Flash Sales Feedback Form Results
Mi, 12/25/2024 - 01:24
Now that the responses to the survey I hosted over a week ago have met a standstill, I feel it's time to post and talk about the results. For those who haven't seen it yet and don't know what I'm talking about: https://forms.gle/kzxkwaxvR4dSPrdX6
To start off, here's the responses sheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1G8PzmhtsdkIap9QXVbJ8GSgjSzd0kM8I...
I've left out the columns for player's name, discord name and what items on auction the player has bid on to maintain anonymity.
Bear in mind, this survey had gone on for a few weeks and is missing a few of the continued supply depot items which were posted after the survey was made.
Some of the data here is easier to visualize through Google forms' pie charts and bar graphs, so I've posted those results separately here: https://imgur.com/a/vt3OFO9
I will be sharing my own thoughts and community concerns to expand on this in the replies below.
Firstly, I would like to clarify on the reasoning behind a few questions, which people seem to have misunderstood.
The questions on how much you have spent on the game, whether you're a student or working, and how long you take to run FSC in particular seem to have raised a few concerns, which I want to address. Your own expenditure on the game and real life situation is none of my concern, this is simply to gauge the demographic of the community in the sense that someone who hasn't spent a dime on the game would have a vastly different view on the game's economy and what's considered expensive, than someone who spends hundreds of dollars on the game regularly. Someone who spends their day working a 9 to 5 job will have less time to farm for items than a school student. A college student would have more commitments than to care about getting an item worth 45ke in this game. Someone who takes 20 minutes per FSC run would easily have more crowns/energy available to buy items than someone who takes 1-2 hours per FSC run, and thus have a different viewpoint on what's expensive or cheap.
The point is, to have as much information as relevant so that one can consider the source of the remaining results, and what background their opinion is coming from, since this is all just subjective measures. But subjective measures can be broadened or explained upon by these things.
To expand on this, to whoever answered the form and takes more than 30 minutes per Vanaduke run, please contact me on discord, I would love to personally teach you how to run faster with little to no effort. I have quite a few guide videos for it on my Youtube channel, but wouldn't mind live coaching over discord voice call or direct messages if that's preferable.
Mi, 12/25/2024 - 01:27
#2
Continuation 2
- Cyber monday should be more eventful. It is an annual event, and should be enjoyable to the player base, rather than exclusive to featured auctions. The common consensus is that Cyber Monday is only in part about the item sales, but more so about the nature of it, the vibes, etc. People like to hang around with their friends while waiting for more depot sales. It gives something to look forward to every half hour in the past scheme. There is an air of excitement throughout the whole day. Spiral Knights streamers have a reason to live stream and spend time with the players, do something more eventful on the side while staying online in game. I personally had attempted a 24 hour vanaduke marathon for it last year. In 2020 I'd also tried something similar, and had spent most of the day playing with my guild, my girlfriend at the time and close friends, which was honestly one of the highlights of my year. However now, removing the depot sales rotation throughout the day and shifting everything to overly inflated featured auctions which almost no one can stand a chance at, just removes any fun from the event. There's almost no point to logging on for it unless you have tens of millions of crowns saved up, which unless you're a merchant or spending a 9-5 job's amount of time running Vanaduke with no concept of burnout, you will not be ready for in the slightest. Even though this year, two of the richest players were banned during Cyber Monday, the prices on items were far beyond reason. The snarblepup pod had gone for 42 million crowns, when the next highest it had ever gone for was 24 million. This is nearly 2000$ worth of energy. In my country's economy, this is a good 6 months of living expenses. How is this fair or enjoyable to players?
- The recent featured auctions after Cyber Monday have been rather random, and we would like some elaboration about it. Is there an active attempt to deflate the prices of totems and mixmasters? Since there's been a bunch of them being posted on Auction House. Why are items like porkular vents randomly popping up on featured auction? Late harvest ear muffs? Toasty extension cord? 2 sets of anti-personnel spikes after dangerous prize boxes just came back? Hunter splash trunks? And now we're getting tabard and chapeau sets? What's the reasoning behind the selection?
- The economy is in a volatile state right now, where almost anything and everything is over-priced, and it's nearly impossible for anyone to buy any item they wish for, specifically cosmetics wise. This point both differs and also stems from the featured auction issue. Too much in this game has gone extinct nearly, and there's just not enough influx of items to replenish the economy. And on top of this, the influx of items we do get, sometimes just ends up worthless anyway and doesn't resolve anything. For example, putting volcanic and divine flowers on supply depot when they're already common, or mech-tennas which nobody uses, when instead this could have been used for similar but harder to find items like roses, porkular vents (not the ones on featured auction), bent vertical vents, or anything lovely, verdant, etc, prismatic halos (the community REALLY years for these please, it's been 2 years since these were removed from depot) and more. There needs to be more items posted on depot sales, and better selection of it to fix the economy, or a revision of promotional box schedules and selection.
