Celestine Neither, really — event participation doesn’t follow a Gaussian distribution, so mean and median values over the set aren’t particularly useful. We actually find that players participating in events like these generally fall into one of three distinct groups: those who event casually, those who make a concerted effort for the duration, and those who go a little nuts. When referring to an “average” player in this context I am referring to what is more-or-less the median of the second group, and thus is unaffected by people who e.g. collect a few dozen charms through the entire event, nor those who e.g. break 6000.

Keilin Alyr We do actually keep track of submitted words rejected by the dictionary, so that we can review them to see if any warrant inclusion. In case you are curious, expand below to see the top 100 so far. Most are either proper nouns, foreign words, misspellings, or combinations of letters that a hopeful player thought “look possibly wordish”, but there are indeed a few here and there which would merit adding. It’s not a perfect system — so far you’re the only person to try submitting “jicama”, so it’s currently sitting at number 2,630 between “jeu”, “jia”, “jid” and “jidn” — but it’ll help add the popular ones at least :)

Your “bad science” comparison doesn’t make sense here and seems more like an attack on the site’s integrity than anything else, especially since you seem to be insinuating that the high prices of buying the pets from the shop is meant to encourage players to spend real money on gems for shroom fodder. The latter argument doesn’t hold up because nobody is forced to buy gems with real money; there is and always has been the option to buy them with nuggets, which, although it can be somewhat expensive, is a valid alternative for all players. The former argument doesn’t account for human error. I think that the main reason event items/coats seem so expensive is that many people want both poses of each pet, which is totally understandable, but wasn’t taken into account in the calculations. That may be why there’s such a huge discrepancy in what the “average” player was “supposed” to want (all of which they were intended to be able to reasonably get) and what the “average” player actually wants, which can’t necessarily be attained by one person alone. But I do think that miscalculation was accidental, not deliberate as you seem to say it is.
Cosmo

e/ Oh look we have a thing on it. Yay! xD
My curiosity has been satisfied. And yay I’m gonna get discounted from the averages tally for being crazy! :3

polygone I must have misinterpreted your tone, apologies. I do see why it’d make sense to only use the statistics for how many charms each player earns in this case, so I guess my statement about trading is kinda moot here. |D Personally, I still like that the coats in the shop don’t cost more than the mushrooms themselves, but I get why making the mushrooms cheaper might be appreciated.

_{That’ll teach me not to try to analyze data way early in the morning. :‘D}

Myla Question! :

I love he black sclera! and I know I can toggle the iris, but it leaves behind a mystery glow? Is it just because it’s a layer smushed with the sclera? Or is it something that could maybe be grouped with the iris to be toggled off?

also pinking King, maybe???

Upon some reflection, I am of the opinion that the bag system is too flawed to merit continued use in Mycena Cave events.  To be upfront I am coming to this very biased (I was averaging over 422 charms per day this event, and quit after the mushroom bag gave me the lower shroom 4 times in a row.  I also struck out every time in the previous event.).  That said, I’d like to share why this system should be taken down.

To put it simply, direct purchasing just makes sense.  I am sure there are reasons for having the bag system; maybe it’s to encourage trading/sales with other users.  You can achieve this will fairly high prices (not saying we need a raise from what we have now…I actually like the current direct purchase prices) instead of not letting users control what items they get.  Many people put in a good amount of effort for these events.  I was personally putting in 12 hour days a lot of the time.  Prize shops really should be straightforward.  I appreciate that it currently CAN be straightforward, but for reasons I will reveal below, the bags should still be done away with, in my view. 

Mycena Cave events used to be bag only.  After a while, the ability to buy items directly was added to the shop.  I’m not sure people are paying attention to the interplay of these game mechanics.  What the bag actually is, and the purpose it serves, absolutely changed from its initial conception because it now has to be seen in relation to direct purchasing.  You can buy directly for a higher price, but you can try for items more cheaply by buying the bag itself.  So what the bag actually is, post direct buying, is a lower price for items with the tradeoff of RNG.  It’s sort of like buying booster packs after the invention of LCGs.  Cheaper per item, but odds are you won’t get what you need.

