I like the idea of pledging like said.

It's kind of like when I sell necklaces I've made to people, custom necklaces sell way better than the stuff I've already made and then try to sell. I know it's a totally different situation, but I think it's the same idea; I feel like people are more inclined to want to spend currency on something if they feel like they had a hand in making it happen.

It's just a theory though x)

A little late to the party here, but I had a thought so I thought I might as well put it out there. Since you added more separate eyebrow and nose items, I keep hitting the slot limit for the face before I'm done and it's annoying. I don't have a GA right now, so the limit is five, with GA it's six I think... so eyebrows + eyes + nose + mouth + makeup + one accessory is it. And I'd like to layer more of those things. Maybe there could be 2-3 more slots available, with the price being higher each time?

I would pay for this too, though I thought the slots were lower, like 2 without GA and 3 with GA? which is stupid really with nose/mouth/eyes being almost a must now minimum with the cool new wearables.

is confused Did this thread change to how to get more players or are we still talking about sinks? I skipped to the end and read the last page and did a double-take. If we're done talking about sinks you can ignore this.

Expand the Recycle Beast currency exchange to other currency grantors. There already is a banker-it's a MOritking right? She could offer them up with an outrageous or moderate agio. I spend a lot of sP to other players to buy other currencies from them. Doing that is not a sink, it spreads them around and back into play. Create a currency exchange like you already have in the Recycle Beast for every single currency. I would burn my sP to get those currencies to buy the things those currencies buy.

Create a direct-to-site sP color, one more expensive than you already have in the Millionaire Center. Sophie the Battle Coliseum Challenger would create it with her paint brushes? Create a direct-to-site sP species. Euclid or Ian could offer it like Experiment and Nuclear are? Already we have a direct-to-site CSC species, the Neela, and a Miracle Potion II.

I dunno how flexible the Forum Title slot is, but make Titles purchaseable like CWs are. Submit 20 Million sP get the right to create ten copies of an item that will grant each of the ten users who use it the exact same phrase. It gets used up, stuck to their account somehow like a labelmaker. The NPC that runs Stick It (Rumi?) is all about the communications so she could run this.

Elwood could deliver clandestine site buffs with his pizza. It shows up as a random event option to buy during holidays. You get to purchase with sP extra atebusdances or survivalsmooches or trickortreats...and a random exclusive pizza to feed your pet (gotta keep up appearances).

Raise wholesale prices by a little bit. Last time this was tried it did deflation real good so much so that SubetaTeam had to occasionally prop up prices. (I thought this was silly since the goal was deflation, but that's what happened) Last time this was tried people avoided this VAT by vending more, but this is no longer possible so raising prices doesn't have to be so severe.

The whole point of sP sinks is to remove sP from rich accounts. Raising the restock prices in the NPC shops would hurt the poor and new players.

Those are the limits without any extra slots. Before you could add more with an item from the Cash Shop, and now in the beta wardrobe you can add up to three more a month for 75k apiece. That's perfectly reasonable for most layers I think, but there's too many items you want to use at once for the face compared to everything else. Like, I'm not even layering eyeshadow or lips or anything, but I hit the limit on an avatar where I wanted to have two eyes layered + lashes (to tone down the expression) + eyebrows (cause neither of those eyes had brows!) + dungeon crawler compact + mouth + nose. That's 7 face items. I'd pay some more per month to use more items, and I figure monthly costs are good SP sinks.

the initial post doesn't say that so I missed this idea.

The traditional way of dealing with this in the real world is progressive taxation. Right now savings accounts and shop tills are tax-free. If Phoenix came in and taxed these randomly it would be very effective. (in real life the government then uses this money for safety net programs, which the quests here kinda act as)

Just dumping sP voluntarily? Hmm.

I know for myself, I love Achievements ridiculously. Make a potlatch Achievement. "I destroyed IksP", and then make tiers. Make an "I destroyed 10KsP" and then make tiers. Make an "I destroyed 100KsP" and make tiers. The only thing you get would be a Forum Title or even just the smugness of having the Achievements? It would be the poorer-rich-user's version of the Delete an Ether.

Quests used to be big fat money losers if you did anywhere near all of them. I did my 1000 quests for Saggi and Cinthia and Maleria back when they SUCKED. Create a new quest grantor, say Merana? She will appear on a damp rainy day as a Random Event and will summon you like the Oracle does. Merana's evil, so she charges you a LOT of sP just to have an audience with her. The quest hasn't even started yet. Let it be known with a warning by Oracle when you approach that you REALLY SHOULDN"T DO THIS and you WILL WASTE YOUR SP. Most of the time it'll be like Jhudora at Neopets: you get poison or the offer to curse your pets Hydrus or gold trinkets to throw in the sea or islander face-painting or water balloons. Occasionally you get something useful or interesting like a Forum Title or an HA Skin. But the goal and the main prize would be the Achievement tiers.

I sincerely hope they don't tax shop tills. It's hard enough to get the Shop Till Saver achievements without someone reaching in there and taking your money (and yes, I already have all the tiers of that achievement, so I'm not complaining on my own behalf).

Yes!!!!! I would pay plenty for the privilege of sticking myself. Its one of the few sP sinks I've read and would really use a lot!

