Note from Game Director: Removing Ingots

[mrbig]

id like to add my 2 cents in. i dont mind the removal of ingots but i do think it will hurt the new people to sl and take some of the incentive to upgrade away ( easy money) over all i think it will be a good idea. but now FC needs to take a look at how many ai farming cities there are and disband some to allow "real" orgs to have a city of there own so they dont have to pay the inflated prices for ai loot and just get it themselves. im leader of a fair sized org and lose ppl all the time to orgs that have a city and if there nerfing the ingots to make the game more enjoyabe for all then something should be done about cities aswell

[Xitami]

Indeed. How are you supposed to make money in the shadowlands anyway? If I loot everything in a single team mission I might walk away with 1-3 million, which isn't horrible, but at high levels (I'm at 217) it's not great either. If everyone in the team is looting, that's 160,000(ish) to 500,000.

With a team looting stuff, I'd need to do 20 Shadowlands missions to earn enough credits to buy just one of my Shadowlands nanos. At least at this point I'll be able to buy that nano before I level to 218.

Missions used to generate enough credits to survive, and some time blitzing some specific Ql200+ items was enough to get yourself the high end gear. But now days missions don't generate enough money to keep pace with the cost of items in game, such as Jobe Armors, Shadowlands Nanos, etc. And for many of these items, there is no alternative than shoving your credits into the vendors.

Ah, but the real question is, do you have need for those nano's right now? Ah, wait, wait.. don't say it. Yes, you do. But why is that? Because if you don't have them, you can't get to the phatties at 215? So why not wait, save, level, and get the phats at 220?

Is that going to hurt you in any way? Will it take away enjoyment of the game? Because if it's all about collecting the phatz as soon as you can, you might as well just go and invest in stamp collecting, right?

You can still blitz, and run missions, and get money. It'll just take a bit longer. And that isn't all that bad, considering that the high end gear was supposed to be hard to get. Right now the high end gear is just there for the buying.

To make a slightly off-beat analogy, consider, say a Ferrari Enzo. You can only buy one when you're invited to buy one. They cost tons. Right now, the economy in AO is like this: anyone can buy an Enzo. They just plop down the requisite credits, and drive right off. This detracts from the whole idea that that car is supposed to be hard to get. This move by FC just turns the car back into an exclusive hard to get item, for those who've put time and effort into it.

*shrug*

[mrbig]

Ah, but the real question is, do you have need for those nano's right now? Ah, wait, wait.. don't say it. Yes, you do. But why is that? Because if you don't have them, you can't get to the phatties at 215? So why not wait, save, level, and get the phats at 220?

Is that going to hurt you in any way? Will it take away enjoyment of the game? Because if it's all about collecting the phatz as soon as you can, you might as well just go and invest in stamp collecting, right?

You can still blitz, and run missions, and get money. It'll just take a bit longer. And that isn't all that bad, considering that the high end gear was supposed to be hard to get. Right now the high end gear is just there for the buying.

To make a slightly off-beat analogy, consider, say a Ferrari Enzo. You can only buy one when you're invited to buy one. They cost tons. Right now, the economy in AO is like this: anyone can buy an Enzo. They just plop down the requisite credits, and drive right off. This detracts from the whole idea that that car is supposed to be hard to get. This move by FC just turns the car back into an exclusive hard to get item, for those who've put time and effort into it.

*shrug*

if you dont have the gear / nanos once your team finds out the kick you for someone more uber it happens all the time

[xiaojian]

There aren't friends to be made in this game. Everyone that would or could help won't.

I can try to imagine a new and good guild all I want but it doesn't bring one into reality. I'll look around but every time you move to another guild you are always set back. People don't know you don't trust won't help etc so again you are stuck in the same situation and usually they forget about you

thanks FunCom for taking a step toward removing the ingot-farmers.

Cynaptix, please get help. you sound very sad :/

[Xitami]

if you dont have the gear / nanos once your team finds out the kick you for someone more uber it happens all the time

Yes? And? Do you in all honesty really want to team with people that treat you, literally, like a tool? I wouldn't. Besides, with this fix, those people will run out of teammates real damn quick, because sure, they might be uber, but the rest of the population will be lagging behind a bit.

So while the elitist "only the best may participate in our team" people are struggling to fill a team for some Pand action, the rest of the folk who might not be so uber yet, will have a full team ready to go and attempt to kick some butt. So not only will they, most likely, have more fun with their game, but they might just get that item they really wanted this time, and have it really mean something instead of "yeah, just bought this here <insert uber item> for <insert ****loads of credits here>, but meh, I might get something else".

