Neopian Health Care Crisis
Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:15 am
Important items in the pharmacy need Neopian government controls. The current system of health care provision amounts to extortion. Neopets expects you to tend to your pets and is rumoured to punish you with bad random events if they are not cared for. Third-party vendors take advantage of this system and of users' bonds with their virtual pets to rob people blind. If your pet is sick, you WILL pay me THIS much, they say (paraphrased from some actual comments in the Trades section). The result is that the poor cannot afford health care for their pets.
Neopets obviously wants to help the poor maintain their pets. They provide all sorts of daily freebies for food, a free $2k every month for pet maintenance, and, if you manage to somehow not find all those freebies, a soup kitchen. Yet they have forgotten about health care for the poor.
I believe the items in question from the pharmacy should be purchased "by prescription only". In other words, your pet should have the illness before you can buy it, and, even then, you should only be allowed a quantity of one cure each time a pet gets sick. Or, better yet, just get rid of the items altogether and have people go to the hospital where the pet will be cured instantly and the owner pays a reasonable medical bill.
The current system helps no one. It does not deflate the economy, since the money paid does not go back to Neopets and is just moved between users. However, it does teach how to push drugs and use people's affections for great profits to the point of being unethical even by my capitalist tastes.
And that's my rant for the day.
Neopets obviously wants to help the poor maintain their pets. They provide all sorts of daily freebies for food, a free $2k every month for pet maintenance, and, if you manage to somehow not find all those freebies, a soup kitchen. Yet they have forgotten about health care for the poor.
I believe the items in question from the pharmacy should be purchased "by prescription only". In other words, your pet should have the illness before you can buy it, and, even then, you should only be allowed a quantity of one cure each time a pet gets sick. Or, better yet, just get rid of the items altogether and have people go to the hospital where the pet will be cured instantly and the owner pays a reasonable medical bill.
The current system helps no one. It does not deflate the economy, since the money paid does not go back to Neopets and is just moved between users. However, it does teach how to push drugs and use people's affections for great profits to the point of being unethical even by my capitalist tastes.
And that's my rant for the day.
Re: Neopian Health Care Crisis
Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:17 am
Yeah, but if you can only buy medicine with a prescription, people will intentionally get their pets sick just to be able to buy it 
Besides, there's a nice water faerie up in faerieland who'll help out for free.
Besides, there's a nice water faerie up in faerieland who'll help out for free.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:21 am
Yes, which is why I say it's better to have them go to the hospital and be treated right there and then (after paying a medical bill to Neopets of course, which then helps deflate the economy; a $2k medical bill to Neopets for Sneezles would not be so bad versus the current theoretical $700 magic cookie that will actually cost you $5100 [only $700 of which is removed from the economy]). And that's not even getting into the $15000 bars of medicinal soap.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:52 am
Just eat poisonous jelly to get a cheaper disease...
Tue Nov 08, 2005 10:56 am
Or go to the healing springs, like dolphinling suggested.
You can't complain about free help.
You can't complain about free help.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:11 am
Yes. Neopets treats cures as an item, but neopets is a game. Magic Smelly Socks has no basis in reality. Most players are old enough to know that. Those who are young and impressional have no idea what you are talking about.
Though I do remember being new and worrying about my poor babies being sick. Rumors from the chat boards didn't help.
Essentially, if you neglect your pet they can get angry and turn red or get sad and turn blue. Neither is just because your pet is sick. You also have to not feed them, groom them, or play with them. Look at thier mood (in Pet Central and then Quick Ref) and if they are unhappy, take them to Roo Island to ride the merry-go-round or to Mystery Island to take the tour. They will remain happy and you won't get any bad random events.
Visit the healing springs and they'll be better in a day or two.
Though I do remember being new and worrying about my poor babies being sick. Rumors from the chat boards didn't help.
Essentially, if you neglect your pet they can get angry and turn red or get sad and turn blue. Neither is just because your pet is sick. You also have to not feed them, groom them, or play with them. Look at thier mood (in Pet Central and then Quick Ref) and if they are unhappy, take them to Roo Island to ride the merry-go-round or to Mystery Island to take the tour. They will remain happy and you won't get any bad random events.
