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Kill all bots


Wildcard64

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That's about it I just wanted to say that the bots in the markets are ruining the markets for everyone.

 

But on a serious note how are they expecting the markets to stabilize if the is a constant sink for selling ore? I would love to see the market load up with cheap ore so i can go buy it make some items and sell them, or move cheap or from one market to another, kind like what is happing with schematics right now. This would surely start trading. Right now I can go pull some ore out the ground sell it with no effect on the market and by them items I want. If they are really concerned with injecting cash into the economy, up the daily reward and maybe even add a new player bonus.

 

What are your thought?

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Instead of selling to bots you would be selling to other players, one could still make money, if there was an over abundance of an ore it would drive down prices. This would then lead to the opening of making money based on moving ore from one market to another. would it not?

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9 minutes ago, Wildcard64 said:

Instead of selling to bots you would be selling to other players, one could still make money, if there was an over abundance of an ore it would drive down prices. This would then lead to the opening of making money based on moving ore from one market to another. would it not?

Bots inject quanta into the economy,currently it only source of it not counting welfare checks,  Schematics on the other hand take massive amount of quanta out if the economy.

 

Remove bots and very quickly there will be no quanta in circulation

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9 minutes ago, Umibozu said:

Bots inject quanta into the economy,currently it only source of it not counting welfare checks,  Schematics on the other hand take massive amount of quanta out if the economy.

 

Remove bots and very quickly there will be no quanta in circulation

There is NEVER a money problem in a game where all players are given a cash injection every day. The only thing that would happen is a re-pricing of goods given the average money flow around the game. Also the intended purpose of the schems to gate people out of making everything themselves would actually function if everyone couldn't make 10's of millions with a bit of mining. Ore and goods would be prices appropriatly so long as there was a wipe with no bots buying or selling at all. It's really that simple. You don't NEED a quanta injection mechanism past free money for logging in. You just need to wipe out the vast oversupply of quanta with a wipe and start everyone at ground zero and let price discovery happen.

 

What your asking is for different ways to 'earn' a different daily quanta injection with the mission system and the like, but those are not needed to support the economy. It's like any fiat currency , the natural inflation of everyone getting money every day would slowly drive prices up over time as money flow becomes more and more. Then you reach the point like EVERY MMO on the planet where the devs spend more time worrying about how to get money OUT of the economy to put new player balances within ranges of typical goods. Even that is largely skipped here by new players being able to make whatever for the effort it takes to mine a little in the nanocrafter for starting equipment.

 

This entire idea that "quant injection" is required by the bots is utter folly. Bots should be removed (yes you keep the for systems such as selling schematics temporarly, though in reality those should be player craft able things that given value through player discovery / imporvment and competition).

 

You will NEVER have a working player economy if this bot nonsense stays.

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7 minutes ago, Xennial said:

There is NEVER a money problem in a game where all players are given a cash injection every day. The only thing that would happen is a re-pricing of goods given the average money flow around the game. Also the intended purpose of the schems to gate people out of making everything themselves would actually function if everyone couldn't make 10's of millions with a bit of mining. Ore and goods would be prices appropriatly so long as there was a wipe with no bots buying or selling at all. It's really that simple. You don't NEED a quanta injection mechanism past free money for logging in. You just need to wipe out the vast oversupply of quanta with a wipe and start everyone at ground zero and let price discovery happen.

 

What your asking is for different ways to 'earn' a different daily quanta injection with the mission system and the like, but those are not needed to support the economy. It's like any fiat currency , the natural inflation of everyone getting money every day would slowly drive prices up over time as money flow becomes more and more. Then you reach the point like EVERY MMO on the planet where the devs spend more time worrying about how to get money OUT of the economy to put new player balances within ranges of typical goods. Even that is largely skipped here by new players being able to make whatever for the effort it takes to mine a little in the nanocrafter for starting equipment.

 

This entire idea that "quant injection" is required by the bots is utter folly. Bots should be removed (yes you keep the for systems such as selling schematics temporarly, though in reality those should be player craft able things that given value through player discovery / imporvment and competition).

 

You will NEVER have a working player economy if this bot nonsense stays.

I 100% agree with this. Especially if the schematics were able to be player crafted. At which point there would be minimal in and minimal out, leading to a more stable economy.

 

The thing with pricing if there is no items that are artificially priced then the prices of the market will reflect labor times. Which if any ore was a price then the pure form would be math function of that, thus costing a little bit more because of the time needed to make it. 

 

Ex. using the current bot price of hematite 25.  accounting for no skills it takes 585 hematite to make 405 iron pure. so we take 585 x25 we come up with 14625. this would be the raw cost to make one batch of iron. Now we take 14625 divide that by 405 and we get 36.11 so that should be the raw cost of iron pure. then we tack on let say a 10% markup. this leaded us to a per cost unit of 39.72.

