Serious Question: Why do I need your Crowns
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:10
I see a lot of complaints about the energy market in trade chat, and all I ever think about when I see these complaints is "why would I want your crowns". It's a serious question that I'm positing to the forums, and I think that if there was a good answer for higher tier players, there would be more favorable CE prices. I don't see a reason for me to cover video game economics here; that's been done to death in other threads, but for me personally, crowns have no value.
Think hard about what you can do with crowns as a player. You can buy recipes with them, you need some to craft items, and other than that you can trade them with other players. What do you think would happen if a player already had the recipes they wanted, and had no items that they wanted to craft in the short term? That player has practically no need for crowns. However, to play this game for more than the prescribed amount of time each day, that player will need to obtain CE. That player is now in a situation where, to him, crowns do not have value beyond their trade in value, and CE does have value.
In fact, the value of CE may have increased to this player, because now the only way for him to advance his character is to get UV items to replace the gear he has, and trades for UV items generally take place in CE, not crowns. Now picture this player as several hundred players that have been around long enough to be wearing 5* gear, and the increases in CE prices make sense. This game needs a serious way to spend crowns to advance your character, and without it there's no practical limit to how high the price of CE will go. I've got ideas, and I'm sure others do as well, but I'd rather leave that for another post.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:22
#2
@ Ozymandius
What can you buy on the Auction House? Mats, recipes and items. If someone's already got the 5* items then he's not really got a need for any of those.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:42
#3
There really isn't much that
There really isn't much that players need extra crowns for. Even the newer P2P players, if you run gates you will get enough crowns to do stuff with ease. What all players need is energy to run gates.
OOO REALLY screwed up when they increased the CE in crafting rather than increasing mats by enough to cause an equivalent amount of CE to be sunk running gates/rev'ing/opening danger rooms/etc. (Yes, this would require a very large increase in mats, and I'm fine with that.)
Now, higher CE prices will cause some people to pay RL money for CE instead of buying from the exchange, which should push the exchange rate down. However, the higher the exchange rate, the less CE people need to sell to get the crowns they need, which should pus the exchange rate *up*. If this later push on the exchange rate is stronger, then once CE reaches a certain price in crowns, it will just keep going up and the amount of CE OOO sells will go *down*. When it cost under 2k cr per 100CE, buyers of CE for money had to drop about 3 times as much CE as the do now to get the same amount of crowns, and they needed more crowns back then. These cheap CE prices let people waste a lot of CE on unneeded/expensive revs, opening treasure doors, going down gates to levels that don't pay well, etc.
The next release better have some serious crown/mat sinks or OOO is going to lock out the new F2P players from even getting started with the game.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:47
#4
100 ce will always be roughly
100 ce will always be roughly relative to the amount you can grind off one t2 dive.
On a perfect dive, I spend 80 energy and make 7k crowns...
Why do you need my crowns? As a fully build player you don't.
As a player who is looking to buy recipes, mats, or uv items you need it for all of the above. Any player can shortcut all the diving by simply selling their ce on the market, and get approx what they could have had if they grinded it out themselves.
Look at the prices - 4* recipe is 10k, 5* is 25k... That is either a LOT of manual grinding (3-5 dives off mist means almost a week just for the recipe for a single gear) or that is money spent on ce and dumped on the market for crowns XD
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 12:53
#5
This is why there need to be
This is why there need to be more Crown sinks in the game.
Letting people change their color, say, should require 15k crowns.
Turning 5 of a 1* mat into a related 2* mat, and 2* into 3*, etc, should take 200/500/1000/etc crowns.
Recrafting a 5* piece of gear to give it a chance at a UV, or giving a 5* piece of gear with a UV a chance at upgrading its UV, should cost 45k Crowns.
This would make Crowns have actual value that would require people who buy energy to want it, and the quickest way to that is to selling Energy to players.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 13:08
#6
These are all great ideas,
These are all great ideas, and I'm glad you brought it up. Another sink could be an implementation of customization. A lot of players are hellbent on customizing their characters, and paired with the knights are so unique looking, it can be a great sink. Also, possibly guild advancements?
