Gold Crowns of the Obsidians

I don't agree with you.

I'm not going to argue the fact that they will get lobbied to raise it either way, but transparency can be used to create trust.

When they increased the rent on housing, there were those of us that defended the action because the rate was reasonable. You might notice that except some outliers the community is not complaining about rents en masse now.

With golden crowns they can do the equivalent of making rents 10x as high as now, without even telling us. I cannot in good conscience defend such a change (and i did on the rents) being reasonable because i have no information that backs that up.

 

Possibly not. If the economy goes wierd because an unusual number of players are cashing them in that month they could hold a special auction or add casinos for the rich.

Casinos don't have to pay in gold either. For example if casinos paid in potions like healing pots etc and a big win is a badass amulet that people really want... wouldn't that actually lower the cost of potions as well as lower the amount of gold? Surplus of some basic needs items ensures the price will stay low for essentials most likely. Especially if there is a donations place for items people want to discard for the purpose of lowering a tax or for redeming a portion of the chances to play the casino again (free spins)

 

That's probably cheaper than spending 1 crown per item multiple times to repair your gear.

 

Id add that this will NEVER balance out, its intended as income for portalarium so the balance will never effectively mitigate the pay-to-win aspect of this situation. This is the whole intention.

 

No, they really can't. For one, because the game has to be playable without external purchases. So players have to be able to obtain the crowns in-game, either as drops or from other players at a somewhat reasonable rate. The economy itself will require that this balance itself, somewhat. Scarcity will drive the price higher than expected, so players will be able to tell if this happens. There are a lot of financially-minded individuals in the community, so believe me, that will happen.

 

If crowns are randomly dropped, which they are, how can you look at a drop rate number alone and say it's reasonable or not reasonable?

If they say there is a 1000 to 1 shot of getting a crown on a mob, is that reasonable? What does that mean if it's across a player population of 1 million people? I would think that the devs should instead say that a certain percentage of add-on store sales will result in crowns being dropped. Much like they did with player lot deeds. This way, you have a relative comparison. Because if only 500 add-on store crowns are purchased, but 10,000 crowns are obtained in-game, that might be a very telling set of stats. Whereas if they only say 1.5% of drops result in a crown being found, that really doesn't mean anything and players will just say "increase it!".

I think it's reasonable for the devs to say something like for every crown sold in the add-on store there will be at least one crown dropped in game.

 

Maybe I'm just overly dense today (and I don't discount the possibility) but if I need an item to "fix" my (power) weapon/armor etc how is that non power stuff?

*sigh* maybe I'm just bummed cuz I can't locate a universe t stand in where this whole thing doesn't look like P2W :-(

 

Probability can be used to predict expected outcome over time. If the rate is 1/1000 and all the power gamers are rolling in piles of crowns... Then I'm probably not going to complain if they make it 1/2000. If i spend 80% of my game time getting enough crowns to get by and then they make them twice as rare.. I'm going to care.

Your other idea is interesting, and in theory could be used as part of a system for balancing crowns. Even in that situation i would like transparency (monthly report of average drop rate over the last month?)

 

You avatars are forgetting to ask the most imPORTant question!

Are these alcoholic chocolate coins?! *

A magical unicorn floating on a magic carpet too!!!

Diving into Obsidian coins will be a healthier change than diving into the floor.

 

We know that game economy balance can be a bit of trial and error. I kinda see gold crowns in the add on store as a move to give the game economic model a potential relief valve.

Consider a real life example first: Needing to fill up your car's gas tank, imagine that you had to go into the convenience store, pay for lottery tickets, and find the winning golden ticket before you could completely fill up the tank. Else you were only allowed to have a half tank. This might seem easy and fair enough, until you realize that somehow someone got there before you and cornered the market on all gold tickets so they could keep filling up their tank, preventing others from doing the same. You then had to go find another gas station hoping that they had gold tickets left to find that someone had done that on.

Potentially no different with COTOs. Imagine that you go into a zone needing COTOS for item repair. And there you find a guild a high level people controlling SOTAs relatively small zones where COTOs are more likely to drop, not letting you hit mobs in a PVE zone, or PKing you in a PVP zone as you attempt to get them. You go to another zone for COTOs, then another, with the same experience. Soon COTOs are not just rare, but by and large controlled by a few groups in your play window. Feeling dejected, you go to a player vendor hoping to buy some, so that you can repair your weapon, and see COTOs for sale. But at an exorbitant price issued by those able to control a broader supply of them.

In such a case, an add-on store gold COTO might be a way to give players an alternative, and also one that might both regulate the market price in game, as well as benefit the game by providing a little funding.

The only player I see getting hurt in this scenario is the one that wanted to corner the market. Because a player who really wanted to duke it out to find COTOs and not complain about it would. And those who didn't mind paying in the add on store would. They would not be hurt at all. All the add on store really does, besides providing another funding outlet for the game, is drive players that want to dominate commodity trade in game insane because suddenly there is an uncontrollable economic input affecting their economic game. And that is a fair complaint too!

 

I'm pretty sure the guy who got killed in at least 3 different zones while trying to repair his weapon and was forced to spend real $ to repair it disagrees with "who got hurt" in that scenario.

You did do a great job describing why max durability loss circumvented by cash shop is a fantastic idea though.

 

Yet, he could easily have used a backup until he managed to find a repair. So, that guys kind of a fool. I'm happy to disagree with him.

 

I dislike the COTO model greatly from a crafting standpoint.

The recent item durability changes were made under the guise of supporting the crafting economy, but in reality it was a purely financial move. All the talk of items needing to break, and now the high-level items never will.

I have been fine with every item in the Add-On Store up until this point, and have made a LOT of Add-On Store purchases, but I am seriously disappointed with this latest turn of events.

Sell premium currency to purchase unique cosmetic items, create a subscription plan, do whatever you need to do... but don't tie that premium currency to item durability.

 

There are games that support themselves through explicitly defying this. They let you do some amount of activity daily, and then slow you to crawl unless you pay after that.

@DarkStarr earlier said this is not their goal but it is a viable model.

And yes Shroud has a great community, that will attempt to stop Port from messing up too badly.

 

Im just quoting what I remember. I'm not trying to convince anybody to believe in something either way.

What do I stand to gain by persuading anybody to believe like me?

However we do have free will to choose based upon all given possibilities. We have this freedom in common. If I personally believed this was bad I could say that or leave or whatever. However I see other posibilities here and bad isn't the only one. I believe this could be good.

So there is no insult from me to you. I just think there are other options and they have done a good job at making this game good even when I personally thought that wasn't an option.

I learned that there might be other options than what I am presently aware of.

 

I'm fine with the currency being tied to durability, as long as crafters skill is still a factor. Currently, it isn't. A COTO means 100% repair. What I'd REALLY like to see is a COTO (or better yet, a special repair item purchased with COTOs) being used by a crafter will return some max durability, but increase the amount based on the crafter's repair skill. Thus high level crafters mean cheaper repairs, but low level crafters can still do the job.

 

THIS. Put the power of durability repair back into the hands of the crafters.

+Infinity

 

<gone...>

 

Restoring Max durability isnt the same as repairing an item right? Or where did I go wrong on that?

 

If we want to make sure crafters turn a profit, the fix is simple:

You can only repair max durability as high as your relevant crafting skill. To get 100 durability, you need to go to a GM crafter and pay them.

But it seems these changes weren't really about putting gold in the hands of player crafters so much as putting real money in the hands of Portalarium.

 

Yeah, I'm with you. Reparing and "max durability" are two different things.