2012-02-28, 02:46 AM
If there's a concern about players with little money being unable to get potions, there are a number of things that could overcome it. People with a small enough of mesos wouldn't be affected or would be affected less, an event NPC could explain what happened through a quest and could reward the player with a stack of untradeable power elixirs, etc. Anyone with a mule with less than 100k, for example, isn't really the target anyway, and no one would know the deflation attack would be coming, so no one would bother to create hundreds of mules just to try to keep their mesos by spreading them very thin (who would anyway if it took hundreds or thousands of new characters?). Players wouldn't even know the exact amount to cap at either.
It's like the cinder block that broke the anemic camel's back.
If things were right, potions WOULD have an effect. Potions are the only truly necessary commodity in this economy. Other things that people spend money on are luxaries, but potions, like food in the world, are entirely necessary. Imagine if the real world were like the Maple World. Every person who worked for a living created money by working. They're not paid from an employer who themselves has revenue, the money is just generated out of thin air. And then the people take their money and what do they spend it on? Food? No, food costs almost nothing when they buy it from the grocery store in New Leaf City. Instead, they stockpile it and it builds up for years on end. They save it to buy things to help them work better or faster. Eventually the car they want to use to get to work more easily, the car that used to cost them a year's salary, now has a market-value higher than they'd be able to get at their job if they worked ten life times. Because the market is saturated in currency and nothing is removing it. It just pours in incessantly every day while people work for a living, nothing ever taking enough out, so it just builds up in the market. The only way to make enough money to get the car every player wants is to game the stock market. Buy low, sell high. Over and over. Make smart investments, sell them at the best time for the best price. Eventually they MAY have a sum of money that originally came from hundreds of other players working for a living. It's all amassed and now they can afford their new car. They buy it and it's great! And then the next week a new car comes out completely unannounced and the previously new car now has a resale value of roughly 0.
A bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but the point is: to simply MAINTAIN, CONSERVE the balance as it is (or was), the mesos coming out (via sinks like potions) have to match the mesos coming in (such as from monster drops). Keep creating money out of thin air without ever destroying enough of it and eventually each individual currency unit becomes essentially worthless. Every time the US government prints money, you know what they do? They collect some and destroy it. They have to, because if they don't, continuously creating money makes each unit worth less and less until they're, well, worthless. This has happened in the real world in Zimbabwe... and it has happened in MapleStory too. It happens in every MMO, to be honest, but most games do a better job of pulling currency out, I think. MapleStory has been atrocious at it.
edit: read this article about hyperinflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation
DRK Wrote:Except that I think the economy is so screwed up because of hackers. Potions are really negligible, actually. They help to take away some of the mesos in the economy like tax does except on a much lower scale. I don't think they would actually have any impact on the economy.The economy is screwed up because it's had mesos being poured into it for years on end without them coming out at an effective rate. Some of it is from botters, especially lately, but legitimate players have contributed probably more overall in the lifetime of the economy simply due to outnumbering the goldfarming hackers. The potential for turning in duplicated items for 10m mesos is just piling on a problem that was already terrible, especially since it's hackers duplicating, but presumably non-hackers who bought them in MTS or something turning them in for mesos.
It's like the cinder block that broke the anemic camel's back.
If things were right, potions WOULD have an effect. Potions are the only truly necessary commodity in this economy. Other things that people spend money on are luxaries, but potions, like food in the world, are entirely necessary. Imagine if the real world were like the Maple World. Every person who worked for a living created money by working. They're not paid from an employer who themselves has revenue, the money is just generated out of thin air. And then the people take their money and what do they spend it on? Food? No, food costs almost nothing when they buy it from the grocery store in New Leaf City. Instead, they stockpile it and it builds up for years on end. They save it to buy things to help them work better or faster. Eventually the car they want to use to get to work more easily, the car that used to cost them a year's salary, now has a market-value higher than they'd be able to get at their job if they worked ten life times. Because the market is saturated in currency and nothing is removing it. It just pours in incessantly every day while people work for a living, nothing ever taking enough out, so it just builds up in the market. The only way to make enough money to get the car every player wants is to game the stock market. Buy low, sell high. Over and over. Make smart investments, sell them at the best time for the best price. Eventually they MAY have a sum of money that originally came from hundreds of other players working for a living. It's all amassed and now they can afford their new car. They buy it and it's great! And then the next week a new car comes out completely unannounced and the previously new car now has a resale value of roughly 0.
A bit of a roundabout way of getting there, but the point is: to simply MAINTAIN, CONSERVE the balance as it is (or was), the mesos coming out (via sinks like potions) have to match the mesos coming in (such as from monster drops). Keep creating money out of thin air without ever destroying enough of it and eventually each individual currency unit becomes essentially worthless. Every time the US government prints money, you know what they do? They collect some and destroy it. They have to, because if they don't, continuously creating money makes each unit worth less and less until they're, well, worthless. This has happened in the real world in Zimbabwe... and it has happened in MapleStory too. It happens in every MMO, to be honest, but most games do a better job of pulling currency out, I think. MapleStory has been atrocious at it.
edit: read this article about hyperinflation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation