Step 1) Make easily tradable denominations of HPCs Step 2) Rescale the rewards for HPCs per rarity Step 3) Keep releasing items in the crystal shop

How to Rescale the rewards

I put this is spoilers because the details are not that important, and didn't think that should be the bulk of the discussion. The important parts are that high rarity items become more worthwhile, and using the price of HPCs as a lever on the economy. What follows is just a brief explanation of what a rescale could look like.

Really there are a bunch of different ways to scale it, and its something that might need ongoing tweaking depending on where crystal prices eventual stabilize out at. I would say the magic number would be one that ends up valuing random R99s at ~5-10mil worth of crystals. The exact numbers here aren't as important, but this would be an example of where to start.

I would make the first pass of balance look something like this: R0-R40 1 Crystal R40-R60 2 Crystals R60-R80 3 Crystals R80-90 5 Crystals R90-95 10 Crystals R96 15 Crystals R97 18Crystals R98 20 Crystals R99 25 Crystals

And then maybe scale that up as time goes on and markets settle from the initial shock of the change.

I think eventually you want R99s to be worth about 50 Crystals at 10K each to make restocking interesting (making a generic R99 worth a min of 5mil, and market prices would probably be 8-15mil). Although exact numbers again are hard to predict

So lets take a look at some of the likely effects these changes would likely have on the economy, over the short and long run.

If the people on the shop search converted all the HPCs on the market to high denomination HPCs, they would likely sell out almost instantly. This would probably cause a potentially huge price spike in HPCs initially (I'm guessing between 15K and 25K), which would even out over the course of a couple of weeks, probably eventually leading to at least moderately higher prices overall (I would hope between 5K and 10K long term).

The huge price spike would likely lead to the destruction of a huge portion of the restockable items on the site, which would essentially end up resetting the site's quest/restocking economy, for a couple of days to weeks quests would probably be very wonky, but people would also have restocking as a viable source of income (even buying random r40 items at 20K profit each would be a viable strategy while quests rebalance themselves).

With the reset in the economy, restocking would be much more profitable as almost every single item on the site would probably find a new price point that would likely be much higher.

Over the weeks to months range, the R0-R80 market would likely settle back down to where it previously had been, while R80-r99 items would be much more scare and be at much higher prices.

If a strategy like this were implemented, you could create a huge lever on the economy to crank it up or let it ease off by monitoring the price of a single resource (HPCs). It would make high rarity items keep and maintain their value because as the market floods, everyone would dump them into crystals, self-regulating the supply.

Some other things might need to be tweaked along the way (I think there are several high rarity challenger loot items that would probably need to be switched over to R170, or else leave in place a highly exploitable source of crystals/sP).

Some quests might need the be tweaked in the short run, maybe ramp up or down the number of high rarity payouts from some of the quests.

With the crystal shop set to clear at the end of January, and crystals on the shop search at a relative low (I'm pretty sure this is the lowest supply on hand that I have ever seen.), this would probably be an ideal time to maximize the impact of something like this too. (you could buy them all for less than 150mil right now)

Then as long as with step 3, you keep demand for HPCs above 10K per crystal, the economy should keep humming along, and with the increased restocking should even start to make a dent in all the excess sP in the economy. You could also probably raise the prices in the main shops to speed something like that up. Increased demand for sP should increase demand for people CSC to sell for sP, and give a (probably small) bump to revenue.

So everyone restocks, the shops are empty. No one quests anymore (except for a few diehards who actually like it), because the expense vs reward just isn't worth it. Everyone converts to crystals, but no one is buying crystals because its so much cheaper to snag any old random item from shops (if you can find anything in the empty shops) and make your own crystals. Or generate items in a bunch of different ways (there's tons that don't involve sP). So the crystal price drops and its no longer profitable. People don't go back to questing, because its still too expensive to quest. People stare at their screens doing nothing...eventually moving to another website that lets you do stuff.

Economy solved!

Seriously, if the economy was that easy to solve, it would have been done already. And as a matter of fact, this has already been tried - with Wizard Tokens as the standard. It didn't work then. Its not going to work now.

