[NEW MERCENARIES] Please note that all new forum users have to be approved before posting. This process can take up to 24 hours, and we appreciate your patience.

Seal Shop is Cancer?

MastaMasta
Vindictus Rep: 840
Posts: 59
Member
in General Discussion
When I played back in 2013-14, and season 2 rare mats were a pain to get.
The population then was decent or at least better than it is now.
I wonder if implementing an upgraded version of the seal shop was not beneficial because it shot the economy.
When you get a rare drop now it's not worth very much like it was then and people play less because they are already done upgrading.
Maybe s3 chapter 2 will raise prices and the implement of new scrolls too?
  1. Seal Shop49 votes
    1. Put Vindictus In the Right Direction.
       80% (39 votes)
    2. Killed the game..
       20% (10 votes)

Comments

  • SilentineSilentine
    Vindictus Rep: 1,285
    Posts: 55
    Member
    ''This game sucks, everything is so hard to get, you have to be a no lifer to have end game gear''
    ''This game sucks, everything is so easy to get and cheap, no way to farm''

    See where I am going with this?
    MastaToksikoHallyRagnastorm
  • MastaMasta
    Vindictus Rep: 840
    Posts: 59
    Member
    Silentine wrote: »
    ''This game sucks, everything is so hard to get, you have to be a no lifer to have end game gear''
    ''This game sucks, everything is so easy to get and cheap, no way to farm''

    See where I am going with this?

    I don't know, man. :(
  • SilentineSilentine
    Vindictus Rep: 1,285
    Posts: 55
    Member
    There are always people who will find stuff to expensive to get and people who will find stuff to cheap.

    There are still items in game that can strike you with milions of gold. Just gotta aim for those.
    Masta
  • PrototypemindPrototypemind
    Vindictus Rep: 8,530
    Posts: 1,320
    Member
    Lower overall prices mean that people can actually acquire worthwhile amounts of gold without going to gold buying sites. See the fact that EU still has a sound economy while NA has hyperinflation that is finally starting to settle down more. The seal shop gives all players a fair chance to earn the rewards they want in game--as does the scroll shop--while still allowing players who save gold towards specific items to acquire them as well. The current state works well for everyone except players who want to feel special and exclusive because they have pixels that others simply can't afford.

    It's a much better situation with the lowered cost for S2 mats and the S3 mats available for seals as well.
    SilentineMastaHally
  • TsiiiTsiii
    Vindictus Rep: 2,175
    Posts: 112
    Member
    Back in 2013 and 2014, vindictus didn't have black desert or blade and soul to fight for active players. The economy being where it is, is only partially due to the seal shop, and more likely due to having less players providing a steady supply of materials/gold/whatever. Blessed magic elixirs for example, are 3x the price they used to be on East server. Enhancement elixirs went from 60k prior to last saturday, to 300k (mostly due to the event and everyone breaking stuff, but still). Sure weapon feathers and such have gone down 10x in price roughly, but how many weapon feathers did a person need per char? One or two, but how many times do you need to enhance/enchant....

    I actually think the seal shop is a very clever way of Nexon indirectly encouraging more players to purchase NX for runes and such, because suddenly a lot of players have access to the best in slot gear. What do they want to do with that best in slot gear? Enchant! Enhance! Buy runes! It's a very subtle way of tapping into the "free" system and pulling some money out of it. It used to be that orange stuff and such was an entirely "F2P Mechanic" save for those who bought boxes for essences, but by increasing the availability of this best in slot gear, it encourages players to look past the step of just acquisition, and look into upgrading, which is money for nexon.

    TLDR: Yeah, some things have deflated in price, but that has only made the money makers shift to different items...

    Masta
  • MadcobraMadcobra
    Vindictus Rep: 5,230
    Posts: 916
    Member
    edited March 15, 2017
    Silentine wrote: »
    ''This game sucks, everything is so hard to get, you have to be a no lifer to have end game gear''
    ''This game sucks, everything is so easy to get and cheap, no way to farm''

    See where I am going with this?

    Oh my oh my
  • pootismanpootisman
    Vindictus Rep: 885
    Posts: 67
    Member
    edited March 15, 2017
    I highly doubt many people like to grind lakoria/kraken 100 times and get nothing, or spend 350m on a fang and 1b on a clean weapon. Making stuff cheaper is the right thing to do as it allows people to play the game, and people who want high end gears will have to dump in $$$. It's win-win.