I swear some people are so obsessed with getting the most uber loot, the most credits, that they've turned into a freaking caricature of their daily lives. I work for my money during the day, and I work hard, and the pay is good. When I get home and fire up AO for a quick 2 hours of play, I don't really care if I'll ever be uber, and have the most wicked equipment. I just care about having a good time that doesn't involve planning, plotting, and following a set of rigid "rules" and guidelines just so I can play with the rest of the kids.

If the rest of the kids don't wanna play with me, my reply is really simple.

"Scr*w you guys, I'm going home." -- Still plenty to do on RK that can be done solo, and I have just as much fun doing that.

[Glarawyn]

Ah, but the real question is, do you have need for those nano's right now? Ah, wait, wait.. don't say it. Yes, you do. But why is that? Because if you don't have them, you can't get to the phatties at 215? So why not wait, save, level, and get the phats at 220?

I can get my phat loots just fine with the nanos I do have. But it would be really really nice to have a new Adventurer Instant Heal nano for Wolf form for PvP, and it would be really nice if I could get my butt to 220...and...

My point is I should be able to scrape up enough credits from missions to buy a certin equipment, such as the latest Shadowlands nanos that I can run, without having to go kill a boss who may eventually drop some loot worth selling, that I may be able to sell to another player for enough credits to buy one or two new nano programs.

Compared to back in the day, if I needed a new nano program I just worked the mission terminal for a few hours and I had the nano I needed, and usually a few others that I would need eventually as well.

In Shadowlands, it's credits only, and the options for generating a reliable income are spotty. It will take 50-80 hours of SKing to go from 217 to 220. Not counting time it takes waiting for your teammates to show up, running to and from missions, waiting for teammates go get back from reclaim/LD/whatver...

That's alot of time, and generates very little in the way of credits.

[Inzuse]

I can try to imagine a new and good guild all I want but it doesn't bring one into reality. I'll look around but every time you move to another guild you are always set back. People don't know you don't trust won't help etc so again you are stuck in the same situation and usually they forget about you because most of those guilds have people there from its conception and usually are off doing their own things. This is the nature of the beast I have been in the game for over a year now and I have seen the way the game has been heading.

your dead wrong.. ive helped many people that have oined my org the very first day.. and spent hours doing so.. and im sure many other people from other guilds have done the same.... omni/ neut / clan im sure it really dont matter

[Hawksbane]

Well the main thing that wrecks the economy is people buying creds on ebay.
ok so getting rid of ingots might reduce that but there are other ways of making creds so people will still be buying on ebay and the market won't be affected as much as it should.
Meanwhile all those non-ebay people are getting screwed out of a good source of creds...

If FC really want to help sort out the market then find a way of stopping people selling creds on ebay.
Shadowbane had the same problem with people selling things on ebay, they solved it in an instant by going to the people who run ebay and telling them to stop it.
People use the 'selling my time and effort not FC property' crap to get away with selling on ebay. it is easy to change the EULA to stop that.

People selling on ebay is easy to stop.

{Edited by bekrowe: not linking to a site which is violating the EULA would be good}
And yes, this company is in business for several years, obviously tolerated by Funcom.

Point proved that FC is doing NOTHING to actually try to stop people selling??

Maybe reduce the value of ingots to stop people farming them but please don't get rid of them, they are used by all people as a source of income. if FC is really serious about sorting things out there are better ways of doing it.
Keeping ingots in the game is good and people will stop farming them for creds to sell if they can't sell creds anymore.

One way of bringing some prices down might be to increase the drop rate of some items. economics works on supply and demand, if the supply is less than the demand then the price goes up, some things sell for 50+ million because there are so few of them. more of them around = lower prices (not too big a increase in drop rate, don't want everything to become as common as Kin of Tarasque...)

[Beetjoo]

Farming ingots only seems to be a problem in ely I say keep the ingots but move them up to high lvl mobs such as the hecks in pen.!

[kuznechik]

Bump for lowering AI city monthly costs.
Ingot removal will almost kill ability to pay for city for small/medium orgs.
And please consider small decrease of cost of SL nanos.

[Hawksbane]

id like to add my 2 cents in. i dont mind the removal of ingots but i do think it will hurt the new people to sl and take some of the incentive to upgrade away ( easy money) over all i think it will be a good idea. but now FC needs to take a look at how many ai farming cities there are and disband some to allow "real" orgs to have a city of there own so they dont have to pay the inflated prices for ai loot and just get it themselves. im leader of a fair sized org and lose ppl all the time to orgs that have a city and if there nerfing the ingots to make the game more enjoyabe for all then something should be done about cities aswell

That sounds so like many conversations i've had. they need to make some sort of restriction to orgs building a city, not just 'need xxx creds'.
How about 'Org must have (and keep) min 33 members, 17 must have AI' even with people having max number of alts on each account that would mean minimum 5 accounts including 3 paid acounts. more than one person would want to have just to farm alien gear and easy requirement for REAL orgs to fit.

