Petition for More Wards - ITS ABOUT TIME

[Jojoya]

I mean the longboy mount in WoW is considsred a gil sink, and it just an astronomically expensive mount. .

Players might have thought of it as one. Blizzard doesn't. Every time every time they've added those extremely expensive mounts and other items to the game they state they aren't intended to be gold sinks. They're just something for wealthy players to spend their gold on.

That's not to say that games shouldn't have extremely expensive items for players to purchase with their hoarded currency. That helps ensure the currency doesn't go back into circulation.

But they doesn't accomplish what gold and gil sinks are supposed to - keeping inflation in check - because they don't affect enough players who are actively buying from and selling to each other.

The idea of tax concerns me because there is a delicate balance to charging a tax that is a legitimate gil sink without forcing players to do stuff they don't want to do in order to fund the tax. This is a game and I don't like the idea of bringing in elements from the real world, such as regularly doing things you hate to get money, just to keep your home. So many people play games to escape that sort of thing.

It also brings up a potentially troubling issue for fcs. Would they need to start charging their members tax fees? Would large fcs be at an incredibly huge advantage due to the enormous pool of players that could make the tax fee stupidly cheap per member? Would it be a fixed price across each member and it's automatically taken from them without their control? Paying tax would certainly make some people wary about joining fcs with a house.

Agreed that it has its own set of problems and shouldn't necessarily be implemented but it one of the few ways you could get a true gil sink out of housing.

As for FCs charging their members fees... why? One 8 bed garden plot growing shards using Grade 3 topsoil can easily earn a million gil a month for a FC. It only takes one person to run a workshop and my FC makes 5-20 million gil a month depending on what the subs and airships bring back. That's really bad management on the part of the FC leadership if they're resorting to asking members for gil donations.

As for RMT, there's no reason why a tax or any other gil sink should encourage RMT. That 40k/month tax I used as an example? Doing 6 MSQ roulettes a month has it covered. Joining a map party for one night a month would more than cover the cost of the medium tax I used as an example. You've still got all the gil from all the other content you do and items you sell to pay for the other things you need or want.

The game is throwing gil at us left and right, it's why gil sinks are needed. There's no need for RMT... unless there are very expensive items to buy and a player wants the item now instead of saving for it.

[Penthea]

As for FCs charging their members fees... why? One 8 bed garden plot growing shards using Grade 3 topsoil can easily earn a million gil a month for a FC. It only takes one person to run a workshop and my FC makes 5-20 million gil a month depending on what the subs and airships bring back. That's really bad management on the part of the FC leadership if they're resorting to asking members for gil donations.

I'm not sure how it's a bad argument given no one (not that I spotted at least) gave any detail on how tax would affect a fc. Maybe some people only want tax for personal houses?

It's really common for fcs to not bother much with gardening. As for the workshop a huge amount of fcs don't regularly engage in that content, my own fc being one of them. We're just not nuts for that feature. You can create some cool stuff with it but we don't use it regularly at all. We only do if we want to craft something we want. This brings me back to my initial point about players doing something they may not necessarily even want to do just so they can pay tax, if the tax is high enough that such a thing could end up being a requirement even for a fc.

As for RMT, there's no reason why a tax or any other gil sink should encourage RMT. That 40k/month tax I used as an example? Doing 6 MSQ roulettes a month has it covered. Joining a map party for one night a month would more than cover the cost of the medium tax I used as an example. You've still got all the gil from all the other content you do and items you sell to pay for the other things you need or want.

My point about RMT and tax was under the assumption that the tax would be high enough that a player would have to actively work towards paying instead of it being low enough that just doing whatever they usually do would still make them easily cover the cost.

The game is throwing gil at us left and right, it's why gil sinks are needed. There's no need for RMT... unless there are very expensive items to buy and a player wants the item now instead of saving for it.

