and made really good points. i was so hung up on the "hoarding BAD" message that i didn't see beyond it. >_< something that i never do (so i didn't consider it) is how unbelievably tedious it must be now to buy currencies with this change. surely that's not how it's meant to be?? and this change doesn't address the real problem which is people scamming with the autopricer. yes it will slow those people down in buying up all the undercut prices, but not enough to actually give others a chance to catch the items themselves. i will say that it has turned me off from buying the teeming mass of rares priced at 2k sp and below, though. it's just not worth my time anymore... is that good? was that the goal?

(also i think these issues with autopricer stuff could also be discussed in this topic?)

I'm not going to quote as it's a long post but I price my shop and buy items to frag in the same manner as

Buying rare and cheap items to frag stops deflation. Before, when the fragmentiser only accepted rare and super rare items, loads of items were priced at 1sp. The fragmentiser controls deflation, not this new 7 item limit. People will still undercut the autopricer, others will autoprice and instead of those items being bought, they'll just sit there so the hand pricers who like to give their customers a good deal, will undercut the already undercut prices.

I also don't understand the logic in removing the fragmentiser. I don't understand how it's slowing down the site. It's removing items and it only needs to remember how many crystals I have in its bank. Surely it's better than lots of different items sitting in shops, all with different prices.

Perhaps we could have some sort of "buyback" system where you could sell your restockable items for a guranteed amount, based on its rarity? Maybe bundle it in with the autopricer so its not too much of a strain on the system and/or put other volume limits as appropriate.

That way, users could mass sell items, restocking rarity would matter more, and a lot of junk gets out of the system. ...It would also need to be released in tandem with some good big money sinks to help curb inflation.

But at this point, I'd prefer to rip off the bandaid here and make some drastic changes. I've found that I really haven't quested since this wait got added.

And that's on me, ultimately. It shouldn't be a big deal, but its just enough extra attention I have to pay that its throwing me off my questing rhythm and I find myself playing Pokemon when I would typically be questing or getting RBP/Frags.(though I honestly restock for fragmentizer items)

If others don't mind this or don't like big game changes, I get that, too. I'm used to it with WoW, (lol clamweaving) but Subeta can afford small calculated changes more than a standard MMO. Just putting my two cents in, in case I represent a player pattern worth considering.

If the issue is a flood of cheap items (as well as the hoarding), what about letting more questers ask for 3 items? The only one I know who does is Maleria, and she might do it every 3 quests or so.

[edit]nevermind, i read through some more of the posts and found a bit more info.[/edit]

Agree with the recycle beast idea.

I also like fragging, so please don't remove it staff!

It would be fun if there was something like a frag a thon like how we do quest a thons!

also while i understand that fragging might not be pulling as much weight with the issue of having tons of items, i also do really like it and would hope it stays, its especially useful to get items that need to be in circulation back in circulation. if the issue lies with too many items i think that stuff like not making the shops rs as much or like limiting quest rewards would probably be a better solution, i seriously frag like everything thats under 100k that i ever get haha but im also usually not going out of my way to get items that i can frag (especially when i can use my massive amount of wizard tokens to vend stuff to frag)

I've come across this every now and then - when i decide to buy some boosters or books or the like and was highly irritated, blaming the whole hodgepotch the site is under. Some information would have been in place, so people don't question their sanity.

Oh yes!! I'd do a frag-a-thon!! Though we'd need to think of some cool incentives right?

I think we need to be careful about overcorrecting here. Have you seen how hard this userbase goes at any kind of -thon? There wouldn't be any items left and questing would be impossible if we were excessively incentivized to buy up everything. I have even noticed in the past few days that RB items are getting inflated and nearly depleted on the shop search and I can only guess it's because people are freaking out about possible changes coming to that feature (maybe prompted by this timer that makes it harder to mass buy). I think the presence of the Fragmentizer and other item sinks is enough; we just need to not have any unnecessary obstacles (such as the topic of this thread) to buying stuff up to frag/recycle.

Same applies to reducing the amount of items that stock in NPC-shops. Maybe this is a good idea but please be careful to make any such changes in a very gradual manner and keep a close eye on how small tweaks affect the market before rushing ahead with more drastic actions.

By the way, can someone please explain to me what even is the exact problem with "hoarding"? Everything the site does in the name of combatting hoarding just ends up rewarding hoarders and then we all start hoarding more for next time. But how does someone having 10,000 Free Beers even hurt the site? It's not like they're physical items taking up space somewhere. If the problem with hoarding is that it leads to price fixing (which I would say is sort of a problem), I think the simplest solution is to put a cap on how many of any particular item a shop can stock. Nothing ridiculous like 10 or something because we need to be able to mass-trade crystals and stuff. But like...maybe 100? Nobody really needs more than that of any item in a shop. If you have 10,000 you want to get rid of, you can put more in your shop when those sell.

