Exploits?

[JunkyardDog]

Pardon my ignorance, I am not in the Beta, but I've read/heard that there are currently exploits allowing for very high profits selling back to the merchants. Names like Yantis are being tossed around. Say it isn't so!

[HeartFang]

I don't have the experience in this exact one, but I have read that armorer items in the 15+ range have a very high sell back the merchants. A lot of people are bugging this and they are wondering what the dev's have planned for sell back of tradeskill items to merchants.

I for one would like a system that you have to trade to players in order to make any kind of profit from tradeskills. This will stop the macroers from making any kind of profit without logging onto their character and having another set-up to sell constantly. This will probably happen anyway. People will see a profit in selling ingame money for real money, like in EQLive, but that is not something that can be stopped.

This exploit(?) is making it very easy for an armorer to level. I have read that a weaponsmith right now is very much a money sink at the moment. All of this is probably going to change when the Dev's so their economy run, which is what a lot of people are saying on the beta boards. I have been in beta since Friday, so I can't tell you too much about all of this.

Hope this helps answer your question and stops a few of your fears.

[Niami DenMother]

In tradeskills, there are a few items here in there in various progression trees that sell back for a profit. Until such time as all the tradeskills are in and fully implemented (alchemy's still not in), and tradeskill quests are in (they weren't to be tackled until all the tradeskills were in), there's not been a lot of effort in removing one of the ways that a tradeskiller can afford to skill up to test the higher-level recipes. Since they're known recipes, that have been reported in as being profitable on several occasions, they don't fall under the bailiwick of exploit during beta.

However, as far as *other* cash exploits, and Y*ntis {shrug} No clue. I have my hands full running 2 sites and bug-checking without looking for trouble. ;)

[Graal]

Currently most helms sell to merchants for about double the cost to make from storebought goods. Other armor pieces can be sold to merchants for a lesser profit. This is a serious problem that needs to be corrected before live or the economy will be seriously inflated from the start.

[xirxx]

They will fix the profits. But in little more than 6 months into the game - everyone will have tons of money - as in all games...

[JunkyardDog]

Thanks for the info everyone. I am just a little concerned since there are a little under three weeks left in the beta to get all this done. Seems like SoE is being rash moving the date up, but we'll just have to wait and see.

[xirxx]

imho, this game is further along than ANY other beta I have seen (and I have been in all, short of EQ1)

WoW is very far along as well, VERY solo friendly, tradeskills are ok in that too..

MxO - good lord, it needs some work; but I played last night for a couple of hours and the lag was very good, missions are not able to be completed at a very high rate....

[BuzWeaver]

This will most likely be addressed by launch.

[Flendon]

What I would like to see is a sort of supply and demand system from the merchants. More supply results in less money to the seller. An example (remember I'm not in beta so just making numbers up): You make 5 pieces of armor the merchant will buy them for 20SP, lets say 5SP profit if you buy all the ingrediants. If you use a macro or just have lots of freetime and make 100 pieces of the same armor, the merchant the first stack (I'm assuming 20 to a stack) sells for 20SP. When you go to sell the second stack the merchant says "I already have alot of those in stock and will have trouble selling more so I can't give you full price for those." He then offers you 18SP. The third stack he offers you 15SP which breaks you even. The 4th you get 12SP a lose for that stack, but your still ahead in the long run. The 5th stack he offers you 10SP breaking you dead even from the beginning. If you made more than 5 stacks you begin to lose money.

The only problem would be what if you make 20 pieces of armor, but the guy in the instance next to you just made 40? Some kind of tagging to the player who makes the sale so that it is only the items you sell that affect this. And have the number reset every 24 hours so you can make up to 20 pieces per day at full profits. If the player wanted to go to another merchant each time they could still get full profits as well, but this would complicate the macro exponentially. Also have the merchants within the tradeskill instance roam around a small area would hinder, but not break many macros.

[Duncan]

I have read quite a few posts wherein folks express concern about illegally macroed characters mass producing tradeskill goods and selling them to npcs for a profit. While I agree that this would be a bad thing, and ruin the economy that is pivotal to one of our avenues of fun in the game (selling our wares) I really don't think it will be a big problem.

I don't write macros, and I'm not much of a programmer, so I won't make a rash statement like "there's no way to macro EQ2." But I feel safe in saying that it will be several orders of magnitude HARDER... You have to respond to random events with the correct keypress within 6 seconds and it's an on screen icon that flashes - no text goes with it that could be parsed for, etc.

There will still be mudflation, and wierd fluctuations in the economy, and rich PCs - but I don't think there will be a lot of afk crafting for profit...

[HeartFang]

Someone on the beta boards that claims to have made one that allows him to make items. He said that he could make it go to sell the items that he has made as well, but he got bored. He says that he did this only to see if it could be done. I know that their are people out there that will pay for a programmer to make them a macro for it and then sell the items/money for real money and make a nice profit.

