Fixing the Economy - Strategy Discussion (in General)

I think this is something that a lot of people would agree on..

The source of why the economy is in the toilet has been changed (NUB forging etc), so now all that is left is to clean up the damage that is left. Let's use this thread to discuss suggestions on how we can go about doing this.

Let's take a look at the numbers:
Total Liquid Assets:
Jan 21, 2007: $2,258,927,074
April 23, 2007: $2,769,849,379
December 6, 2007: $5,476,084,601

Total NW:
Jan 21, 2007: $17,697,168,991
April 23, 2007: $19,833,721,478
December 6, 2007: $27,783,095,336

There is way too much liquid cash running around. Not enough of it is getting spent.

My idea is to use an in-store item as a "money sink", to help take some of the cash out of the economy. An item that would have a good use that would sell in shop for a mil would create enough cash sucked off to possibly counter balance the cash change.

On the other hand, a possible rescale in the ways of how much stats cost at higher NW would help encourage more use of this cash.

I'm just throwing some things out there, and I'd love to hear what others think. Maybe Jon even has some input :D

I like that idea!

The next new item is released in store for a flat 2 mil or something. That would drain TONS of cash! I really like that idea.

Perhaps adding a cash sink in the clan system. Maybe granting clan bonuses or something.

Make damage upgrades on weapons non-linear? ...

How about just reducing the amount of cash earned per battle? That won't make an immediate large impact, but it'll start helping.

"The source of why the economy is in the toilet has been changed (NUB forging etc)"

I don't get your reasoning here. You go on to say there is too much liquid cash in the economy but this change is likely to increase liquid cash as the NUBs will be fighting not forging now.

As far as I can tell this all this change amounts to is protecting the non NUB forgers.

Everyone was spending their money on cheap forging by NUBs, then, that same cash is just being resold again and again and never being put into NW. Therefore, there will eventually be way too much cash (*as there is right now*) and the value of the dollar will go down a lot.

The NUB forger change is basically keeping this from continuing to happen. Now all that has to be done is fix the damage that has already occurred from it.

but now the NUBs will be fighting (which generates money, instead of taking it from other characters), and then selling out... Dumping it back into the economy...

By the way, I don't think changing the amount of money earned per battle will change this either way. That is a long term impact, and not really something that needs to be changed that way. The inflow of money is still the same and proportional to how much fighting that is going on. The important thing is that the money that is already out there gets put into NW or eaten by the server.

People needing money for something would put a need on money, or at least closer to a balance. I remember a time when people who needed money got money, and people who got money had people who needed it. Now the balance is thrown off in a big way..

NOTE: the previous statement was not in reguards to all NUBs. Just the ones that sell out...

Yes TH, fighting and putting their money into NW which can in turn be sold later for other money. Either way, all of the new money they are making is being put into NW and other items and therefore not staying liquid.

I don't agree with your analysis. As long as the NUB exists in current form the money supply will increase and the CB$-USD rate will drop (barring some big increase in demand)

personally i dont see whats the big fuss about liquid cash lol... people may just sell it to others who will then put it into NW lol

So now instead NUB players are fighting which will create entirely new money to be sold - instead of draining out 15 - 20% of the NW they are creating, they will be adding money to the total liquid assets. It really doesn't help to revalue the CB, but I'm not sure that's the only way to deal with it. Maybe instead we could change earning potential for top end players who are using the high NW gear. They buy BA, upgrade weapons and armor, and what not..
er.. then it could uh.. trickle down?

Hmm.. I think I just advocated making the rich richer to help the poor and made it sound useful.

Vote for me!

I think one of the best ways would be to make the Blacksmith more viable. Yes, we have Blacksmith-only items, but they're few and far between. It doesn't really have a significant impact on liquid assets.

For most of CB1, the Blacksmith was the only option available for upgrades. While I wouldn't want the forge system eliminated entirely, I think lowering Blacksmith costs or something of the like would persuade users to dispense more cash towards upgrades, as well as removing said cash from the system.

Two birds with one stone.

okay! I have a plan, eveybody! BS any equipment you have. Spend as close to half of your money as you can this could take a while with the BS's waiting period, so we'll have to take turns. Freed, you have the entire month of December, Nightstrike, you get January, lostling, the first 2 weeks of Febuary are yours... velvetpickle, you get from 2-15-07 to 2-28-07, at which point we will dictate a new schedule. this aughta get rid of a lot of liquid assets by the time we finish this out :P

lowering BS osts wouldnt help anything, as it would either eliminate forging, or forging would still be just as much cheaper, with the only difference being the ability to obtain larger items.

