Cash shop and the bazaar

[Papaya]

Welp.
I don't want to complain or sound like a broken record, and least of all do I want to sound selfish and view this from only one perspective; I try to give suggestions that will benefit both the users and the creators. I'd really like to see Onigiri succeed because I quite like it, and I usually don't like dungeon crawlers all that much, so I'll give this another go while considering the new changes instead of giving up like a lot of other people.

I don't use alcohol so far in this game, even in CBT I didn't bother with Ibaraki and I think I did quite alright but even so, I see little to no reason for Moon King to have been removed. It's clear they made this choice simply to boost their sales. It's not necessary for me to whine about this because there are already several threads doing so, but I will give my very simple suggestion: Just add it back in. Seriously, you shouldn't even have to consider that. I try to play as bare bones as possible, I don't use buffs or EXP boosts and honestly the EXP isn't all that bad, I still don't enjoy the extra grinding of course but if I have a goal I can get through it pretty easily.

Anyways let's not start an argument over grinding, I'm not a hardcore player so obviously it's not fun for me and I'm more likely to have issues with it than those of you who are used to it. The majority of players are also this way, so it's more realistic to take this stance, but either way I'm not even complaining about it I just figured I'd mention the issue is still there. End of the grinding conversation. Back on track: The game itself isn't all that hard if you have patience and a good idea of how to make an effective character, I'm not worried about the difficulty of the game when I say to add Moon King back in, I'm more so worried about this becoming their "quick fix" to assure they get some more sales. Sure enough if they have the balls to remove the beloved Moon King, then they'll probably remove a few other things just to create cash shop items for compensation. CS, seriously stop that. I don't know what kind of economical advisers you have but they are awful and probably need to be fired. In what way was this a good idea? I want to see how many people actually bought that compensation item.

Moving on to the clothes which you all know is the stuff I actually care about, because I'm a girl and I like to be cute, okay? So clothes are no longer possible to buy from other players. The few things that can be sold are already useless to be sold to begin with, weapons and items are not good items to sell in the bazaar because the only form of currency we can use is coins. You can already grind for items and weapons, so it's not the smartest move to buy them from another player until you're much later in the game and desperately want something rare. Most people are in the 20s by now and honestly you go through weapons like no tomorrow around those levels, there's no point in buying them. You will not be hanging onto your lovely new weapon for very long, and a lot of people realize this, and a lot of people decide that it's better not to buy weapons from other players. The same goes for items which are even less important and far too fleeting to waste money on. What does this leave us with?

This leaves us with a very very small percent of players who are buying things from the bazaar, these are the people who either didn't think things through or actually found a decent weapon or mag that they're going to keep for awhile. On top of this, the mild amount of circulation gets whittled away. Most players are selling things for the minimum price. That minimum price is taxed, so the profit is even smaller. These people are lucky anyone bought something from them, they'll be even luckier if they can close their shop without a decimal in their profit, but most people aren't that lucky. This tax is pointless, the money goes nowhere and it actually detracts from circulation. You may think the tax was added to encourage players to buy coins because it makes it harder to buy/sell, but in reality what it actually does is make them cling to their money. The prices go up because of it, no one wants a fraction of a coin, but also no one wants a 5 dollar mag that they won't even need in 2 levels. This results in LESS SALES. Get it? Now get this.

Not everyone likes to gamble.

Shocking? I know, I'm being a sarcastic little fruitcake but this really really needs to be considered when choosing how trading should work among players. The gacha is expensive and has low chances to give you want you want, which discourages people from spinning it. You already have people who refuse to gamble completely avoiding it. Now that clothes can't be sold to other players, getting an item you don't want is even worse news because there's no way to redeem yourself. You can't sell it, so what do you do with it? Waste another 5 bucks or so for another small chance to get what you want? Yeah, I don't think so. Once again the profits go down. The bazaar is near useless, and there's already a small amount of people willing to give the gacha a go, or pay 5 dollars for some fairies. So how do you fix it?
TL;DR + solution
This is all that I really need to say:
[*]Bring back the Moon King
[*]Make some clothes for individual sale (your rare clothes are still rare, but the cautious people can be happy to)
[*]Allow players to sell clothes to each other
[*]Finally, either remove the tax or allow players to sell things for ryou, they are equally effective options, either way you're doing what CS was TRYING to do (encourage people to buy coins) but in a more effective way.

