Re-Rethinking Gold as a Currency

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Skivverus wrote:

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Strill wrote:

The difference between a monetary system and a barter system is that there's a higher transaction cost in a barter system, which discourages people from trading with others.

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Gold in this game WILL take away the player to player interaction on the trade market.

GOOD! That's the whole point of money! Gold makes trades MORE EFFICIENT. Instead of wasting time converting between currency, people get what they want and can spend more time interacting with other players.

Gold does make trades more efficient, but it also makes them more impersonal - when was the last time you thanked someone for their item (or their currency) in an auction house? Or, for that matter, the last time you actually talked to a person you were transacting with?

The argument for economic efficiency in particular doesn't strike me as a useful one - what problem does greater efficiency solve in this game? The effect is to make it easier for traders get more stuff to kill monsters faster (and then get more stuff), but if you make that too efficient it becomes harder and harder to balance.

Economic efficiency solves the problem of you having to spend copious amounts of time not playing the game and not interacting with other players in order to get what you want. For those who want to focus on trading there will always be things to do, but for everyone else, trading is nothing more than a hassle with people wasting time trying to appraise the value of twenty different currencies.

And for the record I talk to lots of people I transact with. Personal transactions happen all the time when very expensive trades are on the line. It's the mundane repetitive trades that currency cuts down on.

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

The only fact here is that GGG doesn't want PoE to have gold, and they have given us their reasons for that decision.

Where? The only reason I've seen is the patently false argument that gold in D2 and Guild Wars is not used because it's not a usable item.

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Strill wrote:

Where?

http://www.pathofexile.com/news/2011-02-08/dev-diary-currency

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We found that successful game pseudo-currencies have four characteristics:

Homogeneity: Each unit of the currency has to be equivalent to other units. They should stack together, and there should never be a reason for a player to discriminate between two different units of that currency.

Correct.

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Utility: The individual currency items have specific uses in addition to their trade value. If the recipient of the currency item is able to use it to improve their character, then it’s even better for them to trade for. The economic value represented by its scarcity is just an added bonus so that they are able to on-trade it if they decide not to consume it themselves.

Absolutely false

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Scarcity: The currency should not be trivial to find. Some popular in-game barter items represent days or weeks of playing, and provide meaningful trade material for very high-end items. Other barter items are more common (cropping up every half hour or more) and allow for granularity with lower value trades.

Irrelevant as long as handleability is satisfactory.

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Handleability: It should be convenient to transport or transact with a large portion of your net worth as currency.

Correct.

Utility is completely irrelevant to the effectiveness of a currency as evidenced by fiat currency in real life. In fact, using fiat currency frees up a great deal of resources which can be used for trade and the creation of wealth.

Scarcity is only important if you're trying to circumvent price ceilings or inventory space issues, neither of which should be issues in the first place.

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These three factors help make a currency acceptable. If a currency is arbitrary (players are told “this is what you should use to trade with”) but it isn’t useful, homogeneous or particularly scarce, then it’s possible they’ll pick some other currency that feels more appropriate to them. It’s important for game designers to predict the encouraged player behavior and to make sure that behavior is enjoyable.

Name a single game where players have chosen a different currency than the nominal one, and where the nominal currency was not restricted by price ceilings or bans on using money to trade for certain items. If you look at situations where players resorted to trading items you'll find that it happened because the items were a way to get around artificial penalties or restrictions on money use which items did not suffer from.

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To make my position clear, I can definitely understand where they're coming from with this system. They want to make it really hard and convoluted to trade in order to constrict and homogenize wealth, which keeps prices high, but also keeps feelings of reward when playing the game high. What I am against, however, is their statements insinuating that they want a thriving economy. Fostering lots of uncertainty in the marketplace through constantly fluctuating exchange rates, and imposing high transaction costs as they specifically enumerate in their statement is the way you discourage people from trading, not encourage them.

Stifle the economy all you want, but at least call it like it is. Don't kid yourselves and say this is going to help create a "thriving" economy. In fact, I would not be surprised in the slightest if players rejected the system and chose a single item type to use as primary currency, then established exchange rates for it and other items, just as they did in Guild Wars. Of course, Guild Wars did so for different reasons, but the economic benefit of choosing one currency is undeniable.

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Strill wrote:

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We found that successful game pseudo-currencies have four characteristics...

