The Anti-Laundering System is a Card Duplication System

[Noahs Second Country]

So I don't have to reread all the replies, what is the chance of getting a certain card for a certain rarity if only a small amount of bids are placed and is it an exponential function as more bids are placed or a linear function?

Just a clarification: we don't actually know if they stack. Cards have been pulled at the first match, or even 10 minutes after the most recent bid.

So neither? It's hard to know exactly how the system works.

[Holland DS6]

Okay, but about how many bids would one need to do for one card, so is that something that hasn't been figured out?

[Refuge Isle]

so is that something that hasn't been figured out?

As the previous post states, no. It has not.

[Noahs Second Country]

Okay, but about how many bids would one need to do for one card, so is that something that hasn't been figured out?

There is no guarantee to pulling a card just because you bid up on it. There are a variety of [unknown] factors at play, and the reason why people can successfully abuse the system is because they have hundreds of farms with packs saved up, thus increasing the overall probability of them pulling the card.

[Recuecn]

TL;DR: If you're complaining that other people are getting too rich, quit whining. If you're worried that your expensive cards' values are dropping... quit whining.

What about if you're worried about an exploit rendering intended play obsolete?

I don't think 'Intended Play' exists, as such: the only guide to the card game from the admins basically says "what it is is up to you." To me, 'what it is'/'Intended Play' is about collecting rare cards. It boils down to the title of the OP: TCALS is a card duplication system, and in my opinion that's great for helping people collect cards. It used to be a one-sided market where players controlled demand but supply would be the same for every card. Now players who own a card can create more supply as well, and that just makes everything a lot more interesting, as well as helping people with their collections.

I could give a better answer if you defined 'Intended Play' but my guess is that in the end it boils down to the fact that you're still comparing yourself to other farmers (hence 'obsolete'.) I've joked on the discord before about the 'card farming arms race' with scripts and firefox containers and hotkeys, where it feels like if you're not farming as fast or efficiently as someone else, you're falling behind. But my point is that small farmers or people starting out are already so far behind, even if TCALS wasn't a thing, that it seems weird that this is suddenly an issue. I prefer to try to avoid comparing myself to others because it would be really disheartening—there's tons of people who have done far better than I have, so I need to have my own, intrinsic motivation. [gif cards] But I also realize that DV is important to a lot of people and part of why they play the game, so perhaps that answer doesn't cover everything. I'm just surprised people still care about other people's DV when it was already such an unwinnable race. I'm not sure Racoda and I are in exactly the same place on this question but I think everything he said in his most recent point was spot on.

Okay, but about how many bids would one need to do for one card, so is that something that hasn't been figured out?

A single bid is enough for a card to spawn, and it happens all the time during transfers, which is presumably what TCALS was designed for. I'm not positive that a single bid can't spawn multiple copies, and if I was, I'd probably agree more with TNL's point when he said that it's not ideal for pulling cards to be a zero-sum game.

As a mechanic, anyone can abuse TCALS in theory. However, doing so requires large sums of bank for some of these cards since they don't have low standing asks or they don't have asks at all. People who own the card, on the other hand, are free to host their own private pull events whenever they feel like it.

On the other hand, the market is open to everyone, all the time. When you benefited from the perg/soops pull event, you weren't the one who threw it, you just happened to be online at the right time. Anyone is capable of watching the market and opening packs when they see bids going up. And of course Racoda's point about it being possible with cards that aren't worth quite such egregious amounts of money stands too. Giovanniland passed me on our regional DV leaderboard by inflating the value of cards trading them to himself. That's not absolutely an identical situation, but it's something a small farmer can do that also uses the way MV is calculated, and I think it's totally valid and part of the game. TCALS works the same way. People can just use the cards they do have (or watch for others doing it with even more expensive cards).

I'm not trying to take some kind of higher moral stance, I've definitely benefited quite a bit from pull events. I think that TNL stated it quite nicely though,

The argument that the price will adjust accordingly is not very convincing, as it generally does not happen in practice.

Yes, I personally think that these cards' values correcting is a good thing, whether or not it actually happens. (It'll make things more exciting, that's for sure.) But my point was that the subtext here is that people think it's a bad thing: big farmers are scared that TCALS puts the MV of their most expensive cards at risk, and that's why those are the people you see in this thread arguing to have TCALS go away. Arguing that TCALS doesn't crash cards' MVs is just yet another refutation of an argument against TCALS in the first place.

I agree that the system can be used in a positive manner too. Hence, the proposal to remove the pull % boost caused by bidding rather than eliminating it entirely.

