The rares issue in context of tournaments (+more) (in General)

For those yet knowing what I'm talking about, these are a few words about some current tournament rules, the "rares economy" of the game and about the limitations tournament characters have in all of the above.


"Rares" nowadays are spawned randomly into existance half in auctions directly, half as battle rewards, and a very small extra from black market votes (special auctions).
They "leave" the system whenever "Mr. Chairman" wins a bid, they also can be considered gone whenever a player that holds them quits without bothering to sell out, and last but not least, they also become unavailable EN-MASSE whenever a tournament ends.

Since tournaments lately have been pretty rewards-intensive, a lot of rares end up on tournament characters (they can easily afford insanely inflated prices), and since there is absolutely no incentive whatsoever to have tournament characters sell them back into the active game, the fact that doing that (selling from tourney) is quite inconvenient doesn't help matters at all.

Also, what do I mean by inconvenient, you say ?
Well, for starters, the current rules prohibit auctioning off upgraded rares, so you have to go through the trouble of disenchanting them first BEFORE you put them on auctions... items which you most likely need fully upgraded until the end of the tournament.
Quite frankly, I have absolutely no idea what would happen if you were online just minutes before the tournament would be over, disenchanted everything then put the items up on auctions - would the auctions complete or get canceled ? Would the server break ? I have no idea, and frankly don't feel like even trying to find out.

That's a double-whammy on rares, once because it annihilates supply (by making rares "vanish" from the active market), but also because it rises the value for which Mr.Chairman will be bidding in the future (since tournament characters are more than willing to be price-gouged, the cash on them is not "extractable" out of the tournament, or at least not without ensuing punishment if any loopholes are exploited).
Not only that, but it's a CB$ source - the cash leaves the tournament economy and enters the game economy (inflationary), but very little of the normal game CB$ go back to "die" on tournament characters (since no tourney char has any incentives whatsoever to sell items just as the tournament ends).



The second issue is with the store - you can't sell rares there, but you can sell regular items... OR CAN YOU ?
Apparently, no, you can't sell many regular items to the store as a tournament character either, because they're "too valuable", even if when you look at them they're nearly worthless... and it's not like ANYBODY would even bother to buy them at the store purchase price, let alone at the store SALES price (which is I suppose the only reason this rule might exist, to prevent that).
I have no idea what algorythm is used to determine what exactly qualifies a non-rare as "too valuable" to sell to the store directly, but it's obviously completely unreasonable... at least from my standpoint.
And since you can't disenchant non-rares, you're pretty much forced to put the item up on auctions if you want to get rid of it (there's no "DESTROY ITEM" option), and ask for a price significantly below store purchase price, hoping somebody might notice and buy it from you... then promptly turn around and sell it to the store for a profit.
Hooray, yay, MORE INFLATION, and the exact thing the mechanich were trying to prevent happens anyway (people buying uber-cheap NW - at least they're buying it for instant NPC-generated profit, but still).

_____


MY PROPOSED SOLUTIONS ?!?

The problem of rares (at least the supply part) could have a relatively easy solution : simply remove all items from tournament characters at the end of a tournament, and shove them back into auctions. It's not like tournament characters need them anymore.

The "store problem" might have a relatively easy solution too.
We need a "tournament-only" section of the store, where only tournament characters can sell goods. They could sell ANY goods here, with no "too valuable" restriction. The catch would be that only OTHER tournament characters would see those items in the store, regular characters wouldn't.

And last but not least, the problem of rares availability in tournaments, that ALSO has an easy solution... especially if you already created the "tournament-only" store : simply fill it up with *EVERYTHING*, manually setting prices to high enough levels for each individual tournament (individualized rare pricing for each tournament might actually be an integral part of tournament flavors).

Allowing "rares" to become at least semi-uncommon just might be what the drop system needs to be made worthwhile in the eyes of so many?

This might be a spoiler but NS is working on parts of the aggravation you have to hugely improve this situation.

Have a little bit of patience please before letting this thread grow out to 100's of posts :)

Let's be honest, the term "rare" is a joke - everything else except rares is WORTHLESS for all but tournament characters, and even tournament characters don't use non-rares except temporarily.
If you want rares to really be rares -while not ruining the game - you need to make the non-rares NOT JUNK compared to rares first.
If anything, I would argue the exact opposite - that what the game needs is to have all rares removed altogether (by deleting all non-rares and making the former rares common).

But that's a sligtly different argument anyway.

This argument is about the annoyance of finding the proper gear for tournament characters when the (lack of) availability of rares should not heavily influence tournament outcomes... but it obviously does, at least to some degree.
And it's also about how silly the store works, and the ensuing absurdities.

Oh, that would be awesome.
Hope he gets something done Soonﾙ.
:)

If the solution is that tourney chars get any items they want for free as long as it is in tourney rules that they can use that item. And then all cash and items the tourney chars make are never allowed into the communty, and that tournament characters therefore have 0 interaction with the rest of the community aside from attacking them, then sweet, I'm all for the changes.

If it's not separating the tournament chars from the rest of the community, then i'm sure it's just something else that will fail.

what you said and ain't this place just the greatest thing since canned SPAM, please tell us again what the problem is..I like the way you spent so much time typing useless information

Slightly less useless than a reply with no substance whatsoever.

I actually would like to see an improvement in the quality of non-rares, either buy adding damage, AC or effects to make them worthwhile.
some of the armours could really benefit from +1% bonuses to strength, dexterity, skills or magic. (when i refer to this i mean leather armour gives 1% dex bonus, steel plate give 1% str bonus etc.) give the weapons bonuses to certain skills like dagger give 1% evasion bonus, hafted weapons gives 1% bonus to archery etc.

Shark: Although sickone is verbose he does have several very good, valid points.

Summarized it is simply this:

Let's keep the Tourney Economy out of the regular CB Economy to circumvent multiple problems.

Personally I agree with sickone on this matter. Thanks Shade for pointing out that this is already being worked on by NS. NS thankyou for seeing the problem and diligently working to fix it.

Soon to be a non-issue, as Shade said.

Almost as if they are useful when you can't afford "rares", right? Only considered useless because the "rares" are so mind-numbingly cheap. If it took a few weeks to pick up a rare item or two (by normal cash standards), then perhaps we'd see more Steel Brigs and Tower Shields actually being used. Perhaps rentals would become worthwhile again (where all but a small handful of items are, for the most part, ignored). Perhaps people would complain less about the drop system if that pair of base EBs they got was worth 4-5m? Not sure, just speculating... But I have always seen "rares" being at least uncommon as a good thing.

Some djins, you just can't put back in the bottle, at least not without pretty dire consequences. This is one of those genies.

WooT!

Ah,

The good ole days of CB1.

Where rare items were in fact rare.

It took me 1 month to get my first rare, an exec sword. Then I paid a forger 1M to get boost it.

Now, with the NUB, execs are passe in 2 days.

I have asked for this since I started.The current tournaments are all done well and I like playing them very much. How ever the tournaments could be organized better from the top to the bottom.

A separate tournament forum. To stop flooding with FS/WTB and other bugs, questions or anything that comes up normally.

Allow tournaments to have a different store all together. The buying and selling of items is completely separate from normal CB. this would allow the tournament organizer to increase or decrease certain rares for tournaments and stop inflation altogether. This would make so no tournament money is ever mixed with regular CB$. (except winnings of coarse)

Also allowing every tournament player equal opportunity to get a rare item instead of being lucky enough the be on when an item goes into auctions or by starting first. This could increase the new strat ideas by having the freedom to allow the tourney players to have as much or little of any item the feel like they want or host will allow.

Lastly If none of this occurs at least..it should be mandatory for Supporter items to be put back into the system. Rares I am not sure and could argue either way for or against.

I know It`s being worked on so what ever I say is moot and also sorry for double posting but. With the system I am suggesting you could introduce new items and have them in the `Playground` before actually going into normal CB.

AK that is an excellent idea imho.

Seperate store would also allow for strict item limitations. No more mistakes for not reading correctly, item will simply not be in the store! Makes it easier for everyone.

Speak for yourself. I want less rares and higher prices. Right now they are far, far to easy to get, and the low end items are completely useless.

To be fair LB, even if you made Rares rare (which would require massively increasing the playerbase, or drastically nuking a lot of existing items), non Rares would still be worthless.

Introducing: Unique Items!

If rares were rare the lesser items would not be worthless, because that's all people would have to get and upgrade. These items would see more use by default, since what else are people going to use?

A small player base is one problem, but it is one of many, including:
The rare spawn rate.
The current linear weapon damage upgrades.
The NUB.

The problem is there are too many already out there, and it's difficult to reverse that since the damage is already done. There are ways to fix this, but it would be a massive overhaul of several game elements rather than just tweaking one.

I'm with Bob. I like that Tourney chars take rares out of the system.

And sellers should love it because it raises prices, which of the most often cited reason why they love the terrible Mr. Chairman.

Indeed!

Tattoos, spells and no other gear, that's what people will use if rares become too rare.

Non-rares can't be disenchanted, they have ludicrous upgrade curve costs pretty early on, and therefore are not worth upgrading past a relatively low point - so no matter how much more expensive and actually rare these "rares" will get, nobody except complete newbies will bother with anything but rares.
NOT using any item until you save up for a rare is almost always better than upgrading a non-rare, the only exception being the early days of tournaments.

Sickone, were you here for CB1 at all?

Not to jump in or anything, you propose a solution in the second part of the thread yet do not clearly identify a problem? If the number of rares in the game goes down so they become just that, "rare" then this is a problem because?

In my opinion if you can save up over a couple of weeks for anything that is "rare" then it isnt.

I think its very good that more items vanish from existance it'd be good to go back to saving up for that big main weapon and having to use crappy ones first or renting, if everything is basically not rare and not very hard to get hold of it makes things less interesting.

Imo, more rares on tourny chars and let them vanish after the tournament, the harm if any is debatable not the solution.

I remember getting my first great axe, then my Two handed Flail,then my Claymore, then my exec, then my loch axe...(stats used to be different for these items in CB1)..anyways it was dam exciting getting my exec and loch...I was like..."YES! I got a loch! Woot!"...now no matter what item I get it's more like ..."meh finally got a _____"< insert any item here<...so yes I can appreciate items being harder to get and would like it more if they were....kinda sucks when I came back..within a 2 weeks I was able to buy any item I wanted (BASE).

If rare items were actually rare, prices would increase to a point where it would be difficult to get them and lesser items would be used more often. It's proven by the past Like LB said...look to CB1.

No, but I can only assume it was much more lively back then, and the economy itself was quite different from what we have now.


The problem was that tournaments should not influence the regular game economy, and the scarcity or abundance of items in the regular economy should not influence the outcome of tournaments.

items were changed in cb2 from their cb1 counterparts. we had 4 to 5 times as many in the population. there were levels of competition, rather than everyone pretty much being able to be at the top in a half a year. damage mods were on a cost curve and there was no way of salvaging items, nor was there much need to.

thinking you can change one aspect of the current system and it will magically go back to they way it acted in cb1 might be a bit naive.

You see, I *like* that Rares aren't rare.

I don't like not being able to run a strategy becuase I'm not lucky enough to own a super rare item *cough*AoJ*cough*, or being while strategicially superior, lesser than my peers. Not due to any failing on my part, but a lack of RNG, or back in the day luck with Store refreshes (or FF Add ons).

Rarity should *never* be an excuse for Power Balance. Or it makes CB less of a 'strategy' game, and more of a Trading Card collectable game.

Rares should (just IMHO) be rare/unique by offering distinct extreme abilities, with drawbacks to boot. The Mage Shield is a brilliant example. They would be 'Rare' as they aren't in everyday use, as they're specific and somewhat unique. Or limited to the amount of them you can use yourself on a team. So only one Corn allowed, and now 3/4 Enchanters all wearing them.

Not Rare as in some lucky few players have them, and the rest don't.

But that's just me.

Even if there were a gazzilion players, and only 2 ELBows in existance, the rest of the bows would still be worthless junk. Unable to perform to the level of the lucky two.

You'd just be forced into using them due to lack of options.

Not really 'strategy' that...

I see eye to eye with Ranger on this one. I remember CB1, when someone gave me a Two Handed Flail when I was new. I thought it was the greatest thing in the world. Then after a long time, I got an Exec, and it was considered rare enough by people to actualy spend money to name such an item.

