"X Event/Addition Will Break the Economy!" - A Discussion

TWMagimay · June 2017

aeee98 wrote: »

It is a problem if anyone who can play daily and often enough randomly can get a VM regardless of how skilled or trap the player is, there is just no argument to that because as of this patch it is true.

This has been true since the very beginning. You could be the biggest trap ever, grind your Argonea BAMs, sell vitriols, buy quils, get vm1 despite being unable to do anything but floormat Queen. It's just gotten cheaper and easier over time.

kamizuma wrote: »

Forgot to address how to "fix" all this. Well that's not an easy question but it's pretty clear that the proper "balance" is still not reached and I'd personally suggest holding off on the event spam and letting things actually settle down for once before shoving more events into the game due to player demand/requests.

Imo, events could create a separate economy from the cash shop and the daily grind. There are items that exist in tera's limbo, items that can not be obtained through either cash shop or regular playing. It's those items that should be the focus of events. Dragon Fireworks, mana candy, that glitchy Alice dress, Nuthatch weapon skins etc. They could even create event-specific items.

AshirogiMuto · June 2017

kamizuma wrote: »

Here's what I wrote about the in game economy itself a few months ago regarding how the game has changed over time. Some of these paragraphs were written in response to what other people said so the context might appear off/random (I separate different posts by "---different post---" so you can see where I kinda change topic but I'm just pasting all of my text because I still believe it's applicable and I don't have the time to edit it into 1 coherent post/update prices at the moment. After that, I'll try to relate it to events in the way I see how events impact things. Note: Again, these prices reference a previous tier of gear (when ambush was BiS) but scaling everything down a tier actually leads to comparable prices for the purpose of this analysis which again I feel is very applicable.

----start of long wall of text----

hi all, this will be a post about the current economic state of the game and what I believe is the logical conclusion that will follow if we continue down this path. Many of my conclusions and predictions for the future are drawn from current observations, talking with other people (in the category of players involved), and reflecting upon past trends that actually did occur in the past. You may feel that I am wrong about some/all of the things in this post (and maybe I am because I don't claim to know everything of course) but nonetheless I feel this is an extremely important topic we need to talk about and I'm surprised nobody else has brought it up yet (although that could be because you don't notice it/care/feel like it's an actual problem).

Anyways, I'll start off by saying that the current economic state of the game is very...unsettling. Core enchanting materials (mwa/feedstock/spellbind) have hit all time lows when referenced to similar time periods after new gear/big dungeon updates. Nowadays, much of the "cost" of gearing has shifted from these core items to new things like dragons/innerwear/brooches/etchings/components of BiS (ambush) gear that are not enchanting related (this means design, ingot, cost of boxes if one chooses to go that route, ect.). With the release of the 30 man raid, we currently see prices somewhat similar to the following for each category of item --> 300-400k for a 2.0 dragon (and 400k+ for a 1.5), 150-200k for a signature crit innerwear, 400k+ for a quatrefoil brooch, 45-55k for armor/foot etching IIIs, 90-115k for glove/weapon etching IIIs depending on type, and very variable prices for components of BiS gear depending on class specific designs but some constants are 400-550 per caprin handle, 800-1k per lilith treasure, and 800-1k per lachelilith treasure. Now, this is all referencing current BiS gear so I'll give some prices for secondary gear people might be considering as well (mainly imperator +15 and the 2nd tier of each other type of item previously mentioned). We are currently looking at around 300-400 per colluva ingot, 250-350 per imperator treasure, 125-250 per factory cabinet, 8-10k per foot/armor etching II, 15-20k per weapon/glove etching II, 70k-95k per superior (non signature) crit innerwear, 40-45k for empowered/quickcarve brooch, very variable prices for imperator designs, 50k for imperator footwear boxes, 75-95k for imperator hand/body boxes, 145-200k for imperator weapon boxes and finally skip the make it yourself and you can just buy an imperator +15 for 250k t3 boots, 250-300k t3 gloves, 350k t3 weapon, and 285-300k t3 body (the t represents tier of etching and you can subtract 50k-75k for tier 2 or non etched equivalents). From these numbers it should be more clear where most of the "cost" of gearing is distributed and what category of item those costs fall in. Now, we can look at what's been happening/will happen in the immediate future.

First, what gives gear value? And also, what is value even? Everyone probably has their own definition of "value" in this game (and in life) but it should be a common viewpoint that something has "value" when it's either useful (to some extent) or not something everyone easily can get. An item first needs to have a use to be valued at all (and yes, in this game costumes aren't entirely "useless" because they do serve the function of making your character look nice or showing off your character hence why costumes are core items in this game funnily enough). An item also needs to be somewhat difficult to obtain for it to retain value or else it'll just lose value over time (and the biggest reason for this is because there are way less players entering this game than those quitting/finished with the game so eventually the demand slowly drops to 0 on all items with some obviously reaching 0 faster than others). I define "finished" with the game as someone that has completely finished gearing up (and costuming up) so they will not be a "consumer" (consumer is then defined as someone that will soulbind or take that item out of the game thus removing it forever from circulation) of items in the game anymore due to those items not having a use for them anymore. With these notions in mind, it should be clear that all gear related items will indeed lose its value over time (although some lose their value so slowly that we will never seen it actually happen anytime soon). The alarming thing though is which gear related items lose their value a lot faster than others. Since things like 2.0 (and 1.5) dragons and signature innerwears primarily come from the cash store, they will retain their value far longer than things like actual gear, etchings, and brooches. With the introduction of the 30 man raid, we will see some changes happen to the "value" of these primarily obtained in game items. First, gear value will take a HUGE hit. The 30 man makes vm8 designs rain like candy along with introducing huge amounts of lilith/lachelith treasure boxes into the game. In fact, on MT alone (and using it as an example to draw reference from because what happens on MT usually happens on other servers to some extent a little while later since MT is by far the most "progressed" server in the game), many vm8 designs already dropped 20-45% in ONE DAY with many raids not even doing their runs yet due to waiting for increased availability of raid members on Friday/weekend. Lilith/lachlith treasures also dropped 20% already. Now consider what will happen when more people are able to finally step foot/master 30 man in the long run. Of course, in the short term there might actually be an increase of "value" on these things (on non MT servers) because of people finally gearing up (since they weren't geared already and a lot of people that swiped for Black Friday now have gold) but overall in the long run (I'd say 2+ months from now), I think vm8 designs will definitely be under 1k gold each (apparently they're like 200 gold for most designs on ktera atm), lilith treasure/lachelith treasure will be under 200 gold each. Now that's in the long run and while we slowly move towards that time point these items will be consistently bleeding value. Next, etchings are on the chopping block because the 30 man raid awards permanent tier 4 etchings. The collapse of etching prices brings about relevant drops in prices for gathering (scarabs and gods tear), armor crafting (aterstod oil), titan peace/embers from dungeon drops and etching III designs from dungeon (mainly ghilleghlade) drops. I'm not quite sure yet how many goddess's tears/gemstones are dropped by 30 man raid/upcoming Civil unreset/rally quests (due to patch notes saying increased goddess gemstone) but if significant amounts come from those sources then brooch prices will start to take hits. As you can see, all "primarily in game" obtained items are already starting to quickly lose value (note: I did not include MWA/spellbind because the cash store continually pumps ungodly amounts of them into the game but that's for another discussion later on if we choose to address it but it should also be noted that they're at all time low prices and will most likely continue to drop in price).

What does this mean though? It means it's great if you have gold because it's now cheaper than ever to just straight up buy things. It also means that it sucks if you rely on these items for in game income. What type of players fall into each category? It should be clear that if you have gold right now the game is good for you and if you don't, it sucks. Who has gold nowadays though? Some people that currently have gold right now are mostly veteran players that have been continually playing for a while so they've built up their resources over the years and have consistently been at end game (and also managed their gold somewhat wisely and haven't done many questionable, in my opinion, purchases like 200k costumes) so they've been able to capitalize on high prices for new gear related items for the other group of players with gold, the swipers (people who spend irl money on this game). This is going to be the crux of what I'm getting at in this post btw. It's becoming increasingly clear that many of the people with gold in this game (and consequently, gear) swiped for it. Gone are the days where most of the people with gear are ones that full on earned it themselves through in game free to play methods and instead I'd actually say 80% of the players with multiple pieces/full BiS gear at this point in time have either consistently spent money on EMP over the years or did some huge spending 1-2 times (most likely during Black Friday) for their gear. The fact is this game is increasingly catering to the swipers and it's disturbing how much "easier" it is to gear up when you swipe vs play the game. Like I've said in previous posts, spending money on this game nowadays gets you more gold for your emp and even more in game items than ever before (due to increasing emp prices and increasingly decreasing costs of gear related items as I mentioned in the previous paragraph). For reference, if you spent $500 during Black Friday for 60k emp, you could get close to 4 million gold on the spot if you just sold your emp to other players and a projected almost 10 million gold if you are smart with the items and sell the items yourself over the next few months. Sound disgusting? It should, considering how difficult it is for most people to get that amount in game without swiping. Tera really is a free to play game, I'll say that, but it's becoming increasingly more convenient to just swipe than play the game and that's the road this game is heading towards. It's catering more and more to the casuals and the swipers (and those with lots of gold) and leaving little for everyone else.

---different post----

A large part of this game revolves around the gearing process because there really isn't much to do once you're fully geared. Once someone finishes gearing they really only have a few options left: gear an alt, prepare for next patch, or afk until next patch. Speeding up the gearing process only drives people more and more towards the last option (afk until next patch) because there's only so many alts you want to gear up and only so much preparing you want/need to do for next patch.

---different post---

Tera has always favored people that swiped (or have more free time) because they're able to put resources (time in game or money out of game) in that others can't/aren't willing to. However, that precise balance of whether or not we want to reward in game time spent on the game vs outside money spent is the point I'm getting at. It is my firm belief that someone that has "worked hard in game" for their gear values it more and thus feels more attached to the game and will continue playing. I say this from many personal examples and observations which include events such as: many people I sponsor and give gear to tend to quit the game shortly after (and nearly half of the people I've loaned resources to tend to just quit instead of continuing playing the game after I geared them up to pay me back), lots of people that spent lots of money on emp to bypass the gear grind (I'm talking thousands of dollars) still don't feel as "invested" in the game and easily quit soon after gearing up, and people that come back to the game and get carried to new gear pieces usually just take a break again due to feeling that they'll get the help again when needed. I'd actually say it's "easier" to swipe now. I'll give you some numbers so you can see where I'm coming from. During the middle of vm1 (when I started playing shortly after it became free to play), a +12 regent weapon cost around 255k on MT for popular classes at the time (warrior/sorc), mwa were 125 each, mes were 550 each, vm1 designs ranged from 25k for a priest weapon (nobody really wanted to make healer weapons) to 800k for a lancer chest, argon vitriols (needed to make vm1) were 60k each, and quills (if you were unable to run mchm and had to buy them from people) were 150-200k each. Also note these prices were on MT so there maybe be differences if you played on other servers. EMP at the time was 1:2-1:3. That meant $100 of EMP = 12k emp = 24k-36k gold if you just sold it to players (which many did at the time). That meant if you wanted to swipe for a +12 regent weapon for a popular class it would cost you between 600 to 1000 dollars! AND IT WASN'T EVEN BEST IN SLOT! If we then look at someone that wanted to swipe for a BiS weapon (vm1) for a popular class (warrior) we can look at the following math: 3x argon vitriols (240k) + vm1 design (it was around 400k for warrior weapons when I started playing), 3x quills (at least 450k if buying), enchanting and mwing cost (averaged out to around 150k back then based on my experimenting with +12ing items for reselling). This meant straight up swiping for a BiS weapon back then cost at least 1,240,000 gold back then (interestingly, a similar number to today's cost to straight up buy a t3 etched current VM early on off someone). At an emp rate of 1:2-1:3, they would be spending between $3400-$5100 on just ONE piece of gear! At today's 1:40 (or 1:65 during Black Friday), they would have only spent $150-250 for the BiS gear equivalent! Of course the argument could be made that it's easier to gear now than back then (and I agree) but I wouldn't necessarily say it's ~20x easier to gear in BiS for a pure free to play player nowadays compared to before because again, I'd like to point out by my estimations on MT only 20% of the people that started the 30 man patch with full +15 ambush are "pure free to play players" that don't regularly spend (or 1 time burst spent during Black Friday) money on EMP. This example referencing vm1 though is the most extreme example of "in game playing" being infinitely more rewarding than swiping and accordingly, a very large amount of people with full vm1 back then got it through free to play methods (I mean seriously, there were only 2 people I can personally remember on MT that fully swiped for full vm1 throughout the whole patch that I had dealings with due to me buying their emp and my group selling them quills because the cost to go down such a route was so incredibly expensive that literally only people with 10k+ disposable income could afford to do so).

Another time point we can look at is during the steam release which I'd call "the midpoint" of emp prices between vm1 and emp prices today due to it being ~1.5 years after vm1 and ~1.6 years before today. During the steam release of mid 2015, emp was consistently 1:9-1:10 and a current BiS vm weapon was selling for around 550k-700k. Accordingly, it would cost around $480-$600 to swipe for your weapon which is still about 3-4x (exluding Black Friday or 2-2.5x including) more expensive than today. During those times, the amount of swipers started becoming more and more prevalent and more and more people running around with BiS vm had spent money on EMP in some way. As we continued down the road of slowly rising emp costs coupled with the slowly decreasing value of mwa and sometimes easier methods of gearing (such as vm5/vm6 1 design fits all methods), we come to today's state of the game where a large number of current "end game players" did indeed turn into a swiper to some extent. The list of names of players that have sold/continue to sell me emp is pretty shocking and now includes many high profile players in top pve guilds such as Amaterasu and Synergy/Treehouse and it's disturbing to see these talented players turn to swiping when back during vm1 or even vm3-vm6 players of their caliber and skillset would have never considered such a thing. As such, I came to the conclusion (with numbers and observations) that it has continually become more and more appealing to just swipe rather than play the game out because 1 hour at a job that pays $10/hour is approximately 44k gold now while less than 0.1% of the playerbase even knows how to consistently make more than 10k an hour nowadays.

Yeah most aspects of gearing (excluding dragon/brooch/innerwear to some extent) are a lot easier for free to play players now but the advantage of swiping is so great compared to playing free to play in the sense that you save so much time relative to before that more and more people are seeing the appeal/need to turn swiper rather than continue playing free to play. Of course there wouldn't be a problem with this if these people continued playing the game but as it turns out many swipers get bored and afk/quit. Now that the barrier to swiping is so low since even just $20 gets you so far now, we see the continual decline of a healthy playerbase due to people just playing even less parts of a patch and then less and less of those players returning for subsequent ones. The overall declining playerbase is the overall biggest consequence of going down the road of making the game more casual and more appealing to swipers because as people leave, more will leave.

--different post----

Yes, the high emp rates don't come from nowhere (as the gold to sustain those rates don't come from thin air as well) but a major part of the reason emp continually goes up is because of how much value the in game store has now compared to before along with less emp being sold overall. It may seem paradoxical that there's less emp but more swipers (as I've said in my previous post) but when you consider 4 people spending $20 each vs 1 person spending $100 (all for the express purpose of reselling for in game gold) you can see how there's more swipers but less emp circulating. You simply just get way more now while spending less compared to before. There are so many game impacting things on the cash store now (dragons, innerwear, obscene amounts of mwa/extensives/premiums/spellbinds/mes) instead of just the costumes and nearly nonexistent amounts of alk/spellbind back then that emp has so much value now. Therefore, it's going to be more in demand/valued especially when there is less overall emp circulating (being sold) in the game nowadays compared to before. Nobody wants to pay more gold than they have to for emp but nowadays you need to offer these high rates to secure the ever smaller amounts of emp being offered for sale and it all follows the logic of being able to get more in game items for less emp.

Interestingly, I'd like to point out that the number of players with "too much gold" are actually very few nowadays (most quit). Instead, it's just a very few number of individuals on each server with an obscene amount of gold. When I was buying emp this Black Friday, I had very little competition on any server (except TR as I didn't really buy in TR due to myself only have a little bit of TR gold). I was incredibly surprised that emp did not go above 1:70 (despite it easily being valued at 1:100+) and that I was able to get it for 1:45-1:65 depending on the day/time/server. It seems as if people (both buyers and sellers) knew emp had high value but barely anyone (buyers) had enough gold to get sellers to sell over them using it themselves (due to the risk/reward trade off of selling an item yourself or just selling your emp). This is why I really don't think we need a gold sink at this point in time. A gold sink would have definitely been healthy for the game in the past but now it's too late as the damage has already been done and a newly introduced gold sink when there's not consistently large amounts of gold being put back into the game would not work well. Instead, I think action needs to be taken to address (and possibly correct) the different points of emphasis on types of items (gear/cash store related) in the game.

end of past text, start of relating to current topic of events----

From here you can see my experiences, observations, and conclusions drawn from a player that has been heavily involved in trading and buying emp off players for more than 4 years and thus the "economy" of this game. How events tie in to all this is that as mentioned before, they artificially speed up various aspects of gearing and lead to faster afk/quitting, discourage trade between older "higher gear tiered" players and newer ones (that rely on IOD dailies/vanguard grind for gold) because the former are now self sufficient and don't need the newer players whereas the new players still need the older ones for things like etching boxes, liberated VM gear, ect.; make individual emp spenders spend less on the store while simultaneously pressuring more people to turn to the store with the net effect of overall LESS emp circulating around the game, and continually devalues cosmetics/rng boxes from the store which means cosmetics that were once prized and could be used as prizes for spread out events are now literally worthless and seen as worthless by the community and if used anywhere near an event, the event is deemed as a failure. Interestingly, as more and more events are implemented the less "rewarding" each one will seem at face value until the event is overbuffed to compensate even when previous similar events with similar mechanics/prize pools were deemed as "successes".

I do feel that recent events implemented in this game since Spacecat's arrival have definitely messed with and had an impact on the economy and its drivers way WAY more than in the past and the people that knew/know how to take advantage of the situation have definitely come out way more ahead than should be possible if events didn't exist. Personally, I've probably more than doubled my in game wealth this past year alone and that's saying something!

The bottom line is there's nothing wrong with events per say but there is definitely a lot of things to consider when planning one (some not as obvious as others) and when taking the feedback of players blindly screaming for events to do XYZ for them. While the "economy" of the game is something not many people directly deal with or particularly care about, the side effects of the economic changes resulting from each event do have relevance to each and every player's experience. Namely, events consistently thin out the active player base with each reiteration and THAT is the biggest problem this game faces.

get a life

Haggard86 · June 2017

Hopefully with sun festival and root stock coming in the near future, we can get some events that also don't mess with the economy that much. People will be doing the events for food items, titles, and the tanks to drive around in velika. I'm completely happy with those events and I want the title on my warrior lol.

