A Fair Cash Wipe (Economy Fix)

Going back to the OP, there is no such thing as a "Fair Money Wipe". I'm sorry but that is just and oxymoron bigger than "Healthy Plague". They only fix for the economy is to lock cash to Accounts and not make it tradeable except through venders and the broker. And to limit the Broker to max item cost of 500 million. Without capping cash for players. This also required DBG to increase the F2P cash cap from the stupidly low $2k to something reasonable like 100 million.

The only other MMO I play is Star Trek Online and the F2P cash cap there is 500 million expandable to a billion, with Lifetime subscription owners getting 2 billion caps. Even EA doesn't restrict in game cash this harshly. SWTOR (Star Wars The Old Republic) has a F2P cash cap of 1 million (I think it just recently went up) with Subscribers (yeah it still have the monthly sub model) getting an unlimited cash cap.

But punishing the entire player base because your companies legal team has been too busy playing footsie with each other in the copy room to do any meaningful enforcement of the TOS & EULA against clear and massive violations. Is as far as I'm concerned the act of a developer who wants their community and their game to die. Because that is what I see happening if these talked about wipes occur. There are too many people, like myself who have spent hundreds of dollars on stabilizers to open lootboxes for items we want and selling the things we don't. And I've sold a lot over my game time. I only have about 300 million on my account at the moment. But if a Cash Wipe happens and a single penny of that cash vanishes when I have done absolutely nothing wrong. I'm gone and you can rest assured many others will walk as well.

Yes I'm sick of all the gold sellers in the game. That's a violation of the TOS & EULA, And DBG seems to have done nothing about it on a scale that matters. And I see why .. Engagement .. that golden word for "Live Services" games. Which MMO's are. The more people or even bots active in a game especially during what is considered peak hours. Is numbers they can show their boards and stockholders and keep them excited and investing. Right now as it stands, you remove the Gold Seller Bots, 100% of them gone, I would expect the concurrent active player base would drop by at least a quarter to half. It's that much of a problem. And everyone knows it.

In conclusion I don't see a Cash Wipe as a solution. There are better solutions, with better long term ramification. A "Cash Wipe" is the quick and easy answer and it's also the wrong one.

The real question is how much money do you need to buy from all the npc's?
Double that amount then that is the cap on the game for everything.

I cannot believe this debacle has been allowed to go on for this long with no word whatsoever from Daybreak other than Mepps condescending "We'll let you know" message. This is the opposite of customer service. And we Legendary members are indeed the customer. Our money, REAL money, should entitle us to better from Daybreak Games.

Actually it is as simple as people think, the problem is people who percieve their gains to be legitimate don't want to let it go despite the fact they're clearly a little clueless to realise that if everyone retains their gains then it stays broken.

I think people need to start to realise that this is make believe money, none of it was ever real and at no point were you ever buying anything in terms of buying something of real life value.

Im not by any means saying there aren't issues outside if resetting cash, there are and they should be fixed as well but if the money is too heavily inflated through people injecting glitched cash for god knows how long even then you've already lost the cash through the resultant inflation caused by the injected artificial cash.

People are only trying to hang on to the cash because they perceive it as having the same value it had years ago when that clearly isn't the case but they're not seeing it.

Some people have even been playing the economic side of this game for so long they've lost sight of what this game really is and it's not monopoly.

And if you think this is my position because I'm broke then you're sadly mistaken, that is not the case at all, I just pick and choose what i purchase in this game in terms of cosmetics, I have plenty of money and items in game.

None of which however stops me from seeing the problems with the state of this games economy.

Im also not oblivious to the fact that i don't make some friends by pointing out issues like this either, some of the DCUO high rollers in this game would probably like nothing more than to see me be silenced because they don't want to lose anything, but the truth is this is a problem and I really don't care if a few people don't like my opinion (I'm not saying that's you by the way)

By the way i don't necessarily support an extreme total reset either, but the whole situation needs an overhaul.

They only have to wipe cash and items from people that got free items and money from glitchers and gold sites. They have the tools to.see what ips traded with glitchers and what ips took large amount of cash or large amounts of items. If ur ip turns up I'm sure they will just wipe those items and some of ur money that the glitchers gave u. And maybe slap u with a 14 day ban only If they see in the chat u didn't know about what was going on. They can see all.of this when our accounts are under review. Btw the devs knew there was a dup glitch way longer than u think. When u see gold sellers there is a dup glitch 100% as long as this game has trade there will always be a way to dup items

I was thinking not as simple as in the solution - the actual problem is easy to see - no matter how honest ppl are/were we all contributed or gained, even in a very very very small way by simply participating.. i just think the solution has to be extremely foolproof and that is not going to be easy

