So... the platinum AH is useless?

[cocopufff]

Honestly have learned a lot about the economy of this game just from reading this thread. I don't have enough experience with high-level play to realize just how many layers of problems exist, but I can definitely see how all of this lead to the economy feeling significantly worse than when I played several years ago.

 

[erousted8]

I remember waaaaaaaaaaaaay way back when I first started the game. Heroic TR had just been introduced. I think the AH was still listing prices in gold, not plat. I didn't have very much many(a few thousand plat) and playing the game was a struggle. This was back when rangen loot had value and there was enough BtCoE stuff to have an actual economy.

Then I found out I had 3-4 collectibles each worth 50-100k plat. I sold them, bought myself some better equipment, and never had problems with money again. It annoys me no other player will ever have an experience like that again.

 

[Xaerxiessia]

A good plat sink ? make loose the 5% increase on a bet if out-bidden.

the AH needs to be stimulated a bit ? allow the F2P to post a bit more than 1 sole auction.
if AH is so useless, why tightening the screw so much on F2P ?

 

[erousted8]

A good plat sink ? make loose the 5% increase on a bet if out-bidden.

the AH needs to be stimulated a bit ? allow the F2P to post a bit more than 1 sole auction.
if AH is so useless, why tightening the screw so much on F2P ?

True F2Pers(this is players who have never spent a single penny on the game) are few and far between, and are not the people who should be active in the economy anyway(if you can't afford the 8 bucks it cost to go premium you probably don't play the game enough to really matter in the grand scheme of things).

The AH itself is never going to be a significant enough plat sink, and that's not where you want to sink to be anyway. We need a LARGE sink at the END of the game that can drain millions of plat out of the economy at a time. And no. It is not now, nor will it ever be "reaper wings".

 

[EvanBanning]

The limits are there to prevent the auction house being used as a bank, its a good thing.

The auction house wouldn't be used as a bank if THE BANK were big enough.

 

[Xaerxiessia]

True F2Pers(this is players who have never spent a single penny on the game) are few and far between, and are not the people who should be active in the economy anyway(if you can't afford the 8 bucks it cost to go premium you probably don't play the game enough to really matter in the grand scheme of things).

The AH itself is never going to be a significant enough plat sink, and that's not where you want to sink to be anyway. We need a LARGE sink at the END of the game that can drain millions of plat out of the economy at a time. And no. It is not now, nor will it ever be "reaper wings".

That says much about your mentality. Mentality of a consumer, not a player.

 

[Ying]

We need a LARGE sink at the END of the game that can drain millions of plat out of the economy at a time. And no. It is not now, nor will it ever be "reaper wings".

In Daybreak lingo it's called Krono. We might actually see it once the launcher and store updates are complete.

 

[Valerianus]

the plat is not useless, but greedy wb&turbine shifted your buying power from plat to shards, premium currency, injected in the system by players usually with real money. so obviously you'll try to sell for shards, cause they have more buying power. coupled with the 30% fee, the system is designed to slowly make premium currency vanish and setting the need to be re-injected. this is true both ways, both premium currencies, shards and ddo points....if you get shards via ddo points farm, the system is designed for you to gain zero, except buying power, but people like the idea of gaining shards because they cost. you think to gain something but you gain zero, except barter power and this is not a small thing anyway, it's very welcome, that money was cashed-in already, using it will burn the shards someone else did buy.

it's too late now for a game economy, instead of fixed it was replaced by shards, it was destroyed on purpose instead of being fixed, we can forget about it.

 

[EvanBanning]

the plat is not useless, but greedy wb&turbine shifted your buying power from plat to shards, premium currency, injected in the system by players usually with real money. so obviously you'll try to sell for shards, cause they have more buying power. coupled with the 30% fee, the system is designed to slowly make premium currency vanish and setting the need to be re-injected. this is true both ways, both premium currencies, shards and ddo points....if you get shards via ddo points farm, the system is designed for you to gain zero, except buying power, but people like the idea of gaining shards because they cost. you think to gain something but you gain zero, except barter power and this is not a small thing anyway, it's very welcome, that money was cashed-in already, using it will burn the shards someone else did buy.

it's too late now for a game economy, instead of fixed it was replaced by shards, it was destroyed on purpose instead of being fixed, we can forget about it.

Shards have a similar problem to plat in that there's nothing to buy. You have a few little things, but what am I supposed to save up my shards for? There are no good unbound items.

Heck, the one trick the pony that is the ASAH had going for it? "BtCoE items can be sold at an extra fee!" became pointless when they never released any new good BtCoE items.

 

[Alco]

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.

You apparently don't know many economists if you expect one of them to be right.

 

[Valerianus]

Shards have a similar problem to plat in that there's nothing to buy. You have a few little things, but what am I supposed to save up my shards for? There are no good unbound items.

Heck, the one trick the pony that is the ASAH had going for it? "BtCoE items can be sold at an extra fee!" became pointless when they never released any new good BtCoE items.

shards were never intended as currency as a part of some game economy, just money\ddo points sink.

 

[erousted8]

shards were never intended as currency as a part of some game economy, just money\ddo points sink.

Except they didn't really put very much in to spend them on, so people are accumulating vast sums.

 

[The Narc]

Except they didn't really put very much in to spend them on, so people are accumulating vast sums.

Well they could doble or triple the cost of chest rerolls.

 

[erousted8]

Well they could doble or triple the cost of chest rerolls.

I'd rather they make more useful unbound things for us to buy and sell each other.

 

[Makarion]

I personally find the "they need to make money" response to any monetization criticism to be fairly asinine.

