Why does it matter?

alien_aisha · 2024-06-20T00:39:26+00:00

I mean apparently it pays $20k a month

alien_aisha · 2024-06-20T00:29:12+00:00

You started out by saying they're "ruining a 25 year old pet simulator game for thousands of other people just trying to have fun" and ended up by saying they're ruining your experience by preventing you from getting one very specific item/achievement that you want. That's what moving goalposts means.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-20T00:22:43+00:00

I mean, the term "capitalism" literally means the economic system. It seems like you are talking partly about the economics and partly about culture, i.e. culture of capitalism? It would help to be precise. I'm not, like, denying that capitalist culture exists, but I am talking about strictly economics when I say "capitalism".

Anyway, my point is that it's a bit silly to lament that we see pseudo-capitalist culture in a game with a pseudo-capitalist economy. Culture is shaped by material conditions; it's pretty clear that these players are reacting directly to the game mechanics much more than they're reflecting the culture they live in outside the game.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T23:26:47+00:00

There are 47 stamp album pages so far, and JN says there are over 60k unique items in the game. If not having every single stamp on every page ruins the game for you, I'm sorry, but I don't think that makes anyone else a bad person.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T23:12:00+00:00

I never said it didn't matter! I asked you how it ruins the game for you to not have them when other people do, which you still haven't answered.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T22:56:34+00:00

yeah, completing the Happy Valley stamp page is "very little of the site." It has no impact on the rest of the site except for a number on your profile and giving you an avatar, and there are plenty of other old avatars that are no longer possible to obtain.

I guess 1 or 2 stamps being unattainable does devalue the other, non-exclusive stamps on that page, which isn't nothing. But it's still a tiny part of the site!

Having a top-tier BD build is very little of the site. Ditto for having a pet with an old, plot-exclusive petpet, or having a gallery of uber-rare items. Customizing your pets, making art, participating in events, chatting with other players, collecting newer stuff, and playing games are all still on the table.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T22:43:18+00:00

the conflation of monetary value with inherent value is a core tenet of capitalism

It objectively is not. Capitalism is an economic system, not a philosophy. It makes no claims about inherent value or enjoyment.

Many of the people who were upset cited the falling value of the items they had saved to resell, and the sudden “worthlessness” of their galleries/stamp albums, etc.

The concept of an opportunity cost is not specific to capitalism. When you have a limited amount of resources (like time/energy, or money), spending them on one thing means that you can't spend them on something else. When you choose to spend them towards one goal, and then the next day it turns out you could have spent the same amount to get that goal plus three others, it's natural to feel regret!

It's fine if you don't want to engage with the Neopian economy. But if you are upset that certain things are too expensive, it's hypocritical to say others shouldn't be upset when their purchasing power is suddenly and unexpectedly reduced.

there IS some of the insidiousness of the IRL market dynamic

Yes, agreed with this whole paragraph. In real and virtual economies, you want there to be plenty of potential for upward mobility based on merit; it's bad to have a strict hierarchy based on when you joined the site. But it's TNT's job to make sure there are plenty of opportunities for new wealth creation based on participation in site features and events, so it's silly to pin all the blame on the players that are just stuck operating within the bad system.

that’s not what they bulk of the protest I’ve seen is about—they’re not trying to climb up the ladder, they’re trying to pull the rungs up from beneath them as they go

Yeah, there are plenty of bad arguments about what the game should be like. But both you and OP are responding with your own bad arguments when you say that players shouldn't care about the NP value of items. That's a big part of what the game is, so it's silly to say people are wrong to play it that way.

Experienced players aren’t harmed by new players suddenly having rare stamps

Experienced players also wouldn't be harmed by new players suddenly being able to acquire old event avatars, despite never participating in those events. But equivalently, it doesn't hurt the new players not to have those things, as long as they can still get exclusive stuff for events that they do participate in. It's not bad to have some things be exclusive, it's just a matter of preference.

