Item How to Mitigate Inflation: Offering Time-Limited CGS (From Olaf's Quest)

Why do prices keep rising? Fundamentally, from an economic perspective, it is because the supply cannot meet the demand.

However, there's something odd here. The number of new players is decreasing, yet the price of low-attack CGS items, which are meant for newcomers, is rising.

I don't know the exact cause of this phenomenon. But there is a way to alleviate it.

The solution is to increase supply and the proportion of newcomers.

Doesn't the demand increase as the number of users increases? Therefore, here's a method that addresses "increasing supply while solving demand."

As stated in the title, it is to provide time-limited CGS. "Newbie starting package" Specifically, offering 16WA gloves, 10WA cape, and 7WA shoes for one month through Olaf's quest.

Currently, newcomers are experiencing the worst period in the history of Royals. Due to changes in CPQ2, they lose interest as their options for comfortable leveling up are reduced, which leads to a decrease in the use of content like PPQ and EPQ that can be utilized by first-time character creators. This vicious cycle continues with subsequent content such as Zakum and Krexel.

Even if they somehow reach the level to participate in Zakum and Krexel, there are almost no veteran players utilizing these content due to their lack of profitability. It's hard to see a recruitment smega (super megaphone) for these contents even once every four hours.

Even if they see a smega and apply, who would readily include a newcomer with low levels and attack power?

LHC? The deer party is already extinct.

If CGS is provided, newcomers can save mesos for a month. The NX and mesos earned during this period would be spent on gachapon or top-up, which would increase the absolute amount of CS/WS, the core of CGS supply.

In other words, the overall supply of gears would increase.

Even if the newcomers who received CGS quit the game after a month, the currency they earned would be circulated in some way, and the newcomers who realize the importance of CGS may play the game more diligently for top-up.

Therefore, this method is expected to increase the number of newcomers, revive "unpopular but essential" content, and alleviate inflation through increased supply.

인플레이션 완화 방법: 기간제 cgs 제공하기(olaf 퀘스트로부터)

물건들의 가격은 왜 계속해서 오르는 걸까? 가장 기본적인 경제학적인 측면에서는, 수요에 비해 공급이 부족하기 때문이다.

하지만 여기 이상한 점이 있다. 뉴비들은 점점 줄어드는데, 뉴비들을 위한 아이템인 낮은 공격력의 cgs의 가격은 왜 오르는 걸까?

나는 이 현상의 정확한 원인은 알 수 없다. 하지만 이 현상을 완화할 방안이 있다.

그것은 바로, 공급을 늘리는 것, 뉴비의 비중을 높이는 것이다.

유저 수가 늘어나면 수요도 같이 늘어나는 것 아닌가? 그렇기에 "수요를 해결하면서 공급을 늘리는 방안" 인 방법이 여기 있다.

제목에서 나타냈듯이, 기간제 cgs를 제공하는 것이다. 구체적으로, 1개월 동안 16wa gloves, 10wa cape, 7wa shoes를 olaf quest를 통해 제공하는 것이다.

현재 뉴비들은 royals 역사 중 가장 좋지 않은 시기를 보내고 있다. cpq2의 변경으로 인해 편하게 레벨업할 수 있는 선택지가 줄어 흥미를 잃어버리기 때문에, ppq와 epq와 같은, 처음 만드는 캐릭터로 이용할 수 있는 컨텐츠의 이용률이 낮아지게 된다. 이것은 그 다음 컨텐츠인 zakum과 krex에도 마찬가지로, 악순환의 연속이다.

어찌저찌 zakum과 krex를 이용할 수 있는 레벨까지 올라왔다고 할지라도, 현재 수익성이 전무하다시피 한 이 두 컨텐츠를 이용하는 오래된 유저들은 거의 존재하지 않는다. 이러한 컨텐츠를 모집하는 smega를 네 시간에 한 번 보기도 힘들다.

smega를 보고 신청을 한다고 해도, 레벨이 낮고 공격력이 낮은 뉴비를 부담없이 끼워줄 사람이 누가 있겠는가?

LHC? deer party는 이미 멸종했다.

cgs를 제공하게 되면, 1개월의 기간 동안 뉴비들은 온전히 meso를 모을 수 있다. 1개월 동안 벌어들인 nx와 메소는, gachapon이나 topup에 쓰이고, 이것은 cgs 공급의 핵심이 되는 cs/ws의 절대량을 늘리게 된다.

