State of Achaea Economy

Rackham

*slow clap*
@Tahquil that was thorough and informative. I wasn't aware the length gambling halls (or wherever you work) go to cover their own ass/protect patrons

Ozmatiah

Dochitha said:

Ozmatiah said:

Andraste said:

I think that having additional transparency on drop rates is what most games are moving towards these days.

That would probably just make me go more mad.  I really wanted to get the Pennon from this set, opened a little over 30 caches by my guess, and not a single piece of it.  So that is frustrating especially with a set that has very little else that people want so I don't suspect people will be opening many.

Other than that, I would agree that many of the items don't have a huge impact, which is why the ones that do drive the existence of those other pieces.  They are not game changing, but when you are like me and have limited time, I love paying for efficiency, or perks that help close the gap that I can't just bash five hours a day.

Put a budget of 5K credits you may get some...

30 caches and not one piece...that is almost 1000cr in market prices... it isn't about cost now its rng.  And for an artefact valued at 1400, it seems the rng has kicked my ass. Here is to hoping refine makes me more lucky..

Camroth

I'm not convinced we're comparing apples to apples anymore. When you are gambling on Achaea you're still getting more bang for your buck than if you had purchased a credit package. Usually substantially more value. This has always been the case with me and I've spent quite a bit on globes. Even if you hit it big, did you really hit it big? Even black hat gold farmers don't care about your pixels here.

I have an addictive personality and I have demons. This has molded me to be a "people have to take responsibility for their own actions" kind of a guy. Stamp a warning label on it if you want to because it certainly wouldn't hurt. But people are always going to sue McDonalds because they "didn't know" if you eat 10 Big Mac's a day you're going to get fat.

Drauko

I've lost track of what I'm supposed to be mad about. 

Davok

Drauko said:

I've lost track of what I'm supposed to be mad about. 

Everything.

Riell

Achaea has taught me I shouldn’t go to a casino.

Dochitha

Ozmatiah said:

Dochitha said:

Ozmatiah said:

Andraste said:

I think that having additional transparency on drop rates is what most games are moving towards these days.

That would probably just make me go more mad.  I really wanted to get the Pennon from this set, opened a little over 30 caches by my guess, and not a single piece of it.  So that is frustrating especially with a set that has very little else that people want so I don't suspect people will be opening many.

Other than that, I would agree that many of the items don't have a huge impact, which is why the ones that do drive the existence of those other pieces.  They are not game changing, but when you are like me and have limited time, I love paying for efficiency, or perks that help close the gap that I can't just bash five hours a day.

Put a budget of 5K credits you may get some...

30 caches and not one piece...that is almost 1000cr in market prices... it isn't about cost now its rng.  And for an artefact valued at 1400, it seems the rng has kicked my ass. Here is to hoping refine makes me more lucky..

Can't estimate the chances based on the value announced. The rarity can double or triple it... We all know this from experience... Sigh 

Skye

Camroth said:

I'm not convinced we're comparing apples to apples anymore. When you are gambling on Achaea you're still getting more bang for your buck than if you had purchased a credit package. Usually substantially more value. This has always been the case with me and I've spent quite a bit on globes. Even if you hit it big, did you really hit it big? Even black hat gold farmers don't care about your pixels here.

It's not entirely about the value in this case, it's also about the function and the item. So it's more about whether your want/need is being satisfied. People gamble for money, players gamble for the item. The credit value is a consolation prize. These promos wouldn't do half as well if not for people gunning for the talisman caches. And the caches don't even give you a whole functional item, you have to keep going until you get all the pieces.

Honestly, to me, Talismans'll always be just a little disappointing. They started out interesting as an added bonus to bashing (yay dragon talismans) and then they apparently just gave up on that feature almost entirely in favour of using it as a cash cow.

I'd wanted denizens to start dropping more mundane items in lieu of gold that you could then cobble together for your own use, or sell to other denizens. The fact that the alchemists and magi have the ability to break these talisman pieces down into (a miniscule amount of) gold would just be an added bit of flavour/income to the class. If you can't complete the talisman and need gold in a hurry, you find someone to break them down for you. Or there would be a denizen who can do it for you for a higher service fee.

Minifie

Skye said:

Camroth said:

I'm not convinced we're comparing apples to apples anymore. When you are gambling on Achaea you're still getting more bang for your buck than if you had purchased a credit package. Usually substantially more value. This has always been the case with me and I've spent quite a bit on globes. Even if you hit it big, did you really hit it big? Even black hat gold farmers don't care about your pixels here.

It's not entirely about the value in this case, it's also about the function and the item. So it's more about whether your want/need is being satisfied. People gamble for money, players gamble for the item. The credit value is a consolation prize. These promos wouldn't do half as well if not for people gunning for the talisman caches. And the caches don't even give you a whole functional item, you have to keep going until you get all the pieces.

