Talk to the Team: Vendor Equipment

[Frith-Rae]

I don't know that I agree that the equipment should be on the Connies, alongside player equipment.

At first glance I can see why it could be helpful (those reasons the above stated and a few others), but when I really think about it - that could get very confusing. Along with price-limitations and not understanding the difference between the item sold by "NPC of Game" and the item sold/crafted by a player.

My views mimic Ssilmaths - I can see the point to putting them on the basic trainers but for hybrid classes how is this "simple"? Unless of course the armor is only there for the level 1-20 (or 1-10 whenever you hybridize yourself..), and it would not be a concern for hybrid-clases to know where to go to get starter armor (and it wouldn't increase with each tier either).

I too am for the new npc idea (with or without a new building), esp. if the gear is meant to give each tier an ability to equip themselves in something serviceable - seems easier than trying to explain which hybrid classes go to which basic trainer.

[Phillip]

The player-driven market did work briefly in Istaria - until the adventurers started leaving. Too much emphasis and importance of crafter over adventurer a bit of a turn off for people after a while.

Some changes needed to turn things around:

1) Lots of adventurers inc
2) Moneysink for high end crafters

Right now we have the opposite.

On #1, one way to help retain new adventurers is to have teched & unteched t1-t3 drop from mobs. Those who thinks this would kill the economy, please note we don't have one atm.

T4-5 will come from crafters. Maybe there can be an NPC that buys teched goods from crafters and hold on to them on long timers to be sold to new players. Some may say, well why not just ask crafters to make things - we know that doesn't always work.

On #2, I'll start with expensive & unique dye-kits that cost much gold to get, as well as pimped out structures, etc. Anything that goes on a plot.

[AmonGwareth]

The player-driven market did work briefly in Istaria - until the adventurers started leaving. Too much emphasis and importance of crafter over adventurer a bit of a turn off for people after a while.

Some changes needed to turn things around:

1) Lots of adventurers inc
2) Moneysink for high end crafters

Right now we have the opposite.

On #1, one way to help retain new adventurers is to have teched & unteched t1-t3 drop from mobs. Those who thinks this would kill the economy, please note we don't have one atm.

T4-5 will come from crafters. Maybe there can be an NPC that buys teched goods from crafters and hold on to them on long timers to be sold to new players. Some may say, well why not just ask crafters to make things - we know that doesn't always work.

On #2, I'll start with expensive & unique dye-kits that cost much gold to get, as well as pimped out structures, etc. Anything that goes on a plot.

Please stay on topic. This isn't about coin sinks, its about selling equipment on vendors. They are related, but thats for another thread entirely.

[awdz]

I would go with putting the gear on adventurer trainers for the basic classes, with advanced classes' trainers immediately telling someone who joins the class where to find appropriate armor (like craft trainers immediately offer starting equipment).

[Thicklesip]

1. No NPC equipment on the connies. The point of consignment, to me, is that it's for PLAYER commerce. Muddling it up with NPC items too makes my head hurt.

2. Oh oh oh-- a problem I only thought of with craft trainers is that they already tend to have a pretty big list of sold goods, what with having to offer formulas to crafters. So that would lean my opinion towards putting it for sale on new NPCs or the adventure class trainers.

[Daulnay]

1. No NPC equipment on the connies. The point of consignment, to me, is that it's for PLAYER commerce. Muddling it up with NPC items too makes my head hurt.

Let's keep our eye on the prize here. We want new players to stay (the point of the change is to fix a retention issue, that it's too hard to get decent enough equipment. Without decent equipment, leveling is too hard and slow, so people leave).

Good teched equipment makes leveling tolerable, but hardly a cakewalk. I was initially against putting unteched equipment on a merchant, because it slows up getting new players into the crafting economy and thereby the community, but I have changed my mind. I think it will be fine, as long as other things are put in place to push new players towards teched equipment (and the community).

On #1, one way to help retain new adventurers is to have teched & unteched t1-t3 drop from mobs. Those who thinks this would kill the economy, please note we don't have one atm.

This steers people away from one of the great strengths of the game, the crafting. Why should anyone craft at the lower levels if it's all available as drops? The current system steers people into the community, to get teched crafted armor and weapons. We should instead be making that process easier.

[Frith-Rae]

I think it will be fine, as long as other things are put in place to push new players towards teched equipment (and the community).

Oh I think the very fact that they WILL FEEL their "this gear is no where near good enough for me to be able to do this right" will be a big enough push for new players to start going "ok so where is the good gear".

Plenty of games have their version of untouched gear on various vendors, cheap an easy to pick up (wether it makes it white gear, or untouched gear, or stateless, or whatever term in that game is used for a gear idea like this) - noone ever buys those because they learn real quick it wont be enough to game with.

