Reduce plat of those who took advantage of the Dowsing rods:)

[Thrudh]

I also take a slight issue with the claim of being able to cap plat in just 4 hours. I am assuming you are starting from 0 plat.

Now each Diamond/Emerald was worth 50 Gold Dubs. If you got 100 Stolen Gems each run (possible I guess), then that would be 5000 Gold dubs or 50 Greater Dowsing Rods (at 100 per rod). In a 4 hour span it would be hard to get more than 8 runs of the cove in (2 per opening and a bit of downtime between openings.) So that would be 400 Rods. At 3000 plat a rod, that would still only be 1,200,000 million plat. About 300K per hour. To cap plat in 4 hours would mean you were pulling almost 350 gems every run and there is no way I see that happening.

FYI, what people were doing were running in. splitting up, killing everything, then jumping out, reform group, and do it again... They weren't doing full completions with the kobolds... They ignored the kobolds... Instead of getting 100 gems every 20 minutes, they would get 100 gems every 5 minutes, and do 8 runs (last run, they would actually do the full completion with the kobolds)

[voodoogroves]

FYI, what people were doing were running in. splitting up, killing everything, then jumping out, reform group, and do it again... They weren't doing full completions with the kobolds... They ignored the kobolds... Instead of getting 100 gems every 20 minutes, they would get 100 gems every 5 minutes, and do 8 runs (last run, they would actually do the full completion with the kobolds)

Some did just this and the wands-for-plat thing

Some, however, ran the cove to full completion multiple times and made some plat with their spares. Depending on how much they did the normal runs, this could still be a chunk of plat.

Is one bad and the other not? Is one more in the spirit and the other not? Did everyone have the same understandnig ahead of time?



Who's the objective judge on this?

[zebidos]

I made about 1,000,000 plat selling unwanted large devil scales as I really did not want to run the shroud, or any quest more then 5 times just to make a item.

I am using that money to give away 100 stacks of heal pots to lowbies who can't afford them (and hopefully get them used to being able to look after themselves)

Well and the 1000's of rage, haste, barksking pots etc for me

[Bobthesponge]

I actually read all 7 pages... I really don't know why.

So, in summary:

1) The difference between jumping for coins and selling the result for plat and farming gems then selling the result for plat is zero. The one comment that said "as if running from the ship to the tavern was real work" missed the whole farming part of it in CC.

2) The economy isn't broken. The price for essentials has not changed. Cure/repain pots, haste pots, curse pots, disease pots, poison pots, resist pots, heal scrolls, cure wands, ect have NOT CHANGED IN VALUE.

3) Large ingredients, scales, ect are FREE. They cost nothing. If you want a large devil scale go run Shroud, Amrath or Devil Assault. If you want blue scales run Tor. Prices on the AH mean nothing - ESPECIALLY the top end prices. A large devil scale is worth exactly what you paid for it. If you agree to pay 2M plat for scales then that is what they are worth to you. Personally, I pay 0 plat for mine.

4) The dowsing rod prices are not a bug. It is not an exploit. They were valued rather highly for the effort it took to get them (and there was effort - see item 1) but nobody broke any rules when selling gems to get them and then selling the rods to vendors. Anyone who thinks this is an exploit also probably things Information is Key should only be worth 300XP. Or Wiz King should only be worth 3000XP. Should people be banned for farming XP from these quests? Some things have more value than others. Deal with it.

5) Anyone who starts another "Economy is broken" thread should be banned. Permanently.

[hityawithastick]

5) Anyone who posts in another "Economy is broken" thread should be banned. Permanently.

This. End of discussion.

[PopeJual]

3) Large ingredients, scales, ect are FREE. They cost nothing. If you want a large devil scale go run Shroud, Amrath or Devil Assault. If you want blue scales run Tor. Prices on the AH mean nothing - ESPECIALLY the top end prices. A large devil scale is worth exactly what you paid for it. If you agree to pay 2M plat for scales then that is what they are worth to you. Personally, I pay 0 plat for mine.

I agree with your basic stand on this issue, but saying that Large Scales, etc. are free is like saying that real world dollars are free. They cost you nothing other than the time and effort involved in acquiring them. If you want more money, just go run a "job" and you'll get them for FREE every week or two.