즉, 전체적인 gears의 공급이 늘게 된다.

1개월이 지나 cgs가 사라진 뉴비들이 게임을 그만두더라도, 그 동안 뉴비들이 벌어들인 재화는 어느 방식으로든 유통이 될 것이고, cgs의 중요성을 깨달은 뉴비들은 topup을 위해 더 열심히 게임을 플레이할 수 있다.

따라서. 이 방법은 뉴비들의 수를 늘리고, "인기가 없지만 필수적인" 컨텐츠를 되살릴 수 있고, 공급의 증가로 인한 인플레이션 완화를 꾀할 수 있을 것으로 예상된다.

 

●OPQ can provide a good transitional-period glove to the news, I prefer add some transitional-period shoe/cape to some old/new pq (add20~40 main state with pq scrolls,~= 5~10att with apple, after tens of runs)
-->but it still can offer some 1 month att gear to the new players from olaf quest at same time.
-->base on this opinion, maybe adding more non-DPS based pq(e.g. KPQ/LPQ/OPQ/PPQ) or skill based pq(e.g. APQ/GPQ/RJPQ) is more friendly to new players
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
With the inflation issue, we can see gears become more expensive, but MW20 is going down.
It seems imply that new player is getting fewer than before recently.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Wish)
Hope there's a lots of new skill-based pq like gpq can be added.

 

this would not solve the inflation at all, and it's really OP to just give every player 6-7b worth of cgs just for doing olaf.
I dont get how this is suppose to effect the economy at all.
Lets say olaf give the purposed cgs for 1 month. On this month the players get money like you said by saving money to gatcha (which I dont see why the cgs affect is but sure),
After one month, the cgs expire and what happens? all the players just buy cgs with the money they saved. whats the difference here?

 

전체 기어들의 매물을 늘리기 위해서, 135렙 이후 보스로 일정 레벨을 올린 후 lhc에 참여해 토템가챠를 하는 사람들이 늘어야 합니다. 기간제 기어들이 없으면, 뉴비들은 lhc를 도달하기도 전에 게임을 접게 됩니다. 현재 bear 파티를 들어가려면, 적어도 160레벨이 넘어야 하고, deer 파티는 아예 사라져 버렸죠? 그렇기에 더더욱, 뉴비들이 이 기간제 기어를 이용해 레벨을 올려야 합니다. 기간제 기어가 만료되면 어떻게 되냐구요? 레벨이 남지요. 뉴비들은 1개월간 보스에 참여해 레벨을 올리고, 스탯을 올릴 수 있습니다. 1개월 전에 받은 기어만큼의 공격력을 레벨업하면서 보충하는 것이지요. 기어들의 가격을 내리려면 공급이 늘어야겠지요? lhc 토템 가챠로 인한 cs/ws/taru 공급은 16/10/7 cgs 뿐만 아니라 20 fs와 같은 하이엔드 기어들의 공급 또한 증가시킵니다. 이제 왜 제가 이런 제안을 하는 건지 이해하시겠나요! 얕은 생각으로 올리는 피드백이 아닙니다.



New To increase the availability of all gears, more players need to participate in LHC (Lion Heart Castle) gacha by joining boss fights after reaching a certain level, typically after level 135.
Without time-limited gears, new players may quit the game before even reaching LHC.
Currently, players need to be at least level 160 to join bear parties, and deer parties have essentially disappeared.
Therefore, it is crucial for new players to use these time-limited gears to level up.

What happens when the time-limited gears expire? The levels remain.
New players can participate in boss fights for a month, raising their levels and stats.
They compensate for the attack power of the expired gear by leveling up.

To lower the prices of gears, we need to increase supply, right? The supply of Chaos Scrolls (CS), White Scrolls (WS), and Taru Totems through LHC gacha also boosts the supply of high-end gears like 20 attack Face Stompers (FS). Do you understand now why I'm making this suggestion?

 

1st of all, google translate seem to have an issue with what you wrote here. it said the same thing like 4 times. and by looking at the numbers on the asian language above (16/10/7), they dont even appear in the english text.
so maybe you said other things that I couldn't understand.
If the only purpose in life is to increase the supply we could just increase the drop rates / give more nx to people. But I dont think thats a good idea. LHC is already a pretty active and full content, you dont need to push it harder.
People literaly come to golem runs with no CGS at all (sadly) and by level 140-150 every player should be able to get 3-4b of money from gatcha and stuff to invest into some cgs (something around 5/8/13) and they could go to bear runs with that.

