My name's Donbot and you will doubtlessly be aware of me from my extremely popular fables reverberating around the Streets. Today though, I'm taking a break from my fables and instead I'm looking to discuss the state of the Credit Marketplace and the price of credits.

How does everyone feel about the price of credits? Do you think they are too high? Too low? Just right?

I'm intrigued as to everyone's thinking behind this, as for me personally, they are much too high. I decided on a few possible courses of action and initially, I decided the solution would be to become more active, try to make more money which would then enable me to keep on buying credits and keep shooting my MIA allocation. This proved a challenge and I was bagging between 1 and 2 a day at full capacity, whilst still having a life. It all went tits up though after I forgot about my MIA, blowing 500k right off the bat which I had spent the best part of the day struggling to acquire, before I subsequently wackbacked (the irony of which wasn't lost on me given my vehement demands to keep wackback in the game) on another meaning that I'd pissed $1,000,000 right up the wall as I wouldn't be around 4 hours later to clean it up. This was very disheartening to me and having flirted with activity, I found myself extremely disinterested in putting the effort in to make money again to keep pace with my escalating MIA allocation.

This chain of events led me to this thread and to see how everyone else viewed the situation. Whilst I see that credits are too high, this must be taken with a pinch of salt. I play for, on average, 3-5 hours per day, sometimes more and sometimes less. I am also rarely flying two hours on the hour and I am probably inefficient in the way I operate whilst being logged in. Would it then be right for someone with as mediocre an approach to earning as I have to be able to fulfill their MIA allocation and purchase credits comfortably? Possibly not. The casual player is not a commodity within MR that is capable of succeeding.

I'm intrigued in your opinions and if you, like me, feel that credit prices are too high, perhaps it is time we explored another potential course of action and began to work together to see credit prices artificially capped at a level we feel is acceptable. As I'm sure you're all aware, any market works on supply and demand. Currently, the market is telling us that the credit price is between $495,000 and $500,000 because that is the level that people are prepared to pay for credits at; the market value. If we stopped buying credits at these prices, then the market value would decrease until it was, for me at least, more affordable.

Anyway, I'm interested to hear what you guys think about credit prices, so lay it on me.

What do you think?

Donbot,

Good topic. I personally think 450k-500k is to expensive for a single credit. The admins have looked at this aswell and I believe they think the same thing which is why they run promotions on buying credits with an incentive on top of the original %. However, they cannot keep up with the demand. They cannot keep doing promo's just because the prices are to high.

I do think they are high, but never complain or bring them to light because honestly, I have no answer to how to fix this. When the admins runs the promo's the prices are decent for about a week or two then they skyrocket again.

Its a never ending cycle.

I would also be interested to read some other comments and idea's on how to fix this market for credits.

The credits are way too high. And running sales is fantastic and all... But it only benefits those people that are able to donate their rl money to the game. And those that can and that receive bonuses, rather free credits essentially, are then turning around and taking advantage of those that are not capable of donating themselves and selling them for extreme profits.

I really have no idea how to fix the issue, but I am intrigued by this and will be interested to see what ideas can come from it.

There are a lot of old accounts around at the moment, which means a lot of high ranked accounts, which means a lot of accounts capable of making good money. This means that marketplace credits can command a higher price than they can at other times (say, after a site-wide war when there's a lot of low ranks without susbstantial income).Basic economics tells us that this will boost the price on the market.

It's also worth noting that it's January, people generally don't have a lot of spare (RL) money in January following the holidays, so I suspect there's fewer credits purchased despite the offers, so again basic economics tells us that limited supply increases price. (note: this is pure supposition, I haven't spoken to the admins about it as, frankly, their salary is none of my damned business)

There are far too few "suppliers" of credits at any time to really introduce competetive pricing though, so the impact of this may well be minimal.

Personally I believe the problem is that there are too many things in the game to spend credits on.

Would anyone dream of spending 500k on a credit when all you could do with it was throw a jail? Nope. 10 credits invested in a CA is worth at least the 500k per credit. Is one MIA worth 500k? Does the petty perk give you enough extra petties a month to give you 500k?

Well anyway, you can see where I'm going with this - I don't need to list every single credit feature.


Perhaps it might be better to put an actual cost in "game cash" on some features, and leave some requiring the change from cash to credits.

For instance;

A jail is probably worth 100k. Make it cost 100k to throw a jail.

An MIA could be 250-350k.

Keep CAs costing 10 credits, keep the timers package at 5 credits - etc.


I don't know how it would impact the game making a change like this, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who feels like the credit situation has spiraled out of control (to the point where a physical cap had to be placed on the market to stop people raising the prices further). Just my thoughts!

The credit prices are ridiculous in my opinion. Yet, even though I could make enough money to afford buying a few here and there, I don't bother due to the situation stated by Donbot. The situation where you accidentally forget about an MIA or wackback on it and can't stay up to shoot it.

Even though I wish we could do something about the credit prices themselves, I know it is best to let the supply and demand take its course. With that being said I feel there is somewhat of a solution. A way to make more people want to pay that much money for a single credit.

What is it? Make it so when you spend that credit, it is yours and yours only. You spent the money on it, it should be rightfully yours. What am I saying? Don't allow people to shoot someones spawned MIA. Make it so they cannot be found at all unless the person who spawned it gave away the name of the MIA its self.

This is merely a suggestion, one that I think would increase the amount of credits being bought, if people knew that they wouldn't waste it. I know that this covers only one of the many things credits are used for, but it is probably the main thing people buy them. So I only covered it, rather than trying to completely change everything credits involve.

Thanks for your time.

I actually like DeadlySin's suggestion really. Maybe one for the PC before it is dissolved?


Another way of expanding this would maybe to have certain credits for certain things. The market place would need a revamp though. I just think it would kind of add more options. I'm not very good with explaining shit like this so bare with me.

Those who buy credits with real life money can then choose what to transfer them in to. Say one person buys 50 credits. Then wants 25 MIA credits, 10 Jails credits, 10 CA credits and 5 perk credits. Then in turn those credits can be sold at a price that suits the action the credit gives on the market place.

Does any of that make sense?

I see potential in it, just from someone with better explanation ability than myself.

It would also add more options for the players themselves to deals with. We all know that in this day and age a lot of disputes are settled with compensation of either game cash or game credits. This market place and credit change would add more dimensions to this if a duel was not acceptable for both parties.

i do agree with GF deadlysin's suggestion how about make a reset timer for a credit it would help a lot for example reset timer for flight or for wacking IA with this credit will be use efficiently

I must admit i would hate resettable feature, as know how much i have heared certain accounts poured into the game when less features were available.  I know i cannot keep up with credit prices to buy timers etc and know on my wages i am not going to put real cash in to a game when i would rather put it in to my kids wellbeing or future.  I quite enjoy keme's idea of an mia is yours if you spawn it which would save some money and i also realise even though i am not willing to pay 500k for a credit someone else will.

I think a lot of the problems boil down to people not using the time they do spend online wisely enough. There are ways to "pay for" MIA's, without hitting your bank so hard (commence rent boy jokes).

I once mentioned being able to throw jails via game cash at a slightly reduced price and was laughed off (not by the admins, by other users). I don't think it would be the cure to the sky high prices, but I do believe it would help.

Personally, I feel we need to shorten the life cycles a little. When you have numerous people close to or over a year old they are going to have built up their own stash of credits and therefore wont purchase them with real money.

The problem is that to shorten the life cycles here we would probably have to dramatically decrease the bodyguard cap. I have long championed a maximum of 101 BG's but havent found enough warmth from other people about the idea to put it up in the suggestions forum, most people generally use the ratio of for every 1 BG someone has, you need 5 kills to"shoot through" it so capping at 101 leaves someone still needing at least 500 kills to shoot them (plus whatever base defence they had on signup)...500 kills in my opinion should be MORE than enough to take someone down. I feel the admins are against lowering the cap too much as it might hurt their income and also may turn the game into something resembling the wild west. However I believe it would encourage more users to go IWP as they have more of a chance of doing something special with an account, they also know that they may be able to rack up enough kills to take out an enemy.

