regular servers. They do not allow it on the SOE Station Exchange servers. For you folks not in the know, the exchange servers are ones that allow people to buy/sell virtual items using their safe website system.

http://www.journeyswithjaye.com/?m=200606

P/S Betting on the little piggie races is fun! You pay the NPC who owns the piggies in the pen and then he counts down and the piggies run like hell to the finish! If your piggie you bet on wins like in the horse races, you win moneys! Golds!

 

[Coppelia]

The best gold sink is :
a) generating less gold on monster drop
b) very useful or even obligatory consumables

A very expensive item that you buy once is not a gold sink. A little drop, that's all. A sink makes gold flows out.

 

[Eslake]

deleting the economy = not a long term fix and sounds more like an "I am poor and want everyone else to be the same as me" (no offence but that is what it sounds like)

I suspect this was in responce to my post.
I'm not poor, and I would gladly see my gold vanish if it fixed things.

Deleting gold is not a fix in itself, but for any fix to work - the gold has to be deleted.


Regs will always be a sink as they are used to create potions - which are expended 100%.
But capping LRC below 100% would require a balancing adjustment to melee/archer templates by giving a % chance on insurance to fail.
I doubt many would accept that.


Gambling would be a nice short-term sink, but people would get bored with it after a while, or get what prizes they wanted and go farm gold to make up for what they lost.

 

[Landicine]

Gold sinks are problematic. Let's look at the suggested:

1. Lower monster loot: Doesn't work. Monster loot has gone up and down over the years, and the inflation is constant. Zombies had no gold. Zombies have too much gold. Zombies have no gold again, but a body part. Zombies have gold. The gold on them has gone up and down over the years, yet inflation has remained constant. Those who farm gold just pick a monster with the best gold per minute ratio. Changing the rate of gold coming in doesn't matter if the rate going out is practically zero.

2. Taxes: I don't mind paying taxes in real life. Civic responsibility and all that, and I know I have taken advantage of a lot of the "perks of civilization:" a police and emergency response force to keep me safer, public works, public education, education loans, national defense, etc. I DO mind paying them in game for nothing. The idea of a tax on stuff or houses in game always seem more like a punishment for success rather than some civic responsibility. Maybe a war tax system that had some roleplay application, but as suggested here and in the past, no.

3. Lower reagent: won't work. Take the example of potions and bandages. I could gather the material to make cloth, or I could buy it and just cut it into bandages. The gold for a lot of bandages is a trivial amount. Potions are still made from reagents, and people burn through a lot of them, but I still buy them from players rather than saving myself money and making them with a GM alchemist I already have. Because the cost is trivial compared to what I could make actually stocking my vendor with a few things I have sitting around the house. I actually use reagents on a combat mage because I wanted a 70s set with 45% DCI. The insurance cost for the armor is higher than the cost of a reagents in the bag.

4. Deleting gold: I hate this idea because I did put some work into gathering the gold and items I have. I did this because I believed this was a persistant world. If because of dupers and scripters and other cheaters, this illusion would be destroyed, I would probably move on to other things. I play to roleplay, and I hate the grind. I do the grind because it facilitates the roleplay and the exploring and the random events. If I was going to have to do another grind, I would have to consider options that were better for roleplay (other games, player shards, etc.). For those who like the grind and powergaming, they would hate this more. This idea would only kill UO which would certainly make the problems of gold sinks in UO disappear.

It also wouldn't fix the problem since scripters could run rampant again. Most inflation in UO is caused by scripters I suspect.

 

[MalagAste]

A true Gold Sink would have to be something that does NOT give any unfair advantage, that does NOT in any way effect your gameplay. So it would have to be something that was desirable yet aesthetic only. Purely looks. Such a hair dye, pet dye, special clothes dye, a plaque. Something like the community collections where what you get is simply decorative or only changes your title. It should not effect game play, it should not give advantage.

We actually WANT new people to play. We WANT new players.... making it so only the really rich can get things that give them great advantage over the casual player or the new beginner only serves to irritate and turn people off. Also it promotes the farming and sale of gold for RL money.

The biggest problem therefore is making something in-game that is sooo neat it would make the folk with the money actually want to part with it, yet doesn't effect the casual player. And like the community collections it should have ways to build up points for the casual player to acquire such a thing as well without having to farm the gold for it if they don't have it.

