Ideas for gold sinks and IG credit prices

Kayeil

Finkle said:

People keep referencing Penwize on the magic scale of Midas, but he has put in the time to really be efficient and deserve his rewards in my opinion.    I'm sure he has taken the time to explore, figure out the optimal routes, and how to use his battlerage efficiently, and how to squeeze out seconds which over a long term turn into great value.  And I'm sure the list of optimizations is longer than what I have listed - those seemingly small details really add up over a ton of play time and continued effort.

As someone who had over a million gold in his bank account from questing by level 70 it wasn't too hard to make gold as a new person.  If you take the time to explore, find the quests, and plan things out you can be immensely profitable.    If you want to put in the base level of effort and grind Manara or your org hunting lists and wonder why you cannot get exceptional returns then that's probably why. 

If you want to make 20K gold a hour as a newer player it is entirely possible, and a great introductory sum of gold, but you need to do a little bit of legwork.    The admin have built a huge expansive world with a ton of hidden nooks and crannies, but a lot of people in my experience have no idea about it because they have never explored outside a small set list of areas that others have provided for them.

Exactly what I was just trying to say. People like Penwize and Seragorn didn't get where they're at sitting on their butts doing nothing. They've done a LOT of testing and data gathering, a lot of coding, a lot of exploring, etc. This is possible at ANY level. I was in the top 50 explorers before age 30 on my character, and it helped me immensely. It has and still continues to serve me as a valuable resource of knowledge.

Froh

Penwize said:

100-150k is on the high end of the high end, that's what I can produce if nobody else is taking a few key areas, nobody else cleared them just before me, and certain other places don't decide to engage deathtrap mode and let me clear them quickly.  I'll use Tenwat as an example because everyone knows about it.  I can't clear Tenwat in 8 minutes if someone else before me cleared it in 20, which happens all the time.  If there were somehow infinite Tenwats, that's a difference of 135k per hour vs 54k per hour.  Tenwat clears for 18k, it takes me 8 minutes.  It takes most other dragons 14.  It takes most non-dragons 20+.  The gold production over time is hugely different based on your bashing efficiency, and really most people who do it as a non-dragon would be better served questing somewhere, given how long it takes to get there and how long it takes them to clear it.

If someone spends a lot of time ironing out minute inefficiencies and driving their clear times down, why shouldn't they be rewarded for that?

Ideally, they should be rewarded.  But at the moment there's an elder game in play where the more you earn, the more you can earn, and go from there.

Someone who gets to dragon is more efficient at raising cash (coining a term, gps gold-per-second) than someone new but their out of pocket expenses don't ramp up at the same rate.

So, Sarapis' statement that the exchange rate between credits and gold is a straight up decision by the playerbase is overly simplistic: if you're earning 100,000 gold which at 6500 gold/credit is about 15 credits then you're looking at a break even point of playing the game vs breaking out the credit card of 5 bucks/hour to buy things like artefacts from an OOC perspective.  So that's your balance point.

Someone further down the curve who might consider themselves lucky to be bashing/fishing/whatever 10k gold an hour is looking at a breakeven point of $0.50/hr AS A PLAYER.

So you've got a broken mechanic if the point is to make getting up to midbie status seem reasonable in game: the same time investment seems much better to a veteran than it does to a newbie, which is just the opposite of what you want if the goal is to give people some rapid advancement early on until they're immersed enough and involved enough to want to stick around.

Straight up, the current system makes credits worth a higher price in gold to people who are already experts than to newbies, assuming that each player puts the same value on their leisure time.

Penwize

That is true of most games.  In nearly every game, your endgame production potential vastly outstrips newcomers production potential.  You grind to get to that point, in the vast majority of games.

The difference, however, is that Achaea's F2P model features a pay-to-skip augmentation of that, that will allow you to pay real cash to skip a large portion of that grind.  That still does not exclude anyone from being able to reach the same point as anyone else, in terms of production over time.

Finkle

Froh said:

So you've got a broken mechanic if the point is to make getting up to midbie status seem reasonable in game: the same time investment seems much better to a veteran than it does to a newbie, which is just the opposite of what you want if the goal is to give people some rapid advancement early on until they're immersed enough and involved enough to want to stick around.

