Plat duping and hyperinflation - beware

[Cantatus]

I haven't been in the game in a couple weeks, but seeing the threads here has gotten me thinking.

The one thing that occured to me was that this problem didn't start until Sony allowed people to move from one server to another with gear. When you think about the fact that there has never been a problem of this magnitude in the game and it comes very shortly after a big change, it's possible that there might be a connection. I'm no economy major, but I imagine someone moving from one server to another with millions of plat could throw the economy on a server out of whack.

[dahna]

Whatever npc banker/hoax and rumor, there was really a bug on banker money conversion. As it seems now fixed, I can tell that it occured on me several times :

- I would open my bank and I would have had about 100 p/g/s/c on me
- would have clicked with shift to get a stock of one unite (100 copper for exemple) and convert in the silver box in my bank
- Oh, surprise, there was still the 100 copper in my inventory and I could convert the stack in my cursor in the silver bank box to 10 silver

Of course, when I tried to shift click the duped stack of copper in my inventory I would crash to desktop. It happend to me in many bank (PoT, PoK, even RE) a few time only, and it was a bit irritating since you would go LD and of course the "ghost" money would have disappeared from your inventory on log back.

I /bugged it a few time, but it has been some week ago, and I stopped reporting as it didnt seems to get fixed. I was so afraid to go LD on each conversion that I used to buy dots to remove my g/s/c

[Grimina]

That wasn't a bug in the bank, that was an all over irritating bug. I couldn't help but notice it as I have a monk, and I can loot lightweight stuff, but just destroy gp/sp/cp to keep my weight down. Every 3rd or 4th mob I would go to destroy something and it would reappear in it's slot. If I didn't try to pick any more money up I could camp to character select and come back and the money would be gone and I could continue on. But the instant I clicked on any money slot again I would crash (most of the time taking 5+ minutes to get back in game).

I /bugged that one every day for about 2 weeks and at one point I thought it was fixed. But it had only changed to about 1 every 15 mobs instead. Which was better I admit...could still get you killed if it happened during a fight or in any place you couldn't afford to crash though.

[GraemeFaelban]

Originally posted by eniamn
and i use to hunt sharks in erudin. and you can't move with 1mp. at 1 agi the only way to move is to get a sow or i hear a snare works too. in pok you can't try the snare thing though and thats where i have needed it.

Agility has zero effect on movement speed.

Encumbrance reduces your movement speed, it also reduces your agility. However, it is easilly shown that increasing or decreasing your agility has zero effect on movement speed. I max out at 300 agility self buffed, I do not move any faster that way than if I have no buffs at all and am naked and cripple myself.

Run Speed 1,2,3 affect movement speed, and various spells and songs affect movement speed, and Encumbrance affects movement speed.

[eniamn]

encumber yourself down to 1 agi and you can't move without a movement affecting spell or aa. my elf runs faster than my erudite. not sure its its class racial or agi but something changes.

[Verdandi]

Originally posted by GraemeFaelban
Agility has zero effect on movement speed.

Encumbrance reduces your movement speed, it also reduces your agility. However, it is easilly shown that increasing or decreasing your agility has zero effect on movement speed. I max out at 300 agility self buffed, I do not move any faster that way than if I have no buffs at all and am naked and cripple myself.

I once tried to follow a friend onto the top of a building via a levitating run across an open space from another high point. Try as I might, using every usual speed technique I could think of, I couldn't quite make it. (Spent a good 10 minutes in the effort.) He asked what buffs I was using, and suggested agi. I put up an agi buff and made it first try. It wasn't by much but it was clearly the agi that tipped the scales. I am now a believer. I theorize that the reason encumbrance slows you is because it lowers your agi. It may be that the effect is more dramatic at lower levels of agi and therefore isn't very noticeable at higher levels. Or it may be that you never noticed because you never knew it was possible. Took me years to realize that sow doesn't affect swimming speed.

I've never seen any statistical data or statement from the Powers That Be demonstrating anything either way, but my own experience has me convinced enough.

[Aeght]

Umm.... it may have been the case once that sow did not effect swimming speed, but it certainly does now....

