Fixing some of the economy

[Thordin]

I hate to say this but i am hope for an item wipe for EVERYONE. Then you will see your prices go up. I dont care if i lose everything it is just a game and i have fun playing it with my friends that i have met here.

 

Well, this won't fix anything, just postpone it. And it seems you do not appreciate effort of players to make gold to buy expensive items like COL or another item from Tanta. It's selfish to suggest item wipe, just because you have nothing to lose

 

But I agree that economy fix cannot please everyone, in fact I think that most of us will be pissed from the beginning, but let's hope we appreciate it in later times.

 

As was posted many times above, no all-in-one step cannot be made, it needs small steps, tweaking and time to make it work, it's a long way...

[Jamol]

Well, this won't fix anything, just postpone it. And it seems you do not appreciate effort of players to make gold to buy expensive items like COL or another item from Tanta. It's selfish to suggest item wipe, just because you have nothing to lose

 

What u say is true. It would just be a temp fix. If we start over with the new formulas or drops or whatever Ent has decided to go with we might see an improvement right at the begining.

 

But, I stand to lose just as much as everyone. I have a COL and i would lose that too. I worked hard to get that selling items and working for other ppl. but we are kinda getting off topic SORRY!

[Longsh0t]

Wow 150+ posts in 3 days .

 

I do NOT want to implement anything new, and I am looking for exact suggestions, such as how and what exactly should change: formulas, prices, exp

I've seen in posts from a few people that mass production is a problem. Also, some higher level items are less wanted and less profitable to make (in terms of exp and gc).

 

Is it posible to determine these things from scratch?:

• The amount people can produce per hour (given they have the components)
  
• The components needed to make the item (closely related to the profit one can make AND the amount people can produce per hour).
  
• The experience one gets per item
  
• The profit (not turnover!) one can make producing the item
  

Just an example (to reduce massproduction & fix the economy):

 

Iron Sword:

Experience: 1.500

Time it takes to produce one: 3 minutes

Profit: 50 gc (50gc on top of the cost to make a sword)

Components needed: 10 Iron bars, 5 Coal, 5 Fire Essences

 

Consequences:

You can make 20 Iron swords per hour max.

You can make 1.500 GC per hour max.

You will gain at maximum 30.000 experience per hour.

 

+ Manufacturers have a little cash to spend on resources and other things, they don't have to harvest flowers anymore to gain their cash .

+ Iron swords give fair exp (im not a manufacturer, so i don't actually know howmuch 30k exp is )

+ Iron bar demand will rise (if you dont get MUCH richer making Iron bars)

+ Coal demand will rise

+ Fire essence demand will rise (if you dont get MUCH richer making Fire essences)

 

 

Disclaimer

'Fixing' one item will not work. You need to look at EVERY item, or people will find loopholes like they have done now (harvesting flowers).

Edited April 27, 2006 by Longsh0t

[sbarstow]

...

Iron Sword:

Experience: 1.500

Time it takes to produce one: 3 minutes

Profit: 50 gc (50gc on top of the cost to make a sword)

Components needed: 10 Iron bars, 5 Coal, 5 Fire Essences

 

Consequences:

You can make 20 Iron swords per hour max.

You can make 1.500 GC per hour max.

You will gain at maximum 30.000 experience per hour.

...

 

I like this idea a lot actually...I just have one question. When do you find out if you fail? Would you find out right away, halfway through, or three minutes later at completion?

 

GOOD IDEA

[LadyWolf]

Cooldown on tools may not be the best solution.

The word "COOLDOWN" in itself seems to shy people away. Those of you that were here before the cooldown, remember when it took for ever to make items? Because the manufacturing time was increased. I think we need this back, because with the cooldown everything is 2x sometimes 3x faster than it used to be, thus making it easier to mass produce.

 

I think level caps for manufacturable items would be a start, meaning a level 30 manuer couldn't turn out greaves and cuisses.

 

Also, as Savyl and a few others stated, remove ALL manufacturable items as monster drops. There are way too many tit longs, and other high end items floating around because you can kill cycs and load up on them. I got 6 of them (tit longs) in 2 hours of training a few weeks ago.

 

When I first started playing EL 15 months ago prices for things were alot higher, but everyone had money to pay for things. MM cloaks were 10k, tit serps were 10k, full pl8 (torso, greaves and cuisses) was 40k, tit chains were 7-8k. EFE's were 7k each!

