Alternative to ore spawnings:

[shasso]

I. Why Changes?

Try making 1000 life essences, with 5 second delay in making each of them that is a total of 5000 seconds or 83 minutes of staring into the wall, waiting for the message so you can click again. That is obviously boring and not much fun, because you cannot even chat properly by having to click all the time. It was introduced to reduce mass production of secondary items like essences and bars to help the economy, to keep prices up. What has happened so far? Its almost impossible to buy Magic essences, Matter essences and even the Life essences on the market, because people rather make 3x or 4x the ammount of Fire/Health essences in the same time, they only make those other essences for themselves if they need them. Life essences for instance, were easy to buy before the new delay, the price was determined by the magic shops and it was at around 4 – 4,5gc per. People were making them for experience and some money, now they stopped, there is a shortage on market but the price still cannot go above 5gc because summoners are already low on cash. There is also a lot less Enritched LE on market now, whitch is limiting the summoning fun. I am not sure how the prices of bars changed, but they dont seem to be much more expensive than they used to be, people still seem to try making the same ammounts, but using a lot more time for waiting…and waiting.. Old players can get used to this easier, they find fun in many other things, have friends and are already addicted, but when a week old player tries to make some Life essence or some Iron bars.. eek.

 

II. Suggestion about what to do and explanation

Goals: Improve the gameplay, limit the mass production, not incourage multiplaying, …?

- All the secondary items like essences and bars should have only a 1 second delay like it was in the old days, experience only affecting the fail chances. The same with final products that are made in larger numbers, like potions and rings.

- Harvesting delayed only for 1-3 seconds max, experience affecting this delay a bit. Also, experience should affect ability to harvest certain materials again. The harvesting is not such big of an issue, since you can still do other things and do not have to click all the time, but some delays are just too big.

- To reduce mass production, LIMIT HARVESTS PER INGAME DAY, after that, getting a message: ''You are too tired to harvest more of this today''. But only for the resources that effect the economy the most: Coal, Quartz, Iron ore, Silver, Gold, Titanium, Gems.

- The problem of this is obviously multiplaying. To try prevent that, harvesting limited materials should be only allowed at a certain level. For instance level 30 or 35 and higher. If that is not enough, also a required level of another skill, like level 20 potion to harvest Quartz; lvl 20 manufacture OR 20 alchemy(or more since this is the easiest skill judging from the top50 list) to harvest iron and so on. For the fair players this should be much of a problem because looking at random players stats, the high harvest level is usually acompanied with a high level in skills like alch/pot/manu/craft.. Also an improved logging system of sucpicious activities? So the player who wants to multiplay has to: Read all the books, get a high harvest level and a decent level in another skill AND risk getting caught. And even if one decides to put so much work into it, in my opinion, the benefits to the game should overweight it.

- Coal should be a limited resource, but with lower required level to harvest, so it would be one more thing new players can sell to producers.

- To additionally help prices, remove Steel 2 edged sword and Steel long sword and Damage rings from monster drops.

- Armor and weapon making delays do not matter a lot because they are made in lesser numbers and i heard there are plans on making it more complex with making handles, blades and then combining components…

 

III. Some rough calculations

This figure is just an example, it could be higher or lower; lets take a limit of 1500 harvests per ingame day. With the excavator cape that means 3000 of some raw material per 6 hours. Atm people can make about 100 Iron bars per hour, 600 per 6 hours. With the proposed sytem, 3000 iron is enough for 430 Iron bars if you buy the coal, 300 bars if you harvest the coal yourself but you can do it in a much shorter time.

All these figures are roughly calculated, because things like walking, experience, carry capacity and other things affect them. I've gathered them from talking to various alchemists and potmakers.

 

Current system, 6 hours of work ----- Proposed system, resouces for 6 hours

 

600 Iron bars ----- 430/300 Iron bars (buying/harvesting coal)

500 Steel bars ------ 375/230 Steel bars*

1800-2400 Magic ess ------- 3000 Magic ess

400 Titanium bars ----- 375/272 Titanium bars

3000-3500 Life ess ----- 3000 Life ess

1800-2400 Spirit rest potions ----- 3000 Spirit rest potions

 

*Silver and Gold bars are similar to Iron and Steel.