We could discuss the multiple things that made the economy what it is now. It comes down to the total situation of what has happened.

The main point is how do we FIX it, right? :) We can all agree that there is too much liquid money floating around though, yeah?

I think rescaling the NW cost of items as well as making more items BS only would go a long way to helping take some of this money out of the economy.

I don't like the idea of increasing costs for everyone to counter the problems caused by the NUB. We could come up with any number of ideas to temporarily alleviate the situation but the root problem remains.

it would also eliminate the usefulness of a lot of items for many players... I'm hard on my grind trying to get to 400 AC, and I'm not sure it would be fair to set this back another 40m, especially with the recent increase to damage dealt (rescale = higher ST/DD than before at the same MPR ). This would also drop AC and stat boosts across the board, and those without extremely large cash reserves would be negatively effected severely...

Lol, I'd like to see some of this liquid cash please:

"Cash: $54,029"

I'm talking about a rescale in FAVOR or SPENDING money on items. That way, people would want to get the money and spend it on items, especially if these BS only items had a lower linear cost value.

oh... so unlimited % boost to DX, ST, DD and/or invincible AC?

Yes let's help make the case by cracking every suggestion anyone comes up with instead of helping. Awesome :)

do away with the PR weight on stuff or at least cut it down and you will see a larger amount of people upgrading stuff...

Does the fact that every suggestion can be so easily cracked possibly suggest that this isn't something that can be "fixed" before... idk... you sell out everything?

I'm selling out before this will be fixed. My grandfather died and I need the money. I would just like to see the economy turn around if I decide to come back. Thanks for questioning my motives.

I apologize for doing so, but I'm looking at this from a different POV... The way I see it, $CB going for $5-$6 /mil is a good thing...

It makes the USD market less exclusive... Sure, it makes it cheaper for Ranger, NS, Freed, and all others who spend large amounts of USD on this game, but I'm sure they'd buy what they needed at any rate. This makes it so that the player without tons of cash sitting around, who play CB as their main game/source of entertainment, can radically adjust their strategy for less than what they would pay for a new console game disc...

It also provides less motivation for people to create an account, play for four months, sell out, repeat.

I did not mean to offend you,as I like and respect you, and even consider you a friend, but, in my defense, please try to take a look at this through my eyes...

Me and TH talked for a while on the cause and effect of a lot of things and have determined that we are basically getting nowhere.

One thing I noticed and agree with: NUBs who are just going to come on, use a low NW team all throughout their career to save all of their liquid cash and sell out at the end is a large part of what is lowering the value of the dollar and putting more and more liquid cash out there and less into NW.

How about this: Cut the rate that NUBs are given straight "cash" in half. With the other half, give them "Blacksmith credits".. only redeemable at the blacksmith. Of course, this would have to be proportionate to the amount of money they would want to spend on an actual item and how much to upgrade said item.

Maybe we also need to list some causes of the problems here as well? With causes in hand, we may be able to adequately suggest answers. I'm just out here to poke the community into giving feedback about how you feel about the economic situation, what you see happening, what you feel should be done, what fraction of the CB population you represent, and why.

Let's move it guys!

Newbie comment, so disregard if it's completely creepy.
What if you do something like:

1. Introduce more useful, but not overpowered "blacksmith only" items. No idea what exactly though.

2. Rethink blacksmith waiting times.
2. A. Something like caps at 5 seconds minimum, 4 minutes maximum per point, and the difference between min/max would depend on NW added.
2. B. Remove the "max 7 points added" thing, and make it a "max 4 minutes blacksmith time" per item, for instance.

This way, a lot of the lower stuff will tend to get shoved into blacksmith a lot more often, since it would be convenient.
Cash sink ;)

There is more money floating around because more people play to use this NUB in order to sell the money to other players. It wouldn't matter if there is a larger cash sink.

Wasp, if we are just trying to support the CB$-USD price then extra cash sinks could help, sure it doesn't change the supply side but it might stimulate demand.

I think putting everything back into demand, including items, liquid cash, liquid cash for sale, rare items, the whole lot.. would be a great thing. I'm not out to make the game USD based, but unfortunately, a lot of the game is set around it.

well, as a temporary fix, Jon can always buy some CBD from the economy. I think I just suggested the game master to spend actual money to buy money in his game, I must be a genius.

