Discussion: Free Character Server Transfers for the Double XP and Reactivation Weekend!

You've said you don't want to explain why you hate marketeers, and that's fine, that's not the question I'm asking.

I did want to ask, however, what you meant by 'damaging the market', and how that was accomplished. Could you clarify that?
Thank you.

People have unreasonable and completely unsupported prejudices against Wiki. It does depend on the area, but in a lot of technical and scientific areas it's a very good resource. I assume your high school would've accepted Encyclopdia Britannica as a reference, right? Yet Nature conducted a survey of science articles in both, and concluded that Wiki wasn't significantly less accurate.


Mmm, price caps. Let me just check my wallet for my licence to print money.

Certainly, since I've known the market since it came online I've become familiar with common recipes that I frequently purchase and consequently the same salvage too. I have noticed small-scale to moderate-scale attempts to what I term as 'spiking'. I can only determine this through either two methods:

• Small-scale: Obtaining significant proportions of supply and selling at higher prices than would be appropriate, in relation to previous sales. Such as AE tickets exchanged for specific salvage. Outwith AE, gathering particular salvage, that is in high demand, and controlling a high quantity of the supply. After all, the supplier holds the price, more-so when he controls the majority of the supply. This largely preys on the whole impatience principle of the market.
• Moderate-scale: An investor buys up the entire stock, and leaves bids remaining, meaning existing and future control of said item, and is sole supplier of the item. The difference from the first bullet is that they will purchase them, at their own expense, at much higher prices, leaving the dreaded rookies view of: Last 5 bids... completely unreliable. Even some veterans don't know how to spot silly changes like this.

Personally the second one isn't that common nowadays, prices are so rampant I can't really make much accurate judgement. It used to be bad back when AE first came out. I know a few people that work along these lines and make a lot of profit but to me, it's just a game not life.

I don't store data on precise items nor am I an expert on economies, etc so don't bash me on misinterpretating information, please simply correct me.

Perhaps I should refrain from using the word 'damage', but rather disrupt the market. There are other ways like AE, since it came out that has funded the intelligent and the new: resulting in the new players happy to pay that absurd price, keeping the price plateaued for a moderate duration of time. I should elaborate that the new players are brought into the intelligent players farming and consequently have the hotly debated insta-50's with lots of infamy/influence too.

One other thing I should explain is that I respect marketers who have lots of experience in this field, in whatever way. For e.g I didn't frequent this forum until I recently came back and found EU forums gone, but I seen a topic by Smurphy where he/she invested into numerous respec recipes, and waited I think quite a few months to make a sizeable profit. This is in no way disruptive, since in that particular length of time the void of recipes will have rose back to it's steady supply. Again, assuming no new AE exploit, whatever disrupting normal game-play.

I am happy to debate further, but I feel I am going off-topic.

Fury

I think they could increase the drop rates of many things by a lot, and they'd still be pretty rare. When some recipes/io's start costing 500 million or more, imo, that's an indicator that it's too damn rare. No need for anything other than better drop rates, especially on teams. Last nite I ran a bunch of lvl 50 missions and got one recipe drop in 2-3 hours. One. If I want shinies, this game is creating incentive for me NOT to team. In an mmo. Increased drop rates is the answer, especially on teams, plain and simple.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against bumping up drop rates (especially on PvP IOs), but your statement is incorrect. The other factor in the escalating prices of IOs is the amount of currency in the system. There aren't many inf sinks in this game but there's a torrent of new inf being created every day. As ever more currency chases a small pool of goods, you get inflation.

Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn Hazy is right

I can cetainly understand if you don't want to get into a drawn-out discussion in regards to this. I, likewise, am no expert in economics, so we're at least on a level field there.

Perhaps my misunderstanding of your use of the words 'damage' or 'disrupt' comes from my not seeing that the behaviours you have described are anything other than people in a market doing what that market allows them to do - make a profit.

Unregulated markets are indeed likely to be impacted by monopolies and are subject to manipulation by the wealthiest participants. This is a feature, not a bug, of unregulated markets.
It is, of course, a different question of preference in regards to a market that is vulnerable to manipulation like that. However, the few times that the Devs have described their concept for the market in this game, it was generally viewed as a form of 'economic PvP'. Much like the other PvP aspects of this game, anything that is not abusing the actual code of the game, or violating the' T' rating is within the rules, regardless of level of politeness.

It is difficult to make this point without sounding insulting, but I'll try: I am having trouble determining the difference between what you percieve as disrupting the market and what you simply wish other people wouldn't do. I am assuming my perception of this is because I am misunderstanding your point, but that's the way it is coming across to me.
Speaking for myself, I would prefer it if the market was an inexpensive, reliable method of getting all of the latest and greatest goodies on a character with a bit of work and some judicious horse trading. However, from what I've read, that's not the Dev's intended goal for it.

Ironicly, if I remember correctly, the Devs also designed the market to be an INF sink (hence the 10% fee). I might very well be mis-remembering this purpose (either stated or unstated), so I might very well be off base on that point.

