credit degradation: make credits slowly disappear over time

[thecheeseman]

to the hard working farmers who oppose this:

in the current system someone can (discreetly) buy credits and instantly trump all your hard "labor". don't you hate that? with the tax system you will still be rich as long as you work hard fairly and honestly. cred sellers will no longer be able to ruin your hard work. they cannot store credits for long periods of time because it will disappear.
what will they end up selling? alien armor. HOWEVER, that means they will have to farm. credit farmers dont farm. they buy creds from players and sell higher, and buy old accounts with farmed ingots creds. currently they have huge stores of credits that was obtained easily. farming items will be extremely hard work and a waste of effort. they will not make a profit.
it will take weeks to obtain a few pieces of alien armor, while 10 billion credits can be sold under 30 minutes. (a seller personally told me this)

in the complex credit selling cycle, the credit ends back in the hands of the cred seller, by being both buyer and seller.

the tax system will heavily combat them and benefit honest hardworking grinders.

[Mereditche]

removing 95% is too extreme. in the tax system you lose credits very slowly. even people with credits in the hundreds of millions range will barely feel a dent, since those players play daily.
the tax system will only hit hard on people with multiple billions or hundreds of billions. aka ebayers/cred sellers/people who took advantage of game mechanics

we are talking about the game ecnomy taking many months and even up to a year here. it will be very subtle. the exploited credits will disappear so slowly people wont notice.

if people hoard items and trade items for item, at least you will be trading an item of euqally perceived value. its better than buying with billions. if they hoard those items and dont want to sell it thats fine by me, it wont effect the game economy

Why do you think people will sit on their exploited credits once this happens? I'm very sure they will start buyin items, pushing lots of credits into said economy and inflating the market by a lot. The amount of credits entering the market would be enormous. Prices would rocket sky high.

While now for example 5 people each hold 200 bil, which they can't sustain during taxation, once those millions are brought into the economy, you'll have 10000 players each holding 100 million and easily sustaining it. This will cause mayor inflation, I'm sure of it. One thing you wan't to prevent is those exploited, hoarded credits all entering the economy at once. As long as those few extremely rich keep them on their passive toons and outside the market, things stays relatively stable at it's current level.

If you want this to work you need to implement other measures. Do an unannounced credit wipe on inactive froob accounts below level 5 (and their org banks if they are the president). Or remove 95% of credits on every toon over night, also unannounced. If you warn people up front they'll find other ways to keep hold of their richness.They'll invest in rk cities, ai armor, rbp's, igocs, ...

[thecheeseman]

once the trillions of creds disappear it will disappear for good. ingots and exploiting is no more.
there is nothing to gain for those tycoons to unleash untold billions into the market. they are selfish, they have nothing to gain by doing that. they can only lose wealth , not regain it.
you are saying those 5 examples will buy off all the expensive items. but they have nothing to gain by doing that.
if you trade an item for another item of equal value you cannot gain a profit. you cannot buy low sell high. more over credits is not involved so there is no epeen value.its not as attractive as credit monopoly. their wealth is frozen, because they cannot honestly and fairly remake their billions.

what they plan to do will not matter because the entire credits of the game will decrease. if they want to throw alien armors around thats their business. they will never be able to have insane wealth in credit form and thus have no power over players.

a slow over time tax system makes everyone adjusted. a 95% is too suddedn and makes rich players quit while with a slow tax system, they wont notice and will keep playing. it is a subtle and slow process.

are you trolling?

[Ciex]

IMHO words are not enough here lets all song the national anthem of the Soviet Union now!

exploiting is no more.

If pigs had wings ... if stupidity could fly ...

BTW credit sellers are our friends. There would be even less people here if they couldnt buy few credits. And its not only for ai armor or endgame phatz.

[thecheeseman]

BTW credit sellers are our friends. There would be even less people here if they couldnt buy few credits. And its not only for ai armor or endgame phatz.

i am reporting you for openly advocating credit selling/buying

since you are hinting that you buy and/or sell credits you have really no importance here, please do not post on this thread

[Sidana]

if you trade an item for another item of equal value you cannot gain a profit. you cannot buy low sell high.

