Economy Rework + Inflation Solutions

[Estate]

Dear Spacetime-Studio Dev Team & Dear PL Community,

I will let other's speak for themselves while attempting to speak for everyone. I've played this game for almost a decade. It has a special place in my life. Part of the reason why I am in business analytics now, part of the reason why I did my Masters thesis on the psychology of nostalgia. It has been foundational to my life which is admittedly kind of funny. That being said my favorite things to do in PL have been to low-level PvP and to get rich. The most popular PL videos are still the Merch Guides and whether the community wants to embrace it or not, the market, consignment shoppe and just plain "looking cool" have been and increasingly vital part of modern day Pocket Legends. I am here today to attempt to regulate that market. Stop Black Market transactions, deflate gold prices of increasingly rare items and re-stabilize such an important aspect of the game.

Create more gold sinks. If the gold sinks are supposed to be enchanting or event items they are obviously not working.

- Maybe offer a title at the xmas event that costs the max gold cap to unlock called (Affluent) and a badge that is also max gold capped price that's just a dollar sign symbol.
- Maybe let players run their own tournaments in game. 1v1s or 3v3s that start in a locked arena and however much gold is put in, 20% is deleted and the winner or winners is rewarded the rest.
- Maybe you create some NPCs or causes within the game to which players can donate gold. These could be tied to server-wide events or bonuses, like if players donate a certain amount of gold, everyone gets a temporary boost or vanity reward.
- Dare I say gold for platinum in some cases or maybe a limited time (for new char slots, CS, inv and stash slots etc).

Currency Rework

As some players outlined previously, I think the introduction of a new currency would be very helpful. An NPC in towns that exchanges a certain amount of gold (1million, 50 million, 100 million, any could work) for a new currency. This new "coin" could be exchanged back for gold in the event that it was needed by a player. The advantages of this are clear. Trades become more safe for high value items & gold-inflation slows down. Scamming would most likely be removed for these items that cost > the gold cap. This "coin" can cap at 5k and could be used in the CS or in player to player trades.

Farming issues

Second, we need to fix farming. Gold farming is the most common for capped players like myself. Sets and pets that give Gold Loot to farm isle or gold realms are amazing but the idea of gold farming has significantly slowed progression for early game players. 1 million gold nowadays is nothing. New players are not going to naturally accumulate 1 million gold without a lot of work OUTSIDE of PvE maps in Towns begging, selling what little they have (and getting scammed on prices) or unfortunately Black Market dealing to jumpstart their PvE experience. The CS is dead because of this. No sets early game sell for any amount of gold that would be useful to early game players and no mid-game sets are worth farming for capped players that can just farm Isle or Realms. 80% of PvE has been effectively eliminated by inflation. Obviously as more gold is introduced the value of it goes down and thus higher prices for everyone. When players farm gold instead of items, the trading of valuable items diminishes. This has lead to a less dynamic market, as fewer items are being circulated and traded, only ones with higher value (almost every "random" vanity doesn't have a market price and are not worn, used or sold). As late game content is the primary source of gold, earlier game content has become neglected by the players because it is simply not worth it to play. The opportunity cost value is significantly askew.

Here are some potential solutions:
- Encourage crafting again. Enhance the crafting system to allow players to create valuable items that can be traded. This could involve new recipes, materials, or even a revamp of the crafting system to make it more integral to the game's economy.
- Item sinks similar to trade up contracts in Counter Strike. Let's say I have 10 St Patty's Brew Steins from 2017. I can attempt to trade them up to a Rainbow Connection but the rarest item (such as the RC in this example) is always a 0.001% of happening. Be very transparent with what items trade up to other items, do not have the player base accidentally figure out that 10 Red Diamonds trade to a starry variation, make that clear.
- Create special vendors that sell unique, desirable items but only accept gold as payment, untradable.
- Incentivize Item Use over Hoarding: Encourage players to use items instead of hoarding them
- Increase the relevance of mid-game content. Make mid-game content more relevant for capped players, introduce new challenges or achievements, which can help redistribute player activities away from just end-game gold farming.
- !! Converting in-game gold to real-world charitable donations (managed by the game developers). !! (Idk, its crazy but im here for all the ideas)

