dud crate price change?

[Klimt]

Hi all! I was wondering if anyone else noticed that the crates used to sell for 15c but now they sell for 5c. I just find it a little frustrating because I was saving them to sell at the end of the month, but now they're worth significantly less. If any staff could clarify why they made this decision without letting players know, it would be really appreciated.

In the future, I hope staff will consider returning to empty crates and letting us sell them like it was during marvel month. I just think it would be nice if the effort we put into crating could actually be a decent way to make credits, as many of us aren't playing as many mini-games and a lot of the recent rares are extremely expensive.

Just my two cents! But some clarification would be nice. (:

Edit: apparently you can sell furni and pins now for 5c each. I’m still curious as to why it’s set so low — I think as players we deserve a bit more.

 

[Finch]

I was saving mine for the end of the month too! Definitely agree with you that it is frustrating...would have been nice to get a little warning....

 

[Dragonfly.]

I'm very frustrated they changed the price because, like you both, I was also saving them. 5c a crate, when you get more duds than real crates is insulting tbh.

 

[Kaye]

when i used to think ash was the most worthless item in the game.... it at least makes you more money than duds lol (and all the furni and pins)

 

[Klimt]

bump...I don't know how to tag staff but I'm still interested in a response from them.

 

[Finch]

bump...I don't know how to tag staff but I'm still interested in a response from them.

to tag staff you use the @ sign and type in their name

 

[Klimt]

@HOST_Duchess @VMK_Perdita @VMK_Kida

 

[Amy]

Due to a mistake, when crates first went out the drop rate was way too high and the normal crate mechanism of about 9/10 crates not opening at all wasn't included. This only lasted less than a day before the rate was dramatically reduced to compensate.

People didn't like this, and I agreed it was boring to sit around doing nothing waiting for them to appear only to potentially miss them. So, I thought of an alternative to the slow drop rate... First of all, I more than doubled the drop rate of normal (non-dud) crates. This means there's more than double the amount of non-dud crates there was back then. Second, I added dud crates so the drop rate was even more crazy, making the total drop rate about 7x higher than they were. The dud crates take up half of all crate spawns. The idea with them, was to have more things going on so you're not just sitting waiting for ages between crate spawns, this makes real crate spawns more spread out than expected.

Someone set a sell price on them initially, honestly not sure who, but they set it ridiculously high for what it was. Considering crates appear literally every 30-90 seconds right now, with 50% being duds and 50% being real, it takes no time at all to get a dud crate. Dud crates give you something to do, and let you earn some background credits. Due to all crates being winners, there are a lot of the lower ranked prizes out there, so we have to keep the credit sale price on those very low too. Otherwise, right now, there would be potentially millions of extra credits building up which is bad because the game already generated about 20% more credits than it uses up (inflation... except the payouts never change... which is baaaaaad). Increasing that disparity just causes a ton of problems, and makes trading and everything else worse down the road.

The alternative to this, was no dud crates, a lower spawnrate of normal crates (so you'd essentially be losing out on the dud crates). Surely you understand why we can't just make all duds normal, right? It'd kill any potential value of any of the items. Same with increasing sell prices, it would generate far too many credits and result in the value of credits dropping, making it even harder than it already is for people to buy rare items by playing minigames. Unfortunately in a game like this, it's easy to look at the individual side of it, but as administrators we need to look at the overall impact of how any action affects the entire population, economy, etc.

 

[Finch]

Due to a mistake, when crates first went out the drop rate was way too high and the normal crate mechanism of about 9/10 crates not opening at all wasn't included. This only lasted less than a day before the rate was dramatically reduced to compensate.

People didn't like this, and I agreed it was boring to sit around doing nothing waiting for them to appear only to potentially miss them. So, I thought of an alternative to the slow drop rate... First of all, I more than doubled the drop rate of normal (non-dud) crates. This means there's more than double the amount of non-dud crates there was back then. Second, I added dud crates so the drop rate was even more crazy, making the total drop rate about 7x higher than they were. The dud crates take up half of all crate spawns. The idea with them, was to have more things going on so you're not just sitting waiting for ages between crate spawns, this makes real crate spawns more spread out than expected.

Someone set a sell price on them initially, honestly not sure who, but they set it ridiculously high for what it was. Considering crates appear literally every 30-90 seconds right now, with 50% being duds and 50% being real, it takes no time at all to get a dud crate. Dud crates give you something to do, and let you earn some background credits. Due to all crates being winners, there are a lot of the lower ranked prizes out there, so we have to keep the credit sale price on those very low too. Otherwise, right now, there would be potentially millions of extra credits building up which is bad because the game already generated about 20% more credits than it uses up (inflation... except the payouts never change... which is baaaaaad). Increasing that disparity just causes a ton of problems, and makes trading and everything else worse down the road.

The alternative to this, was no dud crates, a lower spawnrate of normal crates (so you'd essentially be losing out on the dud crates). Surely you understand why we can't just make all duds normal, right? It'd kill any potential value of any of the items. Same with increasing sell prices, it would generate far too many credits and result in the value of credits dropping, making it even harder than it already is for people to buy rare items by playing minigames. Unfortunately in a game like this, it's easy to look at the individual side of it, but as administrators we need to look at the overall impact of how any action affects the entire population, economy, etc.

Thank you for taking the time to address this Amy!

