Laundering and selling stolen items

Cameron_Vayle

I think it is about time to either raise the limit on how many items you can sell/launder.as 140 is just to low. Some of us like to redistribute the wealth from the rich to well..us <GRIN>. If the limit can't be changed or removed how about an in game item you can purchase that will reset the total that can be sold with the item being sold by the fences.

Kagukan

You can make a decent amount of gold selling stolen items. The game economy may be hurt without a cap.

daemonios

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

Cameron_Vayle

I would buy into that if not for the fact that you can kill stuff all day long and sell it and make a decent amount as well, same with harvesting nodes, dungeons and delves.

How about we add this.

Items can be laundered then sold to other players as house items? There are some neat looking items out there though very few can be placed in a house.

Cameron_Vayle

How is obtaining 140 blue items a day different than obtaining all the drops from doing delves and dungeons over and over? 35k gold is a small amount when compared to that.

Cameron_Vayle

Would also like to add that harvesting crafting nodes in Craglorn and getting just 3 potents puts you equal to the 140 blue items that take much longer to obtain.

daemonios

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

How is obtaining 140 blue items a day different than obtaining all the drops from doing delves and dungeons over and over? 35k gold is a small amount when compared to that.

There are some differences. Most trash gear is worth less than 100g, typically in the 20-50gp. Also not every mob drops anything. It would take much longer to farm 35k gold from trash loot than from stolen items. And it's not about 140 blues, it's about whatever number you want to raise the cap to, since that was the point of your OP.

Cameron_Vayle

I honestly don't care what "some" people might do. Those "same" people already what you are complaining about via dungeons, delves, ect. Thieving is the only line in the game that is this limited.

As for the trash that drops from mob kills, it adds up quick even at low gold amounts as so much drops. Care to address the elephant in the room then? The harvesting nodes? Or is that your money maker and you want it to stay that way?

daemonios

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

I honestly don't care what "some" people might do. Those "same" people already what you are complaining about via dungeons, delves, ect. Thieving is the only line in the game that is this limited.

As I said above, most dungeon loot is cheaper than blue stolen items. It also takes longer to collect, as not all mobs drop loot, and not all loot is worth the same. I know this because I stole a great many items to get the achievement for fencing 1 million gold. Between pickpocketing and lockboxes, you'll be filling your inventory pretty quickly.

If you don't care what some people might do, I don't think there's much point discussing mechanics that can be abused, as you'll simply act as if that doesn't matter.

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

As for the trash that drops from mob kills, it adds up quick even at low gold amounts as so much drops. Care to address the elephant in the room then? The harvesting nodes? Or is that your money maker and you want it to stay that way?

The only way to make serious money off mats AFAIK is to flip cheap stacks, as many people do, and ignore harvesting altogether as it's far too time-consuming. And no, that's not my money maker, as I'm not currently in any trading guild, nor have I been since before taking a long break from the game. I only harvest surveys and whatever nodes I run into while doing my thing. So yeah, do tell me about the elephant in the room and throw some more innuendos around.

wolfie1.0.

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

I honestly don't care what "some" people might do. Those "same" people already what you are complaining about via dungeons, delves, ect. Thieving is the only line in the game that is this limited.

As for the trash that drops from mob kills, it adds up quick even at low gold amounts as so much drops. Care to address the elephant in the room then? The harvesting nodes? Or is that your money maker and you want it to stay that way?

The distinction is not really about how players make gold in the game. It's more about how the game makes gold. Unless you are farming nodes and selling the materials to an NPC the game does not create gold. Selling to another player is a gold transfer and does not create gold. Thievery and fencing items DOES create gold. Killing monsters generates gold st a slower rate. Selling unwanted gear to an NPC also generates gold etc. When considering changes like this you have to distinguish between how players make gold and how the game makes gold. You also have to factor in that with each character slot they add they in crease game gold generation. Same goes for each new account. Etc.

Cameron_Vayle

daemonios wrote: »

So yeah, do tell me about the elephant in the room and throw some more innuendos around.

