Based on how often I buy things from user shops and how often other people buy from my shops, I highly disagree about there not being giant circulation. Interest doesn't really create "giant amount" of sP for most people, I don't think? 100 mil in the bank only creates 8,219 sP of interest a day. And actually, there is a bit of a currency change going on -- sP has less and less buying power, which is causing csc to have more and more buying power, so I often see people paying with csc for larger purchases because it's easier.

We need both sP generators and sP sinks for the economy to work. Getting rid of all the sP generators is going to wreck the economy more effectively than anything else could.

I don't remember how much was sunk with treasure chest slots, pet zapper and buyable hair in the wardrobe, and they're a good start as far as SP sinks go.

But completely destroying SP generators isn't the way to go. I agree that battling might not need a SP reward, but to counterbalance this, the healer shouldn't need to charge.

Interest was seriously nerfed. I had a 8% interest rate when I joined, now, it's capped at what, 3%.

I think hundreds of millions were taking out circulation in the first few days of the tc slots and the pet zapper, keith posted the progress a few times.

I don't remember exact amounts, I just remember it was enough to make Keith really excited :p

While I don't disagree with a lot of the points made in this thread, it's really hard to judge what impact it really is making without seeing actual statistics and data from the site to make a judgement. From what I've seen, Keith is pretty good about keeping an eye on the outcomes of changes he makes. How many people are honestly vending (compared to how many you THINK are vending?). What impact - positive or negative - does putting something here or removing this there are things making? 99.99999% of the time users always anticipate negative impact (with no data to support it - see the entire feedback forums) so it would be nice to see every once in a while what exactly occurs over time and compare it to the original goal.

I'd really love to see some of the data Keith gathers or has available (I'm not demanding for them, just curious!). It's really hard for me to get in a big huff or pretend like I know what I'm talking about and throw in my suggestions and feedback. I'll be first to admit I don't know what some of you are talking about 50% of the time or where you get your theories from.

i retract my statement before.

i LOVE when people vending toooo much!!!! today, in less than 2 hours, i manage to frag hundreds of rare items from user shop while costing me very little. and i very selfishly did not buy them all, i ignore a few at very low price so when more vend (i know they will), i still can buy at low price. see how this is can be exploited?

btw, i remember back then, one day last year they tested some kind of automated buyer by the system to reduce undercutting if i remember it right. maybe this is a good time to implement it.

The last thing this economy needs is to have MORE SP injected into it.

I'd be curious to see how much money these systems are getting out of the economy right now.

The zapper, I assume is still doing a very good job at being a SP sink, and I can't see that one capping. New experiments are out on a semi-frequent basis, and new people join daily. I'm not worried about this one, obviously.

The treasure chest, I suppose it probably slowed down a little, but is still getting SP out. But, is it doing as good as MKB did?

Finally, the buyable hairs. I'd love to see actual numbers for the last 30/60 days for these. In my eyes, it's the least viable sink.

Thank you for reminding me I still need to buy 2 of those hairs!

woo, more money sunk, my job is done! :D

I disagree that we need sP generators. I'd get into it, but there'd be a lot of back and forth in regards to it and I just don't care to get into it. I'm saying that the use of the term "sink" is being incorrectly used and tossed around.

"Gold sink is an economic process by which a video game's ingame currency ('gold'), or any item that can be valued against it, is removed. This process is comparable to financial repression in real economies." Emphasis on removed and any item that can be valued against it ie CW's or CSC. In order to have an sP sink, the sP has to be removed from being obtained in the first place. Then we would be able to dwindle down the amount of currency circulating. Also, if sP is currently worthless, as stated, then why do people keep pushing for sP sinks? It becomes redundant and unnecessary.

But I've had this discussion over and over in my econ courses and if we could not get the whole class to agree to one side or the other, I doubt it will happen here. Online currency and economies are fascinating, especially when users get involved.

I would be logic that all of them slowed down.

If i look at myself: i zapped a week or two until i got every experiment i wanted, I got slots for every pet until the tc's were pretty much finished on day 1 and got all the hairs i wanted on day 1. So I'm personally not using any of the sinks any more.

Anyway I would love to hear how the sinks are doing, just out of curiosity sake. I'm still hoping for a fun and interesting sp sink. Not something like: ha, we are doubling the prices of things because screw you! But more like: here is something fun to spend your money on, like: buy retired plot prizes with sP.

And I want to add in on the topic and top of my first post: I love vending, so i'll be fucking pissed if someone decides to take it away. But I just think it shouldn't be encouraged to do by giving prizes for it.

The reason why people don't want to remove SP from quests and games is because of people who are just joining the site. Most of the money onsite come from there, and most of the people using them for their income. New and casual players.

Completely removing SP generators penalize people. Some should be removed (lol battle SP, and I'm starting to think weekend quests should go) but all of them? That's a terrible idea, because it only helps a minority of players who are already very rich, and makes the game impossible for new and casual players, the one that forms around 60% of the active userbase.

SP sinks are better for the economy than completely shutting off SP generating.

@ Sopheroo Go back a few pages. My opinion was to put the items into the Fragmentizer, not the vending machines. My comment to the other user was in reference to them using the term "sP sink" which makes me nuts to no end that people misuse that term. The point I originally made seems to be missed and left field is being focused on.

