[PSA] Important - Possible Changes And Updates Coming to PWI

kalystconquerer#0876
kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
Hello PWI players!

I apologize for my absence from the forums (aka, not posting and responding to threads every single day the past few weeks or so!)

But I wouldn't be absent if it wasn't for a good reason. Over the past few months, I have begun monthly meetings with CN to talk directly to the developers about how we can improve the International version, as well as share what works and what doesn't. You might have heard this being touched upon on and off, but I haven't shared any concrete details about these discussions as of yet.

Since I feel like the talks are progressing to a good point, here are some things I'd like to share with you guys that are being discussed behind the scenes. Please note that alot of these things are not set in stone and have no ETA. However, I would like to share with you guys the progress I have been making and give you guys some insight into the devs thoughts a bit!



Overall Thoughts of Creating Content for PWI
Devs are actually happy to create unique content for this version. This includes things like cosmetics or new events specific to International holidays. Other things I thought they wouldn't be fielding ideas for, like Homestead, they also appear to be open to (more information below). I have not currently seen what the limit is on changes and requests that involve version specific things like NPC's, Exchanges etc. but a hard stop is anything that is in the base CN version of the game. That being said, I can suggest certain features that might have an impact on the base game that they might implement in a different way in the future.


AH Coin Cap - The devs have said this can be adjusted. They ask for what the number should be increased to and any important information they should know beforehand. Since this will impact the economy, this will need to be done carefully.

Transmutation (PWI specific exchanges) - Can be done, but they would like to have data on the amount of items that exist in the game for whatever is being suggested to be transmutted. Some of the items I have already pulled information on (DQ) and some items will need to make sure are noted (Fairy Boxes), so this would be a good chance to get in items that aren't in the CN Transmutation NPC that we have use for.

Homestead Updates - They would like to know what ideas we have in mind to improve Homestead. This is a great opportunity to suggest possible features and updates to this system. While we still have to keep some of the CN limitations in mind, just having a dialogue about it could open up creation of new and more useful features to get the most out of the Homestead feature!

Custom decorations can be made, but will not be present in the codex.

Bank/Cupboard Expansion - Can be done, but they need details of how much to be expanded to since bank space is involved in a lot of different areas (their words "procedural framework") and they will just need a heads up on it.

Creation of Events - I have proposed two events - one seasonal and one that involves utilizing older materials for specific exchanges. For the former, I will have to provide them with all the assets and tweak some aspects of the event, but otherwise in it's current state it seems to be fine as proposed. For the latter, they are concerned about fairness to players who do not have as much of these older materials stocked up and would like more information on how much is in the system, before suggesting additional tweaks.

Character Simulator (Show PWI Specific Gears) - They will try to find a way to make this show up later, but they are aware of this.


Overall this might not look like alot, but I do meet with them monthly! Some of the things that have came into the game (Such as simultaneous Local and Cross Server NW) are a result of these discussions! There are other questions I've asked that I won't reveal here, since they pertain to things like future content, dates of future expansions or things that are more theoretical in nature.

Also, because my timeframe can be so short with requesting features, I usually have to get them in super early (typically months in advance) to make sure things will pass properly into the next expansion or content update. So some things that need an expansion to implement might take a bit longer to add into the game. I still have not found the proper timing for all these things yet, but I'm quickly learning the ropes and how to ask for these changes. So please bear with us as we continue to make improvements to the game!




What are your thoughts on these discussions? If you have suggestions for anything listed here (or anything else for improvements features wise) feel free to drop your thoughts below! Or if you've already made a post in the Suggestion Box for any of these topics, you can link it here too.
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Comments

  • niniahne
    niniahne Posts: 6 Arc User
    Anything that gives us a voice with the devs regarding our version of the game is awesome. Thank you for making this happen.
  • genjutsu
    genjutsu Posts: 11 Arc User
    the problem with the AH is that there are too many sources for coin and not enough gold supply... wai dont u get rid of that jolly jones quest already? that thing gives you a free 100k just for clicking an npc... people bot that npc for like billions of coins a day probably... also you can increase gold supply easily with charge rewards or charge bonuses....
    if you really wanted to you could increase gold price of everything while also increasing the amount of gold you get from charging.... that would devalue gold enough so that the AH would be fine...​​
    <a href="javascript:alert('really?')">Testing</a> - <a href="http://www.arcgames.com/en/forums#/profile">Links work or not?</a>

    <img src="http://i.imgur.com/vtubTRw.png>
  • ravenyoss123
    ravenyoss123 Posts: 29 Arc User
    I would just like to see more ways for the PvE player to get some things. Mostly referring to NW tokens. The times are so limited that some ppl simiply cant go. Its 4am for some ppl i know. I dont mind it being a hard way to get the tokens. Most PVE players are farming and dont mind doing it. And i dont really know what that way would be. And a way to farm the UP mats other than UP. Like from the hs in some way. You have to have rank9 to be taken on these runs and not everyone can afford it. This game is backwards. You have to be op to do anything to get better gear but u cant be op without doing the things to get better gear.
  • matthew4
    matthew4 Posts: 373 Arc User
    I would also like to switch to another server and I think not only me
  • dingo488
    dingo488 Posts: 936 Arc User
    Personally I would love for PWI to add Build Templates.

    Basically how it works is you save your current gear set-up. (All armor pieces/Weapon/Cards/Star Chart/Blessings/Glyph set up) And then you switch everything around, for instance you put on your PvP glyphs instead of PvE glyphs and you save that too. Same goes for Blessing/Star Chart stuff, you save a third template for Defense as well as one for Offense.

