Is it too easy to fill work orders with alts?

[Tagamogi]

I am not quite sure there is actually a problem here but I wanted to bring my experience up for discussion and see what other people thought:

About 2-3 months ago, I started farming the work order board in Amulna. I camped an alt next to it and logged in a couple times a day or so to check for work orders I hadn't filled yet, and completed those work orders on both my main and the alt. My main idea was that I wanted to level my crafting skills, and doing these work orders seemed a great way to do so. Completing each work order only once each month levelled my crafting skill a bit too slowly for my taste since I couldn't do all of the high-level work orders yet. Doing each work order twice allowed me to level faster and progress at a rate that feels just right to me.

I'm quite happy with the crafting aspect of this - my leatherworking is now almost maxed, tailoring is limping along, and I've started lower level leatherworking on my alt (whom I do intend to play and and on whom I also intend to level leatherworking because I like leveling crafting skills).

The money aspect is getting a bit scary, however. These work orders are very profitable and by doing them twice each month, I am making quite a bit more money than I need to keep up with playing the game and buying new skill abilities. That may just be a function of me not actually levelling all that many expensive combat skills, and I certainly have no idea how much money I'm supposed to have normally or how I'm supposed to earn it.

It's also occurring to me that if I wanted to really farm money, all I'd need to do is camp out a couple more alts at work order boards and complete even more work orders. There is an industry limitation to the work orders but I find industry really easy to level, and I don't think it would take long to max out a pure bank/mule alt. And this strikes me as a really undesirable way to play...

So, finally moving on to the suggestions part, I can think of a few ways to discourage people from alt farming:
- Make the work order cooldown per account, not per character. I don't quite like this since it would also hinder players who just want to play multiple characters, and if they are actually working on leveling cooking on two characters and want to turn in an order of grilled chicken on each character, why not? This would also still give an advantage to players who have multiple accounts.

- Add an additional skill requirement to each work order. If a work order requires items that need level 30 leatherworking to make, require at least level 25 leatherworking to turn it in. This gives an advantage to players like me who actually like to level crafting skills on multiple characters. I also rather like the current system of just being able to buy items for a work order, even if you can't make them yourself yet.

- Lower the profits from the work orders so that they just become helpful for leveling crafting and don't become a source of major income. I'm not sure I like this either since I'm not sure what I'd do for money then. :)

- Is this really a problem in general? Most work orders are either not that profitable, or require materials that are only available in limited quantities. I'm not filling the Amulna toolcrafting orders every time they are up because I cannot actually get that many snail shells easily. For the tailoring work orders, I get to spend time gardening and growing cotton and making thread. It's just the leatherworking work orders that feel staggeringly easy: Buy some skins off Kleave or Sirine, buy some gems from players and yay, quick cash. If skins weren't so readily available and I'd actually have to spend time farming them, filling multiple workorders would be much less feasible.

Thoughts?

[Crissa]

Seems reasonable, unless they're drop items, that crafting work orders would also require the skill for the item. Might be a bit of a headache to code, but makes sense.

How are you getting the work orders from the boards across your account? I only know of the box in Serbule.

[alleryn]

- Is this really a problem in general? Most work orders are either not that profitable, or require materials that are only available in limited quantities. I'm not filling the Amulna toolcrafting orders every time they are up because I cannot actually get that many snail shells easily. For the tailoring work orders, I get to spend time gardening and growing cotton and making thread. It's just the leatherworking work orders that feel staggeringly easy: Buy some skins off Kleave or Sirine, buy some gems from players and yay, quick cash. If skins weren't so readily available and I'd actually have to spend time farming them, filling multiple workorders would be much less feasible.

Thoughts?

The carpentry work orders are also quite profitable in the same way, i think. Wood is cheap. Whether it's a 'problem' or not is debatable, but it does feel like an exploit to me (i've consciously avoided doing it myself because it "feels cheap").

As far as a solution goes, i'm in favor of making work orders cool down per account.



