Mana token vendor?

[lulworthboy]

Just wondering if there could be a mana token vendor like coins or summert that are worth 200, 400, 600mill each ,rather than having to collect items and then lose mana actually making them?

They could also stack as then they wouldn't take as much room in the item box?

Just an idea I have had for a while and thought I would throw out there :)

[imported_some_guy]

I wanted this too. And it seems like a lot of the player do. You could bump/vote this poll that I made last week http://forums.trendyent.com/showthread.php?59399-Should-the-tavern-sell-custom-mana-tokens

but I don't think any of the devs read it

[Aim@Me]

Token was a community designed system. .. Trendy's limit is 600m and 2b for trades. . . just don't get confused with the devs XD.

[davidnj7]

they dont do that because they want there to be a mana cap. if they added tokens, why have a mana cap at all?

[SnakeChips]

they dont do that because they want there to be a mana cap. if they added tokens, why have a mana cap at all?

That's what I said, but not many listen to me lol. Plus Trendy themselves said they have a cap for a reason.

[lulworthboy]

Ah i see what you meen now. But surely after seeing the vast majority of people using tokens anyway maybe they should add it to the game anyway? Makes sense tbh and would make it much easier for evryone

[davidnj7]

you realize to make a token takes up to 3 times the amount you put into it? you lose money in the process. if people want to do that by all means let them do it.

[dtr86]

also it would be kinda useless i think, for me anyway, because almost 90% of tokens i make are during build phase, not in tavern.

though it wouldnt be bad if you had to pay 1.5x or 2x the price for the token. that way youd still be sacrificing mana to get around the cap but wouldnt develop as serious carpel tunnel from furiously upgrading weapons all the time

also kinda agree with the talk in that other thread about the upgrade costs for some things being way too high.

up to like 130 mil per lvl on my monkey at lvl 223 and still 100 upgrades left haha

[Ceron]

The mana cap is 2B because of a technical limit in how they coded the game.

What they need to do is add Mega-Mana equal to some quantity regular mana.

[Aim@Me]

i just sigh.

[JAMasterJ]

good idea. Everyone uses tokens already = fact. So why not work with the community and make it easier? Makes sense...

[lulworthboy]

Thankyou at least some one is seeing abit of sense rather than going on about coding limits and the dd economy

[SyDiko]

The mana cap is there to keep items from becoming super inflated.


Thankyou at least some one is seeing abit of sense rather than going on about coding limits and the dd economy

You're not seeing the bigger picture, and for the game's long-term survival, the economy within Dungeon Defenders is extremely important, especially for the new player. Think of it this way, who's going to buy your overly priced gear other than the 1% of the upper players?

This will probably piss people off, but I actually hope that Trendy does away with the ability to create, 'mana tokens' or make it so that fully upgraded armor when traded loses 60-70% of it's vendor value. This will stop unintended user inflation over time.

[iamisom]

The mana cap is there to keep items from becoming super inflated.

Exactly. Once the cap is lifted, what's to stop people from selling items for 500 billion mana? Remember that there are still new players coming in to the game. Lifting the mana cap would open the door to a wealth of issues that would detrimentally affect adding other features to the game.

[jersiq]

Exactly. Once the cap is lifted, what's to stop people from selling items for 500 billion mana? Remember that there are still new players coming in to the game. Lifting the mana cap would open the door to a wealth of issues that would detrimentally affect adding other features to the game.

Nobody is addressing the points about inflation that were discussed over in that thread graveyard called "Suggestions"


Nope, Trendy's fault.

Let me preface this with the following: I am merely a mathematician who dabbles in some economic theory for fun (not for a job). But I am willing to heavily wager this, no one at Trendy is an economist, which means that choices are made upon gut instinct more than anything.

So, with that being said here are the assertions:
1) The advent of superloot created the demand for more mana for players getting superloot. There is no denying this. Look at the differential in prices for upgrading godly -> Myth -> trans -> (wild guess that Supreme costs even more)

2) WAP's are inelastic. There are no substitutes. They tried to address this (unknowingly I imagine) by allowing the tavern to sell items, but that's even more random than drops and definitely less significant that a shop that can hold more than 3 items of a given type at a time. They furthered this chasm by making superloot drops harder to obtain. Now I am not here to argue about the philosophy behind this, whether it is roundoff programming errors, nerfs to the RNG or increased difficulty.

3) I can't believe I am saying this, but I agree with nikodareus. :P No single shop holder has any pricing information of their competitors. This in turn means that shop holders are not competing for customers. By keeping pricing information away from others, the shop owners are left to decide prices on their own. However, given the opportunity to compete, the shop owners would actually lower prices. In turn, pricing strategies would be different, and the goods would drop in price across the board as owners are sensitive to price changes. Again, Trendy's fault as they have not imposed a better shop system.

