Well. I've saved subeta about 50m after not doing any quests this month :)

This whole concept is horse manure. Why would I do quests at all for a minimal or no profit? Subeta needs to regulate sP flow, sure, but it also has to have features attractive to players or ..no one will play.

The conclusions drawn from how the IRL economy works cannot be so easily applied to a pet site's economy. I don't care whether or not the prices double a couple years down the line because I might not even be playing then! I think many people have a similar line of thought in expecting instant gratification from quests.

Decreasing the sP rewards to the extent you are suggesting would have drastic consequences on the size and growth of the user base. I have no doubt that many current users would stop playing in the interim period it takes for prices to fall. (And who knows how long that could be!) New users, too, would be disinclined to return, seeing how high the prices of potions/elixirs/wardrobe items are compared to the profits they make. I am also worried about the effect this would have on wealth inequality.

That being said, I do agree with you on eliminating or reducing WQ sP rewards. I make about 100-150k sP profit over 10 quests + 250 tokens, which seems excessive. IIRC, when I joined Subeta, he gave no sP reward but selling the tokens themselves was enough to net a decent profit as a newbie.

Cutting the the quest profits in half would be too much too fast. People would definitely react poorly to that, and would stop doing quests. Without quests, a lot of items won't be taken out of the system, and yes, those would drop in prices. But other items, that don't restock, would probably drop at a slower rate. Plus, if people stop making money, it encourages hoarding, which could make the economy stagnate altogether (When I go long stretches of not doing my quests, I know that I spend less).

As quests are the main source of introducing sP to the economy, you really don't want to slash the output too drastically. I wouldn't be against a gradual reduction though. Say, every three months, decrease all outputs by 10% or something. Literally a slower paced reduction would likely be accepted better (oh, I earned 90k instead of 100k, eh, whatever), and would still have gradual effects on items. As we have seen on the recent quest feedback boards, anything too drastic gets a lot of negative attention. Make the difference small, and it wears things down, without killing them.

I also wouldn't be against WQ only giving out tokens and/or against a small tax on all items bought from shops (and a removal of the buying discount, because seriously, I pretty much have that buff all the time, which seems excessive).

Finally, I do want to point out, that your described profit is only meaningful to you. Even if I do all my quests in a day, I am not making any real money... because I am using sP sinks. I am buying a lot of TC slots and using the 400k a pop zapper whenever I have the profits from quests. The introduction of sP sinks that are used reliably would offset the sP fountain that the quests produce... and for some people the sinks work. The problem is they don't work for everyone. :C Which is why sales taxes would help a little. As much as they suck. lol

makes an excellent point. Is this more about the fact that CSC is more expensive? There are many reasons for that, and solving that problem won't be fixed by cutting quest sP.

As others have mentioned, chopping sP profits from quests would bring less sP into the economy, sure. But it will also reduce people's enjoyment of the site and there's zero guarantee that such a move will reduce CSC prices.

I do think Wiz quest payouts should be looked at, I'm not sure he needs to be paying out sP, but as a whole I think cutting sP payouts for all quests across the board is a bad, bad idea. It's the main money earner for many people, especially now that vending machines have been rarity-reduced. Eliminating people's earning potential in favor of maybe possibly if we're lucky easing inflation - very few people would be willing to make that change.

Especially as others have mentioned, there is no real other way to make a decent living on the site without questing. If there were alternatives, the story would be different, but there really isn't. Cutting quest payments would reduce quests completed, which would cut demand for items, which will cut the economy off at the knees.

Nope.

Honestly I disagree with this thread entirely. I only make anywhere between 2-3M from quests a day IF I am very lucky. Sometimes I can barely even scratch 2m. Nerfing the quest sP is going to kill this place. I only have been questing and selling all the items from that to get a profit. Sometimes I can come on to about 1m in my shop to even less than that. 2-3m if I am lucky and have decent items in my shops from quests.

2-5m per day isn't bad at all. Sure, I use to make more a day way back then but it's not the same economy.

