How Skins Could've Been "Innocent" and Trade Inn Discussion

[Exhu]

13 minutes ago, leonseye said:

People who don't have upper level items are already locked out from participating.  Just look around in this trade forum; it's already the case.

Or are you going to be giving me a Valkyrie Armor for my 5 Lumberjack Shirts?

^ also this

[leonseye]

4 minutes ago, thegreatmanagement said:

The first statement, I agree with to all my heart I'm going to be honest. It's often one of the first things you see in many economics related books really. (from my experience) 

They do deserve the money in that sense as well - that I also agree with. 

But I don't think they deserve the ability to get that much from a product of their luck - people should be playing DST, not the lottery. 

Well, that's more of an issue w/ the current system of how skins are actually rewarded (determined by time logged in w/ a weekly limit).

I've often hoped that this is simply an interim system, since things are still relatively new and being tweaked.

[GiddyGuy]

Don't these forums have a poll or something you know that thing that everyone even the devs can use? :3

[Asparagus]

If anyone actually saw @JoeW said

5 hours ago, JoeW said:

You would be trading 9 common items (with the game) to get one classy, or 9 classy items to get 1 spiffy. Just to be clear.

Keep in mind AGAIN, that:

1. Your chances of getting skins higher than spiffy are not in anyway hindered. You still get a random chance to get them like EVERYONE.
2. The Trade Inn would probably solve a few kinks in trading such as:
   1. Trading in your many unwanted commons... not many people have that many commons anyway... except idlers...
   2. ... (I forgot my other point... probably gonna edit this if I remember)
3. As someone stated, not many people are super into common clothes (with exception to a few like scribbled pants and brown pants that match a large number of skins :3)
4. We are already trading TF2 keys for DST skins that cost nothing... NOTHING... T__T
5. When we put a price on these skins, taking point #4, would that not be FAIR? Something of value for something of value? T__T
6. Actually using these skins in-game would be very nice... but just for the sake of having them in your shelf and giving yourself a pat on the back... would you think it better to get it with or without money? (<--- A serious question to think about, I am thinking about this myself and no jab to any side... pun not intended)

7. 10 hours ago, JoeW said:

   At first, some people are going to sell too high, and some people are going to sell too low, but then things will even out as the community decides what the items are worth to them. This will allow people to better understand the value of the items that they have and let's players have more choices for how they can get different items. 

   JoeW is giving us the chance to decide for ourselves... now if someone were to sell a GoH for like $500 would you buy it? If you do, then you yourself are encouraging this and so it is up to you... sell it at a reasonable price... or just trade it... or do you lose the ability to trade it for what it is if it has a price? It all depends on you.

8. ...(being distracted... gonna get back to this later)

[thegreatmanagement]

6 minutes ago, leonseye said:

Well, that's more of an issue w/ the current system of how skins are actually rewarded (determined by time logged in w/ a weekly limit).

I've often hoped that this is simply an interim system, since things are still relatively new and being tweaked.

Same honestly. It is very new still, but the thing is I'd hate to see it veer in a dangerous direction. 

Can I ask also, on another topic? Do you do work or are experienced in any economic fields? Because you are spot on about many things quite honestly. You've made a lot of good points I haven't seen completely myself. 

[leonseye]

2 minutes ago, thegreatmanagement said:

Same honestly. It is very new still, but the thing is I'd hate to see it veer in a dangerous direction. 

Can I ask also, on another topic? Do you do work or are experienced in any economic fields? Because you are spot on about many things quite honestly. You've made a lot of good points I haven't seen completely myself. 

Oh, I'm self-employed as a freelance graphic designer as well as working a part-time job.  On top of that, I'm in my mid-thirties and have been working since I was fifteen, so I guess that makes me old as a gamer, lol.

