Raise the broker cap

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Ryazan, Nov 22, 2021.

  1. Zero303 Well-Known Player

    only ones that whould benefit from this is goldsellers and the ppl who buy from them.
    they should introduce more cash sinks intead or a new system to get rid of cash need.
  2. thedemonocus Loyal Player

    The only thing that would happen if the raised the broker cap is stuff that now costs a billion would just cost 2 billion or whatever they raised the cap to, what they should do is lower the trade cap to the same as the broker. Broker is also safer than trade since you can't get scammed on the broker.
    • Like x 4
  3. Wzlinnkk54 Active Player

    The only thing I see happening from this solution is the item still sells for 2bil now you run the risk of 2 trades, either the item for 1 bil then someone runs off getting shorted 1 bil or 1 bil before the item someone runs off now you lost 1bil and didnt get the item. I personally only like dealing with the broker I personally have been scammed when I was starting out and many have tried since I do not trust others in this game period. Something needs to be done about the amounts of money ppl have or the broker needs changed.
  4. Zneeak Devoted Player

    For the obvious reasons you stated, the risk of people wanting to accept 2 trades is very little. If anything, more trades would occur through broker that would be cheaper than it currently is with people bypassing the system through trade.

    Oh, there definately should be something done about the excess money and inflation above this particular change, it's just that players would riot and like past history the Devs would probably cave. I do hope they are planning to do atleast something.
    • Like x 1
  5. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    This is already happening though. Shaded Comic Material was going for $3 bil in the first couple days meaning several people were willing to go through two cash trades for one item. If the trading cap was reduced I'd wager those same people would be less inclined to make three cash transactions for one item. Personally

    Starting prices on rare items would drop back down to below $2 bil. Players that prefer using the broker would be more inclined to
    • Like x 1
  6. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    This is already happening though. Shaded Comic Material was going for $3 bil in the first couple days meaning several people were willing to go through two cash trades for one item. If the trading cap was reduced I'd wager those same people would be less inclined to make three cash transactions for one item. Personally I would take this a step further and put a short time limit between trades to discourage multiple cash transactions for one item. Absolutely nothing in this game should be priced more than what the broker allows.

    Starting prices on rare items would drop back down to below $2 bil. Players that want to avoid being scammed or prefer using the broker would be more inclined to start listing rare items at a reasonable price. This puts rare items closer into reach for people that don't have a lot of in-game money.
    • Like x 1
  7. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    Yeah, but raising the broker cap means more money ate up when the listing fees are applied. And if you list something for say 10B, that's 500million gone....every time. The broker fees are one of the only places money is actually destroyed in game. Yeah, we spend some at in game vendors, but that's not 100 milliion...or 500 million. Heck that's even going away with Oracle as a sidekick killing repair costs for many. So who cares if the ultra rich shuffle the big ticket items amongst themselves? If you reduce the money in game by a factor of 1000, the ultra rich are STILL the ultra rich....the numbers just look a little smaller at that point, but so do ours.
    • Like x 2
  8. Ryazan Dedicated Player

    The rich getting richer is already happening in the game. The players hoarding rare items and price gouging do not face any kind of tax on their money, they all sell their items for above what the broker allows, they never have to pay 5% of the price to list their item, they never have to worry about the broker time limit, and they never have to face the same competition that broker has, if anything, those players all sell their items for the same price in trade chat and talk down anyone that tries to "lowball."


    What needs to happen is, having the broker cap be raised AND having the trade cap be lowered, to a point where the trade cap is significantly lower than the broker's. The use of the broker needs to be encouraged more than the use of the trade window, for all the reasons I already explained at the beginning of this post. No money leaves the economy when trade is utilized.
    • Like x 6
  9. TheLorax 15000 Post Club

    I support this idea as well.
  10. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    The only thing that would do is eliminate broker trades for anything that very rare, or give those people who already have billions the chance to scoop up EVERY item ever listed for 1 mil in there. Meanwhile watch the cries of 'scam' going up as someone is opening their 10th one sided trade window to hand off 1m a pop only to find that 10th one the other guy signed out.

