Well, listing from 11/5/2021 is done 9/3/2022 Purchased 4199 for 750 each 9/3/2022 Purchased 801 for 750 each 302 days.
If it holds steady at 6 mil flipped per month(72 mil caused ~12 month), at ~50 mil right now should keep dropping/correcting until it hits around 8+ months I figure.
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dracomancienMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 13Arc User
3000 ZEN at 750 : 11/01/2021 -> 09/02/2022 305 days
Currently the waiting time is droping quite faster than I had anticipated, even with the "square" prediction.
I kept the 2 prediction lines as they were on 5th August, just to show "how far" I was (1 month later and already overshooting +10 days from the reality with the square, +14 days for the linear), but also because I expect the drop to slow down as the summer holidays has now ended. Let's see if this guess will be the right one ^^.
As I was myself in holidays, i couldn't pick up the backlog since 1st august (so the backlog line is a bit troncated compared to the others ^^). I will take note of the current amount tonight ^^.
I want to make two observations on the graph above: * The huge spike in early 2021 corresponding to the insertion of mass AD into the economy from the Bonding runestone compensation clearly shows that available AD in the economy drives queue length. That means the new AD drains from dragon gear and purchased keys should have an effect. * The fall in queue length from mid 2021 corresponds to the start of the loss of 50% of the players that happened from summer 2021 to summer 2022 due to the highly unpopular mods. Absent players will not renew their ZAX postings. This player attrition seems to have stopped now with mod 23 Dragonslayer, that was a nice expansion. If Cryptic can make a similar quality expansion player numbers might go up again. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
I want to make two observations on the graph above: * The huge spike in early 2021 corresponding to the insertion of mass AD into the economy from the Bonding runestone compensation clearly shows that available AD in the economy drives queue length. That means the new AD drains from dragon gear and purchased keys should have an effect. * The fall in queue length from mid 2021 corresponds to the start of the loss of 50% of the players that happened from summer 2021 to summer 2022 due to the highly unpopular mods. Absent players will not renew their ZAX postings. This player attrition seems to have stopped now with mod 23 Dragonslayer, that was a nice expansion. If Cryptic can make a similar quality expansion player numbers might go up again. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
Another big problem, the ZAX was broken, before the bonding money came into the game. The ZAX had ballooned, and they reset it from 500 to 750 AD. It ballooned again to 40+ mil before the bonding debacle. The steady growth of the line stopped last summer, but that wasn't just due to players leaving. It had to do with multiple combat reworks also, and then the enchantments. Other things like AD sinks, bard introduction may have helped some too, but the line hasn't shot back up 5-10 million after AD sinks. Not since it hit 71 mil anyways. They have better gear now, but it's an AD sink instead of making people rich.
I want to make two observations on the graph above: * The huge spike in early 2021 corresponding to the insertion of mass AD into the economy from the Bonding runestone compensation clearly shows that available AD in the economy drives queue length. That means the new AD drains from dragon gear and purchased keys should have an effect.
Agree.
It has been a very long time since we haven't seen a meaningful AD sink in the game. Especially one that is linked directly to BiS equipments (without the need to go through Zen Market items for upgrading), I can't even remember any since I started playing (in mod10).
The bonding stones effect, which led the backlog to spike, can also be supposed now as mostly anecdotical : if we project the backlog line we had before the bonding stones (august 2020 - january 2021) and pretend the situation had stayed stable (bonding stones or any other changes never happened), the backlog trajectory (which was roughly growing +2M/month) may have led us to 65M in january 2022, catching up there with the real backlog evolution at the end of the "plateau" period.
So we can maybe consider the backlog (and waiting time for orders made in the Zax) since january 2022 to mostly behave as if the bonding stones never happened (though there is still a little relative cyclic effect). Which means the backlog falling down quickly since mid june 2022 is probably quite mostly because of the dragonhunt AD sinks.
