Petition to Demand a Response from Anet on Botting

Oh good lord, people. It's a phrase. "Petition to Demand Response" is a legal term used by protesters. I thought it was common knowledge, but apparently all of the white knights here think it's a grenade they can jump on to save Anet's life.

We're not "demanding" anything, we're "requesting". Otherwise, there'd be no need for a petition.

To be fair, that ingratitude was earned by Anet. We've gotten far too used to late updates, poor account security, game-breaking bugs, and a bot meta to have a gentle "tone" at this point.

Now, obviously those of us here still care about the game or the community, otherwise why would we be here? A negative tone doesn't mean we don't appreciate Anet's staff's hard work. It means that we're frustrated, because of our love for the game/staff and know that they're more than likely frustrated too.

We'd just like to hear that.

If I buy something and find out that it is "broken", I "request" it to be fixed.
If the seller dont care, I will buy from a different seller next time.

/signed

You seem to forget economics 101. Supply AND demand. Supply does not set the market price. The intersection of both variables do. No mean spirited botter can make someone pay 75-100k for his cupcakes unless he comes and knocks on your door and puts a gun to your head. Same thing with ectos. If they refuse to sell their ectos, then using your own argument, it will NOT affect you or me. If they do sell, prices will drop on ectos, and things will be cheaper. Sounds like a good thing to me. Poor people win. Rich botters with tons of ectos lose since the buying power of their stacks of ectos just went down the toilet. The marketplace solves itself because eventually they could drive down the price so low that it is not worth botting anymore. Remember when elemental swords were a rich man's toy? I made my living powertrading them at 100k+200e or more. Now they are 10k. Who benefitted? The poor guy did. He can now afford an elemental sword skin for 10k instead of it being in the hands of the stinking rich guys. The stinky rich guys lost out when their exclusive skins went from 1 million plus down to 10k. I paid 3000e for one of the first 29 everlasting beetle tonics when they were exclusive. I recently sold mine to a friend for 300e since now they are more common thanks to the z-chest. Who lost? Me, the stinking rich guy at the time. Who won? The not so rich guy who can pay 10% of what they used to cost. So... if your argument is that ectos are going to drop in price from the massive supply, I say "Good!" Rich guys and botters will lose. The rest of us hobos can buy some cheap ectos and blow them on some new toys, and if people do not want to trade in ectos, who cares, the botters sitting on piles of them can sell them even cheaper while we trade in gold or lockpits or shards or whatever. (Do not tell me the price of items will adjust for the price of ectos because I powertraded through the last 2 major fluctuations in ectos from 5k down to 3.3k back up to 8k+ then down to the current 6.5-7k, and I can tell you one thing, the price of the rare weps and minis I was buying and the price I was able to get stayed contant in ectos no matter what the price of the ectos was. As an aside, I was able to powertrade so much easier when ectos were low than when they were high. So poor people who want to become rich powertraders should welcome cheap ectos with open arms. I never found trading easier than when ectos were worth crap.)

And another thing, I keep reading this stupid argument that if other people get a title easy then it hurt me when I got my titles the hard way. No it does not. Your gameplay and your titles do not affect mine in any way. If they cut the requirements for titles in half tomorrow, that did not harm me in any way even though I slogged through a buttload of grind to get my gwamm. It might hurt my feelings, but I get called a noob 10 times a day and I am getting used to getting my feelings hurt in GW.

Remove the grind, reduce the title requirements, reverse the retarded decisions that nerfed skills for ursan, sf, 600 monks, and I will be willing to bet anything, that people stop looking for title shortcuts through botting and instead get them the fun way like we did in the past because the time vs. reward ratios will be back in line. I would love to gwamm my other characters, but right now the time (grind) vs. reward (gold or titles) is f---'d up so one is enough for me.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, or anything, but, it looks to me like botting is going to be one of those things that never goes away...

With all the advances in tech that keep on coming, it will always be possible for botters to keep one step ahead of the mods and admins.

Now, last Winter, Aion tried to do something about those bots-they used an automated process to identify the bots-and banned them by the thousands.

The problem was that there was a high incidence of collateral damage, lots of innocent players got banned too.

On the other hand, Mods and Admins can go into the game, and personally ban the bots, but they can only ban on bot at a time.

There's less chance of collateral damage that way, but it wasn't fast enough for the complainers, who wanted all the bots gone yesterday.