I just call things as I see them and enjoy a good discussion and absolutely love Klei's philosophy and games, which tends to make me passionate.  I can tell that you also love this game and I truly hope that nothing I've said has come across as derogatory, etc, because that is absolutely not my intention.  : )

We all want what's best for the game, and that is one reason I love this community and continue to post here.  If anything I've said has helped to at least shed light on other viewpoints (I don't care if I persuade anyone), then that is literally the best that I can possibly hope for.

[thegreatmanagement]

Just now, leonseye said:

Oh, I'm self-employed as a freelance graphic designer as well as working a part-time job.  On top of that, I'm in my mid-thirties and have been working since I was fifteen, so I guess that makes me old as a gamer, lol.

I just call things as I see them and enjoy a good discussion and absolutely love Klei's philosophy and games, which tends to make me passionate.  I can tell that you also love this game and I truly hope that nothing I've said has come across as derogatory, etc, because that is absolutely not my intention.  : )

We all want what's best for the game, and that is one reason I love this community and continue to post here.  If anything I've said has helped to at least shed light on other viewpoints (I don't care if I persuade anyone), then that is literally the best that I can possibly hope for.

No it hasn't honestly. It's been a very productive discussion in my opinion  no hard feelings. Same though - really hoping for the best for the game's future, considering how many mutual fans are here pitching into this discussion which has (wow) grown to 6 pages. Read this well Klei - there is a lot depending on a decision of yours at the moment. 

[Sheauwn]

And then everyone lived happily ever after.

*Throws roses at stage*

[JoeW]

1 minute ago, thegreatmanagement said:

No it hasn't honestly. It's been a very productive discussion in my opinion  no hard feelings. Same though - really hoping for the best for the game's future, considering how many mutual fans are here pitching into this discussion which has (wow) grown to 6 pages. Read this well Klei - there is a lot depending on a decision of yours at the moment. 

Couldn't agree more! I just want to drop in and let you all know that this thread has been an amazing amount of constructive and real feedback and we all really appreciate it. Rest assured that this is not something we take lightly and we are and will continue to watch everything very very closely.

[Asparagus]

I kinda want to like more posts... but it seems I ran out after liking about 15 things :T

EDIT: Seems my likes have been replenished. Thanks. 

[Bigfoot]

I just want to echo @JoeW: lots of great feedback. Thank you!

[WillowCrocker]

11 minutes ago, JoeW said:

Couldn't agree more! I just want to drop in and let you all know that this thread has been an amazing amount of constructive and real feedback and we all really appreciate it. Rest assured that this is not something we take lightly and we are and will continue to watch everything very very closely.

Thanks Joe. Like I said, I trust you guys over anything, and I know no matter what you're going to do what's best for us. That's why I love everyone at Klei: you guys strive so hard to make your user base happy. I love you guys! Thanks for giving us the heads up and letting us know what will happen.

[werlpolf]

25 minutes ago, leonseye said:

Do they deserve the money they'd get if somebody feels the item they're selling is worth that amount of money?  Yeah, they do.

I guess, you would also sell marihuana, if the person really demands for it. The social aspect in trading with real money is not considered. People are not very clever and you like to (mis)use it. Here are playing also kids. There must be restrictions for selling, because the 'somebody feels' is not rational and must be protected to achieve a well-being for everyone and not just for a minority.

40 minutes ago, leonseye said:

I don't understand why you don't see trading money for the time invested in trying to get a good drop as a "practical" means.  Is it impractical because you aren't working?  Personally, as somebody who has real time constraints due to work, I feel that it's a very practical means (in fact, I have to be up for work in about 2.5 hours, lol).  This is an extremely common practice, as many of us have to work and relate fully to trading money for time (...time is money, etc).

etc? Like: Money is sex! I am always very proud of people, when I hear such statements. If you like to get up one hour earlier for work and the DST gadgets, then do it. But please let other people decide it, if they like it too. Maybe Klei can introduce a in-game vote for that purpose?

25 minutes ago, leonseye said:

If they didn't, they wouldn't be able to sell it at all.  It's not the seller that determines value, after all.

