MapleRoyals Necessary Change

Hey guys,

The reason I am making this thread is to try to bring some discussion into what I think should be changed in the server. I do not want anyone taking any emotional stances and I want this to be logical. One thing I want to warn people who post about this is: As I have been reading previous threads about issues such as leech problems, end game being too hard/not wanting it to be too casual - if you are a player who as put thousands of hours in, please do not comment unless you have an UNBIASED opinion. I have seen far too many people who seem to be the elite resisting change because of their fears and threads being closed because of it. Again I want this to be a discussion.

The big problem I have been thinking about is white scrolls and chaos scrolls and what they mean. To be more specific: chaos scrolls and white scrolls are THE CORE COMPONENTS OF LATE GAME, along with perfect (godly stats) weapons.

The first issue I want to bring up is from my own ignorance. Everyday I vote on GTOP 100 I see 45000 thumbs up for the server. In my mind that means that 45,000 accounts are voting. I know I may be wrong, but there are 2000 players peak online at a time. That would mean nearly every hour a new 2000 are logging in and playing. I can safely say this does not seem logical to one vote to one person. THAT BEING SAID. This simply exaggerates the problem due to Gachapon being the only source for these end game scrolls.

The second issue I see is the PRICE OF CHAOS AND WHITE SCROLLS, AND HOW THEY ARE BEING PRICED. This is my quarrel, 6-12 months ago there was an average of 1k players(maybe 1500 but I do not remember it being this high) on at a time. After another private server shut down MR became the go to private server. Despite this 2x increase in voting and thus gachapon and thus supply of these chaos and white scrolls, the PRICE IS STILL 300MIL. I DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE ECONOMICS BEHIND THIS, EVEN THOUGH I HAVE A DEGREE IN ECONOMICS FROM THE UoI.(haha degrees do not mean shit~rl)

Even if there are more players now than before, the majority are not end game/ 120+ mages to farm enough mesos to support this price stability. With an effective 2x the supply, the price of these should go down, maybe not by half in a 1-1, but at least a little bit. The fact that there has been no decrease is a scary prospect for the economy.

This brings me to the conclusive point of the conversation. I think that the end game content needs to provide AT LEAST chaos scrolls, and possibly at a lesser drop rate white scrolls. Why? because as outlined above we have a system where end game equips are generated from a luck based (Gachapon) npc THAT DOES NOT SEEM TO RESPOND TO NORMAL ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR. With the increase in player base and how the voting system works, the fact that the price of these end games scrolls not decreasing is a problem for the WHOLE SERVER COMMUNITY. This is where the bias comes in, as changes to make these scrolls reflect more logical paths would "degrade" those who have already put in so much time, even though in reality they put in the time in a completely different economy and setting that should not be compared.

Some things I think people will argue with me about

- The integrity of the difficulty of the end game.
My Response: I have no problem keeping the integrity the same. The problem is that with 2x the player base, the economy and these scrolls are not functioning as they should. To me this means either the players that have been here for years have a monopoly with enough mesos that they are affecting prices adversely, or something is desperately wrong with the economy of this game. EITHER WAY THE SERVER IS BEING HURT.
- The challenge/fundamental feeling of the game
As stated above, the economy is not responding as it should with 2x the player base, something needs to be changed so that the economy and the game can evolve with the increased population(please get rid of my lag), in theory there should be a fix for this so that there is not an adverse effect from the increase in population.

My Solution: remove CS and WS from gachapon, make them low low rates for HIGHER END MONSTERS (SKELE). YOU MUST SIMULTANEOUSLY MAKE IT SO ITS NOT JUST MAGES CHINESE FARMING THESE SCROLLS. Maybe make content for other classes in dungeons or increase their class specific drop rate if that is even possible, idk that is why I WANT SOME GOOD OLD FASHIONED INTELLIGENT DISCUSSION.

TLDR; THE ECONOMY IS NOT REACTING AS IT SHOULD AND THE END GAME OF MAPLEROYALS IS BEING NEGATIVELY AFFECTED BY SOMETHING UNKNOWN

PLEASE DISCUSS AND BRING FORTH IDEAS/ EXPLAIN WHY THE PROBLEM IS NOT A PROBLEM.

