Items/money/levels wipe.

[bigglesworth]

My bad. Thank you for the correction!

[blueberry]

I voted for the Wipe. I am for equal opportunities for everyone, which means furthermore, that everybody should get ALL available items through quests all the time - so i'd suggest not to close quests anymore!
That implicates that there won't be any injustices anymore, no one should get an advantage on this TEST-Server, just because he/she did start to play earlier or later.

[originaljustin]

I'm just not going to vote at all but i'm kinda siding for not doing the wipe since the players used a lot of their time to get where they're at. But i'm not completely sure since the economy got screwed up because of me .

[ae4ji]

Doesn't anyone realize this is a beta? Players playing are testers. A game is what it is. Like It not. There are alot more games out there if this one doesn't suit you.

Your doing good job Dev team. IMO

Change is good. Fair is fair!

[Len]

Doesn't anyone realize this is a beta? Players playing are testers. A game is what it is. Like It not. There are alot more games out there if this one doesn't suit you.

Your doing good job Dev team. IMO

Change is good. Fair is fair!

I believe we are still in Pre-alpha!

[omegamormegil]

I like the idea of a wipe, for reasons of making progress in the game's development. It would allow for rebalancing things in an honest environment, which would make a good test run of how everything works before the move to the new server. Hopefully, once the new server is up, another wipe won't be needed in the future, if most of the imbalances are corrected now. Everything people have now is going to be lost anyway, so what does it matter if it is now or later.

As for a wipe being unfair, I think the most unfair aspect of the situation, as it relates to players who have already put the most hours into the game (not me), is that the rampant cheating was allowed to go on for so long, and more so that the monsters seem to have been balanced so that you have to cheat or beg to kill anything but maggots.

I played this game for hours and hours saving up to get a dagger, and then better armor, and then I learned that I needed a scythe to kill the stuff outside of town. When I found the newbie guide, after getting my scythe, and discovered that everyone was cheating, and cheating was how most of the high level characters got their levels, I stopped playing. I felt like there was no point putting real time and effort into the game, such as I had been doing.

I think I'll start playing again with a fresh character when things are balanced better, and when there is no longer such a screwed up economy, from a new player's perspective. It's not fair that it takes SO MUCH TIME killing scorpions and maggots in the desert to save up for a dagger, when you can just ask nicely and skip hours of effort. This seems really broken, and makes a new player's efforts much less rewarding. I spent a ridiculous amount of time killing stuff to get better equipment. Why even bother when I can get the same stuff in town in 10 minutes? High level players should not have newbie usable weapons and armor flowing out of their backpacks from monster drops.

Maybe high level players should start/spawn in a far away village. Although, I admit it feels very friendly having so many people hanging around near the newbie entrance. A portal between the two villages, which newbies couldn't use would ensure that everyone could still hang out together. Especially if there was something in the low level village that attracted the high level players (other than generously loading up low level players with stuff they shouldn't rightfully have).

I think the game should be balanced so that you can more or less afford to buy a majority of the equipment upgrades the vendors are selling at around the same time that you become capable of using them, ie when you meet the strength/dexterity/level requirement. Different equipment should be available for players that choose to allocate their stats differently.

Of course, I know this is still in alpha, but it's hard not to get frustrated when you work hard, and find out it was for nothing. I look forward to playing again, when the game is moved to the new server and everything is reset. I just hope things are balanced better.

[bigglesworth]

(edited for spelling and grammar errors 2007/04/13)

omegamormegil, I think we're on the same page/ same train-of-thought, but I'd like to elaborate.

When I began in late October 2007, there was an infinite arrows bug. All you needed was a bow and one equipped arrow. Our arrow inventory was never decremented when you fired an arrow, but you weren't aware of it unless you owned a bow. That bug was fixed and there was no wipe of any kind.

Now, the characters whose players followed the line that there would be no wipe until the 0.1.x server, are facing erasure. If a wipe, or any number of wipes was to occur before the 0.1.x client, no one would have any significant money, items or experience. There would be no reason to play unless you were one of the developers.

I don't see how abusing a money bug or rapid attack bug would result in an inflated economy, making the game too expensive for newbies or anyone. It's actually a deflation. The prices are fixed at the NPCs. NPCs aren't raising prices. Well, the headband at Taylor's and the skirt in Dimond's Cove, those prices did change.

Players can sell any item they have at any price to another player. The only way to make money between players is to sell something that isn't available through standard game play, whether that item is a 'bottle of sand' or '100 bug legs'. The only inflated prices were rare items sold between players. By definition a rare item would have a high price. Newbies shouldn't start the game with rare items.

