Make killing monsters worth my time.

Ursa - Dreamweaver

Alliptica - Raging Tide wrote: »

QQ sum moar QQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQQ

you have a point or just working on post count?

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

WaffleChan - Sanctuary wrote: »

This is a petition to make killing 1v1, or aoe, etc worth while again. Monsters at the 80+ range just do not drop enough loots to make up for these huge coin and time sinks put in place. The do not yield even half the exp avaliable from these time consuming dailies either. I humbly impose there be a permanent 1.5x exp/drop rate put in place on anything but boss monsters.

With gold in the 150k coin range, that wouldn't be all too bad. Anyone could very easily save up for 20+ gold items. When 350k is low, and it's not considered high until it breaks 500k...

Adding more coin (increased drops) everywhere screws over the free players trying to get by by buying and selling, and leaves no room for gold prices to come down. Meanwhile, it doesn't affect those speculators who are already entrenched, with gold in the hundreds, and coin in the tens of millions or more ready to go, and doesn't affect heavy CS users.

The gambling aspect of the packs gets people to spend more on packs, in case they win. That's not getting to the free part of the economy in a productive way (cheap tokens don't make up for high gold). The chests of coins sell cheap, and a hammer, while inefficient, removes the gold from the free part of the economy. People seem to talk about the hammer a lot when I'm in Arch, and only a few people bother to make the point that the AH gets them more.

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

Buying gold, purchasing gold items, selling gold items, buying more gold... while in theory works decently, you really don't make more than sitting there reselling commodities. Your supposed 'profit' gets eaten up by gold trader fees and you end up making the same or less than you would if you just parked a location and let everyone else do the work for you.

Gold recently went from 330k to 410k on HT, as the new tiger packs were getting popular. With 5 gold, that would be a 400k profit (buy another gold with it!), I believe, just by buying and selling old at good times. The fees are just high enough to keep you from wanting to constantly buy and sell, when there is a <5% buy/sell spread (typical).

VlLKASS - Sanctuary

instead of having to charge gold whenever I want a new gear.

That's the idea...

I do not have the time, nor want to make the effort to give in to the nickel and diming of the major cash shopping community

.

ROFL... let's see.. you don't wanna put the efforts... & neither the money yet expect to get good gear... rofl... I prefer cashshoppers to ppl like u. They atleast support the game with $.

I should not have to pay money to keep up gear wise and level wise with my rivals and friends for pve/pvp purposes. I should not have to wonder where I am going to get coin for tommorows dailies.

YES! Pay me so I can do my dailies! Why the hell did I have to put so much effort into my gear farming! Or running around merchanting! Pffff

NecroKitty - Harshlands

I guess in general i agree with OP.

Just plain old getting out there and killing mobs (grinding) should be more beneficial than it is compared to FC and BH and other dailies. PWI has completely bent over backward to statisfy the Anti grinding whinners, that maybe they went a bit overboard.

I for one perfer to just get on and grind a few hours a day. Especially when im working the next day, i dont want to get involved in any full party related activities. You usually need hours to complete the tasks, or something goes wrong, or people leave half finished or whatever. i jsut like to get on grind a bit and get to bed on time, and get to work the next day somewhat rested.

I also dont want to have to leave my computer running 24/7 to try to sell stuff. I rather jsut NPC my drops a make a few 100k a day.

It would be nice if they adjusted the XP rates on mobs to better compare to FC runs and dailies.

Borsuc - Raging Tide

I have to chime in and say that merchanting does NOT make money, it transfers money. In effect, it is a form of you getting richer while someone else gets poorer. Merchanting is a zero-sum game.

Just imagine, if everyone merchanted the same way, it would be completely worthless. It is not any more productive than "donations" in terms of in-game coin OR gold (if you buy/sell gold). On the contrary, merchanting with gold actually REMOVES gold and coins from the game. (fees)

It is not a good advice to give as though it can work for everyone. By definition, someone MUST lose in order for you to gain with it. Period.

Kaneharo - Dreamweaver

I know what you mean on this. It bugs the **** out of me that the only way I'm going to be able to make money efficiently, is to keep trying to go into Gamma runs. I can't cash shop my way to greatness, and the unreliable survey per day for 1.48 gold or so a day barely takes away charm costs, or in the rare few cases, will actually give me enough coins to update the rest of my skills. Half the reason I'm stuck in a standstill gaming-wise, is because of the simple fact that I can't do anything besides FC after FC, and that's because it costs me the least amount of money. Grinding isn't worth it unless it's 2x, as many others said. To put it short: for this game to mostly benifit people who take this game and turn it into work, which shouldn't be it should be(gold traders and merchants, as well as cash shoppers), is probably going to drive many people from this game.

Psudeotrophe - Dreamweaver

I guess Im a strange one, On my BM, and My sin I've never had any issue making in game coin. Granted I make more during x2, but regardless, I still make large chunks of coin normally, between 200-300k grinding on normal world mobs, for 10-20 mins. You just need to know what to; and how to fight it.

I've also noticed, I spend LESS money, playing my assassin then I did playing my bm. My bm I "needed" charms, my sin, I can run around with only mid level mp pots and Spark to keep myself alive grinding 4-10 mobs at a time. Also Jumping on the BH bandwagon, WILL make you broke, I level relatively quickly, and if I feel up to it, I Duo bh's with my Veno wife, who doesnt have a herc.

If you're smart, and think about what your doing, you can boss grind, and make positive money, without merchanting. One of the most obvious bosses to hunt, is Quingzi, because most of the molds that he drops are worth more than 1mil. People will buy them. Grinding has afforded me the ability to get rank 5, thanks to tokens being in game, I've spent far less on Rep than I should have.

