Revisit the PD rate increase debate.

[Ade]

Hello,

A few months back it was debated as to whether or not the PD drop rate should be increased. The primary motivator behind this idea was to increase the amount of currency in the economy so that there aren't so many items worth "1 PD or less." Right now, the currency is worth way more than it used to be because of a glut of excess goods. The most recent HBR has only exacerbated this problem and made it even clearer. I conceded that it might improve after the Season ended, but it would appear that the seasonal characters entering the "main pool" of players only temporarily boosted the economy.

To give an example of how badly the economy has deflated, I recently saw a 35 Dark Lame sell for 2 PDs. I'm seeing v101s sell for 8 to 10 PDs (they were selling for 15 just a few months ago), and even the almighty v502 has dropped to 25 PDs (from 35-40). These examples are what economists refer to as LAGGING economic indicators (observations made after the fact that allow one to deduce that an economic trend is occurring, in this case- deflation).

Here's the main points:

1. People need to feel like they can make progress when playing a game. If I find a weapon that's both useful and universally used, I should expect it to be worth something WITHOUT having to get super lucky and find hit %. If I feel like the chances of making any reasonable progress are low (which is likely with this economy), then my chances of wanting to play decrease.

2. If I really need PDs, I'm basically forced to hunt v101s or v502s, which have held SOME value (but even those have decreased). Having a more reasonable PD drop rate means I could just play whatever I feel like playing and still expect to make some progress.

3. Pre-wipe Schtserv's gear and player progression was artificially accelerated because we found out, AFTER the fact, that the majority of the PDs on that server were duped / hacked. We have no such problem on Ephinea. In a way, we're the only economy where player progression is 99.9% legit in the history of the game. This is wonderful, but it also shows the pace at which one's gear gets "finalized" and "sphered" is ABYSMALLY SLOW in a 100% legit setting. This it not acceptable to modern gamer tastes, for the most part. I mean, if I need 99 PDs to add 30% to ONE item in ONE % area, and I need to do this for 15 different pieces of equipment across 3 characters, it would take a DECADE to accumulate enough PDs to do that in this current economy. It is not reasonable or healthy to expect to spend a decade working on something in a VIDEO GAME.

So yes, following the Season end and the further crippling of the economy, it's time to revisit this topic.

 

[cameron-]

I have two PDs so this feels like a good idea

 

[Ryan]

I have two PDs so this feels like a good idea

quick, buy a lame

In all seriousness, we went over this, what, two months ago? A "lack of PDs" has done way less damage to the economy than, say, Christmas 2017 did. Easter was a huge step in the right direction and I'm excited to see what the future holds, but values of items like Zanba and Slicer of Fanatic are busy recovering while you're pushing this idea again. anime just team pointed a ton of event items this week - why don't you wait for some more of those lagging economic indicators to show up as a result of that before making kneejerk proposals like this?

I mean, if I need 99 PDs to add 30% to ONE item in ONE % area, and I need to do this for 15 different pieces of equipment across 3 characters, it would take a DECADE to accumulate enough PDs to do that in this current economy.

... which is directly caused by the fact that we don't have mass PD duping like Sega or Schthack did. You pushed this proposal before and you're pushing it again because you're "used to" having amounts of PDs like on those servers; why would you want to move in that direction when you already know where it ends? Slower sphering is a result of no hackers. What's wrong with that?

 

[fishhao]

I agree, I would not want to play pso for a decade. I am happy with whatever shitty unsphered itens I have since sandbox mode is fun too.

 

[Ryan]

I agree, I would not want to play pso for a decade. I am happy with whatever shitty unsphered itens I have since sandbox mode is fun too.

Be quiet, you're probably the biggest reason Lames are so low in value.

 

[Ade]

quick, buy a lame

In all seriousness, we went over this, what, two months ago? A "lack of PDs" has done way less damage to the economy than, say, Christmas 2017 did. Easter was a huge step in the right direction and I'm excited to see what the future holds, but values of items like Zanba and Slicer of Fanatic are busy recovering while you're pushing this idea again. anime just team pointed a ton of event items this week - why don't you wait for some more of those lagging economic indicators to show up as a result of that before making kneejerk proposals like this?

