Is Gold Inflation a Problem?

I couldn't help but notice that there's transactions going on out there of millions, if not tens-of-millions of gold. Apparently, some have enough spare cash lying around to provide a 750K cash prize for water murder.

We don't appear to have enough gold sinks. I'd think that'd concern the people who don't like paying for things like rent or repairs. You're just losing gold in another way - inflation.

This will have some effects, including:

• Returning players after hiatuses, will find they've lost value.
• There's less of a point to purchase tax-free properties, since the rent prices don't raise with the gold inflation.
• Fewer activities can really be viable for making money. Why adventure when that 18g you got 3 years ago off a zombie, is worth 1.8g now?

How much of a problem is it, to just let the inflation keep happening? (aside from potentially signed 32bit integer issues).

 

some things are more expensive now, some less. i remember when attunement rings sold for 60k each

 

Nope.

 

Inflation is a normal part of any MMO's economy. Anyone who pretends it doesn't impact the economy is probably someone who is taking advantage of it.

Unfortunately though, normal inflation that is caused by the accumulation of wealth by long-term players is being offset by the steady decline in the player base.

This past summer, gold and silver ingots were going for 400-420 each, now they are hovering around 300-350 each. Spider Silk belts two years ago were going for 1-2 million each, now they are going for ~800k each.

Inversely though, COTOs keep going up in price in player vendors because they genuinely get spent by people who aren't hoarding them. This is also why troll essence are 400-800% more expensive than other essence, because the essence actually gets used.


I've always felt that it is a mistake to not have a cost of storage either in the vendors or in containers. If people can just hold onto things indefinitely without any downside, and then go around the game economy buying up every other instance of that thing, they can drive inflation indefinitely.

 

best way to keep your gold safe move gold to cotos if you take a long time off =-D (at your own risk)

 

Lol, Been here from the start and sell rares each day but this 750k cost me little and was well worth it for me to get folks to come to my town and see my deco efforts and to reward those that do spend lots of time fishing!

But thanks anyway for promoting my fishing competition, so grab your rod and get fishing!

 

Other things that may have affected gold and silver is the addition of meticulous xp

And theres been alot of power creep over the past year thats made the spider queen alot easier

 

Isn't that the opposite of inflation, though? Inflation is when there is too much money in the system. Prices go up (inflate) when the value of the money has gone down, which happens when more people have easier access to it.

 

Context is important:

Unfortunately though, normal inflation that is caused by the accumulation of wealth by long-term players is being offset by the steady decline in the player base.

• Judgement: Inflation is limited in scope due to the decreased amount of wealth flowing into the system.

This past summer, gold and silver ingots were going for 400-420 each, now they are hovering around 300-350 each. Spider Silk belts two years ago were going for 1-2 million each, now they are going for ~800k each.

• An example of this is the significant drop in ingot prices as a result of lack of demand for ingots and a glut of inventory due to silver and gold mining being the main activity of most people gathering producer xp.

Inversely though, COTOs keep going up in price in player vendors because they genuinely get spent by people who aren't hoarding them. This is also why troll essence are 400-800% more expensive than other essence, because the essence actually gets used.

• Inflation still exists though in the commodities where steady demand exists. Troll essence - because troll rooms yield the highest return on investment of anything in the game. COTOs because there is always a buyer for COTOs.

 

The price for reagents and consumables are steady, artifacts and resources have lowered the price recently... so no inflation

 

I never said there was no inflation, just that falling prices are not proof of it, since that's literally the opposite of inflation.

That said, troll essence prices are probably more a result of demand greatly exceeding supply. Though, it'd be tough to prove one way or the other, as prices in SotA don't necessarily work the same as they do in RL.

 

I don't think reagents and (most) consumables can be used to determine inflation. The fact that they (or the ingredients to make them) have a fixed price and unlimited supply via NPC vendors means those prices aren't really going to change. It will always be somewhere slightly below the NPC vendor price.

 

As to the question at hand, given that inflation exists, though limited in scope - is it currently a problem?

Personally, I don't think so, because there is nothing that I feel "compelled" to spend gold on. The biggest demand I had on gold for a long time was in lot taxes tool repair, but once I upgraded to tax free deeds and tools of prosperity I don't really have anything to do with the money I have aside from spend it on luxuries. Some people may be driven by a desire to have the "absolute best" gear, but I can speak from experience that it isn't necessary for anything. Everything in the player economy is a luxury item, and without any objective value of anything or significant gold sinks, there really isn't any reason anything should be priced at any particular rate outside of "that's what people are currently willing to pay for it".

This circles around back to that there are no real gold sinks in the game. There is no reason to have more than one row lot full of barrels and chests outside of convenience. Everything else after that is a luxury item or a time saver/luxury item.

I understand why some people are against the idea, but this is why I am pro having some npcs that can be purchased and fed gold to process materials for you, buildings like stables could have an optional daily fee to allow horses to be available for guests in towns to use, buildings like windmills could have a function as well as operational costs. NPC guards in a POT could have a scaling salary and participate in sieges or raids that take place inside the town, or act has hostiles when the town is set to PVP.


A good gold sink needs to have a visible ROI and a constant need for gold. I think the problem with past implemented convenience COTO expenses was that they are a one-time costs. Players need something they can invest gold into routinely for some reason.

 

Ah, yeah, now I remember.

