Spiral Knights - Dear Game Designers, please stop ripping off new players.

Dear Game Designers, please stop ripping off new players.

23 replies [Last post]

Fri, 10/11/2013 - 21:39

Mayaura

From the very beginning, I could never understand the exorbitant prices of the Bazaar vendors. I mean, why would the game designers want to create bad feelings with the new players by ripping them off like that?

Let’s use a 2* Brandish sword as an example.

Before the Auction House was introduced into the game, there were three ways you could get this sword: 1) buy one from another player through trade chat, 2) craft one yourself, 3) buy one from the Bazaar vendor.

Option one could be done for about 1,000-2,000 crowns.

Option two required you to buy the recipe (1,000 crowns) and craft one yourself (alchemy – 400 crowns) for 1,400 crowns plus 50 energy (free mist) and the value of some mats.

Option 3 was to buy from Quillion for 7,500 crowns. (Wow! What a rip-off!)

The Auction House added a fourth option that was basically the same as option one.

The Supply Depot offered a fifth option – price = 150 energy or about 12,500 crowns. (Are you kidding me!?!) Even if you used 100 mist, it was still more expensive than options one and two plus, well, you used all your mist.

Removing mist from the game doubled or tripled the player-to-player cost, making crafting your own the cheapest option.

The orbs were introduced into the game. If you had the 3 simple orbs, it was like crafting with free mist. Otherwise you could buy them from the supply depot at a cost of 10 energy or 750 crowns, making the overall crafting cost close to auction house prices with the important difference that you had no chance at getting a great Unique Variant, which is a significant consideration.

A new player not aware of all his/her options might buy a Brandish from the Supply Depot or a vendor thinking, in their newbie naiveté, that they are getting it at a fair price, only to find out later that they were badly ripped off by the game designers.

Result? Spiral Knights gained virtually nothing from the sale, and the new player now has bad feeling toward the game for getting ripped off and has learned not to trust the game designers.

So, really, game designers, why would you ever do something like that?

Fri, 10/11/2013 - 21:48

Cobaltstarfire

To encourage players to craft their own stuff or buy it from another player.

To me starting out it was kind of a given that buying things from the vendors is going to be more costly than taking the time to craft one (whether it's yourself or through another player).

It's like how things bought at the gas station are more expensive than they'd typically be elsewhere, opportunity/convenience cost and all that.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 02:05

Writhes

This is basically an issue of having the two options of time and money. You can either spend time grinding/farming or skip that and pay more.

If new players make a mistake and they blame the game then they are just being naive. They should have taken the time to learn more about the game before making decisions they could possibly regret.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 01:53

Dahall

@OP

I believe this comes from a guy who bought most of his equipment from the vendor.If not then why concerned about these rookies.Unless they're kids,they'll realize that it's not worth buying from vendors.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 02:24

Curious-Mewkat

Yep, it's like asking yourself whether you should buy that overpriced coke at the local convenience store, or going all the way to the supermarket for a cheaper one. And here you are blaming why you live so far from the supermarket.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 03:01

Iamnoone

Be kind to noobs. We need

Be kind to noobs. We need them.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 04:15

Hexzyle

I thought it was common knowledge that vendors in RPG games always sell stuff at ridiculous prices...

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 04:45

Mystrian

Brandish can be upgraded. Why

Brandish can be upgraded. Why are you posting a 2* ?

Heh good luck getting getting a GM to give you a straight honest answer

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 06:18

Mayaura

Thank you for your reasonable responses.

@Cobaltstarfire - If they really wanted to "encourage players to craft their own stuff or buy it from another player," then why sell it to us at all? It doesn't make sense.

@Writhes - It's not a matter of choosing between time or money at all since it's even more convenient to buy one from the AH than to track down the right vendor, and much cheaper.

If your grandmother were ripped off by a con man, would you really say to her, "Now, grandma, the con man is completely innocent; it's really your fault for being naive and uninformed. You should have taken the time to learn more about the situation before making decisions you would possibly regret"?

It's bad enough getting ripped off by certain morally bankrupt merchanters who feel proud of taking of advantage of other players' lesser knowledge and gloat about ripping people off. But to have it done to you by the game you recently started playing, at a time when you are fresh and vulnerable? It would cause only resentment and mistrust at a time when Spiral Knights should be trying to foster a positive relationship with players. That just seems like a very poor decision on the part of the game developers.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 06:24

Writhes

Now we are comparing this to conning? There is no trickery behind vendors or the supply depot and players are perfectly free to ignore them.

In fact players are given free items doing ranked missions up to the point where they are taught about alchemy. As I've said this is just a simple matter of people needing to take the time to understand the game.

Sorry, but your argument is dead in the water.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 06:50

#10

Khamsin

@Hex

"I thought it was common knowledge that vendors in RPG games always sell stuff at ridiculous prices..."

In MMOs, yes, definitely. Traditional JRPGs, vendors are usually a good source of loot though.

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 17:25

#11

Hexzyle

@Khamsin

Yes, well it depends where the other sources of equipment are. If there are many other ways to get the equipment, like MMO's trading, or Crafting/Monster drops like Dragon Quest and Diablo Clones respectively, then the Vendors will be a rip off. Which is most of the time.

Anyway, I've only played one JRPG, and in that I was given the most powerful sword in the game at the start of the game and don't need to buy anything in stores at all :P

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 17:53

#12

Alphappy

>If they really wanted to

>If they really wanted to "encourage players to craft their own stuff or buy it from another player," then why sell it to us at all?