Do I have bad days grinding? yes, it happens, but then there are days where I net - interval gear, berserker weapons, molds, Potions (people will buy pots, and they do NPC very well). Set yourself a goal when grinding, such as "Im going to kill until I have 30 Oblivion soups," or "Im going to grind 5% exp then infuse it into my genie to keep at a good point to keep grinding.


How to determine what to grind on?

Talk to Duke Blacke until he tells you. Duke Blacke gives tips of the day based upon the in game day, he'll say "Water mobs are stronger than normal" or something around those lines, and they will give better drops.

Hunter_PT - Heavens Tear

Ursa - Dreamweaver wrote: »

you have a point or just working on post count?

Purely post count im afraid.

OT: Aslong as its alot harder to make coin in game more people will just casually charge to get the money to get their gear. Gold is alot higher than it was last year and even earlier so even getting aerogear via gold at the auction house or fashion, charms, GS and everything else is more expensive where the price of DQ has remained the same. So in short more people are now buying gold than ever before and is still increasing so PW is making more money from ruining ways to make money like all the TT drops except gold (even though they have dropped considerably) and the higher TT's.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Gold recently went from 330k to 410k on HT, as the new tiger packs were getting popular. With 5 gold, that would be a 400k profit (buy another gold with it!), I believe, just by buying and selling old at good times. The fees are just high enough to keep you from wanting to constantly buy and sell, when there is a <5% buy/sell spread (typical).

I'd rather just keep the gold in the trader and capitalize on the larger swings, but unless you're playing with a couple hundred gold or more, you'll still do better merchanting commodities over the same time span. Unless you're actually manipulating prices a bit, the rewards aren't all that great.

400k profit on 5 gold isn't really all that great. You would need to buy the gold, buy the item, sell, repurchase gold, etc... that's far too time consuming for the rewards you get, IMO, but someone has to do it I guess.

ACLucius - Archosaur

WaffleChan - Sanctuary wrote: »

Now we all know, before hypers, before oracles, and before the discovery of delta there was killing mobs for experience. This monotonous task is now outweighed by the huge number of coin sink daily quests, which consume a large amount of time and people's income. With these holes constantly in our wallets... how does one break even? So many just blanket it with 'mercantilism' as the quick answer. But how far does that really take us?

One needs something to put in the cat to make the cat make cash. But, in reality, some of us would much rather level than perouse cat shops and scour the AH for bargains and mistypes on prices. The only other logical answer is to farm.

With these tokens in effect, the mat market is easily a no win situation, especially for wines. What else can we farm? DQs and gear drops of course! But theres just one problem. Monsters dont drop diddly squat.

This is a petition to make killing 1v1, or aoe, etc worth while again. Monsters at the 80+ range just do not drop enough loots to make up for these huge coin and time sinks put in place. The do not yield even half the exp avaliable from these time consuming dailies either. I humbly impose there be a permanent 1.5x exp/drop rate put in place on anything but boss monsters.

Logically, I can see this as a way to finally break even and make money, instead of having to charge gold whenever I want a new gear. I do not have the time, nor want to make the effort to give in to the nickel and diming of the major cash shopping community. I should not have to pay money to keep up gear wise and level wise with my rivals and friends for pve/pvp purposes. I should not have to wonder where I am going to get coin for tommorows dailies.

Make monster killing worth doing again! While were on this same topic, there is the issue of reputation. Currently, the 3 rep per 80 mobs isnt cutting the cheese. Such mundane tasks should yield greater reward. I also impose that one man armies and justice quests be bolstered in terms of reputation earned. One should not have to pay nearly 4300$ just to experience the final rank.

Some of us free players have needs too you know?

Okay, I am going to go under the assumption that you have ways as a Cleric to avoid taking damage, at least more than those of us with a melee class. I am going to assume you can kill quickly that you can kill mobs quickly and do not take as many hits as melee classes. That said, what costs? As far as I know, you should only have to deal with the repair bill of your weapon and the small repair of any armor damage you may happen to take. Every other cost is a cost you put on yourself.

I can see it coming, you are going to bring up pot costs. Well, those are optional. No one forces you to use pots, you could meditate. Or, you could go out, collect some herbs, make some Focus Powder, and you don't even have to meditate long before you're back up to full MP.

I put a lot of time into minimizing my pot cost to only using it when necessary. I collect my own herbs, I make my own Life Powder (always keeping at least 25 on me at any given time), I keep a genie with Second Wind on me at all times, I keep plenty of HP pots, and I keep a stack of HP food with me. I rarely use any of those except the Life Powder, and I can manage a 150k profit from grinding in one hour. You've got advantages I don't though. You can more easily AoE grind where I cannot, you can heal yourself without needing pots, and you can avoid the heavy costs of armor repair I face from being melee.

Meditation might be tedious for you, but the game isn't designed for it to be easy if you aren't a cash shopper because they want you to spend money. It is how they keep a profit from the game, by people spending money. Therefore, in order to make you spend more, they will make it harder to be successful without it.

They won't make a permanent drop increase because that will decrease their own profits. A lot of people charge gold because it is an easily marketable item with a good return. If there is another easy way to make money, PWE loses out on quite a bit of money.

Miugre - Heavens Tear

Um... Waffle isn't a cleric, man. ._.

And if you can make 150k an hour with regular grinding, good for you. There was a time I could do the same... back when I was lv60, which was a good year or so ago. Now I can't get practically anything unless 2x is on. The last quest I did involved Firebath Phoenixes. After killing somewhere between 75-80 of these I noticed that I'd gotten a grand total of five DQ items. That's one DQ for every 15 mobs or so.

I realize it's random and all, but at some point you have to question it. There's been a general consensus in these past few months that DQ drops were nerfed.

Hunter_PT - Heavens Tear

ACLucius - Archosaur wrote: »

Okay, I am going to go under the assumption that you have ways as a Cleric to avoid taking damage, at least more than those of us with a melee class.

One major problem there, waffle is an archer not a cleric b:chuckle.

