Economic woes of inflation in the land of Arlor....

[falmear]

This would explain why they have made elixirs tradable. They were no longer drawing the plat they used to command and the upgrade system has become the new plat sink for plat spenders, so they give it a last hurrah via kit sales and move on to creating other ways for players to spend their money on the game.

Yes because the way I see it is they are shifting their business model to draw more revenue from crafting and upgrades and less from elixirs. This will be confirmed if we have to craft mythics. If we do then the prices on these mythics will a lot more then they previously were. Crafting and upgrades by plat don't add any value to the game. You are buying off the timer and artificially increasing the cost. This happened last season with mythic weapons because of their rarity & cost of upgrading. If we have to craft mythics then I expect the prices on mythic weapons to exceed last seasons prices.

[Rare]

Lol

[rook storm]

Money, get away.
Get a good job with good pay and you're okay.
Money, it's a gas.
Grab that cash with both hands and make a stash.
New car, caviar, four star daydream,
Think I'll buy me a football team.

Money, get back.
I'm all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it's a hit.
Don't give me that do goody good bull****.
I'm in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet.

Money, it's a crime.
Share it fairly but don't take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise it's no surprise that they're
giving none away.

Pink Floyd

[Anarchist]

]My solution is that when the new mythics come out there should be a counterpart release of new legendary gears that distance in stats just like Lv36 tarlok sets from Lv36 mythic sets.

A good idea someone suggested earlier is adding new items yes maybe even a mythic ring purchaseable with gold from the store. This will ( not 100% sure) give a limit to the other mythic pieces making them stay in a reasonable range from the legendaries. Sts will pratically control the mythic market price.


The problem we are having right now is a red emergency not because market inflates or things cost too much, not because a arcane ring was sold for 100million, Nono the problem is that the entire game is already broken again and we are were we start from. Yes sts messed it all up.

I explain,
The itemization system itself isn't a bad idea if applied like i said in my earlier posts by trying to keep the legendary quite as good as the mythic hence making the demand for legendary sets high in a long arc of time. Hiw to do this? When the current legendary pieces start dropping too low you simply create new ones with better stats revalutating them.

BUT....WHAT DID STS DO?

They brought new legendary pieces worser in stats compaired to the previous mythics everybody already had. So the demand for the new farmable items went flop and their value started dropping fast.


NOTE STS:
Legendary items are the key if you are interested in revalutating the market and making mythic/arcane stuff reachable just through farming, difference between the 3 categorize shouldn't be too high nor to low and that is were itemization plays a fundamental role with the goal of revalutating the legendary sets when they drop too low. The legendary items are also the weakest on market because they can't maintain their value for a long period compaired to the mythics and arcanes. The way the itemization system has been done till now is just "MEH" and oriented to spill the highest quantity of plats from the players.

IMO when you add the new mythic sets you will have to add new legendary sets because the current ones will just suck and the demand for them will drastically drop and it is already low.

[Energizeric]

Your ideas are always brilliant. I agree with each of your suggestions.

To immediately alleviate the problem of inflation, a 'gold sink' has to be created so that 'extra gold' can be taken out from the economy. As you have said, we need to take into account the interest of STS when making any suggestion of this kind. Here is my suggestion:

We all know new mythics are coming. There may be new lv 41 mythic weapons, mythic armor, mythic helm and mythic amulet. Why not make one of them directly purchasable in AL store for a large amount of gold? For example, a new mythic amulet can be purchased from store for $15m gold (not plat) and this amulet cannot be looted from lock. This will absorb a large amount of gold from the economy and can alleviate the inflation problem immediately. As other mythic gear can only be looted from locks or other elite chests, implementing this suggestion will not affect STS's income as plat spenders will keep popping locks to loot those items.

That is a very good idea. I was thinking they could make it a bit more complicated and make it a crafting component. The arcane ring is already a done deal, but imagine if there had been a 4th necessary crafting component and that component must be purchased from an in game NPC for 5m gold. Or it could be 10m gold. Whatever the amount, the rich players will pay it. Remember the goal here is to have the gold sink affect rich players only. Call it a "rich tax". So your idea would work well. Just lets make sure it is only one single item. I suggest whatever item it is, that item only be available from this NPC and not from crates, chests or any other way. That way it doesn't start affecting the free market.

[Energizeric]

Yes because the way I see it is they are shifting their business model to draw more revenue from crafting and upgrades and less from elixirs.

