۞✦ Alchemy: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly. ✦۞

[Kyra Tawney]

I do love the new items and agree with you on every point except one. I am glad that they are makings some old rigs available because I have been wishing they would re-release them again but I was thinking just for a short time.
They do need to have a major over hall of things though because the actual items you need to craft (mostly the rare ones) won't hold out. Then what? This thing is doomed to crash in a few days. If it does go though I wish some of the new things would get released later because in the post showing what you could get there was one thing in particular I would love to have.

[Sombra Mapache]

Angel in a Bottle

But the artists, as shown with how many have retired and left, don't have a long term stake in Gaia's economy. Chances are they're eventually going to go on and get other jobs; some are even just interns. The developers aren't behind this, the artists are.

Why would the rare items deflate at all if even a few more of them are entering the economy? Excess supply = lower prices.

I'm not majoring in economics, but I have taken both a macro and micro econ course, and even speaking on basic terms, the opportunity cost of creating the items may very well be much greater for many people to craft rather than to purchase. That means there's less incentive to buy from the cash shop.

For me personally, knowing now that I can create a lucky the cat at any time means that during the next RIG, I will have no interest in purchasing whatever the "win" item is ever.

Could you point me towards a quote/thread from an artist, developer, or admin wherein it states that artists are the ones who decided how this feature (or any features, for that matter) would work, by any chance? I've seen a number of people make the claim in the past regarding RIGs, but I've never actually seen proof to back it up. To me, it's always been speculation.

I'm not worried about deflation of pricier items (not that deflation of expensive items is really a bad thing, but that's a different story) because, based on how the system is right now, it's much more expensive to craft them than it is to buy them. No one's going to spend 1mil to craft an item that they wouldn't be able to sell for more than 200k. If they did go through the trouble to craft rare items, I would gather that they'd be doing it to keep said items, and it wouldn't really saturate the market with any more of them.

I have the opposite feeling as you regarding it, but for an equally valid reason. I'd still spend money on RIGs because I'd have not only the chance of getting the RIG rare(s), but also because I'd technically be earning ingredients for future Formulas when I'm not lucky enough to win the big prizes. Since the cost of crafting would potentially always outweigh the cost of the items themselves, I'd just save my fail items and either sell them to people who enjoy the feature or keep them for myself to save gold on Alchemy ingredients later on down the line. Since the system creates a purpose to the fail items by giving them the potential of being necessary to make the more amazing ones, less people would feel cheated by not winning the biggest prizes when they play the RIGs.

I hope my logic was not lost in my ramblings. It makes a great deal of sense to me; I'm not just talking out of my a**. xd

[carbonphyber]

Angel in a Bottle

After reading various responses to topics posted in SF in regards to the Alchemy feature, it leads me to believe that the Artists are the ones in charge of this project. In my opinion, it's bad enough that the artists most likely control the drop rate in RIGs. But honestly, why leave them in charge of the Alchemy feature? This feature is a HUGE addition to the site that threatens to turn the ENTIRE economy upside down. Why entrust something that influences such a crucial and driving part of the site to someone with no knowledge of it?

I think you give the artists entirely too little credit for Gaia's success thus far. How well/poorly every item ever released on the site has done is a direct benefit/failure of the work of our talented artists. They have learned through trial-and-error and long experience what works.

Some of the artists are among the most experienced users on the site.

[l Chihiro-chan l]

magickgirl

I do love the new items and agree with you on every point except one. I am glad that they are makings some old rigs available because I have been wishing they would re-release them again but I was thinking just for a short time.
They do need to have a major over hall of things though because the actual items you need to craft (mostly the rare ones) won't hold out. Then what? This thing is doomed to crash in a few days. If it does go though I wish some of the new things would get released later because in the post showing what you could get there was one thing in particular I would love to have.

I understand your desire to have a chance to get older RIG items through the RIGs they came from. However, believe it or not sometimes old RIG items are released via new RIGs as random prizes for pass/fail. I'm sure the odds of it are very low, but at least the concept insures that they won't ever just drop out of the market completely if left as they were.

[Prue]

carbonphyber

Angel in a Bottle

After reading various responses to topics posted in SF in regards to the Alchemy feature, it leads me to believe that the Artists are the ones in charge of this project. In my opinion, it's bad enough that the artists most likely control the drop rate in RIGs. But honestly, why leave them in charge of the Alchemy feature? This feature is a HUGE addition to the site that threatens to turn the ENTIRE economy upside down. Why entrust something that influences such a crucial and driving part of the site to someone with no knowledge of it?

I think you give the artists entirely too little credit for Gaia's success thus far. How well/poorly every item ever released on the site has done is a direct benefit/failure of the work of our talented artists. They have learned through trial-and-error and long experience what works.

Some of the artists are among the most experienced users on the site.

