@Delticon- But there are people selling energy, so I don't have to pay money. I recognize and accept the necessity of P2P players, and I am very grateful to them for keeping the economy moving. As long as enough players are willing to spend real money, I can play the game for free. If that stops being the case, let's cross that bridge when we come to it
Edit: Ninja-posted by two people. Nicely done, guys. Nicely done
Probably because they are pretty damn obvious points. >___>
Trollingyou. Yes.
Someone has to feed us.
Still.. the problem now lies to Three Rings. If Serell's right, Three Rings have secrets hiding. A pot of black chocolate bar awaits to be eaten when found.
For now, the economy issues aren't a matter to everybody. If ye're trying to save tier 2 players from their cliffhangers, I think we're hopeless to do anything about it.
I pointed Cocosnake, Rommil and Pawn, because they thrown in a lot of money into this game. They were actually unhappy about the UV locking was here and they didn't liked it.
Now, they stopped throwing money to Three Rings and was quite inactive on forums, unless they went through some unsatisfactions.
I rarely bother commenting here, since I know someone is going to find some kind of fault with my logic. But I do want to say a few things.
Firstly, grinding is necessary in pretty much every MMORPG. Trust me, I have played some which have much more grinding than spiral knights. Sure, you need to grind to get crowns to get energy, but it isn't too bad - few runs of RJ and you'll have enough to buy some CE. You can always chip in a few pounds to get some CE too - you realise you can buy pure CE without any extra frills quite cheaply, right?
Moving on from grinding, I almost have 5* gear, just need a bit more CE, and most of that time I hadn't paid a penny. The only time I bought something was an Explorer pack, because I fancied the Stranger hat to go with my Wolver coat. That's pretty much your idea of having paid for accessories already implamented, right? And you can also buy weapons for CE from the supply depot, so again, its already implamented - but it isn't forcing you to buy stuff with real money, its simply giving you an option.
Just because you buy something that can be easily sold doesn't necessarily mean you'll want to sell it. In this case, there would be many people buying energy with cash, but not feeling like selling it. OOO is still capable of making cash to run the game, but f2pers still couldn't go any further than tier 2 without having to grind beyond forever just to convince someone to sell a meager package.
Sure, all P2Pers *could* decide to keep buying CE, but refuse to sell it. However. . . why would they? Can you think of any reason?
Why do I always think that in-development games are cooler than the era of now?
Games... getting old, die, graveyard, never be heard again, but only will be remembered.
@Deltikon - And as soon as that doomsday prediction becomes a reality, this thread will be relevant.
Edit: Stop doing that!!
But what's close enough for that is the stupidly high CE prices that f2pers have to face now, just to progress the game. Too much effort for a meager reward. And people hate that.
See all those offers in the energy depot? I highly doubt people will stop selling CE unless OOO does something to enrage all of SK (Like change wolver lines defense to only normal defense. Wait, we might rejoice over that...). People sell CE because it is a fast way of making crowns so they can buy stuff like accessories, UVs, etc. Some do it just because they like playing market man. As long as OOO does good work people will keep buying CE and selling it.
EDIT: It happened again! :O
It's a freely run market, and therefore the price will always reach an economically optimal equilibrium. If ce is regularly selling at 8.5k, that means that 8.5k is the correct price, based on current economic conditions.
If you don't believe me, look here
Edit: XD Ninja-posted again!
"But what's close enough for that is the stupidly high CE prices that f2pers have to face now, just to progress the game. Too much effort for a meager reward. And people hate that."
How is it "close enough"? You're saying our current situation is "close enough" to a scenario where it's literally impossible to craft anything if you're F2P? Gosh, wait till I tell all my F2P friends that they've actually been doing the impossible for months.
BTW, you still haven't addressed the point I and others have raised regarding "forced" purchases and whether a game is F2P. To reiterate: in any F2P game, there *must* be P2Pers, or the game would not exist. What makes a game F2P is the fact that any one person can play the game for free, not that the entire playerbase as a whole can go on playing the game for free. Someone must always pay.
P2P are the employers, F2P (and some P2P) are job seekers. The salary is paid in the form of CE. The goods being exchanged are time of the employees and the CR they turned in.
