The State of MapleLegends Economy

Akhenaton · May 15, 2023

Nightz said: ↑

State of the economy for a new player like you is actually fairly decent, lot's of early game goods are discounted and there's decent meso to be made from certain things you'll pick up along the way.

You've been nitpicking the economy mostly by giving examples about piece of time which isn't exactly a fair comparison to the entire economy and most of it, if I understand correctly is just you showing frustration that some players are able to buy out certain items and re price them at a slightly higher rate. Welcome to Maplestory, especially in a server where owls are free.

Btw stop trying to farm bow 30 at balrogs
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I appreciate your response. I do not think the entire economy of ML is unhealthy. Most items that are sold are done so at reasonable prices. Yes, this is mainly about frustrations with regards to some players buying out certain items and repricing them (hoarding and price gouging). My argument from my initial post however is that I don't think these cornered items are being sold at a 'slightly higher rate', but rather at unreasonably higher rates. Rates that are even more unreasonable than would be allowed in original v62 because of the small and hyper-sensitive nature of the server and its economy. Free owls that allow people to sweep up a market also add to this. Also the fact that v62 maplestory only lasted around 3 years (in GMS at least) while this server has been around for 8 years creates a uniquely different experience than the original game in terms of the potential for meta development that only increases this sensitivity over the long term.

I’ve been playing this server on and off for 2 years so I’m not exactly a new player. I have my own small stockpile of mesos and if I wanted to corner the market for a rare item, I probably could at least for a few months. But I don’t want to do that because that would just make the entire problem worse and again that’s not why I play this game.
And yes, I’m never touching jr.balrog again

beegoratto · May 15, 2023

Bow 30s were 6m 1 year ago

Akhenaton · May 15, 2023

beegoratto said: ↑

Bow 30s were 6m 1 year ago
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They also ranged from a minimum of 4.5m to a max of 5.5m in November 2022, but one day later they are twice the price and sold by one person

fartsy · May 15, 2023

if you wish, i can sell you many bow 30s at 5.5m after next patch, but you have to buy all

edit: rescinded after checking owl, good thing there was no agreement wooo

beegoratto · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

View attachment 50437 View attachment 50438
They also ranged from a minimum of 4.5m to a max of 5.5m in November 2022, but one day later they are twice the price and sold by one person
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and in less than 4 days the min was back to 5m, what's your point? prices fluctuate day to day when supply goes to 0 because nobody is farming

LiquidOoze · May 15, 2023

quintus said: ↑

- karl marx on multimaging.

everybody said many things, but i think we all agree on something !

"older player with immense wealth accrued over several years wakes up and picks out a somewhat rare item to buy and then sit on a stockpile of said item , with the sole purpose of manipulating the market and raise its price artificially, which then makes life poopier for newer players for a certain time until things readjust themselves" is a real phenomenon that happens

people do this and they are able to do that far more effectively than in the original game because its such a small market

i understand that the laissez faire wild capitalist meritocracy folks think if they have mesos to be able to do that.... its their right to engage in antisocial predatory pricing methods... while the peasants should pull themselves up by the bootstraps harder to compensate....

but

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I've got 4bil somewhere sitting in storage and will gladly log on to sweep any item that will make you the most upset in a free-to-play 20 year old 2D mushroom game, all you gotta do is name that item.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

This update happened over 8 months ago, and the recent 50-100% increase in price for PoTs has only happened since february. From Late October 2022 - February 2023 they remained relatively stable around 1m, yet suddenly they are 1.8m minimum. Are you saying that the impact of the update is still being realized almost a year later in the market?
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I bought Piece of Time as low as 100k last year and been sitting on them since.

Yes the supply is starting to dry out, but that doesn't mean there's none left and that no one can obtain more..

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

There is someone right now sitting on a stockpile of over 10,000 PoTs selling them for the maximum market price. The argument that there are dwindling stockpiles and decreased supply of PoTs from the February 2023 prices to current prices (May 12, 2023) is simply not true. I can agree that there were even larger stockpiles before from around August 2022- Late October 2022 as the updates came into effect, but the current situation seems to be removed from that. This situation rather seems to be one individual hoarding an item and driving up its price indepedent of real forces of supply and demand.
If one person with the vast majority of the PoTs is selling them for 3m (over 2x the previous max price from February 2023), then why wouldn't someone with just a few PoTs try to make a few extra mesos and sell them for 20-50% more? Especially if they know that despite being more expensive than they were just a week ago, they would still be the cheapest on the market and would sell more quickly. I think many people would jump at that chance and that is what seems to be happening to me.

