Influence sinks

[Yomo Kimyata]

I realize this is a “first-world problem” in a lot of ways, but I’d love it if there were some large scale influence sinks in the game.  Nothing that would affect the average gamer. 

 

Prestige used to serve this purpose, but I understand why that went the way of the dodo.

 

Maybe a badge?  I for one would welcome a “Dr. Evil” badge for one hundred BILLION inf.  Or a trillion?

 

Any other ideas?

[Dragon Crush]

I think either you're misusing "influence sinks" or I'm misunderstanding what you're proposing. Influence sinks would be something that takes influence out of the player circulation (like buying insps/enhancements from vendors instead of players, or buying stuff off the P2W vendors). Collecting one hundred billion inf would be inf hording, where you just hold on to it instead of spending it. Unless you mean in total, you've had and spent 100,000,000,000 inf, in which case I think there might already be badges for that (though it might only count what is rewarded for defeating enemies/finishing missions, not anything you make off the market).

 

Maybe you mean badge's for total inf you've spent on in game vendors, to just encourage people to buy off NPCs instead of the market?

Edited October 31, 2019 by Dragon Crush
had a thought on what you might've ment

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 minute ago, Dragon Crush said:

I think either you're misusing "influence sinks" or I'm misunderstanding what you're proposing. Influence sinks would be something that takes influence out of the player circulation (like buying insps/enhancements from vendors instead of players, or buying stuff off the P2W vendors). Collecting one hundred billion inf would be inf hording, where you just hold on to it instead of spending it. Unless you mean in total, you've had and spent 100,000,000,000 inf, in which case I think there might already be badges for that (though it might only count what is rewarded for defeating enemies/finishing missions, not anything you make off the market).

I’m proposing spending 2bn (which then goes out of circulation, poof!) for 1/50th progress on a badge, so I am pretty sure I am using the term right!

 

I do think that we have too much influence in the system, but it hasn’t proven a problem up to this point. 

[Myrmidon]

You could always buy Winter packs and give me the IOs.

[Gravitus]

As a badge collector .... I’d say leave the badges out of this , it’s hard enough to collect them all without you adding badges that take hundreds of hours to get .

[MunkiLord]

I think badges would be the most effective way to accomplish the goal. If it's too much for some people, they could just skip those badges. 

[MetaVileTerror]

If you add something like this, I don't think it will actually make for much of an Inf sink.  Instead, it will drive a subset of the player community to just farm for the Inf to get the Badges, while those who don't care about the Badges still sit on the thrones of Inf they've already farmed.  The net result will probably be an increase in total Inf floating around after the badge hunters have grown used to farming for more Inf.

 

The only effective and fair way (which I can think of ) to remove a currency like Inf from circulation is with tax brackets.  Based on total Inf earned, rather than current Inf in pocket.  However, with the possibility of free and unlimited accounts on Homecoming, there are too many ways to essentially do tax evasion, and my idea is dead on delivery already.  I would not want to trade away the current account policies in favour of dealing with concerns of inflation.

And really, the only threat which inflation has to long-term problems is with players listing items on the market for obscene prices.  Which can in turn be addressed by implementing upper limits on those prices.  All the excess Inf can go to the places they've always gone since before time immemorial:  Alts, one of City of Heroes' great strengths.  "Twinking" new characters hasn't really been a balance concern in this game since City of Villains was released.

[boggo2300]

5 hours ago, MunkiLord said:

I think badges would be the most effective way to accomplish the goal. If it's too much for some people, they could just skip those badges. 

THATS UNSPEAKABLE!!  you you you FIEND!!

 

Skipping Badges what madness!!

[Hero_of_Light]

It would be nice to have that much inf lol. I've never even been close to a Billion Haha. 

 

I would say buy hero/villain packs and give away the enhancements as silly prizes for silly things,  like best emote comedy show, or best two out of three roshambo, ect...

 

As in future stuff... maybe make it so you can pay into a special event, like if city hall gets enough donations it'll start a party event for the donator where, if a enough of the randomly selected players on the server at that time go and finish a story specific story arc they get sent involving handing out party invitations, stopping a freakshow attack on the TV station, and clearing the venue of clockwork, a party in the donators honor will be had, a badge will be given to the donator and the participating players so that way you have a chance to get the badge without needing to have a ton of inf, and a special emote for the donator where you're posing for pictures. 

 

 

If those randomly selected people don't do it, then get a notification saying that they failed, and you can have it randomly select again or type in the name of two team leaders you'd like 

To give the story arc to.

 

 

 

Just a random thought

[Lines]

A money sink is an economical mechanism to try to balance currency entering the game with currency leaving the game, in order to prevent inflation. I can’t think of an MMO that has managed it well, as players will find optimal ways to bring money in.

 

There is a badge for spending a large sum in the tailor. I wouldn’t call the badge progress a sustainable money sink, however, as once the badge is achieved then the sink no longer exists.

 

Smaller, more regular sinks would be a better choice, such as the loot packs.

 

Other currencies like the merits earned in game also help to prevent inflation, as you can now compare the influence cost versus labour cost to purchase something.

[Piyerus]

The main problem with this sort of method is that you're introducing something certain people want, and requiring them to farm inf in order to get it. While this may remove the inf they farm from the system in the long run (note that this doesn't remove much inf CURRENTLY circulating, just newly farmed inf), it can just make matters worse once those people actually get the badge (or whatever else carrot you decide to lure them with). Now you've created a bunch of people who've learned how to farm inf very efficiently, and who may not have had any interest in that before hand.

Without a doubt at least SOME of those people will continue to farm even after they get the inf sink reward. In the long run you just create more farmers and introduce more inf into the system.

[Ferrus_Xeno]

Hey, if you are needing a INF sink, you can send it my way... I can always use it.