 

[Klimt]

I appreciate your response Amy. There are just some points I want to consider.

Let's say, based on the drop rate you gave, a crate drops once every minute. That means players will get ~60 crates in one hour, both real ones and duds. Let's also assume that they only get commons and a few rares, but no hats. If they sold everything from their inventory that they won, as well as the dud crates, then they only get 300 credits per hour of consistent crating.

Compare this to marvel month, where the crates could be sold for 50 credits (I think?) and the commons inside sold for 200 credits. The drop rate for crates was different than it is now, but I can recall making about as many credits as I did in friendlies at the time if I crated in FLC. This amounted to about 15,000 credits per hour of consistent crating.

Now, I'm not saying that we should revert the pricing to what we had in marvel month, as that probably played a role in the game's inflation. I haven't been here long enough to really know how the economy was before marvel month so I can't comment on that. However, I can clearly see that we are getting approximately 1/50 of the amount of credits this month that we would've gotten in June. This is ridiculous, and regardless of the inflation in the economy, can't you recognize how significant that difference is? I think a better approach to crates this month would have been making all the crates real, and changing payout to maybe, I don't know, 7,500 credits per hour of crating? Trading is not going to get better as a result of crates/prizes being worth 5 credits. Other actions need to be made to reduce the amount of credits in the game, and they can't feel like a punishment or it makes the game not fun.

I hope you will consider this feedback in other crating events. I just ask that you please try to compensate players fairly for the time they spend crating in the future.

 

[VMK_Perdita]

Hiya

I know Amy already responded and all, I just wanted to thank you for being kind with your words. I appreciate that loads. Let me assure you everyone's concerns and suggestions are being heard and noted for future reference.

 

[Dragonfly.]

I understand you guys are trying to fight inflation, all games do, but this isn't doing anything to fight it. You need to take credits OUT of the game, not stop more from coming in. Otherwise the rich just get richer and the poor can't survive. I've personally given up on crates after only getting pink hats and no other rares, but I just think it's silly you guys justify the change as trying to fight inflation when you aren't actually doing anything about inflation (and offering to put 1 million extra credits into the game by a trivia event). Maybe having a higher spawn rate, a more equalized rarity in some of the prizes, and have us purchase keys to open them could help with inflation. If you had 30 prizes in the crates that were all about the same rarity but we had to purchase the keys to open the crates, you probably would have actually seen a change in credit worth. As is, people were offering a million for a flip showing you how worthless those credits are and those who can't win the flip or top hat have no way to buy them with the duds and other prizes that we did get. Just my 2c.

 

[pirateguitarchick]

I understand you guys are trying to fight inflation, all games do, but this isn't doing anything to fight it. You need to take credits OUT of the game, not stop more from coming in. Otherwise the rich just get richer and the poor can't survive. I've personally given up on crates after only getting pink hats and no other rares, but I just think it's silly you guys justify the change as trying to fight inflation when you aren't actually doing anything about inflation (and offering to put 1 million extra credits into the game by a trivia event). Maybe having a higher spawn rate, a more equalized rarity in some of the prizes, and have us purchase keys to open them could help with inflation. If you had 30 prizes in the crates that were all about the same rarity but we had to purchase the keys to open the crates, you probably would have actually seen a change in credit worth. As is, people were offering a million for a flip showing you how worthless those credits are and those who can't win the flip or top hat have no way to buy them with the duds and other prizes that we did get. Just my 2c.

I do agree. I've opened roughly 300 crates (little more or less). With the majority of Pooh/Tinkerbell/Woody pins I get... I'd rather just have them open to be nothing because it gets old seeing the same items repetitively. Crates are defiantly a good idea and is nice to have when the site isn't very active or waiting for events. I do think 5c is a bit low for selling duds/unwanted items, even 25-50 would be reasonable, especially since the time spent of gathering crates is usually hours.

If there was a "collection" of pins or items so to speak... like example: You open a crate & get a 1 out of 5 Pooh pin (or 2/5 pooh pin...etc) Opening them up to complete a collection of something would make it a little bit better to keep my attention. To make it more of a challenge or better for the game, non-tradeable items would force everyone participate in their own collection instead of trading/buying their way to get those items. That might not be a popular opinion, but if the game is gonna be putting a "high price" on all these items, like they do in real life... then you also gotta work for what you want, like in real life. Just IMO. (:

 

[CoralHibiscus]

Every time I open crates it's usually 50 crates per opening twice a day. The only things of rare value I've gotten the kida mask, candy corn minnie ears, and the candy corn cat ears. Everything else has been sorcerer hats, pins, pumpkin dining chairs, dinging tables, and side table. Now as of the 24th, I've opened 1,200- 2,400 depending on if I was able to collect 100 a day. This seems to be a little skewed to me.


Seriously considering building a pumpkin bonfire.

 

[CoralHibiscus]

Every time I open crates it's usually 50 crates per opening twice a day. The only things of rare value I've gotten the kida mask, candy corn minnie ears, and the candy corn cat ears. Everything else has been sorcerer hats, pins, pumpkin dining chairs, dinging tables, and side table. Now as of the 24th, I've opened 1,200- 2,400 depending on if I was able to collect 100 a day. This seems to be a little skewed to me.


Seriously considering building a pumpkin bonfire.

BTW I forgot to say yesterday that I actually really like the designs for the pumpkin chairs and tables. I just wish they weren't so common.