The In-game Economy - Seeking Game Suggestions

[Marketplace]

I have rewritten this post because I made a tremendous error. I simply reproduced the format of another thread out of sheer laziness, and it started spiraling on to old topics and arguments, and for that I'm sorry.

Now to approach this in another way, and hopefully staying away from old arguments and debates, and keeping it in the spirit of suggestions:

General Question:

Do you think that the in-game economy and trade can be improved prior to the re-launch of the game? If so how?

Specific Questions:

1. Do you think the GMS could be improved upon? (Including the player shops). If so how?
2. (In regards to camping): Do you think drops could be replaced by other long term methods of acquiring an item? If yes, do you have any suggestions?
3. (Hypothetical question): If the reward system (including loot tables) were changed, do you think more items should be NODROP, to motivate people to go and team up to acquire the item, instead of purchasing them? Or should it be in the reverse? Less NODROP tags on future items, to promote more trade instead. Please motivate.
4. Should *token systems be introduced into some aspects of the game, where you roll for the NODROP token instead, and later trade your tokens for the item you want at vendor or shop? Or do you think it should be geared more towards a gambling system where loot tables determine the drop of an item? Please motivate your answer.
5. Do you feel that the whole Rubi-Ka mission system could be improved? If so how?
   
   Attempt to put yourself in the shoes of a new player, that just purchased the game because of the re-launch marketing efforts paid off, when answering the following:
   
   
6. (This ties into the question of NODROP above): If you are a new player, what would you rather see; a system where if you go do the activities yourself by teaming up, you attend dungeons and events to get rewarded? Or alternatively a more trade based economy where farming a certain item(s) over and over and selling them to be able to purchase the item you really want is preferable? Or a balance of both? Please share your view.
7. (This ties into the token system above): Could the new player experience be improved by introducing rewards over time? Say for instance, if we reused the the research window for a reward over time window. The reward over time research (so to speak) can be based on activities such as how many dailies you have done, or what parts of Rubi-Ka and/or Shadowlands you have explored. You gain rewards over time points (similar to research except you don't gain perks but reward points) to purchase a weapon or armor so that as a new player you can can continue later on with a bit better gear.
8. What do you think would be the single most deterring aspect (if any) for a new player in regards to in-game trade, and economy? And how do you feel this aspect could be changed (if you feel that anything should be changed at all)?

*The token systems in this context refers to a similar system to what other games have implemented where you go to finish an encounter and in the end you roll on NODROP tokens. You then save up these tokens and trade them in for a NODROP armor, weapon etc. A close example to this would be the OFAB armor.

Reference:

Some interesting links to Virtual Economies:

• Economic Theory and MMOGs - The comments in the PPT are the interesting part, although very light.
• Designing Virtual Worlds - The link has a synopsis of the chapter. The chapter can be found online.
• Virtual Economy Research Network - Insane amount of information, search is recommended, but many articles also deal with the totalities of in-game currency.

[catdog]

I came back to game between 1 and 2 months ago, before I quit, I sold all my gear, all my stuff. And had cash only to come back to. Hence I had a very bad source of income as my old char and the gear on it wasn't a viable way of making real money anymore. Prices had also gone up to a ridicilous degree, which I later found out was due to a money exploit involving S10 some 4-5 months ago or so. Which brought ridicilous amounts of money in to the game and doubled the prices of everything in a matter of a few weeks.

Now, a couple of days ago I finally started playing the S10 toon I had made with my old money. Since it was important to me to have an income rather then having a lot of good gear, I spendt a lot on it and it's a really good toon. Though not 100% completed, still lacking a few key items. Now, I've made 40m in 10 minutes within s10 when drops were incredibly good, but I've also gone for an hour without seeing a single drop. And at 1000 alien kills, I still haven't seen a relay drop for me or anyone else. So the amount of money generated by S10 is highly overrated, probably by people who thinks the price increase can be attributed to S10 farming and not to the devs messing up and introducing an unlimited money exploit that over a few weeks manages to break the game economy completely.

Anyhow, I've also played the game for a lot of years. And money has become harder and harder to come by. Before SL came, you could simply grind missions and normal mobs and sell loot to vendor. At the introduction of SL, you could farm ingots or even blood plasma would make you a decent living. Simply put, you could live off what you earned through normal play.

