#[Official] Loot and Experience Changes

1 messages · Page 14 of 1

fierce lynx
#

How about if your FAME starts ticking up faster post loot cap? ducks

civic niche
#

I mean I am trying to get to 1b on my empath. 🤔

warped escarp
warm agate
#

I could always use more fame or titles, hah. I don't see it though. I'd prefer see an experience board rather than fame as someone else has previously mentioned.

wary nebula
#

I don't know if this thread is dead now, but if any GMs are still here, can you look at the gem drop rate on lower level critters? I have a couple of level 40s that cannot find gems high enough to create chrisms. No diamonds, emeralds, rubies, nothing anymore. Can we get some of these to drop please?

umbral lotus
#

Auchand posts in here at least

wary nebula
#

Ok great!

pastel lark
#

Yeah, I really hate the loot nerf on lower level characters. Between that and the resource changes, it makes playing alts much more of a chore than a refreshing break from the capped gemstones/asc rat race.

warped escarp
#

i hear that... i have to say, i really do like the idea of scaling down silver generation as a whole. it's the "now you find literally nothing" part that i very much dislike. it was a big step for me to move from a group/many alts approach into a single character and feel like i can be more immersed into the game itself as intended, and i'm really enjoying it, but man loot cap makes it feel punishing... all this investment into gear feels like i'm shooting myself in the foot. what do i get for it? i hit loot cap faster? effectively, i'm working very hard to deck myself out so that the game can more quickly stop feeling rewarding

remote egret
pastel lark
#

I love the box changes for the most part, despite some of the issues. I do feel like it makes boxes more exciting again. But everything else is quick to drag it back down. I couldn't say about resource selling, I have too little play time to really bother with that, I mostly just work on gear for my two mains and my stable of alts, as well as their best friends & MHO buddies in the game. But that was fun to me, slowly building up what everyone has, and pretending it's my own little extraordinary league of diverse talents. Now it's far more dreary, not to mention impossible to max out everyone's resources every week.

crimson pond
#

all this investment into gear (...)
Wait, do people invest in gear for reasons other than MOAR FLARES?! Incontheivable!

I've never found standard treasure to be the reason for hunting, just a benefit on the side for doing what I'd be doing anyway to get that real prize - juicy EXP. So I don't mind as much when things slow down, just means less to manage post-hunt. That's not to say that the occasional enhancive isn't enjoyable, and those YUGE boxes still tickle the dopamine centers. Still looking forward to future improvements on making loot more fun.

I will say that the dichotomy of "we have nothing to spend silvers on, they're useless" and "boo hoo, I can't get more silvers I'm so sad!" is amusing to me. Yes yes, I'm aware that isn't the whole picture. Still funny.

warped escarp
#

i think you're leaving out the option of "i can get and spend silvers"

remote egret
calm bay
#

I still think we'd achieve similar results if all silvers were removed from the treasure system and you just find treasure. Restore previous lootcap. No more 30-100k boxes, or critters dropping 2k silver from their nonexistent pockets, and we find shiny gems, gear, and magic items. I've been doing some basic analysis and from pure income with no 2nd hand market silvers and skins generally are 50-70% of my monthly income from hunting. If we got rid of silvers you would find more items making gems more common and upping the odds of an enhancive find

You'd still convert your finds into silvers we just wouldn't have the unnecessary income padding finding silvers creates.

warm agate
remote egret
calm bay
#

Think of it this way. Would you rather have your box include 25,000 silvers and the weight that requires, or a "pawnshop item" of 25,000 value which has the potential to be an enhancive?

pastel lark
#

I'm sure this has been said already, in this very long conversation, in fact, I think I said it a few weeks ago. I understand the need to come up with some alternatives when it comes to silver/loot generation, but I feel most of us were not the problem, right? Mostly I play GS for the community and roleplaying, but I did enjoy logging in to play my sorcerer or wizard or other cleric, etc., just to turn off my brain for a bit and enjoy some gains. Now that part is not much fun- as I said, it's dreary, and puts me in the mind that me and most casual players are being punished for something we didn't cause.

warped escarp
# calm bay Think of it this way. Would you rather have your box include 25,000 silvers and...

i think sharply reducing the amount of silvers found would have the same effect, but wouldn't feel as immersion-breaking as removing them altogether. i do like the idea of shifting more of the burden towards items to address the encumbrance issues.

and yes, agreed ravenna; i think the real issue is a handful of people running 10-30 (+?) accounts and generating enormous sums, which this doesn't really address at all; in fact, i think it actually incentivizes having more accounts and punishes the one-account players who just want to play their character in the world.

calm bay
# warped escarp i think sharply reducing the amount of silvers found would have the same effect,...

I feel finding silvers on critters that have no way to transport them to be immersion breaking. What is a minotaur doing with all these silvers? What is a patchwork monstrosity doing with a bunch of silvers? There's just so many creatures that have silvers which makes no sense.
But immersion aside the goal is to slow down rapid silvers generation through the treasure system from hunting. Get rid of silvers, do not substitute them except in the box value equation, and then you slow silver generation down, spread treasure finding out for longer periods, and maybe even make Trading worth having again.

umbral lotus
rough vault
#

How would we feel about *** REAL GEM *** or equivalent being added as another ultra rare feeder but realm wide with a flag to prevent more than one to a billing address per year. It wouldn't be too expensive for someone to customize a silver charm to our game as a prize that would be mailed irl with an in game equivalent. I definitely would add a title to anyone loot capped in a month so they can flex.

warped escarp
#

i've always had a soft spot for the "find a real gem" gimmick in gemstone! brings me back to the 90s. i say go for it. or the mug.

umbral lotus
#

Gems, or maybe GS swag would be cool, tumblers, mouse pads etc

civic niche
#

I have enough random crap I don't use around my house. Also, have you seen the cost of mailing something these days?

umbral lotus
cold zephyr
# wary nebula I don't know if this thread is dead now, but if any GMs are still here, can you ...

I've had to remove the last two gem bounties with my level 63 warrior because he was tasked to finding uncut emeralds. Nothing he hunts from level 63 to 68 has ever dropped an emerald - found a lot of blue sapphires and pearls, but no uncut rubies, emeralds or diamonds from these level ranges. Even out of the 20 boxes or so that he came across, not a single one held an uncut emerald.

I tend to find uncut emeralds on level 74+ creatures I hunt with a higher level character, but coming across them is far and few between if he doesn't have a bounty for them. I'm not going to run around with higher level characters to fill a gem bounty because the game is no longer dropping uncut emeralds for my level 63 character because he's hunting creatures that aren't in that 70+ range.

bright pasture
#

uncut emeralds became a lot more sparse for me overall. my bounty gem jar is slowly, slowly recovering since the gem changes, but still no where near as quickly as it used to.

it is peculiar in that it is the only gem to do this, which just means that the gem discovery rate is barely keeping up with the bounty demand rate

rough vault
#

Search in the secret hidden room in kryches and you might get an emerald.

bright pasture
#

i asked about it on 2/4/26 and Auchand said he'd take a look at it

pastel lark
#

I think what bothers me the most about the loot & resource nerf is that it makes hunting feel more a chore than ever. I appreciate that exp is easier, but it's still a slow grind. I don't mind that, I like that it takes effort, but I liked it a lot better when it was offset by getting treasure and resources to work on our gear. Much as I value the RP and events, the fun of the game part of the game is really gone now.

remote egret
bright pasture
#

I am not saying uncut emeralds are sparse - but that they are more sparse. it depends on the supply and demand from bounties

rough vault
#

We just need a lapidary added to the backroom of every gemshop who will sell you a gem of any value you request for a 250 silver commission. No one would care as much about finding gems if you could get what you needed for functions simply elsewhere.

fierce lynx
rough vault
#

I meant cost/gem value + 250 for convenience of getting it and knowing it was truly that value for the purposes of functional use.

fierce lynx
#

I think I understood? Alchemy / Cobbling will work fine with gems valued at 1 silver (plus 250 convenience fee for a grand total of 251 silver). Why would I ask for a gem of greater value when I simply need 5 of this gem? I DO understand that there are other systems where the gem value matters. Just pointing out where your suggested solution 1) Might have a negative impact on other areas and 2) might bypass an intended design idea (that gems should not be available limitlessly).

rough vault
#

Ah. My bad. I wasn't considering alchemy, altering, and cobbling, only systems that require high value gems which are now all rare except in ascension areas. For my needs of buying deeds or animating a critter or making a chrism, I don't really care what the gem looks like at all - only its value matters.

split hamlet
#

Or just change gem bounties to be: Go find 10 gems from X creature. No more specific gem bounty.

fierce lynx
#

So... working with your suggestion a bit further... what about a system where you could buy (once per day / once per week?) one high value gem-like item that would have the specified value (it wouldn't match any existing gems so couldn't be used in alchemy, cobbling, alters, etc. but it would meet the gem-of-x-value requirement in those areas. I'm not sure a service fee would even be needed in that instance but... also not sure how dev would feel about making this more available. Seems reasonable to me but I'm not dev! :p

Maybe the npc jeweler has a method of combining gemdust into a gemblob for this purpose.

fierce lynx
split hamlet
#

I don't do gem bounties. I don't want to manage hundreds of different types of gems. And you can't easily find enough gems to complete a bounty in a reasonable time.

Being able to horde gems for 0 risk bounties is an error.
Not finding gems you're assigned in a reasonable time is an error.
All of it also breaks in a world where you may find 0 loot anyway.

fierce lynx
#

I'm not on the same page as you on gem hoarding. There was risk in acquiring them (someone had to go out and kill the critters to get them to drop). I do agree that potentially the drop rate should be increased (even more than it is?) when you have been assigned a gem bounty.

To be fair, I only do a gem bounty if it is for a gem that I have already collected. But... the risk is still there, I did put my own life on the line to gather what I have hoarded (at least where gem bounties are concerned). And the reason for this is that you are right... it takes too long to acquire them otherwise.

cold zephyr
#

Out for half a dozen hunts. I didn't count the orbs and cubes I found in boxes, but I counted the ones from looted creatures:

Solid Moonstone Cube = 6
Heavy Quartz Orb = 16

That's a stupid amount.

tender scarab
#

Loot capped people could totally follow my trail of devastation and grab up the umpteen heavy quartz orbs I leave behind.

fierce lynx
# split hamlet I don't do gem bounties. I don't want to manage hundreds of different types of ...

Yes. The 0 loot at lootcap is just broken design. Here - go hunt 40 hours a week in order to burn through even longer experience boosts that we've put in the game but... don't actually hunt that much because you will get too much loot so we're going to have to cut you off before you use up these extended experience boost.

100% broken design at this point and I'm hoping they address it soon for those that are hitting these limits.

civic niche
#

Yeah the mixed messaging is....mixed. Play less, but also, play more. (Also, 2nd and 3rd Gemstone RNG, looking at you in this.)

jolly palm
split hamlet
#

It's not going to fix the loot cap issues. You're going to get, some fancy pants, while you can still get loot. That's it.

The error is in the design implementation, not in what is found.

broken vector
#

personally I love all the quartz orbs - keeping my mystic focus up every hunt is pretty easy these days - feel free to leave they laying around for others!

fierce lynx
broken vector
#

prefer you just leave them on the ground or in the Pipe Den!

rich delta
#

I find the lack of cookie drops unsettling, should be the priority to fix

tawny sierra
flint mortar
south trail
#

Waiting for the first of the month for my loot cap food stamps

civic niche
#

Even my OTF Alt is soft capped now...really?

calm bay
#

Is a diff account? Same account = same cap.

civic niche
#

Yes it’s a different account. I’m well aware lootcap is per account.

rigid sparrow
#

i was able to loot cap in about 4 days last month in nelemar. quality of enhancives and such was much lower than like sanctum or somewhere else, but the gems, boxes and junk adds up the same.

remote egret
#

The idea of pulling in 10-15m in 4 days is just crazy to me. So many people apparently capable of that too!

civic niche
#

It takes me like 8-9.

remote egret
#

I've been thinking about downloading ledger to see how much I actually DO earn in a month but I play on different computers all the time. And I do not keep loot separate between accounts. So probably means it wouldn't be terribly helpful

civic niche
#

Probably tue. Given that, it's likely better to just move all your money to X bank that you don't use on the last day of the month or make another alt account to hold the bag, and see where you end up.

umbral lotus
#

I'm a slacker only do 5-6m a month apparently

mellow gyro
#

Dirty casual Ardwen.

calm bay
#

When you all say you're "capped" you're talking soft cap (10m) not fully capped, right?

jolly palm
#

There is no "fully capped" anymore.

After 10m, it diminishes until you hit 15m, at which point you get 1% loot from their forward.

My assumption, when someone says loot capped, they mean 1% capped. Which i think is what you meant too...

crimson pond
#

My assumption is that most people mean "loot is starting to feel bad to my mostly subjective feel-o-meter"

civic niche
#

I’m still using soft/hard cap to represent 10/15. though I recognize hard cap isn’t technically a hard cap anymore. When you get like 8k silvers in 4 hours. It may as well be hard capped.

remote egret
wet valve
#

Please give us a command that says you are at the soft cap or you are at the 15m cap.

civic niche
wet valve
#

Obviously that's sarcasm, a cap is a cap, it's bad enough we have them.

cold zephyr
# remote egret The idea of pulling in 10-15m in 4 days is just crazy to me. So many people appa...

It's not really that hard. Level 63 warrior, took in 750k over the course of about 2 full hours of actual hunting. Between gems, boxes, items and skins. Hunts are usually 12-15 minutes, depending on how long it takes to complete a bounty and in the off chance he gets that grizzled creature immediately, I stay out until his encumbrance starts to tick up over not encumbered. Sometimes a hunt gives 5 boxes, sometimes 1. I've avoided playing maybe half the month and I've pulled in 6.5mil during the time I have played. I'm only keeping track to see how impactful the change would be and here's what I've gathered.

With the heavier boxes I gain loot faster under the new loot cap than the old one.
Hitting the soft cap of 10 mil is incredibly simple to do from pretty much any level range, though below level 25 takes longer due to the craptastic gems. But, as I said, the heavier boxes tend to make up for it.

dusky kernel
flint mortar
#

One positive for me is that I actually found my 2nd ever Eye of Koar Emerald in 15 years of suffering on the Rift/Scatter in one of those big muley chests a couple of nights ago. . So at least I have that going for me.

warped escarp
#

My summarized suggestion:

  • Progressive bracket yield resetting on the first of each month: 100% up to 5m, 60% from 5-10m, 25% from 10-20m, 10% beyond 20m. Median players unaffected; extreme grinders compressed from ~50x to ~8x median output. (This is based on the "median silver generation is 3m" comment previously made by Wyrom; numbers is likely inaccurate now given changes since.)
  • Reduce raw silver coin drops across the board by 40% to lower baseline generation rates.
  • Item and equipment drops continue normally to preserve hunt feel, but pawnshop and gem shop redemption values are reduced. Still sellable to avoid clutter, but becomes very low over time.
  • Gem and skin quality decoupled from silver value. Quality, rather than value, determines eligibility for bounty and chrism rewards instead. Notably, skins can thus still be generated at high quality post-soft loot cap, but will have low value. (This has a bit of verisimilitude in that previous gems can still have low value, depending on their attributes.)

Thus:

  • Silver generation is massively reduced.
  • Players can still complete bounties, make chrisms, charge items, etc. through the month without running into chronic, calendar-based droughts.
  • Items and equipment still drop, but without contributing to a silver flood.

This includes some suggestions made by people in this thread -- credit where due!

I really like the overall idea of reducing silver influx, and I've enjoyed seeing some of the silver-generating accounts dry up. I also like that it's less work for GMs so they can focus on other things, and additionally, I'm enjoying that silver is starting to feel scarce again.

warm agate
#

I'll still be hunting, don't you worry.

umbral lotus
warped escarp
remote egret
# warped escarp My summarized suggestion: * Progressive bracket yield resetting on the first of ...

Progressive brackets?? Are you kidding?! We have enough people that don't understand progressive tax brackets that impact them in real life and you want to implement progressive brackets in a game?! I'm not even an accountant and the amount of times I've had to explain to people that earning more money does not subject your entire earnings to a higher tax bracket is ludicrous. Financial education (looking at you as well parents!) is a shame!

civic niche
bright pasture
#

well, my total silver today just exceeded last month's total, with 0 Trading for this month.

it seems pretty clear that Trading is being factored into loot cap

rough vault
#

That should be corrected to incent training options. Bonus value not increased base value. It was probably never even considered in the hasty decision anyway. If they decide to correct it, might as well add a new looters midas touch elite ascension skill with prerequisite of 225 ranks of trading and INfluence bonus 35, ranks add 5% more bonus value to sellable loot up to 25% more.

bright pasture
#

yeah, i don't understand it. i don't know if it was intentional or not.

it's almost like there is a complete lack of GM response about it

long coral
hazy osprey
#

I'm really hoping there's some useful news in the next month or so. I'm all for the loot cap changes, but the lack of clarity around trading and gem purification coupled with the complete radio silence is mind boggling to me.

warped escarp
#

i expect we'll hear from them a few days after 4/1, once the march data can be parsed, but it would be nice to have a little reassurance in the interim, and perhaps a hint or two as to what the plans being considered might be!

bright pasture
#

yeah, i don't expect any news until they have a concrete plan

rough vault
#

I wonder who is actually on this Assembly of Experts anyway. Heh.

slate bluff
#

Someone just needs to make a lootcap wiki and state that trading effects it. If they take it down or change it then we got our answer!

hazy osprey
#

To me, it's totally reasonable to explain how a system works and say you're giving it time to settle while you evaluate data and make a plan. No issues there. And when the system is such a huge change from its predecessor, I also think it's totally reasonable to miss a few details, either in how you've executed, or how you've communicated. These things happen!

But I find it less reasonable to repeatedly ignore clarifying questions from players. I frankly don't even understand the rationale. It feels very let-them-eat-cake-like to me. In my opinion, understanding the link between trading and gem purification and the loot cap isn't akin to discovering some quirky in-game puzzle. It should just be stated by someone who can say for certain how it works. Why keep players in the dark?

split girder
#

Another great reason to publicize the logic is that we can help test whether it's functioning correctly.

warm agate
#

need an extra fix skillsl let's rally for that now: ::snicker::

remote egret
hazy osprey
#

If it wasn't, and he hits loot cap in both scenarios, he'd have earned more total silvers in the month where he had trading. But he earned the same amount.

bright pasture
#

right - the fact that i am at the same silver mark, let alone no where near the 15 * 1.28 = 19.2 mil mark, is a good indicator

remote egret
#

Thank you both - I can be a bit dense at times.

tender scarab
# long coral it's supposed to be a fun little easter egg for players to discover. lol, you wa...

That's actually the second most positive way I can think of to state the matter. The way I'd state it (inspired by Earthdiver from those many months ago, albeit he was talking about skinning) is that with max Trading you find ~4m less loot per month if you can manage loot cap without it. It's not just reaching loot cap faster, but actually hurting your potential gains because you're taking in sheer silver from NPC shop sales instead of tangible goods that could have been worth more than the nominal silver.

(Incidentally, the very most positive way I can think of to claim that Trading is a good thing would be to say that after hitting loot cap, you can grind indefinitely with no fear of encumbrance so you can fish most efficiently for Gemstones, klocks, and rare/epic/legendary drops. I actually believe that there's some chance this is exactly what they had in mind when they tripled the rate of klocks as part of all these changes. I'm absolutely not doing this, but someone else could. It's the one major bone thrown to continuing to grind past hard cap.)

slate bluff
#

In the current world, trading is for people who generate less than 12mil per month or for people who like to scour the pawnshops
So it is probably still useful for "most" of the current players
The only problem is say my bard with maxed trading and influence hands loot to my wizard for assessing magical/enhancive and my wizard who does not have trading sells the loot. Did I just lose 30% of the value?

chilly tulip
#

I found a (compared to pre-changes) very large number of klocks right after the loot changes and then nothing since. I think something got wacky with that feeder when they flipped the switch on the updates.

slate bluff
#

Yeah, I went from finding decent amounts of klocks over many characters to zero since the supposed 3x update. Something very fishy given how much I play. (They didnt change the drop message did they?)

tender scarab
#

I think we can fairly say that Trading affects loot cap, though it's not necessarily clear whether that happens at sale or loot. But I'm not really interested in that because the end result is "don't train Trading" either way.

So currently my concerns are figuring out A) whether gem purification affects the bard and B) whether race bonus counts against loot cap. If B is true, then people who can loot cap without race bonus should be selling in neutral places.

hazy osprey
#

I haven't moved to the "acceptance" stage of grief here yet; I'm still firmly in bargaining. Don't make trading affect loot cap. Don't make bard purification affect loot cap. Don't make race bonuses affect loot cap.

chilly tulip
#

Acceptance is quite nice

civic niche
hazy osprey
jolly palm
# tender scarab I think we can fairly say that Trading affects loot cap, though it's not necessa...

I'm not sold on trading effecting loot cap. As no GM has stepped in and confirmed this. There has been enough chat about it, that it's a little painful that none have.

I think there are other forces at work impacting things that are bugged out, or something is up. It's really hard to pin down without lots of data though, or actual information on how all the systems tie together.

Almost all my accounts are in 1% cap territory, and I'm about 30% lower in total loot for the month than I would expect to be, having hit that mark. I dont think it's trading.

cold zephyr
# civic niche Or...a plan, since there honestly didn't seem to be one in the first place.

I'm a firm believer that they never have a plan. Just do something because it sounds good on paper and then either tell us suck it, that's how it is OR they go into panic mode and try to correct the issue by adjusting the adjustment they put in place instead of just removing it and starting properly from scratch. Rarely is a good middle ground ever met and I don't have high hopes they'll find a middle ground here.

The month closing in on the end, I've not played half the days of the month because of the rate I get to the soft cap (currently at roughly 6.5mil) because I'm not interested in being punished for the way I play the game.

Maybe they'll prove me wrong and they'll find a good middle ground with all this, but I'm not holding my breath.

tender scarab
# jolly palm I'm not sold on trading effecting loot cap. As no GM has stepped in and confirme...

If it doesn't affect loot cap, then that would be easy to prove because getting to 17m-19m in a month would be very doable. But nobody's done that that we know of, and instead people report the opposite situation of getting to the same 15m with or without it.

Not affecting loot cap would also be a shift from that previous quote that did come from GMs that Nidal found.

Also, skills like Trading, Skinning, and Survival are still useful, to 95% of those unaffected by the system.  Technically, even the top 5% benefit since they can spend less time farming, which seems to be their goal.```
civic niche
#

I have 2 hard capped, one I kept trading n, one I didn't, both are solidly in the 15-16M on ;ledger (usual ledger caveats)

jolly palm
chilly tulip
#

Yeah everyone's like "the silence is deafening" but they just don't like the answer that was already given

hazy osprey
#

It's hard to hold people accountable to a two-sentence answer about one part of the question that was buried in discord five years ago.

jolly palm
# chilly tulip Yeah everyone's like "the silence is deafening" but they just don't like the ans...

I dont know if that's entirely the case. I've been in dozens of loot cap discussions the last few years and this is the first time I've seen someone post that up. It hasn't been shared often.

The silence was seriously deafening, but I didn't know the answer had been given 5 years ago 😆
Just a quick search - it was shared just now.... once a month ago.... once in December 2023... and then Estild's original comment in 2021.

tender scarab
#

Yeah, I didn't know about it until Nidal found it like two months ago. In hindsight, it's amazing that we've just been sharing probably-inaccurate information for years. 😬 (About the previous loot cap mechanics.)

civic niche
#

What's terrible about it, imo, is that Leaf, and to a much lesser extent I (And I'm not throwing shade at Leaf), have been preaching the advantages of Trading for 5 years and not once, ever, did a GM step in and say....you sure about that?

Letting people give bad advice on mechanics that you know are wrong, that just shouldn't be allowed. (Unless those mechanics are specifically designed as puzzles, which this clearly isn't)

#

I added it to the trading wiki page. It's cannon now.

timber kraken
#

There has been so much discussion about whether or not Trading impacts the loot cap, and it’s really a black box thing that only a GM could definitively confirm. A vague 5 year old GM statement doesn’t help much. The loot cap is making folks so unhappy right now, and this is something that really impacts how you play and train your characters.

I think they should throw us a bone (we certainly need one this late in the month!) and simply confirm this, one way or another.

split timber
#

Include gem purifying too, when answering that question please.

civic niche
timber kraken
#

My gut tells me that the GMs don’t want to spill the beans on any of the loot cap calcs, which probably include Trading (as many of you suggest).

But it’s not like you can gain MORE silvers from the game (which is what all of this is supposed to be preventing) by either training or untraining Trading (yes you can get more items and get silvers from other players, but the staff shouldn’t care about that). So there’s really no reason not to disclose this info. It’s just frustrating for the players not to know.

shell phoenix
#

I'm just trying to think through how it would possibly be implemented if it did affect loot cap. We've heard a multitude of times that loot cap progresses when you loot a critter, but trading is applied to the sale of an item, not the value. So would there be a double calculation on loot cap, we know there is tracking for whether you looted an item yourself since there's the 1m silver bonus cap to the first 1m silvers of non-self-looted treasures. If there's some loot cap calculation at looting that factors in your trading skill, do I bypass that by turning on enhancives later? What about the racial trade bonus'? Are giants and halflings hitting loot cap faster by hunting in Landing?

civic niche
#

Programmatically it seems really simple. Item looted by Player A for 20K value at loot. +20K lootcap. Item sold by Player A to an NPC for 25K. Player A +5K lootcap. They have to be storing the original loot value and looter in items, to track the trading bonus cap. And, if they are doing it that simply it would add gem lore song increase as well, but they might have a special flag in there for that.

rough vault
#

The trading and IN bonus effects on loot is legacy design probably untouched since GS3 or earlier when loot caps were not necessary. IMO the design flaw is not really the loot but how easily/quickly/mechanically some are able to plow through tens of thousands of near level foes each month. Since there is no appetite to adjust that blatant imbalance, Design should use this pause in loot to reconceptualize the reasons to train in trading, first aid, survival, and influence as they pertain to loot values. One idea would be to set 200 ranks trading as the baseline for normal loot, with anything less incurring a penalty, and adding some meaningful benefit at 300. Lots of opportunity to rethink this out.

civic niche
#

200 as a baseline would harm low level characters. I'd probably use something like 1x training as a baseline if some sort of system like that were implemented. I don't dislike that idea. A meaningful benefit at 300 is sort of a red herring though, since that's 50ASC and Enhancives and a full 2x training. I can't imagine the reward I'd have to be promised to do 50 ranks of ASC trading.

shell phoenix
#

There should be a title for maxing trading, and another title for 50 ASC trading

civic niche
#

There should be a title for maxing tdest.

rough vault
#

Get to cut to the front of all room order merchants

tender condor
warm agate
warm agate
slate bluff
#

Is this an example of trading ranks helping for buying herbs or is it just static banter?
Putting on your best poker face, you begin haggling with Jaelernia about an appropriate price. She must play poker, too, for at the end of your bargaining it's hard to tell whether she likes the settled price of 250 silvers each.
Would be cool if you had < x trading ranks you need to accept her 500 silver price

civic niche
#

I don't know if that's the actual text, but probably. However, you do raise the point that there is always the (nominal) side benefit of paying less for NPC services/goods with trading, which is not really loot cap related.

tender scarab
#

Trading doesn't help with buying things, just selling them. The bargaining text is from ancient times when we actually could haggle back and forth a little.

warped escarp
slate bluff
#

Sells lacking if we can sell for more but not buy for less......

shell phoenix
#

herbs are definitely a bit cheaper with 25 ranks of trading vs 0

civic niche
tender scarab
#

Hmm, now I wonder if it affects some shops and not others. Let me go check something...

Edit: Okay, apparently I'm wrong! Trading does affect buying. Edit 2: Assuming that the buying is from a conventional shop. It won't affect ranger potions or warrior WPS service packs that use their own weird mechanics with flat prices.

rough vault
#

If trading affected purchase costs at consequential transactions like the wps wagon or all merchants using event currency, people would take it seriously.

umbral lotus
proud rune
#

Maybe because the dir hafters were in the same wagon, for round 1 anyways, too.
And for some reason sold less. (I only bought 2 vs 4 of the fels)

rough vault
#

I hope staff refrains from the juicy temptation of using April 1 to troll something about loot this year.

warped escarp
#

i think that would be poorly received... also, reflecting on the pickers offering to pick boxes in-person and the dearth of loot, i think that having a loot cap which many players max in the first 1-2 weeks, and more by week 3, is going to lead to a chronic monthly drain on pickers. like over time, a certain percentage are going to give up on it at the end of each month and not return, and that pool is going to accumulate

rough vault
#

At least the statistics will reveal exactly how many accounts and how many human account owners are really capping. They should all get special Taylor Swift inspired glittering star pins if nothing else, that sing, "I'm the problem, it's me," when rubbed.

umbral lotus
chilly berry
# jolly palm I'm not sold on trading effecting loot cap. As no GM has stepped in and confirme...

RE: 30% lower.

I suspect the new system counts max possible skin value and max possible gem value towards loot cap. I noticed on an account early on last month started getting a reduction after about 6m of actual loot gained. They got unsellable items from DR around that time as well. They’re mid 30s, skinning everything, not purifying or optimizing. Using the locksmith pool.

So yeah. The real cap is much lower for some reason is seems. That’s my guess.

south trail
#

I don't think this has been mentioned as a draw back of the loot changes. I run from town to town and I don't generally keep big sums of silver at every town. Before the loot changes, if I needed silver to stock up the survival kit, take a caravan, boat ride or cart ride, I'd just go kill a few things and be on my way. No, with loot cap I'm trapped. I've had to ask for a few silvers here and there to be on my way. Super annoying having to think about having silver staches all across the world so I don't get stuck.

civic niche
#

I typically carry a 20 count jar of gemstones on my characters for that, but I can certainly see the issue yeah.

south trail
rough vault
#

Has anyone tested the Ithzir crystal edged weapons yet? I sure hope they don't count toward loot cap unless sold as it would be very odious to manage them otherwise.

civic niche
#

The value of those got nerfed on the first loot cap when someone figured out they were selling for so much and made an alt just walk around there and pick them up.

warped escarp
#

i'm also struggling with whether to buy WR. it feels like an upgrade that my endgame gear should have, but i don't see the purpose at this point -- the only difference it makes is that for the first week of the month, i make e.g. 6 trips to town instead of 10. after that, it makes zero difference, unless the loot cap changes significantly going forward in a way which would give me something to carry. but at this point, i could probably drop all my containers altogether, except for one, and be fine.

civic niche
#

WR got a mega nerf bat with the lootcap changes. I can't imagine paying for it these days. At BEST I'd pay for 20%. I guess if you're a massive hoarder that doesn't use lockers, maybe still worth it....maybe.

warped escarp
#

right... i'm tempted to do it anyway with the hope that things change rather than potentially missing out and having to wait for a year, but it feels like i'm gambling on dev changes and FOMO, rather than making a meaningful upgrade that i'm excited about and have been looking forward to!

and i'm definitively not an inventory hoarder, more like a min-maxer; i try to keep myself under 50 items and many are < 1 lb... so the usefulness for me is even slimmer.

give me a reason to WR! i want to want it!

remote egret
civic niche
#

I'm happy to take your extra money if you want to send it to me instead. There is no universe where I'd spend money in the "hopes" that something changes. Just go day trade or something if you want to gamble. Also, there's no FOMO with WR. It's been at every RW for...at least as long as I've been back. They haven't made any indication that will change. You won't miss out, you'll just have delayed gratification if they decide to change things to make it favorable again.

warped escarp
#

yeah. i'll probably do one container and call it a day. and, i'll probably plan to start dropping most of my containers about a week into each month. at least i don't have to worry about SMR encumbrance as much, i guess?...

civic niche
#

WR is off the table for spending, anything that consumes loot in any way is off the table. New loot cap devalued a lot of stuff. Wizards 2nd rule I guess.

Edit for below, stupid 5 minute timer. Weight Reduction.

shrewd mountain
#

Sorry for my ignorance-- what is WR?

remote egret
#

You should never apologize for ignorance! WR=Weight reduction. Reduces the weight of items in that container by a certain % (so 20% in Starsworn's post - 100lbs box becomes 80lbs)

civic niche
#

Keep in mind that reduction happens only after the item is in he container, so you can't use WR to put a 210 pound box in a 200 pound capable container. Also, in many (most) instances, WR only applies when you're actually wearing it, so if you take it off, it can lead to some weird situations.

tender scarab
#

You carefully examine the haon trunk and determine that the weight is about 301 pounds.
Well, weight reduction might be a lot less impressive than before (since no container could even hold this), but on the other hand, crate whistles are better than ever!

Edit:
The gemcutter takes the gold ingot, gives it a careful examination and and says, "I don't have that much spare silver, so I will have to give you a bank note for it." He then hands you a Northwatch bond note for 37,819 silvers.
+23,141 silvers.

chilly berry
#

WR still makes sense for that bag of things we all carry that has a bunch of stuff in it

civic niche
umbral lotus
#

buy bigger bags and WR still makes sense

civic niche
#

Wonder what WR costs on like a 1K capacity bag.

warped escarp
civic niche
#

I didn’t know anyone had put over 200 on that chart. Thanks.

chilly berry
rough vault
#

What's the likelihood of a new item like pixie dust becoming available at RW that would make a box weightless for a minute if sprinkled generously on it? Pouch will create 5 doses a day for a modest cost of 10000 event currency.

umbral lotus
bright pasture
civic niche
tender scarab
# 

[later...]

The gemcutter takes the gold ingot, gives it a careful examination and and says, "I don't have that much spare silver, so I will have to give you a bank note for it."  He then hands you a Northwatch bond note for 93,787 silvers.```
Had to field pick that one. The ingot alone was about 260 pounds!
rough vault
#

Without a crowbar and gloves, I'd like to see how you picked that up.

proud rune
#

May I ask what those wonderous dragonflies are that magically loot coins?

Edit: well damn, they really are peak

chilly tulip
gloomy lark
#

can they be re-sold or were they always attuned?

crimson pond
#

Attuned. And they track lifetime silvers gathered, it's great

tender scarab
#

Honestly, they're the exact kind of item Wyrom should re-release at some point. They're arguably better than ever with higher quantities of silvers per box, albeit fewer boxes.

tender scarab
#

On another note, some good news and bad news.

Despite trying to do so, I haven't been able to repeat my results from last month where my bard seemed to be around 5-6m further into loot cap than expected. My thought was that purifying could have counted toward the bard's loot cap regardless of whether the bard found it.

I've gotten about 7.9m from loot with my bard this month, not counting gem purifying. I've purified somewhere around 6000 gems and the average value they end up at is around 7000. Of course, they have some base value and some percentage of them start off as orbs before I touch them... but even if I assume that only 20% of average value comes from purifying, that would be 8.4m. It would have been enough to push me to hard cap and yet it hasn't. Based on her skin values right now, I think she's still millions shy.

So the good news is that I don't think purification counts against the bard's loot cap, at least if the bard wasn't the one who found the gem.

The bad news is that:

A) The much, much harder thing is figuring out whether purification counts against the character who found the gem (which can be, but isn't necessarily, the bard). I believe that had been Nisugi's conclusion last month, though I'll have to go back and look at how he got there.

B) It also leaves me unable to explain what did happen with my bard last month, since it wasn't purification. [Kontii's reported](#1461872047062908929 message) hitting 1% cap across several accounts and ending up with 30% less loot than expected, and [Lucullan said](#1461872047062908929 message) something similar, which would explain it for me. That's an outlier for me because I haven't seen it outside my bard last month only, but apparently common enough for others that I lean toward Kontii being right that something else is up and/or bugged that's harder for us to track down.

remote egret
#

Jokes on new LC - I have like millions in old diamonds/emeralds that I have yet to purify! (or is that a joke on old LC??)

remote egret
#

Do you think they are saving the impactful bug fixes for the end of the Month? Or...

fierce lynx
remote egret
devout island
#

wow XP is broken
Experience: 7,915,027 Field Exp: 656/1,200
capped, muddled and sitting in a "super node" , I am getting 20 xp per pulse

yes lumnis has expired for the week, but 20??

warped escarp
devout island
#

nope

   Logic (LOG):   100 (30)    ...  100 (30)
civic niche
#

head wound?

devout island
#

nope

mellow gyro
#

Every lumnis or XP boost expired. 20 per is about right

devout island
#

i understand, but its slowwwwww

mellow gyro
#

We used to run like 34 back in the moon/darkstone years, at best

devout island
#

ooo! saturated i get 22. 🙄

chilly tulip
#

are you F2P? If you don’t have a head wound, a nerves wound, or some kind of GM applied scripting penalty I don’t know how you get 22 saturated. Are you 100% regular exp or are you sending some to ascension? Ascension exp isn’t in the XML so it doesn’t show in your pulse tracking

icy ether
#

Scripting penalty?

civic niche
# icy ether Scripting penalty?

You can get various penalties for afk scripting. I don’t know if throttled exp is one but I don’t see why it couldn’t be.

verbal vigil
#

Probably putting exp to ascension.

devout island
#

ahh yes, 50% to asc. that would do it

sleek meadow
#

Have we fixed the things yet?

flint mortar
remote egret
gloomy lark
#

logic bonus is your exp friend, get a couple logic runestaffs/weapons and pull them out when you are resting

civic niche
fierce lynx
rigid sparrow
#

just wanna toss out there cause i'm feeling pretty crappy about gemstone for another 48 hours or so, loot cap and changes that were made seem very extreme and i'm not a fan. At all.

blazing yarrow
#

Question about cash'lo'nae. As we are coming up on the next event soon. Will it stack with the current bonus or should we wait till the bonus expires before buying the next one?

umbral lotus
#

RW is soon so yes, no idea on the other

warped escarp
#

also will players want to consider buying two since the next major event after RW is > 3 months away?

umbral lotus
#

i expect lots of hedged bets so a decent secondary market on them

rough vault
#

Since we now have to schlep to a Lumnis guy to donate, there should be a new interactive tool implemented: Ask person about Lumnis value. This request would provide practical advice about how many hours of hunting you need to justify the cost, especially if you also run Grandfather's eye. Most players won't consistently benefit from having both boosts without a lot of extra focused hunting in a week.

blazing yarrow
#

This is a great question. if the dates stack and you can buy 2 during rw and apply them both that would get you through to August DR. If the dates don't stack does the certificate have an expiration date? Would be ideal to get GM confirmation on this.

gloomy lark
#

they said they no longer have expiration dates few weeks ago at end of DR

blazing yarrow
#

The other question is will the dates stack or do we need to wait till our current time period runs out before starting the next one?

civic niche
warped escarp
#

this is on a level 14 alt, in ogres in RR (level 15) where i've literally never seen anyone else hunting, trying to get gems for deeds: Gems [20]: a blue topaz (2), a piece of yellow jasper, a brown zircon (3), a clear topaz (3), a star diopside (2), a rock crystal, a quartz crystal (5), a clear zircon, a piece of carnelian quartz, a clear sapphire Skins [27]: an orc scalp (15), an ogre tusk (12)
And from trolls in Hidden Valley, which is even higher level, and also empty -- for the record, this character has about 1-2m lifetime loot:

Skins [16]: a troll skin (7), a troll beard (8), a troll toe```
KF was the same. how are people getting enough gems to even buy deeds, much less make some silver, at low levels?

update: oh good, i died trying to get gems for deeds, and still have no deeds. this is fun
rough vault
#

I wonder if the invoker has maintained the same number of patrons given the paucity of wealth, or if Dreaven is now everyone's BFF again.

main field
#

Not only is loot cap super not fun., it has definitely encouraged me to invest more time (and money) in the pursuit of more enjoyable, fun entertainment.

umbral lotus
rotund siren
#

...I've just been discovering the joys of other games on Steam.

cold zephyr
# warped escarp this is on a level 14 alt, in ogres in RR (level 15) where i've literally never ...

Doesn't matter where you hunt with low level characters, the gems you get are absolute trash. You're lucky if any of the gems you find are worth more than 100 silver. Generally they're all in that 7 to 50 silver range. I think on average in that level range of characters you're going to average about 29 silver per gem. Scrape together 50 gems and you'll get about 1450 silver.

Gems are trash at low level. The only way you can actually make decent treasure in low level areas is when you land those 50 pound boxes. Sure, the gems in the box will be about 150 silver (total), the rest of the value will come from jewelry, silvers, ingots and other various items inside that are not gems.

civic niche
wispy forum
#

me too, haven't logged on in 2 weeks, sounds like loot cap is working like a charm

tawny sierra
#

the exp is nice and im gonna keep the sub through my tutelage but I think they are gonna have to make an adjustment to keep my interest.

main field
#

Once you hunt out your cash’o’nael… doesn’t seem like much reason to continue … seems more productive to invest your time and resources somewhere else than the lands … it’s like crazy diminishing returns on time and enjoyment

rigid sparrow
#

I started in an age where multi accounting and interacting with your own characters was very frowned upon. It's ingrained in me so multi accounting is not something i want to explore. The new loot cap has got me thinking about if i want to continue playing or not for the first time in many years. I don't want to be one to complain and complain about this, but i feel as if players in my position with a single account that were not contributing to the excessive silvers being generated have been hit very hard by loot changes in a 100% negative way. I want to see an upside, but all i see is people getting 7m exp in 2 months instead of 6-9 months, which is wrong imo (the grind for exp is what made me come back to GS time and time again over the last 30 years) but whatever, and those that have spent years building a character in order to generate silvers for themselves cut off at the knees.

warped escarp
#

if the intention was for people to open additional accounts, that's not working, either, because making 1m silver over 250k EXP of hard grinding in near-ghost towns is not fun and i'm about to close the second account i'd reopened

edited to add: i had hoped to just hunt one character, as well, but the loot cap is so harsh that after 3 weeks of grinding with essentially zero loot, i decided to try an alt. but that's so awful that i'm to close up that shop. also evidencing what Nairdin said above; the punitive feel of this on single character-players is quite potent

umbral lotus
#

I am glad I just hunt one character, you people are all nuts!

rigid sparrow
warped escarp
#

as someone who relatively recently tried to shrink my stable to one character and went all-in on him, yeah, this feels awful

umbral lotus
civic niche
warped escarp
#

an unintended consequence here is that there's now zero reason to hunt areas with low loot pressure on low-level characters. i was happy to explore KF and RR and bring a little life to them, but the loot is just as bad there, so i may as well be in the Landing and under these circumstances i'll never touch other towns again.

civic niche
umbral lotus
tawny sierra
#

ive barely gotten into ascension/gemstone systems but they seem kind of boring and expensive. rushing people to endgame while also removing their access to wealth and the mid to high end economy isn't going to keep me around

civic niche
rigid sparrow
umbral lotus
civic niche
#

This feels like a which billionaire has more sort of situation. (Not that I'm suggesting I'm "gs poor" by any stretch.)

warped escarp
#

what are the indirect consequences of this change? a list might be helpful... from what i've seen:
-top hunters feeling dejected for 3+ weeks/month
-low players feel like they'll never 'catch up' to longer-term players
-insufficient gems or skins for: deeds, chrisms, bounties
-further abandonment of small towns and quiet hunting areas because loot pressure is now functionally irrelevant in many spots
-what else?

civic niche
unique oyster
split timber
#

+Finding a huge treasure chest a small race person didn't pick up feels like a big win

rough vault
#

Hobbits only take small chests back from adventures and prefer rewards of mushrooms, pumpkins, ale, and tobacco.

umbral lotus
rotund siren
#

...I feel like the game is dying in the name of lootcap.

rotund siren
#

Any chance of new players - actual new players - have gone out the window because of how screwed low level characters are at this point.

warped escarp
rotund siren
#

This is like that meme from reddit:

I gave my fantasy world a fully functional economy and now my hero can't afford the quest.
Spent four months building a historically accurate medieval economy, wheat prices, taxes systems, guild structures, the whole thing. very proud. very thorough.
my protagonist needs a horse, a sword, and three days of travel rations to begin the prophecy.
he has 6 copper.
a horse costs 40 silver. I checked. I built the conversion table myself. i used world anvil to track the trade routes and mythrillo to log every merchant in the kingdom. every single one of them charges market rate. I did not build in a protagonist discount.
the dark lord is going to destroy the world because my hero cannnot afford a horse.

Right now I feel like Elanthia will die because new players starve to death.

warped escarp
#

yup, definitely needs to be addressed, it's really demoralizing (as someone who leveled an alt to 15 this week, and despite very much knowing what he's doing, made almost nothing in terms of loot)

rigid sparrow
#

I agree with one portion of this. low level under 20 characters should basically have no access to loot. this prevents people from rolling up a warrior/paladin, going voln for the early AS/DS boosts, and hunting wraiths for hours without resting except to drop off boxes and empty your gem/loot bags at npcs. you can make millions a day that easily back then which is a problem that needed to not exist anymore.

#

loot cap for free accounts makes sense. loot reduction after a point makes sense. loot reduction to 1% makes no sense and makes me an unhappy consumer. I said it right away and i'm still feeling the same. Like i sat down to a buffet and stayed too long, now the manager is mad and put up a sign that wasn't there when i walked in about a limit.
Not everyone is affected this way. most don't play their account 10 hours a day, I do. so I feel like this change says I was getting too much for only having 1 account.

cold zephyr
rotund siren
rigid sparrow
#

this came up in another conversation-
Do folks hunting at loot cap affect loot pressure in an area even though they're only getting 1%? Does loot pressure even need to be a thing anymore?

rotund siren
cold zephyr
#

Loot cap from a mechanical standpoint I can understand. However in actual game play it just doesn't make any sense.....one day all your creature kills are lugging around silvers, boxes, wands, heavy orbs (after heavy orb, after heavy orb.....) and then all of a sudden the creatures collude that they feel you've been making too much off of them so they all start carrying no treasure.

That just sounds stupid.

@rigid sparrow
It's the gems that makes low level loot feel like crap.
I've hunted creatures from level 2 up to level 18 last month (on a couple of different characters). I didn't track everything, a bit was missed, but here's the general run down from what I did track:
24 hunts (they consisted of being generally 15 minutes)
From the 24 hunts, from items/silvers I made 343,030 silver

I found 81 total boxes in that hunting range
Average silver per box (selling everything) = 15,445
Total silver = 1,251,047
If I used the NPC locksmith I would have only kept 973,795 silver.
Using the pool (not including tips) would have let me keep 1,112,421 silver.

In all I made almost 1.6mil below level 20. You can make silver in low level areas, but it's going to be generally from heavy boxes. One of the more impressive boxes (silver-wise from selling all content) that I've found from all my record keeping last month (I haven't bothered this month, too time consuming) came from a level 10 creature. All the content in the box netted me 72k. Laughably the gems only valued 87 silver from 3 gems.

peak flax
#

There's an entire ocean of space between 'you can make millions killing wraiths all day' and what we have now. I think nerfing low level loot a little would have been fine, but they absolutely neutered it. If I had started playing after the changes instead of six months before, I never would have lasted because everything would have seemed unattainable. And it effectively locks new players out of Lumnis Donate too, it's incredibly rough right now.

slate bluff
#

I am sure Wyrom will see the data and hopefully make some slight tweaks although I think most of the people complaining here are the majorly affected power hunters. If 70% of the players still are not affected by the lootcap he will know.
I definitely have a hard choice when I lose ~30m extra capacity every month then have to make event spending decisions. Feels bad.

peak flax
#

I spent 2-3 days in Stormpeak hunting just 2-3 hours a day and made 2 million silver. Suddenly I'm much more concerned about the loot cap... and it feels weird to view a sudden windfall with concern instead of excitement.

cold zephyr
# slate bluff I am sure Wyrom will see the data and hopefully make some slight tweaks although...

That's the problem though, if you're just going by numbers.

I hunted maybe half of the days of the month this month and a couple of those days it was just one or two hunts and I've pulled in 7mil+. I'm not trying to loot cap, I'm just playing. However, my choice to avoid playing more so I'm not hitting the softcap and getting reduced loot is why I've pulled back hunting so much this month.

I'm not enjoying it feeling like I have to keep tabs on where I am so I'm not getting hindered down the line with my normal game play experience. It's no fun avoiding being punished with reduced loot if I hit the soft loot cap (which is surprisingly easy) and it's no fun being punished if I hit the soft loot cap.

civic niche
#

I rarely even spend silver on anything. It still sucks not getting any for 3/4 of my play time. It’s just terrible. I really hope we see some changes after this month of data collection.

rough summit
#

Not sure how GMs respond to players concerns but players spending less time in game does not affect gemstones bottom line. Players with multiple accounts have a distinct advantage with the change to loot cap. I also doubt enough players will close their account(s) due to the changes.

civic niche
#

If people find other avenues to amuse themselves, they eventually cancel things. So, maybe, maybe not. There were a not insignificant number of cancellations when the changes happened. There were some big dollar players who quit. Is any of that enough to matter, I don't know, I don't have the numbers, but at some point, it does. There's also people fence sitting now, to see if the pendulem swings back the other way some.

I don’t even really like PoE but I’m enjoying it at the moment because there’s a world of loot. So much loot.

rough summit
#

I believe Wyrm mentioned that numbers during DR were quite high relative to recent years. With the traction that this thread has it seems the people who are most vocal are still playing hoping for change. It has always interested me when game designers have a specific goal in mind that widely differs from what the player base wants.

civic niche
#

The DR post was....odd. There were "new" metrics in there that hadn't been mentioned before like player engagement or something, and no hard BS numbers like we've seen in the past. So, the great DR kind of felt like a moving goal post to me.

split hamlet
#

It's just not fun finding no loot for half the month. I don't know why that is so difficult to understand for some people.

rough summit
split hamlet
#

No

tawny sierra
#

pretty sure hes saying that games should be fun

rough summit
#

I don’t see anyone saying they shouldn’t be. Who are the people that are having a difficult time seeing that?

rotund siren
#

I think the point he was making is that it appears that the devs are having a hard time seeing that a game that isn't fun...isn't fun. And the lootcap operating the way it is isn't fun.

rough summit
#

So when I post are you referring to the devs… and his reply is no, he is actually referring to the devs. Right

rigid sparrow
#

i think he's referring to anyone who is saying that these changes are fine. they definitely are not.

#

As a player, i'm saddened. Gemstone is supposed to take a long time to get to cap and that has an express lane now. That is a whole other conversation though.
As a consumer, Loot cap has me concerned about my own experience in game. I would like to see some indication that staff is either hearing the very vocal community here and considering adjustments, or reviewing the numbers, or anything really. I don't know if I want to continue purchasing this product if it remains this way. If they have been on a different channel and i missed it, i apologize.

rough summit
rigid sparrow
rotund siren
#

Only in that it creates more of a bottleneck in cap/postcap hunting areas.

split hamlet
#

I do actually think having the "majority" of the playerbase be capped is a GOOD thing.

rough summit
tender scarab
#

At this point, more Elite Ascension and hopefully archetypes are the main or possibly only mechanical things I'm looking forward to, so I agree on preferring that more characters be capped. I'd like to see a groundswell of players who want these things as much as I want them.

flat tusk
# rotund siren Only in that it creates more of a bottleneck in cap/postcap hunting areas.

This at least allows the dev deep to focus on this part of the player experience if the majority of the players are here. It'll be a while before my characters hit cap, but given the current state of the playerbase it doesn't make sense for devs to be working on new hunting grounds for level 50 characters. So might as well just have more people capped so everyone can enjoy Sailor's Grief 2: More Sailors More Grief.

rough summit
tender scarab
#

#ascension message

Archetypes are builds, made up of Ascension abilities, that would be spread out through Elite and Legendary tier abilities.  e.g. Arcane Trickster might learn Invisibility (916) as an Elite ability, but then there's another ability that builds off it in the Legendary tier (that also requires the Elite ability as a prerequisite).```
That was the idea, at least at the time. Basically diversification within a profession. In this case, Arcane Trickster was one of the rogue archetypes along with Assassin, Deadeye, Duelist, Locksmith, and Thug. IIRC they were, in order, a more magical rogue, a conventional ambusher, an archer, an open rogue, a more dedicated locksmith, and a Mug-heavy loot hunter.

Whether any of that--or even the entire archetype concept--is still in future plans or not, I don't know, but I certainly hope so since I'm all about distinct characters in mechanics or RP!
rough summit
south trail
warped escarp
#

there are definitely new players, and it only takes a few for them to tell their friends etc. -- i think that GS vastly undervalues new players and the new player experience. this has been my soapbox of choice for a while. they are definitely out there, but GS needs to make it easier for them to engage. this does not make it easier. the reason i've written a million guides is to help address that, but i can only do so much as a player -- i think more concerted effort towards ease of access would go a long way towards the game's longterm health.

remote egret
#

Such a huge point of disagreement locking archetypes behind ascension.

chilly tulip
#

Archetypes don’t exist so they’re not locked out for anyone lol. Also they could make it cost 1 ATP if they want.

cold zephyr
# remote egret Such a huge point of disagreement locking archetypes behind ascension.

Keep people in it for the long game with ascension. Look at Transcend Destiny, you need to have spent 150 ATP before you can even start training up in this elite skill.

My guess is a lot of these archetypes will have multiple requirements of common ascension skills, plus multiple elite skills that will require a large dump of ATPs and so on and even more so if you want legendary skills. It's a giant time sink for the end game.

I'd rather see archetypes available outside of ascension, but that would require a complete rewrite of the professions and not something they'd take the time to do because it would be a massive job with a lot of checks/balances. Through ASC they can pick and choose what skills/abilities can simply be unlocked through individual player.

rough vault
#

Just as Elite transcendence has a significant prerequisite, they should have made any ascension learning require 15M of core training first, and continued to link ascension learning with further core experience until 25M. I would also overhaul the lower levels and revitalize the value of upgrades. Instead of a level based requirement to use mithril, it should be a kill count requirement of significance using 0x before you can use 1x etc. The game is too focused now on acceleration to cap and transcendence. I personally am not a fan of anything about ascension hunting. Gemstones were an embarrassingly buggy system that continue to be tweaked anyway. Most who have been hunting them a year now are bored with it or frustrated by it anyway.

civic niche
#

I'm really not holding my breath for anything amazing out of ASC. It's been out what, 5 yeras now, and we've had 2 new skills in that entire time that aren't cut and paste skills/stats and add resistances.

umbral lotus
crimson pond
#

Giant boxes are great

umbral lotus
granite tartan
crimson pond
#

How many times has that actually happened since the changes? I find a lot of boxes, and I can count on one hand the number that would've required outside assistance as a small race. It keeps getting brought up as if it's a regular occurrence, but I don't think is as predominant of an issue as this channel seems to imply.

granite tartan
blazing violet
#

I'm clearly in the minority on this, but the push to make more people cap and faster makes me sad. I have quite a few capped and multicapped characters, and every time I cap one I switch my focus to a different one because I personally have way more fun with the precap experience. I'd rather there was a way for me to not cap a character I'm playing, which is why I've always been in favor of having the choice to divert 100% of my experience to ascension prior to cap. I don't have to use lumnis donate or cash'lo'nae or any of the new stuff, and I generally don't on my precap characters, but I'm still going to cap them at some point if I play them. Like so many other things, it seems like it would be simple to allow players like me to have fun the way we want to.

umbral lotus
crimson pond
# umbral lotus Since the changes I have found 8 200+ pound boxes, 2 of them found boxes left by...

