[Rolling rivens feels like GAMBLING]

Yeah, the OP hit it right on the nose.

 

Riven's are an alternative loot box you pay with time.

 

SPOILER:

The majority of the game is the exact same way. Frame parts, Prime Parts, Rare Mods are all just a loot box system except instead of seeing the box open up like in SWB2 they hide it behind a different UI, and more importantly, they don't charge you cash for it. The majority of the power items in the game are only obtainable by a RNG loot system.

 

I don't agree with this and I wished De took the next step, not only moving away from exploiting this as a monetization method, but to remove it as a primary game design. RNG Loot arose during a time when imagination was larger than computing resources to realize them and has been adapted to pad out game time and give an "illusion of effort."  After decades of playing games I'm tired of seeing most of the effort I make wasted because it's just a roulette spin, slot wheel, dice roll, whatever random chance analogy you wanna use.

I find no pleasure doing the same mission over and over again and knowing no matter how well I play, how many mobs I kill, no matter what my chances of actually acquiring the item I want is completely random. Maybe I am too old to ignore that reality when I play video games but I feel that something better needs to come around where effort = reward in a more direct and logical way.

[So sick of trading chat, why can't we get an auction house?]

One thing you all have to take into account is an auction house requires a dedicated team to manage the economy. DE has clearly shown it's not interested in developing such infrastructure for the sake of austerity and keeping a lean workforce.  Which is why Trade chat and Maroo's is the limit of what we are going to get unless DE publicly announces intent to develop an in game economy.

These types of systems are completely out of their scope currently and it's obvious after 5 years of development they have no desire to learn any of those systems to adapt them into their game environment.

The fact is they would rather you spend countless hours grinding for RNG loot than trying to play some economic game. Game time is the ultimately currency they value the most, followed by cosmetic purchasing.

Which is fine, I just wish they would communicate that more clearly rather than leave us all in the dark about what is going on here. I personally think it's the wrong attitude to have, being that there is so little endgame content and alternative gameplay the idea of making the in game economy another aspect of the game would only retain and expand the playerbase. Expanding the clan activities to allow for in game player ran markets would be a useful and effective expansion of the game in both content, engagement, and cooperative endgame effort. Something that would be a boon in this game and keep retention rates with veteran players.

 

But you know why bother, just go out there and do another 45 fissure missions to get that prime set, that's what everyone wants to do anyway, according to DE......

[Anyone else hate the Archwing in general?]

48 minutes ago, xV3NOMx said:

I do enjoy the "Archwing" system in the game and wish they were part of every space derelict mission where players have to fly and fight their way to the destination in Archwing mode, complete the mission objective inside the craft, then escape fighting again in Archwing mode to reach their landing craft.

A long time ago, in a system far far away, this was the original concept behind Archwings. All those portion of quests in which you transition from warframe to archwing was the closest they ever got to putting it in the game. Apparently having this type of transition taxes the game, hence it's only seen in carefully scripted events like quests. Although apparently POE and sharkwing realized that dream. So I wonder if perhaps they will revisit these quests and maybe have more hybrid archwing level design, but honestly they haven't hinted anything like that.

[Anyone else hate the Archwing in general?]

I can think of quite a few mission types that i think alot of people would go for:

Obstacle course racing. Non combat, tight halls.

Deathrace, both open area and course driven, This could work for both conclave and PvE.

Redesign Sabotage and Exterminate levels and mission to be completely time driven. Your final reward is completely dependent on how fast you can finish the level. Mix in some of the aforementioned racing level design to these missions.

[Do all tenno have Ordis? Or is he only with the "main" character?]

Yeah technically, Ordis is a unique person, therefore there is only one of him.

SPOILER

Ordis was in fact a real human being who voluntarily chose to wipe his memory and be converted to a cephalon to forget the horrible things he did in the past.  And like other have mentioned Cephalon's are one of a kind AI. There is nothing in the lore which mentions whether a cephalon can be copied which would be the only reason it would make sense that everyone has him. The only other Cephalons, Jordas, Samaris and Suda have never mentioned this was possible and seem to be one of a kind beings, not like models that they were a copy of.