Of course, everyone knows that the biggest reason for the huge increase in the Liquid Assets is the fix the NUB had a while ago. This has nothing to do with NUB forgers. They are a small part of NUBs that join CB. However, they are more likely to sell out, IMO, then normal NUBs and do contribute in that aspect.

As long as there is a NUB, the Liquid Assets will continue to rise.

It would not matter IF new players actually put the cash they make back into their character but not all of them do. There are quite a lot that play just to generate real life money.

Does anyone really believe that NUB forgers are going to save up money to make a run with a NCB? Really?

By simple economics the best way to get money out of the system is to cause an inflation of prices. In CB Jon will have to be Alan Greenspan of the US and artifically make one.

He can do that via many methods, including:

1) Raising the price of everything. IE the upgrade on all or some items.
2) Making a new high demand item that has a high upgrade but well worth the cost.
3) Make a new item that costs CB2 instead of USD to buy (already suggested above)
4) Removing money via:
a) Taking money away from people, equally or not
b) Lowering the money aspect of the NUB which over time should help

However, the same thing is happening in CB2 that happened in CB1. As more people play, some stay but some do not. Those that do not sell out. Unfortunately in CB2, those that sell out have a LOT of money due to the NUB.
Therefore, the rate drops.

It's possibly worth remembering that although there is a lot of cash out there, near to a fifth of the entire CB cash is currently split between only 9 players or so.

I'm not quite sure how relevant that is, but if only a handful of players have the cash it's fairly likely that some of the 'cash sink' ideas are a waste; looking at the two richest players in the game, both have either sunk money into lots of items already, or have provided lots of loans to people who actually want to spend cash.

My way of thinking is that the ones making the cash and selling it aren't likely to make the most of cash sinks anyway, not when there is shiny USD to be gotten.

I'm inclined to disagree with putting things like weapon upgrades up, because that is something of a punishment to those of us who do actually spend our CB cash on in game things.

I suspect the short fix would be simply for some of that money to....disappear by Jon's magic. Long term fix would be to lessen rewards. And by that I mean everybody's rewards, because it's not just NUB rewards that are contributing to this. Plenty of long term players running mage teams and making a tidy little profit on the side by selling CB$.

If a lot of cash is generated by NUBs selling out, wouldn't the money be spent by those who buy it to buy/upgrade items? I doubt anyone would buy CBD and then not use it...

I would agree with that but when 500 million is sitting on two chars I'm not sure I can. Admittedly two chars owned by players who do actually put the cash to use but still, that would take some cash sink to drain that amount!

I think one of the big problems is that there is no inflationary system in the game. Everyone is accumulating more and more money, but rares (in general) still cost about the same amount (~1 million, 2-3 million for high value items). Thus any money made in the game, is basically staying in the game as there are only a few money sinks (BS, transfer fees), and so we accumulate more and more money, but it is always worth the same amount. Another problem is that we are seeing this inflationary effect in the CBD to USD ratio, CBD is worth less and less relative to the USD, but in game CBD is still worth the same. This is giving a larger and larger advantage to USD players as their USD are continually increasing in value in terms of CBD.

To fix this there are really only two options, either prices need to go up and thus have inflation, or there needs to be some major money sinks to keep the amount of liquid assets in check.

If we have inflation, it could be related to the amount of liquid CBD and how it changes. Each month (or every 3 months), if it increases by 1%, then prices everywhere would increase by 1%. This would also mean that the NW of items would increase as well (just like if you purchase a house in real life, its value is also affected by inflation). Prices could also decrease if deflation occurred.

In terms of money sinks, an easy one would be to implement some sort of upkeep requirements for equipment and weapons based on NW. For example, every fight, you would have to pay a "fee" from your winnings to fix up the equipment, and have the fee based on what BA regen rate you are in (ie: at 10/20 you pay 1%, 9/20 you pay 2%, etc.).

To make BS more attractive, you could eliminate the waiting time, I don't see what purpose it serves other than to slightly discourage its use.

I've blabbered long enough. Breakfast time! :D

You also need to get to page 3 (of 142) in the 'richest' standings to see anybody with over 3 million on one char. So lots of characters without huge amounts of cash out there.

Idea time:
Run weekly lottery with 50% cash payout. Cash sink the rest. Disinflation through statistical ineptitude!

Seriously though, I'm all for an estate tax on people that sell out. It's like being diseased in CB and Jon (the government) gets a cut of your money. Don't kill me please :P

i am not sure i see the problem with liquid assets, other than low prices for cb$. in my mind though higher cb$ values means people are more likely to sell out. it should reach some point where the money made is just not worth the trouble of selling out.

