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Suggestion: Tax the leeches

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SoberPhil

Old Alpha
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
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757
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Long ago and far away
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Philippus SoberPhil Maximus
Most of us have to pay to play this game, and that is why we love it. However, right now there are too many leeches, sucking in and withdrawing our PEDs, without contributing anything to the game’s economy. Inactive resellers, hoarding high value items, pushing up the prices and looking for idiots to pay for their overpriced and overrated stuff (I wonder if that 37 DPS FEN chip on auction ATM will sell for 33k PED, and I wonder how much that reseller paid for it, probably like 10 times less). We got avatars, who stand in front of the auctioneer 24/7 without moving one single inch, bidding on everything they could resell for a profit, some of them using alternative accounts to get more auction slots.

Now my point is, as a player who pays to play, I’d like there to be more PEDs in the loot pool, instead we have leeches withdrawing PEDs, and the rest of us end up having to pay for it. This is very unfair and extremely disappointing. I know that MA started banning some shady characters, or declining their withdrawals (opal guy), but that's not nearly enough.

As a possible solution I suggest that MA introduces a new rule, taxing the withdrawals of players with 0 turnover, like in real life we got income tax, value added tax or whatever other tax. The PEDs that were withheld from being withdrawn in such a manner should go back to the loot pool. What percentage of the leeches’ withdrawals should be withheld this way, I don’t know, maybe 20-30%? What do you guys think?
 
0 turnover is too easy for them to get past. Then you have to ask “where would you draw the line?” In order to have it at a level that the people you’re referencing can’t easily bypass the tax, you would be taxing a lot of legitimate, low-cycle players.
 
As much as resellers do have their influence on price and “steal” markup from the players, they are an essential part of the economy.
 
SoberPhil said:
Most of us have to pay to play this game, and that is why we love it. However, right now there are too many leeches, sucking in and withdrawing our PEDs, without contributing anything to the game’s economy. Inactive resellers, hoarding high value items, pushing up the prices and looking for idiots to pay for their overpriced and overrated stuff (I wonder if that 37 DPS FEN chip on auction ATM will sell for 33k PED, and I wonder how much that reseller paid for it, probably like 10 times less). We got avatars, who stand in front of the auctioneer 24/7 without moving one single inch, bidding on everything they could resell for a profit, some of them using alternative accounts to get more auction slots.

Now my point is, as a player who pays to play, I’d like there to be more PEDs in the loot pool, instead we have leeches withdrawing PEDs, and the rest of us end up having to pay for it. This is very unfair and extremely disappointing. I know that MA started banning some shady characters, or declining their withdrawals (opal guy), but that's not nearly enough.

As a possible solution I suggest that MA introduces a new rule, taxing the withdrawals of players with 0 turnover, like in real life we got income tax, value added tax or whatever other tax. The PEDs that were withheld from being withdrawn in such a manner should go back to the loot pool. What percentage of the leeches’ withdrawals should be withheld this way, I don’t know, maybe 20-30%? What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

What is this communist bullshit.

If you don't like it, don't pay for those items. If no one paid it, then they wouldn't be that price.
 
Blame it on the ones who put their stuff on low starting bid.
The resellers place bids at 100% markup.
They are not stupid and never sell that low.
When ever I'm buying something and I see low bids Ill buy that one at buyout just to F em.
Even if it costs me a few ped more.
People so afraid they wont sell their stuff.
I hardly ever see bid wars go in favor of the seller.
Just ask what you want and dont give them a chance to steal your hard earned items.

As far as buying stuff at high prices..
I see something I want and bidders are trying to save 20 bucks on a 4000 ped item.
Roflmao..
Some things don't come to auction very often and if you don't jump on it you won't get it.
I don't really want to take 10 years to get to where I'm going.

I agree the prices are really inflated right now....
 
atomicstorm said:
What is this communist bullshit.

If you don't like it, don't pay for those items. If no one paid it, then they wouldn't be that price.
Click to expand...

Taxation and market regulation were implemented long before communism, they are an essential part of any economy, any working economy that is. Here we have a real cash economy, but no real regulation, which is wrong, because it enables certain people do all sorts of shady stuff, which hurts those who play by the rules, but what do I know.
 
warmdogg said:
As much as resellers do have their influence on price and “steal” markup from the players, they are an essential part of the economy.
Click to expand...

And what part is that exactly? Taxing everybody else?
 
slither said:
And degrading it as a '37 dps chip' shows the poster doesn't really know what he's talking about.
Click to expand...

