A different thought...

[kuznechik]

There is actually way to get your items by yourself.
And thing that differentiate pvm toon that happened to be in pvp zone from pvp guru is not amount of credits, but amount of knowledge about game and ability to use that knowledge to their benefit.
PvP twink have better imps not cause he's stinking rich, but cause he knows about twinking imps and have some items to do it (or friends who have items, it's not like my org got short of SL abil-buff rings once I got pair of each). And by just knowing about how to get implants will give you lil difference between lvl14 in 96 imps and lvl60 in ql75 imps.

[Xtremtech]

Well, one of the most idiotic aspects of this game (imo ofc) are mobs on timer in the wild, where anyone can camp them.

It's true that there are some very difficult to access items because of this. Instanced playing fields such as IS etc predated even SL as a solution to this though - and Pocket-Bosses, catacombs and instanced areas in SL continued the theme.

On the whole though, you generally don't need mega-rare items like these to make a good PvP character for BS. They'll help you to make top of the line PvP beasts... but they're not necessary to create a decent PvP character.

X

[Lorddarcek]

wow...

this thread really got all the flavors...from xtreem dumb to xtreem wise...

was real pleasure to read your post XtremTech....

I wish more here were like you but to reach such highness is unique...BRAVO!!

APPLAUSE...

[Kahina]

OFAB has basically reduced that economy inflation you're talking about.

Thing about AO is that once you wear an item it doesnt lose all it's value all of a sudden as you could see in WoW eg.

Those items are expensive cause they are reusable on many characters and even resellable if you dont want to use them anymore.

I think it's balanced from an economical point of view. Good things that dont lose value overtime should be expensive. You get them once tho, and after you're good for a lil while.

But now it's possible to have very decent equipped characters without a lot of money. After all, symbiants from PBs can be camped easily enough with possibility to sell the extra, you can have decent armor with ofab all nodrop not costing you a single credit, and there are many ways to get great hud/utils without spending credz aswell (camp sector 10, camp pande, etc..)

But no, you wont get uber equip if you're casual player. Not very fast at least. Sry about that.

[BEAST]

No one said you should have uber equip if you are new or casual player. It's how you spend your time playing game. Is it more fun to grind pearls/spawn camp mobs or do some raiding or team action (talking pvm wise)? What is left when you reach 220/30/70 ? Money farming for best equipment. Be it symbs, pearls, ground city farm, or spawn camping. Don't tell me that's very entertaining. AO revolves around money. That's a fact.

And what about some proffesions having better ofab pieces then ai armor while some having crap ofab? What about them ? Will they be at least decent in pvp ? Or they need to reroll because of sucky ofab

Yes things are reusable, resellable, but that's not the point - it's how you get them. If they are on timed mobs, say goodbye to economy and hello to inflation. Look at albtraum for example - everyone can get their bracer (phat - 250-300m on rimor) and dont depend on other farmers. That concept is GOOD. If you depend on someone who has timer for stupid mob and already uber equipment so he can OD you, how is that fair? At least everyone can get into team and try to farm albatraum/alaapa/DB.

As for pvp, to be decent, you need *some* money. Ofab for some profs just won't cut it for decency. To be uber, you need a lot. And uberness is 70% bought, 30% skill. If I'm extra skilled pvper, but can't perk my opponent, while he can perk me and break through my defence, guess who's winning? Why are there so much soljas running around lately anyway?

[Xtremtech]

It's how you spend your time playing game. Is it more fun to grind pearls/spawn camp mobs or do some raiding or team action (talking pvm wise)?

You're right. It is how you choose to spend time in the game that counts.

Team action can also be to gain the necessary PBs or to gain tier armour stuff in the catacombs or to gain AI points for your perks - or even on BS. Your XP rate might well be lower as you're doing it - but you can usually get together with others who also need symbiants/item drops etc in order to do so. if not a full team then at least a small team.

At root you're still teaming to kill mobs whatever you do in this game until you're at top level in everything.