Honestly, to me, Talismans'll always be just a little disappointing. They started out interesting as an added bonus to bashing (yay dragon talismans) and then they apparently just gave up on that feature almost entirely in favour of using it as a cash cow.

I'd wanted denizens to start dropping more mundane items in lieu of gold that you could then cobble together for your own use, or sell to other denizens. The fact that the alchemists and magi have the ability to break these talisman pieces down into (a miniscule amount of) gold would just be an added bit of flavour/income to the class. If you can't complete the talisman and need gold in a hurry, you find someone to break them down for you. Or there would be a denizen who can do it for you for a higher service fee.

we've had contenders/underworld/renegades since they added yggdrasil to questing on the tree, contenders part of combat rankings currency, underworld from bashing underworld, and renegades could be the premium one since perhaps all shouldn't be bashable? 

Andraste

I just realized that the Bloodmaiden cloak also has the shadowcloak ability. Anyone know if it was intentional or an oversight to offer the standard shadowcloak in the new renegades set?

Keorin

The biggest problem with the lootbox promotions, if you ask me, is how much they've sliced org credit income.

Organisations are increasingly the sole source of affordable credits for newer players, with how much the new promotions have caused the market to spike, and aren't getting any direct income from these new promotions either. It cuts into house's abilities to use their funds for interesting activities, and my fear is that we haven't seen the worst effects of it yet.

Cooper

I don't disagree entirely, but the statement would carry a lot more weight if orgs were anywhere close to struggling for gold/credits.

Sobriquet

Cooper said:

I don't disagree entirely, but the statement would carry a lot more weight if orgs were anywhere close to struggling for gold/credits.

Honestly, we are. We've had a recently IG discussion about stopping yearly credit sales as we are about to run out.... 

Keorin

All the orgs I've seen the finances for at all recently are running at a deficit, and are also stuck converting a lot of their credits into gold because of credit sales. The risk isn't so much that all orgs are imminently going to run dry, but some might need to curtail sales heavily, or that orgs will need to start buying up credits for sales, which is going to put a lot more upwards pressure on the credit market.

It also may create a situation where some orgs are far more able to offer credit sales then others, for the entirely ooc factor of how big of credit spenders your members are, which is just a frustrating situation all around.

It's certainly not an immediate problem, but it's an unsustainable status quo.

Cooper

When I was CL of Mhaldor, we had enough gold/credits/comms to sustain for something like 300-400 years. This was without house gold/credits, but also didn't count credit sales (we don't have regular ones like some cities do), and didn't include any future gold/credits the city would get.

Mhaldor is not a rich city, so it would be hard to imagine other cities being hard pressed right now.

Unsustainable, sure - but you could probably go for a few years without too much trouble.

If you're selling too many credits, adjust the amount people can purchase, and at what price. If you're low, sell them for more gold.

Just going to reiterate that I do agree with you, but cities and houses are not poor right now. 

Morthif

Tell that to Ashtan. I don’t think we are credit poor but gold and comm wise we are hard in the danger zone. 

Aralaya

I know Hashan is having serious credit issues, dunno about gold or comms tho.

Solnir

Most cities afaik are good on gold but bad on credits. Mainly because everyone is hoping CFS will go back down and they can offload a ton of gold sitting in city reserves at that point. But... that's kinda not how economy works. 

Makarios

We've been quiet in this thread because at the end of the day there's not many of the big questions Nicola and I can answer. Any major legal policy shifts (such as related to GDPR or lootbox issues) come down from IRE management and would be applied on an IRE-wide basis. There are things we can do (I like the idea of making refine weight pieces there are a lack of compared to other ones for instance), but there's a definite line between changes we can make on a Achaea level and changes that we can't make on an IRE level.

We can definitely appreciate that some people might not like that, but its how it is. With that in mind, we're definitely open to ideas taking that into consideration. We obviously might not be able to use a lot of them (it is the way with ideas that 99% of them go nowhere), but addressing frustrations with promos is always something we're looking to do. Talisman refine came out of that, as did the cycling piece production. Things like that are definitely within our purview to implement.

Minifie

Makarios said:

We've been quiet in this thread because at the end of the day there's not many of the big questions Nicola and I can answer. Any major legal policy shifts (such as related to GDPR or lootbox issues) come down from IRE management and would be applied on an IRE-wide basis. There are things we can do (I like the idea of making refine weight pieces there are a lack of compared to other ones for instance), but there's a definite line between changes we can make on a Achaea level and changes that we can't make on an IRE level.

