Let's discuss turning broker into an auction house.

Discussion in 'Gotham City (General Gameplay)' started by Proxystar, Oct 17, 2018.

  1. Knarlydude Loyal Player


    You and I know that is the only way that DCUO can get the broker fixed. If DCUO does not delete all in game cash then people will still have billions of in game cash to buy up everything after said cap was implemented.

    Like it or not removing all cash that's left over from all past exploits would help keep pricing low. Then with price caps in the broker and in trading. People/gold sellers could not amass the cash needed to sell gold. Stopping the gold selling and the selling of PSN cards would help a lot with keeping the broker prices down.

    Whether anyone wants to admit it or not there are a lot of things that go into the broker being messed up. There are definitely a bunch of parts that need to be addressed in order to bring the broker under control.

    Selling in game cash
    Selling PSN cards
    sending millions or billions in the mail
    zero broker/trade pricing limits


    Just to name a few

    First we need to get the devs to stop with the token band aid fixes like they did with the gold spambots. We found a loophole not even a few days after that fix and the loophole was not closed. Its almost as if someone in DCUO is associated with these gold sellers.
    • Like x 1
  2. MaryMagdalene_DCUO Well-Known Player

    A bunch of bad ideas presented by folks that can't buy that philosopher stone thingamajig.
    Not only would it be a waste of dev resources and manpower but it would surely destroy the game economy all because of the unfortunate many that can't buy op collections or tc stuff :rolleyes:
    I nearly forgot to mention the fact of cash capping and taking cash from people that legitimately earned it would be a really bad move but leave it to the folks here, the new people and horrible vets alike to ruin something in the name of "fairness" and "balance"
    • Like x 3
  3. Knarlydude Loyal Player

    Ohh please, real life happens and bad apples screw up things for the good guys all the time. I have millions but I would not have any issues being reset to zero with cash caps because I earned my in game stuff legit I know that I can get it back. The only ones that would have an issue are the ones that sell in game cash for real money.
    • Like x 1
  4. Jacob Dragonhunter Steadfast Player

    Ultimately, I feel like if we're going to fix the broker economy from forever dealing with inflation like we do now this would be how I would deal with it.

    1) Cap how much money a legendary member is allowed to have. I'm going to be speaking in some Algebra terms for this; but let's allow X=Equals how much money legendary members are allowed to have at once.

    2) Cap how much players can place an item for on the broker. Let P=Maximum price for any given item on the broker.

    3) Instead of taking away everybody's cash, we implement a saving option within the in-game Banks or inventory. Players wouldn't lose their money, they would simply be able to withdraw it when they needed. So EG: If someone has 100 mill, and has spent all the money they have or in this case spent X and they are down to zero; they can just withdraw some to buy some more.

    For legendary members, this would be a free benefit so it wouldn't feel like you're taking away the unlimited cash; but replacing it with an alternative.

    This keeps the players money being useful, and not taken away from them; but it still allows the function of a money cap to do it's job so players can still buy and sell at will, but not at such extremes as they are doing right now.

    Alternative Idea:

    You could also make setting an item equal to a percentage of a price of how much a player wants to sell it for. As it stands right now, there's no punishment or prevention system in place. I feel like if you're gonna risk to put on something for 999 MILL, then you should pay half or 25% of that amount.
    So in the case of a 999 mill, it would likely be 499 mill to place it on there for that extreme price. Which can punish players for trying to keep inflation going.(It'd be like raising taxes on these guys, but it's needed to balance out the broker economy in my eyes.)

    Or if we make them pay 25% of that amount they would pay about 250mil to put that item on the broker for that price.

    This would probably take longer for the broker economy to be fixed, but it would probably be longer instead of the aforementioned cap method. But it would be probably be well more received than my intital cap ideas.
    • Like x 1
  5. Knarlydude Loyal Player

    Yeah, I understand what you are saying but sometimes it's best just to pull the bad aid off fast. I think this might be the best way and yeah it will suck for some.

    But............

    There have been too many in game exploits & gold sellers left to run amok for the past years. We need to get the exploited cash, exploited cash from exploited TC's & gold seller cash out of the game and start over.
    • Like x 1
  6. Jacob Dragonhunter Steadfast Player


    The in-game economy is already destroyed due to inflation, unless you are one of the few people who can consistently sell rare items on for exorbitant prices.


