Why crystal energy prices should fluctuate
Some people believe that the price of crystal energy (in crowns) should be something other than what is it. Or at the very least, that the price should be fixed, rather than constantly fluctuating. I'd like to explain why they system should be the way it is.
It costs a lot of money to create and maintain an online game that is any good. Three Rings needs to get money somehow, and preferably enough to make a solid profit when they make a game that is good. Many (most?) games end up losing money, so game companies need to make enough money when they have a hit game to more than compensate for the ones that will lose money.
At a high level, Three Rings could have gone with a number of business models. They could have made it a subscription game, for example. But that's not what this post is about. Rather, let's take it as a given that they're going to use the crystal energy business model, and consider only the exchange rate of crystal energy for crowns.
Let's suppose that Three Rings set a fixed price of how many crowns it takes to buy 100 crystal energy. What would happen? The answer is that it depends on the price.
Suppose that they decree that 100 crystal energy is worth 50000 crowns. A lot of players who are inclined to buy crystal energy with crowns rather than real money would say, forget it, that's too expensive, and quit the game. For those who remained, selling a little crystal energy would get you a lot of crowns. The game economy would be flooded with crowns, and a complete mess. Too many crowns chasing too few goods would drive prices of everything else absurdly high. This wouldn't be a good system even for those willing to pay real money. So that's not a good idea.
Now suppose that they decree that 100 crystal energy is worth 1000 crowns. This seems to be more along the lines of what people want, as people mostly say that crystal energy is too expensive, not that it's too cheap. In this case, why would anyone pay real money for crystal energy? Nearly everyone would just play the game to get crowns, and sell the crowns for crystal energy. For players, this might seem to work well.
For Three Rings, it wouldn't work so well. Three Rings doesn't want your crowns. They have access to the database. They could conjure up billions of crowns if they cared to. And then do the same thing again five minutes later, if they managed to spend them that fast. Rather, Three Rings needs real-life money. A system that seems to work well until the company pulls the plug because the game is losing money is not a system that works well.
The way that the system is designed is that crystal energy is only created when someone buys it for real-life money. Thus, the rate at which Three Rings makes money is roughly the rate at which crystal energy is used. This ensures that they do make money, which they have to do in order to run the game.
Thus, Three Rings needs to ensure that crystal energy is only created from real-life money purchases, and crowns are only created from playing the game. That lets them regulate both, to ensure a reasonable amount of crowns in the system, and also that they get paid.
One alternative would be to eliminate trading of crystal energy at all. Everyone would have to buy his own crystal energy in order to use it. Players who want that system can have something equivalent by merely not using the energy trading market. So the energy market surely makes at least some players better off, and none worse off.
Three Rings doesn't particularly care whose money they get. If they get $20 from each of five players, or $100 from one player and nothing from the other four, they get the same money either way. If the other four players can make it worthwhile for the one player to pay their way, Three Rings is fine with that. The crystal energy system is explicitly set up to facilitate that sort of exchange.
Indeed, the system is set up the way it is to try to cut out external gold farmers. A lot of games have gold farmers who will spend a lot of time farming gold, and then selling it for real-life money. People willing to spend more on a game do so, but the game company doesn't get that extra money. The idea of the crystal energy system is for Three Rings to be able to capture that extra money.
It also lets them avoid the common problems from gold farmers. You won't get randomly grouped with gold farmers inclined to cause trouble for you. You won't have them harass you with spam messages referring you to their site. People who do want to buy gold won't have their credt card information stolen, as they only have to give it to Three Rings, not some dodgy web site.
Another alternative would be to not have the built-in energy market, but still allow players to trade it for whatever price they like. But players can do that right now. People typically don't because it creates a hassle. That would also make it harder for people to figure out what crystal energy is worth. It would open people up to getting scammed, because they don't realize what crystal energy is worth. It wouldn't shift prices systematically up or down; it would only make it harder to make the exchange. That makes people worse off, not better.
Suppose that there was a built-in energy market at a fixed price, but trades would only happen when there was both a buyer and a seller. What would happen? Again, it depends on what the fixed price is.
