Does the economy need more money sinks?

I believe Ed Castranova was one of the economists. He's often interviewed on MMO economics by the news, has written on the topic, and IIRC even testified to congress related to it. He originally made headlines waaay back by estimating the GDP of everquest based on the then-ebay RMT value of game gold, the average gold-drop-per-player-hour, and the number of players. He also writes on the academic-ish virtual world blog Terra Nova along with a bunch of others... often a good read for talk on the social, legal, and economic issues of MMO's.

From what I recall, there were several issues that really sent things cartwheeling out of control:

1) The "item wear" costs didn't anticipate the extremely easy farming that was possible when uberloot became available. You could farm well-paying quests (Rancor hunts were popular for this) with little risk, very little wear to your gear, and very nice payout.

The devs actually were surprised that the players had min/maxed out crafting items so thoroughly. Crafted gear was based on the quality of the ingredients, and that quality available for harvest varied over time. They'd designed things so the quality of the resources spawning at any one time wouldn't net out armor with more than 40% resists.... and if they did, the 'armor penalty' (better armor subtracted from available action stats) would make wearing that armor counterproductive.

They didn't account for players saving the best resources for several months until they could craft things at whopping 80% to 90% resist... and doctor buffs that multiplied your stats so much that the armor penalty became nothing... and weapons that were similarly allowing dps a good 200% over the best crafted values seen in beta. Since the QUALITY of an item wasn't really tied to the COST of production (factories were flat-rate rent and power costs, regardless of what they were producing) these uberloot items were made relatively cheap (as far as 'drain' was concerned) but produced (often-gamebreaking) performance increases that made the faucet turn into Niagra Falls.

2) There was a currency dupe bug. It produced trillions of credits that got widely distributed VERY quickly. They banned some 270 accounts, then found most of these seemed to be innocent recipients of generous donors. In all, they managed to retrieve something like 70% of the duped currency before it got too circulated to be killed fairly (if you used it to buy my armor, and then the devs took it back from me, should I get the armor back? What if YOU got it from selling something else already?) That still left hundreds of billions of currency dumped into the economy without a planned balancing 'sink' at a time when hundreds of billions of credits actually seemed like a lot.

3) They realized that much of what was a true "hard" mudflation-resistant system wasn't fun for the players, who were used to growing in wealth substantially faster in other games, so they gradually added more "faucets" and lessened the "sinks."

This was probably because they miscounted the "sinks. See, if you cancelled the game, but left a house or factory up, that item still had a rent cost, and that rent cost came out of your character's bank. So, even though your bank money was essentially "out of circulation" anyway, you got counted in the "sink" count. So... four months after you and thousands of others have left, never planning to return, the system compares the 'faucet' of money entering the economy that month with the inflated 'drain' and miscalculates the true monthly faucet:drain ratio. That made the devs believe that mudflation was more controlled than it actually was, and probably made them more confident in tweaking things.

This. If the real devs are worried about marketing/economy/inf sinks - then they need to realize the above. Near ANY change in inf sinks will lead to dissatisfaction at his point and lose customer base.

Where are you getting the idea that its even needed - you and your "friends" have way too much time Moo. I swear from your last posts i see passive aggressiveness, like you hate the game and are trying to backhand sabotage it.

If RMT'rs are that much of a prob, have COH sell inf for cash like they do at lower prices. Ppl can buy pvp stuff, purples, outfit bases, whatever.

Solved.

Except that after the one-time outlay of Prestige to place the Empowerment Stations, the rest of the cost of those Empowerment Buffs is in Invention Salvage (gotten thru drops or purchased at the CH for Inf). So most of the cost of those buffs should be measured is terms of Inf (either the purchase price when you bought the salvage or the foregone profit of selling that piece).

You can certainly roleplay it that way, but the idea that inf is just a proxy for reputation died a long time ago. I can give a level 1 player who has zero XP 2 billion inf. He can now buy the finest gear in the game, yet has no reputation due to accomplishments. When you do a transaction at Wentworth's, you're paying for an item through an intermediary that then exacts a fee for conducting the transaction. Care to explain how that works as an exchange of reputation?

It's game money, pure and simple.

It's called an endorsement... letting your influence help another.

"Heya Mr Wentworths' guy, remember me? Yeah, *flexes* that was pretty awesome, wasn't it. Look, my good buddy deadbeat..."

"Umm... that's Deadbolt"

"yeah, thats' what I said... redbolt.... Y'see, he's a good friend of mine... has a lot of potential... I think... especially if you could, y'know... lend him a little hand? Y'know, a favor for him is a favor for me! Just... do what ya can?"

Oh, I can think of ways for the first. You could, for instance, think of it as a fledgling hero getting sponsored by a more well-known hero. Maybe something like a Batman to Robin (as Chase Arcanum demonstrated just now).

Interesting to note, however, that you could give a character billions of influence and it still wouldn't count towards influence/infamy badges, which you must earn yourself outside of market and player transactions.

That could easily be taken to mean "reputation by the company you keep or the good fortune of being given aid by more established heroes/villains does not translate into reputation earned from one's own deeds."

I'd chalk that up as "sweating the small stuff."

If you're going to ask why heroes and villains have a fee for conducting transactions at Wentworth's or the Black Maret, you should take that to the logical end and ask why they're conducting transactions with influence/infamy when buying or selling things on the market at all, or even better--why they do so to buy inspirations and enhancements, or to craft inspirations.

