GC Prizes and Ticket Stockpiling
 

Because a number of players have now purchased either the majority or all of the GC prizes and are just amassing large numbers of tickets, we are looking at ways to reduce the number of available tickets and give players something to work towards obtaining. One of my current ideas is to introduce a limited set of weapons as event prizes, but give them a dynamic ticket price.

For a long time we've disallowed weapons from being GC prizes (or any item that harms other players. One of the main reasons for this is that weapons are much more desirable than regular items, and would therefore carry a ticket premium (eg: 100 tickets). By making weapons so expensive it would prevent new players from obtaining them for a long time, and this would give people who have hoarded tickets and can purchase the prizes easily a large advantage over them. This is why I'm considering a dynamic pricing structure, whereby prices increase depending on the number of prizes you have bought.

Consider this example: There are 10 weapons, each with a starting price of 20 tickets. After you have purchased your first weapon, the remaining nine double in price to 40 tickets. After you buy your second one the price of the remaining eight doubles to 80 tickets, and so on. The first few items, at 20 and 40 tickets will be quite easy for newer players to obtain but the later weapons, costing a lot more, will give the ticket hoarders something to work towards. Working the maths out, the 10th item would cost 10240 tickets. A new player could easily get one or two weapons, whereas a long time ticket stockpiler will have a challenge purchasing their 6th and 7th ones.

Obviously the example above isn't ideal (10240 tickets for a GC prize is a touch expensive), but I'm interested to get some player feedback on the idea of increasing ticket prices in general (eg: each time you buy a prize, the price goes up by 10 tickets). If we do choose to go with this idea I'll need to have a good think about the numbers.

Anyway, that's the basic idea. Would you enjoy the challenge of trying to get all the prizes, or would you be put off at having to spend more than 'the other guy' to buy your next one? I'll make it clear that this is just one idea; we have a number of other things planned to help fix the ticket economy. ^^

1.5 would be better than 2. Then again I'm not a math major so idk.

But yes, all the gc prizes we have (outside of like 4) are completely useless and just for looks. Yes, numerous people have stockpiled excessive amounts of tickets.

Both problems need to be solved at the same time, and this idea looks pretty solid. But (as far as I read) this idea implies leaving the current tickets as is. That's great and all, but we'd have a significant group of people that could all have the same items from the start. Value starts from only a few people having it, and everyone else wanting it, and therefor working to get it (think of when xbox360 or ps3 came out, you had to go to your friends house when they got one; now everyone has one and its no big deal.)

Very nice concept as I've told you in a PM. If you can get the math down, it will probably be very useful in burning down tickets.

I honestly think Statue auctions or something could burn tickets down too....

If prize costs are going double like that, then that clearly means there will be more events to win. That still doesn't close the gap between "1 ticket - 10000 tickets" very quickly.

So to speed up the process of gaining tickets, while still making it challenge, winning tickets consecutively doubles as well. Not necessarily "win the first event, get one ticket, win the second, get two", but make the amount double for, say, every 3-5 events you win in a row. The ticket "multiplier" ends after you lose/fail to win/participate in an event.

Ideally I want it so that even the current 'super hoarders' could only buy 4 or 5 of the 10 items at the start, and to purchase the 6th it would take a significant amount of tickets on top (a few hundred). Maybe some people will start with 5 items (for example), but that doesn't mean they will each choose the same set of 5 as everyone else. This would mean there's always at least one item which their rival has but they don't, and would give them something to work towards. The 10th item would likely be so expensive as to be almost impossible to obtain, so the challenge of trying to obtian all 10 first could be seen as a competition in its own right. ^^

So the items are essentially going to be the same?

Touche stormo, touche.

Ok Storm, after reading over your idea and thinking for a moment I have two things to say.

1. I’m glad your actually doing something, and addressing this major issue, instead of some other unnecessary assignment.

2. Your current idea seems a little extreme, and reminds me of communism. Why can’t Classic just be normal and sell items at different prices according to their worth/use? I feel like your just making a big deal out of something that isn’t a big deal. Every online multiplayer game has those items that only pros, and people who work hard for them obtain, and there is always noob’s who are not able to get them. And that is the beauty of video games. Also every other Graal server with an “economy” is like this to, and they seem to not be having problems with getting new players or player count.

So what I’m saying is, just take the normal route and just make more items, and price them according to their worth. Please don’t do anything retarded.

The only problem I truly have with this is the idea of some items being better than others to a players perspective. Such as 4 items being the most supreme ones that the ticket hoarders won't care for the rest.

what about a ticket tech tree?

Isn't that what storm is already suggesting?

Then again, maybe we're thinking of two different things. Do explain ranger.

Are they going to be the same prizes? LOL

No it's not.

Ranger's idea is better!

Like from a strategy game:

(Civ4 example):
http://www.civfanatics.com/gallery/f...e_original.jpg

Basically you start with a base prize... that branches into more prizes which branch into more, like a tree.

I really like this idea, especially if it's starting off with a few base prizes.

@Storm: So your idea to fix inflation is to print more tickets and raise the cost of the goods? Where have I heard that idea before?

I mean honestly, under that system, a player would most likely refuse to play events worth one or two tickets, wanting something as unreasonable as 5+ tickets for a single event because prizes are so expensive. Eventually we'd be in the same exact situation, but instead of ticket hoarders having 200 - 500 tickets, they'll have 10,000+. You're just making the problem worse in the long run.

What needs to be done is a complete ticket reset, following with new prizes and other incentives to encourage ticket spending. I know a few of the more vocal 'elitist' will be upset and will cry night and day, but you're not running for Mr. Popular, you have to satisfy the majority over those few who would complain.

I don't see how this is an important 'problem' just now.

