Ingame cash -- time for a change?

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Apollonia, Jun 30, 2021.

  1. Jason Martin Dedicated Player

    No, you definitely want something that players NEED to spend on. Draining money from a game isn't something that you should take it easy, you MUST, so you have to add needs for players at all times.

    Equip repairs, supplies, cosmetics, gear, all that is reasonable.
    • Like x 2
  2. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    Even games that had similar set ups didn’t have it as bad as dcuo lol.

    In game economy is something very important that the devs of any game to consider. Especially when they are player driven (most are). If players can buy key items with cash than an actual system must be put into place.

    Warframe is a game I like to bring up a lot when it comes to economy but I do it for good reason. For those that don’t know, the game has TWO types of play driven economies. Not one but TWO. The first is credits (cash in dcuo) and the second platinum. The funny thing is that platinum is the premium currency that you spend real money on (think of it as marketplace currency). Players can actually trade premium currency with other players. Yet, it works.

    With the cash system players have the ability to farm credits that is used for pretty much anything. Enhancing mods, building ships, researching, anything. So essentially it has a cash drain by making pretty much everything cost credits. Funny thing is, I have more cash in dcuo than I do in warframe and I use more credits it’s warframe lol.

    Now with platinum. It’s used for any special services. Buying inventory slots, buying marketplace items. Buying actual warframe, buying new weapons. Speeding up research or spending up actions that take time. However everything in the game can be farmed. Warframes that cost platinum to buy, well they can be farmed from the game directly. Same with weapons. Speeding up actions don’t need to sped up and don’t need platinum to finish. Even stuff in the marketplace can be farmed like components. They have multiple events to farm special components. This makes it so that the only thing that can’t be farmed for are cosmetics. lol yup. You can do literally anything in the game for free except get cosmetics. And yet they make a lot of money. Players will farm sets of frames and weapons, even farm rare mods, to sell for platinum. The credit system is pretty much ignored since players can make 1 mil credits in a short time. Even the platinum system is balanced. The players even made a community website to list the prices of rare items like sets of frame, weapons, and rare mods to better balance the economy. And the devs know about the site and encourage it lol. That’s how balanced of a system the devs there created.

    The devs care so much about the community that there was one feature they removed. In the past players could use platinum to reroll how their pet looked. Players were spending thousands of platinum to reroll. They spent so much money on this that the devs closed the feature down cause “they didn’t think players would spend that much money on the style of their pets”. And they added a way to change the style through other means. Obviously that game has issues just like any other game. But the economy is definitely not one of them.
  3. willflynne 10000 Post Club


    Go heavier on the needs and you can reach a point where the players will feel put on about it and then you start generating hard feelings. The consistent complaints about repair costs are evidence of that.

    Make something that generates the "shut up and take my money" thinking, though? Something that gets people to happily part with their in-game cash? That's likely to be sneaky effective. The question then becomes what can be offered to spark that Fry feeling. LOL
    • Like x 1
  4. L T Devoted Player

    Repair costs are only really complained about because non-subscribers have very limited access to their money. If that changed, repair costs could go up like 10x and nobody would care.
  5. JKR Well-Known Player


    wow, interesting tactic.

    My two cents:
    - Making money is not too difficult but it helps to build up your base and never drop below a predetermined level. Takes money to make money.
    - Yes, some items do appear to be unobtainable although the game has set a cap for sales in the broker of 1 bil. One bil is a good figure when considering those who have alot of money already but a lower cap of 500 mil might be more reasonable.
    - The video game cash people should go and I believe they have updated the reporting, so, report them.
    - The broker/making money is an important phase of the game due to its connection to making your character stronger:
    ---Three ways to make characters stronger, 1. CR (gear) 2. Skill points 3. Artifacts
    ---There are many feats that can be bought.
    ---Feats add up to create Skill points
    - This game was not created or has not evolved to be conquered quickly. This is an effort game and making money is no different although it helps to have savvy.
  6. TKMcClone Steadfast Player

    I'd advocate for:
    1) make all items tradable only via the broker system.
    2) leave cap broker list price at 1B
    3) make cash account bound and non-tradeable permanently
    4) remove gear wear on all level 30+ gear.
    5) Legendary members get a monthly (account bound) broker token worth $5 million (for any item worth $1 to $5 Million)
    6) Remove league banks replace with broker terminals & individual banks
    If people want to sell names for real world cash that's their silly business. In game cash should be off limits.
  7. Proxystar #Perception

    It's not quite that black and white because contractually they've left that implied if that's even their intent at all, it could be argued character, also means, account and created contractual ambiguity that would favor the end user.

