Abusing Drachma Must Stop NOW

[Hades]

It would be better to burn in hell than to keep cheating and abusing gathering drachma...

You have been warned.

[Zing]

Nobody tells me anything.

Exactly how were people abusing drachma?

[Tetsulunathaya]

*SMACK* "Take that, you little drachma! "

*Slap* "Yeah! Won't do that again, will ya."

*Crunch* "Its for your own good, drachma!"



-- I beleive it was something along those lines.

[Medios]

Im not sure what exactly happened but drachma shops are all closed including weaver. Apparently some players have been redoing quests that have high drachma rewards. Doesnt anyone know that if you turn in a bug most of the time you get rewarded, if you abuse it you get punished? Is it possible drachma shops are just closing to restock new inventory?

Mike

[Weasel]

Surely an immort would post something about it if everyone was being punished for the actions of a few, if that is even the case...

[Hades]

Basically, Blaster and Splork have closed shops while the matter gets sorted out. Not to name names, but basically, so many people were involved over the course of several if not many months than narrowing it down to who is and isn't innocent would pretty much too much of a headache. I believe the conclusion being that if and when shops re-open, close eyes are going to be
watching whose buying what and how.... no word if anyone will be wiped or equipment nerfed.. but don't be suprised.. so I repeat earlier warning... abuse drachma at own risk... only this time.. not only will you be punished but you
will no doubtly be the fury of everyone else who all of a sudden can't spend that hard earned drachma.

Be good or be good at it

[Weasel]

How about rewarding those whom didn't abuse it?

[Blaster]

It is true that I closed the drachma shops, but I have re-opened them for now. If the abuse continues and we catch more and more players abusing stuff and not reporting it, the shops may very well end up being gone. It is a sad day when one player manages to abuse the system enough to make over 1k in drachma. Others too have abused the system, not to the same extreme but they did so knowing they were wrong. To many people envolved to just punish them as it would be most of the player base from what I have heard and seen so far. We will be watching close and you will get caught if you abuse bugs. When you get caught, everyone will pay.


Blaster the disapointed one.

[Zing]

Not all of us are guilty.

[Weasel]

How did they do it?

[brand]

indeed... just who is this masked man...
if he's been caught, let's leak a name so proper taunting can begin...

[Blaster]

[quote="Zing":1n5ig3xy]Not all of us are guilty.[/quote:1n5ig3xy]

We know everyone isn't guilty and we don't want you all to think that either. It is a good sized group of people that are and they know who they are. We could wipe each and everyone of them, but that would require us to dig deeper then we wish on spending time and such, as there is so much better stuff todo than dig through hours and hours of logs to find out who all is envolved.

Blaster

[brand]

ok all kidding aside, who's the player who got the near 1k in bad drachma.
that's a hell of alot of abuse... i've gotten near that for a life total... seems like alot to me...

and just what is this exact definition of abuse? (for future referance of course )

is it starting up a player and get say 10 drachma, and then sending some pitiful 5 drachma book to your friend who's player has helped you out?

is it redoing quests then somehow transfering all profits to one player to buy some monster bad ass item?

is it all of the above?

[Hades]

To possibly enlighten previous questions posted by Brand...

As you know, several months back, oct tokens were removed from the Weaver shop because people were making 'junk chars' to run drachma. Then they would use junk char to buy tokens to roll the main char's stats. At that time, it was decided abuse was going on and warned that oct tokens would be taken out completely if it continues.

The same goes for drachma books and godsanc potions that were bought by
junk chars to be used by prime chars. While these themselves haven't been moved, it doesn't change the fact that it's manipulating the way items obtained not intended by the Imm's.

I see one possible solution, besides taking them out of game, is making books,potions,tokens and the such personal. Then make all personal items dropped when held by a person not flagged for it ala tri-token being held by a greater than 20 level. Anyone wanting to pass personal eq to another char to hold could do so by placing said item in a pack or basic robe. But they wouldn't be able to pass/sell tokens/books etc etc because the 2nd party would automatically drop the item like a hot potatoe.

As far as re-running drachma quests, I think Splork/Blaster mentioned 2 such quest were abused quite a bit.. not sure if those were the only two as some others might be able to do so.. a warning has been posted.. so let the punishment fit the crime in future abuse.

[Marchessa_red_witch]

I can understand being upset when players abuse something intended for one purpose. But let me point something out: by making it possible to acquire a full set of "elite" eq, this is, de facto, the standard that characters will increasingly be held to. It is a red queen's race.

If the immortals want "elite" eq to remain special then they should consider the following:

1. Personalize all drachma eq. No studying books, using oct tokens or wearing eq that is personalized for someone else. Period. No more "farmers" or using junk characters to reroll up main characters.

2. End Drachma scatters, and give out drachma for "tasks", quests or other activities that benefit the mud. I'd include area designing, finding mud bugs and other ways of improving mud play as being part of this. One example is Shyla's teaching drive, it adds colour to the mud, and throwing her some drachma as a way of saying "we like this".

3. Limit the number of elite items that a character can have. Rather than nerfing the monk items, it would be better to not nerf them, but limit a player to 1 major and 1 minor drachma item, or two minor items. This would force characters to make hard choices. The rest of drachma could be spent on god sancts, restring tokens or other improvements which are not about basic offense and defense. One suggestion would be to allow people to use drachma to buy back lost honour from oaths etc.

This might well take some tinkering with items, but that has already happened. Allow people to sell drachma items back to shops if over their limits. Since in future drachma will buy, in essence, expendable but useful itmes, this will only unbalance the game for a short while.

4. Reform quests. There are serious problems with the autoquest system. Let me take an example - there is one autoquest that starts at BH scribe. The mob is not a difficult one to kill, even if it is a lazy pop. The very next quest requires killing one of the biggest mobs in the game - out of reach for all but a few who have lots of big friends. For the rest us, forget about it, it isn't in the mud we play on.

While having the quest end at killing the massive mob might be appropriate for the final reward, intermediate steps at progressively harder mobs would be more appropriate. Yes this takes design, but drachma is something the immorts wanted, and when the design of quests is lacking, it isn't the players fault to adopt either the stance of "eh, drachma?" or doing things like programming in big runs for drachma scatter grabs, because at the prices the shops charge, there really isn't any middle ground.

5. Enforce.

Right now what Blaster is threatening is to punish the people who have played by the rules. We are the ones that don't have drachma items bought with bad drachma. The people who have abused the system - with some exceptions - are going to keep the permanent advantage of having broken the system. If they continue to abuse it, some will get caught, but the rest will have eq that the rest of us will never bet able to get. At that point, if one has enough characters - why not abuse the system? If a few get wiped, the rest will still be better than other characters forever and ever.

The reality is that incentives matter. The current system, by making autoquests woefully inadequeate for generating enough drachma to buy elite eq in anything other than months - but by creating drachma scatters, bugs and end runs - creates a powerful incentive to cheat. The immorts admit they can't and won't catch everyone, they admit that they will punish the innocent first. What are we supposed to do? Pkill people who are abusing drachma? Stand guard over quest mobs? We can't tell who has run a quest, or who is "farming drachma", except by inference. Immortals, not players, are the ones who have the power to enforce the drachma system. Immortals control the supply of drachma, have the power to check logs, recode shops and so on.

Which brings me to my last point - nerfing. It seems likely that nerfing the monk items is related to "drachma inflation". Recently there was a major nerf of necromancer, and a minor nerf of monk. Clearly there was some player behavior which exploited weakness. I say that when the gods decide to nerf - then pay some drachma to the characters who discovered the weakness. After all, they have, in effect, quality assurance checked the mud, and made it better for everyone else. Giving some drachma to players who show that there are "exploits" as "white hats", with the implied threat of wiping for those who are "black hats" is a reasonable way to tell players that the best policy is to report bugs and exploits as soon as they have found them, or to be open in using the capabilities of the mud, and let the immortals decide if the results are balanced.

There has been a great deal of heated rhetoric, and some flaming going on on these topics. It is a shame, because it seems strange to vent anger on each other, with a mud filled with mobs who are just dying to have anger vented on them.