Can the inflated economy be reversed?

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

TZoner - Raging Tide wrote: »

PWE could always set a cap on gold and token sale prices...i have heard from someone that they have done it before. But given PWE's current irl market situation i almost think they would rather the cost of gold with in game coins be higher, that way it forces people to instead buy Zen with their credit cards or at stores so they can make more money off of us. In the long run though i believe its truly the rich people of the servers that control the cost of stuff....and they manipulate it on a regular basis to suit their needs and make themself richer.

1. There is a cap. It's 4m per gold.

2. You heard wrong. They have never put in any additional cap aside from the one that has always existed in the code.

Wanmei has introduced several coin sinks.
We QQ'ed and got DQ Points for items to collect rewards because of the slash in item drop values and the increase in NPC prices.
They've added a few others in the form of quests, and items you can purchase, but it's all optional.

In the end, it boils down to the greed of those that have it. The casual players like myself just get screwed in the end. I don't make any more coin playing than I did 2 years ago. In fact, I make less, and it costs me 10 times more to play effectively.
Which pushes the casual player to use RL cash to buy gold, and supports the company and the servers. Win Win for PWE.

Boomz - Harshlands

bluestuffzzz wrote: »

This was discussed quite a bit back in the day. It's not possible, and even if it was, PWE wouldn't care enough to make it so. The problem isn't a lack of coins. On the contrary, it's actually too many coins in the market that devalue what a coin is worth. With things like tokens of best luck, extacy/excitement cards, etc popping up from Cube, BH, event rewards, etc; all of that coin just magically appears on the server when someone gets it. Even TW rewards cause this issue.

So, what happens when one person gets an excitement card from BH, sells it to the NPC, and gets the 5m coin from nothing? They use that coin to purchase items from players, which puts it into the market. Now, if one person does this, it isn't a big deal. However, imagine how many players do this daily? There's probably 1bil a day created on each server out of the blue.

A way to mitigate this issue are coin sinks via NPCs. If the player that received that coinage turns around and buys items from an NPC (and/or the NPC takes a cut of the profit), then the coin is technically gone and not on the server anymore. Unfortunately, not only does this require work from Wanmei & PWE to implement, but it's only a minor fix.

Ultimately, the coin fix issue doesn't work 100% because everyone will not blow on their extra coins on an NPC-based item(s). There is no possible fix to the inflation, except coin sinks and removing ways that coin are thrown into the market. Much like real life, inflation is natural in the market.

I completely agree with this, however one major part of the issue and solution you did not mention. While coins are created via tw/mobs/bh etc. they are also taken away.
Things in pwi that take coins away:
- gear repair
- gear shatter
- charms
- items that have expirations such as: teleport bells, auto stones
- crafting fees
- gear/wep making (when bound)
- AH gold/coin transfer fee
- and 2nd the biggest one, item time-value depriciation, i.e. nirvana use to be worth 100s of mill now worth nothing.
- now the biggest one, NEW PLAYERS. When a new player is added to the game, they suck up coins from the existing coin pool in order to advance, play, and gear up.

This is a very complex problem, but not one that is not impossible to solve. If you want to lower the worth of gold, and increase the worth of the coin, you must depriciate the value of gear, i.e. come out with more new content that DOES NOT have anything to do with existing content (for instance the content of the new wings of ascention inflated because matchless wings went up 800m in price); and pwi must get more new members at a rate much faster than they are. Currently, the pwi player base is actually decreasing rather than increasing and that is one of the largest problems in this game. Because of that, the price of everything is going up except the worth of the coin. Therefore making the game more expensive to play and gettign less for what you pay which in turn drives more people away from this game.

PWI: this is for you.
If you want this game to survive you must stop creating content that only affects old players, right now it takes at least half a year for a new player to catch up to old players to become even close to their strength due to the way you have progressed the game. rebirths, miridians, leveling up, these are all things that only helps already existing members. Also you must address the coin inflation, in order to do that you must first get a larger player base.

- from Boomz, Harshlands greatest merchant. b:victory

Gnip - Raging Tide

It is a simple matter really. The imbalance was reached when the casual player i.e. light or non cash shoppers left in mass. Without a good balance between the sellers and buyers a healthy economy is impossible.

