The state of the NX economy

I've decided to write a post on this topic that contains a summary and analysis on the current state of the NX-reliant economy here at MapleRoyals. I'll preface this post that I will do my best to maintain factual presentation and interpretation of information based on my own gathering of knowledge and experience with the game, and then follow those facts with a personal opinion on the matter. I do need to state that, arrogant as it may be to say this, I have extensive personal experience with MapleRoyals, having played this server since 2013, and having been a part of many social circles over that span. I have personal experience with a very broad range of the different features and facets of MapleStory as a game, as well as MapleRoyals as a server, market and community, and as such I'd like to make the claim that I am a reliable source of past and current information regarding many matters. I will, of course, never be so arrogant as to claim that my knowledge is absolute; if I am incorrect on any of the content in this thread, please feel free to notify me to discuss and update the information herein. In essence; what you choose to think as a reader of this post is entirely up to you - you may choose to agree with my opinions or disagree with them as you see fit, but as for the facts, unless you mean to disprove a statement that I've made in this post with factual evidence, they will remain true regardless of how any reader may feel about them. Let's begin then, shall we?

The current NX economy is comprised of many different components, including Gachapon-restricted items such as Pink Gaia Capes, Stonetooth Swords, White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls, as well as other items such as AP Resets, Hired Merchants and, of course, NX clothing for style. Of these components, many directly affect the meso economy - Gachapon items are widely sold for meso gains as one of the larger methods of profiting in mesos from your NX, and a secondary, risk-free form of transforming your NX cash into mesos is through the sales of AP Resets. Some alternate components then add or remove NX from the economy without otherwise noticeably altering the meso market - these include the NX purchase of Safety Charms (which currently do not function and are thus currently a non-factor), clothing items (which are indeed occasionally sold to other players for mesos, albeit very rarely) and the purchase of Hired Merchants which allow easier meso-item transactions for a set fee over a short period of time.

This thread was prompted by observations made of the markets for commonly sold NX items over time, with the final straw being a rumor of the sale of one such item for far higher of a meso price than it has historically been worth. The sale in question was the completed sale of an unknown number of AP Resets for 20mil mesos each - that is to say, 3,100 NX converting to 20,000,000 mesos. Through observation of Super Megaphone messages over the last few months in-game, as well as experience purchasing and selling AP Resets on a personal level, it is quite clear that this price is highly abnormal - over the last few weeks, Super Megaphones have regularly advertised buyers and sellers in the AP Reset Market anywhere from 13m to 15m per unit, with occasional outlier sellers attempting to find cheap AP Resets at 12m per unit and buyers attempting to make extra on their NX at 16m per unit. I cannot confirm nor deny any sales made above or below these prices, however I will reasonably claim that a 13m median point has been the average sale price for AP Resets over the course of the last month based on the facts presented. As such, the sale price mentioned earlier of 20mil per unit is more than 150% of the recent average sale price, a significant increase. In addition, historically, drawing upon information from past years into this server's lifespan including before our New Source Update in January 2017, the price of AP Resets has been very relatively stable for many years at between 9m and 11m per unit. This 20m per unit sale is double the average my best historic estimate. Even if the rumor is false and no AP Resets were sold for 20mil per unit, the increase to 13m from the best historic estimated average of 10m per unit is still a significant increase - the former price per unit is now so far below average that sellers do not currently consider it a legitimate offer.

In addition, one can also look at various other NX-reliant items in the meso economy and see a similar phenomenon, though perhaps not quite as drastic as the absurd sale mentioned in the previous paragraph. When speaking of NX-reliant items, the most readily available example items to speak of would be Chaos Scrolls and White Scrolls. The current price of these scrolls, looking through highly-priced item threads on the Market Place forum, appears to be in the neighborhood of 440m to 450m per scroll, however if we look back to older threads, we can see that this price has increased from closer to 420m not more than two months ago. Through history, White Scroll and Chaos Scroll prices have maintained prices below 400m - over the course of 2015 and 2016, I would estimate the price of these scrolls to be in the neighborhood of 330-380m, and fairly consistent throughout that time. It is worth mentioning that outside sources have altered these prices on a few occasions - one such event was the emergence of a true RWT market based on a site which I will choose to not name that enabled real world money to purchase in-game meso, and ultimately caused meso easier to obtain, which in turn raised the prices of all sought-after merchandise the game had to offer. Returning to the present day, it is not uncommon to see sold White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls for upwards of 480m in Free Market Hired Merchants. Comparing this to older prices, we can observe that the price is now 150% the common prices recorded barely over a year ago, and even 115% the price earlier this year.

