the new gauntlet

[Kara o'Tool]

Hello folks,

I would like to share my opinion about the new gauntlet without money and with the reduced arty drop.

About the money, i dont know what to say, it seems to me useless to go to gauntlet, why should i waste time to have so little reward?

I have a good benchmark about this dungeon, i did this before the change for 21 days and i recorded the arty drop rate.
With around 1200 luck i used to get an arty (on average) every 13 monsters so it was one every 2 rounds roughly.

Now with the same setup i got 1 arty every 24 monsters (i tried this for only 2 days tho) but it seems to me that the drop rate has been decreased too much.

Can anyone fix the way it was please?

[+Nyx]

The artifact drop chance was not modified at all.

[Ilsanor]

I'd just like to say that I'm not sure the recent changes are going in the right direction. I can understand that Umbris et al. needed a revamp, but that made them impossible for the mid level players. Now you remove gauntlet as a gold source for yet again the same range of players. If it goes on (say, balrons get a gold drop nerf) there won't be any places that allow players to transition from noob to relayered vet. It'd be nice to get content that's tailored in difficulty and rewards to the mid range players (say from almost-220 dex to GoC set). I know, I know "fighting the inflation and repairing the economy" and stuff, but cutting down on things to do is IMO not the right way to do it. Gauntlet was almost as rewarding as hunting balrons with equivalent combat abilities required and a nasty micromanagement aspect (gold limit on a mule mostly) - now it will be mostly a sad reminder of "good 'ole days". I kinda get the notion that noobs are cared for, vets get new and improved content and the players in between are left to fend for themselves.

[Locke]

Hi, here my opinion about this nurf in gauntlet

hum... i remembered before this change when i was doing lan with one friend and killed gauntlet boss for almost 10 hours( on many days ) and only received one dryad bow, i had 765 luck, at least at this period i collected some gold at the end. Now i don't see the point to farm this place anymore, its so repetitive and frustrating to receive some useless junk or nothing. Imagine receiving only a pathetic dryad bow after 10 hours, without anything( ok we have good amount of token but no gold anymore) lol and its already long to kill darkfather( 0 gold its a lil bit pathetic).

+ each time you close or nurf a area to farm gold, other place are already crowded, so its like more and more harder to get gold and least funny because its more repetitive

One big turn off i felt about diablo 3 was nurf and i quit.

And i paid for your server real money, i'm one of your client and dont really like when you reduce more and more and more my pleasure... and im talking about the shard nerf i saw in the past 2-3month

What ever happens in the future, you are the boss, but remember what your doing when its negative , it have repercussion on player overall pleasure

I'm sure you have other way to help this shard economy in a positive way, like creating new artifact or furniture that need lot of random ressource( exemple : gleam aura leggings) or new kind of relayer deed...

I'm just giving some idea but i like so much playing uo and lot of point are exceptionnal on this shard btw...

I like your GM team, your not a lot but when you work we can see it and its wonderfull, i cross my finger thinking about sgail and britain-felucca

p.s : I know my english spelling is awful, i'm french native and at least im trying to improve it, so please dont be to much belligerent about that...

Good night and peace!

[+Nyx]

I'm getting sick of repeating myself but I will do so one more time:

The gauntlet change was a change intended to be made awhile back when the gauntlet was becoming a huge problem due to players trolling, kill stealing, etc. At that time, Colibri planned to remove the gold and up the artifact chance in an attempt to remove some of the drama from that area and therefore reduce the number of irritating pages we had to answer regarding it. When Colibri makes certain types of changes, they require a restart, so he sort of queues them up and they go live when the shard gets a full and proper restart (which is not quite the same thing as rebooting after a crash/freeze such as we experienced the other week). Well, Colibri got insanely busy IRL and the change never made it in until now, when we'd all forgotten about it being there at all.

So, since gauntlet hasn't been a big problem lately and thus the gold change wasn't really necessary; I have suggested the following to Colibri:
- Return the gold drops, marginally reduced if he feels that it is necessary.
- Increase the artifact drop by a small margin (<5%).

Or, if he does not wish to return the gold drops:
- increase token drops by a small margin (~5%)
- increase the artifact drop by a larger margin (~10%)

I have no way to know whether he will approve either of these options, or neither. It is entirely up to Colibri to make the changes he feels are best for the shard.


