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hankrearden

Should wurm be easier or more difficult

should wurm be easier?  

197 members have voted

  1. 1. Should wurm be harder or easier

    • harder wurm requiring more trade/interaction
      60
    • easier wurm requiring less trade/interaction
      16
    • difficulty level is fine
      114
    • dont know or dont care
      7


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. But I realise that it being a hermit survival game is maybe more what it always  intended to be, I dunno.

Its pretty obvious that Wurm was intended to be a competitive and social PvP game. PvE is only here because Rolf sees the potential revenue of offering that choice. And with that said, making changes that impose undesirable restrictions on this "cash cow" would be threatening that very financial reason to keep it around.

 

 

I'll say it again, the answer is not to nerf/limit/impose on players to create trade. The answer is to add features that make it more convenient for people to trade. Now this likely won't drive up price but it will get more people involved and having fun. 

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the real economy killer for me is allways the demand of silver...


 


why not try more raw good trades maybe 1 Ql 90 mallet for 100 QL 50 logs and so on...


that would be increasing your all beloved economy :P


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Barter economies don't work very well. the chances of two individuals having what the other wants is pretty slim forcing a situation where either one has what the other wants and can dictate terms or an individual has to do a series of swaps. Currency facilitates trades, it doesn't hamper them.


 


Cista, I noticed you point out often that your opinion is in the minority. I think that is a mistake. Just state your opinion with confidence as your own and know that there are many others that feel the way you do. Nobody knows what the most players think or feel, just what they and their friends do. Even a forum poll only samples the tiniest portion of the players.


 


Oddly, despite the disagreements, it seems that almost everybody is on the same page in that we all agree that one of the primary problems is barriers to trade. By that I mean the lack of adequate game infrastructure to encourage players to be swapping resources or buying things from each other that they very well could make themselves, but would prefer to save the time to be used doing something more fun. These barriers range from the incorrectly named "trader", to a lack of means to trade bulk easily, no "buy" system, no security from theft from transporters, long travel times and myriad other aspects that are simply poor design.


 


These sorts of things can be separated from changes to the game environment that others would view negatively, like reduced productivity from certain activities to increased demand for other goods by new game mechanics. Although I support either initiative completely, I don't think anyone should be shutting other people down just because their ideal solution includes something the other doesn't like on principle. Simply address them as separate, specific issues and go forward.


Edited by Othob Rithol
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.

 

Cista, I noticed you point out often that your opinion is in the minority. I think that is a mistake. Just state your opinion with confidence as your own and know that there are many others that feel the way you do. Nobody knows what the most players think or feel, just what they and their friends do. Even a forum poll only samples the tiniest portion of the players.

 

Oddly, despite the disagreements, it seems that almost everybody is on the same page in that we all agree that one of the primary problems is barriers to trade. By that I mean the lack of adequate game infrastructure to encourage players to be swapping resources or buying things from each other that they very well could make themselves, but would prefer to save the time to be used doing something more fun. These barriers range from the incorrectly named "trader", to a lack of means to trade bulk easily, no "buy" system, no security from theft from transporters, long travel times and myriad other aspects that are simply poor design.

 

 

Well said, couldn't agree more.

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I think there are two conversations happening here:


  1. What the developers can do to influence the financial economy of Wurm.
  2. What the players can do to influence the physical economy of Wurm.

Assuming I understand them, I agree with Brash's comments about playability and usability being more important areas of development than financial tweaks at this time.  Recent history has proven that CCAB cares a lot about that as well.  When I left Wurm, it was because I physically could no longer play it.  I was getting repetitive stress injuries from navigating the menus all day, from dragging items to inventory and then into secondary piles.  Recent gameplay changes have helped a lot with this.  The game should be challenging, but not punishing.  Wurm is very challenging, and probably a little more punishing than it ought to be.  For an engaging explanation of the distinction, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs


 


The financial changes that happened this fall not only go a long way toward making the game more egalitarian in the way that silver flows through the economy, but perhaps more importantly, it gives the developers many more options, flexibility, and control over how they can control financial liquidity in the game.  Having more levers to pull will really let them fine tune things and make changes when they deem them appropriate.  So, I really think the game's financial economy is on solid footing right now.  I hope they continue to refine and address usability issues so they don't literally cripple their player base.  As a player who recently came back to a vastly different game than the one I left 2 years ago, I am inclined to let CCAB keep do what they're doing.