Oh please enlighten me. This is a 37 DPS weapon that is being sold for 33 000 PED, this is a fact. The only benefit it has is the efficiency, about 85% (I think), which is supposed to give you 2% better TT returns over something with 55-60% efficiency. You do realize that it will take several lifetimes to make up the difference between this and something like the philosopher's sword, which goes around +150-200? You just can't cycle too many PEDs with such a weapon, DPS is too low, unless you're botting and are able to hunt 24/7, then you're golden.
 
SoberPhil said:
Oh please enlighten me. This is a 37 DPS weapon that is being sold for 33 000 PED, this is a fact. The only benefit it has is the efficiency, about 85% (I think), which is supposed to give you 2% better TT returns over something with 55-60% efficiency. You do realize that it will take several lifetimes to make up the difference between this and something like the philosopher's sword, which goes around +150-200? You just can't cycle too many PEDs with such a weapon, DPS is too low, unless you're botting and are able to hunt 24/7, then you're golden.
Click to expand...


How about adding potentially 2 times 37 DPS to many categories in mayhem? :)

Oh and more if you decide you want to amp it...

Also, your many lifetimes is a bit of an exaggeration... 2% per 1000 ped cycled is 20 peds. If you cycled 1000 peds a day with this, you'd save about 7k a year in the comparison case you made...of course...you are really spending money for something that enhances DPS...

Oh I forget, you also lifesteal off the ticks on the arso chip.
 
I'm one of these leeches who do not depo and mostly trade, I play since 2016 and have spent waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy more ped tha you on:

- Auction fees
- Hunting
- Crafting
- Mining

Your profile in Entropia Life looks more like acc of a reseller :D

Last month I paid around 1k for fees on AH with my only account without ever using any alternative one :)
I can say the same for other traders, they spend a lot in game, I guess way more than me as I'm casual crafter/miner/hunter.

Re-sellers make the trade channel to move and have many other functions.
About the Fen 4 Chip, I sold mine for around 29k and I got it for ~ the same price.
My asking price was around 30-31k but I failed to get profit with this one as I was after another item and so on.

Anyway, I will say it again. The owner of a certain item have the F right to sell even for 100000000k above it's price.

you know it's the owner's business about pricing the item.

Regards!

SAY NO TO TAXES TO THE LEECHES!
 
Sodium Chloride is a more effective solution. ?

Or increased developer vigilance. ?
 
SoberPhil said:
Oh please enlighten me. This is a 37 DPS weapon that is being sold for 33 000 PED, this is a fact. The only benefit it has is the efficiency, about 85% (I think), which is supposed to give you 2% better TT returns over something with 55-60% efficiency. You do realize that it will take several lifetimes to make up the difference between this and something like the philosopher's sword, which goes around +150-200? You just can't cycle too many PEDs with such a weapon, DPS is too low, unless you're botting and are able to hunt 24/7, then you're golden.
Click to expand...

Do you understand how an arson chip works?

You fire it and it does 210-420 dam over the next 12 seconds and then you can use a normal weapon while the arson chip is doing it's damage. So the dps the arson chip does is in addition to the damage your normal weapon does. You don't just fire it and wait for it to reload so you can fire it again.
 
SoberPhil said:
Taxation and market regulation were implemented long before communism, they are an essential part of any economy, any working economy that is. Here we have a real cash economy, but no real regulation, which is wrong, because it enables certain people do all sorts of shady stuff, which hurts those who play by the rules, but what do I know.
Click to expand...

You are taxing something that YOU don't like - a specific person or group of people. You should try again.

Reselling items is not shady. The price of an item is what people pay for it. That's a free market. If you don't like it, don't pay for it. You are not obligated to have that new shiny toy.
 
SoberPhil said:
Most of us have to pay to play this game, and that is why we love it. However, right now there are too many leeches, sucking in and withdrawing our PEDs, without contributing anything to the game’s economy. Inactive resellers, hoarding high value items, pushing up the prices and looking for idiots to pay for their overpriced and overrated stuff (I wonder if that 37 DPS FEN chip on auction ATM will sell for 33k PED, and I wonder how much that reseller paid for it, probably like 10 times less). We got avatars, who stand in front of the auctioneer 24/7 without moving one single inch, bidding on everything they could resell for a profit, some of them using alternative accounts to get more auction slots.

Now my point is, as a player who pays to play, I’d like there to be more PEDs in the loot pool, instead we have leeches withdrawing PEDs, and the rest of us end up having to pay for it. This is very unfair and extremely disappointing. I know that MA started banning some shady characters, or declining their withdrawals (opal guy), but that's not nearly enough.

As a possible solution I suggest that MA introduces a new rule, taxing the withdrawals of players with 0 turnover, like in real life we got income tax, value added tax or whatever other tax. The PEDs that were withheld from being withdrawn in such a manner should go back to the loot pool. What percentage of the leeches’ withdrawals should be withheld this way, I don’t know, maybe 20-30%? What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Welcome to Entropia (assuming you are fairly new based on your forum join date)! Glad to hear you love the game! I suspect your perspective on some of the points you've raised will change over time, as you spend more years in Entropia and further develop a sense of its nature. Some of my concerns with your current perspective have already been raised by others, so I will offer just a single, high-level consideration.

You draw a distinction between those who deposit to play Entropia, and those who do not deposit. Note that your language here is imprecise; no one has to pay to play. Entropia offers a non-depositor user experience, and a depositor user experience, and allows you to choose which you prefer. You have chosen to deposit to play Entropia, because "that's why [you] love it," which is awesome. This means that all financial and non-financial pros and cons of depositing considered, you believe that being a depositor offers the greater utility. Given that conclusion, why would you write an emotionally charged attack thread painting those who derive less overall utility from the game (in your opinion) in a resolutely negative light? You apparently believe that the love for the game attainable by depositing already makes up for or exceeds the financial cost of depositing, so why kick those who have made a sanctioned yet apparently-suboptimal decision not to deposit while they're down with question-begging vocabulary such as "leech," "unfair," and "shady"?

This isn't meant to be a gotcha question, just something to consider. Taxation and regulation are part of economies for reasons that don't apply to idealized virtual economies, where avatar participants pay no recurring, monetary costs to sustain their lives, and systemic health/safety concerns are non-issues.
 
From your Entropia Life profile I gathered that your first global was 6 years ago. If this was not enough time for you to learn how this game works and accept/adapt to it then you really shouldn't be wasting your time here.

Traders/resellers have been here since the game was launched, they are one of the building blocks of keeping the economy going and serve a very important function during "dry market" periods.

So no to tax. As others have said. Free market. Don't want to buy something for X price? Don't buy it. If the price is really too high people simply won't buy it and the trader will lower the price until they get their item sold.
 
Well I can have a deal of anger regarding resellers. But honestly some of that anger is directed against myself - because I have placed myself in a situation where I am up against someone who has taken the time and effort to know a lot more than me about a particular subject.

Its exactly the same as going up against a skilled PvPr in a PvP zone - he would have the experience & the equipment to beat me and its unreasonable to expect him to go easy on me.

Or even hunting mobs without taking the time to research the mobs attack type and without using most suitable armor & weapon.

Its a free market here. OP I can understand where you are coming from, but its primarily your responsibility to take the time to research the market properly (just like in real life).

Its unreasonable to expect that rules etc to take up the slack for you.
 
There are several types of traders/resellers :

- Those who will spend hours and hours buying in town your small/mid ammount of materials to make a couple of peds, usually fair prices for both the buyer and the seller.
- Those who will camp auction for opportunities, items that are a bit cheaper than the current market value to put it back for or a bit above the current market value, fair for buyer & seller.
- Those who will buy items in bulk from quitting players with a small discount to resell it for a profit, once again, fair for both.
- Those who will buy uncommon/rare item and speculate on the prices, might even try to manipulate the price by fake sales.
- Those who will just log in and activate their auction """application"""
- Those who will spam your inbox trying to devaluate your weapon/armor/kid and telling you they are the only buyers, so you have no other choice, then they sell it for A LOT more than they paid.
- Those who will make you believe that a BC-80 will make you the prez of the USA, but Joe Bidder has the perfected BC-200.

Traders/resellers are an essential part of the game, however, greedy a§§ ba§tard are just disgusting, in my opinion.

I had a friend who traded a lot, Manuel, he made lots of cash, invested in lands, making events, rewarding people, doing some free mod fap service back in the days. Tzepu did the same, ended up owning a bank, offering people a service. Sarah was also trading, now owns an awesome hogglo land, and many many more names did/do decent things for the game. This kind of trader/reseller is highly needed and profiting to the whole community.. others well.. they belong to Planet Michael.
 
Right now we have people who are getting 70% returns, and others who are just leeching through trade. Leeches are sucking the blood out of this economy, all of those who did well in trading did so at the expense of others who lost. And those leeches, if they could, would suck this economy dry until there's nothing left, then they would just move on to something else. That's how leeching works.

All I'm suggesting is to make things more balanced, tax the leeches, use that to make bad loot periods a little less bad. If people had slightly better loot, this would help in terms of player retention and playerbase growth. And yes, people would still complain, it's just human nature. But most would be inclined to spend more and they won't complain as much.

Guys, there's one thing you don't understand. This game has grown so much because it was the only one in the genre for several years. However, the RCE niche is getting more crowded as we speak, there are already games where you can officially sell stuff for cash or crypto, and the situation is only going to get more difficult for EU by the end of next year. This game needs to become better, and sooner rather than later. I'm not saying that the sky is falling, but times are changing, that much is obvious. This game has many issues that need to be addressed, and leeching, in my opinion, is one of them.

And all of you who are offended, look at it this way. If this game looses a significant part of its paying playerbase over the next one to two years (which I hope never happens, but it is a possibility nevertheless), who are you going to sell your shiny trinkets to?
 
I think the OP isn't as Sober as he thinks, sounds to me like some drunken rants recently.

There are many professions in this game, reseller is one and yes they do contribute to the game, including by paying AH fees.
Some of those would have a higher turnover in Auction house fees than the turnover of of other professions.
 
Taxes inversely proportional to turnover would indeed have been a good idea, to keep EU as a game.
But MA won't do it because their business is doing well that way, they make money and that's all that matters to them.

Entropia is no longer a game, but a trading platform.
And indeed a paradise for leeches, as long as there are a few players stupid enough to keep believing in it...

We see it more and more clearly, the only ones who succeed are not doing it by "playing" but by investing/trading.
The only value that counts is the size of your wallet.

Don't try to put forward gaming and competition values here, you won't get any catch since there are no more players, or almost no more...
And soon there will be only traders/investors left.

If you're into gaming and competition, the best thing to do is to leave this platform.

New games are emerging, for which I hope the creators will have the intelligence to make sure that they remain games, and don't turn into a nightmare trading platform where the richest win.

I should have left the same day the deeds appeared...
 
SoberPhil said:
Right now we have people who are getting 70% returns, and others who are just leeching through trade. Leeches are sucking the blood out of this economy, all of those who did well in trading did so at the expense of others who lost. And those leeches, if they could, would suck this economy dry until there's nothing left, then they would just move on to something else. That's how leeching works.
Click to expand...

It's worth reflecting on how far beyond the facts this statement stretches to negatively color aspects of the game you dislike. Hunters/miners/crafters seeking favorable markup could just as easily be labeled "leeches," and it is just as true that they would suck the economy dry until there was nothing left, if they could. So would Explosive Projectile condition "gamblers;" they would hit a jackpot worth all of MindArk's profits from 2003 to present, if they could. Prioritizing one's own financial success over that of other players or MindArk seems remarkably weak as a sufficient condition for being classified a leech.

SoberPhil said:
All I'm suggesting is to make things more balanced, tax the leeches, use that to make bad loot periods a little less bad.
Click to expand...

I think the implications of what you're suggesting are much more serious than that. You're asking MindArk to commit to the position that certain modes of game play are less legitimate than others, indeed, modes of game play which were indispensable to Entropia's success in its formative stage. It is not only doubtful that the early game's economy could have, without traders, bootstrapped the degree of liquidity needed to reach the critical point at which they became no longer strictly necessary (and make no mistake, exchange would still be far more cumbersome without them); it is also indisputable that the story of Club NEVERDIE, a trading/investing narrative at its core, was a, or perhaps the, defining moment in Entropia's journey to success. I would posit that for MindArk to take the position you want them to take would be for them to resolutely break ties with and condemn Entropia's original essence. It would be akin to Blizzard launching and advertising Diablo III as a revolutionary Real Cash Economy platform, only to pull the rug out from under its early adopters by yeeting the RCE framework as soon as other players complain of it making their preferred mode of play marginally less fun. Not a good look.

SoberPhil said:
And all of you who are offended, look at it this way. If this game looses a significant part of its paying playerbase over the next one to two years (which I hope never happens, but it is a possibility nevertheless), who are you going to sell your shiny trinkets to
Click to expand...

This sounds like an organic solution to your prior concerns, not a concern in and of itself. Your complaint was that item prices have become artificially high (note that others commonly complain of traders rendering Vibrant Sweat prices artificially low; I think you insufficiently analyze the impact traders have on price). Granting your assumptions, if the paying playerbase starts to leave the game and prices decline, then investing becomes less desirable until the negative feedback loop converges to some equilibrium combination of price and player count; it doesn't magically cause everyone to flee at once leaving the game to collapse.
 
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