Suppose that the fixed price were 50000 crowns. Lots of players would be looking to sell crystal energy, but few would want to buy it. Those few who wanted to buy it could offer to buy it for 40000 crowns and find plenty of sellers. Or 30000, or whatever. The point is, even for someone willing to pay 50000 crowns for 100 crystal energy, there would be no point in using the official energy market, because they could get the same amount of energy much cheaper by buying directly from another player. People who tried to only sell energy through the official market wouldn't find any buyers, so they'd have to either sell for cheaper off market or not sell at all.
Now suppose that the fixed price were 1000 crowns. Again, lots of players would want to buy crystal energy, but few would want to sell it. Sellers could demand 2000 crowns in trades off of the official market, or 3000, or whatever. People who tried to only buy energy through the official market wouldn't find any sellers, so they'd have to pay more off market or else not buy at all.
In both of these cases, a fixed price on the built-in energy market that isn't the equilibrium price only means that the official market isn't used. It doesn't actually change the price of energy. That would be equivalent to not having an in-game market at all, which above, we said was a bad idea.
Some would respond to this with price controls, by saying not merely that it should only be possible to trade energy using the in-game market, and only at a fixed price. Demagogue politicians do this often in real life, ranging from rent control to minimum wage laws. The results of gluts or shortages are always the same, and disastrous, though they do depend on the particular price.
Suppose that the fixed price is 50000 crowns. In this case, there would be lots of people looking to sell energy, but hardly anyone looking to buy it. People wanting to sell energy mostly couldn't. Having to pay so much doesn't work well for buyers. It doesn't work well for sellers, either, to have a high theoretical price that you can't actually get paid because no one will buy from you.
Suppose that the fixed price is 1000 crowns. Again, there would be lots of people looking to buy energy, but hardly anyone wanting to sell it. People who wanted to buy energy mostly wouldn't be able to find anyone willing to sell it to them. That doesn't work well for sellers, because they get so little for selling energy. It doesn't work well for buyers, either, as a low theoretical price doesn't do you any good if you can't actually buy anything at that price. In both cases, this isn't quite a complete ban on trading crystal energy, but it does bring a lot of the drawbacks of it, with no advantages.
But what if there's a built-in market that sets the price at the market equilibrium? Then it works wonderfully. There are just as many buyers as sellers. People who want to buy energy can do so very easily if they can afford it. Same with people who want to sell it. Rather than standing around spamming for half an hour trying to find a trade partner, it only takes seconds to make the purchase you want.
So why not have the built-in market fix the price at the market equilibrium? Because that equilibrium changes with time. Maybe one day, the number of buyers will match the number of sellers if it's 4000 crowns for 1000 crystal energy. Maybe a month later, it will take 6000 crowns. There isn't any useful economic theory that can say, the equilibrium price should theoretically be such and such. People outside the system trying to guess what the equlibrium price should be and fix it there don't have the proper information. This is one reason why centrally planned economies invariably fail.
Rather, what the built-in energy market does is to use the real buy and sell offers that real players make to find the equilibrium price at which there will be as many buyers as sellers. If it costs more crowns to buy crystal energy one day than it did a week ago, it's not because the market is defective. It's because the equilibrium moved, and the built-in market shifted to find the new equilibrium.
The built-in market in the game doesn't actually create prices. It merely gives people more information to be able to find the right prices. Blaming the energy market for prices you don't like basically amounts to shooting the messenger--and doesn't do anything to alter the message. If you've got a 103 F fever and you take your temperature and the thermometer reports that you have a 103 F fever, it's not the thermometer's fault that you're sick, and breaking the thermometer won't cure you.
The flaw in these sort of topics is assuming that messing with CE prices is the ONLY thing that could ever be done. If the company were any sort of clever, they'd do something more involved than that. Just as a for instance:
Make more CE sinks. Reasons to spend CE. Reasons to WANT more than your free 100 mist.
If they could do this, the game would be much improved. They could.. of all the crazy things.. potentially remove lift prices. If people WANT CE badly enough for many things, they'll buy the starter packs. Then potentially buy more later. Right now they can only convince people to buy CE with real money as part of a newbie trap. Which is not a sustainable business model. The newbies won't be new forever. They'll be self sufficient eventually. Then they won't need to spend real money. What they want to do is keep the game newbie accessible(new players are better and you need to recover potential player losses) while being able to convince anyone of status to keep buying CE packages with real money. The current system won't work long term. Something has to be done.