The point is that Aion took a severe hit to its reputation by over-banning, and wrongful banning, to satisfy the complainers, and also escalated the Bot Wars, by causing the botters to get into hacking other players accounts to bot with.

Thing is, you can either go fast to satisfy the complainers, and make lots of mistakes along the way, or you can go slow, ban on a one-by-one basis, make less mistakes and wrongful bans, and listen to endless complaints from the complainers that the company just doesn't care about its players...

Make up your mind. Will the botters ruin the economy with cheap ecto, or will they refuse to take less than what is the current market value? You've made two posts saying opposite things. But, I guess I should be used to that from you. This whole thread is full of it: "Botting is a problem!" "Go ahead and Bot, it's no problem, you can get the bot programs free and nothing will happen to you!" "There will be a new bot available soon! Free Ecto!"

You're like the whole marketing program for the bot sellers. You and Guru. Ridiculous.

Their resolve already have some cracks.

You can buy stacks of cupcake now for 11e witch is btw less then you could during event.

Ecto eventually will follow too.

yes botting is a problem, i was buying some unid today when i asked myself... so why im buying stuff that probably are botted when all i have to do is fire up a bot on my secondary account?

The bot tech reached a point where everyone can do that with a simple google search who will lead you to a trustworthy forum where you can download bots.

Other people will eventually realize that and they will either stop bothering about buying or selling stuff and/or they will join the bot party.

Hilariously wrong.

I wonder how many people you reported for being bots, just because they know how to walk back into town before starting their farming, and type /resign at the end of every run.

Sometimes it's the random behaviour that makes bots obvious. eg. Some of the HFFF bots did random movements around town, emotes etc between their runs. Which made them almost as easy to spot, as the bots that got stuck on the walls or followed the exact same path out theh door every time.

HFFF was extremely tedious, and you had to do thousands of runs to get anywhere. Most human farmers therefore didn't waste time running around town, or doing emotes between runs... they just ran out the door as fast as they could. And when they weren't doing that, they were usually motionless (afk, or reporting bots), chatting with people etc.

you are an idiot. there is something about the fact that a computer can run continued commands over and over all night long without messing up or missing a step, that a human can not do. Making humans obsolete to them, also, rupt bots dont rupt you until the last halfasecond or so before your spell ends, you can not cancel to trick it easily. Cupcakes shouldnt fall in price, theyre supposed to be a one time a year thing making them valued. bots make them worthless almost. More cupcakes=more farming=more bots=more materials=more supply=less demand=economy crash=money is harder to come across=more bot farming ... /cycle get the point, grow up,




also: /signed

i've always wondered why those that care about "the economy" play a game that, by design, has no economy.

i tend to agree that it would stop the massive growth of the botting community.. but i still think the genie is out of the bottle and too many new players are going straight to botting because their friends are showing them how easy it is vs. the reward/risk factor..

having said that... and not being a PvP'er.. i can't imagine how the above solution would help that situation though.

Because that's just a lie. The game has scarce stuff people want. Players exchange it. All you need for the most basic economy is two people and two goods (each of which must be valued by at least one person). GW has many more of both.

I'm sorry, you must have misread what I wrote. Botters could potentially ruin the economy, NOT by driving down ecto/item cost by overfarming BUT by overfarming and maintaining price.

Now, I could see how that might be hard for you to understand, but if supply goes up, yet demand is controlled, then you have a bigger problem than if the price crashes (e.g. US housing market in 2000/2008).

And there's still always the chance that prices will crash anyway, which is obviously also a bad outcome.

And I assume that anti-drug commercials promote drugs? Um....no. Giving people information isn't marketing. Spinning that information in a positive way is.

Botting is bad for the game. Don't hear me saying anything other than that.

Let's set the record straight since there's a lot of dubious economics now floating around this thread. KJ has observed that item prices remained the same even though the supply increased dramatically. There's a reason for that. Demand is more or less transparent in GW. If you're a seller, you know whether people want to buy your stuff at your price and can rapidly adjust your pricing.

Supply is much less transparent. If people are botting, the market will eventually stop clearing, but demand at the market price has to be exhausted before the price will fall. People on Guru are relatively well informed compared to most of the playerbase. Most players don't know that a botting problem exists, and they don't update their pricing expectations in response to a change in supply. But eventually those players have all the cupcakes they need at the market price, and the price starts to fall.