 

Then more and more newbies started learning about the MM perk, which was alot cheaper to buy than a cloak. Then the EL shop started selling EFE's 6 for 5$ usd, this sent the high end manufacturables into a never ending downward spiral. Now tit chains and serps sell for 4-5k, and you can buy a full pl8 for less than 20k. MM cloak still has little value because the perk is still there, and newbs don't understand how important pickpoints are and spend them on the perk instead of buying a cloak.

 

El shop needs to raise their price on EFE's to start, it's no use to ask them to stop selling them altogether, because it is a source of income for them. Instead of 6 for 5$, make it 6 for 10$ or something to that effect.

 

Secondly, if you don't see fit on doing away with the MM perk altogether (and compensating those that have it with pickpoints), then there needs to be a level restriction on it. Say people can't get it until they are level 20 oa. Also, it's too cheap, it only costs a few hundred gold coins and some pickpoints to get. Make it where it costs 10-20k then the price of a MM cape will look really good to players again.

[trollson]

Using Merchant NPCs Throughout

 

It would be interesting to think through the consequencies of replacing all the current NPC traders with (autonomous) Merchant NPCs.

 

They would need to have some rules to handle price adjustments, based on supply and demand. These need not be complex (infact simple rules, well thought out, work better for these types of systems).

 

There would need to be an external source/sink for their goods to act as a safty net, and to get commodities into the market which are not producable by players (or monster drops). Represents the local peasant economy (varies with NPC), and/or trade with the world outside that known to the players (global).

 

Gives prices affected by supply and demand, regional variations, and so on. NPCs no longer serve as an infinite money sink or source.

Edited April 27, 2006 by trollson

[LadyWolf]

To go along with what Trollson said (and you guys can crucify me), I went and played Runescape a few times just to see if it really did suck like everyone said. That game has a thriving economy.

 

Their "merchant has fluctuating prices based on how many of each item it has. Once the merchant reaches a certain set limit of an item, it tells you the price is 0$, but will still take your item as a donation. Then it turns around and sells items in that same manner. If it only has a few of each item then the price is higher, but if its maxed out on the limit for an item, you can get it very cheap.

[Atlantis]

To go along with what Trollson said (and you guys can crucify me), I went and played Runescape a few times just to see if it really did suck like everyone said. That game has a thriving economy.

 

Their "merchant has fluctuating prices based on how many of each item it has. Once the merchant reaches a certain set limit of an item, it tells you the price is 0$, but will still take your item as a donation. Then it turns around and sells items in that same manner. If it only has a few of each item then the price is higher, but if its maxed out on the limit for an item, you can get it very cheap.

However, limiting the amount of things you can buy from an NPC in this game would make leveling some skills very difficult. Example: Thread, the top manu'ers have to buy hundreds of thousands of thread...very few people sell it to the NPC, so the price would eventually get too high. Plus, a lot of items don't get sold to NPCs, so they would all eventually run out. This concept doesn't really interact well with the current economy structure, but I suppose something similar could be fitted to it.

[Gwain]

To go along with what Trollson said (and you guys can crucify me), I went and played Runescape a few times just to see if it really did suck like everyone said. That game has a thriving economy.

 

Their "merchant has fluctuating prices based on how many of each item it has. Once the merchant reaches a certain set limit of an item, it tells you the price is 0$, but will still take your item as a donation. Then it turns around and sells items in that same manner. If it only has a few of each item then the price is higher, but if its maxed out on the limit for an item, you can get it very cheap.

However, limiting the amount of things you can buy from an NPC in this game would make leveling some skills very difficult. Example: Thread, the top manu'ers have to buy hundreds of thousands of thread...very few people sell it to the NPC, so the price would eventually get too high.

 

They don't sell it to NPCs because they use the thread or sell it to market. so the problem wouldn't be immense.

 

if the NPCs would give more they would sell to NPC, thus making the NPCs price go down, until noone sells to them and the price fluctuates back to an high income.

 

in short, you will have periods where you would buy from NPCs and times where you would buy from players.

 

Cheers.

