Economic Changes and Concerns

Yasei 野生

Thread to discuss changes made to drops, among other aspects of the economy. Please spare Tweets.

Kistan

Eek!

Its hard to say - I think it will affect the casual/newer/midlevel characters more rather than people who have a mountain of gold and for whom it has long ceased to have meaning.

It will make that grind to demigod much more of a grind.

On the flip side of that, this is their business model and they make no bones of that. It is still not pay to play and very much pay for perks - paying for those perks just got a whole lot more attractive.

Jolanthe

I expect this is going to be a rocky shift initially, but might not be too horrible in due time.

The biggest issue I potentially foresee is with high level/demi players invading newbie areas for the gold turn-ins due to lack of them in their own high level areas. I think the administration is in a pretty good spot to overview that, however, and to make additions/tweaks as needed.

Orgs may wish to react by ensuring that every known revenue source via questing, especially in those higher level areas, are known so as to ensure and facilitate a healthy spread of players throughout the game's geography at any given moment.

Naevari

Is this part of some IRE wide thing or is this a response to the complaints about the economy? It does strike me that this will affect newer players far more than older ones. I wonder if that's desireable if we want to retain them.

(I myself am one of those newer players, but I do still plan on sticking around. Still, IDK how this is going to influence the desire of other people to stay.)

Ianir

I'm just going to put in my two cents.

This isn't a business model thing. This is purely economic. We are trying something new and seeing if it sticks to the wall, and frankly it might not. However, I'm not entirely sure it's as bad for lower levels as it might sound, and I am monitoring for that.

This has not affected quest gold, and that means turn-ins. Turn-ins are mostly in low to mid-level areas frankly, and I do feel this is where a lot of newer players will be sticking. It will bring us back to a bit of a shift in paradigm - Instead of mindlessly bashing for hours on end, or mindlessly begging for gold (though esteem...), people might be doing pilgrims or bards or commodity quests or ratting or turning in corpses or all other multitude of turnin quests or actual other quests which give gold. Like it's 2005-2011 before most of these gold changes that made bashing/begging so lucrative got implemented.

In the meantime, the benefits are a lot higher. People seem to overestimate the number of active players with giant stores of gold, so hopefully this might take a shot (at least as a bandage) at our inflation problem. It's not an actual solution, we do need a sustainable goldsink. As well, this is (albeit indirectly, though majorly) a buff to questing rewards, something that has been asked for for a while.

Frankly, I see it bring a bit of a shift while people aren't sure what to do. The older players who played in that time period will adjust better than the new ones, yeah, and I am hoping they'll help the newer ones out. But worst case, this entire thing, if it ends up being a failure after a week or two, takes me 5 seconds to revert.

Portius

If the broad goal is to switch over from bashing for gold to questing for gold, I generally approve. I like that goal!

That having been said, I share the concern about the good gold quests mostly being in low levels. It seems like there also aren't that many of them. So I'm concerned with both it encouraging people to hang out in low level areas for gold and increasing competition for the handful of areas with decent turn-ins. Even without competition, that encourages a choice between grinding XP and grinding gold that I am not sure I like.

That's probably an easy fix, though. There's lots of higher level areas that could get turn-ins. Better still, maybe look at tuning the gold payouts for longer quests up a bit? I'd love to just swear off bashing entirely in favor of quests. Much more interesting. Or maybe things will stabilize such that quests are good where they're at already, but I'm skeptical of that.

Bairloch

I'm a "newer" player who has never hit a gold cap. What little gold I have is from turn-ins, not "mindlessly bashing", and doing quests. Bashing was never a valid method of getting gold, for me. I've always been dependent on turn ins.

Ejderha

I would caution players against a knee-jerk reaction. Whether this is the 'right' change or not is still up in the air, but an economic change is likely to affect more than you realize and take awhile to fully propagate. You cannot merely state that 'players won't be able to afford x' because you don't know how changes will affect also the price of x, not just the buying power of players. Frankly - and others have made this point in other threads/conversations - the n number of people with gold approaching Xenthos levels don't really affect the general economy that much, because there's still not that much worth buying with gold. So, even if it makes the rich 'richer,' as of now, that doesn't actually mean anything. Absent something like some jerk buying up all the Anatine in the plex and hording it >.>

Xenthos

The thing that concerns me the most are high-commodity trades; this change is not really likely to impact commodity pricing (because in many cases that is based around mechanical pricing set by villages).  Things like masterwork weapons and artisan goods are thus likely to become much harder to attain (they could actually become more expensive, because the crafter is more likely to tag on a surcharge if they can't run out and make gold easily themselves).