    After setting all this up you can switch your build with one click of a button. Just did PvE and about to do PvP? Select your PvP build template and your glyphs automatically switch to how you saved them to be for PvP.

    PvPing and taking a lot of damage? Temporarily switch to your defensive template and you'll switch to whatever defensive gear you have selected for this template.


    Aside from just being a QoL change for PvP/PvE transition I think it would also make stuff more fair. Right now there's a number of people that have a special mouse or keyboard that has a number of inputs saved on a single button that swaps all this stuff for them, where others have to do it the slow way and are disadvantaged by it.


    Second thing is to remove Jolly Jones already :/ People have been scripting that for years making billions of coins of it. There should never be a quest in the game where you can simply log on, take the quest, receive money, log off and just start an infinite chain of alts repeating that process.
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    edited October 2017
    @niniahne It started when I decided to send of a huge list of changes to them, ironically enough. When they saw some of the things being requested, they started getting more curious with the thought process, and so it turned into a monthly meeting.

    I send them questions, which are a mix of player queries and some of my own concerns, the devs take some time to go over them and then we chat about it so they can get more context. Occasionally we'll get a question or two that gets lost in translation, but usually it gets cleared up during the meeting or in follow up meetings. After the meeting is over, meeting notes are sent of what was discussed so that everyone is on the same page.

    One question for example that got sort of lost in translation that I didn't put up was specifically asking about restrictions on farming instances. Because I had asked them about activating Hypers in FC on a previous meeting, and asked a question about that Phoenix Valley change in the past, they assumed I was still asking them about EXP type instances. So they wanted me to give them data on how many players need the EXP instances (I guess to field for needing a new instance to get EXP?). Obviously this was not what I was going for, so this is something I will need to reword/ask again.

    @sontzu Unfortunately, it's hard to rewind powercreep and as each leap is made, it's harder to walk those things back.

    The constantly creating and forward thinking that the devs are set in lends itself to making new content, but does make older content suffer (most notably in older farming instances). This might be something I ask them in the upcoming meetings about how do they acquire new users, how do they retain them and what their plans are in the future to make this process more player friendly as well as diving deeper into the thought process behind instance and new content creation. Some of these discussions won't necessarily be ones I put up that are player facing (as alot of those strategies and data are wrapped in NDAs) but the results of these discussions (new events, mechanisms, content) might be easier to talk about and much more interesting I think!

    For 2018 we are working on creating seasonal cosmetics as well as other unique types of cosmetics that will be exclusive in different areas (Cash Shop, Chance Packs, Treasure System, Events, Rewards for Instances). Orinj also would like to open up more community driven cosmetics that players would like to have, but I have no idea how I'd start making these kinds of events (and we had some hiccups with the last one that makes me really...hesitant to run any new ones) but we'll see!
  • asterelle
    asterelle Posts: 861 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    I'm not sure if we're supposed to still have the Jolly Jones NPC....
    This is PWI
    wg1RuFv.png

    The exact same spot in PWCN
    ZDIFuLR.png
    ​​
  • nunuator
    nunuator Posts: 455 Arc User
    Just gonna copy and paste some key points I made in previous discussions on this forum...

    PWI has an inflation issue with spend promo's ever since the removal of nuema portal cards... Charge promo's remain untouched and even get revamped for players to get more bang for their buck but, let's take the same amount of gold believe it was 110 for a 10* orb and give them an A pack... And let's remove 12 and 11* orbs from them altogether so we can force players to charge...

    S Chest for 1200 gold ok PWI dev or GM please log in and look at the 8k or so buy orders for gold on each and every server and try to get the gold through AH... Heads up you can't.

    The main thing we need is a coin sink to lower the prices of everything in the game keys and packs are a start but, with limited amount of gold and unlimited buy orders no one is even able to attempt them as much as they like.

    Spend promo's are always a plus and player often set up 1.2k gold buy orders to get the max reward but, with the limited gold sellers in the game and gold going for 4.5mill+ each it makes it nearly impossible for a free to play player to get the gold they want.

    Solution and what I've posted in multiple forums with multiple people liking it add a GM toon which sells gold at a set price... This would allow players to get all the gold they want and not raise the prices on items more and more.

    The GM gold can also go for 5mill a piece for all I care since if you want the gold for a spend promo there is no possible way to even achieve it unless you have been stashing gold for months on end.

    The other suggestion I made was to add a NPC sell price on Twilight Temple mats... All these free lvl 100 toons are ruining the economy on farmers with TT G15 having a 15mill sell price on most servers. (knock knock make the gear log off and magic you can now stash the "bound TT99" upgrading it to G15 makes it trade able)

    Also increase the rate on skulls or make a TT mat to UP mat exchange table (ie: gold TT mat = dull zenith skull shard or skull depending on the rarity)

    Add a solo farming instance for UP where you can farm the mats which are mainly locked off due to homestead.

    PWI is struggling with nearly every new player dailies are still a waste of time and taking a free to play players ability to get a 15 aptitude chart nerfs them even more.

    FSP was the one farm that players had and now that's taken away from them cause pwi wants more gold from us... Yep give us 3gold and you can get what you used to get in 4 days. Man this logic is just killing me.
    Honestly if you want to fix it keep the NPC's and the flowsilver token.

    Also the absurd amount of coin in game is mostly provided by third party sources, at least what I believe they are coming from... If these sources are truly shut down or just become added via a gold to coin conversion where players can get cash for their coins it would probably stop all the massive amounts of coin flow.
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    @genjutsu Bonus Zen that's title specific is one way we can do this. If we have players hording it however, we could run into the same issues if the power lies in the hands of only the few that do charge as they attempt to dictate what the going rates are. But this is definitely something I've thought about.

