I have hunted extensively in the T1 zones of OverThere and Skyfire, and I don't think I have seen a single money item drop like diamonds/blue diamonds. The only drops from trash mobs are tradeskill items that sell for 5-7pp to vendors. Is this an intentional attempt to drain platinum out of the economy or an oversight?
Probably not an oversight as there is no plan to change the bazaar cap. The best way to try and curb this would be to limit the amount of plat produced going forward with new content I guess. As mentioned above go clear a couple of old zones and you will come out fairly well if you know what you are looting.
I think this is the biggest indicator that the Devs just don't play the game anymore...at least at the regular group level. I managed to ding my group 110 last night and took them to Overthere to buy spells. 140k plat for the cleric (he was the most expensive, but everyone else was at least 75k). And that's not even including the new 30k each type 3 augs. When I told my guild this, there were a lot of shell shocked responses from folks. Most of the folks in my guild are the base for EQ..spend money on subscriptions, spend money purchasing heroic characters to catch up, and even buy expansions that they cannot really use right now. They are not power gamers, slaughtering entire zones to farm plat, or master bazaar traders...just players working through quests, grouping with friends and new folks...having fun. But nothing is more discouraging to someone who is working their way through EQ to hear that your spells are going to cost more than you have earned in your EQ playing. Yeah, you can "just buy krono to sell" but if you have been playing the game for awhile at your own place, selling krono seems like a cop-out. You should be able to earn enough cash while leveling to pay for your spells/tomes at the very least. The fact that you can no longer to that and that RoS makes that as horrible as it has ever been is just sad.
I've only ever vendor purchased core spells at rk1. Ones that you cast 200+ times an hour kinda deal. Everything else can wait on rk2 runes to drop from hunting in the new zones.
A dev response on this issue would be swell, since it seems very odd but there's been no confirmation if this is a bug or not.
The "plat sink" crowd has this misplaced conception that everyone is swimming in plat. I don't have enough plat to buy spells and type 3s for all my alts that I play. It's 100-200k for each char, and that's with not buying things I won't ever use. Other than chase loots, they've pretty much removed any and all dropable things which you could hope to sell to make plat from other players. There is no economy beyond chase loots and krono for people that don't want to waste time farming low level zones to accumulate plat. I used to make some selling tradeskill drops to /barter, but with the insane over emphasis on tradeskills these days, I'm hoarding every mat in case it might make it in to some stupid quest line.
Get over yourself Pull the wool from the wolf's eyes Pot calling the kettle black I posted my rebuttle to this nuance on another posting, but when you speak out about harboring diehard members forced, not simply enabled, to out-perform, simply to join your ranks in the best of the best in a game that's intended for recreation, just hurts. It pains me to no end that the existence of such meaningless extents are shoved down our throats to meet qualifications. Sure, understandable applying to end-game guilds is much like applying to a job, but this is not an institution; its a game. My view: Economics. I for one am sick of users selling Collectibles for 100k+, EoK augs (that are only a slighted measure higher than TBM augs purchased with Heroic Adventures) for 250k+, and the latest, greatest items selling off at insanely overpriced amounts. And your dream team, the obvious bread-and-butter of EverQuest, are put off when they are forced to spend a measly krono for some spending monies? I don't dissuade you from what effort you need to put in, the commitment, putting pen to paper in organization, and beyond, but Get Over Yourself
I'm sorry. Really, I am. But am I missing something here? Are people simply this disenfranchised, Or just so extremely full of themselves, that they'll throw anyone under the bus to make them look better?
^this. I'm a raid geared Ranger, money is not an issue - ever. Not every player has as easy a time farming plat. Don't punish the majority of players because of the minority of players like every other MMO does as well. This expansion is a little brutal for more casual players as it is. We need those casual players to continue having the servers on. Let's throw the players a bone on this, k?
Ryanxp, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since it's the holiday season and just assumed you missed something in my message or maybe I was unclear to you. Maybe you had bad shellfish... I am a serious boxer. I may suck at getting things done in game, but I try. I've also been an officer in a large family guild for over 14 years now. The number of conversations I have had with different people in the game (because even though we accept anyone in our guild, we are not the right guild for all folks...so it's nice to be sure what a person is really wanting and direct them elsewhere if there might be a better fit) give me a good perspective on the non-bleeding edge game on the main servers. The base of EQ are the folks who are not at the bleeding edge of the content. If EQ stopped producing content for the next x years, they would still be happy plugging along. They enjoy what has been already produced and have a ton of things on their list of things to do in game. DBG has to do nothing except keep the servers running to service these folks and keep their money rolling in. There are also some casual players. Might log into the game once or twice a week. Might go a month between visits. But they enjoy the game enough to pay for their use of Norrath even though they might not really use the content as much. I'm not sure how many folks that entails across EQ, but I know that we have a fair number in my guild since we are a large family guild. I assume the same can be said for most of the family guilds across the main servers. I suspect there is a population on the progression servers as well. Folks that remember the old days and just want to experience something like that again. New content is going to be the difficulty it is...that's up to the Devs. From my conversations with this group and just reading our guild chat, that doesn't seem to be bothering our folks at least. They remember for every GoD and UF, there was OoW and HoT...and folks caught up. What does raise red flags is the increasing feeling that you need to pay to play (aka kronos for plat)...particularly to catch up if you don't play that often. The little things matter. Like not having enough cash/vendor bait drop to keep yourself going. If EQ turns into what seems to be every other game out there, why play the out-of-date one? Me? I'm riding the EQ train till the servers are shutdown. But some of my best conversations/experiences over the years have been with the folks I am calling the base of EQ. And if they get disenchanted, they will just leave (or simply stop paying). And that would make me sad...and just as important, leave DBG with fewer funds to keep EQ going. Since most of these folks tend to not use the forums or provide direct feedback, I try to make sure that at least their concerns can be seen. And Ryanxp, I'm not sure what crawled up your colon...but I hope it can be removed by Christmas to make your holidays better. It seems like you need more joy in your life.
I don't farm any longer and still manage to make millions a month running my accounts which by the big fish standards I am not even a tadpole in the pond. I stock my traders once a week usually and I rarely ever do a price check. Its really not all that difficult if you have an understanding of items in game. If you are 105+ and have trouble getting plat for the basics there is something wrong. You could easily spend a day farming if you really needed the plat and be set on all of your augs. Maybe I have a knowledge advantage on what trade skill items to sell vs turn into crafted items and sell them since I have been crafting for some time but even still there is a lot of items that sell well in the bazaar that are not directed towards the end game crowd. This game is all about how you choose to play basically. If you focus everything on questing and going after gear upgrades but neglect the financial end of things I guess I can see how this might be an issue but at the same time the guy who is spending more time farming might have lesser gear than yourself so it is a trade off. All in all you should have no difficulty making plat though if you really wanted to assuming you are any where near end game.
It's kinda nice in a way not to have all this generic vendor fodder. I'd love to have no vendor fodder and just have the equivalent of it via coins on kill.
I enjoy your outlook and appreciate the clarity. Unable to read between the lines, I misjudged your leadership role as gloating, along with the statements leaning towards guild membership requirements being mandatory. Maybe I'm just confused with how this all works Personally, this seems like a step in the right direction. With the plethora of expansions, zones, and content, sidestepping with HoT - TBM content to simply buy a 75k spell seems feasible. As a Berserker, the 3 discs given per level are running 3k at most. Augs I've easily already sunk 200k for. EoK had trash for income-based drops, its just RoS is worse. But Collection items and EoK augs are huge on the server I play on, with players paying over 100k to get one collection item, or 250k - 500k for the best EoK efficiency augment for their class. Overboard? I'm under the assumption this credits the monetary value moreso. Hopefully I still get an A for effort on this one... But I really am glad you clarified what seems to remain is badly broken
Cynic that I am, that was my first thought as to why no cash drops. I agree, game design should allow you .
Some of us don't see this game as MerchantQuest. We don't do the whole trader thing. We don't have 30 million platinum. We log in to be heroes in fantasy stories, who don't worry about money but throw gold coins at merchants and buy the bar a round whenever they want. There are different styles of play. Some people who play the platinum game find it easy to have tons of plats. Most just log in to kill monsters and do quests, not to assemble a huge fortune. We don't want to have to scrimp and save, beg and borrow just to have enough plats to buy our spells and make armor from the drops off of mobs. The strength of EverQuest has always be to accommodate all play styles. If EQ wants to limit the game only to those who enjoy and spend time accumulating in-game money, then they will lose the rest of the player base.
So the complaint is that vendor trash does not drop so now people cant afford their spells and type 3 augs.. The expansion is what, 4 days old? If you didnt have the money to buy spells before the expansion came out, how is this Ring of Scales fault? They did drop vender trash loot previously, so if you do not have enough money for spells for this expansion that is the result of poor planning or lack of effort in previous years. Just what in the world are you spending plat on? Just like in real life where you should not buy a big screen TV if you cannot afford groceries, the same principle applies to EQ. Do not spend money on ornaments and chase loot if you cant afford spells. I think its safe to assume that people that do not have plat right now, would still also have no plat at the start of next years expansion, whether ROS dropped vendor trash or not.
Long term planning for the future is important in a game that has lasted 18 years. We don't like the trend we are seeing toward having basic items expensive with no source of income other than playing MerchantQuest. Really, they need to lower or remove the cost of spells and armor components. But if at least the mobs were dropping cash items there would be some way to pay for them besides concentrating on just making money, rather than adventuring. Some of us play EQ for the exact reason that we can forget about having to worry about things like money in real life. We play to get away from real life. If we wanted to have a game just like real life, we wouldn't play EQ.
Sorry, this is garbage. Plat flows like water in this game. I barely play outside of raids anymore (lucky to put in 2 hours a week of actual game play, heck, only played for 3 total hours other than raids since ros came out, so only 108 atm), but I've banked 3 stacks of diamonds and blue diamonds in the past 2 months. If I had sold them, that is around 700k plat. Just loot stuff. I don't care if they add in more cash drops, its a reasonable request, but don't do this pity party "help me! I can't afford to eat!" stuff. If you are in a position to use RoS spells and type 3 augs, you are in a position where you should have had plat anyway, unless you just leech exp from other people so never loot. And that is a you problem, not a game problem. Wouldn't shock me if it was on purpose though, as they are on a kick to "fix" the game (as it sinks into oblivion slowly) rather than make it more enjoyable for those that play. I half wonder if their overlords at daybreak are forcing them to provide quarterly/yearly plans to make the game more marketable to "new" people, and the devs just go along with it rather than pointing out that there will never be more than a handful of those at this point.
