2013-02-09, 02:34 AM
Just because you cannot see the ramifications doesn't mean they aren't there. You can't really say that prices of other gear would not be cheaper if hackers weren't around because quite frankly, you don't know. But let's take a second to think about what happens when everyone has this top tier gear. Obviously, they will want to improve it, and would be more willing to pay to do so, since there isn't an easy upgrade in sight. This means a higher price in scrolls, cubes, etc. anything that you would use to improve your equipment. GM scroll service for example has inflated to several times the price of a few months ago. Legitimate or not is irrelevant, it is still representative of the cost of scrolling an equip. You can bypass this cost using event scrolls, but then you are cheating yourself out of one of the best ways to make mesos for poorer players.
Now think about the meso flow due to the circulation of these equips. It does not hugely affect the amount of mesos in the economy. Therefore the deflation in these equips must be mirrored by an inflation elsewhere. But where? Cheaper equips means poorer players can buy them. That means a higher meso flow from the poor players to the hackers/people who obtain mesos from them, so the items in demand from these people will increase in price. The most obvious of these is NX value, but this also means precubed and prescrolled gear becomes more valuable, putting it even further from the reach of poorer players. And who is likely to have this prescrolled and precubed gear? The rich players, who will then spend that money cubing and scrolling their new gear or buying better gear, which goes to the richer people or back to the hackers, botters and people who buy NX.
So what happens to the poorer players? Essentially, they're stuck with the gear which has basically no resell value (due to the price of psok's) unless they scroll or cube it well. Scrolling is more expensive and the gear will heavily deflate when the next lot of godly equips comes out, and quite frankly, cubing gear well is out of the reach of poor players. So what do they do instead? Buy more cheap equipment, giving more mesos to the hackers. Essentially, what we're left with is a flow towards the hackers/botters/NX buyers/rich people, where the rich people are either big NX buyers or people who are directly hit by the hackers monopolizing the high level bosses.
Therefore the only people who really benefit from this are the hackers/botters and people who buy NX. Some will choose the latter option sure, but given the state of the game and looking at the amount of hackers at popular training maps lately, I'd hazard a guess that more people are choosing the former.
Now think about the meso flow due to the circulation of these equips. It does not hugely affect the amount of mesos in the economy. Therefore the deflation in these equips must be mirrored by an inflation elsewhere. But where? Cheaper equips means poorer players can buy them. That means a higher meso flow from the poor players to the hackers/people who obtain mesos from them, so the items in demand from these people will increase in price. The most obvious of these is NX value, but this also means precubed and prescrolled gear becomes more valuable, putting it even further from the reach of poorer players. And who is likely to have this prescrolled and precubed gear? The rich players, who will then spend that money cubing and scrolling their new gear or buying better gear, which goes to the richer people or back to the hackers, botters and people who buy NX.
So what happens to the poorer players? Essentially, they're stuck with the gear which has basically no resell value (due to the price of psok's) unless they scroll or cube it well. Scrolling is more expensive and the gear will heavily deflate when the next lot of godly equips comes out, and quite frankly, cubing gear well is out of the reach of poor players. So what do they do instead? Buy more cheap equipment, giving more mesos to the hackers. Essentially, what we're left with is a flow towards the hackers/botters/NX buyers/rich people, where the rich people are either big NX buyers or people who are directly hit by the hackers monopolizing the high level bosses.
Therefore the only people who really benefit from this are the hackers/botters and people who buy NX. Some will choose the latter option sure, but given the state of the game and looking at the amount of hackers at popular training maps lately, I'd hazard a guess that more people are choosing the former.
