Curse

freekedoutfish · Aug 22, 2006, 11:40 AM // 11:40

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

There is a problem with the economy in the game as it is now.
That problem is that gold is created at a much greater rate than it is destroyed at.
This causes inflation, a decrease in the value of gold.

The way to counter inflation is to even out the creation/destruction ratio of gold.
One very good way of increasing the gold destruction rate is the implementation of gold sinks.
Gold sinks are things that cost gold, but do not give in return something that can be re-sold for the same or more gold.

The purpose of this thread is to collect ideas for gold sinks that could be implemented in the game and thus save the economy from the ruin that continual inflation will inevitably cause.

Here are some ideas I have though of or come across.
More will be added as they are suggested.

Hairdressing:
Players pay gold to change their hairstyle and colour. Some styles and colours could be available only through this method and not in character creation.
Hair colour could be changed, but it would fade over time, causing the players to spend more money renewing it.

Cosmetic customisation of armour and weapons:
Players pay gold to change the look of their armour and weapons. This could be different models or additional colours, glows, sparkles and so on. These effects could be time-limited, so say you buy them for a day, a week, a month, whatever and have to buy them again after that. Also, if new customisations were released periodically the players would continue to pay for them because they were new and exciting.

Armour cosmetic maintainence:
Armour could also become dirty over time, causing it to lose it's shine and the colours to become dull. Players could then pay to have it cleaned, or pay even more to have it polished to a level of shine greater than it originally had.
This might be considered a hinderance to some, but if you think about it, it doesn't change the gameplay at all, you don't need shiny clean armour, so people aren't forced to pay lots of gold every few days to keep it clean, but many would want to.

Rethink the dye system:
Currently dye drops from monsters and is sold between players for ridiculous amounts of gold. This in no way benefits the economoy since it merely transferes wealth from one player to another.
If dye was treated the same way that weapon customisation currently is, it could be turned into a gold sink.
Players pay to have their armour dyed by a merchant. Mixing of colours could still be done, but it would all be done in a merchant window and not with physical, resellable inventory items.

Rethink the XP scroll system:
Similar to the dye suggestion above.
Instead of XP scrolls being items that are resellable, they should be available as an effect that is bought from an NPC.
Players pay gold to an NPC to be 'blessed' with 2x experience for the next few minutes or however long those scrolls last.
Maybe you could pay more for longer duration or higher multiplier.

Gambling:
"The house always wins"
Any properly run gambling institute takes more money than it gives out, thus creating a gold sink.

Personal housing and furniture for houses and guild halls:
Just like the way guilds can buy Guild Halls, players would be able to buy personal houses. Furniture could be bought to decorate these spaces. Extra storage might also be included in these houses.

Taxidermy and other forms of tropies:
Players could pay to have a monster that they had defeated turned into a statue to be displayed at their house or guild hall.
This would deteriorate (Rot, get dusty, etc.) over time and require an upkeep in gold to keep it in good condition.

Guild Hall expansion:
Various additions to the guild hall could be bought for large amounts of gold, or perhaps rented for a lesser amount per day/week/month whatever.
Additions could include Guild practice PVP arenas, storage, etc. See long posts further down the thread for details.

Persistent message boards:
Plays pay gold to post messages on a message board of some sort in town. These messages have a limited lifespan (24 hours was suggested) to reduce congestion.
Multiple boards could exist in each town. One for trading, one for guild information, etc.

Dancing Lessons:
Players pay gold to learn the dances of other professions, or entirely new dances. They have a limited number of dance lots so that learning a new dance would usually replace an old dance. This means that if they wanted their old dance back they would have to spend money again.

Pay per View PvP:
With observer mode on the horizon, another good gold sink could be paying to watch PvP and GvG matches.

I like all your ideas except...

...making dying armor only accessible at arms trader.

And removing scrolls, and buying their effects at NPCS (despite that kind exists from ghosts at monuments).

It kinda sounds like you just cant be bothered to pay money for either dye or scrolls.

If everyone had easy access to XP scrolls, instead of them being fairly rarish drops, then we would all increase our XP to easily.

And dyes are the only thing in the game that actually trades easily.

I think its good that black dyes are stupidly expensive. If all dyes were cheap, then we'd all have black armor and it wouldnt have the same feel to it.

