How to fix the "over nine THOUSAND!!!!!" problem Part Two
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 16:47
I'm not sure if anyone saw my previous topic about this issue here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/63774
It is clear that pretty much everyone is qqing about the energy prices except the people who buy CE from OOO and then sell it on the market.
My second very easy solution is this:
OOO is the government of the game, right? And the players who manipulate the economy are a bit like corporations, while the common F2P is small business who is trying to get by. What's the first thing that comes to mind in that situation? If you have the time, read this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competition_law Have you ever thought to yourself "This isn't fair, OOO should do something to restrict players from making the CE prices too high!"
In the late 1800's and early 1900's there was a lot of monopolizing going on, where people would come together to form "trusts" where everyone agreed to come together and control prices for the benefit of trust members. A good example of this in Spiral Knights can be found in this thread here: http://forums.spiralknights.com/en/node/57171
Note that the OP referred to 8,700 crowns as being a "high price" for 100 CE. Today most people would jump right on it if they saw that offer.
The 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act was a law passed in the United States that basically prevented almost all market manipulation. If it worked for the entire country, why can't it work for Spiral Knights as well? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherman_Act
It basically states that it is illegal to get together and manipulate market prices. Thus, if anyone saw other players doing any sort of scheming in this manner, a simple report could get them banned. Of course, the Spiral Knights market is not nearly complex as the entire US economy, nor will a rule that simple solve the problem. However, I can't say exactly how to solve this problem in a way that would make (almost) everyone happy. It is up to OOO as the Spiral Knights government to come up with an efficient rule to prevent CE prices from rising. Remember, it's their game.
Has anyone ever heard of the "invisible hand?" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand It is a theory that all things related to economics always stabilize themselves automatically. It's hard to give an example, but let's just say that I'm Henry Ford and I have hundreds of thousands of factory workers. If I let them work underpaid, they get less money. That's less money that goes into the economy. If the economy has less money to spend, that's fewer people buying cars. The invisible hand will smack me in the face and my company will go under. But what Henry Ford actually did was pay his workers generously, and this was part of what made his company so much more succesful. Not only were his workers happier, (and thus felt better about working hard for him) but they could also sometimes afford their own cars, and put money back in Ford's pocket! This is one example of how the invisible hand works. tl;dr it's basically karma.
However, it doesn't seem as though Spiral Knights has an invisible hand. CE prices can keep rising with nothing to check them. I see two futures:
1. Somehow, the prices are stabilized, either by a converted community effort, or by a new system from OOO
2. Nobody does anything to stop this. The prices keep rising until people can no longer afford CE on a regular basis. Many F2P players will simply quit the game altogether. This is already starting to happen. (Act fast, OOO, before you lose your whole playerbase!) Some of the them will resort to buying CE via irl monies. A very small population will continue to purchase CE. With less people buying, sellers will have to keep raising CE prices even more to compensate. Once they get around 20-30k crowns for 100 CE, I suspect at least 95% of the F2P community will have ragequit. With nobody left to sell CE to, the rich players will ragequit in frustration that they can't get easy crowns anymore. Eventually, the only players left will be a tiny F2P population and a few people who don't care about money. With the community so small, people will get bored of the game and leave. Finally, a few hundred people will realize that there is no point in having CE prices so high and they will fall back down to normal prices. Some people will realize this and rejoin the game. However, by the time the game starts to get going again, it has been so long that the game is outdated and seems old compared to CoD 10, Halo Online, TF3, Final Fantasy C, and France France Revolution (if you've got the beat and want to kill the elite!). Then OOO will abandon the game and it will become 100% F2P on Steam with everything unlocked. Several years later, it will become akin to old MS DOS games, where people whip it out for fun as a "classic" but nobody actually plays it for entertainment.
So, OOO.. You choose.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 17:08
#2
and we cant be sure if OOO
and we cant be sure if OOO will in fact do anything. nice studying you did there ( better than that dance ¬¬) but the solutions are still kinda sketchy.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 17:14
#3
+1
Definitely agree with this.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 17:21
#4
I... No...
I'm copying my
I... No...
I'm copying my other post... brb
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 17:50
#5
@kraanx
you realize that this is partially a joke
though it would be pretty cool if it actually was implemented
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 19:35
#6
Solution
Let people trade CR for Mist.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 19:50
#7
In my opinion the CE market
In my opinion the CE market is an extremely close approximation to the free market. I don't think players can viably collude or manipulate prices for more than a day or so at a time.
So look to the free market for the solution; the fact that FSC payout is too high relative to everything else in the game is the direct cause of eternally rising CE prices. Yes, it IS up to OOO to regulate, and they can do that by making some drastic alterations to payouts. And it's in their best interest to do so, as new players are the ones who are always F2P to start, and you don't want to discourage them by having it cost a fortune just to craft their 3 and 4* gear.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 20:01
#8
There are so many ways OOO could 'indirectly' lower the prices... so bloody many. The simplest and quickest solution is to make some CE sinks have a crown variation of the same fluctuating value; no new sinks need to be made, they just modify the existing ones. Alternatively, make upcoming updates (Guild Hall features, 'new weapon mechanics', etc.) cost crowns (if they require any sort of payment) instead of CE.
A lower CE price makes it less grindy and more enjoyable for people who play normally, makes it more costly to buy your way to 5*, etc etc. We've all heard this part before.
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 23:48
#9
haha
Brings back memories of APUSH and AP Econ hahaha. +1 for the details. Unfortunately (I realize this was partly joking) the rise in CE prices isn't because of market manipulation as far as I know. It's most probably a fundamental decrease in P2Ps as compared to F2Ps combined with the rising numbers of CE sinks as compared to CR sinks. None of this is new speculation but I do wish we would get some feedback on this.
