ultra rares again?

[Rapsey]

Alright, time for another Q&A round.

I personally feel as if there's more you guys can do to mitigate this awkward place we always end up hitting. I don't have all the answers, but I'd hope this becomes a priority and the community can work together to find more solutions to this entire problem.

I want the same. That's why I'm taking part in this discussion and not just organizing the next sale.

For starters, the amount of discontinued items existing in PkHonor is ridiculous. (...) These are such beloved items that provide so much to nostalgia and fashionscaping, they shouldn't be locked behind a massive wealth wall or veteranship.

I agree, although I do think there need to be a few ultra-expensive items just so that there is something rich people can spend their money on. Maybe the items we have right now aren't ideal for it because they are indeed nostalgic, but I'd still rather lose a white apron as a normal item in the game, than lose a ToB item or something like that. Items like aprons or wooden shields would most likely never be used if they weren't rare.

When the server was being handed over from Hamade to Mike, I'm sure you had to face this whole issue with discontinued items head-on and it probably wasn't easy. But I believe it was at that moment you had to make a decision, and no matter what you did it probably would've came back to annoy you in the future. Why didn't you decide to reduce the amount of existing discontinued items at that time? Perhaps you already did remove and reintroduce some discontinued items and the ones existing presently are a result from the past decision?

That one is easy: because we didn't know. All these inappropriate gifts to friends were kept secret from us as well, and it's not like we went over the past 5 years of his logs just to go looking for those things (which would've taken weeks lol). It's not like anyone bothered to tell us about it. As I recall we found out about the first discontinued item that was introduced this way at least 6 months after it happened, and continued finding out about new items for several years after. Either way, by the time we found out all these items were already seen as untouchable discontinued items by the people who had them (and many others). At that point it seemed better not to make a rash decision but instead take our time and handle it with care.

Other items like legends were introduced by ancient bugs, years before we had the ability to do an eco scan and find them all. So there too we had the same problem: by the time we were able to remove them they were already seen as precious discontinued items.

It is so unclear to me what the ultimate goal is for PkHonor's discontinued items. Do you want to slowly reintroduce these items back into the game fully YES or NO?

Yes for some, no for others. For example the demon kiteshield is one we removed but aren't certain if we will reintroduce it because it is a custom item. Our main goal is to no longer have any items in the game that are discontinued (meaning they exist in the game but no more can ever be added). Whether they become active items again or get removed completely isn't that important to us, but in most cases there is no reason to permanently remove an item from the game.

Is the donator store the only way you're ever going to reintroduce these items back into the game?

I don't think so. I'd like to see an ultra rare occasionally being used as a special event reward but right now there are no immediate plans to do that so no promises.

If the rich keep using their amassed wealth to immediately obtain the discontinued items being reintroduced into the game... Is it really being "reintroduced" or just hoarded onto an account, further slowing down the process? Is that just the nature of things?

You're right, in practice the new ultra-rare items are almost identical to the old discontinued items. They're still worth about the same and they still get hoarded by the richest. The only real difference is that these rich players cannot permanently lock down the item now. This means the item can never become unobtainable in practice (only temporarily if everyone refuses to sell), but it also means they are sold way more often. Knowing that more will be added eventually encourages active merching. If you know no more can ever be added then the best thing you can do is to just sit on yours and never sell it.

This was one of our goals: to break the stalemate while changing as little as possible about the position these items occupy in the economy.

I agree that doing 10 would be better than just 1. Regardless of which option you go with for a given item, just be clear that the sale is not a 1 off and there will be more in the future. This prevents the whole issue of 'discontinued' items. We should never have discontinued items, only extremely rare items. This was a problem that you guys inherited, but you can avoid it in the future.

Exactly, that's what we're going for.

That doesn't mean the donator store should be the only source of these items of course. I think we should also consider occasionally using an ultra rare as the #1 reward for special (tournaments, big titan events and such). How they enter the game doesn't matter that much. The important thing is that it happens in a controlled way, and preferably only after careful consideration. Having a human decide whether to add a new one seems safer than relying on a 1/1M drop chance or something like that.

Never add stats to a SUPER RARE. That can be seen as p2w.

They can have stats, just not significantly better than other items. Look at the frozen whip and lava whip. same stats as whip but fasionable

Agreed. I don't see any harm in giving something like a dkite the stats of a rune kiteshield or DFS or something so that it is at least usable. Just like it would make sense that the gilded scimitar would have the stats of a rune scimitar even if it was an ultra rare. It just can't be better than commonly available gear.

Still reading your book (I'm kidding), but just to hit on this question; the reason players have a problem with this is because, other players trying to merch credits create forum posts such as these where they're trying to influence how they can make money with what items.

It's as if a player hoarded all the whips of chaos in the game and then made a forum posts discussing that they want the whips to be buffed, it only benefits them and they're trying to manipulate people to buffing it so they can have a fatter pay day and then say that their post is genuine because they care about the whip being buffed.

If I understand correctly the problem isn't that players do stuff to position themselves strategically or manipulate the market. The problem only exists if these players get to influence our decisions, which would then create a profitable opportunity for them.

