Experience Points, Post Counts, and Levels

[zipp]

May 5, 2008 5:05:48 GMT -5 Ghost Bear said:

May 4, 2008 12:39:39 GMT -5 zipp said:

For me, the main concern would be making the site an easy and accesible place for new members. Along with this I wonder how neccesary most of the extras of the site were, such as EXP and gold.

I disagree. Totally.

I enjoyed my inventory, and I think it was useful in developing my character's background. I also enjoyed looking at other people's inventories - it provided an interesting insight into what other people were doing.

-GB

I think you must've been one of the few. Not only was buying from the shops tedious (since you could only buy one item at a time and had to go through various loading times and links to buy an item) but the items had no set purpose. Except...

... the one thing I liked about items was that they were neccesary to raise your class level. It would've been cool if each level required more than just a single (or couple) of items to do this. Then the items would have some purpose.

Also, there was the constant inflation issue. That needs to be addressed.

Finally, I really think that the shops should be more tied in with the WW or something on the site. Buying a manor was cool and all... but not really, because it didn't mean anything, and rarely did other writers acknowledge your property holdings.

I still maintain that the shops had their glory days back at the start of the WW, when the early members first purchased their ships and turned it into a story. THAT was cool.

Just owning a bunch of HTML links that don't mean anything? It's like the gifts on facebook. I couldn't care less.

[Beowuuf]

I thin kyou took what you wated from it, what I didn't like was that you gained gold so fast, it was cool to be a starting character and buy stuff that was basic, eying up cooler stuff.

Then someone would donate a huge wad of cash and the thrill and fun went away

Inflation was the stocks issue - wihtout stocks, everythign was sane. Stocks were fun, but not setting the growth to rational and slow moving fluctuation was definitely a bad idea

I had some ideas for things like manors, etc but I dunno if they would have solidified to anything, much less been coded

[Agrarvyn]

There used to be another of those "rules" that you couldn't use in the WW anything you didn't have in your inventory. Of course, when you had a warehouse with 400 miscellaneous items and 80-odd million GC in the bank, that was fairly pointless.

[Ghost Bear]

May 5, 2008 11:20:18 GMT -5 zipp said:

I think you must've been one of the few. Not only was buying from the shops tedious (since you could only buy one item at a time and had to go through various loading times and links to buy an item) but the items had no set purpose. Except...

Actually I think you were

Most longstanding members of the site had an interesting inventory which complimented their characters in some way. Hell, there would be no West Watch if it weren't for the purchaseable ships.

The Skyriders given to the Crystal Star were worked into the WW, as were a number of my inventory items.

The only thing I see that'd in need of overhaul is the economy, and to be honest I think the latest incarnation of the economy cracked it and seemed to be working well.

-GB

[Beowuuf]

Indeed, the highest earners coluld painfully afford to buy a large house, which seems about the right model for the economy.

The only bad thing with the economy was the items left over from people purchasing thing they didn't need in the heyday, you couldn't then let thigns be sold again (another must for the shop to be useful) as thta would flood the ecomnomy with too much money. Which then set in stone people's inventory as it was impossible to dump stuff without making it a 0 GC sale, which seems a waste fpr powerful items

And even then, I had a pawn shop to sell items, and I had created three 'god' characters to barter inventory items over to to keep the mechanics of the inventory alive.

[Al]

My dog was a key to my WW story!

[Beowuuf]

And I was going to work the pup of Vengence into it too!

I already had Tamas's old hunting dog that was eventually going to resurface

[eviltb]

For someone who was never a part of the whole stock-exchange, mass money market thing, I enjoyed the inventory as it was. The fact that I could only afford a major magic item once every few months seemed more "real" than being able to rack in loads of GC and buy, for example, a Sommerswerd at lvl1! And it made the lottery that much more relevant, as it was really the only way to get a mass of money at once.

(btw the lottery should definately be one thing that is brought back when the new site comes up)

[Agrarvyn]

I'm all for the lottery, provided that the Kai Lords don't constantly win!

[Al]

I liked the lottery, but the stock market was flawed - due to the maths the randomness had an upward trajectory, meaning that people would easily make a ton of money

[Beowuuf]

The stock market was simply set too generously - fluctuations were very swift and not capped and had the potential for a huge swing.

I would also have liked to have seen more RP inpiut into the stock market. Maplphis buys out al lthe bluesteel weaponry, you want to see Elzian stocks plummet. Sekhemty retires, mages supplies take a hit, Nauhuris is elected as the new leader, the stocks receover, etc. Or liol, Zipp destros Eshanr, and the Eshnar Employment Office stock value plunges to nothing, shares wiped out, mass hysteria - and then the Hammerdal Employment Office opens

That would have needed admin intervention, but would have been really fun and integrated the stocks well to the site.

Basically, 1% rise every 2 days for the bank did not unbalance the economy under the new system, even with high GC possessors. I think the stock market could have been ressurected, with slightly higher percentages, (like +/- up to 3 or 5%) with a longer spread of days (perhaps adjust every 3 days, or maybe 7 so you make a 'stock market day', with surprise events knocking the stocks ahead of time.

I was in favour of trying it for a limited period (I was right in the middle of re-releasing the shop items at more relaistic proices) but wants someone higher like FA's approval plus the site. And trhen the site went down


Speaking of the lottery, somethign was fundamentally broken i nthe code - although the set time was correct for weekly, the lottery call kept slipping to later and later all the time. Never figured out the interval enough to correct it with a lower number

[Al]

May 7, 2008 2:55:46 GMT -5 Beowuuf said:

I think the stock market could have been ressurected, with slightly higher percentages, (like +/- up to 3 or 5%) with a longer spread of days (perhaps adjust every 3 days, or maybe 7 so you make a 'stock market day', with surprise events knocking the stocks ahead of time.

The problem was not the percentages as in the value of the percentages, the problem was that percentages were used - you could not lose as it would always move up.

I forget the logic, but Argy and I showed how using percentages was inherently problematic, that real numbers would work much better.

[Beowuuf]

I guess the lower limit needs to be much nastier than the upper limit then!

[Al]

It had something to do with the way percentatges increase - that the value in real GC would increase as well each time it went up.

[Beowuuf]

I can see that £% increase followed by 3% decrese would give you more than you started with, surely the risk is that 3% decrease first would not be balanced by a 3% increase.

As long as their was a range of value (I think there was) then that might work.

And certainly, as long as an admin can come along and create a drop for events happening (lets face it, things go wrong more than right!) it would reset any percentage increase worries...perhaps....

They were definitely a potentially fun aspect, but I can see they just immediately destroyed the subtlyty of the economy and RPG value of the shop system

I seem to recall FA saying that gambling netted you big gains (like roulette) but I never saw how, it always seemed to be so small a benefit