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→Citan's Forum Posts
==== Economy & Work Orders ====
:"As I've said before, guys, we WILL have more methods for players to manipulate and interact with the economy.
:However, that would be 100% a waste of time right now. There are not enough players to even BEGIN to form a TINY BIT of a player economy. Please stop insisting on it. You can't have it without players. Hundreds and hundreds of active players.
:How many players you think need to buy level 20 stuff right now? Not very many.
:I've done this before, and I know the bare minimums necessary to make a player economy run. And we can't just achieve it right now.
:Work orders are a way to help crafters earn money while leveling up their skills. That was their goal and that is all they are for. Their existence doesn't mean there won't be other systems. If you don't like work orders, that's good feedback, and I'm interested in whether you think there needs to be other ways for crafters to make money from the game or not!
:But do not fool yourself into thinking that other players will buy your junk and give you money. They aren't there. The players we have don't need your low-level crap. That's a fantasy that can not come true at this time. Hopefully we will make it happen in time, but pining for it right now is a distraction.
:That last post came off pretty harsh, and I meant it to be ""firm"", not harsh. Let me explain why by way of example.
:Two years ago I was trying hard to figure out how to make group combat work. But nobody was grouping. There were like 15 people online. They didn't want to group. I tried making it more appealing, polishing, but there was very little action.
:You might assume that was because grouping wasn't working well, but actually it was just a lack of players. When more players came, more grouping happened, and it's letting me improve the group experience a thousand times faster than when I was working on it without feedback. I was wasting my time earlier, I should have been focusing on other things until there were enough players.
:Player economy is similar. You may think that it's not working because it's not good enough yet. But that's not the case. I can tell because there's so little feedback about the mechanics that already exist. If there was enough energy for a player economy, I would see constant complaints about how shitty the consignment system is and what I need to do to make it work better. Players would be organizing among themselves to work around my limitations, too, like doing ""craft fair days"" as they do in large MUDs. :But nobody is doing that. The consignment system sucks, yes, but almost nobody even wants to try it. I get more feedback about CHEESEMAKING than I do about economic mechanics.
:It's not that I think we're in a good place with player economic systems. It's that this is not the time to work on them. When there are players chomping at the bit to make an economy, it will be 1000% easier to get it right. In the mean time, it's a distraction.
:That isn't to say that I'm pissed or annoyed at people bringing it up. I just mean to say that I am intentionally ignoring you for now. :)
:---
:In terms of crafting, my current concern is that it should be reasonably compelling and not seem like a huge waste of time. Because I have enough players who want to craft, mostly for personal gain, that I can kind of iterate on that and see how it's working. Will crafted items ever be the most amazing stuff in game? No, never. The high-end goal of crafting is not items, but augments that improve any kind of gear. You will eventually be able to craft super-rare augments that any player will want, regardless of what kind of gear they have.
:The actual act of crafting weapons and armor is not supposed to be better than looting. It's supposed to be more or less on par. A different way to achieve the same results. And a way to level up your skills."
:: http://projectgorgon.com/forum/support/1053-crafting-and-craft-resources?start=20#7978
==== Non-lethal Kills? ====
==== 8/4 Character Limit & VIP time ====
:"By the end of the month, the most important thing to do is to get your account down to 8 (that's the VIP max-character limit). The only immediate action we'll be taking is to delete characters beyond that point. (Some players have 50+ characters on their account, and it's woefully unfair to let them keep all of those when other players have a cap.)
: At a future point, probably another month out, we'll implement the part where you only have 4 slots available unless you have VIP time on your account. At that point your other characters would get ""locked"" (but not deleted).
: The issue of VIP time is a little tricky. That's because the other perks of the VIP plan won't be available for quite a while, so spending your VIP time now would be pretty crappy -- you wouldn't get all the benefits, just the extra slots.
: I'd be tempted to say ""screw it, everybody who pledged just gets 8 slots until launch"" but I feel like that really screws over people who pledged generously. Giving the $25 pledge 18 free months of pseudo-VIP time seems like a dick move to people who actually paid hundreds of dollars for lots of VIP time!
: So I don't know of a ready solution that's fair to all parties. But I'm open to suggestions. Maybe we let you ""spend"" our VIP time early but at a better rate (so one month becomes three, since the other VIP features aren't done yet). Something like that?
: In any case, if you are at 8 characters or under, you needn't worry about your excess characters being deleted -- they'll just become ""locked"" and inaccessible. And if you're at 8 or fewer, you won't actually lose access to those characters in a month"
:: http://projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/975-only-four-characters-by-30th-september#7237
==== Spawn Camping, Stomachs, Frustration. ====
: "It's not an exploit to camp a spawn. Remember that levels are very fluid (a level 60 player may have level 1 skills they're trying to raise) and the content resources are intentionally widely distributed.
: Do I want level 60s camping a level 20 dungeon? No, but if that's what seems like the best thing for them to do with their time, okay, I need to know that. We can fix up the content when it's problematic. (And in fact I lowered the drop rate of stomachs and spleens from 10% to 5% in this bugfix update to make it less worthwhile to farm the corpses.) : When I set up the loot tables on those corpses, I'd forgotten that stomachs are rare right now. : That's a temporary thing, by the way. It's just a side effect of how the butchering and anatomy skills work. When the skills can be raised above level 50, it'll become easier for high level players to get organs from kills. Stomachs won't ever be as common as dirt, but their current extreme rarity is just an accident of how the game's content is being added. : The point is that I don't always realize the ramifications of new content. Please communicate with us about these things! I make lots of mistakes, so please don't assume I ""must have a reason""... maybe I do, but I try to mention things in the update notes if I think they'll have a big impact on the economy. : And please try to keep an objective view about this sort of stuff. Calling him ""greedy"", ""lazy"", ""exploiter"", etc., is over the top. I mean, he's picking up some crap that spawns on the ground. : Now I'm NOT saying that people shouldn't be frustrated by that behavior, or by any behavior, really... if you're frustrated, that means other players will probably be frustrated too, so I want to know that. Please report what's frustrating you. We act on that kind of feedback all the time. : What I'm asking is that you avoid getting into heated in-game arguments about whether people are playing the right way or not, especially when it's something as minor as camping a solo spawn spot. :It just can't end well."
:: http://projectgorgon.com/forum/general-gorgon-discussion/833-exploiting?start=10#5934
==== Just for Old-School players? (No) ====