Please let me know if I sound stupid.

THNX

 

To a certain degree I agree with you regarding the white and chaos scroll prices I think that one issue that is causing this is that people are constantly farming making and generating new mesos through npcing equips. Also the fact that these scrolls are basically used as currency for high value transactions anything over 2.1b is usually traded in white and chaos scrolls, almost all rich/veteran players buy these scrolls just in order have their 60b transaction at hand once the new best item comes on the market.

I personally think there should be some sort of npc that sells an item worth maybe 2b and that you could buy and resell these items at that npc for roughly the same price maybe there could even be a small fee in order to tax higher value transactions as well and get some decent meso sink out of that. Unfortunately I think this idea has been discussed before, hence it is not very likely that it will happen.

 

I think that you bring an interesting point up about the increase in mesos farmed due to more players. My opinion on this is that this is true, more players means more mesos, but there are counter facts that suggest that there is still a problem. The first being that chaos and white scrolls have never changed value. This is a counter point because even though the increase in players means more mesos farmed, it does not mean that there is 2x the mesos, which I will explain in one second. This means that there has been and should continue to be a discrepancy between what WS and CS are and what they should be.

So to explain, when previously googling and looking at a few threads where people were QQing about the way the server is, quite a few people chimed into the rate of mesos with leeching, farming, and bossing. So leech is usually 40-50mil/hr, and farming is 60mil/hr not including godly drops (cravens, concertos, etc), not sure on bossing depends on drops. From this there are two problems I see blocking the theory that more people mean more mesos, which keeps prices afloat. The first is that even though there are more players, these rates (60mil and such just stated) are from end game mages farming hard, high level bossers, and leech is just that same as farming. This means that it is solely end game content making the mesos. Maybe I am bad at farming but I can make like 15mil max in an hour on my 78 I/L from equips/candy/random stuff. But this is as it should be, as you progress you are able to farm and train better. The problem occurs when linked above, where the prices have not changed. You have an immediate change in CS/WS supply, once you hit 30(maybe50) you get gacha and thus more scrolls. It takes month(s) for hardcore players to get to 120+ in order to efficiently farm in a manner that would actually effect mesos in the game. This means that the unchanging prices in scrolls is due to a economics inefficiency, but overall would be rectified over time (say now).

THE PROBLEM WITH THIS CONCLUSION AND MY SECOND POINT IS, THERE ARE ONLY 14 CHANNELS. That means that these places that are dropping the godly cravens worth 100 mil, netting 60 mil/hr, and leech maps are limited. So the over time balancing out is thrown out the door because there is a limited supply of farming and other mesos methods to balance the economy ( in the sense of max efficiency farming - which again would mean discrepancies WS and CS prices from what they are) . In the end this points out even further the problem the economy has.

I am not 100% on this but maybe it is okay as a server now, but going into the future the economy and the server are either going to be ridiculously unfair with those that have the ability to exercise monopoly like power or just the fact that more WS and CS scrolls are going to come out and cause inflation/whacky economic problems. As you said nothing has changed in the past but this is practically a whole new monster to tackle with the current system. The staff and server admins should not turn a blind eye or be lazy because many of the arguments ( such as beta testing and past experiences) need to be thrown out because believe it or not your 500-1k player server has changed drastically with the doubling of people and people having x amount of mules we can deduce are vote abusing. It is fine to leave it how it is but there will be problems, or just mass people quitting to go back to 1k mode, idk we will see.

My 2 cents on the more mesos argument.

 

I don't understand why "the core components of late gate," i.e. WS, CS, and perfect/godly stat equipment are a problem. Late game consists of players who have gear worth billions. And as Hampa stated, to trade at that level requires a workaround to get past max meso. WS and CS are fluid assets, easily bought for around 300m and very easily sold at 300m. WS and CS both function as a way for players to store funds exceeding max meso and also safely trade for items exceeding max meso. Without WS and CS or similarly price stable items in game, trades for items worth more than max meso would be much more complicated, either requiring multiple trades (which brings the risk of scamming) or negotiating with the seller about what other items they would accept as part of the price (which is far more difficult than having a commonly accepted currency that everyone understands and deals with, like the current WS and CS). So this is why I think the current system is a good one. I'll address your points below.

