Suggestion: Add CS/WS to drop from Horntail & Nerf skillbooks drop rate

In this thread i'll try to present 2 problems that i believe need a solution:

1. CS/WS being sold at a very high price of 530m-550m.
2. Horntail's major skillbooks (Triple Throw30, Genesis30, Maple Warrior20) are dropping in price due to the enormous amounts of runs being done, causing for an excessive amounts of them in the market.
Lots of new players are running HT, and other more veteran players turn to do duo/trio/quad runs very often (and quite easily because of mules) which leads to more parties/runs in comparison to total players who run daily, causing a bigger production of skillbooks.

Spoiler: Triple throw market dying - 200m and 6 pages

Spoiler: Genesis30 - 920m and 3 pages

Spoiler: Maple Warrior20 under 2bil

The way i see it , it will only get worse, players do not want to only have 2 books to look forward to that are barely producing any profit if the split has to go between 4-6 players.
Horntail's meta will shift more and more into 2/3/4 men runs, causing the problem to grow.

In order to combat these issues i suggest adding CS/WS into Horntail's drops:

1. It will help with the problem of CS/WS being too pricy by giving another way of obtaining them.
2. Will make Horntail more profitable.

Another very important point is it might cause Horntail to be done even MORE if this change will be implemented, causing skillbooks to drop down even in a faster rate - so i'll be also suggesting to nerf skillbooks drop rates to balance it out with the drop rate of the CS/WS. (I have no idea what are the rates currently, i'll just leave it to the staff to come up with the numbers).

The expected result in my opinion would be - more obtainable CS/WS while they are being very expensive in the market & keeping a healthy/profitable market of the major 3 skillbooks from Horntail.

 

Perhaps supply and demand have something to do with these mysterious market changes?

 

Why horntail though? It already drops a bunch of expensive items, while other high level bosses such as grandpa boss and toad are dry and abandoned

 

Horntail is already called the money dragon for a reason. It already drops a trove of useful items and adding two of the most desirable items in the game will just make it more OP. There is other content as mentioned previously such as Toad and Showa Boss, and perhaps a few more (GPQ? Pink Bean when that drops?) that could benefit from this so more players will run them.

 

Chaos scroll was implemented as a drop to Zakum despite being able to drop Genesis 20.

 

I'd personally suggest additional CS/WS drops go to Neo-Tokyo bosses just to make that place more lively.

Getting a HT party isn't too much of a hassle going by the amount of smegas I read recruiting for him, Neo-Tokyo on the other hand is a barren wasteland despite the interesting bosses and story to be found there.

 

The reason i chose Horntail is to balance the profit gained from doing this boss. Books are way too low in price now compared to the past and are being obtained in a faster pace than being sold - which will only cause the market to get worse over-time.
To stop it from happening, i believe a nerf to skillbooks is needed. But also, if u nerf the skillbooks droprate it will be very discouraging and still not so very worth doing.

This brings up the need to add another source of income from the run, and what is better than adding cs/ws? There is always demand for it, and considering the prices are ridiculously high - increasing the supply by adding it to the drop list will help in my opinion and balance the fact im suggesting to also nerf the droprate of the books to save their market.

(In the past blizzard30, meteor30, zerk30 were worth more than today's TripleThrow30 and its not gonna improve in the future, the server is getting stronger, HT is ran easily by lots of players).

Im talking about a somewhat rare drop rate, to match with the rates of the skillbooks.

 

I disagree, all the 3 books combined are worth around 3bil, and more often than not, runs are dry and you arent getting multiple books in the same run. To the 5-6 men standard party TT30 gives 33m-40m (lol),
Gen30 gives 150m-180m, MW20 gives 316m-380m.

Considering many runs are dry, it looks like sad amounts of profit in the long run, which causing many players (and me personally) to do mostly duo / trio runs to get a bigger cut/split of the books, and that by itself instead of 1 party of 6 doing 1 run, there are 2-3 parties of 2-3 doing 1 run each - which doubles and even triples the amounts of runs being done, increasing the supply of skillbooks by a big amount causing the market to "die".

