Maybe it could be paired with a raffle as well. Let the people with lots of money duke it out while the rest of us sit on our raffle tickets and eat popcorn on the sidelines.Dakota Riley

Yeah that’s basically what I thought of when I suggested an auction, and pairing it with a raffle could also help appease those who don’t have enough money for an auction. I wouldn’t say make it either/or because those who lose the raffle have no chance of winning anything, but allowing a few users to focus on one thing while everyone else can sit back content with their raffle tickets seems nice. And fair(er).

Ally:
And I actually think I remember at some point glitch or someone else mentioning the fact that there are so and so percentages of users with this amount of nuggets in the bank and this percentage under this much. At some point in time. It was a while back, months, but my point is there are a few users who can and will try to evade the chance restrictions on any site, and providing maybe a distraction that allows them to take a more active role in getting what they want might allow those who stick to the rules have their fair chance of winning without those unfair users tipping the scales.

I-I’m not arguing. I don’t want to seem like I am.

And I am also in favor of gold sinks. In my year of being on here, the most major change I’ve noticed has been the 200-300 drop in nugget price of the gems in the exchange. Not that I’ve been watching the economy like a hawk (I don’t watch items so I can’t speak about them), but Mycena’s economy still seems a lot healthier than any other pet site I’ve personally played for a length of time. While it is hard enough to get items here, it’s not impossible, but adding a little extra padding in the form of another gold sink or two might help keep the economy as it is for a little longer. And having an auction or more raffles wouldn’t add too much because they aren’t too often already, so they wouldn’t take out too much at any given time.

An auction or multiple auctions wouldn’t take from more than a handful of users but how is that different from the amount of nuggets being spent by the users gaining an unfair advantage now as they have others purchase tickets for them? Since it is directly being spent by those who win the auction, I might suppose it would make a little more of that currency go away since I’d assume they’re paying other users for the ability to use them for the raffle. Instead of lining those users’ pockets it’s now being taken out of the economy, not recycled.

There might be a good way to do a gold sink. If there is an alchemy component where users have to spend nuggets to progressively get better, and the prices get higher the more leveled up you get. Yeah, I’ve seen this in other pet sites, but it does work well as a gold sink—especially if we were to combine what we get for free in the fishing game.

Another way to make a gold sink would be an event that requires some spending to get prizes and move onto the next level.

Sorry I might’ve jumped in the middle of the conversation, but I heard ‘gold sink’ and felt the need to give out a few ideas. HBSjhvldgfd

Very interesting discussion going on in here! Definitely a lot to think about :)

A few quick points I’d like to make:

Well, I’m not suggesting that every raffle be uncapped — just one every now & then.Ally

This is actually a really interesting idea, and one that we’ve discussed a little behind the scenes. The main reason that we haven’t tried it is because raffles don’t happen every day, opinions are fast and memories are short. That is, if we ran a raffle in September that was uncapped, we worry that it may alienate the people who would feel like they essentially “have no chance”, seeing as they’d feel as though they missed out on an otherwise potentially valuable event that does not happen all that often (i.e. think about how a poorer player might feel if this raffle was uncapped). The fact that it’s the exception rather than the rule is something that might not go very far in consoling disappointed users (or users for whom this is their first raffle, etc). It’s still very interesting, and maybe something we’ll try out in the future… just something we’ve generally been nervous about what its reception would be.

If you pay any attention to the gem exchange on a regular basis you can notice the same players routinely selling large quantities of gems for whatever low price they can get and making it harder for others to sell at a reasonable price for whatever meager gems they have.Hina

Actually, this is to a certain extent by design. We never intended the final gem price to be 3600 nuggets, as we expected the player-to-player sales to be a significant way of acquiring gems, with the shop price simply being the “upper limit”. The idea was that it would help players who earn their gems via nuggets, as they would (hopefully) almost never have to buy them from the site itself, while providing an avenue for people who spend money on gems to acquire nuggets as well. In fact, originally gems were a fair bit more expensive iirc, but when we noticed that gem sales weren’t really happening much we dropped it down. So I’m actually pretty glad that this is finally taking off and becoming a regular feature :)

If there is an alchemy component where users have to spend nuggets to progressively get better, and the prices get higher the more leveled up you get. Yeah, I’ve seen this in other pet sites, but it does work well as a gold sink—especially if we were to combine what we get for free in the fishing game.TheLaughingStar

What an interesting idea! I’m not sure it’d fit terribly well with the play style of Mycena Cave (as it would by definition either result in valuable sellable items for rich players in which case it fails as a gold sink, or items for rich players which poorer players cannot have access to). It’s a tricky balance, as we’d need to find some kind of reward system that (a) doesn’t make you richer, but (b) is still worth doing, while (c) not making something desirable but unattainable by by less wealthy players. But something along those lines is definitely an idea worth thinking about!

