calouscaine
Grouchy Vet
I'll have to keep it in mind when I do a fighter then.
So... the platinum AH is useless?
- Thread starter cocopufff
- Start date
fireball241_jt
Active member
That is how the game survives.
Astral Shards keep the money with the game developers instead of Chinese Abusive computer farming companies where the employees work 18 hrs a day and have 1 day off every 3 weeks.
There was a show on these MMO slave farming workers. I think it was TLC or Discovery.
EvanBanning
Active member
No apparently the game survives by charging $100USD for 30 slots of inventory.
Astral Shards suffer the same problem as plat: nothing to buy with them.
You do realize those same "MMO slave farming workers" are grinding for AS to be sold on the cheap through third-party websites, yes? Astral Shards do not "keep the money with the game developers" when you can earn them in-game. Since you can farm for items that can be sold for AS, the farmers do that now instead of grinding for plat. Does absolutely nothing to curb human rights abuses.
The Narc
Well-known member
Guess we should definitely get rid of the shard exchange then!!!
EvanBanning
Active member
No there's nothing inherently wrong with the shard exchange.
We need to get rid of bound item status on at least a few things so an actual economy can happen.
Aelonwy
Well-known member
Make Minor Artifacts BTAonEquip
Make Purified Eberron Dragon Shards unbound (opens up AH and crafting for others)
Unbind ALL augments, even named expansion ones should be auction able
I'm fine with most gear being BTA but it would be awesome if every pack, every expansion had a half dozen items or so that were BTAonEquip for the purpose of trading... Minor Artifacts could potentially fill that niche but so could items with limited charges that disappear when the charges are used up. Imagine for example a wand with 5 charges of maxed/extended displacement. Use all the charges - *poof* you need to get another one. Or a 3 charge DDoor clicky? How about a trinket with a few charges of Goldskin? Radiant Forcefield? Limited charges, limited existence, valuable to some people more than others.
Make Purified Eberron Dragon Shards unbound (opens up AH and crafting for others)
Unbind ALL augments, even named expansion ones should be auction able
I'm fine with most gear being BTA but it would be awesome if every pack, every expansion had a half dozen items or so that were BTAonEquip for the purpose of trading... Minor Artifacts could potentially fill that niche but so could items with limited charges that disappear when the charges are used up. Imagine for example a wand with 5 charges of maxed/extended displacement. Use all the charges - *poof* you need to get another one. Or a 3 charge DDoor clicky? How about a trinket with a few charges of Goldskin? Radiant Forcefield? Limited charges, limited existence, valuable to some people more than others.
Aelonwy
Well-known member
Further but related thoughts:
The biggest issue for me though is that anything even remotely worthwhile is almost entirely put on the shard exchange. Its so bad sometimes there are almost no augments on the AH, I'm talking 6 pages total with 5 of them being regular filigree. Named, rare, special augments on the ASAH - I understand, I get it. But when even the basic stat augments Con +3 or the lowest weapon damage Flaming 1d6 is more likely to be found on the ASAH than AH that just feels like a problem. A hurdle for the least invested players to be even less invested.
I personally can acquire these things outside the AH, I know the Mysterious Remnant vendor, I know the various collectible vendors - we're old friends. Seems a shame though that people will come to this game and think this is such an obstacle because the AH is obvious, its out there, its visible but crippled. And all the alternate means for basic needs are hidden, over-complicated, obfuscated.
Its not just the AH either. They need to bite the dang bullet and consolidate the vendors in the Marketplace to be more like the vendors in Eveningstar. Close up shop on the Fare Trades (Deneith) and Second Gauntlet Goods (Kundarak) or move their butts out to the Marketplace and remove some of those vendors that barely buy/sell anything because the value range got messed up when they changed from the gold to plat standard more than a decade ago!
I mean, for goodness sake, clean up the mess. Consolidate, streamline, one stop shopping... less make-work, run around, poke your head in here, there and everywhere. I want to explore quests and wilderness zones not look for the vendor with level 4 spell scrolls for just this one class. *rolls eyes*
The biggest issue for me though is that anything even remotely worthwhile is almost entirely put on the shard exchange. Its so bad sometimes there are almost no augments on the AH, I'm talking 6 pages total with 5 of them being regular filigree. Named, rare, special augments on the ASAH - I understand, I get it. But when even the basic stat augments Con +3 or the lowest weapon damage Flaming 1d6 is more likely to be found on the ASAH than AH that just feels like a problem. A hurdle for the least invested players to be even less invested.
I personally can acquire these things outside the AH, I know the Mysterious Remnant vendor, I know the various collectible vendors - we're old friends. Seems a shame though that people will come to this game and think this is such an obstacle because the AH is obvious, its out there, its visible but crippled. And all the alternate means for basic needs are hidden, over-complicated, obfuscated.
Its not just the AH either. They need to bite the dang bullet and consolidate the vendors in the Marketplace to be more like the vendors in Eveningstar. Close up shop on the Fare Trades (Deneith) and Second Gauntlet Goods (Kundarak) or move their butts out to the Marketplace and remove some of those vendors that barely buy/sell anything because the value range got messed up when they changed from the gold to plat standard more than a decade ago!
