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HexD

Penny for your thoughts

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The ability to write books which consume experience points that can then be sold/traded to players which can read them and gain the experience over time. I had this idea while thinking about ways to provide new players with jobs to earn money that weren't consuming their time in exchange for money but could also be a means to level up passively whilst earning money. The thinking was, a player could provide a service to merchant player types on Xanadu for instance that are otherwise too busy to deliver items which can't be mailed by other means. Whilst driving the wagon they could read books for experience which would be gained over time like an action with a longer timer and the more they read the more of the invested exp is gained, book can be stopped and started freely.

Something like that..

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Sounds like a cool idea, I will agree on that premise alone, however it has some really evident problems with it. Namely, it opens up a market that incentivizes specifically to people who may be prone to macro or multi-box accounts. Like pay2win, except its a matter of how much computing power you have at your disposal.

 

IF and only if, each book written in this way was consumed on use, and could not be used to gain skill past a fairly low number, like 50 or so, I think it could work for the purpose for which you describe.

 

E.G. past level 50 you get something like: [00:00:00] The Skill Guide contains no useful information to you. You need to employ your knowledge through experience to get better at [skill].

Edited by whereami

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Maybe people who already achieved the legend (99.99999) should be able to inscribe such books? 

Someone with 100 digging might get a "reward" for achieving this other than the title and it would stop people from multi/macro/2s premium/alt abuse. People certainly wouldn't go through the trouble of hitting a legend in a skill purely to start selling excess of gains for profit but it might create a new market.

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I shall name my book "A Bitminer's Experience" I also feel this would open the door for more pay2win.

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It's already pay2win. You can buy accounts and sleep powders, weapons, armour, magical items all of which make skill gain much easier when you have them and all can be purchased.


Macro users are going to macro regardless and there are steps that can be taken to hinder their ability to abuse this suggestion.


One of them being a time restriction. Since writing about experiences in detail with enough articulation to enlighten another person is no easy feat. Lets say each book takes a while to write and is completed in 20 chapters, each chapter takes 3 minutes to finish and requires a small cool down period to recharge the brain battery of 30 minutes. It's something players would utilise while going afk a couple minutes for a bathroom break, start their writing action and over time complete books which benefit newer players. After completing a book the author must wait 7 days? before they can write another book. So at most any one player could write a book every 7 days and 11 hours? I can't see people spamming alts to write books for money when the return won't be worth it, Especially when incorporating the idea below.

Another way could be to limit the writing of books to players who have 90+ in the given skill they chose to write about, I think players at this level are less inclined to macro although it's not unheard of. We could also have a Wurm publisher NPC which would act as a way of documenting the supply of books and it would quickly become apparent with those who may be using a macro by the shear volume of books produced. Since players would submit their books to the publisher NPC and each book would have the authors name it would be easy to track. You could go one step further and require the skill gain invested into the books to be replaced before being able to write another book, using a reason similar to needing inspiration and having writers blocks preventing them from writing another.

@whereami50 seems a reasonable number to cap it at. 

I think the hard part would be to work out the cost/rate to convert skill gain spent upon writing to skill gain received upon reading. Someone more talented at maths and with a deeper understanding of the mechanics than me would have to work that out but I'm inclined to say it shouldn't be at 1:1 and should cost more experience to impart the knowledge. 

Overall I think it has potential and if anyone has ever played Mortal, it uses books to gain experience and imo is a great system to get players acclimated increasing player retention no doubt.

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41 minutes ago, HexD said:

It's already pay2win. 

thats why i said more.

42 minutes ago, HexD said:

I can't see people spamming alts to write books for money when the return won't be worth it

if it isnt worth selling then how is it worth anything to an account with low skills that can raise its skill alone?

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Not worth spamming, there's a difference.

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There'll be a market for the books and they'll fetch a fair price, I'm sure but I think with the suggestions above there won't be many, if any people trying to run multiple accounts to turn it into a revenue stream because the return won't be worth it compared to the cost of multiple accounts and having to skill them all up.

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Maybe skillgain bonus near highly skiller player if doing same activity? Would be nice for impalongs.

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3 hours ago, HexD said:

Not worth spamming, there's a difference.

But if it is worth selling, then more of it is better. Being of value to sell it is inherently worth the effort to sell more of it. If it isn't worth the effort to sell many than I can't see it's value in a lesser quantity.

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Sure, but if we make it in such a way that the price it cost of creating a book in various forms like premium, time and skill required then people looking to utilise multiple accounts for profit are going to find them selves unjustifiably overworked and/or underpaid in regards to what their return on the books will create. So the books will have value to a player looking to impart their knowledge gained in exchange for a few coins as a side venture not an eJob and the books will have value to newer players looking to gain experience in exchange for a few coins but the books will not hold value to people looking to use them as a market to monopolise.

