I see what you're getting at, but the Guild Halls costing cr is very important, making a cr sink.

I just hope that after this first week, not too many guilds give up their guild halls

Granted, CE and CR can be exchanged in the market, without you personally paying for it (though someone has to). I think the point here is that having equipment-related payments tied to CE makes progression extremely unstable, especially for F2P players, since the price of CE in CR fluctuates so significantly. Upgrading gear becomes significantly costlier when CE prices are rising. P2P players can purchase the CE directly at a pre-determined cash price, so this doesn't affect them so much. Guild Hall extensions, conversely, are a much less essential aspect of the game, and it would be more acceptable if they were tied to CE in place of gear upgrades, which are a basic tenet of the game, and therefore should be more stable. And that is not a bad idea – often new players are affected by increased CE prices that have nothing to do with them. CE prices shot up after the Missions system was implemented, and farming FSC became that much easier. However, profit at lower tiers remained largely unchanged, and so newer players had a harder time affording the higher cost, even though they arguably needed the CE more.

However, if we were to fix CR prices to equipment upgrades, it would give rise to a new set of problems. What would an acceptable CR price be? Let's take a 5* item for example. Crafting costs are currently 800 energy, which can be reduced to 700 CE if mist is factored in. If OOO were to convert that CE price to CR, at what exchange rate would they do it? They might set a high price, say 9000 CR to 100 CE, and this time the crafting costs would remain consistently high because fluctuations in the CE-CR exchange rate would have no effect on the pure CR cost. Change the crafting cost at a reasonable rate, you might say, but who determines what is reasonable?

Some other considerations: Crafting with CR would mean not being able to use mist, which would in turn vastly reduce the amount of rage-crafting, which would result in a smaller UV supply. This would further concentrate UV'd gear within an exclusive group of players that can afford them.

Ultimately, I think the existing system of CE crafting, while not ideal, would be quite a mess to overturn. Perhaps I'm just used to the way things are now. But with the Guild Hall update, and the pricey upkeep payments, I think the situation has been tremendously improved, making crafting more affordable for new/F2P players, and at the same time probably keeping CE prices fairly stable with the weekly CR payments. I find this a viable measure for the foreseeable future.

The flaw with the idea of having guildhalls run off CE, and the main game run of crown, is that the main game could support itself with out any cash input. While this sounds great to players, if players decided to abolish Guildhall and their associated CE payments... guess what?
Developers get no money, we get no game.

Keeping the CE bound to the core game makes it very difficult (aka impossible) for players to cut Three Ring's profits without completely sacrificing access to any levels past the 3rd strata.

Right now, we are much better economically after GH update: CE prices plummeted and it looks like they will stay like this for quite a while.

Though, what will happen after The Lab opens depending on what and how is done, and Expansion missions come up as CE purchasable... that is something we will have to see.

But right now we are much better.

OOO does what OOO wants and what OOO wants is for you to stop complaining about what OOO does.

Has the thought of optional, cosmetic additions being absent during the game's creation ever crossed you? 'Cause I'm pretty sure they were... Kind of makes sense that one of the most viable methods of income via micro-transactions back then would be by charging you for progression, hm?

What I find the most ironic is when players question the design choices in present without taking the past into consideration first. Whilst there might be different routes to take now, fact of the matter is that the system has already been established and accepted. Call for change now would be unwise.

Discussions like these may be entertaining for a while, though it would better to focus matters on things that would benefit the game in the future rather than raise speculation that revolves around change of the system.

1. Players need CE to progress.
2. CE enters the system only through cash purchase
3. CE can be traded among players
If players progress in the game, people are purchasing CE, OOO is making money. Individual players may not be paying money, but someone is- and therein lies the beauty of the system: it redistributes the burden of purchasing CE to those most willing to, allowing for a much larger playerbase. By building it into the system, OOO guarantees that as long as people play the game, they make money. All they have to do is make the game compelling enough to play- the monetization is seamlessly integrated rather than tacked on.

Turning this on its head can be done, but it is hard. Good art, good costumes are not something you can whip up in a few days- you need a framework built with art expansion in mind, and new costumes must integrate well with a good portion of the existing gear. This is significantly easier in 2D (think Gaia Online), but much harder in 3D. Outside of accessories, we have had only a handful of truly new models- even many of the accessories were existing models. Under the CE for cosmetics system, now not only do you have to entice players to want to look good, but you have to draw them in with compelling gameplay as well. Sure, you could have an all-star team that does both tasks equally well, but that's rare- if the team focuses on one aspect, the other will naturally suffer. The CE for cosmetics system requires that both aspects perform well: if you don't have a good game, people won't stick around long enough to buy costumes; if you focus too much on the game, people won't care for cosmetics that do nothing to enhance their gameplay.

Finally, under the current system we do have cosmetics for cash- just look at all the costumes available from promos, and the fact that silver keys cost CE. I would dispute the latter as sound practice, as it takes CE out of circulation that might otherwise help people progress, but that in itself is another balancing point that buoys CE prices when they dip too low. OOO has put quite a bit of thought into this system, and if you did too, you would realize that there is nothing unreasonable about it. In fact, I would call it eerily sane.

"The elevator costs itself repels hundred of new players away every week."

For every of players that tries it, one of them will buy CE, or a pass. So long as the fraction of paying players is high enough, that is all that matters- and judging by how the game is going, it seems like more than enough people are paying $$$. Now, one could argue they aren't maximizing their returns, but it is hard to do that without solid numbers.

There are other important factors in this equation- lower CE/cr prices might result in more payers due to larger playerbase, but that revenue is also balanced against increased bandwidth/server costs. Too low might actually reduce fraction of paying players (if you can play so easily for free, why pay up?) to the point where you get fewer paying players than before, resulting in higher costs and lower revenue. So it may in fact be more cost effective to discourage some players.

so you people are saying OOO doesn't deserve to make money of this game? so you guy's think servers are free? and people creating this game do so just because they can put in a lot of time and effort for thin air?

i think you have a wrong idea of how a F2P game works...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-to-play

" games using the concept are available at no cost to players, they use other means to gather revenue, such as charging money for certain in-game items (like powerful bonuses which are usually available for real money only) or integrating advertisements into the game. "

i see nothing wrong with this system and never has been anything wrong with it...

Basically, Mohandar explained why the system is perfect as it is.

I'd have to say that this game has one of the best free-to-play systems out there, and there must have been a lot of thought, and possibly meetings, that went into this. Why should cosmetic stuff cost CR? Because it's optional and you DON'T have to have it to progress. OOO doesn't need to make money off that, but they need to make money off of promos and from people crafting, which they do very nicely.