*WARNING* - Silvers Crashing

[Kobold]

This is a public service announcement.

Silver market is CRASHING hard right now, I'm not sure why but prices have just fell from 6.25 per to 5.00 per. This may have something to do with the new weighting/padding changes and the move to automation and scrips being the new coin of the realm.

This is not temporary. Silver prices will NOT recover.

In the past silvers will flux due to a fest or merch, but never had they have a genuine compeititor like in bloodscrip/tickets.

You have been warned!

[Taernath]

Fuck silver; buy gold!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVcdvT09qr4

[Amerek]

This thread is off topic, please remove mods. Thx

[Kobold]

Bumping this.

You DUMBFUCKS if people get burnt holding onto worthless silvers you do realize they quit the game and stop playing. This is some serious shit; that two bit swindler tgo is selling for 4 fucking dollars at this point... THIS. IS. IT. BE WARNED

[C.Difficile]

Throughout history, currency declines reach an irreversible level when the issuing sovereign ceases to accept their own currency to satisfy obligations against it. This has been the case for awhile since the advent of simucoin, but the great auction put values on life support. The writing on the wall was there with summit though.

Remember, hundreds of millions get generated every day, and it has nowhere to go.

[Methais]

lol @ Simu raping their golden goose to death to impress the stillfront people.

I wonder how long before they just start selling high end items directly on the Simucoin store vs "pay us for permission for the most tedious grind ever!"

[Wrathbringer]

lol @ Simu raping their golden goose to death to impress the stillfront people.

I wonder how long before they just start selling high end items directly on the Simucoin store vs "pay us for permission for the most tedious grind ever!"

Simucoin auction; coming spring 2018!

[Tgo01]

I wonder how long before they just start selling high end items directly on the Simucoin store.

They probably make more money selling people SimuCoins and watching them only get 250 bloodscrip per arena run and saving up 500k bloodscrip to buy the awesome item/service.

Simu is already indirectly selling silvers via SimuCoins because of the silver reward and item you get at the end of each arena run, the item mostly just ends up being sold at the pawnshop anyways. Sometimes the item is decent and is worth silvers on the market. Then you have to factor in the sewer runs where people are rewarded with silvers, items, pets, and those segment things that people fork over cash or silvers for. Then to top it all off you are rewarded with bloodscrip that is also worth silvers and money not to mention allows people to buy items/services they want and it's hard for silver itself to compete with SimuCoins at this rate.

Honestly I'm surprised the silver market lasted for as well as it did after the first DR, I guess Simu just needed to pump out more and more DRs and make sure to switch Ebon Gate over to 100% SimuCoins (lol right silvers will still be used, 99% then) to really kill off the silver market.

What finally slapped me across the face and realize there is a problem was when I saw someone the other day claim they make more silvers at one DR than they have ever made in their 10 years of playing on and off combined. This was me at that point:

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55150619.jpg

I have no idea if silvers are stabilized for now, if they'll continue to take a nose dive, or if Simu manages to totally surprise us and introduces some mega awesome silver drain event the likes of which this game has never seen.

Even though Wyrom claims Ebon Gate isn't a silver drain event I still think that will be the next test for silvers. I already see more and more people asking for straight up cash for bloodscrip instead of silvers, we'll see what the demand for silvers will be at EG.

[Methais]

What's funny about all this is how Simu keeps denying that they're trying to phase out silvers despite the fact that everything they've been doing lately is doing exactly that. Eventually they'll probably just be like "Silvers might be worthless now, but that was just a side effect, it's not what we REALLY set out to do and plus there's also the fact that..."

{To continue reading this post will cost 80 Simucoins}

I mean just come out and admit it at least instead of acting like people are really that gullible. Even the gullible people can see this. Paying 1k silvers for a wand at the pawnshop doesnt count as "Silvers still have uses!"

[Taernath]

What finally slapped me across the face and realize there is a problem was when I saw someone the other day claim they make more silvers at one DR than they have ever made in their 10 years of playing on and off combined. This was me at that point:

https://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/55150619.jpg

That sounds like it would be true. Between the vendor trash, BS, and occasional valuable you find, you can easily clear a few mil in a run.

[Tgo01]

What's funny about all this is how Simu keeps denying that they're trying to phase out silvers despite the fact that everything they've been doing lately is doing exactly that.

My favorite part was Wyrom saying some people have so much silver that it's skewing the market because people who don't have billions in the bank don't want to fork over all of their silvers for one item. But...people want to fork over all of their real cash for Simucoins/alternative in game currency for items?


Eventually they'll probably just be like "Silvers might be worthless now, but that was just a side effect, it's not what we REALLY set out to do and plus there's also the fact that..."

{To continue reading this post will cost 80 Simucoins}

I mean just come out and admit it at least instead of acting like people are really that gullible. Even the gullible people can see this. Paying 1k silvers for a wand at the pawnshop doesnt count as "Silvers still have uses!"

Yup. I think deep down we all knew SimuCoins were supposed to directly compete with silvers from the beginning, we just didn't realize how bad it would get in a couple years at the time.

[Tgo01]

That sounds like it would be true. Between the vendor trash, BS, and occasional valuable you find, you can easily clear a few mil in a run.

Yup, just more and more silver being generated directly via SimuCoins. And the GMs were worried because people were "abusing" the trading skill. I guess more like the GMs were worried because the trading skill was directly competing with SimuCoins.

[Methais]

Yup, just more and more silver being generated directly via SimuCoins. And the GMs were worried because people were "abusing" the trading skill. I guess more like the GMs were worried because the trading skill was directly competing with SimuCoins.

"Since the silver drain excuse is getting stale, let's have DR flood the market even more until nobody uses them for anything and have to pay us cash for everything!"

Once silvers become completely worthless everything else is going to crash after. Maybe not right away, but the population will start dwindling once people fully realize that GS has been converted to a pay2win game.

They could attach a silver cost to BS items to keep silvers relevant, but Simu sees every useful silver in the game as a possible player to player transaction which is seen as a missed Simucoin opportunity.

Ask if they have any silver only events coming down the pipe, either pay or non-pay, that have no Simucoin involvement and items operate on silver sales. You'll either get told no, or more likely you'll just hear crickets because they wouldn't want to have to answer that question honestly and will just pull a time4fun.

[Taernath]

Once silvers become completely worthless everything else is going to crash after. Maybe not right away, but the population will start dwindling once people fully realize that GS has been converted to a pay2win game.

If we're being honest with ourselves, GS has been p2w since the first paid event, they've just been getting more and more overt about it.

[Tgo01]

Once silvers become completely worthless everything else is going to crash after. Maybe not right away, but the population will start dwindling once people fully realize that GS has been converted to a pay2win game.

That's what I'm thinking. I know people have been selling silvers for real life cash for probably as long as the game has been alive, but people have always had the ability to earn their own silvers via just paying the hourly AOL rate or paying their monthly GS subscription, no additional purchase was required. They could save up their own silvers and buy that awesome weapon or service themselves.

Silver was the perfect medium to conduct trades in as well. Someone could sell their 10x claid of doom for silvers because silvers themselves had value both in game and out. Now we're already seeing more and more people opt for real cash or alternate currency and not everyone wants to spend real cash on items or buy Simucoins to earn alternate currency.

The entire dynamic of the in game currency is shifting in a major way for the first time since...well again since probably the game's inception.

[Methais]

If we're being honest with ourselves, GS has been p2w since the first paid event, they've just been getting more and more overt about it.

Not really, because you could still buy those items from people for silvers. Right now silvers are rapidly becoming worthless, which leaves cash as the only viable way to attain anything good.

Before it was optional pay2win. Soon it will be mandatory and GS will either finally shit the bed or will be primarily funded by a handful of rich people that do nothing but GS.

[Amerek]

The funny part is that by devaluing silvers they are also devaluing regular play and subscriptions (because the reward for actually playing is and should be obtaining silver/treasure).

Maybe they will realize they fucked up when their subscribership dries up. Probably not, since those few playing will also be the ones purchasing simucoins.

[Fallen]

One possible way to set a floor is to have silvers be able to directly buy alt-currency and simucoins from Simu at an exorbitant price. That way, they'd always have some form of value. They could also make it so if you spend enough silver you can pay for your account for a given length of time.

[Tgo01]

Maybe they will realize they fucked up when their subscribership dries up. Probably not, since those few playing will also be the ones purchasing simucoins.

Simu either doesn't realize how important the silver economy is to many players, doesn't give a shit and just wants to earn cash now and worry about the fallout later, or they have already crunched the numbers and figure they'll make more money from the people plopping down cash for SimuCoins than they'll lose from people quitting the game.

It used to be they would rather have a steady flow of cash from subscriptions than from an irregular flow of cash from in game purchases, but now that the SimuCoin store is up and running and they are running these paid events on an almost monthly basis they no longer need to worry about paid subscriptions as long as they have people gobbling up these SimuCoins.

[Archigeek]

The funny part is that by devaluing silvers they are also devaluing regular play and subscriptions (because the reward for actually playing is and should be obtaining silver/treasure).

Maybe they will realize they fucked up when their subscribership dries up. Probably not, since those few playing will also be the ones purchasing simucoins.

I keep reminding them of this. 40 bucks a month is an income stream that all other FTP games would kill for. Why would you want to kill that goose for micro transactions?

Also, when the value of silvers goes down even more, and people finally say fuck it, then what? They stop playing and stop paying, and then the value of everything people were paying simucoins for at absurd rates goes down, and they're left with a $3000 widget in their hands that they can't sell because demand has tanked and method of sale has become restricted to RL money, well then they'll stand there and go "well fuck, looks like that was a waste" and then the purchase of simucoins starts to drop too.

At that point, the next likely thing to see is a reduction in the price of simucoins, to sweeten the pot so-to-speak, and that will be just another level of loss, as we'll see hyper inflation in both silvers and simucoins, and very little secondary market except maybe for trades.

Good luck all.

[Archigeek]

One possible way to set a floor is to have silvers be able to directly buy alt-currency and simucoins from Simu at an exorbitant price. That way, they'd always have some form of value. They could also make it so if you spend enough silver you can pay for your account for a given length of time.

This would possibly be the dumbest move ever. The value of silvers would tank even more. I think it's more likely that we'll see more benefits added to premium, but I'm not sure that's going to work.

[Methais]

The long term end result being Wyrom looking for a new job and Dave Whatley and Stillfront having a massive cocaine party that they didn't invite Wyrom to even though he made all that cocaine possible for them by introducing cancer to GS.

[Taernath]

One possible way to set a floor is to have silvers be able to directly buy alt-currency and simucoins from Simu at an exorbitant price. That way, they'd always have some form of value. They could also make it so if you spend enough silver you can pay for your account for a given length of time.

Hitching silvers to a real-world service would probably further lower silvers' value. You can see that in WoW, where at one time spending 40 gold was considered a big investment, now buying a WoW token off the auction house costs 150,000 gold (it was 15k a year ago). Goldfarming in WoW has been unsustainable for a few years now.

[Fallen]

This would possibly be the dumbest move ever. The value of silvers would tank even more. I think it's more likely that we'll see more benefits added to premium, but I'm not sure that's going to work.

Why? Other games allow your currency to pay for subscriptions. Elaborate.


Hitching silvers to a real-world service would probably further lower silvers' value. You can see that in WoW, where at one time spending 40 gold was considered a big investment, now buying a WoW token off the auction house costs 150,000 gold (it was 15k a year ago). Goldfarming in WoW has been unsustainable for a few years now.

Why would Simu taking silvers cause their value to go down? I'm not saying it wont, I just don't understand why.

[Taernath]

Why would Simu taking silvers cause their value to go down? I'm not saying it wont, I just don't understand why.

For a while, silvers were what, $7 a million? If you tie silvers to a subscription ($15), they now acquire a concrete value. If a silver-to-subscription cost were to ever go over ~2 million silvers, the silver market crashes because why would you buy silvers for more than the cost of a sub?

[Kobold]

Possibility that all of you haven't touched on is.. that this is it. I mean yeah it's been said before a thousand times but everything needs to die in the end. I read on Stillfront's financials somewhere that they give the life expectancy of the GS/DR product of about 5 years (I shit you not, I would go look but eclipse and all).

But, you don't even need to do that. Just ask yourself, "OK, I'm right, this is bad for the long term prospects for the game....then why are they doing it?"

[Fallen]

If a silver-to-subscription cost were to ever go over ~2 million silvers, the silver market crashes because why would you buy silvers for more than the cost of a sub?

Lets say it takes 1 million silvers to = 1 dollar. Not suggesting that as a value, just as a starting point.

You're saying making purchases over however many millions of silver to pay for your account suddenly wouldn't happen because you could pay for your sub with that silver? I'm not following the logic, but I am very, very bad with numbers.

Someone has some armor I want and the price is 50 million silver. Silvers also can be sold to Simutronics at 1 dollar per million up to the cap of 1 month's sub fee.

Where is the problem?

[Kobold]

Also, watch for the weighting/padding changes... I think this will speak volumes on how they view the future longevity of the game.

[Kembal]

Lets say it takes 1 million silvers to = 1 dollar. Not suggesting that as a value, just as a starting point.

You're saying making purchases over however many millions of silver to pay for your account suddenly wouldn't happen because you could pay for your sub with that silver? I'm not following the logic, but I am very, very bad with numbers.

Someone has some armor I want and the price is 50 million silver. Silvers also can be sold to Simutronics at 1 dollar per million up to the cap of 1 month's sub fee.

Where is the problem?

Generally, economic theory holds that fixed exchange rates are bad. setting a concrete dollar value will do exactly that.

[Taernath]

Lets say it takes 1 million silvers to = 1 dollar. Not suggesting that as a value, just as a starting point.

You're saying making purchases over however many millions of silver to pay for your account suddenly wouldn't happen because you could pay for your sub with that silver? I'm not following the logic, but I am very, very bad with numbers.

Someone has some armor I want and the price is 50 million silver. Silvers also can be sold to Simutronics at 1 dollar per million up to the cap of 1 month's sub fee.

Where is the problem?

Alright, so that armor that's worth 50 million at a time when silvers are valued at $7/mil has a 'real world' cost of $350

If silvers get devalued more (as I suspect they would be if they were tied to a subscription exchange), that 50 million silver armor is now worth $50.

The reason for the devaluation is that when an online currency can be used to buy a 'real world' service, like a subscription, it takes on the value/exchange rate of that 'real world' item.

[Whirlin]

Generally, economic theory holds that fixed exchange rates are bad. setting a concrete dollar value will do exactly that.
Yes, but fixed exchange rates imply bi-directional, with two separate entities managing money supply, interest rates/etc on their own. I don't think that economic theory applies to this situation as apples to apples as you may be implying that it does.

[audioserf]

Having just this weekend come back to the game after around 2 years, I have no idea what the fuck is going on. More shit than not I see for sale (on here and on Lnet) is priced in BloodScrip, and from what I can figure out, to get this BloodScrip I have to either pay cash dollars to Simu to grind a dungeon quest, or pay silvers to someone who themselves paid Simu cash for said game. It's a weird feeling seeing the currency generated in game being replaced by one reliant on out of game economics.

