12:01 ST
Reply
[Update] Bank interest and daily bonus
Summary

Starting July 1st:

  • The bank will no longer pay out interest on your nugget balance
  • Bank interest will be replaced with a daily nugget bonus of between 50 and 100 nuggets, depending on your collection streak over the last week
  • The bank will allow you to store gems as well as nuggets

In addition to this announcement, a reminder will be included in next month’s Monthly News Discussion thread. For more details, see below.


Why do we have bank interest?

Bank interest was intended as a leg up for new players, to help them acquire new items and pets more easily. This is why interest rates are higher for people with low balances. In practice, it has been having the opposite effect, and has proven to be unsustainable and detrimental to Mycena Cave’s economy.

How much bank interest is being generated?

In spite of heightened activity due to the Spring event, the last month has been typical in terms of interest generation. Over the last month, players have generated a total of 2.36 million nuggets in bank interest. That is the equivalent of 655 gems at face value, about 700 gems at the “standard price” at which people have sold gems to each other in the past, or about 112 paw prints (i.e. 6 unedited sprouts) at the going rates, every month. We stand firmly behind mechanisms that allow people to earn nuggets without spending real money, but Mycena Cave cannot afford to continue generating on the order of $700 worth of nuggets every month in bank interest alone.

Who does bank interest benefit?

The interest generated goes predominantly to established players with large bank balances, and is not offset by the greater number of less wealthy players with higher interest rates as initially hoped. In practice, regardless of actual interest rates, bank interest essentially functions to increase the wealth of players who already have a significant bank balance at a much more exponential pace than the players who do not have a significant balance. This gives the former an unnecessary advantage that was unintended.

Some data: 403 players collected interest over the last month, generating the 2.36 million nuggets listed above. Just 36 players (9% of players who generated interest) generated about 1.19 million nuggets, or half of the total interest generated. The bottom 50% of players who generated interest (i.e. 202 players) generated only 60,500 nuggets between them, or about 2.5% of the total.  Almost by definition, any player for whom bank interest is of any significant benefit is not a player that needs a leg up over the others.

How is bank interest detrimental to Mycena Cave’s economy?

A regular flow of earning and spending is vital to a healthy economy, but bank interest actually incentivizes players to save nuggets without spending them. By rewarding greater payouts to higher balances, bank interest encourages hoarding behavior, and this has contributed to the development of a visible stagnation in our economy. Removing bank interest will not be an instant fix to this issue, but it is the first of much needed steps we will be taking to help return balance to our economy.

What are we doing to replace bank interest?

A daily nugget bonus will continue to be offered to all players. However, rather than being tied to your bank balance as in the current system, it will be based on your bonus collection history over the last week. Since this bonus is entirely separate from bank balance, it does not incentivize players to hoard nuggets as bank interest does. The base bonus will be 50 nuggets, increasing quickly to 100 nuggets depending on how often you’ve collected over the last seven days. Collecting 100 nuggets daily is equivalent to the current bank interest on a balance of 40,000 nuggets.

Why are we adding gem balances?

A recurring player suggestion has been to enable the bank to hold gems as well as nuggets — mainly because it’s easier to save gems when you can store them out of sight. Once the bank no longer attempts to calculate daily rewards based on balances, adding additional balances for gems becomes more straightforward. As such, we’ll be implementing this feature in tandem with the removal of bank interest.


We understand that there will be strong feelings regarding the removal of bank interest. We are retiring a perk that is very lucrative, particularly for some of our most long-standing players, in favor of a system with far more limited potential gain. However, this is a change that is necessary for Mycena Cave, and so this update will be implemented on July 1st as scheduled. If you have comments you’d like to share, we welcome you to use this thread as a space for discussion.

This update has been under discussion among staff since mid-March. Due to this change having the potential to affect the value of Mycena Cave currency relative to those of other websites, and because foreknowledge of potential change in currency valuations would provide an unfair trading advantage, staff was forbidden from engaging in large cross-site trades involving Mycena Cave until the change became public knowledge. Beginning tomorrow (24 hours after this announcement), this restriction on Mycena Cave staff will be lifted.
Posted 05/23/18

Here’s hoping this helps rebalance the economy. c:

as someone who can never get their interest over like 20 nuggets I am ALL for this change lol

Question though: will the nugget collection streak reset weekly or is it going to be a constant “as long as you keep collecting interest your daily nugget bonus you get 100 nuggets a day” thing?

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

After I finally managed to just about hit 40k nuggets too. ;n;

Hope this helps rebalance things. The amount of nuggets you can get from interest on here is insane. If I didn’t have poor impulse control when it came to spending I’d have shoved it all in the bank for that sweet interest gain too.

Edit:

After skimming a few posts I’m actually no longer sure if I like this change. I think the best change would have been to rework how bank interest works.

Still interested to see how this is going to impact the MC economy.