If the cap was set at 101 then more people would be tempted to IWP themselves up, therefore adding more stock to the marketplace and hopefully lead to slightly cheaper prices. People wont be alive as long so wont be able to build up such vast fortunes through crimes/drugs/crews etc.

Like everything else, it does have its obvious drawbacks. When do you do it? Because like in our current situation there are many users out there who have more than  500 kills so BG's would be rendered pretty useless. On the flip side to that, we're taking away reliance on game features or deep pockets to keep us alive and moving back towards skill, politics and street smarts. Which in my eyes should be what the game is about.

To get the prices to go down we need more people dipping in their pockets, not more money from the current crop who do use real money. I am one of a few people who has been around a long time and never donated for credits (I used to donate from time to time back on .org but I didnt get anything in return) and the only way you're going to get my wallet open is if I think its money well spent. After all, I play this game for enjoyment... and I do enjoy myself here. There hasn't been many things in my life that I have given this amount of time and attention to. However, with the current length of accounts (this is the longer living account I've ever had in just over 10 years of .org and MR and I'm alive today by pure luck), the current size of guns and the current amount of bodyguards I refuse to use my money knowing that I'm still going to have to stay alive for at LEAST 4-6 months to be anywhere near the "top dogs" (and I'd still have to spend and massive amount of time online to do that). That is a mighty long time to remain among the living... so I don't spend my money here because the chances are that before I even get close to the likes of DeadlySin, SammyGarcini and Phil_Steak I will go down in flames. Therefore I'd rather take  the risk of dying while trying to build an account using only game cash... even though it may take even longer. If I die before I'm able to achieve my in game goals then at least I haven't wasted money as well as a huge amount of time on something that I've had very little reward for.

I don't tell people I'm "bored with this game" because it really is a quality game with a quality community, but the frustration at spending a good chunk of my daily life here and getting very little back in terms of success ensures I'm not buying credits. From what my friends and associates tell me that dont buy credits, they too believe you have to stay alive for too long to be relatively successful.

If you didn't want to play with the BG's then the other option would be to increase the kills... more RIA's, smaller number of MIA's between Durden spawns, etc. However this could discourage people from adding to the marketplace stock.

We could always try having a big advertisement push, swelling the numbers would no doubt bring in more credit purchasers with real money, again adding to the stock of the marketplace.

A totally non-admin-help solution?

There's only really one... a cartel type situation. The big buyers or large part of the population all agree to stop buying credits over a certain price. The problem with this however is people would have to be extremely faithful to the cartel and not snap up credits at a higher price, or just constantly refresh the marketplace until credits are available at the agreed price of the cartel and leave everyone else short.

The discipline would have to be phenomenal... something I don't believe we have enough of.

Think that's enough for now.. went off on a wild tangent there, which sapped the last of any brain power I had left after going to work for two 9 hour shifts at work today and being quite high.

Good day.

I must agree with countdown, the bg limit and forts were something i was never a fan of, i remember a bg free org which was a lot more fun but understand the economic viability unfortunately

Unfortunately I think MR has reached a tipping point. What do I mean by that? Well basically for every person out there unwilling to pay the high prices, there is someone who is willing to pay.

I just bought 5 credits for exactly $2.5 million. Was I happy buying at hat price? No. Did I feel I had to buy at that price? Yeah, I pretty much did. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but for some bizarre reason every time there is a Durden spawn, I miss it. Maybe just the start, sometimes the whole thing, often 90% of what's left after the initial spawn. Yet I play often up to 16 hours a day. I work in a bar, earn minimum wage, so donating isn't really an option for me by the time I buy food, electric, pay my internet and rent plus other costs. I'm lucky if I could afford to donate $5 a month. However, it leaves me with plenty of time to play (January is always a quiet month in the hospitality industry). So If I want to train my gun, I have to pay the 500k. If I want timers, I have to pay the 500k. If I want CAs to bost my money, I have to pay the 500k.