LesbianVi · June 2017

Haggard86 wrote: »

Hopefully with sun festival and root stock coming in the near future, we can get some events that also don't mess with the economy that much. People will be doing the events for food items, titles, and the tanks to drive around in velika. I'm completely happy with those events and I want the title on my warrior lol.

yeah, foooooooood

and also Dance bombs too

ElinLove · June 2017

AshirogiMuto wrote: »

kamizuma wrote: »

Here's what I wrote about the in game economy itself a few months ago regarding how the game has changed over time. Some of these paragraphs were written in response to what other people said so the context might appear off/random (I separate different posts by "---different post---" so you can see where I kinda change topic but I'm just pasting all of my text because I still believe it's applicable and I don't have the time to edit it into 1 coherent post/update prices at the moment. After that, I'll try to relate it to events in the way I see how events impact things. Note: Again, these prices reference a previous tier of gear (when ambush was BiS) but scaling everything down a tier actually leads to comparable prices for the purpose of this analysis which again I feel is very applicable.

----start of long wall of text----

hi all, this will be a post about the current economic state of the game and what I believe is the logical conclusion that will follow if we continue down this path. Many of my conclusions and predictions for the future are drawn from current observations, talking with other people (in the category of players involved), and reflecting upon past trends that actually did occur in the past. You may feel that I am wrong about some/all of the things in this post (and maybe I am because I don't claim to know everything of course) but nonetheless I feel this is an extremely important topic we need to talk about and I'm surprised nobody else has brought it up yet (although that could be because you don't notice it/care/feel like it's an actual problem).

Anyways, I'll start off by saying that the current economic state of the game is very...unsettling. Core enchanting materials (mwa/feedstock/spellbind) have hit all time lows when referenced to similar time periods after new gear/big dungeon updates. Nowadays, much of the "cost" of gearing has shifted from these core items to new things like dragons/innerwear/brooches/etchings/components of BiS (ambush) gear that are not enchanting related (this means design, ingot, cost of boxes if one chooses to go that route, ect.). With the release of the 30 man raid, we currently see prices somewhat similar to the following for each category of item --> 300-400k for a 2.0 dragon (and 400k+ for a 1.5), 150-200k for a signature crit innerwear, 400k+ for a quatrefoil brooch, 45-55k for armor/foot etching IIIs, 90-115k for glove/weapon etching IIIs depending on type, and very variable prices for components of BiS gear depending on class specific designs but some constants are 400-550 per caprin handle, 800-1k per lilith treasure, and 800-1k per lachelilith treasure. Now, this is all referencing current BiS gear so I'll give some prices for secondary gear people might be considering as well (mainly imperator +15 and the 2nd tier of each other type of item previously mentioned). We are currently looking at around 300-400 per colluva ingot, 250-350 per imperator treasure, 125-250 per factory cabinet, 8-10k per foot/armor etching II, 15-20k per weapon/glove etching II, 70k-95k per superior (non signature) crit innerwear, 40-45k for empowered/quickcarve brooch, very variable prices for imperator designs, 50k for imperator footwear boxes, 75-95k for imperator hand/body boxes, 145-200k for imperator weapon boxes and finally skip the make it yourself and you can just buy an imperator +15 for 250k t3 boots, 250-300k t3 gloves, 350k t3 weapon, and 285-300k t3 body (the t represents tier of etching and you can subtract 50k-75k for tier 2 or non etched equivalents). From these numbers it should be more clear where most of the "cost" of gearing is distributed and what category of item those costs fall in. Now, we can look at what's been happening/will happen in the immediate future.

