The Mana World Forums

Hey, I'm new here and I got a few suggestions about balancing.

Speaking from experience, I found that the hardest thing to do is keep the game balanced so new players stand a chance, while not benefiting higher level players way too much. So here goes:

1. Have atleast one okish cash cow monster - earlier this was bats, which allowed even new players to make some cash easily. The downside to removing it is that it forces more people to cheat and cash cow with alt-characters.

2. Slow rise of costs of some things based on player level. Like the Ferry, making it 1000gp makes it harder for a player of level 10, while a player like me (Level 50) it's barely an inconvenience. Rather make the costs slowly rise based on levels - kind of like with stat resets.

3. Higher drop rate for quest-required items. Maybe even make this trigger-able so that it only activates when the user accepts the quests. I had to kill over 10000 pinkies, cave snakes and fluffies just to get the required amount of items. Nothing major, but if it was similar to log heads drop rate, then It would have been way less frustrating. It will mean less frustration for new users trying to complete the quests.

Anyway, those are my suggestions - feel free to flame the newbie now

Try-zar wrote: 1. Have atleast one okish cash cow monster - earlier this was bats, which allowed even new players to make some cash easily. The downside to removing it is that it forces more people to cheat and cash cow with alt-characters.

Why should a older Player pay more for a ferry ticket than a new player? It is not like that old players weights so much more.

Try-zar wrote: 2. Slow rise of costs of some things based on player level. Like the Ferry, making it 1000gp makes it harder for a player of level 10, while a player like me (Level 50) it's barely an inconvenience. Rather make the costs slowly rise based on levels - kind of like with stat resets.

For a level 10 player a ferry ticket is worth about 2 daggers and I think with level 10 you should have enough money to afford a ticket. Also as long as no one "helped" you the monsters in hurnscald still might be a bit to strong.

Try-zar wrote: 3. Higher drop rate for quest-required items. Maybe even make this trigger-able so that it only activates when the user accepts the quests. I had to kill over 10000 pinkies, cave snakes and fluffies just to get the required amount of items. Nothing major, but if it was similar to log heads drop rate, then It would have been way less frustrating. It will mean less frustration for new users trying to complete the quests.

I doubt that you killed 10000 pinkies, cave snakes and fluffies - else you wouldn't be only level 50. Afaik most people think that the quest with the logs from the log heads is a lot more furstrating since you don't know how many you actually need.

Turmfalke wrote:

Try-zar wrote: 1. Have atleast one okish cash cow monster - earlier this was bats, which allowed even new players to make some cash easily. The downside to removing it is that it forces more people to cheat and cash cow with alt-characters.

Why should a older Player pay more for a ferry ticket than a new player? It is not like that old players weights so much more.

Gameplay > Realism and Plausibility

But when you really insist on an explanation: most public transport providers in real life have cheaper tariffs for children, students, seniors or other population groups which are usually poor.

Crush wrote:

Turmfalke wrote:

Try-zar wrote: 1. Have atleast one okish cash cow monster - earlier this was bats, which allowed even new players to make some cash easily. The downside to removing it is that it forces more people to cheat and cash cow with alt-characters.

Why should a older Player pay more for a ferry ticket than a new player? It is not like that old players weights so much more.

Gameplay > Realism and Plausibility

But when you really insist on an explanation: most public transport providers in real life have cheaper tariffs for children, students, seniors or other population groups which are usually poor.

most public transport providers also don't have the exclusive right to transport someone from a to b. So it is only logical that our ferry man thought he could earn a bit more.

Part of the reason for price raise is to keep noob spam characters and the like out of Hurnscald.

charge based on amount of inventory. higher level carries more/heavier stuff.

already thought about that, but I didn't found any way to get the inventory weight in eA scripts.

Turmfalke wrote:already thought about that, but I didn't found any way to get the inventory weight in eA scripts.

adding a script binding won't be hard

Turmfalke wrote: For a level 10 player a ferry ticket is worth about 2 daggers and I think with level 10 you should have enough money to afford a ticket. Also as long as no one "helped" you the monsters in hurnscald still might be a bit to strong.

I doubt that you killed 10000 pinkies, cave snakes and fluffies - else you wouldn't be only level 50. Afaik most people think that the quest with the logs from the log heads is a lot more furstrating since you don't know how many you actually need.

Actually I did the Scythe quest at around level 12, but yeah I see the logic behind it now though, so I say keep it high to keep the likes of "HELP ME NOW!" away

As for winter gloves and furry boots quests... The drop rate for a fluffy with fur is 8% So I needed 73 (yes, I counted) furs to complete both, meaning I had to kill, mathematically, 912.5 of them to collect the required amount. The real number is probably over 1000. Compared to the Bow and shield quests, this was by far the most frustrating quest - mostly because he kept throwing away the fur I collected . That said, I've come to enjoy the collection quests for some reason - especially while helping somebody else out. Weird how that works hey?

Ok, another question regarding this. Why do you keep altering the drop rate of things? I noticed that in the last 2 hours I've been killing yellow slimes, that they dropped iron ore twice... 1 iron ore per hour of work? I agree that before they dropped too much, but now it seems near impossible to get even 1 iron ore.

I mean come on. I respect the fact that you're trying to make it harder on hoarders and cheaters, but it's negatively influencing the newer players too. I really like this game and the people within it, but I don't think the exclusion mentality is helping it grow. Sometimes the wise old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is pretty good advice, because all these 'fixes' is losing us players.

Try-zar wrote:Ok, another question regarding this. Why do you keep altering the drop rate of things? I noticed that in the last 2 hours I've been killing yellow slimes, that they dropped iron ore twice... 1 iron ore per hour of work? I agree that before they dropped too much, but now it seems near impossible to get even 1 iron ore.

I mean come on. I respect the fact that you're trying to make it harder on hoarders and cheaters, but it's negatively influencing the newer players too. I really like this game and the people within it, but I don't think the exclusion mentality is helping it grow. Sometimes the wise old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is pretty good advice, because all these 'fixes' is losing us players.

That looks like the rng hates you, the drop rate for yellow slimes wasn't touched since 2010-01-25.