Also, the gear was cheaper and easier to come by. A set of carb was good, if you had some omnifiers, and made it omni carb. It was AWESOME. I mean, you could literally equip a "twink" in some high QL imps and a good set of carb back in 2003-2004 still, and you'd do just fine. Or you would get a set of T1, T2, T3 and do just fine with that.

--------
Now, before we continiue. Lets take a look at the items that are needed for a competative toon today.
Armor: A combination of AI armor and Penultimate OFAB is in most cases the best possible choice for a twink or leveling toon. Getting ahold of a set of AI armor takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and a lot of money.
Symbiants: Not impossible to farm you're self. It takes time, but it's not ridicilous. And most professions use a combination of implants and symbiants.
Implants: Very expensive for a beginner, a fart in the wind for any expenrienced player.
Utilities: S10 Utils cost a little, but they're reusable and not too hard to attain.
Nanos: Most professions have a steadily increasing cost in nanos, some professions have nanos that cost ridicilous amounts of money. (Bureaucrat and Doc (Wierd looking nanos), Nanotechnician (Nullity Spheres), Soldiers (Art of Peace and similar)) But in general, you can live without these ridicilously prices nanos. I didn't mention Grid Armor, because it's in no way an absolute requirement anymore and mostly used for twinks. That also applies to a lot of other nanos which are today mostly twink nanos.
Consumables: Expensive when you start the game, a fart in the wind once you got you're first highlevel toon. Should probably be reduced in price as they punish only lower level toons. Along with implant prices because seriously, up to QL 125 implants are only a problem to come by for new players.


--------


Now, a 2004 toon in Carb would easily get a team. And if the Carb was QL200 at level 100 or so, you were even concidered to be well equipped. If you had bought a proper QL blue dildo as well. Damn you were good. Just to make a direct comparison.

Recuirements for a good 2004 toon:
Twinking: Agi Rifle, Intel Pistol, Treatment Rifle, Pillows. (Cost, 2-3m)
Armor: Carb, T1, T2, T3.
Implants\Symbiants: You did just fine with implants until very high levels. Because symbiants were not 100% commonplace yet.
Weapons: Blue Dildo, TOTW Weapons, IS weapons, uber players had SL weapons from adonis \ inferno but most players did not. Hence it was not the norm, hence it was not recuired.

Recuirements for a good 2011 toon.
Twinking: Treatment Rifle, Colored Pillows.
Armor: OFAB, AI armor, Predator Armor. (OFC medsuit too, for style and fitting in with the crowd)
Implants\Symbiants: You really just need a set of symbiants now, because they're so common everyone else have them. Apart from the slots where implants with a mix of normal and jobe clusters is best.
Weapons: SoM weapons (recuires friends), CoH weapons (recuires money), Alien Weapons (Suck unless you got the gear to equip really high QL ones), Blue Dildoes (Never go out of style).

Now, I realize this is putting it it a bit on the edge. But don't look at the QUALITY of the gear, rather look at how LONG it takes to obtain it! The standard in 2004, was that apart from

A set of carb armor: Buyable from store.
T1: Only a matter of time, no luck involved, you could make money to buy it through simply killing hecklers in a team because of ingots.
T2: Same deal.
T3: Same deal.
Predator: Gotta camp it, and you usually end up competing with some level 220 toon for the kills.
OFAB: Gotta PVP for it, not very fun when you're a complete gimp. And it takes ages to wait for the BS to start.
AI armor: Takes months to camp and create a full set of X type of AI armor. (Ofc you get items for other sets too)

At last a note of "Miy's Armor", say what you want but I don't see non froobs wearing it much.

So, the problem isn't just the money inflation. It's also the item inflation. Because, the "old armors" of thousands of toons have accumulated. Bad peices of armor have been thrown away, good pieces of armor keep gathering and gathering. Now, you can't farm the armor much faster then you could when it was released, but because it has been so long since it was released. So much of it has accumulated that it has become commonplace for older toons.

Now, before I spin this out any further. I'm just gonna cut it short, because the solution is really quite simple if you want everyone to be competative again. Reset the status quo. Introduce multiple new ways of making money WHILE F**KING LEVELING! (Yeah, that you have to go out of you're way and do "moneymaking activites" to be competative really pisses me off. Because in 2003-4 you could be quite allright with what you made through normal leveling)

And, inflate the top armor sets and create better options for high level toons. Aka, simply make AI armor drop more and lower level OFAB cost less. While introducing more powerful options for level 220 characters which makes most pieces of AI armor outdated. Because despite the fact that there are now thousands of AI armor sets, as long as it takes you a month or more to farm a single one of them. They're never going to be cheap enough to be afforded by newer players. Not even partially unless they have a S10 toon which is currently the only place for the non 220 player to make decent money outside of services.

