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We've been hearing a lot of requests for gold sinks lately.
Big Wall of Text about Gold Sinks
TL;DR
- Prices are the result of imbalance between the inflow of gold and outflow of gold. - Prices increases can be slowed down by introducing gold sinks (increasing outflow of gold) but also by reducing the inflow of gold. - Building new gold sinks is essentially building new features. It takes time. Some new features would be better off if they are not used as gold sinks. - In the forseeable future, we'll be working more on reducing inflow of gold than on building gold sinks just because they can sink gold.
The long version
Prices are the result of a balance between gold flowing in, gold flowing out (gold sinks!), items flowing in and items flowing out. right now, net gold inflow (gold flowing in minus gold flowing out) outpaces the net items inflow (items flowing in minus items flowing out), which results in prices rising.
First of all, I've said it before and I'll say it again: prices rising are not necessarily a bad thing. One of the intended rewards for investing in Monthly Collectibles and EIs is that in time, you would be able to sell them for more gold than they are worth now. It's all a question of balance, really - we give gold to reward people for participating in the activities Gaia has to offer, and keeping gold valuable would keep this method of rewarding participation a valid incentive to stay online. edit: keeping the gold we grant valuable means that prices can't rise too fast, because then gold loses value too fast. Balance is a very important concept here...
The forums (and PMs I'm getting) are filled with ideas for gold sinks. There is a constant flow of ideas for gold sinks, and at times when prices are rising faster, the flow of these ideas increases. Some of these ideas are great, some are almost great, but most of them miss out on one issue: there is (or should be) a separation between features and gold sinks.
In theory, each feature on Gaia should either grant gold or cost gold (or cash) to participate and / or use (features that grant cash are very impractical). Most gold sink ideas are in fact feature ideas, with a gold sink coating. One example, probably the most frequent one in Site Feedback, is the lottery, which comes in many colors and flavors. A lottery is an awesome feature that many people want, could be fun to play, etc. It could be made into a gold sink (if the odds are right). But it could also be made into a gold generator (by playing with the odds). In some senses, Daily Chance is a gold-generating lottery of sorts; it gives ou random stuff for free.
The point I'm trying to make is that features are features, and being a gold sink is a nice potential benefit from having a specific feature built, but definitely not the most important one. Features should be built if they are expected to have good influence on how (and how much) people use Gaia. As far as gold is concerned, there are ways to deal with the imbalance of gold Vs. item flows that do not involve gold sinks. Some of them are easier to implement than building new features to be used as gold sinks. Some of them would be better in the long run than building new features as gold sinks.
The last time Site Feedback had such a flow of "more goldsinks!" threads was when bots were rampant, both in Fishing and in other places around Gaia. We decided to ignore these calls, and focus on eliminating bots (reducing inflow of gold) instead of gold sinks (increasing outflow). It worked pretty well, and allowed us to make the new features that were built since (Aquarium, for example, with its overseer grants, booty grab, fish drops and who knows what else is up CP's, CP2's and the rest of the team's sleeves) into features that grant gold, which is much more fun than being a gold sink.
So where are we headed? - We're working on readjusting gold granting on many different features in a way that will result in some features granting more gold, some granting less, and some granting the same on total but will be more fun to participate. - We're constantly working on adding more features. Some are gold sinks, some generate gold. The idea is to try and make it attractive first, and gold sink second (or tenth)*. - Gold sinks may come to a Gaia webpage near you sometime, but personally I'd rather to think of their goldsinkness as a characteristic, not as the main reason for making them.
* There are three things that a feature on Gaia (or everywhere, actually) should be: - It should be there. - It should work. - It should not suck. It's an interesting thought exercise to go over Each of Gaia's features and try to decide how it fares on each of those three points.
Sagger-AT3 · Sat Apr 04, 2009 @ 09:38pm · 9 Comments |
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