I don't agree with you. Nothing released in this project reveals they had any kind of foresight into what they were doing. It's not economical to invest in the items, and it shows the entire thing was done on a whim. I stick by the fact you shouldn't hand an artist a calculus book. It's not their area of expertise.

[S Plissken]

Scott Illudus Delial

Well.. Let's see.. considering to make one set of black edwardian shoes costs me...

20 pairs of each kind of colored shoe, a random item, and 1500 gold. And you're complaining about price drops? It looks to me like it mostly is a way to favor those who get plenty of RIG's, some of the items come from the items you'd get in the other RIG's. Granted I think it's a little strange, Does it make the RIG at it's highest level of evolution, or is it just at the start. And then you play the RIG anyway.

To me it seems more inclined to those who want to collect everything, and then have a use for them. I'd think you'd want to buy certain formulas, trading for the ingredients and what not. If they drop in zOMG, which I figure it will do more than not. Then there you go.

I'm not so sure about the economy. Gaia's going to get hurt no matter what, as is anything that's in the area. It's just life pretty much! But yeah

They need to work out some of these formulas, I'm still laughing about the 00 shoes it takes to make one... that's just a different color of the same 100 shoes you put in.. (20 of each other color beside the one you're making now.)

We'll see though.

I think it actually takes over 25,000 pairs of shoes to make that one black pair, since the brown & red pairs are from the new recipes too.

You need 20 of each original shoes (60 total) to make a red shoe. Then you need 20 red shoes (which requires 1,200 shoes) along with the 60 original to make a brown pair. Then you need 20 brown pairs (which requires 25,200 shoes) along with 20 red (1,200 shoes) along with the 20 of each original (60). If my math is right, then that's around 26,460 shoes you need to make a single black pair. Even if you somehow paid as little as 10k per shoe, that's still over 250 mil for a pair of ordinary-looking shoes. xd Ridiculous, eh?

[Knights Jester]

S Plissken

Scott Illudus Delial

Well.. Let's see.. considering to make one set of black edwardian shoes costs me...

20 pairs of each kind of colored shoe, a random item, and 1500 gold. And you're complaining about price drops? It looks to me like it mostly is a way to favor those who get plenty of RIG's, some of the items come from the items you'd get in the other RIG's. Granted I think it's a little strange, Does it make the RIG at it's highest level of evolution, or is it just at the start. And then you play the RIG anyway.

To me it seems more inclined to those who want to collect everything, and then have a use for them. I'd think you'd want to buy certain formulas, trading for the ingredients and what not. If they drop in zOMG, which I figure it will do more than not. Then there you go.

I'm not so sure about the economy. Gaia's going to get hurt no matter what, as is anything that's in the area. It's just life pretty much! But yeah

They need to work out some of these formulas, I'm still laughing about the 00 shoes it takes to make one... that's just a different color of the same 100 shoes you put in.. (20 of each other color beside the one you're making now.)

We'll see though.

I think it actually takes over 25,000 pairs of shoes to make that one black pair, since the brown & red pairs are from the new recipes too.

You need 20 of each original shoes (60 total) to make a red shoe. Then you need 20 red shoes (which requires 1,200 shoes) along with the 60 original to make a brown pair. Then you need 20 brown pairs (which requires 25,200 shoes) along with 20 red (1,200 shoes) along with the 20 of each original (60). If my math is right, then that's around 26,460 shoes you need to make a single black pair. Even if you somehow paid as little as 10k per shoe, that's still over 250 mil for a pair of ordinary-looking shoes. xd Ridiculous, eh?

♪★♪

That's barely considering the limited availability of the original colors, too; imagine the amount of time one would have to spend collecting those when they're ad-exclusives.

♪★♪

[IV Lord]

"unlike DIs/MCs, were never promised to stay exclusive in the first place~ Shadow Coon II"
That's a great point there shadow, But i do agree that a lot of people may decide to stop buying the cash shop items... After this started up i had a second thought on purchaseing the wed to darkness considering im buying a lot of items as investments to my questing item.

[Penny-Panman]

Paseri

Not to mention, the prices of the items that are needed to make the formula items are outrageous! I think it's a waste of everyone's time & Money.

Agree

[Prue]

Shadow Coon II

Angel in a Bottle

But the artists, as shown with how many have retired and left, don't have a long term stake in Gaia's economy. Chances are they're eventually going to go on and get other jobs; some are even just interns. The developers aren't behind this, the artists are.

Why would the rare items deflate at all if even a few more of them are entering the economy? Excess supply = lower prices.

I'm not majoring in economics, but I have taken both a macro and micro econ course, and even speaking on basic terms, the opportunity cost of creating the items may very well be much greater for many people to craft rather than to purchase. That means there's less incentive to buy from the cash shop.

For me personally, knowing now that I can create a lucky the cat at any time means that during the next RIG, I will have no interest in purchasing whatever the "win" item is ever.

