Inflation

[noelleionscowl]

So I know that there are thousands of posts like this one. I just wanted to know people's opinions.
Arph3tic, please don't insult me here. I'm considering a thread just for people to do that.

Anyways. Have at the poll.

[noelleionscowl]

Personally, I think that inflation is not a problem. People who exploit bugs are very visible, and can have their amounts of money or rare items reduced. Sorry rich dudes.

For me, it takes forever to get enough money to go to Tulimshar. I can't buy anything.

[DarkWater]

You can not have it both ways. If it is not a problem, then you don't need to do anything. The biggest problem is the people in charge have no idea what they are doing. The current changes only increase the divide between rich and poor. It does nothing to remove money out of the system. They clearly can't tell people that have millions from people have nothing. That is why.99 percent of the changes effect people who have nothing. The rich are still rich, the poor are just going to quit. But that was the point of doing it after all. It is clear from multiboxing rule that they can not program the system to take care of a few extra characters, they can't program the system to support real players. So the only way left is to drive real players away.

Once again, if they can not stop automated systems, they are screwed with real people. Best way to get rid of real people is to make them quit. It is easier for them to program people to quit, then to fix the current problems. If they do not remove most of the.money out of the system now, they are going to be forced to do a hard reset.

[bcs86]

It is a serious issue that makes being new or poor very hard.
Wealth is gathered in the form of stored items, pocket gp, and bank gp across individual accounts that can have more than 1 player (mule).
Some active accounts, others not I assume.

Erasing the excess would be equivalent to a partial reset. Some, nay, a few players who we can even name, would log-in and find wealth missing.
I don't know how easy it would be to write a script to parse the account and storage databases for quantity of items, quantity of gp, bank funds, etc.

I'm hoping that it can be prevented from happening again. It hurts to see people angry and leaving.
Vague draft text for wiki maybe.

Thanks for your input DW, I just wish there was more I could do. I play on the main server as Neplor to be in touch with these sentiments.
The new Tulimshar quests and monsters make it a little easier to progress. I look forward to seeing a new Nivalis/Kaizei.

I think botting is more the effect of inflation than the cause.

If inflation is going to be a rapidly recurring problem, should there be a leveling cap?

[Crush]

I think the problem is that there is nothing productive to do with all the money.

The most expensive item you can buy from an NPC costs less than 100k. This means the only thing you can do with your money when you have more than 1M is trading with other players, and that's the reason why rares are so expensive.

For that reason I think that we need more expensive buyable NPC equipment, but also less expensive NPC equipment for the lower tiers.

There should be entry grade equipment starting at 100gp and then several iterations up to high end equipment which costs several millions.

How do we get that many armor graphics?

No problem, the chainmail, light platemail and warlord armor are all recolorable. We can create several versions of them made from different metals. We don't even have to start GIMP for that.

But how do we deal with this considering that everyone already has the warlord gear which is the best armor in the game?

We just nerf it. We declare the current chainmail, light platemail, warlord plate and helms to be the lowest grade metal and adjust the stats down accordingly. This will maybe cause some outrage for those who just got these items, but I think that this is a small price to pay.


Reorganizing equipment in equipment tiers is planned for a while, but unfortunately this effort is currently blocked by monster and stat rebalancing: http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 13&t=11060

[yourmistakes]

the work on rebalancing and equipment tiers can be concurrent.

[Wombat]

mistakes is correct. I've recently received a handful of guidelines for how equipment can be developed in regards to how the new balance operates. After some of our scheduled updates are added, we'll look into meeting the guidelines with current equipment and monsters as well as develop an equipment tier system that includes the gemstone rings. This is an update on what I posted in the thread noted by Crush. http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopi ... 13&t=11060

For the interested, here is the rough guidelines: http://wiki.themanaworld.org/index.php/ ... Guidelines

[bigglesworth]

noelleionscowl,

In three years of playing tmw, I have learned the following (and more):

• You won't become a millionaire overnight. Play the game more often.
• NPC buy and sell item values are not dynamic.
• Save your money. Save your drops for events.
• Don't waste your money trying to buy everything from another player at the highest requested price when there is a high demand.
• Don't buy your way through a quest, complete it on your own.
• If you want to buy an old rare item, expect to pay a premium and try to negotiate a lower price.
• If something is too expensive, don't buy it. Life goes on.

