Here's how I think ship prices will drop: (FWIW, pedantry for some follows)
Ship X is 520m. It's really, really good, and the seller spent EC and/or Dil on keys to get it, and he thinks it's worth that much, and he's gonna profit. Nothing wrong with that.
Too expensive for most players. They just can't buy it (not enough time, etc, to commit to getting it. Buyer is sad.
Season 65,423 comes out, finally! NEW SHIPS! They're great, better, in fact, than even the 520m ship above! Sellers price them at 600m, they're worth it!
Ok, NOW here's the rub: after a couple of weeks, Ship X goes down to 320m. Because its value is no longer what it was before the new season. And Buyer, though a little sad he can't afford the NEW shiny, can now get Ship X because he's scraped up 320m!
TIME/Money is usually the difference. The 600m-ship buyers are the 'bleeding-edge.' They either have the time, or the money, or some sneaky exploit in some cases, or they're just clever and have taken some time to learn non-exploit min-max techniques... and they buy those elite ships. They're awesome. Good for them (jealous snark here).
With certain exceptions, where the benefit for these bleeders outweighs the cost, and makes them unapproachable by the non-bleeders, they're just marginally better than the non-bleeders. It's ok for them to be so. As long as the devs don't make it so hard to approach those guys, it's the right way to do things.
Artificially manipulating the money supply is, imo, not the way to a better game. The natural supply/demand/tech advancement cycle seems to me to be the right way to work it.
Please reconsider ARC. Please make it optional, at the least. PLEASE.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
Here's how I think ship prices will drop: (FWIW, pedantry for some follows)
Ship X is 520m. It's really, really good, and the seller spent EC and/or Dil on keys to get it, and he thinks it's worth that much, and he's gonna profit. Nothing wrong with that.
Too expensive for most players. They just can't buy it (not enough time, etc, to commit to getting it. Buyer is sad.
Season 65,423 comes out, finally! NEW SHIPS! They're great, better, in fact, than even the 520m ship above! Sellers price them at 600m, they're worth it!
Ok, NOW here's the rub: after a couple of weeks, Ship X goes down to 320m. Because its value is no longer what it was before the new season. And Buyer, though a little sad he can't afford the NEW shiny, can now get Ship X because he's scraped up 320m!
TIME/Money is usually the difference. The 600m-ship buyers are the 'bleeding-edge.' They either have the time, or the money, or some sneaky exploit in some cases, or they're just clever and have taken some time to learn non-exploit min-max techniques... and they buy those elite ships. They're awesome. Good for them (jealous snark here).
With certain exceptions, where the benefit for these bleeders outweighs the cost, and makes them unapproachable by the non-bleeders, they're just marginally better than the non-bleeders. It's ok for them to be so. As long as the devs don't make it so hard to approach those guys, it's the right way to do things.
Artificially manipulating the money supply is, imo, not the way to a better game. The natural supply/demand/tech advancement cycle seems to me to be the right way to work it.
The whole problem, with the ideal of supply & demand, is it too brings about inflation.
How you might ask? Simple.
X people demand Y goods, so Z people supply Y goods at W cost (for now).
Now once Z people notice the demand stays steady, they raise the W cost factor for the same Y goods.
This process continues, until they can no longer sell high quantities quickly, and they hold that price for as long as possible, or until competitor's under price theirs (if their are any competitor's, the #1 reason any market can be manipulated), and start to dwindle their price down slowly, till X people begin buying in large quantities again, and it becomes rinse/repeat all over.
Those Z people are defined as milker's, and try to milk anything for as much as possible, and for as long as possible, and as quick as possible.
Those Z people, can never be happy simply making only W cost they first started selling at, and sticking with that bit of profit, instead they show how greedy they are really, and how greed works in society, by ever jacking the costs of Y goods up, simply because X people want them, or in some RL cases has to have them to survive (not that anything is a pure must on this game AFAIK).
STO pricing in a nutshell: PWE/Cryptic only cater to the 2-3% that sink thousands of USD and other currency into the game, the primary income being the 60%+ of players that spend a little here and there are not important.. Idiotic? YES, but that the greed of PWE they are Ferengi and should be limited to Ferengi when they make toons. I think a real Ferengi would have better business sense...