Also remember Cephalon Samaris when you run you first few quests with him?  He mentions that it's rare to see a working cephalon around, meaning they are pretty unique.

It's a game conceit that everyone has Ordis, because to create multiple personalities would be too prohibitive.

Now the question is when people are invited to each other's ship will they hear Ordis?

 

This entire thread rekindled a thought I had a while back when it came specifically to NPC interactions, especially Ordis and Lotus. With the rise of sophisticated AI that you can talk to and who can answer back with increasing levels of realness I wonder if perhaps the entire experience of Ordis and the Lotus could be vastly improve by adding a little of that AI sophistication into them. Instead of them repeating the same canned comments over and over again ad naseum, imagine giving them a large vocabulary and designing them to react organically from your actions and interactions with both the missions and the ship. Heck in the near future how things are working out there could be a point where such NPC's will be completely interactive via voice commands.

[Anyone else hate the Archwing in general?]

I hate archwings purely on the content.

The level design are uninspired. the mission types are rediculous.  And with sharkwing and POE Archwing the entire archwing experience is completely fragmented across the game.

They need to completely revampthe level and mission design for Archwings.

But as a first step they could at least add more mission types on each planet to increase the variety of grind and the ability to use and develop the archwing. Being that archwing had like what 5 missions they could add all of them to each planet and make using archwing at least somewhat of a palatable grind.

And I keep re-iterating the same point over and pover again, why are there no deathrace missions or chase missions?  Why aren't archwing geared towards speed runners and rewards players for finishing a mission as quickly as possible?  Not only is speed running a huge thing in this game but the entire concept of archwing lends itself to racing and beat the clock type gameplay.

I have been an avid fan of flying games and flight modes in games, I really wanted to get behind archwings, but it's so boring, so uninspired, and just not fun to do overall. But someone at DE is committed to archwings being a thing despite is half finished and unpolished design. So until that Dev gives up on archwings we are stuck with it.

One of the few things which truly disappointments me about this game.

[Trading idea]

I don't see how this improves trading, only gives scammers and con artist tools to look for whales......

What would improve trading would be to setup an actual player managed storefront using the existing market UI systems and convert trade chat to a UI which just allows you to search for items offered for sale by all the sellers currently active and the ability to directly message them for trades.

Trade chat fails because of two important and critical points, it's not a permanent searchable post and new posts replace old posts. It's literally like standing in the middle of the barter market bazaar and trying to figure out who is offering what and where they are located, and the stall locations and people change by the second. It just doesn't work past a critical population of players and I feel Warframe has reach that critical mass a long time ago. Creating a stable platform where buyers and sellers can find each other easier still follows the spirit of how DE wants trade to function but removes the complete chaos and anarchy that trade currently is. This can easily be an endgame goal for clans with both in clan storefronts and the ability to host public stores in Maroo's Bazaar, so clan members can collectively organize their trading. this would actually create incentives for people to grind and more importantly cooperatively grind to reach bigger goals. Something I thought was one of the cornerstones of this game.

The trade system in Maroo's Bazaar is ALMOST what is needed but suffers from the same problem of trade chat, depending on the number of people it could be near impossible to find what you want. Running around a room looking at little thumbnail images above people who are randomly and chaotically scattered in a space not even optimized for such an activity is illogical and counter productive.  At minimum traders should kneel on pads like on relays in regular arrayed stalls, and buyers should have the ability to jump from instance to instance via a elevator load interface that way you could at least effectively window shop for items. But that entire manual process of virtually walking around and looking at offerings is a pointless timesink and does not improve the game experience at all. DE already knows this or else they wouldn't have put quick travel options at all their hub levels. Meaning they know people wanna quickly get to their goal; get what they want, and leave without wasting time running around a relay or Cetus.

Which is why I feel doing away with all that and merely creating a player market UI, clan driven, would be much more effective and more in tune with how regular players want to trade. DE can even still insists that buyers and sellers have to meet in person to finish the trade, just creating a market UI which would allow for searching of items IN GAME would vastly improve the experience. It wouldn't involve a huge amount of development time and would markedly improve one of the core aspects in the game. I do suspect that even putting in something like this would quickly expose huge flaws in the RNG Loot system they have in place, which Is IMO the biggest reason why trade works the way it does currently and keeping that way maintains the status quo. Which is unacceptable IMO even if Warframe is F2P or DE is fair.

[Pickup Logic Tweak - Pickup Only If Full Use]

4 hours ago, Bao said:

IIRC, health orbs, energy orbs, and I believe ammo (though the last one I'm not certain of) do not last forever. So being efficient with them can sometimes lead them to being not used at all, thus making it even less efficient than a 1% restore rate. Sentinels are the main culprit of this due to Vaccum, although they are nice with Ammo Case for ease of searching for ammo. If you need efficiency with those kinds of things, just switch to a Kavat or a Kubroe and walk over drops when you need them. Plus we have a small universal Vaccum on our frames. 4 meters isn't much, but its a nice little thing to have when you run with a pet instead. 

I don't believe that's true. There is a mechanics, but it doesn't seem based upon a timer just total number of items occupying a given area:
 

 

[So sick of trading chat, why can't we get an auction house?]

I don't think it has anything to do with the legality of an auction house, it is an issue of development and infrastructure.

It's very possible that the player database they use is incapable of being used to implement an auction system, to do so would require massive amount of development time and resources.

There is also the added complexity of having auctioning be a whole new aspect of the game which has to be balance against the existing grind and rng drop rates. Once again, forcing the devs to dedicate resources and increase the compexity of their operations.

Nothing I have seen on DE's part show any hint they are committed to doing something like this. This is more than likely the main reason why an auction house isn't in the game.

The only possible solution that DE might entertain would be to polish and improve communication between buyers and sellers to facilitate the the existing trading system much easier. I personally think that they could easily adapt the existing market UI and with a little effort(compared to building out an auction system) can create a system which allows players to look for items and sellers to communicate their offerings and prices to a wider audience.

And even going that route would probably expose huge problems in the current RNG mechanics. I personally think though that shouldn't be a deterrence as this is a huge thing in the game which does have immense impact on the experience.

[So sick of trading chat, why can't we get an auction house?]

15 minutes ago, Kaminariss said:

Using warframe.market is MUCH simpler and does the same thing.

Then why not just fold it into the game itself?

[Make me WANT to use a Kavat or Kubrow]

In case you want to know what everyone is talking about when they say Kubrows are powerful allies, here's a video of a guy solo'ing a Void Survival with an Oberon and a Kubrow:
 

This guy did 30 minute survival, solo,with a kubrow and no vacuum. And the build for the kubrow is at the end. So it can be done, and with a team this guy would have been an MVP, if they actually played cooperatively and weren't a bunch of hallway hero's....

However, that being said, pets in this game are just another unfinished and unpolished portion of the game. Instead of focusing on things like Operators, Focus, and POE I wished they had spent their time polishing up companions and sentinels to make them be real additions to the game not just accessories with one useful utility.

The fact of the matter is this was the most recent video I found where anyone even tries to do this anymore, so the perception that pets are useless and abandoned is pretty much true. As most of the video highlighting the power of kubrows are over 2 years old at this point.

[Let us buy prime parts for Ducats,]

11 minutes ago, (Xbox One)THANOTOS OMEGA said:

I actually had an alternate idea as part of a Syndicate overhaul where Suda would offer to remove items from a relic's drops for 100 void traces a nitain an argon and depending on the rarity of which item was being removed one of her medallions meaning that to garuntee a rare drop you would need 500 void traces 5 argon 5 nitain 2 of her mid tier medallions and 3 of her top tier medallions, 

Yeah this Idea would work as well; create recipes with already existing rare items which would make players to use alot of the mats they grind for already to improve the chances for prime items. This would still force most players to grind for items but creates an avenue by which people get to work towards definitive goal.

I just hate RNG loot. I think it's a lazy, archaic, and obsolete game design that is being relied on too much by most devs and is limited the evolution of game design.