    Here is the problem though: When you have such good gears and then there is nothing to do in this game, ofc it's gonna be a wasteland. Neamhain is the only raid in this game that will push gears (and 99% people cannot run), but everything else is a snoozefest after running them for 2 weeks.

    Their way of solving the problem is to bring a new RNG box with each update instead of coming up with more content. RNG box =/= real content, but whatever keeps them float I guess. I'm betting the next update in late march/early april will be some sort of RNG box sale.
    MastaXieRagnastorm
  • CessaCessa
    Vindictus Rep: 1,680
    Posts: 244
    Member
    edited March 15, 2017
    You think the seal shop killed the game?
    You think people are playing less because they already upgraded their gear to +10 orange weapons?


    People are not playing because they realize that no matter how much they play they can no longer progress their gear. Orange +10 is the limit. It's too hard to get past that and there is no guarantee. So if you have a +10 orange weapon why should you waste your time playing this game if you can't get any better than that?
    MastaV0lterix
  • DownIoadDownIoad
    Vindictus Rep: 2,185
    Posts: 312
    Member
    Judging by the votes, you are in the minority OP.

    Seal shop was a great addition to the games.
    MastaYureha
  • MastaMasta
    Vindictus Rep: 840
    Posts: 59
    Member
    DownIoad wrote: »
    Judging by the votes, you are in the minority OP.

    Seal shop was a great addition to the games.
    I didn't have a clear opinion and thought maybe the seal shop was the cause of the population decrease.

    Seal shop must not be the reason.
  • OkatsuOkatsu
    Vindictus Rep: 1,665
    Posts: 113
    Member
    I don't see why there's room to complain that we've been given a way to actually be rewarded for the countless hours of time we put into the game.
    Things like seal shop are only complained about by the more fortunate. The real reason everything is so cheap is because everyone who has money isn't buying anything so there's no gold in circulation. Blame the people hoarding for 95 cap, not the seal shop.
    MastaV0lterix
  • 2edgy4u2edgy4u
    Vindictus Rep: 2,915
    Posts: 391
    Member
    b-but how will i get to see a big yellow number at the bottom right of my inventory now?
    Masta
  • DelterosDelteros
    Vindictus Rep: 2,855
    Posts: 176
    Member
    Rip +15 90 value

    I was thinking they should add mysterious shards to seal shop as well
    MastaArishaLAnthonytonyboy
  • hornywatermelonhornywatermelon
    Vindictus Rep: 3,985
    Posts: 467
    Member
    The only thing this game lacks right now is a regular enchant scroll shop, much like the one we've had in the past events. Add that, bring the revamped scrolls and we're good to go.
  • RemirezRemirez
    Vindictus Rep: 200
    Posts: 4
    Member
    Problems with the game are this> Enhancement system, Enchanting system, RNG systems, terrible optimization.
    Enhancement system where they think its okay to BLOW UP some HARD TO GET (originally) items for a chance to increase the stats. Attack speed and +bonus damage make a HUGE difference. Do you know what causes people to quit the game? Knowing that if they get LUCKY to get over +10, that if they are lucky to get +12, IF THEY CHANCE IT TO GET MORE, EVERYTHING IS LOST. And here is a fact, I have tried to +11 my longsword 8 times with Gob stones. Not ONCE has it succeeded. Not ONCE have I ever gotten over +10 on ANY of the 13 characters. I have been playing since BETA.
    Enchanting is WORSE because its god damn required. Exquisite runes are $25 and only sold SOMETIMES. If they REALLY want to make money, $10 MAX. $2 for regular runes, $4 for premium runes. THOSE are valid prices. $25 is practically half the price of a NEW AAA game. Why is it okay to think "Well, yeah they had to find a scroll by chance, and they have a slim as hell chance for it to land, so lets stab them in the eyeball for a fair shot at the game" for something REQUIRED to be meaningful.
    RNG is offset by seal shop but not all things are in seal shop. Seal shop was the best thing this game ever had done to it. Prices are currently amazing. I agree with mysterious shards and all that to be added to it. Gives rewards for people playing and offsets the TERRIBLE RNG of drops.
    And optimization is just something that needs to happen if they want the game to live.
  • 2edgy4u2edgy4u
    Vindictus Rep: 2,915
    Posts: 391
    Member
    Remirez wrote: »
    And optimization is just something that needs to happen if they want the game to live.

    they don't. rebuilding the game just to improve the experience for the existing playerbase and maybe bring back a few veterans is not a good business decision.
  • Question2Question2
    Vindictus Rep: 3,235
    Posts: 718
    Member
    edited March 18, 2017
    Masta wrote: »
    When I played back in 2013-14, and season 2 rare mats were a pain to get.
    The population then was decent or at least better than it is now.
    I wonder if implementing an upgraded version of the seal shop was not beneficial because it shot the economy.
    When you get a rare drop now it's not worth very much like it was then and people play less because they are already done upgrading.
    Maybe s3 chapter 2 will raise prices and the implement of new scrolls too?