Make more sense now? The job market is saturated. But since more people continue to apply, the employers decide to raise the bar (by raising the price of CE = more CR to be turned in = longer working hours for employees) without limiting the number of people being employed.
Of course we will hit a diminishing margin of benefit at some point. i.e. P2P can only hire a certain number of F2P for farming until hiring more has few to none benefits. That's when more people realize the CE market is stupid and move on to P2P (buy from OOO directly) or stop playing altogether because of competition from other games. e.g. Borderlands 2, Heart of the Swarm, etc.
Question Delt - are you actually a F2Per? Can you say from experience that the current system is bad? I mastered it free in 2 weeks, and I'm sure that the majority of the other F2Pers are handling things pretty well. There are enough people playing the game afterall, and I rarely see any beggars.
Someone is extremely upset that three rings/sega is profiting.
When I started to play the game, I was upset for only being capable of playing for just 10 levels before I was forced to give my wallet. Eventually I dealt with it (most people do not however, and just quit, I know at least one or two guys that did.) and kept playing the game. The grinding back then was a bit high, but it was fairly acceptable for me compared to now. I managed to get to endgame around in a month or two, as the CE price was constantly increasing. And while now I just walk around on the clockworks, I see newer players struggling even more than I did because of the two drawbacks (elevator costs and CE price) on the game. This is why I'm trying to find a way to make the game better and trying to convince you people that there's a better system than a more "ingenious" one of making people either grind forever or pay real money. So newer players can enjoy it too without having to be shoved with grinding and limitations on their faces so they pay real money, with the excuse of the game being "f2p".
Unfortunately, most of those who disagreed with this mediocre money-making system have left the game or just hiding from the wrath of the "spiral drones", so it'll stay like this until the game dies (shouldn't take much longer than 2 years, by the rate of the inflation) or people actually want it to be changed, not that the chances are big for the 2nd case anyways...
And if you're not finding beggers, you might need to look better. And no, they are not. The grinding is far worse than I had to deal when the game was featured on Steam (back then, I only had to deal with around 5000K/100CE). All because the game is entirely based on cash currency. Read Wodanct's posts and you'll easily see that. But people still won't going to listen because they think the average MMO should either make you have to grind forever or to loose some money to get what you want, in order for a company to get profit.
@Eltia
"P2P are the employers, F2P (and some P2P) are job seekers. The salary is paid in the form of CE. The goods being exchanged are time of the employees and the CR they turned in."
So that means people have to work more in order to get the same salary? Sounds worse than working for devilites. then again, it's what happening on nowadays' real life too... And guess what, people don't want to work more to get the same thing they did either way.
@Njthug
Because spiral drones like you keep shoving money on their mouths for a half-p2p grindfest.
Hence all the ranting on the forum about "CE prices are too high!!11111"
It's simple logic. Nobody likes works. By using the CE market, you are subjecting yourself to be employed by the P2P. And yes, we P2P are probably worse employers than Devilites.
Your choices: continue to be employed or become an employer yourself.
I think what the CE market ultimately accomplished, is not to fulfill the "F2P" prophecy (we all know it's a marketing gimmick; development costs money). The point is that, P2P has a say on how "free" the game should be. This is part of the unique aspect of SK, because P2P can influence the value of the game.
Too many F2P beggars? No problem, we jack the prices up. We need more farmers? No problem, we lower the prices a bit.
You can't do anything but to grind forever or pay CE with cash. That's what's wrong with this game, along with fatigue limitation. But instead of trying to fix that, you people are saying that's it's perfectly normal for an mmo being mediocre and invent all sort of stupid excuses like OOO will go bankrupt if that changes or that grinding is a feature, without even looking for alternate, better solutions for both players and developers. You all think forcing people to spend money as if it was the only way for a company to make profit. No it's not, expand your horizons for god sake.
@Njthug 3/10, made me reply twice.
"Alright, I'm tired of this. No matter what we say or do, you are still going to insist that the whole economy should be scrapped and changed to this model. You will believe anyone who disagrees with you is a "MMO addict" or "brainwashed", and you will remain convinced that everyone who hasn't said anything agrees with you (those who don't go on the forums).
