That’s exactly what i meant,
THIS DUDE GETS IT!
Except that most people don’t think that way. The vast majority prefer quantity. The human mind isn’t a simple thing.
There was a study where they tested people on eBay. The same exact item, one cost $10 with free shipping. One cost $5+$5 shipping. Around 90% of the people chose the $10 with free shipping. Does that make sense? No. They’re both exactly the same price. But that one said free on it, so the brain automatically assumes it is better.
So sure, maybe this idea of taking an hour to get 10 coins makes sense to you, but most people will hate that idea and never agree to it because of the way the human mind works, from a young age we are trained to view small numbers as bad and large numbers as good.
Excessive numbers make money look cheap, and that is just a fact. It’s simple to understand.
Haven’t really played the game to see the high numbers in action, but here are my thoughts:
- I agree that there is a sweet spot for currency - we don’t want really big numbers, and we don’t want numbers so small that they greatly impact our ability to differentiate between the value of items.
- You’re (zeno_t) focused on the psychological effects of seeing big numbers. Although I agree the phenomenon exists (otherwise people would stop charging $99.99 on RL items), I can’t agree that it is the be-all-end-all for a good economy.
- Though, I do hope we don’t all end up with 4,121,453,123,012 amount of any currency. An extra “0” in a trade would be catastrophic.
I would put more importance on functions that allow for money to be removed from circulation - purchasing keys for a dungeon, consumables, trade tax, etc.
Seems like its all the same thing, from one side it feel like its just a power fantasy. “I’m rich from defeating monsters”. purely from the mechanical standpoint you’re working towards the exact same thing, 1hour = 1 sword.
Kind of using all caps to call them wrong way and right way when they’re entirely subjective makes me feel like you feel very passionate about it and if that’s the case than by all means go right ahead and feel that way, you’ve a right to your opinion. I just think its unnecessary argument over a perceived difference rather than an actual one.
RO’s still there when we talk about $$$ haha 
True, but still depends on the server you’re playing. Actual RO’s economy is a disaster.
Ntl, the economy was great at first (during the first years). Once upon a time, you were the king of the world with 100k zeny. Now with 1b zeny, you’re a hobo.
Sh*t first happened when Gravity changed its business model. Other factors played their role too, like the merge of some servers, the cash flow exploded…
Let’s hope ToS won’t meet the same problems. #crossyourfingers
Continuing the discussion from Economy - The most important thing:
you talking about inflation right? (its happen in real world too)
basically, inflation happen when there is too much money on hand and the gap between rich/poor is huge, the value of money get depreciated.
example of inflation is when price goes up, a rare weapon from boss drop, people sold/bought for only $1000 at the beginning, because that $1000 is good amount of money, after awhile, people getting richer and richer, $1000 is nothing, just like you said having 1b zeny but still a hobo, just enough to buy that sword.
the gap between rich and poor is bigger, a newbie hardly had enough money to buy potion from NPC. but hobo with 1b zeny, NPC potion had no value.
inflation is unavoidable, but it can be reduce,… how?
we need money sinking, a feature that remove money from the server permanently, so there is no too much money on the server and people appreciate the money more.
example of money sinking, is buying potion from NPC, its different from buying it from other player, buying from NPC, the money is gone forever, but buying from people, the money just change hand.
so we need more useful item from NPC shop,
something like rent a costume, rent a weapon and armor, rent a mount, donate money at the goddess for buff, etc etc
Doesn’t look like ToS is lacking in the money sink department - potions, anvils, item repairs, attributes and all.
Well, in RO’s case, it’s not “natural inflation” (like in real world). It was too fast, too hard for a classic inflation. I exposed one of the main causes, the change of business model.
There are already 2 good money sinks: pricey companions and attributes.
It will take quite some time/money to max attributes. It seems we have some time before to really worry about economy problems.
The IG cash flow will also depend on what will be sold in the cash shop… another big concern…
More money sinks may come later, i.e. when we’ll know more about the housing system.
Yup, that’s important. Maybe we should buy services from other players too (we already have skill shops, buff shopts, etc…) and this must be improved on the future.
And i think the Auction House should be more player involve.
Give me the dollar please.
Also on this note i don’t need extra digits my country recently phased out penny’s to minimize our decimal digits.
[quote=“Masamune, post:53, topic:39742”]
The same exact item, one cost $10 with free shipping. One cost $5+$5 shipping. [/quote]
I would take the 10$ one not because it looks better. not because its bigger. But because you said ebay and shitty sellers on ebay always try to ■■■■ you on shipping so most experienced ebay buyers will take a higher base with no shipping.
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Increased trading tax from 10% to 20%, reduce vendor prices at higher levels (prices at which NPCs buy your items).
Btw, is it still possible to feed equipment to gems?
^ As long as the game has appropriate sinks, inflation will be slowed. Good sinks are those that players enjoy spending their currency on.
Potions are an obvious example, because we happily throw our money into them because they help us do whatever we wanted to do faster or more effectively. We justify the cost and are happy to spend it for improved efficiency.
