First of all, yes there will definitely be another rare sale. If there is ever going to be a last sale we will let everyone know that it is the last one, so no one continues hoarding credits in anticipation of a sale that isn't coming.
Neither are we, but unfortunately it's necessary to boost income periodically or it just dies down. Most do this through discounts and exclusives. We do the same but in a way that I believe is more community-friendly.
It went alright. I do think some things could've been done better. IMO a few too many legends were put on sale and because of it the sale dragged on for far longer than it should have. We overcompensated because some people were worried that if we only sold 5, they'd all be gone within minutes of the sale starting.
Unfortunately that reason still exists. Playercounts alone do not reflect how well the server is doing income-wise. Although a single sale like this can give us a much needed boost and even carry us forward another 6-12 months, eventually things go back to normal and the reserve you have built up from the sale has run out. Personally I don't like the sales but I can live with them. If a sale every 6-12 months is what it takes to keep PkHonor going indefinitely that's not such a huge price to pay.Pvm porn wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 8:20 am That being said, last time there was a good reason (the server was doing very poorly and we launched an advertising campaign IIRC), and I think it could hurt future unique sales if we did these without reason. If this becomes a regular thing to the point people are thinking "well I don't need to buy these because I can just wait for the next one", then obviously the sales will slow down to the point that it's almost like we're just regularly selling rares.
Your concern about them becoming a common thing is certainly warranted. That is something we want to avoid as well. As it is I don't think we're anywhere near making them common though. If we have a sale roughly every 9 months and we rotate items around so they're only sold once in every 3 sales, then a rare would go on sale once every 2 years (and even then only 5-10 of them). That's still very rare.
This is true. There's no eventually about it. Since the first sale it has been the case that after the sale, people would continue to buy up credits at a significantly increased price. This then gradually decreases over the next few months until all the hoarders have stockpiled enough to be prepared for the next sale. At this point the price of credits goes back to exactly what it was before: ~2.5M/credit. It can't go any lower than that because nearly all items in the donator store are priced around ~2.5M/credit. Anyone selling credits for less would be better off spending them themselves.Ryan wrote: ↑Fri May 22, 2020 2:05 pm ^ This.
It'll eventually get to a point where players just save credits and wait for 'ultra rares'. Which will lead to a fairly big dip in donations because the price of credits will eventually crash.. pretty similar to whats happening now. I've literally seen people struggle to sell credits recently. Perhaps some new permanent items or something? But adding ultra rares "too often" won't really help the server in anyway, more so it'll help the "rich players that can hoard credits".
But so what? Why is it a bad thing that increased spending is more spread out?
If we did what everyone else did, e.g. 50% discount for 2-4 weeks on the payment side, then we would see a huge donation increase in those few weeks and then almost nothing for months until the next sale. Because of people hoarding credits we instead get a gentle boost that lasts for months. From our perspective that's a lot more stable. It is essentially a 50% discount that does not end abruptly but decreases over time as supply and demand settles.
As for "helping the rich players that can hoard credits"... In what way are we helping them?
Can they merch their expensive investment and sell it for profit? Sure. But that much has always been true. In fact I think most would argue that rich players used to profit a lot more from these items than they do now. That would mean we have done the exact opposite of helping them.
Donators want wealth. Rich players want things to spend their wealth on. Why spawn money for donators and then look for money sinks for rich players when you can have the money from the rich players go directly to the donators?
Our approach to donations has always been this way: the F2P players help drive donations, and more often than not donators function as suppliers for them. They donate to sell. It used to be mostly mboxes, statuses and custom whips, now it's also credits directly. So what? This is the symbiotic relationship that comes from our wealth-based everything-tradeable approach and it's one of the big reasons why our eco isn't messed up.
I kept your reply for last because I want to go a bit more in depth on the price history of the legends cape. To say it was worth 3-5T is... a matter of opinion I guess.
I've done my best to make a complete overview of when legends capes were sold and for how much. Please note that this is extremely difficult to do accurately. Usually we do this based on GE, since that's the only place where it's always a single item being sold for cash and it's always a sale. But legends capes rarely ever get sold via GE, almost always via trades.
Trades are tricky. These items get traded around a lot but most of the time they're just loans or transfers. You'd think it would be easy to filter these out but it isn't. Quite often the other player trades something in collateral (e.g. my grain for your legends). In some cases it's impossible to tell that it wasn't an actual sale until you see it reversed later on in the logs.
Another problem with trades is that people often don't pay with money but with items. If the payment for a legends includes other rares then you need to know how much those rares are worth, not just now but around the time when the trade happened. This also applies to things like donator credits. And sometimes the legends cape is not the only thing that is being sold so then you kinda have to guess how much of the payment was meant for the legends cape.
Anyway, after a lot of cursing I think I've come up with a fairly accurate overview.