STO pricing in a nutshell: PWE/Cryptic only cater to the 2-3% that sink thousands of USD and other currency into the game, the primary income being the 60%+ of players that spend a little here and there are not important.. Idiotic? YES, but that the greed of PWE they are Ferengi and should be limited to Ferengi when they make toons. I think a real Ferengi would have better business sense...
Actually FTP games generally have between 5% and 10% of the player-base financially supporting them. That is true of all FTP games. It is not about catering to some imaginary 2-3% who are uber-wealthy and spending thousands per year. FTP is a volume business. Get a million people to play and then offer a big enough variety of store TRIBBLE that 10% are willing to buy some of it - and no one is expected to buy it all. That is how they all make their money.
STO is about my Liberated Borg Federation Captain with his Breen 1st Officer, Jem'Hadar Tactical Officer, Liberated Borg Engineering Officer, Android Ops Officer, Photonic Science Officer, Gorn Science Officer, and Reman Medical Officer jumping into their Jem'Hadar Carrier and flying off to do missions for the new Romulan Empire. But for some players allowing a T5 Connie to be used breaks the canon in the game.
Actually FTP games generally have between 5% and 10% of the player-base financially supporting them. That is true of all FTP games. It is not about catering to some imaginary 2-3% who are uber-wealthy and spending thousands per year. FTP is a volume business. Get a million people to play and then offer a big enough variety of store TRIBBLE that 10% are willing to buy some of it - and no one is expected to buy it all. That is how they all make their money.
that... isn't quite true, there was a research which showed that while 10% of the playerbase accounts for about 50% of all income, the other 90% of the players accounted for the other 50%, with half of the playerbase accounting for almost the entirety of said 50%.
of course this is about mobile games, but it likely holds true for MMOs as well.
i find it hard to believe that a ST game, especially one with a sizable older playerbase, that only 10% of said playerbase is responsible for almost all the revenue.
Not true at all. I paid 26 million for my first Bug about 1 month after the Winter Event ended in January 2012. I paid 64 million for my second and third. Of course this was a point in time when Saurian Efficient Boffs were selling for 25 million ECs on the Exchange - after FTP Saurians became easy to get and the price tanked.
Well I purchased 2 Bugs in the last 2.5 years .
One was around 300M , the other was from the last offering and clocked about 430M .
I don't remember how often that ship becomes available -- once every 6-8 months , something like that ?
But I will also look at your purchases .
At the time that STO was P2P , if I had 1M , I thought of myself needlessly rich .
In other words , collecting EC didn't become a priority until F2P -- speaking for myself .
So you can't name any ships that vanished from the exchange solely because the vendor trash nerf drove up the prices.
Like I said before , from my perspective , the vendor trash nerf is too recent for me to observe any impact on the Exchange .
I understand that it's supposed to mean a Cryptic induced a reduction of EC , but as I said I have yet to observe any significant drops in prices of lockbox ships .
If I were to try and understand the reasons for this , then I would guess that the owners of the boxed ships are concerned about their own lack of ability to earn more EC through other means , thus they are pumping up prices to offset their loss of gaining EC via other means .
But that's pure guesswork .
The exchange has been about supply and demand since it's introduction to the game.
Take the new Xindi drednought. There are lke 6-8 of them on the exchange, same goes for the Wells science ship.
When there is so few of them for sale, the price will be quite high indeed. The Xindi dreadnought was at the cheapest I saw something like 190+ mill, and are now in the 220+ million range...
It's the same thing with say Ferrari. If they were mass produced, the prices would not be so atronomically high as they are, but since Ferrari does not mass produce cars, the cars is expensive. A bit simplified, sure, but that is also supply and demand at work, just in another form.
Making EC in this game isn't impossibly hard, but it is extremely boring and feels like a job. I could be making 60 mil a week if I really pushed myself, but it takes all the fun out of the game.
Deleting peoples hard earned money with fake fees is morally wrong.
This is not true. The value of EC is realitive to how available it is. If tomorrow they pushed a patch that deleted half of the EC in all players inventory it would also cause the prices of all items on the exchange to drop by about half as well because each individual EC would be worth more since there is now less. So there is no loss of "real" value (especially if they dropped NPC prices by 50% as well).
It is one of the reasons I think the arguements for raising the minimum wages are misguided. If Burger King pays thier employees $15 an hour then they have to charge more for thier hamburgers. Since I, as a non-Burger King employee, have to pay more for my hamburger, I will expect a raise (or go hunting for a higher paying job). Since I (and the people who work at Burger King) have more money, other business will raise thier prices to 1. take advantage of that money, and 2. afford to pay thier employees extra so they can still afford thier hamburgers. Ultimately there is no net gain.
