PlaneShift
Support => Complaint Department => Topic started by: Enrion on November 09, 2007, 04:31:03 pm
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As many of us became aware in the past hours: the developers have changed the metallurgy levels and the price for gold ingots.
We now need level 30 in metallurgy for producing gold ingots. And the NPCs don't buy'em for round about 600 anymore, they now pay only 240 it.
That's quite unfair. Many of us - or shall I say: all of us? - have spent weeks at the furnaces melting and casting, for reaching level 20 in metallurgy. Level 20 was the central step to wealth in the game. And now it seems that metallurgy above level 5 is a useless skill, except for solving one ore some more quests in which you need gold ingots.
In this thread I don't want to discuss about the fact that these changings came - again - over night without telling the community before or after. We all know this behaviour of the PlaneShift staff and the most of us don't like it to be treated like laboratory rats in these cases.
What I want to discuss is the unfairness in the game now: Players with very high skills and guilds with their own houses. Players and guilds only could afford it because they casted gold ingots and sold'em at high prices to NPCs. Nobody can tell me that he or his guild has earned 6 million trias by killing Rogues.
So, what to do now?
In my opinion the developers are thinking as far as a fat pig jumps. They can't give me the time back I spent at the furnaces. But they can give me the money back I wasted by training metallurgy from level 5 to level 20. And I hope they'll do.
An alternative would be to increase the price NPCs are paying for gold ingots.
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What will you do when all your money and skills are wiped?
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I would have no problem with it <- I said that before when the money-cheat and what to do with it has been discussed.
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Then stop complaining. It has to be done. The economy is 'whack', so to speak. It needs to be capped somehow and gold is the way.
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welcome to alpha testing where stuff is constantly be tweaked, added, removed, od completely overhauled as the game's development progresses.
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Well in case you did not notice, weapon prices have also been reduced from their recent high levels so it looks like there was too much money around altogether. It seems to me your level 20 in metallurgy will do you some good and you might even make more money selling steel stocks. They were being offered for sale yesterday for around 2k tria apiece. You must have known the golden road was only made of yellow bricks before you started down it.
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Eventually jewelry will soon find its way into the game, and gold can be worked into valuable items, such as rings or amulets. I'm quite confident that people would open their wallet widely for a pair of special wedding rings ;)
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Excellent choice, Devs ... more power to crafting, less to mining!
If you look at the real world you'll see that the more work is put into an object the larger the price generally. Up until now in PS a simple gold miner/melter could earn way more tria than a skilled blacksmith by using NPCs. I'm very glad that the Devs decided to redo the prices of things and make a more realistic NPC economy.
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No warning? Odd. Then I wonder what this is? http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=30666.0 :)
As for unfairness, such is the way of a game in developement. Every change is going to cause problems for some people and benifit others. No way around it.
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Ah well, I needed to learn blacksmithing and sword-making anyway.
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i do think the prices went a ~bit~ too, low, but they really did need to drop. How bout tweaking them up just a bit.... not much. Or are uses for the metals come ~really~ soon?
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I actually can't see the point in this. Gold ingots sell for 240 tria, but stocks are still worth 2400+ tria I can see the furnaces getting busy with everyone trying to PL up to level XX just so that they can make stocks and continue making huge tria as before.
Unless the stocks price is to be tweaked too? I sure hope so, the economy needs this.
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I actually can't see the point in this. Gold ingots sell for 240 tria, but stocks are still worth 2400+ tria I can see the furnaces getting busy with everyone trying to PL up to level XX just so that they can make stocks and continue making huge tria as before.
Unless the stocks price is to be tweaked too? I sure hope so, the economy needs this.
But this seems to be ok for me. Now 5 ingots are not worth more than one stock any more. You need a lot more experience to make gold stock (at least it was like that before), so gaining experience pays off.
By the way, I have the feeling that entropy has entered the metallurgy part of crafting. Re-melting the stock again and again reduces the quality now. Before it was more or less rolling the dice. This will make it much more difficult to get expereince in metallurgy.
*edit*
I actually can't see the point in this. Gold ingots sell for 240 tria, but stocks are still worth 2400+ tria I can see the furnaces getting busy with everyone trying to PL up to level XX just so that they can make stocks and continue making huge tria as before.
Unless the stocks price is to be tweaked too? I sure hope so, the economy needs this.
