My PC and bedroom has the dead or dying ashes of uncounted games. Many of them died because of things very similar to this. If I really started listing how many games I've watched die around me, you'd try to get me banned as a curse on any game I play. I've got a lot of experience with well made games that make seemingly small, simple mistakes, that end up snowballing into their demise.
So yeah, mitigate the damage of a bad decision that sets a bad precedent, that can and will have bad consequences without a very close eye kept on it, and very active players sounding a warning.
If someone donated 1k to do something that risked the game's survival....You ask them to pick something else, or give them a refund.
Ok. I will bite. Give me your best hypothetical disaster snowball from this. I am most curious about what you think are the potential bad decisions that can stem from this card. What terrible (or slightly worse) fate can befall us because of this bad precedent. Also, what is the precedent that is bad again, just so we are all clear?
The bad precedent is the Immortal. Card that gives a card isn't great, but not a huge issue. Card that gives a Mirror was always sketchy, but the drop rate is so low that finishing the set is about as common as a Mirror itself, so it sorts out. A card that is basically a Shard of a Mirror Shard, 1/90th of a mirror, is a very bad precedent.
The issue with making 1/90 of a Mirror is twofold. One, it encourages GGG to make pieces and parts of actual currency. If we make pieces and parts of actual currency, we end up devaluing ALL currency, as all the currency is linked together. This many Wisdom for an Alch, this many Alch for a Chaos....You start adding pieces of a Mirror and suddenly these start becoming actual currency, in a way they shouldn't, and while ONE isn't terrible, multiple cards like this would wreck the economy in the game. You notice how we only have shards up to Alchs? Nothing higher? Cuz the Chaos is our baseline currency. Well, why IS Chaos our baseline currency? Maybe partly because we can't sell pieces of a Chaos, just a Chaos? Sure, there are other reasons...but that's part of it.
The second half of the issue is...Mirrors almost never drop, or even exist in the game. That's INTENDED. That's designed in. And that's a good thing. Having an unnatainable goal helps keep players around. TECHNICALLY, you COULD fill your fancy Currency Stash tab with 5000 Mirrors....Is it ever gonna happen? No. Will people try? Yeah. As long as they're trying, they're playing, and that keeps the community, the economy, and the game alive and well. You add this card, and suddenly people plan on farming the hell out of wherever it drops, not because of good XP, or anything else that drops there, but JUST for this card, in the hopes of getting 90 and getting a Mirror, so they're suddenly rich. Wherever this drops will suddenly quadruple in farming simply because of this card. This card's existence will actively distort the game around it because it offers a chance at getting a Mirror, eventually. Mirrors are meant to be ridiculously rare. This card makes them less rare, and that's a bad move.
Think of this card being added as on par to when world governments decided to drop the gold standard. It seemed good in theory, it did terribly in practice, and it let them get away with a lot of hidden economic manipulation and changes that haven't gone well in the long run.
It's bad news, man. We can't afford to have more of this happening.
Dude this sounds like a tin foil helmet kind of argument if I have ever heard one. You are also using real economies as a comparison for a game economy, which is like comparing apples and oranges. The economy of this game is a model at best which functions on its own laws dictated by the users and as it was helpfully pointed out the thing you are so concerned about already exits in lower tiers of currency, where it does nothing to the value of said currency. Also the biggest issue facing the game that I can see is the vast majority of wealth collected in the hands of very few people, who then dictate the prices in the game, which is ironically identical to real life. The fact that most people who play the game casually will never get a chance to experience a major portion of the content that exists simply because they have not been here when the game started or are not dedicated enough to sink ugodly amounts of time into it is the biggest threat to the game. GGG has made steps to address this issue with the end game unique drops, but they only did so after nerfing them into the ground to ensure that the top 1% got richer off of the action. Adding some cards that represent lesser increments of the highest game currency isn't going to do shit to the overall game longevity. Its the wealth gap that will make people quit the game.
~ I am Wreaclast middle class and proud of it!
~ Poor investment =/= entitlement to compensation.
~ Build smart, build S-mart!
Last edited by Ageless_Emperion on Apr 27, 2016, 6:21:37 AM
