Price of Cetus wisps from Quills is still too high

[sir_deadlock]

Firstly, thank you for even considering my prior request for lowering the price.

The intention of my request was to make the purchase more appealing, as previously anybody would call it a reckless use of standing. I worry the modest alteration has yet to alter that perception.

I want players to see purchasing wisps from the quills as a reasonable alternative to going out and farming them. An equitable time expense for new and long time players in consideration for desired exposure to the content being offered. Rather than seeing the price tag and abruptly shying away.

Imagine that instead of buying wisps, you were exchanging them for standing. How much standing should a wisp trade for? Should 5 wisps be enough farming to hit an MR24's daily cap? You found this thing near a van down by the river. If you load back in, there might be another one. That's going to be worth 10x more than the extracted core of a teralyst?!

Originally, I suggested 1,000 standing, because when I made the mistake of trading 40,000 standing for 4 wisps, I thought I'd be getting 40. It seemed high, but reasonable. When I told a peer on Discord, they mentioned "why not ask for a stack of three for 1,000?" and I worried readers might misinterpret my intentions, assuming too much greedy milk.

Before you go saying "he just wants cheap wisps" I want to make it clear that I want a fair price. It just happens that fair, when it comes to wisps, means they are supposed to be one of the cheapest items on the list since they're a component used in many quills items.

It deserves asking how the fairness for this matter can be calculated.

When farming wisps, I've been able to get about 5-10 an hour, I'm sure other people can get a lot more. I can defeat maybe three eidolons a night, I'm sure other people can get a lot more. That means I can get 13x more wisps farming them directly than going through quills standing (considering 3 eidolons per 2 hour night cycle). And if it were during the Plague Star, I could do maybe 3 runs an hour of that, which is 12x the rate.

 Look at Plague Star. The cost for Plague Star wisps is 750 standing. That's reasonable! A run through an operation can take about 20 minutes and reward enough to buy 4 wisps, among other rewards such as forma and the plague zaw items. There's also no daily cap. And while 750 would be great, I have to acknowledge plague star has a different standing payout.

An eidolon has 5 drop phases, each success can drop a core worth 500 standing. So earning a single wisp from the Quills now takes defeating 2 eidolons (1.6 with lures; previously 4, or 3 with lures). And with the standing cap, an MR 24 is be able to earn 5 per day.

For a player working to get their first Mote amp, it costs a single wisp to build. If they don't know about farming them, then their first introduction to wisps is likely seeing it mentioned as a reward in bounties or for sale in the quills shop. While it may be a daunting quest to farm the cores for standing from killing conculysts and battalysts, it is not impossible. Though it is a hassle just to line a player up with a starter weapon. I remember in the beginning I got lucky with a bounty drop. That's how I got the wisp for my Mote amp.

 It is recommended we fight eidolons with a better amp. If a player opts to get their cores from vomvalysts. it's 60 vomvalysts for the rank 1 quills amp parts... and then 1,500 vomvalysts for the wisps. Building a 2-2-3 amp costs 50 wisps (250,000 standing, 10 days). Other wisp items include a rank 10 exodia for 100 wisps (500,000 standing, 20 days) and a full outfit for 60 wisps (260,000 11 days). I could put in the weeks of effort required to buy the wisps I need, but more likely, I and many others will go into the plains and farm for them, because we can do that in a matter of hours, bypassing eidolons and saving our standing for other quills shop merchandise.

To reiterate, I'd say farming wisps is just hard enough. It's tedious, but rewarding. My feedback is that at the current price, a person will not look at the wisps in the quills shop and consider buying them. The standing a person would have to spend to get a practical quantity is beyond the highest 125,000 standing cap. It's a really good idea to have wisps there. I want to be able to buy them. The price needs to be lowered more.

