PW Economics 101: Suggestion to the problem.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

The PWI economy is always a hot topic between the skyrocketing gold prices, the never ending pack/rank sales, and rumors of both a failing game and failing PW stocks.
I've been trying think of economic solutions that both help the players and don't hurt PW profits.

I also want it noted that PW adjusted the value of DQ prices because of people using bots to farm DQs and produce coin. The assumption was gold prices and item value would reach the point where it was no longer efficient to bot low level mobs for coin. This process has lead to the inflation of gold prices due to the amount of coin in the game.

The main issue we have is the disproportionate coin:gold ratio. If you grind 800k coin an hour it takes you 2.5 hours to make $1 worth (gold on my server is currently 2mil average). For those of us farming our gear that is ridiculous when our goal is event gear.
For those buying the items you can rarely get an equal return on gear, for instance the cost of a 10* orb is $25 or 5/$100 but on my server they are selling for around 38m, meaning even if you chose the better deal you lose money as soon as its purchased.

What I suggest is PWI "sponsers" gold to balance the economy. Since the problem is disproportion coin:gold ratio we need to find ways to remove coin from the game. Some ways of doing thismight be increase AH fee cost, place a catshop fee, or doing a "coin for boutique" item deal. But I think it'd be more effective if PWI sponsers gold into the AH that can be bought, the coin then goes to PWI and is removed from the game.

Lets say its just $10 gold an hour, $240/day. You'd be removing around 480mil coin from the server a day, slowing the inflation process. The people buying gold with coin are not the same that are getting gold by charging zen, so you wouldn't be hurting your profit margin. You can do this by placing the gold in at an "average selling price" compared to other gold being sold by players, that way you don't cap the market. The cashshopers market would stabilize because coin would become worth more.



Lemme know what you guys think of this idea/suggestions to improve it. I know people blame the cash shoppers or "greed or PWI" but the gold price is based on coin, not the other way around. And its not PWI's greed that effects our choices, its our greed that affects PWI.

Fintan - Lost City

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

its our greed that affects PWI.

And moreso, our lack of greed. If we stop buying Zen en masse, PWE will really have little choice but to finally start listening to us.

Personally, I think that's the better option to fixing the economy. It's totally within our power, and it's extremely hard for them to ignore. Once they realize that we really do have the power (and willpower) to effect change, they will have little choice but to be more transparent and solicit feedback from the playerbase.

PLAYERS UNITE! b:victory

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I've been trying think of economic solutions that both help the players and don't hurt PW profits.

What I suggest is PWI "sponsers" gold to balance the economy. Since the problem is disproportion coin:gold ratio we need to find ways to remove coin from the game. Some ways of doing thismight be increase AH fee cost, place a catshop fee, or doing a "coin for boutique" item deal. But I think it'd be more effective if PWI sponsers gold into the AH that can be bought, the coin then goes to PWI and is removed from the game.

Contradiction alert! b:bye

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

Rising gold prices has to do with 3 things, player greed, company greed, and inflation.

You are all idiots to assume inflation has had nothing to do with rising gold prices, TOBL adds 5 mil to the server coin total every time someone gets it from a pack. And even with all the coin sinks PW can come up with, it's no match for all the packs people open. And btw TOBL is just an example, it obviously isnt the only way to inject coins into a server. But with so many people having so many coins, way more than normal, they now have...wait for it...more money to spend on gold, so they're willing to spend more. Which will increase gold. Obviously sales have a lot to do with it. But if we had the same amount of coins being injected into the servers every day as we did before packs and shet, I dont care how many sales they have, gold wouldn't be this high.

Imo if they took out just TOBL's and didn't change a god damn thing else, gold price would drop significantly...Think about it. 2% of packs purchased pumps 5mil in. how many are won every day? We've all seen the spam, hundreds of mil a day come into the servers, just from TOBLs alone... Come on now, think with your dipstick.

XMiyala - Dreamweaver

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Rising gold prices has to do with 3 things, player greed, company greed, and inflation.

