Runes of Magic US / AU

Doubt they'll give free IS stuff for gold, but agreed, need a major gold sink and pretty soon if they want to keep their servers going alright.

This has been beaten like a dead horse, but let me grab my stick.

Yes gold sinks, gold sinks, gold sinks.

But you know what? That is not the only problem, I hate to say. There are a lot of problems that plague this game. One of those being that high diamond to gold rates is bad. Nope, not at all. Not when characters have BILLIONS of gold and intend to use it to never spend money on the game. Then we can add to it that they think their UD items are worth the equivalent in gold of 1000 diamonds.... All of the tech issues that make people say they wont spend money till they are fixed is another. GF needs revenue to get problems fixed.

I have never understood how people play a game and don't think to support said game with $$ at all!! That is a pretty low attitude, imo. I mean cmon 15 bucks a month doesn't kill anyone old enough to have a job/retirement/etc... any income at all really. These same people probably have an unlimited Texts per month plan (they don't think that should be free), or 500 satellite channels and HBO (yet are ok with that not being free), the list goes on. All of those things are WAY more expensive then paying 15-20 bucks a month to get what you need in a game and in turn support the game that you enjoy... so that you can keep enjoying it. And before the "if it says it is free, then that is how I will play it" argument comes in... I am sorry, if you are still so naïve to think that F2P is really meant to be F2P... wow. It is to get you into the game in hopes that you want to spend money to progress and advance... Problem is you all got used to advancing without spending money, so now you are mad you may not be able to anymore.

Personally I say disable trading diamonds to other players entirely. If you have alts, let you add them to a shared account where all shared accounts get access to the diamonds you buy. This is a big argument... however alts on the same account never had this problem... so there must be a lot of people doing what I have done a while, which is alts on separate accounts.

/rant off

However I see no problem with letting 1-6 gems be bought for gold, let all the Ptoken stuff avail be bought for gold. After all... those you could get for free anyway. Make it some REALLY high number. Except maybe puris. See I agree we need to get rid of gold... but when there are armies of botters getting the gold back as fast as it is spent... that doesn't help. They need more GMs policing this behavior... which requires more money.... which people don't want to spend to help the game... sigh

Last I saw, GM's were volunteered position -- no money required to pay someone to actually do it. Money possible involved in the "hiring process". If Gm's were a paid position I'd sign up right away but again, since they are volunteers (i.e. no real money, virtual currency at best which doesn't pay for bus fare or food or anything) I see no reason to apply.

What if they reset everyone's gold back to 0 or say 10k? Sure a lot of people will be mad they lost all their gold, but would it fix the inflation?

@Dk: Ideally, you'd like to have the game where the majority of the players are spending $10-$20 a month and where that much could get you well geared. Yes?

A situation like that is simply impossible. If the majority of the players are spending money, there will be a large supply of diamonds and few diamond buyers. In other words, sellers will be trying to reach out to the few buyers, and diamond prices plummet, inevitablely making it earier for F2P.

At the same time, if $20 worth of diamonds was enough to get someone decently geared, then IS items would have to be pretty cheap indeed, and compounded by cheap diamond prices, you get a situation where it is ridiculously easy to be F2P, and hence a lot of people will not see the need to spend $$ on this game.

It would cause a ton of people to rage quit is what it would do lol

Quoted from "Lelantus"

What if they reset everyone's gold back to 0 or say 10k? Sure a lot of people will be mad they lost all their gold, but would it fix the inflation?

People wouldnt just be mad. They would flat out leave the game in such high numbers the servers would shut down.

An alternative solution to gold sinks or removing dias from the AH would have been to lock diamonds bought with gold either from the AH or the cod system. Removing gold from the system is no easy task (but there are some good gold sink ideas). Removing dias from the AH will ruin the economy.

Quoted from "ruisen2000"

@Dk: Ideally, you'd like to have the game where the majority of the players are spending $10-$20 a month and where that much could get you well geared. Yes?

