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Post by sareth675 on Jul 23, 2015 19:33:16 GMT -5
Here's some numbers for you.
4 people go into the bandits.
The bandits drop random loot, but it's literally all level 1 items. And it's not even all their armor, just random bits and pieces. And sometimes their weapons.
We went through the entire area.
And made 66 bucks.
66 bucks isn't even enough to cover 1 characters expenses for consumables.
660 bucks would have been tolerable. Bandits aren't the hardest things (except those damn gunmen with 13ab but whatever).
Graveyard currently.
Ramped up difficulty (it seems).
3 characters went through it.
Almost got killed in the crypts against 2 zombies. Because they seem to have had their difficulty increased. Normally 1 character might be badly injured, now we get sodding smashed by them.
They drop level 14 stuff in the crypt, but given we were almost wiped against 2 of the not so dangerous specimens down there, it's too risky.
Level 14 stuff sells for 20 bucks roughly. And that's the main piece of body armor. The gloves and boots are worth less.
We found almost exclusively level 5 - 7 items in the graveyard surface.
We made 326 bucks.
That was 100 odd bucks each.
This is also not enough considering more consumables are needed in a harder area.
1000 bucks for the whole run would have been tolerable. But with the difficulty spiked up, even higher would still be reasonable.
And to answer why exactly people need money on the server "so badly."
It's a game. People like to have fun.
Some people like to level up. Funnily enough, everyone I've seen on the server wants to level up.
To do that, you need gear.
To get higher levels, you need better gear.
Thus you need money to buy off the vendors. You cannot do that without hours upon hours of grinding atm.
If you want crafted gear, well, then you have to pay a crafter, who has to spend thousands upon thousands of bucks, to hit a level where crafting is viable.
Thus they must grind for even longer to hit said level.
It's ridiculous. The prices are way. Way. Waaaaaaaaaaaay too low.
Gear is worth about 10% of it's crafted cost.
It needs to be worth about 20%. MINIMUM.
Otherwise progression is too slow, and everyone loses any and all drive to play.
People are literally swearing at me in tells to sell bugged items for 100 bucks because vendor prices are so crap right now. It has to change.
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Post by wobbletop on Jul 23, 2015 21:34:44 GMT -5
I was one of the people in the group with my character Jin Ro and the difficulty was indeed extreme. The second pair of skeletons in the crypt were doing Forceful Attack III. Strangely enough they easily killed two of us even though that special attack missed. They could hit reliably enough for 10-20 damage per hit untill two heavily armored people died. I barely managed to kill the last one with a smoke grenade and a incediary grenade. The hp of the skeletons seemed to be way higher than before as well, so we could not kill them fast enough.
In regards to the economy; I have heard that this incredible reduction of lowlevel items has happened to give more relative value to higher level items as well as the fact that the market in the trade quarter is supposed to have the reputation of being one of the most stingy groups of people. I have also heard that -real- adventurerers is not truly a real -class- and that the creators want to reflect upon that by making monster very hard to kill, but at the same time having alternative ways of making do, by gathering materials for crafting, instead of just killing stuff for money.
The problem here though is that there is currently no other alternative whatsoever. All you actually -can- at this moment do is kill stuff for money, and then sell that stuff to the most stingy merchants in the world, where there is also no other alternative since there are no other merchants in the game yet. It would be more reasonable to reduce the prices when it actually is possible to do something else, such as gathering materials.
All of this just seems rushed and some of the ideas have been done in the wrong order, wich makes people frustrated.
This is what I have figured out of this situation at least. I hope my rant was constructive.
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 24, 2015 6:50:47 GMT -5
Vendor prices have been updated and I will post more stats to help offer constructive feedback on the economy when I get the chance.
Thanks for the update, I hear it's helped a huge deal, (perhaps too much, only one way to tell)
Test 1: 2 Characters go through the bandits after the vendor patch.
Skipping the last room (cos bandit gunmen still OP), this is our loot values.
Every item is level 1, except loot nodes, which appear to be working as intended.
Bandits SOMETIMES drop 1-2 items. None of them dropped more than that, and some of them (about 40% of them) dropped nothing at all.
Total loot gained. 129 bucks, roughly.
Better! But only because partial plate armor sells for 40 bucks a piece and we managed to find 2 of them.
Thus the bandits are still as worthless as ever until their loot system gets fixed. Either they should drop everything like the deaders do, or the deaders should be changed to drop random pieces of their gear instead of all of it.
Also bandits badly need to drop level appropriate loot based on party size & level, just like the deaders.
Test 2: 2 Characters go through the graveyard & crypts after the vendor patch.
Graveyard. Not too difficult, item levels range between 4-8. Some drop weapons, every weapon dropped is level 1.
Crypt. Other than... I can't tell, a complete RNG encounter vs 1 dual wielding skeleton where we almost both died because apparently heavy armor was made of paper in that 1 fight, it wasn't as bad as before. Still much tougher than it used to be though.
Items in the crypt ranged from levels 10 - 11, loot nodes working fine.
Total loot gained. 1850 bucks.
^ This is a much, much, much more accurate number. Considering we must have drank about 50 bucks worth of potions each. Our loot to split (just the two of us) was around 800 bucks each. Most pairs of characters wouldn't be able to tackle that area so well, but we're quite well geared and work very, very efficiently together.
Since the spawns in the crypt do not change, cash gained from the crypt should be more consistent regardless of party size.
The graveyard however, is very much dependent on party size. Huge parties spawn lots, increase level of drops, thus get a higher pool of loot. But.... that loot gets split more. Thus, the most profitable way of running this area, is actually soloing the crypt. Which no one can do right now, not without abusing incendiary grenades >_> Which I'm sure someone will now try xD
I'm going to post another thread about something I've thought of about WHY the economy is so hard to balance on this server in particular.
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 24, 2015 11:58:35 GMT -5
*bump, see above post for more information*
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Jul 24, 2015 12:11:08 GMT -5
I've solo'd the crypt. You're right, it takes a lot of grenades and other consumables. Utterly not worth it though. I was one missed throw or bad crit away from dying the whole time.
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 24, 2015 12:44:24 GMT -5
If you net more loot than what the consumables are worth... (which shouldn't be hard given the cost of making healing potions / buying incendiaries), a smart person who figured out an optimal route could net in 1k + bucks for themselves each run. It's just an example, is all.
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Post by drunkensolamnic on Jul 24, 2015 13:27:09 GMT -5
Oh I made a profit for sure. It just was incredibly high-risk on losing it all.
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Post by eba on Jul 24, 2015 19:28:28 GMT -5
If you net more loot than what the consumables are worth... (which shouldn't be hard given the cost of making healing potions / buying incendiaries), a smart person who figured out an optimal route could net in 1k + bucks for themselves each run. It's just an example, is all.  Some of us don't use two handed weapons |
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 24, 2015 19:53:22 GMT -5
The example I gave actually doesn't matter what your primary weapon is. It's literally just spamming incendiaries... I don't know what's so hard to get about that. It's simple NWN2 fighting mechanics. You clear mobs with AOE damage per round. Fastest way to do it. That's with incendiaries... not two handed weapons.
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Post by eba on Jul 24, 2015 20:12:09 GMT -5
The example I gave actually doesn't matter what your primary weapon is. It's literally just spamming incendiaries... I don't know what's so hard to get about that. It's simple NWN2 fighting mechanics. You clear mobs with AOE damage per round. Fastest way to do it. That's with incendiaries... not two handed weapons. You can't incendiary everything all the time. You can stack like three or four. |
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Post by sareth675 on Jul 24, 2015 20:37:09 GMT -5
This thread wasn't really for discussing the power of incendiary grenades in the crypts... and it was an offhanded example saying the optimal way of earning cash in that particular area, was soloing the crypts, which do not have a dynamic spawning script, thus patterns can be learned, and incendiaries can be abused. Since you only need to stack 3 or 4, probably closer to 3 to clear a floor out anyway.
What the post was trying to achieve, was pointing out the differences between a few days ago vendor prices, and the recent patches vendor prices, which I can say it has done it's job. And I think other than pointing out the bandits are still loot wise broken, the crypts could do with a slight tuning down, but are otherwise fine for cash gain.
Perhaps a 3% decrease to vendor prices, leading to roughly a 17% of crafting cost as vendor prices, would be optimal? 15% at the very lowest margin. I would consider the amount of cash I'm pulling out of the crypts in a group or in a pair now is pretty reasonable in regards to progression, though perhaps slightly to high, hence the further 3% reduction.
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Some of us don't use two handed weapons