I mean, if I need 99 PDs to add 30% to ONE item in ONE % area, and I need to do this for 15 different pieces of equipment across 3 characters, it would take a DECADE to accumulate enough PDs to do that in this current economy.


... which is directly caused by the fact that we don't have mass PD duping like Sega or Schthack did. You pushed this proposal before and you're pushing it again because you're "used to" having amounts of PDs like on those servers; why would you want to move in that direction when you already know where it ends? Slower sphering is a result of no hackers. What's wrong with that?

Because I believe that, if the actual progression had been this slow in the previous economies (people just didn't know because a pure economy has never happened before), the slow rate of progress would have been deemed unacceptable and people would have simply given up. I have all of the "top tier" classes at Lv. 200, and the only way for me to accumulate more power is to Sphere equipment. I can say firsthand that the rate of progression at this point in the game is ABYSMALLY BORING compared to the excitement of gaining levels and watching yourself get stronger at a reasonable pace. You're placing trust in Sega's initial vision of progression; the same people who decided that having four Storm Wand: Indra drops in one area was a good idea, that non-stackable materials and grinders was okay to do, and that characters' materials can never be respecced. Clearly they didn't know what they were doing on a lot of things.

So yes, as ironic as it is to say, it would appear that previous cheating had a significant hand creating the illusion of a progression level that was deemed tolerable. We simply didn't know it.

The fact that I've continued to "have fun" with one character over 300 mil. EXP and two other characters over 200 mil. is a major act of discipline and hope. I'd say on 99.5% of the days I log in, my characters don't get any stronger because there's nothing to do except wait for PDs to drop.

Is this good design? Am I supposed to say, "There's nothing I can accomplish in a reasonable amount of time now, so I'll just quit." ? You're worried that PDs dropping too often will make people finish the game too fast and quit, but the opposite scenario could also drive them to lose interest and do the same.

I'm not sure how many more lagging indicators you want. Team-pointing things after your team has already unlocked everything is no different than simply dropping the item on the floor. It's not a real solution. And it would take A LOT of people dropping A LOT of items on the floor to move the economy away from deflation. One person doing that won't fix anything. Perhaps if personal team points could be used to purchase PDs (say 100 TPs for 1 PD) that would solve the issue?

Something has to be done. But I'm losing hope. The game continues to count EXP accumulated beyond Lv. 200, which to me is a sign that it could be made into some sort of incentive, but nothing has been done. There's also been threads about having a new difficulty that requires very high level play, but that never happened. Basically, oldies aren't getting any love. Maybe it is time to simply hang my Spread Needle on the mantelpiece and retire. But I would be really sad. I play other games regularly, but I love the idea of PSO always having some sort of progression

 

[anime]

If you want to fix econony in five ez steps:

• Revert 400% 4P DAR to 200%
• Cap items dropped from rare monsters to one or two per monster (if this is possible)
  
• Continue with tested, balanced events, using them as a method of adding PDs and PD-anchored items to the economy, and NOT as a method of replacing hit hunts.
• The Red Ring droprate nerf did a good job of helping it retain/gain value (before bossrush HBR), revisit this idea with other items that would benefit the economy if they were rarer. (Smartlink, V101, Limiter, Lore, etc)
• Be patient. It took us a long time to get to this point, and it will take a while to improve.

...Halving two of the largest time sinks (s ranks/spheres) has the potential to do a lot of damage to the endless narrative. We already have crazy drop rates with the DAR penalty being removed, events that ramp months-to-years' worth of vanilla progress in a matter of weeks, spheres that are given out just for spamming ma4b on a fonewm for long enough.

 

[Ryan]

The fact that I've continued to "have fun" with one character over 300 mil. EXP and two other characters over 200 mil. is a major act of discipline and hope.

If PSO's such a boring game to play once you've maxed out your characters, you're welcome to not play it at all. I regularly play my HUcast despite him being at 200, and I have fun without putting it in quotes or thinking I'm disciplining myself by continuing to play. Your reference to "modern gamer tastes" in your initial post strikes me the wrong way; PSO isn't a modern game, and I think many, many people here appreciate that.