...anything that requires time and effort to acquire is not free and anything that has a lockout timer on it in particular is not free because of the opportunity cost involved in the use of those ingredients.

[tkrenaud]

Asked for thread to be closed. My point has been lost in the mix, so no purpose to thread. Thanks for thoughts all. See you in game

[mystafyi]

the plat issue, while detrimental to the plat based economy in short term, was nothing compared to the real problems with the event. I hope the dev's fixed the ability to get 140k xp/per 40 min since cc did not have repetition penalties.

[Kaeldur]

It appears that those who play the game a lot (and thus probably have most of the gear they need) got even more wealthy as a result of the Dowsing Rods epidemic. So why not reduce the plat of those who so obviously got millions of plat selling the rods? I wouldn't be averse to a complete wipeout of any plat acquired by selling dowsing rods. I realize this is not realistic but perhaps the mere thought of it as a possibility will discourage future conduct of this sort.

I don't know what the solution could be, but I wish they'd make something that would, like you said, discourage future conduct.

Those who play less spent the time in the event getting stuff to make a piece of gear (or two). While those who had oodles of time used the time to take advantage of an obvious oversight. As a result now those who actually use the auction house to buy an item they need (that they don't have the time to spend farming said item) can't afford the item because those who took advantage of the oversight are now willing to spend more plat on item(s) (which incidentally they probably already have on numerous alts).

Fixing the oversight by eliminating future selling is hardly going to remedy those who now suffer from the inflated prices caused by the oversight. I am sure you can come up with a more creative solution... you know who took advantage either even the playing field by taking away from them or conversely doing something for those who didn't/couldn't take advantage.

I agree. It's not actually about me. I have said several times: I don't use AH, I have more than enough plat to buy whatever I need for any of my characters, and that was before the event. No, I don't have capped plat, but I have more than enough. I refused to partake in the wand selling.

What I try to tell people, but people just ignore it, is that us players should care for the game. It was obviously wrong, but people just care about themselves. Now all new players are gonna have a tougher time at the game, in my opinion. But rather than reading people prefer to personally attack me.

P.S. In the spirit of offering realistic solutions... how about rewarding those who didn't dump their gems etc into dowsing rods by creating a new Broker- the broker could give out some type of clickie or item to those who still have stuff leftover from the event. Supposedly the event is coming back, so that would only be feasible if the event did not come back or if it could be implemented before the event did return...

I suggested that also, but I doubt they'll implement it. But then when I suggested it people were saying I considered myself better than other people because I didn't do it. And some people thought I didn't do it because "I was too slow". Bottom line is I have conscience and I chose not to, I could've, but didn't want to. If that makes me better than someone else? Hardly, but at least I feel I did my little tiny part in not making thins even worse.

UPDATE:
Reading all the responses to my original post has got me thinking... I have always tried to keep an open mind - my philosophy on the majority of "life's dilemmas" has been I am x years old, if the best thinkers throughout history haven't found the answer, I would be arrogant to think in my short life I have. That being said, I can see everyone's point. I agree with some and disagree with some. One thing I apparently neglected to mention is that the "oversight" (selling of dowsing rods for massive amounts of plat in an extremely short amount of time) has NOT in any way impacted my playstyle or the game I play in general. I have been playing since the games release and though I do not have any plat capped characters (more because I never sell anything and would prefer to give to someone who needs it), I have logged enough hours to get any gear that I deem necessary for any of my 32 characters. I NEVER buy anything off the AH. I NEVER sell anything in the AH.

People won't read this. Those who think the wand selling was cool assume that those who think poorly about it are poor people who envy those with capped plat. I guess some people just can't grasp the essence of what we're trying to reach. I don't know what goes through their head, I guess it's either too much greed or a lack of conscience.

So why this thread? I was struck by the fact that so many people were openly talking about this oversight. SO many people were talking in general chat about how plat is worthless, how they got rich during the event, or how the AH prices were higher (or even double). It got me thinking. Remember when you acquired your first frost or fire weapon? Some of us even remember when +5 full plate was an aspiration not merely vendor fodder. I have been rereading some of my older TSR novels and it struck me how in the books when a wizard cast a fireball it was looked upon with awe by all around. For those of us who played (or play) pen and paper we saw this firsthand from our DM and the various modules we ran. It seems that the game has moved very much away from that. Now granted it is an online game and they do need to make the game interesting to keep up the revenue... But somewhere along the line I stopped meeting people who enjoyed the spirit of ddo. The groups I run with both high and low are oftentimes intent on getting to the end of the quest or even running through the quest for the xp then either moving on to a quest with more xp or repeating the quest ad nauseum for the xp. Too many times I see people excluded from a group because he/she has a character that doesn't conform with an expected build-type. Recently someone posted that he/she would boot someone if they used a paralyzer in Shavarath instead of a Vorpal.