I know that I do a short run, 30 min max, in Craglorn and end up with 3 to 4 potents. Toss in the tempers ect I get and I am well over the 35k you speak of. So it is not, as you say, AFAIK the only way to make money on the nodes flipping cheap stack nor is it really time consuming if done the proper way.

Cameron_Vayle

And to be honest I think we are both saying that no matter what you do it is Very easy to make gold.

sho_nuff

I’m fine with the cap, but I think the cap should be removed on the NPC fence.

UrQuan

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

So yeah, do tell me about the elephant in the room and throw some more innuendos around.

I know that I do a short run, 30 min max, in Craglorn and end up with 3 to 4 potents. Toss in the tempers ect I get and I am well over the 35k you speak of. So it is not, as you say, AFAIK the only way to make money on the nodes flipping cheap stack nor is it really time consuming if done the proper way.

You're completely missing the point. If you're making money off selling items to other players then you're not doing anything that contributes to inflation, because the gold that you're getting is gold that was already in circulation. It's not being generated out of thin air. In fact, if you're selling things through guild stores you're actually reducing the amount of gold in circulation, because a percentage is being removed from the game in the form of fees, and because guilds have to pay significant amounts of gold (which is also removed from circulation) to hire guild traders every week.

Gold that you get from thieving (along with gold from killing things and turning in quests) does contribute to inflation, because it's not coming from a finite supply that is already in circulation: it is created out of nothing by the game. Any way to quickly and easily generate new gold (as opposed to obtaining gold from other players that is not already part of the in-game economy) is potentially terrible for the in-game economy, and if not offset by enough gold sinks (like repair costs, that partly offset the gold that you can make from killing mobs) will result in a game where new players can never afford to buy anything from guild stores because of inflation, while established players who have been playing for long enough to keep up with (or ahead of) inflation are the only ones who can afford to buy anything.

SeaGtGruff

I don't understand the argument about protecting the game economy. Because if ZOS were really that concerned about how much in-game pretend gold people are acquiring, they would step in and institute some kind of cap on the prices that players are charging for stuff that's sold in guild stores.

UrQuan

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't understand the argument about protecting the game economy. Because if ZOS were really that concerned about how much in-game pretend gold people are acquiring, they would step in and institute some kind of cap on the prices that players are charging for stuff that's sold in guild stores.

That would never work because some things in this game are incredibly rare, and other things are very common. You can't simply set a cap on prices across the board - the only way it would work would be to micro-manage each different item, and from a practical standpoint that's impossible. Besides, if something like that was implemented then the rarest items would simply never be listed in guild stores - instead people would advertise and sell them in /zone.

It also wouldn't actually do anything to manage inflation by itself. If that was ZOS's strategy for managing inflation then all that would happen is that prices on everything listed in guild stores would slowly rise, until eventually absolutely everything listed in guild stores would be listed at the cap on prices that they had set, and the only things anyone would list would be relatively common items. Everything rare would be sold for prices above the cap, and sold through advertising in /zone.

The way that inflation is managed in MMOs is through gold sinks that remove gold from the economy, and there are plenty of them in ESO (repair costs, bank/bag upgrades, houses, guild trader rental bidding, sales tax on trader listings, riding lessons, the outfit system, etc). To achieve a stable in-game economy without any inflation, theoretically what you need is to ensure that the total amount of gold in circulation relative to the total players stays the same. To do that you'd want to ensure that the amount of gold being created out of nothing (through selling stolen items, getting gold from quest rewards, getting gold/items to sell from mobs, etc) is balanced out by the amount of gold being removed from the game through gold sinks. Of course, if there are too many gold sinks and not enough gold being created (again, relative to the total number of players), then you get deflation, which is also a problem.

I don't think the current system is necessarily perfectly tuned to avoid inflation entirely, but it's virtually impossible to ever get it perfect. The point, however, is that you can't just increase the amount of gold that the game creates out of nothing without considering what effect it will have on the economy, because inflation isn't a big problem for players who have been around and active for a long time (unless they take a break from the game for a while and come back) as they're likely going to be keeping pace with inflation, but it's definitely a problem for brand new players.

