Patrolling Santa
 

Will he be making an appearance this year?

I mapped his route out last year.
Too bad I won't be participating this year. (inactive subscription)

He's been walking around for the past two days, dropping dias, cookies, coal, and an Ice Sword, Shield of Frost (both picked up by Spiker), and a Belt of Crystal Heart, which I believe John got. Someone said he's been dropping IDs, FIDs, and Ice Shields too.

Really? :eek: I've never seen him. Last year everyone was following him non-stop. This year there's hardly been talk of him.

He has a cool shirt on this year

thats because Tig never really stated his existence on a large scale and never announced it on here, and also didnt say what the drops were like bjorn did last year. Not to mention, not that the drops arent good, but theyre easily 1/20th of the value that happened last year. Like 3 Darkflames, 2 Inferno Daggers, 2 Inferno Swords, 1 Sorc Hammer 1 Might 1 Agi, like 14 fids 28 ids, etc. So its not like there are a ton of things and the small "prizes" this year arent anywhere equal in value to the the year before, so once the good items (that are very limited in amount) are gone, theres no point.

I only got cookies

Christmas hasn't been the same since the gift shop was phased out. At least that guaranteed everyone got something cool. (And moreover, got to have a choice in the matter.) Lance's tree-burning event was pretty awesome, and so was the Christmas dungeon. I even remember Lance raffling off a ton of great prizes, including 6-8 hammers. But recently... man, I dunno. Three cheers for mediocrity, I guess.

I think Tig's doing a great job.

Now that I got that out the way; I also think the gift shops were pretty good. It created different "class" of items. And it was fair because everyone could get that stuff and even if they missed out due to being newbies who started after or whatever reason... they could always wait till the next holiday! ^.^

And in case it's a matter of balance...
FYI, a game does not become imbalanced when everyone has the same opportunities. The game becomes imbalanced after everyone benefits from a bug, and the bug is removed so newer players cannot benefit. I hope Tig realizes this is as one of the biggest mistakes the old administration would make.

If you think you have better ideas then you're more than welcome to submit them as I've made clear to everyone.

I don't just slam your faces with a bunch of rare items, and I'm certainly not going to just go raffle off a bunch of hammers. Please try to be understanding.

It's not a case of balance, there are other reasons.

The problem with that is:

A.) You never ask for anything because you're playing Bjorn's favorite game, dubbing everything as a 'top secret project,' even if it's something you need help with. Sorry, but I can't do work for you if you don't make lists of what you need. And putting developers on assignment is a bad idea, too. If what you ask for is beyond their capability, you're screwed sideways.

B.) I have been tied up with work on another server. One I actually care about because the developers don't keep me in the dark about everything. I know Kingdoms has recently had problems with players leaking information, but that's not my fault. I don't know what to tell you on that. Raising the bar on who you trust with that information might be the only answer, unless you can find a different way of going about asking for things.

C.) You never give a definite answer as to whether any work will be used or not. Again, another thing Bjorn did. And I'm gonna bring this back up even though I know you hate being compared to old managers, because I think you've probably been one of the few we've had so far that's actually interested in communicating with players and getting **** done. But you know, when I get work done, and the only response I get on whether or not we'll be using it is a 'maybe,' I lose all motivation to continue working.

Yeah, because Kingdoms' economy certainly hasn't been going belly-up like an overfed trout lately. But sure, pump more diamonds into it. That certainly doesn't cause even more inflation. :rolleyes: Release more diamonds into the economy, and players raise prices on the rare items they already have. Why? Because they have an excuse to make more diamonds off their sale. They're not stupid. Making rare items more or less available is the only way to control pricing on the player market. And when the values of rare items raise substantially, that costs players time. And too much time spent getting nowhere leads to quitting.

Tig, you should start lying to people and say "If it's good enough."

Apparently this will keep people motivated to do awesome work.
Then you'll have plenty of content you can pick and choose from ^^

As part of this process, you should lie to me and everyone else and say you WONT do what I'm suggesting.

I've been listing what I need for Maloria for the past several days, and I've gotten great response from its community. I tell them straight-up whether their work will be used or not after they do it, and if not, I give them reasons why. (More than just a simple "It looks bad" or whatever.) I collaborate with other users to improve their work, as long as it has potential - even if it's not quite on par with the level of quality we look for. And that's something that doesn't really happen on Kingdoms. It's always a 'maybe' or flat rejection with no explanation or effort to improve the submitted content.
An even bigger mistake would be leaving it unfixed or refusing to rectify the abuse. (Be it through removal of exp, banning, and so on.) Bugs have to be killed, regardless of how many players have gotten ahead because of them. It's a sad state of affairs when the only way to level on a server is through exploitation, and even sadder when administrators turn a blind eye to injustice.
Precisely.

Can I trade my cookies for dias?

Wrong. It wouldn't be a bigger mistake. Maybe a mistake just as well. But definitely not bigger.
But if everyone has the same "advantage"... guess what? It's not an advantage anymore. Eventually everyone learns it and it becomes part of the game.


To be more clear, here's what's pissed me off in the past:
Years ago, alchemy equipment was done through the "random alchemy" process. I wasn't much into the game, so I still don't know how it was done. But apparently this was available for anyone to do. These items were constantly being made, and thus weren't too expensive (and would continue to drop in price).
Then one day Stefan made it so you could no longer make these items.
Once that happened, if you had these kind of items, it was wise to just hold on to them and watch the prices sky-rocket.
It took years before they fixed this problem. TBH, I'm still not sure it was fixed. Aren't there some elite items that still exist from those days? Making them very expensive...
Either way, it was very annoying during the years that this was a problem.
They should have never stopped random alchemy untill they designed the current stable recipe-based alchemy system.
The other option would be to remove all the items. But this would just be lazy and piss everyone off.


Edit:
What pissed me off in the more recent past is how many seemed to have reached unattainable levels (especially in physique) through the level-bug. Apparently these levels couldn't be realistically reached via the monsters existing in the game because after a while, the monsters give crap EXP. So it would take forever to get to those levels. The solution, I think, would be to make stronger monsters. Or you could always penalize those for abusing such a bug. But it's hard to say what's bug abuse, and what's just an unknown feature. So people got good exp by partying with low-levels... doesn't really sound too bad.
An obvious bug would be the fact that you could GAMBLE with the shop NPC's. Drop a few thousand plat. Cast alchemy spell. Raise your charm as high as possible. Sell the pile of gold nugs you just got. Get more money.... unless casting alchemy failed to give you gold nugs... then you just lost your plat x.x Good times....