Either you can go into an XP team and level really fast but get no useful items - then go off and spend time doing something mindless and boring to raise money in order to buy items. Or you can spend time on more useful content that levels you less quickly - but not have to spend time doing pointless things to raise money to buy the items.

The psychology of this game is very interesting and never fails to amaze me. Sometimes fastest isn't best. The journey is the point of the game - not the endpoint. If you're not enjoying the journey then there just isn't that much point.

X

[Mikenche]

In my opinion, having a free economy is a good thing. Restricting the ability to sell items with nodrop flags just leads into a different kind of economy, as seen at Beast and APF. Either way, it works by the law of supply and demand. Some items, such as supple bots, just have high demand and low supply, so they get expensive.

The people running around in battlestation in predator armor are probably on their first character, and possibly not aware of the best items in the game. Or they just don't have the credits for it due to the lack of a 210+ main.

Getting credits is not as easy as some of you make it out to be. Most money-making schemes need you to be one of a very limited set of professions to be able to solo. And with a team there's always the question of who should get the phat, if any even drops. I have been in 20-30 city raids during the past two months, and there's been exactly one supple bots (which I of course didn't get). Can't remember seeing any strong bots. Of the ways mentioned by canibaal, symbiant farming is the only one I can do alone with any effectiveness.

That being said, I don't really complain about my situation. I've spent maybe 300-400M on all my characters combined over three years (so a bit over 100M per year - quite low I think), and have two sets of 200-ish AI armor (officer and paramedic). While there are plenty of expensive items that would be nice to have, I'm playing this game to have fun, not to be the coolest kid on the block.

As for the OP's advice of getting a few billion credits before starting to play the game for real - are you perhaps one of those for whom the game is all about having the best equipment? Would you recommend first getting a few million euros in real life and only start to live for real when you can afford a mansion with a heated swimming pool, three sports cars and the best gaming rig on the planet? It's entirely possible to have fun and still spend only a modest amount of credits.

In short: Life's not fair. Neither is any massively multiplayer game. You need to accept that, or quit playing.

[wertewrtey]

This is based on my recent experience rerolling on a new server from scratch.... (I now already earned 140mil at level 112)

New players need to learn that if you fast forward through the content you will always be among the weakest players, it's true for most MMOs... I hear so many cries from new players that it's too hard to earn money... it isn't... roll your own gear or earn credits to buy the gear, try to farm some of your own gear... farm items that others will want... sell at a slight discount on items to sell them faster... I've seen too many players get over level 200 in just a couple of weeks and get so frustrated at how they can't afford anything...



The real secret of getting rich in this game and keeping a respectable character is not to advance as quickly as possible to the end... but to stop along the way... take some diversions... earn some credits... build a good character and earn respect from others... and most importantly don't expect to be better equipped or equal to a player whom has played for years and focused much more time than you on developping a PvP character....

I personally think Nascense and Ely have jaded people, many of whom fight in the same gear for dozens of levels and yet level extremely fast and feel powerful... Not to mention too many teams with a pocket 220 doc...

[Antimony]

Thank you all for your responses so far!

I think I need to clarify a little more what I'm concerned with:

AO is a business. In business, it is important to keep your current customer base happy, but it is even more important to attract and retain new customers. A business that cannot do that successfully, will eventually die - plain RL economics.

With maybe the exception of hardcore role-players, anyone who plays a game like AO would like to have at least a decent toon as a measure of success to continue playing (and paying!). Most people will measure success by how well the toon fares in pvm and pvp. If the game becomes so loop-sided that true new players become frustrated with the lack of success and leave, FC loses and, eventually, we all do - I'm talking about the average new player, not a few whiners who want to be uber immediately, good riddance to those!

In my initial post, I said that credz are all-important in AO. In response, many people said it’s easy to make credz (and posted their favorite schemes), but nobody really said that credz do NOT dominate the game. If you need a huge amount of credz and/or a 200+ Main (as someone mentioned) in order to have a decent 2nd or 3rd toon, something is wrong - 1) a fantasy/scifi game like AO just should NOT be about making money (that's what RL is for) - 2) if getting a decent (not uber) toon becomes too hard, true new players will be frustrated and leave.