For things that are low-cost it is not such a huge deal, but when one item runs 20k+ for the comms alone I think that is going to be a different matter.

Trying to get gold by hunting has just been made a lot more grindy, and the best quest turnins are low/mid level hunting areas... so if, for whatever reason, I decide I want gold by hunting, the people who hunt those areas for exp are going to be "competing" with me.

I think what I am getting at is that I think this can be made to work, but not without additional changes (possibly reducing some comm costs on high comm items, adding in corpse quests for higher level areas like Muud and Dio, stuff like that).  I don't think squishing people into the same few areas is a great "end state" to leave it in.

Ianir

Xenthos said:

The thing that concerns me the most are high-commodity trades; this change is not really likely to impact commodity pricing (because in many cases that is based around mechanical pricing set by villages).  Things like masterwork weapons and artisan goods are thus likely to become much harder to attain (they could actually become more expensive, because the crafter is more likely to tag on a surcharge if they can't run out and make gold easily themselves).

For things that are low-cost it is not such a huge deal, but when one item runs 20k+ for the comms alone I think that is going to be a different matter.

Trying to get gold by hunting has just been made a lot more grindy, and the best quest turnins are low/mid level hunting areas... so if, for whatever reason, I decide I want gold by hunting, the people who hunt those areas for exp are going to be "competing" with me.

I think what I am getting at is that I think this can be made to work, but not without additional changes (possibly reducing some comm costs on high comm items, adding in corpse quests for higher level areas like Muud and Dio, stuff like that).  I don't think squishing people into the same few areas is a great "end state" to leave it in.

I will note that there are some high level areas that do have turn-ins, they are just very recent and not many people know about them. The people that do know about them are using them quite heavily however (one of them might need to be adjusted, it's literally #1 on our quest reward rankings right now by a lot, and it's just one person who seems to be doing it. 50k gold in 12 hours or so. Actually, thinking about it more, this might not be so bad. They aren't doing it consistently over 12 hours, and if this area has competition, it's not going to be one person doing it. Plus it's a fairly large area. It can probably be left alone.)

Jolanthe

Ianir said:

(one of them might need to be adjusted, it's literally #1 on our quest reward rankings right now by a lot, and it's just one person who seems to be doing it. 50k gold in 12 hours or so. Actually, thinking about it more, this might not be so bad. They aren't doing it consistently over 12 hours, and if this area has competition, it's not going to be one person doing it. Plus it's a fairly large area. It can probably be left alone.)

This is pretty much my greatest point of concern - whether or not these sorts of things will remain Best Kept Secrets and leave all the unknowing demifolk milling in the Grey Moors alongside the JoeBlow level 70s and such.

On that note, here's a freebie. Ganine in Project Eternity will buy any cave-fisher for 100 gold. Best deal ever? Not particularly. Much more appealing in the current scheme of things? I think so.

Shaddus

My question is this: who decided the economy of Lusternia was doing badly? What sort of parameters are we using when we say the economy is in need of work? Are we judging this by the cost of credits? How easily people are buying the things they need? The unhinged rantings of a single person in Discord?

Ianir

Shaddus said:

My question is this: who decided the economy of Lusternia was doing badly? What sort of parameters are we using when we say the economy is in need of work? 

http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3355/problem-the-economy

This is something people have said is a problem for years. Also the reason the gold throttle, an unpopular decision in the first place, was implemented.

http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/2669/goldflation

Jolanthe

A question for @Ianir otherwise - there are some quests that kind of unlock turn-ins. Professor Phelsida and the Razine Tunnel Expedition comes to mind immediately. There is corpse fetching, but you can't do any of it until the quest is activated. Can multiple people have such quests activated at once? And if not, would there be potential plans for such (depending on how things pan out from here)?