I think you aren't realizing that the elixirs that are tradable are still purchased for plat. All they did was make a way for you to use your plat to buy an elixir for someone else. Kind of brilliant really. That's also why they made the plat store vanity items tradable. They realized that people will spend their plat and buy them for players who have no plat. If you buy a vanity set and sell it in the auction, you are doing exactly that.

[Energizeric]

]I explain,
The itemization system itself isn't a bad idea if applied like i said in my earlier posts by trying to keep the legendary quite as good as the mythic hence making the demand for legendary sets high in a long arc of time. Hiw to do this? When the current legendary pieces start dropping too low you simply create new ones with better stats revalutating them.

FYI, that is their plan. This was discussed in last month's google hangout session, and I actually talked to the developers about this before the video even started recording, and that is indeed their plan. There will be more than mythics coming, that is for sure.

The problem is that in order to have some balance, they needed to scale back the initial wave of items being released. They do realize this was not ideal, but the only other alternative would have been to nerf the level 35/36 tarlok items, and people would have raged. Otherwise by the time they get to their third wave of items this season, they are going to become too OP. So the only viable solution was to make this first wave of items only slightly better than the tarlok items. That of course meant that mythic items from level 36 are better than this first wave of level 41 legendary items. But my guess is that the next wave of legendary items will surpass level 36 mythics or at least be equal to them.

Because of this itemization plan, it is really going to take the entire season to get things straightened out. But that whole plan has little to do with the issues I brought up in this thread, which is inflation. The problem is not a 100m ring. The problem is that next season we may have a 200m item, and it will keep growing like that. We need for this trend to stabilize, and changing locked crates is the key to that.

[FluidShot]

Because of this itemization plan, it is really going to take the entire season to get things straightened out. But that whole plan has little to do with the issues I brought up in this thread, which is inflation. The problem is not a 100m ring. The problem is that next season we may have a 200m item, and it will keep growing like that. We need for this trend to stabilize, and changing locked crates is the key to that.

I don't usually comment on these threads, but I felt like I should add my two cents.

The problem with this game is that you can become one of those 100M players too easily. I have played other online games in my time, where real money can speed up your progress, and make the game slightly easier and less monotonous, but there was no way to actually convert your real money into game money. Whether you spent $1000 or nothing, it would still take the same time to make money, and gain wealth.

The problem with AL is that someone can blow $10,000 on plat, convert a thousand of it into gold, buy locked crates, then open them until they have 200M worth of items. This can happen in a span of an hour if they really want. Yet, if you don't spend any money on the game, most people wouldn't get to 100M in 25 years, and probably not get above 25M unless they are an expert merchant, who is always watching the market.

Since it is so easy to make money (I will make a sweeping generalization here) and the players who have the 100M and the best items, who have nothing to spend their money on because they used plat to get there, will always have more money available. There is no gold sink strong enough that would at the same time be attractive enough, to make a large enough dent on these players wallets. A large gold sink costs 25M? Use that last pay check to open locked crates until you get the money back.

The problem is how easy it is to get money. Since I'll assume 95% of those with 100M used plat to get themselves there (or at least significantly on the way there), there is no way to fix the problem in the past, the only way is to fix it going forward. That would be somehow, screwing with locked crates so players with way to much real money to spend don't think of them as the "real money to infinite game wealth" conversion they currently are. Until then, we're stuck with the top 1% controlling the price of these rich items, with the average person having no power to do anything about it. How should we do it? No idea. But there needs to be a change so the crates don't convert to instant wealth.

The dragonite bar was supposed to fix this - by adding a necessary gameplay element into it, so you couldn't open a crate and be instantly wealthy. But with the prowess of the ring, and the resulting price of the shard, combined with the fact that the dragonite bar is tradable, this has done nothing to the problem of insta-conversion. People open crates, find a shard, with all the other items, sell to make the 5M to buy the dragonite bar from auction, 5k for the recipe, you're done.
Don't want to open crates? No problem. If you have 100M, buy the shard for 70M, the bar for 5M, and finish up with the recipe. Either way, you're only appealing to a) people with tons of money, or b) the insane locked crate openers, who as a result, have tons of money.

If the bar were to not be tradeable, this might help in making it necessary to actually play through the game, without having the ability to, once you have a ton of money, continually merch them, control the market, and if you, and your merching buddies want, raise the price to 200M.