Not all 200lb+ boxes would fit the criteria of "not able to be picked up at all", but even with that benchmark that doesn't sound like a lot. I'm willing to expand my "on one hand" to include the other hand for counting - Still doesn't seem like a big problem to me! Creating a choice to seek a resolution or take the loss on a small percentage of loot seems reasonable to me.

Methais' assertion on a dev-player disconnect re: fun doesn't really feel all that helpful to me without qualifying the who. Not every player finds the same things fun, in the same way that I imagine not all GMs have the same opinions of the various things that are implemented. The option can't be "only release changes that everyone finds fun" - nothing would ever change.

I'm not going to rehash my stances on all the aspects of the loot change, only summarize that I'm happy with the current state of loot cap / loot generation in the context of postcap hunting. I still have goals to chase outside of this system (and in fact it makes it easier to achieve exp related goals later in the month when I have less loot to manage!). I don't have the proper perspective to assess it on any pre-cap scope. I do think that the market will still require time to adjust (e.g. player service costs), and with that will be interim growing pains.

umbral lotus
#

We have people that play halfling or gnome characters saying they feel they need to change race to be on a fairer playing field and I think that's a serious issue.

crimson pond
# umbral lotus I would think all 200+ pound boxes would be impossible to carry by the smaller r...

Not any more, Nyxus removed the body weight restriction. There is still a max carry capacity which is still lower for small races, but my ranger was able to pick up a nearly 300lb box (with a fair set of modifiers). Re: containers - that's what disks are for.

Re: race change - I've asserted a few times that net average encumbrance still feels basically the same to me, so I don't fully understand this perspective as as a result of any of these changes.

cold zephyr
# crimson pond How many times has that *actually* happened since the changes? I find a lot of b...

Before the change, how often did anyone complain about having to leave a box or needing it field picked because no one could lift it or small races, at least, couldn't lift it? It was a rarity. I see a lot more posts now and I've heard a few thoughts on the esp requesting help for a box someone couldn't lift.

The new way boxes are handled it is more common than before, even if it's still not very common. I hunt with a few characters that are dwarf/half-krolvin/giantman and they can usually carry a lot of weight before being encumbered. I have had a couple of hunts where after just finding two boxes I was encumbered (with the heaviest one being in the disk) to where I had to leave, deal with the boxes and then go back to hunting 10 minutes later. Sure I could have just ran to the locksmith pool, dropped them off and been back on my way, but I don't like giving up 15% of my loot to the pool fee or 30% to the NPC locksmith.

I cannot, for the life of me, ever remember having this issue before the changes. Usually I'd come back with 6-12 boxes on these characters with hardly being encumbered (if at all). I'd off load, sell stuff and by the time my boxes were picked I'd be ready to head back out to hunt. It was a neat, convenient cycle I could follow. Now when I get 2-3 boxes they tend to end my hunt. I personally find it tedious and annoying having to stop a hunt (because my mind isn't full or my 200lb capacity containers are full, or I haven't finished my bounty) just because boxes are obnoxiously heavy now. Some people enjoy this, others don't. There needs to be a correction on the weight of the boxes still to find a happy medium between those that enjoy the "big, heavy" boxes to those of use that don't.

rough vault
#

I used to anticipate a goodie in a box if the town npc locksmith wanted 6k to open it. Anything under that was just loot. Now most boxes cost 6k to open and they are usually not special.

dusky kernel
flint mortar
rough vault
#

So...if a critter drops a malodorous ogrehair cloak that pawns for 2000, that value counts against the loot cap even if I choose not to pick it up to sell; and if I kill a troll king and skin it, the value of the pelt counts too whether I sell it or save it, but if I choose not to skin the troll or I ruin the pelt, there is no effect on loot cap? We clearly need a flag to prevent finding of any unwanted loot types. Set loot flag no to clothing, food, gems under 4000, feras, drake, etc.

civic niche
#

I don't think anyone has tried to parse the data down to what skin quality are you hitting lootcap with. It's probably not even possible. Skin values change with loot pressure and quality.

tender scarab
# dusky kernel what does players wanting things have to do with players getting things 🤣

Either A) when what players want lines up with what they'll pay Simucoins for or B) It happens when what players want lines up with what GMs want.

I understand the pushback (from you and others) because, even to my eyes, B is a bizarrely unlikely occurrence with capped content. But I'm actually making a case around A. My whole scenario is predicated on people buying up Cash'lo'nae for however many years and wanting more reason to keep buying in no matter how much exp they get.

In a sense, A is actually a subcategory of B. Things happen when players want to pay for what the game wants to sell.

granite tartan
gloomy lark
#

so if you don’t skin at all, then you aren’t hit with any lootcap related to value or quality of potential skins you could have created? that’s how I understand it from previous comments

granite tartan
main field
tender scarab
#

Yesterday I was logged in for about seven hours and hunted three times, mostly just standing around idling the rest of the time. So far today I've been logged in for an hour and a half and done actual nothing besides check on playershop inventory. The motivation's dead once the loot is. On the bright side, it'll be back in a little over eight hours!

tawny sierra
rough vault
#

Perhaps what we need now is a newly discovered alluvial deposit near a kimberlite pipe where players can pan for placer nuggets, dig and sift for gems, and otherwise find loot and experience not tied to lootcap or hunting in a new rock hound craft. Fishing just needs experience and good value for big gourmet fish to work this vector too. Sure, it's not the fix most want, but it would be something.

main field
#

I also would like to point out if people believe the common solution to loot cap is … become MA and open up more accounts to circumvent it …

If you hit loot cap on all your accounts within X amount of time and the rest of the time there is still little *sense of accomplishment * … or questions of .. why bother to do more for more if you can do less for the same amount …

The end destination will still be similar even if the journey wasn’t exactly the same.

unique oyster
#

I wonder if the GMs realized how quickly people can hit the lootcap. A lot of players had no idea you could generate 15m in a few days.All this reminded of a quote from Soren Johnson, a lead designer for the Civilization games: Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. I think players are hurting themselves by hunting too hard and the GMs need to find a way prevent players from exhausting themselves.

warped escarp
civic niche
fierce lynx
# unique oyster I wonder if the GMs realized how quickly people can hit the lootcap. A lot of pl...

Regardless of how quickly you can, based on what most people actually did it shouldn't be an impact (as far as hitting loot cap is concerned) for the majority of the player base.

I could hit loot cap if I wanted to focus on that but in practice I never once have. Assuming most players haven't changed their behaviour in the past couple months I am assuming most players still are not hitting loot cap.

gloomy lark
fierce lynx
# gloomy lark this is the crux of it

Agree the mixed design goals / message / insert whatever this is called here is broken.
Do you want me to hunt and kill 30k things in a month or not? Because you are incentivizing me to do so while at the same time hitting me with a stick for doing so.

gloomy lark
#

also just wanted to toss out this idea I saw on esp that I think is really good, allow the LOOT BOOSTs to not be affected by loot cap, so people that hit loot cap could use them later in the month to have some hunts with loot to hold them over (not the end all solution but a nice lil tweak that I think would help)

tender scarab
#

I've been logged on for five hours and 40 minutes now. I guess I'll go do my first hunt.

Edit: Heh, and in the last three days of my +50% exp scroll too.

tawny sierra
#

is he queuing up the April Fools post for midnight?

image.png
fervent hatch
#

Just checking in here at the end of the month. We are going through the data and we'll need to make some adjustments. While the optics are likely there are a lot less silvers now, the reality is, these changes barely moved the needle. The bottom 95% made more silvers and the top 5% was right on track of where things were before the changes. The only difference is the top 1% didn't quite hit over 32mil anymore.

I certainty realize this isn't the best solution. We turned a lot of knobs his time and we dove right into it. And it wasn't enough. So we need to restrategize and come up with a plan that works. We're not going to simply roll this back, but we aren't going to keep the current implementation either.

The goal isn't to create a fair market where we try to dismiss players who put in the work to earn while giving more to the people who don't put in the effort. It's to make sure we can keep silvers worthwhile and to keep providing value to them without hyper inflating all prices to match top earners.

We'll announce something soon, I can't give an exact date, because we are going to analyze the data beyond big number too big. We put a lot of effort into this. I give back as much as I can to the GS economy. I sacrifice a lot of time to make sure enjoyable events can happen with silver and I continue to fight for CLAIM to exist, because I find it very important.

We'll be in touch soon. Not rsn, just soon as we can.

fervent hatch
minor falcon
#

If I were Wyrom I would just get that thing from the simpsons that just kept hitting Homer's keyboard and just let that go in this thread for days. hahaha

fervent hatch
tawny sierra
#

can we have not a 5 minute timer now

fervent hatch
#

As for the Fash item, they won't stack, but we'll figure out how we want to work that in. Accounting (not Chris in Billing) will have to get over it.

warped escarp
#

the degree of consternation these changes caused to gain so little benefit is really striking. also, how are people earning close to 32m when the cap is 15m and then 1%? i've been coming back from SoS when bags that are literally empty for weeks; i don't understand how anyone made even past 20m

fervent hatch
#

I also know this is always hard to believe, but there are thousands of unique players who play GS. The average playtime is a little over an hour. And that is removing anyone who just logs in and out for login rewards. So there is a big pool of players not represented here.

fervent hatch
#

The bottom 95% didn't really make less in March. The median was actually higher.

warped escarp
#

i totally understand that this thread is a very-vocal, very-minority -- i'm also curious how the bottom 95% made more than before. i'm hearing a lot of new players complaining that they aren't making anything from hunting anymore, and i leveled an alt myself and had the same experience, at least in the lower levels (i posted some specifics further up). i'm not disagreeing with the rationale or motivation at all, i'm just truly confused by the results! i actually like the idea of silver being more scarce; i just wish it didn't mean 3 weeks of empty loot bags. the loophole/oversight/GMA spectrum makes sense because at least for the way i was doing things, it was utterly barren for weeks

i wonder what things will look like once that loophole/oversight/GMA is closed? what happens if you remove people who made >16m or so, i.e. more than the intended actual cap in a month?

slate bluff
#

15mil of lootcap and 15mil from Wyrm lockboxes??

fervent hatch
#

We moved the needle hundreds of millions. Not billions like the goal was. I do think part of it is people get down and out by the negativity and might think they are impacted. Lot of herd negativity can happen. Just like real life, most people are undecided where they land, and will follow the lead.

#

I've never used Lich, but I do think something people are using are also reporting very high number recordings from some script. Might be something to look into from those script maintainers.

tawny sierra
granite tartan
#

What's the biggest everyday silver drain right now?

warped escarp
#

i'm also curious how so many people discovered the same loophole/oversight/GMA, enough to move the majority of 1% hunters over 20m, and again what removing those from the stats would change. as someone who isn't exploiting a loophole, it's not falling into negativity -- i literally have had empty bags for about 3 weeks. it is not fun. i think that considering the L/O/G issue a separate issue, and looking at the people who are capped on loot but not doing that, is the place to address the player experience that's being raised here

fervent hatch
#

Right now, 94 people hit loot cap this month. There are 1,782 people who did not. And there are a lot of zero earners we don't include.

crimson pond
#

Is a 1%er a player, or a character?

fervent hatch
#

Loot cap is account based.

rancid prism
#

Names, we want names! pitchforkandtorch

calm bay
#

If every skin I sell is 10s, did I hit that 15mil? I don't track. Eventually I just started learning artisan skills instead

fervent hatch
granite tartan
#

Everyday, but both too

cold zephyr
# unique oyster I wonder if the GMs realized how quickly people can hit the lootcap. A lot of pl...

It is a lot easier to gain silver since the change. When you go out hunting you should usually see 1-3 boxes, which used to be 3-6. When you opened those 3-6 boxes you'd be lucky to see 50k out of all of it. Now you open maybe 2 boxes a hunt and you can easily pull 100k just from two boxes. Granted that's a bit extreme, but certainly is possible. Now, when you have 3 - 80lb boxes and they all 4-8k in silver and a 10-20k ingot plus whatever other goodies are in there, seeing 20K+ a box is pretty simple.

Couple that with 4+ heavy quartz orbs or cubes (roughly 500 silver a pop), the 1-3 scrolls, the 3-8 wands, the various gems (which are trash for pre-20 levels and not much better at levels 20-35), jewelry, skins, dropped silver and so on you can easily pull in just 50k a hunt from non-box loot itself in some areas.

Generating 350k an hour takes me a bit of work. Generating 250k an hour is pretty easy, but requires a little effort and getting 100k an hour is simple. If I were to maintain those levels I'd hit 10mil soft cap in:
350k / hr = 29 hours
250k / hr = 40 hours
100k / hr = 100 hours

My fear here is that the GMs will notice this and reduce how fast you can accumulate treasure and still keep the loot cap the same. This way they keep the low loot cap and drag out how long it takes to hit soft and hard cap.

rough vault
#

You should just analyze capped characters...what percentage hit loot cap? What is the median loot in that group? What is the median hours played in that group? The problem is not the player in game 60 hours a week grinding...it's the player able to hit loot cap in 10 hours who then hunts 60

proud rune
#

Bottom 95% is a percentage includes whomst? Can we not break that down abit better?

Us, and I'm definitely one of them, lumped into a whole undefined bunch when that 95 makes up a
vastly different set/subset/etc of people is interesting to me.
That is a lot of levels there to say the median of the bottom feeders is the same, or higher.

I do understand addressing the 1%, as, from all accounts they are generally more similiar in nature.
Is that the focus? Balancing the 1%?

Very low levels seem to have sparse loot. I'm at lvl 90 myself and play quite abit. Is my loot just focused on the median 95% as a whole?

I'm not a math, or dataset, person. I hate numbers but even I can see that there's more slices to this pie than 1% and 95%.
I also know I'm in the minority of the more vocal here.

crimson pond
fervent hatch
# granite tartan Everyday, but both too

I'd have to go through it to see which system is taking the lead. But CLAIM outpaces anything ever. One year of CLAIM EVENT is more than every EG combined dating back to 1999.

#

(excluding the 2006 and 2009 EG)

tender scarab
#

The top 5% landing exactly where they were is unsurprising to me and the top 1% not getting to 32m is also unsurprising to me.

The bottom 95% making more silvers than before is... no, actually, that's unsurprising to me too. People in here have been reporting gems being terrible at low level, but gems aren't all of the loot, so I can just imagine how the new boxes would be worth more overall. But even if they're actually worth exactly the same, the new loot cap seems more within reach, so maybe people just felt more motivated to aim for it.

Edit: Great point below about more reason for more people to hunt longer with new Temple of Lumnis. Or Cash'lo'nae, for that matter.

devout bobcat
#

I've been hunting more because of the new 5x lumnis, so I'm definitely making more vs pre loot cap. Also soft cap feels like an obtainable goal, so I do try to hit it each month.

tender condor
#

That is likely a big part of it. top earners had no change in their play time. A lot of bottom 95% people are actively hunting like 6-20 hours more than they maybe previously were due to grift + cash

fervent hatch
#

Let me see if average playtime is up for March in about 4 hours.

#

It doesn't show me just yet.

minor falcon
#

I don’t think I hit the loot cap on any of my characters. I just wish I could sell ingots from containers at least. Heh

I might of ventured into soft cap territory on a character maybe…

proud rune
#

I have been hunting quite a bit. I did little before these loot changes, but soft cap does not seem anywhere possible for me.
Perhaps that is a function of loot pressure where I hunt, or other things not applicable here.
But soft cap? Can't see it.

fervent hatch
#

But the last few messages sound more like, hey these are really good changes for the whole game. But like I mentioned, we're going to go over the numbers and restrategize. Make sure our goals are clear and we're designing the game with those goals in mind.

#

Maybe we'll sell bridges for big silver sinks too.

devout bobcat
#

When you say you are making adjustments, which direction will you be adjusting things? Or are you unsure yet?
Edit: I love the Three Billy Goats Gruff reference

warped escarp
#

i think the problem is with players who: a) do hit loot cap, and b) are not GMAing around it somehow

fervent hatch
#

This is a game, the aim is fun.

gloomy lark
#

appreciate the update!

cold zephyr
# fervent hatch I'd have to go through it to see which system is taking the lead. But CLAIM out...

I liked the CLAIM EVENT boxes prior to the experience changes. Allowed me to get a RPA orb to help expedite resource gain. Line up the orb with the start of Lumnis and you can have about 40k resource by the time the 3x lumnis ends. The RPA orbs are useless to me now that resource is a static gain over 30exp per pulse. You should find something better to offer as a secondary prize in the claim event boxes. Take DR for example, offer up a smithy invite - I like those. I never saw one out of the 50 sewer runs I had from using gift books from this DR and a few I left over from last DR. Because of that I avoided putting time/effort/money into DR.

I'd also like to suggest that allow folks to use silver to access entry to the smithy, but it still requires BS for the actual service. This helps you guys with two things you want to accomplish; 1) encourage folks to earn BS, hopefully through the Simucoin store and 2) give a way for folks to spend silvers to help drain them. In return, players earn another useful place to spend silvers because right now there really isn't anything outside of the CLAIM EVENT boxes.

fervent hatch
#

Yeah, I know the smithy mechanic is outdated. It was new (and annoying to code) at the time.

tender scarab
#

I wonder to what degree spending on the Gemstones system is down. The estimate before was that people's grinding was adding [around 1.5 billion](#game-chatter message), but also that spending on it was [draining about the same amount](#game-chatter message).

So if it happens to be that people are spending less on that and yet still generating silver from extra hunting, then the changes might have moved the needle more than it looks.

fervent hatch
#

@granite tartan biggest drain looks to be west gate entrance in the Landing (it's almost tomorrow).

devout bobcat
#

Okay that's hilarious.

tawny sierra
fervent hatch
gusty crow
fervent hatch
#

To answer some questions that went silent in here. The goal is also not to make things like trading, purifying, chisels, etc worthless. We just need to strike a balance. I really want to be able to continue to offer everything I can for silver. I am your biggest advocate. I just want to get it under control in some way.

fervent hatch
split hamlet
#

I'd still like to see what a reduction in value when an item SELLs would look like. Control the cap via selling instead of via looting.

Also, I don't see how it's possible for someone to get 32m in this loot cap system. Sounds like a tracking bug.

proud rune
fervent hatch
#

Maybe we'll sell entries to GS][ for lots of silver. Explore the Jugg for lots of silver. And then get super mad at me because those areas are so antiquated.

fervent hatch
ashen carbon
#

Well, that's a new one for me

>weigh ingot
You carefully examine the gold ingot and determine that the weight is about 197 pounds.
The jeweler Tanzania takes the gold ingot and inspects it carefully before saying, "I'll give you 58,088 silvers for it if you want to sell."```
warped escarp
#

so please take this with a grain of salt, i'm not a coder, but this is from parsing my most recent logs:
in short: ``` Total kills : 1321
Kills w/ loot : 13
Total silver : 3,178
Total items : 10