So KJ is right that the botting has produced an asset bubble that will eventually burst, but is off on why. "Ruin the economy" is probably an overstatement; as long as it is impossible to bot either ecto, zkeys or armbraces, a semi-sane economy will result (but some people will get hurt badly and others will make a killing). If all three can be botted easily, then we're in for another ugly price spiral.

KJ's opponents are correct that the market will reprice, but they are missing the bubble that has formed, why it formed, and how the bubble benefits the botter at the expense of the consumer.

This argument is garbage. I bet you'd be pretty unhappy if ANet released 10,000 Kanaxais tomorrow, Tramp. The value of a Kanaxai is tied up in its exclusivity. Not everyone can dedicate one. Take that away, and the years of labor you invested to acquire the goodies to buy a Kanaxai with go right out the window.

Well, I'm no economist, so I was just doing my best to explain the two most probable outcomes of ecto botting. However, your post makes a lot of sense and is not far off with zkey and ecto botting a modern reality.

I know that Regina took off for a few days, but I'm kind of shocked that we haven't had a reply on this yet.....but of course this isn't a GW2Guru thread about what color a Charr character's butthole hairs will be. Present concerns are discarded for "WILL WE GET PETZ?!" threads at this point.

*sigh*

True . The people in the Anti-L4D2 group were pre ordering L4D2 faster than people who weren't. Which has opened my eyes to realize when people say they are going to boycott <game> they are just blowing hot air and joining a QQ wagon for the lulz.

Even if everyone on a message board who were saying they would boycott something did, it's not like they are even a drop in the bucket next to the silent masses that have better things to do than troll forums.

Well if we look back at some older boycotts and messages to developers, we can see stuff like MW2

http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_pe...d.cgi?dedis4mw

254483 Total Signatures, seems like a lot huh? Well it even that number wasn't enough to make the developer implement dedicated servers to MW2.

^ like I said earlier, Game developers don't care about boycotts as they rarely take their customers' demands seriously (and shouldn't). Gamers are fickle. They'll buy either way.

Honestly, as a gamer, you have no power outside of what they give us. With GW2 coming out and the devs abandonment of GW1, that leaves us with no power.

We can ask for a comment, for help, or for support, but that doesn't mean we'll get it. I hope we do, because that would encourage me at least a little that Anet still cares about this game.

/notsigned if you really want Anet's attention open up NCsoft support tickets.

I haven't seen any bots either and they haven't been affecting my gameplay of the game. *shrug*

even went to HA and looked around for 3 hours didn't see any bots.

Either way I have faith in Anet that they're doing a great job and they'll get these bots even without needing to respond to this thread. :x

Hit B during a mAT. You'll see all the bots you want. Hell, a guild's tag in this month's mAT was a botting program name Zzz.

send a ticket 1 week ago, never had an answer

Obviously you don't want to see theses bots, but you can't deny their presence in bot PvE and PvP.
The last monthly was the worst exemple of botting-without-any-fear.

I'll believe what people are saying. If this was a petition for anet to do something about the bots ASAP I'd sign it.

But sadly if an anet rep was to post: "We're working on it" and I didn't see any progress in the next few days I'd ramble on how they shouldn't tease their playerbase like this.

Which happens all too often.

Also sad sad that these PvPers do this in this game. I myself never liked the actual PvP like RA and CA because they're so boring and repetitive and mundane.

I did like TA though but they got rid of that.

/signed... Oh and.. Hi gwguru.

Before I get started, I'm a PvE player regularily. I like this game more for mindless hack n slash of mobs in pve than calculated destruction in arenas. I don't bother farming or speed clearing areas. I like the challenge of actually killing stuff. If PvE bots overfarm and ruin the ingame economy, it won't affect me. I've always held a view that everything in this game is just monopoly money and we're all waiting for anet to land on Boardwalk with a hotel.

While I do PvP (RA, AB usually) I don't play regularily enough or am I dedicated enough to it to be able to spot a bot from another player there, but that's just pathetic. If people don't have the ability or skill to overcome their opponents through creative play styles, obviously an inanimate object should do it for you. The only personal experience I equivocate this to is map hacking in Starcraft - yes I know two very different things and Blizzard, for a time, attempted to stop it. But it still happened, evolved, and probably will continue to happen later in Starcraft 2 (once they reverse engineer a way to accomplish this feat). It immediately impacts the enjoyment of the game for parties who don't adhere to a meta of cheating. I wish they would have a no-tolerance policy against such violations of rules of conduct and / or EULA, but they don't and probably never will.