 


I'm MUCH more interested in the second part of this conversation, about what we can do as a player community to influence and grow the physical economy of Wurm.  Turning dirt, rocks, and plants into highly skilled and capable player characters is something that the players have to do for ourselves.  Obsessing over who gets which silver misses this entire part of the game.  And I contend that we lose more players to attrition for lack of attention to "world and community usability" than to UI usability issues.


 


"World usability" is something that civic-minded and experienced players can focus more attention on.  WE ARE ALL DEVELOPERS when it comes to the world and our communities.  Dragging a cart up a 24 slope winding road through an olive forest, then learning that there's no coastal road so you can't make your delivery without backtracking and getting lost in the thickets while bears and spiders gnaw on your face, as you try to walk around a mountain, is a really strong disincentive for new players.  To the degree that new players are "taxed" by their lack of skill and funneled into unskilled labor until they can afford premium and raise their skills, they are doubly taxed by the difficulty of transporting things.  It's time intensive, gives no skill, and nobody pays for it.


 


Transportation tax inhibits physical economic development.  It limits and slows the ability of a server to support a large and dense population.  It keeps players from accomplishing their goals.  Time spent in transport is at best difficult and at worst brutally punishing and disheartening for new players.  I strongly encourage more players, especially those who are civic-minded and capable, to find ways to profit not only themselves in terms of enormous skill and material gain, but their entire local server community, by the construction and refinement of their server's local transportation infrastructure.


 


Traditionally, transportation tax was itself the largest inhibitor of highway and infrastructure development.  You had to pay this brutal tax in order to build the roads, with constant trips back and forth through rugged country to the nearest port, or risk wasting and losing the materials recovered during construction.  With the addition of wagons and crates, it has never been easier and more materially profitable to build infrastructure.


 


Good roads and harbors are the lifeblood of communities.  They foster commerce by bringing people together and empowering them to focus their time and energy on valuable pursuits instead of the toil of travel.


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I'd like to see shifts in resources every so often.

"The ground shakes violently and you can hear the sounds of rocks falling in nearby mines"

Check your mine utmost iron is gone but a poor silver and normal copper might be there.

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I'd like to see shifts in resources every so often.

"The ground shakes violently and you can hear the sounds of rocks falling in nearby mines"

Check your mine utmost iron is gone but a poor silver and normal copper might be there.

We're told "deed it or lose it" constantly so many of us have mine deeds to protect our ores. Make me lose it despite deeding it and I'll stop paying for upkeep.

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Obvious statement, the market is supply and demand, everything is relative and changes over time.


 


If there are too many high ql goods around then the lower skilled players who want them can get them cheaper. This means a smaller wedge of the pie for the higher skilled players or they have to raise their game further to edge out their competitors. Its a buyers market.


 


But then it always has been, don't like the price, say no and walk away, find someone else to buy from.


 


PS


Don't mention ships, they are a way bad example of the market, especially when they were introduced. :angry:


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You do have the choice to seek out folks who want to interact. Believe it or not, there are many players who try to work with others even know they could easily do it themselves. There is a big difference between exercising your freedom versus trying to impose your personal desires on other players. Every MMO in existence has many players who play it solo. I also find it interesting that in most cases the same thing happens, people with similar views to yours, where folks think the answer is to force players to work together. I guess from your standpoint it wouldn't matter if I quit because I'm going solo anyway. Although, it would matter to Wurm if many solo oriented players quit.