When I began to play the game, there were no 'newbie helpers'. You had to spend the time to earn your assets. That way, you learned the value of your items and experience. As you leveled on your own, you met other players in the same shoes and together formed friendships. Through those associations, you helped each other, grew your player and accumulated assets. Now that some of us are powerful enough to help new players, it doesn't mean that our ride was a simple one or what we're willing to share is garbage. We'd like to help you out so you stick around, become a positive influence and possibly develop content.

Again, I expect the wipe when we move to 0.1.x clients. A total wipe now won't hurt a newbie, but punishes the players who spent many hours playing the game no matter when they began to play.

[omegamormegil]

I think the fundamental issue in this debate is that there are two kinds of people involved in this game. #1 - People trying to build a good game (developers) and #2 - People having fun playing the game (players). Both types are absolutely necessary for the game to continue, and both types need to be respected.

Dramatic changes (such as a wipe) make perfect sense from a development standpoint, because without one, you can never tell if the game really works properly (the game is still in an early development stage, and isn't even expected to work right). On the other hand, dramatic changes can make the game very unfun for the players that who have spent lots of time (months) playing the game the way it is (broken state, pre-alpha!) and have been rightfully abusing the broken system, which is perfectly fair (I think new players joining the game should be automatically told how to cheat, or they get really frustrated and quit - see my previous post). Developers should not expect players to be willing to loose what they've earned from their hours spent playing the game.

This is the issue. You need to change stuff, or the game will never get any better, but if the game is changing so much that the players have no opportunity to make progress (or they can't keep what they've earned), the game will be no fun, the players will get frustrated and leave, and the game will have no one playing it. Game not fun = No one playing = No MMORPG testing possibilities = No game development progress.

I imagine an open MMORPG is more difficult to develop for this reason, because it takes a lot of interested players to test it. In a traditional RPG, people can test/play the development version by themselves, and can individually choose if they want to accept major changes and have to start over in the game. In a MMO game, change effects everyone.

I think that PLAYERS MUST BE GIVEN THE CHOICE, INDIVIDUALLY to suffer major changes (wipes and resets, significant gameplay affecting bugfixes such as the fast attack bug fix). As a compromise, I think major changes should be qued up, and a new world should be started when a significant game revision is made. Multiple worlds will exist, and someone can start a character in a new world while still being able to play their old characters. The worlds should be set to expire after 6 months (to prevent sprawl), and players should be told this from the beginning (this would help the players to have a development mentality, as well as let them know not to get too emotionally attached to the character they've built (remember players, this is pre-alpha!)). A new world should be created every 2 months, so that development can progress (3 official worlds - two old ones kept around to keep players from being forced to switch, and the current development version). This would also remove some of the reasons people want to fork the game onto their own server (which is legitimate, if they really want to), which keeps everyone from being able to play together.

There should be very good reasons for players to want to start over and move to a newer world, such as the new world is where all the cool new features and quests are added, and where the big bugs are fixed. To this end, new quests and cool new features should be held back from old versions. The cool events should only take place on the newest world. I think players would end up wanting to switch, after seeing how everything is shiny and new and less broken in the new world/version.

Perhaps players moving from an old world to a new one can opt to start the game at level 15 or 20, so that they can skip to testing the more advanced places in the game. Their character names should be reserved.


As for the so called "Rare items", there are also two kinds. #1 Stuff that drops infrequently, or can only be found later in the game (high level weapons and armor, the scythe), or stuff that takes a lot of time to find, like red stingers. Ie, stuff that is created by mundane processes always available in the game, in one way or another. #2 - Santa hats, Christmas clothes, etc. Stuff that people have because they played the game way back when, or they attended a special event, or because they spent a ridiculous amount of gold on it (I think this third method should be made less effective - see next paragraph).

I think that the #2 kind of stuff should be attached to a player's account and should be non-transferable (can't trade, drop, or sell it), or it should be transferable (tradeable, dropable) and have an expiration date. This would ensure that there were no wacky economies surrounding these items. Their purpose is not to be for making money from people who missed an event, but to reward people for being interested in the game and participating in the community with a highly visible hat. I think the first (non-transferable) method sounds more fun. Perhaps, they should go on a special inventory tab which doesn't have a space limit.

Also, Rare items should not go from type #2 to type #1, as I've seen debated here. This only frustrates players who made it to the event. It would also make these events less significant if the stuff given away isn't REALLY special, because monsters will be dropping it all the time in a month.

[kosti4ka]

I missed when these bugs where on and i dont have any rare items from bugs and etc,but i dont care if old players got rare items honestly or not.I only care if im going to get those items honest.Hope someday i have the chance to get a rare item.

