Price of Credits

Rane

The price of credits is too high. Why? Because we pay that much.

Some time ago, the powers that be made some rather large changes to seafaring, and shrubbed some people.  They confiscated gold and belongings, and they did this explaining to the world that it was in effort to balance the economy and lower credit prices.

They also changed the way the credit system works.

It has been many years since then, and the cost of credits is socially accepted as 10,000 per.

This year I consulted the garden asking them if they had plans to ensure the cost of credits would lower, because their efforts many years ago seem to have not yielded fruit.

Their response indicated they had no intentions of making future changes to this area, and that the current state of things was considered a success in their eyes. (They said that the average cost of credits was lowered, which may be technically true, but practically speaking it makes little difference.)

I respectfully disagree.  I feel their efforts have not yielded the success it advertised.

The average price may be lower, but the lowest cost has not.

This makes it very expensive for younglings to get started in this world with lessons!
It makes it harder to teach people and bring up proteges and families.

I believe the only reason that credits remain at 10,000 gold per, is because people are willing to buy them at that price.

What were to happen if we stopped buying them? Most of the young people I know can't afford credits for lessons and therefore are already in a way boycotting, though they dream to one day be able to purchase their first artefact.

The gulf is getting increasingly wider.  The items I own today were bought at 5000 gold per credit only a few years ago (it seems).  Back then I found the world welcoming to newcomers who had a chance to explore trades and seafaring without it costing them millions upon millions in gold.

What can we do?

We can ban together and stop buying credits from the credit market (in game CFS) until they reach the price of 8000 per, which is where they were before the events took place that resulted in the garden taking action to step in.

I know there may be some who are so rich that this doesn't matter, but to me it does.

Consider banning together and refusing to buy any more credits off of CFS with me.

Together, we can make this world a more friendly place, more welcoming to youngling and new people.

You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one.
Maybe you'll consider joining us, and our world will be a little bit more realistically affordable.

If enough of you agree, we can combine to boycott the purchase of credits until they are lower.

Thank you

-Rane Zviera

[Deleted User]

                

Aralaya

I mean... if nobody buys credits then they just sit there at 10k since no one is buying them to remove them from the credit market, right?

Armali

The idea is that people need gold fast so they'll price their credits below the market values and it'll edge lower and lower until a point where people start buying again. That's the idea.

Kayeil

Sounds good in theory but there'll be those who take advantage and don't care about the good intentions and then you have to consider there's a decent percentage of the playerbase that doesn't even read forums and will have no idea what's going on thus making your idea really difficult to carry out.

Aralaya

Also, why would anyone who has credits to sell need gold? What are they gonna spend gold on?

Accipiter

Aralaya said:

Also, why would anyone who has credits to sell need gold? What are they gonna spend gold on?

More credits!

But seriously, what do people who put credits on the credit market buy?

Kayeil

Aralaya said:

Also, why would anyone who has credits to sell need gold? What are they gonna spend gold on?

Ship, ship upgrades, house commodities, mining, tradeskill related costs, that's all I can think of quickly off the top of my head. Sometimes people do sell credits for gold for these things, but not super often. Oh, and some people sell it to acquire inks, curatives, etc if they don't want to hunt up the gold or something.

Aralaya

Always thought of the people who sell the majority credits as people with a Scrooge McDuck money bin to dive into

Ellodin

lol you think the people selling credits on CFS are individuals? credits are mined like BTC, and CFS only seems high because the cost of credits is intrinsically linked to the cost of BTC. stay woke

Dairon

Playing devil’s advocate - it is much easier for newbies to earn gold compared to years ago. Ship trade deals net 5000-7000 gold per for helpers. 10000 gold today simply does not have the same value as 6000 gold in 2008. 

Keorin

Other then ship trades, what other gold generation has been added for actual novices though? Hunting still sucks for gold until you start getting past Logosian. Even for higher-leveled people, gold generation has mostly been going up among the more seriously artifacted sorts, is it really that different for someone without the newer hunting artifacts?

