Fighting Gold Inflation

3x bod filling
3x champing tamers
3x PKs earning plat for short counts


I'm sure I could go on, but tell me again about profit macros to get ahead. Yes, the comparison is shaky because I know he means things like scribe macros and other automated businesses, but it's all the same to me. Gold pumps that are driving up the ridiculous amounts of gold on the server with no where good for it to go. This is why we've seen the 'value' of masks and things multiply by a factor of about 10 in the last two years. It's far too easy to make gold here and far too hard to spend it on anything that actually balances out that influx.

A housing tax would get money out of the economy, but its not very fun. I think gold sinks that double as content is a better way to go.

I think that this has turned into a debate about a non issue. I think you could line up everyone with 10 mil plus for instance, and it would be a shorter line than most people would think. I am not saying it isn't easy to make gold. I can run out and make 100K an hour plus running two provo tamers but there is risk involved with that as well and even still making 1 mil would be 10 hours of playing there.

My point is just because there are some people with large amounts of gold does not mean we have an inflation problem. It simply means that this server has gotten older so of course the amount of people with large amounts of gold is going to increase. That isn't to say someone can earn a lot here in a short amount of time with a combination of luck, good timing, and TIME SPENT.

I've only been chiming in on this because I would like cool things to work towards to spend my gold on. Taxation is a silly idea and I am 100% against anything of the form. Those of us who are adults, and I am assuming most of us are, deal with tax enough in real life and I for one do not want to log into a game I play for leisure and see my gold taxed.

All those that think people with multiple houses should be taxed, I can almost guarantee that if some form of taxation was implemented, (and I think that there is no way that would happen anyway) people who have multiple houses currently would have some sort of grandfather status placed on their homes anyway. So those that hate the fact that they got here late and can't place in a spot they want, or can't place a keep etc. can just bear that in mind.

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Here here

Aside from that, sure you had 13 mil for a mask. You have also been here since the beginning or near beginning of the server.

Do I have over 10 mil sitting in my banks? Sure...but I have been here going on two years now.

I certainly see nothing bad with the environment for new players here either. Me personally, I think anyone starting a new server should get everything by themselves without hand outs. That said, there are plenty of new player guilds offering free housing for people to build their characters up and people that give away free stuff to noobs all the time. If people want to spend their time nurturing new players especially those that are new to UO entirely, then more power to you and thank you! The only negative for a new player as far as the perception of what other people have, is the negative any new player has to an established server. Of course there are people that have tons of stuff, tons of gold, and items that you can't ever obtain. That is because they have been around longer, PERIOD.

Bring on the premium cool shit to buy with gold gold sink!

I heard Xeg provides certain companion services for a small fee, safewords cost extra though

+25 Logic of Vanquishing

If your running for office you have my vote sir, the idea of house taxation make me want to vomit.

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This is dead on, after a few months of holding more then 5 houses 99% of people will downsize, after only 6 months here I am down to 4 myself, and do my best to actively use all of them.

I like to think I've owned a vast majority of some of the best spots in UOR and I'm down to an Lshape and a villa. I think the tax is a horrible idea and I agree refreshing more than a couple of houses is annoying

Quite the reaction there! Good to see.

Thank you for pointing me back to Chris post a few pages back, I had forgot I even read it, turns out I wasn't wrong about the general amount of houses though.

Now I’m not at all surprised to see such a divided bunch of opinions about the subject of taxes. It has happened before on the OSI servers, with about the same reaction then as now. Now I would argue this is only such a strong opinion because the system would have to be applied to an existing player base some years after the server has launched.

There are plenty of games that have you pay rent in some form or another for your houses and what not in game. These houses generally don’t risk all your stuff if you don’t pay the bills though, they generally are safe in some bank box until you reclaim them at a later date. So it’s a bit different than it would be here.

However, this does not mean the system is bad in itself, it might just mean it’s way too late to implement here. I still think it’s an interesting subject to discuss.

