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Discussion on balance changes to sweeping.

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Dimez, Jun 17, 2021.

  1. Nightz
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    Kekw
     
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  2. Vowels
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    sign me up to read some of this glorified fanfiction known as economics where all said is this or that oversimplified near meaningless principle or concept is infallible
     
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  3. Alyosha
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    Alyosha Skelegon Retired Staff

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    I think I was absent the day they covered this in home econ
     
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  4. jesscapades
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    I failed my first econ course in university :yay:
     
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  5. MarcC
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    You're telling me people don't like to see this?

    [​IMG]
    Edit: I don't know how to embed videos?? Doesn't seem to be playing. Click on the link and watch the text vibe
     
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  6. akashsky
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    akashsky Horntail

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    Disclaimer: I took 1 economics class in college

    All yall econ nerds go on and on about your inflation, demand, quantity demanded, quantity supplied, epsilon and other fancy terminology, but at the end of the day, barring an enormous change in supply, nothing will significantly change the price of chaos scroll and white scroll (and by extension all end game items).

    Why? Its quite simple, chaos scroll and white scroll act as CURRENCY, a safe store of value. Just like how house prices always seem to go up in real life, chaos and white scroll prices will always go up in this server. As long as players continue to purchase CS and WS as an investment / store of value, this will never change.

    Staff can tweak the supply a bit, and hoarders will just gobble them up to preserve / grow their wealth while the person who wants to use the scroll for its intended value will suffer (like foreign investors buying expensive coastal real estate pushing out people who want to purchase homes to live in from the market).
     
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  7. aussietinask
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    aussietinask Horny Mushroom Retired Staff

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    Ok, I've decided to fk sleep, because this is more interesting. Going to try to get through as many points as possible.

    1) Negative short term

    CowbelleCowbelle PepperPepper I think you both allude to the fact that the short term effect of this change is too negative for any potential (and uncertain) long term rewards. There obviously has to be a balance. Cowbelle was saying how you could go extreme and ban all players to remove all RWTers. It's dangerous to use extremes as examples, because the extreme short term example of fun might be to make sure every player has perfect gear upon entering the server. It'd be short term fun, but long term would kill the server. My counter to you is that I think general feedback I've gotten from friends on the event is pretty good, so people are still engaged in the content.

    I think the comment on self serving was moreso people who just talk about their mesos/h decreasing... which was the obvious reason for the change. That alone as a reason to revert I feel has 0 weight because it was the intention of the change.

    2) Central bank

    fartsyfartsy CeruleanCerulean points that there is no central bank in ML is true. However, i think the analogy still holds true because my comparison is the process in which 'mesos' or 'money' can be created or generated from nothing. Dropped from monsters, or printed by the central bank are both examples of this. Regardless, the key comparison is that they are increasing the amount of 'currency' in a market without actually increasing the amount of actual items of value in the market. It's not a perfect comparison... but i think there are enough similarities for it to be applicable :p

    3) Using WS/CS prices as indicators.

    PepperPepper fartsyfartsy CeruleanCerulean talked about the danger of using WS/CS prices as a general indicator of inflation. It's a very valid point that demand for these two items are obviously increasing, and that plays into increasing prices, just as much as inflation might be doing potentially. I think my response to that would be that to calculate inflation, you need a basket of goods. Completely correct in that WS/CS should not be the sole determinative items. However, other items like BWG have more than doubled in the past 6-9 months i think. I sold my friend 12wa green mittens for... 50-60m in december? I see a c/o in fm now for like 95 or something. This is obviously the attack gear as mentioned by Cerulean, but i think other items have sort of gone up in price too. Shoe avoid 30s used to be 100k etc. It's easy to cherry pick items to fit a narrative though, and unless we actually start tracking a set basket of goods for inflation (probably not happening...), there will always be a bit of bias in these arguments.

    How much price is being affected by demand and by inflation, I don't know. Staff, in making this change, evidently thought that inflation played a large enough role to be tackled.

    Maplestory is kind of interesting in the sense that 30s create a huge item sink. It means that there is a constant demand for clean items usually. Skillbooks, which Cerulean talk about, generally have less long term demand, because you pass it once and that account never needs it again, coupled with the fact that so many people run HT now. MW20 demand (i think) stays relatively high because every class can use it. I won't try and claim i know the history of how skillbooks got to their current prices, but they exist in a different market in terms of demand, as compared to scrolls and equipment.

