The Last Homely House
Undying Lands => Valinor => Topic started by: MarcinS on March 14, 2012, 04:21:30 AM
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Today I have finally added Currency and Merchant to Gemp-LotR.
I want to give you more info on how it works, so you'd have an understanding of what to expect. There will be no instructions here, as the screen is pretty self-explanatory.
Currency
In Game Hall and on Merchant screen you will see something like "200G 0S" on the right-hand side. This indicates how much currency you currently have. G stands for Gold, S stands for Silver, and 1G=100S. At some point I'll replace the G and S letters with icons of appropriate colour.
Earning Currency
When you register, you will be given 200G. Each week (after the first) that you log into your account, you will be given 50G.
This weekly bonus and selling singles to Merchant are the only way of gaining currency.
Spending Currency
Entry to tournaments and leagues will now cost currency. Most likely leagues will cost 50G, but I'm not 100% sure yet on the price.
You can also buy singles and boosters/collections at the Merchant. Normal (non-Reflections) boosters have a fixed price of 10G. Collections (Ages End, etc) will also have a fixed price, after they are added.
How is card price established
Merchant has a 30% spread. Spread is a difference between its sell price and buy price, so if a Merchant is selling a card for 10G, it will offer to buy it off you for 7G (70% of the price). Side note: Most real life card merchants have a spread of 50%.
Due to the fact I had no starting point for card prices, I had to make all cards the same price, based only on rarity. To avoid people buying cheap good cards, and selling bad cards high, in the first 30 days of Merchant operating, the spread is MUCH higher, but is getting lowered down with time, until it gets to the 30%. This is also something that real life card merchants do - increase spread for new cards.
Whenever a card is bought from Merchant, the price of the card increases by 10% and if no other operations are done on the card, it will slowly return to its price it was sold for after 5 days.
Whenever a card is sold to Merchant, the price of the card decreases by 10% and if no other operations are done on the card, it will slowly return to its price it was bought for after 5 days.
After the 5 days since last operation on the card, the card price will be slowly dropping over time. The card price will decrease by 50% after 30 days and will keep on dropping, until someone buys or sells the card.
Buy price for foils is double the normal value of a card.
Card availability
Merchant has an unlimited supply of cards. It's selling only non-foil/non-AI cards and only from the set they were originally printed in.
Card trading with other players
To avoid people cheating the system, for example with multiple accounts or scamming other people for good cards, I have decided to not introduce trading between players. Introducing such a system would require high maintenance cost (time) to try and track down people cheating, monitoring trades, etc.
Merchant card prices will (in time) be a good reflection of the card demand and value, so it should be enough to give you all the tools to acquire the cards you want and even enjoy earning some currency on card price fluctuations.
Trading in cards for foils
Merchant also allows you to trade in 4 copies of the same non-foil card (same printing and image) for 1 copy of a foil version of the same exact card.
Questions?
If you have any questions, just post them here.
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I think that the merchant should not have unlilited rare supplie. It should have a fix starting amoun
t. Price gowing up for each x day when the supply is 0. And price gowing donw for each x day no card is sold. That it will force player to buy booster.
Also will league play force you to use your cards? Except sealed league? Because I am wondering what i will gain starting to collector these. Thanks!!!!
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There will be 3 types of leagues and tournaments:
- sealed,
- constructed - using "All cards"
- collector's constructed - using "My cards"
Collector's constructed will have higher prize pay out than normal constructed ones.
I was considering limited supply, but then whoever will get to buy first, will benefit. So then card availability will be more of luck based, and I want to avoid that. Not to mention that it would not really model a real life very well, as most people do not buy boosters of cards any more, instead choose to buy singles off the internet.
Don't worry - boosters will still be opened, as they are the only option for prizes.
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Sound good thanks!!!
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Spread is 98,5% at the moment. And it decreases visibly (most expensive rares are 72.05 now and were 72.13 when I got back home less than an hour ago).
I still don't like the fact that C and U foils are so easily available. Getting them will now be only a matter of enough clicking, as when the spread goes to normal, I guess commons will be worth less than 0.10 a piece (probably even 0.01 for most of them) and only really good uncommons will go above 1.00. What do you think about:
- making each foil worth at least 1.00, even when original card is worth less than 0.50,
- to balance this, adding a tax of 4.00 to every "trade 4 for foil" operation?
This way the overall buy-sell balance will not be changed, but foils will be something special. As money we use in the game is virtual, not real, foils can be given a bit more value.
BTW, I think all you wrote here should also be at the Gemp site, as I think there are people who play there but don't use this forum.
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I'll add the "trade 4 for foil" tax, as for the sell price minimum of foil - I'm not going to introduce it. If you think your foil is worth more, you're free to keep it. ;) And you can't buy foils, so it should be a problem.
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Is that normal that I do not see the merchant button?
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Is that normal that I do not see the merchant button?
Refresh Game Hall by pressing F5.
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Anyone notices there are no ,,reflections'' boosters? Were there any IRL or that is just me dreaming ? :D
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Anyone notices there are no ,,reflections'' boosters? Were there any IRL or that is just me dreaming ? :D
I'll do them later, as they are a bit more complicated. Also need to find out, how were they packed.
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Also need to find out, how were they packed.
Not a perfect resource, but I hope this helps:
http://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/index.php/topic,7638.0.html
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Also need to find out, how were they packed.
