What "savings"? The issue is plat has to be removed from the economy. Don't forget that the buying and selling of stuff in game in and in itself is just moving plat that is already here around. So any changes done to the broker is just a bandaid in the meanwhile Since even a hard cap of 10mil across everything (broker, person to person trading, whatever) still wouldn't fix the issue of some people are just sitting on billions of plat. A huge portion of the plat in the economy is dupped. This doesn't mean the people that have it at this point are guilty of anything just, that the economy in general is screwed due to dupped plat. So I don't get how any changes to crates would make any difference, at all.
Sadly, the damage to the economy due to dupped plat has already been done, and IMHO, if the folks with billions of plat just want to swim and dive about in it like Scrooge McDuck* and not let go of any of it, like most RL billionaires, that's fine, they're not actively adding to the problem...though they'd be the first to whinge about anyone threatening to take any of it away from them in any way. X-P (Hmm..."higher taxes" in the form of increased house rent being pro-rated according to the amount of plat your character has on them or in the Shared Bank? How much you can withdraw from the Guild Bank would be determined by your guild leaders, as always. Maybe a reducing amount on rent reduction depending on how many Treasure Hoards you have? The full 25% for the first one, then 20%, then 15%, then 10%, with four still being the maximum? If people work around the rent by getting prestige places, make the ones on the merchants [and increase the range of houses; bring up ones that we miss that aren't on even the Marketplace] worth lots and lots of plat to buy, rather than Loyalty Tokens. Eliminate the status cost for a Guild Hall, but maybe transfer those costs to plat instead no, scratch that last one; it'd just make folks desperate to get more plat on a regular basis; the prestige house cost would be a one-shot deal... :-/) So long as Kronos are available for in-game currency, I don't see the inflation on the Broker being officially reined in completely any time soon. :-/ I still think economists would be fascinated, taking a peek at our economic shenanigans. Uwk *have NPCs sell piles of not only gold coins but platinum as well, with no object collision, not re-sizeable, for seven or eight figures of plat each and make them No-Value (or worth 1c to an NPC vendor ;->) and Heirloom...
Someone did a paper on the value of some in game currency to real money at one point, I don't remember if they used EQ, EQ2 or WoW as the base but it was some economist that did it several years ago. I don't see how Kronos being available to buy and sell between players has any effect on the amount of plat in the economy. Again, just pushing piles of existing coins around. That's why one of my suggestion (which may not be legally possible) would work. Selling kronos for in game plat, then just remove said plat from the game however, it would require someone to be willing to just delete it. Anything they put in that is expensive enough to have an effect on the amount of plat in game and has the desirability for people to buy, is likely going to drastically penalize those that don't already have a ton of plat they are just sitting on. Since the difference between those that have it, and those that don't, is typically huge. Some are sitting on Billions, meanwhile people like my wife might have a few million at most.
The fancy sales crates have no tax. So if I sell an item for 50 million plat through one, no plat is removed from the economy. But in the 50% reduction ones, 5 million plat would get removed. Without any reduction 10 million plat would get removed. Most weeks I turn at least 150 million worth of masters off the broker from raids for guild bank fund. If they changed the free crates to be a 5% tax still, that is 7.5 million plat a week leaving from my sales alone. It would add up. Not sure if it would be enough to fix the problem, but it would be a steady continuous stream of plat leaving at a rate that is proportional to broker prices for things. I actually really like this idea looking at it now, but not sure if they can actually get away with it versus the people getting upset and having broker tax added back to their crates. Okay but you are talking about a game where some people spend HUNDRENDS of real life dollars to get a small 5% boost to the mount/merc/familiar buff even after we were given free versions. Those players will always have an advantage over someone like me(but now that it's so small I don't care). There's a right lvl where something can provide an advantage for those pushing for the best, while really not making that big a different in the ability to do any content. It's just about finding that balance point and pricing appropriately. There was an attempt to do something like this with the challenge zone, but the amount of plat the charm removes is so small compared to how much needs to leave the game(That same 7.5 million that would be removed from the game in my above example would take over 8 days of running the charm constantly to remove).
