Criticizing auction house prices is silly.

[MondoGrunday]

Yes they are. Plat farmers are the equivalent of printing money. The result is called inflation.

people who buy money from plat farmers then use the money to buy an item on the auction house so the plat farmers can use that money to sell back to you again.....

if people stop buying from plat farmers, they will go away. as long as people support their services they will be around. the hypocrisy on this issue is amazing. its not the casual gamer who buys plat , its the hard core type to keep up with their guildies etc.

flame away, but you know its true...

[Lorien_the_First_One]

Sorry, stupid off topic, noob question. What is a pink weapon? I have seen them but don't what they are or what they do. Why do you need one for VON?

They are true chaos or anarcic (sp?) weapons and yes, they do have a pink weapon effect in game. Basically they do nice damage on the construct at the end of von5.

Transmuting or greater construct banes also work nicely but the pink weapons have been around longer so all the old players still think pink

[GeneralDiomedes]

Plat farmers have to earn the money the same way the rest of us do

They represent a separate player base that contributes additional money to the main player base that would not otherwise be produced.

... they are not the cause of the ingame inflation.

This would only be false if they did not exist at all. We can make the argument that they are a small contributing factor or a large one, but not that they aren't one.

[Angelus_dead]

This would only be false if they did not exist at all. We can make the argument that they are a small contributing factor or a large one, but not that they aren't one.

Do you know the difference between "the cause" and "a cause"?

[branmakmuffin]

If you can't make more money than you spend in a given quest, you're doing it wrong.

Your reasoning seems to have a fundamental flaw: you assume the value derived from playing DDO is measured in character profit.

Either it's bad party makeup or bad players, but any way you look at it, you're doing it wrong.

This statement smacks of so much arrogance, we need a new arrogan-o-meter to measure it.

[Hafeal]

Your reasoning seems to have a fundamental flaw: you assume the value derived from playing DDO is measured in character profit.

I did not take that from Tanka's statement. What he is saying is that if you are dying so much or wasting such tremendous amounts of resources in your questing you are:

a) probably playing at a higher quest level or difficulty level than you should be; and/or
b) probably playing beyond your characters ability; and/or
c) grouping in a poor team.

Hey, we all have bad nights that cost a lot. If you are doing so consistently, you should examine your play style.

[Allistair]

Sorry, stupid off topic, noob question. What is a pink weapon? I have seen them but don't what they are or what they do. Why do you need one for VON?

The only stupid question, is the question not asked. It's how we learn.
A Pink weapon is one that has a "Pink" graphic effect to it. These would be True Chaos and Anarchic weapons.
They work really well on the marut at the end of VoN 3. They are also a lot more common than Greater Construct bane.
Even a casual player can easily obtain a "Pink" weapon relatively cheap, where as the Greater Construct or any type of Construct bane for that
matter are hard to find and Can be a bit pricey when you do find them.

There are many ways to take down the various end bosses as well as different strategies. You don't need to have all the Uber gear or play
24/7 to succeed in DDO.

No matter what, NEVER be afraid to ask questions. There are many who are more than willing to share thier knowledge with you.
Also NEVER be afraid to speak up and say at the begining of a quest, that you've never done it before, or to ask the group to slow
down a bit as we proceed through the quest.
The new player today that enjoys and understands the game with be the future veteran player.

You'll also find a bunch of generous people who when you mention you are new will be more than happy to help you with gear and/or money
and supplies. Just remember someday you'll be in a position to help a new player. Pay it forward. Remember how generous people were to you,
and repay that by doing the same for another new player.
I've given away my twink gear to a new player in the middle of a quest, because he needed it, and honestly it could be replaced.
Nothing beats the excitement in a new player's reaction when you're in WW and give him a +1 Elemental long sword or a sickle of Sypheros.

You didn't say what server you are on, but if it's Khyber look me or any of my guild members up.
We love helping new players get acquainted with Stormreach.


***Edit***
Oops didn't catch your forum Sig line, you seem to be far from a new player. LOL My bad.
That still doesn't make it bad advice for those that are new players

[krud]

Agreed on all points, except on how plat farmers are driving up prices. It's not all about the inflated prices on items the farmers post, it's also about the extra cash they infuse into the system that gives people extra spending money. Kind of like infusing our cash supplies with a bunch of counterfeit money. If that money stays in the system it creates inflation.

