Hyper-Inflation

[[ .NK. ]]

So what do you guys think are the causes of this? Got any solutions?  

[jaggedbubbles]

RIGs seem to be having the biggest impact on the hyperinflation in the MP. Considering a good portion of items given in them are at least somewhat rare, it's easy for someone with access to a credit card to become an instant millionaire.  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

EDIT: HOLY F*** TL;DR! Sorry about that. Bold are the main points.

RIGs ((Mythril Coins, Gold Shop items) + Low Odds) + AIers + Booty Grab + Lack of Good Quality Gold Shop updates with numerous items = Hyperinflation. Hyperinflation because even though the prices are ridiculously high, there's a good chunk of people making gold so quickly they can afford that ridiculous price and make all that gold back before they figured out that being the pawns of manipulative Marketplace Venders isn't a good thing. sweatdrop

Booty Grab is the real problem though. Things weren't this bad until they came out with it, even RIGs full of mythril coins didn't do this. The Low Odds on the RIGs was the straw that broke the camels back so to say.

I've never seen AIers get so crazy until Booty Grab came out. Yes, they did attempt to do it, but the price always went back to close to the original price of the item before it was AIed.

I believe staff needs to nerf the amount of gold made through booty grab. Lowering the trigger amount isn't enough. It used to be like 5+ tanks on one page especially in High Trigger threads, but it's still at one trigger per page at least. They need to limit the number of fish that glow at once. People are still getting tanks with 5+ Mermaids and watermeat. Staff also needs to get rid of the blue and green coins. If you have to make a $7 item extra special just to get people to buy it, it's not worth that price Gaia Staff, I'm sure your economist has told you this. I'm a firm believer that gold sinks will never work fully, unless they nerf booty grab. 50% of the site at least plays booty grab to earn their gold because it gives out the most gold for the least amount of work compared to every other game on Gaia. The gold put into this recent gold sink event will be recovered soon, even faster since not everyone even bothered to participate by throwing in assloads of gold.

Speaking of gold sinks, I'm also a firm believer that we do not need more goldsinks. Not because like Sagger says in his journal, "Staff's too lazy to do some extra work to come up with new ones," give or take a few words, but because we have enough. 2% tax and the goldshops contended just fine with everything before booty grab came along. It started getting really bad when they stopped updating the shops reasonably.

The "lolita set" for example, a good chunk of people who wanted it refuse to buy it with Gaia Gold because of it's price tag, due to it not looking like it was worth 10K+ for each item in the set. These later updates, while they are cheap, they're not comparing with the Cash Shop updates. Cash Shop updates have beaten Gold Shop updates in terms of each individual item (not including recolors, 'cause it's ********' easy to do one; takes no time at all) just on RIGs alones. There's no incentive to use these gold sinks. The Ink Body dyes would have been an awesome goldsink, but the amount of work that goes into it is like question for a few EIs. Only those who really want it are the ones who are going to work for it.

We need updates that are versatile, more than just gender specific unisex items. We need item updates that are large and not gender specific. We need recolors, lots of recolors. And staff should quit putting clothing in EIs, to help spread the clothes shop updates. I know they can do it, they have some very love Kimonos and Furisodes and other items that look like they came straight from an EI.

Right now, Gaia's relying too heavily on the 2% tax to take care of all this. If everyone was forced to use it, while it would make prices jump up as well, 2% would be taken away from everyone and it would do a better job. As it is now, I'd seriously think about not selling my really expensive EIs in the marketplace. Prices are so high, 2% out of 50 to 100K, especially for someone who cannot play booty grab, is a LOT of gold. They need to put the focus back on gold shop items...Though, they probably screwed their chances of that considering there's a good chunk of people who pretty much refuse to go to a certain store because they can't stand the new NPC drawing. sweatdrop (I'm one of them. I had to adblock Ruby because she looked so damn out of place.)

But, anyway, that's what I think. Before they start anything, they should nerf the amount of gold fro booty grab. I don't care how they do it, they should. If they want a feature where people can earn a lot of gold quickly, they need to make it a feature that everyone can use without going out and buying a new computer. Personally I think they put in booty grab 'cause they knew too many people thought the prices of the fish were outrageous. ninja

@jaggedbubbles: Surprisingly, RIGs besides the Mythril Coins and gold shop item grants, take out gold from the economy if sold on the MP. All Cash Shop items do.  