    JoJ shouldn't be impossible to remove, as far as I'm aware. However, I would want something to replace it that requires a bit more effort and puts farming power back into the community. This is a long term project (creating something that can be farmed, is future proofed somehow but will still be worthwhile to engage in for both F2P and paying users), so I don't really have solid details to share on this initiative.

    @ravenyoss123 The balance in content is somewhat skewed due to our custom content (gears) and exchanges in the NW forges, which then snowballed into other issues down the line. When I took a look at the CN forges I was surprised to see what their rates were for the NW tokens. I had hopped opening both Local and Cross server would help with these things, but it doesn't stop the inherent issue for gear blocking when it comes to upgrading your own gears with NW tokens. I'll revisit the NW topic with them and see what sorts of activities they would be ok with adding NW tokens to. In the meantime, events I create by hand (forum events and PK events) will be the quick and dirty way to distribute them, but a more permanent in-game solution is preferred.

    I actually wanted to see what new items they could add inside Homestead to sort of help with things like players having trouble running UP. One idea I had floating around was to grant a small little "Chance Pack" that only contained Dragonbreath materials that you could acquire from harvesting Gems or Materials. Similar to how the Storage is used to acquire Minions. And of course, if you harvested higher quality materials or had buffs from your Minions, you could get higher quality packs that could potentially yield higher quality materials.

    @matthew4 This topic is in a strange limbo at the moment because I need to ask the higher ups on their side again about the technical details of it. The last time I touched this topic it was essentially "This costs alot of time because the character must be scrubbed" and it sounded like alot of the character is interwoven inside the world itself. I can ask them again at some point, but this topic had to be put on hold because it requires alot of data delving on my end (to assess impact of the HL players who were adversely affecting being on EU times, who will be allowed to transfer, how the economy of servers will be impacted and fears of "killing" a server as people migrate etc.)

    @dingo488 You know I'm surprised they don't have this function considering they made hotbar saves and we have wardrobe saves but...we don't have a gear loadout swapping function. You might be stuck needing the gear in your bag for this to work (since I don't think the game can "read" what's in your bank) but this could be a cool feature to implement!

    And yeah, while it was "nice while it lasted" it seems more and more that players don't seem to like this kind of NPC here. If this gets pointed out to the devs, they may remove it (since I'm not even sure they're aware of it? There has been a change in devs and the devs that were around for JoJ are not the same devs now as far as I know)
  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    @asterelle Yes, JoJ is something we have specifically. I doubt the technical portion (removal) is the hard part. But I want to replace this with something more engaging and more worthwhile. "Replace this" being something farmable, something that requires effort, something that can be future proofed and something that all users groups would be able to get something out of. An incredibly tall order and something that will take alot of back and forth over, if they're even willing to entertain the idea.

    @nunuator I created a War Avatar specific variant of the Ultimate Spend- Dragon Orbs 10-12 still appear inside Charge Rewards as well as different Spend promos scattered throughout the months.

    I'm already hitting some snags when it comes to the older materials and incorporating them into events (snags being mostly they want more data before they do anything). Asking for an exchange for old materials directly into the "new and powerful ones" simply because players farmed so much of the old materials and not want to play the new content, isn't a good motive for doing it.

    However you did upon something interesting - having an NPC selling tangible items or materials. Taking that idea a step further would be something like a "Black Market" NPC that only sells certain items at certain times, that can change out inventory randomly and have his location be moved every expansion/content update. I've toyed with proposing this idea, but it's on a backlog of "things to suggest to CN sometime soon(TM)".

    Solo instances of UP or FSP could be an interesting proposal/pitch, but the benefits of farming solo versus squad will already be set lower, so I'm not sure how much benefit this would be to players. There would need to be balancing to be taken into account as well (HA/LA/AA). And who knows, perhaps the devs will insist on these instances being more geared towards group play rather than solo play but can't hurt to ask them about it.

    I'll always flag CS to remove people who keep spamming the 3rd party sites and gold/coin farming, but of course they keep finding their ways back and continue to advertise. It's...annoying to say the least. When players see it, please do report it.
  • catgirldesu
    catgirldesu Posts: 993 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    Kalyst, thank you for working hard and trying to improve PWI for us! I hope the meetings will continue going into a positive direction. Here are some of my suggestions:

    Cosmetics
    1. I would like to see Christmas themed fashion weapons. We have a lot of nice Christmas outfits but not a Christmas fashion weapon set!

    2. I'd also like to see more fashion sets based on clothes inspired from around the world. We have a lot of Chinese-inspired fashion, but we don't have that many outfits based on other countries or cultures. For example, the Aegean fashion set is inspired by ancient Greek clothes. More of these please!

    3. I'd like to see more design contests with winners having their design created and added to the game. Maybe we could have a fashion design contest next?

    Homestead
    1. Custom background music and ambience in our Homestead. We could have a selection of background music (perhaps from the existing in-game background music) which we can set so anyone who enters our Homestead will listen to that particular track. But more than background music, I'd love to see custom ambience sounds. If someone wants to make a forest in their Homestead, it would be so much more immersive if they could add forest sounds!

    Content
    1.They should increase the rewards from the Lycaeum of Cultivation. Right now, we need to use a lot of Feral Soul Stars to try getting good Moods and good Inherit Stats for our pets because they are randomized. Venomancers use multiple pets. I've had some pets for years and I still don't have good Moods and Inherit Stats on some of them because gathering Feral Soul Stars takes too long.

