Packs

Devoted - Lost City · January 2012

Divine_Death - Harshlands wrote: »

Let's rephrase that. PW appeal to baddies in that they can spend a few thousands and be "good" and win when they can't on a "real" game.

lol, I couldn't even get started on why F2P can get some people to spend insane amounts of cash without making more walls of text than I already have. b:sad

Divine_Death - Harshlands · January 2012

Are you playing anything good right now O.o? I'm playing this insanely balanced (compare to PW) F2P tank battle game if you are interested lol.

Sagek - Sanctuary · January 2012

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Un-tradeable cash-shop items is a pretty common strategy in the MMORPG world, so the easiest way to answer the question would be to look at the competition.

With that being said, I'd then argue that it would simply kill the game. I base this belief on the fact that the vast majority of F2P MMORPGs that have followed the, "If you want access to the best stuff, you have no choice but to pay," have died grizzly deaths.

PWI's strength is in its open economy. Almost everything can be bought for either real-life money or in-game money, which benefits all types of players.

Take away PWI's biggest strength and impose a hard division between those who pay and those who don't, and the game really has nothing that sets it apart from countless other failed F2P MMORPGs.

Ahh I really Appreciate your response.

Msward - Lost City · January 2012

Devoted - Lost City wrote: »

If you did the same on PWI and just cash shopped 15$ a month to stay even with the cost of a P2P game you could afford maybe a single shard for your armor each month.

I purchased a $20 pre-paid card last month. I used it to buy cash shop items to merchant in game.

I turned that $20 into $75 million coin from those items.

That is a pretty nice shard for my armor.

Sagek - Sanctuary · January 2012

Msward - Lost City wrote: »

That is a pretty nice shard for my armor.

I agree not bad at all.

Devoted - Lost City · January 2012

Divine_Death - Harshlands wrote: »

Are you playing anything good right now O.o? I'm playing this insanely balanced (compare to PW) F2P tank battle game if you are interested lol.

WoT? I'm just goofing around on eh-on while I wait for arenanet to have an open beta for their game.

Msward - Lost City wrote: »

I purchased a $20 pre-paid card last month. I used it to buy cash shop items to merchant in game.

I turned that $20 into $75 million coin from those items.

That is a pretty nice shard for my armor.

That's almost a whole josd! Come spring time you might even be able to fully socket your helm.

Michael - Harshlands · January 2012

Pretty much you will never be able to drop the gold price significantly, even if pack items where untradeable pwi would just keep rep/rank sales running longer to keep the gold price up.

Also you have to consider the number of players with 200-300 million coins on each server if gold started to drop each of these people would buy up at a certain time to try and maximise their profit, each one would have their own limits and only a few will actually "win" the market.

Oh and as an advisory to other merchants (as currently im bored of merchanting but insider advice is fun), Chinese New Year starts soon (mon 23rd), expect a new pack sale (introducing a new pack) at around that time.

Sagek - Sanctuary · January 2012

Michael - Harshlands wrote: »

Pretty much you will never be able to drop the gold price significantly, even if pack items where untradeable pwi would just keep rep/rank sales running longer to keep the gold price up.

Also you have to consider the number of players with 200-300 million coins on each server if gold started to drop each of these people would buy up at a certain time to try and maximise their profit, each one would have their own limits and only a few will actually "win" the market.

Oh and as an advisory to other merchants (as currently im bored of merchanting but insider advice is fun), Chinese New Year starts soon (mon 23rd), expect a new pack sale (introducing a new pack) at around that time.

Well that would be somewhat the point. it would take the main focus off packs and put it on something else.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · January 2012

TheUnderLord - Lost City wrote: »

If pwi was unappealing in the first place, I doubt those players would even consider playing thousands of $ to get the best gears.

I think this point gets lost far too often. People love to complain, but if the game was as horrible as all the complaining makes it out to be, nobody would be playing it.

There are some things in the game that I think are genuinely horrible ideas, but the core of the game is strong enough to survive them.