I rechecked: Prices for ingots now match the prices for stock. So I guess we can close the thread as the gold ingot sells for 488 trias now.
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most of us don't like it to be treated like laboratory rats in these cases.
But... we are lab rats. We're playing a game in development, and the developers are seeing how their community (more specifically, its economy) changes when prices change. I completely agree that gold was far too worthwhile (though I miss the money). It was too little effort to make a lot of money.
Steps to make mad money lootz:
1) Make a Kran.
2) Get mining to level 1.
3) Mine gold.
4) Sell gold for 500 a piece, at 20 pieces a trip. (total of 10,000 tria)
5) Win.
With more crafting coming around, we need more people mining things actually useful to crafting (like iron, coal, etc.) and less on shiny money metals. Less demand for shiny money metals, plus more demand for normal things, means more personal crafting, more variation, and a better player based economy
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Whatever the case.... the ingot prices were tweaked up..... and the seem to be good, now. looks to be right. \\o//
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I thought quite a while before posting here - maybe "complaint" is not the right word for what I'm writing.
I appreciate the recent changes in crafting and metallurgy, as they seem reasonable for me. The level to make ingot or stock is equal now and the prices of the ingots match the price of stock, this is consistent. Recycling blades / Remelting stock decreases the quality until you end up with unusable slag/dust/ or whatever. This is what I would expect (and makes it more difficult for powerleveling - fine for me). Ok, I cannot craft knifes any more as I don't know how to craft the handles - this will probably be fixed soon. And according to my book of shields I don't know any more how to craft shields - well, you cannot really use them, so no problem with that.
The prices for the weapons did rise slightly, so maybe now it becomes an opportunity to craft weapons instead of digging for gold? Not really, I'm afraid. I could run to the mines, dig for iron and coal, come back to Harnquist and use his equipment to craft 4 sabres. Selling them to Harn will not even give me 1000 trias. I'm better off digging 3 gold ore and sell the ingots (or sell the ore for that price). The investment of time compared to the revenue is beyond discussion. Oh, yes, and I forgot: I lost my ability to craft weapons of decent quality. The quality of my crafted weapons is now about 50% of what it was before. That means selling them in an auction to get a better price is no alternative. A bit disappointing after investing so much time in learning to craft swords. I feel that here is still room for improvement. It will take years learning to craft high quality weapons. I don't see a way to learn it without powerleveling.
The second point is the quality drop in metallurgy. Before the changes I was able to get (steel) stock of good quality, about q150 I guess. This after reading the 50th book on metallurgy. (Yes, I did some powerleveling for that, and I hate myself for doing it. I want to apologize to my fellow crafters for hogging the furnace). And here the average quality dropped again to 50% of what it was before. Learning metallurgy was much more easy than learning the art of sword crafting. Still the result is pathetic.
So I decided to give up crafting for now. My time in game is only limited (and I'm not the only one http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=30485.0 (http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=30485.0)), so I will concentrate on the quests and rp - that is probably the best way for me to get most fun of the game. If I really need some tria I can still dig for some gold ores.
As a summary this is no real complaint but the request not to stop with the changes to the game. To my point of view the recent changes turned things to the better, but I'm afraid that a real balance is not reached in some areas. And I think there are still no in game incentives for people that want to be crafters. :(
Yolantha
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Quite right Yolantha! Could we have a bit more well-thought-through posts like this please?
*edit*
Want to add that an imbalance in economy can also exist because of human interactions and customs: Steel stocks (which are produced much faster than gold ores) still sell for 2k, allthough I havent been able to find anyone to buy them (or iron ores for that matter) lately. I can make nice quality 70 (and a bit later maybe quality 100) SS. They are slightly better than Harns' swords (quality 50), so I would sell them for a slightly higher price (400 trias or so, thats a huge loss on the steel stock involved but ok if this is the new economy). I'm sure some of us (especially the beginners) buy swords from Harns occasionally. And these swords just last a bit longer. However I'm unable to find a buyer for these swords. So much for economy when items between level 0 and 30 don't sell and it takes years to level up. Let me know if you think I'm being unreasonable.
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Lyoven what I don't get with the crafting is last night when you were chatting with Ruyek you made a Q65 shortsword and said your blacksmith was 1 and sword making 0. Ruyek's blacksmith is 17 and sword making 9 yet you are making the same quality swords. That does not make sense.
