Price Index Thread (NA/EN)

Quote from JasonTodd

WUC on EN server is 10kk now, bye
Converters 80kk, bye
Converters drop chance is a sh*t, Fragments prices are sh*t, everything about farming raids is a sh*t.
Gameforge does not create conditions for the inflow of new players let alone old ones. If goldsellers will live on and the prices on server will grow but rewards for raids will be 5 alarm piece of sh*t, i have no doubt that there will be no 60 lvl and all advancements on that localisation because what? Because online will be low(it is low now actually) and maintenance of servers will not be profitable for Gameforge.

Look at the Steamcharts, guys, instead of a thousand words!

It is not 10m. People buying it to resell it on the same day will have a lot of problems, especially 50% over current market price. Just try doing it yourself. Eventually, it will get to 10m. You will find yourself out of DZ and bagholding a lot of chips until it reaches that point.

Farming is not shit. What is shit are the RNG rates for upgrading. You can spend $2,000+ or 250+ hours in a month and have it all fail while the next guy to you who is completely F2P, only recently got to level 55 can +1 to +9 in 50 attempts.

EN is experiencing rapid inflation due to standardized gold bot rates.

Gold Bots -> Generates DZ Supply

Players -> Generates DZ Supply & Items

For all intents and purposes, we can assume DZ outflux = 0 for consumption purposes, as supply → ∞

System 0 :

∑ Rate of Players Farming DZ / ∑ Rate of Players Farming Items - ∑ Rate of Players Consuming Items = Price Level

System 1 :

∑ Rate of Players Farming DZ - ∑ Rate of Players Quitting the Game with DZ > 0 / ∑ Rate of Players Farming Items - ∑ Rate of Players Consuming Items = Price Level

Alternatively,

∑ Net Rate of Increase of DZ Supply / ∑ Net Rate Increase of Items = Price Level

System 2 :

∑ Net Rate of Increase of DZ Supply (Natural) + ∑ Net Rate of Increase of DZ Supply (Gold Bot) / ∑ Net Rate Increase of Items = Price Level

System 3 :

Gold Bot Price ∝ Rate of DZ Supply / Rate of DZ Sold (When r > 1, price drops, and vice versa on time-lag effects)
We can assume all sellers are perfectly elastic in demand, as none have a competitive advantage over farming - if one did, then the monopoly price would be effective; and all buyers only look at price exclusively.

Thus, SC Price = DZ Price - Time Value Factor - Inconvenience Factor < Gold Price

Price is sticky for SC, as bot price is sold at discount for DZ, and perception makes buyers unwilling to buy. but eventually reaches equilibrium. Market SC rates tend to equilibrium faster and is always paced at 1:1 to bot price; e.g. costume 500-700m = 1499 SC = ~$12~$15

Ultimately, what we see is a stepwise function. Prices tend to stabilize temporarily, and converges to playerbase natural DZ rates. When gold bot prices are too attractive (as with the recent 6/2 all-server standardization), people buy up quickly. Prices increase across the board everywhere, this makes gold buying less attractive; and DZ supply for bots build up again. They eventually lower their prices again, and this cycle repeats ad infinitum, until no more players remain to farm said items.

Anytime they price under equilibrium (as 6/3 evening rates), DZ supply (bots) -> 0, and price increases. I have looked at the in-game economy, and their rates and price levels for the last few months.

All servers are converging to NA or exceeding (lack of items farmed due to lack of playerbase) in terms of price level due to 6/2 price standardization of bots (other servers used to be more expensive).

The only way to break this cycle is to satiate the needs of players (very good RNG rates) who are spending money (with in-game shop items that are better price points relative to in-game currency black market rates). However, satiating the needs of such players means they become bored quickly and also quit. I often see heavy whales (SC sellers/gold buyers) quit much faster than regular players because they have all the gear they need and the value of playing goes to zero very quickly.