You're probably right that there's plenty of space between "TCALS good" and "TCALS bad", and the proposal probably does a better job of taking a moderate stance than I've given it credit for. But I'd like to see us keep a method for creating more copies of cards that we like, the fun ones, the cute ones (which I do), then I don't see how we can keep that for the cards I want (random gifs, joke cards, etc.) and and if that's the same method that applies to cards worth thousands of bank, it is sort of an either/or.

Or maybe the solution is to have TCALS have more to do with the MV of a card. We used to think that a sale had to be 100x the MV of a card for TCALS to kick in (which wasn't true) but maybe if it worked that way it would be good. Or maybe it would just mean only rich farmers could use TCALS anymore.

[Noahs Second Country]

I'm just surprised people still care about other people's DV when it was already such an unwinnable race.

This is not entirely true. Sure, if you want to beat KK, Mikeswill, or TNL, then good luck. But you can definitely work your way up the rankings.

You're probably right that there's plenty of space between "TCALS good" and "TCALS bad", and the proposal probably does a better job of taking a moderate stance than I've given it credit for. But I'd like to see us keep a method for creating more copies of cards that we like, the fun ones, the cute ones (which I do), then I don't see how we can keep that for the cards I want (random gifs, joke cards, etc.) and and if that's the same method that applies to cards worth thousands of bank, it is sort of an either/or.

Such easy card duplication of any card should not be a mechanic.

Or maybe the solution is to have TCALS have more to do with the MV of a card. We used to think that a sale had to be 100x the MV of a card for TCALS to kick in (which wasn't true) but maybe if it worked that way it would be good. Or maybe it would just mean only rich farmers could use TCALS anymore.

You pointed out the error with your solution already.

However, that did bring the concept of 'community policing' to mind. Just as many members of the cards community have mutual no-heist or even occasionally no-drop agreements, perhaps certain cards are excluded from abuse among those who care about their reputation in the community. Personally, I don't believe this will work, since there are still plenty of 'rogue' figures out there. I'm still leaving this here though for the sake of discussion.

[Racoda]

Such easy card duplication of any card should not be a mechanic.

Care to explain why?

[Aclion]

Such easy card duplication of any card should not be a mechanic.

Care to explain why?

Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping.

[Refuge Isle]

Care to explain why?

Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping.

Except all cards have a junk value assigned according to their rarity class, and this effect only triggers if the card is trading substantially over that. If the value of Soops is 2,000 or 1.00, the only people who are going to be affected are in the top 100 decks and rely on those types of cards for the majority of their account value. The 30,000 other people playing this game will be affected zero in any way, perhaps the card becomes more unobtainable, or perhaps TNL loses market share for no longer being the only game in town that can possibly get a rare card to someone. In any event, duplicating a card does not "damage an economy", it damages a monopoly by removing exclusivity of an item, the artificial wealth created by replication is ultimately evaporated in an inevitable run.

Unless you mean to suggest that the point of NS cards is to have people card farming constantly?

[Racoda]

Care to explain why?

Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping.

Thank you, but I know what duping is.
If the Wikipedia quote is an answer to why cards duplication shouldn't be easy ("[duplication] is bad because it can destabilize the economy"):
Why is that, in turn, undesirable? (see also my previous post where I argue why duplication might be good)

Except all cards have a junk value assigned according to their rarity class, and this effect only triggers if the card is trading substantially over that.

Quick clarification, we actually don't know what that threshold is and if it's tied to rarity/bid/MV.

[Luna Amore]

Duping can vastly destabilize a virtual economy or even the gameplay itself, depending on the item duplicated and the rate at which duplication occurs. Modern persistent world games include automated detection of duping.

Thank you, but I know what duping is.
If the Wikipedia quote is an answer to why cards duplication shouldn't be easy ("[duplication] is bad because it can destabilize the economy"):
Why is that, in turn, undesirable? (see also my previous post where I argue why duplication might be good)

Except all cards have a junk value assigned according to their rarity class, and this effect only triggers if the card is trading substantially over that.

Quick clarification, we actually don't know what that threshold is and if it's tied to rarity/bid/MV.

Take it to the logical conclusion, why have a market at all? Why not let people decide what cards they want?

Scarcity is part and parcel of a market based game. If you can eliminate scarcity, you stop having a game.