It's not common to find F2P MMORPGs where you can compete toe-to-toe with people who are paying $100 or more per month, but you can do exactly that in PWI by either becoming a skilled farmer or a skilled merchant.

Sagek - Sanctuary · January 2012

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

I think this point gets lost far too often. People love to complain, but if the game was as horrible as all the complaining makes it out to be, nobody would be playing it.

There are some things in the game that I think are genuinely horrible ideas, but the core of the game is strong enough to survive them.

It's not common to find F2P MMORPGs where you can compete toe-to-toe with people who are paying $100 or more per month, but you can do exactly that in PWI by either becoming a skilled farmer or a skilled merchant.

The thing is these thread are never ment to be a complaint thread they are more geared to being thought pervoking, altho it is easily lead astray when things that have nothing to do with the original topic are thrown in. I really do value your insight on this subject as it has to do with alternatives that could be given to players to seek, rather than feeling the pack is equal to the almighty. There is a problem whether it's the economy for free players, or whether it's the bordom of the player. These are important things to find out. When people have been jaded to things they tend to not ask a question that has been asked 100's of times before. Even if it's in a way that would bring posative results.

=/

Traz - Dreamweaver · January 2012

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

I think this point gets lost far too often. People love to complain, but if the game was as horrible as all the complaining makes it out to be, nobody would be playing it.

There are some things in the game that I think are genuinely horrible ideas, but the core of the game is strong enough to survive them.

It's not common to find F2P MMORPGs where you can compete toe-to-toe with people who are paying $100 or more per month, but you can do exactly that in PWI by either becoming a skilled farmer or a skilled merchant.

Compared to 2 years ago... hardly anyone is still playing it.

Sagek - Sanctuary · January 2012

Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Compared to 2 years ago... hardly anyone is still playing it.

Times are differen't and times have changed.

Michael_Dark - Lost City · January 2012

Sagek - Sanctuary wrote: »

The thing is these thread are never ment to be a complaint thread they are more geared to being thought pervoking, altho it is easily lead astray when things that have nothing to do with the original topic are throwen in. I really value your insight on this subject as it has to do with alternatives that good be given to players to seek, rather then feeling the pack is equal to the almighty. Theres a problem wether it's the economy for free players. wether it's the bordom of the player, these are important things to find out. When people have been jaded to things they tend to not ask a question that has been asked 100's of times before. Even if it's in a way that would bring posative results.

=/

So, I've been doing a little snooping around. You've been playing 3 years? I just find it odd you're asking derp questions yet you've been here long enough to know better. I do believe you're not really trying to troll.

My little birdies in Sanct don't know who you are. b:question

TheUnderLord - Lost City · January 2012

Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Compared to 2 years ago... hardly anyone is still playing it.

Do you know if there's a way of finding out the total player count for pwi as well as including each servers? I think management up there has a clear idea....just wondering if anyone has ever brought this question up before

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · January 2012

Sagek - Sanctuary wrote: »

I really value your insight on this subject as it has to do with alternatives that good be given to players to seek, rather then feeling the pack is equal to the almighty.

Well, the problem I have with Packs is that they kinda are the almighty.

Most people see Packs as a Free-Player vs. Pay-Player issue, but it never was.

Anniversary Packs were a massive boon to Free-Players like myself, because they basically made it so that a merchant no longer had to do any research or diversification, or even play the game anymore. You could make more money faster by not playing than you could by playing, and then you could just buy whatever XP or gear you wanted.

The bottom line is that Free-Player or Pay-Player, Packs dramatically shifted the game by making a lot of the previous content kinda pointless by comparison. Hyper Stones, FCC, APS gear, and super-cheap Rank gear continued the trend.

But keeping everything exchangeable makes is so that everybody benefits and/or is hurt to the same degree. That's PWI's biggest strength. Take that away, and the game would die.

Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »

Compared to 2 years ago... hardly anyone is still playing it.

I simply can't agree with this statement, because the facts don't support it.

