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EL and rl $

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So suppose I wish to buy 1 attribute - I need a nexus removal stone and 50 hydro bars.

 

I can either harvest / mix like mad and get the items and stone - or if I am lucky enough to be able to, I can use $ to purchase items / gc to speed up the process

 

Lets assume I am going to use $.

I will need approx 1.3M gc.

 

I can either purchase items from the shop and sell on the market, or purchase gc from farmers. Currently (and for at least the last year or so) I get a better return by buying from the gold farmers.

So the gold farmer harvests a whole load of coal / iron /. whatever - sells on the market and I buy the gc.

 

I then use the gc to purchase the hydro bars / stone and get my pp.

 

Interestingly - to get the hydro bars - none of the items needed are the 'rare' items from the EL shop - just lots and lots of coal / iron / fe. IE exactly the same items that the gold farmers are best positioned to harvest to get their gc.

 

The increased demand for hydro bars, simply pushes up the price for the raw ingredients (due to supply) - which means the farmer gets more gc for the same amount of work. This in turn pushes up the cost of the hydro bars - which means the gc buyer need to buy more.

 

This is a vicious circle and will only stop when the price of Hydro bars reaches the price of iron / steel / fe bought from the NPC. (This limit is surprisingly close)

 

The above is simple supply and demand - and in itself not such a bad thing.

 

However, it seriously impacts the game economy.

 

  1. Very little is sold in the EL shop.
    This means that the quantity of 'rare' items introduced into the game via the shop is low, and also Radu gets a small percentage of the rl $ spent on the game.
  2. 2) The price of anything using coal / iron / fe also rises in price, and due to 1) above anything requiring a 'rare' item also increases in price due to low supply.

 

I would be really interested to find out the % of rl $ spend that goes to the EL shop rather than to the gc farmers.

 

 

Please note - I have nothing against gc farmer / pp buyers at all - they provide a necessary part of the game. I am just concerned - that falling income to the EL shop adversely affects, in fact jeopardises the future of the game. Without $ takings - the game cannot survive as currently is.

 

I think that there are several ways that this can be addressed but am interested to see responses.

 

*Ducks and waits for flames*

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Ultimate solution:

Remove pickpoint buying (not nexus buying, only pickpoint buying... solutions for this have been previously presented)

 

Doing this wouldn't just help decrease the time needed to reach upper level competitive PK, but would have a big ripple effect through the whole economy.

PK breaks gear and burns resources. Right now high level fighters are both buying gc and getting comparatively high gc drops, and they're spending most of it, from both sources, on pickpoints. If pickpoint buying simply didn't exist, that gc would instead go to PK'ing and replenishing the resources used during PK'ing. It would push fighters to spend those RL dollars (that they obviously have to be spent) at the shop on rare ingreds for equipment, because having tonnes of gc won't help you if there's no weapons/armor/whatever to buy. I'm not saying it'd solve all the economy and gc-seller problems, but it would help, and would have positive effects on numerous areas of the game, some less obvious than others. Of course, if this was done, the shear strength of some instance/invasion creatures would need to be adjusted.

 

...but of course, that'll never happen. Radu once told me he believes pp buying to be one of the best things he ever implemented, he also said that ~10 years to upper char strength limits is his desired amount.

 

So under the premise it will never be removed; I'd support anything to make the pp buying process as cheap and accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

 

Sadly I can't think of any inspiring ideas to get it done atm :) ...maybe Radu could reduce hydro ore amount in hydro bar from 10 to 5 and add an item to the recipe that he sells at the shop for 50c each (obviously some minimum to buy would be the go, say 10 minimum).

 

I'll certainly think on it and post if i come up with anything.

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You know, the game is not just me and you. Most players DO like the idea of pp/nexus buying. It's good for the economy, it's good for players.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again.

 

Most GC selling from farming comes from farming yeti/LORC

 

Iron etc prices come from the PLAYERS who refuse to sell for less. Been like this for quite a while. Instead of doing anythinga bout it you accept it and blame stupid shit crap that has little to no meaning at all.

 

This all started when LabRat started selling his silver for 2.5 because he monopolized most of the silver sales in bulk.

 

Then harvesters caught on and figured why not sell their stuff for more? Then GenX upped their prices with their once again MONOPOLIZED harvesting sales.

 

You want to point the finger at someone for buying/selling ores? Point to yourself and any one else who harvests.

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You know, the game is not just me and you.

I know. All i suggested in the end was a possible way for you to increase income from the shop.

It doesn't really have much to do with me.

 

Most players DO like the idea of pp/nexus buying. It's good for the economy, it's good for players.

Firstly, forget nexus buying. It's not what i'm talking about. I like nexus buying. I think it's great.

I'd like to see your evidence that most players think pickpoint buying is good... although, what does it really matter if most players are for or against, it's your whim whether or not you want it to exist.

 

Anyways, if a poll is made asking "Would you like to see pickpoint buying removed (but not nexus buying)?", even despite the fact many people will be voting without a clear view of the big picture, if more people vote to keep it i'll never make removing it the point of a post on these forums again.

 

 

 

Most GC selling from farming comes from farming yeti/LORC

"farming LORC"? lol

It's always a hard thing to accept that you actually aren't as knowledgeable on a topic as you think, but you need to seriously consider that this might be one of those times.

Your statement already has every LOrc trainer lol'ing, maybe do some research before considering further posts on this topic.

 

Just cause there was a guy who (quite famously) did it for a long time using mob serping, doesn't automatically mean most get the gc that way.

 

Take it from a person who at least glances at every single post on the central place for such trading.

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I've said it before and I'll say it again.

 

Most GC selling from farming comes from farming yeti/LORC

 

Iron etc prices come from the PLAYERS who refuse to sell for less.

 

1. the MAXIMUM of 100 Gold coins dropping off LORCS (and NO rare drops) is Making the farmers rich. LOL r u nuts they'd be better off farming ogres.

 

2. the increase in ore prices is because of the mini events. There's a lot less people harvesting (10% quit according to radus blog) and ppl will want more for the ore. When I first came back from quit i was a harvester. i harvested all day long and i made almost nothing in profit because of the high rate of harvester meds breaking (which your forced to use pretty much). less supply without less demand will make prices rise - especially when it costs more for the harvester

Edited by LuciferX

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If you buy all the bars for swords for hydro from NPC, it's ~12.6k gcs? While it's a high price compared to what hydro bars cost two years ago, it's still a cap. Caps on prices are always a good thing.

Economy is not my domain but I think making the EL shop compete more with gc farmers and creating more gc sinks would help.

Perhaps it's a cultural thing as to why I think differently from many people here and maybe Radu doesn't care about how much $$ gc farmers make from EL but it still doesn't seem fair to me that people are cutting into Radu's profit.

 

forever, considering the amount of resources high level monsters require and the high risk of death, you'll do better farming 2xfchim + 1 mchim in RoT than cockatrice for example.

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couldnt the PP you get from NCP be tagged somehow ? and make it non removable with nexus stone?

 

would still allow for genuinely misplaced nexus to be removed, perhaps even consider the NCP pickpoint a completely seperate pickpoint from normal ones to make it easier to tag. IDK, not a programmer here so not sure how difficult this would be but it would seem like a complete fix for the whole PP buying situation.

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most non money players seem to have a real problem with money players like myself, what you must realize is at

 

the end of the day this is a business for radu, and i personally think if he can shift some of the income from gc

 

sellers to himself it would be a wonderful thing for him and for us. why should we buy gc from sellers to purchase

 

hydro bars and nexus, when i could directly pay radu himself which i would much prefer because he could use

 

those funds to help improve the game, i am business owner myself and i spend my time trying to figure out how to

 

make people who spend money spend more. i am not saying sell hydro bars , maybe sell some of the raw

 

ingredients in shop, and defiantly sell nexus removals, this would generate a huge income imuho.

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To clarify :

 

Mypoint not with pp buying or with gold farmers - but the fact that Radu does not get any $.

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Anyways, if a poll is made asking "Would you like to see pickpoint buying removed (but not nexus buying)?", even despite the fact many people will be voting without a clear view of the big picture, if more people vote to keep it i'll never make removing it the point of a post on these forums again.

 

I am almost sure we had this poll like a year ago.

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Maybe Radu should just start Selling Ready made characters then hed make HELLA bank...untill everyone had one then the game would be like WoW..everyone with the same stats and same Items Pking...Until it got boring..then no one would play anymore.

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The LORC addition was only due to a couple ready to sell GC sellers I know who say they farm LORC all the time. but meh.

 

They still don't run up the ore prices.

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Maybe Radu should just start Selling Ready made characters then hed make HELLA bank..

 

He could do an auction every month for a few permanent banned accounts.

 

That might be fun :)

 

Piper

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The LORC addition was only due to a couple ready to sell GC sellers I know who say they farm LORC all the time. but meh.

 

They still don't run up the ore prices.

i have killed my fair share of Lo, you will make more money farming fluffs , put it that way

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Maybe Radu should just start Selling Ready made characters then hed make HELLA bank..

 

He could do an auction every month for a few permanent banned accounts.

 

That might be fun :)

 

Piper

 

 

Heh, that actually sounds kind-of fun. No reason to have perma-ban characters hanging around the server... might as well raise some capital for the game. =)

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Since the whole pickpoint buying trend, the market for s2e has definitely improved.

 

As for increasing Radu's income, he can either play broker and take a cut from the gc buying or he can go the way alot of games on the Android have chosen....free, but has advertisement. I know the latter could "cheapen" the image of the game, but I wouldn't mind too much a single advertisement in a quest in the game. Maybe Granny Lorpec knows how to make Coca-Cola and needs you to get some ingredients. Or maybe that Draegoni lady in the magic school would be the one. Just as long as there is only one advertisement, it might just be funny and fun. Of course, advertisements on the Players Online Page or something might work too. Hopefully, after the useful content of the page.

 

Now, two of the greatest enemies of this game as far as I know is greed and placing gc before the items that gc can buy you (I believe in barter being a good way to fix the game).

 

couldnt the PP you get from NCP be tagged somehow ? and make it non removable with nexus stone?

 

would still allow for genuinely misplaced nexus to be removed, perhaps even consider the NCP pickpoint a completely seperate pickpoint from normal ones to make it easier to tag. IDK, not a programmer here so not sure how difficult this would be but it would seem like a complete fix for the whole PP buying situation.

If you flag just that bought pickpoint, they would still have every pickpoint that they naturally earned. If you flagged the player and removed the flag when they next earn a pickpoint, they will wait until they are just under an OverAll level. If you flag the player until they earn 2 pickpoints, that should greatly reduce the pickpoint buying, at least for higher level characters who don't get many pickpoints anymore. Basically, a cooldown of 2+ OverAll levels.

 

Maybe Radu should just start Selling Ready made characters then hed make HELLA bank..

 

He could do an auction every month for a few permanent banned accounts.

 

That might be fun :)

 

Piper

This may actually get some of the rare ingredients which Radu seems to count against the allowed totals to recirculate.

 

after seeing hobobob's post:

open up the inventory of any banned character once a month and choose a random slot and add that to a monthly contest. :pickaxe:

Edited by nathanstenzel

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just fyi, there's like 1-2 gold farmers left. anyone who's selling characters or gold atm are people leaving the game.

I wouldn't really doubt that. Selling their current character in a game they no longer like and buy a character or whatever they need in another MMO.

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just fyi, there's like 1-2 gold farmers left. anyone who's selling characters or gold atm are people leaving the game.

youre numbers are WAY WAY WAY off, i think i would know best i counted about 10 when i read this and didnt bother to count anymore but there are more like 20

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Maybe Radu should just start Selling Ready made characters then hed make HELLA bank...untill everyone had one then the game would be like WoW..everyone with the same stats and same Items Pking...Until it got boring..then no one would play anymore.

 

I must say i agree with the message delivered by this post. The way i see it is the following:

 

From reading the post mortem comments i concluded radu didn't even have the idea of opening the shop himself, but was somehow driven into it by the players. I think every mayor mmorpg, so a game with a persistant world in which at least a 4 digit number of players compete in, does have exchange rate for ingame items/characters/currency vs. RL money. Be it official or unofficial. This arises from the differing value different people from different countries give to both sides of that transactions. The big commercial games try to prohibit unofficial trades of that nature of course, but from what i heard, they're about as successfull as the people fighting movie/music piracy.

Now, EL does have an official shop and leaving aside the optical improvements and simply supporting the game, you can in a way, buy power there. You can not buy pure power though. You have to sell the items from shop ingame, which takes a bit of time and despite what people might think at one time or the other, is limited. If you had a million rostos enter the market at once, their price would drop. And if you consider the combination of nexus removals and hydro bars to be the essence of power, you'll still have to find someone selling the stones to you, even if you bought the bars from the npc.

Because of this, you can't simply make a new character and boost it with some 1000$ to make it pr0 if you only buy from the shop. (Leaving aside the skillleveling here) This i consider a measure to protect the consistency of the game.

 

Now, even leaving aside sales of complete characters, which will be dealt with in another chapter, on the unofficial side there are people selling power in a purer form and even cheaper than the shop.

It was stated that the shop should be made more competitive with those, who only exist because they can undercut the shop and sell power in a more refined form. If you think gc sellers could do any business if their prices were higher than those of the shop, try selling a greatsword for 50kgc on the market when NPCs only demand 40. Like the NPCs ingame set an upper (and lower) limit for the price of items, so does the shop set an upper limit for the RL money cost of gc. If the shop tried to compete with the gc sellers, it would ultimately lead to the scenario arising from acidics comment. By the time the shop had prices that were so low the gc sellers were unable to undercut them and were forced to close business, everything in this game would be so cheap to get, working to achieve it ingame would become futile.

 

On the other hand, it was questioned why the possibility to buy/achieve power through nexus removal stones/hydro bars exists at all. Although i normally agree with Korrode's posts, i have to state here that i do consider this necessary. The skillevelling in EL is openended. No matter how much experience you gather, you could always use more. (From what i heard there's a cap at level 178 due to using signed ints for exp or whatever, but it was not really intentional and radu had stated somewhere that it would be removed if ever hindering someone) When it comes to PP, if someone made it to having all attributes, positive perks and nexuses at maximum, it might be not too hard a task to implement several levels of an expensive perk(like 10 or 20PP) that allows you to raise your attribute cap a bit.

For gc though, there wouldn't be much use once you own every piece of equipment and decent supplies. Sure, you can boost your experience gain by buying books and ingredients for mixing or to waste in a school, etc., etc., but even that is somehow limited because you still need time to burn through your bought stuff. Buying readymade pickpoints in my opinion is way more appealing to players and gives toplevel and more important really rich characters something to do with their gc. Not only might this make the difference for a player with a topchar wether he continues playing and earning gcs or not, but also slows down inflation by lessening demand for said ingredients a little bit.

 

Charactersales are a bit more problematic, but as stated above, i don't think they could be stopped even with unreasonable ammounts of work. When a player decides to stop playing and has a highlevel character, there's a chance that character won't leave the game, but get sold to another player. Thus, even if EL had a high constant flow of new characters joining the game, the mean level of a character ingame constantly rises.

This is normal and happens with most games i think. Since EL has no maximum level however, it is affected by the problems arising from that fact in a more serious way than other games. One is inflation, a topic i heard radu is constantly busy with. Confining it without nullifying the appearance of progression might be a tough job though.

The other is incentive. Constantly adding challenging tasks for characters at levels you didn't even consider achievable is hard and timeconsuming. For instance many monsters were added to the game in the course of the last one or two years that don't have their own sprites. Something in my opinion done out of necessity and not because planned so from the beginning. One of the answers to this problem lies, as much as some players seem to despise it, in PK.

In EL there will always be a player or a group of players that can kill you. And if not there will be after a certain period of time. Thus, strengthening PK and making PK maps more appealing even to strict nonPK players might be a good thing. There are many ways to achieve this. A simple way would be to put more superior spawns and good harvesting spots on PK maps. A more complicated way would for instance be a concept i'm working on atm, involving PK, estates and guildshared property.

 

Edit: As an incentive for levelling noncombat skills to where the sun doesn't shine: For mixing an experience bonus or better yet a small version of the recycling day effect could be added for every 100 levels you're above the recommended mixing level or so. For harvesting i don't know and i don't care atm, i'm going to bed.

 

Summary:

The shop is fine as it is. The option to buy PPs is necessary. Making PK maps more appealing is a good thing. I shouldn't write posts at 4am.

Start the flames,

 

 

Elgoran.

Edited by Elgoran

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couldnt the PP you get from NCP be tagged somehow ? and make it non removable with nexus stone?

 

would still allow for genuinely misplaced nexus to be removed, perhaps even consider the NCP pickpoint a completely seperate pickpoint from normal ones to make it easier to tag. IDK, not a programmer here so not sure how difficult this would be but it would seem like a complete fix for the whole PP buying situation.

Ya, that's what was suggested in the past.

The addition of 2 counters for each char in the char database, one keeping track of amount of nexus from hydro, one from actual pp's, and having the nex rem stones not work if the counter for nexus from real pp isn't at least on 1 (and obviously reducing it by 1 when used).

 

Anyways, if a poll is made asking "Would you like to see pickpoint buying removed (but not nexus buying)?", even despite the fact many people will be voting without a clear view of the big picture, if more people vote to keep it i'll never make removing it the point of a post on these forums again.

 

I am almost sure we had this poll like a year ago.

We had a poll asking about removing the hydro-nexus NPC entirely, not the same thing.

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<CLIP>

The addition of 2 counters for each char in the char database, one keeping track of amount of nexus from hydro, one from actual pp's, and having the nex rem stones not work if the counter for nexus from real pp isn't at least on 1 (and obviously reducing it by 1 when used).

<CLIP>

Awesome. That sounds even better than my solution. Good one, Korrode.

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