[Methais]

Possibility that all of you haven't touched on is.. that this is it. I mean yeah it's been said before a thousand times but everything needs to die in the end. I read on Stillfront's financials somewhere that they give the life expectancy of the GS/DR product of about 5 years (I shit you not, I would go look but eclipse and all).

But, you don't even need to do that. Just ask yourself, "OK, I'm right, this is bad for the long term prospects for the game....then why are they doing it?"

I don't know if that 5 year thing on the site is true, but everything about this has "Get what we can while we can" written all over it.

Either that or they're just really stupid and are unable to see the long term shitball effect they're gonna create because they're too busy bukkaking each other from being so excited about short term gains.

[Methais]

For a while, silvers were what, $7 a million? If you tie silvers to a subscription ($15), they now acquire a concrete value. If a silver-to-subscription cost were to ever go over ~2 million silvers, the silver market crashes because why would you buy silvers for more than the cost of a sub?

This is mostly what happened when the Simucoin store opened. Silver prices adjusted based on the cost of fixskill/fixstat potions and stayed stable for quite a while until Wyrom introduced cancer to the game.

[Tgo01]

Yes, but fixed exchange rates imply bi-directional, with two separate entities managing money supply, interest rates/etc on their own. I don't think that economic theory applies to this situation as apples to apples as you may be implying that it does.

You're right, I think it's even worse in this scenario. You have players the ones generating silvers at the whim of how Simu decides it should be generated. You have Simu themselves devaluing silvers even more by introducing more generated silvers via SimuCoin events such as DR. Then you have Simu being the sole entity capable of taking silvers out of the system and thus giving silver value in the first place.

The silver market worked because everyone believed silvers had value because the GMs were actively trying to give silvers value. Now that the perception of the GMs giving a shit is destroyed the whole thing is just going to fold like a house of cards unless Simu does something. I don't think Simu pegging silvers at the cost of a sub would work anyways because gift of adventure already exists. No way in hell is Simu themselves going to accept silvers for a sub, they would do something similar to what WoW did which was to sell a token to people and then people can decide how much that token is worth in silvers, which would continue to devalue silvers more and more as people realize silvers are worth less and less. Unless, again, Simu does something to reverse this trend.

[Whirlin]

I don't know if that 5 year thing on the site is true, but everything about this has "Get what we can while we can" written all over it.

It's not true.

[Tgo01]

from what I can figure out, to get this BloodScrip I have to either pay cash dollars to Simu to grind a dungeon quest, or pay silvers to someone who themselves paid Simu cash for said game.

Yup, although I'm sure soon enough, or maybe by next DR, people will stop offering to sell DR tokens or booklets or whatever for silvers, they themselves will want cold hard cash or bloodscript or a trade of some sort.

[Methais]

You're right, I think it's even worse in this scenario. You have players the ones generating silvers at the whim of how Simu decides it should be generated. You have Simu themselves devaluing silvers even more by introducing more generated silvers via SimuCoin events such as DR. Then you have Simu being the sole entity capable of taking silvers out of the system and thus giving silver value in the first place.

Don't forget that they're flooding all these silvers into the game from DR while simultaneously complaining about the lack of silver drains in the game that Wyrom stated in that silver drain thread on here that it's an issue with pretty zero priority to fix. Gee I wonder why that could be?

"But silvers will still be useful in game!"

For what though? That's the part that hasn't been answered, probably because an answer like ferries and mine carts and gold wands in the pawnshop or some off the shelf trash would either make Simu look really dumb or really disingenuous.

[Whirlin]

You're right, I think it's even worse in this scenario. You have players the ones generating silvers at the whim of how Simu decides it should be generated. You have Simu themselves devaluing silvers even more by introducing more generated silvers via SimuCoin events such as DR. Then you have Simu being the sole entity capable of taking silvers out of the system and thus giving silver value in the first place.

The silver market worked because everyone believed silvers had value because the GMs were actively trying to give silvers value. Now that the perception of the GMs giving a shit is destroyed the whole thing is just going to fold like a house of cards unless Simu does something. I don't think Simu pegging silvers at the cost of a sub would work anyways because gift of adventure already exists. No way in hell is Simu themselves going to accept silvers for a sub, they would do something similar to what WoW did which was to sell a token to people and then people can decide how much that token is worth in silvers, which would continue to devalue silvers more and more as people realize silvers are worth less and less. Unless, again, Simu does something to reverse this trend.
None of that has anything to do with economy theory of fixed exchange rates. That's basic money supply 101, which I think we all agree, they're not doing great in adequate silver drains. This problem is compiled with the small quantity of people having vast quantities, and unlikely to move that money. Even the god auction didn't remove as much money as they were hoping!

So... rather than end of times, what are ideas that people would have to introduce money drains? Many other MMOs allow you to buy temporary buffs for in game currency, but we would need a hunting ground to enable that. Quests for silvers for entry? Breaking down objects into slabs for currency?

[Methais]

It's not true.

You should ban him for fake news.

[Tgo01]

Don't forget that they're flooding all these silvers into the game from DR while simultaneously complaining about the lack of silver drains in the game that Wyrom stated in that silver drain thread on here that it's an issue with pretty zero priority to fix.

"But silvers will still be useful in game!"

For what though? That's the part that hasn't been answered, probably because an answer like ferries and mine carts and gold wands in the pawnshop or some other off the shelf trash would either make Simu look really dumb or really disingenuous.

I was discussing this with someone at length last night. Wyrom said Ebon Gate was never considered a silver drain because it didn't drain much silvers, he then went on to say last year's EG drained 100 billion silvers from the economy. Let's just think about this for a moment; 100 billion silvers isn't considered a "silver drain" to Simu. So what is then?

He said the auction last year drained 13 trillion silvers, and from what I recall the silver market didn't get a bump from this auction, it merely stabilized the market for a while. So 100 billion silvers isn't considered a silver drain, 13 trillion silvers isn't enough to give the market a boost, Simu making more and more services, items, and events solely or heavily SimuCoin based and, well, this is what happens.

It's still possible silvers might get a bump in the future or will have some value because Simu does another auction or something, but at this point it's all in Simu's hands and how much they value keeping the silver economy stable versus how many more SimuCoins they want to sell.

[BLZrizz]

You should ban him for fake news.

Actually, i can vouch for that. I read it myself in the annual report or one of the quarterlies. I didnt read much into it because businesses need to do that to be able to value the asset for accounting purposes.

[Taernath]

I was discussing this with someone at length last night. Wyrom said Ebon Gate was never considered a silver drain because it didn't drain much silvers, he then went on to say last year's EG drained 100 billion silvers from the economy. Let's just think about this for a moment; 100 billion silvers isn't considered a "silver drain" to Simu. So what is then?

He said the auction last year drained 13 trillion silvers, and from what I recall the silver market didn't get a bump from this auction, it merely stabilized the market for a while. So 100 billion silvers isn't considered a silver drain, 13 trillion silvers isn't enough to give the market a boost, Simu making more and more services, items, and events solely or heavily SimuCoin based and, well, this is what happens.

It's still possible silvers might get a bump in the future or will have some value because Simu does another auction or something, but at this point it's all in Simu's hands and how much they value keeping the silver economy stable versus how many more SimuCoins they want to sell.

Yeah I think the amount of silvers in the economy is way past anyone's comprehension.

[Neveragain]

None of that has anything to do with economy theory of fixed exchange rates. That's basic money supply 101, which I think we all agree, they're not doing great in adequate silver drains. This problem is compiled with the small quantity of people having vast quantities, and unlikely to move that money. Even the god auction didn't remove as much money as they were hoping!

So... rather than end of times, what are ideas that people would have to introduce money drains? Many other MMOs allow you to buy temporary buffs for in game currency, but we would need a hunting ground to enable that. Quests for silvers for entry? Breaking down objects into slabs for currency?

How about selling high end items off the shelf in the game, you know, like real life. And maybe add more end game "dungeons" with OP bosses and such that drop "tokens" you need to purchase those items along with the silvers.

[Methais]

This problem is compiled with the small quantity of people having vast quantities, and unlikely to move that money.

Wyrom has said more than once that there isn't really this small group of people hoarding billions of silvers like most people think.


So... rather than end of times, what are ideas that people would have to introduce money drains? Many other MMOs allow you to buy temporary buffs for in game currency, but we would need a hunting ground to enable that. Quests for silvers for entry? Breaking down objects into slabs for currency?

There are two problems with this.

- Lots of good sustainable methods were suggested and were all shit on.

- Anything that Simu would use would eventually become "Why are we charging silvers for this when we could charge Simucoins?"

They don't want any non-Simucoin based currency being involved in any significant transactions. If they could eliminate silver from the game completely without a huge backlash they would do so in a heartbeat.

They really should just sell high end items for Simucoins on the store and quit treating people like idiots, even though most of them actually are idiots.

[Tgo01]

None of that has anything to do with economy theory of fixed exchange rates.

Yes, I'm saying this is why the situation is worse at the moment. Throw in Simu selling a token for 15/25 dollars that people can trade in for a paid month sub and it would just further devalue silvers if people start selling that for silvers.

Someone mentioned the perfect in game analogy; fix stats and fix skills potions in the SimuCoin store, suddenly these potions had a set real world value that people could peg a silver value to based on the silver/cash exchange. Now as silver continues to drop in value the cost of these things in silvers is going to go up because people know what the real world value of them are.

[Tgo01]

- Anything that Simu would use would eventually become "Why are we charging silvers for this when we could charge Simucoins?"

Yeah really. Look at the options already in the SimuCoin store, all of those would have been perfect for this constant silver drain Whirlin mentions.

The problem is the SimuCoin store already exists, Simu has gotten a taste for how much money outside of the already ridiculously high monthly sub costs people are willing to pay.

The only question now is have they done their homework to determine if this is all worth it or are they just rolling the dice in hoping people won't start leaving in droves.

[Methais]

Yeah really. Look at the options already in the SimuCoin store, all of those would have been perfect for this constant silver drain Whirlin mentions.

The problem is the SimuCoin store already exists, Simu has gotten a taste for how much money outside of the already ridiculously high monthly sub costs people are willing to pay.

The only question now is have they done their homework to determine if this is all worth it or are they just rolling the dice in hoping people won't start leaving in droves.

They really should just change their name to Zyngatronics.

[Taernath]

Yeah really. Look at the options already in the SimuCoin store, all of those would have been perfect for this constant silver drain Whirlin mentions.

The problem is the SimuCoin store already exists, Simu has gotten a taste for how much money outside of the already ridiculously high monthly sub costs people are willing to pay.

The only question now is have they done their homework to determine if this is all worth it or are they just rolling the dice in hoping people won't start leaving in droves.

They could attempt an automated GALD service for exorbitant amounts of silver, but it won't happen.

With the trifecta of a multi-tiered subscription, pay events, AND a cash shop, the golden goose is pretty well squeezed dry.

https://media.giphy.com/media/UZ0vMRAalRqMg/giphy.gif

[Kobold]

Just watch the weighting/padding revamp. As you all know weighting/padding is the third rail of GS (short of outright class nerfs), it's going to be telling how they reconstruct it (aka revamp for better SIMUCOIN milking).

[SonoftheNorth]

I don't think they want to phase out silvers. I think they just want cash more and fuck it.

[Kobold]

Hell, even the Warrior Raging Thrak breaks character to tell you to buy Simucoins now.

Just got this from the other forums. If true... wow, my childhood innocence is truly gone now.

[SonoftheNorth]

I assume attendance is down because people aren't selling books for silver like at all so maybe wyrom will realize theres a problem and start coming up with silver drain ideas.

[Kobold]

I assume attendance is down because people aren't selling books for silver like at all so maybe wyrom will realize theres a problem and start coming up with silver drain ideas.

How sure you about this? You sure it isn't just people waiting on the bloodforge to open up after getting all their invitations?

[SonoftheNorth]

How sure you about this?

100% because I actually play gemstone.

[Kobold]

100% because I actually play gemstone.

You may be the right, Wyrom is starting to throw in extra shops to entice people. People aren't spending BS and aren't going into get more BS is the 1,000,000,000,000 lb. Gorilla in the room WEIGHTING/PADDING changes still hasn't come out.

If anything, this was a terrible roll out of their product line.

[Nephelem]

You would need a silver sink that they declared sacrosanct to prop up the market. Sell xp related boosts, multipliers or mind clears and state emphatically that they will only be available via silver. I am fully aware that when they saw the sales figures they would immediately take back their decision and monetize it, but one can dream.

[Kobold]

Honestly, I think they should've hit on leveling and EXP boosts instead of touching people's items. I don't think it would be as controversial if done that way since something like that exists in F2P versus SUB and exp potions to eliminate the difference. Plus, if they did this, they could make it all simucoin anytime they want without destroying the silver market or anything else.

[Tgo01]

Sell xp related boosts, multipliers or mind clears and state emphatically that they will only be available via silver.

One thing I've always admired about GS was how they were careful not to make the game pay2win.

You can use silvers to buy awesome gear. You had to grind out those levels. Sure if you want to attend this fun once a year event you have to cough up an extra 50 bucks, but after that you can use in game silvers to buy shit inside of the event!

Now they're pretty much fully embraced pay2win as fear as gear and items go, they might as well just kill the game off completely and allow people to directly buy experience. Just think of the short term gains, Simu! You'll be rolling in dough!

Until someone literally has every skill maxed and they are in their 10x uber crit padded gear, with their 10x DB cloak, and their 10x uber crit weighted claid, then they log on one day and are like "What was the point again? Oh, right, RP!"

Then it would be time to monetize ALL RP events. Wait, don't they almost do that anyways?

[Archigeek]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

[Nephelem]

Well of course the better answer is to remove alternate currency, but that ship sailed a long time ago and is never coming back to these waters.

[Kronius]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

This. 100% this.

[Tgo01]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

Silver sinks just for the sake of silver sinks are the wrong way to go (like item breakage.)

I think when people talk about silver sinks they are talking about what you are talking about; introducing some awesome mega item or service of death and slapping a huge price tag on it. Or maybe even a lot of smaller services for smaller amounts of silvers but they can sell thousands upon thousands (like the digging games...before that went the way of SimuCoins.)

[Methais]

One thing I've always admired about GS was how they were careful not to make the game pay2win.

You can use silvers to buy awesome gear. You had to grind out those levels. Sure if you want to attend this fun once a year event you have to cough up an extra 50 bucks, but after that you can use in game silvers to buy shit inside of the event!

Now they're pretty much fully embraced pay2win as fear as gear and items go, they might as well just kill the game off completely and allow people to directly buy experience. Just think of the short term gains, Simu! You'll be rolling in dough!

Until someone literally has every skill maxed and they are in their 10x uber crit padded gear, with their 10x DB cloak, and their 10x uber crit weighted claid, then they log on one day and are like "What was the point again? Oh, right, RP!"

Then it would be time to monetize ALL RP events. Wait, don't they almost do that anyways?