Not a perfect resource, but I hope this helps:
http://lotrtcgdb.com/forums/index.php/topic,7638.0.html
Ok, found a different resource describing the packaging of Reflections and after next restart, the boosters will be available at the merchant. Unlike all the other boosters, their price will be 20G, and players will not be able to choose the booster as part of their "Booster selection" price for leagues and tournaments.
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Marcin, did you make your decision about the entry fee for the next leagues allready?
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I thin kthe merchand should have a minimum card price. Selling card should get too 1 silver, but buying them should never get under 10 silver for a commun, 50 silver for an uncommon and 1 gold for a rare. And key rare should not be sold under 5 gold. To determine key rare just take all rare that worth more than 5 gold right in the middle of a collector league. Currently FOTR.
Else in a few month all card except a few per set will be selling for a few penny, since each player is given 50 gold per week, it is only a matter of time that the card price will be dropping.
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I thin kthe merchand should have a minimum card price. Selling card should get too 1 silver, but buying them should never get under 10 silver for a commun, 50 silver for an uncommon and 1 gold for a rare. And key rare should not be sold under 5 gold. To determine key rare just take all rare that worth more than 5 gold right in the middle of a collector league. Currently FOTR.
Else in a few month all card except a few per set will be selling for a few penny, since each player is given 50 gold per week, it is only a matter of time that the card price will be dropping.
I don't think it's a good idea, not to mention, that it would not reflect a real market. If a card is worthless (nobody buys it), then you can get the card for close to nothing.
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I just pulled a Masterwork card from a Black Rider booster. Merchant values it exactly the same as regular version - shouldn't it be worth more due to being a lot more rare? BTW, how likely is it to pull such card?
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I wondered when we will be able to buy ROTK starters?
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I wondered when we will be able to buy ROTK starters?
After next restart.
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Is the probability of getting a R+ in a reflections booster the same as in real life (10 R+/box or probability of 0.41 per pack)? I've opened 15 packs and only gotten 2 R+. I know that this could happen with the normal drop rate, but it seems exceedingly unlikely
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Is the probability of getting a R+ in a reflections booster the same as in real life (10 R+/box or probability of 0.41 per pack)? I've opened 15 packs and only gotten 2 R+. I know that this could happen with the normal drop rate, but it seems exceedingly unlikely
For each card in the R/R+ reflection slot in a booster a card is randomly selected from a pool of cards containing 4 copies of each R reflections card and 1 copy of each R+ cards.
Considering there are 26 R cards and 26 R+ cards, a chance of getting an R+ card in a slot is 20%. Therefore a chance of getting a specified number of R+ cards in a Reflections booster is as follows:
0 - 80%*80% = 64%
1 - 2*(20%*80%) = 32%
2 - 20%*20% = 4%
In case of a box (24 boosters), you get 48 R/R+ cards, so on average you'd be getting 48*20% R+ cards, so 9.6 R+ cards, which is close to what you're describing was happening in real life (10 R+).
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By the way, wouldn't it be a good idea (as Reflections booster costs 20G, all others 10) to make it possible to get a Reflections booster in return for 2 booster choices?
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and how are the rarities of the other cards in a reflection booster determined.
because i've opened reflection boosters with no rares in it (save the 2 from the reflection series itself)
but I also once had a reflection booster with 3 extra rares. isn't there a fixed distribution (like the 1R/3U/7C in regular boosters)
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Nope, reflections is like a box of chocolates, you will never know what you get.
I just wonder if we have god boosters in here as well.
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i like good boxesof chocolat: i once opened a booster with 3 good rares: total selling price of that reflection booster was probably around 150 gold.
but other boosters with just 15 common or so that are pretty useless or i could buy for 2 silver
It always makes me feel down when i open such a useless box of reflections :p
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I'll never forget the time I pulled 3 foils out of a single ROTK pack. I even remember which ones! Cirion, King's Advisor and Gandalf, Manager of Wizards.
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Could you explain here how the new merchant works?
Also, now that it's no longer possible to sell off any cards you don't want, could you introduce "merchant settings" - two numbers X and Y we can set so that every time a booster I open contains a card that:
- the merchant doesn't want to buy,
- I already have at least X copies of it,
- I could buy it from the merchant for Y or less,
this card is not added to my collection and destroyed instead.
Also a possibility to destroy cards neither I nor merchant wants would be useful. My BoHD, EoF and SoG playsets look cool because I have exactly 4 copies of each card, not because I have at least 4 (end especially double digits look awful, and after opening 60 packs two days ago there are some FotR cards I have 10 or more of).
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MarcinS, please change the merchant back to the way it was. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There was nothing wrong with the way the system was functioning prior to this morning.
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Could you explain here how the new merchant works?
Merchant maintains a stock of cards (how many it owns), a starting value is the difference of how many it sold and bought while the old merchant was working.
- If stock<=0, merchant doesn't sell that card, only buys, and the prize for the card rises over time until next transaction.
- If 0<stock<100, merchant both sells and buys the card, prize for the card lowers over time until next transaction,
- If 100<=stock, merchant doesn't buy that card, only sells, and the prize for the card lowers over time until next transaction.
After each transaction, the price of a card is increased/decreased (depending if it was buy or sell transaction) by 10%.