There are more servers than before, my home server of Sanctuary is more crowded than before, and more Gold passes through the Auction House than before.

I know people keep saying it's dying, but the numbers say the opposite.

Ladyhellcatq - Dreamweaver · January 2012

Things being different have nothing thats positive to do with ---there is less people playing today than there was 2 years ago. That statement I believe is true an also negative.

Generally the new players I meet expect to have awesome sauce gears and power overnight with little to no effort an this is not the case in pwi. Fact is (I believe) a great deal of the really strong players and even alot of the strong cash shopers is this....they have been playing the game a year and inmany cases multiple years.

20$ x 12 bought in multiples of 50 gold when you have a 15% zen sale and intelligently invested,spent,merchanted together with daily play that is profitable does in fact = equal a pretty powerfull character.

In the case of gems however, inflation is such that you are scewed if you didn't get them back before the merchants hadn't caused them to be priced where only the wealthy can afford them.They obviously need to introduce a cheaper more effient system to fill the server with more high grade gems to bring thier price down to earth...err pwi

TheUnderLord - Lost City · January 2012

Warren makes a very valid point that there's a wide gap between the claim that there's a substantial loss in player base and the massive volume of gold transactions flowing in the market.

On Lost City, the demand and supply is relatively balanced and the amount of gold transactions are extremely high, I've been on the receiving end lately from buying a ton of cheap gold.

Since November, the crazy volume of gold that was being moved up to this point is just downright ridiculous, that hive of a business goldmine cannot be coming from a smaller player base, it has to be proportionate to a much much larger one. The numbers are just astronomical when I see my gold trans history and the way the market moved since November.

Ladyhellcatq - Dreamweaver · January 2012

I totally disagree, just means that there is some very strong cash shopping going on. On my server for instance on any given day they are spending tons of gold, however we have people who are literally spending multi thousands a month. Gold suplly does not indicate amount of players.

PurBlanca - Raging Tide · January 2012

Ijs, its about the time for another permanent pack sale...
RT running out of tokens! b:cry

bounded packs? no.

Reboxanol - Heavens Tear · January 2012

Very simply put: The economy will never be healthy again until a way is found to remove a great deal of the coins from the system. Simple economics - as more currency is introduced into a system, the less that currency is worth (inflation). In a perfect situation, there would be "A" amount of coins in circulation, "B" amount of coins entering the system, and "C" amount of coins being taken out of the system (where "B" = "C"). In our current situation, "A" is a number that I can't even begin to imagine (hundreds of Trillions, perhaps?), and "B" is so incredibly higher than "C"... which makes "A" continue to rise and force greater inflation.

It wasn't the tradeable gears in the packs that did this to us, well, not directly anyway. Any time one player trades with another player, coins are NOT created by the system... those coins were already in-play... created by the system before this transaction happened.

The direct reason for our god-aweful economy was the ability to trade 2 PToBL (Perfect Token of Best Luck) for a 10 mil big note. Due to the gears that packs offer, people naturally wanted to open as many of these as possible to get these gears... thus creating a large amount of PToBL by the system, which in turn, lead to 10 mil big notes being made and a greater increase in the amount of coins in circulation.

Personally, I think they should have never put the 10 mil big note into the PW Boutique Agent... but instead put gems or diamonds in there (5-10 PToBL ea) or some other commonly-needed item.

Vanflyheight - Heavens Tear · January 2012

id like to make a suggestion and see what ppl think and have to say bout this sort of thing.

Make packs bound but keep the stuff we can get inside unbound.

Pw makes an npc that sells packs and undates it regularly. plus sell the packs at a normal npc price depending of the kind of pack being sold.

For now this is just a suggestion, but would the two points above make gold prices come down and still keep normal in game things (such as mats and drops) to an average price?

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary · January 2012

Ladyhellcatq - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I totally disagree, just means that there is some very strong cash shopping going on. On my server for instance on any given day they are spending tons of gold, however we have people who are literally spending multi thousands a month. Gold suplly does not indicate amount of players.