[So sick of trading chat, why can't we get an auction house?]

I see your point, but my only answer to that is the belief that DE can keep improving the game with the limited amount of staff and skillset is a wrong path to go down. They need to expand and add talent who have expertise in these types of thing, because if they keep increasing their player number the current system will not be effective enough and would just expose the problem with the game even more. At this point they need to start recruiting people with skills in player economies and trading system and come up with something that is better than the current system. And the sad thing is they are discouraging alot of players from spending plat because of the obtuseness and chaos of trade chat. I for one spend as little time as I need to in trade chat because I find the whole experience frustrating, boring, and unproductive. And almost every time I do go in there my suspicions are always confirmed because I spend more time looking to find the thing I want than actually buying it. Most time I only trade with clan mates because at least then you can have a more rational and reasonable conversation rather than trying to find that one posting with the item you are looking for.

That is why I think merely adapting Maroo's Bazaar would be alot simpler, require less overhead and dev time, and keep in the spirit of how DE wants to handle trade. As for the complexity of such a system, everything needed to implement a storefront is already in the game. The game is dominated by NPC store vendors. All they would have to do is adapt the market UI already in the game and merely allow people to search for items being offered for sale. The key improvement is to have a system where all items being currently offered for sale can be searched for, rather than waiting for someone to post it in a line of text on a scrolling chat screen.  Everything else works exactly as before, the seller still has to be online and you still have to reach out and message the seller.

I will even concede the fact that DE probably lacks a sophisticated player database to allow for a trading API to help players get a real price check outside of the game. But even just giving players the ability to see all the prices being offered for the items they are looking for in trade would help a long way to improving the economy.

[Let us buy prime parts for Ducats,]

2 minutes ago, Teoarrk said:

As much as I can see where you're coming from, with that logic you can say that any mission with a reward table is a lootbox. The reason I see for them switching from the old key system to the new relic system is due to the large quantity of prime items they have available and they can't afford to dilute the loot tables that much over a small set of keys. 

Most of this game is a loot box you pay for with time, that's why DE get's away with it over most other devs, since most devs put the lootbox behind a paywall or force players to pay money, still grind an inordinate amount of time and then pay again for the RNG loot chance. This is where I think alot of people give DE a pass because they think that since they never had to put up real cash there is no detriment, Ignoring the fact that time is valuable also.

Relics were inserted because while DE loves timesinks they have their own vision of what that is. IMO DE doesn't approve of players spending more than the standard 4 round reward rotation on any mission, they prefer you to run several missions over time than playing one mission for a long period of time. That is why they converted from keys to relics, that and the fact you pointed out about the nigher numbers of Prime parts and the limited numbers of Void levels to fit the rewards in.

As another thought they could have created a system whereby refining gets you to the same point. for example another Idea I had was instead of limiting the use of refinement DE could open it up and allow you keep refining a relic to the point where you are guaranteed to get the item you want. So instead of capping refinement, you can keep adding void traces and select one particular item to drop, this would require you to keep refining the relic over and over until you reach a high enough percentage. I thought a way to balance exploits would be to have players take their max refined relics to the void trader and have him open the relic at a cost of ducats. This creates a system when people would still to grind and work towards a reward, but creates a framework by which effort is rewarded in a way that doesn't allow for exploits. Because you can still use the standard RNG loot and statistically it would drop faster by RNG than by refinement, it's just that refinement puts a degree of certainty to the item you are looking for.

Since DE knows the true drop rates for all items in the game they can easily manipulate this type of system to make sure you can could never exploit it to get items faster than you should.

[So sick of trading chat, why can't we get an auction house?]

After 5 years of this game being released and developed I can say with a great degree of certainty that DE will not add an auction house in the game unless they expand their staff massively.

My impression is that DE lacks the fundamental knowledge and skill base internally to create an auction house system in the game, they would need to hire programmers and devs and they are committed to keeping their workforce small and lean. So unless we see a massive expansion of programmers working on the game I doubt we will ever see an Auction house.