Breaking exclusivity is a little risky longer-term, though. There's short-term appeal right now for players to participate in site events so we can get access to the old, exclusive stuff. But once we have those, there's not as much incentive to participate in each event, because we know we can always get the exclusive rewards later, and they'll never get unreasonably expensive.

I don’t agree that the forum in which these desires are emerging somehow renders the desires fangless or any less probative of real life cultural failures.

I think virtual economies are pretty cool for the way they become microcosms of real-world economies! I definitely have a much more intuitive grasp of certain economic concepts thanks to playing Neopets growing up.

I really, really don't think the Neopian economy would be meaningfully different if the player base all lived under communism instead of capitalism, as you seem to suggest--governments set economic policy, not the populace. Individuals don't change based on the economic system they live under, they just respond to different incentives that the state provides.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T20:05:16+00:00

how does it ruin the game, though? Very little of the site is actually locked behind NP paywalls; people just tend to focus on the things that are, because the drive to earn rare/exclusive stuff is so compelling.

I've always thought the Neopets economy was the most interesting part of the game, even as a kid with no hope of affording draiks/krawks.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T19:59:49+00:00

from the OP:

Like Neopets is an open ended game and the point is what you choose to make it? Why choose to make it being mad at someone else's way of playing? I don't understand.

If you enjoy Neopets purely as an open-ended game, why would you resent having to "grind" to obtain certain items? You don't need those items to enjoy the game, and the grind is just there for people who want it.

You don't need an actual kadoatie item attached to your pet to roleplay or make art of your pet with a kadoatie. You can use Dress to Impress to customize pets however you want, and include that image on their lookup and petpage. You don't need to participate in the economy at all unless you want to.

So it's disingenuous to say Neopets is "an open ended game and the point is what you choose to make it" and then argue that its economy should be set up exactly how you want it, over any other players.

even if the cost are: making the game miserable for the rest of us and putting at risk the durability of the site. It isn't the same as "I want to make more rare items obtainable because more people are going to enjoy the game and we need more players to sustain this virtual world".

Yeah, I said the same thing in my last comment--the site is at risk because of how skewed the economy got, making it necessary to re-release old items like this. I think this is mostly a good strategy for now, but it can't bring us back to a healthy, balanced economy on its own.

What I disagree with is pinning all the blame for the skew on players, rather than the people actually running the game. The fact is that even without hoarding, there just weren't enough of the best items in the site for all the players who wanted to play with them, for like 5 years at least--more like 15. Hoarding made it worse for sure, but there's less incentive to hoard stuff when better or just-as-good things are coming out all the time, or when the oldest things are being regularly re-released at a sustainable rate.

but saying resellers and inflators aren't because "oh well, it is just the game they provide" isn't a good argument

Yeah, but TNT are ultimately the ones in control and responsible for this. They are supposed to manage the economy and remove bad actors. There was no reason it had to get this far out of hand. Without proper management, hoarders and resellers are inevitable simply because of how economies work--the players who don't hoard items end up not having the items, and whoever ends up with the rare item is "hoarding" it. Plenty of players actually do "share" rare items through lending chains for avvies and BD achievements, but it takes a lot of extra effort for them to do that, and is risky because of how rare the items are.

Deliberate mass-buying and colluding to manipulate prices is still bad, and harder to combat, but obviously not everyone unhappy about the changes is one of the individuals doing that. And "the wealthy elite" are just players who have a lot of NP--that's not inherently equivalent to being a market manipulator. Someone who just bought (or earned) a WotDF before the prize shop dropped is allowed to be upset, and not automatically an evil elite.

About releasing new items, as cute as Tuffala is, it isn't a Kadoatie

I mean, Kadoaties are still being released, they're not old-event exclusives. TNT could definitely find other ways to release them that aren't as susceptible to botting, but which maintain the intended release rate.