Yes, it does, but it's only 1 indicator. While that's not reliable by itself, there are other indicators that also show the same trends.

When I make a Gold purchase, there are 3 parties involved: the Pay-Players, the Merchants, and the Customers (ie. Free-Players).

As a Merchant, I see higher volumes of Gold being offered for sale than 2 years ago. Conclusion: there are more Pay-Players than before.

I also see far more competition than 2 years ago, both in number of Merchants and in skill/net-worth of those Merchants. I see them competing with me both as cat-shops and as Gold buyers. Conclusion: there are more Merchants than before.

Finally, I see far more sales than I did 2 years ago. These purchases are from players who want cash-shop items, but have no Gold of their own. Conclusion: there are more Free-Players than before.

Those are 3 pieces of objective data, and the trend they're showing me is pretty clear. If they were showing the opposite, I wouldn't hesitate to tell you, because I'm not biased about the results going either way.

ReMakaBo - Archosaur · January 2012

All I know is the recent ones really blow-

Sarrafeline - Sanctuary · January 2012

Reboxanol - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Very simply put: The economy will never be healthy again until a way is found to remove a great deal of the coins from the system. Simple economics - as more currency is introduced into a system, the less that currency is worth (inflation). In a perfect situation, there would be "A" amount of coins in circulation, "B" amount of coins entering the system, and "C" amount of coins being taken out of the system (where "B" = "C"). In our current situation, "A" is a number that I can't even begin to imagine (hundreds of Trillions, perhaps?), and "B" is so incredibly higher than "C"... which makes "A" continue to rise and force greater inflation.

It wasn't the tradeable gears in the packs that did this to us, well, not directly anyway. Any time one player trades with another player, coins are NOT created by the system... those coins were already in-play... created by the system before this transaction happened.

The direct reason for our god-aweful economy was the ability to trade 2 PToBL (Perfect Token of Best Luck) for a 10 mil big note. Due to the gears that packs offer, people naturally wanted to open as many of these as possible to get these gears... thus creating a large amount of PToBL by the system, which in turn, lead to 10 mil big notes being made and a greater increase in the amount of coins in circulation.

Personally, I think they should have never put the 10 mil big note into the PW Boutique Agent... but instead put gems or diamonds in there (5-10 PToBL ea) or some other commonly-needed item.

Hundreds of trillions? More likes Hojillions.

And yes, this is obviously the reason.

But, right now, there's really nothing PW can do to take coins out... What would be worth the coins to someone to spend trillions of coins on, that isn't game breaking, that wouldn't give them a huge advantage, over someone with few coins? Now that the system is broken, how do you fix it? Any coin sink you put in will effect poor players as equally as rich players, how do you take the coin out without making either one, the other, or both (rich, or poor), want to quit?

Tsukyini - Raging Tide · January 2012

Vanflyheight - Heavens Tear wrote: »

id like to make a suggestion and see what ppl think and have to say bout this sort of thing.

Make packs bound but keep the stuff we can get inside unbound.

Pw makes an npc that sells packs and undates it regularly. plus sell the packs at a normal npc price depending of the kind of pack being sold.

For now this is just a suggestion, but would the two points above make gold prices come down and still keep normal in game things (such as mats and drops) to an average price?

PWE will never make an NPC that sells packs. If they did, it would remove the gold requirement from the equation, which would mean less money for them. Right now, for every pack bought, someone charged RL money. It's the same reason they will not ever have an NPC selling gold for coins.

Traz - Dreamweaver · January 2012

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary wrote: »

Well, the problem I have with Packs is that they kinda are the almighty.

Most people see Packs as a Free-Player vs. Pay-Player issue, but it never was.

Anniversary Packs were a massive boon to Free-Players like myself, because they basically made it so that a merchant no longer had to do any research or diversification, or even play the game anymore. You could make more money faster by not playing than you could by playing, and then you could just buy whatever XP or gear you wanted.