Ianir

Jolanthe said:

A question for @Ianir otherwise - there are some quests that kind of unlock turn-ins. Professor Phelsida and the Razine Tunnel Expedition comes to mind immediately. There is corpse fetching, but you can't do any of it until the quest is activated. Can multiple people have such quests activated at once? And if not, would there be potential plans for such (depending on how things pan out from here)?

Pheslida is actually the quest I was referring to earlier, and it's a permanent unlock, not something one person can have unlocked at any time (that would be a tad awkward).

EDIT: I misunderstood your question, sorry. As for multiple people doing quests, yes. It's a part of our design philosophy that quests don't lock people out if somebody else is doing them. Some older quests do, but no modern quest will, and that one is actually fairly recent. Designed and released late 2016.

Shaddus

Ianir said:

Shaddus said:

My question is this: who decided the economy of Lusternia was doing badly? What sort of parameters are we using when we say the economy is in need of work? 

http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3355/problem-the-economy

This is something people have said is a problem for years. Also the reason the gold throttle, an unpopular decision in the first place, was implemented.

http://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/2669/goldflation

Didn't that thread generally call for goldsinks, not making gold harder to get?

Edit: in fact, most of the people in the threads tended to ask for goldsinks  as opposed to making gold more scarce.

Jolanthe

Okay! That's great to keep in mind, and makes looking at these changes more palatable on its own.

But there is definitely one more factor to consider - base gold drops.

I've noticed a lot of lower level mobs have, historically, dropped about the same amount of gold no matter how often or immediately you revisit an area to kill them. Shallach orcs come to mind immediately. You can clear those out, getting 50-100ish gold per drop no matter how long they've been alive, and then collect corpse bounties on top.

Compare this to the Gutter zombie. Previously, they could drop over 2000 gold if they were alive long enough. But I can assure you, if you go back to try to kill the same ones as soon as they spawn, they are likely to produce 2-20 gold drops (yes, I have gotten a 2 gold drop from a Gutter zombie before). Lower than you'd get just farming the "newbie" level stuff.

As I understand it, this was implemented when the scaling drops were first released, to allow newbies to always have a somewhat steady drop income instead of always having single digit drops. But we're now in a situation where a lot of high level mobs aren't likely to have better drops than them unless they are untouched for (at least?) a couple hours.

It may be necessary to ensure that the highest level mobs always have base drops approximately equal to, at least, the Shallach orc. Maybe it won't be. But I've a suspicion this might be the first problem point you'll have to address if these changes stick.

Ianir

Jolanthe said:

Okay! That's great to keep in mind, and makes looking at these changes more palatable on its own.

But there is definitely one more factor to consider - base gold drops.

I've noticed a lot of lower level mobs have, historically, dropped about the same amount of gold no matter how often or immediately you revisit an area to kill them. Shallach orcs come to mind immediately. You can clear those out, getting 50-100ish gold per drop no matter how long they've been alive, and then collect corpse bounties on top.

Compare this to the Gutter zombie. Previously, they could drop over 2000 gold if they were alive long enough. But I can assure you, if you go back to try to kill the same ones as soon as they spawn, they are likely to produce 2-20 gold drops (yes, I have gotten a 2 gold drop from a Gutter zombie before). Lower than you'd get just farming the "newbie" level stuff.

As I understand it, this was implemented when the scaling drops were first released, to allow newbies to always have a somewhat steady drop income instead of always having single digit drops. But we're now in a situation where a lot of high level mobs aren't likely to have better drops than them unless they are untouched for (at least?) a couple hours.

It may be necessary to ensure that the highest level mobs always have base drops approximately equal to, at least, the Shallach orc. Maybe it won't be. But I've a suspicion this might be the first problem point you'll have to address if these changes stick.

There's a base set. Nothing will ever drop below 20 gold right now if it drops more than 0. So for lower level drops, the cut might have been less drastic than 1/10. I hinted at that a bit in my edit to the changelog.

As for how the scaling happens and how the bases are determined, I'd have to jump in the code to check, and I'm not quite in the position to at the moment, I can look that up later.

