I have another idea to solve this problem. But this will destroy huge parts of the game. First of all stop using the energy system and trade it for another currency. This currency can ONLY be bought with real world cash. It can not be ( or maybe it should be) traded with other players. What's so special about this currency? Well you get 50 % discount(or something like that) from all kinds of NPC traders. In other words thast currency twice as valueble then crowns.

That's my idea but i'm not sure that this would improve the game. So it's probebly not a good idea.

yeah i could have chosen better words for that. technically we can set a price but people will only pay so much. its all about supply and demand. if everyone took there offers off the table for a day or two, the price for CE would drop like a rock before blowing up when everyone tried to buy cheap energy and none of the P2Pers wanted to sell it for that cheap.... Maybe OOO should just make the CE cheaper in RL dollars. They would probably get more money over time if it was only a couple of bucks for a day or two's worth of CE. On top of that, P2Ps would be much more willing to part with their CE. Give me 100k CE for 50 us dollars instead of 20k.

What if there was a third type of energy, let's say 'Perma-Energy', that could be converted to Crystal Energy once per day (when it hits its cap of 100). This 3rd Energy cannot be used, sold or traded, UNTIL it is converted to Crystal Energy.

You would have to convert it manually, to prevent auto-farming, and its cap would not go beyond 100. Basically, every player would be given an allowance of 100 ce per day (if you login & convert it), which could then be traded or used on the open market. This would make it possible to aquire ce yourself for big crafts if you were are willing to login and not play several days in a row. The game would then be truly F2P, and OOO could adjust energy costs if they need to.

Edit: OOO could even convert crafting to only use Crystal Energy, and make Mist Energy (for playing) easier to come by (while also increasing the Crown costs of crafting). How does this all sound?

@Dukesky What you seem to be speaking of is converting mist energy into crystal energy, an idea that has been greatly spoken of in these forums (and one I support whole heartedly) however there are two critical flaws with this:

1. F2P players will take advantage of this system as soon as it was implimented (like it is supposed to) but would soon grow bored of having to give a day up from playing and would find other things to do. This would cause them to inevitably leave the game for good.

2. This would cause such a decrease in the value of ce that instead of paying real world money for it people would just accumulate, buy, then sell. This would completely eradicate any income OOO would make off of an otherwise genius, yet flawed, system. However if you continue reading you will see something important.

@Bhruic This is actually an interesting idea. You dive using crowns, revive using crowns, and the price to revive (as well as the diffuculty) shoot up per level. This is not such a bad idea. As you said, players who have used their energy for the day (whatever the purpose*) can continue to play in an almost unlimited amount. They could rack up a decent amount of crowns then choose weather or not they want to risk losing more when they die. However there would need to be a limit on this area similar to the arcade gates 30 floors. Instead of having to wait a day or two to make a decent amount of crowns they could, ideally, make what they wanted in short time. Small changes though:

1. Put a time limit between dives. Not an unreasonable amount of time but a few minutes at the least. This would discourage people from abusing the system by going in, dying, then going straight back. It will give them time to plan how to work their crowns.

2. The gates would need to be expensive. Something that could be made on a floor but still a decent amount otherwise you would be making absurd amounts. It needs to get you money but cost time and money as well.

@Dukesky AND Bhruic If your two ideas were implemented TOGETHER they would manage to balance each other out. In such a way that would be hard for OOO to ignore. First of all remove player trading of CE all together. People who don't want to pay, or can't pay (such as myself), would have to rely on giving up their mist energy daily (or extra if they get a mist tank) and make runs in the crown dungeon to save up for things they wanted. This would completely eliminate the complaints of energy prices being to high or low because it is no longer relavant. People who pay for energy can get special items with it, more than just heat amplifiers and equipment slots, but can gain access to special items like costume equips and equipment power ups. Such items would keep people paying for energy while those who are F2P will continue to play unhindered by the system. Any suggestions for this implementation?

And with a system like that they very well may have to lower the prices a bit, or people could be patient. If OOO kept the trading system then the new implementation would be rendered almost useless, or become so easy to manipulate that people could get tier 5 in one day. It would all depend on the F2P players and how much they thought out their plans. Honestly I think lowering the energy costs just a bit but jacking up the crowns when it came to crafting could help even that out. Since F2P would primarily rely on the crown dive system, crowns would come as easily to them as CE comes to the P2P so by increasing the cr sink factor of crafting and decreasing the ce factor it would balance out a bit more. Here's a possible suggestion for the new tier'd crafts:

Energy: Decrease amount needed for crafting to about 80% it's current cost.

Crowns: Increase cost by roughly 300%

By doing this less energy is needed and can be built up in smaller amounts of time and in the mean time the players can be working on building up their crowns.

Thinking about it now though, if they kept the market system (withOUT that blasted quick trade button), and perhaps a small tutor on how that system actually works (I've been playing for about a month and just figured it out today), then perhaps not only would the market even out but F2P could wisely invest the mass amounts of cr they would earn in the "Surface Dungeon", as I'm seeing suggested more on this forum, into getting more ce. However, even with a more stable system the price would even out at a much higher base since F2P can afford more with that system. Hmmm...now I'm thinking...

Oh and as the person who suggested the free dungeon said, this would be in ADDITION to the normal gates. If a player so chose they could spend their energy on the gates then run what I will explain as a surface dungeon.