The reason you see folk leaving a bunch of gold around is partially due to the change in the Bag o Sending.... Since that change went into effect when I'm hunting to improve my fame and Karma I no longer loot the gold. I can't carry enough to make it worth picking it up.... when your killing things that carry between 1 and 2k and you can only hold about 6 or 8k you really don't want to have to stop after every 4 or 5 monsters to run to the bank and back. Not only does that triple the amount of time you would have to spend hunting to reach Lord status... But it leaves you open to the possibility that while your away at the bank someone else will take over your hunting spot forcing you to have to search for something/somewhere else to hunt also wasting precious time that could be spent gaining fame/Karma... when you don't have 400 hours a week to spend doing things of this nature it makes a difference.

 

[Lucy of Kenton]

still think its mostly down to gold sellers as most cash comes from scripting even if the seller isnt doing it themselves.
remove scripting and duping and slowly very slowly the economy would settle down.
nobody to buy the money for rl cash means no point in them scripting and duping.

 

[Landicine]

still think its mostly down to gold sellers as most cash comes from scripting even if the seller isnt doing it themselves.
remove scripting and duping and slowly very slowly the economy would settle down.
nobody to buy the money for rl cash means no point in them scripting and duping.

Scripters who are gold sellers are a huge part of the problem, I will agree. I suspect there are those who script only for in-game benefit (100 million gold here, a dozen barbed kits there), so even if it were possible to get rid of gold sellers (many games have banned the practice only to see it still run rampant), there would still be people pumping scripty gold into the economy.

 

[CroakerTnT]

Gold sinks are kind of meaningless when everyone has many millions or billions of gold stored up. There are literally trillions of gold pieces sitting around unused that were accumulated largely by scriptors and dupers, then sanitized by cross sharding or big luna purchases.

Meaningful gold sinks would have to be accompanied by a pan-server gold wipe.

 

[Gildar]

3 reagents = 1 EV.
1 EV = 2 dead earth elementals
2 dead earth elementals = >400 gold
400 gold = 80 of the most expensive reagents

You could easily fight creatures that are richer with just as few reagents. In the grand scheme of things, reagent and tithing costs are pocket change.

One thing that needs to be done to fix gold is to reduce the flow coming in. In order for that to be fair to the newer and poorer players, something needs to be done about the existing gold in the system.

I wouldn't mind seeing all existing gold divided by 10, including the amount that drops from monsters (but keep NPC vendor prices the same... probably put a lock on all player vendors the day of this change so that they don't charge rent or anything until the owner comes by and re-activates them, so nobody gets overcharged and nobody sells items for less than they want to).
I also think a gambling system that gives out less money than it takes in would be good.
And a change to insurance in Felucca so that the person who dies loses more gold than the person who kills them gets.
Taxes hurt casual players much more than hardcore players, and should be avoided.

I'd love to see the developers put in a logging system to keep track of where gold is coming into the game the fastest, and additional reductions to the gold drops for those areas (gold that spawns and put into a player's backpack, not gold that spawns and is left to decay).

 

[burnttrees]

i have to admit these 2 statements are in fact correct

Lucy of Kenton

still think its mostly down to gold sellers as most cash comes from scripting even if the seller isnt doing it themselves.
remove scripting and duping and slowly very slowly the economy would settle down.
nobody to buy the money for rl cash means no point in them scripting and duping.

still think its mostly down to gold sellers as most cash comes from scripting even if the seller isnt doing it themselves.
remove scripting and duping and slowly very slowly the economy would settle down.
nobody to buy the money for rl cash means no point in them scripting and duping.

as no matter what is done ANY gold sink is going to get clogged with the amount of money these types of players bring in to the game

sadly i was thinking about it sometime yesterday the amount of gold needs to be figured based on how much is coming into the game if the flow into the game changes the value of it changes as well. If there is say 2 billion gold every 2 weeks coming into the game through the regular means IE. monsters bod's sales of stuff to npc's then there should be an equal amount leaving the game by desired purchases to npc's unfortunatley this is where we all see a different angle some gambling some just like the idea of what we want should be sold others tax's

but i must admit back to the 2 previous posts the gold farmers and scriptors are where the balance in the formula always changes if the ingame gold is normaly 2 bil income every 2 weeks they have a tendency to change it to 2 weeks 6-10bil

ill let mythic do there things and have fun trying to get that 10 mil for the swords scroll and the other 30-40 mil for the 120 scrolls for my other char

 

[Harb]

The issue really isn't the mass complaints received in a thread; it's the impact anything along these lines has on player morale/ enthusiasm. Whether it's a skill nerf, a change requiring what would certainly be viewed an inconvenience, or whatever - one of the major failings plaguing our game since day 1 has been a dev team propencity to often inadvertently miss that which is most important – player empowerment and incentive. It should be a golden rule; that what is given should not be taken away, at least beyond a certain point in time (I’d say the next unscheduled publish, i.e. if you’re templated 3 publishes out, past 4, live with it!). Empower and entice, don’t nerf and irritate.

