Half Camp? (in General)

What if rare items spawned in the store, hidden in with normal non-rare items.

You could limit store buys by realm, and lower the money that the NUB gets. This would encourage commerce. It could even give people a reason to converse, and interact.

The items wouldn't end up turning into rare items until you clicked on your equip page, at which point you can use them, or resell them.

I think this prevents the dreaded scripts, and adds to the game still.

That would be loads of fun!

I like it but one little thing:

what prevents "old" players from buying up the whole store, other then the 8 items per 10 minutes rule?

Well, one reason I'm guessing is practicality. There's a limit to how many items you may have unequipped on your character which would mean they'd have to keep starting new characters, and if the seed number is sufficiently low they'd have to have ~10-15 characters just for one item.

It would still be possible of course, so I guess it's up to how much effort this hypothetical person would be willing to give.

Maybe just limit the number of rares you get buy. Maybe just one an hour or something like that.

What part of this is supposed to discourage cheating?

Maybe you could make it where you can't sell the rares from the stores, only rares that spawn in auctions... Put a little flag by them or something. But that sounds like a lot of work. Maybe camping could be a "HOLIDAY THING" like 1 christmas present per User... or something... but the items would spawn in stores. And would be random?

Just thinking.

Turn camping into massively industrialized fishing? Sounds like an absolute mess to me. The stores would just be instantly cleared out at all times, and rare "drops" would be entirely random.

Might as well make rares be randomized drops during fighting if this is how you are going to do it...

Jonathan, I think novice is saying you wouldn't be able to see the rares names. Truly hidden. So then it would just be a matter of "fishing", as I said, hoping you get a good reel-in from the store.

Correct me if I am wrong on that, novice. While I don't care for the idea myself, I don't think it would be cheatable...

and if you do it during fighting your cutting us forgers out from getting rare drops

thanks sut nice idea

Goodness, relax, cha-cha. We're throwing around ideas here, I'm not trying to cut anyone out of anything.

Forging used to be my raison d'etre.

Thanks, Tal. Nice comment.

sutekh: if that is what he means, there are two possibilities.

1: the random items are worth more on the open market than it costs to buy one, on average. That is, if 1 in N items is set to be a rare that sells for an average value V, and the average price of the N items is P, then V > N * P. In this case, cheaters can build a bot that buys everything in the store, which will be indistinguishable from normal human behavior since that will be the optimal play.

2. V <= N * P, in which case nobody will bother and the only players to get these hidden rares will be new players, giving them another advantage.

Note that the number of humans participating only affects N. That is, you still only have options 1 and 2, nothing else.

I think the hard part would be convincing a new player that blowing all their money on crap is a good idea

Then bring back store botchecks and keep (or lower) the 8 items rule.
I'm not saying I've got the whole system figured out, I'm just saying it seems to me that it could be made into a workable system.

Yes it's like fishing, and is better than random drops during BA expenditure because it will cost BA to even attempt to get a rare.

i think camping should be brought back :) im kinda at a loss as to how is camping a bad thing =x

nov - he's saying either the value of the rare item is worth more than you spend on commons to get it, in which case everyone just buys up everything they can in the shop (which is open ground for bots)

or

the value of the rare item is less than you'd spend on the commons to get it, in which case vets aren't going to bother and only newbies will blow their money trying to 'fish' out a rare.

OB, I think the second half was not that new players would blow their money, but that since they are the only ones buying the items from the store, only they would get those items.

V = N * P is probably the best solution. The randomness would allow people to get lucky (or unlucky) making it a viable alternative.

However, to be honest, I don't think it's worth the time of figuring out a decent equation that would spawn these rares. The equation would have to take into account the recently expired auctions for the rare items and increase or decrease the spawn rate based on that in order to prevent major deflation.

OB: but limits on store purchases would make that unattractive, in addition to the fact that most people would lose money on that proposition (aka, a lottery) and lose the time they spend waiting another 10 minutes to buy an item from the store (or whatever it gets set to)

Bots weren't the problem with camping, those are dealt with in the same manner we currently do. What we need to prevent are people name searching via scripts for rares in the store. I believe this could accomplish that. This does lose what may have been the best part of camping (the skill) but keeps the hard work and adds in an aspect that anyone can do.

I have to admit I am a fan of camping. I will also admit I did not mind testing my skills against someone's crutch script. I won now and then.

All that said, it is not very fair to a newcomer who might want to try their hand at it. Certainly not a level playing field.

I wish as much as anyone there was a fair way to camp. I wracked my brains for a solution when it was first being phased out. None of my solutions were good enough. If you happen to find one that will really work, I am all for it. I think camping added a dimension to the game that almost required more interaction with the people and the site in general. I spent hours online talking, fighting and camping. Once it was removed, it was easy to log in, burn BA and log out.

Hope someone smarter than I can find a solution to bring back camping!

Well said Sefton. I certainly miss the rush and other stuff camping brought to the game. Thats what CB2 lacks. That extra dimension of interaction between one another. Instead we buy from the auctioneer. Boring.

Just a though but what about an extremely rare item drop in batlles and say only when your challenge bonus is 90-100% and never for chars getting 6 BA just a thought. (I know thats not camping) but it would be thrilling

435 money
387 Exp
a treasure chest filled with ?

Not to rain on your idea, Haloki, but with the advantage of being a veteran of strats and such, I could easily make a young character that with my gear, could challenge often and win in the 90-100% arena with less than 6 BA regen. I understand what you are saying, but I think it would be as easy to abuse that system, as it would be the old camping one, perhaps more so. I do not want to stop ideas though, maybe one will work so keep them coming!

I guess that's what I like about this idea, while it does eliminate the speed and visual perception aspects of camping, it goes a long way towards making camping something any player can do should they chose.

Users farming the store would create activity, give people a reason to log in more often by allowing a certain number of item purchases per hour, and would create a massive cash sink as users risked both BA and the price difference when selling items back to the store. The rare spawns would be completely random, allowing hard working campers to have a better chance, but also allowing anyone with the time to join in.

I really don't see a downside.

The potential downside is putting the supply of base rares back into the hands of an elite few.

With this system the accessibility for the common user is such that it would be very unlikely that even the most dedicated camper could corner much more than a fraction of the market. Even with max purchases per hour staying at the level they are now (24 an hour) the number of purchases you could make a day would be limited by both BA and available funds. With no guarantee of success, it would be hard for anyone to justify fully farming the store... and a LOT of work.

The old way of camping was very vulnerable to scripts and the lucky factor.

I would fight for months to get 4M CB and someone could get "lucky" and camp an item that put them way ahead.

One trade off was the fact camping took BA, so if you camped, your charcter did not grow.

However, with characters being disposable and tradeable, one could camp up a storm and then buy or get a high MPR character.

I would like to see camping back but in a different form.

How about anyone could only buy from the store at more x rares per 24 hour period? Then if you see a rare, but it is a low level one, you would have to decide whether to get it or wait for a better one. x being 1 or 2 or 3.

Again, scripts can be used to find the best rares and that problem has to be solved before any camping system can be reenacted. Perhaps a 3 second rule, that is once you enter the store, there is 3 seconds before any purchases you try to make goes through.

I've solved the script problem, and given a slightly more elegant solution to the rare purchasing issue (IMNSHO)

I'm still looking for holes in this outside of Sut's argument that it sounds icky...

might as well set up a slot machine, put letters on the wheels and when a rare combo comes up...jackpot.

moe....nothing.
elm...nothing.
mcm....ding ding, we have a winner!

if jon is even considering this idea, has his stance on gambling softened?

It's hardly gambling, you're not getting something for nothing any more than fighting is long drawn out gambling. In exchange for BA, time, and money you get a chance at a rare item. We're not talking wagers here.
The closest thing it could be compared to is a lottery, and even that doesn't fit given the time investment.

It's only really the slightest change from camping as it was, and from my perspective it's a change that would make it fairer, and less inviting to cheaters.

i would actually love to see some gambling mini-games, they can keep people on a site when they might otherwise log out.

with that being said, i like the slot machine idea the more that i think about it! give tokens for certain things like buying your ba each day, fighting so many fights per week, forging certain amounts of net worth, gaining mpr, etc. these tokens can be used for slot pulls...i am hijacking, very sorry.

I like the ideas... hidden rares will stop scripts. It will promote activity. Should promote more user/user interaction too. The store would cost BA, so would buying tat. Both a good cash sink. I think it's a plausable idea.

If you had a bot check every time, yes bots would have no advantage.