- Make the work order cooldown per account, not per character. I don't quite like this since it would also hinder players who just want to play multiple characters, and if they are actually working on leveling cooking on two characters and want to turn in an order of grilled chicken on each character, why not? This would also still give an advantage to players who have multiple accounts.

I'd like to see weekly vendor pools become account-wide too. It's just a bit too easy to make cash by leveling up favor and effectively multiplying your weekly pool.

I get your point that in some sense this could penalize players who are levling cooking on two characters, but one th other hand i wouldn't want to feel like i "have to" level cooking on two characters just to make use of the extra work orders.

As far as giving an advantage to players with multiple accounts, i would expect that to fall under the "cheating" category, if this system were put in place.

[rastaah]

This is the hardest game I have ever played on making money.....though I enjoy it. So I would not say it needs to be any harder lol. Whether work orders or not, they make up for the almost total lack of coin drops in the world.

[Tagamogi]

How are you getting the work orders from the boards across your account? I only know of the box in Serbule.
I just find a discreet corner and drop stuff, then log out and back in quickly, and pick up what I dropped. There are usually so few players in Ilmari that I could probably leave my items right in front of the workboard and nobody would notice before I got them back. I usually just do 20 items at a time, so it is a fairly quick process.


The carpentry work orders are also quite profitable in the same way, i think. Wood is cheap. Whether it's a 'problem' or not is debatable, but it does feel like an exploit to me (i've consciously avoided doing it myself because it "feels cheap").
The carpentry orders used to feel self-limiting to me since I was having problems finding enough wood to fill them. With the influx of new AC players, wood has suddenly become plentiful and relatively cheap, so yes, I think you could do a quick profit on them the same way now.

I started doing the double work orders casually way back with gems and carpentry. It seemed reasonable enough to me at the time - I had spare gems I might have surveyed on either of the two characters I was playing, I had spare wood that I might have gotten on either character, so if I had the mats to fill a work order on both of them, why not? Then suddenly I wanted to make winter gear, so I wanted to level leatherworking fast and economically, so I started to actually camp the work order board instead of just checking it as I passed by and now it is beginning to feel a little bit too much like cash farming and not just a fun way to do efficient crafting on two characters at once.



I'd like to see weekly vendor pools become account-wide too. It's just a bit too easy to make cash by leveling up favor and effectively multiplying your weekly pool.

Hm. I think this is less of an issue. In order to have items to sell, you still need to spend the time to actually farm them. Unless there is an item that you can just buy from an NPC and then do a quick combine on to make it more profitable and resell, going out and finding things to sell takes time, so there is some natural limitation on this process beyond just a specific money pool.

The vendor money pools have never been a limit for me with my playstyle. I think I might have exhausted Marna once or twice when I was feeling lazy but other than her, I just don't pay attention to the money pool at all. So, I don't know if alt-selling would be attractive option for players who vendor more than I do or who get more valuable stuff.

Edit: Another way to limit work orders could be to set a limit to how many work orders total can be completed per account per month. If you want to do the same work order on every character you have, fine, but they are all going to count towards the same total, just as if you'd done different work orders. Admittedly there are a lot of work orders and some of them are considerably more profitable than others, so it could be hard to decide what an actual reasonable number for "total work orders per month" should be.
A similar account-wide "total cash from vendors per month" limit could be used for the vendor money pools if needed.

[Crissa]

If you have to walk from one board to the other, why drop the items?

[Tagamogi]

If you have to walk from one board to the other, why drop the items?
Sorry, I'm not sure we are talking about the same thing here.

What I do is basically:
- log in alt in Amulna, check work board. Buy the same work order twice.
- log in main, make items to fill work order x 2, teleport to Amulna
- drop items on main
- pick up items on alt, fill work order on alt
- drop work order on alt
- pick up work order on main, fill work order on main
- 3 hours later, repeat the process with new work orders on board

This becomes pretty efficient if you wait until you have multiple work orders to fill and just do them all at once. I mostly just use the Amulna work board - moving characters to different work boards becomes too much of a hassle. My alt mostly just stays in Amulna, although now that she's doing leatherworking too, I'll wait until I have a few shoddy/rough/crude leather orders to fill, and then suicide her to Serbule to make the items, teleport back to Amulna, etc.

