20 replies to this topic

[Keil]

Neopians say that the duping ruined the Neopian economy. And I am here like: are you sure or are you just talking out of your ass to save face? If I learned anything from AP Macro/Micro economics back in high school, it's this: you can't repair one economy the same way you repair another one. It's like giving Aspirin to two different patients with headaches. One patient has a mild fever while the other has a throbbing brain tumor. One aspirin won't yield the same results in both patients.

 

So why does an average neopian think that stopping the duping will save the Neopian economy just because it helped another economy somewhere else. Maybe the injection of this hard-to-seek items will benefit the already broken economy and have the game's "richness" level more accessible. It's too early to predict the effects because there are factors clouding one's prediction like TNT's choice of possibly rolling over the servers and players hoarding everything (removing items like SuAPs and MSPP from circulation). I'm mostly poking at one Neopian's comment I read on the phone today.

 

Ignore my blather above. I'm a bit tipsy and I rolled my ankle which doesn't hurt now but I will feel it tomorrow.

 

Simple question:

 

Does the duping really hurt the economy?

 

>>YES

>>NO

[Swar]

I hope not, I want to sell my duped swords.

 

If it does, I don't really care

[Neoquest]

Duping NP - yes.
Duping high end items - no.

[Kibitz]

There's no real use for nps if everything gets duped......

[Kat]

Honestly I think a little of both.

 

I agree with you on adding more of the very expensive items back into circulation, making them more accessible to the average neopets user. Any other items duped will eventually settle and find their way out of circiulation by the usage of the users (paint brushes, morphing potions, etc) or just decrease in value, which I don't think is a bad thing.

 

As far as the NP duping goes, yes I do think the mass duping of NP by the billions will hurt the economy. If TNT doesn't rollback or freeze all the NP dupers they should perhaps create an NP sink of some sort. I do think they will just end up freezing anyone with 1b+ np as now it would be difficult for them to distinguish between legit and illegit.

 

However we do need the remember that the economy was fucked anyway thanks to the Habitarium mass np gains.. so we're screwing an already fucked economy  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[masterpro]

Looks like the rich gap got smaller.
It's a balanced out playing field.

[masxed]

NO

One of the reasons new users don't stay long or enjoy the game is because all of the cool and exciting parts of the game are for people who cheat, elites, manically addicted personalities (me?). It takes about 1666 successful days of sending max in fashion fever to save up for a draik egg LOL. If new users could afford cool BD sets, nice pets, and other fun items without having to put loads of effort into it they would probably like the site a lot more. More active players sounds like it would be a GREAT thing?

[Keil]

YES

 

The duping glitch isn't just limited to items. Neopoints have also been duped, lending to easy billions, The "value" of neopoints and items are now utterly shot and will forever be if TNT does not take action by rolling back the servers or catching every last duper.

There's no real use for nps if everything gets duped......

 

I really believe thinking the value of the NP will drop because of the NP dupe is shallow. Instead of thinking Neopets as a world economy, think the Neopian economy as a bubble economy with nothing to standardize the value of neopoints but itself. That premise takes away any external influences that'll affect the price per neopoint in whatever units.

 

The biggest issue I see with those opinions is that you forget that in order for NP's value to lower beyond its previously already abyssal value, the duped NP has to be in circulation. If the NP is not being used to trade, it might as well not be counted in the economy.

 

What if there is an injection of 1000 trillion NP into the economy rather than an imaginary infinite instant injection of neopoints. What would happen?

 

The NP dupe is limited to a few during a small window for a handful of people and later opened up to a bigger group of people, but the total of people who had access, let's label them as The Rich were still a handful or even the top half percent. Assume that The Rich didn't have their accounts frozen, what would happen then? They would spend the NP. But what would they spend the NP on? Eveything is relatively cheap with 2b NP handy. And if I had to guess, the problem is not the influx of neopoints, but rather the trouble with spending. With that, I foresee The Rich facing:

• The paranoia of sellers prevents big ticket item trades for NP and items known to be targeted by the dupe. The Trading/Auction Chat are sharks for cheaters.
• If TNT never freezes account with 2B NP and Neopia settles from the duping and into a "normal Neopets economy", The Rich would fear risking their account and would not spend much of it to avoid attention.
• Really, any action with a great deal of Neopoints in a short period is suspicious and cause worry for the Rich. Even the dr_sloth auctions which I foresee as the only worthwhile opportunity for The Rich to use the NP would be seen as a taboo in protect their account.
• If The Rich do break any of the above, their account would freeze and the NP would not go anywhere but the abyss.

Thus, the 1000 trillion NP in all of The Rich's accounts fully never reached being into circulation and most of it rots in the bank. I don't see the duped NP being a problem at all.

[Pilot]

 

NO

One of the reasons new users don't stay long or enjoy the game is because all of the cool and exciting parts of the game are for people who cheat, elites, manically addicted personalities (me?). It takes about 1666 successful days of sending max in fashion fever to save up for a draik egg LOL. If new users could afford cool BD sets, nice pets, and other fun items without having to put loads of effort into it they would probably like the site a lot more. More active players sounds like it would be a GREAT thing?

 

If anyone new could just easily obtain everything, what incentive would there be for people who have already put in a great deal of time and money (legit or not) to stay?

