A question about gold

VaranisArano

Brittany_Joy wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

The gold goes out of the game.

Gold comes into the game out of thin air all the time. There need to be places for the gold to go or there will be too much of it.

This is the most ridiculous position ever. There will be too much of it? How much is too much exactly? As an example, I never have much more than 100k available. I have no interest in accumulating gold...I can get virtually anything I want without it with a little work...if I am not willing to work that much for it, I dont really want it. Who really cares if there is "too much" gold? Or not enough gold for that matter? The only use for gold is to skip tasks you dont like doing(like fishing for example), but that equates to skipping content for me. If I want something...I will work for it the hard way....repairs and wayshrines, along with various potions are the vast majority of my gold expenditure...I never actually buy anything else

I see you don't understand economics.

Gold sinks are vital in any multi-player game with persistence. If the servers were frequently completely wiped, or if it was a single player game there would be no need for them. Since neither of those are true, gold sinks are the only thing that keeps rampant inflation from completely destroying the game economy.

How would you like it if you were a new player and you wanted to buy enough materials to craft yourself a set of level 10 gear, but checking guild traders you found that it would cost you 5 million gold to get those mats? And here you are with about 2,000 gold to your name. Without gold sinks that's exactly what would happen.

Gold gets generated out of nothing in a game. Because of that, there needs to be a mechanism to remove gold from the economy. Otherwise the players who have been playing the longest keep building up more and more gold indefinitely, so hyper inflation sets in, and the only people who can afford to buy anything are the people who have been playing the longest. That's a death sentence for any MMO, because an MMO must continue to attract new players in order to maintain a stable population (there is always some degree of attrition among veteran players). If new players are shut out of some of the most basic elements of the game, like buying simple items from other players, then they're not going to stick around.

Is that how the economy works though? Just a piece of pie is around 5k gold, I don't see how any civilian can survive in Tamriel with the gold inflation.

The game economy doesn't exist for the NPCs, it exists for the players. NPCs dont have to worry about gold inflation when the game makes gold out of thin air. Players do.

Too much gold in circulation and gold devalues, so items cost more gold and new players have to accumulate more gold to buy what they need.

Too little gold, and even though prices are lower, new players struggle to accumulate the gold to buy what they need.

In either case, established players with the time to accumulate gold through farming or trading aren't much impacted by it, as long as inflation never really gets out of hand. Still, ZOS makes sure we have gold sinks too, like housing, mats, motifs, and now crown store gifting.

UrQuan

Shantu wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

The gold goes out of the game.

Gold comes into the game out of thin air all the time. There need to be places for the gold to go or there will be too much of it.

This is the most ridiculous position ever. There will be too much of it? How much is too much exactly? As an example, I never have much more than 100k available. I have no interest in accumulating gold...I can get virtually anything I want without it with a little work...if I am not willing to work that much for it, I dont really want it. Who really cares if there is "too much" gold? Or not enough gold for that matter? The only use for gold is to skip tasks you dont like doing(like fishing for example), but that equates to skipping content for me. If I want something...I will work for it the hard way....repairs and wayshrines, along with various potions are the vast majority of my gold expenditure...I never actually buy anything else

I see you don't understand economics.

Gold sinks are vital in any multi-player game with persistence. If the servers were frequently completely wiped, or if it was a single player game there would be no need for them. Since neither of those are true, gold sinks are the only thing that keeps rampant inflation from completely destroying the game economy.

How would you like it if you were a new player and you wanted to buy enough materials to craft yourself a set of level 10 gear, but checking guild traders you found that it would cost you 5 million gold to get those mats? And here you are with about 2,000 gold to your name. Without gold sinks that's exactly what would happen.

Gold gets generated out of nothing in a game. Because of that, there needs to be a mechanism to remove gold from the economy. Otherwise the players who have been playing the longest keep building up more and more gold indefinitely, so hyper inflation sets in, and the only people who can afford to buy anything are the people who have been playing the longest. That's a death sentence for any MMO, because an MMO must continue to attract new players in order to maintain a stable population (there is always some degree of attrition among veteran players). If new players are shut out of some of the most basic elements of the game, like buying simple items from other players, then they're not going to stick around.

Rampant inflation? Do you mean like paying 2 million for a gold ring? Or 70,000 for a single chromium plate?

Those aren't high prices caused by inflation, those are high prices caused by rarity combined with high demand. In fact, the price of chromium plating has gone down as the rarity and demand decrease - if there were no gold sinks in the game those prices would never go down, because the amount of gold available in the player economy would be increasing faster than the demand decreased.

Shantu wrote: »

I'm just not buying into the idea that allowing users to freely allocate their skills/CP on the fly will sink the entire ESO economy.

Arguing about which gold sinks should and shouldn't be in the game is completely different from the utter idiocy of arguing that there's no need for gold sinks (and unless I missed it, I haven't seen you argue that there shouldn't be any gold sinks, just that you don't agree with those ones). Removing the specific gold sinks you're talking about wouldn't destroy the economy. It would increase inflation, but probably not by a ton - certainly not enough to destroy the economy.