Not sure if this is what you wanted to know though. :) if not, could you give more details, please?

[alleryn]

Hm. I think this is less of an issue. In order to have items to sell, you still need to spend the time to actually farm them. Unless there is an item that you can just buy from an NPC and then do a quick combine on to make it more profitable and resell, going out and finding things to sell takes time, so there is some natural limitation on this process beyond just a specific money pool.

I can't say i've gotten to the point where i regularly exhaust pools. I've done it sometimes on Fainor and the NPCS who buy potions, but i don't have them up to Soul Mates yet either. On the other hand, I haven't really gotten to the point where i feel like i need money enough to really test the limits, but as my first skills approach 60, i expect i'll be ramping up my efforts soon.

I have heard at least one player talk in global about using alts in this fashion though. I think it would mainly apply to cooking and alchemy. I'll try to give more feedback once i get a better feel of how easy it is to really exhaust vendor pools.

[ShieldBreaker]

For the longest time in game I was always cash poor. I started making great progress on saving councils. Unlocking most of the skills that got the cap lifted recently depleted my cash reserve almost completely, but since that time I have already got more money then I have had in the game up until that point. So I figure most of the money is coming from work orders. It is very slow going when you can't afford new recipes and haven't found other ones, but once you have all the recipes and can pick and choose your work orders it pretty easy to start accumulating wealth. Also you need to learn which work orders too avoid, I don't know how many months I had the same Edam cheese order for. (I guess there might be some anger cheese hungry NPCs by now, or a normal player would have aborted the work order quest they couldn't complete)

If you asked me, on my way up the industry ladder, if I thought it was too easy I would have said it wasn't too easy. Now that I am at the top I would say it seems a little too easy, but I foresee other expenses in the future like housing, mounts, unlocking skill caps, new skills, etc. Assuming they are added before cash wipe, I'd like to be able to afford them/maintain them quickly when they show up. I would be okay with Work orders being across the account, my characters are on different levels and if the lower ones got up to poaching work orders my main wants I can role play that. It is really hard to tell if it is too easy or not, the economy may need constant adjusting during the life of the game.

[Dibbuk]

JUST as a suggestion: If a work order needs X industry to turn in, make the WO require X industry to add to WO list. That way, you cannot use alts unless they have the required level to turn in on their own.

[Crissa]

Well, if you have to walk to the board to swap things, I just don't see why you're buying the work order twice and dropping it on the ground. Your main will see the same work orders as your alt, won't they?

I don't see the advantage to the alt being there at all, aside from you get to double up on work orders that your alt isn't really qualified for.

[alleryn]

I don't see the advantage to the alt being there at all, aside from you get to double up on work orders that your alt isn't really qualified for.

You also can check the board with your alt to see which items to bring or if you want to make a trip at all, though getting to double up on work orders is probably the biggest perk.

[Eachna]

- Lower the profits from the work orders so that they just become helpful for leveling crafting and don't become a source of major income. I'm not sure I like this either since I'm not sure what I'd do for money then. :)

Thoughts?

I like most of what you've suggested, but the profit part. There was a point where work orders were the only way I made enough money to keep myself afloat.

This is connected to the Serbule favor grind I've commented on about elsewhere.

There's a huge materials and loot sink for newer players when they hit Serbule. There's a lot of NPCs, it's not clear what benefits any NPC gives you (so you kind of have to unlock all of them to figure it out), and the materials they require come from all over the place. A newer player trying to unlock favor ends up VERY VERY broke.

Work orders on the Serbule board are one of the few things that stands between a new character and cash starvation.

This is limited to Serbule. Once you get through the Serbule grind you have enough different NPCs that you can take a little time to be choosy about the NPCs you unlock elsewhere.

So just for Serbule I think the payouts shouldn't be reduced. In other zones it would probably make sense. Work orders shouldn't be the financial driver for crafters through the entire game. Selling to non-crafters should be. We don't have a large player base so I realize it's a band-aid solution.

