A Solution to the in game inflation.

[Catholicon]

Why not just have the casino give items as prizes instead of money? They could even be named items like the Muckbane.

[Oreg]

Why not just have the casino give items as prizes instead of money? They could even be named items like the Muckbane.

Everquest did something similar and although it was popular for a short time it soon ended up being mostly ignored. Hence my earlier comment about it not being a sustainable source of removing money from the game.

[Anderei]

I know on the other hand that in WoW players started to build their own lotteries, because they missed this from the game. But this only made the organizers richer and was not a money sink.

[Samadhi]

I am all about more gambling options. I will play the games in the phoenix every now and again - the problem is that the wager amounts are so small - that there really is no excitement from winning / concern from losing. If I could play an in game roulette and wager 100kpp per spin - now we are talking some fun times


(P.S. I'm not touching on this necessarily as having a huge impact on the economy; but I will support it purely for its own sake as a source of amusmenet).

[Dendrix]

I'm an EQ1 refugee, I used the casino there until I got the items I wanted from it (Drow mask) and then never went back. Because it wasn't a casino, it was a give mob and item sometimes getting something.

A Casino has a big spinning wheel I can click. It has a set of dice I can roll. Something I can interact with.
Casino should have cards and a card game(s) I can play with proper UI elements. I believe the code for some of the common card games ones is available to have a reasonable computer player.

The casino needs to have a proper UI I can interact with. Not a give the mob something see what I get (like the festivult jester or collector NPC's).

Also the rewards should be something useful, and only obtainable from the Casine (potions of +1 or 2 to stat/skill/damage with a <casino> bonus type - not enhancement). Make them exclusive, so I can only have one at a time - gives good reasons for coming back.

[Devonian]

I'm an EQ1 refugee, I used the casino there until I got the items I wanted from it (Drow mask) and then never went back. Because it wasn't a casino, it was a give mob and item sometimes getting something.

A Casino has a big spinning wheel I can click. It has a set of dice I can roll. Something I can interact with.
Casino should have cards and a card game(s) I can play with proper UI elements. I believe the code for some of the common card games ones is available to have a reasonable computer player.

The casino needs to have a proper UI I can interact with. Not a give the mob something see what I get (like the festivult jester or collector NPC's).

Also the rewards should be something useful, and only obtainable from the Casine (potions of +1 or 2 to stat/skill/damage with a <casino> bonus type - not enhancement). Make them exclusive, so I can only have one at a time - gives good reasons for coming back.

Liking these ideas, possibly a bit more elaborate than I first thought of of. but could lead to some intresting banner adds 'When your luck is cr*p try your luck at craps..."

[Kriogen]

Casino, social hub?

Neh. We "gamble" when we open chests and Shroud is a social hub.

A working gold-sink would be "black ninja outfit" and not that DT ****. For example in Guild Wars i spend tones of gold on elite armor. That armor had the same stats as cheap, easy to get regular armor, but it looked better. And "black dye" is super expensive in GW. It's just 'paint', but costs more then dual Min2 'pesh.

[Kralgnax]

Inflation in MMOs with any kind of player economy is inevitable, and undesirable.

Inevitable, because every quest, every loot drop adds currency into the system, and the player economy passes it around rather than taking it out of game to NPCs.

Undesirable, because it results in new players being unable to meaningfully contribute to the player economy, and prices the out of the expected competence.

It's not inevitale, and not necessarily undesirable.
Inevitability: Item costs are a function of the relationship between supply of desirable items and supply of money in the system. Boh increase monotonically in DDO, because cash sinks are only so good, and the bulk of itmes can be resold after use (Yes, some items wear out and break for good, and some money is consumed, but the net trend in both is positive) So the impotant question is: Does money come in faster than items or vice versa ? And the answer turns out to be different for different things. Some items come down in price over time(Collapsible holes, foir instance), others go up (low level twink gear)

A case in point from my own experience of Everquest back in the day was a one-time superd-duper weapon: the Mithril two-handed sword, which cost 10-20K plat when I first heard of it. By the time I left, you could pick one up in the bazaar for 1-200 plat. Supply just outstripped demand.

Undesirable: Even if it were inevitable, so what? No one is on a fixed income, and facing eviction from their home in DDO. Hyperinflation is problematic, but the only MMO that got hit with that, AFAIK, was Asheron's call.

Cheers,

[Flasharte]

brothel

10 minute Aid buff... (like in the grand theft auto game, if this cars a rockin)

you know it would be full round the clock

[Karranor]

Interesting that this has come up, because I'm pretty sure that True Reincarnations put a huge dent in the inflation problem.

Stacks and stacks of haste pots... pages and pages of cure serious wounds... Yugoloth pots by the hundreds... oh my!