------------------------------------------------------------
    1x  fossilized bessho lizard spur
    1x  large grey pearl
    1x  pale oasis sapphire
    1x  star sapphire
    2x  steel lockpick
    1x  variegated violet tanzanite
    2x  white opal
    1x  woven leaf green slippers
```i don't understand how anyone is getting 32m+... this is >1300 kills for... 5k silver? maybe?
📎 message.txt
tender scarab
#

Purifying is by far the most immediate thing that leaps to mind for how people could have gotten noticeably over the loot cap, so I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of curtailing silvers while retaining value to 1004. I was very surprised that I couldn't prove that it was counting against loot cap (and, if anything, managed to convince myself in testing that it wasn't).

Edit 2: Second most immediate thing would be working the locksmith pool. Haven't done any rigorous testing on that one yet, like what happens if a locksmith races to 15m in a few days and then works the pool the rest of the month.

fervent hatch
#

Those methods are not issues. I was just scrolling back and saw some comments.

gusty crow
#

Timing is horribad on this, you might have squeezed this in before April 1, but ... I think Miss Newsby needs to wait until April 2 to run this headline so it is not seen as any kind of joke by people who know darn good and well they did not make more money after the changes.

fervent hatch
#

Yeah, I won't do the annoying notification thing this year.

#

I will up my game somehow.

#

Remember that neckchain year? That was both really funny and probably the most angry people have been.

fast cipher
proud rune
#

Well I know the easy layup announcement for the first is:
Troll bridges for sale

devout bobcat
#

Bring on the shenanigans. The neckchain got me when I ran ;zesttest, and the final action was WEAR. I laughed.

tender condor
#

i don't think it's actually that hard to get into the 20s. If you were making 2m a day before lootcap, which is a lot of hunting but entirely attainable and not even that much by BIG ONE PERCENTER standards, you're still making 200k a day. If you hit semi-hard cap in i dunno, 10 days you have 20 days at 200k or another 4m and 2m a day is a low benchmark. If you're a 5m a day person even keeping the 10day mark for semi-hard cap that's 10m extra so 25m for the month

edit: to be clear i think all of those scenarios are a silly amount of hunting in general, just completely within range of the top earners typical play patterns

edit2: er wait, i'm thinking 10% not 1% nevermind you're doing gma

gusty crow
warped escarp
# fast cipher Bounty reward accumulation. Unless Wyrom is refering to something else but I wo...

i considered that, but it's hard to imagine that that would be considered a loophole... it's kind of the core hunting mechanic of the game. and bounties just don't pay that much... i'm not sure what the average is, but if you made 5k per bounty, and turn in literally every 10 minutes for 12 hours a day, you still wouldn't make enough. that would be 2,160 turn-ins * 5k = 10.8m. i run bounties intensively and i've completed 2,521 since i made my character like 9 months ago. i think it has to be something else

fervent hatch
#

Yeah, the likely culprit is just saving gems and such to pop over. That's not an issue. But maybe some other stuff happening out there.

civic niche
#

So I'm 3.2% of the accounts hitting loot cap....

fervent hatch
#

There was someone who found an infinite silver glitch a few years back.

tropic creek
#

Can I have a big silver sink for my house? Then everyone can go in there and drop their silvers right down the silver sink.

fervent hatch
#

But you have to supply the silvers.

proud rune
fervent hatch
#

Hah! No, this was a bad case of GMA. Had to put them in timeout forever.

#

Might have been more than a few years ago. Time is just an illusion.

warped escarp
#

i just want to be able to play one character and not have empty bags for 75% of my playtime (3 weeks/month)! that's all i'm asking. i know it's a complex issue to work out how that goes, and appreciate the time into finding a fix.

split hamlet
# 
16,346,029
15,569,497
15,261,897
15,027,052
 9,551,554

Here's where I'm sitting for the month.

(There could be some deposit/withdraw errors as it's not a perfect tracking system, almost like we need a LOOT CAP command or for it to show in wealth.)

tender scarab
devout bobcat
#

Just please don't do anything to slow down the 95% further.

civic niche
fervent hatch
rancid prism
#

I still have that neckchain. I have definitely forgotten what it was, tried to use it, and found out the hard way. It will definitely also happen again.

fervent hatch
#

The gift that keeps on giving!

tropic creek
# fervent hatch But you have to supply the silvers.

Hmmm, Scrooge's vault has ~200 million pounds of gold in it, at roughly 1 troy ounce per gold that would be 2,916,666,666 coins.

Ok, who out there has 2.9 billion silvers and wants to do a dive into a pool of it all?

Edit my source was wrong, found better numbers Listed above.
For posterity 200 trillion pounds of gold is 2.9 quadrillion coins....

fervent hatch
tawny sierra
tender condor
proud rune
warped escarp
calm bay
split hamlet
tropic creek
#

Now I am sitting here and wondering if there's some weird integer issue involved where once you hit loot cap, if you under hunt by X level you get loot again.
That'd be hilarious.

civic niche
warped escarp
cold zephyr
# fervent hatch There was someone who found an infinite silver glitch a few years back.

I recall one day I got yanked into the lounge asking me about the sale of items I just made to a player. Apparently the GMs were hot on the trailer of the player(s) that found some silver glitch, but this was years and years ago. This was when those anti-pickpocket thief items were introduced to the game. I purchased up a bunch of the poison needles because I got tired of getting pilfered the instant I walked into TSC looking for a healer (this was with wizard that was 1x in perception and 1x in picking pockets himself) and after a while of not going through them as fast as I thought I would, I sold off a bunch of them to someone. Apparently this person was someone that had found a way to introduce millions and millions of silvers into their bank account.

Unless there have there been multiple silver glitches over the years, this was the only one I heard of, but it was a long time ago.

warped escarp
#

oh, i think i figured out one GMA method to circumvent loot cap (though i imagine it would be noticed pretty quickly)... can i PM that somewhere, just in case?

fervent hatch
#

I've been wondering why 32mil is being used. I went back and read [my original comment](#1461872047062908929 message). My 32mil mention was about the old loot cap. The numbers over cap are 25mil+ in March 2026.

civic niche
#

Still don’t see how anyone did that. Assuming cap is working correctly you’d have to generate. What. 15 mil then 1b to get the next 10m

dusky kernel
fervent hatch
#

Over 2.5bil silver were earned in the last few days.

tender scarab
# civic niche Still don’t see how anyone did that. Assuming cap is working correctly you’d hav...

That's why my mind goes to purifying. Find 7m in gems within the 15m intended loot cap, purify them to (on average) 150% of what they started as just for example, and that's an extra 10.5m.

Edit: Trading doesn't count "directly"... so it counts at time of sale? That would also be a plausible way of explaining some of the gap. Hoard loot until the end of the month. In that case, even without purifying, the 7m gems in my example could count as 8.96m (with max Trading and not counting race bonus) if saved for later.

split hamlet
fervent hatch
#

I said that it doesn't count directly a little bit ago in here.

warped escarp
#

the fact that 2.5b was earned right at the end of the month suggests that something is being saved and sold -- the gem purifying explanation sure sounds plausible.

there may also be people rushing to get their last gem at the end of the month before reset, which could lead to more loot generation? and people who haven't yet found their last gem also would be less likely to be at loot cap

fervent hatch
#

Last week we were at 7bil. Right now we're closing in on 10bil.

rancid prism
#

So you're confirming that bards are OP!

dusky kernel
gusty crow
#

I ... made 110k today. It was a very good day! I cannot imagine earning a million a day after January's changes.

fervent hatch
slate bluff
#

Wait, so if I unload my motherload of 100 bottles of 100 pre-cap gems each I will be king for a month?

split hamlet
#

I'll save gems in April and loresing them at the end of the month. I hate everything about it, but I want to see if that's how it's done.

tawny sierra
#

does this mean loot in general is calculated at time of sale and not when its generated?

Wouldn't saving gems and loresinging at the end of the month have to generate more during the interim to beat the lootcap?

hazy osprey
civic niche
slate bluff
#

New GS meta is to untrain all skinning, save all 1,039 gems you find in the first week in your locker for gem bounties and then pay a bard to spend 28 hours to sing to said 1000 gems on the day before the end of the month

fervent hatch
fervent hatch
split hamlet
dusky kernel
#

Just make it real simple - if you are the #1 silver generator for March, you get banned for a month in April. Deal with it.

slate bluff
#

New GS meta is to mow your neighbors lawn once per week. $20 is $20.......

rough summit
tropic creek
slate bluff
hard folio
tawny sierra
umbral lotus
chilly tulip
#

More people hunting more because Grift of Lumnis and Cash'lo'nae, plus the terrible gemstone distribution system that has people hunting for between 1 and 100,000 kills for stones 2 and 3 probably explain why overall earnings didn't dip much.

civic niche
#

I was thinking in the shower this morning. I don't really understand how you jumped from 7b to 10b in the last few days of the month. If only 94 people loot capped, even if all of them made 25M+ in that last few days that would only be an extra 1.1B. Where did the other "sudden" 1.9b come from. Like mathematically I don't understand.

warped escarp
civic niche
#

Except, only 94 people lootcapped. So....who was selling them. 200 rando accounts they had laying around? If all 94 of those capped accounts made 25M (which as 3 of them apparently, they didn't). That still leaves almost 2B that had to come from other accounts.

chilly tulip
#

94 accounts. Two of those are me. We can probably self-identify almost all of those accounts just in this thread.

rough vault
#

If the exploit is indeed true, the ideal treasure would be to find and hold only high value gems. A month's 15M initial value could then be purified to sell these for over 22M after hard cap. This formula penalyzes the sell as you find method and even more devalues most other treasure that can't be boosted by some other method. The fix would seemingly be to also track the silvers generated by sale and compare that with the value at drop. Once hard capped by the greater of cumulative sale value or drop value, the vendors would only offer to buy at 1% value. Obviously we won't be doing that and we have essentially endured a month of chaos and frustration to discover only what was obvious. The simplest solution now is to just sell silvers at the simustore for $1 per million. If people want to hunt 80 hours a week and amass billions, they won't make much profit doing so under that fixed value. The Ardwen method of wealth accumulation over time by buying and selling rare things in game for silvers is broken too and will never return. No one does minor upgrades anymore when you can buy 10 years of old school upgrades in one Duskruin. It's all interdependent, broken, and unfixable.

blazing violet
rough vault
#

Semantics. It's not a violation but it undermines the intention of the loot cap nonetheless. It is a clever loop hole that only a multiaccounter could manage.

civic niche
blazing violet
chilly tulip
#

Posting about a game for 35 years and never once doing a good post is quite an achievement, I must say

crimson pond
#

Talk about broken and unfixable.

rough vault
#

You just violated the posting guidelines by personal attack and disparagement.

blazing violet
#

Only a multi-accounter can manage purifying gems? Tell that to all the single-character bards out there. Just because it's a way to pass the lootcap doesn't mean it's anything insidious, it only means that it's a data point for GMs to consider as they continue to fine tune things. We shouldn't be immediately jumping to the conclusion that any game mechanic that allows someone to do something we don't think was intended is abuse/bad/illegal/GMA/whatever. Let the GMs sort it out.

civic niche
#

Oh, now words are important?

devout bobcat
#

The entire point of gem purification is a class ability to increase the value of gems. If and when that changes, staff will let us know. But there is absolutely no reason to not use your class abilities until that hypothetical time.

blazing violet
#

And people regularly purify gems to try to create orb gems, which are needed for a number of different game mechanics. It's not a stretch or even all that clever to imagine waiting to purify your gems until after you hit hard lootcap.

granite tartan
rough vault
#

Only ascension level players are able to find the best value gems now that would make this opportunity to gain so much over cap practical. The vast majority of players will never hit a 10M loot cap so for them, trading, purifying, chisels, etc. are a great way to boost their gains. Most players play under 10 hours a week or hunt under 10 hours a week if in game more, but the recent experience accelerants undoubtedly added a few extra hours to the median hunt time. Out of 94 accounts that capped, how many human players is that? 30? If someone has 80 hours a week to play and just loves hunting, I agree they should have a benefit more than experience for their effort. But the relative efficiency by which some can cull foes and harvest loot is staggering too. Before loot cap some were making over 50m per month per account while most play one account earning under 5. That differential over time is the intractable problem.

granite tartan
slate bluff
#

Just like we figured out boxpool fees are only ~10% of your total lootcap, we need to figure out the monthly % that gems are for lootcap so we can math out what singing to every single gem on the last day would yield. (No one sell your gems!)

hazy osprey
#

My only complaint is that players who are:
(a) likely to hit the 1% loot cap, and
(b) driven to make as much silver as possible
are now incentivized to play the game in a non-intuitive, clunky way. The "optimal" play is to save all your loot -- not just gems -- until either just before the month ends or you've hit the point of no return and then dump it all; this is a consequence of the effects of gem purification and trading, and I hope it changes.

slate bluff
#

What happens if you loot the gems in March and then sing/sell them in April? Does that count towards your April lootcap at all?

jolly palm
#

Maybe it's just me.... but the whole concept feels a bit like a losing proposition (regulating silver production relative to the drain), and I dont mean it in a judgmental way.

If silvers truly became more scarce, and there was demand for them to accomplish things in game... they would become more valuable.

If silvers become more valuable, the secondary market becomes more enticing.

The more enticing the secondary market becomes, the more effort there is to find ways to generate more resources (which could also just be done with more accounts, so I guess that would be a win for SIMU).

But Realistically, silver production and silver reduction will almost NEVER be in equilibrium as long as the secondary market exists.

The population will continue to overfarm a resource as long as it can create value for them. Maybe that comes from finding loopholes in the current structure, maybe it's done by adding 20 accounts to an army.

umbral lotus
crimson pond
#

PP doesn't make silvers, it transfers them. Nothing net new.

umbral lotus
slate bluff
#

No wonder all our ledger silver counts seemed lower than expected. All the power farmers probably pickpocketing us blind while we rest. Every MA for themselves. Survival of the fittest.

mellow gyro
#

Bots gonna bot

proud rune
#

MA is king.
Perhaps its one of the various groups using one character to deposit, search or whatever other flag triggers lootcap counting (those other things that haven't shared)?

(Sorry if that seem stupid. I feel like 99.9% of this thread isn't my business, or applicable, but have some freetime today)

devout bobcat
# umbral lotus My point was they can and will change things they consider abusive, that they h...

Staff will make adjustments as they see fit, which is why I stated the skill should be used freely until that hypothetical time. Also, the issue with picking pockets was primarily perceived griefing. Singing to gems doesn't affect other players.

Edit to add: after all that back and forth, no actual changes have been made to pick pocketing. People just generally hate it and find it useless except for a handful of players. But there are other threads to run down that rabbit hole.

umbral lotus
devout bobcat
#

That sounds brutal and I can see why those changes were implemented. So edit to amend, no changes have been made as a result of the original flag proposal from a few years ago.

umbral lotus
#

At one point Jesh stole a merchant table abd sold stuff from it out of his cloak, they stole road signs

fervent hatch
#

Someone stole a cart with my new shop system pretty early into the code and did the same.

#

All the old shop systems had theft mechanics built in, but were disabled over 25 years ago.

#

Looks like session times were up for March and averaging 3.1 hours. Last month was up too from the usual 80 to 90 minutes. We saw a 2% increase in Prime subs, 2% in Premium, 6% in Platinum, and 3% in Shattered. So an overall growth month which isn't that common for a March. This does not include promos or F2P.

For playtime, most people don't play daily though beyond a login reward, which we don't count. We excluse people in under 5 minutes a day from that data.

chilly tulip
#

Is further refinement likely to target the middle of the road earners, then? Because anyone who loot capped at 35m is capping at 15m would cap at 10m etc... they're going to keep doing what they're doing, I kind of only see one place to cut if overall generation didn't dip much

minor falcon
fervent hatch
#

The goal this last time was to reduce silver generation by over 33%. We missed that mark entirely. It's not a back to the drawing board situation, it's changing up what we're doing.

fervent hatch
devout bobcat
#

Please don't further squeeze the 95% of accounts who don't loot cap.

chilly tulip
#

**Man **this 5 minute timer is brutal. You cannot conquer the Poster's Spirit.

Slapping pity counters on the second and third gemstones might help he says, unselfishly for real though I think grinding stones 2 and 3 keeps a lot of people farming longer than they'd do otherwise.

crimson pond
#

No one really buys previously free QOL things for several hundred dollars worth of currency? Shocker! 😛

minor falcon
#

The lantern re-release was a nice one that I picked up with the claim boxes you pushed out I think last year or two. That was one I missed a long time ago. But did they not do well?

I think I picked up all the items that I missed for each character previously. I thought it was a neat.

I guess I'm a collector when it comes to that stuff even on each character..

slate bluff
#

20 years of silver-in-box RT annoyance washed away with a single coin bug felt so good

jolly palm
crimson pond
#

NuBoxes being big on coins has upped my fossil charm's average gather per invocation by like 50 silvers 🎉

...also I'm pretty sure the bugs are eating coins because their numbers do not reflect my bank account! /s

fervent hatch
#

One thing to keep in mind is when we try to add new layers to the game, we kind of try to take pages from other games and how they distribute items. For example, in some other MMOs (which aren't direct comparisons), when you grind for loot, you don't always grind for all loot. Gemstones are kind of intended to be something outside of silver wealth. Some of the "more interesting loot" we plan to work on are creatures all gaining special drops. The goal is to hit that creature a whole lot, even if you're not gaining exp or silver, because you want the drop.

#

Think of a raid boss in another game where you might have to target it 250 times to get that .4% drop rate.

chilly tulip
#

The Pipe Den clears out while 80 characters go and murder fire rats for a weekend

e: Not sure how much you can share on a WIP here but would these hypothetical fire rats be scaled up for these encounters?

fervent hatch
#

That's the point. GS has a whole lot of really interesting creatures that could get revitalized.

#

The reward being the drop, not all the stuff we're used to.

slate bluff
#

I think the adventure guild should start handing out weekly or monthly tasks like kill 5 wyrms or 250 SG critters or finish 10 bounties in EACH ascension area. "Force" players to diversify their skillsets to unlock all content rewards.

cold zephyr
tender scarab
#

If average session length jumped from 80-90 minutes to 3.1 hours, over double, then yeah, feel like it almost has to be more people hunting longer due to Temple of Lumnis and Cash'lo'nae.

fervent hatch
crimson pond
#

Hopefully they'd be BoP to disincentivize farming for resale

granite tartan
fervent hatch
#

Oh and the 2bil earned in the last few days. There are a LOT of people who went from around 1mil silver to 9mil silver. People loading secondary accounts and such toward the end.

fervent hatch
mellow gyro
#

I want an invasion where we all look like Goblins, but as fog of war and we're really just friendly fire since we're the invaders. I thought sympathy might work. Folks hate it though.

proud rune
#

90's invasions be callin'

granite tartan
#

Remember that "A day in the life of a kobold" fake log someone wrote forever ago? I'd 100% pay silvers to unlock temporarily becoming a critter.

jolly palm
lunar beacon
minor falcon
fervent hatch
jolly palm
#

yeah, not sure the arena would be the right spot for suped up baddies...

But if it's a danger zone we're flying into.... lets goooo

If it was endless and people were upset, that seems weird. Things are supposed to get hard!

chilly tulip
#

Duskruin Shan scaling was horrifying.

civic niche
hazy osprey
#

Details aside, I'm grateful for how closely staff is monitoring this issue, and how seriously they're taking it.

rigid sparrow
#

I really hope the numbers we're looking into don't count at the time of sale. i have so many thousands of items in lockers that i spend hours every month going through and selling between 3-4 million worth of junk to pawn. I'm sure i'm not the only one.

tender scarab
#

Not sure how much that could really represent, but I did do some of it last month too. Finally slowly clearing out the ancient Duskruin arena prize backlog running back probably seven years.

frozen tusk
#

If you changed gemstones to farming a specific critter that the player couldn't earn loot from that might drop silver generation massively if the critters are always mobs that cant be skinned or have alchemy drops as well.

You could specify that players need to farm:
800 for single common
1600 for double common
3200 for a rare
6400 for a legendary

So get a task to kill x critter from artificer, the amount you kill determines reward, stop at the kill amount you want, turn in. You can do the task 3 times a month.

You'd have quite a few folks chasing legendary (which are still random properties and can still be junk) and that's a lot of time not spent farming loot.

pseudo quiver
rigid sparrow
#

wand duping. it may not seem like much but start counting how much wands are worth. that's what you lose if you don't dupe.

bright pasture
#

has anyone else tested Trading? i removed it and saw an additional 3 mil for March, so no idea what happened there

my sell script only deposits in one bank - so there is no funny business with loot tracking scripts

fierce lynx
# fervent hatch The goal this last time was to reduce silver generation by over 33%. We missed ...

If you reduced the locksmith pool fee to a more reasonable level you might find you take in more silver overall from this system. The current fees appear to have pretty much destroyed general usage and acceptance of this system (that and fewer and larger boxes have made opening your own boxes palatable again). Suggestion: Set the fee at 1k silver per box flat price and see how that pans out for a month.

fierce lynx
# fervent hatch Looks like session times were up for March and averaging 3.1 hours. Last month ...

I think you can maybe attribute the off-season growth in subs due to the recent resource gain changes. Speaking as only one data point, I now have two premium accounts so I can alternate playing one of them while the other sits around draining experience (and more importantly - gaining resources). Also I think at least a few folks were talking about transitioning their premium accounts into Prime for similar reasons (no idea who, if anyone did this though).

jolly pollen
#

How are people hitting the loot cap? I've hunted a lot this past month. I hunt, fry, and rest until I'm almost empty, then repeat. Is it possible for people who hunt like this to hit loot cap? Or does it require scripting bigshot 24/7 and never resting at all?

fierce lynx
#

At cap you can make 1m in a day easily doing what you are doing. Most people that hit loot cap live in the game as near as I can tell.
Edit: Day meaning this is like an 8+ hour workday for you in Gemstone doing this activity. 🙂

minor falcon
#

I feel like you can make like 1m in an hour or close to it

jolly pollen
fierce lynx
minor falcon
#

in HW, I probably get like 150k+ for a little less than a 15 minute hunt

With that being said, I still only really hunt 30-45 minutes in HW a day though to just burn my brooch and pray for a gemstone drop.

proud rune
#

I feel there should be a thread that deals with Not-capped, cannot hit lootcap, etc looting.
Since Wyrom said something to the effect that us bottom 95% are still a concern, having capped+ dialogue seems to ignore us bottom feeders.

Don't get me wrong, yalls do have valid concerns. I'm just pointing out that an issue that was directly pointed out (amd might be more folks in total) seemsto have a lesser vocality; mostly due to less posters.

flat tusk
#

As one of the "far from loot cap" members of the community, I don't post much in this thread anymore after they changed resource acquisition because my play experience hasn't changed significantly. I come in to see if there's any news I should be aware of (Wyrom's comments as they pertained to purification and trading were interesting) but otherwise not much of this pertains to me and for the record I don't have major issues with loot acquisition right now.

cold zephyr
# jolly pollen How are people hitting the loot cap? I've hunted a lot this past month. I hunt, ...

I spent just an hour hunting today (hour total time hunting, not counting downtime between hunts) and this is what my non-skinning level 75 reduxmage made:
First Elanith Secured Bank: 310,588

That amount doesn't count for the couple dozen uncut diamonds, emeralds and blue sapphires I'm hording that I also picked up while hunting.

Just imagine someone at cap grinding out for gemstones, if I can bring in roughly 350k in an hour in a non-capped hunting area I don't see why they couldn't easily do something similar if not more.

proud rune
# flat tusk As one of the "far from loot cap" members of the community, I don't post much in...

Perhaps it's simply me keying in on what seems like 'median bottom 95%' seems an issue (paraphrased a good chunk), but this thread just doesn't really pertain to what seems a focus of concern going forward.
I am absolutely not dismissing anyone with different issues but the thread does seem geared toward cap'd+ levels/lootcap/1%-ers.

I might be reading into something Wyron et all have zero bearing, I willing admit it. Still, Loot and Experience shoulda kinda cover even us 95% peoples- whatever that even means at this point

flat tusk
# proud rune Perhaps it's simply me keying in on what *seems* like 'median bottom 95%' seems ...

For sure, anyone that isn't happy about the loot changes even if they're not one of the people being affected by loot cap should speak up about it. I wouldn't be shy about posting here if it was negatively affecting my game time but it just plain hasn't been a big deal for me and I'm assuming that a lot of the other players with my circumstances are in the same boat. This little mini thread of ours gives people an opportunity to jump in if they do have any concerns they want to air.

The bulk of this thread being focused on the 94 loot capped accounts makes sense because they've seen the largest negative impact so I understand why they're the most vocal. 3 weeks of no loot per month sounds pretty miserable.

flint mortar
proud rune
# flat tusk For sure, anyone that isn't happy about the loot changes even if they're not one...

Agreed on all fronts.

Still, 95% is a huge percentage of players. Mostly what I see seems to be focused on the 1% (and those that lootcap as the 1%'/95% <again 95% such a crazy huge vague lumpy %>

Really, I'm not dismissing the majority here.
However the ones not fitting in with the main focus seem to be important too.
(I am basing that on Wyrom's comment prior plus my brain say "95% makes no sense being lumped so generically. If I'm wrong, I'm glad to admit it)

I am nowhere near cap. Even end of the moth after hunting quite a bit. Another reason my experience isn't relevant to this specific main discussion.

civic niche
#

fwiw, nothing in the plan to make a new plan seemed dismissive of the 95%, and they have repeatedly said they had no intention of making life worse for the 95%.

While I don't have the data, I would assume that the other 5% spend a disproportionately large percentage of money on subs/simucoins. Money talks, right? If the money is talking, you have to listen.

flint mortar
# fierce lynx If you *reduced* the locksmith pool fee to a more reasonable level you might fin...

Which is another thing that's screwing me over on this account. I pull 3 boxes for LM reps on Ulknor, Don't get reps on the boxes, which was always par for the course, since i'm at the point in LM where it won't let me use anything but a vaalin or an invar lockpick for reps. I either get told to come back in 10 minutes, or there's no boxes availble.Honestly, i'm at the point where it's not really affecting my end-game a whole lot on Hapenlok. where all i'm really doing is grinding the huge TP costs for 3 major post-cap skills(That's another subject) But it's really messing me up on Timjirdos, my warrior and Ulknor my Locksmith.

proud rune
# civic niche fwiw, nothing in the plan to make a new plan seemed dismissive of the 95%, and t...

You're right. The post I'm going off of was not outright dismissive of the 95%, per Wyrm's prior post. It is simply that this channel seems more geared to that high value demographic, Wyrom's responses included.
(Glady willing to edit if I am missing something about the 95% other than that summarized 'Their median fine, tiny better even')

Plus, one never knows how plans change. Again, I reiterate 95% is a large value that, while it just means brokies, still has various categories

safe epoch
#

For folks living in silver world, who don't find themselves making event currency hand over first, I wonder how much silver would be impacted by taking some script line (say twisted or perhaps even changing it each year) and adding it as available for silver at a premium fest style event. I wonder if that would sink a lot of coins... giving folks real mechanically impactful items for silvers without the uncertainly of random auctions or raffles.

Just seems like it would be a meaningful way to keep silver valued. But I'm probably wrong.

chilly tulip
#

I don't think you're wrong, but that option exists with an extra step already, people exchange event currencies for silvers. CLAIM, too.

safe epoch
sleek meadow
#

Maybe the final tier unlock in scripts should be available for silver…some amount equal to the BS they normally cost. Just for a couple events to see if that would suck out some serious coinage.

warped escarp
#

i think it's a good point, that the silver drainage issue is actually a consequence of converting the most sought-after items to event currencies. the issue isn't that there was nothing to spend silver on; it's that all of those things have been converted to event currencies, and indirectly to dollars. walking that back a little bit would fix the silver drain problem.

sacred brook
#

I don't really mind most of the changes we've seen. Perhaps there could be more elegant ways of doing it, but really it's mostly been fine once the QoL changes kicked in for boxes.

But I'm just unclear why all the hadnwringing from Wyrom. The fundamental issue persists: simu does not want to give up event coins which are far more of a stand in for USD. It's understandable, but it's pretty hard to create an economy where you USD gate nearly everything except the odd silver auction that's unpredictable. Why even truly bother solving this problem?

civic niche
#

Yeah, it feels like reducing silvers is someones quest. 1000 players are gonna figure out how to break any fixes that get put in, it's a sisyphean task, with no clear benefit to trying to perform the task in the fist place.

split girder
#

I have more or less stopped playing this year. Went hunting for the second time in a few weeks today and was entirely unsurprised to see the same 11 person crew slurping up riches while blindly searching all over and casting at critters in the room I was fighting. It's been an ongoing thing now for months with no repercussion.

If the problem is that 5% (which are undoubtedly MA groups) then srs staff.... deal with them and leave the rest of us alone. I'm utterly disgusted by the lack of enforcement against AFK/unattended scripting while gaining benefit.

cold zephyr
# warped escarp i think it's a good point, that the silver drainage issue is actually a conseque...

I think the worst part of it all is that players have given a lot of great ideas for ways to add silver drains to the game, but not one single suggestion has ever been given a thumbs up or down from the GMs. Nor have the GMs ever talked about any silver drains and the only ones they have added are good, but not good enough (claim events and lumnis donate) because not enough silver is getting removed from the game.

devout bobcat
#

The silver economy will remain broken until silvers are meaningfully useful.

rain reef
#

and the beatings shall continue until morale improves?

flint flame
#

I would like to see more useful OTS items available from NPC shops. Like let me buy a 5x or even 4x flaring whatever I need for an alt rather than hoping someone might have bothered to put it in a player shop.

sleek meadow
#

Spot on Thremkin. NPC sold potions or items that have meaningful benefits. Food that gives decent temp buffs, potions that give +5 enchant for 24 hours, or flares, or whatnot...sold through NPCs because that drains silver while player services just moves the silvers around..and still concentrates them in the end. Moreover this would benefit those at the bottom who could really benefit from it, and effectiveness could be capped for over 8x or something so that the whales don't really have any use for them. Same with temp buffs...make food meaningful and sold for even 2 hour buffs...yes a few bacon holders would be upset...maybe we could offer some food that stacks with the bacon?

Anyway there are lots of player beneficial ways to get us to voluntarily give up our silver. But right now it seems like the approach is to take away value rather than add it. simplify travel for players between realms while you are at it...the cost, time, and mechanics are not QOL oriented...make a trip to another realm 5k silver each way, no complex mechanics, no tickets, no waiting around. Just 5k and pop to the city of your choice. The mechanics at the alchemist in HW would be a good base for how we should move from any town. Anyway I don't know that any of these ideas are meaningful because I think they are all addressing an outcome and symptom of a deeper structural issue.

frozen tusk
#

Silver drains don't really address players earning/generating to much silver.

chilly tulip
#

If mechanical gear has to be gated behind USD (event currencies) I don't see them making silvers appealing in game. New players can scrounge up 200k silver for a 4x fire flaring weapon just fine. I don't know what the goal is here unless they plan to one day sell mechanically beneficial gear in game for silvers again.

hazy osprey
#

They already sort of do, because you can buy event entries for silver. Not loads of them, but some. And the auctions do that too.

gloomy lark
#

you can certainly buy loads of them if you offer a good rate

you can buy anything you want from any event for silver, I really wish people would stop acting like silvers are worthless and there isn’t anything to spend them on, it’s just not even close to the truth

chilly tulip
#

Not disputing that at all. I've bought plenty of event currency for silvers. I think the extra step turns some people off who would otherwise walk right on up to Silver HESS and buy stuff with their silvers, that's all. And I don't see them doing that for a bunch of reasons.

rough vault
#

Opening HESS to silvers every 5th year would be worthwhile compromise.

fresh turret
#

I never get even close to loot cap I don't think I have enough time to. I think I cleared 3 mill last month playing a decent amount of time.

sacred brook
# frozen tusk Silver drains don't really address players earning/generating to much silver.

Both are trying to address the same problem which is too many silvers in the system: devaluation of silver. Earning "too much" silver is a problem because it adds to the total silvers in the supply, not because there's anything special about This Months Silvers.

But depending on what it is, silver DRAINS feel good to players. I get X thing to spend my silvers on rather than just trade my silver around and around. Loot caps and their ilk are probably necessary, but they don't really feel good to anyone, even though theoretically they're helping people who don't meet the loot cap monthly out. That's something that's unseen by those players who are benefiting.

minor falcon
#

opening up OSA Ascension hunting might bring in some silvers

chilly tulip
#

I don't know if there's a large overlap between OSA Enjoyers and people who want challenging content

flint mortar
frozen tusk
#

Wyrom is specifically looking to address the faucet/output. Alastir's proposal is the best proposal so far imo that addresses silver output and the player perception of addressing the silver output.

Player behavior is not going to change and my opinion is that every time staff tries to address player behavior they miss the mark. The behaviors of the discord playerbase just seem to be outside the realm of understanding of staff.

You can address silver output without negatively impacting the overall loot output. I thought boxes were going to do this based on the prior comments by staff but they have not. Boxes just supercharged silver output.

We need less silver output by converting items players are just selling for silver into other loot or by creating new systems that allow players to trade in those items for non silver loot.

A daily task that allows players to turn in a combination of random goods like 1 crystal amulet, 1 small statue, and 1 wand for a character bound green orb.

Alchemy ingredients no longer can be sold to the consignment shop. Instead you earn store credit for turn ins. Everything that can be looted from a creature is now sold in the shop for player credit and prices are greatly reduced compared to silver costs. Can still be purchased for silver but costs more.

Greatly reduce (90% reduction) the drop rate of quartz orbs, small statues, moonstone cubes, wands, etc. Sell it all for silvers at 75% of current costs.

Allow skins to be traded in for instant absorb experience instead, but only by the player that skinned it. 1 exp per skin. Each level of quality provides 1 more exp. Value provides 1 exp per 100 silver. Put a daily cap on it.

There's so much garbage that is looted and sold.

If the rare creature drop leans into dropping enhancives, staff could potentially eliminate a huge amount of silver generation because tons of players are farming just for enhancives.

proud rune
#

I don't know exactly what category (if its even a thing) I fit into that 'bottom 95% ', but I do hunt well past Lumnis, have above that generic gear (7x LDP/vhcp hcp plate, 9x weapon), self spell and like-level or under hunt, and don't come close to loot cap. I spend a ton chewing herbs (if no puff is around, but still tip), and buy scrolls and various trinkets to survive, currently lvl 90.

I realize my outlay as a solo player to survive a single hunt is depressing my net to lootcap.
But still.. I don't want to get even less than whatever meager profit I do obtain which is iterally just some gems plus handful of random rare boxed of generic4 weapons/jewelry.

I don't know what readjustment is to come for folks like me, but less isn't it.

fresh turret
#

I'm not sure why Wyrom woke up one day and decided to tackle this issue. I mean wouldn't working on Thrown weapon skills or mining and smelting have been less troublesome?

Look when you guys canceled plat we all had to deal with it. No one was really 100% happy about the constraints but the option was better than nothing. If the changes are going to make the game better just do them. I wasn't happy when WoF was changed to short duration but I got over it.

Just turn the faucets way down to a trickle, put the word out that the kobolds are planning a huge bank heist and your silvers might not be safe for long. Then introduce some silver sinks to get the hoard down to the target level. create a use it or lose it scenario.

You want a silver sink? Now that the migration is over set up an exchange booth for silvers to platinum pieces that allow you to transfer account bound items to another account. the silvers vanish the plat pieces are consumed the item is still bound to an account.

You can also require a guild certificate for professional services so yeah biff can pad your armor but some silvers are gonna vanish from the game to do it. certificates could be good for suffused resources or just resources above the 50k cap. some of those are going to level out as wish lists are checked off but rogues, bards, and monks will stay busy recharging stuff so increase the flare rates bumble might have a little more bard luck and a little less silver. once this thing hits target levels add silvers to the list certificates are good for.

Another thing that might sell like hotcakes are items that negate spell burst, spell sever, and environmental effects for some duration.

anyway just a few ideas and probably no good ones.

crimson pond
#

(WoF isn't self cast only)

fierce lynx
safe epoch
remote egret
civic niche
safe epoch
#

Here is the basic predicament. Without a direct silver draw (not buying SC gained event currency or entries through another player), how do you expect to keep silver valuable? I noticed in Feb the slowing of event currency and entry sales for silvers and that was with the great silver throttle scare of 2026. This will only get worse unless the supply gets more limited (which would tick off even more people who can't get the loot they once did) or by providing a direct benefit to silver accumulation.

I see Wyrom talk about wanting to keep silvers important to the game. I believe they can do it. I was just throwing out an idea of having a selection of premium level (event currency type) items available for silver sale from time to time without the raffle/auction uncertainty. This would help keep folks interested in silver for something other than player services and trying to buy event currency or entries from cash paying players.

That's my point. I'm sure I'm still wrong.

rigid sparrow
#

honestly i see the direction things are going here and i'm just gonna accept it. tell me one thing. if i'm at loot cap, do i have LESS of a chance when hunting to find a legendary, a lock and key, or gemstones/dust drops? if those rates are the same then as much as i hate not getting loot, i can deal with it.(already made almost 3m yesterday, so loot cap will aproach fast)

#

The fact that i made 3m yesterday not even really trying to go hard says loot is coming way too fast. i feel like i should have to work a LOT harder to get that much loot. also the only reason i even got that much is just because i had to kill 1000 things to get my first gemstone (plus one long hunt in sanctum). If this wasn't the case i wouldn't even know where lootcap was.

remote egret
#

1000 kills isn't like...a really fast process for most people I would think. Especially if you are just powering through and not resting

minor falcon
#

yeah this is my same problem... I don't want to generate that much loot but the gemstone system forces ya to. I don't get the message that's being sent between that system and this. One says grind for eternity where it could take you 3 loot caps over to get all your gemstones... while the other one says please don't generate silvers so we are going to cap it.

Oh and here is your regional single prop gemstone you just spent all that time for.... 🤣

gloomy lark
rigid sparrow
rigid sparrow
# gloomy lark I really don’t understand how you have a long hunt in sanctum, you bring giantme...

dwarf paladin with outrageous strength, about 800 lb capacity bags total to hold boxes + disk, 100 lb encumbrance potion, porter...i can hunt sanctum until i'm extreme encumbrance and walk out with a box in my hand because it won't fit in my bags. or having dropped 5 crystal amulets because i'm at item cap and can't pick up this last box. as i said before i've spent years and years making this character a treasure hunting efficient silver generator because it was my only character above 20 for like 18 years. now i'm so efficient i get no treasure for the last 3 weeks of the month becuase boxes have 125k value in them on a regular basis.
(Also i've stopped skinning completely and sold my +25 bonus FA/Survival skinning knife because i'd 10000% rather have a chance at an enhancive out of a box before loot cap and every skin i get post loot cap be worth 11 coins.)

gloomy lark
#

honest question, if you are gonna hit loot cap no matter where you hunt then wouldn’t hunting an ascension area be more fun?

rigid sparrow
remote egret
civic niche
tender scarab
#

For sheer gameplay experience, I'd have more fun steamrolling the Sanctum than hunting Ascension, but Ascension creatures have better top end enhancive drops and the 2-4% chance that a Gemstone find will actually be good, so that's where I am. (If it's just comparing silver to silver, though, Sanctum hunting is also more efficient than Ascension hunting besides maybe Sailor's Grief. You have to actually get into merchanting one way or other--Gemstones or enhancives--for Ascension to win out.)

Part of that goes to Neovik's point. I had characters get really close to hard cap at 13.4m, 13.1m, and 12.7m last month without ever finding their second Gemstones, for example.

remote egret
# civic niche Which is exactly what gemstones encourage.

To me...I literally don't understand how it encourages that. If you know you'll get your pity gemstone in 1500 kills...then I don't understand the rush to crush 1k kills just to get it. If you aren't guaranteed a second and third gemstone...then grinding even more for it doesn't make sense to me either...it comes or it doesn't comes! Obviously the more you kill the more you are likely to get one...but again. People are upset with the quality of most gemstones they find. THAT seems like it would encourage you NOT to grind endlessly for your second and third gemstones because...most likely...it will be not very good!

civic niche
remote egret
#

I dont even think a lot of people think gemstones suck. But I thought we have seen math that the most likely scenario in finding a gemstones is…it won’t be very good (maybe I’m getting confused because someone was also saying rerolling was a fools errand just going by the numbers). So yeah. Either way you are putting in a lot of effort knowing that you are going to LC because “loot comes too fast” (although in reality you are just a power hunter) and not going to have fun OR you are likely just to get a dust stone for all your effort.

If the second and third stones had a pity counter up at like 5k and 10k kills then maybe I’d believe the system was designed and encouraged that kind of behavior. But to me, all this system does is allow for that kind of behavior and potentially reward it.

civic niche
#

I think people like the idea of gemstones, I think the reality of them is much worse because of the terrible/mediocre properties and the Terrible RNG. (I use suck broadly when I speak about them, there are obviously some good combinations people have found.)