The problem I have with Storm's idea is that it isn't really going to solve anything. The people who are currently at the point now where they have collected a massive amount of tickets are just collecting them. No matter what comes up, they're going to be collecting them and that's all they're going to do because they have that huge amount already.

I've already mentioned this to Night, but if you're going to do something like this then the 10 or so weapons are going to need to balance and compliment each other well, which is going to be an extremely hard thing to do on a server like Classic. If they don't balance well then some are going to have an obvious worth over others, which negates the reason for bringing out a system like this. Personally I’d rather not anxiously spend my tickets than to make a permanent decision about a prize, without knowing enough about the possible outcomes to determine which is the "best" choice for me and to put me in good standing with other players. As the prices double when you take a chance with one I can just see this frustrating players.

Like Crono said however, it isn't really a priority. Sure it should be nipped in the ass, but with a small playercount like there is now, and a small pool of people hording tickets through event wins because competition is so low, the problem is just going to keep on coming. This idea doesn't really influence any competitive streak which is really what we're missing in events these days. Oh, and other things to do outside of events.

zips got the right idea. maybe the first 2 or 3 prizes or so are ****ty prizes or something costing 10-20 tickets. once you get the first ones then it branches up to a higher tier with npcws costing something like 50-60. and then, eventually, you have a couple of super prizes costing something upwards of 150+ that are at the top tier of the "tech tree". balancing would be fairly simple i would think. trident on one extreme of the tech tree, starcon firemine at the other. idk what npcws are being talked about tho, i'd like to see a list

Because people have a lot of tickets stock piled, it would take a lot of items to burn through the excess tickets unless we massively increased the prices. If we did that it would price new players out of the market. I also see Classic as an adventure server where each player can compete fairly against an opponent. The whole 'grinding' for items that make a player stronger would conflict with that.

Night also had this concern. What I hoped is the weapons would each be different enough that none was really the best; they would each be the best in their own unique way.

I like this idea. I'm not sure how we could do it without making the higher-tier weapons too strong or the lower-tier weapons too weak though.

I don't have any plans to award more tickets for events. You're right that we'd start chasing our own economy, and that's not a situation want to put us in.

I'd like to avoid a ticket reset if possible, preferring to reduce the number of stored tickets another way, so that if people are losing a lot of tickets, at least they are going towards something.

This is something I had considered before making the initial post. We'd need to make some kind of 'try before you buy' system if the idea is ever implemented.

Thanks for all the comments and feedback so far people, it's been very helpful. ^^

Who cares if the ticket hoarders will continue to accumulate their collection. The point is that there needs to be new ways to make tickets useful. This idea was based upon that anybody could get every item at a cheap price, but to get them all would be for the more pro players. It's a nice Idea, but all ideas have their own flaws.

Ticket reset would be the most plausible at the moment. And then after, introduce these new prizes, and some auctions.

Release some rare GC Prize's worth 200 tickets :P

If you do have a ticket reset, you need to somehow compensate people for their massive losses. As laura said on classic, the problem with a reset is that you're basically telling people everything they did the last...couple months was a waste of time.

Another solution is to cut everyone's current ticket count in half, and then do one of these 'tech-tree' prize things. That way everyone will still be able to get prizes, just not as many at the start.

ok first sentence is okay but cutting half tickets count will not fix anything. if someone had a hard time winning tickets because US or ventrue was teaming on him/her he will see his 10 tickets split in 2 and will just complaint about it. if your reseting/cutting the current people that have alot of tickets , your bringing them back right into the past so they will have to restart what they did months ago...winning tickets.

just release the boomerang upgrades to level 5 starting at 20 tickets then 30 then 40 then 50

i would buy that

Ideally we wouldn't increase the number of tickets awarded, but the way I see this unfolding it like this; most of the hording players would have the first few prizes right away. Since they're the players who play most often, they'll lose interest very quickly in events if they're only making 1-2 tickets per event (who would want to play 10240 events for a single prize?). The GCs would either live with the lack of player interest, or they'd offer more incentive to play in the form of more tickets. Before long we'd be 'chasing our own economy' in the form of players wanting more tickets>GC needing more tickets to host on a consistent basis> GC ticket count increased to compensate for the amount of tickets given out>repeat.

As I've discussed with Nighty, a reset doesn't seem avoidable. I would suggest giving a chance for the player to burn through their tickets in the end by giving them access to some unreleased content (temporarily), auctioning for statues, and other things. This way a player can't complain that they lost 500 tickets, because it would be their own fault for not using them.

i have all the prize already like most players do. what can i buy there

Where in my entire post did I say you would be spending tickets on items already released?

what unreleased npc is there to burn out my tickets like you said.

plus auctioning statue is a good idea i would TOTALLY bid on it ,

You weren't a LAT so you probably haven't seen them. There are literally dozens of unreleased weapons, such as weapon upgrades (hammer, boomerang) I think GrowlZ's birdshot might still be floating around, shovel... a few more I can't think of just yet.

id buy the birdshot and boom upgrades. the shovel!

Just make it so the price increases by 20 each time instead of doubling it, making the max 200.

I don't see the fuss over the reset business. I don't really care, if it's for the better of the server go on and do it.

i dont think the main problem of classi is the economy but the playercount

Economy is partly what is affecting playercount. No incentives.

ok so people wont log here because most players have 200tickets+?

that make no sense at all

could just be as simple as adding a one time use npc that is worth the purchase i dont know that just popped in my head.

if that npc make mystic getting jailed for 10 days every use i will buy it for 200tixs

Why not just limit the amount of tickets issued?

that a bad idea , you dont even play classic why are you posting here

No. They don't come here because there is nothing worth buying.