And yes, as I said in the OwlRepo Note, analyzing the prices of ML items over time is inherently going to be flawed no matter what you try to do or what method you use. There is only so much publicly available data that can be analyzed and drawn from. Even with Owlrepo, we don't know how much of an item is selling and at what price it is selling for. If you have a better way to accurately analyze price indexes over time in ML please feel free to share it.
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owl repo is not accurate.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

quintus said: ↑

this is a very important discussion ! the way i see it, i think the whole point of your thread deep down is this:

should there be market regulation in mushroom society protecting the poor against someone creating artificial scarcity of certain items in a non-organic way, thanks to their wealth, and manipulating the market? is this part of the game or a flaw? a feature or a bug? are we capitalists or communists in our mushroom hearts?

i do not personally care about scrolls or pieces of time, but i do know people occasionally hoard CHAIRS when their price is low and create a scarcity so they can charge nosebleed chair prices. this saddens me immensely, as my single goal in this game is to be very cute and sit on cute chairs.

in my opinion, i dislike market manipulation. i am in favor of communist legends. i think people that hoard items (especially chairs, because i want to be cute) are lame. that is my opinion

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chairs are useless sorry bro

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

You are joking but whenever I see a new player or even a potential alt who is asking for assistance or monetary aid, I provide it to them. And I don't think that should be a bad thing. In fact, I think it grows the sense of community and makes the game more fun to play for everyone. We have all been there at the start and having a sense of community and comradery is good for the health of the game in the long term.
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it's too bad Staff increased potion prices. New players hurt the most from that single change.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

I agree with you, they will be purchased much less often if they are expensive/overpriced. That is one of the problems highlighted in my initial post. By people overpricing items, it creates a freeze on the market for anyone who might actually be interested in buying the item if it were priced according to real market value. This leads to an uncompetitive market that works more slowly and inefficiently at mostly the expense of newer/more casual, less wealthy players. Even the people overpricing the items might make some money off of the rare sale that they get, but that is still only a portion of their stockpile, and the rest continues to sit in an inventory not being utilized by anyone.

I personally can wait as long as I need to for items to adjust in price to what I think is their real market value. I have the patience and I have other hobbies. I am just wondering about the people who might not have the patience and simply move on to other games entirely. I also worry about the sense of community that is being disrupted/lost by this rift in regards to inequality and pricing schemes. I don't think MapleLegends was ever intended to be set up as a hyper-capitalist/anarcho-capitalist simulation game, but that is just me and you are free to argue otherwise if you feel so.

Also regarding Quintus's post, even the most capitalistic market-economies in the world today such as the United States and the U.K have market regulations in place to prevent a complete free-for-all where corporations could charge $200 for a bottle of water if they were able to (which we all know they would- and even do sometimes with regards to 'luxury' water). I know this is not real life and it’s a video game but here we are. I am in favour of introducing market regulations to prevent predatory pricing schemes if the market continues to be uncompetitive and inefficient as I think it is.
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People were never meant to farm 6000 gach tickets in 2 months, play 8 mages at once, or get 3mill NX in 30 days, but alas here we are.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

Do you think one person sitting on 56% (100/177=56.5%) of the total shoes for avoid 30%s in the market, charging over 2m more than the maximum market price (OwlRepo) indicates a healthy economy? According to the United States Federal Trade Commission, having a market share of more than 50% is indicative of a monopoly (https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance...ws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined).
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Just because it's on the market doesn't mean that's the entire server supply

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

-ovv said: ↑

Because this thread feels like a joke.
You can play this game without interacting with the market entirely. There is no such thing as equity in this game when everyone starts from zero and are given the same opportunities to grow.
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aka get good

Nightz · May 15, 2023

Moderator Post

Ryan I swear to god can you pleaseeeee teach yourself how to construct a single reply instead of 20 one liners

