Promo Discussion From Tweets

System

This discussion was created from comments split from: Tweets VII: Tweet Child of Mine.

Xenthos

Kagato said:

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2711
Date: 3/7/2017 at 4:10
From: Ianir the Anomaly
To : Everyone
Subj: Wheel issues!

Hi everybody!

I really hate to do this, but we've been crunching numbers all day and
need to look at the wheel. In that vein, we are going to be disabling
the wheel until we can make a few quick adjustments. The wheel should be
back tomorrow at the latest. We apologise for the inconvenience, and
will let you know when it's back up!

~ Ianir the Anomaly.

Penned by My hand on the 21st of Avechary, in the year 468 CE.

In other words, it was giving out more than it should? A little surprised that it has taken this long, given that I've seen certain individuals sitting at the wheel for almost a couple of days now spinning virtually every chance they got.

I'm dearly hoping this does not mean it is going back to the days of being 99% truefavours and crit clovers.  (ok so maybe that is a bit of hyperbole, but it was still pretty high at one point)

Okay, let me say something from another perspective.

I'm one of those people with a relatively large standing pile of reserves.  In order to make the Wheel pay out in the long run, that's all you needed; if you already had that, you didn't have to invest anything at all.

I've been watching the Wheel spin for days now and it gets harder and harder to resist.  Why have I?  Because it has been just Too Good to be True.  Being able to spin infinitely, without paying a dime, and essentially get an unlimited* (*bounded only by time) supply of essentially every game currency (aethergoop, dingbats, wonder crystals, credits-- though the credits almost all get reinvested right back into more spins, lessons).  Add on to that permanent True Favour and Critical blessings.  I've been left feeling like I am actually hurting myself by not participating in the breaking of Lusternia's Real World economy (if people have all this stuff for free, why would they ever need to buy more?).

I had actually told myself last night that if it wasn't fixed by tonight, I was going to have to bite the bullet and just start (ab)using the thing.

I'm incredibly grateful that they have saved me from myself, and I'm sure a large number of the game's players are similarly grateful that they have been spared seeing me spam my name in fireworks alongside all the others who have been doing so.

Tremula

 Gloing to sleep and waking up to the same people spinning hundreds of coins isn't fun. It seems as if a day per crate (or two pet day) rule had been implemented like so many of us asked for, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. Now the numbers crunch is going to do nothing to not benefit those who didn't have the willpower to not spin hundreds of crates worth.

Ciaran

I think everyone who has been spinning hundreds of times have been abusing an exploit, no matter how friendly they are, it's abuse. I applaud anyone who chose not to print their own money.

Lerad

To be fair, compared to when the promotion first came out, the current iteration is fairly benign already. Comparatively, that is. Making an even turnover (with a very slight profit) is fine, I think. Basically, you want the promotion to not shortchange the buyer, or no one will buy. But the profit can't be so big that people can multiply their stash in a handful of spins. If they have to take thousands of spins to make a noticeable profit, then, well, I guess those are the big spenders, hurrah to them.

I think the root problem here is that the wheel gives rewards that can ultimately be turned back into credits... that can then be turned into more spins, ad infinitum. And each time you convert and re-spin, you end up with a small, borderline profit again and again. At the end of the day, the spins that go into non-credits-convertible rewards (dingbat arties, dolls etc) will reduce your credit amount until you're unable to spin at all, but if your starting capital was big enough, you'll have spun enough times before this happens that you would have made a huge profit.

Of course, you could also get lucky and in fact continue to get big credit-convertible rewards (like ultimate presents), in which case you could spin without limits. That said, to get enough ultimate presents to make such a scenario happen (unless you're really really really lucky) you'll actually need thousands of spins. The conversion rate of coins into presents is roughly 3%, based off the testing done previously, so 3% of spins turn into presents. And, as you know, there's less than 1% per present of getting an ultimate present. Of course, the more you open, ultimate present chances go up, but someone's crunched numbers before, and I'm pretty sure you need to have at least 25 presents (or something) in your presents counter before the ultimate chance starts rising from the less than 1% chance. And that's at least 750 to 800 coins you need, which is 6000 credits cost. To spin so much that your ultimate presents start to sustain your spinning indefinitely, you'll need... many thousands of spins.

But well, I guess the very fact that such is possible is a problem from the admin's perspective.

(Disclaimer: I haven't bought any crates or done any spinning at all for this promotion.)

Ciaran

When it became clear that you could spin infinitely and rebuy packs with your profits it became an exploit. First it was limited by stock, then it became unlimited.

Nobody smart enough to abuse the exploit is dumb enough not to know what they were doing.

Permanent tf and crits are nice side bonuses to infinite goop. Just gotta have no qualms with taking advantage of this exploit.

Oh nice I can turn my infinite goop into credits for my org, then gift them back to myself and my city mates. Seems legit.

Maligorn

I don't think it counts as an exploit if people have literally been cautioning about it since day 1. If the admin don't take action immediately, then for many people (even myself, who hasn't participated in the promo at all) take that as "okay, I guess we're good to just keep spinning". Nor do I think it's an exploit if the people "exploiting it" are as plain as possible about what they're doing and actively supporting a "please end this now" stance.

edit: similarly, the admin have introduced several changes to the Wheel/promo already. This shows that they know there's at least something off about the promo. Combined with several forum posts, envoy chatter and more, it's very obvious that this is just not an exploit in the admin's eyes. Essentially, I'm pretty appalled/disgusted that people can just sit there and insinuate the people that spin a lot have no moral scruples.

Elryn

So, does anyone know if is it worth buying credits for a single crate with the new changes? Do you get at least that $70 worth of value out of it?

It's changing so often I can't tell anymore.

Ayisdra

Elryn said:

So, does anyone know if is it worth buying credits for a single crate with the new changes? Do you get at least that $70 worth of value out of it?

It's changing so often I can't tell anymore.

Before, it was a gamble in smaller numbers and breaking even in larger numbers. Discs bonuses and 500cr bonus did help a lot in small numbers of coins if you were close to a bonus.

Now, I would think it is even more of a gamble if the milestones have increased.

Versalean

The butthurt side of me knows deep down that the people who have been unfing the wheel knew what they were doing. The more pressing question for me is why the Godmin didn't know what -they- were doing when it was released. And the deafening silence on the thread I started is starting to sting, I ain't gon front. 

Maligorn

Ciaran said:

 Just gotta have no qualms with taking advantage of this exploit.

I flip the bird at this statement in particular.

Shaddus

If you were spinning 100 coins and getting back 200 coins worth of credits every time, I could see people getting mad at others exploiting the Wheel. You don't. A majority of the time if you traded in everything you gained including goop to artifacts and then artifacts to credits, you'd get just enough to re-buy the crates you had plus gaining favors/crits/pet curio packs. It was mostly the discs from the milestones and especially the 500 credit milestone that put you further ahead.  Occasionally you'd get rare artifacts from the Wheel or presents and that would put you further ahead as well, but that was less common than one might expect. Also, there's now a glut of goop in the market. 


Things that would fix this:

1. What Ianir has already done, not allowing goop items to be traded in for credits. This, along with stretching out the milestones, will really help.

2. Giving us more items to trade goop in for. We're bored, admin. Give us a reason to trade in our goop for items we actually want to keep. 

3. Allow us to buy items for people with goop, so long as that person is in the realm. If I can spend 800 goop to buy a newbie or a poor friend an artifact vial, I think that's goop well spent. Forcing it to require the target to be in the realm will prevent alt abuse.

Falaeron

Shaddus said:

If you were spinning 100 coins and getting back 200 coins worth of credits every time, I could see people getting mad at others exploiting the Wheel. You don't. A majority of the time if you traded in everything you gained including goop to artifacts and then artifacts to credits, you'd get just enough to re-buy the crates you had plus gaining favors/crits/pet curio packs. It was mostly the discs from the milestones and especially the 500 credit milestone that put you further ahead.  Occasionally you'd get rare artifacts from the Wheel or presents and that would put you further ahead as well, but that was less common than one might expect. Also, there's now a glut of goop in the market. 

Actually, just before this latest nerf I was actually losing about 5-10% in pure credits after everything was traded in, including goop. I still got a few other things so it still made it "worth" it but it had actually stopped being an infinite cycling thing for me in the long run. I was just able to keep going because I had a huge base to begin with from before the nerfs. The way I saw the milestones was that every 500 spins you got 896 credits guaranteed, so I averaged it out to be 1.792 credits per spin when looking at what value I got back.

