A TTL on Kronos should have been in from the start... It doesn't eliminate duping, but it would make it more difficult for the duper to manage the stock, as well as limit the usefulness of selling them by RMT websites.
I agree with this completely. One always has the option of paying real life money to DB and buy a krono. Some folks can't do that but have more ingame time and can pay play money (plat) for the krono which allows them to become full members with all the perks for absolutely FREE. What I'm seeing here is some folks (obviously not all) think that they should not have to pay that much play money, which is quite easy to accumulate these days....they don't like the prices on the broker...well then don't buy them. Obviously it is something many folks are buying or they wouldn't be on the market at that price. Nothing in life is free, there is always a price be it time, action, or real life money. In essence if no one pays play money on the broker for krono at the current price then they will go down. Supply and demand. Can't blame the seller for making a smart move and selling for what the market can withstand. This is a service that allows folks who really can't pay real life money a chance to play the game and receive all the benefits of full membership for no real life money output. Again, we are not the problem, the problem is the third party sites and the players that purchase from them. Again, supply and demand. If players did not EVER purchase from them, they would not exist. My question is that if you can spend real life money with them, why not spend real life money with daybreak and get what you need. But trying to lump legit players into the pile of scammers is just flat out WRONG. Trying to keep legit players from being able to purchase krono or limit their purchases is again wrong. After all we are spending our own real life money with the gaming company. Completely legit. Don't like the play money prices, don't purchase.
Short Version: Someone who purchases Krono from DBG purchases it at the DBG asking price(s). Anyone with the funds can buy Krono from DBG. Someone who purchases Krono from a player purchases it at the players asking price(s). Anyone with enough in game coin can purchase Krono from a player in the game to avoid spending real life currency in the DBG store. Anyone wishing to buy from 3rd party sites does so at great risk for little savings when you take that risk into perspective.
GASP! Nooooooooo /flood market *3rd edit because the idea keeps festering, Even starting the rumor that they are going to put timers on Kronos would send the value of them into a tailspin For those of us who are taking an extended break from raiding and current content who have invested our resources into them it would be GG.
How about no. The above idea is so bad, it would do the reverse of what it aspires toward. As it is, DBG sells Krono in lots of 1, 2, 5, 10 and 25. The idea above instantly rules out 60% of their sale options. And what is the incentive for DBG to limit the rate of which they can sell Krono? To satisfy people who can't afford a subscription, and have a hard time making plat in EQ2? Does not seem wise. Imagine it now, DBG to player "No, we don't want your $400+ for 25 Krono. You can only buy three! Additionally, they will only sell for a minor amount of plat on the broker! You should be so happy with this service!". That is what the idea above amounts to, and it is beyond bad. You appear to be fixated on the mentality of the final user, the person who redeems the Krono for 1 month of game time. What you need to consider, is that is only a fraction of the reason Krono was introduced. When it comes to Krono, the most important people in the eyes of DBG, are the people who buy them from the DBG store. And when Krono is selling for a high plat value in game, there is more incentive for people to purchase Krono from DBG. DBG does not care who ultimately redeems the Krono, that is just an inconsequential end to the process. Limiting the amount of Krono someone can have, thus limiting the rate people can buy Krono from DBG, will not help their sales of Krono on the DBG store, it will hurt the sales. It will also drive in game broker (plat) prices up as supply is even more limited. While I understand your idea was intending to help the hapless souls who are too poor to afford a subscription, and too poor in EQ2 to afford the plat to buy Krono from the broker, you would only be digging a deeper hole for them. Supply and demand ultimately dictates the price of a product. While people can play market games with Krono, just like they could with rare harvestables over all EQ2 expansions, they are still only worth what people are willing to pay. If people aren't happy with the in game broker price of an item in EQ2, they can suck it up and go and acquire the item from the source.