The second point of solution is to increase taxes and drain the DZ supply; there is a lot of things the developer can do;

- Tax any account under 48 hours old, or has not logged in for 72 consecutive hours, and with no character above level 16 from sending DZ by 30% if it is over 1 million DZ, and 50% if it is over 100 million DZ

- Accounts with characters level 15 and below cannot purchase items on the market that are 300% above the 30-day rolling average market price of such items

- Megaphones cannot be utilized until character level 10, and are rate limited to once per hour for any account below 72 hours old - this restriction is lifted upon having a character that is level 20 or higher, or a cumulative playtime of at least 80 hours

- Make Soul Fizz and healing items untradable, all DZ must be spent at trade merchants

- Auto-ban any account with a character standing in Rucco town for 4 consecutive hours, sending out general messages only over many intervals of time and has not completed at least 2 dungeons (almost 0 new players stand in Rucco town chatting for 4 consecutive hours and has not done at least 2 dungeons; if they are afking, chances are they are not sending messages in many intervals of time like 15 sec, 55 sec, 90 sec, 35 sec; even those who chat in Rucco town do not stand in one spot, and those who do, do not chat for 4 consecutive hours non-stop)

- Increase listing fees on market to 5% of listing price, and 20% if it is 500M or higher

- Level 10 characters and below cannot trade with characters greater than level 10, and cannot trade more than 10M DZ at a time; this restriction is lifted for accounts with level 25 characters or above

- To send someone more than 50M DZ over mail, you must befriend them for at least 48 hours; this restriction is lifted for level 40 characters and above or accounts with a playtime of at least 125 hours with a level 20 character or above

- You cannot befriend anyone over level 10, if you are not at least level 10; this restriction is lifted for players within a level 2 guild or higher, or a character level 20 or higher on the account

- Characters at level 55 cannot send DZ to characters below level 10, they must trade them directly and they must initiate it themselves

- The maximum DZ level 10 characters and below can hold is 100M, level 11-24 characters 500M, level 25-40 characters 5B, level 41-55 characters 20B

By making DZ so difficult to farm and send, it effectively increases the time spent trying to find workarounds and/or getting characters to level X or playtime Y. More time to level to X or playtime Y, means less DZ farmed which means to be more expensive rates, and thus lower inflation levels with less willing buyers. Legitimate players do not farm DZ.

Gold Buying (inversely) ∝ Difficulty of Obtaining X achievement [+X weapon]

If you could get what you needed in 2 weeks of farming, in 25 hours or less, the proportion of people who would forego (choose to not farm) would decrease. Micro-transaction games depend on frustration to make people pay up, or pay to not play, or pay to convenience. Ironically, since energy converters are removed from the shop, and so are weapon upgrade chips- it is costing $3-$8 per reroll for ECs and still $3 per upgrade; before it was 200 SC per EC, and 35 per WUC. ECs were cheaper, and WUCs were more expensive back then.

Micro-transaction games with excellent monetization schemes use a variable interval reward schedule to continually draw players in with fresh content, fresh gear levels- or anything new with the prospect of big rewards and small rewards in between so players feel like they keep progressing and playing helps them advance even more, while spending $1 here and $2 here, However, the price point for anything in this game is out of reach for 95% of players. Instead of $0.25 per upgrade or $0.20 per Akashi card, it is something like $3/$1.10 - and only as good as it gets if you buy the largest SC bundle.

The failure of monetization can quickly be seen from first glance at the lack of ''rewards'' or carrots per $ spent on the game. The only 'satisified' players are those who will drop a monthly $250-$400 or $600-$2,000 in one go to get all their gear. I would say, 2-4% of all players would fall into this category and 6% of active level 55s, and 13% of active level 55s doing GC. Realistically, in this economy, this is unlikely to fit in with the 18-25 male crowd who are not ''hardcore SW'' players. And it also comes from a lack of things to 'upgrade', even if they lowered their price points.

With the prospect of ''rewards'' being so remote, everyone (rationally) is going to turn to the ''cheaper'' route where-ever they can. This means less revenue for GF, and more frustration for F2P who could of been paying players - one, not feeling rewards for farming; two, not buying other accessories, cosmetics or desirable items - because primary desire remains unmet - unsatisfied, unfeeling, unwanted. GF could of made a killing; they know gambling is addicting - otherwise why else the artificial scarcity of costumes on a 12-day rotation schedule with monthly akashi boxes. So we know that the only core playerbase, are those who invest (high) hours and (high) dollars into the game.