In a way it already does. Every kill made gives a percentage chance for recieving a drop regardless of who on the team makes the kill. So the larger the team, the more likely the chance for a drop overall. It all come out to the number of enemies killed.

I have some nights that three missions on an 8 man team will yeild me 30-40 drops overall, most of them being inspirations. Other nights under the same conditions though, I will get less than 10.

Ok here's a couple.

1) A new additional market, where the poster actually lists their price for an item and then a buyer can decide from whom they purchase. Here the buyer pays the 10% tax unlike WW/BM where the seller pays to post.

2) An everything store with very high prices (say 20 or more X the sell value). This will put a ceiling on WW/BM prices because you could always go to the Super-Store. It would also counter the drop rate problem.

3) Charge inf to use the Arena and AE. This will cause a sink for inf. (of course if the Devs don't fix AE or to some PvP this sink wont do much.)

4) Allow people to turn off Inf to get more XP. This will also cause an inf sink. And it would please PL who want to get post level 20 or for that matter level 50.

5) Allow people to buy levels with inf. (If you want to prevent them buying every level, allow the purchase of 1 level every 3 days like dropping a mission.) Again Inf sink and PL made happy.

6) Bring back the random recipe roll at the end of TF. (Keep this as an option pick merits to buy recipes later or take the roll now). Then KHTF and Eden would bring more recipes in to the markets.

7) allow us to Bribe contacts to open up their arcs if we haven't met them yet. (small inf sink but a QoL change)

Wow GPBunny, you got some good ideas, I personally don't like number 4 unless you cap the level purchase at say 22, but still, awesome ideas.

The Superstore idea I have been toying with as a request myself for some time now.

Here are some of my ideas:

8) A "debuff" on influence for the next "XX" kills after getting rezzed that would scale with your level. (would drop earnings a little w/o hurting lower level toons overly)

9) Making people buy the accolade powers/badges after they have earned the appropriate badges.

10) Make it so not being in "SG Mode" still costs toons a cut of the influence and earns prestige for the SG (say half of the current rates), but in "SG Mode" they sacrifice a little more (normal current rates).

11) Let people buy their costume slots instead of waiting for the levels. I know I would love this one since I like to have my "Civilian Attire" on many of my toons.

Keep it up folks, who has the next idea?

I tried recommending that and got severly flamed with Neg Rep for my efforts. I still think it is a good idea though.

You mean you want it to be a shop?

It's important to understand that game economies are not like real-world economies and should not be considered analogous.

The sole purpose of having loot in a game is to act as a time sink -- it keeps players on an endless carrot-on-a-stick in order to milk as much subscription revenue as possible. Now I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing as games are businesses like any other, but let's not delude ourselves into thinking it's anything other than what it really is.

Once you understand the purpose it then becomes very clear why there are no regulations or controls. This is because in a game economy inflation is your best friend. The more out of whack the economy the more time and effort is required to obtain what you want, and that again translates into more subscription revenue.

So if you speak of dev intent, the market exists solely to keep people playing and paying, nothing more, nothing less. The more things cost, the more farming, um, playing you need to do to earn more inf to buy more expensive stuff which further raises prices; lather, rinse, repeat. The market is set up exactly the way the devs want it as it completely fulfills its goal. Why mess with what ain't broke?

Depressingly enough, what you say here actually makes a lot of sense and my view of the Devs just dropped a notch or seven. I am going to reserve judgement though for a little while longer. The pessimistic side of me agrees with you, but the optimistic side keeps saying that something is in the winds since changing this system will keep more people happy and playing. We'll see.

Granted you are withholding (direct) judgment, the same argument could be made for the game itself: it exists to keep people paying. I mean playing. Wait, what's the difference?

Point being, connecting in-game mechanics or systems to profit-making motives is merely academic. Like saying McDonald's makes hamburgers because they want to make money, rather than for love of juicy beef.

Well, to a certain extent the time-sink concept of gaming is true, of course. On the other hand, this has to be balanced against the fun factor of the gameplay. A game can be the most effective timesink in the world, but it will fail if no-one plays it because it's not fun.

There are a number of aspects of the gameplay to actually reduce the timesink quality of the game - travel powers, and then changes that allowed travel powers to be obtained earlier, base teleporter units, Oro portals and so forth. In I-17, some mission locations are being altered to allow easier, closer access for lower level characters. That's reducing a time sink.

As far as divining Dev intent, I should have been more specific and said stated Dev intent. I seem to recall the point being actually made that the 10% fee was specifically to act as an Inf sink, but I may be misremembering. I certainly can't find such a comment, but it would have been quite some time ago, so...

In terms of more solutions for Inf sinks, I would suggest that Inf be allowed to be converted, at a ruinous exchange rate, into the other types of currency in the game, specifically Reward Merits. This would allow for a defacto price cap on some high-ticket items (if you can convert, say, 10 million Inf into the number of Merits required to purchase something, why spend a greater amount of Inf in the Market?) At the same time, it would allow speculation and price-based trading to continue unhampered on items not available through Merit purchases, such as PvP and Purple recipes. Also, selling would still occur by those people who were willing to part with something below the 'cap' established by Merits.

