OK, so my last thread actually got a lot of stuff implemented into the game such as boss power pips, supply vs demand in the bazaar, and I'm sure a thing or two else, which I cannot think of off the top of my head.
So lets talk about making a Wizard 101 economy.
As it stands we have desire for only a few items right now: -some rare quest regeants for the crafting quests -New wand/sword type items -Occaisional treasure cards for extra mmph or ds crafting quests -An item here or there that is moderate upgrade while leveling
So the bazaar supplies the items above How do players get the money to buy them? Not from selling items on the bazaar. Unless you are selling an extremely rare item, the chances of the bazaar paying you more than any other merchant in the game are not very good. You might expect a rare level 40+ wand/sword to sell for more than 1000 gold, but typically you can expect the bazaar guy to buy your items for less than any other merchant. At first, sure, most people will probably just sell things there because its convenient. After they realise that it cuts their earnings by a significant amount, I'm sure most people will just avoid selling most everything there.
So why are there 100 robes of blah? Monsters are really putting out so much mediocere equipment that for every level requirement gap, there are just way too many of them. I think, honestly, the percieved value of these items would be higher if they were harder to get. In other games they have no trade no auction type items that only drop from bosses to increase people wanting to do the encounters, but they also have some really rare and increasingly valuable items drop from both normal monsters and bosses. Now, a lot of these items were tradeable and desireable; giving the people that are really nuts about acquiring super items some goals.
Most level 45+ wizards I'm sure would agree that some health, accuracy, and damage increase to their class on a piece of armor is fine and all, but it really does not make you feel special, because every previous armor piece that you spent time to acquire had the same thing, just a tiny bit less of it. Plus with 100 of the same item in the bazaar just sitting there rotting, how special do you feel wearing it? People are not buying these things because they are way too abundant, and they just really aren't very special. Even the best non-crown stuff is all vanilla and boring. In my opinion, if the bazaar merchant does not receive any buyers for x item within an hour, he should reduce the quantity on hand by one. That or just make monsters drop way less of them.
In some games I have played people wore things mostly because they were just rare and hard to get. Most of these items were either very statistically awesome, or they were different in appearance, and people just liked to show that they spent the time to get the items. In other games people had access to super good tradeable statistically awesome items that were just rare and hence traded for a lot of gold. But in a lot of these games, people could trade items or gold with eachother and inevitably the economy had a lot of problems from corruption and ripoff schemes. I certainly would not reccommend letting players trade with eachother in an unmoderated way. I think the bazaar is good in avoiding these things.
Some changes I would make to itemization that would increase my enjoyment of the game and possibly give me an extra activity with my daughter helping to acquire cool stuff would be things like:
-Unique cool looking pets for high level players that actually have stats and possibly a treasure card to rival some of the level 48 quest ones. (How cool would it be to get a 5 power pip fire triton or something?) -Alternative statistics to itemization. Go nuts here. Make some good resist armor with health, or some super high damage armor with negative health, or Just a blank stat robe, but that has 4 treasure cards for a really good spell. I can sense the reluctance from king's isle to put any sort of end all-be all tradeable armor in the game, but you don't have to think of it just from a monster drop stand point. Now we have crafting so why not make a hybrid crafting/drop item? Which leads to the next point. -Epic crafting items that are patterns that are not tradeable or auctionable that can drop from end world bosses. How cool would it be to get a super awesome pattern from the Jade Oni that also required some other drop of his to fashion, and a lot of monster drops and rare gathering items? But make people feel special when they craft this cool thing because it gives better stats than the origional item, but also has like little floating jade onis coming off of the shoulders or something. You know, similar to the little cool graphics that come off of the mooshu and dragonspyre swords. It would give people both something to do, and something to be proud of.
The crafting system has so much potential, but the recipes we have been presented with are pretty much junk. Whoop de do I can make a mirror image of my current item with 4% life damage instead of 12% death resist if I spend two weeks and all my gold getting the regeants. *twirls finger in air* That was really not very good itemization, and definately not worth the effort in any way, shape, or fashion.
So we all get our money from selling items that monsters drop, but the items are not very cool. Nothing that says, "Wow did you see that guy with the black swords floating off his hat?" or, "Woah dude he got super rare item x, sweet!"
I'm just saying the economy and the players could both benefit with a little overhaul. But to be realistic about it, it would be very difficult to think of super cool itemization without having some sort of discussion on the effect that certain stats have on certain classes of players for player versus player arena stuff, or against monsters or bosses.
To put it in perspective you have to think about things like: Why is this storm monster with 1300 hitpoints doing an average of 130 damage a round to me, while this ice monster with 1300 hitpoints only does about 80 damage a round to me? They are the same rank and everything, so why does one do way more damage and have the same amount of health?
In this game, most everybody, even when grouped; don't have any way of actively looking for certain roles. Basically everybody just does damage. Ironically, the ice class, that you think would be the tank since it has all the resistance, does not get played like one. I don't think I have ever seen anyone go out of their way to start an Ice mage because there is absolutely no need for it. They have no advantages. The shield steal spell sounds cool, but it just takes the last applied shield. Not very useful unless you are fighting a fire monster that applies ice shield a lot (and they do)
Why not both create uses for life wizards and ice mages by making encounters balanced toward having them? As it is, you wouldn't even know if you were supposed to have an ice mage because monsters hit everyone just about the same. Ice mages don't resist very much, so encounters aren't tuned around having them, which means no one cares if they are present so noone makes them. One of the best tanking classes in any game were the warriors in everquest. A lot of people wanted to be them because they took about half of the damage that everyone else did, while having tons of health and doing decent damage themselves. This was a very successful decision on part of the developers because they still required some heavy hitters to get the job done, and they needed a healer. They did fail pretty hard on creating healers though.
There are a few life wizards, but no one really feels special playing them because they really aren't needed. Would you rather kill a monster a few rounds faster and avoid getting hurt for 300 more damage? or heal for 200 more? Its kind of useless; and there really is not a big need for a special healing class.
If you guys are going to ever go beyond the Malistare and level 50 point to keep your players playing your game, you are going to have to give bigger advantages to playing certain classes and bigger disadvantages to playing others. To show you some math say a player is fighting monster X as a storm wizard: Over the rounds the wizard does about 300 damage per round when taken into account his blades and traps and that every monster takes the same amount of damage when not shielded. The monster does about 80 damage a round to the wizard only getting lucky occaisionally when the wizard does not have an appropriate shield card.
Given these kinds of numbers, why on earth would anyone want to play an Ice wizard and do half the damage, making a 5 minute fight last 10 minutes, while taking roughly only 5% less damage, just because he has 1000 more overall health? It does not figure out mathematically. Tune them out guys, specialize them. Make people enjoy their characters, and not just feel like all they do is damage. Make fire wizards give people fire shields where any monster that casts spells on them also gets hurt for half the damage, or make storm wizards fling people into the air for a few rounds to control extra monsters. Make people have roles.
Again I do not mean to hurt anyone at King Isle's feelings for past decisions they have made about balancing the game or any other decisions that they may feel hurt to read about me contradicting. I really love this game, and so does my daughter, and I just think it would be a shame to stop playing it after only a few months of starting just because there is no reason to start new characters again or find new items or crafting patterns etc. We really do love this game and I love playing it with her.
