Tera Economy Collapsed and why EME is at fault

KattyKira · October 2016

@NaeGevurah I agree, the game's events area help because no one wants to spend thousands of gold just to buy 2 or 3 pieces of mats from x person. Even the new playersI encounter see the prices of T9 feedstock and starfall and imperator gear on the broker and are put off by it. Then when they learn what they have to do to make it, they do a very many profane statements and start to play the game less and less if not just up and leave at that moment.

For the game to survive, they need to keep events were what would be expensive is dirt cheap to keep new players and returning ones from feeling overwhelmed. If they removed events all together, the rich would just get richer and mat prices would be uncontrollable.

Therefore they can't rightfully do that and expect to bring in new people which with a game this old is how it can survive for years more. Yes, they can add gear and content patches... It will bring in a few returning players that once geared again will leave... that is no way to keep a game healthy like this one. The new blood, the new people that try this game will make it lasts longer...

Catservant · October 2016

What gets me is if the prices go UP--EME killed the game by not providing a gold sink. The game is dead.

If the prices go DOWN--EME has flooded the market. The game is dead.

Thing is, I've been playing for only about a year and a half, and even within that time frame I remember the market prices fluctuating about this much several times. This seems perfectly normal to me.

Everybody and their brother is scouring their inventory for things to sell, and not too many are buying. If you are smart, you will buy things while they are cheap and sit on them until later., when the first flush of dragons have been bought.

WitchyGirl · October 2016

there's no such thing as economy collapsing. it just changed. it always changes when there is an event, new items being added, old items taken out, items become rare/non rare. And things inflate and deflate accordingly.

at the end of the day, the players who complain the loudest are usually because they dont get to make in-game gold "profit" anymore with their monopolized items. well, the economy shouldnt cater to those people.

Even though i didnt pariticipate in the mongo events , i personally think events are great because they are fair for anyone who participates. whether u are new or old, rich player or poor player, you CAN participate in the events. Nothing stops you from entering the events.
If you didnt pariticpate in it, its your fault.
These events are great for EVERYONE.

Events like these help the little people out. so its wonderful.

Enmasses is doing great for running the events that give out good prizes. and i hope they do more in the future.
Enmasse is smart and they are going to do what is good for their business. Running events makes the game very popular with the hype, so lots of players login to pariticpate. Big events gets people to play.

Ves1978 · October 2016

idk why are people complaining so much about ruined economy cause of mongos or kyra boxes. tbh, i prefer events like that to avoid endless grind for feedstock and mwa. if feedstock and mwa are your only source of gold, then you're doing something wrong. you can still earn pretty much gold from farming and crafting and no event will destroy that. most prices went down and it's good for most of players, only ones that sell mwa and feedstock cry about events.

4679N4J4MW · October 2016

Mongo event was great, maybe one of the best events on my ~2 years of Tera and i rly think EME should "break" Tera's economy more often.
OP: Maybe you just love 36g for T9 fod, 250K for a crit +16 inner and fewer geared ppl for end game content, dead CS for Lv 65 only, etc...that's your problem.
I myself farmed that event a lot and i already lost half of my FOD/MWA resources on 100x to +15 a single imp weapon and there's already a new vm8 coming that will halve my T10 fod further again..
And there's much more no life farming coming with this new patch, like new BIS brooch (remember that useless insane quatrefoil farming?), new super expensive 400K mount to farm or p2w every new patch, tier 4 etching, jewelry with more rolls and more RNG, VM8/8.5 with new design (it's just lovely to pay 500K+ for a single weapon design on AV, Lucid/SF days was so ez!11!), etc!

We went from 30K avg players to like 3K on a 1.5 year time span w/ 3 servers merged and ppl here rly want more grinding?
The last thing this game need is more "brainless farming".

Tbh, i can see the point on "hard to farm" MWA/Fod if they put something like a fail cap on awakening system or whatever, but as it is, T10 Fod maybe as well cost like 10g ...

ratedX · October 2016

Swear to god, people fail to have any brain cells.
It's like, we're playing with children or something

It's not the events that EME hosts in question here.
The Mongo Event brought together the community for a single purpose. To kill Mongos!
It was a something to do, and some people actually did enjoy it.
I wish they would create and / or do more events like this and bring back:

Kill BAMs, Spell T–E–R–A, and Win
Blast from the Past
Power Hour

Things of that sort.

