[Venos]

The changes are planned to achieve the following things:

1) Ensure that top end AR is not overpoweringly good or expensive, the reason for this is that having a high-cost way of buying a big advantage in PvP tends to be a bad idea, c.f. HFs, SoVs and so on from IN1. Furthermore, the going rate for exceptional sapphire appears to be about 800k: this is quite simply too high.

2) Redistribute the range of ARs such that there are less duplicated/1-AR-difference armours.

3) Improve the economics of wearing mid to high level armour for PvP and PvM, this means bringing the prices down and increasing turnover in the economy.

To achieve this we are looking at some or all of the following measures. Although I cannot stress this enough: Discussions are still ongoing on the staff forum and we promise nothing specific at this stage.

a) Removal of some of the less popular/aesthetic ore types such that a better distribution of ARs can be achieved and better drop rates on remaining ores should increase their presence in the market.

b) Reduction of AR on top end gear but a proportional increase on their drop rates, the top gear will still have a reasonable amount of additional AR and will still comparatively rare, but the distribution will be more logical and the drop rate will aim to produce a price that is a little more realistic on the top AR types.

c) We have already cut the amount of AR from exceptional to 4, we may also improve the chance for exceptional crafting, this is such that less ingots are "wasted" by failing to get the (extremely significant) 8AR bonus we used to have.

d) Low end armour will inevitably see less use among experienced or wealthy players, but it is that way on every server I've ever played and that is OK. It is better than having prohibitively rare and expensive mid and high range AR. To give low AR colours a use we may introduce a crafting system more like IN1/default sphere whereby you can craft plate out of low end ingots at a much lower skill and with much better success rate making them the staple training/cheap and accessible option for new and low skilled players.

As usual I ask that players try to look beyond their own business/personal interests and see the problems the staff are trying to solve:
- Low use of armour in PvP and even in hunting
- Ridiculous prices on suits of exceptional high end AR
- Uneven distribution of AR in the current system
- PvP and other types of damage are balanced around either average-AR (say 40) or invul (53) keeping top gear at AR around 68 is likely to cause problems when/if those armours see common use in hunting, duels or tournaments.

You have correctly identified the armor issues but you are frankly wrong in how to solve them.

If as you say AR values is a problem then remove 10 ingot types, lower the AR value of the highest armors and even the AR values from the lower types. This makes the mid range AR values be closer to the high end and reduces the difference in AR while keeping the difference in price.
Do not touch the mining chance on ores as that will make it far too easy to just mine everything yourself with automated mining. It's easy enough already!

Remove the AR bonus for exceptional quality armor pieces. Or make it so GM smith has 100% exceptional chance on everything.

If you force prices on gear lower than they are now then the economy will fall apart as there will be no profit base for crafters and therefor no reason for them to actually craft stuff.
I mined almost all of my ingots for blacksmith and ended up with ridiculous amounts of medium ingots that are virtually useless because they are so common. And the high end ingots are supposed to be rare, which they are, and that means prices on them are high which they also should be.

Lets gather an example set of items for hunting:
1) A set of fire/aqua armor - 15k
2) A 1 handed melee weapon - 3k(silver vanq) or 5k(regular power)
3) Reagents/bandages - 5k
4) EV scrolls - 100 for 15k so bringing 50 will be 7.5k

Total price 32.5k
If you then take this set out hunting for 1 hour you will have made at least 50k in just gold. Add to that silver and all the useful items you get from the monsters.
A pvp set would just exchange EV scrolls for pvp scrolls and pots. Shouldn't change the price much.


If you are mad at all the gankers then make bows better at killing naked people. Or make scrolls as hard to get as they were on IN1. Back then blanks could not to be bought or crafted and only dropped in small numbers from Lich Lords and up. 1 FS cost 1k, GH's would go for 200gp. People actually had to think about money before spamming them.
Removing all the automated and no loot fighting would also make people actually go out and do real pvp where they can lose their stuff.


You are so narrowly focused on your damn pvp that you completely fail to see what your changes would do to the economy and to those of us who do not pvp voluntarily.

Economy is hanging by a thin thread already with crafted weapons being so insanely hard to make.


Man I don't even know why i get so worked up about this. It's just frustrating because I really like this game and want it to be good

[Azzo]

Self-supplied tourney, no-loot duels, large-group pvp. Three areas where you could use such armour and have a fair chance or 0 chance to keep it afterwards. And when you factor in people play this game for a year (see played hours in sever stats) obviously you're not going to do it all in 1 week, unless you're super dedicated.

Keep in mind we're talking 800k for the best armour in the game too. If you instead look at the current prices for mid range armours, exceptional mytheril for 35k, that's 1/3 of an evening's hunting. 53AR, middle of the mid-tier AR ranges.

[Loki]

There were more ways to earn money on IN1, even AFK, tailoring fancing shirts or smithing gorgets was big money done overnight. Monster hunting was also no less profitable. Armour prices were also lower, even Sapph was more like 250-500k at most.

So I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of what will happen. Expecting big money in trading low end gear whilst stockpiling mid or high end gear isn't a business model I want to be encouraging really. I also appreciate that people like having rarity value in some items and craftables and the fact is that Sapph is still going to cost many 100's of k, but we are simply making things a little more logical and hopefully making it more economical to wear mid-range armour to hunt and to PvP.

All theory aside the problem is clear, if I jump from player to player I mostly see naked people, people in shop-bought iron plate, and a few people in other trash armour. That isn't a good system for the economy or for the quality of PvP or for the fun of risk/reward in PvP or monster hunting. I also look at vendors and for most of them the turnover isn't great. Better prices, better turnover and higher use of armour would be good for the economy, for PvP, for hunting and for crafters. Part of that is these changes discussed here, and another part will be when we look at spells and how they work and if we should do something to make armour useful there as well (don't start talking about that now though because it really isn't a developed idea).

[Loki]

You have correctly identified the armor issues but you are frankly wrong in how to solve them.

If as you say AR values is a problem then remove 10 ingot types, lower the AR value of the highest armors and even the AR values from the lower types. This makes the mid range AR values be closer to the high end and reduces the difference in AR while keeping the difference in price.
Do not touch the mining chance on ores as that will make it far too easy to just mine everything yourself with automated mining. It's easy enough already!

Remove the AR bonus for exceptional quality armor pieces. Or make it so GM smith has 100% exceptional chance on everything.

If you force prices on gear lower than they are now then the economy will fall apart as there will be no profit base for crafters and therefor no reason for them to actually craft stuff.
I mined almost all of my ingots for blacksmith and ended up with ridiculous amounts of medium ingots that are virtually useless because they are so common. And the high end ingots are supposed to be rare, which they are, and that means prices on them are high which they also should be.

Lets gather an example set of items for hunting:
1) A set of fire/aqua armor - 15k
2) A 1 handed melee weapon - 3k(silver vanq) or 5k(regular power)
3) Reagents/bandages - 5k
4) EV scrolls - 100 for 15k so bringing 50 will be 7.5k

Total price 32.5k
If you then take this set out hunting for 1 hour you will have made at least 50k in just gold. Add to that silver and all the useful items you get from the monsters.
A pvp set would just exchange EV scrolls for pvp scrolls and pots. Shouldn't change the price much.


If you are mad at all the gankers then make bows better at killing naked people. Or make scrolls as hard to get as they were on IN1. Back then blanks could not to be bought or crafted and only dropped in small numbers from Lich Lords and up. 1 FS cost 1k, GH's would go for 200gp. People actually had to think about money before spamming them.
Removing all the automated and no loot fighting would also make people actually go out and do real pvp where they can lose their stuff.


You are so narrowly focused on your damn pvp that you completely fail to see what your changes would do to the economy and to those of us who do not pvp voluntarily.

Economy is hanging by a thin thread already with crafted weapons being so insanely hard to make.


Man I don't even know why i get so worked up about this. It's just frustrating because I really like this game and want it to be good

You've not understood what I am saying.

We aren't removing 10 ores, but other than that the general principle - lowering ARs and removing some ores is exactly what you're suggesting more or less.

Coloured ore chances are not going up, in fact they will overall go down - chance to mine iron will be greater than before. But the chance of any specific ore will be greater, because there are less of them, is that clear now? Again, pretty much what you are saying yourself.

We're not going to completely remove exceptional chance/rating but the numbers we are toying with will give GM smiths an extremely high rate of exceptional even with the most difficult ores.

Your logic is flawed - the prices will drop if miners can afford to sell cheaper, key word being afford, we aren't setting the prices, the miners will, we merely make it so that they can turn a profit at a lower price, simple.

As for the rest of your suggestions they don't relate to armour so I'm not going to get into them, except to say more money = better spell casting is the same kind of utter fail that destroyed IN1 so it will never happen whilst I'm staff, I'd sooner resign than see such a thing happen and I know Taran understands that problem too.

I'm afraid I dispute your claim that I'm only seeing PvP, I have tried my best to include the big picture for you, and as I said above we are not "setting" prices, we are making armour more worthwhile and making it so there are less types thus allowing a miner to accrue a certain amount of a specific ore colour in a shorter period allowing him to make the same profit whilst selling lower. We are also reducing the ways ingots are "wasted" by tweaking the exceptional chances and making worse ores easier to craft which should increase the profitability of mining and smithing. Honestly I'm not sure you even understood what I was saying before your knee started jerking... the suggestion that we're going to remove profitability for smiths alone belies a fundamental misunderstanding of how supply and demand works...