In order to discuss this further, it's important to discuss the topic of inflation, and in order to do so, one must consider the supply and demand of NX items. As supply of NX increases, supply of the items themselves increases as well - more NX means more AP Resets and Gachapon, which means more White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls. As supply of NX decreases, the inverse is true. The more of an item there are, the less valuable that item is, to an extent. In turn, the rarer that item gets, or in other words, lower supply, the more expensive that item gets as well. In broad terms, the demand of NX items has not changed, however there are a few speculative points that I will discuss later on in this post. I would largely like to present information based upon the supply of NX items, or more generally, the supply of NX itself.

The first point that I would like to present is the lack of boss drop NX. For anyone unfamiliar with this concept - up until January 2017 when the New Source Update was released, bosses across the MapleStory world had a chance to drop raw NX cash for players to collect. Lower leveled bosses such as Mano or Stumpy would reward the player with the lowest amount of NX consistently, generally just one 100 NX coupon, however bosses that were considered closer to end-game would drop more - Zakum would indeed drop a Maple Leaf item worth 5,000 NX at a close to 100% rate, and moreover, the Horntail boss would result in between 2-5 of these Maple Leaf drops, thus up to a potential 25,000 NX per kill, every time it was defeated. Of course, I do not have numbers for how often these bosses were fought on a daily basis - that would be privileged information to which I do not have access, however I can estimate that there are approximately 10-15 groups of Zakum Helmet sellers per day, based on the number of advertisements via Super Megaphones I see, and moreover guess that there would be a similar number of groups that attend Zakum without intending to sell their Helmets (and thus not being a group that I would notice). This estimate puts us at perhaps 25 Zakum groups, and thus 50 Zakum completions per day, or approximately 250,000 NX that is not entering the economy per day. Other notable sources of boss drop NX that could also be considered significant include Bigfoot and Anego - the former spawning an average of once per day on 8 different maps over 20 different channels, and the latter spawning an average of 5 times per day on one map over 20 different channels. Through personal experience, both are fairly stingy as far as Maple Leaf drops are concerned, however this is still a reliable income of perhaps 250 NX per either kill. Assuming that these bosses are routinely killed, which I and many other Anego/Bigfoot hunters can attest that they are, this would be a result of another 65,000 NX per day that is lost. Lastly, though Horntail is not currently implemented, it is important to consider that two Horntails daily completed by even five different groups at an average of 3 Maple Leaf drops per kill is another 150,000 NX that is not being added to the economy each day. The combined estimated total of the NX that formerly would be injected into the economy by these four bosses alone totals approximately 465,000 NX per day. When considering the average vote count of approximately 6,000 votes per day at 8,000 NX per vote resulting in 48,000,000 NX into the economy per day, one can then reasonably conclude that the lack of boss drop NX results in 1% of the daily value of NX supply is being "lost".

There is indeed another use for NX that was not formerly an issue prior to our New Source Update - that is, the use of NX on Hired Merchants which now expire. Until January 2017, Hired Merchants were a one-time cost of 10,000 NX for a Hired Merchant that never expired for a character. Currently, the cheapest Hired Merchant option is 12,000 NX for 14 days of use, or otherwise, just under 850 NX per day per Hired Merchant. This does not include that there are options for shorter time periods at lower costs, but higher daily cost, in the Cash Shop - this analysis will assume that any given spot currently occupied in the Free Market by a Hired Merchant will continue to be occupied by a shop open each day. As of the time of writing this, there are exactly 526 Hired Merchants in the Free Market on channel 1, and approximately 160 on channel 2, meaning that these two channels alone comprise of some 686 Hired Merchants. If we consider that each Hired Merchant costs 850 NX per day to maintain, and that the old source cost of this number of Hired Merchants would be 6,860,0000 NX, it took exactly 12 days for the NX sunk into expiring Hired Merchants to exceed the amount of NX that was formerly used to maintain these same spots for an indefinite period of time. From that day forward, 583,100 NX per day is lost, a greater sum than the estimated losses due to boss drop NX not being implemented to this point from the previous paragraph. This 583,100 NX per day being lost to maintain the Free Market Hired Merchant volume is equivalent to approximately 1.2% of all daily NX supply.

