Cash vs. experience (in General)

I wish there were some way of balancing cash vs. experience income based on the character type. I'd love to slow down my experience progression so that I could get my ELB to catch up with my archers encumbrance. The only way to do that currently would be to forge and I dislike forging. It would be nice if you could change the ratio of experience to cash earned a lot like the special periods.

Anyone have any ideas how this could be done without breaking anything or care to shoot down my feeble attempt?

XP can only be gotten one way (two if your count minion buys, but they are yucky), where as CB can be obtained any way you can think of it.

Unless you're willing to gamble on buying a char, XP is always king.

If from the start of the creation of your character you had to choose that ratio and permanently, maybe, but if you can change it anytime, this will give some pretty strange results on the dynamics of the game. Adverse effects on the economy and on relative rankings ought to be.

xp doesn't help if your trying to make a tank and you can't keep the weapon up to the level of your character

that is an awesome idea. how about a way to balance your own rewadrs, like a meter towards more money or more xp, but keep the rewards system the same the way it is. but be able to get all moeny or all exp. huh huh?!

then the only way to be competitive would be to go all XP and USD your CBD. Not fair for us non,USD spenders.

I have to say, I like this idea, along with Sal's. It'd be a lot more convienent...(wow at my spelling error today, but I am too lazy to fix it)

Oh just imagine a NUB with his rewards toggled to 'cash'....

i thought it was a good idea, but maybe i was wrong lol. didnt really think it through. ha

The only way this would work is if you could only choose more cash rewards.

Allowing people to choose XP over money is kind of like bringing back the old RoE; it becomes almost required to reach the top rank(s), and may force recalibrating the N*B which would make it even more of a necessity. That, or we'd be seeing new people at the top every month, eventually pushing those below even farther down, forcing them to run NCBs, etc.

If people could choose all cash rewards, it just seems kind of pointless. The only people who would go all cash rewards are those currently not being competitive. Why should people who aren't trying to get to the top make more money than those who are making a valiant effort to reach the top ranks? It's basically encouraging people to be lazy (Hey! Stay in this 100% CB area and get mad cash!!!!!!) when it comes to competition.

go all cash rewards, buy all your junk, NCB to the top.

Yea, I already thought of those issues - particularly the likelihood of NUB abuse, which is why I asked if someone could come up with a better idea. Even with the possible abuses, I would love to have that feature - probably because USD spending/buying doesn't bother me and because I don't really care if I make it to the top.

Honestly, Dave's idea could possibly work with some tweaking.

At the creation of a new character, you can set a slider that would grant you more Cash, at the cost of XP, but the slider would never go any further towards XP than what it was originally set at. So you could never gain more XP than you normally would, but you could lower your XP rewards per fight to get more cash. This setting could never be changed and would allow those of us who would rather run Tanks/Archer to be able to, hopefully, keep our weapon's up to our Enc.

I don't see how this idea can be implemented without huge area for USD abuse...

I honestly don't see the "huge USD abuse" problem you're all talking about. If everyone goes to "All Cash" then everyone will be selling CBD meaning the price will plummet in a heartbeat. Sure, you can buy boatloads of it, probably pretty cheap, but when you can only sell it for less than a buck per mil, what is the point? The initial wave might be able to make a profit but after that, highly doubtful.

USD get a massive advantage... go all exp and just buy CB with USD... incredible NCB/NUB runs that non-USD spenders will never achieve... do you see what I mean?

No, I don't. Everyone constantly says how there will be huge USD abuse but yet I don't see it.

If you can -never- set yourself to All XP, its pointless to even talk about strategies like that. And even if you did set yourself to All XP, then you would of had to build up a large base of items and cash beforehand. If you buy CBD during your NCB now, you get further ahead with Tanks/Archers because you can keep up with your Enc.

I'm honestly waiting for a valid arguement as to how this will make USD users so much more powerful.

High MPR character choose to go all XP. Suddenly the only way to compete is to go all XP for fall behind in MPR. However, all XP people get no cash, unless they spend USD. Therefore, USD spenders have more of an advantage because they can grow extremely fast in XP while upgrading their items and buying BA while non-USD spenders are kind of stuck with a fall behind or fall more behind situation.

Furthermore, choosing higher EXP over CBD means high cost strategies would suffer (tanks) while low cost strategies would be more efficient to run.

Regardless. We've already decided that the ability to go all XP would be too broken and screw with the system too much. But even if they did, this whole Cash/XP Slider system would only be applicable to -new- characters.

What you are all trying to argue is if someone like Ranger, no offense intended here but you're the first name that popped to mind, decided to buy back Koy and then go all XP. He's the only person that I can think of who could afford what you are all talking about.

Lets say this system is put in place, and lets say that most people go All XP, thus raising the price of CBD to roughly $10 per 1mil CBD. To get a base ELB to the point where it would be competitive, you'd have to spend 50mil CBD to get +160. That alone is 500 bucks. But wait, those + won't do you a thing without some x's. So, multiply $7,798 * the X, is what is listed in the Wiki for the cost per X on a ELB. We'll take a nice happy round number... say 10,000 and that's our X's for this ELB. So, 10,000 times 7,798 brings us to 77,980,000, which I'll round up to 78 mil because that is generally what you'd buy. So, for that, we'd tack on another 780 dollars.

So tell me, who, of our players, will spend $1,280 just to get a Bow to the point where it will be able to hit on people with Evasion and DBs? And heck, that's just the weapon, you then need to figure out all of the cost of the armor and amulets that the single minion would wear. Not to mention the additional prices required for each individual minion that is added to that team, plus the -cost- of each new minion purchased. Which, at the current level of my team NoxDooDad, is just a tiny $70 compared to the $1,280 that was spent just to get an ELB to a competitive point.

Of course if they decide to go mage and use all their USD bought money to buy BA, that would clearly break the game. Imagine if LA did that, then it would be near impossible to get to 6 BA.

Switching the system this late in the game to one like that mostly benefits already established characters with major equips already. They already have the huge amount of money to be competitive, and a huge amount of MPR, they are bound to go all XP. Then how is a N*B bonus character ever going to catch up? As you pointed out, it's near impossible especially if they go tank.

your example with Ranger doesn't make much sense, as he already possess an incredible bow, switching the system would allow him to gain a ton of XP while occasionally buying CBD to boost his bow capabilities or buy BA.

Really no matter how I try to see how this "might" benefit the game, it is overshadowed by gigantic balance and economic problems

I'm just going to copy and paste chat so people understand what is being explained here.

<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> to a point they do but only if people sell.....so to be honest I find it a moot argument to start :/
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> If people dont make the moeny to sell then who is gonna buy
<SilvaGaidin> Well, I wasn't the one who started it. Just trying to prove a point to those who are arguing it.
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> well C&P that to the thread see what they have to say.....lol
<SilvaGaidin> I rather prefer my arguement that I posted last. Getting a base ELB to a competitive point, by purely spending USD, would cost $1,280. And thats for just the bow. Not the rest of the equipment or other minions.
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> hmmm well to a point I do agree with that, you are forgetting that most have items to sell and things to trade, few new users will use the USD system until at least 3-4 months into their NUB Bonus so that # will be different for them as well
<SilvaGaidin> Regardless, if you're using All XP and not making any money, then you have to spend a boatload of cash just to get a character to a competitive point.
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> true
<Lochnivar> unless you go mage/familiar
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> I can definately attest to that
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> wait until you see my NCB diary when I finish my NCB
<SilvaGaidin> Exactly Loch. But if you're going Mage/Familiar, then you can go the cash route and make a killer profit.
<{CB1}Zenai_U'Lanya> it's insane
<Lochnivar> but you could also go the xp route, and end up with massive MPR and a huge tat (as tat growth is based on xp gain)
<SilvaGaidin> The current idea is that you set up a slider type program to try and make a better profit on your run. But you could never move the slider any closer to XP than it would be as it is now.
<Lochnivar> ah... I was a step behind... my apologies
<SilvaGaidin> So you could take a 30% hit to your XP to make 30% more cash. But you can't get more XP than a character could get as it was now. There are basically two settings. The current setting and more cash at the lose of XP.

best bet would be to limit how much of a bonus to either they get like to 25%.

The best bet is to forget the new lottery system and go back to how it was before.

The issue with any type of Non-Mage team right now is that you cannot keep up with your Encumbrance to keep your weapon maxed. This is due to the fact that you cannot make enough money to keep up with your XP/Enc growth rate. The idea is that at the start of a character, and only then, you can set a slider to lower the amount of XP you get, say by 20%, and gain 20% more cash. So if you made 1000 XP and 200 Cash, you'd only get 800 XP but you'd get 240 Cash.

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of random chance either.

"I can't let you do that, Dave."

If the HF is the only tank viable in the game, why not just change the name to MageBlender now.