First, what gives gear value? And also, what is value even? Everyone probably has their own definition of "value" in this game (and in life) but it should be a common viewpoint that something has "value" when it's either useful (to some extent) or not something everyone easily can get. An item first needs to have a use to be valued at all (and yes, in this game costumes aren't entirely "useless" because they do serve the function of making your character look nice or showing off your character hence why costumes are core items in this game funnily enough). An item also needs to be somewhat difficult to obtain for it to retain value or else it'll just lose value over time (and the biggest reason for this is because there are way less players entering this game than those quitting/finished with the game so eventually the demand slowly drops to 0 on all items with some obviously reaching 0 faster than others). I define "finished" with the game as someone that has completely finished gearing up (and costuming up) so they will not be a "consumer" (consumer is then defined as someone that will soulbind or take that item out of the game thus removing it forever from circulation) of items in the game anymore due to those items not having a use for them anymore. With these notions in mind, it should be clear that all gear related items will indeed lose its value over time (although some lose their value so slowly that we will never seen it actually happen anytime soon). The alarming thing though is which gear related items lose their value a lot faster than others. Since things like 2.0 (and 1.5) dragons and signature innerwears primarily come from the cash store, they will retain their value far longer than things like actual gear, etchings, and brooches. With the introduction of the 30 man raid, we will see some changes happen to the "value" of these primarily obtained in game items. First, gear value will take a HUGE hit. The 30 man makes vm8 designs rain like candy along with introducing huge amounts of lilith/lachelith treasure boxes into the game. In fact, on MT alone (and using it as an example to draw reference from because what happens on MT usually happens on other servers to some extent a little while later since MT is by far the most "progressed" server in the game), many vm8 designs already dropped 20-45% in ONE DAY with many raids not even doing their runs yet due to waiting for increased availability of raid members on Friday/weekend. Lilith/lachlith treasures also dropped 20% already. Now consider what will happen when more people are able to finally step foot/master 30 man in the long run. Of course, in the short term there might actually be an increase of "value" on these things (on non MT servers) because of people finally gearing up (since they weren't geared already and a lot of people that swiped for Black Friday now have gold) but overall in the long run (I'd say 2+ months from now), I think vm8 designs will definitely be under 1k gold each (apparently they're like 200 gold for most designs on ktera atm), lilith treasure/lachelith treasure will be under 200 gold each. Now that's in the long run and while we slowly move towards that time point these items will be consistently bleeding value. Next, etchings are on the chopping block because the 30 man raid awards permanent tier 4 etchings. The collapse of etching prices brings about relevant drops in prices for gathering (scarabs and gods tear), armor crafting (aterstod oil), titan peace/embers from dungeon drops and etching III designs from dungeon (mainly ghilleghlade) drops. I'm not quite sure yet how many goddess's tears/gemstones are dropped by 30 man raid/upcoming Civil unreset/rally quests (due to patch notes saying increased goddess gemstone) but if significant amounts come from those sources then brooch prices will start to take hits. As you can see, all "primarily in game" obtained items are already starting to quickly lose value (note: I did not include MWA/spellbind because the cash store continually pumps ungodly amounts of them into the game but that's for another discussion later on if we choose to address it but it should also be noted that they're at all time low prices and will most likely continue to drop in price).

What does this mean though? It means it's great if you have gold because it's now cheaper than ever to just straight up buy things. It also means that it sucks if you rely on these items for in game income. What type of players fall into each category? It should be clear that if you have gold right now the game is good for you and if you don't, it sucks. Who has gold nowadays though? Some people that currently have gold right now are mostly veteran players that have been continually playing for a while so they've built up their resources over the years and have consistently been at end game (and also managed their gold somewhat wisely and haven't done many questionable, in my opinion, purchases like 200k costumes) so they've been able to capitalize on high prices for new gear related items for the other group of players with gold, the swipers (people who spend irl money on this game). This is going to be the crux of what I'm getting at in this post btw. It's becoming increasingly clear that many of the people with gold in this game (and consequently, gear) swiped for it. Gone are the days where most of the people with gear are ones that full on earned it themselves through in game free to play methods and instead I'd actually say 80% of the players with multiple pieces/full BiS gear at this point in time have either consistently spent money on EMP over the years or did some huge spending 1-2 times (most likely during Black Friday) for their gear. The fact is this game is increasingly catering to the swipers and it's disturbing how much "easier" it is to gear up when you swipe vs play the game. Like I've said in previous posts, spending money on this game nowadays gets you more gold for your emp and even more in game items than ever before (due to increasing emp prices and increasingly decreasing costs of gear related items as I mentioned in the previous paragraph). For reference, if you spent $500 during Black Friday for 60k emp, you could get close to 4 million gold on the spot if you just sold your emp to other players and a projected almost 10 million gold if you are smart with the items and sell the items yourself over the next few months. Sound disgusting? It should, considering how difficult it is for most people to get that amount in game without swiping. Tera really is a free to play game, I'll say that, but it's becoming increasingly more convenient to just swipe than play the game and that's the road this game is heading towards. It's catering more and more to the casuals and the swipers (and those with lots of gold) and leaving little for everyone else.

---different post----

A large part of this game revolves around the gearing process because there really isn't much to do once you're fully geared. Once someone finishes gearing they really only have a few options left: gear an alt, prepare for next patch, or afk until next patch. Speeding up the gearing process only drives people more and more towards the last option (afk until next patch) because there's only so many alts you want to gear up and only so much preparing you want/need to do for next patch.

