Junk economy experiencing scarcity. PROBABLY NERFED

Paqu

I've just reached 30s today, and I was expecting that there would be an increased in junk value when I moved to Gunurash or Saksar Jungle, but instead, I only got half of what I was getting before which is odd to me since It's always gone up since 1s then 10s and 20s. I see no reason why it would be different now, unless... it's nerfed down. I remember that when I reached level 30, it is around the time that an update was posted(news update 31). It's quite possible the admins decided that many of us are gaining too much and decided to slow down the faucet. If that is the truth, then I must tell the admins that this is just too punishing.

Shinonome

At times it does feel a bit like the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing. The public-facing devs didn't seem to be aware of last week's prugita nerf either (which still hasn't been reverted). Must be rough to be a fresh 70 right now - either have to take on rare spawns, or spawns that can hit you for 5600 damage in 3.5 seconds. Either way, you'll be lucky to keep your head above water, financially.

Meanwhile they're insisting nothing has changed, while the economy is contracting at an alarming rate - before it even really had a chance to get off the ground. Well... if you have marks hoarded, it's a good time to buy credits at least.

Of course it's beta and all that; I wasn't expecting things to be fixed overnight, but I also wasn't expecting changes that would make it worse in the meantime...

WyldeKarde

I'm actually losing considerable amounts of money now at 70+ from hunting.  The mobs are too strong in places which results in high cloning costs, but for an hour of bashing I can only earn about 1200 marks (before costs).  I used to earn 5-6 pieces of junk per level 70+ mob and now I get 1-2. 

BeepBoop

At 1875 marks a death with repair costs as high as they are it's pretty ridiculous how unrewarding (if not outright punishing) bashing can feel.

Tecton

While nothing changed in terms of us intentionally ratcheting things down so mobs give less junk, I did find some code oddities this morning while double-checking everything. It might have something to do with it, might not, but we'll see!

All our graphs still show an overall positive growth in the mark economy (as in more is being produced than consumed), so there's nothing drastically different.

WyldeKarde

It happened about the same time as the changes to mod drops.  I have been earning about 800 marks for clearing all of the non-Xariel on Prugita.  

I’ll record my numbers for the next few visits to compare.

Slander

The difference between 20s and 30s is staggering. I started my 20s making about 2k/level and ended around 4.5k/level. I've gotten less than 1k going from 30-31. And that's not net gain, that's gross income before any clone fees.

Montem

I've also noticed a massive drop in junk in Anemoi, I went back to Greenwilds to test, but it seems much lower there too all the sudden.  I was barely breaking even if I never died in Anemoi.

Tecton

Hmm, I did find one issue:

We do have diminishing returns for bashing things below your level (so you can't plow through things below your level for easy profit). This was probably a bit too tight considering our current level/area selections, so I've broadened this up so that you will get full junk value for a much wider range.

This is live as of about 30 seconds ago, so hopefully that will resolve the problem.

Tye

Tecton said:

Hmm, I did find one issue:

We do have diminishing returns for bashing things below your level (so you can't plow through things below your level for easy profit). This was probably a bit too tight considering our current level/area selections, so I've broadened this up so that you will get full junk value for a much wider range.

This is live as of about 30 seconds ago, so hopefully that will resolve the problem.

When reading through this thread this morning I was thinking this may be the case but didn't have hard evidence. I bashed the same area (recommended 20-30 I think) from 20-25 and noticed that the junk drops weren't decreasing in quantity, but definitely in value. Glad this was picked up on, thanks for the vigilance Tecton!

tysandr

Please re-tighten it again at some point when you have a broader selection, it was actually a good disincentive to sticking to tried & true lower level places.

Tecton

tysandr said:

Please re-tighten it again at some point when you have a broader selection, it was actually a good disincentive to sticking to tried & true lower level places.

Yep, definitely - many things will need to be tightened back up when there's a wider selection of areas and everything isn't generally in 10 level bands.

