Asshatery and Blaming the Marketeers for Dev. Problems
a digression by Vampyrn
Some of you may have seen the quote below in the
Official Alchemy Q&A Thread. I have this here because I will be addressing some of the problems Recite Your Sins and Panagrammic are talking about and may refer to it within my digression. (Continued below quote)
Panagrammic
Ah, let me take a swing at this one, at least from an economic point of view.
I apologize for my poor wording if you thought that I was blaming users for our laissez-faire marketplace. (This is perhaps why we should have the writers vet everything, but they are so busy with their alpaca races nowadays). The point I was trying to make there is that, to some extent, the pricing of the items is determined by intangible factors that the users must determine for themselves. There are items with equivalent rarities that differ in price by more than 10x.
I'd also like to point out that item alchemy by design is strictly a gold sink, and, as such, deflationary. However, it has definitely caused spikes upward in prices. This is a temporary -- since we have an ever increasing supply of components and only a small percentage of users that have interest in alchemy, you'll find that the prices will become much more reasonable.
You don't have to worry about causing inflation by participating in the market -- that is actually deflationary. We understand if you find the price prohibitive right now, but that situation will correct soon.
Recite Your Sins
I am a little offended that you blame the users when using the "laizze faire" market. "So, if you see a formula and are thinking to yourself, "There is no way that is worth it," then we suggest that you don't make that formula." Ultimately, when they released this new feature, they didn't release it with the intention of not being able to use it. You put the blame soley on the gaian population by saying we are the one driving up the prices using a faulty system they created for the purpose of creating new items, with current limited to begin with. Users obviously want the newer items, but the inflation of the components needed for these formulas is the fundamental problem of what is undoubtly a current broken Alchemy system. So, blame the users, for a system that was created for the destruction of rare items, because of a system that was created for it's intented use.
It's not fair to put out a system you want Gaians to use, knowing it will cause inflation of the items hindering more Gaians from utilitizing the system. Considering almost every single formula out there for now is currently "not worth making", should we just abandon the system to help decrease this inflation it's caused? Either we quit making things that aren't worth making ( abandon alchemy and leave it to collect dust), or buy up the items, decrease the supply with the destruction of the items, and increase inflation. So, don't use this "really cool system", or "cause and contribute to inflation"? Those are some fantastic choices there, thank you.
A continuing issue with Alchemy is the effect it has brought on Gaia's economy. The requirement of many old materials which were not in abundance and newer components which are
also scarce led to overpricing and scalping on the Gaia Marketplace (MP) almost immediately.
The Developers (Dev's) have chosen to call the MP a "laissez-faire" market.
For those who don't know, that's French for "let do" and has come to stand for "free market". Meaning let the market control itself free from outside interference.
A completely laissez-faire market is infeasible, mostly because of one variable which plays its role in everything, Greed. In the famous words of Gordon Gekko, "Greed, for lack of a better word, is good". Well, that's exactly what we have here in Gaia. For many reasons, which I don't want to get into, the MP has become the pack-mule of gold making.
The greedy and gold-seeking flock to and exploit it like a communal gold mine, which leads to the next problem.
Gaia IS a laissez-faire market; however, that is not entirely the problem. The problem that has now arisen is that Dev's rely on the savvy and kindness of those who find materials and Formulae to understand the market and care about others' cost to build. Rather than give due diligence to the issues with the market and get a feel for the problems,
Dev's have chosen to release Alchemy with a sub-par amount of components available (low supply) and expect the marketeers to control their own prices while the rich are willing to buy them at high prices. Panagrammic has said, "the pricing of the items is determined by intangible factors that the users must determine for themselves"; however, I think he has failed to grasp some of those 'intangible factors' that take part in EVERY economy, namely -
supply and demand.
At the height of demand during the initial release of Alchemy and almost non-existent supply (still fairly null). This fiasco of a development process and release is the cause of the now out-of-control price gouging, or selling unreasonably high, which was adversely caused by the non-existence of items upon release and subsequently now.
The Dev's have allowed the main source of materials to be giftboxes, which themselves do not appear very often and have already cost a hefty amount of gold. This was promptly monopolized on by marketeers, rightly so. The average value of
Pink Magical Giftboxes increased ten-fold overnight, why?
Recite Your Sins hit the nail on the head when he battered staff for saying that the users caused the inflation of goods. Panagrammic even admits it unwittingly in his response, though he denies it in his forward... If
"the users must determine for themselves" then a failure to do so would mean that the users are in fact at fault if they don't understand how the market 'should' work. This same a**-umption is what the real-world economy has gone through, see monopolies and price gouging.
Price spikes aren't the fault of users, they are the effect of Dev's not pre-planning the amount of components that need to be pushed out in a rush to bring down the spike quickly. Granted the older item would probably have still undergone a price increase for some time; however, other components would have been controlled and the overall spike would have been dampened by the supply of new materials.
Gaia's Staff and Dev's need to grow-up, wise-up and listen to their users. They cannot expect a user base of mostly teenagers to understand the inner-workings of a market the size of Gaia's. That responsibly is on the shoulders of Staff who need to moderate and control the flow of supply thus controlling the MP prices and reducing the hated inflation.
Stop Being Asshats
With Love,
Vampyrn
100
200
200
