I am still having fun with Gemstones. As has been talked about part of the fun of EG was having a lower amount of people for things like raffles and merchants. Of course we have to wait and see what excatly will happen with the Ebon Gate. I mean 100-150 people for a raffle is one thing, but 250-350 is insane for one item. Like when the 700 people were on the other night that you were talking about. I suppose part of it is selfishness, i want more and better chance and EG has been one of those places for that.

Beldannon's RNG is awful so the lower amount of people for a raffle/merchant the better.



Yes people have bought and sold slips, but with the secondary market being so screwed up because of lack of silver things, the cost of books is going to be higher. That's my concern.

Silver price and simucoins will not keep me away from playing the game. AT ONE point it was said there would still be some BOX OFFICE EVENTS. Unless i am mistaken Did that go away entirely then?

I do love this game, and want to keep loving this game. EG will be a wait and see for me. I don't want to spend 100's of dollars to play like i have for duskruin when i could have spent 50 dollars and some silvers.

Master Fisherman Beldannon the Gambler

PS: I enjoy many aspects of this game. I have mentioned my appreciation for the GM's hard work. Duskruin and Reim being two of the most awesome!

>>It would be super nice if the merchant had a magic wand and everyone could have their item in their hand and the merchant could unlock everyone's item in one wave to a certain amount.

Xerria wants this wand. Make it happen! Chop, chop! ;)

~Just Jainna

<It would be super nice if the merchant had a magic wand and everyone could have their item in their hand>

No wands needed, other than as a prop. It has been done!

But yea pretty sure that is a limited niche thing and the mass unlock by Bazzelwyn only worked because it was on his own script.

Same, it was great.

<<We've been saying that the box office needed to go for quite some time. It's really a pain.

ASGM Sleken

Oh good, that means we will be able to go do troubled waters the same as Reim right? Just form up a group at will and walk on in whenever we want, free once a day for premium.
Fyrentennimar


Quote: "Jaynah says, "This is more fun than rolton tipping and blood eagle ridin combined.""

Well if the just don't want to do the whole box office anymore it would be a lot more convenient on our end at least, to buy a token or something from the simucoin store. Then you can just find a time your friends are free to go without the huge planning ahead and walk on in. Free i'm sure wouldn't happen.

I do think the system being like that would get more people to run things like Troubled Waters again, or Black Swan Castle just as examples. Granted the rewards for Black Swan are way better than waters, I mean waters is mostly just fluff or what is now considered low end. Still a handful of items of value.

Fyrentennimar


Quote: "Jaynah says, "This is more fun than rolton tipping and blood eagle ridin combined.""

>I'm well aware of Zynga. I've studied microtransactions and have been to several seminars on the subject with very known presenters in the business.

What was the last Zynga game you played that felt like it had any soul though as opposed to just trying to nickel and dime you to death?

GS is basically selling its soul to the cancer of microtransactions. DR is the most cancerous thing ever implemented into GS, and now it's spreading to EG along with most if not all new content that high end gear (or even fluff now with EG I guess), can be attained from, because that's what cancer does, it spreads until it kills or is killed.

I mean I get it from a business standpoint, especially this year since Simu is trying to impress their new bosses for a payout or whatever that deal was, combined with Simu being fully aware of the lack of self control/gambling addictions a lot of its subscribers have and deciding to go all out with exploiting it, but it's likely that the only people whose pockets will be erupting with money if/when it eventually all comes crashing down once Simu pushes this too far and people finally get fed up, will be Dave and whoever over at Stillfront. I doubt Zynga ever expected things to come crashing down on them either, but people eventually got tired of their crap where bleeding money out of people took priority over their games being enjoyable without having to fork out a bunch of cash to do so.

DR was a financial success, sure, but you're eventually going to pillage your golden Simugoose to death at this rate, and then how will Simu fund all of its other projects? If you want to nickel and dime everyone to death, no one can stop you except the people you're nickel and diming to death of course. But regardless of that, some things should still be left alone. I get that you guys are trying to push and push and push to see just how far you can push before the players will finally draw the line, but in my opinion this is going to cause long term damage for short term gains. The GM crew and all that might be in better shape today than ever, but when it comes at the cost of the game itself becoming a truck stop casino, who really wins here?