    2. I also believe they should update the pet Mood skills. Some of those skills are pretty obsolete nowadays, while other skills have potential to be good but need to be improved a little. If you gather data from multiple Venomancers, you will see they all use the same few Mood skills for their pets, because the rest just aren't very good. We also really need more attack skills with short cool downs because most pets have to auto-attack a lot and that damage is nerfed by the anti-APS buffs bosses have.

    3. Heal Pet has an effect that reduces the AoE damage pets take but it only works in PvE. I believe they should make it work for PvP as well because pets die way too fast in mass PvP and Venomancers have two skills that depend on the pet being alive (Venomous Scarab and Natural Synergy).

    ​​
  • keihan007#7641
    keihan007#7641 Posts: 1,190 Arc User
    @asterelle Yes, JoJ is something we have specifically. I doubt the technical portion (removal) is the hard part. But I want to replace this with something more engaging and more worthwhile. "Replace this" being something farmable, something that requires effort, something that can be future proofed and something that all users groups would be able to get something out of. An incredibly tall order and something that will take alot of back and forth over, if they're even willing to entertain the idea.

    Just use Nirvana instance. Buff the stats of bosses up to par with FSP bosses to like 5x hp increase. Or make new version with those new stats for better rewards, lets call it judgement mode. But also give something for completing the "Normal" mode of nirvana for people who would have hard time finding judgement squads. This would be restricted to 4 times/day as everybody transmutated their stacks of nirvana keys already so you wouldnt really have ppl who can spam it as much as they want.

    I would really like something like Epsilon version for, I think its called Gods Valley? The thing which has alpha, beta, gamma and delta modes depending on level range and where you do delta for culti. But cut it to like 5 waves as nobody wants to sit in instance for 2h. But due power creep, make it actually challenging instance by non 1shot mechanics but as a result of not everybody having the gear, dont make it mandatory content.
    BlackList vs Frenzied 3/17

    https://youtu.be/RkkWkigYd3k
  • shimarra
    shimarra Posts: 192 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    AH Coin Cap - The devs have said this can be adjusted. They ask for what the number should be increased to and any important information they should know beforehand. Since this will impact the economy, this will need to be done carefully.

    Cut it back to 500m instead of the current 1b.

    1b coins = 1 person buying 250gold. Currently 4.8k gold trying to be bought in tideswell. Thats about 19 people if they put in max coin for gold buying. It's clogging the system allowing people to try and buy so much at once that a lot of people are timing out on buying.

    Previously was 200m coin allowed which was 49 gold. Allowed for over 97 people to put in to buy if we were at 4.8k gold buying.

    If you go with 500m thats 125 gold a person can max their buying at leaving room for other players to try and get some gold. This would reduce the strain on the system.

    I think Tideswell does about 2k gold selling over a couple days. Anyway you could dig into that data and find out.

    Or did you not mean coin cap but meant cap on price of gold?
  • ailiadrake
    ailiadrake Posts: 282 Arc User

    Solo instances of UP or FSP could be an interesting proposal/pitch, but the benefits of farming solo versus squad will already be set lower, so I'm not sure how much benefit this would be to players. There would need to be balancing to be taken into account as well (HA/LA/AA). And who knows, perhaps the devs will insist on these instances being more geared towards group play rather than solo play but can't hurt to ask them about it.

    Kalyst, tell the devs that we are not China here. In our version, UP is either nuke party composed by r9ners, or nothing at all. Sometimes you can find a g16 within their party, but it's a rare occurrence, especially if they are an arcane class.

    Things get nuttier when it's a bunch of g16 out for culti/mbh, and because of their lower gear, or inexperience, people who are actually better geared leave after a few fails because "it's not working". And don't get me started on those mobs before last boss. Even on normal mode they prove to be far harder than the bosses if you don't nuke them.

    If china want people to go to more endgame dungeons like UP and DH by nerfing normal bh and amping up mbh, then they should think about making sure that even lower geared toons could take the challenge.

    Can't say anything about normal DH for g16 toons, as I never got the chance to try it out because, well, who wants a g16 toon in those instances anyway?

    But this is only my opinion as a player that is NOT in a big faction and has to rely on random parties called through wc.

    And I agree in finding another way to earn UP mats that is not from UP or DH, because farming them with my g16 veno alt is proving to be stupidly long without buying them from other players.


    PS: Also let them know that they need to rethink the Homestead Minion Battle Arena point system. I don't mind losing half the battles, what I mind is that when I get near to 1000 points, I get into a losing streak that send me back to 700 or so. Sometimes in a lost battle I lose more points than I earn with a win. Which is utterly frustrating.
  • coinsrus
    coinsrus Posts: 131 Arc User
    genjutsu wrote: »
    the problem with the AH is that there are too many sources for coin and not enough gold supply... wai dont u get rid of that jolly jones quest already? that thing gives you a free 100k just for clicking an npc... people bot that npc for like billions of coins a day probably... also you can increase gold supply easily with charge rewards or charge bonuses....
    if you really wanted to you could increase gold price of everything while also increasing the amount of gold you get from charging.... that would devalue gold enough so that the AH would be fine...​​

    This x1000.

    Not cutting off those bots is a major blow to F2P players who cannot follow the economy and the devaluation of billions of coins added to the market.
  • raevvenn
    raevvenn Posts: 78 Arc User
    Regarding the annoying mailbox spam bot, i suggest one of the following solutions:

    - Ask for a Captcha to verify u r human before sending any message out
    - Introduce a mailbox use cooldown
    - Add a custom filter which sender to allow
    - Any
    - Faction
    - GM / System
    - Friends
    - Include a checkbox to select optional auto-delete for any message with no attachment
    - Add a custom word content filter to delete messages that contain words from player's blacklist

    Regarding Homestead ideas, i d love to see Dragonbreath Sigil exchange for a bound Zenith Skull, and a ton of Sigils for a tradeable Zenith Skull.

