Lots of people have probably suggested that CE prices should go down, or that they should stay at a price. I am suggesting that it stays at a price. Now I understand this will get a lot of hate, so please instead of hate, explain to me why CE prices are so precise and why it needs to be like that.
Thanks,
Magmabubble
I'd rather CE didn't make up such a huge proportion of the costs. For example, a 3 star recipe is 200 energy and 5000 crowns (buying the recipe included). Given that 100 CE costs ~ 8500 crowns, you spend about 13,500 crowns as a F2P player, not to mention the opportunity cost of 100 mist. This basically means that CE makes up about 65% of the costs, which is a low estimate because the 100 mist is not included. If you don't include the cost of the recipe, then the CE makes up 90% of the cost in acquiring the item.
This puts way too much emphasis on CE. For a four star item, the cost is 50% CE with the recipe cost, 90% without; for a five star item, 50% with the recipe cost, 91% without (notice the CE cost is proportionately highest for a 3 star item, which is in itself undesirable cost-scaling as it is a disincentive for new players who hit that first crafting barrier).
I'd rather see the crafting cost change, for example:
3 star item
1000 to 10000 crowns
200 CE to 100 CE
4 star item
2500 to 20000 crowns
400 CE to 200 CE
5 star item
5000 to 40000 crowns
800 CE to 400 CE
The crafting costs are about the same, but the emphasis is now on crowns rather than CE. The problem with CE is that you can't purchase anything with it until keys in the end game, and even these transactions don't proceed through players but shopkeepers. It doesn't contribute to the economy. When a P2P player buys CE, it often goes right back into the system, and when a F2P player trades his crowns for CE, he's effectively dumping money back into the system rather than redistributing it among players (buying, selling, and trading with other players).
Crowns, on the other hand, can be used for many more things, mostly to do with the auction house. By changing the direction of the cash flow from crowns -> CE, to CE -> crowns, players will have more money laying around that they can actually USE to promote the player economy, rather than having tons of CE currency laying around that can't be used to promote the player economy. I believe this would create a more stimulated player economy, which provides players with more opportunities to take advantage of trading. An enterprising player would be better able to navigate the buying and selling environment and come out ahead. It also means players have more to engage in when their mist is empty, namely managing their auction house bids and sales. More game time means players have more to do. The player base grows, people use their mist more and the game takes a bigger focus for them as they play more, which means they are more likely to be spending real cash on the game.
Of course, the cost of CE vs. crowns would find a new equilibrium where CE is valued much lower. Therefore, the amount of CE you receive in exchange for real currency would have to be probably roughly doubled. In this way, the bundles remain similarly valued. On the other hand, elevator passes would become incredibly valuable. OOO could probably reduce the $5.95 USD for 30 day elevator pass to $5.95 USD for a 15 day elevator pass and profit even more.
I understood that this would NEVER be implemented, and thankyou for answering my question. So basically CE is the game's stock markets? (Loosly based)
How is our economy runned by free flowing energy caught in our suits????
Energy is better than crowns... theres definitely some thing wrong with that thinking...
or am i doing this wrong?
Energy is the main trading currency in this game because it's much more stable than Crowns. Other than the occasional sale, it's always X CE to the unit of IRL currency. It's the value of Crowns that keeps fluxuating.
Duke, that is very single sided thinking, that be be theview of P2Pers, but I believe there are more F2Pers, which don't use real money, so the value of crowns stay the same because of normal amount of crowns per level, while CE value changes. Also Money can be turned into CE, CE can be turned into crowns, and crowns can be turned into CE, so the money part is 1 way, you can't get money back; crowns is THE Spiral Knights currency, yes CE can be used for more things, including trading BUT think about it, early game you get taught about crowns, AH uses crowns, nowhere does it teach you to use CE.
They're BOTH the causes.
Crown inflation causes CE to rise due to the fact that you can get more CROWNS to pay.
Less CE causes it to be more valuable, higher cost due tpo lack of it.
Less crowns causes cheaper CE as CR is more valuable.
More F2Pers than P2Pers changes the amout of CE. Unless there are more P2Ps or Billionares, the price will rise.
