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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
There was an online discussion about Gold Selling and this is what I came up with.
RedLeader1
Member, Alpha Two
Every citizen will have to pay taxes to be citizens of a node, whether they live in a tavern, or a freehold. That is a gold sink, and need not be fixed price. As the value of that node citizenship goes up, so can the tax rate.
Membership can be variable, and so is therefore the gold sink variable. All I have to do is set the total tax payable, to be equal to the gold value of everything produced, or farmed in that node, (whether it is by members of the node or not), and I have a zero sum economy, by definition. This can kick in only at say Level 3/4. (Might be good to set a variable here for balance).
This might be a genuine solution. First of all if the tax scales by node citizenship as well, it limits the population of a node and therefore zerg guilds/nodes/factions.
Secondly, it creates a method whereby a node that is popular, even to non-citizens, it will collapse under its own weight, so that the citizens can't afford their taxes. You create a natural mechanic by which nodes can collapse, and you have an unlimited end game. Also a system of PvE economic warfare.
It would also provide a PvP guild/Node with an incentive to play defense, keeping non-citizens out, lest they destroy the economy of their node. And therefore a natural curb on gold selling. If you farm gold from a node, and then sell it, rather than appreciating the goods you sold, by processing/crafting, then the node will collapse economically. The gold sellers become persona non grata in every node, and/or can't be citizens in the node if they don't use the gold to pay their taxes. They might as well be NPC bandits, and part of the game either way. You might be able to sell/gift a bit of gold out, enough to help a friend/relative, but no one is going to make a living out of it.
Maybe my A-Level high-school economics is flawed here, but I can't see any economic problem, and you get a stable (pseudo) zero sum economy.
Membership can be variable, and so is therefore the gold sink variable. All I have to do is set the total tax payable, to be equal to the gold value of everything produced, or farmed in that node, (whether it is by members of the node or not), and I have a zero sum economy, by definition. This can kick in only at say Level 3/4. (Might be good to set a variable here for balance).
This might be a genuine solution. First of all if the tax scales by node citizenship as well, it limits the population of a node and therefore zerg guilds/nodes/factions.
Secondly, it creates a method whereby a node that is popular, even to non-citizens, it will collapse under its own weight, so that the citizens can't afford their taxes. You create a natural mechanic by which nodes can collapse, and you have an unlimited end game. Also a system of PvE economic warfare.
It would also provide a PvP guild/Node with an incentive to play defense, keeping non-citizens out, lest they destroy the economy of their node. And therefore a natural curb on gold selling. If you farm gold from a node, and then sell it, rather than appreciating the goods you sold, by processing/crafting, then the node will collapse economically. The gold sellers become persona non grata in every node, and/or can't be citizens in the node if they don't use the gold to pay their taxes. They might as well be NPC bandits, and part of the game either way. You might be able to sell/gift a bit of gold out, enough to help a friend/relative, but no one is going to make a living out of it.
Maybe my A-Level high-school economics is flawed here, but I can't see any economic problem, and you get a stable (pseudo) zero sum economy.
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Comments
Taverns are for tourists. They pay at the tavern.
Still effectively a tax that can be variable, and they are effectively temporary citizens, even if you are correct.
IS will then pull the plug and not slap people on the wrist. No, at that point everyone gets a ban. The in game gallows that's in every town will post the names that are banned. Blood will flow. It won't be long that people will fear buying gold that no one will go near any gold seller.
I personally think the chars of the banned accounts should also be posted on the ashes main page.
I get that you favor policing, but the major problem with gold selling is not that people can spend real life money to cheat and get ahead, but that generating the gold on a realm, destroys the game economy. The gold sold was generated in the game and it destroys the economy whether it sold to someone else or not.
You need to prevent rampant over-generation of gold, even if you stop the selling of it.
the glint system was supposed to solve this - to create high risk-reward and have diminishing returns on places where the same run is done too many times (the same commodity sold to the same node will be worth less if it's done too frequently.)
However, we have seen in the latest live stream that they still kept 'vendor trash' drops and the ability to sell any old thing to the vendor for cash - effectively 'printing money' in ways that entirely bypass the clever glint system.
Very disappointed, and I hope they correct this.
I agree in principle, but the important thing is balance, and as long as they put a slider variable to balance the money sinks and money supply, there isn't any reason to assume disaster.
The notion a large group of gold sellers unite to run a town - please by all means DO IT. It will be very noticable and reportable when lack of stuff not being upgraded but more importantly, goldsellers created their own honeypot and it will flag the internal systems for the GM to see, then they will see all the connected players and WHAM BAM - BANNED.
But in the end - they are going to have an active staff of Game Masters hunting them down. They will be keeping an eye on gold seller sites and from time to time, "purchase" if at all to Identify 1 individual and see all the connected accounts.
Lastly the buyers also suffers repurcussion and in the end, if proven successful, Word of Mouth will insitll fear into players from buying gold cause their success rate of finding and banning is very high.
They thought this through already
I'm not doing anything then telling you the plan Steven has stated in the streams. Right down to the gallows. Someone put all the info together into one video of everything Steven said about his plans for gold sellers. Clips covered 3 or 4 stream or interviews they were taken from.
No- I already got that. The problem is that Gold selling is only part of the problem. If you are able to generate gold to sell, enough to make it worth your while, the economy is drastically flawed.
Selling an amount of items in the game, to be worth (say) a months subscription, should be impossible, and particularly with the tracking you mention, instantly detectable.