The Rebalancing of Gold

[Twily]

Coming out of my forum hibernation briefly for this one:

I'm curious to know the reason behind the changes to gold that have occurred lately?

I feel like there may be a bit too much happening a bit too quickly. I also worry the severity of these gold nerfs is going to discourage partying. I also didn't see any post in the update thread regarding the change that made all enemies everywhere drop a maximum of 30 gold.


I went on a trip through the Burning shores yesterday. I went through the Drow Heretic area, fought Abulan, killed a bunch of azer, and then went down into the lowerdark and through the entire Maur dungeon.
I got roughly 15,000 gold after selling everything. Only 2500g dropped from the bodies for the entire trip.
This is one of the server's more difficult areas, and in a party of 4 people, that's only 3750 gold each.

This is basically nothing, especially when you factor in the difficulty of getting to this dungeon, the difficulty of the dungeon, the time it takes, the risk of running into the opposing faction(UD/Surfacers), and the expenses associated with a trip like this(bandages, spell components, potions, etc).

For the casual player who always parties and doesn't loop dungeons for hours(generally doing only one, maybe two dungeons in a day), getting any amount of gold is now extremely difficult. Meanwhile the solo/duo player who farms dungeons for hours will only see it as a hindrance, since they'll still be able to farm up enough gold to get everything they want to.


If the goal is to reduce the amount of gold entering the server, it'd be nice to see something to balance the distribution of gold between casual players and otherwise.
Maybe something that progressively reduces gold drops the more times you repeat an area, or that raises gold for the more people in your party.

[Exordius]

Enemies only drop 30 gold now? Wow that's bad and they did not even bother to announce it... should increase the amount not nerf it.

[MissEvelyn]

I agree with Twily that casual players should not have to get punished by this change simply because there's some people who spend hours grinding.

Let the change affect the grinders, not those who enter a dungeon for the first time in a given day.

[Xarge VI]

I'm pretty sure reducing gold drops and rewards effects casuals and non-casuals alike.

It will take some time to take effect for the economy and those with already established billions.

I like reduced gold in the economy as it makes gold more meaningful.

[Gouge Away]

It might make the economy more useful, it will certainly make it more difficult to be an independent adventurer who doesn't craft or engage in that aspect of the game or to be part of a smaller RP-based group who doesn't have a Discord based trade and craft scheme going.

I'd always liked that you could choose to be a consumer and not a crafter if you want. I'm not that into crafting personally, it's just not a part of the game I get into, though I'll do it on some characters if it makes sense... But if I'm playing like a freewheeling drunken rogue I'm not sure their story would involve spending 12 hours a day gathering cotton and sitting at a loom. Hopefully that will still be possible and gold will just take a little more time to acquire, and we're not going for a system where everyone has to trade and craft and be part of one of the big factions or you're not going to be able to access the gear you need.

[Security_Blanket]

I've not even noticed the effects of these changes, but the majority of the gold I get isn't from gold but what I sell to merchants and players. I think part of the problem of folks feeling like they're getting nothing compared to others is they don't know how to loot. You need to be a hoarder and grab anything that is over 200 gold. You don't know how to cut raw gem? Doesn't matter, pick them up. You can't use special rogue tools? Doesn't matter, pick them up. All the small +1 weapons different creatures drop around the island, pick them up. Wear items that give you a bonus to Search to increase your odds of finding loot. Wear Appraise items to get the most out of what you find. You can make a lot of gold when your out grinding if you're smart about it. In my experience, folks in a party prefer to take the lazy approach and let one person do all the looting. The one person often not following any of the above steps. When I loot and split it up at the end, people always seem shocked that we made that much.

[Party in the forest at midnight]

I've not been able to be in-game much lately, but I'd like to try and buy goods from people. Find player merchants to sell things to!

[Hevihenkka]

I'm pretty sure reducing gold drops and rewards effects casuals and non-casuals alike.

It will take some time to take effect for the economy and those with already established billions.

I like reduced gold in the economy as it makes gold more meaningful.

I agree with this. I feel gold has lost alot meaning during these years. Back in the day, buying a portal lense was alot. Now it's just a pocket change. Remember when you had to save 20,000gp just to get to Red Dragon Isle? That was a huge investment! Now you get that gold in a single dungeon run.

