A simple fix to inlfation.


Aett_Thorn

 

Posted

The economy of this game is completely broken.
Far more influence comes into the system than what leaves - this is a major problem in any economy whether they be in a mmo or in real life.
The inflation can be fixed by either reducing the amount of influence coming into the game or increasing the rate at which it leaves.

I suggest doing both.

We have the option of turning off our experience and gaining more influence. I propose doing something similar, but the opposite. Give us the ability to turn off our influence gain and in return, double our drop rates. All recipes have twice the chance of dropping (including purples and pvp IOs), vanguard merits and architect tickets drop twice as fast too.
This not only halts the influence brought into the economy but it also gives us more to sell on the marketplace - further utilizing the biggest inf sink in the game and increasing the outflow of revenue.

Edit: Just noticed the typo in the title. Won't let me edit it - fail lol.


 

Posted

This... is actually not a bad idea. It would fix one big problem, which is that it's impossible to generate stuff without also generating more Inf.




Character index

 

Posted

A slightly more drastic solution:

Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character.

No caveats, no exclusions. If you have 100,000 inf, you don't generate any more from mobs. Earn it through drops and the market.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Silver Gale View Post
This... is actually not a bad idea. It would fix one big problem, which is that it's impossible to generate stuff without also generating more Inf.
^This. I like it. It's fairly simple (maybe not from a coding standpoint, I make no assumptions there), reduces influence coming in, increases supply of items, and the more stuff that sells on the market, the more influence goes out of the system.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
A slightly more drastic solution:

Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character.

No caveats, no exclusions. If you have 100,000 inf, you don't generate any more from mobs. Earn it through drops and the market.
No. Especially considering Incarnate slots, crafting Inventions, changing costumes, etc. require quite a bit of influence, especially in the later levels. The market shouldn't become a required part of the game.

To the OP, not bad.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
A slightly more drastic solution:

Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character.

No caveats, no exclusions. If you have 100,000 inf, you don't generate any more from mobs. Earn it through drops and the market.
I understand the sentiment, but that severely limits the inf that free players can earn. Thats what, 2 SO's they can buy at 50 before they need to go earn more.

Then you get into the people that refuse to market, for whatever crazy reason they have. I understand it is their choice, but still... Too drastic.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
A slightly more drastic solution:

Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character.

No caveats, no exclusions. If you have 100,000 inf, you don't generate any more from mobs. Earn it through drops and the market.
The OP's idea seems fair because it would be a player choice to use that new drop setting. The problem with the 100,000 INF cutoff idea (or any idea that's based on arbitrary INF totals like that) is that it's far too easy to email INF back and forth to different characters or store it on the market to get around things like that.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
To be fair, I never said it was a particularly good idea. Just that it would stop influence from being generated as fast as it is.
Yeah right. And everyone would be so happy to try getting these 100,000 inf at a time.

As for the OP, not a bad idea.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Giant2005 View Post
The economy of this game is completely broken.
Far more influence comes into the system than what leaves - this is a major problem in any economy whether they be in a mmo or in real life.
The inflation can be fixed by either reducing the amount of influence coming into the game or increasing the rate at which it leaves.

I suggest doing both.

We have the option of turning off our experience and gaining more influence. I propose doing something similar, but the opposite. Give us the ability to turn off our influence gain and in return, double our drop rates. All recipes have twice the chance of dropping (including purples and pvp IOs), vanguard merits and architect tickets drop twice as fast too.
This not only halts the influence brought into the economy but it also gives us more to sell on the marketplace - further utilizing the biggest inf sink in the game and increasing the outflow of revenue.

Edit: Just noticed the typo in the title. Won't let me edit it - fail lol.
Holy crap. It's small, and well thought out. I...like this.


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Posted

Thanks for the support guys and for overlooking the typo in the title that would probably deter most.
I just hope the Devs aren't deterred and support the idea just as much.


 

Posted

The only problem I see with it is that it's optional, and not likely to be used enough to make an impact.

There has to be a mandatory way. Perhaps level 50s automagically turn this effect on. It can be like hitting the influence cap of 2 billion in that your defeats still count towards the influence badges.


I also say that one way to delete a bit more influence is to change the inf : prestige ratio into something more appetizing. If I got more prestige for my inf, I'd actually be willing to burn the influence. Instead, I don't burn any and just farm missions to earn prestige, generating even more craptons of influence.


Where to now?
Check out all my guides and fiction pieces on my blog.
The MFing Warshade | The Last Rule of Tanking | The Got Dam Mastermind
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don'T attempt to read tHis mEssaGe, And believe Me, it is not a codE.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Giant2005 View Post
Thanks for the support guys and for overlooking the typo in the title that would probably deter most.
I just hope the Devs aren't deterred and support the idea just as much.
Typos happen. Also, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. Brains are odd like that. Wasn't there a study done recently that showed that people would automatically put the letters in the right order when they saw them, anyways, as long as the first and last letter were correct?


Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"I was just the one with the most unsolicited sombrero." - Traegus

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn View Post
Typos happen. Also, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. Brains are odd like that. Wasn't there a study done recently that showed that people would automatically put the letters in the right order when they saw them, anyways, as long as the first and last letter were correct?
Yes, that was done by Cabdirmge Unevsitiry.

Quote:
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Amzanig huh?


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Aett_Thorn View Post
Typos happen. Also, I didn't even notice it until you pointed it out. Brains are odd like that.
There was related thing like that where, IIRC, you had to read a sentence but you only had a few seconds to read it. Afterwards you had to say what you thought the sentence said. The trick was that nearly every word in the sentence was misspelled (with a few letters in the middle of the words like you said). As it turned out something like 80-90% of the people still managed to understand the overall meaning of the sentence regardless.


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Posted

Not bad idea witht eh turning off X to get more Y.

The only thing that will kill inflation is a ceiling set price.

Put a Store on all sides or Pocket D that sells everything (yes everything, purps, temps, x-mas salavage..) for a set influence price. I don't care if every purple is 2 billion inf. Whatever value is set that would be the new max anyone would pay for said item so no more off market sells.

The other thing is that you need influence eaters. Like any or all of the following.
Convert Influence to reward merits.
Make AE a pay to play.
Make AE a pay to vote.
Put in more temp powers that people can by with their influence. (ie 25 mill inf = 1 hour x2 xp; want to auto complete that mission 1mill x lvl of mission)
Scrap XP debt instead have the player loose 10% of thier current influence.
Leave the influence cap at 2 billion, but make influence account based not toon based.
Let people buy up or down a recipe level (with the min max being what the recipe actually is normally). So if you get a level 38 recipe and you want it to be level 30 it will cost you 8 mill to convert it.

All these things will eat influence. Less influence means more bang for the buck and little to no inflation. Add in a ceiling on prices and you pretty much have as much of a fix as you can get.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post
Yes, that was done by Cabdirmge Unevsitiry.
I...
Damn...that actually works O_O


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by GPBunny View Post
Not bad idea witht eh turning off X to get more Y.

The only thing that will kill inflation is a ceiling set price.

Put a Store on all sides or Pocket D that sells everything (yes everything, purps, temps, x-mas salavage..) for a set influence price. I don't care if every purple is 2 billion inf. Whatever value is set that would be the new max anyone would pay for said item so no more off market sells.

The other thing is that you need influence eaters. Like any or all of the following.
Convert Influence to reward merits.
Make AE a pay to play.
Make AE a pay to vote.
Put in more temp powers that people can by with their influence. (ie 25 mill inf = 1 hour x2 xp; want to auto complete that mission 1mill x lvl of mission)
Scrap XP debt instead have the player loose 10% of thier current influence.
Leave the influence cap at 2 billion, but make influence account based not toon based.
Let people buy up or down a recipe level (with the min max being what the recipe actually is normally). So if you get a level 38 recipe and you want it to be level 30 it will cost you 8 mill to convert it.

All these things will eat influence. Less influence means more bang for the buck and little to no inflation. Add in a ceiling on prices and you pretty much have as much of a fix as you can get.
A few things:

1. Look at common IO recipes. Go compare what they sell for at the tables - you'll see they (sometimes) sell for more on the market.

2. Common salvage. I've been making money on a lowbie lately running in AE and burning tickets. Dropping Alchemical Silvers on the market for 6 inf. People are (were) paying 300,000 for them. (They're down, or were, to 15-25k.) They're available cheaply - literally for *nothing* (but time, and not that much) And yet people were paying that much for them...

3. Pay for AE? Pay to vote? INF for dying? Absofreakinglutely NOT. Not everyone is multi-billionaires - not even some of those that have been around for a while (I've been here since I3.) You want to drive people away, that's a very good way to do so. And account wide INF cap? No. Not only is it a bad idea (especially for those of us with lots of alts,) but those that HAVE that sort of money know how to sock it away.

INF sinks have to be (a) something people don't mind paying for (or ignoring,) as opposed to punitive, and (b) worth the price. Base INF to Prestige conversion comes to mind - I'd LOVE to give SGs a boost once in a while, but the 500:1 ratio... no, it's not worth it. Cut that in half and even with the non-huge piles of INF I have, I'd still burn it once in a while. The flip side of that? One of the things I *hated* in AIon (and a few other games) was the constant feel of needing to grind for gold - for training, for weapon repair, to "buy back" the chunk of experience held by the Soul Healer for dying (and in a PVP-based game, well....) I *despise* those kind of INF sinks - they feel like I'm just making money to give right back to the game, as opposed to stuff I'd buy/burn INF on because I *want* to.


 

Posted

The OP's suggestion is sort of like running in SG mode, where you get prestige in exchange for cutting your inf in half.

