Friday with Means - October 28th, 2011 - Happy Halloween!

[Chrys]

Well seeing as, if we use your example of an RBP taking months and months to get at 700-800m, it would only take you a month to get the 1.2b using S10 (and only at 20m a day, while supposidly people were able to make hundreds of mil a day) I'd say that while the price was higher it really wasn't "bad inflation" seeing as while the numbers were higher the time it took to get one was lower.

The first time I actually decided to "farm" S10, I duallogged I think an advy and fixer and spent about an hour making 40m (I kept my CRU for raiding). This isn't 40m that was circulating in the game, this was purely invented in that one hour from nothing. Other people have reported making double that, because I think they get relays and sell CRU. But let's stay conservative for this example. Now let's say there's about 6 ideal spots (I bet there's closer to 12 spots, but they're not always taken) to farm 40m per hour in S10, and players farm it 20 hours out of 24 per day. That's about 4.8 billion credits added per day. If people were really making the claimed 60-80m per hour, then it could be anywhere closer to 6-10 billion credits per day. Now that effort:reward ratio is unlike anything else in the game, on top of the fact that it's adding inflation to the game because even all the cities on RK don't suck that much (since the fees are dozens of millions every 30 days).

The problem is that what is good for individual players minmaxing their gains in S10 isn't actually good for the game. Or for other players. And the "anyone could do it" argument doesn't wash because the more people did it, the worse it was for the game. From reading this FwM, it's actually this factor most of all that appears to have tilted their hand.

[Farlath]

Prices may lower if you remove money, but then you've lowered the income and things still take you time to get it. The only true way to change the ratio of Income to Item Cost is to increase the avaliablity of that item. You could make RBP worth a million credits even with S10 bounties in place if you made it drop often enough.

An excellent example can be seen in SSoS. That was my point in the ice/bot argument. Make it more difficult and expensive to aquire bots = less bots. That in turn encourages hoarding and speculation, which further drives up prices while at the same time the income stream is lower. All of this hurts leveling paid players, which we need.

[Chrys]

lol just saw this monster edit:

My social studies teacher, back in junior high - to show just how simple of a concept this is meant to be and yet people seem to never understand it, asked us whether it would be a good thing if some other country gave every Canadian citizen a million dollars. Of course being a kid in school a million bucks would be great! Who the hell wouldn't want a million bucks? We could buy a car and a house and every video game or toy we could dream of.

But wait.. knowing that everyone has a million dollars prices would rise! Now this gives credance to the argument that it's soley the moneys fault but, keep going. Which means that we wouldn't be able to buy a car and a house and everything else because the actual value of every dollar is lower. Why? Because, it buys less per dollar.

So okay, dreams dashed, so lets remove that money and prices go down and people can cheer that they fixed the problem and much rejoicing can be had. But if you lose your million dollars the price of a car at 30,000 dollars is still just as much out of your reach as it was when you had a million dollars and the price was higher.

I'm glad your social studies teacher introduced you to economics, but instead of a hypothetical example, how about a real life example? Take any latin american economy of the 1980s, take Zimbabwe today, take a whole bunch of terribly run countries that are printing money to spend. What happens to them? They devalue their money. Which is what has happened to AO credits in the same way. Devaluing takes place because of S10, but the effects are felt everywhere because it diminishes the effort:reward ratio of all other activities involved in making credits.

Now what's the solution? Not print more money. The first solution, as any monetarist will tell you, is to stabilise the supply of money. Stop printing bills iow. That's exactly what's happened here - the main source of billprinting has been stopped. The second thing to do (if it was a real life economy), is a physical devaluation of the currency, but unfortunately that's not possible in AO's economy with no interest rate controls. But what they don't recommend is mass reappropriation of wealth as you seem to be thinking is the only solution (and in real life examples, think nationalisation of industries, etc).

In AO's case, more money needs to be sucked up but it will be slow given the need to balance between new players' enjoyability and old players with hoarded billions - the new stims appear to be the most feasible option and it's a good start. The opening of virtual org cities and new plots of land was another good move.

Prices may lower if you remove money, but then you've lowered the income and things still take you time to get it. The only true way to change the ratio of Income to Item Cost is to increase the avaliablity of that item. You could make RBP worth a million credits even with S10 bounties in place if you made it drop often enough.