Unstable revenue from periodic purchases that are contingent on update releases (costumes, GC) has put GF into this precedent of a faster release schedule than usual over other versions due to high churnover from (1) lack of content for the hardcore audience, (ii) inaccessibility of content for the casual audience, (iii) rapidly lackluster of things to spend on for the paying hardcore audience. Considering one needs 300 WUCs-500 WUCs to potentially plus 8 a weapon - and 100-250 WUCs for a plus 7, it is not difficult to see why the 'disparity' in supply relative to DZ introduced from gold bots, and the '40-80/hr' grinding GC weeks are quite frankly, unviable and inaccessible to the 'working hardcore sw audience'. This is simply a result that one should expect given quite poor oversight on a poorly laid out game design for monetization, poor execution in monetary practices of extracting money from players on the high-elasticity curve, poor retention of high-activity high-expenditure players (consecutive 2x EP weekends?) to push them down the anti-destruct/strength expansion treadmill, etc.

Here are some examples of what I am talking about;

eye colors are relatively inconspicuous relative to hairstyles and hair colours; $7.50 a pop means only the most willing of players will want it, and only for the ones they like. a price reduction was done not too long ago temporarily.

akashi cards were in 50 packs for 200 SC less than present akashi boxes, but were removed when a thread noted how the marketing gimmick of 7.1k SC discounted down to 6.5k SC means the limited cards are not really 'free' at all. although 'limited', they seem to come back every 21-28 days.

BSK brooches were nicely timed before PvP was set to release.

Realistically, all they had to do was segregate the playerbase spending categories and put great deals and then appropriately interspace content updates.

- Cosmetics, fashion

Biweekly Bundle (One random costume set non-tradable, one seasonal costume set, 2x Weekly VIP Gold Booster) - 3490 SC

Costume Bundle (Seasonal Costume Set of choice on 2 unique characters) - 1,990 SC

Hairstyle Deluxe (All Hairstyles, 6 Hair Colors of your choice) - 5,990 SC

Hairstyle Premium (2 Hairstyles, 3 Random Hair Colors) - 1,890 SC

Hairstyle Basic (1 Hairstyle, 1 Hair Color of your choice) - 750 SC

Eye Deluxe (All Eye Colors) - 1,990 SC

Eye Premium (5 Eye Colors) - 1,190 SC

Eye Basic (1 Eye Color) - 300 SC

Retired RNG Bundle (Seasonal costume, non-tradable, not-yet obtained) - 4,990 SC ~ event window 10 days

- Min-maxers

'Exclusive' 1/10 RNG SF boxes - 250 SC

'Exclusive' 1/10 RNG Tera Brooch boxes - 250 SC

1, 5, 25, 100 RNG Advanced/Specialized Refiner Box - 149 SC

Normal SF Box - 75 SC

10 RNG Brooch Box + 10 SF Box + 10 EC + 10 Specialized Refiner Bundle - 6,000 SC

- Hardcore

Make Weapon 'Special Shiny' FX RNG Bundle - 2,490 SC

100 Anti-Destruct + 20 Strength Expansion Bundle + 1 Soulbind Dissolver + 3 Weapon Restorer - 6,990 SC

25 Anti-Destruct + 5 Strength Expansion Bundle + 1 Weapon Restorer - 1990 SC

10, 100, 1,000 RNG WUC boxes - 400 SC

1, 5, 25, 100 RNG EC boxes - 500 SC

200 Akashi Box + 10 Limited/Hidden Akashi Box - 6,500 SC

50 Akashi Box + 1 Guaranteed 5* Box - 3,000 SC

- Casual

'Monthly' Cheap bundles (VIP Monthly Gold Booster, VIP Monthly Silver Booster, 10x Team Respawn, 50 Akashi Transmitters, 10 Respawners, 2x Double Drop Rate 1-hr books,) 1490 SC - once per month

Convenience bundles (4 Inv Exp, 4 Warehouse Exp, 20 Megaphone, 5 Marketplace Tickets) - 1190 SC

Gear Bundle (20x Premium Brooch Transmitter, 6x Brooch Fuser, 20 Akashi Transmitter, 2x SF Box, 5x Anti-Destruct, 1x Strength Expansion, 10x Advanced Refiner) - 1,900 SC