 

(incidentally i consider the thread and the bones as undervalued items compared to the mass amounts used by players. i mean those are one of the few 'non infinite' (as in non directly harvestable, you need to kill for/buy them, not that there aren't infinite amounts of skeletons/spiders) materials, and are worth for players like lilacs and vegetables )

 

But this should be in a topic let's called "let's abolish the pricing bots" (sometimes we will need to talk about this)

[Jamol]

To go along with what Trollson said (and you guys can crucify me), I went and played Runescape a few times just to see if it really did suck like everyone said. That game has a thriving economy.

 

Their "merchant has fluctuating prices based on how many of each item it has. Once the merchant reaches a certain set limit of an item, it tells you the price is 0$, but will still take your item as a donation. Then it turns around and sells items in that same manner. If it only has a few of each item then the price is higher, but if its maxed out on the limit for an item, you can get it very cheap.

 

Our guild was talking about the same thing we need something like this!! Learner was working on something like this for OL.

[LadyWolf]

To go along with what Trollson said (and you guys can crucify me), I went and played Runescape a few times just to see if it really did suck like everyone said. That game has a thriving economy.

 

Their "merchant has fluctuating prices based on how many of each item it has. Once the merchant reaches a certain set limit of an item, it tells you the price is 0$, but will still take your item as a donation. Then it turns around and sells items in that same manner. If it only has a few of each item then the price is higher, but if its maxed out on the limit for an item, you can get it very cheap.

However, limiting the amount of things you can buy from an NPC in this game would make leveling some skills very difficult. Example: Thread, the top manu'ers have to buy hundreds of thousands of thread...very few people sell it to the NPC, so the price would eventually get too high. Plus, a lot of items don't get sold to NPCs, so they would all eventually run out. This concept doesn't really interact well with the current economy structure, but I suppose something similar could be fitted to it.

 

Some items can still be sold at the regular general store. As with RS, not every item even has a value at the merchant npc, but it might to players. Items like thread are bought usually solely from the general store, so it can continue to be sold there. This item doesn't affect the economy as do other items.

 

Also, i'm not talking about taking away other npc's to implement this, as in RS (and I know we don't want to be like other games), they have specialty shops with set prices (like our current npcs and shops), this merchant npc I'm talking about, is like our market channel, only it's controlled by preset values according to supply and demand.

[Longsh0t]

I really don't think you can compare the economy of RS with EL. RS has a playerbase that is FAR greater, thus you can always find a fool to buy a certain item.

 

A NPC with dynamic prices is a good idea though, but again: only use NPCs to set price floors. Entropy only wanted to change the formulas, price and experience and i still think that you don't need to implement complicated things like this NPC to fix the economy.

 

Look at my previous post, I will guarantee you that if you go through ALL of the ingame items and re-evaluate their production rate, exp, price, etc we will need 5 market channels.

[Jamol]

A NPC with dynamic prices is a good idea though, but again: only use NPCs to set price floors. Entropy only wanted to change the formulas, price and experience and i still think that you don't need to implement complicated things like this NPC to fix the economy.

 

I think that just adjusting formulas, price and exp will not fix the state of the market compleatly it might help for awhile. Till someone finds an exploite it happens in RL all the time. Granted some of the formulas need tweeked.

 

Here is one that comes to mind.

Titanium/Steel Alloy Long Sword

Items needed:

8 Titanium Bars

8 Steel Bars

6 Fire Essences

1 Enriched Fire Essence

Get rid of the EFE there is no way you will get your money out of it.

 

Medallions

Items needed:

3 Bars

3 Fire Essences

 

Rings

Items needed:

2 Bars

3 Fire Essences

cut down on the bars i mean 2 or 3 bars for one med or ring how big are these bars.

 

Polished jewels

Items needed:

1 jewels

2 Water Essences

1 Gem Sanding Paper

the sanding paper is kinda pricy

 

All of the c2 ring need tweeked or raise the price to go to c2

 

There is a few morebut these r the ones i know that are bad.

Edited April 27, 2006 by Jamol

[DemonCowboy]

i still say that it's going to take a good bit more than simply redoing formulas, changing exp, and price tweeks.

• 1.)if u change every formula in the game so that it's less costly to make it will drive down prices, if u make them more expensive to make, some ppl may quit working the skills and/or quit the game entirely.
  2.)if u raise the exp for every item, ppl will still mass produce, just level faster, if you lower the exp some ppl might quit making items all together and possibly leave the game.
  3.)if u completely redo the pricing system, that will have some effect, but it would either make ppl dependant on what the NPC prices are for everything, or it would only be temporary.
  

it's going to take ALOT more than that to fix the economy. it's not going to be easy, it's not going to be perfect. and it's not going to be quick. it will have to be done in steps. which will probably hurt the economy more for a bit. but the economy is a MAJOR part of any MMORPG. so it is going to have to be dealt with., or this game will never get out of beta.