 

Will the above always hold true, not always, but the exceptions to this will either be ran dry super fast if you are under cutting but then that person is choosing to under value their own work, quick sell vs better profits or the market it self will correct anomalies.

 

If you take the above calculation and replace the price of 25 with any other number it doesn't matter what it is it could be 1 or 1000 as long as the root calculation can hold true then and only then will the market stabilize. As long as NQ is trying to add or take away money the above calculation will be like trying to balance a razor blade on another razor blade. So if I look around on the market I don't see the happening at all. The price of iron pure is under the cost of hematite due to the bots. To be a true simulation of an economy you shouldn't be aiming to create or remove money, money truly is only a representation of labor.

 

The daily login reward should really be a number representative of something, like if you save one weeks worth of login rewards you can build a small ship. So then you would need to calculate the average cost of said ship with current market prices and divide it by 7 days and then you have your login reward. So this amount could be 10q or it could be 1000 but this in of it self would cause inflation of the market over time.

 

All in all i don't see a way for the market to function properly with bots

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26 minutes ago, Wildcard64 said:

I 100% agree with this. Especially if the schematics were able to be player crafted. At which point there would be minimal in and minimal out, leading to a more stable economy.

 

The thing with pricing if there is no items that are artificially priced then the prices of the market will reflect labor times. Which if any ore was a price then the pure form would be math function of that, thus costing a little bit more because of the time needed to make it. 

 

Ex. using the current bot price of hematite 25.  accounting for no skills it takes 585 hematite to make 405 iron pure. so we take 585 x25 we come up with 14625. this would be the raw cost to make one batch of iron. Now we take 14625 divide that by 405 and we get 36.11 so that should be the raw cost of iron pure. then we tack on let say a 10% markup. this leaded us to a per cost unit of 39.72.

 

Will the above always hold true, not always, but the exceptions to this will either be ran dry super fast if you are under cutting but then that person is choosing to under value their own work, quick sell vs better profits or the market it self will correct anomalies.

 

If you take the above calculation and replace the price of 25 with any other number it doesn't matter what it is it could be 1 or 1000 as long as the root calculation can hold true then and only then will the market stabilize. As long as NQ is trying to add or take away money the above calculation will be like trying to balance a razor blade on another razor blade. So if I look around on the market I don't see the happening at all. The price of iron pure is under the cost of hematite due to the bots. To be a true simulation of an economy you shouldn't be aiming to create or remove money, money truly is only a representation of labor.

 

The daily login reward should really be a number representative of something, like if you save one weeks worth of login rewards you can build a small ship. So then you would need to calculate the average cost of said ship with current market prices and divide it by 7 days and then you have your login reward. So this amount could be 10q or it could be 1000 but this in of it self would cause inflation of the market over time.

 

All in all i don't see a way for the market to function properly with bots

The simple reality is it can't function properly with bots. It's really only a question of how long it will take NQ to realize this and wipe the game and restart with 0 bots.

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You all do realize, don't you, that this is just a rehash of the gold standard vs fiat argument that has gone on for nearly two centuries? The bots are just on the extreme end of fiat money, with a value equal to whatever the government says it is. Yes, it a bit more complicated than that, but if you look at out the CCP manipulates their currency (not bashing, it is just the reality), then my previous statement is true.

 

The gold standard requires a relatively free market, but it does not have to be thoroughly so, to give money its value, the value largely determined by its relative rarity.

 

Why this matters in game, is that the RL argument never has been resolved, or rather those decided the fiat course of action chose to make things easier for their governments to spend money to whatever extent they were willing to risk serious harm to their economies.

 

How then to proceed? Well, if time = money, then those who have more time to play this game will naturally have more money (well wealth, really). While some may jump up to point out that this is, of course, a fair system, then that begs the question of "what about the casual players?" If a casual player feels the game is completely closed off to them, because they have no means of earning money or even competing for it, relative to the others whose actions are causing inflation (because their extra time = printing money for them), then we have a problem. The game will soon not have new players (after release) and will die from attrition alone.

 

NQ tried to partially address this with valuing schematics based on time to create the item, as well as its tier, but they failed to fully account for the items' utility or more especially the need for more than a few of them to exist, relative to other items that take an equal amount of time to build (or a collection of items that take less time). For example, how many of you need 12 territory scanners on your ship versus how many need 12 L engines?  So, although not a hard limit, a more natural limit to scanners, per person, is 3.  But, with each and every scan, it has diminishing utility, whereas the engines continue to maintain the same measure of utility (usefulness) as when they were used the first time as when they are used for the 10,000th time.  If you disagree, then think of it this way, there's only so many hexes for you to scan, once you scan a hex, you have one less hex to scan for its current state of ore (unless the ore is reseeded, this will remain true, even when other planets/moons are added, the utility will increase on the NEXT scan, and then diminish again from that now higher level of utility).

