I don't think using teleports is wrong, but I do think people who actually run the first half of a tier deserve more than what they get. It's a tough job, that.

i think the mechanic needs some fixing up, its way too easy to exploit it right now. and all the GM can do is warn/ban, which are only stopgap solutions.

The teleporting to Basil thing isn't an issue with teleporting. It's an issue with Basil.

The way his inventory is handled needs to be fixed somehow so that this basilporting crap can be fixed. I don't know how. But I do maintain that it does need to be fixed.

Or just make it so that Basil has no inventory or it's set to zero for anyone who doesn't arrive from the elevator.

Or just make Basil's inventory random for every player so there is no guarantee of a particular recipe when you teleport in.

Or Basil won't talk to non elevator arrivals? Classy Basil maybe?

@Rap, i think the only real fix will be a combination of Basil not speaking to those who didn't come by elevator (great idea) and an auction house.

@LobsterHime, If i busy a recipe and resell it, that is a full crown sink for the selling of that recipe. Eliminating ports to basil will be replaced by players buying recipes to resell. More recipes will be bought speculatively, and more will be sold in tradechat. Ultimately, almost just as many recipes would be sold. It would simply eliminate people profiting from the sell of recipes they don't own, at zero risk. I could just as easily argue you are ignoring the big picture, but i don't even really think it is a big picture argument at all. Just as many recipes would be bough (or very nearly). But they would be bought buy people who resold them, for about the same price you are already paying for port+recipe. Right in the 48-50k range, or 17-18k range depending on level of recipe.

@lobsterhime also, see my suggestion #3.

3. Just sell all 4 star and 5 star recipes in town at 18/19k for 4 star, and 48/49k for 5 star. And sell the randoms at basil for the 15/45k prices. This solves the port problem, and fits your big picture argument better than the port system does.

For a reseller to have any impact on the economy, that reseller has to have the crowns required to buy a recipe he thinks he (or she, but for simplicity's sake I will continue to use the masculine pronoun) can resell and then wait for a buyer to accept his offer. This is a fixed, one-time removal of crowns from the player economy with no guarantee that further crowns will be sunk. A teleport vendor, on the other hand need not have the crowns in-hand to cause other crowns to be taken out of the economy. As I said earlier, a virtually infinite amount of customers can take advantage of the teleport to buy as many recipes as they want.

Both merchants get a small premium for their services, but the total crowns earned by the reseller is just transferred from some other single player in a large sum (cost of recipe + premium); the profit of the teleport vendor comes in smaller sums from a lot of different players while the actual cost of each recipe purchase is taken out of the economy. With the resller you end up with one very rich guy (the merchant) and one poor guy (the customer), while with the teleport vendor you have one moderately rich guy (the vendor) and a bunch of poor guys (all customers). The goal of a sink is to get a lot of from a lot of participants in a virtual economy out of circulation.

Without Basil and players working to make access to recipes easier, more and more crowns will be generated (through normal gameplay) and continue to stay in the economy, driving up the price of other commodities (primarily ce, which presumably generates at a much slower rate than other virtually infinite drops from monsters). Resellers help this process, but not as effectively as teleport vendors.

Some other bad arguments:
sold in tradechat
That's a super great idea. I thought I was the only one who wanted more advertisements to sell things people don't necessarily want to buy in /2.</sarcasm>

suggestion #3
Yeah! I have been wishing there was a way for me to literally buy every single thing I need to make any equipment I want ever without once setting foot in the Clockworks. I mean, I can already do that now using the player economy, but I really wish it was much easer. Who the hell wants to play the game to show off any progress?!</sarcasm>

Just make basil levels ones that you can't join like JK, Treasure Vault, or Vanadork. I'm sick of paying 10CE to land there when I join a random party anyway. Problem solved.

When you buy a 4k port to B23 to buy a 5* recipe, 4k goes to the port vendor and stays within the player economy while 45k is permanently removed. When you buy a 5* recipe for 49k, 49k goes to the recipe reseller and stays within the player economy. The recipe seller could then use that 49k to buy more recipes from Basil (the only situation when the two scenarios are equivalent) but most likely he'll spend it on other things like ce and mats. When buying ce, there's the 2% tax that goes out of the economy, but the remaining 98% continues to circulate. There are no crowns removed from the economy when mats are traded among players.

Teleporting to Terminal floors is a major convenience for all players. Making it more difficult/impossible to make use of that convenience to benefit a small group of merchant elites is not, in my opinion, in alignment with the nature of this game. Neither is opening up access to currently-Basil-restricted recipes in Haven. There's a reason Basil only appears on specific floors with a limited, random selection of recipes. Even the recipe vendor in town (whose name I've forgotten) does not provide all 0-1* recipes all the time. Furthermore, it is no consolation for the majority of players who must sacrifice a great convenience so that an extreme minority can profit off of a Basil-free economy.

