Nope, it's fine where it's at. Unless you actually want it in a new thread and I can do that for you. I sent you a PM. We can discuss it through there so as not to tie up this thread with that part of it. But, you brought up some very good points. Not, saying I agree with all of them. But, it looks like you actually put a lot of thought and time into your response. Very well written and thought-out. I am eager to see what some of our die-hard spam-bot boycotters have to say. :)

All I have to say is whilst the rational behind cash shop items paying for the running of the service, there are ways to drastically reduce the affect of cash shop items.

A "Bonus" is favorable for a cash shop user. I dont mind the fact that they can level faster with their [+9] equipment, weaponary, experience cards, blessing of teva, and of course extended hp/sp buff.

However, what I disagree with, is being denied the ability to participate in events simply because I dont purchase things from the cash shop.

Dont get me wrong, I have more than enough money to be able to buy everything I want in the cash shop. If I wanted to I could [+9] all my armour. I could buy the 1 month exp card, and blessing of teva, as well as the hp/sp buff for as long as I play. I could buy myself a nice critical-rate increasing costume. I could even buy myself a nice little raccoon. I could literally spend a hundred dollars each month on this game if I really wanted to.

Although your reasoning is perfectly valid, it promotes outsparks actions. Outspark, although doing their best, is still not producing satisfactory results. If they tested their patches before they released them, then I'd be more than willing to begin buying cash shop items again. However, with this freezing issue I have with XTrap, and the fact that it took them 4 weeks to resolve the fighter-skill animation bug, I'm reluctant to ever support them again.

Please, dont come posting that its not outsparks fault they put out a fault patch. If they even remotely took the time to test it they would've seen something wrong...

Outsparks service is nothing like Blizzards. Blizzard - makers of World of Warcraft, at least take the time to address your problem as quickly as possible. Blizzard works under the assumption that your problem genuinely exists, and try's their best to resolve it with you.

I email outspark about my XTrap issue - response I get from a customer service was basically "We dont seem to have anything wrong on our end." Basically they say, shut up and screw off.

I refuse to give them money to support their game. With the attitude that they have given (minus some of the GM's since they seem to be the only ones who try to actually help me), I'd rather that outspark goes broke.

It's a little harsh, yes, but if outspark was anything like Blizzard, then I would be more inclined to support them in any way or fashion.


Also, if you really want proof why outspark customer service is complete bullshit (sorry for the profanity): it is the fact that they dont even ask for a complete set of information. One thing commonly asked for by any other customer support from a game I've played is the "Dxdiag.log" containing all the information they need about my computer, specifications, drivers, etc.

@Miles - If only Outspark can sit back and look at the whole picture like you!!! They might actually improve dramatically... (esp with ur bots point)...

Cant say i completely agree with ur inflation scenario... gold sellers have bots that continually grind and farm and they're machines that is constantly getting kills, drops, and money.... and they build up a bank that they advertise and sell off to players...

As you said, inflation occurs when ppl get money from quest and NPCing drops... Gold sellers are increasing the number of gold floating around on the market... of coz, it doesnt contribute to the inflation until someone buys it from them... but the gold sellers are potentially there with the gold to increase inflation... there wont be that risk if they didnt exist...

And i have heard about ppl buying gold from them so it does happen!!!

But i have the same view as u regarding Point 4~

Well... I look at it as an extra opportunity for those who use cash shop to get something extra from the game... the clover event isnt the only event quest implemented... there's also the apple cider quest for non-cash shop players for a chance to get a cash shop item....

Like Miles said, what's wrong with rewarding ppl that's keeping the game running? I dont think Outspark is doing too bad in that aspect, there's been a few event quest now (and achievement quest) where non-cash shop players have a chance to get cash shop items too... (provided that the quest works LOL!! but that's a different matter)


Yeah i cant say much about the patching issue... i guess they're getting better at compensating us... (exp event after server down, rolling back our cash shop items etc) but yeah they should start looking at testing the patch... rather than waiting till it stuffs up and compensating us... prevention is better than treatment... but... i'm not too fussed....

But no one is forced by buy CS items... although they're heavily encouraged... but that's with anything... everyone is trying to encourage you to buy their service instead of using the free version....

@Miles--I'm going to have to agree with Hessah on this one.