No lift prices to let new players play and get hooked on the game. THEN they hit the CE pits that make them want to buy CE with real money. I don't mean making crafting expensive. That's a crappy stopgap that stops working the moment people have good gear. I mean other activities. I mean more in game events. More cool things to want to spend energy on to gain access to. Maybe more costume sets you have to pay for with real money to get. You'd be shocked how many people will pay for a purely cosmetic improvement(I certainly would.. and have in other games ;_;. I can't help it).
The goal is to make people shout JUST TAKE ALL MY MONEY rather than reluctantly part with it on a one time basis.
I skipped most of your post - based on your title, I agree. I really like the way they did the energy market. It allows players to get all of the benefits of a paying player without paying. Obviously it costs quite a bit of time to grind out the ce you need for 5* gear and such, but it is still FREE.
I don't like how the energy is tied to dives... Mist is what they did to cover this but I still don't like it. If dives were 5 energy per floor it would make more sense b/c then I could at least dive 2x a day... I don't feel the urge to buy CE to play the game more, the game is good but not THAT good. I do buy energy (off the market and my credit card) to craft things though and have no problems with that.
Another suggestion someone put up that I like is to have a paid option to increase mist from 100 cap to 200-500 cap (based on price) with regen based on 100% fill in 22 hours still. This idea is pretty cool because it allows me to pay up once for a pretty large benefit, although I think they wouldn't do this b/c the mist cap would take away from ce sales, and ppl would still not buy ce to dive lol.
"And Crystal Energy is a abusive system, they should stick with all the best items being Cash shop"
I'm honestly confused why this isn't in the game already. I mean, every other free to play game does this, and it works so HILARIOUSLY WELL. It's a gold mine. Even stuff like cosmetic items will have people shoving their money in your face if they are any good. Hell, I know PAY TO PLAY games that did this and got away with it.
More cool things to do in game that cost CE? Arena combat? Special areas you need to spend energy on to get to. More short term boosts you need to buy with energy. Like, temporary status effects for weapons. Temporarily gain a damage bonus against an enemy. You could keep a plain weapon and buy temporary boosts.. or craft a specific weapon and get more bonuses on it for a short time.
Oh! Shield and weapon costume slots, maybe? Pay with real money to get(and keep) those?
This isn't hard. Just copy every other successful free to play game ever. If they do it right, they could remove lift prices. This will make more people play.. cause every person I know that tries to play quits the moment their first load of mist is spent. So many people that played once and never logged in again. Makes me sad. I can't even recommend more friends try it with lift prices. I start to say how fun I find the game.. but then have to admit the only way to get immersed is to buy a start pack. So then they don't even bother to download it.
OH!
More ideas.
Not sure what set of items to bring on a dive? Random chance for a graveyard that is sure to kick your team's ass since you have no shadow resist without giving up the resists you need for every other level you'll be in? Have no fear! No longer do you need to wait for a rest stop! Pay us real money and your Spiral Knight can be the proud owner of their own..
PORTABLE CHANGING ROOM! Usable for x amount of days.
Getting tired of your color scheme? Looking for a change? Well buy our so and so..
And just on and on.
Buying auction house perks? No listing fees, maybe?
Coming up with better more sustainable ways for getting player money isn't hard. Makes me wonder what they were thinking. These things don't even need to be expensive. It is QUITE easy to nickle and dime people to death in a free to play game. They buy one perk. Then another cause they don't see the harm in a bit more. Then a bit more.
Uhmm long post is long. Will read it later. But yes, it will fluctuate and stop around 7K, that's my bet.
About the cash shop thing ~
In a way they already do this. I am more tempted to give them my USD for CE when I'm looking to craft then when I'm looking to dive. With CE for crafting they have basically made ALL items "cash shop" items. They just have a market where players can trade ce and crowns. The argument that you don't need ce after you have your equips applies to any cash shop item. As long as they keep adding new gear (even gear focused on the cosmetic side without stats b/c ppl can equip them in the costume slot) this aspect of the game is covered.
I don't think more end game ce sinks are needed as long as they keep up with new equipment as I stated above, since the crafting of equipment is a HUGE ce sink.