Additionally, the last staff statement on the topic of boat rides as well as observation of the Cash Shop Use section reveals that the standing cost of the Fast Travel Ticket which allows players to skip boat rides as we formerly have always been able to do free of charge will be the same cost as a Hired Merchant - that is, the cheapest consistent option will be priced as 12,000 NX per 14 days. At this time, it would be very difficult to make any sort of estimate on how many characters will purchase this item, and thus how much it will draw from the NX economy. The closest possible means of doing so would be drawing from the poll results of this thread and making the assumption that the percentage of the vote in favor of an option to skip the boat as well as in favor of keeping the system the way that it was prior to the New Source Update (thus showing their intent to skip boat rides) will be the percentage of players who do indeed purchase the Fast Travel Ticket, a percentage of 69.7%. The public also does not have any means of estimating how many players actually play the game on a daily basis, however if we consider the average daily player count of approximately 1,200 online and the average daily vote count of 6,000, perhaps it is a decent enough estimate to use the average of these two numbers as 3,600 as a reasonable estimate of players per day. Considering these two values, one would assume that, at 850 NX per day for 69.7% of 3,600 players, 2,132,820 NX would be drawn on a daily basis towards this cause, a value that is equal to approximately 4.4% of all daily NX income via voting.

As we've now discussed the changes in NX supply, I would like to briefly touch on the changes in NX demand. The demand for NX-dependant items can be influenced by a wide variety of factors, and so largely this section will simply aim to present potential reasons for an increase in demand based on changes to the game. I cannot claim that each of the following points are absolutely a factor; I simply aim to present thoughts to consider. The most important thought is the idea of end-game; currently, MapleRoyals' endgame content is very limited, as we lack Horntail and the associated skillbooks it drops. This may be causing players to lack drive to continue playing characters past level 155 - until that point, there is reasonable content in Krexel, Zakum, Bigfoot and Anego to participate in, however after that point, those activities have begun to outgrow themselves. The only true content for higher levels currently in the game does not present itself until level 175, when Grandpa boss and the recently-released Castellan Toad are accessible. The Grandpa fight is likely the least attended boss fight in the game - the huge barriers to entry for any non-ranged class of 26,000 HP required to survive Bodyguard A's kick as well as his stun-spam that comes with very little counterplay, the invincibility frames that Bodyguard B presents without a melee character present and the 442 accuracy requirement to hit Grandpa that any non-DEX/LUK based character will find essentially impossible to achieve makes this fight not only immensely tedious but also entirely not worth the effort in comparison to even the lower level options. Castellan Toad, meanwhile, is the only boss that truly requires HP washing to fight, requiring a gargantuan 16,000 HP count that only warriors will hope to reach without HP washing, and to compound the issue, Castellan Toad's HP count totals some 1,070,000,000 HP - a very long and potion-draining fight for any party in comparison to Krexel and Zakum, both of which display HP totals of less than half that. Both options are theoretically realistic, however in both cases, the fights are not enjoyable and generally unrewarding for any reason other than experience, and often even this reason to attend the boss is less mathematically viable when compared to simple grinding. What this may result in is a general lack of interest in gaining experience, and thus a shift in player mentality towards improving gear. Improving gear for any character eventually requires the use of Chaos Scrolls and White Scrolls, and the sooner a player reaches that point, the sooner that the vast majority of their meso usage becomes shifted towards purchasing these items, thus driving up demand. Another potential result in the lack of interest in playing a character above level 155 is the simple interest in creating more characters - more characters means more equipment required, thus more White Scroll and Chaos Scroll demand, and it also means more demand for AP Resets to HP wash these new characters so that they can attend future bosses - Horntail which is not currently in the game, as well as the Castellan Toad, the truest end-game boss that we have.