I agree to other suggestions of adding cs/ws to other "dead" bosses to encourage more runs, but this thread i try to talk mostly about HT to solve the issue of the skillbooks that may seem not so big now, but without a change being done now or in the future - i predict it will only get worse with time.

 

HT book prices, like many other things, is naturally a function of the ratio of # new players / # old players, as it's really just a service that old players provide to new players who need the skill books/pendants but cannot kill HT.

WS/CS is the opposite - new players spend their NX on gach, and sell WS/CS to old players who need them to improve their gear.

Unless we strongly believe that the ratio of # new players / # old players will only continue to decrease over time - this may very well be true post-covid, but I'm not super confident - I think it might be best to leave things as is for now. Otherwise, if say, a lot of new players suddenly joined Royals and HT became super profitable again, and the GMs decided to revert this change, people will just get really angry (because that's how people are).

With all that said, I think HT is still the most profitable boss in the game by far just because of MW20 and Gen30, and an amazing source of exp before lv200, so it's still far from unrewarding. This is definitely something worth monitoring in the long run though.

 

Horntail already drops:

• Horntail Pendant - ($)
• Dragon Weapons - ($)
• Maple Warrior 20 - ($)
• Genesis 30 - ($)
• Triple 30 - ($)
• 2~4 5k NX cards

You're telling me you want even more drops added to Horntail??? Keep in mind that Horntail is THE best boss in the game for EXP. The only other bosses (besides Shao) that can compete with Horntail in terms of EXP are The Boss and Toad. And those bosses can only be run ONCE a day compared to Horntail's TWO runs a day.

Toad runs are infrequent and it can be tedious gathering people to Toad (especially with the required mules to make it go efficiently), which is why the Staff had to add the Toad JQ skip quest to make it somewhat more bearable to do Toad (since people hate JQs!!). The Boss... I sometimes forget it even exists and its usually not on the minds of people trying to level up to lv200 either. And what do they drop that can be considered good? Either a chance for an untradeable eye accessory that might be underwhelming compared to the sheer availability of Spectrum goggles or Shogun/Gold Emerald Earrings. Simply underwhelming.

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If you want to know why there's so many books and profits are low... you can look at one patch: Patch #65. For people who forgot what Patch #65 did, it hit these:

1. Introduced a Graphic (GFX) fix that significantly reduced client crashes and excessive lag from having multiple clients
2. Lowered the incomes of players by reducing drop rates of equips by 20%
3. Ulu 1 was hard nerfed in spawn and Ulu 2 (and Petris) were nerfed in spawn too (though not that hard).
4. Significantly increased the price of NLC potions regularly used by Bossers and Mages

#1 made it that Horntail (and other bosses) became more accessible and runs weren't nearly failing as hard due to players not crashing now (or as much for some players). No longer were the days of hearing about how/experiencing the HTP buyer and half (or more) of a Horntail team crashing in the middle of the run. Also, multi-clienting past two clients would no longer give you lag and high risk of crashing on client(s), making multi-clienting more frequently done. Books and Dragon weapons have thus become more plentiful due to being able to successfully complete Horntail now (compared to pre-65 days).

#2 & #3 Hit everyone as Ulu farm provided a lot of income for the average player directly or indirectly. And you can clearly see that there's less Trio/Quad farmers in Ulu 1 now as profits were cut in half compared to the 240m+/hr that was gained before the patch (causing some of these hardcore players to quit). Combine that with #4 and people are just walking around with less money overall.

There's also the fact that there's a drop in the amount of people playing due to them focusing on their degrees in school or their jobs due to lockdowns forcing them out of work and being poor early in the year. So we have a large supply going on while there's low demand and also people who are playing still that are just less wealthy in general (due to #65). You're complaining about low profits but that should be a given since prices in the market have dropped all around. Hackers/RWTs are inflating the CS/WS/FS/etc. prices when they should have dropped to match the current market.

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Horntail doesn't need any buffs by adding CS/WS to it. Other bosses that are rarely done need it more (i.e. The Boss, Toad, Nibergen, Dunas v2).

