Spiral Knights - Remove direct Energy trading

Remove direct Energy trading

29 replies [Last post]

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 17:13

Dorael

A large amount of Crystal Energy in the game right now is likely being hoarded by a relatively small number of players. I believe that, for the most part, this isn't out of any deliberate intent but simply due to a lack of reason to convert to Crowns. These players sell Energy when they need Crowns but otherwise keep most of their money in an Energy format. As a result, most of the high end trades are done in Crystal Energy instead of Crowns purely out of convenience. If Energy could not be traded between players then the Crowns / Energy market would see a lot more activity and the economy would equalize more to balance between the two instead of leaning heavily toward Energy as it seems to be right now.

While I'm not one of those players who thinks the economy is broken (I'm fine with the Crowns/Energy market being player driven and falling wherever it does) a number of players appear to feel differently. I think that forcing players to deal only in Crowns would stabilize the Energy market a lot faster.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 17:17

Threule

Legacy Username

I agree with this.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 17:19

Ilikiki

No.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 17:32

FossaFerox

Legacy Username

No, it would just make

No, it would just make crafting for other people a lot more painful.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 17:42

Dorael

Crafting

It just adds another step for the buyer to the crafting process: sell energy for crowns. It doesn't change anything for the crafter once everyone starts using Crowns as the default currency instead of Energy. That extra step for the buyer is all it takes to stabilize the energy market for everyone else.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 18:13

hamiltond465

Legacy Username

as a non-paying crafter

This would make my whole 'will craft for free' shtick really painful to do, since energy tends to take a while to buy and I'd have to haggle for the crowns. Also, it removes the ability for a new player to easily log on, buy energy and then buy some equipment.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 18:43

Ezzi

@Everyone saying no

It doesn't change anything except for the fact that you'd have to put the cost of energy into crown format when trading with other players.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 19:41

Shani

Legacy Username

Converting one currency to

Converting one currency to another adds in additional points of uncertainty and additional costs-- if somebody is holding their wealth in energy, they're going to have to sell it, hand over the crowns and have the energy rebought. To make it a fast transaction, you're going to be selling at the low value and buying at the high, plus the transaction fee. Somebody's going to have to eat that cost. On the other hand, if it's a slow transaction, you're going to have to sit there... and bid.. and wait... and both sides deal with the risk that the economy takes an unfavorable turn while waiting for everything to go through.

Why introduce that extra risk and uncertainty when you have a perfectly good commodity that's universally valued?

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 20:42

cheeserito

Legacy Username

I disagree as this would put

I disagree as this would put a huge inconvenience between IRL friends who play the game together, and from what I can tell, a lot of guilds would be strained by this as well.

Imagine: Your friend is just starting out, and they're skeptical about the game. So that the two of you can play together, you decide to just give them a couple hundred CE so they can play longer that the standard 100 mist energy.

Another example: What if your friend decides to join you while you're mid-run, but they don't realize that you're already at the end of the level, and the next level is something they're not prepared for, so they just want to return to Haven. You feel bad because they wasted 10 energy to come down to you, and you want to reimburse them for their troubles (this has actually happened to me, so it's not that extraneous of an example).

Also, a lot of people in guilds give CE to guildmates so that they can continue doing runs together.

What you're suggesting would take that away, and make it very difficult for people who are so accustomed to this. Also, the only way around directly trading CE to someone would be to trade them the current going rate of CE in crowns. And what if you simply don't have that? What if you just purchased a 5star recipe, and are completely out of all the crowns you've been saving? But you have plenty of CE to give, because you're a paying member.

In addition, the market is usually fairly equal as it is. I've never seen more than a 200-300 crown difference in the prices.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 21:23

Ilikiki

No.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 22:22

#10

Dorael

Perspectives

A lot of you are looking at this from current crowns/energy perspectives. Many of you are speaking from the assumption that someone has tons of energy and can't easily sell it for crowns. If crowns were the default currency then people would have more crowns at hand to make trading easier because there's less reason to hold onto 20000 energy. Right now it's working the other way around because all the high rollers are trading in energy instead of crowns. The market would be a lot more stable because it would have that much more interaction.

