Advent Calendar 2023

[TsUNaMy WaVe]

Today's wallpaper was really cute.

I know and care too little about the Neo economy the get the full SAP drama picture, but I'd sure be happy to get one just for the sake of it lmao

[I_royalty_I]

But wait! We DO have a Neopets economist! It's sLaughter- I mean, Dice! Be sure to pass your concerns to them, I'm sure they'll do the right thing and pass it on to TNT!

That guy is sitting on 2,129,000,000 NPs in his bank account - last I checked. He's likely not "for the people" if I had to guess. He's in the group that is likely losing their wealth with each day lol

The average player doesn't use the BD at all. But if you really wanted a 150M item, you can save and eventually get it. You can make 3-4M a month in BD winnings, about a mil from daily quest/trudy earnings, plus compounding bank interest on top of all that. Not to mention plot winnings a few times a year. 1.5B? 3B? Probably not.

These are the kinds of things game economists would consider, which is why so many successful games have game economists on staff or hire them as consultants periodically.

That makes sense, I can definitely see how an economist would make sense. At the same time, that seems like basic enough economy talk that any ole person would be able to wrap their heads around it. Imagine TNT actually taking that step though.

All it would really take is someone with decision making power who actually plays the game outside of dressing up their pet to figure out a way to decrease the absurd inflation without nuking things from orbit.
This whole SAP saga makes me think that TNT really has no idea what they’re doing.
Daily quest should’ve rotated way faster if they wanted to crash prices but also maintain some form of value for the items affected instead of 2 months of the same pool of items. HT should be the anchor for certain items like BD, imagine if marbles wasn’t in the HT before the whole Sleep Ray thing, 100% freezers would’ve ballooned to 50m+.

That's what I'm gathering too. It's like the new CEO stepped in and is completely out of touch with the game. Eh yeah let's give em these items next, why not?!

I think people just come at the whole pea debate from very different perspectives depending where they are on the site.

If you already have significant neo-wealth, bd items etc and have been on the site for years then I'm sure it does feel like 1.5bil is a reasonable target to save up for and achieve. And i can only imagine how awful it feels if you have saved up for your 1.5bil item and then it gets released in a daily and goes down to 2mil. You still have your item, sure, but you've lost all the time and work you put into it.

But it's important to remember that the people who get to 1.5bil (and most players with that much actually have much more) are the top 1 or possibly 2 percent of players. 80 percent of players likely never get over a couple of mil. A decent number of players might get to the 100 - 200 mil range but have other goals, like buying PBs and a more basic BD set, and training etc, that mean it's very hard to get much further.

Without cheating or being a long term player with items that have inflated in value, it is very nearly unachievable for an average player to get into the billions.

I agree that goals (even unattainable goals) are motivating, but for most players 1.5bil as a goal would be like a grocery store worker planning to buy Facebook. Possible, but it's going to be the work of a lifetime. Neopets goals shouldn't be the work of a lifetime.

I don't think there's a way to fix the broken economy *without* causing some hurt to older players and the richest players who have a lot of items stored away, and that's hard to do as their voices are very loud - and I completely agree it's not fair and I would be upset if I was in that position.

But I think really the best thing Neo could do would be have a maximum price any item can be - lets use 300 mil as a draft example. Then whenever at item starts trending over that price, it goes in the HT at 300mil until market prices go down.

Wealthy players would still have items valued at a lot more than most people currently own, and having a capped price for everything would mean that even if someone with a 1.5 bil item effectively loses 1.2 bil with this policy, at least all the other things they want would also have dropped in price so their goals would also be more achievable.

Then Neo should focus on other areas of the site that aren't all about money making, like the BD, so that people have challenges that don't negatively affect other people in the pursuit of them.


(also todays wallpaper was cute)

I agree with you there. The average player will likely never reach the 1.5B mark unless they have been playing for a long long time. There are rare cases of it happening. I have seen a handful of bank accounts that are on account less than a year with over 1B pure in them, not to mention whatever items they have. Not sure if they are legit or how they got there - but they are out there.
At the same time, does every player NEED to get these high end stamps and BD weapons? They can play the site just fine with the affordable weapons and stamps that are currently out there. Is it cool to own one of the wildly rare items like Seasonal Attack Pea and attach it to your pet to take to the BD - absolutely! What about when there are more SAPs out there than ever before and nobody can sell them because nobody wants to buy them, because nobody trusts that anything they sell for will hold it's value long term? I'd argue that SAP will be just another item that was released, had it's moment, and then fades back into the night until the next thing is tossed out there.

