Spiral Knights - Why it should and will cost more to buy crystal energy with crowns

Why it should and will cost more to buy crystal energy with crowns

12 replies [Last post]

Sun, 06/12/2011 - 23:24

Quasirandom

My basic thesis is that the number of crowns it takes to buy 100 crystal energy should tend to rise as time passes. I'm not saying it should be more expensive today. I'm saying it should be more expensive a month from now than it is today.

The way that the system works is that neither crystal energy nor crowns are created or destroyed as part of the energy market trading crystal energy for crowns. The reasons why this should be the case is a post and a half in itself, but for our purposes here, it suffices to say that it is.

At low levels (loosely; this could be defined in a variety of ways), it takes a while to get crowns. At higher levels, you can get the same number of crowns much quicker, while spending far less energy. Thus, getting the same amount of crowns for a given amount of real-life money is more tempting when you're low level, and less so when you're high level.

Furthermore, you actually need crowns more early on. When you're in starter gear, buying your way to higher level gear very quickly gives you a huge upgrade in power. Once you've already got a full set of five star gear, there's a lot less to buy with crowns. Paying real-life money to get far more powerful gear is tempting to some people. Paying real-life money to get alternate gear that isn't unambiguously any stronger than what you already have is a lot less tempting.

Meanwhile, you need crystal energy more later on. You don't actually need crystal energy as opposed to mist energy at all until you want to upgrade to three star gear. You can buy crafted three star gear on the market, but most four- and five-star gear is bind on pickup, and cannot be bought on the market.

Thus, high level players have stronger incentives to buy crystal energy for crowns, while low level players have stronger incentives to buy crowns for crystal energy, or rather, for real-life money. If most of the players are low level, and few are high level, then the with many players looking to buy crowns and fewer looking to buy crystal energy, the price for crystal energy should be low. If most of the players were high level and few were low level, then the price for crystal energy should be much higher, as so many more people are interested in buying it and few in selling it.

So what happens as time passes? Initially, everyone is low level. As time passes, some players get high level, then more players get high level, and so forth. Some old, high level players quit, and new, low level players join. But in general, the drift is toward a higher proportion of the playerbase being high level, and a lower proportion being low level. This has been observed to occur in practice in many games, and Spiral Knights will be no exception.

So what happens as the playerbase tends to get higher level? More demand for crystal energy, and less demand for crowns means that buying a given amount of crystal energy should cost more crowns. Be ready, as it's coming. The only question is how much more expensive, and how soon. For reasons that I won't go into here, from Three Rings' perspective, that's surely a feature of the system, not a bug.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 00:36

Madadder

there ought to b exchange

there ought to b exchange rates for t1,t2,t3 players. a t1 player cant naturally make the money to buy 100 units continuously whether its their ignorant use of energy to revive or the low amount of money generated from their runs.

i know that OOO needs money but most players dont immediately pay for CE until they know they like the game or not

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 10:04

Aexicas

Legacy Username

Interesting Thesis, but...

While a good post, and a common sense thesis, there's a few details I think that you haven't taken into consideration:

1. There IS a destruction of crowns/energy in the energy market trade. Not a -direct- destruction, no, but, I'm not sure that there is anyone who just buys CE for giggles (aside from the very few people that try to buy low and sell high there; too dangerous of a market). Why do people buy CE, more often than not? Crafting. Hence, there is a direct destruction of CE, which does actually support your thesis in the end; As CE is destroyed, prices will inevitably rise, as there is less CE to go around. However, that can be said about it at any time, and likewise does not really explain the topped out costs for CE right now (for the past few days, it's been hovering around 7k).

2. Your ideal of the majority of players being higher level, rather than lower level, works in choice MMO situations; this MMO is not one that it works in.

Most MMOs (a la FFXI, WoW, etc) have a very static player base, that pay good money every month to keep playing the game that they love, having hundreds of things to do, and have the ability to keep with one character forever. They do this because, simply, they pay; they want to get their moneys worth.

This game is very different, it's much more like, say, DDO, LOTRO, or, likely more accurately, other free games like Fiesta or Grand Fantasia. These MMOs, in part due to the fact that they are "free" have a much greater transient player base. Yes, the games will always have many players that have been around since beta (I myself can claim that for DDO), but the games consistently have an influx of new players herp derping their way through the lower levels, getting so far, and then either get bored with the game, or just don't want to spend the time/money to continue with the game. They more than likely had made at least one purchase, so to their developers, that's money gained. This game is no different.

