Out: Farming 5 Year Old Zones; In: Platinum From Current Content
After years of anticipation, nail-biting, and player feedback on both sides, the day has finally arrived. With Game Update 66, the way that Platinum is awarded from Group and Raid zones will change to a per-player amount rather than a total that is split between players. In addition, Platinum will be added to current zones in Skyshrine, Chains of Eternity, and Scars of the Awakened.
The Protector’s Realm Plat Machine
For years, players have been able to complete the Kunark raid zones of the Protector’s Realm and the Shard of Hate, earning upwards of 170 Platinum each. These zones, once requiring 24 players, have been trivialized with level cap raises, the growth of player power, and the advent of Mercenaries, leading many players to Duo (or Solo) them twice a week on multiple characters. Farming Protector’s Realm went from a raider-only thing to a fringe thing to being totally mainstream. This has resulted in a flood of Platinum into the game and rampant currency inflation on the Broker.
Yet Developers had been gunshy about instituting sweeping changes to these old Kunark zones. They know how much things cost. In an attempt to staunch the flow of plat, they held off from adding plat to Velious and Skyshrine group and raid zones and didn’t put any on Chains of Eternity bosses. Further, they added in platinum sinks such as Adornment Dislodgers, the Skyshrine flag, and Drinal’s Steward teleporter. Yet clearly something had to change.
On Sunday, players noticed on Beta that the typical 17-30 plat granted by each named in Protector’s Realm and Shard of Hate had been reduced to approximately 2 platinum per person. This unannounced change caused a firestorm on the EQ2 forums as players demanded to know where they will cover their weekly in-game costs. While a few people tried to defend running 5 year old content to earn 180 platinum in 15 minutes, the more reasonable discussion has centered on just where players should get platinum — from current tiered content.
Coin drops in Protector’s Realm post-GU66
It is no mystery to EQ2 Designers and Developers just how much it costs to play EQ2 these days. Players need Platinum for:
- Mending (Repairing armor)
- Guild Hall/House Upkeep
- Reforging
- Merchants (adornments, gear, etc. all have costs)
- Adornments
- Adornment Dislodgers
- Rare Crafting components
- Tradeskill Apprentice components
- Expert and Master Spells
- Consumables ie. Food, Drink, Ammo
- Collection items
- House Items
Coin Drops?
In the course of working on EQ2U, I’ve learned about a type of item in EQ2 which nobody has ever seen, only heard. When you loot the body or chest of a mob that has coin on it, you hear a cha-ching sound and are granted coin. This hidden item is internally known as a “coinpurse”.
Example ( http://u.eq2wire.com/item/index/1040547473 )
Thus far, coin drops have been a certain amount of coin split between all players in the raid/group (or taken by the Group/Raid Leader). With Game Update 66, coin drops will be individual to each player. Like Void Shards, Obols, Essences, etc., one coinpurse will drop for each group or raid member.
A Conversation
I was very fortunate to have a conversation with Kander last night about these changes. What he made very clear to me is, this isn’t about trying to balance the economy or force player behavior. It’s about the silliness of everyone mentoring down and running a 5 year old zone to finance their gameplay. It just doesn’t make sense to have current content that provides so little coin, that players are forced to lower level zones. As a level 95 character, I shouldn’t have to farm a 5 year old zone twice a week to make enough money to buy my day-to-day supplies.
I did bring up my concerns about how these changes would be balanced against the current platinum sinks in the game and current inflated economy. Indeed, reducing the amount of Platinum from these older zones may initially lead to an additional burst of inflation before prices start to settle as coin is drained from the game. Players who have not been farming these zones nonstop have expressed fear that they will be at an even bigger disadvantage to those who have stockpiled tens of thousands of plat. But something had to be done to encourage healthy gameplay (as the removal of Group XP Split did last fall for grouping in early game content).
Here are his comments on the EQ2 Forum thread on this issue:
Concerning the coin changes.
Coin purses in heroic and raid zones are now based on the number of participants. So if you go into a zone intended for 24 people by yourself and kill a boss, and you get 2 plat, that means if there were 24 players, the boss would drop 48 plat.
If you have master looter on, then that person will still loot all the money. If you have 2 people, you will get 2 people’s worth of coin as master looter.
Coin is being added to all advanced solo, heroic and raid zones in current content as well. The idea is that the amounts for current content will always be more rewarding then dated content. New content will always have a coin increase going forward.
PR, SoH and Veeshan’s Peak still give a lot of coin if you run them with the intended number of players.
How much plat will drop in the new zones? We haven’t heard exactly, but raid zones could see as much as 10 plat per named. Hopefully Advanced Solo and Group zones will have reasonable amounts. Game Update 66 is currently in Beta testing until its release on April 30th, so your feedback is appreciated on the EQ2 Forums.
As for reports that certain zones are still splitting platinum among players, and the fact that this change was pushed to Beta without an announcement, Kander had this to say:
This overall change has not gone to beta yet. Unfortunately a few things squeaked out before we could send the entire system to beta and announce it when it was ready. I am hopeful to have this in and functioning by Friday. Then we will most definitely be listening to feedback.
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Comments (94)
Cloudrat
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I see another S.O.P. in an attempt to close avenues to those who didn’t make the cut and are slowly coming from behind or are new. Only the playgrounds of the rich and famous will be desirable. Roll up the streets behind you once again. Then like all prestidigitation of the politicians and powers that be point the finger at curing inflation.. LOL
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Estred
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I do wonder if anything will be done though to make Legacy more desirable for those level or to pull high levels onto alts. I long have held that the biggest issue is Dropped Gear from Legacy Content is not worth it as Mastercraft and Reactant craft gear just outshine it so much.
