The State of Maplelegends Economy 0

Sounds to me like people can't afford to spend coins at the same rate they are being produced? I suppose in that scenario coin prices dropping makes perfect sense. and when coin prices drop the ease of access to perfect equips goes up and the server becomes easier. Though in my personal opinion White Scrolls and especially Chaos Scrolls are overpriced currently. Don't get me wrong I'm happy that I can make so much Meso from just running Rav/Pap/Zak, but I feel like the barrier to entry for perfect weapon making is way to steep for me to even consider in our current coin market.

Am I interpreting what you're saying correctly?

 

Exactly. Reminds me of the situation of Hyperinflation from history.

https://www.cnbc.com/2011/02/14/The-Worst-Hyperinflation-Situations-of-All-Time.html

I still agree it is healthy for the game to make bossing like Zakum a potentially positive EV but at the rate we are and have been heading.. Prestigious Coins approaching 3,500,000 each market rate, I could see 4.0 by this time next year easily.

I see two outcomes to adapt the situation to move the needle.

1. Decrease droprate across the board. I already expressed this is not an ideal solution which will provide much backlash to the change.

Once you implement something it is very hard to revert it (even if just a typo fix (see: Zakum rate correction))

2. The ideal fix, increase meso drop rate server wide to 2x. This will make up the loss of Multi Mage players injecting billions everyday as well as resolve the "lost" mesos from RWT bans.

Ideally Staff could provide some insight into what they are doing to make up for the meso to coin difference and shed some light on how we will be able to afford anything from potions to prestigious coins, in the future. Maybe something to add to the roadmap.

I'm happy to be a consultant on behalf of the players as an unbiased party as I do actually care about the game's long-term health (contrary to popular belief).

 

Hold on now I'm confused. If there's too much coin production shouldn't that decrease the cost of them? Also, isn't the issue we're facing that raw Meso is inflating faster than we want it to? I don't watch the market too closely, nor do I really pay attention to the economy updates on the patches, but isn't the common rhetoric is that we need more Meso sink?

I don't really understand how the amount of coins in the economy is increasing but the price of them is also increasing. It doesn't make sense from a supply demand viewpoint, but I also understand that there's more depth to the economy than just that so I'm open to clarification!

 

It would be interesting to track the price of pCoins to high-ticket items selling on FM. I'm sure that will have quite the effect on prices, given they have to buy into the market to afford 3k for a perf weapon. once all the cheap ones get purchased out, they have to carry on buying at what ever they set as there maximum price point, which drives up the other coins in the market, as they see they are selling for x price minimum.

WS have always been used as a currency, and unless staff plan on removing meso-limit, coins will continue to be used as currency. I do think tying WS and CS prices together has been detrimental, as CSing items is no longer sorted after, unless buying a service. IDK if staff would want to give this information, but it would be interesting to see coins coming into the game, vs being taking out by WSing projects. Given making a perf weapon takes anywhere from 2500-7000 coins from the game, the market has ways to reduce the overall supply.

On a semi-related note, what should be the expectations of a casuals gear progression from a staff perspective. I don't believe perfect weapons should be for everyone, nor should they try make them to be. There is content in the game that just isnt for everyone (even ignoring HP requirements). Should everyone be able to 6man HT, 18man PB, 3man zak/cwk, or should those be reserved for people who have invested alot of mesos and time into making a character thats capable of it...

 

Yes there is alot more depth to my post than I may say.. of course I am thinking/suggesting this would be the worst case scenario that could would "crash and tank".. Let me explain!

Think of it this way, every time a new Prestigious Coin is dropped/generated into the game, artificially; whatever the market rate at the time (lets say 3,400,000 mesos) is now "locked" into this item.

To take a real world example:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/22/business/economy/federal-debt-history.html

Essentially the USA government was lending against itself so much US dollar and has amassed $30+ trillions in debt, how? By loaning against itself with "Prestigious Coins", printing too much money and creating debt through inflation. This is why in places like Canada, they are slowly increasing rates at the Banks to match the rising cost in today's world but taking it extremely slowly as to not put itself into debt by forcing loans from the government via "printing money" to tame inflation, it's a worldwide pandemic really.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bank-of-canada-january-rate-decision-1.6725283

So what does the future hold? Can we really sustain this influx of "artificial gains" of people sitting on tens of thousands Prestigious Coins or high end items that no one can really afford?

I think by increasing the raw meso droprate serverwide to 2x not only will increase the raw mesos being exchanged/floated but also help with the declining server population issue we have been facing since the start of 2023. This should in-theory double our meso gain output to match the loss of the average server population (used to be 1500+, now is 500+).


So lets say, the entire server meso population is our central bank of Kimmy.
Imagine what if everyone at the same time decided to "withdraw" from the "bank" of the server (everyone's mesos) at the same time? We would all list 100+ pages on Owl of Minerva of Prestigious Coins and watch the undercut wars commence. The strategical ones would wait till the very end (see: Piece of Time at 100k) but most of the average playerbase will most likely firesell at risk of seeing the price continue to trend down (and lose more value) and eventually crash and tank.