 

I think the phrase 'forcing players' is way too strong.  Wurm does not force players to do much, but has incentives for guiding players behavior.  Joedobo, you have been around a while.  what i am trying to suggest is that wurm might be better if the difficulty was similar to that of 2009 or 2010 (no experience with earlier times).  Solo life back then was very hard but very rewarding (for some).  You were not forced to join a village or buy things at the the market, but in made things 100 times more sane.  There were still stubborn hermits back then, even though it was hard.  What we have had over the years is players (or rolf) wanting things easier for that crazy stubborn hermit, and wurm has changed in that direction.  If wurm regained that past difficulty, there would be some solo players who quit, some would not find the hermit life rewarding enough for the difficulty and join a village, and some stubborn crazy ones would tough it out.  This is a tradeoff that should be introduced back into wurm.  Sure we would rather not have to make a choice and have it all, but a game without tradeoffs loses a lot of luster.

Using ideas of Cass Sunstein, I think wurm players would benefit from a 'nudge' towards a more rewarding type of play.

 

the real economy killer for me is allways the demand of silver...

 

why not try more raw good trades maybe 1 Ql 90 mallet for 100 QL 50 logs and so on...

that would be increasing your all beloved economy :P

Yes Beir, there are some serious monetary issues right now.  I hope to put out a thread on wurm monetary policy before next semester starts, but i am not great talking about hard economics to non economists.

As far as your barter idea, this thread is focusing more on the supply and demand for the mallet, not money supply.

 

Garis:  great video link.  There were some good tools wurm introduced to reduce punishment, BSB being the main one.  I think the change to material loss on creation failure was to make the game less difficult instead of less punishing.  Back in the day i dont think rolf had the ability to add enough tools to remove the punishing aspect of the game, so instead removed most of the difficulty.  Now is the time to maybe change that.

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We're told "deed it or lose it" constantly so many of us have mine deeds to protect our ores. Make me lose it despite deeding it and I'll stop paying for upkeep.

 

My playtime has severely decreased after the latest events. It might be more than upkeep I quit paying. The only thing I trust now is my walled and gated village because, right now anyway, gate locks still work and I can ensure they do with a single checkbox. Next I will have to add a 300 dirt tall earthen wall around it and dig a moat between it and the stone fences and fill it with crocs or something. It's getting more difficult alright... more difficult to pay for the privilege to be robbed blind on Freedom. More difficult to pay into the system where the griefer is protected and the victim is at fault. Deed it or lose it. I got it. I deeded it. And I can still lose it. Ask her. Ask 100 others. Freedom is as much PvP as Chaos only we can't kill each other here to stop the draining. So the only harder I want to see is it being harder to be an asshat in this game and get away with it.

 

Before you rag me about secure bubbles and all that crap... I have one. It's called a Deed on Freedom where I pay for the bubble around my stuff. After the latest eyeopener, it seems a house in the wilderness is far safer than my expensive deed. A deed is a loophole that hasn't been found yet. A writ in the wilderness is a titanium fortress. There's something fundamentally wrong with that.

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Luxury! When I joined up the "tutorial" was being KOSed on every deed you passed by for chopping down a tree, being eaten by a spider while foraging for berries to make a casserole and needing a chisel to make a whetstone so you could sharpen your unfinished chisel. And you try to tell the new players of today that and they won't believe you!


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This is where i disagree, although i am looking forward to getting into your topic you linked.  We need to focus on current mechanics if we want a change anytime in the next year or two.  While the economy 4 years ago was not perfect, it was much better than it is now.  trying to find a more vibrant economy like back then would not require much work, only the will and the knowledge of what to tweak and what to leave be.