The surface dungeon is what I've been seeing a lot of on this board quite a bit. It's a dungeon that doesn't cost energy to explore and is commonly suggested to be exploring the surface of Cradle. It would cost crowns to go further/deeper and reviving would cost crowns as well. The deeper you went the more it would cost. It wouldn't be tier'd though. Each "floor" would increase the charges just a bit making it dangerous to go that extra mile, but it would also reward those who survived with higher pay off.

Another suggestion I have is gambling. Everyone knows most players want a form of PVP in this game, it's maybe the only major thing missing. But if OOO could impliment a form of ranking system with this that could give odds of winning, people could observe and place bets on fights when they start. Assuming matches would have time limits you could continue to place bets till about a quarter of the way in. At which point you could walk away or stay and cheer your 'game horse' on. At the end of the match you would recieve a message from the....I'm not sure what you call the ticket person but that person and it would tell you if you won the bet or lost. If you won you would recieve your cr (or even possibly ce) with the message.

We understand full well that its the economy still working on stabilizing. But even after it does the playability of this game for F2P players is still low. What we are trying to do is come up with ways that not only profit OOO and help keep the economy stable but also increase the content so that OOO doesn't lose all of the F2P audience. Your suggestion of reduced price for beginners is nice but that is already covered by the cheap one floor dungeon in the base camp. If people didn't understand that by the time they got to Haven then they aren't going to do well in the game. So what ideas to you have for increasing the F2P's reasons to keep coming back during times they save for energy?

@ xiax

I think the point of the OP is, if we started all over, no one would be able to make 3* or better equipment without someone buying the Crystal Energy from OOO. I think we're trying to come up with a way that still heavily encourages users to drop a bit of cash, without making it impossible to obtain half of the game without someone paying.

@Dukesky & underdog4jc
You don't seem to understand the point of a F2P game. All F2P games are out there to make money, that ones that sell items instead of energy just do so differently. If no one bought the items in a F2P game with an item shop none of the free players would be able to play same as in this game. The game needs servers to host it as well as developers to make new content and maintain the game and all that isn't free. Your logic of someone else always has to be paying in order for others to play for free applies to every single F2P game, it is just more obvious in this game.

You can't equate crystal energy to food when the game gives you an unlimited supply of mist energy. You just have to wait for it. And there are things stopping the price of energy from climbing infinitely. No one will buy energy if they don't think it is worth it, the only reason the price of energy is at where it is now is because people think that the price of energy is still reasonable enough for them to buy it. There really are no ways to lower the price of energy (outside of intervention from OOO) other than getting more people to buy it with real money and sell it on the market. Even if crowns are worthless then why do you care if you have to pay more crowns for your energy? The answer? You don't think crowns are worthless, it has value to you and energy prices won't go above what most players value their crowns at.

Also something you don't seem to understand is that the influx of players from Steam was not small, the number of havens shot up from around 20 to 40+, that's pretty much doubling the active player base.

I didn't say remove the energy cost from gates. But offer a diffrent gate that doesn't cost. And they could easily balance by making the crown drops in the dungeon significantly less than in an energy gate. You act like everyone else is a moron but the only true moron is the one who won't even give a slight nod to the possibility that their idea is good. And that, my friend, is you.

"For any F2P game to run, there must be people paying for the free players, by your logic no game out there to make money can label itself as free to play."

That's not true at all. Take LotRO for example. Yes, the game wouldn't economically surivive if no one paid for anything. But my playing the game for free has no bearing on anyone else. I don't require someone to pay to access one of the regions in order for me to be able to do anything.

Here, it is impossible to get CE if no one paid for it. That means that my acquiring CE is dependent on someone else paying for that CE. In LotRO, me getting access to a "paid" area doesn't have anything to do with someone else having paid to access the area. See the difference?

"Removing the CE cost to gates would devalue crowns even further as there would be no limit to the amount of runs a player can make and how much crowns they can make."

Only if you didn't add an alternative crown sink. The problem with crowns right now is they have virtually no use beyond buying CE. Yes, you need them to purchase recipes, and you can buy things on the auction house, but those only take up a small fraction of the crowns that you get. So all crowns have become is a floating CE variable. There needs to be a recurring crown fee to pay that absorbs the influx of crowns from doing runs. If you make crowns have an independent value, then you can remove the CE costs from gates without drastically changing the market system.

"First of all it would be impossible for you to play the game if no one paid for CE because the game wouldn't be able to stay afloat. Second, think of it this way, in both LotRO and SK, a certain amount of players has to pay OOO in order for the game to run for everyone else."

Ok, but you're either being purposefully dense, or deliberately taking the most obtuse viewpoint. Of course Three Rings needs to make money to stay in business. No one is disputing that. What we are saying is that there is a difference from the PLAYERS perspective. Three Rings doesn't enter into this picture. As a player, you literally cannot get CE in-game unless someone else paid for it. That's just a fact. Even if every single player playing the game donated $1000 to Three Rings, and they were awash in money, that wouldn't change the fact that CE is a purely player driven economy. From that perspective, as a F2P player, you're effectively at the mercy of other people spending money if you want to have the ability to progress.

"By reducing the reward to time spent ratio you are only forcing players to play for longer to get the same result."

It does, yes, but at the same time they don't have to spend the same amount of crowns on CE, so it would balance out.

Part of the problem with the game is that you can only play for a fairly limited amount of time in a day without spending CE. This can be especially bad for newer players who aren't making enough money to buy CE from the market. If CE is no longer required to run gates, then the F2P players aren't limited in the amount of time they spend playing the game. They still need CE to progress in the game, which means that Three Rings will still make money. But the artificial energy limitation on playtime would be eliminated.