Changes to tarmalune tradebar store?

thefiresidecat

boatman are you on your phone? when I use my phone to access the forums (which is most of the time now due to that chick with the eye that constantly is staring you down when you try to read) I can't quote people

xrawcarnage

I cannot quote people either. It says "null"

blindmonkeyz

WOW.. lol
So typically changes on PC we get within a week after if its a easy fix like the patch PC got last Thursday. Other fixes like the Leadership changes and GMOP and SMOP changes typically take a month, just to see how it takes on PC. So this is something you will see on Xbox in possibly a month. Everyone needs to realize that because of Microsofts policies that things will always be tested on PC first before released on Xbox because of processes. And you all know of course they will do this after a double RP weekend. LOL. Sorry that was a low blow.

ambisinisterr

boatmanfall3n said:

I assume that if they lowered their price of their illusionary currency to be more competitive with the vendors than not only would they capture the customers using third party but I think they would also bring in new customers as well.

Players are not bots. They aren't willing to be paid the salary for their time that the bots are willing to get paid. Nor should they.

Bots are slave labor. Sweat shops. Whatever. 500 AD per 1 Zen is already a pittance so dropping the rate to be competitive with them would drop it even further.
How long does it take to earn 500 AD on overage? Let's say you make 24K AD per character every 4 hours (likely way higher than you make for a reason) That would be 12 Zen made per hour or the equivilent of 12 cents per hour...
And that's over double the rate of pay bots accept.

Not reasonable. Buy the AD with Zen...or face the consequences.
What the players should want is for the AD value to go UP (not down) and for players willing to buy their way to the top to use the legitimate method to purchase AD instead of selling their souls for a few cents.

ambisinisterr

mahburg said:

The topic on here is a good example of this, if the Devs want us to be timeline compatible with PC on revenue then they MUST make us the same on overhead imho!

What they want is to not make the same mistakes they made on the PC and fix mistakes earlier.

Like I said the biggest mistake was making leadership grant AD...
The second biggest mistake was waiting so long to change it.

Again, the PC side envies that you have a much more balanced economy than we ever had because leadership inflated the market. Again we had been sitting on the 500:1 AD per Zen minimum wage for nearly two years. Its not rainbows and butterflies over there. Never has been. It's been nonstop complaints about more than gold spammers being annoying...

However the solution to the problem is to make it so people don't earn hundreds of thousands of AD every day just from leadership....which is no exaggeration. I myself had a personal friend who made 300K AD a day just on his one account only from his leadership farm. It doesn't take much of an imagination to consider how much AD was being generated by bots who just farmed leadership 24/7 and didn't play after they finished their half hour farm run.


Also, on a side note:
Gold sellers exist in every MMO. I know MMO's are new to Xbox but as a long time PC gamer I promise I have played dozens of MMO's and every MMO in history has the exact same problem with bots....and the communities always seem to believe that their current MMO is the only one with the problem...and seem to forget when they move on to their next MMO that their previous one had bots due to nostalgia or...IDK...the complaints are always the same in every MMO Forum and the communities always seem to think that their previous MMO was better, their current MMO is the worst ever and the next MMO will kill their current MMO. Different people. Same complaints. And same explanation that the entire MMO industry spends millions of dollars combatting bots every year so if there was an easy solution it would have been fixed.

As I sent in a PM yesterday, Movie and Entertainment companies fight tooth and nail to prevent their movies from being pirated and yet we all know pirate sites still exist and they are around for years or even decades. Bots in MMO's are no different. So seriously I feel like I lose a bit of my sanity every time people say something akin to "well if Cryptic didn't want this to happen they would just stop them." It is not that simple. Period.

boatmanfall3n

@thefiresidecat yes. 99% of the time I am on my mobile.

thefiresidecat

yeah pretty sure it's a phone bug

boatmanfall3n

And again agree ambisinisterr. We do want the value of AD to go up. Doing so would obviously net us more AD per dollar spent on Zen. Which is also why I am 99% certain that the developer does not manipulate the market at all. If they did, they would, I assume, drive up the exchange rate to coax more players onto buying zen. Yet here it is bouncing around 140 and 150 where it is better for players to farm AD and purchase zen using AD.

boatmanfall3n

I'm not sure about everyone but I know for a fact that nearly every person I play with is near or over 30 years old and they have all played many different MMO in the past 15-20 years.