You are all idiots to assume inflation has had nothing to do with rising gold prices, TOBL adds 5 mil to the server coin total every time someone gets it from a pack. And even with all the coin sinks PW can come up with, it's no match for all the packs people open. And btw TOBL is just an example, it obviously isnt the only way to inject coins into a server. But with so many people having so many coins, way more than normal, they now have...wait for it...more money to spend on gold, so they're willing to spend more. Which will increase gold. Obviously sales have a lot to do with it. But if we had the same amount of coins being injected into the servers every day as we did before packs and shet, I dont care how many sales they have, gold wouldn't be this high.

Imo if they took out just TOBL's and didn't change a god damn thing else, gold price would drop significantly...Think about it. 2% of packs purchased pumps 5mil in. how many are won every day? We've all seen the spam, hundreds of mil a day come into the servers, just from TOBLs alone... Come on now, think with your dipstick.

Actually the TOBL alone doesn't add to server coins. You would have to 2 of them to add to server coins, since 2 of them makes a 10m note. Selling 1 TOBL doesn't make server coins, it just transfers it from player to player, but the 10m note does make server coins since you npc the item and instantly get 10m.

Fintan - Lost City

XMiyala - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Actually the TOBL alone doesn't add to server coins. You would have to 2 of them to add to server coins, since 2 of them makes a 10m note. Selling 1 TOBL doesn't make server coins, it just transfers it from player to player, but the 10m note does make server coins since you npc the item and instantly get 10m.

BH100 adds far more coin to the server than packs do. Again, red chat's pretty much subsided since people have apparently stopped opening packs en masse. So Best Luck is a drop in the bucket compared to Ecstasy/Excitement cards.

Hell, I'd be unsurprised if Cube of Fate adds more coin to the game on a daily basis than Best Luck do right now.

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

As I said, TOBLs was just one example. But all you did was reinforce my point lol. All of those put together... Isnt a drop in the bucket. Its a lot of ****** coins and its why gold is so high.

And yes miyala you smartass I know one doesnt equal 5 mil, but 2 equals 10 so it's pretty much 1 = 5mil. Common sense, get some.

Fintan - Lost City

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Its a lot of ****** coins and its why gold is so high.

I stand by my assertion that it's simply supply and demand economics. We need an archer to come in to break it down for people, but basically it comes down to: If people aren't buying much gold with real cash, those who are can set the price at whatever the hell they want; those who want to use coin to buy it have pretty much no choice in the matter.

XMiyala - Dreamweaver

Fintan - Lost City wrote: »

BH100 adds far more coin to the server than packs do. Again, red chat's pretty much subsided since people have apparently stopped opening packs en masse. So Best Luck is a drop in the bucket compared to Ecstasy/Excitement cards.

Hell, I'd be unsurprised if Cube of Fate adds more coin to the game on a daily basis than Best Luck do right now.

Well yea I didn't think of those cards. >.<

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

As I said, TOBLs was just one example. But all you did was reinforce my point lol. All of those put together... Isnt a drop in the bucket. Its a lot of ****** coins and its why gold is so high.

And yes miyala you smartass I know one doesnt equal 5 mil, but 2 equals 10 so it's pretty much 1 = 5mil. Common sense, get some.

And thanks for the name calling geez, I wasn't trying to be a smartass. b:surrender

Decus - Dreamweaver

Ask yourself what is the principal motivator for rising gold prices and then tackle that problem.

Increased sales on high-demand items drive the price of gold. Yes, the players set the value of the gold, but the players respond to the sales that happen. If we have a few sales where a low-demand item is sold, then you will see prices drop, I assure you.

While this does nothing for the gross amount of coins floating around, it does help lower prices on gold. In the past some people far wiser than I suggested great coin sink ideas. I say charge a fee for entering farming instances. It would suck, but it would drain some coin out.

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

Decus - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Ask yourself what is the principal motivator for rising gold prices and then tackle that problem.

Increased sales on high-demand items drive the price of gold. Yes, the players set the value of the gold, but the players respond to the sales that happen. If we have a few sales where a low-demand item is sold, then you will see prices drop, I assure you.

