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Curio proposal
Curio proposal
It would be helpful to know what the issue(s) were in order to offer less drastic solutions. For instance is the issue was players rage spinning than a simpler solution would be to not allow people to convert lessons to credits.
The current changes seem to overly impact curio collection. Apart from a very high chance of rubbing for gold, the current set up seems to favor completing quest sets, while making completing non-quest sets just this side of impossible (without trading which has its own issues).
Under the previous system, the chance of gold from a single curio rub appeared to be 15%.
Under the current system it seems to have been increased more than 300% up to 50-60% (Dys suggests there is about 49-61% chance of gold per rub). However, it should be noted that the chances of gold are even higher due to the loss of generating coins from curios which themselves could generate curios (abt 8% for 1-3 coins, one of which would be a rare) and rare coins now generating gold instead of coins puts the effective chance for gold even higher.
This chance is per rub and with deck stacked towards gold and curios of the same collection and with the shear number of curios types in the game, the chance of rubbing a usable curio for a different collection is depressingly minuscule.
There are something like 140 curio sets, think about that for a moment, even removing the quest curios means there’s about 1000 different curio bits.
The chance for gold it simply too high, unless the aim is to make people trade for every piece. It should be kept in mind that the chance for gold is higher due to the odds requiring on average more than one rub.
The obvious solution would be trade for what you want, but tracking and trading curios is both miserable and frustrating to the point that those with curios who don’t happen to really need curios often won’t bother.
Suggestions:
Rares should never rub to gold, instead of gold they should rub into two or more non-rare curios.
Change the percentage chance of rubbing for gold to 10% + 10% with each rub (or even make 0% chance for first rub). This would put the player in the position of balancing how far to press their luck.
Please implement my idea of adding syntax for showing missing curios from uncompleted sets. It isn’t a minor nor trivial thing to keep track of which curios are needed to complete one’s set when one is working on several sets. I should be able to have a way to quickly check for curios I am trying to collect:
CURIOS ALL MISSING. Lists partial sets and their missing pieces
CURIOS ALL MISSING SETS. This would list sets you do not own and are not yes collecting (so you can see if you’re missing an opportunity) checks completed and partial sets and then lists sets.
Optionally to the above, allow some sort of curio want tracking system.
Convert some of the gold rub percentage to lessons, it wouldn’t have to be many, but I’d much rather have 5 lessons than 2k.
Convert some of the gold rub percentage to the chance to split a curio into two or more curios.
Optionally, implement a curio auction hall (might as well toss in ikons).
Implement CURIO RUB x against y increasing the chance the x curio will be revealed to be of the set y.
End suggestions.
Part of what was fun with coins and curios was the gambling aspect, but with the odds so stacked against players the risk is to the point where there is little enjoyment.
Comments
Maybe having poorer rubs will discourage rubbing so more people will hold onto curios to trade rather than cashing out. Maybe. An alternative might be encouraging trading. Can't reward trading though (with xp, chance at more curios etc) as that would be abusable. Don't know.
I think the problem was that the chance of getting coins from curios was far too high, something like 70% from a given common (as any curio results could be re-rubbed). With curios from lessons and quests it must have hurt credit sales.
Total Curios rubbed 5000
Coins from rubs 1657
Curios from rubs 2491
Gold awards from rubs 756
33% rub one
10.89% rub two
3.5937% rub three
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47.4837 (or higher depending on rounding)
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However, the problem works both ways. If gold is as you reported about a 50% chance then most curios rub for gold at a ridiculously high percentage now:
50% rub one
25% rub two
12.5% rub three
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87.5 (or higher depending on rounding)
Though effectively even higher do to the loss of replenishing curios from coins (which yielded curios, greater gold, curio packages and other items which could get exchanged for curios).
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Splitting rares. Not sure exactly what you meant? With splitting rares I think the chance of getting gold from rubbing rares should be removed. Splitting itself is a negative or in the gambling sense, a 'bad roll'. You would be already taking a risk of losing a rare by rubbing and you're already taking the risk of it turning in a less valuable rare and since the non-rares have a chance at only gold, rare's always have a chance at converting to gold if you keep rubbing the result.