However, if you think the prices on the AH are outrageous then don't pay them! It's that simple. Somehow there are always people who act like they deserve a shot at every item they see on the AH.

[Drekisen]

When I pull something...if I am not keeping it, I will always put it on the AH for 24hrs. at base price with no buyout no matter what the item is. I let the people who really want certain items tell me what they are willing to pay. I have made far more money this way than any other way, because people will buy some stuff u would not expect, while something u would normally put up for a high buyout because ur sure it will sell comes back to you in the mail.

[HumanJHawkins]

Trading on the AH is a skill, and one that takes undeniably vast amounts of free time.

<1>The people who complain about the absurdity of the Auction House and its prices are usually Casual Gamers who get next to zero shot at the things they see posted.

<2>What I find a bit off is +4 Handwraps(plain) posted for 2,000,000 gold with a 5,000,000 gold buyout. This happens EVERY HOUR with various silly and junk items as well as a +1 Vorpal Greataxe RR Halfling going for 15,000,000 gold with a 21,000,000 gold buyout.

1: I make a good profit from the auction house spending no more than 5 minutes per play period. It is more about developing skill than spending time.

2: The solution for this is to implements a useful search mechanism. There is no need to prevent these kind of posts, as long as a person can tell the game to show them all paralyzers with a buyout price of less than 50K plat for example. Or, all items with a Wis +5 bonus. Then you just sort the results by either current bid or buyout price and make your choice.

[Lorien_the_First_One]

They represent a separate player base that contributes additional money to the main player base that would not otherwise be produced.



This would only be false if they did not exist at all. We can make the argument that they are a small contributing factor or a large one, but not that they aren't one.

Right, so we would have the same problem if the game was more popular and there were no plat farmers, big deal

[Tanka]

I did not take that from Tanka's statement. What he is saying is that if you are dying so much or wasting such tremendous amounts of resources in your questing you are:

a) probably playing at a higher quest level or difficulty level than you should be; and/or
b) probably playing beyond your characters ability; and/or
c) grouping in a poor team.

Hey, we all have bad nights that cost a lot. If you are doing so consistently, you should examine your play style.

This.

People think a loot run must be done on Elite in the highest possible quest level.

Factually incorrect. Trial by Fire is still one of the fastest loot runs out there if you can get the right group for it (and, sometimes, even not the right group). And it's, what, L13 on Normal? Why, you can get W/P weapons from there!

[Ranmaru2]

That means a different currency which provides different rewards, such as was done with mod4 dragon scales and mod5 tome pages / shield fragments / tapestries. Of course there will be some interaction between the old plat economy and those new systems when players pay 1,000,000 plat for a single Shield Fragment or whatever, but that connection is optional.

While they have introduced these items that require a grind to get, there hasn't been an effort by the player-base to come out and negotiate any universalities in price from item to item. There's little-to-no effort to come to one place and say (on one server or all), "5 Dragon Scales are worth 100kpp" and then go from there or to create points for item Prefixes and Suffixes and go from there. I'm happy that plat farmers exist in this game as they help to at least create SOME medium for costs. They may post Vorpals for 100kpp even though there's some out for 50-80kpp, but at least they set the high/low/middle bid costs for items and then we adjust to it.

However, you can never prevent people from paying for stuff out of ABSOLUTE necessity. I sold a Siberys Dragonshard for 2 million plat (I have witnesses) on the Auction House, can we blame someone needing a dragonshard that badly as driving Siberys shards up? No. This was an Enigma. A freak accident that hasn't occurred again.

The only reason Auction House prices are so high? People are greedy, plain and simple. Complain all you want about a Vorpal being 100kpp, but if you can't go farm the vale with a caster friend more than 2-4 times and make, potentially, that much in that many runs in order to afford the item, that's your problem.

Farm Trial By Fire (30-80kpp for 8 runs - 40-80 minutes, tops). There's a bajillion ways to make that much money quickly in this game, the Vale/PoP/Trial By Fire/Maze of Madness just allow for the easiest cash farming ever.

