Planned ED price increases and changes in 2023

[+Colibri]

I plan on increasing prices for some of the items in the ED room, as well as maybe changing some things around (e.g. a thing or two could be moved to the token stone, and some things that are rarely bought could be decreased). This won't be right after new year's, maybe as soon as march, but yeah likely sometime during the year. Before each increase, there will be a month-long announcement about what is changing and by how much.

We're well funded, so in a way there isn't need for increases. But with all this inflation in the last 2 years, and ED prices remaining the same for the 12 years years (there was also some gradual inflation between February 2011 and 2020-ish), also the EUR gradually losing its value, I think it's necessary to do this eventually... otherwise if things just stay as they are, donors 10 years from now will get significantly more rewards than someone 10 years ago. So this is to prevent things slowly turning into micro transactions.

I was considering whether the ED prices should stay the same, with just the ED-to-EUR ratio changing, but I think it's simpler to keep that ratio, and easier to understand e.g. something that used to be 500 ED is now 600ED.

As I've been thinking, there are 6 groups of people to consider:
- Players, new or old, who generally don't donate (except maybe on rare occasion) and buy ED from other players. For you, the ED price might fluctuate a bit on [exex, I will keep an eye on that, I already sell batches of ED and might change volumes if necessary.
- Long term vets who already have everything, and don't consider donating (except maybe on rare occasion). For you, I'd say this is good news, because all your possessions will be retaining their value, rarity, or how hard it was to accumulate/build.
- Players, new or old, who donate on a regular basis. What you've built and accumulated so far will retain its value, while future donations will get you less rewards in nominal terms, but equal as everyone else, and in a way the same as it was many years ago.
- Newbies and medium level players who boost their progress with donations and ED rewards. I guess this affects you the most, that's why before any increase, there will be a 1-month announcement, so you can plan your upgrades accordingly.
- Pre-newbies aka people who will be joining after the price increases, well they won't know of the old prices so for them it's as if something was always like this.
- Players who play the basics of the game, doing BODs and going thru dungeons, without much fancy gear and not even a third house. You are basically not affected by this.


In a way this is not yet relevant, but with the current december 25% ED bonus, some things are cheapest as they will ever be, for the next 12 days while the bonus is active.


Posting this as a fresh topic (not on the Excelsior Daily) in case anyone has any questions, or maybe good ideas on this, any other shards/games that have recently done the same, etc...

Please keep this on topic, I haven't forgotten #freethehues #destash #monthlyauctions #makemagerygreatagain #infinitetodolist

[Joshuashw]

If the goal is to maintain value then why only increase hot items that sell instead of everything across the board?

Basing this on your comment to sell less desired items for tokens or less ed

[Kairoz]

I am afraid that this movement will accentuate even more one of the biggest issues of the shard: the lack of incoming players + the crescent number of old players leaving the shard, or recent players that give up cause they think to grow in here is too difficult. What if this discourages even more new players to come to the shard, making it feels even more restrict and less atractive? And the impacts on the economy... Wouldn't it feels even more plastered? Cause, after all, one would need to work even harder and longer, to be able to buy essentials like relayers deeds, change type deeds, bags of holding etc... How to balance this scale, without making the shard feels less atractive and demotivating?

Thanks

[MagicUser]

Exex
As someone who fits in category one. I am very interested to see how this will affect exex prices.

I saw your line about selling eds to bring prices down... I wonder if that will be done with other items? I realize that generally market fixing is not good for the economy, but the greedy capitolist in me wants to ask for some sort of floor and ceiling. Partially to prevent price manipulation and the other to prevent the market from just completely collapsing on any 1 item.

For example, reagents will always sell on npcs for 2 gold. Why have sell directs lower than 2 gold? Some items have npc backing.

On the other hand there are items with no backing, but supply and demand. Should they continue to exist when there is no demand left for them?

Should the exex menu fluctuate? Where undervalued items get thrown off and more common items get added? Is that more vendor territory?

As a side note, I noticed that hard shifts in the market norm seem to be permanent. For example at one point tokens were 2 gold per, its been 1 gold per for quite awhile and does not appear to be correcting any time soon. Someone just needs to force the market price to a value and then keep it there long enough for people to assume that is the new normal.

Tokens
More items for tokens sounds fantastic! There is so little to spend tokens on later. Its pretty much just try to convert them into gold once everything is blessed.

Notes
Also... destash. Had to look that up, that would be awesome.

[Silent]

With all honestly +C this is a terrible initiative. First of all, if there is inflation in world economy it might not be derived by people having more money rather that people paying more for goods. This only means that UOEX gets less money now than 12 years ago not the other way around

Making a house deed or a relayer 60 euros seems quite pushing it ...