Looks like we're slowly getting back to "good old days". Alot of things have improved. Mechanically server is better than 10 years ago, but I feel gaining gold has become way too easy nowdays in a server that is very popular for it's heavy RP.

[KeldonDonovans]

I agree with Twily that casual players should not have to get punished by this change simply because there's some people who spend hours grinding.

Let the change affect the grinders, not those who enter a dungeon for the first time in a given day.

What if... What if they made it so that the gold drop limit applied, sure-but was waved if the player had a writ active in that area. So you can loot where you are working and earn your coin, but if you are farming it, you get diminishing returns. Best part is, this wouldn't be a nerf, since output is actually increased over what it normally is currently, for some. So the casuals aren't really hurt. The hardcore grinders would only get a little buff, when they were completing the writ. IDK, it came to mind, hope it helps.

[CorsicanDoge]

It's a long game but eventually the price of goods will go down if there's less gold around. I'm not sure it'll be reverted because there's an interest in curbing gold inflation.

[Twily]

I am completely fine with the reduced overall income of gold, just to make sure that part is clear.

The reason I say this hurts casual players more though, is NPC pricing, enchanting, and writs.
It's always been the case that a casual player who doesn't go through many dungeons and groups with big parties doesn't get as much gold, so that isn't the part I'm concerned with here.


From the writs side of things:
If you split the gold a player gains into percentages by source, casual players have a higher percentage of their total gold sourced from writs than grinders do. This is because they generally only do a dungeon when they have a writ for it, and don't usually go back out to a dungeon when they lack a writ for it. They also tend to group in larger parties on average, meaning the gold from the kills is split among more people.
Grinders on the other hand have a smaller percentage of their total gold sourced from writs since they tend to be in smaller parties, and kill and loot more enemies even after writs, so this impacts them less.

Some writs could definitely have used their gold reduced, but the Last King tomb for example, now only gives 1500g instead of 6000g. This is less than some of the starting writs around Cordor, unless those were also reduced.

From the NPC Pricing/enchanting side of things:
NPC and enchantment basin pricing is static so it will use up a prortionally larger percentage of a players total gold than it did before. While this is true for all players, casual players are going to feel it a lot more due to how much less gold they have and gain than someone who grinds areas.
Casual players tend to also have less meta builds that will need more bandages.


At the very least I'd hope for something to buff gold drops for parties.
It was already the case before that some people would avoid grouping with others because of gold. If gold is worth more this is only going to become more prevalent since people will want to share less.

This is especially true before the market stabilizes, where as much as 25-50% less gold is entering the server but the prices of things like adamantine armors are still in the 200k+ range. The market stabilizing will take months at a minimum, potentially over a year given how much money some players have saved up.
Until that happens, things like adamantine armor will be completely out of reach for a casual player, unless they can manage to get the adamantine themselves(but with gold income shortages, players will understandably want that adamantine to sell to other players to get gold that way instead, again adding to not wanting to party with others).

Although I definitely don't want to see the return of bumper car looting.

Maybe something as simple as multiplying the gold drop times the number of people in the party could help a bit. Since casual players tend to party in larger groups, this would toss a little bit of extra gold their way while also minimizing the punishment for partying.

Alternatively less nerfs to writs and more nerfs to mob drops could be another option, since writs are something that gives a baseline amount of gold to all types of players equally(although casual players benefitting more due to a lack of grinding income) , that also isnt diminished by partying. (although im not sure how to make this work for characters too high level for writs )



Although I do also find it rather odd that on a per hour basis you'll get almost as much gold for a level 5-10 area as you will for the hardest locations of the lower dark, but if the high level zones reward isn't going to change this can't really be addressed without low levels getting literal pennies that won't allow them to get bandages or any sort of enchanted gear set going.

[AstralUniverse]

I will say this on this thread too...

