Many more experienced players have gone back and forth about the dilemma that faces MA if loot and their housekeeping continues in the same fashion as it is today. I guess I am concerned about the future of Arkadia 4-5 years from now. Will Arkadia face the monetary issues that MA faces today? If so what can we do now to prevent. (STOP! There will be some inaccurate information and assumptions in this post. Please make note of them but at the same time respond to the heart of the message.) As a base point- we know that this economy works for all intents and purposes on a real economy basis. To that end MA must have an accounts payable. In other words there is a lot of loot sitting in avatars inventories that can be turned into ped at any moment. To that end the accounts payable continues to grow and so must the incoming income from avatars. So we come upon several delicate questions. Should hoarding be limited? Should there be restrictions on what a person may hold? In other words should we change the economy system? (Now I know that people who are crafters do amass large amounts of loot for their production. We can leave them out of the discussion.*) Hoarding yes is permitted as a function of the economy. Should we alter that function? In one sense if we have a chance to stimulate and modify the economy wouldnt we want to change or remove those obstacles to future fun in gaming? Perhaps this can not be laid at the feet of Arkadia and its team. But as future members of the planet we should have a discussion on the aspects of the economy that may be beneficial for future game play. If you could: What would a "good" economy, both beneficial to MA and us, look like?
I am aware that this economy thing is very hard to do and MindArk needs to be very careful with what they do in order to not screw things up, but as it is now there is just to little to do for people with no money (newbies) and if ther is nothing to do the game is boring and they will leave. If there is stuff to do for a little amount of money people will like the game and may even spend some real money in the game. I understand that if they make the game to fun for people without money, then all people will just do those activities and there will be no need for them to spend real money and MindArk will not make any money of them, which is not good for business. So the trick is to find a break even point in that. So if there is more stuff to do for free (or cheap) will this attract more players to the game? Will those new players then spend money in the game or just stick to the free stuff? If most of them will be spending at least some money in game this will create a bigger market for people to sell stuff to and therefor crafters will be crafting more and miners will mine more and hunters will hunt more (and all the other professions will do more to). But it all comes to finding a balance in free (cheap) and payed activities in game, but if the game is good then people will want to explore it more and will need to spend some money to play the game. So maybe sweating needs to be removed all together and some other system needs to be made up for new players to have some fun in the game without the grinding, this could end up with more happy (not bored) people that are willing to spend some cash.
1. I don't think it's a good idea to limit hoarding, if anything it is beneficial. In other words Ownership should not be taxed, instead more systems should be added to insure things do not just sit in the storage, but actually get used or get sold to someone who has a better use for and item. Cycling and redistribution of items should be done through use, which an acquirer or a holder has for an item and NOT through Taxation. Setting limits to what a single person should hold is again not the main root of the problem. MA should concentrate on finding uses to excess supply of things which are not currently in use. 2. Why get rid of something which works and is free for anybody to make use of? If anything more systems should be added, so people who wanna pursue other interests can also participate. Some
I can think of one way to weaken the power of mass hoarding (If it is an actually issue) over the Loot / TT pool. Just have certain items slowly phased out. The item stops dropping, the TT value lowers, and the item becomes a collector's item with value being determined by MU.
please never allow them to do that! 0,0 I think hoarding is quite beneficial from MAs perspective btw since it keeps the hoarding player from pressing the withdrawl button. Personaly I still hope that Arkadia will form into a center of the Universe for quite some time untill other PPs at their level of professionalism join in to form a competition. If that happens I wouldn't worry about their financial situation. If it doesn't then chances are that it was MAs fault in which case I would consider to leave the sinking EU ship.
MA controls the purse strings plain and simple. What we do as players have no effect on it whatso ever. We have seen and will continue to see MA steering the economy to best benefit those who have a bigger stake in it. They can devalue something in a mater of a few days like they did with himi and bloodmoss recently being allowed to be freely obtained by anyone on the NDS planets or skills with the skilling events a year or so ago now. What the economy boils down to is simply this. Do you as a customer trust MA enough to invest in them by depositing to make your investment stay at a respectiuble value or not. That is the only economy in game. The rest is at the mercy of MA's wills and desires. I personnaly do not trust them at this point as everything since I have started to play has been devalued to near nothing in the last two years. Until I see major change in the mid level playing field they get NOTHING. At best I may do one more depo for a start on Arkadia but thats the limit as I can not trust them at this point myself.