Prestigious Coins are and have been healthy for the game thus far in terms of progression via White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls but are still being used to avoid taxes and as an alternate currency (which really was the point of Prestigious Coins in the first place) but now they are starting to lose their "Prestige" I feel because how easily they can become worthless (see article posted above about various country currencies going to zero).
We don't want that, it will kill the game.

So how do we stay "on-track"? Just by simply boosting and "printing MESOS", the market will correct itself and allow players stronger purchasing power (think of this as a Credit Card Limit increase) and will be able to reach their goals, whatever they may be, faster.

Does this potentially risk "aging the server"? No I don't think so, this is more of a balancing act than anything else, unlike Damp Forest NX farm 3mill NX in 30 days lol. That was nuts.

I think we have enough meso sink now, but we have lost too many mesos overall since infamous Potion price increase patch.. New players are the ones suffering the most.

Which is really all that matters, we need to have new players coming into the game.

I don't speak on behalf of Staff but I think the new player experience is upmost important. The old players will continue to play regardless of whatever gets in their way (see: Fartsie), but we will struggle to retain new players that actually want to put effort and maintain their play for the long term (most players quit before 90 days.. sad but true)

Additionally, the reason why White Scrolls/Chaos Scrolls were used as currency in the past was because they were difficult to obtain, players had to get lucky via Gachapon to earn one. They were not "farmable" in the sense that Prestigious Coins are given out like candy now. Yes there were players who farmed Gach tickets back then but even still in 2021 White Scrolls were no more than 150mill.. Fast-forward today the average price is 93 Prestigious Coins for White Scroll service. Again, losing its "Prestigousness". White scrolls were ultimately made untradable and replaced with the easier to earn system which caused this mass-inflation we see today.

I think everyone should be allowed to play the game how they want! If they decide to go hardcore into perfecting their End Game Item then they should!
Why? Because they can and it's free!

 

Hit snail, make mesos.

 

https://youtu.be/gdqpY1Bjhco

 

Ok I think I'm starting to understand. I wasn't valuing the generation of coins as generation of Meso. I still think that Coins are useful enough that the price would very quickly rise again if it ever dropped since it'd be prime time to do some mass white scrolling. If the coin market crashed you know damn well I'm taking that opportunity to buy. That's probably the only chance my lazy ass has at getting some chaosed gears, so I guess i'm biased? idk man.

Something I fully understand and agree on is the potion changes since they directly affected me when they dropped. My first character on this server I made back in 2018. An unwashed Corsair (lvl 148). Knowing how future bossing content would be like, and not being able to participate in things like Scarga without HB all the time just sucked. The nail in the coffin though was the pot prices. Back before Zakum dropped coins and way before the potion nerfs I was still losing 1-2m Mesos every time I ran the boss, even with a buyer. We'd have to get super lucky with drops for me to break even. Running content like CWK and Pap was enough to keep me in the green, but when the potion nerfs dropped I knew that was it for my character. This was before challenges were announced by the way. I had lost all motivation to keep playing on my character at this point and for a while I started only playing on my Bishop while working on a new Sair in the background. Challenges will probably fix all the issues I have with the pot nerfs to be honest, but it's taking a long time to release, and it's going to continue to take a long time. Nowadays it isn't so bad. Things like coins help keep Zakum relatively profitable though I honestly think Rav/Pap daily is much much better if you can solo. If challenges had been announced a year earlier I'd probably still be playing on my first character, but it's a little too late now, I'm all washed out now with 23k HP on my new 145 Sair. Gotta say, the nerfed prices with washed HP are 10x better than pre-nerfed prices with unwashed.

tldr: sob story, pot prices were too high on my unwashed sair and I made a washed one.

Anyways It's important to know where my perspective is coming from, and that's a lazy super casual player. When I joined this server in 2018 I really knew nothing about MapleStory. I was like 8 years old or something when Big Bang released so I can count on my fingers the number of memories I have of old maple. And new Maple was never interesting to me either. I joined this server as a super-noob who scrolled their Squishy Shoes with random garbage I found in PQ loot. I think I was in 3rd job before I knew NLC existed. Though there is a faint memory of Bigger Ben in my memory from my childhood, I had no idea about the potions there.

Where is my tangent going? I have no idea. Basically I can personally say that the potion nerfs affected me not as a new player (cuz I had been around for a while by then), but definitely as a casual one. Uhh and I'm still uncertain about the coins thing, but right now at least I can agree that the prices are prolly bound to drop, yet I disagree that it's a bad thing. I would very much like to get some cheap white/chaos scrolls, yes please. Having White Scrolls be 150m again would be great.

 

Do not let being unwashed discourage you.



ThirdEye, is a 181 Archer who is unwashed and is a regular amongst my Horntail group. He is also very eager to receive the bonus of HP but still he is one of the key parts of our team. He has earned many hundred millions of mesos via his earning payouts even with no HP washing done.