I have been one of the many voices advocating a new plat change for a bit and I certainly met opposition to the idea of either by-player rewards or by actually reducing the size of Coin Purses by expansion. This is the thread on the official forums if anyone reading wishes to see what players have to say. It is 32 pages long and reflects the opinion over a few weeks with some changes.
http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/index.php?threads/pr-fix-incoming.6297/
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Phee
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i still dont see them putting in quite enough to make up for what they are taking away. but i could be wrong.. we will see.
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Paddyo
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Kronos. Raid gear from selling loot rights. Neither of these are on your list of player costs, and, frankly, they are the main things people farm plat for. I can casually play the game and repair my armor.
Removing a plat farming mechanic beause of an inflated economy, and replacing it with a mechanic that will still allow the richest to get richer (I’ll explain in a moment) is going to, about a year out, implode krono sales.
If the chests in PR are now dropping 1.5 to 2 plat per person, then the solo raid farmers who have 12 accounts can solo farm PR for about the same amount of plat as they would have gotten before. Not to mention, these people are already farming current tier content and will make bank from that. The only people who suffer from this change is the little guy who was managing to grind out enough plat to pay for a krono or a nice piece of gear now and then.
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Nyna
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they should also replace ALL LOOT with a new gear-currency that drops for each participating member of a group or raid. after collecting (defeating enough bosses) you can trade it in for gear at various prices (reflecting rarity).
I hate nothing more than rolling for gear or DKP bidding, cause it’s a waste of time, sometimes I’d have to look at EQ2U to even know if I need something for an alt or not, and often raid leader closed the bidding in 3 seconds. too fast for that.
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Phee
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that is true paddyo… Kronos on my server are 600-700ish plat a month.. thats what i run these zones for.. i dont gain anything but the ability to purchase kronos for plat, i make other plat elsewhere. personally, no kronos no game.. just the way it is, not spending real money on this game every month. so ill be playing until they take krono out or i run out of plat. i like this game so i hope these changes make things atleast balanced to where they are now.
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Mrrshaw
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I repeat what I said when i first heard about it:
Worst. Decision. Ever.
You can all try and defend what they are doing but what it will lead to is richer being richer, poorer being poorer, and forcing people to do heroics and solo advanced, instead of choosing to do PR.
Shame on SoE!
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Feldon
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Encouraging people in an MMO to actually play together in current content instead of mercing an old zone. How awful!
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Kalmaraa
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Yea Kronos are not cheep and I know quite a few with T3 guild halls that are suffering from low membership right now, this can affect them as well. It’s something that can affect alot of folks across the grid.
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Filly67
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Yes Nyna the best solution would be to replace loot with a type of gear currency. I have thought so for years.
Back to PR and such. To me there is nothing more boring then plat runs. Yes, with my army of alts I can do it many times over and make lots of plat. But in actuality I very rarely if ever do so. I refuse to waste my valuable time playing for plat. I have 18 toons, two guild halls, etc… and can easily afford to care for all of it. I look forward to the plat change. In all honesty I would never purchase a krono to sell for plat or use plat to buy a krono so I am unaffected by this issue. To me the SLR is a game within a game for those who choose to only spend their time selling items to get more plat that they will most likely never need. In turn the opportunity to purchase drops make those who feel they can’t get gear any other way desperate to farm plat it’s a vicious circle and imo not needed. If you want raid gear, raid to get it. If you don’t want to raid, truly then you don’t need the gear. There’s lots of other great gear out there. I haven’t raided in almost a year and my toons do just fine. This game needs a bit of an overhaul and I think this is a good place to start.
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Nyna
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nobody want people who SLR anyway.
I never bought 1 item with plat – except a few Master spells, and some crafting services.
The people who are whining now are simply the guys who don’t spend a dime on this game anyway, they are basically China-farmers, unemployed with lots of time to play.
Fixing this issue may get rid of these cockroaches, and maybe more people will group again and earn their loot how it was supposed to be, not by buying from SLR cretins.
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Zapphod
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I think any form of play style direction/steering is a bad thing in an MMO, whether it is called “forcing” someone to do something or “encouraging” a play style is irrelevant in my opinion a good MMO will put equal focus into all aspects of the game (combat, crafting and social) and not force everyone through the same funnel.
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Snarfblat
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You must be a liberal. They seem to love to mock people who don’t agree with them instead of trying to engage in a meaningful debate.
I don’t like the change. I chose to farm PR too. I choose to raid occasionally and I choose to group and do current solos too. Now, if I want plat to support my 13 other 95 alts (gear, consumables, etc), I get to run current content only or eke out a miserable few plat in old zones. It feels like they are forcing me to run ONLY current content and I don’t always want or have time to do that. So much for free to play my way. More like free to play the way we think you should play.
Busybodies can’t stand someone enjoying the game in their own way and it just kills them that someone is soloing old content and actually getting something useful instead of wasting their time there. Sometimes there’s nothing else I feel like doing than a little mindless grinding and amassing wealth makes me feel like I’m progressing my toon in some small way because I can buy things with it instead of staring at the stone wall of 95/320 and not enough time to raid so no gear upgrades unless that 3000th solo run drops a useful piece.
Oh just go form a group or jump in a pug or join a different guild or join a raiding guild! I group and raid with a select few. I can’t stand the majority of people in most MMO’s (they probably can’t stand me either and I don’t care). You get in a group with some jerk elitist who complains about heals, or complains about tanking or complains about dps. Someone rolls on something that was better suited for another class. Something drops and they don’t win and then there’s a fit. Someone is constantly going afk. Someone just got to 95 and their pulling 8k dps (I’m not a jerk elitist because I just grit my teeth instead of telling them they suck 😀 /hypocrisy…anyone who thinks they are without sin pick up the first stone, hypocrite) Oh, but it’s an MMO and you’re meant to group together! So if I don’t want to group all the time or simply can’t then I guess my business isn’t welcome because it might upset the social people who just can’t stand to see someone do their own thing!
