Golden Parrots and the Gold Industry

[Keaneoo]

Its been notable for a few weeks now that our regular gem sellers have pretty much made all the gold coins they need to already. In fact, if they have not stopped selling gem items all together, they are only trading gems for granite. This is not the fault of the seller(s), I am actually happy they have put themselves in this position, as they have had to trade a lot which requires time and effort.

However the effect now is that for non gem buying players, to maintain your gold industry is very tough. Today the only golden parrots for sale costs 260gc (3.46 coins: 1 gem), of which the seller is only selling x2. Again, this is not the fault of the seller, he can charge a high price as there is no one else to compete with.

Now assuming your gold industry is kept buffed 24/7 which is quite hard to achieve for most players, 1x golden parrot = 500gc from your coinage. Deducting the cost of the parrot in the first place and not taking into consideration the cost of coal and the buffs, that leaves you with 240gc profit.

This means the people who buy gems have an advantage that can be measured at over 50% compared to those that don't. Not to mention the fact that gem sellers are so few and far between now, it is not possible for everyone to maintain their gold industry without buying their own gems.

So the question I ask now is, is the golden parrot too much of an advantage? I have seen BB state they do not want the gap between gem buying players and non gem buying players to be too great, where with the current situation I think that is now the case. I think it really is time that BB tweak the gold industry so that it is at least possible to make it worth while, without the need to buy a golden parrot via any means.

[Qualan]

with other raw materials dropping in price, it is viable- comparable to the more expensive parrots- to build mines, upgrade to lvl 2 and mine em empty and keep 1 or 2 fully upgraded ones to fill with refill rewards from adventures or the odd parrot available etc

I don;t see too much of an issue really- esp cosiderign that once you get over the lvl 4 upgrade hump (or a bit lower for higher end buildings)- you hardly need gold

[Keaneoo]

Qualan, I count myself lucky as most of the buildings I would like to level past L4 are already over the L4 upgrade hump, but at the same time that the majority of players are not. On Northisle, it is still possible to make more gold coins selling building resources than rebuilding L1 mines, though I am sure this will change in the near future. My post is aimed at pointing out how large the advantage is for players who buy gems compared to those that do not, when looking at the gold industry and the golden parrot.

[Qualan]

yea- i got that part

like i said, i dont think the advantage is so grandly much larger unless they chose to spend a vastly bigger amount of cash- and then i don;t begrudge them the advantage as they are paying for others to be playing. However- if you look at the prices of 260 for a parrot- you have to wonder... as on this price level it is not really worth buying a parrot- keeping your mines, smelters and coiners fully buffed and make a profit in the process. At best you break even, give or take 10% so hardly worth the profit, let alone the risk unless you also perma buff your coin maker with rabbit charms etc etc

UNLESS.... the exploit is used, thne the pricing makes perfect sense. A cheater will happily pay it and make a whopping profit on it still. The amount of parrots all of a sudden no longer on the market can;t just be explained by all the gem buyers suddenly not buying gems anymore and selling items. I fear that quite a few supply some wholesale buyers and the trickle that reaches global-3 ends up being way overprices as prices (logically) adjust upwards to prices that he cheaters will pay

[Mystic]

The players who buy gem already got a big advantage, extra licenses, extra cheap generals, Silo's and ofcourse the extra explorers. All ofcourse costing real life money.

About the gold industry, i would like to point out that the materials used up to get the mine is already worth way less then the 598 gold ore it can generate.
An gold mine cost 1400hw, 1400 marble and 1500 tools. Also it cost you about 2400 coal to make it into gold bars, which will turn into gold coins without extra costs.

HW/Marble price is about 16 per stack, tools is about 18 per stack and coal can be bought as cheap as 8.

So lets assume you destroy the mine when it reaches 1 gold ore, so it will only got you 75% of the above noted costs.
Hw+marble = 2800/400*16*0.75=84gc, tools 1500*0.75/400*18=51gc, coal 2400/400*8=48gc. Total costs is about 183. Proceeed is about 299gc. So net profit is about 116gc.

