I came back to this game after quitting around interlude. I was 75 when I returned & went through 4 mentors before hitting the magic mark of 86.
Eager to start claiming mentee rewards for some sweet elemental resists, I nabbed 3 mentees & began leaving my 450w pc on 24/7.
Sadly, 2 of them suddenly stopped playing after a few days, so I had to kick them. So for a full week I was leaving my pc running for 1 person. An absurd penalty considering the mentee can pick up another mentor right away (but i digress).
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Today I got my electricity bill, to my surprise it was up $30.00 from the same period last year. We had a mild winter this year, so the culprit was definitely having the pc on.
I decided it was a waste of my income to participate in the mentoring program, considering the mentees had all the control. At the end of the year this little endeavour would cost me ~$450 in extra fees. A cost that is impossible to ignore.
The rule of thumb is at the end of the year, leaving your pc on will consume 1$ for every watt you use. In comparison to other mmo's, I have never come across a requirement to stay logged in. And for what, I ask you? To sit down, in a corner somewhere safe & be a statue 22 hrs a day.
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In retrospect, I can see why my previous mentors stopped logging in when they were not playing. They probably couldn't be bothered to vocalize their discontent on the forums either. In the end I've decided to mentor my 2nd account for that 10% xp, to hell with the mentee coins!
completely agree with u death, the mentee system along side with the afk shops is a big consumer of power for no reason at all, if NC cared to design there game, and think just a tiny bit about their customers, we might actualy have a desent game.
As soon as my mentees graduate i desided to leave the system aswell, beside costing me alot of money in power, its also a great way of polluting.
Every major companie today considders their co2 emmisions, goverments are making bills to enforce cars to produces less co2, airline companies are charging fees to make your flight co2 neutral by planting trees (think this is mainly for image then actualy doing something).
But NC Soft keeps comming up with new ways for players, to keep their "low" powered systems running 24/7. Great job i say !!!!!
Maybe if we didnt have to keep our PC's running all the time, some of us would actualy buy stuff from the shop, but now we spend it all on power to play the game, insted of before where we just payed to play . No big change, just a new companie we pay the bills to.
First let me say that I agree with your points on the mentor system. In the mean time however, this may help:
In L2's options, enable the 'Reduce background performance' setting. Then minimize L2 when afk for mentoring. If you have a somewhat modern PC (really anything that can play L2), then your computer will use far less power when the CPU and especially GPU are relatively idle.
To get a real picture of this, you can measure your system's power cost using a meter. Search Amazon for "Kill A Watt". For about $20, you can get a meter that will tell you the monthly cost in $ of anything you plug into it. Can help you save money by finding out exactly what costs how much to keep on, or identify things that use lots of power even when "off". Battery chargers are notoriously bad for this.
First let me say that I agree with your points on the mentor system. In the mean time however, this may help:
In L2's options, enable the 'Reduce background performance' setting. Then minimize L2 when afk for mentoring. If you have a somewhat modern PC (really anything that can play L2), then your computer will use far less power when the CPU and especially GPU are relatively idle.
This is only a half solution, yes your usage, but there is still a huge overhead when u round up all afk players who didnt do this, dont know how, forgot about it or plain just dont care.
Why not just design the game, so u dont have to be online when u aint playing your self. Get rid of every single reason in game for staying online afk, this would solve alot of problems, and chances are it might increase the revenue of l2 for NC soft.
I came back to this game after quitting around interlude. I was 75 when I returned & went through 4 mentors before hitting the magic mark of 86.
Eager to start claiming mentee rewards for some sweet elemental resists, I nabbed 3 mentees & began leaving my 450w pc on 24/7.
Sadly, 2 of them suddenly stopped playing after a few days, so I had to kick them. So for a full week I was leaving my pc running for 1 person. An absurd penalty considering the mentee can pick up another mentor right away (but i digress).
*
Today I got my electricity bill, to my surprise it was up $30.00 from the same period last year. We had a mild winter this year, so the culprit was definitely having the pc on.
I decided it was a waste of my income to participate in the mentoring program, considering the mentees had all the control. At the end of the year this little endeavour would cost me ~$450 in extra fees. A cost that is impossible to ignore.