I'm pretty sure players of Asheron's Call didn't consider gem shards, writs and whatnot as epeen and they didn't make a "profit" on them. I'm really sure. Credit is an item, nothing more, nothing less, and it's value is determied exactly like a RBP's value: how much people give for one unit or how much they get for one unit. RBP will still worth 2.5 CC pieces, nothing changes there. "Sorry, not interested in anything than CC, unless you give me a good deal on one of my 12137943 RBPs..."

Now let me ask you this: if taxation leads to investment, investment leads to informal item-item trading, if this informal trading has a minimum value (who needs 999999 medstims for a DChest?), and according to you "lower- and middle-class players" can't get them because they are overcamped), then what do you think will happen? More or less camping on more or less mobs?

All you want to accomplish is remove some granularity from the economy so lock out all the people who can't jump the initial bar for entering the club. Now at least they can a) camp most items (most importantly lead bots) and b) can grind the money slowly.


Also it has been said that hoarders sitting on credz is GOOD for the economy because that money is out of circulation (for the time being).

[Doctorhyde]

once the trillions of creds disappear it will disappear for good. ingots and exploiting is no more.
there is nothing to gain for those tycoons to unleash untold billions into the market. they are selfish, they have nothing to gain by doing that. they can only lose wealth , not regain it.

This makes it very very clear that you don't actually play in the less common areas of this game. Every day there are still credit sellers ("chinese farmers", whatever you want to call them) pearl farming missions, camping inferno dynas, running RK missions for loot, etc.

All that wiping out the fortunes of the fairly few multi-billionaires would do is make credit farming MORE lucrative in the real world. The people who have multi-billion credit banks are the people who DON'T sell to the gold resellers and who DON'T need to buy credits.

Yes, the average price of an item will go down. But the relative value of gold will also go significantly up due to having even the formerly rich needing to buy credits in the future. Additionally the -type- of player who is a multi-billionaire is also often the type of player who can most afford to buy credits in real life since we have the means to support a fairly serious amount of gaming hours (myself being in that group just barely, with under 4B in credits banked, and myself as an example of the self-sustaining well funded player IRL).

Trying to pretend that because ingots and such are gone will prevent the RL credit selling (which is and always has been the real root cause of economic problems) is just burying your head in the sand. Wiping out the banks won't fix this problem. In fact in the end it will make it worse. EVERYONE will be worried about their income level. No one will do a thing for free except for close friends and orgmates. No one will be generous. And credit sellers will find their gold worth more and more as there is more demand for it.

FC would have to micromanage every xfer of credit to "fix" this. They don't have the resources for that. This is a problem in -every- MMO that incorporates tradeable items. It probably always will be. The only REAL fix is to remove the RL income gap between the rich countries and poor ones so that the ratio of time required to farm credits in the poor country is much much closer to the ratio of time it costs the rich country player to make the RL money to buy the credits. Good luck with that.

[thecheeseman]

you can make very little creds by farming in game items. cred sellers have massive reserves. they dont depend on farming. those that do are freelancers and not huge organized companies. by taxing they lose untold billions and no longer make profit, plus are discouraged.

[Doctorhyde]

you can make very little creds by farming in game items. cred sellers have massive reserves. they dont depend on farming. by taxing they lose untold billions and no longer make profit, plus are discouraged.

This makes it very very clear that you don't actually play in the less common areas of this game.

Echo ...

Credit sellers have almost ZERO reserves. That's called inventory. Inventory is bad. This is why credit sellers are occasionally out of stock on credits. Credit sellers routinely buy credits from active players, be they pure farmers or the casual player who is looking to finance their next month of game playing. Your head is in the sand. Credit sellers are the main REASON for credit farming. If you believe otherwise you're a fool. The ingot and exploit credits were sold off long long ago. I have too many friends who live in countries where they pay their monthly RENT by selling credits (in this game and others) to give your argument any more credibility.

I'm sure you'll try and overpost to bury this, too, enjoy that. My point has been made.