I want to talk a little bit about the mushroom tier, as this is definitely its own discussion.  Again I actually think the direct purchase prices are fine.  They are maybe high to some people but later on I will propose an alternative to the bag system that might help that a bit.  The bag of this tier is especially wonky, since there is a ton of desire to get the event coats. 

This brings us to the eternal struggle of this site, trying to find a balance between older/more hardcore players and newer/more casual players.  Obviously the best thing to do is find a way that gives the most to both groups.  I feel that the bag system’s great flaw is it can be needlessly brutal to both groups.  Maybe a player really wants that Dras, but they can only manage 1934 points.  They buy a Toad Pouch.  Ineki.  They try again.  Ineki.  No one buys the ineki shrooms because everyone has 3 ineki shrooms they don’t want already.  What is this somewhat moderate/casual/busy with RL player going to do?  Well, nothing. 

Obviously striking out can happen to people who go ham in these events.  I spent 3800 points and have 4 inventory fillers for my troubles.  But people who try hard for these events are also boned in other ways.  I was 0 for 4 at a time when others were 2 for 2.  So people had 2 dras to show for about half the work I put in.  There’s no real reason that efforts to help the more inactive players should lead to this kind of possible scenario.  Something isn’t calibrated right.  These events should be 90% meritocracy 10% efforts to help the less active players not get screwed over.  The randomness of the bags is the culprit here.

In any case, this creates a problem because the people with good RNG and get a Dras or two immediately get to sell it for 100k or so, and everyone watches this.  And then we watch as the price of the Dras goes down as more and more are redeemed by the bags.  Way before someone can direct buy the Dras after grinding 2375 charms, the Dras has already begun deflating because of other people getting lucky.  This is a deflation that happens every event, and it puts pressure on people to try the RNG for themselves.  Some people get two Dras for under 2000 charms, and sell the shrooms for 180-200k total.  Other people will direct buy for 475 charms more, and get a mere 75-100k for their troubles.

I also think some of the lower down items have low values because many are redeemed in attempts to grab a different item in the same bag.  Like maybe the Ineki shroom would hold its value better if it wasn’t leftover scraps of Dras hunters.  Fewer redeemed, better value.  I think the bag system prematurely hyperdeflates items by generating a ton of them for a price way below direct purchase price.  I’m not convinced that it’s actually good.  Yes yes I am sure it’s awesome that new users can grab event coats for 20k or whatever, but pricing for new users has never been the weakness of the site.  The site’s weakness in regards to new users is it’s tricky to keep them engaged and interested in earning nuggets in the first place. They don’t like grinding, so no matter how ridiculously cheap and new-user-friendly items and pets get, it won’t make them go through the motions.  Grinding itself is the thing to fix.  At a certain point we have to make it so items hold a decent value for the sake of users who actually stick by the site.  But that’s its own discussion I guess.

So I think the bag system should go.  I do realize some people find the direct purchase prices rather high, and so I have come up with an alternative to the bags that still allows for purchasing cheaper than direct purchase prices.  It will need its own name, but for now I will call it Hot Buying.  Basically the player keeps absolute control over what they buy from the prizes, but they will be able to Hot Buy a certain number of times per item grouping.  So basically keep the tier system and associated pricing.  Hot Buying is buying an item for half of its direct purchase price.  Right now I am envisioning a 5,3,1 system.  You can Hot Buy 5 times in the bottom tier, 3 times in the middle tier, and once in the mushroom/pet tier.  So instead of buying a toad bag for 950 and hoping for that Dras, you buy it directly for 1187.5 charms (rounded up I guess).  The trade off for the 1187 Dras is paying over 1500 for the Ineki, etc. 

This could obviously be tweaked a ton, from % off to allocation of Hot Buys.  It might also be worth it to delay Hot Buys until like a week after the shop opens.  It’s hard to say what slightly more expensive but way more guaranteed top pets would do to the market.  I do think events should in fact reward those working hardest in the event first, and then come back around and try to make sure other people aren’t screwed over when it all ends.

