I realize that Lecter, but I think that their very act of lowering the prices without notice made it clear that it was a shortsighted move, and that they made a decision that they felt would benefit the entire player base in the long run.

Of course this is all speculation.

Um, isn't the very point of trading to explore, find and exploit the most profitable trade routes?

or that ehy basically locked their advantage. no no one had a clear chance of ever getting comparable wealth.

given repair costs, this unbalanced things in favor of few.

I buy credits from underpaid laborers.

IMO it WAS an exploit to be able to make that kind of money with a stockpile, and heres why.

The price update for what a station would pay was not instantaneous, this allowed you to sell far more than the station demanded at peak price. Stockpile selling is/was avoiding the INTENDED function of the economy, namely that stations demand a certain amount of cargo before the trade route becomes less viable.

In a real market economy if a buisness needs 500 of a certain good and are willing to pay AAA price per unit for them, they will NOT purchase 50000 units at AAA price, you'll sell them 500 for AAA price and then they might take the rest off your hands for ZZZ price which is alot lower, but odds are they will tell you to take your extra stock elsewhere.

I've posted threads in the past arguing this, and my solution was to simply make it treat each 100, or 120, or however many units bulk sale as if it were that many single unit sells. a bit harder on the server processor obviously but it would mean the price dropped appropriately with each sale.

That's how it was before, and it was changed to allow this. Moreover, that aspect (the ability to sell a stockpile at X price) has not been altered. They just changed the prices randomly. Also, this wasn't an exploit only known to a few players: it was a legitimate profit run availavble in almost any system to any player.

Hi. For the record, I have no idea what anyone is talking about, otherwise I would be happy to respond. I'll be following up with Ray at our meeting on Monday, discussing this, and we'll take a look at the current economic situation.

I do apologize for people's wasted effort.. regardless of what the problem or "fix" was, I know that seeing your work get nullified can be really frustrating. On the upside, no one on here is exactly destitute in the universe. Some of the most unhappy people on this thread seem to have over a quarter of a billion credits.. so.. at least it's not affecting the "poor", hey?

For the record, although mostly as an adjunct point, we will be making periodic universe-wide economic changes over the next few months, as we plan to tie "everything" into the economy, and revamp a lot of things. I do not recommend stockpiling, especially in light of "station storage" limitations going into effect in the near future. Of course, changes with wide-ranging ramifications that go through the normal design process are usually announced beforehand (this, obviously, not being one of them). Again, I don't really know what's happened that has everyone unhappy, but I'll be finding out shortly, and I'll post again once I have a.. position on the subject.

Inc, thank you for following up.

Mostly what I hear here is a bunch of people whining about something that isn't important at all.

Remember: THIS GAME ISN'T EVEN FINISHED YET!

Everything will be different at some point. This was not a bug, but it was something that needed to be fixed. There's no reason to complain about not having a lot of money, because money doesn't really mean much in this game. Unless repair expenses have changed that.

I'm not one to argue that the rich don't need any more money, everyone deserves as much money as they put in the effort for. This is one of the things that happens when you wait for the perfect time to sell an investment for an amazing profit. If you wait just a bit too long, the opportunity might pass. Sounds like you guys spent too much time stockpiling, and lost your perfect moment to sell. Tough luck.

The devs have nothing to apologise for. If they do, it would sound like this: "Sorry we've been working really hard for a demanding but usually friendly playerbase to deliver a great product. We fixed something in preparations for more features that will make the game even better. Sorry."

Quit whining.

Thanks for the reply Inc.

Just a note to say that I deleted some of genka's abusive posts and slightly editted one that had a purpose aside from being abusive.

Thanks for the response, Inc. Most of us knew that you wouldn't make a drastic change without warning or explanation.

Deleting genka is all good and dandy, but...