While this does nothing for the gross amount of coins floating around, it does help lower prices on gold. In the past some people far wiser than I suggested great coin sink ideas. I say charge a fee for entering farming instances. It would suck, but it would drain some coin out.

Coin sinks are effective to an extent. But really we already know what will fix this game, and it's what will never happen. They would have to remove rank gear, or at least make it much more expensive, remove packs altogether for good. And set a timeline for sales. No more than 2 weeks long at a time, and only occuring once every 3-4 months. They would need to fix the alt-FC glitch. It's a glitch, lets be real about it. But if it makes PW money it's not a bannable glitch, it's just a glitch.

We all know what has happened to PW. This is PWIs cash cow that they use to fund other games. They know its broken, and won't fix it, instead they ride this shet for as long as possible to get as much cash as they can to make a ton of other games. Then once PW dies, they'll turn one of their other games into their cash cow, and on the cycle will go. Pretty good business plan, until it runs everyone away from anything with their company title on it.

Sakubatou - Sanctuary

I actually hadn't considered ToBL or BH100, partially because even though the money is excellent only a fraction of the server are level 100, only a fraction of those are doing BHs, only a fraction of those get excitement/ecstasies. And for the ToBL, packs are designed for players to lose money. Its got a worse payback than almost any form of gambling in Vegas (something like 90% average). But I will agree both of those contribute to the amassment of coin in the game.

Fintan - Lost City

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

And for the ToBL, packs are designed for players to lose money. Its got a worse payback than almost any form of gambling in Vegas (something like 90% average).

As I've said many times before, packs are just the PWI version of lottery scratch-off tickets. PWE's in California, so they should know that Proposition 37 (this is the legislation passed by voters in the 1980's to allow the California State Lottery) didn't manage to save California's schools (lazy example; there are better, but this is pretty illustrative) and won't likely save their game.

The biggest difference between an IRL lottery and the PWI lottery is that at least IRL you have a decent chance to at least make your money back. b:bye

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I actually hadn't considered ToBL or BH100, partially because even though the money is excellent only a fraction of the server are level 100, only a fraction of those are doing BHs, only a fraction of those get excitement/ecstasies. And for the ToBL, packs are designed for players to lose money. Its got a worse payback than almost any form of gambling in Vegas (something like 90% average). But I will agree both of those contribute to the amassment of coin in the game.

Players do lose money, but youre thinking of "money" wrong. Our money isnt PW's money.

You cannot, i repeat cannot, directly obtain new packs through coins. SOMEONE has to initially purchase them with gold, may not be you, but someone does. Any pack you get was purchased with gold, aka rl money. With that said, when people buy/sell them that isnt anything but money switching handscoins for gold, coins for more coins. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. But when you open them, since 0 coins were used in the production of the item, since it was originally purchased with gold, and then sold and resold over and over until it found its way to a gambling addict, any coins that come out of it, are a direct inflation of coins. Mainly TOBLs.

Oh and with alt-FC, and just FC in general, and the goonz glitch for a while. There are a lot of 100+s.

Fintan - Lost City

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Mainly TOBLs.

I'd argue that it may well be that stuff crafted via "regular" tokens keeps more coin in-game than TOBL. Flawless shards, wines (no one farms for them anymore, of any substantial number; those people would just buy from NPC anyhow, probably), and so forth.

Just go through the "Luck" page and see how much of the stuff is obtainable via other methods (hint: almost all of it), and how much of it would normally involve consuming coin. That's a silent way of generating coin right there, as it's not being consumed "normally" and instead remaining in-game.

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

Fintan - Lost City wrote: »

I'd argue that it may well be that stuff crafted via "regular" tokens keeps more coin in-game than TOBL. Flawless shards, wines (no one farms for them anymore, of any substantial number; those people would just buy from NPC anyhow, probably), and so forth.

Just go through the "Luck" page and see how much of the stuff is obtainable via other methods (hint: almost all of it), and how much of it would normally involve consuming coin. That's a silent way of generating coin right there, as it's not being consumed "normally" and instead remaining in-game.

Im wondering if the 1500 tokens youd get from 100 packs are "worth" more than 2 TOBLs.