That's a good point dudemus. Though the depreciation is going to hurt those who put money into the game, it absolutely doesn't bother those who doesn't. Hoping that game currency would be a stable holder of value is rather ridiculous in the first place.

As far as I can see, most item prices have been stable save for a few in high demand so all is well. I'll join the disinflation camp when elbow hits 6mil for base :).

The reason why there is so much liquid cash running around is that Jon made it so that equipment is a terrible cash sink, you can't ever hope to regain any shred of $ from equipment if you spend $ on it. Therefore, people aren't spending their money on equipment. I know for a fact that is why I haven't spent my cash yet.

Other then equipment, there isn't much else to spend money on, buying BA? Heh. If there was some worthwhile thing I could invest my CB money in that isn't a total and complete loss, I would do it today. Equipment is too risky to invest in, simply because of all the restrictions by NW, by penalties and so-on and so-forth.

Weapons are not a bad place to put your nw thanks to massive WA :)

I've read so much on this thread about cash and liquid that I think I'm going to do just that.

Let's see how much of my cash I can turn into liquid... Off to the pub boys, back in a few hours.

LOL G :D

I think a combination of either taxing NUBs or "forcing" them to put their money into NW (i.e. the BS credits or something) along with a magical disappearance of money would fix the current situation.

As for inflation, we already do have an inflation system in place called Central Bank. While CB, in this case, only keeps the items in auctions inflated, that does not necessarily help keep money out of the game to some extent. Inflating prices of character to character sells won't help in that respect, and the auctioneer can only sell SO many items..

Basically, Ranger is right. Things like this is what made CB2 happen in CB1. I didn't want to bring that up before because everyone goes "OMG ITS THE APOCALYPSE RUN!".. it's not as bad as it seems. For those in favor of the economic situation, look at it this way:
If money makes a dive to, say, $1/mil. Wouldn't those who can't use USD at all be at even a bigger disadvantage? Now those who can will buy up all of the cash will, for ever cheaper, and make the NW gap that much larger. Yeah, that would create a (possible) demand for the money, but probably at the cost of putting those like Freed etc. at the 10b NW mark. Think you can take out that without fighting back with serious NW? Well, maybe not on Freed's character.. but if I had 10b NW, I'd put it to good use :D

Anyway, from either point of this argument, there is downturns that will lead to CB3 if nothing is done. There is too much supply and not enough demand. Yay for capitalism!

Maybe this is a sign that we should completely change the game over to socialized democracy. Let's all elect represenatives for the realms and have them vote on legislature made by other elected officials. As for economic development, noone will have money, but be given rations of food and equipment as seen fit by THE MAN.

What if there was a weekly or monthly tax on cash? Like at the end of every month, 5% of your cash just vanishes into thin air. This would encourage people to spend their money one way or another at least once a month so they're not stuck with a huge sum over which to pay taxes... And you don't have to increase the price of anything, introduce new weapons, or mess with the balance in any other way.

i think we have modern myths in the making. i remember the reason for cb2 as being a database coding issue. there were other things that jon wanted to change and it was easier to start over rather than recode.

economy had little to nothing to do with it in my recollection though. i could be mistaken as i am old and my memory is failing me quickly! ;)

Time to pitch in my serious 2 cents coz I'm bored at work :)

I may not be the first person to say this but I'd like to question the logic of a monetary bonus on Nub fighting rewards ON TOP of the free BAs. Why? Net worth should be built up steadily as a player gains more experience. New players are not in an any worse position to catch up to Ranger with or without the obscene amount of extra income. This is because to get to an MPR range of top ten would take a good year of work with four months of exp bonus + free BA. That's more than enough time to pack on the nw necessary to be competitive. Does not making 1mil every two days impede the new player from enjoying all aspects of the game? Not really, that's what rental is for. You can experiment with a wide range of strategies without having a ton of resources. There are also a number of effective strategies that don't require much NW, ROBF team not withstanding.

Can an nub make enough money in a year without the ridiculous cash bonus? I'm sure they can. I started with an NCB and 500k 5 weeks ago. I made around 15 million in those 5 weeks without having free bas. 100 million worth of items should put you in a pretty competitive position in one year for an nub don't you think?

I believe someone mentioned this already but the current PR weighting system does discourage dumping excess cash into higher point upgrades. The most glaring example would be Corn. With a PR weighting of 1, I'd think twice about upping that corn from +8 to +10. You get 4% more enchant, beats the same fight list and get reduced reward. No thanks. Maybe a PR cap for items proportional to their usefulness can be established. That will also fix the fact that some of the PR weightings are just off (MGS, Beleg come to mind)

Generally speaking un-regulated economies fix themselves. It is a matter of time frame and damage done in the interim that cause people to want to interfere and regulate it.

Generally speaking the law of supply and demand is always in effect. It can be tempered with regulated interference, but otherwise it simply exists as true.

How does the law of supply and demand when unregulated fix imbalances? Well, let us take the current example. This is what WILL happen if it is left unchecked.

As the cost (the effort to make CB2 cash) decreases because the supply is high and the demand is low, less people will enter into it as a money making venture. The time spent to make the CB2 will be greater than the USD converted out at some point. (whether that is 1mil CB2 to 1USD or 1mil CB2 to .1USD does not matter in the discussion) This point will occur for different people at different times as human's value their time differently based on many things.

The whole point is, so what? The value of CB2 to itself has changed very little. Some items cost more, some items cost less, but in the end, stuff cost about the same based upon supply and demand. The only point the economy "gets into trouble" is when you try to take CB2 and convert it to some other usable asset.

I will bet LARGE sums of money Jon does not care ONE whit if your 1mil CB2 is worth 100 USD 10 USD 1USD .1USD etc etc ad infinitum.

That said leave the economy alone. Interfering with it will only get you into trouble. If Jon introduces a tax or a sink it will not be to fix an economic imbalance, but to make the cost of doing something higher or lower relative to some other CB2 (not USD) related matter.

P.S. The CB2 economy seems to be thriving the USD to CB2 conversion is in the toilet.

P.S.S. OK dont like all the other stuff I said, then just tell me this, WHY is too much liquid cash too much and bad, HOW much is too much, and why should your definition of too much be used over someone elses?

Oh yah, one last thing before it is brought up. I would bet every single currently existing cash sink in this game has NOTHING to do with economy and everything to do with controlling behavior. The more or less something "costs" to do, the more or less in general people will do it. Thus if I want less frivolous transfers between people because it is a database intensive action and uses server resources, I make it cost more to transfer and POOF magic, less people transfer, I preserve existing resources. Ask him *smile*

50% Blacksmith fees... yay xmas cash sink! \m/

if we try to fix this cbd/usd ratio thru a cash sink. could the sellout problem be any better. lower usd/cbd like stated before is good to play catch up. and anyone who wants to sell out is getting less usd per cbd which would make it not as profitable seeing as the amount of new money generated cant be more than money generated from fights.


brb

> I would bet every single currently existing cash sink in this game has NOTHING to do with economy and everything to do with controlling behavior.

Well, there's some of each. E.g., under certain conditions it's cheaper to auction something than to use FS/WTB, because I want to encourage using auctions for various reasons.

But generally speaking cash sinks are a Good Thing because out-of-control inflation is as bad for game economies as it is for real ones. And by "cash sink" I just mean "something to spend money on," not just "something to reduce the amount of liquidity for its own sake." If that's not splitting hairs. :)

(There's actually a growing body of literature about designing a game economy. Only some of which applies to CB but it's an interesting field, and nobody really has all The Answers.)

Very cool, I will have to look for it seems like interesting reading. I am struggling with the idea of using cash sinks to fight inflation. Inflation being where the value and cost of the currency of the realm is high. Decreasing the supply of readily spendable money should increase the value of it? I could see cash sinks to fight recession (when I have 100mil on me, the 3mil Corn seems cheap if everyone percieves the Corn as cheap at 3 mil, then everyone gets a Corn, Corns become non-rare, their price falls as demand drops, pretty soon, nothing costs more than anything else) but and please I am not saying I am right, I am saying I do not understand, I do not see how it would help fight inflation?

it's just the opposite effect of what you see in real-world economies where governments _cause_ inflation by printing more money.

I think inflation is well under control currently so Jon must be doing something right :). I'm talking about the real CB economy of goods vs. CB money, not this frivolous side market of usd transaction that Jon should be little concerned about.

From what I experienced, majority of the items have stable or slighting downward tending prices. Only a few hot items have increasing prices. Example: corn, eb and lately Elbow. Even these prices are slowing down and stabilizing. If anything, I feel demand is a tad low at the minute. This is especially true in the melee weapon market. A morg or a bh hardly fetch much anymore. This has to do with the popularity of evasion and the lack of desire to play melee tank. Another example would be the tattoo market. You all saw how people were selling 1mil level tat to store. Mid level tats are hardly selling at all in FS/WTB.