Also, it's important for everyone to realize that part of keeping the economy as balanced as possible is correcting or removing areas which are heavily exploited or abused. I'm sure y'all loved making thousands of ointments and millions of gold in Fel Wrong in just a couple of hours without even paying much attention; but that was not intended. Over time, ointment prices tanked because of it. To correct that mistake, we had to modify the drop rates. You may see this as a nerf, but those drop rates were never intended by Colibri or the staff. The person who made the dungeon didn't realize it would be abused the way it ended up being; nor did she want it to be. We have to look at the bigger picture - what seems like a no-big-deal easy money location for you guys can, over time, drastically affect the shard and require even more upsetting counterbalancing by us. Would y'all rather we leave places like this intact and then later have to take more drastic measures to counteract the pricing drops and excessive inflation? Those drastic measures could be things like mandatory rental fees on every house plot, much higher prices for commodities on vendors, drastically reduced drop rates across the entire shard, much higher staff service fees, fees for deaths, etc etc etc. These are all ideas that have been tossed around in times past to combat inflation and other economic issues on our shard. None of them are things we want to do, because they would also drastically affect the ability of newer players to get settled and 'up to par' with their gear. Thus, we try to keep things balanced in much less offensive and off-putting ways - such as correcting areas like Fel Wrong.

I hope this gives you all a bit of perspective in regards to these "nerfs".

[Locke]

And just for your knowledge what we see right now its not inflation, its deflation (price keep decreasing with the implicite vendor website help)

I c your gm perspective,but I just want to show u how (we) player feel (and im not talking about Vet having already everything)...

I dont have personnaly difficulty to get gold, but lot of new player keep asking how to find gold, with less place to do it .The only way they see its balron farming and deseperate about it... and i'm not trying to vex any gm at all. They would like to see more way to go to rome if you know what i mean...

And talking about thing its not a bad thing, its a matter to improve in a synergic way from both side...

[Kara o'Tool]

I agree with Locke, i didnt mean to sound arrogant or rude, I was talking out of frustration because it is already so hard to become strong without donating and gauntlet was a good way to earn money, now it is even more difficult.

I also agree with Ilsa, the middle level player atm has some problems with hunting places because peerless are sometimes too hard, and normal trammel dungeons aren't that good for money and balrons are camped.

A good solution was gauntlet because it was doable for a mid level player and it also had a good amount to money to get.
I think it was also balanced because it is one of the most boring experience of uo, and if u want to earn money there u need A LOT OF PATIENCE.

Thanks for the quick answer +Nix

[Modvlator]

* Kind off topic but extra suggestions*

I agree with Locke if it was possible for starter to get geared more decently with some kind of road available to start with less uses for pets and some more efficient pre-relayers item that suits the strenghts of the monsters that excelsior has.


as a quick fix to this matter would something like extend the access to young champ and young quest be helpful and more manageable?


everyone would enjoy to see some extra content available to theses new players
it's just embarassing to sell stuff to someone that keep hunting balrons since a week or a month and even more to buy a powerscroll or a bio engineered pet.

as we try to mention everytimes we speak, we love this place and want it to be as prosperous as it could be and we try to help the shard as much as we can.
Thanks you for granting us the priviledge to play on Excelsior we appreciate it everytime we login.

By the way I want to say that with a profound respect of the agenda of the whole team.

[Locke]

In monetarist theory, deflation must be associated with either a reduction in the money supply, a reduction in the velocity of money or an increase in the number of transactions. But any of these may occur separately without deflation. It may be attributed to a dramatic contraction of the money supply, or to adherence to a gold standard or other external monetary base requirement.

However, deflation is the natural condition of hard currency economies when the supply of money is not increased as much as positive population growth and economic growth. When this happens, the available amount of hard currency per person falls, in effect making money more scarce; and consequently, the purchasing power of each unit of currency increases. Deflation occurs when improvements in production efficiency lower the overall price of goods. Competition in the marketplace often prompts those producers to apply at least some portion of these cost savings into reducing the asking price for their goods. When this happens, consumers pay less for those goods; and consequently deflation has occurred, since purchasing power has increased.

[Locke]

What i c right now dont help economic situation on the shard. It is stabbing it! You are bumping deflation...