Skyy High · Aug 22, 2006, 01:27 PM // 13:27

There is no inflation in this game. Evidence -> prices for EVERYTHING have been going down, a trend that has lasted for 14 months as far as I remember, barring the occassional spikes.

flamingmarmo · Aug 22, 2006, 04:38 PM // 16:38

Where is this inflation you speak of, as far as I can tell prices have dropped. Perfect weapons are so cheap that unless they are good mods and good skins they aren't worth bothering with if you don't have hours spare to set up auctions and watch them/spam WTS. Armour is fixed price. Runes are alot cheaper now than they used to be with only sup vigor being worth much. I can't comment on materials since I don't know anything about their price except they never seem to cost me much :P.
Surely the problem is deflation IE we need to be taking gold sinks out of the game and making things a little pricier growing at a nice stable rate year on year.

edit: I still think some of the ideas are good ones if not simply to have something to mess about with, I'd love to have a wall with the heads of dead creatures on it, or a new hair style.
I disagree with gold sinks for the sake of gold sinks like pay per view which simply penalizes new players who want to see what high end pvp is like, and also I often watch whilst on a pvp character which does not have gold on him.
Having to renew things over time would simply get annoying especially if it was a short as every few days thus hardly worth bothering with if it costs enough to be a decent gold sink.
Fixing dye prices is good but for different reasons discussed in a different thread.

johngid · Dec 14, 2006, 12:10 PM // 12:10

/signed

ZORTENATOR · Dec 14, 2006, 01:24 PM // 13:24

I agree 100%. Things cost more cuz gold has no value. If gold sinks so does the price of items. So I dont do anything to spend money and I keep my 7k and the other guys spend it. The prices go down and I can buy stuff cheaper. Thats a good solution

Mad_Mclaren · Dec 14, 2006, 02:26 PM // 14:26

different style of armors in different type of guildhalls forcing some ppl to buy sigils to get a hall tht has certain style of armors in. forcin sigil prices goin up etc.

Skyy High · Dec 14, 2006, 07:08 PM // 19:08

Gah. Why did this get bumped. Allow me to quote myself from 3 months ago and a few posts up:

Quote:

There is no inflation in this game. Evidence -> prices for EVERYTHING have been going down, a trend that has lasted for 14 months as far as I remember, barring the occassional spikes.

Except replace the 14 months with 17 months. Oddly enough, there wasn't even a big spike in prices when Nightfall was released, because EVERYONE planned ahead and stored up materials and weapons, and tried to sell them off on the first day. We all tried to capitalize on the market booming, and we made it bust.
Weapons, save for the extreme vanity skins that are actually rare (in Nightfall, they're rare because people haven't figured out the best places to farm them...) are still cheap as hell. Inscriptions are so rock bottom it's unbelievable; people thought 15^50 inscriptions would go for 100k+ when they were announced, but instead they're 10-20k. 14^50 inscriptions are 3k, max. What inflation are we talking about now?

midnight caretaker · Dec 14, 2006, 08:14 PM // 20:14

I like the GW casino idea but i am pretty sure this will never happen due taking in account that GW is already addictive to most and adding another addiction to it would most likely end up in law suits.

I could see it now 13 year old gets addicted to gambling in guild wars, steals parents credit card then puts them in debt on a real gambling site.

Since this thread is so old I imagine anet has considered these things and either implimented what they wanted and tossed the other ideas out the dor or may be too much work for them. Who knows if they come out with GWII they may be there

BahamutKaiser · Dec 15, 2006, 12:36 AM // 00:36

This isn't real life, so no matter how much the sink the gold in the game, players can still choose to buy and sell items way over actual value. The real alternative is NPC alternatives, which take away value setting from the players an stabalize it. Even than, the prices should be regulated to keep them from reaching unreasonable amounts.

When you apply gold sinks they do one of 2 things, A) oppress even the lite players who end up spending more on every day commodities, or B) apply sinks which are totaly optional and don't mandate the decrease in gold circulation. But reguardless, no matter how much you reduce gold circulation, players can still demand unreasonable values on certain objects, whether the gold at hand is high or low, it will still be equally overvalued unless there is a Game regulated alternative.

Tango · Dec 15, 2006, 03:05 AM // 03:05

Quote:

Originally Posted by Skyy High

What inflation are we talking about now?