Raid chests could drop as much as 10p a person huh? You hope they treat groupers and soloers right huh? I will wait and see, but I’m not going to piss away what little time I have for piddly amounts of plat and I’m not going to rearrange my life so I can play this game more so I guess SOE once again has told me I should leave. Maybe this time I’ll take their advice.
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Phee
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i see your point nyna, however not everyone has a stable of crafters, oh and i dont spend a dime, but someone else does, bottom line is SoE gets money for my subscription one way or another. money is money no matter how they get it.. so i really dont see what the point of that statement was.
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Seliri
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Gardon said:
Excellent post.
This alone sums up why Rise of Kunark zones like Shard of Hate & Protector’s Realm mustn’t have their platinum rewards nerfed.
Keeping content open for those without other expansions & higher level characters is a must for game design integrity.
End of story.
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Feldon
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Every expansion up to Sentinel’s Fate is free, and Skyshrine was free as well, so the level cap for all characters is 92 with 300 AAs.
End of story.
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Eschia
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I can’t help but see that if someone has a beast of a computer capable of boxing 24 toons, they could still run PR and get the maximum coin. Considering hardware gets more powerful as time passes, and EQ2 is aging, I’m sure many people already do that on a daily basis.
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BXKILLER
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Once again we have SOE stepping in to try and fix the age old problem of inflation.
What is the damage the 180 plat is causing?
If SOE tossed a Timer on the zone, say Hard locked to 7 days then maybe the plat would be so insignificant that they can actually focus there attention on the real problems again. Like the countless Botters running amuck in the game,selling lewts for 200+ a pop and raising the prices of the broker on items that should Never cost the amount there actually listed for & No I do not blame the botters solely for this.
Nerfing the plat isnt going to help, SOE taking there heads out of there asses and actually fixing real issues is what is needed.
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Filly67
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Eschia, do you really think that there is anyone out there paying for 24 separate accounts? I can’t imagine that ever happening yet alone more people doing it on a daily basis.
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Loch
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Eschia, even if someone actually did that….those 24 separate characters now have to wait 3 days to do PR again.
You would have to do 25 times the work leveling up alts just to get the same plat as before. There’s just no conceivable way to make that worth it.
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YB
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SOE should probably just shut this game down. The race to the top aspect of the game is completely true and totally tragic because there is so much lower level content which is fun (multiple peeps through it for me) but largely irrelevant now. After playing since release I am half-considering stopping now.
I believe this PR+ loot fix is a hole being closed in an effort not to nerf solo/duo players trying to buy loot rights (an asinine aspect of the game btw) but to reduce the number of f2p players from getting a subscription for free. The money drops in new content will end up being a fraction of what PR runs could produce. The number of people being able to buy a month a free playing time will end up being a few guildies and the player base will go through the floor. A side-prediction is about August there will be a server merge due to loss of player base.
I wish I could be more positive about this but I no longer like the current content and perhaps I need to look for another game. I am not saying I liked PR-runs and the other plat locs but at least I could read news while I was waiting for the merc to be recallable. SOE’s track record sucks so bad the last couple of years it just depresses me.
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Gourdon
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Filly,
They can use free to play accounts to go into PR.
Loch,
24 characters will make far more money in PR than 1 did previously. However, it is still going to be even less efficient than you suggest. Logging in 24 characters is not a trivial exercise. Getting ready to run PR would take considerably longer than actually running it. Further, It would take a beast of a machine to run that many instances of EQ2.
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JesDyr
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I see a surge in sales of EQ2boxer 😛
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Bilobob
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No would only require 4 PC’s each running 6 instances
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Bilobob
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and u wouldnt even need isboxer cause u wont be controlling anything but the main toon.. its not like u are boxing a CoE raid
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Krulm
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If you want to disinflate the economy so to speak you need better plat sinks. Removing the plat drops as they are will basically benefit the rich int he long term. Those that have so much platinum will hold on to it, while the rest of the economy will eventually suffer. Items will go for far less, and I personally would be very much disinclined to buy Kronos when I only get a fraction from the sales of one that I used to get. Yes I know the monetary issue would eventually over time even out, but it’s something akin to what is happening in the real world today. If the Federal Reserve stopped printing money as of this moment, the entire economy would start to shift and collapse in key areas. Same thing will happen here.
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Wanyen
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Super hydra is probably happening, not with PR, but the other areas. I remember of at least one guy from EQ1 who did that…and was quite proud of it, and all he had accomplished. That has been so long ago though, I can’t remember who the guy was or how many instances of the game he ran. More than you might expect. As long as those guys stick to instance farming I could not care less that they were though. To each his own, and if the trouble really is worth it and enjoyable.
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Kuulei
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Actually its level 90 and Skyshrine is part of DoV and not included with Free-to-play accounts that are bronze or silver, their expansion cut off is Sentinel’s Fate.
End of Story
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Kinya
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This change comes a bit to late but I am happy about it. It is about time honestly.
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Kuulei
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LOL just to check, I googled eq2 and plat. Since the started threads about the coin changes, it appears the cost of purchasing in-game coin from a site of ill-repute went from an average of $5 for 450 plat, to $14.50 for 450 platinum in a 48 hour period.