* The fall in queue length from mid 2021 corresponds to the start of the loss of 50% of the players that happened from summer 2021 to summer 2022 due to the highly unpopular mods. Absent players will not renew their ZAX postings. This player attrition seems to have stopped now with mod 23 Dragonslayer, that was a nice expansion. If Cryptic can make a similar quality expansion player numbers might go up again. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
The queue length is driven by both ends : players selling their AD for Zen, and players buying AD with their Zen. A loss in amount of players probably reduce more or less proportionnally both kind (maybe a bit quicker the first ones than the 2nd ones), and i'm not sure about how it really factors in the queue length.
Although the consequences of mod 21-22 fall in playerbase may have been the "bonding stones" orders on the Zax were less resplenished for a 2nd cycle than if the population stayed stable, the drop in waiting time for orders made in july 2021 and after would have happened anyway ^^.
I was talking about that last year, with the waiting time and orders made in the Zax during and after jubilee 2021, when I posted my first graph :P.
I have tracked the backlog since last year (every 15 days or so i'm writing down the backlog in a xls file), and we are still in the aftermath of the bonding stones sales. 1st phase was the january wall, 2nd phase is the current one, 3rd phase will be a normalization (returning to ~0.6 increasing rate), and then 4th phase we will see a drop in waiting time. But this last phase is still quite far away... it concerns purchase orders made after the end of the jubilee. [...]
A loss in amount of players probably reduce more or less proportionnally both kind (maybe a bit quicker the first ones than the 2nd ones), and i'm not sure about how it really factors in the queue length.
Actually I disagree a little with this.
I think we need to separate between new players and veterans.
New players most likely contribute most of the Zen to the queue, old players know better. And the influx of the new players has not been that much affected by the bad mods.. new players were not really hit hard by them.
The veterans are likely dominant among those that hold all 5 slots full in the ZAX. And most likely the attrition in the playerbase has been among the veterans that were hard hit by the system changes. The veterans are unlikely to contribute much Zen into the ZAX.
So my guess is that Zen influx into the ZAX has been fairly constant, while there has been a big attrition among the groups that fills up the ZAX queue with 5 full slots.
If we can assume that the influx of new players has been fairly constant, that actually is good news for Cryptic and the game. Even if the number of players has fallen hard, the reduction in income might not have been that bad.
Hmm, interesting. My 5k listing from 17 Nov 2021 also was filled 7 Sep 2022. So the duration is 294 days now?
Yup ^^. it's currently on a sharp fall around -0.5 waiting day/day since order date. If someone has order(s) made in december 2021, he can do a linear projection : 294 - 0.5 x (date of his order - 17th nov 2021) to estimate the future delivery date ^^, and would probably not be far away from the truth.
Zax backlog on PC is now under 50M for the first time in a long, long time....
Exactly since 21st january 2021, the day the bonding stones removal showered us with AD. The day before that, backlog was 42,4M ^^. Under 40M will be before the first exchange chart was published (mid november 2020) showing how many AD each rank of bonding stone would be exchanged for.
That is pretty amazing...since July, we've knocked almost two months off the wait time for Zax fulfillment.
Probably much due to the massive AD drains from dragon hunts gear and mods. Those will to some degree persist as new players are coming up, but the old players are more or less done with those I guess. ZAX queue purchases is to some degree an old (and rich) player thing.
Looking at mod 24, the gear there also cost 150k-300k, so the AD drains are in place still. That gives hope for continued fall for the ZAX queue wait time.
anyone else think that maybe theyre subsidizing this a little rn? if they want to change the zax in some way it would behoove them to wrap up the backlog first.
Comments
8/18/2022 Purchased 285 for 750 each
8/18/2022 Purchased 4715 for 750 each
328 days.
Almost down to 10 months now. That is of course still way too long, but moving in the right direction at least.
9/3/2022 Purchased 4199 for 750 each
9/3/2022 Purchased 801 for 750 each
302 days.