The gap in gold income between casual characters with no faction and shop, and characters with a faction and a shop is... INSANE. I speak from playing on both sides of this many many times and I feel like the more busy I am in real life the harder it is to play the game when I do log in and play even though my characters have in game networks and connections. The shops and mutual-storages-and-crafting just blows the economy of the group way out of proportion and way out of the "humanoids work better in groups since the dawn of time" argument. It's still a game and the gap shouldnt be this huge. I think the nerf to writ rewards and loot only pushes us further deep into the discord ooc cliquing era and I think it better off to have been a nerf to the exp rewards, rather than gold. (This is no criticism on the playerbase's behavior or accusations of meta-gaming, just a shift in the spirit of how things are done, that has been on going for many years now and that's where we are).

[Babylon System is the Vampire]

Two things about this, coming from the assumption that the intention is to lower the gold levels and you are serious about it.

1) Starting with the bottom is not the way to go. You have a top end class of characters that have an endless supply of gold, and if you make it harder to get close to them you only incentivize not starting a new character ever.

2) On my last character, I generated somewhere in the 2.5 million-3 million range in around three months. If writ gold accounted for 150 thousand of that I would be shocked it was so high. Now she's a wizard which means less consumables of course, and a base wizard at that which means extra skill points for appraise and search, and I was a carpenter. But even adding a million for that and going on the low end that means that writ gold accounted for 10% of my intake (1.5 million divided by the "no way it was 150 thousand gold"). And while I may sound super efficient as you read this post, really, compared to some vets I am way behind the curve on generating gold. For starters, I try not to repeat writs which means already I am way behind the guy or gal who only does the optimal dungeons in a circle grind loop. I also never really go to a dungeon unless I have a reason to be there (writ, random adventure with a group, resources), so its not like my level 30 is off farming the earl's mansion. The point I am trying to make here if its not obvious, is that to the people who get too much gold this is just a shrug. To the people who only travel in groups, don't know exactly what to grab to sell to the peddler, ect this is devastating. That can't be the intention behind this, can it?

[Irongron]

Some interesting feedback here, let me give some of my own...

First off, crucially, updates to the loot system are never announced. Be that what is going into loot chests, what items are being dropped by creatures, or the amount of gold they drop, and at what level. I do not wish this to be subject of community development, critically because these systems are routinely gamed.

On the subject of gold drops, they have been gradually cut back over the last 10 years, and approximately 3 years ago I took the step of introducing writs as an alternative to robbing corpses. This helps keep high levels out of low level dungeons, and prevents people circling from the gold drops, which used to be commonplace. The reward for writs is more than enough to fuel a casual player's needs.

It has also been noted there that there is a massive discrepency between veteran and casual players in terms of the amount of gold they have available. This is a real issue on the server, and one we do discuss as I team. Only yesterday I was saying that, as a casual player myself, I simply wouldn't bother attending an auction, knowing I would be outbid by by characters who have millions of gold. I konw I'm not the only one, there are a hundreds, perhaps thousands of players in my permission.

Thus, despite calls for quarters to more expensive, I don't do it. Why? Because while the 'market rate' for a ship or guildhouse may well be several million gold I will not price casual players out of the market.

More needs to be done in this regard, and will be, but reducing gold drops on creatures is really not an issue, and was always part of the plan. Since I began reducing that number we haven't just introduced writs, but peddlers too, we've changed appraise so players can make far more gold from selling and crafting objects. As a low level player I make simply thousands from writs alone, so these things are not 'essential' but I don't want players simply being able to fill their pockets with gold from circling a dungeon.

NOTE: Please remember also that most settlements are sitting on MILLIONS of gold, vote for leaders who actually offer employment?

[-XXX-]

Ultimately this all boils down to essential gear not being hiden from more casual players behind an IG paywall. Which I don't believe is the case. If a character needs adamantine armor, they can get it.

Imagine a situation where a party of 4 could get about 10K each from clearing the burning shores. Well, somebody who can solo that dungon would then get 40K...
For a time there's been a change to how looting worked - every character could loot a single spawn corpse for the same amount. This didn't work very well either as factions would simply storm the dungeons en masse and the faction leader would then collect the loot from the party members (we're talking about one lvl30 herding a flock of lvl5's through the Aurilites just to get ~80K)
Organized factions got insanely rich while casual players were left behind.


The good thing is that there's only so much that gold coins can buy. For as long as casual players can get all the gear their character needs, everything's fine IMO. The writs should cover that for the most part. The rest is a matter of RP, so filthy rich characters can RP as being just that.
Not being filthy rich doesn't seem to be an obstackle for RP however.

[CorsicanDoge]

Just to respond to Irongron's note almost every settlement I know in the UD and I can imagine the surface settlements does offer employment but a lot of people aren't interested in doing anything but doing dungeons. I just gave someone a 100k rl monthly salary to do work for me in Greyport because I'm just one person playing a character.

I'm not sure how you can decrease the gap between "veteran" players and "casual" players because the players tryhard or they don't, they actually navigate the crafting system, they work together to get things done. Everyone that's in the settlement's payroll and involved in politics I imagine did the legwork to get where they are to some extent.

I'm always in the lookout for capable people. But it takes some initiative there and sometimes the work isn't fun to do initially but the payout is great down the road. Not everyone finds doing spreadsheets of shops fun to maximize GP returns fun, not everyone finds supplying ammunition for siege weapons fun, not everyone finds being a Cordor Guard fun. Some people just like grinding or only have the time for it and that's perfectly fine.

Writs and dungeons seems to be the only thing that gives everyone pocket change even if they don't want to do politics, crafting, wand/potion selling, or PvP-for-hire.

Also my bard would be really, really poor if they didn't do some out of the box approaches to things. Sometimes I think I'm a sucker not being a wizard/cleric/druid/shaman and just selling wands like most of my character's allies.

[Security_Blanket]

I think a lot of the money comes from players running epic level dungeons efficiently and selling runes for A LOT of gold. Stores and runes, when you can make millions off a single rune, how does a measly 10k compare from a dungeon run? You can't talk gold without talking supply and demand. If Masterwork runes were more common, people wouldn't be handing over their life savings for them.

[CorsicanDoge]

I think a lot of the money comes from players running epic level dungeons efficiently and selling runes for A LOT of gold. Stores and runes, when you can make millions off a single rune, how does a measly 10k compare from a dungeon run? You can't talk gold without talking supply and demand. If Masterwork runes were more common, people wouldn't be handing over their life savings for them.

Want to make a few million? Just find a Pure Chunk of Zardazik.

[CNS]

When it comes to getting 'mega rich' outside of the creative ways like emptying Cordor's treasury, its usually rarely from running dungeons.

I'm sure some people actually do grind out tens of millions from endless runs of epic dungeon X. And bully for them if thats what makes Arelith fun for them.

Most of the accumulation of crazy wealth though comes from owning and running shops. What makes it a case of haves and have nots is partially probably the number vs. number of active players and partially the way we have shops laid out and set up at the moment.

For reference, the last shop I ran was one of the outside ones in Sibayad. A very good location but probably not top tier (think Cordor Mercantile building, Andunor Hub for top, top end). It used to clear around a million per RL week or two depending on how busy the server was in any particular week and it wasn't super optimised though it did take reasonable effort - I spent more time RPing around making deals than actually stocking it optimally.

Human nature being what it is, and a playerbase thats likely not always as young and time free as it used to be (this is a 20 year old game) people generally don't spend hours checking every shop in every house or nook and cranny when they need something. They'll wizz round the shops that are easily accessible.

While its less 'setting pretty', if we want to even the spread out and reduce haves vs. have nots I'd really like to see both a centralisation of shops, to eliminate or reduce the stark differences location provide and bringing those centralised shop locations more under player government oversight, probably replacing high traffic shops in non-pc government control with temporary stalls.

A few mid-range stall 'hubs' outside PC oversight, like crows nest and sibayad (unsure on status of treadstone and outpost in UD) are probably fine to remain as avenues for PC's that don't want to live under PC government thumbs.

[ImWithThisGuy]

As far as gold drops from monsters, there is a mixture of good things and bad things:

The Good
*Gift of wealth is truly a gift worth taking now! (But also subject to change)
*Appraise and search are given significantly more weight now.
*Large numbers will eventually disappear from items; No more casually throwing around "only" six or seven digits.

The Bad
*This change hurts casual players as much or more than dedicated or veteran players, short term and long term.
*This change does nothing to help larger issues in the market, such as farming runic components or shop management.
*Traveling in a party just got that much more painful for your pockets.
*Players may start farming lower level dungeons more due to speed and safety, but still make as much as they would have in an epic dungeon.