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 13:08
#7
100 ce will always be roughly
100 ce will always be roughly relative to the amount you can grind off one t2 dive.
This hasn't been true in the past and even now, it is only roughly true. Now the *maximum* that the CE market can reach before free players give up may be closely tied to what you can get on a run, but the game should be designed so that the maximum isn't reached.
If there are enough crown/mat sinks, especially for things that are desirable but not required, P2P players will be quite willing to sell off lots of CE to get them faster, while F2P can still play as much as they want.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 15:00
#8
I have no doubt the 100CE
I have no doubt the 100CE price will surpass the basic JK's 7000cr. People will still buy from the market to craft their 4*. The only difference is the game is getting more and more "grindy" (korean style). Eventually you'll have to grind thousand of runs to craft a whole 4* set. That will either scare people from the game or make them buy CE with cash. Or both.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 17:35
#9
It is not about buyers, it is about sellers
As I had observed in these few days, I am sure there is a group of people that are manipulating the market. I just don't believe 200 or more people sell CE at the same price at the same time, and they have no rush to sell CE at all.
So why don't I answer you question with another question.
Why the CE sellers sell CE for Crowns? If Crowns have no value to the higher tier players, so why they will sell CE for Crowns at all? Did that make any sense to you?
The market system is designed for inexperience players or players that had no times to earn Crowns to exchange crowns instantly, so they can use real money to buy Crowns (buy CE and then exchange for Crowns). Higher tier players should have no business to sell CE at all unless they need to crowns instantly, but this is not the case in here.
Here is what i believed in, just like what you said, Crowns have no value for the higher tier players that have time to play the game, but they sell CE in a ridiculous price to drive out other players for fun, manipulating the trade market for fun, try to end the game once and for all, or they are working for OOO.
Under the ridiculous high price of CE in the market( I saw 7000cr to 100CE today), new players have no way to get the high level equipment (making high level equipment is a huge part of the game) or even continue to play the game (New players die easily because lack of experience and good equipment) unless paying the CE for real money. So there are only 2 choice for new players, either they need to pay for a free to play game, or just give up and quit. Under the high competition of online game in nowadays, I can say quitting the game and join another one is more likely. This is forcing the new players to quit.
For the same reason, even experienced players that have no bulk of CE, have to quit sooner or later under this circumstance.
In result, the game will end itself since there isn't enough players in the game( OOO can't make a profit on those people since they have bulk of CE). These reason can explain the first 3 point.
For the last point, it is easy to tell, they are working for OOO, they are the game masters. OOO want the profit right away. For the insane price on the market, people are force to buy CE with real money (I saw a lot of people were saying to buy CE for real money now). OOO can make a huge profit now, even though their action will kill the game sooner or later.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 19:26
#10
> Why the CE sellers sell CE
> Why the CE sellers sell CE for Crowns? If Crowns have no value to the higher tier players, so why they will sell CE for Crowns at all?
I think you answered your own question there. Most people with CE aren't selling. When the CR exchange was at 5k, there were about 2 million crowns worth of orders between 5,000 and 5,005. At that time I had mistakenly believed that the exchange would stay locked around there since it seemed like most people were very willing to sell CE at that price and, obviously, people were fine with buying it at that price. If you look at the market now though, there are barely any offers to sell CE. As of this post there is 65,000 crowns of offers seperating 5,800 and 6,000... Anyone that has been selling a lot of stuff on AH probably has more than 65k crowns on hand.
I think that the issue here is that there really is no reason to sell CE and the people that DO need to sell it have realized they can get a lot more than 5,000 crowns for it. Why would anyone who actually needs crowns push the CR exchange rate down at this point? It benefits them in no way.
The scary part is I've been watching the right column for the last 10 minutes (yeah the one with 65k crowns worth of CE between 5800 and 6000) and people have been buying at a pretty good clip so unless the demand for CE suddenly drops or more people jump in to sell, it is going to go nowhere but up from here.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 19:50
#11
Um.........