In other words, I honestly don't think the market issue is any more damaging to the concept than the other basic functions influence and infamy serve. Which is to say, it doesn't damage the concept at all.

And since influence and infamy have been a part of the game since day one ...

Which was never doubted.

But since it is a conceptual currency, mudflation doesn't hurt the logic circuits as it would if it were Gold or Dollars or what have you.

That would be sooooo cool.

What about an inf price then you play the game without gambling? Arcade style games and that sort of stuff.

Fallen Earth has an in-game gambling system active right now iirc. So either they are breaking the law or they've found a loophole / exemption.

EVE uses an economist to measure and model their economy, but the devs see it as a vital part of their game.

That's the key issue. To make an in-game economy 'work', you need to spend a lot of time monitoring it, planing for it and then adjusting it. It has to be a vital part of your game to make such an investment worthwhile.

It's probably not worth trying to fix CoH/V's economy at this time. The fact that the supply of inf in CoH/V is constantly inflating doesn't help, but any changes made to the inf / economy system would provoke huge screams from the player base.

They probably are flying under the radar right now with it.

One of the reasons Second Life changed THEIR policies on online casinos is that they got big enough to be noticed.

Those would likely be safe... ish.

The key that they're looking for are the RMT investment of cash in and the potential to RMT the winnings back out... particularly with "games of chance" used to determine winnings.

Heck, there was just a recent court case in Korea, where participating in online gambling systems are illegal, where two guys got convicted for RMT'ing an MMO (using antigambling laws). It got overturned because the courts determined that the games were more "skill" than "chance" based. Had that game had traditional "luck" mechanics, the convictions would have likely stood.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

My character Green Scare on Virtue is head of a 501c3 Organization known as the Envionmental Liberation Army.

Our mission statement is: "Save the planet or we'll ******* kill you!"

If anyone is looking for a money sink on Virtue, donations are always welcome.

The problem with ongoing money sinks is pretty much what you're bringing up here. Personal bases aren't going to drain money from the wealthy (i.e. those that want more money): they're going to drain money from everyone (at best). This is why I generally support single instance permanent effect inf sinks, like an increase to salvage or WW capacity for what would otherwise be considered an inordinate sum because they don't have much upkeep. Would marketeers with 20 billion inf and dozens of recipes/IOs spread across multiple characters be willing to spend one of those billions on an extra 30 salvage slots or an extra 5 WW slots? Potentially, it could be made nearly limitless so that, if you're really willing to spend 20 billion inf on the salvage bags, you could have the capacity for 150 pieces of invention salvage? I doubt many would do that, but I'm reasonably sure that many more would pay for 1-2 individual increases especially on characters that already have multiple billions invested in them.

The other variety of inf sink that you bring up, the convenience cost inf sink, is present in game to some degree (purchasable travel powers), though, I agree that it could deal with a price increase to actually make it a real inf sink. A mission teleporter (or teleporter with access to all zones) with no cooldown and a 100-250k inf cost would work wonders (I think that 1 mill is probably a bit steep to see much use): cheap enough that people will buy multiples and not see using one as a waste but expensive enough to actually drain a noticeable sum from the economy, not to mention that it exists exclusively to provide a convenience rather than a practical increase to effectiveness.

I picked the price mostly based on "Why not make it a cool million?" so I'm not really set on it It seemed expensive enough to where someone who's loose with their millions could possibly consider this, while someone who's kind of short won't, but isn't going to suffer too badly for it. The price is negotiable, but I look at it this way - if someone can drop a hundred million on a recipe more or less on a whim, he's getting 100 uses for the teleport power, which is... Pretty much more than you're really ever going to need. But again - whatever works. I'm just glad the concept doesn't seem to be horribly flawed in some way

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

In a heartbeat! 5 more Market slots means it's that much quicker to earn that billion back! That's the only 'problem' I'd see with this idea- while those slots may not mean much to the 'casual' gamer, to a serious marketeer they'd be invaluable. Each time I added more market slots, I'd be making my investment back that much sooner.
As far as extra salvage goes, while I'd love to havi it, It's a terrible idea in reality. My main can already hold like 80 Salvage on her person, plus another 50 or so in the Vault, and that's not even counting the ability to store stuff in the base. If I could hold another 150 on top of that, you'd NEVER see any Alchemical Silver for sale.

This, on the other hand sounds like a great plan to me- 100k for a 1-shot Mission TP I wouldn't bat an eye at. Heck, even at a million per, I'd probably use it at least once a day.

I'd really like to see the list of craftable temp powers expanded in general. A 10-use Recall Friend, for instance, would get crafted every time I ran a TF. Or some other powers like the Hammer, Bat, and Pistol powers, that let me give my characters weapons not availible to thier powerset, even if just to show off- the Iron Blade from Croatoa, I'm thinking of you!

Which means that you'd still be removing more than a billion inf from the system, which is the point. You're not generating money faster thanks to the additional slots. If anything, you're destroying more money faster thanks to the WW tax occurring more often.

First, I never said 150 more; I said 150 total. Second, you'd be spending literal billions of inf in order to achieve that amount, which is by no means an insignificant quantity of money to be pulling out of the economy. Third, I'm still pretty sure you'd see plenty of salvage for sale because not everyone would simply horde 3000 pieces of Alchemical Silver (or whatever). We've got plenty of storage already and the payoff wouldn't really be all that spectacular (supply and demand doing what they will).