I mostly agree with this. The game is in dire need of gil sinks. However RMT is often used for housing because that is something with a limited time window for purchase save for dead servers, and even then someone could use RMT because they want a very specific plot so they get gil the fastest way they know how so no one else can buy it before them. Even on dead servers mansions and mediums tend to get snapped up pretty fast. Thankfully because literally nothing else in the game has a mechanic like this with such a tiny amount of the item/asset to go around, RMT isn't as big a problem as it could have been.

[Awha]

Players might have thought of it as one. Blizzard doesn't. Every time every time they've added those extremely expensive mounts and other items to the game they state they aren't intended to be gold sinks. They're just something for wealthy players to spend their gold on.

That's not to say that games shouldn't have extremely expensive items for players to purchase with their hoarded currency. That helps ensure the currency doesn't go back into circulation.

But they doesn't accomplish what gold and gil sinks are supposed to - keeping inflation in check - because they don't affect enough players who are actively buying from and selling to each other.


Agreed that it has its own set of problems and shouldn't necessarily be implemented but it one of the few ways you could get a true gil sink out of housing.

As for FCs charging their members fees... why? One 8 bed garden plot growing shards using Grade 3 topsoil can easily earn a million gil a month for a FC. It only takes one person to run a workshop and my FC makes 5-20 million gil a month depending on what the subs and airships bring back. That's really bad management on the part of the FC leadership if they're resorting to asking members for gil donations.

As for RMT, there's no reason why a tax or any other gil sink should encourage RMT. That 40k/month tax I used as an example? Doing 6 MSQ roulettes a month has it covered. Joining a map party for one night a month would more than cover the cost of the medium tax I used as an example. You've still got all the gil from all the other content you do and items you sell to pay for the other things you need or want.

The game is throwing gil at us left and right, it's why gil sinks are needed. There's no need for RMT... unless there are very expensive items to buy and a player wants the item now instead of saving for it.

I get that if my fault for using the word true. While in my time playing WoW I do not recall blizzard ever making that statement, though I do see where you are coming from and it makes sense.

Though isn't the base function of a currency sink to remove money from the game world? I mean sure depending on how it is done it could have different effects on the game economy, though at the core it is simply a method used by developers to remove money from the game, or am I misunderstanding what a currency sink is?

That said my issue with a tax system largely boils down unless the tax is rather large given how easy it is to make vast amounts of gil after one is already established in a market any tax would just negatively impact players with smaller coffers. I get the idea behind it, thought I highly doubt SE will tax players at rate those who have gil to burn and a reliable means of earning gil would bat an eye lash even when it came to owning multiple plots since plots do prove a source of revenue.

[Jojoya]

Though isn't the base function of a currency sink to remove money from the game world?

The point is to get currency out of active circulation so inflation doesn't get out of hand and new players end up priced out of the game.

In a way, many of the wealthiest players are a mini-currency sink. They're using currency as a scoring system to see if they're "winning". They're not about to give up part of their score so it's not contributing to inflation. It's fine to have items that target that wealthy but it's not going to impact inflation.

That said my issue with a tax system largely boils down unless the tax is rather large given how easy it is to make vast amounts of gil after one is already established in a market any tax would just negatively impact players with smaller coffers. I get the idea behind it, thought I highly doubt SE will tax players at rate those who have gil to burn and a reliable means of earning gil would bat an eye lash even when it came to owning multiple plots since plots do prove a source of revenue.

Which is part of why I listed a staggered tax rate based on property size. Players with less wealth are more likely just to have the small houses and the tax could easily be paid with what's earned through normal game play. Players with greater wealth are the one who have the medium and large houses, or multiple houses. They're already going to greater effort to earn the gil and most of it is usually coming through sales to other players, not game play.

The one interesting thing to point out here is that the revenue that comes from housing isn't newly generated gil (with the exception of that which comes from selling salvaged accessories to a vendor). It's all gil already in circulation coming from other players through marketboard sales or direct trade transactions. When that's the revenue being used to pay the tax, the tax ends up an even more effective gil sink since it's using gil already in circulation.

This is all theoretical, of course, based on the idea of using housing as a gil sink and how it would be effective. SE is unlikely to do it.

