Extra Purse

[Folder]

I really do understand the frustration when the game is in its infancy, but I still think this is the type of thing that balances over time. You would be hurting thieves if you cut gold in half and increase sellable item drops (you're hurting them with gold income and with xp gain). Thieves have 1 purpose and that's gold, simple as that. They suck at fighting, they won't be killing mobs after they rob them.

Ok I lied, they are good at 2 things - traps being the second. That will be important eventually as well, but less so.

I think it's safe to say that everyone's 1st 25 is going to be a chore to level, except maybe paladins which are very easy from what I've seen so far. Once the world is bigger thieves will be going to higher lvl places to find more gold and largely leaving alone the low lvl stuff. There's also the possibility of a Vale-like place to add at some point.

[Makoto]

@Makato the cheap option is to kill stuff, eat food/drink, kill stuff, rinse and repeat. Slower levelling, but if your concerned about gold, its an option. If your power levelling by guzzling potions and such, well thats the cost of it. I honestly havent had a problem with money (yet, I am a cheap skate though).

Fact of the matter remains, even Food and Drink cost gold to buy at Taverns. And if you can't get any gp to buy food and drink, then you can't stay out in the field to level. I'm hardly the type to full-deck my gear, myself (I only recently added enchants and brights to my gear, and that was still charity on Lavelia's part due to getting her sorc to 20) but even with being a cheapskate, the fact remains that if you can't fund gear for basic expeditions into the field, your time leveling is going to be cut rather short, and that's not even talking the cost of leveling at class guilds once you get into higher levels.

I'm literally getting more gold farming the arenas at low levels, (Which by my numbers in Canopia and Seemoor Arenas, seem to give anywhere from a 50-66% penalty on gp drop) than I am heading out into the field to farm. That's a serious problem, especially considering if multiple people are on at one time, there's only so many arenas people can farm, if they choose to go that route. Canopia has one arena, and Seemoor has 4 basic, 1 advanced (Lvl 4+). There is no reason a player should be forced into the arena to farm, and take a gp penalty in the process, merely to meet the bare minimum of having a profitable farming session.

Thieves have 1 purpose and that's gold, simple as that. They suck at fighting, they won't be killing mobs after they rob them.

I disagree. Rogues are good at backstabbing. Stealth and Subterfuge are a Rogue's bread and butter, and that includes finding the chink in that full plate and sliding the dirk in. They're dodgy little things, and a p.i.t.a. to get a solid hit on, hence high agility and hide abilities. Further, "Shinies" are not the sole motivator for Rogues, either from an RP standpoint, or a game mechanic standpoint. Take any example of a Rogue-type from fantasy for a prime example of what I refer to, here. It's in the Rogue's interest to backstab his pickpocketed prey, especially if he's been made, lest they report him to the guards, to illustrate from an RP standpoint.

Fact remains, when one class benefits to the detriment of all others, as is the case where the thieves run through and rob the mobs in an entire area blind, it's not a "Punishment" to rectify that...unless you take it as a given that thieves should not be doing that in the first place, then the context of 'punishment' makes sense, but back to the main topic... When any one class enjoys a massive advantage over the others, a balancing factor is needed. Mages are glass cannons. Tanks suck health pots and heals to stay viable as tanks. But there's no balancing factor here with the way thieves can run through and completely decimate a low level player's ability to earn gp in the field by their own labor, especially when those same mobs can stay there, literally, for hours after the thief in question has been through. The only way to ensure that any given area is profitable at any given time, is to cover all areas, at all times of the day, with constant farming to ensure a constant flow of fresh spawns...and not even the most No-life of all No-lifer's can pull that one off. Nobody can be everywhere, at all times, much less farming at all times, in all places.

[Folder]

I mean thematically yes, thieves are sneaky and can backstab and all that. But in reality they will have low str because of the need for high int/agi. I'd wager most thieves will keep str to a minimum and add a point of agi or int if possible. They aren't designed to fight in this game, in others sure but here we have slayers that do the sneaky/backstab thing twice as good as thieves.

Think long term here once we have a sprawling world and robbing low lvl mobs is only going to be done by a low lvl thief who is leveling the same as you are. High lvl thieves aren't going to bother with these low lvl mobs once they are leveled and there are more lucrative areas.

We probably just have to agree to disagree on this one .