[fate]

omegamormegil,

those are some very good points and I believe that I can agree with most of your analysis. However, your two principal suggestions (multiple servers and making true rare items non-tradeable) I am not entirely convinced by. (Also, those would better be discussed in more appropriate message threads, such as `fixing the economy in the long term' and `alternatives to a wipe', but since this thread has already degenerated into a general-purpose discussion of related matters I shall take the liberty of replying here directly).

I think that PLAYERS MUST BE GIVEN THE CHOICE, INDIVIDUALLY to suffer major changes (wipes and resets, significant gameplay affecting bugfixes such as the fast attack bug fix). As a compromise, I think major changes should be qued up, and a new world should be started when a significant game revision is made.

This goes directly against established software engineering practice (`test always' and `release frequently'). During a pre-alpha or alpha development phase, I would strongly advise against this, since it may make newly introduced bugs much harder to narrow down.

Multiple worlds will exist, and someone can start a character in a new world while still being able to play their old characters. The worlds should be set to expire after 6 months (to prevent sprawl), and players should be told this from the beginning (this would help the players to have a development mentality, as well as let them know not to get too emotionally attached to the character they've built (remember players, this is pre-alpha!)).

People seem not to be fully aware of this fact, even though the developers believe that they are (quote of a developer, `why should we point out what is obvious?'). I still believe that people should be made aware of this more strongly (Some kind of `Platyna says: Remember that this is pre-alpha and we can and will wipe your account whenever we find that this is appropriate' message during login).

A new world should be created every 2 months, so that development can progress (3 official worlds - two old ones kept around to keep players from being forced to switch, and the current development version).

Running multiple servers increases the maintenance overhead for our volunteer developers and administrators, and makes it harder to track down error reports properly. Having had to maintain two branches of a system in the past, I can attest to this being a significant source of frustration-- and they are already doing that, with the tmwserv and eathena branches.

From the player's point of view, having to choose between multiple servers creates certain social problems: should you go to the newest server with the best features, or should you stay where your friends are? Should clans like the HMC have different `branches' for the different servers, or abandon their members on all but the latest? Whom should you believe when people talk about the relative merits of the various servers?

As a player, I would therefore rather see a full or partial wipe than multiple official servers-- at least we'd still be in it together.

So, while your suggestion clearly has merit, I fear that it may create more problems than it solves.

(Please note-- if you are not already aware of this-- that a full transition is planned eventually, namely from eathena to tmwserv. This will mean a complete `start from scratch' similar to what you had in mind.)

Now for the second topic:

I think that the #2 kind of stuff should be attached to a player's account and should be non-transferable (can't trade, drop, or sell it), or it should be transferable (tradeable, dropable) and have an expiration date. This would ensure that there were no wacky economies surrounding these items. Their purpose is not to be for making money from people who missed an event, but to reward people for being interested in the game and participating in the community with a highly visible hat. I think the first (non-transferable) method sounds more fun. Perhaps, they should go on a special inventory tab which doesn't have a space limit.

I disagree with that. Your two premises are

(1) Class #2 rare items mess up the economy if you can trade them
(2) Class #2 rare items are exclusively to reward participants in particular events the items were specifically created for

I see no basis for premise (1). If anything, rare items should give rise to a more sensible economy, since free market economies are known to work best with finite supplies/finite demand and multiple vendors, which is precisely the situation we are seeing with class #2 rares items.

As for premise (2), this is a matter of game design and the question of `what is most enjoyable for players'. In the absence of questions of implementation effort, the only matter that would favour the absence of an ability to trade rare items (which I can assure you has benefits, as evidenced by numerous highly enjoyable HMC events) would be matters of game balance-- but while I can see the absence of rare items trading introducing problems of game balance, I cannot see how permitting rare items trade would introduce them.

Also, Rare items should not go from type #2 to type #1, as I've seen debated here. This only frustrates players who made it to the event. It would also make these events less significant if the stuff given away isn't REALLY special, because monsters will be dropping it all the time in a month.

Note that this happened very recently with leather gloves, which went from being one of the rarest items to being a very common item, though I observed very little outcry on that matter.


Anyway, in summary: I agree with your analysis, but I believe that (a) having multiple official servers will create more problems than it solves, and (b) restricting trade on class #2 rares will not help the game and possibly make it less enjoyable.

At this point, the solution I would expect to be most sensible would be (a) the introduction of additional `money sinks', mostly to experiment with how positive an effect they will have on the economy, and (b) a partial level-wipe, as proposed by Crush, to reflect the increased difficulty of gaining experience. (Personally I would still prefer Platyna's `complete wipe' solution, but it doesn't seem to have much support from the player base and will be implemented as part of the tmwserv migration anyway.)