In light of my calculations, it seems more likely that 900 standing would actually be a more fair time investment. That would have a player being able to buy 2-4 wisps per eidolon run. Making it possible for an MR24 to earn 27 wisps a day from reaching their cap, over the course of about 6 hours of play (3 night cycles). This enables finishing most projects within the span of a week. Even if that play time is reduced thanks to tridalon hunting and speed runs, the daily cap would still offer the 27 wisp exchange rate, which could be said to be a lot to spend on wisps, but at least it gets the job done in a timely manner if a person wanted to skip the grind, whereas currently 100,000 standing for 20 wisps isn't practical.

If my request is rejected, I'll probably keep getting my wisps exclusively through farming and bounties. It's not the end of the world.

I'd like to finish this by thanking the people who review these comments and take them into consideration, as well as thank my fellow tenno for your companionship in game and your constructive and considerate input. I appreciate your dedication to our community. Thank you.

[AXCrusnik]

Honestly just saying that you have to kill multiple eidolons to purchase just one wisp from the Quills is enough to see that price point is an issue. With how much more profitable it is to just farm them out at night (both in time spent and wisps earned) and spend your standing elsewhere, [unless you have literally nothing else you need to spend it on (at which point you'd still probably be better off buying and selling Arcanes for plat)] why on earth would you buy them?

[Ragingwasabi]

id be happy if they just halved it again

[Kurtys]

Even at 1.000 standing each, i would still think twice before buying them. But, at least, i would consider it.

Imo, Cetus needs a fortuna-style balance patch, in bounties mechanics (secondary objectives for bonus rewards) and in economy. I find farming and building things in Fortuna A LOT more enjoyable.

[DarkRuler2500]

3000-5000 would be reasonable tbh

[Teridax68]

Agreed, the costs are ridiculous, and will continue to be ridiculous until we start reaching a point where Cetus arcanes match up to Fortuna standards: Fortuna prices an amp at 10k standing, which is actually fairly expensive (you need at least 4 days to get a max rank amp), but reasonable, considering that there are no other costs or gates attached. By contrast, many Cetus components cost 10 wisps apiece, and Zaw arcanes cost a literal hundred Wisps, among other components, to rank to full. Even with the cost halved, that would be nearly three weeks' worth of standing to get the necessary Wisps for just one max-rank arcane, to say nothing of the other crafting components and the initial standing cost to the individual blueprints. It's bonkers, and an order of magnitude more grindy than what is already generally considered grindy content.

More simply, though, Wisps have no business costing 5k Quills standing a pop when much quicker farming methods exist. It is not exceptionally difficult to go out with a Volt/Nova and get a bunch of Wisps, even without a booster, in the space of a few minutes, and even that method is tedious. The standing cost of Wisps needs to be balanced against that farming method, so that they exist as a viable, if perhaps slightly slower alternative, rather than a rip-off that would make players stop purchasing Wisps entirely when they realize far more efficient farming methods exist (which also have the benefit of not being time-gated).

Edited January 12, 2019 by Teridax68

[Bristoling]

8 hours ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

5k is much better than 10k imo.. let it sink first before complaining.. the change is better than nothing.. and proves de is willing to work with us.. ^^

"This bottle of milk costs 50$. It has been reduced to 25$. Don't complain because it has been reduced".

Sorry but no. We are not complaining, we are giving feedback. Even after reduction, the cost of the Wisps from Quills is simply unfair. Either costs of the Wisps needs to go down to something more like 1000-2000 standing, or the requirement of Wisps in crafting has to go down - like Exodias being fully built instead of blueprints and not requiring anything else then standing to purchase (Fortuna style) or cutting down the cost of building a basic amp from 50 to 10-15 Wisps. 

To give you an example, I've been playing this game since August 2018. I'm mr 26, with 836 hours played, 114 Hydro caps and 34 Hydro kills (pub life, no trin - dead lures). I've built and sold 5-7 sets of fully ranked Pax Seeker, 2 fully ranked sets of Magus Lockdown, 3-4 fully ranked sets of Virtuos Shadow, 3-4 fully ranked sets of Magus Nourish and 1 fully ranked set of Magus Husk. Apart from that, I got my own fully ranked arcanes which I don't sell. Meanwhile, I don't even have one maxed out Exodia. The only one I have currently is rank 1, so I've built in total maybe like 3 of them (rank 0). That's not because I don't know how to farm them, I've been playing with a resource booster almost 80% of the time and can get 4-6 Wisps per 3 minute run (including loading times) during the day on Cetus, more at night. It simply a matter of how much Wisps you need for everything else, like building amps and even Zaw parts, and how tedious, boring, brain-dead and annoying the farming for Wisps is.