A situation like that is simply impossible. If the majority of the players are spending money, there will be a large supply of diamonds and few diamond buyers. In other words, sellers will be trying to reach out to the few buyers, and diamond prices plummet, inevitablely making it earier for F2P.

At the same time, if $20 worth of diamonds was enough to get someone decently geared, then IS items would have to be pretty cheap indeed, and compounded by cheap diamond prices, you get a situation where it is ridiculously easy to be F2P, and hence a lot of people will not see the need to spend $$ on this game.

I am basically f2p. I do spend money when I need diamonds, which lately I haven't needed any. I really don't see how you have so much gearing, statting or whatever else to do every month that $20 won't get you going on the right track. It's not like you're swapping gear out that fast or that often. It's not like high level runes are on sale all the time. If you use a combination of tokens and diamonds and only spend the diamonds on what you NEED to gear up and not all the "fluff" stuff (ie costumes, additional mounts, ect) then you'll easily have more than enough diamonds when there is something you need. The problem is most people have diamonds and think they must be spent right now. Buy what you need when you need it and you'll be surprised how long and how many diamonds you'll accumulate.

People need to stop looking at how other people are spending diamonds and look at what YOU need to play. Do you need +16 on something you're likely to swap out? No. Do you need 4 rune slots right now when you don't have 4 runes to add? No. There are far too many players out there that are basing their own spending habits on what the community has told them they need. If you sit back and enjoy the game, gear when you need to (and not just because its a new shiny to you), use all the possible methods of gaining stats, crafting runes if you need to (not just waiting to buy them), you'll find that the game still requires money but not at the level most people think it does. There are ways to make the game cost less and your diamonds go farther, if you're willing to stop throwing money at every little thing.

People also need to realize, just because it's on sale now does not mean you have to spend all your cash right now. If you can only afford $5 this month, then spend that $5 and buy whatever you need. If that means missing a sale, you miss the sale. It's not like whatever is on sale will never be on sale again, it will at some point.

Those players who don't spend a dime, then complain about things being broken, ect, well they make me laugh. You're expecting GF to spend money they aren't getting to fix the issues you're complaining about. How about you throw in a few dollars to help get these items fixed? Like DK said, spending a few dollars won't kill anyone who has income. Even the kids who don't have jobs can still contribute by purchasing game cards with the allowances, birthday or Christmas money. It really is easy to contribute a few dollars to help support the game you enjoy without breaking your bank. You don't even need to spend every month, spend when you can.

@ Netasi:
If you're already fully geared and only really need to replace 2-3 pieces with a new content update, $20 will keep you there if you farm all the items you need and buy during 120% sale (Of course, there are those that question if this game's quality makes it worth $20 a month, but lets assume it is).

But if its someone starting their gearing path, $20 worth of diamonds will get them nowhere. Someone did a price chart awhile ago, and even if all jewels succeeded, for a full set of T5 +12 gear (in reality, not all jewels succeed and your gear would probably wind up at +8 or +9 with 6 jewels) it costed nearly $100 I think.

You also proceeded to deplore the opinions of F2P while starting your post saying "I am basically f2p."

Quoted from "ruisen2000"

@ Netasi:
If you're already fully geared and only really need to replace 2-3 pieces with a new content update, $20 will keep you there if you farm all the items you need and buy during 120% sale (Of course, there are those that question if this game's quality makes it worth $20 a month, but lets assume it is).

But if its someone starting their gearing path, $20 worth of diamonds will get them nowhere. Someone did a price chart awhile ago, and even if all jewels succeeded, for a full set of T5 +12 gear (in reality, not all jewels succeed and your gear would probably wind up at +8 or +9 with 6 jewels) it costed nearly $100 I think.

You also proceeded to deplore the opinions of F2P while starting your post saying "I am basically f2p."

Yes I am basically f2p. That means I do spend money when I need something. I use both methods, like everyone should.

