Is Lake Kindred Harming or Helping Gaia?

[Kaia Topaz]

(Hope this is the right place to put this, if not please let me know and I will move it asap!)

I returned to Gaia nearly a week ago now after a very long hiatus.

Immediately I realized that the fun I once had here was no longer possible without tons and tons of gold. At that moment I had nearly 700,000 GG saved up from when I was last active but other than that I had given most if not all of my items away to a friend.

After a quick chat with some well meaning Gaians I was introduced to Lake Kindred. After a few hours I was happy with what I was getting from playing the game but wondered if there was a way for me to get more, faster. So I hopped to the Lake Kindred forums where I was promptly given a stronger Kin and a plan on how to "farm" this one boss in the game that dropped 1-2 billion gold per kill.

Within 2 days I went from having 700,000 GG to 24 billion GG. It was painless and just took a bit of time mindlessly clicking at the screen to achieve...

So my question to you is: Is Lake Kindred helping or harming Gaia?

I honestly don't know- It seems to help people like me who start with nothing and move up to having enough to buy a new outfit or send someone a nice gift. I am however worried about the effects of this game and it's rewards have on the overall economy.

Thoughts?  

[Pwnder]

Kaia Topaz

(Hope this is the right place to put this, if not please let me know and I will move it asap!)

I returned to Gaia nearly a week ago now after a very long hiatus.

Immediately I realized that the fun I once had here was no longer possible without tons and tons of gold. At that moment I had nearly 700,000 GG saved up from when I was last active but other than that I had given most if not all of my items away to a friend.

After a quick chat with some well meaning Gaians I was introduced to Lake Kindred. After a few hours I was happy with what I was getting from playing the game but wondered if there was a way for me to get more, faster. So I hopped to the Lake Kindred forums where I was promptly given a stronger Kin and a plan on how to "farm" this one boss in the game that dropped 1-2 billion gold per kill.

Within 2 days I went from having 700,000 GG to 24 billion GG. It was painless and just took a bit of time mindlessly clicking at the screen to achieve...

So my question to you is: Is Lake Kindred helping or harming Gaia?

I honestly don't know- It seems to help people like me who start with nothing and move up to having enough to buy a new outfit or send someone a nice gift. I am however worried about the effects of this game and it's rewards have on the overall economy.

Thoughts?

heart Perfect place for this

Currently, Lake Kindred is one of the few ways that any Gaian, who doesn't buy cash or have a fancy pre-inflation horde, can keep up with the constantly rising prices.

The weight of blame for this is on Gold Generators, items that Gaia started selling, starting with Flynns Booty (which is no longer available and worthless in payout by today's standards) and to the most recent Roll of Golden Coins which boasts a chance at 2 Trillion gold or Gold Fragment (which sells for 100B easily). Open just one of these for 149GC and you will have about 25B in an instant! They have consistently been on sale in thousands of forms, under different names and styles for the last 3 years. Lately we only see about 2 or 3 a month along with a few other RIGs that give us a "gift" or "gold" option to choose from (any "Fishing Hole" RIG), but still damaging when not limited quantity and no major gold sinks around.

There is also the GC purchase option in the Marketplace, introduced about 1 year ago. This feature allows users to buy items in the MP with their gaia cash instead of gold, however, the seller gets gold, not GC. It basically makes the marketplace a huge gold generator of it's own. I could be much worse if they compensated properly the GC to Gold ratio sweatdrop

To answer the question: I don't know. It is certainly not helping the situation, but take away Lake Kindred and there really isn't any other games or features to participate in that will keep users on board. zOMG was removed and that was a huge kick in the shins, the other games pay out the same as they did in '08 and wouldn't help anyone keep up with the marketplace emo

What we need the most is gold sinks, places where users will spend their gold, never to see it return to the economy again. I use myself as a gold sink as much as possible, very little of what I have goes back into the economy ever. Gaia needs to boost features around the site to compensate for so much gold, Guild costs for starters, Arena entry fees, Keeping Alchemy and GoFusion updated with new things to craft. I use Lake Kindred as a gold sink by leveling my Kin to 50 and selling them, it costs about 500B to do this when buying enough Ally Plus 50% in Backalley. I buy severely priced items in gold shops and resell them at a nicely discounted price in the MP, but one person won't do enough damage to the inflation at all. Even doing this I'm rich as hell still, there isn't enough places to spend it outside of the marketplace. This is a major reason I started a petition to keep Flynns Plunder active. Her NPC vend will auction off some really high demand things and helps draw gold from the economy. Although, in the end, I can only trust Gaia to not use the NPC gold in the economy.  

[Kangit]

Kaia Topaz

(Hope this is the right place to put this, if not please let me know and I will move it asap!)