But fishing in games is always BORING! ;)

Jonathan's analysis makes perfect sense though..
It's either valuable to do to the point that every one smart does it all the time.. detracts from other parts of the game. (Ever wonder why forging isn't really profitable? Because it has no strategy at all..)

Or it's not profitable at all, and simply for that lucky someone. (Doesn't add much to the game.)

"Again, scripts can be used to find the best rares and that problem has to be solved before any camping system can be reenacted. Perhaps a 3 second rule, that is once you enter the store, there is 3 seconds before any purchases you try to make goes through."

I think that would work.

I personally am not a bit fan of be lucky, hit the jackpot.

i believe the trick should be limiting the amount of rares spawned so that it actually IS a rare... probably like 1 - 3 per day?

and letting you use up 1 BA per store check if you check 2 times within 1 hour

not to mention you could ONLY spawn the most expensive item in the auction at that time(no supporter items though) would probably help bring prices down somewhat

If you didn't like camping before, I'm not surprised you don't like it now. It was boring, and tedious, and largely based on luck for most of us. However it was FUN, and exciting. If we can capture even a fraction of that and bring it back, while allowing new users to have a taste I believe it could be a huge win for the game.

Perhaps there could be some sort of system that gives hints as to when/how rares are going to spawn into shops. These hints could be given out for being active and helpful in chat, making thoughtful/helpful (and near-Bast quality, in terms grammar and spelling, because let's face it, nobody can really match Bast) posts on the forums, contributing to the Wiki, helping run contests, and things of that nature. There could be some sort of guideline somebody with more power than me could make up, and when in doubt hint-givers could ask one another.

In order to help stop bots, the first hint could reveal the item (as in, people without at least one hint will NOT see the item in the store, and therefore not be able to buy it). The more hints a person has, the more information they'll have about the item(s) when they stock. For example, a person with two hints might know that it is going to appear between noon and midnight on Wednesday, but a person with four hints might know that it is going to appear masked as a Two-Handed Flail between those times (the three hints being the time, the shop, and then the specific item, although that's just an example and I'm sure other people could think of better hints to give out :P). It still leaves some randomness to camping, like novice's idea, but also rewards people for doing good things. Some time after a rare stocks (a random amount of time between 30 minutes and 2 hours, say), all of the hints would be changed to what the next item will be.

As for giving out these hints, one person (or multiple, if nobody's willing to put up the time to do it) could be given the job of checking the forums and wiki for anything worthy of one, and all Admins could be given the minor task of giving a person a hint when they see something worthy. These hints could decay over time, or could be stored up until one manages to snag a rare, at which point all of the hints they used to find that item could be erased.

Like any other proposition, it's bound to have its flaws. For example, people could splurge their hints to others (for a reason I cannot perceive), which could result in a minor fine and revealing of those hints to all people. I don't know how hard something like this would be to make, but, hey, nothing really bad can happen from thinking of ideas. :D

If this is too off-topic, can an admin please move this post to its own thread. o_0 I'm sorry if it is, it's just that this came to my head when I read this thread.

how about another section to the shop that sells mystery box. We can spend say 100k + 50BA or something to buy 1 every day that has a chance of being something rare, or something common or even a 2009 T-shirt? I guess it makes multi that much more attractive, but the whole system already encourages multi (except the reset + ban thing).

BBB - interesting. That is similar to my idea from ages ago with having rares spawn on a per-user basis. Ie, if I enter the store, I have an x% chance to see a rare that no one else sees.

What keeps players from scripting for that too NS.... People could just have a script that keeps opening the store until a rare spawns.

only being able to enter the store a set amount of times per day like 1-2 times would be plenty that way CB isn't flooded by rares

That would be better, the reason I don't like the idea of "camping" is because it is very/extremely biased towards those that have "more time on their hands"

I still like the idea of spawning unique relics or something that can only be sold back for money (random amounts) or be kept as a trophy collection or something. If someone collects all of the relics/trophies then a bigger prize like a rare item or something could be traded for?

Sarcastic Yay, since it has so much support why not just give out rares perfectly evenly! For free obviously.

It's essentially the same thing. Except I say you just bypass the visiting the store part.

Maybe items that spawn into stores could be set at a higher "Fair Market Value" and limit the number of times you could enter the store per day.