Month 1

- Dungeon Completion Event (Completion -> Reward)

- Common Costumes

- Rookie Raids

- Community Events (Q/A Room, Dance Party Participation, Streamer Sponsoring)

Month 2

- Housing

- Spring Costumes

- Grand Citadel

- Weapon 2x Upgrade Success Event

- Akashi 2x Rare Card Open Event

- PvP

- Achievement Scoreboard Rewards (Top X Rank, Top Y Clear Times, Top Z Playtime Hours)

Month 3

- Iris & Jin

- D6 Boss

- 25% Off Everything CS Event

- Summer Costumes

- Character Leveling Event (-> 30, -> 55)

- Daily Login Streak Event with Buffs (Drop Rate, EXP Up, DZ Up, Stats Up, Rare Item Chance Up)

- Daily Login RNG Event (WUC, AD, Premium Brooch, Akashi Card, 250x Grutin Coin, Team Respawns, EC)

Month 4

- Primal Raid

- Soulstone 2x Upgrade Event

- Upgrade bundles released

- 2x Drop Rate Event

- Invasion Event (25-Player Raid)

- Exotic Costumes

Month 5

- Clear X Different Raids, Get Upgrade Items Event

- Primal Raid EX

- Grasscamp

- Specialty Costumes

- Design X Costume, Logo Event / Tweet / Social Media Event

- Class Adv (Lily, Haru, Erwin)

Month 6

- 4-SW Dungeon Event

- Rare Mobs Event

- CS Tier Spending Event

- Comeback Event

- Fall Costumes

- Class Adv (Iris, Jin)

Quote from Bumluffa

By the way, if you want the source for my claim that this thread is more responsible for the inflation than anything else, as soon as I saw this thread 3 weeks ago I spent almost my entire value of dz ~2b into WUCs and ECs which are now worth almost 8b 3 weeks later because I KNEW that something like this would happen. Now you have a first hand account.

Buddy, DZ doesn't go into the economy into thin air.

In KR, WUCs are, 200-600k. No gold bot buying. Everyone's login is tied to their SSID or phone number. And there are punishable laws for not 'abiding'.

Let me ask you, how you can farm 300k/dz per raid non-stop non-buffed all day? You can't. But bots can. And they do. En masse, in parallel, non-stop. Do you seriously think, that NA has 1,000x more players than KR and thus can exhibit price levels many times higher? Sorry, but that is a no-go. It is similar to real life how the federal banks worldwide makes your currency worthless since day 1 by printing money. Maybe read 'QE & check back at the stock market in 2017-2018' as a hint.

Secondly, how do I know? I check the rates everyday. You can look at their megaphones on all servers, and you can ask people in discord, or see their website or ask people who buy gold themselves. All price increases correspond to dates where they dropped their prices by 20-40%. Do you see population spikes in steam charts? *hint hint* NO. There are not MORE NEW level 55s farming DZ than quitting. HINT? Check guilds. Check friend lists. Ask the people around. Take screenshots every week of channel 1 at the exact same time of GC, whatever map. Take your pick.

A profit of 2 billion to 8 billion means nothing, if everything costs more. You know how people say... you can live better in a cheaper neighbourhood where everything is cheap even if your income is low vs.. say something like 150k salary in The Bay Area of USA, right? Or 200k in Beijing. Whatever it is, the analogy applies the same here. If you can buy 5 ECs yesterday with your DZ, and 5 ECs tomorrow with your DZ - did you gain anything? No.

Irrelevant, the market is not controlled by anyone. It is simply a reflection of the devaluation of DZ at the moment. DZ is devalued because DZ is being sold. If gameforge just sold WUCs and ECs, there is less of a need for DZ. If gameforge sold gears +9 in CS, same thing. DZ is just a medium of exchange, a fiat currency in-game utilized for purposes of trade. The more you have of something, the less valuable it is; it does not mean ECs or WUCs suddenly became more valuable- you know that right?