    Another idea for Homestead is turning each Trophy into a NPC statue you can actually talk to after it's placed in the Homestead. Each trophy would give a specific daily quest, with a tiny fun daily reward. The more Trophy NPC statues u own the more quests you can do. The higher the level of the trophy, the better reward. And players allowed to enter your homestead, can come to take a quest from your Trophy statues aswell. The quest would autocomplete once finished, or has to be turned in at an npc outside. I have seen "Messenger of the Future" NPC inside of Homesteads, so i assume that a Trophy NPC shouldn't be a problem.
  • keihan007#7641
    keihan007#7641 Posts: 1,190 Arc User
    raevvenn wrote: »
    Regarding the annoying mailbox spam bot, i suggest one of the following solutions:

    - Ask for a Captcha to verify u r human before sending any message out
    - Introduce a mailbox use cooldown
    - Add a custom filter which sender to allow
    - Any
    - Faction
    - GM / System
    - Friends
    - Include a checkbox to select optional auto-delete for any message with no attachment
    - Add a custom word content filter to delete messages that contain words from player's blacklist

    Please for the love of god Pan Gu dont do the first 2. Mailing rewards for end of season rewards, the raffle codes, etc. Is already a massive pain for the faction leaders. Specially when PWE loves to give codes, which have lifetime of 1 week or so and you "have to" start mailing codes when you get them, no matter your rl situation. I get current system is prolly best one for all parties involved, short of getting rid of codes and having staff do datapull for faction members and just sending them rewards. But I imagine its not reliable for reason or another or they would just do that.

    BlackList vs Frenzied 3/17

    https://youtu.be/RkkWkigYd3k
  • hiitsmeguys
    hiitsmeguys Posts: 126 Arc User
    Do not increase the AH cap whatever you do, gold will go from being capped at 4m to capped at 6m for example and people selling outside the AH for 8m. Raising the AH cap at this point would have no benefit and would likely cost pwi half their player base.

    The cap has never been the problem, the problem is cheap sales that result in an influx of coins pouring into the servers. Recently lucky coins were given more purpose, which is a move in the right direction. Keeping token price away from their 10k base is healthy for the economy.

    Packs that generate foils need to priced appropriately or removed altogether.

    Most importantly, Tokens of Best Luck need a major revamp. The items they're exchangeable for are out of date and result in every best luck being turned into 10m notes.

    Additional ideas. Coin sink - add war avatar catalyst to an npc purchasable for less than 800k a piece / 4m gold breakeven. This item wont be a big seller in boutique any longer due to reduced fs coins on servers and could serve as a valuable coin sink in the short term.
    Further items removed from boutique and added to npc's for coin value would only benefit the economy. Players instead of converting coins into gold, could buy the item directly, while players charging gold could convert the gold to coins and then buy the item directly. Such implementations wouldn't have an effect on PWI's bottom line, since there are already 2 avenues of achieving said item. But such changes would have a major effect on the free flow of gold on the servers.

    The next step would be compiling a list of items that could be removed from the boutique and placed in npc's. Pricing the item appropriately would be important.

    Put zenith skulls in the boutique. China has had them for almost a year now. Will be a good source of revenue for pwi heading into Christmas / bonus season. As long as it's kept in mind that 61 are required for the weapon along with tons of other mats and a reasonable price was set (30-50 gold per skull).
  • jsxshadow
    jsxshadow Posts: 1,414 Arc User
    edited October 2017
    For the sake of the economy I heavily suggest that you do remove JoJ completely with no turning back or even remotely replacing it with something that gives out coins. There are many things needed for new characters. You could replace all the coin rewards with small portions of event gold. Nothing from the event Boutique can be exploited to affec tthe economy. Sure they could get loads of free charms..but with a max number of 9 additional chars per account...it's hardly worth it to exploit but helps newbies.

    Also, please DO NOT raise the AH cap. Instead, let CN program some bot to infuse gold into the server for 3.999.900m per gold or even lower to balance the economy. It is true that by raising the cap you simply put Gold at a steady 8m in sales and that is ridiculous. I can occasionally buy loads of gold from AH..so people are still selling their stuff there. Anything above 4m per Gold on any sale is just pure greed and getting to a steady 8m per gold will discourage Free 2 Play gamers even more cause getting gold will be nearly impossible then. Manipulating the market from your side to get a steady gold supply for 4m max is the only correct way to balance the economy for anyone, cashers and F2P alike.

    Please also consider with CN that adding an NPC (Was suggested many times before) that sells a majority of the most-wanted Pack items for coins could further help balance the economy massively. I see no reason why this would be a bad thing. It doesn't even have to be "cheap" compared to the regular prices now. Let me give some examples. Scrolls of Tome go for 1.2b roughly at the moment, so why no put them into an NPC for 1.5b coins? Crown of Madness is at ~3b on the market, so why not make it 3.5b in the shop. All account bound ofc. This would drain so much coin from the server...and people wouldn't have to rely on packs to get their stuff BUT they would still charge gold to sell it for coins to buy it instantly. People are impatient..there are many which would do it just like that, myself included. You don't even have to make this a permanent thing. Bring that NPC in for a month and see how it goes and then maybe introduce it every 4-6 months. This way stored up coins get spent.

