The "Epic Store"

[Snarfy]

While I don't agree or disagree with Mendel pointing out that these +4 items with extras are now cheaper and thus easier to get, I will add that the other side to this is this: These items being in a shop changed the values of all items on the server, so technically it costs less to get them, but the items you now sell to earn that much are also worth significantly less.

This. If you look at the auction you'll notice that items found in the loot table have depreciated in value, meaning that a player will now need to loot twice as much to sell and save up for the items in the epic shop.

[Tantive]

I disagree with your assement I view it only negatively. It is a completely mixed bag jumbled together.

Good, a magnificent map of hell. All new maps of Tfunke were a great transformation.
Good, a wide selection of goods of various types sold.
Bad, the location where the shop is handled for roleplay. Roleplaywise by lore, access to hell one wants shut. Good characters have to go against their interest venturing to hell.
Good, availability of items, and for those less fortunate in roleplay opportunities one can get items.
Bad, the ease in accessibility of items, it changes roleplay itself in terms of skillspoints reached, and in the importance they have to story progressions or adversarial play.
Good/Bad, it sets new precedents in items one can gain in the game, should DMs award characters an epic item from the shop for feats in a campaign. (Items rewarded before were carefully weighed out in power.)
Bad, the shop promotes a playstyle that favours repeated dungeon runs in the same places. For upkeep of character - you have to suspend your characters inclinations and life they lead to go on dungeon runnings to compete.
Good or bad with anything in between, it changes the server economics dramaticly.

Bad - we have no crafting yet to offset the massive shift in item importance.

[Calodan]

And given the regular population of both (baR)P and powergaming grinders pillaging the countryside, I don't think either camp can press a firm argument that one is 'most', contrary to Akroma's suggestion that the 'most' avoid (baR)P like the plague.

I actually enjoy this RP believe it or not. AFTER I SLAY A DRAGON. The Bar is for the telling of the tale!!

I can agree that the items are overpriced. Is the journey not hard enough? It takes at least 2 players one of them able to kill everything in sight and or cast sanctuary. Maybe the shop keeper should be some type of planes walker who is trapped there and decided to offload the gear he finds laying about from dead stupid adventurers.

Also Lambe suggested we up the selling price of items gained. I agree. They should be worth at least 33% of their actual value of selling price capped at 5k for now. This would really help the Weekend RP only crowd who takes years to develop a PC beyond 15.

Events seem to not fit my schedule. I have a family that comes well before this game. If I get online on Saturday at noon, it's a special occasion.

I hear that. I coach pee wee football, have 3 kids and a wife to tend to. Events are something I have not been to in forever myself either. I miss the stories.

[chad878262]

There was something like 10 pages of debate regarding party looting for chests...I may be mistaken, but isn't party looting universally considered a good thing now?

Now, we've had complaints for a long time about how only the long time players had epic items and they only trade with each other because no one else could ever get anything to compete. Now anyone can get items, regardless if it takes twice as long to obtain x amount of gold, we went from "never" being able to get competitive items to having the opportunity.

We might have crafting in by now if so much time wasn't spent second guessing what is in... I haven't seen any major change in the rp of the server so why not give the store a chance and see if you don't change your mind over time? Crafting will allow customization, but epic stores are meant to even the playing field, NOT to give everyone free access to items, they're a carrot to dangle for those that wish to aim for an item or two, it's not expected (or desired) that everyone can load their character head to toe in epic gear.

[Kanada]

I guess I see this differently from the OP. I am not rich, and I have been here a loooong time, but I have only been in like 3 DM events ever (I never seem to have 4+ hours at one time...) and so I receive no DM rewards. I have never found an epic item. This store at least gives me the *hope* that I can have some decent items one day.

[NegInfinity]

Honestly, after finally getting to that epic merchant (with a character that was waaay too weak for this location), I sorta understand why some people might dislike it.

There's way too much stuff there (I think it took me at least 30 minutes to even look through all of this) compared to any other shop it is much more powerful and much more expensive. So it sorta looks like a big taunt, especially since the server doesn't actually have any decent way to earn this amount of money.

So, the store sorta feels "off" compared to the rest of the content.

But then again, I suppose in the end nothing of this matters.

With all that in mind, I think it was a very good idea to make epic shop merchant a devil.

[tfunke]

Actually the final verdict, I believe, was to change the merchant to a plane-hopping wizard and we would move the shop around the server every 4-6 months. So if everyone wants, for now, pretend it isn't a devil. I'll get this fixed asap.

[NegInfinity]

Actually the final verdict, I believe, was to change the merchant to a plane-hopping wizard and we would move the shop around the server every 4-6 months. So if everyone wants, for now, pretend it isn't a devil. I'll get this fixed asap.

Well, this is very disappointing.

