Is "mend the family" bundles at Grandma suppose to be that expensive?

[Cerikus]

The title. 

Some of those bundles are ridiculus. 
3 Daughter tokens for 27 heciphron, 27 saturated muscle mass and 27 sporulate sac??
3 Mother tokens for 21 saturated muscle mass, 72 benign infested tumor and 21 dragonic??

I would maybe think about it, if it was 10 daughter tokens and 50 mother tokens.

[NekroArts]

I'm looking this in two ways:

• It's a resource sink in case you have excess of one thing but not enough offerings presented to get rid of them just as fast. 
• While it provides an alternative to getting coins, it strikes as a side gig and not as a main source.

[Cerikus]

2 minutes ago, NekroArts said:

I'm looking this in two ways:

• It's a resource sink in case you have excess of one thing but not enough offerings presented to get rid of them just as fast. 
• While it provides an alternative to getting coins, it strikes as a side gig and not as a main source.

I agree with both things, but the prices should still be at least a bit reasonable. 
I will happily sink my resources, if I feel like I am not being robbed. 

[Teridax68]

To start, I fully agree that the bundles are currently grossly overpriced, as one could fetch a multiple of the related tokens by spending those resources more efficiently at the related vendor. However, I also think the very premise is not great to begin with: there is indeed an issue with Deimos vendors in that their random (and already overpriced) resource dumps make for unreliable progression, as one needs to either wait for the appropriate exchange to appear or farm a bunch of every resource just in case. The solution to this should have simply been to make the exchanges reliable, and allow the player to turn in the same individual resources for the same amount of tokens. Even better, one could do away with the awful token system of the Entrati and bring everything back to Standing. Instead, we're getting yet another convoluted system to make up for the failings of another convoluted system, and this new solution doesn't look like it'll help address the problem with its current balancing either.

[DrivaMain]

The cost should be halved to make it inline with other token purchases. I mean come on, 16 Heciprons? Otak only demands 8! 8! Grandmother is greedy.

[Steel_Rook]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

To start, I fully agree that the bundles are currently grossly overpriced, as one could fetch a multiple of the related tokens by spending those resources more efficiently at the related vendor. However, I also think the very premise is not great to begin with: there is indeed an issue with Deimos vendors in that their random (and already overpriced) resource dumps make for unreliable progression, as one needs to either wait for the appropriate exchange to appear or farm a bunch of every resource just in case. The solution to this should have simply been to make the exchanges reliable, and allow the player to turn in the same individual resources for the same amount of tokens. Even better, one could do away with the awful token system of the Entrati and bring everything back to Standing. Instead, we're getting yet another convoluted system to make up for the failings of another convoluted system, and this new solution doesn't look like it'll help address the problem with its current balancing either.

While I absolutely agree with you, I suspect the problems you outline here were precisely the point. At the risk of coming across like "dev bashing," DE have a history of making grinds deliberately slow, unpleasant, unrewarding and as random as they can get away with. I get the feeling that "farm a lot of everything" is the intended behaviour. DE seem to be operating under the belief that if players skip ANY part of new content, then there's something wrong with said content if it's not FORCING us to play every single part of it. You WILL hunt and mine and fish. You WILL break every container open for otherwise useless resources. You WILL run every bounty at every level and lots of times. To me, Deimos is an experiment to see if every single bit of a piece of content could somehow be rolled together into its overall progression such that players can never skip or speed past ANY of it.

Apologies for the random all-caps, but this sort of nanny design really upsets me. To this day, I wish DE would accept that not all of the players like all of the things, and that the best way to design new content is to let players consume it at our own pace and by our own path. This need to push players through literally all of the content does not work, and I really hoped that DE had learned this lesson with Nightwave's original implementation. Clearly not, so I guess we have to keep talking about it.

[Cerikus]

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

To start, I fully agree that the bundles are currently grossly overpriced, as one could fetch a multiple of the related tokens by spending those resources more efficiently at the related vendor. However, I also think the very premise is not great to begin with: there is indeed an issue with Deimos vendors in that their random (and already overpriced) resource dumps make for unreliable progression, as one needs to either wait for the appropriate exchange to appear or farm a bunch of every resource just in case. The solution to this should have simply been to make the exchanges reliable, and allow the player to turn in the same individual resources for the same amount of tokens. Even better, one could do away with the awful token system of the Entrati and bring everything back to Standing. Instead, we're getting yet another convoluted system to make up for the failings of another convoluted system, and this new solution doesn't look like it'll help address the problem with its current balancing either.

