As another user who doesn't send real money on CSC, it's also really frustrating.

You used to be able to get CSC through offers, and I was sad to see that go away - despite the fact that there were possibilities to get viruses through some of the ads, which I believe was the reason why they were removed (I have AdBlocker so that wasn't a problem). You could also get them through Ultimate Game Cards which made CSC accessible for more users - you can buy a card in a store then redeem the CSC - but those have been also discontinued.

But I mean, I've resigned myself to the fact that that is going to be the way that CSC is. I'm still having fun without having to spend a dime on the site. I haven't bought CSC through other users, and I'm a lot less likely to with these crazy prices.

CSC willy always inflate long term and we want that if we want a site with a successful economy. If you compare this to other games where you can buy tradeable items or special currencies you'll notice the exact same thing. Long term, it always goes up. The reason for this is largely in part to the fact that there will always be more of the main trading currency flowing into the game than flowing out, which needs to happen or else the main currency starts to take on a value too high compared to the items you want to buy with it (this is something that happens a lot on the start of games where there's not enough currency to go around). So because there's more coming in than is going out, inflation is only natural. There are ways to curb it such as currency sinks like the millionaire center, and the constant influx of new items to help cycle money around. That helps keep it from spiraling out of control and making currency worthless, but an economy should still have at least some inflation. People need to think that something they buy and don't use right away will still holds its value and things of that nature. So now back to relating that to CSC which is bought for real money. People have already eplained good reasons why CSC went up and is staying up, black friday, holidays, less csc in shops more in trades, less people selling csc they bought with real money to other people, etc. I personally think the majority of the reason is just that black friday is just such a huge event on subeta, it really feels like a holiday here, which is great for us, and for the future of the site, but also inevitably leads to a big spike in inflation. It is also a very collectable currency because it obviously holds it's value and trends upwards which means that a lot of big ticket item trades involve large sums of csc (sometimes several 5k csc cards at a time for thigns like big ticket god weapons). An so, I seriously doubt it will go down (or up) much any time soon and I do think 1k csc cards will likely be unbuyable on shop search next black friday. But if you play the game economically you should be able to add more value on average to your account then vs now as well, even if not at the same rate as the sudden over 25% spike that happened this year.

This is also how I used to buy CSC, and why I have not been able to buy with $$$ anymore. :(

You can use a gift card from cvs i think or subway / burger king but I never tried it.

I was going to ask a question about collections, but this pretty much explains it. Before they used to be +10 mil I think? Now +20mil. Maybe csc is just not being bought as it used to be, idk.

Lol yeah the new reward cards have nothing to do with it, for me at least. The reason I haven't been selling csc very much is because there's so much cash shop related stuff that I need more than I need sP based things? With so much cash shop stuff being released and so many CWs being sold because of csc prices... I haven't had any extra to bother selling.

I also don't really buy into the csc being traded directly instead of involving cards-- if someone is trading their csc for a good, then they're either going to buy the cards via the cash shop directly, or they're going to be offering the csc directly?

With cash shop related things, there's no real exchange of sP involved, unless one of the users is buying csc with sP. The only thing that really changed was people could offer their csc directly now, instead of having to go to the cash shop and buy 5 different cards to turn around and offer.

It bums me out a lot, especially for the smaller things that I only need maybe 100 - 250 csc for, when I don't want to buy in increments of $5 from the cash shop for it. I try not to get CSC with real money unless there's a sale event or I find something I absolutely cannot live without, because I'm a "starving artist" so to speak, so it's making things much more difficult for users like me who don't want to purchase in $5s for something smaller/less expensive.

Unfortunately I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it plays out with the whole being able to trade CSC directly through the trades thing. People are right though, it is right after a major holiday and the BF sale, so hopefully prices will come down eventually. It's still a good way to make sP, so I still think there will be those out there who want to sell CSC to get sP for something that maybe they can't use CSC for.

Given we can't open trades with sp (it must be an item or more), I don't really understand the argument that people are using the Trading Center to sell their csc. To sell csc for sp via trades, people would need two "junk" trades and to trust each other on completing the transaction? o.O

If people are bidding csc for goodies (like CWs) then this is not csc sale, it's a new feature merely satisfying a preexisting demand on regular purchases.