[Silirrion]

People selling on ebay is easy to stop.

I'm afraid thats just not true, we could dedicate many staff 24/7 just trying to prevent as much as we could and that still wouldnt prevent it from happening, nor would it be a very efficient way for us to spend our resources.

That does not mean we dont take it seriously, and we do as much as we reasonably can in terms of those who breach the EULA in this manner, however it is far from 'easy to stop' unfortunately.

[Verdande]

Yes! Yes! Yes!

Thank you Funcom!


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Has anyone yet mentioned that this will make it a little easier for people who can't afford ebay creds?

[Tysunami]

It is good for the fact it is going to stop the high lvl and low lvl wars but would'nt u think if you can do this you could put a patch for a price cap per lvl for these....it does help out the lower people and to the fact that if you want this game to be fun then dont jam them in to rk to get anywhere cause that in simple words is real boring

[Kauh]

/me sighs.. was good loot while it lasted.

What I would like to know, is:

Is the overall economy going to be adjusted to compensate for this drastic change? ie.. regular items, armor, implants/clusters, city land plot cost and upkeep tax, etc...



Cheers.

[Hawksbane]

I'm afraid thats just not true, we could dedicate many staff 24/7 just trying to prevent as much as we could and that still wouldnt prevent it from happening, nor would it be a very efficient way for us to spend our resources.

That does not mean we dont take it seriously, and we do as much as we reasonably can in terms of those who breach the EULA in this manner, however it is far from 'easy to stop' unfortunately.

Well I'm a little confused as to why it is so hard to stop people selling on ebay. I played Shadowbane and there was a problem of people selling on ebay, it stopped 4 months or so after the game was released. AO has been going for years and people still sell on ebay.
How did SB manage to stop it yet AO can't? and what about the site mentioned by Shaoleet? that has been going for years.

It would not require dedicating many staff 24/7 to ebay. simply one lawyer pointing out to ebay that it is against the EULA and they are incouraging people to break the law by allowing them to sell there (which, I believe, is possibly illegal in itself) even though they themselves have not agreed to the EULA.
As for other sites, it shouldn't be too hard to find contact details for, some if not all of, them. then one laywer sends a letter/email stating that if they do not stop they will be prosecuted (that alone would stop a lot of people)
Any site or ebay that mentions a character name: that character is sent a tell ingame stating that they are breaking the EULA. then ban the account for a while (eg over the time the sale is due to take place if possible) do that a few times and people will stop.

It's not that time consuming and I doubt it would take dedicated staff working 24/7. we not talking about millions of players doing it...

[_Bonk_]

I think that Funcom needs to contact Ebay and tell them not to list certain items and see if that works. I think other devs did that with their games. It wouldnt stop the farming and selling of in game items for real money but it would make it much harder for the sellers since Ebay, the biggest online seller, would then be offlimits to them

Have your lawyer contact Ebay and tell them your situation and I am sure they will be more than willing to help you with certain types of auctions. They are nice that way.

[Vlain]

3. deflation? perhaps, but have you seen the prices for farmed ai armor? that doesnt seem to be deflating much.
ANi.

Actually bot prices have dropped drastically since pre-ingot nerf. (speaking from rimor, I don't know what atlantean is up to)

[Octopuss]

Hooray! Good move.

BUT!

I just can't see why you didnt remove ingots like soon after ppl started getting really serious money on them. That was soon after SL release, of course. Now, the ONLY advantage is that people in Ely can lvl up NORMALLY AGAIN. That's quite good, of course. It just should had been done over year ago (

as for Ebay, Sil, the last few posters are 101% right. Just have your lawyer contact Ebay. Easy.

[Littlisttza]

Some people here sound just like a few people we had in our org recently. We took them in at a lower lvl than we normally do. At first...they were ok. We would help them out and do raids and such. Then, they became more demanding... Wanting people to drop everything to help them. And the lack of patience...sheesh. Getting angry even.

When you are getting help from people...how dare you cop an attitude that everyone owes you the help. You should be grateful for the help and patient if needed. Just because you want some item, dosent mean that 10 other people have to drop everything and come to your aid.

Grow up people. If you wont take the time to schedule with your org mates(and I dont mean schedule something in 10 minutes) then you dont deserve their help.

And a big W00T for the ingot nerf. If you dont know how to blitz missions for items then now is a good time to start. Hecklers are for lazy, unimaginative people.