What is currently eating up your gold? Does it feel like we need more things to buy on this server? In some of my testing, it feels like players hit a wall where farming is no longer needed. You can easily just trade holiday items, plat or bods to fulfill your gold needs. This is not a call to action or need for immediate change.. I am just gathering data, for some thought experiments :shock: I can't get the graph function to work: http://www.uorenaissance.com/?page=m_worldeconomy Currently eating up my gold or sinks I can think of: Horses - I never/rarely tame my own. Reagents - Once your characters are completed, this goes down considerably Cloth - Some players sell it, but you may have to buy bolts to get started or for bandages Raw Mats - I do not, but one could buy leather/cloth/ingots and get vendors up to 999 Crafting Tools - Just not worth making these with Tinkering, so I buy them Barber Shop: Name change, Restyling, Neon Dye House Deeds - When they fall, the money is lost I don't consider buying something from another player a sink. Based on the above data, a person could hit 'infinite' gold relatively fast. Outside of character training or holding money in the form of a house (can be redeemed for full at any time I want to pull my fort), there isn't much of a need for farming. In addition, most of the costs I listed above are subtracted from the gold you make by doing something. For instance, I may buy 40 tailoring kits to work on BODs, but that isn't a true gold sink because I create much more gold than I spend. Let's hear your story. What do you spend gold on? How much of your expenditures go away forever? Telamon's Note: After this was posted I fixed the graphs. Here is the related link he was referring to. Gold History on UOR
I like the idea of houses working similarly to house addons. Meaning, when you place a house, you have some time to re-deed and re-place it, but after that placers-remorse period elapses, the house would be "redeeded" as it's value in the form of a check, minus some small percent. I think this would provide a moderate gold sink, and also help to stimulate the housing economy by not encouraging people to simply place homes all over the place unless they are serious about living in it, or re-sale. I know a lot of people wouldn't like this type of change, and it doesn't effect me really so I don't really care one way or the other, but for what it's worth, I thought I would toss the idea out there.
At this point in my UO 'career', basically none of my money goes back into the system. It's nearly all burnt up in transactions with other players. At the same time, I don't really take money from the system either. The overwhelming majority of my income comes from selling things to other players. If there is a need to get gold out of circulation, I think the easiest way is to make a rares shop for gold. Make some exclusive rares that are only obtainable via gold and watch people line up with their millions. UO players love pretty pixels, that is a proven fact. I'm on board with snap dragon's suggestion too.
The rare shop is interesting.. but would possibly require a revamping of the plat system.. Just to make sure both things were drastically different. The house deed idea is very intriguing. There are currently FAR too many empty houses cluttering up the world.
I really was a fan of the property tax ideas in another thread, regarding housing. Something of that nature that required cost of upkeep, based on the size of the home. Perhaps leave small homes exempt.
I really like the idea of a "rares shop", but at this point I am not sure what kind of rares would be sold. With all the various crafting additions (stone crafting, etc.) and the plat system, and the scavenger hunts I am not sure what is left . Is there a limited number of legit items which can be "brought into game"? I remember the black dye tub was brought in illegally at first, be sides everyone showing up wearing black clothing on that fateful day in UO history, what sort of glitches, etc. would the staff have to cope with to "create" totally new things? And do any of them really have the time to attempt it? If the staff does decide to do something like a 'rares shop" I think any item would be character specific, meaning only that character can place, remove it. It could never be placed on a player vendor, and if for some reason the player decides to delete that character the item would puff. Another idea I had, again no idea how staff could/can do it, is having special quest which cost a certain amount of gold to enter. These quests would be by gold scale of the player, some would be super cheap, so newer players could enjoy, some medium etc. Instead of receiving any kind of money as a reward for completing the quest, the player would receive some sort of plaque which could be placed on house... or in bank in the case of newer player not owning a house yet. The gold scale would be based on the players 3 accounts and the amount of accumulated gold those accounts have. Just thought I'd toss these ideas into mix. Thanks again staff for all the hard work you folks do. Westra
On rares, you can always just hue something different. Instant rare! I've never looked into RunUO, but how hard is it to create custom assets? If it's not a complete pain in the arse, there could even be contests for community-driven art that culd be turned into rares.
