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Information Anniversary Event 2021 Balance Changes [Explained]

Discussion in 'Update Notes' started by Nise, Jun 7, 2021.

  1. Blache
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    Blache Brown Teddy

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    Among a plethora of other issues (see Cowbelle's thoughts on it), yes. This change has been an abject failure. There was little need to tamper with such a fundamental mechanic as looting when there were several less invasive methods to be considered. What's worse is that it hasn't even resolved the primary issue. It takes more effort, yes, but it's still quite possible to loot most of the mesos while multi-mage farming at Ulu I.

    Let's take a closer look. What makes farming worthwhile, exactly? How do we determine estimated meso generation per hour for a given map? The answer is simple:

    Meso generated/hour = Total map spawn count x average meso dropped per mob x 360

    Where the above assumes that:
    • All mobs on the map are killed simultaneously
    • Meso Up boosts are factored in
    • Spawn cycles occur every 10 seconds, for a total of 360 in one hour
    • Looting efficiency is perfect
    I'm struggling to understand why such parameters as the average meso dropped by a mob and total spawn count seemingly weren't looked at before destroying the looting system. Particularly when we consider that these parameters could (presumably) have been tailored on a map-by-map basis.
     
    • Agree Agree x 3
  2. ngrman
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    ngrman Stone Golem

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    Cool changes kings.
    I agree with most of these changes except for the sweeping.
    The sweeping changes seems a little heavy handed to inconvenience a lot of people just to stop a few making money in a easy matter.
    Also it feels really bad to know that one has to either sacrifice epm or mesos to optimize one or the other.
     
    • Agree Agree x 2
  3. OP
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    Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    I think the misconception is that the change was solely to deal with Ulu 1 or "problematic maps". It has to do with reducing the total amount of mesos being injected into the server. The cycle that can be seen is as follows:

    The Beginning
    1. People farm raw mesos (which is acceptable, it's part of the game)
    2. The raw mesos fuel player-to-player trade (which is still very healthy)
    3. Some players are able to get by with just player-to-player trade, and don't need to rely on purely farming raw mesos themselves
    Turning Point
    1. At a certain point, raw mesos become easily farmable (eg. not sacrificing epm, investing into a low level dark sight mule, no high gear or level requirement)
      • This can happen when a certain meta map is found (eg. gobies, manne, ulu 1, vikes, harps, cornians, etc)
    2. The amount of raw mesos that can be farmable becomes disproportionate to the amount earn-able solely based on player-to-player trades
      • We see this phenomenon when we compare making money by bossing vs. making a mage (the former earning much less than the latter)
      • This has to do with not just the amount of mesos, but the consistency and ease at which they can be farmed
    3. Lots of players flock to these disproportionate meso farming methods OR it gets farmed by a select group of individuals who do it so much, that they are able to impact the market by the sheer volume of raw mesos they're farming
    4. As people have more mesos to spend, results in prices for big ticket items increasing
    5. Extremely high prices for end-game items (eg. ws and cs) pushes people to farm mesos more (so they could "afford" these highly priced items)
      • Note: not everyone is able to farm mesos like this, as they don't have a mage or can't find a free map
      • This results in an even wider wealth disparity, where THE HAVES keep getting richer and richer, and THE HAVE NOTS get relatively poorer and poorer
      • Because of wider wealth disparity, to remain "relevant" a lot of people will succumb to the new meta strat (like how a bunch of people jumped onto the quadmage Ulu 1 bandwagon)
    6. This, yet again, results in more mesos injected into the server
    7. Prices for big ticket items increase (yet again)
    Then the cycle keeps continuing. Much like it has over the past few years.

    By changing specific maps, we deal with one potential branch that leads into the turning point timeline/scenario. But since it's not a prevention measure, there can always be other strats that we can never foresee and we'll face something similar AGAIN. It'll always be a cat and mouse game, until eventually we would have to nerf pretty much every map that comes out as "meta". And let's be real, no one wants this. Players don't want to read NERF NERF NERF NERF, and Staff don't want to push nerf after nerf after nerf.

