What are some ideas from the SoE staff to address the unbalance of plat incoming vs outgoing? What do you guys think about some of my ideas? Either having items for sell in game for plat on vendors or having some sort of MP item which unlocks things to be bought for plat in game? I understand some of these items can possible take away form MP sells. But i am sure you guys can come up with other creative ways to sell different things on the MP. I am guessing that you guys too understand the issues with platinum inflation. There really needs to be a way to get plat out of the game rather than only shifting hands of the player base.
Except that inflation doesn't mean time is worth less, it means that current platinum holdings are worth less. If all prices rise by 50% then a player gets 50% more for TS drops, attunable items, Krono, PL and other services. It most likely has either no or a positive overall impact for the returning player that inflation means 50kpp for a stack of Sunshard Ore or 1mil for a Krono. People playing the game and acquiring new items sold to other players benefit or at least keep pace with inflation. Rewarding people for playing your game is a pretty much flawless idea. Time spent clearing Sebilis limited by repop and selling gems to vendors is devalued but if Sebilis was still the best way to make plat something is horribly wrong with your game that you've failed to make more fiscally desirable content in 14 years and 19 expansions. Rewarding people for purchasing access to and playing in your most recently developed content is also pretty much a flawless idea. Furthermore if you need to earn plat to catch up to your friends, they aren't friends. Just check your parcels and/or accept the group invite if they are friends. Having friends is pretty much a flawless idea in all aspects of life.
The team is already looking at this, and be on the look out for things in-game like "Shadiest Swashbuckler" (additional info coming soon) which should help a little bit in this regard. Feel free to continue to share your ideas in this thread. As mentioned by other posters, anything that doesn't cannibalize sales from the Marketplace is a better idea for the health of the game. These two things aren't exclusive to each other. It can be both. This assumes that all players who are trying to make money in game are farming TS drops and attunable items. That won't always be the case either.
I must admit I almost never use the bazaar, so the plat sinks to me are the same as they have been for some time: 1. Augmentation distillers. 2. Type 3 augs 3. Rank I spells/disciplines. 4. Armor components 5. Summoning stones and portal fragments 6. Mercenary fees (I rarely use these also) It wasn't long ago that they reduced the prices of the distillers significantly. I'm not sure why they did that. From this thread, it seems the best thing they could do for this "problem" is make Kronos no-trade. It seems to be a social-engineering sort of problem where kronos have induced many more people to go farm mobs for plat that they wouldn't have otherwise. As long as I can reasonably fund the items above through normal play, I'm pretty indifferent about what goes on in the bazaar, or how many PP I have in the bank.
Implement a real auction house type system, so that every player has equal opportunity to post their items for sale, that will drop price inflation instantly, literally INSTANTLY! Not all of us can keep a trader or buyer up 24/7 and have 10+ traders up. I've been saying this for years, but the developers don't want to go down this route, was told via PMs. My guess is they would loose a huge chunk of revenue from those 24/7 traders/buyers. Add to that the restriction of 100 slots for your trader, when there are 750,000+ tradable items in game, is just ridiculous. Giving bigger trade satchels is NOT the right solution, as it will just empower the people who have more traders even more. Taxing player to player transactions in all forms i, but it will never sell to the playerbase. Casino would work as long as the items are wanted. Revert back tradeskill items to having no vendor value Revert back augment distiller prices to not being cheap Going forward, make mobs drop less vendor loot Reevaluate mercenary upkeep cost post level 70. Why level 70 and higher? Well, thats when every other mob drops a blue diamond or diamond, or those expansion specific gems that sell for like 400pp to a vendor.
Distiller that makes a No Drop item into an Attunable. Cost 250-500k. You'd get a few items up for sale, and cause people to burn through pp passing few items down WITHOUT going full scale FV tradable route.
That was Ronak's brilliant idea, along with tradeskill items having vendor value, and look where we are 3 years later cause of implementing those ideas.
I understand the worries of cannibalizing MP. But many of the items on MP would be good candidates for implement ion to in game vendor items. Now if you do that then you can easily create new MP items for which have more appeal. Bigger bags, Better mounts, better illusions, better exp potions, better merc contracts. Also, perhaps a lower value MP item to unlock things to buy in game with PP would be an alternative. I am not sure what other items would be good for a vendor to take plat out of the game. Buff potions Rez potions trade skill stuff - would require TS to be of more value Bags - i think the biggest vendor bag these days is 10 slot? Old expansion gear Old expansion spells rk1-rk3 Old expansion augments Gate potions (all of the locations currently in guild hall) Rather than simply giving all AA up to level 85 how about charging plat for them. or some sort of Plat for AA and level up item. Better more pricey camp fire stuff? Better power sources? Old expansion currencies Pay to play special missions/events? Platinum to tribute? I dont know if LoN is popular anymore but buy cards? Purity augs?
