Does the economy need more money sinks?
Prestige |
Tailor tokens |
The dev team created this beast, I think it's about time to start merging some of these and adjusting the prices accordingly. |
The specific currencies exist to grant specific rewards for undertaking a specific subset of actions. You get VG merits for doing VG based activities that allow you to get VG themed rewards. You get Candy Canes for doing Winter Event content so that you can earn Winter Event rewards. There's no reason whatsoever to merge them especially since they take up no real space. Collecting Candy Canes isn't preventing you from getting other pieces of Salvage. Merit awards don't inhibit your collecting VG merits. They could add 38 new currencies in the form of salvage and it would have no deleterious effect upon your gameplay aside from forcing you to undertake different actions to earn different rewards.
Plus, it's not like we have an inordinate amount of additional currencies in CoX: WoW has more than I care to count (though they have a habit of cycling them out so that players can't horde them prior to content release in order to purchase new rewards immediately), some of them specific to specific groups within a tiny part of a single zone with only a single store to buy from.
I would have no problem whatsoever with more currencies being added to the game. I'd love to see some kind of Cimeroran currency to buy Pilum temp powers, a summonable temp Centurion, or maybe some more salvage slots. I think it would be great if there were some kind of Rularuu currency that allowed me to buy Rularuu theme costume pieces (so that my non-weapon/shield characters can have some Rularuu costume pieces) and temp powers (and maybe some recipes/IOs that can't be obtained any other way to boot).
Specific currencies like this exist exclusively to reward specific behaviors. If obtaining them doesn't directly interfere with obtaining any other reward type (by taking up limited space or replacing drops), then the only problem that you could possibly have is that it's too hard to keep track of them when the game does all of the bookkeeping for you and points out exactly how many you have at any time. It's completely mind-boggling that, when the devs want to encourage players to interact with one group of NPCS and create a currency for them that is simple and unambiguous to reward actions involving said interactions that is exchanged for group specific rewards, people get irked because somehow it's inconveniencing them when you're being given more stuff to do!
For an inf sink to work well, though, wouldn't it have to be something that will be used by most major players in the market about equally?
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The point of inf sinks isn't so much to drain money from everywhere within the economy equally (which is why the WW tax and current vendors don't really do much) as it is to drain money from the people that have a crapload of it. It's not the people like Sam with less than 100 mill to their name that are causing the skyrocketing prices of top end gear (and a lot of middle end gear too). It's the people with multiple billions of inf spread across multiple characters.
When designed well, an inf sink will seem to be a complete and total waste of money to a person of low to middling means but an interesting or minorly meaningful buy to people of gratuitous wealth. I wouldn't ever recommend providing costume pieces as an inf sink since many of the people that care about costume pieces are the very people that don't have the money to compete with billionaires (just look at the hate that was generated by some people concerning the booster pack costume pieces). However, benefits like salvage/WW storage spaces, titles, etc. are generally ignored by the costume minded but are (or could be) of some interest to those with inordinate amounts of wealth so they make perfect options.
In general, the best way to grasp this concept is that an inf sink should be more of what everyone already gets but doesn't actually contribute to your effectiveness.
I love it, I would have such a huge base!!
The influence sink I really want to see is to have the flipper games, the poker tables and the roulette in Pocket D be minigames that would be raked. This would be somewhere I would go with my influence. Imagine playing poker against villains in Pocket D, that would be just like a bond movie :-) |
Won't happen, though. Even though it's in-game currency, the anti-online-gambling laws were rewritten in a way that would cause NCSoft a great deal of grief. ((Essentially lawmakers anticipated many gambling sites offereing tradeable "in-game" currency, claiming they didn't actually have any real money exchanges... and then made dummy companies that offered RMT services that did exactly that. The laws take that into account in a way that could target MMO's that added "casino-like" games))
((snip))
Specific currencies like this exist exclusively to reward specific behaviors. If obtaining them doesn't directly interfere with obtaining any other reward type (by taking up limited space or replacing drops), then the only problem that you could possibly have is that it's too hard to keep track of them when the game does all of the bookkeeping for you and points out exactly how many you have at any time. It's completely mind-boggling that, when the devs want to encourage players to interact with one group of NPCS and create a currency for them that is simple and unambiguous to reward actions involving said interactions that is exchanged for group specific rewards, people get irked because somehow it's inconveniencing them when you're being given more stuff to do! |
Agreed.
