(also added to the original post) After speaking with people and reading comments and feedbacks on this post it seems like a better solution than adding back the bees exhange would be to add the mesos to another form of content which will promote more team-oriented gameplay rather than solo content. The suggestion I wanna raise is to incorporate an ETC that can be sold for mesos as gurantee drop from every box in the VL bonus stage. It will serve a few purposes: 1. Reduce the deflation of the server as was the original point of the post. 2. Promote a team-oriented gameplay and a good alternative to mage farming. 3. Refresh the VL bonus that was recently hurt with the declining price of clean boots and provide a more stable income to bonus runners in VL regardless of hitting chase items such as cs/ws/boots. This option will be easily adjustable to the staff to control the economy better as they can adjust the NPC value of the item. Would love to hear the community's feedback to that idea. Happy mapling.
Wouldnt that also hurt new VL runners? People would probably try to push 12man runs as much as they can, save characters for those runs thus making less 18man runs happen. Not saying 100% will happen with all VL groups but it immediately popped in my head
That is a good point but the current structure of VL boss already has that going. The suggestion is suppose to make VL a more attractive boss and combat the inflation and mage farming meta that is ongoing, not to promote higher amount of people per run. Current runs are already being optimized to provide runners with the best bonus capable for the team. Adding mesos should not impact the party size directly at all (if a team is running 10 man after the change, they would probably run 10 man before etc.). Personally, I hope that such a change will revive the boss and attract new players to try it, making 18 man runs even more common than they are right now.
make the Etc one-of-a-kind then however what if ppl do 12 man and others join and stay on corner (right side) then loot during bonus also a VL run is usually around 50mins so the Etc value must not be above other money making methods to avoid ppl using others' mules to loot the etc, or just grant the etc like Snowman/Cake boss based on participation
Yeah i had the same idea with one of a kind etc but it fell because it will promote leaving mules inside the VL room and ressing them during the run. And as for monetary value of the etc, I left it out to be at the discretion of the staff. Each bonus room has 30 boxes and that obviously has to be taken into account when adjusting the value. Thank you for the feedback!
The problem with VL is it's a case of the rich get richer. There's so many 10-12 man that are run. More loot, etc. Need a pretty nice range for that. Apart from learning, what reason is there to do an 18 man. None of the people who actively do 10-12 sign up for 18s nearly as often, and then the newer players who do 18s don't get people and don't get runs. I like the idea of encouraging larger parties, but not just making it more of a money printer. It's the problem facing every ancient game economy, you need to figure out how the newer/poorer players can have something to draw money from the rich players. I can spitball weird ideas (Items in the jails that can add time to VL timer, you can pay 100m for a VL revive, a totem like gacha for players 40-70 in a special area for an hour a day, extra pets added Tokens of Teamwork), but there isn't an easy solution....
It's the same argument other people made. The point of the post isn't to balance the economy around newer players directly. The point is to sway endgame players towards actual gameplay rather than sitting with loads of mages and farm. I could make the same argument of "rich gets richer" over mage farming. The problems I try to solver are that VL runs are actual content and gameplay whereas mage farming isn't. VL runs are limited to 2 times per week per characterer whereas mage farming is unlimited hours per day and the rich people will get richer wether you want it or not. I'll try to bring back the converstation towards the actual topic which is fixing the server's economy. Statistically if you start sprinkle mesos trough people who do content, the impact will be felt on the newer players too. Apple prices will go up making APQ a more viable option to newer players, getting taru totems and BWG will be more impactful for newer players since their price wont be 250m but closer to 400m like it used to be a year ago before the RG nerf. The server offers many methods to gain mesos as a newer player, except that in mage farm economy they are literal garbage. This solution is the least harming that I could think of. Not making that change wont bring 18 man VL runs back to life. This change will not impact party sizes in any way. As I said in previous comments, Royals players are sweaty nerds that will always try to optimize boss runs for maximum profits. It's already happening now and my idea wont have any impact on it. If people have an issue with not finding 18 man VL runs, they can pick up the glove and start hosting them. A good example would be the new and growing VL server hosted by ours/bosshunters/bloom/diversity/asylum alliance. I suggest anyone who struggles to find a run to try them out or actively start searching for it because that's how everyone starts. There is not a single player who is currently running 12 man runs that did not start by forming 18 man parties with his guild/friends. Give it a try.