 

How is this conundrum to be resolved? Sure, we could attempt to allow a free market to decide this. But, there's no such thing in this game or any other computer game. Why? Because the same considerations of a free market in the real world do not exist in the game. We have some very basic daily needs in RL, such as food, clothing, shelter, etc., that MUST be met for us to exist for more any length of time (yes, even the homeless have a form of shelter, else they die of exposure). It is that selection of RL concerns that underlay the foundations of a free market, are you willing to go hungry in order to buy that iphone? Are you willing to not pay rent and get kicked out of your apartment so that you can buy that really cool big screen TV with all the bells and whistles?

 

These considerations cannot exist with the game, else it would cease to be entertainment and merely a droll second life that few would want to experience for long.

 

As such, demands for a true free market are based on a faulty set of assumptions, that what works in RL will work here, to the extent that it has been tried and proven. It simply cannot. For the sake of brevity, I left out other RL considerations that go into this, namely those mechanisms and institutions that insure our basic needs can be met, such as fire, police, etc., which require us to pay taxes, in some form to be sure. We also do not pay those taxes in game, but merely a fee for market exchanges that are not collected in player to player trades.

 

So, obviously some form of compromise between the two systems or fiscal ideologies must emerge, instead of demands of exclusivity for one or the other.

 

Therefore, I think the best way forward is to leave it as it is, provided that NQ follows through on its intent to withdraw the bots from the game, presumably at least by full release. Schematics as a whole should not be in the hands of the players alone, especially as it will just lead to the same problem as before, without a huge change and subsequent uproar, because we will all just make the schematics we decide we need and then not rely on others for such transactions.

 

Yes, they could be exclusive to some function of research, but that again rewards people either linearly or exponentially (boom or bust kind of luck), and I doubt many will want to solely rely on that one individual who successfully researched the t5  super-duper cannon of doom, just before he/she had a kid and quit playing the game.

 

Instead of trying to beat each side's argument down, let's find something in the middle we can all live with.

 

 

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37 minutes ago, Penwith said:

You all do realize, don't you, that this is just a rehash of the gold standard vs fiat argument that has gone on for nearly two centuries? The bots are just on the extreme end of fiat money, with a value equal to whatever the government says it is. Yes, it a bit more complicated than that, but if you look at out the CCP manipulates their currency (not bashing, it is just the reality), then my previous statement is true.

 

The gold standard requires a relatively free market, but it does not have to be thoroughly so, to give money its value, the value largely determined by its relative rarity.

 

Why this matters in game, is that the RL argument never has been resolved, or rather those decided the fiat course of action chose to make things easier for their governments to spend money to whatever extent they were willing to risk serious harm to their economies.

 

How then to proceed? Well, if time = money, then those who have more time to play this game will naturally have more money (well wealth, really). While some may jump up to point out that this is, of course, a fair system, then that begs the question of "what about the casual players?" If a casual player feels the game is completely closed off to them, because they have no means of earning money or even competing for it, relative to the others whose actions are causing inflation (because their extra time = printing money for them), then we have a problem. The game will soon not have new players (after release) and will die from attrition alone.

 

NQ tried to partially address this with valuing schematics based on time to create the item, as well as its tier, but they failed to fully account for the items' utility or more especially the need for more than a few of them to exist, relative to other items that take an equal amount of time to build (or a collection of items that take less time). For example, how many of you need 12 territory scanners on your ship versus how many need 12 L engines?  So, although not a hard limit, a more natural limit to scanners, per person, is 3.  But, with each and every scan, it has diminishing utility, whereas the engines continue to maintain the same measure of utility (usefulness) as when they were used the first time as when they are used for the 10,000th time.  If you disagree, then think of it this way, there's only so many hexes for you to scan, once you scan a hex, you have one less hex to scan for its current state of ore (unless the ore is reseeded, this will remain true, even when other planets/moons are added, the utility will increase on the NEXT scan, and then diminish again from that now higher level of utility).

 

How is this conundrum to be resolved? Sure, we could attempt to allow a free market to decide this. But, there's no such thing in this game or any other computer game. Why? Because the same considerations of a free market in the real world do not exist in the game. We have some very basic daily needs in RL, such as food, clothing, shelter, etc., that MUST be met for us to exist for more any length of time (yes, even the homeless have a form of shelter, else they die of exposure). It is that selection of RL concerns that underlay the foundations of a free market, are you willing to go hungry in order to buy that iphone? Are you willing to not pay rent and get kicked out of your apartment so that you can buy that really cool big screen TV with all the bells and whistles?

 

These considerations cannot exist with the game, else it would cease to be entertainment and merely a droll second life that few would want to experience for long.

 

As such, demands for a true free market are based on a faulty set of assumptions, that what works in RL will work here, to the extent that it has been tried and proven. It simply cannot. For the sake of brevity, I left out other RL considerations that go into this, namely those mechanisms and institutions that insure our basic needs can be met, such as fire, police, etc., which require us to pay taxes, in some form to be sure. We also do not pay those taxes in game, but merely a fee for market exchanges that are not collected in player to player trades.

