I know I am new in the forums as I have been quietly reading them for about a month or so, but I wanted to know if anyone else feels this way.
I’ve been playing this game for about nine months and quite enjoying it. Now I’m not really enamored with this new “economic system” change. I’ve ground almost half of my turns away today trying to work out the math for just part of this system. That on top of that, this process now requires the continual joy of scrolling and scrolling and scrolling and scrolling through your inventory to transform your items.
This new monetary system seems to have become very cumbersome. Is it me or do you now have to really focus on whether you sell item to get devices to boost your stats or keep grinding to get stuff to convert other stuff to convert to other stuff to advance your story. There used to be items that didn’t have a lot of story impact so you could sell them and both purchase items AND advance the story.
What I find frustrating is having to spend my turns transforming items from one kind into another. This doesn’t make sense to me that we are being charged turns to transform items when the bazaar doesn’t charge you turns to purchase or sell anything. On top of that my rate of return is not constant when transforming items. With some items it is a “matter of luck” which affects the results. This can cause the ratio of tranformation to vary from a 20 to 1 ratio if you are unlucky to a 5 to 1 ratio if you are lucky.
This has seriously taken away a lot of the fun I was having in this game. Before if you had made it to person of some importance it wasn’t terribly difficult to find items to work to getting items for the Bazaar Side-streets. Now it feels very tedious to cobble items together to advance story items. This is requiring a lot of time and math to try and calculate my options for advancing my storyline options.
I understand that they are trying to improve the game but in this process can we at least not get charged turns to change our items from one kind into another. I’m not sure if there is a way to improve the inventory page to keep from continually scrolling when transforming items.
As far as the math goes, all of the new changes are as follows (Whispered secrets into clues, primordial shrieks into maniac’s prayers, and prayers into correspondence plaques still use their old manner of conversion as I recall).
The items are converted into an equal pence worth of ingredients. So, if the item you’re converting is worth 5 pence, and it converts into an item worth 15 pence, you’ll need 3 items for every 1 improved item. This has a net gain of 0. Now, this amount will always be constant, regardless of success or failure. Success allows you to gain bonus things: Essentially it works like any other storylet: If you fail, you earn no profit, if you succeed you do earn a profit. Except in this case, a failure doesn’t really hurt you, since you still make progress in converting your items.
Converting items also has a chance for a rare success: This earns you a far more valuable item than normal. This can involve things such as Memories of Light for converting jade fragments into relics of the third city (quite a reward, for using a formly “vendor trash” item), or even bazaar sidestreet items, such as earning comprehensive bribes for converting romantic notions into visions of the surface.
Also, there’s a very good reason why selling and buying at the bazaar doesn’t take actions but this does: You only sell an item for half of it’s value, so you lose money using the bazaar. Using this system, you convert items without a loss of value, and if you pass the luck challenges you even make a profit. edited by Urthdigger on 1/30/2012
My two cents: sure it was slightly unsettling to find some old prices had been changed (just tonight I was burdened with Nightmares, so I welcomed “A Pleasant Evening”, just to discover I couldn’t afford it, unless spending some turns to concoct the payment -.-). But sure the system does give the game a slightly more experimental, artisan-like feel - having to study the reagents to produce your intended result is more interesting than just grind hundreds of items. Then again, I’m not actually experimenting much, because of the Action cost, albeit justified by the equal (or better) value exchange: having started playing late, I feel compelled to work my way up to the content limit as soon as I can, only halting progress to produce items when it’s absolutely necessary under the direst circumstances ^^
I’ve been playing over a year and while I’m still getting used to some cards having a completely different price, I’m really enjoying the crafting options. BUT, that is something that I enjoy as a player and I could absolutely see that not being appealing for other players. Right now I’m enjoying the puzzle of figuring out what I need to get other things, and the economy shake up has renewed my interest in the game (I took a few months off and was delighted at the changes).
[quote=Urthdigger]Also, there’s a very good reason why selling and buying at the bazaar doesn’t take actions but this does: You only sell an item for half of it’s value, so you lose money using the bazaar. Using this system, you convert items without a loss of value, and if you pass the luck challenges you even make a profit. edited by Urthdigger on 1/30/2012[/quote]
Also, the high-value options for the lowest-tier items don’t have the luck factor (as well as being much more action-efficient). It looks like the general rule is that instead of getting something else, you get more of the product, amounting to a half-Echo profit. Similarly, the tier 3->tier 3 actions exchange 50 of one thing for 51 of another, another 50 pence gain.
So if one says the standard grind is an Echo an action you’re only “losing” half an action per action you spend crafting. I believe the random elements work out to about the same over time.
Thank you everyone for your information, it has been helpful to have further information on this. Having the “endless turns” has been a help on grinding my way to a zubmerine, but not so much on my sleep patterns. (Refilling 40 candle slots occurs in 2 hours and 10 mins and I can set an alarm to go off that often). Then last link was informative as well thanks Alexis! Good luck on all your machinations everyone!
[quote=Urthdigger]
I did this as well. You actually don’t lose much sanity sleeping only two hours at a time.[/quote]
The Gazelle reported yesterday on a mysterious spike in sale of Darkdrop Coffee as well a a drastic rise in commerscial, criminal, scholarly, bohemian and romantic activities all troughout Fallen London. The phenomenon seems to be linked to a three-day celebration called “The festival of endless action”. Participants where reported to stalk the street, break into peoples home and mutter “must…have…caffeine…” under their breath. A paraphlegic Bentic scholar assures us that nobody was hurt significantly from insomnia or sleep deprivation, and personally opines that sleep is over-rated. “We can all sleep when we’re dead!” he said…