Goodbye forever, Deltikon. I'm going to the Clockworks."
I'm following him.
@Deltikon ---- aww hun dont worry 2morro you will have 100 me till then enjoy the fresh air <69.
Everyone game needs the p2p population to keep running, but Spiral Knights is set up to need to p2p population just to function. That is what some people fail to understand and some of those people have even posted here. This is the first Free to Play game I have played personally that needs p2p just to function. If everyone bought only what they needed yes maybe Three Rings would go under.. but that wasn't the point. The point is that everything you do takes energy. A lot of the things you do takes energy bought with either yours or someone elses money to do. If no one sold CE this game would not function for the Free 2 Play population.
That is all I really wanted to point out. I am not saying spend money or not spend money. Just explaining how much of the content in this game revolves around money. Every single drop of CE in the game was paid for by someone.
But let's not overstate the demand for F2P. I know every city needs garbage man, chefs and barbers. But garbage man, chefs and barbers aren't the forces that drive economy.
Completely changing it is something else.
Aww im not trying at all baby <69. So has your mist reached half way....I just did like 5 runs today was great made about 30k+ crowns nom nom ce nom nom.
"Except there's more people offering high prices than people selling lower ones. "
Correctamundo~
Thats why we need more people asking for lower ones. So that over time, there will be more low offer trades than high offer trades.
"But good luck trying to get anything past tier 2 if there is no people selling energy."
Oh, because noone is selling energy atm, amirite?
"This is an adventure game, not a dress-up game. You need gear to progress on the game, not accessories. A little gimmick for rich people matters less than important things for many players."
Again, just your prespective. It's not an adventure game, it's not a dress up game, its just A game. If you think you're supposed to only play it a certain way, 'you're doing it wrong'.
"Everyone game needs the p2p population to keep running, but Spiral Knights is set up to need to p2p population just to function. "
Well yhea. That's what's so smart about its design. Execution wise however, OOO's hasn't done as well.
" If everyone bought only what they needed yes maybe Three Rings would go under"
Define 'what they needed'. I'm assuming you mean weapons/armor only. However, it's a video game so... you don't really 'need' anything. Everything in video games is purely astetic, not just accesories.
And furthermore, why do I never get affection from NJ? Perhaps I'm too 'vs OOO' for an EOS member...
q.q
I have to agree here pretty much with what Orangeo just said. Orangeo and NJthug are tellin' it like it is. The fact is: that OOO have made this as their model, and it works. If it didn't work, we wouldn't be getting updates, buying CE (with cr or $), posting on the forums, or even playing the game... People that do not like this model have been given two choices: They can just stop playing (obviously) or they can play for free and take advantage the success of OOO's model (while it's working). F2P players can get CE at any price, as long as they can complete a run through the clockworks. There are plenty of ways to make cr in this game for experienced, smart players as NJthug states. Orangeo, maybe you get no eos love, but you have my respect. Now come back to the game and shred the depths with me! :D (offer still stands lol)
The game is barely more than a year and some months old (counting after Beta). Give it time before you start saying that the system is "perfect". It may work now, but will it work later? Also yes don't take my post like I am saying only p2p matter. The f2p players are needed also. Will this system endure the test of time? Will Spiral Knights be here in 3, 4, 5 years? These are things we won't know until that time comes. There are so many factors that can kill a game rapidly which don't even relate to the games economy system. Staff, Support, Content, Community, and in worse case someone hacking and stealing the Spiral Knights server files and making countless private servers are some of the factors. Using the last one as an example of what happened to NA Ace Online. (There is another 15 version of Air Rivals/Ace Online anyway that roll in the money for the game owners).
Here is a simple break down of the economy for Spiral Knights. Cash seems to be what is needed just to make Spiral Knights function. Nearly everything we do revolves around energy. CE is bought with cash. Now this is where the f2p community comes in. I don't know who supplies the most money to Three Rings but lets look at it like this.
Player A bought a pack of CE and he/she wants to change it to crowns to roll UVs, buy something from the AH, whatever reason there is.
