Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #1
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Is it too easy to fill work orders with alts?

    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?

  2. #2
    Senior Member Crissa's Avatar
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    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.

  3. #3
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tagamogi View Post
    - 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.

    Quote Originally Posted by Tagamogi View Post
    - 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.
    Last edited by alleryn; 03-31-2017 at 01:05 AM.

  4. #4
    Member rastaah's Avatar
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    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.
    ~~Sparkle~~

  5. #5
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    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.

    Quote Originally Posted by alleryn View Post
    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.
    Last edited by Tagamogi; 03-31-2017 at 11:05 AM.

  6. #6
    Senior Member Crissa's Avatar
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    If you have to walk from one board to the other, why drop the items?

  7. #7
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    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?

  8. #8
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tagamogi View Post
    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.

  9. #9
    Senior Member ShieldBreaker's Avatar
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    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.

  10. #10
    Member Dibbuk's Avatar
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    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.



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