All RP verbs are now 1 Simucoin per use.

>slap dreaven

Sorry, this verb requires 1 Simucoin. You currently have 0 Simucoins.

SimuCoins can be purchased at http://store.play.net/store/purchase/GS

[Tgo01]

All RP verbs are now 1 Simucoin per use.

>slap dreaven

Sorry, this verb requires 1 Simucoin. You currently have 0 Simucoins.

SimuCoins can be purchased at http://store.play.net/store/purchase/GS

We used to say "Don't give Simu any ideas!" Then we would all laugh because of the absurdity of the suggestion.

Now I cry because it's a legit concern :(

[Methais]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

This is why people have been telling Wyrom that instead of "taxing" players to address silvers, give us things we actually want to spend them on, whether it's a temp item or buff or something to keep us coming back for more or whatever.

They're not interested. And even if they were, it would still become "Why do this for silvers when we can do it for Simucoins?"

If they were even just a little bit interested in not phasing out silvers, they wouldn't be using silver drain as an excuse while simultaneously flooding DR with silvers to where people (or at least Maerit) is making a decade's worth of coins in one run.

Their forever excuse will be "There's too much money in the game already blah blah blah" regardless of how good anyone's suggestions are to deal with it.

[Kobold]

You're all forgetting that Simu doesn't want silvers to exist; it's a direct compeititor to their alt-currencies. I wouldn't be surprised that somewhere in Simu High Command Wyrom was directly given the directive to eliminate or severly lessen the silver market and co-op it with a Simucoin backed currency.

[Methais]

We used to say "Don't give Simu any ideas!" Then we would all laugh because of the absurdity of the suggestion.

Now I cry because it's a legit concern :(

I heard on the news that Simu is in talks with Tillmen to make Lich operate on Simucoins.

[Tgo01]

I heard on the news that Simu is in talks with Tillmen to make Lich operate on Simucoins.

The bastards!

It's funny though because Lich is yet another example of Simu letting their customers do their work for them.

GM: "Hey wouldn't maps in the game that followed us around help out old and new players alike?"
Simu: "Yeah but that would take GM man hours away from making us more and more money, let some sucker create that."

GM: "Hey people love using scripts in our game that is literally one giant script, should we maybe make it easier for people to use scripts?"
Simu: "Naww, create a new in game currency that people have to buy with real money, let the players create that."

GM: "Hey what about a way for players to communicate with anyon..."
Simu: "Nope! A player can create that, we need to somehow squeeze in another 4 paid events a year into our already large and ever growing number of paid events a year."

[SonoftheNorth]

Here's the problem. "Sinks" will either make the game more annoying. FIND LESS SILVER/COST INCREASE OF ANYTHING, They aren't willing to exchange GM/Merchant time for silver, they aren't willing to sell simucoin items for silver because they will lose money. The other option is have god auctions all the time and flood the game with uber powerful weapons which is already kinda happening and they are losing value. I think a GREAT solution would be if they lowered the fucking monthly fee so more people would play. Yes more silver would be being generated but more people would be needing to buy things as well.

[Tgo01]

Here's the problem. "Sinks" will either make the game more annoying. FIND LESS SILVER/COST INCREASE OF ANYTHING, They aren't willing to exchange GM/Merchant time for silver, they aren't willing to sell simucoin items for silver because they will lose money. The other option is have god auctions all the time and flood the game with uber powerful weapons which is already kinda happening and they are losing value. I think a GREAT solution would be if they lowered the fucking monthly fee so more people would play. Yes more silver would be being generated but more people would be needing to buy things as well.

And that's another part of the problem, the player population has more or less stabilized now, maybe we're a bit bigger than we were 3 years ago, but overall it's been the same for close to a decade now. Yet in that time people have gotten more and more awesome equipment so everything is less special and unique and valuable now because everyone already has the best gear, or at least the best gear they want.

[SonoftheNorth]

They need to sell useless merchant services like alteration scrolls for a high silver price. Multiple ticket raffles for alteration sessions and shit.

[Methais]

The bastards!

It's funny though because Lich is yet another example of Simu letting their customers do their work for them.

GM: "Hey wouldn't maps in the game that followed us around help out old and new players alike?"
Simu: "Yeah but that would take GM man hours away from making us more and more money, let some sucker create that."

GM: "Hey people love using scripts in our game that is literally one giant script, should we maybe make it easier for people to use scripts?"
Simu: "Naww, create a new in game currency that people have to buy with real money, let the players create that."

GM: "Hey what about a way for players to communicate with anyon..."
Simu: "Nope! A player can create that, we need to somehow squeeze in another 4 paid events a year into our already large and ever growing number of paid events a year."

Do you have any idea how expensive fire extinguisher inspections are?

[Methais]

And that's another part of the problem, the player population has more or less stabilized now, maybe we're a bit bigger than we were 3 years ago, but overall it's been the same for close to a decade now. Yet in that time people have gotten more and more awesome equipment so everything is less special and unique and valuable now because everyone already has the best gear, or at least the best gear they want.

I think the current population is about as good as it's gonna get. They probably realize it too.

Stillfront: Dave, we ran the numbers on so and so and according to this, this ship's going down in X years. Get everything you can out of them while you can, that's a direct order. You work for me now. Fucking remember that.

Dave: Ok boss! Wyrom, you heard them. Get to work, I'm not paying you to have a staring contest with me on Skype. You work for me, you'd better not...I mean don't forg...fucking remember that!

Wyrom: But Dave, what about the...

Dave:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxTBopL6fIQ

Wyrom:
https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-96vY48hxIZQ/TYy9ufiHe2I/AAAAAAAADhU/jJaw_75weEk/s1600/needles.jpg
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/83/GemstoneIV_Logo.png


On another note, you find a lot of random shit when you GiS Gemstone IV.

[Maerit]

I still think being able to buy items at the AG with silver would be a big help to the value of silver, but that would reduce their simucoins sales.

[Lulfas]

Hell, even the Warrior Raging Thrak breaks character to tell you to buy Simucoins now.

Just got this from the other forums. If true... wow, my childhood innocence is truly gone now.

He mentions it as a wrong answer for sure. I didn't pay any attention to the actual text.

[Neveragain]

I think the current population is about as good as it's gonna get. They probably realize it too.

Shit, give me an animation team, a script writer and I could double their subs.

[Avaia]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

As has been mentioned already, pretty much this. Unlikely they would listen, and annoying to have basically the same conversation(with some of the same people even) on 2-3 different boards, but you should post this in that Complaints thread on the Officials.

It's not about "silver drains", and threads about this subject tend to drift in that direction.

[subzero]

Hitching silvers to a real-world service would probably further lower silvers' value. You can see that in WoW, where at one time spending 40 gold was considered a big investment, now buying a WoW token off the auction house costs 150,000 gold (it was 15k a year ago). Goldfarming in WoW has been unsustainable for a few years now.

I think you're missing an important aspect of the gold for game-time trade that Blizzard operates. It's not a one-way street. The auction house does not just create a token when you choose to buy one. The tokens have to first be put onto the market by people buying the token itself with real money from Blizzard. So, gold still has a value. If it didn't, no one would be buying it via the tokens that the people with excess gold then buy for game time.

While you may be able to accumulate a ton of gold in Warcraft, there are still a fair amount of things - very expensive things - that people can buy with gold. One example being that in the latest expansion, they added a mount that I believe the vendor sells for two million gold. There aren't a lot of people running around with that mount. Personally, I was surprised at how little gold a lot of people I know have. Some of them still have less than I would make every day or two several years back.

I don't think Simu would have similar success if they started selling silvers. Maybe they'd have been able to before they started this micro-transaction stuff, but it is probably too late for that now.


For a while, silvers were what, $7 a million? If you tie silvers to a subscription ($15), they now acquire a concrete value. If a silver-to-subscription cost were to ever go over ~2 million silvers, the silver market crashes because why would you buy silvers for more than the cost of a sub?

One month of Warcraft = $15. One WoW Token = $20.


One thing I've always admired about GS was how they were careful not to make the game pay2win.

Gemstone isn't a competition, though. At the end of the day, your power is capped by the ranks you can train in a given skill and your stats and these numbers are the same for everyone (obviously based on profession/race). Sure, you can modify that some with enhancives, but that number also has a cap if I recall correctly. Who cares how long it takes someone to get to the level cap, or skill cap, or whatever?

With gear being the only way to increase your power beyond the maximum stat growth and skill training, the pay-to-win deal has been in place forever basically.


Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

They're getting at the same thing. Technically, yeah, a silver sink would help with inflation rather than the value of silvers. The problem Simu seems to be facing is that there isn't anything worth using silvers on. A secondary problem to that is that they might not feel that they can take enough silvers from people to help with the inflation issue and keep the items affordable enough that silvers are actually drained while simultaneously preventing the items from being as common as a wooden shield.


I heard on the news that Simu is in talks with Tillmen to make Lich operate on Simucoins.

Heh, wonder how fast the game would come to an end.

[Fallen]

Just stop already with the silver sink talk. The value of silvers is far more dependent upon players feeling like they have something to spend their silvers on, than on some actual equation that removes x percent of silvers from the game. Think about it this way for a moment: anyone else here who went to the pavilion auction, what, 20 years ago? What did you spend on the item you bought at that auction? The value of things have changed slowly since then, both up and down depending on the thing, but what has remained constant is that you've always felt that you could get something new and good with your silvers. They had value, to you. You didn't wake up one day and say, "OMG, I wish there was a silver sink!" That isn't how it works. Silvers have value because there's something you WANT to spend them on, and can spend them on.

When nothing cool (or very little) is for sale via silvers, then the silvers are worth less to you. This is particularly true when ANOTHER currency does have value to you instead of silvers.

Silver sink doesn't automatically mean punitive silver costs to normal activities. There are ideas that have been mentioned that are not punitive in nature, but provide new incentives for players rich and poor to gain/spend silver. You even argue that there needs to be more avenues to spend silver, but at the same time, this problem can't be solved by continually holding high end auctions. There's nothing wrong with players attempting to find more ways to spend silver beyond auctions, even if some come at the cost of the rate of accrual or expenditure. Players feeling like it's harder to earn silver and easier/necessary to spend them would do as much to influence the perception of their worth as anything else.

It's not a 1 solution problem. The more ideas to properly manage the issue the better.

[Kembal]

Silver sink doesn't automatically mean punitive silver costs to normal activities. There are ideas that have been mentioned that are not punitive in nature, but provide new incentives for players rich and poor to gain/spend silver. You even argue that there needs to be more avenues to spend silver, but at the same time, this problem can't be solved by continually holding high end auctions. There's nothing wrong with players attempting to find more ways to spend silver beyond auctions, even if some come at the cost of the rate of accrual or expenditure. Players feeling like it's harder to earn silver and easier/necessary to spend them would do as much to influence the perception of their worth as anything else.

It's not a 1 solution problem. The more ideas to properly manage the issue the better.

I think silver value will stabilize (and possibly go back up) if mechanical gear upgrades are seen to be purchasable by silvers. Whether that happens at EG or another venue, that probably is what's missing. The haphazard EG announcement (with the mention of seashells as another alternate currency) has caused issues on that front.

Right now, the only venue for gear upgrades the entire year has been Duskruin - twice.

This really is a perception issue. Nothing has really changed dramatically in terms of silver generation or drainage.

[Kobold]

I think silver value will stabilize (and possibly go back up) if mechanical gear upgrades are seen to be purchasable by silvers. Whether that happens at EG or another venue, that probably is what's missing. The haphazard EG announcement (with the mention of seashells as another alternate currency) has caused issues on that front.

Right now, the only venue for gear upgrades the entire year has been Duskruin - twice.

This really is a perception issue. Nothing has really changed dramatically in terms of silver generation or drainage.

The problem is the only place where you can get any significant mechanical upgrades are going to be from DR and other automated pay2play simucoin events. Silvers are dead in the water, really only useful for off-the-shelf merch items. Couple that with the enormous intake and zero drainage and it's worthless.

Scrip/tix will always circulate because there's a massive drainage point 4 or 5 times a year with the means of acquiring more tightly regulated by real world currency (aka simucoin purchases).

I can even forsee a time when Grand Auctions are held for scrip or other alt-currencies.

[Ashliana]

Holy crap, this thread is dramatic. There's a real disconnect here between the people who play and enjoy the game, and the type of people driven by winning every event auction or hoarding 10x mega-gear that never sees the light of day.


Remember, hundreds of millions get generated every day, and it has nowhere to go.
So the, what, 300-500 people online at peak are generating hundreds of millions of silvers a day? Through what? Duskruin alone?

Even if quattuorquadragintillions of silvers entered the market, what impact does that have to the actual game or people's ability to play or enjoy it? -- beyond being more difficult to incentivize gear from being traded from one player to another? The few assholes who win all the auctions will continue to win all the auctions. Who cares? How does that spell "death for Gemstone"? The game's economy is only a small slice of the game.

If the numbers get crazy, there's any number of potential solutions. Introduce "gold" currency which only drops under specific circumstances with only specific uses. Or divide everybody's balances by 10, or 100, or 1000, etc., and normalize silver coming in to the game. There's a million different things that could be done. So why the hysteria?

[Wrathbringer]

Holy crap, this thread is dramatic. There's a real disconnect here between the people who play and enjoy the game, and the type of people driven by winning every event auction or hoarding 10x mega-gear that never sees the light of day.


So the, what, 300-500 people online at peak are generating hundreds of millions of silvers a day? Through what? Duskruin alone?

Even if quattuorquadragintillions of silvers entered the market, what impact does that have to the actual game or people's ability to play or enjoy it? -- beyond being more difficult to incentivize gear from being traded from one player to another? The few assholes who win all the auctions will continue to win all the auctions. Who cares? How does that spell "death for Gemstone"? The game's economy is only a small slice of the game.

If the numbers get crazy, there's any number of potential solutions. Introduce "gold" currency which only drops under specific circumstances with only specific uses. Or divide everybody's balances by 10, or 100, or 1000, etc., and normalize silver coming in to the game. There's a million different things that could be done. So why the hysteria?

Lol @your rep

[Neveragain]

Holy crap, this thread is dramatic. There's a real disconnect here between the people who play and enjoy the game, and the type of people driven by winning every event auction or hoarding 10x mega-gear that never sees the light of day.


So the, what, 300-500 people online at peak are generating hundreds of millions of silvers a day? Through what? Duskruin alone?

Even if quattuorquadragintillions of silvers entered the market, what impact does that have to the actual game or people's ability to play or enjoy it? -- beyond being more difficult to incentivize gear from being traded from one player to another? The few assholes who win all the auctions will continue to win all the auctions. Who cares? How does that spell "death for Gemstone"? The game's economy is only a small slice of the game.

If the numbers get crazy, there's any number of potential solutions. Introduce "gold" currency which only drops under specific circumstances with only specific uses. Or divide everybody's balances by 10, or 100, or 1000, etc., and normalize silver coming in to the game. There's a million different things that could be done. So why the hysteria?

