There are a few things here.

a. Trying to make Subeta (or any game that isn't EVE) have a parallel to the real world is not really possible. In the real world you have things like rent, food, water, taxes, etc, things that you don't want to pay for but you have to pay for. Those are the 'sinks' that most people spend the majority of their money on. We don't have those kinds of things on Subeta because it's a game and they aren't fun. Adding realism to the economy for the sake of realism isn't good. b. Inflation isn't a bad thing. As long as we continue putting out items that are on the high end that users can spend their sP on, and new users can aim at getting eventually, we are doing things correctly. The value of sP will always be worth less year over year, because we're a game. Look at every other online game and you'll see that this is just how it goes. WoW adds features that give out gold, but also add things that require gold, and as long as you never feel 'poor' the game is doing it right. c. This is the reason that alternate currencies work so well. If we can remove things from being tied to the value of sP (except that obviously the items you purchase from those shops will be sellable for sP) then people who have 1B+ on their account still have to participate to get those things. d. Adding "a new boutique" that takes sP wouldn't be that much of a sink because we'd have to dedicate people to drawing items for it frequently which means they're taken from elsewhere. I don't think this is a good solution.

I don't anticipate lowering (by a lot) the amount of sP that goes out. I'm watching the value of items (I really like what happened after the questathon!) and the amount of sP going out daily.

The thing is - the people with 3 billion sP aren't going to spend it on an item. Someone who has collected that much hasn't done so because they like to have sP, they've done it because they don't like to spend sP. We've noticed this with any sink we've added aimed at the people with billions of sP - they typically don't bother.

Things that would help inflation but would make users really mad. A. Taking a % tax from each user shop purchase (something low, 1-5%) B. Remove interest from bank accounts. This was one of those 'copied from neopets' features that really just results in people with billions of sP getting extra sP every day. Millions of sP are created here daily.

Yup! It's just a stupid way that millions get into the economy daily, for basically no reason. In real life a bank makes investments with your money, hence the interest, here there is no central bank making investments. Your money isn't being used to fund anything, why are you getting a profit for it?

I actually did that a few days ago ;)

I actually like where you're going with this. There are a lot of features that currently cost CSC that I think could be switched to sP for a few reasons. One, they aren't actually profit drivers (that is mostly collections + delish + CWs) and don't get a ton of traffic / purchases. I'm interested to see how much they'd be used if we made them cost sP.

I also think customization is a good route to get some sP out of the system as well. Custom user icons are a cute idea (and something we toyed with ages ago as a CS feature!) as well as custom titles.

I don't even think it really drives money away, people who would have spent that 25csc will just spend it on something else. I do think it changes the psychology when the price goes from 25 of something to 800,000 of something, though.

Right, it'll just cost sP instead of CSC ;)

Why not just sell CSC for sP then, in that case? I just hate the idea of adding both to anything because then we're essentially setting sP->CSC prices.

It's not the same exact outcome, though. In one instance (buying from the main shops) the entire purchase leaves the economy. In the other instance (purchasing from user shops) NONE currently leaves the economy, because it's just being traded between users. Instead with a small flat tax (3%) a little bit of that sP would leave every time something is purchased from user shops.

I also really don't think that it'll result in any changes in the amount of quests that people do. You won't get a notification, it'll just be built into the price. Prices in user shops would probably raise around 3% to compensate, which woudln't be the end of the world considering there is a lot of devluation in items anyway.

Also btw I've been talking about a tax on the shop owner (aka 3% taken out of the profit) not on the user the whole time, I realize I've been saying sales tax, oops!

Again - outside of the news post whenever we push this change you won't even know it's there as a customer. You'll buy items from user shops exactly the same way, and the owner will be shown how much they've had taken from their total profits.

What's a little bit of community backlash :P

This is one of the STUPID things that I did when I started Subeta. The slots game doesn't take any sP away, every sP you spend on it goes into the jackpot for someone to win.

Hey guys, this topic is unlocked, I feel like we had a really good discussion going on here!

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