Simu is always talking about wanting to draw old players back in. What do you think most of them would think if they log back in and nearly everything good is centered around microtransactions now and their silvers are for the most part useless? A lot of those old players are (or at least were at the time) purists or whatever you call it, so my guess would be most would probably just be like, "Good thing I made a F2P account first!" >quit

It wouldn't be so annoying if silvers weren't so blatantly being phased out in favor of this. Simu can also deny that silvers are being phased out all day long, but everyone sees it and everyone knows it, because it's really just that obvious. Still being able to buy pure potions for 8k in the cleric shop or whatever isn't what people are referring to when they talk about silvers becoming useless and having nothing to spend them on. There have been plenty of good sustainable silver drain methods suggested, none of which are likely to ever happen, and even if they did it would probably end up as, "Why do this for silvers when we could do it for Simucoins?"

Outside of the auction, I haven't seen anything good to spend silvers on in years that wasn't some old item from the 90s another player is selling or something. Simu appears to have no interest at all in balancing a Simucoin vs. silver economy. And wizards. There's been some lip service telling us coins will still be useful, but that doesn't mean much when Simucoins are still the only way to get any good items now while also having little to no priority on silver drains.

I'd love to have good/useful/fun for more than an hour things to spend my silvers on instead of doing what I normally do with them. It just isn't an option anymore, and that's pretty sad especially considering how the in game experience used to be for most players.

I don't mind the existence of microtransactions in this game. What I do mind is how it's being shoehorned in as replacement to silvers for just about anything better than standard off the shelf items.

Also fix wizards plz

~ Methais

Keep in mind, don't answer with assuming Ebon Gate this year. Only use what has been done.

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Wyrom, PM

I think he's more pointing out that there was never a time when amazing things were offered for silvers. Most people remember things like rtcf, which had 200 dollar ticket prices etc.

The only ice things I've ever seen for silvers were raffles at eg, which haven't been replaced or discontinued or anything. Even then it was behind a paywall.

All nice stuff has always been behind paywall except the great auctions etc.

Otherwise, people are painting the past in broad, incorrect, colors, as though at one time you could get 10x gear with awesome scripts for just silvers.

>What was once offered for silver that is no longer being offered?
>I want you to think critically here before answering. I am well aware that there are more pay events and additional currencies. Those are new as of 2014. The root of the question is, what was replaced.
>

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>Wyrom, PM


I can take a shot at this one although it depends on what definition of "offered for silver" you're using.

At RtCF in 2013 the following things were auctioned: +10 padding, +30 Resistance, +10 Sighting, +10 TD, Self Charging Item Creation (defensive), Self Charging Item Creation (offensive), Weight Reducing container, Defensive Item creation, Pure Coraesine weapon, Soul Glove/Spirit Bow, AsG change, ClimateWear creation w/ 608 spell knowledge.

I believe there were additional offerings with offered via raffle that also required silvers upon winning said raffle.


I can say it feels like this type of event where limited entry, and payments in silvers won't be offered again.


Briarmoon Cove was another event where silvers were required for some of the wins, such as an AsG change.

My own questions:

1. How do you expect the total number and type of services/experiences/top end items at E.G. To compare to last year?

2. How do you expect the amount of money spent by the population as a whole on E.G. related things to compare this year to last year?

3. If the answer to #2 is "much, much more" and the answer to #1 isn't a similar change, what does that imply about the relative value about spending money on E.G. This year vs. previous years?


I don't know enough to make a commitment either way for now, but these are the questions I'll be considering as more information comes out.

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Fyonn's player

>Non-pay events.
>

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>Wyrom, PM

I don't think the complaints are about non-pay events.

There have been raffles that required silvers to enchant things, but the complaints as I understand them are about ticketed pay events with limited attendance and silvers as payment. Are those events "retired" defining that word as gone forever?

Nothing was removed, but something was added. There is the perceived (or maybe very very real) side effect where silvers are created in bulk by spending cash and now a NEW currency is used to buy goods and services. So before silvers was the only currency, so if you sold something and got silvers, you could turn around and buy something else with them. Now you need to buy another currency and then you can buy a higher end item or service. So it starts to move things towards that currency being a default, but wait, its happening again with ANOTHER currency now too. So very quickly it destroys the faith in silvers, because you dont want to be the person left holding the big bag of silvers that buys you herbs.

You also can't fairly remove future things from the equation because while YOU may have info, the players don't. We can only react to what we know and feel based on what we see and are told, and a part of the game isn't happy with that.

Wyrom says, "Ordim is the reason savants won't be coded as well."

>I keep hearing silvers don't have any use any more. I'm asking what was removed that you could spend silvers on. Not what's going to be removed. Not what's happening at pay events. What is no longer available that was available.
>

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>Wyrom, PM


The question doesn't properly address the situation as I understand it.

I'll come at this a different way.

