Full support!

Recent crystal shop restocks have made this relevant again. Not sure why HPCs have to be tedious to buy/sell when items cost tens of thousands of them.

...and promised that changing the way that they got given out would not result in inflation. :) :) :)

It is not known if she's going to keep on doing this. It could just be these particular items.

I'd support an sP sink similar to the recycle beast to allow people to buy larger quantities over time.

Frag overtime and you don't have to buy 25k crystals in a users shop in a day. in 2.5 hours theres already been almost half of the tactical tome purchased at 25k crystals, the cheapest book is gone, and 25% of the 10k book are gone. I think the current model rewards those actively playing versus those who have the sP to burn when the news post is made.

^

Let me start this post by saying that I am someone who forgets fragging even exists, but probably wouldn't buy them in bulk either simply because I'm saving my sP for other things right now. 😅

Personally, I'm for this change.

I have a few reasons, and I'm also a total crystal shop noob, so take this as you will haha.

Firstly, not sure how much of a strain it is on the server to repeatedly purchase an item but if it does cause a noteworthy amount, I would definitely consider changing it. If not that's fine and dandy.

Secondly, so far the only argument I'm seeing against this change is that basically, users should have to work for HPCs rather than throw their sP at crystals in high denominations. I see and understand your point. I agree that that does make the shop unique. But, consider the following:

-- The Masquerade currencies can be purchased in a bulk of 50, 100 and 250 at a time while also being a currency that rewards the active player. However, it doesn't punish players who may not have time to play as actively as others because we have the option to throw our sP at those bags.

-- You can also say the same about Wizard Tokens, which can also be obtained using another currency (referral points). Those are purchased in denominations of 500 and I don't think anything negative has come from that. Granted, the Wiz Tokens have more uses than just the Token Shop, but still. The fact that the items are released in batches helps with the market not being flooded with them, thus the items purchased for said currency don't lose their value because not every purchased item makes it on to the market. that said I'm not an economics expert so feel free to correct me

-- I quested today from Blue to Shinwa and turned just about all my items in to the Fragmentizer. I think I had like, 120 items roughly, plus some fairies. I got roughly 200(?) crystals out of that. I haven't vended yet, but at the rate of 200 crystals per day, it would take me 28 days to get 5,600 crystals. If these items are going to continue to go up in price (10k / 25k) then this is a terrible output of crystals.

Once you vend and quest for a day, you're out of items, out of chances to get crystals... unless you spend a bunch of sP on items to frag. Subeta users will be throwing money at either crystals or items to frag if they don't have enough crystals for an item anyway, so why not just cut out the middle man and make higher denominations for the crystals? Maybe there's something I'm missing, but it really does seem easier to be able to combine crystals into bigger groups. Plus, it makes gifting them a hell of a lot easier!

I consider myself quite an active, daily player and I still don't have nearly enough crystals lol :)

literally splurged on a weekly ga this morning, did all my quests, vended, fragged everything, and i'm still 10k crystals short for the thing i wanted to buy so ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

full support tbh

I guess I just lean towards not every item needs to be available to every user today.

There's items in the crystal shop priced at all users price points. The 25k item is one that has been highly sought after and most people on the books read HST need (and have been wanting it for years). The last publicly sold copy sold for 500m. I don't think holiday shops should be compared to token/crystal shops as they don't stock these kinds of items.

Keeping the Token Shop and Crystal Shop mechanics separate give staff an option of which shop to restock a specific item.

If you don't have the crystals, the books are all available in users shop currently or it gives you a goal to work towards.

I agree that not every item should be available to the user every day. However crystals as they are now seem like too much of a challenge.

I only got about 968 crystals yesterday for fragging--counting my bonuses toward extra quests and vending for more items than the average user. At this exact same rate for a week, I would only get 6,776 crystals. By the time I got enough for even the 10k book, it would probably be gone. In my opinion, this seems really disproportionate to just about every other site goal (that I can currently think of).

And this is counting my perks as a gold account user. Regular account users would get worse rates, and if the items will continue to follow this pricing trend, I think staff should consider making crystals in available in higher denominations. At the end of the day, users will still have to work regardless of how they want to get those crystals. They will either need sP to buy items to frag, the crystals themselves, or the items from other users. sP is easier to get but that's still a lot of hard work for a user since those items will, as you mentioned, sell for quite a chunk of sP.

The way I see it, everybody wins: people who frag a bunch sell the crystals, people buy those crystals, and everyone gets either sP or an item they really wanted.

