The Current State of the Economy & Reforging

[WindHunter]

Hello everyone, 

As everyone knows, the in-game economy shifted massively after the advent of the Reforging system. This has led a number of players to express concerns about the health of the economy, and as such we would like to share some relevant economic data with the community. 

Some important information on the data: When it says "Fire Pool" it includes every card in the game which includes a Fire Orb. The data was collected and presented in this manner because this is how Reforging works when it tells you that the output card has an X% chance of containing a Fire Orb. Additionally, all price information presented is an average of actual sales in the auction house over a given period. While some extreme outliers were removed from the data set, such as 5 bfp Harvesters and 400 bfp Northguards, in 99% of instances the data was accepted as-is without tampering from our side.

Control Data Set: Contains data prior to the release of Reforging, from June to September 2021.

 

Post-Reforging Data Set: Contains data from two weeks after the release of Reforging, approximately December 25th 2021 to January 5th 2022.

Initial Analysis of Data Set:

At first glance, you can quickly see that after the update the following changes occurred:

1. The average, median, and minimum prices of Common cards increased across the board. 
2. The minimum and median prices of Uncommon cards increased across the board, while the maximum and average prices decreased. The decrease in average prices can be attributed to 1-2 outlier cards in most factions, such as Frost Mage and Shaman, which substantially increased the average price of Uncommon cards in their respective factions.
3. The same thing happened to Rare cards as happened to Uncommon cards.
4. Average, median, and max price of Ultra-rare cards decreased across the board while minimum price increased. 
5. General booster worth decreased from 378 bfp to 311 bfp. Given booster prices are still discounted by 100 bfp until January 18th, this means it is actually more worthwhile to open boosters after the update than it was before. On average, the daily discounted booster will profit a player 61 bfp post-update versus 28 bfp pre-update. How this data will move after the discount is removed remains to be seen, but we expect a slow creep up in prices for cards across the board.
6. Reforging established a minimum base worth for all cards dependent on rarity that did not exist prior. For now this seems to be:
   • Common: 4-5 bfp
   • Uncommon: 14-16 bfp
   • Rare: 62-64 bfp
   • Ultra-rare: 153-165 bfp 

Neutral Cards - A Control Set

Control Data Set: Neutral card prices;

Post-Reforging Data Set: Neutral card prices

Neutral cards were purposefully excluded from the Reforging feature. As such, they can only be put into the Reforging system but can never come out. This makes them a good control for examining the data because their prices should only increase when combined with Reforging. While this happened with the Common and Uncommon cards, the same is not true for Rare and Ultra-rare cards. The only increases to Rare and Ultra-rare cards seem to be in-line with those cards increasing to match the base value of other cards of their rarities. This can be seen with Curse Well and Curse Orb and partially in Queek Queek, though it is possible due to the low trading volume of QueekQueek the numbers were simply erratic in the period examined.

This decrease in the value of Rare cards and the value stagnation of undesirable Ultra-rare cards we see in Neutral cards was a consistent trend among all card values pre-update. If you look above, you will see that the maximum price of Shadow Pool cards in the control data is shown as 3865 bfp. As many of you might have guessed, this data point refers to Infect. Now if you were active in the weeks before the update, you will also know that the price of Infect at the time was actually in the 4500-5000 bfp range. In only a 2-month period, the average price of Infect inflated by between 700-1200 bfp. This trend was not confined to only Infect but to every desirable Ultra-rare card in the game.

The market trends pre-update (not shown here) were that Common cards were largely worthless, Uncommon cards were following the same trend, Rare cards were steadily decreasing in price (even among sought after cards such as Overlord, Bloodhorn, and Amii Monument), and desirable Ultra-rare and promo cards were increasingly inflating. This was because Ultra-rare and promo cards were the only remaining sources of value left in the economy. Reforging changed this by condensing the total price range of the market and by giving each card in the game a base level of value. 

 

[Metagross31]

Great work on the analysis! I would really like to see though, what the prices will look like, once the 100 bfp discount on boosters is over for a few months.

[Dallarian]

12 hours ago, Metagross31 said:

what the prices will look like, once the 100 bfp discount on boosters is over for a few months.

I guess the anniversary discount, while blessing for players is a curse for statisticians ^^

[Hrdina_Imperia]

Good analysis. I was somewhat expecting this result, as it makes most sense within current game constraints. Seems to be a good thing for economy in the end, though we will see what future brings. Mainly the booster price increase, but also potential new cards. 

[VolvoxGlobator]

On 1/17/2022 at 1:33 PM, Metagross31 said:

Great work on the analysis! I would really like to see though, what the prices will look like, once the 100 bfp discount on boosters is over for a few months.

I would expect that it will increase proportionally as the supply of cards will reduce proportionally to the 100 bfp