If you want to give someone some energy you just give them the equivalent number of crowns and they can buy it themselves. It's really not that difficult at all.

Edit: Oh, and cheeserito you could just add them to your elevator/energy tab when you play together. Not that giving them 2-4k crowns is that hard, either.

Wed, 04/20/2011 - 23:30

#11

Ezzi

Just make it so the blue wisp

Just make it so the blue wisp effect on your energy meter covers half the screen when you are over 20k energy. Easy fix.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 09:52

#12

cheeserito

Legacy Username

You clearly didn't read my

You clearly didn't read my entire statement. What if there are circumstances in which you simply don't have 4k to shell out? Then it would be difficult. The only way you could get the crowns to give them would be to sell your own energy, to give them the crowns, to buy the energy back. And you would have to sit there, and wait, and hope that the prices didn't change between you getting your crowns, and them trying to buy the energy.

And a lot of new players are pretty intimidated by the market, it seems, and a lot of them don't even know about it.

And what about guilds? You won't necessarily be going on the run with someone, but you feel you're done for the day and you want to help others continue on. You would again, be terribly inconvenienced by having to convert a bunch of your energy to crowns just so they can do the same in reverse.

Even if the prices go down/stabilize, there will still be times when the prices fluctuate, and getting rid of direct trading would just make so many things horribly inconvenient. What you are suggesting is taking a simple transaction and making it super roundabout, and as someone mentioned earlier, you're just adding an unnecessary layer of uncertainty.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 11:20

#13

Rullerr

Legacy Username

Bad idea

Yes the very high end is dealing in energy, but they bought it/farmed like crazy to get that much crowns. Crowns are worthless, they just are worth 1/40th of energy, so I can say 6k energy rather than 240k crowns. Most people at the high end keep their money in energy, cause the value is only going up. Adding in the necessity to use the market anytime you want to do alchemy trades means that someone is losing money every time. There's no good reason for this. It's not going to drop the price of energy, because they're not going to suddenly decide that crowns are worth it. They're going to hold onto energy until they need crowns, much like they do now. You're just adding cost to people who would rather share recipes among a group than have everyone get them.

Trading energy is useful to groups of friends, guilds, and crafters for hire. Removing it will not lower the price of energy, and might actually cause more hording till prices get higher as need to buy and sell off the market rises.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 13:52

#14

Dorael

Again, perspectives

Cheeserito and Rullerr, you're both again looking at this from the current game perspective that crowns are useless and not worth keeping much of because, right now, they are. If you can't trade Energy then everyone would hold onto more Crowns though. Rullerr in particular, you talk about the Energy market going up right now but that's because it doesn't see as much interaction as it should since people don't have a reason to convert their Energy into Crowns. It would be much more stable if people were constantly using it. People wouldn't hoard it because they'd actually need it now, unlike currently.

People in the high end keep their money in Energy because there's no reason not to.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 14:08

#15

Icee

Speculation and Sinks

You contend, essentially, that speculation is currently driving energy exchange prices up. The "rich" players are buying and hoarding energy because they think the value will keep rising and they only sell for crowns when they need crowns. If this speculation is so rampant that it's problematic (I'm not convinced it is, but I'll analyze as if it is), limiting trading is not the way to fix the problem.

You contend that people hoard energy until they need crowns, so the solution to the supposed problem is to increase demand for crowns by introducing new things to purchase without energy or raising prices in crowns for existing items.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 14:31

#16

Dorael

To Icee

You speculate about my speculations but I didn't say any of those at all. I've said quite the opposite, in fact.