People in this thread have said many different factors for why people use these instead of actually playing the game, and most are true I won't deny it. But how many people have looked at the evolution of gamers? I'm almost 24, I've spent a fair amount of time enjoying video games. I don't have adjectives like 'elite' or 'noob' in my lexicon. I remember an era where the only thing that mattered was getting a higher score on Atari than the person next to you on the couch. Obviously a grind. Then games started to having stories, plots, characters, and sometimes an ending. Then with Ninja Gaiden we were introduced to cut scenes. This was a time when gamers weren't goaded into games by fancy, shiny graphics or polygon counts, frame rates etc. Sure the box art fooled us and terrible games were produced en masse, but even those bad games could be good.

As the game companies evolved, so did the games, but the gamers have always held the same attitude. Regardless of the game, they want to find the easiest way to do something. For example, let's use Gradius on NES. It's a hard game, not impossible, but hard. While porting it to the NES the programmer found it too difficult to beat in order to test all the levels to insure that they functioned properly. To alleviate this, he put in a well known button combination I hope every one has heard of. Ever since then, gamers want a back door or short cut. Beating a game normally is always enjoyable, but the third or fourth time through you might want to skip the beginning and get to the fun parts. But this only affects your enjoyment of the game, or maybe a few other people in the room.

Once the internet became widely available and games took advantage of it for multiplayer cheating went from being fun to being a problem, but in my opinion majority of gamers haven't been able to evolve their gameplay past this. In Diablo 1 try and find a GPoW that wasn't duped. Sure, D2 addressed it some what but it wasn't enough. Any advantage players could find, they took. I remember playing Halo 2 on Xbox Live and loosing 1 Flag CTF because of blue screening (causing the game to hiccup for 20-60 seconds by resetting the router and have most players attempting to reconnect, while the host was able to roam freely.) I'm sure many other people here can recount stories of games they've played online where hacking, modding, or other third party programs have affected a game they enjoyed to play.

By nature, gamers will always take the easier path. Why should I fight all the way to the end in Super Mario Bros. 3 when I can just pop in a Game Genie use Skywalker and get across the level above the top of the screen? Both ways will take me Bowser in his castle. The same applies directly for GW, why should I farm x myself when bot y can do it? I personally have a sense of achievement in game after actually playing through something rather than watching some one run it for me. Don't misconstrue that statement - it's only a game, I know all I really did was take time off my life, but if I am going to sit on my ass all night I might as well do it myself not watch some one else play the game I paid for.

To the people that make bots - kudos. You're intelligence and ingenuity are impressive if you can take an AI and get it to successfully farm or complete something in the game.
To the people who put them on the internet and the people who perpetuate their use through laissez-faire attitudes, you're the problem.
Stop being part of the problem.
To the people that use them, if you can't achieve something ingame yourself, then you probably shouldn't have it. If you can't beat teams in HA, Codex, or RA on your own you should probably practice more. If you can't interupt, then maybe thats not your role in a team. If you're too lazy to farm those stacks of whatever, maybe you shouldn't have them. This game was meant to be, and should be, about skill, not wealth or achievement.

To sum it up - Anet can't do anything. They'll build a better mousetrap, and the the botters will build a better mouse. The only way this will stop is if gamers stop looking for cheats and people stop marketing them. Take 600/Smite. Whomever came up with it was a genius. The person that put it on wiki, thats another story.

/unsigned

Also I have to say the 'fight fire with fire' arguement is just terrible. If everyone bots then who is actually playing this game?

Anyways, that was my rant. Feel free to destroy it with your knowledge of language and a lexicon of harsh, biting satire. Trolls can go back to harrassing billy goats. Now if you'll excuse me, I don't want to grow up, want to be a Toys R Us kid...