Visit the healing springs and they'll be better in a day or two.
Last edited by stampsyne on Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:17 am
Thanks for the tips. I had been trying the Healing Springs, but all she seemed to do was heal hit points and not the diseases themselves. The bit about poisonous jelly is quite curious. Will have to give that a go next time. All of this begs the question: why are some of the medicines so overly valued then? Perhaps if we spread the word, the medication prices in the secondary markets will come back down to earth? Though I won't be holding my breath on it anytime soon. I've only been playing this for a month and these aftermarket prices seemed to have been fixed at their current rates for quite a bit before me.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 11:56 am
Healing Springs faerie can heal hitpoints or she can COMPELTELY heal. You can visit her ever 30 or so minutes.
Since medicines are items, they have a rarity index just like books or foods. There is also a supply/demand issue. There are more Neggitus Injections because the Snowager gives them away. That makes them much cheaper.
OH! And Pteris can be healed my items with worm in thier name.
Since medicines are items, they have a rarity index just like books or foods. There is also a supply/demand issue. There are more Neggitus Injections because the Snowager gives them away. That makes them much cheaper.
OH! And Pteris can be healed my items with worm in thier name.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:04 pm
NAY!!!
For Neopox Pizza is an essential ingrediant for making BBQ Porkwiches, which I once fed a pet of mine over 1200 of. End result was he weighed 1251 lbs. Then I got frozen for other reasons.
(Everything stated above is the truth
)
For Neopox Pizza is an essential ingrediant for making BBQ Porkwiches, which I once fed a pet of mine over 1200 of. End result was he weighed 1251 lbs. Then I got frozen for other reasons.
(Everything stated above is the truth
)
Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:09 pm
Medications are only one very small part of Neopia.
Why does this matter so much? Everything in Neopia is expensive these days. It's just how it is. And when you put medications next to other items, they aren't all that expensive - average, if you like.
Why does this matter so much? Everything in Neopia is expensive these days. It's just how it is. And when you put medications next to other items, they aren't all that expensive - average, if you like.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 12:30 pm
Sarah wrote:Medications are only one very small part of Neopia.
Why does this matter so much? Everything in Neopia is expensive these days. It's just how it is. And when you put medications next to other items, they aren't all that expensive - average, if you like.
Neopia = Virtual World
Virtual World = Made up Economy
The ENTIRE economy of Neopets is a Command economy.
The Stock Market is controlled by TNT.
Real World = Real Economy
Go play Powerpets if you are upset about the hyperinflation. More items retire in Neopets than they do in Powerpets.
Economics Lesson Phew!
Tue Nov 08, 2005 1:17 pm
The Healing items vary in price so much because the Wheel of Excitement can give out an illness - this illness changes every certain amount of time (a month? I can't remember...).
So one month a Magic Cookie will be 900nps, and a few months later it will be 4,900nps. Supply and demand, which dictates all prices and inflation on neopets. You can visit the healing springs every 30 minutes, the wheel of knowledge also has a potential healing spin and if you're really desperate then buy up the healing items when they're cheap and keep them for when your pet gets ill.
But with the healing springs there isn't really much more needed in terms of health care. It certainly beats the NHS
Also, if your pet is ill and you're worried about its mood just don't visit your quick ref page - that way the pets mood won't go down. It only goes down each time you view/refresh the quick ref.
So one month a Magic Cookie will be 900nps, and a few months later it will be 4,900nps. Supply and demand, which dictates all prices and inflation on neopets. You can visit the healing springs every 30 minutes, the wheel of knowledge also has a potential healing spin and if you're really desperate then buy up the healing items when they're cheap and keep them for when your pet gets ill.
But with the healing springs there isn't really much more needed in terms of health care. It certainly beats the NHS
Also, if your pet is ill and you're worried about its mood just don't visit your quick ref page - that way the pets mood won't go down. It only goes down each time you view/refresh the quick ref.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 1:53 pm
People who try to defend these markups are a hoot.