[Tarockanien]

I guess I´ve found a more simple solution : just remove the badge for "most valuable collections" and also the ranking list for this and "biggest bank"; since the problem is mostly created by big farming, decreasing the encouraging of doing so (like "card olympics" or "card pull events", which definitely are almost exclusive benefiting and promoting "big farming" further), would, seen from the psychological point of view, reduce over time the interest in "big farming".
And please, all you "big farmers" posting here, at least have the decency to stop whining about "your losses" from a problem you have created by yourself (by happily abusing a system that already worked in your favour).

[Luna Amore]

I guess I´ve found a more simple solution : just remove the badge for "most valuable collections" and also the ranking list for this and "biggest bank"; since the problem is mostly created by big farming, decreasing the encouraging of doing so (like "card olympics" or "card pull events", which definitely are almost exclusive benefiting and promoting "big farming" further), would, seen from the psychological point of view, reduce over time the interest in "big farming".
And please, all you "big farmers" posting here, at least have the decency to stop whining about "your losses" from a problem you have created by yourself (by happily abusing a system that already worked in your favour).

I don't believe there is a 'Biggest bank' ranking, but big farming existed before the Deck Value census was created.

[Benevolent 1]

Take it to the logical conclusion, why have a market at all? Why not let people decide what cards they want?

Scarcity is part and parcel of a market based game. If you can eliminate scarcity, you stop having a game.

I think that's the crux of the biscuit. Scarcity is a necessity in perpetuating the health of the game. TCALS creates new problems hindering any success at it's original intent.

I guess I´ve found a more simple solution : just remove the badge for "most valuable collections" and also the ranking list for this and "biggest bank"; since the problem is mostly created by big farming, decreasing the encouraging of doing so (like "card olympics" or "card pull events", which definitely are almost exclusive benefiting and promoting "big farming" further), would, seen from the psychological point of view, reduce over time the interest in "big farming".
And please, all you "big farmers" posting here, at least have the decency to stop whining about "your losses" from a problem you have created by yourself (by happily abusing a system that already worked in your favour).

I don't believe there is a 'Biggest bank' ranking, but big farming existed before the Deck Value census was created.

I think I saw the equivalent of a "biggest bank" ranking after the initial run of the game but never saw it since.

[Riemstagrad]

It appears that yesterday's many pulls of HMS Unicorn and Tupelope severely decreased the value of those cards.

Does this mean that the system is not as bad as claimed in this thread?

Yes, Noah is inflating the value of HMS Unicorn again, but i doubt that this card will go as high as before again. There are just too many of them out there.
Sure, Noah can buy them all and leverage his growing number of the same card to boost his deck value, but you don't need a (former) extremely rare card for that trick.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not sure yet if i like or dislike the Anti-Laundering system. Just adding some thoughts after what i saw happening today.

[Noahs Second Country]

It appears that yesterday's many pulls of HMS Unicorn and Tupelope severely decreased the value of those cards.

Does this mean that the system is not as bad as claimed in this thread?

Yes, Noah is inflating the value of HMS Unicorn again, but i doubt that this card will go as high as before again. There are just too many of them out there.
Sure, Noah can buy them all and leverage his growing number of the same card to boost his deck value, but you don't need a (former) extremely rare card for that trick.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not sure yet if i like or dislike the Anti-Laundering system. Just adding some thoughts after what i saw happening today.

That is true - I can inflate whatever cards I want, and so can anyone else. It is also notable that the crash was a targeted attack on the market value of the cards, enabled solely by the effect of the bid mechanic. The targeted attack part is my primary motivation behind inflating it back a bit, though obviously it won't get that high before I run into problems.

However, I don't think that TCALS is a problem of inflation or deck value - it's a problem of scarcity, as Benevolent, 9003, and others expressed above.

The market makes the game fun, and without a market based on acquisition of hard to find/expensive cards you're left with much less of a game. I've heard the argument that 'legendary cards are the high value expensive cards' but quite frankly they aren't that difficult to acquire, the real hard ones are the CTE cards being duplicated in these events.

[Confirm password]

As an extremely small Card player, I have serious issues trying to increase my deck size from 200 to 250 cards because it requires me to get 16 bank and I'm getting roughly 0.30 bank per day. Unless I'm lucky and I get some rare/unique etc to sell.

Please think about the extremely small Card players that do not play the card game for the ranks or for the buy/sell system.

Point in question is, if other players can get a 10000000 deck size, why am I struggling for 3 months to get 16 bank to upgrade my deck size? Sure, I may be playing it wrong, but abusing the system in various ways isn't really "playing it right".

