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Trade Runs - Were they nerfed or was this an accident


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So it's been oh, I don't know.. 2 week's since the trade xp from trade runs was lowered ~50% or more across the board. I read through the lines that were the patch notes, and found nothing on this. Some people said it was a mistake, some wondered if it was intentional. I don't mind either way, what makes me scratch my head is why people still don't know yet? I understand this is a Stress Test but doesn't that involve communication both ways between testers and developers?
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[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1320970122' post='48368']
oh ok, thanks for reporting, I may have broken it while adding the code for a new device I'm working on.
[/quote]

Interesting, curious to see the device you're working on. Makes me wonder, is the device is restricted in who can use it, and if so, is it for the new classes, or one of the original 6?
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[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1320995550' post='48382']
It's for traders of all races, you'll find out soon enough.
[/quote]
I surely hope that this new device (it's L4 available from the QM in Venus in the future) doesn't do what I think it does.

Thanks to the negotiate skill traders and terrans already have a large advantage doing trade runs. They get better trade XP per item on a trade run, better profits and can carry more trade items per run due to their larger holds. The new device appears to give 50% more on top of the trade XP and profits they already get.

Those poor trade-challenged characters without negotiate skill and large cargo holds will become relatively worse off and trade runs, for them, should probably come with a large sign that pops-up telling them "do not bother". There is nothing available for non-traders to get better XP or bounties from combat or explore despite being specialists in those areas.

In the depths of my imagination I had hoped for a device for characters without negotiate to enable them to get more trade XP and a little more profit from trade runs -- "Trade Almanac" or some other pithy title.

Making the passive profit skill benefit non-traders in gang with a TT may make the situation better.
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[quote name='Amethyst' timestamp='1321301160' post='48501']
You mean like these turbo things only warriors use which give them an 'unfair combat advantage' and leave us 'combat-challenged' traders at a disadvantage? :lol:
[/quote]

Does a CL50 warrior killing a CL50 mob getting 1000 combat XP instead with turbo get 1500XP, 1700XP or 2450XP --- because the latter is what's gonna happen with Tien's new device combined with negotiate. The two middle numbers are ball park for what negotiate increases trade XP on trade items at L5 and L7. The final number is L7 + Tien's new device.

Traders won't even need to concern themselves with combat or getting the turbo that is available to them.

They can just run trade-runs from 0-150 quicker than any warrior can combat their way 0-150.
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...but try doing the math for L60 mobs which explorers and traders struggle to touch, and then add in a bit of trade and credits from the loot. We can see the warriors farming the 58s and 60s in BBW and Antares. A bit more fun than flying like a blue-arsed fly between Pluto an Earth?
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[quote name='Amethyst' timestamp='1321370355' post='48534']
...but try doing the math for L60 mobs which explorers and traders struggle to touch, and then add in a bit of trade and credits from the loot. We can see the warriors farming the 58s and 60s in BBW and Antares. A bit more fun than flying like a blue-arsed fly between Pluto an Earth?
[/quote]

Well congratulations you've picked up something twice with one-line throw away comments that are not the subject at all. I will wait to see if the existence and availability of the alleged device is confirmed. Tien's silence speaks volumes. Until then, adios.
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[quote name='Tienbau' timestamp='1321402952' post='48555']
does anyone have any dumps for trade run XP from live?
[/quote]

Dude shut up quick. I'm sure some of the oldies do.
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from what I can gather a decent trade run in live would give 6k Trade XP. Currently trade runs are giving at least double this. I feel 6k is too low, but from what I can gather the 20+k trade XP that runs were giving before were enabling people to level to 150 in a week or so.

What we've been talking about is having a system of diminishing returns, so the first trade run of the day you do will net you the full 20+k that we got before. Subsequent identical runs would give progressivley less trade XP.

The trades person at the booth would be able to tell you an additional profitable trade run.

This way, people playing for a couple of hours a day will be able to get some decent XP, you'll still make better XP than live by carrying on trading, but not as much per run as the initial one.

How does that sound?
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The XP already has a built in drop-off of sorts, as you level up it requires more xp to fill the bar, thus giving diminished returns of a sort. Are you going to diminish the XP further? And how will that affect the built-in diminishing returns?
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There's actually another idea too, Tienbau, I'll find it and link ya in the dev forums. See what ya think in terms of possibility. I could foresee it being much more interesting.
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TB... trade runs netted more than 6k...for SHO! fenris-somerled run got you just over 500 xp per unit with negotiate 5. think it was 554 ot so for TT and just under 500 for others...483 sticks in my mind for some reason. So a TT with trade 7 and 40 slots got just over 550 ea. 40x500+=+20k. Granted somerled-fenris run was considerably longer than the current pluto-earth run, and those are netting 1kea+ per slot, but for back then 20k wasn't to be sneezed at.

The job trade runs if you had a ready taxi....and got jobs right as the timer proced...you COULD get just a tad more TL than a somerled run, but not by much, job trade runs were a waste for TT/TE since those extra cargo slots and negotiate netted more xp, but the runs for those with less slots job runs were good.

GROUPED now..that was the key, trade runs with a TT was the great equalizer. You got enough on a trade run with a friend TT along got you more per item that a job run wasn't worth it..that was for solo.

And then there was the loot method, ANTARES...that was the best equalizer, the bio drops from birdies didn't stack, true, but the whole group would empty vault as much as possible and dock antares station and fill it since they were vaultable. When everyone was full you AS A GROUP would go to paren, have the TT and vendor them. Everyone got the trade group bonus as they traded in their vaults worth to TT in trade..much more any old trade run at 500+ ea. And the credits? SWEET!..even solo the bio parts was massive credits...not like the barely cover ammo costs like it is now. Thats how our guild funded guild builds and free 1-4 builds for everyone else on the server..we had a weekly antares combat group night.
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  • 1 month later...
[quote name='Mattsacre' timestamp='1321786869' post='48728']
TB... trade runs netted more than 6k...for SHO! fenris-somerled run got you just over 500 xp per unit with negotiate 5. think it was 554 ot so for TT and just under 500 for others...483 sticks in my mind for some reason. So a TT with trade 7 and 40 slots got just over 550 ea. 40x500+=+20k. Granted somerled-fenris run was considerably longer than the current pluto-earth run, and those are netting 1kea+ per slot, but for back then 20k wasn't to be sneezed at.

The job trade runs if you had a ready taxi....and got jobs right as the timer proced...you COULD get just a tad more TL than a somerled run, but not by much, job trade runs were a waste for TT/TE since those extra cargo slots and negotiate netted more xp, but the runs for those with less slots job runs were good.

GROUPED now..that was the key, trade runs with a TT was the great equalizer. You got enough on a trade run with a friend TT along got you more per item that a job run wasn't worth it..that was for solo.

And then there was the loot method, ANTARES...that was the best equalizer, the bio drops from birdies didn't stack, true, but the whole group would empty vault as much as possible and dock antares station and fill it since they were vaultable. When everyone was full you AS A GROUP would go to paren, have the TT and vendor them. Everyone got the trade group bonus as they traded in their vaults worth to TT in trade..much more any old trade run at 500+ ea. And the credits? SWEET!..even solo the bio parts was massive credits...not like the barely cover ammo costs like it is now. Thats how our guild funded guild builds and free 1-4 builds for everyone else on the server..we had a weekly antares combat group night.
[/quote]

I totally agree with Matt on this; trade runs def netted more than 6k per run. The biggest issue I see is in comparison of xp per minute gained via Combat or Explores. Combat xp seems very close to live. Job xp seems close to live. Explore xp seems close to live (mining and discovering new nav paths). But trade runs seem much lower (not inlcuding the Pluto>earth run which was def overpowered but this run was not present in Live). Now compare xp per minute of jobs and it leaves the question, "why any player would ever do trade runs vs jobs?" In Live jobs gave a little more trade xp but not to the point that trade runs were abandoned......the way it appears now.