Lets be honest, there is inflation has you said, the people are going to become more poor, the server is not thriving nor anything near that and you are planning to raise the expenses ? Does this seem logical at this moment?

Is this really going forward ?

[MarkM]

I think you should add like ten new items to the ED room it needs a new face lift! New items on the token stone is a great idea for the items that don't really move. I'm not really concerned about about the price hike people will pay it if they want it regardless and nobody is forcing anyone to buy EDs to purchase items.

[Wil]

I plan on increasing prices for some of the items in the ED room,

Hi +C,

If you're trying to control inflation on the shard, I think you may be planning the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

Consider the cascade:

ED Items cost more
Same demand for ED items
Hence greater demand for ED
Greater demand for ED versus gold means the gold/ED spread increases, maybe 70k or 80k.
So now the players who are done buying the ED room stuff and are spending mainly at auctions have more gold to spend
So the auction prices jump

This strongly advantages the folks who have their full relayer suits while disadvantaging anyone mid-game or new.


Now consider the opposite:

ED items cost less
Same demand for ED items
Hence lower demand for ED.
Lower demand for ED versus gold means the gold/ED spread falls, maybe back to 50k or even 40k.
So now the players who are done buying the ED room stuff and are spending mainly at auctions can't bid as high for the same donations.
So the auction prices fall. Moving them closer to in-reach for mid-game and newer players.

'course I could have it wrong too. Economies are complex. But it's food for thought.

Regards,
Wil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GXLVn73yRY

[Joshuashw]

I basically have my full relayer set and I would support reduction in cost of relayers. I have a 70 slot boh and would support reduced cost as well.

My account is old and built but I like the idea of helping newer players move along quicker. It’s already a lengthy investment to build relayers and get established.

There are a lot of things that could help the economy for sure like adding more items for tokens, improving hunting areas, improving demand for resources.

Ed prices are in a good place imo and have sustained value for a long time. I’m curious why the change is desired or wanted.

There are so many things that could be improved, I imagine ed inflation isn’t one of those.

[Muolke]

I honestly don't understand why the EUR-USD ratio is even a factor in these considerations. The value of currencies goes up and down all the time. Today the EUR/USD exchange is at 1.06 which is basically the same it was in 2015-2017.

While I do think there should be adjustments to the economy as a whole, I don't think ED prices need any adjusting. In the last 3-4 years we've seen the cost of an ED in game go up from the standard 50k gold per ED to 60-65k per ED. That alone makes everything 20-30% more expensive.

As others have said, I think that relayers as a whole should be a bit cheaper actually. Especially the first 2 relayers a player gets. Is there a way to make the first 2 relayer deeds an account purchases only 200ed instead of 500ed? Make them account bound so nobody can profit or cheat the system. New player development and retention is really the issue with the economy.

Another way to help the economy is do something that has been talked about ad nauseum and that's preventing recalling into TK to effectively kill the afk balron farming that results in 300-400 million gold generated per month. It's too easy to hit the play button and gather 500k gold per hour for 6-8 hours per day while you're either working from home or doing homework on a 2nd screen.

Finding ways to incorporate resources so that the pricing on those items stabilizes at a reasonable level is also necessary. Look at the price of ointments, logs, ingots, leather, and organics. Token auctions help with token prices. But we also should change the TC vendor award system to award vendor spots entirely based on how many tokens you put up and then have it sink 10% of each players token whenever there's a vendor spot awarded and you don't win it. Vendors have fees and so should that tc vendor award system.

Lastly, regular monthly auctions are going to be the biggest gold sink even if there's no uber items being sold. Taking out a couple hundred million gold from the economy will slow down the inflation we've seen with certain high demand items. Nobody here can say that paying 700-850 million gold for a totem is a good thing.

[Goliath]

Agree 100% with those who have stated how bad/senseless this proposed ED room hike would be. The problem with the UOEX economy has nothing to do with ED room prices, or euro conversion rates. The reason this economy is so fubar'd is because of the 15hr a day scripters and afk'ers. Make Balron/Lurg/Doom spots single entry, or fewer recall points and make people play the game. Scripts are intended to aid in gameplay, not play the game for you. Most of the high rollers who bid at every auction don't need to donate because they can make hundreds of millions a month while they watch netflix or do laundry. If they can't just click a button and make 5 million a day, they may actually start donating after spending 500 million at a single auction and no way to just cruise control for 3 months till the next auction.

