Spiral Knights - Players don't control the gates! We've been had!

Players don't control the gates! We've been had!

27 replies [Last post]

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 21:13

BeAuMaN

Legacy Username

Ah, did the controversial title pull you in? Excellent! I'm in the mood for throwing out accusations today, though this isn't the first time I've discussed alternatives to the current system (See Here). However, as you'll find below, I've some interesting data and speculation on the subject... This will make me unpopular with the devs, but, without further ado:

Opening:

When I originally signed up for the preview (At the linking of Ian's comic, which I highly suggest), I looked over the available information of the game, and while it all looked to be simplistic on the surface, two bits of interconnected information caught my eye on the About Page. To illustrate my point, I circled them in red in mspaint, and also did some underlining (Alas, my art skills are sorely lacking!): A Purdy Picture

However, if you don't feel like looking at the picture, simply read the "Form Powerful Guilds" to the right under "Game Features", and down below under "Harness the power of the Arcade" on the About Page.

"Amass powerful minerals to transform the Clockworks!" and "build their own gates that cut unique paths into the underground Clockworks."... and mulling that over, I thought "Ah HA! This may look simple on the surface, but deeper is a game of intrigue and epic changes made to the gameworld by groups of players! Kinda like a Pixar film." So I downloaded it, played, enjoyed... and while it was a bit rough around the edges, I dropped $50 in the preview in good faith for what was to come.

However, I was to be dissapointed. Yes yes, it's very fun to play, explore, etc... but I was missing my gooey nougat Cadbury center! Why hasn't our guild been able to transform the Clockworks? How are these gates "our own"? So, why don't we move on, and talk about the current system...

How the system (supposedly) works:

I'll preface this with that I'm going off a lot of information that I've "heard", as Three Rings isn't very forthcoming with documentation. Should anyone wish to contribute additional information relevant to the topic (especially verified information), feel free to. Edit: Documentation has been added since then!... Note still preserved for posterity.

Essentially, players run through dungeons, and inhabiting those dungeons are randomized arrays of minerals. After collecting those minerals, they can do two things: 1.) Deposit the minerals directly at a gate construction site, contributing towards the construction of a particular stratum, recieving a varying amount of crowns for their efforts. 2.) Hold onto them.

They cannot trade minerals with other players, nor can they deposit said minerals into a centralized guild storage of sorts.

Guild construction goes on for 8 days. At the end, whatever stratums are built go live... and whatever stratums were not completed are left unbuilt.

GMs currently change stratums to their liking with alloys to add more "variety".

Now, on the Server's end, the Server tracks how many minerals total were obtained by all the players in the last week. Based on the minerals collected, it then dynamically sets the amount of minerals required to max out each stratum. If we were to start from the bottom with Stratums 1 and 2 as the base amount, Stratums 3-5 require roughly 33% more minerals for each stratum, and Stratum 6 requires roughly 66% more minerals, no clue on what higher percentage of minerals are required to reach The Core. This dynamic system increases the mineral amount required to build elevators every week, assuming that the game continues to gain more active players.

With that done, we move onto the...

The Numbers

Today, I introduce a new unit of measurement: The Biznasty (Abbreviated Bz). To quantify the Bz, let's look at the player that this unit is based upon. Biznasty has been playing for a while... but, for our purposes... Biznasty has played, from early launch weekend until 4/15/2011, 3:54PM (GMT-8)... a total of about 192 Hours... over the course of 14 days. This, divided equally, means Biznasty has roughly played almost 14 hours every day. Biznasty is one dedicated player... An extraordinary player, hence why he is the leader of the infamous guild simply named "[Guild]".

So, with all that time spent, how many minerals has Biznasty acquired? As of 4/15/2011, 3:54PM (GMT -8), Biznasty has acquired 700 Moonstone, 820 Crimsonite, 860 Luminite, 900 Dark Matter, and 1000 Valestone. He hasn't sold a single mineral since the game launched.