 

So, obviously some form of compromise between the two systems or fiscal ideologies must emerge, instead of demands of exclusivity for one or the other.

 

Therefore, I think the best way forward is to leave it as it is, provided that NQ follows through on its intent to withdraw the bots from the game, presumably at least by full release. Schematics as a whole should not be in the hands of the players alone, especially as it will just lead to the same problem as before, without a huge change and subsequent uproar, because we will all just make the schematics we decide we need and then not rely on others for such transactions.

 

Yes, they could be exclusive to some function of research, but that again rewards people either linearly or exponentially (boom or bust kind of luck), and I doubt many will want to solely rely on that one individual who successfully researched the t5  super-duper cannon of doom, just before he/she had a kid and quit playing the game.

 

Instead of trying to beat each side's argument down, let's find something in the middle we can all live with.

 

 

The only consideration that cannot be translated from a RL economy and that of an in game economy , is you cannot ever choose not to participate in a RL economy or you die. That cannot be modeled here as if a player is dissatisfied they can simply opt out of the game. Having bots for a period of time is overall destructive to a game world with supposedly finite resources as it infers an enormous advantage to those present during the magical money fairy days. If the game is to be a PvP / TW focused as they seem to claim this would put a huge stone wall in front of anyone arriving after the bot era that everyone was able to partipate in easy $$ mode with rich resources to gobble up. 

 

The schematics I don't really have an issue even if they were left as a purchase from the AI for all. I would like to at least see player activity able to perhaps enhance said schematics but I can be swayed on the argument of that either way depending on implementation.

 

There is no middle. It's either a player driven economy , or it's not. There is a reason what we have now is utterly failing economy wise even pre 0.23. It's the bots.

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25 minutes ago, Xennial said:

you cannot ever choose not to participate in a RL economy or you die.

Then, It is surprising that people ever made it out of the stone age.

 

26 minutes ago, Xennial said:

Having bots for a period of time is overall destructive to a game world...The schematics I don't really have an issue even if they were left as a purchase from the AI for all.

These are diametrically opposed positions, from the overall tone of your argument. They are either destructive or not so much, as long as they are only selling schematics. Since you already allow that they are not destructive, or at least not as destructive when purchase from bots (you use 'AI" but it is the same), then you've just weakened your prior argument, if unintentionally.

 

29 minutes ago, Xennial said:

Having bots for a period of time is overall destructive to a game world with supposedly finite resources as it infers an enormous advantage to those present during the magical money fairy days.

Which is really a non-argument as anyone who joins the game later is already starting from a position behind the progress everyone else has made and you are thus arguing that a wipe MUST occur for the game to be fair to everyone on the day of release, even if that is not your intent. If it is your intent, then are you prepared to further argue for repeated wipes to continually make the game fair? At some point in time, we're going to have to accept that fairness only works to a point and after that, it become detrimental to everything else that we might place value in, i.e., entertainment here at the expense of entertainment received elsewhere.

 

32 minutes ago, Xennial said:

If the game is to be a PvP / TW focused as they seem to claim

I would disagree that this is their focus for game, instead it is civilization building, which by necessity requires that pvp be included as conflict and its resolution is a part of any civilization. TW is, from what has been officially said, going to be a balance for high-end play; if you want the good stuff, you will need to be prepared to defend it against those who'd rather take it. So far, it has very little effect on those who are not after the top tier stuff, as many players simply will not need that in order to achieve their personal goals for the game.

 

So, while I agree that I want to see bots go away, I disagree that having them now will utterly destroy the game, and all the other horrible and horrid things that you imagine would happen.

 

This is not all that much different from receiving income from completing missions, it is merely in a different form, which happens to be more or less lucrative depending upon player choices.

 

Where it causes problems is when it interferes or affects players who do not want to mine endlessly, but would rather buy and sell via the markets (which is what NQ wants from us, granted). However, there has to be some money the hands of others in order to ease the player to player transactions, given that it is far to inconvenient to hand 20kl of a good to someone who does not have the storage for it. There's a level of abstraction here, which serves to limit player options instead of impose RL considersations on similar choices (i.e., you can put goods in the open, on your property in RL, although that can be harmful to your goods, but you can choose to do that. You cannot do so in game).

 

While the resources are finite, in the cases of T1 ores, it is closer to infinite than not, given that there's just SO MUCH of it that the current player base (before .23 that is) would take quite a long while of daily mining, everywhere, to grab it all. Where it has a greater effect is when it higher tier ores were being bought by bots, because the rare ores are much more rare and could conceivably be mined out in a matter of months, not years. It could be argued that t1 ores are truly infinite in that the game will be gone before they can be fully mined out.

 

47 minutes ago, Xennial said:

There is no middle. It's either a player driven economy , or it's not. There is a reason what we have now is utterly failing economy wise even pre 0.23. It's the bots.

