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"Removed Generic Recipe Merchant" from Town

Discussion in 'Release 38 Feedback Forum' started by Selene, Jan 28, 2017.

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  1. Selene

    Selene Avatar

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    I am extremely disappointed in the choice of the devs to remove certain Merchant NPCs from towns well after the landrush. I chose the town that I live in BECAUSE it had a recipe merchant. It made it a good place to create an outpost for new players travelling down the truth storyline because, like Solania, players could gain access to a list of basic recipes.

    When the landrush occurred, @DarkStarr posted that
    I think removing merchants like the generic recipe merchants from Solania, Mud, and Westend goes back on the spirit of the promise that the uncloned town would only be received cosmetic changes. Yes, some of the other NPCs in the scene have SOME recipes, but this was a handy tool for new players to get an idea of the basic recipes they could use when choosing a crafting path.

    Please bring back these merchants.
     
  2. Drocis the Devious

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    I wish they'd remove some things from Owl's Head.

    They have to be very strategic about resources, if one town has a clear advantage over every other town and all the other towns have essentially nothing that is special then we get Owl's Head.
     
  3. Black Tortoise

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    The other side of the coin is if you live in a town that is lacking in certain types of NPCs. It can prove quite difficult finding certain NPC merchants in the entire SW quadrant of Novia (example: Grocery Merchant in my town sells useless cups only - not groceries!). While I understand not wanting NPCs to be taken away from a town, it cant stay frozen in place either - lots of towns need an NPC or two.

    Every town doesnt have to be "complete" in terms of NPC merchants, but 2-3 nearby towns should have a mostly complete selection of NPC merchants. I would only be ok with towns losing an NPC merchant if a different one was gained, and the "lost" NPC went to the next town over.

    If this is "working as intended" then it just needs a lot more development in figuring out what town/region is guaranteed to have certain NPCs. Right now all you can do is run through each scene (which takes time) and poke every NPC. The artwork for a city/town could reveal its merchants, or perhaps merchants can travel from town to town and the towns get a right click menu displaying what type of NPCs are currently available. I understand the strategic resource availability and the depth it offers the game, but its not working very well when it takes hours IRL to find a loaf of bread or stick of butter for purchase. Ive basically learned that its always faster to run across the entire world and go to Owl's Head to get an onion, rather than search through any of the 10-or-so towns near me.
     
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  4. Selene

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    I agree with you that NPCs should be added where they are lacking.. but NOT taken away.

    I guess my irritation is that I CHOSE this town in large part FOR this one NPC. I can see eliminating duplicates of the same NPC in a zone (like where they removed some of the multiple Blacksmith NPCs) or getting rid of NPCs that sell the same goods as another under a different name (like the spice vendor) but this removed an NPC type entirely without replacing it with anything "better".
     
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  5. Net

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    I still do not quite understand why there is so many magic shops and alchemy labs with a both alchemist and magic reagent trader, when they seem to have the exactly same things on sale. I wonder what is the long term plan.

    Anyway I am bit confused about this recipe vendor nerf, it is nice to have more "starting crafter" friendly towns. I would understood it if the recipies were moved to other vendors in the scene, but that does not seem to be the case.
     
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  6. Drocis the Devious

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    I'd like to see NPC's move dynamically so we don't have this problem in the future and everyone gets to be "the good NPC place".

    I understand that you may have picked this place because of the NPC, but that could impact the entire game. If the only way to balance things out is to remove the NPC, I'm all for that. Because Solania is where new players spawn in at, it already has a huge advantage in that area. I don't know what the devs are trying to do here exactly, so it's hard to comment on one NPC being there or not being there. I just want balance over preference of a few people, that's all.
     
  7. Baratan

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    Just another way to penalize new players.
     
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  8. Selene

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    If it was so terrible to have them there, why wasn't that addressed in the first place? (BEFORE Persistence) I was fine with not knowing the window dressing of the scene I placed my home in because I believed the core services wouldn't change.

    They made getting recipes harder (removed MOST of the "discoverable" recipes), turned the rarest ones into drops.. all of which, I am TOTALLY fine with because it creates a progression. But, now they remove the recipe sellers (who only sell basic recipes anyway) from everyplace but Owls Head?

    BTW, Westend (where I live) is in the same neighborhood as Rats Nest. So really, this also effects your town as well as mine.
     
  9. Drocis the Devious

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    They did very little balancing before persistence. We have a long way to go before the regional economies are up and running. I expect TONS of changes between now and launch.

    I don't personally care what Westend has in it. I don't know if I've ever even been there yet. And I get that this impacts you and the people of those towns, but if the only people that get to benefit from good NPC's are people that took all those spots a year or more before launch, that's a really lame system. Ideally the goal should be to balance out all the towns so that there's a method to the madness.

    As far as Owls Head goes, that place is so over powered, for lack of a better word, I don't think they can "un-clone" it soon enough. It really needs a redistribution of core services like yesterday.
     
  10. Laurana

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    Uncloning is protected from changing the services, from what i understand, but this wasn't an uncloning of the scene. It still kind of sucks that they removed the NPC, but they never really promised not to change the lineup of NPC merchants prior to uncloning the scene.
     
  11. Womby

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    It is probably about time they added Travelling Merchant back to the random encounter mix. If they sold pretty much everything (but slightly more expensive because risk of bandits and cost of maintaining horse), that would help a lot.
     
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