Economic Transparency

It's not secret that new players and returning players have no idea what items are worth. Even active players probably couldn't tell you MOST item's worth. The community could help but the devs should add a part to the discord or the forums or both that tracks the average item sell price for the consignment shoppe so players especially new ones can have some idea of what every item is worth. This would take a lot of work and would be manipulatable. Here's how to make it better:

- Time-Based Averaging: Instead of calculating the average based on the most recent sales, use a longer time frame for the average price calculation. For example, an average over the past month or quarter would be less susceptible to short-term manipulation.
- Volume Weighting: Weigh the average price by the volume of transactions. High-volume sales would have a more significant impact on the average price than low-volume sales, reducing the impact of small-scale manipulation.
- Exclude Outlier Transactions: Implement an algorithm to identify and exclude outlier transactions from the average price calculation. Prices that are significantly higher or lower than the typical range could be flagged and removed from the calculation.
- Limit the Influence of Repeat Transactions: Design the system to recognize and diminish the weight of repeat transactions of the same item between the same accounts or within a short timeframe.
- Randomized Audit and Review System: Periodically audit transactions manually or through an automated system to check for patterns of manipulation, and adjust the price calculation algorithm based on findings.
- Transparent Methodology and Player Education: Clearly communicate how the average prices are calculated and educate the players about this system. Transparency can deter manipulation attempts
- Community Feedback Integration: Allow players to report suspicious transactions or pricing trends.

Combatting the Black Market

Trading of ingame items for real-world currency is a challenging issue, especially in an aging game with a declining player base and increasing rarity of items. To address this, the devs and community need to work together to create a more secure and engaging ingame economy while discouraging the behavior.

Here are the solutions:

- Improved Item Tracking and Provenance: Implement a system where high-value items can be tracked, showing their history of ownership. This makes it easier to identify and investigate suspicious trading patterns.
- Reward Reporting of Black Market Activities: Encourage players to report black market transactions by offering in-game rewards. Do I hear black community shield?????
- Create an Official Marketplace with Competitive Features: Develop a more robust, official trading platform within the game that offers features competitive with black market sites, such as lower fees, secure trading, and a wider range of items. Middleman NPC etc.
- Player Identification Verification: Require more rigorous verification methods for player accounts, making it harder to anonymously engage in black market trades.
- In-Game Trusted Trader Program: Establish a program that recognizes and highlights trusted traders in the game, based on their history of legitimate transactions. Cool & recognizable badge/title.
- Escrow Services for High-Value Trades: Implement in-game escrow services for high-value trades, where the game temporarily holds the traded items/currency until both parties fulfill their parts of the deal.
- MANY MANY MORE

I'm not amazing at conclusions. The conclusion from the above reading should be that we have a problem. Gold inflation and the market as a whole is suffering. There are solutions to that problem. Let's work together and make a concerted effort to fix the problem.


From the bedroom at my parents house playing Nuris in 2013 to the safety of my own home. Cheers,

- Estate

[Fwend]

I commend you for your love of the game.

And can see you really care about it and have provided many solutions to a numerous amount of issues currently facing players.

What the majority of players on PL do not understand and realize is the direction our game is going now.

STS have made it clear in their letter to the community 2023

While the team is primarily focused on new content for Arcane Legends the Legacy Legends games (Pocket, Star and Dark Legends) will continue to see special yearly events, fixes and updates throughout the year! Expect periodic updates on these titles as 2023 progresses.

If you read it and think about it, accept the truth of the transparency of STS. Then you might understand what is really going on.

Thank you for your suggestions, and solutions to some of our game problems.

Please understand there is nothing STS will do about them because their primary focus is on Arcane Legends alone.

[Idevour]

Everyone can see the direction the game is going sunny.

Some of us read that and figured we would at the very least get recolors of items

[Estate]

I will concede while I know the direction of the game and I appreciate the transparency on the side of STS. Most of what I requested/suggested could be implemented with minimal effort, seamlessly and as part of these seasonal events/updates.

[Yogaa]

Are you sure you’re a business analyst ?

I doubt it, since all your statements are about work without profit in return.

