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Key Prices, Z Prices
roughbearmattach
Posts: 4,784 Arc User
So, today, saw keys selling in bulk for 68 G.
Zen was selling for only 395 Q each.
These are the lowest prices I've seen in years.
Discuss.
Zen was selling for only 395 Q each.
These are the lowest prices I've seen in years.
Discuss.
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Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
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Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
As for the Z price, it has had a slow downward trend to a little below 400 Q for a few weeks. As someone who generally converts all Q to Z for a couple years, consistent prices at or under 400 is something new.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
I can't shake the impression that there are the same few people (anyone that pays attention to these trade ads can see the same few @handles coming up again and again) that are advertising vast amounts of keys at very low prices thus severely undercutting others and forcing (either inadvertently or otherwise) them to lower their prices just to compete.
I have also seen two players opening hundreds of lockboxes at a time and then advertising their gains at rock-bottom prices (twitchy finger emotes at 1G each and Cyber Cowboy costume sets at 150 G each for example) with the caveat "cause I can
Now, I’m not saying that any of the above actions are wrong (apart from informing other players of a possible exploit, of course). I’m just saying that I have observed some strange and unusual activities from the same few people recently.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Cryptic f---ed up hard core on the in-game economy and they keep making it worse.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
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I really dislike how this is killing off revenue for the game and hope that whatever loophole they are using to generate keys or zen gets shut down for good.
The loophole likely revolves around generating either keys or zen directly or generating something that can be easily be converted to keys or zen....such as questionite.
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Today, keys on AH for 84 G, and Z selling for 385 Q
P.S.
I, too, have heard parts of discussions about ways to get cheap keys.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
You're statement fails to understand how credit cards work.
If I buy 100 keys with real money and sell them for 50g each, I just gained 5,000 globals. If I buy 100 keys with real money and open 100 lockboxs, I can probably make a whole lot more in globals by selling all of that crap for super cheap. I can buy 1000 zen and undercut everyone to get Q for some items I want.
Someone with a deep wallet probably doesn't give a toss about how the economy is supposed to work. They just want to get fast and easy globals and questionite. Cryptic allows them to do it because they only care about making money and not tedious things like making sure the in-game economy isn't a hot mess.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Questionite is incredibly easy to buy and to farm. If I wanted to (but I'm much too lazy) I could run 10 toons through the Alert Dailies alone and net 20,000 questionite a day. Then convert that into ZEN. I imagine an enterprising Gold Farmer could do much better than that.
Plus, I've noticed Whale players in Zone either opening up lockboxes in a frenzy (thank you award spam). Or offering to sell really good box drops for ridiculously low prices. I think that's probably Strega's "don't care I gotta credit card" players.
The drop started then.
Apparently the devs nerfed the cosmic drops FINALLY and now mods resemble the prices from before the cosmics.
I personally went from a frequent box opener to virtually never after that.
I wonder if other games have four inter-fungible currencies like these, including two that can be purchased for actual money (Z and keys).
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
As for me, I don't really mind the low key prices. If I want to spend some leftover Globs for keys, it means I get more.
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Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
If some of the best gear in the game wasn't in lockboxes, you wouldn't have situations where anything inferior didn't tank in value with the introduction of a deep wallet. Cryptic made it more tedious to get gear by playing the game at the same time being super easy to just outright buy something better with real money. That's not player controlled, that's Cryptic controlled. Taking away or making options suck to push people into the cash shop is not a free market and certainly isn't a player-run one.
If the market was really player run, I could make and sell my own products. But I can only buy and sell what Cryptic wants me too and those things are almost always in a lockbox.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Trades are impersonal and self-serving in nature, not altruistic, unless the buyer is a friendly associate who has a personal relationship with the seller. Seller obtains goods with strictly their own effort and/or investment, seller gets to dictate the terms of their sale. If they want to make a quick cheap buck by selling said goods at a fraction of the price of what others are selling at, its their prerogative. Free market. Player-run. Working as intended. Well the reality is that F2P business models have everything to do with making things super easy to obtain with money up front.
Lockboxes aren't going to go away, as long as people keep investing in keys and supporting the business model. Regardless, it's still player-run. Cryptic just controls the kind of digital assets players can own, just like any other game. Since its a F2P game, certain valuable assets are expected to be locked behind a pay-wall, or a huge amount of grinding to substitute for avoiding the pay-wall.
Uh, I was talking about Cryptic not the players. The in-game economy is theirs to control and balance. They allow players to have those impacts on the game because of the way the choose to monetize and how it is so heavily prioritized over the rest of the game. There are things Cryptic COULD do to de-emphasize lockboxes and their associated content, but they've done the opposite.