So, the (Bz) is quantified as follows:

A Player that plays roughly 13-14 hours a day
A Player that collects roughly 50 Moonstone, 59 Crimsonite, 61 Luminite, 64 Dark Matter, and 71 Valestone a day.
Plays the game like a boss.

Now, with the Biznasty quantified, lets look at the gates. I compiled a list of required minerals to max out each stratum on April 15th. Numbers were truncated to the nearest thousand. The list is as follows:

Stratums 1-2:

Ruby Rook: 312,000 Minerals
Jade Sun: 702,000 Minerals
Diamond Bishop: 839,000 Minerals
Coral Phantom: 845,000 Minerals

Stratums 3-5:

Ruby Rook: 416,000 Minerals
Jade Sun: 937,000 Minerals
Diamond Bishop: 1,119,000 Minerals
Coral Phantom: 1,127,000 Minerals

Stratum 6:

Ruby Rook: 520,000 Minerals
Jade Sun: 1,171,000 Minerals
Diamond Bishop: Vanaduke... but... roughly 66% would be... 1,392,000 Minerals
Coral Phantom: 1,409,000 Minerals

So, what's the use of all these numbers, you ask?

Let's say Biznasty, cause he plays the game like a boss, wants to make a stratum of his liking. Let's pretend for a moment that the community knows the various stratum formulas... and Biznasty decides that he wants to make a stratum based off of Crimsonite as the majority. And he wants to build this stratum on Stratum 3 of Diamond Bishop. So, with his mad playing skills, Biznasty has acquired 820 Crimsonite... which, alone, would give him .0007% influence over the stratum!

But silly BeAuMaN! He'd likely use 2 different types of minerals! Okay okay, so he's aiming for 30% a piece, with 820 Crimsonite, and 900 Dark Matter at his disposal! As such, he'd have .0007% and .0008% mineral influence on the gate. Still! This is far from Biznasty's goal of getting a majority! But Biznasty is OVER 9000, and so, he clones himself 99 times, and organizes himself and his clones into a Guild (Since the guild member cap is 100 people). Ho ho! Now, with 82,000 Crimsonite and 90,000 Dark Matter at his command, he dumps it into the gate! Congratulations, Biznasty, you now have 7% and 8% mineral influences on the stratum!

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE!!! Still, not enough towards his goal! So he clones himself another 200 times, and forms 2 other guilds full of his clones! Now with 3 guilds of clones, certainly he can gain the majority he needs! With 246,000 Crimsonite and 270,000 Dark Matter at his disposal, the stratum SHALL. BE. HIS! But this only gives him 21% Crimsonite and 24% Dark Matter in the stratum, still not the 30% numbers he was looking for. It's dinner time, so I think Biznasty is done making clones.

As such, Three Rings Design is responsible for leading to the creation of 299 additional Biznasties. 1 was enough, but 300 inhabiting this planet is INSANE. For shame! SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME!

Anyhow, you get where I'm going with this. Even with 3 guilds of completely identical top-tier players that play the game 14 hours a day in agreement on what to dump into the elevator, they still can't gain a solid majority. Of course, it's nearly impossible to assemble a guild completely composed of such dedicated players with the same views in the first place. And this is just now...

Let's assume that this game will become more popular, but then let's say the popularity finally started to level off... and say... I don't know... it leveled off to require 3,000,000 minerals to max Stratum 3 on a future gate, and we had 100 Biznasties in agreement on what to build. So how long would it take for them to amass enough Crimonsite to make up 30% of the stratum? Well, 30% would be 900,000 Crimsonite, and Biznasty gets about an average of 59 Crimsonite a day, so with 100 Biznasties, that'd be 5900 Crimsonite a day... So that'd come to nearly 153 days to save up enough!

That's right, ladies and gentlemen. Almost half a year of collecting minerals... for a full guild of completely dedicated and top-tier players, in total agreement... to dump in 30% crimsonite onto a single stratum... that will last for 8 days.

