Between
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/92937
and
http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/100091
*points at the price of shadow dragon wings*
Spot the differences
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 09:03
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 09:38
#2
Oh, you use your internet a lot? Better raise your ISP prices. ~ Comcast
Usage increase != grounds for price increase
It's a single virtual record in a most likely SQL database that no human eyes will ever see or touch, completely automated, yet it's valued at $25? okay.jpeg
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 09:54
#3
if you think that's bad..
Iron dragon wings went for 400+ dollars. As there's only under 10 in existence.
It's the most expensive thing in the games history.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 10:06
#4
I know, Aatgy bought one for 228 on steam. Also only 4 exist. Doesn't make it right that virtual items go for more than a few funbucks.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 11:55
#5
People complained about the
People complained about the Flash Sales "devaluing" their hoarded accessories, if they continued to sell these items for the same price all the time, there'd be endless complaining. Price goes up as an item gets older on most games, keeping it a flat 4k E or whatever would make a lot of players (especially resellers) unhappy.
Another place I go to does a "limited item rotation," where they look at current market prices and recent transactions, and put the limited items up in the shop again for approximately the same cost. Price stays the same, doesn't affect existing players' collections or reselling plans, but increases the supply slightly so that people who want the item don't have to struggle to find a seller. I always thought that Three Rings was doing something similar.
edit: mind you, this is not an exact science, and Three Rings may have decreased/increased the price for sales purposes ... but I mean, income is necessary? There's a lot of unknowns in a game economy and it's hard to know for sure how a community will respond.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 11:58
#6
Iron Dragon Wings prices weren't determined by OOO. They weren't even sold by OOO. You had a chance of getting a pair if you did whatever you did (I can't remember) during that Steam winter event and if you got a pair, you could keep them or sell them on the Steam market for as much as you'd like. SK has some big spenders, as such high prices were met.
Usage increase != grounds for price increase
It's a single virtual record in a most likely SQL database that no human eyes will ever see or touch, completely automated, yet it's valued at $25? okay.jpeg
But if OOO knows they're highly demanded, they could sell them for more Energy and thus make more cash. How's it not a good idea? It's not like anyone is missing out on any gameplay; it's a purely cosmetic item we're talking about.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 12:52
#7
"Iron Dragon Wings prices weren't determined by OOO. They weren't even sold by OOO. "
Irrelevant. They can be sold at any time at any price. That pris vee "bug" aka someone at OOO skipped a text box by spending 1 second on updating the supply depo shows that. They could in a matter of seconds give everyone all the stuff ever sold in a split second, but instead they've placed most supply depo flash sales in the 10 to 30 dollar range once every 2 months to please Sega. GG
Let me ask you this, what value would you place on a virtual non-tangible item that takes half a second for a gm to spawn a million of and requires no actual human being on OOO's side to manage or generate automatically.
"But if OOO knows they're highly demanded, they could sell them for more Energy and thus make more cash. How's it not a good idea?" ~Comcast's line of thought
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 13:14
#8
Well, that's virtual goods for ya. It's pretty crazy when you think about it, which is why I try not to think about it.
Let me ask you this, what value would you place on a virtual non-tangible item that takes half a second for a gm to spawn a million of and requires no actual human being on OOO's side to manage or generate automatically.
I would probably never spend more than $10 on a single virtual item with exceptions like Steam games. That said, I have plenty of things in SK that can be valued way above $10 in SK. But I've spent little money on SK in comparison to what my things are "worth". I've gained most of such things through luck, gifts, and dedication to farming. I'm glad my effort has any real world currency value, honestly. OOO may have the ability to spawn such items at any time without any effort but I trust OOO enough to not intentionally do that. Yes, the Prismatic Bolted Vees happened but it was the first time something like that happened during our three years on Cradle (and that's not even counting the preview time).
"But if OOO knows they're highly demanded, they could sell them for more Energy and thus make more cash. How's it not a good idea?" ~Comcast's line of thought
Now it feels like you're just ignoring the sentence that followed. These things are purely cosmetic. Having an internet connection is, at least in the west, more or less a requirement for any person nowadays.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 13:44
#9
You want to know the real reason why I've spent money on this game? To keep it running. I regret doing such and believe it's being redirected elsewhere. Also seeing how a friend has been permabanned since January (I didn't know until recently why he wasn't logging on anymore), I feel it's not worth *risking* money into a service that can be (in what I feel) wrongly denied.
Here's some things I expect before I'll ever pay for something in sk again:
- Fix SK so it works on Java 7 and Java 8 (As in typing java -version into console says 1.7 or 1.8, not 1.6)
- Fix SK so Mac OS X Mavericks doesn't call sleep() in the graphics stack because SK overflows the OS's message pump and OpenGL command buffer. This explains a bunch of random quarter second screen pauses that happen on regular intervals, while having less than 100% cpu core usage.