As i said in my post "Crowns have no value for the higher tier players that have time to play the game, but a group of people sell CE in a ridiculous price to drive out other players for fun, manipulating the trade market for fun, try to end the game once and for all, or they are working for OOO."............
>"I think that the issue here is that there really is no reason to sell CE and the people that DO need to sell it have realized they can get a lot more than 5,000 crowns for it. Why would anyone who actually needs crowns push the CR exchange rate down at this point? It benefits them in no way.
The scary part is I've been watching the right column for the last 10 minutes (yeah the one with 65k crowns worth of CE between 5800 and 6000) and people have been buying at a pretty good clip so unless the demand for CE suddenly drops or more people jump in to sell, it is going to go nowhere but up from here."
Of course I blame the people that drive up the price, but i don't expect they will solve the problem. Here I think OOO should step in, to stop the inflation of CE like most government does to their economy. OOO is the one that in charge of the game and the one that run it. If the price of CE keep on going up, it will drive players away and prevent new players to join. Sadly, Spiral knight is depend on the number of people that play. As less and less people play, it will be the end of the game.
Sat, 06/04/2011 - 20:46
#12
Eh
So, OOO should tell the people that actually payed real money for ce and support the game, that they can't sell their ce for more than X crowns?
Yeah... no.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 04:23
#13
Yes, because it's unbalancing
Yes, because it's unbalancing the economy. You don't get to charge whatever the eff you want to just because you paid dolla dolla bills yo. I have already said this before, there needs to be a cap that is fair for both sides.
As for the end of the game, welp maybe they should of thought this things through more and not did stupid updates that killed off their player base and economy.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 04:45
#14
It is doable
A hard cap is doable as long as it is not too low.
OOO don't need to tell the players what to do.
OOO can simply create a NPC to allow players to exchange their crowns for CE in a high rate (such as 60crowns for 1 CE or even more). Therefore, to set a hard cap for the market rate. Under this policy, they can control the price in the market and prevent the shut down of the game.
At the other hand, a minimum cap can also be created to protect the CE seller, of course it can't be too high.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 04:47
#15
I say 4500-4700 is a fair
I say 4500-4700 is a fair enough cap for both sides. That or an even 5k.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 05:48
#16
crowns are needed for recipes
crowns are needed for recipes and temporary used for the AH.
so if you purchased your recipes you don't need crowns.
as for OOO adding a way to continuously inject CE transparently, perhaps add an npc that sells CE at a certain rate, but only a certain amount.
Like 5% below aeverage the trades of the last hour, but only one position a day (100ce).
Even though that looks little, it'd permanently remove crowns and create CE from a not purchased source. so just by that correlation and by being cheaper than the exchange, it'd have a decent impact.
edit: as for hard caps, they are either too high/low to ever come into effect or completely dictate the exchange price. Not sure if want. Like if you hard capped ce price at 5000 now, everyone would buy at 4900-5000, just due to the volume of crowns generating.
Unless a significant portion of the players are so content with buying 100ce at the 5000cr npc, that the crown volume takes a hit and doesnt recover from it because that significant group keeps selling at the 5000 npc (in which case most people sell at 5000 anyway)
So yeah that's not necessarily bad. Just degrading the option to buy CE with real money to an option to buy crowns/running time/crafting fees.
edit2: oh and how would that affect prices of other stuff. this one is terribly hard to predict without data, because people who now hog CE would have no incentive to do so over holding large ammounts of crowns, boosting viability of the AH for premium items. Anyway, I'm getting the feeling crowns would inflate because more people would have more of em to spend. (if going with the scenario that everyone buys CE barely below the NPC price, which seems likely to me) Just a hunch.
CE would only be desired over Crowns to craft or to run more after all.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 06:50
#17
@ GodofSkype1
"You don't get to charge whatever the eff you want to just because you paid dolla dolla bills yo."
Sorry, but you do. The people who pay the dolla dolla bills are supporting the ongoing development and expansion of the game.
