Hi all,
as many of you are aware, we are working on an awesome new feature that will make sure that gear dropped by mobs is player crafted. We achieve this by having a black market NPC buy said gear from players first, before allowing that gear to be dropped by mobs. Please see below for the details on how that works.
This has the following advantages:
Details
Now, some of you had questions and concerns about the feature. The concerns are mostly the result of us not having specified in greater detail how the feature is going to work.
Note that the feature's "behind the scenes" mathematics and algorithms are not simple - they can't be, as then, the feature would not work as intended. However, the actual in-game implementation will be straight forward and simple.
Here are the details (all of which are still subject to change as we are working on the feature).
We are extremely excited about this feature. As far as we are aware, no other game has done something like this before. It's a 100% fit for Albion's DNA and will improve the game play for gatherers, refiners, crafters and PvEers alike, as their activities will no perfectly synergize with each other. As we see it, it's possibly a total game changer.
On top of that, it allows us to get rid of band aid features such as essences as a requirement for refining and dropping refined resources hell gates and chests. None of these are needed, as the link between PvE and crafting that essences are there for is now created by our player driven item drops, and the extra reward provided by dropping enchanted resources is now provided by dropping actual gear, which is no longer a problem as its player crafted!
And finally, we can drop satisfying amounts of gear, addressing one of Albion's greatest weaknesses, without upsetting the player driven economy.
as many of you are aware, we are working on an awesome new feature that will make sure that gear dropped by mobs is player crafted. We achieve this by having a black market NPC buy said gear from players first, before allowing that gear to be dropped by mobs. Please see below for the details on how that works.
This has the following advantages:
- It allows us to significantly increase overall mob drop amounts, making the PvE experience more rewarding
- It supports the crafting, refining and gathering economy (instead of competing with it)
- It encourages and increases trade & transportation
- It allows us to introduce a new item sink to the game in the form or "corruption", that we can freely configure
- It allows us to remove essences from refining as this feature already creates a link between PvE and refining/crafting, hence essence are no longer needed to fill that role
- It allows us to remove enchanted resources as a reward for hell gates and chests and replace those with additional drops - player crafted, of course!
Details
Now, some of you had questions and concerns about the feature. The concerns are mostly the result of us not having specified in greater detail how the feature is going to work.
Note that the feature's "behind the scenes" mathematics and algorithms are not simple - they can't be, as then, the feature would not work as intended. However, the actual in-game implementation will be straight forward and simple.
Here are the details (all of which are still subject to change as we are working on the feature).
- For each equipment item that can be dropped by mobs, we create a "virtual storage", keeping track of the current amount of items stored and the maximum amount for each item
- Each mob has its drop table, and a roll is made against that table when he is killed. If an item is rolled, it will however only drop if the current storage for that item is > 0. If the item drops, current storage is of course reduced by 1.
- Now, demand for player crafted items in the system is managed through a special black market place. In this market place, a smuggler NPC can buy gear from players by creating buy orders, and players can directly sell to these buy orders or place sell orders in advance that get automatically matched if a fitting NPC buy order shows up
- Every time an item is rolled to be dropped by a mob, no matter whether it actually drops or not, "demand" for that item is created. What does this mean?
- If demand increases, generally the smuggler NPC will create a new buy order for the respective item, at a price equal to its item value.
- However, if, for that specific item, the number of buy orders + the number of items already stored is equal to the maximum amount of that item that can be kept in virtual storage, then the NPC will not create an additional buy order, but will instead increase the lowest price buy order by an amount equal to the item value.
- What this means is that if an item is worth more than its item value in the player to player markets - most items are, as the item value is only slightly above the silver returned from salvage, but for salvage, you also get 25% of resources back - then the NPC will continue to increase the price in increments equal to the item value, until, eventually, the price is high enough that a player sell the item to the NPC.
- For example, a T6.0 broad sword is currently sold for 50k silver in Fort Sterling, which is 33.6 times its item value. This means that the NPC would have to list the item and then increase its price 34 times before a player is going to sell the item to him. As mobs can only drop items that they actually have in virtual storage, and assuming a maximum storage of 1 for this item, it would have to get rolled for drop for 34 times before somebody would supply the NPC with the item, and it would finally drop after the 35th time it gets rolled.
- It's easy to see that with the current drop chances, this is unlikely to happen much. However, in the new system the "theoretical" drop chances would be increases significantly, as the actual drop chances are self-balanced by supply, demand and the player base. Roughly speaking: Actual drop chance = (Theoretical Drop Chance) * (Item Value)/(Market Price).
- When it comes balancing, keeping the above price creating mechanism in mind, we can actually calculate the amount of "Black Market Silver" that each Mob, when killed, is adding to the game. Simply take that mobs drop table and multiply the item value of each item with its drop chance, and then sum up all of these values. This is the amount of silver that the Black Market NPC will post to the market every time that mob gets killed. Now, if a certain mob right now drops 100s when killed, once we have the new feature in place, we could make that a drop of 80s plus 20s injected into the Black Market. This will keep the overall silver amount the same, but will shift a chunk of silver creation (as opposed to mere silver trading) away from PvE and towards gathering/refining/crafting.
- To give you some perspective of that, when we currently calculate the average item value created by a T4 mob, for example, it roughly adds up to 0.5 (zero-point-five!) per kill - almost nothing. Hence, in the new system, we have tons of room to really buff up the theoretical item drop rates, knowing full well that the theoretical drop rates will never be reached as people are generally not willing to sell gear just at item value (as this is pretty much the same or less as you'd get for salvaging said gear, taking 75% of item value in silver and selling the 25% of resources that you get back. With this in mind, we will re-design our drop tables, and on part of it is also to decide how much "silver weight" to put on the enchantment level and quality level of gear.
- Finally, we have the ability to set a "corruption" level for the black market. This means that a certain percentage of items sold to the Black Market NPC will never reach the mobs in question. Balancing-wise, this is exactly identical to these items trashing. We will be able to set the corruption % for each tier and enchantment level separately, allowing is to have genuine and powerful item sinks in particular for lower end gear, which the game is currently lacking
We are extremely excited about this feature. As far as we are aware, no other game has done something like this before. It's a 100% fit for Albion's DNA and will improve the game play for gatherers, refiners, crafters and PvEers alike, as their activities will no perfectly synergize with each other. As we see it, it's possibly a total game changer.
On top of that, it allows us to get rid of band aid features such as essences as a requirement for refining and dropping refined resources hell gates and chests. None of these are needed, as the link between PvE and crafting that essences are there for is now created by our player driven item drops, and the extra reward provided by dropping enchanted resources is now provided by dropping actual gear, which is no longer a problem as its player crafted!
And finally, we can drop satisfying amounts of gear, addressing one of Albion's greatest weaknesses, without upsetting the player driven economy.