 

A good way to reduce the current inflation would be to implement new marketable items that provide QOL benefits but does not drastically give a massive advantage to the richer players.

Some items that i can think of are like

• PET Auto-ACP
• Unlimited usage safety charm

The richer players would probably be willing to pay a good amount for these if they were in the market, but it doesn't give them a massive advantage over those who can't afford it, so it's a pretty good meso sink.

It's even better if they can be redeemed only by Tokens of teamwork, so everyone rich/poor/high level/ low level can farm them at similar paces (but it should be steep and tradeable), and also gives players an actual reason to do PQs again.

 

Beyond the question of how this would affect the economy, I think you're also vastly overestimating the level that newer and weaker players are willing to stick around until before quitting. The known slow-grind levels for unfunded players are roughly around levels 75-135 (basically the major leechstory levels). New unfunded players who leave from being unable to compete are not getting anywhere even close to bossing/endgame. The ones who are sticking around are people who "win the lottery" from a super lucky Gachapon pull early on to fund them through leechstory (like me lol), people who find worthwhile community through their buddies/guildies, or people who enjoy the grind enough to keep going.

I also highly doubt that having a 1 month-long major boost in attack from temporary high-value gear would do anything to actually incentivize people to stay. For one thing, what if they don't want to/can't participate daily to get the full use of the gear? For another, how would they be incentivized to stay after they're forced to go back to having zero attacking power once the CGS expires, especially if they're told they have to accumulate multiple billion mesos just to reach that point again? Remember, we're talking about players for whom saving up 60m for VIP Zak Helm was probably a major investment just a few levels ago.

The kind of incentive system you're proposing where you give players a limited-time huge boost in power and then take it away is really only seen in pay-to-win games. It works there because those developers are specifically trying to make the player think, "Holy crap, I need to grind that much more to get back to where I just was?! Fuck this shit, I'm [deleting this game/getting my credit card out]!" And then the developers hope players are addicted enough to do the latter. The end result is actually punishing new players for continuing without paying, instead of giving players a "taste" of what they could have if they kept going. If anything, an implementation of this system would probably incentivize RWT even more, further fucking up the economy lol.

Any solution that involves systematically raising DPS (especially of lower levels) just usually ends up becoming power creep as you further try to balance it, and if you want a Maple server with power creep and pay-to-win, you might as well just play the official MapleStory at that point lol. I think that rather than trying to increase the attacking power of newer and weaker players, there should be more incentive for stronger ones to party and help them out somehow. Token of Teamworks are great to incentivize some higher level players to go back and participate in the classic PQs, but it doesn't really do much for the type of high-level player who likes to maximize efficiency during endgame. And one thing that I think really wears down on weaker players over time is just the FOMO and pressure from the high standards of stronger players. So, basically, there's a social and resource gap between the newer/weaker and the veteran/stronger players that would need to be addressed to keep up the new player pipeline and overall retention.

Personally, I'd say if you want to increase new player retention, part of the possible solution would be to incentivize and reward stronger players for partying and helping out weaker ones. Running Zakum with someone whose attack is very low? Taking a player on their first Horntail run, and you have to teach them how to do it? Want to relive your nostalgia for LPQ, but you'd rather do your bossing dailies with your time to make it worthwhile? No problem, now there's a "Token of Community" reward, which will give you some worthwhile reward if you collect enough of them! Stronger and more experienced players don't have to feel as salty about carrying noobs anymore, and weaker players don't have to feel guilty for holding down the party anymore, because the stronger players were rewarded for taking their time to actually help someone.

I'm sure this isn't a perfect solution (with the first big implementation problem being "how to prevent veteran players from using this as a loophole by making multiple new characters"), but it'd probably address player retention a lot better than giving them a huge power boost that ends up being a power void after a month lol. No idea how it'd help the economy problem, but I guess one ripple effect it might have is lowering demand of endgame gears a little bit by decreasing the urgency to acquire them, since you'd no longer have to have high damage and experienced execution for people to include you in their parties.

