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Credit Sink Idea


Moo

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Since credits seem to have no value in the game because everyone is so wealthy, we need a way to pull money out in a big way.  The PRS a start, but we need far more money pulled out of the economy.  What if we had raid type loot, that you could purchase, for say 100,000,000 credits.  This gear could be either dropped stuff or new items sold by an NPC.  Thoughts?

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EnB was never about credits (at least as i see it) the game generates cash like candy.. and when i hear ppl say DUNG or Cement bags are sooo expensive i can only shake my head. Im a casual gamer (been off 6 month and just 3 weeks ago i came back) if i need money to buy something i go on a farming tour. There are enough spots to farm l8+9 loot solo or in small groups, so getting stuff for 500m credits thats ultra powered is not the way how its gonna work out.

 

If i need 500m credits i work for it lets say 10 days 2-3 hrs and the item is mine.

BTW why do we need a credit sink?? I remember even in old EnB Nobody had problems with cash most ppl have build and are building for the cost of the button or for free and are happy when they get a tip.

I like it as it is no nee for Greed and to get rid of the credits

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I wonder what the average amounts of credits are between all characters of ONE player ?

 

Mine is approximately 250,000,000 to 275,000,000 (plus or minus 5,000,000). But I rarely play much now.

 

262,500,000

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  • 2 weeks later...

Another idea would be to have either an NPC or terminal a player could goto and swap money for an upgrade in quality percent to some gear they have.  This would be especially useful for players that have raid gear that is not manufacturable 

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  • 7 months later...

Or why not have money sinks for:

 

1. Create extra clothing, facial, make-up and hairstyles at the avatar station.

2. Hull & Wing Variations at the ship paint station.

3. "Gate" keys that unlock gates to special raid or prospecting areas. (Keys are 1 time use).

 

 

It's too bad the devs do not have access to the source code, otherwise come cool idea would be:

 

1. Ship fuel.  Sold by NPC's only.  Less effecient reactors use more fuel.

2. Gambling Dens

3. Extra vault space

 

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Once again, why do we need a "sink"? Credits in this game have 2 functions:

1. Epeen....pfft mine is bigger than yours! No mine is....and mine has a funny curve on the tip to boot! Once again pfft.

2.Gate from getting something, it's to keep lower lvl players from being able to "afford" something. Why bother?This game is so highly social and friendly, people donate or build for cost...why have a "cost sink" for lower level players? If they are nice enough and other players like them, someone out there is going to build it  for them. 

 

If you are going to make a sink for higher lvl players to pour it into, to drive out the credits, what are you trying to do?

I feel you are going to drive out the comradeship with the sink, if you are going to make players have to make the coice of "my credits!" vs. "dare I let them have some of my minimal credits?....", you are going to encourage (even marginally) ungenerous behaviour.

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Once again, why do we need a "sink"? Credits in this game have 2 functions:

1. Epeen....pfft mine is bigger than yours! No mine is....and mine has a funny curve on the tip to boot! Once again pfft.

2.Gate from getting something, it's to keep lower lvl players from being able to "afford" something. Why bother?This game is so highly social and friendly, people donate or build for cost...why have a "cost sink" for lower level players? If they are nice enough and other players like them, someone out there is going to build it  for them. 

 

If you are going to make a sink for higher lvl players to pour it into, to drive out the credits, what are you trying to do?

I feel you are going to drive out the comradeship with the sink, if you are going to make players have to make the coice of "my credits!" vs. "dare I let them have some of my minimal credits?....", you are going to encourage (even marginally) ungenerous behaviour.

I agree with you whole heartedly.  I despise credit sinks, but only when they make absolutely no sense.  For instance:

 

 

1. Paying an upkeep on player housing is a stupid credit sink.

 

but

 

Paying an upkeep on player housing that goes toward building a "player city," is a cool credit sink.

 

 

2. Paying to change your avatar appearance with the same options at creation is a stupid credit sink.

 

but

 

Paying to change your avatar appearance with options other than what is offered at creation is a cool credit sink.