I switched to resting once I was fried, from hunting til I was oom. (because I get loot more days that way.) I'm already at almost 900 kills for the month and close to 3M. Yes, I know I play, a lot, but if I was hunting till OOM I'd be closer to 2000.

slate bluff
#

Gemstones are awesome and transform your playing experience
Wizard - Mirror (makes my casts feel like mstrike)
Warrior - Adaptive resistance goes off constantly and I feel like I will never die
Sorc - was struggling in HW, Boom found Boil Blood and the 1 second debuff legendary and can now -50 TD critters in 2 seconds and shave off their high health with Boil

frozen tusk
#

Gemstones are amazing. The RNG of finding a gemstone is terrible.

broken vector
#

Now that I'm playing pretty casually on a solo account, mostly just finishing my 5x Lumnis each week, the loot cap didn't seem to affect me much. I was probably in the 10-15m soft cap range at the end of the month but I was still getting ok loot. I'm pretty happy with how it turned on from that perspective, although too bad it didn't accomplish the goal. Looking forward to seeing the next iteration.

Meanwhile, I will say I think the 1% hard cap is too harsh/unfun. I would argue it should be no lower than 10% so they still get some loot...and if you have to adjust it on the front end to make the numbers work that's fine but let's not have people playing for 1% loot under any circumstance imo.

minor falcon
unique oyster
#

I'd like gemstones if I could find a good one. I usually get one a month and I have yet to find a gemstone with a rare or legendary property. This is also why the silver drain for gemstones fails for me. I literally have nothing I can reroll, nothing to upgrade, and extra slots are pointless because nothing I find is worth using. I'm still using the default gemstone you get from the quest!

remote egret
rigid sparrow
civic niche
#

I’ve found 24 so far. No legendary, 1 passable rare. I’ve bought other gemstones I have. The “system” of gemstones is terrible. Some of the combinations can be good.

Anyway this isn’t really the gemstone thread it’s the loot thread so I’m gonna stop talking about that system except as it pertains to loot cap.

jolly palm
#

Legendaries seem to be averaging between 1:35 and 1:50 or so based on conversations I've had with others and large sample sizes (1000's of gemstones for the sample).

If you have @chilly tulip RNG modifiers applied, it's going to be more like 1:100.

Dont be Nidal.

❤️ you Nidal.

unique oyster
# rigid sparrow i've been finding gemstones for a little over 8 months, this being my first week...

What it comes down to is, what I want more: hitting the loot soft cap easier with SoS or trying to find a gemstone. Loot cap is reliable, gemstones are too RNG. I could try to do both but ascension hunting areas are kind of a pain to hunt in for different reasons. Too crowded, instant death due to open rolls, harder to get to. I also don't think I can get three gemstones a month with a 9-5 job. I can probably get two a month but only if I spend a lot of time playing.

jolly palm
#

But hardest content, best rewards = most difficult areas.
It checks out.

I do think the RNG to find stones 2 & 3 are a bit extreme. Especially now that gemstones have quickly gotten to a point that dust stones can't even sell. They're basically account attuned loot now. (which isn't a bad thing. The game could use more of that).
They should honestly have like a 2k limit and just a weekly reset.

rigid sparrow
unique oyster
jolly palm
waxen comet
#

TAXES. Der, I fix'd it.

(dey STILL insistin onna modelin' fantasy-land onna real-current-broken-land 'conomix! Psst, der wassa time, not too far back inna history, when stinkin' rich folks had to pay 90 percent! Dat's, in fact, why der great-grandchildren gots roads anna stuff nowadays.)
(da last 40 years o' not payin fer stuff issa also why ye gots "potholes"...eberywhere anna in eberything.)

#

@whyrom? Cause ram issa spensiff.

devout island
waxen comet
south trail
fervent hatch
#

I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few questions here.

  • Should we not be spending time and resources on free festival inventory? It would save us between 3 to 4 months of workload a year with several GMs across teams.
  • Should we shift some items just being sold for silver vs getting CLAIM? Right now, CLAIM drains over 15bil a year, no event has ever drained 2bil silver outside auctions. Silvers can buy more at any paid event than it ever has done in the past.
  • Should we just COLA on silver offerings and go back to a more limited loot cap? Basically an automation tax.
    The reason why silver output gets worked on is because this is a drum that gets beat on a lot. I also can't keep CLAIM in place at the current pricing because of how easily silvers are to print.
proud rune
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Open claim to us on promo accounts. I would have spent. Probably more than any discount I'm getting, but since it is blocked? Nada

You want new people (at least new paid accounts anyways), so not allowing an avenue of potential perhaps needs review. Attacting returning accounts too, also a goal I'd believe.

(Unless I am missing what CLAIM is. Which is very possible in this context).

Edit1: Right, reduced account subscription. However, Any use of the CLAIM verb is blocked for me/us. So again, if I'm misunderstanding what you mean by CLAIM, I apologize.

Edit2: I also realize I dont belong in the Richie Rich silver drain, so I'll wander myself out.

fervent hatch
#

CLAIM is just a subscriber benefit. The promo benefit is being able to play without paying!

chilly tulip
#

Is COLA "Cost of Living Adjustment" in this context, Wyrom? I had to Google, I don't know that one.

fervent hatch
#

Yes.

#

We tried this with raffle pricing to make tickets a percentage of the item value, but that went over poorly.

chilly tulip
#

I think this is an impossible needle to thread and if you ask 30 players about this you'll get 50 opinions

fervent hatch
#

What we can't do is just say, "Well, players are making 250% more silver, so we need to make sure there is 250% more stuff for them to buy." Almost all games would simply nerf gear, add new gear, and call it a day. We don't do that, not globally (nerfs sometimes happen).

south trail
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

If free inventory means exploding cigars and stuff that people excited about for 2min and it sits in a locker for eternity, than yes imo. I'm fine with getting rid of claim. Didn't bother last time What items would be shifted to silver? With the lootcap plus 1m lumnis cost plus lockpick pool cost... casual players are going to be running a deficit each month... not going to haver enough for deeds and herbs let alone tips for raising and healing. The solution needs to target the "problem" people that hit lootcap in 2 days, not a blanket solution that punishes the world for the supposed sins of the few.

fervent hatch
#

Yeah, someone also mentioned some reasons why we might be seeing more accounts coming back. The real answers we get from returning players will shock! Reason #7 will be surprising. Read until the end... [a moment from our sponsor...]

#

Discord won't be the best way to field these questions, I'm just asking here because we can talk about it.

proud rune
#

For the record, I am a returning player. I'm luckier than most with some items I still had of value to offload.

Had it not been for that? Lack of loot+cost of hunting would potentially have had me rethink this.

For whatever that POV is worth in this specific discussion.

wet valve
#

Speaking of silver drains, when is the next WPS silvers wagon?

rough vault
#

There is no reason to create any more unscripted new gear under 6x at any festival for silvers. Focus on high end value items that are always available...nothing under 25m silvers and some up to 1b.

fervent hatch
fervent hatch
rough vault
#

People will chase what they want. If something costs 50m and it takes me a year to save for it, so be it. Those earning 100m a month across their accounts will chase things worth 1b. Just need good items only available in this way. Or as suggested, put 10ish items that we vote on for silvers too each HESS.

fervent hatch
#

I don't want to focus the discussion on drains, but I am interested to keep hearing what people think about the bullet questions I put out there. Drains are always something we work on.

Saw a comment on EE about auctions. The problem with auctions is they take a considerable amount of time to get staff to work on them, make compelling inventory for them, and I'm typically the person building it out, going through it, and hosting it. It's easily 2 to 3 months of time to get those off the ground and then another 2 to 3 months of planning and prepping just for me alone. And if we don't have a lot of new and interesting things, they can fall short.

civic niche
rough vault
#

I'd pay 50m for a fishing rod with 25% better catch chance. Some would pay 500m for a new device that lets you name a gem that can be found in a hunting area and only find those when a gem drops for 15 minutes a day. Lots of potential.

fast cipher
#

Mischaracterization of people who have more time as a "problem" is over the top. As someone who loot caps regularly I haven't really pushed back on the changes because I generally recognize their being done for the health of the game and instead I just adapt to them and move on for the most part but the vilification or suggestion that their behavior is bad/broken of people who have A. more time B. an inclination to improve their characters is becoming grating. If you hunt a lot or do bounties because that's how you improve in the game then the loot will flow there's no GMA or "problem".

fervent hatch
#

If it comes off that way, I apologize.

fast cipher
#

I probably should have quoted, it wasn't in response to you Wyrom. The latest response I was reply to was at the end of Korpacz post.

fervent hatch
#

I definitely care, that's why I am even spending time on it. Though the comment about just working on thrown combat sounds appealing to me!

rough vault
#

You could also just put an NPC exchanger into some pay events to turn silvers into event currency directly. Some players have historically focused on loot efficiency to turn silvers into cash. The ability to trade silvers for event entries or currency in the open market is one of the last opportunities to do this.

tawny sierra
#

Just spit balling and I'm not wealthy enough to ever do this but letting folks buy their monthly gemstones for silvers instead of generating loot to find them would burn the candle at both ends.

having currency be consumable in some way for a mechanical advantage is going to incentivize people to burn it without the need for simu to compete with itself for auctions vs pay events.

tawny sierra
fast cipher
#

I'm pretty whatever on the Claim thing but I will say a lot of people say just sell stuff to silver but I think the bigger issue right now is the volume of silvers impact on cost. They tend to work pretty carefully to not undercut player markets so the prices are probably going to be a lot more than we think/hope if they convert. Even if you have just a lot of silvers laying around it doesn't mean you don't care about the price of things and just spend it to spend it (unless your Omrii chucking in a hole) and everyone likes a deal/value. So my two cents is if Claim is the biggest drain in the game and its needed to stabilize things then I say leave it and adjust the prices of the claim offerings periodically.

warped escarp
#

Should we not be spending time and resources on free festival inventory? It would save us between 3 to 4 months of workload a year with several GMs across teams.

I'm not sure I'm following this. Free festival = silver versus event currency, correct? And time saved meaning that people could just buy OTS gear, instead of having GMs doing HESS work?

If so, I think there's a balance to be found here, i.e., that the goal should be to design GM-unattended festivals through the year which serve the purposes of a) draining silvers, b) keeping gameplay varied and keeping players entertained, and c) giving GMs time to work on other things.

This could take the form of a 2x-yearly larger GM-unattended festival with items sold for silvers, and occasional "visiting merchants" who park a wagon in a random town that sells OTS items.

There's a vast wealth of prior OTS items from Juggernaut, EG, and otherwise that people would be happy to see resurrected, and that players would be glad to spend silver on, particularly the people with 5-10m in their bank accounts. For combat gear, the level to target for these players is approximately: 5-6x flaring - 4-6x SWCP, and variants thereof. Repurposing these vast stores of old items would drain silver, add excitement to the game when one of these wagons shows up and parks for a week, and would take less work than starting from scratch. In addition to the 2x/year larger GM-unattended silver events, these wagons could also be put on randomized timers, e.g. wagon #1 shows up twice a year, for a week at a time, on random weeks, in a given town.

Build enough of these wagons over time, and you have a varied, live-feeling, open world merchant experience that takes zero GM involvement, drains silvers, and satisfies the average player both in terms of fun and in terms of what they need for gear.

rough vault
#

Have your merchant do a split the pot at every event...tickets are 250k each 5 for $1M. See how that works and up the ante to a limited 100 ticket game at 10m each.

civic niche
#

If all of this is being driven by claim. Roll it all back. Charge market rate for claim.

Solved.

Then. Find meaningful things for people to spend silver on.
Lumnis donate was a great idea.

warped escarp
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Reply, ctd.:

Should we shift some items just being sold for silver vs getting CLAIM? Etc.

I think this is something of a false dichotomy -- we should both continue CLAIM, and also have some items shifted to silver purchases. The above solution would address the latter, but there could also be e.g. a "silver shop," parallel to HESS, where certain items -- or even Annex-style upgrades -- are only available for silver.

Should we just COLA on silver offerings and go back to a more limited loot cap?

I don't think this is quite the right direction -- I like the lower loot overall; it's the way the cap is implemented that I see as the issue. Instead of those 94 capped accounts having no hunting for 3 weeks, they should continue to receive loot, but with the following adjustments:

a) Skins and gems have vendor value separated from quality value. Quality is what determines usefulness for: chrisms, bounties, items that eat gems/skins, etc. Lootcapped players continue to receive loot, but as they get more and more loot through a monthl, the vendor value decreases steadily. Thus, loot cap would be the same (or perhaps even lower!) than at present, but there wouldn't be more silver.

b) Reduce straight silver output from hunting. Reduce coins in all forms (searching, boxes, ingots) by straight 60%.

c) Increase gem drop quality for the first 20 levels by about 40-50%.

d) Ensure that lootcapped players still have a chance at the following drops: klocks, feeder drops.

Between these changes, lootcapped players can still find gems, skins, enhancives, everything that's needed, but without the associated silver influx. In addition to the suggestion above to help drain silvers, the overall silver economy should be more balanced.

On not keeping CLAIM:

Addressed above. Additional consideration: Change dust cost at the artificer to 25k per dust (250k per 10), unlimited amount. This would encourage people to spend silver to upgrade gems.

south trail
umbral lotus
# fervent hatch Probably the summer.

Why not have a quarterly silver wps, let people that aren't willing or able to do the alternative currencies, if nothing else to burn silvers, I know there are wps windows i ignored because I didn't want to arena grind

slate bluff
#

Stillfront marketing research shows event revenue is increased by 2.71% if WPS offered only for event currency

hard folio
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

It sounds like if we keep a loot cap of some type in place, and then try and do a couple really big silver dumps, things will stabilize? I'm crap at economy stuff, thus my negative value stock holdings currently. But if that is the case, then is simu stable enough funding wise to lose out on like, one DR worth of income? Open up claim for 1 run where you can claim as many times as you want. remove the orbs, and make it just the booklets. Would that be feasible or would that break everything in other ways?

#

Personally, I'd like to see more of the fluff character customizations available outside alt currencies. These can be defining traits for characters, and add to a lot of the flavor of each character and how they are RP'd. Having these available for a silver cost could be a decent use for silvers. Stuff like CM messeging, signature verbs, illusion props, spell casts, etc.

#

another good draw I could see - and I know you said you did not wanna focus on drains specifically but my brain is cooking now, sorry - is making shimmer trinkets and their unlocks an all year round shop for silvers. These are one of the most useful tools for RP imo.

hazy osprey
# fervent hatch I don't want to focus the discussion on drains, but I am interested to keep hear...

Respectfully, I think the drains are 100% the thing to worry about and work on. Re: your bullet points:

  • I'm not sure what you mean by "free festival inventory." Maybe that's sort of an answer to your question.
  • I think claim is fine how it is.
  • I don't understand what you mean by COLA and a "more limited loot cap." Basically go back to 16/32m and increase pool fees etc?

I think the new loot cap is fine (aside from the clunky behavior encouraged by gem purification and trading), but 1% at the bottom is a bit too harsh, for fun reasons. But it may well be the case that if you put it at 5% or 10% at the bottom, the grinders will still hit 32m, so what's the point of the change at all? And if you, say, set the bottom to be 5% and start it earlier, that probably only hurts the people who earn the least.

I disagree with any proposal that involves decreasing the value of items because all it does is benefit those (like me) who have 9+ figure bank balances to start with, and that's not fair to the majority. Thankfully, I don't think you're proposing anything like this.

I personally think there needs to be some way to improve your character that can only be achieved using silvers. It needs to be meaningful and it needs to have nearly no end to it. I won't speculate on what it should be, because it seems like that's not what this conversation is about. But I think that's what we're missing. Gemstones was, in part, what I'm describing, but, as implemented, it doesn't fully serve that purposes because silver spending is gated by dust and the RNG of finding stones you want to upgrade; maybe that's a good thing, maybe it's a bad thing, but it's a limiting factor in the ability of the gemstone system to drain silvers.

hard folio
sacred brook
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

I think there are two issues:

  1. Actual silver drains that remove silver from the system.
  2. Perceived value of silver (outside of it being pegged to event currency/USD)

If you give people something to strive to achieve with their silvers, it makes the silvers feel more valuable. Because I think from a game designer perspective, what you really care about isn't necessarily that silvers are $3 USD to 1m or $5 or $1.50 (officially people aren't supposed to sell for USD anyway!). It's that people want to get silvers and value having them. Because if it gets to the point where it feels like there's nothing to do with them, they lose that value as a PLAYER.

And ultimately we don't eat things. We don't need housing. Because our characters are just characters in a game. So a lot of what you can do with real money that establishes real scarcity of resources just doesn't exist in a game like this. But clearly people value looting things when they hunt (frankly I'm surprised at how much more people value loot vs. experience!), and for that to matter we still need silver to matter. So even if the silvers aren't being cleared at a huge rate, having something that creates a perceived value of the silvers (big auction prizes, very expensive raffles) could be important.

CLAIM EVENT does that to an extent too, but mostly because it's a way to transfer in game currency into USD stand-in, which is a little less direct and coming in 7.5m chunks is kind of eh.

I'll echo whoever suggested getting rid of smithy invites and let people buy it with silver, though. And maybe add another silver smithy in the year. WPS wagons drain a lot of silver!

hazy osprey
#

Right now, I don't know what to do with my silvers, aside from spend them to buy event currency (either directly from other players, by buying entries from other players, or by selling my silvers for USD and buying entries). I've got all my player services on gear, I've got my gemstone slots unlocked, and I've got a boat. My only other option is to wait for an auction, and I know those are time-consuming pursuits for staff. I'll spend my silvers to upgrade gemstones as I come across ones I find worth upgrading, but that's a long game, so what am I supposed to do in the meantime?

I wonder how many of the people who hit the hard cap are in the same boat as me?

sturdy ridge
#

Offer private properties for 1b silvers

granite tartan
# hazy osprey Respectfully, I think the drains are 100% the thing to worry about and work on. ...

I'm probably in the minority but I'd burn through tons of silvers powerleveling some alts if I could buy instant mind clearer boosts for silvers (yeah brooches, buff those so they can still feel special or something). Exp is the only thing that's universally in demand by everyone that isn't stuck behind a paywall. There are plenty of professions I've never played, but I'll never level an alt the slow way again. But I'd level up all sorts of alts if I could pay silvers to effectively eliminate absorption. Scale costs with level and/or use or whatever if needed.

Anything mechanical that's meaningful is paywalled and I doubt Stillfront is looking to let that change, and that's where all the silvers used to go and why there are no real drains anymore.

hazy osprey
#

I would never spend 1b silvers on a private property. But I would spend buckets of silvers to do what runes of power currently do. Imagine a system like runes of power that could increase stats and skills instead of what runes of power currently do. It would sit alongside ascension (gated by experience) and enhancives (gated by drops RNG and event currency).

Or make it a separate locus that is only able to be improved using silvers and isn't subject to enhancive limits.

Something like that. Let me spend my silvers to make my character stronger. I'm not going to stop buying event currency if you do.

jolly palm
# hazy osprey Right now, I don't know what to do with my silvers, aside from spend them to buy...

I'm there with ya.

I started spending what I have on alts ((gulp))...

Granted, I acknowledge that's not everyone's situation. But you do hit a point, over a loooong period of time in game where there just aren't many things to spend on. Especially if you also participate in pay events to a decent degree.

And then eventually, Silvers become an alt currency to acquire pay for play things at events, because that's the only way to find other meaningful improvements.

tender scarab
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

  • Free festival inventory - Keep it, but sometimes this stuff is way underpriced. The first thing that comes to mind is when the Rings of Lumnis offerings were originally free and stuff cost 100k-500k that people would easily have dropped 10-20 times the amount for. But just in general, any time I see a free festival, I assume before looking at the shops that everything will cost basically nothing and then I’m right. Even from the perspective of that median person making 2.5m a month, they could afford every item they want at every free festival.

  • Shifting more items to be sold by silver instead of CLAIM - I’m dubious on the value of continuing to maintain the existence of CLAIM, but that’s only because it seems to me like it’s being overly relied on as a silver drain and stifling any new ideas. I think it’s fine to keep CLAIM, but you have to also work from a framework that even though it drains a lot in a macro sense, there are also many people who don’t touch it. You still need to create other things that they will buy, whether CLAIM continues existing or not. It’s not necessarily an either/or.

  • COLA - In principle, yes, I think prices should always have been based around medians for average items and high ends for high end items. In practice, something you said a while back about having considered raising prices on Gemstone stuff if not for lowering loot cap makes me hesitate. But the problem there is that it’s theoretically infinite cost (via rerolling) due to heavy RNG nature. The whole system could be an ideal silver drain if it were more deterministic. And other items sold could work too.

jolly palm
# hazy osprey I would never spend 1b silvers on a private property. But I would spend buckets ...

Part of the hurdle here, is that I think we also need harder content...

I dont think there's enough challenging end game content out there yet. I know it's something Auchand and other staff members have said they hope to chase down more. Especially since exp & leveling just got a hyperboost.

Regarding EXP rewards or other things --- I'd also be perfectly fine if a lot of "Rewards" were character or account attuned. That would alleviate a lot of the pressure that's built around silvers.

If someone wants to grind and grind and grind.... let BOOST rewards be the shiny objects for them after they hit the 1% loot cap each month. Just make it all attuned.

hazy osprey
#

I hate that I sell silvers, because even though I turn around and use the money to buy event currency, I do the inevitable calculation of "huh, should I use this money to take a weekend vacation instead?" But right now I have no other use for them. Save me from myself.

Sometimes I wonder if staff is concerned that it'd affect game balance too much. But who cares? The secret known to literally everyone with above average gear and 50m+ experience is that you can pretty much faceroll all content in the game with enough care and practice. Allowing me to spend 500m silvers to increase my AS by 30 won't change that at all.

There's a large chunk of people who play this game to make their characters stronger. Pay events (auctions in particular, but HESS-like offerings as well) thrive on these sorts of players. They're addicted to making their character stronger. Maybe they convince themselves that one day they'll be "finished" and will have won the game, maybe not. But why stop them from engaging with the game? Give them a silvers-based route to make their characters stronger. Make it cost, I dunno, 100b silvers to fully complete, but something like 100m silvers to 50% complete.

As a separate point, I would also happily trade my loot beyond the current cap for instant mind clearers (bound to the character who find them).

jolly palm
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Just my thoughts:

  • If free festival inventory is causing 3-4 months of workload across several GMs... i'd definitely investigate the value. I dont know how to look at the ROI of the focus of your GMs.... but that feels like an odd one. (There are portions of the population that really enjoy this, and it's a part of the game, so I'm not suggesting eliminating it --- but wow, that seems like a lot of human resources dedicated to it)
  • I think whether CLAIM should continue is dependent on what it's intent is. If the intent is to truly be a silver drain, let it do it's job. If the intent of CLAIMs is to allow people who don't want to spend $ participate in events, then it likely should come down in cost, but the majority of the benefit should be attuned (reduce how much BS/Entries goes in them, but improve the benefit the average player gets out of it from other goodies, just attuned).
  • Using COLA as an automation tax would disproportionately hit the non automaters and non MA'ers. It would also negatively impact new returners. I think this is a bad idea.
  • I think offering more things via silvers is a great idea, but maybe have a limit to how much power creep the silver offerings can provide. Let people get a taste of power with silvers, like WPS but items capped at 50 services. Items at Duskruin that can be purchased and pushed up one or two tiers via silvers (think T2 Sigil staff for 20m silvers) - but leave the truly powerful stuff to event currency only.
remote sun
#

i like that idea as well, offer the OTS/t1 items for silver and keep the higher stuff for event currency. also would it be problematic to decouple claims from accounts?

blazing violet
#

As someone who is very picky about what I spend my silvers on (I obtain a relatively large amount of event currency via simucoins, but I have relatively few silvers and never hit loot cap), Kontii's last bullet above regarding using silver to purchase low-tier unlocks for pay event items would probably get me to empty my in-game bank account consistently.

unique oyster
#

I have an idea. This is extreme but might at least be on the track. Allow players to purchase GALD using large amounts of silver. There is always going to be something that a player wants to lighten, deepen, or make look different. It would work as a long lasting silver drain too.

warped escarp
unique oyster
#

That might be true. I was thinking from a non-premium perspective.

Aside from that, I say that you make some of the fluff or really cheap items at festivals available for silver. Things like ingredients for the cooking system, pretty looking blank imbeds, or just anything under 10 festival currency. Its minor but it could help.

fierce lynx
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Should we not be spending time and resources on free festival inventory? It would save us between 3 to 4 months of workload a year with several GMs across teams.

  • For me and my wife - unless there is something "fun" (read scripty) that suits our fancy or we are trying to outfit a new character, there is very little that we ever buy at free festivals anymore. The big draw for free festivals is if there is some sort of story (or games) to participate in and the raffles (and merchant interactions). For most free festivals, I spend maybe 30 minutes perusing the shop inventories, buy little to nothing, and then put reminders on my phone for raffles I am interested in.

Should we shift some items just being sold for silver vs getting CLAIM? Right now, CLAIM drains over 15bil a year, no event has ever drained 2bil silver outside auctions. Silvers can buy more at any paid event than it ever has done in the past.

  • Unless I am mistaken, the general big draw for CLAIM is that you can sell it to one of a few players with lots of silver for a bit more than you paid for it. That is typically what my wife and I do and that is what I see many others doing. There are a few players that seem to have the time to run the pay event for 8-12 hours a day (or something like that) who are buying up the majority of the CLAIMs being claimed. I wouldn't miss CLAIM if it went away (the paid version) and didn't even participate in it last time around as the market was selling tickets for less than the CLAIM event. (Note: I really don't care about exp orbs though I know some people can't get enough of them.)

Should we just COLA on silver offerings and go back to a more limited loot cap? Basically an automation tax.

  • I'm not really a fan of in game inflation. I don't like it in real life either. :p I think you have the right idea in trying to curb the folks that are basically printing silver non-stop all month long but the implementation probably needs some adjustment.
tender scarab
# fervent hatch We tried this with raffle pricing to make tickets a percentage of the item value...

Just want to comment on this real quick. The reason that went over poorly is a mismatch of target demographic. Raffles--at very least raffles of the unbound variety--are at their core aimed at the lower end. Since the odds are that you won't win anything, so the price has to be minimal and/or the potential win has to be enormous. (As an aside, this is also why Gemstone rerolling doesn't work.)

But this is why any silver drain should begin with the question of who it's for. You often say that you regret the scaling pricing on the WPS wagons, but that's a perfect silver drain model that's simultaneously aimed at the low end and the high end, whether intentionally or not.

A variety of silver drains should target different demographics.

devout island
#

Sorry, i still think breakage would drain a LOT more silvers from the economy by having an NPC fix your equipment. Especially If you're not going to fix forging. Sure slam me for bringing it up again. At this point you've got an economy that is being run by a group of people not by the player base.

Also ... Look how many weapons/armor drop in the arena/sewers and he percent that is pawned. There are pawn shop player bots who sit at the tables and buy the stuff that is pawned incorrectly that should be sold to the Gemshop or collectible NPC or stuff that is automatically looted/sold by a script and never really checked.

fast cipher
#

People seem to complain that the locksmith pool fees are felt more by the bottom 95% but wouldn't breakage be the same? It wouldn't impact the people who have a lot of wealth and 10 different swords for fun nearly as much as it does the person earning 2m/month trying to scrap by but who now also needs to pay upkeep. Would it drain silvers? sure but I'm not sure it would have a positive impact on the games playerbase overall.

sacred brook
devout island
unique oyster
fervent hatch
#

Breakage was a perfect solution. The problem was catastrophic breakage that was planned to go with it. The idea, from the code, was you'd want an unbreakable metal to avoid it. Having a repair upkeep on items would help, but it's probably too late to make it work.

#

As for WPS, the reset was not what I liked. It should have never reset.

#

I was very against it, and the GM who pushed that through went against me at that time.

proud rune
#

Breakage? Hells nawps.

rigid sparrow
#

we are vain and want to leave our mark in gemstone. If you wanna drain the big silver pots, give the rich something to purchase so other people will forever see their name.

fervent hatch
#

We tried to sell a street name one year, didn't get a taker!

tawny sierra
#

repair upkeep wouldnt make sense to me at todays lootcap figures. im already sending ~10-15% of monthly earnings to locksmiths and lumnis. silver drains should come with a reward and be optional

rigid sparrow
# fervent hatch We tried to sell a street name one year, didn't get a taker!

I've never heard of this. and if it was off the beaten path, like in playershop areas, i'm sure it didn't go over well. It needs to be something highly visible in a well trafficked area. something worth spending a billion coins on. perhaps have it improve the town "morale" giving a benefit somehow for everyone so people are grateful for the billions spent.

sleek meadow
split hamlet
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Should we not be spending time and resources on free festival inventory? It would save us between 3 to 4 months of workload a year with several GMs across teams.

Probably not.

Should we shift some items just being sold for silver vs getting CLAIM? Right now, CLAIM drains over 15bil a year, no event has ever drained 2bil silver outside auctions. Silvers can buy more at any paid event than it ever has done in the past.

Depends on the items being offered for silvers.

Should we just COLA on silver offerings and go back to a more limited loot cap? Basically an automation tax.

What do you mean by "more limited loot cap?"

Silver output is a system problem. The most recent loot cap changes did nothing to address it going by your recent statements.

Implement diminishing marginal payout based on cap utilization, make play time important again.
#1461872047062908929 message

And then figure out what things you want to sell for a high amount of silvers.

lucid latch
#

Make an NPC that exchanges silver for event currency at a slightly unfavorable rate.

devout island
fervent hatch
#

We would never have catastrophic breakage. We would have a repair system if we ever used it. Nothing would ever break permanently.

#

But no one wants that. And 20 years of not doing it might be too late.

valid orbit
#

Sell salve for silvers?
Sell great weapons, armor, shield for silver that DO break catastrophically?

devout island
#

you should have announced that breakage was implemented in your April fools day announcements, but then again nobody would believe you since its more absurd than making everything edible

sleek meadow
#

each death costs 1m auto deducted from any bank account that has more than 100m in it? have bank robbers randomly steal from the banks and loot 25% of the largest bank accounts...which is how they fund those stashes that people find in the sewers? (semi tic) relax)

devout island
#

Dwi had the right idea... Taxes !
every time you withdraw or deposit, a tax is applied.

fervent hatch
#

Things like deeds and such SHOULD cost more, but again, I don't see it working anymore.

unique oyster
#

Recharge enhancives for silver. I know it is done as an end of the year treat but making it always available would be a good way to curb silver. The upper 5% have to be using an insane amount of enhancives so they would be paying more often.

fast cipher
#

I don't think it would be a massive drain but silver based consumables like the HW alchemist for temporary powerups might drain some silvers. Instead of me generating silvers with tons of heavy quartz orbs i'd drop some coins every X amount of time for the boost.

I'm trying to think of what I've spent silvers on since January other than player services and all I can come up with is locksmith pool and... locksmith pool.

velvet nebula
#

open a casino! a few games with terrible odds, some with slightly less terrible odds... a few progressive jackpots. watch the silvers drain

@fast cipher i started to type this exact thing, but the only thing i could think of that i MIGHT spend the silver on (i don't even use the alchemist power ups and they are basically free), is maybe temporary spell enhancives?

unique oyster
fast cipher
# velvet nebula open a casino! a few games with terrible odds, some with slightly less terrible ...

I don't use a ton but I do use the transport system, and if I didn't hunt inside pretty often I might care more about the weather protection. I walk past a lot people using the wildfire since it lights up my highlights. But its an example of a system that could be adapted to use silvers and offer different perks in different towns unique to the local conditions. Want something to protect you from the heat at SoS got it, something to stop you from getting rifted between planes? sure. I dunno much about RR but like.. i dunno a water walking one? Basically think regional gemstones but get rid of the gemstone and charge people silvers for powerups. Getting rid of the gemstone also opens it up to all levels of the game.

civic niche
unique oyster
#

How about a temporary effect that increases the amount of spells you can have in spell burst/sever areas? Spend some silvers and you can keep a few extra defense spells running while you hunt.

split hamlet
# 
1. Orb Purchases

   Allow daily purchase of an account bound green orb for 100k silvers
   Allow weekly purchase of an account bound Blue orb for 2.5m
   Allow weekly purchase of an account bound violet orb for 15m
2. Enhancive Recharging
3. Enhancive Reroll

   But only if we can choose which specific enhancive line to reroll.  
   If there are 4 enhancives, let me reroll the 2nd line, or 3rd line, but I choose!
4. FixPots

   Sell FixSkills (5m), FixStats (20m, FixProfession (75m), FixRace (75m) and FixName (5m) for silvers.
5. Bounty Pawnshop

   Allow us to sell enhancives to a "Bounty Pawnshop" for bounty points.
6. Automated Services

   Sell lightening for 1m per service.
   Sell deepening for 1m per service.

   Sell greater than epic deepening for more.
   Up to 300lbs deepening for yuge amounts of silver. 
   (But make it incremental spend/add)
   (50m per +10 lbs - above 200lbs)
7. Customizations

   Sell alteration scrolls for 10m.  
   Sell feature alteration scrolls for 20m.
8. Community Silver Sink

   Introduce a monthly contest where the entire game community donates toward a funding goal.
   Every X amount of silvers donated provides a monthly % increase of XP.

   On the 1st of the month, the community silver sink resets.
   For every 100 million silvers donated, there is a global XP boost of 1%.

Here's a list from the last time we discussed this.

fast cipher
#

I'd be fine with those but I don't even think they have to be on that level where they infringe on services that they offer already. Small things that make a QoL difference add up overtime. I'm probably looking at it as a smaller drain but part of a more robust system of drains.

hazy osprey
#

I wouldn't spend money on anything on that list other than numbers 3 and maybe 8. I want something that can make my character stronger. Items 1, 2, 4, 6, and 7 already exist in some form and I can buy them for silvers, typically from another player. Formalizing them to be purchaseable directly for silvers wouldn't be hurtful or anything, but they wouldn't move the needle for me, I don't think.

I think a good system shouldn't be a tax and should instead be something that makes characters stronger that they can't already get some other way.

devout island
#

cant create a pay-to-win scenario

if you want pay-to-win more than premium, find somewhere else to go

split hamlet
#

Since when

(Also that list was taken from like the 100 other times we've talked about how to drain silvers, it's an accumulation of things over time.)

unique oyster
#

I won't mind paying for 6. I hate trying to get merchants to GALD my stuff because I am unlucky.

devout island
thorn rover
#

Drains, I would suggest reverting most of the changes and just adding drains. Previous system worked for decades. The changes led to all these unintended consequences, which is sucking up more and more dev time.

For certain drains, first use is full exp. Second is half. Just add diminishing returns if there's worry about MAers

split hamlet
#

I definitely wouldn't do that.

How do you fix people loot capping in 2 days? You make it take longer.
How do you make it take longer? Reduce the SELL value of every item further and further as more and more silvers are accumulated.

thorn rover
split hamlet
#

Oh, I guess they changed silver generation for no reason then, since it wasn't a problem.

thorn rover
#

Judging from the reactions, it really wasn't a problem. The fixes just upset most people. People complained about MAers till it effected them, then realized it wasn't as big of a deal.

Im not sure why you are on such a crusade for silver reduction. Really, did it effect you THAT much? If so, please explain.

split hamlet
#

I think you're getting confused about the reactions. The reactions are due to the poor implementation of "the fix" to the silver generation problem. It caused additional problems with no apparent forethought about how the changes would affect other systems.

MA complaints are irrelevant.

Reducing the sell value of items is a systematic way to do a loot cap in a way that doesn't have all the negative problems that people were upset about.

You shouldn't be able to loot cap in 2 days. You shouldn't have weeks of your subscription where you'll generate no loot.

Silver reduction via SELL solves that.

Gems/Loot would still have a "system" value (For chrisms/totems/etc). They would just SELL/generate less silvers.

thorn rover
#

How did the silver generation before the patch effect you though?

split hamlet
#

It doesn't matter how I was affected. This thread isn't about me.

south trail
thorn rover
# split hamlet It doesn't matter how I was affected. This thread isn't about me.

Well if it doesnt matter to you, why does it need to be changed? Why are you so passionate about silver reduction then?

I would ask Wyrom the same. Why so passionate? Yes a lot of silver is generated. Economy was stable.

People who MA and make more silver, they worked for it. Everyone is welcome to pay for a lot of accounts, be present at the computer and learn how to code.

split hamlet
#

They've stated why it's necessary multiple times in the 50 other threads that this has been discussed in. Maybe you can search discord for your answers.

frozen tusk
thorn rover
split hamlet
frozen tusk
#

Alastir's proposal is the only real solution I can see.

Absolutely any carrot tacked on to the current implementation when a player hits 1% is just going to further incentivize more players to hit 1% which is completely against the goal.

Just reduce the selling cost of everything.

gloomy lark
#

Alastir’s proposal is game breaking in like 50 ways. Just one example, all small statues could be resold in playershops for their 1% value? Let’s say for 200 silvers because they are only worth 10 silvers to the person selling them.

thorn rover
split hamlet
devout island
#

if you are going to make rules to help/punish a group of people, you cannot apply it realm wide.

minor falcon
gloomy lark
thorn rover
split hamlet
frozen tusk
#

Earning 1% loot is terrible because it's not a value reduction but a quantity reduction. Well actually the current system does both.

The other way is to throttle the value of loot so you earn the same quantity but it gradually reduces in value.

Then we go a step further and just reduce the selling price of every item in the game by 90%.

Will the folks playing more still earn more? Yup.

Will multi accounters still earn more? Probably.

But for the vast majority of the playerbase this would basically be rolling everything back before loot cap was ever implemented with the original 16M -> 35M.

gloomy lark
devout island
#

there are plenty of MA groups who will never come close to the loot cap

thorn rover
#

I never understood the people being upset with MAers. They pay for a lot of accounts. They are present at the computer. They put in a lot of effort coding and understanding scripts. They deserve to make more.

Just revert and add silver drains priced to be accessible to all. Adjust silver drains as needed.

split hamlet
gloomy lark
#

Alastir what is so hard to understand. In your little example you talk about a diamond being worth 500 silvers because of your scaled loot cap. Why would I sell that diamond for 500 silvers to the gem store when I could sell it on player shops for 5k? Be serious, can you not understand the implications of this?

split hamlet
devout island
#

I am a MA'er and I too wrote many scripts to help me run my guys. I script because I'm disabled, take that ability away or hinder it more and i will take my 3 premium accounts down. oooh big threat I know.

SSDI/medicare wont cover GS4 🙁

frozen tusk
fast cipher
#

They could apply the skins logic to gems. Skin values are sticky when your in the cap.

gloomy lark
#

And there it is, your proposal destroys the player resale market for all gems, consumables, skins, and every other drop. Diamond prices go to 0 as loot cappers just keep lowering the price since they never stop finding them. Alright moving on, this would have only taken 30 secs if it wasn’t for slow mode.

split hamlet
#

I didn't realize we were trying to save your gem reselling business. I thought we were trying to create a sustainable loot system and economy.

gloomy lark
#

no you just didn’t think, and your proposal takes something that affects the 1% and makes it affect 100%, just move on, it’s not a good idea and it’s never happening. (And I don’t sell gems)

frozen tusk
rigid sparrow
remote sun
#

1 and 8 would be nice. 8 is essentially what lumnis used to be but now with silvers

split hamlet
tender scarab
#

Just to consolidate key points of Wyrom posts in one spot:
The goal isn't to create a fair market where we try to dismiss players who put in the work to earn while giving more to the people who don't put in the effort. It's to make sure we can keep silvers worthwhile and to keep providing value to them without hyper inflating all prices to match top earners.
We moved the needle hundreds of millions. Not billions like the goal was.

This is a game, the aim is fun.```
```The goal is also not to make things like trading, purifying, chisels, etc worthless.  We just need to strike a balance.  I really want to be able to continue to offer everything I can for silver.  I am your biggest advocate.  I just want to get it under control in some way.```
```The goal this last time was to reduce silver generation by over 33%.```
```I also can't keep CLAIM in place at the current pricing because of how easily silvers are to print.```
slate bluff
#