 

●You're right, I think 1month temporary cgs is a bad idea after ur comments. (I always delete those mobile game when their temporary boost was gone).
●Light Gamers(?)/Casual Gamers(?) usually enjoy the complex thing in the game (pq), rather than the high repeatability things (leech/zak/ht).
-->base on what u say, I have some ideas:
(1)adjust/add unpopular pq to fill Lv80~Lv130 (I prefer fill to Lv80~Lv200, because I cost most of time in LHC after Lv155)
(2)more things that can enter the economic cycle should be added.
(3)create pq that attackers and new players can pq togather
-->(like anniversary tree pq) 4~5 stage for new players(Jump quest/math quest/collect quest) + 1~2 DPS checker stage
-->something like gpq's sewer stage, restrict Lv in some stage
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(PQ list with goods)
Lv21~35(KPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle
Lv35~50(LPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle
(LMPQ) : +35att cider, bad than apq
(CPQ1) : nothing can enter economic cycle
Lv51~70(OPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle, a good mid-tern glove
(CPQ2) : nothing can enter economic cycle
Lv71~80(PPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle, a good mid-tern warrior hat
(RJPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle
Lv81~130: Empty
Lv130~Lv150(EPQ) : nothing can enter economic cycle, but there's a DPS checker that hard to new players
Lv150 up(CWKPQ) : lots of goods here, but there's a big DPS checker
(other)
(APQ) : appos
(GPQ) : assassinate 30

 

I think the easier route to go is changing drop rates of equips. Prices rise cause meso loses value. Meso loses value cause theres more of it. Equip drop rate on Royals is way higher than 2x on some maps. And those maps are big causers of inflation. Nerf drop rates of equips of popular maps like ulu 1 or 2 or skele and youll see inflation slow down.

Also giving a player power, and then taking it away feels more like a punishment than a benefit.

 

what this server needs is a meaningful meso sink that players of every stage wants to partake in.
the main meso sinks today is vl crafting, fm npc stuff(owl, fast travel etc), tax(that everyone does everything they can to avoid) and chair gacha depending on if the event is active. thats clearly not enough to even begin to slow inflation.

 

How do u think about permanent meso gacha to increase meso sink?

 

Easy meso sinks: Safety charms, Everstones, and store permits in Albert's shop.

I don't think the temporary 33 CGS would be a good solution as already expressed. Newer players generally need to save for months to acquire comparable gear (16 SGC = 3b, 10WA cape =2.5b, 7fs = 2.5b, so 8b total), to have such a boost temporarily given then taken away would probably drive more players to quit than aid player retention. In general lesser geared players can simply use higher attack potions to make up for the lack of CGS.

Drop rates have already been nerfed multiple times. Also, the Ulu spawn rates were nerfed back in Update 65 (April 2020). One puzzling aspect about this change is that Petris being nerfed despite already having worse drops than Skele, making Bishops even more OP relative to Archmages. These changes did nothing to change the leeching/farming meta, and simply made it more difficult for legit hardworking players to keep up RWTers. I feel as though the spawn at Petris could be buffed at least to provide a consistently higher xp/hr relative to Skeles so that leech there can be sold for a higher price, in order to compensate for the worse drops.

There is not much use for archmages in the current meta aside from farming and leeching (and Bishops with enough TMA can be just as good at those things). So if farming were to be nerfed (again...), archmages would be quite literally useless. Multi-mage farming is already one of the most mechanically challenging things to do in this game, and requires a significant investment in creating multiple 4th job mages before any profits can be made. Therefore, it is content that is not easily accessible to anybody outside of a handful of dedicated players. In addition, RG was released and (pre-nerf) likely added far more mesos to the economy at once than mage farming ever did.

 

Good suggestion but I think we have enough gacha between lhc/nx/chair/miwok

I think we should take a look at potion drop rates, elixir and pe drop rates are so high that there is little reason to buy the nlc potions. Imo replace ellin+pap elixir/pe drops with only cheese/milk/dews and reduce elixir/pe drops from “soloable” bosses

 

Technically gacha itself is a meso sink.

You could just sell your NX in APRs or Gacha. It helps keep APR price stable because people love gamble.

When I came back from my 2-3year break Ellin just got nerfed. So Elixirs were still at like 4-5k and PEs were like 7-8k. As time went on the price kept going up because the supply was so limited. They were peak in CNY like Elixirs 12-14k and PEs 16-18k. Atm they are around Elixir 8-10k PE 14-16k I think.

I think people are just overstocked right now because everyone was running Pap/Ellin for Anni.

