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Post about IGE you should readFollow

#52 Jan 30 2004 at 9:18 AM Rating: Decent
It really becomes a shame when enjoying a friendly 'game' of killing and looting we have to worry about the economy. Toons or not people cant hide their true self. Most of the players I've met in game are true knights in shining armor, conversation can be enchanting, and a day well spent in Norrath can be magically relaxing. On the other hand their are those who are true thieves,beggars, gnolls and mugworts. My point is we probably have met a few of these cheaters. How can we avoid them? Close Bazaar? Even though I can't afford to shop there often I do on occassion find a much needed spell scroll at a reasonable price, (next to same scroll selling at four times the amount)this would be unfair to those who come by their items honorably. If as one poster stated an exploit 'merchant' can be run mostly without human interaction, maybe the solution could be to not have bazaar merchants afk? Since I am not a seller and have little tech knowledge on this matter it is only a What if?
Oh well nuff said
#53 Jan 30 2004 at 9:20 AM Rating: Decent
49 posts
I sent an email to SOE with a link to this post... I said something like I enjoy EQ, but I feel that this sort of activity is ruining the game. Also, that I wasn't planning on going to WoW, but might consider it if things like this don't stop.

I was nice about it, I didn't say it in a snobby way. Perhaps if we all sent a similar email it might have an impact.

I do have to agree with some of the posters though. While this is ruining the economy, we can always quest the items ourselves.

Just my 2 coppers worth :)
#54 Jan 30 2004 at 9:20 AM Rating: Decent
. never mind -

Edited, Fri Jan 30 09:21:27 2004 by Speedbow
#55 Jan 30 2004 at 9:21 AM Rating: Decent
This post is exactly the reason my "wish" character is built entirely from LDON gear. If I happen to get a better peice of no drop gear or something on a raid then kewl, otherwise I'm not chasing the plat hikes, I'll build ldon gear to wear tell I can get elemental.


Great post btw..
#56 Jan 30 2004 at 9:28 AM Rating: Decent
*sighs sadly*
I've been on the game since beta ...
Recently ... Ive been on to actually play maybe a total of 6 hours in the last 6 months ...
With four accounts between hubby and myself ..
and two DAoC accts ...
and for old times sake and such *was alpha tester*
We have two Realm accts ...
I can see where I will be saving some rl cash soon if Sony doesn't do something ... heck, ANYTHING about this ...
But I fear its a deaf ear we are shouting into atm :(
#57 Jan 30 2004 at 9:30 AM Rating: Decent
Speedbow hit the nail on the head there. I did not know of this IGE or Supersale(whatever) until I read this post. That still doesn't mean I'm going to buy plat online. I never have but I have seen Ebay with an influx of platinum. The most money I ever had in game was around 150k. That was from selling everything I owned on one server to move to another server. There is a person who runs a legitimate platinum transfer service who only charges a percentage of the total.

Anyway, I am unable to see how single persons can make 800k Along the lines of gameplay and always have that money available. Something must be done about this problem, after reading this post it is apparent to me. This problem will become the REAL endgame of EQ.
#58 Jan 30 2004 at 9:38 AM Rating: Decent
Smiley: confused I read the post under mine? Who exactly are you referring to? as "in support of these people" What I support is exactly what I spend while playing Everquest and tat is time well spent. Otherwise I wouldn't be there at all. I play for the fun and relaxation. Really there are no winners because there is no end to the game. The only losers are those that play only to deploy exploits or cheats, no fun in that remember can be run almost without human interaction. Whats good about everquest is the human interaction. Yeah I would like to be the one with the biggest and most toys but i'm not. I can be just as happy for a guildie or partner to win theirs, buy theirs or whatever.
Did I say btw I adamantly DO NOT SUPPORT 'These Kinds of People" who do exploits or any other kinds of activity not in keeping with the spirit and guideline of the game.Smiley: banghead
UPDATE post no longer there? even so just want to be clear on this. Thanks for endulgeing me[lg][/lg]

Edited, Fri Jan 30 09:47:05 2004 by Creatz
#59 Jan 30 2004 at 9:39 AM Rating: Decent
Ok here is some news to answer how much SOE cares

From Now on Gm's will not do in game tech help they will only run quests. SOE has fired 70% of their staff and are going to another country to train replacements. It has been handed down to GM's now and they wat to do it silently so not to stir up any attension. SOE is getting greedy and starting to really ***** up EQ There have been many problems and Like this post, this should have been taken care of. They do not care and all they want to do is make money themselves Pass this on to everyone both post mine and the PP one. SOE does not care for the players all they care about is to make more money if they keep this up the game we have all enjoyed will be opened up to more exploits and hackers just so SOE can make more money.
#60 Jan 30 2004 at 9:42 AM Rating: Decent
I wonder what people think about putting a cap on the amount of money an account could have (8 toons - 600k plat).

or something to do with the account registration like each credit card can only have 2 accounts attached to it. Its been a while since I registered, but they can require a credit card during registration like AOL does.