Because once something becomes commonplace it becomes what you need in order to compete at equal grounds.

[Marketplace]

Thank you catdog, I read it, and will reply to it later on, I'm just trying to summarize it. Great feedback!

[catdog]

So in short, AO is stuck in stale waters. And the problems are created by the lack of new content and definite ultimate content.

Simply, shake it up. And it will work

[Marketplace]

So in short, AO is stuck in stale waters. And the problems are created by the lack of new content and definite ultimate content.

Simply, shake it up. And it will work

I believe Kiantii mentioned something like this in an earlier post, if need be I will find it. I think they are going to shake it up well, like I do with my gf diet-cokes sometime for fun. j/k

[Obtena]

TBH, I think very few people that play AO are qualified to answer this question. It's like asking AO players where all the Dark Matter is in the universe is hiding.

I think the question is more fundamental: If there is appetite for it, FC should get some expertise on economics to determine if there is a problem or not.

[Nubbit]

I think GMS needs a revamp aswell - I think part of the inflation is due to so many people putting the price as slightly higher that everyone thinks that's the norm and prices for everyday items, such as VTEs, whittles upward at a constant rate.

[Marketplace]

TBH, I think very few people that play AO are qualified to answer this question. It's like asking AO players where all the Dark Matter is in the universe is hiding.

I think the question is more fundamental: If there is appetite for it, FC should get some expertise on economics to determine if there is a problem or not.

Maybe so, but there is no harm in discussing it. A dumb idea can lead to a go idea and vice versa.

[Marketplace]

TBH, I think very few people that play AO are qualified to answer this question. It's like asking AO players where all the Dark Matter is in the universe is hiding.

Actually a quick second reply, I don't agree with that statement at all. You can draw broad conclusions on subject matters, however not specific ones.

Lets take a purely hypothetical example:

• 1 person decided to farm 4 tokens from Sector 10 a day. It's a healthy option, and fairly easy right? Total = 16 million.
• A 100 people farm 4 tokens in average a day, because 100 players want a healthy income of 16 million a day. Total 1600 million.
• Let 10 days go by and you have 1600 x 10 million. Total 16 billion injected into the economy.

Now I bet you that there is a helluva lot more being farmed then my crappy little examples.

Conclusion, inflation to some degree.

[catdog]

TBH, I think very few people that play AO are qualified to answer this question. It's like asking AO players where all the Dark Matter is in the universe is hiding.

I think the question is more fundamental: If there is appetite for it, FC should get some expertise on economics to determine if there is a problem or not.

Might be that there are very few who really knows it all, but give me 1 hour of changing some settings. And after that time:

Leveling will work without pockets. And a decent speed.
People will naturally make money through their normal activities. And have the option of making more through special activities.
The difference between gimp and pimp will be decreased.
Teaming will be encouraged.
Leveling will be varied more.
Most people will no longer go inf at level 160.
You will no longer have a situation where you have enough people to make a team @lft but you choose not to.
NT's will be playable before 215.


Not saying I will make decicions everyone will be happy about, but I will make decicions that makes life a little better for most of us.

[Obtena]

Conclusion, inflation to some degree.

OK, so can you then conclude that because there is inflation in real, working economies to some degree, then AO's economy is OK?

I think my point still stands. .. there isn't much value in having a technical, analytical discussion about a point that people aren't qualified to talk about. Sure, chime in with your opinions. That's about as much as they are worth. There is a reason why CCP hired a real economist to do their market analysis in Eve Online. I'm not saying FC should go that far, but I'm certainly concerned if FC starts listening to players about what's wrong with the economy and how to fix it.

Personally, I don't think the question you are asking is the right one or the one you want the answer to. There is a big difference between "What is wrong with X?" and "What do you not like about X?"

[Kintaii]

but give me 1 hour of changing some settings

oh the sheer innocence of never having looked behind the curtains at anarchy online

[Siyra]

but give me 1 hour of changing some settings.

oh the sheer innocence of never having looked behind the curtains at anarchy online

@Laugh; What Kintaii neglected to mention: hahahahahahahahahaha.

