Spiral Knights - Fixing the market! Is it bad? Will it make a huge difference?

Fixing the market! Is it bad? Will it make a huge difference?

19 replies [Last post]

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:38

Mikuknight

It's not an ad. It's an idea and some scenarios that I want to discuss with you.

So I've been thinking, what if I sell 100 C.E. in the market for 1 Crown? Obviously they will buy 100 C.E. for 1 Crown, but what will they do with the C.E? They will most likely spend it on upgrades or use it when they run out of mist, but what if they sold the C.E. for 1 Crown too? I belive that if 100 ce is sold in the market for 1 cr, a massive amount of people will buy it, and they will sell the CE for a lower price as well in the market. After that there should be cheaper offers in the market but I could be wrong. Everyone could just be greedy and are not willing to sell their C.E.

This is just an idea. I'm not making an offer and I'm not asking anybody to make an offer. I just want your opinion. How is this a good idea? How is this a bad idea? What could possibly go wrong?

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:40

Uniquevariant

It would work about as well

as selling dollars for 1 penny outside of walmart.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:41

Klipik-Forum

It might make an impact, but only if you did it with millions of CE.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:55

Mikuknight

Well, with millions of C.E,

Well, with millions of C.E, 100ce will be worth 1cr everyday. I'm just thinking about lowering the price to 5000 or 4000 with the right amount of C.E. Now I think somewhere in the energy menu, there is some kind of deal that gives 20000 C.E. for 20 dollars. If I could just sell 20000 C.E. for 1 cr, what are the chances of the greedy people not re-selling the C.E?
Maybe I should start at small numbers first until people recognize the price in the market is dropping, and then I can raise the amount of C.E. I sell for 1cr.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 15:58

Mikuknight

and also...

also, if a million CE was worth 1 Crown everyday, Three Rings would go nuts

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 16:37

Glacies

It's not going to make an impact. The problem is through the Mission UI and Party Finder. Remove those two and you've cured the problem of the inflated market.

Putting offers of 1 Crowns will not fix the market. All it'll do is have your CE resold for the current base price.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 17:29

Fehzor

There are only three avenues for using energy in such a way that it is actually removed:
-Convert it to crowns by going into the arcade.
-Hoard it, destroy it, or otherwise remove it from the market as essentially a null transaction. (includes unlocking lockboxes)
-Craft or unbind gear with it, which will increase their or someone's ability to produce crowns.

If I were to, say, place 1 million CE on the market each month, this would support more of all all 3. That is to say:

There would be more crowns in the game
And
There would be players with more or better gear in the game, all wanting more and better gear.

So if I kept doing this, and if all else were to be held constant (the same amount of CE is being bought by all players), we would see the market return to an equilibrium, which would be

crowns created for earning CE = CE bought. This equilibrium is never actually reached, because OOO will not let it be reached. In the short run, dumping money onto the market would work. And people would love you for it. But then you can give money to hookers and they'll love you for it too.

You cannot "fix the market" in the long run. Only OOO can do that.

And we get this scenario, where it goes something like this:

if( price of CE is lower than it should be ) Content will require energy to buy into

If( price of CE is higher than it should be ) Content will require crowns to buy into

And this is how OOO operates. They just try to mediate the CE price into the right place, which is great and all, but it means that:
-The community will never really get to be huge, as the size of the community relies heavily on the price of CE allowing for T2 players to stay longer and becoming truly hooked and bound to the game.
-The community will never really die either.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 18:10

Klipik-Forum

What if Ruby, NJ, Mawa, and all the other rich players bought all the CE on the market, used it all on crafting, and sold all the stuff to vendors, then bought more CE with that cr, and repeated the process till there was no CE left?

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 20:15

Mikuknight

right, Fehzor

So there should be a certain price that doesn't get Three Rings attention. A price that makes them say, "Meh, it's not a big deal so I won't change the price." 8000 Cr. was pretty expensive and while Three Rings were satisfied, some thought it was too big. 5500 was the perfect price for players but when it changed from 5 to 6 and from 6 to 8, Three Rings must've changed the price during that time.

And yes, we can also spend the C.E. on Spiral Hookers. :P

Klipik, if they bought all the C.E. there will be no sales in the market. We would have to rely on the regular CE for Cr trade which was always expensive, and it will take time for us to make enough Crowns to buy that C.E. after somebody sucessfully buys it for 8000 or 9000 Cr and sells it in the market, nobody would even have the money to buy it in the market unless the sell it very cheaply. If nobody sells it cheaply, then Spiral Knights will go through a virtual, American "Great Depression," and THEN Three Rings decide to give away Crown prizes so everyone has enough money. BUT they will probably do this just to make C.E. cost 8000 again.

Glacies, I don't get the UI thing but I think I do get why Party Finder should be removed. Going solo in missions does get you rich since you don't have to share the money. How will we convince people to go solo? or how can we get Three Rings to remove Party Finder? or I'm probably not thinking what you are thinking.

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 20:42

Little-Juances

There are so many things wrong there.

1. Money ins't shared in a party. It gets multiplied for each member. You end up winning the same amount alone or in a group.
2. Inflation is caused by people farming FSC
3. OOO never touched the price of the market directly. All they do is release promos.
4. ALL the energy comes from people paying real money. OOO couldn't care less about what they do with it, whetever they sell it for 1 or 10000 crowns ingame to other players, since they already got the $$$..

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 21:19

#10

Fehzor

1. Players determine how much players buy with their money, but OOO sways that decision.
2. OOO changes the energy market in much larger ways than players do, with every update that requires any sort of payment. They MADE the energy market. Yes, the players influence it, no the players do not actually control it.
3. OOO depends on new players sticking around, and buying CE. They do care to some extent that energy is being sold at a reasonable price. This reasonable price is around 6-7K, from what I can tell.

