So Filling Bulk Order Deeds is Tedious - Lets talk changes.

The play style isn't completely automated. If your'e caught away from keys for more than a few seconds a troll will eat your face, while PorkFriedRice kills you on the other screen. I assure you if you are a recall miner you wont spend your time sitting idle at the keys in full automation mode. This is not easy street by any means.

With the cost of production so high vs the amount made from BOD rewards.... it is a losing fight. Any tamer that farms as much as we mine will make MUCH more than we could ever imagine earning. The point to it all being... High End Smith BOD Rewards. That's the golden ticket everyone is hoping for.

Anyone who has put in a decent amount effort into the BOD game must be nervous about these changes. You work so hard to earn your BODs over time, and.. the whole game may be turned upside down with a new balancing act. Lets Hope Not!

That makes sense. So are we finally stating that the main reason we are up in arms about these changes is because it will be more difficult to obtain sufficient resources necessary for just the chance at high end BoD rewards?

After reading through 6 pages of In Sanct Texus Ylem (text walls), no one has come out and said the real reason they are apprehensive is that there will not be enough ingots or ingots will not be as accessible to obtain in order to complete these BoDs to get a mere chance at a high end reward. They have beat around this bush stating that the prices of ingots will go up, that the cost of fulfilling a bod will increase significantly, that this change unfairly targets specific playstyles, but it's all about the high end BoD's right?

Now we're getting to where we can discuss the heart of the matter.

I am going to ask a few questions, not trying to be rhetorical or to paint any traps. I truly don't understand both why these changes were implemented and why people are so apprehensive about them. I am quite honestly naive and not aware that this was even an issue.

1. What should be the appropriate difficulty level to obtain high end BoD rewards?
2. As Telamon has indicated he would be willing to perhaps ease some of these factors if we were to introduce permanent account bans for failure to pass the AFK gumps after a specified amount of times. Would you support permanent bans for people
3. how will the economy be improved, directly and immediately, if macro mining was continued to be permitted with 'less' risk.
4. Can we find a way to make it more lucrative/profitable for player miners to sell ingots? with NPC's selling ingots at a fixed 8 GP, this kind of sets a standard for the market that can't really ever change. If demand for ingots goes up, but the supply remains low, then the price should sky rocket until such time that people get out there and mine ingots.

I will provide my thoughts on these questions


1. What should be the appropriate difficulty level to obtain high end BoD rewards?
Extremely high difficulty to obtain a BoD that will yield a high end reward, less randomization on actual reward. I can only imagine how eye-gougingly annoying it would be to fill a BoD that cost 100k in resources to get..... a mongbat poop (or something undesirable)

2. As Telamon has indicated he would be willing to perhaps ease some of these factors if we were to introduce permanent account bans for failure to pass the AFK gumps after a specified amount of times. Would you support permanent bans for people
I would wholly support something like a PK 'stat' rez for account bans. you get your account banned for failing an AFK gump 10+ times? Then your account is banned for X days, and can only be reinstated with a 60% permanent stat loss to all characters on the account. You get banned twice? goodbye perma-dead.

3. how will the economy be improved, directly and immediately, if macro mining was continued to be permitted without these changes and with 'less' risk.
From the comments I have seen, these changes are really designed to make BoD's more difficult, but the people who are unintentionally paying the price are merchants who now cannot get enough ingots to stock their vendors. I think there should definitely be some looking into this.

4. Can we find a way to make it more lucrative/profitable for player miners to sell ingots? with NPC's selling ingots at a fixed 8 GP, this kind of sets a standard for the market that can't really ever change. If demand for ingots goes up, but the supply remains low, then the price should sky rocket until such time that people get out there and mine ingots.
From what my feeble attempts of economic understanding can grasp, the ingot prices are not truly subject to the laws of supply and demand. Since there is always the NPC vendor at 8 GP you will always have to compete with that. Instead of adding content that makes gathering the resource more difficult, could we add content to motivate selling of ingots? People will only pay 'so much' for convenience. Meaning you can only stray so far from the "8 gp" standard before people say "screw that, i'll wait for the NPC vendor's stock to respawn". there has got to be a way to reward those who are truly adhering to the rules of the shard.

