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Problem: Hyperinflation (the refined aether cost of zen)

You need 1000 zen for a mastery pass. For a free2player, that's 100 zen 10 times. 4 or 5 days ago, zen was 490 (refined aether) to 1 zen, or if you spent your daily allotment of refined aether, you could get 100 zen. Now, the prices have skyrocketed to 697 to 1. I watched a video that said that early in the beta, they were getting 120 to 1.


Let's look at the math. If the price went from 490 to 697 in 4 days, then assuming an exponential model, that corresponds to a doubling time of just under 8 days. If that trend continues, then the price of zen will octuple in a month. This is totally out of control and not sustainable. I'm sure the designers are hoping that the economy will straighten itself out (or maybe they don't want players buying zen with refined aether), but as a f2player, it's a serious problem. If you want to convert your aether to zen, do it right now.


Personally, I have 600 zen purchased, but the last 400 will be crazy hard to get. I stopped buying zen, because refined aether is needed for so many other things.

Comments

  • krumple01krumple01 Posts: 84

    Cryptic has in game currency to zen exchange in all their games.

    In Neverwinter there is a backlog of zen buy requests that are in the millions. It can take over a month for your exchange request to get filled.

    There is another factor you have missed. Players who were willing to trade their zen got from spending cash, have left the game. So the demand for zen is higher than the supply which ultimately leads to a higher exchange rate to grab the attention of a player willing to sell their zen or spend cash for some quick refined Eather.

  • I also didn't mention it, but the amount of zen in the world should be proportional to the number of players. If there are a lot of new players, they need to add zen to the universe.

  • havoshavos Posts: 71

    I've seen in other games (specifically which ones I can't recall) that there are fixed prices for buying premium currency. I know Cryptic has their reasons(I can think of a few), but it seems a better model in this instance to enact such a system. Just have a NPC somewhere that sets the price at like 500 or 750 or whatever to prevent the issue escalating and ruining the experience for some players.

  • squirrelloidsquirrelloid Posts: 77

    The aether:zen price caps at 750, so it won't escape to infinity. (What it will do is result in a market that generally has no zen on it).

    I do find it amusing that players complain about the aether cap, given the price of aether is falling through the floor. Aether is dirt cheap now, so if you want more than the cap, spend some real money and get a ton of refined aether. Arguably, the cap must be too high - zen being really expensive means the aether market is flooded.

  • edited April 2021

    I think you are all very mistaken on how an economy works. Think of the event like a stimulus, then imagine the psychological effect that we get when we see something rise very quickly, well we want to buy it quick or else we feel that we are missing out. That's why I purchased 1000 zen a few days before people would be able to finish their event quest.

    The reason why aether is so sort after at the beginning of a game/expansion is that people want early access to max ranked skills and they don't want to grind for it. Though 150 aether is really not worth 1 zen for most people, when you start getting to 1000 : 1 I expect it to near plateau off, that will be the point when new players coming in and buying zen will almost balance out for f2p grinders. Though imagine you're new and 50 zen can get you 50,000 aether, that's enough to get a rank 6 spell right? so to spend $10 and get 1000 zen can upgrade a whole new set of spells to rank 6/7 roughly, when comparing this to the cost of a new character in league of legends or something it's a pretty decent deal (3250RP is apparently $25 or roughly 3 champions). Now it'll heavily depend on if people continue to want to buy new champions.

  • flawed3#9485 flawed3 Posts: 19
    edited April 2021

    In each of the three game states I see a trend pushing out free and casual players.

    OBSERVATION ONE: PAY TO PLAY ZEN PRICING IS NOT FIXED TO THE DISADVANTAGE OF FREE PLAYERS

    Players who want to spend money can offer any price they want to sell their zen to free players. CORRECTION, THERE APPEARS TO BE A CAP OF 750.

    Let us guess that in Alpha the short window of play drive prices of Aether to about 100 to 120 Aether per Zen.

    Now with no short window, the prices are sky rocketing.

    OBSERVATION TWO: CONSIGNMENT STORE PREMIUM PRICED ITEMS ARE FIXED TO THE DISADVANTAGE OF FREE PLAYERS

    Players who paid to open packs, get a FIXED, high price on consignment to sell their opened packs to free players. The inherent fluctuating of these over priced items produces a gold mine that is only accessible to the players who PAID for these items, as a free player would have to grind for weeks in order to reach this amount of gold.