Capping CE prices on the market just means that the people who actually bought CE for cash don't sell it on the market if the cap is below what they'd be willing to accept. So CE supply dries up. Then they turn to the trade chat channel to circumvent the price cap, selling their CE at even higher prices, reflecting the diminished CE supply on the official market. So you get a CE black market, and the prices are higher than ever.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 07:02
#18
@majic13
what GoS1 means with capping the market is obiously adding an NPC/function that sells CE for the cap value. so no drying up of CE. of course I'm rather skeptical OOO would ever add such a cap/function/npc.
just to clarify~
edit: what's a cap about limiting the functionallity of the exchange market to nonviable zones of exchange.. something like that could never be added with the intent to cap ce price.. I guess I just expected that part to be obvious.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 07:14
#19
Indeed they are rather not
Indeed they are rather not going to add a hard cap to CE prices. That's what I'm saying!
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 07:16
#20
@ hard caps.
I find the concept of a hard cap on the trade in value of CE to be absurd. If one was implemented, and the lack of motivation to sell remained, people would simply do one of two things: not sell, or go around the built in energy market and use trade. Frankly I can only see this hurting the game.
What would happen when a player logged in to play, decided to buy CE, opened the market tab, and found that there was not anyone selling CE? That player would still want to obtain CE somehow, but now they have to use trade chat, say, begging, or whatever other tool they can think of. Or log out. This would make the game less convenient to play, as now they would have to barter with someone to obtain CE instead of quickly picking some up via the energy market. This line of thinking regards high CE prices as the problem, when they are only a symptom of a different underlying problem, that problem being that crowns have little value.
If crowns had value, sellers would be more reluctant to sell, and buyers would be more motivated to buy, resulting in a pricing that would be more along the lines of a mutually agreed upon price instead of the current situation, where the value of crowns fluctuates arbitrarily based on changes in the sellers mood.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 07:36
#21
Then Why u selling the CE ?
Why u bother to sell CE if you can earn it by yourself ?
Because If you sell your CE you can Earn it way more faster ? AM I RIGHT ?
YES !
SO STOP RAISING THE PRICES CUZ ITS WORTHLESS MANY PEOPLE WILL QUIT, ANd then you won't have any1 to sell it.
THen you go the hard way go earn it all the way by yourself ;)
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 22:44
#22
An explanation for hard cap mechanism
First you need to realize that Crowns is not totally free.
You need to put time in the game to earn it.
As OOO set Crowns as the official trading currency in AH, people will still need crowns. So building a energy base market is possible, just like people selling Divine Avenger before. I don't see how this hurt the game at all. ( massive in float of trading message again? it is not hard to come up a solution for it at all, I believe in OOO.)
Second, the problem of no one offering CE on the market. This is where the NPC (hard cap) kick in. Player can simply trade Crowns for CE with the NPC ( NO NEED TO BEG).
People saying it will simply remove the profit from OOO. Not true. It is depend how they set the hard cap.
Like i said in the previous post, a hard cap need to be high. Like 6000 Crowns or more for 100 CE. Why? Because it limited the amount of CE to given to a player in a period of time.
As lot of people said before, the most profitable (by crowns, not mats) run should be the jelly king run. Which give a player roughly 5500 crowns to 6000 crowns( of course it all depend, but OOO have total control on that).
If a hard cup is set at 6700 crowns per 100 CE, the jelly king run net a player a -1200 crowns(5500 - 6700 = -1200) in the worst case. Remember a jelly king run without going to jelly king will use up 70CE without dying. 30CE times 67(the exchange rate for Crowns to CE) equal to a gain of 2010 crowns. 2010 crowns minus 1200 crowns equal to 810 crowns, which is about roughly 12CE.
A jelly kings run last for like half an hours ( Of course sometimes is less, there is a lot free riders i know, but I do believe OOO can prevent that, just like they did on level 18 on jelly king) . Playing the game for 1 hours for 24CE ( 2 jelly king run). Playing the game for 26 hours for 800CE (it use to be around 34 hours for 800CE, but since OOO give out free Mist energy every hour, I guess 26 to 30 hours is a good estimation. And the player need to do jelly king only without any revive, which is boring and hard to do). Then people can craft a 5* equipment. Will that be something a lot people like to do? I will say no. So people without time and with money will still pay OOO.
