Credit Black Holes

[zoneik]

ok let me start by saying abit of hard work and you can make alot of credits in a short ammount of time, but.... FC seems to add more and more ways to loose creds, everyone will remember the good old Sector 10, "yea i know right bringing that old crap up again", i used to farm it on a MA just like alot of people i could leave there with about 200M+ a day. My Current city rent in 3CE is 144M a month witch i pay out of my own pocket, when S10 was around that was a few hours a month work, now its removed i've found few alternitive ways to get my rent or secure way to make xxx ammount per month,

We can all agree taking S10 bounties out was both good in some ways and really bad idea in other,

but i'm here to get your opinions on Credit Black Holes
Wondering what i'm talking about?...... GMI

If i wanna sell and item on the GMI it costs me money to add it (unless you can find a person wanting to buy already, (not you cheap people without your 1 creds) if my item sells i have to pay tax, where is the logic in making us pay twice just to sell and item, when we had org shops we added items picked our asking price and then checked them again every few days, if your org had 3% tax that was never an issure because we knew where the tax was going,

After reading the post on the new instance citys and there rent i'm rather pleased because my rent will go down, but i've yet to find a way in AO to make a real profit without having to rely on other players buying LR's or farmable items,

please add something simmular to S10 bounties ( or anything where you sell items to an NPC for a profit)

[MajorOutage]

We can all agree taking S10 bounties out was both good in some ways and really bad idea in other

Removing bounties was good IMO. Not replacing them with relays was the bigger foul.

please add something simmular to S10 bounties ( or anything where you sell items to an NPC for a profit)

Nonono. This won't solve anything. What we need are things to boost the flow of credits between players. Higher droprates on valuable tradable items. Like AI bots, for example. This would not only curb inflation (which is still an issue due to taxes) but would also help diffuse the wealth gap.

[raw_fox]

S10 is death since the changes of Bounties and PvP levels.

Think about ^^
Its sad.

150ish twinks have no meaning anymore.

[Ciex]

Yeah, having to pay to put items in gmi is a horrible idea imho. It stops people from putting there items that are less likely to sell over time and items that expensive enough to actually feel this fee.

[Honorbound]

You're not supposed to run a city on your own. Attempting to do so is your choice, and if you do choose so, it's your problem how do you farm the credits needed for the upkeep by yourself, as opposed to an actual org putting it together much easier as a team effort.

Effective and unavoidable credit sinks are needed to keep game economies healthy and inflation at bay, especially in games where money and items are mostly just added to the economy but rarely ever removed by "natural" processes. And AO is one such game.

As MajorOutage wrote, the real solution would be to increase droprate of highly valuable items (and I dare say, remove the "innate" nodrop tag from most/all currently nodrop items, or at least rework the nodrop mechanism into a "nodrop on equip" system where such items become actually nodrop only when they are equipped the first time, but until then they are freely tradeable) so that the money that is already in game would move at a higher rate between players due to trading such items in higher quantities.

[Warhead]

Whatever happened to "not all items should fall from the skies"? Turning everything somewhat rare into common loot is not a solution that helps this game in the long term. Chars will be "finished" quicker as will people lose interest in the game...

[Freor]

please add something simmular to S10 bounties ( or anything where you sell items to an NPC for a profit)

This is exactly what should *not* be done. Like MajorOutage said, boosting the flow/circulation of *existing* creds between players is what should be done (not necessarily by making rare loot too common though). That way there's same amount of money in circulation but changes hands more often. Less inflation, same result (if done right: newer players need a way to get something valuable enough to sell as well).

And yeah, as Ciex mentioned: Having to pay to put items in the GMI was really stupid move. If they have to/want to tax this much for using it, at least make the tax happen only when the items actually sell! That results more trades overall when there's more stuff to buy, due to more people using the system. Not rocket science

[Ciex]

Effective and unavoidable credit sinks are needed to keep game economies healthy and inflation at bay, especially in games where money and items are mostly just added to the economy but rarely ever removed by "natural" processes. And AO is one such game.

Monthly city rent
Full perk reset service guy
NPC vendors and shops
GMI fees and tax
...

Still not enough? Damn, you even pay to enter ely from jobe to kill some hecklers. How much new credits (not those from in game trade) do you bring to our economy? I dont at all, everything i have comes from other players.

Ive no idea how about you but when i level my characters my money is removed whith a "natural" process. Having my SL nanos up to date on both NT and engi did cost me around 150 mln for each of them.

To me it looks like that due to those strange economic theories about inflation, deflation and general QQ casual player is supposed to suffer and get poor because others exploited credits (yeah, yeah, those froobies spamming trade channel some time ago with "wtb ai armors, sl dyna weapons, symbiants, rare clusters, RBPs, igocs" or just "wtb anything of value" were obviously alts of s10 farmers ) and fc wants to earn on their in game shop.

