Having come back to CoX after a long hiatus, I was also surprised by how easily inf could be made, especially for entirely brand new charas on new servers.
It was actually quite enjoyable having that "freedom from want" (i.e. freedom from grind) that comes from increased sources of inf income from various drops, easier gameplay with free patrol exps, and plethora of inspirations (and combinable inspirations.) In the end, I would say that ease-of-entry for a potential new player would justify to me the game's current economic situation.
That being said, just from looking at various Black Market/Wentworth's transactions it is quite clear that there is a huge excess of inf, if only indicated by gracious/generous/bored high-levels purposefully paying out hundreds of thousands of inf for common salvage and recipes with the intention of helping out some random strangers.
While that kind of philanthropy is virtuous, it does go a long way in indicating there is a gross inflation of inf at the highest levels where it is created so easily. So while a few inf-sinks were suggested, there are always plenty more. Also suggested were ways to stabilize the market to avoid gross manipulations, and other MMORPG economy-models feature tools that make it slightly more fair for everyone.
Having played on other (Korean, Chinese, Japanese) MMORPGs that favour both subscription models and also micro-transactional "free to play/cash shop" models, I was surprised at CoX's relative lack of in-game-money sinks. Some of the more traditional (read: sometimes fun, sometimes devious) cash-sinks that I've seen in other games include:
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Crafting Risk
A lot of Korean and Chinese games, in particular, feature "high risk/reward" curves for crafting. Meaning there will be a chance to craft something "greater/high-quality" given either patience or investment in crafting skill, with a significant risk of losing something (either destruction of the base materials or loss of all materials.) In CoX this would mean increased level of the final IO, perhaps, with a chance of completely wiping it (maybe with a lower % for those that craft more often, attain certain badges, or memorise so many sets of recipes.) CoX's "100% sure thing" crafting system is actually quite unique among MMORPGs.
In some games like Final Fantasy XI, the risk/reward curve was purposefully shallow so that players wouldn't lose their shirts on a bad crafting attempt. In others, like free-to-play Rising Force Online, the curve was set so high that players would blow up items left and right, causing them to run back to the game-provided cash shops (just as the so-evil developers hoped they would!)
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Convenience Perks
While the devs already introduced a mission-teleporter, an influence-powered mission teleporter (prices scaled to level) would be a great influence-sink. This would have to be priced high enough that people would still want travel powers (would still need them for maps, and for at least getting missions, but you know some will be super lazy.) Other convenience features might be influence-fed teleports to Vault storage, etc.
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Pay-to-Enter
In some games, this is a huge money-sink. Paying each time at the door to enter some big battlefield that has the potential of great drops, or to have clearance to enter a certain zone or player-event, is a staple of Asian MMORPGs. Of course, doing this retro-actively in CoX will only serve to tick off the playerbase, but can be used in any newly-created zone or content as a "barrier of entry for the undeserving" and also "inf sink" at the same time. Already mentioned above was the Manticore/SP marriage event, so anything of this nature could be easily made "pay per view".
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Daily Fees
CoX players, again, would groan at having to now pay influence for things they are used to getting for free, but many many other MMORPGs traditionally charge daily or weekly service fees (of in-game money) for things like storage of items. Others, like FFXI and RFO as mentioned, even charge fees for later removing items. They nick you when they can.
In regard to the other topic discussed, the Black Market/Wentworth's, I think the thing that has always been missing that would stabilize transactions far more would be simple tools such as an expanded "last sold" history, an indication of high/low/mean/average prices, etc. When I first played CoX, I was shocked at how short the historical price section was.
By contrast, this is what I was used to...
http://www.ffxiah.com/item.php?id=11...=7&stack=0
This is from the site ffxiah.com, created by a player of FFXI. The information is actually derived from the in-game data via accounts that take snapshots of the market (on all items) at set times. This allows for a full system of tracking transactions (thus the high/low/mean/median numbers mentioned for each item) as well as a much larger transaction history listing (you can use the interface button to maximise the transactions shown.)
This also allows for things like this (for my character):
http://www.ffxiah.com/player.php?id=147272
...that is, a database of sellers and buyers and their activities. With this many tools, it is still very very much possible to "play the market" (and watch for trending) but at the same exact moment allows for manipulations (and manipulators) to be spotted more easily. It shows suppliers and buyers, and lets the two come together shoud they decide to make their own arrangements. While half the transactions are done by "alts" because they wish to maintain anonymity, most normal and meaningful transactions are conducted by "mains"...and either way the validity of the transaction is retained no matter what identity is used.
As a final word to all this talk of inflation or deflation or money-sinks or market-stabilisation, I think one of the more important points to mention is that with a huge ready supply of influence to both casual and hard-core CoX players, the developers neatly avoid the situation where RMT (Real Money Trade) becomes a pervasive problem. Yes, we all receive the annoying email spam in this game, but really...if you put in too many game-cash-sinks into your game you *readily* invite RMT to come supply that same cash to players. Having a huge excess of influence means there is less external-demand from the playerbase when they can make all that influence themselves--meaning RMT issues are far less problematic than in games like FFXI or WoW or RFO.