So I need to sell a bunch of gems from my locker to make space, there is no way that gems from like 2024 given to my bard on another account to sing then sell would count towards a lootcap, right? 😅

tawny sierra
jolly pollen
#

Maybe we could actually enforce afk scripting starting with the MA groups farming silvers by hunting 24/7. They're the reason we have this issue, imo.

civic niche
#

Everyone always jumps on "afk scripting", and I don't really know, but it seems like they have probably checked most of those groups and they have passed. I do think there's a lot of legitimate "automation" based on policy though.

split hamlet
#

Let's count the number of people who do everything manually versus the number of people who may use a script to "automate" something so they don't get carpal tunnel or myriad of other reasons.

Blaming everything on those evil MA groups is convenient but it's inaccurate. Unlimited silver generation is the issue.

slate bluff
#

I don't know if Wyrom posted the new median but even if the bottom 95% averages 4mil per month then the lootcapped MAers are still going to out earn ya by a factor of like 10x (3 accounts, 15mil per month) every single month so in a year joe smoe have 48mil and AFL (Away from Life) guy has like 540mil. And before it would have been them having over 1 billion vs. your ~40mil.....

split hamlet
#

Stop assuming people are doing something wrong just because you don't like it.

The game wouldn't exist without scripts. 99% of event currency is generated via script. (Or was, lolgladiator)

slate bluff
lofty dragon
frozen tusk
#

But I mean, what could you actually buy for silvers at those old EGs that was remotely comparable to what you can buy for paid currency?

valid orbit
#

Funding game improvements with silver seems interesting. Want a new room in town? A new hunting area? A new shop? Donate (aka vote) for the development of it. Like, maybe almost everything should have a public funding threshold before building it?

Not player designed, just player supported.

gloomy lark
#

fast forward 6 months and half of Elanthia has Omrii statues in it 🤣

lofty dragon
jolly palm
#

I thought EG always required a paid ticket entry? Wasn’t it one of the first real pay events?

tender condor
#

it was. and it was all silver inside but also the items were like "a pouch but IT"S SPOOOOOOKY"

frozen tusk
#

There's been quite a few paid event items for fairly cheap "less than an old EG ticket" that are game changing in their quality of life, like survival kits.

There's also been lots of fluffier items that are game changing for the folks that like them, like the papermaker.

Old events and old items were mostly re-skinned stuff that didn't do much.

Nostalgia is a heck of a drug though and its probably 99% of the reason most of us still play.

lofty dragon
#

I'd still like to know what exactly I'm supposed to be able to buy for silvers at any current paid event since the assertion was made that there's now more than ever before....

frozen tusk
#

The full context was converting silvers to paid currency via claim and the free gifts provided at paid events Starchitin. Not to mention players with paid subscriptions do have the option to use the free monthly simucoins for paid event entries.

These things are frequently overlooked but they are available.

lofty dragon
#

that was an awefully disingenuous way of phrasing it, then

frozen tusk
#

EG cost $36 to $50 bucks per character for entry right? One could say the same about your phrasing as well because you couldn't buy anything for silver until you paid cash upfront.

crimson pond
#

EG is free

tawny sierra
# fervent hatch One thing to keep in mind is when we try to add new layers to the game, we kind ...

Make content that uses silvers mechanically. like a new Cat C property thats unlocked and maintained with silvers and then a hunting ground full of lycanthropic critters and the raid boss with a weakness to silver that drop the "more interesting loot".

You get a form of breakage but its supportive and optional and not punitive. Can make it scale with silvers added so whales can burn more for faster kills, better defensive, longer buffs or whatever makes sense.

Enter in with full pockets of silver that become weightless but slowly disappear for additional buffs while you carry them (maybe applies to groups at lower strength if they aren't carrying silvers). Craft silver totems that do things like prevent a single death or something during the raid. People that want a challenge or on a budget can choose to not take the buffs.

Gives you a few knobs to adjust for burn rate that is mechanically advantageous for players to use. Its not exactly pay to win but just increasing odds over time that you're successful in the raid.

flat tusk
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

I want to be the person that will stand up for free festival inventory because that is one of my favorite parts of this game. Asking this specific crowd, where their main weapon probably has a loresing value with 3 commas in it, is probably going to have a bit of a skewed response. I enjoy the little fluffy and lightly scripted items that are the focus of the free festivals, they're great for filling out an inventory or putting together the right look for an alt, and I've always preferred to mix and match some OTS pieces with altered ones so that inventories don't become an absolute word salad.

That being said, I also wouldn't mind if instead of coming up with new stuff every time, you just re-ran some of the old merchants. It seems like a shame that so much work went into the descriptions and concepts for some of these items that have only shown up once 10 years ago.

split hamlet
#

We need events of all shapes and sizes. An event conversation shouldn't be part of a loot cap conversation.

tawny sierra
flint mortar
cold zephyr
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Spent 8 minutes out hunting with a pre-level 20 character. Between all the items from the creatures and silvers he made this much:
6,071

He did find 1 box on the second kill of his hunt. The box weighs roughly 70 pounds.
If he had to carry that 70 pound box through the hunt he would have been swinging his weapon in 8 seconds. He had to rub a black crystal, put the strongbox in the disk. Thankfully this hunt the problem was solved. If he got another box it would have been a different story and he would have had to run to town.

The strongbox (23) contained:

Scrolls [2]: an aged scroll (2034), a crystal flecked scroll (4833)
Gems [2]: a banded sardonyx stone (54), a clear zircon (11)
Special [2]: some silver coins (3701), a bright gold ingot (12193)
Misc [5]: a polished shark tooth (11), a small block of salt (2; 56 & 60), a lynx cowrie shell (59), a speckled conch shell (51)```

Everything + the box totals = 23447
8 minute hunt = 29518 silver

No loot boost, no skinning. Crappy gems basically failed to even aid this endeavor and I made 30k in 8 minutes on a pre-level 20 character.

My point is, the boxes are stupid heavy still and silver is way too easy to come by.  Let's say I was able to keep a similar return over the course of an hour, that means I'd be making around 210k in silver in an hour. To put it bluntly, you guys screwed the pooch with the loot changes. Tanking the softcap to 10mil has made it laughably easy to hit with the super heavy boxes. In two days I've done a total of about 5 hours of hunting and I'm sitting on roughly 1.75mil. Before the changes I had to work hard to hit 200-250k an hour and that's with skinning on a level 60+ character. I can nearly match that now with a pre-level 20 character that can't skin.

I don't have any suggestion nor do I understand the reasoning behind the changes. I can just post what I experience. Maybe this helps you some, maybe it doesn't.
thorn rover
split hamlet
thorn rover
split hamlet
#

I don't need to win an argument. So if that's why you keep trying to bait me, you can stop talking to me.

Controlling the input is just as important as controlling the output. It's a pretty simple concept to understand.

dusky crest
# frozen tusk Alastir's proposal is the only real solution I can see. Absolutely any carrot...

I am, and likely never to be, anywhere near to lootcap because my game time is very limited and I don’t have the inclination to spend it all hunting. Therefore, like @proud rune, I didn’t feel there was any point in wading into this conversation until now where I will just add my tuppence.

I have been concerned about the impact some of the suggestions made in this thread would have on the so-called 95% (I guess I’m lumped into that rather murky category).

I’ll be honest, the current situation has actually been beneficial to me in that I haven’t seen any significant difference to my game play (other than having to dust off my own rogue to pick boxes, which is a net positive as she needs to finish LM anyway). Encumbrance issues don’t affect me and I like the fuller boxes.

I do agree with Ruse that the best suggestions for any potential revisions to the whole silver generation fiasco I’ve seen put forward so far have been @split hamlet ‘s.

Now back to lurking.

split hamlet
#

I am truly not trying to harm those who are in the 95%. And if they do the full idea "Major Loot Boost during Lumnis hours" the 95% should actually see an overall increase.

The proposal is intended to hit those attempting to make loot cap the hardest by requiring significantly more time and effort to reach the same results.

# 
Wyrom: I don't want to focus the discussion on drains

#1461872047062908929 message

Drains are the #1 cause that created this situation. The silver drains were replaced by event currency drains. We can pretend to ignore it but it doesn't change the fact that a silver drain is the other half of the equation that is required for any long-term solution.

Let's talk, transparently, about that.

thorn rover
#

Im really concerned about the health of the game the longer the status quo remains.

From my personal experience, since the changes, I have only seen people quit, reduce accounts, reduce playtime, or be less enthusiastic about buying event currency (me included).

There are tons of great ideas in this discussion that could move the loot changes in a good direction. I think the population has spoken at this point.

sleek meadow
# frozen tusk You do understand there's a big difference between generating new silvers (selli...

Maybe part of the issue is there is too much stuff in boxes? We used to get 15 boxes with 3 things each, now we get 6 boxes with 15 things each or some such…then we balance that by lowering the price of gems and spamming the world with heavy orbs?

Maybe a first step should have been to change one thing… see what happens. Instead of changing lots of prices just have less stuff drop? Then you could…add diminishing returns on box drops? For each box you get in a month your chance of finding the next falls by 1%? Just spitballing

warped escarp
#

i have a very simple solution that will fix all of these problems simultaneously: give me all the loot and let me distribute it as i see fit. i promise to be a fair Arbiter of Treasure

remote egret
# tender scarab Just to consolidate key points of Wyrom posts in one spot: ```The goal isn't to ...

I couldn’t find Wyrom’s post that included his statement about wanting to keep silvers worthwhile and to keep providing value to them to reply to directly unfortunately. So hope you don’t mind me jumping off your post.

What does this actually mean and can a time in the game be pointed at for when this statement was more or less true?

I believe that Wyrom has indicated he sees the value that the secondary market provides to the health of this game so are we talking about when silvers was $5/mil? $10/mil? or when people felt like they could only buy the best items with silvers?

I’ll be honest I have no idea. To me I currently feel like my silvers have great value. Not in terms of how much I could sell them for to put towards daycare costs but for what I currently need in game. My world pretty much exists in the 30-200m range for items I’m interested in.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately??) but as just is part of the game now, I have to wait for people who spent a lot of $$ buying stuff at DR and then offloading it for >50% discounts in silvers before I get upgrades because I just won’t spend the $$ that is being asked for at DR. And if the DR (other festivals too I guess) prices aren’t set based on the current silver economy I really don’t understand how the amount of silvers in game actually matters. I didn’t see gemstones pricing getting changed when the LC was drastically lowered and that is the biggest source of a silver sink (besides Lumnis) in the game that I see.

velvet nebula
#

is there a world where you cut the box silver value in half, cut the pawnshop/gemshop cap in half, and increase the amount of items that drop by a bit (jewelry/armor/shields/etc)?

Most of the trash drops will get pawned for half of what currently gets paid out, but you have a better chance at finding decent enhancives. You cut silver generation in half-ish and people continue to find loot/items deeper into cap.

#

also, when you find an temp padded item and it appraises for like 800k but is basically worthless, does that count as 25k of your lootcap or 800k?

cold zephyr
# velvet nebula also, when you find an temp padded item and it appraises for like 800k but is ba...