I see that your argument is an economic one, about how WS and CS have had relatively stable prices despite the influx of voting. You have to understand that there is a significant percentage of vote activity that is vote abuse. If there's a hugely disparate number of votes compared to unique players on this server (I see no reason to, so I haven't checked this out for myself), the difference is due to vote abuse. Most vote abusers are low level characters who use their NX to sell AP Resets. Because the required level to Gach is level 50, there are comparatively few vote abusers who Gach rather than sell AP Resets, where the level requirement is only level 16. As such, I think vote abuse vote activity has only a minor effect on the number of WS and CS in circulation. I agree that there has been an increase in the number of unique players and therefore legitimate vote activity on the server. I don't think there has been any significant increase in the number of WS and CS in circulation over the past few months, although I have only anecdotal evidence to go off of. If there has been an increase in the WS and CS supply, I agree, it follows that their prices should fall if demand is constant. But since prices have remained stable, it's likely that if supply has increased, demand has increased in tandem with the supply because most people who Gach are both suppliers and demanders for WS and CS. Because they're legitimate players who are working towards endgame, which requires WS and CS to make endgame gear.

But here is my question: why do you want prices to be unstable? The economy is stable because in large part that WS and CS prices are stable. You haven't explained what "scary prospect for the economy" that stable WS and CS prices present. If WS and CS dropped from mobs, that would make a system that heavily favors mages since they have unparalleled mobbing ability with their ult spams. Gach is an equal opportunity system for every person, regardless of what classes they play. You're arguing for a system where WS and CS are put into the economy as a function of gameplay, in this case hours spent grinding. You want to increase supply such that it exceeds demand, in order for prices to fall. But your suggestion both fundamentally changes gameplay (heavy incentive on spamming ults on mage characters) and does the one thing you are saying we must avoid: unstabilize the economy. You say "something needs to be changed so that the economy and the game can evolve with the increased population(please get rid of my lag)," so you want WS and CS to drop in price so the game can "evolve" and you won't lag? I don't think you seriously think the lag issue is in any way related to the economic issue you perceive with WS and CS prices, of course. But please explain how WS and CS dropping in price will make the game evolve in any positive way.

How do rich players affect prices "adversely?" Rich players, the ones who you see at the top of the damage rankings, have billions of meso in their assets (gear) and in liquid funds (WS and CS). Rich players are rich because they run bosses (solo Zak for Gen 20, trio HT for books and buyers, trio APQ, farm gobies, summon farm at Voodoos, Leps, Elderwraiths, and, uncommonly, sell leech). This is how you get rich. From the Zak/HT book market to the apple market to the Deputy Star item market, no one has a monopoly over these items. Farming gobies and selling leech is, by far, a pursuit in making meso in pure and not in items, so the monopoly point doesn't stand with them. My point is that all of these activities are accessible to people at non-endgame. Even HT is being run by people with average gear who can kill it consistently and reliably. Owling books, you see HT book sellers who have all sorts of ranges. It's not just Fryslan and Nude and other strong guilds. So the game content isn't restricted to just those elites.

TL; DR Explain why the current price stability of WS and CS is bad thing. Also explain why a drop in WS and CS prices would not itself negatively affect the economy.

Hope my post explained my position. Let me know if anything was unclear.

I don't think you sound stupid. I'm just confused.

 

When I first came to this server few weeks ago, WC and CS were 320m. Now it's 300m, give or take. Their price are slowly dropping. The economy is actually working the way it should be.

Don't really see the problem. I think you're overthinking on this matter.

 

I've only been on the server for 9 months now but for as long as I've been playing, WS and CS have always been around 300m, with WS usually 310m, ranging from 300m to 320m, and CS usually 310m, ranging from 300m to 330m. Regardless of the variance in price at any given point in time, they've consistently been at least 300m, hence their reliability as currency. As such, WS and CS prices are stable, and that projection about them falling now is very unlikely.

