"The price of Cocaine has gone down since you started the deal, it has become more profitable so we proceeded anyway."

It may very well have gone down, but if I am trying to go for a full load at a profit, then I do not want anything to proceed anyway. 

Let´s imagine I am carrying 10 barbs, 10 heroin and 10 coke. All of them made a little profit, but instead of selling all, I quick buy coke, so I complete a full load and THEN I sell at a profit for the achievements. If coke is gonna go down, then I don´t want anything to proceed anyway as I may want to make the full load of another drug.

Does this make sense?

It makes sense. I had that problem myself.

Maybe there could be an option to turn off the automatic purchases when running drugs for the achievements.

No. It doesn't make sense to me.

If you change your mind and want to hold a different drug, then just rebuy the other drug after the deal has gone through. Even if it has sold all of the units you've been carrying up until this, the worst it has done is locked in a profit for you already (a good thing) or else it allows you to hold the units at a lower price (also a good thing, though without the profit or the experience points gained from the former).

For the vast majority of times this occurs it will be for someone attempting to buy one of the big 3 drugs at a price near/below the base price listed for the city. If the price has dropped even further, that will be a sale they want even more. For 99% of cases, they WANT it to go through. In the other 1%, you might not be so keen on it anymore (if it was a large change and not a micro change), but it hasn't caused you any negatives as explained above.

It's not a problem when it comes to drug running due to trying to make money, but it is very annoying when you're just trying to complete the achievements regardless if you make or lose money. Now instead of receiving a % increase you have to go all over again and wait for the prices to change.

The drug achievements are a negligible number of the total drug deals. Even describing them as negligible is overstating their impact on the bigger picture there. It takes the average player around... 2 weeks? at a rough guess... to finish all of the drug achievements. Possibly a little more, possible a little less. For an active player, they can have it done in a couple of days fairly easily. When the average life of a character is measured in months and not days, completing the drug achievements isn't an issue (if they try at all) and is done without even thinking about it in many/most cases.

If the time invested into trying to manipulate the system in this way (holding a small number of each drug so that on a change you can purchase a full load at a below current cost price) was instead simply invested into going for the most profitable deal available, the character would end up with far less headaches, far less of a workload, higher earnings and a fairly small change in the total experience gained (I'm not even sure if it would be higher or lower, it depends on the specifics of the mechanics there to a level none of us are aware). 

Altering the current system to help allow the gaming of a system... that provides a relatively small award for fun... that would be completed anyway without even trying for it... that will cause many other users (far greater relatively speaking) not trying to game a system to have to do the same work it's removing? Does that really sound like a good move? 

It's not required. All it does it help people get an achievement 20 minutes or half an hour sooner (if even), yet it potentially impacts on the vast majority of drug deals done by the vast majority of users who've already completed the achievements and who invest literally thousands of hours into play. 

But the majority of players could just click Buy again, couldn't they? It's not really a lot of work to just click again when the price lowers.

If we want to take the "couldn't they... it's not really a lot of work" route... The minority of players could just not try and do a drug deal around the time we know changes occur? 

It's making a change to help with gaming something that doesn't need to be and shouldn't even be gamed. It's making a change that impacts on the majority (all be it a small one, but UI improvements are all about iterative small improvements at every possible step) to give a limited (until they complete the achievements, which is short) small benefit to a small minority (most users wouldn't find the benefit from it as they wouldn't be bothered with the hassle of holding a variety of drugs just to try and game something so easily completed to begin with) of users. 

I understand what's being asked for. I get why it's being asked for. I just disagree that it's a positive move and hope not to see it introduced. I could be in the minority there, other comments will prove/disprove that, but I'll certainly be vocal about any change I believe is a negative rather than a positive (as I would with any change I view as a strong positive).

Of course, you have right to have an opinion, I'm not saying anything against it. I argued for it to be an optional choice in my first post, I believe that would satisfy everyone?

Setanta, as far as I know, there are some super hardcore drug achievements to keep working on well past those couple of weeks you refer to. Also, selling a full load at a profit gives a tiny amount of XP, so well after I'm done with my achievements, I still want to keep on selling FULL loads at a profit.

And I wouldn't call holding multiple kinds of drugs gaming the system. Seems a little harsh for something that is legitimate speculation in my opinion.

But of course, your main argument is that the vast majority of user WOULD want it to go through, so I guess "fair enough" and I will have to lose out on the profit and XP because the majority don't want to do an extra click.

And then you say "The minority of players could just not try and do a drug deal around the time we know changes occur? "

To be honest, I'm not sure everybodu knows the time changes now with so many micro changes per city and district and type of drug.

In the end, I like Padrino's suggestion. Give me the choice for what kind of transaction I want to go through or if I want any change at all to stop my transaction.