"I think the problem was that the chance of getting coins from curios was far too high, something like 70% from a given common (as any curio results could be re-rubbed). With curios from lessons and quests it must have hurt credit sales. "
That's possible, I'd say even more probable, but as of now they've gone from a general advantage to a really bad bet and frankly almost always a really bad buy. If your goal in game is gold you're orders of magnitude better off buying credits, what with credits selling for something like 8 - 10 fold what you get from curio rubbing. Further, it is almost certainly the case that you could buy any specific basic completed dmp curio for less credits then it would take for you to assemble one. This last becomes almost a requirement as more and more curios are introduced.
Trading somehow needs simplification. Right now tracking which curios you want/need is a paperwork nightmare, in my case I believe I still need a few hundred various curios. Even if I tracked them all, there's no easy mechanism to convey to other people what I am looking for and who wants to sit there after each rub while someone looks though their list?
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P.S. Just realized my curio sets count does not add in bubble curios so the odds of getting what you want though rubbing are even lower.
Honestly, Steingrim's rub idea doesn't go nearly far enough. As is, you can't rub because the chance of getting the curio you really need is next to none, but you can't trade either because the chance of someone else having the curio piece you need, and you having the curio piece they need, is similarly far too small. So you end up rubbing either way. Even if rubbing curios got you nothing, people would still rub them.
Personally, I'd just set the chance of rubbing into gold to something minuscule. 5% tops. Or 0%, with you only being able to rub a curio once a day, or something similar. Perhaps a steadily increasing chance of having the curio turn to dust that resets at the turn of the day/month. As long as it would be possible to eventually get the curio you need. As it is right now, the chance of getting the curio you want is simply too small, making it cost-prohibitive to aim for a curio you really want.
I think it would help @Estarra if we had firmer numbers.
I figure something like:
18 animated curios
8 fixture curios
14 mask (Butterfly, Cherub, Chicken, Dove, Fae Knight, Harlequin, Imp, Jester, Kelpie, Maiden,
Marionette, Moth, Squonk, and Swan.)
10 cooking curios (Burger, Chocolate, Cinnamon, Cupcake, Curry, Exotic, Fiery, Fried, Pasta, Spice,?)
13 bubble (Black, Conflict, Gas, Green, Grey, Ice, Lava, Purple, Sable, Sand, Silk, Smoke, and White?)
3 special (leprechaun pot, heart box, treasure map)
92 (23 x 4: what I call collections, the base collections plus quest collections: waystation, vernal, soulless, ice angel, forgotten)
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158 sets or 1580 different pieces!
Starting with a package of 10 enhancement curios (you have 10 possible pieces of the 180 possible damage enhancement curios pieces (quest curios excluded from this example since they don’t appear in damage enhancement curio packages)). You also have the chance of pulling duplicate pieces out of the package.
So with 10 pieces each starts with a one in 18 chance of being of the set you want. Very rough, but arguably doable.
But flip it around and this is where the total number of possible curios, the high gold percentage, and even the increased chance of rubbing the same exact curio or same set works against you. Any piece that is not usable due to being of the wrong set has a ridiculously low chance of becoming a useful piece.
If gold is a 50% chance and if there’s additional 25% chance you’ll rub the same curio set or even same curio (which it seems it is at least this high) then once you rub into any non-wanted curio your odds of rubbing again to some curio you’d want still aren’t aren’t 25% but 25% - all other negative choices. The moment you rub a damage curio into any other type the odds are fantastically against you rubbing it back into a damage curio you’d want.
Kiradawea is not exaggerating that even if implemented it would still be highly difficult to complete sets. Which is why I tend to favor the rubbing one curio against another to increase the chance you’ll get one of that set.
Trade in some way really needs to be addressed. I suppose if they could be sold for gold that could help. If that opens up abuse issues (wasn’t here when that happened), if they could be sold in shops for gold plus a curio (this would require some coding).
Shop or NPC idea. You sell your curios in a shop or through an NPC. If you don’t want people just selling for gold you require a minimal cost of a curio and on top of this you can charge additional gold or curios. You probably should be able to set the type of the curio (same set, same type, etc.). If using an NPC or ‘auction hall’ then putting the item up for sale should not require a fee (buyer pays all fees) since you want to encourage trading.
I guess I look at all the cool things that you can do with ikons to track and sort them. I don't know that your system will work for me since I like to keep the ones I'm working on as partial -- unless I am misunderstanding?
I've managed to work up a system where I put all the partials in a LUA table and then it just tries to attach any loose pieces in a sort of hopeful attach (in otherwords it doesn't know if it needs the piece, but if I have a partial of that set it tries to attach any single pieces of the same set).