In case of plane-hopping wizard it might make more sense to switch character location every reset (out of say, 20 predefined ones), and every 4..6 months change the set of spots where the merchant can appear.

[mrm3ntalist]

There's way too much stuff there (I think it took me at least 30 minutes to even look through all of this) compared to any other shop it is much more powerful and much more expensive. So it sorta looks like a big taunt, especially since the server doesn't actually have any decent way to earn this amount of money.

My character have recently been with the character Vendor and Nai on a dungeon run. In less than an hour we all made more than 10k by selling everything we found on merchants. That could have been more if we used the in game auction. I consider this a very decent way to earn this amount of money.

A character leveling from 1-30 and doing a dungeon run every now and then, will have gathered enough gold to buy any item to equip his character by the time he goes into the epics. That is what the epic shops are about. Epic items. They were not designed to get them earlier, even though you can do even that.

The fact that we have discussions about uping the gold limit with which vendors buy items, proves to me that another point of this shop has been achieved. Every one complained in the past that the gold has no value. Now that has changed. Epic items that would never be sold for gold in the past, now they do.

Well, this is very disappointing.

If we ask 10 players about what they want to do with the epic shop, most likely we will get 10 different ideas. There is no way to satisfy them all. I think that there is good reasoning behind the desicions already been made. Some will like them, others wont. Thats life, even for an online game.

[chad878262]

To add to what M3ntalist said, we also discussed with this an the other epic merchant what the goal is. It was determined that the goal is not for every single PC to be able to kit themselves out with epic gear in every slot, at least not easily. The idea was that someone might be able to at least get one epic item with the gold they make getting up to 30. Maybe it's a weapon, maybe a nice pair of dodge boots and a cloak or a really strong armor. The point is, there are a LOT of build types that people create for their PC's and we did want to be cognizant of that, so there are a lot of items to account for the fact that not everyone plays a gish, or a sneak or a DC caster. Many are hybrids of some kind as well. The gear available reflects the idea of epic characters being able to get one or a few epic items, but if you want a fully equipped in shiny epic gear toon, the expectation is that it should be difficult and it should take a lot of time to get to that point. I've only been to the store once and bought one item, it was definitely cool and I'm looking forward to going back some time with a whole bunch of gold, but it's probably not going to happen for quite some time and that's ok. The journey is a large part of the fun.

[mrm3ntalist]

Also Lambe suggested we up the selling price of items gained. I agree. They should be worth at least 33% of their actual value of selling price capped at 5k for now. This would really help the Weekend RP only crowd who takes years to develop a PC beyond 15.

Is there a reason it is 5k and not 10k or 2k? Is that number based on something?

[Calodan]

Is there a reason it is 5k and not 10k or 2k? Is that number based on something?

Well that is what one can get by killing the epic bosses on the server. So I thought that a good number to be able to sell an item for. Hell I like 10k! However I also know we need to be careful how far we bump it up. I figured that bump would be an acceptable one that would benefit everyone. So it is not purely an arbitrary number in my mind. Good question Mentalist.

[Akroma666]

Question: if we change his location, what will be the point of going to hell?

The risk doesn't match the reward at all.. Specially if he leaves.

If you want it to match, I would suggest adding +500gp to every gold pile and making the chests a MUCH higher tier. Because hell is obviously for the best of the best.. And I've personally made a little money being able to sell the goods off the merchant by sharing my 10% profit margin increase with my group to get there.

Also, bumping the gold for a sold item to 5k will devalue gold again.

[Calodan]

If you want it to match, I would suggest adding +500gp to every golf pile and jling the chests to a MUCH higher tier. Because hell is obviously for the best of the best.. And I've personally made a little money being able to sell the goods off the merchant by sharing my 10% profit margin increase with my group to get there.

Is there plans to introduce a boss here? A dungeon run with a monster so uber that it is the best boss on the server? Being as both UD and Surface toons come here the hardest boss should probably be in this zone yes? I am sure the guys can come up with a boss that is pretty bad arse. Mix in a little Wagner monster recipe and you get a boss worthy of dropping some pretty sic lootz. Make him drop around 15k gold too since you are going to be needing a pretty bad arse party to take it down.

[Wyatt]

Part of what I have seen in my short time back is that it is even harder to make gold than it used to be. The easiest way to make gold reliably used to be trading and selling items to other players in game. With the introduction of the epic stores people are much less willing to spend their gold on items that used to be of middling value. I hear more comments of people saving every copper to put toward epic items, especially now that there are no level limits.

I guess that there is now a gold sink in the game but unless you were able to amass wealth prior to the shops being put in, I am not sure how a character is to make coin other than vendoring things for 1350 gold that used to auction for 10k to 30k. I suppose that now that we have reliable gold sinks, we now may need slightly more reliable gold accumulation.