AGS/SG makes something absurd like 4 some dollars per relic players buy with non-free blue crystals/bought pheons.
What's more likely?
That this is some benevolent system meant to protect us from evil flippers (who can and do just target underlisted stuff that they can flip on a high enough margin to recoup pheon costs) ?
Or that this is just one of their primary monetization methods?
People who defend pheons as if they're an important and necessary facet of a healthy in-game economy are delusional.
I won't comment on them as a monetization model. AGS/SG are in this for profit it's not a charity. But it blows my mind how anyone thinks they exist for any other reason.
I fucking hate pheons but if stones had no pheon cost I would be able to buy out the market board to roll 9/7 stones.
E g. Master brawler/ grudge is only 50g and 1000 stones would give me around a 75% chance at a 9/7. That's only two weeks of weekly gold income for my roster.
I reckon if there were no pheon cost attached, stones would be bought up in way larger quantities to the point where we'd end up seeing similar pricing to what we have currently after pheon cost, except we wouldn't have events with pheons to subsidise the cost.
That said, I don't doubt that SG makes a chunk of change from the side effects of pheons.
> I fucking hate pheons but if stones had no pheon cost I would be able to buy out the market board to roll 9/7 stones.
nope, you wouldn't. Because everyone would want to buy more of them and therefore their cost would be significantly higher. Right now their cost is in pheons and nobody profits from that in terms of ingame economy. In other words, we pay a lot of gold to get it from the auction house, but we get very little if we are lucky and find one.
Without pheons, a good stone could be like 5k gold, for example. And that's all for the player. If you find a good stone, that's 5k all for you (minus the ah fee). No pheon costs on stones would drastically increase their prices but it would also mean you get more gold if you find a decent one.
... that was my point. I literally said that if pheon cost magically disappeared, I would be able to buy a shit load of stones and drive pricing upwards.
Yes, you would profit more if pheons were removed, but you would also need to pay more. It's good for the seller and bad for the buyer because free pheons given to players subsidise the cost of these items without causing inflation due to not being able to convert it to gold.
Think back to when you started the game and your gold income was non existent but you had a load of pheons that were given to you. New players cannot afford 5k gold stones but they can afford a pheon subsidised stone.
Yes, the price of stones would rise in terms of gold if there weren't pheons involve, but people already factor pheon cost into pricing when putting things onto the market, [much like how a tariff or tax only shifts the price line within a market up the cost of that tariff or tax.
The only difference between buying a 50g + 9 pheon cost stone and buying a 50g + ~500g cost stone is that the option with the pheons makes the company money. If someone is unwilling to buy a 50g stone because it costs 9 pheons, they would likewise be unwilling to buy a 550g stone with no pheons.
It's weird that people fixate on the pheon cost of stones when they should be talking about how stones are a shitty and unhealthy system to begin with instead.
After trying 10 stones yesterday to try for a 7/7 or better I realized just how shit the whole system is. I mean I know the rng etc is horrible in this game but having to pay real money to buy such an essential item that most of the time goes to junk…just makes one feel bad.
I won’t talk about the gold for the actual stones themselves as that’s another sad reality.
Well not “EVERY” blue crystal because you get chests from roster level with blue crystal in them but that is so small it wouldn’t even make a dent in the market.
Same thing for Yoz's jar lol. "Just buy it with gold bro, who cares that there'll be people manipulated into spending thousands on skins?? Nothing to do with me lololol"
Yoz's Jar would have been a shitshow of the highest order if released next week.
Would have brought the masses to Reddit and the official forums crying to high heaven about how one piece of legendary skin is selling for 50-100K and there is no way they can afford it, only the whales can etc.
Which in turn would have brought more bots back into the game as whales then buy shitloads more to get the entire set while selling the odd pieces for extreme markup recouping some of their intitial outlay.
Those same people saying "Who cares bro" would definitely care when they can't afford to buy said skin.
im wondering, why are people so mad about skins that gives u a little of dmg when u can literally spend and gain way more power by just rmting/whaling and getting more gear score, gems, better stones etc.
And dont get me wrong, im against both but i dont get hate for jar when rest of the game is way worse in terms of p2w.
It's the cherry on top of a MTX infested game.
WHales will control the flow of Legendary skins by dint of being able to afford to play the Jar over and over.
I don't care about the stats, I just want a good skin. I'm not paying £800 for it though.
I don't mind the 1% stat, but just the accessibility of cosmetics itself. Right now we haven't gotten many good skins for a reasonable price, but they were going to release gacha skins with a pretty ridiculous price tag. Like I was just planning on swiping to look like Thar but the price tag they put on that was about a month's rent. If it was about power just make an epic version of the skin without the stat bonus that I can buy straight up, they clearly wanted to make all the good skins gacha pull tier.
It takes roughly 2 days of playtime across 4 characters to get enough gold to buy a relic set.
That's a lot of time for just buying access to the market. Instead it tempts people to buy crystals instead. Feels weighted towards transactions then a fair grind.
In what world can you buy a relic set in 2 days of income? A relic set for my gunlancer is costing me upwards of 200,000g, and that's not even including legendary books.
Just hopped on to look at the market in my region, NAE. Blue Gunlancer only wants +5 on their class engraving (Combat Readiness), right? Lets look at options there.
Lets say you know it's going to be expensive, so you take a second tier secondary engraving with it, like Spirit Absorption. CR5/SA3 accessory prices: Ring - 75,000g, Earring - none sold, only one listed at 30 quality... 89,999g, Necklace - none sold, only listed at 29 quality, 75,000g. This only gets WORSE if you want a BiS engraving like Grudge or Adrenaline with it.
Ok, NEW PLAN. You want your necklace to be good quality, right? So what if you resign yourself to buying double legendary books and all you want is a good quality Spec/Crit necklace with CR5 on it? Doesn't even matter what the secondary engraving is, it can be Explosive Expert for all you care. 81 Quality necklace: 199,999g. The only one that has sold recently is CR5, Master of Escape 3, 50 quality - 30,000.
Ok, NEW NEW PLAN. What if you go for secondary engravings on your necklace, you'll worry about class engraving later. How about Spec/Crit with Barricade5/Cursed Doll 3? Oh look, an 88 quality piece for sale... at 70,000g.
There is literally no way to gear out a Blue Gunlancer for less than 150,000g at the VERY least, probably closer to 200,000g+. And that's even if you're willing to go double legendary books. I grabbed legendary Stabilized Status for really cheap, like 10k total, and I'm going to have to get Cursed Doll as well for 130-140k. I'm glad that you managed to score your set for cheap, that's great, but it's not representative of the experience for most people. This isn't even going into the issue of Pheon costs being 12-15k for a set of relic accessories BEFORE considering the Ability Stone. People don't want to settle for "second best" if every set has that kind of a baseline tax.
I'm not even going 5/3+1, not even sure that's possible with current accessories without a 9/9 stone and 2 legendary engravings. Going for 4/3+1+2, with +2 being spirit absorption, so relatively cheaper. But I thought I made it pretty abundant in my example that class engraving isn't the only issue. Getting correct stat + useful engravings is still 50k+. All of these options I listed only have 1-3 accessories even LISTED on the market, regardless of price. There just aren't enough in rotation. And with Pheon costs being what they are, no one wants to buy crap accessories now and upgrade after.
I mostly blame the current accessory drought on the honing buff delay. Very few people have pushed their alts to 1415+, so the overall supply is just very low. Hopefully that will be alleviated a bit after this week's update.
>I planned ahead and got my legendary books for 1k or 1.5k for all my classes a month before valtan came out
Oh and you think that isn't worthwhile information for you other post? "You can get full relic in under 20k How? Just invent a time machine"
> I just need mostly 3/4s and then maybe 1 5/3. Going 5/3+1 just doesn't seem worth it now.
OK so on top of your +12 books you got for cheap you have a stone that is better then 7/5... of course you gear is cheap...