OOO does not just step in and dump energy on, they step in and dump content that removes crowns and alters the balance of supply and demand. Promos lower the cost of energy, but are not enough to keep it down forever.

The party finder is a good feature, because as Small Juances said, you get the same crowns from missions regardless of how many people are in your party, but less materials.

You get, on average:

[Crown/token/mineral payout] + [Material payout] / [Number of Players]

Party finder won't find locked parties either lol...

Tue, 06/04/2013 - 21:32

#11

Glacies

I don't get the UI thing but I think I do get why Party Finder should be removed.

What Little-Juances said pretty much @2:

When the Mission UI was added, we eventually got access to the boss mission: The King of Ashes. It directly took you to Firestorm Citadel which is a 6th Strata which happens to give the most amount of crowns out of all the Stratas. Originally the mission gave 12,000 Crowns on Average for only 50 Mist instead of the Arcade version which is 90 Mist for a full run from Depth 18 to the Core. This instantly shot up the CE Market Price to over 10k/100CE due to the quick and easy access to the mission.

Did I mention this all happened within one week of the second Mission UI released? Yeah. Later on about two-three weeks if I recall after the update, OOO nerfed the crown payout from 12,000 to about 8,000 on Average. After this update, CE prices slowly dropped to 8k/100CE. Notice something here? The Mission directly affected the CE market prices.

As you can see, the highest payout mission affects the market stability which is clearly obvious. The CE prices only dropped in price for a short time due to the inflation with Promos.

Now let's step back to pre-Mission UI. CE prices were about 5.7k/100CE before the mission UI was released. See where I'm going with this? Why the removal of Party Finder? Because of what people are doing now: People are joining Depth 23 instantly with randoms for Recipes currently. Just removing the Mission UI won't do. Originally it was a luck-based thing: If you got into a party at Depth 23 via joining, you were extremely lucky. If not, you lost 10 Mist already.

So, yeah.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 06:19

#12

Fehzor

I really don't think people joining at depth 23 is a problem; There are far fewer people selling recipes than there used to be, and I like using the party finder to... well... find parties!

But the big reason against it, is that people actually doing the arcade know whats up much of the time, and that people joining them for recipes rely on them to buy the actual thing, as they haven't fought to get there.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:23

#13

Exerpa

@Klipik

857 cr per 100 ce.
At that value or less you can buy 5* gear from the supply depot and vendor it at a profit.
Above this number, you vendor at a loss.

In the unlikely event that Ce was ever abundant enough to hit that value, the destruction of it in this manner would naturally resolve that abundance.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 10:54

#14

Gwenyvier

If you decided to put CE on

If you decided to put CE on the market for 1cr per 100 all that would happen is the very first person to see it would buy it all out, regardless of how much you put up.

I think I have about 80k cr right now, which is actually a fairly low amount compared to the high rollers. I also have a chunk of CE I'm holding onto but that is irrelevant. With that 80k I could buy a whopping 8 million of the CE (approximately $17,778 in value) you'd be selling. And honestly I know I would if it magically showed up. I could keep it to buy a lot of things later, or I could wait a week, hell a day, and turn around and sell it for mass profit.

Good purpose behind your idea, bad idea though, and it wouldn't actually change anything.

~Gwen

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 11:04

#15

Dragonicblaze

UVS

Among other things, the price of uvs will skyrocket :)

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 14:32

#16

Mikuknight

Well then,

If we can't get rid of the UI and Party finder, and lowering the price of C.E. is bad, what will be the good outcomes of inflating the C.E. price even further? Inflating it so far, that even using up all my mist in the UI and Party finder wouldn't be enough to pay for just 100 C.E. So far, that everybody stopped buying C.E. How can we raise the expenses in the market? If that's a bad idea, then there's gotta be some idea that doesn't involve spending cash on C.E.

Wed, 06/05/2013 - 17:56

#17

Thegreatpiggy

Well then.......

Here, I call, the profit effect. This is why it won't work.

Event 1) Someone sells 100 CE for 1 crown, then someone buys it.
Event 2) The other dude sells it at a higher price, 2k, to get profit yet to get a fast deal, or skips to Event 5, 4, 3 or uses it.
Event 3)The other dude sells it at a higher price, 4k, to get profit yet to get a fast deal, or skips to Event 5, 4 or uses it.
Event 4)The other dude sells it at a higher price, 5.5k, to get profit yet to get a fast deal, or skips to Event 5 or uses it.
Event 5) The person sells it at just a slightly lower price than the usual 6.9k, 6.5k or uses it.
Event 6) The person, not thinking it's not worth it to sell it for profit (only a few 100 crowns gained), decides to use it somehow.

Conclusion: Same price.

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 12:28

#18

Mikuknight

Good conclusion! How can we keep it at the same price?

The price keeps getting higher. Lets say the same price, the current price, is "X." If the price is higher than X then we try to lower the price. If the price is lower than X then we try to raise the price. This will maintain the price of C.E, to keep the price at number X and stop it from changing to another 1k or two. If the price stops changing, this will give players more time to adapt to this price. So basically, the price has to stop moving up and down.

Thegreatpiggy, you're a genius omg :O

Thu, 06/06/2013 - 14:40

#19

Dreathuxy

Lower Prices = Broken Game

High CE prices actually help the games economy. A lot of players use CE as a main currency to buy items (i.e. ASI VH Silversix). If there were lower prices, the CE users will actually start raising their prices and you will need to spend more money to get more CE for the same weapon stated above.

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Fixing the market! Is it bad? Will it make a huge difference?