[omegamormegil]

Thanks for your reply!

The primary reason for my post was to point out the differences in the way players and developers view the game right now. I think doing things to make the game better, such as a wipe or level reduction, must be possible since obviously this is a work in progress. At the same time, an MMORPG needs players, and therefore needs to be fun.

I agree, that a minimum, players need to be made to expect that their characters will be erased sooner or later. Now, it's likely that the way this is done can be made to have a lesser or greater impact on the players, and the less a player looses, the better. Perhaps when someone creates a character, there should be a message saying "Thank you for helping us test this development version of The Mana World. Due to frequent changes in gameplay, user accounts are reset every X months. Please expect this character will be deleted on MM/DD/YY." And in the status window in the game, the expiration date would be noted with a message saying "This character will be deleted in X days."

The specific suggestions I made in my previous post would obviously be hard (and expensive, maintenance wise) to implement, and honestly implementing those specific suggestions isn't that important to me. I mainly wanted to suggest what I thought might be a model for an ideal development environment if keeping the players as happy as possible were to be given an extremely high priority, while still allowing changes to take place.

With this in mind, I'd like to respond to some of your responses to my post.

I think that PLAYERS MUST BE GIVEN THE CHOICE, INDIVIDUALLY to suffer major changes (wipes and resets, significant gameplay affecting bugfixes such as the fast attack bug fix). As a compromise, I think major changes should be qued up, and a new world should be started when a significant game revision is made.

This goes directly against established software engineering practice (`test always' and `release frequently'). During a pre-alpha or alpha development phase, I would strongly advise against this, since it may make newly introduced bugs much harder to narrow down.

When you say that developers need to `test always' and `release frequently', you are absolutely correct. My suggestion would be to fix stuff in the game all the time, but to wait for an expected release to make major gameplay altering changes, for the sake of the players. Again, what is important is not my specific suggestion, but that the feelings of the players are considered, so that they keep testing the game and don't quit out of frustration.

People seem not to be fully aware of this fact, even though the developers believe that they are (quote of a developer, `why should we point out what is obvious?'). I still believe that people should be made aware of this more strongly (Some kind of `Platyna says: Remember that this is pre-alpha and we can and will wipe your account whenever we find that this is appropriate' message during login).

Yeah, something like this needs to be implemented, and needs to be blindingly obvious.

From the player's point of view, having to choose between multiple servers creates certain social problems: should you go to the newest server with the best features, or should you stay where your friends are? Should clans like the HMC have different `branches' for the different servers, or abandon their members on all but the latest? Whom should you believe when people talk about the relative merits of the various servers?

As a player, I would therefore rather see a full or partial wipe than multiple official servers-- at least we'd still be in it together.

So, while your suggestion clearly has merit, I fear that it may create more problems than it solves.

I think the social problems could be overcome in different ways, all of which would clearly require additional work from the developers, but might produce great additions to the game in the long run anyway. One idea would be to have an integrated IM client which would point out where in the game your buddies (clansmen) were at all times (map, dungeon, server, etc.). This would be a really cool addition, in my opinion, as people would be able to locate each other in game very quickly, and thus play together easier. Perhaps if you checked a box next to your buddy in the IM client box, a compass would appear on the minimap and point in the direction (shortest/best route to the gateways between maps) you had to go to find your friends.

In the interest of reducing confusion, if something like this was implemented, it would make sense to direct new players creating characters to automatically join the newest world. Hiding the presence of older worlds which would be expiring soon would only make sense.

Also, debates as to the merit of a world which would only last another month before being deleted would be few. If someone really, really liked the way the game was balanced in a certain world, they would have to start their own server.

In my opinion, it would better for everyone to get players to abandon their characters by choice, and not by force (ie, "Hey, they've got candy over there!" as opposed to "What do you mean you're deleting my character?!?"). This is in essence what gave me the (perhaps overcomplicated) multiple world idea. I'd also like to point out that my idea was to let players create a character in the new worlds while still retaining their old character. I think most people would just loose interest in playing their old characters (which couldn't access the cool new features and exciting (major) gameplay changes), so that the coming reset (on the oldest server) would have significantly lessened impact.

As for my ideas about items, etc, I very well may have wrong assumptions about how those special event type (#2) items work in the game.