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/27/18
Well darn… while I can fully understand the reasons why, and support it, the interest was the only way I was able to afford the monthly items as I still have trouble playing the games. For all my trying I am not good at word puzzles/searches like Spellstones and the others have pretty small payoffs. I’m hoping this means we might possibly get new games like a bubble-pop or a candy-crush like game that is a colour pattern type or matching type in the future. At 100 nuggets a day, you cannot even buy one gem at the end of the month.
Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

Thank you for the change staff! I’ve been critical of the interest for the longest time due to its side effects of preventing people from wanting to spend nuggets. For awhile I actually had enough to fall into that trap too and it made it almost stressful to spend. So when I did spend it all, I couldn’t just be happy with my purchase, I also felt guilty that I’d lost my interest :’).

Like Malis said, it would be wonderful if at some point we get a bigger variety of games to help more people hit their 3K cap a day. I’m fine with what we have but some of my friends struggle with all the choices we currently have. Is there any chance we could see some new ones in the future when you guys have the time?

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

I’m one of those people who maintains a relatively hefty bank account for the sole purpose of collecting interest, but I think this is a really excellent change! While I’m of course disappointed that my effortless money stream is going to end soon, interest frankly warped the way I played the site in exactly the way described in the first post and often made me pass up items I would have otherwise bought from shops/users—simply because I didn’t want the item more than I wanted to maintain my bank interest. It also made spending pointlessly stressful (as Tracer mentioned above) because there’s the point of losing your interest on top of the spending itself.

I’m all for the daily bonus system to reward all players fairly, but do have a small suggestion here: from what I understand in the post, the maximum reward is 100 nuggets/day and nothing else. Aside from that, perhaps something like earning 1 bonus gem for every 30-day streak (or longer?) may help to incentivise players to log on more without having an overly negative impact on the economy? With gems now being able to be stored in the bank and the existence of Rikur’s Rarities, gems feel like a larger part of the economy now despite the fact that there are pretty much no players selling gems. Maybe a 1-gem bonus per month might encourage that, plus login bonuses are always a good way to get the player base to return regularly and hopefully engage in site activities. That said, I’m obviously not privy to the full metrics and have no idea if this would introduce a disastrous amount of money into the economy, but I figured I’d put it out there haha :’)

Posted 05/23/18

Mmm…. yeah. I understand the necessity for this change, but I will admit it stings a little. I’m hoping it helps going forward though! It often feels no one is willing to buy with nuggets because they don’t want to miss out on their interest.

Although, I do strongly agree it’d be nice to have more games and/or dailies to help balance this out going forward? The proposed 50-100 a day doesn’t seem like much imo especially compared to monthly prices (& the fact few sell gems at a lower rate). I like Azurrys’s idea—even if it’s not a gem, but something like a little bonus for x many days would be cool. Right now there’s not much to pull you back daily beyond checking your interest/the new streak system and fishing, especially for more lurker types who don’t really interact in forums/chat.

I don’t want to whinge too much because I am one of those with a sizeable interest income, but… Personally I’ve only recently tried maxing out more regularly with spellstones and, as much as I like it, some days it can become incredibly tedious, so some more variety would be really helpful! o: I’m terrible at echolocation and cave in aggravates my carpal tunnel after a few rounds, so my only viable option really is spellstones.

Posted 05/23/18
Aw, now I’ll never see how many nuggets I’d need to have in the bank to get exactly 1000 nuggets in interest. I was planning to spend all of it in a massive spending spree as soon as I hit that point, since I ended up getting much more of the PP for my last custom from offsite trading than I anticipated and I was left without any real goals to spend the nuggets on so found myself curious… *shrug* I don’t think I can get the rest of the way there in the next week, has anyone done the math for exactly 1000 nuggets in interest and if you have can you please share the answer? I’m not good with numbers, they move on me so math is not my friend.
Posted 05/23/18

Nephele
I withdrew/deposited my nuggets to get the exact number once and it’s 631,621!

Edit: To clarify, that’s the minimum amount haha. I didn’t check to see when it would turn into 1,001 nuggets of interest.

Edit 2: It turns into 1,001 nuggets at 632,653 nuggets c: So between 631,621 and 632,652 nuggets, it’s 1k interest exactly.