    By changing specific maps, tailored to specific strategies, we completely destroy it for people using those maps without utilizing that specifc strategy. In your example for Ulu 1, you talked about running numbers on the assumptions of: 1) quadmage; 2) meso-up mule; 3) looting efficiency. But what about those people that are just a single mage with no meso-up mule or sweeper mule farming at Ulu 1? If we were to adjust Ulu 1 to a degree that it severely affects the quadmage strat, I can only imagine just how much more it would affect the latter setup.

    Big picture. By reducing the overall meso production of the server, we open ourselves up to new possibilities. If we previously wanted to add raw meso generation to another aspect of the game (let's say like how we did with boss ETCs), we had to be very careful and make the raw meso price low. Because when paired up with the overwhelming meso generation from mages, you could exacerbate our inflation levels. BUT, by being able to manage the meso generation from the mages (who are the ones that typically used sweeper mules), we're not as tied down in what we can do in the future.
     
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  4. Blache
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    Blache Brown Teddy

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    And that perception exists for a reason—I imagine it would be difficult to convince the community that these looting changes aren't a direct consequence of multi-mage farming. Would we be talking about this now if ShiveringShivering hadn't been so public about his strategies (the precedent exists i.e. Shaolin nerfs)? I don't think so, but I could be wrong about that.

    If the maps in question are acting as a nidus for practices which are deleterious to the economy, then the primary course of action should attempt to address said nidus directly. Failing that, escalation ought to be considered. The looting change seems broadly analogous to amputating an arm because of a paper cut. Does it prevent further paper cuts? Yes. But you've lost an arm in the process and gained a host of new, ultimately worse challenges. The reason maps like Ulu I and Deep Sea Gorge II are so great for farming is precisely because of their spawn count. Ulu I has a whopping total of 52 mob spawns according to Library data. That number may be slightly off, but it's still considerably more than the majority of other maps whose mobs are in that level range. Few, if any, other maps can live up to that potential; especially considering that the average meso dropped by level 80+ monsters tends to be quite similar.

    Which begs the question: How much meso generation is too much? 30m/hr? What's the cut off? And on what scale? There couldn't have been more than a handful of people employing Shivering's strategy compared to the overall server population—creating four 4th job mages and peripheral mules, then playing them all at the same time doesn't exactly scream "casual". Do we have any sort of data available regarding the impact of "excessive" meso generation on the economy? How can we be sure that it is as much of a corollary to waning economic health as we think it is? Or has it all been guesswork? I won't pretend to be an economist, but I'd like to know there's at least something tangible supporting such drastic changes to a core game mechanic. If the demand for big-ticket items consistently outstrips the supply, why not adjust the supply accordingly? I've noted the attempt to do so with the new exchange, and that much is appreciated, but it's clear there's more to be done on that front.

    As far as the potential impact of map nerfs on solo mages vs. multi mages; I don't see an issue. The map nerfs would apply equally to everyone (the difference being that the implications of such nerfs aren't as far-reaching as altering a core mechanic). Further, nothing outside of personal time constraints and/or effort is preventing solo mage players from creating more mages. And that's okay. Not everybody has to share the same priorities in life. The very nature of this game means that those who invest the most time and effort tend to come out on top. I don't think that punishing them for it is the way to go. MapleStory has always been about creating your own ways to play. The response to innovative strategies, unless game-breaking or brazenly abusive, shouldn't be to shut them down entirely. I am not of the opinion that sweeper mules fall into either one of those categories.

    If emerging meta strategies require a bit of staff intervention as they come, then so be it. You've essentially used major surgery as a preventative measure here when a vaccine would've sufficed.
     
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  5. ma3ohma3
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    ma3ohma3 Chronos

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    if you realise, we have alot of sweaty players. personally, i know 20% of my BL running quad mages yea.
     
  6. Oradious
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    Oradious Mr. Anchor

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    1 out of 5 is 20% too
     
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  7. ma3ohma3
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    ma3ohma3 Chronos

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    so is 2 out of 10 :D
    I am sure with proper data retrieval techniques, staff can easily identify the numbers.
     
  8. kiln
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    kiln Pink Teddy

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    I want to give respect to staff as I'm sure you guys have been monitoring this issue for years. However, I want to ask if you have taken these ideas into consideration:

    The majority of WS/CS actually come from farming. This fact is pretty obvious to anyone watching for yellow smegas - almost all of our WS/CS come from Gachapon, and most Gachapon tickets are obtained by farming.

