FLS reward PVP & smash the grind!

DJXeon

1.23 is going to be an awesome milestone patch. We’ve spent this milestone dedicating time to important issues that you the players have brought to our attention. In this devlog we’re going to talk about Daily Missions, PvP Rewards, Commendations, and Econ Unrest. We’ve got a lot to cover, but I’ll try to keep it short and interesting!

First up, let’s talk about economy. Here’s some fun data about the economy—this is how much money we’ve spent, across all servers, since August ‘09:

 

Recipes: $23,282,997,220

Taxes: $1,638,704,174

Structure Deeds: $779,637,510

Shops: $756,601,175

Auction Listing Fees: $262,763,836

Structure Upkeep: $251,080,635

Auction Listing Extend Fees: $91,605,024

Auction Pickup Fees: $10,839,685

Mail Fees: $2,863,550

Missions: $2,862,980

Society Creation Fees: $2,154,000

Total: $27,082,109,789

So in the last 6 months, players as a whole have spent 27 billion doubloons. That’s a lot of ships! In a similar vein, here’s how much money we’ve created since August ‘09:

Mission Rewards: $15,502,528,679

Insurance Payouts: $11,500,654,600

NPC Kills: $5,376,350,087

Shops: $3,748,736,332

Claim Prize/Scavenge: $140,928,279

Total: $36,844,395,646

In the last 6 months, players as a whole have generated over 35 billion doubloons. Now, if you’re noticing that we create more money than we remove, you’re correct, and that’s not necessarily bad. In general we want more money moving around than we take out, but not too much – a little inflation is good in economics. Currently, we’re generating about 1.27db for every 1db we remove. That doesn’t sound like much, but consider:

That puts our inflation rate at over 25%. That’s a lot.

Because of that inflation rate, over time, we’ve generated over 9 billion excess db.

Daily Missions

Mission rewards are obviously the largest contributor here, and of them, payouts from Daily Missions represent a huge proportion of the entire data:

Mission Count Money

Guns of Del Morro 9627 $221,421,000.00

High Spirits 79865 $1,357,705,000.00

Havana Hijinx 28566 $485,622,000.00

Prison Riot 53230 $904,910,000.00

Fracture Point 65753 $1,512,319,000.00

Gunboat Diplomacy 67615 $1,555,145,000.00

Hulk Smash 62928 $1,447,344,000.00

Island of Fire 71660 $1,648,180,000.00

Tuesday 63389 $1,457,947,000.00

Unhappy Meals 66259 $1,523,957,000.00

Pit Fight 76977 $1,308,609,000.00

Total: $13,201,738,000.00

Of the 15 billion generated by Mission Rewards, 85% of it comes from these 11 Daily Missions. Regular missions from 1-50 only generate 2 billion of our total gold income. This is obviously a big problem. We want doubloons to be plentiful and available, but not to the extent they currently are.

To that end, we’re going to significantly reduce the payout of daily missions, and at the same time increase the payout of normal missions:

A normal mission @ level 50 is being increased from 2,120db -> 3,100db.

Solo daily missions @ level 50 are being reduced from 17,000db -> 7,000db.

Group daily missions @ level 50 are being reduced from 23,800db -> 10,000db.

If we were to plug in these new numbers in the above charts, we’d be generating about 5.5 billion over the same time period. That, along with a boost to normal missions means we’re generating about 1.08db for every 1db we remove. 8% inflation is much better than 25%. It also brings these missions closer in line with other money-making activities in the game. And of course, we’ll continue to monitor the economy and the gold supply in the future.

All that said, we don’t want to give the impression that we’re just removing the most lucrative missions in the game without any thought.

PvP Rewards

As a way to counter-balance the above changes, we’re making improvements to our PvP Bounty Missions.

In 1.23 we’re changing the way that these missions work and significantly increasing their rewards. Currently, when you take these missions, you must sink a player of a specific nation. We’re changing forcing you to kill a player from a specific nation to allowing you to kill a player of any opposing nation with just one mission, so that you can more quickly rack up 10 kills for your bounty.

The way we track who you kill is also going to change. Right now, kills up to 15 ship levels below you (and any above your ship level) count for the bounty. This means you could be sinking players far below your level, or opponents in much cheaper ships, leading to an exploitive situation. In 1.23, you won’t get credit if you sink an opposing player more than 5 ship levels below you.

All total, should you send 10 enemy players to the depths, you’ll be rewarded with 25,000 doubloons, 25 Marks of Victory, 25 Marks of Trade, as well as XP and National Player Faction points. In addition, we’ll be tracking every time you complete this mission, and unlocking some new player titles based on your progress. When you complete 5 PvP Bounty Missions (roughly 50 PvP kills), you’ll unlock the first of several titles:

Skillful NATION_MEMBER

Expert NATION_MEMBER

Dangerous NATION_MEMBER

Infamous NATION_MEMBER

Legendary NATION_MEMBER

These tiles are based on your nation, so if you’re a Pirate, you’ll see “Legendary Pirate”, and if you’re Spanish, you’ll see “Dangerous Spaniard”. The first title costs 10 Marks of Victory and 10 Marks of Trade, and will be available in the standard MoV exchange shops in your nation’s capital. Each additional title requires 5 more completions of the PvP Bounty Missions (50 PvP kills), and costs 5 additional MoV/MoT.

A related player concern is that PvP tokens are losing value in today’s marketplace. We don’t want to add to that just by giving another big source of MoV/MoT. The first way we’ll be addressing this is to reduce the per-ship Mark drop, as well as the Marks you receive for participating in a Port Battle. Port Battle rewards will get an increased doubloon amount as an offset.

The second way is by introducing some new consumable items to the MoV exchanges: the Conquest Supply Crate, and the Conquest Salvage Crate. The Conquest Supply Crate offers a random assortment of Uncommon and Exceptional consumables, and costs 20 MoV. The Conquest Salvage Crate offers a random assortment of loot items (gold plaques, jade idols, etc), and costs 20 MoT.

Commendations

Now, enough about PvP. Let’s talk about PvE. We’ve been told a number of times that the rewards available for Commendations (especially for careers like the Naval Officer) aren’t worth the time spent claiming derelict ships. We’re going to remedy that and remove some complications in the process:

We’re eliminating Freetrader Commendations: Royal Encomiums, Gold Seals, Silver Seals, Large Pennants, and Small Pennants. All national careers receive the same Commendation items. Obsolete items can be turned in at the commendation exchange in your nation’s capital.

All Commendations, both National Commendations and Pirate Captured Flags can now be traded and sold on the auction house

We’ve revamped all career commendation exchanges. You will always be able to get basic ammo, packages of consumables, and respecs, in addition to writs, high-level avatar outfitting, recipes, and assorted raw materials.

All careers can now downgrade Commendations 1-for-1.

All told it should make Commendations much more than a useless item cluttering up your inventory.

Econ Unrest

Last, but certainly not least, we’re adjusting the timers and unrest amounts on the Econ Unrest services.

We’re shortening the pickup timer from 6 hours -> 1 hour.

Reducing the amount of goods needed, and adjusting the amount of unrest awarded to better reflect the current unrest landscape.

Unrest per hour is roughly 1700 for the attackers and roughly 1550 for the defenders.

This means that you can’t quite put a port into contention with Econ Unrest alone (1700 * 4 = 6800), at least not unattended. We hope that this will make the Econ Unrest services useful once more.

As I said at the beginning of this devlog, these are largely changes that have been requested by you the players. These changes are not final and are definitely subject to change based on your feedback. We’re always watching to see what changes and improvements can be made so please continue to provide constructive feedback.