Make in-store items purchasable with tokens

[dageir]

Is this a debate between the haves and the have nots? Everyone that sits on a lot of tokens will be against expiration and those who a are poor wants it removed.
It could be compared to the real world where the poor or people in heavy debt would welcome a removal of a currency and the rich would be opposed. The exception would be in the USA where everyone who is not a millionaire is a temporarily embarrassed millionaire. Right now tokens is the only thing that links the effort with a previous world to the next. Tokens carrying from one world to the next would be an incentive to keep playing.

[Kaios]

What's the worth of tokens? 1 month playtime? Where is that related to world ends? The worth is there as long you can grab playtime for it ...

Those that started to use playtime tokens as ingame currency knew the risk of hording playtime and they're the ones making ingame stuff worthless for trading ... and now you want to honor the speculators ?!? I saw it coming ... halleluja RL greed incoming ... botfarming virtual coins ... botfarming tokens ... the value of work and money gone ...


btw. is there a way to make tokens unusable?!?

I'm glad I'm not the only that sees it and I really lost a lot of respect for Tuz for supporting this kind of scheme

[azrid]

I would prefer a new tradeable verify token.

[Chebermech]

I really lost a lot of respect for Tuz for supporting this kind of scheme

That sounds a bit harsh, I kind of pointed out the problems with it, and also problems that already exist in the current system, and that I would rather support devs than people using paypal to sell their tokens to other players. Tokens were made to be tradable, not to donate them to a friend, since you can just gift someone a sub instead, and it'll be more useful and cheaper, but to use them for trading. And I don't see a problem with that, especially when there are people playing from all over the world and for some subs might be expensive, so they can grind their way in game and trade for a sub token to get that little bit of advantage. Trading last world generated a lot of interest in buying tokens, and people were exchanging it for both items and coins at CF and Aurora, that i know of, probably in dis market when it existed too, and I know for sure that a lot of people got token rich last world due to trading at CF. I knew right away that tokens will start losing their value due to an inflation of them in the game, at times it seemed like there are already enough tokens to give subs to every person on the server for at least a year. If that were to happen, hypothetically, devs would be losing money, as people wouldn't buy any tokens and less people would buy subs, and if trading continues the way it did last world, its only a matter of time when tokens become useless because a vast majority will have them. So to me it seemed like a timebomb right off the start, but you can't really do anything about it, because some people are okay to spend money in game to get the items or the means to get the items in the game to make them stronger or progress their industry and save a lot of time. I'm not a huge fan of pay to win, but on the other hand it does support devs, and doesn't really make you win, when you can lose everything in this game. If people are okay with spending money, that's their choice. But when it comes to spending money directly to buy things from people through paypal, then I have a problem with that, which is why we ban people who advertise real money trading in our discord channel, and even though i know that its still happening through pms, because there is just no way to stop it, at least I don't let people promote it. Now if you want people to keep supporting devs in the future, tokens will be less effective with each new world, because everyone will have subs, and a lot of people already have gold or silver subs to get their patch hats, so they don't even need tokens anymore. Also like I i said in the previous post people who are token rich can already exchange tokens for hats and sketches, or for high quality items in the game from players, they just need to find a person willing to trade. If you make a token conversion into a store credit to buy only hats and sketches, there is no harm to the game balance, there is only additional value to the tokens for all the players and additional revenue for devs. If its impossible to buy subs or verifications with store credit, and store credit transfers into less money than you pay for per token even when buying them in bulk of 12, I think that is fine, and again makes a bit more money for devs to develop this game instead of having player-to-player paypal transactions. Otherwise we have tons of tokens on our hands that only keep accumulating and losing their value + being completely useless to people with payed subs. Does that logic make my morals faulted, what is it that makes you lose respect for me, I don't understand.

[borka]

Tokens were made to be tradable, not to donate them to a friend

If you have a friend you'd like to hook up, consider buying him or her a Subscription Token!

just to set that straight ...

While i surely won't damn you like the other guy did i guess it's thinkworthy that at one hand the devs are bashed for "not making valuable trade items" and instead lower values by making garden pots but on the other hand it's the traders that superseded any trading goods with tokens ... partly even with a totally weird exchange rate like buying tokens for 120 points and selling for 250 points ... besides the effect that tokens don't have a constant value to all trades ... imagine the devs would give their ok for paying with tokens in their store but change the value to their likes: "oh this hat is so hard to script you'll have to pay 20 token to buy"...

you're right when you state it's better to have tokens for trading than doing RM trades for ingame goodies by paypal ... while i think on the other hand it shows that even traders are wiiling to pricedump to grab RM for their scripted goodies ...

but prolly i am just a lousy guy who doesn't understand "competition" when not liking the moneytizing of virtual game worlds /besides coming from a gaming mod background where it was/is usual to give even work of years away for free to share the fun ...