Yes, it's the market - including with its demand and offer. Question is how does the demand come? By people, who have too much money, people, who are addicted into playing and getting the best clothes, by people who cannot endure any longer in getting the clothes for other (false) reasons or simply because of stupidity and poor experience in handling money. The question must be asked and answered in order to find the moral in this story. How big are the single groups of people, who are voting for or against it? Which of the groups know, what they are talking about and have experience? Details must be discussed at least in one example or scenario with a concrete price and its limits.

 

My personal opinion: I really don't like pay-to-win games even when it is only about cosmetics. Especially in DST, because this games is not about winning, but to play and to enjoy the art and the mechanics with / against somebody or also playing / modding alone for relaxing. This money thing will corrupt kids and all other people.

17 minutes ago, thegreatmanagement said:

But I don't think they deserve the ability to get that much from a product of their luck - people should be playing DST, not the lottery.

Difference of DST clothes and lottery: EVERYONE will get at least one of the best items. There is no lottery hear. You don't need luck. If someone gets 3 items of the best collection in a row, then it doesn't mean you won't get these items anymore or your chance will decrease in getting better items. You still can hope as like before and be happy for the other one like in real life!

[TemporaryMan]

The way the market was before January it was possible to trade up to an elegant starting with only 1 spiffy and a large pile of classy and commons accumulated through three months of play.  That's growing harder now that the price of commons is deflating as the dupes pile up.

The exchange rate quoted by Klei of 81:9:1 is only enough to produce a ~50%* increase in classies if every existing item of lesser rarity is trade-inn'd.  *based on very limited and flawed data set i.e. my own drops; I don't have enough spiffies to forecast the change with even this shaky level of confidence.  I think the key to continuing to trade lower-tier skins for the rarer ones will be preventing a flood of those items from devaluing them.  Since classies and spiffies will keep pouring in over time anyway, we're going to need a lot more variety in classy and spiffy items to retain their value into the future.  Each new common postpones market collapse by ~1/4 week * (4 / average player weekly skins) * nebulous average player common-to-spiffy skin collection ambition %; each new classy buys a little more than a week; each spiffy buys a little more than a month.  I can't give exact figures without knowing the actual % of the drops and some good stats on player engagement with skins, but Klei knows the first and should have some numbers to estimate the second.  The trick then is to create enough skins in the common to spiffy range to prevent market saturation for the near future, and roll out a new batch every couple months for the rest of the game's supported lifetime.  Item skins for more than just backpacks offers an obvious way to do this; the pajama skins that were teased on the devcast will also help.

Tl;dr Klei needs to do... basically what they've already been doing.  There's just not enough variety of classies and spiffies at the moment and a glut of commons in our inventories, so there'd better be a bumper-crop of new common-spiffy skin varieties when the Trade Inn rolls out.

[Ecu]

I am quite new to the forums, and in general new to DST itself.  I've not been playing all that long, but I want to weigh in on this all a bit.

Is the reason for marketing skins so that the game can actually be improved upon, or are we just going to see Klei focus on creating new skins to turn more profit?  I've seen this exact thing happen with the game Furcadia (an old social game I used to love).  People being able to pay to get a skin doesn't bother me all that much, but I feel Klei putting development time into such systems seems like a wrong move.

When I initially heard about DST, I thought it would be neat...multiplayer Don't Starve.  When I saw that some of my fellow mod authors from Minecraft were looking at it as a modding platform, I was intrigued further.  None of said authors are mod authors of DST.  They either ran into too many issues fighting with the system, or just uncertain there was really a community for it (at that time).

Me, and three of my roommates play DST now.  We've been fighting for weeks to fix issues with Klei's code just to create an experience that doesn't feel broken (or boring) after a session.  Hell, I tried to make a custom weapon and have pretty much given up on it because there are not official tutorials or guides as to how things work and its a mess to make sense of anything.

