Maybe the developers already have this idea in the works. But just in case, here’s what I have in mind to make this game economy more viable. At some point, players will end up with a surplus of Traitstones that they have no need for. And, if they have a deficit of Traitstones, then they must farm for more which will naturally take some time, or they just might consider buying one of those Traitstone packs at the Shop to save themselves time. Either way, they will continue to receive more surplus stones which in the long run will dissuade players from buying any or continuing to pay for more. Those packs, as we all know, are not cheap. Neither are the costs to operate this game for its growing fan base.
This is where trading comes in. Players have requested it all over this forum. There are some pros and cons with each of them, of course. And I welcome them all to chime in anyway with those ideas so the devs can have a thread devoted to Trade.
For me though, I personally think that this idea is best suited at the Shop. Currently, we can use gems to buy armor, souls, and gold. Glory can buy one of four items in the Rewards tab. Everything else is sold at a price. Now imagine a new tab called Trades. When it opens, you see four panels (i.e., Minor; Major; Runic; Arcane). At the top right corner of the screen is a new currency: Celestial. The amount of Celestial stones you currently possess will be displayed there in that box.
When clicking any one of the four panels below, you will see two buttons in it: Buy and Sell. One Celestial stone can buy you 625 minors, 125 majors, 25 runics, or 5 arcanes of your choice. Just select which panel to buy those stones from. Selling works differently. You basically trade 5 lesser stones for the next higher stone of your choice (e.g., in the Minor panel, 5 minor reds for 1 major brown; In the Major panel, 5 major greens for 1 runic purple; In the Runic panel, 5 runic yellows for 1 arcane; And in the Arcane panel, 5 arcanes for 1 Celestial.). Each time you preform this trade, a window will naturally pop up to confirm the trade. Just click confirm and then simply repeat the process to get whatever you want/ need most from one of those four trait panels.
This form of trading is strictly for those Traitstones.
While it’s a good deal for players, it’s a bad deal for the game. As mentioned in other similar posts, improving Traitstone acquisition efficiency directly affects the only real money-making vector in an otherwise free-to-play game.
Further if trading were ever added it would be closer to say 1 Celestial for 1-2 Arcanes at most. It would not be anywhere close to even and heavily skewed to not being worth it unless you are that desperate.
REGARDLESS of that, in a Free To Play game Auction Houses will only work (successfully for the game) if players uses real life currency to list, buy, (or both) the items in question.
Imperfect resource distribution is a deliberate game mechanic, both to provide each player with a unique, non-deterministic experience, and to give you choices to make. Surpluses of one type may encourage you to try different troops, while shortages of another may encourage you to target that type for farming, save glory for a week where it’s available in the reward shop, or purchase outright for real money.
If you can freely trade traitstones with perfect efficiency to any other traitstone, then there’s no point in there being multiple types of traitstones at all. It would be unnecessary fluff that just imposes interface interaction to pad it out, rather than having any meaning.
First, thanks everyone for expressing your personal opinion on the idea.
Second, its just a rough idea of how it could work. I’m sure the Devs would weigh their thoughts on it quite thoroughly. Your feedback can still help shape theirs, however.
And third, I see this more as a VIP perk than a free-for-all perk.I don’t have VIP 5 at this time, but if this was made available, I would certainly be motivated to use my credit card. I’m not impressed with getting access to VIP chests at this time. I’ve managed fine so far. Not in a hurry to max every thing out either. But I do love having options to sweeten the game experience.
