*WARNING* - Silvers Crashing

[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?