I would pay a ton of sP for an Infinity Activity Center, something that acted like an Infinity Berry but was a toy that doesn't break.

I am all for paying a fee to stick stickers to yourself. And paying extra for more than minimum layer slots. (There are never enough face slots. Never.)

Well, a % tax is going to hit those who have the biggest shops (I don't think it's unreasonable to say these belong to the richest players) the most. If you're only starting out, is losing 25k sP in every 1m you make really going to hurt you? I'd say no. The veteran player who earns 10m sP is going to see 250k sP less every day. It'd be better as a progressive tax, of course, but I don't think that could work with the site mechanics.

Don't forget the whole point of an sP sink is to stop the cataclysmic rise in inflation which, in the long run, is going to hurt new players more - compare the price of CSC today to the price of CSC 3 years ago - as a new player, it then feels a lot more unattainable, and this is directly the result of inflation.

User-to-user interactions are just a really, really big problem, where the sP is being 'multiplied' and the total amount of sP is spiralling upwards as a result (every time you do a quest buying from user shops, more sP is added to the system without consequence).

Realistically I guess it's never going to happen because of the level of outrage that'd occur. People were hysterical about not being able to haggle off a couple of hundred sP, even, without being able to see the bigger picture. It'd just be a great step is countering the constantly rising prices. The other way would be to lower the amount of sP going out - like by lessening quest payouts, for example. I think Subeta needs to be a lot bolder in their steps if they're serious about decreasing inflation - from what we've seen so far, I'd say they aren't. CSC is only going to go up and up and up at this point.

(geez this is long sorry)

Well the whole point is to reduce the amount of sP in the system and, if anything, thanks to rising prices, it's easier to get the shop till achievements with each passing day. :) Any moves to reduce the level of inflation are inadvertendly going to make it harder to get the achievements.

And I'd say it would put new people off playing if they always lost 25K in every million they made from their shop. After all, shops would still be taxed if there was less than a million in the shop till.

The real cause of CSC inflation is that there aren't many CSC gift cards for sale these days. I looked up the 1000 CSC gift card and there's only three instead of the dozens there used to be. One is at 52 million and the other two are at 52.5 million.

People have made umpteen suggestions about what they'd be willing to spend millions of sP on. Even if they were all brought in there's no guarantee that the price of CSC gift cards would come down. It needs several dozen players trying to get sales to do that.

I'd spend a ton of sP on minions and beanbags. That's pretty much it.

But I like this idea from on page 2

• Make an "I Donated SP!" achievement. Give me someplace to donate money too (Free Food clinic? Adoption center? One for each place maybe!) with different tiers. 50k, 100k, 500k, 1mil, 5mil, 10mil, 50mil+. Add neat items and titles. I'd buy em all. Can't get much more sp sinky then that. Kinda like that "Save the Wheels" event that Neopets did a few years ago.

Still waiting on the option for multiple minions for pets gets sP ready

Is shop 41 All That Glitters considered a shop that's harmful to new users? I ask because the wholesale prices at this shop are higher than shop 32 Accessory Bin, that also sells jewelry. Does ATG remove sP from the site, or do folks just not shop there? I know I do because I've got the sP to drop on it.

If ATG is not harmful to new users, then Subeta could introduce another shop in sP like it for something else. A Gourmet Bistro in addition to the Food Shop, a Patisserie in addition to The Bake Stop. It doesn't necessarily have to be either of those. (There's already something like both in Atebus, only those shops take a different currency(ies), Cog Trinkets.)

I don't think the shop is harmful to new users, but at the same time, I don't really think it gets much business.

Looking at quite a bit of the items that the shop sells, the prices seem pretty close to what they sell for in ATG. The new buff is pretty good though, especially for users looking to grab items to put in their wardrobe.

I think a gourmet food shop or even a "college level" bookstore (higher priced books) would work much better since they would be getting consumed, and possibly needed by more that one pet

[edit] forum point woo.

If the sinks aren't draining enough, then it's time to cut the tap. The solution will end up being the removal of Saggi (since nowadays we have plenty of shiny games and the other quests are actually worth doing now) if all we can come up with is mere stop gaps that delay the inevitable.

it used to be that Elixirs in Shop 15 Magic Shop sold like what ATG jewelry sells for now, so you have a good point here. TPTB propped the prices of Elixirs up by increasing the wholesale price. There was still such an excess that they needed to also mess with the Pawn Shop and limit Vending and make quest grantors ask for them. I made a valiant try for a few months by restocking there like mad to make elixirs cheaper to the public. I made a lot of sP but was not able to win and I'm not willing to work that hard for sP long-term. The price supports for these items does stand.

It is true that Elixirs are consumable while jewelry is not. I dunno how many people re-color their pets. I did this a ton when I was new here but now I do not. But I can see how price supports and vending limits and quest grantor requests might be able to prop up the value for an item that is not readily consumable.

I read to all of my pets because they all fight in the Coliseum but only feed one pet. Having a Gourmet pet is not otherwise-useful like having a well-read one. I love your idea of the College Bookstore. Maybe a Sebastian Phoenix University bookstore extension in Riverside?

Or do the opposite, retire the games, maybe. Or, cut the amount they are bringing in the economy.