Setanta, as far as I know, there are some super hardcore drug achievements to keep working on well past those couple of weeks you refer to. Also, selling a full load at a profit gives a tiny amount of XP, so well after I'm done with my achievements, I still want to keep on selling FULL loads at a profit.

I've a vague memory of there being a hardcore one for Coke... and possibly the others in the top 3... but it is vague and hopefully someone can confirm what the details there are.

If the old rules of thumb still hold (and they were relatively vague and unproven at the best of times), the exp gained from drug deals is capped per hour. This is done precisely to stop over gaming of the drug system the way it stands, with micro deals potentially available every five minutes in any district and flights available every five minutes between districts. While this can give a nice little bonus in earnings if a group work hard and monitor prices closely, it could potentially also lead to an inordinate amount of exp gain making a cap seem like a logical thing that would be included (I don't have any of my old IRC logs where details like this have been discussed in the past by those that actually control them, perhaps if someone does have concrete confirmation of the above [potentially with far more detailed specifics] that'd be super). 

As for the Hardcore ones... even if/when they do exist... it's a bit of fun. Impacting on the day to day side of doing the drug deals for an achievement that's a bit of tongue in cheek "ooohhh wow, look how many I've done" is a bad direction to go in (for me. That doesn't mean you're wrong at all. It just means I disagree with it. Not the first time I might disagree with a majority of people and wouldn't be the last time :P). 

And I wouldn't call holding multiple kinds of drugs gaming the system. Seems a little harsh for something that is legitimate speculation in my opinion.

If you're holding them as you don't know which might be the most profitable, fair enough. That's making a choice to split your risk and you're welcome to do it. If you're doing it to increase your chances of holding a full load at a lower price (which is what has been mentioned to date in the thread), that is gaming the system. It's not crossing any lines or cheating, which is a negative connotation often associated with gaming systems, nor is it breaking any rules... but it is manipulating them to gain a desired outcome.

But of course, your main argument is that the vast majority of user WOULD want it to go through, so I guess "fair enough" and I will have to lose out on the profit and XP because the majority don't want to do an extra click.

You could just not do drug deals around any 5 minute interval (if it's XX:04:53 wait until XX:05:03 to do your drug deal).

When it comes to a call between hurting UI for the majority and hurting it for a single (or small group of) user(s). Yes. I'd make that call every day.

In the end, I like Padrino's suggestion. Give me the choice for what kind of transaction I want to go through or if I want any change at all to stop my transaction.

This would be an acceptable solution, however I'd still have two minor issues with it.

First, time is more valuable spent on MANY other areas of the game. This wouldn't take long, but neither would the other million little tweaks the guys have on the to do list that would give far more of an impact to the gameplay for a far larger group of people.

Second, it makes the options page for toggles more complicated. I'm fine with that, you're no doubt fine with that... but the average MR user? I'd worry about that page becoming over complicated to the point that the average user is intimidated and afraid of it (I'd imagine many don't actually understand the vast majority of the content on that page already). 

Customisation is brilliant. I love it to bits. However there's a very good reason why Apple, who develop proprietary systems that are designed around easy use and not allowing much tweaking or customisation instead focusing on a consistent and very fluid user experience, do so well. 

Personally, I remember when major changes were made to the way we buy DFP drugs, purely because a top-up system, not unlike this one, was considered to be 'gaming' the achievements. It was announced and discussed in this thread, which I would consider relevant to this discussion. One particularly apropos excerpt reads:

"Barbiturates Broker    Full Load Sold At A Profit 50x"

I just believe that a person, if they want that achievement, should actually do 50 real drug deals.  Users should not feel entitled to achievements if they are unwilling to put in the work.  It would be nice if you people wearing that badge of honor did so because they did 50 profitable deals, they went the extra mile - not just because they knew a loop hole that let them get it with 1/50th the work.  There are only two hardcore drug achievements for selling a full load at profit, and they were designed for people of high rank, with a very aged account.   I personally think those that do the work properly, deserve to wear that badge of honor more so than someone who does not.

Reply by: Squishy at Jul 12, '13 15:08

Which also answers the question of the Hardcore drug achievements; there appear to be two.

For me, selling 2/3s of a load back to the person you bought it from seconds earlier, isn't doing "real drug deals", so I would have to agree with Setanta in that it's a suggestion which would make it easier to pull down achievements which haven't been legitimately earned.

Furthermore, since the introduction of districts and the chat box, I know that the initial Barbs, Heroin and Coke achievements are fairly easily obtainable within the first week, if you're willing to put forth a bit of work and do some micro-dealing.

Heroin just went down on me at 11:14 am so it's not the 5 minute mark you were saying. But still, if most users do not do their drug trade like I do, I know it's not worth implementing any changes.