Heroes alone ensured a vast money sink sufficient to stave off inflation for the forseeable future.

I made an absolute killing hoarding Ghail Staffs & Scar Eaters in the days folling the Canthan triple green drop weekend because I knew people would want to buy them for their heroes.

Tango · Dec 15, 2006, 03:07 AM // 03:07

Quote:

Originally Posted by BahamutKaiser

This isn't real life, so no matter how much the sink the gold in the game, players can still choose to buy and sell items way over actual value.

"actual value" is a myth. The actual value of any item is precisely the amount that you sell it for.

I can't tell you how often someone pings me to inform me that I'm asking too much for a Totem Axe when I've sold 2 Totem Axes at my asking price that very day.

«Ripskin · Dec 15, 2006, 03:11 AM // 03:11

GAMBLING FTW!!!!

Also from all the previous partys in my guild hall with like 7 people, I'd like a bar with unlimited drinks for a reasonable amount of money that's cheaper.. lol. Just a thought..

I'd LOVE gambling though, I play with my friends every tuesday.

«Ripskin · Dec 15, 2006, 03:11 AM // 03:11

oh btw

/signed except for the hairdresser... <_< too much runescapeyness-ness.

kang · Dec 15, 2006, 05:48 AM // 05:48

simple solution, ad a donation system and have an NPC next to it saying "donate vast amounts of money and recieve a unique prize"

anet would be rich in seconds.

just dont have a prize and rich people would keep pumping in the money to be the first one with the prize on wiki.

ectospasm · Dec 15, 2006, 09:35 AM // 09:35

Theres already too many gold sinks.

-Chests (usually get crap weapons and sell to merchants for 1/4 price or less)

-Skills (no real value, just so many and at 1k each, having to buy 1 skill over and over for all your characters is expensive and rediculous)

-Armor (everyone has to have the newest and best looking armor)

-UW & FoW (nuff said)

-Titles (stuff like drunk and skill hunter, wisdom, etc.)

-Heros

-Guild Hall NPCs (Some people get tired of the same old guild halls im sure. And like to have a few npcs in thier new ones)

Out of those for me. The things I spend most my gold on in order is:
1. Armor
2. Keys
3. Skills
4. Runes
5. Id & Salv Kits
6. UW & FoW
7. Artisans
8. Mods
9. Dye
10. Services

With all those its hard to save unless you control yourself and just dont spend. So the only "gold sink" we need or could use is maybe something like a Weapons Crafters placed throught Tryia, Cantha and Elona that can craft gold weapons like the one in DoA for like 25k each + Materials. But have them customized upon crafting so they cannot be resold or salvaged, keeping the price the same.

shardfenix · Dec 15, 2006, 12:34 PM // 12:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Hairdressing:
Players pay gold to change their hairstyle and colour. Some styles and colours could be available only through this method and not in character creation.
Hair colour could be changed, but it would fade over time, causing the players to spend more money renewing it.

Most other online games have this feature.
/signed

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Cosmetic customisation of armour and weapons:
Players pay gold to change the look of their armour and weapons. This could be different models or additional colours, glows, sparkles and so on. These effects could be time-limited, so say you buy them for a day, a week, a month, whatever and have to buy them again after that. Also, if new customisations were released periodically the players would continue to pay for them because they were new and exciting.

/signed
The current armor system makes everyone look the same. We need wings, auras, customizable pieces on the armor pieces.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Armour cosmetic maintainence:
Armour could also become dirty over time, causing it to lose it's shine and the colours to become dull. Players could then pay to have it cleaned, or pay even more to have it polished to a level of shine greater than it originally had.
This might be considered a hinderance to some, but if you think about it, it doesn't change the gameplay at all, you don't need shiny clean armour, so people aren't forced to pay lots of gold every few days to keep it clean, but many would want to.

Too hard to implement, and not important to gameplay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Rethink the dye system:
Currently dye drops from monsters and is sold between players for ridiculous amounts of gold. This in no way benefits the economoy since it merely transferes wealth from one player to another.
If dye was treated the same way that weapon customisation currently is, it could be turned into a gold sink.
Players pay to have their armour dyed by a merchant. Mixing of colours could still be done, but it would all be done in a merchant window and not with physical, resellable inventory items.

/notsigned
Yes, buying dye can already be done. However, having all black/all white armor makes you look richer than the purple scrubs.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Rethink the XP scroll system:
Similar to the dye suggestion above.
Instead of XP scrolls being items that are resellable, they should be available as an effect that is bought from an NPC.
Players pay gold to an NPC to be 'blessed' with 2x experience for the next few minutes or however long those scrolls last.
Maybe you could pay more for longer duration or higher multiplier.

People buy XP scrolls?

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Gambling:
"The house always wins"
Any properly run gambling institute takes more money than it gives out, thus creating a gold sink.

See http://gw.gamewikis.org/wiki/Dragon_Festival_2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Personal housing and furniture for houses and guild halls:
Just like the way guilds can buy Guild Halls, players would be able to buy personal houses. Furniture could be bought to decorate these spaces. Extra storage might also be included in these houses.

I'm iffy on this. GW is a pvp game. I'm not sure how many players would respond to owning furniture.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Taxidermy and other forms of tropies:
Players could pay to have a monster that they had defeated turned into a statue to be displayed at their house or guild hall.
This would deteriorate (Rot, get dusty, etc.) over time and require an upkeep in gold to keep it in good condition.

WTS Stuffed Abaddon!

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Persistent message boards:
Plays pay gold to post messages on a message board of some sort in town. These messages have a limited lifespan (24 hours was suggested) to reduce congestion.
Multiple boards could exist in each town. One for trading, one for guild information, etc.

For one thing, everyone would only post in the main towns (LA, kamadan, kaineng). For another thing, 24 hours of post life + roughly 2 million players = too many messages. Even if they costed 5k per post, you know some idiots are gonna post something like "I did your mom on the street corner" or some other childish rant, such as "ZOMFG Anet nerf searing flames"

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Dancing Lessons:
Players pay gold to learn the dances of other professions, or entirely new dances. They have a limited number of dance lots so that learning a new dance would usually replace an old dance. This means that if they wanted their old dance back they would have to spend money again.

Interesting idea. I like it. Female monks dancing the male warrior dance would own.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiritofcat

Pay per View PvP:
With observer mode on the horizon, another good gold sink could be paying to watch PvP and GvG matches.

/notsigned It's there for a reason. So newbies can watch and steal people's gimmick builds.

freekedoutfish · Dec 15, 2006, 12:54 PM // 12:54

One of the major gold sinks was removed/changed in the game.

Superiour salvage and identification kits, keys and bags.

When they introduced this idea of using tokens, and commendations, they removed the need to actually purchase them anymore.

Their basically given away free and they help create gold.

You can use tokens/commendations to get a sup salvage or ident kit and then sell it for 1k. Obviously if youve got loads of these left over, youve got easy money.

I made about 20k in 5 minutes doing that.

The same applies for keys and bags and scrolls.

As much as I love the system for making easy gold, we need to remove it. It increases gold and removes one of the main gold inks.

People need keys and indent and salvage kits ALL the time, their an obvious place to spend gold, so why give them away free?

I can appreciate doing for minor ident kits, and relatively cheap, useless keys. And I can appreciate using them on training islands when people have no gold.

But why use them for major and sup and high end keys? Surely people are rich enough and experienced enough by the time they need them to just buy them.

Remove tokens and commendations and alike, at high levels in the game. Only use them for training areas.

Gorebrex · Dec 15, 2006, 01:44 PM // 13:44

I like the NPC casino idea, also like the ability to change character appearance.
Found some thoughts/warnings about casinos, via Search. http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...?search=casino

BahamutKaiser · Dec 15, 2006, 02:52 PM // 14:52

There isn't an acutal value until one is mandated, forcing down prices. There is an actual value on materials because no matter how much a player wants to sell them for, the NPC alternative isn't going to spike up in price, providing a balance.

Likewise, providing these alternatives to everything, including weapons and weapon mods, will create an actual value which will suppress unreasonable sales.

luilui · Dec 15, 2006, 03:17 PM // 15:17

let me buy lvl/xp for my pve character.
i have 5 pve characters, i've done most of the missions/quests, i enjoy pve but i only enjoy pve after lvl20 when i have many skills to play with.

i would be very happy if i can just pay for lvl up for my pve characters, dont think it'll do anybody any harm.