Oversupply has a lot to do with the current downswing. Should return to normal in January, I hope.

So Jon, what is your personal opinion on the economic situation as it stands now?

"Time to pitch in my serious 2 cents coz I'm bored at work :) "

So you add even more money to the game, that's trying to "fix" its economy?!?! :P

I confirm that putting my cash into liquid has had the desired effect and I don't really care too much about Fixing the Economy - Strategy Discussion anymore. Hic

Way to "fix" your problems like most middle Americans! Have money issues? Drink your life away!

Good thing G_Beee is Scottish... otherwise he would fit right into that Criteria

A few things I found out by looking around....

Mr. Chairman
a Character belonging to Central Bank
Created January 01, 2005
Money: $1,020,831,923

referralfunding
a Character belonging to auctioneer
Created January 01, 2005
Money: $478,749,650

That covers almost 1.5 trillion liquid cash...

Yes that still leaves 4 trillion but that still covers a whole lot of the liquid assets out there.... and if you count up all the people who have quit and have built up cash reserves that aren't going anywhere it clears a bunch more.

There is also almost 2 trillion cash just on the first page of richest users.... Give them something to spend their cash on like Exp and I'm sure they will ^_^

So Draco, you are saying to increase money spent on BA? maybe we should increase the daily cap or lower prices?

Yeah why not? How bout give everyone 500 more BA to buy a day scaled to your Refresh rate... What would be so wrong with that... besides the fact exp and mpr would rise up substantially! But still that gives something to spend all that hard earned money on.

NO, no, no, no, no, no, no, no and no. Ranger makes 50k a day after BA, I would make less than that. Do you really think we can afford to buy more BA?

So Flamey.... I understand where you are coming from... but where else are we gonna spend this extra 3 trillion laying around "Smile" So are you saying you don't have extra money Flamey? You have none of this extra 3 trillion? Well maybe we should figure something out then or not worry about the extra cash laying around on a certain few people, because obviously it isn't everyone that has the extra cash ^_~

pssst... Draco... "billion"

Mmkay NS, thanks for the correction... guess I over counted.... thats Billion, billion, billions, billion, and billions ^_^

*looks at my cash balance*

-600k

Nope, no cash here :(.

I sent a suggestion to Slayer for a tournament -- allow transfers from a non-tourny character to a tourny character for only one tournament. It would not be feasible for every tournament, but it'd be fun to have a single tournament where incoming transfers are allowed (outgoing is still not allowed). Further, limit it to transfers only from characters on the same player. This way, players with tons of cash will dump that cash onto a tournament character where it can never be recovered. It will just be retired after a week and gone for good.

Or into auctions with cheap $1 start price and come back into the economy for cheaper than it left... Which still isn't bad I guess....

it left for free :P

but NS bringing up tourneys got me to thinkin... Does the amount of cash on a retired tourney char count towards the total liquid assets? I'm aware that they don't show up on the high scores list, so please don't present that as proof they don't, cuz CB and MC don't show up either...

Draco, if you're trying to say I have money, I don't really. The 9.7 million on my character is Nightstrike's. Well about 9 mil is, I've recently CMed him to find out my tab, I should be out of debt with this final payment. That would be after a year of being in debt.

Yeah, about that, I have no idea how much your debt is... I'll try to find a thread somewhere.

Ban the sale of the CB$

Too difficult to do without banning all transfers to and from characters

we could just tax the hell out of it. i propose a 100% tax on the transfer of cb$. if ya send a million it costs a million. ;)

^End of free trade as we know it. Highly unlikely :)

Transfers are currently at 1% for Cash, not sure about items and such.

ban free ba for nub, let it cost money, problem solved.

You can't get rid of NUB money that's unfair to them, remember they're making the money we're supposed to already have made. It wont fix it.

Flamey. Read my post further up. How much money is enough money? Is is really necessary to give them BOTH free BA and award bonus? Do they really need 200mil cash to play competitively?

Ulord, when the BA cost was made free their rewards were reduced to 60% of their original rewards. This meant it was like every NUB had paid to buy their BA anyway. It was already a step for "they have too much money".

It's deja vu all over again...

Why is it so hard to realize that the free BA change reduced the amount of cash entering the game? That's a GOOD thing! And it works great! Previously, a NUB character didn't have to spend all of that money that was meant to be spent on BA anyway. Now, they have to (or else they lose). Anyone that doesn't buy their BA every day reduces the amount of cash even more so.