You will find it hard to get buyers for those swords. The people that know about crafted want the good stuff and the people that could benefit don't understand about 70/70 vs 50/50 and still stick with their looted swords.
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It seems weapon prices dropped again, which disappoints me a bit. At these prices blacksmithing is still not promoted as an actual profitmaking job. Of course I'm waiting and seeing what happens since the Devs are still throwing everything upside down.
Aiken, last I checked skills at lvl 0 are bugged .. Lyoven will most likely drop in quality as soon as he hits lvl 1.
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We are still very actively working on this issue so bear with us.
All the thoughts posted on crafting are being read and considered so just keep em coming.
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Aiken: If many users don't know the difference between 70/70 vs 50/50, then perhaps standard looted weapons should be of less quality than 50/50. It would probably increase the demand of crafted weapons. They could also be made more expensive to buy (not to sell), so that there's even less benefit of having a looted/npc-bought sword.
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Somewhat :offtopic:
The looted weapons do not really make a lot of sense as it is, You would think if a mob has a magic sword he'd be using it against you if it had a buff that would help. Also having looted weapons be damaged to begin with would encourage weapon repair skill use. If, in a tough fight with a mob (10+ attack exchanges) my weapon is reduced several points of quality the mob's weapon should be reduced even further. Now, he may have weapons he is not using that are available to loot but they may be damaged as well from previous bouts that particular mob might have had.
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This quote
We are still very actively working on this issue so bear with us.
All the thoughts posted on crafting are being read and considered so just keep em coming.
makes me believe it would be sensible to come up with constructive suggestion how to gain a better balance, maybe even without changing too much of the current game settings or rules.
I try to look on the “mechanics” of the economy in PS. What I invest is time and what I get as incentive is experience in the skills I selected to match best for my character or trias. Saying the game is unbalanced means, that
a) the relation of the time invested and the experience gained differs greatly for some skills.
b) the relation of the time invested and the amount of trias differs greatly depending on the chosen action
I hope that a small difference will not matter, but the big differences we actually see in game lead to the fact that gaining tria is more or less equivalent to mining gold ore and the chosen skills are mostly some combat skills in combination fighting and armor.
So I start with this:
What about selling rare goods only in certain places of the game (like BD) so that for a merchant running the way from Hydlaa to that point and back will pay off by gaining some tria. As knife handles are not to be crafted at the moment, it might be possible to sell those far away in BD. Just an idea. I would try to measure the time I need to run to BD and back, the amount of knife handles I can carry and add a 100% surplus to the NPC price of the weapon to compare that to the price of gold ores I could dig in the mine in the same time. But I’m not sure if this works out, as it is like this for the mace and hammer weapon, without seeing any merchants selling those weapon actively in Hydlaa.
Is the complaint department the right place for suggestions? Shouldn’t that be the wish list?
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Is the complaint department the right place for suggestions? Shouldn’t that be the wish list?
http://hydlaa.com/smf/index.php?topic=27759.msg330320#msg330320
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As many of us became aware in the past hours: the developers have changed the metallurgy levels and the price for gold ingots.
We now need level 30 in metallurgy for producing gold ingots. And the NPCs don't buy'em for round about 600 anymore, they now pay only 240 it.
That's quite unfair. Many of us - or shall I say: all of us? - have spent weeks at the furnaces melting and casting, for reaching level 20 in metallurgy. Level 20 was the central step to wealth in the game. And now it seems that metallurgy above level 5 is a useless skill, except for solving one ore some more quests in which you need gold ingots.
In this thread I don't want to discuss about the fact that these changings came - again - over night without telling the community before or after. We all know this behaviour of the PlaneShift staff and the most of us don't like it to be treated like laboratory rats in these cases.
What I want to discuss is the unfairness in the game now: Players with very high skills and guilds with their own houses. Players and guilds only could afford it because they casted gold ingots and sold'em at high prices to NPCs. Nobody can tell me that he or his guild has earned 6 million trias by killing Rogues.
So, what to do now?
In my opinion the developers are thinking as far as a fat pig jumps. They can't give me the time back I spent at the furnaces. But they can give me the money back I wasted by training metallurgy from level 5 to level 20. And I hope they'll do.
An alternative would be to increase the price NPCs are paying for gold ingots.