Things that would fix this:

1. What Ianir has already done, not allowing goop items to be traded in for credits. This, along with stretching out the milestones, will really help.

The goop thing is a good change, though I wonder if it will have an effect on the perceived value of future promotions. I am not sure changing the milestone was a good idea, because ideally people would see value in dropping 200 credits into a crate. I don't know how much this got nerfed, but the value was already more or less almost exactly 200 credits (plus other things that cannot be easily valued like favours/crits/etc) in the long run. This nerf pushes the overall value down.

2. Giving us more items to trade goop in for. We're bored, admin. Give us a reason to trade in our goop for items we actually want to keep. 

So I told Estarra this when she talked to us, but people just don't want to pay promotional currency for consumable effects. They just become things to be used by the min-maxers when it is time to go into tryhard mode such as during Ascension events.

3. Allow us to buy items for people with goop, so long as that person is in the realm. If I can spend 800 goop to buy a newbie or a poor friend an artifact vial, I think that's goop well spent. Forcing it to require the target to be in the realm will prevent alt abuse.

This is actually already possible with the new ashop. Even before the ashop it was possible by just giving the person the goop. It's just nicer being able to gift it directly.

Enyalida

Goop consumable items are never going to be part of a broader economy because even now, the number of people who generate enough passive goop to waste it on temporary benefits is rather low and the number of people who can make the items is astoundingly high.

There's very little demand and HUGE supply, so it's never going to make economic sense to try and make a profit on them. 

Danquik

The cost of consumable goop items is to high for it to be worth the effort or sustainable, not to mention the effects are pretty mediocre for the cost. Lower goop consumables considerably in cost to make and -maybe- you will see people using goop to make them.

Karlach

Late but it you find an exploit and go "Hey guys, this isn't working as it should" and continue to do it, you're still abusing an exploit.

If you stab someone and ring the police going "Hey I killed a guy" then continue to stab people to death you're still committing murder.


If anything you're admitting you know it's wrong, and still continue to do it till it's fixed, which is why people hold umbridge with those who utterly abused the promotion till the first rounds of fixes came in.

Fyler

Karlach said:

Late but it you find an exploit and go "Hey guys, this isn't working as it should" and continue to do it, you're still abusing an exploit.

If you stab someone and ring the police going "Hey I killed a guy" then continue to stab people to death you're still committing murder.


If anything you're admitting you know it's wrong, and still continue to do it till it's fixed, which is why people hold umbridge with those who utterly abused the promotion till the first rounds of fixes came in.

No. Shitty metaphor. If you purchase a product at the price the company sets, and the company changes that price, you and the company participated in capitalism. Even if the company is giving shit away. They're mad because they didn't get to participate. Unless you want to go scream at wal-mart on double coupon Fridays and the old ladies who walk out with $200 in groceries for $1.09, get over yourselves. I'm assuming most of you don't, because that would make you a terrible person. You're just doing it here because it's the internet so it's easier, and there's always been a degree of entitlement because the powers that be listen to you here where as Wal-Mart does not care.

Karlach

A company isn't selling you something in a competitive environment where abusing their error puts you ahead of the competition who cannot respond in kind.

Someone getting cheap food at Wal-Mart doesn't affect you. Someone getting a ton of premium currency in a game for free where it gives them advantages does.

Your metaphor was worse.

Fyler

Yes, I can see how comparing buying products to buying products is so much worse of a comparison than....murder apparently. If your (new) argument is it's only an unfair practice because it's a competitive environment, your original post didn't argue that at all. In fact, it argued the practice on its own was unfair. So imma react this way:



You're being bitter. Your nonsense proves it. Get over it and move on.

Karlach

Cute gifs doesn't give your point credibility when it's lacking in your argument.

The point in the stabbing analogy is you do a bad thing, you point out you are capable of doing a bad thing and you're aware it's a bad thing, you still continue to do the bad thing.

The competitive argument was against your walmart nonsense, them getting a deal doesn't affect you. It does in this game.

That you're misrepresenting the argument and going with the "YOU'RE JUST BITTER" ad hominem just proves your lack of any real point. Go troll somewhere else.

Fyler

I'll go troll and you can go whine elsewhere. It'll be great. Everyone will be happy.

Shuyin

I agree with Celina, it's not a malfunctioning ATM rofl, stop using that.