 

You brought up many good points, and as i kept reading i thought it is going to agree with what i was saying but it wasn't and it confused me and i will tell you why.

Because of covid there are already many many new players and the demand of books from it is STILL not equal to the supply created by end game players (which ill refer to as the "old players").

The numbers of old players is still larger DESPITE of covid.
Also, old players are strong enough to split their parties into parties of 2-3 players causing the supply to even multiply and i dont see it as a flat number difference between new and old players in this situation because of it.
I see it as the difference is in favor of old players and with muling becoming so popular and players becoming stronger, it is even easier to run duo/trio Horntails.

We also see it by the market of the cs/ws.
Like you said, old players need cs/ws heavily for end-game equips, it shows in prices and the competition for them. (i agree hackers might play a role but still)
Meanwhile the skillbooks, which is the market of the new players, the supply is so high and consistent that prices just keep going down and its becoming a battle to sell them sometimes.

Horntail is a very popular run, i believe adding cs/ws to it (In a very cautious rating), will help the state of the server - end game players craving cs/ws to be in an affordable and not a crazy price, and the skillbooks market to not completely go to nothing.

 

I think you missed my main point, but first let me put my attention into the fact you mentioned Horntail's drop and put a money sign to it like the value is so high.

HTP - 180m (very very low and also hard to find a buyer , specially a buyer that makes it through the whole run).
Dragon weapons - so rare to find godly ones that are worth over 100m.
Maple Warrior20 - 1.9b (I agree, still good amount, but only if you are running a small party to get a bigger cut, and still it's somewhat a rare drop)
Genesis30 - 900m (not good not bad, still most runs will be dry and not drop Gen30)
Triple Throw30 - 200m (just sad).

My main point is NOT to make Horntail stronger and NOT to make it a boss that yields a crazy amount of profits - my point is to make a change before it gets worse.
The staff who have access to the numbers and the rates of the drops, should come up with a way to create a certain balance of skillbooks and the cs/ws being added to it.
All of that in a way to NOT (!!!) make Horntail an even stronger boss, but a way to save it from going down even further. Skillbooks will be slightly more rare causing the market to not be absolutely loaded with books compared to the demand, and the slight amount of cs/ws that will make up for the books being less frequently dropped, to flow to the market from it and will HOPEFULLY help reducing the state of cs/ws being 530m - 550m each.

I enjoy this discussion, i think it is very healthy so far and i'm glad it is getting a lot of interest, keep the responses coming.

Edit:
Another thing i forgot to mention and i would like to add is, yes, ulu1 and other farming methods were nerfed, causing LESS mesos in the market in total, pots being way higher, recharging stars is also high , providing a mesos sink boost and less "pure" mesos created from farming flow to the market... My logic tells me if thats the case, and it's HARDER to earn mesos now, why are cs/ws, which are the MAIN useable item used for end-game players and end-game equips, is being sold in a very high price? I think there should be another way of obtaining cs/ws to help the situation.

 

I think my general point is that I agree with your concern, but now might not the right time to make a change yet because the future can still vary, and it's better to not change things than to make a change and revert it in the future.

I agree that if this trend continues on for a long time (maybe 1+ year?), it's probably not good for the health of the server.

 

You are absolutely correct and had many valueable points and i appreciate you responding.

However, we must learn from the past, i will try to make a comparison to support my suggestion.
2-3 years ago the prices were as following:
MW20 - 2.8b (turned into steady 1.9b-2b, sometimes even lower if it got crazy, but considering MW20 is required for every job it holds on pretty tight still)
Genesis30 - 1.5b (turned into 900m)
Triple Throw30 - 1b (turned into a 200m sad price)

Blizzard / Meteor / Zerk 30 books used to be few hundreds of milions - and now turned to 5-10 mil each.
This looks very similar to what is happening with Triple Throw today until it will slowly decrease even further.