So fix whatever anti-laundering system you want but also consider small card farmers like myself that have no clue about the inner mechanics and just want to honestly get some cards that they have their eyes on. Maybe lower the requirements to get an increase deck size, considering others can abuse the system and get inflated deck sizes.

Thank you.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

There is obviously still plenty of scarcity - all legendaries trade *well* above their junk value. I don't have the data to do wider math, but where many epics trade between junk and say, 150%,pretty much any legendary trades at several hundred percent of junk value - and that's with presumably very little comparative junk % among players, and the fact that you're ultimately probably more likely to get any given leg than any given specific common.

Some numbers I can give, though - some average existent non-CTE legs on the market from the bottom end of the top 250 cards only have ~50-75 S2 copies and ~75-100 S1 copies. This incredibly low found rate, especially with card hoarders in play, severely limits who can collect these cards beyond just merely "being sufficiently rare to be fun." Well, it is what it is, I don't think anyone is grovelling at admin to make the leg find rate higher and the game inherently easier, but I'd say it's well within the rights of the playerbase to use the tools available to them to attempt to do it themselves, as well.

And hey, it may not work in the end - as was noted, without a truly sufficient flood of the cards, so that enough are on the market and being moved around long term, which may require hundreds of copies, people can still choose to inflate cards, or hoard them. Rarity can be forced, just as decreased rarity can be forced. But, from my point of view, "ideally" the end result is that certain cards are slightly *less* uncommon and valuable, and by that nature, their owners are at least more willing to sell or trade 1 copy to someone who wants to collect it now and then, for less than several hundred.

circling back: there is no likely scenario where this strategy is used on the vast majority of legs, those trading in the 10's and 20's. Along those lines, anyone overly concerned with deck value is more than welcome and able to store it in those cards more akin to "bonds" than "stocks."

And when even these common legs have generally ~200 or less copies from both seasons combined available in the world, and top 500 decks list doesn't even get below 375 deck value, I don't think we're even close to a true scarcity problem.

In a time-honored tradition of NS - let the unorthodox and unintended use, and creative back-calculating, of a system play out, and bring more flavor to an element of the game.

[Flanderlion]

As an extremely small Card player, I have serious issues trying to increase my deck size from 200 to 250 cards because it requires me to get 16 bank and I'm getting roughly 0.30 bank per day. Unless I'm lucky and I get some rare/unique etc to sell.

Please think about the extremely small Card players that do not play the card game for the ranks or for the buy/sell system.

Point in question is, if other players can get a 10000000 deck size, why am I struggling for 3 months to get 16 bank to upgrade my deck size? Sure, I may be playing it wrong, but abusing the system in various ways isn't really "playing it right".

So fix whatever anti-laundering system you want but also consider small card farmers like myself that have no clue about the inner mechanics and just want to honestly get some cards that they have their eyes on. Maybe lower the requirements to get an increase deck size, considering others can abuse the system and get inflated deck sizes.

Thank you.

I personally just want admin to let us buy deck upgrades from the store. Also, more importantly, there is no right or wrong way to play, don't let others tell you that. This is a sandbox game.

[Noahs Second Country]

As an extremely small Card player, I have serious issues trying to increase my deck size from 200 to 250 cards because it requires me to get 16 bank and I'm getting roughly 0.30 bank per day. Unless I'm lucky and I get some rare/unique etc to sell.

Please think about the extremely small Card players that do not play the card game for the ranks or for the buy/sell system.

Point in question is, if other players can get a 10000000 deck size, why am I struggling for 3 months to get 16 bank to upgrade my deck size? Sure, I may be playing it wrong, but abusing the system in various ways isn't really "playing it right".

So fix whatever anti-laundering system you want but also consider small card farmers like myself that have no clue about the inner mechanics and just want to honestly get some cards that they have their eyes on. Maybe lower the requirements to get an increase deck size, considering others can abuse the system and get inflated deck sizes.

Thank you.

Most players, even large farmers, do not have large decks, rather they work around the deck size limit by using satellite nations to store and transfer cards. Since deck costs increase exponentially, there is no feasible way to afford these upgrades at a certain point.

For example: S2 Rares Collector has 11000 cards with a deck capacity of 50.

[Confirm password]

I personally just want admin to let us buy deck upgrades from the store. Also, more importantly, there is no right or wrong way to play, don't let others tell you that. This is a sandbox game.

Thank you for your answer. More options could be added to the Store. Right now the "Supporter" $2.99 doubles the deck capacity, but that's about it.

Most players, even large farmers, do not have large decks, rather they work around the deck size limit by using satellite nations to store and transfer cards. Since deck costs increase exponentially, there is no feasible way to afford these upgrades at a certain point.