I am afraid the attempts to “balance” currency may only make real plat farmers rich, rather than players that farm to fund kronos and extra’s in game like buying SLR items.
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Mrrshaw
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Yeah, because Sarcasm fixes all the problems in the world. And no, you are not encouraging people by taking away a multi-year existing way to earn platinum, you are forcing them. I usually agree with your thoughts, Feldon, but this time you are just plain wrong. I will reserve a very very small chance on how its handled (I´m gonna betacopy a character and test on friday when it goes live) but from your article alone – it seems to be flawed in a lot of ways.
Free to play my way? More like forced to play their way….
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Etherea
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So the self-absorbed who have hoarded plat have no problem with this being taken away from the newer players who haven’t amassed a fortune yet. Very surprising. If you have a ton of plat, shut up, this doesn’t concern you. This is about the “little guy” who doesn’t have so much plat banked that they have to do things like PR and SoH to get by. You’re irrelevant, as much as it hurts your self-important ears to hear.
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Qamar
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@feldon
Iirc Skyshrine requires DoV and the AA cap of SF was 250. So it’s 90/250 for f2players.
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hathahrk
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since they made this change , will they also change all the plat sink item you mentionned earlier ?
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Eschia
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@Filly67 “paying for 24 separate accounts?”
EQ2 is free to play…
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Sharann
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Thanks Feldon for the wrap-up. This is what I would have expected from SOE on the forums.
This change makes totally sense (and yes I’ve been farming PR for plats on 3 chars as well).
What is creating frustration is that they implemented only one part of the change in beta without any warning (i.e. the PR nerf) and not the amount of plat we will be gaining in COE (or other) zones, so that’s only speculations at the moment. Hopefully it will be enough to encourage players to run through those zones, and hopefully non-raiders will not be left on the side of the road either.
In addition they should balance the amount of plat gained for both dungeons and quest rewards. I mean a COE quest rewards 39 gold…
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Edoo
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I still see it as the death of Krono sales for Sony. People don’t buy them to pay for their own subscriptions. It would be silly to do that there are cheaper ways. They buy them to sell for plat in game.
Is someone going to spend $18 to get maybe 100P now?
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Sraen
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To all the people complaining about the free plat that will no longer be given away…..cry some more!
It is absolutely breath taking to see people actually complaining that you will need to play in the higher tier zones to make a higher amount of plat. Some people are trotting out the same old lie that they will leave the game now because of this decision…..the rest of us can only wish…
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Filly67
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@Eschia and Gourdon of course you are both right, didn’t even think of it. My bad.
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Kalmaraa
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Well here is something to consider when it comes to forcing, there are folks out there, including myself that find it hard to get out in to a raid or even a group these days. For example, I been geared to do CoE heroics for some time, however as most that do these are raiders, and there picky all to hell, I get invited to one maybe once a week if I am lucky.
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Tabri
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I never farm PR anyway its boring and I make way more in game money by just going through Withered Lands harvesting all the rock and root nodes, killing every named, and grabbing every collectible I see. I then either mute the junk I got or sell it out right as is whichever makes more plat,sell all the collectibles, and the rares I got. Doing this I can make around 500-1000 plat or more in a couple of hours of goofing off while Im watching TV or cleaning house or whatever, same with the Sundered zones etc. I now have 12k plat w/o really trying as I havent do this at all lately and before that did this very seldom. Why do you need so much plat anyway? Takes me a couple of hours to make enough to buy a Krono as they are now I see no other reason you would need massive amounts of plat. If you do not raid you do not need raid gear, stop buying raid gear from people doing SLR if you dont raid you are just making them rich, why? for gear you absolutely have no use for.
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Necromancer
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Cool, I guess this means platinum sales will be all the rage again.
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Mrrshaw
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Tabri – No one is gonna buy your stuff, and it will force people to do what you are doing, creating “lines” of people waiting to actually harvest or kill stuff… it won´t help the economy, it will sink it.
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Chronusxx
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Playing in current content will enable you to function in your server’s economy, great. As a raider if named give me 10p each the nights where we go to CoE zones and blow through the em to get to the hm will be great. I might also have a reason to run heroics again.
The thing I’m concerned about is the economic collapse. Severely reducing incomes of the basic casual who doesn’t do ANY heroic instances (no I don’t know why they still play either) will reduce demand for some items drastically and leave more people out of pocket.
Great change, needed to be done, less 1k plat sinks(adornment removers the same costs as guild halls wut?) will be required and the spiraling inflation can finally be tamed.
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Kwill
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As to those who make money collecting shinies and selling rares, well, when there’s no more money in the economy, people aren’t going to be buying those things. PR put money in people’s pockets, which allowed them to spend plat on goods and services.
However, people are smart, and I think it will be interesting to observe the workarounds that occur.
Personally, I always did wonder why they hadn’t changed PR and the other zones a long time ago, it did seem ridiculously obvious that those zones were not being used as intended, and kind of clumsy to use old content as a money machine. So I am disappointed, but not surprised.
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badcat
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I just don’t see how any of this will actually help the economy. I know I ran pr 2 times a week on my healer. I banked that money up to run a guild hall, to pay for upgrades in equipment for my 9 level 95 toons. I not like everybody else who has gobs of plat. ot everybody is an elite raider that has 1 million plat in the bank with nothing to spend it on.
It will be interesting to see exactly what they do, or don’t do. I just think this is a stupid decision on so many levels. Lets find more way’s to make your remaining player base angry.
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badcat
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It kind of like fixing the barn door after the barn has burnt to the ground and you livestock already been pilfered.
