Idea: New Currency System

[Tocharaeh]

Hello everyone. I have a new currency system that I would like to bring to the table. First let me state my case, and then continue forward from there.

As it stands coins mean squat in the game. Yes, we have these strange TP's that NOBODY uses because it takes so flipping long to do anything of worth. I just spent 2 hours gathering stuff, and got like 6 total TP's to show for it. I can go walk right into a quest, complete it in the same amount of time, and earn myself a friggin silver. This is rediculous. Next, tokens. Tokens are WONDERFUL quest rewards, and there are a ton of them out there if you look so they have their own place, like TPs, within the diverse world of 4D. However, what good are coins? Well, coins buy us heals when we actually use them, wands should we ever be desperate enough to hold such heavy things, and occasionally we give 200mil to some unsuspecting newbie. Mostly, we just hoard our coins. I would estimate that the average bank/player rests comfortably at 800,000,000 coins..wasting away. Reward Points- Way useless. We rarely give them out, and it takes forever for players to gather anything worth squat for say a pre-title ability. I used to do everything I could to hand out points so people would use them- However as a RPL/Hero- RP Points don't mean a thing- I can't earn them, and I'm stuck with only a FEW of the commands from the list.

This is what I propose-

I propose that we include JEWELS in shops for people to buy. Each jewel is worth a particular amount. Instead of holding coins in the bank, we hold jewels of difefrent types as follows:

                     Middle grade: Red Ruby (worth 5mil coins)
                     High grade: White Diamond (worth 20 RR)(100mil coins)
                     Exquisite: Jeweled Egg (worth 20 WD)(2bil coins)

The purpose of this is to create player treasuries that aren't so...bland, and it also makes the bank look much cooler. If you need to cash in some rubies for cash, you just deduct them from the bank, and sell them back to any shop for the EQUAL price you originally paid for you.

Next: I believe to bring up the player base, we need to give players a little bit more freedom by allowing them to access restrings more readily. By this I mean that since the IMM staff is so busy, they might as well use their HERO's who are the IMM lackies. Giving the HERO's this ability means tat a player can come to a HERO, and PAY for a restring for say 5 JE. 5JE would be worth probably close to 2bil in our current coinage.

This reason I am also proposing this system is so that there is more cash flow going around. People are spending more instead of just endlessly hoarding. Just because we are restringing something doesn't mean it's being perzed...just renamed.

Which leads to my next chart:

 Exquisite: Jeweled Egg x 3   = 1 Restring (1 Silver)
 Exquisite: Jeweled Egg x 21 = 1 perz (3 JE per script) (7 Silver)
 Exquisite: Jeweled Egg x 18 = 1 lvl 50 mount (6 silver)
 Exquisite: Jeweled Egg x 90 = House (+30 per upper grade of house) (3 Gold + 1 Gold/Upgrade)
 
This is just an example. I think that a currency system like this is more interactive and I think that we could even use this for mob trade quests as well. As you can see I'm calling for a slight decrease in the prices for housing because I think that we need to make the ability to own homes a little more accessable. The reason being is that not everyone is quest savy, and though this may hurt some prides from other players who have worked hard to get where they are today- I say get over it. I think that on top of the new class system being worked out, there is more that can be done to entice newer peoples into staying. Giving players more accessable options like buying restrings from 4D staff to create item uniqueness, and the ability to USE our coinage for the purpose of purchasing all that is available via tokens will help KEEP people here because it gives them more "reachable" goals. Housing and such is truly a minority, and I think that since it is the players that keep the mud going, they should be given a little slack on things.

If you think that the regular token system is fine, and you don't want to change how the treasury works, then I think we should at least allow for players to be able to BUY tokens from the token machine near recall for the same prices as the proposed jewels/jeweled egg.

This is just my proffessional opinion, and hope to hear some feedback form the staff on this. I would like to avoid nay saying from oldbie haters who own everything We really need to start thinking outside the box rather than within the confines of the "power" we have emassed over the many years.

-Tocharaeh

[Turin Orsini]

I understand what you are trying to put forward here, and to some dregee agree and with other points totally agree with you, but what we have to look at before anything else is priorities.
At this point in time we have a major skill and class revamp that has been given the go ahead for discussion development and if workable and agreeable implimentation after much work and testing, minor things that are merely cosmetic essentially will just be a drain on already stretched thin resources.
Ok after that rant my thoughts

Money sort of agree yes it sits there it buys us stuff it pays for recovers and can be to a limited extent converted - implimenting a new currency is not going to reduce the amount of money players have just put more things in place for them to store the same amount of money in - essentually nothing changes there.
Using HERO's to restring would be a fantastic idea if restrings were worth squat, plain and simple, the rules about what can and can not be restrung are a joke - no one is going to pay to get rp eq only restrung - bring back the ability to restring any eq and you will get players using the system and paying for the privilage, but at the moment is a worthless change.
Using coinage to pay for tokens is also good, and yes there may be hundreds of tokens out there available for farming for anyone that has found or has been told where it is and how to do it ( yes I am cynical in these things) and they once they know can get as many as they like, but others may not like a certain area so may never in their wanderings discover these things so buying tokens could work it would reduce the amount of liquid money in the game as people will invest in tokens - essentually replacing your idea at the start of jewels as we already have the token system in place.