Want proof of this?  Just look at the released mods.  A vast majority of them are character mods created via a single template that one mod author managed to release.  I actually looked into things and it will actually probably be easier for me to utilize Unity and Moonsharp to duplicate an engine akin to DST, than actually mod the stuff I want into DST itself, purely because there is little documentation.

Its just silly.  You (Klei) have the opportunity to create a huge modding community with the ease in which mods can be loaded/unloaded.  Yet, you're investing development time into skins, skin trading, and a marketplace that is likely to breed toxicity into your community instead?

In the end, we (the community) don't make the decision...but...I know I've already started looking at Unity and going my own...

[Exhu]

1 hour ago, JoeW said:

Couldn't agree more! I just want to drop in and let you all know that this thread has been an amazing amount of constructive and real feedback and we all really appreciate it. Rest assured that this is not something we take lightly and we are and will continue to watch everything very very closely.

Yay, faith has been restored Glad to know the devs are listening ^.^

[t0panka]

- people should cool off and think about it with calm head

- first of all we are only starting with skins! Lets say Klei will add 2 more themes of elegant and distinguished skins to game. That means 40!!! high tier items. This will higher up chances to get these items A LOT!

- to all people that doesnt like items being marketable: WHAT? Items already are marketable. This way at least everyone will have same chance to sell/buy them and we wont see people paying ridiculous amounts for skins with keys because they are not aware of values

- with market you can sell all items and buy your 1 elegant item anyway

- people will iddle more? WHAT? People are already iddling a lot. Actually some of you here are doing it. More iddlers means only 2 things!!! 1. KLEI WILL GET MORE MONEY FROM BUYING DST! 2. MARKET VALUE OF ITEMS WILL DROP BECAUSE IDDLERS WILL GET MORE ITEMS FROM GAME

- to all people which doesn't like distinguished and elegant items being exception: you all think common item are trash. NOW you think all spiffies are trash just because "you will have them a lot". Lets give everyone elegants??? You will think they are trash and everyone will have them and you will want only timeless/loyal skins now because they will be rare now. WHAT?

- more than half of you here are making profit of skins already AND you have already 1 or more elegant/distinguished items and you say you just want that one/two items and dont care about others? That is just NOT TRUE! whatever elegant item you have you can just add ALL OF YOUR OTHER STUFF (since you dont care) to it to trade for your favourite character. Im sure lot of people will accept. But you wont do that. 

- i helped/give free elegants to LOTS of people so they can have their favourite character. Guess what? Almost all of them just become greedy and "sold" those items for more other items or for keys. People saying they want only their favourite character is BS usually. There are still few people who dont care about money or keys or other items and actually have their favourite character and i will gift them GOH set without problems .)

 

[Exhu]

2 minutes ago, t0panka said:

- people should cool off and think about it with calm head

- first of all we are only starting with skins! Lets say Klei will add 2 more themes of elegant and distinguished skins to game. That means 40!!! high tier items. This will higher up chances to get these items A LOT!

- to all people that doesnt like items being marketable: WHAT? Items already are marketable. This way at least everyone will have same chance to sell/buy them and we wont see people paying ridiculous amounts for skins with keys because they are not aware of values

- with market you can sell all items and buy your 1 elegant item anyway

- people will iddle more? WHAT? People are already iddling a lot. Actually some of you here are doing it. More iddlers means only 2 things!!! 1. KLEI WILL GET MORE MONEY FROM BUYING DST! 2. MARKET VALUE OF ITEMS WILL DROP BECAUSE IDDLERS WILL GET MORE ITEMS FROM GAME

- to all people which doesn't like distinguished and elegant items being exception: you all think common item are trash. NOW you think all spiffies are trash just because "you will have them a lot". Lets give everyone elegants??? You will think they are trash and everyone will have them and you will want only timeless/loyal skins now because they will be rare now. WHAT?

- more than half of you here are making profit of skins already AND you have already 1 or more elegant/distinguished items and you say you just want that one/two items and dont care about others? That is just NOT TRUE! whatever elegant item you have you can just add ALL OF YOUR OTHER STUFF (since you dont care) to it to trade for your favourite character. Im sure lot of people will accept. But you wont do that. 

