"I managed to raise the price of crystal energy from 4900 crowns per 100 energy to 5400 crowns per 100 energy in 10 minutes"
Because people like you, some who have less financial means (or means to pay, my cell is broken for example) and you, you deprive them they can play in making their access to energy harder?
I hate you...
"I spent more on this game than I spent on Guild Wars Trilogy."
well that's kinda the point of F2P games as funny as it sounds.
removing half the endgame was of course not satisfying though :<
edit: changed wording
They could just place additional taxes on players that try to manipulate the market. ie: every 50 buy/sells per day you pay an additional 1% tax (doesn't count orders placed, just on atual purchases or sales) or limit the number of transactions per player to 200.
But if you're smart you'll notice when a player is trying to work the ce market and you can sell / buy ce at the right times without all the hard work or risks.
@ ShadoxLunik
I don't see how your not mad at OOO. They intentionally raised the cost of crafting require more CE. In return this made CE worth even more compared to crowns and less "free floating" CE in the pool (When I say pool, I mean the overall CE that customers have bought yet have not spent/traded). This pissed off other SK players out there with that patch and made many people boycott selling CE on the market and/or buying CE with real money.
Don't blame players for playing the system they did not built.
@TiVVV34 Oh god, they removed tier3 and Vanaduke?! MY GOD ENDGAME WAS REMOVED
This is a very huge problem and I'm getting REALLY sick and tired of people who know NOTHING coming in and saying things like it's working the way it's supposed to and it's a market I can manipulate it.
Actually, no you cannot manipulate it and if you are you should be instantly banned for life. Manipulating the market to your favor because of an oversight with OOO's economy thingy here is exploitation. This is against the TOS, not to mention you are setting up a monopoly and in real life your ass would be in BIG trouble so quick.
I"m REALLY sick and tired of players taking advantage of this situation by holding monopolies on goods/items, manipulating price walls, and exploiting the system. It's time to ban them, they are already ruining what used to be a good game.
IRL doing those things would get you fined, arrested, and jailed. It's fraud, it's illegal, and it's time to stop.
I don't think banning them would be a good solution. How about fixing the "exploit" with a new system.(can't think of anything myself though)
These guys who are exploiting have spent money on the energy and have all right to do with it what they want. Hopefullu OOO rings will be able to find a solution for these exploits.
Crowns are devaluated; the only influence OOO can decently have over the CE price is raising the value of the CR with easy manipulation(s) such as increasing the sale price of materials/equipments to NPC's, increasing the average CR given by mobs, or even decuplating the minerals sale price. Can't just go and accuse CE sellers of being mean, or limit the sale price of something they acquire with real currency, that could trigger huge complains.
Of course they need to fix it lol, that's implied. However, they need to stop letting them get away with this kind of crap. It's also not just limited to ce/cr. There are people placing monopolies on EVERYTHING and controlling the prices. This is illegal people, knock it off!
@Thoran I'm sure OOO knows what people are doing and watching them. Your account lists EVERY SINGLE cr/ce transaction you make not just credit card ones. Like if you buy 100 ce with crowns, it tells you that.
Also, I don't care about complains because I'm sick of all the monopolies and exploitations of the system.
An open and uncontrolled market is the very -opposite- of a monopoly. The barrier to entry here is very low... less than 6000 crowns earned in-game or else less than $10 in real life money to be party of the energy market.
'IRL doing those things would get you fined, arrested, and jailed. It's fraud, it's illegal, and it's time to stop.'
No, it's not fraud, it wouldn't get you fined, arrested, or jailed. It's profiteering, certainly. A few decades ago some very patient people bought up lots and lots and -lots- of gold until the market went up. And then they sold their gold at the high price. And then they lived in decadent comfort, not a jail cell.
Speculation of the sort on the crystal energy market is more akin to day trading in stocks though. You simply -can't- corner the market on an item that will have supply increase and demand reduce (as players either buy CE for cash or quit the game) whenever the price gets too high.
Anyway, day trading is not illegal. Buying and selling large blocks of stock to encourage the price one way or another is not illegal. Listing offers and then delisting them is not illegal. There are many ways to break the law that are often associated with such trading patterns, but those trading patterns themselves are -part of a market-.