Due to the multitude of sites that this game is advertised on, we always will have new players; Heck, I even got attracted by one of those ads. That said, any purchase I've made (so far only 5 bucks, but, still) has put extra energy into the system, and likewise increased the influx of energy. While I haven't quit, there are lots of players that will spend their 3 bucks on the game, sell their energy, play for a bit, and then decide the game is too hard, or they don't like it enough, and go away. That's 750 more energy into the system that wasn't there before, and is what is keeping the markets going.

While, yes, there is more demand for CE now, there is still a high amount of new, lower level players, that are coming into the game. There's a reason the market topped around 7.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 10:26

Daystar

Legacy Username

Sorry, I find this post

Sorry, I find this post relatively useless. It's not hard to understand why things are the way they are. The question is should it be that way.

I'm of the opinion that it shouldn't. When nine times out of ten you make less money for every ten energy you spend exploring the clockworks than it takes to buy more, the game is no longer accessible to new players, and new players are the lifeblood of any fledgling MMO, as this game still is.

Without new players, the committed playerbase has no one to sell their materials to, no one to sell the recipes they find to, no one to sell all those 2-3* gear they craft in search of UVs to. OOO has no one to sell more CE to during promotional events, because all the committed players already have everything they need.

The bottom line is this game needs an end-level crown sink that *all* veteran players will be interested in (this means both aesthetic things and useful combat-enhancing things), and market manipulation needs to be curtailed somehow. Those two things will drive CE prices down to more reasonable levels, so that new players can have a chance to get into the game and explore what it has to offer before giving up because they can only play 1-2 hours a night.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 10:30

Gigafreak

Legacy Username

"The way that the system

"The way that the system works is that neither crystal energy nor crowns are created or destroyed as part of the energy market trading crystal energy for crowns."

Umm. What about the 2% crown tax on these transactions?

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 10:50

Tive

>"The bottom line is this

>"The bottom line is this game needs an end-level crown sink that *all* veteran players will be interested in"
and also mid level players who create most of the crowns with jelly runs.
also, due to the nature of jelly king runs being easily available to newer players, price will have a hard time to balance anywhere close to T1 crown gain. the only way to achive that is to make T2 harder to reach; or T2 very close to T1 crown gain.

edit: my personal bottom line is that OOO should add content that doesnt run on energy but is attractive to new players. Anything in between "build gates to restore ME" (minigames) and "link the soul of your knight to a piece of equip and explore it to strenghten it" (core gameplay with reward different from crowns/mats)

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 12:50

Shidara

Legacy Username

A true warrior's soul

I like the idea of binding your soul to a weapon increase its combat-abilities. That would be interesting to have, and definitely a fitting reward for those who've reached the core. Maybe a secondary level-up method after maxing out 5* equips, possibly with a hitch like having to run through the Clockworks from top to bottom to actually strengthen the bond.
Maybe this has a place in the suggestions-board?

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 13:10

Quasirandom

"there ought to b exchange

"there ought to b exchange rates for t1,t2,t3 players. a t1 player cant naturally make the money to buy 100 units continuously whether its their ignorant use of energy to revive or the low amount of money generated from their runs."

Is that unified crowns for separate types of crystal energy? Unified crystal energy for separate types of crowns? Separate types of crowns for separate types of crystal energy? If multiple types of energy, then what does mist energy count toward, and what gets used in crafting? If multiple types of crowns, then how do lower level players buy higher tier gear? I don't think it's immediately obvious that that's unworkable, but you'd have to flesh out a lot of details.

What is immediately obvious, though, is that if it's the same crowns and the same energy at all three tiers, but only different exchange rates, then that creates an enormous arbitrage opportunity, so that's obviously unworkable.

"i know that OOO needs money but most players dont immediately pay for CE until they know they like the game or not"

You start off with 100 mist energy and a mist tank, plus gain some more with the passage of time. You get some idea of whether you like the game before you're expected to buy crystal energy.

"Why do people buy CE, more often than not? Crafting"

But that destruction of the crystal energy is part of the game's source and sink economy, and would occur even with no crystal energy trading. On the other side, usually the reason people buy crowns is also that they want to use them, and crowns do get burned up in crafting and buying recipes.

"and likewise does not really explain the topped out costs for CE right now (for the past few days, it's been hovering around 7k)."

I'm not talking about a time frame of days here. I'm talking about months or years. It's kind of like saying that over the course of decades, the stock market tends to go up. That it may easily go down over the course of any particular day, or even year, doesn't disprove the general tendency of the stock market to rise over long periods of time.

"Your ideal of the majority of players being higher level, rather than lower level, works in choice MMO situations; this MMO is not one that it works in."

I'm not arguing that most players will eventually be higher level. Rather, I'm arguing that the proportion of players who are higher level will tend to increase with time. If it increases from 1% to 2% over the next few months, or from 5% to 7% or from 15% to 20%, then my thesis is correct, even though that still leaves most players lower level.

"but the games consistently have an influx of new players herp derping their way through the lower levels, getting so far, and then either get bored with the game, or just don't want to spend the time/money to continue with the game."

All games do that. You don't think that everyone who plays WoW today also played it five years ago, do you? Most of the people who played WoW five years ago have long since quit. It's pretty rare for a person to stick with a single game continuously for several years. Now, you can argue that some games have more churn than others, but that doesn't change anything about my claim that the percentage of high level players will tend to increase as time passes.

"They more than likely had made at least one purchase, so to their developers, that's money gained."

In any game with even a modest free trial, the large majority of people who play the game will never pay a dime. I'd be surprised if even 20% of the accounts created for this game have purchased crystal energy with real money. Now, there are probably quite a few accounts that never made it far enough to bother to use the mist tank that you start with, but that sort of quick decision against a game is common to every game.

"Due to the multitude of sites that this game is advertised on, we always will have new players;"

Good to hear that Three Rings is advertising, but I've never seen any ads for this game. I went to their site recently to see what they were up to, since I liked Puzzle Pirates some years ago, looked at the games they've made since, and decided this one looked interesting.

"It's not hard to understand why things are the way they are."

Well, a lot of people don't.

"The question is should it be that way."

That's a different topic for a different thread. Which is a thread that I'll probably make sometime. But consider that the alternative to new players having to either buy crystal energy or not play all that much is for veteran players to have to buy ever increasing amounts of crystal energy with real-life money. A lot of free to play/item mall grinder games essentially go the latter route.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 14:08

Tive

"'The question is should it

"'The question is should it be that way.'

from my experience, other F2P MMOs rely on new players to pay the game by means of fancy items. That expands to glowing stuff that's not particularly stronger, but required insane ammounts of cash shop upgrade protection items to achive. Also progressive increase of moneydrops and oportunities to farm rares.
(also xp boosts to a degree, but these are rather the option for the "subscription" type players, as well as popular resellable items)
Playing an F2P MMO proficiently as F2P player is most of the time allows for above average gear and progression speed from my experience.
Still leaving room for thankful customers via fashion items.
(I've heard of an extreme variation of this a bit ago; basically complete new people buying equip (from other players, after using $ to resell Cashshop items) and boost items (directly via $) for hundreds of dollars to be able to play endgame, yet being unable to play the game propperly even)

SK on the other hand has gone to great lengths to balance crown payout across tiers, and the bind change shut down the most obvious way to make money in a typical F2P game fashion. I might just call what OOO is doing ambitious for now, seemingly wanting intermediate players as the major source of income to pay the game.
As for the CE price, I think it betrayed OOO's expectations.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 14:18

GamerTB

Legacy Username

Hell, why isn't the Crystal

Hell, why isn't the Crystal Energy just bought off the Crowns, instead of being essentially coming from real cash purchases? I'm all for keeping the 5k-100CE synergy*, however, so I'm talking about two entirely different scenarios...

*Synergy for the progression rate, not the demand/supply rate.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 15:11

#10

Senshi

Legacy Username

No...

Crystal Energy will not go up in price indefinitely and unbounded. -Some- crystal energy is purchased for crafting, but much of it is purchased for more playtime. As the price increases T1 and then T2 players will not be able to profit. Each threshold - not able to profit from pure crown collection in T1, not able to profit from pure crown collection in T2, not able to profit from crowns & mats sales in T1, not able to profit from crowns & mats sales in T2 ... each of those price levels has fewer players buying CE, slowing the market increase.

Unless there starts to be a large number of players that can do core runs including danger rooms and graveyards without reviving, then there won't really be a market significant number of players that make more in T3 than T2. Having to skip the danger rooms and revive in each graveyard or shortly after each graveyard because you have no health or capsules left... a common T3 experience it seems ... makes T3 not really any more profitable than T2 anyway. Once you pass certain price thresholds, people will choose to play on mist only, buy CE for cash, or quit the game, and, in any case, take pressure off the market.