No, you've lowered income for one particular class of players in one particular activity. Increasing availability of an item to depress the price of the item is the kneejerk response (not to mention unfeasible given the number of items), the sustainable answer is to wait out the decrease in money supply brought by killing the source of inflation.

As for the whole "vets would OD newcomers and never let them make money".. bull. S10 is not always as crowded as people claim, nor are there always killstealers in there. My Adv, in T1 and using Chiporitas, was able to get enough money from S10 to start buying Strong armour for herself and things like the Sword of Curiosity and in time essentially became a billion dollar twink. I hardly think that's a tredmill that nobody can catch up on.

Yeah well each new player in chiropteras that got their spot and contributed to the daily billions only set the credit target back a little further for the future players down the line. But I don't expect you to be able to see that.

[Rktim]

What Siyra especially issent considering is that S10 basically would force all other to ether jump on the S10 train or GTFO... Because while its true that for everyone in S10 the time vs effort stays the same, its also true that for anyone outside S10 the price vs effort keept rising and rising... Thaus anyone that defend bounties are actually the once saying "you have to play it my way!"...

Just sayin'...

[Siyra]

Now what's the solution? Not print more money.

Really.. I would have thought that removing the 'old' money would be a better solution. But hey if you think removing a newcomers source of money while leaving the vets who have billions stashed alone is gona even start to fix a problem then you keep on thinking that.

Fact is: Funcom could easily stabalize the market without removing bounties. What they need is to make some items (not all, or even a large portion so you're whole "there's to many items" thing is just a straw man) drop more often to force their price down. Then they need to introduce methods to actually remove credits from people, and not a piddly amount, and not only from leveling people - not stop them from making more.

If I'm a vet who has billions of credits what do I care about the state of bounties in S10? If I want to buy something I can. Removing bounties won't effect my bank. What removing bounties does is hurt some newcomer to the game who wants to know how to not make their toon suck so much and gets told they have to either farm some rare item (which they can't cause it's camped by all the people who have money and hardly need more) or grind out some missions or some such nonsense.

Funcom can't very well add an equivilant source of incom back via missions or anything else because then they may as well have just left bounties in, so suffice to say that income source is gone. So the vets can run around with their billions trading it back and forth for whatever item they want for a new alt/twink and the newcomers, who are more important to the games survival, get **** on because items are still rare and still expensive and they no longer have a way to even slightly catch up.

And for what? To appease people like you who think everyone should work for months grinding cash like in '05?

Ya.. I'm sure a newcomer would like that. Go hang out on newb island and tell them that this game no longer has a decent way to make money so be prepaired to grind non stop to afford a single toons gear until you can get in on the market of vets swaping around their billions. See how fast they quit and never return.

Accept the fact that the game has changed, the gaming community has changed, things can't be "months of grinding for one thing" anymore. Call it carebear, call it dumbing down, calling it WoWification - I don't care. It's fact, accept it.

[Mastablasta]

But there's no such thing as a "newcomer's moneysource", if it's like sector 10 existing players will make characters with the sole purpose of farming it. The game even encourages this through XP locks.

[Windguaerd]

Players made creds before S10.

Player will make creds after S10.

Move on.

[Tanisthonus]

Players made creds before S10.

Player will make creds after S10.

Move on.

For the record, casuals don't make creds, but I don't think they're the conversation topic here.


(Tanis, playing when he gets free 30 days, and just running missions and dailys for fun. With the occasional city raid when the org calls.)

[Chrys]

Really.. I would have thought that removing the 'old' money would be a better solution. But hey if you think removing a newcomers source of money while leaving the vets who have billions stashed alone is gona even start to fix a problem then you keep on thinking that.

Fact is: Funcom could easily stabalize the market without removing bounties. What they need is to make some items (not all, or even a large portion so you're whole "there's to many items" thing is just a straw man) drop more often to force their price down. Then they need to introduce methods to actually remove credits from people, and not a piddly amount, and not only from leveling people - not stop them from making more.