[Architect Eyes]

I'm just going to chime in and say that I totally 100% agree they need to fix Booty Grab's payouts. I can make up to 10k or so a day playing just Booty Grab; it's basically my only source of Gaia income since my Art Shop goes largely unnoticed and will go weeks without one new visitor (which perplexes me, to be quite honest).

There are several threads in the Aquarium forum dedicated to high-trigger tanks, and several of these can appear on one page for up to 10 or 15 pages. I would say I make an average of 400 gold per high-trigger tank. 3 per page, and that's over a thousand gold. For ten or fifteen pages.

Fixing BG with implementing more gold sinks would probably fix the majority of inflation problems, in my opinion. We are in desperate need of a gold shop update that will cater to everyone across the board. What we've been getting lately are one or two sets available in many colours (not that I'm complaining about new and more colours being available!). Garage Sale update, anyone?

So yeah, basically I agree with you, Andromeda Phoenix. sweatdrop I just wanted to confirm that it is stupid easy to make so much gold in a short amount of time via BG.  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

Yay agreement! *cheers*
Personally, I'd rather see SF filled with "Work for your gold dangit!" not "It's way too easy, you're probably just lazy and/or your computer sucks." in threads asking for more gold handouts. ninja  

[Dallas Overload]

Hopefully this new update will help out. I really do. We need to lower the price of gold. Big time. It has been the way it is sinse I joined (or sometime after that.)  

[jaggedbubbles]

Andromeda Phoenix

@jaggedbubbles: Surprisingly, RIGs besides the Mythril Coins and gold shop item grants, take out gold from the economy if sold on the MP. All Cash Shop items do.

Mithril coins add gold to the economy, not take it away. You're basically getting money for nothing. It's like getting Gaia gold for real cash, like they used to do.

Selling on the MP only takes out the 2% fee from the sale. For high priced items like at around 100k, it takes 2k out of the economy, but the remaining 98k is still in the hands of another Gaian, giving them increased buying power. That gold stays in the economy if they just buy from the MP (minus any subsequent 2% fees). If and when they use that gold to buy from gold shops will the gold be taken out of the economy.

EDIT: I totally misread your comment, you're correct on the RIGs. However, the ratio for "thank you for playing", "fail", or Mithril coin type prizes is still very high.

As for the changes in ways to earn gold, I haven't seen any difference in the granting system yet.  

[Siarnaq]

((DAMMIT, this was my topic idea, and you post it while I'm in school! D<))
((xD))
(No, seriously. stare )

Anyway, the best solutions I had were already taken, but I'll throw in my two cents worth:

Get rid of, or limit booty grab.

This is the number one problem here, and I am, quite honestly, too lazy to re-type what others have said here. sweatdrop

Better items in the gold shops.

We all know this is majorly needed; everything in the Cash shop completely overshadows items in the gold shops. They almost never, if at all, put any real effort into the gold shop items, and to further annoy people (at least, me...) release gold shop quality items in RIGs. Why? They should just go and sell them for gold instead. stare

Also, include more highly requested items in he gold shops as well. (I mean, BROOMS? Come on, Gaia... rolleyes ) More interesting and useful items = less gold in the system.

STOP with the DAMN RIGs.

RIGs are an absolute menace to Gaians (or, at least the ones not becoming insta-millionaires from them.... stare ). They ALWAYS contain the items we want, and we buy them INCESSANTLY to get said items from them, because the assholes making the decisions on these have them set at so freaking rare, you'll be more likely to be struck by lightning.

This makes it obscenely easy to AI, screwing over anyone who doesn't have the means to procure 100k a day from ever wearing them.

It would be better if they just gave us what we wanted if we're PAYING THEM MONEY, because we'd actually be more inclined to pay, and we'd be able to get them on the MP without the overinflated price. But what do I know? rolleyes

Also, huge wall of red text is HUGE! D:  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

jaggedbubbles

Andromeda Phoenix

@jaggedbubbles: Surprisingly, RIGs besides the Mythril Coins and gold shop item grants, take out gold from the economy if sold on the MP. All Cash Shop items do.

