Board Thread:Game Discussion/@comment-36180858-20190206153942/@comment-32545704-20190206170130

Regarding the value of gold, what they said is that even if reducing prices did significantly increase IAP (which they have said it won't, contrary to popular belief), they would still have to combat the increased amount of gold in the game due to more people making purchases. In other words, GC would become devalued (like when banks pump money into the economy) and prices would go up to compensate (inflation), which of course everyone would complain about.

I think FM's idea of a balanced economy is one where getting to 100% of anything is pretty much impossible. That's their prerogative. All the exploits, cheats, bugs, and some of FM's own programming errors, have meant they probably never achieved this, except maybe in the early days, and have been trying to correct the balance ever since. A balanced in-game economy to FM is like 100% completion to most players, you never actually get there but you keep trying anyway.