Let's have a hypothetical situation here. Say you're able to (relatively) quickly sphere out all of your gear. You do it, and now you can't get any stronger. What then? If PSO's already boring to you when you're just trying to get PDs to sphere things (which, I'll add, is not the endgame goal for every single player on the server), how "abysmally boring" will it become if you're able to reach that peak, and there's nothing left for you?

I'm not even worried about too many PDs making people drop the game. I just think revisiting a needless change like this is a haphazard decision when there are better, less drastic alternatives, especially when the PD rate increase was already rejected by the community. It reminds me somewhat of telecommunications companies trying to ram anti-consumer legislation through Congress again and again, despite people speaking out against it; it just makes your position look bad when you bring it up again after the fervor against it seems to have died down.

 

[Ade]

What better solutions did you have in mind?

Also, what's so bad about accelerating the time needed to "complete" multiple characters from say, 10,000 hours of PD farming down to 5,000 hours? Wouldn't 5,000 hours of enjoyable progress be better than 10,000 hours of sparse progress? As far as modern gamer tastes go, thousands of hours to "complete" a game is still way beyond what most modern gamers want. You may like that PSO doesn't tailor to them AT ALL, but perhaps turning the dial a bit in that direction would be good. Right now, it's not only "not modern," it's archaic.

I'm not saying quadruple the PD rate. What I'm saying is that, if I were to do a full Tyrell's Ego run, I would want a PD rate where I would expect to find 1-3 PDs on most runs. Right now, I maybe get one PD every other run. There's 1055 enemies in the quest. I see that as a problem.

 

[Ryan]

What better solutions did you have in mind?

• Continue with tested, balanced events, using them as a method of adding PDs and PD-anchored items to the economy, and NOT as a method of replacing hit hunts.

• The Red Ring droprate nerf did a good job of helping it retain/gain value (before bossrush HBR), revisit this idea with other items that would benefit the economy if they were rarer. (Smartlink, V101, Limiter, Lore, etc)

• Be patient. It took us a long time to get to this point, and it will take a while to improve.

Also, what's so bad about accelerating the time needed to "complete" multiple characters from say, 10,000 hours of PD farming down to 5,000 hours? Wouldn't 5,000 hours of enjoyable progress be better than 10,000 hours of sparse progress?

You completely missed the point of my post and, apparently, of your own. You want your rate of getting stronger to be faster, but you think the game is boring when you can't get stronger at an appreciable rate. Why should the entire server economy be changed because you want to completely max out all your characters faster, only so you can be "abysmally bored" again?

 

[Ade]

I think a lot of people feel the way I do. I'm just trying to articulate what a lot of others are thinking. I also missed Anime's post until just now. Sorry about that. Anyway...

"Big" events are few and far between. We can't rely on them to help the economy on a regular basis.

Nerfing more drop rates would be terrible because then we would have a glut of PDs and nothing to sphere. (The exact opposite problem.)

I hate to rely on the argument from experience, but I imagine I have more total EXP on my account than both you and Anime combined (I have approximately 850 million total EXP on this server). I don't think you're making any effort to see it from my side. There's a huge difference between having multiple Lv. 200 characters and "having multiple characters over 200 million exp."

Your solution is "either wait for things to get better with the currently implemented solutions or quit," when I'm proposing an actual solution. Several people have already liked my initial post. They just aren't as vocal as I am, which is fine.

A lot of the people who are vocal AGAINST this proposition are the same people who felt that updating the Ep. 2 drop charts was a holy violation, but look how much more Ep. 2 is being played now. An entire 1/3 of the game was being 95% ignored, and now it's played all the time. Maybe we could TRY a PD rate increase (or some other incentive to remove excess items from the economy that is more meaningful than useless team points) instead of just waiting for "somewhat better balanced events" to incrementally repair the economy.

Also, if you nerf the DAR at this point or any other drop rates, you'd have an outcry on your hands, and you'd see mostly 1P mode games. I already play 1P mode more than I should because I can often kill stuff faster in 1P mode than a 4-man party can in multimode. (This is why a new difficulty would also be great, but I'm not even going there for awhile.)

 

[Matt]

While events obviously hurt values, everything has been hurt, so while the previous events were a problem, I think blaming it entirely on events is a mistake.