Tahquil

Fishing.

Duh.

Sobriquet

I've a level 81 alt with nothing but class skills. Good generation from hunting is pathetic at that level, and it's one of the better hunting classes too.

Solnir

The topic title has been discussed off and on for as long as I can remember. Nothing is going to change though, because as several people have pointed out, you'll always have that one person that sees credit prices drop a bit and buys them all out, even if just to hold and resell at higher prices. Without fail. In fact, reselling credits used to be an efficient way of making gold, before the price of CFS was bound to the average.

Antonius

Sobriquet said:

I've a level 81 alt with nothing but class skills. Good generation from hunting is pathetic at that level, and it's one of the better hunting classes too.

From my experience on short-lived alts, the gold generation in newbie areas is great since the intro was last reworked, but as soon as you hit level 21 and can no longer go there, you're back to making crap gold in areas that have hardly changed for 15+ years (or new areas which are presumably scaled in much the same way). There's generally an expectation in games that your ability to make gold will increase as you level, but in Achaea right now it starts high, drops quite sharply when you hit level 21, then spikes back up when you get (almost) to dragon and can do the really tough areas.

I think something probably needs to be done to smooth out gold generation between levels 5 and 99, in addition to scaling gold drops based on player level relative to the level of the denizen/area so dragons aren't (further) incentivised to steamroll lower level areas for quick gold.

Voli

If you plan on selling credits for super cheap, feel free to drop me a 24 hour warning so I can bribe gold off people (since hunting is the slowest thing ever), and purchase 100 of them.

Zekeros

I have too many alts so I can tell you that the gold generation in the Minia is not indicative of what is possible in the rest of the world because you can come out of Minia with over 10k easily, but then in Manara the people that take the gnolls only let you take the quest every so often.

Accipiter

From what I could tell levelling an alt in '16, bashing is a net drain until about level 65, you have to do quests to get enough to fill your health and mending vials. Once you hit 65 the crits seem to let you go slightly positive and from there it just ramps up until you hit dragon.

This was with trans Subterfuge and nothing else, other classes may have a different cutoff but I would be surprised if it varied too much.

Cailin

Accipiter said:

From what I could tell levelling an alt in '16, bashing is a net drain...

From my various experiences, it was about "break even" until maybe level 50 and then a very slow gain. But I don't know how much of that was due to people giving me stuff (lots of herbs or minerals). Runie alt was another story, having to pay for full plate, weapons, and inks. Talk about broke.

Rane said:

The price of credits is too high. Why? Because we pay that much.
...
Consider banning together and refusing to buy any more credits off of CFS with me.

This is the part that boggles my mind. I have a hard limit, and cannot understand why in the world people willingly pay more (and then complain... ?). All we'd have to do is not pay the prices and people wouldn't sell them for that. 

[Deleted User]

Zekeros said:

I have too many alts so I can tell you that the gold generation in the Minia is not indicative of what is possible in the rest of the world because you can come out of Minia with over 10k easily, but then in Manara the people that take the gnolls only let you take the quest every so often.

Can easily leave Minia with 30-40k, if you do the low-exp quests until 21. Questing can make "enough" per day if you know where to go; problem is finding that out since most are pretty tight-lipped. Especially since a ton of the turn-in quests have been nerfed a ton... Not on the level that high-end bashing areas give, but it's still enough to get by.

Mathilda

? Even bashing Manara gave me a steady income to refill health/mana/mending plus start filling up on other essentials. This was me as a wee little druid, too, not EZ 2H. I was able to get a couple hundred in profit from gnolls every hour, up to around a thousand once I could kill faster and hunt longer (endurance drain is real).

Dominius

Umm, since no one has mentioned it, there's also an economical impetus if you want to play it that way. Buy for 10000 sell for 10200, do this with bigger numbers and sip some tea while your credits multiply. I'm sure people have coded this by mow into supersmart credit multiplying systems.