I agree with everything apart from the "bring back standing". The tokens are much superior system to standing, because you can farm in advance. But it needs to be more reliable.

[Teridax68]

11 minutes ago, Cerikus said:

I agree with everything apart from the "bring back standing". The tokens are much superior system to standing, because you can farm in advance. But it needs to be more reliable.

I would argue that that too relies on the limitations of the current system. If we are to grind without limit, we might as well remove Standing caps altogether, and so would not need a token system to bypass them now.

[Cerikus]

32 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

I would argue that that too relies on the limitations of the current system. If we are to grind without limit, we might as well remove Standing caps altogether, and so would not need a token system to bypass them now.

Removing standing caps would destroy game economy. They are important.
The tokens help people, that can login for 15 mins a day and then they can do a long game session on weekend.

[Tesseract7777]

I'm confused by the new family bundles... they seem redundant even if properly priced.

What am I missing? 

[MobyTheDuck]

The prices are ridiculous. Its 10x-100x the effort you would take to farm the tokens the right way.

WHY would I fish literally a hundred fish for 5 Mother tokens if I can spend 5 minutes doing the first stage of a bounty? Why I would mine literally hundreds of minerals to get 4 Father tokens when he asks for literal trash?

If it was a few minerals and a few resources for a Son token or something, I would understand, but trading hours of grind for 4 tokens is laughable.

[Teridax68]

10 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Removing standing caps would destroy game economy. They are important.
The tokens help people, that can login for 15 mins a day and then they can do a long game session on weekend.

Destroy the game economy... how? Important... why? If the caps are so important, why then have a system that bypasses them? Wouldn't Standing without caps allow exactly that case you mentioned?

[Cerikus]

4 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Destroy the game economy... how? Important... why? If the caps are so important, why then have a system that bypasses them? Wouldn't Standing without caps allow exactly that case you mentioned?

It's not about getting a lot of potential standing, but about turning it all in at the same time. If they release the standing caps. I could literally go to Fortuna and buy hundreds of Pax arcanes and start selling them. That would extremely lower the prices. Lower prices, less people buy plat. That's what DE rightfully don't want.

That would also happen with normal syndicates. People would hyperfarm exp and buy all the mods, weapons and sell them. They would buy huge number of relic packs. 

You said: If the caps are so important, why then have a system that bypasses them? It is not bypassing them, you are just allowed to farm in advance, nothing else. 

Let me put it this way:

- Let's say I can play only on saturday. I will play Deimos and farm 2100 Mother tokens. I can then login everyday for 1 minute and turn in my 30k standing a day. In week I have 210000 standing.
- On plains of eidolon I either have to spent time grinding fishes, which I don't want to do or I have to play several bounties every day to end up with 210000 standing at the end of the week, which is not going to happen, because I don't have time to do that every day.

There is a difference.. Also, if you release standing caps, people that have a lot of time will just get milions of standing a day and that would be a problem.

[Cerikus]

1 hour ago, Tesseract7777 said:

I'm confused by the new family bundles... they seem redundant even if properly priced.

What am I missing? 

Well let's say you absolutely despise Son and his conservation and you refuse to touch it. You could bypass it by buying his tokens at Grandma. 

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, Cerikus said:

It's not about getting a lot of potential standing, but about turning it all in at the same time. If they release the standing caps. I could literally go to Fortuna and buy hundreds of Pax arcanes and start selling them. That would extremely lower the prices. Lower prices, less people buy plat. That's what DE rightfully don't want.

That's reaching rather far, given that DE have had no problems making much more expensive arcanes easily available in the past, as with the Scarlet Spear event. Pax arcanes themselves are easily obtainable through regular grinding and cheap on the market, so I genuinely fail to see what would meaningfully change.  

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That would also happen with normal syndicates. People would hyperfarm exp and buy all the mods, weapons and sell them. They would buy huge number of relic packs. 

And? I generally don't put much stock in "this thing will ruin the economy" arguments because, aside from being shrill, conjectural, and used far too frequently against even the smallest of QoL changes, they're regularly disproven by the massive disruptions to the economy that DE regularly brings with stuff like changes to Riven dispositions. If having a system with fewer artificial gates for all means disappointing a few traders, I'd say that's a worthy sacrifice.

