Rares On the Endangered List! (in General)

Read all about it! Rares will become extinct in the foreseeable future!!

Yes. At the rate that the rare items are spit out and auctioned, in combination with the dwindling cb2 money supply, rare items will soon sell for relatively cheap prices, making them economically available to the common folk :).

What is a rare? Something that is rare, coveted, difficult to obtain, no easily found, expensive to obtain, infrequently available, blah, blah.

We are entering into a socialist CB2 economy.

"The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"

Can I get a reality check here?

Why do people keep saying that rares are "spawning more". Are they really? I thought rares were simply spawning to auctions instead of stores, but at the same rate. So why do people keep saying rares are becoming less rare?

Can someone explain that to me? Use very small words, because apparently I am dense.

/me holds up a sign that says "I'm as clueless as Sutekh."

sutekh, even before the recent changes to spawned rares, the numbers of rares spawned into store were already too many. You can just simply compare it to the rares in CB1. Just take an example of a Morgul Hammer, currently there are only 76 of them in 4 years of CB1 and we have 40 in CB2 in less than a year.

okey I have been very quiet lately, but I think its the fact that they are just seeing them more now instead of the hated campers squirreling them away such as they liked to do..Maybe not more "so called Rare Items" just more visible now than before the death of camping

How can you say that more rares are spawning? Have you checked the auctioneers log where it tells you what is or has been in auctions? Checking his log I'd say roughly around 8-9 rares(not counting ammo) spawn daily. When I camped and would check store logs regularly 8-9 rares daily(not counting lesser tats as tons of those spawned) was common. As for cb2 money supply dwindling I kind of agree with you about that but I'm sure Jon will do something if it gets out of hand.

Logan, 8-9 rares would be an awesome day at the store. Usually the store spawned 5-6, and it was closer to 3-4 on most days. Only big days were Tuesday, Saturday, and Sunday.

So money is being sucked out by auctioneer. That just means that $1 CB2 is more valuable than it used to. Eventually it will get to a steady value. This means though that NW increase will be a lot slower.

Didn't I say all this last week? Maybe half of my CB comments are ignored because I used to be a camper, but I allready mentioned that the cash being drained from auctions would increase the value of Cb2 pr USD and further spread the gap between the top 10 and the rest. Even NUB can't give you all the NW that the top guys have.

why does increased value of CB2 per USD would make a bigger difference ? Isn't that will some how make a big spender to think twice before buying 1mil CB2 for 25USD (for example) ?

Rares aren't spawning any faster from what I see, if you compare to Gaza's weekly store spawn report a while ago. It's at the same rate.

How did you make that fantastic leap from having to spend more real money to buy the same one million CBD to this being an advantage to the top players who buy with USD. Seriously, it would be exactly the opposite since they can't buy as much with real money.

Exactly, Vestax sure makes a clearer sentence than me :) And I still think he lives in CB ...

I don't if I agree, but I see his point.

All the top players, who have already spent USD at what would be "cheaper" prices, won't have the competition of everyone else being able to buy CB2 at the rates they've gotten.

It's like if you watching a car race, and someone pulls really far ahead, and then everyone MPG is cut in half. His lead is now twice as substantial.

I don't know if I agree*

Sheesh, I make one minor error! It would increase the value of USD per CB2 not the other way around =P
In other words CB will no longer be 15 USD per million but would just keep gaining $1 at a time. I know I wrote it wrong before, but I didn't proofread myself.

I'm fairly certain that rares are indeed spawning more frequently.

But why is this?

I've been told that "item spawns" are based on the amount of fighting in the past day or so. Now, these more common "rares" are almost needed to be able to compete at higher scores,mainly for tanks. Hence, since more people are getting higher scores, more rares are spawned to accomidate them.

"since more people are getting higher scores, more rares are spawned to accomidate [sic] them"

wrong

"amount of fighting" should translate to the amount of BA consumption not to the current highest score.

sooo...
you are trying to say that rares will become, umm ...rare? in the future?