I think the inflation hypothesis you described works under the assumption that the gold spammers are taking gold from someone else (that is, they are taking it out of circulation). But they are not. They are taking it directly from the game which is continually producing drops (which NPC into money) and quest prizes.

So now the amount of coppers/silvers/gold running out there is being produced two fold--by the players who are completing quests and getting drops and selling them, and by the bots who are farming away and selling those drops for money.

Okay, did I miss something? Where did the faulty patches come into play? I reread Miles post and don't see anywhere in there about not blaming Outspark for patches having bugs???? :confused:

oh yeah... maybe that's wat Angellic thought Miles was implying? i was responding to Angellic's bold line... not Mile's post about Patchy bugs...

when gold is taking from the market its called deflation. If more gold flows into the market, without being backed with items of equal worth, its called inflation. MMORPG's are bound to inflate, some faster, some slower.

Basicly inflation means that prices go up, deflation means prices go down. And i think the gold seller make there money with bots, and enchantment services.
So Outspark would be indirectly profiting from the gold sellers.

@Miles_Glorioso: i just read your post, and i agree to nearly everything u say, but 1 point.
I dont see gold sellers as a blessing. The do increase the rate of money being created. Yes they also keep large amounts from the market too. But the money they keep from the market flows in large portions in the low lvl market.

Unlinke the high lvl market the low lvl market is not very tolerant to more gold. A lvl 20 is rich when he as 10s. So a player that buys 1g, gets in an instant 100times more then that he had before. With that his tolerance to high/extreme prices increases too. Because of that the prices of enchanted and rare item will explode.

In the end people who are rich, from the game designer perspective, will feel poor, and start farming money. And thus are starting a inflation spiral, that will spin faster and faster and faster. Until only people who paying for the game in one way or another can afford good items.

omfg I agree with a lot of stuff here and there xD

let's see...

concerning the game itself, yes it is prone to get utterly boring at higher levels because of the excessive amount of experience needed to level comparing to the increase in the experience you make, and it doesn't get any better by making almost all game features around it.

as for the econ, just gonna point out something that's been partially missing :P
by no means bots keep money from the market. yes, they hold large sums of money and don't spend it(until they sell it to someone), but it's an amount of money that was not going to be produced if the bots weren't there, thus it's purely added to the econ without any impact on the money produced by legit players. and it's not much use saying a player could be making money from monsters the bots kill because low level maps can support players and bots together without problems .-.

Someone I know has picture proof of one of the three Barons of Teva admitting to purposely messing up Teva's economy and making as hard as possible to gt rare items.

Blackmail? /report it

Thankies, Narnia~! (Not the real name of who gave me the pic.)

lie im fine with the holepaying thing but like alot off ppl
mom's and dads wont pay for chash shop stuff like my mom
and like yes id like the stuff but if they make it free wut
r they going to get out of making this game there not gonig
to make any money

Analysis - A more IN-DEPTH continuation
 

Okay, I have a few further points to make, in particular regarding the discussion on the economic situation since that seems to be the hot topic. :D



Firstly I'd like to start with a response from Ralath who I think made some very valid points, and is a large part of the contribution that is my continuation of my analysis of the economy of Fiesta. :)

Actually this is a very good point. What I was looking at was exclusively the natural inflation that is created by Outspark within game through questing, and this was not intended to say that this is the only source, rather I was simply analyzing one apparent source of inflation to assess whether I could find an apparent fault on the Gold Seller's behalf or not in what people are observing as inflation in the game.

And specifically yes, I failed to recognize the NPCs as truly limitless source of inflation due to an increase in currency. :o

I really appreciate your comments, and from that I have decided to look more closely at what are apparent effects of inflation. In particular the one that bothers me which I did mention before is the shift from buying-shops to selling-shops. There are a ton of items waiting to be sold that just aren't doing it fast enough, and so there must be reasoning behind it.



--------------------------------------------------------



This analysis is intended to get the MUCH LARGER SCOPE of why Inflation is apparent in the economy of Fiesta :cool:



--------------------------------------------------------



Direct Inflation from Questing

If you already agreed with me before about Quest-Money related Inflation, then this section is nothing new to you

Firstly, I am correct in saying that the Gold Sellers are slowing the process of inflation. What I did say, and what I failed to stress enough is that the game itself causes all of the inflation. Gold Sellers are taking money from Questing and instead of putting the Gold directly into the economy for their own character's benefit, they are instead keeping the money from going into the economy until the get a buyer.