 

It is quite clear that all the bars will be produced in smaller amounts and I believe that those are the ones that need to raise in price and with them armor and weapons. Making a bit more of some essences would fill the gap in the market, and making more SR potions will not drop their prices whitch were fixed at 20gc+ even before this extra delay and they are used a LOT – summon, magic, fighting.

 

 

!The formulas for making items could be modified for balancing, like formulas for rings whitch would be hard to make when demanding 2-3 bars, polished gems and Water essences.

!If this goes through, the formula for Matter essence should also be changed, and also the Water essence since it is considered to be a low level thing and is used a lot in crafting and now manufacture.

!Have to consider logging in 1 hour before day change and getting double materials, when deciding on the harvest limit.

 

IV. Ok, used all the resources, still 2-3 hours to next day, what now?

- Socialising, trading, roleplaying, exploring, events, quests, training other skills like summon, fight, magic, making basic things like fire essences, doing things in real life so you dont get fired from a job or flunk in school =)

- New things could be done with Joker. A list of options maybe, what is he to say when you find him, like 'Mike found Joker and is sayin: I own y00!!'. Logging Joker findings for a top50 Joker finders list

 

V. Possible positive and negative effects

 

+ A lot less delays, more time for actually playing the game, more time do do other things than just click.

+ When resources are limited, similar like they are in RL, people tend to make stuff that is more in demand to maximise their profit and less of those that do not sell very good.

+ Fixing prices of bars and therefore weapons, armor, rings at a higher level.

+ More teamwork (guildmembers gathering materials even if they dont plan to use it themselves for instance)

+ More trading (you are more likely to make stuff where you are good at and fail less and buy the things at whitch your efficiency is lower)

+ The harvest limit can be tuned at any time.

+ ?

 

- Possible multiplay.

- Frustration of logging in 5 minutes after the new day has started (there are options to do this differently i guess)

- ?

 

 

 

Please suggest ideas about how to improve this, what did I fail to see and what am I wrong about and such.

It would also be nice if some developer said if this is in fact an option or just a waste of time =)

[shasso]

so everybody likes delays? or this idea sucks? or is it too long to read? =)

[_JenS_]

The delay sucks ass back to the days where u couldnt fail

[Lachesis]

What about making summoning profitable? I think it's better taking the problem at its root than trying to heal the symptoms. I would'nt cry about harvest limits as well, though, if they are not too low. Especially when your skills are low you need to harvest a lot, and punishing unskilled chars in favor of skilled ones maybe is not a good thing. Of course delays do the same to alchemists, manufacturers and potioners as well.

 

With regards

Lachesis

Edited February 17, 2005 by Lachesis

[Gen_Axis]

Negative effect is also:

- forcing players to do fighting for those 2 day hours left, after they got they limit and they can't harvest anything more,

And this delay update already forced many people to fighters way... i know you're fighter and you need more victims to kill, Shasso, hehe, but c'mon ;-)

 

btw

+ More teamwork (guildmembers gathering materials even if they dont plan to use it themselves for instance)

lol, i wanna see YOU harvesting anything ;-)

Edited February 17, 2005 by Gen_Axis

[shasso]

who said i was talking about me

 

anyway, you prefer making those bars/pots straight for 6hours to making them in 4hours and then have free time for whatever?

Edited February 17, 2005 by shasso

[Gen_Axis]

nope, both ideas arent good

and this 'free time' i usually was using for making bars/pots anyway ;-)

so i'd like only the part about reducing delays :-)

[behindthemask08]

You seem to have forgotten this is a game!

 

You say it should be like real life, but in RL there are no limits except time, meaning you can do as much as you can in 6 hours and you are only restricted by the amount of materials you have.

 

There should never be a limit of how much you can harvest except your own personal strength. If a limit on harvesting is implemented, there will be a great shortage and shortages are never good for an economy.

 

This game can never be like RL anyway because there is no way for a person to develop a product of their own so I suggest you stop trying to make this into another Real Life, cause that would suck.

[shasso]

You seem to have forgotten this is a game!

 

You say it should be like real life, but in RL there are no limits except time, meaning you can do as much as you can in 6 hours and you are only restricted by the amount of materials you have.

