Price disparity between Chaosed & 'normal' gear

There is a growing disparity in the price of Chaosed gear and non-Chaosed gear. The difference of the two is already quite high in terms of how good the gear is, and it's growing. For example, you can buy yourself a 7/23 thief top and a 19/9 thief bottom (both considered end-game by most players) for under 1b total. 1b gets you about a 6 att shoe, which is below average. The equivalent end-game Chaosed item (~14 att cape, ~12 att shoe) costs close to 9b, and it's only going up in price.

Normal scrolls (mostly 30% and 60%) have been going down in cost for a few months, or staying constant at best. Considering the meso inflation we are experiencing, their actual value to players is going down. Meanwhile Chaos scrolls experienced a rise in value about a month ago and have stayed steady ever since. Scrolled gear of both kinds has been affected the same way. An 11 att shoe (merely above average) was 5b three months ago. Now it sells for 6.5b. A 7/25 thief top (considered end-game even by pros) could be sold for close to 1b three months ago. Now you'd have trouble selling it for 700m. This illustrates a problem in the GROWING difference in price between an above average chaosed item and a never-to-be-replaced non-chaosed item. Not only is the Chaosed item rising in price, but the non-Chaosed item is falling in price.

Why is this a problem? I fear that soon enough there will be nothing of true value except for Chaosed shoes, capes, and gloves. With the growing amount of mesos in the server and lack of a true meso sink, the price difference will be enormous. But even with a good meso sink, the server has gotten to a point where the disparity will be equally proportionally high. I don't it's healthy for capes, shoes, and Chaosed gloves to be the only thing worth any real money.

I don't know what there is to do to fix this without messing with the "nostalgia" aspect of the server, but perhaps we can brainstorm together some ideas. And if you disagree with anything I've said and see the economy getting better, please share.

 

I agree with Tim, this was going to happen due to godly stats existing.
Rather than players banding together to "conquer the maple world", it's turned into more of a competition thing.
Players are busy grinding and bosses are highly exclusive. Nostalgia only exists here in the core game mechanics.
One thing I don't agree with Tim is that there should always be room available to improve stats. One of the biggest killers of any game is that the cap for gear/levels isn't set correctly, leading to a huge gap between players, resulting in an extremely divided community. Games like maplestory, mabinogi and runescape had a good year or two of proper balancing, then the moment high level gear came out that made a huge difference between players came out, the games were ruined. (Of course, they further ruined the games by introducing more P2W factors, but that's how all MMOs work once the initial hype begins to die out.)

But in order to keep contributing to the thread, I'm going to throw out my suggestion:
Change the damage formula.
Weapon attack should be nerfed a bit, and magic attack should be raised a bit.
While this would mess with the market, it would be better than a complete server wipe. (Also probably better than just increasing PGC/FS/Cscroll availability)
On top of this, PGC/FS will still make a decent amount of difference to a players damage, so their value wouldn't decrease too much, but endgame damage won't be quadruple the damage of players who don't have godly equips.

 

these "end game items" are strictly only "chaosed glove/cape/shoe". even a weapon has a cap. once one makes a perfect weapon, they are forever done upgrading that item, unless a newer and better weapon introduced to the server renders it obsolete (this is also where we start messing with nostalgia and timeless/reverse weapons). top/bottom/helmet/earring also has a cap. once you have enough of your secondary stat to wear your weapon, there is no real reason to upgrade it. and once you get a fully 60/70-ed perfect clean non-weapon item, you are set (there are so many of these in FM all the time, and they've been going down in price for months).

for these reasons i fear will happen is that these capes/shoes will become even more expensive in comparison to other scrolled items. it's been happening for a few months and i don't see it stopping. and if that does end up happening, it affects the long term success of the server. a new player looking for gear will invest a small percentage of their money to top/bottom/etc, that percentage is already pretty low but it will get lower. a 'good' cape (11 att) is worth 5x the cost of a 'good' set of top+bottom or overall (which add a lot of stats). that number will only keep getting bigger, as it has. what happens when the cape is worth 10x a set of top+bottom or overall? that isn't good for the server. i just think there needs to be a balance, or a way to stop it from getting even more lopsided.

i'm pretty much trying to say this

 

if cwkpq comes out, i believe it drops bfc? so pgc prices might go down hopefully. if that helps at all.

idk how to bring down the fs price though.... maybe instead of nerfing chaos to +-3, top/bottom 10% and 30% could get buffed to +5 per success instead of +3? idk, might do more harm than good LOL.

if the server gets wiped though, tbh im okay with that as long as i get ALL of my rp ive purchased, refunded. and also that we get to reserve our igns ahead time!

adding SoK might help people make better money off zhelms i suppose.

but the best solution i can think of, besides a wipe, is nerfing/buffing certain scrolls but gl.

oh and maybe for mesos sinks, add better gacha chairs. and also 30 day mount coupons into gacha. more trades = more sunken mesos, and those items will obviously not be super common, and be worth quit a bit.