In summary of these topics (here's your tl;dr of the facts, everyone), at least 1% of all daily NX is not being injected into our economy on a daily basis, and at least 1.2% of all daily NX is being removed on a daily basis in order to maintain the Free Market. Players do, of course, fully expect for boss drop NX to return to the game, as staff has stated multiple times that this will occur, however that does not take away how much NX is missing from our economy each passing day. In addition, hindsight shows that Hired Merchants are a very real draw on the NX supply, and speculation shows that we may be in for a much larger draw in future when mandatory boat rides are implemented to the game, as we are currently told will be the case. One last point to consider; the daily vote count includes every player who votes for NX via gtop200's website. This includes players who vote without going through royals.ms and thus do not actually receive NX, as well as players who may not currently be playing. As such, the total daily NX supply estimate of 48,000,000 NX may higher than the actual effective NX put into the economy on any given day, therefore making the amount of NX being drawn away from the economy more and more significant. I would also like to reiterate once again that the speculation on the NX draw caused by the Fast Travel Ticket is very speculative; I do believe the model proposed gives a good enough estimate on what the numbers may be, however it may be higher or lower as well, depending on the true values of who will actually purchase these tickets and how many people actually play the game daily, both of which are very difficult to estimate. Finally, changes to the current end-game meta may push players towards focusing on gear until the time comes that Horntail is released into the game, and it is also very much true that the current end-game boss in Castellan Toad creates more incentive to HP wash, even if they are not doing so simply to look forward to future Horntail release.

And now, for personal thoughts...
We didn't need an NX sink on old source. The NX economy was probably the most stable economy we had - AP Resets, White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls did fluctuate based on other outside factors such as time of year (Chaos Scrolls are particularly appealing during Christmastime when Red Christmas Socks are injected to the market, thus driving up price, and generally in the summer there are more players playing, thus altering both supply and demand as non-playing voters dump into Gachapon and players make more items) and exploits (of course, as the value of meso changes, the value of all items change regardless of the NX economy around it). But despite it all, all NX-dependent markets remained fairly stable for a long time. It has only been recently, with the many changes to how the NX market works, that we've seen such drastic changes to White Scrolls, Chaos Scrolls and AP Resets. I do very much believe that action needs to be taken at this time - my opinion is that the most important change to be made to the game needs to be returning boss drop NX in order to help keep NX supply up, and furthermore returning Horntail to the game. After these two features have returned, there is hope that NX markets stabilize due to more NX returning to the game as well as diminishing any possible effects on demand due to mentality shifts. In the situation that this does not aid in fixing these markets, I think that ideas very much should be considered to remove NX sinking from the market, or otherwise redistribute NX spending. The first and foremost ideas would be to lower or otherwise remove altogether the cost on Hired Merchants and Fast Travel Tickets so that the game may maintain the original market that it had for years without issue. If this is undesirable and other ideas are to be considered, other options may also help. Changing the price on AP Resets to make them more readily available may artificially ease the cost of these items and leave more NX available to purchase Gachapon tickets with which to make White Scrolls or Chaos Scrolls more frequent. Alternatively, altering Gachapon itself to increase the supply of White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls is another option, however we have already seen a boost to the rates of these items that did not slow the increase in prices, which would only point to changing which items come from which Gachapon machines, or otherwise making them all standardized regardless of which Gachapon is used. This may have unintended impacts on other items from Gachapon that are not as prevalent, such as various 30/60% scrolls, Maple Leaf Face Accessories, Dragon Khanjars, Sky Skis, Stonetooth Swords, Raccoon Masks and Dragon Equipment. Making any of these items available from an NPC would create a massive meso sink in the game as well as completely change the Gachapon balance, and should only be considered as a last resort - AP Resets would be the most ideal choice to be placed in an NPC, as it will not particularly change the appeal of any particular Gachapon location, however it still is an idea that should not be taken lightly, as I truly do believe that a large meso sink in any form may cause any items that are not standardized in price due to an NPC to deflate due to the change of meso in the economy.