EDIT: I go for a smoke and get ninja'd on my post b:sad.

ACLucius - Archosaur

Blah, always confuse those avatar pics. Regardless, I'm quite sure the same applies to archers, with the exception of no healing and better kiting skills.

And just to clarify, I'm not getting DQ items every drop either. I'm getting them about every 10 mobs, and still doing well. At my current level, I am only able to do either TT for mats, or grind for DQ, so I am not in a very good spot either. I'm not rolling in money, my dailies, along with trying to run TT's for my faction mates to get them all equiped as they level, makes it so I don't have very much time either. However, I can easily say that I don't have to squander for coin as it appears our OP does, or at least makes it sound. However, grinding isn't the only option.

Now, if there really is such a problem, it is easy enough to do a mat run and go out, collect all the mined mats (herbs, etc.) that you can, and leave a shop in West Arch up overnight, put all your prices below that of competitors, and watch the money come in. If you can't leave up a shop, you put them in auction house at reasonable bundles (20 each for herbs, 5 each for mats). Obviously, this isn't the only way, but if you are 9x and don't yet know a good way to make money, you should not have leveled so quickly. If you say that you don't want to waste 5 hours to collect enough mats to sell, then you are just being lazy. Even cash shoppers have to work for their money even a little bit. If you aren't going to do that, you have to work harder, but that is the price you pay for having a game free.

I'm not going to go and give an entire guide on how to make money, it is easy enough to figure it out. Hell, I'll give you the easiest one to do though. Go create a new character that you know you can do heavy grinding with, get it to level 4x, do dailies and grinding with it, then throw all the exp you get and spirit into leveling Genies to sell. All the profit you get, throw onto your main. You spend 30 minutes on your bounty hunter if you stack it, less if you have a squad ready to go when you start looking for one, and your crazy stone will be done by the time you are out.

Now, if you say you can't do this, something is wrong because this is possibly the easiest way to make money, because you don't have to worry about leveling up this character.

Heartstone - Dreamweaver

used to be able to grind alot mroe DQ / get money form grinding on barb ~ a year ago. this is not the case anymore. random yea, but i know my sin/archer is receiving way less grinding than i did a year ago on barb. something has hapepned.

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

I'd rather just keep the gold in the trader and capitalize on the larger swings, but unless you're playing with a couple hundred gold or more, you'll still do better merchanting commodities over the same time span. Unless you're actually manipulating prices a bit, the rewards aren't all that great.

1. Somehow, one needs to get into having hundreds of gold, from 0 gold.
2. A nearly 20% profit just by watching gold prices at the AH is nothing to scoff at (don't think in absolute terms, until all sell/buy offers are gone), and
3. has nothing to do with buying and selling commodities. You can do both at the same time, using the AH and/or cat shops; and/or
4. you can do what I did, and spend some of the gold on CS items that tend to sell for as much as they cost or more at a given gold price, and sell those to raise more coin, yielding greater profits than pure currency speculation (but at a greater risk, and burden of effort, as well). That is, when gold went up ~20%, the items went up ~15%, and the items already were selling for enough to, based on current gold prices, let you break even with auction fees and gold trade fees. Sell a few in-demand items at higher than that, and there you go (again: risk, dampened by the gold price having risen).
5. IRL, I would not be able to do this sort of thing and still sleep at night.

400k profit on 5 gold isn't really all that great. You would need to buy the gold, buy the item, sell, repurchase gold, etc... that's far too time consuming for the rewards you get, IMO, but someone has to do it I guess.

No. You would need to make a buy offer, then make a sell offer. It gets much better than 20% once you add items into the mix. I've made well over that, and still haven't sold everything I got from the CS. If gold prices stay under 500k, I'll easily reach net profit within a two weeks (I used a few million on clothes, which was one of the reasons I decided to try my luck at the in-game markets in the first place).

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Um... Waffle isn't a cleric, man. ._.

And if you can make 150k an hour with regular grinding, good for you. There was a time I could do the same... back when I was lv60, which was a good year or so ago. Now I can't get practically anything unless 2x is on. The last quest I did involved Firebath Phoenixes. After killing somewhere between 75-80 of these I noticed that I'd gotten a grand total of five DQ items. That's one DQ for every 15 mobs or so.

I realize it's random and all, but at some point you have to question it. There's been a general consensus in these past few months that DQ drops were nerfed.

Selling DQ went out the the window with double drops, and still seems to be not be that great, IMO. I had to lower prices enough to sell 21-41 DQ drops that it was not worth the effort of keeping them in my inventory (I made more with 700-2500 coin equipment drops), and I was seeing higher DQ items going for much less than they used to, as well. I was tempted to buy a few, just in case they went back up, but decided it'd be too much of a gamble.

I've kept tabs on many cat shops, and outside of the safe extension quest drops, most don't seem to be selling. Just putting the same things at the same price, in the same quantities, back up, over and over and over again. I think it will take awhile for the prices to recover, assuming PWE doesn't do anything more to affect it.


More than anything else, for free players and light CSers, coin needs to become more valuable.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

We need permenant double DQ drops. In fact, permenant double drops itself would be great. We'd have more money to buy things and, in many cases, more items to buy. You can see the results already with molds and TT mats - many molds are a fraction of what they once were. Many things are more accessible to more people, because of the double drops. Who gets less money out of this? The merchants.

tl;dr: Merchanting should not be nearly as profitable as it is; grinding should be more profitable. Permenantly doubling the drop rates (not exp/spirit maybe, but just drops) would solve both problems.

wow... logic fail.

The only thing that double drops did was devalue the TT market, making it less profitable for those who don't run TT 10 times a day. The people actually farming it regularly are still making tons of money, in fact it's cheaper for you to buy most of your mats than it is actually running TT to farm them.

The only thing 2x drops did was make it more likely that people who are in the position and that needed money will actually charge for it instead of farming it. A whole sector of 7x-9x basically lost their means to making decent coin.

