omg. wtf. bbq. (inflation)

[Bango Skank]

Is there any way that possibly, the Admins could do something about the horrible inflation that's going on? I've got a few ides, but they've all got flaws:

1. Begin taxing user who have an amount of gold over a certain cap.

Problem: Users will make mules and divide thier gold so they dont have to pay taxes.


2. Make less ways to make gold.

Problem: This also hurts those with little money and will discourage newbies.


3. Release an event with a gold sink on par of the halloween 2004 event.(perhaps finish the april 1st event?)

Problem: Users may see the event only as a gold sink and not participate, leaving those who spent thier gold on the sink(most likely users with little gold at all) with less than they had before.


4. Somehow connect the rarity of random events with the amount of gold the user has.

Problem: Once again, users can just trade all thier gold to a mule to raise the account's chances.


I'd like to hear your ideas, as well as your thoughts on mine.

[DisNiqqaAnitMySpace]

I doubt that'll ever work. Example: I have a hat worth about 500,000k+, yet I've currently only got 3553g. Also, how is making less ways to make gold going to help? If a person gets, say:
1000g per day for a week, then buys a solar cape for 7,000g.
if there were less ways to make gold, and people DID bring the prices down:
500g per day would STILL mean a solar cape in a week, if the price went down to, say, 3500g, which I doubt people would do. So gaining less gold would make it even harder for users to keep up with inflation.

RANDOM NOTE: Someone once bought over $100 in donation items and sold them for 1k each in an attempt to lower inflation, and got banned for trying to crash the economy, after multiple warnings.

[Seth Darkheart]

The Gaian economy has always been very user-run and user-orientated... I doubt that the administrators would see it as a big enough problem to intervene.

It's not a problem with the site, as such, so it's not like it is something that they would try and fix. I don't know how firm a grasp the administrators have of economics, either, but if they don't have very much knowledge then their attempts may just worsen the situation.

I think the flaws that you have pointed out to your method far outweigh the benefits. Taxing users with over a certain gold limit would just be stupid; how high would they make the limit? If a user wanted to buy a Pimp Set, Fairy Wings and a pair of Bao, that's easily over 100k... Who's to say they're not saving for commons?

Reducing the amount of gold in the economy would just make things worse, if anything. If the prices of '03 donation items fall drastically, people just won't sell them. sweatdrop

[Oreisama]

All of those ideas would be unfair to -everyone-, not just to newbies or Gaians with less money/items. If someone's questing and they hit a gold sink, how do you think they'd react to that? Riot, I say!

[Bango Skank]

kougramaster666

I doubt that'll ever work. Example: I have a hat worth about 500,000k+, yet I've currently only got 3553g. Also, how is making less ways to make gold going to help? If a person gets, say:
1000g per day for a week, then buys a solar cape for 7,000g.
if there were less ways to make gold, and people DID bring the prices down:
500g per day would STILL mean a solar cape in a week, if the price went down to, say, 3500g, which I doubt people would do. So gaining less gold would make it even harder for users to keep up with inflation.

RANDOM NOTE: Someone once bought over $100 in donation items and sold them for 1k each in an attempt to lower inflation, and got banned for trying to crash the economy, after multiple warnings.

Yeah, i read about the cheap donation letter thing once when i was lurking. sweatdrop I was going to list a possible fix for the problem that you stated, but realized that it could be bypassed by mule trading. xp

[Sakasagami no Yura]

The admins have tried making gold sinks with the Donate to Gambino event and by releasing expensive store items, but then people just b***h about NPCs not needing money and the store items being too expensive. People bitched when the G-pins were re-released, too, since they basically saw it as an attack on their precious wallets.

In short, there's no answer that's going to make people happy, so it comes down to the easiest solution; not doing anything.

[Le Diable Blanc]

Seth Darkheart

The Gaian economy has always been very user-run and user-orientated... I doubt that the administrators would see it as a big enough problem to intervene.

Exactly, they want as free of an economy as possible, without them setting limits. I'm sure they want to see how much are Gaians willing to spend on items. That's one of the reasons Donation/Event items don't have set prizes.

[C a u s a t i v e Form]

I suggest setting a stable value to every item that appears on Gaia. Rares and donations aswell. When releasing a donation item, it's worth should be stated aswell. That would help. There is an occurance, that when someone sells sth cheaper than usually, it's value suddenly drops. It works the other way round too.

As I said - there should be one, exact and stable value of every item. This value should be stated not by users, but by admins etc.


