Ranking
Original Post
Community Outreach
Hey,

Something that's been on my mind for a while and that I've been meaning to do is having a conversation with the community about what you all would like and what changes you would want to happen.
We can also address any questions or concerns you might have or general things you want to say to our team to improve our communication.
I feel throughout the years the divide between the players and staff has gotten greater and would like to see the connection between us be improved.
This thread is going to, for a while at least, act as a basis for improving community-staff interaction.

Some things that I personally want to improve on and hope will happen:
- Communication
- Game activity
- Game enjoyability
- Events
Along with anything else that might be brought up in this thread.

Let me explain what I mean by improving communication:
There is a giant divide between staff and players.
I understand how frustrated the community might be with staff over things like not being informed about the clan system change and about prizes on events.
We're staff of this game for the players and we’d like to make this more obvious and visible through our actions, and to make sure everyone feels included.

We get a lot of feedback in the form of backlash and banter.
I want to change that and focus our discussions on what the game needs more.
The staff team will listen to any suggestion brought up and try our best to respond to everything.

Regarding game activity:
We all know that the Toribash has been losing players for a while now.
However, there are usually way more beginners online than there are people on the forums if that is any consolation.
This is why we are planning to move even more events client-side soon.
There have already been some very successful ingame events:
- Free Run Frenzy
- Hole In The Wall
These events have gotten amazing participation from everyone, and we want to do more events like this.
We believe that other events whether competitive, art-related, single-player, etc, will benefit greatly by being advertised and run in the game client.
Our main focus will be events focused on beginners, which will hopefully keep beginner retention up.
There are also some plans to make new items which are accessible to and aimed at beginners.

I'm interested in knowing what the community thinks about this.
For the time being, there will still be events held on the forums but as soon as we can get some dev work done to bring everything to the game client, we'll do that.

Regarding game enjoyability:
This is something that we need your input on, this is your game, and you're playing it.
- What kind of changes do you want to see?
There have been some ideas which could change up the meta a little bit in mods like ABD,TK,JF, and particularly lenshu.

If anyone remembers LesDuncan and what he was doing with TPL, it's sort of similar to the martial arts community now, in the way they've hosted fightnight events and they make new mods.
LesDuncan made a version of ABD in which lifting was still viable, however there are walls and a ceiling that prevented it from being a huge difficulty.
This mod is not perfect, but I would like to see what you all think about it.
In particular, what (if anything) would be required for you to consider it a competitive mod?

About Lenshu:
I believe Kane and fl0w have done an exceptionally good job on their winpoint lenshu mod.
When I mention TPL, this is the kind of mod that I'm imagining.
The running issue has been fixed, and a new feature like winpoints were added.
The communities reception on this event has always been good and in a competitive scene most people prefer this mod to normal lenshu3ng.

I'd like to ask everyone a question: when you play the game does it still feel rewarding?
Do you have anything you want to do in the game still, do you want more purpose?
There are ideas like a free battlepass, just quests for rewards.
Another one that we've had is automated tourneys with different rewards, starts at 10 people in the lobby, could be more TC than usual, or rewards from magicalsack(like an automated etourney but with worse rewards) but like stated previously, we're unsure what we should do.

My vision would be making adjustments to every competitively played mod and hosting events in them.
Just with slight adjustments, the way we play these mods is changed and it makes it more fun.

Regarding events:
Historically, prizes for events have rarely been amazing, and I know that there have been players complaining about prizes not being the best and I agree.
There has been a huge lack of competitive events, excluding clan league and WC, there haven't been any competitive multiplayer events hosted in a while.
There are some events that we're working on right now, and would like to get out soon, I'd just like to see what people have to say about TPL.

Summary:
In conclusion, the things that I want to work on are:
- Staff-Player interaction, keeping the community updated and asking for what the community wants
- More client-side events
- Working on different versions of the main 5 mods, seeing if there's any way to improve the competitive mod-list
- Better prizes and events, more frequent events
- Making the game more fun, adding new features to hopefully improve retention, new goals and a sense of purpose
- Any new content that is possible to do