[Venos]

Loki we clearly have different views on this. Armor isn't used enough, yes we agree. Reason - people run in groups to gank with FS scrolls. Solution - Make scrolls more expensive/rarer and come up with an idea that makes ganking in groups unviable.

[Loki]

I sound a bit harsher above than I meant to, don't take it the wrong way. I do think, however, that increasing circulation of armour and allowing smiths to maintain a good profit margin even if prices come down a little (in the case of some ores that is) is the way forward.

Also, as with all other changes to other parts of the game, we do not make massive dramatic changes that will break everything, we very much prefer to make small increments, the %age change in drop rate, AR and so on for any specific ore will be somewhat small, but hopefully the cumulative effect will be good for the economy and the economic viability of wearing armour for fighting, hunting and so on.

[Loki]

Reason - people run in groups to gank with FS scrolls. Solution - Make scrolls more expensive/rarer and come up with an idea that makes ganking in groups unviable.

This is an oversimplification, FS ganking was a fact of life on IN1 and FS scrolls hit much harder than they do here. Furthermore, explosion here hits for over 50 damage on people who are naked, and EB hits extremely hard on people below 30 AR (more so than FS and for less mana). If despite these people still run around naked or in trash the problem has to be more complex.

Also, rarifying an item that is so potent in PvP is not an option, I can't be emphatic enough about this. A system where top end PvP is only for the rich is not viable and is the reason IN1 died. Rarification of scrolls, rare and expensive but overly strong weapons and a reduction in mining yields for top end ores were the top contributing factors to the death of IN1's otherwise well-populated PvP system.

Edit: I've already also stated that the effectiveness of armour against magic will also be reviewed. Small changes in many aspects are better than dramatic imbalancing changes to only 1 thing.

[Azzo]

Supply is so high that the changes you are suggesting will make things even worse than they already are. If blacksmith/miners were selling at rates supply determined we would be selling all armour except the top 3 for 15k. So the full spectrum of armours now, except Daemon Stee, Reactive, and Sapphire, (maybe Oceanic, it's iffy) between 1k (vendor price for iron) and 15k and even without reducing AR people still would barely buy it. At which point why bother being a crafter to make armour when you can just hunt, get invul, and call it a day.

That is the crux of mine, and I suspect Venos argument.

Regarding vendor throughput, I don't know about others but I've sold 1 million worth of armour in 2 weeks. I've tried to give numbers supporting my arguments and based on my sales data + those numbers I'm going to respectfully disagree with your predictions as a result of the proposed changes and call it a day, as I don't think any more reiteration of points will change minds here.

[Loki]

Azzo, if you are correct about current supply and the prices it would justify, then why is that not what I see at the market place? I don't think I've seen any Blackrock or Black Diamond suits even remotely close to 15k, in fact I see bloodrock/myth/dwarven exceptional plate at significantly more than that...

I'm happy to listen but I'm simply not satisfied with the argument that the 'prices would be cheaper but they just aren't' and therefore we shouldn't play with supply. I'm also not satisfied with the logic that decreasing costs for smiths and trying to increase armour turnover will somehow bankrupt smiths, the mere fact that Venos suggests smiths will be selling at a loss is fundamental misunderstanding of how a change in supply works.

If I'm being brutally blunt it looks like a couple of smiths worried that their stockpiles will be worth less money after the changes, which is self interest ahead of the good of the economy and the server. Also it's an unnecessary overreaction because top and mid range gear will still be valuable and hopefully in greater demand after the changes, so you may lose a little profit/suit but if the turn over is greater you will earn more money.

[Elia]

1. I agree on the point of making scrolls harder to get.

2. What about increasing the gaps between AR values of different ore type armours? If we want all the armour types to be used, then we need to change the way people can get them.
So that nothing like this would be:

- Now, I'm having xxx money, so I won't buy Valorite now, because with yyy money more, I'll be able to buy Aqua.

My answer is: NO. Buy the valorite suit, cause you won't be able to buy the Aqua one.

My point is:
Making AR gaps between different armour sets wider, so that the price gaps became wider.
Then we'll be able to see who has a nice/good/awesome/godsend armour. And that will make all the armour types useable as people won't wait until they will earn enough money to buy the next one - because that's a lot of money.

3. I think Magery is way too strong. It's too unfair to wear a nice oceanic suit and be able to cast Flamestrikes without restrictions.

[Gang]

http://in-uo.net/forums/showthread.php?7...ing+armors

I suggested this a while ago as it's the only solution I came up with to make armors more useful without changing the current PvP style. Don't pay attention on exact numbers, as it was just example. Rather look at the idea itself, what you'd think about a system like that?

[Lamby]

http://in-uo.net/forums/showthread.php?7...ing+armors

I suggested this a while ago as it's the only solution I came up with to make armors more useful without changing the current PvP style. Don't pay attention on exact numbers, as it was just example. Rather look at the idea itself, what you'd think about a system like that?

:thumbsup: support!