This is… bad. It may sound awesome, but no it is bad. In economic terms this is reactor going critical bad.
Like, horribly bad and exposes a lot of problems inherent in the very culture of Sindome itself that it's almost a requirement that you ignore, but I'm expecting all of this to be staff scrubbed and or shouted down, so why even bother explaining?
But I actually have hope that somehow Sindome might get better because I do enjoy playing it, so I do post this out of hope that something may change.
So...
I no longer have faith in Slither's ability to actually know what he is doing in terms of being able to stop the current economic death spiral Sindome is in, as this update comes off as just randomly cutting the prices on items with the hopes it'll do something, kicking the can down the road and expecting the player culture to ignore growing problems.
You're not treating the root of the problem, you're just treating the symptoms while exacerbating the disease. And when the problems grow worse later, it'll just be the player's fault for not having a good time again.
As I said while I'd love to explain why, I just do not have the energy to, as the culture of Sindome is that Sindome can do no wrong, and if there's a problem it's the player's fault. I'm already expecting a wave of criticism from the player base for saying this, and that's not even starting with staff response. Anything approaching the idea of actual current game design being at fault and the conversation is immediately locked, scrubbed and forgotten about. And until the game community is capable of owning up to the idea that yes, Slither is human and can make bad design choices, the game will continue on it's path.
But of course I don't know what I'm talking about and the experiences of the oldbies is somehow more important than other newer player's experiences or insights, so fuck the person who has been playing a fixer every day for three years straight, he doesn't know what he's talking about when it comes to how money works within Sindome.
A fixer who just watched all potential future biz just shrink to the point of not even wanting to bother playing anymore.
And Heaven forbid I actually address topics like how the actual meta is convincing Slither there's a problem when there really isn't.
Proof? 85% percent of the items that the prices were adjusted are sitting currently in the market. Which means that not a single one of you bitching about the prices ever consulted a fixer for market prices, but instead just assumed that your perception of said items prices being too expensive were the correct ones and crying to Daddy Slither produces immediate results.
That 35% cut is more than Apollo could ever hope to achieve in the markets by the way, if you're curious. Slither just gave you all the skills of Apollo in terms of wrecking havoc on the economy, so who needs a fixer anymore?
Things really weren't that expensive, it really did come down to rarity and what a fixer could do with the money they had. But apparently you don't have the time to wait a day or two for the fixer to actually do their jobs. Xo3 isn't that expensive if a Fixer can actually find it. It's just never able to be found because because of rarity because the Seven level PVP characters are hoarding them. And the response by Slither that some players aren't actually deserving of carrying the required top tier weapons has echoes of Animal Farm's "All players are equal, but some are more equal than others." which means these items like ceramic katanas will continue to be hoarded while staff tells you that you have the McDonald's ceramic katanas at home.
But yeah, I only have one viewpoint of the game so my insight is worthless. Whatever.
It makes you wonder why the loudest opponents to increasing the UE caps are the oldbies who are secure in their position at the top and any change would upset the delicate PVP balance of stagnation while always aiming down... maybe because as it's been pointed out even another 300 UE will greatly shift the end game meta and they might actually lose lose in PVP.
Hence why Felibombs will never exist despite there probably being at least five separate bug reports on those darn busted robot control wires.
This is the death knell of your game's economy. Staff is making knee jerk populist decisions to appease the masses while simultaneously catering to a very small class of loud oligarch players. This is only going to make your game stagnate and implode faster. Meanwhile their policy of completely gutting and destroying vital game infrastructure with a pinky promise of replacing them with something better down the road has caused the economy and the systems that supported the common players to grind to a halt, resulting in nobody having any money or being able to have a good time.
Why does this absolutely batshit stupid plan sound so familiar? This isn't learn from the past this is turn on the fucking TV right now.
Things haven't become more expensive. There never was a change to prices to make them go up. Nobody can point to "Protek raise 40% in prices" in the game change log to necessitate the need for a price cut. Slither just dismantled chyen faucets that the game's economy were dependent on. And Slither's design choices and design philosophy of remove but never replace may have over a period of time actually become the cause of all the problems the game is facing.
And until the community can accept this, it will continue to fight amongst itself in a feeding frenzy of who is really at fault for nobody having a good time because there's no money left.
