Is merching better than playing the game?

#142

That is why you don’t choose to raise the price of a stat pot. Also, it’s a bit more complicated than that. For example, if I choose to jack up the price of defense, more people will run sewers. More sewers means more void blades and murkys. More murkys and voids mean more ninjas and assassins. This means more people want hydra, so the price of hydra goes up. If hydra goes up to a life from a mana, less mana is needed. Less mana means less OTs which means less huntresses etc. etc. etc. Everything is linked, so changing the price of one item can (depending on how much you raise the price) change the price of a lot of other things.

I can guarantee you that no one with any sort of experience in the game purposefully goes out farming for etherites or pierce spells or pixies unless you are just a crazy ppe. It just isn’t worth the time investment. If you think about it this way, suppose the drop rate for etherite is 1/100 (to be honest, I think it is quite lower). Each cem can be done in about 10 minutes. This means that you need to run ~300 cems

Calculation for the 300 cems

Calculated using 5%=(1-p)^n where p is the probability of getting etherite, n is the number of cems you need to run, and 5% means that we can be 95% confident that we will get an etherite in 300 runs. 95% confidence is relatively equivalent to 100% statistically, since anything <5% is statistically insignificant.

Continuing with this logic, 300 cems should take you about 3000 minutes, so 3000 minutes of cems would give you an etherite. Conversely, you can clean a tomb in ~30 mins, sometimes less. On average, you will go 1/3 in a tomb. This means that you could run 3000 cems and get an etherite, or 100 tombs and get 100 life. This values etherite at 100 life to make it worth it to try and farm them. Even if you were to use loot pots, etherite would still be valued at ~66 life.

###TL;DR: You have to drive up the price an INSANE amount before people will actively just go out and farm a super rare item like an ST.

The fact that I was able to make so many life pots off of using economic principles in-game means that I have physical evidence for the contrary. If economics didn’t apply to the game, then the way that I merched would not work.

Well I guess the whole point is that I can merch faster than you can farm, so I get to spend more time playing the game with good gear. This means that I can do harder dungeons for a longer period of time, since you spent the first part of your realm career gathering pots in lower-tier dungeons. This was, after all, the primary conclusion of my argument.

At this point, this conversation could be its own thread, since it has gone pretty far off-topic, and it has gone much more in-depth than I think most people care to look at.

One method to price/value white bags
#143

I don’t think it’s off-topic though. It’s still about the merits of going full merch in this game.

Considering how many shitposts there are both on here and on the subreddit, I think it’s fine to have a serious in-depth conversation from time to time, especially when it’s an actual conversation and not just two guys flinging shit at each other.

That’s an interesting way of looking at it, but that only works if you have enough experience in the game to know all these related things and accurately predict what the community will do.

In other words, if you just gave an account to a guy who knows his economic stuff but hasn’t played RotMG and doesn’t really know anything about the game, he would completely fail.

It seems to me like you’re saying “there’s a set of completely abstract mathematical laws that govern all transactions and can never fail”, but in a practical situation I don’t see how you could apply these laws without an in-depth knowledge of the product and the market for it.

Which leads us back to what I was saying: at the end of the day, you still have to play the game to be merching in it.

But the opposite isn’t true: even in your “everything is linked” speech, everything loops back around to the market. You can only have an impact on people who care about the market, but you can never escape the impact the game has on you.

But your reasoning only works based on the premise that everyone will always play dagger classes and that they’ll always need an Etherite for it.

What if people decide to play Ninja or melee instead? What if they realize the drop rate on Spirit is much higher and it also does a lot of damage (and has a lot more range)? What if they figure it’s not worth the risk to spend that much on a low-range dagger and start playing with only Foul/Agate (or newTop, if they’re lucky in LH)?

But that’s exactly what I said: they do apply in this game, they’re just not the most relevant thing about it.

We’ve already established that, if I wanted to, I could run as many endgame dungeons as you do, it’s just that my alts wouldn’t look as fancy as your characters (which, again, wouldn’t make them significantly less effective).

The thing is, endgame dungeons in RotMG are boring. It’s just so much sitting in a group of 50 other players, mowing down everything from a screen away and getting constant heals.