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

Reading earlier comments, it would be neat (maybe) if there was a x% change to randomly collect 1000 nuggets (as an example). Like a mini lottery or something~

*rolls back out*

Posted 05/23/18

Welp. There go my plans for world domination. Glad I didn’t buy a bunch of gems to melt into the interest bank looooool. As someone who doesn’t particularly like playing the same three games over and over to grind out 3k everyday, gotta say I’m a bit sad now. Not going to be able to afford the monthlies very often now, what with my income being cut in fourth. Plus it taking a couple hours to hit max cap on games making it tedious. I like the games, but it’s slow going and they aren’t really the most exciting things. Either grab a dictionary and pray you get a good board, spam click a bunch of times for maybe a good payout on a matching game, or get good at echo and still need to play a good 50+ games. All of them can be fun for a while, but man it takes a long time. Really do hope some more games get introduced to help give us some more options. Heck, mushroom meals has been out forever and still doesn’t have any sort of payout. I get why, since Sudoku is easily cheesed puzzle-wise, but it still leaves little reason to actually go play it. Just bleh. Going from three gems a month to not even being able to afford one without grinding hurts. xD

That said, the update makes sense. Hopefully it does what you need it to and gets people buying things. I do like Azzurys’ suggestion of adding a gem for having a long-going streak though. And I really hope the games section gets some updates sometime soonish. I still kind of wish Echolocation would pay partial nuggets out for guessing some of the wasps.

e/ I do not, however, like the idea of a random chance-based bonus. It’ll just lead to a few random players getting lucky multiple times while some others never get it at all and people will get salty.

~~~~~

e// Don’t feel like making a new post but re: Jacq’s pitch of 250/day making a bigger impact on newbies being able to afford things, that sounds like a good number to me. That’d be two gems a month, do a bit of grinding here and there and you get yourself a monthly item, which would be great as a new person with not too much. That said, ramping up to 250/day for a week of logging on sounds like it’d go a bit too fast. Perhaps the first week quickly scales up in nuggets earned, then over a longer term of something like three weeks it more slowly scales up to 250/day. Or something. Idk. The 100/day max system should probably be given time to see how it feels first before tweaking, thinking more on the economy it’s better to err on the side of not enough than too much. \shrug

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

This is a good change and I’m glad it’s happening. The bank interest, even though it’s something I’ve benefited from, has always been something that’s been explicitly anti-newbie and I think it’s great to see that change. Though I’m not really sure it’s the reason for the stagnation in the economy (or rather, that visible stagnation is due to nugget interest, rather than other factors such as # of active users or the dual economy between PP and nuggets/gems).

I’m also stoked that new users can likely afford the monthly pet just by logging in and selling fishing rewards, and maybe playing a few games. That’s such a positive change and I’m sure that it will get people to stick around a bit logner, to give them something more short-term to work for that isn’t “max out every single day on these 3 games”.
edit: I did the math wrong. An active player is only getting about 3k per month, not 30k. Sorry OTL So they can afford… not much. I think 1k each day is way too much, but even something like 250 per day seems like it would make a much bigger dent in the newbie struggle.

I’ll be interested to see how this affects gem sales and player engagement moving forward. Personally, no interest just means I’m going to be more choosy about buying OotS, not necessarily that I’m going to open my wallet and spend USD on gems instead (or rather, spend USD on PP at nugget rates since those are always better). At 405 players collecting interest, that’s still 1.2 million nuggets (336 gems or about 55PP) being created out of thin air every month. Only half of what was being generated before, but spread across everyone!

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

I gotta say, as a 2 year old player who is *still* dirt poor, I’m glad to see this.

I knew this would be happening, it’s simply how intrest works. Honestly it always made me salty.

I have a grand total of 19k after months of saving badly (i don’t often make my dailies)

This will be a good thing.

Posted 05/23/18
I had no idea bank interest was a thing.  Will we need to go into the bank to get this bonus and will we need to have something in the bank before it is available?
Posted 05/23/18

Hahaha, daaaang it. This is great, don’t get me wrong, but man… from the time this site opened to a couple months ago, I was always broke on here. Never more than 36k nuggets to collect interest on (more often than not, the amount didn’t hit higher than 10k), mý income relied on events and offsite trading. That’s still mostly the case, but over the last couple months I managed to build up over 400k via offsite and event trades with the intent to collect interest worth collecting. So for most of my history in this site, this change wouldn’t have affected me at all. But, here we are 8’D;;;

I’ve been hopeful about a new nugget/item-earning activity though. Any hints on whether one might be in the making? I appreciate the games but like malis said, I’m terrible at them. I can play echolocation but after a few games I feel like just…. sleeping instead haha. I of course still have my trades but I’d really like more ways to earn nuggets here that fit my interests to some degree. (Gimme adventure please ahhhhh)

Posted 05/23/18
As another player with quite a heafty interest amount, while I’m not thrilled to have that source of income vanish, I am excited to see the impact this change might have. I definitely hoarded an incredible amount of nuggets because of the interest system and did feel it didn’t help new users as much as it should.
Posted 05/23/18

YAY I can now feel no guilt about how loose I am with my nuggets omg.  I can be exactly as bad with money as I’ve always been at heart.

Seconding the hopeful cries of more games!!  I’m still excited about the game from the pirate event someday coming to us.  I knoooow this is not a suggestions thread but…!! Some simple games like 2048 or something.

Posted 05/23/18

I can’t always get onto the computer or what have you to play the minigames everyday, and with 3K nuggets being a small cap when I can get to the computer, the interest is what allows me to have enough nuggets at the end of the month to get a monthly pet. So yeah, I’m not that pleased to see the interest go. I rely on it for being able to get monthlies and the seasonals too.

I know I can hoard sell from fishing, but I have so many days where I get nothing from my 10 turns, so that’s not reliable either.

So I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

I just need to add, that I’ll still be hoarding my nuggets. In fact, I’m going to have to be VERY careful about spending if I’m going to be able to afford to get the monthly or seasonal pets. So no insentive for me to add my nuggets back to the economy at all.

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18
Ah, this will not be good for me logging in every day. If there is very little incentive for me to log on and earn at least some nuggets from interest, I’ll likely be too busy to even bother logging on. I understand the sentiment, but I’m kind of sad that this is the choice to replace interest since I have a notoriously bad ability to keep up with this style of daily incentive. I don’t honestly know if there would be a replacement that would keep me here long enough to check things out.
Posted 05/23/18

Ideas: 1. try a 4 or 5k a day cap  New games would be grand, but at the least, try allowing a 4k or 5k cap to generate nuggets into the economy to replace the available ones being removed by the bank interest.  If it doesn’t work, change it back. I don’t have anything to cross site trade, so generating nuggets in game is how I make my own nuggets for what I want on here.

2. create a shop with a few cute and useable items (wearables) that allow a newbie to get low hanging fruit for their new pet.  Offer items that are 500 nuggets tops.  Not many, just a few are needed.

Current shops, cheapest items:
Darcy’s ~ 1,100 Eggy Earrings
Lands Within ~ 950 great price, but for a box o black that only shows on the forums (confusing for a new person)
Sullie’s ~ Several nailpolishes for 500 nuggos < PERFECT!!! ^^
Fungimental ~ 300 Unpondshroom ~ perfect!  We don’t know what it does, but 300 nuggets! Grabby hands!
Leeetle’s ~ 3,300 your choice of 3 versions of naked mole rat, followed closely by Hugtopus at 3,400
Val’s ~ Wings in many colours for 1,000 or a black ruff
Rikur’s ~ doesn’t count because it’s a chance to press your nose against the glass and see rare objects

3. Maybe open a Thrift Store?   Have an option where we can sell our items to the Thrift Store, so we can get nuggets for our ‘unwanted’ items.  Then turn around and sell the same items to users at a reduced price.  That would give newbies or broke users the chance to buy something, and users the opportunity to get some nuggets and might put a base worth on your items? 

It may devalue items being sold in the Bazaar, I don’t think we’ll know what it would do to prices of items until it was put into play, but if it was detrimental, you could do away with it like you are doing away with the Banking system?

***My user feelings….editing to add that as a user, you’re going to see me hoarding even more than before. Having the bank interest gave me the breathing space to feel like I could splurge and buy things.  With it gone and only the 3k a day grind, that places me in an even tighter place. 

I’m also not a fan of daily log in pay offs.  I’ve run into it on two other sites, one where their game mechanics are so funky it keeps adding and then stealing from my daily count leaving very bad feelings.  The other, I lost my daily log in streak after something like half a year.  It devastated me so badly, I seriously considered quitting their game completely.  It took me months to recover from it, especially as I had logged in on the day they said I hadn’t.  So yeah, not a fan of a daily log in.

Also, Thank you very much for the special note about staff not being allowed to use the bank closing to their advantage.  It was sweet of you to put that in place, and then post it.  I appreciate the note of solidarity with your players <3

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

In regards to games…

Maybe recycle some event only minigames like the mastermind game or that one game with the hexagons and make it so they give nuggets…. ? They would have to be balanced for nugget values of course and it may be troublesome (I’m sure everyone on staff is super busy!) but it could be easier on your resources?

I know mastermind was super popular, i don’t remember too many of the other games that have been in events but I’d love to see a return of them. Some could be more chance-y like a dice rolling game (wasn’t there a dice game with a cheating character once?) while others are less so, like the hexagon game(I don’t remember the name of it but I think you captured territories?)

That way you could choose if you wanted strategy or more chance-based gameplay!

Regardless I’m glad interest is being taken away, I’ve fallen in the trap of just getting interest and never spending too because its just free nuggets haha, I hope this will work out okay!

Posted 05/23/18
Just an aside, I really liked that territory capturing game. I forgot it existed. I would totally play that normally.
Posted 05/23/18

I’m not sure how I feel about the interest becoming something so low. While I have been wondering what interest looks like for players sitting on 1mil nuggets, I am also a bit bummed that instead of everyone having a “decent” income, we now all equally have an “extremely crappy” one.

Was there a mathy reason for choosing 50 and 100 nuggets? I feel like this is an EXTREMELY steep drop from a normal bank interest? Would it be possible to up the daily login thing to a max of 500 or something? Like over a week it would look something like this -> Day 1-2 = 50 nuggets, Day 3-4 = 100 nuggets, Day 5-6 = 200 nuggets, Day 7 = 500 nuggets
And if you miss a day you start back at day one (or not and just every 7 days you’ll get 500 nuggets).

Also, as many people seem to be mentioning, I am also on board to add new games and/or raise the daily cap. If a brand new player logs in, they need to play for (based on site gem price) 8-9 days to get fodder or 12 days for an OotS. I feel like that is a LOT of days to ask someone to commit to a new game before they can get anything imo. These may be a bit of a stretch for examples but in FR players can buy multiple new dragons with their daily cap and Digis offers increasing prices based on pet amount. I feel like compared to those games, MC is pretty “hard” to get into because you have to actually get used to the games and then play the one you’re good at (I am only good at Echolocation) and then play it to death for over a week (I didn’t count this new daily thing since I don’t know all the details or the fishing because some days are just unlucky… ^^;)
Of course you could write something but being new and maybe shy like me it’s not easy to just hop in here request an RP. I’ve been here for quite a while and I STILL don’t often request to RP unless it’s for an event.

Posted 05/23/18
I actually love the idea of changing the bank interest stuff into daily nuggets, since I have hard time collecting nuggets, I mean… there’s always good stuffs keep popping up on the store, and I can’t help but to spend my nuggets. And my bank interest slides back into only 5 or 6 per day. ;w;
Posted 05/23/18
In practice, it has been having the opposite effect, and has proven to be unsustainable and detrimental to Mycena Cave’s economy.glitch
We stand firmly behind mechanisms that allow people to earn nuggets without spending real money, but Mycena Cave cannot afford to continue generating on the order of $700 worth of nuggets every month in bank interest alone.glitch


Let’s be honest here.  This is a problem generated by the lack of game development/nugget sinks on Mycena Cave.  If you had, for example, created a batting system with non-trade items/pets/whatever as rewards, it would have incentivized people to start battling.  Training stats could have cost nuggets, weapons could cost nuggets…you could have even made the weapons no trade so people would have to pay a set price you could determine.  This is just one example. 

You also have a wonky economy, where the vast majority of items are under 100k, often by quite a bit.  You never introduced a sort of Super OOTS where the items were 200k or something.  And for those items you could have made them no trade, or if people could sell them angle it so that MC takes a portion of the sale and money is actually sunk and not 100% shifted around between players.

I am saving for 10 sprouts because that is the only goal on Mycena Cave (because of the lack of interesting game mechanics like battling as well as no, say, 1m items).  Even with the bank interest in place, it takes me about 5 months to afford a sprout.  You are knocking out ~40% of my income and I am only 3/10ths of the way to my goal. 

 

The interest generated goes predominantly to established players with large bank balances, and is not offset by the greater number of less wealthy players with higher interest rates as initially hoped. glitch

Well first of all, how big their balances are is kind of moot.  I have almost 4x the nuggets you need for the daily 1k and am not even up to 2k daily interest yet.  And it takes something like 100 million in the bank to get 3k per day.  The issue is that people on the economic bottom aren’t using the tools you hoped they would use.  Here’s a secret though… that’s actually life.  Not everyone has the same drive or ability and that is *PART* of why you see differences in where people end up financially.  It’s not hard to make the daily limit of 3k nuggets on mycena cave.  With training it can be done within 20-40 minutes most days.  Sometimes, in under 10 minutes.  It’s also not hard to log in to click the interest, which is going to be part of the disparity.  Not everyone is going to be high in trait conscientiousness or other things along that nature.  That is why some of these people are poor on MC to begin with.

 

In practice, regardless of actual interest rates, bank interest essentially functions to increase the wealth of players who already have a significant bank balance at a much more exponential pace than the players who do not have a significant balance. This gives the former an unnecessary advantage that was unintended.glitch


So this all basically comes down to people looking to be successful on MC across time being punished because the mechanisms set up for people with less drive to be successful aren’t being utilized by said group.  It takes like 3 months of diligently earning 3k a day and not spending it to be rewarded by getting an extra 1k a day.  At that point you will earn 80% per day of what the most driven and rich users earn (assuming 2k interest and no more….functionally you could cap interest at 2k btw). 

I want you to think about that, glitch.  You are currently giving new players a way to nearly match millionaire players in earnings if they just commit 3 months time to getting their bank account up.  And they can close the 20% gap from there.  That is actually obscenely generous, especially given the decision you have made here. 

I’d actually rather you did not paint this as an income inequality issue.  In fact income inequality in and of itself is not actually a bad thing.  If I make 100k a year and you make 1m a year but I can actually live well on my 100k, it actually doesn’t matter if we have an income disparity.  A difference in and of itself doesn’t mean anything.  What matters is to what extent people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder can live off of what they make.  So take a look at MC.  I would say that you have actually made it an amazing game for new players.  If they actually just commit and make the damn 3k per day most items are a couple weeks away.  That is actually unheard of for pet sites.  You haven’t done wrong by new/poor/undisciplined players.  You have met them beyond halfway.  They need to lazily lift their hand toward you.  It’s on them now.

It’s not about income inequality.  Established players aren’t buying up old oots to spike the prices and take advantage of new players.  If anything nefarious is going on, handle it per player because it’s not a per class issue.  It’s about, in your own words, not being able to afford $700 a month in lost income via real dollars, or something.  Here’s the thing though…you’re not actually losing that money.  It’s like when someone pirates a music album.  They weren’t going to buy it anyway so it’s not a lost sale.  If anything maybe they enjoy it so much they do decide to spend some money towards that band.  Or they tell friends about it and it gets them interested and the friend buys it.  I would at present moment not tell anyone to join MC.  There’s no real direction or meaningful game design, and the operators are punishing players because they couldn’t or wouldn’t put those in place.

And if it is some genuine worry about the economy….flesh a game out already.  MC just being an RP site with a couple click events has done way more to hurt its growth and real life/in-game economy than anything else.  It isn’t rich bullies.  It isn’t things are too expensive (which was said for a while when the real issue is people don’t want to earn the 3k per day).  It’s a hyper-niche site with absurdly little to do.  Make a campaign mode.  Make sinks.  Do something other than nothing/punishing players for your having done nothing.

 

Some data: 403 players collected interest over the last month, generating the 2.36 million nuggets listed above. Just 36 players (9% of players who generated interest) generated about 1.19 million nuggets, or half of the total interest generated. The bottom 50% of players who generated interest (i.e. 202 players) generated only 60,500 nuggets between them, or about 2.5% of the total. glitch

 

Almost by definition, any player for whom bank interest is of any significant benefit is not a player that needs a leg up over the others.glitch


To me this is you getting ideological.  This framing of people getting a leg up over each other is very disappointing, glitch.  First of all, I would dispute that conceptualization.  Second of all, even if that was somehow the correct way to view differences in income, that’s not what is going on.  Sure I don’t “need” a “leg up OVER others,” but I do need a leg up over my goals.  I am just trying to make some pretty pets, man.  Who the hell is being hurt by that?  And how are poorer users being hurt by richer players in general?  Stop framing this is as some sort of righteous crusade against the evil rich…or whatever this is.  Man just lay it out as it is.  It’s either about RL financial implications and/or you just generally don’t want too many nuggets in the economy and the interest generators is an easy target (compared to making an actual game).  There is no little guy being crushed by some oligarchy here.  Just be straightforward.  New/poor players can achieve anything they want.  Interestingly, you WILL be hurting the poor’s ability to make sprouts now.  Interesting to think about.

 

A regular flow of earning and spending is vital to a healthy economy, but bank interest actually incentivizes players to save nuggets without spending them.glitch

Bank interest also incentivizes people to spend everything they make after about 2-3m.  Once you hit 2k-ish in interest, hoarding doesn’t actually benefit you.  In fact doing things like buying OOTS items to later sell to other users is encouraged once you hit a certain bank interest rate.  The issue is the site is small and most people get OOTS as they come out.  That’s not the fault of the existence of interest.

 

By rewarding greater payouts to higher balances, bank interest encourages hoarding behavior, and this has contributed to the development of a visible stagnation in our economy.glitch

Or long-standing users happen to own all the items they want, and coincidentally collect interest as well.  I am not hoarding for the sake of interest itself.  I am hoarding because I HAVE NOTHING TO SPEND MY NUGGETS ON.  Just these sprouts, and the interest is helping me just meet the goal.  Mind you this is already a goal that will take like 3 years.  If you had a battle component and it cost 1000s to train stats and 100s of thousands or even millions for weapons I would be hilariously broke. 

The economy has stagnated not because of interest but because:

1.  The player base is small because the site is niche.
2.  It is very easy for this small base of players to get all the items they want and from there it’s just saving.
3.  The people who still need stuff are too lazy or too turned off by the current earning methods and remain poor.


And it should be mentioned… the bank interest mechanism HELPS new/poor players.  They just have to actually commit to the 3k.  You can lead a horse to water, glitch…..

 

Collecting 100 nuggets daily is equivalent to the current bank interest on a balance of 40,000 nuggets.glitch


So because of laziness I have to reap the benefits of people who can’t commit to a month of grinding 3k a day.  Awesome.  The answer isn’t bringing your committed player base down.  The answer is raising the site up so people have new ways to grind the 3k or add to the site such that the established players will want to lay their nuggets down.  Doing the latter will generate site growth and help fix the economy, and the former will help with player retention.

 

However, this is a change that is necessary for Mycena Cave, and so this update will be implemented on July 1st as scheduled.glitch

A change that is necessary for Mycena Cave as per not actually improving the site and giving players reasons to be here and things to spend their nuggets on. 

Posted 05/23/18
Thank you for this change! I cannot save enough nuggets before I spend them all haha. So this (to me) is a positive change! And I won’t feel like I need to hoard all my nuggets like you were saying.
Posted 05/23/18

As someone who definitely does the hording thing…. I do welcome this change! I’ve always been very pro-newbie and pro keeping new players and I think the wealth division and how hard it can be to obtain stuff is definitely a huge hurdle for new players. I will miss my nuggies….. but creating more of an even playing field for new and old players alike is definitely welcome.

However, I do agree with a lot of the sentiment posted that interest is not the only thing that kind of skews the economy on Mycena Cave. I won’t be too repetitive but the 3k cap plus the fact that getting to that 3k cap can take hours of grindy games is definitely something that should be addressed. Is there any sort of statistics on how many players max out every day and how many nuggets are generated from the games each day? Would be interesting to see. I assume its less than the interest, but that also doesn’t mean that people aren’t maxing out more only because of the interest they generate.

More games and more varied games would be great. I would LOVE mastermind. That was my main game on Leopets, not as tedious as some games and uses a bit more strategy.

I think that doing away with interest is a good way to stimulate the trading market and encourage people to spend nuggets, but more steps can be taken as well. More things to buy for nuggets would be great, and more items that are obtained from a bit of luck or a game, etc. I’m excited for the recolor shop, I think that would definitely help fill the niche as well.

As for the daily bonus, I think its a good idea, but I also like the idea of some extra bonuses for milestones. 50 to 100 nuggets per day seems like something I wouldn’t bother to collect sometimes (but then again I have a bigger nugget cushion than some), so some milestone bonuses would definitely be a nice incentive.

Thank you for the detailed explanation of the reasoning behind the change, hopefully this is a good step on the way to balancing things out.

Posted 05/23/18, edited 05/23/18

While I don’t agree with most of what frieza is saying, they do bring up a valid point about rich users not having any use for nuggets because they already own everything they could want.  I’ve discussed this with a couple people in reference to custom trading.  There is a small demographic of people who have sorta capped out all their other goals and turn their attention to unique pets.  Then, inevitably, a bunch of those pets end up on market for trades or PP purchases.  Then a lot of them end up sitting and rotting because their owner doesn’t want them, other users with unique pets either don’t want them or aren’t willing to trade their current customs for them, and they won’t accept nuggets for them because they have no need for nuggets which eliminates a huge portion of potential buyers.  (what I’m saying is that I’m bummed that I rarely have opportunities to buy existing customs because all I have to offer is nuggets lmao)

I feel good, or at least ambivalent, about removing bank interest because I often hoard my nuggets for interest and I don’t even have that much in the bank.  But I do think there should be something worth having nuggets for when there are a lot of users rich enough to just buy oots when they come out and have no other long-term goals left to save for. 

Of course none of this applies to poorer users or users without unique pets.  It’s just an example of something I’ve noticed in this economy.  There’s been discussion for a long time about how useless nuggets are/the emphasis on PP and I fear we’re no closer to a balanced economy.  Will this help get people spending? I’m sure.  But there’s still the issue that some people still don’t have anything to spend nuggets on. 

Posted 05/23/18

Personally, I think this change could end up going decently well. I mean, I’ve only got a balance of 2.5k nuggets so, for me, this’ll be a drastic improvement, since I usually only hop on long enough to click that interest button, unless there’s an event (like this recent spring one) going on. Full honesty, I can’t be bothered to try and grind the 3k/day cap in Spellstones (because that’s the only game I’m actually good at/enjoying).

I can see why the players in the figurative upper echelon might find this to be a problem, seeing as (like many above have said) it’s their way of getting the monthlies/seasonals. I totally get that this change would cause problems for them, and I can see how they might think it’s either a symptom of lazy game-making or as punishment for being successful. (Heck, I even watched that Pareto distribution video that frieza posted).

But I can also see why y’all in charge see this as a good idea. Lots of nuggets being generated for interest would, in theory, incentivize people to save up until they hit that sweet spot of 1k-2k interest per day, so there wouldn’t be any nuggets getting dropped into the MC economy (though part of me wonders how that could be a bad thing, seeing as, well, it’s almost all virtual currency, afaik, but I don’t know the intricacies of the inner workings of this place).