It's been a wild ride folks; thanks for reading, and a cookie to anyone who read the whole thing. I must admit that I have felt somewhat under the weather as of writing this, so it is entirely possible that I have missed relevant points of discussion or otherwise just made spelling or grammar errors. Feel free to point them out to me, and to discuss anything that I've said for validity, as I very much would like to present the truth with this thread. My goal is to help the economy return to a comfortable place and nothing more - hopefully we all have the same goal and can work together to accomplish it.

 

TLDR lmao

 

my brain hurts can we get a TLDR

 

LOL that feel when the wall of text is too long for these lazy mofos to even find the TLDR

Also Professior Michael, do you think the recent change in level requirement for purchasing AP Resets has had a significant impact on their staggering prices? Many have asserted that this change has rendered the large numbers of hidden vote abusers unable to purchase AP Resets on their fake accounts.

 

I didn't read it but I like it

 

Quickly skimmed through it and my TLDR would be:

There's a lack of NX supply and the economy is unstable.
- Bosses don't drop NX like they used to.
- Merchant used to be perm and now they aren't, creating further global NX loss over time because maintaining those stores cost additional NX.
- AP resets are getting too expensive, would be best to be sold by a NPC to balance things out.
- CS/WS prices grew too much due to imbalance.

 

I read your whole post. My opinion may not be popular but I think there shouldn't be any action taken to try to "fix" the economy. This is a free economy and it's based on demand and supply. Many factors have influenced in the current state of "inflation" comparing to the old source and there has been an increase of 40-60% in most items. However, stuff like not having HT, APQ, or making us buy merchants with NX (to name a few) are obviously gonna affect the economy. Some of the changes you're mentioning were made on purpose by the staff so I'm pretty sure they were aware these changes were gonna have some kind of effect in the economy. If prices keep like they are now, who's gonna be affected? I don't think anyone. Prices of 480-500m for CS/WS would be the norm for the next few years and I don't really see a problem with that. When I first joined MapleRoyals back in 2015 CS/WS were 400m and when prices started dropping to 300m and even to 260m I didn't see anyone making threads saying "let's save the economy", because if you compared prices of 2016 with the ones of 2015 we were in "deflation". The prices started dropping naturally because more people started playing and there was more supply. Although, like you mentioned there may have been some action taken before when there was unusual stuff (like duping or RWTing) that was affecting the economy. But like I've mentioned, this is a case of supply and demand and, unless it's bringing back the functionality of items or features that are disabled right now, I don't agree with trying to "fix" the economy on purpose.

 

SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONTM

What you're ignoring is that staff action directly affected the stability of the economy, in this case making it unstable. So no, it's not a purely free market economy. Supply was artificially changed, which led to many of the issues Mike brought up. If it were a true free market these changes would never have been made in the first place.

I guarantee you they couldn't predict the effect that the changes had or even thought about all the effects it could have. Even in the most controlled economies it's difficult to predict the outcome of some action. That's why central banks are typically very careful before they do anything, and when they do make changes the changes are typically very slight (quantitative easing). In this case the changes were made in pretty quick succession, without proper time given to see how each change would affect the economy. Slow and steady wins the economic race.

Higher prices make it harder for new people to get started. Farming rates haven't changed, so 2 years ago when WS were 300m it would take around 5 hours of farming on a bishop to get a WS. At 450m it would take 7.5 hours. For people that don't already have the funds getting started is much harder now than before. A real life example would be cost of living going up, as it does, but wages staying the same.

So no, it's not just a case of supply and demand in a free market economy. Supply was artificially changed and demand has either stayed the same or increased naturally. This (among other things of course) has led to increased inflation of certain items at an alarming rate. So yes, the economy could definitely use adjusting.

 

It could be, however personally I don't believe that the level requirement will affect anyone abusing the game, as anyone doing something illicit like vote abusing on multiple accounts is likely not getting to level 15 to enable voting on those accounts legitimately - there would likely be some method of expanding that illegitimate activity to reach level 50 as well with little to no effort. However, the topic of vote abuse is also indirectly touched on by Matt...