 

i like this game and see alot of possibilities for it, but the VERY FIRST thing i noticed after playing for awhile was the state of the economy and the completely screwed up NPC pricing system. that's been the thing i've been most interesting in seeing fixed. that is because the economy is the most important part. my very first post in these forums was in the dev suggestion section about the economy. i've done alot of thinking about the EL economy and even did some research into economics because i was interested.

 

true RL economics can't be applied here, because RL doesn't have NPCs w/ unlimited money to shell out, and that right there is where most of the problem is. a way to balance the NPCs has to be implimented or there will ALWAYS be either too many items, or too much money in the game. alot of things will have to be done, but in the end it will be worth it.

 

i even havea suggestion ent might like to bring in cash for the game but i see no point in posting it untill the game becomes completely functional, and the economy is a BIG part of functional.

 

---------

 

this has been yet another long and probably boring post , brought to u by:

[LadyWolf]

Ok, I have been looking at the post and there is alot of good ideas here. All of u need credit at throwing ideas around. We r all concern about the market!! There is not going to be any one way that will be the best.

 

It will hurt some and help others. Ent u should know this the best of all u can not please everyone. i dont expect u to either!! Stick to your guns when you do decide.

 

I hate to say this but i am hope for an item wipe for EVERYONE. Then you will see your prices go up. I dont care if i lose everything it is just a game and i have fun playing it with my friends that i have met here.

 

Item wipe would not be feasible, since some items people have were bought with real money from the EL shop.

[Baron_Samedi]

I see the NPCS buying an infinite number of items as a good item sink for the game.The fact that Npcs sell an infinite number of items I don't see as a good idea,even though it's a money sink.If I need lots of essence and can't find it on market or from bots I can get all I need at magic shops(no actual work involved).If the Npc was sold out of that item you need to buy at market,from bots or harvest and make it yourself.If the magic shop were empty of a particular item,production would adjust to meet demand.Magic shops buying enriched essence may help.The market and bot price would adjust to get these items as people would have the sell to shop option as a way for new people to get gc for those EFEs.If the shop/npc had an item invo cap,any excess sold is gone from the game.

 

Trik is set to buy certain items.If he sold a fixed amount eg iron swords,this may help summoners according to new formulas(money sink),but when his invo for that item is zero only someone selling that item makes it available for sale again.

 

I see the EL economy as actually 3 economies(market/bots/npcs).The market and bots keep items and gc flowing around the game.The Npcs add gc to the game and to a certain extent are item sinks.As stated by many people,it's not an easy fix but I don't believe increasing production times will help.As I've observed many people spend more time fighting than they used to.Adding a cool down to tools would curtail production,since it would mean even more time consuming game play.In my opinion the result would be even more people doing only fighting as a skill.I personally spend more time hunting animals for meat,so I can make FP to reduce costs.

[Knuckles]

My personal opinion..

 

Like someone said in another thread, the only "real" way of making money is by Harvesting, and that's all anyone needs, because that's what everything is based around, all skills depends on Harvesting and getting the Ing's to make the stuff for what you need. Ie: Fighters need HE's, and SR's, all of the stuff needed for them is Harvestable. Same with Potions, and Manuf (Too make the bars).

 

Peoples skills levels are so high now, that alot of people can do things for themselfs, like making HE's & SR's, and what not.. So people have no need to buy anything. Even the price of Magic Swords has decreased by about 50% because of the amount of them in the game.. I remember selling a IsoF for 60k, and another for 20k FE ing's.. Now your lucky to get 20k, Thermal Serps used to be 500k, I couldn't even sell one for 300k.

 

I don't think there is "a good" solution to fixing the economy.. I think it's just got to fix itself.

 

Just my 2 cents,

 

-HunT.

Edited April 27, 2006 by ManHunT

[Atlantis]

I don't think there is "a good" solution to fixing the economy.. I think it's just got to fix itself.

Overall, its declined in a lot of ways in the last year. What makes you think its suddenly going to spike back up?