For example: S2 Rares Collector has 11000 cards with a deck capacity of 50.

Thank you for replying! Is this some sort of "behind-the-scene" deck size limitation workaround? I could not find anything about it in the Help section of NationStates nor on the first 3 pages on Trading Cards forum category. I see the above mentioned nation having 11,515 cards at hand, not 50. When I got to the limit I couldn't receive any new cards (deck capacity full) unless I purchased more deck capacity. I have no idea how it works, but enough offtopic.

My two cents (as Ballotonia mentioned a discussion) were that if there is a desire to improve some aspects of the Card minigame, there are some other aspects that could also be improved. The discussion between the "big whales" of the Card game is interesting to read, they might represent 1% of the Card game population and make 99% of its trades, but I, as a small time player, and I'm sure that many others of my rank, bump into some issues that you don't even think about (or feel that they are way too obvious, from your already gathered experience in the minigame). One of those is represented by the hardships to get decently sized card decks, as you have to know some sort of deck size limitation workaround that's not really general knowledge. I would say tweak the exponential prices for deck upgrade (as big players already work around it and, thus, its not relevant for them anymore). However, by the time it gets too punitive for new players then they would already have gathered 200 cards and can make a better decision regarding investing more time into the minigame or stopping at 200 cards and call it satisfactory. Sorry if its too off-topic.

[Holland DS6]

I do agree that they should lower the cost a little, as I am at 4.00 bank to upgrade, but anyone can have more then their card limit, you just can't be gifted cards or open packs, and when there is a pull event, I only tried the latest one, but I would have to give some of my cards away to my other accounts, that I actually use besides cards, but the card part of the game is just a waiting gameand you need to find a balance of buying cards you want and saving for enough to upgrade.

[Noahs Second Country]

Thank you for replying! Is this some sort of "behind-the-scene" deck size limitation workaround? I could not find anything about it in the Help section of NationStates nor on the first 3 pages on Trading Cards forum category. I see the above mentioned nation having 11,515 cards at hand, not 50. When I got to the limit I couldn't receive any new cards (deck capacity full) unless I purchased more deck capacity. I have no idea how it works, but enough offtopic.

That is true, you cannot open packs or receive cards if over the capacity limit. There is no working around that.

Nations like Koem Kab, 9003, etc. have a second nation set up that processes all of their legendary cards and transfers. So that nation aggregates all of the bank, then piggybacks the bank to the main in one big auction. For card transfers the second nation just sells to the main.

With that being said, deck size limits do hurt big farmers. It takes more time and effort to move cards and bank between two nations. If deck size becomes easier to upgrade, it will still benefit the bigger farmers just as much as smaller farmers, in my opinion.

[Coffin-Breathe]

I´d say, the error was in the creation of the "limit system"; it should have been impossible from the start on to go over storage limit, but maybe expanding storage space should have been a little cheaper, also from the start (49 bank is a hefty sum for someone who´s not farming and almost impossible to pay without getting incredibly lucky on the draw)).
Now it´s to late to change this, I guess, because of the many "volume collections" out there.

[Racoda]

To go back to the scarcity/how the game is meant to be played discussion:

If someone decides to Pull Event a card [themselves], that would mean there's overwhelming demand and no supply (or no supply at a reasonable price). I see nothing wrong with people having a cheaper option to acquire a card than farming for a month and hoping someone will benevolently match their 1k bid.

The cards from the last pull/deflation event (HMS, Fratt) still end up being quasi-monopolised by Noah/Prae for HMS and DGES for Fratt. The cards still are scarce: them being sold depends not on the number of copies, but the number of owners. If someone wants to buy them and nobody's selling, they're free to go through the trouble of hosting their own pull event and disrupting that monopoly.
That might mean they'll have to buy it at the egregious price first, which they can recover by re-selling the spawned copies of the card.
If a pull event is easier to do than buying the card, that means the card was overpriced in the first place.

scarcity ≠ inability to purchase a card

Of course, pull events done by someone who doesn't want to buy the card, or already has a few copies and is purposefully inflating them are different. However, in this case, TCALS' duplicate copies can only hurt only the stability of top-25~50 DV rankings. It would be foolish to stabilize the unstable rankings in their current state: no time to remove TCALS can be picked that would be fair. Why not a few weeks ago, when Luna wasn't 2nd? Why not in a few weeks, when someone else might overtake?
The removal of TCALS only benefits those that are currently at the top already.