Since the recent increase in drop rates for the Humming Power Crystals the volume has spiked as well as the general purchases in the crystal shop. One thing I noticed is that if you want to sell/purchase any large volume of crystals you end up getting a finger cramp clicking 5000 times. There really needs to be some merging of crystals like there is for wizard tokens. IE 10 Point Power Crystal, 100 Point Power Crystal 1000 Point Power Crystal and the like.

No Support. This is a bad idea.

The Crystal Shop allows you a second chance at some very nice stuff. When it was first introduced it was very controversial with the "things must always have value" crowd, because many of the things it gives you are retired or otherwise just not gettable. You either weren't around, or didn't have the dosh back when those items were first available. Without the Crystal Shop you could work to get the sP to pay those who actually had the foresight to have the item with extras to sell.

HPCs were always meant to be work and should remain so. It's much much much easier to get them than they have ever been. Everything on site "requires clicks". It's a virtual pet site.

The other issue I have with this is that HPCs should not be a major currency easily traded or speculated on in the open market. That's not what this currency is for.

Making Crystals more easily tradable will likely increase the value of the crystals overall as people looking to buy 5000 Crystals will be able to buy them now rather then sitting for 3+ hours buying one at a time. Increasing the value of the crystals will result in an increase the value of the items sold in the crystal shop as well. Right now the Crystals are going for around 3k, which is about 50% of what it was about 2 months ago before the tweaking of the drop rates from the Fragmetizer.

I support this. I think having the currency be more accessible would be a great step, personally, in opening the market up and making these rare items - often collectables - more accessible and more common in the marketplace. I really don't think this is a bad thing or will be of detriment to their value. Fragging is just... a lot of work, even with improved rates, it's still hours spent for one single item and I find it instantly discouraging. It's a mental barrier. Breaking down these walls and opening the market can only be a good thing. Fragging will still be very profitable for those who choose to do it, but convenience would also be a great option for the wider market.

I actually Frag like crazy, and I have no issue with the work required to frag items. I just would like to have the option of purchasing crystals from other fraggers that have done the work, or maybe sell my crystals when a sweet new item drops in the shop that doesnt interest me.

Definitely support this! One of the main reasons I don't bother with the crystal shop is that it takes so long to buy the crystals.

While I wouldn't mind this, I'm still on the fence.

It would definitely make it easier to sell crystals in bulk. On the other hand, it would also probably drop the prices of the crystal shop items while increasing demand for crystals and raising usershop prices for fraggable things.

Ultimately, it depends on what staff want to do with the crystal shop. Do they want to make it a Token Shop 2.0 kind of situation, or do they want to keep it as more of a slow-burner like the Recycle Beast?

fwiw, I never got the feeling that the crystals were intended to mainly be bought from other users in bulk. It always felt like more of a "slowly earn your own" kind of thing rather than something you can easily buy up or let pile up in massive numbers (like wizard tokens), and then forget about it until you need it.

No support.

Power crystals are easily obtained by fragging items, like any extra Morostide items you have sitting around. Staff just modified the drop rate for HPC, so that you are at least getting 1 crystal per item. Before the drop rate was modified, I could easily make 500+ power crystals in 15 to 20 minutes. I've never felt like they were a currency intended to be purchased.

The items in the crystal shop are typically retired items, many of them from the first few years of Subeta. I don't think these items need to become common place, because once they become common place their value will drop or they will just sit in user shops untouched.

I think the stuff in the Crystal Shop is sufficiently niche and hard-to-sell that it wouldn't have a huge impact on prices; there's a reason people choose to sell their crystals directly when, theoretically, they could make a much greater profit from selling items directly. Plus every time the shop is cleared, the same crop of items tend to reappear, showing they aren't entering the marketplace in any meaningful way. The slow process of procuring crystals is definitely holding things up.

On another note they shouldnt stock 500 of an item that costs 5000 crystals. That's 2.5mill crystals, no wonder nothing ever sells out and instead sits there and rotts.

I would definitely appreciate a way to buy/sell crystals in bulk, it'd be nice

God yes, I don't care what it is but please let us have some way of buying crystals in bulk! I'm dying over here trying to buy all the crystals I need XD I'd love it if they could be made like the wizard tokens, maybe.. It seems like it'd help the servers, too (less people loading the same page over and over).

I'm definitely for this, I'd much rather pay someone to get crystals for me than frag myself.

Another possible solution would be to add a loss factor to the conversion. Something like 110 crystals lets you buy an item that can be traded back in for 100 crystals.

No support. Crystals are really easy to earn yourself, especially with the new fragging increases. You can always buy the item on the Advertising or Wanted forums and specify if you only want to spend a certain amount per crystal. More importantly, I think if we could buy crystals so easily, it would make people less likely to frag items ...and we all know how hoarding tons of items burdens the servers.

I would be for this if the item itself was in the crystal shop at a slight premium. So not a straight exchange. So it would be like humming power crystal cluster and be worth say 500 individual crystals but cost 550. By being in the shop itself the quantity of it can be controlled as well to see if it would mess up the market though I don't think it would.

I dont disagree that the Crystals are easy enough to get from fragging. I get about 1000-2000 a day from just some light fragging. I don't ever sell my Crystals, I just purchase stuff from the shop. Making the crystals more easily tradable will likely have the opposite affect on fragging. Likely people will frag more as the price of crystals will likely rise caused by people purchasing them to buy items from the shop. Higher price of crystals will also mean the value of items sold in the crystal shop will not be deflated. Basically the main difference will be that the fragger will do all the work and then someone else can pay the premium to buy the crystals without having to do almost a similar amount of work as the fragger had to do in the first place by buying them.

I think they should be able to be a straight exchange (as in 50 individual crystals for a '50 crystal item') - I'm guessing that'd save the servers some strain when people want to buy 100s of crystals (one or two clicks instead of 100 clicks).

Yes crystals are easy to get from fragging, but that also means there are thousands of individual crystals then sitting in shops (one shop on shop search has 43,735 individual crystals in there o.O). Having a '50 crystal item' wouldn't stop people from fragging, but would also mean there's less individual crystals sitting in shops and would make it more user friendly (and server friendly?) to buy up in bulk ;)

Also, if I wanted to give some crystals to a friend, it beats sending 'spamming' them with 10 at a time through the gift center :P

Another reason I support this (I recently had to frag for two of the Trading Cards in there, can you tell?) is because being able to buy crystals individually is just... a false challenge. There's nothing harder about buying 50 or 100 or 1000 crystals, it just takes time, tedium and a bit of wrist strain. If HPCs didn't exist and points went straight into the vault, like Recycle Points, Quest Points, for example, it'd be different. But the 'physical' currency already exists and adding more denominations really isn't a big change.

Then lets bring back frag tagging if we want to stick to the original system :P. I will never ask to buy items out of a shop in bulk ever again if I can generate them out of thin air for ~300sp each.

If anything I think they should not release so many items at a time I or like not as many of one item only because I get overwhelmed choosing :D or like some of the prices are confusing there will be a item worth like 2k crystals and it will be worth less than an item you can get for like 1.5 crystals its not good when you cant to sell something but all the prices are different.