Consider admit kronos bazaar + > to 3million platin bazaar

I'll keep it short and sweet (yeah, I know, unusual for me).

1) Kronos aren't an in-game currency that the bazaar should allow
2) It is not within development resources to go beyond 2.1 billion copper, and never will be. They have said as much, many times.
3) You can face-to-face trade Nobles for Krono and other expensive items, that has to be enough for now.

With that said...

I *would* like to see Nobles added as bazaar-able currency type, since unlike Krono, it *is* an in-game currency that has a fixed plat value on ALL servers, regardless of time, era, etc. 1 Noble = 105,000pp.

In the /trader window, you would simply have a new coin type to the left of Platinum where you can specify the number of Nobles. The /bazaar window would have a new column for Nobles as well.

Boom. Done. Now items sell for a certain number of Nobles, Platinum, Gold, Silver and Copper, left to right, where each Noble is worth 105,000pp.

That is the most elegant way to solve this problem without changing the internal storage and data type used for PP/GP/SP/PP (which devs are reluctant to do), and without dealing with Krono's directly, which would be wrong.

But it's certainly not a trivial amount of dev work...and since you *can* already face to face trade these, I can understand why it hasn't been done yet...

Totally agree Tarew. Allowing real world cash (Krono$) into the bazaar would be a horrible thing.

All they have to do is change the Bazaar to work in multiples of silver instead of copper. You raise the limit an order of magnitude and all you lose is the ability to price things less than 1 silver each. How many listings would be effected?

I would say take this to the extreme and change the Bazaar to just operate in platinum only (remove support for gold, silver, and copper entirely), but I'm not sure if there are large stacks of items that sell for less the a 1 plat each.. perhaps on TLP?

The amounts in the bazaar are fine.
What raising the limit will do is enable prices to skyrocket - cause all the plat/krono hoarders will be able to sway the market.
It will quickly make the economy in-accessable for those who don't buy krono - unless you happen to have 50million plat tucked away.

This change would benefit the few who pay to win or have gigantic hoards of pp.
It will hurt everyone else.
This game isn't republican politics, so lets leave it the way it is.

This does nothing to help. Internally, where we can't see it, the game treats 1 pp as 1000 cp. Removing copper, silver, and gold from the Bazaar still does not change the fact that when the code looks at a platinum piece it says, "Ok, this is 1000 cp". That is built into the definition of platinum. You would have to create an new currency, which they did, the Noble.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2147483647_(number)

Since EQ is a 32 bit game, I would guess that this is as far as you can go. They can't make it a 64 bit number.

It's really easy for non-programmers to say "it should be easy to do X".

As a programmer, I can attest, any statement that includes the words simple or easy is not.
This isn't making fun of non-programmers, its simply that programming is a different paradigm for which there is no analogy. If you don't know how it works, you simply cannot understand it by analogy.

The defacto cap on krono prices is an artificial external control on the EQ economy. It serves no purpose other than to help the people who want to buy cheap, fixed-priced kronos: exploiters and beggars. It is anti-capitalist. I'm glad to see so many eq players on these forums are in favor of communist ideals!

DBG's choice to not fix the bazaar's coding issues is not a reflection of the complexity of the problem nearly as much as it is a reflection about how little DBG cares about it: it is not a priority. As long as they are selling kronos, they don't care who's getting the shaft. But I think it's important to look at who is being negatively (and positively) affected by this issue.

In this case, the people at most risk are newer and less experienced PAYING players who buy kronos from DBG to sell in game. Since the value of kronos in plat is now relatively fixed, but the value of plat continues to go down, so too does the overall value of kronos go down (for the original purchaser). The people taking advantage of those players (and who would like to see the prices stay fixed) are long-time players who are trying to play for free or farm kronos to sell on the black market.

So...do we support the paying customers, or the exploiters and the beggars?

Depending on how deeply the tentacles of that code are entwined in the code, it could be a really ugly change. Considering the server stability issues we continue to have, it's not something I think is worth their time to take on. Too much risk for the potential reward.

If, their current data model is decent, a better solution might be to deflate everyone's currency hoards by a factor of 100 as well as reduce the vendor cost/buyback value of everything and the currency loot tables as well. That would turn platinum in to silver and give breathing room. It could wreak havoc on progression servers though where the newbie experience still values copper.

If they raised bazaar to 3 million kronos would be selling for 3.1 million in no time. Just say no to raiding bazaar price limits.

Yes. I wrote my first program in 1970 and have made a living doing so since 1978. I agree, non-programmers are so stupid.

/s

It seems like half the people that play EQ work in IT.

You are not seeing what I am saying. I'm saying make all Bazaar prices based on silver pieces (up to 2,147,483,647) instead of copper pieces. Two things would happen: nothing could be sold for less than 1 silver and the max price would go up an order of magnitude.

But it wouldn't be that hard to do this in the realm of /trader and /buyer only. You are already changing the displayed price plat/gold/silver/copper into a single binary number - you would only have to change the routine(s) that extract/store the price. No other aspects of coin handling would be effected.

It's will never happen, yes. But it's not rocket science.

obviously if you did program (not just wrote a script in high school), you would believe the devs when they ALREADY SAID this is not a trivial task.......
Plus, it would be a change that wouldn't accomplish anything. The plat hoarders can hoard more...?
There is nothing in this change that will promote increased play time.