 

Going to agree with this guy honestly, they bounce between 300-330m that ive seen. But you are also forgetting that as WS/CS come in from gach people are still using "some" of them to create this godly gear the so called "elites" are buying. Sure there are people sitting on 100s of ws/cs as liquid, but they still put the time in to get that far. Its a game of numbers, put time in and you get the money bro.

 

Regarding ws and cs prices, like I said before many people horde these scrolls in order to make their next transaction go as smooth and fast as possible. These people will keep buying all the scrolls at 300m by using smegas and whispering people who just gached a scroll, usually they are not really in a hurry to buy the scrolls. Meanwhile inside fm stores there might be a drought for ws or cs hence desperate people who really want to scroll their items or such, will have to buy the scrolls for 310, 320 up to 340m each even. That is all the fluctuation there is and have been in that specific market for the past idk how long.
I do not know if this is necessarily a bad thing, I just know it sucks to be the person who did not buy all the scrolls for 300m when you need to make a big transaction and the seller is demanding scrolls at a rate of 300m each.

 

@Shiyui Thank you for your response, you bring up many good points, I never thought of the utility of WS/CS for over max mesos transactions.

My thoughts, and I hope this clears some confusion, is that as you said WS and CS work as a stabilizer and mark for the economy. They are set at 300mil a piece. This is a good tool for fixing the economy, but I think the way that this tool is received is where in the flaw lies. Yes, Gacha is an equal and fair way to receive scrolls, but even if it is 50+ and that cuts down on many of the voting abuse, you still have the core 2000 players who have one main past level 50, thus giving them access to gachapon. So all though the skew of vote abuse may be limited here, the increase in supply is still a problem I believe. I also (my opinion) do not think enough of those players who are 50+ are seriously using WS for anything, maybe CS to try to make a profit from luck. I think this again brings the point up about why WS prices have stayed relatively stable. The problem I see with using WS and CS as a mark for the economy is that it is based out of gachapon, hence the staff/server runners have no way to influence it, so in effect it is a form of fixing the economy for stability that isn't stable in itself (aka false price fixing not by a centralized authority). What I worry about is that because this is a marker for the economy, but due to its nature should react a certain way, but it isn't acting as it should. The implications of this logically in my mind (more theoretical) is that if WS and CS scrolls stay the same price, but the user base increase, over time you are going to have a huge disparity in the mesos sunk into these EXPENDABLE scrolls because as more people need end gear more scrolls get used. I am not quite sure the implication (maybe deflation?, which is bad for economies but hell this is a video game luls so don't quote me).

There are a few things I think make an exception to the above problem, both for and against. One is once you scroll an end game gear it is done, so no more scroll sinks. The other is something I mentioned before, only 14 channels, so theoretically the max amount of farming/leeching/bossing has to be maxed out, meaning a maximum mesos productivity. This is off topic though.

Your concern about destabilization is a valid one, because as you have brought up how WS and CS act like this. Solutions? Off the top of my head scamming is pretty hard because you can either create moderators (like gms or vetted volunteers are middle men), but that has some downside, or you could create a gold like standard (gold maple leaf is redeemable for 2bil? With a tax, so like someone would trade 2.1bil for gold leaf - trade it - tradee gets leaf trades for 2.05 bil, or whatever tax. This means a REGULATED and truly permanent solution to this problem of user increase/decrease, as opposed to a standard that actually fluctuates with rng)

I think you would either increase the drop rate for other classes(if possible, like add a beginner or 1st job skill that only they get like taunt but permanent) or make drop rates at bosses better to counter act the advantages Mages might have with CS and WS dropping from monsters ( again at a fairly low rate so it is hard to get them and keeps difficulty, but also gives 120+ characters the control to improve by their own dedication). This would solve mage op-ness.

