Population Concerns

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Allistaire, Oct 6, 2016.

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  1. jammaplaya

    jammaplaya Avatar

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    I pretty much totally agree with this. I've personally only ever sold gold ore, to help the people who work too much to play but like to craft get ahead to enhance their crafting experience.

    The only problem with not allowing RMT for gold coins is that it will likely happen off the record, which is harder to track for the staff economist and developer's benefit in finding bugs etc.
     
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  2. Numa

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    Unfortunately this is true based on my experience in Star Citizen before things tightened up. Deals were made in the reddit grey market and the seller just gifted the ship to the buyer using his/her Star Citizen account page. You could pretend that it wasn't going on since it wasn't overtly taking place on the forums itself but the volume of ship trades (then) was massive.
     
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  3. Canterbury

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    That's what I was referring to either in this thread or another thread, recently. I love SC, but its attitude of, "Don't do that! Naughty! Naughty!" whilst simultaneously giving people the tools to do it in the first place was... well, a bit bizarre.
     
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  4. Derium

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    I'm about $9,000 deep into this game, haven't logged on in weeks. Yes, been busy with my business, but here's the in game factors that keep me watching the game, but not playing it yet (keep in mind this was all relevant at the time of me taking a break)

    1: Change. I've rebuilt my character a few times since "launch" due to changes they keep making. It breaks your heart to spend hours working on a build you enjoy, then needing to go out and farm the EXP to change builds with each change.

    2: This goes along with change and will go along with #3. I would find really good spots to farm/grind/enjoy playing, but they would change quite often as well. So I'd feel like I needed to re-explore everything all over again only looking to see if there was changes I liked, since there's no good wiki yet

    3: Gold. I broke 1,000,000 gold within a few weeks easily. And not from selling collars or pledge items. There was a few broken spots in the game where you could farm it within 7 minutes and earn upwards of 75,000 gold in resources an hour (chest farming). Thankfully they fixed the locations I know of. But it still took them three times of changing it until they finally found a good fix. However, even right now one of the spots is still too much in value per hour. What's wrong with 1,000,000 gold? Nothing, but in a game where most areas are not released and I had access to all the resources I needed, I didn't like how quickly I was able to accumulate wealth. You could say I should have just ignored the farm spots. But hey, we are humans, we are all greedy. So when I logged in, I felt compelled to grind the spots. When I logged out about two weeks later to take a break, I have around 1.5mil in gold, another 500kish in resources and gave my buddies a few hundred K each. Too much too fast.

    4: Other players taking breaks. I have three good buddies that still play a lot. But again, it was sad to find a new few people to play with, then all of a sudden hear them say they are going to wait to play due to all the jazz about it being pre-launch.

    5: New Add-on items being added quickly. We are still seeing new items thrown at us left and right. I own probably over $1,000 in houses. Why? Because they would do something like the $350 Kobold house, I'd fall in love, buy it, place it and decro it. Then along comes a $300 Viking house. Yes, again, I don't have to buy it, but I'm looking for a house I LOVE and want to live in for a long time. I want to test out the houses and see if I like them as much as I think I would when I visit one in game. But now there's no possible way to melt down and get my money back. So I want to wait until they stop throwing new stuff at us every 12 seconds. Then I'll buy the top 3 houses I like and go from there. This is also a personal issue when I own a Keep, Town, Village and Row tax free deeds. Heh, a lot of new houses to test out. Then again, perhaps there's a public test server where you can try before you buy that I'm not aware of. If so, I'm just an idiot.

    6: Under Construction Zones: Until they polish off most of the zones, I often found myself exploring a scene as much as I could, then all of a sudden hitting a brick wall because it's not finished. That's fine and all, but once it is finished, when I go back to it, I'll just want to rush through it to see the "end" of it. That's the opposite of the play experience that I want.

    7: Fear: This game didn't turn out like most of us expected it to. Is that a bad thing? Nope. but I already threw my money at this game, I'm happy to support Richard and Starr, two people who I've spent my life looking up to. However, I'm afraid to play the game a lot, fall in love with it, feel financially tied but have it falter due to not being "UO2" like people expect so it fails to live up to the hype once marketing hits during actual launch, then I'm left playing a dead game. I'd rather consider my $9k+ a donation to an amazing team, than become hooked on a game with low population. I currently play no MMOs and I personally want to join a healthy one, since all the other games I play are either single player, or games like Overwatch.