[MageFFA]

Dear Spacetime-Studio Dev Team & Dear PL Community,

I will let other's speak for themselves while attempting to speak for everyone. I've played this game for almost a decade. It has a special place in my life. Part of the reason why I am in business analytics now, part of the reason why I did my Masters thesis on the psychology of nostalgia. It has been foundational to my life which is admittedly kind of funny. That being said my favorite things to do in PL have been to low-level PvP and to get rich. The most popular PL videos are still the Merch Guides and whether the community wants to embrace it or not, the market, consignment shoppe and just plain "looking cool" have been and increasingly vital part of modern day Pocket Legends. I am here today to attempt to regulate that market. Stop Black Market transactions, deflate gold prices of increasingly rare items and re-stabilize such an important aspect of the game.

Create more gold sinks. If the gold sinks are supposed to be enchanting or event items they are obviously not working.

- Maybe offer a title at the xmas event that costs the max gold cap to unlock called (Affluent) and a badge that is also max gold capped price that's just a dollar sign symbol.
- Maybe let players run their own tournaments in game. 1v1s or 3v3s that start in a locked arena and however much gold is put in, 20% is deleted and the winner or winners is rewarded the rest.
- Maybe you create some NPCs or causes within the game to which players can donate gold. These could be tied to server-wide events or bonuses, like if players donate a certain amount of gold, everyone gets a temporary boost or vanity reward.
- Dare I say gold for platinum in some cases or maybe a limited time (for new char slots, CS, inv and stash slots etc).

Currency Rework

As some players outlined previously, I think the introduction of a new currency would be very helpful. An NPC in towns that exchanges a certain amount of gold (1million, 50 million, 100 million, any could work) for a new currency. This new "coin" could be exchanged back for gold in the event that it was needed by a player. The advantages of this are clear. Trades become more safe for high value items & gold-inflation slows down. Scamming would most likely be removed for these items that cost > the gold cap. This "coin" can cap at 5k and could be used in the CS or in player to player trades.

Farming issues

Second, we need to fix farming. Gold farming is the most common for capped players like myself. Sets and pets that give Gold Loot to farm isle or gold realms are amazing but the idea of gold farming has significantly slowed progression for early game players. 1 million gold nowadays is nothing. New players are not going to naturally accumulate 1 million gold without a lot of work OUTSIDE of PvE maps in Towns begging, selling what little they have (and getting scammed on prices) or unfortunately Black Market dealing to jumpstart their PvE experience. The CS is dead because of this. No sets early game sell for any amount of gold that would be useful to early game players and no mid-game sets are worth farming for capped players that can just farm Isle or Realms. 80% of PvE has been effectively eliminated by inflation. Obviously as more gold is introduced the value of it goes down and thus higher prices for everyone. When players farm gold instead of items, the trading of valuable items diminishes. This has lead to a less dynamic market, as fewer items are being circulated and traded, only ones with higher value (almost every "random" vanity doesn't have a market price and are not worn, used or sold). As late game content is the primary source of gold, earlier game content has become neglected by the players because it is simply not worth it to play. The opportunity cost value is significantly askew.

Here are some potential solutions:
- Encourage crafting again. Enhance the crafting system to allow players to create valuable items that can be traded. This could involve new recipes, materials, or even a revamp of the crafting system to make it more integral to the game's economy.
- Item sinks similar to trade up contracts in Counter Strike. Let's say I have 10 St Patty's Brew Steins from 2017. I can attempt to trade them up to a Rainbow Connection but the rarest item (such as the RC in this example) is always a 0.001% of happening. Be very transparent with what items trade up to other items, do not have the player base accidentally figure out that 10 Red Diamonds trade to a starry variation, make that clear.
- Create special vendors that sell unique, desirable items but only accept gold as payment, untradable.
- Incentivize Item Use over Hoarding: Encourage players to use items instead of hoarding them
- Increase the relevance of mid-game content. Make mid-game content more relevant for capped players, introduce new challenges or achievements, which can help redistribute player activities away from just end-game gold farming.
- !! Converting in-game gold to real-world charitable donations (managed by the game developers). !! (Idk, its crazy but im here for all the ideas)

Economic Transparency

It's not secret that new players and returning players have no idea what items are worth. Even active players probably couldn't tell you MOST item's worth. The community could help but the devs should add a part to the discord or the forums or both that tracks the average item sell price for the consignment shoppe so players especially new ones can have some idea of what every item is worth. This would take a lot of work and would be manipulatable. Here's how to make it better:

- Time-Based Averaging: Instead of calculating the average based on the most recent sales, use a longer time frame for the average price calculation. For example, an average over the past month or quarter would be less susceptible to short-term manipulation.
- Volume Weighting: Weigh the average price by the volume of transactions. High-volume sales would have a more significant impact on the average price than low-volume sales, reducing the impact of small-scale manipulation.
- Exclude Outlier Transactions: Implement an algorithm to identify and exclude outlier transactions from the average price calculation. Prices that are significantly higher or lower than the typical range could be flagged and removed from the calculation.
- Limit the Influence of Repeat Transactions: Design the system to recognize and diminish the weight of repeat transactions of the same item between the same accounts or within a short timeframe.
- Randomized Audit and Review System: Periodically audit transactions manually or through an automated system to check for patterns of manipulation, and adjust the price calculation algorithm based on findings.
- Transparent Methodology and Player Education: Clearly communicate how the average prices are calculated and educate the players about this system. Transparency can deter manipulation attempts
- Community Feedback Integration: Allow players to report suspicious transactions or pricing trends.

Combatting the Black Market

Trading of ingame items for real-world currency is a challenging issue, especially in an aging game with a declining player base and increasing rarity of items. To address this, the devs and community need to work together to create a more secure and engaging ingame economy while discouraging the behavior.

Here are the solutions:

- Improved Item Tracking and Provenance: Implement a system where high-value items can be tracked, showing their history of ownership. This makes it easier to identify and investigate suspicious trading patterns.
- Reward Reporting of Black Market Activities: Encourage players to report black market transactions by offering in-game rewards. Do I hear black community shield?????
- Create an Official Marketplace with Competitive Features: Develop a more robust, official trading platform within the game that offers features competitive with black market sites, such as lower fees, secure trading, and a wider range of items. Middleman NPC etc.
- Player Identification Verification: Require more rigorous verification methods for player accounts, making it harder to anonymously engage in black market trades.
- In-Game Trusted Trader Program: Establish a program that recognizes and highlights trusted traders in the game, based on their history of legitimate transactions. Cool & recognizable badge/title.
- Escrow Services for High-Value Trades: Implement in-game escrow services for high-value trades, where the game temporarily holds the traded items/currency until both parties fulfill their parts of the deal.
- MANY MANY MORE

I'm not amazing at conclusions. The conclusion from the above reading should be that we have a problem. Gold inflation and the market as a whole is suffering. There are solutions to that problem. Let's work together and make a concerted effort to fix the problem.


From the bedroom at my parents house playing Nuris in 2013 to the safety of my own home. Cheers,

- Estate

Commenting on the gold sink solutions, I would say we need more permanent options instead of just temporary ones. The Enchantment system did it the absolute best, I’ve spent 300m in 1 week just enchanting gear for 35 at one point. The issue is with the games core. Endgame is just not challenging enough, nor engaging. In AL you have campaigns that would require an entire squad to complete. So that’s out as an option. Maybe in 2024 we could see if StS is available to push for more updates on PL. We could try and get the concept of elite maps brought over with their own premium rewards. Elite maps if done correctly, ie requiring you to be within the same level range as the map in question, would definitely require enchants to be in use to safely clear.

The special vendors that sell vanities is something I’ve been looking into for a while. AL has Sir Spend A lot, who sells you unique vanities for gold, some flat out and others from a chest that you roll over and over. Sir Spend A lot would of been a good thing to have back in 2019-2020.

[Estate]

Are you sure you’re a business analyst ?

I doubt it, since all your statements are about work without profit in return.

This seems like an awfully personal attack for a thread in which I attempted to voice concern and offer suggestions to help a game that I love. While this could have been worded in a much kinder manner I understand that the budget of STS is small and that implementing some of the strategies and suggestions I gave would be financially overbearing or simply too time consuming. On the other hand, my previous comment also still stands, that some of these suggestions could be implemented with minimal effort, focus, even direction and thus have a very minute financial impact.

The fact of the matter is that with a game that is dying or a more realistic metaphor is "in a coma until unplugged" the more people that play = more money. A more thriving economy inside of the game would no doubt boost player to player interactions. Truly, any change would increase player count and thus revenue.

