The current cost of things in game is unsustainable for most players. Plat saved up is dwindling, and the future is looking overwhelming and impossible as we try to maintain toons for raiding and heroics. Many players are currently running multiple toons through heroics every week in order to help others get their weeklies and special zones like Den2 and Kurn's done. There are also a lot of players maintaining multiple raid toons right now, as the population seems to be low enough that keeping a full raid roster is a struggle for many forces. So, we have a lot of multi-raiders, and we appreciate them. Personally, I very very rarely get anything but junk merc gear in solos. If I get spells, I share them with my raid force. If I get adorns that I don't need, I share them with the raid force. It's very rare that things aren't needed and I broker a spell or SLR an adorn. I'm trying to help everyone be functional instead of being forced to ignore the needs of my raid friends and hoard plat like a mad dragon. I feel like we're being forced to neglect our friends and greedily gobble up any opportunity to make a plat because it's now necessary just to scrape by as viable. The people who obtained plat through questionable means are sitting on giant piles of plat, sure. But taking every last plat from every other player in the game is not going to fix or balance that in any way. The rest of us don't have it, and there's no honest way for us to get the amount of plat we need right now. Raiding alone costs millions and millions of plat in materials for temps, potions etc. When we run out of plat...what are we supposed to do? Punishing everyone in this way is pointless because those who cheated still have billions and billions...this won't even dent them, but it will destroy most of the rest of us and make it so we can't maintain even one toon due to time and plat required. If little Bobby stole someone's lunch money at school, giving the entire class detention won't fix the problem. If Bobby steals cookies at home, taking all food from the rest of the family until they starve to death won't fix the problem. It's not the rest of us. It's frickin' Bobby. Nobody even likes him. Ban Bobby. Take Bobby's plat. Just leave the rest of us out of it. An average player in general will struggle to earn enough plat in the game to maintain what is 'needed' for raids, and now whatever plat savings we do have is all going to burn up trying to keep our raid main(s) and our alts functional for upcoming content with these extremely overpriced 'must have' things currently being designed into the game. Unless the goal is to drain every last plat from every honest player and then have them quit the game because they don't have a way to maintain their toons...this really needs to be reconsidered. This is a game where quests are rewarding teeny tiny amounts of plat, and mobs are still dropping silver. It's not a game with a built-in way of hoarding millions and billions of plat. Please don't destroy your honest players. You don't discourage cheating by requiring cheater amounts of plat to just be viable.
I'm assuming this is in indirect response to my "bitter pill" suggestion/post, Mana. FWIW, I never did set an amount that I thought any such action could be set at. *IF* it were ever acted upon, I'd hope the "cap" was pretty high; maybe a billion, maybe less. The money disappears from the horders' hands at that point. Regardless, when you take money out of circulation, prices drop. It's simple economics. Kronos sell on Varsoon for WAY less than Live servers because there's no glut of platinum there (as an easy example).
I actually hadn't read your post yet. It must be even worse for new and returning players, for sure. I'm not sure what a perfect 'fix' would look like...I just know that what is happening doesn't seem viable.
Completely agree. Strictly on principle, I don't like the idea of vacuuming away the money from players, BUT economics, regardless of system (capitalism, communism, etc...) all comes down to supply and demand. Too much money and not enough goods drives prices up. WAY up in the case of this game. You hit on something that my post missed also; the declining player base is a factor as well. Less players means less money and loot being farmed, which in turns leads to higher prices due to the platinum glut. I really hope the devs will start listening to the players and fix the broken mechanics scaring people off. That is a whole different topic though.
Just want to point out that "Bobby", the plat hoarding/duping exploiter, isn't really interested in hoarding plat; in the end, it's about krono.
Not at all surprised by that. Sales of free game time tokens are what drives the inflation in other MMOs also; players hording in-game money to buy a real world item that saves them a subscription fee. It's also why the devs at most games have zero interest in fixing it. Kronos (or their equivalent in other games) are a cash cow for game companies. They're too short sighted to see the damage to their games caused by them. As for "Bobby" (whoever they are), I don't know much of the story with the exploit. It was shortly before I had returned. Doing the math though (see my Bitter Pill for Platinum post), either the exploit was soooo massive that you could fly the Death Star through it, OR there was a hell of alot more than one person behind it. I'm assuming though that "Bobby" is a euphemism for all involved.
