If you do not like reading long post and go straight to the point, read the bottom three paragraphs.
As you guys have seen the recent market crash, I don’t think anyone received the benefit unless you have been actively selling the materials since the day 1. People who have been working hard on farming materials and have been honing as f2p and people who have been paying to progress faster, both lost considerably huge value on their gear. However, as we all knew progressing faster is not typically an efficient way in this game, we all knew this will come at one point, and I have no interest in blaming on anyone for it (if you did not know the mats price will drop, I don’t know what to say; if you are reading this post, you probably checked the youtube videos, and all of them were saying the mats price will drop at some point)
Leaving the past market situation behind, I would like to discuss about the current gold rate. As you all know, gold rate has been dropped to pre-argos. Even considering that the bots were existing back in those days, the required gold for honing attempts are insane. Each honing attempts cost additional 100 golds, and given that the market has been crashed and not many people actively buying the materials, the income for the f2p players has significantly decreased. Also, for the p2w players, the gold rate is not in their favor so no one is willing to pay for the materials (I also have seen many players who have been actively investing money until last week, and then stopped progressing and now selling all of their mats).
As you all know, f2p players need gold income source somewhere and it used to be the materials. For p2w players, the gold income source was the high gold rate. At this gold rate and at this trend of material price, I am hardly seeing anyone getting benefits. From my point of view, as the market crashed, passing the 1370 ilvl, I am seeing lot less honing attempts overall.
And some of you may say that the free materials are enough to hone, but you see, as soon as you reach 1370, you will feel that the materials they give out for free is not enough to upgrade your gears to the next level (ex. 1370->1385). This is the point where you either choose to progress faster to try the next raid faster, or remain at your current ilvl and wait for the materials to get cheaper. And except for whales, none of the people are willing to progress outside of their free materials, which is something you can see with the price drop on the leapstones.
The solution to all of this will be increasing the value of blue crystals. F2P players have been selling their tradable materials, so price of those going up will be in their favor. For P2W players, increasing gold rate will be in their favor as they can buy more materials and hone with less $.
Will this raise another issue of p2w? Perhaps for some people, but you know that f2p players will catch up at some point with free materials (as you saw what Amazon did, I don’t think they are in favor of promoting p2w and they would like the f2p players to enjoy their new contents as soon as possible).
So why is updating mari shop beneficial for all?
First of all, as I already discussed above, f2p players will gain lot more gold income as the market will be normalized and p2w players will come back to pay for more materials. If the gold rate increases more than materials price increment, I think there will be people who will be willing to progress faster again, and f2p players can take adventage of this situation. Also, there will be more people on valtan raids. If you were expecting to play valtan raid on the day 1 as f2p with play time of 2~3 hours daily, you need to rethink about the mmorpg. Some of you may already know, but you can definitely catch up the new contents with some time without paying anything, so let the losers pay for their materials to progress faster while f2p players can play a little slow and catch up without paying single $.
Then why mari shop?
Yes, there are other sources such as raid box opening currency and increasing the gold income overall. But the target in my post is not the overall gold amount, its promoting gold rate. If you increase the overall gold income, income from the raids may be an option, but that will cause people who have been focusing on progressing their main character only to be less beneficial. Honestly, how many people can play games all day? Spending the time after you come back from work or school will be just enough for one or two characters. Therefore, changing the gold income from the raid is not beneficial for all.
How about the raid box currency? We already know that making this one a blue crystal will only cause the huge inflation as we have seen in KR server. Also, people were not getting enough gold income for a week, so changing the raid box currency to blue crystal will not be in favor for some people.
Then its mari shop. Who buys stuff from mari shop other than card packs and rapports? I personally stopped changing my golds into blue crystals like a week ago. Also, this mari shop thing is more of an optional rather than mandatory. F2P players may choose to buy blue crystals and sell their mats for more gold, and P2W players may choose to buy more blue crystals to get more mats cheaper while still buying materials with higher gold rate. This will ultimately make the market run much smoother and will benefit everyone for sure.
I personally enjoy this game a lot, but with the current market, you are kind of forced to sell all of your materials to just try the honing (gold cost a lot for the attempts!). So I would like to ask you if updating this outdated mari shop will be beficial to you or not. I personally believe that the updated marishop will let more people sell golds for blue crystals, ultimately increasing the gold rate, increasing the number of p2w players again, and increase the income for everyone, which will definitely help on the honing.
Thank you for reading this long post, and hope you have a wonderful day in Arkesia.