An open market is the -OPPOSITE- of a monopoly. OPPOSITE.
Open market - anyone can participate, anyone.
Monopoly - one person or company controls -all- of a product or commodity.
Show me this one person that owns 100% of the crystal energy in the game. No. Not a monopoly.
And yes, the market is working fine.
"And yes, the market is working fine."
EDIT: for the CE sellers. I don't want to sound pesky at them, but this morning (GMT+1) the CE price was of about 5250CR<->100CE, and just 5 hours later its 5500CR<->100CE. Sellers are really pushing the price to its limits; soon the only profit players will be able to make over a JK run sponsored by sellers' energy, thats the sale cost of the acquired materials at a NPC, so something probably just like 150CR per run. Now its really getting annoying and unreasonable. Its not a monopole of course. People playing for free will end up looking like miners in their time: working (understand playing) hard for a misery (of course they can buy their own CE or leave the game, its not like being miners; just looking alike).
> this morning (GMT+1) the CE price was of about 5250CR<->100CE, and just 5 hours later its 5500CR<->100CE. Sellers are really pushing the price to its limits
I don't think you understand how the market tab works... This morning there were offers to sell 100ce for 5250 crowns, but there were only about 20 or so offers between 5250 and 5600 which meant that people using the simple interface could have purchased 20 orders and then the offers to sell would jump to 5600 crowns. Sellers didn't push the price to its limits, buyers did. I think it is pretty unreasonable to expect people selling CE to sell at 5200 crowns when they could be selling at 5500. On top of that, there have been several people who put up CE walls at 5200, 5300, 5400, etc. in the past two days to try to prevent the CE/CR exchange from going up and they've only been villianized by people that don't know better.
If you want CE to be cheaper, sell it yourself or stop buying it so that the very few that seem to be selling CE have to compete with each other with undercutting offers until the rate drops back to 5000. From what I've seen it does not look like it will be dropping anytime soon. The demand for CE, even at 5500cr is too high.
I hate to sound mean but being myself a buyer and knowing quite a lot, I decently can't agree with you saying buyers pushed the price to its limits, because its simply false. I'd even say its stupid. Check the instant shot of the sale interface
(sorry I'm french, hope you'll manage to identify the respective parts in english of the market window)
I believe SOMETHING needs to be done to prevent inflation. I don't know what, or how, but something...
thoran what you are observing is a price wall that indvidual is TRYING to help us.id know i put the thing up i am trying stop the CE price from jumping up too 5700 or 5800 becuase i dont like to just do jelly king either.i love vannaduke but this market its hard to find alot of player doing vanna so i am trying to make it easier to get to 5* gear.....but then again im just an evil monopolis crook so maybe ill just take the wall down
I've never blamed any of the seller, so no misunderstanding, please. Thanks.
I simply notice how high the price is going with the only will of some CE sellers, I've never said its ALL sellers, probably just a piece of them. Also, of course I appreciate sellers trying to stop that raise. But the flux of sales is so strong I doubt kind sellers can put an end to this; its rather about buyers' will to not be abused by some "evil monopolis crook". Don't feel personally aimed.
Some of my friends on the game have long since lost taste to play, they look at all the energy prices rise slowly, have not know about going to ...
Everyone who says the market is broken really doesn't understand what's going on here.
I hate to shatter your world(s) but here's the bottom line: Games are made to make money.
Don't you think that OOOs knew that increasing CE for crafting and decreasing crown cost on recipes would cause a fluctuation in the market? Yes, they did. They likely have many metrics tracking the CE flow and determined that it wasn't moving fast enough (read: making them enough money).
If you really have such a problem with the CE market: don't deal with it. 750 CE is like $3. If you have a job (maybe asking too much in a f2p game...) then it is likely more profitable for you IRL to just buy the CE's anyway instead of spending hours trying to wheel and deal for it. I understand that 5* take a ton of energy to make and that it's annoying but they're the BEST items in the game right now. Look at comparable MMORPGs and calculate how much time it takes to get the BEST items in those games and you'll see why I'm not complaining.