Mithril coins add gold to the economy, not take it away. You're basically getting money for nothing. It's like getting Gaia gold for real cash, like they used to do.

Selling on the MP only takes out the 2% fee from the sale. For high priced items like at around 100k, it takes 2k out of the economy, but the remaining 98k is still in the hands of another Gaian, giving them increased buying power. That gold stays in the economy if they just buy from the MP (minus any subsequent 2% fees). If and when they use that gold to buy from gold shops will the gold be taken out of the economy.

EDIT: I totally misread your comment, you're correct on the RIGs. However, the ratio for "thank you for playing", "fail", or Mithril coin type prizes is still very high.

As for the changes in ways to earn gold, I haven't seen any difference in the granting system yet.

Yep yep. They need to throw out "Gold shop" grants and Mythril coin grants from RIGs if they're gonna have them.

I've not noticed anything yet either.

@Siarnaq: Yes, the rarity in RIGs does get annoying. As long as they fix that, they can keep RIGs. No more RIGs with different levels of decreasing luck. I think they should alternate between RIG and normal cash shop item update.

Everything else I totally agree with.  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

Quote:

Fleep

Jaganshe

Lowering the prizes in one thing and then raising the prizes in another seems really pointless.

It would seem that way, if you're missing the point. The point isn't solely to curb inflation, but to make sure that gold is given out for activities that we value more. Users chatting and having fun on the forums, interacting and making friends, etc. should be rewarded more than crawling through a Booty Grab thread and hoarding gold.

Of course, I'm not even involved remotely in this change... so I'm just speculating!

Panagrammic

Fleep's called it right. We want to encourage users that stay on the site a bit more than users that just log in for 3 minutes to hit-and-run on Aquarium/DC. There are a variety of ways of doing this, and while we like to encourage "social behavior" (i.e., forums) that doesn't mean that we're going to force people to be social to earn gold. Also, while doing this process, we're going to make sure that we don't have rampant inflation.

Changes will be incremental, over time, and we're paying really close attention to this. Sagger-AT3 is going to discuss it more as we see how it goes.

From this thread.

 

[Siarnaq]

Thanks for quoting that for us. :3

....unfortunately, it seems that they are going to limit what we get from the DC, now... -__-  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

No problem.

I don't know why they're focusing on trying to "bring the community together." I'm pretty sure people just don't browse booty grab threads. They browse and post. Unless they're trying to encourage intelligent coversation aside from "Grab my booty and you get a prize!" sweatdrop

I also hope they don't touch any of the other games. They're fine just the way they are, and while they don't encourage posting on the forums, they do encourage socialism. I seriously wouldn't have stayed on Gaia past the first month if it wasn't for fishing. I was sooooo shy back then. ^^;

I really think they should just focus on curbing inflation first. The way for them to curb inflation is staring at them headon, so I really hope they nerf booty grab. Less I get a dunce cap to post in a comment on their profiles. xd  

[jaggedbubbles]

Booty Grab does seem to be a problem. I was in a couple of threads just to see how "lucrative" it really was. I made 5k+ in less than an hour. That's ridiculous.  

[Siarnaq]

Actually, what I was concerned about was the fact we don't get jack from the DC, and yet they're going to limit it further...? gonk

Also, they need to merely nerf BG to the extreme, and leave the games alone. >:[  

[Andromeda Phoenix]

@Jaggedbubbles: Some people make more than that. 2-5 times more.

@Siarnaq: I hope they don't. If they want to give out more gold, they should do through games and daily chance, but not have it give out nearly as much as Booty Grab.

Ironically, I just quoted Fleep on something else about the daily chance. I feel like a stalker now.

Fleep

Fleep

What I really want to do is get rid of the 5 other Daily Chances and only leave one on the homepage -- then make it give out 5x better stuff, instead of dividing that value over 5 different pages.

Or - making it appear on a different random landing page every day.

From this thread. I wouldn't mind that at all. Even the extremely low chance of getting 1 million gold from the Daily Chance has as big effect as people playing booty grab do.

Edit: Now he says he wouldn't mind getting rid of the thing at all. Don'tcha just wish devs knew how to make up their mind.