Also the fact that basically every active player got a GA (for a total of 20 days) and, presumably, autopriced took a staggering blow to the prices of everything and will probably take a fair time to reset, unless subetateam goes on an absolute madlad spree and fixes it.

i personally dont feel the economy is broken. APing changes some prices, but making one currency be the crutch, as pointed out by others, won't do anything to help. it comes down to subeta is a pet site and too much thought is being put into this. play for fun, not for profit.

There's still a problem that you can AR for free fragable junk. The r80+ market won't move unless the price per item is negative.

I'm all for a higher denomination of HPC, though. (Somewhat related, I'd love an option to turn in the crystals automatically from fragging).

I think the root problem is larger than that though, and that's the lack of a market for "rare", or "Crystal shop tier" items to begin with. Are there enough items that people care about to keep the demand high? It works with Wiz tokens to an extent (Ive been around forever and still always need/want tokens), but there's a lot more base game functionality to use up tokens outside of buying preexisting items.

(Minor thing: last I checked, r99s tend to have a way lower median price compared to other r90+ due to RE's and free shop releases, I don't understand the proposed inflated HPC payout of them)

This proposal is missing a lot of underlying assumptions that need to be unpacked. I don't understand it.

It would be easier to read and understand if the TLA for HPC was explained. It is my belief the OP means Humming Power Crystals ?

It isn't just that the currency WT was manipulated in the past, and full-disclosure twelve years ago when WT were free-market I made a ton of sP arbing their value. Also for about three years the site took a deflationary stance and sP value was also manipulated and with a huge shop (which I had) I could arb value of it into other currencies and items. Site-sponsored anipulation of HPC it is certainly possible. I did read the OP and teh spoiler and it looks seriously complicated. But why?

This would be easier to understand if we understood what was "broken" about the Subetan economy? To me, the economy here is a toy-economy and not a RL economy. It doesn't need to work any particular way other than to "be fun".

(I am guessing) It appears the OP thinks that certain items need to have a fixed, game-supported subsidy for certain privileged items whether anyone wants them or not? In what way is this "more fun"?

yeah, would anyone mind explaining what exactly needs fixing about the subeta economy to silly people like me who don't really see a problem?

I can't fully answer this, because I don't think the system is a broken as some people feel it is.

However, here goes:

1. the basic idea is that the site needs an "economy" - people need to want to buy stuff so they'll do activities to earn sP so they can buy it. This keeps the site active and hopping, something everyone wants.

2. If things are too expensive people will "give up" and not play here.

3. If things are too cheap, people won't have any incentive to sell their stuff and spend time here earning sP to buy other stuff.

4. So you want a happy medium, earning sP is not too hard or too easy. Stuff gets made that a lot of people want to own, but that many don't care about so they're willing to sell it to people who want it.

Ideally, you want people playing and having fun, not "working." So earning sP should happen automatically while you play and enjoy the site activities. But you need to make it so that while playing and having fun you don't earn quite enough to get everything you want, so that on top of the fun you also do a little work. This keeps people coming back and keeps them active while here. Keeps the interest level high.

Right now, its a little too easy to earn sP. There are also huge advantages to players who have been here longer. Both of these issues need some tweaking, and the site has made some errors in that tweaking which has made some of the problems worse. Its needs slow, careful, surgical precision to fix it right.

On top of that "economy" is not a simple thing. Even in a fake world like Subeta, no one really understands it. And there are cascading effects. You make one change that you think will help, and sure it helps, but its not isolated so it affects other things, often for the worse.

The problem with the economy has many factors, the most revelant one being the decrease in total number of users as there once was on the site. Personally I don't think Ideas is bad its just one small step in helping a sector of the economy and that is the crystal shop and the influence of releasing old items.

Sectors of the economy have many folds, starting from the ones that can be easily done to the ones that need some work in the sense that requires capital etc. [ol]

Questing

Restocking

These two affect one another for the most part, if users don't do one or both. It affects the system and economy overall. If hardly anyone restocks, prices skyrocket for items and people fail to quest. If people fail to quest then, items in shop devalue in price. Its a vicious cycle with these sectors and both need fine tuning. In the aspect that one should be rewarded for restocking and one should be rewarded for questing. To which if a user does both, should be aptly rewarded for taking the time and effort to do both tasks.

Games Section

Event Currency

sP Sinks

Would more so be centered around the MC, Specialty Restocking Shop, Antique Shop etc.

