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Leadership (and other professions) in the new economic framework
theycallmetomu
Member, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 1,861 Arc User
For the purposes of this discussion, let's all agree/pretend that no AD in leadership is a positive change/the change we're going for/whatever. I'm not asking to have a discussion about that in this thread, we have plenty of threads for that sort of thing.
The question then becomes, how do we balance the leadership tasks (and other tasks) against one another, relative to this change.
For instant l23 is a 4 hour task that rewards XP and an Enchanted Coffer. L25 rewards the exact same amount now, but takes 24 hours. Either L25 should award 4 to 6 enchanted coffers, or its time should be reduced in order to make it more in line with the 4 hour task.
The other question is, should the reward rates for chests/coffers/bags be kept the same? It's a tremendous investment to get a Very Large Chest of Goods (you need 5 professions to farm for the refuges, and then you need to wait for it to appear in the roster, etc), so perhaps it would be worthwhile improving the drops given from them. Large Chest of Goods could potentially give slightly better drops, but since a number of players (self included) have stacks of them from back in the days when Leadership granted AD, I can certainly understand why the dev team might be hesitant to implement changes.
Other alternatives include adding Marks of Potency and GMOPs (with a low drop rate) to enchanted coffers, or alternatively as alternate rewards for the rare tasks that require components; the wands of detection are basically useless now, for instance.
Additional possibilities involve adding tasks that create bound to character GMOPs, but have a long duration. A level 25 task, that requires high level leadership profession resources, that takes two weeks, would allow players the ability to still boost their characters even if they don't have a lot of time to play, but at a substantially reduced rate. Again, if we want to continue to discourage the alt army approach to character income, it's possible to make such items bound to character, so that we don't have to worry about perverse incentives.
Further room for improvement involves making professions other than leadership worthwhile, without simply reinstating the economic model of "mo' characters, mo' money." One idea I've floated around before is the idea of profession "contracts." By running leadership tasks, you can collect contracts, which are essentially quest coupons. Opening a contract (which requires being logged in) provides a quest, using the quest interface. You would then use the assortment of professions in order to craft resources made to fulfill these contracts. Upon completing these contracts, players could be rewarded with vouchers for Strongholds, bound to character GMOPs, RP stones, or whatever resources the dev team feels appropriate. The goal is not to give players spending money, thus affecting the auction house prices, but rather to give players the ability to use their time investment in their respective characters to boost the effectiveness of said characters.
Such a change would also better facilitate alts for alts sake, rather than alts for main's sake (as was the leadership AD module). While obtaining astral diamonds-to be spent on the AH or used to purchase zen off the ZAX-requires "Active" play time, players would still be able to benefit from "passive" play time on their alts, ensuring that characters don't languish into complete uselessness. Such a change has a secondary side effect of allowing players to contribute to strongholds more easily; as thus, it is likely best implemented closer to mod 8's release, allowing small guilds to catch up to larger guilds in terms of SH development. I understand that a goal is to ensure that guilds have an active goal at all times, and as thus making it too easy for guilds to reach maximum stronghold isn't ideal, but once there are a number of guilds that have reached maximum stronghold, it would be ideal for smaller guilds to have a means of catching up.
But we're getting off track. Ultimately, there's still a lot that needs to be done to make the professions system worthwhile. The crafting of Gemmed Exquisite items remains a valid source of income to an extent, but only to those people who have the purple tools necessary (and, to that end, the more people that have them, the less income those that have them can extract!) However, once a player has their best shirt and pants, and has their best rings, along with artifact equipment, most professions become completely useless. Leadership still has a value in that it produces material goods-that is, things that can be sold on the AH (albeit at trivial rates, outside of resonance stones)-as well as XP which is nice for leveling, but outside of that, there's not much to be gained by the professions system.
But there's no reason this needs to be the existing framework. The core system is actually pretty decent. Players are theoretically rewarded for various kinds of investment, tradeoffs/opportunity costs are easily measurable, and even asset/resource prices can be measured based on AH activity. The professions system has all the preconditions towards being part of a viable economy. All that is needed is outcomes that make investing and maintaining that system worthwhile.
Now, someone forward this to Panderus or Strumslinger or one of the other devs, because otherwise I'm just talking to the player base.
The question then becomes, how do we balance the leadership tasks (and other tasks) against one another, relative to this change.