Eshe

The issue I have been having is at-level areas providing fewer marks than lower-level areas (level 50-60 range), when looked at per-kill rather than per-grind, since lower level you can work through more more quickly. It encouraged grinding lower level areas because of the cost of clones and accruing debt.

Slander

Yea that was sorta my problem. Like I'm level 31 now and I'm in a 30-40 zone to get level appropriate gear, but in a 20-30 zone I can make marks faster (and experience, from not having to heal 2-3 times after each kill).

Shinonome

Well I went from making 300 marks in a pass to 2500 marks in a pass. And the spawns look like they are back to normal in Prugita. So that change definitely helped. Thank you.

Minion

So the lesson here is:

A. Open Beta
2. Admin are not out to getcha
D. While it is important to bring things to the attention of the admin and seek input from the community, it isn't valuable to lambaste the game and staff in doing so. There is going to be a lot of adjustment.

Kax

Yeah I just got a little over 400 marks worth of junk going from 21.5 to 21.66, which is more than I earned from 21 to 21.5. 

Thanks for the fix! 

Shinonome

Minion said:

So the lesson here is:

A. Open Beta
2. Admin are not out to getcha
D. While it is important to bring things to the attention of the admin and seek input from the community, it isn't valuable to lambaste the game and staff in doing so. There is going to be a lot of adjustment.

I'm sorry for the aggressive wording. But we'd been trying to bring up the topic without success for about a week before this thread appeared and it gets frustrating when core stuff isn't working.

Slander

Significant improvement for me too. Thanks!

Minion

Shinonome said:

Minion said:

So the lesson here is:

A. Open Beta
2. Admin are not out to getcha
D. While it is important to bring things to the attention of the admin and seek input from the community, it isn't valuable to lambaste the game and staff in doing so. There is going to be a lot of adjustment.

I'm sorry for the aggressive wording. But we'd been trying to bring up the topic without success for about a week before this thread appeared and it gets frustrating when core stuff isn't working.

I do understand the frustration but the last week has included both Christmas and New Years.

It is fixed now though! Let all rejoice as the marks fill our accounts so we can once again dream of our superhaulers filled with manufactured goods!

(Maybe that's just me...)

Matlkael

I'm finally seeing a tidy profit from bashing, after getting most of my marks for levels 20-30 from incursions.

Darios

Significant fix to whatever was causing the slump in mark generation! Thank you!

EMDA

Tye said:

Tecton said:

Hmm, I did find one issue:

We do have diminishing returns for bashing things below your level (so you can't plow through things below your level for easy profit). This was probably a bit too tight considering our current level/area selections, so I've broadened this up so that you will get full junk value for a much wider range.

This is live as of about 30 seconds ago, so hopefully that will resolve the problem.

When reading through this thread this morning I was thinking this may be the case but didn't have hard evidence. I bashed the same area (recommended 20-30 I think) from 20-25 and noticed that the junk drops weren't decreasing in quantity, but definitely in value. Glad this was picked up on, thanks for the vigilance Tecton!

There are diminishing returns in place for bashing the same area over and over even if it's within your level range, for sure. As far as I can tell it affects both drop quantity and worth. After hunting the Delphi desert consistently through the early 50s I saw the value of junk trips drop dramatically: If I'm bashing I usually work through two kithblades of durability each trip and that initially netted me around 7-9k marks with 2-4 junk drops per kill, but that dropped to a fraction of the overall junk and a total of ~1400 marks for the second to last trip and 774 marks for the last. Which isn't sufficient even to repair the weapons alone, and this is against things that are mostly as strong or stronger than me by probe.

Just to see if it were linked to the area I went to the Quarry and bashed through one kithblade to compare a difference. Most of the mobs still had damage resistance against me for being in the lower-third of the level range but it jumped back to 2-4 junk drops per mob and the trip, despite going through half the overall durability, gave nearly 8k marks.

This was all before the change, though, so I'll have to see if that helped bump things in level-appropriate areas too.