Now I might be more dedicated then an average player but even to me, farming Wisps is unfun, feels like a chore and makes me not want to engage with the part of the game that requires them in crafting. Having an option of buying them from Quills seems like a godsend but in reality, I can simply use Quill standing to build yet another Magus/Virtuos arcane and make 40-60 plat a day from it. So to me, the choice is simple - either I buy 5 Wisps in a day, or I build 2 arcanes and make 40-60 plat. What would you choose?

 

Edit:

Building Exodias or amps requires many different grinds. Fishing on Plains is its own grind but once you jump the initial wall of buying blueprints and fish parts in order to be able to get next tier of fish parts, you can fish enough in 2-3 hours to last you for a month. Mining has same initial wall but afterwards you just mine a bit anytime you get a drop chance booster from a Sortie and you are set, with exclusion of Sentirium which is most rare and you might run dry on it more often. Then you need to farm Eidolons and Cetus standing (can be maxed "relatively" easy through fishing) to actually get blueprints for what you want.

Adding yet another mindless grind of farming Cetus Wisps is simply too much. 

Edited January 12, 2019 by Bristoling

[Bristoling]

16 minutes ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

Yet acquiring it from the quills is NOT the intended main way of getting them. This is a fact, nice wall though.

It's meant as an optional bonus if you're missing just a few for guilding a zaw or something.

Problem is, farming Wisps is the least fun activity in the entire game. You don't fight enemies. You don't need any skill (at least with things like timing with mining or accuracy/aim when fishing you have to actively do something). You spend as much time "playing" as you do watching Cetus door open and close back again, dozens of times. 

We could put 2 weapon slots at Baro's inventory for 500 ducats, for example, and it would be as useless as putting Wisps for 5k standing at Quills. It wouldn't help any new player who would like to expand their inventory, since 500 ducats worth of junk can be sold for enough plat to buy one from the market. And for sure it isn't rewarding for anyone who got rank 5 with the Quills to have access to an overpriced resource. But hey, if you reduced it from 500 to 100 ducats, maybe someone would get weapon slots this way - in case they hit trading limit and couldn't get more platinum, or weren't in a clan or whatever.

Edited January 12, 2019 by Bristoling

[Teridax68]

2 hours ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

Yet acquiring it from the quills is NOT the intended main way of getting them. This is a fact, nice wall though.

It's meant as an optional bonus if you're missing just a few for guilding a zaw or something.

And this is indicated... where, exactly? Where have DE stated that they specifically do not intend for players to accrue their Wisps through Quill standing?

[Teridax68]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

One sign is that they weren't even available there to begin with.. 

But that's nonsense: just because something didn't exist in the game at some point does not mean DE continues to not intend for that thing to be used. The very fact that DE continually makes changes, additions and adjustments to the game, including the most recent cost reduction to Cetus Wisps, is evidence of this, and it is ridiculous to hold onto some arbitrary older version of the game as the "true" version, more so to extrapolate from there the developers' intentions backwards and forwards through time.

As another example, DE explicitly stated they didn't want any Sentinel other than Carrier/Carrier Prime getting Vacuum, let alone companions in general, yet here we are, with Vacuum being a generalized Sentinel precept, and Fetch being its pet equivalent. This, by the way, is with DE explicitly stating, on a devstream, that they deliberately intended for Vacuum to be exclusive to Carrier/Carrier Prime at one point. By contrast, there appears to be no such evidence for them not intending for players to use Quills standing as a means of farming Wisps, and you don't seem to be in a hurry to find it either. As such, I don't think invoking DE's intentions in this matter helps discussion in any way, even if it did turn out that DE specifically wanted players to avoid using Cetus standing as their primary mode of Wisp farming.

[Teridax68]

3 minutes ago, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

Like I said in my first post, they're willing to work with us, don't get me wrong, I've farmed hundreds of those things, and I did not enjoy it. But it doesn't seem that DE just wants to hand them out via the quills, otherwise they would be 250 to 500 to 1k already, after so much time..

I don't think it's specifically because they want to encourage us to farm Wisps on the Plains instead. Rather; DE has a tendency to overprice items when players buy with free-to-play currency, to the point where they either fail to realize how much grinding they're putting in (which I think is the case here, as someone clearly didn't compare farming Wisps with Quills standing relative to farming them with a max loot radar/range Nova), or somehow expect us to accept a level of grinding we are no longer taking for granted. Either way, the end result is a self-defeating option that could solve many players' problems (even something as basic as 1k standing would be inefficient relative to Plains farming, but would be much more reasonable), but doesn't.

[(XBOX)Pugs Xbox]

7 hours ago, Bristoling said:

"This bottle of milk costs 50$. It has been reduced to 25$. Don't complain because it has been reduced".

Sorry but no. We are not complaining, we are giving feedback. Even after reduction, the cost of the Wisps from Quills is simply unfair. Costs of the Wisps needs to go down.

Man compares bottle of milk to cetus wisp prices in a videogame

[Fishyflakes]

8 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

Man compares bottle of milk to cetus wisp prices in a videogame

It's called an analogy

Anyways I agree with OP in the sense that Cetus Wisps for 5k standing are still not worth BUT I would much rather they lower the cost of all blueprints requiring Wisps rather than lower the price of them from Onkko once more.

[(XBOX)Pugs Xbox]

6 minutes ago, Fishyflakes said:

It's called an analogy

Anyways I agree with OP in the sense that Cetus Wisps for 5k standing are still not worth BUT I would much rather they lower the cost of all blueprints requiring Wisps rather than lower the price of them from Onkko once more.

They don't compare at all actually but that's not the important part.

[Bristoling]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

They don't compare at all actually but that's not the important part.

Comparison was made because your clanmate said we shouldn't "complain" because the price of them has been lowered. Just because the price was lowered, doesn't mean it still isn't outrageous, just like paying 25$ for a bottle of milk would be. It's not my fault if you don't understand this analogy or what the point of it was.

[AXCrusnik]

21 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

They don't compare at all actually but that's not the important part.

Dense much? The comparison is the pricepoint of the bottle of milk, which is ridiculous even at 25 dollars, much like cetus wisp prices are ridiculous even at 5k standing.

[(XBOX)Pugs Xbox]

9 minutes ago, AXCrusnik said:

Dense much? The comparison is the pricepoint of the bottle of milk, which is ridiculous even at 25 dollars, much like cetus wisp prices are ridiculous even at 5k standing.

just because they are both ridiculous doesn't mean they can be compared

OH but they are both prices pugs

first off a bottle of milk is not 50 dollars 

also standing is a virtual currency not a real one. it was meant to be a joke anyway but your taking it seriously. leave it alone.

Edited January 13, 2019 by (XB1)Pugs Xbox

[AXCrusnik]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

just because they are both ridiculous doesn't mean they can be compared

OH but they are both prices pugs

first off a bottle of milk is not 50 dollars 

also standing is a virtual currency not a real one. it was meant to be a joke anyway but your taking it seriously. leave it alone.

It was a joke... not a very funny one. Then you followed through and said they don't compare. That definitely was not a joke (if it was, i'm sorry but it was somehow even less funny than the first).

[Teridax68]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

just because they are both ridiculous doesn't mean they can be compared

OH but they are both prices pugs

first off a bottle of milk is not 50 dollars 

also standing is a virtual currency not a real one. it was meant to be a joke anyway but your taking it seriously. leave it alone.

You very clearly missed the point, and your attempts at saving face here are achieving the exact opposite effect. You didn't get the analogy, and that's fine. Doubling down and attacking everyone pointing out the analogy's validity ("something that was reduced in price can still be overpriced"), by contrast, comes across as foolish and petty. Why exactly did you even try to say that the two cannot be compared?

[(XBOX)Pugs Xbox]

Just now, AXCrusnik said:

It was a joke... not a very funny one. Then you followed through and said they don't compare. That definitely was not a joke (if it was, i'm sorry but it was somehow even less funny than the first).

ok i get where your coming from im not retarded. personally im a new player so i dont know the cetus wisp prices or anything soooooo

[AXCrusnik]

34 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

ok i get where your coming from im not retarded.

I never said you were, and everyone here knows milk doesn't cost 50 dollars because pretty much no one would buy it at that price, which is exactly the point in using that number in this comparison.

33 minutes ago, (XB1)Pugs Xbox said:

personally im a new player so i dont know the cetus wisp prices or anything soooooo

That's fine... maybe next time you make jokes you should choose a topic that you're more "in the know" to avoid jokes that miss the mark.

Edited January 13, 2019 by AXCrusnik

[sir_deadlock]

On 2019-01-10 at 5:31 PM, Ragingwasabi said:

id be happy if they just halved it again

On 2019-01-10 at 8:45 PM, DarkRuler2500 said:

3000-5000 would be reasonable tbh

On 2019-01-12 at 10:54 AM, Bristoling said:

Either costs of the Wisps needs to go down to something more like 1000-2000 standing, or the requirement of Wisps in crafting has to go down - like Exodias being fully built instead of blueprints and not requiring anything else then standing to purchase (Fortuna style) or cutting down the cost of building a basic amp from 50 to 10-15 Wisps. 

I'm disappointed that my calculation of 900 standing seems too low, I'm certainly willing to put in your information and see if the numbers come out differently. Otherwise I'd love to know what your formula or logical reasoning was to arrive at those numbers.

I said that my rate was about 10 wisps an hour and 3 eidolons a cycle. If you have different numbers, we can take those and figure out how long it would take you to amass 25k standing and compare that span to how many wisps you could otherwise get while straight farming for them. On the matter of vomvalysts... I won't ask you to torture yourself on that, but feel free to find out how many cores you could earn in a cycle just by fighting vomvalysts if you want. Knowing it's currently 50 vomvalysts per wisp, where most blueprints require 10 wisps, is enough for me.

Please do keep in mind that I'm hoping to find a sweet spot between these figures where the time value spent in the plains remains consistent, so that when you look at the wisps in the shop, you feel like spending your standing on wisps is a fair value... maybe not the most profitable use for standing, but a fair trade for your time. Being that Quills standing is exclusive to night cycle gathering, while wisp farming can be done at all hours, I was also hoping this might act as a sort of incentive to some players in need; they could stop farming wisps for a while so they can enjoy the eidolon hunt without feeling like time has been taken away from their efforts.

 I do happen to feel that wisps, while technically a rare resource, can be reliably farmed to some degree and thus do not require an outstandingly large price tag. I would honestly prefer they be moved down to a rank 0 shop item, since they're a frequent component that does not have any obvious indicators towards acquisition, such as the fishing parts (which could stand to be a bit more descriptive in some places. Looking at you, beetle shells).

 In truth, my calculations came out to 925 (3,700/4 <- the quills standing value of a captured eidolon) but because the minimum marker of standing is 100, I rounded down rather than up as to accomplish the goal of being able to attain a minimum of 4 wisps per eidolon in similarity to the Plague Star event. I feel that is fair, considering that Plague Star's standing rewards and the usual rate of my wisp farming are very similar. I'm not very fast, but I'd say I'm an average player, so doing the math for a speed runner would probably have the fair price be much lower than 900.

 

On 2019-01-12 at 10:58 AM, (XB1)Cubic Clem said:

Yet acquiring it from the quills is NOT the intended main way of getting them.

It's meant as an optional bonus if you're missing just a few for guilding a zaw or something.

I can believe it was originally intended as a topping up bonus, yes. But also consider how my suggestion is not, in fact, an easy method of wisp acquisition even if it were welcomed and implemented. Even an MR18 would be limited to 20 wisps a day for their daily cap, which they have to capture at least 5 eidolons to reach . They could do a lot of other things with that standing. My objective though, is to make it a fair exchange for the time spent.

 It also, and more importantly, does not decrease from time spent in the plains.

- In order to get wisps from farming, a player must spend time in the plains, exploring the landscape.

- In order to get Quills standing, a player has to spend time in the plains, earning cores.

I'm not looking to spend less time in the plains. It's a fun place to be and the devs did a great job making the landscape. However, wisp farming can be tedious. Apart from actually doing the farming, the loading in and out so often is also a big time eater. That's time spent not playing.

There's only so much time in a day. As more content gets released, and there will eventually be more content to explore, we'll need older content to have less grind so we can still play it daily in a meaningful way without having to completely ignore the new content. Call it a grind budget. If they create new content, they must balance the grind budget somehow. I feel that fixing the price of quills wisps might be a grind they could cut back on if people would prefer to hunt eidolons than cruise the shores.

It'd be so much more fun if like, wisps were a k-drive race bonus trophy or an archwing ring course trophy around the Cetus orokin tower. I mean, we practically go down the same course every time, might as well make it a race thing (and it'd be nice if they could fix it so we could pick up wisps while on k-drive). That'd even work out for people who don't know about how to farm them, because suddenly they'd be getting tons of random wisps from doing races.

But yeah, maybe they didn't intend it to be practical, but I'd hope they at least intended people to buy them on purpose. A lot of players won't be doing that intentionally unless they somehow have standing piling over and they need a way to dump it. But since putting in the cosmetic items, there's are better standing dumps than wisps.

[Bristoling]

58 minutes ago, sir_deadlock said:

I'm disappointed that my calculation of 900 standing seems too low, I'm certainly willing to put in your information and see if the numbers come out differently. Otherwise I'd love to know what your formula or logical reasoning was to arrive at those numbers.

I was just putting a number that I personally thought would be adequate and would actually be worth it for me to get Wisps from the Quills. For comparison:

Nowadays, I can do 3x3 just by doing public Tridolon and carrying 1-2 newbies. 4x3 if in a premade group. Now I don't know exactly what amount of cores the Eidolons drop, but after 114 Hydro caps (+35 kills), 145 Gantulyst caps (+79 kills) and 274 Teralyst caps (+173 kills) I've got:

415.600 standing in Intact cores

897.500 standing in Exceptional cores

1.042.800 standing in Flawless cores

For a total of 2.355.900 standing.

Keep in mind I've been using mostly Flawless cores to max out my standing every single day for over 2-3 months now, and I haven't been doing Eidolons much since Fortuna dropped. So around 820 captures/kills of Eidolons gives me roughly (not including whatever I've used for standing) over 2873 standing per Eidolon kill/capture. Since I'm capturing/killing 9-12 per night cycle, that is 25857-34476 standing per one night.

Meanwhile, without a booster, I'm getting 1-3 Wisps every 3 minutes during the day, and maybe 3-5 during the night. On average night, that would be 50-83 Wisps per cycle. In my example, if I go by your method, I'd need to be getting Wisps for 415-517 standing each (my math can be wrong) in order to use up/lose the same amount of standing. Because I can gain up to 35k standing with the Quills in 50 minutes, if I'm farming Wisps instead, I should get a little better deal then by buying them passively through Quills standing (because target farming should still be slightly more efficient then buying them for standing).

Let's say I can use the 35k standing gained to buy only 25 wisps, instead of 50 (which is a low end on a night cycle) or 83 (if rng is in favour). That would put a price of a Wisp at around 1400 standing, which I believe is a lot more adequate then 5k. I know for sure that DE wouldn't want farming Eidolons to be more efficient in getting Wisps then actual Wisp farming - that doesn't prevent me from rallying behind you, because current price is simply not worth it for anyone. But if I said that I should be getting equivalent of 83 Wisps for 35k standing, that would mean a Wisp should cost only 420 standing, which we both know we will never get. Aiming for something more realistic (1000-2000) is more likely to convince DE to do another reduction in price, that's why I proposed that amount.

And to be honest, for 1-2k standing, maybe I would buy some Wisps. But for now, hell will freeze before I spend 5k standing vs Wisp. 

Edit: If what I wrote makes no sense in some way, my apologies, I'm a bit intoxicated.

Edited January 14, 2019 by Bristoling

[sir_deadlock]

39 minutes ago, Bristoling said:

Let's say I can use the 35k standing gained to buy only 25 wisps, instead of 50 (which is a low end on a night cycle) or 83 (if rng is in favour). That would put a price of a Wisp at around 1400 standing, which I believe is a lot more adequate then 5k. I know for sure that DE wouldn't want farming Eidolons to be more efficient in getting Wisps then actual Wisp farming - that doesn't prevent me from rallying behind you, because current price is simply not worth it for anyone. But if I said that I should be getting equivalent of 83 Wisps for 35k standing, that would mean a Wisp should cost only 420 standing, which we both know we will never get. Aiming for something more realistic (1000-2000) is more likely to convince DE to do another reduction in price, that's why I proposed that amount.

And to be honest, for 1-2k standing, maybe I would buy some Wisps. But for now, hell will freeze before I spend 5k standing vs Wisp. 

Edit: If what I wrote makes no sense in some way, my apologies, I'm a bit intoxicated.

I am genuinely and delightfully impressed at the math here. You have much more available data and experience. Thank you for sharing. :-)

You're pretty much saying to a tridalon hunter with RNG on their side, wisps are worth 400 - 500 standing each for their time, and 1,400 on a bad run. That's a big difference. The low end is a good two thirds less. Entertainingly enough though, the exact mid point between the two... is 900 (4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14).

I'm worried that the logic of asking for something you don't want but think you can get is what happened last time and gives false impressions to designers. I'm reminded of words a game design graduate once told me, where they said that if I ever wanted to make a game, I should tell them what I actually want and they'll tell me when and where it's too much. People can surprise you with what they're capable of. So we really need to be honest when we make these requests that change the game we spend hours upon hours of our lives habitating.

 The crux of the decision on wisps is that we do not have to use the quills shop to gain them. If the price is not made both affordable and reasonable, the purchase will be ignored almost completely. So them allowing a reduced price that's better but still not within range of reasonable, is not good enough. There's no comfortable flexibility point where they can keep the price somewhat high and we tough it out. Either they make it a good price or we'll go to the competition with our time (farming).

If players wouldn't recommend buying it, even once, then it's wasting valuable screen space and thus network resources in having to load the image a few million times a day. Honestly, there's a lot of "hide these items" and "hide by default" that could be implemented to save network resources, that players have been asking for the freedom to implement (hide vaulted items), but that's a separate issue.

As for what would convince them to change the price, I was hoping to capitalize more on real world figures. Namely play time, player satisfaction and whatever business impacts I could throw in.

 Tedious activities hurt a player base because it lets players harbor resentment towards a game. That's why a lot of players over the years will take breaks for months at a time. Some leaving the game completely. Grinds are all well and good, but a long time farmer will tell you, a thousand miles traveled with a friend is better than crossing paths with an enemy... okay, I'm making that phrase up, but the general idea is that a fun grind, even if it's longer, is preferable to a short tedious grind because you come out of it saying "I can't wait for the next one!" instead of "I'm glad that's over".

I believe it was you who said you don't have a single maxed out exodia. That is an example where the grind became a problem. It's not like you aren't playing enough (wow, you have been playing) it's just that you find those aspects of the game to be in need of revision for interaction design. Like when they changed mining from a tracing game to a rotodial time challenge. I'm much more eager to do mining I don't even need because it's more accessible now, especially while aimgliding.

[Sharkgoblin]

just go out with the skateboard to search wisps. its kinda fun to do that way