None of this is rocket science, it's just a very simplified version of economics.

Maryal

When needing to launder many items in a short amount of time, I suggest taking them to the Laundromat.

Tommy_The_Gun

Or... Or... maybe just allow to keep stolen items in your hosing storage ? So you can transfer it to other character if you reach the daily limit on one toon ?

Jaraal

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

I have 5 max level thieves, and can make 100k in a few hours selling 700 green, blue, and purple treasures per day to a fence. But honestly? I can make more money farming just a handful of rare furnishing plans.

BrooksP

Jaraal wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

I have 5 max level thieves, and can make 100k in a few hours selling 700 green, blue, and purple treasures per day to a fence. But honestly? I can make more money farming just a handful of rare furnishing plans.

Yet selling furnishing plans isn't a faucet, it is only shifting money around. I can see why there is a cap though, since you can easily control it and farm it. Simply rezoning will respawn many containers, and killing NPCs after fully pick-pocketing them will reset their loot table and their respawn timer isn't long. It could easily get out of control fast.

Now laundering wouldn't be so bad.

twev

UrQuan wrote: »

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

I don't understand the argument about protecting the game economy. Because if ZOS were really that concerned about how much in-game pretend gold people are acquiring, they would step in and institute some kind of cap on the prices that players are charging for stuff that's sold in guild stores.

That would never work because some things in this game are incredibly rare, and other things are very common. You can't simply set a cap on prices across the board - the only way it would work would be to micro-manage each different item, and from a practical standpoint that's impossible. Besides, if something like that was implemented then the rarest items would simply never be listed in guild stores - instead people would advertise and sell them in /zone.

It also wouldn't actually do anything to manage inflation by itself. If that was ZOS's strategy for managing inflation then all that would happen is that prices on everything listed in guild stores would slowly rise, until eventually absolutely everything listed in guild stores would be listed at the cap on prices that they had set, and the only things anyone would list would be relatively common items. Everything rare would be sold for prices above the cap, and sold through advertising in /zone.

The way that inflation is managed in MMOs is through gold sinks that remove gold from the economy, and there are plenty of them in ESO (repair costs, bank/bag upgrades, houses, guild trader rental bidding, sales tax on trader listings, riding lessons, the outfit system, etc). To achieve a stable in-game economy without any inflation, theoretically what you need is to ensure that the total amount of gold in circulation relative to the total players stays the same. To do that you'd want to ensure that the amount of gold being created out of nothing (through selling stolen items, getting gold from quest rewards, getting gold/items to sell from mobs, etc) is balanced out by the amount of gold being removed from the game through gold sinks. Of course, if there are too many gold sinks and not enough gold being created (again, relative to the total number of players), then you get deflation, which is also a problem.

I don't think the current system is necessarily perfectly tuned to avoid inflation entirely, but it's virtually impossible to ever get it perfect. The point, however, is that you can't just increase the amount of gold that the game creates out of nothing without considering what effect it will have on the economy, because inflation isn't a big problem for players who have been around and active for a long time (unless they take a break from the game for a while and come back) as they're likely going to be keeping pace with inflation, but it's definitely a problem for brand new players.

None of this is rocket science, it's just a very simplified version of economics.

The point you missed making was that stuff sold through the guild stores just transfers wealth already in the game from one player to another. (With two caveats).
It has no effect on the wealth IN the game other than higher prices REMOVE wealth through the tax the game charges on guild sales.
No wealth it CREATED.
This is where the first caveat applies:
Items that are rewarded and items looted from bodies have value, and that value is CREATED wealth only if/when sold.
That wealth is taxed when sold through a guild trader, removing some of the created wealth from the game.

A lot of the rewards and loot from bodies is 'Bind On Equip' which destroys any sales value once equipped, it can only be destroyed after that for meager material returns.

The second caveat is items created at a crafting bench which can also create wealth, but it happens on a limited scale, and is probably accounted for by the stuff being broken down after use, as set pieces are also bound.

