I'm seeing a lot of great ideas and view points in this thread, and after having read through it a couple times, I believe that the coin economy, production economy, magic item economy, and gobbie economy are all very much interconnected. That may sound obvious to some, but I believe there are others who are focusing too much on just one aspect of the game's overall economy.
It seems that several chapters are taking different approaches to the problems listed here. But how do we all get on the same page? Does one chapter step forward as a guinea pig to see if these ideas work? Should each chapter "go it alone" and do their own thing? Or we make these changes game-wide so that we're all operating on the same playing field?
So far, and this is just my opinion, I've seen a few promising, low-risk ideas. Here's just a couple of them.:
1) Remove auto-maxout. Attain max XP for the weekend only by paying the 1 silver/BP at the end of each event, OR by pulling an NPC shift of 4-6 hours.
This is how old Nero Int'l used to do it, and I still think it's a good idea. Plus, it scales with a player's level, mitigating the issue of taxing the "Have Not's" unfairly. This system would promote at least one of the following benefits:
(a) Bring coins back into the chapter to account for the living costs and experiences that occur in-between events, or "training costs" (Whichever you prefer.)
(b) Encourage more people to NPC for a portion of their event.
(c) If they don't pay coins or NPC, it will help to reduce the level inflation that the game is experiencing.
If your APL is level 10, and you have 30 PC's, then that's potentially 300 gold returning to the chapter every event. If half of them decide to pull an NPC shift to get XP maxout, then that's still 150 gold coming back in, AND you've generated 60 hours of NPCing for the event. And if some players do neither of these, then you've at least helped to slow down the level inflation that the game is experiencing. It's win-win-win.
2) Impose more limitations on purchasing magical items OOG with gobbies, if not removing gobbie-bought MI's altogether.
Having so many magical items in the game doesn't just devalue the coin, production, or magic item economy; it devalues Magic itself. These are supposed to
be creations of wonder and might, and have turned into mundane commodities that most people end up buying just to "keep up with the Joneses." But beyond that, who wants to spend production skills on potions or scrolls, when a rendered magic item performs several magic spells a day with only one tag and one phys-rep? If I had my way, MI would only be found or created IG by players.
3) Everything that Morganne wrote.
Those are all great ideas, and I'd love to see them in action.
4) Inaryn's suggestion of putting out PP resources.
I think the idea has merit, as this form of treasure is only usable to crafters, who would pay the coin costs to utilize it, and put them closer to the forefront of the games PP item economy, which is where they should be. In terms of logistics, I'm a HUGE fan of all production logistics being performed outside of events. Instead of every player going to logistics at 6 pm on Saturday, creating a drain on the chapter's personnel and time, they would get both day's production at check-in and be done with it.
"But I want to make weapons/potions/scrolls/traps/poisons during the event as need be."
Let's face it, the majority of people aren't getting most of the PP items from that second evening. Between gobbie-bought items, and the first day PP skills, the vast majority of created/purchased PP items come in to game at the beginning of the event anyway. Besides, where's your anvil at? Or your alchemy lab? Or your explosives stockpile? Just do everything at once, and give the logistics people a break. It makes more sense anyway.
Auctions, IBGA resources and experiences, and so on are all great ideas as well, and I sincerely hope to see them utilized.