- There should be some more active communication between Grey Havens and the community, which could happen through the community discord servers, and Grey Havens could use a new community manager, but not hiring from within the community. About this I have a little bit of a hot take that might get hate from the community, but, I feel that Grey Havens joining the community discord servers will be a horrible scenario. I'm sorry, but I don't trust this community to not just get aggressive with Grey Havens, start clowning on them, etc, and just result in no progress made whatsoever. In contrast, I would implore Grey Havens to reach out to community discord staff and communicate with and through them in a civilized manner. I've been putting in active efforts myself to build relations with Grey Havens and make my intentions to help this community clear through my event hosting with them, which I greatly appreciate, and would like to continue working on. Hopefully this can speed things up, and while I can't speak for everyone in the discord staff side of things, this is my formal request to Grey Havens and the community to let me (and potentially others in the community) help. We do care for this game and only mean well for it. You have my email, and my discord tag is @sylvieonmtf.
Wow, that's a lot of typing.
I may or may not have forgotten a few more points that I'd wanted to make, but I feel this should cover a lot of the issues to be addressed for now. If anything else, I will be making another post, or people are free to discuss as well.
My one request to anyone commenting here: Keep it civilized. I don't want any rude behavior towards Grey Havens. This just hinders any forward progress. I'm not here to make hate. I'm here to make solutions.
Thank you to everyone who filled my survey, whoever's read this far into this wall of text, and whoever contributes their thoughts on this matter.
Once again, my discord dms are always open if anyone would like to discuss this further, both players and Grey Havens.
And as a bit of a teaser, to all you event lovers out there, as of now I should have something in the works to make 2025 a more enjoyable year for everyone in this community. Stay tuned for more updates on that.
See ya all, and Merry Christmas <3
Mi, 12/25/2024 - 03:08
#3
My Thoughts
Boy do I have some thoughts.
Before I share them, I’m going to preface them with two principles I think will lead to a better economy, both for players and for Grey Havens.
1. Items should be available.
2. Items should not be equally available.
There are many costumes (and some costume shields) that are impossible to find within the economy. Dangerous Hound Coats are a good example. Prior to their box appearing on the depot, they were upwards of 150ke (and basically impossible to find). After the depoting, they dropped to 10ke. Dangerous Dragon Wings, prior to the depoting of the box, were actually cheaper than the Hound Coat, but they have only dropped to ~60ke. This reversal is indicative that something was wrong.
Featured Auction exclusives are actually rather balanced in this regard. Moonlight/Dead Leafies, Ancient/Wicked/Verdant/Surge/Frosty Tomes of Rage, Iron Shackles, etc. have always been rare, but they are regularly attainable. Many would claim that they are too expensive, which is true to an extent: someone that only plays SK for 2 hrs a week and doesn’t spend money has no hope of ever getting them. But that’s fine. If everything was obtainable with minimal effort, no one would grind or whale and SK would be dead within a year. That’s not a viable solution. Furthermore, if everything is equally available all the time, there is no point in being a merchant, which kills an entire type of gameplay.
On the changes to Cyber Monday Flash:
The Featured Auctions were mostly pretty good. These auctions continuing randomly(?) throughout the year is good. This will help deflate totems, and crown sinks are good. However, some things that have been common before (Prismatic Seraph Wings, Prismatic Halo) should not be FA exclusives.
The Depot items are a mix. Being every 24 hrs is good, although it does encourage spending for e if you don’t have enough for an item you want. I know that might be annoying to many players, but I understand that it is good for Grey Havens to make money. It also gives people a reason to play every day. That’s good.
The items could definitely be better sometimes (come on, Fire Crystals for Christmas? The same sprite pods again?), but others are great. As long as it continues, there will be enough good items to make up for the bad, so I can’t complain. More variety is good!
Old promo boxes on the depot are great! We need more.
Keeping merchants low on energy is good. For too long, they have been encouraged to sit on items and not sell, but now that there is a reason to use it more, they will be incentivized to sell more items. This will hopefully lead to deflation (even if it’s slight) of many items.
Mi, 12/25/2024 - 04:24
#4
To be clear, I do agree that
To be clear, I do agree that items shouldn't be made too easily available with minimal effort.
There should be some distinction in rarity of items, some items cheaper, some items more expensive, all for different reasons, yes.
My main complaint is that with the featured auction focused model, it doesn't address the issue of availability of items too well, and in turn drives up the issue of expensiveness of items. The more that items that are already unavailable are posted exclusively to featured auction, the more that item becomes more expensive. And the more expensive an item is, the more it's technically unavailable to the players still.
For example, if there was only a finite amount of dangerous prize boxes posted on featured auction, say 10 boxes, rather than on supply depot, dangerous items would still be absolutely extinct, these dangerous prize boxes would go up to maybe 10-20ke on auction, and then their drops like dangerous hound coats would remain at 150ke or go higher.
The main purpose of my form asking how much/how fast do people run FSC to farm is to correlate to the question of how much people deem is an expensive item. The people who do not farm much or take a while to run FSC seem to have answered 1ke to 5ke range, which is fine since they likely have other commitments in life, but this is a minority and what I'd deem the "lower economic class" in the game. Appealing to them shouldn't be the primary focus of adjusting item rarity or pricing, but there are some items available to them already (flowers, roses, almost all scarves, vertical vents, hallow, frosty, flame/love aura, divine/volcanic halows, standard color items, etc.)
