Here is why allowing friendly pirates or manipulative cloning is terrible for this game
Clones and friendly pirates are not destroying the economy in vmk. The banning of clones, however, will likely have a negative effect on the economy. Many ultra-rich players were able to spread their wealth over multiple accounts. Many would maintain several characters with rare clothing collections (frequently a male and a female account) each with their own unique personalities. Much of this wealth is now going to be concentrated back to single accounts as they will no longer be as interested in maintaining their clone’s lifestyle if they rarely use the alt I the game.
sorry, but no, there is absolutely no argument for how maintaining a clone's "lifestyle" (playing a virtual game under different names?) keeps the economy alive. If a person has their items distributed across multiple accounts, this accomplishes nothing for anyone else in the game other than making it appear that there are more real life players than there really are. This might help keep people around to a small degree but as far as the number of items in circulation or the demand for items it does nothing.
It is true that mostly all the items released in the beginning of the game aren't really around much anymore because most of the people that have them have left. That's why the "value" of old ultra rares, or even regularly distributed items, is so high the seller can basically name their price because there's usually only one person at any given time trading it.
The solution (aside from re-releasing every item and starting the game from scratch and making the last 4 years of buying/trading pointless to all of us) is to bring those players back and restore the supply and demand for every item to what it's supposed to be. That's what balancing the trade economy literally is.. creating an even supply and demand. Everybody wins in that world and that's what it was like when the game had so many players all the time. How did this problem arise? Aside from other staff issues that I won't go into, allowing "friendly" (lol) pirates was one of the main reasons.
When many many people are playing pirates the serious way (which they used to) overall lots of rewards are given out and it's all based on how you play the game. Which is perfectly fair. When players come along and farm for keys and credits, dominating not only the lobby but also the trading market, it leaves the people playing for real with no choice but to do the same thing or fall behind....or quit. Which they did. And for people who never play pirates at all, they still face a trade economy overrun by a few players which makes them want to quit too. And if the friendliers use clones? well that just adds a whole nother layer of unfairness. So not only does cloning/friendly pirates mess up the trading market bigtime but it also drives players to quit which then multiplies the issue even further.
And "friendly" pirates is not the only way to talk with friends and make credits at the same time, I can think of several others.
Also, if for some reason a person is so desperate to keep multiple personalities alive in-game or needs another account to keep their newly-redesigned inventory organized
You can:
- Use a clone for storage
- Use a clone for talking to people, whilst doing something else (e.g. have one account earning credits or riding rides, with another account talking to friends in a room)
- Use a clone for anything that does not create extra items (e.g. a character implimented in your guest room to enhance the experience)
it doesn't seem like that should be an issue.
I just hate seeing so many people not understand the real problem here so had to explain it. In the end, it's best to look at how the game was originally run. And the cloning/friendly pirates debate never even began there. Hopefully staff will keep thinking in this way moving forward