Kirin Folken
Dalayan Elder
Token system for trade in, with better return /signed
The amount of plat you get when you sell your Charm(s)
- Thread starter Zhak
- Start date
Danku
Dalayan Beginner
The thing that I do not get is that the charms are a plat sink. Yet you get 2/3 of your plat back. Isn't that completely counter productive to the intended purpose? The charms end up being a 1/3 of value of plat sink rather than the full value. If they are really meant to be a plat sink, zero plat return. 100% trade-in value. IMO, it makes sense to use it as the stated intent has been.
Spiritplx
Dalayan Elder
As a player, I support the idea of trading your charm in for tokens or some other non-platinum currency. However, I believe charms were intended to sink platinum out of the economy and as such, it may not be changed. If this is the case, I would strongly suggest a 75% return. It is only an 8.333% increase to what we get now, but would save a lot of money in the long run and still sink a bunch of platinum.
Just my 2pp.
Just my 2pp.
Getting 2/3 of the value back is still a huge plat sink because charms are what people save up their money for. You don't see a lot of people who buy a juggo wanting to lose 60kpp by selling it back. You'd have a tough time spending 150k on a twink, so all you'd do is farm back that 60k and buy a new charm, perhaps for a different character.
Charms do exactly what they're supposed to: take a hell of a lot of plat out of circulation. As long as there's a significant loss from selling them, they will continue to do that job. What's more, putting in a 100% tradein value system wouldn't detract from that; rather than getting by with a crappy charm for ages, players would simply upgrade gradually as they made enough money. The plat would all go the same place.
Charms do exactly what they're supposed to: take a hell of a lot of plat out of circulation. As long as there's a significant loss from selling them, they will continue to do that job. What's more, putting in a 100% tradein value system wouldn't detract from that; rather than getting by with a crappy charm for ages, players would simply upgrade gradually as they made enough money. The plat would all go the same place.
Thinkmeats
War Is Good For Business
Danku said:
Correct, but the 2/3 return is so harsh that nobody really ever uses it, which makes it more or less as good as not getting any back. People are arguing to increase the real plat return presumably with the intent of actually using it, so the difference would be much larger than they're making it out to be.
While I'm not the farming type so I'll never have an expensive charm, I cannot see how making it an 85% return would let the charm slot still work as a plat sink.
Using the prices listed on the wiki, and assuming a player follows the progression of 36k-102k-216k-542k-1.2mill the amount of plat lost to the returns are:
Loss from 67% return: 296k
Loss from 85% return: 135k
Now it is my understanding, but I of course could be easily wrong, that many people skip the 102k and move from the 36k to the 216k, making the plat losses change to:
Loss from 67% return: 262k
Loss from 85% return: 119k
Now, to players willing to put in the time consuming plat sink that it was meant to be and designed to fulfill, 135k lost, or even just 119k, seems a rather small (comparitively) amount of plat lost due to progression through all of the games most expensive items.
Charms were designed as long term goals that many casual players wouldn't give serious effort to obtaining because it's just not their style of play. Asking for the plat sink to be cut by more than half is in my opinion far too much considering the purpose of this line of items.
Sure every player wants to not have to spend as much time and money on their gear, that's only natural to want your good items for less and feel like you got a good deal. But that just goes against what these items are in the game to accomplish.
Edit: If the 65% means no one upgrades their charms and the admins do come to view it as too harsh, then by all means change it to encourage use of a system, at the least. I just view the 85% as too high.
Using the prices listed on the wiki, and assuming a player follows the progression of 36k-102k-216k-542k-1.2mill the amount of plat lost to the returns are:
Loss from 67% return: 296k
Loss from 85% return: 135k
Now it is my understanding, but I of course could be easily wrong, that many people skip the 102k and move from the 36k to the 216k, making the plat losses change to:
Loss from 67% return: 262k
Loss from 85% return: 119k
Now, to players willing to put in the time consuming plat sink that it was meant to be and designed to fulfill, 135k lost, or even just 119k, seems a rather small (comparitively) amount of plat lost due to progression through all of the games most expensive items.
Charms were designed as long term goals that many casual players wouldn't give serious effort to obtaining because it's just not their style of play. Asking for the plat sink to be cut by more than half is in my opinion far too much considering the purpose of this line of items.
Sure every player wants to not have to spend as much time and money on their gear, that's only natural to want your good items for less and feel like you got a good deal. But that just goes against what these items are in the game to accomplish.
Edit: If the 65% means no one upgrades their charms and the admins do come to view it as too harsh, then by all means change it to encourage use of a system, at the least. I just view the 85% as too high.
Danku said:
If you didn't get anything back it wouldn't be a plat sink at all, because I doubt anyone would even buy a charm.
I think if the platinum return was increased to 80-85%, people would be more inclined to buying them in the first place and in turn taking more plat out of the economy. It's a whole lot easier to buy something that expensive knowing you'll get most of it back, which is the reason I think more people would be encouraged to buy them. More people buying = more plat taken out of the economy. If people are afraid to lose their money they wont buy them, taking nothing out of the economy.
