I think it's kinda cruel the way this game sets as a free to play game, since it's such an addicting game and so fun to play, yet you're pretty limited to those 100 ME per day eventually you'll have to pay for CE and then pay some more and more.

It's a momentum and patience game for F2P players. However, it can be frustrating when those simply buying the energy instead of working for it get so far ahead of you. It's easy to succeed as F2P but it takes FOREVER.

Or maybe that's just me. I did well enough for F2P so perhaps I'm projecting; if so, apologies.

Crowns enter the Spiral Knights world with every run through levels of Clockworks, and leave the SK world only through NPC vendor sales (e.g., recipes from Basil) and fees (e.g., Auction House listings, Energy Market sales).

CE enters the Spiral Knights world only through monetary purchases, and leave the SK world through crafting (particularly 3* through 5* gear), fees (e.g., elevators, revives).

While there are still players buying CE for cash, I would imagine that CE is leaving the SK world at least as quickly as it is entering it. This is because Tier 3 access requires at least 4 pieces of 4-star gear, which (after the patch) requires each player to spend a hefty amount of CE crafting (pre-geared players excepted). And of course maximum survivability requires multiple pieces of 5-star gear.

Meanwhile, crowns are entering the SK world much faster than they are leaving it. Every run generates thousands of crowns out of thin air... players convert ever-replenishing Mist Energy into crowns. As many have lamented, there are very few crown sinks to balance this out.

My proposed solution is to add viable crown sinks that cannot be easily exploited...

- Betting on PVP (with crown fees) would be a crown sink... but it is NOT a good solution, because this would be incredibly easy to rig (whether via /tell or offline). Dishonest combatants would only need to get "action" on one side and have their friends bet the other side.

+ There could, however, be crown fees to enter in PVP contests with prizes. In this case, there would be no benefit to rigging or throwing matches.

+ Crafting costs could of course be fixed, so that less CE is required and more materials are required. This would of course drive up the value of materials. In turn, the Auction House would see more materials transactions, and more cr would end up going toward AH fees.

+ The unbinding shop needs to become a massive crown sink and not a massive CE sink, for obvious reasons. Unbinding will revive the Auction House market for 4* and 5* gear, for those with lots and lots of crowns. (Those with lots and lots of CE could still choose to trade CE for crowns, which would help bring the CE:cr price back down.)

+ Players have suggested other low-overhead cosmetic crown sinks, such as the ability to change in-game name or personal color. Make these available, with the costs a high number of crowns.

+ Items like the laughable Heat Amplifier should cost crowns instead of CE. Never mind that the item is incredibly poor value, but it should lead to cr (not CE) leaving the SK world.

+ Another idea is to make Mist Tanks buyable (again, for cr). Players could use these for their elevator fees, revive fees, and the like, but they'd still need some CE for things like crafting 4* gear. Thus Mist Tanks would not be worth as many crowns as 100 CE bundles are, but they would be a good alternative for some purposes.

In general, the idea is just to add items or services of value, with crowns leaving the Spiral Knights world. This would decrease the supply of crowns while simultaneously giving crowns more utility and value.

IGN: Couture

(EDIT: Elaboration for buyable Mist Tanks is in #217. My "blind auction" thoughts are in #167.)

EDIT #2:
+ My last crown sink idea is to have a UV-reroll shop. This could cost a large amount of crowns (based on star-level of the item) and some relevant materials to reroll the UV on an item. The high price would make this an effective crown sink, while the allure of elusive UVs (e.g. Max Elemental Resist, Very High CTR) would make it an attractive endgame option. For certain items (e.g., Sealed Sword line and Antigua line), this would be the most feasible way to (at great cost) get a great UV on the item.

"What do you think about energy system is flawed and why do you think so? (maybe it isn't)"
u shouldnt be supposed to pay for playing

people told me, that its common for energy to cost more, while it costs less during "rose regalia" or events like that and its pretty nice, that the whole playerbase benefits from an event, which technically requires real money..not just with some items or other things, but with energy, which is the essence of the game

however to be that essence, its necessary to be required :l

no matter how i or others think about that concept, its doing pretty damn good!

"Where do you think the value of energy/crowns comes from?"
whoever pushes the buy energy button(F2P/P2P player)/crown button(lazy P2P player, P2P player seeing a good deal or any player seeing a really good deal)

"Do you think the interface of the energy system should be changed? How would you change it and how do you think it may alleviate the problem?"
if the whole system is based on energy, then id be too scared to change anything, since the game is pretty good atm

"Do you think Three Rings should limit the power of the "big players" and if so, how should they limit it without ruining their own sense of fun?"
it is already limited like mad with 5* items being nooby on low tiers and still getting u killed on high tiers in no time

"What are people's thoughts on mini-games or gambling [what kind of gambling (UVs)] for crown sinks?"
minigames
minigames would be cool, but therd be a controversy about their rewards

gambling
i kinda havent even noticed that thers no gambling or refining here..i dont think the game needs anything at all, but new content is always cool
i generally dislike gambling and wouldnt do it unless its definitely worth it

crown sink
not quite sure what thats good for, but thers recipes n stuff..

":::Bonus Question::: I am in support of a system called "blind auctioning." A system where you post up what you are offering to sell or buy energy for, but you cannot see other people's offers. Essentially, you are throwing your offer into a hidden pool and if your demands are met, you will receive your currency. Why do you think this will or will not work? Explain the ramifications of a lack of interface/history. (100,000 crown reward)"

well if u throw something in a hidden pool, the system always chooses the optimal deal, ur idea would kind of require a new system, like if u have something like this

x crown for 100 energy offers
6125 TRADED
6120
6111

100 energy for x crown offers
6119
6125 TRADED
6200

now some1 is offering 100 energy to buy 6119 crowns and there is no button to accept that offer and there is also no offer, that exactly matches the 6119

so in ur system, nothing would happen untill some1 offered 6119 crowns for 100 energy, but that might not ever happen or at a very late point and vice versa, which would be even worse, if some1 cant move with the elevator to the next depth

on the other hand, people could use the trade chat more for energy trades, which still cant be done within the clockworks

i dont really see the point of that system
at the moment its pretty awesome, u just need to push a button!
dont need to know the prices, dont need to know any system or anything at all, its simple, easy and fast and i love those buttons :D

and the prices would still vary! with the trade chat people can sell or buy energy and naturally every1 trys to get the best deal, therefore energy sellers will look for quantity and a good offer, while energy buyers will still be complaining about the prices and on top of that, they might be mad, that theyre supposed to hang in town while buying energy..might as well just play on mist energy

now, if i look at ur system, its more like a step backward and the next step in that direction would be to block communications, since nothing has changed positively..yea no1 would know any prices or anything at all and people would be lucking out or messing things up with that pool of urs

Betting in PvP is by far the best end game crown sink, but some restrictions need to be applied.

Firstly, only the participating player can bet for their own/team. This will stop any dishonest attempt to gain money from betting.

Also, each team/player need to bet the same amount of crowns and the winning team/player will have their bet doubled minus some costs.

Although, I don't know about the legal issues in implementing this, maybe they need to change the TOS or add age restriction?

After careful analysis of various posts and threads about Energy becoming too costly I have collected some of the important facts.

-Way too little Crowns earned in levels that have no Jelly King or Vanaduke levels. This is a must to get fixed but I suggest the other levels get more Crown drops instead of lowering Crown drops in Jelly King and Vanaduke levels.

-End game players are playing the market for fun because they have nothing to do.

-The new boss has sparked up a new desire for CE to craft the highest level of the item(especially the shield).

-The market is influenced by players who have excess amounts of money too much so they can spend whatever the eff they want to get CE.

-No real reason to sell CE for Crowns except for recipes but that money is easily obtained by exploring the Clockworks.

-Too much UV crafting.

-The Jelly King gate is packed (over 450 people currently) while the other gates have less than 100 (88 currently) and the Vanaduke gate has over 150 currently but it's kind of risky so people are sticking to Jelly King farming. I wouldn't be surprised if guilds are using the join feature and exploiting it by sending one guild member to stay at floor 15 of the Jelly King floors and just do nothing there while his/her guild members join and go solo repeatedly.