[Midnightmare]

Welp....
....I don't more effective way.

Pretty much all this, it's all these quality of life changes that will make this game last long and appeal to new players.

[Zoriyatsu]

Yeah I saw this thread and wanted to feel to give my personnel opinion I dropped $40 in 1 day and then from that I haven't even gotten a clothing option except for under wear I can say this a game they underline aesthetic in it for the sake of money is absurd I played a lot of game and Fez At least let you buy clothes to customize for this game I don't enjoy using gacha for buying clothes and now hearing they banned selling cloths is even worse I don't intend to spend more on the game.

I even bought booster for exp that was worth it buy. jJust to use money to buy clothes for your character is like making a game avatar a god no matter how much money is put in. So as of right now I will not pay for onigiri Seeing When I put money in I expected it to turn out good seeing I liked it and supported it but it would seem this would be a off hand game until they rework there system.Also I see they trying ti use Game cash to buy in game items I can say the only thing that will help it if they restrict the sells of booster times like exp booster aside from that nothing else.

One I wouldn't go broke for a game if it meant that I couldn't enjoy it seeing this is a online mmo making the player base poorer isn't going to get them alot of ppl paying also it would underline another fact is if there is no money from there players how can they pay for their internet bills.

P.S Time to spend some money on Steam games and sales better worth my time for variety.
Also cut short explanation I ain't paying a game for trying to make my character to not look like a beggar and also I wouldn't want to pay to make my character unique in it's Own Sense.

[Gyndil]

Sorry to say this guys but honestly i think this is the way to go. Its really why i was drawn to the game personally i don't think the bazaars shouldn't have been implemented. I liked the game when you couldn't trade in closed and I think you would be so mad if they got rid of bazaars all together. Because think about it if you change the bazaars to ryou what would happen.... A faster and faster inflation would happen where people will just bot to get the valuable items and sell for the highest price they can. To be quite honest I think its better off not having a trade system at all....Honestly you don't really need it just find it yourself and or take a gamble plus since the lucky box came out the rares in it are sometimes worth points... Don't try so hard to become rich in the game instead work on leveling and focus on your characters abilities and power stop worrying about fashion and selling stuff just further yourself stat and power wise forget money all together...Its not worth being greedy in this game and worry about the pay stuff when you have the time and or points to do so, to be honest fashion and special skills shouldn't be top because what good is a great skill on someone who is weak and not able to do anything with it right? then again it is personal preference so this is just my opinion. If you want to worry about it that is your choice and everyone has his or her own perspective in value of a game. To me leveling is more important as well is better equipment so the clothing isn't really a big deal to me though i have gotten lucky twice with my gacha tickets so eh of course its not what i wanted but we all know full well when we push that button that its a gamble and two to be totally honest id prefer those "bad" blue items over the clothes since the blue items actually do something in the game such as ryou bonus exp friendship and stuff like that. I mean right now i made the mistake of leveling too fast and im paying for it with my partners needing to be leveled up 5-6 levels as it is it takes a ton of items to level them and at most im getting 5 of each kind per dungeon run on hell mode in a lvl 72 dungeon. So yeah trust me those "bad" blue items are my salvation if there was a way you could give them away to me id be more than happy to take them off your hands....

[Ryusen]