How's that? surprised

[Seth Darkheart]

Causative Form

I suggest setting a stable value to every item that appears on Gaia. Rares and donations aswell. When releasing a donation item, it's worth should be stated aswell. That would help. There is an occurance, that when someone sells sth cheaper than usually, it's value suddenly drops. It works the other way round too.

As I said - there should be one, exact and stable value of every item. This value should be stated not by users, but by admins etc.


How's that? surprised

It works in theory... Except that the people who buy donation items from other users are those that cannot donate themselves. Those who donate, therefore, can sell the items at whatever prices they want; it would be impossible to moderate if the donation items were being sold at above "admin price" or not. 1.5 million users, each with separate trading accounts is a lot to keep track of.

There's also the possibility that the administrators would misjudge. To get a donation price for that month they would have to anticipate not only how many people would donate by the end of the month and how much they would donate (the supply of the item), they would also have to anticipate how much the item would be liked (the demand for the item).

Put the price to high and there will be uproar; people will be angry that the admins have priced a 'bad' item so highly. Price it too low and the people selling the items will complain, or people will buy out all of the items at the new cheap price and sell them on later for a profit.

The 'stable' price would have to go up month by month, to stay in line with the amount of users that are joining. If we assume that there's only enough Minis to be worn by 1/10 of the population at a time (and that's most definitely an over-estimate, I don't think there's 100,000 pairs of Minis), how can the price be stable?

As the population increases, the percentage/fraction of the population who can own the item decreases; the item gets rarer. Imagine that the Halo had been priced at 5000 gold by the administrators. Two years after it's release, can you really expect that they would only cost 5000 gold? Anyone can afford 5000 gold, but there are only 50 Halos. The users with Halos would never sell them!

[Daun]

But then it would become too much like the real world and no fun for the small minority who enjoy hoarding goodies XD and eventually everybody who aspires to be rich. Everybody else will have to be satisfied with wanting things they can't have and enjoying the forums more than the items.

[_ArseniK_202_]

They tried the donation drive, it didn't work.

[Eneldor]

I never saw the donation drive as a way to stop inflation, it was a user idea that the admin thought was do-able. There were... well, a few threads in the Q&F about it the idea of a drive.
I never really heard about users complaining about inflation until just this month. Not saying it was never a problem, it's just extremely blatant when something jumps 10k in price over two days.

[_ArseniK_202_]

Eneldor

I never saw the donation drive as a way to stop inflation, it was a user idea that the admin thought was do-able. There were... well, a few threads in the Q&F about it the idea of a drive.
I never really heard about users complaining about inflation until just this month. Not saying it was never a problem, it's just extremely blatant when something jumps 10k in price over two days.

The admins were expecting a solidarity wave towards Gambino, and that people gave him tons of gold - some people really did. That way, Gaians would have less gold to spend on Marketplace and the most expensive items would remain "unbought" (is this word correct? I don't think so). So, merchants, in order to attract customers would lower the prices.

That would be a crafty strategy, too bad it didn't work.

[Seth Darkheart]

Eneldor

I never saw the donation drive as a way to stop inflation, it was a user idea that the admin thought was do-able. There were... well, a few threads in the Q&F about it the idea of a drive.
I never really heard about users complaining about inflation until just this month. Not saying it was never a problem, it's just extremely blatant when something jumps 10k in price over two days.

Items have always done that.

In my year on Gaia, I've seen items rise from 50k to 150k in the space of a week, and then to 250k two weeks later.

Inflation isn't a new thing, neither is the rate of inflation that Gaia's experiencing. It's just that more expensive items appear to jump by more, when really they're not.

Sure, the older items are rising rapidly, but that can't be helped.

[Eneldor]

Seth Darkheart

Eneldor

I never saw the donation drive as a way to stop inflation, it was a user idea that the admin thought was do-able. There were... well, a few threads in the Q&F about it the idea of a drive.
I never really heard about users complaining about inflation until just this month. Not saying it was never a problem, it's just extremely blatant when something jumps 10k in price over two days.

Items have always done that.

In my year on Gaia, I've seen items rise from 50k to 150k in the space of a week, and then to 250k two weeks later.

Inflation isn't a new thing, neither is the rate of inflation that Gaia's experiencing. It's just that more expensive items appear to jump by more, when really they're not.

Sure, the older items are rising rapidly, but that can't be helped.

In my year of being on Gaia, the word 'inflation' has never been used, ever. Not in the threads and forums I've been to. (Chatterbox, GD, Q&F, Exchange) I know prices have gone up, but no one's ever said anything about it, not to this extent, until this last month or so.
I dunno, maybe everyone's just gotten more whiny...