It's the "amount"

of Materials you obtained while participating in said event.

Example A:

These Materials were obtained by someone who participated.
Not entirely sure how many hours he put in, But he sure loves to link this screenshot.
I wonder why?

Now remember, this was just one person.
Now x those material's by let's say 100 people who may have participated just as long?
Your talking 3 MILLION MWA, Spellbind, PA, EA all together here.
Not to mention the Smart Dyads & Other goodies obtained.

Even @Spacecats admitted to his mistake

Spacecats wrote: »

The rewards for the event were too high, though. I know a bunch of players will cringe when they read that, but it's true! After the first Mongo event, there were a lot of complaints about the Mongos being too hard to find, rewards being disappointing, and overall a "waste" of an event. I know not everyone shared that sentiment, and a lot of you thought it was a cool concept, but I felt there was enough feedback that something had to be done for Neon to prevent it from disappointing those players.

That meant a few main things - 1) Making Mongos easier to find, especially the common ones, 2) Eliminating disappointing loot like Fashion Coupons, 3) Adding rewards for parties that hunted Mongos together.

That 3rd aspect is very tricky, and was the main contributor in landing certain players piles of loot in a short period of time. It resulted in a surplus of enchanting materials, Noble Moons, Chilly Clouds, and innerwear (inners were rebalanced after about the first hour or two, but as we all know a ton of those had already dropped). Some players really loved the loot, and others hated it. Some players likely logged into multiple accounts and formed parties with themselves. Those with only a handful of hours to play TERA per night (what I would consider an average player) were pretty happy with what they were able to farm. Those with infinite hours... well. Screenshots were posted, showing piles of loot. Some players saw those, believed it was normal, and that they somehow got hosed because they couldn't farm that entire weekend. I won't keep rambling here, but suffice to say it's difficult to make an event that's worthwhile for 3-hour-per-night players (don't forget across multiple time zones!), but isn't a magical pinata for those who are able to log on multiple accounts for 48 hours straight.

TL;DR - I agree loot was too high on Mongos. Overall loot rates will likely be lower next time as a result, but I'm confident that there are ways to make events like Mongo and Mongo Neon (as well as the invasion event I'm working on for later this month) stay really enjoyable without raining Feedstock and MWA across the land.

The funny thing about it was. All you had to do was log-in, join a raid, and move to location.
If a few people in the raid were attacking them? You got the rewards mailed to you!
So you technically didn't even have to be at your desk..

Anyway, More then 100 people participated.
Not to mention all the Alternate accounts people have and probably had logged in.

So there is literately billion's of "materials" sitting in-game right now due to one event.
Prices took a huge hit on the Economy due to this.
These "Materials" should have been made personal and non-tradable.
The amount of "Materials" given should of also been greatly reduced as well.

But, What's done is done.

But it also has a impact on everything else.

People are stocked up more or less for the next 2 patches on materials.
People have lost incentive to play.

Now for the people who missed out on the event?
Sucks for them right? Now their stuck trying to form groups to "Obtain" Gear & Materials.

But with people who have lost the urge / incentive to play.
Why play if you don't need anything right?
So now their getting depressed because there is nothing to do.
Which makes them loss incentive to play as well.

But the "Mongo event" is not the only reason people are / have lost interest.

The "Guilded Age" really didn't bring anything new into the mix.
Just Cash shop Dragon's with a OP buff.
And removal of actual content to do:

Dreadspire removed
All Alliance and Crusade UI and NPC's removed
Guild vs Guilds Removed

And? A broken "Weekly" Event....

Not to mention a laundry list of other problems.

Know what that means?
Even more incentive not to play.

As i stated. What's done is done.
Let's just hope a lesson was learned. Because all this combined?
Really upset a lot of TERA's Dedicated Players.
And sadly, Nothing can be done to "Fix" this.