So, the economy is in the state it is in due to the faults of the implementers of the economy. (Wow, I feel like I am complaining about the President of the USA) Everything you see in the market is in reaction to a flawed system. Now it is JUST a game, so I try to remember that as I spend my fake mana on a bunch of binary code.

It has nothing to do with caps. Every measure of "Tokens" created by the players was a response to an already flawed system.

To clarify, simply sticking your finger in your ears and going "caps solve inflation, caps solve inflation, caps solve inflation" doesn't actually solve inflation. It's obvious you already have a problem when things are selling in the trading forum for 75 tokens.

[lulworthboy]

There is already mana tokens in the game and i sont see things going for 500 billion so what would be the difference between adding a vendor for these tokens?

[avaLancHe]

mana tokens are a good thing, its a mana dump, the idea being if you want to hold mana, you do it at a COST. Otherwise why do it.

You put money in the bank, tradeoff, you can't access more than a certain amount at once. If too much mana is floating around, things become overpriced, supply doesnt keep up with demand, as such demand peters out and new players cant afford a cup of tea,

This is Hyperinflation, read Zimbabwe 21st century of the Reichenmark of the World Wars.... Bit of history there.

[SyDiko]

To clarify, simply sticking your finger in your ears and going "caps solve inflation, caps solve inflation, caps solve inflation" doesn't actually solve inflation. It's obvious you already have a problem when things are selling in the trading forum for 75 tokens.

No one has stated that the caps SOLVE anything, we're iterating their intended purpose and why you won't see a significant cap increase or token vendor implemented on ranked servers.


mana tokens are a good thing, its a mana dump.

I disagree, and upgrading your gear is the intended, 'mana dump.'

This is why I don't bother with tokens, they are slowly opening the flood gates for a player driven inflation. Which is exactly what Trendy is trying to avoid. I will also say that any fixes for this is low on the priority list, but don't be surprised when Trendy eliminates the ability to trade items as tokens for profit.

There is a better solution to the whole mana thing, and I'm sure the team at Trendy will come up with the best solution for everyone.

[dragonmaster0283]

Upgrading your gear is the intended, 'mana dump.'

This is why I don't bother with tokens, they are slowly opening the flood gates to player driven inflation - which is exactly what Trendy is trying to avoid. I will also say that any fixes for this is low on the priority list, but don't be surprised when Trendy does away with the ability to trade items as tokens.

This sort of. Were already seeing it happen now since the soft cap was increased from 200m to first 400m and now 600m. Things which sold for 20-50m are easily being priced near 100m. Just looking on the trading forums and things are already selling over 4 times the hard mana cap value (8b or 40 tokens).

Now a token system "could" be useful but there has to be a heavy mana dump to it. Right now its what 20%-30 more expensive to make a mana token. If say a 200m token sold for 400m, it could be a way to drain out some of the high mana pools floating around. (Of course todays current tokens would have to be severely nerfed so that its worse then the 2 to 1 rate). Want to carry more mana above the max, well its going to cost ya.

But frankly I'm not really a fan of a token system.

[SyDiko]

This sort of. Were already seeing it happen now since the soft cap was increased from 200m to first 400m and now 600m. Things which sold for 20-50m are easily being priced near 100m. Just looking on the trading forums and things are already selling over 4 times the hard mana cap value (8b or 40 tokens).

Now a token system "could" be useful but there has to be a heavy mana dump to it. Right now its what 20%-30 more expensive to make a mana token. If say a 200m token sold for 400m, it could be a way to drain out some of the high mana pools floating around. (Of course todays current tokens would have to be severely nerfed so that its worse then the 2 to 1 rate). Want to carry more mana above the max, well its going to cost ya.

But frankly I'm not really a fan of a token system.

I agree. :)

[Armor Biff]

I'd happily pay 250 million mana for official tokens that are worth 200 million. There would still be a limit, since no one can carry an infinite amount of those (item box + shop box + floor).

[Goro]

Exactly. Once the cap is lifted, what's to stop people from selling items for 500 billion mana?

If people won't be willing to buy it for 500 billion mana, then people won't sell it for 500 billion mana. If someone is willing to spend 500 billion mana for an item, then why shouldn't someone be able to sell it for that much? This is simple economics - if no one will buy it for a certain price, then you won't be able to sell it for that price. If vendors want to sell their goods at all, they will have to keep the prices reasonable.



Remember that there are still new players coming in to the game.

New players won't be able to afford even the current cap of sell price, so the mana cap in no way affects them. Getting rid of the mana cap won't suddenly make people start selling low-value, entry-level items for any more than they are now.



Lifting the mana cap would open the door to a wealth of issues that would detrimentally affect adding other features to the game.

I'm curious as to what these issues would be. Right now it just seems like a misguided, arbitrary cap on the market. It's not even successful at the above intended effect - those that can afford paying billions for an item already are. They're just having to go through the clunky process of making tokens.