The point made here is that while Gold Sellers certainly can't PREVENT inflation, they're certainly not the cause. What they are doing is taking advantage of the natural course of MMORPG game-market inflation for personal, real-life financial benefit.

Essentially the best way to look at it is this: every time a person creates a new character in Fiesta, the economy has to inflate. The game naturally creates inflation to accomodate for every character. There is a fixed amount of money that a player's character can add to the economy (that is money not acquired through trades, but rather the amounts given from quests). This is the only form of inflation that I noted in particular in my post as being the point of interest.

As I say, there is a fixed amount of gold a single player's character can put straight into the economy simply by collecting and then utilizing. This inflation that would occur as it does with every other character is being held back by the gold sellers until they get someone who will pay real money for Fiesta Gold. So yes they are reducing the rate at which currency is being added to the economy so they are reducing inflation - the thing to note as some of you are aware, the inflation related to the Gold Sellers is inevitable, but this is a game mechanic, not a Gold Selling mechanic, every character helps Outspark deliver new currency straight into the economy. So very quickly, Gold Sellers do this too, but they don't dump it into the economy as soon as they get it like everybody else.



Gold Sellers Farming Drops and Circulating them into the Economy

Some of you were looking at Farming Drops as adding money to the Economy, so I'm going to have to clear up this misconception.

For those of you who understand Supply Curves as functions relating Quantity to Price (technically the Economic format dictates Quantity as a function of Price which is backwards of what you would think for those familiar with Cartesian Functions and Coordinates), I'm going to make this very easy for the people who are not familiar with these concepts. Firstly as is standard, set Price to be your verticle axis, and set Quantity to be your horizontal axis.

The really REALLY basic BASICS:

Okay there are two opposite ends of the spectrum here. The first is a system in which for a particular good (I won't actually look at individual goods) there are few suppliers who essentially control the pricing without injuring the quantity in which they sell by much. The second is a system in which there are many many suppliers who have hardly any control in the pricing, and should any individual supplier make a change up in price might no longer be able to sell, and if they make a change down in price will sell out almost instantly.

Okay, so very obviously, as we add more suppliers to the system and as our demand does not change, we see a shift from supplier price-control to a fairly constant pricing scheme.

When Gold Sellers farm drops and sell them, they are shifting the overall economy from one in which prices can be easily shifted to one in which prices are fairly stationary (i.e. Dim Dusts tend to stay between 70c and 90c, if someone priced their Dims well outside of this, they will notice a drastic change in the amount of sales they're actually getting).

Inflation/Depression from the Supply Shift

So ultimately Gold Sellers who farm drops are helping to push the supply-side more quickly to a purely competitive economy.

What I am arriving at is this shift is natural regardless of who it is specifically who is starting to sell stuff, but the problem is this shift is supposed to occur with a balance in the shift of demand, that is for the system to stay stable and unchanging, an increase in quantity supplied must equate to an increase in quantity demanded.

Arriving at one of the other major problems noted is a reduction in the number of players joining Fiesta. If fewer players are joining, then the quantity demanded is increasing more slowly than the quantity supplied, so we're seeing a shift to a more purely competitive market.

The ultimate result of which is there are dozens upon dozens of shops sitting there trying to sell stuff to customers that don't even exist or are very few in number - thus transactions become more RARE (so the value of gold is going down, so inflation is occurring). For many of you who have studied the economic changes that occurred between World War I and World War II, "The Hyperinflation" in Germany is a paradigm that reflects rarity in currency flow to the supply-side (in the case of The Hyperinflation, an EXTREME rarity in currency flow to the supply-side).

Just so you all know, Macroeconomics thrives on the notion of Paradigms and comparing noticeable occurrences now to noticeable economic occurrences that have happened before.

As an increase in the ratio of quantity supplied over quantity demanded occurs, apparently drop-farming Gold Sellers are clearly pushing the economy of Fiesta into inactivity.

