Are tolls the cure for mudflation?
by Chris Chester 
May 17th 2008 at 7:00PM
Filed under: Business models, Economy, Making money, Endgame, Opinion
A couple weeks ago we introduced Steve Williams' notion of mudflation, its causes, and a general framework for its eradication. On Friday, he posted part two of his three part economic plan, suggesting that the best way to remove currency from the player economy was to replace large money sinks like item repairs with frequent, small, invisible tolls for things like entering a city, using reagents, and changing zones. By making these sorts of things invisible instead of up-front, you can stem the devaluing of your currency without pissing off the players, or so the argument goes.This blogger is far more fond of having money sinks that yield tangible results. Things like player housing (and the subsequent decorating that goes along with it), guild cities or hang-outs (CoX's Supergroup Base system works quite well), or more types of crafting always seemed to yield better results. Even though the concept of an invisible toll system is really in the players' best interest , we can't imagine the response being anything other than vitriolic. In any case, we're looking forward to act three of Williams' economic treatise to see how he wraps it up.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Reader said on 8:40PM 5-17-2008
Even if players accepted this (which they wouldn't), how would the tax work? Could you not zone if you didn't have any money? Probably not, but then is it a percent of your money, a flat rate, or a progressive tax? All this would do is encourage people to keep an alt with the majority of their money while they only keep a bare minimum.
It's an interesting idea, but outside that it wouldn't really help.
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Wildhammer said on 9:31PM 5-17-2008
I think that this would ultimately bring about a lot more gold buying. For instance, if you travel around a LOT depending on what you have to do in the game- you could potentially lose more money through tolls than through armor repair. If it becomes a bigger money sinkhole than armor repairs than gold buying might become more and more appealing.
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