I think prices are still likely to come down in the next few months, as more people start getting a bit of money to spare and knowing that there isn't a big reason to keep the sp demand for csc as high as it was on holiday season. I'm not sure it'll go down to pre-BF prices, but it should fall.

[edit] Yeah, there are some people (who typically buy csc in amounts around $30/month, or occasionally throw in $50) that are saving their credits and planning their purchases so they'll only spend cash again when a new card comes out. Makes sense when they have limited funds to dispose of and the cards require $100 to be completed, but are only up for ~3 months. So if you've spent $100, you're better off saving any extra to make sure you'll be able to complete next card. It's smart game playing from them, it just doesn't help the site when it comes to motivating the middle buyer to act on impulse.

With transformable items and such, people have requested the ability of filling at least a second card of the same type (or have two cards overlap, somehow), but staff's response to it so far has been negative. Sure, there will be people spending over $200 in three months, but those people already go on the "big buyers" category and most likely would be buying regardless of many incentives.

I went to copy/paste my reward card total to say the same thing just now and then went...nope, not sharing that hahaha. Suffice it to say its a lot and I agree - I don't think for most people that we're not buying because of the lack of rewards (although I am super bummed that for all of the money I'm throwing at the site, there isn't an option to fill a second card or some other reward - this is a pretty small one for quite a few folks during the 3-4 months this card will be sold for).

Would I like more/better rewards? Yep. Does it stop me from buying CSC? Nope. HOWEVER - most of the reason I buy CSC is for CWs and CS items - I almost never sell my CSC. Also, items have been getting more expensive with sP too (not just CSC cards) so I feel like X mil, which will barely sell me one TC item I need, isn't worth me having to buy more CSC for myself + some to sell.

If the things I needed that were sP based were cheaper, and my sale of CSC for sP went further, I'd be more tempted.

Also - I don't think the direct offer of CSC on trades has led to the reduction in CSC cards being available - people who were going to sell CSC would just go get cards to sell - it does make it way easier for anyone buying CWs/etc with CSC though.

I hope that all made sense, I'm running on little sleep and am now going to nap haha.

Honestly, I haven't bought CSC since Black Friday because I maxed out my Reward Card, and hell, why would I buy more CSC when I can just wait for a new reward card?

still here wishing they'd give you a new card every time you finish one

I'm laughing because when I went to the reward card page it was actually a lot less than I thought it would be and my thoughts were "oh that's not that bad, I can share that :'D!"

It'd probably be a lot more if we got special weekend bonuses more often, though (those get me even more than reward cards do).

I actually totally agree with you when it comes to sP things costing more, too. It's not so apparent now because of everyone selling everything that wasn't bolted down during BF, but for a while potions were upwards of 11-13m which was almost 5 bucks. I have a lot of pets and I change my mind about which color is more perfect, or I go crazy and move pet names around and then have to re-potion them-- but man almost $5 for a potion? ... meh, I'll just make her twilight or sun for now it's close enough especially when I don't know if I'm 100% sold on a color.

... even more so if there's a CW that I need for a TC that pops up that the 500 csc could better be spent on.

I don't know, I do try to wait it out when it comes close to a new reward card coming out (at least, assuming they keep to the same pattern) but it definitely doesn't keep me from (over)spending the rest of the time. Though I have to say, it would be nice to have something, if not a second card available for the times when you do end up spending 4-5 or more times the amount needed to fill the first card. At the very least maybe if you spend another $100 after your card, you get to choose one more prize from the same card or something.

The most expensive Reward Card prizes right now are 10-15m (the cheapest is 27k). Note that the two extremes came from the same card (the current one, that included the Black Friday sale) It'd be nice to get a few more of the expensive things out there without devaluing the cheap ones even further like a second card would.

If mine had been where yours is I totally would have shared hahaha - I would've thought the same as you, like, oh hey, that's not bad!