If you hike EDs on relayers/weapon change deeds/level deeds etc., you will only drive prices further in the dumps. Who is going to pay 1100-1200eds for a BC relayer for an extra 2str and 3hp? Maybe years ago when it was easier to recoup that money, but it's just not feasible. It would also crush what's left of the market for mid-level weapons, people will just wait for all end game type items before investing in weapon changes and sc/sr5 deeds if you hike the price.

I know this point will be met with heavy opposition, but I'd like to see items at auction such as Totems, Ancient Weapons, weapon related deeds made account bound. These are true endgame items, there shouldn't be much need for turnover, or at least pay a heavy fee to remove the account bound tag for resale. The same 5-6 people just strong arm and dominate the auctions, only to see the items they buy end up for sale 5 mins later on their vendors. Let them do as they please with the deco and other items. Auctions are meant to be a gold sink, not an opportunity for the rich to just get richer. If they can make a couple hundred million off of the items they buy at auction, then why donate? You've made it so it's too easy to make too much gold without ever having to do anything that requires effort (for those who have an already huge bank/exex ledger), thus less donations. I'm not opposed to making a profit, but auctions are too few and far between, so until they become more frequent, it would be nice for people who actually plan to use the items to actually end up with them.

Increasing the cost of popular items sold for EDs will only serve to make an already top-heavy server, that much more top-heavy. You will drive vet players who are still trying to get more houses, pet slots, gear, away from the game out of frustration, and drive newer players away as well due to heavy cost to get started. There are other servers with just as much customized content, more staff presence, and more events. If you make this server unaffordable, eventually the people who are teetering on leaving, will do just that.

The bottom line is this...is UOEX still a community/family-based/player driven server, or is it strictly another retail outlet? Just my personal opinion, but if you do this, it's a heavy boot on an already choking economy and player base.

[ZeeeQi]

I have nothing more to contribute that hasn't been said already in the thread, just that i'm agree with mostly everything that's been said in this post.

Merry Christmas everyone.

[Johnny Warren]

I plan on increasing prices for some of the items in the ED room

A few items could have prices adjusted. The main ones that need changing are the +items to a BoH and combine BoHs. When you set the price of these you stated the price was what it was as that's what they had sold at auction for. Those items are too expensive, and need to be decreased in price.

I like the idea of moving some less used ones to the token stone.

I agree a but with Wil in that thus change might actually make it harder for newer players, something we don't need.

The playing field has always been changing. I have never even seen what's in Mistvale as it was created when I was already an old player, so I can't get any items from there. I don't think upping the prices to keep things fair is the most valid argument.

[Johnny Warren]

Duplicate post stupid phone. Sorry

[Turnabout]

What do you mean with inflation? Because to be inflation the needed condition is to see a significant increasing in prices, but the only kind of items with prices skyrocketing are those from auctions. Items we can loot are suffering a strong deflation; a bone crusher 2 years ago was sold for 250ed in max 2 days, today for 100ed and you have to wait a month to be able to sell one.

If with inflation you refer to the large amount of stationary money stacked by players who lost a big bid at grand auctions then... you need to give them what they want .

A possible solution (in my understanding, probably I'm plain wrong) should be selling only deco at auctions and integrate actual auction items (weapon deeds, ancient weapons, totems, TH, etc... etc...) inside the ED room. For example: selling 5 ancient war hammer for 150M each month is a lot better than sell 1 every 6 months at 400M.

IMHO.

[Wil]

Just for fun, consider what might happen if +C moved the Relayer Deed from the ED room and put it on the token stone for 24M tokens. At current exchange rates, that's a theoretically equivalent price.

1. Tokens would spike in price. Probably go to 3 or 4 gold.

2. ED would fall in price. Relayer deeds are one of the major repeating purchases done in ED, so no longer being able to buy them for ED would reduce the demand for ED. Fall at least to 50k. Maybe lower.

So how many EDs would donators then have to pay to get a relayer deed? Let's assume ED drops to 50k gold and tokens rise to 3 gold. The relayer deed price in ED would actually have increased to 1440 ED. But only to players who get there by donating... folks who fight a lot to pick up tokens would find it cheaper.



Now, suppose instead that you wanted to -stabilize- the exchange rate. You want ED to center around 50k gold and you want tokens to center around 2 gold. And you want them to stay there. How might you do that?

Well, what if you leave the Relayer deed in the ED room for 500ED, add it to the gold stone for 25M gold and add it to the token stone for 12.5M tokens? Now any time the exchange rate moves off center, folks can make money through arbitrage: buy the down currency (pushing its price back up), buy a relayer deed in the down currency and sell it in one of the up currencies.