There work orders are really uneven and need a better underlying pricing structure. Cheesemaking doesn't reflect the cost of stomachs. Tailoring is a *lot* more work than Leatherworking and the payouts don't properly reflect that difference. And so on. The underlying code works and is pretty nice for alpha, but it could still use some focused attention.

[Yaksnot]

Honestly I don't see the problem, and picking up a w/o only with the appropriate skill level is a bad idea imo.

Let me try to organize my thoughts while I write this out, so apologies if it is a bit scattered.

1) this is a pretty sandboxy MMO you can pretty much do what you want. you don't have to go kill mobs and there are a metric ton of skills you can work on to inclue crafting.

2) crafting can be a true grind, especially your first time thru one like Leatherworking, or tailoring. The time sink involved is real.

3) Many of us play a sandbox game like this rather than a simon says game like WoW is due to that freedom we enjoy with this game.

4) its your choice how you spend your time, if you want to create work orders and turn them in with alts to generate additional income I do not see how that is a problem. No I do not do this myself. Yes I am aware of other people doing it and good on them. They have found another way to make money.

5) what is the fear? is the fear that everyone will start doing this and break the economy? I doubt it will happen. Two major things going against it is that most people that become aware of this just wont bother running an alt out there. The other is that most people will not level the multitude of Trade skills to a high enough level to make it truly worth their while. I can see it generating a couple hundred Thousand for some people. Honestly I am ok with that. They put the time and effort (not to mention the intelligence before this post pointing them to exactly what to do and how to do it) into figuring out how to make things work. Tip O the hat I say.

6) I can see a valid concern going forward if this gets way out of hand at max level and starts becoming a need to be doing this as a standard practice at end game with really big paydays. But we are not there yet, and its not a standard need to do this action.

7) I think work orders are a great idea and can be expanded on greatly as they open up a lot of opportunities and not just make X amount of Y items and turn it into Z person.

8) Bigger Fish to fry. I think I do understand where you are coming from (as stated above) but at this point with so many other major bottle necks (combat!!) and things to work on (GUI!!) as well as development underway (classes and zones!!) I just don't feel that this is a real issue right now. Though certainly time will tell

Yak

[Crissa]

Well, we should still report things like this... So when it does come time to work on it, they have the right feedback to work with. Writing things down encourages discussion and it also offloads the need to memorize every aspect.

[Tagamogi]

Well, if you have to walk to the board to swap things, I just don't see why you're buying the work order twice and dropping it on the ground. Your main will see the same work orders as your alt, won't they?

I don't see the advantage to the alt being there at all, aside from you get to double up on work orders that your alt isn't really qualified for.

The alt can also collect work orders, so that the main can turn them in hours or days later. I've just been spending a minute or so checking the work board, and then I'll turn in the work orders much later when I have more time and when I've stacked up at least 4 or so orders, so I only have one trip to make.

I did the math on a recent nice leather shirt work order, and the net profit on that is at least 5500 councils, assuming a worst-case scenarior where I buy every single skin off a vendor used tab and I'm unable to find gems or redwall crystals for less than 200 councils each. Quite often, I can do better than that.

I think 5500 councils is a pretty reasonable reward for crafting level 40 items. The potential problem comes in where it only takes maybe 5 minutes to put together this workorder, there are a lot of leather work orders with similar reward levels, and the rewards can be multiplied pretty quickly with the assistance of alt turns ins.


is the fear that everyone will start doing this and break the economy? I doubt it will happen. Two major things going against it is that most people that become aware of this just wont bother running an alt out there. The other is that most people will not level the multitude of Trade skills to a high enough level to make it truly worth their while. I can see it generating a couple hundred Thousand for some people. Honestly I am ok with that.

I agree with that to some extent. Also,if enough people start doing these work orders, the vendors will run out of skins (or whatever the fast turn-in material of the day is) and they will need to farm the work order materials themselves. I think multiple turn ins are much less of a concern if the reward is something like 1K for half an hour of effort instead of 1K per minute.