How many people actually grinded during double drops? Did you make enough to afford all your cash shop needs from it? I doubt it.

For most people between 1-60, you'll make your daily expenses for BH wines and Crazy Stones as well as be able to spend a few hundred thousand here and there for fashion or whatever when you need... but once you hit past 7x, you have no real means to make the money you'll need to upgrade and purchase your gear, etc...

You think 2x has hurt the merchants? lol If anything they're making more from it than the average non-merchanting player. Now there isn't any real means to make decent money in game till you hit 10x.

By decent money, I mean 2-3m coin a day, not a few hundred k that you'd get from grinding.

Obviously, you don't have a clue how much it costs to maintain a char that is 9x+ without cash shopping.

ACLucius - Archosaur

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Selling DQ went out the the window with double drops, and still seems to be not be that great, IMO. I had to lower prices enough to sell 21-41 DQ drops that it was not worth the effort of keeping them in my inventory (I made more with 700-2500 coin equipment drops), and I was seeing higher DQ items going for much less than they used to, as well. I was tempted to buy a few, just in case they went back up, but decided it'd be too much of a gamble.

I'm quite sure that we were talking about selling DQ to NPC's, as that is faster and probably better, seeing as how only people who want to do DQ will buy the items. It's only a waste of space to keep them in your inventory/bank.

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

ACLucius - Archosaur wrote: »

I'm quite sure that we were talking about selling DQ to NPC's, as that is faster and probably better, seeing as how only people who want to do DQ will buy the items. It's only a waste of space to keep them in your inventory/bank.

I actually did alright cat-shopping them up to 2x drops, esp. ones that I wasn't high enough lvl to use (41-61, at the time). Even the 71 and up DQ make very little sold to NPCs, unless you are approaching or exceeding a drop of one for every minute. No point in leaving them on the ground, but you'd have to be lucky, or AoE grind exceptionally fast, to make too much more than characters half your level (and, in many cases seen on the forums, far less than us).

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear wrote: »

1. Somehow, one needs to get into having hundreds of gold, from 0 gold.
2. A nearly 20% profit just by watching gold prices at the AH is nothing to scoff at (don't think in absolute terms, until all sell/buy offers are gone), and
3. has nothing to do with buying and selling commodities. You can do both at the same time, using the AH and/or cat shops; and/or
4. you can do what I did, and spend some of the gold on CS items that tend to sell for as much as they cost or more at a given gold price, and sell those to raise more coin, yielding greater profits than pure currency speculation (but at a greater risk, and burden of effort, as well). That is, when gold went up ~20%, the items went up ~15%, and the items already were selling for enough to, based on current gold prices, let you break even with auction fees and gold trade fees. Sell a few in-demand items at higher than that, and there you go (again: risk, dampened by the gold price having risen).
5. IRL, I would not be able to do this sort of thing and still sleep at night.

No. You would need to make a buy offer, then make a sell offer. It gets much better than 20% once you add items into the mix. I've made well over that, and still haven't sold everything I got from the CS. If gold prices stay under 500k, I'll easily reach net profit within a two weeks (I used a few million on clothes, which was one of the reasons I decided to try my luck at the in-game markets in the first place).

Gold prices do not fluctuate wildly enough to make serious coin from it regularly. By regularly I mean daily, or at least several times a week. One can only speculate what the next week's sale is going to be and you have a window of maybe a few hours before gold starts adjusting to what is being introduced after server maintenance. If you are trading a LOT of gold, you do have the potential to make a lot of coin... I don't know how many times I've bought gold at 300-320 and turned it around and sold it for 500k, however you cannot count on that revenue and you could very well **** yourself.

Stock up on gold charm packs while they're on sale, yet the price of gold also drops down 100k after you've filled your purchase, to maximize your profit you need to hold onto them as soon as the gold prices rise, however you're holding onto all this capital that does not move quickly.

I would rather make 200 transactions in one day that make me 2-3k ea than one cash shop item sale that would net me 400k and cost 5 gold. In the time that you've turned that around, I've already made several times that doing far less work.

Sure you can make a lot more money, but at the cost of spending more time doing so. I set up shop, check it every couple of hours and that's all I have to do.

BTW, I went from owing 12m to +72m in a little more than 3 weeks... not including charm and TW pots that I've spent during this time... which is probably another 12-14m in coin. I've done the gold trading and selling cash shop items, you have to work harder and sit on items much longer... it's far easier and faster to make cash by just sticking to a commodity or two.

Atreana - Lost City

Whenever I finish today's CS and WQ, I would go grind one man army quest to farm coins for tomorrow's CS and WQ. It was an everyday affair and before 2x drops, I was able to grind the coins needed for next day's CS and WQ by only doing 2 one man army quests (total 120 mobs).

During the 2x drops, things got easier. I was able to grind the coins needed with only one quest. Take note that I have all the while been grinding on the same mobs in the same area.

After the 2x drop event was over, I noticed that the DQ item drop rate isn't logical at all. For example, if I was able to get up to 30 DQ drops grinding on 60 mobs during the 2x event, then there should be 10-15 for the normal drop rate. Lately, I've noticed that the DQ drop rates are only about 1/3 of the normal rate before the 2x event.

I can grind 60 mobs now and end up with only 3-6 DQ drops. Please take note this is not a rant nor a QQ. Maybe someone can provide enlightenment on this topic. I accept that there are unlucky days when the drops aren't that good but it's been happening everyday now ever since the 2x event is over.

I have tried doing it at different times on different days. Same result and I'm beginning to dig into my bank savings just to fund the CS and WQ. I don't even do BH since I don't have enough coins to pay for the wines. I need to save up whatever coins I can to level up my skills too.

Merchandising is out because I do not have the luxury of leaving my computer on 24/7 while I'm in school.

