So I was told to make a new topic about the subject so I would not interfere with someone elses. The subject sort of says it all. Pretty much everyone wants the Professional IGE/resellers or whatever you want to call them gone. They make gameplay a hassle and violate more parts of the EULA then is even worth mentioning.
Can the Lineage2 economy survive without them the way it is? Would we be better off without them? Personally I think so. Unfortunatly since they make up a huge amount of the subscrpition base with all the little third party program guys running around getting rid of them has been said an impossible and stupid thing to do. We'd be killing the game if we got rid of them.
My own personal opinion is they make the game in many senses sometimes unplayable. With farmer run raid boss clans and third party program resell shops in Giran/Dion/Aden and even some of the new towns and in every starter village except TI they are virtually everywhere.
Back to my personal opinion, I think Lineage would be better off without them, sure not everyone will be able to get brand new gear right away, but as keeps being pointed out, we are not meant to have top gear right off the bat for each new equipment upgrade. The benefits of not having them in the game are huge. The devlelopers will finally see an unbiased version of the game and the players will eventually benefit from this.
Please post your thoughts on this and try to keep the discussion civil and productive.
Can Lineage2 Survive without Professional Farmers?
Yes.
I hope most people relise the drop rate is the way it is because of the farmers. It has gotten worse every chronicle. If there were no farmers they would have to adjust the drop rate or the game would die.
The market will be shook up a bit, but it will recover. If the drop tables where redone. Make it so only adena drops and mats can only be gained by means of spoil.
This does a few things, it places the job of resource gathering back on the Scavengers/Bounty Hunter which sets the price for goods... We have the Artisan/Warsmith that uses those goods for crafting which sets the price for crafting. Then you have the buyer that uses the adena to pay for those services.
This is my vision of what the game economy should be like.
can it survive? yes
can it survive in its current form? no
lineage needs a complete redisign to make the drops more aquireable (or at least more spoilable)
as a crafter its hard enough to make anything let alone a S grade weapon which prolly has blade drop rates in the hudreds of thousands
when i make something you can rest assured something in it was gathered by a farmer
truth is back in c1 nc could have made the drops more reasonable and got a few ppl to stick around eventually building a customer base larger than the farmers we have now
now its a case of "ban half of each server raise drop rates and eventually get a 2% increase in players"
its too late you cant fix something as broken as lineage
A sad as it may seem L2 NA can not survive without the farmers. Have you seen how the prices shoot up when a majority of the farmers get banned? It's insane and grinding for mats would be out of the question for many.
So let's say there were no farmers. Mats would be scarce and prices would be high. The casual player would most likely give up so subscriptions would drop. With a low population a few servers would get merged.
When I talk of mats it's not just stems, bones, and ori ores. I also talk of key mats like BoP shafts, BW tunic parts, and Majestic Necklace beads. There's also the recipes. I don't know of any player willing to go and spoil 3000 black ore parts and if they did it would most likely be with the aid of 3rd party software. So would it be any different than farmers if and when that happened?
would be nice to be able to use the manor system to get my own stuff, however without farmers I think I would not be the only real player pouncing on the manor system if farmers were gone.
We have an army of players on 24/7 with the sole intent to make money by selling what they get from mobs. You take them all away, and you get a mix of hardcore to casual players, that may do a lot of farming or may use the manor system quite a bit, but there will be nowhere near the amount or variety of mats for sale in Giran at any given time. Prices will of course go up, probably a lot more than I'd like to think.
You dont have to like them, you dont have to be greatful for the mats they supply, infatct you can hate their guts. But I think if they were all gone for good tomorrow. Things would get very ugly after a while.
I hope most people relise the drop rate is the way it is because of the farmers
How does that work? Are you sure that the drop rate is effected by the number of times a mob is killed?