Some interesting ideas but as stated at the start just the wrong time in my opinion with everything else going on.

[Tocharaeh]

Yup yup, now isn't the time for sure. Just fiugured I'd drop it here before I forgot the muse that hit me last night. Glad to see we are seeing eye-to-eye on this though.

-Toch

[Kvetch]

So.. if I read right Tokens, Coins, TP's and Award Points aren't enough, you want yet ANOTHER currency system in the game?  How about we just fix the amount of coins given out and wipe everyone's bank?

[Tocharaeh]

No no no, I'm just thinking of separate ways about doing things. Having 8gazillion coins is just retarted. Might as well use them somewhow. Not about wiping peopels banks, and changing coinage amounts- tho I would agree to changing coinage amounts provided. But, what I'm going for here is to give people more access to things they woulnd't otherwise have.

If I have to spend 2 hours for 6TP, it's not worth it. not in the least. Quests have their place. TPs...were just useless. We need to be less stringent on our pbase because we have a rather rediculous choke hold on everything. It's the PBase that keeps 4d alive, we need to give them other ways to shoot for things. I wouldn't mind being able to actually invest my coinage into a home. Makes far more sense to me than just hoping to perz everything possible, add the needed scripts, buy the best home, have a top mount, and so on. Not enough tokens out there. RP groups cost tokens too! (which is stupid), I have invested so much into what once was an active group, am I going to be able to get a refund? Nope. But I have 1bil coins sitting and doing nothing. I think it would be nice to know I could buy things of worth.

Point is is that we invest our time here, and have only quest eq, some perzes, maybe a mount if you're lucky (because you need a stable...heh which requires a house), and so on. It's spendy and unrealistic. Not EVERYONE is a crack shop questor like some people. You need to think about that aspect too. There needs to be a fine balance between hack 'n slasher, and questor.

As it stands do you realized that MANY of the homes that exist are because someone went and built a zone to get a house? 4D doesn't reward like that anymore. Should I actually finish my large zone, and get everything in...what am I going to get: choice to have an IMM, OR a couple of tokens. No home. Not for me. Not for my hard work. But a lot of the fellow oldies sure took advantage of an old reward.

Lessen the noose. Give people some more headroom here. Make tokens purchasable, or creating a coin price. Something. I just like the ideas of rubies, and jewels and stuff because it looks nice. Gives people more to do for themselves. That's all. I want to create more fluidity.

-Tochie

[Molly]

Sorry, I just don't like this idea.

We already have 4 different types of currency, why complicate things with a 5th?
Sure, we could think of other ways to collect and use the existing types of currency.
But getting a new type? Bad idea in my opinion.

The only thing I really agree with is that gold coins still are way too easy to get. Maybe we should work a bit more on that.

TPs are useless and too hard to get?
Sorry, mate, you can't have got the hang of it then.  TPs were introduced to replace the too easy, repeatable 'quests' that weren't really quests but 'pharming'. To just mention the obvious ones; farming and gardening.
TPs are extremely easy to get, since there is about one gazillion ways to get them. Trading is always repeatable, and once you get in the habit of collecting items for the traders, you'll realize that there are gazillions of those too. You obviously just haven't looked for them.
Beside using TPS as an alternate way of levelling, there are several useful things you can buy for TPs, for instance Golems, spacebikes and their fuel. You don't use those things? Well, other players do.

Awardpoints are too hard to collect?
That's because they were supposed to be handed out by our Heroes and RPLs, most of which regrettably seem to have gone inactive. You are both Hero and RPL yourself, I believe, so that's at least one thing that you could do something about on your own. (Mind you, they are not supposed to just be handed out to Recall squatters, you're supposed to think out some quest or RP event and involve players in it, which of course means that a bit of effort on both sides is needed).

Houses are too expensive? Didn't you just say yourself how easy it is to 'walk right into a quest, and earn yourself a friggin silver'? Why on earth would we lower the price then, when we had to introduce TPs to make it a bit less easy?
And don't tell me that tokens are too hard to get and that not all players are Questors.
Sure, there are about a dozen extremely hard quests in the game, where you really need to be a 'Questor' - (i.e. just read the friggin descriptions) - to succeed. But there are also over a hundred easy ones, where all you really need to do is talk to some mob - or kill it. 

Also I don't recall players ever getting a house in return for building a zone.
The reward for that, if the zone is good enough, has always been either an imm or a gold token, (if for any reason you don't get the imm). It still is.

We are already discussing a huge change with the skill system. Let's concentrate on that, rather than trying to change just about everything that is the trademark of 4D.