Doing this is a good idea, but not enough for it to matter because a lot of people just don't use this stuff. It's all fluff really and does not improve your character at all like armor or gear would. I still think we should make commonly used items more expensive that way everyone is forced to spend plat on it. A true plat sink is something everyone is forced to do, and not something that is optional like this.
Vanity items are not a valid plat removal system. If you can avoid spending the plat, it no longer acts to remove plat from the game. IE: housing, mercs, potions, tribute, etc... Current things that actively remove plat from the game and cannot be avoided: armor upgrades (non-crafted), augment distillers (varies) Really, there is nothing which forces a player to spend plat aside from each expansion's visable armor set. The difficulty in choosing a plat sink is non-exclusion, as Roshen was getting at (and several others noted). Not everyone has millions of plat. Too high of a sink excludes those people from content. (Especially new or returning players.) To low of a sink doesn't remove enough. Optional sinks only address a given demographic. In the case of Krono, resellers for cash have no incentive to lower the plat price. They farm plat to buy Krono and resell Krono for less than SOE sells them for. There is no winning situation there unless..... If Krono can be tagged for a one time trade only. That will cut the Krono market significantly. Add in a moderate plat sink and the goal will be achieved. VG had and EQ2 has a plat sink you can't avoid. Gear durability. The higher power the gear, the more it costs to repair.
This is a problem that cannot be solved. Even if there were plat "sinks" - you have plat farmers that will still sell plat on the black market on 3rd party websites. Isn't that how it became inflated to begin with? On a second note, it looks like you are requesting SoE to stop making money through micro transactions. They are a business, not a charity - and IMHO - F2P was charitable enough for them. It is not a smart business model to suddenly offer means to buy things from the Marketplace for plat rather than SC. Honestly, how does this work out for SoE? What monetary gains could they have? What monetary losses could they have? You need to answer those questions if suggesting a system like this. On a third note, It seems the Krono costs is the primary reason of this overall thread by the OP. It is like a veiled complaint. The reason that Krono on Firiona Vie are selling for 1m plat is because you have about one to three people with multiple toons & accounts in barter and in trader mode who have cornered and monopolized the market. When Krono were going for 275-300k originally upon their arrival; the same people who farmed plat and run accounts on these 3rd party websites started buying up Kronos using their plat. Month by month, they would then slowly start to manipulate the market increasing the cost. These same people are selling Krono for $7.99 - $12.99 if not for 1m - 1.5m platinum. Unfortunately, because these individuals are controlling the standard of what Krono are selling for, other players just blindly follow and justify selling their Krono for an extremely high amount citing "that is what they are going for now" - birds of feather flock together. Ultimately, to rectify this - you have to have people willing and disciplined enough to sell privately for cheap - 300k-500k; and simply not patronize those who are selling high. Let them sit on it.
There is a fine line between mandatory and desired but not required. High priced aug distillers was a horrible plat sink. High priced armor creation stuff was reasonable but again mandatory as that was the only option. But most of these things were in the game before platinum was so abundant. You need things that enhance the game but do not limit you or require you to use it. You also need different cost tiers of items so you do not exclude people that do not have significant plat to spend. While having items that will suck plat from the money bags out there. You also need things that are not complicated to implement, as we all know complicated jobs often will not get done as limited resources.
Plat farmers are on every single game. Inflation does not come from plat farmers. it comes from to much currency being in game thus lowering its value. I dont care how many currency you add to the game it will still continue to inflate. What will happen if they add a new currency? Plat becomes worthless just like gold, silver, copper. You will see the new currency doping like crazy on new content mobs and the inflation will continue, until we then again need yet another new currency. The only way to prevent inflation is to have a way to remove currency from the game and players hands. Now about MP. again most of the stuff on MP is old junk. You add some of it to the game for plat and you add new more disable stuff to the MP. For example why is 10 slog bags still the only option to buy for plat from a vendor? what is the max bag size the game can physically have? Heck i think the game should sell 20 slot + bags on vendors for 10k+pp. heck sell 32 slot bags for 1-2Mpp and bump MP bags to 40 slot.... Exp potions. sell them for 100k 50% for 30 min. Sell 75-100% exp potions on MP. Illusions. Sell vanilla illusion potions for plat and leave the neater illusions on MP. Mounts- they are currently sold on a vendor. why not make people buy a mount on MP to unlock it on a vendor to buy for PP? Heck you can make all MP items vendor flag items that unlocks the items to be sold on a vendor.