In your rich person examples, I agree, high level players can boss and such and there is no abuse there. But the problem lies with everything being centered around WS and CS. Let those high leveled players grind for the WS/CS, boss for them , leech for them, whatever. To clarify these drops are only for 120+ (maybe skeles, ToT, Ulu, you get the gist). This way once you get to high level you have a certain degree of control over farming for end game gear. I think the point I am trying to make is that if you have WS and CS staying at the same prices without effect from supply and demand you have the problem where higher level people who have lots of money and immediate access to the most efficient money making methods are directly able to control the liquidity of the economy (power is in their hands not server staff/gms). This could lead to misuse ( again my opinion and very possible they would not be able to)

So to summarize, and I hope my summaries have been backed by my reasoning above, if not just ask and I will explain. WS and CS serving as a stability marker for the economy is dangerous because the server (central authority) does not control it, instead it is controlled by gacha, which as said above should mean increases in supply. Having prices stabilize around CS/WS is dangerous because the risk of the increased voters( or lets specify voters lvl 50+) means that the centralizing unit increases supply. By keeping prices at 300mil artificially (assuming increased supply explained above) you are using more mesos than is efficient. This decreases liquidity in the market. Who does this hurt? EVERYONE! mostly smaller players who can not afford to try their luck at scrolling, or sell things more easily. But also the big players - try selling that 1.3bil mw 20 with less liquidity! (last few sentences mostly academic, the real game consequences may or may not occur, we would have to see)

EDIT: To clarify when you lose the liquidity in the server you lose the ability for players level 50-120(who can not farm for WS/CS or use the most efficient mesos methods) to sell their shrine scrolls, items, etc. And also for them to be able to buy these items.

The adverse effects from this on the economy are possible deflation(?), eventual lack of meso/liquidity in the market (?), and some other ones we could discuss after other people look at this view point. These would occur in the long run.

One proposed solution is to replace WS/CS standard with a gold leaf standard (2.1bil is probably drastic maybe make it 300mil like it is?), again this is not a solution that is easily solved but one the communities minds should brainstorm together. I am just hoping to spark some debate to make sure that the economy of the server is healthy going forward.

Final Words: The system may be theoretically incorrect or inefficient or maybe even broken. Some would say why fix something that in reality has been working? I just want to make sure the dangers to the current system do not set us up for disaster in the future.

Thanks!

 

I saw your reply to me, and I'll reply to you when I'm free tomorrow. Just wanted to type out my response to what you wrote to Hampa.

It's not just a theory. More people = more meso. This keeps prices afloat because of inflation. As more meso is generated because of more people, each individual meso is worth less and less. Since you're from the U.S., you're likely familiar with the stories about how in the old days, you could buy candy for a nickel. That nickel in those days was worth far more than the nickel you have in your pocket. More money was generated by the U.S. Mint, so each individual cent became worth less and less such that the price of the candy increased because more cents were required to equal the candy's worth. I apologize if I sound condescending by explaining this, as I understand you said you're an economics student. Just laying out my understanding so we're clear. Applying that nickel and candy story to Royals, it makes sense that WS and CS prices have been stable because per every unique, legitimate player, their existence both increases the supply of WS and CS (by gaining 8k NX by voting every 24 hours) and increases the demand of WS and CS along with their own funding by which to buy those WS and CS. After two years of the server being up, this has reached a rather stable equilibrium at which WS and CS are around 300m. I'll address your two points about why this "theory" would be blocked below.

Low level mages (usually level 120-130 bishops) sell leech for about 40m/hour. Midgame mages can sell leech at places like ulu 2 for 50m/hour. Endgame mages (if you define endgame at 1 hit skele and petri, around level 180) sell leech for about 70m/hour solo and 40m/hour split, which is 80m/hour with two leechers). If you have a bishop who can 1 hit gobies and your own SI mule to multiclient, you can farm gobies for 80m/hour. Your point about solely endgame players making meso is untrue. Making a level 120 bishop is easy once you hit level 75 at which point you can semi afk and HS attackers or an AM at maps you are leech level for. It's free leech in exchange for your HS. I believe I hit level 120 after a week or two of playing, never leeching, purely PQing and grinding. Hardcore players can hit 120 in a few days to a week by leeching and they can hit 200 in a few months by grinding (like me, as a bishop) or bossing (like various others, as NLs and other attackers). My point is that people can get a consistent source of funding in a matter of weeks by making a bishop and selling low level leech. To get funding as an attacker has more of a barrier to entry because of things like HP washing, for HT especially since many runs do not have HB, but also because of range, in which you'll be passed up for someone stronger because they have better gear than you. Endgame bossing is people who solo Zak (800m if Gen 20 drops) and trio HT (1.3b if MW 20, Gen 30, and TT 30 drop and you have a VIP HTP buyer). You can recalculate the splits with different party members if you're that interested in bossing funding.

