The Lustmord Report: May 21st Economy Patch.

So far, 2014 has been a great year for Darkfall: Unholy Wars.  We've received the Chaos School, the Sinspire Dungeon, the Area of Influence System, new Village Control Points systems, Levy Collections, among other things. All of these have been well received by the community.

On May 21st,  AV released the New Economy Patch. Here's what it's all about:

The New Grind

 

 

These items can be found in greater abundances in the lower tier danger zones, while in the higher tier zones you'll find more essences.

If you aren't familiar with it, essentially the new economy system includes Inferior Raw Mats in the low level danger zones that need to be converted to Regular Raw Mats, that in turn need to be converted to Rare Raw Mats, that in turn need to be converted into Rare Refined Mats.

On top of that, there's a new conversion item for each type of mat. As examples, if you want to create wood from lumber, you'll need Linseed from a bush. If you want to create cloth from wool, you'll need Lye from a tree.  If you want to create the rare variations of these mats, it will require even more of the conversion materials based on the rarity of the end product!

Example-

5 inferior cotton = 1 cotton,
3 Cotton + Essence = Rare Cotton,
3 Rare Cotton + (x) Lye + Mandrake = Rare Cloth.

New Tools

The new tools were put in place to effect what kind of essences you can get. These items will unlock the ability to collect essences based on their tier. As examples, Selentine tool will collect Selentine essences with a reduced chance to gather Veilron. A Veilron tool will collect Selentine and Veilron, with a reduced chance to collect Neithal, and so forth.

These tools add risk to harvesting. If you have an expensive tool, you will be less likely to harvest naked, and away from your keyboard. I use the word "expensive" loosely; these tools are not expensive at all.. but they aren't as easy to acquire as a generic 3g tool from your local merchant, so they do add more risk.

The Alternative Route

 

Distracted by the new mats and tools, the community probably didn't get much chance to try the alternative means of getting resources- Super Nodes.

These Super Nodes are placed in mob spawns throughout Agon, and give an opportunity for players to collect new rare materials, and bypass the grindy conversion systems completely.

The only catch is that you must be ready to defend yourself from local monsters, as well as other players.

Also worth noting, mob loot tables have been revamped, and from what I hear the higher end Terror and Scourge level mobs drop really good refined rare mats.

The Community's Reaction

 

 

Faced with the prospect of additional grind for these mats, and largely ignoring the alternative options, the community exploding in tearful fit of rage! The forums were filled with complaints about drop rates for conversion mats, complaints about conversion costs in recipes, about the tool costs, about how difficult it will be for anyone to raise a crafting skill, and about having raw mats in our banks that we'll never be able to convert.

There were threats and petitions to unsub until the problem is "fixed".

Global chat was filled with people blaming the MVP's, and Teamspeak had constant chatter about soon everyone will be wearing R30 gear- if they can afford it!

There were a people in the other camp, that stood with this patch, arguing that this is the "Economy Patch" so we should be using the market, and not trying to make our own stuff. Others, like Xpiher, recommended everyone start scraping and farming mobs for the salvage more to get basic mats (which isn't a bad idea).

Aventurine's Response

Listening the Community, AV did a Live Stream where they apologized several times for any distress they may have caused the players with these changes. They said they would take our feedback, and work to improve the system.

The next morning, they posted on Facebook that the morning maintanence would be delayed until they could roll out a patch to help correct any issues.

They followed through, and applied a Hotfix that reduced the requirements of conversion mats, as well as increased the drop chance, and added them to Freak level monster loot tables and small treasure maps. You can view the hotfix notes here.

They also posted some insight to their reasons for the harvesting changes, as well as issued a Letter to the Community, explaining a little bit about where they are coming from, and the reasons behind some of their decisions.

So, what does this all tell me?

The final verdict on the Economy Patch isn't in yet. We certainly haven't had much time to test it out.
What it tells me is that AV is serious about improving this game, and their relationship with their players.

It tells me that they want to nerf  the impact of multi-boxing chinese gold farmers to prevent them from soaking the market with materials...

.. And the fact that they didn't completely revert a lot of the changes, but simply compromised on the costs, tells me they have a vision for the direction of the economy and how these systems will work.


Regardless, the next major patch is Custom Roles- ETA is first week of June! I'm way too excited for that to put much more thought into the economy patch.

Economies are for nerds.