Can we make the Winner's Podium tradable again? That reward is already hard to get especially when you are trying to compete againt many other people and not everyone is lucky enought to have a good connexion, so it makes it a bit unfair so why not give the chance for those who really want to have one have the possibility of buying one? And also many don't have the time and luck to wait for random gm event that pop here and there. And I'm sure many maplers would like to have it tradable again, so why not make a vote? Also curious to know what was the main the reason it got swapped to untradable on the first place, can't find the thread. Open to hear what other maplers think about it. Thanks.
The update that changed winners podium to untradable: https://royals.ms/forum/threads/update-71-02-04-2021.188095/ Although no official reason was given, there were 3 main issues that I believe could've prompted the change: Price fluctuations (ranging anywhere from 2b to 5b+) due to it's rarity Podiums were seen as an investment, which is true given how early podiums were sold for as little as 300m. Over the years until the change in April 2021, the price has only increased steadily past 2b. Due to the rarity of podiums and each costing about 2-3b, it is not unreasonable to assume that a funded player could, in theory - buy up most of the podiums in the market and artificially inflate the price to let's say 10b+ for one. I am on the side that podiums should be tradable within your account, and not outright untradable (locked to one of your characters) as it is now.
I get what you mean but all GM prizes always range because people are ready to pay for it and it sucks that when you try and compete sometimes most of the times you either get dc'ed like I do and it's frustrating or people have a server advantage which in theories sucks so why not give the opportinity to make it tradable and let people buy it if they want one. I don't know if it's the GMs that took that decision but it kinda unfortunate they toom such a decision without asking the players what they think. And in my opinion winning something that has value is always nice given the rarety theses events are.
All those things you mentioned though literally happened with other rare NX items such as Veamoth/Ice flower/Janus, the early ones were selling for 1-2b if you search far enough, then they climbed to 20b+ at their peak and in theory the scenario can happen as well with funded player(s) working together and buying them all and driving up the prices, so why were they exempt? I highly doubt thats the reason but they really need to make it tradeable again because I ain’t winning no GM event JQ (correct me if I’m wrong but thats where they are specifically coming from if I remember correctly) with my meme jq skills (for the context zak jq literally takes me hours of sweaty gameplay to complete with my worst “record” being 12 hours) and I regret not buying it when it was tradeable
To add on to this, we also had the same 2-3 people consistently winning the Winner's Podiums. Those 2-3 people would be the ones winning them, and then they would turn around and mass sell them for 2-5b+. I don't know the exact profit they made from doing this, but I'm willing it bet it was well around 30b or more, judging from the same repeat IGNs posted in our Prize Log over the years. Essentially, GM Events were turned into profit farms for them when it took little effort to complete the JQs they had memorized when they were tradeable, and quite frankly it was a problem. During the discussion to make them untradeable it was a unanimous vote within Staff across the board and I personally can't see them ever going back to tradeable. If we made Winner Podium's tradeable again it would just be the same issue we had before, where they were turned into a mass profit gains by the same 2-3 individuals who would come in 1st place every single JQ GM Event. The same people are still getting to the top 1st btw, except now it's a one-of-a-kind item so the next person to reach the top will get it instead. You can still get it, you just need to be roughly in the top 1-5 instead of being the 1st person to get to the top. You can already do this by putting it inside the cash shop and transferring it across your account that way to other characters on that same account.
As someone who is awful at JQs I thought it was honestly cool to see people make mesos from the event. I don’t think by any means these JQs were low effort. JQs for the most part are pure skill, especially considering the cluster fuck of people in the early part. I think it’s the only skill check in the game before VL came out. You could factor things like ping to see who loads in faster, but thats for the most part an extremely minor factor imo. To say memorizing and practicing the entire array of jump quests is low effort I think is underselling the time, effort, and years of practicing those players put in to consistently be part of the 2-4 player rotation that consistently won every JQ. I also thought it was super hilarious when JQ gamerz would have like a scouting list of JQ pro’s and their elite JQ maps, ex: “Oh easy win, lee sucks at Forest of Endurance.” “Loads into Witch JQ: By god that’s Reapeds music.” In landscape of 2019 ulu spam or R>4NL 1SE HT, I thought it was nice to see a very difficult noncoventional yet rewarding way to fund yourself. Picture Relevant:
If podiums are ever tradable again, they should just ban the person as a whole from ever winning a podium again, since they have prize logs.