I agree that maps are limited by the 14 channels. And before I go any further, important qualifier. Yes, the server is incredibly crowded at TW/SG times. But that's one timezone that I recognize is the exception, and I'll be talking in general terms. With that out of the way, there's almost always free maps, even at Skeles and Voodoos. To that point, a friend of mine would be at Voodoos farming Heartstoppers on at least three characters, requiring her to have three channels. I wasn't one of the people to summon farm at Voodoos then, but even now with the event and Voodoos dropping gummies which can be sold at a profit, I've always been able to find a map after a few minutes of channel surfing. Furthermore, the map with the highest and most consistent meso per hour, gobies, has surprisingly few mages farming there and for the most part, gobies is rather empty. This means that the 14 channels are, for the majority of the time, not limiting the amount of meso generated by the playerbase. Sometimes you won't get a Skele or Voodoo map, yes. But usually you will. Because there simply aren't that many people engaged in that funding activity. This is even more true for bossing because rarely, if ever, are all channels for a boss taken. And this is again even more true for APQing. In summary, the playerbase is not really constrained in funding activities. In fact, very few people will engage in them regularly and efficiently. Those who do do the goby farm on one character and Voodoo farm on another are rare, and yes, they are rich, making 300m if not 1b a day or more. At that level, at maximum efficiency, I can make 100m/hour reliably, not accounting for rare drops like godly equips. But it takes concerted effort, and therefore hardly anyone does it. It's more fun to slack in FM and chat, so most people do that, and they just summon farm and go boss with friends because it's a social thing.

You posted before I did, but I wanted to reiterate that you have to explain what you mean by who has a monopoly and what they have a monopoly of. How does this make the server "ridiculously unfair?" Also, you said that more WS and CS coming out would cause inflation? You probably just got confused and meant to say deflation, but regardless, gentle reminder that more supply, with demand held at a constant, will cause an item to fall in price. I'm confused though that you said nothing has changed in the past but suddenly out of nowhere, we have "a whole new monster to tackle?" What happened if nothing had changed for so long? Also, please don't think staff do nothing despite being aware of a problem. For the most part, they do dedicate the time and effort to resolving problems after internal discussions about their courses of action. You can't expect them to immediately solve a problem, especially when you haven't even explained why there's a problem in the first place. They also have priorities like beta testing for the new source which, even if you think should be thrown out, many people have been looking forward to for years because it would solve things like server crashes and server lag, which you yourself want to be fixed. I don't see why mass amounts of people would quit because of some amorphous economic apocalypse from WS and CS being stable in price. And as far as rule breakers, it's literally one staff member who investigates people for RWT and vote abuse and other things. It's unreasonable to expect vote abuse to ever be gone due to the sheer amounts of vote abuse and the ban evasion that follows their bans. That person has their own life and priorities, just like you and me. Going through logs for hours for an unpaid and largely thankless job just isn't going to be high on the list.

 

I'm about to blow your mind. If double the people come to the server and vote, roughly doubling the supply of WS/Chaos, guess what else that means? There are now twice as many people who want to buy White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls! For example, if previously there were 1,000 players buying WS/Chaos, and about 200 scrolls in circulation, the price stabilized around 300m. Now, let's say there are 400 scrolls in circulation at any time. The increase in players means there are about 2,000 people trying to buy them, so it makes sense for the price to stay the same.

Regarding your actual suggestion, I do agree. I think that end-game bosses (HT, Zak, maybe Pianus/Krexel/Pap at an extremely low rate) should at the very least have a small chance to drop Chaos Scrolls, and maybe extremely rarely White Scrolls. I have never been a fan of limiting aspects of end-game content exclusively to luck (Gachapon).

