The Auction House addiction, and ideas...

[SiliconScout]

.... But my own issue to the above recommendation of using TPS is that i seriously want the ability to attempt to make actual money via buying and selling, it's that simple. ...

But that is exactly my problem, see you and I would like to make some actual money buying and selling things as a little added perk.

But you know there is some guy who never leaves Mom's basement that will try to make it his "job" and let's not even think about the 2000 Korean's who will have this as their job.

From there things just go screwy because "plat farmers" aren't doing anything wrong, heck what they are doing is sanctioned by Turbine.

I don't know if you were around much in the earier days but honestly I couldn't go ANYWHERE that wasn't instanced without spam in every channel trying to hawk Plat or Items for cash.

Turbine spent a lot of time and energy shutting those guys down to the point that it wasn't profitable for them to bother and it's more or less gone away. I hated those days, hated them with a passion.

This wouldn't crack the door open for them, it would remove the front wall entirely.

I understand where you are coming from but allowing this will have no positive impact at all. The only reason it's in Diablo III is because rather than try to fight it (which they did previous) they are willing to allow it to happen and just take their cut. And their player base is happier because they don't have to leave the game to go to eBay all the time.

I get it, I really really do, but I still think it's impact would be overwhelmingly negative.

[Kawai]

But that is exactly my problem, see you and I would like to make some actual money buying and selling things as a little added perk.

But you know there is some guy who never leaves Mom's basement that will try to make it his "job" and let's not even think about the 2000 Korean's who will have this as their job.

From there things just go screwy because "plat farmers" aren't doing anything wrong, heck what they are doing is sanctioned by Turbine.

I don't know if you were around much in the earier days but honestly I couldn't go ANYWHERE that wasn't instanced without spam in every channel trying to hawk Plat or Items for cash.

Turbine spent a lot of time and energy shutting those guys down to the point that it wasn't profitable for them to bother and it's more or less gone away. I hated those days, hated them with a passion.

This wouldn't crack the door open for them, it would remove the front wall entirely.

I understand where you are coming from but allowing this will have no positive impact at all. The only reason it's in Diablo III is because rather than try to fight it (which they did previous) they are willing to allow it to happen and just take their cut. And their player base is happier because they don't have to leave the game to go to eBay all the time.

I get it, I really really do, but I still think it's impact would be overwhelmingly negative.

Hrmm. You mentined earlier about farming... this is the point where i get thrown off. (im eazily confuzed)
Target... say... LDS, LRDS, etc... they're already farmed, and used. How would the monetary system make it any different? Farming is farming... it requires time and patience. If i have like 7 LDS, and want to deff keep 6 of them, why not be able to sell that 7th for a few realworld dollars?
If i'm still not getting it... (more than likely, but the blonde is only bleach), then plz explain?
-Tarelyn

[SiliconScout]

A let me first apologize for the coming wall of text ;-)

Picture 2000 guys working in an office, each with access to a couple hundred toons. They spend all day every day running say Shrouds. They only run the raids with members of their "guild", say the "Co-Rean Farmers" guild, and the hand all the loot to one toon to make transactions easier. Now in reality they will probably cycle accounts and raids/quests so that you have a team of "shroud" guys and they run through all the accounts every 3 days and these same accounts run ToD's and VoN's and all the rest as well each with a different team.

In 2 weeks they build up say 2 billion Plat and hundreds of RDS and FRDS. They then place these on the AH for real cash. (payoff for their investment).

But wait the AH allows you to use real case or Platinum (they have millions of this that they want to sell as well so that is no good for them). So they start spamming the Trade, General and Advice channels barking about how you can get 10 LDS for only $20 from them, cheaper than the AH prices!!!

Yes they are farmed already, but they are only good for other virtual items. This harder to acquire digital piece of data can be traded for other harder to acquire digital pieces of data.

The minute you all these digital pieces of data to be traded for real hard world currency you will have people and places start entire companies who do this for a living. India and Korea have traditionally been the 2 largest sources of these.

For Example in India things cost about the same as they do in Canada or the US however the price is in their Rupee's. Thus a 2 dollar bottle of pop would be about 2 rupee's in India.

However they get 55 Rupee's to the dollar right now so selling those 10 LDS which took the "guild" something like 10 minutes to farm (due to the massive repetition they are doing) nets them about $1,100 in their economy.

This can become very lucrative for them due to the imbalance in size of the economies.

