Spiral Knights - a treatise on the crown/crystal energy debate

a treatise on the crown/crystal energy debate

7 replies [Last post]

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 02:04

Vienna

Legacy Username

crystal energy vs. crowns

let me state that i understand these points right now and will concede them ahead of time, so i don't have to deal with tedious, possibly arbitrary arguments.

1. developers are in this to make money, even if it's a free game, and
2. economies stabilize.

with that out of the way...

i don't want to sound like an alarmist, but crystal energy prices have literally tripled since closed beta/start of release. that's alarming. we get it, it's a player run economy, therefore any market tampering is outside of the developers hands.

except it isn't.

it doesn't take a rocket sprocket scientist to understand that economies stabilize. but the thing is that with absolute no handling of the economy, the point of equilibrium is not controllable. yes, the economy can stabilize, but it can very possibly end up in conceptually problematic places because:

1. instances give more or less set amount of crowns.
2. to get in instances, you must pay crystal energy.
3. crystal energy is purchased for free players with crowns.
4. the price of crystal energy is volatile.

if trd had set a hard equivalence rate on ce:crowns, they could control more or less where players should be relative to how much work they input. i'd like to note now that i'm not suggesting this, i'm simply indicating that players are generally at certain benchmarks based on how much work they put in. however, with a player-controlled economy, particularly with a secondary currency that doubles as the enabling agent to do anything in the game, there is no way to control it unless we come to one of two actual suggestions:

1. increase supply, while somehow keeping demand in place (difficult, i think, with a currency that is used for everything. imagine if water or food was a secondary currency in more modern times. how useful would you actually expect dollars to be, if you could just use water for literally everything?), or
2. keep supply in place (or even increase it), while decreasing demand

let's look at 2 indepth.

if you had supply in place, you could decrease the demand of ce by incentivizing the usage of crowns. i'm not a game designer or an economist, but let's just brainstorm here:

1. allow re-rolling of items for a chance to obtain a uv.

let's say you pay 8k and the server re-rolls your item as if it was freshly crafted (maintaining heat or not, it really doesn't matter). you suddenly have a way for every player to burn 8k in numerous amounts and let crowns leave the economy. as crowns leave on a wide scale, the value appreciates and ce prices are driven down, while players still have constant crown income via dungeons. of course, uv prices are affected, but i don't think that's much of an exchange to gain a more stabilized economy.

2. open secondary gates that cost crowns instead of ce.

you could cut heat, dungeons, amount of crowns gained, etc. or make the cost of rooms prohibitively expensive. crowns are leaving the economy to gain crowns (slight net gain or loss, depending on other factors), while ce demand is kept in place.

3. a lottery system.

imagine that people spent 5k for a ticket and 4k goes into the prize pool per ticket. you have a 20% loss of crowns right there by virtue of everyone who played the lottery.

and the most interesting proposal, that would allow the game structure to remain relatively unchanged:

4. crown:ce drop ratios.

what if the game calculated crown drop rates based off of the current market value of ce? the structure feels the same, but as either currency inflates, so does the gaining of the secondary currency. i can't imagine the numbers or formulas used to acquire said numbers, but i also am not paid by sega to do such things. i would like to point out though, if ce:crown ratios got too high, crowns could pretty much buy anything just straight out of vendors, effectively super accelerating people to higher tiers. obviously, this is considering extreme cases, but it's always a possibility.

and i don't know if any of these things should actually be implemented. i'm simply looking for conceptual ways to implement, "crown holes," into the game so the market gains a little bit more stability.

let's make this an open discussion. give constructive feedback, positive or negative, and let's try to work out some ideas here.

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 07:17

adrian783

Legacy Username

your premise of "stabilized

your premise of "stabilized exchange rate in a problematic place" is without ground. in fact your explanation:

"1. instances give more or less set amount of crowns.
2. to get in instances, you must pay crystal energy.
3. crystal energy is purchased for free players with crowns.
4. the price of crystal energy is volatile."

is merely a description of the current process. so if you could clarify that...

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 08:05

Icee

The Game is a Week Old

It's naive to expect a new economy to stabilize in a week. There isn't a stable player population yet and the paid beta testers started with lots of CE and no crowns, which would tend to depress early CE/Crowns prices. I would expect CE exchange prices to keep rising in the short term and there is nothing the developers could or should do to change that trend. If you want a stable market, I suggest using your credit card to buy CE instead of crowns. Those prices are stable and fair.