Except, as I pointed out at the start, you've already established that you accept that at least some part it not to be entirely player-driven.

 

That the economy was failing pre-0.23 was partly due to bots, and partly due to other variables. I sold very little ore to bots and basically even that was an unrealized error at the time. Once I realized I was doing so, I stopped selling to the market and relied on the daily 100k (one of the other variables). Instead, I built what I needed/wanted. I built my three scanners, my 30 L cores, three of my four ships (I purchased a BP for a ship from a player, so I really built all four that I own). I built my 50,000m3 of honeycomb that I have put into my base, so far and I've even built the decorations that I have, included nearly 4 dozen signs and screens. And I'm just a moderately small fish in a very large ocean filled with whales.

 

I did purchase 7 elevators as the ores were out of my reach for personal mining, but whether they were from players or bots I could not say. Beyond that, I had no reason to buy from or interact with any other player beyond my personal choice to chat with them. NQ was spot on about that. And this is another reason why that economy was crap, because when there's little to no player-to-player transactions due to self-sufficiency, there's no need for an economy.

 

If you can grow your own food from seeds you've found, build your own shelter, make your own clothes, and use your feet for transportation, what do you need to exchange with someone else that isn't actually just a want?

 

So again, there's a middle ground, but it has not been realized yet. Probably because people keep insisting that there can't be, when they inadvertently prove that there's some area of it that does.

 

As it is, this is just going around in circles and nothing positive is the result, and certainly NQ believes that bots have a purpose, at least in the short-term, so they're currently here until NQ decides their purpose has been achieved. Arguing against them does not make them disappear any more quickly than just accepting that they are here for the now and trying to help come up with suggestions as to how they can go away much sooner rather than later...the middle ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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It seems that some of you didnt do the math, so lets begin.

 

As i stated earlier at this point quanta generation is achieved in 2 ways, ore bot orders and welfare checks.

 

On the other side , patch 0.23 added massive quanta sink in form of schematics.

 

let us use me as example: i have spend about 450 mil on schematics to date which equals to 3000 welfare checks of 150k.

 

Assuming server has 9000 active accounts that spends the quanta , 3 ppl like myself , removes total amount  equaling to daily welfare checks of whole server.

 

so multiplying that to 300 ppl /orgs  spending 450 mil on average on schematics is going to remove 100 days of welfare checks generated by 9000 accounts.

 

Add to that rest of the active population buying schematics in lesser amounts , 

 

Remove the bots without adding any other meaningful ways of quanta injection, the economy in about 2 weeks  will come to complete stop as everyone will be waiting for their welfare check to be able to buy anything.

 

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8 hours ago, Wildcard64 said:

Instead of selling to bots you would be selling to other players, one could still make money, if there was an over abundance of an ore it would drive down prices. This would then lead to the opening of making money based on moving ore from one market to another. would it not?

If there was a market, prices offered by players would be higher then current bot prices (excluding the 0.23/Christmas special).

Everything points to more mining and less reward if bots are removed. And in my opinion that is the exact opposite of what this game needs, since (in my opinion) mining is slowly killing this game.

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8 hours ago, Xennial said:

There is NEVER a money problem in a game where all players are given a cash injection every day. The only thing that would happen is a re-pricing of goods given the average money flow around the game.

 

How exactly would this work, when schematics are pulling orders of magnitude more money out of the system then the daily is inserting?

Except for the being mind numbingly dull part, mining to bots is no different from PVE or lot drops that you will find in other games as ways to inject cash into the system.

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9 hours ago, Penwith said:

Then, It is surprising that people ever made it out of the stone age.

 

These are diametrically opposed positions, from the overall tone of your argument. They are either destructive or not so much, as long as they are only selling schematics. Since you already allow that they are not destructive, or at least not as destructive when purchase from bots (you use 'AI" but it is the same), then you've just weakened your prior argument, if unintentionally.

 

Which is really a non-argument as anyone who joins the game later is already starting from a position behind the progress everyone else has made and you are thus arguing that a wipe MUST occur for the game to be fair to everyone on the day of release, even if that is not your intent. If it is your intent, then are you prepared to further argue for repeated wipes to continually make the game fair? At some point in time, we're going to have to accept that fairness only works to a point and after that, it become detrimental to everything else that we might place value in, i.e., entertainment here at the expense of entertainment received elsewhere.

 

I would disagree that this is their focus for game, instead it is civilization building, which by necessity requires that pvp be included as conflict and its resolution is a part of any civilization. TW is, from what has been officially said, going to be a balance for high-end play; if you want the good stuff, you will need to be prepared to defend it against those who'd rather take it. So far, it has very little effect on those who are not after the top tier stuff, as many players simply will not need that in order to achieve their personal goals for the game.

 

So, while I agree that I want to see bots go away, I disagree that having them now will utterly destroy the game, and all the other horrible and horrid things that you imagine would happen.