[Kaios]

Does that logic make my morals faulted, what is it that makes you lose respect for me, I don't understand.

Sorry, you're right it was harsh but reading your post advocating for further ways to include that aspect in the game is something I really dislike. I already hate the way tokens have impacted trading in-game and changes to the system that would only exacerbate the issue rather than minimize it will in my opinion have a greater negative impact in the long-term than the short term boon it might be to their sales.

What borka says is exactly how I feel about it too, it makes very little sense to have ever been exchanging tokens at this rate in the first place when their sole purpose is to provide a player with subscription time so to ask for further uses now really seems like no one actually cared what the intention for them was. Tokens weren't mean to replace all forms of in-game currency and while I do think that part of the reason for their existence is to give the devs an alternate form of revenue I am not really sure why anyone thinks they have to rely on this system and only this system in order to generate funds.

I've already pointed out to jorb that there is a lack of sustainability in the way the system is currently implemented and you've reinforced that by pointing out exactly what I said to him which is that the tokens are so saturated within the community that eventually we will reach a point where their in-game value will become essentially worthless and token purchases will begin to slow down significantly. But how does adding more of that resolve this issue in the long-term? As long as players are able to accrue and store this level of wealth between worlds nothing will change in terms of how the game's economy is grossly impacted as a result.

[shubla]

What would the drawbacks be? Why would you be skeptical about turning them into general store credit?

Doing this would only increase the amount that are bought, and the value of them in-game. If anything, you could also just add "vouchers" for various amounts of store currency that can be redeemed in-game to accomplish this, although at a slight markup (i.e 25% $10 = $12.50)

The game already caters to real money trading, so I don't really see any downsides.

Already people only buy tokens and not much of anything else. Something like this would just make the problem worse than what it currently is.
In legacy one could forage some blueberries and collect a few bluebells and pearls to buy something that he wants. But now, you basically have to buy tokens to buy anything from other players.

[Chebermech]

Well trading in general is what drives player interaction, its either trading or taking things by force, or growing quality and keep in within the walls just to be able to keep your base intact from hostile players. But generally trading is what most people do, even on a small scale. Now having an economy driven by blueberries and bluebells would be really good, if there was a demand for it, but with so many curios being craftable at crazy qualities, makes them practically all useless, and most of foraged food ingredients are only good for the early game stuff. In the previous worlds when that was the main economy drive, people would just run bots to get pearls and edelweiss, feldspar and whatever else people were buying, including high quality craftables that people would get due to a bot industry. Not much have changed, and bots do give an unfair advantage for those who are into trading, but with some tweaks to the game, like farming for example, you can now compete with bots, and it is more difficult to bot mining now with added danger to the mines. But stuff like cheese making is still pretty heavily botted and is something a regular player can't compete with, just like in every world before. Still, overall I think the economy is improving, but like Sevnless said

The problems with trade aren't tokens, but the lack of anything else meaningfully tradeable.

which is the main concern. Right now the only thing people can trade to make a decent coin without being a big village is Cast Iron. And at current prices you can trade 50-60 cast iron bars for enough coins to buy yourself a sub token. That seems pretty cheap... compared to previous world, but with Iron being so rare this world, compared to the previous, at least on higher levels of the mine, it makes it more difficult to get cast iron, thus makes it more difficult to make coin, so compared to previous world the only trade sink item that was so popular is less available this world, and because of that more valuable. But all in all, you can still get those 60 bars if you work hard enough (something that you do a lot in this game anyways), while before you had to dig out and smelt about 5-10x as much (depending the world age) to make yourself a token, once you have some industry established it would only take a few days of work in the game to get your sub token. If there were more items in game that anyone could get with enough effort, items that would still be useful in the late game, even for larger factions, that would really fix the economy issues we have today with not much things being valuable for the big guys. While resource nodes such as Icicles and Pit clay are useful, they are mainly owned by the big guys already, Rock crystals are somewhat useful, but not to the extent of a previous world, and it is only as good as the tool you harvest them with, so again, big factions. The only resource that is available to people, depending on how lucky they are is Guano, but only for those who contribute to the kingdom buffs, and only for so long, until its not needed. Everything else, including salt and even brim is kind of useless most of the time. But if there were things that you could get not depending on a time window, but on your effort (like cast iron), that would be so much better. So I guess more spiral mechanics or consumable items?