Is PWI turning this game from a f2p to a pay to level game? It gets worse as your character gains higher levels. More coins are needed for skills, equips, repairs, etc. If a player needs to spend more than a few hours of their time in the game (be it actually at the keyboard or afk) just to make the coins to advance their characters, then it isn't a game anymore. It is a job.

/wall of text

Miugre - Heavens Tear

The only thing that double drops did was devalue the TT market, making it less profitable for those who don't run TT 10 times a day. The people actually farming it regularly are still making tons of money, in fact it's cheaper for you to buy most of your mats than it is actually running TT to farm them.

The only thing 2x drops did was make it more likely that people who are in the position and that needed money will actually charge for it instead of farming it. A whole sector of 7x-9x basically lost their means to making decent coin.

You're looking at it from the supply side, I'm looking at it from the demand side. Without 2x, we see higher prices for TT mats from the farmers (due to less supply), and fewer coins available to the people who would buy said mats. When 2x is on, that gap narrows... which is good for the buyers and perhaps bad for the sellers. I'd call TT farming a companion activity to merchanting, because you still have to play the market with your finds to make money off them. That's why I say merchants are taking the hit with 2x - because big-ticket items are suddenly not so "big" anymore.

By decent money, I mean 2-3m coin a day, not a few hundred k that you'd get from grinding.

Obviously, you don't have a clue how much it costs to maintain a char that is 9x+ without cash shopping.

If the average player were generating 2-3m coin a day, that's when we would need a coin sink.

2-3m is entirely more than I'd need per day. But then, I don't buy ridiculously-priced endgame weapons and armor, because I think the very notion of "pro endgame" is laughable. I buy what I need to be competent in PVE and use whatever's left over to buy superfluous things such as fashion, or to support one of my alts. Quite frankly the only good thing I could really use 2-3m/day for is skills (particularly because Sage Archer books seem to be nonexistant, because everyone hates 'em... XD). But the beauty of it is that if I could make 300k+ a day in grinding, I'd be able to get the skills I want at a reasonable pace.

We shouldn't be expected to run complex instances just to make "decent" money. Obviously those who do should be rewarded with more money, but that gap is just too big. I'm patient enough to grind, in fact it can be very relaxing in certain circumstances. But the rewards for doing it aren't what they used to be.

Solandri - Heavens Tear

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Maybe some of us don't want to treat PWI like a damn personal business...? -___-

And maybe those people don't deserve to be broke all the time?

Yes, I do some merchanting, but not on any large scale. I don't devote any length of time to predicting the market forces of PWI. Why? Because it's a video game. Sure, if you devote that kind of time to it, you do deserve to make some more money. But not nearly THIS much. We have a few merchanting tycoons and then hundreds of people who never have more than 2-3mil on them at any time because they can't get any DQs anymore.

That isn't something PWI has decided. By making the prices for gold and items free-floating, it's the players who have decided it. Merchanting is profitable because players (mostly players like you) have decided it's harder than grinding for drops. If more people merchanted, there would be more competition, profit margins would not be as large, and it wouldn't be as good a way to make money as it is now.

In other words, as paradoxical as it sounds, if you don't like to merchant, then you are to blame for merchanting being profitable. A free market assigns greater value to what people consider to be harder to do. ("Harder" can mean both takes more time and effort, or is more difficult to figure out.) If merchanting were made easier (I've proposed ideas to do this - see below), then it would become less profitable.

Likewise...

We need permenant double DQ drops. In fact, permenant double drops itself would be great. We'd have more money to buy things and, in many cases, more items to buy. You can see the results already with molds and TT mats - many molds are a fraction of what they once were. Many things are more accessible to more people, because of the double drops. Who gets less money out of this? The merchants.

Likewise, if you make grinding easier by making permanent double DQ drops, you will make it less profitable. Remember, the price for TT mats is set by the players. The price for DQ drops is in most cases set by NPCs. So making permanent double DQ drops, all you're doing is increasing the amount of coin in the system. Essentially, you're speeding up coin inflation (why I've always said double drops is bad for the game).

In simplistic terms, if you double the DQ drop rate, you'll pretty much double the market price of TT mats in the process. In a free market, making stuff easier to acquire makes it worth less. The increased rate of inflation from more DQs being sold to NPCs would mean that the coin the grinder is saving up becomes worth less more quickly, making it harder to save. Merchants OTOH constantly reinvest their coin and make a profit on it above the rate of inflation, so would be less affected by it.

ThanosQRt - Dreamweaver wrote: »

btw i really enjoy browsing the AH, checking prices etc... mutch more fun than grinding... i enjoy it as any other part of the gameb:surrender

This is exactly what makes merchanting more profitable. Most people hate browsing AH or cat shops to check prices. Most people would rather spend their time grinding. So the market places a higher valuation on browsing to check prices than on grinding.

You can see the opposite happening with the really difficult grinds - the rare gold high-level TT mat drops. Grinding for those mats is so much harder than merchanting that the price for just one of them can be tens of millions of coin. More money than most merchants can make in a week.

Borsuc - Raging Tide wrote: »

I have to chime in and say that merchanting does NOT make money, it transfers money. In effect, it is a form of you getting richer while someone else gets poorer. Merchanting is a zero-sum game.

You're right about money being zero-sum, but merchanting is not zero-sum. Merchanting creates wealth, not money.

Say there's a chicken farmer and a cow farmer. The chicken farmer is up to his ears in eggs and wishes he had something to drink besides water, and the cow farmer is drowning in milk and wishes he had something to eat besides steak.

One day Bab the merchant tells the chicken farmer, "I'll sell you a gallon of milk a week for 2 dozen eggs?" The chicken farmer has more eggs than he knows what to do with so he agrees. Bob tells the cow farmer, "I'll see you a dozen eggs a week for 2 gallons of milk?" The cow farmer agrees.