EDIT: maybe once we on staff had the chance to think through this a bit more, we should open the topic of gold sinks up to a community discussion. I love it when we do that, because even unpopular ideas out of left field can have nuggets of awesome hidden in them, which end up shaping us for the better :)

raus
No worries, I don’t see anything anyone has said so far as “arguing” in the least. We’re all welcomed to post our opinions, even if we disagree. I like giving suggestions to help improve game play, & I felt like throwing in a limitless raffle every now & then would satisfy people who have/want to throw in some more money to have a “better chance” at winning.

When GCS’ are sold on the forums, they get a lot of high bids (i.e. 120+ gems worth). I’m not sure how many people are buying tickets & how many, but I doubt it’s anywhere near that amount. People are willing to spend more when there’s less of a risk of losing what they’re acquired. Raffles are chance based, auctions aren’t. It would draw large amounts of currency from richer players, which could help the division between rich & poor. If you could find where Glitch said that (or if he’d be a dear & post it himself), that’d be greatly appreciated. I am very curious.

Don’t get me wrong, I like auctions. But they actually encourage hoarding and are not as effective a currency dump.Hina

To be fair, the way that MC is set up now, hoarding is all ready encouraged with bank interest. On one hand, it can be seen as “positive” because if you want to keep your bank interest high, there’s an incentive to keep your money tucked in your bank & not to spend. It can also be “negative”, those of us with large amounts of currency are gaining large amounts of money by simply collecting interest every day. I can see how that could easily cause a big division between poor and rich. There are pros and cons to having something like that. When you have a high interest, you’re encouraged to keep the bulk of nuggets you have to keep the money flowing. There are players who will hoard the bulk the of their nuggets until this is eliminated. I’d personally rather keep the interest than to consistently win every auction.

EDIT:
In regards to gem v. nuggets, right now it’s beneficial to buyers who are getting their gems at a discount, whereas it’s not as good for sellers. I don’t think that the gap is too wide where it could be seen as harmful. Nuggets are more prized than gems & gems can be generated more quickly than nuggets.

I’d also love an open discussion on it, Glitch. :)

Ally

The reason we have a slowing interest rate is that the bank balances of our players varies greatly, from just a couple nuggets to just shy of two million — and it’s not just an outlier, we actually have a number of users with extraordinarily high bank balances. With the current interest rate, a 2 million nugget bank balance means getting about half a gem every day just for collecting interest.glitch

Here’s where I remember his comment from, back in December. It was in response to someone worrying about currency being too hard to acquire here I think? Anyway I guess those users “just shy of two million” are what I’m thinking of. That whole thread is a bit.. Not what this discussion is after, so I’m not trying to bring that whole discussion into this one. It’s somewhat relevant though.

Edit: Perhaps I was reading a bit more into it, or maybe I was remembering another comment and getting things mixed up, but I digress. I can’t think of what else might be making me remember a larger discussion of rich vs poor.

Oh glitch I know that. And I appreciate that. My comment was more along the lines of times that people flood the gem market with large amounts of gems for far lower prices then anyone else is willing to go because they don’t have bulk quantities to sell, basically shutting out other sellers. As I said, it is what it is. And there isn’t really any way to prevent such things. People are going to play how they want. It was more or less an explanation to Arintol how people are managing to bring in the big nugs when there’s a game cap and user shops only go so far.

Ally that’s why I suggested a need for a consistent dump with some sort of worthwhile incentive. Some kind of daily or something that might encourage the nuggetaires to dip into their bank accounts more often then a raffle or auction. I agree with glitch, some kind of a discussion on gold sinks would be great. I’d love some more content and activities on here.