Ain't this the truth! I have dumped millions into ~ing... hehe

[Devonian]

brothel

10 minute Aid buff... (like in the grand theft auto game, if this cars a rockin)

you know it would be full round the clock

seeing as we do get warned of 'Suggestive themes' in the games rating, It'd be nice to actually see some.

[muffinlad]

No, the Plat sinks we need in this game are very Clear...

Housing.....

In-Game Customization... Armor Dying, Barber shops, etc...

Provide Reincarnate options that cost plat instead of RM.

Indeed. Reincarnate options should have never been primarily based on RM...but I am sure that Cash, being king, is a hard thing to turn down once it has been turned on.

muffinstuffin

[Aaxeyu]

Casino? No thanks.

Haste pots that lasts 1 minute but costs 4 times what a normal haste pit costs? Yes please!

And remove the stupid AH fee.

[s1pinup]

No, the Plat sinks we need in this game are very Clear...

Housing.....

In-Game Customization... Armor Dying, Barber shops, etc...

Provide Reincarnate options that cost plat instead of RM.

Although these would be fantastic towards the RP side of the game (which is non-existant on my server) .. As we all know these would be a TP sink if added to the game.

I will say this the airship vendor surprised me when it was introduced and you could acutally pay for one with plat! I would like to see something else to spend my in game plat on because once you have all the gear you want for your toons, it just kind of starts piling up haha.

[sirgog]

Best plat sink recently was the Festival of Endless Bannings.

Huge amounts of plat goes to new players (the ones that grinded motes and sold them) and out of the vet economy.

Khyber prices plummeted after it and haven't recovered.

[TitoJ]

I was just marveling not too long ago, at how easy it was to make plat now, and how cheap everything on the AH seemed...

As far as giving money back to vendors, stock piling all your characters with byoh and buffs, and your cleric with bring everyone's heals, seems like I'm always broke after I make 100k plat or so anyway.

[Marcus-Hawkeye]

I'm no expert by any means, but wouldn't this run the risk of changing the game ESRB rating? If so, I can see why this would never occur.

[Ratnix]

If they are going to put in any meaningful Plat sinks they need to be unavoidable.

AH avoidable. You can always trade your items on the trade channel or forums.

Casino. Well there will be people who will use it, but there will be people who won't. Personally I wouldn't use it.

Housing. Again, some people would use it, some wouldn't. I would never have anything at all to do with housing. I have played a few games with housing, gone into the house once and have never gone back.


An unavoidable plat sink would be something like a tax every time you went into one of the House's or wilderness areas. Say a 1 plat fee each time you went through a gate or through a teleporter or guildship. The dudes who take you places like Tangleroot, make him charge you a fee each time you use him or any of the others out there who do the same thing.

Any plat sink that is avoidable can and will be avoided by people who don't want to waste the money.

[mephistos2]

a) Go back to the gold standard and eliminate pp.
b) Lower the cap on AH/Player wallets to 1,000k gp maximum, allowing no sales/trades on forums.
c) Double or triple cost of high end pots/wands etc.

Problem Solved and Fat Cats get a Nice Haircut

[Gennerik]

Overall, I think the main issue that we're looking at is that after a certain point in the game (a certain, fairly early point), there isn't anything to actually spend money on that isn't from someone else.

Yes, some items can be bought from the Brokers, but that's purely based on what people find, and people still get money out of selling their equipment (which is fine). However, unless you want a regular +X weapon or armor, you avoid normal shops for actual equipment.

To get anything worth using, you either buy off the auction house, which mostly goes to another player (therefore not sinking plat in any real sense of the word), or you quest for it (where by the time you get it, you've amassed a huge fortune since most drops for good items are pretty low, and therefore just devalued the economy even more).

About the only thing that you may need to buy are healing items (scrolls, wands, potions), and for the most part that's for people that aren't running balanced parties. So really, the only real platinum sink we've got are healing items for impatient people.

Maybe we should start seeing shopkeepers with actual good items for sale. Maybe actual epic items for end game. I'm not talking about DDO epic items, I'm talking about normal, DnD Epic Level Handbook items (no augment slots, no multiple abilities, but direct translations out of the Epic Level Handbook). It would be a way to somewhat gear yourself for epic level content, before you've already run it thousands of times to craft yourself a DDO epic item. Epic items are grossly more expensive than normal items, and the price could even be inflated upward to provide that much more of a platinum sink, but I don't see it actually hurting the running of epic gear, since in most cases (there are a couple of lame epic items that aren't actually epic, even by normal DnD standards), the DDO epics are going to be more powerful, if for the sole reason of having the augment slot.

Other platinum sinks may be fine, too, but I think this would be a big market, without relying on other players to supply it, and it may even help more epic level content to be run (instead of skipped through, since many quests are just ridiculous).