If you think of it like this, if it costs 1s per book for example and the most books any one account can make in a month is 4, but it costs 8 euros a month for premium then the cost of producing the books is more than they return and in the eyes of any one with good business acumen, that's a bad investment, yet it still has value to those not looking to exploit the mechanic.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, I'm quite tired.

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Anything to generate revenue eh?

 

The greed of this community never ceases.

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5 hours ago, HexD said:

If you think of it like this, if it costs 1s per book for example and the most books any one account can make in a month is 4, but it costs 8 euros a month for premium then the cost of producing the books is more than they return 

What this would do is add that 4s to any other way that an account is able to make silver. Yes it is less than a months prem.

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No, what this would do is provide new players with a much more passive way to begin the game increasing the retention rate and sustaining an already declining player base. Most of the new players aren't looking to spent real money on this game and even more of them won't grind the methods we currently have to earn enough money to pay for prem, providing ways to support them earning money and gaining skill whilst rewarding veteran players for supporting newer players is a great system as one feeds the other. You look at it however you want, but it's no different than a person employing 5 alts to spam bricks to sell whether they macro it or not, that's why we have GM's to police the game. Well the only difference would be this idea would limit the amount any one account could create but there's nothing in place to limit a players ability to spam bricks, mortar, concrete or any of the other mass produced items which are currently supporting new players and veterans alike.

@FranktheTank

 

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I'm sorry I just can't see this being beneficial. One, if someone isn't profiting, they likely won't invest time into writing the books. Two, if new players aren't willing to grind to get money for premuim, nor are they willing to spend RL currency, how is this beneficial? The game isn't going to benefit by having more players that don't financially support the game.

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Not sure you've understood/read all what I've said. Normal players making books will make money for their effort, but players using alts and macros and alike aren't going to make money enough to justify the use of alts and macros and alike.

Edited by HexD

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7 minutes ago, Finnn said:

-1 don't ask me why


Why?

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7 hours ago, HexD said:

making books will make money

if these 5 words are true then it is abusable 

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On 7/4/2019 at 10:22 AM, Martynas5 said:

Maybe skillgain bonus near highly skiller player if doing same activity? Would be nice for impalongs.

 

I like this better.... 

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5 hours ago, armyskin said:

if these 5 words are true then it is abusable 

 

I never thought of it like this! That means everything currently used to make money is susceptible to abuse and we ought to remove it from the game, right? If making something can generate money and we've established things that make money can be abused and we don't want abuse, we should not have them in game, right? That's your logic here?
You realise you're arguing a point that is already abundant in Wurm, and is actually one of it's unique selling points? Players can openly trade and make money, which invites all levels of abuse and yet we still persist with it because for all the negative there is more positive from having said mechanic. The effects of this would far outweigh the down sides of it and using some forward thinking would be very easy to police/prevent abuse. I'm done explaining, you either get it or you don't.

 

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Wurm's already having it quite easy to grind skills to 50, I don't see why the game would need a pure pay 2 win trading skill system

- 1 reason could be.. buying from web-shop item to be able to export 1-20, (imagine if we had gaps in skills forcing people to buy and GRIND?)30-40, 40-50 skill for specific skills based on their difficulty.. like.. weaponsmithing costing 5x more~ or with w/e multiplier as it's harder(slower) to grind, item itself could be working with a range of skill levels and difficulty multiplier to get less skill per item if the skill is harder to get.

 

Lets see.. WURM/CodeClub itself do not strike me as a money-leech system where they'd do anything to get 1-2-5cents or all your dolla's for convenience

 

This will overall let even the grind-'haters' to gain levels on things they cant stand to spend time on - LONG TERM - further ruining the market of goods as everybody will be able to do anything w/o spending time, it will all be a game of small transactions between players.

 

This will incentivize macroing and botting and will open more work for staff to track and monitor the 'alt lords'.

 

If you want to monetize your skill use the old way.. buy a character, so far works well.

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since way before i played, wurm has changed, so many aspects have been gimped to the point that they're not worth exploiting by people that exploit.
there's no reason we can't start on that foot with books.
I do believe there is a way to make abuse nearly pointless whilst at the same time keeping them a useful, viable option for players that are willing to cultivate rather than exploit.

the creative compromises listed on this thread goes some way to defining the necessary variables.

I can see the vision working in the game but.. the thought and guard involved in applying this idea will be quite taxing for our devs, who already have a roadmap that demands more than their time.
Course, it might be able to be implemented in some part by logic-routes in the code that already exist, i wouldn't know.

eitherway
+1 from me

Edited by Steveleeb

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