[Sidana]

you can make very little creds by farming in game items.

All the more power you want to give to the Chinese guys who will do faring 12 hrs a day for a handful of peanuts.

[Mereditche]

Off course they will start buying stuff once a taxation is in place. For example: taxation is 10% / month. Assume there are 3000 active players on a server and they each have 330 mil credits on average. There are also 2 cred farmers who have 100 bil inactive credits each. Now they have two choices, either keep the money passive for one year or buy ai armor (as example) with it.

Cred farmer 1 has 100 bil credits and choses to sit on them:
After one year he has lost 71.76 bil credits and has 28.24 bil left, meaning he lost more than 2/3th of his wealth over 1 year, while every normal player stays relativley unaffected and manages to keep its wealth at +- equal levels. (they need to farm 30 mil a month, which results in 1 pearl a day, which should be doable. However notice they need to work more to keep their money on an equal level.

Cred farmer 2 has 100 bil credits and buys 200 pieces of supple armor for 500 mil each, adding 100 bil to the market. Assuming their are 3000 active players, every player gets 33 mil more on average. Assuming that everyone had 330 mil credits before this happens, everyone just got 10% richer so prices will go up 10% if the amount of items on offer stays about equal. So what does this mean for the cred farmer? His 200 supple bots are suddenly worth 550 mil. So he even gained by this change.

Only thing that changed is that he's stockpiling items now instead of credits. But! The rest of the economy just got 100 bil extra influx of money, which leads to further inflation. Also the temporary shortage of items (which the farmer bought) will lead to even bigger inflation. This added to the fact that everyone now needs to farm trash mob loot to not be impacted by taxes.

I rather see 100 bil creds stored on inactive froobs. As long as this money stays passive it isn't influencing the rest of the economy. If you force those credits to become active and remove a lot of items from the game this is by any means a worse fate. You don't want a sudden influx of enormous amount of credits combined with a shortage on every valuable yesdrop. It will cause giant inflation, which will hurt anyone but the rich.

[Doctorhyde]

Off course they will start buying stuff once a taxation is in place. For example: taxation is 10% / month. Assume there are 3000 active players on a server and they each have 330 mil credits on average. There are also 2 cred farmers who have 100 bil inactive credits each. Now they have two choices, either keep the money passive for one year or buy ai armor (as example) with it.

Yup. I banked all my credits on a fr00b. If I heard of a tax coming in a new patch the very first thing I would do would be to buy up every valuable thing I could with the credits. And log in and resell it once a month or so if new items were coming out and/or I was worried about the item devaluating. That's the gold paradox. That's why the rich tend to -not- become poorer even in down markets.

But this gets into real economics and the OP doesn't understand anything other than his wallet and the prices in the supermarket.

PS. Nuking fr00b accounts and inactive fr00b-only orgs would be another part of any real solution. The REAL megarich didn't exist until fr00bs and fr00b orgs. BUT I'm not advocating that ... merely pointing out how systemic the fixes have to be to work.

[thecheeseman]

I'm pretty sure players of Asheron's Call didn't consider gem shards, writs and whatnot as epeen and they didn't make a "profit" on them. I'm really sure. Credit is an item, nothing more, nothing less, and it's value is determied exactly like a RBP's value: how much people give for one unit or how much they get for one unit. RBP will still worth 2.5 CC pieces, nothing changes there. "Sorry, not interested in anything than CC, unless you give me a good deal on one of my 12137943 RBPs..."

you cant buy low and sell high when you trade items.

Now let me ask you this: if taxation leads to investment, investment leads to informal item-item trading, if this informal trading has a minimum value (who needs 999999 medstims for a DChest?), and according to you "lower- and middle-class players" can't get them because they are overcamped), then what do you think will happen? More or less camping on more or less mobs?

less camping. items will be mroe affordable in a non insane price range.

Yup. I banked all my credits on a fr00b. If I heard of a tax coming in a new patch the very first thing I would do would be to buy up every valuable thing I could with the credits. And log in and resell it once a month or so if new items were coming out and/or I was worried about the item devaluating. .

it will devalue eventually because the credits of everyone i game will decrease.
you will still be rich, but not in the billions. it wont be possible.