First to address some of the discussion topics…

:::Bonus Question::: I am in support of a system called "blind auctioning." A system where you post up what you are offering to sell or buy energy for, but you cannot see other people's offers. Essentially, you are throwing your offer into a hidden pool and if your demands are met, you will receive your currency. Why do you think this will or will not work? Explain the ramifications of a lack of interface/history. (100,000 crown reward)

Crowns at its current state will face a constant inflation as more and more people finish up their gear sets and have all the recipes that they want. This solution does not address this issue and will cause an outside market. Even in a blind market, people will have their speculations as to how much crowns and energy are selling for based on the speed that their offers get bought out. A person who needs to buy energy will say start at 4000 but waits a few minute and gets no result will get the hint that he needs to raise it higher. This makes abusers of the market and those with an excessive amount of crowns and energy to raise the market to an arbitrarily high price, creating even more frustrations for those who needs to buy energy. Sure, people can wait an hour or two and hope that their offers will be met but it’s unlikely. People who play this game and actually need energy will want it within five minutes or less and will constantly raise their offers until it is met.

What do you think about energy system is flawed and why do you think so? (maybe it isn't)
I will say the energy system is a great idea and is not flawed if it is carried out and balanced with the use of crowns properly. I will go more in details in my main post.

Where do you think the value of energy/crowns comes from?
The value of energy and crowns comes from the demands and speculations of the players. If one is needed more, it will be valued more just like any goods or currency in real life.

Do you think the interface of the energy system should be changed? How would you change it and how do you think it may alleviate the problem?
I think that the previous ideas of having a longer list of offers would definitely fix the over speculation issues that we currently have. It will show the large gaps and walls that market drivers are creating which will help people better determine the actual value of energy/crowns.

Do you think Three Rings should limit the power of the "big players" and if so, how should they limit it without ruining their own sense of fun?

No, the market is fine as it is and people are free to try to manipulate it. I firmly believe that a good economy will be able to stabilize even with player abuse.

What are people's thoughts on mini-games or gambling [what kind of gambling (UVs)] for crown sinks?
More crown sinks will definitely help but it is unnecessary as it is extra work that 3 Rings will have to put in, something that a company on a budget cannot simply do.

Now… for what I think should happen:

If it isn’t already apparent in my answers to the discussion issues, I believe that the reason why the price of crowns vs energy is unstable is due to the fact that the current interface allow easy abuse and that energy simply does cost 6-8k crowns. While I do not have exact numbers, but as long as a player can make more crowns in a run than the amount of energy it costs, prices of energy will continue to rise. I think a JK run will yield about 6-8k crowns and a Vanaduke run without dying can yield up to 12-14k crowns.

So, the big question is how do we fix this?
While I am not fully against the equipment binding and the increased energy cost of crafting, I still think that 3 Rings had a wrong approach. I realize that 3 Rings feel that people are reaching end game too fast with the old energy cost, raising the energy cost of crafting while reducing the cost of recipes is simply wrong. I remember when I first started playing, people would actually NEED crowns to buy recipes. People would sit at Basil and attempt to sell their energy for crowns to buy 45000 CR recipes. At the time, this is about 1500 energy for 1 recipe (Oh the good days when 100 energy was under 3000 crowns). We need more crown sinks, not energy sinks.

I realize that 3 Rings was thinking “well energy is equivalent to money so we must raise the cost to increase our revenue!” While that is true, they would achieve the same if not more by increasing the value of crowns. Energy can be bought infinitely with real cash but crowns have to be FARMED. If crafting costs more crowns, a player who wants to buy energy to rush to end game will have to trade his energy in for crowns and use it and thus destroying BOTH crowns and energy. Since crowns have to be farmed, it is actually a limiting supply if it is in demand. A person cannot magically just make crowns appear like they could through buying more energy.

What I would prefer is that recipes are kept at its old price, the amount of crowns needed to craft 3 stars – 5 stars items be raised rather than the energy. I would also suggest that the energy cost to craft one and two star items be reduced in half and their cost of crowns be raised to reflect the change. I would say raising 1 star items by 250 crowns and 2 stars items by 1250 crowns (numbers are based at 50CR per crown or 5000CR/100, the amount made in an average t1 run so that new players are not royally screwed by the change). This will cause a demand in crowns as people would hoard crowns, hoping that they get lucky with basil and buy the recipes they need to either craft or to sell on the auction house for even more crowns. Remember, when crowns are used, both energy and crowns are destroyed making crown sinks much more important than energy sinks. Now, I realize that we all have mist energy and that could generate crowns. When crowns become valuable enough, we may even see people start gearing up alts (paid of course) with high level gear to farm the clockworks for more crowns instead of standing there and UV farming since the crowns would be worth more than the energy use to craft. They would then SELL their crowns to people who simple do not have time to farm crowns.

Since the new system cause crowns to be more used, people would only need enough energy to use elevators and craft their items. UV hunters crafting 1 and 2 stars items will DESTROY the valuable crowns that are farmed up. Finally, once people realize that crowns are more valuable than energy, people would fight to buy energy for a much lower price. The good thing is, this will not lower 3 Ring’s sales in any way because people that want more crowns would either have to pay to play more or pay to more energy per crown. Remember how old recipes that costs 45000 crowns would be equivalent to 1500 CE? Imagine all that CE being destroyed by buying one 5 star recipe. Don’t tell me you wont be making more money 3 Rings.

Finally, the icing on the cake would be the fact that free players playing on mist energy would not lose out because they will be able to progress through the game without having to pay $5 worth of CE for each 5 star items they make. Now, they can choose to just simply farm crowns until they have enough to make their item or spend, say $10 per 5 star item since if they wanted to trade their CE in for crowns to make their items faster, they would only be able to buy less than 3000 crowns for each 100 CE they have bought. With this system, a new interface would not even be needed as people would fight to lower the price of energy rather than increasing it. People who do abuse the system for their own gains be lowering the price of energy even more would benefit both 3 Rings and free players as prices of CE drops. 3 Rings will also always be able to adjust the drop rate of crowns, allowing them a hand of god in the market should there be future problems without being apparently obvious.

Yep… that’s my 2 cents on this topic.

--Pwnies

no more selling energy, just buy, in the market that is.

trading energy of course is still possible but the currency of energy stays the same. the reason why there's a currency for energy is because when it goes up, people are more willing to pay cash for energy. if the energy currency is so high, it is to hard and expensive for people to spend crowns on it, so instead they pay for energy. this energy currency is what keeps paying players pay so much. its actually getting more expensive for players to pay. if u calculate your expenses on this game, u'll see the difference when currency is low and high.

the uniqueness of this game comes from 2 of its money forms; crowns and energy. in which everyone wants more of both!! this might not be a solution but is an idea for further discussion

IGN: Nom-Nom-Monster

:)

::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180
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As an intro, I'll answer the initial food-for-thought questions:

>>What do you think about energy system is flawed and why do you think so? (maybe it isn't)
The main flaw of the current system is that there is absolutely no regulation of prices, and due to the irrational behavior of all consumers (especially the green ones in this game), the market is widely susceptible to unreasonable fluctuations.
Well, that aside, I'm also not a fan of the "You need energy to play" system this game offers. Hell, I'm not sure I'd even like it if you needed crowns instead of energy, so that doesn't apply to the energy system. Paying a flat rate (crowns) is acceptable, but when energy prices go all over the place (a pretty steep increasing trend, too), it gets much more difficult to play the game, which really is just grinding for crowns at this point in time. Everything is much too expensive, and there's simply not enough content. Endgame can be easily reached in a matter of days or with $20. Problematic, huh.

>>Where do you think the value of energy/crowns comes from?
I can't say there's much of an intrinsic value for energy when it can just be bought again (of course the value goes up as the price goes up.. which is why I've been running largely on mist for a short while). Anyway, the value really just comes from how difficult each one is to obtain. It's fair to say most of the CE in the game is coming from a minority of the population, probably those who don't care about pumping hundreds of dollars into the game over time. The $1.50 of CE I bought meant so much to me until I realized it was only 400ce and spent it easily. Safe to say the value of the game's currency comes from the difficulty of obtaining crowns. So far it's not too hard to get 6-8k for a 40-80ce Jelly Run. Anyway, I can't speak for the actual value since each person has their own value on it, depending additionally on how much they have, or whether they went grinding for it or just bought it straight away. Or depending on what they sold for it, I guess.

>>Do you think the interface of the energy system should be changed? How would you change it and how do you think it may alleviate the problem?
I suppose this is going to be answered later in the essay. Looking at my first answer, I'd like to say that having most everything cost CE (or ME if you want to get technical) is problematic for their F2P players, but if they changed it, they'd have to bring in a new source of income. Safeguards should be implemented to increase stability and reduce manipulability (read on for more).