Player B is Free to Play (maybe Pay as you go too?) wants CE and wants to trade crowns for CE. Player A supplies the CE into the game that Player B wants to buy and use. Either way. Player B has to somehow get CE to make the gear they want.
As I have posted before cash is needed to create CE. That CE a person buys from someone else came from cash, but what would happen if no one wanted to buy CE? If no one wanted to buy CE then why would Player A even buy a CE package when he/she needed some quick crowns? That is why the f2p/Pay as you Go community is needed. Someone needs to want to buy Player A's CE to give Player A a reason to even pay cash for a CE package.
Everyone needs CE. I took some time and did a guess that all the gear I have has probably ate 68k worth of CE from this game. This is not counting me buying trinket slots, weapons slots, silver keys, shadow keys, etc.
Stoping now to avoid a big wall of text. I'll add more later if silly people make more silly post.
...who keeps throwing money to OOO constantly? Where all the energy really comes from? I mean, with the lack of updates and badly crafted promos like the last ones with chance items, do really people throw those quantities of money to get energy?
I mean, one people when spending like 10 dollars may get a high quantity of energy in the market, but the f2pers highly surpass the p2p most likely if that is so (or do p2pers exchange between themselves the energy?) and now with the coming of more f2pers from Armor Games, does really exist a high enough amount of p2pers supporting the game?
I may be just tinfoiling, but we had this situation with Shadow Keys when they came out. Nobody (well, maybe someone!) liked the "random key in random box" and we would see some keys appearing in AH. People knew that most likely (99%) OOO was putting the keys there themselves. And I know that supposedly this is a player controlled economy, but again, does this game receive that much support to cover every f2per in the game (mind you, there are many newbies crafting 2* sets, even if they may not get further) and does that player-based CE supply really exist?
We know of some people who spent a LOT of money in this game though. Can this really make the difference?
You seem to believe changing the game to ''100% free for everything except cosmetics'' is a good thing, when in actuality that comes with serious cons.
For one, if you don't need cash energy to do your everyday activities then what is the incentive to buy any to begin with? ''Cosmetics'' is what you say, or more specifically the accessories. Most of the customization comes from normal game armors, with accessories only adding slightly to them, so why pay for the slight changes when you can already get most of the good stuff without needing to?
Also, without energy restrictions the crowns necessary to obtain recipes, craft them, etc needs to be raised dramatically, or crown payouts severely nerfed in all content, or somewhat of both. Why? Because otherwise you'd go through the content far too quickly and have nothing left to do. You think the grind to get enough crown for CE is bad? It would be worse if the CE wasn't needed, and only a fool would say otherwise.
The game would inevitably shut down far sooner than it should because your plan removes virtually all incentive to pay in the first place. Guess what happens when there isn't enough incentive to pay? They have to resort to adding more incentives so that there's a higher chance someone will pay. They already do this, and they do it quite fairly because they allow these incentives to circulate into the market for anybody to have the ability to obtain, instead of giving exclusivity to the cash players.
The game as it is promotes both in-game currency and cash currency, that's why it's so largely market-based. They give incentives both to want cash and to want crown, which promotes buying cash energy with real money as well as exchanging that energy with other players for crown which keeps the market going.
Where the major problem lies is in the players themselves who inflated energy prices. It's the players that create more grind, not the game itself; though I guess it's the fault of the developers for thinking the playerbase could be intelligent enough to properly sustain themselves. I mean, it's clear as day: Why is the grind so bad? Because energy prices are high. Why are energy prices so high? Because players made the prices that high. There wasn't anything in the game stating they had to be as high as they are or anything, and they've definitely been lower in the past, but over time players caused the prices to skyrocket to obscene amounts.
In conclusion: The system is fair, but the players ruined it through a combination of greed and stupidity.
I am unsure if Three Rings is throwing CE into their own CE market, but I do know when Shadow Lairs first came out Three Rings was throwing shadow keys on the Auction House. Maybe Three Rings could be adding CE into their own market also? Wouldn't be the first time they have effected the economy in some way and it won't be the last. Though I do believe the price of CE being as high as it is would be a sign of lack of sellers vs people that want to buy... and the boss mission you can replay as much as you want allowing the less intelligent part of the community to throw even more crowns at the CE market to get what they want.