Where it to be the latter, I'd have hit the lootcap last month. 10 days of playing and doing moderate hunting I walked away with 7.5mil from stuff I sold. I came across numerous weapons/armors valued 500k-1000k with temporary padding/weighting on them. It would be horribly cruel if they let these items that can only be sold to generate new silvers for 25k count as full "valued" amount that the pawnshop/gemshop/bard song says the item is worth.

fierce lynx
cold zephyr
# split hamlet

Your idea still has the same issue as we have now. Any gem/skin found isn't functioning correctly with other systems and these systems need to be updated to work the the changes they already. Your idea is to have a perceived value (what the item is worth based on it being generated as if no one has any lootcap value scaling applied yet) to be used with other systems such as chrisms, for example. Then you want the item to have an actual value; a value based on the looter's lootcap scaling value. The other systems would have to be updated to work with your suggested change, either way it still takes coding time to resolve.

You don't fix anything mechanically with your idea. You do generate other issues, however.

What happens if Bob gives his 500 silver diamond to Frank? Does the diamond forever retain 500 silver or does it sell for what Frank's current lootcap scaling is at?

Then there is the fundamental aspect of finding loot that returns little to no silver; I'm curious if people would find that just as much fun as finding nothing? Or would it just be tediously irritating because you're now lugging around worthless items of a silver value that you now have to manage?

fierce lynx
#

Why not just revamp the treasure system at the higher end to produce roughly 33% less loot?* While you are at it maybe scale back what you can gain through singing to gems and similar by a third as well.

Then, assuming peoples behaviors don't dramatically change (which is always a big if) you should have roughly 33% less loot generated in a month without even needing a loot cap.

You could probably push loot cap upwards a bit with these changes and still achieve the stated goal of 33% silver generation in the lands.

On the consumption side - maybe every new high end 'cool' thing that today gets put into the monetization side of the house, maybe have 10% of those items instead start showing up on the silver side of the house. Make them lots of silver and only available for purchase via silver.

*I thought this was what the box change up was supposed to do but apparently implementation didn't connect with results for some reason.

bright pasture
tawny sierra
#

can we get a 14 day encumbrance boost potion for half price? 30 days is kinda nerfed

civic niche
#

I still fundamentally do not understand the quest to reduce silvers. I can think of no other open world game where there is a loot cap of some kind, Standalone or Online. There are instead, things to spend money on.

bright pasture
#

perhaps because gs is small and revenue is largely from pay events, vs. larger games where revenue is largely from subscriptions?

#

And why aren't we using AI NPCs with AI to attract media attention and a larger player base? :randomworkthoughts: It would be an excellent application of RAG

tawny sierra
bright pasture
#

The year is 2032. Simutronics, now the forerunner of AI drone infiltration technology, long popular for testing new AI software on its expansive player base, celebrates its 40th anniversary today...

tender scarab
#

As far as I can tell, the only thing we have to go on said publicly about why silver generation must be reduced is because otherwise they'll have to get rid of CLAIM. I assume the unspoken reasoning is that CLAIM is perceived to be cutting too deeply into revenue, but that they want to still allow people to buy pay event items with silver.

That does give me an idea, though. Let's say all of these efforts at reducing silver generation somehow continued not working and they ultimately had to get rid of CLAIM. I think, even then, they could still keep the spirit of CLAIM. What might that look like?

  • Pick out a few expected-to-be-major items per year that would have been pay event items and debut them as being for silvers or the pay event currency the first time they're offered
  • Offer for silver a rotating inventory of items that have already proven themselves as big sellers for the past few years, but have since trickled off due to saturation or newer and stronger shinies
  • Use the teadragon "win a spin/raffle to pay to get the prize" model more often, except with higher silver costs (IIRC these were either win a free teadragon, a 5m teadragon, or a 50k shards teadragon, but why not a 50m teadragon?)

Things like that.

Of course, they can also try these things (or try them more frequently in the teadragon model case) even while CLAIM still exists and see what happens. And I think they should!

civic niche
#

Meh. If all this annoyance and lack of loot/fun is for claim just kill claim. Fixed.

remote egret
#

I like claim. I hate that we might have to lose it just because 94 accounts (50 players maybe?) aren’t having the fun. I don’t know what the silver to BS ratio will be if it goes away but I’m betting everything I want from DR would probably get more expensive for me to buy with silvers

slate bluff
fast cipher
#

Are we really scapegoating the lootcap people for a gamewide issue? If those 94 accounts didn't exist and took the 20m +/- with them off the books that's still less than the 33% goal reduction they wanted.

mellow gyro
#

This thread has legs.

sleek meadow
# remote egret I like claim. I hate that we might have to lose it just because 94 accounts (50 ...

Maybe it was said somewhere in the thread I can't find....but did we ever get a % of total silver earned by the 1% as part of the total silver earned in 1 month? If we did "create" 10 billion silver last month did they get 1-5-25-50% of that total? its not scapegoating if they are concentrating 50% of the total wealth in the game. if it's 5% then yeah its really not the same. I feel like we are dancing around a lot of underlying issues still...you could simply reduce the total amount of wealth that goes out...just slow the engines...that would address one issue. But if it's "revenue" or wealth consolidation then those solutions look very different.

remote sun
remote egret
# remote sun if claim goes away, it wouldnt be because of the loot capped accounts

Oh. I thought that was the implication. The changes are almost certainly targeted at the top earners. The gem change seemed more like an untimely coincidence than a direct attempt to loot nerf for the middle and low levels.

Also. I know the total silvers generated was more than was hoped for…but does the data track how much more people spent (to silver sinks so gone from the game) than past months? I know each account of mine spent almost 2 mil more than usual just based on the lumnis donate!

slate bluff
#

So basically the argument is that the 50 players who represent like ~3% of the population (~50/~1500) are bringing in at least 14% ([94 x 15mil]/10bil) of the silvers but they probably also have other accounts bringing in between 10-14mil (~50 x 12.5mil) so lets tack another 6% to be safe..... So that is 3% of players generating 20% of monthly silvers?

remote sun
#

yes, you're right the lc was aimed at the top earners, but didn't wyrom say after looking at the data, the top really didn't change much?

fierce lynx
tawny sierra
remote egret
# remote sun yes, you're right the lc was aimed at the top earners, but didn't wyrom say afte...

Going back to Wyrom's post on 3/31 (#1461872047062908929 message). He says the 94% made "more" money (although he later says the average account balance is 7.9mil). 5% made roughly what they were making before the change and 1% had their money cut down a small bit "the top 1% didn't quite hit over 32mil".

So yeah - that is always interesting to consider. The average account can just barely afford a CLAIM as it would almost entirely drain their bank accounts. But because the average joe was making more money (but still peanuts spread amongst the masses with no real buying power) I'm not sure what/how they should tweak things.

I still feel like it would be helpful for everyone to know when the "golden age" of the silver economy was (and what metrics are used to measure that) so we can understand the real concern. As of right now the changes solely seem to be targetted to ensure that player money goes to SIMU for the cool stuff rather than other players (in terms of getting rid of CLAIMs).

unique oyster
#

Hearing that most accounts have less than 10m in the bank was really eye opening. The wealth gap must be insane.

remote egret
#

Yeah - I don't know how other people do it but I do keep most money on 1 of my 2 accounts. So then one of my accounts would be in that # but the reality is me, the owner of both accounts, has much more on my other account!

civic niche
#

Right, if people are regularly master bankering, the amount people have on any one account isn't particularly meaningful. I don't do it every month, but I frequently consolidate. So, depending on the snapshot tme, 2/3 of my accounts are regularly under.

civic niche
remote egret
civic niche
#

I genuinely feel like they never should have introduced claim in the first place. It made no sense to me the first time they did it. Like....you're giving away money. Claim gift I get, a tiny bit to tease people (though I'd argue, that's a stupid low amount, you're not really teasing anyone at that level, you're legit only giving them something to sell to people who have silver)

Also, with the gladiator, they removed the time element of running books, so really, there's virtually zero arbitrage on silver:bs now.

fierce lynx
civic niche
#

No the gladiator timer was because people were jamming 100K into their head, then dying, and wanting to get it back, because....people. (Or, that was the stated reason) We all suffer because like 10 people were....not smart.

fierce lynx
#

I don't disagree with the points you make. I wouldn't miss (paid) CLAIM and think turning in your books directly for bs with no time / effort is silly.

primal creek
#

If you need 5m BS in an event you kinda still have to deal with a timegate. They should get rid of it again.

civic niche
primal creek
#

I choose option N for never gonna happen. Arena or arena like open 365 with hess closed.

5m BS - nope just gladiator use. i don't think afk scripting sewers or arena is something I want to try, I did use two accounts though.

I can see 5 screens. Anything more is in violation. So even with that. I would get bored looking at sewers for hours. Toodles.

civic niche
# primal creek I choose option N for never gonna happen. Arena or arena like open 365 with hess...

I really don't recall saying afk scripting. Sewers would be pretty easy to watch 10-12 accounts run through. And you can run a book through the sewers in like 3-4 minutes give or take.

I'm also pretty sure, with the caches, in large volumes you make more in the sewers, but I don't know, I don't have anMA army.

Oh, but having the arena open year round to spread out that grind, I love that idea. They'd probably have to drop the exp on it a bunch, or it would become the new bandit island.

split hamlet
# cold zephyr Your idea still has the same issue as we have now. Any gem/skin found isn't func... 
Your idea still has the same issue as we have now. Any gem/skin found isn't functioning correctly with other systems and these systems need to be updated to work the the changes they already. Your idea is to have a perceived value (what the item is worth based on it being generated as if no one has any lootcap value scaling applied yet) to be used with other systems such as chrisms, for example. Then you want the item to have an actual value; a value based on the looter's lootcap scaling value. The other systems would have to be updated to work with your suggested change, either way it still takes coding time to resolve.

Gems/skins already have different values, skins in particular have a selling value, and then a totem value that can be higher than the selling value.

If something needs updated, then I'm sure they can update it, which yes, will obviously take time.

You don't fix anything mechanically with your idea. You do generate other issues, however.

What happens if Bob gives his 500 silver diamond to Frank? Does the diamond forever retain 500 silver or does it sell for what Frank's current lootcap scaling is at?

This is a non-issue, Bobs loot cap was increased by 500 silvers when he found the diamond. Therefore, the loot was applied to a loot cap and it doesn't matter after that.

Then there is the fundamental aspect of finding loot that returns little to no silver; I'm curious if people would find that just as much fun as finding nothing?

Yes, finding loot is more fun then finding no loot. But this also completely glosses over how the changes would actually function.

sleek meadow
remote egret
civic niche
#

Sure, I just personally think it's a terrible business plan to give away the milk as it were.

remote egret
#

Yeah - I don't know how that works but I imagine it is sometimes better to sacrifice profits for goodwill. And since the average account is barely able to afford 1 claim let alone a whole caboodle (which they would need to earn enough BS to buy enough to really cut into profits I would think) it really is those few mega buyers of claim boxes. Who probably (I would guess) have already spent tons of $$ on simucoins/bs!

To clarify what I meant by goodwill - I just mean it can look and feel bad to have all the cool items be gated essentially behind $$. Especially for those folks that have more time than money.

sleek meadow
#

And keep in mind the cost of the monthly sub which is not insignificant.

civic niche
#

On subs, I'm surprised there's no longer term options for smallish discounts, like every other online MMO seems to have. Sure, slightly less money, but also less churn.

remote egret
cold zephyr
jolly palm
primal creek
#

15m is ALOT more than 10m.

cold zephyr
# split hamlet ``` Your idea still has the same issue as we have now. Any gem/skin found isn't ...

This is a non-issue, Bobs loot cap was increased by 500 silvers when he found the diamond. Therefore, the loot was applied to a loot cap and it doesn't matter after that.
If the gem is only 500 silver for Bob, but giving it to Frank and he can sell it for 3k - that would be a big loophole. So that clearly couldn't be allowed.

Then really, what is the point of your suggestion? Your idea is overly complicated in terms on making a huge sweeping change for everything. Why not just have no value tied to any items and give everyone silvers instead? This way if you pick up a diamond it is simply used for nothing more than other systems the game has to offer (chrisms, animate dead, deeds and so on).

No matter how you try to explain or spin your idea to people most will still see a worthless diamond that holds no value other than it could be used for some other system in the game.

To me, the idea of finding that, as Murdos Burdos would say, "...rare uncut diamond" and having it hold some intricate silver value that makes it worthwhile collecting and selling; that is what makes it an uncut diamond. If I pick one up and it's only valued at 100 silver because my bucket is nearly full and then that specific gem is only 100 silver no matter what I do with it seems like a big waste of time to take and sell at any point of its existence. Then what if I sell that diamond off to someone else that is expecting a diamond to have that 3k+ value, only to find out I sold it to them for 2k and when they sold it they got 100 silver for it?

If you come around and say you don't have to sell it, you can use it for something else (chrism, deed, etc) that's lost on me because I don't use chrisms, I don't need another plethora of deeds, I don't animate dead and I don't want to horde a giant stash of diamonds that have no silver value. I wouldn't find it fun collecting a ton of items that have no resale value for me or for anyone else.

hard folio
rigid sparrow
#

part of the answer here seems simple. i know it's not billions but how much silver is generated by crystal amulets? have a quick one night RP where something comes in, changes the essence of that old ESP magic somehow and now instead of activating esp, a crystal amulet now holds (Insert useful thing every single person in gemstone needs enough to use them and never sell them to the gemshop again here).
Maybe once you've turned in enough crystal amulets to an npc you get an attuned rpa orb.

Maybe we can turn in all of our lockpicks to an npc and eventually earn a lockpick that has a better mod or better strength on it.

I don't think anyone would be mad if we had less actual silver income if we got something tangible for it. even if this only accounts for 1% of the total silvers between all lockpicks and crystal amulets, that's closer to the goal and a change i don't think anyone would have a problem with.

Could do something with wands as well. remove the silver generation by giving people who don't use wands a thing to do with wands instead of hoarding them on an alt, popping in their pocket wizard and duping 750 wands while you go through lumnis turning in gem bounties and gathering resource to sell for enchanting service.

#

i'd love to take wands to an alchemist and have them take X amount of Y wands, to create a temporary enhancive that worked like a crumbly non rechargable version of your advguild badge.

south trail
unique oyster
tawny sierra
split hamlet
# cold zephyr ```This is a non-issue, Bobs loot cap was increased by 500 silvers when he found... 
If the gem is only 500 silver for Bob, but giving it to Frank and he can sell it for 3k - that would be a big loophole. So that clearly couldn't be allowed.

Frank wouldn't be able to sell it for 3k, it would sell for 500 silver, because the selling value was assigned according to Bobs loot cap.

Then really, what is the point of your suggestion? Your idea is overly complicated in terms on making a huge sweeping change for everything.

It's pretty simple actually. The more you sell, the less you get for things when you sell. You can't give it to someone else to "loophole" it into generating more silvers.

No matter how you try to explain or spin your idea to people most will still see a worthless diamond that holds no value other than it could be used for some other system in the game.

You don't speak for most people. The people who actually understand the proposal seem to agree with it. Auchand himself commented on the proposal.

To me, the idea of finding that, as Murdos Burdos would say, "...rare uncut diamond" and having it hold some intricate silver value that makes it worthwhile collecting and selling; that is what makes it an uncut diamond. If I pick one up and it's only valued at 100 silver because my bucket is nearly full and then that specific gem is only 100 silver no matter what I do with it seems like a big waste of time to take and sell at any point of its existence. Then what if I sell that diamond off to someone else that is expecting a diamond to have that 3k+ value, only to find out I sold it to them for 2k and when they sold it they got 100 silver for it?

Nobody is forcing you to pick one up if your bucket is nearly full. If it's a waste of time, then don't do it. This seems simple and obvious, am I missing something?

The extra what if

The diamond would have a system value of 3k+ for chrisms/etc. So it would work as intended.

# 
Do you understand the concept of diminishing marginal payout based on cap utilization.
We're talking about a cap of 15,000,000 silvers in the game Gemstone IV.
Can you give me an estimate of how many gems would be necessary to find with that cap, with gem values ranging between 1000 and 5000 silvers?

Yes — I understand exactly what you’re describing, and your framing is basically correct for GemStone IV’s loot cap behavior.

1. How diminishing payout works (conceptually)
As you approach the cap (15,000,000 silvers in your example), the system effectively reduces the value of each subsequent sale.
A commonly cited model is roughly:
Each % of cap reached → % reduction in sale value

So:
At 0% → 100% value
At 50% → ~50% value
Near cap → values approach ~0

This creates a linear decay in payout efficiency, meaning:
Your average value per gem over the entire grind is about ~50% of nominal value if you go all the way to cap.

2. Turn that into math
Let’s define:
Cap = 15,000,000 silvers
Gem value range = 1,000–5,000 silvers
Average nominal gem value ≈ 3,000 silvers

Because of diminishing returns:
Effective average ≈ ~50% of nominal
So adjusted average ≈ ~1,500 silvers per gem

3. Estimated number of gems
Using midpoint average (most realistic)
15,000,000÷1,500≈10,000 gems
15,000,000÷1,500≈10,000 gems

4. Range depending on gem quality
Worst case (all low-value gems ~1,000)
Effective avg ≈ 500
15,000,000÷500=30,000 gems
15,000,000÷500=30,000 gems
Best case (all high-value gems ~5,000)
Effective avg ≈ 2,500
15,000,000÷2,500=6,000 gems
15,000,000÷2,500=6,000 gems

5. Final estimate (practical range)
High-end hunting (good gems): ~6,000–8,000 gems
Mixed realistic gameplay: ~9,000–12,000 gems
Low-end farming: ~20,000–30,000 gems

6. Key insight (the important takeaway)
Because of the linear decay:
The second half of your cap is twice as expensive in effort as the first
Your “true” average value is always ~half of what the gems say on paper
split hamlet
#

And because I feel it's important to understand the WHY.

With the current implementation of loot cap, it's possible to loot cap very quickly, with some reports indicating people have loot capped in 1-2 days. I can easily loot cap within a week if I'm trying, and then you find nothing for 3 more weeks.

That's not fun to me, and it breaks systems (such as gem bounties, chrisms, deeds, etc.)

The loot cap system should be capable of providing loot over a full 30 days subscription, without unfairly pushing those who dive into the shallow end of the loot pool.

A diminishing marginal payout based on cap utilization solves those issues.

remote egret
#

I think the loot situation could be solved as follows because I think we all know by now the true reason these changes is because stillfront is upset they aren’t getting more player money and Wyrom is trying to protect us from the truth but can’t come out and say it directly.

So. My solution would be if your account history shows >$200 in event package purchases from the Simu store your LC is back up to 32m. If you have made a > $1000 event package purchase your LC is unlimited.

This could align with the already set life positions of super casuals who spend less than $50 at events and whose bank accounts are under 8m.

Casual people whose bank accounts are sub 300m and then the true whales with >301m

(Edits to remove accidental derogatory comments)

civic niche
#

I think if they are going to do it based on spend it should be on sub level.

hazy osprey
# split hamlet And because I feel it's important to understand the WHY. With the current imple...

I see the merits of the system you're proposing, but it has a few drawbacks. The first, most obvious one, is, I think, that it would require a bunch of work to change the way the value of items is assigned. Yeah, it was done for skins, but it's probably not so trivial to do it across the board. Another is, I imagine, anything involving gem prices would mess with a bunch of systems (chrisms, deeds, gem-eating stuff, animalistic totem thingies, charging, purification, to name a few). But fine, it's a big problem, and requires big effort.

Another huge one is that, straight from the jump, this system would impact people who don't normally reach the soft cap. Maybe you could get around it by not causing the value modifications to kick in until a certain loot threshold has been reached.

But I think the biggest one is this: people who are currently not having fun while not receiving any loot are unlikely to have more fun if they receive uncut diamonds worth 50 silvers. Personally, if I was deep into loot cap, I'd rather receive one uncut diamond worth 5000 silvers than 100 uncut diamonds worth 50 silvers each.

Some people might view the system you're proposing as a better tuned approach to the falloff after the soft cap, but I don't think it's a panacea.

split hamlet
# hazy osprey I see the merits of the system you're proposing, but it has a few drawbacks. The... 
The first, most obvious one, is, I think, that it would require a bunch of work to change the way the value of items is assigned.

Maybe, but I think we should let a GM state this, not a player.

Another is, I imagine, anything involving gem prices would mess with a bunch of systems (chrisms, deeds, gem-eating stuff, animalistic totem thingies, charging, purification, to name a few). But fine, it's a big problem, and requires big effort.

Just like with skins, there is a SELL value and a SYSTEM value.

Another huge one is that, straight from the jump, this system would impact people who don't normally reach the soft cap. Maybe you could get around it by not causing the value modifications to kick in until a certain loot threshold has been reached.

Casuals with the monthly average loot (2 million) would see a 13% reduction in SELLing value. Or 133 silvers out of 1000.

The system should apply equally, to everyone, from the start.

But I think the biggest one is this: people who are currently not having fun while not receiving any loot are unlikely to have more fun if they receive uncut diamonds worth 50 silvers. Personally, if I was deep into loot cap, I'd rather receive one uncut diamond worth 5000 silvers than 100 uncut diamonds worth 50 silvers each.

Maybe, but I'd still like to be able to complete gem tasks. I'd still like to be able to make chrisms. I'd still like to be able to get deeds.

I also think this system is more likely to meet the metrics Wyrom has talked about hitting, as it would require more time/effort to reach the higher silver generation limits, due to diminishing returns. Diminishing returns are found all throughout the game, so it makes sense for them to apply to the loot cap system as well.

#

Type faster, I need to go to bed. Or don't, because it's not like they're actually going to do this.

All of those things would use the system value. And you can already "cheese" your totem usage via skins, so what's the difference?

The system would apply equally, to everyone, and those who don't earn a ton won't be heavily penalized. 13% reduction at 2 million income is negligible, but with my idea everyone would also get a Major Loot Boost during Gift of Lumnis hours, so the bottom would most likely be raised up while the top would take significantly more effort to reach.

hazy osprey
#

Is your position that things like deeds, chrisms, animalistic totems, etc, should be using the SELL value or the SYSTEM value? If it's the SELL value, we're in the same place we're at right now, and I'm not sure what problem this new system is solving. If it's the SYSTEM value, then you remove the cost of the thing you're buying (e.g. if deeds use the system value, then you can still earn your "big" amount of silvers via the start of the month gems, and cheese your way into cheap deeds using the less-valued gems you obtain toward the end of the month).

Re: the system applying equally to everyone, I'm pretty sure (though I could be misremembering) that one of the design goals was to not penalize those who don't earn a ton. If you're saying the design goals should change, then I guess that's a fight you can fight.

I agree about the gem tasks. I think there should be some exception for gem tasks, like if you have a gem task, even if you're deep into loot cap, you get a boost to find that gem, and its drop rate would be the same as if you weren't loot capped.

I disagree about chrisms and deeds for the reason I stated before: if you allow these things to work on the system value (in your parlance) and not the sell value, then you remove the "cost" of them.

ETA: way to waste your timer!

chilly tulip
#

Chrisms can just go away

hazy osprey
# split hamlet Type faster, I need to go to bed. Or don't, because it's not like they're actua...

I don't think there's a difference; I think it was a mistake to change totems, and my inference (which I acknowledge is no more than that) is that staff might also think it's a mistake, given the same courtesy wasn't extended to other systems. My recollection is that there was a little bit of reluctance to change them, and now perhaps a little regret. But I appreciate that's speculation.

split hamlet
#

I imagine it's simply that skins were easier to change then gems.

There's some merit to the "cost" of chrisms/deeds, but I imagine it's pretty minimal in the grand scheme of things. There would still always be a cost to create them, it would just be a lower cost, if you wait until you're deep into loot cap.

unique oyster
#

Small aside, I got my first gemstone of the month just now. I didn't track kills but I've been hunting since the first. The gemstone in question:

Property:    Storm of Rage (Rank 1 of 5)
Rarity:      Common
Mnemonic:    stormofrage
Description: You gain 1/2/3/4/5% damage factor for each kill.  Stacks up to 3 times.  This effect falls off after 30 seconds without making a kill.  This applies to all DFs, including bolts.

My only thought looking at this is that I should have spent my time hunting in SoS to hit the loot softcap faster. The reason I bring this up is that gemstones are the sole reason to hunt in ascension right now and when you get something like this it feels like you were just wasting your time. Alternate loot needs to feel like it is worth it especially if I am going to a more dangerous place to hunt to get that loot. Why take on my risk when the rewards are less? In the past, it usually takes me about 2 weeks of hunting to find the second gemstone and as you can image, getting a gemstone like the above feels very bad.

Checking my ;ledger, I've made about 500k this month from hunting. That's pretty low compared to what I can make elsewhere.

jolly palm
#

I'd wager 8 out of 10 stones are going to be dust stones. Might need to lower expectations.

I think it's also good to remember that gemstones in general were meant to be a waaay post cap thing. Really an end game slow drip for more progression.... If ascension hunting is too hard to be worth the chase... it's probably a function of that.

unique oyster
jolly palm
#

Yeah, I guess the loot thing doesn't bother me.... since if you're hunting a 2nd and 3rd gemstone, you're hitting loot cap regardless of where you are. I'd rather let it drip in slowly for a few weeks and have more chances at enhancives than race to loot cap in an easier area

sleek meadow
#

1). Still not sure why this became a crisis this year…. 2) still not sure why the solution wasn’t to just throttle back total drops by 10-15% and watch vs creating a complex set of cliffs and walls.

jolly palm
sleek meadow
#

Yes but so did the current setup and as someone who never caps a 10-20% would not have changed the game for me. Boxes gems etc did.

frozen tusk
#

Crystal amulets, when worn, cause 1 additional exp per pulse to be absorbed. Good for 100 exp pulses.

#

Found clothing can be donated to a charity organization located on fwi, premium benefit, and the pawnshop value of the clothing goes towards blue rpa orbs. An orb might cost 5 mil but all clothing donated has increased credit value of 5x pawnshop value.

#

Something could be brainstormed for skins and gems to give incentive towards trading in these items rather than generating new silver.

Some players would take advantage of additional experience opportunities.

calm bay
#

The game needs to move away from silver __generation __ towards silver migration by removing actual silvers from loot, and dropping more items worth selling to other players instead of items sold to NPCs. Yes we need to still find treasure to generate income, but we should be redistributing more than generating.
Unfortunately crafting and player services are lackluster and only alchemy actually uses found items and produces lackluster items for the amount of effort required.

frozen tusk
#

Better enhancive drops and more common.
More mechanically scripted item s.
More items with ability flares besides the standard elemental.

fast cipher
#

So just some thoughts on this sunday morning as I sell some pelts for 12 silvers. In my experience under the old cap system where 0-16m was what 0-10 is now but 16-20 didn't really feel like anything and 20-30 was a little more of a slog but not too bad and then 30-35 was a grind but it covered most of the month (unless you were in a place like SG). But in the new cap system there just isn't enough room to stretch those tiers out unless your willing to slow down more people and advance the soft cap to a lower number. Looking at my skin sales over feb/march if I were to make a guess the new cap looks something like 10-12 50% reduction, 12-14 50% reduction, 14-15 50% reduction, 15+ 1% but I just don't think 5m is enough space to have the falloffs in loot because if your hunting a lot its a short window of a grind which is why people burn through it and cap in a few days. The reduction probably also starts too low and should be a steeper drop once you cross 10m. That being said instead of reinventing the wheel and creating new loot systems I'd probably just combine the concepts and go back to a 35m cap (or 25m hard cap since that's where the top seemed to land) but move the soft cap down to 10m from 16m and then have much sharper fall offs than the previous cap had between the soft and hard caps to stretch it out over a month.