Agreed - but we ALL need to see that

It IS part of the game though, for some.. for some this is all nothing.. for others they view it as a huge part.. e.g. if they removed 90% of the styling options in the game some would quit, others would not care.. PVP is another one, if they removed PVP i'd be happy.. others would blow up these forums to smithereens.. everyone plays for different reasons.. look at the content vs styles threads or the scoreboard numbers ppl vs those that do not see it as important etc etc - this game is great at diversity, as in playing with goals and focuses is possible - for some the broker is that focus

Never thought otherwise

Agreed on last line - I want to see change too - I want it fixed too but my fear is that some are so sure of a solution that i just feel will not work and hurt the everyday players and a "compromise" will do nothing - wipe every cent or it will just happen again or other issues will occur.. but this is a big deal to do in such an old game & the ripple effect of those changes will be huge - in my opinion

I feell ike it is lose/lose for most but a big loss for those that are "innocent" bystanders

People need to work on there patience skills.

Well, I personally think the solution is rather simply, unfortunately is frustrated by the fact you're trying to keep certain subsets of players happy or as many of them happy as possible haha

I still tend to think there's a bit of hot air from players threatening to quit. I think they'll probably be a little cautious with trying to purchase things in the future and this may affect Daybreaks revenue, hence further complicating the matter. However, I'm calling the bluff on people quitting altogether, a few might, but I also tend to think when the rubber hits the road a lot of them really won't do it.

Oh I agree, realistically there has to be a compromise, the real solution is truly somewhere between a zero reset and doing nothing at all. The devs are the ones that are going to have to decide that one.

As for the items in everyone's banks, that's a far more difficult task in my opinion than the cash, if someone is sitting on 10 OG nimbus auras for example, let's say they dropped those the cash cap to 100mil, that person sells all 10 for 100mil (there will be at least 10 people that will go broke for them) then that person is insta billionaire again, there's definitely issues and quite frankly that side of it, I actually pity the developers cause who knows really what they can do in that regard, I'm guessing it'll possibly be nothing.

Given the likely very neglible amounts of stock left on some items, perhaps making them account bound wouldn't be that bad, but for some more recent rare cosmetics making them account bound while at the same time as limiting peoples ability to renew cash supply detrimentally impacting a players ability to obtain said item.

The one solution I can think of is immediately update the quark vendor with everything from time capsules to date, reduce the cost of some of the older items, leave the newer ones priced where they are, slap account bound status on all archived time capsule contents and make anything obtainable through regular in game play tradeable again.

This could even motivate players to start buying more capsules anyway to get quarks. Just throwing a thought out there. Honestly I've seen a lot happen with the development in this game since launch and it'll be pretty interesting to see what, if anything even, the developers do with this one; and I'm sure there's ideas I'm not even thinking of.

If no one has 10 billion dollars, no one can pay 10 billion dollars...no matter how bad they want to get the item. Right now people can gouge all they want, because there is an unlimited supply of money (assuming nothing is done and we are returned as it was before the lockdown happened)...so yeah, in that case unlimited gouging. Assuming there is some adjustment(besides a 100% wipe), you'd for sure have some very rich people out of the gate, but after a few days or weeks of sales their stock, they will accumulate whatever wealth is left and will have to lower prices as the medium rich an semi rich won't have the money to keep paying more...so things will stabilize. There just won't be enough money for people to keep adding 10 or 20% every time. They could continue to attempt to buy everything, but that would distribute the bigger piles of money into the community...as it should be. Money in the game is not created at a rate of billions...probably not even 10's of millions(by running missions...selling gear), a day...and that's across all players, so growth should be steadier and more attainable for everyone.

I'm still not sure how best to implement it (made a few suggestions already) but less money means lower prices and less gouging, but yes...there will be some 'Super' people who will still try and push the prices up...for sure....without the fake money, it will be much harder to make them skyrocket.

Reinheld

You are right...I mis remembered the 7 instead of a 2 in 250. I think I was superimposing the 7 from 7 years on it....As far as the billions in game, I believe you had said in another post (which is now removed as many are) about losing billions of your hard earned money....quitting the game...etc, etc. If you did not, I apologize. I guess I just figured as you were so vehemently opposed to any kind of cash reduction you actually had some skin in the game. If you are sitting on 250m, under the proposed solution in this thread, you'd end up at 188m or so. A loss to be sure, but I'm not sure I'd 'quit the game' over 70 million especially since that 70 million could barely buy you the Xmas collection pieces as it stands now, much less anything that will drop in the next TC at today's rates.

Objecting on principle maybe? It's your right of course.