Now, looking at how the system works... what does this system encourage? Well... if your goal was to have you guild create a stratum, you could try to gather more minerals, but that takes waaaay too long. What about if the amount of minerals to max out the Sratum was lowered? Well... to do that... you'd have to make it so less minerals were gathered... which means less players were playing... AH HA! Epiphany! Drive out all the other players, so you that the total minerals gathered is lower, and thus, the total minerals required per stratum is lower! GENIUS.

That's right, the current system encourages you to get rid of players, if your goal is to make your own stratum.

Ah, but what about boosting? Right right, because paying a crown for every mineral to increase the payout by -1- crown is an excellent system! In the previous example, for a 3,000,000 mineral stratum, that'd be 3,000,000 crowns... or, distributed across 100 players in a guild, that'd be 30,000 crowns per player! To increase the payout by 1 crown! A payout that isn't even guaranteed to be paid attention to, considering how many players use the autosell button.

Player's don't control the system. Well, maybe I should qualify that statement. It's kind of like a bunch of people being ordered to walk across a stretch of dirt by sombody. Sure, the people moving across the dirt impact the dirt as they walk across it, creating a trail... but they're not actively engineering a road. And for the minority of players that are attempting to engineer a road, their efforts are scattered as people just walk over their work. Yes, the gates are created by the player's actions, but not so much by the player's active plans.

Let's Wrap this up... Conclusions...

In the end, there's only an illusion of control over gate construction by players. I'm not saying that this was on purpose or accident, I'm just saying that that's how the system currently functions. Hence, I encourage suggestions and comments on this. Also, some light being shed by TRD would be most appreciated (I guess "Nick", as the Lead Designer, and I heard "wtfwtf_ok" was the mineral system designer?). The system, as it is, doesn't even require player input. To be honest, the devs could just go and assign stratums by random draw without any player interaction, and you'd nearly come up with the same result.

My suggestions? Why certainly!

Get rid of autosell, so that there's more time spent by players looking at the mineral screen rather than giving them the opportunity to just tune it out and click a single button for "Crown Get!".
Make minerals tradeable, so that there's a mineral market. Not only could crowns be used to amass minerals, but people could trade materials, equipment, energy, etc.
Give guilds a centralized mineral storage system (probably as part of or preceeding a full-on guild storage system, but I digress), administered by the Guild Leader and Officers.
Modify the percentages of total minerals obtained in the last week you use to generate the maximum mineral fill per stratum. You guys must have all sorts of data hooks and metrics in this game, since you guys are all into the "casual"/"social" game scene... So go analyze the data, talk with your numbers people, and make it so that say.... I dunno... it should take maybe 3 months for an "average to above average" full (100 people) guild to be able to fill a majority of a single mid (Stratums 3-5) stratum (prolly with 2 different minerals), while your top guild outliers should be able to do it in maybe 2 months. I'd suggest at least trying this out, and see what happens. Worst that you get is a week of horrible gates.
Edit: No longer relevent, Documentation has been added! Request preserved for posterity... Additional: As I was reminded when replying to SirNiko, we could use more documentation on how the system works. Again, we don't need exact formula, but we don't exactly have an exact idea of where to start. Experimentation would be nice, except it's a bit hard to do with how the current system requires so many minerals. A pointer in the right direction would help at the very least! (thanks SirNiko)

However...

If it was never your intent to let groups of players control the gates, just come out and say it, and remove the whole thing about guilds transforming the clockworks from your About Page. Then at least I feel all warm and fuzzy inside, knowing I'm not being lied to.

I look forward to everyone's responses!

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 21:47

Sick

Legacy Username

I lol-ed. Very entertaining post and I agree wholeheartedly. A few hours before Jade Sun opened up I checked to see that the last two stratums still had ? on them. Seems people don't even want to bother throwing in minerals anymore.

My suggestion as with probably hundreds of others:

Make guild-exclusive gates right inside your guildhall

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 22:05

Senshi

Legacy Username

It's too late to answer in detail, but...

Your math is off by ... a lot. Players only need to deposit enough minerals to change the order of most to least, not all of the minerals in a gate, so influence comes with far fewer minerals than you suggest. Deliberately building the gate in its entirety is wholly unnecessary. Autosell players will fill a substantial percentage with not-quite equal amounts of minerals, but near enough that 10% makes a huge difference in color order.

