Increase cost of mercs?

it will remove pp from the game and lower prices ? people always complain about lack of groups also x10 cost?

You not able to get Group ?

um no

the cost was set years ago ? when was harder to earn pp?

should be adjusted? also would maybe bring bazaar prices down

Hardly.
Besides, they've gone nuts with spell and armor prices already.
I honestly don't want to be forced to start pp farming again by clearing whole low-level zones.
(an average XPing evening only yields around 3-5k with me keeping any TS stuff)

Again, like character power, there is a huge difference between the top end (rich) characters and the middle end (a bit of money) and the lower end (no money). To design the game around the rich characters is like designing it around the most powerful "uber" raid geared and max AA characters: It means you are telling everyone else to quit EQ.

While there may be "too much" platinum in the game, it is concentrated around a relatively small number of people. To punish everyone for this means you want to kill EQ by driving off the rest of the population.

People don't play EQ to invoke the real life worries about money. We play to forget that. We worry about money in real life, that's one reason we play EQ, so we can have a fantasy life, one that doesn't have to worry about every penny (copper).

My impression is the plat sink crowd is dominated by those that pay with krono. Those people think taking plat out of the world will keep krono prices lower allow them to continue having their game play pay their subscription. The thing is, such plat sinks force the people that actually pay real money to have to start farming plat just to afford in game necessities such as spells, armor and mercs. By placating to the few demanding plat sinks, dbg is putting those that pay against those that don't with the preference going to those that don't (I do understand that the krono were paid for at one time).

My impression is that the only characteristic the "plat sink crowd" shares is a misunderstanding of economies, MMO or otherwise. Inflation is normal and healthy, and rising prices are an indicator of the growing wealth and purchasing power of the average player. Growing wealth and purchasing power means people are happy and winning.

If prices go up, it's because more people have more money. If you don't have enough, you are poor (compared to the average player). Buy a krono or start farming more wisely.

I have been just playing lately, i.e., not farming, not min/maxing anything, just getting quests done, etc. And I find that I barely make enough in drops to pay for my merc. If they make mercs cost x 10, casuals will actually have to search for places to farm plat and treasure to pay for mercs. I don't think there's any good reason for this.

I just noticed the irony of saying that "people are happy and winning" in a thread where the OP is unhappy and not winning. I apologize for trying to invalidate your feelings

To build on what Fanra said above, I think one of the differences between EQ and other MMOs is that EQ continues to build on itself and still keeps old content relevant. As opposed to some games where there is an apparent "reset" when a new expansion comes out, invalidating all previous content (and currency). This means that EQ is a closer analogue to real life than other games. In real life, we don't try to artificially take money from everybody in the hope that other prices will come down for everybody. Money just doesn't work that way

In real life, just like in EQ, prices only drop when you have a glut of supply and not enough demand (and that is not considered healthy, especially if you are the one holding the supply). In general, rising prices are just plain normal and healthy.

so price rise is healthy just not for mercs? explain ?

A small bit of math. J5 Merc at 110 is what, about 240pp/15 min? That's 960pp/hour. Running a box of 3+3, that's roughly 3kpp/hour. In EoK I get a diamond or another ~200pp drop every 3-4 mobs. I pretty much need to kill 43-57 mobs per hour just to break even on mercs. And still need pp for Type 3 augs, tradeskills (a single RoS type 5 aug attempt is 10kpp even if you farm your own conflagrant diamonds).
You double cost of mercs, I would likely be going negative just on them unless I go to slaughter stuff in lower level zones. And wasting time there just to farm plat is not something most with limited game time enjoy doing.

I fully agree. If it wasn't for the platinum bags, I wouldn't be able to play and get new gear, mercs, etc.

In the running for most obtuse post of 2018. pretty much HAS to be a troll.

The 10-minute cost of your merc does go up as you level, already:

~161 plat/15minutes @105
~260 plat/15 minutes @110

But my point is that you can charge as high of a price as you want for the use of mercenaries, but it will still not lower the price of other goods you find in the /baz.

Put another way: the cost of goods is dictated by how much money all the buyers have. Right now, you have very little wealth and everybody else has more than you. You seem to believe that raising the price of something for everybody will somehow lower the price of other goods for YOU. But raising the price of mercs will affect the poorest players the most: they will pay a larger percentage of their wealth to use mercs, leaving the rich even wealthier by comparison.

Also, the richest players/farmers don't use mercs at all. Your idea really would only affect the working class of EQ

I like how you think i dont have pp ? lol just thinkin everyone says theres not enough plat sinks this would be a good one

Sorry, complaining about high prices is usually associated with people who don't have "enough" money. My apologies for assuming anything about your own situation.

But as you can see from the other posts here, not everybody believes there is a reason to have plat sinks

They already have the bayle marcs which are a good cash sink for DBG that many use for merc upkeep also.

Well, this one is good, but the runaway winner was the post about rogues having too big of an advantage with SoS and collectibles