Suggestions eh, have a few that haven't already been mentioned, at least in this form: Afterburners, item that boosts your speed to 2-3x bard speed, the catch being it drains 100 plat a second while active. Portmaster Flex: For the exceptionally lazy/poor at traveling individual, he offers ports to zones normally far out of reach, the cost, 1-3k a stone, per toon. Dimensional Destabilizer David: Been trying to find trakanon up but just can't? Wishing you could visit 4 armed named weirdos in Luclin? DDD will hook you up with a private instance just for you and your friends, for a price of only 200k-1 mill plat a hook up. Disloyalty Merchant: Sells many items available from the loyalty merchant, + a few weird ones of his own, for varying prices. New items could include things like bind affinity potions, Fade potions, etc. As a rule, items worth selling are at least 10k plat a piece, and can go up as high as he feels like. Fake Veterancy Certificate Bob: Wish you had some vet rewards, but didn't make your account at the beginning of all time? Shame on you for not planning ahead and just randomly having fun, but that's okay, Bob will hook you up with Vet rewards, at the steal of a price of only 500k per a year, for that toon only. Tributing Tim: Wish you could have more tribute things going, but just can't due to some silly 5 effect limit? Tim can hook you up, offering more tribute slots in both the personal and trophy areas, for a mere 500k a slot. Want another guild slot, special bonus savings there, only 10 M! I realize some of these won't be popular, might be deemed OP, etc, but I'd sure spend some plat on things like these
The armor and distiller cost reduction was aimed at being friendly towards the players who don't farm plat or have huge stores. When I came back during HoT, a lot of the players I was grouping with couldn't afford to make group armor (~220k for a full set afair) and the "progression" way of upgrading T1->T2->T3->T4 wasn't used being of the huge time investment, and lack of groups in the T3 zones. (T1 and grounds were open, if you had access to locked zones, go directly to T4). Aug distillers were a similar issue, I knew people who wouldn't upgrade or change gear because they couldn't pay to switch augs around. I certainly did burn a ton of plat on HoT armor between my main and alt. 2 sets of T4 group, Various t2-t4 raid pieces, plus a set of cultural raid on the alt. So those did work as a plat sink, but they put a lot of stress on parts of the player population that already had a lot of hardships by not being well geared or funded.
Another idea would be to put "Tier 0.5" group weapons and armor on a new expansion vendor, make them NO TRADE and sell them for plat. Tier 1 content would be tuned for classes with this gear. For visible armor drops, these replace the 'template' in the armor combine system with an equip-able armor piece.
I remember they used to have legit plat sinks in game but people complained about it a lot and it got taken away. I remember they used to have aug distiller worth 4k+ but they made it 100 pp now. They used to have expensive armor pieces like up to 30kpp but same people cried and moaned about it and now its maybe 10k pp i don't remember how low it is now but certainly not expensive for just about anyone who can farm an hour a day. So imo it is the playerbases fault for letting people complain about this stuff on these forums and its the devs fault for actually listening to whiners and removing all the plat sinks from the game entirely. Because of this, normal players are literally left with nothing to spend our plat on, outside the bazaar.
Roshen my good man, if you could help implement npc buff casters who, for a high platinum fee, would cast everything from beta buffs ranging to a lower platinum fee for lesser level buffs it would be a good sink that everyone would use. This is something that is a long time coming as quite frankly finding buffs when you need them usually doesn't happen. Keep up the good work and if you can use my surname "Blades" on this npc I'd owe you one!
Ralkor Stoneclaw in PoK sells clarity, haste, and SE for plat. Your merc buffs hp for plat. You want more?
I think I'm forum challenged today. I think I meant to post this originally in this thread, but I ended up putting it in the Nobles thread. ""copy/paste"" If they want a plat sink, they could just introduce one additional prize level in the casino. What if they introduced another (more rare) prize above the Gold Ticket? They could call it a Platinum Ticket. The Gold Ticket is exchangable (sp?) for the 7 or so items that they award, but the Platinum Ticket could be exchanged for 500SC! People would spend much platinum trying to get those tickets. They're more rare, and they take significant time/plats to get one, so a majority of toons either a) can't afford to play until they get one or b) won't bother to take the time involved to get one. The people with neither the time nor the funding to get the platinum ticket for SC will still be buying SC through the normal methods (game card, etc...)...so it shouldn't impact their real SC sales schemes.
Another version of "hey Sony should give us money for playing the game instead of the other way around". Not gonna happen.
How about a single use one size fits all aug distiller (not a perfected) but a distiller that works for any and all non perfected required augs. Or even better (at a high plat cost) a flag or item that if in your possession lets you remove non perfected augs at will with no distiller requirement.
Anything that gives players a way to use platinum to buy something obtainable for SC/USD is a losing proposition for Sony, so there is no point in suggesting that. On the other hand, you do not want to introduce a tax on something already in game, that is a loss in customer relations. This leaves us with introducing new features/plat sinks. Some ideas already tossed around: Master level Mercs at 1k+ an hour Buffbots/static and also placeable in homes, pricing TBA (1k per buff, 100k+ per npc in housing,still have to pay 1k per buff, ie greedy butler) Distillers for no trade items (ie FV lite), pricing 250k+ Distillers for attunable items, pricing 50k+, not a big market but still a plat sink Casino v2.0, you can win BFG, Manastone,Locket of Escape(still expendable, so a great plat sink), Dragon Tooth(that 49 skellie pet), Vox rez stick, Circlet of Shadow, and so on The key for Casino v2.0 is anything that does not break current raiding AND grouping game should be allowed. So if BFG could conceivably make some raid at 80 trivial no big deal, but if it breaks 100 or 105 raids then scratch BFG. Personally I never cared for BFG but if there is a demand for it lets roll with it. Pricing for Casino v2.0 should be adjustable by Sony, tickets might only cost 1k pp per spin, if few spins have been made in last hour or two, but they might go up to 10k+ if everyone is clamoring for that BFG. Of course, Sony should make the odds somewhat rare, so on average items would cost 1M+ to obtain.
I think that this is very much looking in the right direction: vanity items. Hero's forge sets, mounts, weapon & shield ornaments, illusions, rare items that are fun or useful (a Grow clicky for example). We probably don't need more titles; the list I have to choose from is twice the resolution of my screen and I'm not even done with Slayer yet. If you decide to do house items as well, keep in mind that many more players care about the appearance of their character than those who care about the appearance of their homes, so maybe have house stuff in a separate prize pool.