You can't 'waste' time in Yliakum :) you learned a skill, wich is allways a good way to spend your time. Besides some day stock quality might make a difference for sell value or you will need the skill to make raw materials for crafting, as the info window of gold states 'raw material used to make armor'.
NPC's buy gold ingots for 488 trias now and gold stock for 2440 trias. I for one am glad the stock price isn't under ingot price anymore. All those single ores in the furnace and stock casting was annoying. The price of gold being down does however stimulate using weapon skills and thus once more putting emphasis on combat in the game. If I can loot weapons worth up to 7106 trias (scorched long sword), why would I even bother mining gold? In this case I hope it's because crafting metal armor will be an option soon, as the item description states.
For crafted weapons to appeal they need to be significantly better than looted or storebought. The recent changes in lowering amouts of materials needed and ease of training are a good step in making crafting actually worth the effort put in. Lower amounts of materials needed means sell value will be limited. lowest value (selling to npc) should be higher than the raw materials are worth, same with weapon parts. Highest value depends on the amount of trias people are willing to spend on crafted weapons, thus the amount they don't 'need' to buy training, armor, repair kits etc.
For crafters being able to make a living there needs to be money there with the people who want to buy stuff. Every single tria that is in the game comes from the NPC's buying things. Wether this is ore, weapons or apples, there needs to be a right amount of trias in circulation to get the economy going. If people only get enough trias from npc's to buy skills at these same npc's there's no trias left to spend on crafted stuff. So buying skill needs to be related to the amount of trias a certain level of player is able to earn, be it by looting weapons and animal parts or by selling raw materials or even by doing certain quests.
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Some coinage is from loot as well, not all is from selling to npcs.
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The crafted weapons should not be significantly better than looted ones, in my opinion. Looting weapons as it is now, is not much fun anymore anyway, since most good weapons come from the crafters. The chance of finding a good weapon is near zero, which is why looting is only interesting, if you happen to find some stuff that goes for a decent amount of money to NPCs.
Looted weapons should be better or at least equal to crafted ones. The only advantage of crafted ones should be the much higher availability. However, there are no good crafters yet, due do several reasons.
1) Some crafting skills are currently maxed with an insufficient level, IE: axe crafting -> maxed with level 20 (Can't make anything decent with such a 'low' level).
2) Training the crafting skills takes AGES. If you happen to constantly hammer a cold blade, you get 1 (!) practice point in weapon making and blacksmithing after every 30 seconds. However, a combat skill, swords for example, will give you 1 practice point after every 2 seconds when using shortswords, 2 practice points even, if you use 2 shortswords at the same time. That's 30 practice points in 30 seconds, so training sword skill is 30X faster than training any crafting related skill, or in other words, you can max sword skill with 30 different characters, before you max swordmaking for example with just one character. That's got to change. It took me months to get my axemaking to level 20, and even with powerleveling (which is awfully boring), it still takes way too long.
3) Due to the economical issues, many people gave up crafting or didn't even start at it, since it's not much of a business, and training is just not worth the effort. People don't buy weapons of inferior quality plus they wouldn't have the trias, even if crafters could produce weapons of superior quality.
My suggestions on how to fix the current situation.
a) Make more trainer available, so people can continue their crafting training.
b) Increase the amount of practice points given for any action during crafting, or decrease the amount of practice points needed to rank up a level. Training should be atleast twice as 'fast' as it currently is.
c) To ease the economical issue, make looted weapons equivalant to crafted ones, but with a certain rarity. Example from the past: silverweave weapons and stuff were not rare enough, which is why way too many people had them. The iron heavy dagger on the other hand, existed only a handful of exemplars of, which is how I'd like the rarity of good lootable weapons to be. However, going on a 'hunt' (fighting mobs) needs to be more rewarding altogether.
c2) Somewhat offtopic, but the main reason for the economical issue are the NPC trainers consuming millions of trias for their training. You have made the first step in lowering the tria amounts to a reasonable level, the next and required step is lowering the costs for training. That would bring more purchasing power for player-to-player transactions. It doesn't help the economy if 80% or more of the earned tria just vanish in the pockets of NPCs.
All in all, the current situation is out of control, but I'm most confident the devs are able to fix that. Nevertheless, I consider the points above valid, and hope some work will be going their way.
