[Discussion] How do you feel about the recent inflation in specific NP items?

[Fiore]

Not sure if it was mentioned here but I wish the Sloth and other character accounts would do those expensive auctions for rare/retired stuff. Would be nice to get some of those items back in circulation, but mostly just to see people lose their shit over it.

I'm still pretty miffed over some morphing potions that were 200k and are now 2mil+ though

[flowerbeans]

Old School Charity Corner needs to come back...

[Ambient]

I kind of honestly think it's a little interesting the way things have been done. (This could be way off but it's how my brain is reading it) It makes me think of how certain RL stocks should have been able to be manipulated but the crazy things happening in the system working in other ways. Neo is simpler and these items are doing exactly what people thought these stocks would do. I'm not even 100% sure how to explain what I'm trying to say, maybe just that its interesting to see how similar tactics end up playing out in different environments!

[Emerchy]

Old School Charity Corner needs to come back...

This! I haven't done a CC yet, I was so looking forward to last years then it got cancelled

[flowerbeans]

It got cancelled officially but unofficially there was a few days where it went live. It was the old school one so those who participated probably had a lot of fun

The most recent official one was so disappointing though. Low drop rates in the boxes and a Rebuilding Dacardia Stamp..

Really hope they revert but that will come with a lot of other potentially negative implications as well

I kind of honestly think it's a little interesting the way things have been done. (This could be way off but it's how my brain is reading it) It makes me think of how certain RL stocks should have been able to be manipulated but the crazy things happening in the system working in other ways. Neo is simpler and these items are doing exactly what people thought these stocks would do. I'm not even 100% sure how to explain what I'm trying to say, maybe just that its interesting to see how similar tactics end up playing out in different environments!

It's interesting! But if you are a buyer then not so Now things will get REALLY interesting if they can somehow re-release r101s

[Kovac-Muldoon]

Honestly (and I know this is tangential), even reading any of the Neoboards is really, really frustrating. At least we don't hide what we do around here, yanno? I feel as if a good portion of people viewed as "legitimate" traders on the site have had some level of involvement with offsite cheating. The on-site economy is a trainwreck, and the only decent way to play the site these days is by cheating. I wish it wasn't this way, but it absolutely is.

These things are bound to happen in any video game that both has an in-game item economy and remains active for a really long time. Even if you don't have the mentioned price-fixers you will still see a lot of in-game wealth consolidated into the accounts of veterans or guilds containing them. The longer the game goes on the harder it is for nouveau riche to approach the levels of wealth of veteran players, and as the population of the game shrinks the more tight that uber wealthy group will appear to be. This is a natural and inevitable process. You can't blame people who work at something for years or even decades for having something to show for their efforts.

This isn't the case for most Neopets users however. Most of the super-rich and well-known players are cheaters at this point, like you mention, and they (alongside sites like clraik) are responsible for a lot of Neopets' decline as a website. They aren't exclusively at fault but they've definitely helped establish a meta for the black market which (again like you mention) has become a mandatory factor if you want to get anywhere on Neopets. Even if you play in the most legitimate way possible for years on end there's little stopping sites like this one from finding you, cracking your account's login credentials, peeking at whatever you've made, stealing it and selling it to those users who are desperate to keep up with their peers or appear accomplished in-game. TNT is slow to punish people who do this and the temptation of having years & years worth of rewards right now is too great for most users to resist, which ensures there will always be a reason to steal from the needy and give to the rich.

If you put yourselves in the shoes of TNT... how would you solve this? Would you even want to? Those users may be breaking site rules and fooling themselves but they are all that's left. They're the ones who buy the most NC. They're the ones who participate in surveys, site plots and whatever else is produced on the website. They are the "whales". Children aren't going to flock to Neopets any time soon. The only hope TNT has of paying their bills is appealing to long-time users, and those users patronize websites like clraik so frequently that they may as well be a webpage on Neopets proper.

[morecoffeepls]

The state of the economy is so frustrating. Then again, a dwindling player population, lack of events, and a lack of a natural monetary sinks will cause players to take unethical action to make money in a slow market.

I loved the old charity corner, it was a natural inflow of items to replace the lack of players. Plus, some old items finally reappeared after many years!

[Autobot]

The state of the economy is so frustrating. Then again, a dwindling player population, lack of events, and a lack of a natural monetary sinks will cause players to take unethical action to make money in a slow market.

I loved the old charity corner, it was a natural inflow of items to replace the lack of players. Plus, some old items finally reappeared after many years!

In the recent editorial, it was mentioned that they're thinking of going back to that mechanic for the CC, so hopefully that will alleviate some of the problems. I don't remember exactly why they changed it, but I wouldn't be surprised if a bunch of whining restockers/resellers were the cause; there was a small subset of users that hated CC for deflating their stock of 100 mil NP items that no one wanted to buy

The AAA opened back up so maybe that would help too, in the long run?

[Cavdude]

The rich will always be rich. It doesn’t matter what NP sinks they add. If the dr sloth account did auctions again, the item would just go to someone who’s already rich. That’s how it worked before.

[missymontero]

The inflation sucks. And a lot of users have the rare album items in their galleries. I emailed a few people looking for a few people looking to buy one item legit and nobody wanted to sell. Ended up having to buy it