 

OK now that you have had time to look over the thread i linked ill go back to where I left off. Its easy to say this is where we should be adjusting because otherwise itll be years before we see the results. OK fair enough, but Ill contend its nowhere near as difficult as one might think to put a trade system in. One needs a UI.....easy enough, it then needs to be hooked to a database via a SQL statement that uses variables......easy enough. Then we need a way to transmit funds - allready in game, the mailbox, then we need a way to package bulk items, 100000 ways to achieve this with code. At this point  tie them together with some erroneous code and tada -we have simple basic trade system that will not take years, at worst maybe a couple to 3 months, to put into place. It would only allow buy and sell, but hey its a start, something to build on, and from that point sinks and balance can start to be addressed.

 

It seems the thread has veered off a bit to debate on trade so all I can say there is that I put my thoughts on it in the suggestions forum on what I think it might look like if wurm adopted the same high level concepts as allllllllllll the other successful MMO's out there have done.

 

The biggest hurdle in any of this is getting past long held beliefs on what wurm is and should be. If we go by science then we must say success goes to those most willing or able to adapt. Bringing wurm trade to a more modern, working, quantifiable, tried and proven model is a good bet. If nothing else its just simply less risky to put in tried and tested vs unique.

 

We have had traders and merchants for a very long time now. They do nothing to address anything and only make things more convoluted. We know they are problematic on many levels, this has been shown over and over and over again through the years. We need to move away from player dependent and go to player driven models. Player dependent models simply do not work, as fun as it may be to say I can set up a market anywhere and be able to do it how you like, it simply doesnt work. Its a here today gone tomorrow market. There is no stability to them, you cant plan on them being there for any given amount of time, you have to constantly have someone check to see if the merchants have any goods on them, and if they do how many are being kept up, Is the correct person online to make x item....and the list goes on and on and on. Its a never ending logistics mess that forces people to do what they have to do rather than what they want to do. If we move to a player driven system all those issues are gone...instantly...gone. We can see what these player driven systems look like by going to any other MMO out there and see how they are working. No need to "trust" anyone, no need to "believe" anyone...go see for yourself.

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Hankrearden, From your OP I am getting the impression that you equate the "difficulty" of creating objects with maintaining a certain sales price for them. Although there may be some validity to this, I don't see it as a positive direction to pursue to adjust the game creation mechanics on the basis of an attempt to control prices for the creators/sellers of them.


 


This "difficulty" to create objects translates into more time consumed to do so. Already Wurm is the most time consuming game to play that I have ever participated in. More time added to this process would only make it less attractive in turn. To add onto this time consumption to benefit the sellers of these items would only be more difficult to swallow. Nor do I even see how it would apply to creating more of a "community", unless more restrictions were imposed in an attempt to coerce others to have to spend even more time to directly come in contact with these sellers, which eats up even more time spent to accomplish anything.


 


As things are these large time sinks of creation and travel times I would imagine deter many who try out the game from continuing to stick with it until their skills rise and these timers are shortened and lessened in their failings. Even those who have played the game for years still have to endure long creation timers associated with building, if they are not crafters of items to sell. The only option to lessen these is through the purchase and use of enchanted items, which already cost a considerable amount of RL cash when coins are purchased from the Wurm Shop. So on top of time consumed, attempts to stabilize sellers prices (or increase them) are costing those who play the game and use these items in an attempt to shorten timers, even more RL cash.


 


I find Wurm to be an expensive and time consuming game to play, with the purchase of deeds and player crafted items. I would advocate for these both to be lessened over time, rather than endorsed as a benefit for those who would like to make monies from playing the game. There is a delicate balance to be maintained here, while enabling some percentage of the player base to become sellers of items, which should not be to the detriment to the larger majority of the game's players and game mechanics.


 


=Ayes=


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Obvious statement, the market is supply and demand, everything is relative and changes over time.

 

If there are too many high ql goods around then the lower skilled players who want them can get them cheaper. This means a smaller wedge of the pie for the higher skilled players or they have to raise their game further to edge out their competitors. Its a buyers market.

 

But then it always has been, don't like the price, say no and walk away, find someone else to buy from.