I mean, for goodness sake, clean up the mess. Consolidate, streamline, one stop shopping... less make-work, run around, poke your head in here, there and everywhere. I want to explore quests and wilderness zones not look for the vendor with level 4 spell scrolls for just this one class. *rolls eyes*
Altra
Well-known member
We play, pretty much, on weekends.
Friday night usual conversation
"Do you remember where I got the <whatever buff> scrolls?
(he alt-tabs) "Kundurak"
"OK, we also need to go by Deneith for this and this and Phialaran for this"
(Why, yes, my spelling does suck)
We'll spend 20 minutes to get ready to play, just running to different shops.
I absolutely sign consolidating shops.
calouscaine
Grouchy Vet
It would be pretty amazing if the shops got an overhaul/update. Some are the exact same from over ten years ago (silver flame patron, cough, cough). But in all seriousness, things could use a new coat of paint in the npc merchant department.
Not because of farmers and exploiters, it is simply that -pat is useless to someone that is willing to sell a nice item. It they are selling it is likely because they already have the item and having 2 of them like means they have more plat than they need. I have over 20 million and never spend time farming.
DEFINITELY not exploiters. You can hit plat cap in a few months just vendor-trashing the contents of every chest @ lvl 32. The plat glut is due to poor game design; nothing more, nothing less.
The amount of plat entering the system was designed around a lvl 20 cap and scales with level. Now the level cap is 32, so much more platinum is being created than the system was designed to handle. Add in the uselessness of rangen loot(leading to more people vendor-trashing the stuff for even more plat). And the fact that even back when cap was 20, the game lacked appropriate plat sinks.
What does it all mean?
Every single day, more plat is generated by the game than is removed from it. Hence inflation, hence plat becomes useless as a currency.
Mary
Well-known member
DDO has four currencies - this is the problem - we have DDO points, Astral Shards, collectibles, and platinum (gold, silver, and copper are remnants of the early game, and used to matter but now everything is valued in platinum and gold, silver, copper should be deleted - who knows maybe that would reduce lag). In mmos with more than one currency, we see hyperinflation, and generally all but one become valueless. Of the four plat is the least useful. It's much easier to post for astral shards and use them then to not only buy on the shard market but also from the vendors in game that take collectibles.
Jack Jarvis Esquire
Well-known member
SSG need to hire an economist.
They might get 5 different answers, but at least there is a decent chance one of them will seem right.
They might get 5 different answers, but at least there is a decent chance one of them will seem right.
Fisto Mk I
Well-known member
Yea, like EVE Online team. They have doctors of economics on their staff.
And, by a strange coincidence, it is EVE Online that has the best market system and in-game economy of all online games.
EvanBanning
Active member
Shocking.Yea, like EVE Online team. They have doctors of economics on their staff.
And, by a strange coincidence, it is EVE Online that has the best market system and in-game economy of all online games.
TrinityTurtle
Well-known member
The problem isn't rooted so much in the existance of the astral shard exchange entirely as it may seem, crafting and sentient weapons are also contributing to the reduction of player trading. Random loot gets deconned for crafting xp and essences to make shards for crafting xp, and named loot gets fed to sentient weapons to increase their power. And the sheer amount of bta/btc items that you can't sell anyway, helps train people to just feed named stuff we don't want to the weapons and not really think about the player/player sales anymore.
EvanBanning
Active member
Yes this has been mentioned several times in this thread and you are 100% correct.
Even the crafting system itself is carefully designed to be anti-economy:
-essences cannot be listed for buyout, preventing the use of the AH(or even ASAH) as a marketplace(if you are crafting and need essences you need them NOW not 3 days from now when the auction ends).
-crafting unbound shards requires rare bound items, forcing "career crafters" to still go out and adventure for materials(as opposed to being able to buy all mats instantly)
(Yes you can trade tomes which can be bought unbound, but this is a wildly fluctuating market and doesn't fix the essence problem above).
-collectibles. There are TOO FREAKING MANY. The game offers literally hundreds of collectibles, the vast majority of which are completely useless. Now casual player can possibly be expected to memorize which 30 collectibles out of the 200+ available(many of which have extremely similar names) are in fact desired by crafters. You need 5-10 such things MAX that non-crafters can go "Oh, I picked up a lighning-split sorewood! Better post that on the AH and make me some coin!"
-named items are almost always better at every level in every slot. Only extremely casual players who can't incessantly farm R1 for named loot have any real use for crafted items.
-finally crafting itself. If you invest even a modest amount of time & effort into it, you will be able to make everything you could ever want or need LONG before you can make unbound shards for sale. This means in the increasingly rare situation where you DO want a crafted item, its just easier to make it yourself.
Its almost as though SSG delibrarely designed cannith crafting to kill any remaining semblance of an economy.
TrinityTurtle
Well-known member
This is one of my big AH annoyances. Most (not all) players move pretty quickly, and there isn't a whole lot of things I'll remember I wanted in three days for my toons. LOL Not to mention sometimes I just want to clean out my digital hoarding and make space for more (I know, I have a problem) and even for vip there is a limit to how many auctions you can post and those no buyouts are really annoying.
TrinityTurtle
Well-known member
The 'no buyout' options in my case actually increases it being used as a bank for me because the things that have that are the ones that would likely sell if people could just buy them.