Also, these "new currencies" also have the tendency of making old currencies less relevant, so that those at the top of the pile don't have too much... err... influence... over those closer to the bottom... They can't dominate certain sales.
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Other people in the thread have mentioned "optional" money sinks.... these things rarely work well as intended because the people MOST prone to abuse the currency system just opt out of these sinks.
A good example of a bad sink was the Everquest 2 "player homes."
They cost rent, and the bigger/better homes cost even more to rent. And they cost to decorate (both player-crafted and game-crafted) and they cost to upgrade the walls... and someone could spend a WHOLE LOT OF TIME decorating them and playing them... all the while NOT EARNING A DIME.
So, it seemed like a good money-sink. People dumped money down the drain and while they were doing it, didn't earn a damn thing.
THE PROBLEM:
Not everybody did it.
The people that REALLY liked the homes were sinking all their money into them... and earning money at a lower "play rate" than people that were out adventuring all the time and ignoring the home (time decorating and playing IN the houses earned little to no 'faucet' money). In the meantime, things like armor-repair and other "sinks" that were unpopular but affected people actually adventuring and 'drinking from the fauced" were removed or reduced substantially. THOSE people were earning, but not sinking it away.
The devs had hoped that the high-achievers would also upgrade to the more-expensive homes, but achiever-centrics just looked at the rent prices and went "meh... not worth it" while the people that WANTED such social spaces were being bled dry trying to afford them. One of the notes on SOE's RMT experiments was that MANY socializers engaged in RMT to subsidize their playstyle- they paid more to dump the money into their housing rent because they'd rather spend their time doing things that didn't earn them rent money.
And the devs were in a bind as mudflation crept up. If they'd kept adventure-related expenses as they were (the unpopular 'repair' costs), they could have nudged them upward to affect the people that were gulping fastest from the "faucet." As it was, they were draining mostly from those with the least-abusive play practices.
OOPs.
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MUDFlation isn't going to go away anytime soon. It's been so deeply-ingrained into player expectations (not just MUDS and MMO's though... people often see ever-increasing money rewards in single-player games as a kind of "score" that they're reluctant to see go up or stay neutral, too) that the best we can really expect is "well, it's grossly out of control, but it's still kinda fun."
I think that's where the CoH economy usually is.
So that's what they call it ... Mudflation. Man, to think it stems back that far ...
Well, here's an idea I'm throwing out.
What do you guys think of a inherent/temporary power or accolade power that fuctions as a toggle but, rather than draining endurance, drains influence/infamy at an arbitrary rate?
Maybe the devs can come up with powers that confer subtle bonuses or benefits when the power is toggled, but having the power active slowly drains your influence/infamy. I'm not quite sure when and where a power like that would prove useful, but my first blush is to say "any special zones."
Another idea--temporary powers that use a bit of influence/infamy when activated. That could be an alternative for the powers with limited charges that you earn from, for example, weapon raids in Safeguard/Mayhem missions.
So that's what they call it ... Mudflation. Man, to think it stems back that far ...
Well, here's an idea I'm throwing out. What do you guys think of a inherent/temporary power or accolade power that fuctions as a toggle but, rather than draining endurance, drains influence/infamy at an arbitrary rate? |
BLASTER NUKE.
Inf is Inf. It doesn't matter what letters follow: the only difference is cosmetic, especially since the sides don't have any native ability to exchange one of the other.
