Spiral Knights - How is the wealth distributed in SK?

How is the wealth distributed in SK?

29 replies [Last post]

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:07

Owletlover

Here are a couple questions to consider. I have fallen under the impression that the gap between the rich and the poor in SK is ridiculous to say the least, and wealth is distributed under the 99% and 1% scale (if you don't know what that is, look at the American economy >_>). This is my analysis on the economy.

Disclaimer: I am expressing my opinion here. Feel free to disagree and express your own opinion.

What do you consider wealthy?

-Originally I would say someone who has a couple thousand CE. 4k, 5k, 10k = Wealthy. UNTIL I realized I had friends with 50k CE. And people with 150k CE. And people with 6 mil CR. I consider myself poor once I can't afford a 5* recipe, so under 25k CR (not counting CE). And yes, I've been there MANY TIMES.

What are the economical classes of SK?

-The way I see it, we have the elite wealthy class of spiral yuppies who holds the majority of our wealth in CE, CR, excellent UVs, rare accessories, etc. Then there is the hard-working middle class crown farmers who holds typically a fair amount of CE (under 20k) and is constantly recycling the CE into crafts or into the clockworks. Unfortunately, that CE gets spent quickly, and the middle class is always farming profitable runs (FSC or JK) for more CR, which they possibly use to purchase CE. And then, there is our lower class floor scrubbers of SK who possibly aren't skilled enough to successfully farm the profitable runs and probably own few or no 5*.
-So there we have the three classes: the yuppies, the farmers, and the floor scrubbers. I consider myself to be part of the proud backbone of SK farmers, who makes a modest living off playing the clockworks but does not have enough to enjoy luxuries like rage-Punching or rage-reviving.

Who pays to play?

-Yuppies. How else does one acquire mass wealth without bringing out the wallet? Not to say there aren't exceptions with extremely lucky crafts and long time players who have accumulated wealth through the mass inflation of the economy.
-Farmers. I think a sizeable portion of farmers have paid some out of pocket. Nothing excessive, but enough to speed up the process of obtaining 5*. Many of us have felt frustrated with how hard it is to get 5* without dedicating a lot of time to gameplay. The farmers who have not paid to play at one point have had to succumb to endless grinding of the clockworks (fun, but repetitive after a while).
-Floor scrubbers. They pay for the same reason as the farmers, or probably lose interest in the game before they even pay.

Is there hope for upwards social mobility?

-Yes and no. Floor scrubbers can become farmers. I consider farmers to be players with some versatility, who can adapt to different stratums and probably play primarily T3. Versatility is the line between the floor scrubbers and the farmers (and farmers are generally more experienced players). But, can farmers become yuppies? It is a huge jump upwards to wearing the Rolex and driving the Maserati. I'm being silly x) but the gap is quite large!

My questions for you: Tell me! Are you a yuppie, a farmer, or a floor scrubber? What's your analysis? What do you think can be done?

TL;DR Version: AHHHHHdsjflksdaj the SK economy is dying!@!$ Help!

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the analysis and that it made you think.

IGN: Owletlover

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:08

Canned-Bread

Boo

IT'S ALL WITH THE 1%

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:11

Batabii

Anyone who spent IRL cash on

Anyone who spent IRL cash on the game is "wealthy". Or if they otherwise have more than 100k cr or 2kCE. And that's my stance on that.

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:22

Uuni

I guess OOO could give us an

I guess OOO could give us an awesome graph :D
At least I would enjoy it

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:39

Demonicsothe

Theres two groups. the pay to

Theres two groups. the pay to play, and the free to play. I'd be one of these "farmers", but whats so wrong with a rich class of people on a game? You make it sound like they're witholding our gaming experience by hoarding everything that exists.

Since crowns are generated, and not circulated, it is entirely possible for everyone to be "rich." The p2p is technically the ones driving the game, and not just by keeping OOO afloat. Where do you think we get the ce from?

We can all get excellent uv's. It just depends if you wish to buy the ce to sell for crowns to roll, or grind that crown amount up to use.

