Fair enough Ice. However if you want to discuss this cooly and rationally using inflamatory words like whine is not a good start. I am not "whining" and have never "whined" about the sweat price, instead I am trying to do something about it.
I am NOT advocating making sweat an essential item OR "forcing" people to use it. As for the "free" money and the economy well .. as I am currently selling for a good profit the FOURTH business I have built from scratch I think I know a little about economics. You weren't to know this personal note however but now maybe you will understand WHY I can be so confident on some of these issues. There is no such thing as free money even the "free" vouchers I give to customers are not free they come out of one of three budgets marketing, public relations or market research. I "give" these out in the expectation that they will come back to me many times in increased business. That equally applies here. (And before you ask Yes I have given free PED's, items on here knowing that it will help me in other ways.)
As for wasting cash well, as in ALL market economies, lack of demand will soon kill the products if they are no good. And if they receive a product or service they need in return for their cash then it is not wasted is it? There have been numerous suggestions that would be "fun" and useful. Thats what forums are for, exploring as many options as possible and finding the good ideas.
As for research there are numerous long term players who have put up with me picking their brains and asking sometimes dumb questions before I even joined the forums, oh yes I have been in the game longer than on the forum.
With such a big game of course I have missed some things, that is the nature of things but I am happy to acknowledge that when people show me the missing info. Just saying you got it wrong anyone can say and I wont accept, just as I don't expect you to accept things without proof either.
I think maybe the title of my other post should be remembered .....
Suggestions to Bring more Excitment to the Game
SUGGESTIONS not demands not expectations just suggestions. As in offering my 2 cents, backed up by a LOT of years of business experience and general life experience.
The one thing I WOULD like to point out, and this is to forum posters in general on ANY thread, is if you are going to criticise something then offer a solution, otherwise it is just negative "anti-ism".
If you can offer an alternative or a solution then its not criticism, it's help. And everyone can always do with more than that.
Now hopefully we can get on with the process of trying to make this great game even better.
You're still taking this a might bit personally. Read back again. I don't like your idea to integrate sweat into fuel for vehicles. Why? Because with sweat required already for TP jumps, and then turning sweat into mandatory fuel for vehicles, you would indeed be making it a requirement for anyone who needs to travel quickly by means other than a standard teleporter to use sweat. This is almost everyone in the game at some point or another, and this is not going to raise sweat prices anyway... so it will have a negative effect on some and a positive effect on nobody. This is what I'm talking about when I say "making it a requirement for almost everyone to use sweat." This is not a personal attack on you, nor on your business abilities (not to mention that you're not the only successful businessperson here with any amount of confidence,) it is a critique of your idea and your lack of willingness to research. Why so personal about it? The reason that I particularly pointed out the flaws in your ideas was because I was giving your ideas the benefit of the doubt and thinking that you would come back with a response that would try to convince me, and everyone else, otherwise (or to say, maybe you really had something in your idea, but it wasn't being explained enough.) A successful businessperson can pitch an idea, after all, even to critics, and respond to critiques of ideas in a productive and smooth way without taking the critique personally. Instead you seem to have taken my thoughts as direct personal attacks, which they are not.
I already gave a possibility to help keep noobs in the game. It was not sweat related, but it was an idea and a positive one nonetheless, and I've never told you not to post ideas on the forum just because you're new. As a matter of fact I've stated otherwise. I simply suggested that you look into why some of the things are the way they are now. Sweat prices weren't all that much greater prior to lowering the amount of mindforce chips that used sweat. People just plain did not use mindforce (except for TP chips and the occasional rare individual who wanted to be able to use resurrection chips to unlock deadspeak - and even that was temporary usage) because factoring in the sweat price along with the decay and force nexus price made it too expensive to use compared to everything else in the game. Even a lot of those who used TP chips would take the time out of their normal playing activities to go gather their own sweat for personal use because they didn't want to spend the money on the sweat.
Apparently, my positive suggestion does not work for you. That is fine. You want a direct solution to the money issue that does not require depositing. (Getting more people who deposit to stay is part of the goal here, yes? The game runs on depositors, you know.) Sweat is hard to make money from - as it should be, imo, because it is entirely free. You want an alternative? Give the noobs a chance to make PED in a low-cost profession. Not a free one, but one that has the potential to generate more PED more quickly than sweat gathering while having a very low cost. This would probably have to be temporary and only available to people who are below a certain skill level, otherwise easy, cheap money = everyone doing it, defeating the purpose entirely and ultimately rendering the whole thing useless anyway. You want a more specific idea? Fine, I have one of those, too. I have seen a large number of suggestions for beer that temporarily modifies avatar stats. Take that idea and run with it. Let noobs enter the bars and buy beer or a mini-brew kit (L) from the bartenders, say, anyone below the level of 15 can buy, and the (L) kicks in as soon as the user hits level 16, the next time they use the item after that point, it breaks forever. Then the beer either needs to be brewed using the mini-brew kit (L) or the purchased beer needs to mature (or even... gasp... mixed with sweat using a special tool bought from the bartender) before it can be re-sold as a useful item to people who want to use it. Make the effects last for 15 minutes, so someone who wants to go on a drunk-hunt for an hour needs to use 4 beers. Make the change in stats a noticeable and beneficial one so people will actually want to use it, or better yet, make different types of beers that have different effects, that way not every noob doing this is trying to sell the same exact thing (as is the case with plain old vibrant sweat.) Make the cost of the kit or tool around 50PED (c'mon people, that's only $5, seriously, for a money-generating item that you can use until you're level 16) and be able to restock it for about the cost of a half-hour hunt with a noob gun, so that the noob will either have to sweat-n-save or deposit a couple of dollars to get it, and also have to re-invest a small portion of the profit continually to keep using it. They can then figure out from there for themselves how much they need to sell the beer for in order to maintain a demand while at the same time still making PED. Maybe, to make it even just a little bit easier if so desired, make it possible for the noob to use the bartender as a sort of offline shopkeeper that can sell the beer for him (for a small fee, of course.)
This idea not only can work in this thread, but it can fit neatly right into your other one as well, so there you go, a two-for-one.
To the short-term memory comment above, regarding when sweat prices were much higher... Are you forgetting that loot was also higher back then? Not HoFs, but everyday, normal loot. Not only that, but you looted actual PED, too, so you didn't have to take the time to sell all of your crap or pay auction fees to sell everything you looted and get your money's worth out of it. Cost/loot has maintained a balance. When cheaper ways to hunt were introduced, the loot had to be balanced, and sweat then became too expensive to use because the other costs associated with mindforce/sweat did not also decrease. The sweat price was comparable in regards to costs/returns, and it still is. It is one of only two portions of the mindforce equation that were able to fluctuate in price at all, and of the two portions that could fluctuate, it was the more flexible. This can open up a whole new branch of discussion, but this IS part of the cause/effect thing that I've been talking about all along as I've said you can't make sweat a necessary item - not without something else changing drastically, too. If you do, you're either going to be giving more money to the noobs directly from the depositors or directly from MA/FPC. Either way, the cost to the depositors goes up, decreasing their satisfaction overall with game play. At that point, it becomes a question of: would you rather satisfy the depositors who already invest money and are already more likely to stay around for quite awhile to play with their entertainment investments, or would you rather satisfy potential new customers who may or may not stay long-term?