Why does it matter to a new player if their BWG is 250M or 400M if the gear they want to buy by selling this drop also raises in prive by this much because there is an inflation in money making methods? Don't get me wrong I agree that mage farming being by far the best way to make mesos is not ok, but just inflation doesn't sound that great unless you wanna devalue people that are hoarding hundreds of Bcoins (who will have lots of cs/cs instead of Bcoins too). Also adding money to just VL would only make the rich richer as was already said, you'd have to add similar things to earlier content otherwise no one will be able to afford stuff until they're lvl 180+. But then you'd also have to watch out not to just add money to things that people already do anyway, like zak/krex/pap/Chao are already goated for xp so adding more money to those would not make sense.
Its the rate of deflation rather than the amount. BWG and taro totems went down as much as 50% whereas cgs changed around 10% only. The gains/cost rate for newer players is better when there is inflation rather than deflation on these items. As for your 2nd point, the problem with adding mesos to low level content is that it can easily be exploited by hackers and botters for RWT. Adding that method to any other form of content that is soloable/ has low threshold will do more harm than good and add workload to the GM/Admin staff in form of rule breakers and ban appeals and is therefore not viable.
So what is the solution for 'new' players then (anyone under 180)? Make inflation high but only add money makers to Endgame content? Inflation only helps poor players if they can either get valuable items (which you don't wanna add, or disproportionally add to VL) or if rich players are hoarding hundreds of Bcoins that then lose value (which if those same rich people are the ones running VL doesn't do much). If you consider zakum or krex low lvl, then mage farming is also low lvl and botters are already running the server, if not then great we should add moneymakers to early 4th job (that are not also the best xp bosses ofc). Ofc, then we'd also have to make sure those money makers don't cause their own value to plummet because of their popularity like happened with the LHC gach. I'm not saying a lvl 60 should have the best money making options, but so far I haven't seen a suggestion that's not catered towards the already rich players and making only Endgame moneymakers coupled with inflation is not good for the economy at all, because then everyone else is left to getting lucky at gacha as their only option.
The requirement to entering krex is level 70, zak level 50. You probably missed the part where I said they are also hacking and not only RWTing. As for why inflation is good, as I explained in my past message, the value of bwg and taru totems went down by 50% while the value of the scrolled cgs remained unchanged. Inflation is good for the lower players more than it is for the experienced mage farmers. The point of the post isn't to make VL runners richer. I would rather see droprate of VL boots get nerfed if anything. If you would read my past message or any of the messages that I made you would understand that the point is to sway endgame players from mage farming by providing alternative form of content to cause inflation. The effects of such change will be purely beneficial to newer players. If I drew a Venn diagram of people that mage farm and people who run lots of VL, you would see that the two circles overlap mostly. making that change will just hurt mage farming because the inflation will make pure mesos value lower. That is all there's to it.
You probably missed the part where I already said Krex and Zak are not good options to add money to. By that level range I clearly meant 135+ where people run them. Also, BWG and Taro inflation is purely due to the RG change as you surely know. And I would also consider RG an endgame moneymaker as it has the highest lvl requirement of basically anything except VL, so deflation of those items isn't really relevant for non-lategame players. I just don't get how you think having alternative options to mage farming that also cause inflation doesn't make the rich richer. Alternative options are good, but inflation only happens when there is an influx of money and you do not get an influx of money without giving someone money. If you'd reduce the droprate of VL boots and compensate with some raw meso drop that might work, but they'd have to be very careful as last time an option for raw meso was implemented it was way too OP and got nerfed which lead to this whole thread. But I think some farm (not a 2x weekly boss) that is possible for non-mage classes, like mobs with massive ice/fire/holy resistance that drop good stuff so other classes can farm them well, would be better. Not some daily or weekly content that you can only do for an hour and then the rest of the day have to wait for reset because otherwise options are just so much weaker. IMO daily 1-hour stuff would also not be an alternative to mage farming, but an addition and people would still mage farm outside of that hour.