They sell for 10k each, but what are they actually worth game wise I wonder. How much coins ARE they keeping in the game, hmm I wanna know :c

_Ghoul_ - Lost City

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Coin sinks are effective to an extent. But really we already know what will fix this game, and it's what will never happen. They would have to remove rank gear, or at least make it much more expensive, remove packs altogether for good. And set a timeline for sales. No more than 2 weeks long at a time, and only occuring once every 3-4 months. They would need to fix the alt-FC glitch. It's a glitch, lets be real about it. But if it makes PW money it's not a bannable glitch, it's just a glitch.

We all know what has happened to PW. This is PWIs cash cow that they use to fund other games. They know its broken, and won't fix it, instead they ride this shet for as long as possible to get as much cash as they can to make a ton of other games. Then once PW dies, they'll turn one of their other games into their cash cow, and on the cycle will go. Pretty good business plan, until it runs everyone away from anything with their company title on it.

you will have to remove bouth fish and aps or nerf rthem enough to make them balanced with the rest of the skills.
i do not get free t play ppl you do not like rank but lol you pretty much own the market with your aps farming thing.my barb died as soon as ppl saw the damage with interval and fish how you expect a non aps barb to make money that is right cash shop so do not complain now that with all your interval you cant compete cos in my book you make at least for me need to cash shop my r9 gear end of story.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

We all know what has happened to PW. This is PWIs cash cow that they use to fund other games. They know its broken, and won't fix it, instead they ride this shet for as long as possible to get as much cash as they can to make a ton of other games. Then once PW dies, they'll turn one of their other games into their cash cow, and on the cycle will go. Pretty good business plan, until it runs everyone away from anything with their company title on it.

PWE hasn't thought about this so much because this isn't really so true. Once this game dies the revenue isn't going to directly shift to other games. I'm certain a small percentage of players might move to other games, but anyone that has put any significant amount of time into this game knows better than to go to another PWE game due to the horrible mis-management of this version of the game.

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver

Michael_Dark - Lost City wrote: »

PWE hasn't thought about this so much because this isn't really so true. Once this game dies the revenue isn't going to directly shift to other games. I'm certain a small percentage of players might move to other games, but anyone that has put any significant amount of time into this game knows better than to go to another PWE game due to the horrible mis-management of this version of the game.

This is pretty much what I said when I said "Except when their company title scares everyone away from their games". Ie: It wont work because they will have no reputation in the mmo world.

I said what they're trying to do, and what they're really doing.

ItsAWolf - Archosaur

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Im wondering if the 1500 tokens youd get from 100 packs are "worth" more than 2 TOBLs.

They sell for 10k each, but what are they actually worth game wise I wonder. How much coins ARE they keeping in the game, hmm I wanna know :c

A lot of tokens end up being NPCed during pack sale for 10k each. So that's 15,000,000 from 100 packs, where you'd get less than 10 mil on average in BoLs.

There have been a lot of threads with options for coin sinks / less coin injections. I feel some form of gambling will most likely work best to drain coins (like packs are), but they'd rather have people spend real money on any form of gambling.

Empu - Sanctuary

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

We all know what has happened to PW. This is PWIs cash cow that they use to fund other games. They know its broken, and won't fix it, instead they ride this shet for as long as possible to get as much cash as they can to make a ton of other games. Then once PW dies, they'll turn one of their other games into their cash cow, and on the cycle will go. Pretty good business plan, until it runs everyone away from anything with their company title on it.

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

This is pretty much what I said when I said "Except when their company title scares everyone away from their games". Ie: It wont work because they will have no reputation in the mmo world.

I said what they're trying to do, and what they're really doing.

Just add the vision of the company direction to it (which you probably already did for yourself but not written down b:laugh), and you got a rational business plan. Well, basicly you put down the most famous and wellknown business plan that 90% of the companies follow (or at least try too follow).

ImNotFiveAps - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Our money isnt PW's money.