With restricted account numbers and restricted bank account, it all of the sudden becomes a huge pain in the butt to do multiple large purchases or money transfers.

My 2 cents

Zurob
56 Bard Ayonae Ro
#61 Jan 30 2004 at 9:46 AM Rating: Decent
"Easy way to put a stop to this, Dont try to get items ya cant farm yas selves."

You are overlooking a large part of the problem here. The same people who are running this cash cow are the ones 6 or 8 boxing and killing the BoT mini-bosses/tower lords and such camps to control the supply of items into the game.

If you try to get such a camp they simply "accidently" train you out and grief you until you give up.

GMs are never on or "Sorry I have to see it myself" because they are too lazy to check thier extensive log capability.

This means the exploiters can bully the players so that they are the only source of these items so they can sell them for cash and/or sell the platinum you have to buy them from them with.

You have to remember this is not a game to them, it is a source of income and you are threatening their cash cow when you try to interfere.
#62 Jan 30 2004 at 9:54 AM Rating: Decent
This is such encouraging reading for "newbie" with 5 characters at the 30+ lvl, guess i should start all those skills now rather than power level my way up. Economies rise and fall with people that use them. There is a life after EQ! Don't settle for the high priced items.
#63 Jan 30 2004 at 10:02 AM Rating: Decent
Quote:
BUT it would solve the high-end-stuff problem somehow because contoling 12 markets takes quite an effort compared to one.


Not true at all. If they are truly using a programmed bot to control the one market, it would be trivial for them to use N programmed bots to control N markets. That is the nature of bots.
#64 Jan 30 2004 at 10:13 AM Rating: Good
****
4,596 posts
Quote:
"Easy way to put a stop to this, Dont try to get items ya cant farm yas selves."


This sounds like a nice idea, until you actually try to get a camp for a contested item. Here's one, Fishbone earring. Ever tried to get that camp? At least on my server you better have 2 weeks, and you had better be able to take the MOB down to 49% health in 1 nuke, or its gonna be KS'ed. Allowing items to be buyable helps distribute the player population and encourages the play nice policy. Not everyone can get a popular camp, but everyone can grind out PP.

It works the same way on a basic level in real life. Not everyone can be car builders, but everyone can save up enough money to buy one.
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#65 Jan 30 2004 at 10:20 AM Rating: Default
OMG...Ye have put is so very well. I am apalled at the prices in the bazzar. It makes me wonder how I will ever farm that much Plat to get items for me char's husband, myself or any of our alts. I have to sadly report that I have purchased Plat a couple of times. Believe me when I say, I will no longer be doing this. I did not realize the atrosocity of what was/is going on.
#66 Jan 30 2004 at 10:22 AM Rating: Decent
I am on the Bristlebane server..WAY WAY WAY out of control. eq. Cloak of flames 95k? Ornate 50-100k? umm ya right
#67 Jan 30 2004 at 10:23 AM Rating: Decent
The most simple fix would be to increase item drop rates. If SOE openned the flood gates and made every named mob drop it's entire loot table every time and cranked up their spawn frequency for a few months and kill all the bottlenecks and camping time, that way, everyone that wanted something and was capable of killing the drop mobs would very soon be out of the PP for cash market.

The nature of the game, the time sink requirements are what put alot of people with more money than time to spend out there looking for ways to cheat. Throw open the loot floodgates and PP would only be good for Food/Water and spell components and the occasional item that you can't get yourself, but everybody and their sister already has.

Of course this would destroy the artificial economy in the game, and playing the fictional EQ economy is what some people get off on, so my short-sighted fix would destroy a facet of the game, but it sounds like lots of people believe it is already too far broken to fix.

#68 Jan 30 2004 at 10:35 AM Rating: Decent
slimadimes wrote:
i have been well basically forced to use the plat purchasing services many times becuase without them I can never ( or at least feel that i can never advance in the game item wise or really other wise because higher lvl requires higher end equipment which is overinflated price wise in the bazaar.
flame me as long as you want for that but you are a SUCKER, a LOOSER and have obviously not understood that EQ is not a F****G SIM but an RPG!