I want to have a constructive discussion about these topics and address any questions or concerns you might have about anything not mentioned in this thread.
The OP will be updated if there's anything to update, and I hope this discussion will stick around for a while.
Thank you to everyone who spent their time on reading.
And if you want a shiai token, feel free to take this survey or spread it around in your circles
MS survey for the dueling community, feel free to take it for an ST. input is immensely appreciated.
Last edited by ancient; Feb 4, 2022 at 07:12 PM.
pm me your questions or applications

https://i.imgur.com/1GWtVnU.png

dance with my dogs in the night time
cash to burn
my friends vehemently bully me when i try to get them to play this game with me but i might be able to reel them back in if 4-player multiplayer comes out
Originally Posted by SmaBOOOOOOOris View Post
Nah I think your points are also good and I didn't mean to undermind it. It's just that the way I feel about it, ever since Help Squad disappeared there doesn't seem to be any development towards making this game better for newer players. There've been improvements to ranked seasons which is great for everyone I guess, but other than that I feel like everything is focused towards people who are already deeply rooted in the community. I'm just trying to level the field a little and speak for the less experienced ones, as they probably won't participate in this thread.

I'll also use this as an opportunity to expand my point because I thought of things to add. I feel like once you're in the community and you join a clan or just find friends who also play the game, it's easy to stay entertained even if the events aren't great or the game doesn't have much more to offer. The issue in my eyes is that a lot of people quit before they get that far, and without the community Toribash is a pretty boring game if we're being honest. Thus we need to either find ways of including these people as early in their game experience as possible, OR implement more features into the game where community is no longer an essential part of geting the best experience from the game.

I don't have suggestions of how that should be done, but there's definitely a discussion to be had there.

And about that "looking up to people" dynamic, I think it works both ways. When there's too many experienced players and not a lot of new faces, the standard of what is considered a "good player" goes up, and people who are good at the game might not feel like they're good or will ever be good due to how many other good players are around them. Just looking at the previous ranked seasons, a lot of good players finished gold or even silver due the ranked lobbies being dominated by the absolute top of the game players. Not sure how true that was in the most recent couple seasons as I wasn't around, but that was definitely an issue before and you can see how that can demotivate people to play the game at all.


That's a good idea I think. Although my view is this: if you're going to display cool videos that might motivate people to learn some skills, follow it up with tutorials or at least introductions to those topics. Currently most Toribash tutorials are outdated, so maybe it would be cool to get some tutorials about those topics and also have them in that area.

In terms of implementation that should be quite easy to do. The harder thing though is figuring out how to lay it out and what side features to implement so that it's actually useful instead of just being a galery of videos.

thank you for this detailed post and my apologies for the delay in getting to it. i'll be sending out ST after i respond to this.

there definitely needs to be some work done to keep beginner retention and some new features implemented for beginners, however as there's no beginners giving in their input, it's a bit hard for us to imagine what they need. an update to tutorials, more beginner ones being made, UI tutorial and stuff like that is fine. beginner client events will hopefully be on their way soon to keep their retention up as well. right now we are working on a few other things first, but after that is done we'll see what we can do with tutorials.

and to your point about the video tutorials, i brought this up with the devs and some videos, video tutorials (existing and perhaps some other ones made in the future) are possible to add and we could follow those up with some in-game tutorials which explains stuff to the player.

is there anything anyone has to say about the point this post brought up with the clan and community? a thought that just came to me is that we only have one clan event a year, which is CL. clans don't have anything to do the other 300 days of the year, maybe making events for them would help clans and players stay active, as they'll play together to practice? the clan camaraderie is amazing for everyone and clans end up dying after there's nothing fun to do anymore.


sending st now
Last edited by ancient; Feb 7, 2022 at 10:13 PM.
pm me your questions or applications

https://i.imgur.com/1GWtVnU.png

dance with my dogs in the night time
cash to burn

This sums up every toribash new player



Also, what happend to unibash?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Indonesian? | Magical Mode!
Chronoptic energy bursts from one plane to the other, evaporating anything it touches.

in my opinion, toribash is always trying to make new players come but the learning curve of the game is simply too big if they don't have something that makes them grind the game, what are those things?

-toribash content creation: a lot of the older players that we see now playing started toribash watching videos of old legends of the game and saw them as a role models to grind the game and get better, or had the weekly concon videos that he looked forward to appear so he would make a replay or complete a challenge, and clearly this has been missing for a while when concon stopped with TB related videos, when lesduncan stopped with the toribash competitive videos and right now i think toribash should try to bring more content creators to make events, share they're content on toribash discord/instagram to get others into getting back/stay playing the game.


