How to curb inflation? Is any tax to much tax?

TheFallen

Grandmaster
"We expect the new ships and naval combat to be a decent gold sink."
~Admin Adam
This should help, but unless it is very strongly embraced and the combat becomes a major continuous expense I just don't see this being enough to deal with what has recently become a dramatic issue.
 

Nihilism

Grandmaster
I see zero problem with housing as it is right now.

I can spend 1 hour running about, and assure you I can find MINIMUM 50 7x7 spots with ease.

What does someone, even new player REALLY need?

'Need' being the operative word.

A secure with regs? That's do-able in the bank.

A new player 'needs' even a 7x7 the same way an older player 'needs' a tower, keep, castle. Etc etc etc

There are TONS of placements available out there. All of which are not 'needed'.

It's a progressive system.
One 'feels' they want more storage, so they spend the time, make the gold, and upgrade. Thus hoarding more and more trash they never use.

We've all done it, and we all continue to do it.
 

Kiki

Grandmaster
Or people could do what I and a small group of others do and take it upon themselves to give houses, regs, equipment, gold, and anything else needed to new players. That starts them off on their own path towards the wealth building and fun that is this game. Population numbers stay high because instead of working their asses off to a point of taxation, or buying a house that is just under the tax rules and no gold leaves the server, they are learning to pay it forward because that is what happened to them.

I dunno, just a thought.
 

TheFallen

Grandmaster
It would be great if everyone paid it forward, but that just isn't uo for every player helping a newbie there are 5 trying to scam them. Leaving new player development in the hands of them finding helpful players and not feeling like the gold they can earn is worth anything is not a system that builds active players trying to build there wealth.
 

Kiki

Grandmaster
Well, it appears as though since I don't agree with this thread or the principals offered, or the belief that there is a problem that should include housing and/or taxing people, I'll take my leave.

Peace out.
 

Metalhead-

Master
These ideas don't sound to great...

If you're going to do a tax on housing sales then you might as well do a tax on all trade sales (Which is probably what needs to happen).

Upping the vendor contracts to 150k and/or daily min to 5k will just make vendors obsolete, people will just remove their vendors and use the selling forums and sell their items directly. I think vendor transactions could use a small tax on sales (rather than the cost of items for sale) but even if you do that people will still be encouraged to sell items directly with zero tax, unless they implement a tax on all trade sales and make it significantly higher than the tax on vendor sales.

The reasoning behind taxing house sales is because owning property is a sign of stability and that buyer being self sufficient. We shouldn't tax the sale of basic goods which would hurt up and come new players.



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Struan

Expert
Nihilism et al,

I've only been here a couple of months and I was able to place a small house without much problem. Within a hour or two of running around i had a choice of 3-4 spots. Not 50 but I obviously do not have a practiced eye so it had to be pretty obvious.

Out of curiosity. Are those of you active in the real estate market able to still find open spots for mid range houses?

Or is most of the action IDOC now.
 

Harken110

Expert
The reasoning behind taxing house sales is because owning property is a sign of stability and that buyer being self sufficient. We shouldn't tax the sale of basic goods which would hurt up and come new players.



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Pretty much all MMOs have a tax on sales and it certainly didn't hurt the new players and it helped curb inflation somewhat. UO is the only MMO I've played that didn't have a tax system through sales. Besides you have to choose one or the other, inflation or deflation. Right now there is nothing that keeps inflation in check. Sure there are gold sink items but they're vanity items that everyone can do without. I myself even though I have a lot of assets and some gold (had even more gold) have yet to purchase any of the gold sink items. Hell I don't even need to buy regs anymore.

With that said, if you placed a tax on housing a wealthy person or just about anyone wouldn't lose their house. Assuming the tax is done weekly and the tax was 5% of the deed cost? With the money I have in the bank which is about 500k and the cost of my two story villa's deed was (I don't remember exactly) but almost 200k? That means I could literally go MIA from the game for nearly a year and my house will still be up. This would make IDOCS obsolete and drive the costs of planted houses through the roof.

But hell the truth is as we get more players the increase of gold coming in is going to outpace the increase of it going out, this will drive the price of not only homes but everything anyway. To add to this, as population grows, the space for land will decrease only driving the price of homes up even further. Needles to say either way you look at it the prices of homes will continue to go up and will be out of reach for many. And if Inflation isn't curbed the prices of everything will rise.
 
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Kiki

Grandmaster
As they do in the real world when population increases. As they should in any free market economic community. Yet in this economic community, the cost of the materials is static. They're free. Just swing an axe of some sort and you will have all the mats you could ever need. For free. As has been mention, the cost to buy leather armor has gone up from 800 to 2800. All it takes is for people to get off their ass and do what everyone has done since the dawn of this game. Work for what they want.

Think about from a distance people. This server is but a year old. The prices of things are just now finding their level. Of course things are going to be more expensive than they were when the server started. There was an entire world of open land to place whatever you wanted.

Supply... Demand...

Why do I keep coming back here. o_O
 

bane

Master
As they do in the real world when population increases. As they should in any free market economic community. Yet in this economic community, the cost of the materials is static. They're free. Just swing an axe of some sort and you will have all the mats you could ever need. For free. As has been mention, the cost to buy leather armor has gone up from 800 to 2800. All it takes is for people to get off their ass and do what everyone has done since the dawn of this game. Work for what they want.

