Posted by Dusty

That doesn't make since though? If we feel something isn't balanced why would we warn players so they can quickly milk what we're trying to fix before we fix it? It's not like bugs, we didn't force you to sell them. If you saw you weren't going to make as much you can simply not sell.


Because Graal is an ever-changing environment. It's not a static game where you introduce something once and it stays balanced since nothing changes.

Looting was released with a goal in mind, and it was balanced in the beginning. You complain now that things are being "tweaked" but no one complained when prices were drastically raised after initial release. Why not then? Oh right, because it was in the favor of the players. Looting has diverted from the original goal because of the additions of larger bodies of water.

Bug catching got nerfed for obvious reasons, and now they're back to their original prices. Not sure why that's relevant though... guess we should have let players keep making millions off those mantises and ladybugs though! Because that makes players happy right? And making players happy is the absolutely only thing that ever needs to be taken into consideration? Guess we should just give players 10,000 gralats every day as well 'cause that would make them happy as well.


How many mobile games do you know that offer the freedom of gameplay that Graal does with absolutely no need to pay a single dime? Classic does not impose hardly any limitations to players who do not pay for anything. You can still spar, you can still PK, you can still buy every item and participate in events and complete every quest and every job. It's not pay2win and the most your gralats go to is making your character look cooler. Hell, you don't even get ads.

But go ahead and keep saying Graal is the greediest game ever.

I wouldn't say it's greed it's how these decisions are made. Looting isn't some god send job where people are making millions, maybe a few no lifers I guess. The point is looting took time and in no way when I was doing it was I making bank. The only advantage looting had for me was it was more chill and I could gradually do it over time. If I wanted to make gralats faster I would do pyrats and even farming.

So while I was saving up stash over time now with the reduction (again I know it may change but the unknown is the problem) I won't be doing it at all anymore which is 1 less thing to do on a game that already lacks in that field. I am not the same as everyone I understand that but it's simply imo how these decisions are made at any random time. Adjustments are needed in terms of balancing but for people who put in time while saving up their stash it simple doesn't seem like a fair way to go about it.  

Posted by Dusty

How many mobile games do you know that offer the freedom of gameplay that Graal does with absolutely no need to pay a single dime?

"gameplay"  

Posted by Dusty

We can't make adjustments without collecting data.

No one said this was final, and I already posted prices may be raised back up.

But this was an adjustment that was made without a significant amount of data? I know you said it's not final, but I have no idea if this is going to be addressed soon or new-guild-rewards-system soon, and considering Halloween is fast approaching I don't want all my current effort with my loot to go to waste. Also, even if you do raise it back up, I'm assuming it won't be back to it's original price, and I do not agree with a reduction of any amount.

Posted by Dusty

Looting was released with a goal in mind, and it was balanced in the beginning.

If this is true, I'd be more than willing to volunteer 2 hours of my time to prove nothing has changed with the rates at which loot is gained. 1 hour only at Nafet's River/York Bay and 1 hour only at Big City. Testing is an extremely important set of data, is it not?

I apologize if my posts are irritating, because I really do appreciate the fact that you actually respond to concerns. You could've just completely ignored this thread all together. But if this is honestly an attempt at balancing I think it's a mistake.
If it's because Unixmad wants more bread it's okay to admit that too  

pre changes statistics  

Posted by wanderer

pre changes statistics

How much time total? kind of confused by the graph in terms of amount of time it took to get that amount  

Posted by James205

How much time total? kind of confused by the graph in terms of amount of time it took to get that amount

each row is a recorded session, with the time it took, amount looted and per hour loots.
on the top right corner is just me selling it, although the price might be a bit higher because it also had loots from the treasure maps and bandit cave chests.  

Posted by wanderer

each row is a recorded session, with the time it took, amount looted and per hour loots.
on the top right corner is just me selling it, although the price might be a bit higher because it also had loots from the treasure maps and bandit cave chests.

Well what I'm curious about is the overall amount of time you put into these numbers. I can't really get a good idea because when looting you get other stuff too so I can't add up a value. Like how long was your total loot session to achieve these numbers?

Looks like 20 total hours, let me know if that's correct.  