Wizard Token Market

Recycle Beast Currency

Crystal Shop

I don't think these changes are going to cause a drastic effect on the economy as this is a just fraction of the market. The types of items introduced here affects the market for humming power crystals.

I think the main ideas here are pretty solid for helping increase value for this sector of the market. What I like is the proposed changes to the values of restock-able crystal rewards. I think a few of these might be too high in my opinion, unless they don't always give those amounts. Take the r99 proposed ratio rewards, should be 1-25 Crystals instead of a flat rate. These changes would increase the demand and add value back to restocking and value into restockable items. While also making it a chance of getting max value out of all items.

I know you didn't want to make the main focus of the ratio of Crystal/Item rewards but I had an interesting idea for them. I think for the most part anything above r101 should remain the same but like I mentioned previously I think your ideas to increase restock-able rate is rather smart idea. Since while I listed restocking at the lower end of the spectrum its something that affects the site as a whole.

Also how does this idea intrigue you, R0-R44 1 Crystal R40-R60 1-2 Crystals R61-R84 1-33 Crystals R85-90 3-5 Crystals R90-95 5-10 Crystals R96 10-15 Crystals R97 16-18 Crystals R98 20-25 Crystals R99 18-20 Crystals

The reason why I changed the r99 and r98 around, is because while r99 is the highest rarity to restock, r98's in my experience over the years of restocking are more rare to restock. Since the system seemed to favor them that way.

Human Avatar Market

The second to largest area of the site, sure it may have the most amount of people associated with the site but for the most helps set a standard of prices. However if we removed the CW Market from this aspect it would be a small niche market.

Battle Market

This is the second biggest, sector of the site and the one area where most of the value in items come from.

Cash Shop

The biggest sector of the site, and one that need fine tuning for the most part since in my opinion this contains one of the biggest sectors of the site and part of one of the largest sectors of the economy. The Human Avatar Custom Wearable Market and other niche markets included within this sector.

I guess what I would define the problem with the economy very flat. The only way to really make sP in the current economy for 99% of people is to do you a number of allotted quests per day that basically give an almost predetermined amount of sP per day, and that is the only way to reliably make sP for 99% of people. There are a few other tricks that individuals can do as well, but on a game-wide level, the only real viable strategy is to grind out quests. The problem with this is basically that without ways to make other moves in the game your wealth is directly tied to how long you have played the game or how much money you have spent on it. There is no element of skill to it. If I was someone looking at a game, why would I want to play a game where it is only based on time, and money, with no catch-up mechanics aside from spending money.

Don't get me wrong, I hated restocking even back on neopets when it was super profitable. It's not my thing. However, it is a mechanic to give a wide range of players an opportunity to make sP by learning a market and capitalizing on that knowledge. I think it also sets up some interesting dynamics with the higher rarity items as well. If you have a very high scale like that 99% of r90+ items will probably be cashed in for the HPC value, since it would theoretically be a very quick transaction. But you set up a high transaction cost, low volume resale market too. Anyone could cash in Ancient Blue pot for a couple mil in tokens, but at what price does it become worthwhile to hold onto it and sell it to another user? That's an interesting question, and an interesting game, and another potential catch-up mechanic in a high transaction cost, low volume market.

Then the 3rd thing it does is let people grind out fragging for a profit. Searching out underpriced items and fragging them for profit, which would be another catch-up mechanic.

By getting everyone to frag and restock, you work through the glut of useless items floating around, you get people restocking and removing sP from the economy, and you recreate some of the economic games that were present several years ago, that have pretty much died in the huge glut of items and sP that currently exist today.

Back when they did the quest revamp a few years back, a big part of it was supposedly writing the code so that if prices rose, the quest rewards would rise with them. I know it was scaled back slightly since people initially abused it for a couple days and were making 1.5bil sP per day manipulating prices. but I think they switched it to an index, instead of the last price, so I think quests would actually auto-adjust their rewards. They didn't give the exact details of what they did to fix it, so we couldn't go immediately break it again. But either way, most of the quest ask items are under r80 if i'm not mistaken, and r80 might initially spike a little, they should settle back down to similar prices as they are today, meaning long term cost to quest probably wouldn't be affected a ton.