If I'm a vet who has billions of credits what do I care about the state of bounties in S10? If I want to buy something I can. Removing bounties won't effect my bank. What removing bounties does is hurt some newcomer to the game who wants to know how to not make their toon suck so much and gets told they have to either farm some rare item (which they can't cause it's camped by all the people who have money and hardly need more) or grind out some missions or some such nonsense.

Funcom can't very well add an equivilant source of incom back via missions or anything else because then they may as well have just left bounties in, so suffice to say that income source is gone. So the vets can run around with their billions trading it back and forth for whatever item they want for a new alt/twink and the newcomers, who are more important to the games survival, get on because items are still rare and still expensive and they no longer have a way to even slightly catch up.

And for what? To appease people like you who think everyone should work for months grinding cash like in '05?

Ya.. I'm sure a newcomer would like that. Go hang out on newb island and tell them that this game no longer has a decent way to make money so be prepaired to grind non stop to afford a single toons gear until you can get in on the market of vets swaping around their billions. See how fast they quit and never return.

Accept the fact that the game has changed, the gaming community has changed, things can't be "months of grinding for one thing" anymore. Call it carebear, call it dumbing down, calling it WoWification - I don't care. It's fact, accept it.

it seems you're actually frontloading a shedload of your own personal emo issues into this discussion

that's your problem, not mine, not FC's

[Mastablasta]

For the record, casuals don't make creds, but I don't think they're the conversation topic here.


(Tanis, playing when he gets free 30 days, and just running missions and dailys for fun. With the occasional city raid when the org calls.)

They don't? I guess if "make credits" you mean wholesale, constant creditfarming, then no.

[Ahndracorvid]

@Siyra: I agree with you that newcomers need a source of creds. What I think you're perhaps slightly missing is Chrys' suggestion of the CRU mission reward being made yesdrop.

The key difference in these two scenarios -- S10 bounties vs. a tradeable CRU -- is that the former simply creates credits from nothing (ie. "bill-printing") whereas the latter instead shifts EXISTING credits around from one person to another. The reason why the latter works better is the newcomer who can be bothered to do a CRU mission still gets his credits, but at the same time money is being taken from the rich schmuck who is too lazy to do it himself. Y'all've been yelling for the hoarders to have something to sink their credits into, right? Well then that something might as well be the newbies who'll keep this game alive.

I realize it'll be a relatively small amount of cash for the people who have savings numbering in the tens of billions, but for that new guy who just made the few mil he needed for a new set of implants or whatever, it makes a huge difference. I remember when I got my first mil in this game: it was actually a gift from a friend for helping him farm ToTW. I'd never seen so much money in all my AO life at that point, and I was very reluctant to even accept the gift because it just looked like so much money to me back then.

A few mil for CRU to raid will seem affordable to a veteran, while still being a big help for a newcomer. That principle could be better applied to more stuff in game for even better effect. Just like how vets used to pay newbies for basic armor sets before the S10 "nerf".

[Manicmouse]

We need more repeatable quests like the basic armour quests. New players can do the quests and earn millions as players of all levels need the armour. Rich high level players don't think the reward is worth the time spent so will leave it for lower levelled players.

No money is being printed and new players can earn money selling a product that is in high demand.

[Amickson]

Getting money from trades need one very important thing - The buyer. Economy in AO is buyers market, not sellers market. Try selling concrete cushions, medsuit or treatment rifle now and you will earn nothing, every veteran get them already. Basic armor is on the same way, 3-5 ppl can make credits from that, but not more. And for farming cru's - I did that in the past, it's nothing for low players. QL of CRU is more or less determined by mission level, no one will do team missions for QL10 CRU. CRU mission for QL25 CRU (nodrop) on 24h lockout is absolut joke.

[Chrys]

Getting money from trades need one very important thing - The buyer. Economy in AO is buyers market, not sellers market. Try selling concrete cushions, medsuit or treatment rifle now and you will earn nothing, every veteran get them already. Basic armor is on the same way, 3-5 ppl can make credits from that, but not more. And for farming cru's - I did that in the past, it's nothing for low players. QL of CRU is more or less determined by mission level, no one will do team missions for QL10 CRU. CRU mission for QL25 CRU (nodrop) on 24h lockout is absolut joke.