This wasn't an exploit. Hard boring work to make loot

And yeah. Next time auto sell our loot piles at full price before you tweak prices

You even triggered me this time lol  

Posted by James205

Well what I'm curious about is the overall amount of time you put into these numbers. I can't really get a good idea because when looting you get other stuff too so I can't add up a value. Like how long was your total loot session to achieve these numbers?

Looks like 20 total hours, let me know if that's correct.

if you combine every single row, you get 2317 loots throughout 27.03 hours which is 85.7 loots per hour (including gralats, turtles, etc) - with the average loot piece being worth 15.52 gralats, you get 1330 gralats per hour (probably less, my loots were a bit more valuable because of the treasure maps and bandit caves chests).  

Posted by wanderer

if you combine every single row, you get 2317 loots throughout 27.03 hours which is 85.7 loots per hour (including gralats, turtles, etc) - with the average loot piece being worth 15.52 gralats, you get 1330 gralats per hour (probably less, my loots were a bit more valuable because of the treasure maps and bandit caves chests).

That's good info, thanks  

It is obvious(and has been obvious since the the initial price inflation) that looting was the preferred way to earn money on classic. Bug catching was only used for bees, or when the system itself broke down. Looting is an extremely consistent way to make gralat, no ones competing with you, no one can steal your loot. Farming is good, but labor intensive.

Being unhappy is understandable. I am 100% sure Dusty knew this was the reaction he would receive. I theorize that Dusty is making this change for a good reason. I believe he is trying to devalue the gralat again, or at least some of it. Hats in 2012 were somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500. What's change between now and then? Classic gained quicker and more effective money making methods. Look at the most recent hats, usually priced near 5,000. After some simple math that comes out to spending 3 dollars for roughly two hats. That isn't really realistic. You shouldn't have to spend more than a dollar for a hat in my opinion. But looting(and bug catching somewhat) and the profits from it have sent the price of items into inflation.

I would much rather earn less gralats around the board and have a price reduction than continue to raise prices to the point where purchasing gralat actually becomes the unviable option. That's the crazy thing about this situation, you all are saying that gralat packs will be only option to get items, where as if things continue as they were it would be the exact opposite. No one would want to spend 10$ for a hat.

To be clear, I don't know if that's dusty's plan. However I'm more than willing to give him time to tweak the balancing and adjust prices before judging the game and how it handles currency. For all I know he could feel that hat prices are fine and that people should have to spend more time earning gralats. But I want to give him the chance to show what he wants to do before I argue or complain about it.  

Farming is next. Looting was pretty boring/time consuming. You didn't even get as much as farming (Unless this has been changed since before 2 months ago). I guess it's so people will have no choice soon, but to buy gralat packs. I'm sure dusty doesn't make these decisions. I'm just surprised that the iClassic team doesn't make their own game. The only thing I can think of is that some of them get paid.

Unixmad and the rest of Toonslab aren't interested in guild updates, spar tournaments, nor lag decrease. Slowly but surely, iClassic will be dead, due to terrible decisions out of greed. I'm glad I won't be here to witness it.

Just the tip: The game can't stay the same forever, eventually you will need to add something. Otherwise, prepare to see a large percentage of the player count drop, and it won't be due to the server crashes.  

Posted by Areo

It is obvious(and has been obvious since the the initial price inflation) that looting was the preferred way to earn money on classic.

This isn't true really, it's not the ultimate preferred way with a lot of people.

Posted by Areo

Bug catching was only used for bees, or when the system itself broke down.

Bees gave substantially more than looting.

Posted by Areo

Looting is an extremely consistent way to make gralat, no ones competing with you, no one can steal your loot. Farming is good, but labor intensive.

All methods are consistent, you can earn way more gralats from pyrats/farming at a much faster rate. When looting you still have to pay attention but at points spawns drop big time so you don't consistently get loot at the same rate.

Posted by Areo

Being unhappy is understandable. I am 100% sure Dusty knew this was the reaction he would receive. I theorize that Dusty is making this change for a good reason. I believe he is trying to devalue the gralat again, or at least some of it.

It's obvious it has to do with inflation but how you handle it is just as important. It's not just about the gralat though it's also about the value of what you are buying and giving incentive for people to want those items.

Posted by Areo

Hats in 2012 were somewhere between 1,000 and 2,500. What's change between now and then? Classic gained quicker and more effective money making methods. Look at the most recent hats, usually priced near 5,000. After some simple math that comes out to spending 3 dollars for roughly two hats. That isn't really realistic. You shouldn't have to spend more than a dollar for a hat in my opinion. But looting(and bug catching somewhat) and the profits from it have sent the price of items into inflation.