Sure I'm not happy paying 500k, but people like me keeps the market for huge costs going because we have no other way of competing. Like countdown I have been playing over 10 years, and in all that time I have bought very few credits with RL money, not because I don't want to support the game, but because I really can't afford to throw away RL money like that. After tax my take home pay equates to about $7.71 an hour, so to use Squishy's example, that means to Buy a credit with RL money would take me just shy of 8 minutes. My earnings in game are probably higher than the example Squishy used, so again I'm more than happy to sink my Game money into credits.

I don't need huge numbers of BGs. The reason being my death will not hugely affect my family, I'm only the LHM. My Home city advantages will probably save me from all of the most determined random wackers. At the same time my position assures that come a war, no amount of BGs will save my life. Careful planing and pro shots are needed for that. Sure it means my enemy won't have to send as big a gun after me as if I was IWP, but being IWP is really not worth spending so much RL money to get. At my current rank that's about $10 per fully trained BG and about 10 MIAs per BG in game terms. Therefore I can train my gun twice as fast as I can buy protection. Why the hell would I buy protection if it costs half as much to kill me? $1000 buys me 100 BGs or as near as damn it a 1000 kill gun (maybe 950 if I'm really unlucky and WB a lot). Therefore I'm not going to dump credits for Cash as the cash doesn't do me much good. The credits perhaps will help my family stay alive.

An Average CA earns me MR$5.9 million (Because I'm getting choosy then they can earn me more, but on average I think its about right). So every month my CA's earn me roughly 2 credits, FOC. Plus, they have paid for themselves. So I'm buying 24 credits a month at 500k a credit, because I'm happy for them to give me 4 free credits a month. Again in game terms I'm happy to do this, because since I started playing again around July, my CA's have earned me 28 free credits. That's almost 4 hours of my RL saved, or a months worth of Game play.

I remember 2 years ago, one of my character's (Panda I think was his name) Bankrolled my next character's for Credits. Basically every penny I earned I sank into credits, and once a month I spent 5 credits on timers. I lived 171 Hrs game time and managed to accumulate 130 odd credits. I doubt I could do that now, and without a major shake up of credits I doubt I ever will again.

The only long term solution (and I mean long term, any other solutions would be undone again within 6 months to a year) would be for Admin to set a Value on Credits. After one week if the credit isn't spent, then its monetary value starts to degrade, maybe 3% per day. If the credit isn't used/sold after 1 month, it goes out of date and ceases to exist.

Doesn't matter how many Credits you want to buy at a time, I feel 5 weeks is ample enough time to use it, sell it or loose it. At the moment Credits are like Gold, just as Izzy said, some people invest in them when they have the money because when the shit hits the fan, they are worth more or less what you paid for them. The only way to stop this is to remove that resale value 2 months or 6 months or a year down the line. Take DS as an example. If he is Stockpiling Credits with the huge sums of money his GF character generates, then should in some long distant future time his character die, then his son is guaranteed to be an awesome hitter and IWP at no cost to him what so ever. Every GF here has that power, a free ride for their son or daughter, just because they managed to make it to GF this time around.

The Credit Problem Vs. A Player Trying to Max Out Monthly

Assumptions:

- Credits are 500k each

- Players want to maximize their time on MR

- Limit to one month (30 days)

Results:

Timers and Perks

                        - Timers for a month: 5 credits = $2.5 Million

                        - Optional timers for a month: 6 total = $3 Million

- CAs for a month: 10 credits each = $5 Million each (But they profit back about a million each)

Jails and Wack:

- MIAs = 8 every 2 days = $4 Million each set of eight. Maximum would be $60 Million.

- Jails = 1 credit each at an unlimited amount of times, with tapering off = $500k with a random amount of XP given how many people are around etc.

Conclusions:

Based on simple analysis, no one can be expected to max out with regular earnings of any sort. However, that is what every single user on here would want to do and strives for. It is from these numbers that we can really deduce what the price of credits is drawn from. Credits are the only stable form of wealth, and being in possession of them is a requirement these days. As stated time and time again, they are far too expensive these days, and fixing this is a matter of finding the cause, which isn’t all that easy.