Ok this is just my opinion. Should have stated that to begin with. My bust
I think drop rate is dependent on items material ingame and is adjusted with each update/Chronicle. When I first started playing C2 it wasn't to bad but when C3 hit it went way down. Now for C4 it seems even harder to get item parts. Along with this it also seems that with every chronicle there is an increase in (professional players) is it just because there are more areas to hunt? I think its because it takes longer to collect parts so they need more toons ingame to collect that materials.
I believe they do this instead of raising prices because they have great understanding of the economy and when prices are to high. Yes prices do fluctuate but there is a point where item prices get to high and wont sell. So instead of raising the prices they keep them at an average lvl and just increase the toons collecting them.
Yes there is some stuff mainly A grade that are falling in price. But I believe it is because you can farm them now. Instead of insane quests that you might get what you need from.
Now if all the farmers would be gone from the game (won't ever happen) it would crush the game intitialy then NCSOFT would have to readjust the drop rate to keep the game going.
Are you saposed to get your gear at that next lvl, that really depends on you. I got all my gear at 61, even tho I failed elemental sword 2 times before it crafted on the 3rd time.
Can L2 servive with out farmers, personally, with the way the grind is I'm say: NO.
Can the econimany servive: Yes.
With splatters idea of a revamp: NO way in Hell would L2 servive.
if by what splatter would like, then the only adena or mats you'd get would be from mannor system(which bots control) or from playing a dwarf, then no one would have money to buy anything. cause then every one would play a BH, and be fighting over spoils! (ever seen a BH spoil a necros mob then sweep it, so they die cause corpse drain can't be used,happend to me alot in C2)
The proplem isn't really with the farmers in my oppion.
I think the proplem really instands from our: GREAD.
Every one wants to be best, wants to have top gear, lvls and so on. To get that top gear/lvl W/E, they are willing to use out side meens to achieve it.
To salve the proplem, Items need to be lowered in value(which meens 40m for a hlemet,100m for a weapon = too much); Quest need to be alot easier, OR their funtion totally changed.
An Examble of a hard to do quest, the A/g quest for robes rec's, A/g weapon, A/g helmets.
For Robes you got to hunt 100 horns from keriks(which are 5x HP, lvl 70+), and 100 fangs from (XX mob,which are 3X hp and 65+).
Weapons you have to first get lvl 1 coin member (not freaken easy) then get a secound quest to be a royal member, then hunt for mobs that you soon out lvl at 63).
Helmets: you get from a quest in ToI, which the drop rate for the items is very low, and the rate to get one or 2 of the items needed is even lower.
So thats one reason that farmers are around, cause to get the items needed to craft is so darn hard that people don't want to face the 1 mounth grind to get a 60% rec that will fail most of the time.
Can I blame people for buying out side founds: not Really, honsestly.
Do I approve: nah.
Do they have any other choise: yes.
Will they take the easy way out: Doh!! or else why are we talking about it.
It's sad I know, but face the facts. if NCsoft wants a change, make the game easier, not harder, your only helping the farmers, not the players! and by godly stop Ebaying/IGEing your money.
The economy will die in the first step.
But it will recover and there will be a market for everything again.
Remember the days when people that hit 22 were sooo freakin happy to get a Saber?
And Dual Storms or Dual SoR were valid weapons for melee-fighters?
Dual 107's were a really cool thing and the most power-level stuff you can have?
When you were happy to get a Karmian and farmed ages to get stuff like the stockings receipe? (Captain Kylon, I hate you)
When a whole clan worked weeks to get 1 Avadon?
Jesus, farmers made so lazy persons out of most of us.
If you need something, go to the market and buy it.
Without all the farmer-stuff and without all the ebayers money, some prices will drop and others will rise, but in the end, it will work out!
Exactly, these are the things I have been saying for awhile.
The developers can only see what is happening now, and right now what is happening is that "professional" gameplayers have the market squarely in their control, because they use third party programs to farm and delevel at the same mobs for weeks and sometimes months on end. (Can't tell you how many of the same trains I have seen at the same places).