The rule of thumb is at the end of the year, leaving your pc on will consume 1$ for every watt you use. In comparison to other mmo's, I have never come across a requirement to stay logged in. And for what, I ask you? To sit down, in a corner somewhere safe & be a statue 22 hrs a day.
*
In retrospect, I can see why my previous mentors stopped logging in when they were not playing. They probably couldn't be bothered to vocalize their discontent on the forums either. In the end I've decided to mentor my 2nd account for that 10% xp, to hell with the mentee coins!
*
/signed annoyed vet
I do have one question for you...What did you expect?
I remember people shouting for (sell) mentee slots 15-20kk 24h/7.. I was like lol 24/7 should be at least 100kk with all the electricity consumption...
You have quite some cheap electricity O.o
But yeah, NCsoft is famous for inventing new forms of "stay logged in" kind of events or duties. Korean or Japan or Chinese power grids are built with huge overhead in mind, I assume.
Do you have a fixed amount u pay for every watt u use?
And, even tho the PSU is on 450 watt, it dosent use 450 watt, thats the max load
PCs on idle dosent take much power and thats what L2 is, on idle, when ur not playing
Meh, I leave my PC on 24/7 no matter what. My 6-core beast pulls ~200 watts on idle. That includes, so you know, upwards of 3-5 L2 clients running in background.
So... if you can't afford to game 24/7 do not participate. If you can afford to run one or more systems anytime you want for as long as you want participate. Seems reasonable to me.
So... if you can't afford to game 24/7 do not participate. If you can afford to run one or more systems anytime you want for as long as you want participate. Seems reasonable to me.
And if you can't say anything intelligent, don't speak. Seems reasonable to me. Nobody asked for your opinion, we are discussing monetary concerns here, something you obviously fail to grasp as a middle aged woman that has never paid for anything in their entire lives. Some of us work harder than others, but I think we can universally agree that nobody that has earned money enjoys wasting it for no reason. It's no suprise that someone of your social standing and economic background would presume to tell others what they can or should do with what they have. I can afford to do many things, that doesn't mean I should or want to. Your logic is that of a child's as per your usual. Can't you control yourself for 1 day and stay out of a conversation that does not involve you?
But yeah, NCsoft is famous for inventing new forms of "stay logged in" kind of events or duties. Korean or Japan or Chinese power grids are built with huge overhead in mind, I assume.
Koreans apparently pay to play lineage by the hour. It makes sense, from a business perspective, to encourage them to stay logged on as much as possible. For us, not so much.This is a failure on ncwest's part to successfully localize game content for our region, our playstyle, and more importantly, our pricing scheme. Encouraging ncwest customers to stay online all day, everyday, is against ncwest's own best interests and they should have spent time developing a means to circumnaviagate this. Instead they seemed to focused a lot of their energy into the "path of awakening" nonsense, *****ing things further in my opinion.
This problem could be solved with a very small code change. Mentor buffs could either be changed to be permanent for having a mentor, or at the very least given a 24 hour duration which persist after death. This is well within the parameters of what the game engine can handle and would be based on pre-existing systems.
Another design change could be, if you have a mentor, instead of getting active buffs, you simply get passive skill buffs for the duration of the relationship.
Today I got my electricity bill, to my surprise it was up $30.00 from the same period last year. We had a mild winter this year, so the culprit was definitely having the pc on.
I don't believe whatsoever that the $30 was due to your PC.
That said, why not run the game in windowed mode and minimize it? It won't use the GPU at all then, and will barely touch the CPU/memory.
You might also want to buy a new computer since if you did notice an increase on your power bill, you are likely sporting a PC as old as the game itself.
And if you can't say anything intelligent, don't speak. Seems reasonable to me. Nobody asked for your opinion, we are discussing monetary concerns here, something you obviously fail to grasp as a middle aged woman that has never paid for anything in their entire lives. Some of us work harder than others, but I think we can universally agree that nobody that has earned money enjoys wasting it for no reason. It's no suprise that someone of your social standing and economic background would presume to tell others what they can or should do with what they have. I can afford to do many things, that doesn't mean I should or want to. Your logic is that of a child's as per your usual. Can't you control yourself for 1 day and stay out of a conversation that does not involve you?