>>Do you think Three Rings should limit the power of the "big players" and if so, how should they limit it without ruining their own sense of fun? What are people's thoughts on mini-games or gambling [what kind of gambling (UVs)] for crown sinks?
The power of the 'big players' really just extends negatively into the CE market, where there is great potential to cause massive, unexpected (and unreasonable) fluctuations in the CE price. This could be protected by implementing safeguards that will be discussed later.
I guess there should also be a limit on crafting and selling items, now that I look back to the pages of Caliburs going for 2K in the Auction House. Really, it's just too easy to obtain hundreds of thousands of crowns with nothing else to spend them on (all from a single good UV or a single $50 purchase of CE). UV's should be much more common, as should item drops (they could come unbound and with UV's, even). The AH is the only big crownsink in the game, and even then endgame comes far too easily. This game needs radical changes to be balanced, but those would require modifications that make it more closely resemble other generic MMO's, and this one's creativity/uniqueness shouldn't be compromised. There really should just be a bigger crownsink for endgame players, and means of preventing players from OBTAINING so many crowns. Case in point, many have reached end game and have millions of crowns in about a week or two. Hell, Magnus got Fang of Vog + 40kce a week into the game's official release. (see forum post #2957) Whereas I have been playing for almost 2 months and am scraping by with <20kcr and 4* equips. Granted, some players are better than others, but it should not be this easy to finish the game and become a 'big-name player' with power to finish off the market.

------------------------------

You know what, I just thought of an ideal solution, which would be hassle-free and fair to all, really. Let me just delete the last 4 paragraphs of my text and start over, lawlz. This system has been implemented by Jagex already, but tbh it was an excellent system they installed. For those of you unfamiliar with Runescape, the Grand Exchange in their game is similar to the Auction House of Spiral Knights--however, there is a 'market price' that is calculated based on past sales, and no item can be traded outside a ~1% variance of that price. Now, the system would be ridiculously easy to implement, as it would just require a script to factor every sale price into the preexisting market value and modify it based on that.

So let's say the market value is 6000 with a variance of n%. If tens of offers are just accepted at the upper bound, the market price will rise, but (omg, sorry, this is like an epiphany here, where all my econ knowledge is coming back to me) only by a few crowns, so the next cap will only be a bit higher (In the current system, if such a thing happened, the market value would raise by at LEAST that n% variance, due to other players trying to outbid each other).

The biggest fault of the current CE market is that prices are NOT STICKY. They are free to wildly fluctuate as they want, and because nobody is a rational buyer (not in real life, and not in this game), prices DO fluctuate like that. Sticky prices irl exist because an item's market price will not increase immediately if a single consumer goes to a department store and buys 40 of the same item. The sales are analyzed at week's end by marketers, and given how many sales the item had that week, the future price will increase, decrease or stay the same.

Implementing this 'sticky market price' system will certainly stabilize the market, as offers will be blind and there will be a slowly-adjusting limit to CE offers. Technically, offers could be public, but that would trade off some stability for a larger window into the market, leading to irrational decisions ofc. Unfortunately this is fact--the more outlook a consumer has on the market, the less rational they'll be. Yes, there are those who have an eye for stock markets and such or would like to see current statistics (I myself), but truth be told, that would spell bad news for market stability, since most people aren't like that. :P

Oh, one thing I forgot to address. Just remembered that this will stabilize CE prices, but it won't do anything about making them manipulation-proof. Hm. Well, to safeguard the CE market from those who'd manipulate it, we'd have to think of who would be doing the manipulating (sorry if that's supposed to be whom, it's really one of the only grammatical concepts I can't grasp). Anyway, the manipulating would probably be done by players with enough CE/CR to feed a nation. And their method of choice would be selling/purchasing thousands of CE at a certain price to modify the market.

Well, the only thing coming to mind is to have a cap on how much CE can be traded per person per day. Er, this would protect from a few people manipulating prices, but if there were a large guild doing so, we'd have a spot of trouble, but there's not much to do from there, aside from placing more limits, or limiting trades based on many more factors, such as guild size, player's assets, paying status, etc.. I'd go into it, but I'm not sure it would be worth analyzing so many factors for such a small gain, and even then the gain in question ultimately just cuts profits for Three Rings / Sega.

Anyway, a per person cap should suffice for now. Given the monthly limit on purchasing CE is $100-$800, the developers don't believe ANYONE would possibly need more than 10.67kce/day. So naturally, the daily cap on trading CE should be below that amount. The lower it is, the lower the manipulation risk is for the CE market. At some point it'll just get inconvenient for endgame players I guess, so the cap should be around 50-120 trades per day. Not unreasonable, given the average player needs 0-5, and no normal player would need more than 50 trades per day. (This is total trades btw--I guess the in-game, ad-hoc trading can remain unregulated.)

Anyway, stability could be easily achieved by this method, and it would really be easy to implement two market prices (one for buying and one for selling CE) and a single script for modifying them, from a developer's standpoint. This method would disallow others from 'merching' (aka buying low, selling high) CE, but I think they could leave it at that. The reason CE needs safeguarding is because it is such a vital game resource that not everyone has access to. To leave it as is would really just bring frustration to those of us who care, and cut many of the people in the playerbase. It's a little depressing to think how many people have just given up and left just because of this, and so far, nothing has been done about the issue. To leave this alone would be 'selling out' on Three Rings' part, which really defeats the purpose of creating a game to begin with. Idk if they actually care for their players or just value our money, but ultimately they can do what they want, but it'd be great if they installed regulatory methods in the CE market.

------------------------------

Now that we've gotten to the conclusion, let's work our way backwards a bit. Er, because I forgot to address problems. So, what exactly do we need solutions for, and what is the above^ a solution TO? Really I think with that^ I just addressed smaller, more specific concerns like "Why are CE prices going all over the place, ragequit because I'm F2P or endgame". On to more problems:

EVERYTHING in the game costs CE. Whether you want to enter a dungeon, craft an item or even revive yourself from death, it'll cost CE. Actually, I think I about covered it, because that's all there IS to do in the game to begin with. The only things you spend crowns on are recipes/AH (and entering gates, which is negligible). There is absolutely nothing to do with crowns except buy more energy. Energy market and AH are the only crownsinks in the game. It's funny because I find myself preferring to venture into the clockworks to get a certain mat/recipe instead of paying a 10%+ premium for it in the Auction House. Boom, another energysink.

So there's too much CE exiting the system, and too much CR entering the system. To reiterate a simplification, we need another thing to do with crowns than spend them on energy. They're virtually worthless, and CE is much more valuable, as you can see. And WHY is it so much more valuable? You need to give many more crowns to do everything in the game, so shouldn't our crowns be more prized? Yes, except for one thing--crowns are everywhere. CE is not. The only CE source in the game is the P2P game body. Crowns come from dungeon runs, crystal deposits, selling items to shops, etc. Because of this, the reliance on CE is far too high, and because supply is so low, the actual value (and cost) is way too high, and rapidly increasing due to the growing player body and the number of mass UV crafters.

It's a little silly to say that players are suddenly going to stop purchasing CE because they've had enough and it'll spell doom for Three Rings and the few thousand CE left are going to be as rare as Rose Regalia or Beta gear, blah etc ad infinitum. As long as there are people playing, there will be those who will buy CE and sell it. Also, if CE ever DOES become that rare, there will certainly be people jumping at the opportunity to purchase $2 of CE and sell it for tens of thousands of crowns.

That aside, I think we've identified the existing problems as:
>Too much CR coming in, and CR doesn't go anywhere endgame
>Not enough CE coming in, and frankly there's just too much being spent

And WHY are these rising numbers a problem? They're problematic because CE prices will rise to suit only the P2P players and endgame players. Those who are struggling or just starting out will have an awful time dealing with prices that will definitely approach 100cr/ce soon.

Soooo, if you're actually still reading, we'll go into the rest of the solutions.. the above solution is just to stabilize the market and protect it from easy manipulation, I guess. I should proofread this later. If this sentence is still here, it means I didn't, sorry. :/

Moving on, a very simple way to address this problem is to simply make more things cost CR instead of CE--making more things cost CR in general, really. For example, one thing I've been thinking about for a while is to make Trade/Zone Chat cost crowns per usage. For example, 10cr per message (or 10cr/100chars). That's 20cr/min which is pretty reasonable--for a continuous HOUR of spamming trade chat, you've only spent 1.2kcr. Granted this may suck for newer players, but it also encourages everyone to use the Auction House more--which is really a win scenario for everyone. There will be a larger variety/amount of items in the AH, making it easier for sellers to price items and easier for buyers to obtain them. Also, it'll do an excellent job enforcing the crownsink the AH is supposed to be, and it'll cut out much of the unnecessary Trade Chat spam (woo!).