The average person tends to pick and choose what is required, the basics: timers. A person would then then move up from there buying other things. When one considers the cost of timers if purchased with $5 RL USD a month, that price should seem perfectly reasonable. The extra perks also seem reasonably priced. I could see people willing to spend more on timers someday if credit prices lower drastically enough to balance out to about the same in RL money. The current in-game cash cost isn’t terrible relatively. It is those other purchasable items that I will call into question.

MIAs aren’t all that overpriced, and there are other alternatives. I think the price helps deter users from “buying the game” so really I don’t see a big problem there. I think they should be a bit cheaper based on how many hours it takes to make 1 credit. For starting users, it must be terrible. However, I don’t think their cost, 1 credit, should change even if the market shifts downward.

Jails, on the other hand, are overpriced. I don’t see any reason why they would be at that price level, for a single user, except for where the market price of credits stands. They don’t achieve all that much for a single individual, and I’ve only noticed a benefit when I’ve pooled together with others for a crackdown. I think that perhaps the pricing of crackdowns should be reconsidered as the XP given to the initial buyer is usually not that high, with the tapering off effect not even being considered. Maybe the pricing could be derived from the number of active users in the city or active users online with the max price being 1 credit for a full CD and the lowest being .5 for a full CD. If this isn’t a possibility, people should keep in mind to do jails in a group fashion, and then they’ll realize the cost isn’t that terrible if they’re splitting it up.

The only thing with a sure fire profit or return is a CA, and I think a large amount of the market price of credits balances on them. I imagine if there wasn’t a cap on credit prices, it would balance out to about ten divided by the earnings: ~$600k. That means that a person with a CA currently has a consistent return on their investment of their 10 credits at the cost of 500k each. A consistent return is something that should exist in no market. There needs to be risk for a market to fluctuate. With no risk, it will stay stagnant and like in our situation inflated.

Credit prices are going to be a bit tougher to lower until the stored away credits are spent. Squishy keeps referring to how many credits are held by users, and it’s as simple as people with credits aren’t going to sell them for any less than they have to. So the only real ways for the market to shift is to shift the credits either back into cash (which is a terrible idea, and might take forever) or to simply shift it into XP for players. However, this is not cost effective either. I do not expect people with credits to do anything to shift the market as they want to maximize themselves, and they are not the problem really.

I think at the core the credit problem can be realized from the current status of CAs, as I was saying before concerning their consistent returns on investment. They should probably be dealt with first. I’m pretty sure they’re the answer for our inflated market. Lowering their profit by a fair amount is the key. A brief suggestion for a change could be perhaps setting them with a decently variable amount of the drug units they gather (with the maximum still being around the same, but people generally getting a fair amount less, so it’s a bit of a gamble and there is actual risk). Doing this would change the entire market, and we would draw our credit prices from elsewhere. Initially, it would probably be more drawn from staple goods like timers. Over time, it would probably be from an averaging out of CAs’ profit, but that might take a while for people to figure out.

Monthly, we are spending way too much with in game cash on credits. I think there should be moves to reconsider the cost of certain purchasable items like CAs and jails. If prices of the market lower, it might help lead people to spend more of their stored up credits as well. One other thing that Squishy refers to is the time we put in to make money, and $500k takes… a good amount of time for any user to make, relative to the costs they have. Daily, it’s not hard to make that much. When one tries to do that multiple times over a day, it’s not easy, and even then a player could never keep up with the cost of credits and the striving to max out.

Note: If my math is off at all, I’m very tired so I hope only that just my theory is at least coherent.

Maybe it's 8 MIAs every 4 days, I'm broke as hell so I wouldn't have noticed.

CAs don't consistantly provide a profit. Yeah if you pick and choose when to sell you can maximise your profit, but despite averaging over 10 hrs per day play, there are whole weeks that go by without me ever getting coke over 8.5k. Down to luck of the draw, whether I've already flown etc.

CAs are not responsible for the current price. In fact I remember credits going for upwards of 3/4 million before the admin Cap. CAs don't make a profit at all at that price.

Its simply as Izzy stated, Supply vs Demand, and a desire to hoard something that is of intrinsic worth. The only way to stop that, is to remove the intrinsic worth.