For the purposes of merchant, all card types and variants are equal, with only one exception. Merchant will always buy a foil version of a card, even if it has full stock of the card, and foil card price is always double the normal card value.
You can have a maximum of 255 of a single card, so there should be no problem with owning more than 4 of it. I don't see any value in "destroying" cards.
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MarcinS, please change the merchant back to the way it was. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. There was nothing wrong with the way the system was functioning prior to this morning.
It was broke. As many people pointed out - boosters were practically worthless. There was absolutely no incentive to open or even buy them, as singles were always cheaper and also always available at the merchant.
The perfect system (IMO) is one, where average value of cards you open in a pack is equal to the price of a booster. This was not the case in the old system, and has a good shot at being this way in the new one.
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Boosters have use for prize winnings. Singles have use for buying/selling. There's no point in changing something that no one had any problem with. Me, I enjoyed selling a lot of my random commons for 1S each every time I pulled stuff I didn't want in a pack. It's a way to increase my overall gold total a little at a time. Now I have even less incentive to open packs.
I sell cards back to the merchant for two reasons:
1) To clean out the clutter from my inventory
2) To gain more gold so I can buy the singles I want.
Now I can't do either one of those, since the uber rare singles are the ones you can't buy anymore.
Or perhaps we should put it to a vote?
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You can have a maximum of 255 of a single card, so there should be no problem with owning more than 4 of it. I don't see any value in "destroying" cards.
I don't play in Collector's (or any other constructed) leagues for at least half a year (because Sealed is more fun for me and I have no time for two leagues running simultaneously so I choose Sealed). I collect cards purely for the fun of collecting. And the fun (for me, though I guess it's the same for most people who want to collect cards) is in seeing a nice row of "4" next to each card. Not to see a row of random numbers and trying to get all of them above 4. I don't want to have more than 4 of a single card because for me this makes my collection worse.
Of course the number 4 is completely arbitrary, so I'd prefer to leave the choice of his number to each collector (I guess 1, 4 and 8 will be most popular, the last to get two playsets and later turn one into a set of foils).
Me, I enjoyed selling a lot of my random commons for 1S each every time I pulled stuff I didn't want in a pack.
Things change once you pull 500+ cards you don't need at once :)
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That's why I've always suggested that MarcinS add the ability to sell multiple cards at once.
This new merchant is an absolute failure. It sounds good in theory, but there are just so many problems with it. Please change it back.
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About the merchant limited format.
I agree with MarcinS it is necessary to add this constraints, is always possible to abuse of the system just by demand or being clever about which league may be upcoming at a very good time. Nevertheless, I do also agree with Nitsuj about the HUGE handicap against the new players.
I propose the following: (before saying no please read)
Trading available: this will definitively help newbies (in the site) to form a collection, is clear i would prefer to trade 1 of my aragorn's bow than sell it and when trying to buy an armory see that i need to sell another one. And for them i am sure it will depend on their meta game.
how to avoid "dirty strategies" to get a bigger collection with many accounts?: Weekly payment will be as 50D (diamonds i dont know to mention a currency); Diamonds will only work to pay for tournament entrances. G - Gold and s- Silver will continue to work as usual for card transactions but there will be no weekly payment, the ONLY way to earn gold is gonna be through tournaments (and not by winning games, but by position)
Prizes for collectors tournaments may be better to encourage participation.
Explanation of why it works:
1. Newbies may try for first, non-collector tournaments. Earn money and by trading rapidly build a decent deck.
2. Since you wont earn gold periodically by doing "nothing", the only way to cheat now is to make 10 accounts and participate in tournaments but this is quite exhausting and actually can already be done in the present configuration.
3. Better prizes (for collectors) do not represent an advantage over new players, why? because only the first 3 places (under a low mutiplier proportion maybe) are gonna get them, the thing: make it really hard to win this prizes as in real torunaments.
Well, I have no clue how hard is it to program trading, but for sure should not be a problem now paying attention to trades cause they are no profitable. Hope my idea is not stupid.
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That's why I've always suggested that MarcinS add the ability to sell multiple cards at once.
This new merchant is an absolute failure. It sounds good in theory, but there are just so many problems with it. Please change it back.
Whatever merchant there will be in place (old or new or anything different), it will never anymore buy any card (think of all the useless commons everyone has in their collections). It makes absolutely no sense for the system to do that. The fact it was there in the first place, was because when merchant was set up, I had no way of configuring it to know, which cards are useless, and which are not.
So, your only complaint now, is that this ability was taken away from you, after you had it. If it was not there from the start, and merchant was able to distinguish junk cards and never offer to buy them, you would be absolutely fine and would totally accept an argument, that noone would ever want this card.
Please, do not judge the new system, and make (false) assumptions, based on it operating for 5 hours only. The old merchant has broken many other parts of the system (league prizes among other things), and I'm hoping that fixing this issue, will bring other parts to normal operation.
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Well, I have no clue how hard is it to program trading, but for sure should not be a problem now paying attention to trades cause they are no profitable. Hope my idea is not stupid.
It's not very difficult, but your system can only be successful if there is no way of exchanging diamonds into cards (or gold). In other words - we would have to remove game win prizes from leagues. This would also make it very difficult (or even impossible) to introduce on-demand 8-player tournaments, for exactly the same reason.