The bottom line is that Free-Player or Pay-Player, Packs dramatically shifted the game by making a lot of the previous content kinda pointless by comparison. Hyper Stones, FCC, APS gear, and super-cheap Rank gear continued the trend.

But keeping everything exchangeable makes is so that everybody benefits and/or is hurt to the same degree. That's PWI's biggest strength. Take that away, and the game would die.

I simply can't agree with this statement, because the facts don't support it.

There are more servers than before, my home server of Sanctuary is more crowded than before, and more Gold passes through the Auction House than before.

I know people keep saying it's dying, but the numbers say the opposite.

The fact is, I see about 1/5th of the shops in west I used to. I don't even see 1/10th of the world chats for squads I used too. More gold just means this game has more cashers which is explained by the deeper and deeper sales. That's hardly any indicator of quantity of unique players. I've been around dreamweaver to long, and no there's not even close to the amount of people there used to be. The new servers don't mean anything. I'd be putting bets on this as a fact.

The marketing team killed this game with rank sale. The End.

Tsukyini - Raging Tide · January 2012

Traz - Dreamweaver wrote: »

I don't even see 1/10th of the world chats for squads I used too.

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. I have never used WC to form a squad. I use my friend list/faction list for that. Other people may be doing the same.

Traz - Dreamweaver · January 2012

Tsukyini - Raging Tide wrote: »

That doesn't necessarily mean anything. I have never used WC to form a squad. I use my friend list/faction list for that. Other people may be doing the same.

It shows the complete lack of new players. All "new" characters are just alts of 101 mains. This ties into the unique players thing.

godsmartyr · January 2012

KrittyCat wrote: »

I have to say, the economy on PWI would probably crash if packs and their contents were made untradeable. Too many things are made cheap by them, and if that was to be taken away? b:shocked

b:surrender

Sad to say it, but leaving them in is the lesser of two evils in this situation.

I agree packs can never be removed after being implemented. However, if they returned packs to their original price of 1 gold per pack, the sale of packs would either drastically drop, OR the price of gold would have to drop below the ridiculous price of 1.5m each; otherwise no one would waste 1.5m to open a pack for 15 tokens.

Packs don't ruin the economy, PWI's stupid *** sales on the packs do.

Edit: Also as stated long, long ago when packs first came out. Take the 10mill bank note option off the F'ing boutique agent.

Michael_Dark - Lost City · January 2012

Reboxanol - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Very simply put: The economy will never be healthy again until a way is found to remove a great deal of the coins from the system. Simple economics - as more currency is introduced into a system, the less that currency is worth (inflation). In a perfect situation, there would be "A" amount of coins in circulation, "B" amount of coins entering the system, and "C" amount of coins being taken out of the system (where "B" = "C"). In our current situation, "A" is a number that I can't even begin to imagine (hundreds of Trillions, perhaps?), and "B" is so incredibly higher than "C"... which makes "A" continue to rise and force greater inflation.

It wasn't the tradeable gears in the packs that did this to us, well, not directly anyway. Any time one player trades with another player, coins are NOT created by the system... those coins were already in-play... created by the system before this transaction happened.

The direct reason for our god-aweful economy was the ability to trade 2 PToBL (Perfect Token of Best Luck) for a 10 mil big note. Due to the gears that packs offer, people naturally wanted to open as many of these as possible to get these gears... thus creating a large amount of PToBL by the system, which in turn, lead to 10 mil big notes being made and a greater increase in the amount of coins in circulation.

Personally, I think they should have never put the 10 mil big note into the PW Boutique Agent... but instead put gems or diamonds in there (5-10 PToBL ea) or some other commonly-needed item.

Excellent explanation but we've been down this road before. That's really only part of the issue. Gold prices are also manipulated by gold traders, "event" sales, desire for people to purchase coin with cash, bh and tw rewards, etc... There are many other contributing factors, but I won't explain them because that discussion has already happened hundreds of times in the last several years. The simple truth is that PWE has purposely manipulated inflation to benefit their bottom line, no matter how you want to look at it or break it down.

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