Stuff that is stolen and sold to a fence CREATES wealth in the game by turning containers and pickpocketed loot into wealth when sold to a fence.

The game is trying to minimize wealth creation within certain limits that it can scale and plan for.
As mentioned - the tax when sold through a guild.

It also probably writes off a certain amount of wealth as being 'lost' when a player quits the game without giving away his inventory, or just fails to continue logging in again.

There is also a certain amount of wealth that the game re-aquires when items are bought from vendors and then consumed, like potions, food, stylestones, and the like.

I probably missed a few details, but the important point is that the game can plan for a certain amount of wealth creation, and probably alters the amount of live nodes, or reward values if too much wealth is in the game at a given time, as well as in infusing gold and stuff into the game by putting that stuff into the daily reward, or in things like 'double node rewards' or even increasing the reward RNG for short periods of time.

Unfettered fencing would just mint wealth in the game with no limits.

**One of those details I left out**
If unfettered fencing was allowed, try imaging the bot-masters would find a way to program bots to loot containers rather than nodes, and use that to make bajillions in sales for gold like they seam to manage to do every day now by just farming nodes and NPCs.

Players say 'but I wouldn't do that', because they'd get bored and stop, or limit their fencing at times, while other players would start doing it for a while.

Bots don't get bored.
They work 24/7, and never sleep, never complain, and never have to log out for bio-breaks.

randomkeyhits

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

"140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day"

How?

I like pick-pick-stabby as much as the next person, possibly even more......

but 140 blue items and for multiple characters?

I just want to know how, my drop rate of blues is nothing like that sugggested here.

Jaraal

randomkeyhits wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

"140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day"

How?

I like pick-pick-stabby as much as the next person, possibly even more......

but 140 blue items and for multiple characters?

I just want to know how, my drop rate of blues is nothing like that sugggested here.

The quality of the treasures you get are affected by several things, including the level of your Legerdeman, the NPC rank (social standing) of your target, and the difficulty of the lock you open to access the treasures (on both safeboxes and building doors.)

For example, try picking an advanced lock on a building containing several nobles or mages and steal/pick inside. You will find a better quality of loot.

daemonios

randomkeyhits wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

"140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day"

How?

I like pick-pick-stabby as much as the next person, possibly even more......

but 140 blue items and for multiple characters?

I just want to know how, my drop rate of blues is nothing like that sugggested here.

Max pickpocketing passives, go for harder targets and high level lockboxes, discard greens.

randomkeyhits

daemonios wrote: »

randomkeyhits wrote: »

daemonios wrote: »

Item fencing is the in-game equivalent of a money-printing machine. 140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day. Without a hard limit you'll have rampant inflation and (more) gold farmers/sellers.

You may think "but I was never going to farm 140 blue items on one character, let alone several". But you can be sure someone would. 1st rule of MMOs is: if it can be exploited, it will be exploited.

"140 blue items a day is perfectly doable and already nets you 35k gold per character per day"

How?

I like pick-pick-stabby as much as the next person, possibly even more......

but 140 blue items and for multiple characters?

I just want to know how, my drop rate of blues is nothing like that sugggested here.

Max pickpocketing passives, go for harder targets and high level lockboxes, discard greens.

Check on all the above, except discarding greens as I don't get the volume of blues. I'll look to see if I'm not going for the hardest targets as thats the only thing I can think of.

ArchangelIsraphel

As someone who also likes to use thievery to make money, I just want to say... please, please listen to the others in this thread who are talking a lot of sense. The amount you are able to fence per day should NEVER be uncapped. No where in this game is there a gold sink deep enough to make up for the damage uncapping the limit would cause. The gold you would be making would essentially become valueless over time, and the amount of inflation would get worse and worse.