I think we need a change to prevent it from happening, and maybe learn from Zakum that how adding cs to it's drop list was probably the reason it caused Gen20 to drop so low. (300m)
I believe if adding the cs to the boss was the cause of it, there should have been a nerf to the gen20 drop rate to counter the effect of people running it way more often to try and achieve a cs.

And even if that is not the reason Gen20 dropped, the other reason i can think of is that, again, more people are bossing - providing more skillbooks to the market , and less amounts of new players buying them.
This phenomenon requires an adjustment to the drop rates and an alternative drop to support the old/endgame players so these bosses won't be "ruined".

 

random idea that has nothing to do with anything.....why do we have 12 hours to run HT?, ppl want to encourage the pt play, reduce the access to do so many HT runs? well, 80 mins seems more than enough isnt it? also theres a good way to train ouselfs for PB

 

I see where you are coming from, this will probably cause less runs in total, but i don't support this idea because i don't want to make Horntail a boss that requires people to be strong to kill it or they cannot run at all, i think anybody should have the choice to go into it, regardless if it will take them 3hours or simply 1 hour.

Plus, what if one attacker dc on you, you won't be able to finish probably being short in time. I think there should be a room for error and the "freedom" of a player to do whatever he wants in his HT run.

 

This game is not HTRoyals

 

I never mentioned the server is only about Horntail.
It's not about Horntail only, a big part of it is to make the cs/ws market better (which is a huge part of the game for many players).

 

The only benefit from introducing WS/CS into the horntail droplist is that the income from HT will become more consistent, i.e. "profitable".

There is no obligation for the server to cater to the people that farm HT daily to protect their income from this boss. Moreover, the reality is that players will continue to farm HT irrespective of this change because it is, and remains the only boss that gives a substantial source of exp in addition to income, when done over time.

The current book prices are a reflection of server demand/supply and as silv has previously mentioned, is a reflection of the ratio of new to old players.
Old players by definition are those who are willing and able to participate in HT runs; and new players those who are willing and able to purchase skill books. As such, the price for triple throw will fluctuate but naturally fall over time, as will genesis the longer this server continues to run. Maple Warrior's price and demand are likely to sustain for the foreseeable future.

The rich in this server do not need to become richer. Accept deflation for what it is, and accept that the profitability of different activities in this game are slowly dwindling. This is the expected outcome from Update 65 and onwards.

What is probably more unexpected for some is probably the fact that WS/CS have remained on average at 500m+ since late 2018 and I'm increasingly able to sell them in FM for 595-599m. This is despite the comical attempts at manipulating the market via things such as increased frequency 2x voting/drop rate, chair gachapon recycling, widespread game nerfs and introducing meso sinks across the game.

Changes like ones you suggested (including some which have already been implemented) should all technically wait until autoban is introduced because they will only affect the CS/WS market once the astronomical meso injection that occurs from hackers are removed from the game.

 

And you missed all of my points. I can clearly see that you don't understand what I'm talking about. So let me break it down for you:

[-] You said CS/WS are high priced
- I said Hackers/RWTs are inflating the CS/WS/FS/etc. prices when they should have dropped to match the current market.

[-] You said HT Skillbooks are dropping in price due to the amount of runs being done
- I said this is due to Patch #65 which allowed runs to be successfully done (less teammates d/c'ing) via GFX fix, people having less money overall via Ulu/equip drop/NLC pot nerfs, and as well as less players playing because real life (therefore less demand!)

[-] You said CS/WS should be added to HT to combat the high price of the scrolls and make HT more profitable
- I showed that Horntail drops already gives several drops worth money. I also said HT is THE best boss in the game for EXP and can be run TWICE in a day (basically double dipping on both EXP and DROPS.

Veteran players (and people that I know) regular do HT even when they're already lv200 because its just that good. Some of them even stopped doing Cwkpq as much in favor of HT. And for people trying to reach Lv200 (and washed), their main activities for exp are the trifecta of Shao-HT-Krex. If CS/WS is implemented into HT, it will just further cement Horntail, the BEST boss in the game, as the GREATEST boss in the game.

If any boss needed CS/WS added to it, Horntail is not the one!