I enjoy vending. It tends to be not particularly profitable, but it's a compulsive thing that I like to do. Obviously, I'm not alone in loving vending. I really hope it isn't eliminated.

I enjoy vending as well, I just think that some them need to be tweaked so we aren't getting the same dirt cheap items we always do. Vending is definitely contributing to the price drop of items but vending and rsing should not go hand in hand. The point of rsing is that we get items that vending machines don't give us. The items in the shops are the same items that we can easily vend and therefore are not profitable. The shops need to be fixed to where we can get those different items again. I RS in Weapons Warehouse and Defend and Conquer and I've grabbed maybe one good item since the tweak. Before the tweak, I'd get several different items that I could sell for profit and did so, and over the months, I have not seen a significant change in price for those items. So I really, really don't understand why this system had to be tweaked.

I'm a quester and I like that items are now dirt cheap - it means a lot more profits from questing now that even most super rares are really cheap :p Usually I make around 2m per day from quests. Granted, I don't make 'AS MUCH' in my shop til from selling items - but I still average at least 1m. Idk maybe I'm ignorant or stupid but I can't see the problem just yet =/

Let's be honest; restocking was kinda sucky before they made the changes. I'd so commonly see nothing in a shop worth buying up. Maybe a couple of items at best. I'm certain things were in a better state a couple of years ago. These new changes aren't brilliant now, while we still have fewer restocks of devalued items, but if it helps make more things worth restocking in the long term, I'll stick with it.

And, its not as though the things that are starting to rise in price aren't there any more; they're just there less. These things will be bought by questers at least, and therefore won't fall off the restocking grid for a week or whatever it is.

Restocking's been kind of sucky for a couple of months, definitely, after the captcha went away and when Keith literally doubled the number of items that appear in a shop on each restock. Glutting the market with items and then allowing buying to become easier did flood the user shops with cheaps and commons and negatively affected values in a lot of ways. Keith said at the time the stock amount change would last "a week" to "see what happens" and that clearly has remained unchanged. For reasons.

I'm trying to keep in mind that my original question and theory - is this supposed to help item value? is 100% a generous assumption on my part. No reason has actually been stated that I've seen. I can equally believe that this is a deliberate strategy to destroy all item values across the board so that every single user will HAVE to depend on quests and games for any SP earning. In fact, I'm almost positive that's a big chunk of the reason, if not all of it. Keith hates restocking and has said as much, and seemingly would be happy if it all died in a fire.

Given the silence and the continued unbalancing of the economy, I'm more and more certain this is the actual intent.

I wonder if your view of the situation and mine might differ somewhat because of what we restock. Do you normally seek out high-end items, stuff that sells for a couple hundred thousand profit? I seek out the low and mid level items, the stuff that sells for 5k, 10k, 20k profit and rely on those. That is what I've seen bottom out, almost across the board for me. I haven't found much that I restock regularly that has actually risen in value, so no, I'm not seeing any benefits from where I stand.

That said, I do think we're coming at this from basically the same direction. Restocking hasn't been fun or super profitable for a while now, and I absolutely agree that what pops up more rarely will get bought up as fast as it appears. But these fixes aren't fixing anything, at least not in a manner that appears like an actual fix to me. I still maintain that keeping our regular restocking rates and THEN tinkering with the temporary retirements, etc, would have been a better metric to gauge effect on the economy. This current "fix" is terrible.

I think the numbers of individual items restocking has been reduced a bit since The Change; I'm sure I'm seeing fewer cases of 14 of one common item languishing in a shop. And the higher restocking numbers of rares and super rares did only last a week (part of me felt horrible knowing what it would do to item values, but another part of me had too much fun buying them all).

Hmm, yes. There's hasn't been an explicit desire to improve the economy from on high, let alone any acknowledgement that there was anything wrong in the first place. Part of me worries that this was all change for change's sake (restocking mechanics untouched for eight years?! Oh no! What a nightmare!). Everyone's very quiet about it all. I've seen Keith argue with users about site changes hammer and tongs in the past... I don't know if he doesn't care or just doesn't have anything to say. Given all his past comments about restocking, it would be nice to have some assurance that he maybe doesn't consider restocking (and the people who do it) to be entirely akin to something he scraped of the bottom of his shoe.

I'll generally restock anything that's going for about 12k or more in user shops. I've noticed a real loss of items going more middling prices, 15-30k or so. There's a widening chasm between the cheap and the super expensive. Granted, I haven't seen a lot of growth in prices, but it's there, and it's promising enough. I do agree that it's not the ideal method, though. I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it agian here: there are better ways.

I too agree that vending is a huge chunk of the problem.

For the longest time, I would just vend randomly all over the site, and whatever I got I threw in my shop and that was that. When I did RS, it was so time consuming, because a good 85% of the stuff was selling below shop price, while another 10% only gave you 2k profit. I'm not the type of person to go after things that are worth thousands. I would just like to be able to go into a shop and pick up a few things for 10-20k profit. That shouldn't be an unobtainable thing lol.

There needs to be a balance between vending and restocking. Either it's still not limited enough, or they need to produce two different groups of items. The "double dipping" of lower rarity items makes them all virtually worthless, unless questing is involved. Which then opens a whole new can of worms, because without those cheap items, nobody quests.

Lovely catch-22 we've gotten into.

I personally love restocking. It is pretty much the only thing I do on this site other than the fun events. I am not good at battling or games. I like the collections and trying to get new items. This is my stress relief and I find it fun when I am able to snag new items as well as find super rare items in the shops. I like to get to know a shop, try to get one of each item to place in my hoard and use it as sort of a memory booster when the shop refreshes to see if I can pick out something I have not seen recently.