Silvers used to be the main way to get anything. Now you have a chance to get something that was previously sold only for silvers every 6 months via simucoins. If people are no longer forced to pay in silvers, and they can only get the upgrade via simucoins, then silvers lose their value and purpose.

You can sell silvers, buy books and farm bloodscrip. You can also just buy bloodscrip for silvers. But moving the main payment method from silvers to simucoins has caused a perpetual decrease in the value of silvers.

This is going to lead to inflation, for basically everything. If you paid $200 for that weapon, you're not going to sell it for $120 worth of silvers. You're going to want at least $200 worth of silvers. But as silvers continue to drop in value, you have to raise the price of that weapon higher and higher. It will eventually get to the point where you just don't accept silvers. It will become a bloodscrip & cash only market, as those are the only valid payment methods to obtain gear.

I think bubble flares were first introduced at a festival in landing for silver and the luck of the draw. No entry fee but silver. Has this been done lately?
Fyrentennimar


Quote: "Jaynah says, "This is more fun than rolton tipping and blood eagle ridin combined.""

I don't think this will be a popular suggestion, but at some point in the future I'd recommend no scrip or tickets be kept beyond the event it's designed for. Let them be cashed out at the end of the event, or any time during, for silver, at a rate announced before the start of the event. Players will still pay more for them during the event. However, this will eliminate stockpiling, which will eliminate the need to set astronomical scrip prices on things. Everyone starts at zero at the next event. Prices can be set at attainable levels, or slightly thereabove (unless there is no such word), but not radically so. It won't stop the devaluation of silver, nor will it cause there to be "event spikes" in the value -- something a number of players appear to have a vested interest in. The best way to cause event spikes is to continue to require silver, but make the scrip also required. Most F2P games have 2 tiers of currency -- one that is easily generated in-game, and another that you have to pay for, or is only dropped rarely. Combining them is crucial, or the "easy currency" is worthless. This seems to be the gist of the discussion here.

Regarding the value of silver over time, unless something significant changes in the in-game economy it is guaranteed to eventually drop to near-zero. It may take a long time to do this, but it will happen. Some real work needs to be done on how silvers are generated by the environment and how they are recaptured by the environment to ensure this doesn't happen. The players who hoard silver would probably prefer the long-term value to go up over time. I can't think of any reason this couldn't be attainable.

Why are you disregarding pay events when we were still required to spend silvers at them? I can't speak for everyone, but I spent almost every silver I had at each of the CCF events I attended. The same applies to the EG auction which was a pay event, but also the old pavilion auctions which were not.

Whether or not it's pay event has some bearing on what I think I can get for my silvers, but not whether or not I'm going to spend them.

>>When it comes to my gear though, my perception is that there is no path for me to plan out my how to acquire an 8x enchant on my armor or have +TD added to it.

I'll weigh in on this one, Wyrom. I think ALLENM20 is onto something that we need to consider.

I can't say if anything has been removed based on the way you asked your question. I'd say 'Voln cert', but there are easy counters to that - was raffled post announcement, could put in a re-appearance, may have future venues with it, etc. So it's hard to say 'it was removed'. And you'd be absolutely right to say 'hey, not pay event!' But. . .

I will say, though, what was removed - or at least moved - for me. The 'brass ring', being able to throw down a chit and watch (metaphorically speaking) as the wheel spun round and selected. . . well, anyone. Even someone I didn't know or had never seen before. Yes, we still have that, to some degree. But not with the same verve, not with the same items . . .

And most importantly, not with the same marketing. I know you and the team do a lot outside of 'just pay events' to make us all happy. And I strongly suspect we'll see some cool stuff in the future. But let's face a simple fact - the pay events are very public, very loud, and very known. The next spinner with that Voln armor tier unlock? Not so much. (While I'm at this, a brief personal rant - where the AICH EIEEE DOUBLE HOCKEY STICKS is my enchanter's trunk?!)

So we see, we want, and as we consider - at least on the pay side - it seems like it isn't in reach. We don't know about the next three 'drop-in' activities, so we can't count them. But that 'brass ring' went from 'I wonder when' to 'Oh, yeah - it's next week, but there's no way. . . '

I'll amend. It wasn't removed, and really it wasn't even moved. It was added, highlighted, underscored, and - if I might be so bold as to place myself in the 'casual player' category - for the me-casual player it was the Tiffany tour before the Walmart Christmas.

Doug

<No stealing my bloodscrip!.?

My Precious, precious bloodscrip.. (strokes it lovingly) :D

How about a monthly/quarterly or whatever is balanced raffle of potions?

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!>tell child to be quiet
The child cries, "I don't wanna!"