Virilneus’ GS4 Idea Book

Seriously, I mailed feedback months ago, no response, so I REPORT this bug on the forums hoping that they FIX it. What do they do? They cover it up! Maybe they don’t have the manpower to fix it, (believable) maybe staff doesn’t prioritize it, maybe, just maybe, the people who currently abuse it are friends with GMs (I know, I’m being purposefully incendiary, so sue me). Well, screw them, 3-400 active players view this site daily. Maybe its okay to them to just have a few “special” people abusing game mechanics generating millions of free silvers monthly, but if I tell you all how to do it perhaps it becomes a big enough problem for them to finally fix it. Not that a fix would even be hard, you have to stop a single event that happens once per month and this isn’t ovulation I’m talking about here, they know when it happens down to the minute.

You know what grinds my gears? Telling me not to report a bug on the boards… sheesh… I swear if they marginalize the officials any further by putting in cumbersome and frequently changing and or different depending on who you talk to rules… No discussion of broken game mechanics now? What is the game mechanics subforum for then?

Maybe they should have staff spend more time fixing problems than preventing players from discussing them. There is a thought.

Dear ASPEN,Your post was hidden from the GemStone IV Forum.  Discussing and/or promoting methods of abusing game mechanics can harm the game and ruin the fun for other players.  Such methods should be reported to staff via in game bug reporting methods or email.  Check the Contacting Customer Service information in the Help section of our web site to learn more ways to report methods and incidents of game mechanics abuse.

The problem area of this post is:

The whole post.  There is absolutely no reason for you to post messages detailing how to abuse game mechanics.  Even if you think the proper channels are ignoring you on such issues.

Please remember that you agree to abide by the Rules for Posting and the Terms of Service each and every time you login to our services.  If you need to review these items, they can be found via the Forum Policies link at the top of every forum’s page and from the customer service page, respectively.

Thank you for your cooperation in this matter. If you have further questions, please feel free to contact me at MOD-GSRALIEL@play.net.

A copy of your post is included for your reference, below.

-Raliel

==== BEGIN COPY OF POST ====
Forum:    GemStone IV
Category: Game Design Discussions
Topic:    Player-Run Shops
Msg#:     3552
Subject:  How to Abuse Game Mechanics to Buy a Shop CHEAP

I sent a feedback to Simutronics about this awhile ago, no response, I didn’t want to post the bug letting others take advantage of it, but since no one wants to fix it, might as well let everyone know about it.

So, if you don’t visit your shop for 6 months or don’t pay rent your shop gets repossessed. At this point it can be claimed by someone else.

The thing is, when this happens is known and can be manipulated.

Shortly after 1 AM eastern on the 1st of every month the game server goes through each shop and updates it. It takes a little while (and different towns go at different speeds) but when it is done you will be able to buy a deed. Just set up a script to start spamming the command and run it at 1 AM and you’re all set.

But a deed is not a shop, the guy will sell you, and anyone else, a deed so long as there is a vacant shop, he could sell 100 deeds for 1 vacant shop, then it is whoever gets to that shop first. What you can do is have a movement script to immediately run and spam every room of the shop area trying to claim your shop, and if that doesn’t work in subsequent months you can skip the deed buying portion (they don’t expire) and just room spam starting at 1 AM.

If you MA you can have all your characters get deeds to increase your chances. You can also hit multiple towns in a single night because they stagger.

If a shop in WL goes for 10m, and a shop in FWI goes for 5, and SOL and Mule go for 5 each, imagine how much money you can make! All you gotta do is abuse this game mechanic (it is mechanics abuse because you’re using OOC knowledge to give your character an unfair in game advantage - not unlike say imbuing ranger rods repeatedly for sale at the pawn, who remembers that one?)

So you claim the shop, then sell it to another player, pocket the silvers, rinse repeat every month.

Some players have already been doing this for a long time, reaping tens of millions of silvers in profit, don’t you want a shot too? Just drink some coffee, the next cycle is new years eve so you’ll probably be up late anyways.

The obvious solution to this, considering how few vacancies there are, is to have some GM schedule a monthly real estate auction and let players bid on the property. Put it on the calendar. It’ll be good RP, it’ll drain silvers from the gain, and you’ll be stopping this abuse.

But until then, its like the Oklahoma land rush. Mark it on your calendar’s folks! New years eve, after the GM openhouse, ready your scripts or macros and head to the shop deed guy with note in hand. You could turn a 100k deed into millions!