I wouldn't really consider Prestige a "real" currency since all it buys is entirely cosmetic and non-combat utilitarian. You can't buy temp powers with Prestige, not to mention that Prestige and Inf are pretty well directly linked thanks to the fact that there is a stable, game defined exchange rate from Inf to Prestige. Once again, not really a currency since you can't trade them between players, and they only have a single function. Merging any of the existing in-game currencies would not only be stupid, but bad for the game. Candy Canes exist to force you to do Winter Event content in order to get Winter Event rewards. If you could do an ITF and spend the merits you earned there on Winter Event rewards, there would be no reward driven reason to have you partake in the Winter Event content. If you could spend Candy Canes on VG costume pieces, how would that make any sense whatsoever? The specific currencies exist to grant specific rewards for undertaking a specific subset of actions. You get VG merits for doing VG based activities that allow you to get VG themed rewards. You get Candy Canes for doing Winter Event content so that you can earn Winter Event rewards. There's no reason whatsoever to merge them especially since they take up no real space. Collecting Candy Canes isn't preventing you from getting other pieces of Salvage. Merit awards don't inhibit your collecting VG merits. They could add 38 new currencies in the form of salvage and it would have no deleterious effect upon your gameplay aside from forcing you to undertake different actions to earn different rewards. Plus, it's not like we have an inordinate amount of additional currencies in CoX: WoW has more than I care to count (though they have a habit of cycling them out so that players can't horde them prior to content release in order to purchase new rewards immediately), some of them specific to [url=http://www.wowwiki.com/Winterfin_Clam]specific groups within a tiny part of a single zone with only a single store to buy from/url]. I would have no problem whatsoever with more currencies being added to the game. I'd love to see some kind of Cimeroran currency to buy Pilum temp powers, a summonable temp Centurion, or maybe some more salvage slots. I think it would be great if there were some kind of Rularuu currency that allowed me to buy Rularuu theme costume pieces (so that my non-weapon/shield characters can have some Rularuu costume pieces) and temp powers (and maybe some recipes/IOs that can't be obtained any other way to boot). Specific currencies like this exist exclusively to reward specific behaviors. If obtaining them doesn't directly interfere with obtaining any other reward type (by taking up limited space or replacing drops), then the only problem that you could possibly have is that it's too hard to keep track of them when the game does all of the bookkeeping for you and points out exactly how many you have at any time. It's completely mind-boggling that, when the devs want to encourage players to interact with one group of NPCS and create a currency for them that is simple and unambiguous to reward actions involving said interactions that is exchanged for group specific rewards, people get irked because somehow it's inconveniencing them when you're being given more stuff to do! |
But I do consider prestige as currency as you can use it to purchase and maintain base empowerment stations which have a direct effect on gameplay.
Who do I have to *&^% around here to get more Targeted AoE recipes added?
Arc Name: Tsoo In Love
Arc ID: 413575
I'd like to see scaling WW/BM fees . This could bring down overall influence people have, or create a real black market ( which inflation will create eventually, and already has to some degree).
I'd also like to see random recipe drops added back to TFs that grant more than 20 merits and those TFs merit reward would be reduced by 20.
More randomly generated incidental supply will bring prices down. Instead of adding a new currency to the game they replaced an old supply line, which had the effect of removing random incidental supply. Now that people don't automatically generate supply as a result of a TF, the amount of pool Cs on the market has decreased thus increasing their price.
As far as I can tell the devs wanted to keep everyone happy when they added an alternative to the market, but the problem is they failed epically when they forgot to realize that their chosen implementation would wreck market supply and aggravate people even more due to spiked prices. Sure there is an alternative but now it adversely effects the other group of players instead of catering to both market going and non market going players.
The prices on purples and pvp IOs are unlikely to change unless supply is increased greatly, so I don't see them changing any time soon.
I am an ebil markeeter and will steal your moneiz ...correction stole your moneiz. I support keeping the poor down because it is impossible to make moneiz in this game.
I'd like to see scaling WW/BM fees . This could bring down overall influence people have, or create a real black market ( which inflation will create eventually, and already has to some degree).
I'd also like to see random recipe drops added back to TFs that grant more than 20 merits and those TFs merit reward would be reduced by 20. More randomly generated incidental supply will bring prices down. Instead of adding a new currency to the game they replaced an old supply line, which had the effect of removing random incidental supply. Now that people don't automatically generate supply as a result of a TF, the amount of pool Cs on the market has decreased thus increasing their price. As far as I can tell the devs wanted to keep everyone happy when they added an alternative to the market, but the problem is they failed epically when they forgot to realize that their chosen implementation would wreck market supply and aggravate people even more due to spiked prices. Sure there is an alternative but now it adversely effects the other group of players instead of catering to both market going and non market going players. The prices on purples and pvp IOs are unlikely to change unless supply is increased greatly, so I don't see them changing any time soon. |
I like the above idea but i'd prefere recipe drop option for the SF/TFs that give 20 or less merits. We had an incentive to complete Cap SF and other low end merit TFs when they gave recipes, now we don't.