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You said: If the caps are so important, why then have a system that bypasses them? It is not bypassing them, you are just allowed to farm in advance, nothing else. 

... which is literally bypassing the standing cap, as you are pre-farming your Standing. You might have your daily gains metered, but the net amount of time spent playing remains the same, and farther down the line that translates to the same number of items bought to be sold later on the market.

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Let me put it this way:

- Let's say I can play only on saturday. I will play Deimos and farm 2100 Mother tokens. I can then login everyday for 1 minute and turn in my 30k standing a day. In week I have 210000 standing.
- On plains of eidolon I either have to spent time grinding fishes, which I don't want to do or I have to play several bounties every day to end up with 210000 standing at the end of the week, which is not going to happen, because I don't have time to do that every day.

There is a difference..

Of course there's a difference, that's why I'm suggesting to enable the former so that we don't have to worry about the latter situation. It seems we are in agreement on this.

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Also, if you release standing caps, people that have a lot of time will just get milions of standing a day and that would be a problem.

Why?

[DrivaMain]

26 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Why

If people allowed to hoard tradeable items easily it would completely ruin it’s Value because too much supply and less demand. DE doesn’t want that and will make free to play players lives a nightmare because it will be harder to farm platinum. Yes Scarlet Spear does reduce Eidolon Arcanes prices, BUT it’s a limited time event that only happens once per year. Look at Eidolon Arcane prices now, it’s almost the same price before Scarlet Spear drop.

The reason for standing cap is to create artificial scarcity of the tradeable syndicate items to jack prices up.

[Teridax68]

2 hours ago, DrivaMain said:

If people allowed to hoard tradeable items easily it would completely ruin it’s Value because too much supply and less demand. DE doesn’t want that and will make free to play players lives a nightmare because it will be harder to farm platinum. Yes Scarlet Spear does reduce Eidolon Arcanes prices, BUT it’s a limited time event that only happens once per year. Look at Eidolon Arcane prices now, it’s almost the same price before Scarlet Spear drop.

The reason for standing cap is to create artificial scarcity of the tradeable syndicate items to jack prices up.

It is nonetheless an event that happened, and once again, DE routinely ruins the value of Riven mods with disposition changes. It is not them who are the most concerned with changes to the economy in this discussion.

[Cerikus]

8 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

It is nonetheless an event that happened, and once again, DE routinely ruins the value of Riven mods with disposition changes. It is not them who are the most concerned with changes to the economy in this discussion.

Don't bring Rivens into this discussion because:
1) it's not relevant
2) I despise rivens
3) DE don't do it to "ruin" value, but to act like they are trying to keep a balance of rivens, but we all know rivens are just a lootbox of warframe and balance is the least thing they want

I will put it as simple as possible on the example of Pax arcanes:
DE want us to farm it or buy it with plat.
If it's common and has a price tag of 5p, that's literally bad for DE.
If it's mid range price (40p) that's amazing, because people will spend the money.
If something (scarlet spear arcanes) are too rare and the price is too big, people will not buy them. That's literally bad for DE.

They want stuff to have mid range prices, so people buy them. That's why they have standing caps OR they sometimes artificially lower the prices (like scarlet spear event).

Mid range prices -> good balance of supply/demand -> people spend plat -> DE have money -> game exists

[DoomFruit]

On 2020-11-21 at 3:30 PM, Cerikus said:

I agree with everything apart from the "bring back standing". The tokens are much superior system to standing, because you can farm in advance. But it needs to be more reliable.

You could already store standing up in advance. You get much more standing handing in individual minerals, fish or tags on Earth or Venus than you do by handing in multiple minerals for a single token and then handing in the single token. The only part of Deimos' system which isn't a flat downgrade is the reward from the T5 bounty, which gives more standing than the other two worlds. Everything else, EVERYTHING, sucks massive donkey balls.

[Teridax68]

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Don't bring Rivens into this discussion because:
1) it's not relevant

They absolutely are, they're a far bigger part of the player economy than Pax arcanes.

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

2) I despise rivens

Who cares? How is your personal dislike of Rivens relevant to discussion?

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

3) DE don't do it to "ruin" value, but to act like they are trying to keep a balance of rivens, but we all know rivens are just a lootbox of warframe and balance is the least thing they want

Again, that is irrelevant, as their imbalanced nature has no bearing on the popularity and amount of currency flow of Riven trading.