Because P2W players are faggots who should be taken advantage of at every turn, they are the problem.

[C.Difficile]

Holy crap, this thread is dramatic. There's a real disconnect here between the people who play and enjoy the game, and the type of people driven by winning every event auction or hoarding 10x mega-gear that never sees the light of day.


So the, what, 300-500 people online at peak are generating hundreds of millions of silvers a day? Through what? Duskruin alone?

Even if quattuorquadragintillions of silvers entered the market, what impact does that have to the actual game or people's ability to play or enjoy it? -- beyond being more difficult to incentivize gear from being traded from one player to another? The few assholes who win all the auctions will continue to win all the auctions. Who cares? How does that spell "death for Gemstone"? The game's economy is only a small slice of the game.

If the numbers get crazy, there's any number of potential solutions. Introduce "gold" currency which only drops under specific circumstances with only specific uses. Or divide everybody's balances by 10, or 100, or 1000, etc., and normalize silver coming in to the game. There's a million different things that could be done. So why the hysteria?

I'll start off by saying people like you are great for the game, as Wyrom intimated. You find what you enjoy and you enjoy it. That's great.

I won't gaslight by calling concern here hysteria, but it's fair to say a significant portion of the GS4 population has a significant real world investment in their item hoards, and the value of these items (i.e. the ability to "cash out" at some future date) relate directly to the health of the game long term. When you're talking real world values in the tens of thousands of dollars, it's not unreasonable for people to be concerned.

The issue with silver value and the corresponding concerns raised in this thread is that silver is a tangible representation of player "effort" in the game. That is, players are driven to do things and achieve things based on certain incentives in the game. A significant part of GSIV's incentive structure is gear upgrades over years and perhaps decades. In the past, you could buy crit padding/weighting, etc via silver, creating a direct link between in-game player effort and the primary incentive driver in the game.

With the new simucoin structure, you now have an in-game incentive system that's completely severed from one of the primary (and for many players THE primary) incentive drivers in game. The concern isn't really the value of the silvers themselves, but what the devaluation of silvers mean for its ability to act as an incentive mechanism for players to continue to advance in the game. This in turn affects players populations, longevity , etc. The implications are are incredibly significant for the game's long term existence.

[Fallen]

I think silver value will stabilize (and possibly go back up) if mechanical gear upgrades are seen to be purchasable by silvers. Whether that happens at EG or another venue, that probably is what's missing. The haphazard EG announcement (with the mention of seashells as another alternate currency) has caused issues on that front.

Right now, the only venue for gear upgrades the entire year has been Duskruin - twice.

This really is a perception issue. Nothing has really changed dramatically in terms of silver generation or drainage.

Wyrom brought it up in the other thread (on the PC) and I agree that the silver drains need to be recurring, as opposed to permanent upgrades. If you could temp boost your gear/stats/etc for silver fees that would be a lasting silver drain. Same with if they were to do something like revamping CoL to bypass some innate penalties by paying silver/treasure. You create incentives to use silvers to gain advantages, scale the costs for use and levels, and I think you'll see the demand for silver increase.

That's not to say you don't ALSO have auctions and perm upgrades for silver. You need both. You need lots of different solutions to a multi-faceted issue.

[Yulis]

Huh....so what I hear are a lot of folks now seeing what I saw once EG was switched to pay to play events that were offered for silver in the past? Or perhaps a like mindset is just jumping the gun too soon.....(though I doubt it)?

I pulled my accounts. They officially deactivate on the 28th this month. I still have a handful of items I find interesting on a few characters, but I'm too lazy to log in and hand them out to others based on my last experience trying to give away free stuff.

I can't even believe it, but I actually had troubles trying to give (yes GIVE) away 2 - 4x (+17) perfect warswords in game a couple weeks back. After standing in TSC and yelling they were for free for anyone that wanted them ask asking on lnet - no one wanted them after almost 10 minutes. I eventually had to make mention that I was going to just dump them down the well and then a couple folks offered up to take them.

I even offered up my 6x perfect gornar flamberge for 5mil (you're not going to find another item like that for 5mil - at least I don't think you would). I'm too proud to simply give this item away, but I thought 5mil was a hell of a bargain.

To me, that's just icing on the cake of why I'm leaving. No one wants a quality item (quality in my eyes), even if free because they can't use them to sell for enough silvers or trade for other in game currencies to get a high-end item. I guess these items are too low quality to be a worthwhile item for most people to put any time into.

I had people telling me that I was a drama queen, to quit bitching and just leave and blah, blah, blah when I brought up my complaints about the swift switch to tying up everything to SimuCoins for events. I've had KRAKII and DOUG (to a lesser extent) on the officials try to spin my complaints into a positive outcome of some sort....I wish they'd just stop with their bullshit and shut the fuck up. I saw KITHUS posted concerns about it all, even though from past posting experience usually he's trying to argue the good things and tell those that are complaining that nothing is wrong. Even Wyrom replied to me (and I've seen to others over the past 6 months) with cheap shots and piss poor rebuttals to make his side of the story seem all bright and cheery and claim things will be better for the overall game with the change over to SimuCoins at events because it brings in more money.

Looks like I got a hell of a bargain selling off my silvers about 2 weeks when they still fetched around $6-7/mil.

I don't know if this will be the downfall of GSIV, but it certainly can't be doing it anything good for some of people that rely on the silver market. To all of you that stick around, best of luck with the direction Simu has taken GSIV and to those of you that leave, best of luck on wherever you find yourself in your future gaming endeavours.

[Wrathbringer]

The (silver) market is soft right now, and likely indefinitely. -Wyrom on the officials.

There you have it.

[Tgo01]

The (silver) market is soft right now, and likely indefinitely. -Wyrom on the officials.

There you have it.

Almost as if he's bragging.

Let me guess; the silver market has been responsible for players quitting in the past so it needed to be killed?

[Tsk Tsk]

Almost as if he's bragging.

Let me guess; the silver market has been responsible for players quitting?

I wouldn't be surprised. Lots of people like the business/merchanting aspect of the game, not just the role playing. They aren't mutually exclusive. People put a LOT (and lordy do I mean a lot) of time into the game and like to see at least a minuscule return on that investment of time. Gotta sting knowing silvers won't ever recover (or simply not likely to) for the folks who have invested a lot of time into making a lot of it.

[Gelston]

I wouldn't be surprised. Lots of people like the business/merchanting aspect of the game, not just the role playing. They aren't mutually exclusive. People put a LOT (and lordy do I mean a lot) of time into the game and like to see at least a minuscule return on that investment of time. Gotta sting knowing silvers won't ever recover (or simply not likely to) for the folks who have invested a lot of time into making a lot of it.

Or money buying it. Just dropped that cash into a pit, basically.

[Tsk Tsk]

Or money buying it. Just dropped that cash into a pit, basically.

Truth. Makes one cautious about making future investments into it if there is no chance at return.

[Tgo01]

I wouldn't be surprised. Lots of people like the business/merchanting aspect of the game, not just the role playing. They aren't mutually exclusive. People put a LOT (and lordy do I mean a lot) of time into the game and like to see at least a minuscule return on that investment of time. Gotta sting knowing silvers won't ever recover (or simply not likely to) for the folks who have invested a lot of time into making a lot of it.

I don't blame people for quitting for perceiving that the silver market is crashing.

What I mean is Wyrom has a tendency to blame everything but Simu's policies and practices themselves for why people are no longer playing this game. He has personally called out Lich (which is just laughably) and the PC (equally laughable) for causing people to quit, so I'm just wondering if he's bragging that the silver market is "soft" and likely "indefinitely" because the silver market/economy has caused people to quit before.

[Tsk Tsk]

I don't blame people for quitting for perceiving that the silver market is crashing.

What I mean is Wyrom has a tendency to blame everything but Simu's policies and practices themselves for why people are no longer playing this game. He has personally called out Lich (which is just laughably) and the PC (equally laughable), so I'm just wondering if he's bragging that the silver market is "soft" and likely "indefinitely" because the silver market/economy has caused people to quit before.

If Lich went away, the game would. I have no doubts. Why the hell would Lich be bad?

[Gelston]

If Lich went away, the game would. I have no doubts. Why the hell would Lich be bad?

Because there is toxicity on LNet chat I guess. I do kind of miss the times before Lich, when the amulet was your means of communication and... Everyone just took things a little slower because you did most of your stuff by hand. It was tedious, yes, and I have no doubts GS would be a lot worse off without Lich, but there were nice things about not having it.

[Tgo01]

If Lich went away, the game would. I have no doubts. Why the hell would Lich be bad?

He blamed LNet because people can be meanie heads on there, then went on to claim people either had no idea that LNet wasn't part of Simu/GS, or that they could simply not use LNet, not use Lich itself, or at the very least untune from LNet. His complaints must have worked because Tillmen actually changed it so the LNet channel itself was no longer a channel a new person is auto tuned to and he created an entirely new "safe space" channel called help that people auto tune to instead.

It's also why I don't buy his bullshit story that he had nothing to do with a competing forum to the PC springing up; he has actually blamed the PC itself for GS losing customers.

[Tsk Tsk]

Because there is toxicity on LNet chat I guess. I do kind of miss the times before Lich, when the amulet was your means of communication and... Everyone just took things a little slower because you did most of your stuff by hand. It was tedious, yes, and I have no doubts GS would be a lot worse off without Lich, but there were nice things about not having it.

I will agree to disagree. You just like the nostalgia, it wasn't better in any way other than more people played back then.

[Gelston]

I will agree to disagree. You just like the nostalgia, it wasn't better in any way other than more people played back then.

I didn't say it was totally better, just that some things were. On the whole, Lich improved the game.

[Tsk Tsk]

He blamed LNet because people can be meanie heads on there, then went on to claim people either had no idea that LNet wasn't part of Simu/GS, or that they could simply not use LNet, not use Lich itself, or at the very least untune from LNet. His complaints must have worked because Tillmen actually changed it so the LNet channel itself was no longer a channel a new person is auto tuned to and he created an entirely new "safe space" channel called help that people auto tune to instead.

It's also why I don't buy his bullshit story that he had nothing to do with a competing forum to the PC springing up; he has actually blamed the PC itself for GS losing customers.

I could see it being possible that people took things too personally on PC/lnet and quit the game, there are a lot of sensitive souls out there that don't have the willpower to just ignore people. With that said, it's a very very minor thing that may have happened a handful of times and the folks were likely already borderline ready to quit for numerous other reasons. A drop in the bucket to the billion other problems.

[Tgo01]

I could see it being possible that people took things too personally on PC/lnet and quit the game, there are a lot of sensitive souls out there that don't have the willpower to just ignore people. With that said, it's a very very minor thing that may have happened a handful of times and the folks were likely already borderline ready to quit for numerous other reasons. A drop in the bucket to the billion other problems.

Yeah but like you said how many people can it possibly be? People probably quit all the time over actual in game harassment/hard feelings that is much harder to ignore than simply doing ;lnet ignore person or ;untune lnet.

It's just funny watching him ignore legit actual concerns and pivot towards LNet and the PC for why people are quitting.

[Ashliana]

I'll start off by saying people like you are great for the game, as Wyrom intimated. You find what you enjoy and you enjoy it. That's great.

I won't gaslight by calling concern here hysteria, but it's fair to say a significant portion of the GS4 population has a significant real world investment in their item hoards, and the value of these items (i.e. the ability to "cash out" at some future date) relate directly to the health of the game long term. When you're talking real world values in the tens of thousands of dollars, it's not unreasonable for people to be concerned.

The issue with silver value and the corresponding concerns raised in this thread is that silver is a tangible representation of player "effort" in the game. That is, players are driven to do things and achieve things based on certain incentives in the game. A significant part of GSIV's incentive structure is gear upgrades over years and perhaps decades. In the past, you could buy crit padding/weighting, etc via silver, creating a direct link between in-game player effort and the primary incentive driver in the game.

With the new simucoin structure, you now have an in-game incentive system that's completely severed from one of the primary (and for many players THE primary) incentive drivers in game. The concern isn't really the value of the silvers themselves, but what the devaluation of silvers mean for its ability to act as an incentive mechanism for players to continue to advance in the game. This in turn affects players populations, longevity , etc. The implications are are incredibly significant for the game's long term existence.

I appreciate the well-meaning response -- and I see where you're coming from, but I personally don't understand the whole "viewing Gemstone as an investment" mentality.

I understand that sometimes in-game things are worth real money (i.e., I could sell my WoW account with a ilevel 935 mage and 9/9 mythic achievements) but also understand that any changes in it could instantly make it all worthless (i.e., as soon as the next xpac hits in WoW).

Perhaps the relative stability of Gemstone -- i.e., 10x being the max power -- has led to the perception that doing so is somehow a good idea, or at least led to the defensiveness over preserving that "value" that a person has accrued.

But.. while something having value outside of the game might be an interesting byproduct of making a good game, intentionally catering to the idea that a game should have extra-game value is an odd one. The only other example I can think of like that is Blizzard's original conception of Diablo 3, which proved disastrously unpopular. Obviously that doesn't mean it couldn't happen, but that's not the direction I'd want to see in the game.

Completely agree with you that Gemstone should have a meaningful currency, and that a player should be able to achieve increases in power correspondent with effort -- I'm just not sure that needs to translate into someone being able to "cash out" in order to make the game one worth playing.

IMO, the size of the playerbase is the overriding concern with regard to the lifespan of the game, and that SimuCoins should've been a replacement for, not an addition to, subscriptions. Milking the ever-dwindling whales until the game collapses doesn't seem like a smart strategy. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Gelston]

Yeah but like you said how many people can it possibly be? People probably quit all the time over actual in game harassment/hard feelings that is much harder to ignore than simply doing ;lnet ignore person or ;untune lnet.

It's just funny watching him ignore legit actual concerns and pivot towards LNet and the PC for why people are quitting.

Inurtia quit because she ran out of chowder.

[Stunseed]

Almost as if he's bragging.

Let me guess; the silver market has been responsible for players quitting?

The people who try to make a living off of scripting and selling, sure they'd quit because the milk has gone bad.

I mean the market has been flooded for some time and people are willing/desperate to move currency. There are temporary surges, but when someone's dog dies/sob story here gets involved it's about getting cash over currency regulation.

It's not easy to see, but the writing has been on the wall for some time.

[Tgo01]

Perhaps the relative stability of Gemstone

That's exactly it. I don't know so much if people "invest" in GS in the traditional sense, that is buy 100 million silvers with the hope of selling them at a later date to make a profit, because for the most part the silver market either stays the same for a while or drops at a slow rate then sometimes they get a small temporary boost, so actually "investing" in the game doesn't make sense. But I think the thought process is "Hey I can buy this awesome sword of doom for 1000 dollars, get a lot of use out of it and have some fun with it, then maybe in a couple of years if I get bored with the game and decide to quit I can sell it for 900 dollars, so I'm only out 100."

I don't know if we're quite there yet (with items themselves losing a lot of real world value), but if it does happen someday then you'll have more people questioning "...do I really want to drop 1000 dollars for an in game item that might be worth 200 dollars in a few months?"