All i see here is a bunch of people skirting the spirit of anti-afk and trying to justify it somehow.
"Lets just f*#k over and spit on any miner who tries to make a legitimate living in this game." "hahah newbs lrn 2 razor"

The vendor should have ingots removed from the sell list, and anyone who within the entirety of this servers history who has recalled and then mined within 2 seconds should have their whole worth within the game strewn throughout britannia.

This isn't helpful. It's mildly amusing, but very unhelpful. You're making accusations which really can't be proven.

People want large volumes of ingots, which isn't inherently bad, and there really aren't that many player ingots on the market. I do agree that if ingots were removed from NPC's the incentive for people to mine by whatever means necessary would increase because players could start setting true supply/demand prices for their hard earned resources.

Oak sells for 20 gold per board, why? cause you can't buy it from an NPC and it in high demand.

#4 This is the question I am hoping to address

I'm trying to be a miner. A melee miner, utilizing the servers many many gargoyle pickaxes. I'm sorry if I ruffled some feathers previously. Honestly, the actions of others doesn't interfere with my operations that much, regardless of how they do it. It really is that darn npc's fault with his 8gp inventory.

I pretty much play in 30 minute bursts. In that thirty minutes, I have to get ready, and then wind down, from whatever I do. So what I do with my time is really an estimate. I'm sure someone else can beat my estimates for what I can earn doing various activities for about 30 minutes.

Provoking in a dungeon
About 12,000 gold, a few magic items (literally all I can carry)

20 Dull Copper Elementals (these are the fastest way to get a bulk amount of any ore, as they don't have a chance to summon a stonecrafting ellie)
About 1000 ingots, 40 gems, and 2,000 gold.

20 Valorite/Verite/Marble Elementals
About 250 ore (not including time sink of smelting the valorite ore), about 16 marble ingots, 80 gems, 10,000 gold, and quite a few magic items.

If I sold the dull copper at 8 or 9 gold, (what people seem to want to pay), I'd have to be fucking retarded to want to do that all day. When the mood strikes me to farm dull copper elementals, i use the ingots. When i bring home 10,000g from farming the good elementals, i run right out and buy iron ingots. Frankly, I'm a little bit tempted to just leave the valorite and verite ore in the wilderness. Why should I drag it home if its not worth the time it takes to drag. If anything it's a sad by product compared to the value of the gold, magic items, and marble I'm actually farming. I've tried selling valorite and verite. Nobody bought it at 12. And don't tell me "you should have tried selling on IRC", I'd like to support the games built in features, thank you very much. That's how I choose to play. Many people have been standing up for that lately.

In my opinion the problem is that ingots are ONLY being used for BODs. The strangest thing about your shard is the lack of metal armor being used/sold. Do something about this. Give each color of ore SOMETHING unique so each color has a value to someone's build. If you just balance them and make the various colors each more powerful than the last...well you'll give value to valorite...that's something I guess. People claim that the ingot economy is strong, or healthy, or in demand. But its not. When demand refuses to raise what it's willing to pay, that's not a balanced economy.

Thank you for reading.

The reason we are up in arms is because our play style is threatened. I enjoy recall mining coupled with the troll hunting I am now accustomed to. With these new caves, the ability to recall mine is fading very fast. Therefore threatening my and many other's play style.

1) The appropriate difficulty level is already in place. If the chances or the ability to pull more/exchange BODs was introduced... There is a greater chance that existing bods will diminish faster in value.
2) I absolutely support permanent bans on repeat offenders. 10 seems excessive to me honestly... I would vote for 5 or less. IF there was more leniency about removing incorrect answer flags (we've all answered that stupid gump wrong before don't lie) DON'T AFK GATHER!
3) If macro mining was permitted with less risk and continued as it was previously installed the ingot supplies would be on the up and up. With recall miners feeling comfortable, most would be willing to part with Iron ingots. To get a reasonable amount of bods done, most require large amounts of dull copper and shadow. <-- Thats why you don't see those for sale.
4) Profits will go up if the demand is there. To generate demand you would have to spark interests in BODs. You would think prices would go up with supply being so low but smith bods just require such a large amount of ingots to fill there is not incentive to sell them away with them being so difficult to obtain.
As far as adhering to the rules of the shard, I do all of my gathering attended and, all of my "automation" is done with Razor just like the rules say we can do. Please don't anyone go throwing accusations around.