For very fuzzy math reference: I think we are most likely talking about 100k extra money per character doing turn ins, per month. That's doing the super-easy turn ins like leatherworking only.

I don't know what else players use to make money. There are possibly much easier money making methods available to high levels.


Work orders shouldn't be the financial driver for crafters through the entire game. Selling to non-crafters should be. We don't have a large player base so I realize it's a band-aid solution.


I quite agree with your post in general but wanted to quibble with this one statement.

Selling to non-crafters is pretty difficult if you are trying to level a crafting skill that doesn't produce consumable items (e.g. potions or food). It doesn't matter if you can make the best chest armor in the game - your profits are still going to be pretty limited if everyone in the game at most wants to buy it once.

I really love PG's work order system - I finally have a reason to actually make lots of armor and I don't have to compete with other crafters in the player market in order to make marginal profits (or least-worse losses) on items I create to skill up. And yes, selling to other players is still fun, I'm just saying that it works much better for some skills than others.

[Crissa]

The alt can also collect work orders, so that the main can turn them in hours or days later. I've just been spending a minute or so checking the work board, and then I'll turn in the work orders much later when I have more time and when I've stacked up at least 4 or so orders, so I only have one trip to make.I do this without the alt sitting there. The work orders just don't seem to change often enough for the transit to matter. Loading into alts takes time, too. Although I've only done it a few days... So the extra inventory of an alt is nothing to sneeze at.

I like the work-order system, too. It is a 'do 10' quest, but when you're doing one or ten, it really doesn't matter. Although that 'ten antler' order sat in my inventory for like, weeks x-x I musta killed a couple hundred deer.

[ShieldBreaker]

... Although that 'ten antler' order sat in my inventory for like, weeks x-x I musta killed a couple hundred deer.

I know that feeling, your out killing stuff you pick up 5 of some trophy items, add them to the couple you already got in inventory, go to work board and think hey I only need 2 more for this order and can collect this reward . Then those last 2 take forever to find. :)

[Khaylara]

Unpopular opinion as always I suppose... but I don't do work orders on alts unless they can complete said work orders themselves:) In other words I don't transfer stuff on another toon to complete work orders multiple times. To me the whole thing sounds exploit-ish so I just don't do it (which probably explains why I'm always broke).

The problem has to be searched somewhere else - why do players have to do this? The answer is simple - because playing absolutely by the book 100 % of the time doesn't allow you to progress. I get my game cash only by farming and selling stuff. I don't sell craft products (very rarely foods but underpriced or tools at NPC value). I can absolutely guarantee that only doing what I do (farming and selling, no multiple alts camping boards or vendors) a player simply cannot get enough cash to progress (buy skills and unlocks mainly).

Imho this discussion shouldn't exist, we shouldn't have to use alts and mules to double up on work orders for cash or to store resources or even alts to exploit the guilds system. One character should be enough and able to support itself by farming only. The fact that we can't accomplish that should trigger an alarm bell. In my mind that says "the game doesn't offer enough resources and that forces people into exploiting the existing system". In any other game I always did okay with cash only by farming, crafting and selling my crafts, I supported full guilds sometimes with my own funds. Here though crafts have absolutely no value, you can't sell them to players, there's no coherent market and you're unable to support one toon to the current cap level in more than 2 combat skills unless you exploit the system somehow.

Don't get me wrong, some of the players posting here are some of the most honest people ever and I don't want to point a finger to anyone yelling "exploit". I am sick of people's multiboxing yes, but the game design encourages that (I include distributing crafted items from one toon to 3,4...10 other toons for WOs in multiboxing even though it's not always the case technically).

What happened to "you can have everything on one character", "you don't have to keep everything, sell mats and keep only for what you're currently leveling". This is what we were always advised to do, right? However, more and more often I see people muling to 5-10 characters simultaneously and nothing is happening to stop that. That means we actually need 10 characters to keep everything we collect (including for the purpose of industry orders being completed x2.3...10 times). Why do we need to complete the same work order 2,3...10 times although only 1 toon has the craft skills to do it? I can't imagine it's for fun.