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Sando
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to encourage players to do new content theres a lot of ways to do it , but nerfing old centents doesn’t help
as OP mentioned coins will be dropping , but tbh 2p each chest doesn’t help
1: for solo zone 2p~ 5p chest thats fine , heroic should be 10p , raid should be 15 ~ 20p each chest & players
2: inceasing more vendor items ( 2 ~ 10p ) through solo , heroic and raid mobs
3: increase the cost of selling attuned items to vendor( 1p ~ 5p )
4: increase coins from quests
for those players that like to run old content for plats thats their option , same for those that refuse to farm plats . it is a shame for those crying nerf those plat farmers just cuz they dislike farmers ?
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Abatha
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They didn’t nerf the old content, they changed how currency drops GAME WIDE. If you run the zone with the full raid you still get the full plat drop so it’s not nerfed per se.
I see no problem with what they’ve done. I have 6 Alts that are 95/320 and yet I rarely ran PR or SoH to farm plat.
Yes I raid, but in a guild that’s newer to raiding so we’re still trying to gear our mains. There are currently very few plat drops in raids. Now that will be fixed.
Not to mention in PR 2 plat per boss there are 7 bosses plus the gear that sells (to a vendor) for about a total of 5-7 plat depending on the chests that’s still 19-21 plat minus your merc if you use one for roughly 15-20 minutes. Still about a plat a minute. Not to bad, just not 100+ plat that you want.
I use my crafters to supplement my plat, there are still items out there that people buy (if you don’t gouge them) that can make you very descent plat daily. Also, sell rares, masters, collectables and you’ll all do just fine.
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Elderon
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All ur plats are belong to us…
I have 5 decently geared 95/320 toons. I raid 5 out of 7 days per week and I have an alt guild that I keep up. This pace takes plat to keep things moving and at any given time i probably only have about a combined total of 100-200 plat on my account. Raid prep is expensive… Top notch Poisons, potions, Arrows, food & drink do not come cheap and raiding as much as i do, i really don’t have time to look for a Tradeskiller to help me with these things (So I buy them from broker /gasp) Yup, it’s expensive.
I have farmed PR & SoH when my plat reserves get low because it’s a quick solution to my problem. Which is… I don’t have alot of time and it’s a fast buck to supplement my raiding needs and alt guild needs.
I would love to run the new Heroic Zones all day (Which also get meaningless after a while) but let’s be honest here; Groups are getting harder & harder to find. Especially groups that you know will be able to finish a zone and not poop out on the last mob… Drinal anyone?
I’m really not sure how to respond on this… i guess i’m a bit bummed that my easy plat runs will now not be worth the run, but on the other hand, i’m hoping the price of things on the market will come down to compensate.
it’s sort of like giving me a really nice tool that solves my problems and then taking it away because i’m “misusing” it.
I look forward to the next screwdriver that I can use as a hammer.
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Ragefighter
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I’m happy that there will be raid plat drops again. Now it will only reward those that are actually “Raiding” (or grouping) and not just farming old crap for plat.
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Benj
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I am actually surprised that CoE didn’t have plat drops (I’m not the looter in my guild, honestly didn’t know). However, I didn’t like having to run PR just to buy items on the broker. The amount I looted by playing the game through soloing and heroics were not enough. The plat farms like PR and SoH flooded the economy with too much money. People were willing to pay more because they had more. Higher demand equals higher prices.
I also tried to run PR to maintain my subscription. It took me about half an hour to clear PR. At 170pp per run, that makes 340pp per hour. If Kronos cost 600-700pp, that is 2 hours of work. If I spend 2 hours in order to dodge a $15 fee, than I’m working for $7.50/hour, just a bit higher than minimum wage. I don’t want to work a minimum wage job just to play my games.
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Avianna
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How much plat will drop in the new zones? We haven’t heard exactly, but raid zones could see as much as 10 plat per named.
Give me a break! 10 plat per name is 41g 66s per player per name. Die once and your repair costs from the bot will eat that. But some how this is better???
Even with farming PR twice a week I was barely able to keep up my three raid toons and afford a SLR piece now and again.
Is SOE trying to create a new class? The street beggar! Well here comes creating 24 free accounts and PL each of them up to 75 just so I can stand them all at the door to PR and still run the zone and be able to make capital in the game.
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Benj
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@Avianna
You raise an interesting point. Is this 10 plat per name using the old sense of one collective loot drop, or is this 10 plat per name per person? If it is the latter, than any CoE named would give as much platinum as all of PR in Beta right now.
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Phee
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i hope they are smart enough to drop 10 plat per player..instead of 10 plat total.. that would be just an insult to everyone if it were to plat total a chest in a raid zone.
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madcat
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Still one good thing from this, Leader will not anymore take ALL the plat for his personal(friends) use.
Balance old content by small touch is never a good thing.
The whole eq2 old content lack of logic and not inline with the current one.
At best they will not break everything, but for sure they ll break several thing.
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Solzak
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I agree that something should be done. Currently, obtaining obscene amounts of plat is way too easy. But the proposed change would heavily penalize guilds that go into current content shorthanded. Even 1 person missing means over 4% plat loss for the guild!
I would like to suggest a level-scaled bonus reward for those that take on a zone with fewer than a full raid force. (*** Please note that this suggestion is in addition to the new Beta plat amounts, not a suggestion that they be lowered even more. ***) Maybe start with 10% max, scaled by number of players. So if a full raid gets 10p each from a chest, a single player would get 11p. Roughly:
Coinpurse = Coinpurse + (Coinpurse/10 * (1- NumPlayers/FullZone))
// Yes, I know its technically only about 9.5% for 1 player. //
// Coinpurse * .01043478261 (instead of /10) would fix it, but confuse too many people. //
Now scale that by level difference. Pick the highest player in the raid, and if they’re equal level with the Named, each player gets the above amount (no level bonus). Lower than the boss, it scales up. Scale down to removing the original 10% entirely if you’re 5 levels higher than the Named. If we make it linear, that comes out to a 10% bonus at 5 levels under the Named, and 20% at 10 levels down.