-market system: a lot of the players like the game and really want to have TC to buy his dream set and his dream items, but those new changes just killed the market with those taxes and I'm 100% sure there is a lot of better ways to maintain the economy like bringing back forum user customization for TC back that would be a great way to sink more TC, take off the bountys for people with high streaks in-game and make more tourney rooms with a bigger variety of mods like it used to be (greykido, TK, wushu, mushu, abd, aikido, lenshu) and taking the TC login rewards or atleast lowering then while keeping the 1 shiai per week


-player groups: toribash used to have a lot of organizations for the different player groups to gather, talk, learn, teach that made a lot of players make new friendships get better at something they liked like making replays, forging flames, or even people that share that live in the same country and share the same mother lenguage, and sometimes i look now and i don't se those orgs and i feel thats a big reason that a lot of players decide to migrate to other games and leave toribash.


-role model players: when i look how most of the new players often don't keep playing, i think its mainly because they don't have a lot of legends, good players that keep playing the game, i'm not saying that there is no good players, but most of the legendary replaymakers/duelers/flame forgers/artists left the game mostly because the staff don't really listen to what those players want as a change or what should be reverted, so getting in touch and making events with those legends, for example, would be great so the newer player would learn more about toribash history and how some players made so much impact.


-ingame and forum events: nowadays i see a lot of etourneys and hotseats that players join everyday and a lot of events that seem like more of the same. Making less in-game events would be better in my opinion since playing the same kind of event everyday its kinda tiring, so making it 3/4 times a week would be good enough. The forum events like the head texture of the month thingy should have a dif kind of prizes (instead of TC + shiai and item make it a custom item for the event specifically) and maybe entrance fees so more TC can be sinked and making less events but with a variety fo theme like one Flame forger event, bring back old events like replay cup


staff and moderation: if you ask most of the older players that still plays toribash they probably feel that the staff most of the time don't listen to then while doing the decision making that lead to changes that make the game unenjoyable for a lot of them, like the market changes made a lot of marketers drift away form the game and now we can't buy certain items in the market since not a lot of players put their items up to sale and shiai tokens are easy to obtain so people rather wait to buy a full pack that makes using the market less useful and less enjoyable, so most of the time it feels like that the staff is filled with players that doesn't really understand as much flames like the flame forgers, the market like the marketers make changes that doesn't make a lot of sense, so in my opinion bringing back the orgs would help the staff so they could talk with people that know more about certain aspects of the game to see how they should change or if changing X or Y would help
Originally Posted by Love View Post
-market system: a lot of the players like the game and really want to have TC to buy his dream set and his dream items, but those new changes just killed the market with those taxes and I'm 100% sure there is a lot of better ways to maintain the economy like bringing back forum user customization for TC back that would be a great way to sink more TC, take off the bountys for people with high streaks in-game and make more tourney rooms with a bigger variety of mods like it used to be (greykido, TK, wushu, mushu, abd, aikido, lenshu) and taking the TC login rewards or atleast lowering then while keeping the 1 shiai per week

I disagree, I think the market was dead way before that. What killed the market was seemingly random price fluctuation and re-releases of limited items, which made it very risky to market things without having the insider knowledge of upcoming price changes. It didn't help that sir essentially said they will keep doing it as they see fit for the foreseeable future which obviously doesn't strike a lot of confidence.

The rest of your points are really good and I agree.
Originally Posted by SmaBOOOOOOOris View Post
I disagree, I think the market was dead way before that. What killed the market was seemingly random price fluctuation and re-releases of limited items, which made it very risky to market things without having the insider knowledge of upcoming price changes. It didn't help that sir essentially said they will keep doing it as they see fit for the foreseeable future which obviously doesn't strike a lot of confidence.

The rest of your points are really good and I agree.

that happened because one of the things that the staff made that all the marketers disliked was restocking the 3d items with prices way lower, and just the fact that the games just gives you 1 shiai and about 3k of TC just for login in every day of the week and saying that the tax its to mange the prices seems just dumb
why would someone ver use the market since they have threads for buying and selling items w/o the tax or simply wait 4 weeks and buy a pack or a 3d for shiai
and with the new chion event made up to 15 shiais already
how these types of changes will help solve the problem of the market??
Originally Posted by Love View Post
in my opinion, toribash is always trying to make new players come but the learning curve of the game is simply too big if they don't have something that makes them grind the game, what are those things?

-toribash content creation: a lot of the older players that we see now playing started toribash watching videos of old legends of the game and saw them as a role models to grind the game and get better, or had the weekly concon videos that he looked forward to appear so he would make a replay or complete a challenge, and clearly this has been missing for a while when concon stopped with TB related videos, when lesduncan stopped with the toribash competitive videos and right now i think toribash should try to bring more content creators to make events, share they're content on toribash discord/instagram to get others into getting back/stay playing the game.