DISCLAIMER: This post was written by a tired person - feel free to rip it apart if the logic is a disgrace to humankind. I am just happy there is so much collective problem solving going on in this thread. It's encouraging. I just hope this post is coherent.

[falmear]

I think you aren't realizing that the elixirs that are tradable are still purchased for plat. All they did was make a way for you to use your plat to buy an elixir for someone else. Kind of brilliant really. That's also why they made the plat store vanity items tradable. They realized that people will spend their plat and buy them for players who have no plat. If you buy a vanity set and sell it in the auction, you are doing exactly that.

By making elixirs tradable they make them accessible to people who would may not have ever bought them. But once there is enough elixirs out there, there ends up being an excess supply. So overall I would expect sales of elixirs to decline. Ask yourself why they didn't make combo or XP elixir (7 day or +50%) tradable. I am pretty sure damage, damage reduction, and speed elixirs don't sell very well. Combo, XP, and luck elixirs are probably the best selling. And the highest profit margin I am sure is on the XP and combo elixirs.

[Hectororius]

I think you aren't realizing that the elixirs that are tradable are still purchased for plat. All they did was make a way for you to use your plat to buy an elixir for someone else. Kind of brilliant really. That's also why they made the plat store vanity items tradable. They realized that people will spend their plat and buy them for players who have no plat. If you buy a vanity set and sell it in the auction, you are doing exactly that.

The reason why things become tradable is because the sales begin to lag from the exclusivity, so they they find a way to boost those lagging sales and it usually results in exclusive items becoming available to the rest of the player base (see inventory, ah, character slots, vanities, Grimm, Ewen,...).

Unfortunately, they've only managed to compound the situation by making harder to sell already hard to move items. Withing a week of the elixirs being released, elite drop items have nearly dropped 50% in value.

You wanted gold sinks? We got em in spades. But its taxing the wrong player base.

[jrkimkyla]

Great points, however I do not think the arcane pets (Hammerjaw, Glacian) should be removed from crates. These pets are viable and therefore should not be removed so that users who would like to use arcanes such as HJ and Glacian get the chance to do so without having to pay 10 million more for the best arcane.

I agree with you. Do not remove hammerjaw or glacian

Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk

[Energizeric]

The reason why things become tradable is because the sales begin to lag from the exclusivity, so they they find a way to boost those lagging sales and it usually results in exclusive items becoming available to the rest of the player base (see inventory, ah, character slots, vanities, Grimm, Ewen,...).

Unfortunately, they've only managed to compound the situation by making harder to sell already hard to move items. Withing a week of the elixirs being released, elite drop items have nearly dropped 50% in value.

You wanted gold sinks? We got em in spades. But its taxing the wrong player base.

That is not a gold sink. When someone buys an elixir for plat, and then lists it in the auction and another player buys it form them, the only gold sink there is the 5% taken by the auction for the listing fee. It is simply a transfer of 95% of the gold from the buyer of the item to the seller.

A gold sink would mean that the money leaves the game, kind of like when you buy potions from the potion lady in the guild hall, or when you pay to feed your pet.

[Energizeric]

I don't usually comment on these threads, but I felt like I should add my two cents.

The problem with this game is that you can become one of those 100M players too easily. I have played other online games in my time, where real money can speed up your progress, and make the game slightly easier and less monotonous, but there was no way to actually convert your real money into game money. Whether you spent $1000 or nothing, it would still take the same time to make money, and gain wealth.

The problem with AL is that someone can blow $10,000 on plat, convert a thousand of it into gold, buy locked crates, then open them until they have 200M worth of items. This can happen in a span of an hour if they really want. Yet, if you don't spend any money on the game, most people wouldn't get to 100M in 25 years, and probably not get above 25M unless they are an expert merchant, who is always watching the market.

Since it is so easy to make money (I will make a sweeping generalization here) and the players who have the 100M and the best items, who have nothing to spend their money on because they used plat to get there, will always have more money available. There is no gold sink strong enough that would at the same time be attractive enough, to make a large enough dent on these players wallets. A large gold sink costs 25M? Use that last pay check to open locked crates until you get the money back.

The problem is how easy it is to get money. Since I'll assume 95% of those with 100M used plat to get themselves there (or at least significantly on the way there), there is no way to fix the problem in the past, the only way is to fix it going forward. That would be somehow, screwing with locked crates so players with way to much real money to spend don't think of them as the "real money to infinite game wealth" conversion they currently are. Until then, we're stuck with the top 1% controlling the price of these rich items, with the average person having no power to do anything about it. How should we do it? No idea. But there needs to be a change so the crates don't convert to instant wealth.