Now have a look on some real solution; way to help this fictionnal-macro-economie and must use to avoid deflation :
-Aim for a positive inflation rate (typically 2%) rather than trying to push inflation down all the way to zero.
-Introduce liquidity into the market
-Expand the scale of asset purchases or expand the types of assets that it buys

[Ilsanor]

First off, I'd like to ask you +Nyx to stop treating any discussion on changes implemented as a personal attack on you or the GMs in general. Since I can't speak for anyone else but me I'll make it first person, but I assume there are others who'd agree. I have the utmost respect for you guys and what you do to make this shard work and be a fun place for each and every player. Just because I try to find flaws in whatever change or event is introduced is NOT because I consider you stupid, not caring, not fit to be a GM or anything of this sort. No. I'm just a firm believer of second (or third, or 10th) opinion - the things you do are always well thought out, but you are still human. There's bound to be something you might forget about, overlook or perhaps not even consider at all. What I want is not to make you feel in any way inferior because of such mistakes, but just iron out all the rough spots and make it all a version 2.0. Or perhaps - as in this case - approach the problem from a different angle, if the current approach seems to do as much bad as good.

the gauntlet was becoming a huge problem due to players trolling, kill stealing, etc

True - wherever there's something to be had people will quarrel. But eliminating the gold drops altogether does not really remove the problem - it simply moves them to a different spot. Be it balrons, champs or whichever method of gold gathering players use - the quarrels and unbecoming behavior will sill be there. I can compare it (by a bit of hyperbole) to destroying the North American continent just to stop the war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Sure, you eliminate USA as a side of the conflict and everything will settle down for a while. But then someone else will come and stir it up again - be it Russia, EU, China or whoever. Because it's not inherently about countries - it's about the same as the gauntlet issue - it's about resources and/or money. And the less resources you have available, the more quarreling you will have. So the solution here would be to have more places to make the money, provided all of them are equally profitable in regards to effort vs payout.

And on a slightly different note - I think that adding various 'consumables' would make for a great gold sink. Things that disappear on use that allow you to take half damage for 1 minute, travel at twice the speed for 5 minutes, allow you to teleport to a given location or out of a locatian (for example from inside Destard lvl3), increase your skill by X for a given time (+5 to BS for 5 minutes), perhaps stuff that increases skill/stat gain rate (like Scrolls of Transcendece on OSI) - all of these things could be bought for gold reducing the inflation without introducing deflation.

[Oaken Stone]

Hey all, just thought I'd add my two cents. I like the idea of no gold, provided the artifact drop rate stays the same. Increases artifact drop rate will decrease their value and again, make it pointless to go there. That being said I would like to mention the problem isnt with doom gauntlet. Many servers with excellent economies have fully active gauntlet. The problem is the Large bag of holding gold farmers.

Also, it's important for everyone to realize that part of keeping the economy as balanced as possible is correcting or removing areas which are heavily exploited or abused.

Gauntlet is not being exploited, the large bag of holding is. In my opinion.
Respect

[Oaken Stone]

Oh I would also like to mention another way this hurts newer players. I farmed in gauntlet for my first time the day before the changes were made. In 2 hours I made more money off artifact drops, and the boss dropped items then I did gold. Close to 5:1 actually.
These bosses drop some great low level starter gear for new players which I fully stocked my vendor with, LRC gear, jewelry, and mediocre looted weps. Nothing to compete with good crafted gear, but enough to get people started.

I suggest:
Leaving arti drop rate the same
Leaving gold out, or dramatically lowering
and reinstating the actual item drops of the bosses loot tables.
People in farm mode wont want this stuff anyways and they can still go for arti farming if they want money or the items without getting super easy gold they just throw in their bag of holding. Newer players will still be able to pick up a few items here and there they can sell for additional profit on top of any artifacts. It's win win for everybody in my opinion (except those exploiting the bag of holding issue who lose out on easy gold, they dont really need anyways =P)

The bags of holding are economy killers. Removing/altering an awesome component of this game for mid level players to break in with, to prevent high level players from gold farming is just a bad idea in my opinion. Especially if not done correctly. All this did was remove something that works from the game (gauntlet) to accommodate the over powered items people are allowed to donate or spend ed's on (bag of holding).

[Locke]

Oaken touched a good point about bag of holding, i got one and its very easy to put 60k gold stack 20x or 40x, maybe if you cancel bag of holding to hold gold , but whatever this will not fix the actual deflation on the shard...

[Yoda]

ok read everyone's point of view and everyone makes some points


but I have a very simple question

isn't the gauntlet for the purpose of farming an artifact?