The Ugly (Wall of Text)
All that said, I've a few major concerns; listed mostly in the bad section. I've also seen several posts stating that writs are enough to cover the gold costs of a casual player.. And I simply have to disagree. That wasn't always the case, only since the most recent update, it was quite true in fact. I cannot claim to have checked every writ, but I can attest for the Sibayad tombs. They used to award 6000 gold each, which was truly a bit excessive considering there are three, and can be completed daily, leading to an easy 18000 gold.

That was in fact more than enough for a casual player. It was even enough for many dedicated players! But that number has been cut by three quarters; That 6000 is now 1500, and that 18000 is now 4500. Writs are still excellent considering they are "Free work", but assuming they have all received changes like this, writs simply cannot sustain casual players anymore. Though I'm sure the changes were not so substantial in all writs, so may need to be taken with a grain of salt, even with fair grounding.

If a player gets 1500 from a medium level writ, and they get a total of 7500 total gold from the whole dungeon (Including sales), that may not seem so bad.. When they are by themselves. When you have to cut that 7500 in two, three, or even four different shares, there is barely any gold received, even after counting the writ. With a full party, and a reasonable/walking pace, a single dungeon can take 30m-1h, and with the time limitation some casual players have, that time spent is even more valuable.

To spend someone's two or so hours of playing a day to ONLY be spent in dungeons, and to be forced into ONLY traveling alone, getting maybe a total of 16000 gold or so is quite the shut down. 16000 gold is nothing to scoff at, that's not what I'm talking about.. It's the way to get that 16000. Even if those players run at break-neck speed, I don't see that fixing the issue.

I worry limitations on gold drops like this will draw higher level characters into lower level dungeons due to this principle: "If you are always going to get a maximum of 10000-15000 per trip, the faster you can make that trip, the better". Running has always been prevalent, and this does nothing to help or prevent it (making it more "necessary" in the short term). Nor is it a secret that the faster you kill things, the faster you get through a dungeon, meaning more raw gold.

Epic dungeons meanwhile are very frequented, meaning you're more likely to run into someone already there, catch their tailwind and get nothing, or have to fight for your reward. I've already seen plenty of players ready to jump on another group in order to get control over the dungeon, so that means you may have to compete with other players; meaning the casuals are going to get trampled in this instance.

So- Feel like spending an hour looping low-level dungeons in complete safety? Or like spending two hours in epic dungeons -and all the costs of consumables that comes with it- only to gamble for epic resources? That is sort of the question that remains. When I imagine it, I feel like the efficiency of killing ten times more weaker enemies will very likely match, or perhaps even outpace the runic components- even with their large price-tags; because those are all that's left in the epic dungeons.

[Xerah]

*This change hurts casual players as much or more than dedicated or veteran players, short term and long term.

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of how gold moves through the economy. Gold moves from levelling characters to established characters through PC shops, primiarly. If these casual players have less gold, then the price for things will eventually adjust down to compensate. If character primarily geared up through NPC shops that don't change costs, then you would be right, but there is a fluctuating economy.

[Security_Blanket]

While I doubt it will be a popular solution to those that have established themselves with a merchant empire. But maybe a cap on gold in the bank would be a way to curb gold inflation. Have it capped at 20 million maybe, any more gold then that you gotta hold it on your person and start thinking of imaginative ways of spending it before you lose it.

[Xerah]

It's already capped at 20m (which is way too high) but it doesn't matter since someone can open an infinite amount of faction accounts with the same limit.

[ReverentBlade]

I feel like this change is shortsighted. The profit margins on consumables, at least, are already as low as they can get. I would make maybe 20 gp on a potion or 100 on a wand. There isn't any lower to go short of giving the stuff away. Even at those low margins, a rogue can still spend more than they make just trying to keep supplied. Are people actually -playing- this game before making these balance decisions?

[AstralUniverse]

If there's one thing that's really a buzz kill is when you level your exp faster than your gold. In that, for example, you get to lvl 16 and you can no longer select some of the early 10s writs that you can solo, you want to select lvl 15-20 writs now but your gear is utter crap and you're forced to not only waste time in lower level areas), but you also dont have writ selection that you can handle. This may be just me, tho. Due to my time zone I mostly solo.