I think they just have to stick a hard cap on the selling price and be done with it, you can make what you will about free market rubbish, but the reality is that no one realistically is going to pay 10k plat to play the game each month. The only people who are going to buy it are the people who are buying low selling high. They won't get less from people using them as people will only be using them to play the market, however the price will increase and be out of reach of the majority of the player base. It won't fall due to the market playing people. It hasn't yet.
Really would be interesting if its only a handful of people playing the market like this in a little pyramid scheme. Will finally be funny when there is a last man standing with a pile of kronos and no one to sell them to.
Fix the Dupe that is flooding the market with plat and this is all taken care of. You know the one DBG
I think they did - have you noticed how the spammers that have been making it through the filter (report spam people, click the name, then select report spam, it doesn't work unless more people start doing it) are now asking over double what they were a month ago? I would put money down on it that those spammers weren't opposed to using every bug they could find, and that them doubling what they ask for the same amount is a clear sign that something got fixed somewhere.
Dwindling down to the two types of players that can afford them. Exactly what they want. That way everyone is forced to pay the actual sub so the money directly goes to them. Some people may even be *smart* enough to throw money at the 12 month sub. The whole picture is there. It has been, just recently have people noticed the lack of attention/enforcement to the real problem here and become extremely careless. When it rains it pours......
The spammers are still in game because DBG have done nothing to get rid of them. They are account holders that are selling plat and krono in channel. As another player has already found, if it was you or me doing this crap we'd be banned, SO WHY HAVEN'T THE PLAT SELLERS? Are they selling duped krono? Probably. They are also still selling krono at half the price DBG is. If it is duped DBG are not seeing one cent of probably half the krono sold in-game. The plat sellers are not idiots, they'll sell it for the max they can get for it. Nothing has been fixed, and if it has, it sure as hell is not obvious to me. Suddenly after 10 years of playing this game, with no plat spam in channel, we are bombarded every bloody day WITH THE SAME MESSAGE, yet it still gets through the so called spam filter. Smed claimed that it required 10 unique reports to do anything about them. Cool, but wait, they're still there, EVERY DAY but Smed has gone, probably tweeting about some **** I guess. They are losing money to putrid plat / krono / oh and MAX LEVEL green adornments don't forget, but still they have done nothing. They are also losing players due to this ****, but still it's not worth a Dev comment.
Obviously it is something many folks are buying or they wouldn't be on the market at that price. Nothing in life is free, there is always a price be it time, action, or real life money. True someone is buying them and that would be plat seller's, which is driving up cost's because less kronos on the market = higher price because of demand.
The problem isn't Krono. The problem is the amount of plat floating around EQ2's economy. The few plat sinks there are aren't removing enough plat. Until some really effective plat sinks get implemented the price of just about everything is going to continue to creep up, with high demand items going for ever higher amounts. Nothing new really. This has needed to be addressed for years now.
What if they put a limit on how much plat FTP could trade/spend on broker and how many krono they could trade/sell on a time basis? They could still have as much as they want, but they couldn't use it or give to other players unless they became all access.
That might prevent some abuses, but potentially its a punishment for legitimate players too. Maybe if the limit was something ridiculous like 50k in a day and 100k in a week. While that looks ridiculous now it wasn't all that long ago that 10k was absurd. Now? If you want to buy that mythical helm off the broker I think its ranging around 14k on AB.
Myth helm 80-160k on Freeport. Very rare to see one on the broker. The problem with limiting plat to FTP is the krono cost. They removed the plat cap so FTP players could actually purchase a krono to begin with. Even then, a plat selling company need only consume one krono and there they have all access. One krono is nothing to someone that has 300-1000 kronos. Plat is about where it should be given the progression. It actually might even be a little low. Level 100 quests should prolly be giving out 5+ plat if they would have followed the scale of plat increases by level. You can make a lot of plat just killing trash in AoM. But that amount is still below par with the amount you could get killing trash when level 80 was cap. I realize stating that might be counterproductive to my argument about krono cost but that's the facts. One aspect of the downward spiral on the value of a plat is the fact that there is all of this frickin heirloom only gear. If we could actually broker more AoM gear the plat would flow a little smoother and help balance the economy. That's on the devs. Lore and Heirloom stuff are killing heroic level players. I understand some of this was implemented to help tradeskill and I appreciate that. But there needs to be a return of ethereal, raid researcher gear and more mythical items that are tradeable. Crafting raid level stuff was a huge plat sink but great for the economy.