I don't think the posts in this thread are children crying aimlessly and I hope they all realize that this is not an issue isolated to NW on xbox. I'm would like to think that everyone here has played at least a few MMO games before and that they are aware Chinese gold farmers are present in every MMO. So no need to lose your sanity. Nobody has said that their is an easy fix to the problem.

attorn97

boatmanfall3n said:

And again agree ambisinisterr. We do want the value of AD to go up. Doing so would obviously net us more AD per dollar spent on Zen.

you have it backwards. You want the value of AD to go DOWN... you want AD less valuable. you want everyone to make 24k AD every day so that they have no problem buying Zen at 300:1.

right now, a full day's refining of 24k equals about $1.72 (based upon a 140:1 AD to Zen market). Since not many people can refine 24k AD a day, the refined AD are pretty valuable.

I, on the other hand, have a ton of rough AD. I want the value of AD to go UP. I want them to take even MORE AD out of the economy. If it hits 100:1, my daily refined limit of 24k would be worth about $2 in zen.

"well.. people won't buy zen then!" people say. As long as the relative prices for stuff on the AD remains the same, people will buy zen. Plus, lots of people just can't help themselves.

meliboo

I think you are forgetting that more and more people are quitting this game everyday. About 8 guild members quit today, and my Bf is quitting tomorrow when BLOPS3 drops. So soon there will be no one buying Zen, and the market will be extremely low for those who choose to still play this game.

armadeonx

Ah the game is free so as long as they keep updating content they'll keep getting new players - there's always turnover in mmo's.

I'm happy when Zen costs below 150 AD as I absolutely cannot be bothered running skirmishes on my 3 characters, I make about 45-50k per day in total and that doesn't go far when you're trying to upgrade 3 characters.

I'm generally ok with the economy changes but I'll be happier when they get around to adjusting the cost of regular items like companion and mount upgrades. (it's cheaper to BUY a higher level than upgrade)

ambisinisterr

attorn97 said:

you have it backwards. You want the value of AD to go DOWN... you want AD less valuable. you want everyone to make 24k AD every day so that they have no problem buying Zen at 300:1.

I'm glad somebody else explained that.
Wow it sounds weird to hear those numbers though. The PC end has been so inflated for so long that 400:1 still sounds like a good price to me. I'd be happier at 300:1 and even happier with 200:1...but yeah...anything below 500:1 puts a smile on my face.

grandpaxxx

Only way to get rid of the farmers is to clamp down on the economy no more trading period. They don't want you to think the game is pay to win or pay to play that's why they won't do that.

The farmers will always be here and there prices are cheap. I know a few of my friends have purchased over 40m ad from them at really cheap prices. 200 bucks for 10 million ad even if you loose 1 million in transfer. You can still buy zen equal to the 199 price 3 times over.

Makes me feel kinda dumb for buying the 199 zen.

Some of them have so much they toss me a few mil ad if I ask them. Since getting suspended for 3 days since I last did that not asking them anymore but it was funny.

Guess it gave me time to work on my cars that I have been neglecting so all in all thanks devs for the mandated game break.

zukn75

You think you've got it bad on X-bone, since the leadership change(Nerf) the exchange rate has gone from a stable 500:1 for 2 years, to jumping 80 points in 3 hours. I think I understand why it's being done , we've got to get a lot closer to you in the economy, unfortunately, it's painful for us and you. They've got to suck out our excess ad and campaign currencies before they can introduce new methods to generate AD to us. The plan is solid, whether we all can cope with the travails is another issue. And while they drain us of excess AD you guys suffer with not enough. I hope it means they have a long term plan.

boatmanfall3n

@attorn97 why exactly would you want zen over AD?

What is it that requires zen that you can't buy with AD?