For instant l23 is a 4 hour task that rewards XP and an Enchanted Coffer. L25 rewards the exact same amount now, but takes 24 hours. Either L25 should award 4 to 6 enchanted coffers, or its time should be reduced in order to make it more in line with the 4 hour task.
The other question is, should the reward rates for chests/coffers/bags be kept the same? It's a tremendous investment to get a Very Large Chest of Goods (you need 5 professions to farm for the refuges, and then you need to wait for it to appear in the roster, etc), so perhaps it would be worthwhile improving the drops given from them. Large Chest of Goods could potentially give slightly better drops, but since a number of players (self included) have stacks of them from back in the days when Leadership granted AD, I can certainly understand why the dev team might be hesitant to implement changes.
Other alternatives include adding Marks of Potency and GMOPs (with a low drop rate) to enchanted coffers, or alternatively as alternate rewards for the rare tasks that require components; the wands of detection are basically useless now, for instance.
Additional possibilities involve adding tasks that create bound to character GMOPs, but have a long duration. A level 25 task, that requires high level leadership profession resources, that takes two weeks, would allow players the ability to still boost their characters even if they don't have a lot of time to play, but at a substantially reduced rate. Again, if we want to continue to discourage the alt army approach to character income, it's possible to make such items bound to character, so that we don't have to worry about perverse incentives.
Further room for improvement involves making professions other than leadership worthwhile, without simply reinstating the economic model of "mo' characters, mo' money." One idea I've floated around before is the idea of profession "contracts." By running leadership tasks, you can collect contracts, which are essentially quest coupons. Opening a contract (which requires being logged in) provides a quest, using the quest interface. You would then use the assortment of professions in order to craft resources made to fulfill these contracts. Upon completing these contracts, players could be rewarded with vouchers for Strongholds, bound to character GMOPs, RP stones, or whatever resources the dev team feels appropriate. The goal is not to give players spending money, thus affecting the auction house prices, but rather to give players the ability to use their time investment in their respective characters to boost the effectiveness of said characters.
Such a change would also better facilitate alts for alts sake, rather than alts for main's sake (as was the leadership AD module). While obtaining astral diamonds-to be spent on the AH or used to purchase zen off the ZAX-requires "Active" play time, players would still be able to benefit from "passive" play time on their alts, ensuring that characters don't languish into complete uselessness. Such a change has a secondary side effect of allowing players to contribute to strongholds more easily; as thus, it is likely best implemented closer to mod 8's release, allowing small guilds to catch up to larger guilds in terms of SH development. I understand that a goal is to ensure that guilds have an active goal at all times, and as thus making it too easy for guilds to reach maximum stronghold isn't ideal, but once there are a number of guilds that have reached maximum stronghold, it would be ideal for smaller guilds to have a means of catching up.
But we're getting off track. Ultimately, there's still a lot that needs to be done to make the professions system worthwhile. The crafting of Gemmed Exquisite items remains a valid source of income to an extent, but only to those people who have the purple tools necessary (and, to that end, the more people that have them, the less income those that have them can extract!) However, once a player has their best shirt and pants, and has their best rings, along with artifact equipment, most professions become completely useless. Leadership still has a value in that it produces material goods-that is, things that can be sold on the AH (albeit at trivial rates, outside of resonance stones)-as well as XP which is nice for leveling, but outside of that, there's not much to be gained by the professions system.
But there's no reason this needs to be the existing framework. The core system is actually pretty decent. Players are theoretically rewarded for various kinds of investment, tradeoffs/opportunity costs are easily measurable, and even asset/resource prices can be measured based on AH activity. The professions system has all the preconditions towards being part of a viable economy. All that is needed is outcomes that make investing and maintaining that system worthwhile.
Now, someone forward this to Panderus or Strumslinger or one of the other devs, because otherwise I'm just talking to the player base.