Vote abuse becoming more difficult (as well as players unwittingly failing and not actually receiving NX by not completing the captcha without knowing) is another reason that NX supply could be diminishing, as whether we may like it or not, vote abusers injecting NX into the economy did contribute to it. I did touch on that very point in my post (number of votes not being equal to actual NX into the server), so I'm glad to hear that I wasn't that far off the mark... though I am somewhat concerned about how much of a role it may be causing by making the missing NX from boss drops and Hired Merchant costs becoming more significant compared to NX supply per day. I'm sure that whatever is coming in the next update is very important, but I do have to state my sincere hope that boss drop NX (and Horntail) are indeed the next update, as the longer they remain out of the market, the longer the NX (and meso) economies stray away from where they should be.

Last note - very glad to hear that the Fast Travel Ticket cost is still in question - the number that I came up with was definitely a scary one (made scarier by the above), and I am relieved that it is not final. If any updated thoughts on the numbers could be presented, a more relevant analysis can absolutely replace the section that I wrote on it, though I'd expect from what you've said that staff has already done the math and the numbers will work out.

Yes master;

In summary of these topics (here's your tl;dr of the facts, everyone), at least 1% of all daily NX is not being injected into our economy on a daily basis, and at least 1.2% of all daily NX is being removed on a daily basis in order to maintain the Free Market. Players do, of course, fully expect for boss drop NX to return to the game, as staff has stated multiple times that this will occur, however that does not take away how much NX is missing from our economy each passing day. In addition, hindsight shows that Hired Merchants are a very real draw on the NX supply, and speculation shows that we may be in for a much larger draw in future when mandatory boat rides are implemented to the game, as we are currently told will be the case. One last point to consider; the daily vote count includes every player who votes for NX via gtop200's website. This includes players who vote without going through royals.ms and thus do not actually receive NX, as well as players who may not currently be playing. As such, the total daily NX supply estimate of 48,000,000 NX may higher than the actual effective NX put into the economy on any given day, therefore making the amount of NX being drawn away from the economy more and more significant. I would also like to reiterate once again that the speculation on the NX draw caused by the Fast Travel Ticket is very speculative; I do believe the model proposed gives a good enough estimate on what the numbers may be, however it may be higher or lower as well, depending on the true values of who will actually purchase these tickets and how many people actually play the game daily, both of which are very difficult to estimate. Finally, changes to the current end-game meta may push players towards focusing on gear until the time comes that Horntail is released into the game, and it is also very much true that the current end-game boss in Castellan Toad creates more incentive to HP wash, even if they are not doing so simply to look forward to future Horntail release.

 

Probably hard to predict how big the effect would be, I just stated that some kind of effect was obvious.

About the fact that the economy was artificially made stable, I understand what you’re saying. However, why was it chosen to be stabilized at 300? Why not at 400m like when I joined? Why can’t it be stabilized at 500m now? Sounds arbitrary to me.

 

I agree with @StrickBan. I haven't seen this many smega'ing of buying/selling godly items before. Economy is inflated, yes, but people are richer too. We should take that into account. Nothing drastic needs to be done...

How is it harder for new people to get started? Every 60/70% and some 30% scrolls have drastically decreased in price. Low to mid tier gear is also super cheap. AP resets? 90% of new players don't hp wash on their first char. There's also a culture of "you must absolutely hp wash to boss!!" in this server which frankly is overhyped. You don't need much hp washing to HT. Check out Sila's guide.

Farming rates have not changed but the number of royalers has increased: lots more mesos created in the server. Yes it is more expensive to buy a WS/CS, but how many times do you buy a WS/CS vs. any other scrolls (which are now dirt cheap)? So you save a little here but spend a little more there. The ratio isn't 1:1 obviously but it surely isn't chaotic in any sense. Without HT (+ the fact that you don't lose exp when you die, something no one mentions but is significant) people have made a mage to either farm or prepare or make a new funded char.

The AP reset inflation is due to 3 things:
1. lv50 req => lower supply
2. More players + players getting richer and richer (cuz nothing else to do but farm!)=> high demand
3. Apparently gaching is better... which is debatable

^Impact on economy could have been easily foreseen by staff which tells me their decision was a conscious one and therefore inevitable.