Wiz said:
Couldn't you just have a script to deal with the tokens?
For example, to get tokens you either hand in
1) A charm and you are returned its approximate value in tokens
2) Handin 10,000 platinum to receive a 10,000 Platinum Token for example, or you could just have a separate merchant sell the tokens for 10,000 platinum.
You have charm tokens valued at 10pp, 100pp, 1,000pp, 10,000, and 100,000pp.
In order to get a charm you hand in
1) Three types of tokens (the values of the charms might have to be rounded off to the nearest 1000pp or so for the higher charms)
2) A special charm identifier which the vendor sells which has the name of the charm you want to buy so you can specify which charm you want
This could be a separate trader vendor which sells the charm identifier, and to make it use less script and less overhead the trader could just straight up sell the Platinum Tokens instead of having to have a script running which accepts money handins. Then you would only need a script to give back the appropriate tokens after a charm handin and to give back the appropriate charm if the correct tokens are handed in with an identifier.
In order to get cash back from a charm you hand it in to get your tokens, then hand in your tokens to the merchant who has a script to give you back 75% (or whatever number gets decided upon) of the value of the token.
A simpler fix would be to simply have it check to see which charm you currently have equipped, have it check the price needed to buy that charm and lower the prices on the other charms by that amount, when the charm is bought it removes/deletes the current charm from your inventory.This is obviously only dealing with those who want to upgrade their current charm while getting back the full value of their old one without dumping plat back into the economy.
Ok so I've been brainstorming a bit as to how you can make it so that upgrading your current charm will cost nothing but if you just wish to sell it then you still take a certain % hit..
This is a very rough idea so please submit feedback / comments / questions
You could start this at the 36k charms and above so you'd only need 6 zones ( 36k, 66k, 100k, 215k, 538k, 1.2 mil )
This might be a big a little bit winded but I'm trying to make sure that this wouldn't be able to be exploited.
Lets say you want to go from your 215k charm to your eternal.
The current difference in plat between the two charms is ( 538k - 215k? ) 323,000 platinum. You would buy a potion from a vendor for 323k ( it would need to be a neutral npc that you couldnt boost your faction on ), it would port you to some unoccupied zone and there would be a quest npc there who is blocking a door. You get a key to the door by handing the NPC either a juggo charm or a genocide charm, these are the only two items the mob would accept to give the key. You unlock the door and inside the door there is an NPC who you hail for the eternal charm.
This makes it so that you're still paying full price for the charm, 323k in plat and then your old 215k charm and so that it wouldn't be abused by people who just want to sell their current charm.
I realize that it might take a bit of time to code this in and use up 6 different zones, but this is a way to upgrade your current charm for no loss of plat while still maintaining the plat sink that you want charms to have if you sell them.
There might be a better / easier way to implement this suggestion, but I'm pretty sure this way would work.
This is a very rough idea so please submit feedback / comments / questions
You could start this at the 36k charms and above so you'd only need 6 zones ( 36k, 66k, 100k, 215k, 538k, 1.2 mil )
This might be a big a little bit winded but I'm trying to make sure that this wouldn't be able to be exploited.
Lets say you want to go from your 215k charm to your eternal.
The current difference in plat between the two charms is ( 538k - 215k? ) 323,000 platinum. You would buy a potion from a vendor for 323k ( it would need to be a neutral npc that you couldnt boost your faction on ), it would port you to some unoccupied zone and there would be a quest npc there who is blocking a door. You get a key to the door by handing the NPC either a juggo charm or a genocide charm, these are the only two items the mob would accept to give the key. You unlock the door and inside the door there is an NPC who you hail for the eternal charm.
This makes it so that you're still paying full price for the charm, 323k in plat and then your old 215k charm and so that it wouldn't be abused by people who just want to sell their current charm.
I realize that it might take a bit of time to code this in and use up 6 different zones, but this is a way to upgrade your current charm for no loss of plat while still maintaining the plat sink that you want charms to have if you sell them.
There might be a better / easier way to implement this suggestion, but I'm pretty sure this way would work.
Thinkmeats
War Is Good For Business
This would probably be the way to do it: Have a quest npc vendor. Hand the vendor any charm. Vendor records X as the value of a flag on your character, where X is the charm you just handed in's cost. You then pick the charm you want via dialogue. If you have enough cash handy, the vendor sets X back to zero, then deducts Y plat, where Y is the difference between the cost of the charm you're getting and the amount stored in flag X.
After discussing this with brandar for a bit... there would really be no need to make seperate zones... just seperate houses / npc's... they wouldn't even need to be in the same area. I guess I have no idea if an NPC can record how much plat you have banked with them or how much work it'd be.
Dzillon
Dalayan Master
Why is everyone complaining about a pure platsink to be hard to work on ? I don't think the staff wants half the server wandering around with Eternity charms or equivalent. If something could be done about the return rate, it would help everyone and it would be welcome, but why bother with those compliicated ideas ?
syduck: