I know the poorer players were complaining about the cost of the keys, but the upside is that they can get 15,000 or so for a box. This is a lot of money for many players. And the richer players are happy to spread the wealth around this way. The only problem I see is that it's quite evident that there are going to be a lot of accessories around that are so plentiful and lacking in demand that they will be practically worthless. Perhaps they could at least be sold for a pittance to bazaar vendors like recipes and such are. And because so many accessories will have so little value, even the very wealthy players will begin to have serious reservations about paying 750 ce for the silver keys. I anticipate (hope for?) a price adjustment downward for the accessory system to be sustainable. The accessories have brought a lot of excitement to the game, and we need a jolt of that from time to time. Thanks, 3- Rings crew!
Accessory system is actually a sly redistribution of wealth
Definitely true, I have spent at least 120k on boxes so far.
The price of lockboxes is dropping quickly. It is more of a case of crowns being given to players that are patient from those that just can't wait a few days. In a few weeks, I doubt that the price will be above 100cr, they spawn way too often. Being rich has little to do with it.
Aww hell nah, get offa my avatar
Poor players can't afford the key price of 750 ce, so the boxes are worthless to them. Rich players who can afford the key prices will buy the boxes for 10,000 cr or whatever, thus giving a nice income boost to the poor players.
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I believe 200-300ce for one accessory is a fair price as such the vendor price could be 10k crowns to help stabilize the minimum price for accessories, but of course with that update about costumes being able to be resold for just 1cr and how every single other thing about resale work... thats what I would expect from ooo. But yeah lockboxes are free stuff for f2p players that just play clockworks to spend their mist. The problem is with the less wise that decide it is a good idea to invest on a key just because everyone else is doing it, and forget they are still 3 star or so.
The problem is that they should have done it the other way around.
We have about 90% of Box sellers for 10% of buyers at the moment, thus why the prices are crashing dramatically on the lockboxes. And very soon they will be worthless because only a very small fraction of players are willing to open them.
Opening boxes doesn't appeal to a vast majority of players right now and there are two main reasons for that :
- The keys are way too expensive. If each key was worth around 100 CE each, a much larger percentage of the SK population would want to open them (and might even buy CE for that). But for now most of them just think opening boxes is a gigantic waste of precious CE.
- The main focus in SK is to get gameplay items first, NOT cosmetic items.
And unlike TF2, getting every single one of the items is near impossible in Spiral Knights. Usually our endgame players have about 20 five stars items, which is far from being the "complete" collection of what's available.
TF2 players dont mind spending some extra money on cosmetic items like hats or unusuals, because they can get every single gameplay items for free as they all drop randomly AND their starter items are usually as powerful as the new ones they can get anyway.
SK Players have this main priority that TF2 players don't. We have to get to full 5* before we can even think about cosmetic items.
As a result, a significant part of 5* players and probably every single players from 0 to 4* feel that their CE is better spent on gameplay items rather than opening lockboxes.
Iron lockboxes are now down to 9k crowns. I should know, as I just sold mine a shade lower than the lowest price, which is a bit above 9k.
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My Suggestions Compilation Thread: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/14651
My Balance Compilation Thread: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/27538
Just pointing out that I've bought a Lockbox as low as 7.5k crowns since this is starting to become an analysis of what the Lockbox costs are now.
Shh! :)
And here I thought the price of CE would go up with those keys being CE-only, and those lockboxes would be worthless. Wonder how long it'll take for things to stabilize... probably awhile, the cute auras & mustaches are rare. Some of the other accessories are barely worth half the value of a key right now.
I watching the market the last couple days and it's pretty crazy how many folks are accessory gambling & dumping $20 or $50 worth of CE into crowns all at once. If anyone is into arbitrage and has a significant amount of ingame funds, now's the time to do it.
And if you're not, lockboxes seem to be fairly common. It's "worth adventuring on CE today even if you skip arenas and other very profitable levels.