View Topic

So with a new term coming up, I wanted to hop on board with this and get people's opinions and ideas.  We've been talking currency-this and currency-that with no such thing even established here on Wintreath.  One of the biggest problems is having a balance between the things that earn people some Krones, and the things that cause people to lose them.  Since we can't have one side become bloated and fall ontop of itself with everyone being millionaires, there has to be a good number of ways to lose currency.

At the present, here's some ideas that I have, and if anyone has more ideas, definitely share them:

For makers, there's the simple ones to start:  Whenever someone creates a topic or posts, they earn a little bit of credits.  Not much, but just a bit.  This is mainly because whenever currency is integrated into a messageboard, that's usually how it goes, as that's generally how it's generated without manual input.

Naturally, another maker would be for when a member wins a bet from something such as the Arena or a game that allows it, such as the idea for Werewolf is happening.  Along with winning bets, members could also win credits when they win a contest or win a game, such as Werewolf or Spyfall.  It'd encourage more contests since there'd be a feasible prize.

Likewise, one that I've noticed 10KI does is random regional disasters that may happen, such as floods, earthquakes, or the like.  This can cause people to lose credits, or earn them, though it's generally a smaller amount.
--------------------------

For the Sinkers, there's a few ideas as well.  As I mentioned, there's the simple one of betting in games or events.  Winners of course would get a currency reward, but others would just lose the credits that they bet.  This could extend to having a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly lottery that people could bet in, and while the reward would be great for a certain number that may win, it could be a great sinker since, again, others would simply lose the credits they put in (it all going to the lottery/games account that would handle the betting/credit rewards).

As I mentioned, the random regional disasters could factor into this as well, causing people to lose money if their region is affected negatively.

Wintreath could also have casino games like slots, blackjack, and other various ones to sink more money into as well as reward winners.  The credits bet could range from smaller to a large amount, proving to be an effective sinker for members who like to gamble a lot to see if they can win a lot back.

Shops can be established to sell regional items, such as technological advances, agricultural improvements, and the like to "improve" nations.  They can also sell items at a high price that could affect a nation in regional disasters, giving them a higher chance that it would affect them positively.  Other non-regional/non-NS items could be sold as well...such as the establishment of shops that could sell RP-centric items for current/future Gathering Portal RPs.

Likewise, while Wintreath is not the most political region, it could still be established that candidates could spend credits on political propaganda such as campaign avatars/signatures to give out, and the like.  Also, members could set up Signature/Avatar or other types of shops where they create things for credits...both something for people to make and spend credits as well.  People could also use credits for yearly things (IE, 10KI had a time capsule that they did, where members donated credits and an item to put in the capsule, and then earned back those credits and more if they were still in the region in the next year), or other such purposes.

Those are the ideas that I currently have, and would love to see other ideas as well.  Ideally, I'd really love to see this almost-tired discussion of currency reach a reality soon.  But the only way that can happen is if there's a system in place that keeps that perfect balance of making and spending credits.

*pokes microphone* Hello? Is this thing on?  Surely there must be input/ideas for this considering the length of time this subject has been discussed...to the point that a Banking Bill was even attempted to try to get it jumpstarted.

I think regional currency could be interesting and spur activity, so I'm for it. The only reason I haven't really pushed for more betting in the Arena (and starting up the Fighting Pits) is that I don't yet have anything for the credits to be spent on, so exchanging credits to regional currency could help with that idea.

The only problem I see is that it could end up just existing for itself. Besides gambling and betting on games, which I'm sure people will still have fun with, there needs to be something to spend the money on. You've suggested NS items, RP shops, profile flair, and political campaigning swag, but what's the likelihood that people would be willing to sell or buy any of it? I think that question is critical for the success (and, first, establishment) of a regional currency.

It's always better to experiment and get a more hands on idea of how it will end up as opposed to just asking questions of how we think it will end up.

At best, it becomes a system that is widely successful, more ideas and activity come out of its existence, and Wintreath becomes more prosperous.

At worst, it sits there with no one taking advantage of its use, and the system is removed and we go back to where we were before...but at least we tried it out to see where we really stand with it outside of just talking about it.

At worst, we've put in a lot of time developing and implementing a system that isn't used. Gerrick hit the nail on the head as to why we haven't done this yet, and we all know without adequate sinks it's not going to work. If we're not spending the money on anything, why would anyone do things to make more of it?

I used to work with RPG design, and it's so much easier there...have character's equipment wear down so they have to pay to have it repaired, have them have thirst and hunger so they have to purchase or craft food and drink...hell, go the Diablo route and have item gambling. But it's so much more difficult when you're talking about forums where there are no characters and it would be undesirable to make people pay to do things that contribute to the community.

My suspicion is that we'll need to work on other areas and invent things for people spend their hard-earned Krone on...enhancing our RP capabilities site-wise might be one way to do that (have everyone make a Wintreath character for example), but there's no easy answers here.

I mean you could have forum areas cost krone to join and have certain ones that require a 'subscription' or something. I dunno

The idea of any VIP-type of area that you'd have to pay to enter sounds like a terrible idea for two reasons.

One being that if it's not an area worth checking out even (no activity, it's discussions you'd already see in other areas, etc...), nobody would even pay to enter it in the first place.

The second and most obvious being that the minute we start charging people to view areas on the forum, the less likely we'll get members that will want to stay.