Also, the day of release, the topmost stratum was +5 across the board, the next stratum -5, the next stratum -10, etc.
Now I don't know when it changed, but the new structure +5 for first stratum, +4 for second stratum, etc, is more friendly to depositing 'ahead of time' into a stratum. The new structure also means for any but the topmost stratum, you only need to pay ... 1 or 2 crowns for each mineral you want added. I haven't tested to see how 'tied' prices work, but, in any case, if you pay 2 crowns boost to the next stratum down from the one currently filling, then you'll get minerals from auto-depositors, because your prices will now look like,
5 5 5 5 5 5
4 4 6 4 4 4
And whatever one you boosted will grab autodeposit minerals and put them where you want. Well, a small change codewise, but it does show someone is paying attention, and changing things for the better. I might have other thoughts on the matter, but not at this hour!

My specific points aside, I do agree with the gist of your complaint and think it's a good topic for discussion.

Still I agree, guilds seem largely unconnected to this process, and the system needs a lot more work. I just don't think it's as impossible to select gates as you suggest. The incentive for selecting them, though, is entirely lacking (except as a public service to not have four gates in a row that are entirely poisons levels... )

(As for minerals... I'm deliberately saving mine. 1000 minerals is a substantial shift in direction. 17 is not.)

Mon, 04/18/2011 - 23:28

Sirrocco

Legacy Username

If it wouldn't be a horrible

If it wouldn't be a horrible amount of coder time, i really rather like the idea of a guild mineral stash and guild elevator. Minerals going into the guild stash give no money. Minerals in the guild stash can only be used on the guild elevator. You can take as long to fill the elevator as you like, and only officers can allocate from stash to elevator-under-construction. The elevator costs some reasonable amount to build per level (possibly depending on number of members in the guild) and lasts for something like 8 days after being built. Since only guild members can use the gate, you can be assured that if you go to the gate and hit join, you'll be partying with guildies.

...and I say this as someone who likely will never be in a guild. I just think it would be cool.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 04:09

SirNiko

Legacy Username

How do we know that 7%

How do we know that 7% influence over a gate is not enough? If the variance in the random generation of materials is less than that (say 5%) it's very likely that the theoretical guild of 100 pumping in Crimsonite and Dark Matter would succeed in creating a red or purple tier.

The problem would be if 27% of all minerals gathered the previous day were, say, Luminite (if truly random, the result should be 20% for each of five materials). Then players autoselling would result in Luminite being the dominant material.

Good math, and it's interesting to see that the gate sizes dynamically alter based on player performance, but the conclusion doesn't prove your assertion. We still need to know the % of a mineral required to tip a gate to a stratum type (If it isn't based on simple majority) and the variance in the random material generation (which is a product of both the game's coding and the levels players are likely to play).

The second one could be observed by looking at the gate mineral distributions right before launch, but that doesn't tell us where the minerals are coming from, or if a high volume of Jelly King / Vanaduke runs are responsible, or if your average player does not actually do those.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 07:30

Awesomest

Legacy Username

Agreed.

It's so disappointing how even though it SAYS gates are made by the players, it's near impossible to influence it. Hell, it's almost near impossible to even complete a gate right now, even with all those auto-sellers.

I think a huge part of the problem is how unaffordable and infeasible boosting is. When it costs almost 1m crowns to screw with a gate, not even the most powerful guilds can't really afford to pay it. They really need to change the way boosting works and at least reduce the cost for initial boosts so that dedicated guilds will be able to put a good effort into influencing EVERY gate.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 08:59

KalmaAmlak

Legacy Username

Alloy Wins. Flawless Victory.

Taking Jade Sun as an example, it had been shaping up as a nice solid set of Poison strata for T2, which I had heard was half on purpose (someone had a huge pile of purple, and green was the dominant mineral collected over the week). Then with less than an hour left till launch a GM came by and hit the T2 stratas with Fiendish and Ice Alloys.

