Solving the ammo problem and the money sink problem in one swell foop

[PSmith]

Two problems in the game:

1) Money's accumulating without enough sinks to get rid of some.  The result?  Prices spiraling ever upwards.

2) Scouts are the only classes that absolutely have to lay out cash to use their abilities, namely arrows and poisons.  It's extremely unfair when compared against, say, Necros who buy a poisonous spell and then use it bang-bang-bang with no worries.

Solution:

All spells, every single one, should require tradeskilled "focus" components that are used up exactly as are arrows and poisons.

A) Foci should be specific to type of spell.  Pet spells would all use Focus Type A, disease debuffs use Focus Type B, so on and so forth.

B) Foci will be made by various tradeskillers.  Disease foci are from provisioners, Poison foci from alchemists, Elemental foci from Jewelers, et cetera.

C) Foci would require vendor components in addition to fuel (much as provisioners also require water, dough, sugar, and such).  This would be the new money sink.

D) These would be level-dependent items where a higher focus can be used for any spell of Level X down, but a lower focus cannot be used for higher spells.

Lastly, the focus for Fireball would be a small ball of sulphur, bat guano, and phosphorus.  (And thus we pay homage to our roots.)

PS:  I play a Necro, a Conjurer, and an Illusionist.  My Necro's my highest-levelled character.

[slippery]

Our we could just bring ammo consumption under control.

[GussJr]

slippery wrote:

Our we could just bring ammo consumption under control.

...like when Makeshift Arrows actually made arrows...

[ZUES]

Redo "Makeshift Arrows" to actually MAKE arrows again please. Poisons and arrows are pretty darn expensive.

[Shotneedle]

Make ammo non consumable. Add heroic/raid dropped ammo.

[Gungo]

Just put arrow consumption in control by making mastercrafted quivers have an innate 20% ammo conservation.

Add in a money sink by making most drops including most raid drops tradeable.Then revamp the diety system so people want to gift most of these items to the dieties for favor. Make blessing into a 10 min reuse 5-10 min duration buff. Make miracles into a 5 min reuse (instant, 30 sec, 1min duration) abilites.Add more Dieties and allow players to worship any diety, have multiple dieties, and donate favor to multiple dieties.This will have the effect of encouraging players to do PQ's and/or donating excess items to dieities. add more ammentities to guild halls to further increase upkeep.

[jjlo69]

ZUES wrote:

Redo "Makeshift Arrows" to actually MAKE arrows again please. Poisons and arrows are pretty darn expensive.

how about farm a lil for ammo money you can make enough plat in under hour to pay for my ammo for a week of raiding(non rare ammo) and if prices get too high do like I did power level a woodworker. I agree with slippery change the way ammo is consummed or make it to where i can craft more ammo per combine like i asked for a few months back on the Tradeskill boards.  Lastly DO not change make shoft to make that crappy ammo again ever if anything change it to have more triggers since it also gets consumed the same way ammo is.

Uncle

[thegriss]

Gungo@Crushbone wrote:

Just put arrow consumption in control by making mastercrafted quivers have an innate 20% ammo conservation.

Good idea. This or something similar to this

[Gungo]

Uncle@Mistmoore wrote:

ZUES wrote:

Redo "Makeshift Arrows" to actually MAKE arrows again please. Poisons and arrows are pretty darn expensive.

how about farm a lil for ammo money you can make enough plat in under hour to pay for my ammo for a week of raiding(non rare ammo) and if prices get too high do like I did power level a woodworker. I agree with slippery change the way ammo is consummed or make it to where i can craft more ammo per combine like i asked for a few months back on the Tradeskill boards.  Lastly DO not change make shoft to make that crappy ammo again ever if anything change it to have more triggers since it also gets consumed the same way ammo is.

Uncle

The problem with just increasing the combine amount is it will screw crafting them at lower levels. Arrow/ammo consumption has gotten exponentially worse as MULTIATK and FLURRY become more prevalent at higher levels.