I fully understand where you are coming from and appreciate your comment. This post was made to cast a general net, or throw everything at a wall and see if anything would stick. I care about this game and this community. I trust that STS will listen to me or at the very least see the magnitude in which the community still cares about the game as well. Features implemented or not, its good for the game, forums, community as a whole to have more posts like the one above.

[Far]

I commend you for your love of the game.

And can see you really care about it and have provided many solutions to a numerous amount of issues currently facing players.

What the majority of players on PL do not understand and realize is the direction our game is going now.

STS have made it clear in their letter to the community 2023



If you read it and think about it, accept the truth of the transparency of STS. Then you might understand what is really going on.

Thank you for your suggestions, and solutions to some of our game problems.

Please understand there is nothing STS will do about them because their primary focus is on Arcane Legends alone.

Bro, Why are you targeting STS? Even Cinco failed by listening to your advice, joining Discord, and orchestrating scenarios to get most active players banned, bro. you left nothing behind in the game, yet you still expect STS to listen to you?

[Curvatwo]

Dear Spacetime-Studio Dev Team & Dear PL Community,

I will let other's speak for themselves while attempting to speak for everyone. I've played this game for almost a decade. It has a special place in my life. Part of the reason why I am in business analytics now, part of the reason why I did my Masters thesis on the psychology of nostalgia. It has been foundational to my life which is admittedly kind of funny. That being said my favorite things to do in PL have been to low-level PvP and to get rich. The most popular PL videos are still the Merch Guides and whether the community wants to embrace it or not, the market, consignment shoppe and just plain "looking cool" have been and increasingly vital part of modern day Pocket Legends. I am here today to attempt to regulate that market. Stop Black Market transactions, deflate gold prices of increasingly rare items and re-stabilize such an important aspect of the game.

Create more gold sinks. If the gold sinks are supposed to be enchanting or event items they are obviously not working.

- Maybe offer a title at the xmas event that costs the max gold cap to unlock called (Affluent) and a badge that is also max gold capped price that's just a dollar sign symbol.
- Maybe let players run their own tournaments in game. 1v1s or 3v3s that start in a locked arena and however much gold is put in, 20% is deleted and the winner or winners is rewarded the rest.
- Maybe you create some NPCs or causes within the game to which players can donate gold. These could be tied to server-wide events or bonuses, like if players donate a certain amount of gold, everyone gets a temporary boost or vanity reward.
- Dare I say gold for platinum in some cases or maybe a limited time (for new char slots, CS, inv and stash slots etc).

Currency Rework

As some players outlined previously, I think the introduction of a new currency would be very helpful. An NPC in towns that exchanges a certain amount of gold (1million, 50 million, 100 million, any could work) for a new currency. This new "coin" could be exchanged back for gold in the event that it was needed by a player. The advantages of this are clear. Trades become more safe for high value items & gold-inflation slows down. Scamming would most likely be removed for these items that cost > the gold cap. This "coin" can cap at 5k and could be used in the CS or in player to player trades.

Farming issues

Second, we need to fix farming. Gold farming is the most common for capped players like myself. Sets and pets that give Gold Loot to farm isle or gold realms are amazing but the idea of gold farming has significantly slowed progression for early game players. 1 million gold nowadays is nothing. New players are not going to naturally accumulate 1 million gold without a lot of work OUTSIDE of PvE maps in Towns begging, selling what little they have (and getting scammed on prices) or unfortunately Black Market dealing to jumpstart their PvE experience. The CS is dead because of this. No sets early game sell for any amount of gold that would be useful to early game players and no mid-game sets are worth farming for capped players that can just farm Isle or Realms. 80% of PvE has been effectively eliminated by inflation. Obviously as more gold is introduced the value of it goes down and thus higher prices for everyone. When players farm gold instead of items, the trading of valuable items diminishes. This has lead to a less dynamic market, as fewer items are being circulated and traded, only ones with higher value (almost every "random" vanity doesn't have a market price and are not worn, used or sold). As late game content is the primary source of gold, earlier game content has become neglected by the players because it is simply not worth it to play. The opportunity cost value is significantly askew.

