Pink Poogle Toy Forum

This change to the WC is horrible. TNT has made it much EASIER for people to create monopolies of certain map pieces now ... they have completely taken away the ability to rectify the situation through simple supply and demand.

What do the hoarder/price fixers do? They go on the shop wiz and buy out every buyable WC map piece of a certain type (for instance, the Tyrannia 2.13 WC piece).

Now, the price skyrockets on that particular piece. If someone wants to buy the last piece to finish their map, they have to pay the hoarders falsely inflated price to actually finish.

How can the market react? Well, it really can't ... because the ability for the WC players to "win" the piece that the price fixers have cornered has been hampered ... because you will only win that piece 1 out of 20 times (if the random number generator code is working correctly ... which it sounds like it might be slightly skewed). So the prices stay high for much longer now, and the price fixers win.

So ... it is now easier for the same old price fixers to do their dirty work yet again and mess with the Neopian economy.

Please change it back to the way it was before. Allow supply/demand do what it does correctly ... and not bias the game in a way that helps the price fixers.

Thanks, X&G... you're exactly right. This isn't going to solve anything, and I don't understand why they did it.

WockyChocky, I was lucky enough to have completed and sold a picture just before this change, so my picture was completely empty. I've won six competitions so far, and I got five different pieces (I got two 2.20s). Right now I don't have as much of a chance of getting doubles because my picture is so empty, but I anticipate problems once I have five or so spaces left to fill. The pieces are awarded randomly -- if they only gave us the pieces we didn't already have, then nothing would be different here except for where the pieces go after you win them.

I just have one question:

Does this change affect if you can still earn peices for compleated maps?

Before, you obviosly couldn't earn new peices when you compleated a map, because they would go directly to your map gallery, rather than your inventory.

So I'm wondering if that bit has changed.

I won three map pieces last night... I started out needing about six pieces to complete the map I was working on, all three of the pieces I got were ones I already had, and two of them were the same piece. I'm not feeling great about my chances of completing maps this way.

Also, I don't know if it's just that I happen to be good at games that most people aren't, but I've sold three full Krawk Island 2 maps so far: 500k, 590k, and 800k. There's no way I will ever make that up by selling individual pieces.

And a big word to everyone's great comments on how this will affect availability and hoarding of pieces. Why is this so obvious to us but not to TNT?

I think TNT already has some convoluted ideas about how a ivrtual economy would work, like the idea that increasing the max on games would drive all prices up to make it useless. (I saw that in one of the editorials). I hope they realize the mistake they made and change it back FAST, before this really messes up the prices.

I was just going to post and say Yes, you can now get duplicates of what pieces you already have - I won a WC a short time ago and when I got the piece it is one already in my map for that world

This was just not one of TNT's better decisions. Maybe it's temporary? That they'll try to work something else out? We can only hope.

I don't mean allowing completion of 1&2 more than once, but in my case neopia central was the only world I could easily win pieces and completing my maps locked me out of the market. The change that would stop hoarders would be to remove the ability to remove pieces from the map in the first place:P Not that that change would be anymore popular than this one of course.

At any rate, if I'd known converting the maps would prevent me from earning pieces I definitely would have completed a few full maps and sold them before converting. It just seems to me that if you can win pieces and sell them before converting, you should be able to do the same afterwards as well.

Well it turns out I need 2 pieces and have won 3 since the rule change, none of which I need. So... I thought logically, I'd stick them in the trades and try to find someone to swap pieces with me, but no one is biting. I'm really not interested in selling them piece by piece on the wiz.

What's the big deal with using trades?

What do you mean, exactly?

If you mean "what's so annoying about just trading doubles for pieces you don't have," see above. People don't seem to want to do that.

I have won 11 competitions since this change, and I've gotten 8 unique pieces. I threw the 3 stupid doubles in my SDB for now. I'm hoping that it all evens out after a while and I end up being able to create a couple full maps around the same time with all these pieces. It's still really annoying, though, because this change means it takes longer for me to earn NP, and it's just a hassle. I really want them to change it back. I hope everyone's writing into the Neopian Times (and that they're noticing)!

Well, I for one, have written in to the times applauding tnt for making the wc less cheat friendly.

I also suggested they reduce the number of unpopular games in the wc to get rid of wc snipers that play unpopular games at the last minute. If everyone writes in with that suggestion, maybe they'll do it.

Hey, if someone is good enough to enter at the last minute and win a piece, they deserve it. It's fair. And it's not like someone can find a game with no players, send a score and win a piece -- each game has a minimum number of players needed before pieces are awarded. I don't know why anyone would want to stop even more people from earning pieces; they're getting rare and expensive enough already!

And I agree WC shouldn't be "cheater friendly," but restricting the pieces like this isn't going to help. If you look at XenaAndGabrielle's post at the top of this page, he explains why this is just going to create more problems.

Do you play in the World Challenges?

There are plenty of games with only a handful of players with low scores.

http://www.neopets.com/challenges/world ... world_id=2

Really easy to play a game at the last minute and get a piece. Need another score to reach 5 players? Log in to your other account and submit one.

What you are talking about is cheating and if they caught them they would be frozen for an unfair advantage(not to mention playing games on a secondary account).

Like Cranberry said, they do not need less games to make the WC pieces even harder to get.

Megadittos. I play the Faerieland World Challenges, and was just about to complete a map. Now, because of this stupid rule, I have gotten ALL DUPLICATES, and none I need to finish.