Wolf/bear hat nerf - profits somewhat misleading...

Yep, that's what we should encourage.

 

I wont respond to your insult in kind, but somewhere in this equation - there is a player making 0g for several cycles of gathering and crafting. There is a substantial investment cost for crafting fuels. If the design was to be a zero sum game, then why wasn't it implemented like this from the beginning? It seems like there was some consideration involved in lowering the price of wolf hats to 80g - but is this consideration part of a plan to ween players away from bulk sales of wolf hats and reduce the profitability to zero sum? Or simply to balance the profitability of bulk wolf and bear hat sales to be in line with other methods of generating revenue.

In my initial post I'm trying to highlight the fact that there is considerable time involved in gathering and refining the materials to create a wolf hat - and if the bulk wolf hat sales seem high on a gold generation metric somewhere because they're all being sold at once, please keep in mind there are several steps involved before the final sale.

 

This is why I tried requesting a blog post about it. Apparently their design has been stated, but if it is hidden in youtube videos, reddit, and other off-site resources it really isn't consumer friendly. I want to play the game in the game. Likewise I want to trust the developer website to be my go to source for documentation about the game - not strategy guide levels, but design goals and end product vision.

 

@Ancev
I'm just trying to enlighten you that you are attempting to skate uphill, your fighting a key concept of the game, and attempts to get it changed are going to be unfruitful. (this is a key factor in their version of a player driven economy)
I said nothing insulting, instead I expressed sympathy for your situation.

You think things are changing, but actually things are being "corrected".
It's a bug, that allowed your profit, and most likely will be eliminated, or reduced to painfully small.

 

Like bread was at one time. Had such a nice time baking

 

Well, if this were entirely true, then we probably would not see patches like this:

So the wolf hat price is now 80 (was 100 before the patch) and the amount of wax has been upped to 6 (was 4 before the patch). This means that the fuel cost, using leather straps, is 1.5 curing salt and 6 wax + tools cost, which means a small profit.

If this is a "bug" perhaps you can explain why it was not fixed. It would be extremely easy to fix. Instead, a small profit was maintained.

Edit: also the post you're referring to is 1½ years old, things have not been completely static during this time, and there is simply no logical reason why a crafter could not gain a (small/balanced) profit from his/her work. The major limiting/balancing factor in this case is time.

By the way, a little correction: unlike stated in the OP, making the leather straps for a single wolf hat requires 1.5 curing salt, not 2 -- e.g. enough for 10 wolf hats can be made from 10 hides + 5 curing salt turned to 10 leather, then (leather+curing salt)*10 turned into 20 leather straps, 5+10 = 15x curing salt for 10 hats => 1.5x curing salt for a single hat.

 

I make 25, vendor, then use the +1s to level MC/Enchanting. If they break on #2, no tears. If I get some +6 or +9 hats, they can sell from 2.5k to 4k depending if the bonuses are good and mesh with the build that would wear it.



Makin me some lemonade and skill pts

 

If life gives you a wolf head, make a wolf hat!

 

Having read the post linked about design decisions, I now understand better what is going on.

The developers are concerned about out of control inflation. To combat inflation, they want more sinks than faucets. Current faucets are Raw Coin, Item Drops (more Coin), Raw Resource (Crafting Enabler). They view resources as a faucet as even though it doesn't create gold, it creates Stuff With Value.

The perceived problem with crafting to sell to NPCs is that it would create additional faucets every step of the way, which would lead to runaway inflation gated only by how quickly resources could be harvested/crafted. The player view is presently "If I spend X amount of time doing WORK I should gain comparable income to Y". And this is where the misunderstanding is happening. The developers want the coin being generated by the Adventure Faucet to go down the Crafting Drain. The way to accomplish this is by having Worthwhile items only available through player craftsmen.

Here is where and why the system is breaking down.
* The Base Difficulty to craft useful items is too low. This leads to Everyone Is A Crafter. The challenge in changing this is if it is too difficult, then you run into I Cannot Afford To Become A Crafter on the opposite side of the spectrum.
* Crafting is NOT a Self-Sustaining Skill. You cannot JUST get better at crafting by crafting. You need to fill your crafting XP pool. The best way to do this is ADVENTURING so that you can gather resources. This is a failure for a dedicated crafter because he must spend his time outside of their desired role.
* XP Requirements to Level Up are Huge: For crafting it is not just a matter of time spent. It is a matter of output produced. Compounded by the fact that everyone is a crafter is the fact that output far outstrips demand. However, crafter skill advancement is still dependent upon input. Crafters wish to advance regardless of profitability. Adventurer/Crafters can afford to do this, and thus shift the market price for raw resources out of the dedicated crafter's price range. This leads to a negative feedback loop of knock-on effects where adventurer/crafters are 1) Able to afford the loss to grind out gear 2) Able to advance more quickly 3) Making the best stuff 4) Making their own gear and selling other high level items they made on their way to it at a mild loss to recover some costs which they can afford to do because it is not their only income stream. 5) Ultimately pricing dedicated crafters out of both input costs as well as output retail prices.


Proposed Solutions:
* Put more XP Gain into Refinement Skills. Significantly more.
* Turn refinement into batch processes with mini-games.
* Reduce XP requirement per crafter level, but increase time required to craft single items.

XP Starvation and not End Product Demand is currently the reason for overproduction of goods and damaging the formation of a real player market economy. These suggestions also put crafter grind into Refinement, not into adventuring. Score during mini-games impacts output amount. Allows more time sink but makes the process more engaging. More skilled players also produce less drain providing sense of achievement for getting better at it. The idea is that crafters should produce less items over longer periods but see the same rate of advancement while engaging in the game in ways more meaningful than watching craft progress bars but different from adventurers. This reduces over-production and forces a choice between adventure time and crafting time. Those who do both are knowingly sacrificing fast advancement in either/or.

 

I'm not sure if the idea of creating "additional faucets every step of the way" is entirely correct, because each resource can be sold to an NPC only once. Yes, every step along the way might add a little value (even considering the cost of fuels and tools), but every step also requires significant time investment - time that is away from something else (good ol' opportunity cost), like mining that eternally respawning node for the 108th time, or killing that eternally respawning bandit halberd fighter for teh 77th time.

I'm perfectly willing to change my view, if someone can provide a convincing explanation, why would someone doing rounds of farming 50 halberds and selling them to a NPC blacksmith be somehow better for the economy than a crafter refining and making higher value goods and selling them, getting a fraction of the halberd-farmer's income in a comparable time. The way I (currently) see it, it's simply a matter of tuning, of taking the variety of possible end result(s) into account.

Roleplay-wise and logically, the idea of a product losing value every time its refinement level goes up, is ridiculous beyond belief. It is perhaps the dumbest idea ever presented in a game. Apparently we are willing to go to any length to support the "economy"..

Another issue is the assumption of "comparable income". I don't believe crafters are really wanting/requesting that. Instead, I believe many would be at least content with a minor profit, or at least a break-even, so that they can at least afford the fuels and tools without going broke.

 

You are still focusing way too much on your own desires as a crafter, and upon real-world economies and sensibilities (which often don't work in games for many reasons). The problem being tackled is a systemic How Does Coin Disappear Never To Be Seen Again. The developer desire is for the crafting system to play that role. Otherwise, there is only Ammo and Reagents. Taxes will hit many players. But some players don't have houses. Some players have tax free lots. So Ammo and Reagents alone is not enough of a DRAIN. They need additional drains. If crafters make a profit engaging only with NPCs in the craft process, while this would make sense in reality, completely eliminates the largest non-tax drain in the game.

In order to come up with a solution to make crafting better, we have to address the need of retaining the DRAIN be it through either proposing new systems or working out a way to fix supply/demand.

With video game design, reality and logic goes out the window. How much of it does varies, but at some point there is no logical way for a dude with a sword to take out a dragon when it is defending itself, so already broken. Fun > Logic. The best things happen when we can get both. But Fun =/= Easy otherwise it gets boring. Which is why the question of coin faucets and drains is important.

 

You are 100% correct. Adventuring is and has been the focus for quite sometime and crafting so far hasn't received much love. Selling wolf hats makes no more per hour than grinding skellys when you take into account crafting time. But it was nerfed anyway because THERE SHALL BE NO CRAFTING PLAYSTYLE. Try as hard as you want. But why take into account a crafter's time? Crafter's time is WORTHLESS or so the general attitude seems to be. There have been only 2 occasions where someone offered to pay me for my time crafting a suit for them out of 50+ requests. Most of the time they don't even pay for the consumable materials to make the item. I guess us crafters should just grovel for every gold piece. But take away the gold from adventurer grinding and *INSERT SHRILL SCREAMS FROM THE COMMUNITY* followed by immediate reversion back to the old rate with apology from Darkstarr.
@Rofo you are completely and utterly wrong. Please stop posting nonsense. Chris said that there would not be any positive gold feedback loops. He didn't say you wouldnt be able to vendor something for more than the materials cost. Positive gold feedback example: Buy armor chest from vendor and savage it selling the scrap for more than the original cost of the armor. repeat.

Ok Rofo, I can play this "screw other people and their playstyle" game too. So this is what I propose and will lobby the devs for:
1. A reduction in the gold for weapons and other items obtain from adventuring/grinding back to the previous levels (~1500 gold/hour)
2. Double the damage to weapon and armor durability and triple the use rate of reagents.
3. 50% reduction in adventurer experience given by mobs
4. Increasing the cost of all weapons, armor, repair kits by a factor of 10x on all NPC vendors.
5. 100% increase in the vendor gold given for craftable items to support the crafting community when players arn't buying.
6. 80% decrease in public vendor fees
7. Doubling the buff effects from masterworking and enchanting

That's a good start. As soon as I learn of any adventurer making more than 1500 gold/hour, I'll make sure to scream at the devs that it's an exploit/bug or otherwise invalid playstyle and get it patched ASAP.

 

Has anyone ever heard the phrase, "a starving artist?"

 

I am going to add my experience into this.

I was farming Elder Wolves. Each wolf would...at the very least! Drop 2 Animal Hides and a Wolf Head. Every Single One.
Meticulous would give me extra hides. Most of them would also drop a suet and/or Thrombus

Let that sink in. Every Single One.

In Ulfheim, I would kill around 30-50 wolves in about an hour. I would gain adventuring exp for the kill. I would gain producer exp for the skinning. Then I would get more producer exp for making the hat. And on top of that I gain about 60gp net for selling the hat.


They have seemed to smarten up and not have the head drop on every single Elder wolf. I can live with this.

 

I always looked at being able to sell something crafted for more that its components as arbitrage. It shouldn't really exist but does do for certain windows. Very similar to finding under priced goods on an auction house.

That said, there's nothing wrong with having a few daily / repeatable quests. Maybe there's a guard in town who will pay $500 for 5 bear hats today and tomorrow it will be something else. This is even better if it fits in with some macroeconomic story such as a recent war breaking out or too many players doing x instead of y and that shifting the market.

 

Your attacking the messenger in a fit of anger.. I'm just enlightening you to what is going on.
You seem to think I'm advocating this system, but I never did.
Never once called for nerfs, never once /bug reported it, simply told you why it's never going to make much money, and explained why calling for it to be changed is a waste of energy.

In the online version of the game, crafters must sell to players to be profitable, that is part of the design to make a "player driven economy".


You are correct, you have the only profitable Recipe in the game to sell to NPC's, and all the other ones are bugged... the devs must have silently changed their mind from the same answer they have given every hangout, and every forum post for the last couple years. You should begin bug reporting all the other crafting recipes in the game and get them corrected too.

I'm done trying help.. good luck!

 

It appears to me that there isn't actually a problem.

They halved the rate I can acculate hats...down to about 30/hour. (including time to craft them into hats)

The return on making and vendoring the hat is now 50gp. Which means about 1500 gold for the hours work. About the same I would have gotten mining skellies.

Before it would have been around 4200 gold/ hour

EDIT: and killing wolves seems much more rewarding, and it was kind of relaxing to go home, craft up the hats and sell them before turning off the game and going to bed.

 

Sorry but you have left out the time component again. It's not POOF! instant wolf hat worth 60g. You have to make all the components and then assemble the hat.

So if I'm adventuring I can kill 100+ skellys an hour each of which drop a weapon (50g) + corpse wax(15g).. possibly reagents. All of which I can instantly vendor for a huge profit. Plus I get adventurer experience and if I buy the ultra cheap NPC vendor gear, my costs are minimal. Sounds OP to me. AND, I don't need to spend another 2 hours processing the drops to get the gold. I get it instantly. So basically during those two hours, I can kill another 200+ skellys and make another 10k+ gold!

Edit: Not to disparage your chosen method of gameplay. Great if you like to do that. But my point is that adventuring gameplay makes much more gold/hour so there was no reason to nerf wolf hats.

 

nahh..I added the time component.

I probably make way more hats then you do. I made 500 the day they went back to 100gp. In fact, I probably make around 2000 a week.

And it was making me way more money then I could get farming huminoids....which btw was a byproduct of getting the wolf heads since there are a lot of skellies in the same zones I get the heads in.

As well as a lot of other resources like mandrake ( I get around a hundred) nightshade ( I get around 50)

And to tell the truth the time component is meaningless. I watch the Late Show with Colbert and hit one button set up to craft the hat so I get maximum exp for it.

I just wish I could vendor more then 50 hats at once.


I should add, since the word 'TIME' was brought up...that I am also saving time by gaining producer exp skinning the wolves that you don't get killing skellies.
I gain decent exp killing elder wolves, but if you are lower level, you can kill wolves equal to your level. You have to make up for that time by killing other more appropriate leveled stuff to gain the same exp.

All in all the Elder wolf is my one-stop-shop for character advancement.


Low level huminoids for gold doesn't really advance your character very quickly does it?

 

That's because you are not high enough adventurer level probably to get the higher gold farming rates.

If you kill the higher level ones you get good exp and higher value drops like 2h sword and long bows.