I'm quite sure, if it was possible to make such system possible and safe, other free-to-play systems with trading would be out there already. Judging by the fact, that other systems use single-merchant as Gemp-LotR does, we can assume that this is the correct way to do this.
And if you think people don't already try to cheat the system - let me just give a small stat. Since the Gemp-LotR was established, I have banned over 800 accounts... yes, there are villains out there, some of them multiple offenders.
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The way I see it, the purpose behind prize packs is to add more product to a player's collection. But in every pack, there are bound to be useless cards. Whether it is a card no one uses, like Cast It Into The Fire, or a card you don't need more than X of, or it is a card that a player just doesn't want, there are always redundant cards in each pack. But those cards should still have some value. Was it really hurting the system to sell random useless commons back to the merchant for 1S each? Apart from the weekly allowance, there's no way to earn gold except for selling cards. Even if every card you pull is crap, you should be able to sell each card in order to get SOME profit out of it.
No one that I know of ever bought packs with the hope of finding a specific card, even in real life. The odds are always against you in that scenario. If you want a specific card, the best way is to buy a single. Sure, IRL, the amount of physical cards is a finite number, which means some singles might not be available in some areas. But there's still no reason to simulate that shortage here, even if it is temporary as you claim.
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yes i agree, but my argument is that exactly the ONLY way to cheat would be... to cheat like is done TODAY.
The argument, means that trading would not affect the current system of cheating but would give a fair way to mix merchant and participation for everyone. Anyway, still when there could be people with 10 accounts and trying to win a torunament wouldnt be possible because at least ive never seen top 10 people i dont know.
Of course would be needed to suprime booster prizes from winning matches.
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yes i agree, but my argument is that exactly the ONLY way to cheat would be... to cheat like is done TODAY.
The cheating today, is not affecting the economy and player's collection. I don't really know what do these player want to achieve. Some of them join sealed leagues with multiple accounts to find an account that gets a good card pool, some of them join sealed leagues to increase end-of-league prizes.
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It is sort of possible to trade now, with the merchant only having finite stock. I could start a ghost account, buy boosters, when I pull a savagery, go to the merchent to sell it, and then on another browser session go and buy it. This didn't really matter in the old system, as the ghost account had no real incentive to sell anything to the merchent - but now its a way to farm hard-to-get rares.
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by the way, if they do this to increase prizes. Well why not using multipliers depending on the number of matches played :P in the league
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It is sort of possible to trade now, with the merchant only having finite stock. I could start a ghost account, buy boosters, when I pull a savagery, go to the merchent to sell it, and then on another browser session go and buy it. This didn't really matter in the old system, as the ghost account had no real incentive to sell anything to the merchent - but now its a way to farm hard-to-get rares.
PLEASE, in a few days, situation when merchant is out of stock SHOULD NOT be happening. We are currently in a transition state, and you're jumping to conclusions!
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by the way, if they do this to increase prizes. Well why not using multipliers depending on the number of matches played :P in the league
I'd rather have the prizes be fixed, now that we have some good number of players, which is something we might come up with soon.
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Whatever merchant there will be in place (old or new or anything different), it will never anymore buy any card (think of all the useless commons everyone has in their collections)
But then there needs to be another way to get rid of the cards you don't want.
Look at those two pictures:
http://img171.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=114798841_cards2_122_1173lo.JPG
http://img140.imagevenue.com/img.php?image=114652256_cards1_122_552lo.JPG
The first one is pleasant to look at. The second is a complete mess. For me, first one is collecting, second is hoarding. And I would really like to be able to change what I see on the second picture into nice collection like on the first. Otherwise collecting loses all appeal to me. Within the system we have today I can aim only at all-255 collection, but I won't live long enough (I expect it will take me around further 2,5-3 years to finish the all-4 one, provided I can remain one of the top sealed league players).
A way to get rid of unneeded cards even if they have 0 market value is not needed for those who care only about strength of their deck. But it also won't do them any harm. And it will allow for fun of collecting sets, playsets, foil sets and so on.
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A question: can you still exchange 4 copies of any card for a foil version?
And would the merchant buy a foil version of a card, when it's refusing the buy the regular version?
If so, it seems to me you could convert a bunch of your garbage cards to foils, and then sell them to the merchant.
Still, talk about a huge PITA!
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Two problems:
- it will take huge amount of money (each conversion takes 4 cards and 2 Gold)
- this way, I can get rid of extra cards if I have 8, 12, 16 and so on copies, but this doesn't work for cards that I own a number of copies that is not a multiple of 4.
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Two problems:
- it will take huge amount of money (each conversion takes 4 cards and 2 Gold)
- this way, I can get rid of extra cards if I have 8, 12, 16 and so on copies, but this doesn't work for cards that I own a number of copies that is not a multiple of 4.
I can add an option for scrapping cards above X, however I'd rather spend that time working on tournaments...
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Just add back the option to sell crappy cards for 1S each. And add the ability to sell multiple cards at once.
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Just add back the option to sell crappy cards for 1S each. And add the ability to sell multiple cards at once.
No, and no. There is no reason you should be able to sell cards to merchant over a specified treshold, I can add option to sell multiple copies of the same cards (provided merchant accepts them), but you will not be told up-front, how much you will be paid for them - the reason being, it could be exploited.
