Stonewood Bow Staff and Plane of War Progression

If you really want to get into it

Price gouging is a pejorative term referring to a situation in which a seller prices goods or commodities at a level much higher than is considered reasonable or fair. This rapid increase in prices occurs after a demand or supply shock: examples include price increases after hurricanes or other natural disasters. In precise, legal usage, it is the name of a crime that applies in some of the United States during civil emergencies. In less precise usage, it can refer either to prices obtained by practices inconsistent with a competitive free market, or to windfall profits. In the Soviet Union, it was simply included under the single definition of speculation.

Since many people are buying them at the higher price, it must be reasonable and fair to an extent.

None of the items were earned in a way inconsistent with a competitive free market. You are not forced to purchase these items. You are very much invited to attempt to earn these on your own. Its tough fighting over 12 spawns with 30+ people? Oh well.

This is simply the market adjusting itself to an item that is fairly rare, suddenly having a very much increased value.

What would you consider a reasonable and fair price?

Well, I did visit PoEarth today, used my key to go in back and farm some steel for the bow cams once I got a stack, went and found a little spot to collect vines, once I had a stack, got all the pre-combines done, and made a few bows for guildies with staff. I am flagged up to doing the bow hand in, but, with everything so hectic, will wait a week or two (maybe longer) to find myself a bow staff. If folk want to be first with the most, they might even give up a kidney for the latest phone, not that I approve of such, but, some folk will do/spend whatever, should a rich person spend a million or so on a car, that is up to them, and the same goes for this flag, and peeps in a rush. There are no tradeskills required by a person to complete the flag as the final item is a no fail, so if folk are willing to buy in at a premium, then so be it, the rest of us and those coming up may or may not get to PoWar eventually.

At least the zone is permanant.

Yeah, this is what I tell everyone who makes a fuss out of it. People are turned into Prisoners of the Moment and get caught up in the initial rush. Best thing to do, is to likely wait a few weeks when everything calms down and then go tackle the zone and the quests etc. Probably be less of a headache then. And also, who knows, perhaps the zone sees a sweeping down-tune by then too along with an alternate route with the Bow stuff.

It's actually called supply and demand, not price gouging. Supply is low so the price will be hyper-inflated until demand wanes.

There is really no issue with them locking it behind tradeskills especially since the item is tradeable.

There is no issue making some of the items needed rare to slow things.

The real issue is funneling the entire population of each server through one zone with limited mobs on a slow repop.

The best fix would be to add the items to mobs in other zones.
The easy fix would be to ramp the repop up to every 3 mins or so.

ya ll are worrying over the bow....dont forget to discuss the camp for the mob that drops the diamond you need for final combine of the bow.

also??? Prices in bazaar will reflect those willing to buy it instead of being patient and just getting the item, I could have jumped on it but waited...bow is made. Your next fight as I stated is the camp you will need in War for the mob that must be spawned that drops the diamond. People were ooc ing 100k yesterday for loot rights on that one.

Bingo.

With the diamond, however, not only can you camp the named but every mob in zone has a chance of dropping the diamond. PH's camped? Go kill other stuff in zone - it may not be as fast, but you have an active option besides KSing or sitting on your thumbs. That's how I got mine.

It doesn't set up the situation you have in PoE where your options are basically to either participate in a massive KS-fest, walk away for a week or month hoping that the demand and resulting anti-social behavior has died down somewhat, or pay a krono to a farmer.


The funnel has created a situation that rewards anti-social behavior. Not good design for an MMORPG.

I have never seen anyone call the devs performance a natural disaster. I would call it a man-made disaster, either way its nicely put!

This seems generally in-line with Luclin/PoP era questing............

5am and people are still sitting on treant spawns in PoE... lovely

The years may have dimmed my memory - but I don't recall any perma-camping of gray con mobs being a part of that era.
-R

No but fighting over spawns was. Guilds having phone trees to call and wake people up to kill a named when it popped for progression. Constant camp stealing and arguments over drops. Its why they finally put in instanced raids.

Guess since its plane of War they wanted us all at War with each other to get in.

There were 6 people in my group. We killed one named that dropped the diamond. We got 5 from trash mobs easily enough. They'll probably be rotting soon.

Oh, if you did a Vex Thal key or two this will seem very familiar. The icon for the bow staff even kind of looks like a lucid shard

They certainly have created a demand shock.

Hard can be good. VT keying was hard - by (besides the raid drop), requiring killing scads of mobs for the shards in multiple zones. You didn't really need to worry about shard-dropping mobs being permacamped. There wasn't much that discouraged cooperative play for the grouping part of the quest.

Making these 10 Arboreans the funnel has instead created all sorts of incentives for actively anti-social play in a group environment. That is bad juju for an MMORPG.

Meanwhile, if the anniversary raid or mission here requires participants to be keyed, given that the number of bow staffs that will drop in a day is about two dozen, SOE has set up a situation where many folks will have to wait until next year to participate in the mission.


P.S. I don't mind price gouging so much - they are simply responding to the incentive structure that has been established. To a certain extent, after plat having had fairly little value for so long with most items being no-drop, it is good to see more of a use for plat again. (Though I wish 500k wasn't the average rate.) Where it is/will be a problem will be people KSing trees to get staffs simply to sell, making it that much more difficult for people who are willing to camp camp. And seeing the guy that had been sitting on 400 Fresh Meat for over 3k for months - or various other commodities at high prices that I see that aren't moving - prices tend to be sticky rather than elasticon my server. The 10-tree funnel will likely make prices for the bow even more so.

The silly part is I was very happy to get a new high level zone to raid and quest in but now after 11 hours of camping (12 now) I have still yet to see a staff drop or kill a mob in POW. So instead of being a happy camper with the new content I am pe-o'd royally. A few things wrong with all this : One the stupid drop rate that the patch that reduced lowbie TS items seems to have an effect on this drop I know It was not this rare a few months ago. Two, long spawn times ..so even with the drop rate it takes forever to get one. Three , The bow needs a tinker to make a lot of it so forces everyone to hunt one down.

Rarity is one thing but this is not an epic flag so to force us to farm in a one shot zone wasting our time and not even making aa's or loot is just a screw you from sony IMO.

So please either fix the drop rate ..make it droppable from any mob in zone and possibly also the spawn times to something more reasonable like the 5 minutes in hot zones

The truth is I expected an emergency patch this morning because of how messed up this is. damn disappointed it did not happen.

This is the definition of bottleneck.

How they thought this was a good idea is beyond me. Have they not learned some lessons over the years on design?

They should have made it that ANY of the Planar bows would be good enough. That way at least some of the population will be spread out.

As is..... it is just horrid design.

It's funny because when people rush into new expansion zones and farm names to make money selling their gear and blocking people from camping mobs so they can make a buck, many people in this thread called that normal behavior. Now it's people being greedy.

Farming sellables from epic mobs so others can't get their epics unless they pay for it is met with the reply to either pay the price for it or try harder. This is classic!

Using information from Beta to learn about the new expansions whether you are testing or not is fine, but using test to do it is cheating or dishonest. I think everyone should get a lesson in hypocrisy for Frostfell this year.

I say put it on other mobs and severely lower the drop rate to compensate. That spreads people out and still requires the work to get in.