Donator and Premium status

[Thierryu1]

Again, hey hi.
I was wondering if we could maybe think of something to stop dono and prem status' to become so damn expensive.
As a new person I can imagine that it's not fun to waste away your time making around 18-23b to buy just your dono and prem stat.

Can we maybe just add them to a store for a set price of like 4-5b ea? In my opinion essentials like these should not be items that are made to profit on by rich people.

Open for discussion of course.

[Empty]

support.

[Iron kaite]

Support this 100%

[Church]

I foresee this having a large impact on the price of donor credits. Having a definitive credit to cash ratio set by having one of these items having an inexhaustible supply on an item previously only purchasable through credits will affect it in some way.

Not to say I think this is a bad idea, I do think the statuses are too expensive at the moment.

[Raj]

Have to agree ngl

[Rapsey]

Can we maybe just add them to a store for a set price of like 4-5b ea? In my opinion essentials like these should not be items that are made to profit on by rich people.

Although this is the easy way out, I don't think it's the right solution. There's not much point calling them donator statuses anymore when everyone just buys them from a shop. These things were created for a reason, and it wasn't to create a 5B hurdle that every account needs to get past. If we're gonna start dispensing them from an in-game shop then we might as well remove them from the game, they wouldn't serve any purpose anymore.

I also don't think your conclusion is correct, that they are being profited from by rich players.

I'm curious why this is happening. As far as I can tell what happened is this:

• We did a few ultra rare sales with large profit margins
• Veterans realized they could buy credits for 5M+ each and still make a profit, so they did
• Donators realized they could get 5M+/credit
• Donators now try to get 5M+/credit all the time, i.e. by selling a 2000 credit status for 10B+

I'm not exactly sure what to do about this. Frankly I'm even more puzzled that this didn't happen years ago. You can't really blame them for it, apparently people think it's worth paying 10B+ for a status so why wouldn't they ask for that much. Sure we could lower the credit price to 1000 credits and hope that will bring down the GP prices but I doubt it. Even at 1000 credits, as long as other players are prepared to pay 10B+ for a status they will just keep asking for that much. That's basically how economy works, buyers pay as low as they can get, sellers charge as much as they can get away with. The prices won't go down until the market refuses to keep buying them at those prices.

I'm also not sure why credits are still being bought for 5M+ each. There hasn't been a rare sale for a long time now and it's not even sure that there will be another one, or that it will have the same profit margins. Why do people keep buying credits at this inflated price that started off only being done by people prepping for ultra rare sales? Is this another one of those "prices can only go up, not down" that seems to define our economy? I can understand the seller's reasons, of course they ask as much as they can. What I don't understand is what possesses the buyers to go along with it.

[Thierryu1]

Can we maybe just add them to a store for a set price of like 4-5b ea? In my opinion essentials like these should not be items that are made to profit on by rich people.

Although this is the easy way out, I don't think it's the right solution. There's not much point calling them donator statuses anymore when everyone just buys them from a shop. These things were created for a reason, and it wasn't to create a 5B hurdle that every account needs to get past. If we're gonna start dispensing them from an in-game shop then we might as well remove them from the game, they wouldn't serve any purpose anymore.

I also don't think your conclusion is correct, that they are being profited from by rich players.

I'm curious why this is happening. As far as I can tell what happened is this:

• We did a few ultra rare sales with large profit margins
• Veterans realized they could buy credits for 5M+ each and still make a profit, so they did
• Donators realized they could get 5M+/credit
• Donators now try to get 5M+/credit all the time, i.e. by selling a 2000 credit status for 10B+

I'm not exactly sure what to do about this. Frankly I'm even more puzzled that this didn't happen years ago. You can't really blame them for it, apparently people think it's worth paying 10B+ for a status so why wouldn't they ask for that much. Sure we could lower the credit price to 1000 credits and hope that will bring down the GP prices but I doubt it. Even at 1000 credits, as long as other players are prepared to pay 10B+ for a status they will just keep asking for that much. That's basically how economy works, buyers pay as low as they can get, sellers charge as much as they can get away with. The prices won't go down until the market refuses to keep buying them at those prices.

I'm also not sure why credits are still being bought for 5M+ each. There hasn't been a rare sale for a long time now and it's not even sure that there will be another one, or that it will have the same profit margins. Why do people keep buying credits at this inflated price that started off only being done by people prepping for ultra rare sales? Is this another one of those "prices can only go up, not down" that seems to define our economy? I can understand the seller's reasons, of course they ask as much as they can. What I don't understand is what possesses the buyers to go along with it.