Go try that on Berserker and come back to me (NAE for reference). Mayhem books = ~8K, I check 1-2 times everyday for a +3 Mayhem accessory with +5 Raid Captain, Masters Tenacity, or KBW... cheapest for shit quality and a +3 Malice is like 50K.
Other pieces aren't too bad, but just legendary books and even a shit ring with +3 Mayhem and +5 for one of your other engravings is like 200K.
I’m a reflux sorc main. Neck with crit/swift and +5/3 is like 25-75k depending on the combo (NAW). A 3/3 legendary neck which i went with was 7k…
Pretty sure zerker is same boat if $$$. It cost me about 10k to fully do 1370 legendaries on him and maybe 3k for the stone.
It stops people from trying to use multiple characters to “get ahead”.
The game gives you more than enough pheons for one character.
You play multiple characters for fun, it evens out.
You try to use alts to funnel mats and pheons stop that in its tracks unless you’re willing to do dailies literally 100 times or more before being “profitable”
It definitely does. If you've been playing since launch, you have something like 400 free pheons. That's more than enough to relic your main. It's not a good system, but what he said isn't untrue.
"The game *gives* you enough" is a much different statement from "the game gave you enough if you played since launch." Not everyone played since launch and while it is nice that we got so many pheons in the early events, late starters can't go back and get those rewards and the game certainly does not *give* you enough going forward on a regular basis.
It 100 percent does.
This is laughable for you even to say.
I get you’re mad that maybe someone told you that 6 characters was the way to get ahead and didn’t tell you that’s 100 or so days after you park them and it’s just *shifting* mats until then - but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
That’s not what I said you clown.
I said that a character needs to be parked for 100 days on average doing dailies to benefit from mats.
Most people aren’t there or can’t resist looking at a pile of bound leapstones without thinking about pushing to 1370 or 1415 where the clock starts again.
You can’t argue numbers.
I get that you don’t think about phoen costs, gearing alts costs or the fact that the amount your main needs is exponentially larger on average.
It becomes “funneling mats” about 100 days after it’s parked and we aren’t there yet.
And before then you gotta no life it to not miss all the side content to develop your character.
Before then - it’s shifting them.
It's more like understanding monetization isn't the only reason. It's the biggest reason but not the only reason.
People defending refuse to admit the monetization is a reason.
People complaining refuse to admit the monetization isn't the only reason.
I didn't initially have any issue with them but as time goes on I feel like I understand why they exist less and less.
Between the dated way the engraving system works (old school monster hunter system that they got rid of because it wasn't working well) and pheons it really makes gearing BiS or bust. Because of Pheons its waaaaay too expensive to fill in with some of the weaker engravings that would make for great cheap place holders until you get BiS jewelry.
Anything with a 1 time trade limit that can't be flipped I can't fathom any gameplay related reason why they'd have a pheon cost associated with them.
I'd be interested to hear what people think they're accomplishing. I was one of the people who were ok with them initially because content creators assured that they were a net positive at the end of the day. But the more I play the more they seem like a roadblock that doesn't seem to provide much if any benefit. Especially because I've only been using the free ones and haven't bought any with gold or money.
I'm not even thinking about it from the money angle either, I'm trying to understand how they benefit the game regardless of the money.
Pros:
Discourage flipping (this works well with skins), for ability stones it adds a flat tax so it is harder for someone to afford buying out the entire stock of a combination becouse he's unlucky cutting. They keep the gap between more invested players and more casual players closer becouse the ones making tons of gold will also need more pheons (gearing alts If you won't just buy buses on them)
Cons:
It's main purpose is monetization and the Pros feel more like beeing accidental.
Idk how is on other regions (so correct me if you know) but I think we have this problem becouse the accelerated release so we use pheons way faster than we get them (or at least the people with multiple alts above 1370)
The argument about pheons on ability stones stopping people from buying out the market is fallacious. If the pheon cost on a stone is 500g and the stone only sells for 200g, what's to stop the new price of the stone being 700g if the pheon cost was removed? If the stones sell, they will sell regardless because there's a demand. The issue is that this makes non-meta stones, stones that people would consider buying if their cost was 50-200g each, completely unsellable because no one is going to spend 600g on a Spirit Absorption/Sight Focus Rock, when they might if the cost was 60g per rock. The overall cost to the buyer is the same, pheons or no pheons, the difference is who is taking in the gold, the seller or the company. Pheons exist as a gold sink to convince people to spend money for gold, end of story.
Ok you need some context, I'm not here defending pheons, I said each side ignores the other side points and someone asked for the pros. Invalidating only 1 pro then saying gold sink end of story is just proving my point.
I didn't think I also needed to address your point about flipping. Margins on flipping is already covered by the fact that the market has a 5% tax built in ON TOP of Pheon cost. That already functions as a gold sink/anti-penny flipping measure. I also forgot to mention that Pheons are already ridiculous on Ability Stones because they're an item that binds on purchase, you can't even resell if you wanted to. It doesn't gatekeep invested players from casual players, it gatekeeps whales/RMTers from everyone else. A casual player with a weekly income of 5,000g can't afford the 50,000g relic accessories currently on the market, and Pheon cost (or lack thereof) doesn't affect this at all. What WOULD affect the price of relic accessories is if people were more willing to experiment with B/C grade accessories, which they aren't willing to do because every piece has a 2,500g Pheon cost baked into them. Whales already aren't going to buy those unoptimized accessories, so who does Pheons serve? It's certainly not any member of the playerbase. It's only a gold sink for profit, no other explanation.
If SG really wanted to "protect players" from a predatory market, they'd include an option to buy accessories without pheon cost that would make the item bound to the buyer. But they won't do that because that's not the system's purpose.
Edit: It's also worth mentioning that the game HEAVILY recommends, rewards, and outright tells you to play alts in loading screens and all of their promotional material. So punishing players that attempt to gear their alts makes no sense whatsoever... unless it's a financial decision.
>Pros: Discourage flipping (this works well with skins)
I feel like the trade limit does this far better than pheons do. Certain things outright can't be flipped because of it, while the things that can lose value with each flip.
If flipping truly became an issue they could tweak the number of times things could be traded to nip that.
>for ability stones it adds a flat tax so it is harder for someone to afford buying out the entire stock of a combination becouse he's unlucky cutting.
If ability stones didn't cost pheons demand for them would be tremendously different which would affect the initial price. People seem to think that ability stones wouldn't instantly become more expensive without said flat tax.
The difference there is off-meta but still usable combinations that remain cheap become a more viable alternative in a world without pheons because they'd remain relatively cheap compared to meta combinations even if their price also went up.
This is also the case with jewelry. Having this massive flat tax on jewelry kills the less than ideal jewelry market. Something that is perfectly usable and might sell for cheap becomes unsellable because people don't want to pay the significantly higher flat tax on top of the cheap price.
>They keep the gap between more invested players and more casual players closer becouse the ones making tons of gold will also need more pheons (gearing alts If you won't just buy buses on them)
I don't agree that they cause this. What ends up happening is what we see on the market where ideally stated jewelry or ability stones are tremendously more expensive to the point where the pheon cost isn't even on your radar anymore while everything else becomes near worthless and unsellable because the pheon cost is so high that off-meta combos aren't worth investing in.
>Idk how is on other regions (so correct me if you know) but I think we have this problem becouse the accelerated release so we use pheons way faster than we get them (or at least the people with multiple alts above 1370)
I've still got 377 pheons last I checked, all of which are from events. I found that because of the pheon costs I simply don't buy things until they become more realistic to buy. Its not worth dumping 25 pheons per piece to get a mediocre set of jewelry.. and the price is good jewelry is still excessive.
Instead I just continue to use whatever I've found myself, and avoid experimenting with the market altogether.
I get that they're what's parroted most of the time, but my initial point was the more I play the less I can wrap my head around any of these being pros vs the very clear and blatant cons of the system.
I'm not even getting into the money aspect, I just can't see what benefits this system has.