PS: The recent crafting changes were good, nontheless. It only needs more tweaking. However, nice work so far. :thumbup:
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Yes, I agree with Rongar totally. At the moment it does not seem to be balanced at all. Tria has become really hard to come by compared to progress points. Before it seemed I was either out of one or the other, but there were ways to make a lot of either reasonably quickly. At the moment I am closing in on 10,000 progress points, but still only have 40K in tria.
To me, the golden number is 42. That's how much tria a training point costs (last I checked). And that's reguardless of what you train...a stat, a skill, magic... So you should be able to make 42 tria to every progress point (in general over a long period of time). That would be my rule of thumb.
While I am totally >:( that gold prices have gone down, that's just the way it goes so I'm fine with it. The devs have to try and balance things out. But I just about wrecked my wrist training my metallurgy to 20 with all the mouse clicks it took. I have no desire to train it to 30 now to make gold ingots again. From what I hear crafting is even tougher and takes longer. I never got started with crafting and I don't see doing so in the near future. Hopefully the more crafting improves and the more things one can craft and make a decent profit from it, the more incentive I will have to get started on it. But to give people incentive to invest all that time crafting, there's got to be a payoff, short term and long term. If you spend an hour mining the materials, making stock, and making a sword and it only sells for 80 tria, that's not enough to make me turn to crafting anytime soon.
I say crafted items should be worth much more to NPCs than looted weapons. That will encourage more to make the effort X-/ to train crafting.
So either that, or as Rongar points out, the cost of training needs to be cut.
Oh, and what's the deal with all of these top level mobs like the Brigand, Dlayo Gladiators, and cuttroats only dropping 3 tria here, 5 tria there...? Haven't they ever heard of circles? Especially the bandits and cutthroats. They should have 100s if not 1000s of tria on them. At least occasionally. They aren't very effective bandits, are they? ;)
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To me, the golden number is 42. That's how much tria a training point costs (last I checked). And that's reguardless of what you train...a stat, a skill, magic... So you should be able to make 42 tria to every progress point (in general over a long period of time). That would be my rule of thumb.
Are you serious? xD
Whichever dev did that is great!
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To me, the golden number is 42. That's how much tria a training point costs (last I checked). And that's reguardless of what you train...a stat, a skill, magic... So you should be able to make 42 tria to every progress point (in general over a long period of time). That would be my rule of thumb.
Are you serious? xD
Whichever dev did that is great!
lol... What is the meaning of the universe?
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Oh, and what's the deal with all of these top level mobs like the Brigand, Dlayo Gladiators, and cuttroats only dropping 3 tria here, 5 tria there...? Haven't they ever heard of circles? Especially the bandits and cutthroats. They should have 100s if not 1000s of tria on them. At least occasionally. They aren't very effective bandits, are they? ;)
It looks like the gods have listened to you. Well, I have yet to come across an NPC which drops circles, but I found some, which are dropping several octas, hexas and trias, all at the same time ;)
*Edit* Looted circles now :)
<3 devs
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Of course 42 is the answer, just need to ask the right questions.
Elegant solution I think, less 'special' weaponry, more overall gaining of wealth through more gradually collecting of trias from npc's. Tougher NPC's, more trias they drop. Ensures the rarity of the special looted weapons and at the same time adds economical potential. Builds a basis for a crafting economy too, though then the inferior crafted stuff should also make more then the raw materials its made of and/or the looted common weaponry at a certain point. not tested that yet. Nice work :thumbup:
edit: just realising i'm giving compliments in a complaint thread ... ah well you earned them :)
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It looks like the gods have listened to you. Well, I have yet to come across an NPC which drops circles, but I found some, which are dropping several octas, hexas and trias, all at the same time ;)
*Edit* Looted circles now :)
<3 devs
\\o// Awesome! Hail devs! :flowers:
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NP.
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And here the next change has happened. \\o//
c2) Somewhat offtopic, but the main reason for the economical issue are the NPC trainers consuming millions of trias for their training. You have made the first step in lowering the tria amounts to a reasonable level, the next and required step is lowering the costs for training. That would bring more purchasing power for player-to-player transactions. It doesn't help the economy if 80% or more of the earned tria just vanish in the pockets of NPCs.
Only 30 tria per PP now, from formerly 42. That's about 30% off. :thumbup:
Let this be the proof; The devs do indeed listen to us, no matter how many people think otherwise.
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Wow! Really? I haven't trained anything recently on account of being so ... broke. This is really good news, though. :woot: