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Comments
Now buying EXPERIENCE with gold. Holy shit. I would hop on that in a red hot minute, because I am a lazy dickhead who doesn't like hunting. They're as likely to do that as your idea though, which is to say precisely nil chance of that happening.
I think the experience thing could actually happen - especially for second and third chars tied to the same account, if enough people said loud and clear "no really, we want this". It essentially has happened in other games, and frankly, the players in those games are not shy about saying what they want, and what they do and do not like. Admin is always going to weigh what is in their own best interests, and rightfully so, but Achaeans consistently underestimate their purchasing power, and it's frustrating to watch.
Most people actually seem to be... absolutely terrible at hoarding credits. I mean, not that it's a particularly nice thing to do to actively manipulate the market as some have done in order to squeeze people for every penny, but (and in a way it's good that this happens), many sellers will also put a big glut of credits on the market all at once like raving idiots. And then, if someone prices under them (because huge glut), they are so impatient they will immediately reprice the whole glut lower. Know what? Sarapis really DOES know his players :P
As for how this might play out, the artifacts are still a set price, not tied to any in-game fluctuations (unless you are supplementing your purchase with in-game gold). That's good. No problem.
Any sort of set price in-game gold sink (like ships) is now much easier to deal with.
Would need to simply scrap the idea of OOC/IC when it comes to artifacts and just consider them owned by the player... (fine by me, and it's already arguably murky).
The potential wild card is almost anything else. Probably still a lot of new gold coming in, and not sure if enough of it would be going out or not. It might not be so terrible, really (but I'm just not sure). Problematic for IRE too if too much gold stays in the system, because then it might not leave until it's been transferred between players at inflationary levels - and THEN used to purchase artefacts, etc...
Penwize has cowardly forfeited the challenge to mortal combat issued by Atalkez.
Right now everything has to be balanced around level ~80, which is why dragons were repeatedly nerfed. As well, while the sentiment that "grinding is good" (or at the very least, "by God if I had to do it, everyone else should too") is still pretty strong here... a lot more Achaeans seem to be open to, or even actively want reductions in the "grindy" aspects of the game.
It's even more pronounced in some of the other games, where this actually did happen. Not only did it happen, it was far, far more outrageous (depending on your point of view) than the modest suggestion Trey (jokingly) threw out. And you know what? The guy who's hunted up more XP than Penwize (yes, really, and by quite a lot) was just as pleased about it as anyone else. I was in the high 90s at the time (which is much easier to do there in the first place, but still quite a lot of hunting), so it was still a nice little cap off for me, but I just didn't care that people were running around making level 100 alts (from newbies) in two days, because great, now our side has someone to fight against and they don't just go "squish" when we take a whack at them. I mean, I still thought they were completely insane, because they'd be logged in at all hours to do that, but I didn't care that I had to hit enter until my pinky was sore (because I am a caveman and don't have a "basher" like all proper IRE players seem to) and they didn't.
The best answer might be even more player self-segregation by game/server - exactly on the basis of how they feel about QoL issues like this one.
I do think that it's healthier to make sure that content is accessible to everyone, but that doesn't mean you should be going straight from Minia to LHG just because. It's not about getting to the destination, but the journey that got you there.
If you went back in time to when my first character was level 25, ignorantly ratting all the way to level 70 and made them a dragon and decked em out in arties, I probably would've played for another 3 months, tops. But the grind to achieve everything I have has kept me playing for 9 years and spent much more dough than I should have on this game.
If you want to lessen the gap, make more hunting areas with more strategic challenges that reward you with more xp- don't just give a way to buy xp. I'd even go for an artifact that gives the xp-enhancing aura for a set duration over just selling xp.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
I mean, for all I know there could be a gold quest in Tir Murann that gave a 20-30k payout (and requires that the Vertani be alive). But is it ever going to actually be completed with any degree of frequency, given how dragon-infested the place is?
- With sharp, crackling tones, Kyrra tells you, "The ladies must love you immensely."
- (Eleusian Ranger Techs): Savira says, "Most of the hard stuff seem to have this built in code like: If adventurer_hitting_me = "Sarathai" then send("terminate and selfdestruct")."
- Makarios says, "Serve well and perish."
- Xaden says, "Xaden confirmed scrub 2017."
I think that you're absolutely right about newer players needing to be careful about things like that - and if they're not careful, both admin and other players should be careful for them. In my case, I consciously did NOT take advantage of that opportunity with my two little alts (which I've created mainly to play other orgs someday, while leaving my main in her org), because once I do play in those other orgs, I really will be "new" again in some important ways, and I really like to take my sweet time as a newbie.
When I first brought what is now my main IRE char out of a loooooong slumber (I'd made her on a whim many years ago when the other IRE games were frankly less evolved), a lot of people wanted to help me power-level her, and only because I knew I wanted to take my time in what really was a completely new world for me, I tactfully (but very firmly) insisted on being a novice for a very long time. I'd give my reasons too, so they hopefully understood why. That said, once I do decide to seriously play one of my alts (here or over there), I do think players who are on alts are definitely looking to get into the GAME part of the game faster once they've made sound decisions about what class they're going to be and the like. So in short, "level-up" sort of offerings really would make the most sense for second and third characters tied to the same account (but even those people will at least pause to consider that they're in new territory if they're smart).
But yes, we also have at least two very different sets of reactions to that kind of thing in general. Some players are going to appreciate being in a game where the only way to get to level 100 is to grind or PK your way there (probably grind for most), whether on your first char, or your fifth. They consider it an achievement - but others, we just don't care. We really do view it as more of a game (a game we'd actually like to play for its best features - which in IRE really is the PK system), and players in this category are just hugely turned off by a system where you "pay" for access with the sort of time investment that is really more appropriate to a young person on summer vacation than a responsible (or even slightly balanced) adult.
The game populations have already sort of self-segregated from what I can tell, but at least some portion of the players who are sort of limping along not very happily in the flagship (like I was) and perhaps truly losing interest once and for all, just don't realize there are other truly viable options within the same company. IRE really was about to lose me. I was frustrated with the Achaean approach to its players (which is exactly what some of its players seem to want - just not what I wanted). I still knew if I tried to access the most exciting part of the game in any serious way, I'd just get squished repeatedly, and get trapped in a vicious cycle of grinding back lost XP. A few other minor things, but that's probably the huge one. If I hadn't, on a complete whim, decided to log in to an ancient character on another server, they'd have missed out on a pretty amazing set of paychecks over the last year or so (which I am happy to do, so long as it's within my means and I feel I'm getting good value).
Not long ago it came up that it actually might just be a few players driving the inflation (admin does have a lot of bubbles I'm sure, but I hope they don't totally lose that one). In my experience making my newbie, my feeling is that yes, some players in some categories (and I can't make good guesses at what all of those categories are) are not only not getting "enough" gold for their efforts (in the case of newbies in particular, yes, please make their little lives a bit easier for sure, they're not all sitting on a Smaug hoard of credits like mine was), but they're competing with people who are generating the sort of gold income that drives the market even further beyond what they could hope to compete with.
"error" = double post