Inflation and how it affects the current player base as well as potential new players

[aarrgggggg]

I will start this off with my own personal experience playing Arcane Legends.

I started playing AL in season 4 as a warrior. As a new player my first goal was to get to the current lvl cap (31). Along the way i bought 1 bundle with auction slots and the guardian set from the store using 70 plat i had saved up by doing free offers (game downloads). Eventually i made it to the current lvl cap and i set a new goal for myself, i wanted the current mythic lvl 31 pavise (at the time was roughly 1.5m gold)

And so i started merching and continued farming, i started with cheap items many times only making between 1 and 5 thousand per item but eventually i achieved my goal and bought the pavise. My next goal was to find a good clan with which i could start to farm elites, By chance i was asked in town by lucaspeixoto if i wanted to join him for an elite run as they had three in their party and needed one good warrior, i said yes and after the run i was asked to join C.U. which i think was the best decision i ever made in game was joining CU.

Now i had achieved my first goal of a pavise, and my second goal of finding a great cap lvl clan.Now it was time for a new goal, so my new goal became mythic armor and helm (which at the time was about 5.5m-6m for the set) so i merched and farmed my way until i achieved that goal, never spending a dime on plat, only doing free offers.

So after about 4-5 months of playing ALOT i had achieved all my mythic dreams, i had myth weapon and myth armor and helm, all the best items in game, with the exception of arcane.

Now how does my personal experience tie into inflation you ask????

Simply put new players and non plat spenders no longer have attainable goals, when i started at lvl 31 cap i had the pavise carrot dangling in front of me,
pushing me to attain my goal of a mythic weapon which at the time 1.5m was a totally realistic and reasonable goal to have. The amount of income a new player can make now is the same if not less than in season 4 when i started and yet those goal like items are 4 or 5 times more expensive now.

Now however new players no longer have that carrot dangling in front of them, last seasons mythic weapons are still close to 20 million, which is fairly unattainable to lots of veteran players nevermind the new players just starting out. and lets be honest they are not even this seasons weapons, they are last seasons weapons making them overpriced outdated items.......

2 factors make it this way

# 1 There are not enough mythic weapons in circulation anymore, season 4 had a more reasonable number of them in circulation which drove prices down

#2 The whales forget about the little guy and think that since they can afford them everyone can, alternatively they overprice them on purpose effectively forming an elitist group in game which alienates everyone else.

STS Make enough of these new mythics drop so they will at least be priced more fairly for your average player

Whales remember if u alienate the little guys too much they will all quit and there will be fewer and fewer people in your guilds and on your friends list that are actually active.


Heed my warning

[tharidom]

20mill is a lot for veteran players who cant put all their time in gaming:/

[Schnitzel]

I started this game i dunno seasons but lvl cap current (41)

even 100k items = out of my budget

[Kakashis]

I will start this off with my own personal experience playing Arcane Legends.

I started playing AL in season 4 as a warrior. As a new player my first goal was to get to the current lvl cap (31). Along the way i bought 1 bundle with auction slots and the guardian set from the store using 70 plat i had saved up by doing free offers (game downloads). Eventually i made it to the current lvl cap and i set a new goal for myself, i wanted the current mythic lvl 31 pavise (at the time was roughly 1.5m gold)

And so i started merching and continued farming, i started with cheap items many times only making between 1 and 5 thousand per item but eventually i achieved my goal and bought the pavise. My next goal was to find a good clan with which i could start to farm elites, By chance i was asked in town by lucaspeixoto if i wanted to join him for an elite run as they had three in their party and needed one good warrior, i said yes and after the run i was asked to join C.U. which i think was the best decision i ever made in game was joining CU.

Now i had achieved my first goal of a pavise, and my second goal of finding a great cap lvl clan.Now it was time for a new goal, so my new goal became mythic armor and helm (which at the time was about 5.5m-6m for the set) so i merched and farmed my way until i achieved that goal, never spending a dime on plat, only doing free offers.

So after about 4-5 months of playing ALOT i had achieved all my mythic dreams, i had myth weapon and myth armor and helm, all the best items in game, with the exception of arcane.

Now how does my personal experience tie into inflation you ask????

Simply put new players and non plat spenders no longer have attainable goals, when i started at lvl 31 cap i had the pavise carrot dangling in front of me,
pushing me to attain my goal of a mythic weapon which at the time 1.5m was a totally realistic and reasonable goal to have. The amount of income a new player can make now is the same if not less than in season 4 when i started and yet those goal like items are 4 or 5 times more expensive now.