---different post---

Tera has always favored people that swiped (or have more free time) because they're able to put resources (time in game or money out of game) in that others can't/aren't willing to. However, that precise balance of whether or not we want to reward in game time spent on the game vs outside money spent is the point I'm getting at. It is my firm belief that someone that has "worked hard in game" for their gear values it more and thus feels more attached to the game and will continue playing. I say this from many personal examples and observations which include events such as: many people I sponsor and give gear to tend to quit the game shortly after (and nearly half of the people I've loaned resources to tend to just quit instead of continuing playing the game after I geared them up to pay me back), lots of people that spent lots of money on emp to bypass the gear grind (I'm talking thousands of dollars) still don't feel as "invested" in the game and easily quit soon after gearing up, and people that come back to the game and get carried to new gear pieces usually just take a break again due to feeling that they'll get the help again when needed. I'd actually say it's "easier" to swipe now. I'll give you some numbers so you can see where I'm coming from. During the middle of vm1 (when I started playing shortly after it became free to play), a +12 regent weapon cost around 255k on MT for popular classes at the time (warrior/sorc), mwa were 125 each, mes were 550 each, vm1 designs ranged from 25k for a priest weapon (nobody really wanted to make healer weapons) to 800k for a lancer chest, argon vitriols (needed to make vm1) were 60k each, and quills (if you were unable to run mchm and had to buy them from people) were 150-200k each. Also note these prices were on MT so there maybe be differences if you played on other servers. EMP at the time was 1:2-1:3. That meant $100 of EMP = 12k emp = 24k-36k gold if you just sold it to players (which many did at the time). That meant if you wanted to swipe for a +12 regent weapon for a popular class it would cost you between 600 to 1000 dollars! AND IT WASN'T EVEN BEST IN SLOT! If we then look at someone that wanted to swipe for a BiS weapon (vm1) for a popular class (warrior) we can look at the following math: 3x argon vitriols (240k) + vm1 design (it was around 400k for warrior weapons when I started playing), 3x quills (at least 450k if buying), enchanting and mwing cost (averaged out to around 150k back then based on my experimenting with +12ing items for reselling). This meant straight up swiping for a BiS weapon back then cost at least 1,240,000 gold back then (interestingly, a similar number to today's cost to straight up buy a t3 etched current VM early on off someone). At an emp rate of 1:2-1:3, they would be spending between $3400-$5100 on just ONE piece of gear! At today's 1:40 (or 1:65 during Black Friday), they would have only spent $150-250 for the BiS gear equivalent! Of course the argument could be made that it's easier to gear now than back then (and I agree) but I wouldn't necessarily say it's ~20x easier to gear in BiS for a pure free to play player nowadays compared to before because again, I'd like to point out by my estimations on MT only 20% of the people that started the 30 man patch with full +15 ambush are "pure free to play players" that don't regularly spend (or 1 time burst spent during Black Friday) money on EMP. This example referencing vm1 though is the most extreme example of "in game playing" being infinitely more rewarding than swiping and accordingly, a very large amount of people with full vm1 back then got it through free to play methods (I mean seriously, there were only 2 people I can personally remember on MT that fully swiped for full vm1 throughout the whole patch that I had dealings with due to me buying their emp and my group selling them quills because the cost to go down such a route was so incredibly expensive that literally only people with 10k+ disposable income could afford to do so).

Another time point we can look at is during the steam release which I'd call "the midpoint" of emp prices between vm1 and emp prices today due to it being ~1.5 years after vm1 and ~1.6 years before today. During the steam release of mid 2015, emp was consistently 1:9-1:10 and a current BiS vm weapon was selling for around 550k-700k. Accordingly, it would cost around $480-$600 to swipe for your weapon which is still about 3-4x (exluding Black Friday or 2-2.5x including) more expensive than today. During those times, the amount of swipers started becoming more and more prevalent and more and more people running around with BiS vm had spent money on EMP in some way. As we continued down the road of slowly rising emp costs coupled with the slowly decreasing value of mwa and sometimes easier methods of gearing (such as vm5/vm6 1 design fits all methods), we come to today's state of the game where a large number of current "end game players" did indeed turn into a swiper to some extent. The list of names of players that have sold/continue to sell me emp is pretty shocking and now includes many high profile players in top pve guilds such as Amaterasu and Synergy/Treehouse and it's disturbing to see these talented players turn to swiping when back during vm1 or even vm3-vm6 players of their caliber and skillset would have never considered such a thing. As such, I came to the conclusion (with numbers and observations) that it has continually become more and more appealing to just swipe rather than play the game out because 1 hour at a job that pays $10/hour is approximately 44k gold now while less than 0.1% of the playerbase even knows how to consistently make more than 10k an hour nowadays.