I think the game would take a chronicle of readjustment but after awhile things would eventually settle back into a normal rythmn and after Ncsoft adjusted mats and drops accordingly we would have a solid game play expierence.
Right now it's cheat out the farmers when you can and force them out of prime hunting spots.
I'm also thinking that getting rid of pro farmers is very good for L2. It's a hard task but it will do next things:
1) promote clan activities
You need to work to equip clan members together as a clan. for example in C1 it was common practice to hunt as clan groups in forest of mirrors to get emi bow shafts to craft emi bow for archers in clan.
2) promote playing of warsmith/bounty hunters
Currently most of warsmithes is just leveled to specific level (like 56, 62, 70) for different craft grades.
3) Increase difference between equipment on different chars.
Right now, almost all high level chars use same gear.
Can the Lineage2 economy survive without them the way it is? Would we be better off without them?
Simple experiment would be to get a clan on to the PTS and see if it can equip itself in B Grade.
I do believe it is fully possible to maintain the economy, you would just have to deal with not having top grade gear when you turn, not using shots all the time in PvE, etc.
Simple experiment would be to get a clan on to the PTS and see if it can equip itself in B Grade.
i think the problem lies in low population therefore on the pts you wouldnt have a chance to equip yourself
last i checked it took a lvl or more to get 1 weapon blade
not such a big deal when you have hundreds of ppl hunting the same area who dont need the blade
Yes, It can survive alright, until we die and lose our B gr or A grade or even S gr armor set pieces or jewelry then it will be a good farewell....and not to mention there will be absolutely no pvp because no one will want to turn red and lose they hard earn weapon and armor.
The way I see L2 and its economy right now is:
Linage 2 - farmers < playing 8bit mario bros 1 (yes that mario is less grinding very monotonic but it was fun for it's time)
don't want farmers? then loosen the econ cycle....make drops way way way less rare
Yes it can survive, and if we get rid of the farmers the "regular" player will actually be able to use the manor system.
The farmers are wide spread there is no debating that. But i have to wondered....
They(NC) have said "we are active in the fight against the pro farmer". But what makes me wonder some is, are they turning half blind eye towards the issue while address the issue?
I some times think... They know how removing every pro farmer will unsettle the economy, and thats just something they don't want to happen. So they are trying to find a trade off. The lesser of two evils so to speak.
I say that as i sit here in De land and watch a 20 dwarf ballet.
I see a bunch of people posting and only one who has it right. Let me give a bit more detail on how this sort of thing works.
MMO companies who have player run economies pay a large amount of attention to that economy. They know it's growth rate, they know how many mats are being farmed, they know how many come from quests and the manor and all the various other ways to get mats.
They also know that for a healthy game, you need a certain amount of growth, but not too much or you have inflation and under an inflated economy the new player takes a beating. So they have in their mind an amount of growth they want to see, they also probably have in their mind an optimal amount of mats that are injected into the economy.
OK. So they know they want the economy to grow by a certain amount. There is a couple things they can do to affect this growth. They can increase drop rates, they can increase misc other ways for mats/adena to enter the economy (quests, manor) and lastly they can adjust the money sinks. (Soul ore price, GK fees, availability of Enchant scrolls, etc)
Now if they want the economy to grow at say 10% per month the easiest thing to do is adjust the drop rate to give 10% growth. Fine tune it up or down a bit. I have a theory that they are doing this on the fly and on a regular basis, which is why they have not published the drop tables, because the percentage chance of a drop changes. I think that they have made it dynamic, so that they can tweak it as needed.
Now here's the problem. If we had a server full of real players, then they would set the drop rate to maintain their target economic growth. Now if we take that same server and inject a whole bunch of pro-farmers into it, and they are playing 24/7, guess what's going to happen? That's right those pro-farmers are going to make a killing for a while because of the drop rate. At the end of that month NCSoft is going to see some crazy growth because of those 24/7 players. What are they going to do? They're going to lower the drop rate to get back in line with the growth they want.