Oh dear lord are you serious? Even not knowing the code like Kintaii does I know you'd be able to do diddly squat in an hour. No decent code above "Hello World" skill comes out of an hours work. Not to mention the list of random crap you threw together that you figured you'd be able to fix.

What about compiling? What about bugs? (In an hour you'd be rushing, no doubt there'd be more bugs then when you started) What about tweaking and fine tuning?

Do you know how many DB entries there are that you'd have to modify to make NTs more playable prior to 215? They rely on nanos the whole way, that's a lot of data to change, plus all the math you'd have to do to make things scale appropriatly lest your work results in the current state of affairs that you deem so unplayable. Of course you could just take the easy way out and say every new nano is 10% stronger then the last one, with everything having the same cast and recharge times so that you can just copy paste (a thing that many have chided Funcom for doing to much) practically the entire list of NT nanos back into the DB.

What if you want more varied nano programs, as there is now. Finishers and starters, debuffers and quick DD or long someone else is tanking blasts? What about nano cost? You have to take into account different builds, it can't be to much or to little for the level. As much as we as players like to think it'd be better if everything was 1 NaCost for 10,000 dmg that just wouldn't be balanced.

How long would the math for all that take you? I think an hour has passed already but oh wait... you're not even close to being done tweaking NTs what about all the other stuff on your list?

jump Laugh;

[Marketplace]

@Laugh; What Kintaii neglected to mention: hahahahahahahahahaha.

I'm sure catdog knows him/her-self that it doesn't take an hour. We all say silly things just to make a point more effective, and I am probably right up there on the top of the list of saying stupid things myself from time to time.

The point is still there, how long have we know about the heckler problem and kite hill? If a team could create a story line, and instance, and the resources to go with Dark Ruins, I'm sure they could have done this:

• Re-use Elysium and Scheol dungeons for missions a la Inferno type or simply taken one single unused dungeon in the same play-field and reused it for missions, with good xp.
• Improved experience gain through Elysium, Scheol, Adonis, Penumbra to a small extent so it wouldn't be Kite Hill to Inferno.

Please don't misunderstand, I know what I described above in the bullet points might not be doable in a few months, but with a bit of planning at least within a year.

If I had the qualifications and experience, I would take time of my post-grad studies for a year, and offer to help for free, not that my help would be wanted.

[catdog]

oh the sheer innocence of never having looked behind the curtains at anarchy online

While I realize the programming is complicated, making solutions that makes idiotic player behaviour obsolete (aka sitting at kite hill) is not harder then giving the players a better option. And if that option is overpowered in terms of leveling speed compared to effort, so be it, at least it's not as booring as sitting 3 days in a row at kite hill to get youre char up. 3 days fighting mobs that give insane XP \ kill would be way better.

And at 150-200, boost XP in Dark Ruins so badly, that going inferno before 200 and waiting to get a team spot, in stead of teaming equal leveled players in Dark Ruins, is simply not worth it.

AI armor is inflated, there's a great lot of it, a large part of the community has it, but it's so hard to obtain it sells for amounts of money not obtainable by newcomers. And there's no good enough alternatives. And because of that, people that don't have it have trouble getting teams. Here you have 3 options:

1. Provide a better alternative, which would make AI armor less sought after.
2. Increase droprates so they're reflected in how common the armor actually is.
3. Add a nearly as good alternative that is relatively easy to come by. (+20 to all weaponskills at QL300 opposed to +30 from AI armor).

NT's, remove level locks on all nukes apart from LE\PVP nukes. Problem solved, they won't be good enough to compete with the top DPS, but they won't be so bad that they don't get in to teams.

Don't pretend this is so bloody hard that you can't find an option. Because right now, you're doing NOTHING. And THAT, is the core of the problem. You don't have the balls to shake things up sufficiently to solve anything. Or you have a team infighting too much to get anything done.

Sometimes, simply doing something, is enough.

[Lazy]

*ideally* s10 bounties should be changed into bounty credits that can be used to buy leadbots from an npc (make a special DCSD-like 21slot bp. 1 full bp of bounties for a bounty card; 2 cards for a mainbot, 1 card for a secondary bot). make the bots cap out at ql 180 for the mainbot and 144 for the secondary bot.

this will stop pumping large ammounts of new credits into the economy out of thin air and will instead circulate some of the "old wealth" built up over the years. bonus points for increasing the supply of ai armor for levelling toons. (225 css/cc/cs set will last a levelling toon pretty much all the way to 220 when they start working on their endgame armor.