SeaGtGruff

I wasn't thinking in terms of a flat price cap across the board, but rather a per-item cap, which I do think could be possible from a practical standpoint. When you list an item in a guild store, the game automatically sets a default asking price for it, which I think is 3 times the base value (300%). All ZOS would need to do to cap selling prices on a per-item basis would be to set some limit on that percentage of base value, such as 1000%, or 10000%, or 100000%, or whatever. They could even vary the percentage cap based on the quality of the items-- one cap for white, a bit higher for green, higher again for blue, etc. And as for rarity, ZOS already knows how rare each item is, based on the numbers in the code that indicate how likely it is that a given mat or piece of gear will drop, so they could use that to help scale the percentage cap-- the less likely an item is to drop in loot or spawn from nodes, the higher the percentage cap when listing that item for sale.

Note, I'm not necessarily stating the way I think things SHOULD work, merely pointing out what I saw as a flawed argument as to why increasing the daily limits for fencing and laundering would break the game economy. The way things are right now, it's already possible for players to accumulate "too much" gold, either through the buying/selling game, or by farming. Is there a daily cap on how much ore you can farm, or how many runestones you can find? Is there a daily cap on how many items you can sell to NPC merchants? Why not? Should there be? I don't think so-- but if the game economy is as fragile as some of you seem to think, then maybe there should be?

As it is, it seems like some players don't even farm for gold at all-- they might sell stuff they've looted, or gotten as a reward for completing a delve or dungeon or whatever, but they apparently don't go out of their way to "earn" money, whether honestly or dishonestly (i.e., thieving). I once befriended a player who fell into the habit of hitting me up for 5000 gold or more every other day so she could completely re-spec her character. If I had it, I would give it to her, because it doesn't take me very long to farm that much gold, so I figure it's easily replaced-- although it quickly got tiresome, and she eventually stopped (I think because she was also asking other players and they got nasty with her about it). Other players don't seem to do anything BUT farm for gold, either by farming mats and selling them, or by running dungeons and whatnot and selling dropped items that aren't "bind on pickup."

Also, I'm NOT arguing in favor of REMOVING all daily limits on fencing and laundering-- but some sort of reasonable increase could be instituted. Right now the only decent increase in the daily limit is when you spend your first skill point on that perk. The increases you get by spending a second, third, or fourth skill point is almost insulting, like you're being asked to waste those skill points. The only thing that makes it somewhat tolerable is that the quality of treasure you find while thieving seems to go up as you progress, making it far more likely that you can sell 140 items which are worth 250 gold each-- or 275 for me, since I spent skill points on the haggling perk-- and maybe a few items worth 1500 gold each (or 1650).

To be frank, "I don't have a dog in this fight," because I hardly ever reach my daily limit as it is. Oh, I used to, back when I was trying to buy every housing property in the game that doesn't require spending REAL money (crowns)-- or before that, when I was still trying to increase my bank account slots and inventory pack space to their maximums. But I've taken a break from buying houses, and have finally accumulated well over 1 million gold-- which I'm sure is "small potatoes" for players who play the buying/selling game and make obscene amounts of money selling items through the guild traders. I think a lot of players will either stop trying to farm gold, or at least slack off on it, once they attain a certain bank account balance. There will also be a lot of players who will NEVER slack off on farming gold, no matter how much they've already acquired. And some will be content to never farm for gold at all, even if that means they'll forever be begging gold or gear or mats from other players.

Jayman1000

Cameron_Vayle wrote: »

I think it is about time to either raise the limit on how many items you can sell/launder.as 140 is just to low. Some of us like to redistribute the wealth from the rich to well..us <GRIN>. If the limit can't be changed or removed how about an in game item you can purchase that will reset the total that can be sold with the item being sold by the fences.

You can make alts and each of them can sell/launder that limit... I say it is just fine as it is.

Oliwaltony

I say rise the limit, make it account wise. Problem solved. Not everyone has money to buy character slots or want to get bounties on all their chars.

Someone mentionned earlier the possibility to easily farm 140 blue gear on each char all day. Its straight up impossible, even if you'd play 24/7.

Before someone try to be a smart-as$, I'm a max level thief with all the passives that helps me with quality etc, I know the bests spots to farm for best npcs, and gathering ~80 blues takes ~2-3 hours in average when you do that non-stop (that is with pick-pocketing in addition of assasinating, so 2-3 rewards per npcs, making it faster). I never farm longer than that cause its boring as freack after a certain ammount of time.