They could be silly-fun areas. Further it is a sink that seems appropriate of the forums. We could 'charge' for things like the Adult Area, or membership in guilds as well. These would be entirely optional, but used for fun.

In fact for creating, and managing, Krones, in order to help stop inflation we could do something like the following:

• Each post has a chance of creating X amount of Krones (let's say 10 krones with a chance of 1/20)
• Each time a post doesn't pay out, the chances decrease by 1 (so a 1/20 chance becomes a 1/19 chance, 1/19 to 1/18, and so on)
• When a person does get a payout, their chances restart by taking the default chance and adding to it the value of the chance, with guaranteed being 0. So if you get it at the 1/20 chance, then you get a 1/40 chance next time. This should help slow inflation of the currency.
• Areas like the spamming forum should have either 0 chance to pay out or a very-very low chance (think 1/999 chance or something like that). This deincentivizes spamming.
• There is a total cap of Krones that can ever exist at one time. Say 20,000 or so. (Banned, deleted, and other disabled or unused accounts can simply just not count towards that)
• Perhaps the more active a user is and the more varied a user's activity is they have a better minimum chance of creating krones
• Over a long period of time (about a year or so) Krones may be freed up (removed from the account and allow them to be created again) if not actively spent. This encourages people to spend instead of keeping them for long periods of time.
• Currency that is spent on forum things, that aren't managed by an account either can go back into the generation pool OR be stored in a 'treasury' of sorts to be payed out to government members (Storting, Monarchy, Riksrad, Ambassadors, RP Organizers, ect.). This either incentivizes posting more or will incentivize the government more, depending upon what is desired.
• Potentially have the amount of Krones that a person have also factor into the chance of creating krones to further incentivize spending.
• If an account has the same IP as another one, only the older one can hold krones by default. If an account has an IP of a known proxy then it can not hold krones either. This makes it less worth-it to create an account to bypass any limits (Especially if the chance of getting Krones is tied into the amount of Krones you have). Admins and the like could intervene and allow an account to have, and store, Krone, but ideally this would require verification they are who they say they are first.

This way krones are never lost, only ever created or spent, and helps keep down inflation. It also makes posts valuable and we could even incentivize giving people Krones for things like making good posts, if necessary.

If we make it to where there are sinks, and we make spending the krones have a better payoff/worth more in spending, than keeping, then we incentivize spending them and thus push more people to be more likely to spend their wealth.

Sinker or not, I will not, and will never support charging people to access ANY area of the forums.  The adult area already has an application that people have to fill out and be accepted for.  To start charging for it as well is just stupid.

In no way is it appropriate for the forums, because we're not a place that says "you can only go here if you do this first."  The only reason the adult forum is an exception is because, well, it's an adult forum that we don't want minors accessing.  Adding a paywall behind forum access is in no ways a good thing, it's something to punish members who don't have any krones and reward members who have an abundance.

Outside of the Adult forum and private areas for the cabinet/courts, all areas should always be allowed to be accessed by anyone, and not hidden behind a paywall.  We're not a pay-to-play forum, and we should never become one.

-points to SA forums- They charge actually money to access their forums. Maybe there is a point to charging.

We're not SA.

We're not SA.

Besides, Something Awful is a company. The fee paid to access the forums is used to maintain the site and raise revenue for the owners.

However good things do come from there, like let's plays. Personally I think it might have a positive effect on our forums. Areas that aren't necessary to engage with the community, but are nice little extras. (Like, the adult area, for example). Further to be a member of the adult area you would have had to be around for a few months, so you would have gotten krones in the first place, and generally around 15 krones or so doesn't overly punish someone because by the time they have that much (and probably more) they would qualify for the adult area anyway.

Also things like guild membership could also cost some krones (again not much), after all you can still do things that the guild do outside of guilds. By making a small amount of areas of the forum require some krones we are also incentivizing people to spend their krones and also give those forums a bit of a 'status' as it were. To say I have been around long enough, and thus gotten enough krones, to qualify for this. Some of the forums could be a one time cost (like SA), other things could be like a subscription (for game reviews if someone wishes to do have it in a subscription area). It could be that certain things, like a RP hotel, also cost a few krones as well...

If Wintreath were a larger and much more active forum, then one can argue positivity.  However, when donations themselves in real currency are minimal, I forsee actual negative effects should we start actually charging to do things on the forums.  Shop items and gambling are different because they're silly little things.  Walling off areas behind paywalls is different because you're now forcing members to be able to pay a fee to post in that area.

In large forums, that may be alright because they can sustain themselves in terms of both activity and member count.  If a couple of members leave because they don't like the system, the forum survives because it still has pages of active members.

Wintreath isn't that place.  We have a handful of active members that we can't afford to lose, and implimenting any sort of paywall to actually do something will cause us to do just that.

I doubt any member would leave because they have to pay a fake currency (which should be somewhat easy to gain and doesn't actually cost real world money) to access a small area of the forums. The small, silly, things won't work because there lacks an actual incentive to do things in them. Further with my system we could incentivize posting in those areas by making the odds better for those areas to allow people to get a 'return' on their payment.

If you want things that actually matter then my idea works, if you don't care about making a system that is going to work decently then fine, don't take my idea, but if it doesn't work, don't say I didn't try.