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 10:50

Vienna

Legacy Username

in regards to adrian783: i do

in regards to adrian783:

i do apologize, because it was 4 in the morning and the entire post is pretty convoluted, but the central premise is based around not how ce:crown interaction is inherently bad or anything, but how trd could potentially control the economy more so they could have the game design work more in a way they intended (pretty much the second half of the post and on).

i just wanted to say that that's how it works, and because that's how it works, the equilibrium balance of the market could end up in pretty extreme places. you can say any economy is, "balanced," or, "stabilizing," honestly, but that doesn't mean that it balances or stabilizes at the points that you want it to.

in regards to icee:

it is. i have. that doesn't mean that conceptual problems don't exist with a structure, nor that preventative measures or even reactive measures can be taken in advance (or not). i'm not trying to be a prophet that's saying that the entire future of the game hinges on the suggestions that i'm making. more like someone who is just pointing out potential concerns that could happen in the future.

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 16:35

Runegrace

Legacy Username

There's obviously quite a few

There's obviously quite a few of these energy threads going around, and I think there's some points that people need to consider in relation to the CE market.

-Energy paying for itself, and the source of inflation

There are people citing how no one should be complaining about CE prices, because with 100 CE you can do runs, do this and that, and have more than enough crowns to pay for more CE. This is more telling than these people realize. What this is really saying, is that as long as 100 CE creates more crowns than the cost of 100 CE, then it makes sense for players to buy CE. And thus, the CE price will continue to rise. The price is going to keep rising for CE as more players reach deeper tiers, and can get more crowns per energy. The breaking point for crowns will be somewhere around the amount of crowns a player can get in t3 with 100 energy, as it doesn't make sense to pay crowns so you can make back less crowns. And note, "amount of crowns" would include crowns gained from selling materials, etc. As long as the energy pays for itself, players will buy and the cost will go up.

Now, the price may be lower than this amount if enough players buy CE with real money to cash in on the huge amount of crowns they can get with a few bucks. It could also be higher, considering that frugal use of your daily energy can result in even more crowns without buying energy. f2p t3 players would HAVE to do this in order to gain the energy needed to create 4 and 5-star equipment if the crown cost for CE has gotten high enough. All in all, my guess would be that the final price for CE should be around the amount that you can get with 100 CE in t3, but slightly below that amount.

-Increasing the amount of crowns players get, or reducing energy costs for...anything.

If you increase the amount of crowns players get for anything, such as drops in the dungeon, you raise the amount that players can get with 100 CE, and....well, see above. The price would go up again until we hit that break point. Reducing energy costs for things does the same thing; you can get more crowns with your energy, the price goes up, until we hit that break point, and back to square one. As it turns out, "printing" more money does not help control inflation.

-So how do we fix it?

You don't. Or at least, not now. Everyone should be aware that the balance of energy and costs (crowns or real money) is something that OOO is obviously considering very carefully. If energy runs freely, no one will buy CE and they make no money. Game shuts down, and we cry. If high energy prices create so strict of a barrier that new players can't get in, then the number of players stagnates, then diminishes, and they don't make enough money to keep the servers running. Game shuts down, and we cry. I don't want the game to shut down, and I certainly don't want to cry, so let's let OOO decide how to make their money.

That barrier to entry is I think the only thing that might be an issue once energy prices get high enough. Possible solutions to that could involve reducing costs to early elevators slightly. SLIGHTLY. The crown per CE ratio should always be lower in t1 than higher tiers, both for inflation and to keep players from grinding early tier 1. Alternatively, I could see raising the capacity of the Mist Tank. That's capacity. You would still get 100 per day, or perhaps even less per day if you already have 100. Then again, that may just be because I hate feeling like I should play every day to not "waste" energy. Regardless, changes like this that don't result in a net possible gain of crowns or energy could still result in a decrease in demand overall for energy, affecting what OOO makes for their labors. They're aware of the whole situation, and it'll be their call to make.

In the meantime, players just need to deal. Either pay to play longer, or moderate yourself to take advantage of the free Mist energy. Think of it as a game demo...but instead of only letting you play for 1 hour then ending, requiring you to pay to continue, it's a demo that only lets you play for an hour each day, every day. It even lets you play with people that paid for the game, and never resets your progress. It's actually pretty generous in comparison to other games out there. I know people would like to play as much as they wanted for free, but that's about as fair to OOO as it would be to players if you paid them money and got absolutely nothing in return. "Play for nothing" for players is "Get sent money for nothing" for companies. Try to keep that in mind if you don't already.

Mon, 04/11/2011 - 17:59

Vienna

Legacy Username

i feel like you came right in

i feel like you came right in this thread with something to say on your mind before you even read anything; read the thread, subsequently disregarded it, and just said what you wanted to say.