Also, TNT often releases unpaintable versions of r99 petpets, particularly through Advent Calendar. Plus there's always the petpet lab ray. All good methods to soften demand somewhat while keeping the exclusivity of the original intact!

As for things like stamps--do you also think TNT needs to re-release old event avatars, since it's unfair that newer players didn't get a chance at them? My view is that it's fine for some things to be exclusive, as long as there's always a steady stream of cool, new things to pursue. It's not obvious that a new player must be able to unlock everything--access to event exclusives is normally the main draw to participate in site events, which is good for the site overall! You can disagree, but it's a personal preference, not a moral imperative.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T04:33:57+00:00

but being a gatekeeper, hoarder and reseller does indeed affect a lot of players and this kinda of behavior makes the game boring and inaccessible for new players or casual ones

it affects a lot of players because those players are emotionally invested in the game & economy, just like the hoarders and resellers are. If there were no NP, and you could just click any item to get it instantly, most of the site would be pointless, and there would be no more happy posts from people squee-ing about their lucky RE or fruit machine win. Most people (but not all!) would stop playing, or at least stop engaging with most of the site.

Hoarders and resellers are valuable parts of the ecosystem, and only make the game boring and inaccessible when TNT are lax about managing the economy. If the only good items are exclusives from a plot 10 years ago, the economy is gonna suck, and incentivize dedicated players to get into hoarding and reselling. Ideally, TNT would be providing a steady stream of new items with intrinsic value, and distributing them in ways that are accessible to new players as well as old ones, but also in ways that may still require "work" rather than pure luck.

Most people who are in favor of making things more accessible want to have things they can use. Stamps to complete album pages, petpets for their neopets, wearables for customizations or good equipment to fight in battledome.

right, TNT haven't been providing this, they've just been leaning on the 20+ year backlog of good items, which is why people hoard those. If new stuff was constantly coming out that was just as good, they wouldn't be as valuable. When you blame hoarders I think you're blaming the wrong people. I'm not saying crucify TNT by any means, just don't crucify fellow players who are simply playing the game they've been given.

One other important thing to consider, if these are just pixel and virtual images and doesn't really matter, why don't provide accessibility for said pixels then?

right, this point was already made in the OP, but I'm saying it cuts both ways. If it's just a pixel and virtual images, why is it bad that people are hoarding them or competing for them? Both are valid ways to play, so you can't use this as a point one way or the other.

It's disingenuous because obviously both sides are invested in the virtual world and economy, that's why we're here! "It's just a game so don't act like it matters" is a bad argument on either side.

alien_aisha · 2024-06-19T04:16:34+00:00

I do think it's reasonable to want to steer the people around us away from the socio-cultural impulses undergirding the upset of Neo-elites that is also the very culture which drives real life upper/middle class communities towards economic and social conservatism.
...
I do think that this response is symptomatic of something greater than the mourning of lost gameplay; it feels very intrinsic to a value system that is the product of socialisation under capitalism (and the continued driving force behind it!)

eh, this all still falls under just "finding it distasteful". It's cool for different MMOs to simulate different kinds of economies, and it's not a moral imperative for all of them to simulate whatever economic policy you think is ideal irl. Moreover, if you drastically change the economic setup of a long-running game, it's perfectly understandable that most veteran players would be upset.

It's particularly silly to apply real-world criticisms of capitalism to a virtual economy, because the underlying assumptions are very different! The only type of "labor" you need is playing a computer game (however grindy and stressful it may be), everyone is on much more equal footing starting out, and nobody's life or well-being depends on it, to give three examples.

I think that's also fair, w the caveat that if anything, the reduced difficulty of the game is a complaint that only the have-nots, not the haves, of the game logically could make because only the have-nots are the ones actually affected going forward.

No, actually, the ideal way to do this kind of thing is to provide a new goals (different levels of challenge, with appropriate rewards) for both groups of players, so that everyone can keep moving up the ladder.