NOTE: trade xp from mob loot is also lower than in Live. This may be due to the lower level loot that mobs drop (a Cl 40+ mob dropping level 2-6 loot and only a few of each) but with trade runs so low the only viable trade leveling mechanic in the emu is jobs.
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The biggest advantages Jobs had in Live, particularily Trade Jobs, was in addition to Trade XP, they also gave Explore XP, and faction. I think that Jobs should retain the advantages of more than one type of XP, and faction, but to make Trade runs competitive, they should reward more Trade XP, per hour than jobs. There should also be more things Traders can do for Trade XP, so when they get bored flying endlessly between Somerled & Fenris, they have some other fun things to do. Things designed to play to what a Trader is good at.
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  • 2 weeks later...
The faction bump is hardly worth the effort though. Even if you get 6 jobs from the same faction, youre getting what, 30-60 faction per run?

*shoots two or three chavez* Done.

Know what I mean?

Now if it was say 25 faction per job, then factioning via job runs would make sense.
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[quote]
fenris-somerled run got you just over 500 xp per unit with negotiate 5. think it was 554 ot so for TT and just under 500 for others...483 sticks in my mind for some reason. So a TT with trade 7 and 40 slots got just over 550 ea. 40x500+=+20k
[/quote]

I'm pretty sure at the moment even without a TT you're getting more than 554XP per item somerled->fenris so what I said holds. With a TT you're getting tons more, so yeah trade runs are still way more profitable XP-wise than they were in live.

Before the re-balance they were netting around 1200XP per item which was a little bit bonkers!

And to the poster who said 'I would be diminishing the returns [i]further[/i]' I didn't say that at all, please read the post again.

thanks,

TB
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[quote name='Ryle' timestamp='1328119491' post='52875']
The faction bump is hardly worth the effort though. Even if you get 6 jobs from the same faction, youre getting what, 30-60 faction per run?

*shoots two or three chavez* Done.

Know what I mean?

Now if it was say 25 faction per job, then factioning via job runs would make sense.
[/quote]

Personally I think indeed the faction should be higher per job so that would be a viable route to faction gain. I would even suggest that it should scale to job level as does a kill (lower lvl chavez kill gains RD faction, higher lvl chavez kill nets more RD faction gain.) so too should the jobs, L50 be x faction gain and a 2x,3x etc. for each jobs tier.
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  • 1 month later...
I keep reading about the traderun from Pluto to Earth and just can't understand why people think it's so great...

In live I got about 550 exp per item doing the spice run at Neg4 (TL15+) on my TT, which is the same as I am getting now in the emu. (one way was slightly lower, like 525 iirc). The Pluto-Earth run gave me just over 1k per item (1034 ?) the other day when I tested it, which is on par with the spicerun as it's one way only. Both runs are 4 hops, with the spicerun having slightly longer stretches.

Of course if you can grab explore jobs going back, it's going to be a lot better in total, but those require OL90 which is not what a trader will be even close to when his TL is in the high teens/low 20s. Once you are OL90 the traderun exp should have "dried up" a long time ago and you should be hauling stuff between Somerled and Fenris anyway.

Can't remember when the exp from spicerun "dried up" in live, guessing it was around TL30 or so ?

In general I don't find the exp from traderuns to be any better than live at all.

Also compare the spicerun to explore jobs at VT for instance. Spicerun for TT is about 36k on a return trip (OL60, 34 cargo slots ?), same as the VT jobs and equivalent time taken. Now group with a JE and you almost double the exp from the jobs (assuming you can get enough 6k jobs for 2 players, otherwise it's 4875 each). For the traderuns there is nothing better than Neg5, being a TT and in a group, every other scenario is a lot worse.
Maybe my numbers are off, as I haven't done many traderuns lately (and I can't check right now), if so forget everything above :P

On another note, what happened to the device earlier mentioned in this thread ? Was it ever implemented ?
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