Of course a high hard cap like this will not help the F2P players, but this will make the game profitable to OOO with a hard cap. And after the hard cap is set up, OOO can now try to adjust the balance between the number of players in the game and their own income. I believe less players won't profit OOO and more F2P players won't benefit OOO either. Now they have a device to adjust both, and i believe OOO will find out the right hard cap sooner or later.
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 22:59
#23
And also
The trade market will still work, since some players will be willing to offer their CE for Crowns as they have no time to play the game or need crowns for crafting and for biding immediately. (OOO do need to raise the value for crowns on crafting or recipe.........) But the market will work under a hard cap, if the hard cap is 6500 crowns for 100CE, people must offer less than 6500 crowns for 100CE in order to have a buyer.
And a now OOO have a device (hard cap) that they can change it weekly or even daily. They can adjust the price slowly, which is better than an update that increase the crafting energy from 400 to 800, which a lot of people get crazy about........
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 23:55
#24
I don't expect to be crown
I don't expect to be crown efficient on a full run.
running the first half a stratum will allways be a gamble for recipes.
joining on basil is how you farm crowns.
As for the NPC thing, I don't belive it's an option OOO would use. Also kind of meaningless to still have the "market" (it's really just OOO telling people what to sell their CE for)
Also it IS losing money for OOO.
I'd know by using the npc I remove crowns from the economy which could be nice for the CE trade price. So why would I not do that.
A)Like that I also don't consume $ covered CE, which usually would have to be bought by someone. That's effectively lost money.
B)Less crowns for CE also means more people would rather buy it from another player than use $ to get CE or crowns.
I'd rather want OOO to make the game more Playable to a total new player and leave the CE:Crowns price to balance for crown drop efficient play. (though they should probably change some things about crown payout too; can't expect everyone to understand 100ce can give you 15k+ crowns from crown drops)
Sun, 06/05/2011 - 23:58
#25
We should be able to buy
We should be able to buy furniture or something for our guild halls.
That recrafting idea is excellent.
Mon, 06/06/2011 - 12:58
#26
The market will still work
A market will still work with a hard cap, as i said a hard cap should be high.
How about a real life example? There is a hard cap for interest rate in a lot of country. For example, the maximum interest rate a bank can charge a person is 10% in California State, a interest rate that is higher than 10% is illegal . And none of the banks are charging at 10% interest rate.
If a trade market is meaningless under a hard cap, how can they explain the interest rate situation?
A hard cap will not kill the market as long as it is high enough.
A hard cap is just used to prevent the exist of a monopoly or oligopoly in the market.
And about the OOO losing money thing. So who think losing players is making money for OOO. A hard cap is to prevent the massive of players lost because of monopoly and oligopoly that exist in the trade market (the best selling point of Spiral Knight is free to play, if a monopoly exist in the market, how can it be free anymore? Everyone will need to pay to play) . Losing players mean less people know about Spiral Knight, mean losing the expansion of number of players, also meaning losing potential customers to OOO. Is that sound earning $$ for OOO to any of you?
And about the 100CE for 15kcr, beside being a 100% free rider( join at level 13 or higher), can you tell me how you are 100% sure that you can earn 15kcr per 100CE. I really want to know how.
Mon, 06/06/2011 - 17:40
#27
reply to zirkir
Simple if you want to play like us CE buyers buy some CE and stop whining. people who dont pay dont deserve to have the right to tell us ce holder/buyers what to do.
Beggars cant be choosers enough said.
Tue, 06/07/2011 - 00:03
#28
This is silly
Lots of people want CE. I've even bought it and I pay for the stuff with real money.
Selling it is less desirable, since I can visit dungeons on the CE and make more than I'd sell it for.
CE has been devalued from the start. I'm afraid it will reach equivalence somewhere around the value of a tier 2 run.
Not that it would bother me. I enjoy playing the game, even on 100 mist energy per day.
I invite people who don't understand this to read on supply and demand
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
It may be complex but market forces will continue to push, increasing the value of CE until it is either devalued or some large amount is added into the economy. Likewise, if something increases the value of crowns, the price of CE will drop, since more people will want to sell CE and fewer will want to buy. Perhaps a very expensive sixth star of gear or some fancy costume pieces.