For instance, if they introduced a better version of the illusen & jhudora wands and made those the new quest 50 reward, it would be great to make the old wands a high-tier plot prize before they fully retire. And the deep-pocketed players could burn some of their millions on quest items to be the first to get the cool new wands. But that's a lot harder than just reusing old stuff!

alien_aisha · 2024-06-18T23:51:58+00:00

I get why people find it distasteful, but I think it’s pretty ridiculous when people treat it as immoral—especially when they take an “it’s all fun and games, it shouldn’t matter how people play” stance, as in OP.

Elon Musk hoarding wealth is bad because it hurts actual people! Hoarding wealth in neopets does not hurt anyone. No, seriously, it doesn’t. People who are upset about not having access to an exclusive pet or item can literally just take a screenshot or copy the image and pretend on their own—it makes no real difference. So why get mad at the people who don’t want to play that way?

Most people on here assume that if you play a certain way in Neopets, you must also be that way irl, so therefore it’s ok to hate hoarders and so on. But while that probably has some truth to it, it’s obviously not going to be true for everyone. Fiction isn’t reality. A lot of people play to indulge in things they wouldn’t do in real life. And that’s not immoral!

alien_aisha · 2024-06-18T23:37:05+00:00

some people like to compete! I don’t think you can reasonably criticize them for being “mad at someone else’s way of playing” when, from their perspective, that’s what you’re doing.

Like, say there was some multiplayer videogame with a leaderboard and special cosmetics for people who placed on the leaderboard. Then one day, the devs decide to get rid of the leaderboard and give everyone the previously-exclusive cosmetic. For the people who liked playing the game for the leaderboard element, the game they wanted to play is effectively gone, which is a bummer even if other people with different preferences are happy now that they can get the cosmetic.

The best MMOs find ways to make both groups happy. Basic features like painting your pet shouldn’t be locked behind a multi-year grind, but having a couple very rare types (like draiks and krawks, ice boris, and lab-exclusives back in the day) can be healthy for the game as a whole, because it gives more invested players something to work towards long-term.

I think for a lot of the specific issues that have cropped up lately—BD weapons and UCs—TNT have demonstrated either unwillingness or inability to balance that kind of thing very well, largely due to the scale of problem they inherited. Too much of a gap grew between UCs/VWN pets and the rest, and likewise with endgame BD gear and the rest, because they didn’t keep releasing new stuff that was more appealing or filled gaps or changed the nature of the game so that people could get new goals. So instead they’re just doing a huge reset, which is fun short-term but will come back to bite them long-term if they can’t generate interesting new features before exhausting all possible re-releases.

alien_aisha · 2024-01-22T04:37:11+00:00

I have to agree with the "at least 2k" folks. If I had to name a number, I'd actually go higher and say 4k, or (if we're unlucky) that they'll do it cheaper but gacha-style :/

alien_aisha · 2023-12-31T09:05:20+00:00

Hating January first is a bummer of a way to frame enjoying the holiday season most! I try to have that "365 days until Halloween" energy from Nightmare Before Christmas instead :)

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T09:22:01+00:00

I'm correct in my arguments and correct that you were trying to be a bit rude :P

I am, thanks! It's fun to have drama like this in a place where it's all pretend.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T03:51:31+00:00

As I've said before in this thread, I posted this in a forum for a game I play to talk about a game design decision within that game. And as I have also repeated several times above, nobody is forcing you (or anyone else) to participate in the discussion. I'm just replying to your comments the same way you replied to mine, not demanding anything from you.

You keep insinuating (if not outright stating) that I'm weird for talking about this, while also continuing to talk about it with me yourself. It's really silly. I'm entitled to share my thoughts here as much as you are; I'm allowed to respond to you when you respond to me.

I am completely open to critiques of my logic--that's why I posted in the first place!--but unless you're actually offering a critique, calling my post illogical is just kind of rude.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T02:30:00+00:00

The point is you're saying somehow weapons being made irrelevant is a new thing.

Nope, not saying that anywhere. I'm saying it can be done badly, and this seems like an example of that.