People wearing metal armor more often would not put a dent in the amount of ingots consumed on the shard. With the number of colored ingots I've gone through, I could have made 20 platemail armor suits for every active player on the server.

If there's no one on the entire shard who will pay your asking price, that's not a reflection of the economy but rather on your asking price. I would love to see Kelloggs raise the price of their cereals to $20 and then complain that the economy is in shambles when people stop buying them.

Stop acting like there's much room for an increase in ingot prices. Even with the fix for failure ingot usage, making a GM Smith will consume 45k ingots.
This makes it the most expensive skill to GM already ... each gp the ingot rate raises, adds 45k to the cost of GMing this skill.

The only reason why colored ingots sell _at all_ is the fact that people use them to fill high level bods and flip low level BODs. Low level colors are only used for flipping because they sell for a very small markup compared to iron ingots. Higher prices here would simply result in people dumping the copper bods.

Colored ingots are barely used for crafting since colored weapons can only be crafted with runics and metal armor is very very unpopular here due to the very powerful leather armor. So instead of dreaming of a world were those mean NPCs and Recall Miners are gone and ingots finally sell for a rewarding 20gp each, get a first hand impression from the market, make a GM smith and a GM miner and tell me how your perspective has changed.

It's also nonsense that new players here are are affected by recall miners. When I started here, long before I GMed Razor Lore, I was mining in various caves. Never had issues finding spots to mine even though recall mining didn't even have the trolls then. There's already non-recall caves and the Occlo mines with some sewer rats that will make mining for anyone not [Young] pretty bothersome.

The one and only reason I stopped mining is because it's such a drag and the reward for manual mining is a joke compared to ANY other activity. It's probably more rewarding to run around and scavenge regs ! I hope no one here is seriously claiming that manual miners can seriously supply this server with enough ingots even without the BODs.

My goal was to mine the ingots for my own GM Smith and I couldn't get more than 15k ingots before I couldn't take it any more.

Maybe there are some hardcore manual miners here ?

Anyway, something needs to be done very soon. There's no way the market will recover the way it's been crippled now. My preference would be taking a step back and reconsidering some of the changes done, trying to see how some of the less radical changes affect the market. But if the solution is to change more mechanics and add more custom stuff and create more confusion, I'm sure more people will feel affected. Stuff like this should have been changed during the beta, not before the 2nd anniversary.

I am confused. the one hand you say:

and then you say:

Why is mining so unrewarding? Would the ability to accumulate higher volumes of ingots solve this? So if tweaking the price of ingots isn't the way to go, then increasing the ability to obtain larger volumes of ingots would be? If ingot prices were reduced to 2 gold per, and you could more easily obtain 30,000 ingots would that be the direction you would suggest?

I can't believe I'm bothering to respond, but here we go.

Wodan you brought up the exact same LIES last time I spoke on this thread. NOBODY is suggesting ingots sell for 20gp each. And nobody is suggesting anyone train a GM smith with colored ingots. You know some jackass that trains GM smiths with colored ingots? Please send them my way. The price for iron ingots is never going to go up. All I'm suggesting is make the colored ingots have a use other than bod flipping.

If you had read my post, you would have noticed where I said that recall miners don't affect me. I am not dreaming of any world other than one where colored ingots have a use. And I am working on a GM smith. Please stop telling me to shut up just because im new here.

Dalavar, if metal armor was viable, I wouldn't have to sell the ingots for an inflated price, I could sell the ARMOR at a FAIR price.

I feel like you guys won't listen to me because I'm not "one of you". Never have I said ingots should sell for 20gp each. That's a concept you all attached to me.