I have a lot of Crowns and Energy compared to most people. Most of my money is in the form of Energy. Honestly, I don't care what it's going for. If I need Crowns, I sell Energy. If I don't, I don't. When you have a lot of something, you care less about the worth of a small fraction of it. The rich don't hoard Energy because they want to make more money. They hoard Energy because there's no reason to convert it into Crowns and, since there's no reason, they might as well just leave it in the form of Energy. Why should they convert it?

This leads to the same problem as it does in the real world. The market exists to be interacted with. The second worst thing you can do to an economy is hoard your money and not spend or invest it (the first worst being to simply destroy it). They don't have to add anything new, if all player trades were done in the Crowns format the Crowns / Energy market would see a lot more interaction.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 14:42

#17

Ilikiki

Icee with the actual

Icee with the actual economics. Thank you, Icee.

Have I said no to this idea yet?

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 15:52

#18

Icee

Sinks increase demand.

Ok, so I agree with you when you say that players with a lot of energy don't sell it on the exchange unless they need crowns. Our disagreement, then, is how to make them need crowns.

Forcing them to use crowns for trades with other players will increase the volume of the exchange, but it won't actually increase the demand for crowns because a player will buy crowns with energy once, then those crowns will just be traded back and forth between players. Unless you remove them from the system altogether, the demand will remain unchanged. The way to increase demand for crowns is to sink more of them, not to force them to be used in non-sinking player-to-player trades. If you want to sink more crowns, you raise prices or introduce new items and services that require them.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 16:06

#19

Dorael

Sinks aren't the only way

You're correct that sinks do increase demand but they're not the only way to do so. In any event, I think it's moot. My concern isn't that there's too much money in the economy right now and that some of it has to go away. I just think there's too much Energy that is sitting there doing nothing. Investment and currency cycling are always better for an economy than hoarding of resources.

I am not actually concerned with increasing or decreasing the demand/supply of Crowns or Energy persay. I simply want them to balance out and stabilize a bit more than they are now. The market is a bit wonky because a lot of people favor Energy simply because there's not much reason to favor Crowns. There's a reason all the high end trades are done in Energy. It's not that Energy is better than Crowns, it's just that most high rollers buy Energy and it's an inconvenience (one extra step) to turn it into Crowns when there's no real reason to. No effort + no reason > Effort + no gain.

Thu, 04/21/2011 - 22:00

#20

Awesomest

Legacy Username

Put simply:

People that want 4* or 5* gear need to buy CE to buy their gear from other people. The CE they buy then goes to a player that doesn't need to sell the CE for Crowns, so it's permanently removed from the active market. Economics 101: decrease in market supply = increase in price. So in order to recycle that 'wasted' CE, a need to convert Energy into Crowns needs to be implemented.

But I don't agree with this idea. Sure, it's going to inject CE into the market and lower prices but, like cheeserito has pointed out, it does it at the cost of convenience and simplicity. I'd much rather see a more constructive solution like implementing a money sink (e.g. an entry fee for PVP) than the removal of a perfectly good feature.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 00:17

#21

ikillyou

Legacy Username

cosmetic crown sink

feel free to disagree with me, but maybe player housing would be a good way to get rid of al this excess CE that people seem to have ( not me personally )
making the rents a certain amount of crowns a week would give reason for these players to exchange some of this CE to crowns, to pay their rents. just a suggestion, i dont know what people will make of it

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 12:05

#22

Tive

The thing you are propposing

The thing you are propposing will temporary increase demand in crowns, but solve nothing.

Cause crowns keep increasing infinitely.

And I'd stop playing a game that forbids dealing in the only stable currency.

edit: seriously just accept that energy has a value of nearly as much crowns as you can get per jelly run. because if it rose above that people would stop buying due to unsustainability. Really without crown sinks sky is the limit.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 12:37

#23

cheeserito

Legacy Username

Dorael, I'm quite frankly

Dorael, I'm quite frankly very tired of you not reading my posts. You say that I'm looking at from the game's current perspective, even though I told you EXACTLY why it wouldn't work AT ALL even if the market was stabilized, like you're suggesting! OMG LEARN TO READ. And stop insisting that I'm not reading your posts, because I am.