    For this last suggestion you might think at first that I am crazy..but Add General Summer Tokens and Medal of Glory to the droplist of all TT- and Lunar-Bosses. Ofc, it should be from the additional drop-table and the chance per boss (depending on difficulty) should never be higher than 0.x or even 0.0x. This would encourage people to use those instances again. Or make a new mode for both Lunar, Twilight Temple or better yet Nirvana with special bosses that are harder and might have a higher chance to drop these things. Give people something to farm..like in the good old days. Even if its a small chance and takes ages..you know how many people you can lure back if there is even a slight chance to farm their r9? Holy moly...I personally know a couple dozen.

    I am very glad that you have a direct line to CN now and that you are willing to improve this game. Thank you very much kaly!!!

    PS: Ah and remove all pack items that can be exchanged for Coins. So remove Wedding Wine (token exchange) or rather the option to exchange it for 99.999 coins. Remove the 2x Token of Best Luck Option for 1 Ten Million Big Note. Also, please remove the Foil items. No pack item should have an option to generate coins at all. Making packs about the chance to get something cheaper than you could possibly buy at an NPC, as suggested above, is good enough to motivate people to charge and buy packs. Then you could even make ultra-pack sales for even cheaper than they are now. You could also manipulate token/lucky coin prices by giving an alternate option to get the Pack-Items from an NPC not only by coin but also with tokens and LC. I hate to say this..but getting as many pricings as possible out of the hands of the very, VERY greedy playerbase is a great thing and will benefit the masses and not only the few greedy people on every server.
  • ironpwner
    ironpwner Posts: 94 Arc User
    The problem with JOJ is the hundreds of bots that are used to generate billions of coins a day. I have seen clone toons log at the JOJ spots, and they log like 10-20 toons simultaneusly. It is easy to tell the difference between toons who are being used to get a small amount of income from those who are being used to bot and abuse the JOJ quests. I can tell you that, at least on Etherblade server, lots of said toons have gibberish names and have no customization at all.

    First fix would be to ban them all. @kalystconquerer#0876 you can try to check on Etherblade server if you'd like. From reset to at least 12:30 PM PST, there are tons of those gibberish named toons constantly logging on at the JOJ spot located near Etherblade City, Inn of the Eagle. At the spot of City of the Lost, Northern Pass, you can find lots of people, some who are legitimately doing JOJ dailies for some coins, and also some who are abusing, by botting the Advanced Grinding Machine quest, which has been a related issue for a long time. At the Plume Citty spot, Battlemark Village, you can also find lots of JOJ bots and slave toons. Some of them fly to Arrowhead Mannor and King's feast, while others fly to the Savage Fields near Tellus City. Lots of those are bots simply programmed to go turn in quests or dig the items.

    Ban the toons which spam the "buy cheap coins" too please. It's easy to find them, they're at the starting zone at Celestial Vale, near the mailbox, and 99% of the time they have name which appears to be russian (hint: some of the JOJ exploiters also have names which kind of sound like russian), the bot character spamming mails lacks customization too. Just create a new toon and you'll soon be spammed by that bot toon near the mail with a 'buy cheap coins' mail.

    Now, my sugestions to JOJ dailies would be:

    A ) Reusing the JOJ NPC quests:
    1. In first place, to make it Culti dependant. To get JOJ quests the toons must be at least 'Transcendant' or 'Enlightened One'.
    2. Make it a 'high lvl toons' thing. Honestly, at low levels, you don't need that many coins, especially now since skills only cost spirit. In my opinion, JOJ quests should be available from lvl 80+, not from lvl 21 to 80.
    3. Replace the easy '2-3 clicks' and 'dig' quests with chain quests instead. Make them a little challenging too, maybe to require to team up with 2-5 people.
    4. Make the JOJ quests reward not coins but a number of a special kind of tokens, which could be traded for maybe a set amount of coins or ecstasy cards.

    B ) Add the JOJ coin rewards to all BH levels. To prevent this from being abused, make BHs culti-dependant. Add range restrictions to the BHs completion, to prevent high geared people from helping their low level army of exploiters for the BH coins.

    C ) Make the Nemesis Gauntlet event a Weekly. This event looks awesome, and it is a shame many people didn't get the chance at it, for various reasons. But what if you could make it stay as a weekly quest. Make it require Vacuity culti or higher and lvl-adaptable. The rewards could be the same items, but the items on the NPC could change. For example, you could increase the number of jades required for the dragon orb ocean and other high tier items, or remove them. But add ecstasy and excitement cards to the NPC, which required a high but farmable amount of jades to get the. It doesn't have to be the Nemesis Gauntlet event tho, it could be other event or new quests which could work in a similar way.

    I think the idea is to motivate the average high level non-harcore CSer player and F2P player too. There are people who make their efforts to stay interested and to date with the game updates, and not all of them can invest lots of money on the game. It'd be great to motivate people to make serious alts, not slave or bot alts. Currently the way JOJ quests work, motivates people to create tons of accounts and lvl up their toon slaves just to exploit JOJ dailies. JOJ (or the quest/event which would replace it) would be better as a Mid to End game players thing, not low lvls. It would be better if it helped the player base by giving them a decent amount of income to survive (buy pots, pay teleports, pay repairs), but not make them billionares. It could also motivate them to lvl up Serious alts to try the other 11 classes which aren't their mains, promoting teamwork, a better flux of new players, and maybe all of this could make them feel happier enough to invest some real money on the game.