The dragonite bar was supposed to fix this - by adding a necessary gameplay element into it, so you couldn't open a crate and be instantly wealthy. But with the prowess of the ring, and the resulting price of the shard, combined with the fact that the dragonite bar is tradable, this has done nothing to the problem of insta-conversion. People open crates, find a shard, with all the other items, sell to make the 5M to buy the dragonite bar from auction, 5k for the recipe, you're done.
Don't want to open crates? No problem. If you have 100M, buy the shard for 70M, the bar for 5M, and finish up with the recipe. Either way, you're only appealing to a) people with tons of money, or b) the insane locked crate openers, who as a result, have tons of money.

If the bar were to not be tradeable, this might help in making it necessary to actually play through the game, without having the ability to, once you have a ton of money, continually merch them, control the market, and if you, and your merching buddies want, raise the price to 200M.

DISCLAIMER: This post was written by a tired person - feel free to rip it apart if the logic is a disgrace to humankind. I am just happy there is so much collective problem solving going on in this thread. It's encouraging. I just hope this post is coherent.

Very good analysis. You have pointed out all the problems with the "free to play" game model. But that is the kind of game we play, and STS is not going to change that. So the solution is to help them manage it the best that they can by making suggestions that will not hurt the game's profitability.

There is one error in your analysis however.... If they keep the total amount of gold in the game consistent by managing gold drops and gold sinks properly, then more and more players cannot keep getting richer and richer as there would not be enough gold for this to happen. People only spend 80m on an arcane shard because that 80m exists. There is only so much gold to go around.

Yes, the rich always have most of the wealth.... that is how capitalism works. If you are here to debate the merits of capitalism, then that is a different debate for a different forum. The problem here is that there is an increasing total amount of gold in the game, so the fortunes that these few players have amassed keeps increasing. If you stabilize the total amount of gold in the game, then these huge fortunes will level off, and so will prices of the best items.

Last summer we pointed out that there was a decreasing supply of gold in the game, which was a bad thing and was causing prices on everything to drop. So STS reversed that with a change to the locked crates. But apparently the balance has gone too far the other way. Just because a certain amount of something is good, does not mean that more of it is better. It's time to reduce the gold drops.

[Anarchist]

FYI, that is their plan. This was discussed in last month's google hangout session, and I actually talked to the developers about this before the video even started recording, and that is indeed their plan. There will be more than mythics coming, that is for sure.

The problem is that in order to have some balance, they needed to scale back the initial wave of items being released. They do realize this was not ideal, but the only other alternative would have been to nerf the level 35/36 tarlok items, and people would have raged. Otherwise by the time they get to their third wave of items this season, they are going to become too OP. So the only viable solution was to make this first wave of items only slightly better than the tarlok items. That of course meant that mythic items from level 36 are better than this first wave of level 41 legendary items. But my guess is that the next wave of legendary items will surpass level 36 mythics or at least be equal to them.

Because of this itemization plan, it is really going to take the entire season to get things straightened out. But that whole plan has little to do with the issues I brought up in this thread, which is inflation. The problem is not a 100m ring. The problem is that next season we may have a 200m item, and it will keep growing like that. We need for this trend to stabilize, and changing locked crates is the key to that.

TBH i didn't fully watch the hangout and skipped many parts.

Nonetheless it seems i was on the right track.

Can you explain in what way you want to change the locked crates?? Copy and paste if you already said it please.

What do you think of adding a gold shrink that is a mythic item purchasable directly from a NPC or craftable with a huge amount of gold?

Do you think as i do it can keep in range the other mythic items when they come out? Sure the mythis from lockeds would be higher but i don't think they will greatly exceed the gold mythic surpassing it with Xm-200m. This could be used by sts as a mythic market price regulator to keep the others at a good range.

The mythic items buyable with gold would be rotated so the natural devalutation is equally spread among all of them, this way there won't be a situation where a mythic ring will cost 10m and another mythic item 50m.

Like i said earlier i don't think inflation can be defined as a problem of arcane legends economy but it is rather a natural evolution that resides in the dna of the system itself, actually it resides in any economy that follows the capitalist method of a free market.


I want to also point out you are concluding there is inflation by saying a item that is currently the rarest, most expensive and strongest ingame can't be acquired by selling gears nobody really wants.

Let's wait and see what happens when the good legendaries pop out.