You have to keep in mind that a game economy has a slightly different dynamic than real economies. When you run about the galaxy earning EC from doing missions etc, the game has to "print" that money for you when you receive it as a reward (or when you sell something to an NPC vendor). So in a real life situation, imagine if you boss printed the money to pay you.
You have to have ways to remove some of that printed currency. If you did not ever remove any of it inflation would make it worthless since if everyone has tons of it, it is not worth very much. To make sure the economy stays stable, you have to either adjust the creation of that currency, or the destruction.
The prices on the exchange reflect two variables: 1. How quickly can you earn "new" currency from the game. 2. How quickly is that currency destroyed by the game.
For an ingame MMO economy you want to have some inflation. It helps to "devalue" the past work of older players so that newer players do not have as much of a disadvantage and do not get discouraged. The result is that exchange prices are always going to move upwards but everyone also earns money faster to make up for it (like in real life).
The recent EC earning nerf slowed the creation, but did not change how quickly it is destroyed so it was a move to slow inflation (slow down how fast prices rise) instead of trying to start deflation (getting prices to drop).
So, the prices are high because the economy is designed that way, just like in real life.
I understand that it's supposed to mean a Cryptic induced a reduction of EC , but as I said I have yet to observe any significant drops in prices of lockbox ships .
If I were to try and understand the reasons for this , then I would guess that the owners of the boxed ships are concerned about their own lack of ability to earn more EC through other means , thus they are pumping up prices to offset their loss of gaining EC via other means .
But that's pure guesswork .
It is not going to reduce the prices of anything, it will just slow the rate at which they will increase in the future. Instead of 40% price increase of the bug each cycle (like in your example), it might only be a 25% increase.
As long as idiots keep thinking they MUST own this or that ship because ... reezonz ... And buying Lock Boxes to either get them or sell the other stuff to make enough EC/Lobi to get them, the prices will remain high ...
Players need all of the things I am selling for ridiculously high prices on the exchange. Honest. You can trust me, I'm an iconian.
You simply can't complete your STO experience without buying the things I have for sale. So open your wallets for me.
Comments
Ship X is 520m. It's really, really good, and the seller spent EC and/or Dil on keys to get it, and he thinks it's worth that much, and he's gonna profit. Nothing wrong with that.
Too expensive for most players. They just can't buy it (not enough time, etc, to commit to getting it. Buyer is sad.
Season 65,423 comes out, finally! NEW SHIPS! They're great, better, in fact, than even the 520m ship above! Sellers price them at 600m, they're worth it!
Ok, NOW here's the rub: after a couple of weeks, Ship X goes down to 320m. Because its value is no longer what it was before the new season. And Buyer, though a little sad he can't afford the NEW shiny, can now get Ship X because he's scraped up 320m!
TIME/Money is usually the difference. The 600m-ship buyers are the 'bleeding-edge.' They either have the time, or the money, or some sneaky exploit in some cases, or they're just clever and have taken some time to learn non-exploit min-max techniques... and they buy those elite ships. They're awesome. Good for them (jealous snark here).
With certain exceptions, where the benefit for these bleeders outweighs the cost, and makes them unapproachable by the non-bleeders, they're just marginally better than the non-bleeders. It's ok for them to be so. As long as the devs don't make it so hard to approach those guys, it's the right way to do things.
Artificially manipulating the money supply is, imo, not the way to a better game. The natural supply/demand/tech advancement cycle seems to me to be the right way to work it.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
So true. So true.
The whole problem, with the ideal of supply & demand, is it too brings about inflation.
How you might ask? Simple.
X people demand Y goods, so Z people supply Y goods at W cost (for now).
Now once Z people notice the demand stays steady, they raise the W cost factor for the same Y goods.
This process continues, until they can no longer sell high quantities quickly, and they hold that price for as long as possible, or until competitor's under price theirs (if their are any competitor's, the #1 reason any market can be manipulated), and start to dwindle their price down slowly, till X people begin buying in large quantities again, and it becomes rinse/repeat all over.
Those Z people are defined as milker's, and try to milk anything for as much as possible, and for as long as possible, and as quick as possible.