If you only feel well if you're a Superhero play Spidermen or Hulk on a console, ok?

PS: do you also prefer to pay to get laid because you don't get the "high lvl women" otherwise?


Edited, Fri Jan 30 10:38:06 2004 by Leiany
#69 Jan 30 2004 at 10:42 AM Rating: Decent


Edited, Fri Jan 30 10:44:38 2004 by gnomeruler
#70 Jan 30 2004 at 10:44 AM Rating: Default
In a controlled economy, like EQ, the black market will tend to be more "efficient" than the planned market, because it will always be on the lookout for arbitrage opportunities that arise from unintentional flaws in the price control structure. That's what corrupted the Soviet economy, that's what's happening here.

I hope that Sony, being a good capitalist company, takes a hard look at its economic model and the unintended consequences before the release of EQ2, because that's where they have the most control in the long term.

The real solution is to "free" the economy by putting it entirely (or nearly entirely) in the control of the individual players. The bazaar was the first step to a free economy, but we see the problem of a mixed capitalist & planned economy with the plat dupe schemes. By exploiting the plat dupe schemes the dupers use the controlled economy for leverage in the marginally free economy.

To make the entire economic system "free" you have to make all items except for the most basic of basic supplies (food) player craftable. It has to be craftable from items that are available in game that don't require excessive camping and respawn times. It can be "laddered" in such a way that items are increasingly hard to make, and take continual building up with harder to get items, so as not to deflate the economy. In the end this would prevent massive speculative arbitrage on the scale we see it today. It would work this way: Producers (player tradeskillers) would flock to make any product that commanded a high price, thus creating competition and bringing the price down. This would ensure that prices stay on a marginal cost basis, rather than a monopoly or cartel price basis the way they are today. Make sure that high-end items are appropriately level restricted, and you have demand leveling as well. The barriers to entry to become a producer are relatively low in this concept, because the barrier is just player investment in character tradeskills. Cartels and monopolies would not last long because traders would be created to compete. If they did last, then all Sony has to do is monitor monopolies and enforce anti-trust, much easier than fixing a planned economy.

Market imbalances would be self-correcting, rather than requiring Sony to hire developers to investigate and correct vendor pricing imbalances. Correction to vendor pricing imbalances only create more imbalances at some other location. The problem is in the basic conception of the system, not in the details of its implementation.

I'm not sure the EQ1 system can be saved. As a very smart Eastern European economist, George Staller, said about the transition of the Soviet economy from a free one to a planned one (in the early 1900's) then back to a free one (in the late 1900's): "It's easy to make fish soup out of an aquarium. Turning fish soup into an aquarium is very hard."
#71 Jan 30 2004 at 10:45 AM Rating: Decent
If you think about the complexity of the EQ economy, the best way to affect rising inflation is to treat it as a real economy.
Inflation is a natural occurrence in the real world. In general though or at least in a relatively stable economy, as prices inflate, so do incomes. Cars used to cost a few thousand dollars and people were earning 30K a year and living extremely comfortably witha a family. The problem occurs when you have rampant inflation such as what happenned in the latter years in the Soviet Union. The effect that IGE and Yantis have on the EQ economy is similar to the monetary policy of the USSR that caused the extreme devaluation of its currency. They have flooded the money market. It would be as if the Treasury just kept printing more and more money. The other problem is that since they are an outside agent, there is no way for their actions to affect the income of players. You obviously earn more as your level increases, but the prices on high end items increases at a higher rate than does the average plat income per level increase.
One way, though I'm not sure exactly how complicated this would be to do in game would be to introduce a rate of interest to the EQ economy. Getting together a group of GM's to regulate interest rates much like the Fed does in the US would be one way to alter purchasing patterns and demand for certain items. If for instance banks had slots that could only be accessed in that zone and were interest baring, the EQ Fed could control spending patterns because people would be more likely to save money. Then to effectively sell their items, vendors would have to drive down prices until they were so low that the benefit of saving was relatively less then spending the cash at the given price. Such a commission could also filter out mass quantities of plat from the system by either creating loan NPC's that would follow a program operated by a lending interest rate or by allowing certain players to eventually grant loans and charging them a rate of interest like the way banks are charged interest from the reserve.
Basically as the EQ market increases in complexity, so must the way in which SOE and players deal with the market. Once you get a server like the one I'm on (Xev) where most players under 60 are twinked alts, the natural inflation due to level increase is exhausted and better controlling measures must be taken to combat this.
#72 Jan 30 2004 at 10:46 AM Rating: Decent
Leiany wrote:
I am an avid trader at the Bazaar on Firiona Vie and that selfrunning buy-cheap-programm is either not running on FV or just a myth, because in the last 2 weeks a bought at the Bazaar (including yesterday)
20+ HQ Cat Pelt for 4p
20+ Spiderling Silk for 2p
4 HM Backpacks for 25p
1 Fine Antique Ringfor 150p
1 1 Di'zok Signet of Servicefor 180p
1 Platinum Armbandfor 20p
1 Stained Cloth Maskfor 25p

As every bot should outwit and outrun me there (just look at the pelt&silk - these are pure moneymakers!) Iseriously doubt they exist.