EDIT: typos

 

You are correct - you don't need any HP washing to HT, strictly speaking. You mentioned Sila, who wrote that guide; I've known her since 2014 and done many Horntails with her - she stopped doing them after a while, and part of the reason was that her low HP made the boss fight too intense for her to handle doing often. She died a number of times even though she could theoretically survive, because of seduce, because of autopot failures, because of simple inattentiveness over an hour and a half long fight. She's not alone in that either - I have personal experience with dozens of other players over the course of hundreds and hundreds of Horntail runs who have complained and even remade their characters entirely for more HP, not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Horntail doesn't require any HP washing, but the more you wash, the easier it becomes. If you are good enough to do it without HP washing, I commend you; most people prefer to pay for the safety of having enough HP to take a many hits before dying as opposed to just two.

I also would be remiss if I did not point out that the newest released boss requires HP washing for any non-warrior, and unwashed warriors require Hyper Body to survive and will still fall under the same category as the above. I have a 30,000 HP Bowmaster and even I find Castellan Toad to be slightly stressful as I cannot tank two hits without dying, I must pot after every hit.

While you may subjectively not subscribe to the necessity of HP washing and you're entitled to play and feel that way, the truth of the matter is that HP washing makes the game easier to play, and for that reason it will always be an integral part of Maplestory.

As an end-game player, I can say that over the course of the last year, I have personally purchased at least, if not more than, 100 more White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls than every other scroll in the game combined. White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls are undeniably the end-game scrolls in Maplestory, and as such, changes in their prices effectively shift the entire end-game market. Highly priced items such as scrolled attack gloves, capes, shoes and perfect weapons are bartered with White Scrolls and Chaos Scrolls as their currency in place of mesos. A shift of 100m more value per scroll means far less WS/CS value for a big ticket item. A perfect weapon that costed 25b in the past might still cost 25b now - the difference is that 25b used to mean 75 White Scrolls, now it means 56. None of this is opinion - it's all fact.

Consider a player aiming at preparing their character for future by making meso, as you've said they do - they will aim to have a perfect weapon +7, and at the very least some above average attack gear. It's true that topwear/bottomwear/helmets/earrings/overalls also matter, but the large majority of damage increase comes from how much weapon attack a character has. A perfect weapon, assuming it drops on your head from Gachapon, still requires an average of 70 White Scrolls to complete, and from there, what is your above average attack gear? Is it a 15atk glove, and 10atk cape/shoe? That will run you about 8b - the glove you may be able to purchase for raw meso or even create yourself. The cape and shoe are both more than max meso and most if not all buyers would require payment in WS/CS - a sum of some 6-7b, which would be about 15 more WS/CS. That's 85 scrolls you're now purchasing as a bare minimum to complete these transactions. And this is just for what's quickly becoming "average."

Can you substantiate this claim? Prior to the New Source Update, Goby farming was a rampant method of creating meso and widely accepted as the best method of doing so - players were able to create ridiculous amounts of meso per hour without ever having to speak to another player - it was pure NPC value on equipment that would net a player approximately 80m mesos per hour. This was true created meso - it wasn't obtained from another player, which is movement of meso, as is the case when a player buys leech or sells Gachapon or AP Resets. To my knowledge, the current best meso generation rate is at Ulu 1 or Ulu 2 - a raw meso gain of about 60-70m per hour. This is very plainly less per hour. As for the claim of number of players increasing - currently as I type this, the players online sits at 1032. This number is indeed slightly under the average that I've seen, with average being closer to 1200. This number has also not changed significantly to my knowledge of average online players from 2016 - if anything, I'd believe it has decreased, not increased. You claim yourself that farming rates have not changed - if players counts are the same, and players are farming just as much, but making less mesos per hour, how is it that you have come to the conclusion that "lots more mesos are created in the server"? I'd like to hear more to fully understand your point of view.

Once again, if you don't subscribe to the standards of the server, I commend you. I would wholeheartedly make the claim that the majority of the server does, in my experience. I do respect your opinion of nothing being necessary to counteract the issue presented, I just felt the need to clarify some points as well as answer a question that you presented.