And how will you make that balanced so that "rich doesnt get richer" without making it abuseable by RWTers and hackers? Any sort of mobbing will be contriversial because: 1. not all classes are balanced the same around mobbing 2. stronger people will mob better and therefore get richer??? You are literally contradicting youself with your own ideas which makes me very confused. Making the mesos part of a team gameplay where all classes but mages is literally why VL is optimal for that. Fact is rich will get richer wether you want it or not, its a feature of the game regardless of what content will be suggested. If it wasn't true people would not invest in attack gear to begin with. It is liteally the OG snowball game where you grind gear to kill mobs to become stronger to kill mobs faster and so on.
So how do you propose to balance it to shift people from multi mage farming? Because just adding meso to VL makes those people run VL 2 times a week and mage farm the rest of the week. Like you said, the Venn diagram of people running VL and mage farming is already a circle so any buff to VL is just a raw buff to those people, not really an 'alternative meso making method' as the thread title states but just a raw meso buff to already rich people. Besides, saying inflation is a buff for newer players is just outright wrong if that inflation is caused by giving money to only people that run VL. It's fine for stronger people to make better money, it's not fine to give stronger people a blank buff and make the gap bigger. So any sort of mobbing is fine, there's plenty of possibilities to create mobs that take low to no dmg from mages, and make map layouts so that multiple classes can farm them effectively. Yes some classes will be better, but that's already the case. You seem to think all content that's not super endgame will be easily hacked and botted, but making content lvl 130+ that makes money for non-mage classes is equally hard to bot or hack as current mage farms.
Well that's not true since newer players don't farm pure mesos it will not negatively impact them. But it will mean that every loot that they gain from bossing will be worth more mesos. You seem to not understand how inflation works. The only people who are being hurt are the ones that hold or gain mesos. It will cause neutral effect at worst on newer players and positive effect at best. Again, you don't seem to understand how economy and inflation works. The point of inflation is to make everything more expensive and make the value of money cheaper so people who hoard mesos lose value. This will make the economy more active and will benefit most people who are looking to buy and sell stuff on the market. The people who will be hurt the most from such a change will 100% be mage farmers. The inflation state does not change their income since the amount of mesos they gain from npcing equips is fixed. People who do any other form of content will still get the same value on their items since inflation will cause prices to go up, meaning that if I loot Gen20 in zakum, it will be worth more. It will literally revive the forms of content that mid tier players are doing just like you hoped will happen in your own replies. If we talk about US economy, they target inflation to be at 2% yearly. Reason is to make people spend their money rather than put it in a bank and sit on it for years which causes a slow in economy (slow economy sounds familiar? its literally what's happening now in royals). Money (or in our case mesos) is not suppose to be an asset, it is suppose to be spent. The gap can't be bigger than it is right now. As someone who did bossing for years to fund his account, the income from bossing has never been as bad as it is right now. You are completely disregarding how cheap mw20, gen30, gen20 is compared to 1 year back. Also, deflation is not proportional in the price of cgs since 15gloves are almost the same price as they were 1 year ago which means that being a newer player is way harder now than it used to be. Again, it's a fact that the lower requirements for content are, the easier it is to be abused by hackers. I do not just "think" that.
Let's not go down the route of saying stuff like "rich get richer" because the "rich" spent a lot of time and effort into becoming "rich". Giving such statements only undermines the effort and time they spent in the game to reach that point. It's a private server, you can get from lvl 1 to 200 in 2 months+ as a new player on this server without buying leech if you invested the time. There isn't a content in the game that is gatelocked for players. My opinion (which anyone here is more than welcome to disagree with) is that if any such change were to be implemented, it should be at a higher level, i.e. 200 minimum requirement to prevent exploitation from hackers. But I am happy to listen to the discussion go further. I am interested to hear other people's pov on how this economy can be improved.
