Quotes and Tweets keeps bringing this up, so I figured I'd give the topic a focus.

There seems to either be a drought of credits on the market, and/or a deliberate attempt to make them very expensive of late. This makes me wonder a few things, and I feel like writing them down a bit.

Has there been too many promotions right now? It seems that there have been several promotions in recent months that have made it less satisfying to buy credits. We've had artifact packages for a few months, and then a lesson promotion, as well as a very generous wheel that sometimes gave out credits (both free and bound). Do you think this is a temporary effect of that?

Is the general OOC purchase market healthy? I worry a bit since I know it's the paying players who keep things going for the free players. (The weird economics of F2P). Is it just a case of the special promotions, or is the economy driving down the OOC purchases?

Could there be ways to improve the market so it doesn't get manipulated overtly. One possibility I was thinking is the option for a seller to sell credits as bound--in other words, you can sell credits "as bound" which means the buyer would have them automatically bound if they agreed--this would probably help prevent the "markup" market from happening. I like to see credits as a fair discount, and I'd hate to see them grabbed up by somebody who's just gonna jack up the price a few thousand. (I've started going outside the credit market to prevent that from happening). Maybe an option to only allow X amounts to be sold to a single user, so you could "spread the wealth" a bit.

Anybody else have thoughts?

That's what worries me the most.

I kind of think the special promotions are to blame for this. A lot of people are patient if the wait-time is reasonable. When I can make 10 credits every day doing absolutely nothing, why buy credits with real money?

Bring back curios, that would solve it. People have so much stock piled gold, and they give credits pretty regularly, I think that would put enough credits on the market- and I want curios, so it's win-win.

>.>

The facebook credits always struck me as excessive. Honestly, 1 credit would keep most people doing it. I mean, an elite membership and a facebook thing, and you'll be set relatively quickly with pretty low cost.

But honestly, that's been around for a while now. I feel that the shortages are due to changes in gold earning rates. They're probably underpriced, and so selling out. I know that's painful to hear for people who remember 4k credit prices.

While I don't want to be the voice of negativity, you've provided a very sound argument, from an administrative standpoint (to me anyways!), to never, ever consider bringing curios back.

"Bring back curios, no one will ever need to buy credits again with RL money!".

Nooot a strong stance!

We just need market balance. Assuming nothing has changed in terms of people buying them, when people sell them, jack the gold price way up. If they sit there, lower the price. If they sell, raise it. If I wanted to sell right now, I'd put them at... lets see what credits for sale says...

I'd probably try 15k.

Credits currently available for purchase:
6 credits at 12000 gold per credit.
24 credits at 15999 gold per credit.
10 credits at 16000 gold per credit.
17 credits at 17949 gold per credit.
20 credits at 17950 gold per credit.
1 credits at 18000 gold per credit.
2 credits at 19000 gold per credit.
6 credits at 20000 gold per credit.
10 credits at 25000 gold per credit.
5 credits at 65000 gold per credit.
Total credits for sale: 101 shown (101 total) (Average sale price: 11763)
Use CREDITS BUY AT to purchase.


If they blow out, too low.


Honestly, flooding the game with gold can be a good thing. It devalues the static gold stockpiles out there. Now what we need is stuff like, blessings for gold, or new manse toys for large amounts of gold, or "buy sparkle from this NPC for gold" (which takes it out of circulation), and otherwise give people a reason to WANT gold.

If players want gold, then they are incentivized to buy credits in order to get gold.

Which brings up another thing- with more gold out there, if people are able to get it, then they don't feel as inclinded to purchase credits in order to sell them for gold.

So there's lots of stuff going on!

But if you're one of those folks worried about the credit market, take up influencing, sell on market for a credit or two or something, or just start making/hoarding gold. Or come up with a coherent argument to restrict the gold supply post haste.

Touche, though I can only imagine how much $$ the crates/casks raked in when they were up for artifact packages- which is not the point, but... yeah.

But really, when someone has several million gold just hanging around, it's unlikely they're going to go out and buy credits. They'll sit around and wait for them to appear... unless there's a nice sale (30% sounds good -hint-)

Not to rain on your parade in an attempt to get curios back, but...

I got over $100 worth of credits from my one $25 crate. That's not counting the lessons, gold, exp, or favour or whatever else it gives. That was counting only the free credits and bound credits, and the two artifacts that I got. Admittedly, it was lucky, but most people averaged a rate near double what the value of credits are, and I am sure there are others who got just as lucky if not luckier. The influx of gold probably came from the wheel, and by extension, curios.