The only thing that concerns me about CE is the limiting factor on playing SK. CE to dive is not good. At rock bottom prices with tons of new players dumping ce on the market to buy up top gear quick it is profitable to dive on CE bought off the market... But I would NEVER spend ce I purchased with my money on diving... To me that is a complete waste.
I don't think there are many ppl who drop cash on CE to dive...
Pure Cash shops are an awful idea. one of the best parts of this game is that free players are not restricted from any part of the content and can spend as much or as little as they like.
Yet most people here will turn around and say removing the CE from elevators would kill the game.
Yet it's my experience that most people I know didn't even bother playing. The two that did try it quit the moment they were out of their first free load of mist. I myself only kept playing because my friend got the pack first and fed me enough CE to keep doing clockwork. Until I was hooked myself. Then I got a starter pack because of the exorbitant energy costs on crafting.
Though, I guess it's more profitable for people to buy the starter pack and quit once prices get too much to buy CE with crowns? They got the 20 bucks from everyone. Then they don't need to pay for bandwidth or server upgrades if everyone quits immediately afterward? That would make sense. It's clever if a bit cut throat. What will they do to attract another load of players into the CE trap, I wonder? They can't do much better than tapping unaware steam players.
That first post could have been made vastly more concise.
Price fixing is bad because it is very difficult to gauge the market equilibrium price. If you fix the price too high, none of the buyers want to buy and no trades occur. If you fix the price to low, none of the sellers want to sell and no trades occur.
In either case, buyers and sellers will abandon the official price-fixed market and turn instead to the unregulated black market, where they can trade their goods closer to the market equilibrium price. The downside of the black market is that it is much harder for both buyers and sellers to accurately gauge the market equilibrium price, and this can result in under- or over-payment.
Ta-da.
To be honest I think Three Rings have a pretty good setup here. CR supply is limited by the elevator fee (otherwise people would grind for CR all day long and flood the economy with CR, leading to inflation). The amount of CE in circulation depends on how many people have paid real money for it - if CE becomes rare its price in CR rises, and it becomes more appealling for people to buy 750 CE for a few bucks, rather than by grinding for 50,000 CR needed to buy the same amount of CE.
Ultimately, those who have more money than time (ie: people with paying jobs that limit their free time) buy CE with money; those who have more time than money (ie: kids, students, part-timers) do Clockworks runs and buy CE with CR.
I was considering making a thread similar to this, but you explained it much better than I ever could, Quizzical. Bravo.
@BuffCookie: Pure Cash Shop games are a complete turn-off to me. I hate the hard distinction between "items you paid money for" and "sub-par run-of-the-mill gear." It makes the game look like this. http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/5/11/
Likewise, name ONE pay-to-play game that didn't a) come out in the last few months or b) shortly transition to free-to-play or a hybrid model after their combination pay-to-play+microtransaction model failed. (Hi, Champions Online, I'm looking at you.)
I really appreciate that SK uses a softer business model that makes *time* the only trade-off. The ONLY trade-off. I don't like lording my P2P status over others, and I don't like others doing the same to me.
PS, how can we really judge how well or badly SK's business model is working for them until ... I dunno, we see some actual business numbers? Different games make money different ways, so as long as they're in business, who cares what the specifics are? WoW makes all of its money off of its expansions, for example, while CoH continually released new content at no additional cost for a long time (until recently). I'm getting tired of people pointing at other games and saying they do it better without any ... proof.
Pabo, BuffCookie, Shosuko, and arimal: please read the thread before replying. You've completely missed the point. This thread is not about whether the game should use crystal energy as opposed to some other business model, as I explicitly stated. It is not about what should cost crystal energy and what should not. Rather, it is about how crystal energy should be priced, in terms of how many crowns it should cost.
majic13, the point of this thread was not merely to assert that the price fixing that people propose in other threads won't work. It was to explain why it won't work. Proof by assertion is not a form of proof. (Then again, neither is proof by intimidation, but this post really isn't that.)
"Hi, Champions Online, I'm looking at you."