    So once the cap is in, and someone has 20 billion, when they get an item you desire...what incentive is there for them to sell it to you at 1Mil vs 3Bil today? What....you think they are worried about having 20,001,000,000 vs 23,000,000,000? This plan would only increase hording and the only way someone would be able to get a ultra rare item is to also HAVE an ultra rare item to trade, so you'll still be forced to farm TCs to get those. Plus it leaves a lot up to opinion on what things are worth...."I'd like to trade my pig for your 3 chickens"...."nah deeze chickens are worth at LEAST 2 pigs"...cash is the common item, pigs and chickens are not. It would help for standard items, sure...but is anyone really worried about the prices on standard items? Also basically eliminating the broker eliminates the broker fees, so even less money is consumed...meaning that dirty glitch money is going to be around forever...it will just change hands more often.
  11. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    I take it that's the US Server? Because EU doesn't have anything that anyone sensible would pay 2.2 Billion for. Not even the OG Plasmic.

    Anyway, yes, it would help with inflation. By directly making 90% of the richest players characters "wealth" completely useless. You're basically taking all the money off the board. This works for 2 spectacularly simple reasons:

    - I can certainly imagine theres a few players out there foolish enough to trade multiple times to an unknown player for 1 item without the thought of a scam coming to mind. However, the majority of people are not that foolish. A 1 Million cap on Trade as well as the Broker would deter most of the population from risking it, and rightly so. Trade would dwindle until the greedy were forced to accept the Broker as the main way to sell, and accept that their days of ripping people off is well and truly over. This isn't instant ofc, but over time.

    - Then theres the math you ignored. You just explained that some of the greedy on your Server price things over 2.2 Billion correct? Ok so hypothetical time, lets say someone wants 3 Billion for a Phoenix Material. Remember how every Trade is 1 Million max now? How many 1 Millions are there in 3 Billion? When you get that number, thats exactly how many Trades need to be made for the greedy one to get their 3 Billion. Greed will only make somebody so patient, never mind multiple people. (The number was 3000 btw)


    Something like this hasn't been implemented so far because the Devs expressly said they don't feel its their place to interfere with the ingame economy. We're well beyond the point of that mattering anymore. People are literally pricing New Players out of the game, and then go into threads about why New Players leave pretending they don't know. I wouldnt insult anyone by pretending that the price is the only reason, but its a larger part than most are willing to admit.

    Its time to call a Spade a Spade. This isn't an Economy anymore, its a slaughterhouse controlled by people who use Goldsellers. And its at the point where Dev intervention is a necessity, not just an option to be discussed. Hell, a lot of people dont even realise (or wont admit) that some of the more expensive items on the Broker are sold by Goldseller Proxy's. We've all come across the Goldseller Bots, doing nothing but standing spamming chat with ads. Standing doesn't earn ingame cash, so where exactly do you all think their surplus of cash comes from? Its a maddening merry-go-round.

    - Player buys 500m from Goldseller
    - Goldseller invests part of profits into new TCs or Booster Bundles
    - Player spends 500m on Broker not knowing it was listed by Goldseller
    - Goldseller gets 500m back, plus makes profit off other items they listed with other Players
    - And round and round and round we go
    • Like x 1
  12. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    See post #31
  13. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    The only thing you are right about in there is that no one will open 3000 trade windows to trade an item worth 3 billion 1 mil at a time. Yeah...that's not going to happen. So what they WILL do is demand an item of similar value...and how will YOU get that item if you want the 3billion dollar item they have? Seriously....where will YOU get the item of equal value to trade to them? Cause I can guaranteed they won't be dropping the price to 1 million.

    You are rolling the economy back to a 'barter' system, which USED to exist here in the real world too....until money was standardized and people realized some subjective barter value was not as good as a fixed cash value. And yeah, if you go back to when that happened and someone realized they'd have to work for an hour to afford a 2 cent pair of socks, maybe they'd have rather traded the 6 potatoes they could have dug up from the garden behind the house in 1 min....but hey....they could also SELL those 6 potatoes for 3 cents....so they get the socks anyway AND an extra cent. Either way, if you told that guy that today a pack of socks costs 10 bucks I'd think he also would feel it's unfair and completely over priced....till he finds out the price of potatoes as also gone up.

    So go dig up some potatoes and sell them. Then get what you need....don't penalize the sock sellers for selling socks for what they can.
    • Like x 1
  14. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    If the Broker Tax was 15%-25% I would hand-on-heart be in full agreement with you. I honestly would. But it isnt, its 5% as you explained yourself. And 5% is absolutely nothing to the people who use Goldsellers, or Goldsellers themselves.