[Daddyblu]

Leave it be!

Arcane ring is a decent price do you know why it should be 100m++

1.) Its the only arcane rarity that all class can use ( Mage, rouge , War)

2.) the demand is high since all players can use it regardless of class.

3.) shard drop rate is low.

4.) if i have another shard i would always keep a extra one on my inventory ( because we all know shard will be use in the future for upgrading other items.)
So shard price wont go down.

[Energizeric]

TBH i didn't fully watch the hangout and skipped many parts.

Nonetheless it seems i was on the right track.

Can you explain in what way you want to change the locked crates?? Copy and paste if you already said it please.

What do you think of adding a gold shrink that is a mythic item purchasable directly from a NPC or craftable with a huge amount of gold?

Do you think as i do it can keep in range the other mythic items when they come out? Sure the mythis from lockeds would be higher but i don't think they will greatly exceed the gold mythic surpassing it with Xm-200m. This could be used by sts as a mythic market price regulator to keep the others at a good range.

The mythic items buyable with gold would be rotated so the natural devalutation is equally spread among all of them, this way there won't be a situation where a mythic ring will cost 10m and another mythic item 50m.

Like i said earlier i don't think inflation can be defined as a problem of arcane legends economy but it is rather a natural evolution that resides in the dna of the system itself, actually it resides in any economy that follows the capitalist method of a free market.


I want to also point out you are concluding there is inflation by saying a item that is currently the rarest, most expensive and strongest ingame can't be acquired by selling gears nobody really wants.

Look at the first post in this thread. I gave 5 things I would change about the locked crates.

And yes, having a mythic item that can be purchased from an NPC is not a bad idea for a gold sink. It would serve to tax the richest players, as they are the ones who would buy the mythic item, which is what we want. I think an even better idea would be to use this new crafting process and make one of the crafting items cost 5m or maybe more.

I actually suspect that instead of having actual mythic gear dropping in the future, we will have a "mythic shard", just like we have an arcane shard. And then there will be other ingredients that will have to be acquired to craft each item that we want. This will allow players to craft the exact item they want, instead of a mage looting a rogue armor and having to sell it to buy the one they want. The rare item will be the "shard". So my suggestion is to add some crafting element that you buy from an NPC and which costs a nice amount of gold, and that will serve as the gold sink. I suspect that 15m for a gold sink may be far too much. Remember that we don't want to have deflation, we just want to stop the inflation.

I do realize that not everyone is going to be able to have an arcane item. Arcane are super rare, and by definition, that means not everyone could have one. If everyone had one, then it would not be rare. My concern is that escalating prices every campaign. When arcane hooks were released, they were 20-25m. Maul was 40-50m. Kershal was 60-70m, and now we have arcane rings/shards going for 100m. Why does this number keep increasing? The answer must be that there is an overall increase in gold in the game. We are not talking just a few players who have 100m, there are a ton of them.

[Energizeric]

4.) if i have another shard i would always keep a extra one on my inventory ( because we all know shard will be use in the future for upgrading other items.)
So shard price wont go down.

Yes, I always make sure to own two Ferraris, that way I can drive the other one when one is in the shop. I suggest that all people should do that!

[epicrrr]

The fact that a single item has been bought/is selling for 80+ MILLION GOLD is pretty scary, were seeing how much gold a player can spend thus setting a base price for certain items.

[Anarchist]

I actually suspect that instead of having actual mythic gear dropping in the future, we will have a "mythic shard", just like we have an arcane shard. And then there will be other ingredients that will have to be acquired to craft each item that we want. This will allow players to craft the exact item they want, instead of a mage looting a rogue armor and having to sell it to buy the one they want. The rare item will be the "shard". So my suggestion is to add some crafting element that you buy from an NPC and which costs a nice amount of gold, and that will serve as the gold sink. I suspect that 15m for a gold sink may be far too much. Remember that we don't want to have deflation, we just want to stop the inflation.

Adjusting locked crates isn't powerful enough to stop any future inflation (as for now things are Ok. Arcane rings apart the current legendary gears allow F2P players to decently reach the mythics and arcanes items).

I like the five points you listed though.

The second is a bit risky because it means all new mythic and arcane drop rate will have to be boosted since there will never be enough of them when they come out. Just like in the case of the arcane shard.

[Fauksuras]

Well I'd just like to say that with the way things are moving if you're inclined to spend money on a game (like the amount needed in crafting), there are way better games out there to do so.