This is hard, because there are people who got a lot of plat through legitimate means when krono prices were ridiculous and still have that plat. And then there's people that didn't. This is a huge divide. I personally have 6 billion plat mostly acquired through SLR when kronos were really high. I hope for kronos to stabilize back under 50 mil so they can be on the broker again, but then there's people like me who could literally buy 100 kronos if they go below that. [And for perspective, before the whole dupe thing and prices raised to ridiculous amounts I was a person who paid for my sub primarily through flipping kronos throughout the month] This makes it hard though because if you did not acquire plat during that time, there's no way to get the same amount of plat now. [Though today someone did make 1 bil through an SLR, thats way less typical now] A plat cap will not solve the problem because people will just spread their plat out to keep it under cap. I personally would be cool with a straight percentage reduction across the board, which would leave everyone at relatively the same amount of plat but put plat levels back somewhere in line with earnable plat - however the problem is it would have to be such a high percentage reduction to make a dent. And that brings it's own problems with it. They try to put plat sinks in game(den challenge, but the problem is this can not both be at a level that makes it accessible to everyone and at a level that makes a meaningful difference due to the divide).
The hard part is making those people who (presumably) had piles of plat pre-exploit understand that the value of their coin has already been stolen, in effect. Ideally a fix would plan on draining the plat somewhat slowly so that prices can fall gradually as well, thus preserving the purchasing power of whatever plat is left in the remaining pile. In that case, the pile will have shrunk, but the amount it will buy is similar to what it would buy under the current regime.
Hmm! Not a terrible idea; the gods know I've had to actually buy and sell a Krono on just about every server to have a prayer in hell of being able to afford anything on the Broker that I need and can't get otherwise (like, say, Rares now that RNGeezus hates us all). :-/ Remember back when there was an in-game plague or whatever in WoW, and RL scientists of various stripes (some even real ones! ;->) studied it to see how a society would react to it? Well, budding young economists could either study us right now; or the Wiemar Republic in Germany; or places like Chicago during the Prohibition (and the Great Depression, which hit during Prohibition...thanks, idiots X-P), where only the crooks really made out? :-/ It's sad that Daybreak doesn't have any motive whatsoever to fix this any time soon, apparently, as long as people are buying Kronos not necessarily to keep themselves in the game as F2P folks, but to just unload them on the Broker so they can fill their swimming pools with plat like Scrooge McDuck ("You BETTER let me put more zeroes at the end of my price than anyone else [I'm firmly convinced that this sort of thing was at least part of the problem; "keeping score"], or I'm gonna rage quit and go on the Internet and tell everyone how much this game sucks even if I have to lie about it and make sure no one else ever plays it again and..."). Or just to be able to hold their head above water to get the necessities they need. X-P Uwk
This still assumes that everyone has a ton of plat saved up and/or can easily save up a ton of plat. New players, returning players, players who would rather not buy and sell kronos because that seemed to be the only common factor among the players they knew that got swept up in the recent...vanishings. All of those folks are not going to be able to compete. Example: Bobby stole 30 cookies. Suzy noticed the cookie craze and bought ten cookies before prices got out of hand. Greg and Kelly were so distracted collecting free furniture from the dungeons on Test server that they missed the memo about cookies completely, so they only have 2 cookies each. Now Bobby and Suzy have too many cookies...so to fix it we're going to take 15 cookies from everyone across the board. I mean...I guess Greg and Kelly might not notice because they're decorating on Test, but still...
This is where a percentage decrease would help. If Player A has ten times the plat of Player B, and everyone loses half their plat, Player A still has ten times the plat of Player B. This avoids players with lower amounts of plat getting hit more harshly by reduction methods. Also there's people who literally did nothing differently from normal and still acquired loads of plat when the exploits were going on. (Also refusing to do something perfectly legal like buy and sell krono because people got in trouble for doing things against the rules doesn't accomplish anything. Everyone I know that got suspended if it was later reversed did do something against the rules-even if it was rules that had not been enforced prior. Now I do not think buying and selling krono should be necessary to acquire reasonable amounts of plat for the economy, but that's a different story). The other option to getting plat out of the system is just to very significantly raise the amounts that are earned in game. But the divide is so much it would have to be such an excessive increase. Even if all quests started giving a 100,000 plat instead of what they give now(less than 100), it would not make a dent in decreasing the divide. (I'm not saying people should be able to very quickly amass the same amount of plat people earned over time, but that body drops/quests should give an amount of plat that matters within the economy of the game cause without that people have to get into groups that can SLR good gear or such to get a useful amount of plat without spending RL money on krono). If you estimate 100 quests for an expac, if each quest gave 1 million plat then doing all the quests would earn someone enough plat to buy a cheaper krono of current prices on Maj'Dul. Increasing the amount of plat rewarded also just continues the inflating numbers; but I mean at this point why do we even still have gold, silver, copper when 1 whole plat on its own is worthless. And this is what makes it hard, anything that punishes people who acquired all their plat through legit means will not go over well. Anything that makes a dent in the plat divide requires an excessive amount of change in either how much plat people have or how much plat people can ear through quests, body drops etc. I don't really know how to reasonable fix the problem.
You are assuming there was in fact an exploit, you could be as off about that as your math is. Some players have been doing this game a very long time. Had you not left in the first place you would no doubt be on the same level the players who did stay are, well for the most part, some dont play the market.