Reminds me of my first character... I kinda laugh now at the items I dreamed of having. I remember "bid wars" in the AH for a +1 Vorpal something... I was so excited at possibly getting my first vorpal item.

LAST POST: well human nature is to go in with a view and retract what you need to bolster your point and this thread has proven that once again... I had hoped people would step back and view the entire game and its future but instead people seem to only care about how it impacts them.

Exactly. Extract 1 word from your entire post and just build their whole attack against you based on a single word, and just comfortably ignore the rest. Pretty disappointing. At least this event served to show me how petty the majority of the players are, even if there are a good amount of great ones.

[Ganak]

P.S. In the spirit of offering realistic solutions... how about rewarding those who didn't dump their gems etc into dowsing rods by creating a new Broker- the broker could give out some type of clickie or item to those who still have stuff leftover from the event. Supposedly the event is coming back, so that would only be feasible if the event did not come back or if it could be implemented before the event did return...

This paragraph is still cracking me up.

[jwdaniels]

Asked for thread to be closed. My point has been lost in the mix, so no purpose to thread. Thanks for thoughts all. See you in game

Your point wasn't lost, just kind of overwhelmed. You want everyone to lose their plat, and barring that you want the opportunity to make plat yourself. You're not arguing whether the CC event was good or bad for the game or the economy - you're just upset you didn't get paid.

[Chai]

I actually read all 7 pages... I really don't know why.

So, in summary:

1) The difference between jumping for coins and selling the result for plat and farming gems then selling the result for plat is zero. The one comment that said "as if running from the ship to the tavern was real work" missed the whole farming part of it in CC.

We can tell that I am not the one who missed something, but something was sure missed here. Lets talk about the difference between money changing hands (farming an item and selling it to a player) -vs- creating ALOT of money from nothing (selling dousing rods for play and capping plat on toons)

2) The economy isn't broken. The price for essentials has not changed. Cure/repain pots, haste pots, curse pots, disease pots, poison pots, resist pots, heal scrolls, cure wands, ect have NOT CHANGED IN VALUE.

Incorrect. People seem to think that +1 metalline of pure good is worth 600k plat now.

3) Large ingredients, scales, ect are FREE. They cost nothing. If you want a large devil scale go run Shroud, Amrath or Devil Assault. If you want blue scales run Tor. Prices on the AH mean nothing - ESPECIALLY the top end prices. A large devil scale is worth exactly what you paid for it. If you agree to pay 2M plat for scales then that is what they are worth to you. Personally, I pay 0 plat for mine.

The prices on the AH mean nothing? Everyone is just an overnight armchair MMO economist now aint we?

4) The dowsing rod prices are not a bug. It is not an exploit. They were valued rather highly for the effort it took to get them (and there was effort - see item 1) but nobody broke any rules when selling gems to get them and then selling the rods to vendors. Anyone who thinks this is an exploit also probably things Information is Key should only be worth 300XP. Or Wiz King should only be worth 3000XP. Should people be banned for farming XP from these quests? Some things have more value than others. Deal with it.

You are merely bantering semantics with some antics here. It is what it is, exploit or not, whatever we want to label it, it is bad for the economy over all to allow people to create money from nothing limitlessly. The difference between what happened here and what happened in SWG was the supply of the exploit material went away, and that is the one redeeming factor.

Here you go with your loose definition of farming. Running from the barter chest to the tavern isnt farming. Keeping with your analogy I bet you think that logging in and out to gain xp in 1k increments is farming too eh?

5) Anyone who starts another "Economy is broken" thread should be banned. Permanently.

Anyone who doesnt see that this is bad for the economy is blind to the situation.