If a 10cr charge isn't enough it can always be raised. Also, not sure about Zone chat but it can be modified to only project to the current 'zone' aka Town Square or Bazaar. To be honest I'm not entirely sure what zone chat projects to, anyway.

Additionally, I like the idea (Vysorn, #112) of Crystal deposits giving you CE. The numbers can just be tweaked so you don't get outrageous amounts of CE for finding a single crystal, but w/e. Better yet, as you break crystals, they could randomly drop CE along with the crystal shards? It's not unreasonable to give 3-5 extra CE to the knights who take the long windy passage full of red rovers for the small treasure room. Hell, even boxes or monsters could randomly drop them, too. Approximately, 1CE should be as obtainable as 50-100CR while in the clockworks, with a slight tradeoff on the Crown rewards.

Additionally, we'd do well to change the crafting system. Really, asking 800CE for a single item is outrageous, not as much because of Crown cost, but because of the actual cost of removing 800CE from play. 800CE that's not coming back. In this game, we need ways to get rid of Crowns, not Crystal Energy. A better solution would be to drop CE costs and raise CR costs for crafting.

Also, a daily crafting limit would help with the vanilla-flooding of the market, another thing to stop big-name players from ruining the market. I mentioned this earlier but making UVs more common would be great, too. This way, a single lucky player can't get 500kcr from one item and then arrive at endgame. Sad, but true. Three rings places far too much value on 'rare' items, aka Max! UVs or Blackened Crests (to my knowledge only one crest exists in the game).

Other solutions that have been proposed are PvP wager matches or simply charging CR to enter a PvP arena. All good ideas I suppose. There should be a premium/wager PvP where crowns are charged, and a basic free-for-all (just because I like the idea of free, friendly PvP, and not being charged for everything I do in-game. Maybe the premium ones should have quirks such as elemental plates, wheels, mob spawners etc). Or, one could be charged admission based on their equips, where 5* players with level 10 gear, tetraheart pendants and UV:high gear would be charged much more than a 2* player.

On the note of there being way too many crowns endgame, I'd like you to think of previous MMOs you've played. For example, any WoW-esque generic MMO. There are certainly a few good reasons there aren't (nearly as many) big-name players with comparable wealth in those games. One is probably that endgame isn't so close to startgame. There's a lot more to do and it takes much longer to get there. Additionally, the reason so many endgame players are so rich is because, at that stage, all there is to do is UV crafting, which leads millions of crowns for a few good UVs. Oh, there's also the part about Love Puppy drops. Not sure if they're still bound, but it's silly how one stroke of 0.1% luck will get you hundreds of thousands of crowns in this game. That's definitely something that should be reconsidered.

While I stew in my thoughts, here are other ideas I agree with:

Father-Creamy #121: CR in place of CE, but modified for 1.2cr in place of 1ce, so as not to render CE obsolete. It would be good for players who need CE fast or can't afford 100CE at the moment.

Vysorn #112: CE from crystals--idea already quoted; maximum % change: This would work very well alone, although I find it would complement the earlier blind, sticky market proposal very well so that CE prices don't max out as walls towards the end of each day/week/month

Kevomatic #154: PvP prize matches would be amazing, where the winner gets a rare, bound trophy and the cost to enter/progress is in CR--there should be multiple levels costing 1k-100kcr. In fact, it could just be a regular arena as opposed to a PvP match. It would be an excellent endgame crownsink; cosmetic crownsinks such as ign change, gender change or color change (which reminds me, there really needs to be a gender system beyond 'my hat has ponytails so I'm a girl'); unbinding shop depending on * value of gear. Massive crownsink indeed, and additionally it would probably help the AH crownsink see more big trades; PURCHASING MIST TANKS. Yes. That is the best idea I have seen yet (sorry if someone else proposed it first, I haven't read all the posts).

Maberiku #159: Merchants randomly/rarely selling CE at lower prices.

Generally, this section has just suggested ways for CR to be taken out of the system, and ways for CE to be put in. I think it'd be unreasonable for Three Rings to decide to dump CE into the energy market outright like that, but a better idea for there to be some more value to it than "6000 crowns". Besides, why would they give away free CE like that? The least they should do is make it part of the gameplay aspect. Best solutions are those that suggest adding CE rewards in the clockworks and add new crownsinks in Haven, imo.

Anyway, it's 1:30am so I'm largely out of ideas, but maybe I'll pitch in later. Also, this post is well over 4000 words and 9 full single-spaced pages, written in a matter of hours. Lovely, hehe. Wish my term papers went by as well. Thanks for getting this far down. :)

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***BONUS QUESTION*** On Sinxeno's proposed blind auctioning:

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this system.. on one hand, it'd be an excellent crownsink if all the wasted crowns were just eaten up instead of refunded--but on the other hand, nobody would willingly post offers for 8k continuously just because it sold. Well, I say this for myself, but I'm not sure what an endgame millionaire would do. Input, anyone? If you're an endgamer, would you post a 'blind' 8k for 100ce? To speak for myself, if one of my energy offers sold immediately, I'd put up another at a slightly lower cost to see when it would sell. It's brutal enough waiting on non-blind materials to sell in the AH, but for energy offers to be blind and free like that, well, things would be awful. I can't expect the playerbase would accept it well, since most people like to see what they're bidding on (I briefly mentioned this earlier when I was talking about making the sticky market blind). To be honest I really don't know about this one. I can't imagine it'd even be considered for implementation, really.

I'll try to go into it, huh.. it's difficult to discuss this when I have such a limited viewpoint. Well, picture yourself. You have millions of crowns to spare as well as tens of thousands of CE, so I'd imagine (if you needed to buy CE) you wouldn't have a problem paying X amount for your CE. But the frugalness inside me says that I'd rather keep trying to get a lower price, and then I'd be frustrated when my blind offer wasn't met (oh god, finger cramp. Thankfully it's only my left thumb, I don't even use it). Not having.. well, just not having. Not having is something most people don't like. Being kept in the dark about our financial assets is something we're not even used to. There is no real-world application I can think of for blind offers, and it's probably like that for a reason.

Player outcries and frustrations aside, I guess we can look at its efficiency. As I said above, this would do an excellent job of acting as a crownsink if and only if players were content paying what seems like too much for CE. Anyway, it's safe to say that prices would still be rising steadily, as a player would think "Hm, this didn't sell. Let me try a higher price", and would increment their offer not by 1cr and then wait again. I for one would not like to wait 4-12 hours to see if my offer sold. Rather, players would increment by 50-100cr, and look at that, success. Simply blindly testing/waiting when you need CE immediately is a poor idea. It's safe to say that most players buy their CE on demand, instead of saving up for the future.

Here's a good comparison for why blind-bidding is a bad idea. I think it's safe to establish as given that a) players want the lowest price and b) testing lower prices requires waiting. For establishment c) players don't like waiting, we can look at the AH. The other day I saw a bid-only Angelic Raiment sell for 18.9k. It had a curse:max! UV on it. Why did such a rare item sell for so cheap? Because people don't like bidding. Nobody will look at a bid item and say "hey, let me just wait 2 days for it to sell!" They'll say "I'll just be outbid by a lot, so maybe I'll come back for it later". Granted, in part, this was due to the fact that nobody even wears Angelic Raiments, but we can put that aside, as the same thing really applies for most mats. I've rarely had an item sell for its bid price when I had a reasonable buy established (even then it didn't get a bid until at least medium time remaining).

So you say, we can make players choose how long they want their offer to be up, and charge premiums for longer offers. Still not bad, but this brings up the problem that we're still in the dark. Granted, we can choose how long we want to wait, but how do we know how our offer is doing? Will we wait days more for a slightly lower price, or will we just say "to hell with it" and pay an extra 200cr for the CE now? Also, how would things sell, anyway? Would the highest CR offers be taken first? Because of the incredibly high exchange rate, this would mean someone who put up a blind bid for 100cr less than the highest would never have his offer taken, given that there are players out there who would pay said premium for immediate crowns. And so, this would make the CE price rise indiscriminately to the highest price available, or higher (but instead of being +1 like it is now, it'd be +50 due to poor estimates). All stability would be lost, and the demand for premium 'instant' CE would cause the cost of CE to increase rapidly.