I'm in no position to assess whether what you said is true, but if it was, shouldn't that be a good thing from your PoV? Increasing supply decreases costs. If OOO really is injecting CE (which I doubt, but nvm that), F2Pers should rejoice.
I posted this in the other thread; http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/53465
Go read 'On Player Retention'.
I mean, do the big angry wall of text even work?
last time i checked, were players not GM.
Agree with Trollingyou Deltikon you idiot give UP already.They worked hard very hard on this game they have to pay money to GM'S and pay money to run the game to keep it in development and to keep it up and running including the servers OOO is just a small company and by the way Trollingyou took the words out of my mouth
it's a simple deal: you can play for free, but you'll most likely not pass the 3 stars grind barrier... think of it like a "demo", you'll realize it's not worthy to keep grinding forever, so move on to other games or "buy the game", which can become really expensive
@Derpules I did not even imply that is was true at all. The only thing I know firsthand is the shadow keys deal.
@Canine-Vladmir I don't see a single big angry wall of text here. Guessing you didn't read anything and just posted.
@Fehzor Nice, nice indeed.
Not much else to add right now besides wondering why some people even posted.
Are terrible IMO. There is an evident problem with energy system in this game, along with how much of it is needed to actually play the game. We all know there is something not right with it, unless of course you're one of the .01% of the player population that has plus fifty million crowns and tens of thousands of CE.
Yes, there are some flaws in the economy, spookey. But what OP wants is to make irl money only cosmetics. But that defeats the point of the game where everything can be obtained free. (Or atleast someone else's money)
Delt, you keep on referring to doing away with the fatigue system, do you know what the consequences of doing such a thing in this style of game would be?
We would have a prevalent issue of "gold farmers" (or "crown bots" here maybe), as well as inflated C.E. prices and in the end the price ratio would be no better off and we would be grinding even more to do so, would you like to know why that is?
I'll answer it for you anyway, when all of SK celebrated the anniversary, because they let everybody have an elevator pass, I discovered how stagnant this game is without the limitations and worries of managing your resources, your energy, if you mess up, you can just try again, no consequences, heck you even keep the crowns from your journey and the only things you lose are the heat on the floor you lose on, and/or your minerals you carry on your back.
Without the energy system, there is no consequence to death, instead of the game taking more skill, it would only take more persistence.
And because there is no penalty for death, and no cost to elevators to gather crowns in the first place, the amount of crowns players get can be extraordinary, especially if you sit there ALL DAY and take advantage of it.
When the anniversary event happened and everybody got that free elevator pass for what...a day or two? (EDIT: I think it was a week total)
...The price of CE rose by ~1k within a single day.
Not only does what you ask of the fatigue system render the CE market completely vulnerable to inflation to the point where even the great depression would assume the fetal position and start crying in the corner, but since there is no penalty for death, the game would turn casual.
And last I checked, the place where your dialect originates from absolutely hates games that go from even somewhat skilled to downright casual, but that's another story altogether.
Essentially what you would be doing is killing SK by taking away the fatigue system, as there would be absolutely no control, and it would be just like any other MMO except this one has zelda gameplay (not that I would ever complain about the gameplay of course, unless they really botched it up).
@Serell All you're thinking of is cosmetics....
I understand what everyone's saying but seriously, SOMEONE has to agree with this. You have to literally PAY to play this game. And when I say play, I mean PLAY. Sure, I can deal with using energy for alchemy and all that garbage but, I have to use 10 ENERGY every time I want to do CLOCKWORKS. Doesn't anyone find this ridiculous? Sure, they give you 100 energy to start off with but when it's all gone, you're gonna pray that you have just enough crowns to pay for another 100 energy! Then all your hard earned crowns from that adventure are gone... Maybe the only other option is wait 13.2 minutes for another 1 ENERGY, or basically wait 22 hours for your whole tank to come back.
So, if you are a free player, this whole game is going to take HOURS away from your play time kids. Good day.
That's the point of CE being worth so many crowns, it's so that way farmers of any place cannot constantly get CE and generate revenue, because that would render the places constantly farmable.