Eliron

Thoughts that may need to be addressed/an eye kept on:

1) Some things that are meant as small gold sinks just became a lot more expensive, like keeping beasts. Particularly as someone who enjoys buying the special event (Wayfaire, penguins, etc) beasts when they come out, this would dis-incentivize me buying the dingbat beasts and it's frustrating that I may have to start culling the ones I've collected so far.

2) Currently people are usually pretty polite about not bashing the turn-in mobs. But I do see the potential for this to become a trolling point, particularly if someone wants to frustrate a particular person or org--just take 2 minutes to kill the turn-in mob for the area they're bashing, and take away a large part of the value of their work.

3) Family honour past a certain point is already heavily curbed with decreasing rewards. Bashing and influencing are generally what people grind if they care about family honour. Doing so is now less beneficial to the individual, since it's going to be earning them less. Could the honour returns on bashing/influencing be looked at, or perhaps some kind of honour gains added for certain quests? Preferably gains that aren't diminished past being useful after a certain point. I'm not certain how the last would work, perhaps even just honours quests?

Feedback on perception of this since admin are just trying things out:

It feels like this makes my time in game less valuable. I've got limited time I can play with RL responsibilities, and I was finally feeling I was in a good balance of mechanical grind for things I need/want in game and the more role-play oriented activities I enjoy doing more. I can't increase the time I spend in game right now, so all I can really do is disengage from certain aspects because bashing/influencing is now less efficient for gaining what I want, and so I just can't do it all.

I'm not saying the changes are bad. I can see what admin are trying to do, and I support them trying things. Addressing some of my concerns above my help address my overall perception of it as well. This is just how it feels to me as a player--if my time is limited, there's less I can do so less point in engaging.

Edited for typo.

Kistan

I am hoping this leads to a cultural revival in cities which traditionally pay loads for books and performances!

Rasvin

This doesn't help the economy. It just increases the difference in players who stock piled gold. This will only make prices on things drop. Whether I am spending 10,000 gold or 100 gold if it takes the same amount of time to generate then that is what the amount of time it is worth. Now, everyone that had a pile of gold will be able to purchase everything at a cheaper rate.  I feel like most player opinions were ignored. 

Jolanthe

Regarding changelog 1390, does the increase in quest rewards scale and change based on how recently you, personally, have done the quest, or anyone?

It isn't specified, but if it set to the individual, I think that's a big step forward and a huge improvement over the state of mob gold drops previously. Much as I enjoyed the prior system, it absolutely made you want to keep your favourite gold farming spots a secret. But if one person can do rockeater training without duly cutting into the income of a subsequent person following up shortly after, I feel that does the opposite - ensure the sharing of quest information between players, so everyone maximises their gold earning potential as they discover more avenues for revenue. Further, it deters one player from spamming the same quest over and over, and would push them to move on to others.

Jaspet

Rasvin said:

This doesn't help the economy. It just increases the difference in players who stock piled gold. This will only make prices on things drop. Whether I am spending 10,000 gold or 100 gold if it takes the same amount of time to generate then that is what the amount of time it is worth. Now, everyone that had a pile of gold will be able to purchase everything at a cheaper rate.  I feel like most player opinions were ignored. 

Gold generation from bashing was out of hand. I was happy to see them do something, anything, to try to curb the inflation.

You shouldn't get overly caught up worrying about dead money - if these excessively wealthy weren't spending their dragon horde stockpiles before, they're not suddenly going to start now.

Rasvin

Being able to actually afford stuff was nice. I played during a time when I could barely keep curatives stocked. Time will tell, but this was a clear shift to benefit more established players. 

Kistan

I worry kids today will never be able to buy manses.

I suppose it adds realism bringing a flavour of RL into a game

Xenthos

Jolanthe said:

Regarding changelog 1390, does the increase in quest rewards scale and change based on how recently you, personally, have done the quest, or anyone?

It isn't specified, but if it set to the individual, I think that's a big step forward and a huge improvement over the state of mob gold drops previously. Much as I enjoyed the prior system, it absolutely made you want to keep your favourite gold farming spots a secret. But if one person can do rockeater training without duly cutting into the income of a subsequent person following up shortly after, I feel that does the opposite - ensure the sharing of quest information between players, so everyone maximises their gold earning potential as they discover more avenues for revenue. Further, it deters one player from spamming the same quest over and over, and would push them to move on to others.