In the course of staking out the pharmacy, I have seen the magic cookies, the medicinal soaps, the hoochie coochies, the potions of containment, etc. First off, magic cookies and medicinal soaps are not rare at all. They spring up two or three times per hour (the shop only restocks about five times per hour) at about 25 to 29 per batch. I would guess their prices are artificially being held or there wouldn't be such a surplus of them lying around the three areas (auctions, trades, shop wizard). Second, name me another routinely stocked item that sells for 800% of the official shop's cost. A magic cookie can be haggled down to $700 or less. It sells for $5000 or more. It's highway robbery, and people should be informed there are alternatives to it.
Obviously, there's no comparison to the real world, because, in the real world, with margins like that, every other entrepreneur will be opening a magic cookie production shop, driving prices down. In the real world, if the magic cookie market was not an open one (as in the case of a company with monopolistic control of magic cookie production), it would be regulated. The problems of a pure capitalistic society in the real world are very much alive in a virtual world: greed rules, class divisions are developed, the divide grows wider and wider. In other words, the rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Hyperinflation has never been a good thing in the real world. Those were the economics of the past, like in the U.S. Jimmy Carter era, which, if anyone doesn't know, were not good. The Greenspan doctrine was always to keep inflation under control. The result has been longer prolonged boom periods in the United States followed by shorter recessions. I read a post here that Neopets was trying to control inflation. Good for them. I'm all for it as well.
Also, if we want to get technical about virtual versus real world comparisons, Neopets should consider building in some overhead costs for these shops, based on the size of the shop and total user-assigned values to the merchandise displayed. There's no pressure on people to move merchandise as there is in the real world, where there's a constant need to pay for staff, floor space, warehousing, utilities, security, etc. I believe that helps keep artificial price floors up.
In the course of staking out the pharmacy, I have seen the magic cookies, the medicinal soaps, the hoochie coochies, the potions of containment, etc. First off, magic cookies and medicinal soaps are not rare at all. They spring up two or three times per hour (the shop only restocks about five times per hour) at about 25 to 29 per batch. I would guess their prices are artificially being held or there wouldn't be such a surplus of them lying around the three areas (auctions, trades, shop wizard). Second, name me another routinely stocked item that sells for 800% of the official shop's cost. A magic cookie can be haggled down to $700 or less. It sells for $5000 or more. It's highway robbery, and people should be informed there are alternatives to it.
Obviously, there's no comparison to the real world, because, in the real world, with margins like that, every other entrepreneur will be opening a magic cookie production shop, driving prices down. In the real world, if the magic cookie market was not an open one (as in the case of a company with monopolistic control of magic cookie production), it would be regulated. The problems of a pure capitalistic society in the real world are very much alive in a virtual world: greed rules, class divisions are developed, the divide grows wider and wider. In other words, the rich get richer and the poor grow poorer. Hyperinflation has never been a good thing in the real world. Those were the economics of the past, like in the U.S. Jimmy Carter era, which, if anyone doesn't know, were not good. The Greenspan doctrine was always to keep inflation under control. The result has been longer prolonged boom periods in the United States followed by shorter recessions. I read a post here that Neopets was trying to control inflation. Good for them. I'm all for it as well.
Also, if we want to get technical about virtual versus real world comparisons, Neopets should consider building in some overhead costs for these shops, based on the size of the shop and total user-assigned values to the merchandise displayed. There's no pressure on people to move merchandise as there is in the real world, where there's a constant need to pay for staff, floor space, warehousing, utilities, security, etc. I believe that helps keep artificial price floors up.
Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:14 pm
I don't think there would be much of a game if you couldn't restock for a profit. 
Tue Nov 08, 2005 2:24 pm
stampsyne wrote:I don't think there would be much of a game if you couldn't restock for a profit.
I've no quarrels with restocking for profit. The official shops serve as middlemen or wholesalers in that regard. It was something as horrendous as +700% markups on something as universally vital as health care that really ticked me off. It's a basic need, so we're gonna really jack up the price. That's the message I get. Imagine if that's what the hospitals did to you in the real world. If the prices of the medicines were only raised by just(?) 100% or 200%, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now, but I guess doubling or tripling one's investment is not good enough for some people...they have to take you for more. Good thing some folks were kind enough to post some alternatives.