[yourmistakes]

i forgot to say so earlier, but i have to agree with all of crush's idea here. i almost never have to buy something from an npc. every once in a while i need to buy some arrows or potions, but that's it. should definitely be a much higher number of consumables that can be purchased. stuff like ether to replenish mana, or perhaps even a phoenix down type item to revive a player from death.

[krazilec]

I guess we should start by defining what is precisely the problem in TMW referred here as "inflation". The classic definition states that it is a "rise in price level". As only the prices between players may change (trading with NPC at fixed prices), it has to refer to this "market".

I believe it is caused in TMW by an increase of the overall monetary mass. As previously mentioned, it comes from the fact that, at a certain level, there nothing to do with your money. So rich high level player can afford extremely high prices for rare items. The price of other items shoudn't be influenced too much.

Let's remark that, whatever money sinks you put in the game, and as long as the total number of items stays constant, this is due to happen as the money starts to accumulate in the hands of some players who have (almost) all possible items. Reducing the drop rates / sell prices of the drops may delay this, but on the long run the results stay the same... and this is but only a part of a wider phenomenon, namely the limited evolution possibilities.

But is it really a problem if some players are willing to trade rares for some exorbitant prices ? It doesn't really change a thing for the mid-low level players. Obviously, it will definitely become a serious issue if the majority of players in TMW reach the last levels, but then, as aforementioned, this will be just a part of the problem.

Introducing some money sink for the richest players (Exotic trader and so on) might help to reduce the amount of money they hold. But on the other hand, "smaller" sinks only impact low level player who can't afford it. They should exist, because there is a discrepancy between equipment and level evolution (one could get almost all the (useful) equipment items while being level 50 or under), and can help fix this (as well as the proposed new tiers equipment system), but not become overwhelming obstacles preventing the new players from having fun.

Anyway, that was just a few thoughts I had.

[noelleionscowl]

OK. This was an opinion post, not one to hate on my ideas. I don't have enough time. I get to play TMW for maybe an hour max, every week. I don't have enough time to be working though all the levels to make some armor that I then have to buy, for money. These money sinks are ridiculous, and no matter what the devs do, people will always exploit bugs, and make ridiculous amounts of money.

Also, botting and autostacking will become a huge problem. Many players will be encouraged to do this because of how easy it is, and how fast they can gain money while focusing their main character on a different target. I did an experiment, and found that I could make 10k every 5 minutes with four characters. I don't autostack anymore. I decided that even though everyone else was doing it, I wouldn't.

Anyways. Back to the topic at hand.

I UNDERSTAND that I can't multiply my money. I also understand that I don't want to work to get the good armor again. Seriously? It took me forever to get these, and now you're making them less than what? What are the new stats? It's because of these f*cking stupid changes that you people put in to "encourage development" that encourage the players to realize that they are fighting a losing battle against an aristocratic group of select individuals, who wish to make the game progressively harder. So here's what I've seen:

1. A gm wants to create a tedious quest that you will have to do something for if you die, so you can't be automatically reborn.
2. You people want to kill the stats on the equipment we have.
3. You up the ferry price 995gp.
4. You lower the price of bat wings by 90gp
5. You lower the price of bat teeth by 138gp
6. You discuss endless ways for us to lose money.
7. You lowered drop rates
8. You killed Nivalis

People are leaving because you have made the game so stupidly difficult.

This whole mess of inflation crap has to stop. You honestly think that people who exploit bugs get their money through bat wings? You think they care if they have to take the ferry? No. Some players have millions. They can go back and forth as they please. All you are doing is hurting the players who go broke trying to buy the next best piece of armor, which they had to make. And also, that whole thing with coal and iron ingots is stupid. It's these things that make the game unplayable.