Code: Select all
Date | Type | Price
2016-02-20 | TRADE | 727,100,000,000
2016-02-21 | TRADE | 500,000,000,000
2016-02-21 | TRADE | 500,000,000,000
2016-02-24 | TRADE | 594,350,000,000
2016-04-28 | TRADE | 750,000,000,000
2016-05-04 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2016-05-13 | TRADE | 805,000,000,000
2016-05-23 | TRADE | 975,000,000,000
2016-05-24 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2016-05-27 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2016-06-01 | TRADE | 750,000,000,000
2016-06-04 | TRADE | 750,000,000,000
2016-06-04 | TRADE | 753,000,000,000
2016-06-05 | TRADE | 800,000,000,000
2016-06-06 | TRADE | 775,000,000,000
2016-06-06 | TRADE | 600,000,000,000
2016-06-08 | TRADE | 675,000,000,000
2016-06-10 | TRADE | 725,000,000,000
2016-06-26 | TRADE | 702,897,483,646
2016-08-11 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2016-08-12 | TRADE | 917,097,374,100
2016-08-28 | TRADE | 750,000,000,000
2016-09-26 | TRADE | 835,350,000,000
2016-10-17 | TRADE | 970,500,000,000
2016-11-06 | TRADE | 825,000,000,000
2016-11-07 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2016-12-24 | TRADE | 808,917,251,441
2016-12-25 | TRADE | 850,000,000,000
2016-12-25 | TRADE | 850,000,000,000
2016-12-27 | TRADE | 843,000,000,000
2016-12-27 | G.E. | 99,999,999,999
2017-02-05 | G.E. | 1,000,000,000,000
2017-02-05 | G.E. | 750,000,000,000
2017-02-12 | G.E. | 1,100,000,000,000
2017-02-12 | TRADE | 900,000,000,000
2017-02-27 | TRADE | 1,250,000,000,000
2017-03-10 | TRADE | 800,000,000,000
2017-03-31 | G.E. | 962,275,781,250
2017-05-04 | TRADE | 504,000,000,001
2017-05-14 | TRADE | 225,000,000,000
2017-05-19 | TRADE | 825,000,000,000
2017-05-22 | G.E. | 1,000,000,000,000
2017-05-22 | G.E. | 1,150,000,000,000
2017-05-22 | G.E. | 1,200,000,000,000
2017-05-23 | G.E. | 1,500,000,000,000
2017-05-26 | G.E. | 1,700,000,000,000
2017-06-29 | G.E. | 1,100,000,000,000
2017-07-11 | G.E. | 1,050,000,000,000
2017-07-29 | G.E. | 1,025,000,000,000
2017-08-20 | TRADE | 961,415,375,000
2017-12-05 | TRADE | 1,999,175,000,000
2017-12-10 | TRADE | 1,750,000,000,000
2018-05-30 | TRADE | 4,472,000,000,000
2018-06-15 | TRADE | 3,650,000,000,000
2018-07-06 | TRADE | 600,000,000,010
2018-10-23 | TRADE | 2,002,500,000,000
2019-03-03 | TRADE | 4,275,000,000,000
2019-03-22 | TRADE | 3,000,000,000,000
2019-08-13 | G.E. | 2,900,000,000,000
>>> SALE <<<
2019-12-22 | TRADE | 1,375,000,000,000
2020-01-04 | TRADE | 2,300,000,000,000
2020-01-04 | TRADE | 1,150,000,000,000
2020-01-08 | TRADE | 1,150,000,000,000
2020-01-10 | TRADE | 1,096,950,000,000
2020-01-13 | TRADE | 1,197,500,000,000
2020-01-18 | TRADE | 1,150,000,000,000
2020-01-20 | TRADE | 1,200,000,000,000
2020-01-23 | TRADE | 437,500,000,000
2020-01-31 | TRADE | 900,000,000,000
2020-03-19 | TRADE | 342,000,000,000
2020-05-12 | TRADE | 1,100,000,000,000
2020-05-13 | TRADE | 1,081,500,000,000
2020-05-14 | TRADE | 1,079,250,000,000
2020-05-22 | TRADE | 1,410,000,000,000
Now, you could look at 2018-2019 and claim that legends was worth 3-5T because it was sold for twice for 3T+ and twice for 4T+. Okay, fair point. But also look at just how few were sold in those years and how drastic the price increase and sale decrease were compared to most of 2017. It's almost as if all the legends cape owners collectively agreed not to sell their capes unless someone paid them 2-4x as much as they were worth just a few months before. Unsurprisingly almost no one was willing to pay that price and legends cape trading all but came to a halt. This was the era of legends cape hoarding and if you want one you better make me an offer so ridiculous I can't refuse.
Maybe we were wrong to burst that bubble. I think it was a good thing. Now they are back to reasonable prices instead of monopolized extortion prices. From this data at least it doesn't look like we have ruined the item.
my only other question would be could you give us a rough time frame on when you think items will be added? Also ty for the quick reply’s and in-depth reply’s to everyone