So while I think this system would have served the game well if it was there from the start, it’s fundamentally not a fun way to lose gold as you say. (My opinion is still that it would help loads)

But what are more fun ways to draw gold out of the economy? And I do mean ways that destroy the currency, not just pass it along to someone else in the form of an item. Just because it transitions from a pile of gold to a hued fish steak that won’t ever decay on it’s own, does not mean the gold is gone. It just changed form, as I’m sure you all understand.

I still think some kind of regularly held auction would be a good way to draw some money out, it would of course be preferable if the items sold had uses or something so it went away in the end. But even without it it serves to eat up some gold now and then.



I will quote the idea from the UO economy analysis:

Create auctions. Auctions can be used to determine prices very efficiently, especially on identical commodities like many of the items UO. Auctions have the added benefit of creating a fun social event. One possible implementation would be to create an NPC auctioneer who presides over an auction at a specific time and place. The players would announce their ask and bid prices by typing, for example: "offer 100 pearls for 5 each" or "bid 10 on 50 shirts". The NPC auctioneer would check the bank accounts of the bidder and only consider it valid if the character has enough to pay. When the transaction is complete, the auctioneer transfers the items and money directly between accounts. (An alternative implementation would be to allow players to buy "seats" in the exchange which serve the same function as the inter-account transfers.) If the auctions work well, the prices derived from auction can be used to set NPC shopkeeper prices automatically.



And don’t keep arguing we don’t have inflation here, because it’s unavoidable in all economies to some degree. It happens in the real world all the time. Our society would not work at all if it wasn’t for taxes and regulations to how the economy worked, so call it silly garbage all you like, it’s still a very necessary part of making it work. Now we might not notice it as clearly here yet, but it will come unless this is kept in check.

But as this is a game meant to be played for fun and enjoyment, we need to invent systems that has the same effect of removing currency, only it has to be masked as something fun you want to do.

Sadly the human brain prefers rewards and instant gratification before things it perceives as hard and dull, little does it matter how good the outcome is in the end.

I have 3 houses and will probably not get anymore, the most at once was probably 10. I have only lost one and it was a tower that collapsed. I was online next door in my large keep but just never went over to refresh it, as it was empty. Also, right before I moved out of my large keep someone stole a lot of stuff from me as I put all my belongings in the courtyard for moving to different homes before I did the redeed. Who was it? I don't know, but that was my gold sink. I don't need any more as I haven't farmed gold in over 2 years. My damn skeletal blood knights cutlass...

Lol dude there is nothing "necessary" about having taxes here. What is it anyway? You think people have too much gold or too many houses? Also anything discussed on OSI about this subject is an absolute moot point because OSI had THOUSANDS of active people per server. Here were do not have anywhere near that nor will we ever (although it would be awesome if we did have those kind of numbers).

Go figure that people want things that are fun when they are playing a game too.......quite the concept.

Anyway, i have taken this as a light conversation as none of this would be implemented anyway.

I think you might be missing the point here. This isn't specifically about taxing your gold pile in the bank by house tax. It’s about an economical cycle that has to be maintained, and this is one of the few online games that even attempted to make such a system work. The game literally is all about this, in every part of the early system design. Why do you think there is durability loss on your gear when you get hit? Why does items decay when you put it on the ground? Why can people loot you when you die? Why do you pay rent on your vendor proportionate to what you try to sell the items on it for? Why does repairing items cause the max durability to go down? Why are there uses on things like a pickaxe? So it will eventually break and you need to replace it, taking it's "value" with it out of the game.

These are all forms of ”taxation” on items and currency in the world, it is as i said ” masked as something fun you want to do.” Because it also rewards you. You kill a monster, it gives you gold, you give the game durability loss and resources spent in different forms in return. Just because you think something is fun does not mean it doesn’t serve another function as well, however boring you would find that function if you had it presented in another form.

If I give you one rock and you give me a different rock in return, a rock I can trade for a third slightly different rock, would you think that sounded like a fun thing? Probably not. But that’s basically what happens when you farm gold, you just don’t think about it as such.