My Conclusion (this is much less simple than what I tried to explain above)

So on one hand we have inevitable inflation at reduced rates from Gold Sellers circulating Quest-based currency to buyers, and on the other hand we see a reduction in the supply-side of market activity. By closing the financial-gap between low-levels and high-levels, we see a normalization in prices. By flooding the markets with more drops, we see a normalization in prices. So everything is shifting to a purely competetive market that has a growing surplus supply to its current demand due to a reduction in incoming players. Ultimately the reduction in supply-side market activity is causing an inflation in Gold due to the lack of transactions occurring (which is cyclic).

So the players who buy gold from Gold Sellers get to a state of financial stability or better, and then those who work hard to get there, and then those who cannot earn enough money are struggling to make their way up.

Ultimately, we have serious inflation in currency, for which the only way to stay on top is to buy more money from Gold Sellers.

My personal opinion which I refrained from adding to the discussion before is that I think Gold Selling isn't so much the cause of inflation as much as it is the only means those at the bottom of the barrel have to survive ongoing inflation. I believe that through my analysis that it is the surplus of drops up for sale in the market and a decline in the amount of new players in Fiesta that is causing this strong inflation, and what's worse is that coming into the game you might feel like in the game it takes a long time to succeed financially, which IS the effect of inflation in the economy.



Conclusion: Reduction of Incoming Players and a Surplus in Goods Supplied are causing Inflation (which is reducing the number of incoming players and not solving our problem with surplus goods supplied) and Gold Sellers are the ones profiting from this

:eek::eek::eek:

Double-Post, sorry!
 

Unfortunately my post was pushing the maximum number of characters so I'm posting a double post (sorry!!! :( ) because there was another good response I got that I wanted to provide my feedback to.

This post definitely stood out to me, and was written by MaxOff:

Firstly, in my previous post I was making an observation of what I saw and not really giving my opinion on the matter. Yes I believe that Gold-Sellers are not really causing inflation by slowing the rate at which game-induced inflation actually occurs. As stated above this is the RESULT of ongoing inflation.

Note, my previous observation never included anything on the surplus-supply before, which is what I lacked in order to be able to state a clear opinion. Here because I have the ability to conclude what IS happening to the economy on Fiesta, I am able to state an opinion supported by reasonable analysis and observations.

Your last paragraph definitely supports the observation that inflation IS occurring, and I agree that players who are not buying gold from Gold Sellers are at a disadvantage, however I do not believe those buying Gold are alone in Fiesta, or at least not yet. Players whose characters already have plenty of money and items are right up there with Gold Buyers, not being affected by the chaos occurring in Elderine and the simple lack of activity in Roumen. Pretty soon Elderine will begin to look like Roumen if we don't draw more players in quickly, and then the players in Uruga will start feeling the results and will be scurrying to make ends meet financially.

Not quite. Spider Assault, and the King Kong Phino are two of the highest paying KQ's. These KQ's run every hour.

Reward: a box full of T3 materials that can be NPC'ed.

Spider Assault: Up to 9 stacks of T3 items (30 per stack, 10 T3 potion buffs)
King Kong Phino: Up to 9 stacks of T3 items (50 per stack, 15 T3 potion buffs)


Unfortunately, Fiesta's economy doesn't quite work as one would expect it to.

The higher-levelled and lower-levelled area's can be completely independant of eachother. The only need for low-level assistance is in the production of scrolls which often require T2 or T1 mats when producing a T3 or T2 scroll.

uhm, quests do not cause inflation in the end :P

I mean, they actually give extra money to the econ, but NPCable drops don't give you THAT much money since you'll be using a lot of those on prod skills which will result in consumables, and skills/stones are more than enough to burn money out of econ in a reasonable rate.

as for the supply stuff, well, as much as I hate to say it, bots selling low tier mats make life easier for lots of people since not everyone wants to spend their strict amount of time available to play on gathering such stuff, and most of the legit players who actually gather stuff do it for using not selling x;
there IS a portion of the new incoming players that will sell those, but that doesn't cover all the demand. and even if the need for low level assistance is low, it's still needed to be given in a reasonable amount.