Of course, this suggestion might make the markets utterly trivial and marginalize them - I don't know.

Also, I'm not certain that it can be claimed as a blanket statement that our Market does not function as a 'real-world' market. In what way it the Market in game not a real-world market? Real people are selling things, real people are buying them, and actual (perceived) value is being exchanged. The goals of the Dev team in setting up the Market and the goals of the Players in participating in it are not the same, and I think that difference makes it quite reasonable to assume that the Market is a market, and tands to follow the same rules.

Speaking for myself, I can certainly say that I have been able to acquire things on the market in a much faster way than I had in just playing the game for them. I can tell, because:
1) I had the resources to acquire them, and,
2) I didn't already own them.
Therefore, the Market has been (in terms of making my characters as effective as I would like them to be) a massive time saver. If the market didn't save time in getting certain, specific items for a character, no-one would use it - they'd just play until these things dropped for them.

Also, Diggis asked if I wanted the Market to be a shop.
Hmm, sometimes. Mostly, I was saying that in an ideal world, for me, it would be nice if the Market was all of the things that an in-game shop could be (cheap, reliable, etc). I wasn't saying that was the best solution, or that it would be good for the game. I was just making the point that the things I might wish for my ease and comfort aren't necessarily the best things in general.
As I noted above, I suspect that a game might be able to support both a Market and a shop system (that's essentially what I was suggesting above). I just have no earthly idea how to balance it so that both would be useful.

Well you're right, it comes down to perception. But while people tend to really hate long travel times to missions they seem to like farming because the former is simply dead wasted time whereas the latter, while skull-crushingly boring, at least makes you feel as though you're accomplishing something.

I didn't say it doesn't function like a real-world market, I said it shouldn't be compared to a real-world market, as the benchmarks for a successful market are completely different for each. A real-world market, in order to be successful, needs to be stable above all else. Inflation must be kept to a minimum, and there usually needs to be at least some form of regulation in order to keeps things in balance. Otherwise it collapses and your economy fails. It's easy to keep earning money in a game -- you just keep playing. And you have no overhead such as paying rent and utilities, buying food and clothing, transportation costs, etc.

Since none of those things are a concern in a game there is no incentive for the developers to regulate the market. On the contrary, the more inflative and unregulated a game economy is the better it functions, at least from a dev standpoint. In real life a stable economy is necessary for people to survive. Not so much in a game.

Well this isn't really true. It's because we are strong-armed into using the market to acquire the items we want due to the structure of the loot system as well as artificial limitations placed upon us in terms of acquisition and retention. Did you ever think to yourself "things would be a lot easier if there were maybe 20 kinds of salvage instead of hundreds"? The massive number of salvage items and recipes ensures that you'll almost never have exactly the right combinations you need to make what you want, which forces a trip to the market. This limitation is further compounded by the extremely limited amount of storage space we're allocated. If you were able to store every single salvage item and recipe you were awarded we'd spend a lot less time at the market. Which is exactly why we can't.

How about as an alternative to number 2, we have player run stores? Minimum cost to open a store is 100million. Once players can see prices they can shop around because it brings in competition unlike the auction house.

It would be cool to use them like bases so along with monthly 'rent', they pay to decorate their store and just like WW, a percentage of the sale is paid as a fee(think credit card transaction fees for the merchant). I would also like to see a new UI where the store owners can pay influence to remain at the top of the list much like Google Adwords. To provide incentive for people to visit your store, i.e. to see all your wonderful decorations you paid good money for, you can charge a shipping fee if they buy it straight from the UI or no shipping fee if choose to enter the instance. I suppose this would have to be substantial to make it worth it to load into possibly many stores as you shop for the best deals.

It would be fun also if the owner could take over an NPC while they are logged in so you could chat/bargain/etc. Maybe even make this a part of SGs so when the leader is not on, someone with the proper permission can play the store owner.

Influence sinks that target the 'richest' players to please NCSoft and competition to please the players.

I guess one of the problems I see is the have/have not syndrome as I'm sure many players would complain this idea is too prohibitive to access for the majority of the players. So are bases to a degree and the game already consists of have/have nots considering the current prices for purples. But I will leave it up to the smarter people in this thread to point out additional negatives/positives since this is all I've got.

Well it's a somewhat academic argument most of the time. But we don't pay based upon the amount of time we play, so there is a difference. We pay for a fixed amount of access time. Whether we play for 1 hour a day or 12 hours a day the cost is the same. So the incentive is to get us to play for shorter sessions stretched out over longer periods of time. Boring, repetitive tasks like farming fulfills this goal quite nicely.

It's important to understand why the market exists and why it functions as it does. It's not supposed to be a fair and equitable solution, and any suggestions to make it so is wasted effort. This is all I was trying to point out.