If you could encapsulate that idea with some in-game rationale it be more logical. Perhaps actually joining the Midnighters and running in Midnighter mode, or when running secret missions for Vanguard (which, since they're secret, won't give you any influence/infamy).


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by GPBunny View Post
Scrap XP debt instead have the player loose 10% of thier current influence.
Leave the influence cap at 2 billion, but make influence account based not toon based.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dechs Kaison View Post

Completely cut influence gain for anybody with more than 100,000 on their character.
See, the problem with ideas like these (aside from being ridiculous), is that anyone with even a minimum of intelligence would be sure to periodically email their stash of cash away from their character to be able to keep it safe.

No, there has to be more optional cash sinks, like prestige conversion. The temp power buying is a nice start, but not everyone uses those. I also like the OP's idea--I would use it from time to time, if it were an option. However, if I may expand on one of GPBunny's ideas....

Perhaps if the devs did a data-mine on the maximum average (on a bell curve, not counting anomalies) price anyone has ever payed for X item in the auction house....and have a way to buy it from a store vendor. Say the most people have ever paid for the alchemical silver, over time, was 300k influence. And right now it's going for 200k on the auction house. You can try to buy it at the AH still, or you can buy it instantly over at the NPC store.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stone Daemon View Post
Perhaps if the devs did a data-mine on the maximum average (on a bell curve, not counting anomalies) price anyone has ever payed for X item in the auction house....and have a way to buy it from a store vendor. Say the most people have ever paid for the alchemical silver, over time, was 300k influence. And right now it's going for 200k on the auction house. You can try to buy it at the AH still, or you can buy it instantly over at the NPC store.
Problem with that (for many items) is something I mentioned before:

I need to make X many recipes (let's go with another usually-high-priced one, Luck Charms, and I'm making a bunch of Accuracies for the SG bins/badge/whatever.)

Why would I spend *any* INF on it when I can run a quick mission/arc/farm in AE and just burn tickets getting salvage? I've gotten 10-11 LCs, ASilvers, etc. in a single haul, after all. What could equal several million INF... for the low low cost of nothing.

I'd basically be evading that sort of a sink.

Now, no, that doesn't apply to purples and the like that don't show up that way - but I can get those other ways (grind trials, hero merits, etc.) anyway.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill View Post
Problem with that (for many items) is something I mentioned before:

I need to make X many recipes (let's go with another usually-high-priced one, Luck Charms, and I'm making a bunch of Accuracies for the SG bins/badge/whatever.)

Why would I spend *any* INF on it when I can run a quick mission/arc/farm in AE and just burn tickets getting salvage? I've gotten 10-11 LCs, ASilvers, etc. in a single haul, after all. What could equal several million INF... for the low low cost of nothing.

I'd basically be evading that sort of a sink.

Now, no, that doesn't apply to purples and the like that don't show up that way - but I can get those other ways (grind trials, hero merits, etc.) anyway.
Thus the optional aspect of it. They try to shove an inf sink down our throats, I can imagine many people would get quite angry. With this, you have a guarenteed way to get whatever you want--it's just going to be generally more expensive than the AH, and have the side benefit of removing money from the game.

As to your AE example...those are random rolls. This isn't. This is "I wanna buy nao!" for those that need that kind of thing and don't like to screw around with placing bids and can't/won't farm for AE tickets.

As with other things in this game, it lets you bypass certain things (such as astrals/merits/etc do in relation to getting rare recipes) for a price. And people like options, no?


 

Posted

Several things....

1. Double drop rates? I doubt it would happen but maybe a slight improvement to drop rates. Maybe an improvement to the chances of getting a drop by something like 33% or in the ballpark of a quarter. But then improve yields more. Not an expert on rewards tables but something like a disproportionate improvement to chances of getting uncommon or rares vs commons. So that rather than completely filling your inventory with common junk 2x as fast, you'll gain everything slightly faster and a better chance at uncommon junk.

2. End of mission/arc bonus. Possible point of exploit; turn off inf there or to kill a boss and improve the drops just for them. So how about a kind of inf debt that you incur upon turning the option on? At this point you don't earn inf or get improved drops but the drop bonus will turn on after paying the debt with dropped inf you'd have gotten.

3. Coupons! This option could come with the bonus of adding coupons to the drop tables and even really nice stuff like merits! So tailor cupons, crafting coupons, and other stuff that might cost you inf to use.

4. Vendors. They still give you inf for your junk. So how about changing that chatty vault secretary into someone that wants our junk (*smirk*)? There'd be progress bars on stuff you can get rif of (like badges) and when you get to 100%, you get the prize and start over again. Ex: trade 20 temp power recipies for a basic IO of your choosing. trade 15 pieces of random common salvage for a random uncommon drop. trade 25 pieces of any common salvage for a piece of common salvage of your choosing.


 

Posted

Double drops for PvE and PvP is alright. But for AE? Don't we need more incentive for people to play the other areas of the game? PvP surely could use some new players.