I am not disputing the idea that the game needs to charge money for things. But there is a world of difference between a monetization style which causes frustrating gameplay and tries to monetize that frustration (forcing you to buy things to alleviate frustration) v.s. a monetization style which causes enjoyable gameplay and seeks to monetize that enjoyment (encouraging you to buy things to offer more of the enjoyment you're experiencing.)

DDO's atrocious inventory management system where the only real solutions are locked behind a frankly stupidly high paywall ($20 for a shared account is kind of insane) causes frustration to players, and your options are to open your wallet or live with the frustration. DDO's quest design system which, excluding the give away code, requires players to endlessly farm the same quests over and over again if they want to level without buying in, deliberately designing quests so that you get diminishing returns from doing the same ones and requiring players to kill every monster and every barrel for maxing EXP, is all a frustrating gameplay loop that you either deal with or pay your way out of it.

The fact of the matter is, DDO's monetization is frustrating. It is thrown in your face constantly while you play, and the less money you have spent, the more frustrating elements you have to deal with. Games tend to have a LOT more players when they focus on making good, engaging gameplay that people will pay for MORE of, rather than making mediocre gameplay that you have to pay in order to make better.

That is only true if you don't run a VIP account, since that includes a lot of the comforts such as a shared account. Frankly, I wish we'd go back to that being the default, rather than f2p with "micro" transactions.

 

[Makarion]

They could bring some of the people back from not spending money if they fixed that which insulted those people in the first place! Nerfing improved precise shot which was one of the few AOE attacks for ranged types while allowing there to be AOE single button caster room wipes is utterly insulting. Dropping the convenience of energy resist shrines in the cargo hold, just so they can have their beholders and scorrow and wraith casters wipe out your buffs so you have to slow down and recast buffs(or just slot in permanent energy resists i your gear) all whilst creating uber bard buffs not dispellable by the same mons so dual boxers can run around with uber permanent buffs, super insulting.

Neither improved precise shot, nor the ship cargo buffs broke anything they were just pure takeaways. The first one got me on the negative train the second one made me commit to closing my wallet on any extra spending, and from watching on the sidelines for many changes after that i am glad i did.

On the other hand as you said milking the egos of the whales spending on xp pots and guild ships on hardcore is definitely a wise place to earn income. I have said it somewhere else double/triple the cost of those items thise people will still pay it!!

I agree with you that it seems that weapon-focused builds seem to be meant for spike / boss damage, and casters for support, aoe and roomclearing. Above all, regrettably hybrids are not generally viable at higher difficulty ratings, so you cannot really compensate for weaknesses very well.
Of course, that really is only a problem if your baseline is soloing high reaper.

 

[cocopufff]

That is only true if you don't run a VIP account, since that includes a lot of the comforts such as a shared account. Frankly, I wish we'd go back to that being the default, rather than f2p with "micro" transactions.

If DDO really wants a subscription model, they need to stop expecting people to both pay a monthly subscription and to shell out more than $100 for all the expansions as well. Or if the game is going to go on expansion model, they need to commit to that and begin reducing the price of previous expansions. ESO allows you to buy a bundle of the newest expansion + all previous ones for a flat rate of 60$. GW2's rates are similar. Neither game shoves as many essential systems behind paywalls, either.

Closest thing to DDO's is FF14 or WOW, which requires subscription + purchasing expansion content. WOW gives you all expansions up until the most recent one for free with your subscription. FF14, which is often considered one of the most expensive MMOs out there, only requires $60 for all existing expansions + subs to keep playing--and unlike DDO, its in-game cash shop is limited to cosmetics and mounts. There's just no real way to justify DDO's monetization compared with other MMOs.

DDO's coupons were a great thing, and if they were actually a permanent change to the monetization instead of just a one-off deal every few years, I might have kinder words. But for players who are starting now, the cost of the game is extremely prohibitive--especially for an MMO that's as dated, buggy, and laggy as DDO.

My 2c is that bleeding a small playerbase for as much money as you can is only likely to kill the game off, but that's just my thoughts.

 

[Sarlona Raiding]

I put some of the top-tier random loot I find on the plat auction house and most of it sells. But I mostly do that so someone else can make use of good items I can't use - not to make plat profits.

ASAH is off limits unless you spend some amount of cash on the game which I have done. The ASAH has the same issues as the plat auction house - there isn't much to use the astral shards on once you have a guild ship and all astral shard guild ship goodies. Most of the good stuff is bound.

Plat is not available for sale on the ASAH so it's not possible to get any rough comparison of value but I don't think too many people would buy plat if it was available on the ASAH.

The main issue is that plat maximums and such were set long ago and since then plat payout for junk has continued to go way up due to level cap increases. The same issue exists with commendations of valor, essences and just about anything else that scales with level.

 

[erousted8]

Plat is not available for sale on the ASAH

This is actually a really interesting notion I'd not considered. What if you could sell plat on the ASAH? Of course we've still the same problem of why? But if the game had proper plat sinks I could see it being valuable.

 

[fireball241_jt]

I remember waaaaaaaaaaaaay way back when I first started the game. Heroic TR had just been introduced. I think the AH was still listing prices in gold, not plat. I didn't have very much many(a few thousand plat) and playing the game was a struggle. This was back when rangen loot had value and there was enough BtCoE stuff to have an actual economy.

Then I found out I had 3-4 collectibles each worth 50-100k plat. I sold them, bought myself some better equipment, and never had problems with money again. It annoys me no other player will ever have an experience like that again.

I still have a lot of random loot for low level. Keen Falchions. Everbright. Then added Icy Burst from Risa and they are even better.