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Yes there is a reason. And that reason has been stated over and over again on here. Please put the merchant back the way it was so we can actually get rid of our extra cards and make a little more profit.
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Two problems:
- it will take huge amount of money (each conversion takes 4 cards and 2 Gold)
- this way, I can get rid of extra cards if I have 8, 12, 16 and so on copies, but this doesn't work for cards that I own a number of copies that is not a multiple of 4.
I can add an option for scrapping cards above X, however I'd rather spend that time working on tournaments...
This is not something needed soon. Tournaments are definitely higher priority. But it would be nice to have such possibility one day. So if you put it on "low priority fixes" list and do some day when there are no major upgrades to work on, I'm completely fine with this. Thanks :)
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So, i noticed something a little quirky with the merchent this morning. Hobbit Swords are in a weird spot where the merchent is not buying them, but doesn't have any to sell either. Not sure how this would play out in the long run, but they could be off the market forever? I guess TTT swords can be bought.
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FotR Hobbit Swords can be bought. Merchant never sells (and never sold) reprints.
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"Merchant now sells all the cards, but the out-of-stock cards are substantially more expensive to buy"
Well I guess this is to make people who complained happy. When I look at prices it definitely is not worth to buy those cards. How does this work - is the price more inflated with each buy when out of stock?
Now it's even more important for merchant to give information about estimated stock. Without it no rational decisions can be made, and especially a decision to buy boosters. I think the best way this can be done is what I proposed yesterday, with one change due to a possibility that the stock goes negative if people buy it when it's out of stock:
- make a daily economy report - each day, at midnight server time, a text file is generated (or, perfectly, each time a player requests it to be generated, but I don't know how heavy this will be on the server) containing market info. Such file should be easily importable into any spreadsheet software for analysis purposes. For example each line could be something like this:
#1#R#1#The One Ring, Isildur's Bane#4#18,52#availability#
Where entries mean: set number, rarity, card number, card name, number of copies you have, current sell price, estimate of copies the merchant has, for example:
- seriously out of stock (deficit of 5 or more copies)
- out of stock (0 copies or small deficit, selling at inflated price),
- very low (1 to 3 copies, i.e. less than a playset)
- low (4 to 11 copies, i.e. less than 3 playsets)
- average (12 to 50 copies)
- good (51 to 90 copies)
- very good (91 to 99 copies)
- overstocked (100 or more copies, not buying).
Also, out of stock cards should definitely be flagged withing the merchant (especially useful for people who have 0 copies of this card) and buy price should be displayed for those people.
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The sell price for out-of-stock cards is doubled.
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Well I am not sure that some prices are equal the card.. Cause i have sold company of archer for 270G and Southron Markshmen for 120G.. Also some cards from the sets about 17 have a price about 400G cause they arent stocked (And i see it can be bought for 900G)... Its a reason or just a bug?
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To be honest i think that persistant Orc shouldnt have a price about 2000g (when i see now he is out of stock and he can be bought for 8000G!!!) this is what you want to full the market of expanded sets?
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And I just made over 1100G by buying Shadows starters and selling most of the contents.
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The biggest problem is definitely the S rarity cards from Hunters and onwards, as there is completely no way to buy them other than as singles from merchant.
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I'm willing to accept and reasonable change requests/suggestions, and no - saying "bring back the old merchant" is not a good one. The old merchant had a flaw - card prices were always going down in the long run, which turned booster packs worthless.
If you have any ideas what we can improve with the current merchant, please post them here.
One thing I'd like to definitely do, is to introduce Expanded and Wraith Collection as fixed sets.
Current crazy "buy" prizes on some cards, are a consequence of me turning merchant into aggressively trying to acquire cards, that it is "out-of-stock" on.
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The merchant is down...ppl sold cards from shadows for over 2500g each...interesting...
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I think you should gear up merchant with about 10 pieces of each rare.. Then your model would work.. But now you must reduce prices of these crapy rares whose are hundres or thousands gold each or you will completely destroy the block of 1-10 !!!
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The old merchant had a flaw - card prices were always going down in the long run, which turned booster packs worthless.
Just a thought... on my server I just altered the formulas so the rate the prices reverted back to normal after transactions was a lot slower and also essentially removed the dropping of prices over time. Something to consider at least.
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Well now I see that the prices are about the normal when we consider that many of cards are out of stock.. With a brief look I havent seen some madness like 8000G.. ;)
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But Goblin Armory now has about 2000G price.. Maybe it would be OK after few days.. It will settle down...
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The problem is it will not settle down as long as cards are out of stock. And to get them in stock someone must buy packs, open them and sell singles to merchant. I tried today but gave up after well over 1000 RotK packs - the interface is just bad for mass operations so noone has time to heal the market.
25.12.2012 01:30 CET RotK report:
- average rare card sell price is 25,36
- 30 cards are in stock, 91 out of stock, price of the ones out rising as I write this.
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so i also dedicated to sell good rares to obtain a lot of money. But i noted all the packs i opened just repeated like (x4 horrible cards all the time) the same #$&*@! cards? So that means even when u buy boosters u cannot obtain them? then how?
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Maybe there should be some better logic behind rares in boosters. I don't know how it is done currently, but I assume it's completely random what rare is contained.
It should be ensured that every rare gets optained equally. There could be a database on the server that tracks how often a rare has been put in a booster and then decide which rares are in the next boosters. So every rare will eventually be optained.