I can promise you that the concept of house taxes would have been nothing you even questioned today if it was in the game from day one. It fits the rest of the game very well, what do you gain from a house? Lots of room to store things, you can show others you are a rich guy, you have fun decorating. What do you trade for it?? X gold a month. The current tax on it is that it decays if you don’t refresh it. This is also a form of check on the system just to make things go away eventually if left unused, it just wasn’t enough sadly.

Only reason I used houses as an example is because it has some clear flaws to point at.

The real issue as I have been trying to point out, is that if you insert 10000 of a currency into the world, and only remove 5000 at the same rate you put it in, you will have said currency piling up, this might take a short or a long while, depending on how the balance between the two is.

This is true whether we are 3 players or 3000, it just takes longer for the 3 players to cause any issues with inflation, as long as the cycle is not working properly.

Now I don’t know how flawed the cycle really is, I can only guess at it. But when you see 60 million gold added a month, and I would assume this is after all the drains are applied, that could indicate quite the growing problem.

Again, I don’t specifically advocate the use of a house tax, it would just have been a partial and fairly easy fix for a growing problem.

Actually, I think this is one example of something a new player would want that is impacted by inflation. Reagents, ingots, weapons, vendor contracts, etc., are all priced based on static vendor prices, but a good vendor location is one of the more essential early game items. Even if the prices on these places aren't inflated by much. I suppose free vendor spots at some prime houses (yours and Markos' for example) also help in this regard.

I don't think there MUST be positive systems. It's an interesting suggestion to think about though, what we can do to give incentive for less house ownership.

Well, let's get to it!




It's no surprise that most people with lots of houses and money do not want a house tax of any kind. All it does is harm them and benefit others.

First off, do you think house hoarding is bad for the server? Do you think house speculation is bad for the server? If your answer to both these is no then no amount of discussion about their existence or the effects of a house tax will change your mind. Move along or join Jack of Shadows's adorable trolling.

If you think house decay is a good mechanic, then you agree at least on principle there should be some sort of use restriction on housing. What we're arguing about, then, is the degree of those use restrictions. Let's move on to the arguments against:

1) People don't house hoard because it's already frustrating to refresh 15 houses.

Then they won't be affected very much by a housing tax, if at all if the tax only applies to multiple houses. It will affect people who house hoard.

2) Not many players own multiple forts/castles.

When there are only 85 of something total and even a small number of players own multiple ones, then it's still a problem. There aren't many players who own forts/castles at all. And there are many players who own multiple keeps. Just today, the same player bought 2 keeps for 2.5m and ~4m, or between 3x and 5x deed cost.

Housing speculation adds exactly nothing to the server.

3) Players who do house hoard will likely sell their houses for the right amount of money.

Housing speculation adds nothing to the server and it should be discouraged even if hoarders may sell their houses for the right pile of platinum. A housing tax would decrease this number and encourage sale.

4) House hoarding isn't a problem.

When you run around the map, there are many areas where there are almost completely empty or empty houses everywhere. Empty houses which aren't being used is a problem. That's not counting houses which just sit and are never used other than to be refreshed every 2 weeks by owners or friends. This is true even for larger houses.

Even around Yew Bank, ~a third of the houses are unused and empty. Vendor houses and Yew is also good example of gold inflation affecting the economy, where vendor houses around Yew are selling for 5x+ of their deed prices. Ones closer to the bank are obscenely expensive and pretty much completely out of reach for many players.

5) Some player who doesn't play very much other than to log on to keep his island may not be able to continue this way.

First, how valuable is this?

Second, if passed effort is weighted so heavily, then why not make the houses permanent and remove house decay completely?

Third, the same is true about other people who want to play a certain way but cannot because this player is taking up an island. If he values the use of the island enough, he'll pay the tax. If he doesn't, let someone else use it.

6) Items new players use are still cheap and haven't gone up in prices.

One, players don't stick around on a server because they can still buy iron ingots at 8gp because they're sold by vendors or pay deed for a log cabin and place it in a swamp. Players stick around to get to the end game things, e.g., keeps, forts, rares, etc. Making new players wait months to have to opportunity to buy a Keep/Fort/Castle, maybe if they have the cash to beat other bidders, isn't going to make them stay. They'll get to the point they think is reasonably obtainable and quit.