also you could set one flat rate for tax. people avoid the taxes so much lol.

oh and add cooler non donor
hairs and eyes. i know a lot of people that will never bother with any eyes and/or hair unless they get donor. either that or raise the cost to change to non donor hair/eyes (please dont raise the cost of their color x.x i spend like 2-6m per day as it is on that LOL)

K GL WITH THIS im horrible at economics but i support this and hope you guys find a good solution where the prices for everything balance out.

edit: and if timeless and reverse weapons come out, gl killing it (hopefully they dont add wheels...) not a lot of people on this server can survive, and even then, i think he has some insta kill attacks??? and dispel i believe lol. im all for adding pb tho <333 i think adding those weapons is a great idea though. and the gear for it.

 

What about moving the drop of those equips (mostly lvl 80~100) to another mobs which aren't that common (maybe some ludi maps). Currently some of the places that drop those kind of equips are always crowded due to different reasons (skeles for exp/leech; gobys for mesos; ulu2 for leech) so it's easy to find some clean godly tops/bottom to scroll. I believe that right now some of those equips are just a side effect of people grinding, by making this change it would force people to actually go out of their way to farm those equips, which would make them a lot more harder to get, making both clean and scrolled tops/ bottoms more expensive, and getting to this:

 

Easy solution: Start chaosing your tops and bottoms

 

This is really an intrinsic problem with chaos scrolls and attack gear existing, and there's not much you can do about it without resorting to outrageously extreme measures like what Tommy posted. I don't feel there's a problem because it's simply the way things were in live servers too, though it was even more stupid there with all the places they let you get weapon attack and slots to scroll.

 

Point to add: in addtion the price of gachapon scrolls with the exception of int scrolls are falling rapidly and decreasing in value.

 

Disclaimer: I haven't been online in a while and have no idea what the market is like currently but I'm just going to talk from my knowledge of economics and what I read from this thread.

I'm going to have to say that I think your fear is largely unfounded.

How supply and demand work in a competitive market (i.e. both consumer and producer are price takers) is that the supplier of the good has different conditions in producing for long-run and short-run. Logically, a producer only supplies the goods if he/she makes a profit and to make a profit in the long run, the price of the good must be above the average total cost; however, a producer still profits in the short run if the price of the good is above average variable cost.

The materials a producer needs to scroll these non-attack equipment (average variable cost) are still less than what the producer profits from selling them so the producers supply these non-attack items in the short run. But if the time and effort of buying scrolls/clean equipment and reselling the scrolled item (the average total cost) isn't justified by the price of the item (which I believe you are implying is happening currently in the market), the producers will eventually stop supplying these regular equipment.

Once players feel like they aren't getting their moneys worth in scrolling regular equipment, more will start to scroll attack equipment and the supply of the regular equipment will go down and prices will go up for the regular equipment while the prices of attack equipment will go down due to the supply increase.

You might want to make the argument that attack equipment are more difficult and costly to scroll so not many people will start scrolling attack equipment but that is already taken into account. There's a barrier to entry for that market and that's why there's such a price premium compared to the regular equipment market. When people feel like scrolling a regular equipment isn't worth the investment, they will either A) stop scrolling completely, or B) move on to another market (e.g. attack equipment or perhaps another untapped market). Either way, the supply of the regular equipment will go down meaning prices will return to its market equilibrium AND if the prices of scrolled attack equipment are as OVERVALUED as you say it is, then more and more people will enter the attack-equipment market regardless of the barriers of entry and supply will go up, thus decreasing the price.

If prices don't change in the near future like I say, then one (or more) of these possibilities for error is probably the reason:

1. Not enough time has passed for the market to be effected by long-run decisions (i.e. producers haven't started entering the attack-equipment market or leaving the regular equipment market)
2. You are overhyping the price difference between the non-attack and attack equipment (meaning they are already priced at market equilibrium and the price gap won't increase as you suspect it will)

Basically, I don't think there is an issue here at all and that you're actively trying to look for, or even make up, problems for some reason.

Of course this is all theory but I don't see a significant reason why the theory of basic economics wouldn't apply to Maple where there is a free market with a free economy.

 

the scroll prices are going down as well as the scrolled good, so the producer can still make profit. the risk is lower and the reward is lower, but the profit is still there so the items are being scrolled. it makes sense and it's also evident if you just take one look through fm. the same scrolled items are being produced and sold. but the price of these scrolled goods is going down along with the scroll price itself. the scrolled good is going down at a faster rate than the scroll is, meaning the relative profit is smaller, but it is still there and the item is still being produced. like you said, you haven't been playing as much but if you take one look through fm you will see that i am correct about this.

it's not that simple. every attacking class needs chaosed attack gear. there won't be a surplus of chaosed goods because of that, the nature of chaos scrolls, and the fact that capes/shoes have five slots (seven in the case of red sock).

this is a nice way for you to say i'm trying to stir up shit for no reason and it's completely unnecessary. there's no way i am making up problems "for some reason". if you read what i had to say then you'll see i've made claims and backed them with observations. i see a trend that i am identifying as a problem and i am bringing it up "for some reason", that reason being that i like this server and don't want a significant part of it (its economy) to be ruined. i genuinely care about this server and who knows, i may be wrong. but i take offense when you imply that i'm making this post and said all that i have said "for some reason" like i'm just trying to start some drama. if you reply specifically about this part of my post i will ignore it so don't bother.