Those Z people, can never be happy simply making only W cost they first started selling at, and sticking with that bit of profit, instead they show how greedy they are really, and how greed works in society, by ever jacking the costs of Y goods up, simply because X people want them, or in some RL cases has to have them to survive (not that anything is a pure must on this game AFAIK).
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
that... isn't quite true, there was a research which showed that while 10% of the playerbase accounts for about 50% of all income, the other 90% of the players accounted for the other 50%, with half of the playerbase accounting for almost the entirety of said 50%.
of course this is about mobile games, but it likely holds true for MMOs as well.
http://recode.net/2014/02/26/a-long-tail-of-whales-half-of-mobile-games-money-comes-from-0-15-percent-of-players/
i find it hard to believe that a ST game, especially one with a sizable older playerbase, that only 10% of said playerbase is responsible for almost all the revenue.
Well I purchased 2 Bugs in the last 2.5 years .
One was around 300M , the other was from the last offering and clocked about 430M .
I don't remember how often that ship becomes available -- once every 6-8 months , something like that ?
But I will also look at your purchases .
At the time that STO was P2P , if I had 1M , I thought of myself needlessly rich .
In other words , collecting EC didn't become a priority until F2P -- speaking for myself .
Like I said before , from my perspective , the vendor trash nerf is too recent for me to observe any impact on the Exchange .
I understand that it's supposed to mean a Cryptic induced a reduction of EC , but as I said I have yet to observe any significant drops in prices of lockbox ships .
If I were to try and understand the reasons for this , then I would guess that the owners of the boxed ships are concerned about their own lack of ability to earn more EC through other means , thus they are pumping up prices to offset their loss of gaining EC via other means .
But that's pure guesswork .
Take the new Xindi drednought. There are lke 6-8 of them on the exchange, same goes for the Wells science ship.
When there is so few of them for sale, the price will be quite high indeed. The Xindi dreadnought was at the cheapest I saw something like 190+ mill, and are now in the 220+ million range...
It's the same thing with say Ferrari. If they were mass produced, the prices would not be so atronomically high as they are, but since Ferrari does not mass produce cars, the cars is expensive. A bit simplified, sure, but that is also supply and demand at work, just in another form.
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This is not true. The value of EC is realitive to how available it is. If tomorrow they pushed a patch that deleted half of the EC in all players inventory it would also cause the prices of all items on the exchange to drop by about half as well because each individual EC would be worth more since there is now less. So there is no loss of "real" value (especially if they dropped NPC prices by 50% as well).
It is one of the reasons I think the arguements for raising the minimum wages are misguided. If Burger King pays thier employees $15 an hour then they have to charge more for thier hamburgers. Since I, as a non-Burger King employee, have to pay more for my hamburger, I will expect a raise (or go hunting for a higher paying job). Since I (and the people who work at Burger King) have more money, other business will raise thier prices to 1. take advantage of that money, and 2. afford to pay thier employees extra so they can still afford thier hamburgers. Ultimately there is no net gain.
You have to keep in mind that a game economy has a slightly different dynamic than real economies. When you run about the galaxy earning EC from doing missions etc, the game has to "print" that money for you when you receive it as a reward (or when you sell something to an NPC vendor). So in a real life situation, imagine if you boss printed the money to pay you.
You have to have ways to remove some of that printed currency. If you did not ever remove any of it inflation would make it worthless since if everyone has tons of it, it is not worth very much. To make sure the economy stays stable, you have to either adjust the creation of that currency, or the destruction.
The prices on the exchange reflect two variables: 1. How quickly can you earn "new" currency from the game. 2. How quickly is that currency destroyed by the game.
For an ingame MMO economy you want to have some inflation. It helps to "devalue" the past work of older players so that newer players do not have as much of a disadvantage and do not get discouraged. The result is that exchange prices are always going to move upwards but everyone also earns money faster to make up for it (like in real life).
The recent EC earning nerf slowed the creation, but did not change how quickly it is destroyed so it was a move to slow inflation (slow down how fast prices rise) instead of trying to start deflation (getting prices to drop).
So, the prices are high because the economy is designed that way, just like in real life.
It is not going to reduce the prices of anything, it will just slow the rate at which they will increase in the future. Instead of 40% price increase of the bug each cycle (like in your example), it might only be a 25% increase.
Players need all of the things I am selling for ridiculously high prices on the exchange. Honest. You can trust me, I'm an iconian.
You simply can't complete your STO experience without buying the things I have for sale. So open your wallets for me.