Yes, I would be mad, but I posted specifically about title requirements, not supposedly limited items. If title requirements were cut by 90%, it really would not impact my gwamm. I might be mad that I did not wait until the new lower requirements, but such is life and you get over it. (I am still mad they killed my 600 monk. I have not gotten over that yet.) Oh, and I am selling the kanaxai in large part because it just depresses me to own it. I have a lot of good memories from the game and this kana used to be my best friend's. He got scammed out of it by a bunch of euro-fags who then sold it to me. I did not find out it was actually my best friend's one until 2 months later when he emailed me at my private email explaining why he could not bear to log in anymore. So gained a kana, lost a great friend. That's not how I want to remember GW1. So selling this cursed thing and buying my first pet back, island guardian, that I ever started this game with 3.5 years ago. At least then I might have some closure and a little bit of good feelings left as GW2 is dangled in front of me. Maybe good feelings... that 600 nerf is still pissing me off.

Oh, the housing market analogy on the previous page does not work. The housing market in 2008 did not crash because of oversupply and constant demand. It crashed because the Democrats in charge of the banking committee (Christopher "I get V.I.P. Loans" Dodd, Barney "The Male Brothel" Frank, Chuck "Chuck You" Shumer, and Maxine "I'm A Socialist" Waters) forced the banks to make ever higher percentages of mortgages to applicants REGARDLESS of their income or ability to repay the loan, in order to increase low income home ownership. This policy started under Bill Clinton's watch and the democrats in charge continued it under Bush, since the democrats controlled Congress. I remember buying a house in the Clinton years and Wells Fargo bank asked me what race I was. WTF? I told them it was none of their business and it has no basis for the loan. The loan officer then told me it was part of the new form the bank had to fill out due to Clinton regulations and that if I refused to answer she was instructed to look at me and make her best guess as to what race I was. Each year the congressional finance committee forced banks to slowly increase the percentage of these "subprime" loans being made to "diversify" home ownership. It got to the point where the loans were made just on the basis of your "claimed" income. The bank did not actually have to verify your income at all. Whatever you stated on the application was good enough. You could make up any damn numbers you wanted. Those were called "no-doc" loans. All was fine and dandy as they packaged these things up and sold them in bulk back to the government Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Is it any surprise that the boards of these institutions were packed with political patronage jobs? They were mostly former Clinton workers who were paid off with directorships. Hell, they even cooked the books in order to hit the targets they needed to pay themselves millions in bonuses. Those political patronage jobs sure pay off big time! The law of averages masked the true disaster these bundles of mortgages were going to have. Then one day the economy takes a dip, the subprime borrowers get hit the hardest, and all that paper turned out to be worthless. The bank assets get killed, lending stops, and the housing market takes an even bigger dump. So the 2008 bubble was not oversupply and constant demand, it was caused by political manipulation in a private sector market.

Maybe... just maybe... if I was smart enough I could come up with an analogy something like Anet being the "government politicians" screwing around in the marketplace everytime they monkeyf--- around with the nerfing and buffing of skills. Like the politicians pretending to be market wizards when they are clearly complete idiots, I do not think the people at Anet realize what motivates and what creates a disincentive for people playing GW. I am not sure where to go with that analogy, but it is there somewhere. I think I will go eat dinner instead. Cya.

ah well since my thread has died, and this one is active, i'll /sign

They both serve the same function: signaling accomplishment. The only difference is a matter of degree.

...

Here's how this works: the government failed to appropriately regulate lending. The loan officers (I once was one) got paid on the basis of the business they booked. The banks were in a classic "heads I win, tails everyone else loses" situation. They were guaranteed a bailout if things went south. So the banks funded far too many risky loans. If it works (and it worked phenomenally in the short run), the banks profit. If not, the taxpayers bail them out. Hard to pass on risks when the upside is huge and the downside is minimal.

Now, since everyone and his brother could get a loan, builders kept building to service demand. Once the system failed, lenders had to be more conservative. The result was a glut of supply on the market.

Demand didn't change. People were still willing to pay the same amounts for a house. But capacity to buy did. The result is a crash in asset values.

I don't have time to read this thread and I don't have time to see the direction the discussion is proceeding. However as this is directed at Anet I would like to say the following: I am a terrible person who has long derived enjoyment from other people's suffering. I have long hung around likeminded individuals and the list of our bans from this game is extensive. So strong were our bans that one of our members names was put on the restricted list long before words such as "(filtered by guru, not the F-bomb, it rhymes with punt)", "dyke", or "vagina". Our longtime guild was in the running for guild of the week (back when people cared), but was removed when they realized who was in that guild. And while none of us (as far as I know) have botted, that is irrelevant; all of our shenanigans are insignificant next to the effect that botting has had upon the credibility of this game.