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Credits have no value in the game, why would you need to have a sink?

 

If you have that many that it bothers ya, give them to a GM

If everyone else having more bothers ya, get over it   They don't care about them

 

I have yet to see anyone in game ask for credits and not have several people send them more than they need

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Credits have no value in the game, why would you need to have a sink?

 

If you have that many that it bothers ya, give them to a GM

If everyone else having more bothers ya, get over it   They don't care about them

 

I have yet to see anyone in game ask for credits and not have several people send them more than they need

I wager 50 quatloos that you are right.  Credits are meaningless to me.  I use them to buy vendor crap to rip and have never run out.  When I build for someone I simply say tip only.  The tip is really just an exercise in courtesy because I don't need them.

 

If a credit sink were to be designed so that the economy would start to work again, here is how I would do it.  Have ultra rare and valuable items made once a week ( AA toys, turbo toys, etc..) and auction them off.  The highest bidder wins and when the credits are traded to the GM for the item, they disappear.  Suddenly those highly sought after items gathering dust in the vaults would be sold off to raise the credits to compete in the auction.

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Another idea would be to have either an NPC or terminal a player could goto and swap money for an upgrade in quality percent to some gear they have.  This would be especially useful for players that have raid gear that is not manufacturable 

+1

 

Would love to see a way to repair/improve quality on non-buildable items.  Perhaps it could work as a skill similar to call forward.  Some NPC sells you a device.  Player equips the device and activates the skill which uses up the device.  Each device raises the quality by 1% on an item you have equipped in a specific slot.  You could charge some serious credits for the device, let's say 100mil.

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So… Regarding Credit Sinks and “Making the Game Economy Work”:

 

“Money” (or “Credit(s)”) is a “Medium of Exchange” and/or a way of storing value.

 

From an Economics point of view, that quality – “value” – is the most critical; and it stands in contrast to another qualified term: “worth”.

 

How much something is “worth” is denominated in a notional currency; but the “value” of something is determined by the degree of benefit it provides to someone who desires that benefit.

 

If we look at residential property prices over time, we can see the distinction between the two terms.

 

How much a house is “worth” generally increases over time; that is: how much the property costs to purchase in the relevant currency increases. E.g. a house that was worth $100,000 in 1990, was worth $200,000 in the year 2000, and $300,000 in 2010.

 

However, the “value” of the house is determined by how much benefit it provides the purchaser, if the purchaser is interested in that benefit.

 

To an auto-worker in Michigan, a house in Detroit will provide more benefit to them personally, than a flat over-looking Central Park in Manhattan. This because they need to commute to work every day, because their friends and family also live in Detroit, and because the auto-worker is more socially adapted to the Detroit Culture than they are likely to fit comfortably into the Upper West Side Community.

 

So although the apartment on Central Park West may be worth 100 or 1000 times more than the auto-worker’s house in Detroit; that Detroit house is more valuable to the auto-worker. The only benefit the auto-worker would get from the Manhattan apartment would come when they liquidate the asset by exchanging it for however much it is worth in Dollars at the point it is sold. They could then exchange a small portion of those realised Dollars for an improved house in Detroit (and possibly re-skilling training, because the Auto-Factories are closed… But that’s another topic..!).

 

On the other hand, a Wall Street Foreign Exchange Trader could easily afford to purchase 100 houses in Detroit, from a single year’s bonus payment. But unless they were looking to get into the Low-Cost/High-Volume Residential Leasing Business, 100 residential properties in Detroit would be of little or no value to the Trader.

 

So:

 

The flat on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is “worth” much more than the house in Detroit; but it represents a different “value” to different individuals.

 

The standard “Truism” we all hear is that “Property always increases in price, over time: it’s the best investment.”

 

This is true in terms of “worth”, but not in terms of “value”.

 

The long-term trends in property prices in developed Western Economies are all pretty much identical. And they all indicate how, over time, the average property price is (over the long-term) always between 3 and 4 times average income. It is this long-term average that mortgage-providers generally use to assess and approve mortgage applications.