Net result is that the chicken farmer trades 2 dozen eggs for a gallon of milk. But he's happy because the gallon of milk is worth more than 2 dozen eggs to him. The cow farmer trades 2 gallons of milk for a dozen eggs. But he's happy because the dozen eggs are worth more than 2 gallons of milk to him. And Bob gets a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs from the deal.

What just happened? The amount of milk and eggs in the system is zero-sum. There are exactly as many eggs and as much milk as before, yet everyone is happier. How can that be?

Wealth was created by distributing the materials to the people in a more effective manner. Bob the merchant facilitates that creation of wealth by helping distribution. When I started cat shopping, I bought up DQ and mat drops in Silver pool at a price higher than the NPC paid. People getting those drops were happier because they got more money for it than if they'd sold it to the NPC like they would have if I weren't there. Then I moved those drops to Archo and sold them there. People there were happy to buy from me because I sold it at a lower price than the competition. Sometimes my competition sold it at a lower price than me, and people were happier to buy from them. But overall, we lowered the price of those drops, meaning the people buying them paid less for them than if I hadn't been there. Everybody wins.

Now, if the cow and chicken farmer were smart, they'd meet up and agree to cut Bob out of the picture entirely by trading the eggs and milk between themselves. But most people are lazy and don't want to bother with that. The people buying the drops I sold didn't want to bother setting up a cat shop in Silver Pool buying those drops. And the people grinding at Silver Pool and getting those drops didn't want to bother setting up a cat shop in Archo to sell them. So by agreeing to my prices, they've essentially said they would rather have me do the distributing instead of doing it themselves.

What does change the dynamics is when another merchant comes in. Frank the merchant enters the picture. He tells the chicken farmer he'll give him a gallon of milk for just 1.5 dozen eggs. And he tells the cow farmer he'll give him a dozen eggs for just 1.5 gallons of milk. The two farmers switch to using Frank as their distributor and get more value for what they pay. When more people merchant, the merchants' profit becomes lower.

Just imagine, if everyone merchanted the same way, it would be completely worthless. It is not any more productive than "donations" in terms of in-game coin OR gold (if you buy/sell gold). On the contrary, merchanting with gold actually REMOVES gold and coins from the game. (fees)

Removing coin from the game is a good thing from the free player's perspective. It drives down the price of gold. Likewise, adding it to the game (like double drops does) raises the price of gold, which is bad for the fre player.

It is not a good advice to give as though it can work for everyone. By definition, someone MUST lose in order for you to gain with it. Period.

Anybody who has taken a basic course in economics knows that is wrong. The cow and chicken farmer example I gave above shows why. You're assuming that everyone values all items equally, which is never true.

Some final words: I actually agree merchanting is too profitable, despite having made a fortune off it. But the solution isn't to make grinding easier. It's to make merchanting easier.

I've proposed many ideas in the past to do this. The Auction House filters need to be fixed so people can sort and browse items more easily. They need to add a way to sort the auctions of a particular item by price, so you can immediately see which listing has the lowest price, like how the gold sales window is automatically sorted. There should be a global "market exchange board" like the stock ticker boards on wall street. It lists the average price of the last few dozen cat shop transactions of an item, so everyone can immediately see what the item's market price is without having to browse AH and cat shops to get a "feel" for it.

All of this would make merchanting easier, and decrease the profit margin on it, allowing more coin to stay in the pockets of those who grind for it, and less to end up in the pockets of merchants taking advantage of people who don't realize the true value of what they're buying/selling. The optimal profit a merchant makes should be commensurate with the amount of time and effort it takes to collect and redistribute whatever it is he's selling, because that's what he's contributing to the economy. In the chicken and cow farmer example, the cut of eggs and milk the merchant is taking should be proportional to the amount of time and effort it takes him to ferry those goods between the two farmers, relative to the time and effort it takes those two farmers to produce the milk and eggs.

Michael_Dark - Lost City

Miugre - Heavens Tear wrote: »

That's why I say merchants are taking the hit with 2x - because big-ticket items are suddenly not so "big" anymore.

You're looking at it wrong. The farmers will continue to keep farming, they'll price a good deal of what they have at competitive prices and still make a fair amount of money. Many of them hold instances, use wall hacks, etc... their time and effort involved is much less than most. If you were to do several runs, you can't easily sell uncalled mats, and you lose money. The only time you'll win is if you actually use coin to buy your mats. Farmers are farmers, they'll continue to farm they'll continue to earn more money. It's the casual players who want to farm a couple times a week that are hurt the most. I know, because that's the category I fit into.

It used to provide enough money for subs for more runs, repairs and charms and enough coin to do dalies... the first 2x event ruined it for nearly 2 months... now after the 3rd 2x event, prices are likely to never recover. You may disagree, and that's fine, but I know far more people that were basically left scrambling on ways to make money... most of them, except for the merchanters and habitual farmers ended up spending cash to get the coin they needed. Luckily I've outleveled that era.

If the average player were generating 2-3m coin a day, that's when we would need a coin sink.

2-3m is entirely more than I'd need per day. But then, I don't buy ridiculously-priced endgame weapons and armor, because I think the very notion of "pro endgame" is laughable. I buy what I need to be competent in PVE and use whatever's left over to buy superfluous things such as fashion, or to support one of my alts. Quite frankly the only good thing I could really use 2-3m/day for is skills (particularly because Sage Archer books seem to be nonexistant, because everyone hates 'em... XD). But the beauty of it is that if I could make 300k+ a day in grinding, I'd be able to get the skills I want at a reasonable pace.