That's because there are lots of different gold sinks in ESO. Houses, furnishings, the Golden vendor, mount training, equipment repairs, guild trader bids, sales tax on guild store sales, bag space, bank space, outfits etc. Removing all gold sinks would destroy the player economy.

Shantu wrote: »

The laws of supply and demand in guild exchanges will take care of itself. But I've earned those skills and CP. Charging for a change in how I want to use them is like the government installing pay toilets in my home.

Your analogy actually only works if the government that installed pay toilets in your home also allows you to print your own money at home and use it anywhere. Again though, I'm not arguing that those specific gold sinks are or aren't appropriate. It's just that your analogy isn't valid.

Mettaricana

AlnilamE wrote: »

The gold goes out of the game.

Gold comes into the game out of thin air all the time. There need to be places for the gold to go or there will be too much of it.

Too much of it tell that to the guild leader big wigs that leeched the market selling traders they got the gold cap in bank and all characters besides theres much bigger things to remove gold with like buying houses, tempers etc than nicmel and diming us with this crap

VaranisArano

Mettaricana wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

The gold goes out of the game.

Gold comes into the game out of thin air all the time. There need to be places for the gold to go or there will be too much of it.

Too much of it tell that to the guild leader big wigs that leeched the market selling traders they got the gold cap in bank and all characters besides theres much bigger things to remove gold with like buying houses, tempers etc than nicmel and diming us with this crap

That's sort of the point of having major and minor gold sinks. Even poor players are constantly generating new gold and those minor gold sinks like repair costs, wayshrines, and the outfit system help keep inflation from them down even if they dont buy stuff like housing and motifs.

Repair costs are probably the best example of this, since your gear breaks as you gain exp. You gain gold from questing or farming mobs? Repair costs take some of that money back out of the game.

Jeremy

Shantu wrote: »

So, what's the point of making players pay a chunk of gold for jumping to a wayshrine or resetting their skill line, morphs, attributes, or CP? What's the negative impact if people could move around zones more quickly? And so what if I what to change my morphs, skills, attributes, and CP on the fly? What's the big deal? It's not like the gold goes anywhere except out of your account. Personally, I think removing the gold punishment from these would add considerably to the enjoyment of the game.

The Wayshrines don't bother me. It's not like it's hard to get around on this game. Short of giving you your own personal teleporting device I don't really see what they could do to make it any easier to travel on this game.

But I'm with you on the prohibitive costs of changing your skills. It's especially a problem if you play multiple roles on the same character or participate in PvP - as they require different skill sets to optimize. I'm not suggesting they should make it free, but I would prefer they at least give you several skill templates you can make use of.

Ramber

Maybe we should be able to try other morphs or abilities that we have to respec then if we keep them we pay it we return them in 24 hrs we get our gold back?

cheops

Shantu wrote: »

UrQuan wrote: »

josiahva wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

The gold goes out of the game.

Gold comes into the game out of thin air all the time. There need to be places for the gold to go or there will be too much of it.

This is the most ridiculous position ever. There will be too much of it? How much is too much exactly? As an example, I never have much more than 100k available. I have no interest in accumulating gold...I can get virtually anything I want without it with a little work...if I am not willing to work that much for it, I dont really want it. Who really cares if there is "too much" gold? Or not enough gold for that matter? The only use for gold is to skip tasks you dont like doing(like fishing for example), but that equates to skipping content for me. If I want something...I will work for it the hard way....repairs and wayshrines, along with various potions are the vast majority of my gold expenditure...I never actually buy anything else

I see you don't understand economics.

Gold sinks are vital in any multi-player game with persistence. If the servers were frequently completely wiped, or if it was a single player game there would be no need for them. Since neither of those are true, gold sinks are the only thing that keeps rampant inflation from completely destroying the game economy.

How would you like it if you were a new player and you wanted to buy enough materials to craft yourself a set of level 10 gear, but checking guild traders you found that it would cost you 5 million gold to get those mats? And here you are with about 2,000 gold to your name. Without gold sinks that's exactly what would happen.

Gold gets generated out of nothing in a game. Because of that, there needs to be a mechanism to remove gold from the economy. Otherwise the players who have been playing the longest keep building up more and more gold indefinitely, so hyper inflation sets in, and the only people who can afford to buy anything are the people who have been playing the longest. That's a death sentence for any MMO, because an MMO must continue to attract new players in order to maintain a stable population (there is always some degree of attrition among veteran players). If new players are shut out of some of the most basic elements of the game, like buying simple items from other players, then they're not going to stick around.

Rampant inflation? Do you mean like paying 2 million for a gold ring? Or 70,000 for a single chromium plate?

I'm just not buying into the idea that allowing users to freely allocate their skills/CP on the fly will sink the entire ESO economy. The laws of supply and demand in guild exchanges will take care of itself. But I've earned those skills and CP. Charging for a change in how I want to use them is like the government installing pay toilets in my home.

Gold jewellery and the means to upgrade jewellery to gold are priced as such to reflect the effort required to obtain them before JC was a thing.