Small parenthesis, I had played a F2P MMORPG where I had seen players spending over 5k$ (US$). That was the parenthesis -oo-
Now the thing is OOO doesn't directly control the CE market in game, that's players who does. It more or less topped at 5800CR<->100CE just now, quite worrying.
all of the hand-wringing about players buying 5* equipment and 'ruining' the game for themselves has come ful-circle. Players will have to truly buy 5* equipment - with RL cash - because they cannot harvest enough crowns (in a reasonable amount of time) to purchase the necessary crafting energy.
I'm pretty sure this is an unintended consequence.
That's just about 200k to be fully decked out in 5* gear. People feel so entitled to their 5* gear that they forget it's supposed to be something to be worked for.
It'd be difficult, not impossible.
That's if you have the recipes already
Making items harder to craft itself I find isn't a problem; it actually make them more "precious" to its maker. What bother me is rather that energy also is required to play, simply. That's not just making it harder for players to improve their gear, its making it harder for players to play the game.
@Zeveross 200k, that estimate is way off.
Try like 300k and THAT'S IF you have all the mats and the recipes, if you need either your going to pay a serious premium turning to the AH so your probably looking at well over 400k to craft a full set of T5 now because we all know Basil is a jerk and will never have all the recipes you need.
It would cost 260,000 Crowns from 4* to 5* counting only CE. The average player has 3 defensive slots and 2 offensive slots. The upgrade costs 800CE and 2+3=5 so 5x800=4000CE. CE right now is 65 Crowns each so 65x4000=260,000 Crowns. Recipes are 25,000 each if you get them yourself so 25,000x5=125,000 Crowns. 260,000+125,000=385,000 Crowns from 4* to 5* counting CE and recipes. Think about people who have 7 slots or work for CTR/UVs.
The main problem I see is that the 1% Crown fee for Energy sellers is simply too low. This encourages speculators to take advantage of the Energy Market with virtually no risk and work involved. A higher rate for the Crown fee would discourage players from trying to "beat the system" and stop prices from fluctuating so much. A similar Crown fee in normal trades would also prevent speculators from spamming chat channels to circumvent the Energy Market.
The game is new, and players are still arriving - most of them will not want to put real money into the game right away, which means that demand for CE will outstrip supply and the prices will rise. This is especially true since there are more and more crowns sloshing around in the system as people do Clockworks runs, so there's a combination of supply/demand forces and inflation pushing up the CE price on the marketplace.
This will not continue indefinitely, though - after a while the playerbase will stop expanding so quickly and a proportion of those new players will start paying real money for CE, thus contributing to the CE supply and bringing market prices down again. Three Rings will (probably) implement some more crown-sinks to keep inflation in check, and the CE prices will stabilise.
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter how many hundreds of thousands of crowns you need to get the CE to craft your 5* items. The fact is that if you're patient and determined you can use your 100 ME per day to do fundraising runs, bank the crowns you earn, and eventually you will have enough to buy the CE and materials you need. It might take weeks, it might take months, but by the time you have those 5* items you'll feel that you've really earned them.
I don't believe this is just happening itself. When people offer buy so high, they let it happen tbh. I say nobody should buy the selling offers and nobody should bid higher than 5000.... how can we make this happen
Yeah, I forgot to factor in that you need a 4* item to make a 5* item now. Still, my point is the same. It doesn't matter how many crowns it takes (within reason, and I think under 500k is still well within reason) this stuff is THE BEST, it shouldn't be some cakewalk.
I think the economy is fine right now. 6k CE for 100 isn't outrageous. However if it starts getting out of hand it will drive all prices up and shut out new players (like others have already said) and THAT is the only thing I'm really worried about.
"I think the economy is fine right now."
Just what bothers me is CE sellers proved they have a complete hold on the CE<->CR market prices, as for now. Its being very easily manipulated, that's a bit concerning. Otherwise I'm not gonna complain it'd be like I couldn't afford paying more -'cause I can-, but not everybody's got the luck to be already fully geared like I or many other players already are.
Don't you think that OOOs knew that increasing CE for crafting and decreasing crown cost on recipes would cause a fluctuation in the market?