Now about the gearing process. Where does it say as you are gearing up your gear MUST be +12? Where does it say you need to plus gear at all? All of that is up to the players. You can quest just fine with mostly unstatted and unplussed gear. I've done it. Players while leveling and gearing up can also benefit from hand me downs from their guild or from buying cheaper previously statted gear from the ah. This gear doesn't need to be purples, it can be while gear that can then be resold or passed around to any other toons you have. The only thing a new player should really look at buying from the IS in the beginning is a mount, for obvious reasons. The rest can be picked up with tokens along the way, stocked up on. Most of the experienced players know how to bypass statting alts until much later in levels. This information NEEDS to be passed on to any new players. I won't even teach new players how to stat until they are 55. People are under the assumption that you NEED to stat all the time, you don't. Take a good OBJECTIVE look at the leveling and gearing process and you'll see how and when you need to stat. It's not nearly as often as you think.

With the blue gear sets, it makes statting/gearing through the mid game levels unnecessary. Once you get to TB, you can start adding some bag stats to the gear, by now since you've been doing dailies everyday, you'll have a few thousand tokens. Buy a few puris, 3 stat the items that will give the MOST benefit, not every item. Having gear that is +1 or some other low plus number is just fine, since the gear you have on won't be your final set. +12/+16 should only be done to gear you'll be keeping for a while, not something you're using while questing, that's just wasteful.

Quoted from "Lelantus"

What if they reset everyone's gold back to 0 or say 10k? Sure a lot of people will be mad they lost all their gold, but would it fix the inflation?

Quoted from "Darwec"

Quoted from "Lelantus"

What if they reset everyone's gold back to 0 or say 10k? Sure a lot of people will be mad they lost all their gold, but would it fix the inflation?

People wouldnt just be mad. They would flat out leave the game in such high numbers the servers would shut down.

An alternative solution to gold sinks or removing dias from the AH would have been to lock diamonds bought with gold either from the AH or the cod system. Removing gold from the system is no easy task (but there are some good gold sink ideas). Removing dias from the AH will ruin the economy.

I remember offering what I called a "draconian solution" to the Excess Gold Problem. It required:

1. Servers to be shut down.
2. Database to be backed up.
3. Script run to remove all but 200M gold from each existing character.
4. Script run to remove/send to owners all items from AH selling for more than 200M gold.
5. AH modified to accept items on offer for no more than 100M gold.
6. Game modified so that maximum gold held by any given character cannot exceed 200M.
7. Servers restarted, welcome to the new reality.

And this suggestion went over about as well as the proverbial turd in a punchbowl.

With the existing amounts of gold on our servers, it is far, far, far too late for GF to institute any kind of gold sink that would actually be USED by anyone, much less the numerous "moneybags" players. You know, the kind of person such as the player who brazenly stated recently that he was sitting on "a billion gold".

Other than to buy diamonds from the AH--which is no longer possible--or to buy gear/stats from other greedy players, what is the actual USE in having 1 billion (or more) gold stashed across several characters? Counting coup? Enraging one's gentleman's sausage? I have no idea. I do have a good imagination. I simply cannot see the "pleasure" in amassing that amount of gold, or the actual usefulness thereof.

Putting diamonds back into the AH and making them "locked" or "bound" after resale would be useless. Pray, tell me how goldspammers would not be able to buy up those diamonds. After all, it's not as if they don't already have the capability of getting gold from their "employers".

And we did once have "bound" diamonds in this game--diamonds purchased via PayPal and/or by credit cards. That certainly worked out well, didn't it? I can remember the screams on these forums regarding "bound" diamonds, how it was an unfair practice, it was discriminatory against those people who didn't have access to various game cards which produced UNBOUND diamonds, that there were two classes of diamonds and it was impossible to keep track of the bound and unbound diamond pools, et cetera.

In the now-several threads dedicated to diamonds in the auction house or "fixing" server economies, I have not yet seen one really "good" solution, or even a small cluster of "solutions".