However, what I foresee (which is probably highly inaccurate) is a massive influx of nuggets to where everyone dumps their bank account balance to under 40k nuggets (whether by buying a massive amount of random stuff or converting them to gems or whatever) so as to not be “losing” nuggets each day. After that, everyone just hovers around 40k so as to feel like they’re not ‘losing’ nuggets due to the interest/bonus mechanic. Do I think this prediction is possible? Sure, but unlikely. I’d say its odds are similar to the odds of everyone that is considered a “big” player getting up and never coming back.

I’m hoping this makes things better for everyone, or at least the majority of people, but to those of you who will not be returning after this change is implemented, farewell and may the stars watch over you. To those of you who will remain behind (like me), here’s to quality of life improving.

TL;DR: This is gonna get spicy. Bye to those who leave, good luck to those who stay.

Posted 05/23/18

I am a somewhat unusual player in that I pretty much exclusively use this site to play Spellstones. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever actually posted anything anywhere before now? A momentous occasion. Anyways, I play every day and usually get top three on the monthly scoreboard, and have nothing to do with my nuggets besides putting them in the bank and watching them grow. It never takes me more than 15 minutes to get 3k, although I usually play for longer than that for fun. I’m currently at over 1.5k a day in interest.

On one hand, I agree that the interest rate giving me over half of what I can otherwise earn from games has certainly disincentivized me from spending it. When I just started using this site I did occasionally make purchases for customization items; when I started saving up for an item worth 80k I realized how much more I was making just from interest and decided to start saving, and never ended up buying the item. Even if there was an expensive item I really wanted (which has yet to occur, since, as I mentioned, I don’t really use this site) I would feel highly discouraged from buying it as it would lower my interest, even though I only really collect nuggets to watch the numbers grow bigger.

But on the other hand, I don’t know if getting rid of interest is the best thing to do at this point. Realizing how much interest I was making was also one of the reasons I fell into the rhythm of playing Spellstones diligently each day. Just adding 3k to the bank each day was one incentive, but a system where the more you played games daily, the even greater your profits became gave me an incentive to play far more than a measly 50-100 nuggets a day would.

I also don’t think it’s quite right to frame the issue as a few big players gaining interest and dominating the economy and leaving the rest of the players with nothing, because Mycena Cave is not real life. Notably, unlike real life, people start out on an actually equal playing field. The only thing stopping people from saving up their own fortunes is the time they have to play the games daily, and while I recognize that that might take a prohibitively long time for some people, that is 1. Somewhat unavoidable, as real life is always going to take precedence, and 2. it’s not like I started out being excellent at Spellstones?  I recognize that my enjoyment of it and experiences with it aren’t universal, but at first I could often barely hit 3k taking the full hour of time. Once I started playing more often, the word-finding process became much more intuitive, and now I can usually tell within five minutes whether a board will get me to 3k in less than fifteen minutes. It’s barely even a meritocracy, since I believe anyone decent at the game can hit 3k easily and the nugget limit prevents me from capitalizing on the fact I usually get 6-10k or more on games I have the time to play all the way through.

The players with large bank balances aren’t making the game worse for anybody else. I’ll admit that I don’t participate in this site as much as many active users, but that’s partly because there… isn’t really that much here to do. There’s not much to buy.

I agree that our current interest setup disincentivizes spending nuggets. But there’s a lot more wrong with the economy than that, and I think at this point fully getting rid of the interest system may do more harm than good (especially since as I said, the fact that people have large piles of cash on this site isn’t actually hurting the economy for lower players.)

On other pet sites, I and many other users make enough in bank interest in a week than the vast majority have as their first money-making goal. But there, this is less of a problem because there’s a lot more to spend stuff on, so people actually spend their vast fortunes on big goals, and more importantly: The interest quickly reaches a rate where you’re not actually losing much in interest by spending. Sure, I don’t let my bank balance there dip below 200m because I don’t want to lose my interest profits, but anything beyond that I feel free to spend whenever I want.

Here’s the thing. There isn’t really any good way of making money on this site besides games (capped at 3k) and interest (which in my case gives me another 1.5k). If interest rates were capped, or at least reasonably quickly reached a point where they barely went up at all with more deposits, then that would solve the problem of disincentivizing spending – people would be encouraged to play the game regularly to save up to a certain point, and then would be more free to spend. 

The current interest system is a good incentive for saving up more and playing more because it can pretty quickly get up to a third of your daily earnings; 100 nuggets is more than a tenth of what your cheapest item costs. It’s not going to encourage anybody to play. A daily bonus system is not inherently a bad idea, but it would need to at least ultimately end up at more than 100 nuggets – maybe a monthly system where you get rising levels of nuggets and maybe some items every day you log in capping off at like, a gem for a week- or month-long stretch would be a far better incentive. 100 nuggets is nothing, and not even just because I’m used to 15x that a day from interest – you can barely get anything with it.

At least Neopets, which has a garbage economy where the higher levels of it are nearly completely inaccessible for new players, appeases its proletariat with a wide variety of cheap items they can spend their pitiful earnings on. Which I’m not saying is like, morally correct, but it keeps the more casual and new userbase appeased.

Basically, to sum up: I agree something is wrong with the current interest system, but I don’t think getting rid of it is the answer, especially at this point when there really aren’t many other ways of making money. Revising it so it caps at 1k or something would be far better than 50-100 nuggets a day, which is barely an incentive at all.

Posted 05/23/18
Reply