To control ammo consumption at higher levels would be best done by putting ammo conservation on quivers and on range weapons themselves. Something as simple as making all mastercrafted quivers have 20% ammo conservation and putting an additional 10% ammo conservation on level 90 bows.

So addiing another 30% conservation would cap rangers while the proc is up and greatly reduce the ammo consumption of other scouts.  

[Seiffil]

Gungo@Crushbone wrote:

Uncle@Mistmoore wrote:

ZUES wrote:

Redo "Makeshift Arrows" to actually MAKE arrows again please. Poisons and arrows are pretty darn expensive.

how about farm a lil for ammo money you can make enough plat in under hour to pay for my ammo for a week of raiding(non rare ammo) and if prices get too high do like I did power level a woodworker. I agree with slippery change the way ammo is consummed or make it to where i can craft more ammo per combine like i asked for a few months back on the Tradeskill boards.  Lastly DO not change make shoft to make that crappy ammo again ever if anything change it to have more triggers since it also gets consumed the same way ammo is.

Uncle

The problem with just increasing the combine amount is it will screw crafting them at lower levels. Arrow/ammo consumption has gotten exponentially worse as MULTIATK and FLURRY become more prevalent at higher levels.

To control ammo consumption at higher levels would be best done by putting ammo conservation on quivers and on range weapons themselves. Something as simple as making all mastercrafted quivers have 20% ammo conservation and putting an additional 10% ammo conservation on level 90 bows.

So addiing another 30% conservation would cap rangers while the proc is up and greatly reduce the ammo consumption of other scouts.  

I'd rather have Uncle's suggestion then what the poster he quoted suggested though.  Which I think is more the point of his post, though I could be wrong.  Makeshift arrows summoning arrows was worthless cause they were the worst arrows available for the given tier, and only summoned about 65 arrows every 10 minutes at master.  In it's current form, it's more valuable to any ranger who is actually trying to dps.

While your suggestion of having MC quivers gain some sort of ammo conservation ability isn't a bad one, I'd much rather them go back and rework ammo consumption in general.  The problem with your suggestion is it doesn't really fix anything.  I mean it may be enough now, but what happens a year from now from they're adding even more flurry and MA, and the ammo consumption increases.  Sure you're still saving 20%, but if your consumption doubles from say, 500 to 1000, you went from saving 100 arrows to 200 arrows, but you're now using 300 more arrows still over the same period of time.

[Neiloch]

Reducing ammo consumption by percentage is one of the best solutions. Even if people end up using much more arrows, the benefit they provide remains the same, such is the magic of percentages (not SoE percentages to be sure).

Only other suggestion I have read anywhere that I liked is craftable items, quivers lets say, that grant x amount of time of ammo. Make them auto-consumable like poisons. So let's say a "Titanium Field point filled Quiver" provides 60 minutes of 'ammo' while still providing a steady stream of supply and demand. Then change all the 'arrow conservation' effects to increase the time on these quivers. Obviously also increase recipe requirements compared to a single stack of arrows.

Other than this, they could just make every shot only use one arrow, but that would drastically lower arrow consumption.

We have to consider that the devs thought the idea of using much, much more arrows was a good thing to make it so part of the crafting community had more demand and to provide a money sink. Even though I think making a single adventure class almost entirely support and justify a few recipes is complete BS.

PS: I have zero ammo problems. I just disagree with how ammo consumption is being managed from a design perspective since it's highly unimaginative and boring. Might as well get rid of ammo outright instead of having this lame busy work system.

[Gungo]

Seiffil@Permafrost wrote:

Gungo@Crushbone wrote:

Uncle@Mistmoore wrote:

ZUES wrote:

Redo "Makeshift Arrows" to actually MAKE arrows again please. Poisons and arrows are pretty darn expensive.

how about farm a lil for ammo money you can make enough plat in under hour to pay for my ammo for a week of raiding(non rare ammo) and if prices get too high do like I did power level a woodworker. I agree with slippery change the way ammo is consummed or make it to where i can craft more ammo per combine like i asked for a few months back on the Tradeskill boards.  Lastly DO not change make shoft to make that crappy ammo again ever if anything change it to have more triggers since it also gets consumed the same way ammo is.