    P.S. When the next Exp pill code is given, it would be good to monitor the starting area at the Celestial Vale, at least on Etherblade server. Not eveyone is a legit new player or Serious alt. Some are players who abuse those codes in other ways than just to have an easy JOJ alt to farm the highest JOJ quest range.
    War. War never changes. Memento mori
  • matthew4
    matthew4 Posts: 373 Arc User
    killing" a server as people migrate

    Yes maybe big problem but no all want migrate on another server people from tideswell especially Czech people would like to go to Da server because of a time zone that is bad for us

    Next comment why no A or S card dont trade over alt=same IP address or why no in game unbound item here Is bound but unbound item miss
  • kkemz
    kkemz Posts: 73 Arc User
    Actually one of the things for HS friends and I was talking about. we would like to see and be able to get fish for the ones of us that has ponds, lakes, maybe different animals as well. It would also be nice to have more options of things to do to our HS. I'm not at lvl 30 for the HS but I have a few friends that are.
  • jorock457
    jorock457 Posts: 28 Arc User
    Can starchart items be put back in as rewards for primal dailies? How are new players supposed to upgrade their charts now?
  • npc15
    npc15 Posts: 229 Arc User
    I mentioned this in the maint thread but I think there should be a bound skull shard on the UP daily quest to make getting g17 weapons a little more obtainable for the average player and not the just heavy casher/ merchanters
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  • justdax
    justdax Posts: 94 Arc User
    I'm getting really sick of the "ban JoJ" BS all the time. Yes, it is abused; yes it is botted; yes some people have 200 accounts used solely for JoJ coin and all of that is a problem. The solution, however, is not removing it completely and not changing it to require parties to complete. It is specifically designed as a way for lower lvl toons to get coin. Even though skills don't cost coin to level any longer, there are other items that do cost coin. And you will need coin to learn your higher level skills and get your higher level gear (if you're not one of those players who has time to spend most of the day, every day, farming for it), and you will most definitely need coin for repairs since drops are now virtually nonexistent. Yes, all of these things start to happen after JoJ ends, but having the coin saved up is certainly a help in getting there and doesn't force a F2P player to CS for the coin needed later. With a full set of G16 armor (not including the wep) costing upwards of 30-40 mil each piece (or more) for a total of close to 200 million coin, having JoJ available is important, even if it's only done on a spare toon on my account.

    More helpful would be to find some way to fix the problems and leave this very small source of coin (for non-botting and non-abusing players) available as it is.


    Transmutation -- Would like to see low level transmutation use some of the DQ items that drop. As it is now, they are completely useless and are simply left lying around till they disappear. Giving them a purpose - other than coin, which is still a non-starter, I believe -- could be helpful.

    Would also like some way to filter transmutation result possibilities (low level at least since I won't spend the far too much coin for high level) -- all pots (of various levels, buffs, and nuema pills, for example. Not sure what might go with nuemas to add some degree of random results, but i'd really rather not end of with a bag full of nuema pills when I'm already maxed and need pots, for example. Also, please make the pots stack with wep procs or at least not get overidden -- my clerics R9 wep has a speed proc, for example, that completely overwrites the speed buff pill from transmutation. While I don't necessarily need additive speed, not overwriting the pill's buff would be nice. Same with holypath and some other things, I expect.

    Homestead -- It's a coin sink. That's all. Keep it that way if you need to get coin out of the game. The skills are nice and are worth getting, but many people I know don't have the time to use it to farm what few mats you an get from it. Would be nice to be able to reflect in your homestead - perhaps in a reflection building - rather than only in the realm of reflection. I believe others have mentioned this before. If you really want to make it interesting, add the ability for other players to raid your homestead -- similarly to the base raids that used to be available in Hero of Three Kingdoms before PWE killed that one. This could be a use for the minions you set out - they can guard your stuff. Probably way too complex, but it might make the homesteads more appealing for some players and could provide incentive to develop them further. Not sure; just an idea.


    My ideal change to the game -- restructure it so it uses realms like some of the newer PWE games. This would enable PvP and PvE realms and give PK'rs some place to hang out where everyone there is in PK mode. It would also make it easier to avoid the Archosaur cat shop mess through the use of a trade realm. I realize this is probably much more involved than anything being discussed and is probably a complete overhaul of the game engine, but it might solve some of the other issues players have with the all PvE servers; and events could run at different times on different realms (see FW events, if I remember correctly), at the very least.

    Bot system -- Get us the FW bot system!!! It is far more sophisticated and useful than what we have. At the very least, we need the ability to select mobs to attack (quest mobs) or avoid (bosses). And it would be really nice to be able to tell it not to pick all the junk you don't want -- I want arrows and shot on my archer and maybe pots on some toons, and crafting mats when I'm working on that, but not all the gear and other **** that occasionally drops, doesn't stack, and fills all your bag slots for no NPC value.

    Coins -- Auto pickup PLEASE!!!!! Again, a feature of FW that would be useful to see here. My guess is people don't pick coin because it takes time they don't want to spend and, if your ranged, you have to run get it. How hard is it to auto-collect and throw in the bag? (Probably harder than I think it should be, but I'm not a techy, so please don't shoot me.)

    For what it's worth......

    And a HUGE thank you to you, kalyst, for all you're doing and working on the make this game better. I don't think you get nearly the recognition for this that you deserve. Really appreciate all that you do for us!!

  • kalystconquerer#0876
    kalystconquerer#0876 Posts: 1,421 Perfect World Employee
    @saxroll We can "bind" codes to accounts, but this takes a datapull to do and a bit of engineering magic. To my knowledge this has never failed, but that bandwidth has to be shared across all games and all types of promotions and campaigns happening. So it's not ideal to ask them to do this every 4~6 months.