Really now? Cryptic controls more than that. They also control rarity, how it's bound, cost, where items are added, restrictions on acquisition, the currencies that exist to buy items, rarity of that currency, restrictions on that currency's use, and other things that I've surely not mentioned. That is a great deal of control over their economy. Especially since controlling the in-game economy can and does impact the money they can make due to the choices Cryptic has made.
Think about all of the things done over the years that have changed the in-game economy. Price hikes of all gear gained by playing the game. Huge increase in character bound and BoP items. Reduced ability to gain globals by playing the game. Increase in new currencies. Increase in temporary events. Devaluing old currency. Reduced drop rarity. Increase in lockboxes. Shifting Ultimates into lockbox exclusives. Increased quality of lockbox costume sets VS non-lockbox sets. Shifting long desired stances into lockbox exclusives (arcane flight/emotes). Increase requirements on gaining certain items from playing the game (j-gear, cosmic cosmetics).
There are so, so many things Cryptic has done and will do to control the in-game economy. Thinking players have any control is a fantasy. A free market cannot exist in a place where one entity has absolute control over everything.
Just because Cryptic chooses to monetize the game in a certain way, does not make that the only option nor the best option. Taking someone's money is easy. Trying to be balanced is not.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
When there's an obvious demand for keys at the AH, then it's a sign that lockboxes are an accepted direction for Cryptic to take the game. I'm sure we all have our personal opinions on the ways Cryptic "should" monetize the game, but as it stands currently lockboxes are objectively making Cryptic money, and I don't see why Cryptic should drop that business model entirely.
If for some reason there's a drastic drop in key purchases at the Z-store during future lockbox releases and near disappearance of keys from the AH, then sure, that's good grounds for push for a complete dismantling of the whole lockbox thing. As it stands currently I don't see any sign of that happening, and not anytime soon.
I just noticed a recent drop in prices, and was curious as to what people thought.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
You get a triple facepalm for how hard you fail at mind reading.
It's not that lockboxes exists, it's how they've been implemented into the game and the heavy focus on them to the detriment of other game systems. Path of Exile has lockboxes too, but everything about them is so completely different than what CO has done.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Oh and since we're being all snarky, it's impossible for a person to do a triple-facepalm since human beings only have two hands, unless you're using your foot for the third facepalm, which would be ideal considering you'd be practically putting your foot in your mouth.
Anyway:
I wasn't criticizing people for using credit cards to buy tons of crap to sell. I was criticizing Cryptic for allowing it to happen with the impact it can have. I.E. Failing to balance a part of their game.
Criticizing the way lockboxes are implemented is not a stance for or against their existence. De-emphasis doesn't equal remove from the game.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
http://imgur.com/a/2OuK9
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Same problem with the keys. Prices aren't really changing very much, but the graph makes it look greater. Plus, prices on the AH tend to change more throughout the week since most people buy and sell on the weekends. That is something your graph doesn't show at all.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
I could make a graph which shows percent increase from some common price in the past, 100 G per key, and 425 Q per Z. Such a graph wouldn't have the issues you mention. Key prices have been as much as 35% lower than the past median, and Zen prices have dropped at most by 7.5%.
In other words, key prices really have dropped quite a lot lately, especially since they had a commonly held price for so long. Some have suggested a market flooded with keys, and also the value of keys as currency has dropped with silvers being able to raise their resource cap. Zen prices have only dropped a little.
I'm not sure. Feel free to keep discussing.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Q/zen prices haven't really changed in over a year. There is the typical spike when a lockbox comes out, but going sub 380 doesn't happen much. A really super popular omgawesome lockbox might see close to 500q/zen, but the price usually ends up going back to around 400. Especially if the next box is a Vintage Toy.
Of the two, key prices are the only thing seeing an unusual drop in price. I've also seen much more legion gear where there was hardly any before. Seems to me like some people are dumping a ton of actual cash into the game. Or returning lifers using their considerable zen stockpiles to open up all the lockboxes and poop out keys everywhere. If it was people offloading Questionite, I would think the prices of q/zen would go up with a greater demand for zen, as what happens when a lockbox comes out.
It could be more people playing the game and spending money, but it certainly doesn't feel like the population went up very much. Maybe a miracle will happen and a dev will *gasp* share data with the filthy peasants that play their game.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
Whoever you are, be that person one hundred percent. Don't compromise on your identity.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009