The technical discussion is completely moot and purely speculative. Have fun, but it's not the real issue. The issue is that DBG does not care about the problem (and it is a problem).

Increased playtime isn't the issue, Krono sales are (purchased from DBG). Leaving the bazaar as it is now means that the value of Kronos will continue to drop on live servers. This means that people playing on live servers will buy fewer of them.

Personally, I only play on live servers. I will quickly jump over to an event server for the shortest route to the prize (if the prize is worth it), but I do not enjoy playing in decade-old content. I do not play on TLP servers (which are not directly affected by this problem).

DBG missed a huge opportunity by hiding the Artisan's Prize behind ancient expansion progression. I would have happily spent lots of kronos to buy the seals from other players and get the prize, but I still can't be bothered to sit and wait for a trivial mob to spawn every 3-4 days. And now, thanks to the broken bazaar, my kronos continue to buy less and less every day.

I still don't believe the issue is about technical ability:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/28977587/is-it-ok-to-use-64bit-integers-in-a-32bit-application

There are really a few things that can and should be done:

1. Create the check system from Ultima, you essentially write a check for an amount of money to purchase a product.

2. Velium Pieces, this was brought up many years before as a way to further. Right now might need to have one or two more place values beyond this to keep inflation down.

3. Building in a new economy that integrates new ways of sucking platinum out of the system.

The bazar, barter, etc lowers the cost of transactions in game via automation. Demand and supply can still set a price above the current limit, with the added transaction cost of buyer and seller encountering each other. The idea that DB is in any way obliged to commit resources to investing in expanding the automation engine to cover larger transactions is deeply flawed.

Arguments against such an automation engine expansion are:

The main purpose of krono is to generate a revenue stream from players that do not have adequate means to pay, but can generate in game goods that they can sell to more affluent players for krono. It has the added benefit of keeping a lot of dedicated players in the game, building community, and benefiting the game in general. The efforts to pay for a krono has to be manageable for a single player, taking significantly less than a month.

Anything that can risk this balance is a risk to the player base and to revenue. If a player can no longer afford krono via his efforts, the player base shrinks. This shrinkage will not necesarily be reversed when demand for krono drops, because it is no longer being consumed

Any plat-for-chase loot transaction can still be set up outside automation via in game or outside game social media channels. This true transaction cost slows down mudflation.

And yes please to more PP sinks.

I don't believe the threat to the free-to-play community is as important as the threat to the paying community.

Except the free to play community using krono are no longer free to pay but paying members. Whether the money comes from the player using the krono or another player is irrelevant.

You might argue that the players with lots of money would take up all the krono slack if suddenly prices ended up being 4 or 5 million plat due to bazaar price limit increases. That still ends up being worse for the game and the community at large because fewer players overall is bad for the game.

Arguments for bazaar price limit increases only server those with lots of plat and those wanting to play the RMT game.

I am part of the "paying" community and there is no threat to me by leaving bazaar sell limits where they are. There is no threat to you either. Let's face if those who can afford super high bazaar prices are not at threat by anything. High in game prices do benefit those into RMTs and also those who use unnamed prorgrams for farming stuff. I would suspect supporters/users of those programs are more likely to conduct Real Money Transactions for profit and more likely to want to see higher in game price limits.

I have no problems making money with the current bazaar price limits. If you are a smart fellow I am sure you have no problems making money. I have no problems getting krono when I need the and I am sure if you want them you would have no problem getting them.

Let's face is as the bazaar is now as the game is now if you want concentrate on making in game money its doable. Not everyone is in to that nor should they have to be hard core into making in game money to have a chance at affording krono.

RMT people not as interested in the game as making RL cash want ways to farm game items with little effort at all and minimum amount of time playing. They always want to be able to convert the farmed items to commodities useful for RMT transactions with minimal effort (i.e. putting up a bazaar seller). I think the speed bumps a 2 mill baz limit places on legtimate players making in game money soley for in game reasons is well worth it if it makes conducting RMT business more difficult. Will people still make RL money off the game? Sure. If they are determined enough it will happen. But no reason to make it easier.

The other issue is that as all are not into making big money in the game there has become a very large wealth differential. Doing anything to increase this is not good for the game. The closest we come to new players are returning players and pricing them out of the bazaar is not a good thing.

Anyone who has made tons of plat in game and complains about not having anything to do with it has no one to blame by themselves. Before they made all that money they knew there was nothing to spend it on.

LOL nice try.

I've seen you do better than that. Can you elaborate some?

The plat price of kronos in-game is always dictated by the player base. "Rising prices" are a sign of
a healthy and active population. "High prices" is a subjective term used by people who struggle to afford things that people with more wealth can afford. The price only goes up as high as people are willing to spend on them. If the player in question can't generate enough plat in a month to buy their krono, it is because they can't keep up with other players.

It is empirically silly to think free players have a significant, direct impact on the revenue stream to DBG which keeps the game alive. Lot's of indirect benefits, like making it easier for returning players, but if those returning players don't spend money (on kronos, subscriptions, marketplace drivel), they aren't helping the game in the long run.