It's not necessarily 'lootings' fault. You have more people playing the game and they get smarter. Other job systems have been exploited no doubt but looting again isn't some easy way to make gralats. It takes time, a lot of time and that time you have people playing the game... and there isn't ultimately a lot to do on the game. If you eliminate the purpose of these jobs then it removes another aspect of the game in my opinion. With less reward less people are going to do it, if that's the point then what is there to do on iClassic?

Having a game grow in playerbase is a good thing, and adjustments are always needed. But again how you handle these changes is just as important, you had players putting in some serious amount of hours (which again is playing the game) to just getting a good amount of gralats. So if you effectively nerf it without any indication then those people who put the work in that were saving up are the ones targeted the most (again the people who put the most amount of work). That to me seems like a punch in the gut and we are talking about actual active players.

Posted by Areo

I would much rather earn less gralats around the board and have a price reduction than continue to raise prices to the point where purchasing gralat actually becomes the unviable option.

Again you can't just blame this on 'jobs' on graal, if you have people playing the game that is also good. I don't think this is entirely Dusty's decision but you can't just expect to nerf everything and expect players to get more gralat packs. This doesn't increase the value of the items being sold. If you want more people buying packs and etc then quality of the item is important which I also understand is a limited factor on graal because of free labor and blah blah.

Posted by Areo

That's the crazy thing about this situation, you all are saying that gralat packs will be only option to get items, where as if things continue as they were it would be the exact opposite.

So if you reduce the amount of gralats you get from jobs, and somehow hats magically go down in price then what does it effectively do or accomplish? What you're saying is jobs are the reason why prices are going up (most likely) which is effectively making people get less for buying gralat packs... but the resolution is to nerf jobs and lower prices so people can buy more for single gralat packs? Does the price of gralat packs remain the same or will it also go up at some point? There is a lot to factor here but one thing I know is you need to give people something to do on this game.

Inflation is always complex but fixes generally seem to be gradual rather than reactive. If you just nerf everything then a lot of people will also just stop interacting with jobs all together (which is a huge part of iClassic) and not everyone who loots/farms etc just do that and call it a day. For instance sometimes I would loot to get an extra gain if I choose to buy a gralat pack. Without that extra gain it's going to make me less likely to fork a couple dollars out for essentially items that have no value to me. Some of that is my opinion but I don't exactly see how this will yield more consistency with people buying more gralat packs from this change.

Posted by Areo

To be clear, I don't know if that's dusty's plan. However I'm more than willing to give him time to tweak the balancing and adjust prices before judging the game and how it handles currency. For all I know he could feel that hat prices are fine and that people should have to spend more time earning gralats. But I want to give him the chance to show what he wants to do before I argue or complain about it.

Again it's more about the communication and how the situations are being handled. I don't think looting is this big of a problem and it's not something that is being exploited or anything. A simple post/announcement saying changes are coming for looting so it gives people who have saved up stash can atleast sell it ahead of time instead of feeling ripped off. So you have people who spent the time to earn their reward to get what they expected and changes can be applied after.  

Yeah. I had a method of exploiting the level edges with the pumpkin lantern in order to get max loot spawn. The lantern will 'go out' at the edge of a level before entering the next area, so you can determine where and when the spikes in spawn chance occur, find a level intersection, and swim in circles to get more spawn chance. Wait till 3-5 items spawn in rapid succession, then move to another spot.

It's a bummer that hat prices weren't raised from 1000 or 2500 to 4000 or 5000 to compensate instead of bashing income methods...

How much was that rainbow color changing headphone set worth again?  

Posted by 4-Lom

Yeah. I had a method of exploiting the level edges with the pumpkin lantern in order to get max loot spawn. The lantern will 'go out' at the edge of a level before entering the next area, so you can determine where and when the spikes in spawn chance occur, find a level intersection, and swim in circles to get more spawn chance. Wait till 3-5 items spawn in rapid succession, then move to another spot.

It's a bummer that hat prices weren't raised from 1000 or 2500 to 4000 or 5000 to compensate instead of bashing income methods...

How much was that rainbow color changing headphone set worth again?

1. Water Mount
2. 5 Bushes
3. ???