Why did SOE spend so much time nerfing tribute values?

[Taadieri]

If they were going to overlook vendor sold option to get up to 8k tribute per backpack for 1k?

Was trying to sell Mischievous Platemail Bracers (dwarven cultural) for 1100pp each today. They tribute for 7742 and have always offered good balance between plat to tribute ratio, total tribute per item and limited farming.

Get some smartasses ragging me about what a terrible deal that is and when I challenge them, they say Mass Enchant Silver spell sold by vendor in Commonlands for 16pp per stack and tributes for 800pp per stack.

Checked Lucy and confirmed all Mass Enchant spells tribute for 40 each, 800 per stack. Originally this matched their sale price of 40pp each. In late 2005 the prices were reduced to a range of 5gp each for Mass Enchant Clay to 5pp each for the mass cultural metal enchant spells but their tribute values were left alone.

So now a 5 minute trip to Commonlands will let someone fill up with with 50k+ tribute at an 80-1 tribute to plat ratio, making all tradeskilled and most farmed tribute items virtually worthless.

[Shadrok]

Not a nerf - an exploit

Obviously, when they reduced the prices for the Mass Enchant spells, they failed to reduce the tribute prices and people are exploiting this.

I feel bad now. I keep my guild tribute full by buying in the bazaar at a 10-1 ratio. I've probably been wasting my time. I am going to report this as a bug in game.

[Nolrog]

Of course you /feedbacked and /bugged this in game, right?

[Taadieri]

I have been out of town for two days since shortly after posting rant.

I did not initially /feedback or /bug in part because the people I heard about this from (in the 'general' channel, so not violating confidences) insisted that SOE was aware of it and that it had been posted at their user forums for years.

Multiple searches for "mass enchant" and/or "tribute" and similar terms did not find any references at the SOE forums and I have submitted both /feedback and /bug now.

[Xenephex]

I don't think there's any question that any vendor purchasable item is not supposed to tribute for more than it's purchase price - certainly not at that insane ratio. It's definitely an error and definitely an exploit for the people who are doing it (and I can pretty much guarantee they know it's an exploit).

Back when tribute was first introduced there were a LOT of items that were off-kilter in terms of tribute value, including some TS items that tributed for more than the cost to make them (but also including a lot of dropped items). In that instance they actually went back and changed everyone's tribute values after the fact.

I would hope they would at least do that in this instance, but I have relatively low expectation that they will.

[Ngreth Thergn]

Well, I got a new bug report on the enchant spells... so their tribute value is being fixed.

[Taadieri]

Thank you Ngreth.

Part of the reason I ranted here instead of immediately reporting in-game were claims from other players that SOE had been aware of this issue for some time and specifically declined to fix it.

It appears that this was never true and I am glad to see it will be corrected now that it has been reported.

[Nolrog]

Thank you Ngreth.

Part of the reason I ranted here instead of immediately reporting in-game were claims from other players that SOE had been aware of this issue for some time and specifically declined to fix it.

It appears that this was never true and I am glad to see it will be corrected now that it has been reported.

Should always /bug things in game that you don't think are correct. That way, it can be checked.

[Ngreth Thergn]

At least the correct person did not know. I had no idea And it was probably me that caused the disparity in the first place by accident changing prices without also changing the tribute (though frankly I do not remember... it is the sorta thing I would have accidentally done!)

[Xenephex]

I'm curious Ngreth. I bugged this on test as soon as I saw this post and went and verified that this was indeed the case on test server also. Do you tend to see bug reports from test more readily than bug reports from live servers?

I only ask because someone in this thread indicated that they had previously bugged it on live.

[beryon]

I vote to raise all tribute values to match! Problem solved!

[Ngreth Thergn]

I'm curious Ngreth. I bugged this on test as soon as I saw this post and went and verified that this was indeed the case on test server also. Do you tend to see bug reports from test more readily than bug reports from live servers?

I only ask because someone in this thread indicated that they had previously bugged it on live.

not really. I got it as an official internal report (QA reads the /bug constantly) so it may have just been the fresh hit.