It functions by "has anyone at all done it recently," not to the individual.  I think it would be far better tagged to an individual.

Basically all gold income now fluctuates depending on what someone else has done, and there is not a good way to know how long ago someone did the corpse turnins (you can kind of guess based on how much gold the mobs drop, but does not work well on low-level quest mobs that are usually at the floor).  You might get a bunch of gold, you might get very little.

I was tentatively okay with shifting things toward questing, with more tweaks, but now questing feels like it got nerfed too because there is no way to know what you can expect to get.

This change would be far better in my mind if it was by person.  It would encourage collaboration, as you suggest.  It would also mean that if I do an aslaran run I would probably just do it once (so a lowbie will have aslarans available to kill an hour later) instead of me just throwing my hands in the air at all the quest turnins I know being perpetually depreciated and just spam camping the easy ones.

Rasvin

Kistan said:

I worry kids today will never be able to buy manses.

I suppose it adds realism bringing a flavour of RL into a game

Just one of the many issues with nuking gold production. Everyone that already has the poor one time big gold sinks really don't care because this doesn't affect them. The larger gold production allows the new players to catch up. It still takes effort. Now there is no catching up, so we are basically saying, "New player or new character you're at least 5 years too late probably more like 10 years too late." 

Jaspet

Xenthos said:

I was tentatively okay with shifting things toward questing, with more tweaks, but now questing feels like it got nerfed too because there is no way to know what you can expect to get.

I wasn't, because it felt forced and unnatural.

It's obvious, but by limiting effective gold generation to quest turn-ins, you're also limiting your gold generating areas to ones with quest turn-ins. Most areas do not fit that bill, so you're artificially increasing competition for those mid tier areas that people trying to level are still using because the higher level areas are out of reach.

You could add more turn-in mobs to compensate, but that doesn't change anything.

Ianir

Xenthos said:

Jolanthe said:

Regarding changelog 1390, does the increase in quest rewards scale and change based on how recently you, personally, have done the quest, or anyone?

It isn't specified, but if it set to the individual, I think that's a big step forward and a huge improvement over the state of mob gold drops previously. Much as I enjoyed the prior system, it absolutely made you want to keep your favourite gold farming spots a secret. But if one person can do rockeater training without duly cutting into the income of a subsequent person following up shortly after, I feel that does the opposite - ensure the sharing of quest information between players, so everyone maximises their gold earning potential as they discover more avenues for revenue. Further, it deters one player from spamming the same quest over and over, and would push them to move on to others.

It functions by "has anyone at all done it recently," not to the individual.  I think it would be far better tagged to an individual.

Basically all gold income now fluctuates depending on what someone else has done, and there is not a good way to know how long ago someone did the corpse turnins (you can kind of guess based on how much gold the mobs drop, but does not work well on low-level quest mobs that are usually at the floor).  You might get a bunch of gold, you might get very little.

I was tentatively okay with shifting things toward questing, with more tweaks, but now questing feels like it got nerfed too because there is no way to know what you can expect to get.

This change would be far better in my mind if it was by person.  It would encourage collaboration, as you suggest.  It would also mean that if I do an aslaran run I would probably just do it once (so a lowbie will have aslarans available to kill an hour later) instead of me just throwing my hands in the air at all the quest turnins I know being perpetually depreciated and just spam camping the easy ones.

I fail to understand how '100%+(modifier based on how long it's been since somebody else has done it)' is a nerf. At all. Or in this case, 150%.

At this point, I'm just going to step out of this thread for a day or so.

I will leave you with this though - ~360k gold in 12 hours from one player. This change might have actually made the problem worse.

Xenthos

Is the modifier only a positive?  I read it as being like the kill-a-mob thing (where it gets dropped down to a very low level).

If it is always the base amount it previously was PLUS a variable modifier then my feeling of nerfed quests is obviously incorrect, and it is just a straight buff.

Feota

Just completed the Blasted Lands Orphans quest (quest 186) and got a real nice token of appreciation from the questgiver - 262 gold for ~25 minutes of fetch questing and mid-level denizen killing.

Nothing to see here, folks.