    The only reason there is an "Unfortunate Many" that can't buy OP collections or TC stuff is due to the fact that most are either premium players, or they don't spend 24/7 on the broker like some folks I know do.


    Ultimately, the only way for you to come out of the "Unfortunate Many" is to try and climb that broker ladder, and go through the process of farming TC items and undercutting other sellers so your stuff will sell instead of the competition.(Admit it, just about everyone does it.) The fact that there is an unfortunate many, doesn't mean the broker is fine the way it is.


    And players earning their money? Uh no. It's been well known for a long-time now that Gold Sellers and Money Glitches have been the main reason the USPS/USPC side has been so inflated, especially when you compare our broker economy to the one over on the Xbox Server.

    Further proof of this is the fact that you can't really make in-game money very quickly unless you sell something from a Time Capsule these days. DCUO quest and on duty missions doesn't certainly hand out 1mill per mission lol, not even close.
    • Like x 2
  7. Hraesvelg Always Right

    We need a huge gold sink. Put in a vendor that gives you a buff potion that buffs your stats by 200% for 24 hours. Charge 50 million. Don't let it work in PvP. Don't change the balance of the raids to compensate. Let the 1% people go absolutely APE for a while, buying and hoarding or being god-kings in content. Things will equalize fairly quickly. Buff percentages and amounts can vary. Not everyone will do it, and you've got to make sure we don't have any more rampant inflation. Punishing the innocent to get the guilty it NEVER the answer, unless you want mass revolts.
    • Like x 2
  8. StillDeathern Dedicated Player


    So the bid for the item would automatically increase?

    No thanks. While true, you elaborate on an upper limit, I can see someone bidding up their own sale item, just to push to max the sale price, which in turn would circumvent the whole reason for developing your auction house.
    • Like x 2
  9. StillDeathern Dedicated Player


    This guy/gal gets it.
    • Like x 2
  10. Knarlydude Loyal Player


    The PS server was at least twice as high as the PC server when the merge happened and the prices have been going up ever since. What thought was weird was that I always heard about a the money exploit but never saw it until after the merge with PS. It wasn't until after the merge that I had a number of new ( to me ) PS players I made trades with ask me if I wanted the money exploit. Maybe the PC guys were more discrete because they are an older group of players. Who knows. One thing I do know is that PS players are more brazen but that could be an age issue as well.

    Then on top of that. PS players complaining about gold bots but not a word is mentioned about players selling PSN cards for in game cash. :confused: These two things are one and the same. :confused:
  11. StealthBlue Loyal Player

    As some have hinted at, the biggest problem is that money is generated in game (cash rewards, items sold to vendors, etc) faster than it is removed from the game (through vendor purchases, repairing gear, broker fee, etc).

    Early on in the game, vendor prices increased with every tier (or episode). Due to the cash cap for premium players (which weren't in the original design of the game) vendor prices for many items have been capped at $2000, while we continue to get more cash as we progress in the game.

    The best plan I've heard to combat inflated broker prices involves removing the cash cap (or at least changing how it works). Vendor prices could then increase with each episode by the same amount as the cash rewards increase.

    Just look at how much you get for selling different level plans to the vendor. Tier 1 gives around $1000 per plan, while plans from recent episodes give over $23000. So it takes 2 early plans to buy a piece of gear, but a single recent plan almost gives you enough cash for 12 pieces of gear. Plans aren't the only place you get cash, but each place likely scales in a similar fashion.

    Don't get me wrong, there would be some details to work through, and some issues to resolve to implement this.

    I suppose another option would be to not increase the cash rewards every episode, then we have a flat rate of money entering the game that more closely matches the money currently leaving the game. So a t1 item would cost (or sell to a vendor for) the same amount as the most recent episode version.
  12. Brother Allen Loyal Player

    People will just buy and sell directly and not use the broker if there was a cap. If the Devs zeroed everyone out, there would still be gold sellers, it would just take a small amount of time for them to make $$ and once they did they would adjust their prices of gold to match the economy and demand. I remember back in the first year of the game seeing gold sellers and back then it was like $1 per million or roughly that price because you did not require a lot of money back then. Current cost for gold is far less since the population requires much more. There were FAR less of them but they did exist.