I'm hearing you loud and clear Fisher and you've spoken some points that I've made earlier on as well.

I'm right on board with the dismay that colored ore is primarily for BoDs, of which there are far too many on the shard for this size player base.

Please CuB the BoDs!

Thanks, I got a number of my ideas from you. (ive spent the past few weeks scouring y'alls forum, attempting to play catch-up...it's like I'm stalking an entire town)

Why is it that you get to determine what is "fair", but the hundreds of other players on this shard don't?

You chose to mine, and you ended up with ingots that aren't worth as much as you'd like. That's no one's fault but yours. It doesn't mean you're being lowballed, it doesn't mean the economy is broken, it means you chose to spend some time doing an activity that wasn't the single most efficient and profit-maximizing endeavor you could. Usually, that's an admirable thing... we all spend time doing things we enjoy, that bring us value beyond gold pieces and platinum. Typically people who do such things are very happy with their results. You seem to just be bitter and angry though, that people aren't tripping over each other to pay you the price you want to sell your ingots for.

Nope Dalavar, none of that is true. I'm just making observations, and backing those up with personal experience.

I don't care what you're willing to pay for ingots, because I'm just not going to hassle with them anymore. If you were smart you would be super interested in getting as many people as possible out there mining...but that's fine, keep your lousy market to yourself.

edited out of self-shame

.

Small update:

I found a way to vastly improve the profits per time of my ore elemental killing toon. I now leave the colored ore on the corpses.

if that doesn't really upset a whole bunch of you...then I don't know what will.

No one was telling you to shut up but I'm having a hard time seeing where you can contribute to this discussion much. You have zero understanding for the mechanics that lead to this discussion yet you have a very aggressive attitude towards people who are affected.

I don't blame you, you're new and that's cool but is it necessary to show such an aggressive attitude ?

Well increasing the yield from smelting ore might be able to work towards a better balance here. Lowering the ingot prices could work, but not as an isolated change. I am very willing to contribute to a review of the Mining/Ingot/BOD system and I already made plenty of proposals. Yeah I guess lowering the ingot prices/values and drastically increasing the mining/smelting yield would also work ... but I'm getting tired of this discussion. We're all just talking to the hand for three pages now

Thanks for liking my mining guide, Wodan.

I felt this way from the moment I started seeing this thread

I appreciate you all helping me understand why this was as important to you all as it is. Like I said from the start, before this post and frankly before the patch, I personally wasn't even aware this was anywhere remotely an issue of import. I've always been off in my own happy land making up quests and leading adventures.

I think some of the ideas, should be at least considered. I think there are a lot of intelligent people contributing to this. I think there just needs to be some give and take, and the suggestions I think really have to be given with the good of the shard at mind and not 'my personal' play style. I also want you all to know that I'll be the first to take my own medicine. If there needed to be a nerf, to any quest like features, I would support it. I give you the prime example of bidding farewell to the Chessboard in Nujelm. For a long time I have missed this, but if the chessboard has proven to generate some kind of negative impact to the shard I have bid farewell to it, with hopes that it can come back in the future even better.

Lets go at this trying to convince Telamon to hear out our suggestions. I think that Tela would be willing to hear out ideas so long as we let him know we aren't going to flame out in a burst of heightened interweb fueled hate-rage if he doesn't implement the ideas.

I think once this thread has run it's course we should pick out the best of the actual ideas presented (there have been many suggestions given so far) and discuss those ideas specifically.



Ideas so far, that I can remember off hand while typing this:
-changing ore deposits to yield one type of ore
-tweaking NPC ore prices so that true supply/demand exists (i guarantee this will motivate miners of all sorts to deal with whatever pains there are if they can sell their ingots for valid prices).
-Some kind of obscure change to BoD system that I don't even comprehend (because BoD's are way over my head)
-Player supported consolation for Corruption's ingot vein library (ok this wasn't previously suggested, but I would be willing to help ammend this because I personally understand this pain. If all of the current NPC camp spawn locations were to suddenly change, I would be sad in my pants because of my NPC camp library)