If it was as simple as getting people to stick around through credit prices then they would be hard capped.  If we want people to be immersed and stick around then it is the orgs and players who need to do that.    You need to interact with people, include them, and relentlessly find avenues to make them feel relevant to the story of their city/org/people surrounding them. 

I understand it is a case of the rich get richer, but to just muzzle Penwize/Seragorn/Whoever because he/she/they put in serious work is over the top.    They worked for their snowball effect through I'm sure copious notes and time grinded out. 

People like Grandue/Ashtan put together a mining powerhouse and people cry because they put in the hard work with that.  Sure the commodities might need balancing but that's another topic.  Their mining group put in time and people instantly wanted the same rewards without the investment.

People die constantly to unnamable strategy and cry about it.  Instead of crying on whatever ooc clan that Occie is broken they could take literally 1 second from their offense to hit diagnose and most likely live.  They did not invest the preparation to understand a fundamental of combat.  Where as someone like Atalkez died one time to it from me and said - Wow, what did I do wrong and now refuses to die again to it.  He has invested preparation with combat and analysis it.

We can complain about the haves and the have nots but if you want something then go out and get it.    If you want to make the high level money then go out and learn some areas, rethink your bashing strategy instead of hitting F2 with Ken's Script I'm sure most use, and take notes to shave seconds off areas until you're efficient like Penwize.

If you want to sit in your city and roleplay whatever that's fine, if you wanna focus all your time on combat that's fine, but don't be upset because the individuals focusing all their time on hunting are accruing money because they actively are trying to accrue wealth/resources.

Frederich

I'll uh.  Just make a point here as a guy who is like top 100s in explorers (for whatever that may be) and grinding.

The grind is awful, and I'm more-or-less not wanting to do it unless I get artied to the teeth by a certain lovable grandmother.  At that point I hunt areas that I probably shouldn't (See: Tir Murann) and make a good deal of money and XP.  Whilst areas I'm supposedly able to hunt proper (Swamp, Creville) are a little out of my league for some entities there.  And the gold is really subpar for a certain place, netting me about 9k for an entire run which takes about 40~ minutes.  Most of my money doesn't come from there though.

Most of my money comes from trading and selling, underselling people to get my goods sold, and grinding in gold grinding spots (that dragons often take up because 6k for about 3 minutes of work is grand).

Sure, credit prices are high... but that's sort of why I'm sitting on a my life savings, which is about 100k right now.  It's annoying, sure.  Sometimes you find people in your city (or people who announce on CFS) that they're selling credits under.  I try my best to instantly buy them out if they're on the relatively cheap side.  Why?  Because they're an investment that doesn't ever really go out of style.

I can sell them for more, or just keep them lying around.  It's the stock market where you never really lose unless something breaks the market and CR prices plummet because everyone has credits instead of gold.

Froh

Penwize said:

That is true of most games.  In nearly every game, your endgame production potential vastly outstrips newcomers production potential.  You grind to get to that point, in the vast majority of games.

The difference, however, is that Achaea's F2P model features a pay-to-skip augmentation of that, that will allow you to pay real cash to skip a large portion of that grind.  That still does not exclude anyone from being able to reach the same point as anyone else, in terms of production over time.

True, but:

Achaea is marketed as being free to play, so it's nice if the elders aren't bidding directly against newbies for those first few trans skills and artefacts in a way that the newbie is at such a disadvantage.

Also, are you really using "but you can pay to skip playing a big part of the game" as an argument to say that the mechanic is NOT broken?  It's a game; it's supposed to be fun.

The tradeoff should, in my opinion, be "I could get that extra artie a month sooner if I pull out the credit card", not, "Crap, actually playing this sucks, here's my credit card so I can skip a lot of it."

The second is not a good way to bring people in- it works for people who have already bought in, bashed everywhere and are making a rational time/money decision but it's not a good way to approach someone still inside their first 10 or 50 hours.