 

There should never be a limit of how much you can harvest except your own personal strength. If a limit on harvesting is implemented, there will be a great shortage and shortages are never good for an economy.

 

This game can never be like RL anyway because there is no way for a person to develop a product of their own so I suggest you stop trying to make this into another Real Life, cause that would suck.

i know its a game, i was just comparing because of the economy, whitch cannot work properly with unlimited resources. You allready ARE limited by the delays, the harvest limit would just enable for them to be removed so you can make a similar ammount of stuff in a much shorter time withouth WAITING. If you check the calculation you can see there going to be no shortage, just look at the market, steel shields are going for 350 gc already, iron for 200 or even less. People can make a lot more than they can use so the prices have no other way to go but down

[shasso]

nope, both ideas arent good

and this 'free time' i usually was using for making bars/pots anyway ;-)

so i'd like only the part about reducing delays :-)

the delays wont be reduced withouth a compensation. So its either ore spawning or something else.

[Dorplein]

I think the idea is great.

[The_Pale_Elf]

Personally, I like seeing someone looking to help a portion of the community that he doesn't participate in, such as a fighter offering suggestions on improving alchemy.

 

I think a large part of your "problem" is that the manufacturing interface sucks butt. You pile some items together, hit a button, and much like placing the ingredients for a daqueri in a blender, you just wait till it's finished and you pour out the concoction. A lot of what makes manu/alch/crafting boring is the system by which you use the skill. Maybe if it could be replced by a menu driven system, where you dbl click the tool and pick from a list what you want to make, and then it checks to see if you have required resources, it could be a lot more interesting.

 

As for the actual proposed solution, I'm gonna read it over a coupla times before responding. It's a long'un, (not a bad thing, just takes a bit of concentration and thought)

[shenriss]

for the manu menu i m agree...

[scarr]

I hope they make alchemy easyer for gnomes verry soon :-P

[The_Pale_Elf]

I have always been against the random EFE and ELE bit. I'd personally much rather make them craftable by themselves, but at a much harder skill rate and cost a good number of lower level essences. This would allow higher level alchs to make ELE's as they want, and it would increase supply. Making it take a large number of FE's would maintain the pricefor the economy. If an LE is 4gc, then make the ELE take 500 LE to create, thus 2k for an ELE. Which, when you include failure rates, would be a lil more, maybe 2.5-3k. Plus, the crafter would need 500 carry capacity. Or 250 LE, and you've got a happy medium, (250 req pack space and 1-1.5k ELE)

 

:lol: Nothing personal but the idea of limiting how much you can harvest 'just because' sux. "You're too tired" "Lick my *expletive*, my char's name is Hercules and has 1000 carry cap!!"

 

I think it would be better to limit how much can be harvested in an area, so you aren't just left hanging for the ingame day. You would still have the option of walking over a few steps and getting the ore there, (as in the spawning harvest system, tho everyone seems to think they'll hafta go on a 3 day expedition to find a "vein" when it would just be rocks spawning in a 5 x 20 tile area).

 

Btw, I don't think Alchemy is the easiest skill, it's just the most profitable one, due to making enriched essences. Oout of a 10k tit serp, you figure 6-7k of that goes to the alchemist who made the EFE.

 

Also, it's not illegal to have multiple characters, and it's no longer illegal to trade on same IP now. So there's no downside to muling your own stuff. (Which I think is a good thing. What's the diff between muling your own stuff for a guild or having a player mule for the guild?)

 

Silver isn't really that similar to iron, since iron ore weighs twice what silver does. This means that when hauling to storage, you can take twice as much per trip, thus cutting walking time by half.

 

Another thing that would be nice is a system that limits you by playtime, not gametime. Meaning, if you log off, and then back on right after a new hour starts, then you're left waiting till the next hour to gain harvesting skill. Wouldn't the push to doing by day instead of hour mean that you could wait 5+ hours just to gain skill? So I make steel bars, log off, back on and find that I can't make more steel bars till I wait for the next ingame day, which is hours away. I wanna play a game, not sit and chat. I'm in EL, not Yahell. Talking to people is a small part of an MMORPG, it shouldn't be the primary focus.