EDIT:

also, ao needs a VIABLE alternative to combined armor in ALL slots for ALL profs at endgame. certain profs *require* 5-6 pieces to be competitive in pvp. some need a full set. others do just fine on a budget without any combined at all (my doc doesnt wear any combined and does fine, my fixer wears anything between 6 and 7 pieces depending on my mood that week). agents have only one viable piece of ofab (the chest) and the rest is rubbish. (ideally an upgrade to ofab that adds main relevant weaponskills/specials and is nodrop or something; like imbued superior icy fixers superduper ofab sleeves of penultimate icy wastes mk 6 : +40 smg/as/fa/burst/evades.) nothing *too* absurd but something that will let us entirely skip ai armor and still be something more than alpha fodder in pvp.


alternatively, if there won't be a viable new armor to replaced combined in *all* slots, then at least give us a better way to farm leadbots (1 random bot drop in apf 13/28/35, lower cooldown on city raids, add an aigen to arid, etc)

[Kintaii]

stuff

First off I should say I didn't mean any offense, so my apologies if my comment was taken as such - Not my intentions. =) There's just often a massive disparity between what people (including us) feel are "simple, easy fixes" and things that they think will take us the better part of two years to complete - Oftentimes the estimates end up out of whack due to those 'lurking demons' that Means often refers to in the FwM posts (or the rare occasions where things end up easier than expected [the social tab for example]). ;P Just saying that what often times can sound/seem like an easy fix can take a lot more time & effort than most peeps would initially believe, and due to a lot of reasons.

As to the brunt of your post, though:

While I realize the programming is complicated, making solutions that makes idiotic player behaviour obsolete (aka sitting at kite hill) is not harder then giving the players a better option. And if that option is overpowered in terms of leveling speed compared to effort, so be it, at least it's not as booring as sitting 3 days in a row at kite hill to get youre char up. 3 days fighting mobs that give insane XP \ kill would be way better.

And at 150-200, boost XP in Dark Ruins so badly, that going inferno before 200 and waiting to get a team spot, in stead of teaming equal leveled players in Dark Ruins, is simply not worth it.

It doesn't really solve the root issues, though, which are that (A) right now kiting offers the most appealing XP-to-effort ratio (that being relatively none) and (B) by increasing XP in one area to overdominate another the issue simply shifts from one location to the next - If we increase the XP in DR to make Inferno missions less appealing at lower ranges, then everyone starts complaining about how Dark Ruins is the only viable way to gain XP at that level range (assuming that they even do it - plenty enough people enjoy being lazy and just paying for their levels on kite hill, something that can only really be addressed by altering fundamental game mechanics).

AI armor is inflated, there's a great lot of it, a large part of the community has it, but it's so hard to obtain it sells for amounts of money not obtainable by newcomers. And there's no good enough alternatives. And because of that, people that don't have it have trouble getting teams. Here you have 3 options:

1. Provide a better alternative, which would make AI armor less sought after.
2. Increase droprates so they're reflected in how common the armor actually is.
3. Add a nearly as good alternative that is relatively easy to come by. (+20 to all weaponskills at QL300 opposed to +30 from AI armor).

The main problem with AI armour is that it is, as you said, about as good as it gets - The list of alternatives is fairly slim. This harkens back to a lot of really old design decisions made by the previous dev teams which, while sound in their initial logic, forgot to take things like the sheer voracity of our players into account. ;P

So let's say that we take the new Pande instance, for example, and put in a brand new set of armour that's better than (or at least a decent sidegrade to [and if you can come up with a true sidegrade for ai armour i will give you a round of applause]) the high-level Combined stuff. It's an instance, so everyone can eventually get what they need without having to purchase or farm too hard.

The first impact of this is the immediate devaluation of AI armour. Not a bad thing in *some* ways, but if the market suddenly drops out on an item that people had previously spent amazing amounts of time, effort and credits to receive on their character, making said effort worthless now that they're able to simply go instance run for a full set of something better, they would most likely be a bit upset, and understandably so. Take a look at WoW, and how many people have left the game post-expansion launches where all of their previous raid gear was suddenly made worthless by trash drops in the world.