Is there currently an interest cap? Or does the rate continue to increase the more gems you get? I’ve never really paid much attention to how the rate changes with each deposit so I’m just curious on that thanks raus for finding that

raus Hina
Thanks for posting that, I appreciate that. :) It helps put things into perspective. I don’t think there is a cap, I know there used to be, but that changed when the interest levels were revised. Anyway, if staff wants to combat the gaps between the rich and poor, then I think bank interest should be re-evaluated. I know I’m one of the richer players, but without any incentives to spend my money, I prefer to keep it in the bank & profit off of it. /shrug I think it might be difficult to raise interest with people like me, who aren’t really worried about high prized pets or anything.

glitch
To get back into the discussion of raffles, I can understand where that would discourage players. I’m trying to think of a way that both parties could be satisfied. I think auctions are a great idea, but perhaps you could do a double raffle? One capped, one limitless, where the user entering the raffle can only join one raffle or the other. This, of course, like my initial suggestion, would be a rare occurrence.

There is no theoretical cap, but in practice, there sort of is. This is what the interest rates look like (you can ignore the green line, that’s the old interest rate that we used before March 2014):

As you can see, it continues to rise as your balance increases, but after a certain point it rises so slowly that it doesn’t make a material difference. For example, at a balance of 2 million nuggets, your daily interest is 1720 nuggets. You’d need to double that to break 2000. 10 million would net you 2346 and 100 million would net you 2555.

I still don’t necessarily see a reason for a gold sink. Making a gold sink wouldn’t benefit the poorer players in any way, it would only take from the rich and maybe give meager benefits. A system like that could damage the economy because the richer players wouldn’t be able to/willing to buy from the poorer players.
Long story short, there will be rich players in every game, and there’s really no reason to take that money away from them. (Note, this is from a person who has somewhere between 10k-55k nuggets 95% of the time)

What a pretty custom Tamako! You did a wonderful job!

I’m dead broke, but hopefully my one free ticket will get me that pretty custom! ;3 Good luck to everyone! <3

I really agree with Arintol.  I’ve gotten above 100k nuggets once but that’s only because I was saving for two things at a time. :|  Don’t get me wrong, I know that my bank account is sad and empty because a majority of days I don’t bother maxing out because it’s tedious and annoying, and I don’t have the irl funds to sell gems or CC, or buy things with CC or gems.  But the point is that I don’t have a lot of nuggets in the bank, and I know a lot of other people don’t either.  So like, while LaughingStar’s ideas are neat, I also feel like they’d just make me angry were they actually implemented because, unless the money required was very small (in which case what’s the point?) I wouldn’t be able to take part.  It’s not like there aren’t things already taking money out of the economy (site shops, raffles, etc). 

Like Arintol said, there’s always gonna be rich players, but there’s always gonna be MORE poor players.  Something like an auction seems like a good idea (especially when paired with a capped raffle) because an auction is basically literally a way to say ‘hey, we want some money out of the economy, fight over this thing’. There can also be more than one raffle at a time to empty, potentially, more than one bank account at a time.  Poorer users know that they can’t win, so it’s sorta a bummer, but in comes the raffle to save the day!  Besides, raffles/auctions are exciting!  Something that’s actually, like, a site feature that rewards people for spending money just sucks because the poor players that can barely afford OotS most months get completely alienated in some unnecessary attempt to suck some nuggets from the site.  Maybe way don the line, but right now I definitely don’t think that’s really necessary.

-slams fist on table- I’d like to return to my age-old cry for some sort of game that involves gambling.

I’m going to sit this one out as well (other than the first free ticket). I’m just not able to sink more nuggets so soon after the last event. It’s a really beautiful coat though, Tama!

As for the gold sink debate, I tend to lean with Arintol. I feel it’s a risky move because it alienates poorer or ‘casual’ players if you start to introduce site content solely for the wealthy. I don’t really see the issue with some people being rich as long as they’re not allowed to abuse their funds by, say, purchasing extra raffle tickets beyond the cap. That’s just incredibly arrogant and elitist behavior to me. Unfortunately, it doesn’t shock me that it’s been happening.

I feel it’s a risky move because it alienates poorer or ‘casual’ players if you start to introduce site content solely for the wealthy.Auswren

I think you are misinterpreting what we mean by a gold sink. It is not specifically “solely” for the wealthy. A gold sink is simply a method that removes currency from the game. The site shops and raffle tickets are gold sinks - the nuggets are removed from play, basically deleted. Anyone can use a gold sink. But they are only effective if people use them.

I personally don’t think gold sinks are needed now since this place does seem to have one of the healthiest economies I’ve seen so far, but it is a good thing to think about for future occasions as the site grows in size (and maybe as an alternative to keep the economy going). I merely suggested a few ideas I’ve seen in way bigger sites when they were attempting to keep their economies going steady, like Gaia Online before everything went belly up with inflation and all they desperately needed were gold sinks. On that note, staff, please never sell nuggets for real cash like Gaia. That would definitely kill everything, and FAST 8I

EDIT: Also, Hina explained it the best above my reply.