Now, I don't have an instant solution to this - I think making items rare or nodrop or mobs even harder to kill will just make matters worse and widen the gap even further - I still hope FC will consider an overhaul of the economy in the future, meanwhile, I'll be making some credz.

DDH

[Ober]

Communistdude0, I've never had much money (250m'ish tops after 2 years or so), and I've done fine.

I just don't expect to have all the most expensive stuff.

And it's never been hard to make the creds you need for the stuff you need.

Or do you want people to get "phatz tickets" every 10 levels they gain?

[Xtremtech]

Most people will measure success by how well the toon fares in pvm and pvp. If the game becomes so loop-sided that true new players become frustrated with the lack of success and leave, FC loses and, eventually, we all do

The vast majority of players new to AO focus on PvM not PvP (in fact most characters focus on PvM - new or experienced). New players will generally focus on team PvM too, rather than solo, once they're past the basic 40 or 50 levels and start building friendships etc. There is just no pressure on team PvM players to get anything that would cost a lot of money or even that would need nodrop flags.

Reasonable team PvMers really don't need anything flashy or special to be good. They won't see themselves as being useless or unable to contribute if they don't have top of the range stuff. It's a small minority of players that will compare themselves in that way when they start playing the game.

What you also see, is that players new to the game don't even measure themselves against the 'top' players much and they're in no hurry. My brother and his kids started playing a few years ago and really enjoyed the game - despite being still only level 80 - 110 after over a year's playing. They had severely under-tweaked characters, low QL imps etc etc. But they were just fine, collected most of their stuff via normal loot or rolling missions and played quite happily in teams with their org.

They were, I think, aware that there was more that could be got out of the game for their characters - but didn't really need to access it for their purposes. They weren't all that interested as they were happy enough bumbling along as they had before. I did give them a couple of hundred million between them, but they took ages and ages spending any of it.

I think you'd be surprised at just how many people play this game on that sort of level, especially new players.

By the time newer players are beginning to think about getting into PvP, they've usually begun to get into the game reasonably well and have begun to build their character more. At this point, they're well able to build a decent PvP character without having to spend a fortune on super-special gear. They'll have built up a small fund of creds - partly because they move through the game more slowly with their first toon and just acquire more along the way.

There's a much smaller third group of players though: the ones who have a lot of experience as twinkers from other MMORPGs who are taking up AO. That group will head straight to the forums or stratics or wherever and will find out what's what. They'll level quickly, they'll compare themselves to others and will want the best stuff if they can get it at all.

But they're also the people who will be able to provide for that level of investment. They'll find out where and how to make money and will go off and do that happily in order to acheive their goals, because they've done it in other games too. They may well buy some creds too in order to give them a kick-start but if they do, then they'd do it in any game. They don't really care about the process of getting stuff, they just want quick and easy access to the top-level stuff with low investment of time. They're not going to get put off the game by it.

Within these categories you've already captured well over 90% of new players.

It's not a big issue. People perceive these issues partly because they think everybody views things from the same perspective as they did. They also forget what being a new player was really like. And people often forget that most forum traffic doesn't even begin to correspond with the majority of players views. It really is like an iceberg - what you see is only the smallest tip and underneath there, unseen and unknown is the vast majority of players.

X

[Antimony]

Communistdude0, I've never had much money (250m'ish tops after 2 years or so), and I've done fine.

I just don't expect to have all the most expensive stuff.

And it's never been hard to make the creds you need for the stuff you need.

Or do you want people to get "phatz tickets" every 10 levels they gain?

Wow, I explain the basics of free market ecomonics and you call me a communist - interesting!

But fine, let's think this through to the other extreme:

How about Funcom removes the only real restriction on "Free Trade" in the game? The sale of credits and items for real money - we already know that it is going on illegally, so why not make it official? In fact, let's go a step further and have Funcom sell items and credz via their new points-per-pay system directly to the player?