However, in the above sticky market solution, a blind system would work much better as it would not allow others to see what the current market looks like (the benefit of Sinxeno's 'blind auctioning') so they cannot outbid others ad infinitum. However, as established, the biggest downfall is the uncertainty in current prices, which will really cause the market to fluctuate wildly and prices to increase at random. The sticky price system (recall the variance limits) would keep this from happening, so it would really be blind, but controlled auctioning, reducing competition and increasing stability.

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::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180

First, please forgive me for repeating any ideas all ready presented, I'd like to talk about what options exchanges do. This is entirely without the subject of more crown sinks (of which I support, but discussion of *low* ce prices are orthogonal to *stable* ce prices). I'm coming at this from the perspective of a programmer, so if there are any traders on, feel free to chime in with what I'm missing.

Options exchanges certainly have instability around prices, but they do have a lot of ideas in place to prevent abnormalities.

Exchanges want both liquidity and volume, since that's how they make their money. Depending on the exchange, you may have any combination of:
1) Per-posted quote fee. If you post a bid or ask, you pay something.
2) Per-trade fee. If a trade happens, you pay something.
3) Price-time priority. If your quote was there first, you get the first trade.
4) Volume priority. If three people post an ask for 100ce at the same price and a bid comes in, each one only sells 33ce.

Three Rings all ready does 2 (albeit one-sided), and 3.

I'd like to discuss these in regards to price stabilization.

I'll talk about 4 first because the effect is simpler; if a party wishes to trade, they do not need to advance the bid or ask in order to start selling. What tends to happen in exchanges that use price-time, is that if a party wishes to trade, they increment the bid or decrement the ask by the smallest price unit to make their quote stick at the top of the book. You can see this clearly by just watching the book in-game; players will leapfrog one another at increments of 1cr. Switching to volume priority gives another option; parties can tie the current top of book price and get a share of the trade. In addition, if a party wishes to buy or sell larger portions, they will post larger sizes, which tend to stabilize the market's prices. Because the smallest increment is 1cr (an absurdly small value), volume priority may not have any effect in this market, since leapfrogging is nearly free in the mind of any party on the exchange. This leads to dollar-auction behavior, and plays into the hands of anyone careful enough to manipulate the market.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction

The effect of 2 is interesting. This will just about determine the spread between bid and ask prices, since any player acting as a market maker will just wait until bid and ask are wider than this amount and play both sides. Assuming the market is volatile and not moving in any direction, one can simply make money off the spread. The more market makers there are, the less profitable this becomes, since the spread will collapse faster. If 2 were made smaller, the spread would likewise shrink and eliminate market making as an option, since the amount of money to be made on each trade would likewise shrink until it doesn't become worth it for manual entry of each trade (in real life it isn't either-- my job is doing this programmatically). With smaller spreads, you would expect to see smaller swings of the mid price, since it would have to travel through more quotes in order to move.

And that's the solution really. How do you encourage more quotes on the market, or have them be larger? By having more of them, manipulation becomes harder since there are more to move through during a push, and prices will be more stable even in the absence of manipulation for the same reason. I suggest that Three Rings lowers the trade fee, or eliminates it entirely and puts in a small posted quoting fee instead, possibly similar to what they do for mail. Perhaps lower the fee if a quote is of a large size, and/or refund it when a trade occurs.

I hope someone finds that interesting, feel free to PM me if there are any questions.

IGN: Benjamin

It's not too difficult to put a progressively increasing transaction fee on energy sales prices. The formula could be devised in a way to give a threshold of what 3Rings designers think are acceptable prices. So say 4-6k is the range. As prices go from 4k to 6k the transaction fee will raise only small amounts. Yet enough that once CE surpluses rise and the cost of energy buy offers follows, it's no longer profitable to just transfer energy from column A to column B and make a few hundred crown per transaction.

Since the profits will get absorbed by transaction fee it'll discourage energy traders from gaming the bid tables, and prices can begin to restabilize according to a more true market demand, and not just exclusively the people that will pay whatever.

Then beyond the range of say 6k (again being arbitrary just to illustrate this idea) the progressive fee will grow geometrically. So say you start posting energy at 10k. The fees could maybe scale up to 60%, making it less profitable than selling it at 5k for a 2-6% fee.

These ranges and penalties will have to be decided. It just has to get more discouraging and less profitable for people to move energy from one panel to the other. It also would have the bonus of discouraging gouging, but preserving a range that keeps the energy market interesting. Allowing it to raise and lower according to the demand, rather than people's one-up-manship in shuffling energy around on the market tab.

Though the reality is that actual average value of CE might be higher than what most players are accustomed to. It might really settle in a few thousand higher than the 4-4.5k mark. It's hard to say what will happen without having access and querying the actual transaction data. :I

IGN: Shinko

I've given this some thought and consulted my friend and classmate who's studying economics in college right now to come to this conclusion. One of the reasons that there are problems with the current energy market is that it's too easily manipulated. As the OP stated, any wealthy player with enough crowns can mask the CE buyer's market with false high prices and just watch as normal people are fooled into bidding higher.

A solution to this that I thought up is to make the market a double blind market. I made up this term so it needs some explanation; when I say double blind market, I mean a market in which buyers are blind to what the lowest priced offer is and sellers are blind to what the highest priced offer is. Players are allowed access to all the offers, but not in any numerical order. I will expand on this more as this post matures. The inspiration for this came from MapleStory. MapleStory's freemarket system is basically a blind market for buyers. Sellers may setup shop and sell their items for whatever price they want, and it's up to buyers to comb the market looking for the lowest price. This system did wonderfully suppressing trolling sellers who try to sell their wares for a higher price just to crash the market for as long as the free market has been available. Prices in Maple's FM worked almost completely on supply and demand factors leaving a single player or small group of players very little power to influence the market very much. The only thing which began to break Maple's FM was hackers who would flood the market with goods (a problem SK doesn't have yet).

Yet, SK's energy market is very different. Where as Maple's FM had thousands of different items in it our energy market only has 2 things: crowns and energy. So I will now depart from Maple's FM structure, taking with me only the idea of a blind market (one in which the absolute best price for a good is not known). The idea of this model is to suppress market manipulation without creating stagnation. The reason that the SK energy market is so easily manipulated is that it's too responsive to a single player's input. However, if the market model is too unresponsive to player input the prices will stagnate and will not reflect true supply and demand.

My idea is this: have a market UI where buyers and sellers may post offers which will be displayed by order of the oldest offer. Players browsing the market may see a finite number (the exact number may vary depending on what works best) of offers to a page and each will be displayed in the order in which they were placed queue style. Each offer will have a player's name attached to it, and a player who makes several offers will have them grouped under his/her name in the order that they were placed (actually the name doesn't need to be there but it might help to root out people trying to manipulate the market). Players will be limited to having 5 different active offers up at a time (meaning a player may make 50 offers to pay 5000 crowns for 100 energy but cannot make offers for 5000, 5001, 5002, 5003, 5004, and 5005 crowns until their other offers expire or are taken down by the player). If players make offers consecutively they will be placed in the queue in the order that they are given. Offers made at a later time, but for the same amount of payment as a previous offer will be grouped into the other offer and will take the older offer's time stamp. Players browsing the market may then accept offers that are there or keep browsing the page and other pages looking for better offers. Offers will have a finite lifespan (I envisioned 48 hours or so but it might be shorter) and will be taken off and refunded to the player who placed the offer after the time is up. I envisioned offers expiring with the day they are made (i.e. any offers made on day x PST will expire on day x+2 regardless of when they were posted) or having their own 48 hour expiration. Either should work although I believe the first option is cleaner. At the top of the UI will be a market indicator in the form of the average buying/selling price of the market (depending on whether the player's looking at the buying or selling market). Offers made by the same player at the same price (grouped offers) will be counted as a single offer at the offered price in the average.