 

My point on CS/WS is that there are too many people with the money to buy them. The fact that no one sells AP resets means almost everyone is gaching for WS/CS - even though WS/CS pull rate has decreased - .

The only solution to a WS/CS price correction is to increase gach rate. But what consequence would that bring? Much much much less AP resets on the market. (Please, do point some other solutions. I don't consider myself an economist by all means)

About HP washing. Yes, I agree with you about being comfortable/stress/rage-quit when bossing, sometimes even leads to being ostracized. I stand corrected on that fact. However, tbh, I don't think the price of AP resets is a problem at this very moment. Why? because people are rich. Don't forget that the AP reset price has only increased since about October~. Prior to that people have been washing comfortably. So it's only a fraction of the players that need AP resets. That being said, If it breaks 15m, yes, we have a problem.

The whole problem is linked to ethics...i.e. vote abusing. Matt would have to allow vote abusing to bring things back as they were which he probably won't. The only true solution is make a NPC sell AP reset for mesos. This would solve BOTH CS/WS and AP resets problems.

Something I don't understand:
Why has perf items not increased in price when economy as a whole inflated?

 

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/s-91-19-red-craven.106816/ 22B OCT 2017
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/91-19-rc.102602/#post-561369 20B SEP 2017
Cant find anything really from 2016 and I'm tired from a 10 hour day at work. So heres a comment of someone offering to sell a RC in 2016 at the price it used to be. 16b
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/b-91wa-red-craven-or-56-12luk-clean-red-craven.77650/#post-420173

Hasn't inflated at all has it?

 

Thanks! So what's the problem @Michael ?

 

"A perfect weapon that costed 25b in the past might still cost 25b now"

Meaning there's inconsistency between the inflation rates of CS/WS and the inflation rates of end-game items. Meaning item values become further volatile and disrupt the game ecosystem, especially for end-game players. Which I assume isn't a good thing, probably. The most expensive item I own is an average ele wand scrolled with 100% scrolls so that's about all I can say lmao.

 

Well to clarify this point as I myself specialize in making perfect weapons (lmao), a perfect weapon doesn’t change on price. A perfect nisrock/ craven is 50 ws, old sauce and new. If the price of white scrolls has gone up, then ofc the item in question is going up, but regardless of the rate of WS, the real price for the weapons remain the same: 50 ws

 

White Scroll and Chaos Scroll pull rates have both been increased as of this patch. Supply has increased, which from an economic standpoint should then lower the price. The problem? The price has continued to go up. This points to either the supply still being lower than past market equilibrium, or the demand being higher than past market equilibrium, and thus the price is still increasing in compensation until it finds said equilibrium.

Though I am curious why you pick 15m as the specific cutoff for this to become a problem, you're entitled to your opinion on it, so I won't question it. In any case, the price is already in the vicinity of 15m, as mentioned in the original post. A fraction of players could be as low as 1/100 and as high as 99/100 - I'd assume your claim is that only a small fraction need AP Resets, to which I'd very much like you to substantiate this claim as well. As I've already mentioned more than once, HP washing is likely in higher demand now than it ever has been in past, due to the only true end-game content being Castellan Toad and the potential for Horntail re-release which has been awaited for a long time and only gets closer as time progresses. Once again, the potential increase in demand as well as the noted decrease in NX supply has contributed to increase in prices.

Allowing vote abuse would likely very much overcompensate the issue, and is unethical as I think you've noted yourself. An NPC to sell AP Resets for mesos is one I mentioned as well - it would allow stability in the AP Reset market of course, but it would also open up a very significant amount of NX to being used for Gachapon. This too could become an overcompensation - if an average ranged character washes to 9,000 HP (close to the number required to attend all bosses in the game), they would use approximately 200 AP Resets without considering resetting any base INT the character may have required to acquire enough MP to do so. 200 AP Resets is a draw of 620,000 NX, or over 600 Gachapon tickets. I cannot attest to the rate at which Chaos Scrolls and White Scrolls come from their respective Gachapon machines, however one should consider that each washed character is removing this number of attempts at CS/WS.

 

But with the perfect items being paid for with an item that has inflated, is making the item itself be inflated through purchase. Correct me if I'm wrong here.