Gem balance

[Hew Keenaxe]

I never new how important gems were until my gemmed weapon was stolen. A lvl 50 gemmed can defeat a lvl 100 easily.
So my problem is, that gems are so easy to come by if you are ranked in a town, and how hard they are to come by if you are not. Some balance needs to be addressed.
Either they have to be easier to come by , by doing tasks, such as mining, herb cutting, fruit picking, fishing or the such, or there needs to be a way for those not ranked to get them.
Or there value needs to be cut down some.
I have five characters as allowed. All but Hew is allowed to get gems.So this aint a poor me, post. But the balance seems to be off.
Less gems to those ranked, or more ways for those not to get them. Or reduce the power of them. Something needs to change.

[Estralis Seborian]

You can get magical gems by gathering actions. If you are not member of a town, you won't get any gems. This won't change. The bonus appears reasonable to me, it is significant. Perhaps you can elaborate on your ideas a little more? What exactly shall change, why and how?

[Hew Keenaxe]

I recently logged in with one of my new characters. He is ranked but barely. He had maybe ten gems to collect. I was surprised, so logged in my other characters. They all had the same, but for my Galmair character, he had one.Just one, and I have played him longer. And of course Hew gets none as an outlaw. But besides the availiblity of them, it is the power of them. If they are going to be so powerful, they need to be more avalible.
Balance. Just asking for that.

[Estralis Seborian]

The amount of gems you get is scaled by the tax income of the town. So, if you get 10 gems a month, the tax income was high. If you get one gem a month, the tax income was low. Donate to increase the tax income of your faction and thus, the gem output.

[Ragorn]

You can get magical gems by gathering actions.

you are joking! the amounts of gems you get by gathering are not comparable to those you get in towns

If you are not member of a town, you won't get any gems. This won't change. The bonus appears reasonable to me, it is significant. Perhaps you can elaborate on your ideas a little more? What exactly shall change, why and how?

Why was already explained well. And can be extended endlessly: ooc favorism (e.g. town levels higher 7), abuse of donating mechanism, etc. How? That's up to you and the game designers One fair alternative could be to sell them at a fix price, e.g. 5 gold each. And limit the amount by the time a character is active (e.g. up to 1 month:10 , every additional month +5, cap at 12 months) - make the amount dependent on the monthly online time would be also a good way (and of course there has to be a cap too!). Another alternative would be to change the quest rewards and add some more gems here. E.g. eye of the pain, etc.

[Uhuru]

NPC quests do give them out, some of them. And some GM inspired quests give them out. Such as the one held today. Which, unfortunately, Hew was unable to attend and, of course, you can only attend with one of your many alt characters.

[Mephistopheles]

While I do agree that gem distribution is completly broken, we do not need to make gems easier to get...

Really? There's no way for gems to change hands, or be lost, and there's an incredible potential for abuse as far as the current state of things.

New proposal
Bring back rope disarming, reasons are pretty clear, there should be a way to disarm a character via engine.

Player drops (won't happen nor should it until the game is in a stable state with less bugs, more features etc etc)

Move gem gain to treasure maps and high level creatures (duh the gems are for combat-based chars anyway...)

Casuals will complain and none of this will go through, though to me it's one of many options that makes sense
#SSDD

[Estralis Seborian]

While I do agree that gem distribution is completly broken,...

I'd be interested in a description what exactly is broken. As I do not play regularly, I just can check the script and state that it does exactly what it is supposed to do, technically.

Selling magic gems at a NPC is not what the magical gems were designed for. They are "sold" for tax money. Some more quests with magical gems are always appreciated.

[Jupiter]

How about a quest that gives you a few magical gems and that is repeatable once a week?

Of course, that should be a fun, creative and challenging quest (we can do pretty awesome stuff with lua). Good ideas are welcome.

[Matron]

Of course, that should be a fun, creative and challenging quest

X lines of quality RP, X being greater than zero Burn

[Q-wert]

And some GM inspired quests give them out.

Snarky side comment: Those seem to have an suspicious focus on Galmair.


At a whole, I do not believe the gem system to be broken. It serves two purposes: Rewarding long time player activity and acting as a money sink. And I do claim it to serve both of them quite well. It is not all too difficult to reach rank 7 in any of the cities by running through the static quests. Each rank is granting 10% more gems. Ranks higher than 7 require having to address Hews rampages, do administrative work, organizing quests, writing announcements and even getting some mapping done. Personally I can attest that to be quite a lot of stuff to do. Seeing at least some reward for that work is nothing bad, I believe.

It is possible to donate stuff and money to increase the gem-gain for the whole faction. Nobody is forced to participate in that, while everybody in a faction does benefit from it. Practically it does give gold a hard counter value of something that everybody wants, but one that benefits those not powergaming gold all day long as well. It also does not affect characters deflecting to others cities much, over the course of the last half year Cadomyr had by far the highest gem output and more people moving away than to it.

Gems improve armour and weapons (weapon gemming actually only doing about 10% of the displayed value) by exponentially rising gem costs. A 40% Bonus on a single piece armour (162 total gems) is rather easily obtainable by playing for a while, 50% (486 total gems), 60% (1458) or even the 70% (4374) some few organized player organisations field are not very much stronger but require way more active playtime. Two characters with less playtime and same skill and (asides from gems) same equip should still easily squish a highly gemmed character.

I am quite sure the system is working as intended. Maybe you two could point out in which respect it is supposed to be broken?

[Ufedhin]

And some GM inspired quests give them out.

Snarky side comment: Those seem to have an suspicious focus on Galmair.


At a whole, I do not believe the gem system to be broken. It serves two purposes: Rewarding long time player activity and acting as a money sink. And I do claim it to serve both of them quite well. It is not all too difficult to reach rank 7 in any of the cities by running through the static quests. Each rank is granting 10% more gems. Ranks higher than 7 require having to address Hews rampages, do administrative work, organizing quests, writing announcements and even getting some mapping done. Personally I can attest that to be quite a lot of stuff to do. Seeing at least some reward for that work is nothing bad, I believe.

It is possible to donate stuff and money to increase the gem-gain for the whole faction. Nobody is forced to participate in that, while everybody in a faction does benefit from it. Practically it does give gold a hard counter value of something that everybody wants, but one that benefits those not powergaming gold all day long as well. It also does not affect characters deflecting to others cities much, over the course of the last half year Cadomyr had by far the highest gem output and more people moving away than to it.

Gems improve armour and weapons (weapon gemming actually only doing about 10% of the displayed value) by exponentially rising gem costs. A 40% Bonus on a single piece armour (162 total gems) is rather easily obtainable by playing for a while, 50% (486 total gems), 60% (1458) or even the 70% (4374) some few organized player organisations field are not very much stronger but require way more active playtime. Two characters with less playtime and same skill and (asides from gems) same equip should still easily squish a highly gemmed character.

I am quite sure the system is working as intended. Maybe you two could point out in which respect it is supposed to be broken?

I agree with you Q-wert ,I am playing a new character theses days and have no gripes at all about the gem system , infact quiet the opposite, I think it is very well balanced , rewarding the player in an appropriate manner.