    OBSERVATION THREE: BOTS DRIVING UP THE COST OF ZEN PREVENTS FREE PLAYER OR CASUAL PLAYERS FROM GETTING ZEN AT ANY REASONABLE COST.

    Once bots have taken over and aether is abundant the price of zen sky rockets edging out the free players.

    In all three situations it seems like the disadvantage of being a free player is clearly demonstrated.

    AS OF TODAY THERE ARE ZERO PREMIUM ITEMS AT THE CONSIGNMENT. I GET THE FEELING THAT THE BOTS FARMING FOR GOLD HAVE REACHED THE AUCTION PRICES AND REAL PLAYERS HAVE ZERO CHANCE OF BUYING PREMIUM ITEMS ON THE CONSIGNMENT.

  • envicoenvico Posts: 156

    "AS OF TODAY THERE ARE ZERO PREMIUM ITEMS AT THE CONSIGNMENT. I GET THE FEELING THAT THE BOTS FARMING FOR GOLD HAVE REACHED THE AUCTION PRICES AND REAL PLAYERS HAVE ZERO CHANCE OF BUYING PREMIUM ITEMS ON THE CONSIGNMENT."


    As far as I know this game doesn't have bots on the AH. One of two things happened.

    1. The devs came in and bought everything for sale with dev gold (they said they were checking into the market abuse)
    2. Someone or a group of someones bought the items with multiple days worth of tokens so they would have them. This could include shell dummies so they can keep the money on their "main account".


    As for the Aether problem... If gold were not inflated due to market flipping there would be an easy solution: Allow people to trade gold to other players for refined Aether.


    Unfortunately with the way that some people have abused the market there is no possible way to allow that because they would have infinite resources for free.

  • I'm a f2p, and I have everything (outside of suff cur and bloodsoaked alter, of course). I've got over half a million gold, 7 of each basic land. Level 172. I have max allowed of all fragment types and multicolored mana. I'm perfectly happy as is - I don't feel abused as a f2p. Quite the opposite, I see no real reason to pay $$ for anything. I turned aether into zen and bought the mastery pass, but there is literally nothing useful in it - I'll be getting the Dimir Assassin, even if I didn't have the mastery pass. One more class to go, and I'll have essentially finished the game.

    I desperately want a sealed format...

  • krumple01krumple01 Posts: 84
    edited May 2021

    I usually check the exchange daily just to monitor the rates for changes. A habit I developed playing Neverwinter.

    Anyways I was surprised to see today that zen was not being traded at all. There was no zen being offered at any amount of Eather. This is a sign that the game is now tanking hard.

  • sexyrainboysexyrainboy Posts: 68

    In the long term there will be no zen left for sale at all if the zen to aether cap is not removed. This is because there is a 2mil cap on aether storage and as more people reach it they will start dumping aether into the zen market as if they don't they will esentualy loose it. This will lead to zen being mass purchased at the current 750 max price and none will be left on the market. You are seeing the problem incorrectly, the cap should be opened and not reduced.

  • sexyrainboysexyrainboy Posts: 68

    The broker has no stock in it because he is not fluxuating the prices based on supply and demand many players are holding items simply because he is not oftering a good deal. Every now and again he will up the price and you can see the stock flood in but because this also creates gold in the game the devs seem to have disabled the price fluctuation since April 29th and thus there is no more stock being put on the broker.

  • Unlike most, I have been very supportive of the game and the devs, but having zero zen for sale is really hurting my gameplay. I want to start buying zen so I have enough for the next battlepass....


    Is there going to be another battlepass?

  • You can still buy zen! Just put an order, and wait for it to complete. It seems they are adding zen, but the high prices keep it arounf 750.


    But there's so many orders at high price, that unless you buy at 750aether/zen your order wont finish. For me it takes about half day between the order and when it completes.

  • The Zen exchange is there so that players who buy Zen are able to sell it for aethers.


    It is not there to support the free to play players, that is just a by product of the design

  • ... which is fine. However, without access to zen for f2p, then the game would absolutely be pay2win, which would turn off even more players...

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