I returned to Gaia nearly a week ago now after a very long hiatus.

Immediately I realized that the fun I once had here was no longer possible without tons and tons of gold. At that moment I had nearly 700,000 GG saved up from when I was last active but other than that I had given most if not all of my items away to a friend.

After a quick chat with some well meaning Gaians I was introduced to Lake Kindred. After a few hours I was happy with what I was getting from playing the game but wondered if there was a way for me to get more, faster. So I hopped to the Lake Kindred forums where I was promptly given a stronger Kin and a plan on how to "farm" this one boss in the game that dropped 1-2 billion gold per kill.

Within 2 days I went from having 700,000 GG to 24 billion GG. It was painless and just took a bit of time mindlessly clicking at the screen to achieve...

So my question to you is: Is Lake Kindred helping or harming Gaia?

I honestly don't know- It seems to help people like me who start with nothing and move up to having enough to buy a new outfit or send someone a nice gift. I am however worried about the effects of this game and it's rewards have on the overall economy.

Thoughts?

I guess Pwnder beat me to being the first response. Writing takes forever. cat_sweatdrop But here's what I was writing:

If the 24 billion was obtained as pure gold directly, then it's kind of like a gold generator (which is bad for inflation), but having the ability to earn it in Lake Kindred as an option also allows those who don't buy gold generators to catch up. It adds to inflation, but having alternate methods of making decent gold makes it a little more fair between the users (like how the Daily Chance also gives out more gold now). That's assuming this method is easy or tolerable enough for most users to put up with.

As far as I can see, the main problem with inflation (aside from the annoying number of extra digits to deal with) is the uneven distribution between the users, where those who spend real money can buy (almost) whatever they want, while those who don't can buy less and less as the inflation gets worse. From what I can tell, even if it did technically lower inflation, removing the best free and widely available methods of making gold while still selling gold generators would probably only make the problem worse as it would greatly increase the gap between the users by depending almost exclusively on how much money they're willing to spend on the site. If they removed gold generators (and added gold sinks), then they could change the amount of gold given out in Lake Kindred and the Daily Chance just to prevent "excessive digits." Though maybe with enough gold sinks, it wouldn't even matter.

I believe inflation (too much gold in the system) is separate from the excessive gold gap between users, but in the current situation on Gaia, gold generators cause both at the same time, to the point where "inflation" usually seems to refer to both things together.

Meanwhile, if you had to sell items to get it, then you're more of an item supplier, and can make gold by lowering rarity of those items and lowering their inflated Marketplace prices (which should be good for the economy), unless you overprice the items too much. I personally like to list items below both the lowest listed price and the average buy price, and I still make decent amounts (I have more than 37 billion, didn't do much trading with my other accounts, and still have stuff I didn't get around to selling).

What I do with Lake Kindred, mostly because I don't have much spare time to play through the main part of the game, is just take 5 Kins, put them all on your team, then collect their little gifts every 24 hours from the home base. I posted a thread on easy ways to make gold, and my Lake Kindred method is in the third post. I was avoiding listing methods that I thought hurt the economy more than it helped. Even if a method I listed generates gold, most of it would be removed by the Marketplace tax, since that's a primary part of all of the current methods I have listed. cat_razz

Edit: I'll vote that it's helping more than it's harming. cat_razz  

[Pwnder]

Kangit

Took me a bit to type up what I needed to say about the matter myself emotion_brofist

I just can't dog Lake Kindred in any way, even if it isn't helping the inflation problem. What else would users have to give them an edge on inflation around here, if it weren't for LK?

It really is a good game, and currently we both know we can find tooooons of other reasons why inflation is the way it is as well as pan out other ideas on how it can be dealt with, without blaming LK.

Open the gold sinks and shut down gold generators!!!  

[Pantherea Leonis]

When used responsibly, it doesn't hurt the economy at all. I use the money I earn to buy more kins to flesh out my collection, and the rest to feed my ever-growing lust for collectibles. Especially Evolving items.

You wouldn't happen to have some EIs you don't need/want?
Or duplicates of SD+?

sweatdrop I'm a bit crazy for collecting, but it also means I buy expensive items in the marketplace, sinking money that way, and also buying from the shops.

Oh, and the items I get from LK, first I collect them until I have the max number of equipable poses from an item, and then I sell the rest on the marketplace if it's worth any money. Sinking, hopefully, some money that way. And the money I earn go around, sinking more and more. I hope I'm helping on the inflation, one gold piece at a time.

Lots of blabber. LK is good. It is free, and so give free players a way to keep up with the inflation, and the purchase of potions helps both the Gaia Interactive economy and the Gaian economy.