Also the dar is not going to change. All it did was discourage people from playing together. Ultima has the 200‰ dar proposal that anime is suggesting, and nobody uses it and just solos to hunt if they can. It's simply not fun.

 

[StevieWonderDownUnder]

Easter was a huge step in the right direction and I'm excited to see what the future holds,

The irony of this post is that the reason that the Easter Event was step in the right direction and provided much economic activity is because it pumped MORE PDs into the economy.

I completely agree with anime's third bullet point. However, making events a source of PDs without changing natural PD rate will just make far steeper "boom-bust" cycles around events.

Edit: After some thought, is a fairly obvious that Anime's fourth bullet is actually really stupid without an adjustment to PD rates. You are basically suggesting strangling supply to artificially raise prices. The problem is, like with limiters, is that 90% of the players that can afford limiters at 20 PD already have them. Which is why adepts can sit indefinitely on a tradelist for 25 PD. If some of these items you mentioned increase in value due to drop table changes, then sellers will raise their price. The problem is that when newer players can't afford a limiter at 15-20 PD, how do you expect them to afford them at 25-30? These will also sit on trade lists until sellers decide they must lower prices to sell them. Then, you have a effectively pushed the market in the same situation it was before, but limiters are harder to get.

 

[Ryan]

"Big" events are few and far between. We can't rely on them to help the economy on a regular basis.

I'm not wanting to rely on events to help the economy. If the economy is ever going to recover, I'm counting on events to not further damage the economy.

Nerfing more drop rates would be terrible because then we would have a glut of PDs and nothing to sphere. (The exact opposite problem.)

None of the items anime suggested adjusting are sphereable in the first place.

Your solution is "either wait for things to get better with the currently implemented solutions or quit," when I'm proposing an actual solution.

anime just gave you multiple solutions that weren't "wait for things to get better", and I referred you to them.

A lot of the people who are vocal AGAINST this proposition are the same people who felt that updating the Ep. 2 drop charts was a holy violation

How is this relevant? I'm not in that category.

(or some other incentive to remove excess items from the economy that is more meaningful than useless team points)

Now we're getting somewhere!

The irony of this post is that the reason that the Easter Event was step in the right direction and provided much economic activity is because it pumped MORE PDs into the economy.

Putting more PDs into the economy in the way Easter 2018 did and just doubling the PD drop rate are two completely different beasts. Moreover, Easter 2018 wasn't nearly as boom-bust as far as player counts go as more overpowered, previous events were.

 

[Ade]

I'm not wanting to rely on events to help the economy. If the economy is ever going to recover, I'm counting on events to not further damage the economy.


None of the items anime suggested adjusting are sphereable in the first place.


anime just gave you multiple solutions that weren't "wait for things to get better", and I referred you to them.


How is this relevant? I'm not in that category.


Now we're getting somewhere!

Yes. I agree this is moving forward. If we can have some way to "cash in" junk rares for something else (like X points = a PD), that would be neat. If this is too complicated, then increasing the PD drop rate would do the same thing assuming the right rate increase was selected. There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know...

 

[Ade]

The irony of this post is that the reason that the Easter Event was step in the right direction and provided much economic activity is because it pumped MORE PDs into the economy.

I completely agree with anime's third and fourth bullet point. However, making events a source of PDs without changing natural PD rate will just make far steeper "boom-bust" cycles around events.

Brilliant. Hadn't considered this.

 

[Ryan]

I don't think you understand what I am saying. Booms in "economic activity", not player count. Trading was super active during the event. Prior to the event it was dead, then during it I made 300 PDs trading, now it is dead again.

Misread, my bad.

 

[ToasterMage]

why do you always need progression why not play pso for f u n ?

 

[equestriancitizen]

Yes. I agree this is moving forward. If we can have some way to "cash in" junk rares for something else (like X points = a PD), that would be neat. If this is too complicated, then increasing the PD drop rate would do the same thing assuming the right rate increase was selected. There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know...

ade i really don't think you should sell yourself short as "the charlie brown of pso".

you are the milton friedman of pso.

 

[Ade]

ade i really don't think you should sell yourself short as "the charlie brown of pso".

you are the milton friedman of pso.

You made my day with that