It's to preserve balance in the economy, back when this game first started, a lot of people mentioned the prices were much worse, and this is actually relatively stable, even for newer players.
You're SUPPOSED to wait to have energy, it's a game you play now and then, followed by doing some other activity (perhaps?), otherwise all you end up doing is wasting crowns and time attempting to farm when all it may earn you is materials, which aren't even worth the crowns you've probably spent attempting to even profit off of even those.
Sure, I find it a tad strange, but I have other games and media I play as well, so it goes in tandem, and I like the way the gameplay handles.
I have never paid a cent and I'm on my way to 5 star gear, I've already gotten dauntless delver during the anniversary event with the week(?)-long global elevator pass where all the elevators cost zip zilch zero and etc.
It's that not difficult, and it's not that time-consuming.
Patience? Depends on the person.
Difficult? Not at all.
But paying to play this game when I have a sustainable source of energy that refills at what...22 hours maximum if it's empty?
Come on man, that's the sort of thing Zynga encourages, and they're relatively infamous for their practices.
If you're going to complain about how the game functions, at least know which methods are most-effective and use those as an example.
It's like trying to play another MMO and complaining about making money when all you're doing is killing low-level enemies, when you speak of how hard it is to make crowns, At the very least have enough decency to use only the best method(s) instead of doing the foolhardy thing and blowing crowns on CE just to traverse dungeons instead of say...buying keys to shadow lairs/crafting equipment/UVrolling/etc.
Really, that was the biggest mistake was blowing your crowns on CE just to do more floors of clockworks when you need crowns, CE, and materials to craft, all using your precious CE in dungeons does is simply waste crowns.
Your looking at it all wrong man Three Rings cares a lot about its playerbase they prove this by doing this:
1. They give every player 100 mist energy
2. This 100 mist energy then allows a player daily to play this game for mere seconds or hours.
3. The time spent waiting for your mist energy to recharge you can go read a book, sleep, watch tv, touch yourself, rob a bank, run in circles, do your homework, touch yourself again, and much much more.
Three Rings allows you to have some fun with your daily dose of video games, but does not want it to take over your life so 100 mist energy allows you to have a great social life as well. Yes, you can buy Ce, but they dont force you to at all they rather see you run around outside.
I find it to be a great thing this game is doing they are taking a step-foward allowing gamers to have fun and enjoy the real-world.
And I'm already 4.5 star. Just saying coz I think someone said F2Pers can never reach t3.
Even a f2p player can farm KoA nonstop and make crowns. 14k-16k not counting tokens for 2 KoA runs per 100 ce used.
@Sirzerox The only way a f2p could not reach T3 is if no one paid Three Rings for the CE you bought from the CE market.... which has been explained many times.
Hm,
@Marthedge
You're right, just removing the fatigue system at this point would make a mess on the energy's price, because the game is too dependent on it. What I'm saying, in a indirect way, is to make the cash currency less dependable on the game like, for example, making everything that affects gameplay (crafting and slot unlockers as biggest examples) possible to get/do, not just with CE, but also with crowns, while keeping the strictly cosmetic stuff only obtainable with CE.
@Njthug
That one is new. Didn't knew the developers cared so much about us to not letting us play their own game unless we "bribed" them. I think I should leave my parents and ask them to adopt me while on it... And of course, by not letting us play their game doesn't necessarily mean we're not going to play something else, you know?
@Sirzerox
You only get to tier 3 because you're buying the energy that was paid by someone's real money with your own crowns. If he wasn't selling that energy, you'd be the one who had to pay it in order to progress.
@Giovi
Exactly. And yet, there are people who call that a "feature".
that would mean no one was buying energy.
Which would mean it wouldn't matter if you could craft or not--the game would soon be deleted anyway.
The same goes even if we use your cash shop idea. What if everyone stopped buying from the cash shop? The game would die, just as surely as it would if everyone stopped buying CE now.
Bottom line: even if there was no such thing as CE, some other player would have to pay for the server you're playing on. Every F2P game requires some percentage of players to purchase stuff with real money, regardless of how exactly they extract that payment. Show me a game which could continue operating if *everyone* was F2P. Go on.