Never happen. And I'd scream bloody murder if it did. Two words for ya buddy:
BLASTER NUKE. |
What, conferring an added damage bonus with Defiance? I wasn't thinking about that. Aren't a lot of temporary powers excluded from stacking with Defiance, anyhow?
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You're missing the point. Currently, a blaster's nuke wipes out his endurance bar. So one of two things will happen:
- Nuke goes off, and all the character's influence goes away.
- Nuke goes off, some influence goes away, but character has millions, so it doesn't matter, and the intended down-time becomes a moot point.
The prices on purples and pvp IOs are unlikely to change unless supply is increased greatly, so I don't see them changing any time soon.
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We saw it in Aion. Tons of the same item, priced outrageously. We see it here, as well.
Part of the problem (though I wouldn't change it, because I think it's preferable to Aion's market) is the nature of our blind market. You don't know what folks are bidding until the sale is complete. As long as buyers are content to pay higher prices, sellers will continue to post their wares at higher prices.
no.
You're missing the point. Currently, a blaster's nuke wipes out his endurance bar. So one of two things will happen:
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I never said the power should be like a Blaster nuke.
What do you guys think of a inherent/temporary power or accolade power that fuctions as a toggle but, rather than draining endurance, drains influence/infamy at an arbitrary rate?
[...] Maybe the devs can come up with powers that confer subtle bonuses or benefits when the power is toggled, but having the power active slowly drains your influence/infamy. |
Unless there's a game mechanic/power I'm not yet aware of which would wind up causing this kind of situation, even with subtle toggle powers.
... You might be missing my point, then.
I never said the power should be like a Blaster nuke. |
No. I caught where you said it was going to be a toggle. Which means, naturally, that it can be active when the blaster fires his nuke. Hence, my concern that it might seriously violate a major design principle behind the blaster's nuke (drain all endurance, leaving the blaster exhausted and unable to recover for a few seconds).
No. I caught where you said it was going to be a toggle. Which means, naturally, that it can be active when the blaster fires his nuke. Hence, my concern that it might seriously violate a major design principle behind the blaster's nuke (drain all endurance, leaving the blaster exhausted and unable to recover for a few seconds).
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It's not like the power would switch ALL endurance drain to influence/infamy drain, rather that the toggled power drains a slight amount of influence/infamy while active, giving a subtle boost of some kind.
On one hand, I like the conceptual idea. One of the common misconceptions about the economy of City of Heroes is that it is not a quote, "zero-sum-game" where theres no reason why you can have something that I can't have. In many aspects, City of Heroes does have a zero-sum-game system behind it.
Okay, to frame the perspective on this, lets make an assumption. That assumption is that putting IO's on your character is an intended part of the end-game, and that the developers intent is that all players should be in a position where they can completely IO a character with Rare sets in less than a year. Okay, with that framing set... |
My reading on the addition of purples and PvP IO's is that they were added specifically to have something in-game that was *NOT* in reach of all players without significant investment (either of time playing/"farming" or in engaging in Market transactions or PvPing in the case of PvP IO's). I am in particular recalling BaB's comment about the irony of someone calling themselves a "casual player" yet having a purple'd out WS.
Also, if a player wanted to outfit a character with rares in "less than a year", he/she would be well-advised to start that process well before reaching "end game" at level 50. I don't see most IOs as "end game".
Altoholic - but a Blaster at Heart!
Originally Posted by SpyralPegacyon
"You gave us a world where we could fly. I can't thank you enough for that."
So that's what they call it ... Mudflation. Man, to think it stems back that far ...
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Read alot about it several years back- was reading alot of MMO design stuff as a tangent to a development project my employer was proposing. The talk on economics and the inflation issue goes back quite a ways. One game currency got SO ridiculously broken that players abandoned it and started using a particular loot drop as its' own form of currency instead.
Back then, many economist-gamers had ideas on how to develop a "real" economic model with perfect faucet-drain mechanics. SWG even employed economists as consultants, hoping to get it straight.
After a few hard lessons, it seems that many have changed their tune from aspiring to "make a viable, controlled, sustainable economy" to "what's most important is fun... and the ones players find fun are also essentially broken, so our goal is now to make the most enjoyable broken system possible."
I'm not certain your assumption is correct, especially the part I highlighted.