As for the rest of your post, there are markets and then there is the economy. When I talk about the economy, what I guess i'm trying to say is the engine for growth. The battle market, the wearable market, ect. Those are all part of the economy, but they don't really affect the core of the game, they are the outputs of the economy rather than part of the engine itself.

In the past the engine of the economy was speculation, and driving hype for items. People have clearly shown distain for the model. But the economy still does need an engine that can get people where they want to go in the game. Right now the only engines are time and money.

I think quest sp output has been changed recently, at least on my side. Whereas before you could earn between 6-7mil per day its dipped to 3mil, and thats with GA and doing all quests. I think they are slowly tweaking things in the background, as I'm not profiting as much as quests as I did before.

I don't think restocking would be see as needing skill, though. It's just luck of the restock, sinking time into waiting for good items, and having a faster internet connection. It's another form of sitting and waiting, the way I see it.

There are a lot of things that could be improved on Subeta, but I'm going to have to agree with the majority here and say that the economy, as it stands? Isn't one of those problems.

Yes, there's a lot of excess chaff items and sp floating around, and yes, time spent in the game is an obvious factor. But that's almost always going to be the case, and I feel like rocking the boat on what is honestly a pretty stable part of a notoriously unstable site is just asking for trouble.

Also, as points out, there isn't really any "skill" involved in restocking, especially considering things like timezones, ping, site stability, and just pure luck. Basing the economy so heavily on restocking and fragging would lean away from accessibility. Quests might not be the most "interesting" way to keep a market flow going, but they also allow pretty much anybody to particpate at any time, purely based on their own dedication to making money. More importantly, they work. Stability is an important factor here, especially seeing as we're only just getting over the chaos of the server merge.

All in all, I don't feel like the Subeta economy needs much of a shake-up. Some fine tuning here and there, sure, but rewriting the established "meta" for lack of a better word will only upset the site even more than it's already been; something that Subeta does not need.

Nawh, I was just listing out the main compontents of the system but I understood where you're coming from. Questing and Restocking are the main sources of the model of the current economy. While I listed them at the lower end of the spectrum they in my opinion are the linchpin of what really kept the economy afloat for awhile. With restocking since I did so in the past prior to very long hiatus and coming back to restocking in the current system.

The only reason why I listed a few of these other sectors of the economy because of newer released items, and how if the newer released item falls within one of these sectors I will list below affects how quickly it retains its price through being released.

I think I find the current system alarming in that issue that one can easily make quick cash selling newly released items in a short period of time before the eventually falls of the prices of these items. To which here are the sectors I see affecting prices, on restock-able items currently.

1. Wearables
2. Weapons - I haven't seen one of these released in years but in my opinion might affect prices higher than wearable items.
3. Collection items, like to which certain collectable items affect the prices of them differently
4. Item with no use other than hoarders/for treasure chests.

If you look at the releases of items over the past year, 90% of those items have been wearable in some shape or fashion. Its because for the most part these items haven't devalued as quickly and badly as some of the other sectors in releasing items that restock.

Also, upon coming back I noticed that drastic price decrease of not just all items but even items of Super Rare rarity. Which there is probably 10% of the current restockables super rare rarity are over 100k and then a fraction of the value is above one million. To when I left I had all super rare item on my wishlist and I would only buy r86-r99 items when they were below 100k and that wasn't the case for 90% of those items. Even the rarity of rare was that case as well.

I don't really see a benefit in restocking full time as I once did, or mainly for items above a certain rarity now as is, because restocks from r80 to r99 are few and far between. Meaning you need to devote hours to a few certain shops. With the hope they'll restock something worth value that someone wants.

To which I think this change to how crystals are awarded for restockables may help change a shift in the value of a good chunk of items. Also I kind of wary the the larger demonetization of crystals but maybe a test phase can be done

Its definitely been changed, and I think they did it in a very good way. They added Morty Cards to the reward system, then reduced quest rewards.

I definitely noticed the trend, but keep questing because with the addition of Morty Card, quests have become profitable (useful, helpful) even with less upfront rewards. If I lose sP on a Library, maleria or saggy quest, I still have a chance at a Morty Card to make up for that. Simply the chance of getting a card is enough for me to spend sP and complete a quest I would have quit before the cards where an option.

That's the kind of tweaking that's needed! Subtle, small changes that the user base doesn't freak out about.