 

I think Catnip makes a lot of mistakes, but economy wise the game is very well maintained.
I don't perceive any relevant inflation. The market has pretty much steady prices that vary depending on availability and demand, which is how it should be.
One of the things that people ask all the time and would totally induce inflation is loot gold scaling with difficulty, so a low level zombie will give you 20 gp while a high level would give 200 gp. This would flood the economy with gold thus generating huge inflation.

 

Can't say on how things have been really recently, but over the course of the game I haven't seen inflation play a significant role. I have seen a handful of individuals become ridiculously wealthy, but because the new/casual player who doesn't kill stuff all day doesn't have any meaningful way to make gold (and any way to make gold outside combat has been pretty thoroughly stamped out, other than gardening, which requires a time commitment and real estate investment many aren't willing to do). So I'd say we see inflation, or at least wild fluctuation related to the dev/nerf cycle, on combat-specific items particularly ultrarares, but for other stuff its the opposite - player 'labor' is effectively worthless - there's no markup on refined vs. raw goods and the main things that sell in the resource market are components to make combat gear. If you're a player who isn't all about upgrading gear, you usually find you can buy what you need sometimes even cheaper than making it yourself because someone's offloading a surplus.

Its been pretty clear, to me anyway, that the economy in Sota has never really 'worked'. The limitations on buying/selling visibility due to the market system, the frustrations of maintaining a vendor, the dwindling playerbase, the ultrararity of desired items, - it seems that there is either a crazy amount of demand for something that simply doesn't drop often, or no demand whatsoever for anything else. Even crafted gear, unless its all perfect rolls, you can't usually even sell it at cost. Things like food, dye, etc. get made for experience and get sold at a loss to recoup some of what was spent. The overproduction and selling for race-to-bottom prices of a lot of things counteracts any inflation for the most part.

From my personal observations, you either have folks who don't need / don't care about gold and just play the game and get their own stuff, or you have people who really want to power-grind and either grind gold to then buy gear/materials to equip themselves, or, what I see most often, is they simply buy gold for RL cash and bypass that step. I guess if you wanted to assess inflation, you'd look at how much a million gold is worth in US dollars over the past few years. I don't really follow it, but it seems its gotten cheaper and cheaper.

 

Yep. And I know that gold inflation must not be a problem because the IGG to Crown exchange rate has basically been the same for months. The new IGG must be going somewhere, but not to the people buying crowns.

And that specifically does NOT cause gold inflation, because the total money supply remains unchanged.
It's only new IGG in the system that causes gold inflation. And keep in mind that players who stop playing is also a gold sink.
At this point I'm more curious about where the new gold goes. I have to remember that it's basically only coin drops and stuff that gets vendored to NPCs, not loot in general. If you get an awesome artifact and sell it to another player for a million, it still has no effect on the IGG supply.

Right... they need to drop more loot that can be sold to other players, rather than creating more coinage. And why are zombies carrying coins around anyhow? How would a meaner zombie have (or have pockets for) ten times as many coins? And where do skeletons keep their coins?

 

I'm curious what you think they've done for economy maintenance.

Things they could do are increasing tax rates, or NPC product costs. They rarely even take action to remove the damage from hacking/botting (which I'll grant anti-botting efforts as at least one maintenance action).

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In general, I wasn't really talking about pricing per individual items, but the amount of gold was in the economy. People seem to speak about the inflation as though it were a slow trickle, but "hyperinflation" may be a better descriptor. My gut-feeling estimate was about 10X inflation over the last few years. Here's a point of comparison (from MarkeeDragon):

1M gold in Oct 2017 - $247
1M gold today - $37.5
... so about 6.6X.

Given that he plays maybe 4 time a year, some else may be more up to date.

1M gold in June 2017 - $120
Today - $27
... so about 4.4X

So I wasn't horribly off.

It's more difficult to assess per item, because farming gold also farms items. Because there's little to no item destruction, the market has also hypersaturated with excess stuff, depending on type.

My advice to new players - skip the tax-free properties and commission-free vendors. Since the gold savings with those is vanishingly relevant, why waste your money? Just sell 3-4 beetle carapaces and you've paid your village lot for a week. Apparently lowering the game funding is not a problem, according to some.

So what I've learned from this exercise:

• Reduced income due to trivializing P2W... ahem... "convenience" items - unimportant.
• Losing frustrated players whose money they had when returning - unimportant.
• Ongoing narrowing of viable gameplay because the loot tables don't adjust for inflation, funneling the playerbase into fewer and fewer activities - unimportant.

Well, people quitting the game does effectively remove large chunks of gold from circulation. So I guess the system is self-regulating after all.

 

Incidentally, I'm not advocating cranking up property taxes. There are fun ways to spend money.

For instance,

• If you have good virtues, and 500k gold, you can sponsor a parade in any town (only governors can invoke it on POTs). The system broadcasts this event. Trinkets and money are thrown to the crowd.
• If you have bad virtues, and 500k gold, you can fund a zombie attack on a town (only governors can invoke it on POTs). The system broadcasts the event, and there's good loot, multiple boss enemies, etc.
• etc etc... spawning overworld events and encounters.
• etc

I forget what the other game was, but it's popular to buy items that spawn items/events for other people to enjoy. And it'd help soak up the hordes of extra money lying around. These would effectively be non-farmable, and therefore, more possibility for being rewarding.

 

Prices increasing can be because of inflation, or it can be a byproduct of increased intrinsic value of the underlying commodity. Given how good @Elrond and others have become at crafting, I think it is the latter.

The Iron Bank is regulating well the Gold in the game.