- Don't play price games and make me regret buying something. If you went to a food store and saw a liter of soda was $10, I think you'd be pissed too.
- Balance stuff out? Minor content updates.
- I don't believe what gunide did qualified him for a permaban, seeing someone permabanned like him makes me not want to put money into something that can be service denied so easily.
The GMs know all my accounts, and they probably know what I've spent, so they know what they'll be missing out on then. They have a person on staff whose job it is to maximize profits for OOO by looking to see what people buy in game.
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 16:10
#10
SK has been working on Java 7 & 8 for me, although I'm not on a Mac
Thu, 05/15/2014 - 16:59
#11
On mac I clean tested, as in zero'd out the HDD and installed brand spanking new copies of the os. If you install oracle java and never had apple java installed on your system, spiral knights will NOT run. If you had apple java before it, java uses the older java from apple by default, so it runs as 1.6 which works. If you have a newer Mac OS X and never had apple's discontinued java installed, it will try to run as 1.7 or 1.8, which I clean room tested on a 2010 MacBook Pro to not work. If you install the java JDK though it will overwrite the default java version that's run, which will kill sk on mac.
This has been a problem for months and a ton of mac users have left sk because the default jvm is now 1.7 or 1.8 because they simply like having an updated java without security bugs. I seriously clean tested this from scratch. I also clean tested the fact that sk runs like poop on mavericks while running fine on mountain lion, due to improper api use.
In fact, I've helped others on mac with this very problem on the forums: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/100043
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 00:13
#12
@Welux
$400? Pfft, http://puu.sh/8Puhr.png
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 07:07
#13
java 7/8
You need a workaround for steam SK to work on Java 7 or 8. Now, that may be a steam issue, but regardless, it's an issue. Mac is an altogether different issue, and a brutal one at that.
Now Grant, the iron dragon wings is a person issue, not a SK issue. People put that item up on market, and sold it, not SK. Sure, SK could devalue it if they so chose, but they don't have to, and that's their choice.
As for your friend being permabanned, I've not found SK permabans unreasonable in the past, and they are always willing to discuss, as well. You know as well as I, both of us having had bans overturned. We were fortunate, sure, but the fact remains a logical discussion with the GMs tends to result in a mediated settlement.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 07:55
#15
Let me see if I understand what's going on here... OP is complaining about OOO following standard economics?
"Usage increase != grounds for price increase"
Demand increase == grounds for price increase if sales do not go down
(especially on an non-essential product, like costumes)
unlike something necessary, like medicine... because that would be price-gouging, or something.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 08:00
#16
It's not just the steam version, it's all versions of sk not working when you update java on mac
At least tf2 has meaningful content updates every so often and I know if I bought something in the tf2 store it wouldn't go to waste. Hats are cosmetic in tf2, but unlike here, I feel they do more than just spawn more future hats.
Klipik:
Profit maximization != keeping customers happy.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 08:00
#17
Although I must ask about the java thing.
"Fix SK so Mac OS X Mavericks doesn't call sleep() in the graphics stack because SK overflows the OS's message pump and OpenGL command buffer. This explains a bunch of random quarter second screen pauses that happen on regular intervals, while having less than 100% cpu core usage."
I get this too (the screen freezes), but on Lion (10.7), and in SK as well as other non-java based games (most notably LoL). Is there a fix for this? It's quite annoying and has caused me several deaths in both games. Is this even the problem I'm having?
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 08:05
#18
@Hyper
"if sales do not go down"
Plus, no one's noticed until now... if everyone's gonna stop buying them and be unhappy, OOO will bring the price back down or just not sell them again and let the price regulate itself.
Sat, 05/17/2014 - 08:38
#19
The random untimed pauses are most likely garbage collection. It's the repeat and exactly timed pauses corresponding with CPU usage being low that is the issue. Not to mention screen tearing happens when Vsync is enabled when sk bugs out, as spiral knight's process gets sleep'd even inside a framebuffer copy function. Sk runs fine on snow leopard (10.6) and mountain lion (10.8) on a "MacBook Pro revision 7,1" (you can google this to bring up exact hardware info) but not mavericks (10.9). I never tried lion (10.7) as I skipped that version since it's widely known to be apple's vista of OS X.
If you're gonna unsupport my system (java 8 and mavericks), why should I continue to spend money?
Sun, 05/18/2014 - 15:46
#20
Lol remember when prismatic
Lol remember when prismatic mohawks were for 600 ce?
OOO probably analyzed the sales and saw what sold the most in the first flash sale and increased its price in the second.