NgekNgok

oh yes, of course it's unfair. you should expect backslash and collateral damage when you try to control an inflation. that's why, apart from trying to slow the inflation down or stop it, at the same time, you should also try to make short-time sinks that can remove the money from market, as much as possible. the point is, when you try to stop an inflation, at the same time, you should also try to move the market into healthier state. if you do it separately, or consecutively, it might ended up as another failure, or the results weren't good enough. you can take a look at Tree of Savior as a case study. ToS suffer from inflation driven by (partly) the gold-sellers. the gold-sellers generate a very big sum of in-game currency and adding it to the market. and IMC's last attempt to control their game economy is, removing the currency drop from monster completely. it's not the best solution, but it's still a working solution. while IMC succeed to slow the growth of money within the market, IMC also failed to remove as much as money from the market, in the end, it's only stalled the market and the prices are pretty much unchanged. and it's also true that the damage mostly done to newbies and mid-level players, while veterans didn't take much since they're, veterans, they still got it "easy" when it comes for "farming". but IMC also already implement changes for character growth/progression rewards. the rewards were generous enough to make the newbie or new character progressed smoothly to the late-game stage (in term of leveling). there're more going on in ToS, but in term of controlling their game economy, slowing down inflation, and fighting gold-sellers, IMC finally able to get a "good" result and gain "control", at least for now. to put it simply: stop the money from entering the market break or "destroy" the market, then rebuild it. brace yourself (both of you and your playerbase/community. some will be genuinely pissed and butthurted.) i rarely see an mmo taking drastic measure to "fix" their economy and somehow manage to get a "working" solution. ToS is the last one that i witnessed directly and become part of the "collateral damage". yeah, it's quite interesting and fun to see. i didn't say it would be easy and harmless to your playerbase. also, afaik, most private server, working based on the reverse-engineered version of the game, some even build their own backend for the server-side. unlike the original developer who had access to the source code for both client and server of the game. so yeah, i could imagine the technical difficulties. and the "base design" of the game is already flawed and not-optimized.. for me, it's simply, "the effort needed and the payroll, doesn't added up" lmao. all in all, it's still an interesting and fun topic to talk about. most theme park mmo suffer the some problem when it comes for the economy. sandbox mmo get it slightly better, because naturally, they had to think about the economy more seriously from the start.

that's partly wrong tho, and kind of common misconception of "player-driven" economy. the owner/developer/publisher/administrator of the game also act as "regulator" or "government" body of the world/game. so, yes, you can do, or "fix", something, and in fact, you're the only one who can "flip" the economy upside down if you want to. i sometimes, discuss mmo's economy with a friend, and the basic problem on every mmo economy are: unlimited "reserve" of in-game currency. ineffective or sometimes, non-existent, sink for the currency. these 2 problems, should be solved within the initial game design (i.e. on analysis, design, or development stage of the game), so, we can't do much about it. if we back into celestia luna case, my realistic possible solutions would be: (i'll say it blatantly, and what i said might be a little too radical, or in-accurate because my knowledge about the current state of the game is not much) stop "printing" additional "money" (in-game currency) through private donations (if you're still doing it). i understand that private donations are the source of income for you guys. but, you should start "regulate" or limiting yourself first if you wanna help controlling the inflation. the world/game already has unlimited reserve of money waiting to be "mined" or "farmed" by the players. by "printing" and giving it to a player in return for private donations, you only add more "money" to the market, and it's only make the inflation worse. start designing and implementing more sink(s) for the in-game currency. you should start gathering data about "how much money currently 'exist' and owned by the players in the game". then set a goal on how much money you want to remove from the market, and finally, build a plan or strategy on how you'll do it. for starter, you could start selling more "premium" items directly from npc, that players can buy with in-game currency, and make those items account or character bound. so more money can go into your sink, and prevent those items become "trade goods" in the market (you want a sink, right, not a flow for the money to move in the market). you can make it either permanent or temporary as a long duration event (like a month, or 3 months, etc). if you make it temporary, some players might start "rushing" for it, and some don't. if you make it permanent, it would another sink for the currency. the game already had some sinks, like crafting cost, etc. you could play around it, like increase the cost for the end game stuffs, etc. gradually decrease the amount of in-game currency that a player can "farm" at a time. there're some possible solution for this. you can decrease the server drop rate multiplier. or, you can remove the in-game currency drop from monster. or, you can decrease the price of specific item that being used as source of income. or, you can remove the server drop rate multiplier completely and only increase the drop rate of some selected items (raw crafting materials, trash items for money income, etc), or, you can combine those proposed solution from me, etc. basically, currency sinks in game (in this case, mmo) design, is the practical implementation of fiscal policy for the game economy. it can be in form of taxes, maintenance cost for equipment, production cost for crafting, housing rent cost, etc. in mmo, if you can design a good sink, then you create a good policy for your game economy. if you're doing a good job adapting your game's currency sinks to the "evolution" of your game economy, then you're doing a good job as the "government body" or "regulator" for your game. and sadly, almost in every private server version of an mmo like this, the server wide drop rates multiplier often times become one of the factor that driving the inflation. given how "easy" it is to generate income (in-game currency or money), it's only matter of time and the prices will skyrocketed naturally, regardless the supply and demand chain. also because a market weren't only dictated by supply and demand law, it's also dictated by the amount of "money" circulated within the market or (active) population. uh, somehow, it become an essay. lmao. well, i like the discussion about mmo economy, so, can't really help it. best regards, and ciao...