[TERA PC & Console] En Masse is closing, but TERA lives on! We will continue to support TERA PC (NA) and TERA Console until service is transferred. Stay tuned for more information.
[TERA Console] The Grotto of Lost Souls update (v85) is now live! Read the patch notes here: https://bit.ly/TERACon_v85
[TERA PC] The 64-bit update (v97) is now live. Check out all the changes delivered on August 11 here: https://bit.ly/tera64_patchnotes
[TERA PC & CONSOLE] Summerfest Part 2: The Beach Bash is on from August 11 until September 1! Participate in event activities to earn tokens redeemable for costumes, consumables, mounts, and more! Details: https://bit.ly/tera_sf20
Comments
Cheap enchanting materials benefit poor players/new 65s that don't have gold so they need to sell their mwa/feedstock to get said gold? Cheap enchanting materials are bad for rich players that can just buy them all out and progress even further in gear in a shorter amount of time and with less gold than in the past?
They're too busy seeing $$$$$
Yeah, the problem isn't the cheap mats to buy, the problem is the low price to sell farmed mats. People are just looking at the low-priced consumables and thinking "it's good because I can buy things for cheap" -- but where does the gold to purchase those mats come from? Where is that money going? Where does the supply of consumables come from? The amount of straight gold you earn from vanguard and as drops isn't enough to pay for all the mats you need, so you'd need to be able to sell things, but you're making less. For F2P players without much gold, they probably don't have Elite either, so even their selling comes at a price. So even though the mats are cheap, there's no real way to get ahead -- unless you yourself hit the jackpot on an event (which masks the problem) or you sell EMP.
That said, even if you do re-balance the supply, we still need to address the issue of the already-rich being able to control the market without any cost/penalty. As I've said before, even though it won't be popular, we need to add/increase the broker listing tax for Elite.
it is more important that items keep selling to keep gold flowing between players. Stubbornly keeping prices high results in stagnation, and no gold is moving around to be reinvested, resulting in an even worse state for the market.
A market with lower prices is better for the general public. Average and new players now have a chance of obtaining particular items that were once likely out of their reach, meaning they're more likely to stay with the game in the future.
I don't see the difference, so let's go for it
Yes, let's.
I concur!
It's not just about prices, though. Just having high prices due to low supply or people controlling/inflating the market is also bad. It's about the balance between the amount of gold earned through gameplay, the value of goods that can be farmed (and thus traded to get more gold), and the cost of needed items (both merchant items and those purchased through trade). If any of these elements go out of whack, it's bad for new F2P players. If you don't earn enough gold and the items you farmed are devalued, it still won't help you be able to afford the items even at a lower price, unless you get your gold from elsewhere.
Cheap enchanting mats? Sounds good... except when it's the main source of gold from vanguard quests. That's right, the value of your vanguard credits and feedstock are cut in half or even threefold. The income for the masses is hampered quite a bit.
And then you look at the VM8 designs. When everyone and their mother have enough enchant mats to +15 the next three or four gear sets, you shouldn't be surprised that the designs are in such high demand. Add in the whole reset scroll fiasco and look at those prices! Your enchanting materials are worth [filtered], so good luck affording the designs.
If I may put on my tin-foil hat, flooding the economy with stuff like Mongos and high loot box rewards helps more than it hurts EME's bottom line. Nobody buys those extensive alk/spellbind boxes, and people still frantically open strongboxes during those events. But, since your ability to make gold in-game is diminished, buying EMP to convert to gold suddenly looks more attractive.
Edit: what counterpoint said pretty much
The majority of enchanting mats granted during this latest event were from Mandragora Boxes, and those contain a variety of items. The only Alkahest inside those is non-tradeable, Personal Alkahest. There are a lot of comments in this thread referencing Mongos, and the loot design in Mandragora was a direct result of TERA Mongo: Neon granting too many enchanting materials across the board.
You can sell a lot of other things that aren't feedstock/mwa. I don't know why people act like that's the only way to make gold. I do not sell enchanting materials ever and I still make more gold than is needed. Before 1 single DFNM per character per day for a long time earned you 2,000 gold until it dropped to under 1,000 gold, and even then. You could also have been doing IOD and selling the tears for 2,000+g ea or secrets for almost 4,000g ea. Then at the start of this patch you could sell the boxes for almost 4,000gea and the other for over 1,000gea along with the other mats that can be traded for over 100g ea and 2,000~3,000g ea. All these VM mats will earn you more gold than simply selling MWA or feedstock would. Currently you can get Ambush weapon design that sell for 500,000g to 1,000,000 depending on how early you sold it and class. I know people will say that requires you to win a roll, but not if you find 4 people to split since 500k to 1m split between 5 people is still 100k to 200k. Then during events, like the recent, you could have easily made a couple hundred thousand gold selling tokens, which is again far more than you could selling MWA or feedstock as an average person... Selling enchanting mats was always a bad way to make gold anyways as a person who isn't rich since you needed the enchanting mats yourself, how ever, what you could sell is any BiS related mat or cosmetics since these people aren't going for BiS any time soon.