Economic Changes and Concerns

2

Comments

  • Did the Tolborolla honours, made like 5k in the process. In particular, wood turnins were about 120 per log. Not sure if that was worth the effort, but I feel like less involved comms quests could be worth doing under the present setup.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    If comm quests are also impacted that is pretty neat.  I had not considered those.
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  • edited May 2018
    Okay, and just went to Highwater Keep and picked up a few diary pages that were literally just sitting in rooms out in the open. Handed them to some named denizens and got 2,250 gold for each of them. If I'm understanding the changes correctly, if I go back in half an hour and do this again, I'll make 20-25 gold at a time? And then the onus is on me to figure out when no one has done the quest for a few RL days and maybe I'll make 500 per?

    I'm just really confused, considering it was said at the beginning of this thread that the changes were intended to make questing MORE reliable.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Feota said:
    Okay, and just went to Highwater Keep and picked up a few diary pages that were literally just sitting in rooms out in the open. Handed them to some named denizens and got 2,250 gold for each of them. If I'm understanding the changes correctly, if I go back in half an hour and do this again, I'll make 20-25 gold at a time? And then the onus is on me to figure out when no one has done the quest for a few RL days and maybe I'll make 500 per?

    I'm just really confused, considering it was said at the beginning of this thread that the changes were intended to make questing MORE reliable.
    Based on what Ianir just said, doing it again when the things reset should net you 1500 gold each (1500 * 1.5 = 2250).

    If that is the case, questing is still consistent, but has a bonus to encourage spreading out to new things.  My concern was that the modifier would be a high negative (dropping repeats down like your question states), but it does not sound like that is substantiated.
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  • Xenthos said:
    Feota said:
    Okay, and just went to Highwater Keep and picked up a few diary pages that were literally just sitting in rooms out in the open. Handed them to some named denizens and got 2,250 gold for each of them. If I'm understanding the changes correctly, if I go back in half an hour and do this again, I'll make 20-25 gold at a time? And then the onus is on me to figure out when no one has done the quest for a few RL days and maybe I'll make 500 per?

    I'm just really confused, considering it was said at the beginning of this thread that the changes were intended to make questing MORE reliable.
    Based on what Ianir just said, doing it again when the things reset should net you 1500 gold each (1500 * 1.5 = 2250).

    If that is the case, questing is still consistent, but has a bonus to encourage spreading out to new things.  My concern was that the modifier would be a high negative (dropping repeats down like your question states), but it does not sound like that is substantiated.
    Okay, that makes sense (regarding the modifier). I'm a little confused about how it's more profitable to pick up a visible item in a room and hand it to a denizen than it is to trek across an entire area killing several denizens and fetching hidden items, but I guess that's not really the focus of this topic.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    That is more a matter of balancing rewards which I suspect would be a huge undertaking (not part of this thread, as you say).

    I would appreciate verification of the page turnin if you can do that when the pages respawn, I would like to see the actual numbers.  But assuming that it actually does work this way I am no longer feeling like questing got hit. :)
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  • Xenthos said:
    Jolanthe said:
    Regarding changelog 1390, does the increase in quest rewards scale and change based on how recently you, personally, have done the quest, or anyone?

    It isn't specified, but if it set to the individual, I think that's a big step forward and a huge improvement over the state of mob gold drops previously. Much as I enjoyed the prior system, it absolutely made you want to keep your favourite gold farming spots a secret. But if one person can do rockeater training without duly cutting into the income of a subsequent person following up shortly after, I feel that does the opposite - ensure the sharing of quest information between players, so everyone maximises their gold earning potential as they discover more avenues for revenue. Further, it deters one player from spamming the same quest over and over, and would push them to move on to others.

    It functions by "has anyone at all done it recently," not to the individual.  I think it would be far better tagged to an individual.

    Basically all gold income now fluctuates depending on what someone else has done, and there is not a good way to know how long ago someone did the corpse turnins (you can kind of guess based on how much gold the mobs drop, but does not work well on low-level quest mobs that are usually at the floor).  You might get a bunch of gold, you might get very little.