Now however new players no longer have that carrot dangling in front of them, last seasons mythic weapons are still close to 20 million, which is fairly unattainable to lots of veteran players nevermind the new players just starting out. and lets be honest they are not even this seasons weapons, they are last seasons weapons making them overpriced outdated items.......

2 factors make it this way

# 1 There are not enough mythic weapons in circulation anymore, season 4 had a more reasonable number of them in circulation which drove prices down

#2 The whales forget about the little guy and think that since they can afford them everyone can, alternatively they overprice them on purpose effectively forming an elitist group in game which alienates everyone else.

STS Make enough of these new mythics drop so they will at least be priced more fairly for your average player

Whales remember if u alienate the little guys too much they will all quit and there will be fewer and fewer people in your guilds and on your friends list that are actually active.


Heed my warning

Yeah I agree that the goals are getting harder and harder to obtain once your set one. I only recently completed one of my long term goals and it took me since nordr season to accomplish.

[Fauksuras]

I agree and you gave the perfect example with your story.

I am in a similar situation. There's nothing else left for me to get since the gap is huge and I don't expect new mythics to be cheaper. I have gold saved up and some hoarded stuff. It won't be enough anyway.

In other MMOs I could get by with gold from quests and loot but let's be honest the gold drops here suck (32g from a boss?) and the way the items are made sucks, usually only on type of item is worth something while the rest are worth crap(IE Brutality/assault) and that item usually ends up being super rare (which isn't a bad thing) but usually in the unsuccessful runs a lot of gold goes into potions in turn Making you poorer.

Maybe if they devised a system where making different types of builds was rewarded, the other types of items (versatility, security etc) would have some worth, but in this game its damage or nothing.

[jiph]

And also sts should have mythic weapons purchaseable with gold or plat in store cause this guys really op the mythic and arcane weapons in cs I think it will be more fair if everyone had a chance to get mythic and arcane gear more easily instead of trying to open locks to get a chance at 1

[uunknownn]

i hope sts take a very göod look to ths thread.i stop playing endgame because mythic or arc. items are nearly impossible to attain fr ordinary players.

[Zynzyn]

The gold that dropped from locked crates has been reduced so that the system does not have more gold. I think the max gold payouts from crates gave new players an opportunity to atleast have some gold for gear, weapons etc. But now they cant even have that. It has further widened the gap between the elite super rich and the average player. What was required was something that could distribute the AL economy's gold around more evenly.

I do applaud the new gold sink in the form of new titles/ untradeable vanities. Sts made a good move here to control inflation and I hope there are more new updates like this.

But may I ask what would giving arcane shards and limited OP pets to the already rich merchants (who have bought their way into the event LB) achieve? It encourages the divide between the elitist small group and the common players. Its a vicious circle. Because of these means unintentionally provided by sts, the richest ones in the game will continue to monopolize and over-price items. New players and average players are compelled to buy items at cut-throat prices because of this and the rich get richer. It creates more inflation.

[Kakashis]

The gold that dropped from locked crates has been reduced so that the system does not have more gold. I think the max gold payouts from crates gave new players an opportunity to atleast have some gold for gear, weapons etc. But now they cant even have that. It has further widened the gap between the elite super rich and the average player. What was required was something that could distribute the AL economy's gold around more evenly.

I do applaud the new gold sink in the form of new titles/ untradeable vanities. Sts made a good move here to control inflation and I hope there are more new updates like this.

But may I ask what would giving arcane shards and limited OP pets to the already rich merchants (who have bought their way into the event LB) achieve? It encourages the divide between the elitist small group and the common players. Its a vicious circle. Because of these means unintentionally provided by sts, the richest ones in the game will continue to monopolize and over-price items. New players and average players are compelled to buy items at cut-throat prices because of this and the rich get richer. It creates more inflation.

Well said. Contests should just be a lottery system

[aarrgggggg]

Dont let this thread die its important, because mythic weapons is what draws the crowd to this game and when they become overpriced it pushes everyone who doesnt have 100 million gold further away from AL

[Alhuntrazeck]

Double odds mythic weekend would fix prices, IMO 10m for a mythic staff is too much, the mythic gun was about 1.5m-2m last season...

This would ofc increase the amount of mythics in the game and everyone in PvP would look alike, lol.

