IDEAS FOR RYZOM

In my opinion, lowering cat production isn't a great motivator to get guilds fighting over OPs. It kinda just makes OPs worthless. The only thing to really fight over is the mats produced.

And we used to be able to share cats with allied smaller guilds. Now the only way to get them is to join a big guild that has OPs. There's hardly enough to trade around.

I'm not sure how much more fighting the Devs want, but they should know that the sides are never going to be close to balance enough for OPs to go back and forth. One side will always be more powerful, and have the option to take all OPs if they wanted to which would be very bad for the health of the server.

You quoted me and therefore I expected the quoted point to be addressed. You wrote a lot of words but did not address why you thought the statement was hypocritical. I am not criticizing your use of spoliers. I am not addressing any of your choices. I am addressing your criticisms. I want to understand what ground rules put "changing clothes while running" into the fun killing / challenge destroying category while spoiler and alts fall outside that category.

You are limited to 3 occupations at a time. It is possible to:

Monday - Practice Occs 1,2,3 then quit 1 and do 4
Tuesday - Practice Occs 2,3,4 then quit 2 and do 5
Wednesday - Practice Occs 3,4,5 then quit 3 and do 6

But even thinking about this makes my head hurt. Since you say that "it means more stress than fun", I can only conclude that you see this as an option most would find unpleasant and not use it. Since we apparently agree that most find it too uncomfortable to use, the unequivocal conclusion that follows is that since it can't be considered a truly viable option, the entire foundation for your mathematics disappears.

I'm certainly not imposing my style on anyone. What I am doing is rejecting your imposition of your style on others.

-No one is making you dig under Dai Den. Whatever mat you are digging under Dai Den is certainly available in a non aggro area. If you want to dig annete fiber under Dai Den, that's your choice; you get the same XP for crafting using shu fiber harvested over by Kara TP w/ no aggro around.
-No one is preventing you from walking your packers out to the Void.
-No one s making you return to stable to craft. Hawkers are available in every 250 region and in a non a grro area

These are self imposed constraints. I do not have any comment on your choosing them. I take issue with your using them to support an argument that they are the only alternative. Arguing that the making cats is time justified because otherwise you must dig under dai den, can not bring packers in field and can not avoid going back to stable is what I take issue with.

This is exactly how most "independents" get their cats tho I would argue that you could exchange the same efforts directly for cats.

I don't use cats for combat skills, just for crafting. But a team of 3 or 4 chain pulling can kill Kinch at the rate of 3 a minute and its a helluva lotta fun.

I am not vilifying playing with an alt. What I am addressing is the repeated exaggerations and contradictions in your arguments ..... a classic representative sample of which appears below:

1. Exaggeration - How did we get to an hour ? I gave you actual measured times of 2.25 (HA) minutes to 9 minutes (Jools). If we are comparing the time it takes under two alternatives, I take issue not with the choice of where to craft but the fact that you are multiplying the time it takes for the option you are arguing against by a imaginary factor of between 7 and 27.

2. Contradiction - Standing in front of a stable boy is somehow fun but crafting in front of a hawker and crafting is not. Please, please , please tell me how the experience of crafting standing in front of a hawker is less fun than standing in front of a stable boy.

The math only works when one imposes the same set of self imposed restriction on how one does things as you have chosen. By your own words, quitting one occ to take another each day is possible but "too stressful" for it to be a viable alternative. And w/o the ability to practice 4 occs in a day, the math falls apart. The question is not whether its possible, the question is whether anyone would consider it worth doing. Given the amount of people crafting cats, the answer would seem to be obvious.

I don't have a thing to say about your choices..... only your insistence that other choices are somehow unworkable or wrong when yours are not. When you criticize one choice, it's "fair game" to ask you how your choice is any different. I can't understand a set of ground rules that makes:

1. "Changing clothes while running" a fun killing / challenge destroying choice while "using an alt" and "spoilers" is exempt from those same rules.

2. "Crafting standing in front of hawker" is not fun, but "crafting standing in front of a stable boy" is.

3. To get craft XP, it is necessary to dig under Dai Den, digging in safe, non aggro areas is not a workable alternative.

4. Keeping packers in stable is a necessary thing and keeping packers in safe camp near hawker is unworkable.

5. One must travel back and forth to town after digging a bag full of mats, having your packer(s) with you is no good.

In the context of the matter at hand, that is the rate of craft XP, the only difference in any of the above choices is that the ones you have chosen unnecessarily increase the amount of time required to complete the task. As one peels away each of these self imposed constraints or "time penalties", the time advantage you calculate gets less and less. When ya get to the issue of the 3 occ limit per toon, while a possible alternative exists, in your own words it is "too stressful" . And with that option therefore admittedly unviable for most players, the foundation on which the mathematics is based completely crumbles.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't experience catalyzers supposed to be rare-ish items?

