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More Basic Economics: Affordability |
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Before I get to writing journal entries with my criticisms (intellectual, not derogatory) of the proposed changes to Gaia's economy, I want to talk a bit about affordability - how affordable, or easily obtained, Gaia items are.
I'm going to pick on one of my favorite items to use as an example, the Kiki Kitty Plushie. I do this because it's one of the few items I have readily accessable information on. (If I go back through all my notebooks and look hard, I know I have some data on other items, but you know, that would be work.)
Back in the winter of 2006/2007, Kiki Kitty Plushies (which will be referred to going forward as "Kikis", since I'm already tired of typing that) were selling for 206,000 gg. That sounds pretty good, especially since the current LMP is 100,000,000,000 gg (how convenient for the math!).
But let's look at that price vs. Gaian income without vending. I'm eliminating vending (the speculative buying with the intention of selling for a profit - a/k/a buy low, sell high) because it's wildly variable and involves risk of one's savings. I'm looking only at basic income that is open to anyone - gold given from games, or items given by Gaia which can be sold.
Back in the day, I made roughly 1000 gold a day from doing the hardest level of jigsaw puzzles, selling any bonus items they dropped (oh, I loved it when I got something I could sell for 800 gold!), posting in forums, gathering and selling trash from Towns 1 in large lots. This means that 206,000 gg Kiki would take roughly 206 days of steady work and no spending at all to afford.
Today, I assert that the average person can make 1,000,000,000 (1 billion) gg per day with less effort. Here's how I came by that number:
1. Vote daily in the Runway. At the end of 8 days you get a Chirpette Bundle. Right now, the Chirpette Bundle is selling for roughly 7,000,000,000 gold. Divide that by 8 days and you get 875,000,000 gg per day.
2. Level 5 kin can fight successfully in the Milky Way. The Hell Portal is dropped at all levels, including Stage 1, at a slow but reasonable rate. Hell Portals are currently selling for 700,000,000 in the MP.
Add those two together and you get 1,575,000,000 gg. Yes, that's over what I asserted by quite a bit, so I rounded down so you could sell them at fire sale prices to move them fast.
Add in things like the Daily Crap, daily rewards from Kin, Booty Grab, selling the Daily Log in stamp card rewards, and making that billion per day becomes quite reasonable.
Going back to Kiki: if you're making 1 billion gg per day, and it's selling at 100 billion, it means it now takes only 100 days instead of 206 days to earn what you need to buy a Kiki.
So even though the absolute numbers have a lot more commas and zeroes, Kiki is actually more affordable and easier to obtain today than it was in 2006/2007.
Anecdotally speaking, many people have returned to Gaia who, once they get over the shock of the number of digits in prices and gold awarded these days, are even more astounded as how easily they're able to buy items they never thought would be in reach.
There are lots of reasons for this, but that's part of the economic plan criticism post that'll I'll be writing up eventually.
purplewiz · Thu May 25, 2017 @ 11:18pm · 2 Comments |
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