[Yomo Kimyata]

8 hours ago, Piyerus said:

The main problem with this sort of method is that you're introducing something certain people want, and requiring them to farm inf in order to get it. While this may remove the inf they farm from the system in the long run (note that this doesn't remove much inf CURRENTLY circulating, just newly farmed inf), it can just make matters worse once those people actually get the badge (or whatever else carrot you decide to lure them with). Now you've created a bunch of people who've learned how to farm inf very efficiently, and who may not have had any interest in that before hand.

Without a doubt at least SOME of those people will continue to farm even after they get the inf sink reward. In the long run you just create more farmers and introduce more inf into the system.

First, you certainly don't need to farm inf to make, say, 100 billion inf.  The AH is a far more efficient tool for that.

 

Second, I'm not convinced that there would be a significant (say, 5%+) increase in overall inf generation from the introduction of a single badge.  In fact, more marketing would almost certainly result in more inf being destroyed through market fees.

 

Third, and most importantly, I feel that having a difficult goal and being rewarded with a few pixels for it is worthwhile.  Many/most people would say, "screw that noise" and would pass on the badge.  No one ever said you have to get every single badge.  That's fine with me.  Some badges are more brag worthy than others but at the end of the day, no one cares except for the player themselves!

 

I'm getting the sense that the hard core badgers don't want any new badges, and certainly not any difficult ones, but I may be wrong.

[MetaVileTerror]

"Difficult" and "tedious" aren't really the same thing, though.

[GM Sijin]

5 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

"Difficult" and "tedious" aren't really the same thing, though.

Something a lot of game designers have to learn the hard way. Or just choose to ignore. Though you could say it's difficult to manage because the amount of tedium involved is obnoxious.

 

 

As a note, though, and this is a 'generally speaking' thing: Singular, niche MASSIVE inf sinks are far less effective than more universally desired smaller ones. Not that you can't have both.

[MetaVileTerror]

I still think it's crucial to make certain that any attempted Inf sinks don't end up becoming -reasons- for Inf grind/farming.  Putting anything "shiny" on offer with an excessive cost will merely give an incentive for someone to go out and grind for all that Inf, rather than removing the Inf which is already in circulation.

[Yomo Kimyata]

6 minutes ago, MetaVileTerror said:

I still think it's crucial to make certain that any attempted Inf sinks don't end up becoming -reasons- for Inf grind/farming.  Putting anything "shiny" on offer with an excessive cost will merely give an incentive for someone to go out and grind for all that Inf, rather than removing the Inf which is already in circulation.

Yes, yes, the shiny!  That’s exactly what I want, and I don’t think I’m alone!  Like I said earlier, accumulating Inf through market activities is a net influence destroyer.

 

Also “difficult” v. “tedious” may not be the right description.  You can move a mountain of sand from one place to another.  If you use a teaspoon, it’s tedious.  If you come up with a better method, then it’s difficult. Even so, It certainly wouldn’t be mandatory.  No one is being forced to move that mountain.

[Dragon Crush]

While it'd likely be rather annoying for anyone affected and don't really think it should be implemented, an idea I find amusing would be if players sitting on mountains of inf were targeted by heists from NPC villain groups. Someone who's just hording 50b inf logs in one day to see "The Circle of Thorns robbed you of 2b inf while you were away".

 

Maybe make small dual/team insps also buy-able from vendors in later zones for a small / higher volume sink?

[Yomo Kimyata]

21 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

Something a lot of game designers have to learn the hard way. Or just choose to ignore. Though you could say it's difficult to manage because the amount of tedium involved is obnoxious.

 

 

As a note, though, and this is a 'generally speaking' thing: Singular, niche MASSIVE inf sinks are far less effective than more universally desired smaller ones. Not that you can't have both.

Great to hear from you!  Are there any dev ideas for inf sinks you can share?  I’m far  more interested in the ones that provide something bragworthy over something more utilitarian like doubling the AH fee, but I wouldn’t object to that either.

[GM Sijin]

7 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Great to hear from you!  Are there any dev ideas for inf sinks you can share?  I’m far  more interested in the ones that provide something bragworthy over something more utilitarian like doubling the AH fee, but I wouldn’t object to that either.

Nope! GMs are generally not heavily involved in the dev process and when we are it's typically either a hush hush situation or something that the community already knows about. Mostly just trying to encourage ideas on both side of the spectrum!

[Derek Icelord]

On 10/31/2019 at 8:18 PM, MunkiLord said:

If it's too much for some people, they could just skip those badges. 

You fail to understand the Badger mindset, sir.

[Yomo Kimyata]

23 hours ago, GM Sijin said:

 

 

As a note, though, and this is a 'generally speaking' thing: Singular, niche MASSIVE inf sinks are far less effective than more universally desired smaller ones. Not that you can't have both.

Anecdotally, I’m hearing from a lot of people who are each sitting on piles of dozens to hundreds of billions of inf.  If you want to take massive amounts out of the system, it’s certainly there!

[Rigged]

The best way to remove money from the system is actually not through static purchases but by increasing taxation - specifically by raising the AH cut. A lot of the transactions in game already run through the AH (because of the magic pooling mechanic) and raising the AH cut to say, 15% would be far more effective in the long run than putting in things that the ultra rich can buy.

 

Yes I get it's more boring.

[Mr. Vee]

I just think it's nice that we're only worried about influence sinks to deal with piles of money from AH or farming addictions instead of the usual hyper inflation reasons for them in game economies.

[Dragon Crush]

Maybe putting 2 tax brackets on AH would also help put a soft ceiling on how much items will sell for. If it's 15% up to a point, then 20% past that point, most people won't want to list stuff for 20%.