Way too much Ped tied up in CLDs and AUDs, players log in to collect dividends and no longer play the game or deposit. Result, declining turnover, prices falling. Have you ever seen so many uber items for sale so cheap and prices falling further still.
PED and CLD are simply another currency in game. You cant hunt with CLD/AUD but you certainly can buy and sell things with CLD/AUD and its very easy to convert them to PED. Overall the various deeds are good for the game because it encourages (and results in) further investment on all budget levels.
The reason for falling prices on various unlimited items is not because of a shrinking player base or a lack of willingness to buy such things. There is still no shortage of big spenders. The falling prices are strictly a result of a diluted market as well as
new and better things being introduced into the game.
For example, I just put an offer on an Arsonistic III TEN chip for about double what I would pay for a ML-35 and years ago, the ML-35 was selling for double and triple what I just offered for the Arso Chip
Do you really think MindArk ever intended on prices rising to such astronomical levels? There is no way. Those kinds of prices were unsustainable long term. Players reselling to each other created those prices and MindArk had to deal with the aftermath of that situation. As a result, we have gone through years of a carefully managed decline in values. MA has been slowly introducing better and better weapons in terms of DPS and DPP.
Ten years ago we were all happy at level 30-50 grinding away with level 100 guns and effectively doing 2.2 to 2.5 Damage Per Pec with
low DPS. And then collectively we all raged and had epic fits on the forums when we found out that the ones that got here before us and skilled up were profiting (through game play) enough to buy a Lamborghini. They were level 100 and using weapons that did over 3.X DPP while we were doing 2.5. They had the skills and gear to grind the higher level mobs that looted the good stuff, the things of value, and in between the good loots, they didnt really lose peds. Meanwhile, their epic profits were funded by our epic losses. Then they promised us that if we paid tens of thousands of dollars for their equipment that we would also profit the same way...
That also was a situation that's unsustainable. MindArk couldn't just confiscate the Mod Mercs and IMK2s so instead they brought the rest of the player base up to a higher Damage Per Pec and rebalanced loot distribution.
So then those original "uber" players had fits on the forum and quit... well, sorry that reality just hit you in the face like a ton of bricks but being in the global top 3% of income earners by hunting Aurli in a small video game out of Sweden isnt sustainable. These are the guys that made tens, even some hundreds of thousands of dollars and then bitched about how much EU sucks. Please.. go fuck yourself... you just made a small fortune in a video game and now you are complaining?? I remember those threads, I was there, pointing out all the reasons why those people were spoiled little bitches.
So, we saw (L) items that brought us from under 2.5xx Damage Per Pec to 2.7xx and 2.8xx DPP.. then unlimited SIB which immediately sold for astronomical prices. More and more of those looted.. then we started to see more and more (L) as well as unlimited SIB that was 2.9xx DPP and that's were we are now... inching closer to 3.0 DPP
Today, you can get into an unlimited SIB gun with amp that does 40+ DPS and over 2.9 DPP for 4K PED. The same is true with melee + amp. In my opinion, that's a good thing because just a handful of years ago, that kind of setup was so rare, it would have cost 30K or higher.