Penwize

That's not what I said at all, no.  It's possible to skip the grind to get to the endpoint if you want to, but it's certainly not necessary to.  And if you've paid any attention at all to what I've been saying for most of this thread, my argument is not that the elders should be bidding against newbies. 

My argument is that gold should be made more valuable to the elders by adding or enhancing gold sinks, so that we have a reason to spend gold instead of buying credits.  More gold sinks means more demand for gold, which will either mean that those who produce gold will use it themselves, or that those who want gold but don't want to grind it themselves will instead purchase credits and procure the gold that way.  Both of those outcomes are good for everyone in the game, both elders and newbies alike.

Skarash

 
My argument is that gold should be made more valuable to the elders by adding or enhancing gold sinks, so that we have a reason to spend gold instead of buying credits.  More gold sinks means more demand for gold, which will either mean that those who produce gold will use it themselves, or that those who want gold but don't want to grind it themselves will instead purchase credits and procure the gold that way.  Both of those outcomes are good for everyone in the game, both elders and newbies alike.

In the interest of moving this conversation forward, could you give an example of what you specifically would consider a viable gold sink?  At this point, the discussion has hit that slippery slope of how much a person 'deserves' for the work they've put in and it's going in circles. I ask this of you specifically as I'm interested in what you'd think is a better alternative for the gold that you earn rather then credits - at this point I'm having a hard time visualizing anything where I'd go hmm I want that and would rather spend my gold buying that then credits.

Atalkez

Lessons for gold is the most obvious, to me. 

Austere

Atalkez said:

Lessons for gold is the most obvious, to me. 

Could sell lessons based off what the average credit sale is, instead of some arbitrary number that the divine decide credits should be valued at.  This keeps their concept of a free economy, while still creating a very large sink hole for gold. 

If this is the route they decide to take (which I seriously doubt), lessons should be slightly cheaper.  Maybe 5% less than the current avg credit sell that rounds up to whole integers. 

Amranu

Here's an idea, artefact rentals via gold.

Atalkez

I assume you mean purchasing a "pack" of lessons for the current price? Otherwise, 1 lesson for 6500 gold vs 1 credit for 6500 gold to trade into 6 lessons is fairly obvious.

The lessons cost in gold would have to be fairly small, otherwise it's a waste.

Austere

Atalkez said:

I assume you mean purchasing a "pack" of lessons for the current price? Otherwise, 1 lesson for 6500 gold vs 1 credit for 6500 gold to trade into 6 lessons is fairly obvious.

The lessons cost in gold would have to be fairly small, otherwise it's a waste.

Yeah, I definitely meant lesson packages of 6. Hell, since a credit is obviously worth more, maybe even sell at a rate of slightly more than 6 lessons to the credit.  

Penwize

Skarash said:

 
My argument is that gold should be made more valuable to the elders by adding or enhancing gold sinks, so that we have a reason to spend gold instead of buying credits.  More gold sinks means more demand for gold, which will either mean that those who produce gold will use it themselves, or that those who want gold but don't want to grind it themselves will instead purchase credits and procure the gold that way.  Both of those outcomes are good for everyone in the game, both elders and newbies alike.

In the interest of moving this conversation forward, could you give an example of what you specifically would consider a viable gold sink?  At this point, the discussion has hit that slippery slope of how much a person 'deserves' for the work they've put in and it's going in circles. I ask this of you specifically as I'm interested in what you'd think is a better alternative for the gold that you earn rather then credits - at this point I'm having a hard time visualizing anything where I'd go hmm I want that and would rather spend my gold buying that then credits.

I mean, alright, I'll take a crack at the sort of systems I'm thinking of.
I've already mentioned some small changes that I think would greatly help.  Things like the SoW elixirs, ethereal shrouds and heron feathers all being gold purchases.  Heron feathers especially, since they'd give midbies access to clouds for some small gold investment.

But for overarching gold sink systems, I'd do something a bit more involved.  Mining was a good attempt, but the numbers are very imbalanced and don't wind up producing the effect they should.  However, let's take a look at what I'd do to seafaring.

I think seafaring is a great example of a system that could be made into an attractive gold sink, if it was just given a little bit more volume.  The seamonsters bit has huge potential, but I would take it a lot further than it's being taken right now.