Don't stereotype. Tons of f2p actually gets to t3 without paying a cent. Or maybe a couple, but only to be a paid account in order to use alts. Yes, clockworks diving gets boring. But, besides lockdown, what else do you do on this game? Diving is basically the entire point of sk. Go ahead and buy ce. I have nothing against people who support this game monetarily. But if you are tired with the repetitiveness within a game, would it not be time to switch to something else to play?

Sat, 01/07/2012 - 23:50

Espeonage

Not even any bashing!

I much enjoyed the way this was presented.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 00:11

Metagenic

Technically, every T3 player is P2P

Even if they didn't pay a cent themselves, they're still relying on the people who buy CE with IRL money, so they count as P2P.

If no one bought CE, every single player would be stuck on 3* gear.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 00:45

Geekfox

I was a F2P player for 5 months. I finally decided to donate to OOO for such a great (and addicting) game and hope they expand the game and their servers to more continents.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 00:57

Rommil

assessments.

man. those rich players must spend a TON of real life dollars on this game. 1000s of dollars. to get multimillions, even 10s of millions of crowns or 150-200k ce. its amazing!

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 01:19

Batabii

Donations are one thing, but

Donations are one thing, but I don't approve people using money as a shortcut and then bragging about it as if they've actually accomplished anything. This is why we have people in tier 3 who don't even know what each monster's weakness is.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 01:49

#10

Infyrno

you need both

if you dont have the rich(P2P) then who will pay for the fancy UV items that people are trying to sell?

and if you dont have the mid wealth(F2P) then who would buy the cr?

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 01:52

#11

Aus-Lagger

Steve Jones agrees with this

Steve Jones agrees with this evaluation

I beliefs i'ms a chinese rice paddy farmer

my anlaysis of ekonomy is led me to belief dat new playas dying out due to playa hating richer playas selling ce at playa hating prices

mebe tha soln to da probz is to haf more crown sinkz

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 01:56

#12

Skyber

I kind of consider myself as

I kind of consider myself as the farmer class. it takes me about a week to make a piece of five star gear.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 02:17

#13

Omega-Shadow-Death

ummm...

I have 50k Crowns, 2k CE, no 5* items and I farm RJ but i haven't spent a penny on the game.

Where do I fit in???

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 02:47

#14

Mayaura

Guild - Cloud Nine

I'm a long time player who has accumulated wealth through time. I paid $9.95 for 3500 ce shortly after I began playing back in April of 2011. The main reason was so that I could craft, but a huge secondary benefit was that I opened a second free account, so that I had 2 characters getting 100 ce everyday.
Crafting more than farming has been my main means of gaining wealth. I'm probably in the top 1% wealth-wise, but far below that skill-wise.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 03:02

#15

Nicoya-Kitty

I've got piles of gear but

I've got piles of gear but usually very little in the way of crowns or CE. Does that make me rich or poor? I've never bought CE with cash, but I'm getting close to the point where I'm running out of interesting stuff to craft and will probably start spending my dungeon loot on less directly useful things like accessories or UV rolls or something.

In general, though, I suspect that the wealth distribution in SK follows the Pareto distribution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_distribution

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 04:20

#16

Mayaura

@Nicoya-Kitty

Ouch - that wiki page made my head hurt

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 04:29

#17

Yeriq

I think you are looking at this the wrong way

I think status (or more loosely wealth) in SK isn't directly, or strongly tied with the amount of CE you have. It's a lot of things. For me, what good is your 50K CE if you have like 3* only gear? Can you honestly tell me that you have stockpiled all that CE for use in revives? Anything worthwhile in SK, what makes you stand out is your gear: sword, shield, and armor; "Heated" gear and remember the requirement: You can't make 4* gear unless you heat to at least 5 and you can't make 5* unless you heat it to 10.