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Comments
Let me see if I can explain with an example:
Equip & Train Stronghold Infantry
Duration of Task: 1 Week
Requirements:
Hero (The only requirement that is not consumed/changed in the process)
10 - Mercenaries
10 - Suits Leather Armor
10 - Shields
10 - Short Swords
10 - Leather Guantlets
10 - Leather Greaves
10 - Cloth Pants
10 - Cloth Shirts
10 - Leather Boots
20 - Minor Healing Potions
20 - Minor Endurance Potions
10 - Defender's Belts
10 - Defender's Rings
10 - Defender's Necklaces
Results:
10 - Stronghold Privates
7000 AD
or
Equip & Train Stronghold Corporals
Duration of Task: 1 Week
Requirements:
Hero (The only requirement that is not consumed/changed in the process)
10 - Stronghold Privates
10 - Suits Chain Armor
10 - Longswords
10 - Chain Guantlets
10 - Chain Greaves
10 - Detailed Cloth Pants
10 - Detailed Cloth Shirts
10 - Chain Boots
20 - Healing Potions
20 - Endurance Potions
10 - Warrior's Belts
10 - Warrior's Rings
10 - Warrior's Necklaces
Results:
10 - Stronghold Privates
14000 AD
or
Equip & Train Stronghold Sergeants
Duration of Task: 1 Week
Requirements:
Hero (The only requirement that is not consumed/changed in the process)
10 - Stronghold Corporals
10 - Suits Plate Armor
10 - Greatswords
10 - Plate Guantlets
10 - Plate Greaves
10 - Detailed Cloth Pants
10 - Detailed Cloth Shirts
10 - Plate Boots
20 - Major Healing Potions
20 - Major Endurance Potions
10 - Knight's Belts
10 - Knight's Rings
10 - Knight's Necklaces
Results:
10 - Stronghold Privates
21000 AD
I know this seems like a lot, but it would require large amounts of Raw materials to be consumed, lots of time, and planning... The Latter is something Bots would be restricted.
As for the "Army of Leadership" problem so many complain about. Easy, limit an account to 10 characters with the ability to Craft.
If each of my 10 alts could conceivably use crafting to make a total of 42,000 AD in three weeks this way, I could see it...
You could also have similar three path trees for Stronghold Archers, Stronghold Clerics, Stronghold Wizards. Perhaps a separate similar designed tree for Stronghold Craftsmen, Stronghold Siege Engineers, etc...
The key is, to make all of these required for the Strongholds, and to way to substitute them for the more tedious to acquire items for the Guild Coffers (Hems, Equipment, AD)
AKA Cyber Troll and Euben Hadd
In any event, not accepting said premise means you have no real contribution to the thread in question, so, I mean, I understand your disdain, but there are other threads for that. This is the "let's make the best of a bad situation" thread.
This is not the first time I have provided ideas on how to make the Crafting system better, more interactive between the crafts, and more useful. So I am curious as to what metrics and processes you would use to award the GMOPs and others...
AKA Cyber Troll and Euben Hadd
It looks like someone was told to remove AD from LS, without even looking at the tasks...
And i will be really surprised, if we will see any substantial change to Leadership by the end of this month or even year.
What we need, would be a way to make AD with LS rewards, but we're not going to get that, because that would just ridicule the recent removal of AD from LS.
Getting RP instead of AD is not going to cut it either, RP is going to be worth close to nothing soon too, even with another 2xRP event coming next month...
I would rather like to see Stronghold vouchers replacing AD from Leadership, those vouchers are at least worth something, and considering how much resources are needed to build and upgrade a Stronghold, there is going to be a constant demand for it.
Or they can throw in those loyal something items for companions into the +12hrs Leadership tasks...
Anyway, unless the Devs come up with a real upgrade to LS, this profession is dead in the water.
AKA Cyber Troll and Euben Hadd
They were a good bunch of folks who made and introduced us with the initial content and I dare anyone to call it HAMSTER! You think that was HAMSTER? well think again and press "K" to find what we have now.
Back to the topic. Changes are needed but I really doubt it can be done with actual dev team. All they've done is cut RAD from LS tasks, bravo! u rock guys!
A proud member of "mythical horde of DPS GFs"
1). Is SW more dps or tank based?
2). Yes. I am panzer!
3). Get ACT if you want to celebrate your epeen.
4). Horniness will not stand between me and what I believe - "MM"
The idea floated now about vouchers (which is another one I'm in favor of) allows for multiple characters to be beneficial, but since guilds have a maximum player limit, it'd be using up a finite resource, so you don't get the sort of "abuse" (I use the word loosely, as I don't think anyone was doing anything "wrong") that you saw with the old leadership armies.