Its good that people called attention to it. They went no less overboard than you are going now by using conjecture to interpret the situation in the way it will benefit you the most. The last time Turbine grew a pair and took mass action on something this obvious was right before MOD 9, and so many diapers needed to be changed from all the crying that ensued that they realize now that they cant do something like that without a forum riot.

Had this been SOE, they would have flat out told you not to do it and those who did would have gotten the business end of a banhammer. For some reason Turbine wants to be all secret squirrel about it and not identify something as WAI or bug / exploit, and this allows people to get away with it. In doing so they try to justify it and be all cute doing so. LOL. Seriously. Every time I read one of these "its not doing anything wrong because they didnt say so" posts I think of the Chapelle stand up with the cop pulling his friend chip over for speeding while drunk and chip tells the cop "Sorry officer, .....I didnt know I couldnt do that".

[LazarusPossum]

I've been railing against the advice channel tards that keep saying you ---need--- such and such from the AH to complete such and such quest and this is what I keep saying when I rail against them while they try to talk some newbie into purchasing overpriced stuff from the AH.

I keep trying to get them to use that plat on other stuff like various pots and consumables but I don't think anyone listens.

You think maybe that overpriced stuff might be their own (the channel *jerks*)?

[wuliman]

First and formost, people weren't creating something from nothing. I farmed the gems-i sold the gems-i sold the dub's-i sold the rods-i made some plat. The time sink farming gems was my currency. I didn't create gems and dub's from thin air, or heavy for that matter. I know this game is based on fantasy, but there wasn't any magic involved.

People "THINKING" +1 met of pg is worth 600k. Like i've said before, lvl 16 group, doing shroud with nothing but masterwork weapons...been there, done that...and i'm not anything special.

Maybe you don't get it, the game got along just fine before the AH was ever an idea. YOU DON'T NEED THE AH TO PLAY THIS GAME. "Everyone is just an overnight armchair MMO economist now aint we?" Why don't you turn that self-rightous finger back at yourself for a second...because you sound an awful like a kettle right now.

I wonder, did you talk to everyone across every server before you started to speak for them? Did you ask every single person if this dowsing rod event affected them in any way? Did it affect they're pot/scroll/ship ammen costs? OH NO! I CAN'T AFFORD TO BUY A LARGE SCALE ON THE AH! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO? DOOOOM, DARN YOU DOWSING RODS, YOU RUINED MY LIFE! I guess you're just gonna have to do the last resort...run shroud, amrath, devils...og, say it ain't so! Don't confuse an enconomy breakdown with mass Lethargy due in part for those who want nice stuff without the work entailed.

[Junts]

Just ban everybody that accumulated more then 100k plat for 3 days and give the other people some plat or a way to earn easy plat for 3 days. Even if a third of the game gets banned for 3 days oh well. What they did was wrong and might as well let the other people make some money those three days.

Dude, thats crazy: I played the event for 3 hours (total, on the last night). I made one sneak attack hat and sold the rest of my gems into rods for plat because I knew I wouldnt have time to use them to make any other items.

I made well over 100k plat doing that..and I only did the mines quest 3 times.

No one cheated. Turbine vastly unbalanced the rate at which they gave out different parts of the event (in particular, too many gems equalling too many doubloons to ever use for anything useful) meaning that getting dowsing rods was, among other things, the most efficient way of getting that garbage out of your inventory!

Clearly the person who assigned a 2k plat value to something that cost 100 doubloons wasn't thinking - at all. That person, and the one who decided that people would get 15x more doubloons of each kind than they could possibly use to buy anything useful, are the ones responsible for the plat spike. There was no alternative to get rid of them except to destroy doubloons in increments of 50,000.

In 3 runs of the mines thing I made enough gems to have 50,000 gold doubloons after I made my sneak attack hat. What on earth did they think I was gonna use them for??

[PopeJual]

The only thing that I think is really that important to get from the AH is a DR breaking weapon.

And there are PLENTY of cheap DR breaking weapons on the AH if you aren't all that choosy about the particulars.

search for
metal flamet
metal good
holy silver
silver good

and see what comes up. I guarantee that you'll find something within your budget. Everything else is just a convenience.


That still doesn't mean that the Cove didn't temporarily break the DDO economy even more than it previously was.

[DustTheWind]

I mean if you are TR'd you have plenty of plat for small things anyways. You know the prices on large green steel ingredients are sky high anyways compared to what you would get for this event. And like most people are already stating once that plat is gone the economy just goes back to normal. Its not a problem unlike maybe an actual flawed game mechanic or other more serious problems.