 

im just going to throw this scroll in here, feel free to click on it.

 

Sorry if my train of thought is hard to follow, but it's 7am and I haven't slept (gotta fix that at some point, but not now apparently);

I think, like some other poster before me has said, that the reason for all of this is simply the nature of Chaos Scrolls. End game top/bottom is not 19/9 and 7/23 as Inversion suggested; it's much higher, we just haven't started to Chaos those items yet... or have we? There's a 17str Maple Leaf out there, owned by someone who already has a 23 atk SGC (two Chaos on a clean one rather than WS+10) and the best PGC in the game at the moment. I'm not quite as godly as that, but even I've been casually tossing Chaos on gear that aren't exactly conventional; I've been Chaosing DEX earrings and a couple of tops/bottoms myself. No, what is really missing is the point that Chaos are the best scrolls in this game.

At some point or another, the amount of money that it will cost a player to increase their gear by 1atk would be so exorbitant that the could use the same mesos to Chaos any other equip and blow the current standard for that item out of the water. I recently spent the equivalent of about 25b on a Facestomper that was only a 3atk upgrade (the former FS was included as a part of that price, so the actual upgrade cost was roughly half that). That's about 40-45 Chaos Scrolls; if you think that the best pants I could've made with that money is 19/9, I'd respectfully disagree with you.

Now, the equivalent of 3atk for the character I was playing at the time would've been about 25 stat points. Obviously, that's unrealistic of a gain on whatever stat gear I was scrolling. However the next time I upgrade my Facestompers, it might cost that much for only 2 attack. And the next time, maybe 1 attack. At some point or another, the worth of upgrading one attack will be so exorbitant that it'll be more efficient to chaos stat gear. That links back to the final point of my first paragraph; the problem isn't that stat gear are vastly outclassed by attack gear, the problem is that Chaos Scrolls vastly outclass regular scrolls.

What's the best way to address that? I'd argue that we're not at the point that we even know if this is actually a problem yet, because basically nobody has started trying to actually Chaos stat gear yet.


As one last parting note; please try to keep this conversation civil and at least somewhat intellectual. The value of your entire post is sullied if you end it with a parting shot at someone's character. I think that this topic is very interesting, whether I agree it's a problem or not, and I'd very much like to see where this conversation leads. I'd hate for people to be discouraged from posting because they think they'll get flamed for their thoughts.

 

I apologise if any of you guys took personal offence to what I said about "thinking you are actively trying to look for, or even make up, problems for some reason" because I honestly didn't mean to say you were trying to create drama. The meaning behind that was saying you could easily be biased about this situation because you are a large producer of these regular equipment (from what I remember) so it's natural for you to think there is a problem and want the prices to go back up.

I'm only posting because you asked

and because I think this topic is interesting so if you think my posts aren't helpful to the discussion, then feel free to pm me to stop and I will.

I think the biggest criticism of my former comment is that the theory I talked about doesn't apply to higher attack, more end-game, equipment because they're so hard to create. I agree they're very hard to create but disagree that there's a problem in that. Firstly, there doesn't need to be a surplus of high attack equipment for the prices to go down, just an increase in supply will bring prices down. Secondly, even if there is no competitive market for the high attack market, the logic still applies.

So if there is a monopolistic nature behind a market for a good, then the optimal producing quantity is where marginal revenue equals marginal cost instead of marginal revenue equalling average total cost. This means that there will definitely be a price mark-up as indicated by the Lerner's Index and there's nothing wrong with that. If there aren't many high-attack equipment in the market, then the seller definitely has the right to mark it up in inverse proportion to the price elasticity of demand.

Now if the price of high-attack equipment is as overvalued as it is implied in this thread, then producers will enter this monopoly and try their best to break through the barriers of entry because of its overpriced nature. Then the Lerner Index decreases and price mark-up decreases. You might say this will take years to achieve but the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index indicates that there is an exponential relationship between the number of players in the market and the market concentration so just a few more producers of high attack equipment will decrease the price of these high-attack equipment exponentially.

Once again, I'm not trying to fire shots at anyone. Just giving my two cents as to why I think price regulations are not necessary because I too play this game and don't want unnecessary policies governing the market.

I think the other criticisms can be answered by rereading my first post but if there are any further concerns or needs for clarification about my argument, I'd love to hear them.

 

this is what happens when half of the server is scrolling stats gear for sale lolz

 

Make mages OP so people stop playing scrublords.

 

I'm okay with this