Flendon, armor pieces and weapons don't stack, so the most that you can carry on you at 1 time is 30 in your inventory. I believe that the helms in the 'teens are being sold at a 20 sp profit, not completely sure, but I believe that that is the number.

I hope that they get a lot of these issues with the major profit making items fixed so that they aren't going to ruin the economy in the first week.

[Cavel]

I have not found anything that could be an exploit... The one thing that I do chuckle at is that you can MAKE a profit if you do everything right... but you REALLY have to work for it, Mine, harvest, gather, Kill, and finally skill then you sell one of the first items you learned to make back to the vendors for like 8-16cp if I remember right.

The one think you all need to know is that unlike EQlive Vendors here do not keep ANY items... There is NO vendor farming at all. Once an item is sold to a Vendor it is Out of the world for ever. So while the idea of diminishing profits from a Vendor based on demand that vendor has for the item being sold is really cool it cannot work based on the fact that the Vendors no longer try to sell PC's items that other PC's sold to them.

Cavel

[BuzWeaver]

All people like Yantis need is time. They have the people that will sit for hours treadmilling.

[Ngreth Thergn]

[QUOTE=HeartFang]I believe that the helms in the 'teens are being sold at a 20 sp profit, not completely sure, but I believe that that is the number.

[QUOTE]
the helms in the "teens" (trivial 16) is 5.1 silver profit from all store bought parts, you can edge a bit more out with foraged parts, but then you are working with limited resources.

I hear the helms in the 20's (I do not have it yet) are even more...

Yes, I sure hope they get in an economy pass before release, but we will see.

[Flendon]

Flendon, armor pieces and weapons don't stack, so the most that you can carry on you at 1 time is 30 in your inventory. I believe that the helms in the 'teens are being sold at a 20 sp profit, not completely sure, but I believe that that is the number.
Well if an item doesn't stack the profits could drop per item sold instead of per stack.

The one think you all need to know is that unlike EQlive Vendors here do not keep ANY items... There is NO vendor farming at all. Once an item is sold to a Vendor it is Out of the world for ever. So while the idea of diminishing profits from a Vendor based on demand that vendor has for the item being sold is really cool it cannot work based on the fact that the Vendors no longer try to sell PC's items that other PC's sold to them.
This doesn't have to be based on real supply and demand, just the concept of supply and demand. EQ2 can still record that player X sold 10 pieces of armor to Merchant Y today. Player X's profits will be lower for the rest of that day. If Player X wants to take the time to leave the instance to find another merchant he can still make full profits. If Player X wants to give his wares to Player Z (or a 2 boxed toon) to sell his wares then Player Z can make a profit on the first few sold (To keep making profits like this he would need another toon for every N number of items made during that 24 hours).

This would make it so someone grinding out gear while at their machine could still hope to make a profit by walking around from merchant to merchant, but having to go to mulitple merchants would make the macro exponentially harder. And it is based off of hard numbers, not what the merchant is trying to sell to players (since they can't). Nothing will end macroing, but alot can be done to make it more work than doing it the old fashioned way.

[FenixFyre]

Well if an item doesn't stack the profits could drop per item sold instead of per stack.


This doesn't have to be based on real supply and demand, just the concept of supply and demand. EQ2 can still record that player X sold 10 pieces of armor to Merchant Y today. Player X's profits will be lower for the rest of that day. If Player X wants to take the time to leave the instance to find another merchant he can still make full profits. If Player X wants to give his wares to Player Z (or a 2 boxed toon) to sell his wares then Player Z can make a profit on the first few sold (To keep making profits like this he would need another toon for every N number of items made during that 24 hours).


I've taken a few years of programming classes in college and for the devs to even attempt this kind of think is boggling to me. The management of the flags of players, how much they made of what item, who they sold it to, how many they sold, etc. would create the possibility of so many more exploits, I'm not sure they would even attempt it. The devs have said openly that they are wanting to avoid the whole premise of grinding on one thing for profit, exploit or not. They designed tradeskilling to be a social thing. Several people in the basement, crafting away... "I just made a stack of pristine dyes. Any scholars want to buy?" or "level 18 scholar making scrolls if you bring me the components" things like that. If there's one particular item that is easy to make and sells back to the merchant for an insane profit, the proper solution is to bring the selling point down in line with other similar parts. Granted all the Y@ntis freaks will eventually find a way to exploit the system, but the way they have things going, it will be much more difficult.

*steps off soapbox*

[Zendaken]

Actually, FenixFyre, I don't think it would be all the difficult, depending on how they coded it. If they're going OO, then it would be a simple matter to merely track the vendor object with a counter for number of item objects sold. So, for example, a linked list of vendors sold to containing a linked list of the items sold to said vendor containing a count of the number of those items sold. For today's systems, that not much load and using C++ standard classes, I could whip up a tracking class to use in each character object in about an hour.