And again, the term "sP sink" refers to completely shutting off sP generating as more is being generated than eliminated. It does not mean gradual removal or revaluation. If you want to discuss further, take it to my comments so the derailment ends here.

tbh the only encouragement vending needs is the profit you make off of it. the machine i vend at has absolutely 0 exclusive items, but i still vend there several times per week because that's where i make the bulk of my income. if a vending machine is unpopular (read: unprofittable), the better course of action would be to remove that particular vending machine from the site and either moving its item pool to an existing machine, or better yet, just remove that item pool along with the machine (since obviously no one is interested in vending that particular item group).

putting exclusive items into vending machines that people don't care about only serves to crash out the value of the items in that machine because everyone is trying to sell their surplus that no one is buying.

i'm not sure that removing vending altogether would be the best course of action, but cutting down on the number of machines and the types of items being vended is probably our best bet.

Er... sP sink just refers to sP being removed from the site, not that AND sP generators getting shut off. You can decrease the total amount of sP in the site and still have an influx. You just need a larger outflow than influx. If you finish reading the wikipedia article you got that quote from, you'll see it backs me up.

Also, the reason why sP being worthless means we need sP sinks is that there's too much sP in circulation. Look at what happened in Germany after World War I. They made a massive amount of currency, and as a result that currency became worth very little. Prices shot up because their money had very little buying power - like how the sP cost of csc has shot up. Scarcity adds value.

I agree that battle quests shouldn't give out sP. Exp is already a great reward. As for weekend quests, what about making them last two days instead of three?

Oh, even standard battling gives SP! Like, if you defeat a challenger the first 10 times in the coliseum, battle quests or not, you get EXP, but also SP!

Things like gelatin wars get a lot of SP in the economy, even for the small challengers, because pretty much everyone can beat the minigelatins, and with the achievement to defeat 5000, people are going to pack as many battling as they can!

I don't want staff influencing item prices like that. :(

That's not right at all. A sink is anything that removes currency from circulation, and a faucet is anything that produces currency.

NPC shops are sinks. You spend money, and it vanishes into the ether.

NPC quests are faucets. You turn in some items, and they generate money.

If you don't have enough sinks, then the overall amount of sP in circulation continues to increase and leads to inflation, so item prices go up (see: CSC prices over the last few months).

Item faucets/sinks work the same way. Vending is a faucet that's flooding the economy with low-rarity items, causing their value to drop.

And these aren't mutually exclusive: deflation is affecting prices of low rarity items because of vending, and inflation is affecting prices on high rarity items that you can't vend.

I do agree that the term "sP sink" is being misused in this thread, but not for the reason you've given. People are talking about sP sinks in relation to vending, when we should be talking about item sinks.

I do and do not agree with multiple points that have been made so far...

I do enjoy the use of vending because it makes fragging much simpler in my opinion, but I do understand the issues it causes in the economy. And as stated, the crystal shop really isn't given enough attention to make fragging worth it. Even before it was recently cleared out, there wasn't really anything interesting available except for Edward.

In response to

• Honestly if vending was set to 10k an item, they might as well just get rid of the machines completely. No one in their right mind would take the (high) risk at vending an inventory full of worthless junk. In the end, if vending is trashed, I just hope all those exclusives end up obtainable by other means.
• Also, I'm not sure if "scrapping" was meant as not using Wizard Tokens altogether or just for the machines, but if the first, I do NOT think Wizard Tokens should be removed. 1) Many people (including myself at one point) make a majority of their sp of off selling them. 2) The Wizard Quests would be just another plain sp quest (boring). 3) The token shop would then most likely cost sp, and I (and I'm sure many others) have a ton more tokens lying around than pure. 4) Besides, how would you just clear out all those tokens from the site? It seems not only unnecessary, but way too difficult to accomplish.

Why on earth (or Subeta?) would they want to get rid of restocking? I understand it was taken from Neopets, but it's such a large part of the site. I probably spend about 65-70% of my time here RSing. If that goes away, how are we supposed to quest or acquire items in general? (Kind of off topic, but eh.)

Because they said not enough people restock compare to how many people get things from shop search, bla bla bla bla other silly excuses bla bla bla bla we prefer people to grind endlessly rather than make more restockable bla bla bla

YES, I AM BITTER.

I can understand why you are bitter. And "not enough people restock compare to how many people get things from shop search", seriously? What's wrong with getting what you need from shop search? Isn't that how most people look for specific items? Besides if you go through shop search and end up purchasing from the NPC shop, isn't that still restocking? And again, I myself spend about 65-70% of my time on here restocking (as in just refreshing main shops over and over), and many make their "living" off of RSing. And again, how are they supposed to replace such a large part of subeta? Like a couple of people said about the vending machines, completely getting rid of it would cause numerous of people to just rage quit (I know I would).

Also (slightly back on topic), wouldn't taking the suggestions from this thread, of one way or another cutting back on the vending, actually cause the inflation in the user shops to go down causing more and more people to RS from the NPC shops? Not sure if I'm just missing something, but it seems as though their excuses have quite simple and logical solutions.

Could we give vending machines the option of not returning anything? For example if there's a 60% chance of it eating your money, and you get nothing in return. That might slow down items, possibly people might vend less.