The Hard Questions & Ideas

Something worth logging in & staying in, that make the "grind" worthwhile?
Why bother keeping on logging in, if "grinding" your skills, only leads you to be able to solo/duo mobs?

I don't want to play a soloing/duoing game.
I LOVE the Teamwork aspect of defeating a foe!

I want to log in & go out with a purpose, a reason to go out & slug stuff to its death.
I want to group with players & kill the almighty foe & have a chance to be rewarded with the sought after Artifact!

Many of the encounters these days, automatically award the prize/artifact to the group member who stuck the most blows...

What about those of us who aid & assist, by throwing down MS, Ice field, Fire Rings, disabling shots, Fireflies & Blind....
& keep the Tank healed, slugging away from the sidelines with whatever we have got to help aid a fight = no joy AT ALL for the team-members who helped defeat the foe? @Chris
Why bother going out to help the Tank get richer, when there is absolutely NO chance, for the ones who aid & support, will even get a look in?

 

But what is that something?

I thought this was what the "roll for loot" thing was all about?

 

BUT.... Are you right?

 

I think it is either gear you can put on and be happy for the upgrade, or things you can socket into/modify gear with.

I would also say nice deco, not rusty stuff, would excite homeowners.

COTO's as well.

However, due to the messaging of the loot window/roll system non-notification (I hear there is a visual effect, I've gotten things and in the fury of the fight or the speed looting afterwards seen exactly 0 of them while they happened) it might be that you could be giving away Pirate Galleons and because the system doesn't celebrate it with more than a line in the chat window, we'll still think loot sucks. I lean heavily toward this.

 

Per the original design, the "reward crafters for crafting" was ripped out and tossed in the trash. In order to make crafting a money sink, the devs specifically choose to have raw materials always be more valuable than anything you can craft from it, from an NPC standpoint, to encourage selling to other players. Unfortunately, folks successfully lobbied for skill gain via use, which breaks that paradigm and takes the economy with it.

With a fissure that big running down the center of the economy, no amount of "final 20%" is going to patch it up.

 

I don't know. It was more a question.

 

Yeah. Unfortunately the NPC buy prices aren't even in the same Province as the materials cost. Not even on the same continent. So the only people selling to NPCs are those who are getting rid of trash that they used to level up. Or me putting in advertising bags.

It's a sad situation.

Edit: On the other hand, there should be plenty of trash high end gear that is good enough for new players in the loot table. There will just never be high end real loot.

 

And that's the core of the problem.

The value of raw materials as a source of XP and the value of converting materials to realize that XP, aren't properly accounted for in prices. The original economy called for crafters to build what was in demand and to sell for a profit. Demand would be controlled by decay rates and supply by node respawn rates and drop rates. However, since grinding is now king, crafting is done for the grind so demand is well below supply and adding more supply doesn't drive prices down as it all gets funneled into the grind. The solution, that the devs have been quite opposed to it seems, is to add item sinks to incentivized more varied crafting, NPCs buying sets for more than base price, etc., but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

 

This maybe the case....

I don't remember "crafting as a Gold sink", could you give me a reference or link, thanks...

What I do remember is:
-crafted items ending up as loot...
-crafted items being the best equipment...

I also seem to remember them saying that they were going to build a game the players wanted, they said: "why would we ignore you guys and make a system you don't want to play on?", that would be a waste of our time and your money...

I don't think the "Planned economy" is working as intended on paper... I see many "sitting" vendors (meaning their stock has not changed recently) with fully stocked items that just sit there with "NO sales"... Pricing has come way down on items like Iron ore, Copper ore and that tempts me to buy them all, but if their owners are not restocking them, I won't be able to continue buying... Plus if their owners aren't playing anymore, then where is my Gold going? I'm sure that's not a sink they have anticipated...

I can help explain this, better loot to me is not increased Gold, but different items... It would seem that every loot drop contains the same stuff, a rusted weapon, rusted armor, the occasional Bone and of course "corpse wax"... This seems to be typical loot and I as a crafter do appreciate the salvagable items and I wonder why so much corpse wax, I have tons of it...

Better loot to me is:
-iron hilt component... or copper or up to white iron hilt and all in between, I can still salvage, but I can also save resources by not having to make this component...
-blades... all kinds of blades as a component, every metal out there, I can salvage or assemble into a weapon, without using up my resources, ores in particular...
-other components like plates, binders, etc...

These are like 1st stage components, it's not like I won't be using any fuels because I will, in the next assembly stages or should I beg you to lower the requirements for resources to make a Hilt?

Every trade has components that could be loot dropped in different scenes, spread them out... I'm not saying make them "common" but let them drop so I can get at least 10 in a couple of hours of gameplay... Add them to the loot that's already dropping...

I know the devs stated somewhere, that they wanted crafting to raise skills quickly, so that crafters didn't need to make 1000 worthless items to raise skill... Well, I'm sorry to say, but it didn't work out that way, we still need to make 1000s of items to raise skill...

Crafted items as loot, I wonder why it isn't working? Maybe crafters have put too much into it to just sell it for nothing meaningful gold wise... I haven't the resources to make a lot of items, you've made sure of that and I don't like it... So are you listening? or NOT?

You've tied our hands and feet in so many ways, please reevaluate the game systems and come up with some modifications...

 

That's huge. Same with the experience received. You don't feel it being earned. You can see your pool go up and down but you don't see the continuous growth. We don't get level up effects. The character sheet ought to show total exp and a progress bar toward the next adventurer level. When you gain exp some indication of how much earned should show. When you level up a little sound and animation. Players need to feel when they make progress.

I agree. I care more about an interesting experience than loot. The zones with little quests are fun. Though, the release notes pull me to explore them more than cues in the game. Side quests I've missed I have a hard time finding. Every tavern bar tender should respond to "rumors" with leads to quest in the local zones. And / or Arabella should mail avatars with "I've heard rumors of ... in ... please investigate."

Hopefully part of the quest system rework is to build the back end to allow them to very easily add and remove quests to scenes. They could probably sell "Add a small quest to the zone of your choice" in the store if it didn't cost them more in labor to approve and get them in game.

Maybe crafting quests where a master asks you to craft an item in exchange for teaching a recipe? The turn in could go into the loot table.

 

You say "material costs", is that what an NPC will buy my ore for or is it the inflated player prices, I can't afford?

There seems to be a lack of "competition" between players and NPCs, since NPCs don't sell any resources (with the exception of reagents for Magic use) and the amounts needed for crafting use are way out of whack...

The way players price things only makes me want to gather my own for free and the way the devs have set up the amounts needed only makes me sick, I have a no win scenario here...

Demand is a big question mark, and Profit is undetermined, when there are no sales, your profit is zero and you won't find out what's in demand if you don't get any sales...

So, why are there "no sales"? My guess is the price is beyond what the market can afford (or is willing to pay), so talk to the sellers or compete with them by lowering your prices and see if you start getting sales... Without a Global market board, both are very hard to do... You would have to visit every single player vendor to do this, every day... Without a Global market board...

 

Should players be buying/selling wood for the 5g that NPC's will pay? Should they just mine for you for free? At what price can they sell their mats that doesn't make you sick?

 

Well, they did increase the rate that you get these things from salvaging.

 

It is possible that the hard questions found in the threads title may be less important than the hard realities the team faces. I don't suggest anyone stop giving suggestions or feedback. That doesn't mean I think they are in a position to do anything about delivering on a lot of it, at least not at the present.

 

There are no sales because prices are high and prices are high because material costs are artificially inflated and failure recovery rates are so low. Both of these are design elements, so "working as intended", I think the original crafting as a gold sink has been archived or removed, I know I commented on it and it isn't in my comment history. The outcome is still present though, you can sell the components for any crafting recipe to NPCs for more than the finished good. Raw materials are overpriced because their price contains a premium for the XP they will convey.

 

NPC vendors, give us back some money, crafting materials used and a chunk of crafting exp back when we sell our crafted gear!? The higher end the crafted item the more money and exp??

 

Re loot drops on mob bosses or hard mobs... agreed the loot is lame. Pattern and recipe drops would very much sweeten the drop. More weapons and armor that are eh but could be salvaged for a fabulous crafting component would work, too. Also, more gold on those mobs would be great. I’d rather have gold than 10 gems and fragments or potions.

 

Wood is through the roof, I'd probably buy it at 30g rather than get my own, but at 50-60 I'll stay self sufficient. I'd say ores are probably about 50% more than I'd pay. This all has a knock on effect on goods prices.

They are fine if you've been playing for a while and amassed a small fortune

 

Maybe you should go back to school? If YOU don't understand someone, it means the other person is uneducated fool? Think again. This toxicity is the last thing we need now..

 

Totally unaccepted. These comments are from a rotten person. I feel sorry for your parents, fam and friends.