[Habari]

there are two main reasons against the wipe:
1.punishing cheaters
and ists quite easy to see who has cheated , its a question of Time if you have wined 100 000gp in one year:keep them if you win 210 000 000gp in a couple of hours: you are a bloody cheater , im sure you can program the server to calculate the amount of money per account in a period of time. secondly normally POOR PEOPLE=HONEST PEOPLE , these shouldnt be affected by the wipe , i'm in favor of wipe only for cheaters.
Maybe please someone good at maths take the percentages of drops , the ammount of monsters you can kill killing quickly and tell me how much money you can win in an hour by selling drops ,
this info would be really clarifying i thing it would be a good idea to wipe accunts in top 50 only or maybe do this:

Code: Select all

up to 15 000gp stay as your are
up to 30 000gp lose 39.7% of your money
up to 100 000gp lose 59.5% of money
up to 500 000gp lose 69.6% of money
up to 1 000 000gp lose 79.3% of money
1m to 2 million 79.8%
from 1million to 20 million 79.9%
20 mill to 100mill 89.9%
more than 100 mill 99.7%

maybe actually the % should be stronger
2.fixing the economy
there are 3 ways of wining money :
1.selling objects to NPC(from quests and monster drops)
2.selling objects to another player
3.In the casino
4.CHEATING , BUG EXPLOITING ; our friendly program WPE and so on
THIS IS AN UNIVERSAL TRUTH ONE OBJECTIVE ; BUT ONLY FOUR WAYS
lets examine them:
with way one you win little money (sad but true)
with way two you might win lots of money nut what happens is that money changes hands
with way 3 i lose always pesonally
way 4: bingo

THERE ISNT SUCH A THING AS INFLATION IN TMW (NOR DEFLATION AS SOMEONE SUGGESTED)
ITS SIMPLY A CURRENCY DEVALUATION

This happens when money grows out of thin air : in real life with counterfeiting, in TMW because of cheating

The millions of gp at the game are absolutely valueless because of this , the problem is that RICH players arent really rich , they cant buy nothing with that huge ammount of money ,
without counting that the economy system is fine , poor players at the moment are not afeccted ny the huge ammount of money in game.

SO: WIPE OR MONEY SINKS BUT ABOVE ALL BUG FIXING
although i have the impression that only poor players are cooperating with the dyeing machine

AND PLEASE GUYS DO NOT USE Duck WPE YOU ARE RUINING THE GAME FOR THE REST OF US BECAUSE OF YOUR BLOODY INDIVIDUALISM

AND IF SOMONE HAS DISCOVERED A NEW BUG BE A NICE BOY AND REPORT IT NOW TO ADMINS

fixing the game so people dont cheat will almost fix the economy , people are still massively cheating , ists true that Monsters and Npc create money from nowhere but they do it in small irrelevant quantities which cant destabilize an economy , but cheaters DO it in big numbers and they do ruin the economy

[Bankai777]

i like this guy

[Soki]

in my opinion.. killing monster and selling drops to npc for gp doesn't destabilize the economy since we all have to buy arrows, pay for dyes.. spending some gp to npc too.

[DrRude]

Greetings, all,

I've been playing the game for a few months but this is my first post in the forums. Forgive me if this gets a little long-winded but from the looks of this thread, some things might need to be put into perspective.

For starters, let's set the record straight -- TMW does not have an economy.

• If an economist were to look at this world he or she would call it an "informal economy" at best because it lacks things like a Gross National Product (the total value of goods and services produced in a country), the people aren't taxed, and there is no form of government to impose any kind of regulations.
• Due to the glitches that some players took advantage of before they were fixed, there IS an uneven distribution of wealth. A few people are very rich. Most others that came after that are not. That still doesn't make for a messed up economy. It's just an uneven distribution of wealth - period. Crying about it won't help. Newbies screaming that the economy is messed up won't help either. Again, an economy can't be messed up if it doesn't exist.

That said, even if an items/money/levels wipe were to occur, the same problems would probably arise again. Here are a few reasons why and some ways to possibly correct the situation:

• Up until recently, players could not produce things to sell. Everyone in TMW had the same job -- kill monsters, pick up whatever they drop, and sell it. And because the NPCs pay little or nothing for what players sell to them yet players can charge thousands of gp when selling the same items direct to other players, there is inherently a problem. No one is involved to step in and say "hey, you're charging insane prices for -whatever-".
• There need to be more ways that players can produce things to sell using raw materials that don't have to be obtained through completely some major quest. Throughout history, the economies of most countries got their start with textiles (fabrics, clothing, and etc). Making dyes is a good start but players need easier ways to make different types of clothing. Of course some things should be harder than others to make, thus command a higher price.
• The value of many items bought and sold by NPCs should be raised to match Supply and Demand. This should include most rares too.
• The more that players can earn gp in ways other than selling drops, the more even the distribution of wealth will become.

Anyway, that is some food for thought.... I'll gladly go into more detail if anyone cares to discuss it further.