Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Jun 25, 2023 12:28:35 GMT -5
Is it just me, or are a bunch of PBs, PPPBs and MPs suddenly flying off into the stratosphere as well? I'm glad the creative prize pool was updated, at least, but it looks like more needs to be done to keep the prices from going out of control. Maybe more daily prizes?
It's not sudden, it's been going on for years. When I bought my Pastel Paint Brush in 2021 the market price was 4 million. Now, in 2023, the price is 12 million. An increase of 8 million over 2 years might not seem like much to veteran Neopians who have a large amount of daily passive income, but a lot of newer Neopians really struggle to save that much in that time-frame.
The kinds of patch fixes that TNT has been doing (flooding the market with Christmas Meowclops, Faerie Petpet Paint Brush etc.) are... not really a long-term solution. If you were a Neopian saving up specifically for a Meowclops, you would have benefited, but if you were saving for a Black Petpet Paint Brush to paint another petpet, then you were out of luck since that particular item shot up into the stratosphere after the Meowclops re-release.
It's gotten to the point where the economics aspect of the game just feels very unfun and unplayable to the vast majority of Neopians. The creative contests also feel a lot higher-stakes than they used to be. The fact of the matter is, there's a limited number of prizes available, and winning even one multimillion-NP thing means the world to a truly poor Neopian. It's hard to be wholesome about other people's work when there's so much at stake.
I was working on grinding my AC goals this past week, but since today and tomorrow are rest days I'll be devoting that game time to the article instead. I think I have a good amount of survey data to work from now.
Actually, the best BEST way is really to crack down on bots.
Yes, this truly is the deepest issue. The root cause of why there's such an extreme scarcity of things like Kadoaties, r99 stamps etc. is because bots (piloted by cheaters) snatch them out of the shops and sell them for real money on the black market. I really wish TNT would hire somebody like neo_truths or Dice to look into the technical side of what's going on and remove that bottleneck on the supply. If TNT would run a kickstarter specifically for the purpose of hiring a developer with those qualifications, I'd be quite happy to put some money in. I feel very uncomfortable about buying more NC/premium when they continue to ignore the problem, especially with that April Fool's joke they did this year (which I still think was in poor taste).
This is too much for a Neopian Times article though, so I'll just be focusing on Neopians' experiences. The day-to-day of what's happening, on the ground. Essentially just describing a problem which I think is pressing and in need of attention.