I got the hang of the captcha codes, but love the new system that only requires it when it is a super rare item, then I know when I am purchasing it that it is something of value. I love that I can get a buff on top of my discount card. I love filling up my shop with things to sell to other users who quest. I like sharing my good restocks with my friends and try to keep an updated wish list. Vending is boring and I find I end up with lots of junk that is not worth the sP I spent getting the tokens to do it. The amount of rare items or things from my wish list are very few. Vending I feel is what needs to be fixed and updated. I would be much more willing to pay 20 tokens for a vend if I knew I was going to get something of decent value. I do feel that the pricing and value of items have fallen and something that is worth 20k one day may be worth 1200 sP the next.

Waiting longer times for the shops to restock takes away from my experience because sometimes I only get a hour a day and if there is only one or two restocks then the rest of the time is just me clicking on shops to see if they have restocked.

Thanks for keeping us updated.

Just here to be a broken record and say that something needs to be done about vending.

I don't usually vend. Because I don't care. I vend when I need to frag for crystals on short notice. Guess who is going to spend her 20k wiz tokens vending because Subeta decided exclusive items were a good idea? INTRO. Also these items are seriously hard to get. It's not a "vend one day, you're done" deal. I didn't get any from Dragons Hoard in all my vends. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, considering the lack of the items in user shops. We're just flooding the economy with more of these cheap, useless items... so limiting how often they restock isn't really doing anything.

Revamp vending, then take care of restocking. Because restocking was never an issue. (Unless it's SubQ currently, because that's an issue)

On board with the vending-- There needs to be more of a limit and less pushing for exclusive vend items in these things. Vending is really putting the hurt on the economy. Clearly, if we're still in this mess, then 250/500 vends per day is still too high.

Why not try 125/250? See how that balances the economy.

I hate saying it because I do enjoy vending, but something has to cave and its not restocking on this one.

I don't know about you, but I personally don't like clicking on a shop to see a wall of items with many, many of the lesser rarities with high quantities in stock. They just sit there and rot, creating the usual wall of items. Can't there be a hard limit on quantity in stock across the board? So even if 2-3 of x doesn't get sold when it first restocks, it doesn't amass over 10 in stock when it restocks again. Because the whole point was trying to curtail the amount in stock? And I don't see that changed at all. Besides, restocking could be a lot more exciting if restocks were smaller quantities and occurred frequently. But maybe that's just me. Hope I wasn't too hyperbolic this time. :')

I think it would help a lot if you could limit the number of items that show in a shop at once. Limit it to 75 items at one go and clear the shops out a bit more often - it would mean the cheap shit that no one wants doesn't clutter everything up and with less of them in there maybe the prices could go back to normal.

You know restocking is broken when it seems like 80% of the items on stock are restocked for a loss and thats with a discount card and discount buff.

This is ridiculous. Just put the restock pattern back to how it was. This new system isn't working.

I think the current system is generally fine. Plenty of things worth buying around that I've found; it'll certainly do until the changes to vending are made.

However, I would maybe like to see the return of the shops clearing, even if it's only twice a day, just to refresh things a bit (and having a period when things just weren't sitting in shops was always a bit helpful in upping user shop prices).

I'm not going to redo my gold account, and I have spent so much less time here since the nerf to restocking. There's no point, that was my favourite thing to do here.

Right now, I'm much happier to spend time back on this site for restocking. Someone fixed it.

Shops are finally restocking cohesively. If one restocks, the more common shops restock. This was my biggest issue with the restocking makeover. I hated that change and glad it's back to normal.

The wait times are no longer insane- I saw the smith store not stock for over 6 hours the other day, that's just... no.

(edit: and nearly 12 hours later it's not restocking cohesively like it was early in the morning and times are up for restocks again. That was short lived.)

Here's what I was looking forward to with restocking changes:

Samurai Waraji 2,384 sP 12 in stock

There should not be 12 of that in stock. Ever. Keep the max to 5 for rarity of 1-50, 3 for normal, 2 for rare, and 1 for super rare (which you already do for super rares anyway). It doesn't have to be those exact numbers, but that will have less flood for the market and makes sense. Items will circle out faster and you'll have a lot less complaints. If people want more commons than they're restocking, tell them to take it to the vending machines or user shops. boom. They don't have to have every single item straight right away and no one expects it out of any other site/game, so why cater to this idea here?

Right now, super rares aren't really that super. The K Sticker should not be 800k, not with how easy it is to make sP; it should be much, much more. That's half of the fun of getting a super rare, it should be harder. I should not see a super rare restock more than twice a week. It makes no sense and throws the value of the rarity out of the window. It just becomes a common restockable item to me.

Keep super rares RARE. They should be hard to obtain. Sorry newcomers, but that's why they're rare. Every game has rarity levels and the super rares are elite because they're meant to be coveted. It gives them worth. There's many games I keep playing and spending countless hours on just to get the super rare items someday- the type of items you can't just easily obtain with cash unless you're bartering the systems exchange of cash (CSC/cash shop item) for the item. The effort is fun, frustrating at times, but fun.

Also, captchas are no longer being applied to Super Rares, fyi. Just restocked 2 without having to type in anything.

I applaud Subeta trying to make an effort to make it an area more enjoyable, but I think too much change was made in regards to restocking that it backfired. The KISS (keep it simple, stupid) principle really applies here.

Your entire post is amazing and what I wanted to say plus more. c: I thought 10-12 in stock was bad, but then I checked the bakery just now and look what I found...

Blueberry Pie 482 sP 20 in stock

at first I thought I saw wrong lol but it says 20 TWENTY

Someone please tell Fantine to stop baking please. Isn't this overtime? Fantine needs to go on strike like now.

Can't you clear out stock right before each restock and make sure shops restock frequently enough?