[Jaid314]

Its good that people called attention to it. They went no less overboard than you are going now by using conjecture to interpret the situation in the way it will benefit you the most. The last time Turbine grew a pair and took mass action on something this obvious was right before MOD 9, and so many diapers needed to be changed from all the crying that ensued that they realize now that they cant do something like that without a forum riot.

turbine didn't 'grow a pair' and mass ban people for exploiting.

they had a stupid script that mass banned/warned people for existing in the same area as someone who was detected as exploiting.

using that as an example of how to deal with things, if you were logged in and near a vendor while someone was selling wands, or if you were near euphonia while someone was trading for wands, or if you were in a group where someone killed anything in the crystal cove (or wilderness area) at all who then later went to trade in their doubloons for wands, you should also be banned and/or warned.

hopefully, you can see just how mind-numbingly stupid that policy would be. and that would be why turbine unbanned and unwarned people; because they looked at what happened and reached the obvious conclusion that proximity to someone who exploited is not grounds for banning. i would have hoped this would be easy for everyone to grasp, but apparently it isn't.

as to the fact that millions of plat entered the game rapidly: true. millions of plat enters the game from nowhere every day. when you open a chest and you see 500 gold pieces sitting there with your name on it, guess what... that 500 gold pieces didn't come from an established character's money. it was generated out of nothing. it didn't exist until you opened the chest. and when you take that "+10 equivalent" ghost touch light hammer of maiming to the vendor and sell it, guess what? you just created more plat that entered the economy without coming out of any other character's pocket. zomg, you exploiter you! bad player! taking money out of chests and vendoring items! you ought to be ashamed of yourself! the only legitimate way to make money in this game is to sell stuff you find to other players, and if you think otherwise you're clearly a dirty cheater and have no morals! [/sarcasm] (well... actually, i can't guarantee i won't be sarcastic for the rest of the post at all).

seriously. if it was that awesome to get lots and lots of plat, you'd see lots of people farming IQ, day after day, and earning plat.

oddly enough, i've actually seen more loot runs for TEMPEST SPINE then i have seen for inspired quarters.

if you want to farm plat in this game, there are plenty of ways to do it. you can bring hundreds of thousands of plat into the economy every day by selling to vendors if you want to. you don't need some fancy event to do that, it's merely that the event provided more people with loot that had only one remotely appealing use. if they hadn't sold their gems for doubloons for wands for plat, plan B would be... solid fog grenades. so there you have it. lots of people think plat is better than solid fog grenades. a few people think that lots of plat is better than getting exceptionally good loot, as well. fast forward to now, and i bet those same people have next to no plat, and those of us who farmed loot (and ended up with leftover stuff that was worth either solid fog grenades or plat) still have all the gear we farmed.

there is currently a lot of platinum changing hands in the economy. make use of that fact to earn more platinum by selling to other players. if you use the auction house, you'll even be helping to destroy money from the economy.

just don't fool yourself into thinking that plat is the ultimate resource which can be exchanged for whatever you want. if we're in a reaver's fate run and i pull a dreamspitter, nobody is going to be buying it from me. if i'm in a raid with my sorcerer and i pull a piece of gear that i want, no way in hell am i selling it for plat.

for any of the best gear in the game, it most likely isn't available for plat. odds are good, the only people who are going to be accepting plat in trade for the best loot... are the people who farmed the event for plat and missed out on getting items in the first place. because they don't understand that plat is easy to get if you care to spend the time looking.

[PopeJual]

The last time Turbine grew a pair and took mass action on something this obvious was right before MOD 9, and so many diapers needed to be changed from all the crying that ensued that they realize now that they cant do something like that without a forum riot.

Funniest thing I've seen on the internet all day.

[Yaskin_Forrit]

I 'bought' and upgraded al the stuff I wanted. then turned left over gems in to dubloons etc. I decided to do this way before the event finished and made thousands (not millions, but it was enough).

Another guild member just missed out - turned all his gems to dubloons just as the event ended - he is not bitter, or upset that he missed out on millions because he got everything he wanted and upgraded it.

You can't just penalise people who spend more time in game than you because they made some money and you didn't!