What's more is they aren't going to lower costs of recipes. They're NOT going to lower crown costs of ANYTHING. Your "solution" would literally be causing so many PROBLEMS it's not even worth it to consider! The scenario I presented of not having the 4k (hell, I don't even care! It could be 2k, for crying out loud! It could be 300 crowns, it doesn't even matter!) to give to someone is still going to be an issue. In fact, it's going to be MORE of an issue, because EVERYTHING would be reliant on crowns! So you'd be less likely to have any!

ALSO, they are NOT going to change the market system, so there will still be the waiting around for the bid to go through, and there will still be fluctuations because it will still be USER driven. >:O

And what's stopping those "hoarders" of energy from intentionally trying to drive the market prices up? Just because they frickin' feel like it?

And what about the paying members? You'd essentially be telling them that their form of currency is USELESS! Because your whole idea here is to get it so that the energy market crashes, and energy isn't worth nearly as much as crowns are.

What's more is that what you're suggesting could actually do the opposite of what you're hoping it would do! Because you would STILL need energy for gates/reviving/crafting. And what if those hoarders don't even care? And just keep hoarding? Because really, wtf not? They can just keep doing runs, and just keep getting more and more crowns until they single-handedly can cause the prices to bend to their whims?

By limiting their trading, you're not going to get them to change their ways. AT ALL. And why should they? They can still craft items, and trade mats. And they probably wouldn't care if the person could give them the energy to craft or not. I sure as hell wouldn't be trying to sink all my energy into crowns when I knew that I could do like, 3 jelly runs and make 4x what it would have been worth. =/

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 13:06

#24

Dorael

Replies

Awesomest: It is basic Economics which is why it's maddening that people don't understand the problem. It doesn't matter if we don't agree on what the solution is but so many people can't even agree what the problem is. Anyway, money sinks would be fine but I just hope there are more Crown sinks added in later instead of just Energy sinks. What's needed is more reason to interact with the market. Actually what might be best is if two major sinks were added in, one that sunk Crowns primarily and one that sunk Energy. That way people who want to participate in both have to interact with the market more.

TiVVV34: I deal primarily in Energy right now because it's what people do at this level. The only reason Crowns aren't stable is because no one that has a lot of Energy cares at all about Crowns. It really has nothing to do with driving costs. Most of my money is in Energy, believe me I couldn't honestly care less. I simply think that a more stable in game currency would be better for the game as a whole.

Cheeserito: I read your posts and responded. What you seem to be missing is that we are in disagreement over the difficulty of converting; selling Energy and buying Crowns. You believe it to be a huge strain on the user to do so. I believe it is not. You think it's a huge burden to have to input a bid and wait a few seconds. I do not. If the market sees more use, this would be even less so the case than it is today.

You seem to be under the belief that I'm like everyone else and think people are hoarding Energy because they're trying to manipulate the market. Four days ago I hit 20k Energy. Three days ago I dropped to 10k Energy. Yesterday I got back upto 17k Energy. Roughly two thirds of my money right now is in Energy because it's what people use to trade with. The only reason I have as many Crowns as I do is out of laziness, Crowns aren't worth anything and I'll probably convert most of it to Energy later today. It has nothing to do with hoarding or trying to manipulate the market, it's just what everyone has because it's slightly more convenient.

Simply because Energy would be useless as a currency for player trades doesn't mean it'd be a useless currency. It would still be worth whatever it's worth in Crowns.

Finally, yes if they had to trade in Crowns they would have to interact with the market. Market interaction is all I'm shooting for here.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 13:15

#25

Icee

Market interactions for the sake of interactions don't matter.