I have hunted Dulak often, and whenever my sow wore off swimming the gunthak channel, I would slow down noticably....

As for agility vs encumberance vs running speed, in the example that made you a believer it could simply have been a momment of reduced lag that carried you across....

If you want a better test though, encumber yourself to the point you cannot move, and no more, then get the agility buff. If agility affects movement, you should be able to move....

Keep in mind that it may be also that only low agility affects your movement...

[Farnyr]

my elf runs faster than my erudite. not sure its its class racial or agi but something changes.

Unless Im mistaken, all races run at the same speed to make things fair. The reason your elf seems to run faster is because of the height diffrence in your perception. Go try making a gnome and running around and then make an Ogre or Barb and run them around, youll think youre slower on the Ogre or Barb, but its just cause you are taller, and percieve the landscape going by slower.

[Itzena]

Official reply to all the dupe, exploit, etc. stuff.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

When I was doing my smithing in Kaladim and trucking ore all over the place, I kept a special suit of agi gear and tried getting an agi buff for a test. It seemed logical to me, since more weight => {less agi, lower movement} and very low health => {less agi, lower movement}, so they might be connected.

With my agi now significantly higher, I found my movement speed was no greater, nor did the speed as a function of weight seem to change at all. No hard numbers or parsable data, but it was enough for me to stop believing in agi & movement speed. Every concrete example I've see, the slower low agi person has also been either encumbered or very low health, and the reduced speed could instead be attributed to those effects.

[Renjah]

Arcticle on crgaming

Seems they got some of the cheaters but who knows if they REALLY fixed it. Seems someone could have cheated on an extra account and handed the plat over to the real account thus they only lost a toon, but keep the money. I guess in time the effects of the cheats will wear off but dont expect it anytime soon...

[Saleani]

Well, the pricing screw up that made this macroing exploit so wiggadelic is still in the game. I bet it came out the same time as the coldain temper fiasco. Right now there is some other major crisis in the SOE offices which is diverting attention big time.

[Dunthor Warsmith]

Originally posted by Renjah
Seems they got some of the cheaters but who knows if they REALLY fixed it. Seems someone could have cheated on an extra account and handed the plat over to the real account thus they only lost a toon, but keep the money.

Their old policy, if I remember right, was to place the burden on the reciever of any platinum to make sure that it was not ill-gotten platinum before accepting it, and thus anyone who could be traced to having stolen platinum could get banned. This policy seemed horribly unfair (if you pay me 2kpp for my FBSS, how am I supposed to tell if you got that from killing Hill Giants or by duping plat?) as anyone, even a number of steps removed from the offender, with no reasonable way of knowing the platinum had illicit sources, could be banned for their role in the plat duping machine.

I don't believe that policy is still in effect or posted anywhere, so hopefully whatever they've settled on is fairer. Either side, banning everyone with "bad" platinum or just banning anyone making platinum, is going to have imperfect results. Its just a question of which philosophy you subscribe to I suppose: Is it worse to punish an innocent, or to let a guilty go unpunished?

Hopefully they find a happy median.

[Troodon]

Originally posted by xaanru
I wonder how much of this "Duped plat" was just someone buying and reselling Coldain tempers while the merchant was broken.

Making plat from that would just be a mater of how fast you could click on the stacks and buy/sell.

LOL, is that why the merchant in Thurgadin stopped selling them? I thought I was going insane, hehe, because I KNEW I bought tempers from him before, but couldn't find them, when I was trying to make a spool for a guildie's blessed fishing rod. Was forced to brew my own tempers (only big deal about that is it's a pain to go clear to CS for brown algae). Hopegully that means once they fix that merchant bug, he'll sell the tempers ahain, hehe. Is cheaper to brew your own, but if you only need a couple for a quick combine, is nice to be able to pay extra for convenience of not making a bunch of CEs and finding someone to port you to CS for the brown algae.

[eniamn]

my ranger's speed is mob tested. wolves will eat my wizard unencumbered. wolves can't run fast enough to catch my ranga when he books it. various other things i can kite with the ranger without sow have made me think this.

i dont really expect cvt to be sold again. least not soon.