CaitieGetsCrunk
Would you mind going into more detail for me about this deflation/finn's booty stuff? I had been under the impression that everything got extremely expensive because of greedy people, like the original poster said. I have no idea what this finn's booty is or how the value of gold here decreased, but I'm very interested in learning.
It's inflation, not deflation.
Inflation = Increase in price of goods or services (purchasing power of a unit of currency goes down)
Deflation = Decrease in price of goods or services (purchasing power of a unit of currency goes up)
Inflation and deflation are directly proportional to the amount of gold in circulation. Regardless of how greedy Gains may be, Gains cannot create money, so at best they can have an indirect effect on the relative circulation: rich Gains could hoard gold and cause deflation, or buy a bunch of stuff and cause inflation. Of course, inflation will cause prices to go up and encourage hoarding, while deflation will cause prices to go down and encourage buying, causing your normal market fluctuations.
Where does the bulk of inflation come from, then? Simple: the amount of gold in circulation is going to net increase over time if more gold is created than destroyed, and will net decrease over time if more gold is destroyed than created. For years Gaia had a relatively stable rate of inflation due to gold generated by users interacting with site features (polls, games, daily chance, etc.) outstripping gold destruction via gold shops, market sales, etc.
Up until gold generators, cash shop & monthly collectibles did not increase gold; they just presented a valuable item that could be sold for gold already in circulation. This changed when Gaia introduced gold generating items that were guaranteed to create large sums of gold with every purchase. Gaia did not change the rate at which gold was destroyed, which in resulted in a huge net increase of gold in circulation and forced a much more rapid rate of inflation.
The funny thing is, gold generators are the only item on the site where the very act of buying them causes them to lose value. A gold generator that makes a million gold is awesome when there's only a billion gold in circulation, but after a thousand of them are opened it is suddenly only worth half the value for the same price. Of course, Gaia responded to this issue by creating gold generators that made more and more money for the same or similar price, obsoleting the old ones and further driving inflation.
Sort of like in the real world, where banks can create money by issuing loans such as mortgages. If the banks were to do something stupid like, say, issue a bunch of subprime mortgages creating a bunch of money out of nowhere that people couldn't pay back, things would probably go well for everyone. Oh, except for that 2008 housing crisis thing. Ignore that. No worries, though, Gaia gold isn't debt so there won't be a debt crisis, there will just be hyperinflation until the site stratifies into the people who pay to play and the people who don't care about gold, at the cost of losing the customer base in the middle.
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