Sorry for misunderstanding. I just don't see why anyone would want zen other than to convert it to AD.

grandpaxxx

Well they buy zen at 130-140... one guy I know has 100k+ zen that he baught between those prices and he sets his sell price at 167-200. Collects the interest waits for it to go down again and buys it cheap again.

mercbenz360

I couldn't even imagine a new player starting now. Hundreds of currencies, half a dozen campaigns, players spread out all over, insane prices and undercutting in the AH, nearly impossible to make AD (rewards scale down to level), geared twinks (alts) crushing you in lowbie PvP, etc. etc.

They've made the grind worse for less reward for the hardcore and added a massive mountain to climb for newbies and casuals. That's not a great place to be imo.

grandpaxxx

I agree totally! The massive undercutting will help the new players that join.

thefiresidecat

"well.. people won't buy zen then!" people say. As long as the relative prices for stuff on the AD remains the same, people will buy zen. Plus, lots of people just can't help themselves.


not only that the population of people who were buying zen in the first place will always buy zen. it's convenience. they have the money they don't have the time. that's the real commodity here. time vs no time. people who can spend the time farming vs people who want to play and have money but cannot spend time farming.

armadeonx

I wish I was in the latter bracket lol.

mahburg

thefiresidecat said:

mahburg said:

thefiresidecat said:

i dont think we have any evidence one way or another as to how much zen is being sold. You can day trade to great profit. How much was ever actually being bought with real money and traded? How much is being fed into the markets by the makers of the game? How much is being bought and sold with ad converted. We have no solid numbers on any of this so to make definitive statements seems a little less than factual to me unless you have an inside look at the market.

The one factual bit we do have is the exchange rate and that is undeniably cheap.

One can only go by qualitative information gained from those who buy zen (talking to them in chat) the Devs will never release their revenue stream data so as a criticism its a little moot, if there wasn't a serious market for trading zen for AD (bought with real money) then there would be no need for the exchange would there? And yes I see the fact that it allows those with AD to buy zen, but where do people think it comes from (unless you assume its Arc feeding the market but then they would run out of cash and we would have nothing to debate)

Speaking from personal experience the market pricing has in in game economy terms doubled the cost of purchasing Zen in the store if your intention was to use it for fast AD stocks for ranking up purposes.
Now people can argue the wallet warrior versus I dont spend a dime issue as much as they like, the reality is every FTP game has this division and the software companies behind them depend on this for their revenue. Halving (or more) the returns from this aspect is imho, counterproductive.

Actually, I do think they feed the market. and no I don't think it costs them anything. Yes, some people I am sure do buy to get AD but I doubt that's the serious feeder of the market.

there are a lot of assumptions here but as far as what they are aiming for and manipulating the market to be at... we really don't know. But if they wanted the price of zen to be at 240 because it would be more profitable for them, or if they wanted it at 500 they could manipulate it to be that. AD is just as illusory as Zen. they can print as much of it as they want. it doesn't mean real money for them the way it does to someone buying zen.

Well in that case they should have no issue driving the Market to where it is on PC where the exchange rate is about 430 on average peaking at 480, we now have the same sinks, the same earning potentials and the same mods. Why then is PC 3 times the ad per 1k Zen than it is on here if they control that market?

We will have to agree to disagree as to where the Zen originates I guess, however as neither of us actually can ever know, Its a bit moot

mahburg

ambisinisterr said:

mahburg said:

The topic on here is a good example of this, if the Devs want us to be timeline compatible with PC on revenue then they MUST make us the same on overhead imho!

What they want is to not make the same mistakes they made on the PC and fix mistakes earlier.

Like I said the biggest mistake was making leadership grant AD...
The second biggest mistake was waiting so long to change it.

Again, the PC side envies that you have a much more balanced economy than we ever had because leadership inflated the market. Again we had been sitting on the 500:1 AD per Zen minimum wage for nearly two years. Its not rainbows and butterflies over there. Never has been. It's been nonstop complaints about more than gold spammers being annoying...

However the solution to the problem is to make it so people don't earn hundreds of thousands of AD every day just from leadership....which is no exaggeration. I myself had a personal friend who made 300K AD a day just on his one account only from his leadership farm. It doesn't take much of an imagination to consider how much AD was being generated by bots who just farmed leadership 24/7 and didn't play after they finished their half hour farm run.