-player groups: toribash used to have a lot of organizations for the different player groups to gather, talk, learn, teach that made a lot of players make new friendships get better at something they liked like making replays, forging flames, or even people that share that live in the same country and share the same mother lenguage, and sometimes i look now and i don't se those orgs and i feel thats a big reason that a lot of players decide to migrate to other games and leave toribash.


-role model players: when i look how most of the new players often don't keep playing, i think its mainly because they don't have a lot of legends, good players that keep playing the game, i'm not saying that there is no good players, but most of the legendary replaymakers/duelers/flame forgers/artists left the game mostly because the staff don't really listen to what those players want as a change or what should be reverted, so getting in touch and making events with those legends, for example, would be great so the newer player would learn more about toribash history and how some players made so much impact.


-ingame and forum events: nowadays i see a lot of etourneys and hotseats that players join everyday and a lot of events that seem like more of the same. Making less in-game events would be better in my opinion since playing the same kind of event everyday its kinda tiring, so making it 3/4 times a week would be good enough. The forum events like the head texture of the month thingy should have a dif kind of prizes (instead of TC + shiai and item make it a custom item for the event specifically) and maybe entrance fees so more TC can be sinked and making less events but with a variety fo theme like one Flame forger event, bring back old events like replay cup


staff and moderation: if you ask most of the older players that still plays toribash they probably feel that the staff most of the time don't listen to then while doing the decision making that lead to changes that make the game unenjoyable for a lot of them, like the market changes made a lot of marketers drift away form the game and now we can't buy certain items in the market since not a lot of players put their items up to sale and shiai tokens are easy to obtain so people rather wait to buy a full pack that makes using the market less useful and less enjoyable, so most of the time it feels like that the staff is filled with players that doesn't really understand as much flames like the flame forgers, the market like the marketers make changes that doesn't make a lot of sense, so in my opinion bringing back the orgs would help the staff so they could talk with people that know more about certain aspects of the game to see how they should change or if changing X or Y would help


thank you for your well thought-out post. it is definitely true that there is a lack of content for toribash on youtube, nowadays most people just stream or make tiktoks/reels about the game instead, which doesn't help show what the game is actually about. which is clicking balls. lesduncan was a huge part in my upbringing on toribash. I'm trying to see what i can do about the idea of TPL, see if there's any kind of fight-night or similar events i can do with this mod and other mods and improve the competitivity this game is lacking. i remember being a huge fan, and a huge fan of everyone that i'd see on those videos since they were all good players. i definitely want to see if it would be possible getting someone on the staff team or anyone in the community that would be interested in making some recordings of duels, event fights, stuff like that. for example endurance onslaught should be getting their games recorded, i think that would be fun.

there has been a giant lack of forum events, however since i've been in SMod i've been pushing ES to do more work and get some more events ready. there's a good few in the works right now and a replay making championship coming soon, ranked season 7 coming soon, ETC. i'd only like to ask for the communities patience as we roll these events out.

to your staff and moderation point, this is the point of the community outreach. i'm trying to fix the divide between staff and players and making any changes or ideas of changes known to the community so we can get their input.

if anyone here has any interest in doing some toribash recordings let me know ^^

EDIT: love regarding your market point;
i didn't respond last night because i was unsure of the statistics and if what you're saying is right or wrong. sir has given me some statistics of the last months of old market and first few months of new market. old markets best weeks regarding activity compared to new markets average, new market is 200% better. and that's with the lower active playercount. marketing is more active now, and it sinks TC too. forum TC customization didn't sink as much TC as you think it did, and it was quite overpriced for just a line of text. the new market has space for improvement, but so far it's been very successful.
Last edited by ancient; Feb 9, 2022 at 08:56 AM.
pm me your questions or applications

https://i.imgur.com/1GWtVnU.png

dance with my dogs in the night time
cash to burn
Originally Posted by SmaBOOOOOOOris View Post
I disagree, I think the market was dead way before that. What killed the market was seemingly random price fluctuation and re-releases of limited items, which made it very risky to market things without having the insider knowledge of upcoming price changes. It didn't help that sir essentially said they will keep doing it as they see fit for the foreseeable future which obviously doesn't strike a lot of confidence.

The rest of your points are really good and I agree.