Miles_Glorioso , im really glad for your last posts, but there is some important error in your thoughts:
-Every Players that joins the game, will leave it someday too.
-GoldSellers do not sell the drops they farmed to the community, but to the npc's
-If my overvation is correct: GoldSeller mainly generate there money by selling enchantment services.
---they resell money, not generate
---are the mayor buyer for dusts
---are buying from the cashshop

So sorry if I misunderstand something. My understanding of economics is limited to supply-demand, what I read in the paper, and common sense.. xD

Hmm... How does that differentiate between a person who, say, farms a lot of sap in the the sap farms in AEW and someone who only farms and only gets money from quests? Obviously, the person who has farmed a lot of Sap and then NPC'ed it has a lot more money to add than someone who has simply gotten money from the quests. The game has a near limitless supply of ways to earn money, simply by NPCing mushrooms, ore, petals, starfish, clam meat, whatever.

The thing with this is Gold Sellers don't... affect the economy otherwise in any other way. That is, they aren't spending money for skills, or equips, or HP/SP stones like real players do--that money "disappears" into the game forever (and I'm going to go out on a limb and say that is good for keeping down inflation since it is removing money from the economy). Also I'm assuming they aren't getting their money from quests since the money that is earned through quests is actually not a lot compared to the same amount of time spent farming. Not to mention it's hard for bots to figure out quests and what to kill and to turn in quests. @.@

I dunno about this one but I don't think Gold Sellers actually sell (vend) the drops they farm. I've always been under the assumption that Gold Sellers are using bots that can farm or mine and they will later sell these drops to an NPC and since they aren't limited by time, this is highly profitable for them. (I wouldn't be surprised if one gold-selling company could be run by just a couple people.)

Also, another thing to note is that unlike the real world, there isn't a certain amount of money that players have to earn in order to "play." Yes, it's nice to have HP/SP stones, but those aren't necessary in the sense that IRL, food and other expenses are necessary. So for many people (like me), vending stuff that I don't want is a bonus. I would still do fine whether I sold/bought stuff or not. I know that whenever I cannot sell my equips, I will continually lower my price until I can sell them. However (and correct me on this if I'm wrong), retailers feel like they have to keep raising the price of everything to keep up with the expenses. A character's most basic expense in Fiesta is from the NPC, which do not ever change prices.

Basically, I don't consider Fiesta to be dependent on currency flow from one player to another.

I dont see why all these People are Complaining, If the Game did give you all the special things that you have to buy with SparkCash, they would mostlikly have to charge people to play. It would be like Final Fantasy 11. But they are at least letting Everyone play for Free, or would you like a bill of $29.99 a month to play Fiesta.

Re-hashed and re-tried argument =/


The Cash-Shop thing was only one facet of the whole thread. Thing is, while what Rokaraged posted a long time ago isn't even the main focus of this thread anymore, it is something that we're playing with right now, months after he posted.

Firstly, this game isn't worth paying to play.

Secondly, the games balance is obstructed as well.

Unlike other games, which have more to do than to mindlessly kill monsters repeatedly, fiesta doesn't have much depth.

A pay to play solution would never work for a game like fiesta.


Secondly, the games balance is thrown off by classes, bugs, and of course, the cash shop only servers to compound the issue.

The cash shop is a way for them to make money, yes. But the moment you divide the game with cash-shop items, you only create problems with balance.

With all things considered, it shouldn't be possible for archers and mages to tank. Yet they can, and they can do it better than many fighters or clerics.

You can buy a nearly permanent upgrade to your HP/SP pool. You can buy a nearly permanent boost in exp-rates.

So, I'll let you decide whether having cash shop items isn't compounding this issue of balance.

i played Beta and thought it was a really promising little game.

i took a break so i could come at the shiny new game with fresh eyes and really appreiciate all the updates and improvements.

oh wow was i dissapointed!

i mean the clicky bar while foraging mushrooms i can live without, but can someone not have correctly labelled the skill scrolls by now? or the weird punctuation marks in some of the early quest texts? i cant believe that such important things that dont seem difficult to deal with have STILL not been fixed.

and the GMs are definately less evident.

on the outspark being sneaky front i did notice that they remove the unscheduelled server failiure notices from the board, but leave the old planned ones up, why? oh wait, because it looks bad you say! why perhaps an apology to replace it? no? wow i feel really valued, thanks

PS. i do feel that they're making it v.hard to play the game without spending money, ive found stuff on there too expensive to buy on a whim.

Oh No Gold Sellers!