CoolWater, a little history:

Morgul Hammers were not always around on CB1. They were introduced later.

So, let's make a more valid comparison: Lochs and BoNEs.

On CB1, there are 145 Lochs extant.
On CB2, there are 42 BNEs extant.
Ratio of CB1 count to CB2 count: 3.45

CB1 lifetime (using January 1, 2003 as when it really started going strong): 2.75 years
CB2 lifetime 0.75 years.
Ratio of CB1 lifespan to CB2 lifespan: 3.67

3.45 is _dang_ close to 3.67.

So, again (and without getting bogged down with the USD crap), can someone tell me how they think rares are less rare now?

Ok, let me try that last sentence again.

Since more BA is used per day, there is an influx in the amount of money in CB. With more money being "brought in," there should also be more items to spend the money on?

Isn't the number of rares spawned ~proportional to the number of fights in a day? Could it be that we're seeing more spawns because campers are now fighting?

you guys are never happy, when its ' there are not enough rares, everyone keeps having to buy regular stuff from the store' now its ' there is too many, blah blah blah' this is waht you all wanted right , to get those items which gives you a bonus, well get them before john turns off the tap, i think the reason there are more rares are simple.

It is the classic" Let me in , Now lock the door"syndrome.
When you need an item there aren't enough of them in the game but once you get one then you don't want any more added to keep the value of your high.

An excellent point, Seeker. I would assume Jonathan is still using the same "spawn logic" for rares, so what you mention is a very good possibility (if it is even true in the first place...haven't really seen any proof that "OMG RARES ARE SPAWNING LIKE CRAZY!!!!!" just yet. *smile*)

Folks, when you see Morgs swimming upstream, then you can complain. Until then, rares are rare.

How are rares more common? From the changelog, it just seems they spawn in auction rather than store, exact same number of rares will appear in the same amount of time.

The only difference is now there isn't somebody camping a store to buy them for almost nothing and resell them for millions.

I'd like to clarify that although my original post might have been interpreted to suggest that rares were spawning more frequently, I really didn't say that. That may or may not be the case, depending on the fight activity for the day. However, since the auctioneer ONLY accepts CB2, what is relevant is that the cb2 cash supply must be decreasing. Until that cash supply dwindles significantly, rares will become relatively much cheaper than they have been recently. After we may encounter a depression where even though the rare is cheap, money will be much harder to come by to get it.

those people claiming that there will be massive depreciation because auction proceeds vaporize are idiots

do a little math before crying wolf, people

I'm still thinking this through--and I may be totally wrong.

Before: 100% of new rares were camped and sold for cb2 &/or usd.
Now: 100% of new rares are auctioned for cb2

Assumption 1: The amount of cb2 generated will increase to keep the prices of the rares stable

Assumption 2: Cb2 generated can't keep up and prices of rares will decrease.

I'm not an economics wizard, but I think that one of those 2 assumptions will become evident in the next few months.

heh just bring back camping in a few months and all will be fine and business as usual (v)oO(v)

Lousy idea, RIP Van Sharkles. I'm not trying to bring back camping. But possible solutions are:
1. Increase cb2 rewards and cb2 production in the game
2. Decrease spawn rate of rares.

Decrease the rate of rare spawning to what, exactly? As I write this, the auctioneer has spawned the following in the last 24h:

CoI (1)
SC (1)
ToE (1)
Exec (1)

plus assorted rare ammo, which I assume isn't in the discussion. Realize that the majority of rares in auctions did not spawn (in the old sense of spawning), but rather came from the black market, or people selling their stuff. One rare every six hours sounds pretty familiar to me, doesn't it?

Isn't the number of people playing CB2 frequently greater than the number of people playing CB1 frequently..? o_O

213,457 battles served in the past 24h

At an average of, say, $100 per fight (which seems low, but I'm being conservative), $21 million CB entered the economy over the last day. Did that much get spent on rares?