Market Statistics show that with the implementation of the new market system, the new market system has generated more transactions per capita, with less players. It does get a bit dicey when discussing price fluctuation. As a member of MS and a avid marketer myself, I do try and avoid causing unnecessary price fluctuation that would destabilize current pricing for items. But alas it cannot be always stopped. Take the 2048 head for example. It was exclusive with only 3 copies at launch. Now there are well over 15 iirc. But the price didn't deviate that much from where it was. Sure it did go down in price, but it stabilized to a healthy rate in the current market eco-system. I do share sentiments regarding random price fluctuations but do bear in mind, it is inevitable to an extent. Something is only worth as much as someone will pay for it after all.

Originally Posted by Love View Post
that happened because one of the things that the staff made that all the marketers disliked was restocking the 3d items with prices way lower, and just the fact that the games just gives you 1 shiai and about 3k of TC just for login in every day of the week and saying that the tax its to mange the prices seems just dumb
why would someone ver use the market since they have threads for buying and selling items w/o the tax or simply wait 4 weeks and buy a pack or a 3d for shiai
and with the new chion event made up to 15 shiais already
how these types of changes will help solve the problem of the market??

The restock of the 3D items was something that I wasn't around for. However, the 1 Shiai Token + 3K for logging in is much more than what was given in the past. It is an incentive for players who are newer to stick around and explore the market and what it has to offer. Yes it is considerably low, but that is by design, as if you give, lets say, 10k and 3 ST per week for logging on, it would create a TC inflation in which where everything would drop in price, as if everyone has ample amounts of TC, then nobody has TC. That would be unhealthy for the current market, and would have an adverse affect.

Also to point out that, the current tax on market sales, while a bit steep, is pretty reasonable. If you market a lot, then purchasing the premium shop pass is a roughly 85K commitment for 3 months. I feel that is beyond reasonable. Yes it is a big commitment for most, but it is a logical way of balancing out who is rewarded in the new market system. And to clarify why someone would use the market to begin with, if someone is trying to sell bulk amount of items, the market would benefit them more than selling the traditional way. They can mass list the items and have them automated to send and pay out when items are sold. The other way of selling via the forums, while more popular, is a more daunting task, as it could take weeks to find someone depending on what you are trying to sell and how high of a demand there is for that item to be sold. Not to mention the maintenance required to keep checking up on that thread to see if you received any responses. I do feel this new market change is a step in the right direction but I am open to all feedback.


SMALLMOTHGIRLS4L

we are better than you
Originally Posted by Lucci View Post
Market Statistics show that with the implementation of the new market system, the new market system has generated more transactions per capita, with less players. It does get a bit dicey when discussing price fluctuation. As a member of MS and a avid marketer myself, I do try and avoid causing unnecessary price fluctuation that would destabilize current pricing for items. But alas it cannot be always stopped. Take the 2048 head for example. It was exclusive with only 3 copies at launch. Now there are well over 15 iirc. But the price didn't deviate that much from where it was. Sure it did go down in price, but it stabilized to a healthy rate in the current market eco-system. I do share sentiments regarding random price fluctuations but do bear in mind, it is inevitable to an extent. Something is only worth as much as someone will pay for it after all.



The restock of the 3D items was something that I wasn't around for. However, the 1 Shiai Token + 3K for logging in is much more than what was given in the past. It is an incentive for players who are newer to stick around and explore the market and what it has to offer. Yes it is considerably low, but that is by design, as if you give, lets say, 10k and 3 ST per week for logging on, it would create a TC inflation in which where everything would drop in price, as if everyone has ample amounts of TC, then nobody has TC. That would be unhealthy for the current market, and would have an adverse affect.

Also to point out that, the current tax on market sales, while a bit steep, is pretty reasonable. If you market a lot, then purchasing the premium shop pass is a roughly 85K commitment for 3 months. I feel that is beyond reasonable. Yes it is a big commitment for most, but it is a logical way of balancing out who is rewarded in the new market system. And to clarify why someone would use the market to begin with, if someone is trying to sell bulk amount of items, the market would benefit them more than selling the traditional way. They can mass list the items and have them automated to send and pay out when items are sold. The other way of selling via the forums, while more popular, is a more daunting task, as it could take weeks to find someone depending on what you are trying to sell and how high of a demand there is for that item to be sold. Not to mention the maintenance required to keep checking up on that thread to see if you received any responses. I do feel this new market change is a step in the right direction but I am open to all feedback.