I slightly disagree here. The 200 in 2 months was an anomaly not a norm. You're probably looking at a year for most players especially those not following the meta. When I made the point of "The rich get richer" My point was not that rich players don't deserve mesos, but that we have to be very careful with what we do as for example: making VL give better drops, is going to help richer players more than newer players. This is going to inflate the server everywhere, which only makes it harder for non-VL players to catch up. Earlier points brought up we should put the content at 200.... The problem is that players hit a few walls and they hit it way before 200. That especially hits new players who quit seeing the grinding wall even worse in Royals than GMS. Players are constantly advised to make a Bishop first, and we can see that as year after year, bishops are the most made class. I get frustrated as this is treated as a normal feature, and not a gameplay bug. Players run into an equipment cliff and are told "Go APQ or Mage Farm" If we lock money making to end game content then why does level 1-199 matter? The point of mesos is they are a way to translate player effort into a tangible intermediary of progress. Whatever we buff we encourage players to do. Right now players are encouraged to mage farm because of how lucrative it is. Put yourself in the mind of a 125 NL. Your choices are.... buy leech, go hunt HH and hope nobody else is also doing it.... go EPQ...which can be often dead (And if you only have a few hours you can play....) Oh go make a bishop first....well your bishop is just a mule, we don't need real bishops...until we do in VL. What do you mean almost nobody mains bishops.... (Sorry side rant) My point still stands we need some content that 'everyone can do' but it makes the most sense for newer players to want to do. BPQ was a good band-aid for that, but there was no 'repeatability factor' and it became just another expense that eventually fell to seller mules. Once you have your acceptable shoulder there's no real point to doing it again. We've turned into into selling Zhelms & HTP 2.0s My point is something like Imagine if KPQ gave a prize of 7m every time you finished it. A good party can finish in 8 minutes. So that's 42.8m/hour (Obviously I'm not suggesting we do this EXACT change) But note how it's nothing ground breaking for mage farming armies, or for accounts, that have 20 APQ Mules But now that entry CGS is going to be a lot faster than spinning up a bunch of mages.
getting from 1-200 in 2 months+ is not an anomaly. It can be done by many who put in the time. I did it in 3 months (in 2021) without lhc and shao/ht until i was 180 because lhc did not exist and because i didnt have enough hp. (On a bowmaster) Its actually very hard to not get to lvl 200 in a few months. I had a friend who only logged in for shao everyday from 170/180 for 3months and got to 200. Im convinced players who take a year to 200 are players who dont want to do any content and if they dont want to do any content I do not feel ashamed in leaving them out of the equation in terms of getting rewards. we should reward the players who put in the time shouldnt we? Why reward the players who dont? right now newer players already have an alternative which is to sell apr for straight up mesos. And they do reward newer players for doing stuff like kpq (tokens of teamwork) 10 tokens of teamwork: flame throwing star (50-60m market price) which equates to approx 10m per kpq run if you do get it. Sure, its not guaranteed but its a bonus on top of already being able to vote for 8k a day (25m mesos approx). I also do not believe in “a bishop is a must on this server” at least i dont own a bishop and i know many others that dont and have no reason or need to. I think people are over exaggerating the need for owning a bishop/mage to start the game. That being said, if they take the time and effort into making one, why shouldn’t they be rewarded. I do not recall mentioning anywhere that it has to be VL related but do correct me if I missed out something. I mentioned locking the content (if anything is even going to be made) to 200, which to me is the most basic goal a new player should attain first after joining the server and for obvious reasons. At lvl 199 you wouldn’t be thinking of “the economy is fucked i cant afford this or compete with others to buy cgs” At lv 199 you’re thinking which boss you should be doing to level up because each level gives an equivalent of 1 wa in stats which is infinitely easier than upgrading cgs. All I see pre200 players talk about is bossing and I have never met a player that is not 200 talk about “i cant earn enough mesos” since mesos isnt really a problem for them. You only really start hitting the “screw me sideways this economy is fked” depression when you reach approximately give or take 50-55 cgs.