 

PS

Don't mention ships, they are a way bad example of the market, especially when they were introduced. :angry:

I really need to stress the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics.  following quoted from http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/110.asp

Microeconomics is the study of decisions that people and businesses make regarding the allocation of resources and prices of goods and services.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, is the field of economics that studies the behavior of the economy as a whole and not just on specific companies, but entire industries and economies. This looks at economy-wide phenomena, such as GDP and how it is affected by changes in unemployment, national income, rate of growth, and price levels.

 

In the total of wurm, overall demand has dropped while supply remained steady.  The overall demand dropped due the game being made easier and more solo friendly.  On the micro side, certain sectors were hit very hard by this drop in demand, causing profit seeking individuals to leave those sectors and join one of the few sectors for which there was still demand.  This is what caused the oversupply in the remaining sectors for which there is demand.  It isn't 'natural' market forces that caused this, but changes in the game, hence the reason why discussing them is legitimate.

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I don't see it as a positive direction to pursue to adjust the game creation mechanics on the basis of an attempt to control prices for the creators/sellers of them...

 

 to benefit the sellers of these items ...

 

 endorsed as a benefit for those who would like to make monies from playing the game.

I would really like to put this strawman down for good.  all following quoted from me in this very thread.

"The market is one way in which players interact.  for those who prefer a gift economy, villages provide that.  It is more a question of interaction than making money."

"For starters I should note I am using the term 'economy' in the traditional sense, meaning the volume of silver coins exchanged for goods and services over a time period.  Some people view the term as 'how much profit one can make' which is not a correct use of the term."

"Do wurmians need a 'nudge' towards a more interconnected experience (via market or sharing economy)?"

 

IF there is to be a dialogue, you have to know what the other people actually say.  Otherwise you end up with a useless collection on monologues.

 

Also as i noted previously, the terms 'coerce' and 'impose' are far stronger terms than is needed.  How many people who played in 2010 felt 'coerced'?

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Luxury! When I joined up the "tutorial" was being KOSed on every deed you passed by for chopping down a tree, being eaten by a spider while foraging for berries to make a casserole and needing a chisel to make a whetstone so you could sharpen your unfinished chisel. And you try to tell the new players of today that and they won't believe you!

and when you died you lost everything.  I did a man in the wilderness thing before Pristine on Deli.  It was great and horrible all at once.  That was the hardest time I have spent  in the game.  Crafting hard, come on guys  you are not going to get ate by a bear.  Die and still have tools and a compass is not hardcore.  Throw all your stuff away with a new alt and experience what hard is.  But most of all have fun.  

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I think the phrase 'forcing players' is way too strong.  Wurm does not force players to do much, but has incentives for guiding players behavior.  Joedobo, you have been around a while.  what i am trying to suggest is that wurm might be better if the difficulty was similar to that of 2009 or 2010 (no experience with earlier times).  Solo life back then was very hard but very rewarding (for some).  You were not forced to join a village or buy things at the the market, but in made things 100 times more sane.  There were still stubborn hermits back then, even though it was hard.  What we have had over the years is players (or rolf) wanting things easier for that crazy stubborn hermit, and wurm has changed in that direction.  If wurm regained that past difficulty, there would be some solo players who quit, some would not find the hermit life rewarding enough for the difficulty and join a village, and some stubborn crazy ones would tough it out.  This is a tradeoff that should be introduced back into wurm.  Sure we would rather not have to make a choice and have it all, but a game without tradeoffs loses a lot of luster.

Using ideas of Cass Sunstein, I think wurm players would benefit from a 'nudge' towards a more rewarding type of play.

 

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I would really like to put this strawman down for good.  all following quoted from me in this very thread.

"The market is one way in which players interact.  for those who prefer a gift economy, villages provide that.  It is more a question of interaction than making money."

"For starters I should note I am using the term 'economy' in the traditional sense, meaning the volume of silver coins exchanged for goods and services over a time period.  Some people view the term as 'how much profit one can make' which is not a correct use of the term."