    This means there is some degree of coupling between the supply of WS/CS and the supply of mesos - as more mesos are farmed, more WS/CS are obtained.
    Yes, Gachapon rates are lower on mage ultimates, but I would still argue that the meso/Gachapon supply is dominated by mages selling leech or farming.

    Now consider that the price of WS/CS has been rising, while the price of other goods have remained relatively constant (from owlrepo.com):
    upload_2021-6-17_3-41-14.png
    upload_2021-6-17_3-41-32.png



    upload_2021-6-17_3-40-12.png
    upload_2021-6-17_3-40-45.png
    upload_2021-6-17_3-42-50.png

    It's clear from these observations that the rising price of WS/CS reflects primarily on the increasing number of players looking to craft perfect/CS'd gears for high-end bossing, rather than a simple increase in the meso supply.

    This effect (an increase in the number of players in the end-game) creates a secondary problem where there is an excess in supply of gears from high-end bosses. I believe both these problems (bad bossing profits and rising price of WS/CS) are a direct consequence of an increase in the number of players reaching end-game.

    The most obvious solution, to me at least, would be to shift the supply of WS/CS from Gachapon to difficult bosses (perhaps a "boss" gachapon drop with a chance of WS/CS, and removing WS/CS from "mob" gachapon drops). This way, supply and demand for these commodities will naturally match, unlike the "fixed" (as in a reduction independent of WS/CS demand) hit to the supply of mesos that is likely to do nothing to the inevitable rise in the price of WS/CS.
     

    Attached Files:

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  9. ma3ohma3
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    ma3ohma3 Chronos

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    WS shards pls
     
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  10. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    Finally a post worthy of the rare "agree" react! To support this claim, I would point your attention towards leech prices. Similar to ws/cs, leech is a fundamental commodity that accounts for a massive chunk of the ML economy. If inflation was truly the cause of ws/cs increasing, you might expect leech prices to rise comparably. However unlike ws/cs, leech prices have been virtually constant since 2019. This suggests that the supply/demand of these commodities is a much bigger factor in determining the price of items compared to the impact of inflation.

    Another way to look at it is to think of the value of ws/cs in terms of equivalent labor rather than meso. Even bypassing the value of mesos themselves, it is obvious that the number of hours you need to farm (whether it be leech, bossing, or anything) to obtain a whitescroll is much higher nowadays than in the past.

    I would highly encourage staff to move away from analysing the situation purely based on amount of mesos on the server and consider suggestions that actually remedy the supply and demand of important commodities.
     
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  11. BananaPie
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    BananaPie Selkie Jr.

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    Please.
    [​IMG]
     
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  12. yurain
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    yurain Windraider

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    While this is correct, we also can't just plainly throw more WS/CS into the server to increase its supply.(Edit 1) It will just fast track the game for everyone, while the price of a WS/CS will remain, because that is what everyone been paying for 4 months now. The increase in supply will just be eaten up by the overwhelming demand, and push the price back up again. This is like how the increase in WS/CS rate for gacha ended up to be, barely a dent on the graph.

    The change to the looting is make meso earning even harder and not to decrease the price of WS/CS what not. It is purposed to make the game harder for everyone, so you will take longer to perf your weapon. Introducting a new supply of WS/CS, such as bossing, doesn't fit the ideaology of making the game harder to play.

    Just a quick look at the new cwk exchange....you might net a more consistent result by quad mage ulu1 anyway?

    (Edit 1. Kiln pm me that he didn't meant to suggest any increase in WS supply in his post. From my understanding, to shift the generation of WS from mobbing to bossing with a heavy bossing capable population, would no doubt increase the WS supply.)
     
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  13. OP
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    Nise
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    Nise Supervisor Staff Member Supervisor Game Moderator

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    *points to the very first section of the OP*

    Additionally, in the OP I do talk about how the rise in CS/WS prices can't solely be linked to ONE cause, and that there's a vast number of things contributing to it.
    kilnkiln definitely nails some of the other points that contribute to it:
    THAT SAID, while the trigger for WS/CS prices to rise seem to be relate with the increased demand and relatively limited supply (due to the gacha-gated nature), we also have to ask ourselves what's allowing the prices to actually go up so high? I'd argue that it's the increased meso supply and the inflation that has already happened over the years.