This may seem complicated, but not compared to some of the stats equations. It would rightfully reward current content raids and give a bonus to shorthanded ones, while the highest-level-in-raid factor would stop obscene plat farming. (I’m sure using average raid level would Not help in that regard).
Probably beating a dead horse here, but I figured I’d give it a shot.
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Phee
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“I also tried to run PR to maintain my subscription. It took me about half an hour to clear PR. At 170pp per run, that makes 340pp per hour. If Kronos cost 600-700pp, that is 2 hours of work. If I spend 2 hours in order to dodge a $15 fee, than I’m working for $7.50/hour, just a bit higher than minimum wage. I don’t want to work a minimum wage job just to play my games”
So you rather it change to make it 20 cents an hour to play your game?i was fine not farming PR before kronos, but only because you could buy a year sub with SC back then.. i quit when my sub ran out until they put kronos in the game, then i came back, running regular up to level zones got me almost enough to sustain.. 1 characters. but with an extra cost of 700 plat a month is the reason i would do ROK raid zones for plat. when i collected enough through running them to pay for my monthly krono that would be it. to make up for that, the amount of plat they will have to put in for each person per raid mob will have to be substantial in my opinion.. if it were 10 plat per named per person.. thats 240 plat in each chest.. i just dont see SoE doing this.. considering the largest chest ive eever seen with plat in it was only like 75 or something.
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Larc
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In my job in SQA, I at least have the ability to stop devs from doing useless stuff. Spending ANY time fixing stuff that is ancillary if a WASTE of time. There are enough ACTUAL things that need to be fixed. This isn’t one of em. I would suspect they are going to find out about the law of unintended consequences.
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pluto
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It’s all about Kronos. Sony realized it can make more cash by forcing players to actually purchase memberships or kronos by diminishing the plat return on playable content. It’s SOE… need I say more?
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Brian
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I for one am thankful I won’t have to run PR anymore! Give me current zone plat and even if it’s less I know I won’t be alone in being infinitely happier!
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Ratzilla
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don’t really like it burns more of my time. they should just make the old raid zone timers longer is a easy fix . but if the new raid content pays enough plat it will work . but knowing soe i doubt it . me and others will waste time doing yawn kills more than ever for less reward good odds knowing how they do things to eq2 .the clock is ticking down on this game anyways. make it more of a pain to buy what you need soe to stock mains and alts years later ? btw who’s gone to buy your 1000 plat disloder now ! 10 plat to reset a tree sounds even better now .
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Ratzilla
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Pluto is right it’s not about the plat as much as it is about stopping players from getting kronos for plat to play the game free .
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Loch
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@Ratzilla
I’m a bit confused. Isn’t this game free to play anyway? Or did you mean, players having a “free” gold membership?
Kronos cost 17.99. If a player has a gold membership through using Kronos, then they are more profitable to SoE than a subscriber paying 14.99 per month.
Why in the world would SoE want to stop players from using Kronos?? It’s prepaid time UP FRONT. At more than their bulk rate for subscriptions!
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Regolas
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You’re wrong Paddyo. If someone is 12 boxing PR, they’re getting the equivalent plat off one run as it is now split between 12 characters, whereas currently they can run it 12 times separately and get 12 times as much as casualplayer01 that just runs it once.
It’s not going to make anyone worse off than the other. People with more characters can earn more coin. Always has, always will. They also need to spend more to upkeep those extra characters. Everyone is in the same boat. The ones it will hurt a little more until it balances out are the people who don’t have a lot of plat sitting in the bank and got used to doing a quick PR run as and when they needed a boost. But hopefully instead they can go about their normal playstyle and be rewarded enough coin to cover their needs, so they don’t ever get to the point where they need to go do a PR run.
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Phee
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exactly, kronos net SOE more money than subscriptions. no logic whatsoever, although.. SoE is known for such things.
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Brian
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The only people upset with this change are those who were using PR runs to pay for their EQ2 subscription. Period.
Using the argument that ‘it’s been this way forever!’ doesn’t justify the fact that it’s wrong. I shouldn’t be able to go in, spend 15 mins soloing a raid zone and make hundreds of plat. Now don’t get me wrong; I’ve done it for a very long time. But again that doesn’t make it right.
There’s still plenty of ways to make plat in game to pay for your EQ2 subscription, you just will have to actually work a little harder for it.
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Phee
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i think that is the point, some people dont have the time to put in to make enough for the krono without the plat from PR. atleast thats what ive gathered from the posted ive read and people i talk to.
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Tabri
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Thats funny nobody will buy the rares and collectibles and muted materials I put on the broker if they remove the plat from PR,that’s ridiculous. I was top 5 ranking world wide as richest on the servers years before PR was able to be soloed just by selling that stuff. People will always need rares to upgrade spells/ca’s with and collections for fast AA boosts and muted items for all kinds of things regardless if PR drops tons of plat or not. Prices may lower on the broker a bit but you still can make a lot of plat w/o PR there are lots of other ways and not just the 3 I listed, I just dont feel like listing them all, use your brain.
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LSD
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The price of Krono will go down. As will the price of things in SLR. With less plat flooding into the economy, people will be less flush and thus less likely to drop 1k+ plat on something. The only reason people throw around plat like it’s confetti is because you can make hundreds a week appear out of nowhere for next to no effort.