Also, on a side note:
Gold sellers exist in every MMO. I know MMO's are new to Xbox but as a long time PC gamer I promise I have played dozens of MMO's and every MMO in history has the exact same problem with bots....and the communities always seem to believe that their current MMO is the only one with the problem...and seem to forget when they move on to their next MMO that their previous one had bots due to nostalgia or...IDK...the complaints are always the same in every MMO Forum and the communities always seem to think that their previous MMO was better, their current MMO is the worst ever and the next MMO will kill their current MMO. Different people. Same complaints. And same explanation that the entire MMO industry spends millions of dollars combatting bots every year so if there was an easy solution it would have been fixed.

As I sent in a PM yesterday, Movie and Entertainment companies fight tooth and nail to prevent their movies from being pirated and yet we all know pirate sites still exist and they are around for years or even decades. Bots in MMO's are no different. So seriously I feel like I lose a bit of my sanity every time people say something akin to "well if Cryptic didn't want this to happen they would just stop them." It is not that simple. Period.

I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument but it doesn't explain or excuse why they wont reduce the sinks on things like professions, or why we get the pain immediately following PC but not the reward, its that that will inflame the playerbase on live, Players on Live pay for the privilege of being online just in order to connect to games online, PC players don't unless PW/Arc hits them with a monthly server charge. We are very sensitive to companies who are perceived to be taking the mickey.
Ask Ea how their new pay to play their games model is faring?

thefiresidecat

grandpaxxx said:

Only way to get rid of the farmers is to clamp down on the economy no more trading period. They don't want you to think the game is pay to win or pay to play that's why they won't do that.



The farmers will always be here and there prices are cheap. I know a few of my friends have purchased over 40m ad from them at really cheap prices. 200 bucks for 10 million ad even if you loose 1 million in transfer. You can still buy zen equal to the 199 price 3 times over.



Makes me feel kinda dumb for buying the 199 zen.



Some of them have so much they toss me a few mil ad if I ask them. Since getting suspended for 3 days since I last did that not asking them anymore but it was funny.



Guess it gave me time to work on my cars that I have been neglecting so all in all thanks devs for the mandated game break.

lol I'd feel dumb when my credit card got hacked (and for spending so much real money on a game), I give em (the game makers not the hackers) the amount I'd have spent if they had charged to play.. no more.. no less either someone has to pay salaries.

It's so cheap because it's stolen merchandise. they are hackers. they hack things. they love credit cards.. love em.

attorn97

boatmanfall3n said:

@attorn97 why exactly would you want zen over AD?



What is it that requires zen that you can't buy with AD?



Sorry for misunderstanding. I just don't see why anyone would want zen other than to convert it to AD.

I want Zen because I don't have to convert it to AD right now, and Zen will always track AD inflation or deflation. I generate enough AD on my chars to take care of all my needs. Then, with the excess, I buy Zen.
If I have 100k AD now, and Arc reverses leadership and everyone starts making hundreds of thousands of AD a day, my 100k AD pool isn't going to be worth squat on the AH. Bu, if everyone is making hundreds of thousands of AD every day, the exchange rate of AD to Zen will jump to 300:1 for example. I now have 50k Zen worth 15M AD instead of 50k Zen worth 7.5M.

Zen is a very nice rainy day fund that will never lose value due to AD inflation.

ajax0101

Zen is a very nice rainy day fund that will never lose value due to AD inflation.


Except economy is experiencing extreme deflation currently.

thefiresidecat

ajax0101 said:

Zen is a very nice rainy day fund that will never lose value due to AD inflation.

Except economy is experiencing extreme deflation currently.



unheard of deflation. I actually got some zen for 111 today. personally, I have a lockbox addiction so it's all well and fine for me.. but as a bank yeah it's recently a little scareball

attorn97

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp

Works with my 401k. Works with zen.

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armadeonx

There's new gear every mod it seems. Looks like we have a choice between updating armor every few months or never buying new armor as there's a new set always around the corner.