Want to fix the Obsidian Chips economy problem coming up?

If the obsidian chips change is coming (because we all know not all QA changes always make it through), with the storm of movement that has happened with chips/ingots, there's 2 ways you can save the economy Portalarium.

Increase drop rates of Obsidian chips by 10x for a while, effectively making all chips/ingots stay the price they are before the change, and making the hoards worthless.

Or

Delete all chips and ingots currently in the game on the day of release. People want to complain about lost money? Shouldn't have acted on information about changes that hadn't been implemented yet.

@Berek @Chris @DarkStarr

 

Would be ok with the first solution.

Dear Port, you really need to be more careful with Dev+ and economy stuff. Sure, all of us paid good coin to get infos first.
But i get headache every time it is about the economy. We have to find a different way to handle economy relevant information imo.

 

Our apologies about the change, we're working on an announcement related that should go out shortly.

 

Stricter rules in the future that include punishment for market manipulation based on Dev+ info can help stop future incidents, but this is about stopping what is about to be a major market changing problem.

 

I feel as a community we let port down.

At the top of my screen as I write it clearly says refrain from sharing the info in here

Some people, I hope a minority, broke that. For that like often on the world. Those who took Dev+ the way it was intended and have not abused because they were what port hoped for. Like all rules changes will come in because of actions of a few people spoiling the status quo for the rest.

I hope the ban stick comes out.

 

The change is fine, but the info shoula been kept from all.

No hate, next time get it right.

 

Specificaly talking about making changes to game play, but keeping the sensitive info away from all.

Since this is dev+ ill comment on rarity and chip drops.

Rare is great, chip drops are fine.

I can easily get 2k a day, thats 1.5 days for a super rare weapons.

 

Yeah I misunderstood, I thought you meant he had posted the proposed announcement

 

@Berek Where will the announcement be placed, so I know where to keep an eye out?

 

This open development process is messy.

Every time we seem to get good information, someone freaks out about it and goes over board on their reaction. There's no way to win here. Someone is always upset.

What I'd really like to see happen more is the development team creating methodologies and practices that are based on core goals for the game. An example of that would be Stable, Fast, Fun. Where the developers prioritize work in that order. Making the game stable takes priority over making the game fun.

But now that we're in a persistent state, I'd like to see some kind of thought put behind how we make changes. Balanced, Fair, Fun? I don't know what that looks like exactly, but the emphasis should be on balanced, imo. Balanced economy, balanced combat system, balanced RMT, balanced social features, balanced exploration, balanced playing styles...etc....

In large part I think they do this from month to month fairly well, but during the month they do a very poor job of this. The obsidian chips/ingots is a perfect example. Here you have an understandable balance change but a communication problem and an overreaction problem (from the players). I don't know what their "announcement" will look like, but I hope it doesn't include anything listed in the OP. The OP imagines two solutions that punish the persistent and active players (of which there are VERY few) in exchange for a form of "fairness" that doesn't actually exist in any game. What's really important here (to me) is not that some people might make some money on chips, but instead that we have a working and balanced economy.

 

Not sure a handful of people now holding a bunch of ingots, waiting to sell them at exuberant prices due to the changes, is an example of a working and balanced economy. It's why there's such a backlash over what is going on, and why the changes proposed would help. The second of the two is extreme, the first would keep the economy balanced out in that regard. Just like with stock exchanges, that's "insider trading". And it's punished in courts because it ISN'T a part of a "fair and balanced economy"

 

I've never seen Obsidian anything being sold anywhere.
I've never worn it, used it, cared about it...
Before this happened I rarely would hear about people going to the forge to make ingots, weapons, armor, etc...

Our overall population is small. So the supply and demand for anything is going to be out of whack.

Will some buyers and sellers be impacted? Yes. But in the grand scheme of things this is not that big a deal. What's a much bigger deal is that Portlarium consistently fixes things like this from month to month allowing players to abuse the existing rule sets even though they know it's not intended.

To me, THIS is the real issue. Not the communication, not the change to ingots/chips, but the fact that Portalarium delays these changes while communicating intent and then waiting weeks before implementing.

 

I've seen vendors in OH, NM, and NBM selling Obsidian armor actually, and well worked I might add.

I've seen it used effectively the way it is intended to be, against bosses specifically. AJ uses a set when he fights the clockwork dragon, to great effect.

I agree that it needs fixing though, that things like this should not even be communicated to us as Dev+ members. Anything that could drastically change the economy should be held until it is implemented. Or, as said in a previous thread, if they want our feedback on an economy change, proposed to us in a way that won't give us an advantage. "Hey, we are thinking of changing X. Our ideas are A, B, C, or do nothing. What are your thoughts?"

 

I think we should not lose sight of something....making a sweeping change deciding that something should suddenly be 10x as rare is the genesis of the issue. If you want something mae rarer, fine.. but a 10x change is just stupid. It would have been much smarter to make smaller incremental changes.. both to the material requirements as well as the drop rates. I also found it interesting (having been there when @Chris was first made aware due to someone in the dev+ channel calling it out) that the dev in charge of the economy. again Chris, was completely unaware. Next item up look at the source of the information...it wasn't some secret exploit kinda thing discovered accidentally on the QA server.. it was in a document provided to the dev+ community.
I'm astounded that nobody (on the port side) had the presence of mind to see how this would play out. Next up on the list was Chris's initial response (again in Discord) that canceling the change would piss of the people that had acted on this information because of the impact to their wallets. Sorry but that's the nature of a speculative/risky "investment". My own initial response (which I hold to) is screw em.

So ya, Port has to shoulder the blame here.

Next up though is the fact that somebody, knowing full well they were breaking the rules took it upon themselves to make a forum post sharing the information. While I understand the sentiment and frustration this can't be ignored either.


Anyway.. I haven't even had my coffee yet but I'll say this as well.. I would submit this isn't the first time that dev+ information has been acted upon by members of the dev+ community in order to gain a financial advantage. Just speaking for myself.. I didn't purchase dev+ access with an eye towards being able to use what amounts to insider information to gain a financial advantage. If that isn't P2W I'll eat mu (under-powered by the by) Halberd.

I DO think it has made some sense to get input from those with the most skin in the game. Not sure I'm saying that right and I mean no disrespect to those with only basic $40 accounts.

Now having said all that I'll propose a solution.... simply rethink/postpone the change. Tbh idk wth people were thinking.... but it feels like someone said.. 'Oh look.. people have too many of these.. we need a gold sink.'
Imagine for a moment that you wake up in the morning and find your RL currency has been devalued by a factor of 10. Anybody who thinks we wouldn't see rioting in the streets has been lost on Willie Nelson's tour bus.

I'm freakin tired of some of the sinks, particularly when far greater economic issues are still with us. FFS, I got the new char I've been building up out to see what he could do in a (lower end of) a 5 skull zone. I did OK and managed to stay alive while picking off the mobs.. and the reward? 8g! Hell no wonder people aren't playing but I digress a bit.

Back to the leakage of information that can't be ignored. posting d+ info in the general forum ares ist verboten and we all know it. If that flies w/o a penalty it's a middle finger to those of us who try to adhere to the rules.

ok /rantoff

I'm out for coffee

 

Here is the announcement: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...n-to-all-starting-with-r45.95837/#post-848671

 

Would also like to add an idea somebody else threw out @Berek @DarkStarr @Chris :

On day of release, convert all the current Obisidian ingots in the game to something else, like: Old Obsidian Ingots, or Small Obsidian Ingots. Sometime down the line, put in a recipe to convert them to regular Obsidian ingots at a 10 to 1 conversion.

 

Looks like the release notes were updated - instead of 100->1000, it's now 100->500.

 

While that will mitigate some of the outrage, it still doesn't change the fact the market is about to have a metric crap ton of pre-made ingots from 100 chips thrown on it come patch day due to the storm a couple of Dev+ people caused. These solutions would stop that market influx from happening in the first place.

 

yeah if that had just been omitted from what we saw.. funny.. Im pretty sure I can go back to last months post where there was something that didnt make sense and Darkstarr told me they wouldnt change the wording..... but hey.. i guess what suits right.

See last month : https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...raft-feedback-please.92726/page-2#post-833280 repeated we wont change the text (and then do later)