The State of Maplelegends Economy 0

Well sure; I'm not saying that things like multimage mob-farming needs to be nerfed. Just that other things need to be elevated to compete. Yes, at some point people will get bored of whatever else was added as well, and it'll turn back into trying to find the next "fun" thing to elevate. As long as things are kept relatively comparable in effectiveness given the time investment, then it should be fine.

Really, it's not all that much different than trying to create a sustainable MMO in the first place (or in this case, modify an existing one). Just need to attach resource acquisition to the things devs are already pursuing to make the game more fun and engaging.

 

Generally the state of the economy is fine from the pov that player already gave their own commitment to the game. You can be either a multi FMA farmer/dual-hero-solo-core or just casual player with a bishop mule. This is what it is, I will only play this game at this pace because that's all I can commit lol, I not going to suddenly play the game more if zak drops suddenly 10x-ed. Idk. Also I am kinda whatever at myself, because I can techinally do all the content of the game already, a bit with the help of some apple maybe.

It just leave a bad taste in player's mouth when certain items are being constantly wiped in the market, then followed up with a smega "lowest price in fm". Like I have been around the game long enough to know that the price will actually just take a couple of days, if not a week to recover. But whenever such things happen it is still very eye rolling moment.

Wrt the supply/price of some item. It is like how the earring int 30 price crashed for a week when it was added to phantom watch. Then the staff immedately changed the drop table and moved the earring int 30 onto some unfarmable nest golem. The initial change confirm has touched some pricing threshold therefore forcing such rapid change within a week or so. It is worth looking back at your internal discussion (assuming there is one actually) and see how is the threshold determined by your team.

 

Well sure. There's just not really that much that can be done due to it being an illiquid market, since that illiquidity stems from the size of the community. The best you can do as a "fix" is putting in an artificial supply and artificial demand at price-point extremes, but that would be effectively staff fixing the price of everything. Which would be less than desirable.

 

i don't think gachapon scrolls are illiquid at all

 

I liked the idea that Kimmy brought awhile ago about more frequent fix patches (instead of only during event times) and they never came

 

i think the correct word here is education and patience.
players can hoard all the weapon 30s they want. players can also farm all the weapon 30s they want, i.e. cwk.
Staff's tracking of CPI is useful and indicative of the state of economy and inflation rates.
However, there should not be an obligation to constantly update players on these CPIs, maybe once a year, like the anniversary post, is fine.
CPI would be useful in examining the pre and post effects in the nerf to multi-mage, i.e. difference-in-difference.

 

This. More of this. I think one of the major disconnects us players can have are not knowing how those tech details the past few events have had are planned to be used.

It should come as no surprise that things take time for such large endeavors especially for a single dev. Priorities can definitely shift between adding new stuff, revamping old stuff, and even fixing broken stuff. But players also get kept in the dark for too long between patch cycles both waiting for what they believe are the "quick and easy" bug/balance fixes, as well as not knowing if any of the large items in roadmap are ever going to come in our lifetime. This leads to players memeing on all sorts of things such as pq rework, defense rework, subani ankh rework, class balance, etc. I think the only reason hp challenge sort of escapes it is because there's been tangible progress on it from a player pov.

Tl;dr let him cook

 

Unironically I agree with this - it's actually one of the best suggestions so far in the original thread mentioned. This forces people to either use them, or if they would like to merch/flip the scrolls, there is essentially a time limit (say 3 months) before the scrolls disintegrates, thus forcing them to eventually sell the scroll at a price that individuals would pay as expiry date gets closer.

 

Wouldn't that mess up the market as to where the buyer can deliberately wait for as long as possible to buy a scroll to force a lower price? It's like the inverse of hoarding but yield the same results for the common mapler

 

That is a valid point - the only counter I can think of is that it would take all of the players who need that specific scroll to wait until that day to then buy that specific scroll at its lowest value.

Example scenario: Bow att 30, hypothetically it's priced at 10 mil and expires 3 months from now, and there is only one seller, and the sellers scrolls expires in 3 months.

Now let's say you have Buyer A,B,C,D,&E. A-E can theoretically wait until month 2, day 29, until the buyer is forced to lower the price to something astronomically low. But Buyer A-E would all have to compete at that same time to buy the scroll before each other at that moment in time.
Instead, I believe it would go like this - Buyer A-E will think "when is the right time to buy" because if they wait too long, buyer B or buyer C might snipe the scroll. So the competition is still there, the seller won't have to wait until month 3. Buyer A may figure that he/she will be able to buy the scroll at a price that he/she deems reasonable one month in because if they wait one week later, or one month later until month 2, the scroll may be sniped by buyer C, D, or E.

 

then you band up with a few friends and enter into an agreement to hoard mesos

 

A lil bit of Maple Hedgefunding action

 

This would constrain supply to a 3-month production timeline and you could potentially create even more scarcity and higher prices in the market with significant volatility. You'd basically wipe out all existing Bow 30 scrolls from current supply, thus erasing all potential supply from demand-driven prices.

For example, Player A wants to buy 20 scrolls but there are 0 on the market. Player B has 20 scrolls but wants to sell at a higher price than what Player A wants to pay for it. Player B continues hoarding scrolls until Player A decides they have enough funds to pay for a higher price point. Player A decides to pay the higher price, and Player B can become a supplier. In your proposed system, Player B either uses all of the supply before the expiration or sells in one large fire sale of an event (my guess is most people will self-use rather than try to compete for sales). Then every single player similar to Player B will be out as a supplier, and you'd be chained to a 3-month supply timeline.

To rationalize your suggestion, you'd need a few questions answered:

• How many Bow 30s are being introduced to the total supply within a 3-month time period?
• How many Bow 30s are being demanded within a 3-month time period?
• At what price point will suppliers be encouraged to sell the scroll instead of keeping/using it for themselves?

My prediction is that people will continue to hoard and use the scrolls for themselves instead of cycling it into the economy. Much of the production-side of things will come to a halt because farmers aren't idiots and know that investing their efforts into a depreciating good is a waste of time. In fact, you'll start seeing even more fun market manipulation tactics from the farmers -- instead of turning their gach into scrolls, they can slowly convert their gach over time, controlling the available supply to maintain prices through artificial scarcity. At this point, you're stuck in the same predicament - players who want scrolls will need to produce it for themselves and they will be constrained to this arbitrary 3-month expiration themselves. No such thing as long-term projects anymore. You've basically shifted the power of monopoly from a few bad market actors into the hands of the farmers themselves. Without expiry, farmers don't need to care much about monitoring the supply. With it, you've now given farmers the incentive to be market manipulators themselves.

So what do you think the market would look like when the farmers themselves start buying out all the underpriced scrolls - instead of just one person? What do you do then, make gach expire? And then what?

We saw the QoL drop with the prestigious coin conversion tax/untradeable WS changes. Imagine what kind of shitshow you'd see if every scroll was haphazardly made to expire.

 

I just wanted to mention to Pasta and the rest of staff that this kind of communication punches insanely above its weight in terms of how much community goodwill it generates for how much effort it takes. Most of the community is aware that projects are constantly being shuffled around, things will fall behind schedule, and *something* is being worked on behind the scenes, but just giving players a heads up that 'hey yeah we know this is taking a while but we haven't forgotten' provides a lot of reassurance. I know staff views player demands and impatience as entitlement but you have to keep in mind that when something is announced and the playerbase then hears literally no mention of it for over a year, it's nice to just get a bit of reassurance rather than being forced to blindly have faith.

People are more likely to be understanding of delays and issues with open and honest communication; people generally do not like to be left in the dark for excessive amounts of time.

For what it's worth, the way these sentiments are expressed also can be important. I really appreciated the way you phrased everything in a professional and forthright manner. No excuses, no talking down to the playerbase, no trying to hide anything, just 'hey yeah this thing is taking longer than expected, we decided it was lower priority at the time, here's a bit of what we have done on this front so far though'

I can't speak for others but just that one post alone has immense value to me as a non-staff player

 

Hmm I didn't think about it that way - you made a good point, farming may decrease & ironically increase prices.

 

The fact that balance team is stressing out about inflation, jacked potion prices to curb it (LOL!!), while completely ignoring coins exist is HILARIOUS

 

Anytime Staff make a new post it is generally a good thing, need more engagement for sure.

Extra nice when Pasta posts

 

what if the indices dont show that inflation is strong?

 

As a casual player, the idea of expiring scrolls and prestigious coins scares me though. What if I am working on multiple projects at once and just would like to keep my scrolls for future use?

To give a scenario, let's say I am currently working on scrolling my gloves. I would then pour all of the mesos I earn now into buying the ingredients necessary for the scrolling project (gloves, PoT, gfa 30%, 70%, coins for ws, etc). However, I also do know that after I have completed with my gloves project, I would want to work on my shoes next, which means I would start collecting and keeping Shoes for Jump 30%, whenever I get them from gacha, quests, drops, etc. This is so that I can jump right into my next project i.e. shoes once I am done with my gloves.

If the scrolls expires in 3 months, this means I ought to sell all my Shoes for Jump 30% whenever I get them, or find ways to use them all as soon as possible before they expire. This would could have a few possible implications to me:

i. If I decide to sell the scrolls now and buy them back later when I need them, I will lose out on mesos due to transaction taxes

ii. Worse yet, I am susceptible to price fluctuations of the market of the particular scroll (who knows, I may be forced to sell them at 5m now, but have to buy them back at 10m later?)

iii. If I decide to keep them, I now have the added task of keeping track of the expiry dates (it's a game, why should I have to do this T_T), and make sure that I have the necessary ingredients to be able to use them before they expire

iv. And in the scenario that I fail to keep track of the expiry dates, or make mistakes, or just happen to have other unforeseen circumstances irl that I have to attend to, which makes me unable play the game for weeks and to use the scrolls as intended before it's expiry, it would be a very painful experience to me. (This is even scarier if prestigious coins have expiry dates too. Imagine losing 70 coins because I do not have enough playtime to gather the remaining 30 coins within the timeframe; or knowing that I can't gather the remaining 30 in time, I am also still unable liquidate the 70 coins in time before it expires.)

v. Also in the scenario where I keep/use them, this would mean I have to split my mesos and resources into working on multiple scrolling projects at the same time, which IMO would slow down the speed of all the projects and be inefficient overall.