Important New System for White Scrolls (Feedback Thread)

I mentioned this before, but would like to reiterate again, this change is not primarily aimed to buff bossing. Adding coins to boss drop tables is meant to be a nice buff to bossing to increase the bottom line from godawful to at least getting something regularly/semi regularly (depending on what rates we decide on).

I think a lot of emphasis has been placed on effect this change will have on bossing, but any change to bossing is the secondary effect of this change.

This change is meant to tackle the issue of white scroll demand and hoarding. I’m finding it hard to figure out all the permutations of this, so really enjoying reading all the thoughts here. However, while I won’t say bossing is unrelated to this change, it’s only slightly related in the sense that bosses are one particular vehicle to further expand sources of coins entering the game.

One thing I’d be interested in brainstorming would be what other viable sources of sources of coins might be to the game without flooding the market.

I’m still very much developing my views on how this plays out based on what I’m reading here too!

 

I really truly feel that the bossing buff should be completed first before this change is even considered and given time to see how the market plays out.

I agree heavily with jesscapades here where you are trying to fix too many issues at one time:
1. Increase ws/cs
2. Buff bossing
3. Address tax maybe?
4. Stop hoarding

If you do such a huge change, there is no way for you to properly track which parts are working and which parts are failing. It can take 1 thing to make the whole system fall apart.

I am really hesitant to be on board with such a huge change. There are so many things that can go wrong. Bosses could break, coins can accidentally dupe or disappear from inventories, etc. Every time new content is released we see these types of issues and this one is far more customized than what was released in the past. I feel we are dreaming big when a smaller solution would suffice.

Also the amount of data that will need to be pulled, gone through, and tracked to monitor these changes is immense. If it does go wrong it is also extremely hard to revert.

 

Completely agree

 

I wonder what would happen if WS/CS could be crafted from an npc by gathering specific etcs.

 

Like Pepper mentioned, I also think bossing buffs need to come first, because bad bossing incentives are at the root of this problem. Bossing and farming/leeching are heavily intertwined, and when you change one you directly change the other. Right now there’s a clear and large imbalance between bossing profits and farming profits, and that’s led us to many end-game players quitting bossing and becoming full-time farmers/leechers. So if bossing becomes comparably profitable, I suspect a good chunk of farmers/leechers will stop and happily return to their HT cave apartments.

Going back to my suggestion, if you make HT profits identical in nature to farming but slightly worse in amount, you’d get a small change in the economy and that’s what we should aim for. We need to hold as many things constant as possible to help identify the effects of that change. Then once the incentive design is in place, you can elegantly and easily start adjusting and tweaking rates to affect the market.

Basically, it seems like we’re lost in a car driving the wrong way, and the suggestion is to immediately jerk the wheel and make a u-turn. The issue with that is that we don’t know if that’s the right way and we’re at risk of getting into an accident with oncoming traffic. Instead we should be slowing and stopping the car, checking a map for the right direction, and then making a plan for how to get there.

 

The prestigious coin system sounds pretty nice honestly, I'm in favor of it. I don't think with this system in place bossing would be anywhere close to as efficient as mage farming so bossing wouldn't become broken. I can also see how people dislike it because its a little too custom and anti nostalgia but overall this is probably the best fix to the white scroll issue I've heard so far.

 

Yep this change seems an overly panic response, and in my opinion also, going in the wrong direction.

Bossing & Meso farming are indeed at the root of the problem here, lets look at the chain of cause and effect in order:
1) Naturally,over time more players get to bossing levels ->
2) Bossing being "not good enough to afford end game" ->
3) Players are "pushed" to mage farming /leech selling ->
4) Overpowered meso generating methods are developed ->
5) "imbalanced" amount of mesos is being collected AND raw meso generated by said players ->
6) Said players CAN AFFORD to keep buying WS/CS consistently even with rising prices.

Of course there are more reasons such as rising demand due to more 'end game' players, and general meso inflation.
However, at the end of the day, said players DO HAVE the mesos to consistently buy WS and thats a fact, if not, prices would not rise.
And of course, this also leads to a growing disparity in wealth between sweaty mage farmers and other players.

Therefor, as Jess and others have mentioned, these are the roots of the issues we are currently facing, and what the proposed "fix" should be aimed towards,
As was the intention with the recent loot changes for example.