Yes, you basically need to generate that kind of money to sustain yourself and afford lvl11 skills. Like I mentioned somewhere previously, if you don't plan on going much past 9x, you won't need it. Just running cube, bh and cs on a daily basis will run you 600-800k easily. If you can't cover that and save some money up, you'll never get any skill or any decent gear and do as you've done and just decide to roll a dozen lowbies who don't have any high costs associated with them. Sure, that's fine for you, but I don't see another point other than to gear up for TW and PvP once you've reached the end. The replay value of most of this game has been ruined by hyper leveling and BH addiction... all the questing and getting to know people your level and seeing them over and over the course of months as you both level up are gone... so has much of the fun of actually playing.

We shouldn't be expected to run complex instances just to make "decent" money. Obviously those who do should be rewarded with more money, but that gap is just too big. I'm patient enough to grind, in fact it can be very relaxing in certain circumstances. But the rewards for doing it aren't what they used to be.

Shouldn't be expected? That's just part of the progression of the game if you hadn't noticed. Once mobs hit 8x, their DQ drops become far more scarce than 3x-6x mobs. Drop rate hasn't been nerfed, the higher you get past 6x the lower the DQ rate.... it's been this way for what more than 8 months? That's nothing new, the game is just not geared for you to make money grinding when you hit higher levels, it's for you to farm higher instances and to sell off what you don't need, or what you've farmed to sell.

Darksylph - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Anybody who has taken a basic course in economics knows that is wrong. The cow and chicken farmer example I gave above shows why. You're assuming that everyone values all items equally, which is never true.

Actually your cow & chicken example illustrates that people are taking a loss, you're just hiding it in logistics.

The Cow farmer doesnt realize that for his gallon of milk, he could get a dozen eggs on the open market, so he gives 2 gallons to Bob, who is sheilding him from this knowledge. Likewise, the Chicken farmer doesnt realize he can get a gallon of milk from just 1 dozen eggs, so He gives 2 dozen to Bob just for his gallon. The middle-man, Bob, effectively manipulated the market by hiding information, and got free goods for putting in no real work other then running what is effectively a scam. The chicken got less then the value of his goods, and so did the cow farmer, meanwhile Bob took advantage of them both and walks away with free goods.

FitHitDShan - Sanctuary

Darksylph - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Actually your cow & chicken example illustrates that people are taking a loss, you're just hiding it in logistics.

The Cow farmer doesnt realize that for his gallon of milk, he could get a dozen eggs on the open market, so he gives 2 gallons to Bob, who is sheilding him from this knowledge. Likewise, the Chicken farmer doesnt realize he can get a gallon of milk from just 1 dozen eggs, so He gives 2 dozen to Bob just for his gallon. The middle-man, Bob, effectively manipulated the market by hiding information, and got free goods for putting in no real work other then running what is effectively a scam. The chicken got less then the value of his goods, and so did the cow farmer, meanwhile Bob took advantage of them both and walks away with free goods.

Bob provided information which is just as important as eggs and milk. You would have him give that away for free when you accuse him of "shielding" the other market participants from his knowledge.

Solandri is correct that making market information more readily available would cut into the margins for merchants and make the whole economy more efficient. There would still be room for merchants to prosper (particularly as his suggestions focus on information about the "spot" market and merchants can earn a good return taking risks about longer term value propositions). This is a good set of suggestions for the game. However, the problem of insufficient return for investments of regular gaming labor is still an issue because the natural consequence is less labor is supplied (i.e., more people turn away from the game as too costly at high levels).

Kupuntu - Sanctuary

If I grind thieves for an hour, I can get around 200k in drops, which is quite nice. However, it takes money and effort too: if I grind for an hour, I must also farm some herbs to make pots. Repairs are somewhat huge, along with emergency NPC pots. Killing mobs isn't just worthwhile anymore; I rather farm materials. I know it's not that good business either, but that's the best I can do. I can make around 150k money per hour that way.

Michael is right when he said that most coin-making ways are now removed/made worse. But if you think about it; all ways of getting coin to the economy are pretty much removed. The best luck tokens give 5m each, but the change of getting those is now much more slim than with anni packs. Since most people are now doing BH, there won't be as much DQ items sold to NPCs. Repairs, however, are pretty much the same. The 'chest of coins' won't be opened anymore since the hammer is too costly, thus no more coins from that source. The mob drop 3* decomposing costs more now, so it drains coin too.

If you think about that, it might seem that there is no coin sink, but rather a way how to reduce the amount of coin coming to the economy. Clever thing to do in my opinion. But, you guys think I'm right? Or am I completely wrong in this?

redhog2

How about not doing your dailies b:shutup

Elenacostel - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

In other words, as paradoxical as it sounds, if you don't like to merchant, then you are to blame for merchanting being profitable.

I really, really dislike this statement.

It may seem strange, but I like grinding. It's weird, but I actually enjoy playing the game. I like to click on a target, and press a few keys which result in the death of said target.

I do not believe blame should be assigned upon someone who simply wants to play their class.

WarrenWolfy - Sanctuary

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

Buying gold, purchasing gold items, selling gold items, buying more gold... while in theory works decently, you really don't make more than sitting there reselling commodities. Your supposed 'profit' gets eaten up by gold trader fees and you end up making the same or less than you would if you just parked a location and let everyone else do the work for you.

Well, I can't speak for anybody else, but I did earn about 6.5million yesterday "buying gold, purchasing gold items, selling gold items, buying more gold", so it doesn't just work in theory only, and my profit was real profit.

Granted, it's because of my experience that I'm able to do it successfully. I don't have any secret information, however, since I personally feel that sharing information creates a more fair system for everyone, rather than just extra profits for me.

My (not so) "secret", as I've revealed many times, is just that I'm willing to pay a little more for Gold and charge a little less for items (in this case, Tiger Packs). My experience, however, is what prevents me from bidding a little too low or a little too high or in too great quantities, etc... etc... etc... That's something I can't really explain other than it's a learning curve that isn't really that steep and is definitely worth the effort.