 

This is not all that much different from receiving income from completing missions, it is merely in a different form, which happens to be more or less lucrative depending upon player choices.

 

Where it causes problems is when it interferes or affects players who do not want to mine endlessly, but would rather buy and sell via the markets (which is what NQ wants from us, granted). However, there has to be some money the hands of others in order to ease the player to player transactions, given that it is far to inconvenient to hand 20kl of a good to someone who does not have the storage for it. There's a level of abstraction here, which serves to limit player options instead of impose RL considersations on similar choices (i.e., you can put goods in the open, on your property in RL, although that can be harmful to your goods, but you can choose to do that. You cannot do so in game).

 

While the resources are finite, in the cases of T1 ores, it is closer to infinite than not, given that there's just SO MUCH of it that the current player base (before .23 that is) would take quite a long while of daily mining, everywhere, to grab it all. Where it has a greater effect is when it higher tier ores were being bought by bots, because the rare ores are much more rare and could conceivably be mined out in a matter of months, not years. It could be argued that t1 ores are truly infinite in that the game will be gone before they can be fully mined out.

 

Except, as I pointed out at the start, you've already established that you accept that at least some part it not to be entirely player-driven.

 

That the economy was failing pre-0.23 was partly due to bots, and partly due to other variables. I sold very little ore to bots and basically even that was an unrealized error at the time. Once I realized I was doing so, I stopped selling to the market and relied on the daily 100k (one of the other variables). Instead, I built what I needed/wanted. I built my three scanners, my 30 L cores, three of my four ships (I purchased a BP for a ship from a player, so I really built all four that I own). I built my 50,000m3 of honeycomb that I have put into my base, so far and I've even built the decorations that I have, included nearly 4 dozen signs and screens. And I'm just a moderately small fish in a very large ocean filled with whales.

 

I did purchase 7 elevators as the ores were out of my reach for personal mining, but whether they were from players or bots I could not say. Beyond that, I had no reason to buy from or interact with any other player beyond my personal choice to chat with them. NQ was spot on about that. And this is another reason why that economy was crap, because when there's little to no player-to-player transactions due to self-sufficiency, there's no need for an economy.

 

If you can grow your own food from seeds you've found, build your own shelter, make your own clothes, and use your feet for transportation, what do you need to exchange with someone else that isn't actually just a want?

 

So again, there's a middle ground, but it has not been realized yet. Probably because people keep insisting that there can't be, when they inadvertently prove that there's some area of it that does.

 

As it is, this is just going around in circles and nothing positive is the result, and certainly NQ believes that bots have a purpose, at least in the short-term, so they're currently here until NQ decides their purpose has been achieved. Arguing against them does not make them disappear any more quickly than just accepting that they are here for the now and trying to help come up with suggestions as to how they can go away much sooner rather than later...the middle ground.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason I don't have an issue with bots being used to sell schematics is because game economies naturally inflate over time due to more and more money generation systems and fewer and fewer money sinks. So if it's not schematics it will be something else like pretend 'taxes' to take money out of the economy. Since players cannot craft schematics and acquire them in some other form at this time then that is all it works as is a way to take quanta out of circulation for the time being. 

 

Again, my premise is that games never suffer from not having enough money but quite the opposite. So until schematics were turned into a player created item , or other money 'sinks' added to the game world they simply function as that. Are they the solution to the everyone makes everything NQ seemed to be concerned about? Not in and of themselves obviously , but JC even stated they were just the first step in combating that problem.

 

You still have self sufficiency as the primary problem in the game. In the current form you can mine, sell to a bot , get the quanta to turn around and give to a bot for the schematics to make what you want from the ore that you did and never touch a market or interact with another player. This is exactly because of the first step where you can mine and sell to a bot. If you had to sell to a player then ore prices would reflect how people valuate having X item it costs that ore to make. With the bots buying ore there can never be this price discovery because you are effectively short circuiting the entire price discover mechanism by allowing people to skip interacting with other player entirely.

 

In the game as it stands now if they removed bots without a wipe what would happen? The price of ore would collapse through the floor because far more people mine then produce. People would suddenly find themselves unable to 'make money' outside the daily allotment. This would mean most people would find mining not worth their time and stop doing it. Terrible for DU as right now because outside of industry and playing legos thats the only other major activity players engage in. The orgs / individuals that have past the schematic gating and are making stuff for themselves would be largely unaffected because they have excised themselves from the market already.

 

This is why any economy discussion has to start from the perspective of a wipe. You take the same no bot scenario with a full wipe and pricing of ore would simply have to be based on demand from producers, or value the players place on time and effort required to mine said ore. In turn the pricing of those goods would find a natural low point at the start with all production / consumption based on Alioth/Sanctuary. Then as time went on and more and more quanta was injected in the economy by daily allotments the prices of these forces would naturally flux and rise like every other fiat currency and some level of inflation would take hold based on NQ's money sinks compared to money generation. Production would be stimulated by the low ore prices slowly over time driving up demand for them and thus the price, slowly making it more valuable for people to spend their time mining.

 

Naturally this only works well if there is some cost associated with the production of good outside of the schematic gating mechanism. You need something for the economy to hang it's hat on so to speak. If industry machines required power that had to be generated by the consumption of fuel for example then the economy would be based on the price of said fuel and everything else would naturally be priced around that. Your middle ground you seek is not really necessary. The only thing that is necessary is to get out of the way of the natural market to develop.

 

Then they could focus on more creative ways involving player activities to inject money into the economy outside the mine->sell loop. So long as those mechanics are not directly tied to the market the only serve as an inflation mechanism to provide players whom don't want to participate in the mine->sell->produce loop to have a way to 'earn' money to buy the things they wish from players who do. Without some pin to valuate goods and such like the price of fuel to run industry you cannot properly stabilize anything because as things stand today it's to easy for players to opt out of the economy by bots.

 

Perhaps the middle ground you seek is just wait till they put in a cost associated with running industry and then wipe the world and restart with no bots. The issue is the longer they go without a wipe the greater the likelyhood that players will quit over feeling they saw all DU has to offer and have no desire to repeat the process. Without a wipe any attempt to remove bots in an already hyper-inflated economy with people completely detached can only lead to the haves playing , and the have not feeling like they can't. Hence the outcry this patch which basically did a small version of that. 

 

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4 hours ago, Xennial said:

The issue is the longer they go without a wipe the greater the likelyhood that players will quit over feeling they saw all DU has to offer and have no desire to repeat the process.

Ah, so now we get to your real argument.

 

Thank you, but no.

 

I am not interested in the game being leveled just in time for full release because "fair." I care nothing for how much or how little others have. I do care about the hundreds of hours, expanding to thousands of hours, put into building a rather large ground base, spanning more than one hex.  

 

Life is inherently not fair. When we are born, some have more and some have less, how they acquired or lost their wealth is immaterial to my success or failure.

 

Anyone can choose to join the paid beta. If they delay, it's on them, not me.

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The way I see it, "bots" exist in one way or another in almost every MMO. For instance, you can sell items in World of Warcraft to an NPC vendor. In the early days of its economy, this is how money was injected into the economy. Eventually, there was enough money that players started offering more than vendors for certain goods.

 

There are a few differences in DU: 

 

First, it's integrated into the market UI (auction house). This is purely a plus, since it stops people from offering less than the minimum amount than turning around and selling it to the bots/npcs, effectively scamming new ignorant players out of some money.

 

Second, which is a debatable difference, is that the buy/sell prices are identical. In most other MMOs there's a substantial markup for buying items, typically between 2x and 10x. I'm not an economist so I don't know the macro impacts on the market, but this basically means players will never trade with each other for the affected goods, only with bots.

 

Lastly, the bots only deal with entry-level ores rather than a large number of otherwise useless items (aka vendor trash). As mentioned previously in the thread, this basically turns the market into a gold-standard economy, except the "gold" in this case is something that you can walk into your back yard and find strewn about randomly.

 

I believe the result will be hyper-inflation up to the point that the value of quanta is about on par with the effort required to dig up T1 ore. Basically get ready for 1B quanta to be pocket change.

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22 minutes ago, Jaface said:

The way I see it, "bots" exist in one way or another in almost every MMO. For instance, you can sell items in World of Warcraft to an NPC vendor. In the early days of its economy, this is how money was injected into the economy. Eventually, there was enough money that players started offering more than vendors for certain goods.

 

There are a few differences in DU: 

 

First, it's integrated into the market UI (auction house). This is purely a plus, since it stops people from offering less than the minimum amount than turning around and selling it to the bots/npcs, effectively scamming new ignorant players out of some money.

 

Second, which is a debatable difference, is that the buy/sell prices are identical. In most other MMOs there's a substantial markup for buying items, typically between 2x and 10x. I'm not an economist so I don't know the macro impacts on the market, but this basically means players will never trade with each other for the affected goods, only with bots.

 

Lastly, the bots only deal with entry-level ores rather than a large number of otherwise useless items (aka vendor trash). As mentioned previously in the thread, this basically turns the market into a gold-standard economy, except the "gold" in this case is something that you can walk into your back yard and find strewn about randomly.

 

I believe the result will be hyper-inflation up to the point that the value of quanta is about on par with the effort required to dig up T1 ore. Basically get ready for 1B quanta to be pocket change.

I agree with you except last sentence, 1b never be pocket change,

 

First: bots with 25g/l for t1 is just temporary, normal price is 12q., players been offering more for a long time .

 

Two: Schematics are going to suck up large amounts of quanta for very long time

 

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I would like to set a counter point to wiping the economy. I believe Xennial is right in the fact that we would see a massive drop in ore prices with the removal of bots, but I don't we that this would be a bad thing. The drop in ore prices I believe would spur more manufacturing by which would reduce the cost of elements in the end. This could be very beneficial with the current 3 live and your element is out a reduction of price on said items would be a useful thing. Also the reduction of price would mean that one would have to actually not have to try as hard to be able to build ships which would help increase the pvp aspect.

 

I do understand there there is the large gate of schematics for production, and this would need to be addressed in some way there would be several ways to address this but the easiest would be to make it player craft able.

 

I agree with penwith that life is not fair and we shouldn't aim to make it fair. I do believe that you should be able to get out what you put in. To make life easier for the casual player we already have a way to help with that, they are called organizations. When you pool your effort big tasks become easier, say you want to make wrap drive get enough people together then everyone only puts in a little effort and you have a full production line. But we cant crank out a drive from everyone at once, that fine they are casual players they can wait a little bit right?

 

So far I have stayed solo and I have no complaints about the game, minus the beta bug issues but hey its beta. That being said if you can get the markets going that can actually help the solo player because now I can make one said component and make money and not have to rely on a huge org to get my stuff. And until the markets become more useful and higher used the only way a player will succeed is in an org as there is not a huge drive for orgs to sell on the market. They will make the stuff they need, and to make quick money just sell the ore. There is no major drive to sell components or completed items. 

 

Because this is a game I think it is even more appt to be able to be the perfect market, because there are factor we don't have to take into account. But i would argue that the taxes that are collected in real life are still driving the economy because they don't make money just disappear the same way bots do. When we pay property tax and that goes for the fire department, guess what that money goes to the fire fighters that then spend that money for things in their life and the fire department buy fire trucks. Bot buy ores and the ore goes poof and money comes from an invisible pit, and you buy a schematic  and you get something pulled outa thin are and that money goes poof!

 

I still don't see how bots are helping.

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21 minutes ago, HangerHangar said:

Too late.

 

Schematics pricing is balanced around current wallet levels.   Removing bots now would be the same thing as pulling the first steps of advancement out of the game, cementing current orgs/players who had the easier bot economy on top.

All the more reason to remove all bots and make schematics player made.

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40 minutes ago, Wildcard64 said:

Could you elaborate or is this just a one liner to bump the post to the top?

Because thats the outcome of bot removal and wipe. There wont be any wipes.  We're going to the moon. Buckle up, sir! You're in a for a ride. We want to write stories and create content. You have other agenda.

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4 minutes ago, Elitez said:

Because thats the outcome of bot removal and wipe. There wont be any wipes.  We're going to the moon. Buckle up, sir! You're in a for a ride. We want to write stories and create content. You have other agenda.

If you had read what I had actually wrote i am advocating for removal of bots with no wipe, let the market balance itself and we continue on. But thanks for you useful input.....

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2 hours ago, Wildcard64 said:

I would like to set a counter point to wiping the economy. I believe Xennial is right in the fact that we would see a massive drop in ore prices with the removal of bots, but I don't we that this would be a bad thing. The drop in ore prices I believe would spur more manufacturing by which would reduce the cost of elements in the end. This could be very beneficial with the current 3 live and your element is out a reduction of price on said items would be a useful thing. Also the reduction of price would mean that one would have to actually not have to try as hard to be able to build ships which would help increase the pvp aspect.

 

I do understand there there is the large gate of schematics for production, and this would need to be addressed in some way there would be several ways to address this but the easiest would be to make it player craft able.

 

I agree with penwith that life is not fair and we shouldn't aim to make it fair. I do believe that you should be able to get out what you put in. To make life easier for the casual player we already have a way to help with that, they are called organizations. When you pool your effort big tasks become easier, say you want to make wrap drive get enough people together then everyone only puts in a little effort and you have a full production line. But we cant crank out a drive from everyone at once, that fine they are casual players they can wait a little bit right?

 

So far I have stayed solo and I have no complaints about the game, minus the beta bug issues but hey its beta. That being said if you can get the markets going that can actually help the solo player because now I can make one said component and make money and not have to rely on a huge org to get my stuff. And until the markets become more useful and higher used the only way a player will succeed is in an org as there is not a huge drive for orgs to sell on the market. They will make the stuff they need, and to make quick money just sell the ore. There is no major drive to sell components or completed items. 

 

Because this is a game I think it is even more appt to be able to be the perfect market, because there are factor we don't have to take into account. But i would argue that the taxes that are collected in real life are still driving the economy because they don't make money just disappear the same way bots do. When we pay property tax and that goes for the fire department, guess what that money goes to the fire fighters that then spend that money for things in their life and the fire department buy fire trucks. Bot buy ores and the ore goes poof and money comes from an invisible pit, and you buy a schematic  and you get something pulled outa thin are and that money goes poof!

 

I still don't see how bots are helping.

Right now building meaningful sized factory requires effort, before patch one could start manufacturing beacons few days after starting the game

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