7) Not many players have ten mil in their banks.

So what? This can be true and gold inflation and house hoarding can still be a problem.

8) Even if a tax were to be implemented, vets would be grandfathered.

Well, if the proposal is to be gutted and not applied specifically to the people causing the problem it's meant to address then you're right there wouldn't be a point to it.

9) I don't like taxes.

I don't like my items taking durability penalties. I don't like having to spend a pile of plat to get blessed runebooks. So what? Things should have costs and a two week refresh by an owner or friend is apparently not enough.

10) Taxation is a negative system

It's a negative game system in the sense that it's a cost to do something else which is desired. I wouldn't call durability loss a "negative game system" nor would I call house decay a "negative game system." Both are conditions on a benefit that people want into order to accomplish another purpose in the game. In this one the dual purpose of fighting gold inflation and house hoarding.



Got em!

Conclusion

Given the number of vets and heavily involved members of the server against the idea, the likelihood of house taxation is pretty much zero. And furthermore, it seems to primarily address a problem which is mainly off-topic to this post. Any gold sink through taxation would likely be small in comparison to faucets which is why discussion is focusing on house hoarding instead of what it should be focusing on which is gold inflation.

So, in a way, ShadowJack's adorable trolling is true. It's a lot of effort to accomplish something controversial many do not want when there are available ideas without such push-back. Unfortunately, I think this negatively affects the long term health of the server, but whatevs. When/if it becomes a substantial problem, it can be addressed and hopefully not at a point which is too late.

I would really like a lottery/gambling sort of system where you spend Gold/Plat to get chips in order to play some simple games. The chips cannot be turned back into gold. The chips can be used to buy some neat items, hopefully ones which have uses and run out or are permanently used. This would pull gold from the economy and give people new content (with risks!) to spend their time. Maybe I'll make a post about a proposal, but to be honest, I don't think inflation is big problem on the server at the moment, but it does exist and can be seen in the sales of Keeps+ houses, vendor locations, and the rarer... rares.

Lotteries would be cool. Poker would be awesome with a rake being taken from each pot as the sink but I think exploitation is too much of an issue with poker tables.

Now come on, item durability and taxation are two completely different things and there is NO comparison and that is all I am going to say on that.


Again, I say line up everyone with 10 mil plus in gold/checks and that line is going to be shorter than what most of you may think.

Isn't this obvious to anyone who can math? 590/10=59. 59 is the maximum number with many absurd assumptions.

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They're not the same, but they are similar in some aspects. They're both "negative" game mechanics which impose a cost on players to receive a benefit. They're also things I don't like having to deal with. A game mechanic needs to address the glut of gold already sitting in banks. The players with lots of gold in banks are also players who tend to have large/massive and even multiple large/massive houses in good spots and a housing tax addresses both of these things.

What if there are zero players who have 10M in their banks? Now, what does that prove? It doesn't prove gold inflation isn't a problem. If anything, this criticism is attacking the idea that there is gold inflation, but even to that point it isn't dispositive. In fact, high levels of gold inflation means people are less likely to have piles of gold because their wealth would be bleeding away.

Gold inflation is present and obvious in a large number of items being sold on the server, .e.g., vendor locations, prime housing spots, larger houses, and rares. The inflation in costs of some of these items is getting to the point where newer-ish players (players who have not been here for years) are unable to even think about getting those items. I think it's a problem when "end game" is so end game that it's unobtainable. I'm not claiming that this is the current state of the server, just saying that it is at least somewhat of a problem now and will worsen as time goes on.

Some people are able to have real discussions and some aren't. My post is not accusatory nor is it in bad faith or attempting to insult anyone. Writing that people are typically against things which will negatively affect them or that most are, in fact, against those things is simply not an ad-hominem nor is it an ad hominem fallacy. It's neither a personal attack to point out your interests nor is it a claim that your position is wrong because you're acting in your own interests. I didn't respond only for your benefit, so I'm not bothered that you didn't read my post. Your position and points are the only things which suffer because you didn't and don't respond.