Even after healing and buying ammo, I think there's more than enough money left over for all the other tasks that require money.

I would go so far as to guess that the number of rares spawned is directly proportional to the number of players actively playing, which is pretty much proportional to the amount of money entering the economy.

Good ole Jon. Maybe he's not so dumb after all.

you forgetting nub players

Almuric, that is a very bad way to do the math. Because frankly, no one can win without NW. Nearly all the cash for people go into NW and not base items.
As for Jon, I would LOVE for you to briefly explain how all the cash that went into other players pockets is the same as all the CB cash going into a black hole such as Central Bank. I don't think any math is involved to show that eventually CB cash will be worth more per USD, although I think the rare prices will stay the same because people will be the deciding factor on bids.

not much appealing about all this any more is there?

Almuric, don't forget how many of those battles were from purchased BA.

the amount of items spawned in the store is related to the amount of battles done.

1 day of nobody fighting = no spawns then i think

Let's test that.

Today CB has $855,739,715 total liquid assets

It was ~$800m when camping changelog was posted if I'm not mistaken.

It doesn't look like we have a "dwindling cb2 money supply" and it's not correct to say this increase results from NUB alone imo. I don't believe CB2 economy is suffering as a result of this change.

G_Beee you can't judge this in a matter of days. a change like this has more long term effects than short term

LOL, you waited until the 42nd post on this thread to say that Mega!!?

Bravo, touch of class.

I did a quick calculation of auctioneer sales between Sept 4 to Sept 13 on rare items (not including ammo).

Total sales: $37,676,640

Now go do a similar count on the FS/WTB threads for rares on the 9 days before the changelog ;)

bgeee,

That's way too much work and as a federal employee, I'm not used to doing that much work.

Jonathan, is it possible to show a stat on the community page to track how much money the auctioneer and blacksmith makes?

Almuric, that is a very bad way to do the math. Because frankly, no one can win without NW. Nearly all the cash for people go into NW and not base items.

Boggle. Well... yeah. Caedmon provided a list of the rare items that spawned in that time. If those things sold for, say $3 million, that still leaves $18 mil. Some of that is spent on BA. Some of that is spent on upgrading items. Some of that is saved for a rainy day. No one except Jon could tell us exactly how much is spent on each, but I would say that there is a positive cash flow into CB via fighting.

The CB$-to-US$ conversion ratio is almost completely independent of how much CB$ is generated. It's really just a function of demand here. (Yes, supply is part of it, but the supply is steady and increasing at the same rate that new players are being added, for all intents and purposes.) So really, it's just demand. If lots of people are buying, price goes up, and vice-versa.

Answer me this: If no one were buying with US$, what would people use their excess CB$ for? Not everyone has a use for it. What means would we use to get the excess cash a mage character has over to a tank character who really needs it? There'd have to be some in-game system where I give him value and he gives me CB$. Perhaps a promise to take him off my fight list. Entrance to a clan? Drawing of a character picture?

Looking at the top 70 richest characters, I see about $300 mil in loose cash. That's a lot of rares to be bought and a lot of NW to add. As long as new players continue to enter the game, rares will remain relatively rare and as long as people continue to fight, more and more CB$ will enter the economy.

The sky is not falling and the CB economy is very healthy. (Speaking as someone who's been playing this game for a long time and programs complex financial calculation programs for a very large bank.)

I've been away two weeks and this camping change - well I can't say I'm not surprised but still... whoah...

But - and apologies to all those whose game was camping/trading rares - my game is fighting and building up my character and to see rares in auction that I can actually afford to buy.... I like it.

Ever since the NW/PR changes I was expecting camping to take a hit. I also remember the discussions/whining about how that was going to collapse the CB economy and lose players by the ton. I'm still waiting for that to happen.

Rares will be rares I think, and money will still change hands for them. The only difference I can see is that a minority now cease to make big money when they enter the market.

Rares on the endangered list? There's plenty of Lochs in the store. Pffft.