Inflation. How to fix it?

The answer to fixing inflation is simple. Take a lesson from the current administration. Give everyone that leads teams a stimulus incentive bonus of 100,000,000 Influence per mission.

Semi serious thinking on this. I used to mess with the market back when it first came out. Ie. use all 10 slots (at the time) to buy and bid on 1 item - I would buy up every item for a price of less then (at the time) 5000 (which was a lot back then) and then turn around and put them up for sale for 10,000. It seem the best way to avoid this type of 'market scheming' would be to have the game periodically dump (once a week or so) mass quanities of items in on the market at the low low price of 500 per item for white salvage, 1000 per item for yellow salvage, and 5000 per item for red savlage. Thus ending the ability to manipulate the market. The same process could be used for recipes as well... but base the price on the value of Regular Stock IO's - yellow recieps 3X the value of reg stock IO value of a similar lvl recipe - Red recieps 5 x the value of reg stock IO of similar lvl - Purple 10 x the value of reg stock IO's of similar lvl. - Or some formula that seems accepitable to whomever decides how much things should be paid for.

2 cents worth.
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Psychology is considered a 'soft' science because most people's brains are considered 'mush'.

if they want to supercharge supply changing drop rates is the easiest way to do it.

And "market scheming" does nothing to drive up prices- quite the opposite.

Mmm...

If you want to really place inflation in a head-lock, and even reverse the cost of salvage, recipes, and IOs; you would need to institute sources of such goods outside of the traditional market (WW/BM).

Notice that the costs of red and yellow salvage is to an extent placed under restrictions thank to AE and your ability to trade tickets for salvage. If AE would offer white salvage as well, it would also clamp on the white salvage cost inflation and ruthless manipulation we see today.

Notice you can buy standard enhancement recipes at the university, thus the cost of that recipe is effectively capped. It may make sense to have the IO set recipes also available to thru the university as well, thus hard capping the prices for IO recipes. I would suggest an entirely different thread to determine what a fair price for the various types of recipes would be.

AE somewhat addresses the recipe thing, but since it is a random recipe drop for the exchange of tickets, its kinda pointless from the position of getting what you really need at the level you really want. Perhaps the ticket amount you can store can be significantly increased to accomodate a true exchange of tickets for recipes of your choce and level, aka like we can do with Merits.

The Merit system is another way to acquire recipes with out using the market, if the preponderance of the players would do this instead of using the market; I would predict the prices at WW/BM would commence to drop.

Alignmernt Merits works in the same way as Merit System, its just a different way to acquire the merits for trade.

Vanguard Merits, are kinda useless in this regard. Perhaps they could also be made tradeable for salvage and recipes, but once more I suggest a different thread be started to discuss what the trade rates should be.

As you can picture, there is already an almost comprehensive set of systems that allows us to circumvent the market, and avoid the ravages of inflation and player greed.

My dissertation on how I make money, is simply an example of using those already in game systems that allows us to not use the market.

The basic principle, stop using the market! Thus demand plumets and so will prices will have to follow.

I do not support measures to deny players the ability to store influence, items, or what not when the market system can be circumvented all together.

The devs have all kind of ways to fix this as well, if inclined. A sudden increase in the drop rate of the good recipes would have shocking repercusions on the bloated market prices for instance. After all market prices are a function of supply and demand, if the devs provides ample supplies, then the price would obviously drop.

Hugs

Stormy

Or, Stormy, more simply just place a bid you are willing to pay, go play and have fun, come back after some time, and collect said item. I see too many people saying prices are crazy. But if they showed some patience, they can get what they want much cheaper.

I don't think the 'frequency' of drops will actually solve this problem... cause I will bet most people will hoard the 'valuable' stuff, ie. alchemist silver that usually is expenisive, and red salvage especially (I know I hoard them cause I don't wanna pay 3,000,000 for a diamond) and with the talk of even more storage space the problem will probably get worse not better.

Ok.. that was a dollars worth.

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Battle not with monsters, least ye marry one, for when you gaze into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you! - Almost Famious Quote

I don't see AE as a fix. Yes, I farm tickets when I really need them, but they always seem to nerf the farms for tickets, which is a pain, because I usually end up having to find a new farm instead of enjoy playing the rest of the game. I appologize if this attitude seems offensive, but I'm not a huge fan of AE, some people seem to enjoy the AE farming community, it's not for me. I just solo farm for tickets. Next project, learn how to make ticket farms in AE.

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They say memory is the 2nd thing to go, good thing I can't remember the first.

Aside from my other issues with the market, etc, I find the huge numbers unaesthetic. (Rather like pinball, which suffered from a period of "score inflation", with at least one attempt to re-impose some sanity.) I wish we could just chop a few zeroes off, across the board... but that doesn't scale well to low levels, of course. The endgame is driving everything these days.

The basic problem of inflation in this game is that influence is magically made by defeating enemies. That means the influx of currency into the game is vastly outstripping the availability and consumption of goods.