Sorry to say this guys but honestly i think this is the way to go. Its really why i was drawn to the game personally i don't think the bazaars shouldn't have been implemented. I liked the game when you couldn't trade in closed and I think you would be so mad if they got rid of bazaars all together. Because think about it if you change the bazaars to ryou what would happen.... A faster and faster inflation would happen where people will just bot to get the valuable items and sell for the highest price they can. To be quite honest I think its better off not having a trade system at all....Honestly you don't really need it just find it yourself and or take a gamble plus since the lucky box came out the rares in it are sometimes worth points... Don't try so hard to become rich in the game instead work on leveling and focus on your characters abilities and power stop worrying about fashion and selling stuff just further yourself stat and power wise forget money all together...Its not worth being greedy in this game and worry about the pay stuff when you have the time and or points to do so, to be honest fashion and special skills shouldn't be top because what good is a great skill on someone who is weak and not able to do anything with it right? then again it is personal preference so this is just my opinion. If you want to worry about it that is your choice and everyone has his or her own perspective in value of a game. To me leveling is more important as well is better equipment so the clothing isn't really a big deal to me though i have gotten lucky twice with my gacha tickets so eh of course its not what i wanted but we all know full well when we push that button that its a gamble and two to be totally honest id prefer those "bad" blue items over the clothes since the blue items actually do something in the game such as ryou bonus exp friendship and stuff like that. I mean right now i made the mistake of leveling too fast and im paying for it with my partners needing to be leveled up 5-6 levels as it is it takes a ton of items to level them and at most im getting 5 of each kind per dungeon run on hell mode in a lvl 72 dungeon. So yeah trust me those "bad" blue items are my salvation if there was a way you could give them away to me id be more than happy to take them off your hands....

I highly disagree. This is not a single player game, this is a MMO which you are suppose to enjoy with others. Trading encourages player interaction. What if you have a friend who needed a rare drop, you've got a few to spare so you want to give them one. The lack of a Trading system forces them to go thru the grind you had to put up with. You can try to use the bazaar by only pricing it at 0 but that isn't possible. So your friend is FORCED to buy Coins. It may also be the other way around you are just unlucky and did get the drop BUT the other person got the item multiple times that person can't give you the item you need.

For Costumes, they don't affect your character, they are not Necessary to finish the game. Yet people want to make their characters unique. Players want to be different from each other. To show off your "style" or just to look cool/cute/awesome/different. Making all the cash shop item combat related makes the cash shop and the game seem more P2W (Pay to Win) having the cash items be costumes just lets the company have some income from the players.

If your only goal in the game is to "Level up" then you will get bored so bad. Once you reach that point what else is there to do? A person can reach the cap, but seriously you can't cap how much a player would want to customize their characters.

Not saying your mentality is wrong but you sound more like a CS white knight. What ever lets you enjoy the game.

[Gyndil]

I know this is not a single player game and I do agree the bazaar is unreasonable but why do it then why not just help your friend by teaming up and running the quest/dungeon with them rather than give and to be quite honest in any MMO there is not that many charitable people. Personally I take time out of my leveling to go back to prior towns and help all who need help do what they need or get what they need. I admit there is not that many people like me but there is a few that i know of and the party system is enough for character interaction but if you want them to sell the individual clothing you know they will charge way more than the gambling cost. Yes it isnt the best but you know how the world works there is no game out there that doesnt have some type of pay 2 win feature in it. And as i said before about the level up system i use its not at all boring to me and its my personal opinion not like its for everyone. If you dont like grinding at all this game isnt for you anyways. What can you do.. With enough effort anyone can get any equipment that will be suited to what they wish to have so i dont agree that there should be a trade system put in the effort and work for it. I get customizing is what people like to do I will admit even i do it occasionally what i was saying i personally would rather get the other stuff rather than the clothing as it is more useful to you in game i have no quorums with people doing what they want. I have no problem with that and if people want to do that its fine by me. Still saying that post as i said in the post is my opinion you can disagree if you wish. I was just hoping to help people see my point of view of it being not so bad of a system. It will destroy the games economy more if you implement trading in my opinion slowly going up higher and higher like every MMO i have ever played.

[Aozuki]

The way the bazaar system and cash shop works on this game makes me thinking of pre year 2000 online games or so on.(last day I was thinking I would have found Onigiri like the best MMo ever 8 years ago or so,because of this lack of standard features every online game have nowaday but that does not exist when every online games was P2P or so).

I think Cyberstep though the wrong way about for making their games profitables (or maybe more the old way but old things are not always better, and I like old things!).