Uncle

The problem with just increasing the combine amount is it will screw crafting them at lower levels. Arrow/ammo consumption has gotten exponentially worse as MULTIATK and FLURRY become more prevalent at higher levels.

To control ammo consumption at higher levels would be best done by putting ammo conservation on quivers and on range weapons themselves. Something as simple as making all mastercrafted quivers have 20% ammo conservation and putting an additional 10% ammo conservation on level 90 bows.

So addiing another 30% conservation would cap rangers while the proc is up and greatly reduce the ammo consumption of other scouts.  

I'd rather have Uncle's suggestion then what the poster he quoted suggested though.  Which I think is more the point of his post, though I could be wrong.  Makeshift arrows summoning arrows was worthless cause they were the worst arrows available for the given tier, and only summoned about 65 arrows every 10 minutes at master.  In it's current form, it's more valuable to any ranger who is actually trying to dps.

While your suggestion of having MC quivers gain some sort of ammo conservation ability isn't a bad one, I'd much rather them go back and rework ammo consumption in general.  The problem with your suggestion is it doesn't really fix anything.  I mean it may be enough now, but what happens a year from now from they're adding even more flurry and MA, and the ammo consumption increases.  Sure you're still saving 20%, but if your consumption doubles from say, 500 to 1000, you went from saving 100 arrows to 200 arrows, but you're now using 300 more arrows still over the same period of time.

While i get what you are saying as a ranger with the myth proc and the ammo reduction AA the extra 20-30% ammo conservation would cap the reduction for rangers when the myth proc is up so you wouldnt waste any arrows. This doesnt solve the issues for non rangers as ammo consumption goes up, but at least the % will scale as neiloch says.

The ideal solution is to make ammo consumption a controlled amount by removing multi atk and flurry from consuming extra ammo and instead leave ammo consumption just based on delay of the weapon. This consumption amount will thus be controlled and can further be reduced with the ammo conservation ability.

[Lethe5683]

PSmith wrote:

Two problems in the game:

1) Money's accumulating without enough sinks to get rid of some.  The result?  Prices spiraling ever upwards.

2) Scouts are the only classes that absolutely have to lay out cash to use their abilities, namely arrows and poisons.  It's extremely unfair when compared against, say, Necros who buy a poisonous spell and then use it bang-bang-bang with no worries.

Solution:

All spells, every single one, should require tradeskilled "focus" components that are used up exactly as are arrows and poisons.

A) Foci should be specific to type of spell.  Pet spells would all use Focus Type A, disease debuffs use Focus Type B, so on and so forth.

B) Foci will be made by various tradeskillers.  Disease foci are from provisioners, Poison foci from alchemists, Elemental foci from Jewelers, et cetera.

C) Foci would require vendor components in addition to fuel (much as provisioners also require water, dough, sugar, and such).  This would be the new money sink.

D) These would be level-dependent items where a higher focus can be used for any spell of Level X down, but a lower focus cannot be used for higher spells.

Lastly, the focus for Fireball would be a small ball of sulphur, bat guano, and phosphorus.  (And thus we pay homage to our roots.)

PS:  I play a Necro, a Conjurer, and an Illusionist.  My Necro's my highest-levelled character.

HELL NO!

[Rijacki]

Gungo@Crushbone wrote:

Just put arrow consumption in control by making mastercrafted quivers have an innate 20% ammo conservation.

Quivers with varying % of conservation would be a nice addition. NPC bought = 0, Handcrafted = 10%, Mastercrafted = 20% (or higher), special recipe crafted = 30+% (or higher). It would give an added benefit and a progression of sorts.

[docpaulpur2]

Removing MA/flurry from extra arrow consumption seems like the most future-proof solution here.

[Tigress]

ppl who do not or cannot raid are not rolling in plat so it seems unfair to cater to only one type of player.  though the uber rich are quite vocal, they are probably not the majority.

i do not like the OP's idea, not even remotely.  i dont have any issue with dropping the consumption of arrows or the other suggestions listed here.