Edit: I guess this is a fair place to vent my frustration about a related thing: Why in the world does Lyka have a chance to drop Chaos Scrolls? It's just a high level area boss with no real significance. Chaos Scrolls used to be dropped by Griffey, but they were removed for reasons I don't remember, but can only assume would also apply to Lyka (the reward isn't suitable to the level of challenge, further encourages attempting to monopolize area bosses). But if Chaos Scrolls are allowed in Lyka's drop table, I can't think of a realistic reason that they shouldn't also be dropped by the actual end-game bosses.

 

Hey OP Just making a post to share my responses! Im currently pursuing a 2nd major in economics, hopefully my economical qualifications will not be as useless as you've described your own degree to be in the real world XD.

Given how there are thousands of individual units in the economy (the players), it would only make sense for the equilibruim prices of WS and CS to be relatively sticky, given how price elastic the demand for these goods are as a result of the rather strong competition when it comes to selling your goods/buying your goods. It is also important to take into account that when it comes to these use items, youre in a market where your goods have absolutely no product differentiation, and the guy next to you can have the exact same good as you do and youre fighting with him to sell.

That means that you have very minimal price setting power. The demand for CS/WS from a seller is very price elastic.

That also means that to have a unit change in price, you're going to need a very large change in your supply curve that would be proportionately larger than its effect of the resulting reduction in price. Also take into account that the price elasticity of supply is also very elastic, which is to say that firms (or more like people who hold CS/WS) are able to release/withdraw their goods to/from the market, depending on prices.

Putting the two together, that implies that youre going to need drastically large changes in supply and demand to produce a small change in the prices of these goods.

I understand where you're coming from with this proposition, but (probably), the biggest reason why they are gachapon exclusive is to allow for income equality in the game, so that as a whole, more people can enjoy the game rather than having the elite being the only suppliers of WS/CS; that would be the perfect case of the rich propagating the rich, resulting in farming being the only solution for newer players to have a source of income, other than gachaponing for scrolls or other items, which would have a much less expected rate of return given that WS/CS are withdrawn from the gachapon machines.

Also, you may have to consider the fact that the market - trade system in this game is not smooth to the point where the assumptions in your economics education hold true. The law of supply and demand strongly insists on the assumption of consumer and firms having perfect information about the products qualities and availability. In MapleRoyals, there are a few things that cause this assumption to be unsafe to make:
1) Information about the availability of ws/cs is not very perfect, it is subject to how often, and how many people use an owl to observe the prices of WS/CS at every given point in time. As such, suppliers may not observe that prices are dropping as sellers who are relatively more willing to sell at a given price start undercutting. If they do observe such behavior, suppliers will be more willing to drop prices as they are more aware of the price competition. Another point that is partially related to this (assuming perfect information in the market) would be risk adversity, whereby if the price of a good is observed to drop, people might speculate that the price will continue dropping, and therefore try to sell their goods as fast as possible, which in itself causes the price to actually drop. In reality however, this perfect information does not exist and therefore the prices are more sticky than what you would expect in the economical models that you learn about.

2) A huge number of people in this game refer to that mapleroyals scroll price guide that has a complete listing of scroll prices, made by Plenty. The fact that many people refer to this listing and hear about prices from their friends, also combined with the reality of imperfect information the market, causes people to have a reluctance to deviate from the stated prices. This creates price stickyness which may be what you observed in the market for WS/CS; given a much larger supply of voters and therefore ws/cs (assuming that the extra votes are used at the same gachapons), by the economical models, the price should drop rather quickly, but because of people having a rather adamant yardstick of the prices of WS/CS, as well as the fact that goods trading in maple doesnt happen in a similar manner to a stock market that always has a full listing of prices and availability, the prices of WS/CS are generally sticky, but it is dropping.

The only real way that that prices will drop in mapleroyals is when a large enough proportion of the sellers of goods are unable to sell their good at a given price, and will therefore reduce prices in unison as a good proportion of sellers realise that their price yardstick needs to be adjusted.