    Also, i think the staff are well aware of the demand increase in WS, hence why they put in an exchange quest to increase the supply side as well. So the solutions are not all just on the liquidity-money side, but are rather multiple initiatives tackling the general economic problem identified. Whether the correct problem was identified may be up for question (which I will remove myself from discussion for haha)

    4) 5-6 Leech prices

    fartsyfartsy are we getting into antitrust/competition law with regards to price fixing of 5-6 leech prices? xD now we are starting to get into my area of expertise haha

    Also in response to Pepper, I mainly mention 5-6 leech because that's where people say is 'the only place to earn meso' now.

    The major premise of my theory is that decreasing meso generation will result in increasing the purchasing power of an equivalent amount of meso. Even if the 5-6 leech community fixes the leech at 12m/h, the opportunity cost of spending 12m/h on the leech would theoretically be higher. People might be lazy and still buy the leech, meaning that the demand for 5-6 leech can still maintain the prices that high, but they'll have to work harder to earn the 12m in the first place. So although prices may not automatically drop, i think there might be a shift in value of the 12m.

    5) Gimping of single mages more than multi mages

    CeruleanCerulean ChrisssChrisss PepperPepper As a single mage farmer at petris, who used a 184 shad as a sweeper, this change SUCKED. But i think looking at how much prices have skyrocketed lately, that the change was warranted. I felt that most of my income from petris came from meso bags, and obviously was the most stable source of income, moreso than equips or gach.

    I generally think that both are hit pretty hard by this, and that is by design. Mages still serve their function as the definite best leeching class, but maybe falls a bit back as a moneymaking class. After all... a nerf by definition... makes something worse haha

    The fact of the matter is that multi mages will always make more money per hour than a single mage. I do agree with what Chriss said that people who invest more should reap more rewards. But there has to be some degree of checks and balances. It can also be interesting to see what new metas emerge. I know some of my friends were starting to find certain maps they could farm for money on their attackers.

    6) Effect on multimagers

    Pepper said this: "When it comes to trying to directly nerf multi-mage farming, any form of leech price will not be significantly affected as the target (multi-mage farmers) are not the same people buying leech. The ones buying leech tend to be everyone else who isn't multiclient leeching themselves."

    Absolutely correct. But these people are the ones who inject mesos into market, by buying WS, CS, or other scrolls in FM. The people who do buy leech are the ones who sell items to these people who generate mesos from nothing. Obviously mesos have to be generated from somewhere, and we have meso sinks to even it out. But when the generation far outweigh the sink, and mesos start circulating and causing inflation, the root of the issue is the meso generator, not the person buying leech (as the money will just go back into the economy as an income multiplier).

    7) Other effects

    Such as what Pepper said about not being able to loot mesos in HHG (or PQs in another thread), or not being able to drop trade. I think these are very real issues to do with gameplay. My post here is moreso focused on the economic side of things though, so I'll focus on that.

    8) Other potential solutions

    Some solutions have been suggested, but I'm not commenting on them, because I may or may not be discussing them as a BT member (very mysterious heh)

    I think it goes without saying that we will monitor the situation.
     
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  8. PandaOnPanda
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    They aren't talking about a short term effect. They're talking about how the change made looting mesos something that is unappealing, clunky, and buggy feeling. There's no short term vs long term in that argument, it's just pure QOL and intuitiveness. The point is that you shouldn't sacrifice gameplay to maybe solve a potential economic issue, which is what happened with this blanket change
     
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  9. aussietinask
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    aussietinask Horny Mushroom Retired Staff

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    I agree that the aesthetics, clunkiness etc. is a real issue, but I won't discuss anything beyond that because i dont think i can separate my personal view for that one
     
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  10. -ovv
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    You attributing increase of Shoe avoid 30% price over the last year to inflation is why I'm convinced your assessment is incorrect.
     
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  11. aussietinask
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    aussietinask Horny Mushroom Retired Staff

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    Literally the next sentence: "It's easy to cherry pick items to fit a narrative though, and unless we actually start tracking a set basket of goods for inflation (probably not happening...), there will always be a bit of bias in these arguments."
     
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  12. randomhs
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    as expected, the looting changes make the game look/feel unintuitive and clunky, almost as if it was a bug that never bothered to get fixed. safe to say nobody is having a good time (looting at least).
     
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  13. -ovv
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    But you were literally using Shoe Avoid 30% as a means to cherry pick the 'extreme inflation' over the past year. I'm here to tell you that it wasn't due to inflation.
     
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  14. kiln
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    I seriously doubt this change will even reduce WS/CS prices by more than 20m.

    Gachapon and meso drop from the same activity. You'd need to somehow convince people (almost everyone) to just give up on picking up mesos (mage players and non-mage players alike) and only pick up Gacha tickets.

    This is not even mentioning the fact that the increase in WS/CS prices is primarily demand-driven.


    Name me one item of value that doesn't drop alongside mesos (directly or indirectly through Gach).
     
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  15. aussietinask
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    aussietinask Horny Mushroom Retired Staff

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    Literally the sentence after that: How much price is being affected by demand and by inflation, I don't know. Staff, in making this change, evidently thought that inflation played a large enough role to be tackled.

    Also, I only said the price of shoe avoid 30 has gone up, i never said it was due to inflation. For the purpose of constructive discussion, i'd also like to know why the prices of shoe avoid 30s have gone up. It was just the first thing that popped into my head when i thought about items that i've encountered while i've played that drastically increased in price.
     
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  16. akashsky
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    akashsky Horntail

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    Shoe avoid 30% went up because players realized that scrolling for avoidability is better for your DPS than scrolling for dex in some cases.
     
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  17. -ovv
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    It's easy to cherry pick sentences to fit a narrative though, and unless we actually start tracking a set basket of quotes for inconsistencies (probably not happening...), there will always be a bit of bias in these arguments.
     
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  18. Cowbelle
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    This is what I meant by the fact that there needs to be a measurement tracking what's happening right now that is valued enough to revert the change that is NOT related to economic impact. Gosh, we all agree it's clunky, ugly, and makes the server look broken. Isn't that enough?? And if it's not, why not? What could be considered "enough" to trump the fact that maybe, some x months into the future, it MIGHT help balance the economy (which we have no historical data to back up this claim)? Having a KPI that is not meso-generating related keeps things in check.

    Yes, my equivalent example was an extreme, and it was used to show that going to extremes is not okay. This change IS extreme. It's basically saying "people are using sweeper mules to loot [edit:mesos] killed on other characters, so you know what? NO one can loot [edit:mesos] that were killed by other characters" This is changing a fundamental aspect of how this game works. If you need another example, it's like proposing "party members shouldn't share exp" as a response to 5-6 exp being too high. This is too broad of a stroke and should be reverted and a more conservative approach proposed.

    I don't think the quality of the event can be translated to how they feel about the effect of this change. The event is fun! I'm really thankful for it. I hate this meso looting change. I think the sentiment of the event and this specific balance change should be separated.
     
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  19. Blache
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    Despite all this discussion, there are a few pressing questions still to be answered if any staff member wishes to tackle them:

    • Is inflation widespread in the ML economy? If yes, how have you arrived at that conclusion and what metrics were used?
    • If there is little evidence that inflation is widespread at this time, why has the initial response to the problem been so heavy-handed?
    • If there is an expectation that inflation will rise significantly in the near future; what projection model was used and does that model demonstrate a strong correlation between "excessive" meso generation and inflation?
    • What would you consider to be an acceptable rate of meso generation and why?
    • Why do you all hate the mage master race?
     
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  20. KurayamiLove
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    KurayamiLove Skelegon

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    If non-mages do better damage on a single target than mages so if there was a big monster with a lot of HP that gave good drops, you know.... like bosses but unlike them, they drop something valuable.
    I think I'm on the endgame and many people like me are so tired of grinding that they rather chill and just boss sometimes. I can't stand more hours grinding and when I use my mage to leech my Priest to Bishop I don't last even an hour. so I rather having more options of making money rather than just grind on a map for countless hours.
    The event reward points for bossing works kinda like the post big bang reward points and it would be cool to have that in a way on regular bossing, make a store with goodies. I know it may be hard to balance due to muling but muling is always the issue it seems.
     
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