My reading on the addition of purples and PvP IO's is that they were added specifically to have something in-game that was *NOT* in reach of all players without significant investment (either of time playing/"farming" or in engaging in Market transactions or PvPing in the case of PvP IO's). I am in particular recalling BaB's comment about the irony of someone calling themselves a "casual player" yet having a purple'd out WS. |
Yeah, but if the drain is an arbitrary amount of so many influence/infamy per minute or second or what not, then it shouldn't matter what powers a hero or villain are using alongside that, right? Those powers would drain endurance as normal.
It's not like the power would switch ALL endurance drain to influence/infamy drain, rather that the toggled power drains a slight amount of influence/infamy while active, giving a subtle boost of some kind. |
Your original post made it sound as though you wanted to consume influence in lieu of endurance. This post makes it sound as though you want to consume influence at a presumably constant tick-rate to enjoy a buff, while endurance consumption remains unaffected.
Is that correct?
No, I rather like not having more INF sinks in COH, TYVM. All the fees and "money sinks" over THERE certainly contribute to an RMT issue. Adding them here - where there is, frankly, nothing but enhancements (not IOs, not purples, not PVP recipes, just plain old TO/DO/SOs) that you need to buy - WOULD create an RMT issue.
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Personally I'd like to see scaling Wentworth's fees. For new players without much money, they'd just have the current fee schedule. But if you're buying a Luck of the Gambler global recharge proc for 100M, you'd get socked with a significantly larger fee. Buying a PVP 3% defense IO for 2 Billion? A special Hoover animation will play over your character's head as the fee is collected.
Freedom: Blazing Larb, Fiery Fulcrum, Sardan Reborn, Arctic-Frenzy, Wasabi Sam, Mr Smashtastic.
Back then, many economist-gamers had ideas on how to develop a "real" economic model with perfect faucet-drain mechanics. SWG even employed economists as consultants, hoping to get it straight.
After a few hard lessons, it seems that many have changed their tune from aspiring to "make a viable, controlled, sustainable economy" to "what's most important is fun... and the ones players find fun are also essentially broken, so our goal is now to make the most enjoyable broken system possible." |
Okay, let's clarify something.
Your original post made it sound as though you wanted to consume influence in lieu of endurance. This post makes it sound as though you want to consume influence at a presumably constant tick-rate to enjoy a buff, while endurance consumption remains unaffected. Is that correct? |
How does that translate to a Blaster's nuke suddenly consuming all his/her influence (or having enough influence left over to fire off another nuke immediately)?
I wouldn't really consider Prestige a "real" currency since all it buys is entirely cosmetic and non-combat utilitarian. You can't buy temp powers with Prestige, not to mention that Prestige and Inf are pretty well directly linked thanks to the fact that there is a stable, game defined exchange rate from Inf to Prestige.
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Yeah--I'm talking about a toggle buff power that, rather than consuming endurance like all other powers, consumes influence/infamy.
How does that translate to a Blaster's nuke suddenly consuming all his/her influence (or having enough influence left over to fire off another nuke immediately)? |
Your original post stated:
What do you guys think of a inherent/temporary power or accolade power that fuctions as a toggle but, rather than draining endurance, drains influence/infamy at an arbitrary rate?I made the mistaken assumption that you meant for this toggle to change the way that all powers worked. (You would kind of have to in order for it to have any meaningful effect on characters with vast sums of inf.) But that assumption was clearly incorrect.
I recant my objections.
For an inf sink to work well, though, wouldn't it have to be something that will be used by most major players in the market about equally? (I'm mostly illiterate in macroeconomics too, so somebody feel free to correct me.) A lot of the common proposals, like charging for super-rare costumes and such, are things that I just can't see a majority of people going for, especially among the people who currently have all the cash in the first place. Heck, it'd probably exacerbate things by making the people who can't figure out how to efficiently make cash complain that they have to choose between IO'ing their character or getting that special Prestige Uranium Crown costume piece that they totally need because their hero is named Uranium Lord and omg devs hate the actinoid series. While, meanwhile, Jimmy McMarketeer and Bobby Farmerholic see that it doesn't give any recharge or defense bonuses, shrug, and go back to work.
Having Vengeance and Fallout slotted for recharge means never having to say you're sorry.