[Geraus]

I feel sorry for you all, but I do not think any big sharks here in AL cares for you. Almost all the best players like ****. They will post and post here just to get the price up, at first they will estimate a price example is arcane shard they will tell you that the price should just be 40 - 50m because you will only craft a ring and when they bought a good amount of this shards. They will post how awesome the arcane rings are and sooner or later the shard will cost more. STS should make all items being equipped to be soul bound to the character he equipped it with. Meaning if a merchant equip an item, they will not be able to trade it anymore. This way merchants cannot wash wear, then promote then sooner or later trade for a higher price and let arcane items available thru plats and can be trade able but still soul bounded when equipped. Because their are lots of plat spenders out their that sells their items for a reasonable price at least they are not sharks that controls the whole market . Good example their are ripmaws they cost that even newbies could afford, also the luck elix and other elixirs also have a reasonable price. Why? because the almighty sharks cannot control this side of the market because their are many plat spenders out their unlike a group of shark ganging up and buying all mythic and arcanes and they control how much they will sell them when supply is limited which is not true because they have a lot of them. All sts solution are short term fixes because they are concern about their earnings, which is quite understandable but if more items are available for plat purchase that cost 1-10k plats. Is it just the same as when people opening for their hopeless lock chests. Sts should be the one giving a price bracket to the items not their trusted sharks.

[Milan Lame Man]

IMHO we need 2 things:

1. Give people reason to open Lockeds, so that farmers have a chance to earn money by selling them. Luck kits may give STS their platinum purchases, but if Locks keep dropping in price, this will not end well.
A back-of-envelope calculation shows that the income from opening Lockeds is waaay higher than kits & revives (a farmer uses 1 kit worth 4 plat to get 3-5 Lockeds that eventually mean someone is going to spend 15 plat on each; and revives are, clearly, pennies)

2. More things to farm for besides Lockeds. Eggs are nice in theory but once plat players have all the pets, eggs only shuffle gold from one poor player to another.

Clearly I suffer from Upgraditis, but I believe both points above can be solved in one go in this way:
1. Add / keep mythic items in Lockeds
2. Add the possibility to upgrade mythics from lv26-30-31-36 using Dragonite sticks (that can be purchased for 15 dragon teeth). In the beginning, ~20 sticks would be needed for each upgrade. After a few months, the price would be lowered to 10 sticks, further dropping at next expansion to make upgrades within reach of new players.
- makes a lot of gold move from people who want to upgrade their Lunar Pendants to the people who can't even afford them
- tooth farming will be fairly profitable for a long time, due to extreme amounts of mythic gear within the game
- the market with mythics will be alive for a long time, because everyone will eventually want to be full myth

Original thread at
http://www.spacetimestudios.com/show...posted-already

[Energizeric]

What causes inflation is not rarity of items. What causes inflation is too much gold in circulation. I posted about this issue last month, and in response STS added the gold vanity for 10m (a nice gold sink) and they removed the 50k gold reward from locked crates. But it will take some time for these to become effective. But already we have seen the arcane ring drop about 20m in price, and the Kershal staff drop around 10-12m. So I suspect this is working, but they may need to do a couple more similar things.

I agree that making the mythic weapons a bit more common than last season would be a good thing as well, and it seems like they are doing exactly that. Back in season 4, we had two mythic weapon weekends, and both times there was double odds on those weapons. Having double odds causes everyone to open locked crates in huge numbers, and this drove the price down to around 3-4m. By the end of those mythic weapons weekends, I don't think anyone was still holding locked crates in inventory.

However, last season we only had mythic weapons available with regular odds, and the result is that those weapons are very rare. I see more Kershal staffs for sale than mythic staffs, and more arcane mauls for sale than glaives. They really were too rare last season. I suspect that once this event is over, the price of the new mythics will be lower than last season.

But we are never going to get back to mythic weapons costing 1.5m. That was too low. The reason why that was too low is because you have a trickle down effect with pricing. So if the mythic weapons are 1.5m, then the elite legendary weapons that you can farm are going to cost maybe 50-100k, and that is too low to make elite farming profitable. If you remember, in season 4 elite farming was pretty much dead. The only elite dungeon anyone farmed was oltgar, and even that was not very profitable by the second half of season 4. Elite legendary items need to hold decent value, and for that to happen, there cannot be enough mythic weapons to go around to everyone, or else there will not be any buyers for the elite legendary weapons.

[aarrgggggg]

What causes inflation is not rarity of items. What causes inflation is too much gold in circulation. I posted about this issue last month, and in response STS added the gold vanity for 10m (a nice gold sink) and they removed the 50k gold reward from locked crates. But it will take some time for these to become effective. But already we have seen the arcane ring drop about 20m in price, and the Kershal staff drop around 10-12m. So I suspect this is working, but they may need to do a couple more similar things.