I’m not saying the raffles or shops are bad. I just haven’t been considering them as gold sinks per-say, because there’s a limit to how much you can spend there. (Unless you want a few hundred of the shop items for some reason.)
Basically I don’t see any reason for the site to change right now. It might need a change at some point in the future, but right now the economy is fairly stable. When I first joined I was actually very impressed with how well thought out the business strategy for the site was/is.

First off I’d like to just say that seeing a discussion like this is super refreshing! A lot of smart ideas going on here, and its especially nice seeing staff give a lil behind the scenes and discuss things they’ve discussed!

Sinks are important, but I think the fact that a limited amount of Nuggets can be earned each day kinda balances things out for the site? I am newer so I may be 110% wrong… especially since some people have been saying that there are really rich users. Older players have accumulated more… which makes sense.

As far as currency sinks, they can be good but also annoying at times. I work for another petsite, a pretty small one and we have a Wishing Well where people can toss in points every day and wish for any item on site… it does tend to sometimes be only rich people that toss in a lot win it, and it discourages poorer people from playing, so there tends to be some animosity about it, which is sad. One of the things about it is that there is no cap on donations, so people can literally toss in a TON… I think that maybe if there was a max donation amount it would create less animosity.

It does work as a very good currency sink though! It removes a TON each day and helps rare items circulate…. it just tends to cause drama. :(

So that’s my thoughts on currency sinks… I have also seen them get really out of hand on places like Neopets, they make currency and item sink events fairly frequently and its never quite done right where everyone can enjoy it. @_____@

Whenever they are made, its a fine line and they need to be balanced well. I think a wishing well or something could maybe work here… but there’s not a ton of items on site so maybe it would saturate the site with too many nicer items.

I feel like the economy is probably fine without them for now… though as I said I’m new and maybe 1000% wrong :P

Why not have a raffle, at a close interval of time or perhaps at the same time, that everyone gets one free ticket and that’s IT?Losty

We’ve actually been mulling this one over too :D It could be a lot of fun!

• Ticket number 1592 (owned by Loon) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 3104 (owned by Vysal) wins a Sunshine Swirl Custom Ineki!
• Ticket number 1398 (owned by Gabriel) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4504 (owned by Dove) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 1184 (owned by lollobrigida) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 1457 (owned by Aloulore) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 144 (owned by R4gn0r0k) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4309 (owned by malkav) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4546 (owned by [@Tyrian]) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4055 (owned by Swan) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4200 (owned by Nanna) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!
• Ticket number 4140 (owned by Kali) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 2126 (owned by Draven) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 3477 (owned by Jordii) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 2733 (owned by Meri) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 1830 (owned by [@Yuni]) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 2459 (owned by Miranda) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 1953 (owned by baekhesten) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 545 (owned by mgrmgr) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 276 (owned by raus) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 1006 (owned by Teal) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 2525 (owned by Firkasa) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 953 (owned by Blossomfall) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 2963 (owned by 9lley) wins a Cave Capsule 2013!
• Ticket number 1378 (owned by [@Heresy]) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3670 (owned by Doomfish) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 2242 (owned by MmeLibertine) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3118 (owned by Marnakix) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 4259 (owned by [@ModestMouse]) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3977 (owned by [@Scarlettkitsune]) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 4595 (owned by Irefe) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 2096 (owned by Vulpen) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3307 (owned by Zero) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3730 (owned by LaraAelric) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 3713 (owned by Dracogryph) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 1149 (owned by hathor) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 897 (owned by Altair) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 2766 (owned by Shamise) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!
• Ticket number 1049 (owned by Crow) wins a Cave Capsule 2014!

Congratulations to those who won, prizes will be sent out shortly have been sent out! And to everyone else, I hope you have better luck next time!

Oh, I see that one of the grand prizes was won by staff… so here’s what we’ll do. I’ll draw one more ticket for an eleventh glowing changingshroom (putting everyone’s tickets back in the bowl first). So to be completely clear, people who have already won in this raffle are eligible to win this eleventh GCS (to be fair to the people who won a cave capsule).

So… stand by for one more ticket drawing!

EDIT:

• Ticket number 3349 (owned by luccamajere) wins a Glowing Changingshroom!