What would be the downside to trading something like that? If 10m is removed from the game to get a single one it's already a win.
10 million of an item turning into a single one of another item reduces the massive glut of gold on the shard. If it cannot be turned back into gold, the gold is sunken from the economy and no longer part of the excessive saturation. I'm no econ major but I know that inability to turn it back into gold is a benefit. If people are accepting 10m gold VALUE things as payment for their items, it's not adding anything to the economy that has already been removed. Money being created endlessly without significant amounts leaving the system, are what cause inflation in UO.
I don't understand how the item moving from one hand to another is any different than the same item not ever moving. It can't be used to make more gold and literally nothing changes outside of the location of that item. Can you clarify what you mean?
I dislike the idea of character bound items, that sounds like something new EA UO would have, I don't think we should go in that direction.
Love ya Blaise but I'm with Gideon on this point. If you create a new super-expensive and desirable item that can be sold/traded between players, you'll only have re-created the same situation that prompted the creation of this thread in the first place. It's trying to answer the problem by doing more of the same. Shrouds that some players could afford and use as commodities while other players sat around getting mad about the fact that they couldn't afford them would make some players happy but it wouldn't help this issue. The actual gold removed isn't relevant in this scenario. In order for a gold sink to effectively combat inflation, it has to remove the value of the currency used on it completely. The only value in the sink could be to the player who spent on it. Whether that meant account-bound items or some other intangible bene, the end result is the player's wealth would be diminished and only that would combat inflation.
The only way to reduce inflation is "removing" gold or valuable items from the economy. Substituting gold for something else won't help, as Gideon suggested. Easiest (no code change) thing for players to do is to dump 1m checks into trash can. Obviously this won't happen, so what's next? Therefore what could be done is for every property a character owns tax could be taken.per tile square. An "X" amount per tile, per property. So a keep would pay X * 24 * 24 for example. X can be determined by either Telamon or by players in a poll.
Those are all good gold sink ideas, Gideon. I'd have thought that inflation affected the poor more than the rich. After all, the rich just keep paying more and more and bidding ever higher - they're the primary cause of inflation on high-end goods and they don't much care because they've got it to spend, right? Is this topic really mainly driven by wealthy vets getting mad that they can't get one of everything? I thought it was usually the grumbling po' folk who feel priced out from day one. If not specifically in this case, then in general. Either way though, good gold sinks could only improve things all around for everyone involved.
The subject of inflation has always come up on every server I've played on since 1999. That more than indicates that it's a real issue. Maybe it is only an issue because of jealousy/laziness/insert a negative trait here but it's still an issue, well-founded or not. I've never seen a server address it properly, so I'm sure no one has taken a measure of inflation's real impact. I guess if you tell players "Get good or quit whining" and they just keep on keeping on then it might not need addressing.
There is no 'cost of living' in the game. I think property taxes are the only thing that could really hit a core chunk of gold and contribute to a larger picture. People holding more homes than makes any reasonable sense in a community this size for a game of this scale. Property taxes would make the most sense, equate to a cost of living 'large', by only applying to homes over 10x10 or potentially even variable based on range to guard zone/bank? It is unpopular and mostly for those holding large properties they don't even use or really have a sensible use for outside of hoarding or 'holding for friends'. I often feel like a hoarder for the A^T Guild Hall but also do try to put it to good use as well as leave it open as a staple of the shard along with the library to the south. I'd gladly pay a nominal fee for keeping that much space occupied, along with my keep and tower. For the sake of businessmen, the first 30 days of ownership after placement could be tax free. That said, t's not likely to ever happen due to the nature and scope of such a change.
Then maybe it's not the right gold sinks Or maybe it is, if other people would buy them. The value of your wealth that there can be more of will fall. So gold, plat, etc. But for server rares and such, their value increases with inflation. And most of the time it seems, faster than inflation, as players leave and wealth becomes more concentrated among few buyers of such things. As long as IDOCs drop items, and players who quit can give their stuff to other people, inflation will never be stopped. The fact is, the wealth on the shard right now is say 60% due to the time and effort of players currently playing, and 40% due to the time and effort of players no longer playing. So unless player growth is maintained, the wealth per active player is always going to go up.
Good post, Gideon. I'll address your comments in reverse order. I was seriously tempted to get into a huge discussion about real world economy but it's enough to say that you went way overboard there. The only way inflation affects UO servers is in the outrageous prices that high end/rare iterms start fetching. It could be more complex than that with some serious effort, if there were little to no player attrition and everyone understood cost-benefit analysis for starters, but it just isn't. It doesn't matter if too much wealth is in the hands of a veteran or an elite player or a new guy who scored some super lucky drop and got overpaid for it. Any of them can and will drive up prices on a limited number of items just because they can, to no one's benefit. Well, you pointed out a possible way that any of the aforementioned gold sinks could fail. I'll go a step further and say that, given enough time, they absolutely would fail. That's the case with any system. People destroy/corrupt/beat all systems, then we call them "broken" and replace them with other systems that will also be corrupted or beaten. Any solution is only a temp fix but that doesn't mean that the venture isn't worthwhile, or that this is guaranteed to fail right from the word go.
