It's not a big bother to me or anything, but it just occurred to me considering past efforts to fix the game's economy. I know it's helpful for newcomers and low levels for affording potions and such (Though the Job training quests help a lot with that too), but other than that, doesn't 4x Meso Rate kind of just promote inflation? I'm sure it's hardly comparable to the amount of mesos gained from selling equips, but it'd still contribute. Are there any other reasons I am missing on why we shouldn't just set the Meso Rate to 1x? I'll likely request this thread to be closed if there's a vastly important reason I forgot about.
There are many things that factor into inflation. The 3% sales tax on meso trades affects inflation rate. because it is a fixed percentage even if you pay more, the tax is fixed. A little bit of inflation is good for the economy. By lowering the meso rate won't you cause deflation? A general, persistent fall in prices, can have severe negative effects on growth and economic stability. Less money in the economy means less demand which causes prices to drop. People save money as it becomes harder to acquire. leech and items go down in price. This is the start of an economic crash. Less money gives more consumer power. If you had a bunch of WS/CS and watched prices slowly drop, would you settle for 470m and liquidate your items because meso is worth more as supply of it decreases to 1x. As more money is saved, less money is spent, further decreasing aggregate demand.
Great insight, Phalacy! Do you think the Meso Rate (The amount of mesos that are dropped from mobs) being changed to 1x would be enough to cause such a drastic reaction? If I am recalling correctly, most all mesos earned in the server are from selling Equips dropped from mobs. I personally don't feel like it'd be a large enough of a decline to start hoarding, but you seem far more informed. Do you think it'd be better overall to keep the Meso Rate at 4x?
The Meso rate is something I have been curious about too. We implemented some extra logging a while back to get a better insight about how much Meso comes from where, mainly to figure out exactly how much Meso is gained from NPC'ing, so that we are able to make better judgements when it comes to adjusting drops. So here's some data to help with this thread: 23,668,042,271,438 Mesos gained from NPC'ing items since the beginning of the year. 2,105,304,955,671 Mesos gained from looting Meso since the beginning of the year.
Wow that's some really interesting insight on how the economy runs! Did you guys keep tabs on how much the 3% tax takes out of the ecconomy as well? That can provide an even clearer look on the inflation rate of the server. As the only other big money sink after tax trading are shops, mainly the FM shop which eats up the most money out of all shops in the server, but i doubt it clears a segnificant amount of money when compared to the tax trade (though i would be interested in hearing if you guys check the money used by that shop as well). Also, i would love to know if its possible track how many WS and CS change hands, as each time they do, it's practically a 500m tax evasion that you can track. But wow, 25 trillion meso printed in half a year, that's some scary amount of money to handle.