Think about from a distance people. This server is but a year old. The prices of things are just now finding their level. Of course things are going to be more expensive than they were when the server started. There was an entire world of open land to place whatever you wanted.

Supply... Demand...

Why do I keep coming back here. o_O

Kiki one minor correction. Cost of materials is never free in UO. All activity in an economy also has to take account for time spent by the player to create. So there is a real cost to those materials they are just measured in time and that has a monetary value roughly equal to the amount of money that you could generate through other activities.

The overall danger of gold inflation is that it increases the amount of time that a new player would need to spend doing stuff in the lowest levels of the economy (farming monsters and collecting raw resources) compared to players that started earlier since it erodes their buying power.

I like the idea of a tax but don't like the idea of eliminating IDOCs through the auction suggestion. What about if the tax was an option? Either refresh your house the old fashioned way or pay a tax to auto refresh it. I know I would pay the tax for my 18x18s if it was reasonable (5% every 2-4 weeks) and I didn't have to worry about clicking the sign all the time. I am really paranoid about it as I have like 2 million worth of stuff just in vendor stock at my house. So this would give me peace of mind and enhance my gaming experience.
 

Kiki

Grandmaster
Adding a tax to auto refresh would get rid of idocs, thereby leaving no new housing for people to buy.

Said it before, leave housing alone. It's a delicate balance that has been going on since the dawn of this game, and no other game in the world has been able to recreate it.

There is no "simple" change that can happen without having completely unseen knock on effects.

Housing works as it is, find something else that could be a good gold sink and I'll get behind it.
 

StarBaby

Grandmaster
lets switch from housing to pvp... pks have all the money anyways.
Lord British sells you a 10k pvp permit to turn a blind eye.( your now allowed to attack others )
10% of all gold plundered ( in pvp) is considered tax and is flushed directly down his golden toilet...
 
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Metalhead-

Master
lets switch from housing to pvp... pks have all the money anyways.
Lord British sells you a 10k pvp permit to turn a blind.( your now allowed to attack others )
10% of all gold plundered ( in pvp) is considered tax and is flushed directly down his golden toilet...

PKs have all the money? Just because they have all your money doesn't mean they have all the money. Tamers are the cash cows. Also PKs operate outside of the law therefor taxing it makes no sense especially coming from a RPer.


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StarBaby

Grandmaster
PKs have all the money? Just because they have all your money doesn't mean they have all the money. Tamers are the cash cows. Also PKs operate outside of the law therefor taxing it makes no sense especially coming from a RPer.

In that case Dragons wont be happy unless you feed them piles of gold, a thousand at a time...
Wait a minute that's horrible idea, Im a tamer
 
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BeerJedi

Grandmaster
The issue with auction is as follows:

An auction Gold sink isn't a sink. it's an investment where those with mass ammount of gold can now out bid anyone for a house with ultra rares for reselling. Those with massive funds can leave the server with out fear of IDOC and then prevent new players from finding spots.

IDOC is key for a few things -
1. natural event for players in general - PvP, Item rush, discovery of items collected, etc.
2. Distribution of wealth - i'm "middle class" in UOF and IDOCs are great, i get a outside shot of find cool stuff and its fun. otherwise one person gets the entire house contents. then they can resell for more.
3. Redistribution of rare resources - housing land. One of the true limited resources in UOF is land for housing. taxes to prevent IDOCs will force land to never change hands. This will cause the housing market to A. jump in mass price as limited houses will change hands and B. shrink the availability.
4. This prevents any new player from getting the ability to find a spot, or buy a spot for attainable costs. If a 7x7 or 12x7 starter houses start going for 500k because that's the only thing on the market, then new players won't stay. IDOC and forcing players to be in game to refresh houses keep the market managable. For someone new to UO or at least the server, getting ones feet on the ground is not easy. Living out of a simple bank box is near impossible.
 

StarBaby

Grandmaster
Finally thought... I think one of the best gold sinks in the game is probably vendor upkeep..
maybe we could just adjust the % paid into our vendor for the goods were selling to make it more effective.
 

Harken110

Expert
Finally thought... I think one of the best gold sinks in the game is probably vendor upkeep..
maybe we could just adjust the % paid into our vendor for the goods were selling to make it more effective.

The problem with the vendors is that most people already don't tend to them much. So if you increase their cost (or tax) and don't tax sales through trades then players will just sell items directly ( flooding IRC chat or the selling forums) and by pass vendors altogether, making them completely obsolete.

If anything vendors need to have their costs reduced or better yet removed the current system and just have a tax on sales that way I don't have to worry about the vendor expiring depending on the number or value of Items I place on the vendor.
 

StarBaby

Grandmaster
"If anything vendors need to have their costs reduced or better yet removed the current system and just have a tax on sales that way I don't have to worry about the vendor expiring depending on the number or value of Items I place on the vendor" ~Harken

Agreed,. Originally I thought of having a 5% tax on sales.. but though the adjustment to the current system maybe a lot simpler
 
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