Honestly, no I don't think OOO thought about the effect of the higher CE crafting requirements on the cr<->CE market. Nick's explanation of the change was that they felt that 4* and 5* items were just too easy to get, and CE seemed like an easy (and profitable) way to fix the problem. And, really, I think the profit was very much secondary, they wanted to make it so people couldn't get all the top stuff in a few weeks of playing (or immediately if someone opens their wallet). Personally, I agree with OOO that the old costs were far too low, I just strongly disagree with their fix being more CE instead of a large increase in mats.
Oh, and I think 6k per 100CE is *REALLY* bad for the game, it makes it almost impossible for new players to really get into the game without paying upfront. Honestly, even 4k is too high. Yes, OOO needs to make money, I'm not suggesting OOO should make less, but I think that large enough crown/mat sinks would likely improve the cr<->CE exchange rate
CE has crashed into the 5700s-5800s after buyers boycotted. Sellers realized it's too much for CE to hit 7k.
A real boycott would be to massively refuse buying for at very least 3 days, and that's really nothing I find. Though I believe since things are going extremely fast inside the market, there could be already huge consequences if it had to happen!
went up 500-600 CR since you posted this...
like that one dude said, it'll scare away new players.
i just wish they would sell the game for 60 bucks and not charge elevator fees,
i'd be content with that.
"CE has crashed into the 5700s-5800s after buyers boycotted. Sellers realized it's too much for CE to hit 7k."
I don't think there are any CE boycotts in this game. A boycott requires a substantial percentage of participants to acquire any real power, and rallying that many players seems highly improbable...
There are natural retaining forces in any economic system that will push a market towards an equilibrium point. Senshi has explained it in this thread pretty well. You can't maintain an artificially high or low price for very long.
It appears that there isn't enough CE on the market, so individuals are able to single-handedly spike the price to absurd levels. Just now, a player was bragging he had 2 million crowns and he was able to buy every CE auction below 7k. At that level, the "end" of the CE sellers was close to being seen, as there were 10 auctions up in 500 crown increments going up to 10k per 100 CE.
Since the increments at that high end were so large, it leads me to believe that if a player continued to buy CE with crowns for much longer, the CE market would potentially run out (at least for a short period of time).
Honestly, I don't really understand why there isn't a hard cap put on CE prices, with Three Rings being the final vendor with something like 10 million CE available at a certain price point. While it would limit the market, the current system makes it too easy for individuals to have an adverse affect on every other player in the game.
It has been going from 5000 to 7000 Crowns per 100CE in loops for the past 30 minutes. It's too easy to manipulate/exploit the market.
Sky is the limit for CE prices. There's little incentive to sell your CE, better keep it and do your runs. More crowns may come by selling mats and rare recipes you acquire while cruising T3 with your fully expanded 5* set/jewels/extra slots... It's a good time to cash in CE...
Incoming TL:DR wall-of-text post:
I personally only manipulate the market up and down to prove a point in how volatile the market is. The real problem herein lies the system itself and the potential buying power of each individual. The amount of wealth that I have accumulated pales in comparison to many others on the market (many who have quit the game with their huge fortune). Honestly, the system is incredibly flawed at its core because it promotes greedy manipulation of the market in addition to hoarding wealth.
Let me just give you a few examples to illustrate my points which I am essentially just reiterating from other people's eloquent posts. The most important reason why crystal energy is becoming increasingly higher valued is because crowns are inserted into the system everyday in massive quantities, while crystal energy is being used up by everyone in the game in small and large increments at a time. Let's just say that 10,000 people play this game everyday for an hour and on average make 5,000 crowns a run. Essentially, a whopping 50,000,000 crowns has just entered the system which can only be removed through the use of the AH, buying recipies, crafting items, and teleporting to a gate where you haven't finished the prior tiers. To be on the safe side, we can say that 50% of the crowns are used up through these money sinks, but that still leaves 25,000,000 crowns generated everyday.