There was an exploit and people participating got banned or suspended over it. With the amount of plat people are able to generate through in game means, kronos will not get as high as they got during the exploit on their own. Kronos got up over 2 billion plat due to said exploit. Luckily they have been coming back down in price.
Zhevally already covered part of this. In addition, I want to say that returning players are valuable. We want them to be here. We want to listen to their feedback and know what's working for them and what isn't. Without returning players and people coming in new to the game, we cannot replace the people who are throwing in the towel for the many reasons that they do...and that math is pretty straightforward. You didn't leave? Cool! You have what you need? Awesome! Still doesn't invalidate the fact that new/returning players can't keep their heads above water, and we need them to be able to.
What? The 72k plat for 2 hours isnt sustainable (price paid) for most players on top of food and snacks and temp adorns!? Who could have guessed its only been talked about for several years that the exploiters ruined the economy and no one cares. I am of the strong opinion that veterans players dont care about returning or new players and the devs dont do either. Before it was at least possible to spend $$ and sell some krono for your GM/Ancients, on some servers, with the recent broker changes thats borderline impossible too now.
If you have a price paid charm, just sell one with a min of 25 mil and split 6 ways you can now run the charm for over 100 hours each. People that can do challenge content can make the high amounts of plat through SLR. The bigger issue is people who don't can not make reasonable amounts of plat. Solo returning players will pretty much never catch up on plat unless they get real lucky with rune drops in solo zones(and I'm not saying solo players should have the same amount of plat as those doing raids/challenge, but if raid/challenge folks have over a billion plat and solo players can not reasonably make 1 million plat through in game stuff that's a problem). That charm and other stuff in den challenge I think were vague attempts to try to reduce the amount of plat out there, but there's very few people with the right amount of plat for that stuff to put some kind of dent in their stash without it being all or even more than they have. An interesting experiment would be those fancy rare temp adorns DPS love, I wonder if those could be sold at a price point on a merchant to do something, but I don't know what the price would have to be. Something that's not gamebreaking for people without plat, but can help remove plat from those with ridiculous amounts. [heck I know people that would spend like 10 million plat if not more on a good powerlinks if we could buy those with plat]. I think this could be interesting because I know people who would buy that stuff at whatever price point until that ceased to be a pocket change amount for them. I don't see this ever happening because it would reduce Krono sells, but what if they put kronos available for plat, then that plat would leave the game. Trying to think of things now that wouldn't involve anyone loosing plat but would net plat leaving the game.
As a solo player that has reasonably made millions of plat selling food/drink/arrows/bolts/etc. I agree that new/returning players are at a disadvantage. However, if you have billions of plat, why not give a million or so to that new or returning player. I mean, if a lowly millionaire can do that, the billionaires in game can too. If you've been playing a long time, it behooves you to help the new or returning player get geared up and at a level with plat that they can actually earn some by selling things. What stops that is the few players that think it's a good idea to run prices on things that may cost quite a bit to make until it's not worth it to sell them anymore. I see that on skyfire quite a bit. Not all the powerlinks or other items like that are from the overseer, some of them are player made with quite a few rares, ask before lowering the price too much.
The good powerlinks are all rare drops. Temp adorns and cheap powerlinks are crafted. I actually have randomly given plat to people and its wild cause for some people they think that 1 million such a ridiculously high amount of plat when its not anymore. But I could give 10 million plat to every new player on my server and that would not fix the problem. Anyways, I'm not talking about lowering the plat on items that players can use to attempt to make plat routinely - I'm talking about the things that are currently so rare there's never more than a couple on the broker anyways if even that, or the stuff that's not even tradeable/sellable when looking at the good temp adorns. Crafting has always been weird in that there's people willing to sell stuff for less than what it costs to buy the mats for certain things, but for other things the market never become saturated enough for that to be a problem. (Thinks like the basic temp adorns that people use a lot of tend to stay where they sell for profit, but stuff that gets used at a lesser rate tends to drop below the profit point at least from what I've experienced on Maj'dul.
Why not have another clamp down on Broker prices? Give folks a chance to get used to this one, then clamp down again. It might not fix the existing divide between the Scrooge McDucks bathing in coins and the rest of us, but it should slow it down in the future. We're at, what, 50 million plat for putting something up on the Broker, max? Crank it down to 25 million, then 10, then 5. Level the playing field a little. ;-> And that way, no one should have anything taken from them. Uwk
Well, hang on; just had a thought... If folks fretted about the restrictions on the Broker prices but could still charge like umpteen gazillion plat on the Auction chat channel (I'm not sure if that's been restricted as well, since I don't go there), is the problem now one of, "Well, people can turn off the Auction channel and not see me!1!1! All my zeroes don't look as cool there!" Please tell me that's not what this is... X-P Uwk
