I was scrolling through the FM and decided to see how much some MS would cost. I set the category to "Currencies," clicked PB as the filter, and saw 1 MS for 300k PB. Like, what? I use 1:25k—why is there SO MUCH inflation? Do you guys just have too much money?
No hate to the people who are selling, obviously, I'm just confused and concerned about the massive inflation we've seen.
(unrelated, there was also 1 kb for 700k, that was a bit of a shocker.)
The average rate for P:MS exchange has been steadily increasing. The average this time last year was about 30,000p:1MS IIRC, and recently it was about 80,000p:1MS.
I think part of it is people trying to buy up MS to afford upgrades, CA, and other things, but not being able to/not wanting to spend real money on premium currency, thus there's an increased demand. The sellers are thus able to sell their MS for more pebbles because they know people will buy them regardless. That, and people are really wanting pebble sinks right now due to many pebble purchases being relatively cheap.
The player economy has always been rather unstable on LW, ever since public registration opened, and we're likely going to see the rates continue to climb.
Bloodguile
Secondarily to the primary issue of "everything desirable costs ms and there are very few free ways to generate them", is the relatively tiny player base. In a more healthy game economy, there would be a lot more competition to get things to move, and there would be a more dynamic market.
There isn't a lot of competition in the ms seller's market just because there are not many active people here; so it's also way easier for someone to manipulate without spending a ton of time doing so... which is why we see the rates climbing so much faster than on other similar games. Similarly, many people don't mind spending a silly amount of pebbles on ms because what else are they gonna use the pebbles on?
It does harm player retention, especially with new players, so it's unfortunate. But it's not something you can convince people nicely to avoid doing, you have to design a system that's robust against it. :/
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I'm not personally impacted by it, I don't care about CA & so don't buy ms from the flea market (or buy them from the site either, lol) at all and just get my upgrades through the free route, but I think it's a shame that's this is where we are with the economy already.