Credit sellers have almost ZERO reserves. That's called inventory. Inventory is bad. This is why credit sellers are occasionally out of stock on credits. Credit sellers routinely buy credits from active players, be they pure farmers or the casual player who is looking to finance their next month of game playing. Your head is in the sand. Credit sellers are the main REASON for credit farming. If you believe otherwise you're a fool. The ingot and exploit credits were sold off long long ago.
I HAVE TOO MANY FRIENDS WHOlive in countries where they pay their monthly RENT by SELLing CREDITS

i never said cred sellers were not the main reason for cred farming. with tax in place farming credits can only go so far until you reach a plateau. then the % removed will be too much to maintain.
with cred ratio being low then those who buy credits will stand out signifccantly, making it easier to ntoice and catch.
admitting you are friends and fraternize with credit sellers only shows you have an ultierior motive.

[Sidana]

you cant buy low and sell high when you trade items.

Excuse me but what the LOL?

less camping. items will be mroe affordable in a non insane price range.

Again, LOL? If you start taxing everyone will jump to item-item trading (I'm sure I would), then if you can only trade valuable items then how does it mean less camping all of a sudden?


edit: your style reminds me to this: "WHAT IS YOUR SIN, CHRIS?"

[thecheeseman]

you cant buy low high sell low, when you dont involve credits.
amassing items when it wont sell for actual credits is pointless.

[Manaas]

Cred farmer 1 has 100 bil credits and choses to sit on them:
After one year he has lost 71.76 bil credits and has 28.24 bil left, meaning he lost more than 2/3th of his wealth over 1 year, while every normal player stays relativley unaffected and manages to keep its wealth at +- equal levels. (they need to farm 30 mil a month, which results in 1 pearl a day, which should be doable. However notice they need to work more to keep their money on an equal level.

This is the point of this idea.

Cred farmer 2 has 100 bil credits and buys 200 pieces of supple armor for 500 mil each, adding 100 bil to the market. Assuming their are 3000 active players, every player gets 33 mil more on average. Assuming that everyone had 330 mil credits before this happens, everyone just got 10% richer so prices will go up 10% if the amount of items on offer stays about equal. So what does this mean for the cred farmer? His 200 supple bots are suddenly worth 550 mil. So he even gained by this change.

But average player has 330m, how are they going to afford something "worth" 550m? No-one will buy it and eventually when the cred-seller needs creds to sell to someone, he will have to sell off the bots at lower prices because no-one will buy them. Rotting armour in your bank is worthless. Also even if he decides to sell off the bots directly, the work required to get 550m credits by selling to shops etc would be ridiculous and he would have to raise the real money price to stupid heights, possibly over $100 for one bot to break even, and no-one but the extreme gamers with lots of real cash will buy it and they dont make up the majority.

Only thing that changed is that he's stockpiling items now instead of credits. But! The rest of the economy just got 100 bil extra influx of money, which leads to further inflation. Also the temporary shortage of items (which the farmer bought) will lead to even bigger inflation. This added to the fact that everyone now needs to farm trash mob loot to not be impacted by taxes.

Yes bigger inflation and no1 will buy the said shortage of goods because the farmer will want more money than people have. Even if a few people who are unusually rich buy a few parts from the farmer, the average person is not going to blow his whole bankroll on one piece of armour and will wait for prices to drop again.

I rather see 100 bil creds stored on inactive froobs. As long as this money stays passive it isn't influencing the rest of the economy. If you force those credits to become active and remove a lot of items from the game this is by any means a worse fate. You don't want a sudden influx of enormous amount of credits combined with a shortage on every valuable yesdrop. It will cause giant inflation, which will hurt anyone but the rich.

This is where you dont have quite a firm grasp on economy. Shortage of goods= high demand and prices will "increase" not "inflate", inflation assumes that ALL the money in the whole game has increased for example the Zimbabwe printing of trillions of dollars.

Raw goods are still worth the same, but the prices have all risen accordingly because of all the new money that's arrived out of thin air.