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The problem is it will not settle down as long as cards are out of stock. And to get them in stock someone must buy packs, open them and sell singles to merchant. I tried today but gave up after well over 1000 RotK packs - the interface is just bad for mass operations so noone has time to heal the market.
What purpose does it serve to have a fake economy which has a fake merchant that is out of stock on fake cards?
There is no reason for this. There is no reason why the virtual merchant should ever be out of stock. It's ridiculous.
Maybe there should be some better logic behind rares in boosters. I don't know how it is done currently, but I assume it's completely random what rare is contained.
I think that is part of the problem, yes.
It should be ensured that every rare gets optained equally. There could be a database on the server that tracks how often a rare has been put in a booster and then decide which rares are in the next boosters. So every rare will eventually be optained.
That is essentially how Decipher did it: The manner in which cards were printed and packed attempted to achieve an even distribution of different cards. It wasn't truly random. So, if you bought a case, you could be reasonably sure that you'd get a pretty good distribution. If you were buying boxes, ideally you'd want boxes with consecutive serial numbers.
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Well I would like to ask if admins think about the reset collections to the state before the new merchant or not...?
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All I can say is that I bought 100 packs of FOTR today. No Goblin Armory, Gandalf FOTS, Savagery, Hate, Elrond LoR, Aragorn ROTN, Lurtz or Greenleaf. I did pull 1 SOTSF and 1 Boromir LOG, but those were the only notable rares.
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Resetting all collections an to zero and giving each player a fixed amount of funds, so that everybody starts at the same level would be a better option than resetting the collections to the state from the past week, though I'm not convinced whether it would be the best option.
Old system put new players at a disadvantage, given that sealed league prize system had changed. This transition puts those who played the system at a huge advantage. Resetting the collections and funds to zero would rob people of their collections and I'm not sure that the people would like that.
It seems like we have a choice between three flawed political and economic systems: feudalism (reverting to the old system, establishing back the privileges of the "aristocracy"), liberal capitalism (legitimizing the primary capital accumulation that took place by keeping the current system) and commnunism (wiping out all the collections and giving everybody the same starting point).
I's personally opt for resetting all the collections, giving all the players the same fixed amount of funds (much larger than current 200 GP), sizeable enough to acquire the first constructed deck (the same amount would be given to the new players), plus giving each player weekly allowance for each week of being registered on the site (plus the league prizes he won minus the league registration fees if he participated in leagues), so those who had been on the site longer and would have lost more would be compensated.
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Bib: I think I got all your lurtz, gandy, and elrond :P
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I bought 150 more FOTR packs and nearly have a playset of the good rares. Just need 1 more Goblin Armory and 2 more Elrond.
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Old system put new players at a disadvantage, given that sealed league prize system had changed.
Which change do you mean and why do you think it put new players at disadvantage?
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Not being able to keep our sealed cards after the tournament is the change I know of and am referring to.
I have a suggestion about foil pricing, that would make foil prices more realistic and consistent, eliminating the complaint about worthless foils as prizes, as foils will no longer be worthless.
As we all now, the merchant 'selling price' of foils (i.e. the price needed to redeem a foil) is 4x regular card + a fixed amount (currently 1 gold - this could be raised to make the foils less accessible and more valuable). I suggest similar pricing for selling the foils to a merchant. A fixed amount of 1 gold, plus a regular card merchant buying price multiplier (currently it's at 2x, but I'd suggest raising it to 3x). That would make even the common foils more valuable, reflecting their value in the physical market more faithfully (their supply was low).
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Remember that this was not the only change made when currency was introduced.
Back then sealed league participation was free and you could get 18 guaranteed booster packs out of it every 28 days (series were 7 days long).
With current system (assuming participating only in sealed league) you:
- pay 50 gold for a 36 days long league (1,39 a day, 39 during 28 days),
- earn 50 gold a week, 200 during 28 days.
This means during 28 days you get 161 extra gold. This does not allow to buy those 18 packs you could get in the old system, but is not far. During a calendar year you get 25 packs less this way if you buy boosters all the time. On the other hand you get to choose what sets you buy. And, with number of people participating in sealed leagues now you get better prizes than the old system gave you (I got a lot more for 2nd place in last TTT Sealed than for winning first ever FotR sealed a year ago).
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I'm a new guy, so I don't know the details and I would appreciate if you could clarify this for me.
Were those 18 boosters awarded in addition to the sealed product? And was the sealed product 1 starter and 3 booster packs per series, making the total at 4 starters and 12 booster packs, or was it something different?
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Well I think that is normal that when someone started on the start year 2012 and another started in the middle of the same year, the first one MUST have and advantage and that is good and absolutely normal!! So I dont agree with restarting all collections.. I think that maybe merchant needed an improvement but this change since last week isnt what admins wanted to..
Also I am very dissapointed because my prize from collectors league (which I should obtain in 2 days )is very very devaulated.. :(
Sealed events are very cool to get some boostert to be ready for collectors leagues but it takes a time.. I loved that.. Now I have a play set from FOTR, almost Towers and the next would be Kings.. But it took 2 days and I liked much more when after few months I was able to build up two collectors decks.. That was better..
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I'm a new guy, so I don't know the details and I would appreciate if you could clarify this for me.