Where is the LOCK??

incarnate, i do thank you for letting us know of the upcoming plans, and for explaining the full reasoning for what happened.

as for the updates in the future, we should be more weary of our deposits, and make sure that we make our sales prior to server restarts.

and as for your comments chaos,

"Mostly what I hear here is a bunch of people whining about something that isn't important at all."

importance is in the eye of the beholder, especially if what is important is the SOLE BASIS of their character. let's say that your character (main) is a racer, and within the next update all the fast ships / top speeds were removed from the game. or how about a pirate character? when all the weapons suddenly do very little damage... until you lose the amount that a few of us have, i recommend keeping a tight lip.

Dear Butter's-Alt: Had the price crashed as a result of a "natural" phenomena, such as another player cashing in their own pile, that would be one thing. That's a risk you take when stockpiling.

A random, unannounced Dev alteration of un-bugged, deliberately created profit margins is not a risk you take while playing a game. At least, not any game you'd be sane to play: 'Yeah, I invest time in doing X, Y or Z in game A... even though at any time all my work could be blown away arbitrarily. But of course I keep paying/playing.'

Also, to follow up Doak's post: if an update is going to alter something, that's cool. But notice is key where reasonable reliance has occurred.

You were making millions of credits on relatively short runs, and this just became available after the devs fiddled with the economy. Where in that did you not think it was broken?

It wasn't broken. Broken implies an unexpected happenstance. These prices were set deliberately. They may have been too high in hindsight, but it wasn't a bug or an accident.

Reasonable reliance

You know as well as any of us that the game you are supporting is a game in flux, with a small development team that DOES NOT have a public relations department.

You're supporting a small market game, that is in a state of constant change, run by four people. Don't you think that making an obnoxious public spectacle is probably not the best way to deal with this?

Worst case scenario, people make mistakes. So relax, send the devs an email, and just let it go....

A PR department is hardly necessary to take 5 minutes or less and make a post saying "Will be altering prices across the board in X days/hours. This will affect all goods sold after such time in Y manner."

Whether the game is "in flux" or not isn't the issue. Change is to be expected: but this sort of behind the scenes manipulation of the basis of the gameplay without any advance notice is not flux. It is suddenly removing a perfectly functional and Dev-vetted part of the economy, without warning, because the ballance was sub-par... and doing it regardless of the time investment made by players. It's not like we're annoyed that a change was made at all or that someone crashed the market at that station: that's all part of playing a game that's in flux. What is not part of a game, in flux or otherwise, is having the rules change on you without warning.

And it's not like there wasn't a place to step in and say something: http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/2/14923

Doak, that happened to me when the Vulture was taken off Infiniboost and the Valkyrie's speed reduced to 225 and energy requirements for wormholes and so on...

Anyway, remember old Border patrol? Let's say one was a damn saint and doing BP, they didn't abuse the bug at all by leaving and rejoining the group 50,000 times. Let's say over the course of the night four or five people left and were replaced. This upped the bot count and thus the rewards. The way BP was set up was intentional, this aspect of it was not, nor was it seen for the longest. Much like the markets.

You guys should be damn happy the Devs stopped it now instead of letting you wrrite it down in databases and get used to it for months.

P.S. - Yes I was also a "victim". Oh noes... prices fell a bit... I'll make just a bit less money but I'll be making money.

P.S. #2 - I remember the 500,000 credit route in Azek, lovely research supplies of all kinds. Too bad the Devs fixed it the day before I was going to run it all day and make millions.

I've already addressed that aspect of your argument Lecter:

http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/1/15117#190186

If you don't agree with it that's fine, but please stop arguing in circles.

edit: Your link is intended to do what? Back up your reasoning? Or point out how desperately this dev action was needed? And if you're intending to say: "This is when they should have stepped in and made a grand notice of change to come", then again, I would remind you that you're supporting a developer team of four people without a public relations department (who, in a company like Blizzard for instance, is responsible for scouring the forums and maintaing a certain level of customer feedback). Chances are they missed it, or simply came across it late in the game.

So again, relax.... email the devs with your concerns.... and just let... it.....go....