Personally, I hate the idea; we’re well past the cut-off point on this one.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Gold sinks should be something that people want but dont need and has to be replaced. Pet or hair dye that cost 1 million gold but wears off in a week. a rideable polar bear that can't be bonded and dies in 1 week.

Bingo. Brilliance.

Shiney gold statue of yourself for 50 million. Something for the ego.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Gold sinks should be something that people want but dont need and has to be replaced. Pet or hair dye that cost 1 million gold but wears off in a week. a rideable polar bear that can't be bonded and dies in 1 week.

Bingo. Brilliance.

Shiney gold statue of yourself for 50 million. Something for the ego.

 

[concernedplayer]

Consumable high end runics for sale, for gold only.

Introduce 1 step above barbed runic, only can be purchased with gold.
Introduce 1 step above valorite runic hammer, can only be purchased with gold.
Introduce 1 step above fletching, saw, everything ... only purchased with gold.

Can't quest for them, can't find them on monsters. Only 1 way, gold.

Give them appropriate charges and ability to make quality of items that make them worth the gold spent on them. EA comes out with a guarantee that they aren't going to screw up the value of the kits to devalue them.

I bet trillions of gold would leave the economy within a few weeks.

 

[Gildar]

Consumable high end runics for sale, for gold only.

Introduce 1 step above barbed runic, only can be purchased with gold.
Introduce 1 step above valorite runic hammer, can only be purchased with gold.
Introduce 1 step above fletching, saw, everything ... only purchased with gold.

Can't quest for them, can't find them on monsters. Only 1 way, gold.

Give them appropriate charges and ability to make quality of items that make them worth the gold spent on them. EA comes out with a guarantee that they aren't going to screw up the value of the kits to devalue them.

I bet trillions of gold would leave the economy within a few weeks.

And all that gold would come pouring right back in once those with the gold got the suits they wanted... maybe even faster considering that those who don't have enough gold would be farming extra hard trying to get enough gold to get one (and/or get the gear crafted from them).

Give those runics a single charge, make the items crafted with them non-PoFable, give them a reduced success chance, make them relatively cheap (100k? 1 mil? not sure exactly) and make the items crafted with them have half the regular durability. Then people would buy them and continue to buy them for a very long time.

 

[Maplestone]

How do you nerf gold? Assorted stream of thoughts...

Finite resources: in such a world, we're playing Monopoly (which by the way is a remarkably good simulation of Marxist economic theory: everyone starts equal and through capitalism one person ends up with all the money)

High end buyables as gold sinks: why have the collections failed to work as a gold sink then? (if you up the power, you risk eventually making the game all about farming gold efficiently)

Reagents/consumables as buyables: I have piles of reagents and rarely pay dangerously. Why do I use 100% LRC suits? Because reagent resource management is tedious. Make spellbooks chargable with reagents (like tithing) and perhaps we have something. Even so, it hits low end over high end (same goes for raising the bar on insurance or other day-to-day expenses).

Taxes: there have been a couple of good long flamewars on the topic that I don't really want to revisit other than to say "I gave at the subscription"

Buyable runics: this translates gold inflation into power inflation.

Reality is that the UO economy is going, from time to time, suffer dupes, scripts and exploits and the gold that lingers on after the bannings is not uniformly distributed. You can't efficiently remove it all.

There is also a huge gulf between people who want to wander zenlike through the game world and those who min/max getting gold (farming or trading). Now this isn't bad - wealth accumulation is a valid playstyle.

This leaves inflation, limitation and decay.

The devs could simply allow inflation to happen. Just as we lament what a dollar used to buy in the real world, so it is in UO - just declare it natural, even encourage it.

The devs could limit gold - no more 1 million gp checks, no more billion gp vendors: reengineer the game to have a wealth limit just as we have skills limit. Any more gold and you've just attracted dragons. High-end trading would re-emerge in some form of barter. Messy, lots of grumpy players who wouldn't believe it could work, nightmare amount of recoding to make it even possible to cap gold.

By decay, I don't mean item decay (which would recirculate but not remove gold), but rather gold decay. Once a year, change the currency, force everyone to start over. Have a collection where people can cash in their old gold for decorative items that document their past success. If rares collectors decide to go to barter then so be it. Creates some chaos, but gives that fresh new world smell each spring. Either that or a land swarming with scripters and rares collectors wondering if gold bars marties would make a good barter currency.

I'm stumped.