Once again. Optional items will not reduce inflation. Marketplace items are not open for discussion to be replaced by plat purchases. Tying plat requirements to items you directly pay cash for will reduce sales. Taking real cash away from SOE systems will only come internally.
ohh come on, wizards still worry about having exclusive porting ability? if a wizard is trying to make some Plat TLing and porting they might as well go sell ice and Antarctica. That stuff has been dead for years.
I would really appreciate quality feedback. What is the point and just saying NO NO NO NO without trying to engage in a solution to the problem. Or i guess you think there is no problem and we should just add more currency every time one becomes so inflated. You know what also wont reduce inflation? doing nothing. I just reviewed MP items and really most of it on there can stay exclusive to MP. And if put into game for PP then better upgrades could easily be added to MP.
I say "NO NO NO" because an SOE rep already said No to MP items for plat. And I did provide quality feedback in a prior post. It doesn't match your desires so you've opted not to acknowledge it.
Why prevent inflation? Inflation IS a plat sink. True people sitting on piles of pp might not like it that Krono went from 100Kpp to 850Kpp - such things erode their position as pp moguls. But eroding priviledge conferred by luxury purchaces (as opposed to actually camping an item) while maintaining reasonable "necessity" costs for food, beverage, arrows, armor upgrades, aug distillers, etc. is exactly what should happen. Can't buy or gamble for an Improved Mana Stione? Good. As Mr. Smedly once declared - SOE will not sell power. Marketplace ought not sell it nor should the bazaar, nor should a casino. Can't merchant your way to purchased for pp or Krono purchased expansions? Good. Can't buy for $10 an expansion I paid $40 to obtain? Good. This ought to be a, as much as possible. advancement through heroic effort game. Not a I bought 20 Krono with RL money, sold each one for 850Kpp, and used the proceeds to BUY a Mink Cape (ain't I teh coolist evah) game. Prestigious items (powerful or not) ought to be pried out of the cold dead claws of defeated monsters by the person enjoying them.
I'd like a life tap/HT potion for plat. And defensive potion. And mez, FD, lets just farm out all abilities as expendables? I mean.. They can all just "sell ice in Antarctica". It isn't about selling TL's for plat. It us about having that capability right there, at your fingertips, wherever you are in the game.
1) There is no inflation (and actually deflation on aug distillers) on NPC/game mechanic purchased items. Player to player price inflation benefits new/returning players in that any goods or services provided to another player provide vastly more purchasing power relative to NPC vendor or merc upkeep costs. This is the benefit section, "or a positive overall impact for the returning player". 2) If the returning player had a large amount of platinum when they return it has (much) less player to player purchasing power than when they quit. This is the detriment section, "current platinum holdings are worth less". 3) Time spent in the game remains relatively constant in that if prices are 3x as high the new player can most likely sell the Defiant drops they got for 3x as much and then either purchase Defiant gear of their class for 3x as much, "most likely has either no...overall impact" or they use that 3x purchasing power on NPC sold spells and merc upkeep and section 1 applies. It's not at all limited to TS drops and attunable items, the actual resource is time. If you want to participate in the player to player economy in an efficient manner you have to do something which benefits other players. If you could efficiently participate in the player to player economy farming gems in Sebilis then 14 years and 19 expansions of content have been an utter failure in that regard. The game moves forward, this is a good thing. If Level 105 players are doing camp checks in Sebilis because that's the most efficient way to purchase Level 101-105 Rk.2 spells it would mean 20 consecutive expansions have failed to create more desirable content and that would be a disgrace. Inflation is the only thing that obsoletes Sebilis. The Devs haven't addressed Sebilis since nerfing beetles to no longer drop something from the gem table (halfling you crystallized sulfur) 100% of the time many years ago. Players are making sure that it takes more hours in Sebilis to purchase the same items from players and pushing people into new content. Thanks players for moving the game forward. "Time spent clearing Sebilis limited by repop and selling gems to vendors is devalued".