    8: All the cool things are purchased with cash: Well, not ALL, but most. I spend more of my time on these forums buying things from people than I actually do in game crafting, farming or finding things. Now there might be true rares out there, I spent countless hours searching for those random encounters trying to get the vendors to show up, so far I haven't seen them selling any super rare items. I thought we struck gold when people were selling the "small odd skull" for a ton of cash at launch, but those are best are semi-rare. Until rares are confirmed, it's better to just buy up all the add-on/pledge/telethon rares with cash, instead of going out and exploring for them.

    9: Loot tables: Enough said.

    I have to say, this is NOT me trashing the game. I really do love the game. Even just spending all night in my POT messing around is relaxing. I just am afraid to become too hooked on something, then have it suddenly change on me. Disappointment is much harder to shrug off.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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  5. Kara Brae

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    My understanding is that finding and taking advantage of a place that can give you upwards of 75,000 gold an hour would now be considered a bannable offence, so hopefully this isn't possible any more. If you know a spot that "is still too much in value per hour", maybe you should report it.

    I can earn around 1500 g in an hour if I risk death and put my mind and energy to it. Yay! :)
     
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  6. Andrew Silverston

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    Port mentioned yesterday that they are not pushing to attract more players right now because game is far from where they want it to be, before the masses will pour in to play.
     
  7. StrangerDiamond

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    Why is there such strong moderation on the forums while people are allowed to exploit gold that wasn't supposed to exist and there is no moderation upon them ?

    Very discouraging...
     
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  8. Derium

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    It wasn't a gold exploit, it was simply opening chests, taking out the ore, wood, gems and reggies, tossing them on a vendor quicker than miners could. The "exploit" was literally "zone into an area, run to chests, open them, take the stuff, leave".
     
  9. Derium

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    The biggest spot has been almost killed off. They did this in steps:

    First they Dumbed down the loot from the chests
    Then they changed it so you could only loot the chests outside of combat. But with max run speed and popping run speeds you could still make it
    Then they moved spawn closer to the chests to make it harder, but it was still possible with practice
    Finally they deleted doors that you could open really fast, get behind and wait to deaggro

    So now the only way to farm the chests is by clearing out the 10+ mobs, plus the chests have much less loot. I have my notebook around here somewhere, I'll try and find it and give you the exact breakdown I figured out while Min/Maxing the best area.

    Moral of the story? Good on Port, they fixed it not just once, but FOUR times until it was no longer on easy mode.
     
    Last edited: Nov 13, 2016
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  10. StrangerDiamond

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    It sure is nice that they are paying attention, I also appreciate the fact there is an effort to make no element of the game P2W... but if you are letting players become immensely rich (especially RMT folks who are playing 24/7) through things not WAI and then not moderating them, it almost rivals in economic impact...

    Its just like we're repeating the same error than we had with UO, exept now the beta hasn't even begun *+ persistence* and we already have massive wealth imbalance which allow some players to purchase all manners of rare things to sell them back for real money because everyone else will be so far behind.

    Am I a know-all about the issue ? no... am I personally affected by the outcome... well yes and no... I have never "amassed wealth" in role-playing games, not my thing because I believe karma is not only one wheel but that its rather a continuum of wheels of time. Hence I do not mind what people do and how much money they make ; but I know about something else and so very well. The funny, witty, dynamic, profoundly good people are these days pretty conscious about many things that went unnoticed in the past.

    Lets for the sake of brevity compose it thus simply : they will leave not only if they suspect unfairness, racism, sexism in the dominant population, they will also leave because the people supposed to be moderating said innuendos have turned the blind eye. I see it everyday in every sphere of being and the wasted potential causes me pain and sadness, if a critical amount of those players leave, others will even know subconsciously not to join in. It is one thing to moderate a community, and to moderate a community.

    Have a better explanation ? I'm open to it... and know what I see. *cough*

    Thats how that fits in population concerns, we are not known to attract the portion of players that will not worry about those things, so in reality it can only get worse...

    I am unconditionally pledged, and this as I said is as a "thank you" to King Gariott and King Darkstarr, who have made me into the strange, wierd, spectacular roleplayer I love being. After all the ultimas and the mystical happenings of UO Atlantic-Pacific era : I could only grow into an extremely demanding pain in the arse.
     
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