Bear in mind while reading this, I don't fully understand the current sea monster hunting system, and this is me brainstorming ideas to augment it without fully grasping the current system myself.

I would add progression to seafaring via hunting sea monster.  Add an alternative to gold payouts for seamonster kills, instead yielding talismans. Those talismans would either improve the effectiveness of one aspect of your ship, or add some cosmetic improvement to your ship that is visible to everyone on the seas as sort of status awesomeness. As for improving effectiveness on your ship, I'm thinking things like a progression on turn speed, sail strength, weapon speed, weapon damage, hull strength, etc.  Talismans could be continuously applied to a ship, using the same sort of diminishing return for progression as leveling has.  Cosmetics can be sail colours and styles, hull adornments (say, a black ship with menacing spikes, a hull carved with dragon motifs, crested round shields lining the sides, etc), that sort of thing.

Further augment that by providing tiered ship weapon ammo, with high priced ammo variants having greater effectiveness or additional effects, and leaving normal ammo as-is provided by weapon racks and such.  Additionally, perhaps provide purchasable sea monster bait that can increase the spawn rate of certain sea monsters.

You could even go so far as to have additional, temporarily hired NPCs that could serve as stand-ins for players for certain actions, like clearing the rigging, keeping lookout or firing weapons.

So why would adding that sort of thing to seafaring be a gold sink?  Because hunting sea monsters costs gold, through things like crew wages and ammo costs, and if you're not getting gold out of it, that's a sink.  You pay gold to go do this thing, and get cool stuff plus entertainment out of it.

Looking at a second example, let's add Pokemon's safari zones to the game, because why not?
Suppose there's an area in the game shrouded in mist, and you can pay a guide to bring you through that mist to some denizen-filled hunting ground.  These denizens are hard for the level of whoever it is that paid to enter (so it scales for everyone), but reward high experience and trophy talismans.  If the trophy talismans had a regular use to them, so they were consumed, they'd be an item of high demand.  Vanity items like pets and mounts are a decent choice but are too permanent to have the same long-term impact.  Still, having them there with a long grind would definitely incentivize hunting the place.  Consumables would provide a longer-term goal for them, though.  Transoceanic orbs are a great example of that, and more things like that would be good.  Tossing up ideas, an augmentation for armour to increase its stats by a small percentage for a limited duration.  Or a single-use raido-style talisman, where you can mark somewhere and recall to it.  Or even lifestones again, or weaker talisman versions of them.  You get the idea, though.

I think housing moving to commodities was a fantastic move, but putting stone in mining at the insane production rates it currently has kind of killed that avenue and left only wood as the gold sink there.  I think more uses for housing would help further drive that

The idea is to have large, systemic uses for gold available to the longer term players that would drive their desire for gold without impacting those who aren't interested in those features.

Sanna

Amranu said:

Here's an idea, artefact rentals via gold.

Never ever happen. And the admins would have to be stupid to let it.

Skarash

Sanna said:

Amranu said:

Here's an idea, artefact rentals via gold.

Never ever happen. And the admins would have to be stupid to let it.

technically rentals already exist in the form of SoW consumeables like lucky str etc. They are of course not directly available by gold purchase (though you could raise the gold, buy the credits, buy the crown, buy the item).

Grandue

Just make credits unable to be converted into lessons and make lessons be purchased with gold.

Ismay

That'd certainly make the credit market go way down, lol.

Ahmet

I'd honestly love replacing credits with gold when it comes to lessons.

Kayeil

Lessons for gold would be nice, it'd help greatly offset the amount of credits on cfs being bought up for multiclass.

I like @Penwize's idea of a "safari" zone. I had been playing around with the idea in my head of a hunting zone to use archery for trophy hunting, giving the use of non-artefact and artefact bows more use just beyond raiding. Before anyone complains that's "too exclusive," sea monster hunting is a far more expensive and exclusive hunting practice because of purchasing a ship, the weapons, ammo, and the upkeep that never ends with owning a ship.