Now the task: TRY NOT TO BUY VERY MUCH until the new card is out. I have troubles because CWs /sigh

And I agree - I always buy more than I mean to when its on sale for a weekend - especially if there are two really awesome items. I'm like: one purchase on paypal, one purchase direct on site.

Oooh yeah - very good point. It would be nice if for every $100 over we got a bonus "selection" and could choose one. Some of the things (like in the first reward card) changed and/or were readable so its like...I need more than one? Damn. But the wears I definitely didn't.

Also - I don't think we got a new title this time? I think it was the same one awarded - I'd like to see different title options too - that might encourage other folks to buy more CSC with cash?

Yeah I skipped reading the books so far but I really need to read more, and I have two battle pets :l And it'd be super nice to be able to get each version of transformables, since I'm always willing to drop the extra CSC for regular CS transformables. New titles would be great too tho~

I remember the time when a 1 month gold account medal was worth 700k SP, so 500 CSC would have been 700k meaning that 1000 CSC would have been worth 1.4 mil SP. I don't think it'll ever go back to that price. The current price will probably go down, but I'm not sure if it'll reach the level it had before the black friday sale. It just happens and we can't really do anything about it, except wish that we had bought and hoarded CSC before to sell it now :P

I'd be interested to know how many users used to use UGCs, and how much their disappearance has had impacted the CSC economy. Aside from being a widely available and safe way to purchase CSC, they were also commonly earnable through websites which offer you points through the completion of offers and surveys etc. That's how I got my CSC for a couple of months, and doubtless I wasn't the only one. Now they're discontinued and Subeta hasn't created an avenue to buy credits with a similar card system, my only options are to buy it from users or just do without.

Kinda makes me cringe a little when people talk about how much cash they spend on CSC. Bragging about your rl dollas isn't that cool yo.

Anyway, I would really like to see something done about the price of CSC. Personally I used to buy a decent amount with sP, occasionally with £ if there was a cool item you got when you bought via Paypal. But these days I'm just kinda pissed off about the price and have ended up ignoring csc things? It's so inflated that now I don't really buy csc for cash shop stuff because in my head I'm like 'well thats 50mil I could buy so much more of my wl with' and then end up going round in circles until I eventually don't buy anything lol.

I agree that a TS stock or something would be cool, or even settling the price somewhere with a hard limit - for example putting CSC cards into the millionaire center at like 20mil, Crystal shop or recycle beast for however many points - and whacking a timer on it like once a week purchasing. Then people who want to price competitively still have a decent amount of sP gain, but it prevents stupid inflation around times like BF.

To solve the reward card argument they could just throw in useful shit like SBQ invites or Wizard tokens into the purchases. For every 500 csc you buy you get 500 wizard tokens or something. Not a massive reward but still appealing.

I wish people would stop going on about the offers. 90% of them were riddled with viruses and weren't legit offers, and that's why they were taken down. And they're unlikely to come back for those reasons.

Just for the record, I don't think any of us were bragging about our RL money or how much we spend - we were noting that despite the fact that reward cards aren't that rewarding for the folks who sponsor the site, we still do buy CSC regardless - so the cards didn't seem to impact the amount of CSC available for sale on the site very much as far as we can tell.

And putting CSC in the MC for a set price, even if you can only buy once a week or whatever, would probably negatively impact how much people are willing to spend of real money on the site which means less revenue which means less money to improve the site with.

- More rewards for purchasing CSC always increases spending - Flux's suggestion of adding in smaller rewards after the card's special prizes might help some folks be more apt to spend. But realistically - demand for CSC continues to increase, so the price of it for sP will continue to grow - especially when a large number of people who do buy it with real currency are more likely to keep it for their own use than sell it (since other items are also driving up in price in crazy ways). Another option would be to look into having your own site themed cards sold at retailers - the problem with credit gift cards is that you have to pay activation and service fees - which prevents people from actively being interested in them. I know we don't like to compare to other sites, but the ability to buy Neocash cards at retailers did help that site grow the number of users who were spending real money there. And if I recall, I think you guys had a poll about that very same thing. If nothing else, its something to look into.