Personally, I would be fine with that because I could afford it. I would guess a lot of high school and university students in their teens and twenties would all of a sudden be at the financial disadvantage.

However, now a new player with sufficient income could simply purchase himself a nicely twinked toon for a few hundred euros/dollars/yen/etc. - I would guess the very same people who don't want to change the current economy because they might be losing some advantages (and who are calling me a communist) would be complaining to no end how unfair this would be - but as someone said earlier "Life's not fair. Neither is any massively multiplayer game. You need to accept that, or quit playing"

DDH

[Antimony]

XtremTech - I agree with much what you said - however, my personal experiences are probably different from yours (and neither might be staticially valid with respect to the entire AO population, but we wouldn't know).

The reason why I bought up this whole discussion:

For a year or so, I have heard from many new players who quit (and closed their accounts) that they just didn't enjoy playing their "gimpy" toons.

"Man, I'm playing now for so long and I still die all the time" "I tried to make money but I just can't get as much as I need to ungimp myself" "I hate BS, I never even have a chance!" - not actual quotes, but pretty close.

I have heard this now too often from decent people who were not whiners or beggers or stupid, lazy noobs - nor were they disgruntled power-gamers either.
That's why I'm concerned - if AO becomes too frustrating for a new player to start and to continue, the whole game is in jeopardy. Of course, we would not know for sure, but if AO still has more players starting then quitting, I will gladly take it all back and admit that I was wrong.

DDH

[Luiza]

rich ppl and poor ppl, we have them in rl also...thought this is the way a mmo whould be...

[Totenfisch]

So a character built for offensive PvM play tends to let defence, healing etc slip because in PvM the tank takes the hits and somebody else is healing just in case.

I think you hit the nail on the head right there. My primary concern with my toons is independant survivability. I imagine the same would be true for anyone who prefers PvP to PvM.

[Thermonuked]

increasing drop rates will lower the economy, s10 has already proven that with CRU prices, not so long ago, a 210+ player would spend a few days running cru mish, sell 1k cru for 100m, now, 1k cru goes for 20m, because there are loads of 150 players with stacks of ice's from s10, if the dyna's started having a 50% drop rate, or in the case of things like beast, a 100% drop rate for the thing in their loot table, after a couple of weeks, there will be so many ppl trying to sell the previously unobtainable items that prices will fall, sure, the ubah 220 campers will still be able to make creds by camping, but instead of camping 1 item for 7 hours, and selling it for 400m, they could have 10 items and sell them for 40m each, the gap between the haves and have nots will lessen, the best players will still be the best players, but the occasional players will also have a fighting chance of getting things they need.

also, player A, 220/30/70 keeper, all the best gear in the game, camping a dyna, tends to have a much better chance of getting the loot rights, over player B, a 215/16/56 MA with 220 symbs, and a mixture of ofab and combi armour, therefore, player B's only option is to pay the prices that player A decides to charge, but, if there was a 50-50 chance that item 1 will drop, player B will start to find that 1) the dyna isnt camped, 2) player A already has the item, and is willing to sell it to player B at a reasonable price, 3) a few friends are willing to team with player B, for an hour or so to catch a couple of spawns, OD the keeper, get the item he needs.

[Epicurus]

I felt that Ofab was a nice move of FC to bring very reasonable upgraded equipment to the masses sort of speak.
Only problem is it's excruciatingly hard to get a set at levels that don't have an active BS (so basically all levels except TL5 and TL7) because the only alternative, LE missions, requires a decent team and a lot of camping for even a few pieces.

Now with Myi's they added another option that is fairly attainable for most I believe, so I do think FC recognizes the changing economy and danger of evolving towards an uncrossable gap between haves and have-nots.

Nevertheless there are certain 'older' items that could definately use an improved droprate, just like some of the old bosses (18hr timer ffs, or even worse a spawnchance placeholder) could use an improved spawn.