Ending Point: You want to fix the economy or attempt to create some balance so one player type or the other won't complain? Come together and talk item prices via plat/points. Compile it all into a thread that can/will be updated based on item availability (Forum trade threads are an Ok, at best monitor, and the AH allows one to visually see and count the # available.

[Brummbar]

Best response BAR-None!


Those who don't work hard at a skill or craft and then turn around and complain about those who are successful are just a waste of spacial mass.


Learn your skill, and be as good at it as possible, ... the old adage, lead, follow, or GET OUT OF THE WAY.

I think we could sum up nicely by saying that if you realistically expect to be able to afford high end items off the AH you must also be adept at selling there as well. Some guys think up great builds, some guys play their heart out and amaze you, and some guys can turn dog turds into gold. It's a skill, and like any skill you have to practice and research. Right or wrong, for those of us who have done our homework and really enjoy working the market it's a slap in the face to hear people complain and try to play the plat farmer card.

[MrWizard]

Oh yea!!! Criticizing people who critize auction house prices is ridiculous too....

hey man.....ready for an all caster invader elite run??

I see a lot of complaints about "out of control" AH prices and so forth. I've seen claims that "plat farmers" are responsible for the high prices. I've seen various suggestions around capping or otherwise "controlling" the auction house prices in order to "fix it". I've seen people claim that Plat Farmers "bid up" prices in the AH.

Frankly, these suggestions/ideas bewilder me.

First, Plat Farmers aren't responsible for the high price of items on the AH. Buyers are. Because apparently (some) buyers are willing to pay those prices. As long as there are buyers with money to spend, sellers will try to get every penny they can. If the sellers price their items too high, no one buys them, and the seller pays a transaction cost.

Second, if you try to control the auction house to ensure "reasonable" prices (essentially creating price controls), every interesting item will stop being posted on the auction house - and will show up on the forums instead. Case in point - Wounding of Puncturing items. Now, imagine that no more +6 stat items, no more vorpals/disruptors/paralyzers/smiters/etc, no more holy of pure good/silver bows, no more mithral shields or full plate, etc, etc on the AH. Many, many items are simply far more valuable than others of the same minimum level. (Anarchic Burst Handwraps of slowburst vs. vorpal battleaxe of righteousness)

Third, unless the platfamers are responsible for half the items on the AH, they can't reasonably create artificial shortages for very long. Let me give you an example:

Let's assume there are 100 vorpals that drop on every server on a given day. 5 of those are picked up by plat farmers, the other 95 by regular players. Each player decides for themselves what they would like to receive for the vorpal... let's say they want 100k plat on average for their vorpals, and they set up auctions with a 100k buyout.

The platfarmers, however, want the price to be a million. But they can't make the price a million if there are vorpals out there for 100k. So they have to buy up 95 vorpals at a total price of 9.5 million. So now, they put vorpals back on the market at 1 million. Now, will someone buy some of these vorpals? Probably, but not that many people have 1 million plat lying around, and most of those who do probably don't need vorpals. Maybe they sell 10 of them. So they make 500k plat in profit on that first day.

The second day, another 100 vorpals drop. But this time, some of the people who sold one the day before noticed that their 100k buyout went quickly. So some decide to go for a 200k buyout - let's say the average ends up being 150k. So now the plat farmers have to spend ~14.5 million, and they sell 10, for a loss of 4.5 million.

And the third day, other people notice the rapid buyouts at 150k, and go for 200, etc. In essence, the plat farmers can't control the price because they can't control the supply. Unless they pick up more than half the good items every single day, the farmers can't ever make enough in profits to cover their expenses in creating artificial shortages.

In summation - the prices are an elaborate dance between buyers who want to pay as little as possible, and sellers who want to make as much as possible. If the prices are high, it is because buyers are willing to pay those high prices, otherwise the sellers won't be able to sell them, and will have to lower their prices instead. The auction house works fine as it is.

[Ron]

Plat farmers have to earn the money the same way the rest of us do... they are not the cause of the ingame inflation.