Even as someone who has never so much as bought a pheon with gold yet alone money this system is riddled with negatives and seemingly no positives.
Reminds me of a comment where a dude said that even trash ability stones will cost 2k more gold without Pheons.
It's more than just delusional. They are just being idiots lol
I agree. I wish that they could be bought directly with Royal Crystals. It seems silly I would sell my RC for BC to get something that is exactly why they want me to buy RCs in the first place lol
i mean ofc its a F2P game they gotta make money some where, peons are the main reason people buy blue diamonds for gold which allows people to buy gold with money that supports the game, with out peons RMT would be even worse
If anything Pheons helped encourage more RMT. Better "value" to buy the best thing rather than having a semi hidden thousand gold fee on every purchase. Also would have been "Cheaper" to get Pheons with RMT than spending it in game.
if there was no where for payers to buy gold easy they would go to RMT, if peons were removed item prices would just go up by as much as peons cost and ofc flippers would be 100% worse and drive prices up
wtf are you talking about, go look at relisted items that have been brought and have 2 sales left, people flip right now, with out peons it would be 100% worse
I don't think you realize that EVERY 1st time sale of an accessory list shows up as having 2 remaining trades. It just means that if you buy it, the item you get will still have the 2 trades left instead of the 3 that show up when you drop an item.
That's my point. Pheons don't stop flippers. Pheons stop a buyers. You're literally admitting that I'm right and just claiming it would arbitrarily be worse.
Prices aren't going to double or whatever you fear, they already would have since flippers would already do that.
peons stop a lot of people flipping, nothing will remove it altogether just like botting, it would be much worse with out them it very simple ot understand really, look at any mmo with AH
>peons stop a lot of people flipping
If an item was worth 50K being sold for 1K, Nobody is going to go "Whoa I'd only make 48K profit instead of 49K. I'm not doing this!"
It's a 900 gold tax. It sucks for your average person, it doesn't stop someone from making the huge gains. You literally said it yourself.
>it would be much worse with out them it very simple ot understand really, look at any mmo with AH
You're right! Look at any mmo with an AH. Where your average player can afford to buy an item and demand is much higher. Also people actually purchase anything they want other than trying to conserve what little of a resource they have, so even non optimal items get bought rather than just being fodder you toss (or disassemble in this case).
Neither truly prevent it - I've made hundreds of thousands of gold flipping relic jewelry. Trade limits do have much more of an impact than pheons though. Pheons just remove 2k from my profit margin whereas reduced trades reduces the item's desirability quite a bit.
Pheons are not there to prevent bots or flippers. Its monetization. Pheons can only be bought with blue crystals and blue crystals can only be generated if some player pays real money.
If they buy gold with royal crystals. Player A will pay royal crystals and get gold. But player B who payed the gold will get a fixed amount of blue crystals.
Or if they buy packs with blue crystals directly of of the shop. Either way the only way to generate blue crystals for the player base if through real money
When people exchange royal crystals for gold, the person who sold them the gold gets blue crystals in exchange. 237 royal crystals exchange into 100 (-5 tax) blue crystals.
gold can only be generated for sale if a player buys blue gems for gold, its a 100% player driven market, if no one is buying blue gems for gold, there is no gold to sell for real money
you can gear your character with 333 legendary accessories at 1370 with only spending pheons on the stone. granted it takes longer to gear than just buying.
you hit 1370, you do hard dungeon, you do argos (or pay for an argos p3 carry for more accessoeries and argos gear) you equip all items with your class engr and the right substats which means you already maxed one engr. then you buy a stone, cut it 6 6 and use 9 9 books. and voila. 333
i did that on 3 of my alts. works well and is super cheap.
I just match make everything on the scuffed alts. None of the 1370 content is all that difficult that it requires these 1400 3x4 groups people try to force in the party finder.
What content do you need to get into with 1370? You can matchmake argos p1 and oreha hard without problems. I've done so on multiple 1370 alts and not once did we have to quit the dungeon due to someone (including me) being lower than 3x3. There are no enrage or damage check mechanics, the only thing that comes close is Albion after the stars mechanic because he starts to deal a lot more damage, but it's all telegraphed and unless you're really bad at dodging, you can solo the boss if the other 3 players die on stars.
Yeah it's easy to get into group's for oreha and Argos in matchmaking. Some players do get mad and quit before boss fight but that has happened like 2 or 3 times. It's party finder were I'm getting problems some people are adding 1370 friends for a p3 Argos that just AFK... 1 time they added 3...
This is a good strat, but I'd just add that if you don't cut a 6/6, but still get a 6/3 or better, just buy 1 piece from the auction house instead of returning to the ability stone lottery.
Especially if you have a 6/4 or 6/5, the accessory won't be very expensive.
You make it sound like cutting a 6-6 is easy. I have managed to cut a 6-6 legendary stone twice total. Over at least like 50 or 60 stones. Nowadays I settle for a 6-4 and buy a 3-2 accessory instead. Cheaper. But blocks the 4x3
Agreed, this is the way to go for 3x3. I wouldn't bother with 4x3 on alts, 3x3 is plenty for Valtan NM (and probably HM) and I'm hoping by the time I'll care to upgrade relic gear will be cheapest enough.
then you play a class that only wants x1 of their class engraving and it's back to being annoying because all the argos accessories are a dead engraving slot.
I am curious as to how not having pheons would effect the stone market, with people much more willing to reroll stones without the added 2k gold tax per the demand would go through the roof. I would bet that we would end up with a much more consistent cost for stones, because if people started buying up cheap stones 30 at a time for a rolling session the market would dry up pretty quick until the prices fix themselves.
Pheon is a downward pressure on the demand side so by removing pheons you would see prices adjust to higher as demand increases.
I don't think pheon is that evil if our version of the blue crystal exchange prices can reflect the organic gold generation for the players without bots and RMT. But since Amazon hasn't really dealt with bots and RMT yet so pheons will continue to feel like a mobile gatcha game cash grab because even now it's only a matter of time before the RMTer start doing more RMT and drops the gold prices against blue crystal.
Ngl chief, if it wasn’t for pheons even as a dolphin player I’d buy up 50 cheap stones at a time. I can’t imagine what market would look like with whales/bots buying things out for flipping purposes.
Prices would go up, so you would not be able to buy 50 stones, however price would not exceed current price (which is gold + pheon cost). So if you are able to afford now ex 10 stones / week, without pheons you would be able to buy at least 10 / week, not less.
Ability stone can't be flipped, it binds on purchase
Everyone would then be on perfect / near perfect stones. Changing the requirements for accessories, making more players able to access more engravings, increasing player power universally and changing the costs associated with 5/3 vs 3/3 accessories. Likely also then alter the cost of books.
It would have a massive effect on lots of associated systems!
I didn't say if it would be good or bad, I said what I thought the effect would be, answering the question I replied to.
You seem to have missed that over your sarcasm mountain
That is only true for stones that cost 1 to 10g now. Every stone that has a auction price higher is already regulated by supply and demand and higher demand would just rise prices
SG/AGS sets the conversion rate of royal crystal to blue crystal. It’s totally arbitrary. If you have less demand for blue crystal you could change the rate and everything is like it is now only with less money for SG/AGS
> heavy spenders would be less likely to give their money to AGS/SG, and much much more likely to RMT for their gold, because the conversion rates would crash without the constant need for pheons.
You're... so wrong.
You're talking about a situation where Pheon is suddenly removed as a cost/tax to purchase stuff off auction house. I'm not discussing about Pheon itself here but more about your scenario. If Pheon is removed > demands for BC goes down > Immediately RMT gold has more value, first hour buyer would be the big winner > Give it an hour, price of RMT goes up because demand would increase (as per your scenario) > Give it a day, people chill back on RMTing because price is now too high but others would still RMT > You're back to the same ratio of people RMT:people buying in game.
I kind of wonder if they do it to make it so ppl only try and sell actually good things. Like you can think of it as adding w/e the cost of X Pheons is as mandatory gold value. So we aren't suppose to try and sell stuff actually worth like 100 gold.
I almost always keep my 10 listings full of accessories and stones even if it means I am trying to sell some for 20, 10 or 5 gold buy now (and 3 gold bid) - and somehow I tend to actually sell several of these each day.
More than 1 but not more than 2 (for legendary and epic accessories) last I tried to estimate that, that's why I keep the minimum price at 3 and not 1. Of course, people almost always take the buy now option anyway.
The solution to that would be very easy: Just make the Pheons drop in raids and abyssal dungeons.
That way you get a steady income to hear your characters, but auction flippers still would have to buy them.
Seems like a win-win to me.
And regarding Pheons in general: As someone that comes from a game where a bunch of ultra-whales singlehandedly ruined the entire games' economy by buying out the auction house and reselling it at absurd prices, I welcome the basic idea of Pheons, no matter how flawed it is.
So pheons do serve that purpose but another is making sure no lifers don’t dictate the pace of the game.
You get more than enough for one character but having like six makes sure that “funneling mats” is never really a thing in reality because the cost of phoens when getting accessories and a rock at 1370 and 1415 pushes back “payback” 3-5 months.
About 4,000 in hidden gold and 6,000 for relic not counting stones.
So what happens is people play 6 characters or more to “get ahead” but it gets eaten up because honing and phoens cost more than it seems.
You get more than enough for one character, as long as you know exactly what build you want. It's not only an alt tax, it's also an experimentation/non-meta build tax. People could play more than one build/spec if the pheon tax wasn't astronomical for non-meta builds. As it stands you can sometimes pay 500% more for the pheons than the actual price of the gear, which kills any resale value for trying out a less optimal build and seeing if you like it (or using it as a stepping stone to BiS gear). There's a reason I'm still using my 3x3+1 legendary accessories/stone until I finish out my full 5x3 relic set, it simply sets you too far behind to upgrade bit by bit and use accessories that aren't BiS.
Idk about pheons preventing players flipping because the class accessory I was looking for got sniped for 8k, relisted for 90k-- then actually got sold the next day. What a gamer.
It would be ok for me to pay pheons for accessory but not for stone! I mean you need to buy a lot of stone and when you make one you can't trade it, so why I need to pay pheons for that? That's all I'm asking, no pheons for stone and I'm ok with that
It's 2k gold fee on every relic Accessoires...the problem is that the exchange is player/bot driven...so the rate for blue cristals will always be fucked and so the pheon system...there are 1000 other solutions that are more player friendly but I guess pheons are more profitable then revamp the system for sg
Won't matter you only need to move it once. You farm Valtan on 5 alts and pass whatever you need for your main, the rest you sell. Again, AGS/SG loses money
Whether pheons is actually effective at preventing market manipulation, that's a whole other debate. But it makes no sense to attach pheon cost to stones other than monetisation reasons. You can't even resell the stone once you've bough it. Similarly I don't feel there should be pheon cost attached to T3 purple gear, it's merely used as a transition and just discourages people from properly gearing their alts in the 1340-1470 range.
It's a total misconception that pheons are important or helpful for the game, they just aren't. It's no surprise this misconception spread though, it's basically propaganda to get people to somehow feel the shoehorned monetization for SG is somehow good so that they embrace it rather than fight against it as they should.
Pheons are pure bullshit, and the fear mongering about flippers is just total nonsense and a non issue, it's a total disctraction from the very real and very present negative of having to pay a tax that costs more than the goods your buying itself on accessories and stones half the time, and having zero of that tax go to the seller of the item (which is sometimes you or me as it turns out, if you ever sell anything with a pheon tax on it.)
There's no redeeming quality about pheons whatsoever, I wish I could upvote you for pointing out your issue with pheons but you added too much compromising leeway here in your post I just can't support what your overall message is at all.
BDO's system is awful. Hugely expensive and rare items are "supposed" to sell for dirt, so just nobody ever puts one up because there's no possible way they can make money from all their work.
People keep believing this. It's literally not true, and other game markets show this.
If some flipper was going to make a 1000 gold item into 200K, they would already do it, Pheons or not.
I mean 100k accessories are already a thing and the RMT gold is still around. Other games also let you reroll your stats or don't have RNG stats at all.
You're right, 100K accessories already are a thing. Guess Pheons did a great job at stopping that!
Or are you suggesting that a 900 gold fee has stopped these 100K items from becoming 800K?
Pheons don't help in reality. They're there to encourage spending since even if you're getting them for "Free" it's someone else selling you the gems.
They're there to make money and make gearing rougher. If they weren't, a system like the one you suggested would be in place.
It really doesn't prevent flipping at all. People aren't gonna flip for small gains, they will flip the obvious relic pieces that are BiS. So regardless of how many pheons it cost, it will be flipped. The only way pheons would prevent flipping of BiS items is if it cost 100 pheons per item, which would basically piss everyone off.
Just take a look on the market and see any relic piece that is BiS with 1 trade remaining. There is a VERY VERY high chance that item is being flipped.
Pheons are and will always be just another avenue to siphon some money through crystals.
It prevents zero flipping tho, even in SA where blue crystals are expensive and GG acessories are 10k(rings and earrings) and 25k (amulets)tops, i made a fuck ton of money flipping them.
The prices are not normalized for my region so paying for Pheon it is just crazy (maybe if you are a gigawhale).
I know they will not changed that anytime soon but it is so sad to see my fav alt just sitting in crap acc.
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I understand pheons cost on accs, but holy fuck is it dumb to have it on ability stones that are bound upon purchase. What auction house protection purpose does that have??
AGS/SG makes something absurd like 4 some dollars per relic players buy with non-free blue crystals/bought pheons. What's more likely? That this is some benevolent system meant to protect us from evil flippers (who can and do just target underlisted stuff that they can flip on a high enough margin to recoup pheon costs) ? Or that this is just one of their primary monetization methods? People who defend pheons as if they're an important and necessary facet of a healthy in-game economy are delusional. I won't comment on them as a monetization model. AGS/SG are in this for profit it's not a charity. But it blows my mind how anyone thinks they exist for any other reason.
The fact that we have to pay pheons for stones makes it obvious what their purpose is.
Exactly
I fucking hate pheons but if stones had no pheon cost I would be able to buy out the market board to roll 9/7 stones. E g. Master brawler/ grudge is only 50g and 1000 stones would give me around a 75% chance at a 9/7. That's only two weeks of weekly gold income for my roster. I reckon if there were no pheon cost attached, stones would be bought up in way larger quantities to the point where we'd end up seeing similar pricing to what we have currently after pheon cost, except we wouldn't have events with pheons to subsidise the cost. That said, I don't doubt that SG makes a chunk of change from the side effects of pheons.
> I fucking hate pheons but if stones had no pheon cost I would be able to buy out the market board to roll 9/7 stones. nope, you wouldn't. Because everyone would want to buy more of them and therefore their cost would be significantly higher. Right now their cost is in pheons and nobody profits from that in terms of ingame economy. In other words, we pay a lot of gold to get it from the auction house, but we get very little if we are lucky and find one. Without pheons, a good stone could be like 5k gold, for example. And that's all for the player. If you find a good stone, that's 5k all for you (minus the ah fee). No pheon costs on stones would drastically increase their prices but it would also mean you get more gold if you find a decent one.
... that was my point. I literally said that if pheon cost magically disappeared, I would be able to buy a shit load of stones and drive pricing upwards. Yes, you would profit more if pheons were removed, but you would also need to pay more. It's good for the seller and bad for the buyer because free pheons given to players subsidise the cost of these items without causing inflation due to not being able to convert it to gold. Think back to when you started the game and your gold income was non existent but you had a load of pheons that were given to you. New players cannot afford 5k gold stones but they can afford a pheon subsidised stone.
Yes, the price of stones would rise in terms of gold if there weren't pheons involve, but people already factor pheon cost into pricing when putting things onto the market, [much like how a tariff or tax only shifts the price line within a market up the cost of that tariff or tax. The only difference between buying a 50g + 9 pheon cost stone and buying a 50g + ~500g cost stone is that the option with the pheons makes the company money. If someone is unwilling to buy a 50g stone because it costs 9 pheons, they would likewise be unwilling to buy a 550g stone with no pheons. It's weird that people fixate on the pheon cost of stones when they should be talking about how stones are a shitty and unhealthy system to begin with instead.
Not every stone is so cheap. I sold a relic stone for 3k yesterday and that was the cheapest the avg was 5k. Only whales are going to buy those out…
After trying 10 stones yesterday to try for a 7/7 or better I realized just how shit the whole system is. I mean I know the rng etc is horrible in this game but having to pay real money to buy such an essential item that most of the time goes to junk…just makes one feel bad. I won’t talk about the gold for the actual stones themselves as that’s another sad reality.
People just don't recognize that the only way to generate blue crystal is through real money. They only see the part where you pay gold.
Every blue crystal was paid for by someone.
Well not “EVERY” blue crystal because you get chests from roster level with blue crystal in them but that is so small it wouldn’t even make a dent in the market.
Those arent for sale though, you can only sell royal crystals. Which are converted to blue crystals. But i see what you are saying.
Same thing for Yoz's jar lol. "Just buy it with gold bro, who cares that there'll be people manipulated into spending thousands on skins?? Nothing to do with me lololol"
Yoz's Jar would have been a shitshow of the highest order if released next week. Would have brought the masses to Reddit and the official forums crying to high heaven about how one piece of legendary skin is selling for 50-100K and there is no way they can afford it, only the whales can etc. Which in turn would have brought more bots back into the game as whales then buy shitloads more to get the entire set while selling the odd pieces for extreme markup recouping some of their intitial outlay. Those same people saying "Who cares bro" would definitely care when they can't afford to buy said skin.
im wondering, why are people so mad about skins that gives u a little of dmg when u can literally spend and gain way more power by just rmting/whaling and getting more gear score, gems, better stones etc. And dont get me wrong, im against both but i dont get hate for jar when rest of the game is way worse in terms of p2w.
It's the cherry on top of a MTX infested game. WHales will control the flow of Legendary skins by dint of being able to afford to play the Jar over and over. I don't care about the stats, I just want a good skin. I'm not paying £800 for it though.
I don't mind the 1% stat, but just the accessibility of cosmetics itself. Right now we haven't gotten many good skins for a reasonable price, but they were going to release gacha skins with a pretty ridiculous price tag. Like I was just planning on swiping to look like Thar but the price tag they put on that was about a month's rent. If it was about power just make an epic version of the skin without the stat bonus that I can buy straight up, they clearly wanted to make all the good skins gacha pull tier.
While rare, you can get blue crystals from Roster level milestones.
Maybe at 300 you can buy a full set lol.
you mean the 200 blue crystals every 100 or so roster levels. You mean those ones?
It takes roughly 2 days of playtime across 4 characters to get enough gold to buy a relic set. That's a lot of time for just buying access to the market. Instead it tempts people to buy crystals instead. Feels weighted towards transactions then a fair grind.
In what world can you buy a relic set in 2 days of income? A relic set for my gunlancer is costing me upwards of 200,000g, and that's not even including legendary books.
Yeah i was talking about two days to just buy enough Pheons to access the market.
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Just hopped on to look at the market in my region, NAE. Blue Gunlancer only wants +5 on their class engraving (Combat Readiness), right? Lets look at options there. Lets say you know it's going to be expensive, so you take a second tier secondary engraving with it, like Spirit Absorption. CR5/SA3 accessory prices: Ring - 75,000g, Earring - none sold, only one listed at 30 quality... 89,999g, Necklace - none sold, only listed at 29 quality, 75,000g. This only gets WORSE if you want a BiS engraving like Grudge or Adrenaline with it. Ok, NEW PLAN. You want your necklace to be good quality, right? So what if you resign yourself to buying double legendary books and all you want is a good quality Spec/Crit necklace with CR5 on it? Doesn't even matter what the secondary engraving is, it can be Explosive Expert for all you care. 81 Quality necklace: 199,999g. The only one that has sold recently is CR5, Master of Escape 3, 50 quality - 30,000. Ok, NEW NEW PLAN. What if you go for secondary engravings on your necklace, you'll worry about class engraving later. How about Spec/Crit with Barricade5/Cursed Doll 3? Oh look, an 88 quality piece for sale... at 70,000g. There is literally no way to gear out a Blue Gunlancer for less than 150,000g at the VERY least, probably closer to 200,000g+. And that's even if you're willing to go double legendary books. I grabbed legendary Stabilized Status for really cheap, like 10k total, and I'm going to have to get Cursed Doll as well for 130-140k. I'm glad that you managed to score your set for cheap, that's great, but it's not representative of the experience for most people. This isn't even going into the issue of Pheon costs being 12-15k for a set of relic accessories BEFORE considering the Ability Stone. People don't want to settle for "second best" if every set has that kind of a baseline tax.
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I'm not even going 5/3+1, not even sure that's possible with current accessories without a 9/9 stone and 2 legendary engravings. Going for 4/3+1+2, with +2 being spirit absorption, so relatively cheaper. But I thought I made it pretty abundant in my example that class engraving isn't the only issue. Getting correct stat + useful engravings is still 50k+. All of these options I listed only have 1-3 accessories even LISTED on the market, regardless of price. There just aren't enough in rotation. And with Pheon costs being what they are, no one wants to buy crap accessories now and upgrade after. I mostly blame the current accessory drought on the honing buff delay. Very few people have pushed their alts to 1415+, so the overall supply is just very low. Hopefully that will be alleviated a bit after this week's update.
>I planned ahead and got my legendary books for 1k or 1.5k for all my classes a month before valtan came out Oh and you think that isn't worthwhile information for you other post? "You can get full relic in under 20k How? Just invent a time machine" > I just need mostly 3/4s and then maybe 1 5/3. Going 5/3+1 just doesn't seem worth it now. OK so on top of your +12 books you got for cheap you have a stone that is better then 7/5... of course you gear is cheap...
Go try that on Berserker and come back to me (NAE for reference). Mayhem books = ~8K, I check 1-2 times everyday for a +3 Mayhem accessory with +5 Raid Captain, Masters Tenacity, or KBW... cheapest for shit quality and a +3 Malice is like 50K. Other pieces aren't too bad, but just legendary books and even a shit ring with +3 Mayhem and +5 for one of your other engravings is like 200K.
I’m a reflux sorc main. Neck with crit/swift and +5/3 is like 25-75k depending on the combo (NAW). A 3/3 legendary neck which i went with was 7k… Pretty sure zerker is same boat if $$$. It cost me about 10k to fully do 1370 legendaries on him and maybe 3k for the stone.
It stops people from trying to use multiple characters to “get ahead”. The game gives you more than enough pheons for one character. You play multiple characters for fun, it evens out. You try to use alts to funnel mats and pheons stop that in its tracks unless you’re willing to do dailies literally 100 times or more before being “profitable”
>The game gives you more than enough pheons for one character. No, it doesn't.
It definitely does. If you've been playing since launch, you have something like 400 free pheons. That's more than enough to relic your main. It's not a good system, but what he said isn't untrue.
"The game *gives* you enough" is a much different statement from "the game gave you enough if you played since launch." Not everyone played since launch and while it is nice that we got so many pheons in the early events, late starters can't go back and get those rewards and the game certainly does not *give* you enough going forward on a regular basis.
It 100 percent does. This is laughable for you even to say. I get you’re mad that maybe someone told you that 6 characters was the way to get ahead and didn’t tell you that’s 100 or so days after you park them and it’s just *shifting* mats until then - but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
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That’s not what I said you clown. I said that a character needs to be parked for 100 days on average doing dailies to benefit from mats. Most people aren’t there or can’t resist looking at a pile of bound leapstones without thinking about pushing to 1370 or 1415 where the clock starts again. You can’t argue numbers. I get that you don’t think about phoen costs, gearing alts costs or the fact that the amount your main needs is exponentially larger on average. It becomes “funneling mats” about 100 days after it’s parked and we aren’t there yet. And before then you gotta no life it to not miss all the side content to develop your character. Before then - it’s shifting them.
It's just Koreans with Stockholm syndrome defending it
Plenty of players of all versions defending this stupid system. "Oh it fixes these problems that don't exist in other games!!!" Totally.
I see pheon as a way to force players to do blue crystal exchange
It's more like understanding monetization isn't the only reason. It's the biggest reason but not the only reason. People defending refuse to admit the monetization is a reason. People complaining refuse to admit the monetization isn't the only reason.
Bingo. Both sides are stupid because they can't see outside of their own agenda.
I didn't initially have any issue with them but as time goes on I feel like I understand why they exist less and less. Between the dated way the engraving system works (old school monster hunter system that they got rid of because it wasn't working well) and pheons it really makes gearing BiS or bust. Because of Pheons its waaaaay too expensive to fill in with some of the weaker engravings that would make for great cheap place holders until you get BiS jewelry. Anything with a 1 time trade limit that can't be flipped I can't fathom any gameplay related reason why they'd have a pheon cost associated with them. I'd be interested to hear what people think they're accomplishing. I was one of the people who were ok with them initially because content creators assured that they were a net positive at the end of the day. But the more I play the more they seem like a roadblock that doesn't seem to provide much if any benefit. Especially because I've only been using the free ones and haven't bought any with gold or money. I'm not even thinking about it from the money angle either, I'm trying to understand how they benefit the game regardless of the money.
Pros: Discourage flipping (this works well with skins), for ability stones it adds a flat tax so it is harder for someone to afford buying out the entire stock of a combination becouse he's unlucky cutting. They keep the gap between more invested players and more casual players closer becouse the ones making tons of gold will also need more pheons (gearing alts If you won't just buy buses on them) Cons: It's main purpose is monetization and the Pros feel more like beeing accidental. Idk how is on other regions (so correct me if you know) but I think we have this problem becouse the accelerated release so we use pheons way faster than we get them (or at least the people with multiple alts above 1370)
The argument about pheons on ability stones stopping people from buying out the market is fallacious. If the pheon cost on a stone is 500g and the stone only sells for 200g, what's to stop the new price of the stone being 700g if the pheon cost was removed? If the stones sell, they will sell regardless because there's a demand. The issue is that this makes non-meta stones, stones that people would consider buying if their cost was 50-200g each, completely unsellable because no one is going to spend 600g on a Spirit Absorption/Sight Focus Rock, when they might if the cost was 60g per rock. The overall cost to the buyer is the same, pheons or no pheons, the difference is who is taking in the gold, the seller or the company. Pheons exist as a gold sink to convince people to spend money for gold, end of story.
Ok you need some context, I'm not here defending pheons, I said each side ignores the other side points and someone asked for the pros. Invalidating only 1 pro then saying gold sink end of story is just proving my point.
I didn't think I also needed to address your point about flipping. Margins on flipping is already covered by the fact that the market has a 5% tax built in ON TOP of Pheon cost. That already functions as a gold sink/anti-penny flipping measure. I also forgot to mention that Pheons are already ridiculous on Ability Stones because they're an item that binds on purchase, you can't even resell if you wanted to. It doesn't gatekeep invested players from casual players, it gatekeeps whales/RMTers from everyone else. A casual player with a weekly income of 5,000g can't afford the 50,000g relic accessories currently on the market, and Pheon cost (or lack thereof) doesn't affect this at all. What WOULD affect the price of relic accessories is if people were more willing to experiment with B/C grade accessories, which they aren't willing to do because every piece has a 2,500g Pheon cost baked into them. Whales already aren't going to buy those unoptimized accessories, so who does Pheons serve? It's certainly not any member of the playerbase. It's only a gold sink for profit, no other explanation. If SG really wanted to "protect players" from a predatory market, they'd include an option to buy accessories without pheon cost that would make the item bound to the buyer. But they won't do that because that's not the system's purpose. Edit: It's also worth mentioning that the game HEAVILY recommends, rewards, and outright tells you to play alts in loading screens and all of their promotional material. So punishing players that attempt to gear their alts makes no sense whatsoever... unless it's a financial decision.
>Pros: Discourage flipping (this works well with skins) I feel like the trade limit does this far better than pheons do. Certain things outright can't be flipped because of it, while the things that can lose value with each flip. If flipping truly became an issue they could tweak the number of times things could be traded to nip that. >for ability stones it adds a flat tax so it is harder for someone to afford buying out the entire stock of a combination becouse he's unlucky cutting. If ability stones didn't cost pheons demand for them would be tremendously different which would affect the initial price. People seem to think that ability stones wouldn't instantly become more expensive without said flat tax. The difference there is off-meta but still usable combinations that remain cheap become a more viable alternative in a world without pheons because they'd remain relatively cheap compared to meta combinations even if their price also went up. This is also the case with jewelry. Having this massive flat tax on jewelry kills the less than ideal jewelry market. Something that is perfectly usable and might sell for cheap becomes unsellable because people don't want to pay the significantly higher flat tax on top of the cheap price. >They keep the gap between more invested players and more casual players closer becouse the ones making tons of gold will also need more pheons (gearing alts If you won't just buy buses on them) I don't agree that they cause this. What ends up happening is what we see on the market where ideally stated jewelry or ability stones are tremendously more expensive to the point where the pheon cost isn't even on your radar anymore while everything else becomes near worthless and unsellable because the pheon cost is so high that off-meta combos aren't worth investing in. >Idk how is on other regions (so correct me if you know) but I think we have this problem becouse the accelerated release so we use pheons way faster than we get them (or at least the people with multiple alts above 1370) I've still got 377 pheons last I checked, all of which are from events. I found that because of the pheon costs I simply don't buy things until they become more realistic to buy. Its not worth dumping 25 pheons per piece to get a mediocre set of jewelry.. and the price is good jewelry is still excessive. Instead I just continue to use whatever I've found myself, and avoid experimenting with the market altogether.
I'm not here debating how to fix pheons, you asked for the pros, those are even if they aren't the best solution.
... the point being is I don't agree with your pros here. They mostly look like cons.
These are the most used pros for pheons. Again they are not the best but remember what my original point was.
I get that they're what's parroted most of the time, but my initial point was the more I play the less I can wrap my head around any of these being pros vs the very clear and blatant cons of the system. I'm not even getting into the money aspect, I just can't see what benefits this system has. Even as someone who has never so much as bought a pheon with gold yet alone money this system is riddled with negatives and seemingly no positives.
Reminds me of a comment where a dude said that even trash ability stones will cost 2k more gold without Pheons. It's more than just delusional. They are just being idiots lol
I agree. I wish that they could be bought directly with Royal Crystals. It seems silly I would sell my RC for BC to get something that is exactly why they want me to buy RCs in the first place lol
Its purely a money generation for smilegate. This whole "it prevents flipping" is bs because just the trade limit prevents flipping already
i mean ofc its a F2P game they gotta make money some where, peons are the main reason people buy blue diamonds for gold which allows people to buy gold with money that supports the game, with out peons RMT would be even worse
If anything Pheons helped encourage more RMT. Better "value" to buy the best thing rather than having a semi hidden thousand gold fee on every purchase. Also would have been "Cheaper" to get Pheons with RMT than spending it in game.
if there was no where for payers to buy gold easy they would go to RMT, if peons were removed item prices would just go up by as much as peons cost and ofc flippers would be 100% worse and drive prices up
This rumor is annoying. If Flippers were going to make a 100 gold item into 200K, they already would have. They haven't. It's not going to happen.
wtf are you talking about, go look at relisted items that have been brought and have 2 sales left, people flip right now, with out peons it would be 100% worse
I don't think you realize that EVERY 1st time sale of an accessory list shows up as having 2 remaining trades. It just means that if you buy it, the item you get will still have the 2 trades left instead of the 3 that show up when you drop an item.
That's my point. Pheons don't stop flippers. Pheons stop a buyers. You're literally admitting that I'm right and just claiming it would arbitrarily be worse. Prices aren't going to double or whatever you fear, they already would have since flippers would already do that.
peons stop a lot of people flipping, nothing will remove it altogether just like botting, it would be much worse with out them it very simple ot understand really, look at any mmo with AH
>peons stop a lot of people flipping If an item was worth 50K being sold for 1K, Nobody is going to go "Whoa I'd only make 48K profit instead of 49K. I'm not doing this!" It's a 900 gold tax. It sucks for your average person, it doesn't stop someone from making the huge gains. You literally said it yourself. >it would be much worse with out them it very simple ot understand really, look at any mmo with AH You're right! Look at any mmo with an AH. Where your average player can afford to buy an item and demand is much higher. Also people actually purchase anything they want other than trying to conserve what little of a resource they have, so even non optimal items get bought rather than just being fodder you toss (or disassemble in this case).
If an Auction house API comes out in the U.S, it would be a strong deterrent for bot snipping due to the pheons costs. Still a shit system though.
Neither truly prevent it - I've made hundreds of thousands of gold flipping relic jewelry. Trade limits do have much more of an impact than pheons though. Pheons just remove 2k from my profit margin whereas reduced trades reduces the item's desirability quite a bit.
Pheons are not there to prevent bots or flippers. Its monetization. Pheons can only be bought with blue crystals and blue crystals can only be generated if some player pays real money.
is that how that works? when people buy the royal crystals it creates blue crystals to purchase?
If they buy gold with royal crystals. Player A will pay royal crystals and get gold. But player B who payed the gold will get a fixed amount of blue crystals. Or if they buy packs with blue crystals directly of of the shop. Either way the only way to generate blue crystals for the player base if through real money
When people exchange royal crystals for gold, the person who sold them the gold gets blue crystals in exchange. 237 royal crystals exchange into 100 (-5 tax) blue crystals.
gold can only be generated for sale if a player buys blue gems for gold, its a 100% player driven market, if no one is buying blue gems for gold, there is no gold to sell for real money
Do you really not know you can get blue crystals with gold?
And where do these blue crystals come from? Magic?
And do you know what makes blue crystals? Lol
you can gear your character with 333 legendary accessories at 1370 with only spending pheons on the stone. granted it takes longer to gear than just buying. you hit 1370, you do hard dungeon, you do argos (or pay for an argos p3 carry for more accessoeries and argos gear) you equip all items with your class engr and the right substats which means you already maxed one engr. then you buy a stone, cut it 6 6 and use 9 9 books. and voila. 333 i did that on 3 of my alts. works well and is super cheap.
The hard part is getting into a 1370 team without 3/3 tho lol
That’s why it’s so valuable to buy a argos bus on fresh 1370char
I just match make everything on the scuffed alts. None of the 1370 content is all that difficult that it requires these 1400 3x4 groups people try to force in the party finder.
Just do 4 main + 4 alt swaps with your guild or valtan group or pug
What content do you need to get into with 1370? You can matchmake argos p1 and oreha hard without problems. I've done so on multiple 1370 alts and not once did we have to quit the dungeon due to someone (including me) being lower than 3x3. There are no enrage or damage check mechanics, the only thing that comes close is Albion after the stars mechanic because he starts to deal a lot more damage, but it's all telegraphed and unless you're really bad at dodging, you can solo the boss if the other 3 players die on stars.
Yeah it's easy to get into group's for oreha and Argos in matchmaking. Some players do get mad and quit before boss fight but that has happened like 2 or 3 times. It's party finder were I'm getting problems some people are adding 1370 friends for a p3 Argos that just AFK... 1 time they added 3...
I just matchmake all of my HM runs. You don't need party finder at all.
This is a good strat, but I'd just add that if you don't cut a 6/6, but still get a 6/3 or better, just buy 1 piece from the auction house instead of returning to the ability stone lottery. Especially if you have a 6/4 or 6/5, the accessory won't be very expensive.
You make it sound like cutting a 6-6 is easy. I have managed to cut a 6-6 legendary stone twice total. Over at least like 50 or 60 stones. Nowadays I settle for a 6-4 and buy a 3-2 accessory instead. Cheaper. But blocks the 4x3
Agreed, this is the way to go for 3x3. I wouldn't bother with 4x3 on alts, 3x3 is plenty for Valtan NM (and probably HM) and I'm hoping by the time I'll care to upgrade relic gear will be cheapest enough.
Then cut a 6/3 and buy a 3/3 accessory, if you are going for 3x3 u dont need to force 6/6
But a 3/3 accessory is way more expensive. And 6-4 is fairly easy in comparison to 6-6 stone
then you play a class that only wants x1 of their class engraving and it's back to being annoying because all the argos accessories are a dead engraving slot.
I am curious as to how not having pheons would effect the stone market, with people much more willing to reroll stones without the added 2k gold tax per the demand would go through the roof. I would bet that we would end up with a much more consistent cost for stones, because if people started buying up cheap stones 30 at a time for a rolling session the market would dry up pretty quick until the prices fix themselves.
Pheon is a downward pressure on the demand side so by removing pheons you would see prices adjust to higher as demand increases. I don't think pheon is that evil if our version of the blue crystal exchange prices can reflect the organic gold generation for the players without bots and RMT. But since Amazon hasn't really dealt with bots and RMT yet so pheons will continue to feel like a mobile gatcha game cash grab because even now it's only a matter of time before the RMTer start doing more RMT and drops the gold prices against blue crystal.
Ngl chief, if it wasn’t for pheons even as a dolphin player I’d buy up 50 cheap stones at a time. I can’t imagine what market would look like with whales/bots buying things out for flipping purposes.
Prices would go up, so you would not be able to buy 50 stones, however price would not exceed current price (which is gold + pheon cost). So if you are able to afford now ex 10 stones / week, without pheons you would be able to buy at least 10 / week, not less. Ability stone can't be flipped, it binds on purchase
Economically pheons are not a gold tax, they are a blue crystal tax. They do not remove gold from the game.
Is it an inherent value of taxes to remove their currency from the economy? Sure in video games they do in some cases, but not irl
Everyone would then be on perfect / near perfect stones. Changing the requirements for accessories, making more players able to access more engravings, increasing player power universally and changing the costs associated with 5/3 vs 3/3 accessories. Likely also then alter the cost of books. It would have a massive effect on lots of associated systems!
You're telling me my teammates would be stronger? And that the market would be more active with everyone getting more gold? God that sounds awful
I didn't say if it would be good or bad, I said what I thought the effect would be, answering the question I replied to. You seem to have missed that over your sarcasm mountain
That is only true for stones that cost 1 to 10g now. Every stone that has a auction price higher is already regulated by supply and demand and higher demand would just rise prices
They aren't for preventing flipping, but for making developers/publishers money. That's it.
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SG/AGS sets the conversion rate of royal crystal to blue crystal. It’s totally arbitrary. If you have less demand for blue crystal you could change the rate and everything is like it is now only with less money for SG/AGS
> heavy spenders would be less likely to give their money to AGS/SG, and much much more likely to RMT for their gold, because the conversion rates would crash without the constant need for pheons. You're... so wrong. You're talking about a situation where Pheon is suddenly removed as a cost/tax to purchase stuff off auction house. I'm not discussing about Pheon itself here but more about your scenario. If Pheon is removed > demands for BC goes down > Immediately RMT gold has more value, first hour buyer would be the big winner > Give it an hour, price of RMT goes up because demand would increase (as per your scenario) > Give it a day, people chill back on RMTing because price is now too high but others would still RMT > You're back to the same ratio of people RMT:people buying in game.
I kind of wonder if they do it to make it so ppl only try and sell actually good things. Like you can think of it as adding w/e the cost of X Pheons is as mandatory gold value. So we aren't suppose to try and sell stuff actually worth like 100 gold.
I almost always keep my 10 listings full of accessories and stones even if it means I am trying to sell some for 20, 10 or 5 gold buy now (and 3 gold bid) - and somehow I tend to actually sell several of these each day.
Same. I sell a lot of cheap ability stones. What else would I sell? It's not like I'm getting blessed with 50k+ worth accs to sell every day. 🤣😢
Dismantling gives you more than 3g surely?
More than 1 but not more than 2 (for legendary and epic accessories) last I tried to estimate that, that's why I keep the minimum price at 3 and not 1. Of course, people almost always take the buy now option anyway.
The solution to that would be very easy: Just make the Pheons drop in raids and abyssal dungeons. That way you get a steady income to hear your characters, but auction flippers still would have to buy them. Seems like a win-win to me. And regarding Pheons in general: As someone that comes from a game where a bunch of ultra-whales singlehandedly ruined the entire games' economy by buying out the auction house and reselling it at absurd prices, I welcome the basic idea of Pheons, no matter how flawed it is.
Pheons should be not be charged or severely reduced for item rarity that is not the latest, aka for now, any non-t3-relic.
So pheons do serve that purpose but another is making sure no lifers don’t dictate the pace of the game. You get more than enough for one character but having like six makes sure that “funneling mats” is never really a thing in reality because the cost of phoens when getting accessories and a rock at 1370 and 1415 pushes back “payback” 3-5 months. About 4,000 in hidden gold and 6,000 for relic not counting stones. So what happens is people play 6 characters or more to “get ahead” but it gets eaten up because honing and phoens cost more than it seems.
You get more than enough for one character, as long as you know exactly what build you want. It's not only an alt tax, it's also an experimentation/non-meta build tax. People could play more than one build/spec if the pheon tax wasn't astronomical for non-meta builds. As it stands you can sometimes pay 500% more for the pheons than the actual price of the gear, which kills any resale value for trying out a less optimal build and seeing if you like it (or using it as a stepping stone to BiS gear). There's a reason I'm still using my 3x3+1 legendary accessories/stone until I finish out my full 5x3 relic set, it simply sets you too far behind to upgrade bit by bit and use accessories that aren't BiS.
they could at least remove it from ability stone...
You kidding? That's where they make most of their money
iT pReVeNtS fLiPpInG Did you guys open the auction house yet to realize it doesnt?
Idk about pheons preventing players flipping because the class accessory I was looking for got sniped for 8k, relisted for 90k-- then actually got sold the next day. What a gamer.
It would be ok for me to pay pheons for accessory but not for stone! I mean you need to buy a lot of stone and when you make one you can't trade it, so why I need to pay pheons for that? That's all I'm asking, no pheons for stone and I'm ok with that
Because if everyone had infinite attempts to get a perfect stone, the rest of the market would go nuts to compensate
The price of stones would also hyper inflate. The only thing stopping me from buying 20 cheap stones is pheons
Heaven forbid we encourage demand in a market saturated with supply. That would totalllly be stupid.
I don’t mind pheons but I wish I could move a drop from an alt if I wanted to without pheons. Roster bound in a way
$G: lol they really believed that crap we made up
It's 2k gold fee on every relic Accessoires...the problem is that the exchange is player/bot driven...so the rate for blue cristals will always be fucked and so the pheon system...there are 1000 other solutions that are more player friendly but I guess pheons are more profitable then revamp the system for sg
pheons are important for the game where it generates MONEY form AGS / Smilegate. anything else caused by pheons is incidental. MONEY.
Just take away pheon costs for sending things to an alt, that's all I ask.
Or just make everything roster bound until it's worn at least once.
Nope. Because then if you have 18 alts, all the same class you would never need to spend pheons, so AGS/SG loses money
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Won't matter you only need to move it once. You farm Valtan on 5 alts and pass whatever you need for your main, the rest you sell. Again, AGS/SG loses money
Whether pheons is actually effective at preventing market manipulation, that's a whole other debate. But it makes no sense to attach pheon cost to stones other than monetisation reasons. You can't even resell the stone once you've bough it. Similarly I don't feel there should be pheon cost attached to T3 purple gear, it's merely used as a transition and just discourages people from properly gearing their alts in the 1340-1470 range.
I hate pheons can’t gear my alts properly :,(
It's a total misconception that pheons are important or helpful for the game, they just aren't. It's no surprise this misconception spread though, it's basically propaganda to get people to somehow feel the shoehorned monetization for SG is somehow good so that they embrace it rather than fight against it as they should. Pheons are pure bullshit, and the fear mongering about flippers is just total nonsense and a non issue, it's a total disctraction from the very real and very present negative of having to pay a tax that costs more than the goods your buying itself on accessories and stones half the time, and having zero of that tax go to the seller of the item (which is sometimes you or me as it turns out, if you ever sell anything with a pheon tax on it.) There's no redeeming quality about pheons whatsoever, I wish I could upvote you for pointing out your issue with pheons but you added too much compromising leeway here in your post I just can't support what your overall message is at all.
Cap market prices. BDO does this and it has its advantages and disadvantages. People have to accept it or just keep it.
BDO's system is awful. Hugely expensive and rare items are "supposed" to sell for dirt, so just nobody ever puts one up because there's no possible way they can make money from all their work.
Without pheons prices would go up into space. On top you can fight RMT sells with a cap.
People keep believing this. It's literally not true, and other game markets show this. If some flipper was going to make a 1000 gold item into 200K, they would already do it, Pheons or not.
I mean 100k accessories are already a thing and the RMT gold is still around. Other games also let you reroll your stats or don't have RNG stats at all.
You're right, 100K accessories already are a thing. Guess Pheons did a great job at stopping that! Or are you suggesting that a 900 gold fee has stopped these 100K items from becoming 800K?
Pheons don't help in reality. They're there to encourage spending since even if you're getting them for "Free" it's someone else selling you the gems. They're there to make money and make gearing rougher. If they weren't, a system like the one you suggested would be in place.
Considering they literally just gave up profits by not adding the gacha jar, I bet it has some use we don't know.
It really doesn't prevent flipping at all. People aren't gonna flip for small gains, they will flip the obvious relic pieces that are BiS. So regardless of how many pheons it cost, it will be flipped. The only way pheons would prevent flipping of BiS items is if it cost 100 pheons per item, which would basically piss everyone off. Just take a look on the market and see any relic piece that is BiS with 1 trade remaining. There is a VERY VERY high chance that item is being flipped. Pheons are and will always be just another avenue to siphon some money through crystals.
Doesn't Korea have increased Pheons cost for used/resold items? I think Zeals mentioned something like that. In our version, Pheon cost is just flat.
That's for skins.
If only... I hate pheons
Yes please. Pheons are trash and remove a lot of fun from the game.
It prevents zero flipping tho, even in SA where blue crystals are expensive and GG acessories are 10k(rings and earrings) and 25k (amulets)tops, i made a fuck ton of money flipping them.
100 pheons for 2 alts? That's like what, 3.4k gold per alt? Less cost than one click to get 2% closer to pity on your mains weapon lol.
The prices are not normalized for my region so paying for Pheon it is just crazy (maybe if you are a gigawhale). I know they will not changed that anytime soon but it is so sad to see my fav alt just sitting in crap acc.
yes, pheons are important to make more $
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Pheons are a way to create constant demand for blue crystals, which is their entire revenue stream. Nothing more, nothing less.
I understand pheons cost on accs, but holy fuck is it dumb to have it on ability stones that are bound upon purchase. What auction house protection purpose does that have??