TL;DR VERSION:
- Too many dragons in the system
- Not enough treasure to expand + keep buying dragons
- Automatically buy out all the dragons under a certain price range periodically, thus providing funds to expand + buy dragons and taking away some of the extra/unwanted dragons, bolstering the economy!
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FULL VERSION:
Whether or not the economy on this site is 'working as intended', the fact that prices as continually sinking and already at the point where there's little to no difference between plentiful, gened plentiful, and even common or gened common prices. This being the case, anything you do to gene or breed change your dragons you are doing at a continual loss, which gets incredibly frustrating. If you pay 80k for a dragon hatchling, and the next week that same hatchling is only worth 40k, and the week after that it's worth 20k, it gets incredibly frustrating, and turns geneing or scrolling dragons into something that can only be done at a loss. We've reached the point where if you want to scroll one of your dragons to turn it pretty, you'll have to accept that you're not going to see any return on your investment, which is incredibly disheartening for many people on the site, and makes them less likely to spent real money on gems, and time on the site earning treasure. You're less likely to buy hatchlings because prices will drop the instant you do, which in turn makes prices drop faster because so few people are buying. Something has to be done about dragon overpopulation and prices dropping, or the site will suffer because less and less people are going to want to spend money and time on things that would take years to earn back just the purchase price, if only breeding was relied on.
Something has to be done. Overhauling exalting has been discussed at length, but would probably require a LOT of work and reworking how things are done right now. So what about periodic buyouts of the AH?
Either randomly, or every time the AH hits a certain number of dragons, they could be bought out wholesale, or every dragon of a certain type under a certain price range could be bought out and exalted without it counting towards dominance (an in-universe explanation could maybe be that they were employed to help sort mail or deliver it or something by the AH). This would help drive prices of dragons who are gened or of higher rarities up and hopefully stabilize them there, would take excess dragons out of the population and breeding pool so there would be less raw dragons to clog up the systems, and provide a bubble of treasure to everyone who was selling dragons, who could then pour that treasure back into the economy or site, doing things like buying lair expansions and other dragons, to get things moving again.
A lot of the dragons bought would be unnamed. Exalting unnamed dragons is a hot topic, but given that there's already a name generator that's part of the site, it seems like it hopefully wouldn't be that hard to throw a name on the dragons before they were removed from circulation.
We already have a whole bunch of treasure sinks all throughout the site, but the problem we have right now is too little treasure (no one can afford to upgrade their lair) and too many dragons (that aren't selling), so what we need right now are more/more effective dragon sinks and extra treasure in the system, that can be used to get the ball rolling again. Periodic buyouts of the AH, or of every dragon of [specific gene type/breed/combination thereof] under a price range that would vary depending on the breed and the genes in question, could do that.
- Too many dragons in the system
- Not enough treasure to expand + keep buying dragons
- Automatically buy out all the dragons under a certain price range periodically, thus providing funds to expand + buy dragons and taking away some of the extra/unwanted dragons, bolstering the economy!
___
FULL VERSION:
Whether or not the economy on this site is 'working as intended', the fact that prices as continually sinking and already at the point where there's little to no difference between plentiful, gened plentiful, and even common or gened common prices. This being the case, anything you do to gene or breed change your dragons you are doing at a continual loss, which gets incredibly frustrating. If you pay 80k for a dragon hatchling, and the next week that same hatchling is only worth 40k, and the week after that it's worth 20k, it gets incredibly frustrating, and turns geneing or scrolling dragons into something that can only be done at a loss. We've reached the point where if you want to scroll one of your dragons to turn it pretty, you'll have to accept that you're not going to see any return on your investment, which is incredibly disheartening for many people on the site, and makes them less likely to spent real money on gems, and time on the site earning treasure. You're less likely to buy hatchlings because prices will drop the instant you do, which in turn makes prices drop faster because so few people are buying. Something has to be done about dragon overpopulation and prices dropping, or the site will suffer because less and less people are going to want to spend money and time on things that would take years to earn back just the purchase price, if only breeding was relied on.
Something has to be done. Overhauling exalting has been discussed at length, but would probably require a LOT of work and reworking how things are done right now. So what about periodic buyouts of the AH?
Either randomly, or every time the AH hits a certain number of dragons, they could be bought out wholesale, or every dragon of a certain type under a certain price range could be bought out and exalted without it counting towards dominance (an in-universe explanation could maybe be that they were employed to help sort mail or deliver it or something by the AH). This would help drive prices of dragons who are gened or of higher rarities up and hopefully stabilize them there, would take excess dragons out of the population and breeding pool so there would be less raw dragons to clog up the systems, and provide a bubble of treasure to everyone who was selling dragons, who could then pour that treasure back into the economy or site, doing things like buying lair expansions and other dragons, to get things moving again.
A lot of the dragons bought would be unnamed. Exalting unnamed dragons is a hot topic, but given that there's already a name generator that's part of the site, it seems like it hopefully wouldn't be that hard to throw a name on the dragons before they were removed from circulation.
We already have a whole bunch of treasure sinks all throughout the site, but the problem we have right now is too little treasure (no one can afford to upgrade their lair) and too many dragons (that aren't selling), so what we need right now are more/more effective dragon sinks and extra treasure in the system, that can be used to get the ball rolling again. Periodic buyouts of the AH, or of every dragon of [specific gene type/breed/combination thereof] under a price range that would vary depending on the breed and the genes in question, could do that.
Ours is the coldest blade
Ours is the longest night
Ours is the bitter frost
Ours is the chill that bites
Ours is the longest night
Ours is the bitter frost
Ours is the chill that bites