The flaw in that argument, Ridd, is that plat farmers work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They work the same quest over and over, whichever is the one that gets them plat the fastest. Basically they are printing a LOT more money than the average (or even the hardcore) player, and yes, IMO, they are driving up prices on the AH. Because, quite simply, they are responsible for dumping a large amount of plat into the economy that otherwise wouldn't be there. You can't compare them with other players, they are apples and oranges. If they didn't sell it, they wouldn't stay in business, and we wouldn't be getting those constant annoying tells all the time (and speaking of that, when is turbine going to fix the harrassment report system?).

They're kind of like the terminator. "They can't be bargained with. They can't be reasoned with. They don't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And they absolutely will not stop, ever."

[Euthorcize]

I am a new player.

I have 20,000 plat between my 2 guys. I simply cannot imagine there will ever be a day where I can afford the auction house prices.

[Riddikulus]

The flaw in that argument, Ridd, is that plat farmers work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They work the same quest over and over, whichever is the one that gets them plat the fastest. Basically they are printing a LOT more money than the average (or even the hardcore) player, and yes, IMO, they are driving up prices on the AH. Because, quite simply, they are responsible for dumping a large amount of plat into the economy that otherwise wouldn't be there. You can't compare them with other players, they are apples and oranges. If they didn't sell it, they wouldn't stay in business, and we wouldn't be getting those constant annoying tells all the time (and speaking of that, when is turbine going to fix the harrassment report system?).

I just can't see plat farming as a profitable operation for a large number of farmers. Maybe on a WoW server with tens of thousands of players certainly, but here in niche-land it just can't be.

Judging by the spam-tells I get it looks to me like there is really only a couple of different messages... perhaps there is only a couple farmer groups who are doing this... and if so they just cannot affect the economy in any meaningful way.

Again IMO it's the other 1000 players on each server who are creating massive amounts of wealth which has no place to go in the current DDO economy which is causing the inflation. Sure the plat farmers contribute a percentage but I don't think it is as large as you would think.

As far as some mitigation strategies (be nice, just brainstorming here):

1) Make all magic items bind on equip. This reduces twinking and locks in better items so that they cannot be reused/sold.

2) Instantly disable trial accounts which get a spam report against them. Let them talk to the GM to get reinstated if it turns out to be a mistake. Give them a free month as an apology even.

3) Devalue the economy... during one maint period divide all money in-game by 5 or 10, along with all AH bids, etc. This will make it so that you can put higher value items on the AH to pull more cash out of the system in auction fees.

4) Add a meaningful search ability for the AH. This will contribute to competition.

5) Join the AH between the servers together. Again makes the seller/buyer populations larger and contributes to competition.

6) Add the ability to buy the next two bank space tabs for some kind of large fee. This increases players carrying capacity which reduces the need to buy items on the AH at high prices.

7) Add the ability to establish a guild bank. Again this increases carrying capacity for players and allows easier sharing of mid/low grade magic.

Out of ideas for the moment...

[Ranmaru2]

I am a new player.

I have 20,000 plat between my 2 guys. I simply cannot imagine there will ever be a day where I can afford the auction house prices.

ransack the vale

[Aranticus]

This.

People think a loot run must be done on Elite in the highest possible quest level.

Factually incorrect. Trial by Fire is still one of the fastest loot runs out there if you can get the right group for it (and, sometimes, even not the right group). And it's, what, L13 on Normal? Why, you can get W/P weapons from there!

bad example....

tell me how many people you see running TBF on normal? heck my wiz can even solo it on elite. yes it is ML13 on normal, but what is the chance of a W/P dropping? if it drops every run, i'll just do it on normal. however in ddo this is not like the way you put it across. maybe out of 1000 pulls, you get a w/p. however, you get 999 lousy crappy weapons. 999 ML12 weapons sell MORE than 999 ML10 weapons.

another this is for the possibly of some gear dropping. how many people run dust on normal for loot? on normal setting its L16 and 0% chance of a +2 tome dropping (reward dun count), but when you run it on hard, there is a possibility a +2 tome might drop. the only people that run dust on normal are those that do it for 1. flagging, 2. vale ingredients

so why do people choose to do some quests on elite? 1. elite has better drops, 2. xp is better, however its dependant on the difficulty of the quest

tbf = elite
dust = hard
shroud = normal

by your arguement, everyone should be running reaver on normal then..... since you can get w/p on normal