A. I haven’t had the chance to buy the games I’ve wanted since they’ve gone so quick
B. This is absolutely going to be the case with others as well, ending up with a very high amount of unused coins
C. The high amount of unused coins gives people the chance to buy keys quicker, therefore resulting in a never-ending cycle of coin-hording/game shortages.
I may just be salty about missing out on games, I may not be. There may be some substance to my complaints, and then there may not be. Who knows?
This has been discussed and argued a fair amount already, the situation you describe is well known by everyone already. If you have any concrete ideas on what to do then I’d be happy to hear them, but take a moment and read at least some of the already existing threads on the topic first.
Thank you.
We don’t have a silver bullet for this, but here are some of the things we’re doing/thinking about:
Be more consistent and intentional with our coin game releases. We’ve had a lot of people wonder why we don’t put a timer up for when new releases hit the shop, and it’s simply because we’ve needed the flexibility to go a day early or a day late if necessary. We’re evolving our process so that this shouldn’t be necessary in the future, which means we may be able to be a bit more explicit on when new games will drop (but don’t expect a timer just yet).
Continue to refine game prices. This is a hard balance to get right. If we price too low, games sell out very quickly. If we price too high, people (sometimes rightfully) complain. We’re still learning how to best strike this balance.
Add non-game purchases for coins. In order to help combat the boom/bust cycle, we probably need to add in some additional ways to use coins on the site. We have some ideas here, but we’re not ready to talk about them yet, and we’re probably a ways off from actual implementation. We’d love to here ideas on what people would be willing to spend their coins on.
Create more ways to get coins while balancing the amounts received. Right now, as you all know, you only get coins from clicking the coin button. This is (intentionally) a very low barrier to entry, but it’s always been the plan to add more ways to get coins. This is high on our priority list, but of course when we add more avenues to gain coins, we also need to make sure all methods are balanced so we don’t flood the economy.
Step up the security on using coins. Any system where people can receive free stuff is going to be gamed, and the coins system is no different. We’ve spent a lot of time monitoring for and acting on people exploiting the system, but we’re not perfect. We have a system in the works that should make it much hard to exploit while minimally impacting ease-of-use.
None of these things are going to happen magically tomorrow, but I hope it helps knowing that we’re actively working on and thinking about ways to make this a better experience for everyone.
I think this would be a good idea to have this post of yours in a post of its own and pinned so we can all stop seeing the same threads each and every other day.
about adding things other than games to the coin shop
maybe physical items at astronomical prices
humble sometimes includes physical stuff in their highest tiers, so maybe you could partner with developers to get the physical stuff for cheap and sell them at high coin prices, maybe adding that the buyer pays shipping
things like posters or stickers or knickknacks or whatever is lying around in warehouses
it could be a good way to remove excess amounts of coins from the economy while still providing users with items worthy of their large pile of coins
I don’t think it’s needed now, but in the future it might be an option to consider.
what about selling exclusive video game soundtracks or digital artbooks/.zip files with things for your pc like wallpapers etc./handbooks/plot preview comics of some sort, or, if any will ever be available, video game releases from other sites than steam and homebrew roms for coins?
because i’m currently not interested in any of the coin shop offers (even past ones), and these things would be the ones i’d definitely buy
I had kind of an idea for dealing with the large amount of coins?
What about once a month purchasing or finding a key for a brand new, high-demand game or popular game and selling off raffle tickets for it? Make the tickets like 100 coins a pop, nothing ridiculous, but obtainable in a short amount of time.
Then at the end, pull one of the tickets and whoever bought that ticket gets the key!
In my mind, the best way I have seen this dealt with is with vanity uses. If every daily game could be released with a coin-purchasable emoticon/card/trophy/equipment for user characters (in order of how much of a pain each one is to implement) at the price of what is the equivalent of a 15-day streak, this would probably cool down the economy quite a bit.
I may sound like a broken record, but I have been warning for a while now that this market is too inflation-prone. Without proper safeguards, the only logical thing to do macroeconomically will be pricing games 5000, 7000, 10000…
To be completely honest, once a more robust system gets going, I would suggest doing what one does to implement a new stable currency in a country: mass wipe-out and start from zero. Of course, that’d come with a hefty final sale people could burn most coins on… you’d have to plan to be pretty big.
How about having two versions of your daily sale game?
The normal version, which you can buy outright just for cash as you do now. And then a special version that could include things like a soundtrack and whatever malarky people get in special editions these days! That version could be purchased with the same amount of cash as the standard version, plus X amount of coins to get all the bonuses.
Hold on, your name is @Fenchurch huh? What a weird coincidence, I once lived in a cave due to unfortunate events in space-time and ended up back on prehistoric Earth, with only fallen leaves for currency.
Anyway, eventually an eddy came along and swept me up and as a result I managed to get back to current day but after a while, I missed something I once thought I hated.
Yes, in having lived in a cave for years, I now realised that I now missed my cave that I called home, missed it greatly as it happens. So I went around to where it had once been located but in present day and there stood a rather unremarkable house, which just disappointed me.
Then suddenly, just as I had filled myself with regret enough for one lifetime, in a merest moment of rare occasions, I smiled. I smiled because a woman walked out that door, a woman I had met once before, a woman I had never expected to meet, ever again.
Her name was dun dun dun… Fenchurch.
I know I am grasping at straws here but you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?
Oh dear, I hope so or all this is going to seem rather silly.
@Punkster@redsweater You are both kind of correct. My name specifically refers to the character in HHGTTG which I got known as from playing WoW back in the day, it was the name of my main. Since then it just kind of followed me about and I used it for all my games/forums and things and well here I am!
As for the station, I believe Douglas Adams named the character Fenchurch after Fenchurch Street Station so!
Surprise is I’m actually a dude, unlike the character. I always thought Fenchurch was kind of a gender neutral name but maybe I’m wrong there! (my WoW character was female though)
Also “don’t forget your towl”!
Also also 42 is honestly my lucky number so maybe this was all fate!
Also also also @Punkster you make me want to read all the books again writing like that! Love it
Who CARES about the HHGTTG? Let’s fight more about a well-meaning system that provides free entertainment for the community and drives many users to enjoy this place!
No I haven’t because it wasn’t written by Adams. I felt it might tarnish my experience with the series. I just felt that no one would be able to quite capture the style and humor that he put into those books. But since you say its ok i might have to give it a go.
I doubt it will tarnish the overall experience of the previous 5 books and as I say it is definitely missing Adams input, although some of the ideas were his, it misses his writing style.
Colfer is a great writer of comedy in his own right but he is not Douglas Adams.
I know this is way off-topic, so I shall leave it there, just to say it is worth a read but only if your expectations are low, mine weren’t and I was disappointed at first.