[Ashliana]

That's exactly it. I don't know so much if people "invest" in GS in the traditional sense, that is buy 100 million silvers with the hope of selling them at a later date to make a profit, because for the most part the silver market either stays the same for a while or drops at a slow rate then sometimes they get a small temporary boost, so actually "investing" in the game doesn't make sense. But I think the thought process is "Hey I can buy this awesome sword of doom for 1000 dollars, get a lot of use out of it and have some fun with it, then maybe in a couple of years if I get bored with the game and decide to quit I can sell it for 900 dollars, so I'm only out 100."

I don't know if we're quite there yet (with items themselves losing a lot of real world value), but if it does happen someday then you'll have more people questioning "...do I really want to drop 1000 dollars for an in game item that might be worth 200 dollars in a few months?"

I get what you're saying, but I think the take-away here should be examining what's going through the mind of a person who thinks it's worth spending 1,000 real dollars for an item in a video game. To each their own, I suppose..

[Tgo01]

It's not easy to see, but the writing has been on the wall for some time.

For sure. I think we all had an inkling this would happen some day when SimuCoins were released but since the SimuCoin store didn't compete too much with silvers we largely dismissed it. Now that the SimuCoin store is directly competing with silvers for just about every damn thing in the game it's hard to ignore.

[Kobold]

The (silver) market is soft right now, and likely indefinitely. -Wyrom on the officials.

There you have it.

Just like to say one thing...

https://media.giphy.com/media/Ic97mPViHEG5O/giphy.gif

[Tgo01]

I get what you're saying, but I think the take-away here should be examining what's going through the mind of a person who thinks it's worth spending 1,000 real dollars for an item in a video game. To each their own, I suppose..

In this particular case it's because, as you said, GS has been relatively stable in terms of a working in game economy, so a lot of people don't view it as spending 1k on an in game item, they see it as only losing a few bucks if they decide to sell the item later because it retains a lot of its value. If the perception that items are losing their value and fast I think there will be a lot fewer people willing to drop that kind of money for some items.

As far as people with 1k to burn on an in game item, meh, people spend all sorts of money on their hobbies. If you're playing GS for 3+ hours a day, 5+ days a week, then you're getting a lot of use out of your hobby, why not spend some extra money to enjoy it more.

[Ososis]

Just like to say one thing...

You really think that gif is more scathing than it is. You may have the record for most re-used stupid gif.

[Tsk Tsk]

Inurtia quit because she ran out of chowder.

The chowder was rather limited for my taste.

[Neveragain]

I could sell my WoW account with a ilevel 935 mage and 9/9 mythic achievements

Now I'm wondering how many times I have t-bagged you in battlegrounds.

[Gelston]

The chowder was rather limited for my taste.

Up yours, jerk.

[Tsk Tsk]

http://i.imgur.com/vQxGdER.jpg

[Stunseed]

For sure. I think we all had an inkling this would happen some day when SimuCoins were released but since the SimuCoin store didn't compete too much with silvers we largely dismissed it. Now that the SimuCoin store is directly competing with silvers for just about every damn thing in the game it's hard to ignore.

I'm not sure if we can make that comparison from "then" to "now". We have seen more people having subscriptions, but there's also a much, much higher percentage of people in the current customer base who don't see GS as a game. It's a side hustle.

Simucoins are still viable and perfect for the person who plays GS for a casual gaming experience. This person doesn't buy silver and rarely deviates from the subscription price, but splurges for the "extra". They lose nothing from their experience, and gain with additional expenditure.

Simucoins hurt the people who peddle for cash because the currency conflicts with their flow.

Case in point? Use the time-back machine and look at Sergey's site say 5 years ago, then 10, then 15. The carrot has only gotten larger but prices tended to remain relatively static until the inception of outrageous monetary scripting. Yes, of course before people point out person X or Y, outliers are there.

Not an enjoyable discussion, but one that has to be considered.

[Gelston]

http://i.imgur.com/vQxGdER.jpg

@tsk tsk #don'tneedtags

[Methais]

I don't blame people for quitting for perceiving that the silver market is crashing.

What I mean is Wyrom has a tendency to blame everything but Simu's policies and practices themselves for why people are no longer playing this game. He has personally called out Lich (which is just laughably) and the PC (equally laughable) for causing people to quit, so I'm just wondering if he's bragging that the silver market is "soft" and likely "indefinitely" because the silver market/economy has caused people to quit before.

Blaming Lich? Lolololol Wyrom wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for Lich and this game either wouldn't exist or would have like 6 people logged in. Simu should be sending Tillmen free hookers and coke on demand at the very least.

[Neveragain]

http://i.imgur.com/vQxGdER.jpg

https://media.tenor.com/images/1adc82b4fda387f154f143364c43d6b0/tenor.gif

[Tgo01]

Simucoins are still viable and perfect for the person who plays GS for a casual gaming experience. This person doesn't buy silver and rarely deviates from the subscription price, but splurges for the "extra". They lose nothing from their experience, and gain with additional expenditure.

I think just about everyone is affected by a worthless in game currency (if silvers become totally worthless), whether people buy or sell silvers or not.


Simucoins hurt the people who peddle for cash because the currency conflicts with their flow.

Again I think SimuCoins affect everyone. Wyrom tried to claim that people don't like the idea of spending all of their silvers on one item, but these same people are going to payout cold hard cash in addition to their already high subscription fees for that one item?


Case in point? Use the time-back machine and look at Sergey's site say 5 years ago, then 10, then 15. The carrot has only gotten larger but prices tended to remain relatively static until the inception of outrageous monetary scripting. Yes, of course before people point out person X or Y, outliers are there.

Not an enjoyable discussion, but one that has to be considered.

So scripting killed the silver market and not SimuCoins? Or both? Not being a smart ass I'm honestly not following you now.

Scripting has been going on for a long time in this game, maybe more people are doing it now, I don't know, but the silver market has persisted. The silver market didn't start taking a nose dive until Simu decided this game needed 4 DR events a year and that EG needed to be converted into another version of DR with a completely different alt-currency as well. The writing is on the wall now; all future events are likely to become exactly like DR. Hell I think we're already there aren't we?

[Stunseed]

< So scripting killed the silver market and not SimuCoins? Or both? >

In all honesty, multiple moving pieces have done significant damage to the silvers market. There is not one single aspect you can focus on without ignoring another, and I believe that is a damning topic for many. There is not a single fix to this particular issue.

Alternate currency doesn't help, but I don't think it hurts the general populace ( as much as you, Tgo, do from your rebuttal I'm wagering ).

There is in comparison a huge influx of high-end items caused by pay events. Players like uber gear, Simutronics is a CREAM corporation ( dollar dollar bills ya'll ), and in order for a player to feel compensated versus perceived value the rise of prices of items can be attributed.

Item attrition runs rampant in Gemstone now, in comparison to the way back machine. So values are much more skewed than ever before in comparison, which leads to silver devaluation because the item isn't simply good enough. This game is balanced against 4x gear, and let's face it when 6x is selling for a million silvers who would find silver to hold much relative value?

In my opinion, take it how you'd like, is that there's more gear out there than accounts available to use and thus the "carrot" must improve. The larger the carrot against the current valuation of silvers tends to reduce its own value. Combine that with people willing to cannibalize the valuation in order to obtain cash, and Simucoins removing some additional options ( I can't sell BP's to save my life anymore, add examples here ), and it's not a stretch to view it is a multi-faceted issue at hand.

So far, Wyrom has not gone the path of other games, but something akin to breakage or Bound to Character/Account may be an eventuality that has to be viewed. I realize everyone's in torch and pitchfork mode, but the man has quotas to meet to keep his own livelihood. Unless a silver seller is willing to chip the man some of the profits for the movement of silvers? Other games take cuts through an Auction House so it's not as far fetched as it may seem.

Everyone needs someone to blame, I get that. But to point out someone that in comparison has been open with communications/ideas than previous regimes without the clarity of seeing multiple sides is a bit odd. Warden shit on your Kix and told you they were Cocoa Puffs for many years and you LOVED IT!

[Tgo01]

Warden shit on your Kix and told you they were Cocoa Puffs for many years and you LOVED IT!

And Wyrom says the PC and Lich are to blame for why people are quitting GS.

He also said they needed to introduce more and more paid events/SimuCoin events because the game needed to "grow", by "growing" he meant the game needed to make more and more money from a smaller and smaller playerbase, not "grow" in the sense of attracting more players.

I was looking forward to Wyrom taking the helm. That feeling is long gone now. He has just hastened this game's demise in my opinion, and saw fit to try and damage the community we have here on the PC because he felt we were too big of meanie heads and were losing him money somehow.

[Wrathbringer]

And Wyrom says the PC and Lich are to blame for why people are quitting GS.

He also said they needed to introduce more and more paid events/SimuCoin events because the game needed to "grow", by "growing" he meant the game needed to make more and more money from a smaller and smaller playerbase, not "grow" in the sense of attracting more players.

I was looking forward to Wyrom taking the helm. That feeling is long gone now. He has just hastened this game's demise in my opinion, and saw fit to try and damage the community we have here on the PC because he felt we were too big of meanie heads and were losing him money somehow.

Yeah, I'm out as soon as I can cash everything out. Merchanting has always been my main love with this game, and now it's just completely not worth the time anymore due to silvers being well on their way to worthless. This makes shops, by extension, worthless. Who needs a shop that uses only dead currency? I'm not accepting silvers as payment for anything at this point.

[Kobold]

Most of you fucktards were playing this game to make money on the side; the magic of actually playing was gone long ago. I hope most of you manage to sell out, good luck in your future gaming endeavors.

[Back]

I remember years ago someone did an analysis on what it would take to generate enough income to support yourself solely from GS sales. His conclusion was that it wasn't really sustainable. Sure, you could make a few bucks here and there, see some profit, but not enough to cover all your living expenses. I think it may have been Stretch but I've burned quite a few braincells since then.

[Gelston]

I remember years ago someone did an analysis on what it would take to generate enough income to support yourself solely from GS sales. His conclusion was that it wasn't really sustainable. Sure, you could make a few bucks here and there, see some profit, but not enough to cover all your living expenses. I think it may have been Stretch but I've burned quite a few braincells since then.

You're down to 3 now?

[Ashliana]

You're down to 3 now?

Somebody really shit in your cereal today, didn't they?

[Back]

I blame all the stupid shit I read on the PC.

[Gelston]

Somebody really shit in your cereal today, didn't they?

Nope, why would you say that?

[Wrathbringer]

Nope, why would you say that?

It's retarded.

[Luftstreitkräfte]

so glad i sold most of my stuff already

[Luftstreitkräfte]

bigshot was the death of GS. Also one more RTCF and you pussies will be paying 15 per again.

They could easily do stuff like 300m for +10 strength to char permanently. Still a lot of OP shit they could do.

[Parkbandit]

The chowder was rather limited for my taste.

Are we speaking about the actual chowder.. or is this a euphemism?

[Parkbandit]

I blame all the stupid shit I post on the PC.

Corrected.

[Kobold]

bigshot was the death of GS. Also one more RTCF and you pussies will be paying 15 per again.

They could easily do stuff like 300m for +10 strength to char permanently. Still a lot of OP shit they could do.

They won't. Doesn't fit their bottom line anymore. Box office is dead and it's all about the Simucoins, silvers directly compete with that so buh-bye.

[Luftstreitkräfte]

I was looking forward to Wyrom taking the helm. That feeling is long gone now. He has just hastened this game's demise in my opinion, and saw fit to try and damage the community we have here on the PC because he felt we were too big of meanie heads and were losing him money somehow.

You're such a whiner.


Blaming Lich? Lolololol Wyrom wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for Lich and this game either wouldn't exist or would have like 6 people logged in. Simu should be sending Tillmen free hookers and coke on demand at the very least.

this

/thread

[Amerek]

Blaming Lich? Lolololol Wyrom wouldn't even have a job if it weren't for Lich and this game either wouldn't exist or would have like 6 people logged in. Simu should be sending Tillmen free hookers and coke on demand at the very least.

Fucking truth right there.

[SonoftheNorth]

Lol lich brought the power to the masses before that you had people scripting on psinet and before that just having shitty macro scripts they/a friend cobbled together but were the same thing. People were hunting 8 capped characters at once long before lich was released and I doubt it's because they were a genius.

[SonoftheNorth]

And there ARE silver sinks. Hunting pressure, skinning nerfs, now the trading cap are all limiting silver into the game. Skinning beetles on psinet made you way more fucking money than you do today.

[beldannon5]

On a side note. Allerli hates me. I am okay with that. I have no hate for anyone. Maybe hello lol. In the thread on the elanthian forums I pictured the emperor from star wars saying the hate is strong with this one. Shrug. Okay back to this evil topic

[SonoftheNorth]

The problem is there isn't really a market for sub-1m items anymore, not much to spend your silver on that is interesting except for insanely expensive things so people just sell off their excess for cash instead saving it(what I personally do) and theres no new players coming to the game because of high ass sub costs, the game has been around so most people are capped and its such a fucking hassle to level up alts people aren't gearing up other characters. I think if they did a promotion where characters below level 40 got non-stop lumnis for a month or something you'd have a lot of people at least creating and gearing alts for fun which would at least create some commerce.

[Tgo01]

You're such a whiner.

I might have to quit GS now because people are mean to me on the PC :(

[Gelston]

I might have to quit GS now because people are mean to me on the PC :(

Quit GS again?

[Tgo01]

Quit GS again?

I have never quit GS before.

[Steve]

On a side note. Allerli hates me. I am okay with that. I have no hate for anyone. Maybe hello lol. In the thread on the elanthian forums I pictured the emperor from star wars saying the hate is strong with this one. Shrug. Okay back to this evil topic

Usually being hated by someone that's pretty universally a shitty person is a good thing. It means you're doing something right. Allereli has about zero social skills and jumps into every single possible place to interject something useless and shitty because I'm pretty sure she's somewhere on the autism spectrum.

[Gelston]

I have never quit GS before.

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?94361-Tgo-to-quit-GS

[Tgo01]

http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?94361-Tgo-to-quit-GS

That must have been the person who used to own this Tgo01 handle.

[Tsk Tsk]

Are we speaking about the actual chowder.. or is this a euphemism?

Neither. He's just chowder obsessed at the moment.

[Methais]

Usually being hated by someone that's pretty universally a shitty person is a good thing. It means you're doing something right. Allereli has about zero social skills and jumps into every single possible place to interject something useless and shitty because I'm pretty sure she's somewhere on the autism spectrum.

I heard on The Today Show last year that she gives out fruit for Halloween. But I mean it was NBC so who knows if it's actually true.

[Luftstreitkräfte]

there's too much stuff in the game that's junk. anyone who works for over $25 an hour doesn't want to spend their precious spare moments sifting through a bunch of bullshit

[Gelston]

Neither. He's just chowder obsessed at the moment.