The Main Focus
 

All I'm Saying is that Everyone is Complaining way too much for somthing that is Free. When you get something that is for free(For Example: A Remote Controll race car) you get the Race car and you dont complain till you realize that u need Batteries to make it work. Well at least you didnt have to pay for the $30 race car, all you have to pay for is the $5 Batteries. So you people Complain for all the little things that happen in the game when at least you get the main peace to make it all work FOR FREE.

I have a question, How do these Sellers get the gold to begin with? Seems a little Phishy to me.

I've Never used Cash Shop, your saying the more i use Cash Shop the more likely I'm going to run into problems. Should I use Cash Shop?

Thanks for your remarks!

1. It's not important to note that every joining player will leave someday - by having joined and doing a little bit in the game they have added money to the economy and when they leave it will still be there.

2. Gold Seller Bots will definitely sell drops they farmed to NPCs, but Gold Sellers who do not Bot know as well as everyone else does that drops CAN fetch a better price if sold directly to another player. I've discussed both situations in my analysis already though.

3. The "reselling" of money is an interesting notion I had not explored - and I can definitely see a clear benefit here for the gold sellers. However unless anybody actually has real statistics on what gold sellers actually do to get their gold, everything mentioned pertaining to Gold Sellers is all hypothetical and should be treated as such.

I have explored both of these notions in both of my analyses. But to expand further, the point is that both scenarios generate gold to be added to the economy. Thus inflation is occurring. The exact amount of inflation is as you observed is vastly different between the two sources of gold. My notes on quest-related inflation are strictly noting its presence and are by no means arguing it is the primary source of inflation, especially after the addition of my second analysis. Farming and NPC'ing is a very large source of inflation in the game.



It is correct to note that real players are a strong source of deflation in the economy to help counter the inflation from NPC'ing. It should also be noted that real players also do a fair bit of NPC'ing themselves. The fluxuation in inflation related to real players is very difficult to quantify though. :(

Right, as noted earlier in this response there is a higher profit margin to be made by vending to players - but NPC'ing is something one would have to do if you were using bots.

Since you have brought this up, this is actually not an Economics concept but rather a Game Theory concept. To avoid complications, if a player is very very very dedicated to playing Fiesta and levelling up or doing whatever they do and are trying to do it as quickly as possible, NPC'ing becomes a better and better source of currency as one needs money quicker and quicker (and acquires drops quicker and quicker).

But if you had all the time in the world to sell your stuff, or if your competition was very very small (or if you have a very high demand, the proportions of demand to competition here hold the same effect so this is really the same thing), or you have an extremely rare and valuable drop, then you would prefer to sell your stuff rather than NPC it.

Of course not everybody has all the time in the world - so to extend from your observation, a lot of people cause a great deal of inflation because of this.



Also, I don't believe there is much of an economy to look at in Fiesta, true there are things one can look at but in all honesty if water were currency (metaphorically speaking) then Fiesta much resembles the "Flat World" concept in which water falls from the heavens and then falls from the earth - so really there is no stability. In actuality, a "Fiesta Economy" is hypothetical altogether and the only thing an analysis can lend to is an explaination for small fluxuations that players may feel from time to time.

As pointed out, NPC'ing things brings money into the economy, and buying skills/items from NPCs removes money from the economy. It's an entirely unrealistic situation to even attempt to analyze. Ironically the "Vortex of Money" that surrounds NPCs parallels a very long analysis I did on the effects that the "illegal drug market" has on the rest of the economy (drug lords are hoarders and givers of money, outside the drug market they would appear to be themselves a vortex of money, limitless amounts coming and going).

the problem is that the batteries, that fit in the free race car, cost $20 each.

Dont Necro Post

4days is the longest gab, that not necro posting.

nopenope. Still an active thread with a good clean discussion going on. :D

o.O

Spirit has spoken

Why dont you just find another game
 

As I started to play more and more i noticed all the problems, As soon as I noticed all these problems I started to look for a new Free Online Game. I found a perfect Game Solution, The Game is called Last Chaos. This Game Is 10,000 times better than Fiesta.... I have Posted this for all the people who just complain too much. You should Try this game and post a Reply and at least make it to lvl 10 and tell my how you feel about This Game compared to Fiesta.

Here is a link to get the game: http://lastchaos.aeriagames.com

This game is not Completly Free but is like Fiesta Without haveing to rely on you Pocket Money to get better.