Suggestions

How about people learn to take no for an answer. Sprites are retired and should stay that way. Once they become freely available then there's absolutely nothing to invest in anymore. Dragons are worthless, everything that's not retired eventually because ridiculously easy to get, and removing one of the biggest investment items on the site is a horrible idea. A quest will be done eventually, so this would guarantee a Sprite for free.

No one likes the Bears, and the staff only did that poll because people were throwing a fit about the sprites just like they are now. Honestly I feel so bad that years later this same garbage is still being loaded into the suggestions forums instead of things that would actually make the site better

-shrug- Still a silly reason, still putting this out there for the people who don't like 1) How the Retired Items were handled or 2) Prefer players to be happy and be capable of getting old stuff, no matter when they joined or 3) Don't really like the stagnant elitism that some people wedge themselves into when discussing retired items.

Considering that the admins have said that they would and would not do things, and then have done or not done those things, I'm not really swayed by the "They said retired". They said "No color wheel expansion" too but here we are. -jazz hands- Here's to hoping that one day we'll also get some dragons outside of the 2/2/2 rule.

"Nothing to invest in" is a weird thing to say, since last time I checked this is a dragon collecting game, not a market simulator. But hey, these are just my opinions.

Thanks for the feedback.

@Mcalli

I am so in love with this idea omg!

I doubt it'd crash the sprite market because:

1 These quests will be time consuming and assuming not everyone has a lv25 battle ready coli team. Even then I do assume these quests take a long time and people will play at their own leisure so it's not like sprites will suddenly flood the market in a torrent.

2 Allows people who has extra sprites to sell it so investments are still safe (I know I would sell my extras)

3 stabilize the sprite prizes, yes they'd go down by a bit, that's certain but at least people won't have to worry about light sprites being sold for 1000's of bucks in a few years from now.

I do like the idea of a tiered system so when you do it once you are awarded the armband, do it again you get the apparel (adding more of these into the pool as well as people can sell them more investments! :D) then finally the sprite.

And suppose they'd add the other items too then you'd get the 2014 sashes and apparel items, not the bears since those are available during NOTN, then it'd be the 2015 apparels and acolytes, and course the other exclusive rewards.

Do think that you should only get one as well of these exclusive items so there will be a bit of a market for these as well (eeey look more investment opportunities!)

Why do I keep bringing up investments? Well I know a lot of people don't want to see all their money go down the drain (granted this also would happen if the site closed down so I honestly don't find it a good argument but eh each to their own)

Hm, I could potentially get behind this, provided it's done right.

Actually, if anyone plays guild wars 2, they implemented something similar with some high value weapons. You have to go through a very time/cost intensive scavenger hunt and crafting process to make one, and you can only make one of each. If you want more you have to buy it from other players. Making one still costs A LOT, but it's slightly less than outright buying one since you're also paying with time.

I think for this to work the quest would also have to cost a lot so it doesn't totally devalue sprites. If you have to pay a lot for the quest, you're still going to charge a lot for the sprites should you choose to sell.

Now this wouldn't be a cost in outright treasure. It would be an opportunity cost type thing. For example, your step that wants you to exalt dragons. This should be done not from the standard dragon page>exalt, but from a page in the quest format. The deity asks you to send them champions, and you then get an informational text saying you'll be exalting these dragons warning etc. I'd then borrow the crossroad coding, and give people a box and let them select so many dragons to send away. Only dragons exalted from this page count for the quest (and they probably wouldn't count for dom if you're sending them to other deities than your own).

But here's the important bit, you don't get any exalt bonus payout for these dragons. Sure you can get dragons for free by breeding them, but you're paying with the opportunity cost of what you could have gotten by exalting normally.

If it's balanced right, you could make the opportunity cost of the quests relatively balanced to what the sprites are valued at. It just lets people work incrementally and be guaranteed a prize, rather than having to save up a huge amount all at once and then have to hunt for a seller.

@McAlli

I remember seeing posts where it is mentioned that the staff did a poll on whether not to retire the sprites. I did buy the rest of the bears and the acolytes from the auction house because I didn't want to wait for them to come around again.

I hate to bring up dragon cave again, but the argument 'Retired is retired', and 'They are never coming back' on dragon there were two dragons that the creator of the site said was never coming back. Only this year TJ went back on that and one was unretired, and the other one was redesigned. The point is that retired doesn't always mean retired.
I do not trust him any less because he went back his word, I still trust that he will introduce new dragons, new holiday dragons, and that he put a new game or activity for the hoildays.

There are also semi-retired dragons on the site, in that you can still certain dragons but not cave borns. These are the valentines, Halloween, and Christmas dragons

@Hawkfeather Thanks for your input! [quote]I think for this to work the quest would also have to cost a lot so it doesn't totally devalue sprites. [/quote] Yes! I do want to quests to act as treasure sinks. And since you'd have to play the quest multiple times to get your hands on the ultimate prize of a Sprite, you'd be shelling out quite a bit. This is tempered by the fact that the treasure sinks in the Quest will be static, unlike the AH which is always at the whim of player based inflation and undercutting. This allows players to take their time building up treasure for the quest without feeling like they have to quickly pour everything they make into down payments or racing to buy something before the price changes or someone else purchases it. I also like your idea of how you can Exalt dragons to a deity who isn't yours. Thanks so much! @SmaugsTreasure No problem! It's always good to have some comparisons to look at, even if they're not identical, so that we can guess what might happen if changes were made. I appreciate other people's views on the "Retired is Retired" thing because I can't always form the words other than "That's not a solid argument" lol.

Another example:

Valenth before it closed down had a special pet called the kumos, this pet was at some point retired however at some point it got so crazy that people would flaunt their kumos and act ...super elitist simply put. They'd purposefully offer their kumos to trade or whatever but not accept anything because "Nothing was good enough"

What did the staff do? Release the kumos even though it was said they would not re-release them, general response? Thank you.

Though yes this is a rather extreme example i do kinda see people act in a somewhat similar fashion

I am amazingly awesome with this idea. DO EET