This was one of the single best changes to the economy ever!

"Why is it so hard to realize that the free BA change reduced the amount of cash entering the game?"

Making BA free, _increased_ the amount of cash in the game because NUB players no longer need to purchase BA. How can you say that it lessened the cash entering the game? I am sorry NS but that statement is ridiculous.

I've been busy at work today. I'll post up some numbers later tonight on the amount of cash an nub can make. It'll be illuminating I promise :).

glory, ns explained it above in the same post you quoted from. you might also understand if you read the original changelog here:

http://www.carnageblender.com/main.tcl

if you still do not get it then i am not sure what else to tell ya.

hmm, the link above should've been: http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0029aT sorry

I read the previous changelog thread and even re-read NS's comments. They do not make sense at all. He states that it forces NUB users to buy BA, if you have free purchasable BA, then it has no cost. Taking a 100% cash bonus, and lessening the bonus by 40% and removing the BA cost by 100% results in 60% cash increase for NUB users.

yes, and 60% as opposed to the older 100% is a reduction. this leads to less cash coming into the game.

"I read the previous changelog thread and even re-read NS's comments. They do not make sense at all. He states that it forces NUB users to buy BA, if you have free purchasable BA, then it has no cost."


what he means is that the other 40% they used to get is now not given to them, therefore it is automatically spent on ba purchasing. they just have to decide whether or not to use it now. before though, they could sell that 40% plus the other 60% to usd spenders. now they can only sell the remaining 60%, thus less money coming into the game.

While I understand your point, I still disagree, look at the numbers in the first post. There has been no change in rewards for regular or ncb users, so the _only_ result can be from nub users.

If a NUB user was getting 1k gold from a battle, and their BA cost was 2k per BA, then they were losing 1k per battle.

Now, they would be getting 600 gold from a battle, and no BA cost, which results in total amount of (total purchaseable BA x 600 gold per battle) more gold than they were getting before.

G = Gold per Battle
Bf = Battles Fought (Before any purchaseable BA)
bF = Battles Fought (After purchaseable BA)
BC = BA Cost
X = Money Gains

So before they were getting
X = G(Bf) - BC + G(bF)

after the change the formula becomes

X = (G(Bf) + G(bF)) * .6

So, let's try a few numbers...assuming a 1k gold gain and 2k ba purchase cost, with 300 purchaseable ba. (not exact but close enough)
BEFORE CHANGE:
X = 1000(1000) - 600k + 1000(300)
X = 700K

AFTER CHANGE:
X = (1000(1000) + 1000(300)) * .6
X = 780K

Now, the numbers are not exact, but you can see, that there is more cash entering the economy after the change than there was before, almost 11 percent more.

nub's don't have an increased ba cost like ncb though as far as i know. so your made up numbers are way off base. if you use 1k rewards and 100 ba purchase price, then you end up with 900 before as opposed to 600 afterwards. therefore using made up numbers really doesn't prove anything. it could go either way. ya need to get some actual numbers for it to be pertinent data.

NUBs did have increased BA cost according the same formula NCBs had.

Now their BA cost is 0.

> not exact but close enough

clearly not close enough, because you're 11% off. :)

> NUBs did have increased BA cost according the same formula NCBs had.

correct

> Now their BA cost is 0.

... and their rewards are 60% lower.

in this context, mentioning the one without the other seems like you're being deliberately misleading.

It was not my intention to mislead. I had thought everyone now understood by numerous posts in the thread that the NUB's get 40% less rewards. Ever since their "bought" BA is now free.

it's more accurate to say that the BA price is automatically deducted from their earnings.

furthermore, whether it is 700 or 780 that is still less than worse case scenario from before which would be no bought ba with cash maximized for sellout which is 1000 and no bought ba. the intention all along was not to punish or reduce anyone's rewards necessarily but just remove the opportunity for exploitation of nub for the sole purpose of selling out.

You forgot a scenario:

Before Change, No BA Purchased:
X = 1000(1000)
X = 1000K

Thus, NUB's who didn't buy BA make 220k less per day, and those who buy BA now make 80k per day more. Assuming that BA vs non-BA buyers is at 50% it is still an average net decrease of 60k per NUB per day. Even if 2/3 or people purchased BA before, it is still an decrease of 13k per NUB per day.

These theoretical calculations are all well and good, but in the end there is still a large degree of uncertainty in all these numbers and there is only 1 conclusion that can really be drawn:

1) Relative to a NUB who only wanted to maximize profit, every NUB now makes significantly less after the change.