You cannot, i repeat cannot, directly obtain new packs through coins. SOMEONE has to initially purchase them with gold, may not be you, but someone does. Any pack you get was purchased with gold, aka rl money. With that said, when people buy/sell them that isnt anything but money switching handscoins for gold, coins for more coins. Nothing comes in, nothing comes out. But when you open them, since 0 coins were used in the production of the item, since it was originally purchased with gold, and then sold and resold over and over until it found its way to a gambling addict, any coins that come out of it, are a direct inflation of coins. Mainly TOBLs.

It's pretty easy to see with each new "lowest price ever!" pack sale b:surrender

Ahira - Lost City

Gold price tends to correlate to pack sale. When the new pack sale discounts got introduced you could immediately calculate that gold price will rise to 1.8mil+ because of packs intrinsic minimum value in coins.

Its probably not the single reason but I think putting the gold price of packs alot higher (remember 1 gold per pack b:chuckle) would help toward fixing the economy.

Fintan - Lost City

Ahira - Lost City wrote: »

Its probably not the single reason but I think putting the gold price of packs alot higher (remember 1 gold per pack b:chuckle) would help toward fixing the economy.

Or, better, get rid of packs and let people get the items the old-fashioned way. b:surrender

Egads! Did I seriously just suggest that people play the game instead of throwing money at it and hoping that will make them instantly better than everyone else and thereby enjoying it without doing anything of worth!? b:chuckle

Miugre - Heavens Tear

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

I actually hadn't considered ToBL or BH100, partially because even though the money is excellent only a fraction of the server are level 100, only a fraction of those are doing BHs, only a fraction of those get excitement/ecstasies. And for the ToBL, packs are designed for players to lose money. Its got a worse payback than almost any form of gambling in Vegas (something like 90% average). But I will agree both of those contribute to the amassment of coin in the game.

These things certainly contribute, but what you'd really need is a balance. If you nerfed the payouts from packs or BH, they should be made up for in another area... like, say, good coin rewards for your common quests.

The problem with coin sinks is that PWE has historically proven that they have no idea what they're doing. You probably don't remember the days when gold was 100k, but I do. Then in early 2009, PWI started a wave of sales which pushed gold prices near the 150k mark. Around the same time, Chests of Coins were released, meaning gold prices now had a solid "floor" of just under 200k (as anything less would allow constant, easy profit from the coin chests).

So what did PWI do? Did they acknowledge and apologize for their excessive sales and ****-poor item introductions? No. This is what they told us. No mention of the coin chests, no mention of the sales. Everything in that post contributes to it being one of the first, big "red flag" examples of the PWE staff completely failing to understand their own economy.

Every now and then PWE and the devs do introduce a new coin sink, and sometimes they're even useful coin sinks (ring engraving for instance). But just as often they're useless and no sane person would do them (do you remember the "Gray Tiger Badge quest?" exactly - no, you don't). And even the ones that work do absolutely nothing to the gold prices. The gold prices are controlled primarily by the sales, and since we haven't not had a sale in over two years, no one even knows what the "gold floor" would be at this point. No one has known that since the days when it was 100k.

To really fix the gold market, we'd have to return completely to the grind-based economy of 2008 and early 2009. So, uh... yeah, let me know when you have an idea of how to make that happen, because I'd love to see one (really, I would).

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The gold prices are controlled primarily by the sales, and since we haven't not had a sale in over two years, no one even knows what the "gold floor" would be at this point. No one has known that since the days when it was 100k.

If you NPC'd everything from Anniversary Packs, they'd pay 231k per pack for the Tokens / Best Tokens alone, which at current Gold prices mean the "hard" Gold price floor is at 1.05 million.

The "soft" Gold price floor depends upon the fluctuating market prices of everything else in the Packs. Assuming absurdly low fire-sale prices (ie. under-cutting everybody else by at least 25%), the value per Anniversary Pack comes out to about 335k, which puts the "soft" Gold price floor at 1.52 million.

