Hello,
(source)
Since everyone now gets BFPoints, but it doesn't leave the market (it is only transferred from a player to another), everyone will have more and more, and so prices will keep going up. i.e. The currency will lose its value the more people have it.
BF (SLR) is a game about cards, not about merchanting. A problem in the economy will break the Card Gathering system, since the gap between new players and old players (who accumulated hordes of BFP) will keep getting bigger.
Since it is a small market as well, some people started monopolizing it: Buying all the -few- copies of a card in auction, then reselling all of them on their own price.
On the other hand, if people were getting cards instead of BFPs, demand will get low, and card prices will drop to the point where eveyone has all the cards they want.
Suggestions -Please-:
1- Reduce the amount of BFP we get from quests, and replace them with cards. Maybe add a new type of booster which has lower odds of getting rare cards.
So, the daily "play X minutes quest" gives a Normal booster, while each other quest gives 10-15 BFPs + Low booster.
The exact numbers need some thought (and data) to get right, but the idea is to increase the Cards entering the market (we play for cards after all), and reduce BFPs (which is an intermediate currency).
BFP were originally meant for a system were new sets of cards (twilights, amii, ..) were introduced periodically. And it was limited because it was bought for real Dollars. Now, when no new cards enter the market, prices of cards will snowball at this rate.
2- Add "sinks" to get some BFPs out of the market.
A sink system is something like upgrades, where players give gold to the game. The gold is bye-bye: no other player will use what you pay for upgrades. That's why the gold value remains stable.
A possible solution is making boosters easily purchasable. current daily quests could give a player a maximum of 150 BFP or so everyday. That could be the price of a booster. So the daily quests will give the player 1 guaranteed booster + 150 BFP which is an Option: spend in trades, OR, buy another booster.
But now, why would someone buy a RNG booster when they can directly buy the cards directly? Assuming they horded enough BFP already, of course.
Currently, the best way is not to buy/sell, but to trade; as BFP is losing its value, but cards value remains the same. It is similar to some cases of real life inflation where the currency became so irrelevant that people started going back to the old eggs-for-bread trade system.
In the couple of weeks I played, I noticed a dramatic change in prices (specially Shamans, Dreadchargers, ..etc). It is not that bad, but it will probably be bad soon, imo. At this early stage, there are two approaches:
1- Every few months, re-balance the whole economy, e.g. when players have lots of BFP, lower BFP income rates.. and when players have lots of cards, lower cards odds in boosters, ...etc.
2- Design a relatively balanced source/sink system. It might not be perfect, but it could be tweaked easily and improved in the long run.
Thanks for reading. The topic of economy is broad and I might have missed something, so please share your thoughts