Tklees wrote:
that you get more flies with honey than **** posting.
That wasn't disruptive posting at all, if anything your post was "****" posting.
He's got a valid point to bring up and discuss and you're breaking the forum's rules.
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* Don't be a Troll:
Deliberately posting non-constructive, inappropriate, or inflammatory comments in order to solicit a response or cause discord is not allowed, in addition calling other users "Troll" or other words to describe this behavior is also prohibited. Troll country is only an area in game; please find another bridge to sit under.
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* No Flame Throwers allowed:
Don't make it your objective to insult, disrespect or otherwise berate a post or user.
Your post didn't contribute to the topic of conversation and, to an outsider, looks like a thinly veiled attempt to discredit any further discussions of the topic by relegating them to the realm of "****" posting.
You're a balance moderator, I'd expect such a pointless ad-hominem to come from someone else.
I mean no disrespect, I've played with you in game and seen you post plenty of times but posts like that detract from the conversation and generally lower the level of respect in public dialogue.
Back to the topic at hand;
I believe optional cosmetic gold-sinks are the best way to curb a rapidly inflating economy.
If we have players with lots of gold who have nothing to spend gold on but items sold by other players (with lots of gold) then there's nearly no way for the money to make its way downwards.
In the real world, the CEO of the oil conglomerate doesn't wrench pipes, log pressures, write schedules or manage accounts. He pays people to do it. In this model, when two super-rich people exchange money for needed goods (airplanes, yachts, plastic surgery) the money makes its way down to the actual producers of such goods; Farmers, mechanics, miners and steel-mill workers for example.
In the MMO system, thankfully, the system isn't nearly so tedious. An enterprising player may be able to go into the wilderness, skin mega-squirrels and sell the pelts on the auction house to someone who turns it into gear to sell on the auction house to someone who wears it to kill baddies to get extra gear to sell on the auction house to the squirrel-butcher so that there's an even distribution of money, goods and services while each of them still complete the open goals of the game.
That's a perfect closed system.
Right now the issue is that the objective of the game isn't to craft gear and kill baddies for gear to sell to other players.
It's to kill other players.
With 15s per kill quest and 25s per t3 flight it's not a guaranteed possibility to even break even in a single RvR lake, much less if you have to jump to the next one before you're finished getting 25 kills (Which is more likely than most want to admit) so it's entirely possible to spend an evening killing other players, taking keeps, getting rewards and losing money.
While this isn't a problem for those of us lucky enough to already have money for flights, this poses a great threat to newer players of the game (And isn't the insane effort of entry to the higher tiers what caused the original spiral of death on live?) who may not be able to RvR for more than one zone at a time without being forced to run into the PvE zones and kill spiders for spare change. This isn't fun. The goal is to encourage open combat with reckless abandon.
That being said, inflation let to run amok can wreak havoc on the player economy as well! Players may very well never be able to afford decent talismans or potions if they don't level the crafting skills themselves! Something must be done to prohibit exorbitant prices for needed goods. One way to do this is to increase the value of currency by increasing Upkeep costs, costs needed to complete the every day tasks in the game (flying, respeccing, buying a last name, purchasing RvR gear) to appropriately discourage money hoarding driving prices down. Another way is to make currency harder to come across (reducing kill quest rewards etc). Each of these changes raises the perceived value of currency driving prices down. The only problem is that neither of these are really all that much of a problem for those who already have money, it's only an issue for players who are trying to get a foothold on the game.
A system that has proven well in other games with similar mechanics (Which will not be named here) is to provide expensive cosmetic items or other "status icons" to spend a large amount of money on. This allows Scrooge McDuck, the clever business man with a character at 200 of every crafting skill to show his wealth and afford the cost of living while still letting Hardy Worker, the fresh 32 engineer, to fly about and do his business and envy Scrooge.
I think the best course of action is to do one of the following while providing expensive cosmetic options (Special dyes, mounts, otherwise un-acquirable alt-appearance items).
Either the cost of upkeep needs to be readjusted to allow players to only RvR and still come out on top
OR
The amount of money coming into the economy from kill quests needs to be rebalanced to at least allow players to get by on RvR.
Being able to earn 7g with 25 kills was a bit steep, but it should be conceivable to make 3-4 so that you can still fly around and respec every once in a while without having to grind.
TL;DR there is no TL;DR just read it.
This isn't a damnation, this isn't me "skewering" the devs (whom I admire greatly for their hard work), this is an appeal to consider a rebalance to allow players to play the game.