In conversations with people when the new caps were announced I'd also say while having a low cap sounds good for the game (TBD?) but low numbers feel much easier that the cap goes from aspirational to something you realistically think you can hit (often multiple times).

Anyway some random musings.

primal creek
#

1m soft cap. 5m then 1%. Lets just go where it needs to this time. There is not even enough drains in the current economy to suck out 5b/month.

safe epoch
# fervent hatch I saw a few comments about adding more event offerings for silver. Few question...

Item 1 - I would think this would be a simple accounting decision on cost vs return OR it would be a simple RP decision on game flavor and richness. Perhaps that's measured on participation numbers and engagement surveys. Seems like a straight business decision.

Item 2 - I'm not sure why this is an either/or... I had mentioned how neat it would be to see one (perhaps rotating) good event item/script/flare/etc move to a silver sale to see how people responded. The claim seems to be for another purpose altogether. I realize there is a secondary market where folks can exchange silver for event currency to buy items, but if it came straight from the OG merchant I can't help wonder if it might generate interest just for that very novelty and without relying on the secondary market middlemen type folks doing currency exchange. Remember what Jesus did to the moneychangers (Happy Easter by the way).

As for CLAIM... I don't know your numbers here but I can say that I personally have bought the claim until the last couple events because silver became more valuable. I suspect CLAIM can continue as a great silver reduction in the game but it must be price adjusted to account for scarcity (or perceived scarcity). I also like the idea of making things from a CLAIM account bound if possible.. and if you do that then maybe even sweeten the pot to sell more of them.

Item 3 - inflation is a thing.... I can see turning this knob making some impact but I know how well the pool knob adjustment was received and wonder if it really impacts the few you seem to be trying to impact.

Bottom line... hard to have much of an opinion without a comprehensive understanding of the goals. I know they've been articulated to a degree, and I'm not trying to be argumentative at all. I appreciate all of your dedication to the game and everyone engagement with it. It's just hard to have real opinions without solid facts and solid goals put out in front of us.

rigid sparrow
#

Conversation keeps coming up of "How many actual people hit loot cap" VS "How many accounts hit loot cap"?

Also i'm curious to know who else is having an experience like mine.
Prior to the loot changes i noticed no dropoff in loot ever. I don't think i ever hit loot cap even when i was skinning like a madman on teras.
Now if i want to, i can hit a point of noticeable loot dropoff in less than 2 weeks playing the same as i have since i finished the gemstone quest.
If i really want to push it and hunt nonstop i can loot cap in less than a week fairly easily.

(Edit: what bugs me about this is that if i were making this much before, i think i would have noticed an income of 30m a month from hunting. it was more like 15 or less i'm sure. it seems like silver generation has been limited, but the feed is really sped up.)

It's extremely noticeable and easy to judge where you are in that 10-15m range if you do OSA and search the piles, by how often you fail to grab a box when searching, or hunting glacei by how often you don't get a gem when searching (If you have the survival to avoid injuries).

safe epoch
hoary prawn
#

Breakage would be exactly the push I need to cancel both my accounts and say goodbye to a game I've enjoyed for over 25 years but increasingly feel is not a good use of my time or money. I very much doubt that I'd be alone in that.

safe epoch
sturdy ridge
#

A silvers powered enhancive, like the locus, could be a good silver sink

warm agate
#

Found a box I could NOT pick up, So I blew it up I got a 110 lb slab of gold and a slab of silver I had to drag out of the Sanctum. I can't lift it. I wish I could find out how much it weighs

#

Now this huge blob is counting against my loot for the month and I can't pick it up

rigid sparrow
warm agate
#

laughyikes

south trail
jolly palm
#

Or just let ALL enhancives be charged by silvers.

In the absence of that - i'm all for a Locus styled one too 😬

rigid sparrow
#

if we could donate fresh unduped wands or quartz orbs or moonstone cubes to the advguild for credit towards a 30 day enhancive recharge potion that'd remove a lot of silver generation.

warm agate
#

Well, I left the silver in the pit, if anyone miraculously can pick it let me know how much it weighed

jolly palm
#

Feels like they could also just adjust the reroll cost (reducing or eliminating scaling dust cost) and turn gemstones into a legit silver sink.

Rerolling creates a greater binding, so more character bound silver sinks is a big win for silvers overall

frozen tusk
#

They need to introduce counterfiet locus for silver. Works the same as regular locus but for silvers. Has 10 slots instead of 20. Each slot can only be enhanced up to 10 instead of 20. Need to pay silver to keep it charged.
Maxed out counterfiet locus would be 1,000,000 silver for 30 day charge.

jolly palm
#

another great idea - could even see the charge costing more

timber kraken
#

Another easy trick to increase silver drains and simucoin potion purchases would be to increase the enhancive caps for bonuses / stats from 50/40 to 100/80.

Let us glow with enhancives if we want to deal with the cost.

hazy osprey
#

In a game where there's no PvP balance to worry about, and no record boards to chase, and where people can essentially train or buy what essentially amounts to superpowers, it's ridiculous to try to solve loot problems with taxes (locksmith pool, breakage [thank god it'll never happen]) instead of power increases.

(NB: I'm not suggesting no loot cap. I'm suggesting designing a meaningful silvers-only sink.)

fierce lynx
# jolly palm Throttling back total drops hits everyone. I belive their goal was just to throt...

I doubt that would achieve the stated 33% reduction in silver generation. Where that number came from - no idea. But I'm guessing it would need to hit everyone at least some in order to reduce overall silver by 33%.

I'm still puzzled why the fiddled with the boxes so much and yet where somehow unable to achieve any meaningful reduction in silver generation as a results. That said... I LIKE less boxes but sounds like someone didn't carry a 0 or something in looking at the percentages on the new implementation.

civic niche
hazy osprey
jolly palm
# fierce lynx I doubt that would achieve the stated 33% reduction in silver generation. Where...

I agree. But i'd rather take a metered approach and keep tweaking from there. Even if it just cut down 5-10%, it's progress that would have been met with much less resistance.

It also keeps the changes to just ONE lever, so you can see the real impact.

Pulling a ton of levers (making a bunch of changes) and letting it ride for 2.5 months, leaves you wondering which pieces are the pieces that didn't work when you try to analyze them and assess.

It also creates a ton of chaos and change that is met with a lot of resistance.

I'm glad Wyrom said they're going to assess and make changes. It's a bummer that so many levers were pulled that it might be really hard to unwind some, push some harder, without knowing all the impacts and causing more anxiety amongst the player base.

fierce lynx
fierce lynx
# hazy osprey The box fiddling was to further the goal of making boxes interesting and didn't ...

Okay. I must have misread the intention. I thought there was going to be an overall reduction in loot output as a part of the change.... bigger boxes but the frequency would be such that your overall loot would be less from boxes. If that wasn't part of the intended change then they missed an easy reduction in overall silver there.

Also - just get rid of ingots. Convert a portion of silver to an ingot and then.... forget to put the ingot in the box.

frozen tusk
#

Boxes were supposed to be less frequent.
That doesn't appear to be the case and its like boxes drop at the same rate but are way bigger.

Box loot was supposed to be more interesting.
That doesn't appear to be the case and boxes just provide more of the same loot as before. More silver, more gems, etc. More loot that generates silver.

hoary prawn
# safe epoch Perhaps "breakage" is too harsh a word to use... perhaps it would be weapon and ...

I enjoy the company of the small handful of people I’ve met since being forced out of Plat who are not running 24/7 BigShot zombies, and the people are really the only reason to play the game, since the mechanics are for the most part about as engaging as waiting for a bus.

Hunting doesn’t change all that much whether it’s giant rats or vampires, only the techniques and numbers of cheap deaths actually vary. Crafting and alchemy entirely failed to live up to their promise.

I’m holding out some hope for the sorcerer revamp, as I like the changes to Sacrifice, Bloodburst and so forth and hope the new pets will be worth having.

I don’t give a monkey’s how many silvers are in the game or who owns them, I’ve long ago accepted that I’ll never have and really don’t need the Vorpal McGuffin of DOOM

However, the corporate greed of whoever currently owns Simu is nothing I feel any need to pander to; if they don’t get a grip and start reinforcing the rules on unattended scripting, the game won’t be worth playing before long.

crimson pond
#

Boxes definitely drop less frequently

frozen tusk
#

That may be the actual case if I parsed my logs but it doesn't feel like a big enough difference.

safe epoch
# hoary prawn I enjoy the company of the small handful of people I’ve met since being forced o...

I really understand your there.

While never having played in the plat world. I do miss the early days and how RP centric the entire game was. Now I see a mix of people drawn to various aspects of the game.

No doubt there are those chasing and acquiring the Vorpal McGuffin of DOOM (I must admit I may want one now), but I also see a great community of folks interacting and helping one another chase goals, learn skills, understand mechanics, and yes... gain things.

There is beauty and ugly in it all.

Nobody likes a hoard of zombies and I think that is a universal truth.

civic niche
#

Boxes are absolutely less frequent

south trail
thorn rover
#

Lots of good ideas in the past few days, let's make it happen!

rigid sparrow
#

If you gave me a way to break down crap enhancives for enhancive dust to charge my enhancives with, i'd probably never sell another crap enhancive to the pawn for 25k. resulting in less silver generated.

umbral lotus
desert dock
#

I have been reading small blocks of conversation on this channel for the past few weeks while trying to fall asleep at night. About five to seven minutes seems to do the trick.

Seems a lot of the talk is about silvers in (generated into the system), and perhaps less so about money out. I really agree with the posters who mention needing a way to spend silvers.

With acknowledgement to power creep…how about this. Players can buy a token from the Simu store for a small sum (I dunno, say $10) to CONVERT an item to an Ascension Build. Weapons, runestaves, armor, shields, UAC, ranger trinkets, etc. (ha, I am a ranger and need to find some way to sell unsellable nature’s grace).

Once converted, an item become eligible for potions that cost silvers and allow them to increase the enchant, ensorcell, sanctification, etc. Potion for a T6 or S7 or +50-55, 35 mil, T7 or S8 or +55-60, 40 mil, and on and on …up to double the normal player service limits. Each individual weapon, armor, shield, etc. a player converts to the Ascension Build could drain well over a half-billion silvers over time if a player is so motivated to upgrade it. Simu could also sell a good number of (perhaps stacking) difficulty potions for BS ($) as players seek to further upgrade their gear.

You could also have charges incorporated into the Ascension Build system, and require moderate amounts of silvers to recharge the Ascension item upgrades, although perhaps that goes too far.

This system would seem fairly self-run, creating a massive universe for silver usage, and allowing the powers that be to focus on create new uberwilde hunting grounds to keep the player demigods in check.

...if nothing else, I hope this rambling post helped put some of you to sleep tonight.

jolly palm
# desert dock I have been reading small blocks of conversation on this channel for the past fe...

I like where your head is at with the Ascension Build system... might need some tweaks though. Biggest problem is that there isn't much content that would need it at the moment.
There needs to be more difficult end game content to support the idea.

You'd also need to take Enchant off that list.... Major enchants occur at HESS and +50 ---> +55 is about $630 when it's available... and it's purchased in troves when it is. (+5's can be purchased all the way up to +75)

T6-T8 and S7-S8 are fun ideas.

flint mortar
# remote egret I couldn’t find Wyrom’s post that included his statement about wanting to keep s...

Well, there's the financial reward that Simultronics has always reaped from certain players of MA groups that ran 9-10 PREMIUM accounts concurrently, while they'd play out and AFK farm every hunting area for what it was worth, and then they'd just cash out and sell gear, characters and coins. Rinse and repeat, and people wonder why there's a problem. Invariably, like with the Elemental Lore Review, and the initial attempts to address the so-called treasure imbalance., players like myself and others get hosed.

rough vault
#

Let us reflect on the reality that most silver sinks that involve maintenence costs have been disfavored by the player base, with permanence for a one time cost being the preferred compromise. There remains a lot of inconsistency regarding which systems and items are still subject to maintenance costs, and when pay events suddenly offer permanence. The entire history of enhansives with then the fusion script and the bounty badge, and then ascension and then the locus and the fake locus is a good example of a system unsure of itself with many abrupt course corrections regarding costs, rarities, and expectation for typical gameplay in top areas. There will undoubtedly be a lifetime lumnis boost offered at some future pay event auction for $5000 worth of currency, and some will gladly pay that to avoid the weekly need to pay. Breakage without catastrophic loss or a tax to use anything over 5x each week sounds like a good silvers sink, but no one would love that concept. What we do want are things to buy that are optional but still special. If staff let players brainstorm we could all create this wishlist together. Otherwise, i support Alastir's framework as a good solution. Grinding the game still awards more experience and fame to those who choose to do so; only treasure is being necessarily limited.

#

Many barbies will spend most of their RW currency buying permanence for their cosmetics too rather than suffer maintenence cost of a silver sink to restock. This theme is replete and so be it.

mellow gyro
#

Good post, but the approach to this is a lot of 1:1 discussion as a single player from probably our perspective to try and solve it and we're not being told a lot of the pieces, but seem to all point to accounts so it's not 1:1 character wise. It's IPs and accounts generating a cycle that pays for itself and that was capped. It just happens we have a lot of players who play a certain way or a lot AND do some of those combined things causing the root cause, but the root cause other than "too much silver" has a bunch of plot holes in the true dilemma. Day 1000 of topic continues.

calm bay
#

I wonder how much silvers we could drain per year if the AG offered enhancive recharging for silvers year round. Plenty of people prefer not to bounty hunt and thus have lack of BPs for charging items, and also many avoid enhancives for this reason. Make it accessible to everyone for silvers, and you might get a decent amount of drainage.

warped escarp
unique oyster
#

There isn't too much to spend BP on. I think recharges and the fix pots are the only thing people buy regularly.

mellow gyro
#

Yeah. That was where I got to on that one. It would be a drip in the bucket of silver and just a kind of maintenance fee, not real impact

queen pebble
#

As much as I applaud the effort, I don't think you are going to find an easy cap solution that won't wind up punishing the 95% or leaving the 5% with nothing to loot for half the month. Any limit you put in can almost certainly be worked around by adding an account (a net win for you guys, revenue-wise) or by stashing everything and selling after you cap. I think that if you consider the secondary market and look at prices over time, the perceived value of silver is relatively stable. Maybe more stable than it even has a right to be, given the net increase every month. If only a percentage of the player base is even capping at 10/15m I don't honestly see why this is even an issue that requires such precise tuning. It's not about suppressing growth since the simustore directly allows for someone to convert money into power. If the value of silver changes over time, we get inflation/deflation like any economic system, but by and large, that hasn't happened.

But I'll offer options towards a solution:

  • Remove the silver payout on all bounties, increase bounty point (exp?!) payout in return.
  • Probably won't go over well, and I purify all my gems too!.. I suspect that the vast majority of over-earning is exacerbated by 1004, so remove it... Shift 1008 to 1004 and give Bards an SMR-based disable/attack song in place of 1008
  • Allow us to pay for bounty exclusions/expedite with silver. I know that vouchers are a source of income, but it can't be that much per month.
  • Let us purchase runners, guild vouchers, enhancive pauses, maybe even enh/super boost along with other things that are low-revenue/or not available boosts
  • One unpopular thought: Remove the trading skill entirely or reduce it to 0/1 1x only for all characters, and apply it only to items bought from NPC merchants, and maybe offer some discounts, like the stupid chronomages.
  • I would love to recharge or "bribe" the treasure guy to reduce the cost or provide more charges where they can fit.
queen pebble
#

Got another one...

let us pay 10k to have the dwarf catapault us past the mine cart in Zul

tender scarab
#

The only thing I can picture after reading that is the Secret of Mana cannons.

queen pebble
hard folio
#

love the cannon travel system

calm bay
queen pebble
#

Sure, with EVOKE you can have a bolt too! Bard sound web of doom

flint mortar
sacred brook
#

I think warrior servicing could be improved simply by increasing the cap from 200k to 500k

There are other problems with warrior grit obviously, but I think for marketability one big one is that you can't do much at once.

That change wouldn't alter the weekly math, but it would mean if you had a full resource cap you could do 20 services, which is 1-2 CER at once for most items. People will be more likely to pay for that than 8 services that isn't even a full CER at the lowest levels.

But I guess I've digressed now that I've looked at the thread lol

jolly palm
sacred brook
jolly palm
sacred brook
gloomy lark
#

Team let’s stay focused, we want onslaughts and codexes first right? Maybe gemstone RNG tweaks? then they can start on everything else

sleek meadow
#

Just reset the cap and all the complications back to pre change then reduce some overall drop rates in silver and gems so that bug hunts get 20-% less. Gemstones aren’t producing silver are they? It’s all the drops that come along the way. Reduce those drops = less silver. No one needs 12 heavy orbs a hunt.

gloomy lark
#

yea to add on to that, probably only needs to be done for the 90+ hunting areas, I didn’t hit loot cap in bowels or Atoll and I play a lot, but I am going to hit soft cap by mid-month in SoS

mossy forge
sleek meadow
# mossy forge someone hasn't hunted kobolds for loot.

I have some lowbie alts who junt orcs and hobgoblins and whatnot and while they seem rich for the level it still takes me a good while to build up 1m. Its not what is skewing the market...not that I think the market was broken. It was pretty darn stable as far as I can see except at the top.

umbral lotus
south trail
#

Don’t really make sense to have 8 or 9 ’currencies? Bllodscrip, reikhen, silver, bounty points, premium points, simucoin, etc. convert most of them to silver and adjust the prices. Theres your silver drain.

I suspect there is a concern that if people can buy more they’ll get too powerful and trivialize the content. That cat left the bag years ago from what I can see. Let people buy more and have more fun. Don’t focus on limiting how much fun people can have but rather focus on how to provide more fun - new towns and hunting grounds, rework weapons to make them all useful, class archetypes/specialization, etc. if people get too strong just add more and make it harder. (Give them a new goal instead of throwing roadblocks to their existing goals).

I’ve heard SG has a population of 4 humans. Seem like a miss. Make sure it’s accessible.

sleek meadow
#

put a 3-5 second timer on each gem and pawn sell ...I suspect that would have an intersting impact on silver generation as it would likely slow down some bot hunting and selling. not a huge amount but if that run back to town went from 10 seconds to 180 seconds it would show up... And yes I know this would be HUGELY unpopular.

tender condor
#

why did no one consider just making these things they make hundreds of thousands of dollars on every year just free. someone get wyrom on the line this is huge.

calm bay
south trail
calm bay
#

You don't think premium points incentivizing paying for a higher subscription generates revenue? This seems like one of many reasons people chose to pay 4x a regular subscription to be premium.

I previously suggested just making AG recharging for silvers available all the time, but most folks don't think it would drain a meaningful amount of silvers.

remote egret
# umbral lotus Hey, I was 100 percent unstable

That kinda means you're stable about being unstable...so does that drop you down to...99% unstable?

@calm bay My reason for premium/platinum was MOSTLY access to FWI among all my alts so I didn't have to worry about having my pet empath/cleric/wizard in the same town as others if I needed some help. That has kinda gone away now though. And premium points...man. Anything other than working on a plane jane 4x item just...costs an insane amount of PP.

queen pebble
# calm bay You don't think premium points incentivizing paying for a higher subscription ge...

Maybe, but I think you have to balance this against the lootcap now. The second I get the lootcap message, I'll be changing all my accounts to standard and splitting the characters I care about onto their own accounts. Not to MA, but it opens the door even wider. It will will result in a net loss in revenue for simu from me at least. I think this is becoming a fairly standard practice now. More standard accounts vs a premium for expanded loot cap.

umbral lotus
calm bay
#

Premium Points isn't a "currency" that I would put into the same category as other things. Its a perk that's been in the game for probably 30 years now for Premium Subscribers. Long before many of the newer premium perks have existed, and while not the only reason it is definitely a factor in people's decision making on whether to go premium or stick with prime accounts. Either way, changing those things to be silvers is bad for business. Better to brainstorm ideas that don't plunge the company into financial ruin.

queen pebble
# calm bay Premium Points isn't a "currency" that I would put into the same category as oth...

For sure, but I think most "services" you get from PP are available from DR, which you can convert silvers into BS for. I mostly just use PP for alters, occasional spikes, etc myself. I love the thought of the WPS service, but I always seem to get caught by all the surcharges and can never quite afford it =D. It takes a very long time for PP rewards to matter where 8 months of farming on an extra account could net you 80k bloodscrip worth of silver. Not arguing about it's validity, but as a selling point it's a poor one in comparison to loot capping accounts each month.

remote egret
calm bay
#

The premium enhancives item is pretty unique and uses premium points which isn't easily reproducible through event offerings. There are some other things PP is valuable for, which are either much more expensive through events, or far less accessible, but its been a staple of the higher tier account system for so long people would definitely not approve this being converted into any kind of silver sink instead.

I've mentioned a number of times that I feel the game needs to move away from generating silvers as "loot", and provide more usable items that will drive players to sell to each other and transfer wealth instead of generating wealth.

south trail
umbral lotus
south trail
queen pebble
# south trail I’m not saying get rid of it. I’m saying make those things accessible through si...

Especially when, outside the unique offerings (some of which are account-bound like enhancives, reducing their real value)... you'd be better off paying 15 for another account opening up 10-15m more cap per month under the current system. Assuming you cap them all that is. I just feel like this system is promoting something that is accepted but probably not their preferred outcome. That 10-15m can be turned into bloodscrip which is arguably vastly more useful than 1200pp per year. And you save yourself a few bucks a month.
,
... Then, by the time you get a response you have more PP to spend.

warm agate
#

I'd really like to see a unification of alternate event currency myself. :🤷:

south trail
#

Another no brainer silver sink is temporary enhancives (could even be outside of enhancives). Pay your 1m/month to give your character +10 as for the month. Power level at this point is almost irrelevant. There are whales that hit the snooze button and mow through ascension areas. And the people that don’t care still won’t care. A small, but feel good power bump is going to make people happy to have something to spend silvers on and won’t affect game balance which for a lot of people now is … don’t get open rolled smr crit into death.

remote egret
south trail
#

At the end of the day the goal is generate revenue. I think the focus should be on meaningful improvements aimed at attracting and retaining players rather than milking the existing player base with another flare or talking sponge. Growing revenue by increasing # of subscriptions is a long term road to success and makes draining silver less of an issue - not enough bs to be sold for silver because there are more players requiring bs means more simustore purchases.

rough vault
#

What if loot capped players could buy additional cap space 1:1 at 5 million silver minimum? They would still not really make much more but they could continue to find stuff. The drop rate would be reduced as if they were back at 10m.

cold zephyr
#

Tracking the number of orbs/cubes I've found just from looting creatures starting this month's lootcap reset. I've only done hunting across 4 days of this month and probably about a full total of 8 hours of actual hunting.

[loot_tally: Tracked Items:]
[loot_tally:   solid moonstone cube : 11]
[loot_tally:   heavy quartz orb : 18]
[loot_tally:   heavy moonstone cube : 2]
--- Lich: loot_tally has exited.```

I haven't kept track of boxes, but I've probably found around 4-5 dozen boxes. Based on last month and the previous months box data I did track, you generally see an orb/cube in 3 out of every 10 (30%) boxes, so at least 14-18 orbs/cubes from boxes. That means I've come across almost 50 orbs/cubes across 8 hours of hunting....I find that a bit absurd. 

I know some folks like that they drop like rain drops, but they're a bit excessive. I have a couple of characters that likes to make use of them at times, but they still find 2/3/4 a hunt and they can't go through them fast enough and ends up carrying multiple orbs/cubes that just adds unnecessary weight and take up precious room when the boxes themselves now require more room and weigh more.

Think the drops can be culled by half? That way we still get a good amount and those that like them will still get them for personal use and those of us that are getting tired of them will see less, but still have some if we so chose to use or sell them....or leave them on the ground.
umbral lotus
#

one day last month I had 15 of those damned orbs from maybe 5 hunts, it was ridiculous wen you consider their weight

remote egret
rigid sparrow
#

sometimes "5 hunts" means, "I got encumbered, ran to the bank, deposited my coins, threw my boxes in the pool/locker, and went straight back out to hunt, four more times."

calm bay
#

I want more white/black crystals over quartz orbs/cubes. I actually use those...

broken vector
#

I prefer quartz orbs 🤷

umbral lotus
broken vector
#

over an hour, one at a time, yes\

royal epoch
main field
#

Mission accomplished.

fast cipher
# umbral lotus by the dozen?

I'm with Tsalin here, as a warder I like the orbs the duration is so short that you can burn through that dozen pretty fast if your using them. I'd be cool with making the duration better if theres a reduction though

royal epoch
#

I'm curious. Knowing that we need better outflow-to-inflow rates of silver AND that MAing massively increases one's capability to earn loot, what would you folks do about loot cap? Assume a clean slate.

queen pebble
# royal epoch In fairness, part of our effort here has been to make it feel like you don't hav...

Why? This seems like a bit of an odd goal. It actually reads more like, we're capping loot and selling it as something that's good for you. I still can't comprehend what the actual goal here is. Silver value has been unchanged for a long time; that's the easiest indicator that the economy is relatively stable. The old loot cap didn't break it, so why the more restrictive one? Too many high-value accounts converting silver to BS instead of paying for it? (To be clear, I am absolutely not against you guys making your money; I am actually very in favor of it).

The whole thing seems like a solution in search of a problem that everyone paying attention can see doesn't actually exist. That, or we're solving a future problem we haven't been made aware of.

If you really want to cut silver, take purification out of the game, and change trading to only work on purchased items from vendors. Cut any silver from bounties/tasks/whatever out entirely. There is a natural limit on silver generation in the game; people might contribute to it at different levels, but if the aggregate total is too high, trim the sales values across the board slightly to bring it in line with what you want. Hell, cap the gem dealers at 10k for gems, 25k for jewelry, like you adjusted the pawn shop.

Any cap you put on it is bypassable, adjusting values in aggregate is the only option that's going to reduce net silver generation. The players that want to print money will print money, you won't stop it. At the end of the day, converting a premium/plat account to two standard accounts is a net loss for you. I know I'll be doing that the first time I see the loot cap message.

To answer your second question, drain the silvers, adjust values accordingly, then adjust the prices of the drain. There are a thousand things you could sell people would pay for on a regular basis if you look at the valuation of SimuCoins vs the need to drain silver (like selling bounty waivers, runners, guild vouchers).

civic niche
jolly palm
#

I think one message has been super clear through all the conversations this entire thread.
The player base really really enjoys finding loot when they play. It really really sucks when they don't find loot when they play.

It seems like finding loot is an important aspect of the game for many players.

queen pebble
#

It also is just a solution that flat out doesn't work. I can pay $15 dollars for more cap space every month. If it's about money triple the cap for premium. Sucks for standard accounts, but the inverse is you're basically promoting MAing with the cap.

civic niche
royal epoch
#

But I really don't want to get into the weeds on that.

queen pebble
#

While I am complaining about things. You guys should really consider looking at Simucoin prices on some things. Want to easily sell more fixskills? Price them inline with in game silver prices. Your fix skills are like $40, in-game (and we'll use secondary market ratios here for comparison only!). They are 3.5-4m or roughly $10-12 dollars.

royal epoch
#

I'd like to get feedback on the question that I asked, mostly.

#

(Fair point on fixskills, though.)

#

Mostly I don't want to pull back and try to answer for all of our business decisions because a) I can't and b) I am notoriously distractable, and that would derail me totally. I'm just trying to collect some info.

civic niche
#

A longer answer on loot cap.

Not finding loot sucks. I think the initial cap was "ok" to stop rampant abuse, but I can hit the new loot cap pretty easily in a week and a half.

No player asked for loot cap, what we asked for was meaningful silver sinks.

royal epoch
#

Can I ask how you're hitting loot cap that quickly? I play all month at what I'd say is a pretty decent rate, and I typically hit cap pretty late in the month. I never get to hard cap.