Personally I do 4x Pap 1x Shao Daily just to restock on PE/Elixir everyday with or without an event. Its a time sink too, if they remove it I guess I could just buy NLC pots but prefer the flexibility of 50% pots and 100% pots (75% seems too awkward. My lower hp ranged attkers use PE and my 28k+ HP melees use 50% pots)

 

I too prefer elixir and pe but the fact in my case is that I haven’t had to spend any meso on potions from an npc in a long time since the supply is so high, I would like to see them alter drops for some lower level bosses to give milk/cheese/dews since that is a more fitting potion at the level these bosses are intended for and also help push people like me and you to occasionally buy pots in nlc

 

a change like this would not be really fair since it only affects specific classes.
NL / shad / bucc barely use any pots while warriors and mages use a ton of them.

 

It’s already unfair, dark knights use 12k worth of pots every time they’re hit in some bosses!
The sad truth is that meso need to disappear from the economy and potions being exclusively a part of the player-player economy does not help us with this.

 

Temporary equips are generally frowned upon. The only ones I kinda tolerate are the Xmas Event NX Ring and BDay Event NX Pendant, and even then I wish we could at least have them last a full year so we can (potentially) have them at all times.

Looking back on my days studying economics, there are a few ways to slow down inflation. I can only think of 2 that really apply to this game though:
- Increase the supply of items (more access to scrolls, equips, etc.)
- Decreasing the supply of money (i.e the "meso sink" that people keep mentioning)

Increasing the supply of items can be done with a higher drop rate or increased gacha. Decreasing the supply of money requires something big and flashy to spend mesos on. I forget, which event is coming up next? Summer Event which includes... Miwok & Chair gacha? Yeah... I would wait until AFTER the Summer Event to decide if anything needs to be done about inflation because it is already kind of an inflation killer. My only real fear is the price of APRs skyrocketing because of the Miwok Gacha again.

 

I'm well aware ulu has been nerfed a few times already. Despite those nerfs the drop rate here is still way better than almost any other map. The reason nerfing ulu 1 and 2 didnt change the leeching/farming meta is because both the exp/hr and meso/hr rates here is basically unmatched in any other map even after nerfs factored. The maps are also extremely friendly to lower level 4th job mages so theres not a huge barrier to entry to start selling leech and farming meso here at the same time. A lot of the items that drop are higher level weapons which NPC for a lot and then the rate of them dropping is still really good even after spawn nerf and drop rate nerfs. Then you factor in how these maps are for the 95-105 bracket. There's basically no other map to go to that will compete with Ulu. All of what i mentioned prior is the same reason nerfing Skele made no difference. Petri's, a mob thats similar level as Skeles, that are found on a map with a good spawn rate, drop significantly less items than Skeles or a map 15 levels lower than it. It takes a lot more levels and gear to 1 shot here as well. Id be more than happy to see Duku's un nerfed as I didnt feel like they really broke anything. They were a good end game mob for Arch Mages to strive to 1 shot and their drop tables arent insanely good either. I understand people want to feel like they can keep up with RWTers but half the battle is how fast meso inflates on Royals. If Meso inflated significantly slower due to free meso being pumped into the economy due to how much farming Royals players do, your meso in march should have almost the same value in august. Meso inflates so fast you NEED to farm instead of WANTING to farm just to keep up with inflation. Which is where I think multi map mage farming came from. Inflation hurts everybody from the newbie who wants to buy entry level equips to the veteran with a net worth of 300b+.

This is just my opinion and I know this wont be popular with a lot of people. But I think we need to continue to nerf the egregiously overpowered maps and raise all the bad ones up to wherever we drop the powerful maps to. I feel like only having a handful of good maps stimies people choosing to go to any alternatives if they're not as good. I will always prefer more options to farm or train at. We could seperate maps into ones that have good drop rates and ones that have good exp. I think we should move away from maps that are great at both. By nerfing powerful maps we would have less meso being generated with items being npc'd and this would lower the rate of inflation. I also think Multi Map mage farmers are incredibly damaging to the economy and inflation as a whole but with the sheer amount of effort that goes into doing it, I think im probably ok with it.
OP and others want to deal with inflation, but the way we deal with it right now isnt dealing with the route cause of the issue and its just going to keep happening over and over at a fast rate.

 

Perhaps a good idea to reduce the meso sink is to offer alternatives that reduce time investment on untradeable goodies like the Ephenia Ring or dojo belts for a high amount of mesos.

Many players are busy (students with full time job and busy life for example) so in my case I obviously won't do endless dojo runs for a black belt, yet I'd happily pay 1.5-2b to save the time and effort of these runs with my busy life.

It both helps busy players to obtain untradeable goodies that won't hurt the economy and also reduce the meso sink.