Same with more mouths to feed(F2P) and breadwinners(P2P). Food is CE.Unless there are less Mouths to feed, or there are more breadwinners, the amount of food is lesser and less in stock.
Yes, it is both the amount of crowns and amount of CE sitting on the table.
They sit on a sort of balance. When one is more common, the other becomes more expensive; if everyone has elevator passes for derpbillion years and plays for derpty-herp hours a day and gets derpty-herpthousand crowns every day, that is a lot of crowns. Where do all those crowns go? Some of it goes to Punch, some goes to crafting, but there is far too much of it sitting there. All that blubber pushes the CE prices up because more crowns are in the market doing nothing and the amount of CE is not growing at a significant rate to match it. Does that mean to vomit all your money into CE to bring both high? No, that would make anything which uses energy diminish in price: equipment, materials (obtained from running floors), and unbinding; mostly equipment. If equipment is cheaper than lower tier players will ascend faster, regardless if they become more skilled. Enjoy all the kiddies running around in T3 whining that everything does too much damage and the enemies are too difficult. What does that leave us? Get that crown blubber exercising. No one wants to see that giant lard bucket. We need something which will either drain crowns out of our market or interrupt the flow; something which does not create crowns but people will still want to do.
If OOO wanted to, they could do simple maths to attain numbers with which they could balance their game in the way that you say. I have faith enough in them that they know enough to do that before throwing numbers around…
Specifically, what I mean to say is that this is how the devs envisioned the game, they wanted to create situations where T2 knights have to grind. They have, or had, the numbers when they made it, and they balanced the economy this way. Let this set the tone for their other updates. If you don't like it, it won't change. You cannot and will not change it unless you're able to change the major factors of supply and demand to control the key economic decisions made by the devs, and that is an unreasonable demand in itself.
The only disharmony presented to you is in the advertisements for the game. OOO claims "no grinding", OOO claims "all items are attainable F2P", OOO claims "Form powerful guilds" and to top it off OOO shows you a picture of a magikat hat on the art implying that you can attain that too. Essentially, this is all just a matter of false advertising. That the game is "supposed to be 100% F2P" is a notion created by the players, but undoubtedly inspired by the developers.
If the CE price is fixed, so you will never experience how the economy works.
So what if the amount of crowns needed to craft went up by a factor of 10? Would that constitute something to "drain crowns out of our market" which "does not create crowns but people will still want to do?"
Of course, the problem is that crafting becomes prohibitively expensive, but we can compensate for this by lowering the amount of CE needed by 50-60%.
If everyone in the game were F2P, this economy would be a fraction of what it is now because you move at a snail's pace when you are waiting for your mist tank to refill. The economy activity is driven and sustained by P2P players, but only inasmuch they use their real currency to purchase tradeable goods, not when they pour purchased CE back into the game via supply depot perks, expansions packs, silver keys etc. The game economy benefits primarily when it goes back into crowns or the equivalent of crowns, for example when you purchase CE to unbind your equipment to sell in the AH.
Granted, CE is a currency that you can use to make trades, but it isn't nearly as flexible as crowns. That's why it would be healthier for the game if crowns took up a greater proportion of costs for everything, and I am not convinced OOO would lose money in doing things this way.
/sigh
At the moment, the CE market is player-controlled. This means that the players set the prices - some buy it for irl cash, and then sell it on for an amount of crowns. Naturally, people want the most cr for the CE that they sell, so they set the price fairly high.
I believe OOO have said more than once that they will not fix the price of CE. However, from time to time the CE price gets too high for their liking and the game begins to stagnate, losing its player base since F2Pers don't want to pay such a high price for their CE. When this happens, OOO releases a new promotion in order to get the P2Pers to buy more CE, and encourage the market to trade again - adding more CE to the system. An alternate solution would be to reduce the amount of crowns in the system, by creating crown-sinks (featured auctions with accessories, costumes or whatever), or reducing the crown output from the Clockworks. This latter has occurred in the past, usually associated with quite a bit of rage.
Another possibility would be to reduce the number of CE sinks, but OOO are not likely to do that when CE is the main source of income from SK.
It doesn't need to be like this. It's just that people like money.