As for the concerns of the OP, I'm all for making the game more enjoyable for grinders. But I do think that many people have unrealistic expectations about what any changes would do to their economic standing versus other players. For example, if drops were permanently doubled, my income would double because my customers would have twice as much money to spend. Thus grinders would remain on the bottom of the economic totem pole.

If people expect to be able to keep up with the equipment standards of people who are either spending real-life money or are spending time and effort to learn the markets, then they're just not going to be able to do it by mindlessly doing what everybody else is mindlessly doing, no matter what rule changes PWI implements.

Della_Brown - Heavens Tear

Michael_dark - Lost City wrote: »

Gold prices do not fluctuate wildly enough to make serious coin from it regularly. By regularly I mean daily, or at least several times a week. One can only speculate what the next week's sale is going to be and you have a window of maybe a few hours before gold starts adjusting to what is being introduced after server maintenance. If you are trading a LOT of gold, you do have the potential to make a lot of coin... I don't know how many times I've bought gold at 300-320 and turned it around and sold it for 500k, however you cannot count on that revenue and you could very well **** yourself.

Stock up on gold charm packs while they're on sale, yet the price of gold also drops down 100k after you've filled your purchase, to maximize your profit you need to hold onto them as soon as the gold prices rise, however you're holding onto all this capital that does not move quickly.

No arguments, there. There is risk involved, and some people do have specific talents and skills for it, even though they want to think they are no better than others. I used the 2x drops and grinding to build a buffer, made a few mistakes, learned how I made those mistakes, and corrected for them. I will likely not be making the kind of money that some of those with impressive stashes of coin and gold are.

I would rather make 200 transactions in one day that make me 2-3k ea than one cash shop item sale that would net me 400k and cost 5 gold. In the time that you've turned that around, I've already made several times that doing far less work.

If you're making 200 transactions in a day, are you:
1. Buying low from another cat-shop or a lowball auction, to sell it higher yourself,
2. buying and reselling the same items in a shop, or are you
3. doing a lot more work than I am?

I doubt I generally get more than 100 total item drops in a day, if that (yesterday couldn't have even been 50), and manage maybe 20 or so total pickaxe uses. It's not coincidence that I've been playing since early/mid last year, and my highest level character is in the the mid 40s. If you are buying and selling the same items at the same shop, you probably have more free space than I do, and you've taken the time to amass a deep inventory. If you are getting 200 drops/day to sell, on average, you are definitely doing several times more work than I am, at the moment.

Sure you can make a lot more money, but at the cost of spending more time doing so. I set up shop, check it every couple of hours and that's all I have to do.

I spend 10-15 minutes, over typically 3-4 hours of play, checking cat shops and the AH, when I have to be wandering around Arch anyway. If my 'net connection has already reset, I also set up a shop, and sell odds and ends, mats that aren't selling at a high enough price to otherwise rid myself of, etc.. If I want to set up shop regularly, for common in-demand items, I need to keep more inventory slots open than I currently am able to, and give up coin for the sake of a deeper inventory, and hope I don't get reset shortly after setting it up (personally, I think you should be able to log off and have the cat shop left up for a day or so--keeping one up for a day is going to take 2-4kWH v. S3, isn't it?).

BTW, I went from owing 12m to +72m in a little more than 3 weeks... not including charm and TW pots that I've spent during this time... which is probably another 12-14m in coin. I've done the gold trading and selling cash shop items, you have to work harder and sit on items much longer... it's far easier and faster to make cash by just sticking to a commodity or two.

I'm doing both (but less so with the shop, ATM), and seem to be making fair coin for the time I put in, and resources I have at my disposal, based on everything I've been reading. I have not owed any amount at any point. I'm adding a few minutes of work here and there to the lvl 20-30 run-around-Arch quests, for the most part. Once I get to the low 40s, I'll continually have enough quests to be going back to Arch for to make it only a few minutes here and there, once again (once the Silver Pool and Hidden Orchid quest arcs are done with).

I haven't noticed any particular difference in the time I am sitting on items (maybe I sell most of them too low at the AH?), and it's much easier to sit on them for a few days in the mailbox or AH, instead of my inventory or safe. I don't bother with the AH on anything I won't be making 100k+ on, since the fees can eat into it a good bit if you're only making tens of thousands of coin in profit, and have to relist it a few times.

If you are nearing endgame, not needing space for quest items and items for future uses, and you can make much more than a lvl 20-25 that was started off with profits from a lvl 45 grinding during 2x drops, some of which included spending millions of coin on clothing, I just don't see how I'm doing poorly. You should be making much more than I am.

I am making quite a bit relative to what I am putting in, with all the risk involved in doing so, betting on people being willing to part with their coin for instant gratification, and taking advantage of those same people not looking around for what's out there before they go looking to spend it.

A great deal of the value of financial middlemen, at least outside of fact-checking and such, is an illusion, and also sets of excuses for not educating the general population about economics, as much as they are educated about reading, writing, and following authority. If you fix the problem of people wanting to pay more to do less looking around, then you will also fix the problem of gold being 400k coin, which will make grinding and farming have similar returns to buying and selling. To do that, less coins need to be in players' hands, and/or gold needs to be required to get into the hands of players with coin to make some of that gold useful to heavier CSers.

Moving around a bit: coin sinks would fix the short-term problem of players having too many coins. However, if the heavy CSers don't have to deal with non-CSers and light CSers to get their stuff taken care of, the problem will remain. Merchant players will change their strategies to avoid the new coin sinks, or exploit them. As long as there is a significant decoupling there, coin sinks, and restrictions of coin creation (such as reduced drops) will, over any real duration, even a couple weeks, harm light CSers and free players more than it helps in reducing any glut of coins.

FI, if methods of restricting coin get gold down to 300k, and you can grind/farm/sell about 50% of what you could before, you are harmed more than helped. Meanwhile, the heavy CSer buying packs is not significantly affected (which is where the real problem of this whole topic rests).