Upcoming Economic Balance Changes

That's a short sighted, over simplification of the solution.

 

There's nothing inherently bad about inequality. The point is to make sure the game's incentives are lined up to this all trickles through the economy. Comparative advantage might mean that some players gather plants and others mine silver and they trade.

The goal of a multi-player game is to crate meaningful synergy and meaningful conflict. If you have a complexly sand-boxed gold farming game, you'll eventually get Chinese sweatshops where low wage workers manage teams of bots selling gold to the first world. The ways to prevent this are daily quests representing meaningful choices, and not having everything in game tradable for gold.

 

in essence what no reagent spells do is create the min/max type of playstyle also. This is what @Chris wants to get away from. If its free people will use it.

 

@DarkStarr I'm failing to see how all of this doesn't universally increase gold for all players since any player can jump through the same hoops for more gold. Isn't that what you said you wanted to avoid?

This is basically turning the Oracle into a gold faucet.. Just how much does she have anyway? And why on Earth.. would Novians give Outlander's gold just for showing up everywhere? Neither of these makes any sense from a story point of view.. as for quests.. well I suppose it depends on the quest.. I hope these are only temporary measures.

 

it very well could be an alt-gold farming operation. I have 7 accounts. If I log in and talk to the oracle with each one i could make 3500 gold a day.

 

"Reagent Spawner Balance: We are reviewing the reagent spawners to make sure they are evenly balanced against the power of the spells they are used with and well dispersed in the scenes so players won't have to exclusively rely on merchants."

Whoo-hoo! I use magic and have been able to harvest all of my own reagents... not really that big of a deal so long as you're willing to move around a bit. Now there's going to be even more!!!

 

All of these are throttled at either single use ever (the quests) or daily (the Oracle) so they won't create a faucet that keeps adding gold to the system which is what would happen if we just increased overall resource yields.

Outlanders are particularly obsessed with gold so of course they will show up anywhere it is offered. Makes perfect sense from a story viewpoint and Richard agrees BTW.

 

How about making all spells use reagents, but selling them at 12 for the current cost and making gathering them return more. That is the same "solution" as arrows, and if the plantable reagents returned a higher yield it would make them viable cash crops (see cotton).

Other reagents need an option to be agriculture grown as well. Oyster beds in water lots (or water planters) would be a good start. A coal mine with lots of coal and ash, but few enemies (ala Owls Nest( would be good too.

 

yes many in our guild would love to be a dedicated crafter. Right now that is not feasible.

 

Speaking only for myself, I would seriously consider walking away from Shroud if that's going to be the solution. Currently, it's a risky proposition as it is trying to use reagents for magic & paying for arrows & repairs, and not running a "deficit adventuring" budget.
What you've outlined would amplify the problem many times worse. Please don't do this.

 

I'm almost certainly part of the 10%, it's a bit of both I have 110k gold and nothing to spend it on.

I've spent at least that much this week on good masterwork items and 350k previously buying 2 expert crafting tables.

I fail to see any of this really helping. Removing all reagents would be a more useful step (I'm 75% melee 25% Mage) or selling them for 25 for the current price would address it.

For me I can earn 500g I less time than it would take me to walk to the oracle and back. Town criers is one time and barely will cause a blip.

 

How exactly would this make it worse? Extremely cheap reagents, plus more yield per harvest, plus options to farm them on property, would offset using a single reagent for low level spells by a factor of ten or more.

Casting "free" spells is really unnatural, especially coming from games like Ultima where even the lowest spells required reagents. A reagent free deck is basically saying you want magic, but you don't want to be a mage. It's like me saying I want to be an archer, but I'm not willing to carry arrows. That's the cost of magic.

 

Respectfully, from my perspective, that's the opposite of what you just outlined. Selling them for 2, 3 or 4 times their normal value is not "cheap".

 

No, what I said was selling 12 of them for the same price as they currently go for each.

 

"selling them at 12 for the current cost" does not mean that. Ay yi yi. smh.

 

DarkStarr, have you also correlated the "richest" players with the amount of time played overall. It's fine to compare a below average player with an excellent or elite one, but if that bottom 10k isn't investing even 30 minutes a day or even a week there's simply no corollary to be had. One person plays the game the other is simply looking around.

I'm highly suspicious that the game has 10,000 players logging in daily honestly.

Anyway, the discrepancies between wealthy and poor players in my experience is based on smart, focused players versus their less organized counterparts. Notwithstanding the few that have exploited imbalances in the game to date for massive profits. I had zero issue making 10k in my first day playing. I'm perfectly fine purchasing reagents, paying rent, farming and repairing gear. I think my in-game income is modest; maybe upper middle class. A far cry from elite output, but enough success to wonder why people are struggling so much.

Below average players aren't laser focused on profits and generally overwhelmed by the game, which doesn't give them any purchase into the world we're playing in at the moment. We're all left on our own to figure out what to do with our time.

World economic tweaks will not solve the issues in this case.

 

I find it hard to believe that the ''10 %'' have become more rich only using ''reg free deck''. There is still some stuff like -15 % reg use wand that can help , and some skill regeant cost are decrease while they increase. And i don't know if they can see in their stats the money that people have made from selling ''deed'' ''coto'' ''and all kind of plege rewards'' for in game gold. I know someone ( that i will keep anonymous ) who get a very high pledge lvl , he almost don't do any adventuring , or crafting or ressource harvesting ( 95 % of is time is pass on managing and decorate the pot he own ). And he is still got arround 250k gold just by selling extra stuff he don't need from is pledge. And there is a guy in my guild that i'm pretty sure is on the top 5% best pver in the game. He can solo forever some pass 5/5 and most of the spell he use are not reageant free spell. So i don't think changing the price of reg would change anything right now. The change they are making now , gonna help new player get some money to get start , and its really great. And as they have said its only the first step , so lets wait.

 

@DarkStarr +1000 for your OP. This sounds like a definite step in the right direction. I'm looking forward to having some gold!

 

90% play the game as intended, 10% live in mines and go only out for trading .... I do about 15-30k each day through mining and still work 10h a day (nightshift), so yes, there is a big difference between player's gold pouches, but it comes from playstyle, because each playstyle gives a different income (also compared on same char levels)

 

I wonder how many of these super low gold accounts are alts, placeholders, and players that only logged in to claim property to have for launch. I know I have only logged my alt in twice (to remove items). So that account has almost no gold compared to my main account.