"Do wurmians need a 'nudge' towards a more interconnected experience (via market or sharing economy)?"

 

IF there is to be a dialogue, you have to know what the other people actually say.  Otherwise you end up with a useless collection on monologues.

 

Also as i noted previously, the terms 'coerce' and 'impose' are far stronger terms than is needed.  How many people who played in 2010 felt 'coerced'?

Edited by Ayes

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Ayes:  I was wrong about you spouting a monologue.  I thought you did not read what i said, it appears you did but just perceived me to be deceitful in my intentions- fair enough.


EDIT:  Dont let my wurm name give you the wrong impression, i can see how that could be easy.  After years of Econ courses and extra reading, I am no longer a Chicago/Austrian type economist.


 




(1)  It is very narrow sited to focus only upon created item prices and not take into consideration their ramifications upon the whole game, (2)since the more time consuming and expensive the game becomes the less attractive it will be to play. The main concern and center of game change adaptations should be to (3)contribute to the enjoyment of playing it and certainly NOT to enhance the ability of players to make a profit from playing it to the detriment of the aforementioned.



Edited by hankrearden

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While the walls of texts are getting too long to read at this point in this and Sun's thread, I find it difficult to compare the past Wurm economy when things were all on 2 servers ( Wild and Freedom ) to today with all the servers we have, I'd prefer the current direction the game is going, albeit slowly at times of adding more features to stopping that process and the game spending resources to look into economy issues so Billy can name his deed Boardwalk.


 


GW2 had a dev to manage the economy and all it did in my eyes was increase and decrease drop rates to try and control the amount of items you could loot, I hated that more than most things have ever encountered in my gaming years. 

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Since Rolf like to add extra servers.  It would be interesting to see one started like Challenge but PVE.  Have contest monthly on best deed, best building, most unique deed and building.  Since skilling and building are so quick on challenge.  


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Since Rolf like to add extra servers.  It would be interesting to see one started like Challenge but PVE.  Have contest monthly on best deed, best building, most unique deed and building.  Since skilling and building are so quick on challenge.  

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I really need to stress the difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics.  following quoted from http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/110.asp

Microeconomics is the study of decisions that people and businesses make regarding the allocation of resources and prices of goods and services.

Macroeconomics, on the other hand, is the field of economics that studies the behavior of the economy as a whole and not just on specific companies, but entire industries and economies. This looks at economy-wide phenomena, such as GDP and how it is affected by changes in unemployment, national income, rate of growth, and price levels.

 

In the total of wurm, overall demand has dropped while supply remained steady.  The overall demand dropped due the game being made easier and more solo friendly.  On the micro side, certain sectors were hit very hard by this drop in demand, causing profit seeking individuals to leave those sectors and join one of the few sectors for which there was still demand.  This is what caused the oversupply in the remaining sectors for which there is demand.  It isn't 'natural' market forces that caused this, but changes in the game, hence the reason why discussing them is legitimate.

You are seriously over-thinking this and most real world criteria cannot reasonably be used in a game.

 

There is no real micro economy, there is only time (investment) and premium/deed costs (rent) and there are no actual consequences for failure.

 

The macro economy is the expression of the players interactions of those who choose to and this is working fine. It is not broken in any way.

 

The game changes are what they are and their purpose is not to bolster the economy but to allow the players to have more fun. ALL of the players. This is massively more important than trying to bolster prices for in game markets. And these changes can easily be considered part of natural market forces. Market forces react to both internal and external pressures, are always in flux and seeking equilibrium. A new manufacturing process will impact a market and cause it to seek a new equilibrium point. So consider the crafting gui as a "new manufacturing process".

 

I'm sorry to say that the "deal_with_it.gif" really is quite appropriate here. Without changing core game mechanisms/balance you can't impact the economy much and changes of the level that would. well, they would be severely disruptive and probably detrimental to the game.

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