I understand that, I just feel like removing 433M from everyone is a good move, that is going to be counterbalanced by giving probably 10 persons 50M and 2000CSC for doing good art?

We're removing 433M from a lot of people to give 500M to 10 people and this is what bothers me a little more, that the riches are removed from the majority, to be put once again in the hands of a couple lucky talented people.

I'm just disappointed, I guess. Don't mind my endless complaining.

Well Louis isn't a SP sink, so we really are putting all of our marbles on Skitters in this case, right?

I mean, the userbase is pretty much 50/50 in what they like, half of it like pretty pink things, and half of it would love to see everyone be gored again. Who knows. O_O

Still be a creep, probably

You know he is my less favorite NPC on the site.

I just wanted to state my disgust at the sp prize for this contest and agreement with the points made here by users who are much more eloquent than I. It just seems massively hypocritical to ask for ideas for sp sinks, then dole out such a large amount (and to a "normal" user, who is not sitting on a hoard of 100 billion, 50 million is quite a lot!)

And I'm probably not the only player who isn't crazy about Skitter's items. I much prefer vampires to zombies but it seems that vampires have been banished from the site. I probably won't be buying much from Skitters again this year.

You can all call me an idiot, but I think the prizes are amazingly cool and if I could draw I sure would enter. It seems that everybody has a negative reaction to most of the new stuff. Why not just be happy and try to win the contest instead of trying to run Subeta for the administrators?

This thread...

Yes, 50 mil is a lot, but it's not an obscene amount of sp. This will have little to no effect on the economy. It's a contest. Should we not be offering good prizes? And surely it's preferable for the site to be offering a chunk of sp rather than just more CSC which is equivalent to the site giving away actual money it needs to function. Also, just because sp sink options are being discussed at the moment, does that mean we should shut down all means of producing sp from nothing around the site? Have a little faith, for once.

I am slightly disappointed about the nature of the contest, though. It's so elite. I see that it's a good way to incorporate new and interesting items with user input without adding extra strain on staff, but to produce something to the standard expected of all official art is almost inconceivable to me. I might be able to come up with something I'm not embarrassed to enter, but winning is essentially an impossibility for me, and likely the majority of the userbase.

Good prizes can still be offered. Switching 50mil sp to 1k csc eliminates 50mil going into the system. Considering creation of cws involves payment of csc, I find it a bit weird and arbitrary to include sp as a prize. 30$'s worth of csc for a cw quality item that can be and will be purchased by a lot of people is not a big deal. I can even argue csc has remained inflated since black friday (which was a given but that's not the point here because it's not like that csc has a big chance of being sold for sp anyway) so an added measly, MERE 1k csc to 2k is not a big deal. The artists are doing subeta quality item and overlay work. So ... why are we paying them in sp again and not csc? /shrugs

This entire thread dismays me. There's a quick fix by replacing sp with csc and yet everyone is still talking in circles, because giving away 50mil as a prize is apparently okay and not a big deal when the picture that has been painted is any sp sink is good. I just... nothing here makes any sense to me. :C I give up trying to use logic here.

Except that these items won't be normal custom wears. They'll be bought with sp, not CSC, so the site gets no monetary return. Asking the site to give away and extra $100 instead of a chunk of sp which will be dwarfed by the predicted sp sink resulting from the event is asking a bit much to my mind. Why shouldn't sp be part of the prize? It's the primary currency on site. We shouldn't lean on the idea that CSC is preferable or superior.

An extra 500 mil for a one-off event will not up-end the whole economy. We can have sp coming into the economy while simultaneously have sinks to regulate it. The prospect of more sinks were not brought in because we're in some sort of state of emergency. It needs no fix.

Yes, but if you have an on-site way of artists to earn csc by making site quality items + overlays already, it seems weird to award them sp for it. It doesn't matter what the items will be bought with, because the work's the same. The artists put in work that is typically awarded with csc profit. They should be paid with csc. Idk how else to say it. Sp shouldn't be involved because the general mindset lately has been sp sinks sp sinks sp sinks. Adding 50mil per winner may not be a lot, but it is sending the wrong message, and why would anyone want to reverse what the TC sp sink has amounted thus far based on an unsupported notion (since the 8bil number provided isn't exact in any way)? Like others have said, why would anyone want to have the mindset of "oh this will not up-end the whole economy even though we're fighting against this thing with constant sp sinks?" It doesn't matter if it's a little or big contribution. It's still a contribution. I could argue the TC slot sp sink isn't making any substantial contribution if all it's done so far is remove less than 500mil sp. So why bother? That's what I'm trying to say. It's like the site is all happy it's found these small sp sinks like TC slots, snowball buying during that event, and cruise hair coupons, and yet it's treating the prospect of generated 500mil sp like it's no big deal. Just because sp is being generated and the site doesn't know how to quite handle that doesn't mean it's okay to add more.

Including sp as a prize for an item which will be sold for sp seems fair to me. It's just a different (and very much more controlled) method of giving an artists a cut of the profits in the same currency their item will be sold in. If artists would rather earn pure CSC for their work, then they can still submit them as normal CWs and are free to not enter.