    In the end, the reason gold sellers are so prevalent now is because of the time capsules. It gave people a reason to buy from them, so they could have the nice new shiny things without having to dump a stupid amount of money into time capsules. It was a double edged sword so to speak for Daybreak. Hear people complain about gold sellers or make a ton of $$. For Daybreak I'm sure it was a easy choice to choose the profits from TCs.
    • Like x 2
  13. Hraesvelg Always Right


    Well, that would have been a relatively easy thing to fix. What happened was that the "money generated" wasn't from actual in-game actions, it was caused by some delinquents printing up a lot of undetectable counterfeit money. So now we have tons of funny money floating around. Things are still RELATIVELY sold at their respected values, but the inflation has caused those numbers to be in the millions. For a somewhat real life example, take a look at Zimbabwe.

    The thing is, this whole hullabaloo is mostly just sticker shock. The rare things will still sell for a lot compared to non-rare things, it's that comparison that's the issue. If a rare is selling for 200 million now, and a common is 1 million, then having a common for 1,000 and a rare for 200,000 IS THE SAME RELATIVE difference. It's still 200x the cost of the first item. Like in real life, you've got to have something that someone with money wants, and then negotiate with them to get what you think it's worth. And something is only as valuable as what other people will pay for it.

    The people spending "all day working the broker" are STILL going to spend all day working the broker, putting in the time and effort, and reaping the rewards. And those people that do start selling things for 200,000 to each other, and leaves out those with 1,000...we're back at square one. The things people want are finite, and capitalism in a basic system like this is the most efficient way to distribute the finite resources. Markets create imbalances that capitalistic people then fill.

    I didn't money dupe, but from the results, I've sure sold stuff to people that had, then I parlayed that into more profits, etc. Wash, rinse, repeat. Welcome to the big show.
    • Like x 1
  14. Proxystar #Perception

    The risk of bidding on your own item is obviously that you might win your own item. Also the system could surely have security in place where you can't bid on your own items.

    You could make an alternative account, but that'd be pretty desperate.
  15. StealthBlue Loyal Player

    Some of the glitch money has been removed already, though not all of it. If the issue was purely the money glitch or TC glitch (both of which have been resolved), prices wouldn't keep increasing so much for the rare items. Just earlier this year weren't the ultra rare collections going for sounds $90 mil? Now they are going for $200+ mil. There wasn't a glitch during that time frame either.

    The base game cash flow is broken, fixing that is the first step to repairing the damage done from the glitches. Right now cash is entering the game in legitimate means to cover broker fees for high proceed items, and then some. If the normal cash flow of the game no longer supports those fees, prices will slowly drop.

    Sure, rare and highly sought items will still be expensive, but you did forget something in your comparison. When the rare items were around $90 mill, the commons were around $1 mill. Now that the rare items have inflated to $200 mill, the common items are still around $1 mill. Almost all of the inflation over the last year has solely been on the rare items. All other items have remained at relatively consistent prices.
  16. StillDeathern Dedicated Player


    So you would get your own item and your own money and just pay the fee... just like now if the item fails to sale or if you buy it back.

    Security couldn't work, for the reasons you state, many league mates of mine have multiple accounts for example, my wife plays, what would stop them from login in and bidding, or in my case, my wife bid it up to a level I readily accept?

    No security can fix or stop that.
  17. Dene Prince Devoted Player

    Make cash account bound but not tradeable.. gold sellers would die ... but then so would cash transactions in trade chat :(
  18. Proxystar #Perception

    That's how any auction functions though, what's stopping Ebay from collapsing under the weight of potentially fake bids?
  19. Caesar's Lion Dedicated Player

    DBG (don't like saying the devs as I don't hold them responsible) have no more inclination to do anything with how the broker works than they do to remove feats from TC's/super rare items. 1 feeds the other. 'Fixing' the broker means they lose cash on TC sales & RB's. Hard to attain is the intention.

    Sad but true.

    If I was to suggest a change I'd implement a feature where I can post how much I'm willing to pay for an item (like an in game Metro exchange). Anyone who has said item can see how much me & others are willing to pay & if it meets what they want for it, deal is done.

    Also, imo any attempt to reset everyone's cash to zero would be met by a rarely before seen exodus of committed players. Every penny I've got in game I've got legit, it comes from grinding & a circa 4 year unbroken sub.
    • Like x 2
  20. Proxystar #Perception

    I don't think resetting cash is the answer either.

    Realistically too me this is just about making improvements to the broker environment.