"moment"

[Yulis]

Wyrom posted:

In about 2 hours or so, we're going to offer a limited sale on booklets. You will be able to purchase a 50-count booklet for 10,250,000 silver. We will not be selling any other sizes of booklets or jars (note, you can use booklets for the sewers as well). There will be an in-game announcement just before this takes place.

( http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Paid%20Events:%20Adventures,%20Quests,%20and%20Sim uCoins/Duskruin%20Arena/view/7505 )

So, why do this?

1) to back peddle and save some face?
2) just to make it look like they "care" for the immediate moment?
3) realize maybe they can make exceptions to make people happy on both ends?
4) realize the fall of in game currency is actually having some kind of ill-effect on things in game and/or with their SimuCoin sales?
5) some other reason?

[Tgo01]

1) to back peddle and save some face?
2) just to make it look like they "care" for the immediate moment?
3) realize maybe they can make exceptions to make people happy on both ends?
4) realize the fall of in game currency is actually having some kind of ill-effect on things in game and/or with their SimuCoin sales?
5) some other reason?

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) No
4) Yes
5) Maybe

I suppose it all depends on how limited "limited" is. We talking dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

[drauz]

Selling books for 10m silvers.

[Taernath]

https://media.giphy.com/media/rl0FOxdz7CcxO/giphy.gif

[Tgo01]

1) Yes
2) Yes
3) No
4) Yes
5) Maybe

I suppose it all depends on how limited "limited" is. We talking dozens? Hundreds? Thousands?

Seriously though, my best guess is this latest round of shakedown is having a real effect on their bottom line somehow, or they are worried it will have an effect on them in the future.

If everything was great in Simuland as far as raking in the dough was concerned then I see no reason they would suddenly allow people to buy shit with in game silvers that was previously only available through SimuCoins.

[SonoftheNorth]

Hopefully they do this at EG too.

[SonoftheNorth]

If everything was great in Simuland as far as raking in the dough was concerned then I see no reason they would suddenly allow people to buy shit with in game silvers that was previously only available through SimuCoins.


Sales are probably way down without people buying numerous 1k simucoin lots to resell for silver.

[Tgo01]

Sales are probably way down without people buying numerous 1k simucoin lots to resell for silver.

That's an awesome point. People were on here bragging about how they make a real money profit every DR by buying booklets with SimuCoins then selling them for silvers then selling the silvers for more than they paid on the SimuCoins.

With the value of silvers dropping this probably isn't possible anymore and thus a lot fewer people are buying SimuCoins for booklets. Maybe Simu finally realize that destroying the in game economy has side effects that affects their SimuCoin store as well.

[Kobold]

Wyrom posted:

In about 2 hours or so, we're going to offer a limited sale on booklets. You will be able to purchase a 50-count booklet for 10,250,000 silver. We will not be selling any other sizes of booklets or jars (note, you can use booklets for the sewers as well). There will be an in-game announcement just before this takes place.

( http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Paid%20Events:%20Adventures,%20Quests,%20and%20Sim uCoins/Duskruin%20Arena/view/7505 )

So, why do this?

1) to back peddle and save some face?
2) just to make it look like they "care" for the immediate moment?
3) realize maybe they can make exceptions to make people happy on both ends?
4) realize the fall of in game currency is actually having some kind of ill-effect on things in game and/or with their SimuCoin sales?
5) some other reason?

One thing is for certain, the book for silvers market must really have dried up.

[Ososis]

Maybe Simu finally realize that destroying the in game economy has side effects that affects their SimuCoin store as well.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qn79hn4gZfQ

[Kobold]

And what most of these fucktards don't get is this only happened because there was a backlash to the fucked up levels of greed. If you morons just curb your degenracy and/or these whales who are all apparently billionaires would just blow their money on hookers then we would go back to 'old school' Gemstone III.

But no... everyone is a fucktard degenerate gambler with absolutely nothing to do with their money.

[drauz]

And what most of these fucktards don't get is this only happened because there was a backlash to the fucked up levels of greed. If you morons just curb your degenracy and/or these whales who are all apparently billionaires would just blow their money on hookers then we would go back to 'old school' Gemstone III.

But no... everyone is a fucktard degenerate gambler with absolutely nothing to do with their money.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAqV-SoVVns

[Neveragain]

And what most of these fucktards don't get is this only happened because there was a backlash to the fucked up levels of greed. If you morons just curb your degenracy and/or these whales who are all apparently billionaires would just blow their money on hookers then we would go back to 'old school' Gemstone III.

But no... everyone is a fucktard degenerate gambler with absolutely nothing to do with their money.

8808

[SonoftheNorth]

And what most of these fucktards don't get is this only happened because there was a backlash to the fucked up levels of greed. If you morons just curb your degenracy and/or these whales who are all apparently billionaires would just blow their money on hookers then we would go back to 'old school' Gemstone III.

But no... everyone is a fucktard degenerate gambler with absolutely nothing to do with their money.


You're pretty angry have you ever considered meeting up in real life with another gemstone player and fist fighting them?

[Gelston]

You're pretty angry have you ever considered meeting up in real life with another gemstone player and fist fighting them?

He can't even decide what gender he is going to dress up as.

[SonoftheNorth]

He can't even decide what gender he is going to dress up as.
GS fight club may mellow him out.

[Kobold]

You're pretty angry have you ever considered meeting up in real life with another gemstone player and fist fighting them?

Come at me Bruh!!!!

http://www.menshealth.com/sites/menshealth.com/files/images/Nadolsky_0.jpg

[SonoftheNorth]

They should have that at simucon. You both pay in 100m and box and the winner gets the pot, Also would probably go viral and attract new players.

[Gelston]

Such terrible skills. He linked directly from mens health.

[Neveragain]

They should have that at simucon. You both pay in 100m and box and the winner gets the pot, Also would probably go viral and attract new players.

I would totally skip Sturgis for this.

[drauz]

They should have that at simucon. You both pay in 100m and box and the winner gets the pot, Also would probably go viral and attract new players.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ABi4cYB28

[SonoftheNorth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ABi4cYB28


Hell yea

[Kronius]

They should have that at simucon. You both pay in 100m and box and the winner gets the pot, Also would probably go viral and attract new players.

Count me in.

[Methais]

You're pretty angry have you ever considered meeting up in real life with another gemstone player and fist fighting them?

Let's find Sean2 and some carnies and let them all go at it.

Those 99 booklets sold out in under a half hour. Poof, there goes 1 billion silvers from the game forever.

I believe 2 billion a month was the magic number Wyrom gave us for silvers entering the game. Looks like he found the silver bullet for the silver drain, so now they can't use that excuse anymore.

[Tgo01]

I believe 2 billion a month was the magic number Wyrom gave us for silvers entering the game.

It can't be that low, not going by the other figures Wyrom has given us. He said last year's auction removed 14 trillion from the game, at 2 billion being generated a month that would take 7000 months to create just the silvers that was drained from that one event.

Even at 2 billion dollars a day being generated it would take over 16 years to create those 14 trillion silvers.

The more I think about this the more I'm convinced Wyrom either pulled that 14 trillion figure out of his ass or he read the number wrong and read 140 billion as 14 trillion or something.

Even assuming that one event took 3 years worth of silvers out of circulation that's still about 13 billion silvers a day on average is being generated.

[drauz]

It can't be that low, not going by the other figures Wyrom has given us. He said last year's auction removed 14 trillion from the game, at 2 billion being generated a month that would take 7000 months to create just the silvers that was drained from that one event.

Even at 2 billion dollars a day being generated it would take over 16 years to create those 14 trillion silvers.

The more I think about this the more I'm convinced Wyrom either pulled that 14 trillion figure out of his ass or he read the number wrong and read 140 billion as 14 trillion or something.

Even assuming that one event took 3 years worth of silvers out of circulation that's still about 13 billion silvers a day on average is being generated.

Just offer the books for silvers for 24 hrs. I bet a lot of silver would get drained, then reevaluate after 24 hrs.

It wasn't open for a half hour and sold out.

[Methais]

Just offer the books for silvers for 24 hrs. I bet a lot of silver would get drained, then reevaluate after 24 hrs.

It wasn't open for a half hour and sold out.

This is pretty much the fix. Nobody's bank account will be able to sustain buying books for 10m over and over.

Let the first X days of DR be Simucoin only as an extra incentive for people throwing money at Simu or something, but books for silvers should be a permanent option and seems like it would fix a number of both new and old issues with the economy.

[Kobold]

Let's find Sean2 and some carnies and let them all go at it.

Those 99 booklets sold out in under a half hour. Poof, there goes 1 billion silvers from the game forever.

I believe 2 billion a month was the magic number Wyrom gave us for silvers entering the game. Looks like he found the silver bullet for the silver drain, so now they can't use that excuse anymore.

Think Methais hit the head spot on. This was massive silver removal in like 1 hour.

An idea, why not have an alternate form of books call it ingame "soiled torn book". It lets you in the arena but not for the full run, maybe an overall net of 150 BS per perfect run. These sell for 10 mil silvers at any amount. Likewise you could do books of 30 for 10 mil. These could also be extended to digs and 'slot machine' events where the tokens are impure and will only give you 7 searches or digs etc.

Furthermore, if you try to exchange these books with anyone they tatter and disintegrate.

[BLZrizz]

The lower quality book for silver is a good idea. Still incentivizes simucoins but gives players a means to access the event, albeit inefficiently.

[Yulis]

It can't be that low, not going by the other figures Wyrom has given us. He said last year's auction removed 14 trillion from the game, at 2 billion being generated a month that would take 7000 months to create just the silvers that was drained from that one event.

Even at 2 billion dollars a day being generated it would take over 16 years to create those 14 trillion silvers.

The more I think about this the more I'm convinced Wyrom either pulled that 14 trillion figure out of his ass or he read the number wrong and read 140 billion as 14 trillion or something.

Even assuming that one event took 3 years worth of silvers out of circulation that's still about 13 billion silvers a day on average is being generated.

Wyrom edited his post, he said he had an extra zero on the ends of his numbers or some such.

I believe his edited amounts came out to be (going from memory): The auction removed 14billion (give or take) and EG removed 100million.

Going from the Grand Auction 2016 on gswiki (https://gswiki.play.net/Great_Auction_of_2016), if you add up all the items on the list it's almost 12 billion. I'm not sure if that is every single item sold at the auction, but it's the only list I know of.

[Tgo01]

Wyrom edited his post, he said he had an extra zero on the ends of his numbers or some such.

I believe his edited amounts came out to be (going from memory): The auction removed 14billion (give or take) and EG removed 100million.

Going from the Grand Auction 2016 on gswiki (https://gswiki.play.net/Great_Auction_of_2016), if you add up all the items on the list it's almost 12 billion. I'm not sure if that is every single item sold at the auction, but it's the only list I know of.

14 billion sounds more reasonable. Now I question only 2 billion silvers a month being generated. That averages out to be about 70 million silvers a day. Doesn't GS have something like 1300 accounts log in each month? That's only an average of 54k silvers per account per day. I guess it's possible, just seems like a very low number. It also doesn't explain how 7 months worth of silvers disappeared forever during one auction and that didn't even make a blip on the silver market. Unless of course people have been hoarding silvers for years now with nothing to spend them on so 7 months doesn't really do much.

[Methais]

14 billion sounds more reasonable. Now I question only 2 billion silvers a month being generated. That averages out to be about 70 million silvers a day. Doesn't GS have something like 1300 accounts log in each month? That's only an average of 54k silvers per account per day. I guess it's possible, just seems like a very low number. It also doesn't explain how 7 months worth of silvers disappeared forever during one auction and that didn't even make a blip on the silver market. Unless of course people have been hoarding silvers for years now with nothing to spend them on so 7 months doesn't really do much.

Some characters/accounts don't even generate 54k in a month. Healing empaths aren't generating new money, a lot of alts are spell/enchant/ensorcell bots that don't generate new silver, MA crews don't really count outside of group hunting bonuses, some people just suck at hunting, and most people are probably prioritizing maxing exp gain over loot, and if you're hunting an easy exp but shitty loot area for several levels you're not going to be generating a lot of new silver. My alt account generates probably under 10k a month in new silvers, and that's from occasionally having to kill something with my cleric when rescuing my dead wizard. I'd guess most of your accounts don't generate new coin either.

And stuff.

[drauz]

I only really play like 3 days out of the week, so I probably generate like 200k a week in silvers if that.

[Tgo01]

Some characters/accounts don't even generate 54k in a month. Healing empaths aren't generating new money, a lot of alts are spell/enchant/ensorcell bots that don't generate new silver, MA crews don't really count outside of group hunting bonuses, some people just suck at hunting, and most people are probably prioritizing maxing exp gain over loot, and if you're hunting an easy exp but shitty loot area for several levels you're not going to be generating a lot of new silver. My alt account generates probably under 10k a month in new silvers, and that's from occasionally having to kill something with my cleric when rescuing my dead wizard. I'd guess most of your accounts don't generate new coin either.

And stuff.


I only really play like 3 days out of the week, so I probably generate like 200k a week in silvers if that.

I dunno, still sounds low to me. Lower level characters hunting in areas with low/no hunting pressure are making bank. Higher level characters won't be making as much per critter but they are tearing shit up, not to mention in events like DR where capped characters really shine.

Not to mention there are apparently a dozen or so people who script hunt so much they had to nerf the trading skill to deal with them.

I'd just put the figure closer to 3 billion, maybe even 4.

[Fortybox]

Guess I am in the minority here. I think the after market is stupid and actually like Simu taking control.

I think the people that are hurt the most are the ones that are getting beat out by Simu. IMO, I think Simu should have taken over years ago.

[Kobold]

Guess I am in the minority here. I think the after market is stupid and actually like Simu taking control.

I think the people that are hurt the most are the ones that are getting beat out by Simu. IMO, I think Simu should have taken over years ago.

Sorta/kinda agree with this sentiment. But I think some kind of outlet or alternative to acquire access through in-game means is ultimately healthy for the game lest the game really turn into a Zynga game.

Wyrom if he wished could really drain the fuck out of the total silvers in the economy through selling untradeable impure books/tokens for silvers. He could also adjust silver values to whatever he desires by adjusting this mechanism. I think Simu needs to realize that this is a sub game as well as SIMUCOINs and ultimately a healthy silver market = healthy subbing.

[Methais]

I dunno, still sounds low to me. Lower level characters hunting in areas with low/no hunting pressure are making bank. Higher level characters won't be making as much per critter but they are tearing shit up, not to mention in events like DR where capped characters really shine.

Not to mention there are apparently a dozen or so people who script hunt so much they had to nerf the trading skill to deal with them.

I'd just put the figure closer to 3 billion, maybe even 4.

I think you're underestimating the amount of people that hunt in shitty loot areas because the exp is quick and easy.

Even at cap, if you're hunting in just Nelemar for example, you're typically not making shit outside of an occasional spike here and there.

That's all before considering how many characters/accounts generate 0 silvers a month, and I'd guess probably at least half of the paid player base has at least 2 paid accounts. A lot of those are support accounts, and most support accounts generate nothing. Enchanting and ensorcell don't count either because that's just shifting money from one player to another. A lot just stand around and chat/rp while staying level 37 for decades too.