for me it doesn't make sense we make a tax to sink over over the market while people get up to 19 shiai in the event, what will happen will be that the market will shrink, people wont care about the market because they can simply play a few es events and buy a pack for free basically, there is no point of having a market tax and so many ez ways to get a shiai token. and giving newer players more money isn't making then play for longer, if we take the daily rewards and make then get back into playing tourneys and filling the rooms we will create better players that will stay for a longer, since this change of the market seems like u can't barely find any items from some non traditional colors like blossom for example, because less people are using it, i think some of the changes like the new interface and the new buying option are great, but the market tax seems dumb, since this formula of giving newer members more TC and shiai haven't been paying off, as a i said earlie: the learning curve of toribash is high and that's what makes people stop playing the game not the fact it was hard to get TC or items, if you give what was the reward of grinding the game for simply login in and playing a 50/50 mod in etourneys the newer players never gonna grind the game and the learning curve will make him quit
Originally Posted by Love View Post
for me it doesn't make sense we make a tax to sink over over the market while people get up to 19 shiai in the event, what will happen will be that the market will shrink, people wont care about the market because they can simply play a few es events and buy a pack for free basically, there is no point of having a market tax and so many ez ways to get a shiai token. and giving newer players more money isn't making then play for longer, if we take the daily rewards and make then get back into playing tourneys and filling the rooms we will create better players that will stay for a longer, since this change of the market seems like u can't barely find any items from some non traditional colors like blossom for example, because less people are using it, i think some of the changes like the new interface and the new buying option are great, but the market tax seems dumb, since this formula of giving newer members more TC and shiai haven't been paying off, as a i said earlie: the learning curve of toribash is high and that's what makes people stop playing the game not the fact it was hard to get TC or items, if you give what was the reward of grinding the game for simply login in and playing a 50/50 mod in etourneys the newer players never gonna grind the game and the learning curve will make him quit

I think you're overestimating how much TC/ST gets generated by different sources and kinda missing the point of new market.

Players who actively participate in ES events, do marketing and use daily rewards as their main source of Toribash "income" - they're all different (often not even intersecting) groups of people. Daily rewards were mainly introduced as a way to allow beginners and amateur players to get TC without having to grind 24/7, but they're also a drop in the ocean for any established player who'd focus on marketing or playing in tourneys/events. It's also wrong to assume that every player gets 3K TC + 1 ST weekly - there's only a small number of people who actually keep the streak to be able to claim 800 TC and 1 ST rewards on 6th and 7th days respectively. A little over 75% of all players who claimed their reward this week didn't continue their streak and over 93% of players are within their 3-day streak (350 TC total).

The number of players who can "easily get 19 ST" in an event is so insignificant that it's not even worth bringing them up. Of course there'd be pro replay makers or duelers who'd wreck any relevant event they come across, but don't forget they've played for years and mastered the game so they kinda deserve that? It's not like anyone can just play for a few weeks and make enough ST/TC to buy a void pack, so I'm not sure what's the point you were trying to make there.

What's more, different types of players spend their TC/ST differently - a beginner/amateur user is more likely to get their items from the in-game shop rather than wait for an offer in market. They usually want to actually get the item too instead of maxing out on the resell value like the marketers do (which is neither good nor bad - but it does heavily affect how your shop/market usage). At the end of the day, most of the TC spawned by login rewards ends up either abandoned on the account if a user stops playing or it goes back to the shop when they buy from it.

Market tax, however, is primarily targeted at long-time players who'd be more involved in trading - it takes the "live" TC out of circulation and tries to keep the economy healthier by reducing inflation. It's been added so we have a sustainable TC sink that doesn't rely on manual labor, be it creating new items for the shop, coming up with yet another "sell a 100-symbol-long bit of html code as a usertitle and charge 200k for it" sinks and so on. New market provides you access to a way wider audience than the old one, gives you more features and the tax is relatively conservative (you'd likely pay more to your government if you wanted to buy a can of coke in your local grocery store). It does potentially hit big marketers who trade items that are worth ~million of TC total per month, but they can purchase a market premium subscription to both get their shop featured, make their offers more competitive and earn more TC by not having to pay the tax.


The "why have login rewards if learning curve is too steep" mindset sounds exactly like "why have healthcare system if there's garbage on the street" to me. Learning gameplay mechanics is barely related to the ability to customize your character in-game, and you definitely don't improve one by making it harder to make use of the other.