[Rodeo]

The problem with giving two coin purses is the fact that each mob will generally be doubling the economy, which isn't good. This means that just for one class, we risk breaking the balance because someone can rob, then someone can kill it, and generally get double gold.

This is why we have several mobs that can drop items now too. The idea of junk items is that they cannot be stolen and they can be sold for profit. Not 'all' mobs have this, but I think alot of mobs will (or more should anyways.) Junk items obviously are safe in the fact that you yourself cannot be robbed as well while you hold them. Maybe more mobs need something like this, At least half the mobs types could have it. It's probably harder to say now also because there are NOT enough leveling areas and a 22-25 area might be more gold based then item drop based, and there is very little room for going elsewhere.

Though also, normally for most monsters, from what I've seen after the first kill or two in the area, the new monsters that spawn are normally not robbed, it's typically a one time rob with Thieves, they often don't stay in the area and rob (Not saying this couldn't be a thing, but it's the whole time > money deal that makes it not worth it often.)

If this was ever to be added (the thief double purse thing) it would be more like you can steal 50-75% of the max on mobs, and then the rest is by killing it. I don't know if this is needed yet, really depends on what everyone says. I'm not going to increase the gold output on all mobs, double economy is going to hurt the game. ROK had alot of issues economy wise, and trying to balance double gold due to one class again is too much. I think the hidden pouch or extra pouch thing is really a over complicated thing in which if people ever felt that the gold drops were being robbed too much, you just have all mobs drop sellable items too and then balance the gold based on the item itself. (I.E. if the mob has 200 gold, make it only have 100 gold, and a 100 gold item.)

I will quickly point out that when I mentioned a second purse, I also mentioned that the gold a monster dropped in total (between the second purse for thieves and the original one dropped upon death) would probably end up being lowered, or simply split between the kill drop and the thieve's purse.

To address the rest of the post though, I don't mind junk drops and that would be a viable option as well, since it would keep the game in balance.

Either suggestion would work imo because the balance of the game would remain relatively the same.

@daedroth Right now, the issue with eating/drinking something is that you have to wait for food cool down before you can drink anything. That's not slow leveling, that's snail leveling, if you're running a mana sucking alt. It's true, eating and drinking can restore mana/health but it seriously slows down leveling when you're a new player. (I use both food/drinks and pots when leveling my mage-types so I'm well aware how much it slows down leveling to do this.) But I do like you're addition to the idea of the Thieve's Purse (yes, I just named it ) holding a mere percentage of the gold it holds, total.

@folder: Yes, thieves are useful. I've already mentioned that thieves have their place and that this is NOT an attack on that particular class. Hell on Nightmist I ran a Thief almost constantly for the duration of the time I played. I enjoyed playing my thief. It was fun. Every class has it's perks and it's deficits and a player that truly loves playing a thief understands this simply because they took the time to level the damned thing (it's a total pain in the ass at low levels just because of the fizzle-factor ). This idea isn't to 'penalize' those who play the thief class. In fact it might just be incentive to get those thieves to actually kill what they steal from.

@Aeron: The quest system will help but it's not meant to, well I hope, be what floats players level up cost in it's entirety. Once you add the cost of decking your gear (I dropped approximately 20k, give or take 5k, gold between mana to cast the spells into scrolls and refill the mana bar, emberstones, blank scrolls, to gear up my second monk, and that was doing all of the decking with my own crew.) and buying potions/food/drink then the cost racks up quickly. The only thing I'm addressing in this post is the fact that you have to put in quite a bit of work a fair amount of the time to just get any return on the effort being put in. Kill a spawn. No gold, no item, null drop. Kill the next one. Rinse and repeat all the way through an area. By the time you come back through, hopefully, everything that's been a complete null drop has respawned. If you're a low level player it can be a hard hit, you know? Even with eating/drinking to offset cost you still have to wait the cool down time on food/drink before doing so again, and in the meantime you're going to need to heal health and mana.

NIGHTMIST....OH GOD SMALL SNAKE CLICKING FUCK ME RUNNING.

[Lavelia]

NIGHTMIST....OH GOD SMALL SNAKE CLICKING FUCK ME RUNNING.