[jinq]

 

 

 

If anyone new could just easily obtain everything, what incentive would there be for people who have already put in a great deal of time and money (legit or not) to stay?

 

ucs are untouched

[Karyx]

My thoughts on this issue:

 

1) MSPP avatar users will whine but have to suck it up. The avatar just isn't that hard to obtain anymore. Its only novelty was that the MSPP (TCG) was very hard to obtain. The item itself is virtually useless.

2) SuAP owners will cry themselves to sleep at night because they thought it'd be a good investment and/or they are reselling. Battledome has been rendered obsolete and very few people actually care about 2-Player BD enough to see this powerful BD item back in circulation. Again, it's mostly just a novelty for the avatar.

3) The duped NP might make it out of accounts they were made in, Dan has mentioned he's spent 500mil on various shops/trades/auctions, but most will probably lay stagnant, as with most of the NP already being hoarded by people who have max NP.

4) Draiks will be more accessible, maybe encourage not-so-frequent users to come play a bit more so they can get one for themselves. The only thing this hurts are pet traders, but I don't really care much for them, so screw them really. PDEs were already cheap to begin with anyway. Same with PBs.

 

To answer your question: No, I don't think it will affect the economy at all. It might deter people from buying these higher-end items for a time, but it'll pass, especially if it's seen that TNT isn't really taking any actions against those duped items. The Neopian Economy is already a bust due to the number of players actually still playing, it might actually do them some good to have some things be easily obtainable. 

 

Feelings get hurt, investments sink, people will bitch. Especially the people who take pleasure in owning such rare items or a ton of NP. Those people can go suck it lol

[Pavement]

The price of SuAP's never had an effect on the economy. I think it depends on what items end up being duplicated en masse.

[ASadDog]

I vote No on both Neopoints and items. The money would be an issue if it could somehow get to a huge number of people, but spreading that wealth around at all right now will look suspicious and gradually leaking it out won't cause any huge imbalances. The value of high end battledome items was really getting out of hand, too, so I don't mind those deflating.

 

It actually would be great if nice equipment like that were more widely available to normal users, but the battledome has other annoying barriers to mid/upper-tier battling that would need to be sorted out before it looked attractive to an average player. Training time gets really absurd, for one thing. And there's not much to do in the battledome besides the Obelisk war and guild-run fight clubs. A more official fighting tourney could be exciting, or another plot with war elements at least.

[Cloud9]

Well said about the NP glitch, Keil. I definitely agree there. Just think about all the other games you've played and perhaps applied a money cheat to - did you end up using all that money? Probably not. You bought what you needed/wanted, and the rest kind of sat around. As an average Neopian, I really doubt you're gonna be spreading your glitched wealth around.

 

As for item duping...

 

I'd probably group the entire Neopets userbase into three categories:

 

1) Top "Hardcore" players (they do the whole BD thing and run around flaunting crazy trophies)

2) Regular players (they try hard to primp up their accounts, but they mostly spend their time primping their pets)

3) Casual players (they do random shit... play games once in a while, tickle their pet, whatever)

 

Before this whole duping fiasco, most of these duped items were in the hands of category #1. Now because these "extremely rare" items have been duped, everyone in category #2 now can access them because it's become "affordable". Also let's be honest here - most of these high-end BD/avatar items are more or less a "prestige" symbol. When you saw an user had it, you assume that they were "rich" enough to get one, or knew a "rich" friend to have one. As for BD items, what good is a really good weapon if your pet's stats suck? Therefore, I don't really thinking item duping hurts the Neo-economy at all. It just forced a "decrease" in a few items' prices by a lot.

ucs are untouched

 

That's about the only thing that's still "rare" on Neo lol... everything else can actually be obtained in some way or form.

Edited by Cloud9, 02 October 2014 - 08:04 PM.

[Kaddict]

Hurts the economy. With np, obvious inflation. With the items, if the most rare and powerful items are not worth anything anymore, why would people pay 20m for others? All items will deflate because of it, mixed with the trillions of np added to the economy isn't good. But Neo was dead anyway.

[2NE1]

I don't think MSPP & BGC matter much.

But well, if you could dual wield SuAP at no cost, would you bother buying anything else? 

[Karyx]

Who even really cares so much about the Battledome these days though?

[Ka1]

Hasnt tnt been mass releasing things to deflate them

Hasee was UB before the gave out at the negg cave

a lot of items are deflated by tnt and i dont see how duping is going against that.

ppl complain and move on after the mass release

 

Neo is just a place to have fun and achieve goals like trophies, av count...basically pixels.

[Eefi]

Duping NP - yes.
Duping high end items - no.

This. NP is just currency, items have "value". There are some ridiculous rare items like those stamps (which are even one-use).

From a players perspective, I think give everyone a chance to get even the rarest items because Neopets is just a damn grinding game.

[masxed]

This. NP is just currency, items have "value". There are some ridiculous rare items like those stamps (which are even one-use).

From a players perspective, I think give everyone a chance to get even the rarest items because Neopets is just a damn grinding game.

So true, the game is sometimes a big pain considering the sheer quantity of effort needed for certain achievements.   

[Legitboi]

i don't really care so much about neopets...... it is getting BORED without use the cheat program.