I am one of the people Becca talked about that abused these JQ events and viewed them as meso farming events. Although it sucks that they made it untradable, it was completely understandable why they did because the same people kept winning 2-5b+ prizes for 5 mins of JQing, enough to the point where these people can fund an auf helm straight out of these JQ events, which is obviously a problem that had to be addressed. I also remember in a Sea Gorge event where I was banned as a person from winning a Deep Sea Chair again and so if podiums were to become tradable again, the same concept can be applied for people that have won 3+ of them. However, it also creates another problem where if they do become tradable, the same people that kept winning them from when they became untradable, are going to start mass selling all the podiums they stashed on their mules, thus creating an ugly market scenario. I'm all for making podiums tradable again, but I'm definitely going to be selling everything I have, so it might not be the best idea to do that. Also, on the topic of podiums, are we allowed to win a podium on behalf of someone else that's in the event that did not get first?
I'd just like to clarify and say we as a team decided to add a limit to however many tradeable chairs could be won from Sea Gorge Maze for everyone involved. Once you reached the internal number we decided on the prize switches over to NX (roughly 10k if I recall correctly) because we learned our lesson from the Winner's Podium situation. We didn't specifically ban just you, it was a limit we added onto everybody-- however there's only been I think 3-4 people max who are able to complete Sea Gorge Maze so far lol We did think about adding a limit similar to the chairs during the Podium discussion we had internally, but there were a LOT of Winner Podiums floating around, especially on mules nowadays. I also recall it was one of the first tradeable consistent NX items that were given out since the beginning of the Server as well, which naturally there are a ton lying around either collecting dust or locked away via perma ban. If we were to remove the untradeable tag one of two things could happen: a huge price crash, a huge price increase, or a secret 3rd option: both. I think overall there were just too many Winner Podiums in circulation from previous Staff members (I'm talking way before my time of joining Staff circa 2014-2017, etc.) handing them out without really adding any restrictions or thinking about the monetary value down the road, so we ultimately decided on making them one-of-a-kind and untradeable to at least balance it out a bit and give others the chance to earn their own Podium instead of buying one because after all; it's called Winner's Podium, not Buy It With Mesos Podium! I do agree with the above, it was nice seeing some people make some mesos from selling them-- but as you said, there eventually reached a point where people could fund auf helms, perf weapons, gear, what have you, just by simply farming GM Events especially when we were hosting a ton back to back for a year or two. One or two here or there was fine, but over time the same people would cross the finish line and then immediately item smega 'S> this 3b' and added the funds to their meso collection. You didn't even have to boss or farm, you just had to camp out and wait for that GM message which was nearly everyday at one point because back then we also only had ~3 GM Events we could host in rotation. Nowadays it's a lot more spread out because we have a ton more options for GM Events to host, but I still think the damage was done with Winner Podiums flooding the market to the point where we had to retroactively make the decision to turn them untradeable. As for the topic of giving Podiums to someone in the Event regardless where they are in the map, personally speaking I try not to do that. I want to keep it as 'Oh 1st place already has one? Okay 2nd place will get it/3rd place will get it/4th place (if we get that far)' etc. I just think it's more fair that way in the long run. I know there was one instance fairly recently where you asked if somebody could get it instead and they came in 3rd place because you two were racing pretty much neck in neck and then he had an unfortunate tumble. Then somebody else took 2nd place, and I gave it over to them and skipped over the 2nd place person. Looking back at that, that was a bit unfair at the time because I didn't even confirm with the 2nd place person if they had already won one and I still kinda think about it and feel bad for not at least confirming if the original 2nd place person had already received one before just handing it over to the 3rd place guy you requested. So because of that, I'd rather keep it as 1/2/3/4th etc. in that order instead of bypassing other people who are right there. Quick edit: sorry I forgot to mention this bit, when I said it takes little effort to complete a memorized JQ I didn't mean initially it takes little effort to get to that point of memorizing the JQ-- but that it eventually becomes little effort once it becomes muscle memory and you're able to breeze right through it 1st place every time. I'm sorry it wasn't worded correctly, that wasn't my intention. It takes a lot of effort to get to the part where it becomes little effort, if that makes a bit more sense.
As someone who doesn’t enjoy bossing or endless mob farming this development feels kind of devastating to me. Why should funding through JQs not be viable? I don’t see the problem? My happiest memory is from sweating the witch tower to get the Full Moon Chair which was a very rare drop, but i sold it for 4.5b i believe. This felt extremely rewarding, considering all the time i put into it. This year i started up again and have been spamming it on 9 characters on repeat only to learn it no longer has ANY rare drop rewards. Cmon, it’s exponentially more dopamine knowing you MIGHT get lucky and hit the jackpot. Now it just feels like a chore, like i’m going to work 3 times a day to farm my tokens.. The winners podium effect i’m pretty sure i also got from the witch tower 7 years ago or so.. What’s the problem with rewarding people for getting good at JQs? I don’t see the issue with people funding endgame weapons through JQs, seems super cool that there are alternative ways to get funding. It also lets new players have the chance to randomly catch up a bit if they hit a jackpot, which feels super good.
