High Aurum is not good for the game

I get that FC as a company needs to make money , like every other business does, that is common financial sense, I have no problems with that, however, when you have a player driven economy on a free to play game which in itself has pay walls via caches / sprints/ weapons etc e etc ie Cash For Aurum.
Maybe it hasn’t occurred to funcom or maybe it has and im not blaming funcom over what is essentially a player driven economy, we set the prices we want to sell and buy items at, however, not all people work or have income where they can afford to spend copious amounts of ,£ Aus , Euro’s etc into a game which already has a dwindling player base, and at the time of writing Aurum is now peaking at 250 per 1 Aurum.
My own circumstances changed last year where I am no longer able to feed cash into a game for vanity items or Collectors editions and trust me over a 12 year period I have pumped plenty of money into FC
.Yet its really for the non patrons/free players who will suffer the most or ultimately drive them away and sure I don’t know the metrics of how many players do or don’t play this game, but now the anniversary is over and done with, I see the state of the game.
I have to run alts in order to ‘ complete my main toon’ and here is part of a conversation I had with a player whose name I have blocked out to protect their indentity, but I find their reasoning flawed and what is fundamentally wrong with this game

[01:45] MyAlt]: any truth to the rumour going around that its you deliberatley jacking the prices of Aurum up?
[01:45] [XXXX]: i think i am the one spreaded this rumor :smiley:
[01:45] Myalt]: why would you do that ?
[01:46] [XXXX]: because the rumor itself can make the aurum price higher XD
[01:46] [XXXX]: without I actually do anything :stuck_out_tongue:
[01:48] To [XXXX]: high aurum prices are having a detrimental knock on effect you are aware of that right ?
[01:48] [XXXX]: just to check how much funcom will care about the economy :stuck_out_tongue:

Eventually with attitudes like that this game will only be populated by a small minority of players
Who have everything and done everything
The game offers nothing but a watered down version of its former version, the content is woefully inadequate to what it once was and even the latest installment of South Africa was well quite frankly not worth the wait at all
I have seen 3 friends ( non patons who have quit the game in the past couple of weeks purely because of the pay wall and the fact of the grind involved ( unless you’re flush enough to plough moolah into FC )
You need customers to make any business thrive , but the model FC adopts to me at least doesn’t make sense at all . I have Fc points which I can no longer use except on a dead game
You charge a monthly subscription for a game which is on maintenance mode and 17 years old ( Anarchy online )
But eventually higher aurum prices will drive away players not attract them until you have a two tiered type of player those who can and those who cant , and those who cant wont stay around .
Thanks for reading

1 Like

This flowchart might help:

That’s all I really have to add. I’m not an economics expert so I don’t know if the numbers are good or bad, but I DO know that having a flowchart on hand might be useful in this conversation.

1 Like

I’ve seen how they do it. As soon as there is a new high they put up for 50 aurum. And people then follow adding more. Rinse and repeat. Some people still have a high amount from the bug at start.
If what they said at beginning, that the max price is 300 (sold by funcom), we will see that in a month or 2.
Price now is 224 each aurum…

Was also said at start they expected it to settle around 200 marks each aurum, and they would watch the exchange. Don’t expect them to do that anytime soon.

What pay wall?

I agree that the high price of aurum isn’t good in the long run, but you don’t need aurum to enjoy the game.

2 Likes

:wink:
How can the reason flawed if you are just acting as planned?
You surely know who is actively bringing up people’s attention of aurum price recently.
Maybe, I am just too lazy to start a topic like this by myself. :stuck_out_tongue:

Lets give Funcom time to react. Not sure why but people expect Funcom to react in major ways on the weekend.
Not saying I have not concerns of my own but until nirvelle, andy and such comes on today they probably don’t even know of the aurum shenanigans that is going on less are able to react in any way.
If I catch them I will point them here and also have a talk in hope to at least get acknowledgement of the issue at hand but I suspect it will take time in the least.

This is relevant if we consider this being an issue. I fail to see how nor why Funcom should react to adjust a system they’ve put as “player-driven” since the beginning. Unless there’s a bug or something similar to duping we had at release.

You can’t “deliberately jack up” the exchange rate permanently. A large amount of wealth would only allow you to manipulate the rate short term. If it remains up there rather than snapping back, that just means the price is fine being there to begin with.

The game has no functional MoF sinks except for reward chests and auction house fees. It’s not a wonder that most long-term players, no matter how casual or hardcore, are sitting on massive mounds of MoF. Every day, each character can introduce up to 10-12k MoF to the system. When most of that isn’t spent, it enables the exchange rate to creep upwards because the average player doesn’t mind spending a little more of their otherwise worthless hoard.

Two ways I can think of to counter that.

  • Implementing another functional MoF sink so that the players are actually compelled to frequently spend their MoF elsewhere rather than comply with rising exchange rates.
  • Reducing the actual real life price of Aurum so that more Aurum is introduced to the economy.

Option one would require the introduction of a new system, option two I don’t know how much control they have over. Whether they do one of these or something else, it will be a surprise to me either way. I think they’ll let it hit 300 before intervening.

2 Likes

I didn’t make this document. I just knew where to find it and I figured it would be useful in this conversation.

1 Like

Gotta thank @Jingi for that aurum tracking.^^

2 Likes

ATV has already gone down and you can see that by how much is available in the pools. Not very much at all in comparison to what was previously on offer, which shows a weak and unstable market because of what looks like un-natural inflation. It also looks like panic buying and selling due to risk factors. They are either not willing to comply or just don’t have it available anymore coz they sold at a loss already.

I used to use the market for helping my alts along, but now the price is far too high for my liking and i’m seeing far less actual pools of aurum being offered for sale at these high prices, There used to be groups of 24k+ on offer, now there is only one 16k group and a few other pools of less than 5k and 1 at only 800. You can see that the higher it goes the less there is available, not to mention the crossover of having to exchange it because you NEED to, means there is a loss because the balance is not the same, so you end up NOT doing it. If you watch it you can see someone desperately trying to reduce the cost, by introducing tiny amounts, as soon as a lower offer is on its snapped up to join the higher pools. This is no different than buying up all the items off the market at low price to re-sell at a higher price to set the new standard rate in an attempt to make more for yourself by market manipulation. If you own more than what others have available you end up with a monopoly on it. It’s a dangerous thing to do while it looks so weak.

Fear has seemed to set in that the cost of Aurum to buy is rising it will also run out coz people wont buy/sell at that price coz the risk factor is too high to just sit on your aurum and not get rid of it as quick as you can at the all time high before it comes plummeting down again coz someone thought it was clever to mess with the market via rumour and having their own alts buy/sell at certain set prices to keep the rumour going and validate it. Couple this with the need to buy the aurum as a F2P player at the lowest mof price and you have a market gone crazy.

The price is too high, that’s the general consensus of people in game - barr a few who want it to be high so they can cream off the top while they can.
The cap of Aurum should have been at 200 in a free to play - low population game.

economic

As it is a free market, if people do not agree on current price, why would they still buy it? Where are those massive amount of buy order comes from?

Are you trying to say you don’t respect the wishes of those who say its too high?
There is a lot less aurum available as it is to buy from the AH. So that shows people do not agree with the current unstable price. It’s panic buying and selling due to risk.
So, What is your point exactly? I’m struggling to see what it is.
Wait… let me guess, you’re too lazy or too tired to comment coherently
Here let me save you the bother
:stuck_out_tongue:

I am simply pointing out the market doesn’t consider the price is too high and your wish of capping it at 200 is unlikely going to happen.

Where are you pointing this out?
The market price is too high.
And there is a hell of a lot less on offer now than previously.
Any lower offers are taken up and added to the higher offers.
You must think people can’t see that… and that’s sad.
It’s not i who is blind my dear, nor wilfully ignorant to the facts that have been before your eyes for some time now.
You are making the assumption that it is my current wish for it to be capped at 200
If you read it again you will see i have said “it should have been” - meaning from the start.
It’s too late for a re-capping lower than what it is unless funcom resets the market
But let me be clear about what the general consensus of this is…
And that is a one of poison by your own hand - i wouldn’t be proud of that achievement.
The title of “I screwed you all over coz i was bored” is not a one i would want to parade.
It’s also a hard one to shake off… If you can.
Good luck.

I can help you again, if you can’t understand.

##############################################################

Did I assume it’s your current wish or it from the past?
It doesn’t matter, it will not happen.

:grin: There are many secrets of this operation. All I can tell you is, it works just as planned.

Was you plan to have less aurum in the exchange?
Available aurum on the exchange:
friday 34273
sunday morning 32798
sunday evening 23983
This morning 26204
now 16970

Yeah, I mind-controlled everyone, made them no longer buy aurum via cash.
Thus, there is less aurum in AH even with a price in their favor.
:rofl:

You can humour your way through this all you like my dear.

You never know when market will crash and when there will be incredible cheap stocks to buy. Just as it is in China A-share market right now.
Thus, I always place some buy order at extremely low price. :grin:
It’s both a charity and profitable work.
:grin:
侠之大者 为国接盘