I understand the concern and I do agree that Sylestia absolutely needs better long-term Gold sinks. Unfortunately, until things can be restructured and features such as full-fledged crafting and player housing systems can be implemented, I am rather limited.

Since the beginning of the Week of Love, over 400,000,000 Gold has been added into the economy. The primary sources of this come from selling items in Inventory (mostly un-used Pet Equipment / Avatar Items) and Lost Grove farming.

However, only 300,000,000 Gold has left the economy. The primary sources of this come from Lost Grove related purchases. As you can see, just in this short span, an additional 100,000,000 Gold has entered the game's economy. This ratio is pretty par for the course at this time. It used to be much worse - things have slowed down considerably over the years as I have made many micro changes. But the problem absolutely has not been resolved and won't be for quite awhile longer. All I can do is try and slow it down as much as I feasibly can so that new players can still be somewhat represented here when they start out playing.


If I were to remove/lower the expenditures from the Lost Grove, it would only make this problem so much worse. As I said, expenditures in the Lost Grove are by far the greatest source of Gold leaving the economy. I would be forced to greatly reduce the amount of Gold players can earn from static sources, such as chests, tasks, missions, and selling items. I don't see how this helps anyone at this point in time - this would literally only embolden those with vast amounts of wealth already as everyone else will find it almost impossible to earn wealth. At least, as it is now, it's pretty easy to farm up Gold quickly and then players have their choice of where to spend it.


In a game environment, where players leave the economy (quit playing), yes, there should always be a gradual uptick in Gold coming in vs going out. But we have always been way above that nominal level. Players have steadily increased their average Gold positions nonstop for 9 years. However, the amount of Gold awarded by the game has remained static. Quests don't reward more Gold. Items don't sell for more Gold. Etc. So a new player is earning the same amount of Gold by playing today (roughly) as a new player years ago did. Therefore, it is not good that they are ending up with less and less buying power simply due to inflation alone. Thus, the reasoning behind current Lost Grove expenses, etc.


I have quite a few significant adjustments/plans in mind for the future to directly assist the game's economy. I am not ready to disclose everything at this time, however. But it is a major concern of ours and something we absolutely will be addressing with future updates. As hinted above, there are full fledged plans to implement immense crafting systems that will help to eat up a lot of Gold on a daily basis. In addition, there are plans to ultimately release player housing which will significantly help to remove Gold from those with big stocks of it.


But, as it is now, I really do not have many options. Gold inflation is already an issue in the economy and I have exhausted pretty much everything I can feasibly do atm to slow it down. The Lost Grove is both the biggest source of income and spending at this point in time (which is intended). It accounts for the majority in both earning/spending.

I'm sorry, but I'm still confused on the gold inflation part. Prices I've seen for the past 5 years have been pretty stable - gear generally sells for a standard amount, as do fest items. I haven't seen any jump in fabled catas, fest supplies, avi items, etc. I might be missing something, but I don't see how a new player has less buying power with the same amount of gold. If anything recently, the gold:dia conversion rates seem to have made gold MORE valuable.

Fox has explained it to my half dead from allergic reaction brain and I get it now. Pls disregard.

It makes sense to me that more gold has been generated than has gone out, we can't have negative funds after all, and isn't that just what saving is? Saving for future purchases? Grinding up the gold so that you're not constantly running out of it? It's just good practice and budgeting to try and make more than you spend.

I can't be certain but, I know if you look at the numbers the players who have 5 million gold on hand, if we double that to 10 million there's obviously going to be less players with 10 million on hand. How much of that 100 million is just the average player keeping maybe 100k-300k on hand? And not millions?

If you're concerned about the amount of gold being generated versus added back into the economy, while this is off topic I'd also like to mention the addition of rare avatar items being counter productive. I made at least 200k if not more selling rare avatar items out of my inventory last festival because they were such common drops that almost nobody really wanted to buy them, and even then it wasn't worth trying to sell them. They also clutter the wardrobe, I know must create extra work for the site artists (and some players would agree with me that they'd rather have the artists work on other content that's not just a more dull colored staff helds.)

