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Dupes and the Economy
Goibot
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@ZOS_JasonL @ZOS_JessicaFolsom @ZOS_LenaicR
First we find out that there is a duplicate bug in the game. You stated in a previous post that you have fixed the bug in a very timely manner. When in reality this bug was well documented and reported in beta.
Honest communication goes a long way in fostering good relations with your community. The gamer news sites are having a field day with this.
You brought out the ban hammer and rightfully banned a ton of people. That is good, but what shape is the games economy in now that we have tons of excess gold and legendary mats in the game?
And now we find out there are at least two more dupe bugs still in the game!
Two questions:
1. When can we expect a fix for the rest of the dupe bugs.
2. What is your plan to fix the economy (putting your head in the sand is not a fix)?
Edited by Goibot on April 21, 2014 5:01PM First we find out that there is a duplicate bug in the game. You stated in a previous post that you have fixed the bug in a very timely manner. When in reality this bug was well documented and reported in beta.
Honest communication goes a long way in fostering good relations with your community. The gamer news sites are having a field day with this.
You brought out the ban hammer and rightfully banned a ton of people. That is good, but what shape is the games economy in now that we have tons of excess gold and legendary mats in the game?
And now we find out there are at least two more dupe bugs still in the game!
Two questions:
1. When can we expect a fix for the rest of the dupe bugs.
2. What is your plan to fix the economy (putting your head in the sand is not a fix)?
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crush83✭✭✭✭Here's the problem scenario:
Innocent Ivan buys duped legendary material from Scoundrel Steve. Ivan goes on to craft legendary staff with duped legendary material, not knowing that material was duped.
Oblivious Owen buys Innocent Ivan's legendary staff (let's pretend that Owen didn't buy his gold from China) and is playing with the staff.
Let's say that Innocent Ivan then goes and buys a bunch more materials from various players.
Those players use those funds from those materials as follows:- Sharon repairs her armor.
- Sally bought a horse.
- Sherman buys consumables.
- Shane buys a weapon from another player.
ZOS decides, let's remove all items that were crafted with duped materials.- They ban Scoundrel Steve.
- They delete the legendary staff.
Now, it's only fair if they take these items away from the unsuspecting history of victims, that they reimburse them with the gold/items they traded to obtain the items.
Do you take away Sally's horse?
Do you re-apply damage to Sharon's armor?
Do you re-apply damage to Sherman's health that was healed by consumable potions during battle?
Do you take away Shane's new weapon that he bought from another player? Do you take away the gold from that player, and give their weapon back?
The point is that the paper-trail can be nearly endless from the time that the dupe took place to the time that it is acted upon, and a lot of the money and damage that has been injected into the economy because of it can't be recovered.
The worst part is that the exploiters know this, have alternate accounts, and funnel the duped items and proceeds into them, evading bans. Only the duping account gets banned, but not the receiver of the duped items. It really sucks, but the only solution is to flesh out duping bugs before release.
Apparently, a few of these dupes were reported before release, and Zenimax chose not to fix them.Edited by crush83 on April 21, 2014 5:10PM2 -
Inco✭✭✭✭I suspect the actions they are taking will likely not be public. The economy damage has been done and some tweaking of things will most likely happen.
I still suspect a LOT of the dupe'd items are around. Saw a couple people selling purple upgrades/gold upgraded armor in zone this weekend. Stuff that is NEVER purple/gold in drops.
Back tracking those with multiple dupe'd items is most likely underway internally and targeting those that seem to have an over abundance of rare items.1 -
SunfireKnight86✭✭✭✭The economy will right itself within a month. As was pointed out, people sell gold and use mats. By the time they "fixed" it all of that *** will be long used. Any sort of "fix" would just unbalance the economy further at this point.0
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Well the economy is ruined by the duped items and the gold. There is someone that I won't name specifically because against the rules and they can ban me for mentioning someone specifically. Was giving away 100's of thousands of gold to random players because he used the duping process to get over a billion gold from selling duped legendary mats to vendors over and over. The economy will never recover from that and will be damaged permanently. The cost of things will likely sky rocket eventually because of these vast amount of gold that the normal player will not be able to afford it.2
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loops73✭✭heres the kicker...the original bank dupe is still alive and well and still flooding the market with duped items..zenimax did not fix it..also the hireling mail bug is rampantly going on..the whole server is screwed up to the point where I cannot play on it and feel that everything is on even footing...no sub from me!1
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loops73✭✭
a month?? even if this is true,thats a month that people are more op than everyone else.SunfireKnight86 wrote: »The economy will right itself within a month. As was pointed out, people sell gold and use mats. By the time they "fixed" it all of that *** will be long used. Any sort of "fix" would just unbalance the economy further at this point.
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Goibot✭✭✭I guess the absence of answer is in itself the answer. Put head in sand and ignore what is happening.0