As you can see ONE of the biggest costs is the coal. And then I even assumed an cost of 8 per stack. So the person buying the golden parrot is also absorbing the cost of the coal, which is about 80gc for 1000 extra gold ore (buffed extracted). And golden parrot cost then 260+80=340gc and you get 500gc back. Thats about 68% of the proceeds while somebody who is building the mines will get 183/299 61%. I personally don't see that much of an big advantage.

[Keaneoo]

Mystic, thanks for the maths on the L1 mine viability, it may be a case they are viable already after all.

In terms of your comparison of parrot vs no parrot viability, you didn't consider gem buyers.

(using your figures)

Rebuilding L1 mines 183/299 = 61% - player keeps 39% of gold coin generated

Buying parrot with gold coin 340/500 = 68% - player keeps 32% of gold coin generated

Buying parrot with gems 80/500 = 16% - player keeps 84% of gold coin generated

So yeah, that's why I think parrots are too much of an advantage now and that the gold industry needs tweaking.

[Jonnahen]

as my own calculations all ready showed me, it is still profitable with buying parraots, even at 250.

Second thing, all prices are controlled by a single trade sheet owned by one guild. Because of trade sheet we dont have afree market. Also effect the prices on coal for gold production.

[Blebekblebek]

destroy it, switch to beer production,no gems required.
my coinage only provide less than 5% of my real coins income.
btw there's a lot alternative for Gold refill.

if you really desperate need of gold ore, you can also rebuild gold mine since it's lot's cheaper rebuilding mines than buying refills.

well, I'm not really concern about gold refills, you still can continue your journey without it, and eventually you'll get it anyway from adv.

I'm more worried about Noble Deeds demand and others important stuff like Improved drill plans.
this game is really dependent with gems, to whoever say it isn't, well you just haven't reach the part that you need gems stuff so badly.

I'm lucky I was able to increase my population cap to 4.5k right before gem seller stop selling their gems.
so I'm able to do 2-3 adv/day and keep retraining for 2days, if you had less than 2k (and I'm sure most people even have less than 1k), well... just enjoy slow pace of the game.

market price has nothing to do with real currency, people have their own standard value for their money, and I respect that, however this also prove that free player has no longer being benefits for this game unless they have something useful for paying gems with something they need/demand.

most people on my friend list (specially lv 32 and below) is already quit since I never seen them online.

This is my opinion from me, I don't really care if you agree or not, it will never change anything either, over and out.

PS: spending money for games is usual things, but spending money to continue your cycle production in free-games is absolutely ridiculous, it's even worse than paying subscription for pay-2-play games.

[Mystic]

Jonathan, what you said is nonsense.
Trade is controlled by supply and demand not by one guild. The prices I mentioned in my post are based on personal selling experience. Its rather simple, when there are no new players comming into a game, the number of people buying produced goods decrease. New players get a sizeable amount of coins in the first couple of days and often use that to speed up the game. You can see that the most clear at the price of hardwood/marble, as those items are used to upgrade buildings. When a server matures you see the demand for those goods grow lower as more and more players get into the gold-coins upgrade range. Then demand for coins will increase and prives overall will decrease, more people having to pay 500gc to upgrade their buildings to L4 for instance. Then you will see demand for Exotic planks and granite go up when people will move up to the L5 and expert buildings. At the moment I expect that Newfoundland is clearly at that stage and the most advanced players in Northisle are also there. Ofcourse also that phase will end, and then the demand for building materials will be completely gone and the only demand will be for map fragments, adventures and sometimes some ore and brew.

At my server I already know severall players who are barely doing anything at their building industry and I expect that we have the same situaition in the first server. In theorie demand for gold will be going down soon, but sadly it won't be replaced by anything else.

[Jonnahen]

Mystic, Dont tell me what i said is nonsence, because the trade sheet has never been responding to "supply and demand" but more what is fitting them best.

People are using the trade sheet like a bibel, prices are not controlled by supply and demand, but more on the prices that they want them to be fixed at.