There's a pattern I keep seeing across RP servers trying to break past a few thousand concurrents: they don't stall from a technical ceiling, they stall from an economy ceiling.

Here's what breaks first, in order:

• Under ~1,500 concurrent, most economies are simple enough that manual balancing (nerf this item, buff that job) keeps things stable.

• 1,500–3,500, currency sinks stop keeping pace with currency generation. If you haven't built deliberate sinks (property upkeep, consumables, cosmetics with real scarcity), inflation quietly wrecks the new-player experience — a week-one player can't afford anything a month-one player can.

• Past 3,500, the failure mode shifts again: your top 1% of players/factions start accumulating enough in-game power or currency to warp the entire server's balance, and casual players churn out because they can't compete.

Most servers that plateau permanently in the 3,000–5,000 range aren't hitting a player cap or a performance wall. They're hitting an economy design wall that was fine at low scale and silently breaks at high scale.

If you're planning to push past 5,000 concurrent, model your currency sinks and whale-scaling curve before you need them, not after your economy is already broken.

Curious what sink mechanics other operators here are running — drop your concurrent count and how you're handling inflation.