+1 to all the other posters and their thoughts on plausible adjustments to the economy. Crown sinks please OOO!
Wed, 09/05/2012 - 23:57
#10
There is no manipulation;
There is no manipulation; this is the saddest part.
Players want their energy faster, so they outbid the previous guy just a little bit, and the next guy outbids him a bit more. Well, this pattern continues until you get this mess that is the Spiral Knights market.
This is by far the most serious issue in the game right now, beyond all other things. I'm hoping OOO is thinking up something, because as fair as the system could be, the playerbase is becoming unable to sustain itself. The playerbase is unable to use a system like this responsibly.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 00:47
#11
Best option for fix
Introduce the game on psn/xbox live and allow players on our servers. It would be like the steam wkend and everyone can be become rich selling mats. It will be a beautiful thing. And an increased player base would make the game more fun.
It halved ce prices when the steamers joined.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 04:35
#12
@Pawn
That's only a
@Pawn
That's only a short-term ''fix''.
Just like with Steam, the prices may have dropped, but they spiked back up after a bit of time had past.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 05:10
#13
If...
if OOO doesn't come up with a solution, Imma just join the Planetside 2 player base >:)
Ps.when will you P2P realize what you did is for vanity? I mean, after a while, im pretty sure your gonna be like Cocosnake, "OMG did i seriously put money into this shi-- err, crappy game?" I got that reasoning after just 15$ into it. jus sayin'.
"Pride Before a Fall."
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 08:04
#14
@ Deviite
true, but i think my main point is it would make the game better to have an influx of new players. But yeah, off topic.
@Canine--i'm an adult who makes a nice wage. I've probably paid 125$ total on the game in 1 1/2 years. I don't mind at all paying for entertainment. Many people waste that much money a month on fast food. I don't. Many people waste that much money a month on smokes. I don't. Many people spend that much a year on movie rentals, movies at the theatre, HBO, cinemax, etc. I do not. Careful about criticizing how one prefers their entertainment, when it's all opinion as to what is 'worth it' and what is not.
P.S. I spent the money to support OOO. I became filthy rich in game as a purely F2P player. After deciding it might be my favorite game of all time, i chose to support the development team. It has become stale to me, and i don't really play anymore. I don't regret a penny i spent on it.
And i keeps my stuff :D
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 08:27
#15
Ditch your pride [and get a
Ditch your pride [and get a job], you will get all the CE you want, that is the real solution.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 08:34
#16
@Kalaina-Elderfall
In my opinion the CE market is a poor approximation to a "true" free market. Why? Because in a true "free" market, there are innovation that encourage competition. It is competition that makes a market "free".
If the CE market is truly "free", we would have seen new (technological) innovation that better utilize CR (a surplus goods) and convert that into CE (an economic goods), so competition can take another form by being the first guy to create a way to do such a conversion and rip the profit.
The problem right now is that, the Devs are not very well educated in economics (please don't blame them, they are tech people). So they believe they have constructed a "free" market. In truth, by believing into this illusion and they do not act on the inflation, they have already become the largest market manipulation force there is.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 09:09
#17
thanks for the pep talk ._.
I will never criticize ppl who dont want to be criticized
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 13:48
#18
Well.. They tried :P
Easiest explanation for the rise in price is just by a combination of price creep, impatience, and the currency status of CE in general. When you think about it, the most recent promo of an "energy boost," where you get 15% more CE in each REAL CASH MONEY purchase, kind of qualifies as an economic stimulus. Logically this would have flooded the CE market and therefore lowering the price, but it would seem that demand for CE is still much higher than the supply, and this stimulus didn't even put a dent in it. Since most players are just willing to 'buy now' whatever the existing price of CE is rather than making an offer and waiting for those who want crowns badly enough to flinch & take less crowns for their CE, and those who are observing notice that the product keeps moving at a higher price so they too adjust their offers higher, and therefore the whole thing creeps like commodities in today's markets IRL.
I like to think of CE as Gold. There are always people who will want to buy it, it doesn't seem to lose value over time, and is not legal tender.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 14:06
#19
Gold doesnt disappear...
CE is never recycled so theres always a huge demand for something that goes back to OOO through Spiral HQ.
the old perfect scam, sell something that comes back at you. Probally a flaw in the spiral system, CE nevers recycle or flow back into the game
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 14:52
#20
i'll admit I wont pay in a
i'll admit I wont pay in a combination of gold and dollars to buy a new coat for the coming winter, I'm simply pointing out some similarities in both the way CE is traded (slow incline) and commodities of the markets today, and that the use of CE as a currency is once removed. When the game started out, CE was for crafting and elevators, crowns for everything else. Over time many other things have been added to encourage the spending of CE, which is to OOO's benifit, as there wasn't too much demand in buying CE with real money for just the use of elevators and crafting (this is debatable, however, as crafting accounts for most of the energy usage in this game), and while these additions to help the once-removed status of CE, it does not change the fact that the game has 2 currencies.
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 18:53
#21
@ canine
do you even know what a scam is????? By your logic when you rent a movie, enjoy it, and then return it...the old perfect scam.
*facepalm*
It's a service you can play FOR FREE, even though it cost OOO money. Scam?
*facepalm*
Thu, 09/06/2012 - 19:04
#22
CE is like USD
It's backed only by the full faith of the issuer (Three Rings).
sure, now lets see if we can get everyone on the forums ( which i doubt) into this community effort (plus, a load of players havent ever heard of the SK forums yet). this will require LOADS of mobilization.