I've read quite a few threads on here and in general discussion about what can be done to stem the volatile energy market and rising energy prices. The way I see it the problem is that their are not enough end-game crown sinks and not enough people buying crystal energy. People with way too much crowns on their hands manipulate the energy market or hoard energy for fun. Now installing artificial crown sinks will mostly just anger players so I have come up with a sort of counter-intuitive solution. Now it may not make sense at first but please hear me out.

I propose that Three Rings should implement an in-game bank for players to store their crowns which pays out significant interest on a weekly basis. Now at first this may seem to only exacerbate the problem with the over-abundance of crowns but if done with the right controls a bank can function just as well as a crown sink as a crown generator.

Conditions for the bank:

1) Interest is paid each week based on the lowest amount ever stored in the bank for the week.

2) Leaderboard for most crowns stored in the bank (based on lowest amount for the week as per condition 1) with bonus interest for the top 5.

3) Tiered interest rates so that the more money you save in the bank, the higher your interest rate.

Much like a real bank such conditions discourage people from taking out money but instead to store as much as they can in the bank. Now I can't say much for how well a virtual bank would work out but if you look at their real-world equivalents it seems like banks do a pretty good job of making sure people keep their money in the bank.

Part of the problem with crowns is that they don't change much in value, people trade it in for crystal energy because CE can be expected to increase in value over time. Now by allowing players to store their crowns in a bank which pays out interest you have created a second more sure way for players to increase their wealth over time.

Condition 2 instills a sense of competition in players to see who can store the most crowns in the bank with a tangible reward attached to the end. This at the same time discourages the richest players from ever taking money out of the bank to use in manipulating the energy market and at the same time encourages energy hoarders to sell their energy on the market.

Rationale for condition 3: The tiered interest rate will essentially make each crown be worth more to a wealthy high level player than to a poor low level player due to the difference in potential interest gain from that crown. This will make wealthy players less likely to spend crowns when energy prices are high and allow low level players to be more likely to spend crowns even when energy prices are high.

Now some may say that with bonus interest it could potentially be next to impossible to catch up to the first placer in the leaderboards and all I have to say to that is you can always buy crystal energy with real money and sell it to catch up. Which, guess what? Is exactly what this game needs and the game market needs -- more people buying crystal energy.