[Knuckles]

I don't think there is "a good" solution to fixing the economy.. I think it's just got to fix itself.

Overall, its declined in a lot of ways in the last year. What makes you think its suddenly going to spike back up?

 

What makes you think it wont?

 

If it can't be fixed, don't bother trying, it will just make it worse.

Edited April 27, 2006 by ManHunT

[sparhawk]

I don't think there is "a good" solution to fixing the economy.. I think it's just got to fix itself.

Overall, its declined in a lot of ways in the last year. What makes you think its suddenly going to spike back up?

 

What makes you think it wont?

 

If it can't be fixed, don't bother trying, it will just make it worse.

 

So THAT’S how we deal with problems everywhere. Let’s not do anything anywhere anytime to fix things. I’m sure it will make it worse. Let us let people starve, let people get massacred and lets let genocides happen. If we try to fix it, it will surely get worse.

[sarcasm]

 

Edit: Spelling

Sorry for lashing out, it is just that I dont like this kind of mentality.

Edited April 27, 2006 by sparhawk

[LadyWolf]

You ever heard that old saying, "It'll get worse before it gets better"? I think that's what ManHunt was referring to..sometimes "things" can't be fixed and are only made worse by our actions, but something can be done to eliviate our market problem and give it a nudge in the right direction. Everyone says it's gonna take something big and humongous to change it...I think a few tweaks here (formulas) adjustments there(npc prices) and we will start to see an upward climb. It's not gonna happen overnight no matter what, we will just have to be patient once the wheels start to turn.

 

I think bots should have to follow the same prices set as the ingame NPC's, because they do alot of undercutting, just like the players. If they are caught not obeying the prices, then they need to have their bot locked for X amount of time, continuously breaking the set prices would result in the complete loss of the bot.

[carone]

I'm just going to add my 2 cents here too.

I've actually just read ALL the posts in this thread so I want to comment on them a bit and add some of my own drivel.

 

First of all: I think the economy isn't as screwed up as many people think it is. It's far from being perfect, which imho is impossible to accomplish anyway, but it could be a lot worse. Still, it needs tweaking...but please keep in mind how complex this undertaking is and how hard, if not impossible, it is to keep track of all the consequences even the smallest changes bring with them.

 

For example getting rid of mass production by increasing production times:

It's easy to believe that this is the main problem and fixing it will solve the problem, but think about the consequences of taking as big a step as drastically reducing the amount of items created in the game. The good consequence is that we get closer to meeting the actual demand of those items, but look at some of the bad consequences that come with such a step. The overall demand for everything required to make those items will also be reduced at the same level.

For the example of a simple item requiring iron bars:

You won't need as many iron bars in the game, not as many FE's, also meaning less sulfur and flowers. The market for those low level items will be gone immediately. You can just harvest or make all of those yourself because you simply don't need as many anymore.

And then simply increasing the amount of required items to produce the more complex items is just going to release another avalanche of consequences.

 

Perhaps I'm completely wrong and it would indeed improve the situation, but I just think that some people here don't realise how big the consequences of even the tiniest change can be, let alone big changes such as greatly reducing overall production of items over night.

If there's someone here who thinks he can predict all the implications of such big changes, please step forward and enlighten us, I know I can't.

 

My suggestion: Small, very small changes please, let's not rush into this.

 

So what exactly is wrong with the economy anyway?

What do we want it to be like and how can we accomplish that?

What IS the perfect economy? (I can tell you one thing, everyone getting rich isn't. )

 

Here's what I think(this is my point of view, I'm not all-knowing, if you are, congrats. If you think this is complete nonsense, let's discuss it, that's what this thread is there for, isn't it?)

 

We need to have a steady flow of gold/items not only coming into the game but going out of the game as well.

I think that is one of the problems of this particular economy. We harvest and produce too much and consume too little. We're flooding the whole system more and more.

One branch of items for example that are not taken out enough are obviously weapons. Most people don't even use weapons against monsters because of the fighting system. In my opinion this is one of the things that HAS to be changed as quickly as possible. We need more weapons/items being used and getting broken(meaning completely leaving the system).

 

We have too many people manufacturing, that's a fact and I don't see a way of changing it without huge risks of screwing up the economy even more. So why prevent these people from selling the items they make to NPC's? Okay, it won't really remove the item from the system, it will only convert them to gold coins, so what we need is a way to get that gold out some way or convert it into other items again then remove those. In my opinion a lot more stuff has to leave the system than it does right now.

I agree with many other people in this thread that all items have to be bought by NPC's at prices that cover the cost of the production. This will also accomplish minimum prices for all items, which is a great thing for an economy that doesn't rely on people actually needing anything. In EL prices keep dropping and people are willing to sell way below actual value because EL is just a game and the consequences are not what they are in the real world(good thing too, we don't play a game to get the same crap as in real life, huh?).

 

We have to make expendable goods more attractive. Potions, teleport rings for example, these have to be bought and used more, they will help empty the system to make room for the new things that are being harvested/produced constantly. They aren't being used enough because they are too expensive and/or not effective enough.

 

There has to be a need for players to spend money at NPC's, more gold should leave the system!

More items should be available from NPC's only. These items exist already but imho not nearly enough. Items like mercury, but to prices that make sense so people actually buy them.

Or having to spend gold for access to certain new areas for example.

Many of you will start yelling now: OMG, BUT I DON'T HAVE ANY MONEY! HOW CAN YOU SAY MORE MONEY HAS TO LEAVE THE SYSTEM?!?!?!

Well, maybe you don't have any money in the current system, but that's what has to change. We need more money and fewer items than right now. At the moment everyone has lots of stuff but no money, there is no way for the money/item circulation to get going because there isn't enough money entering the system.

I believe more money from monsters can help solve this problem and being able to sell more of the crap people have rotting in storage to NPC's. Once there are ways to get money we'll probably need ways to get it out again. I doubt we'll have a system that will consume enough items to make it unnecessary to remove gold coins directly from the system... but this is going too far now, there's no way to predict that yet, such things have to be tested.

 

 

So here are my thoughts on what might work, credits for most of these go to the people in this thread who came up with them, I'm mainly just listing my favorites:

 

1) Get rid of monster drops that can be produced. Swords, medallions...

 

2) Reduce probability of other drops: Books, potions, whatever else there is.

I'm not really a big fighter, I don't know what exactly and how much they drop. But I do know that the amount of most drop books is way too high. The market is flooded with them pushing prices way too low for books you'd pay thousands for at the NPC.

 

3) To compensate 1 and 2: More gold from monsters.

The fighters need a money source, otherwise they will be forced to harvest or alch for money, hurting the market by making everything themselves. I don't remember who wrote it but I completely agree that ideally each profession should be able to support itself without having to go into others to make the money to be able to 'survive'. This is VERY hard to accomplish completely, but at the moment it's very unbalanced and needs tweaking badly. You can't accomplish much as a crafter only for example.

By shifting the balance of this the market can be influenced GREATLY. Will this change be good or bad? No idea, I'd expect it to be a good change, but it's much too complex to be able to predict it with certainty.

 

4) Level restrictions for using items.

This is a must, imo. Noone uses the cheaper items. There is no market whatsoever for those but there should be.

 

5) Reduce harvesting madness. Lower prices NPC's will pay for harvestables. This is a tricky one...

People harvesting all day long to earn money directly just seems wrong. But changing this can have huge consequences so this has to be approached with care too. There has to be a way to get more people to harvest things that are actually needed for the economy but the market probably won't require THAT much stuff.

This is most likely very, very critical to mess with.

If you take away such a big source of money where will the money come from instead? Imagine if all those people start manufacturing items because they can't make enough money by harvesting anymore? Even more items on the market noone will buy? We'd also have even more people making their own stuff because they don't have the money to buy them anymore. If you get rid of harvesting as a source for gold there has to be an alternative. Even more gold from monsters?

 

6) Make potions/rings more attractive.

My suggestion: Potions like defense, coord and similar ones need to be more effective. +10 defense, +10 coordination instead of 5 and/or make the effect last longer. Hardly anyone uses them because they simply aren't worth it(I guess, otherwise they would all buy my potions).

Rings: They simply have to be cheaper. Adjust the formulas a bit so TP rings cost let's say 50gc instead of 100gc. Someone suggested removing being able to flee completely...worth a shot, imo. But keep the formula for diss rings for now. That can be adjusted later if necessary.

 

7) I'm giving this its own entry: C2 rings are way too expensive. Make them cheaper but also consider restricting teleporting to C2 as was suggested by someone in this thread. No hopping back and forth from C1 to C2. I'm not so sure about this one myself but I think it should at least be considered.