    Let's look further back into the past and see the trend for prices & also explore the surrounding circumstances that may have contributed to those trends.

    [ Prices in the Past ]
    Based off old messages on the #free-market on discord, throughout 2017 the WS price was solidly between 70-80 mil. Over the course of 2018, there was a slow rise from 80 mil to 130 mil. 2019 saw fluctuated between 130 mil to 170 mil at times, but eventually going back down. The owlrepo graph above by kiln shows the trend since 2020 (geospizageospiza is a godsend btw), where WS prices go from 140 mil to 180 mil, and have been consistently there for a while, bouncing between 170 and 180 since the beginning of this year.

    [ Surrounding Circumstances ]
    Now it's important to frame this in the right context, which are the major events/developments that happened since 2017.
    • 2017 Summer: MapleLegends had one of its most successful ad campaigns attracting a huge influx of players.
    • 2017 Summer Event: the goby meta was created and every channel in Deep Sea Gorge was filled with players farming mesos. First landmark instance that caused worry from the community regarding inflation.
    • Mid-2018: bulk of the new 2017 players hit end-game.
    • 2018: relatively anti-climactic in terms of new players.
    • 2019: a wave of new players did come through because of another ad campaign if I remember correctly.
    • 2018-2019: mannequin meta (until auto aggro was removed in 2020).
    • 2019/2020 (?): harps & cornian meta
    • 2020 Feb: covid boom happened with a huge influx of new players bigger than 2017 Summer potentially.
    • 2020 Feb: CD meta.
    • 2021: huge portion of new covid players hit end-game.
    [ Possible Explanation ]
    • What enabled the price to slowly rise from 80 mil to 130 mil in 2018?
      • With the 2017 players hitting end-game, it would explain the increased demand
      • But, even if there was higher demand, if people didn't have that kind of mesos laying around, people wouldn't have been able to buy it after a certain price point.
      • The ability of players to buy for a higher price could be explained by the delayed effects of the goby meta. More raw mesos injected into the market, and it eventually spreading around between players and becoming normalized.
      • In addition to goby meta, an influx of players means more people grinding. More grinding = more mesos being printed.
    • Why would the price increase in 2019?
      • 2018 didn't see that many new players. If anything, it was just continued/constant increase. Nothing out of the ordinary. That means the price increase in 2019 can't be justified by increased demand from players like 2018 & 2021 can.
      • I would argue its the influence of the mannequin meta, which ushered in a lot of raw mesos. To a smaller degree, continued spill over effect from gobies as well.
    • Why does the price gradually increase in 2020?
      • New players, more raw mesos farmed, you get the picture.
    [ Explaining Further ]

    Let me elaborate on what I meant by: "But, even if there was higher demand, if people didn't have that kind of mesos laying around, people wouldn't have been able to buy it after a certain price point."

    IRL, if I'm Apple selling iPhones, and people all want iPhones, I can jack up the price. Even if you don't have the money outright, you can use a credit card and buy an iPhone, even if you don't have the money readily available.

    IN GAME, if you don't have the money outright, you generally can't buy goods. There's no bank to borrow money from, so you can't really buy things at prices that you can't afford.

    Multiple people have to have enough liquidity to be able to drive up the prices to the extent they have been driven up. Why did prices back in 2018 stop at 130 mil? Why didn't it go even higher? There just weren't enough people that could comfortably put down more than 130 mil per WS to cause the prices to go up. If there's only 1 person (Lucyflower *cough*) left that's liquid enough to buy WS at that price, then no one else would bid higher, and the price would stagnate there. Then in 2019, people caught up to that level of average liquidity. Now, there were enough people for there to be a competitive market to sell to. Once again, the price goes up. Especially with manne farming, people are able to consistently farm raw mesos to fund these escapades.

    Of course, I don't think this is UNDENIABLE TRUTH. It's just my analysis of how things have gotten to where they are. To chalk the rise in prices of WS/CS to solely supply & demand is an oversimplification in my opinion. There's multiple factors at play, and the generation of raw mesos is convincingly (at least to me) one of them. Oh, and for the owlrepo graphs of 60% scrolls dropping despite the excessive supply in mid-2020 is an outlier case, that doesn't accurately portray the state of the economy, as post-2020 anni, the market was flooded with 65% scrolls, which terribly stunted the 60% market.
     
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  14. kiln
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    kiln Pink Teddy

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    Hi Nise! I appreciate the detailed reply.

    Edit: re-read OP and post and realized I was going in circles. Sorry.
     
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  15. yurain
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    I do think is this totally a demand and supply issue. The increase in meso supply is just a by-product of the high price.
    Everyone wants WS to perf their weapon, and with limited the supply of WS, the price just goes up and up and up and up.
    When the price just goes up, people have to farm more and more and more, because they need that WS to perf their weapon.
    Decreasing the meso supply is not going to drop the price because the demand is still there.

    From shivering's journal, he seems to be making close to 35m/hr at ulu1. This seems to be a similiar value back then selling 1h skele leech back end (8m split), as I dig through some old 1hit skele guide. The increase in farming of raw meso is due to the decrease in leech price over the price. It reached a point that it is better to farm raw meso than to sell leech (aka p2p transaction).
     
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  16. Selquin
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    Selquin Headless Horseman

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    The cwkpq exchange is indeed a step in the philosophical right direction, but its not enough. Myself and many others are skeptical that the exchange will have any significant affect on ws availability. Providing off meta methods of generating ws will have limited impact, simply because the number of people willing to farm less efficiently is much lower. Unless cwkpq exchange has very high rates that makes it competitive with meta farming methods very few people will do it and it will soon fade to obscurity. Why not instead introduce some of the gach supply to content that people are already doing?

    Do you have any thoughts about my suggestion to analyze the price of ws/cs in terms of # of hours of labor and skipping the intermediate meso step altogether? For example in 2019 it would have taken ~6-7 hours of selling skele leech to buy a ws. At current leech/ws prices it would take roughly 8-9 hours. You can also use other common meso making methods instead of skele leech (whether it be ulu2, shaolin leech, or even HT kekW) and the conclusion is the same, ws/cs are worth more in 2021 when weight against labor.
     
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  17. Blache
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    If, as predicted, the looting changes have little impact on the prices of WS/CS, then they will actually have made the endgame harder than it already was. And MapleLegends wasn't an easy server to begin with. It boggles the mind.
     
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  18. -ovv
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    -ovv Horntail

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    An increase in cost of end-game items is inevitable, and attributing it to bad inflation is the wrong way to go. When everything else becomes cheap except for end-game items, wouldn't you consider that to be the ultimate balance of the game? If white scrolls become more expensive, white scroll-30%ing will become more viable as a strategy as will 30%ing/CSSing an additional slot. Nerfing meso generation across the board won't necessarily lower prices in a fairly inelastic end-game market - it will just increase the required time investment to obtain the same end-goal.

    Also, it's fairly early to assess any impact this may have on the economy - all the sweaty mage farmers have shifted gears into farming event points. Once the event cools down, you'll see that multimage farming is still the superior strategy, and everyone who has already created their 4+ mages aren't going to just stop using them.
     
  19. joota
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    joota Mr. Anchor Retired Staff

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    I'd love to get more feedback from the rest of the balance team unless the rest of the balance team has Nise's exact opinion. If they do have the same opinion, then it sounds like there's a big disconnect between the balance team and a good proportion of the active ML community.
     
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  20. akashsky
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    akashsky Horntail

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    I agree with NISE's analysis as far as the cause goes. I also think that a lot of you are misconstruing his argument into thinking that nise is saying:

    "This is solely in inflation issue, not a demand issue"

    When in reality its both, and NISE is just saying that inflation is the larger impacting factor. Staff should be able to actually measure meso and item supply in ML economy by querying the database (I hope they did this in their analysis, but based on NISE relying on GEOSPIZZA graphs i don't know if this is the case).

    Demand goes up and down via the server cycles and population. This year has just been an outlier where we have had less players "quit" than normal due to the pandemic. When things get back to normal demand should also reset to equilibrium levels. The mesos that players farm however, slowly goes up over time because ML has never actually had any good, continuous meso sinks (2.5% tax can be avoided via use of cs / ws as currency).
     
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