Yes yes I am sure it’s awesome that new users can grab event coats for 20k or whatever, but pricing for new users has never been the weakness of the site.

A user cannot currently buy any coat for less than 25,200k nuggets / 7g for fodder. Even a “cheap” 20k shroom (which still represents a week of maxing out daily on games for a new user, as is) technically costs 45k when you incorporate the cost of the base pet to feed a mushroom to. Whether event coats should be considered special/elite enough to be priced out of newer (or casual) players’ reach is a different discussion, but I very much disagree with the implication that pet collecting here is easy for new players (especially relative to other sites).

glitch
If I tried to submit a rejected word 120 times would it mess with your table? Just wondering /whistles

frieza I’m sorry that you got such terrible luck with bag opening and many of your points are valid and could be extremely helpful. However, removing the bags and leaving prices as they are, even if you do discount 1 mushroom per event, it would exclude and severely limit many people. I agree that active users should be rewarded more based on activity and you are because you get more charms to spend. However “active” is in my opinion not so black and white. Someone could work a 10 hour shift, play for 4 hours, sleep for 8, do real life things for 2. I’d consider that pretty active, they’re spending a majority of their free time on here. I know I’ve been extremely busy with work for this entire event and while I’ve still been active as much as possible, I’ve been limited by what time I have. Without bags, I wouldn’t be able to come anywhere near close to getting the different pets. Perhaps another alternative to your suggestion. An option to trade in unwanted items at half the bag price. This would slow the deflation of prices and reduce the insane numbers of unwanted items without making it too unfair and giving you unlimited chances. ex. trade in ineki shroom for 475 charms. not enough to buy a new bag or come anywhere near buying a pet outright, but high enough to be a consolation prize and encourage users to trade in unwanted items.

edit:
glitch just a quick comment. I was reading through your explanation of why prices are higher this time and while I agree with most of what you said, I think it’s important to note that both poses for both coats are vastly different from one another so it’s much more like having 4 coats than 2. I understand that pose change shrooms are only 5k so it’s an easy swap, but that’s assuming someone only likes one. In order to get all of the event pets you’d need all 4.

Jacq  We will have to agree to disagree on that, though I will admit my perspective is informed by Neopets, a place where you’re lucky to make 10-50K a day and yet some things cost 1,200,000,000 neopoints.  Coming from that site, the ability to get a huge number of things for less than a month’s effort is mindblowing.  It’s not about pricing them outside of a new player’s reach for me, simply because I don’t think they actually would be.

Fie95  Yeah maybe just one discount at the top doesn’t work.  I think it could be tweaked such it could be a viable alternative to bags.  I’m not sure what that would look like, though.  The example you give is one I tried to give as well.  What if the person you described is just after the Dras shroom but only have the time to generate around 2k charms?  Then they have to try through the bags.  If neither yields the Dras, then they wasted their entire event.  It all comes down to the goals of the hypothetical busy with real life player.  And fodder/no fodder has become part of the discussion for this event.  I spent 3800 charms and got half of the event coats, though I would need to extra cost of fodder to use them.  Under the system I brought up, I’d be guaranteed 3/4 event pets, no fodder needed, for a few hundred charms more. 

frieza I don’t know that it’s fair to compare the cost/effort to obtain a new event item (like a 12th hour mushroom) to something that’s likely over 10 years old (like uh *googles* a marafin?). I also don’t know the relative worth of neopoints to dollars, either, but the “cheap” 20k shroom in your example is still $5, which is enough for a light lunch in most countries (ie not insignificant), or $12 if you account for the $7 pet as well, which can get you a combo meal, bottle of wine, or an entire video game (a nice one if there’s a steam sale lol).