    Let me give you an example from EU Server

    For over a year we've had 1 person trying to sell the Ink Material on the Broker. I already have it myself but i kept seeing it so it caught my interest. I can positively tell you whoever it is, either uses Goldsellers or is a Goldseller, heres why. This person has a rotation. They start by trying to sell it for 600m, then after 3 days 595m, 3 days 590m, 3 days 585m etc etc. It gets to about 545m, vanishes for a week, and reappears with the exact same rotation. 600m 595m 590m etc etc.

    Have you any idea how much that 5% has lost this player?
    600m costs them 30m,
    595m costs them 29,750,000,
    590m costs them 29,500,000 etc etc.
    And they've done this for over a year. 11 postings every 3 days with 1 week before they begin again.

    If that's not unequivocal proof that 5% deters nothing, I dont know what is. And this is 1 of many examples from the EU Broker, not a one-off.
  15. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    Its kind of a terrible idea to start bringing real-world economics into this to back up your point, given the absolute horror show we're projected to see over the next 10yrs. I'm going to assume you aren't aware of how bad things are about to get for everybody and swiftly pull us back to the ingame world.

    Yes, the Trade limit will indeed make the greedy rethink how they price things. Glad we agree.

    Nope, there wont be a barter system or people scrounging for items to trade. Thats something i'm pretty sure you just thought up within the last 10 mins.

    The confidence behind my "nope" is simple, Space. You neglected to account for that 1 variable, thus the guess about a 10 min thought. Where exactly are they supposed to store all these Precious Items until they find somebody to trade them with? As I recall, a previous Forum Member started a Thread recently asking for Trinkets/Pets to be given a Sub-Menu to free up inventory space because they were running out of space on their Main, in Banks, Bank alts and Shared Bank. Disregarding the fact that said Forum Member destroyed the Thread by admitting the request was redundant, quite a few Forum Members were asking for the same.

    The only conclusion you could come to from that is that Players are already having storage space issues when it comes to items. If the Thread can be believed ofc. Now the notion that all Rare Items will be Traded Day 1 is pretty ridiculous, as i'm sure you'll agree. So the question becomes, where exactly do the greedy store the Items until they find a Trader? Keeping in mind when answering that you can't just account for 1 type of player?
  16. Greenman_x Steadfast Player

    I’ll preface this with saying I probably farm cash as much as I spend time playing the actual game. For years I ignored feats in the name of selling items for max cash value so I could swim in a pool of money like Scrooge McDuck.

    With that being said, I think they need to do a sweeping reduction of cash to all players with more than 10 million and take away some percentage (think 90) from them all. Get the crazy excessive amount of cash out of the economy all together. I lost something to the effect of 60 billion when they did it in 2013 or so, but there is no denying it was necessary.

    Additionally a cash sink is sorely needed. There is nothing at all in the actual game that players can put their cash towards that costs more than 10k or so. The biggest sink we had prior to the Bottle City Soders was Extremes at $900 for 6. Something bigger is needed now that the population deals in billions and not thousands
  17. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    I could be wrong and could be thinking of 1 of the other Money Glitch years, but DCUO has never had a "sweeping reduction" before. From what I remember they "Rolled Back" the game to before the glitch was 1st used, literally rewinding time for everyones characters. That cant be done here. Absolute guess, but i think the last glitch was somewhere between 3-5yrs ago? Theres no Roll Back to that.

    As for a Cash Sink, again, this doesn't account for new players at all. No matter what the system is, if it has any benefit whatsoever, which would be the only incentive to use it, its one New Players will either have no access to, or have to wait years before they can.

    Dont get me wrong, not trying to trash your ideas. Any solution is worth looking at. But they just wouldn't work or haven't/can't be done.

    I also think your first statement is one of the most important in this entire thread, including my posts:
    "I probably farm cash as much as I spend time playing the actual game"
    That shouldn't be a necessity. But it is, otherwise you wouldn't do it. And when you break that sentence down to its core, you've lost half of your time playing to this broken system.

    If that doesn't require fixing, nothing does.
  18. Reinheld Devil's Advocate

    Since I had replied about the chickens and pig barter in my previous message...which you replied to...I'd guess I hadn't thought it up 10 min earlier.