Utility is completely irrelevant to the effectiveness of a currency as evidenced by fiat currency in real life.

(emphasis mine)

You're missing the point here. They're introducing a currency system, and when you try to create a currency, its utility is very much an important consideration. Look at Bitcoins if you don't believe me.
Also, game currencies are always introduced alongside "gold sinks" - in other words, uses for the currency.

In the context of Wraeclast, there are no forges, no blacksmiths, no tailors - no one who would want to take your gold if you had any. What would they buy with it? There's hardly anyone to buy things from. If anything, a universal currency would end up being food, and I suspect that having that drop from zombies might be going a little far for some players.

As for the stack size limitation - the point is that these, too, are items, and they do take up some space, however little.

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Skivverus wrote:

In the context of Wraeclast, there are no forges, no blacksmiths, no tailors - no one who would want to take your gold if you had any. What would they buy with it? There's hardly anyone to buy things from. If anything, a universal currency would end up being food, and I suspect that having that drop from zombies might be going a little far for some players.

You are not really bringing the argument of realism into this, are you? I'll answer it anyways: the reason why they would take your gold is because they can buy other orbs from vendors with it. And why would they want orbs? I do not know but why do they want orbs and scrolls at the moment?

I have yet to read a valid point against the proposed system in this thread. The proposed system provides everything the current system does and more. The only difference is that we get a more practical currency for trading. Everything else stays the same.

The only argument against it is that additional ressources in form of work are requirted to implement this. The ressources might be better used for more important things like more content / balancing etc.

There isn't going to be gold in PoE. Developers have stated their views on the matter.. multiple times. Good talk. Points made. end the thread.


Just because I love kicking dead horses..

Utility is not always subjective, the whole premise of utilitarianism is based on that fact. If utility were completely subjective, it would be impossible to try and create an ethical world view with rules of conduct that could be followed by anyone at any time.

Utilitarianism is not relativism.

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Wittgenstein wrote:

There isn't going to be gold in PoE.

Currently, there's a "Purchase" and a "Sell" option in place in the Beta, even though the "Sell" option isn't enabled. If there isn't going to be gold, perhaps the "Purchase" and "Sell" options could be combined into a single "Trade" option. On the left side of the screen you'd see the merchant's items and on the right, the player's inventory.

After all, in a trade, you're essentially buying and selling at the same time.

p

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Baki wrote:

I have yet to read a valid point against the proposed system in this thread. The proposed system provides everything the current system does and more. The only difference is that we get a more practical currency for trading. Everything else stays the same.

I believe the MOST valid point against this system is the FACT that the dev's do not want gold.

GGG - We want to make a game with an economy, based around bartering and player defined values, that does not use gold.
You - Hey, I know! Let's use gold! Then let's give the currency items set value ratios and use our gold to purchase them!
Other Members - Gold is not an option.
You - Gold is the best option. What reasons do you have that can show me that gold wouldn't work?
Other Members - Why can't you understand that gold IS NOT an option? Your suggestion is completely useless as there will never be gold in this game.

How about telling a Realist painter that his painting would be so much better if he had Aliens shooting laser beams at Dragons.

Why don't you go tell someone who is allergic to milk that milk is indeed the best thing for them. Give them all the suggestions you want and tell them all the benefits milk has to offer. All you're doing is wasting your time because milk is not an option.

If pure will is the only requirement and discussion is not wanted we can shut down these forums.

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FaceLicker wrote:

How about telling a Realist painter that his painting would be so much better if he had Aliens shooting laser beams at Dragons.

Why don't you go tell someone who is allergic to milk that milk is indeed the best thing for them. Give them all the suggestions you want and tell them all the benefits milk has to offer. All you're doing is wasting your time because milk is not an option.

i stated logical reasons for it and proposed something reasonable. Obviously that is the difference between your examples and this proposal.

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Baki wrote:

i stated logical reasons for it and proposed something reasonable. That is something different than the things you wrote there.

And I stated exaggerated and dramatic reasons to embellish and emphasize the point that you are so clearly missing.

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Baki wrote:

If pure will is the only requirement and discussion is not wanted we can shut down these forums.

There is no discussion on this because you're trying to CHANGE the dev's vision of this game. It's one thing to offer feedback and suggest improvements or additions that make sense and are relevant. Gold is something that does not make sense and is not relevant because the dev's have clearly stated their position on it. It's not an option. Never was. This particular discussion is moot.