I don’t measure my enjoyment of a game solely by the amount of pixels I’m getting or how high the numbers on my screen are. What’s happening to me as I play also has an important role in that.

So what this whole conversation boils down to is that you can talk all you want about what you think the most optimal way of playing is, if it’s boring and repetitive I’m not going to do it. It’s exactly the same as the “for or against the fame train” debate, in that sense.

#144

Indeed. You’d think the conversations were limited to shit-slinging with the way the forums usually goes.

I think they build off of each other, although I could definitely tell you just given the knowledge of which item drops from where the way in which prices will change. I think pretty much everyone knows that during the OT event, the price of mana decreases. This messes up the trade of items that are worth a mana, since they are no longer worth a mana, they are worth 4 defense or half a life or some equivalent.

To be honest, most of the cascading reactions from one item going up or down in price are relatively marginal until you really start messing with the price a lot. Still, it can be enough to get 50-100 hydras sold at a higher price than usual, which is enough profit to be worth the time it takes to do it.

But the game IS shaped by the market. If dbow suddenly became tradable, I guarantee you more tombs and shatters and lost halls would be run, since dbow is pretty amazing for all of those. Likewise, if pierce jumps in price so that less people can afford it, less of those dungeons with high boss defenses will be run.

Well, I think its the same kind of premise. In this case, people would most likely turn to foul, since it is pretty good and it is cheap. But suppose I raise the price of foul AND etherite. Now they can’t turn to anything other than spirit, cronus, the lh dagger, or a sub-par dagger. Now I have a scenario where I’m making profit off the artificially inflated prices of etherite and foul. By raising the price of foul too, I have taken away one of the substitute goods, or at least made it less appealing.

Well what DO you find enjoyable in the game? I like getting rare white-bags. You need to do end-game dungeons for that. I guess if you like doing ppes and running around in bad gear, then you probably won’t find yourself merching :stuck_out_tongue:

#145

implying any of this matters anyways
the current state of rotmg

As long as white bags are soulbound, merching is rather pointless anyways (granted, it might still be something for newer players…). By the time you get the white bag you desire, your chars will be maxed anyways. And all the lesser crap simply isn’t worth the time to stand around in nexus.

From the point on you get reasonably gut, trading becomes obsolete. Unsoulbound all the shit, and we have a talk again.

#146

I’ve already explained to you why that’s not the case. Merchants have been a bottomless salt mine for the better part of the past 5 years, how exactly do you explain that if they are the ones with all the power to shape the game as they want?

The only thing that would change is that more people would bring those items into those dungeons, because they’d be more confident in their ability to recoup from their loss.

There are already plenty of other classes that are great for those dungeons. Assa/Sorc for Tomb for example, or melees in Shatters.

(also the problem in your logic is that plenty of people were running Tombs in the long period between the SBing of Dbow and the implementation of Pierce, simply because it’s a great dungeon and because for a while it was the only endgame)

Again: then people would either play non-Dagger classes or loot their own stuff instead of buying it.

See, that’s only partially true for me. Of course I like getting new items, but I won’t go out of my way to farm something I know I’m not going to use (like the new UT Cloak) or that drops from a dungeon that’s boring to farm (like LH or Snake Pit).

Depends. If by “rare white bag” you mean “white bag no one has”, then yeah it’s mostly going to be LH/Nest. If you meant “white bag with a relatively low drop rate”, then you can find plenty of those outside of endgame (problem being that sometimes they can be just as boring to farm for as endgame, for example Bulwark and Plague/Resu).

Thing is, I don’t personally give a shit about exclusivity, it’s only something I care about when I’m talking about game balance in a general perspective. I don’t care that there are literally thousands of other players using full tops on Pally or a Dbow on Archer, I’m still having fun playing those.

#147

Well, they can also turn to one of the other traders. RotMG’s free market means that it’s only the ultra rare items that can be subject to price manipulation. Anything easily available in-realm is resistant to price fixing.

In a Foul drought/price hike, the sensible player of course would just use Agate/Emmy for ~1% or whatever worse DPS that it effectively makes no difference.

Something that’s maybe not received as much attention as it deserves in this discussion is multitasking.