I think it has become the norm to buy the status because it's the progression of the game. I am sure that a lot of people don't wanna buy the things for 10b, but sadly they have no choice if they want to get their characters to max and comp. The removal of the Status' and instead using something different to decide when people get their donator and premium bonuses, be it your total level, your time played, objectives completed would for me work fine too. Though obviously, you will not agree with this seeing as it loses an iconic thing from PKH and from the donator shop.

About the rise in donator credits I think it might have to do with the following;
Since the last ultra rare sale it has become clear that people expect it to come again, maybe because the timeframes in between the two former ultra sales were quite identical, maybe because not all the oldschool rares have been put in the shop, or maybe even because people think Mike and You need the money for the server and yourself (Rumors I heard on the street, jokingly and seriously).

Maybe adding them in a shop is not the best way. Maybe blaming it on the rich people is not very fair. But I do know that I would be bummed out of this server if I had to slog my way to 18-23b just to get some boring progression ranks done. I still do think there should be some sort of solution to this.
Open for ideas and discussion as usual.

[The underdog]

I'm not exactly sure what to do about this. Frankly I'm even more puzzled that this didn't happen years ago. You can't really blame them for it, apparently people think it's worth paying 10B+ for a status so why wouldn't they ask for that much. Sure we could lower the credit price to 1000 credits and hope that will bring down the GP prices but I doubt it. Even at 1000 credits, as long as other players are prepared to pay 10B+ for a status they will just keep asking for that much. That's basically how economy works, buyers pay as low as they can get, sellers charge as much as they can get away with. The prices won't go down until the market refuses to keep buying them at those prices.

I'm also not sure why credits are still being bought for 5M+ each. There hasn't been a rare sale for a long time now and it's not even sure that there will be another one, or that it will have the same profit margins. Why do people keep buying credits at this inflated price that started off only being done by people prepping for ultra rare sales? Is this another one of those "prices can only go up, not down" that seems to define our economy? I can understand the seller's reasons, of course they ask as much as they can. What I don't understand is what possesses the buyers to go along with it.

Different ways statuses come into and leave eco, higher credit demand because of mystery box price change, mboxes being the best source of statuses, irons now also joining credit demand, druidic bis equipment comes from mboxes, multiple donator store related updates and nothing pointing to you not wanting the bank account bumped up like that again so a sale is more likely than not. It's also the strongest currency ingame, limited supply.

Why wouldn't a lower donator status price cause the price to drop? If you pay 5m a credit and you put it for 1000 credits in the shop. Why would you pay 10b for it from a donating person if you can buy 1000 credits for 5m each and have it for 5b?

[Thoby]

I don't think that the ultra rares primarily dictate the 5m pricetag of Donator Credits, but I think the general demand has risen quite a lot. This likely has to do with the update that happened on the 20th of December. Keeping general economics theory in mind (supply versus demand), a few significant changes have been made to the Donator and Premium statuses:

With the removal of the purchasable statuses for ironmen, a heap of new demand has appeared. Lets say that our player base is 75% regular players, and 25% ironmen (rough estimate). This change alone would generate about 33% more demand for the statuses by our ironmen community. Next, we also see the biggest change for the supply; statuses cannot be removed after they are applied. When they are 'removed' it now returns 5b in cash instead of an item. This has had a heavy impact on supply, since each new player/account that wants a status requires someone to donate for the credits. Before, it was possible that some statuses moved from owner to owner for 10+ years, but with this update its lifecycle ends when applied to a player. I cannot put an estimated decrease of supply alongside this, because I don't have the numbers, but statuses are removed quite often.

These changes, alongside the increased demand for more bank spaces and other items, has impacted the price of the Donator credits. I sorta think this was intended with this update, to at least give the Donator credits more value (and thus more incentive to support the server). If we'd put the statuses into some kind of store, we might as well revert the update.

It's actually a complex problem. On the one hand you don't want players to feel hindered by the high prices, but on the other hand you want players to support the server. I personally think we should tackle the underlying problem: stop the statuses from being essential for game progression (remove them from the Max & Comp cape requirements). However, this would require a mentality change, because we have always treated the statuses as a general step within the game progression.

EDIT: Whoops, just saw The Underdog's reply above me, summing it all up. O well.

[The underdog]

I think just put it in the shop for like 1500, allows for a reasonable ingame price whether credits fluctuate to 3m or 8m and it'll adress the issue in the short term. Still allowing it to be worth donating for.