Now the explanation of why I believe this is a better market structure. Remember that the principal goal of this market structure is to make the market resistant to those who wish to manipulate it but still be reactive enough to player's input that the market won't stagnate by making sellers and buyers blind to the absolute maximum and minimum prices of the market. This market is set up in a way that compliments a lot of player offers. In order for a market model like this to work there needs to be a large number of offers on the boards thousands, 10s of thousands, or even 100s of thousands, the more the better. The more people that participate in the market the more resistant it will be to a single person trying to manipulate it. Normally the market would work like this: players making offers to buy CE would try to make offers below the average while players accepting offers would try to accept offers above the average. With more people accepting offers than making offers the average will be pushed down as lower offers accumulate and higher offers are taken off the board. With more people posting offers than making offers the average will be pushed up as old low offers get pushed off the board and new higher offers get made. The same will be true in the opposite direction for the boards offering to sell CE. The average acts like a market indicator showing users where the true value lies despite any trolling offers that get submitted. Really there can be many different offers ranging quite far from the average yet the average should stay fairly stable. This makes the indicator resistant to market trolls and informs the players where the price is actually situated even if a large group of people post extra high or extra low offers. The average and thus the market gains stability as the number of players making serious offers increases. In fact, this market might be able to work without a market indicator, but I added that to make life a little easier for players so they wouldn't have to shoot in the dark when trying to make an offer. As an added measure of manipulation protection, putting player's names in by their offers shows players wishing to post more offers whether a set of unusually high/low offers is actually indicative of the market or if it was just a set of troll offers trying to crash the market. These offers may affect the market for a little while, but because of the time to live on every offer they will eventually be bounced off the list to make room for more serious offers. The time to live on offers is crucial to keeping the market from stagnating. Too much time and the market will slow down and become unresponsive to the push/pull of supply and demand. Too little time and the market will be too responsive to market trolls. The ability to view every offer posted yet not view them in numerical order is key to keeping both buyers and sellers blind. There must be enough offers on the market that a person would be quite burdened to look through every offer to find the lowest or highest one. New offers coming in would help keep browsers blind to the absolute maximum and minimum of the market. The rules of grouping, counting groups as only one, and limiting the number of offers also helps to steel the market against trolls. In theory, anyone who isn't a market troll but needs more than 100 energy would simply make several offers of the same amount to get it which is why any number of offers for the same amount is allowed and only different offers are limited. Of course it is still possible for a large group of people to purposely change the average of the market, but the group would have to be large, and they would all have to renew their offers consistently until the market decided to catch up with them. Such large scale organization is hard to pull off and likely wouldn't happen unless there was a large movement for it (think about how much good all the threads trying to boycott the market do now). Listing the oldest offers first means that new offers trying to troll the market will be put at the end of the line out of sight while old offers can have a chance for acceptance before passing. It also gives added incentive for players who need energy or crowns quickly to turn to accepting offers rather than posting them (I don't see very much incentive for players to accept energy/crown offers when posting an offer gets them energy/crowns fairly quickly).

In summary, I believe this market model effectively mitigates the efforts of market trolls through several countermeasures including a resilient market indicator, player access to every posted offer, a time to live on every offer, and restrictions and limitations on how offers are posted. These same features also function to give players an idea of what to offer, give players the freedom of choice in a fair market environment, discourage market stagnation and remove troll offers, and control anyone who might try to manipulate the market. Ideally with this model the force of supply and demand would show players what they say they want to pay for energy collectively as a group without being influenced by outside factors.

@tennispro

Yes,
or more easy:
accumulate a large group of customers, make them happy, make them fund you.

due to the design of the game-system a high inflation is inevitable.
And 000 want that.
A high exchange rate and corrupt mark makes buying CE more attractive. But there is a limit. Unrealistic high fluctuating prices will scare people away.
If people are knowing the exchange rate will rise, they might wait to buy a new item (with crowns) because they feel like they are wasting their recent bought CE. This will reduce the rate of new CE sold. And they might link the game market to the reality, and they wound like it.

A progressive elevator fee is a start.
However, you need to show the people what they are missing in deeper tiers and why they will have more fun if they pay.
(Very) Limited access to deeper tiers with boosted weapons might work.

Plus they should look after more ways to fund the game.
Advertisement pictures in game. On walls, like in reality. (similar to quake live)
Selling fancy rare doping items directly. (similar to team fortress 2/valve)
etc.

@Maberiku
"Thinking of the fact, that CR are only needed for these limited actions, it seems a miracle that people who bought CE are willing to sell the CE for CR..."
True. The coupling of both groups, the paying and the free playing, is weak.
But if the coupling is increased, for example if paying players need something from not paying paying players, it would be hard to explain to them why they have to pay at all.

Edit: Its funny: Somehow the situation of 000 and some "power players(traders)" is similar: Both want to make maximum profit but they need to take care not to destroy their source of income.

Quite true. You made a number of valid points that I completely agree with. Finding a way to exhibit full content would be important if limited content gates were intoduced. Perhaps, more promotional events with lowered elevator costs would help in the long run. Which brings us to methods of advertising, which you also pointed out. This is one area where I think Three Rings needs to step it up a bit. Advertising will solve many problems much easier than any of the solutions listed in this thread.

I understand my suggestion has its holes, but I guess by posting, I intended to point out there are alternative methods of addressing rising energy, rather than inventing a new energy market. The real problem is not the rising energy costs, but the unhappiness to players old, new, you, and me, that rising energy costs cause.

::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180
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The problem is that there are two currencies in the game right now, CR and CE. The latter is only obtainable from Three Ring's market, being purchased with real money. Naturally, there are a limited number of players buying CE, and even fewer who are selling it (to be honest I find it hard to believe how many hundreds of thousands of CE are traded every day, but I'm going to assume much of it is the same CE being circulated for profit, as opposed to new CE coming in to be used). And then there are crowns. Worthless, awful crowns. Here we have CE, the bread and butter of both Three Rings and the players, and it's quite finite. And we have crowns: essentially worthless, but can be used to purchase the valuable, scarce CE.

It's like if everyone in the world wanted precious gems/metals for private consumption. We have a finite amount, and it's only a matter of time before all that's left is a ridiculously priced relic, because it's being consumed considerably faster than it's being put in, I believe. Some posters already have commented on how slow the CE market is right now, and how difficult it is to buy some. Gaps between the top offers are tens, hundreds of crowns apart. But I digress.

The problem is that the widely available currency (Crowns) is pouring like a monsoon rainfall into the game economy. There is little to nothing to do with crowns in this game, except use it to purchase CE (or buy good UVs if you're endgame, but at this point you may as well craft your own, using more CE). Conversely, CE is necessary in everything from guild creation to crafting to adventuring. This is why everyone wants to purchase CE, and why this ever-increasing demand (as the playerbase grows) is overpowering the dwindling supply (many CE buyers have stopped, especially with the end of Rose Regalia).

Stability and manipulation aside (as those aren't as big problems, and I think I discussed it to death in my last post #166), there are too many crowns in the game and not enough CE. I'm led to believe many players buy large lump sums of CE occasionally (especially endgame) for consumption. The 1% trading fee isn't going to take out many crowns, but the consumption of hundreds of CE is going to ultimately remove them (a big problem is UV crafting).

To lessen the velocity at which CE leaves the system, things can either cost less CE or limits could be placed on how much CE one can spend/trade in a day. For example, a person shouldn't be able to craft more than 10-20 items in a day, or use more than 5kce--at least until Three Rings introduces an artificial method of creating CE. I can't say we can rely on the few CE that'll generate entirely, but crown/energy costs should be modified so that clockwork runs aren't as pricey (especially to new players) and crafting costs more crowns instead of CE (I really cannot see their justification for making recipes cost less CR and more CE--in fact it's considerably easier to get to endgame now, especially if you're P2P, and the general crown cost for crafting a single item remains the same--it's only UV crafting that has become more costly, and it's taking a larger toll on the economy since endgame players are practically crownsinks themselves). Anyway, like I said, there should be limits on how much CE can be consumed and traded daily (I went over this a bit in my last post again), as the high CE consumption rates as of now really do no favors for the game, they simply shred the economy for CE and for crafted items.

To all you players saying "Well that's dumb, I bought it with MY real money so I should be able to do whatever I want with it you F2P noob", no, you really cannot. It's like walking into a store and shooting the clerk because you paid real money for a gun and ammunition. You're paying Three Rings for a service, you're not entitled to anything more than they're allowing you, and if you're unhappy about that, go play another game and don't be so self-centered. This game relies on P2P players, F2P players, endgamers and newbies working together to keep it from collapsing on itself (as it is right now), and since many endgame players have resorted to mass UV crafting or market manipulating, the game is really going to hell.