The other issue alot of you are failing to comprehend is that having an auction house would require more granular control over drops rates and the economy or else people will quickly expose just how messed up the drop rates are in this game. DE will have to spend a inordinate amount of time playing whack a mole trying to stop every exploit to the RNG loot and the auction house or else break the economy completely. Which would require more workers and more infrastructure in the company.

 

However, I thought of something which would require little effort by DE to implement and keeps with the nature of the current system. Adapting Maroo's Bazaar to allow for Tenno/Clan Storefronts.

Instead of loading a Maroo instance and running around a room looking at items for sale, create a system by which a buyer can SEARCH for items being offered for sale by everyone engaged in  trading.  Maroo Bazaar isn't a level you can load and run around in, it just becomes an interface by which buyers and sellers can find each other and conduct business without the chaos of a realtime public chat window.

If you are a seller you go to Maroo's and enter the "seller's" instance. There you just see a room with a console when you activate it allows you to post items you have for sale and the price you want for them(plat or barter). You just select the item, put in your terms for it, and post.

As a buyer you enter Maroo's and go to the "buyer's Instance. Once gain you are in a room with just a console in which you access all the offers in the entire sellers instance. Instead of having to play around with a scrolling chat window where people list items in different and non standardized way, now you can look up any item you want and see if anyone is offering the item up for sale. Once you locate the item you can just message the seller and either agree to his terms or negotiate a price. Once you reach an agreement then the seller can initiate a trade right there and it works out like any other trade.

But one important detail I would like to include which would make this system even better. Create an API which allows third party sites to data mine the trades and create price checks for all items in the game, backed up by real world data not self reporting.

I feel this keeps in the spirit of how DE wants to handle trade, but creares a system by which the process of trading become a more rational and smoother experience.

[Let us buy prime parts for Ducats,]

No I'm with the OP.

Relics are just DE's version of a traditional loot box, even if we don't pay real cash for it. It looks and acts just like any other loot box in any other game. Just because DE doesn't put it behind a paywall doesn't excuse them creating such a ridiculous system to collecting items in the game.

Refining is an insult to the word improving chances, being that you don't even see the real percentages that are "improved" when you refine.

DE has repeatedly said that they design the game around timesinks. They design their game from the position of making players spend alot of time playing before they can get the reward they are looking for. If you look at the game as a whole you can tell they don't particularly care how you are spending your time grinding as long as you spend a significant amount of time playing the game.

So adding prime parts and putting in a high ducat cost would absolutely not break the game.

First of all the answer the threat of people hording expensive prime parts would be to make the list of available prime parts limited and incomplete, you can't buy a whole frame with Ducats at once, and there are enough rare prime parts to make sure a decent amount can be available every 2 weeks but that they don't break the basic grind system, and like the OP says they can put the price on a level that you wold still need alot of grinding to afford the cost.

For me I hate relics and refining, it constitutes a complete waste of effort to play a freaking slot wheel mini game in which nothing you do really affects the outcome.

And since DE doesn't want to make trade chat a reasonable and rational trading economic system; unless you are willing to spend hours trading most times you will waste more hours playing fissure missions versus the rewards you get.

For example, since relics have been released I have been unable to farm out a complete prime set without either someone gifting me a part or me buying one from trade. The only time I grind fissure mission is when I see a Void Trader item that I want, since I know I can just grind random relics, convert them to ducats, and get the item i want, I still don't know how long it's going to take to get it, but I know every mission I play takes me one definitive step forward to my goal.

I can tell you it feels alot better selling prime parts for ducats and getting the EXACT item you want than the feeling you get when the last relic you own opens after playing Fissures for several hours and the item you are looking for doesn't drop. Meaning you have to start all over again collecting random relics hoping the one with the part you are looking for drops enough and then going back to gambling your time away. That has been my general experience with relic farming, disappointment and frustration, to the point where I have stopped seriously grinding for primes items, it's just plain horrible.

It's a freaking loot box, just because you pay an inordinate amount of time instead of money doesn't make it ok. I prefer my efforts to translate to direct results, not be meaningless grind busywork so DE can pad their playtime metrics....