So from my data I would assume it takes about 3.5h-4.25h to farm 140. So you would, by doing it 24/7, be doing ~6-7 character per day, giving you 231-270k per day, if you would do that non stop 24/7. Since you cant do more than 6-7 characters a day by only selling "blues", then the cap doesnt mean anything if someone is really into farming this, since the actual character cap without upgrading is 8, 9 if you bought elsweyr. A person couldn't possibly sell more "blue" items per day without a cap than simply doing it on many characters. Removing the cap wouldnt change anything as to those people who would "try" to abuse this would not be able to do it more than right now even if they tried hard.

The only difference is that it would also allow us to sell our greens and whites and not only try and get blues. In that sense, the bigger account-wide cap comes in to still make people have to choose what they wanna sell if they really are into farming those beautiful blues and selling those only.

Its not everyone who want to invest all their gametime, let alone free time in doing that, or creating only thiefs to farm golds. There is less boring/better ways to farm golds tbh, I do hundreds of thousands golds every day since I joined a trader guild and I've stopped stealing for most of the time, because the reward/time invested isn't worth it. If I could do it all on 1 char, having a bigger cap that would allow me to sell all my stolen loots instead of only blue, I would invest some time every day on 1 char to do a little run of grab and sell. As is, selling only the 140 first loot you get (mostly greens and whites) isnt worth the time getting them.

Making the limit account-wide and at about 1000 items per day (once boosted by passives of course) would make much more sense. 140x8 is 1120, so for base game players that never upgraded their character slots, it would be approximatelly the same amount as if they farmed on all of their chars, but it would let them only farm for a bit and sell everything instead of looking for only blues for hours. Its wouldn't crash the economy as I mentionned earlier because the current method already permit a bigger possibility of farming but isnt done because its just plain boring, and not worth the time. This would only be a quality of life improvement for the thiefs of tamriel.

SeaGtGruff

Oliwaltony wrote: »

The only difference is that it would also allow us to sell our green and white and not only try and get blues.

If I'm on a thieving run because I need a bit of gold, I'll pick up whatever I find. But once I reach the limit set by how many inventory slots I've got available, I'll start destroying lower-quality items so I can pick up higher-quality ones.

But you're right that thieving and fencing can get very boring. Sometimes I think the most enjoyable part of it-- aside from the occasionally purple item-- is seeing what the devs have dreamed up as "treasure," because some of the items are funny. But after you've had a chuckle over them a few times, even that gets old.

Oliwaltony

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Oliwaltony wrote: »

The only difference is that it would also allow us to sell our green and white and not only try and get blues.

If I'm on a thieving run because I need a bit of gold, I'll pick up whatever I find. But once I reach the limit set by how many inventory slots I've got available, I'll start destroying lower-quality items so I can pick up higher-quality ones.

But you're right that thieving and fencing can get very boring. Sometimes I think the most enjoyable part of it-- aside from the occasionally purple item-- is seeing what the devs have dreamed up as "treasure," because some of the items are funny. But after you've had a chuckle over them a few times, even that gets old.

Yeah, once you've gone through most of it, there isn't any giggles left by doing thefts and seeing what "treasures" you'll find. I do also destroy my white/green (actually I launder them/sell them to merchant to get achievements on my chars) to get more blue, but it doesnt make sense that the actual limit make us wanna do that because 140 of "white, green and blue gathered and sold together" isnt worth the time you spent getting them. People instead spend a bit more time to try a get more blue, resulting in not much more golds for the time invested, but resulting in more per possible per day.

My suggestion is to take the current limit and to increase it and put it account-wide only to make it easier for people to create a "thief" and make it less time consuming/ worth your time to steal anything and sell everything. If you still wanna farm for blues only after that, thats on you but 1000 blues in 24h is near impossible without starving IRL and wearing an adult diaper, which I never did and hope I never will.