Champions Online is still a subscription game. The "free for all" bit is just marketing blather. The game's third iteration of a free trial is a more generous free trial than the previous two, so Cryptic decided to market it as the game now being "free". But the "free for all" is still very much a free trial, and the game is still very much a subscription game. Buy a bunch of stuff from the item mall but no subscription and you'll be horribly gimpy as compared to subscribers. Subscribe and buy nothing else and your character won't be gimped at all. That's not comparing someone who pays to someone who doesn't. That's comparing someone who subscribes to someone who buys everything else except a subscription, and actually spends a lot more than it would cost to subscribe. And the subscriber will get a lot more for less money from the subscription.
If you don't have anything to contribute or any interest in the CE market, then stop looking at CE threads. I say 'looking at' because your responses make it clear that you don't read them or recognize that they are not all saying the same thing. The fact is, CE is an integral part of the game. Weapons, armor, monsters, materials, recipes.. CE. All these things are going to be discussed multiple times from different points of view. It is true that there are many annoying CE threads along the lines of 'lets fix the price lower' or 'why is CE so expensive?' but this is not one of those threads, this is in fact a thread designed to educate people so that they might be less likely to make foolish threads based on a complete failure to understand market fundamentals. The very existence of those (short yet painful) threads is a clear indication that many people don't understand even the simplest things about the CE market (like that it -is- a market and the CE there comes from other players that bought it with cash... )
Also I like the thermometer analogy, that's good!
I am not interested in reading the threads because it is something I already know and I think has already been said 500 times. Everything discussed in here now that I have read it already has been said before. Honestly if you want this thread to be something to help give knowledge to others add it to the Wiki page or see if a GM may sticky it somewhere, otherwise it is just repeating the same thing, over and over and over.
costumes pvp area with tournaments been playing one month and almost full t5 gear need sub bosses and NEW LEVELS keep the complainers bussy and thouse of us who shell out five bucks here and there happy
I am hoping they take a page out of their other games and make a sort of cooperative player battle, basically a guild war for this game. Only problem I could for see with guild wars is that if we include area's with large amounts of people fighting the lag in the area's would be crazy bad.
If you aren't interested in reading the threads then DON'T READ THEM and while you're NOT reading them DON'T comment on them. It's rude, disruptive, and generally obnoxious and useless to comment on a thread that you are not going to actually take the time to read. You -assume- it's the same information being repeated, you -assume- it's the same complaints being restated... but you didn't read it, you don't care to read it, and you -don't know- what you are actually commenting on. You can tell from the topic it's about CE, so just leave it alone and read something else and don't comment just for the sake of disrupting conversation and complaining about what people are interested in talking about.
Also, my thread on crystal energy (http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/4620) is included in Eurydices useful links, and my next revision of my indirectly-stickied post is probably going to benefit greatly from some of these conversations that you want people not to have for your convenience.
I really don't think this much needs to be said to explain the simple fact that price-fixing a player-driven exchange market simply doesn't work. So long as direct player trade exists in a game (and it does in Spiral Knights), then markets, auction houses, consignment houses and such are mere conveniences. Players use them because they give a broader customer base. If the market prevents people from doing what they want to do, people will simply take it to direct trades, and possibly set up a player stall marketplace. Games like 9Dragons already allow you to set up a stall and walk away from the computer, and hideous as that system may be, it IS a form of market that doesn't involve a game system middle man.
I still feel that energy costs for the elevators are a bad idea, however. Yes, OOO and Sega need to make money, as neither company is a charity (nor are video game players a charity-deserving community). That much is obvious. But the way to make money of an MMO (and Spiral Knights is just about the next best thing to one) is to encourage people to play more. I'm not talking about the Skinner box design crap that WoW puts out, but actively preventing people from playing is just about the complete opposite. The thing is that a new player's experience consists of one dive in the Crash Site shaft, then a trip to Haven, then one dive in any of the Haven gates and then oops! Can't play any more for another 24 hours!
Just about every player will give just about an hour to just about every game said player will even try. Getting a player to stick in your game for about an hour is no major accomplishment. Getting that player to stick for two, three, maybe even four hours, or even come back the next day, THAT is how you get players to stay with your game, and eventually pay you money when they like your game enough. Maybe it's just me, but I'm more inclined to pay money for something I know I'll stick with, as opposed to dropping cash on stupid things (like Section 8: Prejudice) that I won't get anything like my money's worth off of.