I am sure there are tons of regularly occurring items that could be turned in to deeds.. I really want a wench. You could even allow people to place those showcases in town shops. That would make for some really cool vendor housing. I think its pretty safe to say that farming becomes unnecessary pretty quickly.. I know some players do champs or are after certain leader board titles. With a small server population, I think we need to work hard to repopulate the dungeons. What if there were dungeon specific holiday coins? There could be a special vendor/quest line at the beginning of deceit and offer undead style rewards. Change it up based on the location. I would LOVE a reason to clear Covetous or an Orc Cave! The best part is, I think that this could be done in an era accurate type of way. Go in to the cave and look for a rare drop, come back and turn it in like a bounty head.
Snap Dragon's idea is interesting, because it's a one-time fee, payable upon selling the deed. That to me is much more palatable than ongoing expenses. On the down side though, I don't see it raising very much money. Don't these things solve themselves though? As long as there is a reasonable time investment needed to earn gold, it solves itself. If vets are just living off of the interest on their platinum and BODs, they'll go down in price as the market gets more and more of them from new vets in addition to the old vets. Paradigm, I agree that the dungeons are pretty sparse, but the system is set up well for them to be active. For example, having the boss spawns and platinum dropping on most monsters is a nice benefit. The problem is, there's so much other profitable stuff to do on the shard, with less risk and interaction. Miner-bots, BOD churning, instanced Pirate dungeons, etc. It's not, IMO, that the dungeons don't have enough to offer. It's that too many other aspects of the game are new, interesting, and essentially just as rewarding.
There's a reason to kill everything in the game. They all have a chance to drop platinum. The perpetual 'holiday' coin of the realm.
This argument is always made, but I'm not sure it's true. Whether vanquishing halberds sell for 10k or 10 mil, the both drop at the same rate off of liches. Likewise with platinum, which doesn't even require liches to be farmed. Find one and you're immediately in the inflated system. The items necessary to play UO will stay at fixed prices from NPC vendors. For everything else, the market will take care of things. The practical limitation on inflation is always that we each only have a few hours in a day to earn gold. So as long as we're clamping down on the methods of gaining gold that don't require actively playing the game - macroing, duping, etc. - then inflation won't be a problem at all. I understand the concern in the OP, but if the market gets flooded with BODs and platinum from years and years of vets just logging in to grab them, then they'll obviously go down in value. I mean, BOD rewards and platinum rewards are only getting more and more common as each day passes. The only gold sink we *should* have but don't, is vendor charging fees on BODs. This, too, would take gold out of the economy, and IMO would actually allow for the freer movement of deeds and the quicker obtaining of rewards (further reducing the value of these alleged vets who just log in to claim the BODs and live of those riches). I have no idea what these are. Is there a post somewhere?
There are tons of useless and empty buildings within cities, why not convert some of those to player housing or for player vendor use at exuberant prices? I'm sure lots of people would like to live in Britain or have a vendor right in a popular city.
I agree there should be some sort of gold sinks in game, but again, it's a slippery slope. I like the idea of property tax for 2nd homes and above. If you are inactive, there is no need to have more than one house. If you're active, the property tax should not worry you because it will be absorbed by your day to day income. You can even make it 1 house exempt by account, and that still would be fair. This would also help keep the number of houses per player down, thus helping to keep housing spots available for new players. I think having checks basically negates the need to be able to sell deeds for full value, so this is a viable option to curb indiscriminate house placement, and (1) promotes a more realistic market and curbs housing speculation, while (2) allowing for more "open land" for the influx of new players. Having a rare shop is tricky. In principle it sounds like a good idea. However, what rares would you include and how much would the cost? Rares value is assigned by players. Whatever one person is willing to sell for, and the other to pay will be the rare's value, so it really shouldn't happen that admins set prices for rares. Also, if the rares are part of the spawning rares list, it would kill the business of rare hunting. If they're from the BoD reward matrix, it would hurt (likely not kill) the BoD market. If you do it for server birth/uniques, well then they will no longer be THAT rare. However, not all is lost. I have talked to Telamon in the past, and there is one instance where rares could be slowly be added back into the word without creating “new†items. If a server birth or “unique†has decayed or is linked to an account that has been inactive for 6 months, that item could potentially be “reintroduced†to the world. Telamon was not specific on the way they might be reintroduced , and likely was not sure. I think it would be a good idea to add these items in an ingame “auction†event. Sure, this would mean the richest will get the coolest items, but it also means it would get be the best chance to remove the most gold from the server. I fear the day we start changing the hue on rares. Many people have asked me what I think of UOR so far, and my answer has always been the same: “It is awesome in every aspect, but could do with a little less “trammel†deco.†I do believe bright red furs (to use only one example) are a bit too much for my own personal taste. Would I display one if I had it? Hell yes!! But if you ask me if I'd rather own one than have them all absent from the server from day one (I'm not advocating they be deleted now), I'd vote for never having introduced them in the first place. I do think Westra's idea of pay-per-quest is AWESOME!!! In a sense I already do this. I buy a ton of aMiBs to go do with my guildmates. Do I come out of it with equal value to what I paid for the aMiB? Not every time (more like never). However, right now by buying from other players, I'm only transferring money inside the same economy, nothing is taken out. I understand many people would say it's nuts to spend money to go kill things, when you could go farm arctic ogre lords all day and become a millionaire. However, PvM rankings and such might be an incentive for people to go do these “questsâ€. Have the reward be more a recognition than an ingame item that could hold value.
