Townhall Part 2

Tiur

And part two.

https://hastebin.com/ruwefovigo.sql

Tekias

Not to nitpick, cause it's great this was posted, but it's rough reading since, as someone who wasn't there, it looks like the editor chopped out quite a few lines here and there (most definitely in error, of course).

Edit: Just an example...

2017/08/25 17:27:14 - Fezzix said: I jumped the gun in the queue, but when it comes to shops, I 2017/08/25 17:27:26 - Vash thought: Achaea used to have the guild tutor sell basic guild supplies. 2017/08/25 17:27:35 - Tiur said: Question: Repair skills? Broader armor system? etc. 2017/08/25 17:27:36 - Fezzix said: Celebration of the Stars, the Valentines promo, the Haunted House, frequent need to visit forgers/crafters.

Kodaza

@Tekias The issue is that when a line is too long, it wraps around to above itself. So in the example,

everyone.
2017/08/25 17:27:03 - Tiur said: Questions should queue, I'm trying not to answer thinks and confuse
tickets and tokens and the like.
think the limited system is fine. I do like the seasonal shops that sell prizes in exchange for
2017/08/25 17:27:14 - Fezzix said: I jumped the gun in the queue, but when it comes to shops, I

That translates to Tiur saying "I'm trying not to answer thinks and confuse everyone," and then Fezzix saying, "I jumped the gun in the queue, but when it comes to shops, I think the limited system is fine. I do like the seasonal shops that sell prizes in exchange for tickets and tokens and the like."

So the whole town hall is there, you just kind of have to read up and down.

Tiur

...that damn chicken

Toz

@Trikal tried to warn us of their treachery.

Xenia

i can't follow thew log, formatting chopped off the ends of long answers

Edit: And now the truth is out, I don't read anyone's comments.

Tekias

No, it's all there. Kodaza explained what happened. Still a pain to read, but at least it's all there. Hell, one of Fezzix's says was like 20 lines, but it was all intact.

Teani

https://hastebin.com/cimivucawa.coffeescript
This right here is an edited log, which you can read without confusion. All the lines should be in order!

Diogen

Whoops.

Tekias

Diogen said:

Whoops.

To the Shame Tube?

Rhyot

2017/08/25 17:33:42 - Tiur said: Gold gains from hunting and the cost of cures for hunting are not
balanced at all.
2017/08/25 17:34:03 - Tiur said: We're looking at multiple ways to remove gold drops and tie them to
something else. It should be an easy fix after we just DECIDE.
2017/08/25 17:35:26 - Tiur said: The last brainstorm we had, I put forth the idea...
2017/08/25 17:35:52 - Tiur said: Killing monsters ups a concept of "Activity" on your character. We
would track the levels/quantity of things you killed.
2017/08/25 17:36:14 - Tiur said: Then, though a mysterious thing I haven't decided... city,
murderNpc, hunting guild, something.
2017/08/25 17:36:21 - Tiur said: That could be rewarded with gold.
2017/08/25 17:37:04 - Tiur said: That way we have three data points: killexp, number of kills, and
player data that did the killing. Then we can balance it to give Newbies more per kill, and Rhyot
less per kill.
2017/08/25 17:37:31 - Tiur said: That decouples the gold from actually dropping off of a mob. Much
easier to control and track.


So after reading this area, because its the only area I felt was actually important, it's left me with a very sour taste in my mouth that borders on bitter. So please bear with me as I ask a few questions.

1) If gold is planning on being removed from being dropped from mobs, are you going to likewise remove gold from questing?

2) As it stands, gold is already difficult to come around unless you spend hours questing or days fishing/bashing. So if you do, in fact, remove gold from bashing will the 'achievement rewards' gained from 'activity' actually be something lucrative enough for even newbies to be able to survive on (ie buying cures/weapons/vial/etc)?

3) What about people who don't actually enjoy bashing, but have only done it as a means of obtaining gold? Will there be a way for the pure RPers and even crafters to obtain gold without having to bash or quest for hours/days on end?

4) This has been brought up multiple times and has constantly been ignored by everyone on the admin team or written off as unnecessary. With the idea of gold being way too inflated (since there's an infinite amount and a lack of gold sinks), have there or will there be any talks about changing up Prize bags to actually be worth while purchasing?

5) Do you believe that there's actually enough areas with respawn times appropriate enough to allow 100 players to bash on a daily basis to get their activity timer and their gold rewards? If not, are there plans to increase the amount of bashing areas, mobs in bashing areas, and even respawn timers so that you don't run into a bottleneck?


And this is more commentary on my part from the last townhall... I don't mind that bashing is actually a negative income due to the fact that herbs/elixirs are ridiculously expensive, but I do not feel that you need to completely remove gold drops from mobs from the game. If anything, the desire to create more likely manners of gold gain/sinks is better than removing any form of gold drop (especially hunting since its completely minimal now as it is).

Tiur

1) Questing is regulated by the reset rates. It's already pretty controlled, at least in terms of generation. Some quests escape notice for a time.

2) The idea is that it's impossible to automate gold drops fairly. It needs to at LEAST be 0 sum, but maybe a little better for lowbies, and a little negative for things that are just exp, and even a little positive so you can do better as you go. Activity lets us do that with much better granularity, it lets us set a standard like "Bashing for an hour should get you X"

3) Eh, they're not the problem right this moment. I'm looking at fixing gold/comms, not passive generation for those that don't want to take part in the two main methods.

4) It's not ignored, we just don't care all that much. Prizebags were a previous administrations' attempts at gold sinking. I take a larger view having to do with the idea of content as part of the item cycle. Prizebags don't fix any of that, they actually make it worse. Essentially, they make gold vanish, but still put an equal amount of items in the game, and items need to be taken into account as part of an economy too.

5) There aren't, but we have instance code and a few other things to alleviate the pressure in the future.

Basically, right now I can't tie gold to level (mob level, which is really meaningless these days), because when an outlier happens, it happens hard. Gold drops were nerfed, and it hurts everyone. Achaea has a 'daily quota' sort of system, where after so much, it slows. That's great, except it's also tacitly saying "BTW, you can make X per day. The end." I just want to say "You shouldn't have to bash more than an hour or so a day, at any level, to be able to AFFORD to bash an hour or so a day." So bash for an hour, break a little more than even, highfives all around. Keep bashing, it slows down a bit, and we can tweak where we go from there.

Some more elaborate explanations via macroeconomics go into the idea of causal chains, leading vs lagging indicators, etc... blah blah. It comes down to wanting to give people enough to live on and enjoy the game without using up too large a percentage of their playtime, while also letting there be a reward for going over and above.

Tiur

And note, we're being slow because I don't want to screw it up. I've got a number of reference books I'm working through, and I'm trying to build a decent model of the game's economy. Being an engineer, I gotta overdo it.