LadySam - Raging Tide

If your haveing Game problems i feel bad for ya son . I have 99 problems but that sh*t ain`t one ! b:pleased

Ursa - Dreamweaver

Sakubatou - Sanctuary wrote: »

The PWI economy is always a hot topic between the skyrocketing gold prices, the never ending pack/rank sales, and rumors of both a failing game and failing PW stocks.
I've been trying think of economic solutions that both help the players and don't hurt PW profits.

....

useless wall of text

....
Lemme know what you guys think of this idea/suggestions to improve it. I know people blame the cash shoppers or "greed or PWI" but the gold price is based on coin, not the other way around. And its not PWI's greed that effects our choices, its our greed that affects PWI.

you fail to understand the economy of the game and how that economy generates profit for PWE/PWI.
People are more inclined to charge and sell gold when price of gold is high, because obviously you have a bigger return for your investment.
lemme give you a short example:
Jack charges 20$ in August, Joe charges 20$ now.They both want to get Deicide for their 5 aps chars

Jack had 24 mil coins after he sold 20 gold for 1.2 mil/piece. Still about 10-14 mil to grind or charge another 10$ extra (50% cost increase)
Joe has 40 mil coins after he sold 20 gold for 2 mil/piece. Decides are still 35-37 mil. He gets the item + has some money left for refines
Same logic can be applied to mats, gems, etc.
You see the difference? that difference stimulate people to charge gold. High gold prices are good for the ones that put money into this game.
PWI doesn't have a coin sink issue, pretty much everything you do ingame is a coin sink. what you need to understand is that higher gold prices are beneficial for all the parties involved in this game EXCEPT the f2p players. But those are not an income generator for PWI, those are actually the necessary bait for the spenders. If you're charging some cash you wanna have some advantage over someone - hence the f2p.

Quilue - Sanctuary

That is certainly not true for everything you'd get in this game. Items that come from the boutique are dependent on gold price as well as player demand. Vit stones are the best example of this. They used to be half the price as they are now, almost mirroring how gold has doubled over the past year. DoDs shot up significantly as well due to both player demand and rising gold costs.

Stuff that have remained the same price regardless of gold, like Deicides, is insignificant compared to the cost of real endgame gear and shards. High gold prices by itself is ****. The cost of refining and sharding is the real cost endgame, and that is dependent on gold price.

What actually benefits cash shoppers is ridiculous sales on stuff that they can buy directly, such as d orbs and R9, which incidentally drives gold prices up anyway. However, high prices alone is not that great for anyone.

PWI just need to have less sales. It would benefit them as well in the long run. For example:

The first rank sale pushed gold up to 1m, but it went down very quickly as most people got their fill of rank. During the second rank sale, gold stabilized around 700k. PWI had to use packs in order to drive gold up. (which again, does not help anyone). You can see players becoming numb to the affect of packs by the fact that they had to keep releasing more and more drastic sales on packs in order to simply get gold to where it was before. The infamous combo of 15 gold for 50 packs plus R9 sale didn't even get gold to 1.5m last time. Finally, they released the ridiculous sale of 22 gold for 100 packs to finally push gold to new heights.

It's just stupid. If they make sales further in between, player demand will shoot gold up when a sale happens. If players know that "the R9 sale won't come back for another x months" they will scramble to buy it when it's here. In between sales, there will be people charging for mounts, aeros, fashion, and charms as always, so I don't see what PWI's ****ing problem is.

Sagek - Sanctuary

Ursa - Dreamweaver wrote: »

..
PWI doesn't have a coin sink issue, pretty much everything you do ingame is a coin sink. what you need to understand is that higher gold prices are beneficial for all the parties involved in this game EXCEPT the f2p players. But those are not an income generator for PWI, those are actually the necessary bait for the spenders. If you're charging some cash you wanna have some advantage over someone - hence the f2p.

Very well explained.

Idunno how many of you actually have done research on the company PWRD which is PWI. on their main page they give a financial sheet as well as some other stuff explaining the direction of PWRD. Which touts it'self as one of the largest gaming companys in China. The Financial Model for Perfect World II(which is what we are playing) is a "item-based revenue model" that is taken directly from their 2011 Investor Fact sheet. Perfect World I is their Flag ship game and is P2P thats why it takes longer for them to get the things we(PW II) pay for with cash. Nothing is broken with their game. It is doing exactly what it was made to do. Ursa is correct in what she is saying.. The more coins we as a player get for our purchase of gold the more gold us paying customers will buy and face it we are what keeps this game profitible for the company. But I u nderstand the frustration for f2p players.. but the model for this game is exactly how they state it.

Ursa - Dreamweaver

Quilue - Sanctuary wrote: »

That is certainly not true for everything you'd get in this game. Items that come from the boutique are dependent on gold price as well as player demand. Vit stones are the best example of this. They used to be half the price as they are now, almost mirroring how gold has doubled over the past year. DoDs shot up significantly as well due to both player demand and rising gold costs.

Stuff that have remained the same price regardless of gold, like Deicides, is insignificant compared to the cost of real endgame gear and shards. High gold prices by itself is ****. The cost of refining and sharding is the real cost endgame, and that is dependent on gold price.

What actually benefits cash shoppers is ridiculous sales on stuff that they can buy directly, such as d orbs and R9, which incidentally drives gold prices up anyway. However, high prices alone is not that great for anyone.

PWI just need to have less sales. It would benefit them as well in the long run. For example:

The first rank sale pushed gold up to 1m, but it went down very quickly as most people got their fill of rank. During the second rank sale, gold stabilized around 700k. PWI had to use packs in order to drive gold up. (which again, does not help anyone). You can see players becoming numb to the affect of packs by the fact that they had to keep releasing more and more drastic sales on packs in order to simply get gold to where it was before. The infamous combo of 15 gold for 50 packs plus R9 sale didn't even get gold to 1.5m last time. Finally, they released the ridiculous sale of 22 gold for 100 packs to finally push gold to new heights.

It's just stupid. If they make sales further in between, player demand will shoot gold up when a sale happens. If players know that "the R9 sale won't come back for another x months" they will scramble to buy it when it's here. In between sales, there will be people charging for mounts, aeros, fashion, and charms as always, so I don't see what PWI's ****ing problem is.

you fail to put yourself in PWI's shoes. What you're saying is totally correct from player point of view.
Simple put: why do you think PWI goes through so much trouble to keep gold prices as high as possible with sale after sale after sale? you and 99.9999% of the playerbase think they're just stupid and r.etarded. I for a long while thought the same thing, but a few months back (being bored at work) I started to do some research.
People were deeming this game dead 2 years ago. It's still thriving - maybe not from player number point of view - but I'm pretty damn sure from income point of view that's true. So I asked myself, why do this model works? Why going against every common sense direction this game continues to exist?
Answer?
Greed.
The income model of this game is based on very basic human emotions: greed and pride.
Greed is the drive for charging gold and selling it for higher and higher prices.
Pride is the drive for charging gold to get the latest fashion, mount, flyer, gear, etc.
As the game economy progresses people afford to pay more and more for gold and for other items. 2 years ago no one could have afforded 2 mil gold. No one. Now? it's a given.

Stopping sales, driving gold prices down? are you insane? That makes absolutely not sense from business perspective because it will cut hard into both the driving emotions above: greedy playes will get less for their gold = unhappy and you won't be able to show off every week some new shiat you got = unhappy. Why, in the name of all that's holy, would you want your paying customers unhappy?

I'm a player too, and a f2p one since 2009. High gold prices hit me like every other f2p player. I don't like it a bit, but I understand why this is happening. Keep an open mind and try to abuse this game fact. You can really make a fortune ingame.

Sagek - Sanctuary

Altho their fincal model works it doesn't mean it's good for business. PWRD is hurting in a sense because they are not getting the idea that when dealing with an US player base we demand customer service which is not a custom practiced in China from what I have seen. In 2009 PWRD's stock was Soaring at $42-$43 per share of stock Per the NAQ. now as of 2011 it is selling at $11.11 a share. Even with their Purchase of Cyrptic Studio's which was run by Atari they are remaining luke warm. But in a 2011 statment from the President of PWRD he stated that they are intentionally slowing down their pursuit of growth and focusing more on the quaility of the current games they have.