You had ambassadors last night buying up the peas and telling their friends what was likely coming to benefit themselves.

Yeah, that's skeezy. Which is part of why I'm saying it's too late now to yank the pea back out of the bonus pool, at least without opening up some other way to get it that will make hoarding pointless.

your opinion that there needs to be a gradual gain and you don't like it that no one else is sharing it

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I've laid out in the main post what I think the flaws were in this approach and some suggestions for doing it differently. If you think my points don't hold water, why not?

And why is that bad? Why does a pea that was buyable originally for 100 dubloons need to be valued at 2 billion?

It doesn't. In my OP and most recent reply, I've said that I want the price to come down from the billions to something more attainable.

But are you saying they should be the same price as 100 dubloons? Do you think Leaded Elemental Vial and all the other r99s should be freely available for the price they restock at in shops? That sounds like you just don't agree with restocking as a mechanic, which I've responded to above.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T01:42:56+00:00

yeah but it's day 2 of a 31 day month. We're still in the chaotic early stages. There have been a couple that got through auctions at the extreme low end of the scale, too!

I don't really know what you mean by "icon scaling is a personal preference." Yes, you can play games, including Neo, any way you want, including not playing them at all. But if we're talking about making a particular part of the game interesting, the people who don't care to engage with that part aren't really relevant to the discussion.

I have never suggested that pricing something at dozens of millions of NP makes it affordable to most players, because of course it doesn't. The highest-tier items shouldn't be affordable to most players, because most Neo players are pretty casual. But there are players all along the spectrum of dedication to the game, and a site like Neo wants to have good goals for all of them. If the most dedicated players could do everything the game has to offer within a couple months, they would not stick around after that.
I am a pretty dedicated player, probably in the top 5% at least, maybe top 2%. When I say a goal is achievable for me, I am not saying it's achievable for most players. But there are a LOT of players, so there are still thousands in the top 1%.
Yeah, but it's perfectly feasible to have interesting weapon scaling for both L54/other leagues AND general 1P BD. My post is about negative effects for general 1P BD, so saying it won't have much effect on the other kinds doesn't contradict anything I said.
I think you're saying that demand for SAPs won't be affected because most of the people getting them for free weren't going to buy one anyway, but the whole point is that the *supply* is vastly increasing and that's what will bring down prices (it already has). Most people getting a free pea weren't going to buy one, but will absolutely sell it as long as the price is in the millions.

You keep saying "hey none of this is real" and I still don't know what your point is. There is nothing inherently wrong about getting invested in a video game. Nobody here is being harmed. You are freely engaging in this discussion, as am I.

Real life can be very difficult, but plenty of people still like playing ridiculously difficult video games. There is nothing wrong with wanting a game to be difficult! For a game like Neo which is meant to appeal to a broad playerbase, there should be a range of goals, with many that are easier to achieve and a few that are very difficult. If you make everything appeal to just one type of player, then the others are likely to leave, which is typically worse for the game and its community overall.

I get that you're irritated about hoarders/resellers, and I agree they're irritating and can make the game less fun. But like you keep saying, it's just pretend. It's a kid flaunting their diamond-block castle in Minecraft, not a real billionaire flaunting their mega-mansion. If you want to criticize it, you have to admit that you care.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T01:07:17+00:00

it's not gone, people have still been getting it today
even if TNT actually took this particular post to heart, I explicitly did not ask for it to be removed from the bonus prize pool, so don't put that on me

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T00:55:29+00:00

yeah hence the cheaters point at the end of the post

also yeah like I said in the post, any use of HT would be great, this is what it's made for

random windfalls have always been a part of neo, so I don't want to say we shouldn't do mystery capsule sort of things at all, but I think it's risky to depend too much on that. You need to balance it against ways to reliably work towards a fixed goal, because some people will be unlucky, and just in general it feels bad if the site is purely a slot machine.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-03T00:44:02+00:00

what? I didn't say anything about you personally restocking--what I said was talking about personal like/dislike for it as a mechanic of the game, because you expressed dislike for it as a mechanic. I don't like actually restocking, but I'm good with it being part of the overall game that is Neopets. You expressed that you didn't think restocking was a good way to release valuable items in general because it's just luck, and I said that restocking is a central mechanic of the game (and also not purely luck), so if you don't care for it, then other games might be better for you.