This change is good. If it causes a few primadonnas to rage quit because they can no longer get a handout, then good riddance.
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Madcat
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I hope they ll stick with 1 coinpurse /player. Dont matter some raider feel too uber or too select for going full raid force. They have better chance to get items, so they dont need MORE plat, that what they are supposed to get since they already get more items. cf : i disagree with solzak, i dont like this logic where you go with less so you want more reward. The reward is designed for the enconter not for the number of player who do it. ((pps : why you considere plat of members to be the guild plat ??? they are slaves and work for free ?)
If you can raid shorthand then you dont NEEEED more plat 😉 you are already well stuffed 😉 it’s greeeeedy to ask for more.
PS : i havnt runned PR since one years and i have made more than 20k plat so i dont care abot this chance but still it’s far from what is need a COMPLET change of everything…
Do the raptor epicx2 in kunzar still give his 18 plat ? do TOFSx2 give x17 plat by name ? so many plat everywhere on old content i feel lame to kill a bug bad boy level 103 who only have 7 gold in his poket… so lame.
And as scout i have pickpoket skill (remove it?)… woah i success to pickpocket 47 silver to a level 100+ mob, i m rich !… stare at those mob level 70 who have 2 plat… sigh this mob in sinking sand level 50 drop trash loot for almost 1 plat each, ok i feel lucky with my 47 silver from level 103 mobs, sure.
Still lot of work to balance, nothing is solved.
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Veeman
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10 Plat per named? About half what PR was dropping 3-4 expansions ago? And this is suppose to be the answer? Ok, we all know that the plat nerf is going to happen. Now it’s just a matter of finding a new way of making a lot of plat all over again. I was thinking about taking all my horded plat and corner the market on something needed by all. Like buying all arrows that are under 1 gold ea and reselling for 1g50S each. Will have to look into that after this takes effect. Instead of buying stuff with all my plats, start using it to manipulate the market.
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Feldon
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PR drops 12-30 plat per Named split between raid members.
New raids will drop 10 plat per Named for EACH raid member
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Kwill
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I have seen no one complement Feldon on his very, very clever graphic for this article! Thumbs up!
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Phee
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there is a reason they have “shorthanded victories” players should be rewarded for things like this, sense of urgency, flawless victories.. all of those should be rewarded with extra plat, because to me that means you have taken the time to actually learn how to play your class in a group or raid. maybe im just bias to players that know how to pull their own weight when playing with others. and alot of content you need everyone doing that or you will not succeed. so yeah those things should all be rewarded a bonus in plat in my opinion.
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griffonlady
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This should have been done years ago… before the economy was dependant on it. This is too much, too late, and we will lose players over this.
Some people are saying it will force people to play together. Well why not change the logo of SOE then? It’s not free to play your way if you are forced to group.
Also, the price of Krono will not go down very far. People who are shelling out real money for plat (which is basically what krono is) aren’t going to pay $17.99 for 50 plat here when they can go to a third party site and buy 300 plat for the same price. I’m guessing the 3rd party sites prices will go up too, with plat getting harder to farm.
I’m not saying all krono buyers will, and don’t get up in arms saying i’m accusing them of ptw… I am saying that it’s just common sense to get the most for your dollar, and a majority of the people used to getting 800 plat now will probably be angry at the drop and not feel obligated to pay SOE more for less.
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LSD
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It doesn’t force anyone to do anything. Quite the contrary – many people only do PR because they’re “forced” to to stay economically viable, not because they actually want to. This change merely removes a mechanic that is being used in ways that were not originally intended. You’re not entitled to easy plat. Most people who are pissed at this change are just pissed because their cash cow is being sent to the abattoir and now they’ll actually have to put some effort in and – *gasp* – interact with other players. Now all they need to do is stop fabled gear dropping in solo zones…
I doubt you’ll be seeing Krono for anything less than 300 plat. They’ll more likely settle around 400-500 plat. But any talk on that is purely speculative at this point. SLR prices may go down significantly though, as will Ethereals I’m sure.
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bob0builder
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Well everyone with the ability to enter PR and SoH are now going to introduce more pp in the next few weeks than ever before.
After GU 66 update — What if I have 24 people in my raid and 12 people are not zoned in and 12 people are actually in the zone killing the names. Do the 12 people outside of the zone getting coin still? They don’t get items like obols when not in the zone. hmmm
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Yuukie
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So, Solo runs in old zones for plat = cheating the system?
Buying station cash / “Kronos” with dollars and reselling for plat = playing your way?
Besides, who needs plat for repairs? Just use station cash. Master spells? Just upgrade with station cash.
I’ll just file this under more of SOEs “New Game Enhancements”
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Phee
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Yeah lets just do EVERYTHING with station cash.. buy raid gear with SC, by food/drink/potions/arrows with SC. i love this idea.. my 113 Station cash i have had the last 2 years will go a long way! lol really.. they have pushed SC far too much.. but thats an entirely different problem. lol
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Jaeded
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Every expansion up to Sentinel’s Fate is free, and Skyshrine was free as well, so the level cap for all characters is 92 with 300 AAs.
End of story.
I have a paid sub and a free to play and I have DOV & Skyshine on the FTP account
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Abatha
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Booo F^<l<ing hoo they're taking away easy plat. They're making me play an MMORPG with other people, they're making me do XXXXX they're making me also do XXXXX.
NO they're not MAKING anyone do anything, if you don't like it fucking leave, play another game you'll do nothing but complain about. Oh wait you've tried that and realized that EQII is still one of the better games to play. No matter if you play solo, grouped or if you raid. Quit crying and adapt there are multiple ways to get plat, several people here have mentioned some of those ways. The horse is dead, the buzzards have fed and the bones have been ground to ashes……… let it go already.