It is entirely possible to do {something else} while at the same time Rotmg merching in the background since it involves literally no threat to your character, unlike any playing of the game. And each trade is only a matter of seconds.

Even if doing easy content, it still requires player’s continuous focus on Rotmg throughout the thing unless you are doing risky business like afk in dungeons, and there is very little content of worth that can be done in the short time that a trade takes.

#148

Here is my pro merch strategy that I used for Jack the Ripper: Get 2 mana, buy a life, sell the life for 3 mana (I know the beginning is slow af) until you have enough mana to buy 2 life. After that, start selling the 2 life for 5 mana. Then, buy life for 2 mana, and repeat the cycle after the 2 life part. It wasn’t that hard.

#149

It only took me like 4 hours total tbh.

#150

I mean, most white bags are not significantly better in any way than the T13 gear. Honestly, I think the only white bags that TRULY change how a class is played are:

  • dbow - Bow classes can now fight high defense enemies
  • cwand - Wand classes can now fight high defense enemies
  • dokuray - Ninja can attack from a much further range
  • planewalker - Rogue can now teleport
  • puri - Priest can remove status effects
  • prot - Priest can now play as a tank
  • bee helm - Warrior can now curse
  • jugg - Warrior can now play as a tank
  • scutum - Knight can permastun without a good pet
  • ogmur - Knight now does massive dps
  • oreo - Paladin’s can now show off by doing stupid things
  • marble seal - Paladin can now play make everyone a tank
  • plague poison - Assassin can now dirty a tomb while not getting SB
  • esben skull - Necro can now slow
  • ctrap - Huntress can now paralyze
  • fulmi - Sorc can now slow
  • midnight star - Ninja can now paralyze

All in all, most of these still don’t change the class THAT much. Most classes will do just fine without having white bags, hence why people tend to use a lot of throw-away characters. Plus, most of the whites that really do make an impact are extremely difficult to get. It makes little to no difference if you merch or play the game, as your odds of getting them are extremely small. The time that you lose to merching is negligible when compared to the amount of time that it takes on average to acquire something such as a jugg.

I honestly don’t see how this relates. Much of America is built on the middle class. The middle class complains quite a bit. In fact, I think that you can find that there are salt mines at every stage and level of this game. Players with lots of white bags complain how they can’t get the last few that they need. Players with few white bags complain about how other people get more white bags. Players that merch complain the market is terrible. Players that don’t merch complain that merching ruins the game and question why light blue stars have top gear.

Well there are enough useful white bags that I don’t have (cough looking at you event whites) that I am still happy hunting for them.

Well why would I spend time trying for white bags that I already have, unless I need more. I still get excited when I get a dbow, because I can always use more dbows. But I need dbows, because I want to do LH with a dbow.

That’s the key that people don’t understand. When I merch, it is almost never done by standing in the nexus of USW2. It is done via realmeye or discord while I am farming white bags in realms. I have the choice of doing both, so why not get the best of both worlds?

#151

If you’ve been on the market recently that’s a terrible idea. Tops is a much better market imo and skins are even better.

#152

By OT I assume you are abbreviating Ocean Trench
P.S. OT doesn’t drop Sword of the Acclaim

#153

I meant O2, not OT. Whoops

#154

And why do these people use throwaway characters, if not to get white bags to put on their mains?

It shows that the merching community is getting much more affected by changes than the rest of the community.

Honestly if you still don’t get that focusing exclusively on one side feature of a video game and then claiming that you somehow have more control over the game than people who have mastered all the core features is illogical, then I don’t know what I could say that would persuade you.

Most of them aren’t quite as consistent as that one, though.

Also, consider this: for example, let’s say that Deca suddenly soulbinds Pierce or Etherites. Of course people all across the board will complain, but those who go in the realms and play will adapt, whereas the merchants will just have lost a fuck ton of Life and will have to decide whether they keep all their Pierce or Etherite mules and hope for an unSB at some point or throw them away to store other things instead.

#155

You really can’t adapt against RNG tho, realistically speaking because drop rates so insanely low. I mean, event whites often take a few years to get for most people and that is considered “normal”.