One thing to be certain of, there is no grand conspiracy of people abusing the market. Just too many buyers and not enough sellers.
Cheers, cats.
Tue, 06/07/2011 - 01:24
#29
Daystar hit the point, only
Daystar hit the point, only way to fix the market is givin more value to crowns, and to give crowns more value they got to make more crown sinks; if only they kept the earlier prices for crafting (5*: 45k cr for recipes, and 300 CE for crafting, and so on) it would have been much more balanced, beacuse a player needed many more crowns instead of CE to craft an item, but all daystar's ideas are good for crown sinks; then, why don't OOO use these ideas? The problem is, many people who are unsatisfied with CE prices today decide to buy it with RL money, and that's totally wrong: i'll buy CE with RL money when the game gets a real fix and I get satisfied, not when it's going nowhere and when i whine about it, and everyone who wants to play without spending 20$ a week for the game should do this...
Tue, 06/07/2011 - 11:48
#30
About abusing the market
It is not a conspiracy that players abuse the market.
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/10165
Sinxeno simply admit that he did abuse the market, and it is not a secret.
In this case, OOO should step in and do something to stop it from happening again.
Allowing the P2P players to abuse the trade market is a suicide action for the game. F2P players is a big part of the game in a "Free to Play" game.
Tue, 06/07/2011 - 12:22
#31
Market abuse...
It is not a myth that the market is manipulated... the price can be pushed a good 10% out of equilibrium. But, this is a temporary effect. The market will return (or maybe be pushed) back. Sinxeno's manipulation was made easier because his 10% push of the market -up- was made at a time when the market was rising anyway. So he really only pushed it up to 5% or so above equilibrium and as soon as he logged off the market snapped back by several percent anyway.
It is not players pushing the market around that causes -sustained- price shifts. It's players pushing the market around that makes it change by 400-800 crowns per 100ce over the course of a day. The price change over the course of a week or a month is from market forces. New players not buying CE, new piercing weapons costing 1400 ce each to craft ( 800+400+200 ), &c. When one player decides to craft the 5* of all 3 new piercing gear at one time and buys 2400 CE at once, that can easily drive the price up by hundreds in seconds, and because such a player is -not- going to relist that CE later but is going to sink it into crafting, it has a much longer lasting impact than manipulation tactics.
Ultimately market manipulators are going to -sell- CE. There's no profit in manipulating the market if you don't cash in; when you cash in, you remove the upward market pressure that had been provided before then. When you craft with crown-bought CE, you put upward pressure on the market and leave it there.
Tue, 06/07/2011 - 23:08
#32
The problem for market abuse
I didn't witness Sinxeno's manipulation by myself, but i did witness another abuse last week.
The exchange rate was stable at a point at 5500 crowns to 100 CE, suddenly increased to 7000 crowns to 100CE in a matter of 10 to 20mins.
This was a typical manipulation. Of course, the price did went down afterwards, but it never get back to 5500 crowns to 100CE. It stay at around 5800 crowns to 100CE. 300 Crowns different after a single manipulation. A 5% increase of value on CE in a 10 to 20 mins period.
If there is a 5% increase in value in CE everyday , for the exchange rate is now about 6500 crowns to 100CE, after 30 days, the exchange rate will be around 28090 crowns for 100CE. Therefore OOO should really stop the player's manipulation in the trade market.
And sometimes, those manipulators aren't looking for profit. They are just doing for the fun of it. Like a person showing off in front of their friends or a hacker that hack people's computer, they do it for the fun.
Mon, 06/27/2011 - 23:49
#33
nope
if i could buy CE at 10% cheaper then in the market from an npc, then there would be a crown INFLATION as i could use that energy to run more dungeons, to get more crowns
we need a crown sink, like the ability to buy different looks for 100.000 crowns each, or 250.000
OOO would also make money of this, as people would need to PLAY THE GAME to get crowns, and to play the game, you need energy
Auction House?