[Awha]

The point is to get currency out of active circulation so inflation doesn't get out of hand and new players end up priced out of the game.

In a way, many of the wealthiest players are a mini-currency sink. They're using currency as a scoring system to see if they're "winning". They're not about to give up part of their score so it's not contributing to inflation. It's fine to have items that target that wealthy but it's not going to impact inflation.



Which is part of why I listed a staggered tax rate based on property size. Players with less wealth are more likely just to have the small houses and the tax could easily be paid with what's earned through normal game play. Players with greater wealth are the one who have the medium and large houses, or multiple houses. They're already going to greater effort to earn the gil and most of it is usually coming through sales to other players, not game play.

The one interesting thing to point out here is that the revenue that comes from housing isn't newly generated gil (with the exception of that which comes from selling salvaged accessories to a vendor). It's all gil already in circulation coming from other players through marketboard sales or direct trade transactions. When that's the revenue being used to pay the tax, the tax ends up an even more effective gil sink since it's using gil already in circulation.

This is all theoretical, of course, based on the idea of using housing as a gil sink and how it would be effective. SE is unlikely to do it.

That makes sense perosnally my goal was not to impact inflation, just to stagger the access to plots and treat it like the finite resource it is. Learned something new I always thought the core function of a gold sink was to remove the money from the game, and depending on what the sink was added to would have different impacts on the economy. Like in WoW I and many others do consider mounts a gold sink, and many do not even like that mounts are a good sink. Though I do not mind them personally. Though I will admit i never gave the ingame economy much thought.

Granted I was just going based off a wiki page, it seems based off thst page having an impact on the economy does not always have to be the primary goal of a gold sink, but it does make sense since removing gold from the game itself probably does not do much of anything.

Granted your idea makes sense, and I could see it working though I also doubt SE will do anything drastic to changd up housing since they seem to be fans of the status quo. Though I think that is part of the problem. since ad it stands housing has a limited supply but the prices are so readlity accessible it sort of gives people mixed signals.

[Jojoya]

That makes sense perosnally my goal was not to impact inflation, just to stagger the access to plots and treat it like the finite resource it is.

A tax does both, though. It helps to curb inflation and reduces demand for a finite resource.

It's easy to make the choice to buy something when you pay once and it's yours forever. If you don't end up using it not a big deal, it's not costing you any extra to keep it.

It's harder to make that choice if you have to keep paying for it each month. Will you use it enough to make it worth paying the recurring fee? If not, you're better off not buying it and saving the gil to buy other things you will be using.

When the idea of a tax has come up in past discussion, some players objected because they said they wouldn't have bought their house in the first place if there had been a tax they would need to keep paying. That shows a tax would have a positive effect on reducing demand for a limited resource.

[Awha]

A tax does both, though. It helps to curb inflation and reduces demand for a finite resource.

It's easy to make the choice to buy something when you pay once and it's yours forever. If you don't end up using it not a big deal, it's not costing you any extra to keep it.

It's harder to make that choice if you have to keep paying for it each month. Will you use it enough to make it worth paying the recurring fee? If not, you're better off not buying it and saving the gil to buy other things you will be using.

When the idea of a tax has come up in past discussion, some players objected because they said they wouldn't have bought their house in the first place if there had been a tax they would need to keep paying. That shows a tax would have a positive effect on reducing demand for a limited resource.

I cannot speak for others just myself if they kept housing prices at their current range a tax would not be enough to deter me. Spending small if not constant amounts of gil phases me all that much, but say if the buy in price was higher I would sort of think twice, and if the buy in price was higher and came with a tax that probably would be enough to sway my thoughts of buying plots on my second account I have been getting ready for Ishgard housing.

Though will admit for most maybe a tax in itself would be enough to sway them especially the casual owners that really do not do much and just treat it like a window dressing.

Over would be interesting to see what kind of impact diffedent methods would have on the market and demand. Be it a lottery, higher prices, taxes, an ingame method to buy and sell homes to other players.

Though sadly SE clearly seems stuck in their ways.