This isn't hypothetical either, it's as real as real gets I personally know 2 people who worked in one of these companies farming Diablo II items. In their case it was even worse because they could run bots to farm for them most of the time. This is much harder to do in DDO due to the quest structure. Sure they got caught repeatedly and their Key's were banned but they just bought more copies. They were profiting several thousand dollars per copy of Diablo II purchased so it was MORE than worth it for them.

This is the nightmare that we need to avoid because were this to happen you are eating up a TON of server resources to service a segment of the community that is going to be running a lot of quests and raids but not providing anything to the community.

Sure they may be making it easier to get $$ and items but that really doesn't help us, it really really doesn't.

Why?

In this scenario Turbine spends a lot of time, energy and system resources to keep everything running smoothly but doesn't get paid a dime for all the extra work and server load. In the end that means their income is stagnant (perhaps even decreasing) while their costs keep increasing. They can't stay in business and offer the same kind of game in that scenario.

That is why I said if you are looking for the "make money" button it shouldn't be there. If you are using the "let me just buy it" button then Turbine should either sell Plat in the store or allow all items to be sold in the store.

Personally I would prefer if it was just all left as it is. It's got a good balance and is obviously making them enough money to keep us entertained.

[Kawai]

That was pretty exhaustive, and explanatory... so, to counter, i believe it could be regulated and monitored with a little forethought. Should also do a little wait and see on how D3 is turning out...
-Tare

[Cauthey]

Personally I would prefer if it was just all left as it is. It's got a good balance and is obviously making them enough money to keep us entertained.

I wholeheartedly agree. DDO is fine the way it is.

Not to mention, do support a game that turns the blind eye or rewards gold/plat farmers is to support that particular industry. I have heard horror stories about poor working conditions and have read articles about "gaming addiction" in Korea. Supporting this industry is not doing any good for the world.

Silicon, thank you for the education on how gold/plat farming works. +1.

[Cauthey]

That was pretty exhaustive, and explanatory... so, to counter, i believe it could be regulated and monitored with a little forethought. Should also do a little wait and see on how D3 is turning out...
-Tare

I disagree. You'll always be one step behind the gold/plat farmers, no matter how much forethought. And even if you catch them (as SiliconScout suggested), they still win. They are much more motivated to "re-roll" their farmers than you or anyone has infrastructure to monitor/police/policy them.

[Kawai]

I disagree. You'll always be one step behind the gold/plat farmers, no matter how much forethought. And even if you catch them (as SiliconScout suggested), they still win. They are much more motivated to "re-roll" their farmers than you or anyone has infrastructure to monitor/police/policy them.

Good point... I concede. Thanks all for the input...
...broken dreams are hard to swallow
-Tarelyn

[SiliconScout]

I agree there, it's too bad really because it would be kinda neat.

The good news though is that you can trade those ingredients often for some pretty cool stuff.

[phalaeo]

i know right? my booty is usually parked at mkt1 front and center of the AH. Like i think ive said before it takes me months to go 1-20... shameful.
And oh, your sooo wrong about the mall. it IS shopping therapy, especially the shoe stores.
But alas, you get my last +1 of the day. Cheers, luv.
-Tarelyn

I wear a Women's 9.5 EEE. The shoe stores are the special hell for this Halfling.

[wax_on_wax_off]

I'd much rather see the AH be accessible outside of the game like an iPhone app or other such thing, would be great fun to interact in this way with the game when you can't otherwise play.

[Kawai]

I'd much rather see the AH be accessible outside of the game like an iPhone app or other such thing, would be great fun to interact in this way with the game when you can't otherwise play.

Heck yeaaa! Even if we could just access it from outside the mmo itself would b nice. I'd be laptopping it at work

[Kawai]

I wear a Women's 9.5 EEE. The shoe stores are the special hell for this Halfling.

Hmmm, off topic, but we DO need to be able to change the color of our shoes... that would rock!

[Zyerz]

Me? No time whatsoever. The AH has become way too overpriced I dont really bother with it. Occasionally I might look for a GS ingredient (if its at a decent price) or a weapon for a lowbie (but most of the time good low min lv weapons go for insane prices). So my time in the AH is minimal.

[Kawai]

Me? No time whatsoever. The AH has become way too overpriced I dont really bother with it. Occasionally I might look for a GS ingredient (if its at a decent price) or a weapon for a lowbie (but most of the time good low min lv weapons go for insane prices). So my time in the AH is minimal.