Teched gear - esp. at higher tiers - is pretty much a requirement to fight on-level mobs. This simple discrepancy (between non-tech beginner gear and teched-gear) I think will be enough of a push to have new players looking for the better gear (or crafting their own).

No need to reinvent the wheel (though the ability to fight well without having to have the best of the best teched-gear would be nice IMO. Tech farming is the worst. But thats a different discussion LOL)

[Daulnay]

No need to reinvent the wheel (though the ability to fight well without having to have the best of the best teched-gear would be nice IMO. Tech farming is the worst. But thats a different discussion LOL)

Not entirely a different discussion. We want to boost retention of new players, and better access to first tier teched armor and tech bits would be part of the answer. The other day I saw a bunch of tier 1 tech bits on the Pawnbroker in New Trismus. That should not happen!!! There haven't been any on the Consigner there for several days, of course.

[Phillip]

Let's keep our eye on the prize here. We want new players to stay (the point of the change is to fix a retention issue, that it's too hard to get decent enough equipment. Without decent equipment, leveling is too hard and slow, so people leave).

This steers people away from one of the great strengths of the game, the crafting. Why should anyone craft at the lower levels if it's all available as drops? The current system steers people into the community, to get teched crafted armor and weapons. We should instead be making that process easier.

People craft at lower levels nowadays to get to higher levels (like me). Basically just wiz right by. There's no need to craft lower teched gear - money meaningless and there's no market anyways. As well, making gear is just one part of crafting - there's also plot building. By the time a player get to T4 - they prob want look into buying a plot and building.

I think there are some really nice folks on my server. For people like you and me, perhaps we've been around hence we kind of feel the close-knit basis of the so called community. However the reality is, community in Istaria is something I've never believed can bring any excitement to new players. The make-up of our community are mostly just people working on their many plots, chattering now and then. Sometimes they help make things for new players, sometimes not. Just folks doing their own thing.

Back on topic - adding unteched gear on vendors or whoever won't make things anymore or less exciting for new players. Level up, buy unteched stuff, rinse and repeat is not fun whatoever. Putting that as drops - much more alluring.

[Thicklesip]

Back on topic - adding unteched gear on vendors or whoever won't make things anymore or less exciting for new players. Level up, buy unteched stuff, rinse and repeat is not fun whatoever. Putting that as drops - much more alluring.

The point of this proposed basic gear is that it would act as a stopgap, to make it so players could go out and start fighting things to get BETTER gear. Making the basic "just enough that you can start killing things" gear a drop is... ow brain cramp.

Anyways we've now had a bunch of posts that have nothing to do with Amon's latest question, and since I love discussion but want to keep stuff where it's supposed to be, I propose tangents and related discussions move over here to this handy-dandy thread.

Re-opened because I am considering working on this. Trying to determine if:

a) Equipment should be on the Craft Trainers.

b) Equipment should be on the Adventure Trainers.

c) Equipment should be on entirely new NPCs or Pawnbrokers.

I'm leaning towards (b) and my reasoning is that the players the equipment is meant to help is adventurers and so they would likely be at their trainers. Going to a craft trainer might not occur to them. (c) is a possibility because players would go to special vendors for it, but it would need to be well located in every town.

Buying equipment related to your class does have a precedent in other MMOs, though in many its often special non-crafted items meant as coin sinks rather than standard craftable items.

Btw, reading back through the posts I did want to clarify something. This equipment would ONLY be armor, shields, spells, and weapons. No tools, pouches, backpacks, cargo disks, cargo gear, etc.

Opinions on the placement of the items?

I am currently leaning most heavily towards options B & C. C features the slightly nuisance of needing to jam more NPCs into cities, but both B and C would be easy to use and (perhaps most importantly) easy to teach to newbies. I'm really not fond of A, between how complicated tracking down whatever you wanted would be and the hassle of those NPCs having even LONGER trade lists to wade through.

[Phillip]

The point of this proposed basic gear is that it would act as a stopgap, to make it so players could go out and start fighting things to get BETTER gear.

I understand that from the original post. However I feel there's a lack of understanding for the new player - from both current players and developer. We understand noobs have been having a tough time getting gear so let's dumb untechs on NPCs and that's it?

If the eye on the prize is to retain new players, IMO I don't think that's good enough.

[Daulnay]

We understand noobs have been having a tough time getting gear so let's dumb untechs on NPCs and that's it?

In order to make it easiest for new players, let's put the (unteched) gear on a new NPC. Craft trainers would be, as Thicklesip says, too hard to figure out and track down. The new NPC can coach the new player, telling them that better (teched) gear can be had at the consigner, made oneself, or gotten from the Marketplace channel.

That would make it work, without messing up the current good parts of the game.