Yeah, CA's do consistently provide profit over a month. You come out with more than you invested. You can choose to sell your coke for less, but either way you leave with at least 5 mil, which is what you paid in the beginning...  unless you're really broke and desperately sell the coke for nothing

I mentioned hoarding, and I'm targeting intrinsic worth in my argument. :P

I have been away a long time so to come back to this feature, was, initially anyways, fairly awesome. I bought some credits and promply got underway. 

A few days later, realising I was out of credits I bought some more to be sure I could get all the "perks" I felt I needed.

I have been trying (as everyone has pointed out) to maintain MIA limits, whilst donating. I have never, ever had a problem making money in this world, it's something I have always prided myself on actually. Playing as much as I do, I routinely found myself at the top of most donation lists. Under the current economic climate, there is no ways I can accomplish this.

Even with the head start (50ish dollars) spent, and a steady income from CA's, I literally can't keep up with buying credits at 500k a pop and maintaining what I feel to be decent levels of donations. (Not that there have been many credits to buy of late anyways).

Even blames this feauture, and that feature and market place restrictions etc etc etc. We are striving for a perfect balance in a world, that is not even slightly perfectly balanced. The issue with such an overwhelmingly top heavy userbase is obviously going to destroy the economy... The efforts that have been put in place to "control" too much money in the game, isn't actually effecting these heavy accounts. It is effecting the new people in the game, the new BG system is a particularly tough pill to swallow for anyone who has made an account in the last 20 days or so (or anyone still wanting to buy BG's)

Everytime you introduce a new restraint/restriction/control into a system, it is going to react... My limited observations lead me to believe that the more this has been tried to be restricted and controlled, the worse the situation is getting. Not for lack of good ideas, and not for lack of trying/execution. But simply because, trying to bring balance to an imbalanced world is no small task.

Yes increasing BG prices will take money out the game (lets just be honest here, it is more expensive now) but all the accounts that are sitting with millions are (for the most part) IWP already, so you won't be removing money from them. You are essentially hurting the people who are playing catch up.... But for me the really depressing part is, should you create a world where the newcomers are not disadvantaged, you would be creating a system that will only bring even more imbalance to the world....

Economies are no simple system. People who study them their whole lives can't figure them out and despite their best efforts inflation spirals out of control and economies crash. It is not the fault of the administration. It is not the fault of the user base. In my very humble opinion it is just the current trend in a tremendously complex system. It sucks for the time being and at the moment there doesn't seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel...

I did like the idea of some of the feautures being available for cash purchase (bringing down the utile value of a credit thus hopefully lowering it's cost). Currently credits impact essentially every part of the game which is why one can demand such a high price for them, when there are sooooo many feautures that they unlock. Not to mention selling features for game cash will reduce cash in game, it will however lower revenue which is not an ideal side effect for administration obviously. I simply can't justify spending the credit on "Jail breaks", "Petties", "Felonies", as there is no ways it will be worth the 500k at the end of the month.

Flight timer perk could potentially make 500k depending on how and when it triggers. Wack perk is definitely worth it since a trigger during a durden spawn means another kill and a kill is essentially 500k in itself so one trigger at the right time and it pays for itself.

CA's and Timers definitely worth it.

Anyways, I don't have any great ideas, just some opinions on the situation. I hope we can find some sort of middle ground here, though I think a lot of trial and error will be involved.

I'm sorry but that's not a consistent profit. A guaranteed profit of MR$1,000,000 is consistent. Some people hang on to every unit they get 5o try and maximize profit, others sell as long as there is a decent profit. To make MR$6 million selling at an average of 9k per unit means you have to sell 1334 units at that average. I don't know how many units a CA actually produces over4 its life so I can't make any other analogies. All I have to go on is my average.

You make it that CAs could actually loose money and all that will happen is some people will stop buying them, they won't stop buying credits. They'll just kill more, or buy more timers.

I also disagree that JBs are over priced. I average 50 busts when ever I throw a JB, I feel that 500k game cash is a fair trade for this.

If admin where to allow cash purchase of perks rather than credits, then I believe the cost would need to be at least 50% more than the credit cost. As I already stated, the only way to change the cost long term is a complete overhaul of the whole credit system, or to remove the guaranteed return on credits.