We can assume that everyone only plays on mist energy and crafts on mist energy, but that would just be a gross exaggeration of what actually takes place. Out of the 10,000 players that play everyday, we can probably safely assume that they use on average 50 crystal energy (500,000 CE total daily). This is to take into account the people; who revive from death, craft items to use, use elevators, and probably the biggest CE sink, ragecrafters (people who craft multiple items at a time seeking UV's). Although there aren't a lot of crystal energy sinks, the repercussions of CE being slowly drained out of the system are felt by slowly increasing prices. Moreover, the people who have CE and understand how the market works, are reluctant to give up their huge hoards of crystal energy because they know that it will only increase in value over time. (I cannot comment on how often CE is entered into the system because any estimation would be horribly wrong).
Which brings me to my next point, there aren't enough crown sinks in this game that allow the market to stabilize itself out without an artificial injection of CE into the system. What I mean by this is, there needs to be more devices to suck the influx of crowns out of the system without the player's feeling like their resources are being plundered by an artificial hand. Three rings has backed themselves into a corner where the players who have paid probably don't want to invest more money into the game, and the people who are just starting out are reluctant to pay for a game with a volatile currency system. Any swift and large action taken by the company will likely be taken divisively by the people who play and will further alienate even more people while satisfying the other half.
There are no easy solutions for the mess that is slowly unfolding. The system at its core will eventually break down once the quantity of crowns on the market vastly exceeds the crystal energy to a point that it is no longer profitable for people to do a dungeon and be able to continue playing by buying energy with the returns on their dive (an estimation would be around 8500 crowns). Moreover, all the supply of crystal energy will slowly fade out of the system without more people to pay for it, when the number of people who already pay for it is dwindling. If my calculations are correct, no one person is able to salvage the system by buying absurd amounts of crystal energy because of the alarming rate at which it is being depleted.
I am sure Three Rings is closely examining the situation now and working out possible solutions. However, the problem is only exacerbated with time passing. I am sure my calculations are grossly wrong, but hopefully they illustrate the problem at its core.
Also, in the end, my own manipulations of the crystal energy market are to show that it is possible for one person to directly control the price and influx at one time due to the lack of listings on the market. I do not intend to cause harm by my actions and I am sure some people resent me for drastically increasing and decreasing the price at a whim, but I do so only to prove a point. I only fear what could be done if numerous players got together to take advantage of the system.
Ok to summarize what sinxeno said. We're simply in one massive economic dilemma that wouldn't benefit any of us at this point.
It has gone out of control because of F2Pers. They are buying CE even when people are trying to lower it. STOP BUYING IT.... X_X
If you're a paying customer I don't see any drawbacks to this situation because you get ce using your money, which means you end up getting more crowns for the money you spent... so the only players crying are the F2P ones.
The problem is that it's a Free-to-play game, and people don't want it to be one of those Facebook games where you can play for two hours a day, then you have to pay to get anywhere.
Honestly, what we need is a good crown sink. Maybe make PvP have wagers, and a small amount of those wagers be removed as tax?
Actually zero I'm a paying player so stop being a dunce.
You don't get to charge w/e you want to just because you spent $ mmk? You have to be FAIR about it. The game depends on ALL people buying and selling CE, not just the sellers of CE. Stop being an ignorant eff.
I would love to hear people's solutions as to how they think they system could be fixed. In addition, give reason why to think that system would work over any other system and how your idea works in both a long and short term situation.
Oh and I forgot to mention the most important part; I am offering a 40,000 CE Reward for the person with the most thorough, eloquent, and most detailed answer out of all that are posted. I will be looking over these responses with a fine-toothed comb in the same way a college teacher would. Citing sources to how you think the system would be fixed by using online sources in addition to other games and events in other games will be accepted and supported.
This is my farewell present to this game. I enthusiastically enjoyed this game from the start and I only hope it can continue to grow with expedience. Thank you for your feedback.
Players are the only way to lower cost of energy. You could start a union but that would most likely mean that you guys would loose money trying to lower energy costs. Energy is used for EVERYTHING. If you need it badly then purchase it with your own cash. Energy disappears into crafting now after the patch. Will ooo do anything about it? No, they are not in control of the market. People dont even need to sell their CE if they dont want to.
My solution
-Be pro, dont die!
You shouldn't take money that seriously though. This game doesn't restrict you to pay each month but whenever you want. It was your own choice and you could've decided to pay less (like I did, just 8 dollars in 2 months). Also consider it as support. The game desperatly needs expansions tbh.