He does currently rely on DK HB to survive, but that does not discourage him! He can even do 1 party (6 player) HT runs if he chooses to!

Hope this sparks some motivation to you!

Agreed, Pap/Ravana as solo do (in the long term due to Prestigious Coins) generate positive EV (even after Sunburst costs at 1mill). It's worth your time for sure.

 

Decrease the coin droprate and bossing becomes totally useless unless for exp, which you might as well make 2 mages and go 5-6 till lvl 200. decreasing the coin supply allows for a more intensified hoarding. ever wondered why apples have not been really hoarded? new players (anyone not on the mage/drk farming track) becomes poorer. imagine zak with poor coin droprate and 100k gen20s. good luck to players in the 13x/14x level range. Do you even know the average production supply from these low tier players to make such a judgement call?

Even without coins, WS/CS and bank systems are still used to avoid taxes. Players will naturally gravitate towards methods which are more efficient.

you are asking how likely a bank run will occur in ML. If coins/ws/cs are good tax-evasion items, players will naturally want to keep them instead of keeping meso, either for their own use, or to use for trades. this applies to all tiers of players. In this case, how would u justify the conditions such that everyone at the same time decides to "withdraw" from the "bank"? 1 condition that can be thought of is, when everyone is done with their gears, weapon, gloves, stompers, blah blah, etc. But how many ppl are that stage? another condition is that when the server becomes dead. Both conditions are unlikely to happen.

Has there been an artificial gain? before the implementation of ws/cs, they were ~300m in value. Now, they are ~330m despite the pot increases. In my opinion, they actually crashed in value due to the increased supply from bossing. Then again, it could be a social aspect to provide ungated access to low tier players. Before the implementation of coin supply, WS/CS were soaring in value with no end in sight. you can check out prices in older servers for that trend.

economies are different across countries and certainly different in maple. the direction behind the decisions are the key. Do i attempt to attract and retain newer players? Do i favor the the traditional income making methods?

And once again, my own analysis of CPIs across legends for the past 2~3years doesn't show that there is an inflation.

 

That is why I did NOT suggest that route. I suggested a second option.

It nearly happened just the other week when the Pasta Pink Bean bank was frozen when Skarmory was banned. 22,000,000,000 was being ripped from the game. That is a big deal and can make those players involved doubt their bank's legitimacy if Staff can just potentially close it at their leisure.

Remember we also need to retain old players who continue to be the backbone of MapleLegends through and through, they, like you, stick around and we value those players just as much as the new registrants.

 

Why would everyone try to sell the only currency that have any real backing (centi WS/CS)? That's like saying, if everyone were to sell all their equips this very instant the market will crash. The only true value meso has is the correlation between meso and fixed NPC costs, everything other is relative.

Printing money would not help solve anything, since perf items will have an avg value of used WS rather than a fixed meso value. The only thing that could alter that value is class popularity or if a better item gets released down the line.

As an old head, I estimate that 95% of the population since 2015-2017 has stopped playing, taking a hand picked example isn't really enough evidence to support your claims. Does staff have a KPI for player longetivity in the current server population? Would be really interesting to see!

Mass inflation is caused by players playing the game without enough meso sinks, it has nothing to do with prestigious coins (except the tax avoidence, which can be determined negligeble in this scenario).

 

that technically isn't a bank run like irl tho. in irl bank run, the government bails the bank out....

 

What exactly is the issue with loaning gear? Lots of times I've borrowed gear for a boss run etc just to see the difference in damage so I can figure out what I need to reach my goals

 

The problem with inflation in games can actually increase with server online times, as we know from other games such as World of Warcraft or Maple Story as well.

So the easiest and most effective solution to it is to generate meso-sinks.

For example, in WoW as the expansions took place, the amount of gold players could obtain were also increased. They included flying and increased repair costs to overcome this.
With another expansion, they included more mount options along with scaled repair costs, and being able to craft some end-game items required you to obtain some expensive items from the vendors.

With that in mind, I honestly don't know what we can add to our server as a meso-sink mechanic. The only thing comes to my mind is add some chairs that can be obtainable with mesos.

Maybe others who have more knowledge about MS can lead a suggestion with this example.

 

Players: We need more meso-sinks! Meso inflation is out of control!
-Staff increases pot prices and shows data justifying the rates-
Players: No not like that!

 

i wonder if the increase in summoning rock prices was inflationary relative to the counterfactual

 

Reminds me of this:

Spoiler: whining

 

In this sense, inflationary from a market seller's perspective isn't a bad thing - it puts more money back into the pockets of players. Alcaster being able to conjur infinite summon/magic rocks is rigged. I'd be amused if there were daily pot/etc/meso limits from NPCs. Can't sell your junk to NPCs if they have no more mesos to give out.

 

it's probably somewhere in between but is 2.5% of 7k a larger meso sink or 5k from the npc? If less mesos are destroyed, it probably isn't working as intended.