Just an example of the top of my head, would be to add a new type of foragable and or hunting byproducts sink mechanic like an Alchemy, add poison extraction from snakes for potential medicine use or weapon poisoning for hunting/pvp; herbs and mushrooms that you can't pot, animal parts such as wolvering scent gland, magpie eggs or any other wild bird byproduct (there are so many birds), etc. The reason I bring up alchemy is because logically you can sink more of the same ingredient to increase the density of a substance, so if 1 scent gland gives you 0.05l of a certain liquid, and when you have say 1l of it, you can boil it down to 0.1 of higher density/quality essence, in other words... sink and crit mechanic of foragables and hunting byproducts. And here you might ask again, will bots ruin this mechanic and the economy of it once again, and they certainly will affect it, but just as much as they affect making cast iron bars, if not less, as it requires more manual tasks that are impossible/difficult to bot, or to bot safely. Sorry for a bit of an off-topic with this example, but i think health of the economy is overall a very important subject, and what kills it is not subtokens but a lack of sink items in the game that are obtainable and attractive to everyone, throughout the whole world, no matter the quality. And after all, player economy is not ran by subtokens but by market specific currency, aka coins, that you can gain from one person and spend by buying from another.

[Kaios]

The problems with trade aren't tokens, but the lack of anything else meaningfully tradeable.

which is the main concern. Right now the only thing people can trade to make a decent coin without being a big village is Cast Iron. And at current prices you can trade 50-60 cast iron bars for enough coins to buy yourself a sub token. That seems pretty cheap... compared to previous world, but with Iron being so rare this world, compared to the previous, at least on higher levels of the mine, it makes it more difficult to get cast iron, thus makes it more difficult to make coin, so compared to previous world the only trade sink item that was so popular is less available this world, and because of that more valuable. But all in all, you can still get those 60 bars if you work hard enough (something that you do a lot in this game anyways), while before you had to dig out and smelt about 5-10x as much (depending the world age) to make yourself a token, once you have some industry established it would only take a few days of work in the game to get your sub token.

That's not what makes the tokens bad though, it's good if a player can acquire them through in-game means but from what I've seen the opposite thing happens and players with less time to spend on industry buy the tokens and spend them on the large factions with more time to spend on something like spiraling for example.

If there were more items in game that anyone could get with enough effort, items that would still be useful in the late game, even for larger factions, that would really fix the economy issues we have today with not much things being valuable for the big guys. While resource nodes such as Icicles and Pit clay are useful, they are mainly owned by the big guys already, Rock crystals are somewhat useful, but not to the extent of a previous world, and it is only as good as the tool you harvest them with, so again, big factions. The only resource that is available to people, depending on how lucky they are is Guano, but only for those who contribute to the kingdom buffs, and only for so long, until its not needed. Everything else, including salt and even brim is kind of useless most of the time.

I do think all of those things have their uses to someone even if the main factions no longer have a need for them, silver would be a nice thing for hermits to be able to trade that used to have a reasonable level of value until someone decided to put a significant level of effort in decreasing its worth.

But if there were things that you could get not depending on a time window, but on your effort (like cast iron), that would be so much better. So I guess more spiral mechanics or consumable items?

Spiral mechanics are fine but metal quality increased incredibly fast this world and I think further efforts need to be made to slow that down.

And after all, player economy is not ran by subtokens but by market specific currency, aka coins, that you can gain from one person and spend by buying from another.

If a dude is setting the price for a q400 anvil at 2500 gold coins it doesn't really matter if coins are the currency because the person buying that anvil is either going to spend tokens to buy the coins or pay with tokens directly, there is very little else you could trade to someone that they would offer you that many coins or something worth that many coins in exchange. And yes that falls under the problem you described with there being very little for most players to offer the top factions but I think as long as there is this payment model in place that attributes a value of $10 to an in-game item that is transferable between worlds, the devs are going to have a very difficult time creating anything acquirable strictly through in-game means that is valued above that.

[Chebermech]

well, the price of any item is a subjective matter, if you take an example of 2500 coins for a q400 anvil, if you can sell cast iron for a current price of 60 bars for 100 coins, you can get a q400 anvil with 1,500 cast iron bars, but you can't get q400 anvil by using those cast iron bars to make it yourself. In 5-6 months people will be selling q800 anvil for the same amount of cast iron bar equivalent, so in a sense if you save up your cast iron for late game, you will get even more out of it. And of course some people would rather spend money than time in game to make effort to dig the cast iron, or anything else if there were a lot more things like cast iron in a constant demand, people would still spend money. And if tokens were to disappear from the game, people already have a reference point on how much money things cost in game, and if they were going to spend it on a token before, and value their time more than money, they would go for real money transaction instead of supporting devs. I am though with you on tokens affecting the economy, especially since world 10, and i think cf has contributed to it a lot, making a lot more people spent more money on in game items, through buying tokens and hats to trade for those items, and probably thru direct money transaction. With ease of access and a working currency and a pretty much global economy last world it was tend to happen, due to min-maxing nature of players and what the game has to offer in terms of value to the players. What we have today is an aftermath of an inevitable, which needs to be addressed before min-maxing goes to the extreme.