[DarkSoul]

Exactly. Once the cap is lifted, what's to stop people from selling items for 500 billion mana? Remember that there are still new players coming in to the game. Lifting the mana cap would open the door to a wealth of issues that would detrimentally affect adding other features to the game.

Just because someone sells something for 500 billion does not mean it is sold for 500 billion. Economies in games fail due to money being unlimited. The solution that many game companies take is buy putting in a money sink that decreases the amount of money in the system. Guess what you all ready have that there called TOKENS.

Having a hard cap is perfectly fine due to technical issue so long as that hard cap is viable for the market of the game.
e.g. a 2 billion hard cap would be silly if we needed 10 billion to fully upgrade an item. Im sure were not at that stage though supreme with 360+ upgrades might come close but anyone who could get that shouldn't have issues with mana because they'd have tokens coming out of everywhere.

Having a soft cap does nothing but limit people from improving the gear they have. The defender store website and using something called communication invalids new players from not being able to buy gear for themselves.

Even adding a feature that allows for players to buy a "token" that upgrades for a set amount and gives you what its worth regardless of the soft/hard cap would only decrease the number of tokens people use.

[iamisom]

I'm curious as to what these issues would be. Right now it just seems like a misguided, arbitrary cap on the market. It's not even successful at the above intended effect - those that can afford paying billions for an item already are. They're just having to go through the clunky process of making tokens.

I meant to say could detrimentally affect adding other features, not would.

I should add that this is all my opinion, and that clearly I need to retake some economics classes. The dev team is aware of the community suggestion for official mana tokens.

[zingfharn]

Since eggs are now basically worthless, why don't we just agree they're worth 200m each? Real world money is, after all, nothing more than a faith-based system.
I say all small eggs are now worth 200m.

Solved.

[Urza]

Since eggs are now basically worthless, why don't we just agree they're worth 200m each? Real world money is, after all, nothing more than a faith-based system.
I say all small eggs are now worth 200m.

Solved.

I am all for this as I have a zillion small eggs.

All these suggestions about this and that way to do tokens is all nullified by the true underlying problem which has not been solved. It is single biggest reason prices are out of balance and the economy is hyper-inflated. This problem must be fixed before we move on to a trendy backed token system because if we dont then it will be even easier for this problem to get bigger. That problem is hackers making tokens and until that is solved none of the rest of this means anything.

EDIT: Right now we have hackers with infinite tokens taking X time to upgrade items with pro mode. With that trendy system we will have hackers with infinite trendy tokens taking x/20 time to just buy trendy tokens without the need to upgrade anything.

[Toonfish]

The problem with this is, the eggs are just worth 100 mana. If someone get's payed in Tokens, but wants to spend mana to upgrade weapons or pets or whatever, they sell their tokens to the tavern keep. This is not possible with small eggs, as these are only worth 100 mana.

[JAMasterJ]

@darksoul I hear what you're trying to say - but surely you'd agree that all of the billions and billions needed to upgrade high end gear and pets is more than enough of a "sink" to drain mana from the economy? I think the issue of losing mana investing in token building is pointless and tedious... from the newest player to the oldest vets - the pets and armour (now also accessories) you have at your level of play will usually suck up in upgrade costs any mana you are able to earn.

I find it tedious at best, that to upgrade a trans pet with 300^s, I have to literally sell a fresh 600mil token every 3 upgrades!

Personally I would like to see both the mana cap raised, and the implementation of some form of Trendy endorsed token in game.
I'm fairly confident Trendy will sort it soon, seen as upgrade prices are coming dangerously close to the actual 600mil soft cap.

Regarding hackers - they will ruin the game no matter what system is used. Do hackers not bother to hack because they have to token build? No... So stopping hackers must be treated as a separate issue - while ensuring the game enjoys a problem free economic system for the regular player is an issue in itself.

[AmagicalFishy]

If people won't be willing to buy it for 500 billion mana, then people won't sell it for 500 billion mana. If someone is willing to spend 500 billion mana for an item, then why shouldn't someone be able to sell it for that much? This is simple economics - if no one will buy it for a certain price, then you won't be able to sell it for that price. If vendors want to sell their goods at all, they will have to keep the prices reasonable.
No ****. That's why player-fueled inflation is player fueled. You're not justifying overly expensive prices with "simple economics", you're just stating the blatantly obvious. The fact is, if players didn't have a fairly simple means of stacking up billions of mana, then no one would be buying or selling things for billions of mana.

That being said, I personally like the token system. It's really cool to see a player-created economy—especially since one can break through to late game with the AFK shops. The inflation thing brings up a good point, though, and I feel like the only way to solve that is by increasing the cost of creating a token. (I was also a fan of the Stone of Jordan. :))

I don't support an official Trendy token system.