[Ming]

I understand it's hard to get armor made, but as a crafter who sucks at fighting, I still can't support the idea of easily handing out armor. Trainer quests to get the armor pieces would be fair, I think. For tiers one and two. After that, I think a player should be around long enough to join a guild and get help. Just handing it out or selling it defeats the idea of the game. Why not hand out everything in that case, it would be easier.

[awdz]

I understand it's hard to get armor made, but as a crafter who sucks at fighting, I still can't support the idea of easily handing out armor. Trainer quests to get the armor pieces would be fair, I think. For tiers one and two. After that, I think a player should be around long enough to join a guild and get help. Just handing it out or selling it defeats the idea of the game. Why not hand out everything in that case, it would be easier.

Oh, good points here. I love the idea of trainer quests - it uses the obvious starting place for players taking a class to learn from.

[Delite]

One solution to this would be to add non-teched items to existing Trainers so that players could purchase un-teched items for immediate use. Only items that are also sold as formulas would be available (so, for example, an Armorsmith Trainer would only sell Ringmail and Scalemail, not Chainmail or Platemail) and these would be un-teched.

This would still leave a market for teched items as well as for the looted variety of items. But it would provide a mechanism for players who are new to the game or in the middle tiers to obtain basic equipment for their level quickly, while still providing a market for existing players by providing techniqued equipment.

I've given this much thought and I tried to see the pros and cons. Pro, it would allow the new players easy access to the gears they need.

Con, it takes away the coins a new player may earn stocking the connie while leveling their craft skill.

Another Con, tech comps are not always easy to get so stocking the connie with teched gear wouldn't really be beneficial to a player who prefers crafting over adventuring. Yes some players do stock the connie with comps at a decent price, but other players will overprice the comps.

With tier 1 and tier 2 gear, I (and others) tend to keep the gears cost at 100c, 150c, 200c, and 250c. Have a feeling this would drive market prices up by a lot and that wouldn't be beneficial to new players.

So with 2 cons and only 1 pro (imo) I would have to say no to this idea.

[CloudAngel]

I understand it's hard to get armor made, but as a crafter who sucks at fighting, I still can't support the idea of easily handing out armor. Trainer quests to get the armor pieces would be fair, I think. For tiers one and two. After that, I think a player should be around long enough to join a guild and get help. Just handing it out or selling it defeats the idea of the game. Why not hand out everything in that case, it would be easier.

Also refurbished gear is available from trainers when starting a school and from militia suppy officers. This is enough to get started with for new adventurers. More basic gear would be redundant and hurt new crafters chances to start selling gear on the connie.

[AmonGwareth]

Complaints about the middle tier are really what sparked the original post in this thread. Players saying that they were having trouble finding any T2, T3 and T4 equipment because the connies were only being stocked with T1 and T5.

[Phillip]

A few things here...One, adding quests means work (coding), and it's not even that appealing adventurewise - there's an art here that most are simply clueless about. Two, no one says to give away the stuff for free. Having things drop from mobs is appealing and think of the shear amount a player must slay in a multiclassing game. Three, Frith is right. Adding the stuff on vendor will make it kinda blah. Like buying white gear in lotro.

Some here say this will take away a good part of the game. A good part I agree though always has been only for a certain type folks. As even now these folks hardly get to make these t1-13 items.

[Drevar]

I think I'd rather just see the starter quests give out a piece or two of gear as an extra reward. Even if they had a T1 tech, I don't think there will be a huge upheaval of the market.

I wish the token/bounty marker system had been revamped instead of totally taken out as these alternate currencies present solutions to this issue as well as acquiring techs and formulas (in the now closed topic about tech/formula chests). But this was apparently "too hard" for people to understand.

Similarly, the lack of vendor space is also big factor in not having sets of T2-T4 stuff on the consigners as well. Until you can somehow consign entire sets of goods as one item, or have reverse consignment, or allow a thousand vendor slots per account, the problem won't go away.

[Shadowedraven]

Perhaps the words of a newcomer to the game would be helpful on this issue.
I personally did not know about there being teched armor/weapons other than for the dragons ( I have 3 hatchies). I've been gaming a long time so I know that while a game doesn't need to be easy to encourage people to stay it does need to have a good tutorial.
Istaria's tutorial is excellent. I understand everyone's concerns about the economy and ruining the basic feel of Istaria... that is what is keeping me here... however... it's not always easy to link up with people willing to teach you what you need to know.
Perhaps you could add something into the tutorials for bipeds and dragons alike stating that they can get basic gear from their trainers (which they already do) and suggesting they seek out player crafters for teched armor and weapons or even just better non teched items. That way they know from the beginning A) what they're starting with is minimal, B) where to go to get better, and C) a limited idea of what they are looking for 'teched armor or weapons'.