Has anyone else noticed the high volume of newbies begging these days? It has a strong correlation with the higher prices of CE as well as the growth of the playerbase. It's the first summer this game has been released and so it's the challenge test this game has to face--whether it'll survive an influx of thousands of new players. Doesn't seem to be doing so well. This game is difficult for newbies, as entering a T1 gate for them costs the same as entering a T3 gate for endgamers--the difference between them is that the endgamer has hundreds of thousands of crowns (and therefore a considerably amount of energy) to spend, whereas the newbie does not. I'm not saying gates should be more expensive in T3 as there are so few runs allowed per day already, but they should be cheaper in T1 so as to keep newbies in the game longer (and those of us looking to have inexpensive fun in the earlier gates). I was talking to a newbie the other day, explaining the reliance on energy, and I told him you could get 100ce for 6k. I think he may have died inside at that. If no newbies can stick around to play (this game is highly unbalanced right now; all the power is in millionaire endgamers), how does Three Rings expect to make more money in the future?

Anyway, I think the above established how/why we need a cheaper CE system not only for newbies, but in general, too. In addition to this, we need lesser energysinks (just ones that cost less, or return energy at some point) in conjunction with more crownsinks, ideally ones favored to endgame players. Artificial sources of CE would be appreciated as well, since the game revolves on it right now.

Possible crownsinks that have been proposed: PvP arenas, challenge arenas that yield trophy items, Unbinding shops, Cosmetic shops, Customized purchaseable gear, Mist tanks, gambling/arcade rooms, a new crafting system.

To clarify, the energysinks are currently: clockworks elevators, crafting. These are the biggest aspects of the game, and they should cost less energy to stabilize the system, and limits should be enforced to make sure these systems (namely crafting) are not abused.

Really, the big problem is that the game right now is a massive energysink. There are millions of crowns circulating the system, but much of the CE is being consumed beyond replacement. The game's emphasis should be shifted away from the current clockwork runs or UV crafting ad infinitum and to new crownsink expansions/updates that offer incentive for players to have fun again, instead of becoming endgame and (maliciously, intentionally or not) ruining the game.
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::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180

I agree,

smart advertising which dose not destroy the atmosphere of the game can create so much headroom for new ideas. This is simply in the interest of all of us.

Cheers!

a poll that only last a week to set up the limit to where ec should be price
for example 5k 6k 7k 8k 9k 10k 15k 20k and etc

when the final day comes
Example: 5k crown win the poll
the market can only sell 100ec for 5k crown

this poll can only be do only every month
you CAN only vote once

that first week there is no setting for how much ec will be
if 100 ec goes over 20k then this game is crazy

Sorry people, i just want to know if it was really three rings asking us for help to lower CE prices. It seems to me that the higher CE price, the more people buying CE with real money, and they make more profits. If it wasn't them asking for us to help, then all these suggestion like crown sink would be meaningless, because that would require them to do stuff to lose profit.

Thanks for replying, but I was only trying to know who was asking for us to help lower the CE price. Is it the OOO staffs or just random player.
And I do agree with more players = more profit, but the impact of rising CE price on it is still debatable. And if OOO thinks it's not profitable to raise the CE price, there would be no reason for them to double all the crafting price of CE and lowering of Recipe prices.
Either way, I'm not trying to debate how they can make their profits, I just want to know if this discussion is about giving the OOO staffs tips to solve CE price problem, or just gathering up the community without OOO intervention to solve the problem. If it's the latter one, many suggestions here about crown sink would be meaningless.

Short Version: New Content THAT COSTS CROWNS

Long Version:

CE is price is dictated by the behavior of CE buyers. Something I do not see given much time is looking at the current situation from the eyes of a CE buying player. Here's an example:

Lets say I am a moderate CE buyer with some experience in the game. I want stuff and am willing to spend $ to get it.

I want a new 5*. I buy a 3* with a minor UV off the AU (15k). I buy the recipes off Basil over time (Lets say 5 T3 runs to Basil - netting ~15k crowns and spend 35k on the recipes). I make a jelly run for heat (I trade energy for 6k crowns and heat). I craft the 4* (2500 crowns and 400 CE). I make another 5-6 jelly runs for heat (I trade energy for 30k crowns and heat). I craft the 5* (5k crowns and 800 CE). I make 10 jelly runs where I play with my new toy and get it to 5*/10 (I trade energy for 60k crowns and some heat).

Notice something in this chain of events? Come on, think a minute....

I made more crowns getting the needed heat and recipes then I used in the whole process.

Crowns Spent:

(35k recipes + 7.5k crafting + ??? on mats) = ~45kk

Crowns Earned:

(Basil + Heat) = ~120k

Yeah the math is kinda loose but I think the point gets across. Even if I am a CE buyer, I have no reason to trade CE for crowns. In fact, all said, at the end of making a 5*, I am likely to want to buy CE with crowns.

Here is another example. Lets say I am a UV grinder and I want cool UV's:

I am a end-game player with nothing to gain but UV's. I am willing to buy CE for this and do. I bust out my MasterCard and get to work.

I make 100 Wolver Coats (lets use 1k in mats just to keep it simple and assume I buy them off the AH - so 100k mats, 40k crowns and 5000 CE alchemy fee).

I end up vendoring 90 of them as they have no value at all (90 * 750 = 67.5k). 8 have minor UV's people will buy so I AH them for 5k or so (8 * 5k = 40k). 1 is not what I wanted but has real value. I sell it either on the AH for 35k. The last one is neat and I AH it for 150k or so (or keep it). Results vary, but this is a decent example.

Crowns Spent = ~140k

Crowns Earned = ~300K

Again, after all is said and done, I have no reason to sell CE. If anything, I take the crowns I net and buy CE of the market.

One last example:

Lets say I am a 5* veteran player. I am willing to buy CE and do, both to support my habit and because I want to support OOO.

Ok, so, I do some runs with friends each day. This costs me some energy. At the end of this, I have extra crowns and mats and whatever. If I sell anything, I sell enough some mats to buy enough CE to play with my friends tomorrow.

See a motive to sell CE here?

Conclusion?

Ok, so, even if I bought CE, what would possess me to sell CE, ever?

Me, I am not sure why anyone besides new players selling some to buy basic equipment would have a motive - and that is a serious issue.

I think I am like many other players. I am willing to buy CE with $. I would be more then happy to sell CE for crowns. I just lack a motive.

Change that and the CE market stops being a problem.

::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180 #181 #183 #192

@LordDarkness:
Three Rings isn't asking us; Sinxeno (just a player, to my knowledge) is bored/frustrated with the game, and he's looking for some intelligent discussion before he leaves, hoping that this thread will be seen by Three Rings staff members, and hopefully some of the ideas would be implemented in-game.
TL;DR No, OOO isn't asking for help, it's just us talking amongst ourselves.

@Tobsterz:
I like your idea, but ultimately there's some point in time where a player would altogether stop buying CE because the vendor price has incremented too far, or because he has nothing left to craft--trying to get a full set of 5* gear even, what with all the energy you've already bought, would cost far too much. Additionally, I've said this before, but it's not for Three Rings to dictate what crown prices CE should be selling at. CE and CR have no real value--their value is determined by their difficulty to obtain. Let's say someone does 20 jelly runs on ME. He gets 200kcr. The only thing to do with this money would be to buy more CE. Why? Because in this game, you can't do anything with CR. Everything revolves around CE. Now, this isn't bad--our player can purchase maybe 3500ce until it becomes too expensive for him to profit. And then what? The 'free' demo is essentially over. The player must now become inactive or P2P, because nobody's going to grind 4 days on ME just to be able to purchase 100CE.

Again, there can be no automated, preset value placed on crowns or crystal energy. The exchange rate should be determined by the players, and this is why an open market system works best. The downside of this system is that it is very prone to manipulation, as we've seen so far. I've already explained a sticky price proposal in TL;DR #166, but ultimately there's still massive CR inflation and massive CE deflation in the game right now, which cannot be stopped without modifying the existing sinks in the game or adding more energysinks. These sinks will reduce the rate at which CE is taken out of the system, and they will increase the rate at which CR is taken out, especially for endgame players.

TL;DR the game needs new content that meet these criteria if it wants to survive.

::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180 #181 #183 #192

I have just posted this thread http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/10694

Inspired by your thread a few of my friends and I have decided to form a coalition to take on the market forces. After investigation we feel it is something that we, as players, can combat with the proper coordination through the same forces the market was derailed through, without the intervention of OOO or any game changes.