Cause only farming and crafting is not enough for the cost of skills and abilities. And I think a topic about how to fix that would be very useful. How about ideas for a functional economy and a normal marketplace where we can actually sell what we craft and not just overpriced raw materials? It's about time we start building an economy and it's about time we stopped using an army of alts for everything from storing to selling to vendors or completing work orders.

P.S. I think limiting the reward for work orders is a really bad idea for players like me who only do it on the character that actually has the skills to complete WOs
PPS not being "holier than thou" here, I play w/o an army of alts simply because any game that encourages that by design is a game I'm going to quit eventually. This one being in alpha I'm hoping won't go in that direction.

[alleryn]

It's not hard to get rich on a single character. Given how long people have been playing, there must be multimillionaires. I've topped 700k in three months -- edit: since that isn't a very useful figure: 25 days, 8 hours logged in according to /age -- (just unlocked my two main combat skills past 60, so now i'm down to 500k).

When i started i did camp the work order boards in Serb and Elt with alts but just to obtain work orders for my main, which i transferred through Hulon's chest and only for the first month or so. I think i turned in a couple of trophy skin orders i wouldn't have otherwise, but it wasn't a major effect. Apart from this i haven't used alts for anything else -- no muling, nothing.

You can make loads of cash from the single set of work orders (mostly leatherworking, carpentry, alchemy and toolcrafting), cooking, alchemy and toolcrafting forensic kits and skinning knives.

There may be times where there are abilities you'd like to unlock that you can't afford, but that's a good thing -- if i had everything i wanted, things would get stagnant.

My main concern with alts is that if it becomes commonplace to do every good work order 4 times, etc, that there will be rampant inflation and the next levels of skill unlocks will be that much more expensive and make it hard to keep up.

If anything, i think it's too easy to make money at present (after that first period where it's extremely hard to make money before you start unlocking good recipes).

[Khaylara]

I didn't say it's hard to use just one character but it's simply much faster and easier to use multiple characters. 700 k is not a lot, I probably made much more than that but sank them in skills.
My point is by design we actually have an advantage if we use multiple characters. I didn't say it's a necessity but why make 20 k off a WO when you can make 40, 60, 80 k or more from the same work order done on few alts, crafted by one toon. It's much easier and faster clearly-I'll craft 60 great melee staves and distribute them to 3 toons, do it 3 times cause why not. Get where I'm coming from? I don't want to rush content and choose not to do it (others do too) but it's available and very advantageous.

[alleryn]

Yeah i can agree with that. This was a bit misleading though, if that's what you meant.


playing absolutely by the book 100 % of the time doesn't allow you to progress.

If 700k isn't a lot, then clearly you aren't having trouble progressing, since that's enough to unlock pretty much all your skills to 70 (well not every combat skill but how many do you really need...).

[Wemedge]

The advantage to multiboxing work orders doesn't seem like it would be worth the hassle to me. In any given week I make a pretty nice sum of gold. I pretty much do this every week without alt assistance. I don't run w/o's on alts or even have my alts in the guild I'm in to cheese the cash bags. The lazy bums don't even camp used tabs for rare finds. They just sit in serb to stash the occasional pile of something not important enough to keep on Wem.
Even if I did decide to multibox work orders, I don't think it would put me much further ahead than I am now. The time it would take to farm out the mats to multibox the amount of w/o's I crank out monthly would be staggering. Plus the extra time of transferring things and getting to each turn in point and so on would also add up. And buying the mats just seems pointless to me, lot of work for very little profit, especially on a multibox scale. It also doesn't seem like the annoyance involved in w/o juggling across several chars would make it very sustainable either once the thrill of bucking the system wears off. Becoming super rich isn't a sprint, it's a marathon.