[Oxie]

There was a change recently in crafting, where the extra bonus you could get from doing a first pristine combine made it unbalanced with leveling up certain crafters vs. others. Alchemists, jewelers, and sages could fly through the levels, but others just leveled so slowly because you only had a few pristine combines to make.

Since there was an obvious imbalance to leveling certain crafters a change this change was made, so why does this imbalance remain for ammo and poison users? Why should some classes have to "pay" for their DPS and debuffs? Yes, everyone can increase their character's skills by using potions,  temp weapon adorns, food/drink, but the scouts have to use poisons and arrows/throwing. Yes, I realize that tanks also use ammo, but it's nothing like what the scouts are having to pay for their DPS and debuffs.

Fair and balanced, that is what ammo/poison users are asking for...

Rift did it right with rogues. Your class build gave you abilities to coat your weapons with various poisons. You had an endless quiver and never had to worry about arrows or bullets.

[Katanalla]

Honestly not much point in caustic poison anymore - only 1% of total dps... from the expert caustic poison to specialist, the damage has only gone up about 325 per trigger, which is okay I guess, if you ignore that scout dps has gone up more than 10x since RoK...

Only poison I carry at the moment are some old vitality breach for farming /shrug...

And oh yea, WTB BUNNY MOUNTS!

[Talathion]

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Focus:_Ammo_Conservation

The awnser to all your problems are already ingame.

[Oxie]

Talathion@Antonia Bayle wrote:

http://eq2.wikia.com/wiki/Focus:_Ammo_Conservation

The awnser to all your problems are already ingame.

So what do I tell our ranger who got rid of his ammo conservation adorns so he could put crit mit adorns on his gear, so he could get his crit mit % over 220? Why should the classes that use a lot of ammo be forced to have to pay for their DPS? Why should our ranger have to use ammo conservation adorns over crit chance adorns?

You play a plate tank, so you should have no say in this discussion. In theory, a plate tank is not doing ranged DPS, so you are not spending several plat a night to play your toon correctly in regards to DPS.

Just stick to role playing and trying to argue for zerkers to get godmode abilities.

[Artalis the Elder]

Put looted quivers in game with stats and innate ammo conservation. Give them adornment slots that can only take ammo conservation adorns. Done.

[Darkelfelin]

Neiloch@Kithicor wrote:

Reducing ammo consumption by percentage is one of the best solutions. Even if people end up using much more arrows, the benefit they provide remains the same, such is the magic of percentages (not SoE percentages to be sure).

Only other suggestion I have read anywhere that I liked is craftable items, quivers lets say, that grant x amount of time of ammo. Make them auto-consumable like poisons. So let's say a "Titanium Field point filled Quiver" provides 60 minutes of 'ammo' while still providing a steady stream of supply and demand. Then change all the 'arrow conservation' effects to increase the time on these quivers. Obviously also increase recipe requirements compared to a single stack of arrows.

Other than this, they could just make every shot only use one arrow, but that would drastically lower arrow consumption.

We have to consider that the devs thought the idea of using much, much more arrows was a good thing to make it so part of the crafting community had more demand and to provide a money sink. Even though I think making a single adventure class almost entirely support and justify a few recipes is complete BS.

PS: I have zero ammo problems. I just disagree with how ammo consumption is being managed from a design perspective since it's highly unimaginative and boring. Might as well get rid of ammo outright instead of having this lame busy work system.

Man, I think that the solution you propose here is just great.

Make arrows work like food and drink. It would be simple, efficient, fair for everyone.

Probably not the most realistic one but who cares about realistic things in a world of magic...

Anyway I agree that scouts being the only archetype totally dependant on consumable is just... totally unfair.

So, either that, or make all other archetypes have to actually buy something to be able to dps.

[Darkelfelin]

Kiki@Guk wrote:

Put looted quivers in game with stats and innate ammo conservation. Give them adornment slots that can only take ammo conservation adorns. Done.

Interesting too