Klendathu

I very rarely pay over 10k for a credit, and even 10k makes me wince. I stockpile gold until someone says 'cfs' and then see if I can snaffle some at under 10k. There's too many people who are trying to make a profit from their credits, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it does make things tougher for the little guy.

Mathonwy

When I started, I believe they were considered expensive at around 5k per. People who had been around when I was new told me they remembered when they were sold for ~3k. At the end of the day, inflation is the norm for credits; the cost would decrease if and only if gold were the only way to acquire them, but it isn't.

And that's not a bad thing. If the game doesn't make $$$, you lose talent (producers etc.) and you lose opportunities for events etc., and the more money it makes, the more resources they can invest because they'll see a better return on those investments. And so do cities etc. since they get a certain percentage of citizens' purchases, which in turn further drives people away from CFS.

Factor in people making money speculating on the credit market, and it's a wonder the cost on average isn't 50k per.

Dochitha

There's way too many ways to generate gold almost on a non stop cycle, and not so many things that needs large amounts of gold to purchase that people need to resort to selling credits to get gold. Lots people are generating gold and buying credits saving them for Artefacts. In that trend cfs will only grow... 

Charlius

While I am all for lower credit prices, I am not sure I really understand the problem with credit prices. Though my most recent IRE game was Lusternia where there is the same or less gold generation opportunity, and credit prices over 20k each. (Though it is somewhat counter balanced by cheaper costs for artefacts.)

Klendathu

Charlius said:

While I am all for lower credit prices, I am not sure I really understand the problem with credit prices. Though my most recent IRE game was Lusternia where there is the same or less gold generation opportunity, and credit prices over 20k each. (Though it is somewhat counter balanced by cheaper costs for artefacts.)

I think therein is the 'issue'. Achaea has historically had relatively low credit prices. The influx of players from IRE games, used to higher credit prices, has driven the price up. Achaeans just haven't caught up.

Antidas

Klendathu said:

Charlius said:

While I am all for lower credit prices, I am not sure I really understand the problem with credit prices. Though my most recent IRE game was Lusternia where there is the same or less gold generation opportunity, and credit prices over 20k each. (Though it is somewhat counter balanced by cheaper costs for artefacts.)

I think therein is the 'issue'. Achaea has historically had relatively low credit prices. The influx of players from IRE games, used to higher credit prices, has driven the price up. Achaeans just haven't caught up.

Right? Its all the immigrants fault!

Mathilda

Speaking as someone who's had some experience with Lusternia, it's not very true that artifacts are 'cheaper' there. The credit ones are, sure, but there are also loads of other 'artifacts' that can only be purchased via other currencies (dingbats, wondercrystals), and these are usually more expensive than credits themselves.

With that said, Achaea's far, far larger population contributes immensely to why this game's credit market is in a healthier position than its sister games. There are more people who buy credits, which in turn adds to the stockpiles of the cities and the houses, which they can then return to the game.

Charlius

Mathilda said:

Speaking as someone who's had some experience with Lusternia, it's not very true that artifacts are 'cheaper' there. The credit ones are, sure, but there are also loads of other 'artifacts' that can only be purchased via other currencies (dingbats, wondercrystals), and these are usually more expensive than credits themselves.

With that said, Achaea's far, far larger population contributes immensely to why this game's credit market is in a healthier position than its sister games. There are more people who buy credits, which in turn adds to the stockpiles of the cities and the houses, which they can then return to the game.

for the most part, the Dingbats are a glorified version of Crowns and the Wonder crystals I never paid much attention to, but they seem to be similar to be a broader version of the Bloodstained Shards and the Tome of Muses thing here. I had been referring to the standard artefacts.

I definitely agree that the population and community here does promote a healthier market, a healthier everything so far actually as far as I can tell. Though doing a quick glance around, even lower population games can have lower prices, Aetolia for example looks to be at roughly 7000 gold per credit. My original post was basically me saying "I wouldn't mind lower credit prices, but it could be worse".