 

[Love the changes to invasions - now can you do the same thing for Nitain alerts?]

And I actually think alerts should be harder not easier, like a sliding difficulty option based on MR.

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

1 minute ago, ButtNugget13 said:

And right there was where any credibility you had flew past my ear on it's way out of the window!

I deserve to be treated badly because my IGN is not to your tastes?!??! Hahaha!! Feck me gently with a chainsaw!

Sorry dude I dealt with hundreds of issues like your, and most time people with your types of screen names were typically guiltier than those who had non-provocative names. And they were typically more offended and more hyperbolic the more guilty they were. I have been doing customer service and dealing with this type of issues for over a decade.

 

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

2 minutes ago, ButtNugget13 said:

Do you have me on some kind of block list that you cannot read my posts?!??!

As I have stated over and over, this is entirely irrelevant. They are telling me that they CAN drill down to a level that tells them which items in my inventory have been purchased using platinum that was illegitimately garnered, they are telling me EVERYBODY involved in any transaction or part thereof are being treated in the same manner and, as demonstrated clearly, it only requires ONE player to purchase or obtain platinum illegitimately for any number of people to end up in my situation and be punished and forced to spend real money.

Are you willing to concede that your position of "...the vast majority..." is simply incorrect?

Absolutely not. but then again I also have the opinion that DE practices a fair amount of passive aggressive actions to discourage activity. So they could look into it, but it would still take time and effort, and since they want to stamp down on this completely, unequivocally, and with no wiggle room for exceptions, unless you can generate a list of users which represents more than 5% of the total playerbase, who were erroneously banned for this, they aren't going to see it as a priority and they aren't going to flat out admit they don't see it as priority. Doesn't mean they have it out for every user in the game, but they have to invest time and effort on things they feel helps improve the quality of the game and that generally doesn't cover customer service. Customer service is seen as a drain and a cost to do business. Creating a review system and a escalation policy for people who feel they were unjustly banned is seen as too complicated, too costly, and not worth the cost of appeasing a few wrongly punished players. Why do you think customer service has largely been outsourced?

I don't know what types of games you play or what software you use but typically devs tend to be more reactive than proactive. So it usually take a huge break or issue to get them ti implement a serious fix.  And many of them live in a serious bubble and can't even conceive of most scenarios which end up breaking their programs. So unless they see a serious issue from their metrics they don't see each and every upset and angry customer as a serious issue.

And not for nothing man, your screen name alone makes your credibility suspect at best. As someone who routinely had to entertain issues like you put forth, I would automatically be suspicious of any claim you made, even though I made a serious effort to be objective and logical about these types of issues. Because everyone claimed they were unfairly banned, I had people who I had clear and unequivocal evidence that they broke the TOS and EULA repeated come back and try to argue for me to unbanned them. To the point I had to ignore them.

[Getting 10x Squad Energy Restore (Large) BP without Syndicates?]

I get the feeling he's new or a hallway hero solo type who gets pawned by the eximus units when he tried to level his unranked frame soloing on Pluto......

Cause that's the only time I was ever worried about syndicate hits, seriously they are a joke, they should be ALOT harder than they are.

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

37 minutes ago, DeMonkey said:

That's an entirely separate matter, Auction Houses have been proposed and assumingly disregarded multiple times now.

Most common reason is that the price of everything would massively reduce. The ease with which people would be able to get their items out there would create far more competition and supply and lower prices across the board.

Given that purchasing the currency with which trades generally happen puts dinner on DE's table I'm sure you can see why that's perhaps not what they want. I highly highly doubt that the lack of an API and AH has anything to do with a lack of capability.

No but if they have no desire to put in a sophisticated player driven economy why would they retain detailed records?

Here's the part alot of you seem to fail to grasp, there might be records that would perfectly explain what is going on here, but if there is no structure in place to record that table and allow it to be searchable, either manually or automatically, that data is typically discarded. So unless they were already keeping track of the data they aren't going to have access to it easily if at all. And to take your analogy, it's  precisely because they want to put food on their table that they make those types of decisions.