I agree that making the mythic weapons a bit more common than last season would be a good thing as well, and it seems like they are doing exactly that. Back in season 4, we had two mythic weapon weekends, and both times there was double odds on those weapons. Having double odds causes everyone to open locked crates in huge numbers, and this drove the price down to around 3-4m. By the end of those mythic weapons weekends, I don't think anyone was still holding locked crates in inventory.

However, last season we only had mythic weapons available with regular odds, and the result is that those weapons are very rare. I see more Kershal staffs for sale than mythic staffs, and more arcane mauls for sale than glaives. They really were too rare last season. I suspect that once this event is over, the price of the new mythics will be lower than last season.

But we are never going to get back to mythic weapons costing 1.5m. That was too low. The reason why that was too low is because you have a trickle down effect with pricing. So if the mythic weapons are 1.5m, then the elite legendary weapons that you can farm are going to cost maybe 50-100k, and that is too low to make elite farming profitable. If you remember, in season 4 elite farming was pretty much dead. The only elite dungeon anyone farmed was oltgar, and even that was not very profitable by the second half of season 4. Elite legendary items need to hold decent value, and for that to happen, there cannot be enough mythic weapons to go around to everyone, or else there will not be any buyers for the elite legendary weapons.

many valid points that you made, it sounds like we are in agreement, 20 million is too much 1.5 million is too little. Honestly i feel that the new weapons should be somewhere between 5 and 10 million in the first few weeks.

Will that happen? I doubt it...im not holding my breath
I know it was the mythics that drove me 2 play this game, and the fact that they were at an attainable price in season 4 when i started.
Had that same mythic pavise been 20million i probably would have quit AL within the first month of playing, because it would have been out of my grasp and i would have realized that pretty quickly.

The point im trying to make is that in my opinion based upon my own experiences. The price of these new mythics will have a HUGE impact on how many new players will join and stay in this game as well as existing players staying in this game and not quitting.....Energy has pushed many away. I see the new mythic weapons as a last hope of sorts.

[Rare]

I posted about this issue last month, and in response STS added the gold vanity for 10m (a nice gold sink) and they removed the 50k gold reward from locked crates.

[Frekken]

I saw all this coming when the essences and gems were introduced. Remember at first? I sold a blood gem at 20k.
Those were easy to craft and obtain
All prices scaled up since then 'cuz people thought it were gonna stay at that price. Big mistake

[Energizeric]

many valid points that you made, it sounds like we are in agreement, 20 million is too much 1.5 million is too little. Honestly i feel that the new weapons should be somewhere between 5 and 10 million in the first few weeks.

Will that happen? I doubt it...im not holding my breath
I know it was the mythics that drove me 2 play this game, and the fact that they were at an attainable price in season 4 when i started.
Had that same mythic pavise been 20million i probably would have quit AL within the first month of playing, because it would have been out of my grasp and i would have realized that pretty quickly.

The point im trying to make is that in my opinion based upon my own experiences. The price of these new mythics will have a HUGE impact on how many new players will join and stay in this game as well as existing players staying in this game and not quitting.....Energy has pushed many away. I see the new mythic weapons as a last hope of sorts.

I agree that 5-10m is the sweet spot for new mythics. The price will depend on the supply. Players who loot them want to sell them, and if there are never more than 1 or 2 of them in the auction, then the price will stay somewhat high. But if they are being looted faster than people are buying them, then people will undercut each other in the auction and the price will drop down. That is what happened during season 4.

[Haligali]

Dont dream about <10m prices, lvl36 mythic weapons were 10m at last season start and people now more wealthy.

[deadcobain]

This is the most interesting thread in the forum for me right now - thanks everyone. When I first started playing, I couldn't understand why the loot was so bad - it didn't feel possible to do more than scrape by on drops. Then I thought I'd got the hang of it, when I managed to cap and get magma, pavise etc (decent tanking gear, basically). I have 2 hard workin' toons - the tank is good, the (capped) smurf just works to equip the tank. It feels as though unless I find the right strategies, I am failing forwards from now on. The prices of my gear are dropping, I am no good at merching - and after a few plat purchases, I'm unconvinced about the advantages and fun I thought I'd gain. Hopefully the fun will return - and I'm actually more interested in fun than gold - just concerned that I won't be able to equip myself competitively for future expansions.

ain't got no how whatchamacallit (kurt cobain)