Jimmy

You need to zone for it to disappear. If you haven't zoned since midnight UTC then you'll still have a child 😉

The commit for this may have gotten lost, we're looking into it. Nothing to see here. Move along hero!

Please don't attribute dishonesty to what in reality is simply a difference of opinion. Read through the thread, specifically the staff posts. This topic has been covered multiple times. This changed was aimed at balancing the ability to produce influence, not amass it. The production of influence is what creates buying power and sets prices in an economy where monopolies cannot exist.

As mentioned earlier there's no solid plans right now, but on the subject of merits: It would be much more likely we increase the availability of merits in content that's currently lacking that extra layer of rewards, rather than increasing the value of merits themselves.

All posts before this one were moved from the original patch notes thread.

1,000 per shard. (There's 5) And if you run out, you can make another account. It's free.

Please try to be civil to each other. Nobody should be attacked for having an opinion.a As a reminder, if you quote a bad post, yours will get hidden when it gets hidden.

It's being merged into the relevant discussion thread. Just like this one will be.

Sorry about that - It was merged with another thread, but the moderator who did it forgot to tick the box to leave a redirect (and unfortunately this process cannot be reversed).

This is exactly how it works here 🙂 We can't be everywhere at once, but will respond to reports as quickly as possible. We are very reliant on (and thankful for) the community helping us in matters like this. In future please report incidents like this as soon as you see them and we'll deal with it. However, as @Neiska accurately described, we will not discuss disciplinary actions relating to other players unless they choose to make it a public conversation. For that reason, and others, I'm going to lock this thread before it gets out of hand. @Boudicia.Dark please feel free to PM me or submit a support ticket if you wish to discuss this further.

Exemp farms alone were not an exploit on their own, but they definitely were an abuse of that mechanic. There's no good reason why a level 49 mission should give greater rewards than a level 50 mission.

Can't hit the same target twice 🙂

(Not directed just at @Crysis, just quoting this for convenience...) There's a difference between earning (or generating) influence and amassing influence. Earning influence creates more money and inflates the economy. Amassing influence simply moves that money around (and actually causes deflation due to the market cut). The assertion being made by myself and many others is that farming was (and still is) the fastest way of earning influence in the game. This fact is not incompatible with the claim that marketeering allows you to amass influence faster than farming allows you to earn it. The economy is not a one-dimensional beast, we have different tools and options available to us to tweak different parts of how it functions. The primary goal of this change was to reduce inflation and adjust the balance of earning influence - because earning influence is what creates buying power, and ultimately drives pricing in the market. I'll repeat my earlier statement: Reducing the effectiveness of crafting and using converters would do nothing but massively drive prices of rare goods up for everyone. We don't want that.

The hotfix (and rollback) were actually both related to the AE issues. The other improvements just came along for the hotfix ride.

Right, OK. I did answer this, albeit indirectly. It's certainly not an 800 pound gorilla, and not something we're trying to hide or obfuscate in any way. It's a deliberate part of the economy working as intended right now. Basically: Those people marketeering? They are turning the supply of low-demand goods into high-demand goods, thus lowering the cost of those high-demand goods for everyone. That's a net positive for the economy, specifically a net positive for the average player interacting with the economy. Anything we do to remove or damage this process would cause prices to skyrocket. We don't want that. However if your argument is that it should be simpler or easier to engage in this process? That's a reasonable one, and certainly something we might look at in the future.

I may have missed something then. What specifically hasn't been addressed?

That's not very nice, is it? 🙂 I'm not trying to be obtuse here. I - and many others - have explained multiple times how the current dynamic with marketeering, converters, etc is actually OK. If you don't like the answers, that's fine, but not liking an answer isn't a reason to start attacking people.

That is the topic at hand though, and was the reason for this change. The market is already incredibly democratized compared to live. Could we do more? Sure. But the economy has bigger issues right now.

Correction: Marketeering doesn't produce influence, it moves it. It's also the main reason why there's generally a plentiful supply of highly sought-after goods. Anyone can put in a little bit of time and effort to produce them. Farming on the other hand produces a ton of influence which leads to inflation (bad), but it also produces tons of goods, which lead to an increased supply of goods (good). None of the changes we've made have impacted the ability for farms to produce goods. Just influence.

That's fair. Perhaps "pretty close" was a bit of an overstatement, but I think it's fair to say we're a lot closer to that goal than the economy on live was 🙂 Something else your post highlights is that the reward balance between farming and literally everything else still has some ways to go - you should never feel like you have to farm. There are no solid plans right now, but we've had some discussions about improving the way that rewards are distributed for "normal" content to make it more worthwhile. It's not on the immediate horizon, but it is definitely something I want to spend time on at some point.

For a videogame, a healthy market (in my opinion anyway) is one that is rewarding for the average player to interact with, but still has depth for those who want to engage further. We're pretty close to that right now.

Agreed. This will also likely be part of us looking at Incarnate components and crafting.

Indeed. Cleaning up Incarnate components and giving you something else to do with them is on our radar.

Something else to keep in mind.... I think very few people here would argue that the economy on live was good or healthy. Our changes (both past and present) are to ensure the Homecoming economy does not end up like that. In other words: "It was like that on live" is not a good argument when it comes to anything related to the economy.