I'm sorry you've had bad experiences with it...
GS ings usually fluxuate, they've been a lot lower recently (past few months) as the drops have increased...
As for Low Level or lowbie weapons, they can draw the highest of prices simply because of what they are.... you can't craft GS until you get up there, and if you can find something particularly useful with the Frost-Burst Kit attatched to it, it can bring a very high price...
Anyway, it NEVER hurts to check it every so often, if you browse long enough you can usually find a great bargain! (Which is the cause of me addiction

[Tshober]

i have always wondered why they bothered charging a fee with nonexistent currency that they don't need, but it makes sense if they are training the players to accept fee charges when they moved over to real money.

The reason is inflation. DDO is a closed economy. But as you quest and raid away you are constantly adding money to that economy in the form of loot. When you open a chest you add money to the economy that did not exist before. When you sell junk loot to the vendors, you add money to the economy that did not exist before. Econ 101 taught us that when a closed economy keeps adding money and never removing any, very shortly that money becomes essentially worthless and everything costs incredible amounts of money because everyone HAS incredible amounts of money. Inflation. You have to remove money from the economy somehow to slow down inflation. Some MMO's do it with huge gold sinks like player housing. DDO does it mostly with AH fees and airship buff rentals.

[Kawai]

The reason is inflation. DDO is a closed economy. But as you quest and raid away you are constantly adding money to that economy in the form of loot. When you open a chest you add money to the economy that did not exist before. When you sell junk loot to the vendors, you add money to the economy that did not exist before. Econ 101 taught us that when a closed economy keeps adding money and never removing any, very shortly that money becomes essentially worthless and everything costs incredible amounts of money because everyone HAS incredible amounts of money. Inflation. You have to remove money from the economy somehow to slow down inflation. Some MMO's do it with huge gold sinks like player housing. DDO does it mostly with AH fees and airship buff rentals.

Agree... however with the addition of the crafting halls, finding lower level good loot has become much harder and more expensive for the young newbs (non-TRs).
Not saying it's broken, but... hmmm... yea, it's broken.
....have you hugged a newb lately? (they likey hugz and nice gear in a trade window)

OH! and I wanna House!

[Xynot2]

I wasnt referring to players making real money. I was eluding to buyers being able to use real money.

[justagame]

I used to spend more time at the AH, but crafting has probably reduced that a bit.

Additional web-based ways to access it might be nice, but given how myddo works (or doesn't), I'm not sure I would trust it.

And I absolutely oppose allowing real cash to be used in AH transactions.

[PinkDragonJr]

Agree... however with the addition of the crafting halls, finding lower level good loot has become much harder and more expensive for the young newbs (non-TRs).
Not saying it's broken, but... hmmm... yea, it's broken.
....have you hugged a newb lately? (they likey hugz and nice gear in a trade window)

OH! and I wanna House!

and raise a family.
wait i just realized. where are the kids?! why are there no children playing in the streets of Stormreach. are all people born in other cities and then immigrate to Stormreach to become celibate!
i mean really. Turbine we have a serious problem here.

in other news authorities have renounced the rumors that kobolds are kidnapping the cities youngsters to worship as their reincarnated gods.

back to the AH debacle: i mentioned earlier that i have no real preference to it either way. but i would also have to admit that i had not considered now seriously some would take it as a professional career. as far as i was concerned it would be just a few people making some extra cash to justify their gaming habits. but then i play Diablo 2 offline exclusively and never paid any attention to the account frauds that plague WoW.

that being said, I really think that the 'pay to win' club has no foot stand on here. i mean items have been available for purchase at the DDO store for at least the last four years that i have been playing it. being based-ish (Very -ish) on the 3.5 ruleset there are no easy buttons for equipment or other salable items in DDO. the minimum level on items sees to that. actually i'm rather surprised at how few Career Crafters i see, but that may just be the server i'm on. all said it's nothing not like social pages like facebook where it's blindingly obvious who pays of the short cuts and who plays for free.

and yes, yes i do hug newbs all the time. it makes them uncomfortable which is priceless. plus afterwards they ask how i did it and a lesson on the emote command ensues.

[Kawai]

...wait i just realized. where are the kids?! why are there no children playing in the streets of Stormreach?

Children as "pets" would be sweet. (Hmmmm, gonna get flamed for that one )

and yes, yes i do hug newbs all the time. it makes them uncomfortable which is priceless. plus afterwards they ask how i did it and a lesson on the emote command ensues.

I know, right? We used to go hang out on Korthos and give stuff out -until we realized that most of them were TRs... hehe... the trick is to examine them and make sure that the toon is listed as a LvL-1+ Adventurer...