    You can alternatively argue that you're not selling or buying a character you've paid money for someone to delete theirs or use a name change token with the opportunity of knowing when the name is available, none of which is technically a breach of that clause ;)
    • Like x 2
  8. willflynne 10000 Post Club


    Fair point, but with how the community can act and react sometimes, it doesn't take much for some to feel hard put upon. It's not tough for me to imagine increases in needed costs causing some hard feelings in parts of the community.
    • Like x 1
  9. the solowing Steadfast Player

    How they think we sound:
    @5:48 seconds

  10. Proxystar #Perception

    I perhaps have missed part of the conversation but why are you wanting to remove league banks and what impact if any do they even have on the wider economy?
    • Like x 1
  11. TKMcClone Steadfast Player

    I figured they would be useless if all items are either account bound or only transferable via the broker system. No point having community banks if you can't put anything in them.
  12. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    Why make items only tradable with broker? That’s a terrible idea. I’ve seen games that have this feature and trading is the most wanted feature. People actually have friends and league mates that they actually want to help. Are they supposed to just put in on the broker and hope a poacher isn’t there waiting to buy items for $1? Sorry but no. That should never be an updated feature in any game.

    You’re suggesting making a huge change not only with that idea but your other ideas too. Removing banks as well? There are also people out there that play solo and use those banks as backup inventory since they are f2p
    • Like x 1
  13. ObsidianChill Community "Trusted"

    You can argue alot of things but if the topic of this thread was to adjust the economy through ingame cash it won't really get anywhere if the main contributing factors aren't addressed. The broker is nothing, all the broker is used for is to sort by ascending and descending to make a quick buck off pricing errors. You very well know the broker can be completely controlled and influenced by just a few individuals in game. The selling of names, auras, psns and whatever other TOS violations are at the core economic problems where multiple billions can exchange hands very quickly all outside of the broker or trade etc.
    • Like x 2
  14. TKMcClone Steadfast Player


    If the game economy problem is to be permanently fixed, it going require unpopular changes no matter what.

    I play solo and use my league banks for storage / transfer. I would happily trade that for regular banks and brokers in the league hall, if it gets rid of gold sellers. I'm sure that there are accounts that just play the seasonal and buy/sell broker game in order to sell cash to gold sellers. I don't think that should be a part of the game economy.

    There are tons of ways to earn cash and if someone needs help that much, you can just run content with them . Heck, reset their content or send them a gift card, half the game is P2W now anyway.
  15. DeitySupreme Steadfast Player

    But you are going around the problem. You say doing this would stop hold sellers. Yes that’s true. But so would having someone to actually monitor chats and IP ban sellers.

    Incase you aren’t aware if what IP ban means (not trying to say you don’t. Just incase you don’t) if a players is caught selling gold the account is banned. Not only that but all accounts using the IP address (their home) will be permanently banned too. This means the gold seller would be completely banned.

    There’s no reason to make everyone pay to catch the fee that are doing it. I’d rather completely get rid of the problem at the source than trying to work around the issue.

    Send them a gift card? Run content with them? That’s your solution? Running with them is rng. If I get a rare drop that I already have and I just want to give it them them you suggest we go farming the item again? And what is a gift card gonna do? Last I checked you can’t buy collections in game for RL cash.
  16. Kimone Luthor Genetech Clone

    Okay, I'm still not entirely sure how or why removing the league bank is part of your proposed fix to the economy. Like, pretty much nothing that CAN be stored there CAN'T be stored somewhere else, so I'm going to assume you missed a goto line somewhere in that patch of code and that's why you keep coming back to that conclusion, but of the sacrifices necessary to make the game economy work again?

    Getting rid of the league banks is probably the most immediately draconian and definitely the least effective.
    • It doesn't address inflation through regular aggregation of in-game currency
    • it doesn't address inflation through the "not so much a cash reset as a legitimization of the money laundering" 25B account 'reorganization' that occurred after the glitch
    • it doesn't address TC gambling and forced scarcity market issues, which were the market factors that made the cash "reset" so laughably ineffective, and
    • it doesn't address arguable-to-direct TOS violation items such as real cash for game cash, name selling, or any of those other Really Big Issues.
    It seems like a false equivalency - like you're pushing it as an agenda item because you want Brokers in your League Hall and somehow it didn't occur to you to maybe just say "Hey I want a Broker and a Regular Bank in my League Hall too", there's definitely room for it, and I'm in in favor of adding those amenities too - but I don't get how that solves anything, LET ALONE EVERYTHING, without addressing ANYTHING ELSE on that list.

    Like, League Banks are definitely the one non-culprit here yo.

    And yes, I know you're recommending non-tradability as a solution, but it's also kind of a draconian solution and really not very equitable either - the fact that people can trade things isn't what got us here, the fact that people exploited item duplication glitches, cash duplication glitches, and deliberately manipulated the market while simultaneously insisting on absolutely no market controls or regulation got us here.
  17. Proxystar #Perception

    What I was primarily demonstrating was that the contract clause is subject to some interpretation and a reasonable argument can be made from a different perspective :). My intention was certainly simply to express that it wasn't black and white and neither side of the argument is necessarily right or wrong, so certainly don't take me the wrong way, it's just an interesting discussion piece.