DZ is being valued because people can buy DZ, and the reason people buy DZ, is because paying for it with SC is more expensive, and the reason people prefer the cheaper route, is because the rates for things are so atrocious, the reason rates are so atrocious, is so that GF can make money off of people's frustrations of not being contented about their gear. If people stop being frustrated, and become contented, they stop spending money unless they have another objective in mind which cannot be 'obtained by DZ' or '$', but time.

When you peg a fixed amount of SC for $, your items listed on marketplace don't change overnight. However, the people who can 'afford' to buy everything from their newly-minted DZ can. And they do, which I clearly explained was a symptom of the system itself - the cause of buying DZ in the first place which led to this problem.

Gameforge can implement technical measures to slow and delay the process of DZ buying insofar as to make transaction costs high, and thus deter buying DZ. However, this will never solve the problem unless it is enforceable to the full extent like KR ver. is - so long as GF insists on not changing the system or the parameters of the system - because it against their interests to do so at the request of the developer - conditions will remain stagnant in favour of inflation for the time being. People are paying to not play the game, surprise, surprise (who would of thought farming 250/hrs a month was not viable).

FYI, selling WUCs and ECs at higher price points - leads to the same question. Where does DZ COME FROM? Farming, duh. Buying loots from other people doesn't increase the DZ supply, buddy.

Farming rookie raids does.

Multiplying this activity to 24/7 on 1,000 computers - does even more, especially when you automated it.

DZ does not 'come' into thin air, unless you start using exploits and hacks. If that happened, then their rates could easily be so astronomically ridiculous, that you would see price increases of 100,000% by now and we would witness the next great

'rollback'.

And sorry, but your post is very not laudable. Whales cannot just suddenly wake up in the morning and buy things. They need DZ, and they either do that through selling SC (circulating DZ between players) or buying from gold bots (introducing new DZ). Whales cannot just buy up everything they want in the market at the whim of their fingers. They start with 0 DZ like everyone else, they have to give (someone) something they want (costumes) or (real money) to gold bots. When they do the latter, they buy the stuff they want (WUCs, ECs, HQ armor cores) and not the stuff they don't need (blue level 14 gears, nebula cards). If all they did was circulate DZ between players from selling SC; the SC-rate would go down due to the spamming of CS items on the market, but why would anyone sell SC at atrocious rates of DZ (is the question). If they only circulated DZ around by selling CS items, guess what happens to the WUC/EC sellers? They get richer. What happens to the costume buyers, SC item buyers? They get poorer. DZ Generated = 0. Price level = same. Number of items on market = dependent on rate of consumption and farming = proportional to new level 55s who want good gears, vs those who already obtained their gears (only farm WUC/EC to *sell* for DZ if they want *oh.. SC items! BPs! other items!)

If you cannot even understand such a simple concept, I cannot fanthom how to explain any further. It is simple as a sink, for which water is poured into, and for which a drain is clogged (no DZ sink - except for players that quit the game, and the 0.0001% removal by upgrading, or removing brooches or whatever).

This is literally in the introduction of any economics textbook; I didn't even need one, a simple demonstration of an economic system of 2 entities with fixed DZ and a third entity would of given you the same result (with the third having infinite supply of DZ).

Quote from Bumluffa

Quote from Rin

Quote from Bumluffa

By the way, if you want the source for my claim that this thread is more responsible for the inflation than anything else, as soon as I saw this thread 3 weeks ago I spent almost my entire value of dz ~2b into WUCs and ECs which are now worth almost 8b 3 weeks later because I KNEW that something like this would happen. Now you have a first hand account.

Buddy, DZ doesn't go into the economy into thin air.

In KR, WUCs are, 200-600k. No gold bot buying. Everyone's login is tied to their SSID or phone number. And there are punishable laws for not 'abiding'.

Let me ask you, how you can farm 300k/dz per raid non-stop non-buffed all day? You can't. But bots can. And they do. En masse, in parallel, non-stop. Do you seriously think, that NA has 1,000x more players than KR and thus can exhibit price levels many times higher? Sorry, but that is a no-go. It is similar to real life how the federal banks worldwide makes your currency worthless since day 1 by printing money. Maybe read 'QE & check back at the stock market in 2017-2018' as a hint.