Of course, the exorbitant CE requirements for crafting and the lack of crown sinks other than market fees does mean that there's really very little -other- control on market price than the price rising to the point that players stop using crown-bought CE for elevators so there's every reason (barring balancing factors in future releases), so the OP's thesis is likely to be correct to a point, but the T1 profitability ceiling seems to be slowing market increase now - the market surge as people crafted 4* and 5* Snarby gear pushed the price right up around or just a little past the T1 ceiling of making profitable runs, making T2 runs pretty marginal, making either playing the full tier every time or selling materials essential, but not so high as to need to do -both- of those things to break even.

We'll see what happens on the next arsenal expansion.

Mon, 06/13/2011 - 18:03

#11

Quasirandom

"from my experience, other

"from my experience, other F2P MMOs..."

"Free to play" is a marketing slogan, not a business model. It encompasses so many different business models that acting like "free to play" specifies the business model is as absurd as pretending that "3.2 GHz" specifies a processor or "550 W" specifies a power supply.

There's "free to players, but paid for by advertisements" that mostly got destroyed by the dot-com bust sending ad prices spiraling downward, and now survives only in dinky little games that someone put together in his free time.

There's "free for a while, but then you hit a wall and are too weak to advance further without buying stuff from the item mall" that brought the more recent rise of the model in South Korea and China.

There's "you can buy insanely overpowered gear for your level, but you'll outlevel it soon enough" that a lot of "free to play"/item mall grinders subsequently moved to.

There's "whoever pays the most real money wins, with a UI whose main purpose is to disguise this for a while, until after you've paid".

There's "subscription game with a generous free trial", such as Champions Online or Lord of the Rings Online.

There's "buy to play but don't pay anything after the original purchase", which completely mystifies me as to why people call that free to play, but they do of Guild Wars.

There's "pay to get more options, but not necessarily better options" as in League of Legends.

There's "we're going to have different business models on different servers" as in EverQuest II and Puzzle Pirates.

There are other things, and also combinations of things. And even games that go in the same categories above don't necessarily have similar business models.

-----

"Hell, why isn't the Crystal Energy just bought off the Crowns, instead of being essentially coming from real cash purchases?"

Where is Three Rings supposed to get their revenue, without real cash purchases? They don't want your crowns. They have access to the database and could conjure up billions of crowns if they wanted them. They want your money. And that's not a bad thing, but I digress.

-----

"Crystal Energy will not go up in price indefinitely and unbounded."

I didn't say that the price would be unbounded. There are plenty of functions that are strictly increasing everywhere, but converge to a finite limit. See, for example, logistic growth. In my head, the model is more along the lines of logarithmic growth, which is technically unbounded, but takes so long to get stupidly big that the universe will end before it matters if the function is bounded or not.

Tue, 06/14/2011 - 00:30

#12

Tive

>There's "you can buy

>There's "you can buy insanely overpowered gear for your level, but you'll outlevel it soon enough" that a lot of "free to play"/item mall grinders subsequently moved to.

yeah this is a core element. Can suck for pvp though but it otherwise can be really good. Especially when the gear isn't that op and easily obtainable as long as it's only upgraded to +4. (you'll be faster at leveling than bads by a huge margin usually; and in endgame you can buy anything with drops)(alternatively it's really op and a shameless cashgrab, but I only know of 1 game that went down that road a while ago. it was also bad and marketed at people who you can do that with)

Also UV farming kind of has the same place as these upgrading scemes that rely on protection CS item for the item not to self destruct/downgrade (past a certain upgrade level). Just that ME is cutting into potential profits here. (making CTR caliburs not explode in price)

As for the gear itself, SK took out the part where gear is ALWAYS coming from player drops (because everything was so easy to mass produce) and replaced it with a humble CE fee in place. Sadly the CE will disapear and not go into the economy. And everything besides the CE is even easier to obtain now due to lower demand.

In my opinion, SK really could need more incentives for new players to put some CE on the market. Well old players too, though they are more likely to be on the source. Basically there should be something desirable aside from CE.
Something that's tradeable and only available from, think like vanaduke's place, just harder and you need tokens to acess it. (tokens should be tradeable in that scenario)
and harder shouldn't mean more biohazards you walk into due to lag.. (the wheels are totally fine though cause you'll only get hit a few times for little damage your shield could take)

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Why it should and will cost more to buy crystal energy with crowns