CotHinomics

[Psychyn]

Why only services? Because the effort to make items is not IC. In the rare cases that it is, products too.

Products and crafting lack interest from the people; Or rather the gathering for the required materials. Thus people conjure up their items out of thin air and indeed, no IC effort is needed on making said items. OOC effort is a different story though.

I don't see why in-game currency can't be used as legitimate IC currency.

Because thanks to my obsession with profiling each character I play, I had a little under 18k gold across my entire account. Some people still struggle for Bronze Tokens.

At our state, IG currency is used too much for other things (tokens, OOC gear etc) to be relevant. It would need a major reform.

That, pretty much. If we want IG currency to be remotely usable as IC currency, we'd still get back to putting a real value on the gold obtained. The profile system gives quite a load of gold, add dailies to that, regular quests and everything else; Long story short, there'd be such a massive amount of gold to trade around that people still end up paying 500 gold on just about anything. (Because hey, that's just 10-15 mins to get.)

Only way it can work is when forced and regulated, which is not something many are up for.

Only options I see is:

- Limit IC currency, reform. Make entire system behind it to regulate the money; Which isn't really doable.
- Leave it as it is atm, small-scale for those that want to use it.
- Remove it entirely, have no currency/economy at all as IG gold is not much of a replacement.

Several union members have agreed to adventures of theft, robbery and such; Meaning they can lose their IC currency/inventory. All in all, I think it happened only once in.. three weeks.

People vote for IC currency, but aren't really doing much with opportunities presented from what I can tell. That's the way it has always been; Either due to lack of interest, or clarity I can't tell.

[Adam255]

In my opinion, IC currency will hinder RP more than encourage it.
Why? Well, it's rather simple. The way it's being handled right now is that you have a weekly quest to get 15 silver, which is fine and dandy, and doesn't involve the need for gear, but some people don't like doing dailies (Or weeklies, for this matter). Personally, I did the quest some times, then just gave up because I really couldn't be assed to anymore. I've also heard of several people who thought the same.

"But that's easy to fix! Make it free from some vendor!"
Wrong. And I think we can all see why that's wrong. We'll have beggars running around with 200 gold as loose change before we can blink.

Secondly, we have this issue; "My character has more money than this ICly!"
This relates to the first point I stated quite easily, as income varies from person to person, and some characters could even make more than 15 silver a week. (gasp) This, in my eyes, will lead people to just say 'screw it', and use the more commonly welcomed inviso-gold method.

A way to fix that? I don't really see any aside from the GM team having to dispense a set amount of allowance for each player every week, which would majorly suck.

THIRDLY, Inviso-gold. People will prefer this over IC currency, I would say. It's simpler, there's less counting involved and it's an infinite amount. Money isn't what RP revolves around, and from what I see on CoTH it's mostly for a couple of drinks at the tavern, or a new outfit, which is -very- trivial. Sure, if there's focus on money in said RP (like slave trading, or purchasing a house), then it might come to good use, but those things don't go down as often as a drink is purchased.

Overall, I think leave it as it is. People can use it if they want, or not. Forcing it would just drag a lot of unneeded anger towards the GM team and server as whole.

[Sadron]

I think it has been established that it would be pretty impossible to enforce a economy on the server, and just as difficult to regulate every financial interaction that our characters to through to make sure everything checks out. That said, what if we relied on a more optional barter system?

Instead of gold being equated with dollars and cents in the modern sense, it could be counted based on weight or something. The value of the product and the value of what is being offered for it could lead to RP and conflict; characters could haggle and discuss the price until they come to an agreement and everybody walks away happy. I think something like this would do more to create character interaction than assigning prices to everything and creating a fixed value of currency. Additionally, the use of imaginary gold does not, in my mind, hinder the idea of economic interaction, it just removes the in-game representation of currency.

As for how much gold a character should have, that should be up to the player. Think about how much money your character would have access to and how much they would have on their person. Just because you have 1000 gold in your character's inventory doesn't mean that's the amount they have in their pockets. A splash of common sense could save us all from the trap of an infinitely rich character.

In short, I think whatever system of economy/trade/whathaveyou CotH has should be one that allows for the onus to be placed on the players to participate in and control. This is essentially what we have now, the problem most people seem to have with it is that people don't participate.

[DaveM]

I, as a player, like many others, would voluntarily immerse myself into such a system as much as I could.

What I felt was missing last time around 'staff-side', let's say, was motivation to accumulate money. The auctions were a nice feature and exactly the sort of thing that would be needed. Then again, they had few exclusive items and were a bit too accessible. But more in that direction. Perhaps things you can exclusively get with IC currency at any time. I've made suggestions in a previosu thread on the subject.

I'll have more fun simulating my professional's drive for money if I also have an OOC drive towards the neat exclusive thing that you can only get with cash.

[Zhaei]

As for how much gold a character should have, that should be up to the player. Think about how much money your character would have access to and how much they would have on their person. Just because you have 18k gold in your character's inventory doesn't mean that's the amount they have in their pockets. A splash of common sense could save us all from the trap of an infinitely rich character.

...You don't think I actually implied I assumed that amount of money IC, right? Just to make sure. It was an argument to refute the idea that IG currency is usable in its current state.

[Harmonic]

I would not be a happy panda if this was turned into something mandatory. It sounds so constraining.

[Krent]

I would not be a happy panda if this was turned into something mandatory. It sounds so constraining.

It wouldn't be, if done right.

That being said, "doing it right" is a damn tricky thing to do.

As I discussed in my own COTHonomics essay-post.

Which I want everyone to read :|

[Sadron]

As for how much gold a character should have, that should be up to the player. Think about how much money your character would have access to and how much they would have on their person. Just because you have 18k gold in your character's inventory doesn't mean that's the amount they have in their pockets. A splash of common sense could save us all from the trap of an infinitely rich character.

...You don't think I actually implied I assumed that amount of money IC, right? Just to make sure. It was an argument to refute the idea that IG currency is usable in its current state.

I didn't aim that at you or anything, but I can see how it seems that way. I just pulled a number out of thin air and I suppose that one got stuck in my head from reading your post or... something. I'm a little dumb sometimes.

[Rigley]

I, as a player, like many others, would voluntarily immerse myself into such a system as much as I could.

What I felt was missing last time around 'staff-side', let's say, was motivation to accumulate money. The auctions were a nice feature and exactly the sort of thing that would be needed. Then again, they had few exclusive items and were a bit too accessible. But more in that direction. Perhaps things you can exclusively get with IC currency at any time. I've made suggestions in a previosu thread on the subject.

I'll have more fun simulating my professional's drive for money if I also have an OOC drive towards the neat exclusive thing that you can only get with cash.

Well, there's only so far you can go with IC Currency for certain items.

What do you do once someone's got everything they want? Do we retrofit current items to be IC-currency purchased only, or do we need to have it arbitrarily applied to every new item we add in?

The big problem is that we're not going to have an unlimited source of items to add and have available for these rewards, and as mentioned before, that sort of stuff isn't going to be overly pertinent to all people, or likely even most. Worse yet, it kinda has us select certain items above others to be special and exclusive-- and that's difficult to do in a game like WoW that has so many blingy outfits and weapons available; a very valid complaint there would be that while X armor is IC currency, tier gear is free to be added at will.

You essentially get into the problem of what to make exclusive with that sort of set-up, and beyond that there's just the general problem that some players don't really wish to have to put in what could really just be seen as OOC work in order to complete their armor set.

[Ormica]

I'll just say I'm trying to help by using the IC money as a gambling thing. People like to gamble no? So come on down to Gadgetzan we'll make you a great profit for it!