Players have no control.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 09:32

Syor

Legacy Username

I agree on
*removing the autosell button
*but add an option to allow us to type the amount of minerals that we want to input
-this will encourage users to sell individual minerals, especially if one cost more than the other, and reduces the high increasing rate of auto-seller
(as it really takes a long time to click 50 minerals, and worse when it reaches pass 150)

I don't agree on
*trading minerals
*unless they are all sold at a fixed price of (1.1x - 1.5x),
- this is for those who really want to change the gate and prevents people from trying to overprice minerals

The rest I don't understand and won't bother to.
Why?

*this game has been out for less than a month, don't expect too much changes yet despite having it opened during beta and already had a number of changes done to it.
*If I'm right (whatever I have remembered/heard or they could have already stopped), they are constantly changing how the way stratum will affect the type of monster to find a more balanced and still provide a variety of gates
^The gates are still made by us, sometime they might need to be alter to give a balanced overall gate, like having beast, fiend, construct etc etc and provide a wider range of variety but I can't confirm on that either. This is just pure assumption.
*To get the guild thing to work, we will need to start having a Notice Board and Guild Announcement, that would be part of the mail/news/invite pop up and a auto personal message from guild directly after we login, respectively.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 10:07

BeAuMaN

Legacy Username

Thanks for the comments everyone!

Wonderful commentary. I appreciate it. The more discussion on this topic, the better. Now, let's see what I can do about some replies...

@Sick: Thanks! And correct, it seems like people hardly finish the gates... we advise our guild members to not throw in any minerals. We're saving ours for some point in the future where we feel that they'll actually accomplish something.

I'm still mulling over the "Guild Exclusive Gate" idea... I haven't been looking over the suggestions too heavily, though I've been thinking over the effects it would have on the whole mineral economy. The mineral availability would probably have to be changed, since if all the guilds are building guild exclusive gates, then they might not bother building the normal gates at all. However, it's certainly an interesting idea that should be discussed more in-depth! I also proposed a different system over here, you might want to take a look.

@Senshi: Interesting thoughts... When I went and whipped up this post though, I went forward with the idea that a guild was intending to implement a solid majority into a stratum, so as to assure it ended up the way it liked. Furthermore, I went with the idea that the stratum was to be completed to 100%, so as to assure that the lowest stratum opened up. Point taken though, once the lowest stratum is opened up, technically speaking, you only need to complete 10% of the stratum (According to wiki) for it to be built.

But of course, doing the minimum isn't always enough. Though it doesn't exist right now, in the future what could exist is competition between the guilds, vying for control of certain stratums. True, you could put the minimums needed for majority, but then you'd be open for takeover by other guilds who'd invest more than you! Oh the intrigue that could be found in that!

And I did start to notice the change to the boosting system... I agree, it is a favorable change. Still though, it's pretty expensive.

Anyhow, thanks for your comments and support!

@Sirrocco: Thanks again! I already commented on the whole guild elevator idea up above towards Sick, and it's certainly interesting. I also like the idea that being an "Officer" would have more usefulness aside from just inviting/kicking and promoting/demoting people!

@SirNiko: I already commented towards Senshi considering obtaining the "minimum" influence. And as I said earlier in my post, the documentation for gate construction is very lacking, so I'm going off of what I've "heard" from a number of people, and what's in the wiki. At this moment, according to the wiki, apart from not knowing what combinations yield which gates, we don't necessarily even know how minerals interact with eachother in the first place! Actually, speaking about this, I should go ahead and add the documentation request to my list of suggestions... not the first time I've asked for more documentation. Thanks again, I look forward to more of your thoughts!

@Awesomest: Exactly! I was so crestfallen when I started discovering more about the game, and finding out more and more how guilds don't really have an effect upon the game world. Boosting is definitely infeasible at the moment... reduced prices would go a long way I'm sure, however I'd still want minerals to at least be tradeable, which creates an interesting and dynamic mineral market. On that note... If someone boosts a stratum, and it isn't completed to 100%... do they get their crowns back for unfilled minerals? Since they're paying extra for minerals... But I digress. I appreciate the feedback.