The question is how to bring back the casual gamer. That is something I fear is impossible for pwi, seeing how none of the GM's are in game so frankly have no idea the state of the economy much less the game.

I say enjoy it for what it is. But it's glory days are long gone, unless they do something drastic.

FragiIe - Dreamweaver

Gnip - Raging Tide wrote: »

It is a simple matter really. The imbalance was reached when the casual player i.e. light or non cash shoppers left in mass. Without a good balance between the sellers and buyers a healthy economy is impossible.

The question is how to bring back the casual gamer. That is something I fear is impossible for pwi, seeing how none of the GM's are in game so frankly have no idea the state of the economy much less the game.

I say enjoy it for what it is. But it's glory days are long gone, unless they do something drastic.

This!
Greed is the main issue...botting isn't hurting the game that much..I cleared 250k in 2 hours of botting and that's keeping my bm in a congested area..the drops and coins simply are not there! Anyone claiming a million coin an hour is lying out their ****!

TZoner - Raging Tide

Solution: Make PWI Pay to play and give everyone r9rr +12 with our choice of shards..GG

Xx_BeLLa_xX - Harshlands

Here's my advice for people that complain about the economy:

You are welcome. b:cute

Night$aber - Dreamweaver

Shame that isn't true Bella xD.

Toliman - Raging Tide

Boomz - Harshlands wrote: »

... While coins are created via tw/mobs/bh etc. they are also taken away.
Things in pwi that take coins away:
- gear repair
- gear shatter
...

Those players, which pay for gear repair or gear shatter more than they can get from fight are pay to play players.

Boomz - Harshlands wrote: »

...
Things in pwi that take coins away:
...
- items that have expirations such as: teleport bells, auto stones
- crafting fees
...

What reason to pay more, than you can get ?
Again it is pay to play option.

As any other from your post.

Free to play players know, how get coins.

They have not any way to get gold though from NPC using stable price of gold.

Evryn - Morai

butterglobe wrote: »

I've been wondering what possible ideas could help stabilize the sharply growing inflation in PWI?

Would (example) making mobs drop higher amount of coins help?
>> So that it encourages people to farm mobs in general not just for important items but also for coins thus using the coins for gold trading to purchase boutique items and when boutique items are more within reach of the community, the value of items would stop increasing.

That would only raise inflation further. The big problem is botting - people who have the ability to autoculti for extended periods of time (I'm guilty of this myself) make a few million a day (2 to 4 or so, per character). Add Jolly Jones' quests to that mix for another mil or so per day for roughly an hour of playing, and you've got a steady income. And I can guarantee you that a LOT of free to play peeps are doing such.

At this moment I think the coins coming from mobs are so outdated that its no longer worth picking up.

Dunno. Past level 90 you can get coin stacks as high as 2000 on a lucky drop, with an average of around 300. That adds up over time, especially if soloing. I always vacuum if I got a chance to.

How to solve inflation? Simple - set a top price at which point NPCs will start selling the item. Stuff like Sacred Mothers Aura for instance - any person selling it for more then 3.5 will fail to find a buyer due to the fact that with a few Mysterious Chips and 3.5 million coins, you can make one at the mysterious merchant.

It wouldn't be a bad idea to add Tokens of Luck at a similar rate - 1 mysterious chip + 15K coins = 1 token of luck. Would set a ceiling price for tokens and make chips more popular as a BH reward in the process (55 of em ain't a lot if you're saving for a Gen Summer's token). And since you can get a lot with tokens, that'd fix a lot of the inflation issues I think.

zhangwuj1

The solution to ease gold inflation is very very very simple.

Create an npc that sells dod, vit stone and dot for 100m coins each
Create an npc that sells random S card for 200m each

I can assure you that gold price will drop to below 1.5m in every server within a few weeks. Inflation solved. But too bad pwi's not gonna do that. Though i would really really really love to see such coin sinks with end game items.


So ******n sick of every single end game item being obtainable only through chance based packs/chest from boutique.

Proski - Archosaur

do solutions exist: yes
will they be implemented: no

Jaabg - Sanctuary

zhangwuj1 wrote: »

The solution to ease gold inflation is very very very simple.

Create an npc that sells dod, vit stone and dot for 100m coins each
Create an npc that sells random S card for 200m each

I can assure you that gold price will drop to below 1.5m in every server within a few weeks. Inflation solved. But too bad pwi's not gonna do that. Though i would really really really love to see such coin sinks with end game items.