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Madcat
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remember all this started in EQ1, the plat was well earned and after a lot xpac, they saw player have millions of plats. They have tried to avoid this with EQ2 putting a soft and a hard cap… so they lower everything to fit in this cap. Still it’s done like itemization, in pain =)
But i think lot of people go drama. Nothing will change. SoE will still want more dollars, and we ll still want more game. And all we ll have is more marketplace 😛
Dont care they ll not break our fun.
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Daalilama
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Lulz..I see a few people calling the plat from pr/soh/vp obscene….who decides that you me or the guy on the next server…also see people stating that the old zones are used primarily for kronos…again wrong…though that is a part of it…this “problem” as some call it only became an almost game pasttime simply because last few xpacs they either delayed or declined to put plat in chests from raid mobs…my guess is last few years they were seeing if they could drain the plat from the game which would explain many of the increasing plat sinks in the last few years…which failed…also see some of the same butt hurt people thinking this is the best thing since sliced bread but they have always had their panties in a bunch about SLR’s…
For a funny just think they expanded dev time to place a lvl limit of 75+ on pr (not sure if other zones have it) and removed the need for a healer to rez pr…yet just nerfed the main reason people were doing pr to begin with…glad there isnt any extremely pressing issues with the game like class adjustments that need to be done…oh wait….
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Brian
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As much as I’ve loved pilfering thousands of plat from PR and SoH, it’s an obviously broken part of the game that I am glad they are finally addressing.
Sorry, folks, but nobody should be able to waltz into a zone, and in 15 minutes walk out with hundreds of plat. Nope, sorry, no how, no way does that make sense.
However I do love that they are going to put plat chests into current tier gear. While no means will it offset the cost difference, it sure as hell will eliminate the dread of running PR/SoH.
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Ferrek
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This is almost as funny as when they added crit mit to the game, and everyone complained for a long time. Then they removed crit mit from the game, and everyone complained about that…
Like sands through the hourglass, these are the patches of our EverQuest II.
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Zapphod
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I am not sure I share the views that this is a broken part of the game, lets assume you are right and that you get 170ish plat for 15 minutes work personally I have always found it to be closer to 80 plat for 30 minutes work but hey maybe you have a higher luck quotient, you are then locked out for 3 days.
So my question would be why do you consider 170 plat an excessive amount to earn over 3 days?
Yes I know you can run it 21451673459 times on you various alts and make a squillion plat in a little over an hour you are just that good but the fact is most people don’t have that many alts hell I would be prepared to be that most players have less than 5 alts capable of doing PR.
The only people that are really going to get hit in this change are those who play a couple of toons and use the likes of PR to fund small guilds and upgrades most of the rest will continue to make their money from SLR.
Once this is done should they be looking at limiting other sources of income in excess of 170 plat in 3 days to make things fair for all, maybe limiting the number of times an account can access an instance rather than an individual toon?
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Earth
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ok everybody, it’s time to 6-man PR, nothing’s changed but the verbiage, if sony forces us all to have at least 6 accounts, they will make 6x the money
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Earth
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on second thought the funniest part of this announcement is that master looters can still rip off the raid force shya right, that’s healthy
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Illuminator
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Brian completely hilariously contradicted himself, as you all do often. He said ‘hundreds of plat in 15 minutes’ and then called it ‘the dread’. Such suffering, I’m sure. Liar.
This is a solution looking for a problem. It will tilt the economy towards endgame raiding again, and getting back into raiding is NOT why anyone reactivates their accounts in the year 2013.
This change will reduce the amount of content useful to farm, in direct attack on the talking point that there was going to be a focus on more content. Lie busted.
Supposedly this fights inflation, and just look how well the devs police themselves against stat and XP inflation. Graph it in Excel if you must. Lie busted.
Is this an honest attempt to rebalance the game? Of course not, the fastest T9 XP
remains to be had mentoring in Sebilis. Lie busted.
This is about a dying class of elitist players trying to use a change of rules to prop up their own purchasing power and armchair conceptions of the game. People like Feldon do it in the real world economy all the time with predatory laws and regulations.
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Lowratio
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I raid 5 times a week and often work 60 hrs a week. If the new raid plat is 5 per named, that will be just less then one tpr run. Meaning that now I am getting plat only for repairs and adorns. I really see this as a punishment for being a long time player of Sony games.
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Breanna
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The only way it affects me is paying for guild hall cost, since the last xpac had no plat for raiders, and we had no real income for the guild, soe even took away the master drops, I mean think about how often you see them drop in raids? Its a very low drop rate, since they added masters to sc? Now people end up putting them on the broker for huge prices. I had no choice other than to farm plat for covering guild cost. It wasnt a desire to spend my time farming but soe put us in that situation. So hopefully soe takes all this in to consideration when they nerf plat runs. Lower the cost to maintain the guild halls or give enough plat to cover them. I use the plat to make potions arrows ect for raiders as well… cost up keep can be huge. bah anyways thats my thoughts on it.
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Froak
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fact is i came back to this game because of the ability to pay the sub by playing the game. ive had alot of fun in eq2 over the years but in its current state it is not worth paying out of pocket for a sub in my eyes. aside from daily costs, if i cannot make enough coin to maintain a sub i simply wont play anymore. with reports from beta making 1p40g from an advanced solo that takes as long as WE solo, futures not looking bright. the last thing this game needs is less players.
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soeland
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Not sure why anyone would be surprised…. Whatever people like about the game has to be removed. It’s SOE policy
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