 

So where a house in England was bought in 1930 for £450 and in 1990 it was worth £45,000; this correlates to the average income in England in 1930 being £150 a year, and in 1990, it was £15,000. That particular specimen house then, in 1990, is worth £44,550 more than it was worth in 1930; but its value remains constant at 3 times the annual salary of the kind of person who would benefit from living in that house.

 

Of course… Property prices are subject to all sorts of short-term fluctuations, the most recent boom as the result of credit being widely and easily available. Average incomes did not rise, but the average amount of mortgage funds approved per applicant did increase. The result being that at the peak of the boom in 2007, average house prices were 10 or 11 times average incomes. Critically, whilst how much a particular property was “worth” increased dramatically, the “value” of that property to an individual who might like to live in that property did not change. As mortgage credit became much more restricted following the 2008 Banking Crisis, average property prices in ratio to average incomes began to deflate.

 

All of which is by way of demonstrating the distinction between an item’s “worth” and an item’s “value”; and also by way of showing that “money” or “credit(s)”, in and of itself, has no purpose other than as a Medium of Exchange, or a way of (temporarily) storing value.

 

And all of *THAT* is by way of illustrating how “Credits” in Earth and Beyond, in and of themselves, have no value, are not supposed to have any value, and never will have any value.

 

(Tradeable) Raid-only loot items have value in Earth and Beyond.

 

Rare drop items have value in Earth and Beyond.

 

Uncommonly mined AA artefacts have value in Earth and Beyond.

 

Colourful parrot feathers have value in Earth and Beyond.

 

And it is these (and other) items that have displaced Credits as Mediums of Exchange, and/or a way of storing value.

 

These items all have an intrinsic value in that they provide a tangible benefit to the class of character that is able to use any single item. Credits have no such intrinsic value.

 

There may be an Exchange Rate that converts these items into Credits, but that Exchange Rate is so prone to inflation as to now be off-the-scale.

 

It might be possible to arbitrarily devalue the Credits currency, say by a factor of 10 or 100, but this would not alter the fundamental dynamics of the In-Game Economy.

 

Let’s say for example that a looted Hellbore currently sells for 2 billion credits. If the resale value of the loot that can be gathered from an hour’s drone-farming in BBW was reduced by a factor of 10, so would the notional Credit/Item exchange rate for the looted Hellbore. The Hellbore would now sell for 200 million credits; but there would be as many players with 200 million credits available to spend as there are currently players with 2 billion credits to hand over in exchange for the HB.

 

In summary (at last!!):

 

In-Game Credits are never going to be able to form the bases of a stable Economy, because as with the fiat currencies issued by National Central Banks in the Real World, the monetary unit itself possesses no intrinsic value.

 

Whether you have a billion, a million, a thousand or a hundred spare credits to spend on items you desire to possess, is largely irrelevant, and determined solely by the ease with which those credits are acquired.

 

Since credit acquisition within Earth and Beyond is determined by the resale value of “vendor-fodder” (i.e. loot items that have no value to other players), any effort to address currency inflation would have to target the prices paid by vendors in exchange for that “vendor-fodder”.

 

But here is the fundamental point:

 

There are only *TWO* types of items in the Earth and Beyond Economy:

 

1)      Items that are of either temporary (whilst levelling up) or zero value to players;

 

2)      “End-Game” items that are of on-going and permanent value to players.

 

And it is the Market Mechanism that facilitates the exchange of the second type of items that is the *ACTUAL* In-Game Economy of Earth and Beyond.

 

A Market Mechanism that is controlled by the Player Community as a whole, rather than by the mechanics (or “Rules”) of the Game, will always deliver a more stable Economy.

 

:)

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  • 3 months later...

In a RL example of "stored wealth", you see these ads all the time..now is the time to buy gold...now is the time to by silver!  Buy real estate! etc. All presented as a means to "hedge" against uncertainty.  As markets trend down people feel they have lost "worth" and they change investments etc. as stock prices tumble many folks do indeed buy gold,silver, gems or other precious items, figuring they will use that item to lock in some worth while the other uncertain currency flucates. All of this is perception based. They perceive that some precious metal has a more solid value (it does tend to not be as maniplatable like government backed paper currencies, governments like to tinker). But even the precious metals value is a perception, it is only worth exactly what you can get someone else to take in exchange for something else that you desire, not 1 iota more.

 

People keep saying this base ball card is worth X this is worth Y....it isn't...it's worth what someone else pays for it, if you don't want to pay what they insist it's worth, to  you it wasn't worth that, real estate has the same problem etc.

 

So how does a poor man "store wealth"? By investing in something he/she actually uses, especially in things known as durable goods. So say each pay check you don't have enough left over to invest in a bar of gold....not I. But what can you buy to lock in some worth? At the risk of being called a hoarder.....how about instead of pissing away your money on a lottery ticket, or hoping it goes your way on a fantasy football bet (the lottery? really? that's the single worst bet ever) or some other futile hope to get rich quick.

 

Try this....buy 2 cans of soup instead of 1. Buy a 10 pack of socks instead of a 3 pack. Buy a case of toilet paper rather than a 6 pack. Whatever you can store over time, but actually use. WOW! you just stored wealth! That can of soup can sit on the shelf for a yr. or more, locking in your value. How so? Well say you bought the soup for a $1 and next yr. it's $1.50, you locked in your value and hedged against inflation. Now yes, eventually you got to eat that soup, and your replacement cost is going to be $1.50, but for the time you had it, your value was locked, you didn't "lose" value. it's even better that it is something actually useful.

 

And the added benefit? What if something went really bad, either for you personally like a job loss or as a nation like some catastrophy? Well you would actually have that "stored wealth" to call upon until things improved, were if you had stored gold or silver...what use would it be to you? You couldn't eat it, wear it, or wipe your butt. You would be at others mercy to take the gold or silver in exchange for food etc. in a sellers market, food would be at a premium and silver wouldn't, all your stored value would be wiped away as you had to liquidate it just to get enough to eat.

 

Now consider all that ^^^^^^ and crack another mormon joke! In a starving, cold, non-flushing toilet world....who is the rich person? They guy with the food, clothes and toilet paper! Not the guy with a vault full of gold *

 

*and the bullets to defend it :excl:

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Good post Mattsacre.

 

It reminded me about the history of the Spanish Conquistadores in South America in the 16th Century.

 

At that time, silver formed the actual and literal basis of currency in the Spanish Empire. So when the Conquistadores gained control of vast and largely untapped silver mines in Peru and Bolivia, the sense was that this would make the Spanish Empire wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.

 

But in actual fact, it ended up bankrupting them.

 

Because after tons and tons of “Nuevo Mundo” silver started arriving back in Spain, the Spanish had completely failed to see the massive inflation problems this would cause.

 

Suddenly, silver was no longer the rare and durable commodity it had once been, and it was the scarcity of silver that had made it suitable as a currency, not its intrinsic usefulness.

 

The Spanish Economy did not expand in terms of productive capacity, new goods or services: there was suddenly just a lot more “money” around with which to buy the same amount of goods from the same amount of producers.

 

After a short while, all this new Spanish silver spread out across Europe, and after a brief period of economic expansion fuelled by the ability to buy up what other European Nations were producing with all that new silver, the Spanish Economy imploded. And it has never again risen to the giddy heights of Superpower Status it enjoyed in the 15th and 16th Century.

 

And all because the Spanish thought “money” actually had any intrinsic value.

 

The fools..!

 

:blink:

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You know what other "currency" out there was funny? Tulips, yes a flower, tulips at one point became a funny currency in Denmark, the scarcity of certain varieties or new hybrids actually drove a boom and bust cycle in Denmark at one point. There was actually a infamous heist of a ARMORED CARRAGE! The tulips were thought to be so valuable that a tulip merchant had to send armed guards to ride a coach with bound chests inside. Even the royal family got in on it......and as always, at some point after all kinds of ponzi schemes and market manipulations and price fixing etc. the bubble burst and everyone was broke, even the royal family took a notable hit. Not so funny for them at the time I'm sure, but to us with the lens of time it's humorous. Flowers as money, lol.