I think a more directly correlation to status in SK is the amount of time you spent playing SK.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 05:24

#18

Darkbrady

Aye, I'm with Nicoya; it's

Aye, I'm with Nicoya; it's hard to consider here, if you're looking at full player value or asking entirely about liquid wealth. I tend to find myself hovering around 15k crowns, and however much CE I've not spent at the time (or a bulk, if I've recently bought some and not spent it yet), but I have quite a handful of 5* gears, sets, weapons and shields, mostly +10 and a lot of spare 3/4* stuff to boot that would far exceed my liquid wealth value. Typically, I could argue that I'm one of the wealthy types, because I can afford accessories and rage-revive, I have no immediate need for new gear and typically build new sets because I want a new set for the novelty or to more easily do certain levels, but I could also claim to be one of the farmers, having often very little liquid wealth and need to sit and farm levels whenever I want a new something.

I think you need to separate your classes into four categories:
"Yuppies" = the wealthy types with all the armour they need and all the crowns/CE they need to buy w/e else they want
"Armoured-Farmers" = who have the gear and weapons, but little liquid and still farm crowns constantly
"Farmers" = who have gear, but not quite to the same degree as above, and need to farm constantly
"Scrubbers" = who have nothing, basically.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 06:43

#19

Etendue

I think that 80% of the

I think that 80% of the wealth is held by the average person, from the 25-75th percentile.

It is therefore your duty to consume goods marketed by other players in order to boost the economy.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 07:02

#20

Mysticbeam

erm......

i am considered very rich, and havent paid a cent. full 5*, i can make more 5* in a short amount of time, etc.

i have been trying to benifit to economy(bought the first full 2 pages of yellow shards)

and i have pumped massive amounts of CE into the system via unbind, buy/selling CE, manipulation, and other methods ;)

while i havent reached millionare/trillions of CE, i still think i did pretty well for a F2P player :)

@megatenic: i may be wrong, but i think OOO started the game with a set amount of CE already in the system, otherwise the first few players would have to pay, lol.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 07:27

#21

Mastersleet-Alt

....

I am a kongregate player.

I played this game for a while not too long and not too little, i went to tier 3 without spending a cent and also because of the explorers pack i used it to generate money a way that im not telling, (not hax) than i made a ton of 5 star things a whole set of them. After that i used the kong surveys to get 25 kreds to use for 750 ce just to get my own mist since im sharing so its so possible to get to tier 3 stop begging and try to pick up an oppurtunity that will take you to tier 3 it took me 5 days to get a tier 3 set at explorer pack and before that it took forever to get back up from crafting shivermist. SO IT IS SO POSSIBLE to get to tier 3 just get 4 star equip :3 u dont need 5 star :D

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 08:07

#22

Xylka-Mkii

TL;DR everything after the OP

TL;DR everything after the OP cus i gtg soon

I'd say im around the high, to middle class.
I buy CE on occasions, and can sustain a daily growing profit. On my opinion, some of the lower class knights intentionally let themselves fall there (the beggars and such) They refuse to work hard or be patient to wait for Mist, so instead they beg their way through the game learning little to no skill. If they don't want to actually farm JK like the rest of us (or even T1 at that) and try to manage their savings, then they deserve to be those beggars.

On that note I had no trouble grabbing a 5* recipe while F2P. 1 run a day yeilds at minimum 10CE profit, assuming you fail and have to revive once or twice. Hwever, in T1, It should give a cr payout somewhere close to the price of CE, and even then 40 energy left over.

I honestly don't see why there should be a low class beyond new recruits.

EDIT: As a forenote, I bought 4 Explorer packs during the sale, but am currently at 1104 CE and 10kCR. 300CE of that 1100 I got by doing runs and selling items (mats).

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 08:46

#23

Kalaina-Elderfall

I play like a farmer but I've

I play like a farmer but I've probably put more money into this game than the average farmer. Aside from the 20k CE I wasted on Punch and then replaced out of my pocket (1/3 of the money I've put into the game; also broke my gambling tendencies), all of my money has gone into getting UV gear. Once you're at 5*, how else are you going to improve your game? And while I will always have my eye on one of those luscious VH CTR Blitz Needles, I tend to focus on getting pieces of gear that cost about 4k CE. I've made about 15k CE off lucky crafts and probably 5k off buying and selling things at the right time.

Basically, I'm steadily moving toward having the gear I want, making enough for a piece every couple weeks. A Vana run is worth about 200 CE with an elevator pass and about 150 CE without, so it doesn't take THAT long to get good stuff (two FSC runs a day for two weeks = a piece of 5* gear with a good UV). Just don't expect to be buying Prismatic Wings or anything.