Were those 18 boosters awarded in addition to the sealed product? And was the sealed product 1 starter and 3 booster packs per series, making the total at 4 starters and 12 booster packs, or was it something different?
Sealed league gave you 3 starters (with rare cards removed*) and 18 boosters to build your deck. This was divided amongst the 4 series exactly the way it is now (starter+6 packs, starter+3 packs, starter+3 packs, 6 packs in series 1, 2, 3 and 4). The only difference was that you could keep those cards. So you got extra 18 boosters, but no cash. Overall difference is really small.
*BoHD and EoF starters contained the fixed rares. This caused those rares drop in value as everyone had them. So no big difference because of those cards. And other starter deck cards are rarely worth a lot.
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There is still the value of starters to account for. Though most cards in them are worthless, they do form a starting point to construct a deck, and the only way to obtain certain useful premium (fixed) cards (Boromir from ROTEL, Gandalf from MOM and Moving This Way come to mind), and their selling price is 25 gold per starter.
So, the difference is 19 gold + 3 starter decks per month in favour of older players.
A semi-serious suggestion: you could make an 'all-foil' collector's league. That would keep the collector aspect alive.
Anyway, the prices seem to have settled.
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On first series 1-10 the prices are settled but there are few exeptions, like goblin armory, hides, small hope...
All foil collectors leagues is way different from colletors league, cause to have 4 foil Goblin Armory is very difficult even with the foil option..
Still IMHO the best sollution is to get all collections to the state before this armagedon ;)
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The prices are definitely still not settled. For example Morgul Brute is going up and already very high. And some cards are going up still being low, so we will see their problem in a few days.
Lacking tools to research the market properly, I don't see the big picture. But in the RotK set I looked at a lot recently still around 30 rares are out of stock. I just bought 80 packs and sold all rares there, it didn't help a lot.
The problem is that this market has no people living off it, who will put enough work to stabilize it. Noone monitors the prices 24/7 to take the profit whenever a big chance comes. Especially as taking such chances requires investment and most people don't have resurces required.
I think a bot account, given some 20.000 gold starting money, looking at the market 24/7 and investing into boosters every time expected return of investment (on selling singles to merchant) is more than 150% (so expected sell price of 1 rare, 3 uncommons and 7 commons is 15 gold or more) would fix the problem, still living a healthy margin of profit for people willing to do small scale market stabilizing by buying boosters (boosters are random, to have them attractive compared to singles they need to be a bit more profitable on average).
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Market actually looks and reacts much better now then before. By saying this I mean at least regarding prices of most key rares. Sure we used the system at the start but now it seems that it will settle as people stopped chasing gold or cards. I'm not sure how this at end plays on collectors leagues by players having wanted decks, but everyone had choice to boost up his collection or not. If someone didn't want to take this speedy way, he could just stay idle last 2 days. Number of friends here didn't actually care about merchant frenzy as they rather play sealed or casual, or they want to build their collection regardless of collectors league.
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On Monday, mid-afternoon, I noticed that Goblin Armory was buying at 2100 G. I sold my two copies and got about 4000G.
I then went and bought probably 700 packs of FoTR, selling off any rares beyond 4. I only pulled 2 Goblin Armories, but finished at about 4800G. Mind you, my FoTR collection was pretty light when I started. I had a lot of the good Uruk Hai stuff, and a decent start on rainbow stuff. But that was it. I had 0 PATHS, 1 SoSF, 1 Greenleaf, 1 Gandalf, 3 Savageries, 2 Goblin Swarms, 0 Glamdrings, 0 Last Alliance. But after a couple hours, I had a complete play set, and was up 800G.
I then went into RoTK, which I had next to nothing of, except a few pieces here and there for an Elf and Men deck. I started buying packs, and when I got down to $2200 G, I was getting nervous that my engine was going to be broken. But then I started opening my 5th or 6th copy of a gazillion good cards. Yesterday I ended the mid-afternoon with a nearly complete playset of RoTK, and about $3800G in my coffers. If it wasn't Christmas Eve and Christmas day, I could have kept going on this as I was still netting about 300G buying 50 packs at a time, but I wanted to spend some time with the family rather than doing 4 mouse clicks per booster. (buy, confirm, open, confirm).
I then built up my MoM and RoEL playsets, getting 4 of all the power cards. Ending at about $3400.
I then moved into TTT, which I had a pretty decent collection in. I bought in until I got 4 Desert Lords, and 4 Easterling Captains. I ended up with only 1 Ugluk I think, but I got out of TTT pack buying, because the power rares were too far and in-between. Although, I did get a foil Desert Lord, which I sold for 500G
I then hit SoG and MD, again starting with next to nothing, and got pretty close to complete playsets out those, with about 1000G left.
So, last night, I'm looking over my collection, and the merchent, and the only really hard to get rares that I need are mostly in Reflections - so I made my first real mistake and started bulk buying reflections. I didn't do too good there, as R+'s are just too hard to get, and stopped ending at 600G altogether.
Now, I could get back into my collection, and start selling off cards that I really don't need 4 copies of that are going good, like Eomer, Queen of Elves and Men, Greenleaf, Choke Aragorn, Cirdan, Aragorn's bow, etc and probably generate back up to $1,400 and could restart the engine and chase after sets like EoF or BoHD, which I didn't really touch because there are not enough power rares to keep the engines going in those two sets (all though EoF is getting close).