- i helped/give free elegants to LOTS of people so they can have their favourite character. Guess what? Almost all of them just become greedy and "sold" those items for more other items or for keys. People saying they want only their favourite character is BS usually. There are still few people who dont care about money or keys or other items and actually have their favourite character and i will gift them GOH set without problems .)

 

 

"people should cool off and think about it with calm head" - You are assuming that people aren't thinking this out calmly. Trust me I've thought about it plenty, along with the other people who have made very long, thorough posts lining out their stance on things.

"to all people that doesnt like items being marketable: WHAT? Items already are marketable. This way at least everyone will have same chance to sell/buy them and we wont see people paying ridiculous amounts for skins with keys because they are not aware of values" - Actually they aren't marketable, people just happen to be able to trade items for other games for them. They can't straight up give money to people for them without using means outside of Steam to pay for them. People will post them for ridiculous prices, it happens every time in game items become purchasable with real life money in games.

I'm not even going to bother quoting all of your other stuff, it's just you making assumptions about people, their items, and their trading methods. Great, you gave stuff to people, that has absolutely nothing to do with the Trade Inn and items becoming marketable.

[t0panka]

1 minute ago, Exhu said:

I think you missed the point where a lot of people don't want money involved in this in any way. Also you are putting words in people's mouths.

Money is already involved! Marketable items will only lower prices and give evryone fair chance to buy/sell whatever they want

[thegreatmanagement]

25 minutes ago, t0panka said:

 

- first of all we are only starting with skins! Lets say Klei will add 2 more themes of elegant and distinguished skins to game. That means 40!!! high tier items. This will higher up chances to get these items A LOT!

- with market you can sell all items and buy your 1 elegant item anyway

 

1. Just because new items were added didn't mean the overall probability increased. The system could be that any elegant item is the same probably, whereas the probability ends up being split among all elegant/distinguished items equally. (e.g. there are 40 elegant bags, so each item receives a x1/40 chance to receive to balance out

2. The market trend might get to the point that all of the items someone has wouldn't even be enough to buy an elegant item... the potential price changes that could happen would be devastating if it went in this direction; even more so seeing that spiffy items have a good reason to seem like they will decrease even further in value. 

[thegreatmanagement]

23 minutes ago, t0panka said:

Money is already involved! Marketable items will only lower prices and give evryone fair chance to buy/sell whatever they want

Or it could go the opposite direction you know. Items from other games' markets have shot up instead of the opposite. You can't just call something out as being that simple, markets are hard to predict... 

[Asparagus]

I thought this was already settled... in a "let's just see how this pans out and we'll fix issues when they appear" way? Is this a case of tl;dr? 6 pages would be too much to read through... or is it my aura of "don't read my post" kicking in?Basically, I made the same points as @t0panka's except with less capital letters...

2 hours ago, t0panka said:

- people should cool off and think about it with calm head

I would suggest adopting this to your succeeding points in that post  please try to avoid directing CAPITALIZED generalities at others by using "you" as people might misinterpret them as being confrontational

2 hours ago, t0panka said:

- i helped/give free elegants to LOTS of people so they can have their favourite character. Guess what? Almost all of them just become greedy and "sold" those items for more other items or for keys. People saying they want only their favourite character is BS usually. There are still few people who dont care about money or keys or other items and actually have their favourite character and i will gift them GOH set without problems .)

That is very sad to hear... truly, I sympathize with you. But if it's any consolation, I got a Webber GoH drop and was quite happy, I got it just after the first GoH (Willow if I remember) was posted in the forums... I enjoyed it a lot... but my heart is with Wendy... I was content with Webber but if given the chance I would have traded him with all gratitude for a Wendy... as time passed I became content at having an adorable spider (though I personally don't play as him much and almost exclusively plays Wendy) so I was thankful to @ThaumicParrotfor trading me his Wendy GoH...