The argument in favor of putting diamonds back into the AH seems to be favored by those who claim to be F2P, or those who claim to be "looking out for" F2P players. The first group are likely those who have billions of gold stashed across a number of characters. The second group is UNLIKELY to be players with altruistic motives, and probably include people from the first group.

Now that they're gone, leave them gone.

Fin.

I wasn't referring to gearing for questing (god forbid if anyone spends a huge amount of money on gear just for questing o_O). I was referring to once someone really hits gearing for endgame, when they're finished questing and are looking upwards at siege/instance runs.

$20 gets you around 1000 diamonds during double diamonds if I remember correctly, and I know my first set of poopy T4 fully statted +9 gear and dirty T9 weapon took more diamonds than that.

Quoted from "ruisen2000"

I wasn't referring to gearing for questing (god forbid if anyone spends a huge amount of money on gear just for questing o_O). I was referring to once someone really hits gearing for endgame, when they're finished questing and are looking upwards at siege/instance runs.

$20 gets you around 1000 diamonds during double diamonds if I remember correctly, and I know my first set of poopy T4 fully statted +9 gear and dirty T9 weapon took more diamonds than that.

And who required you to spend more the $20 a month?

$20 gets u nowhere in this game tbh....

Quoted from "Cike"

$20 gets u nowhere in this game tbh....

Not alone no, but since when do players, especially the ones who are at/near level cap really need to spend $20 a month, every month on their gear? Spend $20 this month, save those dias, spend $20 next month, save.... until you NEED something. Like I said, players are spending on "fluff" they don't need then complaining how expensive the game is.

or I can go pay 10-15 bucks a month and be endgame somewhere else...

If they wanted to sure, but they are here playing THIS game, so that's not even a valid point.

It is valid, though, because it provides a basis for proving that this game is way too expensive. It costs 15 bucks a month to play arguably the most successful MMO of all time. You can get endgame, play several different well geared characters, and have access to everything for 15 dollars a month. 15 dollars a month in RoM (A buggy, glitchy, half broken game.) won't even buy you enough puri's to stat one set of gear. Let alone multiple sets, or runes, or plussers, etc. And that same gear will need to be updated in 6 months or less.

The game is too expensive. Even if we put aside that the game isn't worth spending money on, even those who do spend money on it won't get crap for it unless they spend several times what it would cost to play any other game.

And sure this is from an endgame perspective. Sure you don't have to be endgame, but that is what is fun for alot of people. If you are comfortable crafting and running easy modes all day, that's fine. But it should NOT be so ridiculously expensive to get well geared.

Ultimately, the game has become what it has because of decisions made by the company, not by the players. In this kind of game, some will pay tons and some will pay none and lots will fall in between. Even with the dupers, hackers, botters, etc., this game could have still been thriving. The resellers of diamonds would even have had very little effect in a thriving game. If reselling was the problem, it could have been easily fixed. The cost of the game is high. Period. Most of that is because of RL diamond prices and IS diamond prices. Some of that is because of what has been determined to be the norm, but if that norm is what is necessary to clear the hardest/newest instances, then again, the cost has been determined by the company.

It doesn't matter if people are P2P, F2P, or P2W. What matters is that they play the game. This decision recently makes it slightly less pleasant to do so for P2P or old established F2P. Much more unpleasant for other F2P, and also for that most endangered of species, new players. No one trusts new players, and inevitably, some will get scammed. Some older players will get scammed, too. This decision did not make it better for any player. If the company makes more money, which is ultimately probably why this was done, it will be justified in their eyes. But if the same decision shortens the life span of the game, then if they made more money in the short run, did it actually end up making more money for them in the long run. Many decisions have been made which cost this game its player base. For short term gains quite often, the player base has been diminished.

I know Zid is happy, but Zid is happy because he thinks it's sticking it to the greedy endgame FTPers. This actually affects them little more than it affects P2Pers.