So ******n sick of every single end game item being obtainable only through chance based packs/chest from boutique.

If those prices stick around, people will be getting dod's in 1~3 day. S cards for 200m is cheap in my opinion, for a guarenteed S card, considering how OP they are. If they remove botting, and keep the above prices, i would be for it. With botting the above prices are too cheap.

Evryn - Morai

zhangwuj1 wrote: »

The solution to ease gold inflation is very very very simple.

Create an npc that sells dod, vit stone and dot for 100m coins each
Create an npc that sells random S card for 200m each

I can assure you that gold price will drop to below 1.5m in every server within a few weeks. Inflation solved. But too bad pwi's not gonna do that. Though i would really really really love to see such coin sinks with end game items.

Nope, the reaction for that will be that there'll be an even more insane number of bots (the fully automated kind) running about. Providing endgame stuff by plain coins invites people to focus solely on coin-generation, even by non-legal means. It doesn't solve the problem of prices being high.

The problem with any broken economy is an imbalance between supply and demand. If the supply of coins is high, then the demand for them will be lower, which reduces their actual value. This can be remedied by setting a few floor and ceiling prices for common items (such as Tokens of Luck). That creates an unlimited supply at a fixed price, which offsets the high supply of coins.

[Edit]@Below: I was speaking mainly of coins, not gold or eventgold.

Toliman - Raging Tide

Evryn - Morai wrote: »

Nope, the reaction for that will be that there'll be an even more insane number of bots (the fully automated kind) running about. Providing endgame stuff by plain coins invites people to focus solely on coin-generation, even by non-legal means. It doesn't solve the problem of prices being high.

The problem with any broken economy is an imbalance between supply and demand. If the supply of coins is high, then the demand for them will be lower, which reduces their actual value. This can be remedied by setting a few floor and ceiling prices for common items (such as Tokens of Luck).

When NPC sell boutique items using fixed prices (in coins) supply is unlimited, demand is not essential.

MageMERC - Harshlands

Mayfly - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Have an NPC sell tokens of luck for somewhat over 10k. That introduces a massive, attractive coin sink, still leaves room for token merchants to make a profit, and puts a ceiling on the price of tokens (which controls prices of many other popular items in game, such as teleacoustics, crab meat, herb yuanxiao, and various pages.)

MageMERC - Harshlands wrote: »

.....

5 - regulate the gold price or just the token price - been saying it for 4 years and its still a relevant issue. Either that or make certain items available from an NPC for a reasonable monetary price - wines for example or those new teleport stones - they rock.

There seems to have been a growing subject of developing the game for the two basic classes of people ie - the rich and the poor.

The poor need the token price regulated, but this also becomes a coin sink as the following example illustrates: I am in the 'poor' category so for most of my chars I don't use charms because they are just two expensive. If they were available from tokens, and for a reasonable token price I would get them for every char, therefore creating a coin sink - same with teleport stones - same with bank/inventory extension stones - wines etc - these are the basic things the 'poor' need or would use, but that the 'rich' would also continue to buy. Even though the rich and well geared don't need wines, lets say wines were 5 tokens each and tokens were 10k each, then people would wine every instance wouldn't they. This argument has a circular aspect to it unfortunately because if wines were super cheap, people would farm instances more too. It is the type of thing I believe needs to be trialled and the effects monitored.

Not so with say Teleport Bells. I don't buy them because, again, they are too expensive. If they were a reasonable price I would have them on every char - a great coin sink but no adverse side effects whatsoever.

This is sorely needed to assist the 'poor', casual and new players in the game because the cost of basic items is prohibitive.

Now the rich - don't ask me. How you guys get the price of a pang gu down from 450mill or whatever the hell it is, is beyond my knowledge.

Zymari - Archosaur

While I do like kitty's idea about buying gold for cash via bidding...I have a better idea.

1) Take a percentage of everything that is bought or sold through a catshop or form of catshop like you already do from ah but on a larger scale. This removes a massive amount of cash from the game. If need be, do it via trades involving cash as well to avoid leaving catshop form to make the sale.