I've already spend thousands of dollars on online games I liked but for good reasons :
- getting more exp than usual (with exp tickets)
- resetting character stats ( it's like 5 or 8 years it became a standard feature, but here is an horribly costly sub system of the Nyankoporon. Why? Even in World of Warcraft where it was horribly costly, it was in In Game money, and in several games I played it was more between $5 and $20).
- getting costumes (for example : standards or old ones can be bought directly, special ones were in random pack or Nyankoporon like systems for a short period of time).
- getting special items, available in promotions for a short period of time.

Having a true economy in game is mandatory. Why?
First as already said it's needed to increase players interactions.
Second AND THIS IS MORE IMPORTANT TO MAKE MONEY WITH THE GAME, some people will always spend A BUNCH of real money to get Cash Shop items, then they will resale them to people than can't spend real money (like... minors ? or poor people). And when I say a bunch, for example I knew a couple of wealthy chinese on a previous game I played that spend like $500 each week this way for like 3 years... think about the fact that they were not alone >_>

Another 2 cents of me : I find totally stupid the fact you can't share the storage between characters of the same account. It's like 8 years also it's a standard feature of online games (even in Ragnarok Online a MMo from 2002, it exists! and RO was one of the MMo with the best economy ever, even economist students made their final paper on it!).
There's a lot of good feature in Onigiri (and the first of all is that you kept the old way of dropping items, without this stupid level limitation they put everywhere since 4-5 years). But the way you made the trading system ruined everything.

[Gyndil]

People decide interaction not trade they start a coin trade or ryou trade and the bots will flood just sayin i know its helpful and there is some kind people out there but lets face it most are not kind. though shared storage would be great for this game but RO didnt fit my playstyle so idk if i can put an opinion on it...

[Aozuki]

Anti bot system exists for a long time.
And players awareness to signal them.

I know there's some country players don't know how to play without a bot. I've already saw this phenomenon by the past but it never ruined even a single economy in a game.

I even had said that encountering a bot in a game is a good thing because it proves the game worth hackers to try to make money with it (so it proves the game is whealthy!), don't forget most of the time bots are here to grind money then sell it to stupids...
Or they are here to make people levelling and in that case your statement about bots is meaningless because they are already in the place for sure.

[Ryusen]

Why just not party up and help some one get an item?
If it's a rare drop it may take a while. I help players get rare drops by doing dungeons with them and seriously the time we spent there would have been so much less If we could trade. I was the lucky one and got rare drops, my partners? not so much. They didn't get the drop till the next day. By that time I had 9 of said items and they had 1.

What's stopping someone from botting right now? The only difference is that what ever money they get stays with them. Depending on how you play it's not hard getting money and at some point you'll have so much that you'd wonder what to do with it. I was rolling around with 4 mil at lvl 28 (without botting). I'm sure others have had that much or even more at that level. There is probably someone using a bot right now running dungeons for mats to sell it in the bazaar. How is that not harming the economy? Because not alot of people can buy it since it requires REAL money.

There's a few ways a trading system can be implemented without harming the economy (to a certain degree). Make it so ITEMS are tradeable but not MONEY. So you can't "buy" you'd have to trade an item for an item, or for free if both parties agreed. The other method and might be the simplest is just remove to min limit for the current bazaar system. That way if you want to simply "giveaway" and item then just put 0 as price. Simple. Another possible method is having 3 currencies. Ryou, Coins, and "Trade Credits" Trade Credits" can only be used in bazaars but can be aquired via Ryou or Coins. The "Taxes" then would make sense. Cause the Tax in the Bazaar is stupid since we are losing real money even with the simplest "sale"

Trade HELPS with interaction. IF there is an item you need and have horrible luck at getting, you can TRADE with others, or you can continue to try your luck. Western Gamers Aren't into the whole "grinding" process that eastern gamers are accustomed to. Some simply don't have the time or even patience for grinding for one piece of item.
Trading is one of the basic interaction a game can give. It's also one of the simplest, next to chatting.

People will adapt but right now there is only so much we can do to adapt. The only POSSIBLE way for one player to get an item from another is by using REAL money.

EDIT:
Some one already made a thread that talked about the economy of the game. THAT said the current system is not really good. The person who started it and did the math is studying Economics so chances are they have more knowledge than you and I about this.