Alot of ideas that im presenting "takes off" premium/diamonds role in distribution of items as well as player involvement with it (which could be bad on game health too) and moves it into simple NPC. Some of them sound crazy, but they all would be very eficient in reducing amount of cash from game though and at least some ideas could be considered into implementation, however there are risks in implementation and this should be emphasized. At the bottom of the post i've collected the safest ways to reduce inflation and i believe they should be taken very seriously into consideration, while the rest can be treated more like a weird option that can find its way into game in one way or another.
Stuff like lottery wouldnt reduce amount of cash greatly, if there wouldnt be great rewards for big cash. There are easly dozens of people who have few kk pure cash and quite alot of players who owns even dozens of kk cash. Lottery for 5k wont reduce inflation. It is an option that could reduce inflation, but rewards inside must be shiny Pokemons, otherwise rich players wont be intrested in it, likely.
I think that great idea would be adding a lottery for just a master ball, perhaps only once a year for PA birthday? However, that lottery would have unlimited tickets costing 100k each at NPC and it wouldnt be visible by players how many tickets has been bough already as well as people wouldnt be able to choose their number, which would be generated randomly or the pick of a number would only be possible after "closing" ticket buyout - that way people would spent more money on this lottery than normally would, not knowing how big ticket pull is.
An option too is adding a "soft" master ball into game, with 10% catch rate, but not throwable on shinies/clones, perhaps bound to character. There are many hard to catch Pokemons like Karrablast, Dancie, Comfey and that kind of ball, with right price and availability control could also remove cash from server.
Alternative idea could be an easy monthly quest for shiny box that requires 250 lvl of character and in addition it would also require to pay 2? 3? kk cash and then another monthly for cloned box for 800k. That way you can get rid of off huge amounts of cash quickly but without giant overflow of super op Pokemons. As monthly timer and lvl requirement would slow things down. Some kind of weekly with cleffa & 250k is an option too.
Another option is adding boxes above as one-time quest reward which would at least result in poor players able to sell theirs boxes and partially redistribute cash gathered by rich.
An idea of reducing cash flow would also be increasing price of NPC items, especially revives, since they are the most used by high lvl players and would reduce cash earned from high level spots, but also perhaps Ultra Balls and bags with adding more bags unique to only NPC, as well as adding some outfits/addons/auras/decorations and any other expensive non-gameplay things for big chunk of cash, unique to NPC. Since increased price for UB could hurt lower levels an option would be a weekly/daily X amount of UB for current price and everything above would cost much more. This would result in getting less money from farming higher level spots.
An idea is also adding 'premium' kind of balls for high prices - higher than regular market prices, for example there is big intrest atm in dream balls with big dificiency of them, adding them for 0,3 - 0.4k each would move some interest off market, since they would always be available at NPC when a rich player needs it, some wouldnt care that much about market balls when they can get them from NPC anytime, however i believe there are better options as this change is, for many reasons, risky.
A good option is also increasing prices of a house rent, based on house SQM and city. Secondary benefit of it would be bigger rotation of houses, since the best and biggest houses are already occupied very heavly by the richest players with little chance and choice of them becoming available for new/returning players.
Another option is adding Pokemon boxes NPC with inq boxes for 1kk box 4 and poi for 300k, box 3 for 30k, etc.
Flint could sell all evo items, stones especially for high prices or just random held item/random evo itme, as well as submarine key/key to paradise/reins of unity, etc.
You can also make bank money account-wide and tax it with 0,1% above 5kk, 0,01% below 5kk taken with monthly balance. It wouldnt hurt players very much, but would consistently reduce money from server.
You can add small amount - 20? of Pokemon Cards exclusive to NPC, perhaps in a box. People already pay dozens of k for a holiday card box, so unique NPC cards, forbidden from trading (or with separate 1 month long cd) and from receiving them from mixer would result in big chunk of money spent on them by at least some players.
There is big deficiency of some TM's on server and prices of all went crazy in past few months - any mechanic that increases amount of TM's would be good for price drop, like buying specific TM case from NPC for X amount of cash could increase supply of certain deficient TM's while also reduce prices of other TM's from that case. Implementation of cooldowns/level requirements would help to prevent from TM's overflow.
Perhaps tokens earned from how many daily logins you got in specific month, exchangeable for specific TM could also be considered as an alternative option, it would help lower the prices and increase supply of rare TM's like Lunge or Doom Desire. These TM's could take 2-3 months of token collection, while some more popular like leaf storm could take a month.
There are many ways to reduce inflation but there needs to be taken steps in more than just one direction. Especially important in my opinion are:
- reducing amount of cash earned from 200+ respawns is in my opinion important - it could be via revive costs like above, it could be via decreased loot on these specific respawns, a nerf to amulet coin or any other method
- increasing house rents
- bank changes
- Pokemon cards NPC
- a way of increasing deficient TM supply
they are fairly neutral and safe to gameplay, players and balance/condition/health of the game, but takes an impact of at least slowing inflation.