It's kind of ironic how this situation is both opposite and identical to the way things used to be. The difference being that in the past it was the owners of discontinued items who did everything they could to influence our decisions to maintain this profitable opportunity for them. I think no matter what we do, as long as there's wealth to be gained people will always try to push their own agenda.

The only way we can really deal with that is to not let it affect our decisions. This is tricky of course, we still feel that everyone's opinion should be taken into account. So far I think we've done a good job to make up our own minds and not let other people force the decisions on us. We didn't let people manipulate us into keeping discontinued items forever and we're not letting anyone manipulate us into organizing sales. I think we should organize them when we feel the time is right, not because someone who may have a personal stake in it is trying to push us to do it.

I have been badgered about the next sale since lockdown started, yet here we are 3 months later and there still hasn't been one. Anyone is free to campaign for what they want, but I hope it's clear we don't let that make the decision for us. And believe me, it is a strange experience to be so reluctant when people are trying to throw money at you. Pretty sure this isn't how it goes on other RSPS lol.

Could we change item IDs and model on initiate to have a rare variant and then re-release a different armor to have all the same stats? Maybe one without a gold trim or something?

We could just give white armor those bonuses. Call it uninitiate armor or something. Just a crazy idea - not like anyone is using white armor for anything besides fashionscape.

This would make things significantly harder. It's possible, but it would also defeat the primary purpose of the whole undertaking: to get rid of discontinued items. They were all introduced through bugs and random spawning and none of them were ever meant to be untouchable for life. We see this as a mess that should be cleaned up, not made even more permanent by duplicating these items so the discontinued ones can stay in the game forever.

In terms of demand for Donator tickets: I have always been a fan of having more Donator rank tiers. Since the ranks are tradeable, they're basically a bit of a status/progression symbol. The current statuses only require 5,000 tickets per account (2,500 for Donator, 2,500 for Premium), which could very well be expanded upon with a new, more expensive rank. It won't have to have a lot of fancy perks IMO. Just something to upgrade to for players that would like to be top-tier.

Aside from that, I'd personally like to look into some account-consumables in the Donator store. For example, a scroll that unlocks +100 bank slots on use (up to 2,000 slots, or something). This makes it so there's a regular demand for Donator tickets.

I'm in favor of that. The hard part is just finding meaningful benefits without too much progress creep.

One downside to tradeable statuses is that sales rapidly dwindle over time. As soon as there's enough of them in the eco rarely anyone donates for them anymore. We should also look for a way to have statuses leave the game again if we want this to be a viable long term funding solution.

Lastly, I remember seeing a suggestion about putting the ultra rares into Mystery boxes (with a limited stock, of course).

This is something I am very strongly against. Loot boxes are alright the way we have them: cheap and without too much profitability spread. That way it's not really gambling, 'cause if you buy a few of them the profitability evens out completely. If you start adding ultra expensive items in them at a very low chance, that's when you are really preying on people who are sensitive to gambling addiction. It's like those casino games that use an expensive car as a prize to lure in people to keep going for that one more chance. I think that's despicable and we should never ever go that route.

There's also no need for it. I don't see how putting an ultra rare into a gambling wrapper is any improvement over just selling it. Other than filling our pockets more by preying on people's gambling addictions of course, but I really don't consider that to be a good thing.

[Thierryu1]

This is something I am very strongly against. Loot boxes are alright the way we have them: cheap and without too much profitability spread. That way it's not really gambling, 'cause if you buy a few of them the profitability evens out completely. If you start adding ultra expensive items in them at a very low chance, that's when you are really preying on people who are sensitive to gambling addiction. It's like those casino games that use an expensive car as a prize to lure in people to keep going for that one more chance. I think that's despicable and we should never ever go that route.

There's also no need for it. I don't see how putting an ultra rare into a gambling wrapper is any improvement over just selling it. Other than filling our pockets more by preying on people's gambling addictions of course, but I really don't consider that to be a good thing.

What about putting them into a new lootbox that you get from doing stuff, anything really, from skilling to pking (bit like PKP is right now, just make it way more rare).
The chance of getting the ultra rare items should then be like 5 times lower than an Magic stone (maybe even more) and if it is not an ultra rare you don't get anything. The boxes are untradeable and are only obtained through playing the game?
Just a random idea.

[Lykos]

Thank you for all your replies and interactions with the community in this thread @Rapsey!

[Rapsey]

What about putting them into a new lootbox that you get from doing stuff, anything really, from skilling to pking (bit like PKP is right now, just make it way more rare).
The chance of getting the ultra rare items should then be like 5 times lower than an Magic stone (maybe even more) and if it is not an ultra rare you don't get anything. The boxes are untradeable and are only obtained through playing the game?
Just a random idea.

Sure we could make it into a 100% random thing and let the server's RNG pick like 1 player out of every 1000 to receive a ridiculous surprise gift, but what would be the point? You may as well spawn 1T in random player inventories. Sure you can do it, but why on earth would you?

If they are given away for free I believe it should always be as part of some kind of contest. That way you are actually putting the item to use, by using it to create a very exciting event for everyone involved (and at the end also making one person very happy). If you just randomly drop it into someone's lap then all you've done is make one person happy by making them an instant trillionaire (and everyone else jealous for this unwarranted and undeserved gift). I consider that a total waste of an opportunity.