The drop pool is also larger which while I don't know the specifics, assume affects how often epic/legendary items drop. These items dropping less means less people getting duplicates and so less of the item going up on broker. WHICH, the site taxes, so shouldn't you want more things to be sold on broker? I digress, I don't think adding less colorful versions of avatar items and taxing the site artists more is really worth whatever effect it has on the market (assuming that's what you were aiming for.)

Actually as Aelingalathynius said, recently the gold:dia conversion rate has changed. A lot of players are still using the 2000:1 (including me), but they've been going for about 1800:1 and I even saw 500:1 a weekish ago.

Back on topic with the proficiency point discussion, really... how many players battle to the extent of meeting the bosses they need multiple teams/pets arrangements to defeat? I imagine not many, it seems unfair that this specifically targets those players.

I'm also not sure where the inflation is supposed to be, either. Prices for almost anything I can think of are pretty much the same now as when I started playing, back in 2015. The one exception is fest avi items, which are more expensive now because the drop rate for all those sorts of items was drastically lowered at some point. If the issue is that the price is too high, then it likely has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with how scarce the items are. Punishing regular players because a few have a lot of gold does not seem productive. :/

As for people not willing to spend gold - players have to sit on massive gold piles in order to afford the current constant gold sinks like stable tabs, combat system, and LG barracks stuff. If those things were more affordable, players wouldn't need to hoard gold and would likely spend it more freely. Though, to be fair, people sitting on a lot of gold and not spending it would help prevent inflation rather than making it worse - the gold is literally not being spent? If it's not being spent, it's not entering the economy. Is the problem actually inflation, or the accumulation of gold hoards?

The main issue I see, though, is that none of the gold sinks currently in sylestia are actually worthwhile to the average player, except possibly for stable space. There's no point in upgrading the barracks much because of how grindy the LG is - if a player is not already loving the combat aspect of the site, then sinking gold into things that only help with combat is a waste of time. Likewise, there's no point in buying more than one team for the LG because ranking is absurdly time-intensive and generally boring, and nothing beyond the caves is actually fun to play except for those few hardcore combat enthusiasts. Long, tedious, mandatory boss battles with a laundry list of mechanics you have to follow aren't going to be of any interest to the average player of a petsite. I have already given up on the LG completely, because of it. And I'm likely not the only player who doesn't want to waste time on something that is simply not fun to play.

Part of my disappointment with the temple was that I was expecting some sort of exploration area that changed layout and had interesting things to find. But instead it's just tedious combat mechanics and more combat mechanics. It might as well be a single room we all go in and out of to fight mandatory enemy after mandatory enemy - the whole changing layout thing might as well not even be there.

Because nothing beyond the caves is of any interest to me, the only gold sink that is worthwhile for me to spend on now is stable space. And given the gold sink of new tabs, it's basically required to sit on millions in order to upgrade. Personally, I play this game for the petsite aspect, not the combat or economy simulator aspect. And I feel like people not willing to spend gold pretty much reflects that - this is a petsite, so if the gold sinks aren't related to the petsite aspect at all, it's not surprising that almost nobody wants to waste money on it.

As has already been mentioned, multiple teams for boards is a good reason for people to have multiple max stat teams - equally fun are things like MoM or fests where you need a team that's level 59 or 60 or 70 specifically, or a team of a specific species. Because ranking isn't required, and levelling in the fest zone while getting nice loot is generally more fun than LG grinding, it's worthwhile in that respect to have multiple teams. Equally, if boss battles in the temple weren't mandatory to run around for more than a few minutes, then people could more easily rank/level pets with it actually being worthwhile. I feel that at least for those players who like combat and actually are willing to grind through the temple, they shouldn't be punished for it with more gold sinks. It's already a massive grind to get there as it is.

I understand that the LG is supposed to be grindy in order to tide players over until the site revamp... but if it's not actually fun for most players, all it's going to do is frustrate those who manage to get there until they eventually give up on it.

Adding to Squeak's comments on people sitting on gold because they're not into the whole Lost Grove thing...

Many of these players who made bank probably AREN'T pushing content. This means they're not worried about sinking millions into the barracks, and the issue I'm having lately? They're not having to DESTROY the equipment they find for enchanted powder to get gear upgrades.

It takes 350 enchanted powder to get a primo piece crafted and ranked to +5.

That's 350 blue pieces I'm not selling, or 35 purples, or a mix of both.

I'm NOT getting much gold from the Grove anymore, definitely not enough to SUSTAIN progression, because the main way of GETTING gold from it is now being turned into powder instead of gold.

Enchanted Powder requirements has completed destroyed my means of generating enough gold from the Grove to keep continuing. I maybe, MAYBE, get like 50k a week from the weekly missions - 18 mender talismans for 12k, tracking 6 species for 12k, usually can't even get the blacksmith ones cleared within a week because they're expensive to DO without wasting supplies (including gold) on something I don't even need, so I save everything for crafting/upgrading primo gear every other week or so when RNG allows.

I'm losing gold just to get better tools that make it a little easier to lose more gold trying to fuel the next upgrade, so I can lose even more gold. And this sucks. Hard. No wonder people don't like the Grove.

I don't expect the Grove to be 100% profitable. I don't.

But when you have to PAY just to swap a team's proficiencies around just to TRY to fight the final boss? I START at a loss.

I start with a 150k entry fee to try to fight the boss. (swapping teams)
I lose. I have to heal for 55k (fine, fair gold sink, I can live with that)
I might try again and spend another 55k having to heal. (or around 27k in the plaza of the earlier zone if I have time to click around but mobile sucks.)
Eventually I give up, and have to pay 150k again to reset my team.



As for trying to force me to get MULTIPLE teams, fix your system for swapping pet gear first. :|

My pets are breeders.
They stay in the organized stable with their mates.

If I want to swap to another team, I have to get the gear first by flipping through a list of 100 stables.
Finding the right tab.
Finding the right pet.

All WITHOUT the benefit of quick-key with the first letter of the name because that isn't an option on mobile.

Then I have to remove the gear one at a time.

Then I have to flip through 100 stables AGAIN to find the right one for the other team.
I have to find the right tab and the right pet.
Then move the gear pieces onto it one by one.

On mobile this takes up to 10 minutes. 10 minutes of tedious scrolling through massive lists to find the right pet and swap gear pieces around. Is this fun? NO. Obviously this is not fun.

Which is WHY I'm sticking with my Nytekrie team... The only struggle is occasionally swapping their gear around from within the same 3 pets in the same stable. Not digging through 100 stables worth of pets. It only takes about 3 minutes to swap their profs and their gear, which is why I've sunk months into ranking them for multiple proficiencies.



I'd be happy with the grind and even the gold losses is I WASN'T having to pay 150k just to swap my teams and try the boss. Then pay 150k to reset them to normal so I can do literally everything else except try the final boss. This is unsustainable. This is infuriating. I literally cannot afford to even try.



Please reconsider the pet proficiency and talent point cost. All it does is punish people who don't want to change their pet teams.

And if you want to encourage people to have multiple teams, throw the gear pieces into the party selection page or something. PetSlotA keeps items 1,2,3,4; PetSlotB keeps items 5,6,7,8; PetSlotC keeps items 9,10,11,12. Swap a different into spot A? The gear stays the same. No 10 minutes of inventory digging. Need a gear piece that isn't already on a pet? It's held in a special inventory on the party selection page which also removes it from the list of things that can be broken down in the blacksmith. Need to throw it back in the regular inventory? There's a button for that. Need to add something new from the inventory? There's a button on the inventory page for that. Keep the useful gear right on the party page.

THAT would encourage me to make more teams because it wouldn't be a pain in the butt.

Ok let me address some issues i see:
Gear:
A relic is worth 3000 to sell to site, armor 2400 and bracers are 1800. If you dust only bracers and sell the relic/armor pieces, for every 6 relics you sell you could buy 10 bracers from other players selling on broker. For every 6 armor you could buy 8 bracers from others. It makes more sense to dust only bracers. VT Relics sell for 6000, armor 4800 and bracers sell to the site for 3600, I honestly sell relics and dust armor and bracers. I have still managed to earn 250k just doing temple and zone runs since reset


Proficiencies:
We all know from pretty early that it costs gold to switch proficiencies. You decided that you would have multi prof pets. Rather than having elements that share the same points you have chosen elements that dont share prof points. I know you dont like the thought of having many pets as your team but it means you dont need to switch profs so no added cost to you. You dont want to do this though so its your decision to sink your gold into that.

Healing:

Im not entirely sure why its costing you 55k to heal. Is it the gold cost in the barracks? If you take their gear off first it costs less. If you put missions on and open the bags you will get potions and revives you can use in barracks to fully heal at no cost to you. i use revival draught I and strong restore potion III. The bags drop a range of items including these two and gold

Tab Issues:

I have needed to find pets and remove their gear to lend to a friend and did it on mobile. I know which stable most of my pets are in but if i needed to find a particular pet and didnt know where they were i could use advanced search. You can click "View stables" and then you know which stables they are in. I know its an added step but it should cut down the 10 mins+ it takes you.

Pet Armory:

A pet armoury like you kinda suggested would be great. There is much about gearing up pets that leaves alot to be desired. I would adore a place on site where you can load the gear you have on your account and your party pets will be active but you can select any pets to add gear to as well. This would be so great for boards as well as everyday use.


You dont have access to a computer anymore? you do all your breeding and such on mobile? Thats pretty impressive being able to find all your pairs on mobile. I find it hard to find pairs and i mostly use desktop to breed xD

No. I don't get PC access anymore. I BARELY get to play on mobile and that's why everything is so much more difficult.

The baby just doesn't allow it. She'll be off playing on her own and paying no mind to me, but as soon as she sees that I have the phone out, she MUST have it. So I have to sneakily hide it every time she looks over, or if she does see if I have to put it away entirely until she goes back to something else.

I can barely get anything done.

Usually my battles consist of 2-5 rounds, put the phone away for 4 minutes until the baby is appeased, then maybe get another 2-5 rounds or move on to the door. :|

(Even now, she's mad and throwing toys on my lap to get my attention; this will probably take me 3 hours to finish)

Gear:
I need enchanted powder. There is never enough enchanted powder. And I don't get the opportunity to mindlessly farm up enough for powder and to sell. You've made 250k? Okay, if I even GET to play enough to make that much, I'm still out at least 50k. If I don't get that many opportunities to play? Then I'm just out 300k+ for wanting to try the boss again.


Proficiencies:
I wouldn't mind having other teams if it wasn't a pain in the butt to set them up. Like I said, ten minutes of swapping gear around is ridiculous. And I simply don't have it. On PC, sure, it's not that bad. I have easy access to tabs. On mobile? The little button that lets me access tabs loves to disappear entirely, so I'm stuck flicking the page up and down repeatedly until it decides to spawn.

Yes I know Sylestia wasn't made for mobile. I miss the PC. I really, really do, but this is what I'm stuck with and it has raised a ton of woes that all coalesce into me wondering why I even bother, but I've sunk years into this game already. I can deal with most of it.

And the fact is, I've already spent as much time as anyone else would have for ranking my 1 team into multiple proficiencies. This didn't matter back when I could play as I wanted, and NOT be forced to use an unfamiliar team setup because of ONE boss. That is time and effort I WON'T get back.


Healing:
I don't know why it's so expensive either ;_;

Yes it's gold cost in the barracks.

Removing gear goes back to the problem of scrolling through a list of 100 stables to get to the right one to remove the gear. Same with using potions on them.


Tab issues:
Again, there's an issue where my option to swap tabs just goes "poof" and I have to glitch the glitch away. If I even can. I generally know which stable the pets are in, but even then it's a massive list where I can only see like 2 - 3 names at a time so it's easy to skim over the right one. A lot. And then if I miss the armor piece or the grid slot by juuuuuust a little, it pops up a zoomed-in version of the general area.

Mobile. Sucks. So hard. And I hate it. But I can live with it.




What I can't live with is having to fork over 300k just to try the new boss. If it isn't changed then that's it for me. I will no longer to try progress in The Lost Grove. Probably ever. And without progression as an incentive, what's the point of doing ANYTHING in the Grove?

I want to play. I want to push progression. But if I can't afford it, then I simply can't afford it. And that's probably the same reason so many other players don't bother either. It just sucks that I HAVE the drive to keep throwing my team at the boss and dying repeatedly without being like "okay, this just isn't for me." I'm just too poor to play now that I'm forced to be a casual player.


Annnd baby is out of patience. Spent all my possible time back here, still advocating for some mercy.

I'm done after this. If Krin won't change his mind then I'm done with grove progression and it will be my sole goal to be a gold hoarder. Billionaire or bust. :|

The gold sinks of the grove (Barracks/gear/crafting costs) are punishing and shutting out the lower players that the gold sinks are supposed to be helping. Newer players work their butts off to even get to the grove so they can take part in the WoL/Lucky/Patriotic events only to get blocked by all of this. The site and economy can't grow at this rate as newer players won't be able to catch up or even enjoy the content at all. It'll just continue to be what is has been for a while now, a stress grind.

If you want to remove all of the top 5% players gold, maybe offer them Avatar items off of their wish lists or make an amulet like the amulet of youth but instead it makes a pet look like it's made out of solid gold. A Midas Amulet, and maybe a solid gold pet companion to go with it. Heck sell them a custom avatar set made of solid gold. That would give the gold section of the avatar store a boost and be a huge drain for only those with enough to buy it. You could also do sets of silver and bronze to target those with less gold, but still a little too much for the economy. That should also give you breathing room to get the housing and other gold sinks going while letting you remove the barriers in the grove for the rest of us.

Possibly another way to make the temple interesting, have the rooms change themes when it's in endless mode. Have room blocks that are RNG based as to what they are when you enter. The rooms you enter could be a mini forest, a cave, a molten magma room, normal temple, an ice room, a shadow room, an underwater room, to just toss out a few. Or have the temples theme change with the sylestia weather.

As for the mechanics of the fights... yeah I hate it. I'm not good enough with this kind of system for it to be at all easy or fun for me, but I love exploring so I'm dealing with it. Maybe ease up a few notches with it and make them a bit more forgiving? I hate it when one slip up wipes out my entire team. I don't even get the chance to learn how I messed up, I'm just dead.

On another note, I have put so much effort into grinding gold and gear for the grove that my toddler now cries when I sit down at my computer desk, so I am effectively time gated as well as I will have to reduce my play time.

I would have to agree on making the bosses and enemies more forgiving in the temple. I mean, it's the final stretch but no breaks from everything we did in the caves? The worm was one thing but this new section is another. Dying from a boss that can wipe out a team doesn't help us learn what we can do next time.

I do appreciate all of the help guides though as they did get me through the game. I also thank a few others that helped me when I was posting videos of battles I didn't understand very well because of the fact of the hard difficulty. But I feel as if the game is unbalanced with the bosses and enemies being stronger than our teams no matter what element is chosen.

The reason why I swapped Sunstar to water was because of the fact that earth wasn't getting my team anywhere and the first north floor's difficulty. Now I have to swap him back to earth and grind to craft and upgrade all the red gear to +5. The drop rates on my end are just god awful too.

Maybe this all should be taken into consideration?

I've been debating commenting on this thread for a while but I figured I'd go ahead and post my opinion even if some individuals might not agree. I'm not going to comment on the Lost Grove aspect on this thread since I'm only a casual player and I'm only in stage six. However, I will comment on proficiencies as I disagree with lowering the price to change them.

I get that some players might get attached to one particular group of pets and may want to use those for everything, however that is a personal decision. The game, in my opinion, is meant for you to have different parties for different areas of the game. Also, this site relies HEAVILY on stat breeders. If this were to be implemented players would no longer buy max pets. Max pets are roughly 400k. As you said, right now you're already paying roughy 1-2 million gold. A max pet is less than half of that. Players buy multiple parties of max pets because its cheaper than changing the proficiency all the time. If we lower it, no one will buy max pets because there will be no need. Players will just buy one party of max pets and continue to change the proficiencies. If players stop buying max pets we would lose so many other players who take so much of their time to breed these pets. If these individuals left, we would also see the site go down rapidly because again, they are one of the biggest groups of people who give this site income.

I get that's it's frustrating to have to change the proficiencies around so much. I've had to do it myself after buying parties from other players and not liking the original set up. Yes it is expensive but that is for a reason, so that players don't rely on one party alone. I in no way mean to sound rude, but it is your decision to be spending all that additional gold rather than having multiple parties.