When the Forge rolled around it's safe to say I was rather surprised by the new store system which had been implemented. I'd heard the rumors, but the actual introduction of the spool system and store came as a welcomed surprise. However, I did take note of the fact that the store was selling skins directly, a practice which is certainly more morally grounded than the market and also gives us more information than initially realized. Let's break it down:
When a player purchases a skin set (we'll be using the individual pricing sets for this post), they pay $2.99 for a character's entire set of skins. This isn't just the elegant, but also includes the distinguished body skin, the spiffy pants, spiffy gloves, and finally, the classy shoes. Many people will arbitrarily set the value of the elegant at the $2.99 marker however this actually isn't accurate, as we have to account for the elegant item's value in terms of relation to the other items in the set.
When balanced for the spool scale (Classy=45, Spiffy=150, Distinguished=450, Elegant=1300) we can calculate the total spools a set contains and how much we can partition off to the elegant itself. Then we can take that number and compare it to the total spools and price to get the actual money value of the elegant by itself. All in all, one 3 dollar set contains 2095 spools of cost value, 1300 which can be attributed to the elegant. That means the percentage of the initial cost that can be attributed to the elegant is 1300/2095 spools, or about 62%. 62% of 2.99 is approximately One dollar and eighty five cents,
Ok, so why does this matter?
This is important because when we actually compare what Klei themselves values the elegant skins at, compared to what the market prices them at, we can see a significant disparage between the two. If elegants were being sold at their actual value then we wouldn't be seeing the ridiculous prices we have today.
I'm not trying to make any major statements on the morality of the market in this post, I'll let the numbers speak for themselves and the reader decide that. I just want to make sure people are informed. Note: If I were to balance this based on the larger packs we'd see the elegant valued at less, however this wouldn't be privy to this post as it is focusing on individual pricing.
Anyways have a nice day! 