The state of mana pots

#27

I just filled my mules up for life 1:4 mana. I did get a few life 1:5 mana. Either way it is a great deal. The value of pots change due to availability and that is a good thing.

#28

The fact that second thessal doesn’t drop mana is a testament to the fact that Deca cares about economy balance. It also directly benefits Deca for mana pots to not be worthless in that players feel it worth it to buy keys. That being said, I don’t belittle how you choose to play the game. I imagine you’ve bought and sold to merchants before, and have been happy to do so in some instances. There is a very good chance we’ve had a positive exchange before. Please don’t belittle how I, and a number of other players. and very likely you in the past, have played the game.

I believe Deca cares more about game balance and furthermore, economic balance than most people think. You say that there primary goal is to make money? They are a for profit company that bought a dying flash game. To think that their primary goal was to do anything else primarily is laughable. However, a good company knows that to make money isn’t as simple as raising the prices of keys and watching the profits role in. A good company provides content, keeps balance, and takes an account of all viewpoints.

For the record, the economy is perfectly fine. It will go on just like it has. You guys speak to me like I’m not the fucking oldest god damn merchant in the game. The balance of mana pots having 2 values is frustrating. That is all. I don’t merch pots and i never will.

End “angry merchant essay.”

#29

Use Cosmic? Isn’t that about half a Life (I really don’t keep up with current prices).
Or some other item that’s in between Life and Mana value, if needing to eke out that 0.5L.

#30

From our standpoint I agree that it makes sense to have a mid tier pot like mana to make life easier. I also agree that their overuse of mana dropping dungeons for events gets old.

Honestly though, I don’t think Deca has any responsibility toward the in game market players created. I’d much prefer them to drop any facade of caring about it, and just let things work out as they may.

Ultimately it’s pointless, because the in game market still does affect them based almost solely on their sales of mystery boxes. It sucks, but that’s the reason for pretty much everything they do, and it’s the reason things will stay pretty much the same for the foreseeable future.

#31

This is no less serious then cdirks needing a buff or melee classes are overpowered. It’s game discussion, and an opinion.

Mana currently is being used as 0.5 life in item trades, when if traded for life it trades for 4:1/5:1. Worth both.

@Nevov sure, there are issues with that those, namely the universal demand for any items other than pots just isn’t there.

I guess, fellas, while this started as a post demanding change, it’s evolved into a post lamenting it.

I’m disappointed in how Deca has treated mana pots.

I wish they would find a way to keep them at 0.5 life.

I would be open to an alternative benchmark.

I would accept the price to drop to 5:1. Is this the wording that you want to hear to be open to a discussion?

#32

I feel you man. Me too.

#33

Can you give an example of where Mana is still being used as 0.5L?
If I saw someone had priced item X for Life+Mana I’d view that as: they want 1.2L.
If they priced it at Life+3Mana I’d think that’s 1.5L.

Are people trying to negotiate with you saying “how about a mana that’s half a life?”

#34

As the last few events have been mana based, the price has settled to closer to 4:1. But as the prices cool off, they’ll revert back to the dual pricing of being 2:1 and 4:1. Eventually theyll be worth 2:1 again, but cue another event, another period of dual evaluations, and an eventual drop. Rinse and repeat. I’m sure if you sifted through prices you could find a few examples of people buying for a mana and selling for a life or buying for a life and selling for 1 and a mana, but for the most part we’re caling it 4:1 atm.

#35

First of all, I’ve never merched.

Second of all, telling the truth is not belittling. The in-game market, by definition, exists only because of the game, not the other way around.

Any slight change to the game’s balance affects the economy, meaning changes in the in-game economy are always only side-effects and consequences of balancing changes. From Deca’s point of view the in-game economy is an indicator, not a concern in and of itself.

Right now for example, one of their problems is that they need to make dungeons interesting to run (which generally means satisfactorily rewarding) while at the same time not overflowing the game with endgame items.

This is why they’ve been stuck adding Mana as a guaranteed drop to a lot of dungeons: they can’t make Life too plentiful and/or easy to loot, but at the same time they can’t have dungeons that eat 8/8s for breakfast only drop Vit or Spd pots (see also: old Woodlab and old Deadwater).

One of the solutions could be to modify how guaranteed drops work to make items other than stat pots guaranteed in certain dungeons (for example a dungeon that’s guaranteed to drop at least 1 t5 Ability for the group).

But even that’s not certain to make Mana exactly worth half a Life and/or more stable in market value. It only addresses concerns of game balance, it doesn’t affect the market directly.

This is getting confusing. Is your problem merely that people are buying for less than they’re selling? Because I’m pretty sure that’s always how merchants have operated and I don’t see what Deca could do about it.

#36

Refering to merching as my “little merchant side game” is quite literally the definition of belittling.

I appreciate the rest of your post. I agree that finding a balance is difficult if they want to entice players into purchasing keys while keeping the game balanced. Maybe during events having thessal drop unsb mystery pots that are weighted towards mana could be a solution, so that the influx of pots is limited, but those farming mana would still be able to.

As to the final bit, it’s that it can’t be relied upon to hold its value for even 1 week at a time. It’s volatility as its use as a currency is tiresome, where most other pots and items can be relied upon to hold their value for the forseeable future, mana cannot. The swings are drastic, and they happen too often.

#37

After about 6 months of not playing I still am able to sell Life 1:8 Rainbows (of the same kind). I have been selling SPD, DEX, DEF, WIS, VIT at this rate for at least a week.

