well I'm level 5 now and have a few complaints...

[ouch]

well first things first, some anoying bugs that need to be addressed:

1. clicking through the menu system to the ground is highly anoying. you know your trying to eat all those apples and then are off by one pixel and click the ground causeing your guy to run off a cliff and die is not amuseing...

2. while mineing, if there is lag and the animation finishes and you sit down, if you happen to get an ore then your guy will stand back up. The actual status of your character is in limbo then as "z" will no longer make him stand or sit as he is already doing both according to the game... the only fix seems to be /stand forcing him to re-stand.

The economy is another problem. Seeing all the hatred for gold, I stayed away from it untill I hit level 5. why now? quite simply you need trias in bulk once you hit 5. Everyone blames gold, but I think the problem is that leveling is FAR too expensive. you have absolutely 0 alternative for getting that kind of cash before you die of old age in real life... Take crafting a sword... to go through the effort of createing a longsword you know, battleing your way to get too an iron mine, mining 36 iron and 4 coal. (which you likely have to make 2-3 trips for) smelting the ores creating 10 steel ingots for handles, 3 steel stock and then heating the stock and pounding on them to shape them 3 times, heating again, cooling, heating once more, cooling again, then finially sharpening the blade. and then heating 2 ingots, pound on them at an anvil, then, finally assembling the 2 at an table to create a sword worth... wait for it.... under 300 tria to npc's... Yes the player just spent all afternoon (3-4 hours) obtaining a little under 300 tria.

now how many levels can you buy with for under 300 tria? pretty much 0... maybe a couple un-implimented level 0 skills perhaps... you need 1000's to make 1 level at level 4. I can't even imagine leveling to 20 this way which I hear you need around 20k per level.

As a result the only choice a player has is too obtain money through the way that returns the most, we know it as Gold. I spent those same 3-4 hours mining gold and now have 15k in the same amount of time. So now we are faced with the extremely difficult decision... do we spend our 4 hours of work on 300 tria, or do we spend it on 15,000 tria... Hmm... decisions, decisions...

what makes all this worse is that there are usually more people in one gold mine than all the taverns in the game at all times... But what choice do we have? how can we develop our characters and help out the newbs on a budget of under 2k-4k a week? At the current prices for training that's impossible.

how do we fix this though? well I'm not entirely sure but what I am sure of is makeing people huddle at gold mines longer isn't the answer. without a doubt gold needs a serious price cut, in half or more at least. the returns for gold is quite ridiculous. I mean seriously, put all the worths of the ores (and then thier stock equivlents) in the game on a line graph and the point on the gold one will be so pointy it will hurt your eyes just to look at it. Next up, the cost of leveling needs to be sliced severely, again by half or more. Or make it so that training is completely optional and only boosts the experience gained for that skill when doing it physicly.

anyway just my 2 tria...

actually.. no, I need those 2 tria train with...

[ThomPhoenix]

First off, you should sell those swords to players, not NPCs. I agree though that NPCs should pay more for them than just 300 trias (or training must go down).
Secondly, it's true the Economy isn't perfect. Far from it in fact.

The problem is that it's very hard to balance since "the damage has already been done". Best thing would be to come up with a good balance based on a) a theoretical model and b) tests on Laanx and then just to Wipe the entire database. Reset the whole world.

[Lanarel]

As you can see if you search in the bug tracker, both the bugs you mentioned have already been fixed. These problems will be gone in the next release.
About the inbalance in economy, there are several thread about that, it is a known problem, and not as easy to solve as just cutting the price of gold. If you want more people in the tavern, go hang out there and have a beer. They only cost virtual money to RP.

[ouch]

it's good to know those bugs are fixed, thanks.

But I think the economy problems might be as easy to fix as cutting gold and training prices. I mean think about it, what drives us to need 10's of thousands of tria? Training. What is the only way to get 10's of thousands of tria? Gold.

Unless I'm overlooking something that is.

[Jeraphon]

and then just to Wipe the entire database. Reset the whole world.

I like the way this man thinks. 

[ThomPhoenix]

Press the red button, I know you want to!