Tue, 04/12/2011 - 12:18

Vienna

Legacy Username

i would also like to point

i would also like to point out that this thread isn't about flat out lowering the cost of ce.

it's about a perceived flaw with the structure of the economy itself and suggestions on how the game could implement ways to gain more control so trd could move the economy about more in the direction that it pleases.

Tue, 04/12/2011 - 19:24

Runegrace

Legacy Username

@ Vienna i feel like you came

@ Vienna

i feel like you came right in this thread with something to say on your mind before you even read anything; read the thread, subsequently disregarded it, and just said what you wanted to say.

Somewhat. Some things are generalized, but quite a bit relates to your post as well. I posted in your thread firstly to not create ANOTHER CE thread, and also because out of those threads your post was more than "WTF everything should be freeeeeeeee!", or the opposite "STFU noobs, system is fine because it works for me right now!" I can more explicitly show the relevance with your post, though. The main tenant of my post is that, as long as CE can be used to gain more crowns than that CE costs, then players are motivated to buy it and the price of CE will continue to inflate. In a more general sense, a person will buy something when they value it to be worth more than the price. Such as, if you were willing to pay $1 for an apple, and you see apples on sale for 50¢, then you would buy that apple. With that core principle in mind, consider your last 4 points.

1. allow re-rolling of items for a chance to obtain a uv.

Abstracting your idea a bit, it's "use crowns to create/modify equipment", in order to sink crowns instead of CE. This actually already exists in the game, in that you can pay crowns to get up to 3-star equipment from vendors. Most people don't do this, though, and instead get recipes and craft the item themselves. This is because a 3-star item costs 7,500 crowns, but the recipe is 1000, 400 to craft, plus 50 energy. Ignoring the cost of the materials, that means that a rational, well-informed player will craft for themselves as long as the cost of energy is less than about 12k per 100. Cost of materials or rarity of the recipe will incentivize buying the item a bit more, but that's still pretty huge. Circling back to your idea, if the cost of a re-roll to success isn't favorable, a player will use CE and craft the items themselves. If it is favorable, then you're actually not sinking crowns, but instead REDUCING the amount of crowns that leave the economy (players will/should never jump at the opportunity to spend more on the same item).

2. open secondary gates that cost crowns instead of ce.

If the crowns you gain is equal to/less than the cost of the gate, there is little incentive for players to go in. If you gain crowns, even less than you would normally, then this gate is a place for f2p players to grind for crowns. This means that they can build up money in these low-payoff gates, then use that money to buy CE and get into the high-payoff gates. Also, f2p players now have a play to play for free...endlessly. There is less incentive for them to buy CE with real world money, which will mean less CE in the game economy and less revenue for OOO. Methods that put more crowns into the economy will not help with CE price inflation.

3. a lottery system.

Mostly what I said with number 1: players will not throw away money. Though this is a good spot to quantify that "rational, well-informed" assumption used for economics. Many people are not rational, and certainly some are not well-informed. It means that the practice can be different from the theoretical, as people can make choices based on emotional response, or not understanding that they're losing money on a transaction, etc. Most of my arguments are based on theory and looking at border cases, like how the price of CE should rise towards the amount of crowns than you can make with 100 CE. It's a lot more difficult to predict the effects of bad decisions, however, and I'm certainly not a professional economist. Most of my assumptions here are based on pretty straight-forward supply and demand.

4. crown:ce drop ratios.

See...above. Adding more crowns to the economy will increase the cost of CE even further. It's like if a government is in debt, so they simply print more money to pay for it; it would result in huge amount of inflation as the nation's currency becomes worthless. Of course players could buy more CE if they had more crowns, but if they had more crowns, then they would buy more CE and drive the price up. The price of CE, and thus the amount of crowns players got, would perpetually increase for as long as the game runs with this idea.

let's make this an open discussion. give constructive feedback, positive or negative, and let's try to work out some ideas here.

If I was inelegant in showing how my points were in relation to your/this discussion, then I'm sorry for being inelegant. I was mostly just trying to address some points that I thought were important if a thoughtful discussion was to go on, and my closing remarks were based on the following conclusions that I had come to:

Devaluing CE (reduced elevator energy costs, etc) would help combat inflation, but requires OOO to sacrifice income, assuming that the changes don't bring in a huge enough number of new players/customers to counteract them. This is why I said that the decision is really up to OOO; every company needs to be aware of the price to demand curve for their product, and set their product's price at an optimal range.

The only sure-fire way to bring down the cost of CE is to pull out a credit card and get some of your own, put some up for sale, etc. Prices will go down if there's more CE in the economy, pure and simple.

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a treatise on the crown/crystal energy debate