Discussion on balance changes to sweeping.

Just make a system that lets you trade raw meso for extra HP/MP and all the meso in the game will sink faster than your mother on Jupiter

 

I don't doubt it, which is why I originally supported the idea. Furthermore, I will clarify that I meant "don't aim for deflation, aim for more controlled inflation" in general, to both people giving feedback on this thread and staffs. It was not specifically targeted towards the sweeper change.

The sweeper change was a good attempt, but it does have pretty big flaws that I can't look past. It affects more population than what seems intended, and has clunky QoL issues. If those problems can be addressed, I would support it again.

I should also note that I didn't think much when I said meso sink would stimulate the market, when in reality it just helps against rapid meso generation.

Now I'm not an expert in either Maple or economics, so I don't have a great suggestion. All I came up with was something similar to a government loan, which would be a meso sink (by means of interest) and a stimulus to the market, but also unrealistic and too custom.

In summary, I think it would be healthier to come up with ways that somehow encourage users to trade certain items or do specific tasks (which then would cause consumption of materials needed to complete such action). My reasonings solely lie on the fact that I'm a monkey who read "economic policies that limit free market = bad" on a textbook.

 

Observing the actions that other video games do / have done to create healthier gameplay, not only in their respective economies, but other areas as well, is a great incentive. Why have innovative ideas when you can just steal them?

Here are two that I've found that tackle economic issues:

- A famous WoW PS has implemented a 'Gold Squish' mechanic that literally halves everyone's gold each year. Whether that gold is in storage or in an inventory, it doesn't matter. Gold is WoW's currency.

- GW2 allows players to convert their in-game currency to premium currency at will. You can also purchase their premium currency with real world cash.

 

I don't see any issue with making it so that players, but not pets, can loot party mesos. The current situation feels really bad.

 

Uncontrolled free market is equally bad too. Says another textbook.

 

At the very least, I hope they can implement some way to make it less invasive for lower level players.. It’s really annoying for everyone. Maybe if the monster was killed by someone below level 120 (and thus not by a mage ult) then the party can still loot the mesos.

 

To be fair, capping ultis income by 50% was the best argument I've heard in this entire thread.

Yes sure, you can re-enable sweepers to loot meso and all. but the problems gets fixed by just capping ultis drop rate and meso rate by 50% (just like event drop rate with ultis against other skills)

Does it fuck over the sweaty mage players? Yes
Does it fuck over the new players making a mage to make meso™? Yes
Does it fix the problem of absurd meso incomes from farming meta maps? Yes

Is it fun for the players that just play the game for fun? No, but they still do full dmg from ultis.

 

Can you source this textbook or explain your claim more?

If you’re talking about market failure in microeconomics, then yes, it is highly agreed upon that policy intervention is needed because free markets lead to actions that can literally kill people; examples include excessive pollution and $500 insulin shots. However IMO, this is extremely irrelevant to ML.

Don’t get me wrong, I wholeheartedly support intervention policies IRL. But I see no reason why they should be implemented in any video game. Potentially dying because you can’t afford insulin is wildly different from not being able to afford a 14 att glove. And we all have equal opportunity to invest in each meso-making method in order to get a 14 att glove. On a larger scale, no one is going to actually suffer from wealth inequality. If you don’t have the time to make multiple mages and farm mesos for white scrolls, you’ll lose out on like, 1m dpm? Not the end of the world. And personally, if we didn’t have wealth inequality in this game, I wouldn’t want to play it; why play a game where you get penalized for playing it more?


Now, if you’re talking about textbook macroeconomics, then yes what you’re describing is essentially the Keynes vs Hayek debate. Keynes advocated for government intervention during the 1930s depression and Hayek advised to leave the markets alone. I don’t think this is at all relevant because their arguments hinged being in a financial crisis, and I don’t think we were in a financial crisis; by definition, a depression/recession is when an unusually high amount of people become “unemployed”. If we’re adapting this to ML, I’d say it would being unemployed = unable to make meso or unvoluntarily making less mesos than before. This clearly was not a problem before the sweeper change, so using these theories is irrelevant.

TL;DR:

Overall, there’s a lot of abstraction between textbook economics and ML economics. Doesn’t mean they’re unrelated though, and IMO game economics is closer to textbook economics than IRL is. You just need to take caution before applying the textbooks because almost every economic model has very strong assumptions, and if those assumptions aren’t reasonable then the whole thing crumbles.

Sorry for the super long rambly post. I’ll probably revise it and trim it down later when I have time.

 

I don't own any MU or sweeper mule. Just feels a huge drop in quality of gameplay when your screen is filled with meso that you can't loot. They visually block the lootable items, mind fk your pets and you have to spam much more to pick up the non-mesos. The amount of players being fked over because if of the looting change is just way too much for the intented purpose.

The overall intention of reducing the gap between non-mage and mage farming is a good intention. But it might be better to have a + and - at the sametime to achieve the same objective. If not it just going to be depression as fk to read nerf after nerf after nerf, even if it doesn't affects me. This whole patch note just reads all people getting fked from all sides.

 

I'm just glad mages are getting kicked in the balls

 

card hunting rates gets nerfed too iirc

 

Then all you would need to do is use skill OTHER than ulitimate for farming cards, not that much of a sacrifice really given mages have multiple AoE spells.

 

I don't play mage, so take my opinion/idea with a grain of salt.

If u use OTHER skills for to card hunt, how about using OTHER skills to efficiently generate mesos?

Ultimate nerfs card drop rate and its been accepted. Can we do the same for mesos? In exchange to be able to loot other's mesos again

 

dude try to go to 5-6F its so dead and keep in mind this is during the most anticipated event of the year, there are a few sellers that is true, but not in the same way as before

 

Just delete mages,
Imagine having a class based around spells to end up using ultimates after 4th job, with the exception of bishop.

Add Cooldown to Ultimates, ez, no more spam, they're forced to use other spells, everyone is happy except Mc4clientmeta who gets sad he wont make bucks on leech alone, also remove HP washing.

Also i'm joking , i know it won't happen don't ''Poe's law'' me

 

Telling a Mage to use anything but Ult is like asking a couch potato to walk to the store after being spoiled for a long time

''ARE YOU EXPECTING ME TO USE MY LEGS...TO WALK?!''

 

Ironically, a <10 second cooldown on mage ults wouldn't even be a significant nerf to most spots.
Mobs respawn every 10 seconds, if you oneshot the map (ulu1, harps, cornians) you don't really need to cast more than once per 10 seconds, hence ult cd would leave multimage farming perfectly viable but screw over actual grinding mages :^}

 

Mommy cant buy you tendies forever, and some places dont deliver.

 

Who was the person that suggested that ultimates could have a "charging" mechanic (like Grenade or that MM skill)? It doesn't change much for the playability of single-client mages, and absolutely neuters multiclient mages.

No one is going to have 4 computers and a keyboard for each limb.

...Except sku