The majority of answers are in the range of 10-45ke per item as expensive, from either experienced farmers or merchants, which is what I agree with too, and feel would be a healthy benchmark for items meant to be intentionally expensive AND available to deflate to. This means items like dangerous hound coats, AP spikes, spiral soakers, caladbolgs, etc. These items are now within the lower half of this price range
The issue lies in the classification criteria for what items should or should not be intentionally expensive. Because clearly some items like lovely tailed helms, tech colored items, prismatic halo, prismatic seraph wings, iron shackles, iron dragon wings, etc could stand to be lowered to fit this price range, and are actually extinct. Why are these items being kept expensive as they are? What's the reasoning?
Items like mixmasters, totems, orbitguns, snarblepup pods, one of a kind items like moonlight and dead leafy auras etc being intentionally expensive makes sense, they're quite unanimously known as "trophy" items right now, more than actual use items. But for others, the metric to determine why they should or shouldn't be rare is unknown to us.
There was some controversy about the thunderous, raging and frenzy costumes' prices when they were posted on depot, something about 22ke plate mails? Which, is a big upgrade over its previous 200ke market price. And if this is an item that's intended to be semi rare, then 22ke price is justifiable. People who want this to be cheaper than that with that intended rarity are kind of just asking for minimal effort items. Say these drop to 10ke. Having these at similar price range to a Crown of Summer (Available in prize boxes twice a year) when they're depoted ONCE is unreasonable and weird.
However, if these plate mails are not depoted again for another 3-5 years, then they rise back to 70ke, then 100ke, then 200ke range again, then we have a problem. If these are put to featured auction only, they will still inflate to as much.
While constantly decreasing the rarity of an item to make it more affordable kills merching, there also comes a point where the availability of the item overall comes into question, and where the item may have inflated TOO MUCH. Consider, 30-40ke prismatic halos due to being absent from 2023's depot sale. If that keeps up being exclusive to featured auction, it could reach 50ke+ in the next year, or more. This, I feel is unhealthy to the game's economy.
I'm not asking to bring everything down to like sub-10ke range where people can do vana casually for a few days to 1 week and buy anything. But some items that should be more available to people or have been in recent years have inflated to unreasonable amounts, and needs a stable solution.
You could say the items like lovely, verdant, spritely have inflated as much because their prize boxes haven't been out for years, but even some previously depoted items haven't been depoted again, and instead moved to featured auction. And there's the problem.
Also a key consideration. Accessories and gear tends to inflate much slower than costumes, simply due to the fact that they can be unbound. Costumes though, need to be regularly replenished in the economy since they can't be unbound, only hoarded and resold.
Hence in my opinion, it would be fine to depot accessories once as an initial economic control measure, and then move them to featured auction.
Mi, 12/25/2024 - 12:42
#5
Issues with direction
I still think items which affect gameplay have absolutely no business being this expensive and made to be whale items. Mixers, orbit gun, and totems should NOT be this expensive. Given that there isn't currently a craftable (or at even token item) version of any of those weapons, those which we do have should be made just as obtainable as any other piece of equipment. Hell, I'd settle for them all being shadow lair stuff (please don't make the monkey's paw curl with this if this approach is taken).
Considering those items "trophies" and accepting them as reasonable "whale" items is extremely dangerous. We NEED to move away from that model. No normal player will ever get to enjoy these unique pieces of equipment because of their sheer scarcity and trophy-like position. I do not care if people lose out on their "investment". This was a mistake to allow in the first place and it's best to correct the issue entirely before it gets even worse than it already has.
Mo, 12/30/2024 - 11:45
#6
something something
ngl, of all the results i've read through, the thing that stands out to me is that one player who has never beat vana
we gotta help that dude!
To get into my own views on the form responses:
Overall, it seems that people are majorly of the following opinions:
- Featured auctions are nearly impossible for the common players to win. Only the select few rich merchants will get these items from featured auctions, and just resell them since they now own the entire supply of that extinct item. The rich just get richer at others' expense. Costume makers will not be able to use these items for their costumes, and what's to say their alternative items aren't of the same fate?
This makes it especially difficult if two people desperately want the same item for their costume, or even more, and it's only one of them who gets to complete their costume.
- Cosmetic items would be better suited for supply depot than featured auctions. There are some outliers to this of course, some cosmetic items can be posted to featured auction, but majorly gear reskins, mixmasters, totems, sprite pods, battle chef sets seem to be in the acceptable category for featured auction items.
My personal idea for this would be to instead have a rotation of items for featured auctions, but then later on have them moved to supply depot. This way, there's still the novelty of having them posted to featured auction, having the bid wars, etc. but people can still use these items for their costumes, they just have to wait a little more. However this would take a greater discussion on abstraction between what items fit which of these categories.
- The current daily supply depot sales are overall good for the game. Some of the item choices are really good. However there are things that can be improved upon. Some of the complaints are as follows:
A net good of these depot sales however is it's serving as a good energy sink to the rich players, and I feel it is a good step in combating the inflation in the game's community. I just hope there can be some improvement on this to optimize it a bit more.