In short, I dislike botting and am appalled that it is being allowed to run as rampant it has been today.

You are absolutely correct on the moral hazard of the government standing behind the banks to bail out risky lending. However, you are wrong when you attribute it to government failing to regulate it. Government over regulation, and specifically the democrats, were the cause. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 under Carter was put in place to increase minority lending. Fine. However Clinton took that program and used the HUD agency (Housing and Urban Development) to expand the number of risky loans exponentially. The banks were forced to make ever higher percentages of their loans to people who could not pay them back or face penalties from the government. The same idiots on the Congressional Finance committee who raised the percentages are now trying to blame everyone else. You are right, the banks did not care because it meant more profit for them as long as the government (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) was buying up the subprime pools and basically ready to bail them out if things went bad. Well now Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are asking for another 400 billion today to bail them out of all these HUD loans. Just look at today's Investors Business Daily Editorial. Government regulation was the problem both in creating the mess AND, as you say, in creating the moral hazard of the banks. In my opinion, there should be some congressmen in jail right now as well as Raines and a bunch of the other democrat cronies under Clinton who raped Fannie Mae and cooked the books to get their bonuses. They knew this paper they were buying up and reselling to investors was junk, but they just took the money and ran. Investors Business Daily article just from today on this very thing:

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnal...aspx?id=532484

So this whole thread in a nut shell...

Bots won't be stopped
Lux JQ is bad
Koreans have been botting HA for 5 months + now
Anet doesn't care about bots
Reporting gets you no where
Kurzicks still boast about every win in JQ
People don't like contests and who judges them
People like going off topic for politics
Halls will soon be held by a team of 8 bots
Raptors and TopK can be farmed via bot
People seem mad at Anet and at each other
Grind is no good


I have probably missed more points,but for now this is good enough to say that GW is going down the shitter.

@talon994

that seems like a fair assessment to me based on all i have read.

@ Martin & Tramp:

You two done with that little contest you're having? Besides, what's the need for analogies anyway? Botting is wrong, bad, against EULA, cheating, etc.... There. Easy, simple and without the need for one-upsmanship.

@ANet:

Yeah, I don't like botting and would like it to be looked at please. Thank you.

All of the problems in gw would be easier to handle if they just had a larger Live Team

Nerel, as of this moment, there is nothing else you can do to counter the interrupt bots besides cancel cast. The way you provided isn't realistic since we all know that Anet won't do anything. Sure, if Anet will ban the bots, the way you listed will be one thousand times more effective than mine. However, we all know that hackers always find ways to get around the system.

For the farm bots, if the players don't want to fight fire with fire, they will have to swallow the bitter pill and play in an unfair environment. It's simple, people. Anet will not do anything about these bots so either you join the botters or keep playing and stop crying.

That being said, my friends from the alliance have farmed for the past 2 weeks (about 300 hours online) straight without logging off and none of them were banned. They all have at least 1,000 ectoes each. I don't think they will get banned anytime soon since the programming knowledge they have far surpasses Anet programmers' knowledge. I doubt that the Anet programmers even hold a PhD or Masters in computer programming. This is sad. People who can work are paying for those who are unable to do their jobs right. Why bother working when you can't do anything right?

Guys,
I heard they are making a W/Mo RA bot...
This could destroy RA forever.

Yes and she comes with Mending, Frenzy and Healing sig that she uses together all the time and she is blond. )

Wow wammo joke, welcome to 4 year ago

This is full of win

Have you ever noticed how Anti drug spots make it clear that bad things happen because of drugs? That's what makes them ANTI. Yet, when someone in the thread said, "I don't want to bot, A-Net might ban me." You were quick to jump in and tell them that nothing bad would happen from botting. According to you if they run a bot their account is perfectly safe. That's not anti-anything. That's -- to quote you -- spinning that information in a positive way. The information you've given is that bots are free, readily available and completely safe with more and better options on the horizon. Not exactly a negative spin.

There are some similarities between simple economic models and pixelated economic models. Market glut + controlled market isn't one of them. It makes no difference if someones chest is full of ecto until they either start to sell them or stop buying them. Your stand that they will break the economy and still keep the price exactly the same is nonsensical.