Right now I think the smartest play is to sell whatever you possibly can for pure NPs, stock up on pure however possible. When the shit continues to hit the fan and nothing is worth what it used to be, you'll be able to come in and scoop it all up and play however you want. That's the strategy I'm planning to take from here on out at least

[Maluko]

still no SAP for me =(

[Marius]

They are going for 300mil at auction today, how is that worthless? It's still going to be worth a lot after this month is over because lots of people want two of them.

It has been three days only !

The fact that every item in the game can be devalued at anypoint makes it worthless to me. it just feels TNT is killing NP market

[I_royalty_I]

Pulled a random amount of shells off one of my lists. Ran through exactly 218 accounts at the advent calendar. Got 3 SAPs. This is stupid lol

[abaj]

I was late to the ambassador drama but I just wanted to mention how funny it was to read about the bullshit. It must have been hilarious to everyone watching how Herdy and co squirmed live on discord and neoboards. Nothing personal against these people, but they 100% deserved the flak they are getting. They should just quit being "ambassadors" at this point but I'll bet my SAP that these weirdos will never step down without a fight lmao.

[I_royalty_I]

I was late to the ambassador drama but I just wanted to mention how funny it was to read about the bullshit. It must have been hilarious to everyone watching how Herdy and co squirmed live on discord and neoboards. Nothing personal against these people, but they 100% deserved the flak they are getting. They should just quit being "ambassadors" at this point but I'll bet my SAP that these weirdos will never step down without a fight lmao.

What kind of flack are/were they getting?

[chii3d]

Pulled a random amount of shells off one of my lists. Ran through exactly 218 accounts at the advent calendar. Got 3 SAPs. This is stupid lol

1.4% drop? That's really low.

[Buizel]

What kind of flack are/were they getting?

Lots of people accused them on inside trading. If I'm summarizing correctly, people pointed out in the discord how a JN staff member bought SAPs while they were low and then flipped on selling them for higher than they were going for. Then, JN put a warning on site that the SAP may have been removed from the pool (without this being confirmed), which caused more panic selling/buying. The warning was then removed some time after, but the damage has been done.

Along with Herdy asking TNT to remove the SAP, a lot of trust has been lost for JN for some. People think that the staff member knew the pea would be removed, which is why they sold it for higher + the addition of that warning.

(Again though, I'm not saying this as I agree with the accusations, I'm just trying to beat summarize it.)

[I_royalty_I]

1.4% drop? That's really low.

Seems like it, but that's a VERY small sample size. I don't have the time to run through thousands of accounts to get a better estimate. Also, do we know whether each account is only able to get SAP one time, or can you get multiple? If you have a chance of getting it everyday, who is to say some people couldn't get multiple on their account over the 31days of the advent calendar.
Even though it's a pretty small drop rate, you add that up across tens of thousands (a lot of people seem to come back for advent calendar) or even hundreds of thousands of accounts (not including shells that we illegit folks use) and there could be an INSANE amount of SAPs out there in the wild by the time the new year comes.

Lots of people accused them on inside trading. If I'm summarizing correctly, people pointed out in the discord how a JN staff member bought SAPs while they were low and then flipped on selling them for higher than they were going for. Then, JN put a warning on site that the SAP may have been removed from the pool (without this being confirmed), which caused more panic selling/buying. The warning was then removed some time after, but the damage has been done.

Along with Herdy asking TNT to remove the SAP, a lot of trust has been lost for JN for some. People think that the staff member knew the pea would be removed, which is why they sold it for higher + the addition of that warning.

(Again though, I'm not saying this as I agree with the accusations, I'm just trying to beat summarize it.)

I hadn't heard of any of that. I just got peas not long ago, so doesn't seem like it's removed just yet. Still a very real chance for it to drop. I have seen rumors about reddit staff in cahoots with NT with regards to what items would drop in events so that they could sell them before they deflated. I'm sure it's all wild speculation but not entirely out of the realm of possibility. It's too bad JN got pulled into it, I think they do an AMAZING job with their site and have some truly talented people over there running things.