Yeah most aspects of gearing (excluding dragon/brooch/innerwear to some extent) are a lot easier for free to play players now but the advantage of swiping is so great compared to playing free to play in the sense that you save so much time relative to before that more and more people are seeing the appeal/need to turn swiper rather than continue playing free to play. Of course there wouldn't be a problem with this if these people continued playing the game but as it turns out many swipers get bored and afk/quit. Now that the barrier to swiping is so low since even just $20 gets you so far now, we see the continual decline of a healthy playerbase due to people just playing even less parts of a patch and then less and less of those players returning for subsequent ones. The overall declining playerbase is the overall biggest consequence of going down the road of making the game more casual and more appealing to swipers because as people leave, more will leave.

--different post----

Yes, the high emp rates don't come from nowhere (as the gold to sustain those rates don't come from thin air as well) but a major part of the reason emp continually goes up is because of how much value the in game store has now compared to before along with less emp being sold overall. It may seem paradoxical that there's less emp but more swipers (as I've said in my previous post) but when you consider 4 people spending $20 each vs 1 person spending $100 (all for the express purpose of reselling for in game gold) you can see how there's more swipers but less emp circulating. You simply just get way more now while spending less compared to before. There are so many game impacting things on the cash store now (dragons, innerwear, obscene amounts of mwa/extensives/premiums/spellbinds/mes) instead of just the costumes and nearly nonexistent amounts of alk/spellbind back then that emp has so much value now. Therefore, it's going to be more in demand/valued especially when there is less overall emp circulating (being sold) in the game nowadays compared to before. Nobody wants to pay more gold than they have to for emp but nowadays you need to offer these high rates to secure the ever smaller amounts of emp being offered for sale and it all follows the logic of being able to get more in game items for less emp.

Interestingly, I'd like to point out that the number of players with "too much gold" are actually very few nowadays (most quit). Instead, it's just a very few number of individuals on each server with an obscene amount of gold. When I was buying emp this Black Friday, I had very little competition on any server (except TR as I didn't really buy in TR due to myself only have a little bit of TR gold). I was incredibly surprised that emp did not go above 1:70 (despite it easily being valued at 1:100+) and that I was able to get it for 1:45-1:65 depending on the day/time/server. It seems as if people (both buyers and sellers) knew emp had high value but barely anyone (buyers) had enough gold to get sellers to sell over them using it themselves (due to the risk/reward trade off of selling an item yourself or just selling your emp). This is why I really don't think we need a gold sink at this point in time. A gold sink would have definitely been healthy for the game in the past but now it's too late as the damage has already been done and a newly introduced gold sink when there's not consistently large amounts of gold being put back into the game would not work well. Instead, I think action needs to be taken to address (and possibly correct) the different points of emphasis on types of items (gear/cash store related) in the game.

end of past text, start of relating to current topic of events----

From here you can see my experiences, observations, and conclusions drawn from a player that has been heavily involved in trading and buying emp off players for more than 4 years and thus the "economy" of this game. How events tie in to all this is that as mentioned before, they artificially speed up various aspects of gearing and lead to faster afk/quitting, discourage trade between older "higher gear tiered" players and newer ones (that rely on IOD dailies/vanguard grind for gold) because the former are now self sufficient and don't need the newer players whereas the new players still need the older ones for things like etching boxes, liberated VM gear, ect.; make individual emp spenders spend less on the store while simultaneously pressuring more people to turn to the store with the net effect of overall LESS emp circulating around the game, and continually devalues cosmetics/rng boxes from the store which means cosmetics that were once prized and could be used as prizes for spread out events are now literally worthless and seen as worthless by the community and if used anywhere near an event, the event is deemed as a failure. Interestingly, as more and more events are implemented the less "rewarding" each one will seem at face value until the event is overbuffed to compensate even when previous similar events with similar mechanics/prize pools were deemed as "successes".

I do feel that recent events implemented in this game since Spacecat's arrival have definitely messed with and had an impact on the economy and its drivers way WAY more than in the past and the people that knew/know how to take advantage of the situation have definitely come out way more ahead than should be possible if events didn't exist. Personally, I've probably more than doubled my in game wealth this past year alone and that's saying something!

The bottom line is there's nothing wrong with events per say but there is definitely a lot of things to consider when planning one (some not as obvious as others) and when taking the feedback of players blindly screaming for events to do XYZ for them. While the "economy" of the game is something not many people directly deal with or particularly care about, the side effects of the economic changes resulting from each event do have relevance to each and every player's experience. Namely, events consistently thin out the active player base with each reiteration and THAT is the biggest problem this game faces.

get a life

says the guy that made the favor of quoting something the original poster said to be a wall of text, without a spoiler tag.

At least next time trow the quote inside a spoiler like I do when it's too big or lots of images.
Or better: just post something useful.

Be useful or be gone. At least my comment is telling people how to keep it clean by using spoiler tag.

"X Event/Addition Will Break the Economy!" - A Discussion

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