Yeah, quite frankly I don't get this whole "everyone should have access to a vast amount of daily cats" thing. If cats were supposed to be readily available for everyone at little to no cost, they could simply double the XP we get or half the XP we need and completely get rid of cats.

Like most, I started playing when I had access to more cats than I could carry. Do I miss the faster levelling? Of course. Do I think I have a right to cats? Absolutely not.

Regarding OPs becoming worthless: I hardly think so. Even a small amount of cats per day is still an advantage, and that advantage is exactly what cats are about: Putting in effort (OP wars) to have an advantage.

The only people I really see "struggling" (well, what struggle really? All that happens to them is that they will advance slower, and they decidedly chose it that way) are new small guilds (like the Sabbath of Bane), who do not have any OPs and thus no direct access to cats. But even they have the possibility to trade, or to simply encourage their guild members to all do the Tour of the Camps, which, with proper fame, grant enough low level cats to be worth it for newer players, time-wise.

And is it unfair that they have no access to something the bigger guilds do? Absolutely not. Maybe the point is that not everyone should found his or her own guild for the lols of it. It requires effort, work, planning and more importantly knowledge, contacts and strong will.

I also remember the daily cat give aways a year ago by many guilds who had more cats than they could store. Is it unfair that that's gone? In my opinion, nope. Cats are a benefit of being in a guild, guildless players receiving them was just a nice bonus.

tl;dr: Cats shouldn't be a common commodity, no cats isn't unfair, work for your XP.

[As an introductory note: There may have been a couple of misunderstandings, and as far as I am responsible for, I would like to apologize when I did not express myself clearly or did not understand. Kindly note that I am not a native English speaker.]

As I do not want to repeat the whole discussion just some notes:

I do not want to deny that you have more experience in the game than me, and clearly, I shall try to follow your suggestions for more effective crafting at least to some extent, much more as I finished mastering my last country in digging. So let us drop that point.

Please let us not mix up two things: first, the maximum amount of occ products per day, which cannot exceed 4.5, and second, the time to produce these products, and the resulting time it takes to produce 1 stack of cats or, more exactly, their pre-product, nexus crystals (which is very useful as it doesn't consume weight or bulk).

To the latter: As I mentioned, I estimate 20-30 minutes for 1k nexus crystals. As this seems not to be challenged anymore, I shall not repeat the calculation. It is, btw, possible to speed that up at least to some extent, but as a rule of thumb, I consider it valid.

To the further: Unless changing occ, no more than three sets of products may be yielded. One set of products equals 375-438 nexus crystals for surface occs and 750-876 nc for lair occs, for simplicity I prefer a conservative estimate of 400 and 800 nc, respectively. Assuming equal usage of surface and lair occs, an average of 600 nc on the long range seems reasonable.

That means, that by regular occupation usage of 3 occs a day, 1800 cats are an undisputed yield rate. When you consider daily dropping of one occ too complicated, what about dropping all occs every Monday and Fryday, and taking 3 new ones? This will result in 21+6 productions per week, an average of 2,314 nc per day. I do not think that is overly hard to keep in mind.

More than 2 stacks of cats every day does not seem few to me. A guild holding a 250 OP has 40.5k cats to distribute per week when drilling 50/50 as I was told. That means, 5.8k cats a day. If the guild has more than 2 members requesting cats, it is below my yield on a per member base.

As long as one has no cats to waste, one should clearly think twice before using them when xp is plenty anyway, and the activity can be done at any time. When I have to wait for a day or so before I have a team for kinchers or jugulas for an hour or two, I may prefer anyway to double the result even if gaining the cats has lasted longer than winning xp during leveling without cats.

As to your "changing clothes while running", forgive me, but I simply do not understand. I do not recall to have criticized changing clothes without delay or cd time though one could, but a game is not a real world situation. I did not find discussions where that issue had been raised. I think we both agree that one should not use shortcuts too easily, no matter whether accepting loads of dappers, spoiler information, or other stuff which is convenient but "saves" also fun and satisfaction. This clearly also applies to using an alt.