I can't be the only person who's bounced into the chaos cave and had the experience of seeing someone rubbing dozens of coins and wished there was some way to check and convey to that person that I would be willing to trade them. As it is now, you're just asking someone to take a lot of time to check what they have against a list.
If no better way to trade emerges, I may just have to learn how to use mudlet databases and iterate though partials then figure out how to spit that into a readable list, but meh, should I really have to be a coder or keep spreadsheets to trade curios?
Each full curio (I.e. every 10 pieces) has one common rare that seems to be coded in a way where if it exists in the game, no more of it can spawn. I remember getting together the teddy bear back in the day... and it ended up being to where 8 different people were looking for the right eye and nobody seemed to have it. Five days later, two people had a teddy bear completed and six more were still looking for the right eye despite the fact that numerous people were buying curios and trading, and yet... no right eye.
That bit needs to be looked into and possibly removed, because I know there are people roaming around with hundreds of pieces... and who's to say that they aren't holding the piece that can't be spawned when it's already in existence? Now, it might be just paranoia and conspiracy theory on my part, but there's been one too many cases when several people have all been looking for -one- piece of a curio and have been unable to locate it for days on end.
The collection and trading aspect is all fine and dandy, but at this point... I'd say it might be a better idea to just start selling completed curios in the store rather than pieces... once a collection is gone off the main market (i.e. people have stopped buying them because they've collected what they were looking for), it's pretty much just gone... and finding that one piece you need is a very hopeless endeavor. I remember buying six 100-piece crates in an attempt to create a single curio... and never having more than seven unique pieces of any one curio in that collection. To me, that means that if I want to get a curio assembled right now, I probably need to dump somewhere north of 1600 credits to buy at least eight 100-piece crates... and in the end, with coins no longer in play, it is a pointless expense, one that I simply won't bother making in the end. Better to just put one vendor for fully assembled curios that's selling stuff you can buy with credits/fixture/animated curios at 100cr a piece. I'm willing to bet that you'll see a lot more people buying the fully assembled stuff than you would ever see people buying crates even if the price went down to 50cr for 100-piece crates.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
It wouldn't be workable as a design decision, too much risk of someone sitting on it unknowingly or maliciously.
When there are so many sets a high rub percent into the same set really only benefits the quest/questevent curio collection.
It has gotten to the point where I think curio collectors don't want to see any more curio sets because the result of adding more is just makes completing any older sets more and more impossible. Imagine if 400-what 800 more trade curios had been added?
He just wants it so that there's a huge chance of it staying as a cooking curio, or a damage enhancement, or a damage resistance (his post specifically references disliking a cooking curio piece becoming a non-cooking-curio-piece).
Chance of rubbing a curio into gold starting at a minimal level (ideally 0%) and then increasing the more you rub it, with the chance resetting over time.
Example. I rub a curio, and it has a 80% chance to turn into a curio of the same collection, and a 20% chance to turn into a curio of a different collection. I rub it again immediately, and this time it has a 75% chance to turn into a curio of the same collection, 20% to turn into a different collection and 5% chance to turn into gold. Next time, it wll be 70/20/10. However, if I then decide to wait until after the weave, I'll again have an 80/20 chance on the curio when I rub it.
Allows the impatient to chance it, the cautious to eventually get what they need, and makes getting the one piece you really need less of an impossibility.
Edit: Said "set" instead of "type" but I did mean type.
I would personally just go with:
Replace the current CURIO RUB <curio> syntax with CURIO RUB <curio> [FOR GOLD]. If you add FOR GOLD, you always get gold and if you do not, you will never get gold. You may only rub 10 curios per RL day.
More curio pieces generated = more to trade = better for everyone dealing with them. I personally prefer that to enhancing rubbing (which just encourages people to try to solo it by rubbing every piece they get in the hopes that it turns into what they want).
The ability to use trading to finish curios is a nice ideal, but the amount of curios compared to people who purchase curio pieces is far too skewed for purchasing to function all that well. One problem is that a curio piece is in itself no longer a desireable object. A lone curio-piece is just a line of text, and unless you want it because it's a piece of a greater whole, you'll have no use for it. Or in other words, when you have the curios you want, you won't be generating new pieces. Therefore I'd like it to be possible for those who have to "solo" it, because there will be those who have to "solo" it.