Originally Posted by Darus Grey

Brad, I have a serious question.

Is there anyone on your team who is the equivalent of an economist?
If the answer is no, you really should consider it. If its yes, I don't think they're doing a good job(and I hate being mean saying that, but I consider myself an expert in this field, and theres some simply mind boggling issues.)

Theres been some changes that really make me question your guys issues with crafting vs world drop quality.
It often seems to me whoever is making these changes from a "balance" standpoint is ignoring or at least not factoring highly the economic impacts of these changes.

The way the economy on most servers is heading, world drops keep lowering in price, but the value of rare crafting materials keeps *rising* as more competition levels up competing for the same scarce resource pools.

This was already creating a large disparity in the perceived value of crafted goods.
As a weaponsmith, sure I could until 2 patches ago make "the best" weapons ingame. Often at 10-20x the price to *make* it compared to a world drop/quest its with maybe 5% less overall damage.
Thats one of those things that seems balanced on paper(comparing a heroic crafted weapon to a heroic world one), but in reality the scarcity of resources to make them is driving prices through the roof and significantly lowering thier overall value.

The recent change monday in the T4/T5 upgrade recipes made it even worse, leatherworkers and mineralolgists got particulary , for lack of a better word- screwed.
Adding the requirement of *another* rare secondary component, basically doubled the cost to make many items.

In the case of LW and MIN it raised the minimum costs to make the items by so much that they now have no value on the market, they're simply to expensive for what you get.

Its also having a spiraling effect on those resources, the rare secondaries are now climbing higher in price, and will continue to do so for forseeable future.

This again is continuing to widen the already large gap in the power < - > cost disparity between crafted and world drops, as crafted goods will continue to become even more expensive to make/buy, well world drops can only get cheaper over time as more drop.

I would seriously urge your team to consider the economic impact of many of these changes, from my perspective it seems more like a "throw it in, see what happens" approach, vs anyone putting in thought on the longterm economic effects of some of these changes.

Originally Posted by Locithon

I'm just wondering Brad how you really expect us to raid? I've been seeing that GM's are turning everyone in the raid into a skele so they get more than 3-5 fps. And thats' w/no other guilds there camping for the mob. Since raid mobs apparently will be fought over, can you seriously expect people to tackle a raid mob while getting 1-2 fps? Are there solutions coming down the pipe for this sort of thing?

Because when you say you can get 30 fps in most situations, that's assuming there's a single group. Performance comes to a halt though with 24 people, even on highest performance.

Not to be all negative though, our guild just finished the entire Pantheon of the Ancients trials and I have to say it's the best dungeon i've seen in VG yet. Hopefully the endgame single man dungeons are going to be this good.

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

He doesn't have to give details, but he doesn't have to use doublespeak or give false information either. Personally, I was just curious as to why he would say moving to SOE caused beta to start early, when beta started 6+ months prior.

Originally Posted by Twobit Whore

Or I could just keep my current machine which runs every other title on the market *very* well for free.

I think you are honestly being way too flippant about people just going out and upgrading. That may have worked when things came along every 6 months that made the computing world rethink the future - especially when compatibility wasn't always the highest priority, but these days things are different.

Originally Posted by Lyenae

750w powersupply to power an old intel and 1 ATI gpu?
$300 dollar case?
$400 for 2gig Ram paired with a 2.8ghz dual core?

what the hell?

Originally Posted by kohl

Did Brad say that he was looking for minimum 300k subs? I'm sorry but I have a hard time believing that any dev with some pride wouldn't be shooting for "as many subs as my game's success allows".

Did you read Brad's wall of text? He laments on and on about how people are pigeonholing his game as 'hardcore' or 'tedious' but that in reality, VG is really about everyone. It's meant to appeal to hardcore, core and casual. If that is the case, and its a solid quality game, and MOST importantly - its FUN - why could it *not* garner 1 million subs? Any please don't use the tired bullshit excuse of Sigil not having a big name, because positive word of mouth in the gaming community, quite frankly, does wonders.

Originally Posted by woqqqa

Or even if Sigil had managed to implement the AES (Automatic (?) Encounter System) they hyped so much prior to release. Instead, it's EQ camping time! Yeah, this game's going to last....

Originally Posted by Drtyrm

Those environment textures drive me nuts. I can't get my head around the multiple hard edges between objects wrapped in various stone.

Does VG still screenshot without some of the graphical effects being applied?

Originally Posted by Nino

I wasn't here during the first year when that decision was made.