2) Make things like crabs/herb/hypers purchasable via coin. Then add new things to be purchased from tokens. Increase the number of tokens given per pack from 15 to 30 flooding the market with tokens and removing more money via catshop fee (see #1)

3) Up the cost to repair armor based on it's lvl...i.e. rrr9 and g16 get a nice increase in repair bill and trickle it down.

4) Add a hooker NPC to every corner.. male and female... charge high prices and remove coin from the game. Also, charge a couple million coin every 30 minutes to kill Duke Black in order to stop system messages for the next 30 minutes.... pretty sure Duke Black would stay dead.

Toliman - Raging Tide

Zymari - Archosaur wrote: »

...

2) ... Increase the number of tokens given per pack from 15 to 30 flooding the market with tokens and removing more money via catshop fee (see #1)

...

Every token of luck cost 10,000 coins (players can sell tokens of luck directly to npc and get coins for it) .

Your idea is like: "Wash windows with dirty water".

Leni - Raging Tide

Idk if someone has suggested this before, but that thread that asked if inflation can be reversed got me thinking and i thought of a pretty simple solution.

The problem in PWI is that demand is too damn high and supply is too damn low, and as time passes it will just get worse and worse until ppl stop playing cuz nothing is affordable anymore (which is actualy starting to happen already).

So how do you fix this?

What's needed is an unlimited supply of resources, but the price shouldnt be too low and affordable with low effort so players stop cash shopping to instead get their items with in-game means because that's not good for the company's business, nor too high to discourage ppl from playing the game seeing their goals are nearly unreachable, because the company also needs F2P players or ocassional cash shoppers to play with the regular and heavy cash shoppers and keep them here.

And how could that be done?

First, by introducing an NPC that buys Gold at 2M and sells it at 3M. This creates a system in which players can choose from dealing with the NPC and get a decent deal, or try to get a better deal by dealing with other players

Gold demand will always be greater than supply, so gold will stay almost always closer to 3M than to 2M, but the Gold Dealer NPC ensures that gold will never run out nor get too high. Some ppl may think: "but higher gold price benefits cash shoppers cuz they get more coin for their money." Well this is false because as gold price rises, so does every boutique item, so they may get more coin, but their coin has less value. And this also protects cash shoppers because it will ensure that their gold will still sell at a decent price, even if there's a sudden lower demand.

And second, by making Supply Tokens tradeable for pack items. For example, Scroll of Tome at 8,000 Supply Tokens + 700M. This still takes a good amount of time and a decent chunk of coins, but it's DOABLE, and provides ppl with a long term goal to keep playing and incentive to go to NW. The company would also benefit from this because there would be more ppl cash shopping to buy NW supplies (charms etc) and also to pay the coin fee. Other stuff could be DoD/DoT at 400 Supply Tokens + 55M, Charms at 100 Supply Tokens + 5M, Tokens of Luck at 1:1 rate + 5K coin fee, etc.

In the long run, these fixes will ensure a long-lasting and self-sustained economy that would greatly increase the lifespan of a game that is on it's way to implosion, and it will guanrantee that players keep cash shopping because their money will keep it's value and seems like a worthy investment, and the company will retain this source of income for a longer time. So for once, everyone wins.

WannaBM - Archosaur

I dont like to cry doomsday, but it feels like PWI is desperately holding on to its last straws.

PWI needs income obviously. But as a game gets older, fewer people will be investing and paying to their cashshop. This makes the gold price go up and items grow more expensive for the casual player. The casual player can either go cashshop, or they might quit.

Now PWI could accept the reduce in cashshoppers and try to slow this process down by making better sales as the game gets older and putting new stuff like catalysts on sale earlie or doing things like you suggest. This should slow the process down as it keeps players happier, but it can probably not reverse the process as it is undeniable that the game is aging and it wont last for ever.

But what if they are unable to accept a reduction in income because they wont be able to pay their servers and personel ? Is that why they are doing stupid and desperate actions like insulting their players with increasing prices for old items and gst sales without mog sales ?

Its a path to self destruction. They were smart enough to set up this bussiness, i think they cannot be stupid enough to be unaware of this themselves. Thus I fear they take this path out of desperation because accepting the reduced income from an aging game is simply not an option for them so instead they maybe go for "death or the gladioli" b:surrender

Zoldi - Morai

Interesting view but now a mod will have to merge the two threads b:sad

SylenThunder - Twilight Temple

Zymari - Archosaur wrote: »

While I do like kitty's idea about buying gold for cash via bidding...I have a better idea.