So I'm leaving. I'm no longer going to go on unless my friend tells me something is happening. Which happens about every 3 months. And my parting note is that I'm still going to read the forums.

[yourmistakes]

I UNDERSTAND that I can't multiply my money. I also understand that I don't want to work to get the good armor again. Seriously? It took me forever to get these, and now you're making them less than what? What are the new stats? It's because of these f*cking stupid changes that you people put in to "encourage development" that encourage the players to realize that they are fighting a losing battle against an aristocratic group of select individuals, who wish to make the game progressively harder. So here's what I've seen:

1. A gm wants to create a tedious quest that you will have to do something for if you die, so you can't be automatically reborn.
2. You people want to kill the stats on the equipment we have.
3. You up the ferry price 995gp.
4. You lower the price of bat wings by 90gp
5. You lower the price of bat teeth by 138gp
6. You discuss endless ways for us to lose money.
7. You lowered drop rates
8. You killed Nivalis

People are leaving because you have made the game so stupidly difficult.

i'd like to introduce these concepts to you, just to make sure you're familiar with them.
link 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming
link 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing
link 3: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_control
as for your list:
1: see link 1
2: see link 2
3: see link 3
4: see link 3
5: see link 3
6: see link 3
7: what drop rates were lowered?
8: nivalis was removed so it could be redone, not for whatever reasons you think it may have been removed for. i hope this clears things up for you.

[Kandiman]

So I'm leaving. I'm no longer going to go on unless my friend tells me something is happening. Which happens about every 3 months. And my parting note is that I'm still going to read the forums.

Every single post I have seen from you is complaining about the same thing, how things are too hard. I'm a new player and with relatively few exceptions, I do not agree. You want everything handed to you without having to do any work to get them. What's the point of a game if there is no challenge? Anybody who expects to be able to buy the best armor in the game for dirt cheap and no grinding should not be playing this style of game. Try that attitude on WoW and see how long you last. If you leaving the game stops the endless whining instead of constructive ideas to help address the problem, good riddance.

Regarding inflation, there are a couple of things that I find slightly higher than strictly necessary, but without expectations set by how things were before, it seems perfectly reasonable to me (exception for the ferry, but only between tulim and hurn). With a little more scripting in the starter quests to point new players in the right direction, all it takes is a little time to make enough money to continue. This is something we have been told is in the works, so a little patience is in order.

tl;dr...stop whining and do some work for yourself.

[Alons]

If i had to give my opinion, I'd pick a bit of each. But mainly i agree with Crush on money issues. It's not right when you have some millions gp and nothing to spend on. That's why rares are so expensive. If the players had to buy more consumable items (just like mistakes' idea about phoenix down, more potions, stuff for magic consumable for example to teleport, etc) that would ballance the income with the spending so the prices wouldn't go that high.

The new armors' idea is nice, but then you would have to reduce the defense effect on damage reduction to be able to add armors with more defense.

I just stepped in with my opinion, I hope it makes some sense.

Thanks for reading.

[cutlf1sh]

Look. Kandiman, if you find her posts offensive you can flag them. Report her to the admins. Have a level, item, and gp reset done on her account. Come to her/my house and shoot her.

But seriously. She has a life. She's a student. SHE CAN'T DEVOTE HER ENTIRE Duck LIFE TO A MMO JUST TO "DO SOME GRINDING". I KNOW SHE CAN'T DEVOTE THE SAME TWO HUNDRED HOURS TO GET SOME DAMN ARMOR TO REPLACE THAT WHICH SHE ALREADY HAS.

(If you're going to kill the prices on the armor, tell me first. K?)

BUT ANYWAYS. You complain to "stop whining and do some work for yourself"?

Stop whining, and go do some Duck work for yourself.

Don't ban my IP, Noelle uses this computer too.