P.S. if you needed further proof that this isn't e-murder, an exploit, or e-stabbing, why isn't Falmiis, etc. etc. shrubbed? Surely justice must be had if you abuse bugs?

Shaddus

I mean, I wouldn't shrub this year's winner of Lusternia either.

Shuyin

I'd shrub people for breaking the rules regardless of special snowflake status. They're the rules for a reason.

Phoebus

It doesn't really matter if you think it's an exploit, it only matters if the admins think it's an exploit. And if the admins thought it was an exploit, I'm sure action would have been taken much sooner, and there probably wouldn't be this ongoing silence in regards to people's questions about it. And honestly, it would be pretty crap if people were punished for taking advantage of something that was 100% the administration's fault. You can think it was a low move all you want, but ultimately they were allowed to do it, so it's completely pointless to yell about how the players who profited immensely from a stupid promo should be punished.

Enyalida

Yeah. I mean, there certainly are folks to be mad at over this promotion. If you're mad at other players for participating in a promo how it was intended to work, see the above posts. 

Karlach

Where's this discussion about wanting punishments coming from? The whole point isn't that some people got a chance to get rich and others didn't, it's not even "if you could, you would too."

It's this bollocks attitude that you can do it and find a reason to justify why when you know it's clearly the wrong thing to do. Sure milk it for all it's worth, but don't try saying "it's ok, I told them this is wrong so me doing it is fine" or that you're somehow doing us a favour by making sure only a few people gained from it rather than a wider number.

Just own it, you saw a chance to get ridiculously rich quick and you took it. Don't try to act like your farts don't stink.

Deichtine

Fyler said:

Karlach said:

Late but it you find an exploit and go "Hey guys, this isn't working as it should" and continue to do it, you're still abusing an exploit.

If you stab someone and ring the police going "Hey I killed a guy" then continue to stab people to death you're still committing murder.


If anything you're admitting you know it's wrong, and still continue to do it till it's fixed, which is why people hold umbridge with those who utterly abused the promotion till the first rounds of fixes came in.

No. Shitty metaphor. If you purchase a product at the price the company sets, and the company changes that price, you and the company participated in capitalism. Even if the company is giving shit away. They're mad because they didn't get to participate. Unless you want to go scream at wal-mart on double coupon Fridays and the old ladies who walk out with $200 in groceries for $1.09, get over yourselves. I'm assuming most of you don't, because that would make you a terrible person. You're just doing it here because it's the internet so it's easier, and there's always been a degree of entitlement because the powers that be listen to you here where as Wal-Mart does not care.

Dam how did you guess what I did on my fridays?

Fyler

Karlach said:

Where's this discussion about wanting punishments coming from? The whole point isn't that some people got a chance to get rich and others didn't, it's not even "if you could, you would too."

It's this bollocks attitude that you can do it and find a reason to justify why when you know it's clearly the wrong thing to do. Sure milk it for all it's worth, but don't try saying "it's ok, I told them this is wrong so me doing it is fine" or that you're somehow doing us a favour by making sure only a few people gained from it rather than a wider number.

Just own it, you saw a chance to get ridiculously rich quick and you took it. Don't try to act like your farts don't stink.

Honey, I owned it a long time ago. I just don't give a flip about your weird ass moral compass that says I can't/shouldn't participate in a free market if it gives me an advantage. That's what the free market is about, love it or hate it. Some people get the deal, the advantage, the cheaper price. Some people don't. No one stinks for it except the people whining they aren't the winners.

Shedrin

Karlach said:

Where's this discussion about wanting punishments coming from? The whole point isn't that some people got a chance to get rich and others didn't, it's not even "if you could, you would too."

It's this bollocks attitude that you can do it and find a reason to justify why when you know it's clearly the wrong thing to do. Sure milk it for all it's worth, but don't try saying "it's ok, I told them this is wrong so me doing it is fine" or that you're somehow doing us a favour by making sure only a few people gained from it rather than a wider number.

Just own it, you saw a chance to get ridiculously rich quick and you took it. Don't try to act like your farts don't stink.

You're calling this an exploit and comparing this to murder. I don't agree at all, and if you're being hyperbolic I don't think it serves your argument well.

There is no crime involved here. There is no bug involved.

And the responsibility for this only rests with the admins and should only rest with the admins. Anything else is too messy, too vague and too prone to subjectivity.

Silvanus

Especially when it's not the first time a monthly promo has gone wrong.