It is an interesting exercise to try to make an economy balanced. I'm glad it's happening in this video game instead of real life (lol), so at least people can maybe learn a few lessons on it without hurting anyone. If they were to make general utilities cost more, then the average no-time player may fork over more money because they'll have to sell a chrono, which will change the chrono market a bit. (hurts most players, helps tycoons) If they were to make a new utility, like mounts used to be, that requires plat then this would make also give plat more perceived value, and gives people a more voluntary reason to perhaps want to sell a chrono. I think this would be the more kind way to go about it. My suggestion would be to sell the ability to double zone, by which I mean if I go into a zone line, I have the option to go to the next zone, or any zone connected to it. Very much a convenience. No one needs it, but I am sure some people would appreciate it. I've saved the economy again.
1: A semi steady amount of plat rolls into the game. People hoard it, because we have nothing to spend it on. Hoards get big. 2: After years of hoarding, they introduce kronos. Now, the hoarded plat breaks loose because you can spend your hoarded plat for your account. Not that you likely need to, subscriptions aren't crazy expensive, but hey, free for some plat you had no use for - yay!. 3. Prices inflate, millions of plat that were hung up on people who had nothing to spend it on now do. It's not new plat. It just isn't being hoarded now. 4. Prices inflate. I give people plat, they pay for my subscription for me. Win/WIn. What's the problem? If you can't afford it plat wise, just pay for your subscription like in the past via $$. 5. There is alot of plat entering the game, and not much leaving, which will cause inflation. But the initial inflation to a little over 1M for kronos I think is the shaking plat loose. Now, where it's creeping up much slower, I think is just plat entering the system. Personally I add about 150k a week to the system, I'm sure many others add more. (by add I mean via non-player sources - 3 raid chests + some trash loot)
there's non boxers on normal (non fv servers) that literally have more than 100 million plat mostly from normal play over 15 years. Just go look at the thread with the nobles many people said how rich they were in that thread. People who are blaming botting/boxers here just have some tinfoil hats.
For the purposes of this thread, how about introducing a single-use combine bag that allows you to take no drop off an item and allow it to be traded. When you click combine on the bag, the item becomes a none: none item (like a pet item) and looses its no drop status. The person receiving the item would then have to put it in one of those bags, and it would revert the item back to it's previous stats. Make the bags sufficiently expensive that it would take plat out of the economy, but not so much that it would not be worthwhile to the player. Say 250k per bag. Or, set up an NPC in the Baz that does the above mechanics for you for 250k per transaction, kind of like what the token vendor did for bags.
OP and a few others suggest that the EQ economy needs to be improved by wringing pp out of the system by creating additional "plat sinks". IF the plat sinks were viewed by most players as near necessities in order to remain competitive they would erode wealth even where wealth did not exist. Players at 50K-1M pp could potentially find themselves unable to meet what they saw as normal monthly game expences - especially if they choose not to toil in 50Kpp/day fields like Beza/Mechamatic Guardian. <- share croppers/peasants/sans culottes. In contrast, those sitting on 25+ Kronos/25M pp change from (perhaps) having more assets than they would ever reasonably spend in game (highly comfortable) to even more motivated to loot everything that drops in their box groups if they even bother to offer you a spot and bazaar price gougers (robber barons capitalists). Inflation is baaaaad? Items declining is value as they become semi-obolete is baaad? Nope. Don't lay up your treasures on Norrath where rust and moths pervade. There should be no mound of treasure great enough that a tycoon can sit on it indefinitely and make no effort except to buy from those that toil and sell to those who toil not. Another MMoRPG has weapons, etc. take damage and need repair. It makes just as much sense to me to have items rust and rot if kept on a merchant's shelf unused. Making items attunable and with must be used within 30 days restrictions would wring some pp out of the economy 8).
Question and suggestion regarding in-game plat for loyalty tokens. First off, why does it cost so much for a bag of plat with loyalty tokens? I know at one point it used to be a little too inexpensive, but over 400 loyalty tokens for 1 bag? I think that's too high. Personally I think between the range of 300 to 350 loyalty tokens would be much better, not everyone can be online 24/7 to get these tokens (if they don't have a trader). I know it's based on how much game time the player is on for, but I was wondering if the devs could possibly reconsider it just a bit cheaper. Thank you.
the rate Loyalty points are given out is not based on how much time you spend online, it's based just on how old your account is. It used to be based on how long you were subscribed but that was changed when FTP came in to just be based on the age of your account. I took a several year break from EQ once, and when I finely logged my accounts back in they had max Loyalty points.
LOL. thats the best way to go insult someone you disagree with. No one on the regular servers have over 100 million plat from normal gameplay. A number have over 100 million but definitely not from what anyone would call normal gameplay. But I like your style use a server that is known for excessive amounts of plat as an example. Fail.
I'm not sure what you constitute normal game play. Playing the bazaar is normal game play from my perspective, and I have 400 million or so. I think most people who have accumulated any significant amount of in-game wealth have done it through playing the bazaar and monopolizing it, not through botting as you are implying.
Yes, velocity increases based on continuous subscription time. It has nothing to do with account age; that's vet rewards.
it *was* based on subscription time, now FTP accounts just accumulate loyalty points at half the rate All Access accounts do, plus the maximum they can have is lower .. I have some FTP accounts that have never been subbed and they have about 4000 loyalty points each Edit - and the other difference is FTP accounts cannot buy bags of plat. I imagine this is to stop people making a thousand free accounts and reaping in piles of plats.
It is perfectly normal game play. I'm sorry you don't feel that way but according to the developers it is, and they've stated that they are happy with that design. Nothing stopping you from putting up that many traders in bazaar either.
Just throwing this out there, keeping in mind low server populations, which prob. means people aren't buying Kronos every month: Even if someone got Kronos for $9, it's still cheaper annually, to have one of the $89 or even, $99 a year subscriptions. Could Kronos be responsible for the population decline, in part? People who are already paid up are more likely to log on on any given night.
I specifically said not FV, FV is a different animal, you could sell 500 arx crystals to the barter and get 20 million plat without even having to haggle anyone.
I don't think 250k plat would pull enough plat out of the economy. Consider that the older COTF rare drops are going for 4-5 million plat worth of krono, more for some of the tank gear; TDS is through the roof. This would certainly make the price of COTF and TDS rares drop. It would likely spread plat around a bit, from primarily just the high-end traders to high-end traders and raiders (selling off old gear). Wouldn't soak off much plat, though. [Not to mention the coding issues, but that's a different issue.]
If one defines 'normal game play' as 'game play as most people engage in it,' then you are certainly not normal. That certainly doesn't take away from your achievement - you have certainly done a most excellent job of playing according to the rules SOE/DBG have set up. Saying this as someone with 5-10% of your EQ net worth (acquired primarily through tradeskilling, however.)
ok, this is for Roshen, and Holly.....lets schedule a meeting for tuesday morning 9:00 a.m...get the team together, read the posts, listen to some of the communities ideas, figure out a plan of attack for getting this done...stop all work on progression servers and get this implemented this week....fly me there if you need someone to give a motivational speech and to keep pushing people on this. Just get this done, please.....
Re: 'morality call,' I think the issue of a 'morality call' would only come into question if one could be pretty confident that no one else would stand up to aggressively make use of the system on his server if Kravitz didn't. I think it's pretty safe to say that if Kravitz didn't stand up, someone else would. My server (Povar) has multiple folks playing just as aggressively as Kravitz is; one standing would down simply reduce the competition facing the others. I do appreciate how he is being so open and blunt about what he is doing and how he is doing it - and i am saying this as someone who hates the insane prices I have to pay for tradeskill items. I agree, but I wouldn't even call it against the spirit of the game. People in real life eventually live up, down, or sideways to whatever incentive system/payoff structure they operate within. This is the one that SOE/DBG has created, intentionally or no.
