Crown sinks
Thu, 04/21/2011 - 21:32
I've seen a number of threads complaining about energy one way or another, and making suggestions about how things should cost less energy. This is, in general, a bad idea, for a number of reasons - primarily that it cuts into the money that the devs make, though there are other issues. Recently, however, someone brought a point into clarity that I've seen bubbling below the surface. One of the problems with the crown/CE economy is that there just aren't enough good, open-ended crown sinks - especially for people at the upper end of tier 5. Adding some decent crown sinks would actually be good in a number of ways.
- People who'd made it to endgame, and had significant energy stores (possibly by buying it) would have a reason to want crowns. This would encourage sales of energy, which would, in turn, help keep the cost of energy from skyrocketing
- People who want to buy energy for continued play would be able to do so more easily, and therefore would do it more. This would encourage CE expenditure.
- CE expenditure makes the game go
So... things we're looking for (in my opinion).
- It shouldn't just be a nerf. "Hey, we need a crown sink, so we're just going to make life suck for you" is not the answer, no matter who you're talking to. No repair fees or anything like that. People should be able to continue playing the game just as they always have, without interruption. This should be some new, interesting thing.
- It should be of particular interest to endgame players. Lower-level players have recipes to buy and crafting to fuel and mats to purchase (from people who have their own recipes to buy and crafting to fuel). Upper-level players (who will generally have the most ability to make crowns) have relatively little to spend money on.
- It should do something interesting with an achievable number of crowns. If someone runs tier 3, and sells the resulting mats for crowns, that should be enough to do something interesting with. This is the first way in which "boost mineral prices" fails to be the thing we need.
- It should be a true sink. This should be a way for crowns to simply leave the game, rather than going to another player. This is the second way in which "boost mineral prices" fails to be the thing we need.
Bonus points for fitting in a useful and interesting place to sink unwanted generic mats, that's even better. As a player in tier 2, I already have a huge stack of mats I know I'll never use and never sell, and I can only see that stack getting bigger from here. The "WTS" cries on the trade channel wouldn't be anything like so insistent if people actually had something to do with all of the mats that weren't part of their own personal crafting progressions
Various ideas I have (some stolen):
- People have mentioned thoughts about having guild-specific gates, which would allow a guild a lot more control over the gate's destinations (since they'd be the only ones who could dump minerals into it) and ensure that any group you were joining was full of your fellow guildies (since they'd be the only ones who could access the thing). That's something that could handle a fairly high cost in crowns (as it would be intended for guilds that had at least a few high-level players in them).
- One idea I've seen on the forums would be the ability to pay recipe sellers to refresh their stock. This would likely do some unfortunate things to the resell market for recipes (which, as it is money transfer, doesn't actually help sink crowns at all), but other than that, it seems like a pure win. People are certainly interested in it (as a player at tier 2, if such was available for a reasonable fee, I'd likely hit that button multiple times a run). It won't necessarily even reduce the average time through a tier all that much - people will be less interested in the recipe sellers, so that'll go down even as this goes up. We also wouldn't have to deal with quite as much "WTB Recipe"/"WTS Recipe" spam. The guy in town wouldn't do it at all, and otherwise costs would increase by tier.
- Some way to buy better control over the gates for a given run. This would let you select the area you were going to next at each elevator, without having to wait the various minutes for the gates to change over themselves - primarily a timesaver. For graveyard/treasure gates, it obviously wouldn't let you select the treasure all by itself, but it might let you select from the non-graveyard, non-treasure options, or go for the 50/50 split on the big ones. Possibly even let you select the graveyard specifically, if that's what you're into. Costs would increase by tier.
Anyone else have any ideas?
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 00:06
#2
Boosting gates alternative as a crown sink
Boosting gates seems to be a very high-end crown cost (not really a sink since it just redistributes the crowns to 1,000s of players) but at this time it is completely unfeasible, costing about 1M CR to +1 a particular shard color. I'd say that instead, for a modest fee... 100k?, someone could swap the +5 from a strata above with a +4 from a strata below. You could also swap +2 with +1 deeper in the gate. Once swapped, that color on the strata couldn't be swapped again to avoid one's hard work from being undone. It would let people have fun manipulating gates while taking some crowns off the market.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 00:52
#3
Don't forget
Boosting gates isn't a true crown sink anyway, even if you could afford it, as it increases the gain on mineral deposit. It just redistributes the wealth.
One idea is expensive armor and helmets with weak stats that are only desirable as costume items. Conspicuous consumption is a great anti-inflationary measure.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 01:19
#4
In addition to the guild
In addition to the guild gate, all the other things that people want to see in their guilds (eg. notice board, decorations etc.) would be a good money sink.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 01:22
#5
- Taxes on a general exchange
- Taxes on a general exchange or auction house seem, uh, like a pretty basic and very wide-ranging sink in general, but *not* at the top end. So, worth noting as an add-in, but not a final fix.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 07:41
#6
Sinks should be fun
The OP hits the nail on the head when it says that sinks need to be fun, so players enjoy them rather than merely have them. So below I'm listing a few things that I think would be fun. I'm not convinced that they all even need to be pure crown sinks. I'd enjoy the content proposed below even if it cost energy, materials, or some combination thereof.
Costume armor (i.e. stuff that can only be equipped as a costume) can be available in a wide range of prices. Imagine a million crown costume and the achievement that would signify for the high level players in this game. But even for newer players, less opulent costumes could be available for a few thousand crowns.
Guild hall furniture and decoration is another possibility. Anything functional should cost energy (and maybe materials and crowns), but there is a lot of room for decorative items to allow people to show off their wealth with a pure crown sink or a crown/materials sink.