(sorry my knowledge of neopets is pretty out-dated, but my impression is that there’s a lot of items/crap lying around there for cheap/free. Have they really cut down on the mountains of books/plushies/clothes/bits of garbage/food? Or are you making a distinction between “items” and “items that actually serve a purpose” like paint brushes?)

frieza not sure if I’m reading correctly so can you please clarify what you think the problem is with my suggestion or did you think there was no problem? Had a little trouble following what you said.
Also not sure where you’re getting the numbers that you would get 3/4 pet? The math doesn’t add up on that. Also what about items? Even if that is what you got, it isn’t an amazing haul considering you’re at the very very top of activity level so the average person would get way less. It’s extremely unfair and unreasonable to require people to spend 10+ hours a day to get the majority of event items/peta, not even all of them. This option would leave the majority of people getting very few prizes/pets. Most people aren’t able to hit those numbers. You’re using your numbers to base this suggestion off of when you’re wayyyy above the average, maybe use someone else’s numbers?

Jacq  Well for what it’s worth, real world money isn’t a consideration for me here.  In-game effort is my focus. (Neopoints for money gets your account frozen, by the way.)  If it’s balanced right, spending real life money isn’t a necessity in the first place.  And I think that is something Mycena Cave is really good at.  Appealing to people making the choice to eat or not, or alluding to it, is kind of weird to me.  I guess it can be useful to equate the cost of a 20k shroom to a meal, but in my way of thinking it makes way more sense to treat it as time spent grinding the daily 3k.  If people put in the time to be able to grind efficiently, we’re talking as little as 90 minutes out of their week spent grinding.  You can make arguments that the few months it takes to learn to do that is rough, but people really can get to a level where they aren’t committing that much time per day/week to gather resources.  If people can grind 21k for two to three hours effort, that should be how we calibrate the site.  Should the site be built around people who put 0-30 minutes of effort in?  I don’t really think that makes sense.  If you’re not grinding often or at all, the tradeoff should be waiting longer to get what you want or to go ahead and spend money on the site.  The effort to get 90K a month before interest and fishing is pretty minimal, and how far that 90k goes is extraordinary. 

And it isn’t limited to old items.  A new item on neopets can be released and if it has a good function to it, it could easily start out at 1M neopoints or greater.  Maybe singling out older items isn’t 100% fair, but its use was to indicate this sort of problem.  Try grinding 10k neopoints per day from the games for a year.  How much effort that takes and how little it goes towards worthwhile items is pretty atrocious.  I think across ten years, I was able to build a networth of 40m on my own, and a lot of that came from the prize shops of events.  Meanwhile it costs hundreds of millions to have a decently competitive battling set.

I am talking about items worth getting, whatever the reason.  It doesn’t have to specifically be useful.  Plenty of items have value because of rarity and the nature of collections on Neopets.  Some are weapons, some do other things sure.  But I am talking about a general class of items worth having.  This is for sure distinct from the pool of 20 items various dailies give out, etc.  Generally speaking it’s hundreds of thousands to a few million NP for the bottom of this class of items.

Fie95  Do you mean the half value sell back suggestion?  I didn’t really speak to it at all in my last post, I think.  But it could be a way to go, I’d need to think on it more.  As or the 3/4 pets, it should make sense.  I was saying that for a few hundred more charms, like maybe 400 I didn’t precisely add it up, and in conjunction with the Hot Buy suggestion, I could get a Dras and both Ineki as pets…guaranteed.  Maybe it’s more like 500.  1188 Dras + 2 regular price Ineki.  In any event it’s also the Dras of your choosing and the Ineki of your choosing for under 3k charms.  No fodder step needed, you just get the pets.  Compare that to trying for three toad bags and getting three ineki.  That’s the same number of coats but fodder is needed.  And you also don’t get the Dras.

As for items, I am of the opinion these events are better for the economy if not everyone can get everything.  It helps add a little bit extra value to the items while also incentivizing commerce between players.  There’s no real reason the bottom items for events shouldn’t be like 2-3k, but they often drop much lower.