I know most people have experience with this sort of thing with TF2 and other games and call me naive since this will be my first run with this thing... but from what we know of Klei, they have been very steadfast in their running... why not give them the benefit of the doubt? Innocent until proven guilty?

[ailailou]

My dear Klei Entertainment, I embarked the Don't Starve boat ever since it started sailing. It's been almost 4 years ever since, and I want to keep enjoying the voyage despite the forecasted tumultuous weather. The latest information dropped in this thread by Cpt. JoeW brought me to the point of putting a life vest on. I'm about to take a leap of faith off the boat.

I made sure to leave my 2 cents on the deck.

[Mudley]

Okay, here goes nothing:

My interest about skins is minimal, and that's why I kept myself from posting in this topic, because I believe if you don't have anything useful to add, it's better to just stay quiet.

But if my crappy english is not fooling me, I've read that depending on how the whole skin situation turns out, some people might leave the game entirely.

I am gonna brace myself from the rocks that will be thrown at me, but leaving a game because of a pure cosmetic mechanic, is a very dumb reason to do so. It might be different for some, but the main reason I play DST is so I can have the same fun I had with the original DS, but with friends.

And yeah, coming from the guy that does not care that much for skins doesn't mean that much, and don't get me wrong, I too want the skin economy to not be a joke, like TF2's. But, leaving everything behind just because of it?

[Mikeadatrix]

15 hours ago, Exhu said:

THIS, so much this

Exactly.

14 hours ago, leonseye said:

The "number of people arguing that they don't like what Joe posted" so far is 6.  I think it would be silly to base their decisions of the game on what 6 people said in a forum thread, which is already a teeny-tiny subsect of the player base.

You are not "many".  You are 6 people.

Explain to me how people will no longer be able to receive skins as drops from playing the game and customize their character?

Explain to me how these skins received from playing are not still absolutely free to everyone?

Because what you're talking about does not impede the skins feature in any way, shape, or form.  There is nothing unfair about it.

Rare skin drops are clearly intended to remain rare, that's why they are... y'know, rare.  And when you get one, whether through playing the game or trading, you can at least feel somewhat special for having one.

I have been telling my entire Steam Friends list about this. They tell theirs. I say about maybe 500 now know.

14 hours ago, leonseye said:

Then don't spend it on digital cosmetics.  Just play the game and get drops like the rest of us who aren't willing to pay for drops.

There is nothing unfair about this.  Do it the hard way for free, or do it the easy way by trading items of value.

You are not somehow entitled to the rarest of items in the game simply because other people have gotten them.

Listen. You're really ignoring the point here. The Trade INN is god awful. We can't even get the items we want. And by "hard work" you mean playing the game for the next 40 years nonstop? Mmmm I don't think so. And the reaso  why the Market is horrible.. Traders will see the "Prices" and jack their trade so high we will be all **** outta luck.

13 hours ago, DarkXero said:

Let the TF2ening begin.

 

This will be my last post in the forums.

See you all!

Welp. It was good while it lasted. See ya scrubs in ShipWrecked.

13 hours ago, leonseye said:

There has been a lot of speculation thus far in this thread talking about how these items are now being opened up to the Steam marketplace, etc.

Does this just mean that instead of just trading for other skins or keys, now people can choose to buy items outright from other players for money from their Steam wallet?

I don't personally see an issue w/ that as the items are still being given out for free just for playing a game that I already enjoy playing and have enjoyed playing w/out even the possibility of cool clothing items for years.

Also, there are other skins on the way as well?  Don't need an ETA or anything of the sort, just hoping that one day maybe I'll get my hands on that sexy Samurai Wigfrid concept that was shown a while back.

Heres the entire issue with this. People will have Good Ol Samurai Wigfrid be worth maybe (if I know greed) $300 American. That's how greed works. Like Joe put it, It'll take time to stable down. But how long? Months? That's how long TF2 took.