    As far as space, no....that wont' be an issue for the mega rich as the mega rich also know that you can open 100's of accounts, all of which come with 2 toons...6 if you are willing to spend 5 bucks....all of which have their own bank space and inventory.

    Your trinkets and pets example is flawed...90% of those are NOT tradable, and are never tradable once used. That leads to a single toon running out of space...collections/auras/Materials from TCS or most drops are tradable...mailable (so shared bank not needed there), and indefinately hordable if you are organized. No one is going to start pricing things at 1 mil just because the cap is there...especially if they already have billions with nothing to spend it on now. They will wait till there is a thing of 'equal' value and trade their horded goods for it. Don't believe me? Watch trade. People offer older BB items for this newest one...or the top level collections for other older TC collections. Why not just broker them and use the gained money to buy what they need?...because a lot fo those items are 1B+ items....You want to set the bar to 1M? you won't even see seasonal collections or base iems in the broker then....so what will you do then?
  19. Hunted2468 Well-Known Player

    My apologies, perhaps my previous post could have been more clear, or maybe I could have worded it better. When I mentioned a "rich players characters wealth", im not referring to, nor assuming that, the richest characters in the game are owned by actual rich people. I'd actually bet my own Mortgage that the majority aren't. The rich, from purely a base psychological standpoint, would statistically be far more likely to be Trolls in an MMO, rather than bother gaining "fake wealth". Theres no fun in fake wealth for someone with all the time in the world. Whereas people who are unsuccessful financially in real life would find far more comfort from fake wealth, seeing themselves acquire something ingame they'll likely never see in front of them. To live vicariously. Neither group are a straight forward "one is A and one is B", each likely has normal, good players in them. But the likelihood still remains regardless.

    That, however goes down a whooooole different kind of road and discussion, and would be best left for a different Thread altogether. It was necessary to address though as your viewpoint and/or solution is directly linked to the belief that I was talking about a group I wasn't.

    If we carried on discussing your theory about how Real Life Rich People have hundreds of accounts, we'd only really be discussing an assumption. And thats just as bad as 2 people arguing semantics. Worse, maybe. You can't prove that its only the Real Life Rich that create your version of the problem with this solution, and I can't prove it isn't. Thats not a point to be discussed or thought about, its a dead end.

    As for Trinkets and Pets? I'm not entirely sure where you got the idea I was talking about Trading them. I brought up the problem of Space availability. I then referred to a Thread that was complaining that Pets/Trinkets were taking up too much Space and that several prominent Forum Members had agreed with the idea to section-off Trinkets and Pets to free up Inventory spots and Banks, regardless of the Threads redundance. Trinkets and Pets are mentioned because their mere presence creates Space issues for people already, apparently. Theres no mention of Trading them or borrowing them or lending them.

    Finally you bring up how Trade chat already barters items. Ok, so how does my solution create bartering if it already exists? If someone is after an old Aura and "barters" for it, the problem halves immediately. The given item may go back into circulation for bartering later, but the recieved item is consumed and worn by the player. 1 more piece off the chessboard. Now that happens 1 more time, now 10x, now 1000x, now 10,000x. Every time it dilutes this Secret Society of Barterers of goods to trade, and even with New TCs and Booster Bundles it never gets close to getting back to max. On the contrary, it keeps fading and fading. All the old "good" Auras and Materials have been bartered and used, so whats left? Going to trade the Phoenix Material for a Purple Metallic? Because thats all thats left. Or you could sit and look at how all the hoarded Auras and Materials have taken up so much Space you can't even buy the New Episode gear without deleting something or giving something away cheap.

    I'm not suggesting the solution I have as part of some "vendetta" against the rich here. Theres no ulterior motive to be found. I suggested it because every other Solution, which i've considered before myself, has some ridiculously major flaws in it. A 1 Million cap just......doesn't. I wont pretend it'd be an overnight fix, the option of an overnight fix no longer exists, but the only people it could possibly "hurt" fit into 3 category's:

    - Goldsellers
    - Players who use Goldsellers
    - Players who have an unhealthy attachment to fake, worthless ingame money

    And so far I cant think of 1 good reason to give a damn about any of those 3. Can you?
  20. MaryMagdalene_DCUO Well-Known Player

    Lmao you and anyone else actually think that raising broker cap will improve economy?
    If anything it's going to encourage others to price items over the broker cap.
    • Like x 1