But, again this is only my viewpoint. I definitely understand the argument against it, I just think there might be a better way to do things where everybody wins. 😊

Support.

If we're worried about making it too easy*, then just use smaller denominations. I doubt that grouping together 5, 10, 50, or even 100 HPCs together means that others are going to suddenly start buying them when a news post comes out and prevent others who have been saving up the HPCs from getting Crystal Shop items. It'll just make it easier for a) fraggers who sell and b) people who already buy crystals and keep them on hand.

As is, buying from the crystal shop is way too hard, in my opinion. Fragging is tedious AND trying to get anything in a restock is super hard. This would at least alleviate one of these hassles.

*Which honestly, I don't think it would.

I agree with you guys and

It is super difficult for me to build up such large stores of crystals... like I said above, I play every day - I always have a GA and I do all of my quests most of the time. I normally frag everything I get from quests that is worth under a certain amount of sP and sometimes vend (side note: it is so much easier in my opinion to save up wizard tokens than crystals if we are comparing, I was able to buy the horns and roses releases last year in the BHH and token shop even though I only joined last January. Not the one in the crystal shop though :P).

I wasn't as dedicated to fragging lately since the crystal shop was so empty for most of this year but I still thought I had enough to buy anything that would come out. However, I have only been on the site for just about 2 years. Last year I think I fragged most days, but anything I built up was drained when I had to buy a bunch of stuff before the crystal shop was cleared out last time.

I have no problem with rewarding players with older accounts that have been waiting patiently for a certain item to be rereleased, and saving up their crystals. Just from a newer user's perspective it can get a little frustrating because there are SO many items on the site that I need to save for :) Plus on top of that there is the recycle beast shop... it adds up to a LOT of grinding!

So anyway to bring this back closer to the topic lol (sorry), larger denominations would enable people more to save up during crystal shop downtimes if they so desired :) I would definitely use this feature, even buying just 100 crystals a day from a user shop would add a lot to my hoard over time!

I also agree, denominations for crystals don't need to be huge. 5, 10, 50, and 100 seems like fair enough denomination increments.

(Just as a side note, I think wiz tokens are definitely easier to save and get LOL since we can quest for them and purchase 500 at a time from the referral shop)

I don’t disagree on rewarding people who play daily vs others, but the crystal shop isn’t the recycle beast shop. What about people who frag daily to sell the crystals?

I see there’s people with anywhere from 100,000 to 500,000 crystals in their shop - arguably very hard working fraggers. Why make it possible to buy HPCs from other people as currency (like wizard tokens, unlike recycle points), but make it super hard for these people to sell them? Imagine buying Wizard tokens one at a time. No one benefits from that.

Make it easier for me to reward their work, rather than having to click buy every 2 wake seconds for 10 straight hours. No one is gonna do that. We have items that stack pretty much every currency, including event currencies, except for this one.

The two main people who frag and sell in their shops are happy to buy the items in the crystal shop for you outright vs. clicking for a 100 Crystal item or 25k crystal item. They did so for several people with this last restock who reached out. (The third is unfortunately deceased).

Edit: It's just nice as someone who actively frags to be able to log on and obtain a book i've wanted versus it being gobbled up by people who could just buy HPC's in that moment (i'm definitely biased). Especially when all these items are still obtainable in user shops for anyone who didn't have the crystals to get them. And the lower cost items still in stock are at or close to the HPC rate...so those too can be bought out.

I’m not sure how asking them to buy the item works for you if you don’t want people to buy crystals in the moment. This is the literal equivalent to it

I just want to make it easier to buy and sell HPCs though. Not trying to get anything from the crystal shop. I’m not sure why this currency has to be bought in singles when the others offer options.

The time limit makes it work for me. No one user can go out and buy 100.

i want these just because i want more shiny rocks

like if the 1000 point / 5000 point crystals looked something like or ? yes please!

As someone whose actively fragged over a LONG period of time to include most vended items daily and actively buying crystals over a similar LONG period, I don't think the fair argument is justified just because it's not realistic for you to obtain the 10k - 25k crystals overnight and arn't willing to frag over an extended period of time.

All of those items are available in user shops (at pretty reasonable prices actually) so it is still obtainable to you if you don't want to hoard crystals .... just at a slight premium. Or you have the option to reach out to the HPC resellers to see if they are willing to buy an item out directly for you. It seems more unfair to let users catch up to those who have been working on their hoard for months/years overnight.

If you frag, you will always be the one setting the cost. Whether it is for crystals or the items from the shop. They’re only worth 2k in SS because of how tedious they are to buy