Aside from the undercutting issue with the autopricer that has been getting worse lately, I really don't see any huge, glaring problems with the economy here. It seems fairly well balanced. Questing is profitable, the system provides a way to inject old retired items back into circulation, everyone can get almost anything they want with a reasonable amount of work. The occasional quest-a-thon or highly-desirable Crystal Shop restock seems like enough to keep the item supply under control when it starts to get a little out of hand. I don't think we need to go tearing things apart here or we are going to end up with more problems.

Maybe retiring some items from the main shops could help. For example, how many people want useless wires or broken light bulbs in a gallery or pet treasure chest? Both of these are 'other' which means you can't wear them, feed them to pets or give them to pets to play with. As they're only asked for in quests I don't think they'd be missed much and there would still be plenty of items for fragging.

Start with retiring a few items, see how the economy goes and then retire some more if necessary.

Do we really need the Mystery Box in Arctic Frost? How many people use it to buy a lot of cheap restockable items at ridiculous prices? The only time I use it is if a Major Drills quest asks for one item from the box.

So. I've been reading every comment on this thread and I'd say I'm definitely not the only person who doesn't like this new 'feature'... From what I gather, the problem with hoarding is that it strains the database because there is a large amount of items. That's it. I still don't see how this change fixes that since it only puts up a hurdle when buying pre-existing items. It'd be a different matter if it affected the NPc shops, since that /creates/ items. Buying from another user just moves items around or, even better, removes them because they're fragged or recycled. And as has been pointed out, this isn't stopping under cutting, even makes it worse as some said, in that it makes it take more time for people to buy the items that are too cheap, leading to more people autopricing at that reduced price. (The longer an item is at a certain price, the more people AP during that time. Simple.)

Having quests give out less items (or no items) would fix the huge influx of items being /created/. Since that's the problem that feeds hoarding. There are so many items priced so low that it almost makes you want to hoard. Heck, you almost NEED people mass buying to keep prices at a decent level. Which you wouldn't need if less items were created.

As for price fixing using the AP, a little birdie told me staff is scared to mess with the AP since so many people use it and if they mess it up, it'll upset people. Which is a fair point. But I've been thinking about this for a while and my suggestion for that would be; clearly announce when a change in the AP is going through (e.g. from 2am to 4am on X day), so that people can AP during that time at their own risk. That way those willing can test it properly, knowing they're part of the test. Is that an acceptable path, ? Because clearly something needs to change about the AP undercutting, since so many people have an issue with it. As someone pointed out in this thread, this wait time is a (failed) attempt at curbing hoarding, which isn't what people were having a problem with. It does nothing to fix AP price fixing, which IS the thing people have a problem with.

IMO this wait time needs to be removed as a failed experiment and something else needs to be done about the hoarding; less items from quests, change vending, change NPC shops, something. But that can wait. The AP needs something along the lines of a minimum price (never price any item below 3k) and/or a minimum % price drop (never price any item more than x% less) to be set as personal preferences. Or something else. I don't think you should do anything about at what price or how many someone wants to sell, because there are plenty of reasons why someone wants to price way lower (fire sale) or sell many of the same item (fought Eclipse 200 times).

I was on board with this change thinking it may deter the people abusing the autopricer and I would be safe to autoprice again. You know, I pay for it, I would like it use it without losing a good fraction of my potential profits to people gaming the system. However, these people don't seem to be deterred at all. It seems to hurt more than it helps.

I would rather see changes to other areas of the site - RB taking anything, maybe fragging accepting more rarities, autopricer changes that more clearly mark drastic changes in price, fewer items being restocked/awarded from quests, etc.

Yeah, that's along the lines of what I've always heard the problem with hoarding is, but...how exactly does that strain the servers? (Not pressing you personally for an answer, asking rhetorically I guess.) I'm not a coder but isn't Free Beer x1 taking up pretty much the same database space as Free Beer x100? It's still one item, with some number defining how many you have. I get that moving items around takes resources but in that case, the problem is more that we have tens of thousands of unique items on the site (and it's hard to call that a problem because it's one of the things that makes Subeta so awesome).

I agree that perhaps quests should give out fewer items as rewards. I think it would make questing terribly boring if none of them ever gave out any items. I love Library Quests because of those super rares (plus they wouldn't be worthwhile for just the sP given), Quentin's quests are only worthwhile because they give amulets, and it's great that event items can be given out by certain questers (e.g. pirate stuff from Carl). But I don't see any need for quests to give out two junk items in exchange for two other junk items...that doesn't reduce the overall junk. In fact, why even give out junk, nobody is excited to get it. You know the one quest that makes sense to give out common items? Sarah, since those are meant for new users who don't already have everything. Let her give out some cheap stuff, those quests are only available to a subsection of the userbase anyway. The quests that ask for junk should just give sP. Maybe the quests that ask for more expensive things (like Saggi) could have a small chance of giving a rare/super rare. I don't love the idea of quests asking for more items because Maleria asking for three is already tedious with that 5-second timer between shop purchases. If you want quests to suck up more items, let us do more quests per day. Battle Quests probably don't need to give out all those junk weapons either...maybe just the first ten levels or something could give an item, have the rest just give XP.