    The problem is not really that the seal shop update killed the economy, but the drop rates not being updated to reflect the seal shop update.

    Look at OJ solids, super rare drop, not worth much because it only costs 50 seals. If OJ solids dropped often enough, then the price would match the drop rate and people wouldn't feel cheated by getting a super rare drop that is not worth much. Now, the price doesnt reflect the drop rate at all.

    I think it would be better if all seal shop mats were unbound and could be sold back to the seal shop for the full purchase price. This would do the following :

    -Allow people to gear up alts easier (and encourage people to buy runes) since they could farm seals on their main, transfer them to their alt or expertise character and then make end game gear

    -Allow people to help their friends gear up easier (similar to above, very important for getting new players to stick around rather than jumping ship to BDO or whatever)

    -Make low level seal shop mats worth something, most people just NPC teten frags since they are worthless

    -Give people a reason to run lower level raids since the rare drops would be worth something

    Another problem is the drop ratios. Devcat has consistently demonstrated very poor understanding of proper ratios. E.G. Look at purple solids vs purple smooths. You need 5 solids to make a full armor set, vs 2 smooths. So the drop ratio should reflect that (5:2 ratio). Instead, smooths are much more common than solids. End result? Purple smooths are worthless compared to purple solids because anyone running s3 dailies have far more smooths than they could use, which reuslts in an excess of smooths in the economy.

    The roch revamp is another great example of poor ratios. Lets say you need 1 rare drop + 10 trash mats to make one item. The roch revamp made the rare drop so common that the limiting factor is getting enough trash mats to make the item, so the rare drops are now worthless.
    Silentine wrote: »
    There are always people who will find stuff to expensive to get and people who will find stuff to cheap.

    There are still items in game that can strike you with milions of gold. Just gotta aim for those.

    First of all lets assume an economy without massive inflation from gold sellers.

    Most items that are worth anything are drops that you -might- get once a month if you do end game stuff every day (which not every can do due to IRL commitments, etc). Things like r7 scrolls for example. Because if you could get r7 scrolls once a week or more, they wouldn't be worth much, because most people would be willing to wait to get the scrolls themselves rather than spend gold on them.

    Back when roch/drags was end game, roch was great because roch drops was a consistent source of gold (titan ankle frags, etc). That went out of the window with drags and beyond due to the super rare drops and bad ratios. No point buying drag trash mats when you could do drags for 3 months and not get a single rare mat.

    If the only thing worth anything are rare drops, then you run into the problem of people quitting or refusing to do certain battles because "Im not going to get anything good anyway, why bother?". Plenty of people refuse to do s2 dailies precisely for this reason.

    Problem 2 is that newbies find it hard to get money, they need a lot of money to get geared up, but the stuff they can get consistently is worth pretty much nothing. The only thing that they can get consistently, that is worth anything, are enhancemnet elixirs, which is completely reliant on whales willing to buy runes to mass enhance weapons for a +15. But new players ALSO need elixirs to get geared up (outside of rare events where you get a coupon or whatever), so its kind of a catch 22.

    End result : newbies often quitting because they cant get money for gear, dont want to spend long hours farming elixirs or whatever, and they find the game too hard so they quit and jump to another game.

    Seal shop -kind of- helps but most newbies loath the idea of talking to people to do raids so they just give up and jump to another game instead.
    pootisman wrote: »
    Here is the problem though: When you have such good gears and then there is nothing to do in this game, ofc it's gonna be a wasteland. Neamhain is the only raid in this game that will push gears (and 99% people cannot run), but everything else is a snoozefest after running them for 2 weeks.

    This is a bit simplified. Even if you have a full OJ set, theres still scrolls, plus the accessories arent in the seal shop. Even if you do have full everything, you can still gear up an alt, get gold to prepare for future content, play for the fun combat, play with friends, etc.

    If on the other hand you hate the combat, you are never gonna stick around for long.