Sea monster hunting or some other "trophy hunting" zone could have talismans, or maybe add it to ship trades. However, if it 's a trade I would suggest earning a random piece as the reward, and that the sets are not huge like azatlan sets... maybe only 4 pieces a set. Then they can have useful but limited bonuses to them, like maybe one that adds potential for 2500 (or whatever #) more potential to a figurehead's power for a length of time (60 days? 90 days). As long as it's useful enough, people will want to do these again and again. However, these routes should probably be shorter than a Mayan Crown or 25 credit trade... it depends on how useful the item is. Time versus cost versus usefulness will determine if anyone bothers.

@Finkle continues to make great points. Not only have the top hunters, combatants, miners, explorers, etc put in a ton of work to get there... but if you're REALLY interested and show a legitimate interest in these things, a lot of them are pretty helpful in their own ways. I know Seragorn, if he has the time, is always happy to duel or spar people and then  go over with them what they did wrong and how to improve. I know he's also willing to give tips on hunting, and answer all sorts of questions. He's very approachable and helpful, and asks for nothing in return. I've heard that Jhui can be helpful with combat questions. I know I've gone to Penwize a few times with questions about things, and he's also been very friendly and helpful. For explorers I've spoken to Ahmet or Josoul, except you shouldn't ask an explorer straight out for the answer, but maybe just a question like if a certain room in an area you know exists is still able to be entered or something that isn't giving you the answer. As long as you respect an explorer's secrets, they've been awesome at helping with that, too! I've spoken to top tier miners... and they've gone way out of their way to answer so many questions and explain the whole process and how things work. Seriously, if you show TRUE interest, there are super nice people out there who WILL help. The top tier people are not unapproachable. They did work their butts off to get where they're at, and it's not fair to complain how much the top people have. They didn't get it handed to them on a silver platter. They worked hard at it, and it's not fair in my opinion, to keep on nerfing these people just because they've put in the work and know what they're doing. Especially since they can and are willing to help when they have the time. They are valuable resources with a wealth of knowledge, great people, and an asset to the game. 

Greys

I am curious how many of you guys took advantage of the ship trade deal: 10 perfume for 25 bound credits.

Valkyn

Nope, just don't have the time to do anything short of crown deals, and often I don't pick those up. Two hours is a long time, which is what it tends to take to finish a trade deal. Doing two trades worth at once is way less appealing with sea monsters around and the extra chance to lose cargo.

I can get the 100k profit from that deal in two hours in half a dozen other ways that mean I'm not stuck at sea if anyone needs help with something.

Trey

I feel kind of outside of all of this. Most of the ways I flip around profit to toys nowadays is directly linked to things like talisman promotions, rare and desirable objects, etc. I don't hunt or fish, or quest. As such, even though @Ahmet pointed out that I have a good amount of wealth, I don't really feel qualified trying to point out a fix.

On the flipside, I'll always be the pioneer of most of the credits-for-promo deals people are trying to jock these days, so being an OG is kind of nice.

Josoul

Forums are terrible for discussing existing mechanical features. No point arguing with people that have an (uninformed) opinion and nothing will shake them from it. And that opinion seems to always be 'nerf the best, bring them down' which the admins love to listen and do calling it then a day. Happened couple weeks ago for mining, 7 RL months of work to optimize it on a whole different level than -anyone- else, using the design features resulting in a ~80k gold, ~12cr per RL day net profit on average (not during the whole period, just the last 3-4 weeks the masterplan started working and people to bitch). But no person should get such profit off a game feature (comparable to what anyone can get in 1-2 hours of bashing, sigh) the forums said and code was changed to nullify all the work. Moral of the story, the longer you talk about a game feature on forums, the more it will be nerfed for the high end making the bulk of uninformed people, that will never put the effort themselves to see what it means to reach the top in a feature, happy that nobody can mechanically be that much better than them. Bashing gold is next on the list of nerfs now, brought to you by the uninformed legions!

Yes, I am bitter. Back to my corner now.

How does it feels reading threads like this? (1:16 and after) no Dumbledore around to save the day though. 

Need more people like @Finkle being vocal, respect. And less naysayers at every corner.