 

How about "beanie babies" a few yrs ago...people were paying big money as "investments" dependent on rarity etc. they too, became a joke "investment". Feudal Japan, many of the clan wars were dependent on the rice crops and the prices, if you couldn't get enough rice ahead of time to feed your troops....guess we got to call the war off...that one instance you prayed for a bad crop and hunger :/

 

One I always love, the first island "purchase" the pilgrims made from the indian's. It's currently in fashion in our education system to portray the poor indian's as "victims" of white mans greed and avarice. But consider this: Both parties got out of the transaction what they wanted..who was the "victim"? The european's thought the indian's were suckers to just give land away for some beads and trinkets and a few iron blades. The indian's thought the european's were suckers for wanting a island with little game and swampy, besides the indian's didn't understand "owning" land anyway.

 

The indian's "economy" was based on beads and trinkets, iron blades were unheard of and were so valuable to them at that time, it was like having fort knox in a bag. Those "worthless" beads and trinkets? They caused a realignment in the power structure and relationships of the indian tribes in the surrounding area. Suddenly that previously minor tribe was RICH and had enough to throw around to make marriages and treaties with surrounding tribes, there after elevating the tribe..who got ripped off?

 

Now the european's, they got that land, and started to make a go of it, and part of their group returned to the home land to get more supplies, on their return the colony had vanished. What happened? who got the worst of that deal.......well move forward decades and decades and that former island is a small state, in a huge nation, that is if not the most powerful then one of the most. That "island" is some very valuable real estate now! Who got ripped off? Who was the victim? I guess it's all in your perspective eh?

 

The indian's had their heyday, the european's not so much, then after a time the former european's, now American's are on top of the heap. Those indian's that got ripped off? Well their tribe got absorbed and merged many times over, but their desendent's are also American's, and for many of the tribes (at least those well managed) quite well off financially. Who got ripped off? Who was a victim? Once again perspective :)

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Not touching Native American Politics in this veering-out-of-context thread with a barge-pole..!!  :unsure:

 

Like you say: a matter of perspective..!

 

With regards Economic Bubbles and the commodities that have been at the root of some of them:

 

My favourite has always been Peruvian Bird Sh*t (a.k.a. guano): http://www.coha.org/the-great-peruvian-guano-bonanza-rise-fall-and-legacy/

 

Talk about Drop Rates having an adverse effect on an Economy..!

 

:D

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  • 2 weeks later...

I like the idea of buying some % to your non manufacturable stuff with credits. That will make people go farm more and that will make people sell stuff to others. I may be wrong, but this idea "may" wake up the market.

 

Liubosa

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That's a really good idea liuu.

 

But mostly, I think it is a really good idea for having a facility in-Game to restore quality (or increase quality to 125%) for non-manufacturable items.

 

As far as a solution for the Credit Inflation issue though... I wonder if it is really a (good) solution for a non-existent problem?

 

Personally, I find the liberation from restrictions around credits quite pleasing. Credit economies are never very effective in any Game where (as Mattsacre eloquently described) utility is more important than pure wealth. And I think that applies to EnB.

 

Raid-only loot, rare-drops, feathers, cortexes, loot-only components, rare ores... All have utility in-Game; and consequently, all have an inherent value that is reflected in the way that they are traded between players, and in the general exchange ratios: the Market is lively enough, if you have the correct "currency".

 

Credits currently have little or no utility within the Game, and I don't think the Game is suffering as a result. There is plenty of farming going on for feathers, ores, hulk items, and of course, XP...

 

So I'm not sure there is any need to add Credit Farming into the mix.

 

(But would still love to see a facility added to the Game to improve the quality of non-manu items..!)

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