People come on this is simple math.

If you have 100% Rewards and 100% BA Cost which change to 60% Rewards and 0% BA Cost, the rewards value did change by 40% (no one is disputing that), the other value changed by 100%. Explain to me how 40% less rewards (for normal and no cost ba) = 100% less BA cost.

The major factor that is being overlooked is the rewards gained from the free BA. 60% Rewards (Normal BA) + 60% Rewards (No Cost Purchasable BA) being equal to previous 100% Rewards (Normal BA) + 100% (Purchasable BA) - BA Cost does not add up to me.

"it's more accurate to say that the BA price is automatically deducted from their earnings."

This is somewhat an intentionally misleading statement as well Jonathan, because maybe in your calculations you figured that the 40% difference was equal to their BA cost, but you completely left out the gains they get from the _free_ BA. That is a _huge_ amount of CB2 if a NUB is maximizing their gains, and a lot of them do (then sell out).

Perhaps if a NUB can give us his average CB2 per battle and NUB %, we can calculate exactly if he is making or losing money due to the change. It will be easy to see how much more or less money he is generating per day.

We will also need someone of equal MPR who is not a NUB to let us know how much normal BA cost, preferably a NCB to see exactly how much the BA does cost.

Until then, we can type till our fingers hurt. Let us see with cold hard facts.

My current BA cost is 2,234 per BA and if I am lucky I get about 275 CB2 on average per BA.

And what is your NCB%?

And your BA regeneration rate?

Glory, the cash gained by using the BA you are forced to buy is not less than the cost per BA. BA cost has ALWAYS been more than rewards for normal players. A long time ago, NUB players had an advantage wherein they would earn more per battle than the cost of BA. This was changed, and is why the BA cost for NUBs and NCBs is huge.

Therefore, if a player has X cash, purchases a BA, and fights, his cash will be less than X after the fight.

All Jon did was force all NUB players to buy their BA (remember, it's not free relative to pre-change). Since buying BA reduces your cash, and all NUBs are forced to buy BA, all NUBs are forced to reduce their available cash (though they do convert that cash into XP, which is the goal in the first place.)

Glory, you're still misunderstanding. Jon's statement was not misleading. When NUBs bought BA they still made money from that BA. He factored out the cost of the BA equal to the reduction of rewards. This effectively meant it was *exactly* the same as when BA had a cost and the NUB was buying ALL their BA, everyday.

So this means that every NUB is buying all their BA (under the old NUB) which means they produce less money because they spend more on BA.

I don't know how you can't understand this.

Glory you say the maths are simple but I don't think you are right

The way I see it you now get 33% of your potential BA free versus a 40% reduction in rewards. If you were hitting close to 100% CB and BA usage your total reward should have gone down. If you have a lower challenge bonus and/or get less than max free BA then things shift towards the new system but there is still the fact that buying in money time was more profitable before the change.

NS, normal players below a certain size and in a decent clan can make money buying BA. There was never to my knowledge anything special about the NUB (outside money time) that gave an advantage in this respect, the BA cost was always increased in proportion to the extra rewards.

> The major factor that is being overlooked is the rewards gained from the free BA.

I found my original calculation to see if that was the case. It was not.

But I did miss something -- the halving of BA regen rate while the amount purchaseable did not change earlier this year. So the revised value should be 0.3 of the old, not 0.6.

nice, so now nubs are gonna get 30 percent of the cash rewards of the amount before the free ba change?

"the halving of BA regen rate while the amount purchasable did not change earlier this year."

hm.. I thought that the amount purchasable did change.. I thought it's always been 12-hours worth.

Yea it was halved. NS you were right the NUB did get BA at normal prices at one time, since July 05 cost was increased in proportion to the bonus.

> I thought that the amount purchasable did change.

Somehow I arrived at the amount of 1800 BA total generated per day for someone at the 10 BA rate. I thought it must be 1440 (10 BA every 10 minutes, old rate) plus 360 BA.

But you are right, the BA purchaseable used to be 720. So now I have no idea where I pulled 1800 from. I retract my explanation. :)

Total Liquid Assets:
Jan 21, 2007: $2,258,927,074
April 23, 2007: $2,769,849,379
December 6, 2007: $5,476,084,601
December 12, 2007: $4,448,911,247

over a billion gone in 6 days, great job team. now lets work on getting novice's NSCs to +23 and we'll be back to normal :P

Hatch..

http://www.carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002Ib1

NS..

http://carnageblender.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=002Ic7