[Awikun]

Zoneik has some valid points.
Most veterans do not really care about credits because over the years the accumulated huge amounts of credits one way or the other and their wealth is often "stored" in a form of expensive items like RBPs, IGoCs, combined armours, etc.

Many years ago when I started to play AO I could not afford yalm up to around level 100.
The only way (at that time) that I could earn credits was to loot every single piece of crap from killed mobs and sell it to shop terminals. I always caried several empty backpacks and after some missions spent few minutes clicking on shop terminals to sell all this crap. I had to do few missions before I had 5-10 backpacks full of crap and when I sold it I got maybe few hundreds thousands credits maybe 1 mil max.

Then there were ingots...., S10...... and now I get 99% of my credits from selling items to other players through GMI or using sales channels.

The key question is where do credits come from now ? (apart from credits already existing)
I really doubt that there are a lot of players who still loot every single piece of crap from killed mobs and sell it to terminals...
There are some quests/missions that gives credit rewards but very rarely the reward is more than 1m (for level 220) and I doubt anybody is using it as a way of earning credits.

I would like to know if FC has a tool that monitors the total amount of credits on a server and how this total amount of credits on a server changes over time?

I suspect that over the last few months this total amount of credits on both servers is decreasing (which to some extent is good) but on the other hand the perfect situation would be to have more or less the same amout of credits stable over some time.

[Senzatzii]

dude stop bitching around
i never had a s10 twink, never farmed s10
i got over 20b
thank you, the game isn't all s10, is larger than that
explore it !

[Lazy]

people that farmed s10 made peasant cash compared to the real sources of income in this game.

[Boltgun]

If I disagree on rents, we don't need more bounties.
And tbh the GMI has been profitable, especially in its highest cost as I could put several low level items and risk less payments through time outs.

[zoneik]

dude stop bitching around
i never had a s10 twink, never farmed s10
i got over 20b
thank you, the game isn't all s10, is larger than that
explore it !

S10 was an example of a steady income, and when your unable to get teams to get nodrop items most tend to give in and buy them for way over priced prices

i'm talking on behalf of the majority of the population who seems unlike yourself to be able to farm 20b

after taxes GMI, expensive nano's (GMI prices on rare nano's) the casual player will struggle and thats before you folk out on half decent armor weapons, imps , symbs (if paid),

Let me also point out 1 major concern, from the lvls of about 160-210 most profs barely even get to see team (doc's, MP's) because there either no use or little DD'ers / would you take a under 215 doc with you on APF's Beast, DB1,2,3 ?
Healing is minimum dmg is way under avradge (UBT useless)

unless your a really kwl guy that takes lowbies to get there items then they are expected to folk out for them

[Senzatzii]

ofc i take under 220 toons, but only if i know they can handle it and wont die from one hit and mess our raid
95% of lvl 200-218 toons have the same items they had at lvl 150ish, they dont even bother changing it

look at laari, lvl 218 enf who can tank better than most 220 enfs -> ofc ppl take him in teams/raids
look at a random toon with 7k hp and wearing medsuit -> ofc ppl wont take him

[Ciex]

Ohh, another "everything is fine, people under lvl 220 have many things to do". I love reading those

[lunarsolace]

just to be crystal, s10/ingots were credit creation.

other stuff like bot farming etc is depending on other players buying stuff.


Credit creation, like irl, deflates the value of each credit. On another point, people farming credit creation and not items to sell creates more demand, less supply of rare items so prices go up. Generally competition with supply drives prices down (everything else held constant)

I will say Ice should still drop in s10 and they should have upped the droprates on relays.



I would consider myself a veteran player, I have a bit of stuff/creds. I hate the new gmi's nickel/dime you to death approach. I realize what it does. Its clunky and I hate using it. After the merger, most of the 'new features' it provided will be obsolete, etc etc. Could have kept the old system of player shops (more credit sink in upkeep) and tied it with the mail system.

[Notcrattey]

s10 just needs better relay drops, or a rework to make raiding with groups encouraged.

[MajorOutage]

Everything he just said

+1+1+1+1+1

And, you are indeed a veteran player.

[Cratertina]

one idea would be to double relay droprate and give 3 to 5 ICEs on S10 bosses.

But again very important to note. Any kind of major income that comes from feedning NPCs or shops is bad.

[Utopian]

one idea would be to double relay droprate and give 3 to 5 ICEs on S10 bosses.

But again very important to note. Any kind of major income that comes from feedning NPCs or shops is bad.

The problem is - there needs to be a balance. FC has the pendulum swinging too far in each direction. Right now, the new credit creation is much more limited without s10. Creating substantial credit sinks (which I would say the GMI and new city rents are) is going to deplete credits, so there needs to be some meaningful way to create new ones.

I think there are much better credit sinks that could (should) have been employed that would have less affected game play. For instance, the reperk guy should be more than 20 million. Pay the creds or wait 2 days - fair tradeoff. Credit sinks for convenience I am all for - but not on things that are affeccting game play.