Like he said, it's convenience cost. You can spend either your time or your money to get to the top, and those who don't want to spend their time(read: are impatient) will spend their money instead. This is just how free-to-plays work. When there's an option to spend money instead of time, the developer benefits in the form of the microtransactions that will eventually take place because said player is not willing to spend their time(or because they have their mom's credit card).

Sat, 10/12/2013 - 18:31

#13

Khamsin

@Topic

Those vendors are a holdover from way, way, WAY back in the day, when loot drops were the primary source of loot, rather than crafting. They haven't been anything except a trap for a long time.

@Hex

Vendor sold loot isn't really that much of a ripoff in classic Diablo games. Most of the time you have almost no use for Gold, so if the Vendor had something half-way decent, relatively speaking it wasn't that expensive. Course, that changed in Diablo 3 with the AH...

But yeah, generally in MMO-type games if there's crafting, crafting is usually in some way better than vendors, to push people into the crafting system.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 03:53

#14

Mayaura

Enjoying the debate

I'll say it again, since I know previous posts tend to get skimmed - It's not a convenience cost. The auction house is just as convenient, if not more convenient than vendors, and much, much cheaper. And the supply depot charges even more than vendors now that mist is out of the equation.

Let's set up this scenario and see how you feel about it:

Newbie: Wow! I just crafted my first gunslinger hat and got some kind of unique variant on it, Fire maximum something. Is that good?
Me: Yeah, that's nice. Wanna sell it?
Newbie: Um, okay, how much?
Me: I'll give you 100,000 crowns for it. (We'll assume it's worth about 400,000 for the sake of argument.)
Newbit: Wow! Seriously?!? OK!
(We make the trade.)
[A similar situation might be a newbie in need of a philoso feather who offers me 10,000 crowns for one, and I accept it.]

Okay, now, did I do a bad thing? I know some players like to blame the victim (in this case, they buyer) and say "Buyer Beware", but if you think what I did is morally acceptable, then your greed has overwhelmed your conscience. It's a kind of deception, i.e. a scam or con, for the sake of financial gain. Sure, players can say "Well, life lesson for me. Next time I'll know better," but it doesn't make it acceptable.

When players join the Spiral Knights community, they enter into a relationship with the game that involves a certain amount of trust. So why risk violating that trust by putting them into a position where they have to choose to "ignore" the bad options that the game as a seller offers them? Why jeopardize the budding, fragile relationship with a new player by ripping them off? It would be better to halve the price the vendors charge and update the supply depot prices to relfect the new post-mist reality and market of the game.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 04:05

#15

Feyi-Feyi

Dear tumble dryer,

for once we actually agree. Not in that OOO is scamming poor newbies, but I do believe most of the NPC vendors are redundant.
Supply depot can easily take over their business imo.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 04:40

#16

Writhes

@OP

Since you simply don't understand anything about the economy I will spell it out for you. I honestly was hoping you would have figured it out by now so I wouldn't have to take the time to explain it.

Vendors and the supply depot are essentially playing a role as a price cap preventing players from monopolizing trade. At the same time they have a high enough price tag on items giving players freedom to set variable prices.

If you had your way and the vendor/supply depot prices were lowered it would have an immediate impact on the economy. Items across the board would be set to lower prices than the vendor/supply depot and at the end of the day the vendor prices are still higher.

Are you done babbling about conning or do you need more education?

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 04:53

#17

Sinnthesis

@Mawashimono

Good god, if you dislike this game and its developers so much, just leave. SK would be a much better place without your constant whining and passive-aggressive trash.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 09:05

#18

Doctorspacebar

It's a Concrete Jungle out there

The way I see it, vendors are there to keep a ceiling on prices. If energy were ever enough to make it cost 36000 crowns to craft a Gunslinger Hat, it would be cheaper to buy from the vendor; this sets a limit on energy prices. (Of course, that would be 16000ish crowns for 100 energy, which is entirely ridiculous, but it's still a backup limit should all other pricing limits fail.)

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 09:20

#19

Warp-Master

Actually, vendors aren't all that bad in terms of "ripping off new players" when you consider that crafting itself is a ripoff when you aren't crafting Wolver or Gunslinger.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 09:56

#20

Marvelrock

Looking at the argument here.

Looking at the argument here. I don't see why you are complaining? It's in-game money OOO doesn't benefit from it. Newbies are bound to make the mistake of buying brandish and whatever from Quillion. It's like finding out for the first time HoH recipes aren't tradable. So the argument here I get but it's not to make a complaint to make on the forums.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 11:30

#21

Exerpa

>(Of course, that would be

>(Of course, that would be 16000ish crowns for 100 energy, which is entirely ridiculous, but it's still a backup limit should all other pricing limits fail.)

Didn't this happen on one of the GameCyber servers? I think it was reported that they folded both communities into one recently, which implies that the population was too low to run them separately.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 22:53

#22

Mayaura

What a shame.

It's too bad some forum users result to childish name-calling, hostile attitudes, and aggressive insults like some of the above. Guess this topic hit too close to home.

Oh well, kids will be kids, and I guess the rules of the playground where a "sucker" deserves what he gets and "the weak and defenseless" are deserving victims is all they know.

I'd continue the debate and show how embarassingly mistaken you are, but your rude attitude deserves no more than an in-game "Ignore" and a さよなら　forever.

Sun, 10/13/2013 - 23:24

#23

Writhes

Thanks for putting this thread in the gy. You wouldn't want the embarrassment of being proven wrong by an obvious truth to linger around now.

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Dear Game Designers, please stop ripping off new players.