 

8) More manu XP for certain high level items.

There should be a bigger reward for making items that require an EFE or other expensive ingredients, imo. I don't think there's a risk of them being mass produced anyway so some more XP would be nice for the few times the manufacturers make them.

Also more XP for other high level items unless there will actually be a market for them in the future.

 

9) I like the idea of getting XP for failed production very much. And very realistic too. We gain way more experience from failure than from success in Real Life.

 

10) Some minor price adjustments.

Examples:

Feasting potions more expensive from NPC perhaps so it would be profitable to mix them. But at the same time reduce food requirement for some items to compensate the higher price.

Or alternatively(probably better) adjust the formula for feasting potions to make it cheaper and easier to manufacture. Get rid of the wine and veggies for example. It takes too much effort to make them.

Spirit Essence is wack. Make mercury cheaper, spirit essence from NPC more expensive or replace mercury with some other ingredient.

 

And now some rather big changes, for the future perhaps.

11) Change the fighting XP system to xp/damage or XP/monster.

12) Certain monsters can only be hit with weapons with certain properties.

5 and 6 are both obviously there to force players to use weapons and eventually break them to remove weapons from the system.

Monsters with immunity to weak weapons or weapons without certain special properties is done in many RPG's and imho it would be a nice feature for EL. Certain monsters can only be harmed by titanium weapons for example or some special monsters can only be harmed by magic weapons. This is obviously not a quick fix but requires quite some work.

 

13) 'useless' clothing simply to look different.

I loved this idea but a lot of work is involved of course.

Variety is always nice to have. People will pay lots of money to be different, I think this would help the market quite a bit.

And also as suggested more capes or clothes with different properties like acid rain or solar flare protection.

 

 

Okay, enough already, let the flaming begin.

In my opinion these things should at least be considered and tried out. I expect a lot of this is going to be trial and error anyway, as always with such things.

And I can't point out enough how important it is to take small steps. It doesn't take much change to tip the scales. The smallest change can have HUGE effects.

 

And now I have to get back to EL, I wanted to level oa today but now I've been spending almost all my time with this thread and writing this post.

 

I know you requested specific suggestion on changes, Entropy, but that's damn hard to do at this point, imho. It all depends on what exactly will be changed. I think once the extent of changes is assessable we can try making concrete suggestions for formula changes.

 

Many thanks to all the devs and mods who are involved in the development of this game, btw.

 

carone

[Longsh0t]

Very good post there.

 

11) Change the fighting XP system to xp/damage or XP/monster.

That would certainly stop people from the current flee/fight/flee/fight tactics. I like this idea. One thing though: I also think the weapons do too much damage, if i use a titanium long when training the fights NEVER last longer than 20 seconds.

 

4) Level restrictions for using items.

Fair enough. You mean like you need at least 20 attack to use an iron broad sword? I think it's a good idea, but the levels need to be looked at very closely.

 

1) Get rid of monster drops that can be produced. Swords, medallions...

2) Reduce probability of other drops: (...)

3) To compensate 1 and 2: More gold from monsters.

Good ideas, should also be combined with the 'new' fighting system

[Enyo]

Most of what you have said has already been said and posted by me earlier in the thread.

 

I would suggest that people actually READ the entire thread before posting more and more of the same ideas over and over and over again and also if you see that someone else has already posted certain suggestions, please don't just re-word it and make a new post.

 

At this point I don't see this thread going anywhere at all because its become so cluttered how could anyone possibly keep up. We have all debated and forumated this topic to death. I think several people have already suggested it and now I'm going to propose it again. Lets just give it a rest and let the devs have an opportunity to digest it all.

 

Thanks.

Edited April 28, 2006 by Savyl

[carone]

Most of what you have said has already been said and posted by me earlier in the thread.

 

I would suggest that people actually READ the entire thread before posting more and more of the same ideas over and over and over again and also if you see that someone else has already posted certain suggestions, please don't just re-word it and make a new post.

...

 

And maybe you should've done the same and actually read my post. I said I'm mainly commenting on what's been said before and what I think should or shouldn't be done of those suggestions and why.

 

That's what's been happening in the posts before and I don't see what's wrong with discussing these suggestions. We all have different theories on the effects certain suggested changes would have and my post was my view on those.