I guess the only real way to do this would be at some point decide to draw a line. "Starting with X expansion, masters, grandmaster spells, whatever (potentially up to everything for that expansion and beyond) will no longer be able to be placed in sales crates that reduce tax more then x%." (Be it 10%, 20%, 50%) That might be a starting point. It goes predictably bad if they try to take things away from the players but, if its announced ahead of time it might go a little better. Then again, I'm not even sure half the stuff is listed anymore its just sold outside the broker all together now that the 10mil plat limit is there.
With all these suggestions, run them around your head from the perspective of someone with very little money and someone with many billions of plat (either in plat or hoarded krono) and you'll see whatever you do you just disadvantage the poorer players more in order to chip tiny chunks out of the wealth of the richest. The only way to reset the economy is to reset the economy. Remove plat entirely, make krono no trade, then introduce a new coin which is only obtainable from quests and mobs. But if you did that, almost all veteran players would just unsubscribe and never come back. So it'll never happen. The devs had the chance to stop this when the dupes were identified. They opted not to and what you have now is a result of that decision. It will never be reversed, and more dupes will happen.
If there are any lower levels out there looking to get some crafted gear/weapons or food on Maj’Dul then I would be willing to help. Part of the problem is greed, pure and simple. It shouldn’t cost players plat to buy a crafted level 40 robe, etc just for example. Not everyone likes crafting and that’s fine. So people need to be more willing to help lower players as I said in another thread.
I came back after a long break and I have to tell you: no way a new player can afford anything in this game anymore. Even simple things like crafted armor is millions of pp which a normal player can never get through leveling and questing. Food and drinks 120+ start at 10000pp and other things. Selling shinies is also gone, because either the market is flooded or no one buys the expensive ones. The small playerbase adds to this. Regular players are the wealthy ones basically hoarding all the wealth and those players do not need anything usually from the AH. Also regarding Krono: a handful of people (maybe even unintenionally) price fix them so nobody can play on farming pp like the systems works (kinda) in WOW e.g. . One solution: change the currency like in a bankruptcy economic scenario! Yes, make all pp worthless and drop a new currency.
Broker. ;-> Though nowadays, it reminds me a bit of the Auction House in WoW, having them yoink away our entries so relatively soon. :-/ They have plat in WoW now? Oy... X-P Keeping in mind that it's not just the Broker we have to spend things on; rent is another, and I always thought it would've helped to have a currency just for that, but was always at a loss as to how to make sure we could get it on a regular basis. In Landmark, it was a matter of X pounds of refined copper ore or whatnot, but the lack there was that you couldn't pay up in advance, but had to come back into the game at a set time each week or else your entire layout was wadded up and thrown into a Hefty bag equivalent (and I wasn't sure if we could save a layout file) because you were 7 days and 5 minutes late. X-P Granted, it was Beta, and there was no indication that's how it was going to be once it went live, but it discouraged the hell out of my family and I. :-/ Uwk who appreciated the tools in that game for "sculpting" the landscape and items, but other than that... /shrug
Possibly (havent done anything with krono since broker restrictions were put in) but, 500 mill for a krono isnt really a bad price if you're outfitting a toon, that would allow you to get most of what you want. It all comes down to what YOU think a krono should be worth not what someone else thinks it is worth. The game is set up to get you to spend money, its not required, but it does make some things easier. Spend money on krono, sell krono, get plat...easy. Or... get left behind while everyone else is moving along. In my opinion, everything after level 100 is a trainwreck and expensive, its actually quite clever the way the game is set up now, but you have to stand back and look at it to see the pattern.
I remember when some harvested items were going for a gold, I would pull weeds all day. Now I'm getting like 1,000 plat a weed, not a rare. Its like a new game to me to see how much plat I can hoard. I'm sure the richest players have over a 100 billion.