Everyone has their cause and effect backwards. The drop rate is low because we have all of these farmers working 24/7 and they have had compensate for that by lowering the drop rate. If those farmers where to suddenly go away do you think NCSoft would just ignore the fact that the economic growth went from 10% to 1%? Hell no they won't because as everyone know, too low of a growth rate and the game sucks. They would adjust the economy to compensate.
Finally, think about this:
My clan has about 50 active players. I would guess that we play an average of 3 hrs per day. So that 150 Hr per day.
Now compare us to a bot party of 9 players going say 20hr's. (give em 4 hrs to delevel and do whatever else..) that's 180 hr's for that bot party.
What does that mean? That means that if we all are farming the same lvl of mobs and same type, that a 9 man bot party is making more money in a day and getting more drops than a freaking 50 person clan.
With that example in mind, maybe now you can imagine how the drop rate has been adjusted to compensate, and how the bots affect every player of the game.
Lastly, take into account that if that 9 man bot party were removed from the game that NCSoft would need to roughly double the drop rate in order to maintain the same growth!!
If what you said doesn't hold true and mirror whats happening.
They are removing those type of players as fast as their ingame policys will allow. But it's like a leak in a pool and all NC is doing is refilling the pool. Whats need is to patch the pool first.
They are removing the pro farmers, but for everyone two takes their place.
You don't have to be Rocket Scientists to understand this:
If you knew that you have a 5% (or even just 1%, just an example...) possibility to get your new SLS sword as a whole drop, would you ever contact a farmer to get adena for real money and go buy it?
I think that people are missing a very important point.
The pro farmers are here because it's a profitable business for them. They will never go away while that's the case and I can't see everyone suddenly deciding to stop the practices that make it profitable.
The point about whether or not the game could survive without them is moot. They aren't going away as long as the people who want them still play.
I have played a lot of these games and they exist in EVERY one of them. I actually remember when they didn't, but someone saw a way to tap into human sloth and greed and since that time, they've been here.
It's not the economy that makes the pro farmers, it's human nature.
I think that people are missing a very important point.
The pro farmers are here because it's a profitable business for them. They will never go away while that's the case and I can't see everyone suddenly deciding to stop the practices that make it profitable.
The point about whether or not the game could survive without them is moot. They aren't going away as long as the people who want them still play.
I have played a lot of these games and they exist in EVERY one of them. I actually remember when they didn't, but someone saw a way to tap into human sloth and greed and since that time, they've been here.
It's not the economy that makes the pro farmers, it's human nature.
It's a profitable business for them because they have "something" to sell for money.
If that "something" fails to exist, no profit for them so they just go away...
Which of the above is not well understandable?
It's not "Human Nature" when a L2 player who knows that he might never-ever get the gear he/she wants by simply hunting, he/she feels forced to trade with farmers...
"Human Nature" is that that player simply wants to enjoy the game in the afternoon, and still keep sleeping at nights and doing his/her job/school during the day...
Thus, he/she wants to level-up in-game and equip his/her toon like anybody else would...
Not talking to Jute but all you guys here in general.
A few of you told that the manor system is run by pro farmers.Well since C4 came in (new interface) is 10 times easyer to turn in my crops.Heck there are fruits like Desert codran (DMP-sells for 15-20k) that arent depleted till a new session starts.Yes the popular seeds are gone fast but consider how many players there are in the server.Also fruits are getting accumulated-they dont dissapear so there are alot of legit players that got tons of fruits to sell back.
Ive gotten most of my matts for SoV (enria,iron ore,CBP) from the manor.
Also the matts drops-for 1 day i was able to obtain 300 of iron,bones and varnish at Forsaken plains from tigers and orcs (it might not be alot for 60 lvl player but still...) got alos 1 great sowrd and 2 kris edges that day.Now i dont need those so ill sell them to someone.I think that L2 would be better without the farmers since i had to flag on a few to get the out of my spot.
Also i play on Teon-the server thats supposed to have the most pro farmers from all of them.