I could get behind a full reset of collections, as I'm surely not the only player who built more or less a complete playset over the past 2 days. But then again, when I think back to playing in the day, I remember playing against the best decks, so I'm sort of torn on this one. But I did what I did because I didn't want to be the odd man out, I assumed that many of the regular players were going to do what I did, and I wanted to keep up in the arms race.
I'd miss my collection before this card windfall, as I had good cards to build good decks from sets 1 through 7, and two decent MB decks - but I'm not sure what Marcin's best option here is to keep the "My Cards" leagues from just being "All Cards" leagues.
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By the way, if there is a full reset, I suggest we open up with a Collector's league in Fellowship Block (all 3 expansions legal from week one, make it a 3 week league). It'd be more or less a sealed league, and we can all start building our collections.
Any full reset though should probably have some notice, so we can all communicate to friends who stopped coming to Gemp, so they can get in on the ground floor.
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The full restart is very bad choice.. Because people who played here about 2 years will lost all what they built up for the long time.. That is not a sollution... On the other hand turn things on what were before two weeks would change only few things.. Only new players who have in two days made a full set will be angry but still I think its not fair that the new player should be fully geared as the old player who spent on gemp much more time...
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Also the fact that for settling down the price of Morgul Brute will result to the state that other cards will have just a funny small prices...
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What is it to you that other people loose cards but you don't? Wouldn't you like to play collector's league against competitive decks and players rather then wining against weak decks or struggle to get games in for the week?
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Well I think that is very bad sollution to ruin players their colletcions! (I mean CoS, hsiale...) Also I think that collectors leagues worked normaly.. But now almost everyone has a full sets.. Do you mean that this is fair? Someone build it very long time and another comes and gets it? That is not good... Trust me.. I have now almost full sets 1,4,7 and its very easy to get all other sets... I had about 300 rares before this new merchant.. Now i have about 2000... That is not the way i think collector should be
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That is the main contrast!!! It takes 8 months to get 300 rares.. But only two DAYS to get the rest of 1700... It is not fair..
Everyone can click on computer to buy and sell cards/packs.. But It took a lot of time to me to get a some good rares for 3-5 decks... Now I can build everything.. And I am just dissapointed that the player who joined today can have a same collection as me ... Thats why I love to turn it to the state before this new merchant, because I spent many hours in sealed leagues to get a few good rares and now I see that was pointless..
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I would assume that the people would be looking forward to the challenge of having more players with competitive decks. Playing a fully built Uruk-hai or Moria deck against all common decks becomes boring quickly (at least it should).
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Yes, but that is the point.. You are participating in sealed events to get better cards, to compete in the collectors, which should be the best league, because its like it was in normal.. (with the difference that you can be just rich to get best card, but you have to win them first) ... now it seems to be destroyed...
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Before anything else can be decided it has to be clear how collections are supposed to work over time. There are two ways how collections on gemp can work:
Either it is assumed that eventually everyone will get a full collection and can build perfect decks. OR it is assumed that there will "never" be a full collection (because of high prices, low amount of rares available, resets,...).
The first case is kind of pointless because if someone want to play with/against perfect decks they can just play "all cards".
The second case makes a lot more sense:
"sealed" for those who want to play with equal chances and "low" decks.
"all cards" for perfect decks
and "collection" must be something in between.
So it should be very hard to get a good collection and take several years to have a complete collection. Imagine it like a long time super slow permanent sealed league.
One Problem is this would discourage newcomers. So there needs to be an incentive or way to boost newcomers without giving them an unfair advantage. This is really key or we will end up with case #1.
Of course the merchant must work within that system. Selling a handful cards for several thousand gold and funding a full collection of the profit is BROKEN. There MUST be a reasonable maximum and minimum price for cards. Reasonable would be for example 10 times the price of a booster for selling a card. Buying from the merchant can be a lot more expensive, this will encourage booster sales and leagues.
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Merchant has worked exactlly as you discribe the 2nd case ;) But now is the first case
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That is untrue. Prices where completely out of balance and market was like a dead horse.
I for one am not new to this game but I discovered gemp few weeks ago. Before I stopped playing LOTR in physical wold :), I have gathered my collection from 1 to 10 almost fully or to point where I had all the decks I wanted to play.
That is why I would rather pick up where I left the game instead of just waited out period of xy weeks to get xy gold to by xy cards and then beat other inferior decks in collector's league.
I'm still unclear about your motives since I fail to see how this change affected you, but everybody has their high ;)
Even if someone got bothered to went trough a process of buying 10000000 packs it was a choice of ruining collector's part for himself and on purpose I would say...
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Well I play since May.. I have been participating in all sealed leagues since the time I have joined Gemp.. I always looking forward to the opening boosters and making better my collection.. I also was 2nd in movie but I have only one deck ... Also I was playing Fotr collectors recently and also I had one deck and when It turns to tower I had to sell some of my best rares to rebuilt the deck... Prices were more or less cool, I mean it was a long time run to collect best cards... It took me 8 month to win the collectors, that was a challenge...Now the mechanics were changed and mechant gives good prices to collect ALL... I dont wanna lose cards I get in these 8 month.. But I also dont want another 1700 rares I have obtained in last week... Thats why I would prefere the state before the new merc, when a winned match in sealed events had a value..