BTW, I forgot another effective crownsink: crafting. I personally have sunk most of my crowns into recipes, though I'm sure players who grind for UVs have sunk a lot of crowns from the economy at some point. I also undervalued the 2% tax on CE<->Cr trades. They're probably the largest sink for crowns in the game due to the sheer number of trades occuring every hour spread across every player in the game.

One reseller can spend a fixed amount of crowns and regain his losses (with a little profit) while a single teleport seller can sink a virtually unlimited amount of crowns from the economy.
I did account for it. What I meant by this statement is that a teleport vendor can continue advertising to allow other players to sink their 45k repeatedly while a recipe reseller can only resell as many as he has initial capital to spend. A reseller who completes 10 5* deals back-to-back will end up with ~490kCr when he's done, while a teleport vendor who gets 10 visitors will only have 40kCr. The "problem" is that if recipe reselling becomes the preferred (or only allowed) method of circulating recipes in the player economy, isolated pockets of crowns begin to accumulate among players who do nothing but reselling recipes. From there you face the usual problems of having too much currency and not enough commodities in a market.

ITT: Opinions.

The only two I actually see using numbers/statistics to back up their statements are Hime and Jeburk. [opinion]The best scenario, IMO, has to be the one proposed by Piebandit. Randomizing Basil's inventory as players go in will prevent someone staking out the "best" inventory he has, while still making Basil-porting as a viable means of profit.[/opinion]

Randomizing Basil's inventory opens up a new problem: for 10 energy you'll be able to change Basil's inventory, again and again till he's got what you're looking for. It would also make finding recipes easier in parties of four, since everyone has their own set of recipes presented to them, so four chances of finding the recipe you need. This doesn't appear to be the setup that OOO is after (although most of us players would love to see this).

Simply making the Terminal non-invite would already help a great deal. Then the only way to obtain recipes would be to mail the crowns, if you could trust the person to mail the recipe back. And after that transaction, the recipe can't be bought again. It would limit the no-risk recipe selling considerably. I'm against non-chat Terminals. Don't punish honest players for other players' possibly undesired behaviour.

But why are we trying to fix this anyway? Are some people here jealous at how inventively others can make crowns without investing crowns first? Why are players concerned that players are helping eachother out to find recipes, or to reach the more profitable floors? Isn't this what a multiplayer community is about?

Player A buys 10 5* recipes and sells them all for 50k each, he now has 500k
Player B sells 10 ports to basil for 5k each, he now has 50k

However, Player A, in order to buy those 5* recipes ALREADY HAD 450K, he only made 50k off the sales, the same as the second guy.

As for the argument of money pooling in certain people, while the player with a large capital has the greater ability to invest in recipes and sell them and anyone can sell ports, there are still only certain types of people who will take the time to do this and therefore the money is still pooling in certain individuals.

Personally i think selling ports is great, it allows a greater variety of recipe purchases for people in the market. It also gives people who make it to t3 basil an opportunity to make a little extra money if he has nice recipes without needing the capitol to invest in buying them. Not to mention avoiding the risk of buying recipes that you cant sell.

@ lobster and Dragn,
Again i want to preface this by saying the spirit of this is "Discussion Mode", not attack, flame, bogus comment driven.

I think that the player buying and selling recipes is generally a player who is more likely to be sinking money in general. People trying to hustle up 1k-2k profits on speculation reinvest that same money elsewhere, driving the market. The player who buys/resells recipe seems like would have little incentive to say, whew got 48k, 3k of profit, time to invest that all in CE and let it sit.

Conversely, i think the player selling ports to basil is much much much more likely to take 4-5k profit, and immediately convert it to CE. Repeat. Which would contribute to some of the market issues existing. I wonder if this type of behavior outweighs the positive sink they create.

It's impossible to know without some actual statistics that correlate how much money sunk it takes to offset X purchases of 100 CE.
I wish we had some kind of statistical analysis to check this type of thing.

People like myself used to carry 10-15 recipes (usually only 1, maybe 2 five-star, i don't have that kind of crowns to have a full stock of 5's) at all times to try and resale. Once upon a time (previous 2 weeks), i may have had that volcanic helm when i saw you shout that. If not me, then someone would have had it in their inventory.

As of about 3 days ago i came to terms with buying and reselling recipes is now a horrible horrible horrible horrible horrible (etc) investment. I have been slowly moving those last 3 recipes and will not buy a single one i don't plan on using again--unless later it's viable w/ auction house. Once upon a time (a week ago) i moved recipes easily w/in hours, next day max, of purchase. Now i've been trying to sell a heavy demo armor for 3 days. And several times have got no takers @ 15k. Horrible investment. Do you know why? Well, you guys know my feelings on this already.

:o It's just like playing stock though. You get gains, you get losses, if you take a risk, that's business with your selling profession

Actually you can, its just not called stock, its called bank account saving (yup I used the wrong term so sue me :D :D). Those people who are recipe sellers risk nothing but gain their money at a slower rate AND they have to divide it with a partner. But I went over the differences between all these services elsewhere.

At this point I'm ready to make a thread on a poll of things I bet won't change.