Now just throwing something on top of my head, idk if it was considered already, and obviously its not intended to solve everything but -
what about potential nerf to Meso Up?
Currently Meso-Up is only really relevant as another buff mule that pretty much every mage farmer uses these days.
+50% RAW MESO generated is pretty busted if you ask me, especially considering the massive amounts of raw meso generated by these players.
Am I gonna get tons of hate for this? Definitely, but whatever. ; D

 

Also to clarify, this prestigious coin change is not going to be pushed out in the short term. This exercise is to gather potential feedback and then evaluate where we stand from there. There's obviously a lot of balance to consider with such a change, and then we have to figure out the code etc., which will take more time.

No comment on the timeline of any other changes

 

Bossing already feels bad. Nerfing MU means farming will feel bad. Everything will feel bad. I'd rather have buffs to the under-performing part: bossing.

 

We could have both!
And it doesn't have to be a major nerf, even just 10%~ is significant server wide when so many players use it, while not harming so much an individual player.
Anwyays, just an idea, and like I said, obviously not a fix for everything.

 

Nerfing MU means u need an excellent gaming pc to add more mages.

 

could probably push small tests on things like events like christmas or summer events etc, so that you can pull it when events over and get an overall feel of a direction of where to go with it, and since it would be during an event, it would only affect a small timeframe which hopefully wont piss people if it goes awry, though maybe devteam already had their own idea of how to introduce it, and this comment is redundant

 

Just a fyi for those commenting on the bossing changes - it is way further along in the pipeline than the prestigious coin proposal, which is more is a radical idea that is open to feedback.

For the bossing changes it is just hashing out the details, and can be released once that's done. This idea about prestigious coins really is in its infancy so maybe we can revive this thread and revisit how it goes along with the bossing changes once that's released

 

What if we just merge the 2 systems together and make bosses drop CWK badges.

 

I’d really like to hear more about these bossing changes. If it’s a change to the bossing rewards, then by default it’s also a farming change and ws change, and so it could have major negative repurcussions to the economy. If possible, I think the community would really appreciate hearing more about it and having a chance to provide feedback on it before it’s released.

edit: also this bossing change might make a lot of things ppl talked about in this thread fairly irrelevant :/

 

Just as a side note when NeoTokyo was first released back in the 2000s, was the Neo Tokyo coin system we see in Legends similar or the same to the one that was used when NeoTokyo was first launched on the official server way back when? That would at least show that the original creators had set a precedent. I just played on GMS so it was never in that one when I played or I quit if it ever got carried over.

(I also saw a few posts about people saying a coin system isn't good for nostalgia)

 

I have an idea that may be able to combine a lot of suggestions here, but I need a confirmation from the devs first before I can flesh it out. Theoretically speaking, how difficult would it be to implement "possible number of trades" for an item in the current ML's client?

In case that wasn't clear, I'm talking about putting a limit on how many times an item can be traded. After the specified amount of trades, the item would become untradeable.

I know it's not possible naturally, but Pasta has been pulling some magic tricks I've never seen before so... I figure it wouldn't hurt to ask.

 

Im really liking seeing everyones ideas and its cool to have a feedback thread!! With something like this im so glad there is one.
I was just thinking.. In this system is the actual number of ws and cs limited to the amount gached plus the amount of ws or cs the total number of coins in supply could be traded in for? Like you get the ones from gach and then the npc trade in is infinite but limited to coins so what if coins AND ws get hoarded?
Also would the exchange rate be static or would speculators wait for rates to change and trade in after causing hoarding? Or would players anticipate a nerf to the system early on and rush to trade in current ws for day 1 rates?
In the other direction what if a lot of 30s land in the next two months and four or five wealthy enough players are competing and there's a coin shortage?

Just a bunch of hypotheticals.

 

One problem that has been mentioned every now and then in this thread is that by introducing a single coin/currency, you have essentially pegged the exchange rate of ws:cs rather than leaving it up to market forces.

A potential solution to this is to perhaps actually introduce two different coins (one for ws and one for cs). This allows the market to take back control of the exchange rate between the two.

Two rather than one coin obviously means it will take up more space in one's inventory, but if stack limits can be increased and you can hold many coins without having to worry about making many many stacks of them, then it's really no different from holding a ws and cs cause those take up two different inventory spaces anyway.