Economy and Inflation

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Madd
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Economy and Inflation

Post by Madd »

This is a continuation of the discussion from the HWYD thread.

Please read the whole post before you contribute.

I have been thinking about how to fix the inflation for a long time, and I've tried a lot of things (goldsinks, mainly). I'm not going to make any large decisions without much discussion and prior warning. Don't panic.

The solution to the economy has several parts.

The first part is reducing the ratio of new gold vs spent gold.

1) Make it so adults don't give you gold when you click them
2) Large trade tax


The second part is making it so gold hoarders don't suddenly see their gold values skyrocket and become infinitely more wealthy than everybody else.

1) Reset everybody's gold back to zero
2) Divide everybody's gold by ten (linear reduction)
3) Decrease everybody's gold with a square-root based reduction (the more gold you have, the more you lose. The less gold you have, the less you are affected)
4) Phase out gold entirely, replacing it with another currency (silver?). Everybody would keep their gold and have zero silver. Shops and quests would start only accepting silver. No new gold would be generated, people would mine silver instead. The gold would become a closed system. People would use gold less and less, finally forgetting about it altogether. I would then remove gold entirely. (difficult in general)
5) Sliding-scale trade taxes based on player's equity (difficult to calculate)

Doing nothing is not an option, because eventually everybody will get sick of inflation and leave.

Flat-rate trade taxes are not a complete solution.

I would especially appreciate someone with an economics background's input on this.

Please don't feel as though you should post as much textual anger as possible. This will work much better as a civil conversation.
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ArkaiGuy
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by ArkaiGuy »

I say reset gold :P AND taxes :evil:
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by Kestrad »

I still think gold should not become a closed system if you introduce a new currency. That would be bad news for people with lots of gold, as it would become a heap of worthless gold extremely quickly.

Also, I can't claim to have an econ background, but the traditional way to combat inflation is through increasing interest rates on loans and things like that, right? Maybe MS should get a bank.
Last edited by Kestrad on February 3rd, 2012, 9:34:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Madd
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by Madd »

Sochitelya wrote:Taking away the gold that people spent time earning is going to slap you in the face. You're going to piss people off because they put effort into that. And they're going to show it by dumping the site like a bad boyfriend. You are basically saying to them that not only is their work useless, apparently so you can pander to people who want instant gratification, but that you have no respect for them as players. You're the admin and it's your site, but people don't stick around in places where they feel the admin will screw them over any time he feels like it. You only have to look at the backlash against, say, TJ of DragCave or what's-his-face of Subeta.
I have no plans to "take away" gold. I am only suggesting we revalue it. You know when stocks go from $100/share to $50/share, but everybody's stock turns into two stocks? Like that, except perhaps on a curve instead of a line.
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Nightjourneys
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by Nightjourneys »

Can we couple #4 with small scale gold sinks? Like Kael suggested in HWYD a renaming fee, or other such options could be a way to get gold out of the system while we're switching over to a different currency.

Also, thought: For those that would rather not spend it, what about conversion? You can trade 100k gold for 25k silver. Bad conversation rates, but you're still X% above people that have just begun earning the new silver, so the value is still there, no work was lost.
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by ArkaiGuy »

Kestrad wrote:I still think gold should not become a closed system if you introduce a new currency. That would be bad news for people with lots of gold, as it would become a heap of worthless gold extremely quickly.
Then there should be a shop for people to spend their leftover gold, then once everyone is using the new silver poof the gold is gone!
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by sammythethief »

ArkaiGuy wrote:I say reset gold :P AND taxes :evil:
:angry:
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Madd
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by Madd »

I like the silver idea too, but a straight conversion rate negates the effects entirely.
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by ArkaiGuy »

MadameRed wrote:
ArkaiGuy wrote:I say reset gold :P AND taxes :evil:
:angry:
:evil:
Its a good idea in retrospect
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Re: Economy and Inflation

Post by BBkat »

ArkaiGuy wrote:
MadameRed wrote:
ArkaiGuy wrote:I say reset gold :P AND taxes :evil:
:angry:
:evil:
Its a good idea in retrospect
No it really isn't.
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