Secondly, how do I know? I check the rates everyday. You can look at their megaphones on all servers, and you can ask people in discord, or see their website or ask people who buy gold themselves. All price increases correspond to dates where they dropped their prices by 20-40%. Do you see population spikes in steam charts? *hint hint* NO. There are not MORE NEW level 55s farming DZ than quitting. HINT? Check guilds. Check friend lists. Ask the people around. Take screenshots every week of channel 1 at the exact same time of GC, whatever map. Take your pick.

A profit of 2 billion to 8 billion means nothing, if everything costs more. You know how people say... you can live better in a cheaper neighbourhood where everything is cheap even if your income is low vs.. say something like 150k salary in The Bay Area of USA, right? Or 200k in Beijing. Whatever it is, the analogy applies the same here. If you can buy 5 ECs yesterday with your DZ, and 5 ECs tomorrow with your DZ - did you gain anything? No.

Irrelevant, the market is not controlled by anyone. It is simply a reflection of the devaluation of DZ at the moment. DZ is devalued because DZ is being sold. If gameforge just sold WUCs and ECs, there is less of a need for DZ. If gameforge sold gears +9 in CS, same thing. DZ is just a medium of exchange, a fiat currency in-game utilized for purposes of trade. The more you have of something, the less valuable it is; it does not mean ECs or WUCs suddenly became more valuable- you know that right?

DZ is being valued because people can buy DZ, and the reason people buy DZ, is because paying for it with SC is more expensive, and the reason people prefer the cheaper route, is because the rates for things are so atrocious, the reason rates are so atrocious, is so that GF can make money off of people's frustrations of not being contented about their gear. If people stop being frustrated, and become contented, they stop spending money unless they have another objective in mind which cannot be 'obtained by DZ' or '$', but time.

When you peg a fixed amount of SC for $, your items listed on marketplace don't change overnight. However, the people who can 'afford' to buy everything from their newly-minted DZ can. And they do, which I clearly explained was a symptom of the system itself - the cause of buying DZ in the first place which led to this problem.

Gameforge can implement technical measures to slow and delay the process of DZ buying insofar as to make transaction costs high, and thus deter buying DZ. However, this will never solve the problem unless it is enforceable to the full extent like KR ver. is - so long as GF insists on not changing the system or the parameters of the system - because it against their interests to do so at the request of the developer - conditions will remain stagnant in favour of inflation for the time being. People are paying to not play the game, surprise, surprise (who would of thought farming 250/hrs a month was not viable).

FYI, selling WUCs and ECs at higher price points - leads to the same question. Where does DZ COME FROM? Farming, duh. Buying loots from other people doesn't increase the DZ supply, buddy.

Farming rookie raids does.

Multiplying this activity to 24/7 on 1,000 computers - does even more, especially when you automated it.

DZ does not 'come' into thin air, unless you start using exploits and hacks. If that happened, then their rates could easily be so astronomically ridiculous, that you would see price increases of 100,000% by now and we would witness the next great

'rollback'.

And sorry, but your post is very not laudable. Whales cannot just suddenly wake up in the morning and buy things. They need DZ, and they either do that through selling SC (circulating DZ between players) or buying from gold bots (introducing new DZ). Whales cannot just buy up everything they want in the market at the whim of their fingers. They start with 0 DZ like everyone else, they have to give (someone) something they want (costumes) or (real money) to gold bots. When they do the latter, they buy the stuff they want (WUCs, ECs, HQ armor cores) and not the stuff they don't need (blue level 14 gears, nebula cards). If all they did was circulate DZ between players from selling SC; the SC-rate would go down due to the spamming of CS items on the market, but why would anyone sell SC at atrocious rates of DZ (is the question). If they only circulated DZ around by selling CS items, guess what happens to the WUC/EC sellers? They get richer. What happens to the costume buyers, SC item buyers? They get poorer. DZ Generated = 0. Price level = same. Number of items on market = dependent on rate of consumption and farming = proportional to new level 55s who want good gears, vs those who already obtained their gears (only farm WUC/EC to *sell* for DZ if they want *oh.. SC items! BPs! other items!)

If you cannot even understand such a simple concept, I cannot fanthom how to explain any further. It is simple as a sink, for which water is poured into, and for which a drain is clogged (no DZ sink - except for players that quit the game, and the 0.0001% removal by upgrading, or removing brooches or whatever).