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

I will put it as simple as possible on the example of Pax arcanes:
DE want us to farm it or buy it with plat.
If it's common and has a price tag of 5p, that's literally bad for DE.

Which is already the case now.

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

If something (scarlet spear arcanes) are too rare and the price is too big, people will not buy them. That's literally bad for DE.

That's not how supply and demand works.

4 hours ago, Cerikus said:

They want stuff to have mid range prices, so people buy them.

There is literally no sense at all to that claim.

[Cerikus]

4 hours ago, DoomFruit said:

You could already store standing up in advance. You get much more standing handing in individual minerals, fish or tags on Earth or Venus than you do by handing in multiple minerals for a single token and then handing in the single token. The only part of Deimos' system which isn't a flat downgrade is the reward from the T5 bounty, which gives more standing than the other two worlds. Everything else, EVERYTHING, sucks massive donkey balls.

You are literally wrong. Yes you can get standing from fish, minerals or conservation, but there are people who do NOT want to grind those activites for standing, those people would rather play the damn game - killing stuff in warframe. 

I literally don't care that there are other ways to stockpile standing in other openworlds. I can stockpile standing on Deimos by playing the actuall game and not a fishing/mining simulator. Don't gete wrong, I like those activites, but NOT as a main source of standing

That's why Mother tokens are much superior to standing.

[Cerikus]

20 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

They absolutely are, they're a far bigger part of the player economy than Pax arcanes.

No. What we were talking about is standing. Players time converted into game items.
Rivens are RNG lootbox - a slotmachine. It has no connection to what we've been talking about.

22 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Who cares? How is your personal dislike of Rivens relevant to discussion?

Since they are not relevant to the discussion as I explained above, you bringing them into it is poinless and I didn't want to talk about them.

24 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Again, that is irrelevant, as their imbalanced nature has no bearing on the popularity and amount of currency flow of Riven trading.

This is the most incorrect thing you have said so far. Their imbalance is EXACTLY what has bearing on the currency flow. I don't know and I don't want to assume if DE lied or just made a mistake, but:

1) they said Rivens were suppose to help bad weapons to be usefull, which has not happened, instead we have BS prices for the meta rivens and everything else is trash
2) they said Rivens will never affect Warframes and they do

The flaws in the design and the way DE are handling rivens directly affect the currency flow.

28 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Which is already the case now.

Last time I checked R3 Pax arcanes were around 40p.

30 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

That's not how supply and demand works.
There is literally no sense at all to that claim.

What? I was not talking about supply and demand there.. Let me try to explain one more time.
If something is very rare and too expensive, most people will not bother to get the plat to buy it. (supply is much lower than demand)
If it is too common and everyone can get it, it has 0 value and nobody will bother to get the plat to buy it. (supply is much higher that demand)
If DE for example run Scarlet spear, they increase supply, more people have it, price goes down, more people spend their money on it, DE profits.

You have to understand, that people that have so much platinum they can just buy a full set of Arcane energize are mostly people who know the game very well and can farm plat easily. People that do NOT know how to do that are those who are actually paying for the game. DE needs the economy balanced for THOSE people, not you or me.

[Teridax68]

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

No. What we were talking about is standing. Players time converted into game items.
Rivens are RNG lootbox - a slotmachine. It has no connection to what we've been talking about.

You are the one to have inserted the in-game player economy into this conversation, in an attempt to have a "won't somebody think of the children" moment. Your entire argument against uncapping Standing was that it would somehow ruin the economy, so it is perfectly salient to point out that DE have "ruined" the economy on multiple occasions to the loss of only a very select few. Because the economy has survived worse, it would similarly survive a world with uncapped standing, therefore your argument against it is moot.

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Since they are not relevant to the discussion as I explained above, you bringing them into it is poinless and I didn't want to talk about them.

And I didn't want to talk about the player economy, yet here we are. Also, are you saying you dislike Rivens because you don't think they're relevant to the discussion, or that they're not relevant because you dislike them?

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

This is the most incorrect thing you have said so far. Their imbalance is EXACTLY what has bearing on the currency flow. I don't know and I don't want to assume if DE lied or just made a mistake, but:

1) they said Rivens were suppose to help bad weapons to be usefull, which has not happened, instead we have BS prices for the meta rivens and everything else is trash
2) they said Rivens will never affect Warframes and they do

The flaws in the design and the way DE are handling rivens directly affect the currency flow.