I would like to invite you to participate, as we are looking for players who desire a fair market trade. We will be looking into the entire SK economy, dives, crafting, material sales, and auction house items to fully explore the situation so that we may provide better feedback on the state of the SK game.

We do not require any CE or USD to implement our system, but are looking for players who wish to dedicate some of their time and resources to maintain this system with us. We are also looking to sponsor a newbie guild which can assist players in making the best choices as they begin exploring the SK world. A good newbie guild can help players get the most out of the game, and keep many players from falling into begging by helping them understand what they can do to achieve their goals through their own efforts, and help them avoid choices which could cost them without bringing them any benefit.

To fix the economy you need to have both Sides of the Economy (Crowns and CE) valued and have to have both used often to require people to do activities to get more. Some fixes...

1. Have a random recipe slot machine type thing... place x amount of crowns in, get a random recipe... possible put in some that can only be obtained through this slot machine, that just so happen to provide bonus geared towards PVP or other activities... can be updated to go with the future expansions... Chance for a unique costume... things of this nature...
Amount placed into machine would vary for the level of gear you would like to receive. Level A 1* Level B 2* Level c 3*... Ect...

2. Mark things like Trinket slots and Weapon slots, and even the new heat amplifier cost crowns to get... Would require a monthly amount of crowns to be invested to have slots usable. Also add levels to hear amplifier... higher percentage for more crowns...

3. Allow Mats to be purchased from vendors... 1-3* for crowns, not an extremely low price but high enough to allow people to still want to trade to get a better value or to find in clock works to save crowns.

4. Danger Rooms... how many people pass these up... how many people would pass there up if the reward for completion was CE... teir 1 10CE (Free elevator ride) teir 2 25CE... decent amount... Teir 3 50CE... Fair Amount... Maybe even have mobs in clockworks have a RARE chance to drop CE (Given party wide like gold... in 1CE or 2CE mounts...

Now Crowns have more value and more reason to be used... CE is still valuable and people will still want to buy CE to have the 5* toys faster...

So, after much thought about the current system I think I have figured out a unique way in order to balance out the problems in the Energy trade.

The problem currently is there is only a single input for CE into the game and that is buying it. While this is good for three rings, in the long run it will actually hurt the game as very quickly the energy market will climb to a point it is pointless to even try to get CE to upgrade your gear.

So I suggest the following option.

A Daily quest (aka: Able to do it only once a day) that requires you to delve to Basil from floor 1. It rewards 50 crystalized energy. This would allow players who still want progress in the game to have it, even if they choose not to pay for CE, albeit at a much slower rate. A 5* piece of gear would require running the daily for 16 days solid to just get the CE to go from 4* to 5*, but it gives people an option. This in turn would take the load off the Energy market, as people could choose not to pay and just work towards it over several days.

Just my 2¢.

::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180 #181 #183 #192 #200

------------------TL;DR, scroll down------------------
I am under the impression that without an enforcing body (in this case, Three Rings), you cannot get anything done. It would be ideal to think that we could run a democratic union in the game where everyone cooperates, but there's really no incentive for anyone (with power aka CE) to cooperate with our community rules. So to curb the players' power, OOO really needs to intervene.

Anyway, shying away from that topic as I suppose it's been overdone ten times over, the problem is that there is not enough CE in this game. I'm surprised there are still hundreds of trades every day, what with so much CE being consumed.. I figured much of the P2P body had stopped paying/playing due to the little this game has to offer. That deals with old players leaving, but what about new players coming in, or current players considering paying?

Well, I'll elaborate on old P2P players first, then move on. Players became P2P back in the day largely because the game was new and exciting, and in part because of the Rose Regalia promotion. There was an influx of CE in the market and everyone was happy. People would actually sell their CE because recipes were so expensive back then, and nobody wanted to grind for hours just to be able to afford a single recipe.

Anyway, once the promotion ended and Rose Regalia slowly left circulation, those P2P players had already achieved endgame status and really had no more reason to purchase CE. I wouldn't really expect endgamers to purchase CE in order for the game to survive, anyway. But it's true that their time came too soon, as this game really does not have that much to offer.

Moving on to current players. Well, if any of you have come upon the battle of purchasing CE or not, the downsides are that you're spending real money, but the upside is that you get 5* gear that much faster. The main reason you wanted to buy CE anyway was so you could do more clockwork runs, craft more and get a few extra crowns so you can buy that last recipe. So really, most of the CE would be spent by you (unless you're one of the few players who likes buying max! UVs for outrageous prices). As you can see, a pretty limited amount of CE is actually sold and circulated in-game.

Because very few players do sell their CE (probably not enough to keep the game world spinning round), we need to encourage more players to purchase CE, be it for themselves or for others. I think it's safe to say that the only reasons a player would sell a large amount of CE would be a) 5kcr for 100ce or b) selling leftover CE they don't need. So we can really only encourage players to buy CE for themselves, because they have greater reasoning to buy for themselves than for others--purchasing CE to sell is essentially buying CR, and crowns are sorta worthless beyond a certain point.

------------------TL;DR start here------------------

Anyway, how do we get more people to buy CE? They need incentive, and that comes in the form of game content. Different types depending on the different gamer, I suppose. Let's divide people into categories:
>Newbie
>>>Dedicated newbie
>>>Begging summernoob
>Average player
>Endgame
>>>One who chills
>>>One who screws with the market for their own gain

------------------TL;DR end here------------------

And, well, here I'm stuck. Looking at noobs, we can ignore the beggars since, well, you already know. They beg because they don't know how games work, and I don't expect them to become P2P without first becoming a dedicated newbie (this can be influenced only by a helpful community). So, dedicated newbies. They start playing the game, and it's not bad. They get to haven, see all the wonders the world offers, and then make their first, second, third trips into the arcade. Uh-oh, expensive elevator and revive fees mean they're already out of mist. There's no way they'll have made enough CR to afford more crystal energy in that short trip, so they're sorta stuck. They pay the same fees as everyone else, only to get inferior drops.

Going off of Tennispro's suggestion #173 (no-fee elevator), I recall an MMO I used to play that had a 'training ground'. You could either go ahead and enter the real game that everyone else played--tougher monsters, better rewards--or you could (only if you were below a certain level) enter a newbie training ground which isolated you from the rest of the game world, but still offered you a unique leveling experience, and kicked you out once you reached a certain level (high enough that you would survive alone). So let's say a player can enter the newbie clockworks for a small CE(ME)/CR fee (similar to the 'advanced training' hall, but with actual threats and gains, although minimal), and they can train in there N times or until they are at n* gear. Now of course the grounds wouldn't be profitable to any player above that amount, so we can't turn around and claim that this new zone is free gold farming for noob accounts. To further assist the situation, T1 should cost less than T2, and T2 less than T3. Why should a 0* player pay as much energy as a 5* player? Furthermore, the noob grounds would need to have a high enough payout to assist newbies in affording T1 runs. To keep the amount low, it only makes sense to make easier gates cost less--this would also offset the low gains to be reaped from lower gates, but not so much that farming T1 would actually become profitable for the average 3* player.

Three Rings could add new, bonus gates that cost MORE--said gates would require you to have completed X amount of runs and have full 5* gear before entering. I won't say they should reward anything valuable, but they should act as a sink for endgame players. Again, reverting to the whole energysink/crownsink discussion, though.

I digress.

------------------TL;DR start here------------------

This game needs 1 of 2 things. Incentive for players to sell crowns or incentive for players to buy crystal energy. This would be done by making crowns more valuable or lessening the game's reliance on CE. Some buyers would inject CE into the game in exchange for CR they needed, or enough players would come to like the game enough that they would pay for the occasional CE, and also be able to play for a bit without having to buy more.

All in all, no manifestable solution comes to mind, but there have been a multitude of good, easy solutions so far..

-------------------------------EDIT----------------------------------
After finally going into the clockworks to play again with the ME I hadn't touched in a few days, I realized why everyone gets bored of this game and moves on to other things. There's simply not enough content, and even delving into the clockworks is repetitive and seems like grinding after some time. Tbh it makes sense that in a game with maybe 30 'different' levels, most of the people get bored and stop.

Three Rings should add fun things to do OUTSIDE the clockworks, really. They should start with a PvP system that emulates miniature WoW raids, and maybe add shinies to Guild hall. idk, the clockworks as-is are just dreadfully boring, which explains why everyone just stops playing the real game, and instead decides to mess with other fun things.
::IGN Guhnom:: #166 #180 #181 #183 #192 #200