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

As said in the initial post, PoTs are just an example and I have not had a chance to use them for crafting yet as I have not reached the end game yet. However, I HAVE tried farming bow 30%s from jr. balrog for the better part of a day last week. I killed 15 of them over a period of 12+hours and I got 0 bow 30%s. Just because you are able to farm something does not mean it is profitable or worthwhile. That is why I think it is unproductive for my time. I also think it is disrespectful for my mesos if I simply caved in to the predatory pricing and bought the bow 30s because I think the current market price is not the real value and is inflated due to hoarding and price gouging. Also, if I caved in to the predatory pricing out of impatience for the price to adjust to real value, that would encourage the max seller to increase their price even more independent of the real forces of supply and demand, making the entire problem worse. If you think that is entitlement because I don't want to spend a week farming jr.balrog's to get a few bow 30s, rather than sell leech or boss (which is actually profitable), then I do unabashedly consider myself entitled.
There is a reason why people with multiple DrKs choose to farm exclusively Master Chronos for Helm Dex 60% and gach tickets and don't multimage/multi-drk in other maps for other scrolls. And that is because it is worth the time investment and is actually profitable compared to farming other maps for scrolls that have low drop rates and are not worth the return on investment of time and mesos (such as jr. balrog).
We have also already discussed that the historic low prices in PoTs (under 1m avg price) were due to multimaging. The prices stabilized for several months after the impact of the update from August 2022. My argument surrounding the PoTs is that the current situation of PoTs being a minimum price of 1.8m is SEPARATE from the multimaging issue, and is primarily caused by a hoarding and price gouging situation, particularly given there are 10,000 of them being sold for the maximum market price.
Merchers are certainly able to buy goods if they think they are below price and they do. My contention is that some merchers are sitting on stockpiles for months, barely selling any of their items, which artificially drives the overall price up, particularly if they have a monopoly/oligopoly over that item. I am not expecting priority access to a good. I just want to be able to scroll my weapon/craft my item/ play the game without having to wait months for that mercher to lower their price, since they are sitting on most of the available items. They are welcome to sell them for an increased price if they think they are reflecting market trends. But that does not mean anyone is going to buy them, and once they realize that, the only thing everyone will have lost is time they could've spent doing something else than playing a game of 'market chicken'. I do not see the value added to the game by having one person possess a literal monopoly over a given scroll type and have it sit in their inventory for months on end, not being used and only being purchased to be resold at a higher price. The items could be sold within a reasonable speed at a more reasonable price that still nets the mercher profit and actually be scrolled onto items and used by players, but greed for the maximum potential profit prevents this. I personally find THAT to be entitlement at the expense of other players who actually want to use the item.

Regarding Beegoratto and the Shadow Claw 20s, I think this is somewhat of a separate issue. Skill books are typically 1-2 time use, maybe 3-4 if you are unlucky. The Shadow Claw 20 is also only dropped by literally ONE mob in the game. This is similar to Holy Shield 30, however Manon is often farmed off spawn for other reasons such as cards, job advancements and other drops. Scrolls and crafting items on the other hand can be used dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of times by the same character. Scrolls and crafting items can also be obtained from more than one mob in the game, often also available from PQs and gachapon (PoTs are not availabe from PQs and gach). However if the price for Shadow Claw 20s DO get too expensive independent of real forces of supply and demand because one person wants to charge a very expensive price, I would be in favour to regulate that too. Yet, I don't play NL and I am unfamiliar with those prices.

Also regarding Beegoratto's other comment, people are only able to buy completed items in the first place because people bother to scroll them. If everyone took the mentality to erase all risk and price fluctuations regarding scrolling, no one would scroll anything and everyone would walk around with clean equips. And maybe buying completed items is something I will do if the situation continues as it is, however I think scrolling is an important part of the game that generates value. But scrolling/crafting generates significantly less value if the prices are inflated and out of sync with real forces of supply and demand for months on end, which is what I think is happening right now for certain items.

Yes, everyone does technically have the same opportunity to hoard items and price gouge. But is that really what you want to see? Do you want 200 different players each cornering their own market for an item and charging inflated prices, or even worse, fighting over cornering markets and driving up prices without even using the items? Where is the sense of community in that? I don't want to play that game and that is why I made this post in the first place.
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If someone is sitting on un-sold items do they really exist? hmmm

No, it's none of your business what other people have, stop crying about others and focus on you.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Nightz said: ↑

Ryan I swear to god can you pleaseeeee teach yourself how to construct a single reply instead of 20 one liners
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sorry I'm on mobile and I'm replying as I read lol

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

-ovv said: ↑

How exactly do you think the people with the largest stockpiles of scrolls gather their supply? From mesos inherited by their parents?
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must be nice

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Nightz said: ↑

State of the economy for a new player like you is actually fairly decent, lot's of early game goods are discounted and there's decent meso to be made from certain things you'll pick up along the way.

You've been nitpicking the economy mostly by giving examples about piece of time which isn't exactly a fair comparison to the entire economy and most of it, if I understand correctly is just you showing frustration that some players are able to buy out certain items and re price them at a slightly higher rate. Welcome to Maplestory, especially in a server where owls are free.

Btw stop trying to farm bow 30 at balrogs
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yo let the man sit at Jr. Balrogs if he wants to!!!

I love Nightz because he always tells it like it is and doesn't take shit from anyone. He is a good man.

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

Akhenaton said: ↑

View attachment 50437 View attachment 50438
They also ranged from a minimum of 4.5m to a max of 5.5m in November 2022, but one day later they are twice the price and sold by one person
Click to expand...

owl repo can also be manipulated, js

ryanlights · May 15, 2023

LiquidOoze said: ↑

I've got 4bil somewhere sitting in storage and will gladly log on to sweep any item that will make you the most upset in a free-to-play 20 year old 2D mushroom game, all you gotta do is name that item.
Click to expand...

Let's do Rocks of Time, if seems on-trend with the OP's entitlement.

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The State of MapleLegends Economy

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The State of MapleLegends Economy

Akhenaton King Slime

beegoratto Zakum

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Nightz Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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