    Internally, we can check for who's a part of a faction at any given time, but I'm not sure how frequently this updates when we have people coming and going and leadership changes. So attempting to send these codes to a factions roster via a data pull or checking our internal tracking can have issues, if shifts happen inside a faction.

    I mentioned it a bit earlier but they have some confusion surrounding doing things with old content and old instances. I proposed an event that utilizes old materials, but they want more information and insight behind the request first before doing anything.

    @raevvenn We did have a capcha before for botting (I'm not sure how many people remember this) that required you to type in a number or something while you were logged on. It was a pop up box with Chinese characters, and if you didn't get it right or if you didn't do it right away, I believe if disconnected you, but it's been a long time since I've seen it.

    Custom word filter would be an interesting option.

    NPC's inside Homestead in a trophy form would be super interesting! Obviously, since the functionality of the Messenger is based around a Cash Shop functionality, that might end up being mostly Cash Shop or promo based items, since we'd not only be asking them to make the custom Homestead item, but we want actual functionality built into it with timed quests. But having seasonally activated dailies could be cool, as well as social interactions by visiting other players - lots of potential here!

    @ailiadrake Looking at the difference between Lunar Solo and Squad for example, there are some materials in squad mode that you can't get in solo mode. If we make the Solo mode the same or better rewards, then players will leave regular UP alone and making squads for it will become much more difficult. Perhaps we can balance that out with a coin entry fee like Lunar Squad mode for an UP solo mode? Or make a mirror of UP for squads that don't have as harsh restrictions? Just some thoughts.

    @catgirldesu Of all the cosmetics we can make, Fashion Weapons might be the most complex. It will need all of the dances/idles as well as one per every weapon "type" (Hammers, Polearm, Fists etc.). Not impossible, but if we aren't getting any through the CN devs directly this year, we'd be going through our art studio we're working with. Mounts/Pets/Fashion I think they have a good handle on how these should work via the design documents sent by PWRD. For Fashion Weapons...it would definitely be an experiment. If we have room in our schedule I can try and squeeze in production for Christmas Fashion Weapon sets, but I also have to be mindful of the requests of my coworkers for SWM and FW respectively :) So that would be slated for 2018 for sure if they can get into production, not for this year.

    What I could do too is design competitions... *thinks*

    Fashion sets that are representative of other cultures sounds like a good idea as well! Should note it down somewhere for things we could put in the pipeline. Any design competitions would need to make the perameters clearer and it goes without saying, but the results of these contests would take a bit to work their way into the game. But they DO end up in the game eventually.

    Custom sounds would probably be a toggle option paired with furniture? Or do you mean just an overall thing (where you set it from the Homestead UI?)

    Since I don't play Venomancer as much as I used to, what I'll have to do is ask the devs and see if they would consider doing any changes to Venomancers and the pet system as a whole in the future. So it'll be more an exploratory question first and then I see where they take it from there.
  • wettstyle
    wettstyle Posts: 236 Arc User
    More Solo mode's please, G-16 player finding it harder and harder to fit in R9 world lately:) Probally not possible, but attached to solo mode The system evaluates your Power, Gear, Non changeable of course once you enter Dungeon's modes ect...And the Mob's Bosses Adjust in strength according to your Gear, stat's ect.. like a sliding scale sorta. Of course your reward's are adjusted as well... Just a dream:P
  • nbreaking
    nbreaking Posts: 607 Arc User
    About the gold cap, tbh, I think it's ok the way it is, it forces certain prices to stay on that same price range, by changing the gold cap you will also hyperinflate everything else. If people have more coins per gold, then suddenly things go up too, a CoM which is valued at around 600$ atm, will still be valued at the same price, except that now (let's say cap goes to 8M, just a number) instead of being worth 2.4B, it's worth 4.8B. This price inflation will cripple new players even further, for those already established like myself it changed nothing, coins are worth less, gold is worth more, nothing else changes, but for new players, gathering 8M for 1 single gold... right...

    Anyways, what I propose is the following: Leave the gold cap as it is, however, prevent it from expiring. The gold price isn't the issue, the issue is that your bid expires after 3 days, so, you're always getting the money returned and the fee consumed for no damn reason, just because I want to buy gold I'll lose money.
    If the expiration is no longer on, then first come first server, like a line, if the gold cap is at 4M, then when i place a bid for let's say 20 gold, i'll just enter the line (as it is now) and then i'll stay there until i get my gold (that way I am GUARANTEED to get gold eventually). What worries me about this system is that everyone that has the coin will place the max bid of 240ish gold, which would make the gold go kaboom on those numbers. To avoid this, lower the max bid again, from 240+ to the good ol' 49 at 4M. That way people can't buy huge volumes of gold on just 1 toon.

    Anyways, this is just how I see it, apart from that i like the other ideas, but raising the gold cap is gonna be stupid for the economy.



    Mr. Justice
  • shapoopi
    shapoopi Posts: 78 Arc User
    hello kaly,
    Thanks for trying to make this game better, but you really need to talk to them about updating our NPC's since they really outdated i mean like as an end game player i dont do anything with supply token other than getting the 105 buff and i dont do anything with pwi boutique agent other than getting hp pots.
    NW forges XtW forges, pwi boutique agent these three npcs need some kind of update or adding extra stuff to them,
    need to put in mind that not everyone can farm all day or play the game 24/7.
    like make g17 mats available with perfect token of luck or supply tokens
    S chest/A chest or Dull Zenith Skull with perfect token of best luck
    or exchange Glyps with tokens or supply tokens.
    arena coins trade with Tokens or Lucky coins.
    this will make the game easier

    Another thing i would love to know can we get another rebirth for A set ? that will help balance the game since NP set is not easy like it used to be..