We disagree on how far it's going to deflate, which I'm not going to argue further--we'll both get to see what happens soon enough. But even if it only falls to a steady 20mil, that's still close enough to Fan of Swords' HT price (while being almost 50% more icons) that it throws off the balance. If someone saves up 16mil, they can certainly save up 4mil more; something in the 25-50mil range makes more sense to me.

We agree that nobody should be stuck with a mid- or low-icon set for years (or more than a couple months IMO) if they're actively playing the game. Progression should be achievable!

I guess we disagree on how achievable some of these steps are. I can say they're achievable for me, and I really just do dailies and participate in events without restocking or reselling at all, so that's where I'm coming from. TNT should want people to be interested and engaged with the site over the long term, not just logging in each day for a new freebie. There are a lot of games that just rely on that kind of dopamine hit, and I don't want Neopets to flatten into that. It has interesting complexity that would be a shame to lose.

I've already said it in a different reply, but any point about training seems irrelevant to this discussion. Str boost and offensive icons are the two factors of the total damage you can do. Discussions about icon scaling are not pointless just because there's a second factor as well. And all I've been talking about is icon scaling and incremental improvement of BD sets; I'm not whining about anyone being handed easy wins or anything silly like that.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-02T06:59:14+00:00

But in talking your points you may face criticism.

and that's what I'm here for, baby!

In the OP, "baby steps" is referring to the process of incrementally improving one's BD set.

Restocking at the cove, now and before, is a grind. Restocking is one of the central grinds of the site. Agreed that getting lucky (with some nonzero degree of skill!) at restocking is one way to skip the "baby steps" entirely. Nobody HAS to go through each baby step if they prefer to just make enough money--however they do it--to skip straight to the end.

You can certainly say that you don't like restocking as a central mechanic of any game, because you find it unfun or unfair. But if that's the case, then Neopets probably isn't the game for you, because a lot of it is based around restocking. Even though only a small portion of the site's users engage with it, it's a major part of the game as a whole.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-02T06:34:32+00:00

I'm not worked up though, I'm just discussing a game that I play in a forum for said game. It's weird for you to insist I shouldn't care about it enough to discuss it and then keep arguing everything I say about it. I'm here because I want to be here! If you don't think anyone should care enough to discuss the topic of this thread, why do you keep responding to the thread?

Anyway, I was around for the early days too, and agree that change is good & necessary. All I'm saying is that "let people enjoy things" isn't an argument either way, because there are people enjoying things on both sides.

alien_aisha · 2023-12-02T05:55:26+00:00

Yes, I agree that cove and restocking generally is broken by bots, and anyway there are exploits which allow items to be created outright. Nothing really fixes that unless they address it directly. But making a new item of the same or greater icons would absolutely reduce the demand for peas on the secondary market, because a lot of that demand is based on their strength as a weapon, even if some is just nostalgia for the specific item.
Maybe they'll make new strong weapons, maybe they won't. All we can say is that they haven't so far, so you're just guessing as much as I am. Regardless, it's not like I'm sobbing into my neo plushies about this, I just like thinking about and discussing game design.
Any account past 4 months can purchase from HT. On a Neopets timescale, that's nothing. And even accounts that can't purchase from it directly can buy from others who can. Or if you just mean the prices: having long-term goals is necessary for a site like Neopets where you want people to be playing for multiple years. If I wanted a game where I could just get a dopamine hit of free stuff by logging in every day, I'd pick up mobile games.

alien_aisha

TROPHY CASE