I don't think you realize that you wouldn't increase market interaction for more than a day. Changing the currency used is a neutral change. If people don't sell energy now because they trade in energy instead of crowns, they won't sell crowns later, because they'll trade in crowns not energy. The only way to increase market interaction is to get more players into the game and encourage them to sink more energy and sink more crowns. That way the freeloaders will need to buy more energy from the market and the paying customers will need to buy more crowns, thus driving up market interaction.

Although I must say, I'm not sure "increased market interaction" is itself important. The only people that would benefit purely from increased trade volume are the handful who play the spread to buy and sell energy for profit. Those people can exist in the game as it is designed, but they are not at all important for its success.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 15:52

#26

ajericho

Legacy Username

Instead of making it harder

Instead of making it harder to do things currently in the game, perhaps future additions can consider this. I say this mostly as a player who buys my crystal energy with cash, cash made from hard-earned dollars in a job that already deprives me of much time to spend on the game, and I really dislike the idea that life needs to be made harder for people who don't have the time to earn crowns.

The two currencies interact with each other. If you have time, you'll get crowns. If you don't, you'll get crystal energy. Life is funny like that.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 15:56

#27

Tive

Yeah a stable monster drop

Yeah a stable monster drop currency would be nice.
Wishful thinking at its finest. (as far as current SK is concerned)

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 23:44

#28

cheeserito

Legacy Username

I don't understand your

I don't understand your burning NEED for interaction with the market. I literally interact with it everyday. And so does my boyfriend, and another IRL friend, and even some in-game friends.

And I NEVER said that the people hoarding are hoarding for the sole purpose of messing with the economy. Ever. I said that they could if they so chose, but that they're still going to continue doing what they're doing (most likely). And just hoard crowns AND energy. Especially considering they're never going to need to trade their energy at that point.

And if you're complaining about direct energy transactions, then why the hell are you charging energy for your services? Not everyone is selling things in energy, in fact almost all the ones I've seen have been wanting to sell for crowns.

In my experience, crowns are pretty hard to come by as it is. And 45k for a 5star recipe is pretty ridic for me, as I only ever have 3-8k at any give time. And I continually purchase energy with my crowns, and I still only have about 1.2k CE. Because I'm continually doing runs to get crowns to buy CE. It's a great cycle, and it's really great for my boyfriend and I. We duo everything, and I buy all the energy, while he buys all the recipes (he also sells all our mats for CROWNS). And then I split the CE with him. And quite frankly, I think we shouldn't have to post a bid for crowns with energy in order to trade crowns just so the other can buy energy. Even if it's only "a matter of seconds." You know what else is a frickin' matter of seconds? Direct trading. =/

Why have this:
>I sell my energy to get crowns
>Trade the crowns to boyfriend
>Wait for him to post the crowns to get the energy
>Wait for someone to basically give him the energy I just sold
>Continue on

When I already have this:
>Buy energy with crowns
>Give energy to boyfriend
>Continue on

Also, you're the one who initially referred to it as hoarding. So stop contradicting your own logic.

Sun, 04/24/2011 - 19:54

#29

BehindCurtai

Legacy Username

Economics and Inflation.

Sorry folks, I tried to fly this flag during Preview. Didn't happen then, and I don't think it will happen at all.

Basic economics: Buying finished high-end items from NPC's is excessively expensive. That lets players trade profitable. High end items should be made. Fine.

But once you've got your high-end items and can make runs to the bottom, guess what?

* You have no crown expenses, only energy, and crown inflation (increase in supply compared to population) is inevitable. *

The long-term effect of this is Bang!Howdy -- the complete pointlessness of scrip in that game drove the cost of gold nuggets on the exchange forever upwards.

A long-term economy requires that all fountained items have sinks. Materials go into crafting. Energy goes into everything. Crowns go into crafting, purchasing recipes, etc. But eventually you stop crafting.

The longer the delay before serious in-game player trading of materials, stock items, AH for unique variants, etc, then the worse the effect when it does come in.

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Remove direct Energy trading