This is literally in the introduction of any economics textbook; I didn't even need one, a simple demonstration of an economic system of 2 entities with fixed DZ and a third entity would of given you the same result (with the third having infinite supply of DZ).

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I feel like you wrote a whole essay without first understanding what I said and contradicting yourself several times. First of all, I didn't buy ECs and WUCs at the initiation of this thread in order to profit - it was a measure of insulating myself from the inevitable inflation I knew this thread's existence was going to create. That's very simple and you should understand that a lot of people do the very same thing.

Secondly why are you contradicting yourself by saying "DZ does not come into thin air" when you spent the majority of your comment explaining how the inflation situation is attributed to gold bots when they literally do materialise DZ from thin air farming dungeons 24/7.

Thirdly that point does not even make much sense if you had any realistic grasp on the game and actually played it often enough to notice that gold bots cannot be seen running to and from dungeon entrances on a 24/7 basis. Instead of asking me to take screenshots each week at GC how about you stand outside a Rucco Town dungeon or Candus dungeon for a couple hours each day and measure how many characters with randomized names go in and out? Btw I hope you do realise the gold you get from farming each dungeon at those low levels is a mere pittance and if they were selling the item drops from those runs instead then that would be causing item prices to go down and not up. Are you starting to see why what you're saying doesn't really make sense?

By now you should hopefully realise that the gold that is sold on gold farming websites are not really run by lvl 1 bots farming dungeons 24/7 than max levels selling their gold to those websites who act as an intermediary to people wanting to buy gold. Hence, if a whale who bought 5k WUCs for <1m DZ back when they were sold on the CS sells 100 WUC for 1.2b dz now to sell for gold vs 100 WUC for 250m dz before your thread, I don't think those gold websites are going to be wanting to pay the same dollar value for that dz. That's very simple maths which I'm sure you can understand given your predisposition for overcomplicated graphs and data

Perhaps instead of skimming through economics books you probably don't understand, consider taking a course in cause and effect

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Yes, I am well aware of people selling their DZ at 1/2 price to what the gold sellers are selling at. However, let me ask you - do you think proportionately, on a per-hourly basis, that farming at X fixed rate DZ is viable enough for your wage decreasing every week? At first, it was $1=$1mil, then $1=10mil, then $100=$1bil, then $50=1bil, then $20=1bil and so on forth.

There is a theoretical limit to the level of scalability of farming DZ, and I can almost certainly guarantee you, that most players are not farming DZ 24/7 actively. They are, passively, in a sense by playing the game, yes. But does it make sense to you that NA's rates were tripling or quadrupling over EN, when they both had the exact same number of items on the market the last 6 weeks? No it doesn't. In fact, EN gold bot prices were 220% more than NA, and this clearly identifies the discrepency.

Furthermore, I myself, had ran GC at the theoretical limit of 8 minutes and 29 seconds - other versions have whales running it as low as 7 minutes pre-GC "streamlining" - likewise rookie raids 3 minutes give or take.

The majority of player gold sellers, are players who quit their accounts, or do some merch flipping. Merch flipping does not generate any DZ on itself. Players who quit their accounts generate an insignificant amount of DZ over their lifetimes compared to bots doing it automatically. If anything, you can just look at some the items that bots are selling (and yes, I have screenshots of them in Candus City and Ruin Fortress from months ago) - Soul Fizz and whatnot. The point is, their DZ source comes primarily from farming DZ, and second forth, selling high-liquidity items en masse units.

If all they did was farm WUCs, you would see WUCs prices dropping crazy hell. But as we all know, DZ is generated faster in relative ratio to proportion of WUCs generated, as WUCs are being burned every upgrade attempt by every player on the server every day, whether they choose to sell their WUCs or not, same with ECs.

Great for you, that you cannot see them running in 'dungeons' - but had you read the other thread that the VIP Customer Relations guy said - I paraphrase "it is hard to determine and pinpoint the DZ source transactions, as most of it is farmed in dungeons" is a testament to the fact that they are good at remaining inconspicuous farming DZ and selling high-liquidity items on the marketplace everyday.