That's precisely the reason I want them back

Bringing curios back is a horrible idea. However developing new gold sinks, and further incentivizing the use of the few current gold sinks would definitely help increase credit sales and improve the current credit market.

I'd like to mention that, while some people think that it's the excessive gold rate driving credit prices up... I'd like to note that back in the days when Astral bashing produced about 500k in roughly 2-3 hours (and that was before insanity existed in the first place!) credit prices were at around 1-2k per credit. Gold was much easier to come by back then.. so that argument is weak.

Not really. The argument rests on very basic fundamentals. Rather than being dismissive, we should ask what is different (other than the credit prices themselves) between then and now.

Say you have two olympic swimmers on a boat 300 yards from the shore. You shoot one in both legs and throw them overboad. He manages to swim to shore and live. You then shoot the other in both legs and throw him overboard. He drowns. You can't tell the police "I am not a murderer. The first swimmer made it to shore. This proves that the argument that the second olympic swimmer drown because I shot him in both legs before throwing him overboard is weak."

It may even be that something was "wrong" with the market back then that made the credit prices artificially low in regards to the gold supply. Without supporting evidence, it is at least as likely as something being wrong now.

But that was quite a while ago. Akui is 135, and gold drops on astral were well before my time! A great many things have changed, not the least of which is both the absolute number of people, as well as the relative portion of the population (I would imagine) that can handle top end bashing.

Having been here since 2005 (not counting alts), I think the credit market has consistently inflated by anywhere from +1,000-2000 per year. That's why I'm suddenly wondering why we've seen a big spike in prices over the summer, as it doesn't fit with the usual pattern.

I still believe the last artifact auction set this mess in motion. I remember selling a bunch of credits on the market because prices were as high as 7000! I expected them to drop back in a few weeks, but instead they just kept rising. Should have just held on to them.

There's two ends to this problem that I see. First of the number of credits on the market, and secondly the inflation of gold. And then a third thing I'll touch upon later.

First part is easy, why do we have less credits in the market than before? Well, there have been recent massive credit sinks, coupled with promotions that did not involve credits being sold (lesson sales, arti sales, curios, ect.). Also, promotions generally give bound credits, meaning that if people would like to sell them off for gold, they can't. That also means that later on they won't run into needing credits again as likely, because the bound credits just sat there until they became needed.

On the other hand, we've started to make more gold per hour. This in itself would be fine, but due to offer being diminished, has a much stronger effect. It's not just gold getting that massively inflated, it's also credits being worth more per piece.

As for Facebook credits and what not, I think it's more something people are resorting to because ingame prices are getting worse and worse, and in real life a lot more people these days have to watch their money than they did before. It's become a lot harder to get a loan, a house, and a job, after all. But people like the game and want to keep playing.

Also, it is summer. We're nearly done with it, but there's some dog days left. Mid september is where it usually picks up, when people are settled back into college / uni / work and vacation time is officially over and done. Activity will pick up then. So will spending. I think this is a factor being overlooked before.

My theory on the major contributing factors:

1. From memory, it has been a while since the monthly promotion was a straight bonus % of credits.
2. The latest auction with some very, very high priced artifacts in terms of credits took a huge chunk of supply out of the system.
3a. Gold income from bashing should actually have decreased per unit time. I think gold drops were scaled with the mobs, but corpse turn in gold should have remained the same, so per unit time this should have decreased. It could well be that gold drops actually increased in a greater proportion than the time it takes to kill them.
3b. More orgs are now offering incentives for esteem. Not only does this introduce more gold into the credit market (I'm assuming org gold isn't used for purchasing credits), it also discourages people using their own gold to buy the esteem when their org can provide it.
4. We're entering the vicious cycle of inflation of credits. People expect the prices to continue to rise, so sellers hold back and buyers take up as much as they can. As such, the credit prices will increase, causing further expectations of price increases.

How about this? Lower the credit market ceiling from 65k to 30k? Also, if we can get some people to set a large amount of credits at a certain level, lets say 10k, that would prevent people from making money selling credits at a higher price due to the amount of credits that are at the level.

That would force for a time the credits to be sold at below the 10k level. 5k to 10k credits would do at that level, and it would be easier if a group of people placed those credits at that price rather than 1 or 2.

also, another possible thing, not sure how this much this would help though, a dingbat market? Not just credit?

I'm up for someone putting down 10k credits at 10k per. How many will you put up? Personally I don't have the economy to put any up.

well, i should be able to put up in a month or so about 5k credits myself. Made enough to pay for uni and living fees and everything, so I can do something like that.

edit: would be cheaper and easier if there was a credit deal or something 30% of like that, plus the elite bonus, would make it much cheaper...