Addressing the Economy (mudflation)

[Rhambuk]

Originally Posted by Hasbinbad [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Whatever you do, don't stop watering the plants with Brawndo.

its got slectrolytes!

[Hawala]

Originally Posted by acemac [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

the person that solves the economy problem in MMOS will be very rich.

I'm working on my PhD in Economics.

There are several issues:

1) Currency is not controlled.
2) There's no interest rate to offset inflation.
3) There's no borrowing/lending, due to no collateral.
4) Merchants buy the same item even if they have a billion of it, whereas you'd think their marginal utility would be close to zero or even negative for that last item. People should have to find a merchant who doesn't have very many of that item you're trying to sell.
5) Mobs DROP currency, it should only be attainable through banks, or merchants.
6) Mobs DROP gear, although this isn't such a huge problem, because it takes work to farm gear, just like it takes work to make gear IRL.
7) Tradeskills generally produce inferior gear to camping.
8) Certain items are simply unfarmable now, this doesn't usually happen in real life. Their prices skyrocket.
9) Last but not least, patches are being anticipated, people know what will happen and how items are going to change.

[citizen1080]

Originally Posted by Hawala [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I'm working on my PhD in Economics.

There are several issues:

1) Currency is not controlled.
2) There's no interest rate to offset inflation.
3) There's no borrowing/lending, due to no collateral.
4) Merchants buy the same item even if they have a billion of it, whereas you'd think their marginal utility would be close to zero or even negative for that last item. People should have to find a merchant who doesn't have very many of that item you're trying to sell.
5) Mobs DROP currency, it should only be attainable through banks, or merchants.
6) Mobs DROP gear, although this isn't such a huge problem, because it takes work to farm gear, just like it takes work to make gear IRL.
7) Tradeskills generally produce inferior gear to camping.
8) Certain items are simply unfarmable now, this doesn't usually happen in real life. Their prices skyrocket.
9) Last but not least, patches are being anticipated, people know what will happen and how items are going to change.

Not saying you are wrong...as I think I got a C- in Econ...but we have most this IRL and our economy is still in the shitter =)

[fadetree]

Item decay comes to mind. Oh wait, everybody hates that worse than inflation.

[Hawala]

Originally Posted by fadetree [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Item decay comes to mind. Oh wait, everybody hates that worse than inflation.

YES, item decay.

[Tecmos Deception]

I still think that ideas like this will mostly only remove pp that wasn't really in circulation anyways. It's not like the people who can afford 500k guises have been buying upgrades in EC contributing to some perceived inflation among other players, and it's not like the people whose pp is actually changing hands are too likely to spend it on a 1-in-a-million lottery instead of just buying something that will be useful to them.

And if you made the lottery or prices appealing enough that people other than the super rich are willing to blow a ton of pp on it, then you've gone from being a "nonclassic sacrifice in order to make something else more classic" to "nonclassic sacrifice that only makes things still less classic."


I mean, it might help deal with inflation issues when Velious hits and all the people who have a bankroll they're saving for then would start bringing their pp out of the banks... but I doubt it.

[Rhambuk]

Start a casino and try to scam them out of it like a normal person.

gm intervention is just going to cause veterans to quit, assuming they just remove a ton of plat from banks.

Might as well just do a server restart...

[Swish]

I don't know if Bob is back in full swing but I'm considering getting the old Trade Fed setup going again, with escrow services on account sales etc. I wasn't part of it the first time around but did use the escrow once and it worked well.

You'd all trust me right? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

[Rhambuk]

Originally Posted by Swish [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You'd all trust me right? [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Yeah I would, though in the past month ive sold..2 accounts and boughten 2 accounts, didnt use an escrow for either, call me naive for being trusting with 1mill plat but havent been screwed over yet.

I think people know that the gms will involve themselves in cases of account scam, its happened before. no real point in trying to scam them out of it if the gms are going to fix it after.

Bob posted they don't in his own personal experience but that was at least a year ago, pretty sure people have posted about being scammed and the gm's helped them sort it though.

To really stop it, just get a bunch of scammer escrow guys, do the trade. delete the plat and not give them anything. plat gone no account sales, just what we want right...

[Daviss34]

Let the free market decide; if we start diddling with the economy, it will only have unintended consequences. When Velious makes it out, things will even out until the same pattern repeats because there are no new, better items to bring down the price of old elite items and thus they will inflate again. No real way to fix this, but there's a lot of ways to make the economy work a whole lot worse.