Increased prices means nobody can afford it, for now. This means people will just resort to trying to farm their own armour parts or just getting on with life without bothering to farm their full combined sets (you dont need a full combined set to play this game funnily enough). After some time when the farmer who invested his creds into items realises nobody is buying then he will have to start selling at lower prices, this is just logic.

[thecheeseman]

exactly. wall of text spam pretending to have degree in enconomics while stating countless falsehoods and broken logic cant hide the truth.

that credit inflation has killed the game, and new players will not be staying when new engine comes, if funcom does not take action.

funcom loses more revenue by allowing this to happen.

everyone, EVERYONE who has posted knows if items cost 100m to 300m is easier to afford by the average player than multiple billions. but they have an agenda and would lose their sense of exclusiveness, eliteness, being at the top, sense of control and domination, real money profit made from selling, etc. everyone will have an equal chance and credit buyers will easily stand out and be banned, and tycoons will lose control and infulence over the game.

[Doctorhyde]

you cant buy low high sell low, when you dont involve credits.

It is called barter. SMART people get rich by it every day. All you have to do is have something someone wants and be unwilling to give it to them until they give you something worth slightly more.

Besides, your suggestion wouldn't remove credits from the trade anyway ... it only affects the long-term hoarding of credits. Which means you are still going to involve credits. And you will always be able to buy low and sell high.

What you MAY be trying to say is that having credits slowly devalue to a static point somewhere in the future will lower the effect of selling high during the deflationary period. True, overall banks will definitely go down, but the proportional value of the -credit- in the situation will actually rise. Which means as long as you can keep your reserves semi-fluid during the deflationary period and then invest heavily in valued commodities once the deflation has ended.

(which is the long-winded version of what I said in my most previous post).

[Mereditche]

with tax in place farming credits can only go so far until you reach a plateau. then the % removed will be too much to maintain.
admitting you are friends with credit sellers only shows you have an ultierior motive.

It wont change a thing. Once credits are taxed, they'll change their credits into items that don't loose value over time. Why would they sit on a pile of credits that will be gone in a year or two? They aren't stupid, there's a reason they got rich. They know how to play the market, and any "announced" change wont have any effect as they are SMARTER THAN YOU and will invest in a better product to stockpile that wont loose value. Everyone else will be farming even more to cope with this new taxation.

A sudden influx of trillions of credits, and a removal of many valuable items, will hurt us all. As long as this money stays inactive, that's the best thing for all of us.

Other solution, is doing an "unanounced" wipe or changing credit caps on fr00b accounts and orgs to 50 mil or a %-tage on all of us => UNANOUNCED! If cred hoarders know, they'll roll 20 times more fr00bs and they'll make 20 times more orgs if needed. Only if you don't announce the cred wipe can you hurt them and even then in a minor manner. Anyone who's a bit of a brain doesn't just stockpile credits. Every smart one diferentiates in different products: so next to credits, they've got 10's of AI armor sets, 10's of igocs, some cities, some rbp's, ...

[Sidana]

you cant buy low high sell low, when you dont involve credits.
amassing items when it wont sell for actual credits is pointless.

Why is that? Currency is what people accept as currency. Ancient Mayas were buying slaves for a few cocoa beans a pop. Then you had Africans doing trade with Europeans for beads or salt. Anything can be currency and anything can be amassed. Gold is not currency yet everyone started hoarding it last fall, but it's still only some stupid yellow metal, not "money".

"Credit" (have you even looked at this word itself?) can be anything ingame that has a universally accepted value; eg I know if I sell this DChest for 20 Infusers I can use 50 more to buy a RBP - using Infuser as "credit".

This is where you dont have quite a firm grasp on economy. Shortage of goods= high demand and prices will "increase" not "inflate", inflation assumes that ALL the money in the whole game has increased for example the Zimbabwe printing of trillions of dollars.

This is where formal logic failed you, Mere said rich #2 dumps in 100b extra money in the economy that he was sitting on previously. How is this not equal to the Zimbabwean money prints? (PLUS goods shortage on that, just for fun)