02-10-2012 at 11:17 AM

personaly i think what peopke choose to do with there money is there business. they earned it. its theres.<br /> <br /> and yeah i bought i think 5 of those companions and yes there all on dogs.

02-10-2012 at 8:29 AM

I think if people are able to buy companions that give $ per day and not use them, those people probably have tons of cash already or have enough of an income that the pets are no big deal to them.<br /> <br /> Trial payouts need to be tweaked... no doubt about it. :P<br /> <br /> And the explore feature is definitely doing something to the economy. :-/ *pokes the $846 mill now in circulation*<br /> <br /> How is the new thread going to differ from this one? I hope it gives a more in-depth analysis of the inflation situation. This first one was sort of bare bones without much information to go on. :-/

02-10-2012 at 7:50 AM

I will be locking this thread soon to open a new poll discussion thread. Just wanted to fair warning :)

02-10-2012 at 7:45 AM

"How do we know what % of the items are actually equipped?"<br /> <br /> I ran a database query to see how many of each were equipped. There are a lot of collectors and hoarders on the site while will have tons of these companions just sitting in their inventory. I'm personally guilty of it... I don't have enough dogs to put them all on. <br /> <br /> "What was the average TP of your trial teams?"<br /> <br /> When I ran that experiment, my average trial team was in the 1000TP range. I had a couple higher TP dogs, but around 5k was my max. <br /> <br /> J'ai, making $200k while you spent the equivalent of $300k on explore turns doesn't seem very pressing XD But, I'll concede that I didn't think of the junkyard when working my figures. Although it does bear saying that buying cheap rares to hoard and sell for more later doesn't hurt the economy. By itself, it does not introduce any new money into the game, nor does it create any kind of imbalance. The same principal is played with each monthly shop restock.

02-8-2012 at 6:48 PM

Well said. :)

02-8-2012 at 5:33 PM

It just baffles me that so many money-making opportunities are being introduced when we're trying to fix the inflation issue. <br /> <br /> Every time the Explore game comes around, the user shops are overfilled with cheap rares because it's a money making opportunity. Many users (I'm not going to lie, I do it!) buy those items while they are cheap, and resell them for much more later. Other users (again, me) take items that they get from Explore, but don't want, and just junkyard them. That introduces more money to the game. Honestly, in the past 2 days of exploring, I've made almost $200k just from junkyarding items and finding money. And I only bought 60 explore turns, for the heck of it. Not that I got anything worth the 3 bones :P<br /> <br /> But now the money companions pose an even greater problem. Per user, it doesn't seem that they're earning that much money. But as a whole a very large amount of money is being introduced. Even on a daily level, especially with the Dragon's Hoards, it's a pretty large number being accumulated.

02-8-2012 at 5:06 PM

"Only about 2/3 of those companion numbers are equipped. Still, let's say they were all equipped and every single account was logged into over the next month. Divide 10 million by 22,000 members and that's, like, $500 per month. I know, I know, not all members are active, but while we're drawing vague comparisons, there's a valid point there. <br /> <br /> I'd say we have around 1,000 consistently active accounts. $10million divided by 1,000 is only $10,000. That's not even enough to buy the cheapest monthly item. It's probably barely enough to cover food expenses for the average kennel size. "<br /> <br /> How do we know what % of the items are actually equipped? From when I posted earlier, the site was showing only 2 companions for sale in user shops. I don't know why someone would buy the companion and then keep it in their inventory where they wouldn't get any money from it for the day. It seems to me as though people have those things equipped.<br /> <br /> I'm not sure how dividing the amount of money brought in from this month's companions by the amount of users on site (active or otherwise) is relevant. An additional $10 mill a month into the economy is still $10 mill no matter how you look at it. With that sort of math, we could argue that inflation is not a problem on Alacrity either. $811 mill divided by 22,000 users would mean everyone only has $36,863 in their pockets.<br /> <br /> I think maybe one of the problems with the explore game is that we've had 4 of them in the past 5 months: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and now for Valentine's. Out of the four, this last one is the only event that has had its payouts significantly reduced from what I can tell.<br /> <br /> And sorry if I was wrong about the the amount of cash in circulation. If it had significantly dropped at the beginning of the month due to the new shop release, that is a very good thing. But, since it is now back up to what it previously was (or higher... I don't know), that progress has basically been undone.<br /> <br /> What was the average TP of your trial teams?