And once you have the gear you want, is there any real reason why you need to have more money? At that point you can work on buying accessories, switching to a different type of weapon, or whatever else you feel like doing. So social mobility isn't really necessary; to play the game at a high level and have good stuff, you really don't need to buy a ton of money. It helps, though, and if you think the game is worth your money, you might as well pay what you think it's earned.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 09:23

#24

Uuni

I play like a farmer but I

I play like a farmer but I consider myself to be quite a lot more wealthy. I bought 2 explorer packs + about 15 € worth of CE. Aside from that I can make a 200k cr purchases from the AH just for novelty items and still manage myself. I often do vana runs but I don't make much out of it. I mostly make profit from the CE market. Buying CE for about 5% less than what I sell it for. 3% profit each trade is about 250cr repeated as much as you can will eventually make tons of profit with very little effort. Only thing holding back is that if you post an offer to sell 100 ce for 6300 100 times at once everyone will try to sell lower than you because they dont want to wait. You are pretty much forced to do it slowly

Due to the explorer pack promo ce prices were really low. You could buy 100 ce for 4800 and now sell it for 6300. That's some nice profit I got there, enough to get me gold rose hat and enough boxes & keys to find a wolver tail.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 11:40

#25

Owletlover

@Kalaina-Elderfall I think

@Kalaina-Elderfall I think what you said about Vana runs is fair. For a period of about 2 months I played FSC at least once a day (on mist), and after those 2 months I found myself extremely bored of FSC. All the CR I made went into CE and crafts.

@Mastersleety (and others) I don't think getting to T3 is terribly hard without IRL money. Part of the allure of the game is that once you get all 5*, you want MORE 5* gear in the sense of unique variants or aesthetics, and the player finds himself/herself at a point of dedicating even more time to the game. And time = money.

@Infyrno I agree, but I think the market can be too easily manipulated by one wealthy player. A monopoly is never fair.

@Demonicsothe This is a great game. But upon losing interest in the clockworks there doesn't appear to be many methods to get rich besides crafting. I also think that it's very hard for a farmer to become a yuppie without spending a LOT of time on the game. A lot being 1 hour+ a day. Also, since yuppies can be holding 100k or 200k CE at hand, if that CE was withheld from the market, demand goes up and therefore CE prices (in CR) goes up. On the other hand, if it is dumped into the market, CE prices go down dramatically (my friend once bragged that by spam clicking sell CE, he brought the market down almost 400cr). I think the problem lies in the volatility of the market, and that players are so easily affected by the artificial movement of the market.

For clarification, <3 to all the classes. When I say hard-working or proud, I mean it in the most unbiased sense. Hard-working because farmers are grinding the clockworks, bringing in the CR that balance the CE market. Proud because I've met many farmers who pride themselves on not having spent IRL money on the game (although if time=money, then they have spent a fairly good bit of "money" on the game).

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 13:26

#26

Rommil

hi xylka

good points all. but i regret to inform you that you are poor, not middle-high class. :)

(poor but not broke..but uh..yeah... poooor.)

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 13:50

#27

Infyrno

its weird

but when i first started playing and heard of someone having 1k ce it would be like omfg thats so much

but now i have over 3k and am sitting here realizing after i craft a 5* set and buy a shadow key ill be broke again :X
to break out of being "poor" is pretty hard for a normal person

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 14:20

#28

Fehzor

The economy dictates how I

The economy dictates how I spend my cr.

If it is high (5K-6.5K per 100 ce), I buy ce and stockpile.
If it is low, I buy recipes and use my cr to get that, as its more efficient to do so then.

I'd say I"m middle classed, by the definition of the OP. I currently have ~5.5K CE, with little to no cr (as I said, I'm buying ce with it). Oh, and I'm F2P.

Sun, 01/08/2012 - 14:35

#29

Espeonage

Just to clarify since it was

Just to clarify since it was mentioned (here):

The policy was that preview players would have their purchased CE returned to them at release, along with a bonus 25% of it.

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How is the wealth distributed in SK?