It's great that things are being added to the Gem/Bean/Star coin stores, but the prices are just silly.
For example: Weak point potion vs Saltpeter
WPP sells for 1,200 coins easily and costs 180 Star coins. (this gives SC a value of 6.6gc ea)
Saltpeter is near useless and costs 600 Star coins per 100
This values Saltpeter at 40,000 coins per k.
I'm not asking BB to update the prices to keep up with current market rates for each server on a daily basis. I realize how much work that would be. It would be possible however to do a one time overhaul and balance things out a little better, and then little touch ups once in a while.
Why should BB do this? A greater number of viable choices in the Gem shop can lead to more gem sales. If you could buy consumables (e.g. granite) for a decent rate compared to building deeds I'm sure some players would do so.
All this will become moot for a while at least if Master Architect boxes go live the same as they were on the testing server. At current market values the box was averaging around 6-7k worth of building deeds (FM, WT etc) for 65 gems. That brings the value of gems up to 100 coin per. Of course the value of FM and all other deeds will tank, but not by 90%. This means that no intelligent Gem buyer will purchase anything other than MA boxes for quite a while. MA boxes would be a decent purchase at 10x the gem cost.
Like any game where you have multiple choices on what to build/buy if you have a handful of items that are way more efficient the game becomes very limited, and diversity disappears. Not to go into a third rant, but adventures fall into the same category. How hard would it be to make adv more balanced (not perfect, just closer) No one runs Secluded Experiments? Try upping the loot by 10%. Still no one? 20% etc.
I'd rather have a game where one week the most efficient adv is BK, and next week SoTV, than for the smartest thing to be running the same adv 100+ times in a row.
Challenge: Find a better example of imbalance than WPP vs SP