Qanda wrote:
For those of you complaining about the avatar being expensive/waste of np to get, here's a solution - don't get it. Seriously, the lack of one avatar won't kill you.
I don't care the least bit about the avatar. It's the out-of-control inflation on the site and the fact that TNT is making it worse, not better, that annoys me.
atomicblonde wrote:
As for inflation, that's hardly TNT's fault.
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As for the pink paint brush, yes it will be priced a little higher. It will make pink that much rarer of a color. If it's too pricy for you, settle for something different. If you do really want it, you'll have a really special pet in the end.
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This site is not about instant gratification, but setting goals and working for them.
Of course the pink PB inflation is TNT's fault. When they create the demand for the item by creating the avatar, the resulting inflation is their fault. It was an act of TNT, not an act of God.
TNT could help keep PB prices down by making finding them around the site a more common random event: they probably could do it by changing one line of code. They haven't. That means the high PB prices in general are indeed their fault. (Moreover, I think the major surge of PB inflation was initiated by several events that were very clearly in TNTs control and seemed deliberately designed to raise PB prices: raising the price of the Darigan and Baby PBs in the Hidden Tower and retiring the Faerie PB.)
Moreoever, there have been some good ideas floating around about keeping overall inflation in check: releasing more items, re-distributing items from accounts that can't be returned, and so forth. Maybe TNT is really trying to keep inflation in check, but on this end it doesn't look like it. Trying to balance the creation of new NP via games, contest prizes, and stocks, and the destruction of NP via random events, freezings, and people buyging things from the official shops -- that's what will keep inflation in check, and TNT is responsible for it. When they don't do that, yes, the resulting inflation is their fault (or at least, their responsibility.)
As for the notion that making the PB more expensive is OK because it makes it more "special" and gives people something to work for: oh, please. A simple colorfill that makes your pet pink instead of blue isn't made more "special" by making it cost a million NP. It's still just a bloody colorfill, and exactly the same as it was when it cost 200k. What costing 700k makes it is
overpriced, not special.
No one wants instant gratification on the site. If painting pets were free, it wouldn't be fun. But while 700k or 1 million NP may not seem like a lot to you, for someone who's stuck on dial-up that could be six months' work -- or more. Free painting may not be fun, but having to play a game for that long just to turn a pet
pink isn't fun, either. It's a chore. It's work. Discover that one's goals are not just difficult, but impossible to achieve in any reasonable period of time isn't fun.
I think most people who play Neopets already have a never-ending list of goals they're working for: I know I do. We don't need out-of-control inflation to give people something to work for. There's plenty to work for already without it.
Don't get me wrong, I
like Neopets. When I joined, I thought it was fun. I still think it's fun, but inflation is making the game less and less fun for more and more people -- including me -- and I don't like to see that.