Ahh so you remember those days of pain

[Aieron]

@Aeron: The quest system will help but it's not meant to, well I hope, be what floats players level up cost in it's entirety. Once you add the cost of decking your gear (I dropped approximately 20k, give or take 5k, gold between mana to cast the spells into scrolls and refill the mana bar, emberstones, blank scrolls, to gear up my second monk, and that was doing all of the decking with my own crew.) and buying potions/food/drink then the cost racks up quickly. The only thing I'm addressing in this post is the fact that you have to put in quite a bit of work a fair amount of the time to just get any return on the effort being put in. Kill a spawn. No gold, no item, null drop. Kill the next one. Rinse and repeat all the way through an area. By the time you come back through, hopefully, everything that's been a complete null drop has respawned. If you're a low level player it can be a hard hit, you know? Even with eating/drinking to offset cost you still have to wait the cool down time on food/drink before doing so again, and in the meantime you're going to need to heal health and mana.

When we were discussing gold balance for leveling before, I asked NiteHawk if he is intending players to be fully decking their gear prior to lvl23+, and he said they shouldn't be. As for running into areas that have been completely robbed, that's a player scarcity issue as Folder has mentioned. Moreover, you only truly need to clear one or 2 spawns of mobs with no gold to begin leveling on ones with gold.

Not to be dismissive of your concerns, but I'd strongly suggest considering how you're approaching the game if gold is an issue. I've lvl'd upwards of 10 characters now to 20 without bankrolling from my mains, and they all were able to get new gear/spells within a lvl or 2 of expectations. The only classes I found a bit daunting were pure casters (necros/sorcs/druids), but I think spells costs were lowered since then,

[Makoto]

@Folder: Agreeing to disagree is fine. However, it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem at hand, namely that we have entire swathes of areas that it is now impossible to even break even in raising levels for a lowbie in. My responses are geared towards finding a solution to that, whilst yours seem to be more focused on making excuses for keeping the status quo, despite this glaring flaw. If I were less level-headed, I might think you were one of the ones running through robbing all of the low-level spawns with a high-level thief, leaving nothing for the lowbies...but that'd be silly, wouldn't it?

Fact remains, sure, we can agree to disagree, but it does nothing to solve the issue at hand, and only serves to shutdown discussion of the issue between the two of us. Not very productive to finding a mutually amicable solution, but I suppose if that's the best one can ask for...

[Folder]

@Folder: Agreeing to disagree is fine. However, it does absolutely nothing to solve the problem at hand, namely that we have entire swathes of areas that it is now impossible to even break even in raising levels for a lowbie in. My responses are geared towards finding a solution to that, whilst yours seem to be more focused on making excuses for keeping the status quo, despite this glaring flaw. If I were less level-headed, I might think you were one of the ones running through robbing all of the low-level spawns with a high-level thief, leaving nothing for the lowbies...but that'd be silly, wouldn't it?

Fact remains, sure, we can agree to disagree, but it does nothing to solve the issue at hand, and only serves to shutdown discussion of the issue between the two of us. Not very productive to finding a mutually amicable solution, but I suppose if that's the best one can ask for...

lol now we're sounding like RoK chat! The thing is I don't consider this a flaw, hence the agree to disagree. We both seem set in our opinion so no point stating it over and over, that's all good sir.

[Rodeo]

NIGHTMIST....OH GOD SMALL SNAKE CLICKING FUCK ME RUNNING.

Ahh so you remember those days of pain

Yes NM is total grind fest. Back before I had to go to the doctor for my hands and was able to actually play I had no problems getting to level 18 on most classes. But I really think once more people start playing and monsters get cleared pretty regularly you guys will notice a big difference. I have found that a monk or barb will round alot of mobs in area and refresh the gold fairly fast if that is your problem. Lack of players is probally the main problem cause back in the glory days of rok I could run a thief around tn e clock and find monsters and players to rob. So give it time. Let players come and if the issue exists with a player base of 50 to 100 players then we can adjust it as needed. Geez guys we are still in development. One more wipe to go!

[Makoto]

@Folder: *Shrugs* To each their own, then, I suppose.

@Rodeo: We'll see, then. I stand by my stance, that this unbalances the game for other classes, but I'm patient enough to give it some time and see what comes of it. I still say that it's ridiculous that a lowbie has to be confined to the arenas, and take a hit to gp gain rates just to be able to make a profit, much less break even on farming.

Edit: Context/spelling