Could you point me towards a quote/thread from an artist, developer, or admin wherein it states that artists are the ones who decided how this feature (or any features, for that matter) would work, by any chance? I've seen a number of people make the claim in the past regarding RIGs, but I've never actually seen proof to back it up. To me, it's always been speculation.

I'm not worried about deflation of pricier items (not that deflation of expensive items is really a bad thing, but that's a different story) because, based on how the system is right now, it's much more expensive to craft them than it is to buy them. No one's going to spend 1mil to craft an item that they wouldn't be able to sell for more than 200k. If they did go through the trouble to craft rare items, I would gather that they'd be doing it to keep said items, and it wouldn't really saturate the market with any more of them.

I have the opposite feeling as you regarding it, but for an equally valid reason. I'd still spend money on RIGs because I'd have not only the chance of getting the RIG rare(s), but also because I'd technically be earning ingredients for future Formulas when I'm not lucky enough to win the big prizes. Since the cost of crafting would potentially always outweigh the cost of the items themselves, I'd just save my fail items and either sell them to people who enjoy the feature or keep them for myself to save gold on Alchemy ingredients later on down the line. Since the system creates a purpose to the fail items by giving them the potential of being necessary to make the more amazing ones, less people would feel cheated by not winning the biggest prizes when they play the RIGs.

I hope my logic was not lost in my ramblings. It makes a great deal of sense to me; I'm not just talking out of my a**. xd

Pepper-tea has made it pretty apparent - Even leading the official feedback thread. There's also the fact that artists being behind drop rates and RIGs in general has been proven before (it came up during the Neon Core / Ethe debacle.)

I also think Carbon's post hints at it, even if he isn't directly admitting to it.

What are the chances you would fail valefor 10 times and end up with 10 nature brooms >> ?

As an exchanger, I can tell you what perspective I'm looking at it from. You might want to compare it to when the easter slippers were re released and how the price plummeted, despite only a few entering the system.

[S Plissken]

Knights Jester

S Plissken

I think it actually takes over 25,000 pairs of shoes to make that one black pair, since the brown & red pairs are from the new recipes too.

You need 20 of each original shoes (60 total) to make a red shoe. Then you need 20 red shoes (which requires 1,200 shoes) along with the 60 original to make a brown pair. Then you need 20 brown pairs (which requires 25,200 shoes) along with 20 red (1,200 shoes) along with the 20 of each original (60). If my math is right, then that's around 26,460 shoes you need to make a single black pair. Even if you somehow paid as little as 10k per shoe, that's still over 250 mil for a pair of ordinary-looking shoes. xd Ridiculous, eh?

♪★♪

That's barely considering the limited availability of the original colors, too; imagine the amount of time one would have to spend collecting those when they're ad-exclusives.

♪★♪

I know... which makes me think that the people who came up with those recipes aren't good with numbers. sweatdrop

[Ix-Kiwi-xI]

I totally agree this was not well though of and poorly developed, even from the start, as Angel has mentioned over and over, why the hell are artists getting involved in Market Strategy/Economy, they should be limited to designing.

This feature was in fact released in TinierMe last year, the exact same thing, I can only think Gaia Staff/Devs do their research and check on the competition, if they had they should know it had devastating results on their site, it resulted on users feeling "cheated" on, having their valuable/rare items re-released in such an irresponsible way. Most of them quit that site on behalf of Alchemy and came back here to Gaia at the time. Everything they've worked for/payed for was now close to being worthless.

Alchemy should have been limited to crafting NEW items.

Personally I am now completely discouraged to buy RIGs from Cash Shop, and yes, I don't see how that can be good in any way.

[Dances With Scissors]

Tussies

Angel in a Bottle - I agree with everything you have written. They should definitely not make old RIG items/EI's craftable like this.
It sure is a slap in the face to the people who spent months questing for those items. At least, that's how I feel.

couldn't agree more

[Empress Boa]

I'm personally mixed about this idea. I think it is great to finally craft items we've been questing for ages. I always raged b/c everytime I spend 25-50 dollars on bundles lately I get all fails.. what's up with that ratio.. so when I saw this Alchemy and Items... I was excited to see Pale Marionette, but realistically, i'm sure it's very hard to successfully craft that and even so with the hope to get that, I'd probably spend way too much gold before I could get it. I'm just going to see how this goes.

So anyways, yes. Neutral so far.

[Trash Noir Claws Out]

Some of the new items are beautiful, but I wish they were just released as part of a RIG. These items are going to be so expensive to create, that once the actual items themselves start selling on the marketplace, the prices are going to be astronomical. This is going to shove the already inflated Gaian economy into even more dire conditions. sad
And I just want one of those Jellyfish dresses, cuz they are just too cute, but I am not paying every dang gold coin I've got for it. stressed