Can We Not?

Comments

• taoscribble Posts: 30Member Beginner

  July 2017

  Y'know, in the other games I play, stuff like this isn't an issue.
  
  Part of it is because there's no equivalent to EXP potions in those games. And in one, items that are bought with real money are on a timer as to when you can put them up for sale. Let's say you get the free gift that comes with a one-year subscription. The gifts that come with it are bankable, but are restricted to that account for the full year, down to the minute. You can destroy them, but you can't sell them to other players or NPCs, not that NPCs buy anything for more than 1-10 gold, anyway.
  
  The other part is because when stuff costs too much, people just don't buy it. And this is in a completely and utterly player-dependent economy: NPCs don't sell any items, aside from a few 1-200 gold items required for quests. Money drops are poor, and equipment is rare, but all mobs drop something that can be used for crafting. Like LaTale, one character can learn any and every crafting job. So it's get into the market, or tough nuggets.
  
  And if you set your price ridiculously high, your item will never be seen: When buying from the market (which is set up a little like the Auction on LaTale), only the lowest available prices are even listed. So if everyone else is selling bundles of 100 wheat for 5,000 gold, and you try to sell 100 wheat for 50,000 gold, your batch will never see the light of day. Equipment is the exception, of course, since the same pieces can have different bonuses.
  
  The last part is that there's a ton to do outside of grinding to get stronger in fights. If you don't feel up for fighting, gathering from the maps
  themselves is an option for a few professions, and it's nowhere near as tedious as how mining was in old LaTale (or current LaTale). You don't even have to fight to level up your
  main level in one of the games: Achievements for exploring and crafting can raise that. Or you can raise pets or breed mounts, building their stats and then selling them.
  
  And there's also a much, MUCH larger assortment of equipment to choose from, and none of them are blatantly better than another unless it's something like a 50-level difference to even equip it. So even if one pet or mount or piece of equipment becomes regularly over-priced, people can easily find a cheaper alternative. And when the demand for the more expensive equipment drops, so do the prices. Rinse and repeat.
  
  TL;DR: The point I'm trying to get at is that LaTale is a very basic and bare game. Enjoyable, but there's not much to it. And because there's not much to it, everyone is hyper-focused on the one main thing to do. And to do that one thing easier, people feel that these items, bought with real money, are necessary. Because these items are 'necessary', people are willing to shell out ridiculous amounts of in-game currency for them either because they aren't lucky enough to get them on their own, or can't afford to shell out the IRL dough, or don't care to. And because people are willing to pay those extremely high prices, they're going to stay there.
  
  It also helps that, unlike LaTale, in the other games I play, you don't need the in-game currency to do EVERYTHING. Seriously! Ely is stupidly easy enough to come by via quests and selling everything that drops, and I'm going to assume that that's BECAUSE you need ely to do any and everything. Which, of course, contributes to people being willing to pay those insanely high prices.
  
  I mean, am I the only one that thinks it's silly that you need to pay 50,000 ely, on top of all the shards (that you get at RANDOM) for even the first earrings that you can craft? For a level 5 character?? And that's not even taking into account the chance of failure and losing everything, low though it might be. That should be a warning sign right there that something is amiss. It's almost as bad as a Zynga game.
  
  I guess I should be thankful that you don't need ely to learn the skills of your own class anymore.
  
• Bodaff Posts: 14Member Beginner

  July 2017

  Contrary to what you might think, this actually IS economics.

  
  

  With every passing day, players are getting stronger. Their access and ability to farm ely is growing, and as more and more people leave the "questing" stage of leveling (1-190) and enter the "grinding" phase (190+), the demand for primes is going UP, not down.

  
  

  This is coupled with the fact that access and distribution of primes is very, very tiled right now. There are simply not enough to go around. The GMs have briefly mentioned attempting to fix this, but for the time being, there is too high of a demand for primes, and no supply to meet it, so the price is rising.
• taoscribble Posts: 30Member Beginner

  July 2017

  I'm pretty sure no one is saying the demand for primes is going down. From the number of topics on it, the high demand is obvious.