EVECHARM Posted:

Why in the world should the shops be risk based? That’s not getting flezz moving in the economy thats just letting rich people abuse the system unfairly

Why should someone be able to get 2000% worth of a item they bought just because it suddenly went away with barely any warning. I mean heck there is one master ball going for 6 million + right now.

Deciding when to sell a moar file that you spend your visits to earn to get the most for it should be risk based, not just buying a item in a shop.

Just buying items isn’t risk, even if they lower the stats or items a bit, there’s no way the item is sudden;y going to absolutely plummet making the investor poor. Removing the item just create a absolut insane and unfair demand then there ever was for the item and basically abusing the system.

What I’m asking for is the creation of something that qualifies as an “investment” in the game. A .moar file will never be an investment, as forums are not removed and .moar files only become less rare as time goes on and more people get them (and people who already extracted them get extras).

In order for something to work as an investment, it has to have limited availability. Either there were few of them created in the first place, or it was available for a time and now it is gone. The best way to do this is “remove luxury items from shops after a time.” Nobody needs a master ball to do anything of significance in this game, so you’re not hurting anybody if you make them not available anymore. The alternative would be “making certain .moar files stop dropping” which would be more of a problem. As long as everything is always available from NPC shops, there will be a ceiling on the prices for those items, i.e. “however much you can get them for with max frugality, plus a small markup”. But to really make the player economy interesting, there has to be issues of scarcity. Pink Floyds and Earbleeders will never be scarce. Headphones are, hopefully some day Master Balls will be.

Also, you talk about “the rich abusing the system”? How are they abusing anything? From the description of itembuildr from the onset it was clear that items would be in the co-op for a limited time and only the best would make it into the game via permanent NPC stores. People, having read and informed themselves thought that “well, there’s no store for special items, so they don’t have anywhere to go” and then reading ET saying “I’m going to be rolling out changes for itembuildr tomorrow” put one and one and one together and thought “hey, maybe I should buy some master balls”. It’s not abusing anything, it’s just “being informed” and “anticipating something happening.” Informed people who correctly anticipate things happening should be able to cash in from this.

Plus, what are they abusing? For this to be considered “abuse” someone or something has to be hurt by it. It’s no great tragedy if people spend too much flezz on anything or if there are certain items that people can’t get (as these are things that are already happening, that have nothing to do with itembuildr.) It’s not even risk-free, since if itembuildr kicks out a special item better than the master ball, people may not be able to get “what they paid for them in the first place” for their piles of master balls. Plus, it’s not really a problem when the rich get richer. Beyond the point where “you have all the items you want”, flezz is pretty meaningless. The only use for it is “getting more flezz”. If people who had everything they wanted used their flezz to make more flezz, I’d say that’s entirely a good thing.

There is no scandal here. ET has done everything he should do as concerns master balls. If he does anything along the lines of “refund people” or “warn people that certain items would be returning/leaving”, that would be absolutely the wrong thing to do. It would punish people who took initiative and reward people for whining. Terrible precedent to set.

Remember, not everybody should be able to get everything. Sometimes the only thing that makes something special or worth acquiring/holding onto is “Not everybody can get one of these.” “I was there for that!” limited edition stuff is an entirely fair way to reward your long tenured characters. And “I got this item that most people will never have!” is a great milestone with a really rewarding sense of accomplishment. Not only should ET not “fix” what happened here, ForumWarz really needs more things like “MasterBall-gate”.