Intrinsic

I love that avatar. Back when I used to play EQ, someone posted that vid as an example of an enchanter in action. Good stuff.

*edit* Ah, I see, it changes. I was referring to the one with the two cats.

Hmmm...

*note to self, suggest raising prices on Trap of the Hunter to unobtainable levels at the next Market Cartel meeting*

Would you be in favor of raising the inf cap if it could be done in a bug-free manner? I don't think that concern over a buggy implementation should inhibit discussion of the idea.

This matches my experience (the speed, I haven't been rolling my a-merits). It takes me an hour or less spent over a couple of days to earn an a-merit. I don't farm AE tickets so I can't compare that, but there's no way I could earn 100 r-merits in an hour, even speeding through TF's.

The inf I lost on WW was due to inactivity on that character. I was not reimbursed for that loss. I was partially reimbursed for the lost emails. In that instance I was reimbursed for the items that I could remember (which were the expensive ones, I also lost some generic IO's that I didn't care about). I should note that the emails themselves were not restored; rather, I lost some recipes, and CS reimbursed me by placing equivalent crafted enhancements on one of my characters. I have zero complaints about the situation; I only mention it to say that if I had lost a large amount of inf instead, I don't know how that scenario would have played out.


I want the cap to be high enough that I don't know what it is. I want the cap to be high enough that I'm never in danger of reaching it over the span of any single character's earnings. If I run tip missions every day on a character, earn an A-merit every other day, and sell the proceeds, how long would it take for that character to go from zero to the cap? Under the current system, the answer to that question is measured in terms of days. I want the cap to be high enough that the answer would be measured in terms of years.

Are my expectations unreasonably high? I've played several other MMO's in the last decade or so. This is the only one where I even know what the money cap is, let alone being in frequent danger of bumping into it. And games like EQ or EVE have undergone enormous inflation over the years, and have players (like me) that do stupid marketeering tricks like flipping and such. Somehow, all those other games have managed to deal with the problem such that it's not an issue for the players. I know that it can sometimes be madness to compare MMO's with each other, but in this particular case I feel the feature in question is directly comparable. All I'm asking for is the same quality of experience that I get from other MMO's.

That doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Speaking as someone who has lost money that was stored in WW bids and lost items that were stored in gleemail, I wouldn't consider either of those methods to be secure for long-term storage.

If that is true, then it means that good, legitimate players are being forced to break the rules in order to conduct fair transactions. I can't think of a better argument in favor of immediate action by the devs to raise the inf cap.

Nothing. Prices on items, and fees like crafting costs, would be adjusted to 10% of their current value to match the change. The purchasing power of the individual would remain the same.

There are already transactions taking place involving PvP IO's that are in excess of 2 billion. Raising the inf cap would, among other things, facilitate these transactions without having to jump through the hoops that players are currently forced to do.

There is another option. The devs could shift everything over one decimal place. Players who have 2 billion now would have 200 million, mobs would drop 1/10 of the inf they do now, etc. This would effectively raise the inf cap to 10x the current cap.

Hmm, I thought this was supposed to be a lighthearted thread. Anyway, reduction in the money supply should not be the ultimate goal. What you want to see is an increase in the real purchasing power of the individual. In your example, flippers cause an increase of 10 million in the average purchasing price despite draining inf from the economy at roughly twice the normal rate. Given the flippers' profit of 12 million, that might actually be a fairly accurate example; we'll never know the exact numbers though.

This has been kicked around for at least a couple of years that I can remember, probably longer. I've seen some truly excellent ideas come up, and none of them have ever been implemented.

Therefore, instead of suggesting a new idea, I'll suggest something which is being put into the game anyway. Make the incarnate system an inf sink. Make the crafting costs for the slots high. It doesn't have to be a recurring cost, and it doesn't have to be punitively high, but at least it would be something to soak up a bit of inf.