The only way to realistically reign in inflation in this game is to either take influence out of the game by destroying it (even watching billions being burnt off by the 88s shows that a few players have zero effect on inflation, no matter how many zeros they put behind their effort) or by limiting the influx of it (which would take away some impetus to defeat/farm).

The basic problem of this game, or any other video game, is that while inflation is a problem, to introduce real world scarcity to fix gameflation would make the game no longer fun (ie. the fix is worse than the problem).

No one wants to have the market defeat price of a malta agent go down because too many people have farmed them, or have to wait for a Nemesis map to regenerate because 'were all out of WarHulks'.

Sorry but there is no fix for inflation because people want to play without scarcity on enemies, and whenever a scarce item (like purples and rares) is introduced, it will automatically be the focus of lots and lots of currency.

That being said, the increase of level 50 earning power and AE exploits have made inflation worse.

If you can buy an A-merit (100 merits) for 20m + 50 merits, let people buy 50 merits too.

100k*level to take an enhancement off and into inventory
100k*level to move a slot to some other power (only if empty)

Add every temp power to a NPC where you can simply buy it with inf, much more expensively but more conveniently

Mmm...

I seen some really intriguing concepts, and they make me wonder.

It seems a basic premise for a large part of the posters is:

Premise 1:

"Excessive influence held by players produces market price inflation"

Thus given that premise as valid, then it becomes logical to deduce that the solution to inflation is "taxing the rich" so the poor has it better, ha ha ha... I am sorry could not resist the political barb...

But the feel is if we could decrease how much influence a player could hold, then they could not afford to pay any price for anything the desired, and therefore the prices at the market would drop.

While this seems very reasonable, after all supply and demand rules would essentially support this position, after all if demand is essentially broke, then the availability of demand for the current supply would plumet and thus the supplyers would have to reduce their prices.


I have been addressing the very same issue, from a different angle...

Premise 2:

"If the noraml way of acquiring goods is too expensive, go outside the box"

Unlike Arcanaville who would suggest to get coupons to buy player supplied items, I want to totally and completely decouple from that environment.

Let me explain, why I don't think the coupon concept would work, is the coupon worth whatever price the item at WW is priced or is a fixed amount; thus if fixed it would essentially render the coupon worthless. If it pays the player asked amount, I believe it would only make the inflationary costs go even higher and now we are looking at some aweful exploit conditions, such as I get a cheap white recipe, place it for sale at WW for a billion, then go do TFs get my merit purchased coupon and buy my own recipe for a billion...

I believe under the principles of supply and demand, if you want to force the suppliers to drop their prices: "You have to drop demand", not increase it.

This is why I support A-Merits, Merits, Vanguard and AE Tickets as a way to actually drop demand at WW/BM. Why should I buy an over-bloated priced LoGT 7.5 at WW when I can get it for 250 merits at the vendor or 2-Amerits as well?

Once more, yeah it may be a bit tedius, maybe. But tips can be done in a few minutes and are not that bad to do. If you are patient in a week or so, so yo will have your 2 A-merits, also while doing tips you can get shards, recipe drops and all kind of wonderful things as well. Frankly hardly a bad deal.

But my alternate principle is simply, find ways to satisfy your needs outside of WW/BM to drop demand, that will work if enough of us use this process.


Now here is a simple one the devs could do:

Premise 3:

"Vendors sales all things as well, thus price capping"

This one is quite radical, but it will sure as fire work! It will end inflation hard and fast. Not only will it end the over-pricing and inflation it will cap how expensive anything is and perhaps make the pain of those who are not so lucky in getting what they need a more reasonable enterprise.

If the vendors sold everything, salvage and recipes. Then at WW/BM it would make no sense to sell stuff higher priced than what the vendor would sell them to you. A good question would be what are fair prices for salvage and recipes, were it would it still allow for a healthy MM/BM operation. After all how much a player could sell something for would have to be less than the vendor, and yet good income could be achieved from actually receiving a drop, that is a fair profit. For instance, if we say an invention set common IO is worth 500,000 influence purchased at the vendor, then a player could reasonably sell that recipe for 250,000. Knowing that any two whites of his, would allow him to purchase at a vendor any white recipe he would want, or find a bargain at WW/BM.

There is another approach, one pretty much illustrated and desctribed by Penny:

Premise 4:

"Bid a fair price, and be patient"

Actually if as a community refused to pay the over-bloated prices, that in itself would force prices down. The two obstacles I see with this very simple suggestion is personal patience and the community standing tough over a fair price, besides determining what is a fair price?

I can't think of a 5th approach, maybe some of you smart ones out there can...

A quick recap...

I don't believe the "limited influence accumulation" proposition to be proper; my second proposition to use "alternate sources to acquire goods" can be rightfully accused of tedius; the third "Vendors sells it all" Can be very reasonable but for the players that really abuse (play) the market would be a horrifying turn of events; the fourth could actually work, but can we get enough mass participation to achieve the effect?

Hugs

Stormy