No one would stand for that but it addresses the problem. In real life most of us work a set amount of time for a certain amount of pay and that's all there is to it. We can't just go on a 2 minute horseback ride or teleport around to whatever job we want to do that day and earn as much money as we want based upon our time, effort, and efficiency. Near - unlimited income and wealth = a mess.
I don't know why anyone thinks UO is anything like a normal economy. It isn't. The entire thing is artificial and works closer to backwards of than similar to a normal economy. I the real world we exchange products and services for the money we earn. Our job is to make stuff. In UO, your job, for most people anyway, is to bring gold into existence. Not stuff. This gold is then used to trade products that staff wills into existence. You then have to hope that staff can somehow balance the gold hose with the number of items in the game and the relatively unstable population (or at least well enough that it doesn't all completely fall apart). Ultimately, if you think 3rd anniversary sandals "were too expensive," then the problem wasn't too much gold, but rather not enough sandals. If there are 10 sandals, then only the 10 most eligible buyers are going to get sandals. This will be the case whether there is 10 gold on the shard or 10 trillion gold. As the game ages and the money supply grows, the incentive shifts from farming - what is viewed as the normal means of earning gold - to satisfying the desires of those who already have money and close substitutes. Also, vendor items get relatively less expensive since you get more gold for actual stuff (up until the point those resources become supply constrained, but I think staff would decrease the vendor respawn timer if that happened.) In fact, I propose that the less valuable gold is, the closer we get to having a real economy. You get more money for providing actual stuff (wands, mares, marble ingots, etc) and less money for, well, creating money. I still think the real problem with inflation is that it could potentially pull people out of dungeons and thereby creative a problem of perception for people who associate going to dungeons to make money - and all of the things that come with that - with UO. TL;DR - Maybe dungeons should have spawned, instead of gold, resources that are used to create high end items with varying enormous amounts of effort.
The sandals and masks were expected to be expensive, however these rares have been hitting higher prices as of late due to some 1%er's bidding against each other to own said shiny piece of pixel. The anniversary clothes however, when there were even more bags/items distributed due to the higher playerbase from this time last year or the year before with 1st anniversary, it just didn't make sense when last year on 2nd anni, items were trading hands at 50k per tops compared to the hundreds of thousands price tags this year with about 33% more items out there. *shrugs* I wouldn't be against seeing a lot more sandals and masks being dropped on these events to battle the 8 figure price tags. Or sandals for all, how can they be millions if everyone has a pair?
No actually the real economy functions pretty much like the uo money out of thin air constanly flooding the economy, the only difference is instead of buying an exceptional sword crafted by a gm blacksmith we are buying cheap chinese shit made by characters that started with the automatic blacksmith template.
Have a means to take gold out of circulation. If it never leaves the loop then the problem continues. Unless the %2 become hoarders of gold piles and stop trammeling it up and we know that's not going to happen. Critical mass tax or option to buy holiday/plat coins with gold via npc? Maybe we just need to get used to big ticket high priced auctions. Amazes me how many hours people put into this game farming and accumulating gold. @Eaos that's transference of wealth. I remember watching a cartoon in a class of little boats full of "items" coming to America while boats of dollars floated back to China, I doubt they'd show that cartoon nowadays.
See: Of course the sandals would go to the richest. The difference would be that the amount spent wouldn't be 100x more than the average player expects to earn in their tenure here on UOR. I think he was referring to the fact that we print money that has absolutely nothing backing it and hasn't for some time.
At least on this shard there is a hedge against inflation, sink your money into plat! Gold is a fiat currency! Platinum Standard! Audit the UOR Fed!
You're missing the point. I think a significant part of the problem is the method in which the items are introduced to the world.
Anniversary items by annual bags and then events on top of that, that works. Halloween has the events, xmas does too.....kill stuff, get stuff. Random drops when farming for statues, timers on rares (could do with a lil more randomness on some to throw off those that have them down to a T). Holiday vendors work well too.
Is inflation actually a problem at all? Who does it affect here? People come and people go, bank accounts sit dormant, stuff decays, money is sunk into properties and other things and removed from circulation entirely. Platinum seems to have risen slightly but generally people are buying it anywhere from 6k on the low end to 7.2 or so on the high end. Most of the problems that plagued osi inflation such as the early mass duping schemes are already fixed and Telemon seems to keep things running smoothly and prevents stuff like that. If you remember playing on osi when a small house in the sticks would cost a few mil because there were absolutely no spots left, it's hard to be upset about the supposed inflation here.
