I would like to discuss gold and its impact on this server. I'm going to look at where it comes from, what it is used for, the impact it has in stages, and some ideas to spread its impact.
See spoiler at the end of this post to find other forum threads on gold/economy.
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Where does gold come from?
Fresh gold (By fresh I mean not been on a PC before)
-Regular loot (bodies/loot spots)
-Selling items to NPCs
-DM Events
-Slot Machines!
-Quests
Old Gold
-Player to player
--Buy/Sell forums & Auction House
--Muling/Gifted
-Guild to Player/Player to Guild
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Where does gold go?
-Burned gold (By burned I mean never seen again)
--Merchants
---Usables (Potions/Heal kits/etc.)
---Weapons/Armor
--Guild Bases
--Spells
--Slot Machines!
--Consignment fee for IG auction house
--RCR (Intentional or not
)-Warm gold (By warm I mean transferred from one place to another kinda like when coins sit in your pocket for a while)
--Player to Player
--Buy/Sell forums & Auction House
--Muling/Gifted
-Guild to Player/Player to Guild
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Stages of Gold Usage?
Stage 1 - Almost all Burned Gold - New PC who knows no one and has little gold. Most gold is initially burned for weapons and armor.
Stage 2 - Mix of Burned and Warm Gold - PC has earned enough gold to find better deals on the auction. A lot of gold is saved up and spent in auctions/epic store although a good amount still goes to usables for learning spells/supplementing buffs/healing
Stage 3 - Mostly Warm Gold - Enough gear has been purchased to make usables obsolete. For example +4 Natural Bonus Amulet makes barkskin potion obsolete. Still some burning/warm gold but mostly to supplement gaps in gear/healing.
Stage 4 - Occasional burned/warm gold - Gear is set and optimal. On occasion things like heal potions or useful items come up but they can be purchased from other PCs. Accumulation of gear begins to stack and eventually becomes the better commodity than gold.
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Thoughts Based on the Above
As a player progresses through the server, most of the gold burned occurs in earlier stages. It's when proper gear is gathered that we see gold begin to stack up. Add in another layer of complexity with muling and suddenly we have a lot of warm gold.
This means that our economy is demanding for those at lower levels but once folks reach a satisfactory level of gear, the amount of gold burned begins to drop significantly. There will come a point where a bulk of players will hit a wall and hardly need gold anymore even with regular gold-sinks. If a player has the best gear possible with a surplus of other good gear, there is next to no incentive for gold, either to spend it or to buy with it except for usables and spells which is negligible.
In a regular economy, wealth can be used to hire people for goods and services but here those things are limited.
As it is, most low level (non-muling) players will have little (or nothing) to offer a higher level, gold-heavy player. Better than fresh gold further bloating the amount of gold in the economy would be to have a way for gold-heavy players to transfer gold to gold-hungry players for some kind of meaningful service.
(Note: This could come in the form of crafting, especially if crafting required loads of mundane parts that were further refined into greater ones. If crafting is tied to regular leveling, as opposed to a separate crafting improvement system, it won't see the kind of activity it could apart from regular leveling [but that's another post down the thread, I guess]. That said, not everyone needs crafting goods)
Therefore, Gold-starved PCs need something to offer gold-heavy PCs so that gold remains valuable at all stages.
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Even if we gate an area through a gold check and/or experience check there's no stopping people from using alts to pass the check.