PvP of course was a crown sink in preview and I look forward to its return because it's fun. It also allowed freeloaders to keep playing while their mist refilled, which may help keep them around longer, but may also discourage payment because they can keep playing, so someone with a better understanding of that sort of behavior would have to decide whether to add a nominal energy fee. (3 energy per round, like a danger room?)
Puzzle Pirates has portraits. Something similar could be implemented in SK, although in YPP they require both currencies, so they don't sink primarily the game currency as we're discussing here. I want SK portraits so they can be linked to Zazzle where I could get my knight on a mug to go with my pirate mug.
An auction house or trading post would be a great crown sink. It might not impact those who have already reached end game, but it would remove a lot of crowns from circulation even if it only takes 1% from each transaction. I would have it take 10% of the sale price, though. That kind of sink would certainly exert downward pressure on the energy market.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:37
#7
Unlike puzzle pirates, which
Unlike puzzle pirates, which has very few truly practical items, the existing items in this game are all practical and it will be hard to pry crowns from players for anything that doesn't contribute to the core gameplay. I don't have much in the way of ideas for new sinks, but I have a lot to say on an existing sink.
Boosting was definitely conceived as a sink. Yes, if a stratum is completely filled with that one mineral there's no sink, but that will never happen so every boost sinks a lot of crowns. That said, the system is broken and that's why it's not seeing any use.
The barrier to entry for boosting is far too high. You only have to secure a majority of two minerals (and not have a certain other in third) while filling a stratum to guarantee a theme if the new tutorial is correct. You pay 1 crown up front for every remaining unit of capacity in a stratum, which is over a million for an empty tier 3 stratum currently! And because of autoboosting that won't even make it more attractive than just dumping everything in the top stratum that isn't full.
This aspect seems quite simple to fix to me.
1) No autoboosting. Minerals are worth nothing by default, or 1 crown for all strata on all gates if you prefer. (This also eliminates a crown fountain of some millions per day I'd estimate by how strata are filling currently.)
2) Pay as much as you want to boost as much as you want, half of which is always sunk, e.g. 100k crowns for +1 for 50k minerals or +2 for 25k minerals etc. regardless of the boost half is sunk and the rest redistributed.
3) Change the selling interface to show the total value for the number you're carrying of each of the five types of minerals, with a sell all at best prices button for each type. These are the best prices spread across all strata on all gates.
4) Show the current high unit price over minerals in dungeons. Multiply by the size of the crystal after breaking. (Doesn't have to be real time, an update on the prices on entering a level is enough.)
Now to make boosting itself more desirable, there seems to be one obvious solution. No more power distortions forcing boss levels, boss levels will have to be created by special mineral requirements. What these requirements should be I don't know unfortunately, but they should be harder than normal themes to stop stupidity like every gate having the royal jelly just because it's relatively cheap to do.
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 10:50
#8
I have nothing to contribute D=
So uh, this is a good idea. (bump)
Fri, 04/22/2011 - 19:23
#9
I've thought of another one:
I've thought of another one: The express elevator. Add an express elevator to Moorcroft Manor and Emberlight. The elevator only functions when in a progression that includes the Jelly King/Vanaduke. Using the elevator costs something like 30 energy, 1 of the appropriate boss token (so they have to kill him once the slow way in order to use the elevator at all, and they have to keep killing him if they don't want to run out of tokens), and a significant number of crowns (Rather more significant for Vanaduke than for the Jelly King). The express elevator takes you directly to the boss level, no waiting.
Reasons why people will do this
- If what you want to do is kill the boss over and over again, this lets you do that without digging through a lot of other levels in the way. If your little crew doesn't have much time to play, then it's a great way to face the big guy in the time you have. Even with the token cost, it's the most time-efficient way to farm tokens, and if you really don't care about the crowns and mats you could pick up along the way (say, because you're absurdly rich already) it's the most energy-efficient as well.
- It lets you ensure that you go into battle fully prepped. You can purchase vitapods and consumables before getting on the elevator, you have full health, and you won't have spent any revives yet. You won't have any health pills, but that's not the end of the world.
Reasons why it's a crown sink
- You have the up front cost in crowns. This should be designed to be enough that it will overwhelm any crowns that might have been earned on the boss's level.
- If they want to have vitapods and potions, they'll have to buy them, and that's about as pure a crown sink as there is. As a happy side effect, we'll finally give people a good reason to buy those things.
Ways to crank it up a notch
- keep a high score list of "number of times boss killed" for each boss. If you're at the point where you're competing for who's beat down Vanaduke the largest number of times, you have the crowns and energy to burn anyway.
Variations
- Rather than having it cost a token, have it require that the player have cleared to the next stopping point in that elevator's progression - ie, that they have killed that boss on that elevator before, the standard way.
Sat, 04/23/2011 - 11:02
#10
I like these
I agree with the concepts and like a lot of these ideas, personally.
How about spending crowns to fix the additional elevators that are scattered throughout each safe floor in the clockworks? I'm not sure how it would work precisely, maybe just in conjunction with the formerly suggested guild elevators or fast travel ones. Or they could just give people additional clockworks branches, which needs high-end players to put forth the money to unlock and explore. This would open up additional levels, maybe hidden bosses as well, or something. Each tier would need higher costs, and you could make each branch from the lower tiers branch even further as it goes, generating a lot more content per gate, and hiding bosses or other rare goodies in only a few would give a lot more incentive for people to push money into giving the low-level players more options.
Let PvP come back. Last time they introduced that in Preview it created a downward market shift that was very interesting. It is set up so that sign-ups cost crowns and only the the 1st place player makes a profit. Crowns in was less than Crowns out.