Yesterday I wrote how the Albion devs made a gigantic mistake that will make a few multiboxers extremely rich that will allow them huge advantage in whatever they get into later. I still claim so, and no one even tried to disprove me, all they can say is "this is temporary, the market will sort it out".
I also claimed that this extreme wealth imbalance will infuriate the casuals who will see that the fruits of their hours of grinding is less than what focus alt multiboxers make with literally one click. I realized that I was wrong with that. While the devs won't be able to stop the wealth imbalance, they can conceal it, so Average Joe won't know better and believe that the 50K silver he farmed doing expeditions is something.
To do that, all the devs need to do is keeping the ratio of gold (shop currency purchased with real money) and silver (in-game currency) in the reasonable range. If Average Joe is informed by Average Jack that he gained 10x more silver by throwing the price of a coffee on the game, he'll know that he is irrelevant in this game. If this doesn't happen, because the gold:silver ratio is not insane, he'll be oblivious and happy.
Now the devs have full control over the gold:silver ratio. They can spawn an alt any minute with zillion silver and gold and sell or buy as needed to create artificial demand or supply of gold. This isn't rigging, as it's transparent: the ratio is visible to everyone and he is free to make an informed decision about buying gold or starting a gold-using alt. Sure, some players would be better off without manipulation, but it's true for every balancing: sword users are surely unhappy about a sword nerf.
Same with the raw materials: if there are 3 times more products are created from the same materials due to excessive focus use, devs can increase the base material needs of crafting. Regardless of focus use, they must constantly monitor silver and material creation and intervene to prevent extreme inflation/deflation. They can change everything in the game and as long as the change affects everyone and the changes are documented, it's "balancing the game" and not some shady action.
So Albion won't go down. It will still be damaged by the fact that a few solo players with their alts make more money than guilds, but it will only lose informed grinders and gatherers. The PvP-ers, the whales and the clueless casuals will stay.
So will I. And since I'll need an alt army after release (I'm not stupid to throw money on them until it's 100% sure that the game will be released), I figured out how can you make your personal guild without logging in more than one alt at the same time (which is bannable). The guild icon is the shield in the button bar next to the inventory. Press it with your main, pay a little money for creating the guild and set up a recruitment advertisement with some rarely used language/playstyle combination:
Then log in your alt and look for the same combination. As you can see, there aren't hundreds of Turkish beginner guilds:
After all alts applied to your guild, log in your main again and you got a bunch of guild letters with options to accept them:
Just don't forget to delist your guild after all alts are collected, no need to litter up the recruitment page.
PS: after the nuclear apocalipse, there will only be cockroaches and this type of morons.
I also claimed that this extreme wealth imbalance will infuriate the casuals who will see that the fruits of their hours of grinding is less than what focus alt multiboxers make with literally one click. I realized that I was wrong with that. While the devs won't be able to stop the wealth imbalance, they can conceal it, so Average Joe won't know better and believe that the 50K silver he farmed doing expeditions is something.
To do that, all the devs need to do is keeping the ratio of gold (shop currency purchased with real money) and silver (in-game currency) in the reasonable range. If Average Joe is informed by Average Jack that he gained 10x more silver by throwing the price of a coffee on the game, he'll know that he is irrelevant in this game. If this doesn't happen, because the gold:silver ratio is not insane, he'll be oblivious and happy.
Now the devs have full control over the gold:silver ratio. They can spawn an alt any minute with zillion silver and gold and sell or buy as needed to create artificial demand or supply of gold. This isn't rigging, as it's transparent: the ratio is visible to everyone and he is free to make an informed decision about buying gold or starting a gold-using alt. Sure, some players would be better off without manipulation, but it's true for every balancing: sword users are surely unhappy about a sword nerf.
Same with the raw materials: if there are 3 times more products are created from the same materials due to excessive focus use, devs can increase the base material needs of crafting. Regardless of focus use, they must constantly monitor silver and material creation and intervene to prevent extreme inflation/deflation. They can change everything in the game and as long as the change affects everyone and the changes are documented, it's "balancing the game" and not some shady action.
So Albion won't go down. It will still be damaged by the fact that a few solo players with their alts make more money than guilds, but it will only lose informed grinders and gatherers. The PvP-ers, the whales and the clueless casuals will stay.
So will I. And since I'll need an alt army after release (I'm not stupid to throw money on them until it's 100% sure that the game will be released), I figured out how can you make your personal guild without logging in more than one alt at the same time (which is bannable). The guild icon is the shield in the button bar next to the inventory. Press it with your main, pay a little money for creating the guild and set up a recruitment advertisement with some rarely used language/playstyle combination:
Then log in your alt and look for the same combination. As you can see, there aren't hundreds of Turkish beginner guilds:
After all alts applied to your guild, log in your main again and you got a bunch of guild letters with options to accept them:
Just don't forget to delist your guild after all alts are collected, no need to litter up the recruitment page.
PS: after the nuclear apocalipse, there will only be cockroaches and this type of morons.
2 comments:
MassivelyOP ( survivors of AOL's Massively site ) had an article today "ALBION ONLINE HAS HUGE PLANS FOR ITS PLAYER-RUN ECONOMY, INCLUDING ALL-CRAFTED DROPS" I had not previously considered Albion, so am curious as to your much more informed analysis.
TIA
This wasn't a problem for you in EVE online (plex) so I don't understand why you point that out in albion ?
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