With energy's current price for $$$, one, single shadow lair run from an 1800 CE key will cost a total of
$5.12 per key if buying 3,500 energy
$4.79 per key if buying 7,500 energy
$4.50 per key if buying 20,000 energy
$4.00 per key if buying 45,000 energy
Let's be realistic and say most people buy the 7,500 deal if fairly dedicated. If I felt like soloing 8 shadow lairs in one month (twice per week, not much play time or average play time) it would cost me $38.32. Almost 40 bucks a month just to play an average amount of play time in shadow lairs. Another option is to split this between 4 players. That's still $9.58 per month per person, and you need to find people willing to do this. Keep in mind that not all runs are successful..... this is end-game content. It requires progression, which likely means multiple failures if you are not being carried.
If you solo, someone would be more tempted to buy energy in bulk from this method (you can rely on yourself to make full use of the energy). Buying the 45,000 energy bulk would be $32.00 a month with the scenario in the above paragraph. If you play with 4 players splitting costs, then someone would be more tempted to buy the smaller energy deals because you likely do not want to rely on three other players for a long term deal. Buying 3,500 energy consistently, the scenario in the above paragraph would cost $10.24 per person.
If you are thinking "Well, I don't know why you are wasting your time mentioning this because most people farm the CE cost instead of paying $$ for SL since that is practical" then you have the mindset of a good consumer. Very few players would actually be willing to pay this much per month.
Because of this, I am proposing a shadow lair pass that sets a realistic cost on running shadow lairs. In this game, it is pay $$ if you do not want to do the farming, and farm if you want to save $$.
With the current shadow lair system, it is a no brainer for the average player to only farm to reach the costs to run shadow lairs after buying an elevator pass (or even without an elevator pass, it's all much easier than spending $$) which can cut profit from OOO.
The dudes that manage financial stuffs for OOO know that for so much of a price increase, so many consumers will not be interested based on past sales. This suggestion is me asking the dudes that manage financial stuffs for OOO to take Shadow Lairs and their larger than should be costs into consideration.
This second post is for making the Shadow Lair Pass work. The problem: Can OOO make a Shadow Lair pass that only lets the person with the pass go down and won't allow a whole party to leech off of the one with the pass.
My ideas to solve this.
1. The pass doesn't unlock the shadow lair gate like a key does. Rather, it will teleport the one player that does have it past the locked part of the gate. If the entire party has shadow lair passes, all of the members can teleport past the lock and the party will descend.
2. Include the fact that players may leech off of one player with a pass into the $$ cost of the shadow lair pass.