02-8-2012 at 3:51 PM

Only about 2/3 of those companion numbers are equipped. Still, let's say they were all equipped and every single account was logged into over the next month. Divide 10 million by 22,000 members and that's, like, $500 per month. I know, I know, not all members are active, but while we're drawing vague comparisons, there's a valid point there. <br /> <br /> I'd say we have around 1,000 consistently active accounts. $10million divided by 1,000 is only $10,000. That's not even enough to buy the cheapest monthly item. It's probably barely enough to cover food expenses for the average kennel size. <br /> <br /> Also, cash on-site has not dropped below 800 million in a long time, that I've noticed. If it did, it was during the first few days of the monthly item release -- it does normally take a dip then. We were still over 800 million after the raffle and that cleared about 100 million out of the economy. <br /> <br /> We have several money sink ideas coming up in the near future, but even if we didn't have those, an event like explore and the meager income of a fantasy companion are nothing to worry about. People easily made many times more before the realization of dogs over 1,000TP and trial teams became an issue. <br /> <br /> I've personally ran trial teams competitively just to see how much money I could make (and, I'll be honest, making that much felt really good). I don't have excellent trials dogs -- I didn't even have maxed dogs when I did this. I made close to $1,000,000 in a single day by use of trial teams and energy companions. Sans energy companions, I can still net about half a million. If I limit myself to entering 2 dogs per trial and actually compete with other people, my winnings dropped by about half. Granted, I was entering trials with no dogs yet entered, so I wasn't playing a strategic angle. Winnings could go up from there if you were careful about who you competed with. <br /> <br /> Also, I don't think we will be allowing explore purchases for cash. But I think we will have another feature available for cash purchase in a couple days :>

02-8-2012 at 1:57 PM

And just for fun with this month's companions:<br /> <br /> Number of companions currently on site:<br /> <br /> -Black Dragon: 150<br /> -Black Unicorn Foal: 132<br /> -Black Pegasus Foal: 123<br /> -White Dragon: 110<br /> -White Unicorn Foal: 128<br /> -White Pegasus Foal: 122<br /> <br /> Total # of companions currently on-site is 765.<br /> <br /> Multiply that by $500 a day and you get $382,500 being "printed" each day.<br /> <br /> Multiply that by a week and you get $2,677,500 being "printed" each week.<br /> <br /> Multiply that by a month and you get $10,710,000 being "printed" each month.<br /> <br /> Those numbers only hold true for today and may be quite different as the month continues and more companions are purchased.<br /> <br /> If the economy was truly healthy (balanced), this would be no problem at all. Another deciding factor is whether or not the majority of the companions were bought with cash or bones. If they were bought with bones, it furthers the problem of having too much cash available. If they were bought with cash, like Clay said, then it will take a while before the items allow their owners to break even.<br /> <br /> Let's keep our eyes peeled for the amount of Ala cash in circulation by the end of this event. It's at $809 mill now. :P<br /> <br />

02-8-2012 at 1:10 PM

I'd like to disagree and say that it's a combination of both trialing for profit and features such as the explore game that are contributing to the inflation problem. The amount of cash on-site had been holding somewhat steady for a bit at around $790 mill or so.<br /> <br /> Today is only the 2nd day of the explore game and the amount of cash has risen to over $808 mill.<br /> <br /> I do notice the amount of cash payouts is decreased when compared to the explore features from halloween and christmas, which is a good start, but, from an economical standpoint, it's still worsening the economy by making ala cash more abundant.<br /> <br /> In order for something like the explore feature to not negatively impact the economy, there should have been something implemented to even out the amount of new cash being "printed". <br /> <br /> For example, if players had the option of buying more turns for cash (like we can for bones) that could even it out some.<br /> <br /> $140k in a week doesn't seem like a lot, but when you multiply that amount by 15,000 players or so, that's a pretty significant number.