Not sure what you mean by "plat sink" here. The only part of crafting that is a plat sink is the cost of fuel. Considering that the raid-level crafting tends to use expansion-based currency like Ferrins and Etyma instead of plat to buy the fuel...the plat spent on these items continues to circulate. Or am I missing something here?
I sincerely doubt that you are missing anything. As you know, a plat sink is something that removes existing plat from the game. Often, however, people conflate their own spending with plat being removed, but that is merely exchanging plat from one player to another - which results in a net change of 0 plat in the economy. Many don't appreciate that distinction. _____________________________________ For those that still don't get what Meirril is implying and I am saying directly, I'll give an example - but first I'll clarify the terms I am using: When I use the term plat faucet, I am referring to any means of introducing platinum to the overall economy - such as revenue from killing mobs, quest completion, selling vendor trash to the vendor, etc. When I use the term plat sink or plat drain, I am referring to any means to remove platinum from the economy - such as fuel costs, broker fees, guild hall coin upkeep, reforging costs, etc. Now, for the example. Imagine that you have two players. For convenience sake, I will refer to them as A and B. A does a lot of dungeon running in old content and as a result, has amassed 500p. Since A is utilizing a plat faucet, that 500p has been added to the economy. Next, B places an item worth 400p on the broker, which A subsequently buys. A began the transaction with 500p, and B (for the purposes of simplifying the math) started with 0p - which means that the total between the two players equals 500p. After the transaction, A has 100p and B has 400p - which means that the total between the two players still equals 500p. If you subtract the latter total from the former total (to find the net change between them) you get 0p (iow, 500p - 500p = 0p). Later, B spends 50p (just a notional amount for illustration purposes) on reforging. This means that 450p remains in the economy (100p in A's hands and 350p in B's hands), while 50p is removed from the economy. I hope that helps clarify the difference between plat sinks/drains and plat exchanges between players. ___________________________________________ ZUES, no offense intended, but trade between players is economically neutral. As such, making more things tradeable will not add or subtract platinum from the economy. Granted, seeing more tradeable stuff may inspire more people to engage in activities that add plat to the economy, but doing so would decrease the buying power of plat, unless a subsequent efficient means to remove the additional plat from the economy is introduced. Absent that effective plat sink/drain, more available plat will initially allow the purchase of more goods, but then the supplier(s) will want more platinum in return for making the same quantities of goods available. So the end result is an equilibrium point higher than it was previously. This, of course, means that the purchasing power of the platinum will be less (i.e. it will take more platinum to purchase the same amount of items). As far as the increase in Krono costs is concerned, given recent additions of semi-efficient plat faucets, it isn't entirely surprising that the Krono prices have increased. (I'm not saying that it is all due to these plat faucets, but they are definitely a factor.)
Just to defend ZUES's idea, he has a point. Most broker transactions have a 10% or 20% broker fee paid. Unless your willing to travel to a player's house to avoid the broker fee. Sometimes that isn't an option because that player either doesn't have the rent paid or they never set up the boxes to be directly accessible. So if a bunch of those 300p Legendary items went on the broker, a lot of 30p broker fees would be removed from the economy. If the broker suddenly surged in popularity it would become an effective plat sink. Right now there are a huge amount of transactions that happen through /auction with no plat sink attached, if player behavior could be shifted to the broker that would actually help. It would also trivialize itemization, but that is a different issue. Probably one that dev considers more important than trying to fix the in-game economy.