If everyone was out farming, we'd be generating trillions every month.

[Neveragain]

Guess I am in the minority here. I think the after market is stupid and actually like Simu taking control.

I think the people that are hurt the most are the ones that are getting beat out by Simu. IMO, I think Simu should have taken over years ago.

I used to enjoy spending a month or so at "home" and then make the trip to the Landing for a weekend. Buy and sell shit over the amunet, visit with my out of town friends and then head back "home". It always gave it that adventure feel and there was always plenty of shit to buy. It's also one of the reasons I would hate to see the cutter go away (for any extended amount of time), it used to be like 2 or 3 hours between voyages then they changed it to like an hour or so and now it's down to like 25 minutes. The first adjustment was about perfect because it still gave you time to gamble on the cockroaches during the voyage.

I give credit to Wyrom on allowing the use of silvers for books, I hope this is how it is done going forward. EG is the only event I ever consider paying for but that will no longer be a consideration unless they leave the option open to pay a flat fee for the entire event that is within the same price range as prior Ebon Gate festivals. Silvers losing in game buying power would gut the game of any meaning for too many players.

[BLZrizz]

EG is the only event I ever consider paying for but that will no longer be a consideration unless they leave the option open to pay a flat fee for the entire event that is within the same price range as prior Ebon Gate festivals. Silvers losing in game buying power would gut the game of any meaning for too many players.

I see this sentiment about EG a lot, this fixation about only paying a flat fee regardless of the value you get in return. It reminds me of people I know that love going to bad buffets. I ask them if they know the food is horrible. And their response is: "but you can have as much of it as you want!"

The couple of times I attended EG was low price, low value, save the heart/ether. But I suppose if you love mind numbing hours digging and then sorting through junk, sitting on 200 person GALD lines, and browsing through the same 4x gear, then I guess it was good event for that.

[Neveragain]

I see this sentiment about EG a lot, and it reminds me of people I know that love going to bad buffets. I ask them if they know the food is horrible. And their response is: "but you can have as much of it as you want!"

The couple of times I attended EG was low price, low value. But I suppose if you love mind numbing hours digging and then sorting through junk, sitting on 200 person GALD lines, and browsing through the same 4x gear, then I guess it was good event for that.

Oh, I don't go every year, I like getting involved with the story that's going on when I do go though. I also don't mind throwing a little extra cash at a game I love from time to time. I have never been a merchant chaser so that's never been a big concern to me. The vast majority of all the alterations I have had, have been when a merchant rolls into town on some random evening. I have always had a better appreciation for that type of merchant anyhow because it gives that feel of a wandering merchant. Hell there was a time I refused to have a merchant do work for me because of my character not liking the NPC doing the alteration. I'm pretty much a "purist".

[Tgo01]

I see this sentiment about EG a lot, this fixation about only paying a flat fee regardless of the value you get in return. It reminds me of people I know that love going to bad buffets. I ask them if they know the food is horrible. And their response is: "but you can have as much of it as you want!"

The couple of times I attended EG was low price, low value, save the heart/ether. But I suppose if you love mind numbing hours digging and then sorting through junk, sitting on 200 person GALD lines, and browsing through the same 4x gear, then I guess it was good event for that.

I don't go to many events but I imagine the thought process is people just like the ability to pay a one time fee and can enjoy everything, even if that's "enjoy." Ideally there would be no real life fee at all but that ship has long sailed.

I think people don't like the idea of microtransactions in their microtransactions. It's also like in that video Methias posted the other day, it's another gimmick where Simu gets you to buy more Simucoins than you need then you're left with extra Simucoins so you're like "Well might as well buy more Simucoins so I can afford that other service, otherwise I'm stuck with Simucoins that I already paid for."

[Steve]

I especially like how I can spend $10,000 for high end items if I want at DR and am then told to go fuck myself at EG and that I need to invest another $10,000, regardless of whether or not I spent that first $10,000 on items.

[BLZrizz]

I don't go to many events but I imagine the thought process is people just like the ability to pay a one time fee and can enjoy everything, even if that's "enjoy."


I have always had a better appreciation for that type of merchant anyhow because it gives that feel of a wandering merchant. Hell there was a time I refused to have a merchant do work for me because of my character not liking the NPC doing the alteration. I'm pretty much a "purist".

Fair points. I hope they treat EG with kid gloves given the sentiment people have associated with it, and not make it seem like a carnival where you have to have tickets in hand to get on every ride. I'm starting to believe that they should have left the event be, as a relic of "old Gemstone."

[Tgo01]

I'm starting to believe that they should have left the event be, as a relic of "old Gemstone."

But the game doesn't grow like that. And by grow I mean it doesn't make more money than it did last year.

[BLZrizz]

But the game doesn't grow like that. And by grow I mean it doesn't make more money than it did last year.

Yeah, I might be naive but I'm willing to cut Wyrom some slack on that, though I found that risible myself. This is based on my inability to determine what the reach of his decision making authority is about the game's long and short term direction. For all we know the corporate overlords may be forcing this transition to "earn or burn" when it comes to events and their ability to generate revenue, or to what extent that 2017 earn-out provision is driving this years' surge for revenue.

[Dhuul2]

I'd pay for a GS3 instance. Just saying.

[drauz]

The other option is to raise sub rates across the board though.

[Androidpk]

The other option is to raise sub rates across the board though.lolno

[drauz]

lolno

Its either that or more microtransactions. They are owned by a publicly traded company.

[Tgo01]

Yeah, I might be naive but I'm willing to cut Wyrom some slack on that, though I found that risible myself. This is based on my inability to determine what the reach of his decision making authority is about the game's long and short term direction. For all we know the corporate overlords may be forcing this transition to "earn or burn" when it comes to events and their ability to generate revenue, or to what extent that 2017 earn-out provision is driving this years' surge for revenue.

It might not be Wyrom ultimately calling the shots but he's the one trying to justify more paid events and micro transactions by flat out saying Simu needs to suck more money out of their remaining customers because making over a million dollars a year for a 30 year old MUD apparently isn't good enough.

[drauz]

It might not be Wyrom ultimately calling the shots but he's the one trying to justify more paid events and micro transactions by flat out saying Simu needs to suck more money out of their remaining customers because making over a million dollars a year for a 30 year old MUD apparently isn't good enough.

Sir, lines of coke and hookers are not free.

[Steve]

Here comes the "But he's just following orders!" argument.

Before you say that, person who's about to say that - you know who you are: Please include in your post one other example where "He was just following orders" was looked upon favorably by history.

[Androidpk]

It might not be Wyrom ultimately calling the shots but he's the one trying to justify more paid events and micro transactions by flat out saying Simu needs to suck more money out of their remaining customers because making over a million dollars a year for a 30 year old MUD apparently isn't good enough.It might not be? Do you actually have to even think about that? :jerkit:

[Tgo01]

It might not be? Do you actually have to even think about that? :jerkit:

I'm sure the sales targets they have to hit come from up above (I would be highly surprised if Wyrom sets those), but I think Wyrom himself is the one who decides how they are going to reach those goals. I don't think Whately or especially Simu's new owner is getting that much involved in how these sales goals are reached, they just want sales goals reached.

[Androidpk]

Yeah, really sounds like you know what's up at Simu.

[Tgo01]

Yeah, really sounds like you know what's up at Simu.

Well what do YOU think the PM of GS does? Is there really some guy who has never even heard of GS before in a boardroom saying "Yes, yes. Don't allow customers to buy shit with in game silvers, make them buy Simucoins instead."

[Methais]

I'd pay for a GS3 instance. Just saying.

Gemstone Diamond for only $2700 per month! Relive the golden days of GEnie bills!


Here comes the "But he's just following orders!" argument.

Before you say that, person who's about to say that - you know who you are: Please include in your post one other example where "He was just following orders" was looked upon favorably by history.

What about those guys who bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki?


Well what do YOU think the PM of GS does? Is there really some guy who has never even heard of GS before in a boardroom saying "Yes, yes. Don't allow customers to buy shit with in game silvers, make them buy Simucoins instead."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-npEGLaXRY5g/TeF20GeX2UI/AAAAAAAAAxA/Vl46HbgG1i4/s1600/theofficedvdlogo.jpg

[Neveragain]

Its either that or more microtransactions. They are owned by a publicly traded company.

Not true at all.

I'm curious as to how many people returned when they were running promo's for Cross into Shadows? How many people returned with that video about Gemstone?

I don't think most people would have a problem with micro transaction, the complaints come when they use those micro transactions with every new "idea" (their not really new ideas when it's just another slot machine with different bells and whistles). Now using those micro transaction for things like alterations and such I don't think would be a problem (think Sadie scrolls). Hell it would be nice to pay $20 to schedule 15 minutes with a GM to do a feature alteration...etc., this would be especially nice for alt characters. The problem arises when people are paying cash for items that play a role in game mechanics.

I was being cereal when I said that with a small animation team and a script writer it would be easy to double their subs. I would also bring back the 30 day free trial, that alone got me to create 3 other accounts that I was paying for. Honestly there are so many ideas to solve revenue problems than just micro transactions.

[Kobold]

This is the only game that has a monthly sub and microtransactions... for a modern cutting edge MMO it's laughable, for some 80's MUD this is astounding; like watching a prancing unicorn fly by.

Wyrom is trying to squeeze and squeeze and see where the pain threshold is for his players. Make no mistake, he only did the 99 book sale because of the massive backlash, lack of book sales, and his creeping suspicion that he has hit that threshold (or very close to it).

[Maerit]

This is the only game that has a monthly sub and microtransactions... for a modern cutting edge MMO it's laughable, for some 80's MUD this is astounding; like watching a prancing unicorn fly by..[/b]

FFVX is subscription and they also have optional microtransactions. They have no free option to my knowledge either, and its probably the 2nd largest MMO community still active?

[Gelston]

This is the only game that has a monthly sub and microtransactions... for a modern cutting edge MMO it's laughable, for some 80's MUD this is astounding; like watching a prancing unicorn fly by.

Wyrom is trying to squeeze and squeeze and see where the pain threshold is for his players. Make no mistake, he only did the 99 book sale because of the massive backlash, lack of book sales, and his creeping suspicion that he has hit that threshold (or very close to it).

Completely incorrect. ESO, SWTOR, STO... All those have sub tiers and cash shops.

[Ashliana]

Completely incorrect. ESO, SWTOR, STO... All those have sub tiers and cash shops.

Have you actually played TOR since it went mostly free to play? It's a total garbagefest. Pity, too. STO's also pretty bad, though I have a soft spot in my heart for it.

[Kobold]

Completely incorrect. ESO, SWTOR, STO... All those have sub tiers and cash shops.

You know what, you're absolutely right. After reviewing how ESO, SWTOR, FFXIV does it I think this current model can work.

I think in light of this new information, I'm going to take back everything I've said.

Going forward...

+ selling books/tokens for silvers is a bad idea.
+ books/tokens/shovels etc. should be exclusively bought for SIMUCOINs.
+ Silvers could be traded for "Gold Coins" (in-game version of SIMUCOINS) anytime at the bank.
+ Silver to Gold Coin rate should be determined by management to whatever they see fit at the time.
+ All merchants regardless of event including auctions will utilize "Gold Coins" no exceptions.

[Taernath]

Have you actually played TOR since it went mostly free to play? It's a total garbagefest. Pity, too. STO's also pretty bad, though I have a soft spot in my heart for it.

Gelston basically lived in TOR for a few years, from my understanding.

[Methais]

FFVX is subscription and they also have optional microtransactions. They have no free option to my knowledge either, and its probably the 2nd largest MMO community still active?

Yes but FFXIV has things like graphics and a full time paid staff. And if I remember right all microtransactions are cosmetic, with the most mechanical item being a mount that looks cool, which is pretty much cosmetic since mounts are easy to get in game.

Selling 15 minutes of GM time for X Simucoins would sell well I think. Some people would probably pay that just to stand in a room with a GM's attention and nothing else.

GM says, "Hi Player!"

Player exclaims, "Omg omg omg omg omg omg!"

You notice a wet spot rapidly forming around Player's crotch.

Player blushes.

>gmchat lol this guy totally pissed himself over me saying hi. I feel like the fucking Beatles man

[SonoftheNorth]

>gmchat lol this guy totally pissed himself over me saying hi. I feel like the fucking Beatles man


THERES A GM CHAT? METHAIS IS A GM, CONFIRMED.

[Neveragain]

Selling 15 minutes of GM time for X Simucoins would sell well I think. Some people would probably pay that just to stand in a room with a GM's attention and nothing else.

It would be their top selling item in the simucoin store, it would also encourage more creativity among the player base. At one point I would have spent hundreds on cosmetic changes to my character.

[Methais]

THERES A GM CHAT? METHAIS IS A GM, CONFIRMED.

http://i.imgur.com/PEkBoao.gif

[Gelston]

Gelston basically lived in TOR for a few years, from my understanding.

I like TOR. I think the free versions are fucking retarded though and they are definitely pushing at making the paid sub the way you need to go if you want to do anything end game.

[Methais]

It would be their top selling item in the simucoin store, it would also encourage more creativity among the player base. At one point I would have spent hundreds on cosmetic changes to my character.

Only problem is it's not automated, which is I guess one of Wyrom's "requirements".

But as much of a hot item as this would be, they'd be dumb to not just do it manually for now and implement the automated part later.

[Stumplicker]

The proper way to implement microtransactions into gemstone would not be Nexon levels of cash grabs and slot machines, but instead:

Crowdfund by popular development using Simucoins as currency. For example, and no, the numbers are not supposed to be accurate here:

Three options given:

1. 75,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Develop the Ranger Guild

2. 25,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Finish Monk Spell List

3. 50,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Overhaul of CoL

When one option becomes funded, Simucoins pledged to the other two options are refunded, the funded choice becomes implemented, and the next round of crowdfunding choices begin. If a previous choice reached a certain percentage of pledges in the last go, it's retained as an option for the next crowdfunding round.

It offers no mechanical advantages, doesn't fuck with the game's natural economy by throwing a bunch of alt currencies for cash into the mix, and pushes development of the game via extra income for the developer based on player feedback on what they would actually like to see.

And sure, keep on with the cosmetic and quality of life simucoin options, like locker expansions, easy teleporting city to city, et cetera. But come on. The slot machine systems, and gating all the most popular items behind segregated paywalls that aren't interchangeable? That's Nexon level shit right there.

Player Feedback: We like Dhu Kittens!
Developer Response: Dhu Kittens are no longer available by their previous means, but you can buy them for 75,000 Bloodscrip, increasing with each purchase.

That's not how that should work. That's not how any of this should work.

[SonoftheNorth]

The proper way to implement microtransactions into gemstone would not be Nexon levels of cash grabs and slot machines, but instead:

Crowdfund by popular development using Simucoins as currency. For example, and no, the numbers are not supposed to be accurate here:

Three options given:

1. 75,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Develop the Ranger Guild

2. 25,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Finish Monk Spell List

3. 50,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Overhaul of CoL

When one option becomes funded, Simucoins pledged to the other two options are refunded, the funded choice becomes implemented, and the next round of crowdfunding choices begin. If a previous choice reached a certain percentage of pledges in the last go, it's retained as an option for the next crowdfunding round.