Yes, the rates were already known to be nerfed long ago; the point is, when you have variable X with factor Y changing in front of your face, and all other variables are the same - decreasing playerbase, decreasing average player base time, decreased DZ selling rates - it is not hard to see the intrinsic links right before your eyes. I have observed the dynamics between gold bot prices and price levels since day 1 of being the first level 55 lily on the server; and yes, there is a natural rate of inflaction intrinsic to the playerbase having better farming capabilities - but they don't scale to infinity, while bots can. If you simply had googled up bot algo detection and look at the first profile picture of their time-distribution of in-game activities, you can clearly see their one-sided lapedness in farming activities in relative proportions to all other activities, versus the average player, or even hardcore DZ grinding player (which I was with schall tier3 card) when DZ was worth something.

Unless, you are going to tell me that, there is an ACCELERATING exodus of MULTI-BILLION-DZ farming level 55 players quitting the game, selling their account causing DZ prices to drop so quick- but if this was true, we would see DZ prices rebound - and they haven't. Furthermore, like I said, there is a THEORETICAL limit to the maximum speed time-efficiency of running things without good gears, while scaling horiziontally with bots - it is INFINITE nearly (except server space / other capital contingencies). If you wanted to illuminate the fact that I prevented price information asymmetry, and hiked a few more 'capitalists' who invested in assets instead of holding DZ to contributing to increasing prices, fine by me. But just know, people don't start with infinite DZ, and you would be VERY HARD PRESSED to make a billion DZ from not selling LOOTS or SOULCASH (which is DZ - neutral). Just tell me how many hours it takes for YOU to farm DZ (up to a billion), solely from raids, non-stop, and whether you would do it for a decreasing wage. Because let me tell you something, clear times did not drop by 50% week by week! And if you +8ed your weapon, or +9ed it to increase efficiency, this still doesn't cut clear times or give you 5x more EP to farm; not to mention you only have 24 hours, while bots have 24x many computer hours.

When I say, DZ doesn't appear out of thin air, I mean it requires (intrinsic effort, capital, human energy) and other factors for it to appear. You need to set up programs to automate things, and test it. You don't just change the values of your account to 10 trillion and be done with it (I am sorry if you cannot comprehend my point clearly). My deeper point, is that it takes effort. Reading this thread and buying assets is a one-time event. Items are being farmed everyday. Unless, you are going to tell me that dude who bought 2,000 WUCs when they were 10k each is 'responsible' for today's inflation because he quitted already and disappeared off with 2,000 WUCs; which is completely irrelevant. Prices change everyday due to people's valuation of things. And when they get more DZ from buying from gold bots (it is really ironic that you say that the majority source of DZ is by players - because if that was true - they would just buy from players and cut out the wholesaler). In fact, player DZ prices is always higher than bot DZ prices, and this is simply a reflection of the fact of relative effort level differences between automated programs and human players (or labour, in this sense).

Anyhow, capitalists don't have infinite DZ to gorge into assets; just try buying out the entire market with your measily DZ (from not selling items, only gotten from raids, only from selling to NPCs) - and see how far that will get you. Chances are, asset prices would drop or remain the same because someone came and 'undercut' you. My primary point is, you cannot just buy out the entire market with your garbage-earned DZ / hourly basis. 300k/raid @ 3m 30s with loading time inclusive, for a maximum of 40 times per day. Please. Spare me the pleasantries.

A fixed limit of farming ability, for fixed amount of time, with fixed playerbase, at a fixed-consumption level would yield a consistent price level that is increasing in linear proportions, not drastic jumps of 20-140% in random days in correspondence to gold bot discount days.

I already prepared the proper point of contention of point for you.

KR server. WUCs. 300-600k. No gold bots.

Right, someone would of bought all those WUCs because 'inflation', right?

No, DZ didn't scale into infinity. That DZ was destroyed when players quitted. Those WUCs stop selling when players finished +ing their gear. Those WUCs accumulated when things got farmed. Same with star cards in JP.

I do not understand why it is so hard for you to understand such a simple concept.

Oh, and their chat bots are automated too. Just look at their suffixes changing number parameters every line; some of them even change channels automatically; hell the VP guy said they 'scripted' their logins! By the THOUSANDS.