[Cariadast]

alot of dumb people here....
why cant u let people find out on their own how to make money?
thats supposed to be one of the games fun stuff...
people wanting to make money can search the forums and sites...theres enough guides out there already...

Errrrr pardon me.. I thought this WAS a forum to search and learn and SHARE

people who dont want to read forums or AO fan sites or make an afford shouldnt be fed info ....

All your doing is spoiling people enjoyment plus helping lazy people that otherwise would leave the game(goodriddence).
they will just stay and continue bothering the hard working ones...

dude 2 words

Anger Management

[kiggity]

many people have 220 "finished characters" that don't buy anything other than stuff for their alts or farm cities to farm stuff for their alts. introducing dust brigade and albatraam after there had been no new high end content for a long time won't hold back these people for very long, they will get their new phats and go back to whatever it was they were doing before.

its too late to get rid of these "old money" players, but look at the price drop that dragon chest has suffered, adding new "end game" stuff will help somewhat to lower the cost of the items replaced. So now your power leveled 220/5 Agent main(or whatever) can have a D-chest cheaper than ever. Except all the 220/30's now have the DB chest, they have moved on to the next big thing, and you won't be better off in BS than you already were. Just because there are people that have come before you in this game doesn't mean they need a nerf because you can't kill them.

this is different than WoW, you need to "win the game" before you can PVP and be effective. FC has tried to help this out a bit with the intro of OFAB/VPs, many people power level to 220 now and grind out some ofab to save money till they can afford some "end game" upgrades.

[Javafan]

Thank you all for your responses so far!

With maybe the exception of hardcore role-players, anyone who plays a game like AO would like to have at least a decent toon as a measure of success to continue playing (and paying!).

I tried once for fun and to see how it goes: i made 2 mule accounts and for 1 week continously I sold "omni med suits" to clanner... Only that..

I made 2 mils... then with some other froobs i did lvl 10 mishes and got about 2 BPs of concrete cushions, some intel guns... some sold fast... some sold after 2 weeks..

After 3 weeks of such testing I had 10 mils... probably would have made more if i played 24/7 as some people do (that's their business how much time they put into the game... and if they play it 24/7, I will never object to them having 4 bils in cash and expensive stuff or investing 500 mils only in twinking itemes).

Java

I remember even now one of my froobs... my first yalm I ever bought was on an enf lvl 67 that had a frost scythe equipped... I put points into Pharma tech and started killing all the Wailing Wastes dynas and looted absolutely everything i could get my hands on... So i had blood plasma, i had other shop food junk i sold.

I bought my GA4 from doing ql 200 mishes with my fixer at lvl 130sh so i got money, bought CRU... did some raids and i got lucky once...

"If you need a huge amount of credz and/or a 200+ Main (as someone mentioned) in order to have a decent 2nd or 3rd toon, something is wrong" - who said that... all people had to start somewhere... When I started playing AO, my first toon was a trox MA that was using a rifle to kill mobs

If you don't have enough cash to be competitive in BS (whatever TL), make another toon just for the plain farming to make cash... Get money, read the profession forums, ask and then decide what you want to do...

You can't be competitive all of a sudden... it's like seeing an add in the newspaper about computer IT tech and you go at that company and at the interview say you want to actually be the manager...

You do not need to be filthy rich, to have your own personal city... there are people that have that... but they kinda play 24/7... invest a lot of time in the game and may be playing for already 2-3-4-5 years.

Play for some time and make friends... with them you can go doing team mishes higher lvl than you... do stuff together and split the loot... alone you can make it, but it's hard and boring (at least for me)...

And always look on the forum... "my gameplay" improved considerably after "discovering" the forum and actually paying attention to what people where saying.

I know it is long post, but I've been in this situation: i am new to the game and can't do anything cause I don't have org, money and all is very expensive... Then someone gently planted his boot in butt and sent me tumbling to read some threads from AO Froobs and AO Forums about lowbies getting money