#156

You can come up with methods of farming, such as organizing guilds and/or discords. You can also make the decision to focus on just one super rare white bag or farm for several at once.

Merchants on the other hand can’t do anything with an item once it’s SB.

#157

Most people don’t get white bags to use. They get them to show off. It’s primarily about having people go damn, that’s a nice character. For the most part. Why else would you have a tablet on your wizard or 50 swap-outs in your inventory. You can’t tell me you have that leaf bow in your inventory because you actually use it.

But I’m good at merching and I also consider myself to be a pretty decent player. I have quite a few whites, most actually. I can solo shatters, clean a tomb, and hold my own in halls. You can do both.

That’s kind of cherry-picking an example. It’s like saying what would happen if jugg suddenly became tradable. Getting a jugg as a drop would yield about as much enthusiasm as getting an acclaim from O2, since now everyone would be able to buy a jugg. There are accounts out there with nothing but duped juggs on them. Litreally you’d have ever light blue star in the game running around and dying with jugg warriors. Obviously this is not an ideal scenario. This would screw over all the players that play the game instead of merching, since the merit of their toils would drop to essentially zero. Some people worked hard to farm their juggs. Your example is just the exact opposite, where merchers get screwed instead of people that run dungeons. They would be extremely salty too. The difference is, if you made jugg tradable, I’m sure a lot of people would be happy, since now they don’t have to put in any work whatsoever to get one of the best items in the game. The game would be a lot less satisfying this way.

#158

There is definitely a limit to this system however. And you will still have to invest ungodly amount of time in a game many people (like you) consider to be skill-less. Pure grind isn’t very attractive.

#159

So you agree with me that the loot system needs to be improved then?

Except nobody uses alts to farm for Leaf or Tablet. People started really using alts for Shatts and even more now for Lost Halls, and considering how many have died wearing Shatters rings and LH UTs/STs/NewTops, I’d say they’re not just wearing them in nexus to look pretty on Realmeye.

(of course, with both permadeath and low drop rates that would probably be the smarter option, but most people aren’t that smart and also that’s boring)

Because you actually played the game instead of sitting all day in USWest waiting for someone to buy your 8 Spd with 1 Life (or whatever these guys do nowadays). Merching is only useful as fuel to keep playing, not as an activity by itself.

I took the most extreme example, but that’s what would happen if anything went SB.

In general, market value fluctuates all the time but in-game value doesn’t change all that often. 5 years later Cosmic or Dbow are still very good tools and have been consistently good all the way through.

This means a non-merchant can safely stockpile items they like to use or that their favorite class can equip, since it’s unlikely they’d get suddenly fucked over, while a merchant can never be completely certain of what will happen next and has to either stockpile a little bit of everything or change his stocks all the time.

Historically speaking, there are a ton of cases of items being made SB but basically none of items made unSB (not counting UT weekends since they were really short).

That’s why I didn’t bother thinking too hard about that possibility.

#160

Of course. I just don’t agree with your opinion of how DECA should increase player satisfaction. I want a better, universal trading system that doesn’t restrict random UTs, STs or tiered items. I prefer greater player freedom.

#161

Oh the loot system is terrible. Of course it needs to be improved.

Idk, I feel the majority of whites are just used to spice up realmeye.

Well that’s the point of the original question. I don’t think anyone is trying to argue that the ONLY thing that you should do is merch. That makes no sense. It’s like running that half-marathon in GTA5. Like what’s the point?

The average price stays about the same. It fluctuates a lot though. UBHP has been 4L as long as I can remember, but its price has varied between 3-5.5L. Pixie is always going to be 6L, but it varies pretty cyclically between 4 and 8 life a couple times a year. You don’t have to permanently change the price of an item, you just need to manipulate it enough to make a profit if that’s your goal.

I mean yes, but at the same time, skins have dropped to like 1/2 their original value. Incs used to be multiple life, now they are like a defense. Sky used to be a life. It’s like an attack now. Abby, STs, acclaim, acrop. I can name off probably 20 items that have hit rock bottom price wise.

There will never be another UT weekend. Pretty sure deca made a statement about it. It also doesn’t make any sense to do it.