The second impact is that we've now just created Yet Another Armour Set for people to get while making all of the other previous, older sets more-or-less worthless. At that point why really bother with ever getting Tier or your full OFAB set? Why have those armours in the game at all? Naturally you'll eventually have to offer upgrades to any set of gear you have in game, but invalidating massive swaths of old content is rarely a good thing.

Now you come to the third thing, which is thinking about how this sudden change in numbers is going to effect your relative character/profession balance. As it stands, AI armour is pretty stupid stat-wise; putting in anything *better* than AI armour is going to just make people more crazy overpowered at end levels than they already are, and as I said earlier I'm not entirely sure there's much we can do to make a good sidegrade to the armour that isn't already there (IE: some OFAB pieces).

Let's say we add a small, more easily-farmed downgrade, though. Who would ever get it? I mean, I'm sure that some people out there would probably want it, either for levelling purposes or just to have the set, but... let's be honest here - AO is a twinking game and that's why you guys play it. No one is going to settle for a +20 armour when that +30 is what they really need, and we end up with Yet Another Armour Set.

And as far as dropping the viral bots more often goes, while we have increased various drops of the bots at various level ranges over the last couple of years, increasing it much further drains part of the *importance* of gaining and owning AI armour. It *is* something you have to work for, to earn and to gain - This isn't a bad thing, it's just that there are few alternatives that would allow players to gain the same relative power while not having the true benefit and convenience of AI Combined armour.

What would be the more intelligent thing would be to go back and fix the existing armour sets that you have, bringing *them* more in line around AI armour and thusly boosting their own importance - Create sidegrades in your OFAB and T3 sets by offering similar power *values* to AI armour while neither set being as much of a "catchall" as AI armour is. There's a lot of other, smaller nuances to attempting something like this but the basic idea is to revitalize older sets while not introducing new content, and similarly degrading the overall importance of AI armour while not removing its appeal and relative rarity. Overall, everybody's happy. Just takes a lot of work and effort to rework all of said armour sets, and its best to do it at a point where you're altering the *rest* of your design to match (as opposed to doing it both now and then doing it again later when we're exporting the Rebalancing stuff).

NT's, remove level locks on all nukes apart from LE\PVP nukes. Problem solved, they won't be good enough to compete with the top DPS, but they won't be so bad that they don't get in to teams.

Wouldn't really help much. The level lock thing does suck from a playing standpoint, but even if we unlocked NT nukes across the board there wouldn't be a massive leap in damage for the profession; what kills NTs, particularly in PvM, are the cast times & recharges on their nanos - Combine this with a fairly glaring lack of an alpha and it highlights a little more of the NT's overall problems.

I'll also admit that I sure don't have the defined numbers on exactly what that'd let 'em cast at any given level ranges, and that's the sort of thing I wouldn't want to just blindly toss out without having a lot more precise information and control over exactly how much MC an NT can gain and at what levels. Otherwise we'd have to tweak and double-check all nuke MC requirements, and at that point we're approaching what we're doing with the Rebalancing anyway. ;P

Don't pretend this is so bloody hard that you can't find an option. Because right now, you're doing NOTHING. And THAT, is the core of the problem. You don't have the balls to shake things up sufficiently to solve anything. Or you have a team infighting too much to get anything done.

Sometimes, simply doing something, is enough.

I'm... not really sure where you're getting this from, though, particularly with changes such as the removal of the "not-Shade" tags and things such as the removal of nano recharge on MA attacks - It may be that we're not taking care of your specific, personal concerns as quickly as you'd like, but at the same time some of those things you've brought up effect much, much more than the singular items you're addressing. It requires quite a bit of thought to go through how one alteration to a profession might affect not only that profession but the relative balance of the rest of AO's classes; does that class now underperform due to the buffs given to this class? Does that profession now have a harder time perking this profession, and is that a good or a bad thing? etc. etc.

There are a lot of things in AO that need looking at and taking care of. I'd like to think we've been pretty open about that in general, really - We'll freely admit that there are issues we are working to resolve. Do things take time? Of course, particularly given the older technology, the twisting labyrinth that is our 'game balance', and an admittedly small team. We still plug away, though, even if the "simple" fixes often end up requiring much greater consideration and work than initially thought. It just goes to show how much there is to consider when making changes to a game like this - Particularly one as old and large as Anarchy Online is. Just gotta be careful pushing the dominoes.

