What if you could turn gold into something else?

[Sarphus]

Gold is pretty heavily devalued at this point in UO and it becomes more devalued every day. Gold is also pretty heavy, so after hunting for a while players can't carry any more gold. This creates a scenario where people can't really dungeon crawl because they will fill up with gold before they get anywhere near the bottom of a dungeon. Instead, a lot of players don't even bother looting gold. My goal is to design a system that gives players a reason to loot the gold off monsters while throwing a bone to crafting skills and not inflating UO gold further.

The idea is to allow players to create "coin-grade gold ingots" using gold coins. While field fighting, a player could drop gold on a fire beetle to fill the beetle up with molten gold (it would hold about 100k worth). Then the hunter could take the fire beetle to a skilled miner to have the miner extract the ingots, which would drop the ingots in the pet owner's inventory.

I was thinking 1000 gold would turn into a single ingot. The ingots could then be crafted into things using tinkering and blacksmithing.


I didn't think a lot about the kinds of mods you would get out of gold ingots, but there are several directions the devs could go on this.

One direction would be to make the coin grade gold ingots enhance luck by more than current gold ingots.

Another direction would be to have the coin grade gold ingots add mods that are desireable on metal armor (such as mage armor)

Another direction would be to make the coin grade ingots enhance as many resists as valorite, but different resists.

This idea could be expanded with future expansions too. For example, some tinkering assemblies could require a component that's made from gold ingots. Or maybe there could be a bow that requires a coin grade gold component to be crafted.

What do you guys think?

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Gold is pretty heavily devalued at this point in UO and it becomes more devalued every day. Gold is also pretty heavy, so after hunting for a while players can't carry any more gold. This creates a scenario where people can't really dungeon crawl because they will fill up with gold before they get anywhere near the bottom of a dungeon. Instead, a lot of players don't even bother looting gold. My goal is to design a system that gives players a reason to loot the gold off monsters while throwing a bone to crafting skills and not inflating UO gold further.

The idea is to allow players to create "coin-grade gold ingots" using gold coins. While field fighting, a player could drop gold on a fire beetle to fill the beetle up with molten gold (it would hold about 100k worth). Then the hunter could take the fire beetle to a skilled miner to have the miner extract the ingots, which would drop the ingots in the pet owner's inventory.

I was thinking 1000 gold would turn into a single ingot. The ingots could then be crafted into things using tinkering and blacksmithing.


I didn't think a lot about the kinds of mods you would get out of gold ingots, but there are several directions the devs could go on this.

One direction would be to make the coin grade gold ingots enhance luck by more than current gold ingots.

Another direction would be to have the coin grade gold ingots add mods that are desireable on metal armor (such as mage armor)

Another direction would be to make the coin grade ingots enhance as many resists as valorite, but different resists.

This idea could be expanded with future expansions too. For example, some tinkering assemblies could require a component that's made from gold ingots. Or maybe there could be a bow that requires a coin grade gold component to be crafted.

What do you guys think?

The idea is interesting minus the smelting on a fire beetle.
If a smith wants smelt the gold down thats cool and maybe implement the component idea.

To me hunting is hunting.
Collecting loot and treasure is based on weight.
I dont want the game to further fall to, you get everything you touch.


The other problem is gold isnt devalued.
If it were truely devalued then the item prices wouldnt really change. They would (players) want something else for items besides gold.

Item prices are inflated because there is excess gold. If people can cheat to 1 billion gold. Then the economy is blown. Luckily item values increase too. So it is sort of a wash.

Plus who really hunts for gold now a days. You could have made MILLIONS getting 25k tickets.

The canges for BOS and all that are great. But only as great as the DEVS add in gold sinks and close dupes.


I think taking gold and smelting it into a resource would be a great gold sink. The bars, like you said could have value on modification.

Id add mixings ores with it give you unique properties, ones we have to discover.

Or let gold be smelted down combined with ores for armor and then you can inlay gems on it. Sure the suits would cost a lot but you could make some cool guild customize ceromony armor.

A perfect gold sink.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

I have posted this before:

I think it would be better to remove 90% of the gold from the game overnight, and then cap the total amount of gold on a shard. (Maybe even the total amount of gold per account should be capped, too.) That would keep gold in circulation, and it would make people trade items instead of selling them for an insane amount of gold through their Luna vendors.

The circulation of gold and items are essential for a working economy. Currently, the economy in UO isn't really working. This has several reasons. One of them is the hoarding of gold and the hoarding of items. It works the same way in real-life economy. The government doesn't produce an endless amount of money, otherwise we would have the same massive inflation we have in UO. The total amount of money is LIMITED. That's the secret of balancing an economy.

This would mean, for example, that when players would "hoard" gold, monsters hardly yield gold as loot anymore. Only few gold in circulation -> Prices drop, or people trade instead of buy. Economy regulates itself!
When a player loses insurance gold because of dying, this amount would go back into the "monster loot gold pool". There have to be gold sinks, like insurance, that circulate the gold from the hands of players back to the monsters. Like items bought for gold being lost and destroyed.

 

[Lord Kynd]

I have posted this before:

I think it would be better to remove 90% of the gold from the game overnight, and then cap the total amount of gold on a shard. (Maybe even the total amount of gold per account should be capped, too.) That would keep gold in circulation, and it would make people trade items instead of selling them for an insane amount of gold through their Luna vendors.

The circulation of gold and items are essential for a working economy. Currently, the economy in UO isn't really working. This has several reasons. One of them is the hoarding of gold and the hoarding of items. It works the same way in real-life economy. The government doesn't produce an endless amount of money, otherwise we would have the same massive inflation we have in UO. The total amount of money is LIMITED. That's the secret of balancing an economy.

This would mean, for example, that when players would "hoard" gold, monsters hardly yield gold as loot anymore. Only few gold in circulation -> Prices drop, or people trade instead of buy. Economy regulates itself!
When a player loses insurance gold because of dying, this amount would go back into the "monster loot gold pool". There have to be gold sinks, like insurance, that circulate the gold from the hands of players back to the monsters. Like items bought for gold being lost and destroyed.

nope not unlimited, but they sure do like to work on 'credit' don't they ? looks at defict.. whew .

the problem you appear to be running into is that UO doesn't have a end game like the rest of games do. in otherwords... you can't beat this game. it doesn't end.

 

[hawkeye_pike]

nope not unlimited, but they sure do like to work on 'credit' don't they ? looks at defict.. whew .

the problem you appear to be running into is that UO doesn't have a end game like the rest of games do. in otherwords... you can't beat this game. it doesn't end.

What are you saying? That limiting the amount of gold would "end the game"? That would mean that people are only playing in order to acquire more and more gold. Which (to my opinion) is absolutely not the case.

 

[Sarphus]

I still like being able to smelt gold that is looted as you hunt, because I don't think there's sufficient reward for most monsters in UO, which is why people don't bother to kill them. So we disagree on that point... I wanted to quote this other point you made, because I think it's a great idea.

I think taking gold and smelting it into a resource would be a great gold sink. The bars, like you said could have value on modification.

Id add mixings ores with it give you unique properties, ones we have to discover.

Or let gold be smelted down combined with ores for armor and then you can inlay gems on it. Sure the suits would cost a lot but you could make some cool guild customize ceromony armor.

I could easily see metal combinations using gold and silver coins on top of existing ingots. This system could be introduced as an extension of the alchemy skill or added as a new skill called something like metallurgy.

I also like how you describe the system as having a research element to it where people need to experiment to find secret alloy recipes. It would be so cool if the devs put in a research based system like this along with secret combinations to form more powerful alloys.

A metallurgist could try a combination of various metals and then perform metallurgy on the alloy to determine the properties of it.

I also like the idea of adding decorative and enchnated gems to items to make them more effective. I'm not sure how feasable a system like that would be, though. New art would probaly need to be added for each item that can have gems attached to it, which may not be plausable with current art devs available.

 

[yanaki2]

my idea on possible gold sinks/changes that might help :

1. quintuple item insurance
2. no longer return gold when deeding a house.
3. quintuple the cost of redesigning your house.
4. allow certain options for castles/keeps such as teleporters. for a hefty price. say 1 mil+ per teleporter.
5. reduce the gold on monsters to 1/10th of what it is now.
6. half the purchase price venders pay for items.
7. place venders that sell uber loot at hugely inflated prices.
example, have ea have a merchant that is in say brit provisioners shop. he sells certain rare items for a very inflated cost.
8. have npcs that sell harder to get consumables like shadow ingots or yew wood, but make it very inflated in cost, say 30gp per board, 50gp per ingot ect... the inflated cost will mean you can get a ton of it but it will cost you a fortune, and the people who get it through normal methods can still ask a fair price for them.

just a few ideas. maybe also have a event , a public execution of any dupers caught. sell tickets, and send screenshots to the duper, and mail them a nice award they can place on there wall stating they were banned for being a duper. hey umbra would be a great place to put up stocks with npcs, named after banned charicters awaiting execution. just a though.

 

[Desolation87]

just a few ideas. maybe also have a event , a public execution of any dupers caught. sell tickets, and send screenshots to the duper, and mail them a nice award they can place on there wall stating they were banned for being a duper. hey umbra would be a great place to put up stocks with npcs, named after banned charicters awaiting execution. just a though.

Nice! I'd pay 50gp for a rotten tomato to be thrown!

 

[Thrand Graywolf]

Gold is also pretty heavy, so after hunting for a while players can't carry any more gold. This creates a scenario where people can't really dungeon crawl because they will fill up with gold before they get anywhere near the bottom of a dungeon.

Bag of Sending.

Used to, we could do a dungeon top to bottom as a group and collect enough gold to cover insurance and still make it worthwhile.

Now...forget it. We're tied to areas that are either near banks or can have gates to banks opened for quick deposits. That removes a fair chunk of the best dungeons from the list of destinations.

 

[azmodanb]

It would be nice just to see gold ingots appear when your pile of gold hits 60K, so you dont have to look though your bank for piles less then that. I hate having to find a pile that is 54897 out of stacks of 60K ... but yeah I like the idea... just another thing that could happen.. maybe...

 

[Thrand Graywolf]

It would be nice just to see gold ingots appear when your pile of gold hits 60K

Use checks?

 

[Sarphus]

Use checks?

Actually, you'd use commodity deeds because the gold ingots would be ingots instead of currency.

I don't know that anyone would turn a lot of their existing gold into gold ingots, though. You can store 1 mil gold on a check, but you can only convert 600k gold into a commodity deed.

This idea is intended to create an incentive to hunt in areas that are inconvenient to get to (giving you the ability to take loot from them) as well as serve as a gold sink.