Sp sinks do not represent a "fight". With the recent discussion, I think that the aspect of the removal of currency has rather been over-focussed on. They're just a means of keeping a handle on the economy in exchange for things people want. The ingoings and outgoings of sp are under much tighter control than you give then credit for. The site has to strike a balance between what is fun and what will actually work. Keith has already said that if he thought there was too much sp in the systems, there are things he would do about it. More sp is generated than is removed everyday, and that is something which is allowed to happen.

It's possibly a bit difficult to get the proper perspective on it from the point of view of an individual user, but I really think that 500 million sp is actually no big deal.

Then why isn't the entire prize in sp then if that's the reasoning behind it? Why have both sp and csc as prizes? It still seems completely pointless to me. You can see it that way and Keith may say the point of TC slots purchased for 100k isn't to remove loads of sp, just to give people a reason to spend sp on, but I think it's bull. We had and still have MKBs in the mc, so that reasoning alone is invalid. Ever think we wouldn't need to think of new ways to spend sp if generation of sp wasn't an issue? It may not be bad now, but why wait until shit truly hits the fan? There's a thing called prevention and the site should use more of that reasoning than the thing it seems to like most - fixing.

It won't greatly impact the economy.

Probably because CSC is a nice prize in general, and has been a part of the prize for pretty much every contest the site has thrown in the last year or so. Beyond that, I dunno, you're going to have to take that one up with staff.

From what I can see, new sp sinks are just a way to diversify the user experience. People get things they've been requesting for a while, and the site gets to keep a handle of money flow in a painless manner. Everyone wins. We still have MKBs because people like gifting them, and there's still the chance of getting three slots from one box, which is a pretty good deal (lots of users strongly requested they were kept after the possibility of directly bought slots gained a lot of support). Bringing in the ability to buy them directly just opens up more options in how people can interact with the site, which is generally something I welcome.

Is there any indication that shit is likely to hit the fan? Keith has indicated multiple times over a long period that just about every aspect of site usage is monitored and altered accordingly.

Whether it impacts the economy or not isn't the point - because no one can agree on whether it will or not - it's the fact that there were all these urges lately to create sP sinks to essentially destroy sP by taking it out of users' hands, and then just handing out huge amounts of millions of it back.

We don't know how many winners there will be, but that doesn't matter. 50 million per winner is just. Ginormous. I don't care what anyone says, that is a LOT of sP. That's half of what I have. That's like 30mil more than what I spent on the treasure chest sink, and I thought I spent a lot.

The point is that it's completely hypocritical. Why would you make a big deal out of sP sinks like it's urgent to remove sP from the economy but then turn around and hand back FIFTY MILLION per winner? Good gravy.

edit: and I mean 50mil doesn't seem like much in the grand scheme of things, with all the total sP on site, but for ONE person? That seems like a lot but maybe it's just me...

Don't get me wrong, I love the new tc slots method, but my point was we didn't really need it as we had MKBs before. Obviously, buying slots en masse for 100k a slot is definitely easier and more convenient, but was that really the purpose of it and not as an sp sink?

I can't say continuous sp generation is particularly good for the economy. I can't say if/when things will get shitty, but what I am saying is why would anyone add fuel to the fire by making 50mil a prize? I can't say I have faith the economy is being monitored. It took just a few days for a lot of restockable item prices to tank after haggling was removed from shops. I'm not confident about it being monitored. I hope I'm wrong as I'm definitely not for shit hitting the fan and would really like to see subeta succeed, but the staff response in this thread makes me wary. :c

MKBs being stocked in the Million Center was a big drawback. Only one could be bought every twelve hours, and even then you might only get one slot. I suppose there is the possibility of moving it to another shop, but even though it's a cheap item by the standards of the MC, it's expensive for just about every other shop. The easiest solution was probably just introducing direct slot purchasing.

The price of items fluctuate all the time, and as far as I can tell it's down to a lot of factors besides how much sp is in the system. It's something to a different beast, but since I have little knowledge of economics, it's difficult to say how it works (not that I really know). There are items I used to restock all the time months ago and are now next to worthless. Items losing value and then regaining it has always been an aspect of the site as I've known it. From an administration point of view, I think that it's very difficult to control the prices of individual items. It's not as if all items have crashed in price; a lot still hold value, and I've seen a few go up in price over the last week. The slightly freer nature of item value is one of the things I enjoy about restocking.

As much as I've been wary of (or outright furious at) some staff decisions in the past, I'm pretty comfortable with this one. They're the one with the big picture. If anything, it shows they're aware of past mistakes are happy to move forward with lessons learned. But, I do see where you might be uneasy; I often find that staff give answers or attempt to reassure users in a way that still very evasive and cagey. More often that not it just fosters distrust than dispels it.

Because we're sick and tired of desirable things inflating in price because they're too much SP in the system. Unless you're happy about how much a GA costs, now.

Being happy and pretending nothing is wrong is not going to make Subeta better. When we have issues, Keith is fairly open to discuss them, and this is why I like this site. Because Keith is open to discussion and feedback.

The main reason CSC is inflating is because SP is more and more worthless.

I would have preferred to sink the 310M I used for treasure slots rather than making a bunch of people richer by buying their MKB in their shops.