Shouldn't be too much more difficult without OO, but that starts heavily depending upon specific choices of implementation details. (*shrug*)

Just my view point from 10 years of programming (three in industry), including (which I always ask myself why in the world I did) two Masters focusing on software. Heh.

I will say, however, that every programmer has a different view of complexity, which is why it nearly always works best to have a group of people - the more views the better!

Zen

[JunkyardDog]

Well the concensus seems to be that there is no concensus. Nothing new there I suppose :) All I can say is if there is some necromancer soloing a mob that is the only source of some rare spell (vampyres in Tenebrous come to mind) and monopolizing the servers supply of something OR if there are vast armies of southeast asians farming trading exploits, then this game will go in the toilet fast.

Since some people think it will get fixed in the next couple of weeks and others think its impossible to prevent, I guess only time will tell. I long for the early days of EQLive when there were no gods to kill and buying a platinum sapphire necklace from a jewelcrafter meant something. I remember being only the third fletcher to 200 on Brell and swelling with pride when people came to me for a shaped darkwood compound and there was a profit to be made doing it.

In some ways the intimacy of that relationship between crafter and player is diminished by the bazaar/bulletin board system. I enjoyed that my name got passed around and complete strangers would send me a tell, "So and so said you were the best, can you make me this? Can you do the combine for my Trueshot Bow?" Now its more practical, but less personal.

Here's hoping fears and reality don't meet and have a party.

[Niami DenMother]

In some ways the intimacy of that relationship between crafter and player is diminished by the bazaar/bulletin board system. I enjoyed that my name got passed around and complete strangers would send me a tell, "So and so said you were the best, can you make me this? Can you do the combine for my Trueshot Bow?" Now its more practical, but less personal.

Here's hoping fears and reality don't meet and have a party.

Since, on any finished product (not interim or refine stages), your name IS on the items being sold, your name will still be bandied about a lot if you're a reputable crafter.

Folks searching the market and not finding *quite* what they need will be smart to examine similar items and check out the names of the crafters who made them, for example. People who went market shopping weeks before and suddenly find themselves in need of an upgrade may be savvy enough to examine the items that they just outgrew and check to see if you're able to make bigger and better for them, etc.

Time will tell, of course, but that little "Made by" tag is going to be a lovely thing for those who want their name out in the forefront. :)

[JunkyardDog]

Since, on any finished product (not interim or refine stages), your name IS on the items being sold, your name will still be bandied about a lot if you're a reputable crafter.


Time will tell, of course, but that little "Made by" tag is going to be a lovely thing for those who want their name out in the forefront. :)

Oh sweet! They used that in DAoC where I was also a grandmaster fletcher hehe. I think one of the enormous advantages EQ2 has is that its the 2! It has the benefit of mistakes and victories achieved in other games that preceed it. I'm glad they picked up on this little feature. Thanks Niami!

[Tzee]

imho, this game is further along than ANY other beta I have seen (and I have been in all, short of EQ1)

I agree, i don't think there's been a beta that is as well polished as EQ2 is. Of course there's lots of voice overs still missing, crafting isn't fully implemented... and way too many vendors seem to sell nothing but a torch or a bag... it's still good enough for release imo.

MxO - good lord, it needs some work; but I played last night for a couple of hours and the lag was very good, missions are not able to be completed at a very high rate....

MxO isn't due for release for at least another 4 months, and will probably late (i wouldn't be surprised if it didn't come out until summer of '05... still, the combat animation in MxO is absolutely fantastic.

[Dreamhunter]

I don’t see a big impact on the market if a thing or two can be sold for a profit that is less then let’s say 10%. You gain 2.5s on 25s cost and that is a big margin?
You also have of take into account the size of the market that we have in the beta vs. the size at release, and you have take in account the degradation of the equipment, which is only partially implemented. At present you loose 10% of item condition each time you die, but after you repair it, it is as good as new. Apparently this is going to change, and that change should affect the market.

[JunkyardDog]

Since when are they adding permanent degredation? I have not seen any offical posts about that.

[Dreamhunter]

There won’t be permanent degradation per-se but rather:


Items take damage when you die. They won't degrade from regular use.

The exact amount of damage they'll take is something we're playing with in tuning. Again, we want it to be significant but not debilitating. And yes, we intend to keep the tradeskill folks busy with repair work.

Technically there isn't a maximum number of times something can be repaired, but there are a limited number of low-cost repairs. At a certain point, it becomes *dramatically* more expensive to repair something. As in, it's simply not feasible to do it anymore.

And yes, items will show you how many cheap repairs are remaining so that people buying used equipment won't be duped.


That is what I ment in my previous post.

[HeartFang]

While dying happens, it doesn't happen enough to make the low cost repairs making items no longer wanted to disapear. The items that you have will become out dated long before the low cost repairs are gone. Unless they are planning on changing this between now and release, I don't see repairs being that great of a problem.