Well this is getting a little accusatory on your part.  I was well on my way to over 6k charms but was making the case for people who could only manage 2k charms and wanted the Dras and so were forced to try for the toad bags.  If you can’t acknowledge that I am trying to be conscious of people who don’t earn as much as the higher end of achievers, then there really isn’t cause to discuss after this post.  That wasn’t very generous on your part.  I’m trying to discuss ideas that can benefit as many people as possible.  If the much lower end of activity wouldn’t benefit from the Hot Buy system as it currently stands, then by all means tweak it.  But I’m not convinced the bag system is the answer.  As I have said before, it can be needlessly brutal to all players, regardless of their activity level.  That should be done away with, if possible.  This is an exploration of the possibility. 

frieza
I think we’ll have to just agree to disagree on that point then. I think a lot of the other stuff you said makes sense - though in general I think the “hot buy” concept seems easily exploited (I don’t see how you would stop someone from selling their “discounted” slots, and therefore devaluing the items across the board to the discounted price - similar to the way fodder prices used to be repressed to the 3g “trading free”, because people were able to purchase a newbies “free” initial pet.)

Fie’s idea of being able to alchemize unwanted items back into currency is an interesting one - and it’s used to great effect by most other games that utilize loot box systems. The only issue is that it would introduce direct-charm trading with it, which it seems like the site wants to avoid. (e.g. if Stony Steppers can be alchemized for 20 charms, that means buying stony steppers from someone is “buying” 20 charms). One one hand, this is a positive for the issue I pointed out earlier of “trying, but not hard enough”, so someone who only found 2000 charms only needs to buy enough to “mkae up” the cost of the pet. But removing the account-binding from the charms also reduces the rarity of the expensive items (potentially at the cost of increasing the rarity of the less expensive items?).

FWIW, I was equating it to the cost of food for 3 reasons:
1) comparing pet site currencies is comparing oranges to daydreams, but relative real-dollar values are something you can talk about. For example, you can’t buy flight rising treasure for real currency. But you can buy gems, and you can trade gems for treasure. $1 buys you 100fr gems, Nearly every pet game has systems whereby you convert real money to in-game currency or items, and if it doesn’t then it’s not really a fair comparison to systems that do (it would be like comparing a free2play MMO with The Witcher 3).
(On neopets I remember buying a babaa plush, and using the code to get a virtual item, which I think I sold/traded to another user for neopoints)
2) I was looking at the wikipedia page for the Big Mac Index, which is for something else entirely (understanding currency exchanges), so I was thinking about different ways to value the cost of something, and how something like food/fast food is a pretty good point of comparison.
3) idk I was probably hungry lol

Fie95  It’s not clear to me that ANYONE should be able to get everything in an event, and it isn’t clear how far the ability to do that should be extended to the lower end of activity.  If someone redeems 500 charms during the event, should they be able to get everything?  1000?  2000?  What’s the cutoff for this, if there even is one at all? 

I guess at this point we need to hear from people like glitch and Myla and learn the purpose of the bags in the first place.  My guess, especially since direct buying wasn’t added until users asked for it, is to create scenarios where you have multiple items you don’t want and you use them as trading material for the items you do want.  The bags as a cheaper way to get items could not have been the intent of bags when they were introduced, so what I just said makes sense as far as I can tell.  If it’s true, then staff never wanted everyone to be guaranteed everything in an event in the first place.  Maybe that has changed, but maybe it hasn’t.  They are the architects of these events and would obviously be keeping an eye on how they plug into the greater economy of the site.  They probably want items moving between accounts, but that’s just a guess on my part.

And for what it’s worth I intentionally picked a below average number for my example of the person who only managed to get around 2k charms and really wants that Dras.  As glitch mentioned on page 3 of this thread, the average player will have around 2600 charms by the end of the event.  You’re right that Hot Buy Dras + Full Ineki is probably a bit above this, not to mention not having much room (or any) for the lower bag items.  But again I don’t think we actually know people are supposed to be getting everything in an event.  It might just be that’s what we want as collectors and participants.  And again you run into the problem of how far should 100% event item/pet collection be afforded to the lower ends of activity, IF that’s the intent of the events at all?

Also the 90 minutes was referring to efficient daily 3K nugget grinding, and was not related to the event proper.  Jacq was discussing fodder costs and larger site questions surrounding newer players. 