Since the Ocean Trench event I have been selling Life 1:4 Mana. I know that there are a lot of people that won’t buy at my prices but, there are a lot that will because its easier and faster to max a new character this way if you can afford it.

Mana is pretty cheap now but give it 2 - 4 weeks after the event is over and the price will be Life 1:2 Mana like it generally is.

There is nothing wrong with this economy. It is supply and demand, when supply of something goes up it generally becomes cheaper.

Buy when its cheap and sell when its high. No problem.

#38

ok, you need a pot worth exactly 0.5 ife.

why? economies fluctuate. rotmg is no different, especially because of how the chest events affect the demand of pots, especially mana.

furthermore, you’re implying that deca can assert a standard of potion worth and that everyone will just go along with it. how do you suggest that they somehow create a pot whose demand fluctuates exactly such that it will always remain a constant 0.5 life?

we haven’t even gotten to “what happens if the price of life drops?” or questions of the like, and yet you’re comparing a supply-and-demand style economy in a video game to the currency of the united states. if you’re going to make that comparison, then the way rotmg has shaken out is exactly as you envision: the value of mana as a standard has dropped, in a similar manner to how the value of the u.s. dollar has dropped due to inflation.

tl;dr it’s impossible for deca to “enforce” a standardized currency worth x amount of pots because they literally have no say over the economy which will generally tend to inflate anyways as demand drops.

the only thing they could really do is cut down on the number of events they generally do, or have event dungeons that don’t have mana in their drop tables, because influencing the demand is really the only way you’re going to influence the price. even then the price is highly unlikely to remain stable for very long.

#39

I’d like a pot worth roughly 0.5 life, one that doesn’t bounce back and forth every 2 weeks. If manas worth 3:1 its a nonissue, its when mana bounces between 5:1 and 2:1 is the issue. Deca can artificially limit the amount of mana pots given during said events. They already have with 2nd thessal not dropping mana but instead a mystery pot. I don’t want to edit my original post but I’ve already dropped the absolutes.

The comparison to a dollar amount is a simple one on the basis of currency notes, not the dollar as a whole. I don’t know where you got inflation and the US dollar from but… k.

#40

if Deca limits the drop rate of mana during events are you telling me people will double down on their effort to attain mana pots thus still driving price down to the rates were seeing now or can you imagine the same amount of dungeons being run, with mana pots seeing a more stable value? I understand the notion of supply and demand, free market and inflation. Deca has changed drop rates and loot tables for various reasons on more than one occasion. As pots are used as a form of in game currency, when their value changes drastically, I personally find it a pain in the ass to do business.

#41

now i’ll ask the same question: how do you think deca could enforce this? aren’t there a myriad of factors that affect the value of said pot?

assume that 0.5 life = 4 def. are you implying that pot x should be worth 4 def or 0.5 life? how are you going to account for the fact that life fluctuates in comparison to other pots, or tops? how do you measure the worth of a pot?

if the price of def rose in proportion to life - let’s say that 0.5 life is suddenly worth 3 def - are you implying that pot x should be at 3 def as well, or 4 def?

you’re not accounting for the fact that every tradeable item with a reasonable demand would factor into the value of this “constant pot.” again, i will reiterate that in a supply-and-demand economy, there is not much that can be done to maintain a constant value of anything.

the last time the realm economy was relatively constant was… literally never.

if you somehow don’t understand, let’s take the acclaim. it was incredibly expensive in wildshadow days, and has now dropped to just 1-2 life now. you could say that it was due to all the updates and events, but even in the period of stagnation in the kabam days in which i played, the price of acclaim dropped from 3-4 life to 2-3.5 life.

it’s very similar to the system of currency in the us. more money gets printed, the less demand there is. in this case, it would be people hoarding or duping items that leads to the in-game inflation.

wow what a ninja edit; thus you answer your own question.

then again, deca has very little obligation to cater to your needs as a merchant. furthermore, if the mana droprate got increased to, for example, 2x the norm, it would probably be worth 2x as much. if you play the game, you’re technically getting just as much value in life as before, although it does hurt people who stockpile their loot for a later date.

#42

Ninja edit was on the basis of you spending 10 minutes to reply with an obvious explanation of basic economics. Which you still felt necessary to send. Thank you.

#43

and yet, with this knowledge of basic economics, you still want a constant form of currency in an uncontrollable form of economy.

and i really like it when you tell people not to belittle you until you start to do it yourself a few posts later. good stuff.

#44

Realm does not have a currency system. We have pots. It’s all we got. It fucking sucks. We have not gold, we have no coin. We have pots and at the end of the day pots are items. DECA can do there god damn best to make sure the only alternative we have to an actual currency system remains stable.

#45

well maybe we dont want to just drop stuff we dont need, and make profit instead by merching…

#46

ok, the alt is to cease all updates and anything that would change realm’s economy in any foreseeable or unforeseeable way.

there is no way to continue chest events as you continually assert without affecting the value of pots in a negative way. you should think about your own arguments before criticizing others.

depends. a lot of people nowadays profit quite a bit from lost halls, which i believe to be the single biggest factor in why the economy is the way it is now. wealth is simply more accessible to everyone now - that’s simply all there is to it.

if you want to make profit by merching, yeah there were definitely better times, but the overflow of life and mana isn’t all that bad. the values of the “lower” pots seem to have actually gone up in comparison to life and mana in my pov, so it can’t be that bad.