PS: CFS spike also affected by the recent promos focused on non-credit purchases (three months in a row even, stockings, lessons, tokens), the main reason in my eyes since such promos while they still bring revenue dont add credits in the game. 

Kayeil

That's rough about the mining changes, sorry to hear.

Dairon

I tend to like finding other means of making gold instead of bashing all the time. I only average maybe 30k an hour bashing. Talisman sets, commodities market, promotion deals and such tend to be more lucrative for me since I can juggle most of these at the same time, even while mindlessly bashing. 

But needless to say, if I could figure out how to average 150k an hour, I would spend most of my tIme bashing. 

Jonathin

These threads pop up every time the credit market spikes. What's the point of more gold sinks? If someone wants to buy all the credits that nobody else is buying, they'll find a way. Think of gold sinks, sure whatever, but the premise of the complaints is sheer entitlement and it's showing.

Cooper

There will be a pretty huge back lash from the player base who have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours getting a high level/dragon, and buying thousands of dollars of artefacts and class skills, just to be able to hunt ~50-100% faster than non dragons.

If that's the portion of your player base you want to piss off, then go for it!

Froh

Penwize said:

That's not what I said at all, no.  It's possible to skip the grind to get to the endpoint if you want to, but it's certainly not necessary to.  And if you've paid any attention at all to what I've been saying for most of this thread, my argument is not that the elders should be bidding against newbies. 

My argument is that gold should be made more valuable to the elders by adding or enhancing gold sinks, so that we have a reason to spend gold instead of buying credits.  More gold sinks means more demand for gold, which will either mean that those who produce gold will use it themselves, or that those who want gold but don't want to grind it themselves will instead purchase credits and procure the gold that way.  Both of those outcomes are good for everyone in the game, both elders and newbies alike.

I'm not sure what would be of interest to buy for such players.  I did read your full note on possibilities but I'm a little buried by the detail:

You talked about some things which players who bash would want such as maritime enhancements.   They're bashing, presumably, for gold or experience or both.  So do these things, whether or not they decay, act as net gold sinks?  If they are a net gold sink for a given player, why would he buy it?

I'm not saying that there are no answers (stuff like heron feathers for cash as you suggested are interesting though a player taking the long view like elders do would just save up for wings) just that I don't understand how you provide something which is so desireable that elders who bash/fish/mine/etc. want it more than a credit stash or what they can buy with credits (or credits->crowns->temp goodies) but still winds up being a net cash drain on them without breaking balance in another system

"Cool stuff to buy with gold", to be attractive, would need to be I THINK one or more of the following
1) RP stuff, customizations, status symbols.  It's not clear to me that a significant number of players want to either continually accumulate bling or to pay rent on bling.  They certainly like a certain amount of bling but a continual sink that eventually puts them on a treadmill of not amassing wealth?

2) helps with bashing - then is it really a net gold sink? People aren't going to min-max to stuff that the min-max math doesn't work out to their benefit for

3) helps with PVP - The top tier are pretty buff compared to everyone else as it is... would it be good to exaggerate this (such as temporary buffs, etc.)?

So what does that leave?

Shirszae

Froh said:

Penwize said:

That's not what I said at all, no.  It's possible to skip the grind to get to the endpoint if you want to, but it's certainly not necessary to.  And if you've paid any attention at all to what I've been saying for most of this thread, my argument is not that the elders should be bidding against newbies. 

My argument is that gold should be made more valuable to the elders by adding or enhancing gold sinks, so that we have a reason to spend gold instead of buying credits.  More gold sinks means more demand for gold, which will either mean that those who produce gold will use it themselves, or that those who want gold but don't want to grind it themselves will instead purchase credits and procure the gold that way.  Both of those outcomes are good for everyone in the game, both elders and newbies alike.

1) RP stuff, customizations, status symbols.  It's not clear to me that a significant number of players want to either continually accumulate bling or to pay rent on bling.  They certainly like a certain amount of bling but a continual sink that eventually puts them on a treadmill of not amassing wealth?

I think you'd be surprised. Though in the end it would depend on how exactly anything is implemented, I very much think a great majority of players would spend a lot of gold on things like that.