Business And Economy Archive
Thread: Money Sinks...
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MikeMonger1
Thu Mar 03, 2005 11:44 am
#1
Ok. Could somebody explain to me WHY the the idea of more money sinks in game is so popular? Every day, there's a new post, coming up with ways that the system could take money out of people's hands.
People are obsessed with the whole inflation concept. Think about it. Say you have 1 million credits, and the item you want to buy costs 3 million credits because of inflation.To combat this inflation,SOE kicks off a 1 time 50% tax of everyone's banked credits, and reduces payouts from missions by 50% from then on. You now have 500k, and 1/2 the earning potential you just had (in this simplified scenario). To reflect the new reality, the item you want to buy will be reduced in price by half....to 1.5 million credits.
In other words, items are always going to cost proportionately the same. The only thing sticking more money sinks in game will do is p*ss people off. While prices may come down, costs will always remain steady. And costs matter more than prices.
Do you know when inflation actually matters?When you want to take some of your currency, and exchange it for the currency of another country. Inflated dollars will buy you fewer yen or pounds or deutchmarks or whatever.
The whole inflation concept is, therefore, completely and totally meaningless in an MMORPG.
So if you wantcosts to come down, taking money away from people will do absolutely nothing. You need to increase supply. Go out and loot more pearls, or craft more armor, or harvest more resources, or whatever.
EdOWar
Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:22 pm
#2
In addition to all that, inflation isn't even really happening. The prices of most, if not all, crafted goods has declined since the start of the game, even as quality has steadily improved. The only thing that retains a high cost are looted items. Given the high demand for a limited supply of rare loot, it shouldn't be surprising that rare items go for millions of credits.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Va-Mei
Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:28 pm
#3
Inflation doesn't hurt the long established players of the game much. Thay have their cash. The players that it does hurt are the new players that keep these games alive. They are forced to live off of the scraps of others, and pay the hugely inflated prices that others can afford in order to buy the lootitems they need to compeat in the game.
The problem with most money sinks that get introduced, is that they are taxes on everyone. They hit the poor the hardest, and are a trivial pitance to the wealthy. If the devs really want to draw cash out of the games economy, they need to offer something that will apeal to the wealthiest players, and make them WANT to part with thir wealth. The difficulty there is in apealing to them, without giving them more powerful tools to that can be used to create more wealth within the game.
This is a suggestion i offered i the other money sink thread out there right now...
I can see what your driving at with your idea, and I agree that an NPC managed auction is they way to go. Where I dis-agree with you, is in whatgets auctioned. Private housing is something that nearly every player in the game has or wants to have. It's intended to be affordable for even the part time players. If you pit the part-time NooBs(and everyone else)against the super-elite for housing, who do you think will have buildings?
That said, what I would auction is a ticket to an instanced dungeon.That dungeon should be VERY difficult (ie. DWB), it should spawn every 52 hours or so (2 days plus clock rotation), should involve a long and complex puzzle so players want to try again (but have rewards along the way, so they never walk out empty handed), and the final solution should offer some very cool loot that is valuable for something other than combat or any other form of generating cash. The AV-21 is a good example, the Jet-Pack is another.Useful prestige items that don't really do more than existing items in the game. If the dungeoun did offer combat oriented loot, it should not be superior to items currently available in the game, or that will just spur on the arms race even further. The Executioner's Hack is a good example of this.
Byrunning access to a prestige dungeon this way, the super-rich will compete against each other for the shot at getting in the door, compelling those with the most cash to willingly givetheir money to the sink. A side bonus to a sink like this, is that it will be self correcting over time, and self-tailoring to the economy of each server. As the amount of cash ona given server draws down, players will not be able to bid as much.
Edit: If you want to force the initial price of these tickets even higher, reward every member of the 1st team to solve this dungeon with a unique trinket. A decorative item (ie. wookie orb) that serves no other purpose than a trophey piece saying "I was 1st." To push it even higher, make the reward gold on the 1st server to complete, and silver on the rest.
Message Edited by Va-Mei on 03-03-2005 11:29 AM
MikeMonger1
Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:44 pm
#4
Va-Mei wrote:
Inflation doesn't hurt the long established players of the game much. Thay have their cash. The players that it does hurt are the new players that keep these games alive. They are forced to live off of the scraps of others, and pay the hugely inflated prices that others can afford in order to buy the lootitems they need to compeat in the game.
The problem with most money sinks that get introduced, is that they are taxes on everyone. They hit the poor the hardest, and are a trivial pitance to the wealthy. If the devs really want to draw cash out of the games economy, they need to offer something that will apeal to the wealthiest players, and make them WANT to part with thir wealth. The difficulty there is in apealing to them, without giving them more powerful tools to that can be used to create more wealth within the game.
This is a suggestion i offered i the other money sink thread out there right now...
In other words, items should be just as affordable to the new player and they are to the established player.
I agree with you to a certain point. But let's look at an example.
It only takes a player 2 weeks at most to master an elite combat prof. After two weeks, that player can grind away 12k missions on any of the "adventure" worlds. You only need basic equipment and a buff to do these missions. Call that 300k per buff session.
So, a new player can make a good 10 million in 34 days, or at most a month and a half after logging in for the first time.
10 million credits will buy you almost anything in the game, AND you're still a relatively new player at the time.
So is the whole "new player's can't afford things" argument really valid?
And as for the things that cost more than 10 million....should people really get legendary weapons after only playing for 2 months?
Va-Mei
Thu Mar 03, 2005 12:55 pm
#5
My point isn't to try to advocate what things should cost, or how long it should take for a New Player to become indistinguishable from an Old Player. Only that if the devs do want to control the amount of money in the system, they need to do it at the top, and in such a way that the elite willwant to participate. Taxes are that are effective at drawing down the amount of cash available on a server are going to be a hardship to the new & the poor, and are just going to piss off the middle class. Taxes that are low enough not to be a hardship, won't be effective at balancing the inflow to the servers.
Kalano
Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:27 pm
#6
there is no need for more types of money sinks. the devs can and will control the flow of credits in the game. as we have seen they stopped the solo groups.
The biggest and most used money sink is thru the crafters. It takes resources, which are also a currency in a different way, that are used in making harvesters. crafters use harvesters by putting 2 x credits into a power harvester, and put credits and power into normal harvesters. They are both money sinks for credits. Crafter takes harvested resources and makes items. he sales items to mission runners and others who make credits one way or another. the mission runners make credits off of mission terminals. On a mission, armor, weapons, food, and another item used in the fight get used up in time, so they are a sink themselves. So, it a long way, the money comes in, and the money goes out.
for the armor, well, the equipment used to harvest critters gets used up too, so there is even a cost for the harvesting.
There is a term used in economics. Its called the "Invisable Hand." What it means is in some basic means, that money will go from hand to hand so that one person can buy anothers product. The company you work for lives by this means. They pay you to do certain work, you intern pay someone else for you grocieries, they intern pay for supplies from a farmer, who inturns pays someone for pesticides. That person then buys the product that you helped your company produce. You didn't see all the steps the money took, but it moves around.
Even the SWG economy work on such a principal, but in a very very basic one.
The devs do watch the economy and if there is a influx of x item, being credits or certian loot, they can change the numbers a little to cause it to not be produce as quickly. Also, they can tell if someone is exploiting the system and duplicating or causing there to be an unintended increase via a bug.
Va-Mei
Thu Mar 03, 2005 2:48 pm
#7
Man... have you crafted lately? Assuming I use BER10 harvesters, high concentration spawns, and sit on them for the full length of the spawn, it costs me about 11 credits to harvest the materials needed forone VK. Hell a full field of BER13s may have an opperating cost of 300k for a one week set-up, but it'll yeild over a million units of material on an 80% spawn. I can take 300k just in looted cash from the NPCs on Lok ina weekend, forget mission rewards. What are the guys doingcash missions making now? 100k an hour? More? Harvies may be a drain, but they don't pull that much out of the system.
EdOWar
Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:16 pm
#8
Actually, I think the biggest cash sinks are player cities. Our modest sized city has a weekly maintenance cost of 640K. This amount isn't fully covered by city taxes, either; periodic donations are required to keep the city running. Smaller cities have lower maintenance costs, but still it's got to be a fairly significant amount.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
Phaelyn
Thu Mar 03, 2005 3:19 pm
#9
MikeMonger1 wrote:
Va-Mei wrote:
Inflation doesn't hurt the long established players of the game much. Thay have their cash. The players that it does hurt are the new players that keep these games alive. They are forced to live off of the scraps of others, and pay the hugely inflated prices that others can afford in order to buy the lootitems they need to compeat in the game.
The problem with most money sinks that get introduced, is that they are taxes on everyone. They hit the poor the hardest, and are a trivial pitance to the wealthy. If the devs really want to draw cash out of the games economy, they need to offer something that will apeal to the wealthiest players, and make them WANT to part with thir wealth. The difficulty there is in apealing to them, without giving them more powerful tools to that can be used to create more wealth within the game.
This is a suggestion i offered i the other money sink thread out there right now...
In other words, items should be just as affordable to the new player and they are to the established player.
I agree with you to a certain point. But let's look at an example.
It only takes a player 2 weeks at most to master an elite combat prof. After two weeks, that player can grind away 12k missions on any of the "adventure" worlds. You only need basic equipment and a buff to do these missions. Call that 300k per buff session.
Actually, you can get FAR easier missions on starting planets for 5k payouts each - No buffs, chitin armor, and you can easily do 30 of the missions in an hour - That's 450k in the same duration as a Buff session. So why buff and put on Comp armor to get LESS money? That 13.5 million in 30 days WITHOUT paying for buffs or Comp armor...
So, a new player can make a good 10 million in 34 days, or at most a month and a half after logging in for the first time.
10 million credits will buy you almost anything in the game, AND you're still a relatively new player at the time.
So is the whole "new player's can't afford things" argument really valid?
And as for the things that cost more than 10 million....should people really get legendary weapons after only playing for 2 months?
EdOWar
Fri Mar 04, 2005 1:24 am
#10
The idea about buying a ticket to an instanced dungeon is kind of intriguing, but I think it ultimately leads to the same problem you're trying to fix. Only the richest players can afford to get into the dungeon...thus only the richest players will be able to loot the cool stuff in that unique instanced dungeon...that no one else is able to loot. So the richest players can 100% control access to some great loot, sell it to the rest who can't gain access, earn their money back, outbid everyone else on the dungeon ticket...rinse and repeat. Bidding on the ticket may drain their coffers, but it also becomes part of the costs which will be figured into how they value the unique loot they get. If a ticket costs 10 million credits, they aren't going to give up their loot for a price less than at least 10 million credits.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
ALeoNN
Fri Mar 04, 2005 2:14 am
#11
EdOWar wrote:
Actually, I think the biggest cash sinks are player cities. Our modest sized city has a weekly maintenance cost of 640K. This amount isn't fully covered by city taxes, either; periodic donations are required to keep the city running. Smaller cities have lower maintenance costs, but still it's got to be a fairly significant amount.
Slim Vargo, Corbantis
I once thought harvesters were the greatest money sinks, but you're right. I can't imagine being the mayor of a city, let alone being the one responsible for its finances if it were not self-sustaining.
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