I must have read this wrong. You can't actually be against stopping cheating on production shards right?
Actually yes, its a pointless measure that even IF it works (and works on *all* cheats), it will merely further unbalance the game as it is. Those who gained it all will be vastly superior to those who didn't. A cheater that stops cheating but has hundreds of millions of gold and luna vendors full of stuff, isn't going to be hurting by a long shot.
Again, IF this even works and IF it works on all cheats.
Soo, you want to run a study on a new shard and compare it to shards that have been running for...what...10+ years? I don't see how this would be a reliable comparison. The shards you are comparing it to have had a long long history of events, transfers, high populations of players in the past, etc. A variety of players that include cheats and non-cheaters alike. And we both know the population of this new shard will never be able to even reach the populations that other shards have.
Oh? I thought the promise of no cheats would be alluring to a great many people.
Well, from what I've seen, shard economies require more resources than legitimate resource gatherers are able to provide. This will either result in skyrocketing prices on resources, or a complete lack of availability of resources, or both. Most likely both.
And in all likelihood the game will suffer a steep decline in users quickly, further floodng the game. Shards would likely start being unsustainable and merged/shut down.
The 'shard economies' would have to adapt. I am perfectly happy for these cheat fixes to be implemented as soon as is feasibly possible.
It won't affect my 'economy' one iota. The only resources I buy come from npcs. The rest I get myself. It takes a while, but I'm playing a game, not competing in a race.
Uhm, then how exactly are the cheats affecting you then? If you play in your own bubble, it doesn't affect you either way.
There are any number of legitimate crafters who actually enjoy resource gathering, but have been discouraged from selling them because of trying to compete with scripters.
?!? The price of resources have been fairly constant over the years. The problem of course being that with the influx of large amounts of high end gear and gold over the years, many players are rich and resource gathering will in many cases not seem worth it.
Its really no different than the western world, we get rich and we don't really want to do the menial jobs anymore. It won't seem worth anymore to anyone.
Btw, you *assume* they're legit.
I think we would see a revival of the smaller vendor shops that we used to have.
lol, come on? You really believe that?
It still boils down to supply and demand... take away the scripted supply and you'll have real-live players step up to fill the void. As it is now, the real life players can't compete against multi-account scripters.
Why would real life players step up to fill the "void"? There would still be enough resources in circulation to last a decade or two, and by then the programs would have adapted anyway, if the game hasn't collapsed under the lost players.