But, HOPEFULLY
the current in-game issues are addressed soon

https://www.facebook.com/xratecl/

TWMagimay · October 2016

4Y3PCJWKN9 wrote: »

The rich get richer. The gap between the rich and poor players widen. When these events happen, rich players benefit the most. When prices tank, they buy the mats out and keep them until the next content patch to resell at lot higher price. Rich players have the funds to massively buy out the cheap mats. Poor players and even players who participated only have the mats they farmed, they don't have the gold to buy out more.

You make it sound like prices just tank on their own. But it's players who decide to undercut each other to the point of halving the price. Look at the summer event. Same thing both years. Last year people exchanged tokens for semi's and the price tanked when they started selling them. This year semi's remained quite stable....

Deleted User · October 2016

Wtf wrong with you ppls? Enmasse give you free items and you Q.Q?
What wrong ? Spell on TR 30 gold semi 200 gold mwa was 19 gold loool so what? Go to farm gold on dailies and celestial arena ad buy itesm now!

Deleted User · October 2016

You should say thank you enmasse.... The only problem is this period , enmasse make as wait TOO MUCH!

Athenril · October 2016

They gave you an easy option to stock up on mats before the next patch and you still cry about it on the forums? I really don't get this community.

aeee98 · October 2016

I was one of the unlucky people who didn't have that much of a time to farm mongos, because I just had to go inactive.

But still.

Players have to realise what is the real value of gold for.

Right now, there is nothing you really need gold other than to barter for items. If people actually play the game it is supposed to be, ie farm crafting mats and upgrade, then they will be actually at a constant pace even if they are behind those who have tons of items, since their gold can be used to barter. Is any experienced player used to seeing less than 1k gold in their inventory? I am one of them, and I care dare say that it is THE incentive to keep me going in the game.

The ability to sell your BiS gear to players removes the incentive for people to actually play and grind the actual dungeons. After all, why grind real dungeons when I can just go into IoD on 16 characters and brainlessly get enough gold in a week to get a set piece that someone else has made? I get the point that you feel like your gear piece is worth money, but that IS the problem. They should be the mark, the trophy, of you reaching the endgame, not just a random piece of gear that depends on whether you enter runs.

Because of that, players SHOULD be glad materials start to become cheaper. So what if you get tons of materials? So what if you get a trillion gold? The so-called "endgame" players who already got millions of gold yet doesn't want to join anything that could become a trap run aren't the players the average player will be with. They can sell for a much higher price, but gold depreciates in value when less players actually play. Materials fall in price naturally when these events come. And that is where the regular new player can amass their materials to get gear that could make them more gold from actually playing. What's more, if players are actually not selfish people they could give newbies some materials to help them in their journey now, knowing that they could easily farm more in much more quantity in the future. Sadly that is what I find this community lacking in.

I agree that the event gave items in way too much surplus, there is no denying it looking at hard facts. But EME isn't entirely at fault here. If you want an real incentive to grind, throw your account to the side and start a new one, because otherwise you will be dependent on all the raw gold farming techniques that is the real reason why prices soared at the first place.

Pocah · October 2016

Honestly I get really tired of the "experts" who sit at home, who aren't in possession the necessary information but somehow manage to diagnose all the ills of the world.

OP, you actually don't know how much money the average person made out of the events. You don't know whether the events revitalized a flagging player base. You don't know whether it damaged the market or just re-balanced it to something enmasse wanted. I mean you don't even know WHY it was done, let alone what the true effect was. Even if the market has collapsed you aren't in possession of any of the hard data that could be used to form a realistic opinion. In other words - YOU DON'T KNOW! You are just guessing.

Tatsuyaaa · October 2016

All I can say is if EME keeps doing these easy to farm mats events, their overall EMP sales will gradually go down. Anyone that wants to argue this is free to do so but its common sense, the cheaper the mats become the less value they have. I bet EME's train of thought was something like "players will spend less gold on mats and more gold on buying EMP for costumes". What they didnt think about was what happens when the players who buy EMP are needing less gold for mats so they buy less EMP overall.

DesuBean · October 2016

Would you rather be at GF where materials are scarce ?
They're making it easier for players to be more equalized, why is that a bad thing?!

Tera Economy Collapsed and why EME is at fault

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