Also, youre right in assuming that when more people come into royals, the demand of WS/CS is held constant as these are luxury items that newer players will not have the ability to purchase, and therefore they cannot demand for the good.

In my opinion, given the limitations of the goods market in maplestory, I do think that this is the best system possible to achieve the goal of utilitarian enjoyment of the game, as well as to create stability in the game. The price stickiness of WS/CS is paramount for the game, as those goods are used as assets which facilitate trade. The moment prices are too flexible, people would minimise trading as they have less willingness too hold a more risky asset and given that ws/cs are currently the only universally recognised assets in royals that hold a pretty high value, undermining the price stability of these items may be quite dangerous. (it may become harder to trade higher value items in the market such as 7 WATT ++ PGCs etc) That is also why I am against having WS/CS drops being implemented to bosses as this will cause the market supply to have a lot more potential for fluctuations, subject to how often/willing people are to boss.

 

I think lyka has a really low drop rate for chaos scrolls, its a remote boss you have to do a hell questline to get to lyka in the first place. In general its a pretty shitty boss it is not worth doing for exp, some might argue that its worth doing for the chaos drop chance. Personaly I have no idea if its worth doing I have never farmed lykas.

I do not think it would be fair to add chaos drop to endgame bosses that people already kill as much as they can just for the amount of exp it gives and don't forget the drops of those bosses are already worth quite a lot.

 

Chaos Scrolls and White Scrolls can be compared to precious metals in a real economy. Mesos are just printed paper.

 

Hey Everyone,

So I think everyone has done a great job explaining their points, and now I see why the inefficiencies I pointed out have occurred and how the economy has handled them and adjusted.

Feel free to keep giving your own opinions and suggestions because this was super interesting learning about the economy!

 

the super rich hoard the white/chaos scrolls limiting the progress on the middle and poor class(while they get stronger). but ofcourse they super rich will defend this current system because of the addiction on power.(cant blame em, who doesnt like being at the top of what they do)

if royals provided a system where you trade in 1 bil mesos for a special royals coin worth 1 bil.(trade coin in for 1 bil TAX FREE) i think chaos/white scrolls wouldnt be as heavily hoarded.

 

Interesting topic, you guys discuss a lot about ws and cs, but what about BVMs, the main ingredient in order to craft the items that cs improve?

BVMs aren't quite as much of a fluid asset when compared to WS and CS, but they are used to make commonly chaos'd items. Recently they have dropped in price (over time) to a point where they are relatively cheap. This may be due to more bvms being introduced into the market than are being used, but what if a person potentially bought every bvm for an extended period of time to where they had a majority of the bvms in the server, then didn't craft any glimmerman items with them?
I'm sure there aren't that many bvms entering the server daily, and people with 50b+ could probably easily achieve buying all the bvms for 2 weeks straight, essentially slowing (by a fairly large amplitude) the creation of new glimmerman items. This is due to currently clean glimmerman items (and the few crafted glimmerman items with some straggling bvms that were potentially missed) being scrolled then exiting the market. More failures will occur than successful glimmerman items during the CS process, resulting in a lower rate of scrolled glimmerman gear being introduced to the server despite the rate of newly joining players remaining the same. Will the bvm market still remain stable in this case?



TLR
Buy as many bvms as possible for an extended period of time, don't craft.

Players will craft existing bvms and the few that you miss from a small few being gached per day. Majority of these will fail.

Rate of players needing/wanting glimmerman gear > rate of clean glimmerman gear introduced to market, on top of that being successfully scrolled

Results in lower ratio of endgame gear available per player, available clean gear to scroll will also be reduced. This may cause price of CS to decline, as then they will not be used as often.

Is there anyone with some better statistics education than me that wants to crunch some numbers or logic?
Because I'm pretty interested in this scenario.

 

dont encourage that! it would only further the weath gap between the rich and poor.

 

I'm not encouraging anything, just curious to see what would potentially happen.

Those who are wealthy enough to possibly carry through with this would probably not.

Anyways, regardless of what happens, the market would re-stablize anyways.