They did not say no. they said it would be a better idea. They could do whatever they want and add whatever they want to MP. if they wanted to make real $$ they add old gear to MP if they wanted too. and the extreme would be to add old raid gear and raid clicky effects to MP. Not really a limit to what they can offer on MP. I am sure they know what does and doesn't sell well on MP. Take the dead items and put them for sell on a vendor and see what happens. I meant to agree with you on the krono issue i like the idea but is it something that can be done easily?. I would think an easier solution to krono would be to have SoE set a plat price for krono by having a vendor buy them. Then the vendor can sell what they buy to others who want them at whatever price SoE thinks is right. The price you would sell to the vendor would be less than it cost to buy from the vendor so you are naturally going to take out some plat for every krono. This is much better than simply having wide open trade market that takes no plat from the game and fuels plat farmers. I also like the idea of gear upkeep; however, i think the implementation would be very difficult and really not likely to happen. That is why i mentioned new upgrade power sources sold by vendor and purity augs sold by vendor. That is a more fee-sable solution to that idea i would think.
apples and oranges. TL is a utility like a general buff. buff for which should also be put into a potion. neither buffs or TL are some sort of exclusive ability. AFK all night long and you have your buffs. annoy and beg people for buffs or TL.. but your going to extreme. Mez/Fade/Defesive yea thats legit abilities. what you are saying is like saying offer wizard ethereal nuke potions... not to mention i say Gate not port not TL. Not port to bind. Not secondary recall. none of those more exclusive abilities. I do play a wizard too and it would not bother me a bit if anyone can gate to wherever i can. I just dont care. its not an OMG cool power ability anymore. The days of sitting in nexus selling TLs is over. I dont think a single wizard hangs there hat bragging they can gate to places..
We should figure out something on which the super-rich will spend their plat so that it leaves the economy but without taxing daily necessities. Maybe big pricetags on buying the rare attunable drops from CotF which are already in game and theoretically attainable but if the price is high enough it won't compete with the bazaar except for convenience at a premium. Don't raise the prices on things like aug distillers or components to make armor. Target the 200 foot yachts, not bread or milk.
First part is a PC way of saying no. In other words: "Any MP changes will be of our choice, move along." Second part won't affect Krono prices as much as Krono sales. Buy it for cash, sell it for a fixed plat value. Buy from vendor at 10% markup. If SOE doesn't set the buy price high enough, krono sales will drop. => SOE income drops. Game economy varies per server. On FV, 250k pp is worth less than 250k pp on Bristlebane or AB or C-T. It needs to be able to adjust to each market accoringly. This can't be done with a single merchant, and would require real resources (EG: a paid employee to regularly manage each according to server economy.) On that aspect alone, it would be more cost effective to apply the "trade once" aspect to the item. (Which could then be used as an aspect on future items)
I'm not talking about sitting in PoK, GL, Nexus, wherever... I'm talking about carrying that power with you wherever you go. It isn't apples and oranges. There is a potion anyone can buy/use to gate, then use GH or PoK stones. You can buy some teleport potions to non-druid/wiz locations via the loyalty merchant. Having the power to go from current location to a given destination does take away from a class, just as farming any other ability out does. (Enter wrath of the enchanters here). It has an impact. One which us not arbitrary by any means. They also have a set price cap around 1024 pp. anything over that would have to have more utility than a vendor gate potion (cheaper from players). To add that desirability, it would inevitably detract from the abilities if the teleporting classes.
Putting gold tickets on the loyalty vendor removed a big plat sink from the game. A new or revamped casino with either some old school gear that's no longer dropped or even some gear similar to the CotF chase items would be a very fun way to spend some excess plat.
This would reduce value of the Krono, reducing the sales of them. People are buying Krono's for a safe way to generate in game cash. There currently are fewer players purchasing Krono's for in game cash than those wanting to use them for 30 days of game play, thus the price continues to increase. Demand is higher than supply available. To decrease the in game cost of Krono's you need available market for high cash items (HH items like ACoF and rare drops in CotF). During HH the prices of Kronos stabilized somewhat, since players needed cash to purchase items they wanted. HH is gone and Krono prizes are rising again. To correct Krono inflation is to create more supply of Kronos (more players buying Kronos), to do that without discounting the price of Kronos is to increase the demand for in game cash. Two effective ways to do this, first create an efficient market for high end items, currently its being transacted via general chat, EC third torch style, which isn't very efficient and the noble solution isn't viable. Second, create cash sinks on luxury items, like my idea of vanity mercs (Master Mercs) with slight increased level of power , e.g. cast rk 3 spells, etc. And make these expensive, min 5k per hour or more, but doesn't impact the general player base. These will create more demand for players to purchase Kronos since there will be reasons for players that want to spend out of game hard cash on items in game. Ruven