    I was tentatively okay with shifting things toward questing, with more tweaks, but now questing feels like it got nerfed too because there is no way to know what you can expect to get.

    This change would be far better in my mind if it was by person.  It would encourage collaboration, as you suggest.  It would also mean that if I do an aslaran run I would probably just do it once (so a lowbie will have aslarans available to kill an hour later) instead of me just throwing my hands in the air at all the quest turnins I know being perpetually depreciated and just spam camping the easy ones.

    Even if you were right about the reward mechanics - and it sounds like you are wrong - I disagree that the system would be better pegged to an individual. This is fundamentally about the economy, and the economy is about the interaction of people with each other and the world. If everything is pegged to the individual and you never have to buy anything because nothing ever decays, why even play? On the other hand, creating a situation where people might conflict because of overlapping needs is what a multi-faction game is about.

    We ask for more conflict systems, and at the same time ask for goodies that make it so we never have to interact with people. 

    If the problem is the uncertainty, that can be solved independently of the individual v. community issue. Add keyword 'reward' to mob reactions where they estimate the award they will give out for the next turn in or quest. Running around asking people what they'd be willing to pay for your services sounds more realistic than murdering thousands of the same mob because the price is static or because at least -you- have not flooded the market lately.
  • Ejderha said:
    Xenthos said:
    Jolanthe said:
    Regarding changelog 1390, does the increase in quest rewards scale and change based on how recently you, personally, have done the quest, or anyone?

    It isn't specified, but if it set to the individual, I think that's a big step forward and a huge improvement over the state of mob gold drops previously. Much as I enjoyed the prior system, it absolutely made you want to keep your favourite gold farming spots a secret. But if one person can do rockeater training without duly cutting into the income of a subsequent person following up shortly after, I feel that does the opposite - ensure the sharing of quest information between players, so everyone maximises their gold earning potential as they discover more avenues for revenue. Further, it deters one player from spamming the same quest over and over, and would push them to move on to others.

    It functions by "has anyone at all done it recently," not to the individual.  I think it would be far better tagged to an individual.

    Basically all gold income now fluctuates depending on what someone else has done, and there is not a good way to know how long ago someone did the corpse turnins (you can kind of guess based on how much gold the mobs drop, but does not work well on low-level quest mobs that are usually at the floor).  You might get a bunch of gold, you might get very little.

    I was tentatively okay with shifting things toward questing, with more tweaks, but now questing feels like it got nerfed too because there is no way to know what you can expect to get.

    This change would be far better in my mind if it was by person.  It would encourage collaboration, as you suggest.  It would also mean that if I do an aslaran run I would probably just do it once (so a lowbie will have aslarans available to kill an hour later) instead of me just throwing my hands in the air at all the quest turnins I know being perpetually depreciated and just spam camping the easy ones.

    Even if you were right about the reward mechanics - and it sounds like you are wrong - I disagree that the system would be better pegged to an individual. This is fundamentally about the economy, and the economy is about the interaction of people with each other and the world. If everything is pegged to the individual and you never have to buy anything because nothing ever decays, why even play? On the other hand, creating a situation where people might conflict because of overlapping needs is what a multi-faction game is about.

    We ask for more conflict systems, and at the same time ask for goodies that make it so we never have to interact with people. 

    If the problem is the uncertainty, that can be solved independently of the individual v. community issue. Add keyword 'reward' to mob reactions where they estimate the award they will give out for the next turn in or quest. Running around asking people what they'd be willing to pay for your services sounds more realistic than murdering thousands of the same mob because the price is static or because at least -you- have not flooded the market lately.
    How does lowering the ability to obtain gold for individuals that need it and spend it help the economy? Basically, I bashed for gold. If I need essence I bashed differently. People that didn't need gold didn't bash for gold. They most likely stick to Astral. They will most likely stick to Astral with their stockpiles of gold. Prices will lower because gold is more rare. Making their stockpiles that much larger. While new players will need to try to learn quests even if they hate questing for gold. This change does not help the economy in fact there is going to be less spending. It will hurt the economy. This change had zero to do with the economy. It just changed the value of 1 gold to a fraction of one gold. Thus, gold stockpiles was multplied in value. Again, nothing for the economy but help the haves and hurts the have nots. 
  • Rasvin said:
    How does lowering the ability to obtain gold for individuals that need it and spend it help the economy? Basically, I bashed for gold. If I need essence I bashed differently. People that didn't need gold didn't bash for gold. They most likely stick to Astral. They will most likely stick to Astral with their stockpiles of gold. Prices will lower because gold is more rare. Making their stockpiles that much larger. While new players will need to try to learn quests even if they hate questing for gold. This change does not help the economy in fact there is going to be less spending. It will hurt the economy. This change had zero to do with the economy. It just changed the value of 1 gold to a fraction of one gold. Thus, gold stockpiles was multplied in value. Again, nothing for the economy but help the haves and hurts the have nots. 
    Fundamentally, there will be people that believe high end bashers should be able to bash 150k in two hours, and those that believe that sort of gold generation is somewhat excessive. We cannot fix the gold that has already been generated, but we surely can stem the tide going forward.

    There will surely be outliers, things like aetherships and aethergoop transfer costs that will get looked at in the future - but those aren't 'daily cost of living' expenses. I believe your 'the rich get richer' argument is relatively unfounded, given that high end bashing is the one that gets hurt the most.
  • edited May 2018
    @Maligorn it's not the rich get richer because it isn't an issue going forward. It is the present that is the issue. I believe this would be great if the game was rebooted; however, the current in game issues cause it to not be a good solution which is just an opinion. Now, if there is a massive one time expensive gold sink then that would probably fix the entire issue. We haven't been discussing the fix to what it broke though.
  • There is no solution to the economy of the game that won't have pinching in the short term. Newer players, novices, and midbies should still very much have enough gold for supplies, including for both PvE and PvP . If you really can't accomplish that, contact your org to see if you can get some extra gold for such things, or if there's a young-person's shop with reduced prices or w/e. 
  • I think the real reason for gold is to buy credits to supplement actual credit purchases. 
  • Okay? Then you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Those with big ass gold stockpiles already aren't putting credits on the market for gold. Because they HAVE gold and evidently aren't spending it on anything! 


  • Hmm, I think pretty much even the ones with a big stockpile purchase at certain rates. I could be wrong.
  • Xenthos said:
    That is more a matter of balancing rewards which I suspect would be a huge undertaking (not part of this thread, as you say).

    I would appreciate verification of the page turnin if you can do that when the pages respawn, I would like to see the actual numbers.  But assuming that it actually does work this way I am no longer feeling like questing got hit. :)
    The base gold for pages (from before the changes) is 1000 per page. There's six of them in total, and they can be begged back. So from that particular fetch you can expect 12k+, and it resets about every game day.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord

    Rasvin said:
    Hmm, I think pretty much even the ones with a big stockpile purchase at certain rates. I could be wrong.
    My rate is 4k.  If I see credits under 4k I will buy them.

    ... That has not happened in a very very long time.
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  • MaligornMaligorn Windborne
    Rasvin said:
    @Maligorn it's not the rich get richer because it isn't an issue going forward. It is the present that is the issue. I believe this would be great if the game was rebooted; however, the current in game issues cause it to not be a good solution which is just an opinion. Now, if there is a massive one time expensive gold sink then that would probably fix the entire issue. We haven't been discussing the fix to what it broke though.
    Why was I tagged? <.<

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  • ShaddusShaddus , the Leper Messiah Outside your window.
    Is the goop throttle also being removed?
    Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
  • I am making more gold in the current regime than the throttled one, at a cost of a very small portion of my esteem generation.

    I've never understood why people think gold inflation per se is a bad thing. Presumably, the bad thing is the ratio of effort to (curatives, basic gear, credits, etc.) being too high. Changing the rate at which gold enters the game changes the former, but after prices equilibrate won't change the latter.

    Overall, this seems like a nontrivial nerf to influence. My modest proposal is create more influence related turn-in quests. 
  • Ianir said:

    I will leave you with this though - ~360k gold in 12 hours from one player. This change might have actually made the problem worse.
    Considering I logged on before I went to work and made a little over 20K gold just by doing total newbie stuff for about 30 minutes (cows and rockeaters were the most tasking thing I bothered with), it probably is worse now. More so if that profit is greatly diminished for the next person to try at it. But if the scaling is relatively minimal, or rescales quickly, the only real question might be whether the top crust is too much.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    Jolanthe said:
    Ianir said:

    I will leave you with this though - ~360k gold in 12 hours from one player. This change might have actually made the problem worse.
    Considering I logged on before I went to work and made a little over 20K gold just by doing total newbie stuff for about 30 minutes (cows and rockeaters were the most tasking thing I bothered with), it probably is worse now. More so if that profit is greatly diminished for the next person to try at it. But if the scaling is relatively minimal, or rescales quickly, the only real question might be whether the top crust is too much.
    There might be an issue with the timer, rockeaters are generating a bit more gold than they should math-wise.

    But math-wise, rockeaters used to be 50 gold per hand-in.  Now, if they've been done recently, they should be worth 75 minimum (I am currently getting 87 per for some reason).  50 (original base) + 25 (a 50% bonus to the base) + 0 (done recently, so the timer adds zero).

    If your main gold income was questing low/midbie mobs previously you should now generally get more gold for the same time invested (no gold drops any more, but always more from the turn-in).  If nobody had killed the mobs previously they would have had more gold to drop, sure-- but if nobody killed them, then nobody did the quest recently so you'll get that bonus on the turn-in too.

    If your main source of income was murdering things that dropped piles of gold, you have to rethink things.
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  • Kali said:
    Xenthos said:
    That is more a matter of balancing rewards which I suspect would be a huge undertaking (not part of this thread, as you say).

    I would appreciate verification of the page turnin if you can do that when the pages respawn, I would like to see the actual numbers.  But assuming that it actually does work this way I am no longer feeling like questing got hit. :)
    The base gold for pages (from before the changes) is 1000 per page. There's six of them in total, and they can be begged back. So from that particular fetch you can expect 12k+, and it resets about every game day.
    Just turned in a page again and got 2,250 gold.
  • edited May 2018
    So the 360k in 12 hours was based off projected end results from the 2 hour point.

    What I finally came out with in 12 hours of bashing with intermittent breaks for varying lengths of time was 222,000. It would have been closer to 280,000 but I forgot to set my auto engulf trigger to >300000. It was sitting at the old 150000 threshold, so anytime I picked up a corpse it checked my gold, saw I had over 150k and engulfed at 150 corpses in inventory. That happened a few times before I noticed... more offerings for Drocilla!

    This was monk bashing with crit rune, and on trash mobs with turn ins. I could have made more doing better payout mobs (kephera/illithoid), running and grabbing both sets of quinotaurs, and various other things.

    Bashing speed is a factor in making lots of gold, but it is entirely feasible for a casual player, non monk, to make 20k - 30k in an evening, especially as between two areas you can easily get an extra 10k in quest reward.

    edit::
    I should also point out you can fall victim to bashing to fast, so you need to find your sweet spot to make sure you have more uptime  than downtime.
  • Ejderha said:
    Xenthos said:
    Jolanthe said:
    stuff
    stuff

    Even if you were right about the reward mechanics - and it sounds like you are wrong - I disagree that the system would be better pegged to an individual. This is fundamentally about the economy, and the economy is about the interaction of people with each other and the world. If everything is pegged to the individual and you never have to buy anything because nothing ever decays, why even play? On the other hand, creating a situation where people might conflict because of overlapping needs is what a multi-faction game is about.

    We ask for more conflict systems, and at the same time ask for goodies that make it so we never have to interact with people. 

    If the problem is the uncertainty, that can be solved independently of the individual v. community issue. Add keyword 'reward' to mob reactions where they estimate the award they will give out for the next turn in or quest. Running around asking people what they'd be willing to pay for your services sounds more realistic than murdering thousands of the same mob because the price is static or because at least -you- have not flooded the market lately.
    I can only really speak for myself, and I understand that different people may feel differently, but I don't enjoy these kinds of financial transactions and conflict. I find this entire part of the game tedious and uninteresting and in fact really like the sound of nothing ever decaying. If this game were only about buying and selling, I personally would be gone. I realize that the game isn't about me and there is a class of people that really enjoy mercantile transactions, but when I personally think, "It would be nice to have more conflict systems," this is not what I have in mind. I don't say this so much to say that you're unequivocally wrong as because there are other perspectives that I think are also valid, the game being principally about "fun" (which is defined differently to different people, obviously), and because I don't feel like the kind of economy you're arguing for is as intrinsically necessary to a conflict-based RPG with multiple factions as you seem to suggest.
  • My 1 cent, this actually might serve as further disincentive for players to recruit new players, because those new players are potential competition for an increasingly smaller pool of gold generation.
    WHY WE FIGHT
    Accountability is necessary.
  • Ianir said:
    I will leave you with this though - ~360k gold in 12 hours from one player. This change might have actually made the problem worse.
    I am starting to think they were not trying hard enough

    Gold generation seems to be insane now
  • I have been making a lot more than I was before. I've never actually had money, now I do.
  • Having just recently returned to the lands in the past 3 months i have to say this change has completely ruined the game for me.
    Decent money drops were part of the fun.
    I also think it shows a real lack of imagination in how to deal with the issue of inflation.
    Here are some simple things that would have fixed the problem much better and not ruined the game.

    1. Banks in the middle ages charged you to keep your money safe.  Charge 0.25% per day on bank accounts.
    2. Limit the amount of gold you can carry on your person to the most expensive thing you can purchase in the game with gold (or 100K whatever is higher).
    3. Invent thieves so that if you leave money lying around in a manse or somewhere else there is a chance each day it will be stolen when you come back.  You can vary the percentage depending how hard you want to force people to put their money in the bank and deflate the economy.

    What will this achieve? 
    1. It will erode the net wealth of high wealth individuals faster than low wealth individuals solving some of your historical problems.
    2. It will force people to invest their money in other disposables and especially credits.  People buying more credits is good for the game (presumably Estarra has to eat).  If people stockpile goods then they are still exiting money from the economy and the value of the stockpiled goods will decline due to supply glut.

    Please put the gold back in the game - you have made it really boring.
  • XenthosXenthos Shadow Lord
    edited May 2018
    Your ideas seem backwards.  If someone has a lot of gold and wants to convert it to credits, they are not going to buy credits with real $.  They are going to buy off the market.  People who want gold and buy credits for that already can (and do).  The only thing that will accomplish is to drive up market rates and/or deplete it entirely (so nobody can buy credits).

    Additionally, Ianir has already stated that stockpiling is not as big an issue to address as generation, hence why they are trying out ideas around modifying generation.  Your thoughts completely ignore that.

    Do you have any ideas for better addressing the generation of gold?

    Edit: Some additional explanation of the above.  Let us say that Xenthos has 35,000,000 gold "frozen" and around 100,000 "active".  Given a lack of other gold sinks, Xenthos has effectively sunk thirty five million gold out of the game (by definition, if it has been stockpiled it has not been spent).

    If you keep high rates of gold coming into the game, AND force the stockpiled gold to become "active" again, you have made the problem worse.  Not only is there just as much coming into the game as there originally was, but there is additionally tens of millions floating around that would not have been otherwise.  You have more gold, not less.
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  • I'm also not sure how he's coming out with substantially less gold to feel like his experience is being utterly ruined.

    I mean, I definitely haven't gotten around to earning quite the same amounts as before. I was pretty good at exploiting the old drop system and could hit the cap now and again without lots of fancy toys or resistances - just a whip (not even the divinus one).

    But while I don't seem as efficient when I tryhard, I also know very few quests and not so many turn-ins, and this is just propelling me along to learn more. And if I don't feel like putting a lot of effort into earning gold and just want to do a round of rockeaters with some bards and scholars on the side, I make way more gold on that very quick and casual run than I did prior.

    So it's benefiting my casual play effort at the expense of my strenuous play effort. Think that was the intention, kind of? And I haven't even figured out how to best take advantage of the new routines yet.

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