Crack down on unattended resource gathering.
Posted: Sat May 09, 2009 9:46 pm
It's really great that this server has no in-game donation items. I've donated hundreds of dollars to other servers and still felt like my contributions were moot. After all, what's the point of donating for a neon shroud when 1) everyone has one, and 2) it immediately labels you as a "donating newb"
I digress, what the hell is up with people bagging on those who donate? I've heard some really stupid shit like, "I can't believe you'd pay REAL MONEY for in game items LOL fag."
What the duck? Of course I'm gonna spend €25 on 50k of each reg, and here's why: I don't like farming regs, waiting for mages to restock. It takes me about an hour and a half to make €25 at work, and it would take me at least a couple weeks to get that many regs, and that's assuming I already have the gold to buy them!
Since when am I not allowed to spend money on entertainment? I paid for my computer. I paid for the game itself (long ago LOL). So, why would I not pay a few more bucks, not even enough for appetizers at some restaurants, if it can save me countless hours of doing something I don't partiularly want to do?
I'm sorry if the uo experience is brand new for you and you just want to play the game how it was meant to be played. It isn't new for me. It isn't fresh. I played on sonoma until trammel came out. Lost all my shit. I played gamers for over two years. I had one of the first floating houses, and at one point I had two private islands with castles. I've donated over $1000 to defiance. Uo is not new to me. Anything I do in game now is pretty much playing catchup.
The great thing about second age is that it has none of these donation items into which to sink countless piles of hard earned cash. Of course, the unfavorable side effect is that (most certainly?) less donation money is coming in. If the shard population continues to grow as it seems to be, the hardware will eventually need an upgrade. I have no idea what derrick does for a living, but I hope he's wealthy for all our sakes. Once I convince some friends to come over, I'll certainly be donating. I hope you all do the same. Hell, I'd have no objection to paying $10 per month.
And, here's why I don't mind pdonating even though I know I won't be getting 50k regs or a private island... Because second age is more legit and old school than other shards.
I started here macroing Provo and music at the Brit stables. Once I was at about 93 I wandered to moonglow where I accidentally stepped through a gate to destard. Bingo. I spent the next few hours getting used to my character and farming dragons. Eventually I had 20k. Hard earned gold, and all I had to do was give some of my time. Keep in mind, I wouldn't have farmed this gold if I weren't enjoying doing so.
I saw a fairly recent thread which had a castle going for 1.5m. Gold is worth something here. The only way it can be introduced into the economy is through an investment of time. This is a stark contrast to other free shards who's economy has been made nearly inexistant through years of donations introducing more and more gold into the pool with little to no time invested.
Unattended resource gathering will ruin this delicate balance. The balance I speak of is that between time and resources in an economy. For example, let's assume 50 people are willing to actively farm on the shard, this could be dragon hunting, mining, treasure maps, or even npc escorting. Of course there are gold sinks such as reg consumption and armor/wep durabilty loss, as well as idoc houses and red stat loss (remember, time is the most important commodity. In an ideal world, the devs anticipate the rate of gold sink and adjust the rate of resource acquisition accordingly. A couple things make this difficult. First, it's hard to anticipate what people will do. Even a single active guild could completey demolish the balance. The most important thing to consider, however, is the rate at which gold and other resources are being introduced into the economy.
So here's the deal. Most people aren't willing to farm more than a couple hours each day. The devs have regulated mob spawn, reagent cost, skill gain rate, armor decay, and more, all with this in mind. They anticipated (just an example here) that 2mil per hour would be harvested from the world, and roughly 1mil per hour would be destroyed through regular wear and tear. Obviously, some inflation is to be expected.
However, when some dude starts farming 10k ingots per day and selling them for half the normal price, then the value of gold just dropped! If some dude is macro farming 1mil per day, then decides to pay 10mil for a castle, then everyone else is gonna want to sell theirs for ten. Did the value of castles just rise? Nope. The value of gold just dropped.
Recruit a few active staffers dedicated to policing for unattended macroers. Don't be retarded about it. If some dude leaves to take a piss for a minute while his mining macro is running, that's really no big deal. If you watch the same dude doing the same thing for ten minutes and he is miraculously unable to respond, delete his gold. There should be at least one person on at any given time, roaming popular farm/gather spots to find afkers. I could easily set up a rails macro to lumberjack and pick up 10, maybe 20k boards per day. Set up another macro to craft and sell bows to npcs, gg. It doesn't matter if it's afl mining or afk begging. It will fuck up the delicate economic balance and then we might as well be buying mills at $5 a pop. Do something about this.