@KalmaAmlak: heh heh heh. Well... you're certainly right. I don't particulary enjoy that the GMs are going in and modifying gates. That said, I'm not quick to blame GMs in this respect, because they were taking their marching orders here. But this is an excellent point! GMs are out trying to fix an earlier problem of gates being without variety, due to the old mineral system spawning mineral colors based off the theme of the level (or something close to that). They pulled out the alloys to make sure there was some variety in the elevators. However, as they continue to modify the elevators in this fashion, they may easily be overriding the efforts of people attempting to make stratums of their own! This definitely can take more control away from the players. Thanks again for the comment!

Phew... typing hands are getting tired, stomach getting hungry, I think I'll stop this batch of replies here. Once again, I encourage more discussion on this. No matter what the solution may be percieved to be, there's definitely a lack of a system where the combined efforts of players can "transform" the clockworks effectively. Thanks again everyone, I look forward to future comments!

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 10:09

Coriakin

Legacy Username

I don't agree with removing

I don't agree with removing the autosell button, but making it work across all gates to make boosting have a real impact would help. Or in some other way the interface needs to be improved. Or does it? I've always viewed gate building as a relatively minor part of the game, but if it's supposed to be an important aspect of the game something needs to be done to make it more engaging (and less confusing) to new players.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 10:39

#10

Feynt

Legacy Username

I'm in agreement with the

I'm in agreement with the guild gate and storage idea. I think it would be useful because our guild raids certain dungeons often, and if we could make a gate we want, it'd be quite helpful.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 11:01

#11

Pauling

I strongly agree that the

I strongly agree that the "player made content" system is broken so badly, in so many ways, as to be a moot point. (Even the boosting system- which was on the edge of being of use during beta- became beyond useless following the release)

We need a better system, and that includes basic documentation- the last 2-3 iterations have been met with total blank silence from the devs, followed by silent changes behind the scenes. Not only are mass experiments not feasible right now, but when performed, they typically lead to truly horrible gates. A good system needs to include the basic information that would allow it to be used.

However:

- Guild gates would create a system where you were only adventuring with guild mates, which is at odds with the social nature of the game.
- The autosell button is good UI, and I am baffled by the recent tendency to demonize it as the source of all problems. (especially by people who admit that they don't know how minerals work, even if they DID deposit manually) I don't want to click 1,500 minerals , one at a time. (or even 150 shift-clicks. Or even ten... that's a good way to discourage people from getting involved at all.

I'm really interested by the mention of "fire" or "ice" alloys being available to the devs. It sounds like those would be a good feature for players to access in place of the current "boost" system, provided that it includes a UI that clearly shows how many of each alloy are in a stratum. Not sure how these alloys would mesh with the current gate creation system, but then, that's what devs are for.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 13:07

#12

RamuneDrink

Legacy Username

Seems to me like you just

Seems to me like you just need to play for fun...
No offense or nothin', but what's so bad about varied gates?
Sure you won't get the mats you want, but is it really that bad?
You're basically trying to monopolize the system.
What if someone actually wants to play a random gate arrangement?
You know, just for fun?

I hate uber technical players.
Go breed a maxed IV pokemon.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 14:31

#13

Datareaper

Would be super if there was a

Would be super if there was a market for selling minerals, the machine gives beans as a payout for a couple of runs worth.
I would totally be for it if the guild made private gates could be invited to and used when they finish it.
Oh, and im totally guilty of just dumping my minerals into the dumpster with the best payout.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 14:44

#14

Feynt

Legacy Username

The problem is the lack of

The problem is the lack of variants. I mean sure, we've got an almost solid poison gate coming up (I haven't been on to look at the status of it today, but 4 levels of non-stop poison is nuts). What happened to that is puzzling to be sure, but this is an example of random convergence. Somehow, someway, this gate got a higher gathering of the correct mineral balance for poison. Looking at the rest of the gates, they're completely random despite attempts to persuade it in other manners with 500-1k minerals of a particular type (or types).

