What does having semi free market have to do with making a game more challenging?

Competitive =/= Challenging. I think we all can agree to that the term competitive could mean towards other games as-well right?

Regaining control of the economy means a lot of freedom for new development through stagnation. It might at first sound like a really stupid idea, but undermining the economy with 3rd parties, in this case real money as in player to player transfer 1) makes people like me loo down on how the economy is handled as it opens up for a pathway of scamming business that no-one really wants within the community. 2) it does however add a level of freedom to it, expanding the community from a game-oriented one to that of whatever lies closely tied to it, in Toribash I mainly speak of the player to player trading of joints and textures, however if one would cripple the trade of items such as joints and texture "slots" (I see o problems with texture to texture trade as there are no ways to control a market of user created content) nabi would be making more out of it, and just as in league of legends and textures there it would provide a new market for nabi, which then could invest more as a result of funneling, which leads to more work on the client itself which the market is built around.

However this is a entirely different discussion, that of micro and macro management of the TB economy, and I see little relevance of adding that trail to this thread. If someone want to discuss it I'd say it would probably be better to have the discussion through PMs and/or create a new thread for it, as I believe most players of today(!) would not like the idea.

toribash have perfect concurention economics model, (means one and the same product, many traders, many customers) therefore there is only one tool - price war. not like i give a fuck, but to me it's better not to have a free market at all.

idk how hard it to understand that having people selling tc for less than torishop price is not a good way to earn money yourself.
microtransactions are actually a good way to get money from your customers. all you need to do is to close free market already and after shit is sorted, introduce new pricing for tc. not before.
and it's gong to be clockwork if you bother to analyse the tc value before making any changes to price.
price rangeis obvious.

It is actually a quite hard thing to understand, seeing as you didn't consider all factors of a free economy.
You would actually have to prove mathematically that having people sell their items and toricredits independently harms the total potential profit, which I am sure you cannot.
Some factors:

1.
Many users invest toricredits into boosters, items that get sold for USD and so forth to have a good start into the economy.
Furthermore certain services such as VIP don't get uncommonly sold for toricredits by users, who obviously will have to put real money on the line in exchange.
Common sense won't really get you far in this matter.


2.
There is a huge community around the market. Getting rid of it would enrage many people, and certainly make many leave as well.
As you probably know, there are many people who don't even play the game anymore but still can be found being active on the forums. Those are potential customers for nabi as well.
We do not want to deter people.

alright, let's make a statistics which show ammount of marketeers and overal tb population. but even without, we can do some guesswork.

we both can agree that there are way more players who don't even know what the market is.

now, let's say marketeers buy boosters, tc, whatever

and let's say we will close the market entirely, and wait a bit untill tc value will get stable.

after that we make $5-15 tc packs (this is the perfect price range for f2p game due target market being broke children with no payability)
$5 is pretty legit amount of money f2p scrubs are okay to spend, so the questions is only tc.

now compare limited segment of marketeers who may spend more than $20 on tc and forum features to horde of people who just play the game and don't even use forums, who surely wold not mind to throw in small cash.

100 people spend $5 against 10 people spending $20
500 vs 200 just for start

and don't forget that once they made small purchaise they will be way more comfortable to buy again, and since there are alot of things you may spend tc on, you can be sure as fuck that people will make purchaise atleast several times.

isn't it obvious?

"hey i bought %amount% toricreds so i finally got %name% force yay! will try to save up on money mom give me for lunch and i will buy myself %item% yay!"

you need to understand what your target market is.

fuck, you don't even need a major in marketing to understand that.

I discussed this with nabi's marketing director. I represented your position to see where it would go. This is what he came up with:

The value of items strongly go down if in fact they become single use when you restrict the market according to your proposal.
If you can't sell your vampire force, it's only useful if you're wearing it. Leading you to have no reason to own items you aren't wearing on your character as you have no form of selling it.
Consequence: Marketing goes down, nabi makes less profit from people who currently buy things with the fact in mind that they can re-sell them.
The hundreds upon thousands of micro transactions that occur, which drive our economy forward, typically occur between small time users and few really high TC owning people.
Eliminate that and what the fuck is our economy based off of? 12 year olds hoping to wear the color BLACK?
If your targeting demographic is 11-19 year olds. Most of them without cash or a job, is it smart to base the entirety of your economy off Credit Card purchases? Of which are 100% cosmetic, and yield 0 chance of return as they can't be sold, exchanged. Particularly the free market animates people to invest into items because they know they can get some value back into their possession once they don't like them anymore.
Additionally: would there even be a Texture Art market? Probably not, since it depends on a free economy.
As a company, do you want to be remember after 7 years, to just say "Fuck you" to the people who have invested into your game like Toast, by making every item they're not wearing literally useless?

allow to sell items back to shop but with huge discount. problem solved

and allow more types of payment systems to make sure is easy and accesible to pay.

EDIT: yeah, if it will bring more profit in a long run i would without a question.

texture market is very specific topic and i'm sure there is a way to work around it aswell.

ah and btw i seriously doubt any much people over 20 actually play this game. toribash is bound to low hardware and internet requirements therefor it's appealing to children who play on old brother's computer or in extremely rare cases - studs who play it on notebook.

vast majority are 11-15.


so basically: allow more types of payment systems to make sure is easy and accesible to pay.
you are entirely correct that far less people have cards to pay, so there should be a nice big list of payment systems for scrubs to use. to make it convinient

payment systems that accept cash and turn it into e-money obvisously
eather by virtual cards or mobile phone

first of all, how many of these young players are marketeers?

now why should we care about how they will get it. if they will start to sell their butt on street to strangers, i don't give a fuck.

$5 is pretty much legit price tag for microtransaction. and to assume that our glorious target market is so broke that don't even have $5 a month is completely insane.

if it's not clear you MUST create hoops for players in f2p game to force em to pay for microtransactions. want it all and want it now? donate.

why it's so complicated?...

all toribash items have no gameplay value and bring no gameplay advantages.

no matter if you have orc or demon force, therefor it's only customization.

in short: if you want to look cool now - donate. if you want to look cool but don't want to spend a dime - jump hoops untill you will get it.

ONLY LOOKS


overall last thing you should care about is what is going to be the most comfortable for your customers. it's always a balance.
in f2p games it's a balance between what players are ready to pay for and how much of content you may make accessible for everyone while having desired profit.


and to answer your part on how to make sure peoplee will have items etc - pricing.

all required is to make up a statistics of average income per day and set pricing based on timeframes required to obtain items, since time is the only value free players spend.

i hope it was more or less clear.

I'm sorry, but that is a rather weak counter proposal to the points I brought up.
Having the option to sell items for far less than what you bought them initially for is not an option for many players.
Your other statements do not counter anything I said either. Particularly your statement regarding the art texture market makes it evident that you have no proper model in your head.
Feel free to think of appropriate counters, otherwise this is a rather pointless discussion.