[Baron Samedi]

   I have metallurgy at level 27, and swordmaking at level 12...trust me, the training gets both expensive and extraordianrily tedious at higher levels!

   I think, though, that having crafting skills be so expensive and take such a long time to advance is a good thing. It will make players specialize in certain crafts, and keep crafters from overrunning the place later. A good, high level swordsmith should be uncommon, not found on every corner.

  I think that there needs to be a way to make crafting rewarding for player as he practices his craft, instead of just making him waste endless hours and tens of thousands of tria without any sort of compensation. A beginning or medium level swordsmith cannot sell their swords...they just don't sell, noone wants to buy them, what with all the cool swrds you can loot.

   As for the gold, I do hope to see a more progressive way of obtaining income from refining other metals, such as copper and silver...but right now, for the time and effort, gold is the only reasonable choice.

   

[Enrion]

Many chars are buying gold for 400 trias each. So where is the problem to earn money in the game? Listen, ouch: You can't win the crown of Yliakum within one day. That's quite normal for RPGs. Stop crying and start working.

[TymTheEnchanter]

Isn't this really an issue with the fact that PS is still incomplete?

As an example mining gems is almost useless as no-one can cut then and make jewelery because those skills are not implemented yet, the same for bow making and leather working and so on. As more skills are implemented that can create useful (or desirable) items the opportunities to make money from other sources will expand and gold will become less important (think about the cost of cut, polished & set diamonds vs their raw cost to dig up).

Agreed, the economy is not well balanced, but then it is probably fair to say that it will change in future releases once other, more pressing, issues get resolved. As it is, there *is* an economy and whilst it is not perfect it does function. How many perfect economies do you get in RL?

I also agree that training is rather expensive and maybe the cost per level curve needs to be addressed so that the lower levels are reasonably cheap (after all, you are only learning the basics of a skill aren't you?), with mid levels being a bit easier to obtain as well. However the high levels *should* be costly as you are trying to learn the fine mastery of a skill and this can, and should, take a great amount of time and effort which should be reflected in the cost to train. Indeed, after certain levels you sholdn't be able to train any more (you are the best there is), and it is only through practice that you can improve your skills.

This gets onto Baron Samedi's point about rewarding a player for practicing their craft, but only rewarding the skill being used - maybe by having general PP's earned from experience and skill specific PP's that are worth say 5 general ones earned from using the skill (actual formula to be worked out later ). That way the fastest way to train a skill (no addressing getting the money to pay for training) is to use it.

There's my 4 tria (2 given to ouch to cover costs )

[eldoth_terevan]

Set all quests to be repeatable. Wipe the characters back to start stats every MONTH. Manage server like a test server, instead of TRYING to manage it like a finished game. Have the GMs become testing managers, granting ability bonus for testing higher level combinations, such bonuses would only last a month. The pace of life and events for true players does not have to change. Only the hardcores that love PS and roleplay will stay, development will increase in pace and efficiency, troublemakers will get bored and leave, exploiters will not be able to benefit very long. And that is the crux, characters that benefited from bugs in the past are still carrying those bonuses. Perhaps we could make an exception on books and maps, though. Yes: I have four or five high level characters that I have spent a couple of years working with. WIPE I say, and wipe OFTEN! [laughs maniacally and disappears in a puff of sulfurous smoke]

[Baron Samedi]

Many chars are buying gold for 400 trias each. So where is the problem to earn money in the game? Listen, ouch: You can't win the crown of Yliakum within one day. That's quite normal for RPGs. Stop crying and start working.

    That's the point. There is no way to earn money crafting (until you reach mega levels), and looting and digging gold are the best, and realistically, only way to do it.

   I think that's fine for now, but for crafting it kind of sux, that's all.

[Jonerian]

Okay, first off I am playing this game only for a couple of month and not years, so I don't have that long of an experience with the game.

Manage server like a test server, instead of TRYING to manage it like a finished game. Have the GMs become testing managers, granting ability bonus for testing higher level combinations, such bonuses would only last a month.

Simply: no. Not because I am afraid of the wipe. It's not like PS will be a complete game within 2 years only because of such intense testing. There also is lots of development to be done. I would guess it is important for most people involved, that you can actually play this game somewhat in the many years it is still in development. I also don't think that it would be to the point to grant higher level abilieties only through a GM. This would need a lot more coordination with all the testing players. I guess it IS done with the (real) testers, but to watch a game evolve and to watch chars evolve for a longer time helps the development.
I am not against wipes at all, but I am against scheduled wipes every month. A wipe is only needed when there are serious changes and many things can be planned without an trial and error method every month..

@economy:
In another game I made lots of tables and calculations for the whole economy of the game. That was about 20 different ressources and another 200 completely different "items". For every item you can make or get you have to find out the amount of "gaming ressources" you need to get them (recursively and with some fixed point calculations and so on) and the "value" this item has.
The other game (it was ritterburgwelt.de) was turn based (so gaming time was not a ressource) and the important "gaming ressource" was space, because there was a fixed limit in space for every player. In PS the "gaming ressource" would be the time spent to get and/or produce the Item (PLUS the time spent for the items needed for this item)
The Value would be mainly Tria. This value is related to the items which need this item or at the far end what this item is "worth" to a player (in order to get more ressource through fighting, mining and so on). For some items you need to set a value (a golden ring can't be used, but should be worth some amount of gaming equivalent) And you might have to iterate the model because there are some loops which have to be approximated until they match.
Of course this would also be a constant change as game mechanics and more items get introduced. Even if the game would be complete the prices need to be changed due to changing amount of items being wanted or produced (I an item isn't bought by anybody, the price should go down)

You can do all this in a spread sheet or build your own program with a database with all the recipes an mechanics. It helps to test some things out, but you can develop most of the economy without testing everything InGame. (Still testing that IS important though)

I guess there is somebody in the development who is doing this right? Of course an InGame guild could also do this task and try to enforce some prices, since big parts of the economy are done through players, but it takes a long time to investigate all the game mechanics without knowledge of the exact rules becaus you have to do a lot of testing vor EVERY skill, item and way to produce or get anything.

If this is done, so it must be clearly evident, that some "interesting" parts of the game just don't make any sense because of the way the economy works at the moment.


Like I said, I don't have years of PS experience and don't know any developer personally. This is just based on my experience with the economy in games.

PS:
If somebody is wondering how "professional" my comments are: I DON'T study business (which doesn't help a lot anyways) and I also don't study economies. My major is computer science and my minor is math, so the methods I use are out of that area and the rest is only logic and gaming experience ;-)


PPS:
Training has to be expensive in order that you can constantly train and get better without reaching the maximum in a couple of weeks..

[Under the moon]

I 100% disagree with training having to be expensive to limit the 'maxxing' time of a character. Money should not be a factor in training at all if you do not wish it. The only thing that should limit training should be training stamina. Simply put, you can only learn so much in a day. Run out of physical training stamina and your body starts doing damage to itself (reverse training). Run out of mental training stamina and you simply will not learn any more. Run out of magic training stamina, and you mess up a practice spell and your head explodes. That is both realistic and limiting.

Adding money to the equation should do two things: Give you better resources to train faster and use your training stamina more efficiently. Second is to access special training you could not learn otherwise.

Edit: Also DEATH TO PP! Hate them. Kill them. Not needed. Not wanting. Unroleplayable. Pointless. Unrealistic. What are they anyways?

[ouch]

well in my opinion haveing to pay for training courses in order to learn something is complete BS anyway. I know plenty of people that do what they do just based on them doing it most of thier life. And they still havn't entered a classroom for training on that task, and they usually know all the tricks that the ones fresh out of a school don't even know.

in short, to me it's like your paying someone to turn your brain on which doesn't even seem right in a magic fantasy setting...

[Dajoji]

In some trades learning can happen with practice only, but other fields can be much more complex and even dangerous if not taken on under the guidance of a proper mentor. Not to mention that those things one might learn alone can be mastered much faster and with more proficiency if there is someone there to show us the ropes.