I want to bring the discussion back to Hot Buying again, since I think it or a related system could be tweaked such that it could compete with or even replace the bag system.  Let’s take a look at the Cat Pouch:

As you know I suggested a 5:3:1 system for the item tiers, and so for the Cat Pouch you would be able to directly buy one of each item for half off.  That amounts to 237 charms.  Now obviously direct purchasing each and every item is double that at 474.  But here’s the kicker.  Buying 5 Cat Pouches and getting a unique item each time is 225 charms.  The odds are pretty good you won’t get a unique item 5 openings in a row.  But even if you do, the savings are negligible.

As you go up in tiers, the value becomes lower of course.  It occurs to me though that you could potentially float the numbers.  So maybe go 1:3:5 if you’re pet oriented.  I just came up with that now though and haven’t begun to analyze it.  In any case following 5:3:1, let’s look at the Owl Pouch.

Direct Purchasing the Owl Pouch items will cost 1000 charms.  Applying the Hot Buy to the three most expensive items, it costs you 653 charms to get one of each of the mid tier prizes.  It would cost 475 to buy 5 owl bags trying to get one of each item.  And once again, good luck with that king of RNG.  Doing it in 7 bags is already 665 charms, more expensive than Hot Buying and getting one of each directly.

Adding it up, my Hot Buy system gets you one of each low/mid tier item for 890 charms total.  Having ridiculous RNG and using the bags to get 1 of each with no duplicates would be 700 charms.  I guess I’m not factoring in trading here, but it’s not like the rarer items trade the same as more common ones. 

So I think Hot Buy is for sure a good system for the bottom two tiers.  It’s slightly pricier than absolute luck of skilled trading, but priced such that it’s probably going to be cheaper than going the bag route for most people.  It might break down at the top tier level, although again we need to consider how much we’re supposed to be able to get out of these events rather than what we WANT to be able to get out of these events.  Maybe it IS supposed to give on the pet level, or the item level.  Maybe they don’t want us to cover everything, so we don’t know if getting everything is actually a metric we’re supposed to be using to judge this system.  And if it is, how does the bag system hold up for helping less active players get everything.  And do we care, or do we not care, that even in the best scenario the bag system will be forcing fodder costs? 

Glitch said the average user will generate 2600 charms over the course of the event, or around 185 per day.  Say we take the normal user (again, it doesn’t make sense to calibrate events around the least active players for tons of economic reasons).  2600 - 890 = 1710.  They can for sure make any of the four pets they want in addition to all of the items.  As you can tell, there will be several hundred left over.  Maybe they could use the leftovers to get more items.  Or maybe they are put into the position of having to choose all items or multiple pets.  It isn’t clear to me that’s an unreasonable position to be put in, especially if staff wants us to trade and sell among ourselves.  If they want activity between users, they don’t want users to be able to get everything.  That’s just a nice ideal on the part of people participating in the event.  And maybe to be really dominant within the event and get mostly everything, you need to be willing to do more than the average player.  If you can’t or won’t do that, there are other avenues to attaining everything in the secondary market. 

frieza I’m confused where you’re getting these numbers? The Dras is 2375 and the Ineki is 1583 (but no one would buy that one outright) so if someone wanted to buy the Dras outright they would only have 225 for items and that’s only getting 1/4 of the pet. With bags you can get wayyy more.

Edit: sorry I sorta stopped reading after saw you pinged glitch/Myla bc I thought you weren’t talking to me anymore lol, being on mobile is hard. Wanted to make one more comment before later going on computer to read more thoroughly. Glitch said earlier you’re right bags aren’t meant to be the “cheaper option” they’re meant to be the normal and direct buy is supposed to be overpriced. The explanation is somewhere earlier in this thread

Jacq  This is going to be a pretty short reply, sorry about that.  But I appreciate everything you wrote even if I don’t respond to parts of it due to time constraints.

Could you tell me a little more about how that works?  I figured that caps on the Hot Buys would prevent exploitation.  If a Dras can be gotten at 1188 a single time per account and then it’s 2375 each time, doesn’t that fight deflation better than multiple chances at a 950 Dras shroom per account? 

I like Fie95’s idea in that if we’re going to keep bags, we may as well alter the situation by being able to do that or even push back when you can buy the bags.  Maybe only direct purchases the first week, that sort of thing.  But in my view that only solves some of the problems, and not the problem of the person scraping 2k together and failing to get the Dras twice in a row.  I feel like that really shouldn’t happen to people.  Like whatever your activity level, you shouldn’t get destroyed like that.