Tulkas used to sell for 20USD base.

Oh when Rares were actually Rare.

I NEVER got a lochaber axe in CB1, nor did I ever get an ELB. By the time I could land an ELB, my compound bow was just too good to give up.

That statement doesn't even make sense in CB2. My biggest complaint of CB2 is that I don't have any feeling of advancement. After the short N*B, MPR grows slowly, so where do I get my feeling of advancement? Shall I focus on advancing to better gear? Nope, there's no better gear. Shall I focus on forging my gear? Nope, that will hurt me in rewards. All I can advance is my ELB's X, and it's already over 8000.

Maybe we need new gear with MPR requirements. Say, a new helmet that you can only wear after 2.5 mil, or gloves that you can only wear after 4 mil... Give me something to focus on during the rut.

Focus on catching up to the next higher on MPR like me or focus on dropping a particular person who farms you or beating 100% someone up higher. There are lots of goals to get.

Imho, that is the most interesting part about CB, figuring out how to beat someone who is farming you. I use my gear towards that goal, rather than simply upgrading just because I can. Back when ranger was using Koy, is was pretty much untouchable, and people like mikel and sute were constantly trying to poke at his strat to find weaknesses.

I am currently trying to beat GB and a couple other people who are farming me, and even though I am only 1 mil mpr and I am using a character without an NCB, I am having fun.

Sickone, in reply,

1) Tournaments have always effected the economy, selling to people in a tournament and stockpiling various equipment that others would deem as junk for this sole purpose is fun and can make a fair whack of money from it, plus auctioning when a tournament is on...

2) Tournaments have always been effected by what people manage to buy from auctions and often the one with the most money early on manages to win the vital auction for a much needed item, also part of how tournaments work.

3) Therefore what has changed? The reward bonuses given to tournament players, and thus if it is deemed to becoming a problem, and I agree I think its a bit stupid to have 1000% bonus for a month then all you have to do instead of having a complicated coded solution is ask the tournament admins to just be a little conservative with tournament bonuses if use them that often at all.

Who said that was the case?

whoever made the above statement. ; )

Right. I read that twice and skipped it both times. Sorry Dude. *grin*

I am not sure how you got that out of my statement, but it is not what I was implying. Either way with items staying the way they are or not both sides have good arguments and both have there positives and draw backs. I personally like Cb2 and the way it is, I like the community now and back then I'd prefer them all together at once however :-p

The whole concept of advancing through tiers of items only applies when these items don't require scarce resources to upgrade to a usable level. I fully concur with Sickone when he says that upgrading anything that's not a rare is a complete waste of money, especially with rentals and generous veterans. The only way this would make sense would be if you could ink/smith lesser weapons into better equivalents.

Under the current system, this is true. This is exactly one of the things wrong with it.

It depends on whether you consider something rare or having its own niche. Something like a regular mace is not rare at all, but there are merits to upgrading it. Something like the elven stiletto on the other hand is rare but there is no reason to use it or upgrade it.

What exactly are the merits to upgrading the mace?

Maybe since its a low-level weapon that triggers SoC or something like that?

In case you are just starting a character and dont want to equip your monster MH

Personally I like the fact that rares on tourney characters disappear. It just makes my items more valuable. So keep up the good work all you tourney players. hehehe

Me too, but I guess devs don't like rares... Unless that's about to be a non issue soon too...

This.

Rarity (as I've harped on above) is a poor choice of balance in a strategy game.

The Mace, while non rare, has a specialised strategic use, and is actually useful.

Unlike the Tulwar.

Or the 'lesser' Rares that are an absolute waste of time.

It's not only the economic side of things that Sick's covered, but also the inherant upgrade curve of CBs items, which makes the lessers of anything (even lesser Rares) a waste to invest in.

Second!

Just like to add a WoWism.

There's a reason that the e-sport Arena Tournaments give all the participants set gear.

So that the PvP competitive side isn't ruled by RNG luck at getting that super *rare* (and therefor ultra powerful) item Drop. And pwning your opponents becuase of that, and not your playing ability/strategy.