[Khaylara]

alleryn - no, I don't have that much trouble progressing cause I've been around for a while and most of my crafts are maxed. If I run dry I just craft a bunch of things and sell them. But it can be done much faster running alts. I tend to spend the cash rather on tradeskills anyway, I have about 5 combat skills unlocked to 70 across 2 main chars.
Wemedge- you are honestly the exception when it comes to making cash, you're just very good at it but afaik you did it w/o altitis, the rather slow way. About the mats seeming pointless, you did buy mats for shamanic for example and guaranteed you helped other people to make cash that way. That's what I mean, if few players just use an army of alts to stash materials, don't buy anything, do work orders on alts and sink everything in NPCs that's overall a pretty stagnant picture for the game itself. I bet you don't even realize how many players got money just by filling your work orders, 20 k for a book is a lot for a newbie. That's how one should get cash, trading with other players and not by using alts to farm cash by using loopholes. At least that's my opinion.

If you guys say using alts to fill the same work order multiple times is not needed, why are we discussing this and why do people do it ? Logic says it's not for fun but because they have to for multiple reasons-maybe they started more recently, they don't have enough tradeskills maxed to fully use the WO boards (maybe they just have carpentry maxed and not lw, tailoring or tc). The option exists and people are using it because it's available and doesn't have much downsides except the hassle of logging and relogging and trading alts.

[Tagamogi]

The reason I originally started doing alt work order turn ins was really just that I wanted to level crafting skills. Being able to complete work orders twice as often makes a tremendous leveling speed difference, especially if it pushes you over the skill point needed to make the next tier of armor and you have suddenly 14 new work orders you can fill at the new skill level.

So, it's not just money that's a motivation here but at least the skillup motivation is going to go away once a skill is maxed. You can still use the work orders to make money forever, though. ( Or until you hit the gold cap, anyway. :p )

In my opinion, whether the multiple workorders for money are a serious problem really depends on what other options players have for making money and what the money per time factor is for them. If multiple workorders aren't a particularly efficient money making method, then I don't think it matters if some players decide to use them instead of other ways of making money.

Where money comes from is one of those things I haven't figured out yet, though. ;) If I solo in Gazluk, I make maybe 1K in NPC vendor cash while gaining 1 level at 60+. That's a fraction of the money I need to actually buy my new level abilities. Of course, the reason I make that little money is really my own fault since I use items I get for crafting or favor. I don't know if the game's intent here is to force me to decide between leveling crafting and buying new combat skills, or to make me spend x time farming money for each combat skill level, or to make me level crafting so that I can turn in work orders to get money for training my combat skills... I don't think the high cost of the combat skills is necessarily a problem, I'm just not sure where that money supposed to come from. My primary source of income so far has been work orders.



There may be times where there are abilities you'd like to unlock that you can't afford, but that's a good thing -- if i had everything i wanted, things would get stagnant.

Exactly. Accumulating money once you are high level seems a bit too easy to me, too. I think part of that is just a function of how much I play (or rather not play), though. If I only do enough fighting to gain a couple combat levels per month, it's very easy to pay for them by doing a couple high-profit, low-effort work orders. If I played enough to level an entire skill from 0 to 70 every month, I think trying to find enough money to afford that would feel very different.

[Eachna]

I quite agree with your post in general but wanted to quibble with this one statement.

Selling to non-crafters is pretty difficult if you are trying to level a crafting skill that doesn't produce consumable items (e.g. potions or food). It doesn't matter if you can make the best chest armor in the game - your profits are still going to be pretty limited if everyone in the game at most wants to buy it once.

I really love PG's work order system - I finally have a reason to actually make lots of armor and I don't have to compete with other crafters in the player market in order to make marginal profits (or least-worse losses) on items I create to skill up. And yes, selling to other players is still fun, I'm just saying that it works much better for some skills than others.

Sorry, yes, in some cases you'd sell to crafters or use items yourself or sell them to NPCS.

Work orders shouldn't be the main economic driver because eventually we should have enough players to have a functioning market. That whole market will have many pieces, which includes work orders, selling to NPCs, selling to players, etc.

I was just trying to say that I'm aware part of the way the W/O system works now is to help make up for not having enough players to sell to so prices may change in the future. When that happens I'd like the Serbule w/os to take less of a hit than other areas for the reasons I wrote about.

edit: fixed typo