Annnndddd.....
WHOOSH
I digress, what the hell is up with people bagging on those who donate? I've heard some really stupid shit like, "I can't believe you'd pay REAL MONEY for in game items LOL fag."
What the duck? Of course I'm gonna spend €25 on 50k of each reg, and here's why: I don't like farming regs, waiting for mages to restock. It takes me about an hour and a half to make €25 at work, and it would take me at least a couple weeks to get that many regs, and that's assuming I already have the gold to buy them!
Since when am I not allowed to spend money on entertainment? I paid for my computer. I paid for the game itself (long ago LOL). So, why would I not pay a few more bucks, not even enough for appetizers at some restaurants, if it can save me countless hours of doing something I don't partiularly want to do?
I'm sorry if the uo experience is brand new for you and you just want to play the game how it was meant to be played. It isn't new for me. It isn't fresh. I played on sonoma until trammel came out. Lost all my shit. I played gamers for over two years. I had one of the first floating houses, and at one point I had two private islands with castles. I've donated over $1000 to defiance. Uo is not new to me. Anything I do in game now is pretty much playing catchup.
The great thing about second age is that it has none of these donation items into which to sink countless piles of hard earned cash. Of course, the unfavorable side effect is that (most certainly?) less donation money is coming in. If the shard population continues to grow as it seems to be, the hardware will eventually need an upgrade. I have no idea what derrick does for a living, but I hope he's wealthy for all our sakes. Once I convince some friends to come over, I'll certainly be donating. I hope you all do the same. Hell, I'd have no objection to paying $10 per month.
And, here's why I don't mind pdonating even though I know I won't be getting 50k regs or a private island... Because second age is more legit and old school than other shards.
I started here macroing Provo and music at the Brit stables. Once I was at about 93 I wandered to moonglow where I accidentally stepped through a gate to destard. Bingo. I spent the next few hours getting used to my character and farming dragons. Eventually I had 20k. Hard earned gold, and all I had to do was give some of my time. Keep in mind, I wouldn't have farmed this gold if I weren't enjoying doing so.
I saw a fairly recent thread which had a castle going for 1.5m. Gold is worth something here. The only way it can be introduced into the economy is through an investment of time. This is a stark contrast to other free shards who's economy has been made nearly inexistant through years of donations introducing more and more gold into the pool with little to no time invested.
Unattended resource gathering will ruin this delicate balance. The balance I speak of is that between time and resources in an economy. For example, let's assume 50 people are willing to actively farm on the shard, this could be dragon hunting, mining, treasure maps, or even npc escorting. Of course there are gold sinks such as reg consumption and armor/wep durabilty loss, as well as idoc houses and red stat loss (remember, time is the most important commodity. In an ideal world, the devs anticipate the rate of gold sink and adjust the rate of resource acquisition accordingly. A couple things make this difficult. First, it's hard to anticipate what people will do. Even a single active guild could completey demolish the balance. The most important thing to consider, however, is the rate at which gold and other resources are being introduced into the economy.
So here's the deal. Most people aren't willing to farm more than a couple hours each day. The devs have regulated mob spawn, reagent cost, skill gain rate, armor decay, and more, all with this in mind. They anticipated (just an example here) that 2mil per hour would be harvested from the world, and roughly 1mil per hour would be destroyed through regular wear and tear. Obviously, some inflation is to be expected.
However, when some dude starts farming 10k ingots per day and selling them for half the normal price, then the value of gold just dropped! If some dude is macro farming 1mil per day, then decides to pay 10mil for a castle, then everyone else is gonna want to sell theirs for ten. Did the value of castles just rise? Nope. The value of gold just dropped.
Recruit a few active staffers dedicated to policing for unattended macroers. Don't be retarded about it. If some dude leaves to take a piss for a minute while his mining macro is running, that's really no big deal. If you watch the same dude doing the same thing for ten minutes and he is miraculously unable to respond, delete his gold. There should be at least one person on at any given time, roaming popular farm/gather spots to find afkers. I could easily set up a rails macro to lumberjack and pick up 10, maybe 20k boards per day. Set up another macro to craft and sell bows to npcs, gg. It doesn't matter if it's afl mining or afk begging. It will fuck up the delicate economic balance and then we might as well be buying mills at $5 a pop. Do something about this.
Annnndddd.....
WHOOSH