Now it could be this is a blind spot in how they handle this type of situation that might eventually be rectified, by my impression is this has a very small impact and that from a business standpoint, devoting time and energy chasing down every complaint when the vast majority are legitimately acting in violation to the TOS is just not worth it.

That was typically the argument that was given to me whenever I asked to have this level of granularity in my job and I would need to come up with a multitude of examples to even get their attention. And even then I ran into serious resistance from people who I later discovered where hiding their shoddy or incomplete work, or just plain weren't interested in working on that issue regardless of the impact.

So I can say with a great degree of certainty that DE doesn't see too many of these examples, they are probably atypical from the usual activity that they are trying to stop, and their database lacks the capacity to be handled in a way to sort out something like this, probably because up until last year the total amount of transactions wasn't worth the effort and it was intentionally set up this way because it was a cheap and easy way to do it.

[Access to Weapon/Warframe Slots at Low MR - Some Change Might be Needed?]

56 minutes ago, Paradoxbomb said:

I think unlocking some extra weapon/warframe slots for each MR level would be perfectly fair. Especially considering that you'll likely have to rank up and sell weapons/frames to get the MR for them anyway, it would be good way to give new players some lee-way with the amount of stuff they'll have to discard or buy room for without entirely removing the need for new players to shell out a bit of plat for some extra slots.

I'd see your point, if warframe slots were 100 plat and weapon slots were 100 for 3 slots.

I mean for example I ended up getting Tempo Royal when it was first released. I sold that mod for 100 plat and bought a bunch of slots and potatoes for it. So like I said it's not like their aren't avenues to get plat by playing the game, playing intelligently, and working towards getting slots.

I just don't see the price of slots to be unfair considering the amount of  gameplay you get for them.

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

Oh no I am not disputing that perhaps a certain number of people are getting  caught up in this wrongly or unjustly. I am not saying that they aren't legitimate scenarios where people might be tricked into receiving illegal plat. I am saying DE balances the need to create a structure around preventing that against the need to do other projects. Or else they have to expand and have built in layers of structure to maintain such a process. If you have worked in software development you should already know the primary reason you install this type of automation is specifically to reduce manpower and costs. And that's outside of the fact that barring some unforeseen bug or glitch your automated system would be vastly superior than any human.

I am also reading between the lines, DE isn't interested in supporting anything close to this type of behavior. so subliminally I am reading this as them saying, "look every gift horse in the mouth, or else." Now you may disagree with that, and I certainly disagree with indirect or passive aggressive approaches, but it seems clear to me that DE doesn't want anyone to focus on gifting as a thing in this game. Possible to avoid exploits and cheats which would allow people to receive fraudulent items easier. and also because they rather you grind for it and take your RNG loot chance directly rather than vicariously through another player.

As for you contention about how easy it would be and they must already have a capability, I point out that they don't even have an API to allow data mining of trades. I ask why is there no auction house system?  These are things which cover the type of transaction that the OP's scenario revolves and would have made it easier to separate the bad apples from the mistakenly identified. If they can't release data to allow for simple price checking on the trade system they have, they can't possibly be close to having the type of system to allow auctioning to happen, let alone have comprehensive chain of custody records.

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

1 minute ago, Badgriuel said:

So how is someone going to think twice about their interactions if they have NO way of knowing if the person that the trade is being done with is using plat that was gained wrongly? So you punish an innocent player for the actions of another? That hardly seem right no matter which way you look at it. You don't punish someone that did nothing wrong, other then making a trade in the game which last I checked is part of the game. Trading is a big part of the game so why punish a player for using a system that was put in place by the Dev's for players to use? None of us as players have no idea if the plat gained in a trade is legit plat. 

 

Where did I assume that in my post? I clearly said what the Engineers I worked with and our Bosses wanted to be at the top of the list.  