1) Take a percentage of everything that is bought or sold through a catshop or form of catshop like you already do from ah but on a larger scale. This removes a massive amount of cash from the game. If need be, do it via trades involving cash as well to avoid leaving catshop form to make the sale.

2) Make things like crabs/herb/hypers purchasable via coin. Then add new things to be purchased from tokens. Increase the number of tokens given per pack from 15 to 30 flooding the market with tokens and removing more money via catshop fee (see #1)

3) Up the cost to repair armor based on it's lvl...i.e. rrr9 and g16 get a nice increase in repair bill and trickle it down.

4) Add a hooker NPC to every corner.. male and female... charge high prices and remove coin from the game. Also, charge a couple million coin every 30 minutes to kill Duke Black in order to stop system messages for the next 30 minutes.... pretty sure Duke Black would stay dead.

1. Actually, making it the same percentage of AH would be fine. take it from both the seller, and the buyer. Adding it to trades is a bit silly though as there's no way to manage the "cost" of the items.

2. They've done this before. Usually the coin price of said items is so outrageous that only a complete moron would pay it.

3. Already implemented.

4. Seriously?

Sevchenko - Dreamweaver

Now explain physicists how Me handing a bag with 100 coins to someone for example results in that someone receiving a bag with only 95 coins? b:laugh

What happens in "The Game with T" game that makes it 'balanced' in economics terms is:
- You farm for gears directly (most bound on pick-up), NOT for the money to make/buy them.
- You farm for refining items directly not for the money to buy them.
- You farm for ITEMS directly (most bound on pick-up) not for money to buy them.

Another thing that cooperates with the coin overflow: NPCs don't sell anything worth spending into, thus NPCs LOST their ability to merchant/remove coins from economy.

Add this option to ALL apothecaries around PWI:
- Limb Poultice of Death for 3,5k each
- Vigor Poultice of Death 3,5k each.
- Reviving Sap of Death for 5k each.
- Chi poultice of death for 2k each.
- Life poultice of death for 2k each.

Another NPC who can sell GSHOP items or gold itself at a fixed ratio:
- 1 Gold = 3 million coins

(Because players dont sell gold from AH anymore, only buy buy buy and that hardly removes coins from the game)

This would not only help balance the Cash/free thing but would also stipulate bounds to the inflation. Because every transaction nowadays just moves money from someone's hand to another.

Now, if possible this would be great:
- Increase TT gold/red drops.
- Increase Palace of Nirvana drops.
- Add mysterious chip packs as drops from TT bosses (and tradable with Undercurrent Coin) (So free players go sheet bricks to get them and Paying users will buy it from them).
- Add tradable Medal of Glory as redeemable from 240 undercurrent coins (or something about that).
- Add Dragon orbs 1~5 star redeemable from NW Supply tokens (like, the rest of PW versions)

Flow: Someone farms Item A -> ((optional) Someone sells gold and buy item A) -> Someone consumes Item A on making a gear or refining something.
Someone sells item for coins -> Buys Item A -> Consumes Item A on forging gear or refining something.
Someone sells item for coins -> Buys potion in the npc.

In every way, coins will be flowing inwards and outwards game economy.

Just for the record:
Right thing to do: Sell free to play users time to cashing users.
- A free to play user doesn't mind doing dungeons, events, pvp stuff. A paying user only wants to Pay for stuff to have it faster. If we changed this game to a "Sell f2p users time to cashing users" we would both value the time of free users and balance game's economy, while potentially increasing the amount of cashing users.
What they do: Sell overpowerness directly leaving f2p users time overflow in-game economy.
- Player buys gold, buys orb, uses orb. His gold didn't affect anything or anyone in-game. F2P user time get devalued in this transaction and, paying user will surely feel: "Damn can't believe I spent 50 dollars in this single refine."

When things are too expensive and F2P users get excluded from real money economics, a miracle event happens: The game stops being a game and becomes a Mall.

vacekira

Quick fix: add option at auctioneer to exchange like 1M coins for 1 gold right with NPC not with other players, so players who are selling golds now on 3m would be forced to sell it under 1M ..or people wont buy from them, they will buy from NPC. So PWI will have full control of golds not merchants.

One more thing: remove botting if you do this above.

bye.