02-8-2012 at 8:29 AM

Like I said before, it is NOT the goal to stop the flow of money into the game altogether. It is to find balance. Let's review a couple figures: <br /> <br /> This month's money companions, as Clay calculated, would take seven months to pay for themselves if you logged in every day. More importantly, these companions are available to everyone and there is no unfair advantage to being able to equip them. <br /> <br /> As for explore, no unfair advantage. Everyone has the exact same chance of finding the exact same amount of money. But let's just take a look at the amounts (and ruin all the fun of it in turn).<br /> You can get up to 240 explore turns per day. <br /> Approximately 1/5, or 48, of those turns returns money.<br /> An average of $500 can be found per turn. <br /> That's $24,000 that can be found, on average, each day if you do nothing but explore, although most people will need to do things like sleep or go to school, so the reality is much less than that. <br /> <br /> $24,000 is a large amount of money, really, but let's keep in mind that this is a limited time event and won't last for long. I'm not putting a timeline on it, but let's say a full week -- that means about $140k. That's not even enough to buy two Bones at current market value, for the record.<br /> <br /> But now consider that a below average trial team of 1500TP makes about $6,000 per trial (around $2k per dog, three assured wins). Without energy companions, each team can run around six trials per day, or $36,000. That's ONE team. Most people who run trial teams have several of them and energy companions to run more trials with, and keep in mind that as TP goes up, so do overall winnings. This is not a week long event, either.<br /> <br /> I hope that it's more clear as to what is causing the out of control inflation. It's not fun, limited games like explore or adorable companions which give you a little extra cash. but the daily grind of the current trial system, which has been turned from a sporting event into a money mill. <br />

02-8-2012 at 5:06 AM

Me too, Deja. It really boggles me.

02-8-2012 at 3:56 AM

I'm sorry, but with yet another event going where you literally find cash lying around on the ground and new money companions introduced just this month... I find it incredibly confusing that we're suggesting trials are the problem when it comes to an overabundance of cash in the economy.

02-8-2012 at 12:44 AM

Yeah I know. I was a bit peeved when it happened because one day I was buying minks for $15,000 each and then the next day they were put in shops for $30,000

02-7-2012 at 5:54 PM

Hm, interesting.

02-7-2012 at 5:50 PM

Was a long time ago. Something to do with the shops being worked on or fixed or something adding to them... the prices were wiped or something. I dunno, someone else would probably be able to explain it better than I.

02-7-2012 at 5:48 PM

"I know I've heard people say that the prices of bones have kind of gone up (when buying from other users), but I think that's due to the overabundance of Ala cash available."<br /> <br /> This is exactly correct. Too much cash in the economy offsets the value of other things, such as Bones, and causes inflation. This is exactly why we need to work towards limiting what cash is introduced into the economy, as well as work on better money-sink options. <br /> <br /> I put over 20 Bones on auction a week, or so, ago with an auto of $99k just to see if the rumors were true. All of them sold in less than a day and not but just one player. The true market value of Bones is enormous because there is little value in cash.

02-7-2012 at 5:36 PM

Sorry, what do you mean when the shops were wiped out?

02-7-2012 at 4:47 PM

I noticed the bone ecomony starting to go downhill way way way back when the shops were all wiped out. They used to be sold for 20K each back then and when the shops were fixed or whatever, then they were sold for 50K or so afterwards.

02-7-2012 at 4:45 PM

Yeah, people are definitely spending money directly back into site shops. But it seems like it's still not enough since Ala's overall cash amount keeps rising.<br /> <br /> Is the amount of bones on site considered to be stable? I see it jump-roping back and forth around 16k bones on site. I know I've heard people say that the prices of bones have kind of gone up (when buying from other users), but I think that's due to the overabundance of Ala cash available.