This seems to be more worried about being able to purchase CSC than it is to fix the sP value and make it as valueable as it was back then. A few ways that can happen that people will be EXTREMELY against is taking CSC away from being purchasable with sP. This would allow CSC to be transferred from user to user without being sold for sP at all. This means pretty much you are forced to either have the money on hand in real life (which not everyone does) to purchase CSC and buy CWs and cash shop items or be able to make the CWs and sell them to earn CSC. This would make selling/buying CWs extremely expensive with sP (as if it's not already). Another help would be making CWs only purchasable with CSC and not sP and/or make a trade section designed around trading one CW for another CW of the same layering. (like background for background only.)

Another sP maker would be returning DP back to how the was with being random and you having 0 choice over the item you get.

Pretty much it's going to be give or take with CSC. CSC is always going to be highly valued above all if it can be traded for any and everything instead of just being limited to Cash Shop based items. This can help or hurt the economy because now you can trade items for CSC gift cards instead of sP.

My personal view on CSC can vary at times. I am more than happy and have bought CSC for sP before. I have noticed it impacted the economy in different ways. Around the time it was purchasable by sP is when I noticed sP value drop and even more so with the introduction of CWs. The only way I can see the sP value returning to exactly how it was before would be to make CSC not purchasable by sP and only real money and maybe even making CWs unable to be sold on user shops for sP so that is all dealt with by CSC.

Do I want any of this? Of course not. I am just voicing my opinion on how to make it go back to how it was before. I do not wish to see CSC only purchasable by real money and CWs locked away like that as well. We do need a item sink rather than a sP sink (even if it's for short bursts of time) and the recycle beast only asks for so much. With needing a item sink maybe utilizing the Item Drive would be preferable. Maybe something like the quest drive. Have a goal to reach of so many items and make it so only low user shop priced items could be donated (that way people cannot take advantage and sell Rare and Super Rare at high prices and drive them through the roof.) It would help get all the severely low priced items on the website be bought up and possibly restored to a decent price range. This however can also hurt more than help if they don't set a limit on how high the item prices need to be or maybe only certain items (far and I mean far more than RB asks for) can be accepted. Maybe after a item gets so high in price on the market again they can remove it from the item drive as they go.

Flight Rising has a tax on purchases done in user auctions, with a low percentage, so at this point, I wouldn't be opposed to a user shop tax as well.

I think FR has something like 1%/3%/5% rates, depending on how long the auction is.

I love this suggestion, wow.

Personally, I buy my CSC with real cash money, so when I compare the worth of CSC and SP, it's just to gauge the worth of one currency in contrast to the other. I'm not affected negatively by CSC prices rising at all.

There is high demand for CSC, and no demand for SP. The Millionaire Center is not enough, and I was expecting the Antique Shop to get more releases. Right now, it just feels forgotten.

I buy my CSC with real money as well, largely because I'd rather spend my sP on other things. That said, I do agree with the points already made about the large number of items flooding the cash shop and the average prices of those items, which absolutely increases demand on CSC. Cutting sP influx won't do much to bring that conversion value down, in my opinion, because the demand for the CSC exists independently of sP.

The way to bring CSC value down? Decrease the demand for CSC. Less items in the CSC store, less frequent releases. Done.

I don't know, I think the sP sinks are working pretty well. I just sunk multi millions in a bunch of pet slots, and I am eyeing the Antique shop for future purchases. I would also like to see more things in the Antique Shop, but a stray comment from Amber (I can't remember where I saw it) suggested they're currently working on converting Reading Drive prizes to sP values for addition to the Antique Shop. So I'm sure we'll see more stock there soon.

Point being, chopping the main sP source of the majority of the site just for the sake of "inflation" I think is a bad move for a lot of reasons and won't solve the problems put forth as justification for the chopping. shrug

I buy my csc with money AND sP, so there will always be a demand for sP as long as you can use it to purchase csc. Is the ratio high? Yeah, but I'll still pay it because it's worth it to me. I think the quest payouts are decent

I disagree with the argument behind the millionaire center. It should not take someone a year to purchase ONE item (albeit the most expensive) if they pour all their effort into just that thing and not enjoying the other aspects of the site. I don't mind it taking a month or two (longer for those who don't put tons of hours into subeta). There's so much to do, so much to collect, on subeta. I think it's pretty balanced as it is.