305 days
And it seems it follows the "square" prediction from the last graph i made rather than the linear one
dateformat is dd/mm/yy
Currently the waiting time is droping quite faster than I had anticipated, even with the "square" prediction.
I kept the 2 prediction lines as they were on 5th August, just to show "how far" I was (1 month later and already overshooting +10 days from the reality with the square, +14 days for the linear), but also because I expect the drop to slow down as the summer holidays has now ended.
Let's see if this guess will be the right one ^^.
As I was myself in holidays, i couldn't pick up the backlog since 1st august (so the backlog line is a bit troncated compared to the others ^^).
I will take note of the current amount tonight ^^.
* The huge spike in early 2021 corresponding to the insertion of mass AD into the economy from the Bonding runestone compensation clearly shows that available AD in the economy drives queue length. That means the new AD drains from dragon gear and purchased keys should have an effect.
* The fall in queue length from mid 2021 corresponds to the start of the loss of 50% of the players that happened from summer 2021 to summer 2022 due to the highly unpopular mods. Absent players will not renew their ZAX postings. This player attrition seems to have stopped now with mod 23 Dragonslayer, that was a nice expansion. If Cryptic can make a similar quality expansion player numbers might go up again. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
It has been a very long time since we haven't seen a meaningful AD sink in the game. Especially one that is linked directly to BiS equipments (without the need to go through Zen Market items for upgrading), I can't even remember any since I started playing (in mod10).
The bonding stones effect, which led the backlog to spike, can also be supposed now as mostly anecdotical : if we project the backlog line we had before the bonding stones (august 2020 - january 2021) and pretend the situation had stayed stable (bonding stones or any other changes never happened), the backlog trajectory (which was roughly growing +2M/month) may have led us to 65M in january 2022, catching up there with the real backlog evolution at the end of the "plateau" period.
So we can maybe consider the backlog (and waiting time for orders made in the Zax) since january 2022 to mostly behave as if the bonding stones never happened (though there is still a little relative cyclic effect).
Which means the backlog falling down quickly since mid june 2022 is probably quite mostly because of the dragonhunt AD sinks. The queue length is driven by both ends : players selling their AD for Zen, and players buying AD with their Zen.
A loss in amount of players probably reduce more or less proportionnally both kind (maybe a bit quicker the first ones than the 2nd ones), and i'm not sure about how it really factors in the queue length.
Although the consequences of mod 21-22 fall in playerbase may have been the "bonding stones" orders on the Zax were less resplenished for a 2nd cycle than if the population stayed stable, the drop in waiting time for orders made in july 2021 and after would have happened anyway ^^.
I was talking about that last year, with the waiting time and orders made in the Zax during and after jubilee 2021, when I posted my first graph :P.
I think we need to separate between new players and veterans.
New players most likely contribute most of the Zen to the queue, old players know better. And the influx of the new players has not been that much affected by the bad mods.. new players were not really hit hard by them.
The veterans are likely dominant among those that hold all 5 slots full in the ZAX. And most likely the attrition in the playerbase has been among the veterans that were hard hit by the system changes. The veterans are unlikely to contribute much Zen into the ZAX.
So my guess is that Zen influx into the ZAX has been fairly constant, while there has been a big attrition among the groups that fills up the ZAX queue with 5 full slots.
If we can assume that the influx of new players has been fairly constant, that actually is good news for Cryptic and the game. Even if the number of players has fallen hard, the reduction in income might not have been that bad.
Filled 9/7/20222.
If someone has order(s) made in december 2021, he can do a linear projection : 294 - 0.5 x (date of his order - 17th nov 2021) to estimate the future delivery date ^^, and would probably not be far away from the truth.
Under 40M will be before the first exchange chart was published (mid november 2020) showing how many AD each rank of bonding stone would be exchanged for.
Looking at mod 24, the gear there also cost 150k-300k, so the AD drains are in place still. That gives hope for continued fall for the ZAX queue wait time.