[edmaster]

Ok where do I start!!! Its a massive list.
Firstly, No profession NEEDS combined armor, but every other armor is just really annoying to get and you need friends.

1. To fix AO increase drop rates or if like the old drop rates increase spawn times. AO has the most retarded spawn rate ever. Many people need to do some quest and the spawn time is 3 hours or 8 hours or even 20-30 mins. (80% of the time you spend in AO will be waiting on some crap to spawn.

2. Everyone wants to lvl to 220 fast cause almost every flipping quest in sl requires you to have a high lvl to help you do it. There is no point in staying low lvl, get to 220 fast so u can actually do the ely quest. not to mention lvl 150 -200 are basically dead lvls, meaning most professions cant kill most things that lvl.

3. No one does anything in PEN cause the xp sucks for all pen missions, not to mention its sided only.

4. AO IS A MONEY GAME!!. Everything you want to do in ao cost creds, unless u have a org or friends. They make getting to a dyna (sl and rk) hard, the fight hard, the spawn time 20 mins and have a 5% drop rate. Is there really any point in killing at low level or just get a high lvl to try farm it?

5. S10 is a godsent, just because some people abuse it that doesnt mean its bad. If you use that train of thought we should shut down the internet also. Without s10 most people cannot make a lot of creds to buy what they NEED!! to survive (vte's implants, symbs'), and THE REASON WHY EVERYTHING IS SO EXPENSIVE IS BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF FARMING. (this means symbs also).
Tried to farm a symb for a lvl 150 1. (Only 2 bosses dropped the pattern), 2. (There was a 40% chance a pattern would drop). Then after spending the mandatory 3 hours at least to get a full set (if no one out damages you), the symb has a 20% chance of dropping. If is doesnt drop you are screwed.

AO is setup so that the things most professions need drop the least. symbs, weapons, nanos. So basically the people with the most creds and high lvl friends will always get the best stuff.

To fix all the creds problem, increase supply. INCREASE pattern drop rates, increase item drop rates, and massive increase spawn times, on dreads, sl bosses and rk bosses. Rare items can stay rare, but let people actualyl be able to get what they want.
Lastly LE is the most retarded expansion ever. People cant get vp and the only fix is spend real money so you can use the expansion, or hope you have millions of creds to buy ofab. IF people were actualyl able to use ofab they would be better.

This is only a short list of AOs many problems. Simple thing is that right now unless u have high lvl friends or alot of creds, if you are new you will not get far.

I mean no offense to the AO family, Kintaii and his group. But I am really tired of spending hours waiting on a boss to spawn just so i can complete a quest of get an item i realyl need. This is the most depressing game i have ever played. After playing AO i need to play other games so i can relax

[Siyra]

The point is still there, how long have we know about the heckler problem and kite hill?

I realize that kite hill has been a problem for quite some time - and that alternatives could have been made by now.

But lets say we do have something just as good as kite hill that encourages teaming and active gameplay. Would people use it? Would people really enjoy manually grinding some misc mobs to get their xp when they can still go to kite hill?

Well okay, so then lets say we nerf kite hill, what then? Well, people will find the next best spot of dense mob population and good xp (since we put good xp on a lot of mobs now this won't be hard) and they'll just kite there. And while it may not be a "hill" it will become a popular kite spot. And we'll trade the heackler grind/kite for another mob and be none the better.

In the end it comes down to a simple undeniable fact. Humans are lazy. A vast majority of us just don't want to work if we don't have to. No amount of increasing or decreasing XP on this mob or that will solve that.

[McKnuckleSamwich]

Wow, I just read that post by kintai, and that was FAR better than the last like 18 FWM's combined.

Kintaii youre doing an awesome job, and props to you and means and the team for all the work youre putting in.

As for S10, it's not such a big deal. If you want CREATED credits, theres S10, Static dungeons, jewlerly TSing, and a few other LESS effective ways to make money.

If you want to TRANSFER wealth, theres bot farming, city raids, sellign LR's, farming whatever, and a buttload of other activities.

If you don't know how to make credits, you aren't thinking hard enough, or don't do enough research.

Act like an indian entrepreneur, and LOOK around at what is needed... Then provide it.

voila, you've just found a niche, and a way to make money.