Your attacks on me are humorous and it gives me great pleasure when you react like this, thanks. The problem with open forums is you get everyone's opinions on what you post regardless how intelligent or stupid. Honestly, I don't worry about spending an additional $30 on anything and can only give my opinion with that as a factor. Wasting money is relative to how much of it you have or don't have available.
Let me break this down for you since once again you fail to grasp a concept. If your monthly budget can not withstand a $30 increase due to your increased game play do not play the game. If you still want to increase your game exposure you will have to work even harder, making more money to cover your increased expenditures.
If you are already working harder than others I recommend you try working smarter. ~ IMHO
Dracha u are right, open forums are a problem and u clearly stated why with your contribution. This was never about weather or not someone can afford 30$ or not playing.
This thread was to enlight the problem of NC West enforcing a bad design with a even worse business plan. No other MMO forces u to keep your clients logged in 24/7 for any kind of benifits. people should be encouraged to play, not to stay afk online, something NC currently is working hard on.
First of all u have the mentor system, but on top of that the change to Vitality. In the old days the longer u stayed logged out, the more vitality u gained, to maximise the effect when u played. Now its stay online gain little, be happy!!!
I think the main problem, that the NCsoft worked out at first to the Asian market the game. In Korea you need pay for, that time what you spend in hunting zone while if you are in the town you won't need to pay nothing.
Also most of the players in Korea play from different Net Caffees where they aren't really effected from them electricity payment.
Also just stay login, when you use your computer for yourself, it is your own problem that you were logged in in 24/7.
But yes it is an unfair thing really, that a Mentee anytime can change mentor without penalty, while the Mentor get 1 week penalty if his mentee leave him, if he kick off his mentee and if the mentee finished with the leveling.
If the Mentor get it than the Mentee have to get it too, or if the Mentee not get it should not get penalty for the Mentor too!
I don't know what kind of PSU you got but I've 650W one, modular and a watt-o-meter(device not software) says system is drawing 75-100 watts of power per hour. (with no monitor)
1 kW/h costs 40 US cents for me so lets take 100watts(accounting for PSU's efficiency as well because PSU's take energy loses). In 24 hours it would sum up to 2.4 kW or ~1$ so yeah in 30 days it would add up to 30$ bill but than again minimum wage is something like 19 USD per hour and average is probably about 25-30 USD per hour so in the end it doesn't make much difference.
However as for you, I doubt you pay 40 US cents per kW so the actual price should be lower or you got really crappy PSU that draws whole 450w at any given time. In that case throw that PSU out and buy decent one.
I do not think 450W PSUs were THAT ineffective, PSUs give only what system asks for with certain effectivity but 120W immediate consumption will never draw full 450W. That's what those Bronze, Silver, Golt, Platinum certificates are for.
It's more that s/he may have older system without additional power management features, they are turned off, or running game active all the time. If L2 gets minimized, CPU gets throttled to half the speed = lower consumption, graphic card (I have dual chip 320W monstrosity) sucks less power because it does not render anything besides desktop and leaving system idle monitor goes to sleep = minus additional 70-120W.
BTW whoever is concerned about power consumption, check out new AMD 7000 series graphic cards, their chips are awesomely scalable when it comes to power consumption and performance, eating negligible watts when they idle.
1 kW/h costs 40 US cents for me so lets take 100watts(accounting for PSU's efficiency as well because PSU's take energy loses). In 24 hours it would sum up to 2.4 kW or ~1$ so yeah in 30 days it would add up to 30$ bill but than again minimum wage is something like 19 USD per hour and average is probably about 25-30 USD per hour so in the end it doesn't make much difference.
Where do you live? Cause minimum wage is 8.25$/h here.
Where do you live? Cause minimum wage is 8.25$/h here.
In Norway, we actually do not have minimum wage legislation so unions could have high bargaining power. However it doesn't matter sort of nation wide non written agreement exists that you will not get less than ~20 USD/hour.
But don't think everyone in Norway is rich, progressive tax system, SUPER HIGH TAXES and VERY EXPENSIVE living costs makes up for the money earned.
Single pack of cigarettes(20) ~15 USD's
Bottle of coca cola 2l ~5 USD's
Cinema ticket ~15 USD
I worked in tourist information for some time and we were recommending to bring AT LEAST 150 EU per day to spent in Norway(including accommodation, travel, food and other costs).