And to be quite honest - if there weren't a horde of motherf****g retarded dumbass lamers out there who are to dumb, lazy or complex-ridden to start EQ without buying plat he didn't have this problem!




Edited, Fri Jan 30 05:40:36 2004 by Leiany




Not quite. There is no reason for them to buy items that sell so low. If spiderling silks could be resold for say 1000pp each yes, they would buy them up, but otherwise why bother? Buy the high end items that are reasonably priced, stack the price, and then sell the PP to someone so they can go buy your inflated item. Then turn around and use that PP all over again to buy up more reasonably priced items, mark them up, and then sell again for inflated prices, and re-sell the platinum ONCE AGAIN.

Items that are common, and easily farmed by folks way under level 50 even, are not worth thier time to inflate. It's the items that people want that they will inflate.

On Xev, we have someone that farms the BoT Tower bosses every morning, and sells the loot rights for thier items for 50,000pp. This person, supposedly then PA's the PP to make his rent. How true that portion is, I am not sure, but I do know that this group of folks does sell loot rights every morning.

EQ Economy is screwed up, people that have no interest in the game and it's mechanics are what made it that way. The only way to fix the problem is to not buy thier PP, but everyone that can afford to take shortcuts will.
#73 Jan 30 2004 at 10:47 AM Rating: Decent
As far as I can see there are two separate issues here:

Platinum sales
Account Sales

Plat sales really doesn't seem too difficult to fix. The great majority of medium to high end equipment is already No Drop. The examples quoted in the original post are the exceptions. Just flag all of the currently tradeable items akin to Ornate or better No Drop. Have someone at SoE monitor a price-collection program and as soon as any item is regularly trading above a certain trigger price, say 100k, make it No Drop.

After a while, nothing is going to be left that's worth buying. If the price gets pulled up on lower level stuff to fill the gap, then that gets made ND too. Eventually plat won't be worth paying real money for because there won't be much left worth buying. Casual players, however, will get along perfectly well will stuff that's currently treated as vendor trash - I know I do.

Account sales is a much harder one and in my opinion a much more dangerous one. I really don't want to be constantly playing with people who bought a 65th Cleric today and never played a cleric beforer in their lives, or to say hi to JoePaladin that I grouped with yesterday and find it's a completely different person.

If SoE and the other MMO companies aren't confident of being able to establish legal ownership of accounts and characters, which they seem not to be, then it's going to be very hard to stop people trading them. I think it would need some kind of log-in security measure, perhaps, that would invalidate access from a different ip address than one registered at account creation, but I don't have the technical knowledge to know how feasible that is.
#74 Jan 30 2004 at 10:51 AM Rating: Decent
Leiany wrote:

You can craft/loot/quest everything for your class on your own (except for some cultural TS, ok) so how the hell are you FORCED TO BUY something????


Ur actually quite wrong, u cannot craft/loot or quest everything u want on ur own. E.g if ur character is lvl 61 or below, and u do not have teir2+ pop flags, it is impossible for u to loot/quest(w/o buying the patterns) or craft ur own ornate armor.., with peices going from 20k to 100k+ recently its unlikly u could afford them either?

And with ref to ur previous post, that stuff is trash any high-end char wouldn't even bother looting.

The people this is really affecting are thoes who cannot play 24/7, and are not in "uber guilds" but who do invest some considerable time and effort in leveling their characters up, to then find any reasonable upgrades are beyhond them in price range.

E.g. Ornate Leather Boots for bst's about 6k usually, FT3boots, and very nice when u can get em at lvl 55, when they become 50k.. its only twinks that are likely to be able to afford them.
#75 Jan 30 2004 at 10:52 AM Rating: Decent
Silly question, but why would anyone use RL money to buy game money?
#76 Jan 30 2004 at 10:55 AM Rating: Decent
It is silly to spend real money for virtual, but its basically just a currency exchange.
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