I recognized that there is a different thread discussing playing with an alt. I would not or at least much, much less rely on had we more players on our server. Getting a team to level on kinchers as you described is not an easy task, there, and if one only waits for, leveling will be very slow. Playing with real players is absolutely much more fun, but being unable to train definitely is not.

Easy: Once I had the solutions, I could go on with occs, which I did anyway, in a more effective fashion. Again, on a more populated server, I might have trained occs with several others on the same grade, doing the elimination work jointly, such as the predecessors were able to do. That would have been more satisfying. That I am producing my cats myself, makes me independent, now. I am still helping others, and most times just for fun, not for reward, as others do vice versa.


Agreed, but getting such a team is nothing so easy and self-evident on a low population server.

There is a difference indeed. If I have all my mat on the beasts and, additionally, in the trading system, I am crafting for some time, seeing and greeting people. That is some change from hanging out digging. As far as you mean that crafting time does not matter so much, ok you convinced me.

Still you do not make me digging faster, 600mats/hr is a reasonable result (I know others are better). That means an (irrealistic) maximum of 180,000xp when getting max xp (300/mat) from overcrafting every time ignoring degrades and failures, 120-150K xp per hour being realistic, dropping to nearly 100/mat in the end. Even if I set crafting time to zero, I cannot beat that, and even a better digger with 1000mats/hr will be only bit above that.

No, it does not fall apart at all, see above. Even if "only" yielding 1800 cats per day, that is more than 4 members of a guild holding a 250 op can expect. And as I told, change all 3 occs twice a week, then you are close to 4 occs a day.

I don't. I do not challenge people getting their cats from outposts. I didn't even deny that the cat production may be too low for Arispotle with a larger population than Leanon. I only challenged groundless assertions that spending less than an hour per day to obtain two stacks of cats is not viable, waste of time, or that the math does not work.

I still do not understand (maybe my fault), kindly explain.

I am dropping the rest. I could explain why it was favorable for me to dig on Dai-den's patrol way given my needs of leveling jungle and some other considerations (I killed him at a number of occasions, btw.), and why mat I wanted/needed was there and not somewhere else. I do not say that that is the only way to do it, I do not say, either, that leaving the packers in the stable is a must. But trekking the packers needs time and is risky, especially when done alone.

And your assertion that the calculation "crumbles away" does not follow. Any stack of cats is guaranteed 100k xp as long as you are able to get the other 100 from elsewhere and don't use cats to pay dp. And that 100k xp is won in 20-30 minutes. There may be ways to get more xp faster, granted. But there are not so many, and not all of them available to anybody in a similar way as winning cats from occupations is.

I fully agree to anybody saying that cats are not so important at all. That can be told about everything in the game as well. Yet winning cats by doing occs is versatile and satisfying, and worth while the effort, also when doing the math, I dare say, much more when doing so.

I voted for the rate to be increased.

I remember both the time before cats, and the time when cats were just introduced. When they were introduced, the logic that was presented to me for the abundance of cats produced was so that guilds with Ops would be able to share cats more or less freely with anyone they chose to share with.

I completely understand the need to reduce the rate with a reduction in playerbase, but the current production rate appears to me to be woefully inadequate. I don't suggest returning it to the original rate, but definitely higher than it currently is. I was told recently that the actual reduction was 60%, my suggestion would be to back that off to 40% reduction from the original rate.

i would say 60% in favor of the idea vs 26% against speaks for itself.

And I would say:
First get the forum absentees and the French/German people to vote as well to make the numbers more realistic (100 people are not a very big base).
Secondly round mathematically correct or not at all (26.9% -> 27%)

Well since both Aniro and Leanon do not have a similar poll in thier ideas forums, maybe we could just do Arispotle. Apearently the need for cats is much lower in the other servers. Perhaps this has to do with population.

Furthermore, the poll has been here for 5 months, i think all had their chance to vote. Perhaps someone missed it, well thats just bad luck.
You dont need everyone for a conclusive poll.

And thank you for the math. it makes a huge difference.

just raise the dam cat production alrdy

Actually I meant the huge number people never looking into the forums ;-) (on Leanon it's round about 75% of the people I know that only look into the forum if they have a problem - so those people would never see the poll as they don't see it as a problem)
And just in the time since my last post 4 additional people have voted.

And regarding the math: it's not a huge difference but it shouldn't look as if you're preferring one option when trying to get a final conclusion
I don't think this poll will lead to that - they probably just see it as a hint that there are some people not liking the situation. And change something else (maybe more missions for cats or another option dropping the flower production all together and increasing the cat production instead, ...)

would be nice to see if they will look into it :)