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 14:46

#15

Ilikiki

RamuneDrink, the thing here

RamuneDrink, the thing here is that what we do won't affect you too much, and it is fun to us.

I don't understand why people bring up this weird "play for fun" thing as though people weren't having fun or weren't trying to actually maximize their fun when doing things like this. Competitive / technical players have fun doing what they do. You will have fun REGARDLESS of what we do -- you will dive into whatever dungeon there is, won't you?

As for the random gate arrangement thing...

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 16:31

#16

weirdguy

Legacy Username

-3-

The problem is that unlike Pokemon, this game is almost entirely reliant on making the most of what you find, and if you don't find the right stuff, you're subject to the same type of people you hate the most to supply you with the goods you need to progress in the game.

Basically I don't want to be blocked by merchants who refuse to sell for anything below "you're a noob so I'm going to rip you off" prices, and then later be told off for having noob armor and not get into the fun places.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 17:27

#17

Sirrocco

Legacy Username

I would not say that that is

I would not say that that is the problem.

The problem is that this is a way that people *should* be able to influence the world in cool ways, but they can't.

Proposed solution (exact numbers may vary): have a "just give me the money" option (possibly under a different name) that lets you dump minerals for 6, and reduces the overall required number of minerals but doesn't fill any hoppers. Autosell defaults to this as long as no slots are selling for more than 6, and otherwise looks for the highest available payoff across all under-construction gates. Problem solved.

- the autosellers, who really just wanted cash, have their cash, and are happy.
- The number of minerals per level to build the things drops (via the action of the autosellers) to the point where boosting is potentially viable - and if you boost enough to get the price to 7, the action of autosellers will fill that strata up *right* quick. It also drops to the point that mineral hoarders can do some fairly effective stuff without too horribly much effort. Indeed, you could actually afford to hoard minerals until you were sure you had enough to finish the entire gate and then dump it all in at once, ensuring that it would go live with the levels that you wanted.

Basically, the problem is that there's a lot of random people out there who are given incentives to dump in noise (in the form of crowns) but don't actually care about the outcome. Adjust the incentives slightly so that the pure monetary incentive is slightly weighted towards not dumping in noise, and you put a lot more control back in the hands of the people who actually care about the outcome.

Alternate version: have some gates pay out more, others pay out less, and all go live as long as they have at least *some* minerals in every tier. Encourage the wandering GM types to only really muck with the compositions of the more valuable tiers. That way, the autosellers will gravitate towards the base5-payoff gate, filling it with random junk (which may then get mucked with by a GM - but no one really cares) while the people who are doing it to craft a gate to their specs rather than just for the money will head to the base3-payoff gate, and may squabble with each other (via adding competing mineral types) to their heart's content. This is good because you do get the random gates, for people who like random gates, but the people who want more control actually have a viable way to pursue it. Even having only one base3-payoff gate per cycle would handle this issue just fine, as long as it was relatively easy to ensure that it would go live, and the GMs could resist mucking with it. Include a bit of fluff saying that they've developed some interesting new technologies that provide greater precision and navigational control, but they're more expensive so that they can't pay out as much for each mineral, or something along those lines.

Tue, 04/19/2011 - 17:36

#18

azuraith999

Legacy Username

good read. A guild should

good read. A guild should have a personal gate! :)

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 18:34

#19

dreampod

Legacy Username

You should be able to control

You should be able to control the composition of a gate fairly easily with just a 1 crown bounty for minerals due to auto-sellers. Put a 1 crown bounty on the minerals you want in that gate and then on a different gate put a 1 crown bounty on all the other minerals. That should shift the minerals you want to the gate you want and have all the other minerals getting dumped in a gate you could care less about.

This would increase your ability to influence the construction of a gate enormously because rather than only getting a couple points of influence per level you run you get the equivalent of 1/5 of your crowns earned worth of increased influence.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 18:57

#20

Unbounded

PAUSE.

Alright, First things first, I love this post, and it does a good job of being humorous while making a good point.