Other somewhat clever examples from RO were Mammonite and similar skills which literally consumed currency. After a while the amount felt insignificant to the user, but we just spammed away happily watching the coins scatter, not just from our own pockets, but from the system.
Maybe the OP went about explaining his ideas and thoughts in a weird and intricate way that may not be well written either. So instead i’ll try to see if he means something about keeping the economy deflated and i’ll try to explain it in my own words as thorough as i can:
In order to prevent inflation in MMOs one must tackle the main source of the problem in an MMO economy. This is the fact that money is created out of nowhere. Some examples of this are:
1)Killing mobs gives money.
2) Items are permanently acquired ONCE with no need for extras.
3)Selling junk to NPCs.
4)Rewards for quests,raids or even events.
In essence money is bound to inflate in MMOs and as it inflates so do prices in the Auction House and trades between players. The only solution to this every growing problem of ample amount of silver coins is “money sinks”. Money sinks are a way the world can take back its silver coins in an economic way that is healthy to keep prices low without making it too unbearable for newly created characters to earn the bare minimum silver coins to stay classy( no one likes running around in broken equipment D:). Some of these commonly used money sinks are:
- Equipment repair due to durability damage( keeps on giving a money sink for both low and high lvl players alike).
2)Taxes( Auction House tax, Quest accepting fees, trading fees)
3)Making multiple equipment viable on the same character (weapon changing due to different elements in combat).
4)Production costs( costs to produce an item, costs to refine an item, costs to socket and unsocket items)
5)Chances of failure( items disappear when you fail at refining,socketing,unsocketing,producing,etc)
In order for the economy to not suffer from both inflation and deflation, the MMO must have both money sinks and money creation mechanisms. The thing is most mechanisms are driven by a force, can you guess what this force is? PLAYERS. That’s right players drive the economy, from making money to sinking money. A player driven economy gives depth to the game as much as a real world economy since after all it follow the same principle; “decisions based on finite resources”(money,materials,time).
What the OP is hoping for or at least suggesting is for the game to have a balanced player driven economy which most of us are in agreement. Now what i do like which most MMOs don’t implement is a PVP driven trading system, at least to some extent being able to make money off trading packs between towns in the game. Something like you purchase the packs from an npc and need to deliver the pack on another town, this way your character will be displayed with a backpack while traveling with said packs. Then players can have the choice to attack you or leave you alone ( or preferably the roads between these towns are open PVP areas) and if you die you would drop the packs on the floor for anyone to pick up. But if you make it to the town you can make quite a profit for putting your pack(and life) in danger. This promotes believe it or not alot of social play, from relying on your guild or party to protect you to having designated trading days in guild to having guilds fully made to trade packs. It also serves as practice for those pvp inclined in case of GvG events. And since trading packs is made as an optional way to make money, those who don’t want to participate don’t have to.
Er… No. The OP has pretty much already said exactly what he wants, all he cares about is the money having less digits.
All i want is to make this game better, by improving strategic points on it.
I think your example is a little bit too low, although I understand your sentiment.
if it takes you 1 hour to make 10 coins, that sounds like a lot of RNG is involved in getting those coins to drop, since they are rarer.
if it takes you 1 hours to make 10000 coins it means that you can be given 50, 100 coins, or even 500 or more coins when you kill something/achieve something, meaning it feels like you are constantly making progress or being rewarded rather than waiting for RNG to drop you 1 of the 10 coins you need.
Although like someone else said before, you can easily break up the currency into gold/silver/copper as a way to be giving currency regularly in smaller amounts
i understand some may prefer less digit.
but money with less digit does not help reduce the inflation.
example,
farming 1 hour get $10, and monster’s drop sword valued $10, if the inflation is high, the value of that sword would be like $100 the next month. increased 10 times.
VS
farming 1 hour, get $1000, and monster’s drop sword valued $1000, if the inflation is very low, that sword value maybe $2000 next month. increased 2 times.
for a healthy economy, we need great money sink in the game. so the inflation is not sky high.
I’m not against the idea of having less digit, i could go either way many digits, or less digits, im just worried about the inflation.
You missed the point of his example entirely it was a hypothetical example with the same time to make a different value but the items were costed accordingly. In other words RNG has no relation his example.
if you want you could view it as
Kill 10 mobs = 10 coins Buy a sword for 10
kill 10 mobs = 1000 coins Buy a sword for 1000
The time/mob is just representing that earning rates are to stay the same in the model he wants. He just wants lower values so money has a more valuable feel per coin.
Truths are:
- Your topic title is kind of misleading. Economy is basically a circle of production and consumption and the stuffs in between.
The digit number of the currency almost has nothing to do with the economy process (production and consumption process) between the players. Your topic is initially about the players’ psychology concerning the currency digit and the rewarding feeling. BUT… - The digit can actually have an indirect effect to the economy, depending on the players interaction and mentality. Why? Because with smaller number, comes smaller gap. With smaller gap, the lesser farm will worth more. Therefore players shant feel the need to hunt high levelled mobs to increase their wealth, they just have to stay online as long as possible to kill lesser mobs. Thus this shall encourage players to…bot. ESPECIALLY, if you compare it to RO early days.
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