Here are some potential solutions:
- Encourage crafting again. Enhance the crafting system to allow players to create valuable items that can be traded. This could involve new recipes, materials, or even a revamp of the crafting system to make it more integral to the game's economy.
- Item sinks similar to trade up contracts in Counter Strike. Let's say I have 10 St Patty's Brew Steins from 2017. I can attempt to trade them up to a Rainbow Connection but the rarest item (such as the RC in this example) is always a 0.001% of happening. Be very transparent with what items trade up to other items, do not have the player base accidentally figure out that 10 Red Diamonds trade to a starry variation, make that clear.
- Create special vendors that sell unique, desirable items but only accept gold as payment, untradable.
- Incentivize Item Use over Hoarding: Encourage players to use items instead of hoarding them
- Increase the relevance of mid-game content. Make mid-game content more relevant for capped players, introduce new challenges or achievements, which can help redistribute player activities away from just end-game gold farming.
- !! Converting in-game gold to real-world charitable donations (managed by the game developers). !! (Idk, its crazy but im here for all the ideas)

Economic Transparency

It's not secret that new players and returning players have no idea what items are worth. Even active players probably couldn't tell you MOST item's worth. The community could help but the devs should add a part to the discord or the forums or both that tracks the average item sell price for the consignment shoppe so players especially new ones can have some idea of what every item is worth. This would take a lot of work and would be manipulatable. Here's how to make it better:

- Time-Based Averaging: Instead of calculating the average based on the most recent sales, use a longer time frame for the average price calculation. For example, an average over the past month or quarter would be less susceptible to short-term manipulation.
- Volume Weighting: Weigh the average price by the volume of transactions. High-volume sales would have a more significant impact on the average price than low-volume sales, reducing the impact of small-scale manipulation.
- Exclude Outlier Transactions: Implement an algorithm to identify and exclude outlier transactions from the average price calculation. Prices that are significantly higher or lower than the typical range could be flagged and removed from the calculation.
- Limit the Influence of Repeat Transactions: Design the system to recognize and diminish the weight of repeat transactions of the same item between the same accounts or within a short timeframe.
- Randomized Audit and Review System: Periodically audit transactions manually or through an automated system to check for patterns of manipulation, and adjust the price calculation algorithm based on findings.
- Transparent Methodology and Player Education: Clearly communicate how the average prices are calculated and educate the players about this system. Transparency can deter manipulation attempts
- Community Feedback Integration: Allow players to report suspicious transactions or pricing trends.

Combatting the Black Market

Trading of ingame items for real-world currency is a challenging issue, especially in an aging game with a declining player base and increasing rarity of items. To address this, the devs and community need to work together to create a more secure and engaging ingame economy while discouraging the behavior.

Here are the solutions:

- Improved Item Tracking and Provenance: Implement a system where high-value items can be tracked, showing their history of ownership. This makes it easier to identify and investigate suspicious trading patterns.
- Reward Reporting of Black Market Activities: Encourage players to report black market transactions by offering in-game rewards. Do I hear black community shield?????
- Create an Official Marketplace with Competitive Features: Develop a more robust, official trading platform within the game that offers features competitive with black market sites, such as lower fees, secure trading, and a wider range of items. Middleman NPC etc.
- Player Identification Verification: Require more rigorous verification methods for player accounts, making it harder to anonymously engage in black market trades.
- In-Game Trusted Trader Program: Establish a program that recognizes and highlights trusted traders in the game, based on their history of legitimate transactions. Cool & recognizable badge/title.
- Escrow Services for High-Value Trades: Implement in-game escrow services for high-value trades, where the game temporarily holds the traded items/currency until both parties fulfill their parts of the deal.
- MANY MANY MORE

I'm not amazing at conclusions. The conclusion from the above reading should be that we have a problem. Gold inflation and the market as a whole is suffering. There are solutions to that problem. Let's work together and make a concerted effort to fix the problem.


From the bedroom at my parents house playing Nuris in 2013 to the safety of my own home. Cheers,

- Estate

They don't have the dev manpower to recolor items - how they gonna add all this?

[MageFFA]

They don't have the dev manpower to recolor items - how they gonna add all this?

I’m sure they do if money is involved. Still don’t know why StS doesn’t just reskin popular items and place them on the plat store permanently for a reasonable price. Give me a Level 35 ESB that isn’t broken in PvP and I’ll pay whatever, obviously that’s a lie but you get my point.