An MMO model that doesn't let people play and progress for as long as they like, yet isn't a subscription game just doesn't work for me, both because it ends up costing MORE than a subscription MMO, and because it's not a good way to attract new players. Personally, I'd pay $15 a month to get rid of the shaft lift costs. Just the lift costs. Not the costs for revives, not the costs for crafting. Just the lift costs. Then I could play to my heart's content and not worry about dying a few times and being unable to fund my trip back down.
I'd consider Champions Online a hybrid model, which I specified in the sentence prior. F2P *or* hybrid. (Also, hello to DDO as well!)
CE seems to be going up about a hundred crowns a day now.
Start hording now.
I didn't miss the point of your thread, it's just that the point of your thread, no matter how long you drug it out, is simply common sense that players who pay for ce and grind cr should be the ones deciding the price. OOO did this with the market system really well. No matter what the exchange is, players determine the exchange, and so it is fair.
The reason we had a tangent about ce uses is because that is actually a topic more open to debate. What ce and cr are used for matters, and can always be changed. For instance, the game's economy took a HUGE change when OOO upped the energy cost of crafting.
I think it is important to maintain the value of ce by keeping a ce cost tied to diving... as much as limited play sucks, this maintains the value of cr for f2p players better than anything else could. I ponder how much a mist tank purchasable for ~4k cr would effect the economy positive or negative...
You can make a bit more than 4k a run doing tier one if you solo it. You'll get about 3k in just money. Sell all your drops and get 4k+. People always need low level bits to make their own stuff. Your question on how buyable mist tanks would effect the game revolve around that fact, most likely. It's the lowest risk option for profit, and it is easier to get gear you can solo tier one with than it is tier two.
It might not be different from price fixing CE at 4k. Eventually you'll take your profit and buy CE with it. How long you have to grind depends on the CE price at the time, and you'd only need to invest in CE if you want to craft.
Though how it would effect the game as a whole remains to be seen. The CE price keeps fluctuating. Right now it's still at 4k.
Though whatever happenes.. buying CE would still be necessary. Mist tanks only fills your default mist. Which is only good for diving the clockwork, reviving, and energy gates. Not crafting. For established players, crafting is the reason you'd buy CE. The impatient would still buy CE with real money for expediency.
Price-fixing is not a good idea, but OOO has control of the vast majority of the factors that dictate equilibrium pricing, and they both can and should be expected to use that control to influence prices indirectly when the prices either drop too low for CE sales to continue supporting the game or become so high that player enjoyment is seriously hampered.
They did this quite blatantly when they increased the CE costs for crafting--and their extremely strong influence on the market was demonstrated quite clearly by the subsequent rapid rise of CE prices in response to that particular patch. While I'm not convinced that this particular change was good for the game or the company (and I tend to agree that a similar effect could have been implemented more elegantly) this type of economy management is something that OOO should be doing.
The cry of "leave it to the players" is either disingenuous or straight-forwardly silly; the players have some control over the price of energy, but OOO has a great deal of control as well--without even getting into price fixing--and a responsibility to use that control to make the game better: to either optimize the balance between fun and revenue generation per player for overall profit (from a strictly capitalistic perspective) or optimize the balance for...well, some sort of balance (from, perhaps, a more utilitarian sense).
OOO should be manipulating the energy market: sometimes to increase their profits directly by encouraging people to buy more CE and sometimes to alleviate player frustration at high energy prices. Price fixing isn't really a good idea, but indirect manipulation is. Suggestions like adding more ways to spend crowns at the top end of the game are what OOO should be looking at.
Also, I made 5k soloing the Jelly Palace gate earlier today--and that's not terribly uncommon. Doesn't even count materials (though I don't think I got any worthwhile material drops) or tokens (I got a couple). I didn't do the JK, so that was only 70 energy plus maybe nine on opening treasure gates and danger rooms--not even the full hundred (I used the last twenty to help craft a new gun).
I could easily swing 5000 crowns for a hundred CE. 7000 was getting a bit steep for me. 3500-4000, honestly, seemed a little low.
