Normal game play being actually going out there and exping doing quests. Yes bazaar/barter is part of the game but the game wasn't built around that being the regular part of the game. And what I actualy said and did not imply is that many botters are running multiple toons they are playing with purely through kronos. They do little work to actually gain their plat and by little real work I mean other then setting up their bot software. They are not even spending their active time int he bazaar or barter making the plat. I feel (this is an opinion here) that it also makes them willing to pay more plat for krono so they can keep botting. And the new progresson servers have NO ONE who has amassed plat over the years but they are major krono transaction locations. These botters affect the price of krono across servers since krono are account based.
I have to disagree. If he has controlled the markets as extensively as he says I do think its a morality call. From what he says he has had a massive affect on his severs economy. Been running a guild 16 years almost and I have had a rule in effect from the beginning "we encourage all sorts of game play as long as it is not negatively impacting the game play of others". Now without being silly and saying camping a named is a negative impact I would say controlling a massive portion of a servers economy would be a negative impact. That being said I would have expected someone to make far more then 400 million plat by doing that so perhaps the claim is exaggerated. And I can't really imagine a sever with several people being that aggressive in the bazaar/barter system. On my server I see certain people try to control the krono market or other very small groups of items but no one seems to be bothering to try and control vast amounts of the items being sold in the bazaar. The argument that if I don't do it then someone else will isn't really the best excuse. All that being said I don't think DBG needs to be doing anything other then let the system run. The plat any have amassed will continue to drop in value unless invested in krono. And thats okay too.
I understand your point. The bazaar pricing does reduce the enjoyment of other players. I am just cynical about human nature, I guess - I would expect someone else to step in. I expect people to live down to whatever incentive system is in place. On Povar, there are two major players in the materials I need for tradeskills, with a couple of others who will drift in and out for a few months at a time. In my case, I would hate to imagine what would happen to prices if one of the two major players dropped. As for 400 million plat, dunno, depends on how many pots he puts his hand into. If someone worked to monopolize every possible market I would expect more plat, but if someone focuses on just a few niche markets that he/she/it knows well - in this case apparently glowing briny's - I can see 400 mil. For me, I've earned about 20 mil over the last year, about 80-90% earned from tradeskilled items and the rest from selling drops I've collected - no reselling. The tradeskilling I focus on just a couple of items; I am sure that I could get more by working on more items and/or doing the reselling game, but I don't want to spend the time. I can see Kravitz focusing on Briny's and 1-2 other items, ignoring the rest of the market, and calling it a day, in which case 400 mil sounds plausible for wildly successful trading in a few select items. After all, if you are making plat to buy kronos to support your playtime (as opposed to those engaging in RMT to augment income), how much do you need? Why bother dabbling in more than a handful of items?
/mindblown I just returned this week after a few-month hiatus (story of my EQ career). Last night I sold a couple stacks of TS mats to someone advertising in general, for 100Kpp! That's a huge haul, to me, and puts me over the 500kpp level for the first time. 400Mpp? My hat's off to you Tat
Its not just spell runes, its CotF and TDS rares which I buy for about 1 to 1.5 million each in buyer and flip them for 4-10 kronos.
Yeah, but those come in at a pretty slow rate - nice bonus, but not very predictable. (I am agog at the folks offering to buy stuff for one mil - that they get enough takers that they keep offering it. One born every minute, I guess.)
This was originally a role playing game. It was intended that some people chose the merchant route. He has gone a bit extreme with the number of accounts and such, but playing a merchant is normal game play. I'll give you that the game has turned significantly from its role play roots, however.
In every game with a player economy, there are players to whom the market IS the game. They're part of the community just like raiders, groupers, casuals, and socials. They don't need much content or special considerations, just that the game support having some kind of economy.
This is rather a silly statement to make considering there is a currency for players to trade goods back and forth from the first day the game was launched. And then added the bazaar/barter system went Luclin went live 3 years after launch to alleviate the Commonlands player run system. Like I said, just cause it doesn't constitute normal game play in your mind doesn't mean you are in the right to consider it not normal. Your vision of what constitutes normal play doesn't matter when its being defined by the developers.
In the same way your, or my opinions (or those of developers if players walk away from the game rather than embrace conditions in it) aren't truth either. Devs can decide if price gouging in the bazaar is tolerable fun times or game wounding anti-social behavior. Devs can decide if there are enough plat sinks in the game or if Timmy Player's 50Kpp savings are too much in contrast to Tommy Tycoon's 25 Krono 100Mpp bazaar distorting fortune. (Plat sinks are a regressive tax imposing the greatest burden on those who can afford the tax the least <- sweeping generalization. A 25K pp/day plat sink wrecks Timmy and leaves Tommy Tycoon untouched.) You don't achieve a healthy economy by impoverishing the poor and leaving the impossibly rich relatively unscathed. "Let them eat dirt (while we eat roast peacock and charge 100 Francs for a loaf of bread in our bakery)" doesn't work over the long haul.
LOL you are reading far too much into what I said. When I say normal game play I mean regular average mainstream gameplay. I am not insulting bazaar play. I am not saying playing the bazaar itself is evil. I am saying that for most players the bazaar is just a place to occasionally buy or sell things while they go around exping and levelling. I also seem to recall the barter system going live much later then the bazaar system. Maybe I am misremembering. And simply having a currency system does not mean that VERANT meant buying and selling to be the main gameplay in Everquest. To even imply that is SILLY. I think it is very clear that levelling, killing monsters and doing quests was intended to be the main or regular or normal type of game play. I am sorry the word normal offended you because it obviously struck a chord. But yes it is more usual for people to play the game by killing monsters. leveling and doing quests then it is to playing the bazaar game.
It's SILLY for you to assume that. They meant for people to play the game however they desired within the frame work of the virtual world. Merchants and trade skillers were an integral part of the game and immersion. You could easily get to level 50 without ever doing a quest (and many did). Adventuring, killing, questing, trade skills, merchanting, etc were all different games within the larger game. People did what suited them and often specialized. This was designed as world to fill with a diverse population of people contributing to the society in different ways. It was never meant to be a one size fits all experience. Although today's game is more and more moving people that way (trade skills required for various quests; quests required to access content (progression); smaller, less immersive content with little exploring; cookie cutter loot; unique class abilities being farmed out; etc).
Very true. While it boggles my mind sometimes that some long time players have so little plat available, traditional plat sinks (armor costs, distillers, ect) hurt them extra hard. Bazaar prices just shuffle plat around, and you can always go hunt instead of purchasing. Things like distillers and swapping augs affect everybody. And hurt some people alot more than others. (Usually the EQ equivalent to the poor)
The solution isn't to implement a "tax" through merchant vendors, but to implement a tax every time a player-player trade occurs, whether it be trade window, trader mode, buyer mode. So the shuffling around of plat from player to player has a cost to it. At the same time there should be a upkeep cost to keep up your trader or buyer.
Aug distillers are dirt cheap compared to what they were years ago. I'm one of those long-time, always poor players, and I don't think distillers are an issue at all. As to the rest, I just do without. If you're >that< casual (like me), none of the very expensive Bazaar items are absolutely necessary. Tat
Would require that every single No Drop item in the game have a duplicate of it made that some new one time tradeable flag (not to be confused with Attuneable). In other words, never going to happen. As for the whole Loyalty point discussion: F2P earns a max of 30 Crowns/week; starting out at 0 with velocity increasing every week that you actively play. Silver earns a max of 60 Crowns/week; starting out at 0 with velocity increasing every week that you actively play. All-Access earns a max of 120 Crowns/week; starting out at 0 with velocity increasing every week that you actively play. Everyone is capped at a max of 5800 Crowns, but in order to reach that you must be able to accept that weeks payment in full. So if you are All-Access, at full velocity, and have 5690 Crowns then you will not gain anymore crowns until you buy something from the Loyalty merchant; while I Silver could get 1 more payment at full velocity, and a F2P could get 3 more payments at full velocity. As for the whole "Tax on Trades" they have tried that before; it blew up in their face big time and it was nixed before it even made it to the live servers. They instead came out with the convenience fee for having your /bazaar items delivered. I don't know of anyone who has used it knowing that they had to pay the 10%, unless they had delivery vouchers to use in place of the fee.
Some excellent ideas here, and imho this definitely needs to be addressed. The bazaar market is stagnating to a ridiculous extent atm.