Though, while I was reading, something caught my eye:

"So, the (Bz) is quantified as follows:

A Player that plays roughly 13-14 hours a day
A Player that collects roughly 50 Moonstone, 59 Crimsonite, 61 Luminite, 64 Dark Matter, and 71 Valestone a day.
Plays the game like a boss."

I don't know about you, but in a single day I have no problem collecting far more minerals even on a weekday, and I don't even play for five hours, on a weekend/holiday.

Though with that, I'm going to continue reading...

EDIT: After reading the remainder, I don't think you've mentioned the "boost" option anywhere in your thread.

If you check Wegner in the arcade, (The guy around all of the minerals), he clearly says:

"Certainly! You can "boost" the value of any mineral type on an unfilled stratum. By "boosting", you invest crowns of your own into the mineral type of a particular stratum to increase the payout of that mineral type.

By doing so, you can direct the minerals of other knights that autosell. This is because autosell always searches for the best payout of the minerals sold. Players or guilds willing to invest a lot of crowns can drastically change the outcomes of entire gates!"

So apparently, the way the guilds are supposed to control the outcomes isn't by DIRECTLY altering the value, it's supposed to be done by boosting the living heck out of the gates, and essentially forcing the players to do your dirty work for you.

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 20:08

#21

Shani

Legacy Username

I rather like the idea of the

I rather like the idea of the generic dump reducing the total minerals required rather than acting as a specific type since it seems to accomplish the goals of both parties: the percentage becomes easier to manipulate for those who care, and those who don't still get paid. Or if we want to penalize those who want to manipulate the strata, make the generic dump worth ever so slightly more.

Side note-- does autosell check all the strata for all the gates, or just the strata for the gate you happen to be looking at?

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 23:07

#22

RamuneDrink

Legacy Username

@Unbounded The problem with

@Unbounded
The problem with boosting is that in order to boost a value early enough to have an influence over peoples "Auto Sell" distributions you need to pay sums of nearly 1-5 Mil crowns...which is impossible for even the most experienced CE-buying player. IE, "boosting" at this rate is nearly pointless.

@Shani
...good question. I'd like to know the answer myself (though usually I auto sell anyways).

@ this thread
Okay, I should probably apologize for earlier. Personally, I prefer going into a dungeon not knowing what I'm going up against, as opposed to attempting vainly (at least with my meager minerals and money) to control the outcome of a specific gate. But, since some people obviously do find such activities fun, then let them go right ahead. In fact, if they want help, I'd be more than happy to dump all my crimsonite or whichever minerals into a specific gate! Just give the word, and I don't see why not. As for my own enjoyment, it doesn't really matter. Heck, I won't even be going down to tier 3 anyways, so whatever, right?

Fri, 04/22/2011 - 23:27

#23

Pinto

Legacy Username

Because it's more on topic on

Because it's more on topic in this thread, this post.

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 10:15

#24

Unbounded

@ Ramune

Yeah, for even the most experienced PLAYER, trying to single-handedly control the gates is hard. Extremely hard.

However, for a full GUILD, it becomes a totally different story.

Sat, 04/23/2011 - 10:22

#25

Magnus

Legacy Username

I have good news. Enough

I have good news.

Enough players are quitting that the mineral requirements are getting less out of hand!

Now if only a few more thousand people could quit, we'd be able to control the gates again, away from the autoselling scum.

Sun, 04/24/2011 - 19:38

#26

Frederf

Legacy Username

Boosting should be able to be

Boosting should be able to be done on a small scale. Say I want to invest 1000cr in a gate's future. I boost 1-0-0-0 for valestone. Thus the next 1000 minerals donated will pay out +1 crowns of that type for auto sell. When my boost is exhausted it drops the payout back to +0.

I don't want to buy some crazy permanent boost for all time for 5,000,000CR I just want to boost my share

Mon, 04/25/2011 - 13:50

#27

Pinto

Legacy Username

That's almost exactly what my

That's almost exactly what my linked post says (more detail, includes a crown sink), Frederf :P

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Players don't control the gates! We've been had!