Hey if CRU is going at 10m an ICE then 2.5m for a single RK mission is not a joke when you can roll level 20s to do them in under 10 mins. It's not meant to be lucrative to TL7s but for new players, that's the whole point. It's obviously not the only solution to the flow-money-from-rich-to-poor, but it's a start, and importantly it eliminates completely the objection that CRU is too hard to get (not that it really is all that hard to get considering the potential rewards).

[JustinSane4]

I don't get the "inflation is inherently bad" argument. If things cost twice as much as they did 6 years ago, but credits can be earned three times faster (including for new players - flush veterans with S10 twinks pay more for basic armor), then buying power has increased. I think it's very difficult to claim that S10 did not contribute to inflation - it pretty much had to, though I think it's effect may be over-estimated by many. But that doesn't mean S10 was bad or made the game worse. I'm quite confident it vastly reduced the number of hours a totally new player had to play to get good gear, and inflation has it's economic upsides as well. It reduces the value of currency hoards (so people sitting on loads of credits will slowly find them worth less than they used to be) and increases spending (since if my credits are worth more now than they will be next month, it makes sense to spend them now). Hyper-inflation is bad of course. But outside of an unfortunate exploit, we haven't really seen that in AO.

[Kron]

It was our intention to remove bounties from Sector 10 along with some larger changes we are making in the next update (team and single player instances for spawning the boss at the beginning of the playfield) but the data snuck in on us.

If the new changes are introduced with the next patch then I don't see why there is a problem.
The alien armor will become much more available and go down in price. Instead of people making creds that appear out of thin air and inflate the economy the creds they get will come from other players resulting in a deflation.

[drainbamage]

I don't get the "inflation is inherently bad" argument. If things cost twice as much as they did 6 years ago, but credits can be earned three times faster (including for new players - flush veterans with S10 twinks pay more for basic armor), then buying power has increased. I think it's very difficult to claim that S10 did not contribute to inflation - it pretty much had to, though I think it's effect may be over-estimated by many. But that doesn't mean S10 was bad or made the game worse. I'm quite confident it vastly reduced the number of hours a totally new player had to play to get good gear, and inflation has it's economic upsides as well. It reduces the value of currency hoards (so people sitting on loads of credits will slowly find them worth less than they used to be) and increases spending (since if my credits are worth more now than they will be next month, it makes sense to spend them now). Hyper-inflation is bad of course. But outside of an unfortunate exploit, we haven't really seen that in AO.

Yes, inflation isn't necessarily bad, if you ignore the credit cap issues. But only if the credit faucets are accessible across the player range and smoothly scaled. When a specific subset is generating most of the credits, like the situation was with S10, there's a problem.

[Manicmouse]

Actually inflation is just when the value of money decreases, nothing to do with prices "skyrocketing". Inflation of 0.5% is still inflation, it's not bad, it's a fact of life.

Hopefully we don't get to the point where we carry our credits in our virtual wheelbarrows to buy stacks of ammo ^^

[Dogtrauma]

Actually inflation is just when the value of money decreases, nothing to do with prices "skyrocketing". Inflation of 0.5% is still inflation, it's not bad, it's a fact of life.

Hopefully we don't get to the point where we carry our credits in our virtual wheelbarrows to buy stacks of ammo ^^

I dare you to present one single other indicator of inflation than prices rising.

[Colrain]

There are too many pages to read all the posts here about S10 bounty being removed ...

What I would like to say is that I have played AO since 2003, not a hardcore player, but consistently playing since then. I don't twink like the other long-time players, so when I took a toon I was leveling into S10 I didn't get very far, never saw a bounty. After 3 or 4 attempts with other leveling toons I stopped trying to play S10. Even my 146 MA I made as a theoretical S10 toon to collect ICE has trouble getting past all the S10 twinks.

So I am glad a change was made so that more than just lvl 150 twinks can go into the playfield, maybe. However, it would also be good if there is a way for newer players to make credits for buying stuff beyond implants and nanos. Maybe the daily missions should have a credit reward also??

As far as inflation goes ... in the past 6 months to a year prices for AI combined armor has doubled. That is pretty high inflation to me.

Colrain

p.s. My real reason for trying to read all the posts ... how long are the UPH's staying in-game ... thru next week-end I hope.