It's not perfect but it works. I know when I joined I was so freakin' ecstatic about the economy here. It's so easy to earn sP. I NEVER had anything on neo, it was too hard to earn anything on there. And now Gaia, wow just make an account and you won't want to stay because it's nearly impossible to obtain the older items.

rambling rambling, I don't think I really have a concise point lol

@ lirikai if only the CS was the reason for the CSC demand; I believe CWs are the culprit here. (just my guess)

Oh good point, I forgot about the CW market. Yeah, those too.

Also? This:

This is why I stay on this site. This is the number one reason I enjoy Subeta. The economy mostly works and it's not just a hardscrabble slog to gain anything at all. Take that away and you take away people's enjoyment of the site. Can and should quests be tweaked here and there? Sure, maybe even yes. But not completely across the board, especially not when we're still settling into the new patterns from the changes made to vending and RS'ing, etc.

LOL quests net me about 1 mil a day if I do them all, and only do the ones that I am likely to get payback from. Keith has done a pretty good job evening out the quests over the past two years. We used to get a lot more insane quest requests that didn't pay anything back OR paid way too much back at times. This isn't Neopets, it's not supposed to take you 5ever to get 1 mil.

I do however, agree that the economy is trashed and we need to gradually fix it. Some of the suggestions here might work. But cutting it all at once would seriously fuck everyone.

Last thing I'll say really but:

Look at Cinthia. Not very many people do her quests. In fact sometimes when newbies come into the SB and ask which quests are worth doing, many people will say "not cinthia lol" or something to that effect. Why? She doesn't give out much sP. So people don't do her quests. So slashing all the other quests will just nerf them. If they can't make a decent profit, they won't do them.

- No, that's not why people are upset. CSC was brought in as an example of increased price.

- The thing you're not seeming to understanding is that I actually am considering it. But I'm also considering the user base who use quests as their way to make any kind of sP on here. I don't know of many people who are perfectly okay with losing profit when they're trying to get ahead.

I'm not here to argue with you. You have your opinion, I have mine. If this gets implemented then most of the older user base will deal with it or they'll leave. I just personally don't feel its a fix; I feel it creates more problems but I'm not a mathematician and I don't know the first thing about economies, as I said in my first post.

Also ^ this is a good idea. has a point. Cutting it all at once you'll have a very, very large amount of people get pissed and cause a riot. Doing it gradually would be a smarter idea if cutting absolutely has to happen.

I really do not see how they're too much. How can one have too much sP? And the thing is, we're not just getting paid for the items, we're getting paid for the time we take to find and bring the item back to the quest-giver. If you take away the decent amount of profit, quests become pointless. Some of us make most of our sP from quests because we're no good at restocking or whatever. To take that away would just be cruel. It's bad enough that Saggitarius' profit has gone down so much. It's almost so that it's not worth it anymore to do his quests. I was perfectly happy to gamble on rarer items in return for a possible larger profit.

Are you able to buy as much things with 500M as you were a couple years ago?

No? It's called inflation.

The more and more people with high amounts of SP we are, the more and more inflation increases, because users have the capacity to pay more SP for necessities

Having giant piles of SP doesn't benefit you when it's time for you to buy something because there are a lot of people with giant piles of SP, now. Before, when SP was scarcer, and people with hoards of SP were less common, prices were lower for high-tier items because there was less people able to afford them.

i get the argument about inflation and all that, but at the same time you gotta keep quests SOMEWHAT profitable. i remember a while back when keith was retooling some of the quests, i was barely pulling a profit on them, if at all. so i just... stopped doing quests until payout swung back to worthwhile. i doubt i'd have been the only one.

inflation happens in real life too, it is constantly happening.
the last time the United States had a negative average yearly inflation rate was 1955 if my quick google search proves accurate.

"On 1 August 2006, the first dollar was redenominated to the second dollar at the rate of 1 revalued second dollar = 1000 old first dollars. "

and they've done this multiple times since then I believe. all it does is make the numbers lower, it's not actually changing anything except they took a few zeroes off of stuff.

Removing the zeroes is for convenience but it's not their main goal in reintroducing new currency. They want to stabilize the eco around a new currency (but it never works). It's pretty hilarious actually.

Zeroes (for the most part) are irrelevant, i mean, look at the Japanese Yen. It's just that since USD is most common, its easier to anchor everything around it and have numbers closer to it in ratio.