It offers no mechanical advantages, doesn't fuck with the game's natural economy by throwing a bunch of alt currencies for cash into the mix, and pushes development of the game via extra income for the developer based on player feedback on what they would actually like to see.

And sure, keep on with the cosmetic and quality of life simucoin options, like locker expansions, easy teleporting city to city, et cetera. But come on. The slot machine systems, and gating all the most popular items behind segregated paywalls that aren't interchangeable? That's Nexon level shit right there.

Player Feedback: We like Dhu Kittens!
Developer Response: Dhu Kittens are no longer available by their previous means, but you can buy them for 75,000 Bloodscrip, increasing with each purchase.

That's not how that should work. That's not how any of this should work.


You're back

[Stumplicker]

You're back

What are you, retarded?

[SonoftheNorth]

What are you, retarded?

Yes

[Taernath]

The proper way to implement microtransactions into gemstone would not be Nexon levels of cash grabs and slot machines, but instead:

Crowdfund by popular development using Simucoins as currency. For example, and no, the numbers are not supposed to be accurate here:

Three options given:

1. 75,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Develop the Ranger Guild

2. 25,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Finish Monk Spell List

3. 50,000 Simucoins Crowdfunded - Overhaul of CoL

When one option becomes funded, Simucoins pledged to the other two options are refunded, the funded choice becomes implemented, and the next round of crowdfunding choices begin. If a previous choice reached a certain percentage of pledges in the last go, it's retained as an option for the next crowdfunding round.

It offers no mechanical advantages, doesn't fuck with the game's natural economy by throwing a bunch of alt currencies for cash into the mix, and pushes development of the game via extra income for the developer based on player feedback on what they would actually like to see.

And sure, keep on with the cosmetic and quality of life simucoin options, like locker expansions, easy teleporting city to city, et cetera. But come on. The slot machine systems, and gating all the most popular items behind segregated paywalls that aren't interchangeable? That's Nexon level shit right there.

Player Feedback: We like Dhu Kittens!
Developer Response: Dhu Kittens are no longer available by their previous means, but you can buy them for 75,000 Bloodscrip, increasing with each purchase.

That's not how that should work. That's not how any of this should work.

We shouldn't have to crowdfund development when there's a subscription.

[Stumplicker]

We shouldn't have to crowdfund development when there's a subscription.

We shouldn't have a cash shop that gates the most popular items and mechanical bonuses behind microtransactions and slot machines either, but between the two of them, which would you prefer?

[Taernath]

We shouldn't have a cash shop that gates the most popular items and mechanical bonuses behind microtransactions and slot machines either, but between the two of them, which would you prefer?

Neither. This is a false dilemma.

[Stumplicker]

Neither. This is a false dilemma.

Not necessarily. Simutronics is a business and they would like a way to make more money. Nothing wrong with that part. They have chosen a route that's very scummy. If given a choice between the option they've chosen and the option presented that benefits everyone's agenda without harming anything currently in place, I choose the latter. At least my option funds development towards what players want and keeps the economy as stable as it was prior to the cash shop. The option we have doesn't benefit anyone but Simutronics, and that's a very short term marketing strategy they're utilizing. Eventually, once it's got its hooks in every possible system, it'll drag the ship down.

[SonoftheNorth]

They should sell premium points at an inflated rate.

[Stumplicker]

They should sell premium points at an inflated rate.

Didn't they used to? I seem to remember they used to allow people to back-pay premium months for PP.

[Gelston]

Didn't they used to? I seem to remember they used to allow people to back-pay premium months for PP.

Yeah, you could backpay. You probably still could. A lot of the backpaying of subs was due to how rewards were back then too though. You needed continuous, unbroken time to get certain tiers of crap.

[Taernath]

Not necessarily. Simutronics is a business and they would like a way to make more money. Nothing wrong with that part. They have chosen a route that's very scummy. If given a choice between the option they've chosen and the option presented that benefits everyone's agenda without harming anything currently in place, I choose the latter. At least my option funds development towards what players want and keeps the economy as stable as it was prior to the cash shop. The option we have doesn't benefit anyone but Simutronics, and that's a very short term marketing strategy they're utilizing. Eventually, once it's got its hooks in every possible system, it'll drag the ship down.

An extra $1000 isn't going to make them develop the Ranger guild. If that were the case it would have been done LONG ago, because between tiered subscriptions, the cash shop, and paid events, GS is eminently profitable. Crowd funding absolutely does not need to be thrown into that mess as well.

[SonoftheNorth]

Didn't they used to? I seem to remember they used to allow people to back-pay premium months for PP.

I never heard of that but just selling the premium points instantly for say 70% of the premium sub cost instead of fucking up EG would be pretty cool. Huge PP blocks are drying up and hard to come by. A ton of people doing DR are doing it to get similiar shit to PP points. Why not just do that and leave festivals alone?

[SonoftheNorth]

People would still keep premium accounts for the raffles/merchants etc so I doubt they'd lose much money and could leave festivals alone.

[Stumplicker]

An extra $1000 isn't going to make them develop the Ranger guild. If that were the case it would have been done LONG ago, because between tiered subscriptions, the cash shop, and paid events, GS is eminently profitable. Crowd funding absolutely does not need to be thrown into that mess as well.

I'm not talking about in addition to the cash shop. the cash shop is cancer in most forms that they're using it for. I feel I pretty clearly stated that what I was stating was an alternative to the cash shop model, which is akin to pay to win. Diablo 3 had a cash shop. They alienated a huge chunk of their playerbase with it and then reversed course.

Edit to add: And no, of course $1000 is not enough to fund development of something. I never stated that it was.

[SonoftheNorth]

Backpaying the entire cost of a premium sub isn't really worth it but maybe like 65% 70%(someone good at math could crunch the numbers) of the cost of the sub just for the points with no other benefits like raffles/merchants etc would probably sell just as good as these slot machine things you basically have people doing them to sell the scrip off to the same small group of people for cash anyway. I am guilty of doing that myself. You'd probably be making near the same amount without disrupting the rest of the game.

[Taernath]

I'm not talking about in addition to the cash shop. the cash shop is cancer in most forms that they're using it for. I feel I pretty clearly stated that what I was stating was an alternative to the cash shop model, which is akin to pay to win. Diablo 3 had a cash shop. They alienated a huge chunk of their playerbase with it and then reversed course.

The genie is out of the bottle and the cash shop is never, ever going away.

[Neveragain]

Only problem is it's not automated, which is I guess one of Wyrom's "requirements".

Honestly I hope this is not a Wyrom requirement. Whoever's requirement this is, it really shows how out of touch they are with their own product. The ability for GM's to interact with the customers in real time is the prime selling point of their product.

Yea I love Black Sabbath on my CD's but I would give my first born to see them live in concert.

[SonoftheNorth]

Honestly I hope this is not a Wyrom requirement. Whoever's requirement this is, it really shows how out of touch they are with their own product. The ability for GM's to interact with the customers in real time is the prime selling point of their product.


I agree, I play GS over say wow because you can have cool unique shit and there are rare godly items that exist and it's not just everyone has the same gear at cap.
I feel like there isn't even badass boxfound shit anymore, they just save it for the dig hopper and you pay to try to win it instead of randomly coming across something rad.

[SonoftheNorth]

If everyone just pays cash to have the same shit what's the point?

[Stumplicker]

The genie is out of the bottle and the cash shop is never, ever going away.

All it'd take is a single day with a fraction of the playerbase behind its removal. According to Stillfront's data, Gemstone has about 3000 active subscriptions. If you were to get 2-300 people together, and have all of them cancel their accounts on the same day, some of them inevitably cancelling multiple accounts, it doesn't take until the end of that day for Simutronics to reverse course on its marketing strategy, so long as that was laid out in the terms of the boycott and a viable alternative was presented (such as the one displayed above).

A tiny fraction of that was all it took for them to reverse course on their handling of the 6x HCW/HCP issue last Duskruin. And that didn't even require anyone threatening a boycott.

The impossible part however is getting 2-300 people to agree on anything on these or any other of Gemstone's forums.

Boycotts fail these days because we're dealing with Megacorporations that know you can't get a number of people together that'd put any sort of dent in their business. Who's gonna get 30 million people together to make Walmart change its mind about something? Nobody, that's who. But 200 people with an account or two each is enough to put a dent in a 3000 accounts total number to make them change their mind on something that's alienating its playerbase.

Wouldn't take more than a day.

[Neveragain]

I agree, I play GS over say wow because you can have cool unique shit and there are rare godly items that exist and it's not just everyone has the same gear at cap.
I feel like there isn't even badass boxfound shit anymore, they just save it for the dig hopper and you pay to try to win it instead of randomly coming across something rad.

http://i.imgur.com/wyYbnVT.png

[SonoftheNorth]

All it'd take is a single day with a fraction of the playerbase behind its removal. According to Stillfront's data, Gemstone has about 3000 active subscriptions. If you were to get 2-300 people together, and have all of them cancel their accounts on the same day, some of them inevitably cancelling multiple accounts, it doesn't take until the end of that day for Simutronics to reverse course on its marketing strategy, so long as that was laid out in the terms of the boycott and a viable alternative was presented (such as the one displayed above).

A tiny fraction of that was all it took for them to reverse course on their handling of the 6x HCW/HCP issue last Duskruin. And that didn't even require anyone threatening a boycott.

The impossible part however is getting 2-300 people to agree on anything on these or any other of Gemstone's forums.

Boycotts fail these days because we're dealing with Megacorporations that know you can't get a number of people together that'd put any sort of dent in their business. Who's gonna get 30 million people together to make Walmart change its mind about something? Nobody, that's who. But 200 people with an account or two each is enough to put a dent in a 3000 accounts total number to make them change their mind on something that's alienating its playerbase.

Wouldn't take more than a day.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xs1ZNRcAThY

[Methais]

Honestly I hope this is not a Wyrom requirement. Whoever's requirement this is, it really shows how out of touch they are with their own product. The ability for GM's to interact with the customers in real time is the prime selling point of their product.

Yea I love Black Sabbath on my CD's but I would give my first born to see them live in concert.

He specifically stated it would have to be automated in the silver drain thread from here. Automated, not permanent, and something people would keep coming back for.

Though I don't think something like buying a ticket for 15 minutes of GM time was brought up.

The silver drain was found yesterday anyway. They released 99 DR books for sale for 10,250,000 and they sold out in under a half hour. That's a billion silvers gone that aren't coming back.

Nobody can generate new silvers injto the game at that rate. The fix is there, it's just a matter of if Simu wants to use it and keep the game healthy over the long term at the expense of some Simucoin sales during the initial silver drain, or keep going full retard and ignore said silver fix in favor of a higher short term gain.

They should also keep in mind that every booklet sold for silvers isn't a missed Simucoin sale. A lot of people would otherwise just not do DR at all. Either way books for silvers will drain the fuck out of the system at a rate much higher than what players can generate into the game and Simu would be stupid to not take advantage of it. Even dumber than when they nerfed GS3 sorcerers.

It also fits Wyrom's automated/temporary/repeatable criteria while being something people will trip over themselves throwing their silvers at until they're out of silvers.

[SonoftheNorth]

The silver drain was found yesterday anyway. They released 99 DR books for sale for 10,250,000 and they sold out in under a half hour. That's a billion silvers gone that aren't coming back.


That probably takes care of half of what the pawnshop generates during DR lol, if they'd run it longer maybe. Or like have books on sale the last day of DR and if you stock up for next run so be it. They would barely be losing simucoin sales by doing that and taking a lot of the silver out of the game.

[Methais]

That probably takes care of half of what the pawnshop generates during DR lol, if they'd run it longer maybe. Or like have books on sale the last day of DR and if you stock up for next run so be it. They would barely be losing simucoin sales by doing that and taking a lot of the silver out of the game.

I'm pretty sure Wyrom stated in the silver drain thread that roughly 2 billion silvers are generated per month in GS.

I also don't get at all why DR floods so many coins in the game unless it's specifically for the purpose of flooding the game to devalue silvers. Otherwise it makes no sense to have it generate the silvers it does while they complain about too many silvers in the game with no drain.

[SonoftheNorth]

Honestly it sucks but they should probably get rid of the pawnable item drops in DR and just give you extra bloodscrip instead. A lot of cool gear comes from it which I have benefited from myself but it's also just creating more silver and adding to the problem even more.

[Tgo01]

That probably takes care of half of what the pawnshop generates during DR lol, if they'd run it longer maybe.

That's what I'm curious about, how many silvers does DR itself generate? After an arena aren't you rewarded with an item worth upwards of the max the pawnshop will pay (35k) plus you receive a note valued at like 5 or 10k or something? How many tickets are in these books, 50 each? Assuming I'm right about everything then the silvers generated by these 99 books is upwards of almost 200 million. So altogether the books themselves drained 800ish million, which is fantastic, but does that even scratch the surface of how many silvers DR itself has generated?

It was a nice gesture by Simu, but they really need to sell a lot more than 99 to make a dent in this. Why not 99 every day for as long as the event lasts? Or like someone else suggested have the first 2 or 3 days be Simucoins only and after that you can use either Simucoins or silvers.

[kcostell]

The items are often worth less than 35k, and in some cases much less (Feras two-handed sword, I'm looking at you).

I wouldn't be surprised if DR generates far less silver than Reim over the course of a year.

[Methais]

That's what I'm curious about, how many silvers does DR itself generate? After an arena aren't you rewarded with an item worth upwards of the max the pawnshop will pay (35k) plus you receive a note valued at like 5 or 10k or something? How many tickets are in these books, 50 each? Assuming I'm right about everything then the silvers generated by these 99 books is upwards of almost 200 million. So altogether the books themselves drained 800ish million, which is fantastic, but does that even scratch the surface of how many silvers DR itself has generated?

It was a nice gesture by Simu, but they really need to sell a lot more than 99 to make a dent in this. Why not 99 every day for as long as the event lasts? Or like someone else suggested have the first 2 or 3 days be Simucoins only and after that you can use either Simucoins or silvers.

Seemed more like a test run to me based on his post in the DR folder.


I wanted to see how it would go. At 99 booklets, it allows me to collect some information.

http://forums.play.net/forums/GemStone%20IV/Paid%20Events:%20Adventures,%20Quests,%20and%20Sim uCoins/Duskruin%20Arena/view/7529

At this point Simu needs to decide between short term gains (which might not even be short term gains if sales are already down from people not selling books for silvers) or long term health of the game because the silver bullet for draining silvers is right there in front of their faces with bells on all like

http://pa1.narvii.com/5800/7006deea6ea8abb29f928d2fe9be42e6eb106c2b_hq.gif

Normally I'd think this would be a no brainer decision, even for Simu, but they have that other factor of this first year Stillfront bonus bullshit, whatever that's about that I'm too lazy to go look up.