We can definitely appreciate that some people might not like that, but its how it is. With that in mind, we're definitely open to ideas taking that into consideration. We obviously might not be able to use a lot of them (it is the way with ideas that 99% of them go nowhere), but addressing frustrations with promos is always something we're looking to do. Talisman refine came out of that, as did the cycling piece production. Things like that are definitely within our purview to implement.

Since refine has 0 value from the piece, and it actively takes credits out of the game, a formula to reach each item in the set with pieces would be great, 3 injunction gives anything above it, but 3 cloak pieces will net you a pennon piece. It doesn’t have to give you precisely what you want, but it adds extra value to what you use higher tiers for (and you can’t refine refined so you can’t turn 3 crappy into a pennon).

Ozmatiah

Knowing the refine formula would help, as i only care about the pennon i am refining everything, and it seems like some of those refines have no chance.  

Unknown odds and lack of availability is frustrating. It falls into the same area that there are other talismans i would like but there is also no availability.

Andraste

Makarios said:

We've been quiet in this thread because at the end of the day there's not many of the big questions Nicola and I can answer. Any major legal policy shifts (such as related to GDPR or lootbox issues) come down from IRE management and would be applied on an IRE-wide basis. There are things we can do (I like the idea of making refine weight pieces there are a lack of compared to other ones for instance), but there's a definite line between changes we can make on a Achaea level and changes that we can't make on an IRE level.

We can definitely appreciate that some people might not like that, but its how it is. With that in mind, we're definitely open to ideas taking that into consideration. We obviously might not be able to use a lot of them (it is the way with ideas that 99% of them go nowhere), but addressing frustrations with promos is always something we're looking to do. Talisman refine came out of that, as did the cycling piece production. Things like that are definitely within our purview to implement.

I see one of the big issues (and this may be one of those IRE wide things that you have little control over) is the overall shift to bound credit sales. If promotional talisman pieces redeemed for unbound credits, this would go a long way towards repairing things. Although I recognize that this may also make it harder to find pieces as people might be more inclined to just redeem a piece right away.

I've also mentioned (must have been years ago now) that upward trending inflation in the credit market is a dissuasion to new players. Things like raffles, lotteries, and gold auctions go a long way to alleviating the glut of gold in the economy and stabilizing things, but there must be opportunity cost to IRE for losing new players to mechanics that (to them) appear to reinforce the 'cash grab' mindset (even if that isn't your intent). (considering the substantial time it might take for a new player to raise the 12k+ gold to buy a single credit)

Jiraishin

Andraste said:

I've also mentioned (must have been years ago now) that upward trending inflation in the credit market is a dissuasion to new players. Things like raffles, lotteries, and gold auctions go a long way to alleviating the glut of gold in the economy and stabilizing things, but there must be opportunity cost to IRE for losing new players to mechanics that (to them) appear to reinforce the 'cash grab' mindset (even if that isn't your intent). (considering the substantial time it might take for a new player to raise the 12k+ gold to buy a single credit)

Yes. When proteges used to ask me IG how to get enough lessons for the skills they needed, I advised earning gold (and gave recommendations for level-appropriate places and quests) and taking advantage of org credit sales and the markets. This is how I myself got tri-trans.

I can no longer in good conscience tell them to look at the market. Even though hunting is markedly easier and the gold gains correspondingly better than they were when I was a newbie, making 12 or 13k gold is a disheartening chore when you consider it only buys -one- credit. Orgs now sell credits for as much as they went for on market when I wasn't yet tri-trans.

[Deleted User]

Jiraishin said:

Orgs now sell credits for as much as they went for on market when I wasn't yet tri-trans.

When I came back in ~2012, Eleusis was selling credits for around 3.5-4k each iirc. Same for the Sylvans (albeit more rarely). Credits were still around ~5.5-6.5k each at this time... Fast forward to today and Ashtan's are 4000 gold each.

Trey

Makarios said:

We've been quiet in this thread because at the end of the day there's not many of the big questions Nicola and I can answer. Any major legal policy shifts (such as related to GDPR or lootbox issues) come down from IRE management and would be applied on an IRE-wide basis. There are things we can do (I like the idea of making refine weight pieces there are a lack of compared to other ones for instance), but there's a definite line between changes we can make on a Achaea level and changes that we can't make on an IRE level.

We can definitely appreciate that some people might not like that, but its how it is. With that in mind, we're definitely open to ideas taking that into consideration. We obviously might not be able to use a lot of them (it is the way with ideas that 99% of them go nowhere), but addressing frustrations with promos is always something we're looking to do. Talisman refine came out of that, as did the cycling piece production. Things like that are definitely within our purview to implement.

@Makarios whoever came up with talisman refining is my favorite person. It gave me something to do with the 100+ garbage Seafaring pieces that I could do nothing with up to that point, and I ended up getting islandwings as a result!