I mean it's real simple, if you get a item as a gift you should have an idea where it came from. If someone is just buying an item for you for no reason and you can't tell how they got it I would find that highly suspicious. So the rule is if you aren't sure where it came from, even if it's from your friends, don't receive it until you are sure. I mean if they are such close friends the OP could have asked where the buyer got the plat from, and if they lied that pretty much shows they weren't that close a friend as they thought. Or he's feigning ignorance because he never thought DE would catch such a simple ploy to launder illegal plat.

In my personal experience in this game when someone bought a gift they usually tell people how they could afford it, usually so they show it wasn't a big deal, like buying it on discount from the store or having a 75% coupon. So typically it's not very hard to tell if someone is buying plat illegally because they tend to tell people how they got it. Or else whoever this "friend" is they are not genuine because they are willing to expose everyone's account for banning for the sake of illegal plat.

So anyone looking into this would need to find proof that this guy got a gift from someone he knew and that those people weren't directly engaged in fraudulent activity. And I can tell you right now once word came out that some person is willing to do this, then the floodgates will be opened where each and everyscammer will flood for review requests. Just looking into the records alone would take man hours to run searches and collect data. then if you decided that this needed to be automated you would need to develop a code change, implement it, and see how it would work with the existing systems you have already. Once again, time money and manpower that De will have to devote instead of new content or other projects.

 

Your last point is confusing, because my point is maintaining a sophisticated database take effort and willingness, and you would just pointed out that your company was committed to developing the product that way. I pointed out several developer teams who were unwilling to do so or too apathetic to make it a priority. This doesn't even go into the general IT cheapness I ran into, where companies relied on cheap or outdated tech and were willing to spend hundreds of man hours fixing rather than investing money or time to upgrade. It's prevalent ideal in the business world, infrastructure and IT resources are seen as no different than office furniture and equipment are subjected to esoteric or obtuse accounting policies or austerity rules. I would have to explain to senior managers and executives that their policy amount to essentially forcing the office to not use file cabinets because they cost to much to buy up front, so every has to use cardboard boxes instead. Because they refused to see the business justification for a server upgrade or a tech refresh.

[Well, I think that DE and I are about done...]

34 minutes ago, Badgriuel said:

We typically kept records of accounts going back an entire year, we always made back ups of the information and made sure to have it in two locations in-case something ever happened to one of them. Roughly around 1-2 million concurrent users. Pretty complex since it was easy to break things if you didn't know what you were doing. Our Engineers made sure the databases were always in top working order. That was one of the major things we wanted to make sure always was working besides the game itself. 

Our company had around 20 employees. 

There you go, you assume every dev wants to spent time fixing and maintaining database, and depending on the culture, that might not even be a priority.

What I have discovered in software dev is there isn't a real standard, you can get away with hobbling together any technology and as long as the majority of the user's are happy it's not worth fixing it unless it majorly breaks. None of the companies I worked for even wanted to test their code changes. The very same company I mentioned decided to put in a code change live on Friday before they left because it felt good and it helped them with the project scheduling. Lo and behold on Monday when I came in my inbox was flooded with complaints and I found out these geniuses just made a change without even thinking about serious stress testing, which would have delayed the release and added more time. they had to roll back the change and spend that "saved" time testing out a fix. But no one thought that testing changes going forward would be a good solution.

I work for a cloud storage company who instead of creating sophisticated automated database management systems would literally have devs runs scripts on the database periodically to do things like purge, look for overages on account, and billing irregularities. They wouldn't even bother converting the size of people accounts from bytes to gigabytes I would have to do the math in my head to convert it.

Another point I want to make is that DE might not be interested in going down to this level of detail on any one case because it might expose something about how their fraud detection system worked. For example, the truth is no matter how sophisticate their DB could be, they could probably only hold so many records pertaining to one item. For example the simple explanation is that perhaps they approach this situation in this manner because they do not want anyone trying to figure out a way to gift an item to the point it no longer register as fraudulent. So they ban any and all account associated with that item to make sure the not only does no one try but that anyone caught up in something like this think twice about their interactions. Like I said, if people are taking risks and receiving items from dubious or strange people/circumstances, then you eed to tread carefully. It it's too good to be true, it typically is on the internet.