It is interesting how immediately after proclaiming your aversion to talking about Rivens, you step on a soapbox to complain about them at length. You have completely misinterpreted what I have said, as my rebuttal was simply to your attempt to dismiss Rivens from the discussion on the grounds that they're imbalanced. Of course overpowered Rivens sell for more, but that only makes the discussion more relevant, as a single Riven can sell for the equivalent of hundreds of Pax arcanes. If the Riven market can sustain large disruptions, so can the Pax arcane market, or whichever other.

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

Last time I checked R3 Pax arcanes were around 40p.

You're right, I was looking at rank 0 Arcanes, which makes them even more dirt cheap than I initially assessed. Thank you for correcting me.

9 hours ago, Cerikus said:

What? I was not talking about supply and demand there.. Let me try to explain one more time.

You are talking exactly about supply and demand, that's the problem. If an item routinely sells for a large amount of plat, unless there's a market bubble, that is the price people are willing to pay to obtain that item. It's not that nobody will want to buy those items, just a small subset, yet that subset is still enough to match the equally limited supply. Again, this is how supply and demand works. DE does not need to balance the economy around anyone in that respect unless their primary interest is to allow more people access to a certain item, which they did to the detriment of the trading economy time and again. I therefore do not see the meaningful difference between those situations and what we're discussing now.

[sitfesz]

Mend the family "feature" is another few hours of development wasted with these prices.

Daily standing cap is one of those anti-player stuff that restricts player freedom and comfort for daily logins, nothing more.
Don't try to picture DE as an economic genius behind this at least in the same topic that discusses the gigantic failure they did when they estimated the "mend the family" prices. It's just a coincidence that price inflation caused by caps goes well for DE.

[Cerikus]

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

You are the one to have inserted the in-game player economy into this conversation, in an attempt to have a "won't somebody think of the children" moment. Your entire argument against uncapping Standing was that it would somehow ruin the economy, so it is perfectly salient to point out that DE have "ruined" the economy on multiple occasions to the loss of only a very select few. Because the economy has survived worse, it would similarly survive a world with uncapped standing, therefore your argument against it is moot.

And I didn't want to talk about the player economy, yet here we are. Also, are you saying you dislike Rivens because you don't think they're relevant to the discussion, or that they're not relevant because you dislike them?

It is interesting how immediately after proclaiming your aversion to talking about Rivens, you step on a soapbox to complain about them at length. You have completely misinterpreted what I have said, as my rebuttal was simply to your attempt to dismiss Rivens from the discussion on the grounds that they're imbalanced. Of course overpowered Rivens sell for more, but that only makes the discussion more relevant, as a single Riven can sell for the equivalent of hundreds of Pax arcanes. If the Riven market can sustain large disruptions, so can the Pax arcane market, or whichever other.

You're right, I was looking at rank 0 Arcanes, which makes them even more dirt cheap than I initially assessed. Thank you for correcting me.

You are talking exactly about supply and demand, that's the problem. If an item routinely sells for a large amount of plat, unless there's a market bubble, that is the price people are willing to pay to obtain that item. It's not that nobody will want to buy those items, just a small subset, yet that subset is still enough to match the equally limited supply. Again, this is how supply and demand works. DE does not need to balance the economy around anyone in that respect unless their primary interest is to allow more people access to a certain item, which they did to the detriment of the trading economy time and again. I therefore do not see the meaningful difference between those situations and what we're discussing now.

I didn't start talking about it because I wanted to have a "won't somebody think of the children" moment, whatever that is suppose to mean anyway. I just tried to contradict your opinion that Token's are a worse system, that's all. 

Both. I dislike Rivens and I think they are not relevant to our discussion. And yes I did start talking about them, because I always get kinda angry. That's why I said I didn't want to talk about them, because I know myself :D 

Well is it true though that "that subset is still enough to match the equally limited supply"? I am not an expert on trade and economy, but I am pretty sure, that more money gets traded around the more an item is affordable. Yes, couple dozens of Loki P systems get's traded around a day with a price tag of 300p, but if DE unvault it and it drops to like 50p, there will be houndreds of people trading it, thus the amount of plat traded increases. I base this on bits of info that DE dropped multiple times on streams. I of course don't have the time to find the proof, so you don't have to belive me, but I vividly remember them saying that they will unvault certain primes, because they are very hard to obtain for players and existing parts are too expensive. I take it as a proof that they are doing what I was saying. If they don't adjust the economy to the "middle class Tenno" most people will not spend money.