@buffcookie - the last thing I want is for energy to be "not needed." Not only is it the only profit of the game, it's also a great player interaction. A lot of my motivation is based on watching my energy grow as I get ready to craft something. This is actually a very good system imo - both as a system for making money and as a system to encourage play and progression, and even player interaction (players are on both sides of the market after all).
I don't know if ME tanks would be good for the economy or not... We would no longer use ce for diving, but I don't know how many ppl actually buy ce for diving... This would provide a way for players to play more, while fixing a cost again on how much they can dive, so I don't believe inflation would actually be effected... The biggest effect I think is the interaction between CE and ME if this were to happen... If ME tanks were cheaper than CE on the market, then ppl would sell CE on the market to fill up on more ME tanks to supplement their crafting. In a way, that could create a cr sink for ce buyers that keeps them putting it up on the market... I don't think CE costs could fall below the cost of ME... So in a way this would also create a price floor. If ME tanks were 4k, I think a healthy 7-10k per 100 CE would be completely fair and balanced for both sides of the exchange. A player could drop 100CE to a f2p player, in exchange for the cr to buy 2-300ME to offset crafting or continue to dive :\
Anyway - it's a subject I don't support or endorse... just a thought that goes through my mind as a possible solution to the (imo) only drawback of the energy system, which is the need for energy to dive...
Like others have said, price fixing just doesnt work. Having a dynamic market that adjusts to how badly players want it is the way it should be.
That being said, keep the system the way it is now, but add some cosmetic CE only items. In League of Legends, people by the skins for their favorite characters all the time. Im talking about real cash, for purely cosmetic. This game doesnt offer enough incentive to buy any CE past what you need to craft and keep playing. End game, people are sitting around with tons of CE just because they had teh crowns to get them. This game is still in its early stages, and i believe that more options should be in place to profit off the lazy people.
However, I am strongly against a practical item that you would absolutely have to pay for. If there was a way to grind for it, as long as it isnt excessively long, it would be fair to make some end game CE sink items. If people are paying for "pay only items" you will have a nightmare in the gaming community. THis is because the only way to make people get these items is if they are significantly more powerful than the others. This would put too much of a gap between the people who are willing to shell out tons of money and those who arent.
Like others have said, price fixing just doesnt work. Having a dynamic market that adjusts to how badly players want it is the way it should be.
That being said, keep the system the way it is now, but add some cosmetic CE only items. In League of Legends, people by the skins for their favorite characters all the time. Im talking about real cash, for purely cosmetic. This game doesnt offer enough incentive to buy any CE past what you need to craft and keep playing. End game, people are sitting around with tons of CE just because they had teh crowns to get them. This game is still in its early stages, and i believe that more options should be in place to profit off the lazy people.
However, I am strongly against a practical item that you would absolutely have to pay for. If there was a way to grind for it, as long as it isnt excessively long, it would be fair to make some end game CE sink items. If people are paying for "pay only items" you will have a nightmare in the gaming community. THis is because the only way to make people get these items is if they are significantly more powerful than the others. This would put too much of a gap between the people who are willing to shell out tons of money and those who arent.
Are you saying "cosmetic-only, and you spend CE which leaves the system" or a bundle like the Rose Regalia promotion they had a while back, which is more "buy CE and we'll toss in a free costume-only armor piece"? They've done it with success in the past, though it may work better if it weren't a limited-time only promotion. Probably something to look into.
I think your logic is a little backwards: we don't need an endgame CE sink, we need an endgame *crown* sink to fight against inflation and to give high-level players sitting on tons of CE incentive to sell their stockpiles and put their supply on the market.
What if you could either
A. sell mist energy in 50 unit amounts on the market
OR
B. there was a mist energy crystallization machine that would charge crowns to crystallize energy?
Keep the grinding, while setting a cap on the energy market that isn't a few hundred CR under how much you can make in a dive.
no - I don't think there should be any way to generate crystal without someone buying it from OOO.
If there was a way to "sell mist" we'd just have a bunch of farm accounts pumping mist into the market <_<
This game would flop as a subscription game, just saying. It doesn't have the thing to make you addicted to it like WoW for example.
And Crystal Energy is a abusive system, they should stick with all the best items being Cash shop, release something like 6* or something. All CE does is limit your playtime