Silver economy talk

[Tgo01]

I thought these messages from Wyrom on Discord were interesting:

Wyrom: EVENT BOX hit over 6bil!
Wyrom: More than 6bil, but we're draining more than is being generated. For 2022, we've drained a little north of 20bil in just these extras. With the opt-in for more bloodscrip/exp in February, silver generation was roughly 4.7bil, but we drained double that in February in just the two EVENT BOXes and prize pile alone. The game does an okay job at taking out the everyday silver generation at the low end. I use February as an example just because it's typically one of the higher months of the year.

So February is one of the higher months in terms of silver generation, and only 4.7 billion silver is generated in February. I say "only", I know it's still a rather large number, but I thought it would have been much higher. The hard loot cap is 35 million, the soft loot cap is 16 million, so even at 16 million silvers per account, that's only 294 accounts hitting that loot cap every month. Of course the number of people hitting the loot cap every month is probably very low, maybe even the low double digits. Let's say there's about 1000 unique accounts that log in each month, that's only about 4.7 million silvers generated per account per month.

Way, way, way lower than I would have guessed.

Amazing how this one event box drained more silvers than one of their highest silver generating months. And it's something that probably took very little time to code. The event box already existed because of the previous event box, and all of the stuff in the box already existed. Crazy how people have been asking for silver drains for decades and all they had to do was put in the minimal amount of effort and it worked. A huge and elaborate god auction wasn't even needed.

Now they just need to implement a few more silver drains and then do a god auction when everyone is poor.

[Realk]

what this fails to address is that only 10 people bought gift boxes, the rest of us just bought them and sold them for cost.. and kept some of the other peices much the same as we did the last run

[Tgo01]

what this fails to address is that only 10 people bought gift boxes, the rest of us just bought them and sold them for cost.. and kept some of the other peices much the same as we did the last run

Very true. Maybe they should do a monthly event box and change up what's in them. Like maybe next month it can be an account bound 4x orb and like 100 bounty vouchers for 10-15 million silvers or something. More people would probably get a personal use out of those instead of just immediately selling them.

They could even do something like turn this into a monthly raffle too, 1 person every month would receive a legendary item. This way legendary items aren't just for capped players and even someone who is only level 50 can have a shot at legendary items for a relatively low silver price.

Actually scratch the idea that it's in the giftbox, because then if the 10th person who buys an event box wins there is no incentive for anyone else to buy the giftboxes (no incentive for the raffle anyways), so every person who buys an event box is automatically entered into a raffle that is drawn on the first of the following month.

[BLZrizz]

what this fails to address is that only 10 people bought gift boxes, the rest of us just bought them and sold them for cost.. and kept some of the other peices much the same as we did the last run

Agree with this. I suspect pareto efficiency at play here, with 20% of the players generating 80% of event entry revenues, probably closer to 10/90 or 5/95. But Dreaven hit on the important point: draining silver (scarcity) is just half the equation; the second half is generating demand for that scarce item. Lots of things are scarce and worthless. The key is to make the item scarce and valuable, which in GS generally means the ability to convert silver into desirable mechanical upgrades.

[gilchristr]

A bit "north" of 20B, huh?

He should save that word for when the player base gets over 500. Its like he's bragging down with the ship.

[Nephelem]

I don't see why it matters who is buying the gift boxes. Silver sinks aren't going to do a thing if you are targeting them being affordable. The current model seems good, include an item or two for a regular player, and a saleable item for the whales to fund it all. They should add event boxes at every event, like Frontier Days, Premium Fest etc, not just the pay events.

[Tgo01]

I don't see why it matters who is buying the gift boxes.

I agree if it's just some event boxes end up being like this. I think a lot more people actually used the shovels in the last event box. But if this becomes the norm, where event boxes are just mainly for people to resale to the whales, then it could lead to problems such as the whales start to get bored with buying up all of the event boxes even 2-3 months so they stop buying them, and also could lead to people getting tired of the event boxes just being for whales so they too stop buying them just to resale them.

It seems to be working for now, but the GMs getting complacent with the status quo because it's working tends to lead to problems down the road.

I'm just saying it wouldn't be a bad idea to maybe try and spice them up from time to time to get people interested in event boxes for themselves and not just be a cog in the larger whale machine.

[Nephelem]

I just don't see what your are going to put in the boxes that is :

1. Cheap enough for everyone
2. Filled with items "regular" people find desirable
3. Either bound or not of interest to be gobbled up by whales
4. Able to somehow generate meaningful billions of silvers sunk

[Tgo01]

3. Either bound or not of interest to be gobbled up by whales

I don't think it's bad that whales gobble up the items in the event boxes, I just don't think every event box should just be something that only whales are interested in.

Like I said I'm pretty sure a lot of people bought and used the shovel event boxes and that was awesome. This event box seemed geared mostly towards the whales who wanted to buy them all, and that's fine too, just as long as the GMs don't get into a habit of making the items only interesting to whales. So far they're 50/50 and that's not too bad at all.

I also think they should do monthly event boxes and not just for paid events.

[Ardwen]

This is the rare occasion I agree with Tgo, anything that pulls silver out on a regular basis is a net gain for everyone. Honestly do the boxes with one buyer getting a golden ticket attuned item, encourage the purchases and still supply the whales too.

[Tgo01]

Wyrom on Discord: EVENT BOX closed out at 621 redeemed, or 7,762,500,000 silver.

So this one event box drained 7.7 billion silvers, almost twice of what is generated during one of the highest silver generating months.

Monthly event box, please!

[Alastir]

I purchased several event boxes.

I wouldn't purchase a "golden ticket" box, because more than likely you get nothing from it and it's a waste of silvers.

I will say that I like the "gift box" with an "event box" because being able to sell something for 1m for a person with no money helps to keep the economy going. It may be the first million silvers that person has ever had.

[Tgo01]

I wouldn't purchase a "golden ticket" box, because more than likely you get nothing from it and it's a waste of silvers.

Depending on the prize in question, I bet a lot of people would drop 5 mil on a box that has a chance to win a legendary item if they also threw some other goodies in there too, like 100 bounty task vouchers or something. Maybe for 10 mil it can be a chance to win a legendary item and have like a 4x RPA account bound orb in it.

The thing is they can just experiment every month to see what works and what doesn't, mix-and-match. During months where there is an event going on they can tie the boxes to the event, and months with no events going on it can be something else.

I think they stumbled onto one of their better ideas here, I'm just hoping they keep it going.

[Dendum]

I have been bearish on silver prices for awhile but if Wyrom continues to sacrifice dollars for silvers silver prices could restabilize