    This is of course exactly the reason why we as a society end up in courts with common contract disputes. Ultimately a judge would have to determine the correct interpretation of the clause. On face value though it's riddled with ambiguity and implied clauses will always be harder for a company to defend than an explicit clause.

    In fact the second part of your post here leads in to a perfect example. You've cited "auras" and "PSN Cards". Both those items are actually explicity dealt with in the terms of service.

    These are dealt with at clause 5.4 virtual items, this clause quite explicitly outlines that virtual items obtained in game and that they explicity forbidden to trade for real cash, both an aura and your cash in game are "Virtual Items", these are very distinguishable from say a "player name" that can be changed in a whim and is arguably not a Virtual Item and certainly isn't defined as such within this clause, you could argue possibly implied, but that's an argument that risks failure from a legal enforcement perspective. (I'll say something else about this a little bit later on though)

    ".. Virtual items may be tradable to other end users as part of the Daybreak Game. However, except as may be expressly permitted by Daybreak in its sole and absolute discretion, selling or otherwise transferring Virtual Items in exchange for real world money or monetary value is not allowed".


    Of course if you contacted Daybreak first and said "Can I sell this OG Plasmic Aura for $500USD" and they said "fine" then you'd have their permission, an unlikely occurrence but nevertheless a possibility, you'd want that in writing though.

    Coming back to that earlier point I bracketed above, it's important to note that these clauses are riddled with ambiguity that create a power imbalance in Daybreak's favor, rightly or wrongly I won't opine on, but you would be silly as a player to test it when you might be emotionally or financially invested in ensuring ongoing access to your account.

    You certainly shouldn't be trading auras or other in game items stored in your inventory for real world cash including PSN cards, you shouldn't be trading virtual currency for PSN cards either and although names are a bit more grey you'd probably be on the silly side to engage in that sort of transaction also; if not, because it risks at the very most breaching Daybreak's terms of service but at the least it leaves you incredibly vulnerable to fraud/theft of either real cash, psn credit, virtual currency or a desirable player name.

    Despite the fact I arguably don't agree the terms of service currently capture name trades in a forbidden manner, I would agree that it probably should, if you want to delete your name and someone just randomly happens to pick it up after you that's fine, but the undertaking of selling a name is probably toxic from a player experience perspective, because this just creates an atmosphere where people hoard names they have absolutely no intention of using other than to make money in game and that sort of behavior shouldn't really be accepted, it should be explicitly forbidden either for real cash or virtual currency.
    • Like x 1
  18. TKMcClone Steadfast Player


    League banks are useless, if everything in only tradable on the broker. Full stop. You could remove them all together, broker / bank is just a potential use for the space. And, that loophole needs to be closed to close the economy off from the outside.

    Everything is addressed if all account are sealed off from game cash and non-broker trading. All the big accounts in the game are only worth what they can buy and sell on the broker. 1 billion at a time. An OG nimbus auras is only worth 1B because you can't sell it any other way. A collections max value is only worth 1B. Eventually the system will even out because the broker is the only way to trade and the items on the broker are only worth 1B max. It's not hard to earn 1B in game you can do it in one round of time capsules.


    It's rough, I agree, not to mention you can't sell raid resets and repair bots are useless.

    I just think it's worth it, if the goal is to really fix the game economy. Bans are not a magic bullet, you can change your IP address or use a different console. AND, It's not like the gold sellers are there to play the game. Accounts are disposable for shouting only. The accounts that do the actual cash earning, cash buying and cash selling are never heard from. It's a business. You can sell to them as well. If the economy is closed the option to sell game cash to the gold selling sites for Real world money is gone. Items are only ever worth 1B in game. (1B is just the current cap, make it 500mil if that works better)

    Right off one of their sites:
    1.Our promise for DC Universe Online Gold,items,accounts sending is in 8 mins-24 hours.
    2.Fill in your character name(in game name) and your contact way when you place an order.
    3.After you pay, please contact with our online support, we will arrange a face to face trade with you or mail to you in game.
    4.If you have any questions, you can see the FAQ first. If your questions are not included in FAQ page, just contact our live chat.
  19. Kimone Luthor Genetech Clone

    Okay, so it's clear that you're not actually intending to suggest an actual fix to the economy, just a repair of a couple of the most egregious offenses in exchange for continued access to slightly less egregious offenses. Nevermind.
  20. Proxystar #Perception

    Will that really fix the problem though or just mean everyone will list everything for 1B knowing that everyone has billions.
    • Like x 2