I also agree that vending is a huge source of unnecessary junk. The only reason I vend is to frag (more items - the cause of, and solution to, all of our problems!) or to get pirate stuff during Keel. Just don't let us vend so much I guess. Or as someone else suggested, maybe getting an item could be a chance instead of a guarantee, but I'm gonna go ahead and say that'll make me upset every time I use it because RNG sucks and no one will be happy about it. Best to find a solution that doesn't make us all want to riot, yes? But if I could only vend 100 times per day (guaranteed item each time), then it just is what it is and we'd adjust.

Again, I strongly suggest that any change under consideration is implemented one at a time so you can monitor the effects and undo it if everything starts to crash. Let's not change quests and remove vending and have a frag-a-thon, we'd have utter chaos.

I don't love the suggestion being thrown out of quests not giving out items at all, but less items I could live with. I don't typically just sit and restock - I get items mainly via quest rewards and by buying extras of restockables that I'm asked for in quests, and I make decent sP from selling those in addition to what I make from the quests themselves.

I'm also definitely still thinking about this in terms of Keel Hauliday though, where quests were a good extra source of new items for me - making Mori and Nori (or Pete, though I'm not sure I got any from him) give out one item instead of two would reduce the chances of getting a Freyalise item, but it would still be possible and would generate slightly less junk. Quentin gives you an item in addition to the mage amulet when they give you an amulet - that extra item could easily be removed

I would also support reducing the number of vends (maybe 100/200 or 125/250 instead of 250/500) - it's not something I really use regularly and even when I do, I end up just fragging most things I get from it so I'm not sure how much junk is generated sitewide through it. Though I'm curious if that would require a reduction in the number of Wizard tokens given out as well, since less would potentially be sunk into vending?

I quest for quest points, morty cards and items. The questers who give out sP only rewards I leave until last so I can skip them if I'm not in the mood for questing or the site is laggy. I'm terrible at restocking, so the only way for me to get rare/newer items is through questing. I would hate the few questers who give items to give out less, or none at all.

While I only ever use OD vending, I would think that reducing the vending limit would really annoy those going for the 50K vending achievement.

One of the things I love most about this site is that you can play it in so many different ways. Reducing those ways would suck.

So.

This talk of "autopricer abuse."

That sounds like a recipe for getting that yanked if you're found to undercut by a certain amount when the current autopricer pulls from the lowest usershop price, which can just as easily be (<-- APPARENTLY) hand-priced.

But that's my two cents.

I like how the Subeta economy works. Is it perfect, no, but it works very well. If you check the exchange rate between sP and CSC and the exchange rate between CSC and the US dollar, and inflation, the sP is an incredibly stable currency over the 5 years I've been playing. This is a massive achievement given how much trading, sP creation, and sP sinkage goes on every day.

It'd be great to see the credit given where due. Other games, including massively supported games like World of Warcraft, have problems with their economies we'd never see in Subeta. Other pet games have had inflation on various currencies over time that Subeta has avoided.

It's natural for newly released items to be worth much more than older items. Rare items that can be vended or obtained in battle are naturally worth less sP than rare items that can't be vended or obtained in battle. Items given out by questgivers more often are worth less; items that have no uses in collections are worth less; etc. The sP value of any specific item is something that users should expect to naturally fluctuate.

If you sell it for 9k and then see it for 50k the next day, that doesn't necessarily represent a loss for you; if you sell it for 50k one day and then see it listed for 9k the next, that's not necessarily a great windfall. These are the kind of things that happen in a small economy with hundreds of thousands of items - many more different items than players. I see a lot of lack of understanding of and engagement with the economy in these posts, and it's a little bit frustrating when I also see the sheer depth and functionality of the subeta trade currents.

Agree with those above that find the recycle beast and fragmentizer are good ways to keep items circulating and going in and out of service, turning into new currencies, etc. I think changing recycle beast so it requests different items from different users is a good potential way to go - it keeps it distinct from fragging (that accepts all items, which is why it's not a good idea to have recycle beast accept all items, as that'd make the two mechanics too similar) - but broadens the sink over a wider number of items. Another idea would be to have the recycle beast change each item out after it receives a given number of them. Like, once the beast receives 200, or 500, of that item, it gets swapped out a few minutes later for a new item asked for.

I don't mind the cool down after 5 items purchased of 5 seconds; it's no worse than the 5 second cooldown in restocking between every item, so it seems fine. But, I'm not sure it's having the desired effect.

If it discourages buying up the cheaper items, it leaves the cheaper items in place to be autopriced to for longer, which seems a bit potentially counter-productive. And several people above report seeing the opposite of the desired change in practice already. So it could be that the 5 second shop purchase delay's not working as hoped, and may be removed for that reason.

I also wouldn't like decreasing how much you can vend per day. Vending's the main way I get the pirate items, and lowering the limit would severely hamper my chances of getting those items.

Why not use Wizard Tokens to get the items which are currently released in the Crystal Shop? I've got over 79K Wizard Tokens because I rarely vend unless it's for a Drill's quest and I have a GA for the autopricer. The Token Shop isn't stocked very often and it's next to impossible to get anything from Blackheart Hollow. (Crystal Shop items could go in the Token Shop instead)