Reinheld

I would probably agree, if this were the first time the game had done something that pissed me off, but it wouldn't be. It would just be another one in an increasingly lengthy list. I doubt that I am the only one who feels like that.

Two weeks ago I bought a material for 15 million for a specific character that I had an idea for (and that was not stupidly under-priced - as I recall there were five or six of them going for under 25m). So yes, to some, 70 million would be a big deal.

Should cap broker at a billion. That'll solve broker over-pricing.
Cap players at say 5 billion.
Assuming times running still all items will purge (expired selling time)
broker items back to sellers.
Problem solved.
Far as the fees, well you pay the price you take your chances somewhat
quoting Joker in the vault.

Oracle: Guys...we need your help! Soloman Grundy and Clayface are wreaking havok near Giordano Botanical Gardens and the Justice league is off world fighting for the survival of the entire planet! We need you to go detain those two while keeping the damage to a min..."

DCUOHero: "Already taken care of. Just gave each of them a billion dollars. They've decided to retire to a small Barbados villa with a couple of trophy wives and luxury accomidations. Justice served!".

Except if there's even one sucker (harsh but accurate and appropriate description) out there that falls for their pricing, there will be no incentive for them to lower their prices. That one person buying at that price will mean there's a market at those prices.

The only real way to help drive down outrageous prices is for players to flat out refuse to pay those prices. Not because of a wipe or reduction of cash, not because of a cap being put into place. It requires players to simply not give in. But all it will take to undo any efforts to bring down prices is one foolish, impatient or desperate player to give in.

The broker is already capped at a $999,999,999 ($1 less than a billion), trading is capped at around 2 billion.

I don't agree with wiping or account bounding items. I do agree with measures implemented to prevent PSN/CashApp/PayPal/Venmo/Steam trading like those messages be filtered just like with profanity filter etc so their entire limited messsage in trade chat would be *** ***** *** ** = WTB 25psn pst me

If it has PSN or any of the other terms like CashApp etc just asterix the sh** out of it, K!

The queries and cron job I mentioned about identifying gold spambots and large (huge) transactions via trade or mail would be best. Taking our current in-game money and/or items when we've accrued quite a bit of it from selling tc items is pretty meh to me.

I love the way my dogs poop smells, some are odd just like many on here.

Point is a wipe isn't what you think it will be and after it occurs how will their time capsules be valued? You'll get 1 lucky drop out of a 100tc and everything else in the other 99 caps are worthless, account bound and now their time caps won't sell as well, wait and see.

I still think this solution is very simple.
Imagine for one second that actual gameplay got you the collection, styles, feats, etc.

I know, I know to some of you that sounds insane and you might be wondering how that fixes the cash problem.

I'll start with TC collections. Instead of having us wait out the TC items in the second chance vendor. They should all be available immediately. The more recent the desired item, the more expensive it is. For example, you want the Neon Chromas but dont have 2 bil, any more stabilizers. Run content because now its available in the vendor for 50-60 thousand quarks or whatever that's equivalent to source marks.

Immediate rebuttal from some people I have discussed this with is that Daybreak would never do this because they would lose money on TC sales. Which might be true.
However consider what they lose in TC sales would be made up with people actually playing the game more, resetting more content, possibly opening TC that they would not have open knowing eventually if they dont get lucky in a drop they can buy what they want from the second chance vendor. In this system it's a win/win for both new players to the game as they can also save. Older players will run content with them knowing they are actually playing for something they also need. In fact maybe even make it a renown based system where you have to open a set number of TC before your actually able to see second chance vendor items?

OP, Seaonal, etc.
This could be the same process. You need a collection? Once your full renown or have run the content a set number of times. You are now able to view items you need for a price in that vendor for marks. These marks would of course be a higher number cost and it allows you to make the decision. Run content and get lucky or grind for what you want. Again this means more gameplay across and as far as I can tell that a win-win for everyone.

Just in case you miss how this fixes the money problem. In game money would become much less relevant. In the end you could spend set amount of money to buy what you need but that becomes your choice. Chances are the times will not be as expensive because players will be less willing to spend ridiculous amounts of money for itmes they can just grind out. Or spend real world money on the actual game instead of with gold spammers.

No need to wipe any ones money. You got trillions. Hey, great for you but how is it it relevant now?

Just an idea from a gamer who wishes DCUO continues to thrive.

A money wipe in my opinion not a good idea to do. You have players like myself who have been playing for years buying and selling and building our cash up legit. Yes I do agree that something has to be done with the cheaters/glitchers and daybreak has a very hard job at that. I'm not saying it to get brownie points I'm saying it because it's true you can only please some of the people some of the time not all of the people all of the time. I do hope daybreak comes up with something that will make both side meaning who wants s wipe and who don't that we both can be happy with.