Cost of Trainning and Skill Reset

I've not logged in yet, I'm waiting for a friend on a new account to try it for the first time tonight; but the problem with high prices for skills is that if you're trying to earn from combat, the weight restrictions are such that only looting gold makes any sense... trying to sell weapons etc quickly overloads you. But the gold drops from average mobs are only double figures if you're lucky. So staying "in the field" as it were is impractical, at least in terms of ability to get gold directly. If there were quests that gave rewards we might see a wider economy which would counter for that... but as it sounds so far, I'm not looking forward to progressing my character further. Hopefully I can get some brand new player feedback later on it...

 

Well it's both. It's extra potency at lower levels (increased ability to combo, able to focus more passives towards a specific skill set, plus the earlier Dev mentioned ones) and way to maintain deck tempo as you level up.

 

For the final release of the game or even the beta version where all pre-alph and alpha instances are wiped, you're probably right. Much has been made about improving the combat system ... and now what you've effectively done is made it as unattractive as possible for people to experiment and give you feedback and suggestions.

My primary interest is crafting ... but I was looking forward to experimenting with the combat system and maybe entering some tournaments for fun while I wait for actual crafting and vendors. Not much chance of that now.

As a retired developer, I would want as much feedback and experimentation at this stage as I could possibly get, so I truly don't understand the need or rationale for putting in the training costs now. Changing the pricing on something isn't a major coding effort - how about undoing it for now and letting us continue to have fun while paying for the privilege of testing things out for you.

I'm just sayin'
Sil

 

It is MMO it will be grinding no matter what, someone need to do it so others can sell items and get that "grinded" money, and other which sacrifice their time will double that money without going into forest.

So because that You and other are "casual players" everything should be easy and probably the best solution rabbit should have 10000000000 gold, all sets should be in vendor npc and crafting should look like"i go to npc buy all stuff and 1 click to get full set"??

I don't like grinding and done that for test and reporting bugs ( but You didn't notice that). When You go into scene to mine ore, chop tree or gather plants there are monsters which usually spawn near nods or in they way to them so gather loot and sell it like everyone else. But You need click it to gather that loot like EVERYONE else, it won't magically appear in Your backpack. And if You thinking i enjoy grinding, being for few hours in one place YOU are wrong (and usually i'm doing that for test purposes) But I know that if i want achieve anything i need sacrifice something in this matter i need gather loot and sell it or grind if i want something almost instantly not in few hours/days.

Maybe there should be arena (chillblain dung) where inside would be "old trainer" without prices and getting out of arena would reset our skills to normal.

ofc /zone/quiting/dc won't work there to do not exploit.

 

I've gone ahead and merged the multiple threads on this topic into one. Please remember to keep similar posts together and not to create new threads when existing discussions on the topic already exist. Also, please refer to post Gold Allocation for Skill Wipe for an official statement on this topic.

 

I am over level 60 and I had over 80,000 gold. After I trained I had around 10,000 gold left. I suppose it would not be too bad spread out over time as you level. I am glad I will be getting some of the gold back and I hope you will be refunding our training cost anytime there is a skill reset.

 

This game was billed as not an MMO, or at the very least not your average MMO, but your whole posts seems to promote the need to grind, even though you admittedly don't enjoy it.

Increased gold into the system, as you champion, is actually part of the problem, because it creates the perceived need by the developer's economic models to increase the skill costs to maintain balance, which is VERY premature to be focused on.

I did go back and edit my initial post , because I do know you are testing the loot and see the loot bundles liches as being a bug, even though the developers do not. I tend to agree with you on the imbalance there.

However, you are also making some big assumptions about the casual player's playstyle, it's not about getting everything at once, but a balance to the progression.

 

Agreed. All of the new updates in R19 I was excited about, I can't test. I'm not willing to grind my way back to where I was and then not be able to experiment with the new skills and combos as well as the other new content like dyes. So you guys wanted to test the new numbers. Well, I think you have your results.

 

It will be easier to handle the higher cost of skills after wipe. You start to lvl, gather, get gold and can buy your skills....no fast lvling though.

 

Then you need to heed the feedback from causepain about the loot bundles on liche lords. The out of balance loot bundles creates the glut of gold, and only encourages more grinding, and then the casual player needs to now compete with this, via increased skill costs as you attempt to maintain balance of the gold.

I would really like for you to make a distinction between resource gatherer, and crafters. CRAFTING as in turning resources into goods, is NOT profitable, never has been, and never will be. The profits are in the gatherer selling resources to the crafter. This is creating a very common misconception that crafting (turning resources into finished goods) is actually profitable. As a casual player who doesn't grind, I end up buying resources on the player vendor, at the lowest prices possible, and then turn those into finished goods for my own use, while I'm striving for the +3 strength bonus from critical success. I'm only selling the failures from that process, and you can't even get half of what those same resources cost on the player vendor.

After you've implemented the oft delayed player vendors, and fleshed out the skill trees much more fully, especially including the refinement and crafting trees.

This may be true, but you're balancing half a set of something thats not even fully implemented.

But do you intend to do this every time you add a new skill? You have not once commented on the testing aspect of this, unless you consider it "off-topic" and are therefor intentionally ignoring it. Also, as this is pre-alpha, sometimes you find the need to reset the skills, etc, do you intend to make this "gift" every time you need to make these changes? Also I take offense to calling it a "gift", you took something away from us (our previously invested skill points), and this is at most "fair compensation".

Gear can't currently be broken down. So as you asked earlier "When should we start working on balance?" ... After all these "future" things you keep using as justification of current changes are actually in place.

Also, none of this economic balance changes now, seem to take into consideration the OTHER things that cost gold, such as house lot deeds, etc ....

As a consequence I think you're looking at the economy as a closed system, but when you also sell house deeds as add-ons, or part of pledges, you're also bringing real life money into the equation.
Just how many hours of grinding, should be equivalent to $1 of real life money spent on the same item in the add-on shop?

As another commenter mentioned, this is one thread in a large net, but when you yank on one thread too much, all the others will unravel.

 

Well I didn't get too far in training since I only had 3k and I'm level 56. But anyway they have donated already to our level up cause so no worries. Things happen and when the game is launched as in other games leveling will be costly and so will much more. That will be part of the work we do playing the game. It also promotes us finding creative ways to make gold, barter, and work it all out. If it is handed to us with a golden spoon then that takes away from the game and we are testing it out now and **crying** in some cases.

 

Plus if we struggle our creativity will kick in. Who says we have to grind for the gold? How about a charity drive for the homeless, special events to earn cash, a bake sale, a gustball event betting on the winner. It has to more difficult in the long run because this game is a roleplaying game and some are not used to that part and think grinding is the only way to make cash. We now have containers that provide for better announcing events and quests. When and if we get a market place with bulletin boards we may be able to announce our work order requests for resources and hire people and be hired. There is so much more to this picture. We just have to open our eyes. well if you want

 

It's only "easier" in that we have less skill points available to use after a wipe. But each wipe is in fact "harder" on us, as we have to start over.

 

I don't think it'll necessarily be a problem when the game is final. The pace of the game will be slower and we'll have more time to do things. If you want to talk about single-player games, in the old days of DOS RPGs and Ultima, it actually took a while to earn enough gold to buy decent equipment. You had to start out with leather and move yourself up to plate over time. Leveling was also slow. It was also hard to carry things around in your inventory to sell them. I see fast leveling and fast gold earning as an MMO feature, not a single-player feature.

I think it'll be bit of a problem during alpha, both because people want to test all the skills out, and also earn enough gold to do things like decoration between wipes. People want to help create spaces role-playing during the tests, which helps the devs, too, because they can then use that to promote the game. But if you have to do it in a narrow window of time, and skill training costs, then it does require constant grinding. I was busy gathering gold last release for home decoration, while I was doing other things also like fighting, doing screenshots, and upgrading my equipment. I had to spend it all just today on skill training. So that's something devs should take into consideration.

 

But your comparing a pre-alpha release where the focus should be on testing and reporting bugs, to a finished game, where the focus is on an already established balance.

 

But none of this creativity is reflected in the macro economic balance that Chris is focusing on.

Events and the like only moves gold around within the system. The net gain in gold, and the skill costs are part of the larger system, where gold actually enters into existence, and is removed from it.

This increased cost, will necessarily compel more people to grind more often, to maintain the arbitrary costs of skill progression, thus taking time away from what a player could spend creating, and attending the social player-driven events.

Just ask Winfield how much time he's had to grind ... He's had to make choices about whether to level up, or whether to maintain the player driven social scene of PaxLair.

 

True, its hard, but we have less wipes now and so no need to hurry.

 

Yes I am, well it just got me thinking in terms of possibilities for the finished game. I want to be spurred to use my imagination, even now it gives something to do, so I don't think it is all bad. Perhaps someone will do a play and charge admission, or charge admission to their gustball event. They have fixed it anyway with a donation to us.

oops editing spelling **majoria goes to make coffee**

 

So now at best I can test 1 deck of skills, if I don't like it I won't have money to try a different one. AND it's pre Alpha. The only testing that is happening is Testing my patience, which usually fails short of playing very much.