I feel like you can compare site currencies by looking at how long it takes to get X, and how far X takes you in the economy.  If you look at those things at the same time they should be comparable, as far as I can tell? 

And thanks…now I am getting hungry myself.  :p  

just to clarify Glitch’s clarification, that 2600 number isn’t an “average” user. The activity distribution is multimodal (think something more like this, though I assume the middle hump is higher and the rightmost hump is lower). The bumps on the side were cut off as outliers, and the median was taken. I’m a little unsure, without seeing it, why it would be chosen over a mode in this case. Since the outlying distributions were removed, the choices made in their removal as such that you can manipulate the median (for example, by intentionally choosing cutoff points that make the tail longer on one side than the other, you can “drag” the mean and median around.) I don’t believe this would have been done intentionall here (nor what purpose it would serve), but there it is.

There’s another interesting thing here, whereby the most active users (like you, frieza), aren’t being taken into the distribution calculations, but are having an effect on the economy (via the introduction of items, mostly at the lower rarities).

Aside: I think there might be a glitch? I tried to send Crusher some words, but his name’s not coming up. I can’t find any of frieza’s pets when I put them in the “give” box. Frie, were you able to somehow quit/withdraw from the event after collecting some charms?

frieza I don’t know that I can really explain it more than I have, without just rewording my post (sorry) and using the same reference to fodder prices. Right now, the ineki shroom, regardless of its price in the shop, is valued at 950 charms (it trades 1:1 with toad bags). The dras shrooms’s cost isn’t deflated in that way because of its increased rarity. While the dras is a desirable item, the way Myena is set up means that there’s likely to be way more people that would be interested in selling their discounted dras ineki shoom (for FR, if not for other event items). Limiting the discount to one per account only controls deflation if you assume more people want to “keep” than “sell”. Under the current set up, our theoretical FR trader makes more money selling charms (up to and including enough for the dras pet itself) than risking the RNG of the toad bag and trying to sell the (relatively undesired) ineki shroom.

It’s always a pleasure to talk mechanisms with you, fwiw. We have super different approaches to these kinds of games but I appreciate your POV. :)

Jacq  Yeah glitch is right.  I know a lot of this event is tit for tat with the time bonus, so I didn’t want people wasting their words on me. It was better that they could be funneled towards more beneficial users.  It wasn’t a formal deactivation of the event, but glitch was able to effectively create that scenario.

Thanks for the reply.  I enjoy these discussions as well, though admittedly I’m probably in over my head on some of the more technical aspects.  I just like messing around with ideas.  Is the ineki shroom being worth a toad bag theoretical or are such trades common enough to assert that?  It almost seems like it flickers across multiple value points depending on if a trade can be made or not.  Also what if Hot Buying an item/pet locked it to your account for a period of time?  Just a thought.

when ur trying to make words but ur listening to lady gaga

Jacq  I just watched “Stripes” last night, but that instantly made me want to sing “Da Do Ron Ron Ron ...Da Doo Ron Ron!” xD

glitch  I can’t find where to submit words for consideration, but would like to put forth ‘Coati’  and ‘Coatis’ (plural)as a word to enter.  It’s what my pet coatimundes were called.  Coati is used for short, much like ‘pup’ is shortened for ‘puppy’. 

Gotta say, I’m a bit upset. I was not the most diligent but I still *tried* and I can’t even buy a toad bag for my troubles. If you guys know me at all, the coats are the things I value most. I know the average is high but.. maybe we should take into account the amount of time people spend rather than the average? Ideally, how much time should people spend on this event to make them “earn their keep” on the prizes?

I know there’s been a lot of complaints on prices and glitch has done some very fancy math to make it fair. But it certainly doesn’t feel fair. >: If the average is where you put the prices, that means 50% are going to miss out on things.

Edit: “A secret admirer sent you Toad Pouch! How nice!” Noooo ;; This isn’t what I meant by posting here. But thank you ;;