I'm sure this is already in development (unless of course technicalities make this practically impossible to implement) but I am asking that other quality of life changes and developments be suspended until this is in place. Firstly, I am aware that admins are working extremely hard and very involved already from the back-end and thank you all for your hardwork. For what it's worth, update 65 has probably reduced the amount of circulating mesos amongst the so-called veterans. Most people that make a living off farming have stopped. Instead of a drop in market prices globally (or so we hoped), so far: - CS/WS have remained stagnant between 450-550m - AP reset prices are rising towards 20m and my feeling is that the injection of new players alone cannot fully explain this - Gachapon-only scrolls are similarly inflating in price - Godly drops have largely increased in price - Godly attack gear and weapons have either stayed stagnant at pre-update prices, or inflated Instead, the things that have dropped in prices: - All farmable scrolls/rare items that weren't previously hunted for: Earring int 10% Helm dex 60% Helm int 60% Cape int 60% Zombie's lost golden teeth (and eyes of fire in association with this) Nependeath's honey Sap of ancient tree Mithril (and steel) plates Needless to say I think hackers are responsible for the majority of this change, because to my knowledge very few (if any) farmers have migrated to these areas and certainly the sudden increase in supply since update 65 is to be expected when hackers are rampant. I'm not really sure why economy balancing changes were implemented before autoban in that regard, because despite all the farmers ulu meso injection probably still accounts for only a small proportion of the inflation we're seeing today. However, I do feel that auto-detection of hackers and bans should be a priority now, and other quality of life/economy changes/meso sinks what-have-you be suspended because the root and majority of meso injection and supply is not targeted. It is not sustainable for a limited number of GMs to run around trying to ban individual hackers, nor should we be expecting them to (yes, submit report abuse threads but please stop yelling in shoutbox / pinging GMs as if they're some on call service). People start burning out very quickly when you try to target software with manual labour. Hackers affect the longevity of the server - please make this a priority. For what it's worth, feel free to reduce the drop rate of scrolls, rare items, godly equips, etc. But appreciate that this is a temporising measure, just in the same way that Update 65's changes were. At least until autoban comes around.
Without Update 65, it will be harder to pin point the root cause of inflation like you're doing here. The deflation of farmable scrolls/etc shows that there is increased botting/rwt activity, but someone can always play devil's advocate and point fingers at ulu for the inflation of APR/WS/CS/gacha items/attack gear prices. In that sense, I'm really glad that Update 65 was pushed forth as: 1) it was a step in the right direction 2) it brings more transparency to the increasing hacking/botting/rwt activities we see now Spoiler: technicality Technically, the inflation of goldy drops can be partly attributed to the 20% equip drop rate nerf in Update 65. I doubt it's relevant though as the point on APRs, gacha items and attack gear still stands. Plus, balance changes are probably a low hanging fruit compared to coding up a well-functioning autoban system. Regardless, I think your price observations are spot on and I fully support this initiative. I'd like to believe that staff is fully aware and already working hard on this given how obvious the issue has become, but some reassurance from staff would be nice, as it has been bothering me (and I'm sure many others too) for a while. Thanks for writing this up! Spoiler: rant Seriously, how can so many new or returning players come up with the 5-10B to afford nice entry-level weapons and attack gear (and HP washing for ranged) in 1-2 months time? This might not be much for the veterans players, but I've been trying to buy a 10-12 cape with my savings and the prices just keep creeping up