Another reason a Rare Shop is a great idea is the amount of coding needed. We don't really know what Tel has up his sleeve for next year. Thanks for the responses guys. I agree with a lot of what is being said here. Dalavar, I agree with what you are saying about there being more profitable ways to make money once you hit the end game. My point is that players can hit this stage in record time. Uninteractive money making seems pretty anti Felucca to me. To borrow from the blessed runebook thread.. when you combine platinum, bod collection in guard zones, blessed runebooks to courtyards.. well, that's a different thread. When I think about history perfected, I think about a Saturday night where the dungeons are filled and would be do-gooders turn murderers because they are tired of someone camping their lich spawn. Instead of a Saturday night, where everyone argues in IRC while their tailor finishes that weeks bod collection. The tailor then recalls to an uninhabited corner of Ice and then to Delucca for a turn in thats far from over populated. This is why I brought up the potential for a dungeon coin system. Ya, I get that Plat does drop but who is actually out there farming Ettins for a Plat drop? Maybe the Gold Sink isn't the issue or the economy will auto correct. I just want people out there interacting. Since we deal with a low population compared to Chessy 1999, we have to improvise and incentivize. Maybe this is just the state of modern private shards. I haven't played many of them. I just remember back to my days on Chessy OSI and wonder how to get back there.
I would love to see the arena duelling system getting worked on, as well as Capture the Flag or games that come in the future, have a private pay-to-play option. Shard hosted and publicized events are good but I would pay tons of gold to get into the CTF arena with just my guildmates and friends for practice or fun play. As for other duels, it would be great, especially if the kills in said arena were ranked, if it cost a nominal fee to actually fight, wherein, %50 of the proceeds go to the winner, the other half gets deleted.
Agreed that this is a different issue. This is one of my main qualms about the shard too... even for "active" players like myself, who have limited time to play each day (less than one hour, usually), my time is in many ways best spent doing non-interactive stuff. Exploring pirate instances, BODs, etc. Pirul, pay-per-quest is awesome, especially if those quests give titles. Right now, UO assigns the "Lord" title, but I think it would be awesome to have a pay-per-quest system that gives you the "Duke" title, and others in that vein, with similar decaying rules like the Lord title with fame (decreases over time, decreases if you die, or in this case perhaps if you don't do a Duke quest for a given amount of time). Lord --> Duke --> Prince --> King, etc., and you can move up and down the ranks, etc. Actually, I think this is really exciting. I'm personally not into titles, but am into competition. So if I had a chance to be one of the one or two "King" characters on the shard, I'd pay a boatload for some instanced quests to earn that. Blaise, also love the pay-per-tournament thing. Frankly, that should be standard IMO. Works darn well for Poker. Although I'd advocate for a larger entrance fee, a smaller rake, and a flatter payout, to encourage participation. I'd drop 200k on an entrance fee with 10% rake, if the top 50% or 25% of players got at least that back, but if it's all going to the winner, I'd not spend 20k on an entrance fee because I have no chance at the moment.
A rare shop would be great and easily the greatest gold sink uhhhh...ever? But yes, it would be interesting to see what items are placed into said shop. I think removing CBD's from the tailor reward matrix and simply having them buyable for 100k would be an easy start. This is a price that has been consistent on the shard since they were first introduced and something that (most) people are always going to be after...whether it's a pair of sandals for each toon, a new mask, rare hue cape or whatever. The pay-for-a-quest idea sounds great (although Jupiter should get a share of those profits for all time since he is the ORIGINAL quest master ) Also - Poker. I cant wait to see this implemented. I know a few people will bitch about this idea but...a few mats I have seen desired by people on a regular basis that no one EVER has for sale - Leather (Spined, Horned, Barbed) and BONES - if we had a vendor that sold these on a regular basis I know MANY BoD addicts who would GLADLY throw their money at it rather than go farm it up.
