So it recently came to my attention that the value of every loot has been decreased by at least 50%. It's not just Elster either, the merchants have lowered their selling prices as well.

I don't really understand the purpose behind this. It's not like looting was quick to begin with, and to my knowledge has not become broken over the past few days. You gain loot at the exact same rate as before, which, barring any distractions, is about 100 loot an hour. That seemed fair to me because on average that would equate to about 1100 gralats. With current prices, it would take 5 hours to earn 1 hat at that rate, but now it would roughly require 10 hours. Spending the entire time looting. For one hat.

I hate to complain, but I honestly do not understand the reasoning for this change. As far as I know, looting wasn't even the fastest method. I'm pretty sure I calculated you could earn approximately 2000 gralats an hour from farming in a guild house.  

Looting is undergoing some balancing.

When diving and looting was first released, there was a limited amount of water--most looting took place in the Nafets river and York bay. The purpose of looting was always, from the first design iteration, to move around the world to reap the full benefits. However, since it was released we've had Big City and Destiny shoreline added... players are no longer cramped into a small area of water. They still need to move around, but most diving can be done in the same large expansions of water.

These large areas of water also means the algorithms designed to spawn loot has a much better chance of actually spawning loot. Players are now profiting much more off of looting compared to numbers a few years ago, or even last year. In fact it's nearly at the top of the income tables, whereas the year of its release it was at the bottom.

This may not be the final outcome of the balancing. Prices may be increased and the algorithms tweaked, but something has to be done.  

Guild house farming you could make roughly 1k assuming you don't go afk half the time. Same would apply to looting but not the same amount obviously.  

So first the bugs had an issue and now the loot.
Desperate times.

http://www.graalians.com/forums/show...275#post734275  

none of the jobs really pay unnerf looting  

Posted by Dusty

snip...

I've been looting for a long time, even back when there was no Big City or Destiny. It's always been my main method for earning gralats and it's always been roughly 100 loot per hour. Certainly never as low as 50 loot per hour as this update would suggest. Do the algorithms really take into account the amount of water? I thought it had to do with the levels themselves, and if there is water present in that level there is a chance of spawning loot. This would explain why it wasn't an uncommon occurrence for loot to spawn in the Castle fountain.

I don't know what could have possibly changed since last year, considering Big City was introduced around November 2014. And large bodies of water have always existed at the Oasis. Maybe people have given up on bug catching, so they switched to looting. Or maybe since they can't tower they figure they'll spend time looting. What exactly do you mean by they are profiting more from looting? How is that data collected and interpreted? Like, Elster dishing out more gralats than previous years would just correlate to more players looting or players spending more time looting. Aren't the rates at which gralats are earned more important than the raw amount of gralats received?  

Posted by Noxious

I've been looting for a long time, even back when there was no Big City or Destiny. It's always been my main method for earning gralats and it's always been roughly 100 loot per hour. Certainly never as low as 50 loot per hour as this update would suggest. Do the algorithms really take into account the amount of water? I thought it had to do with the levels themselves, and if there is water present in that level there is a chance of spawning loot. This would explain why it wasn't an uncommon occurrence for loot to spawn in the Castle fountain.

I don't know what could have possibly changed since last year, considering Big City was introduced around November 2014. And large bodies of water have always existed at the Oasis. Maybe people have given up on bug catching, so they switched to looting. Or maybe since they can't tower they figure they'll spend time looting. What exactly do you mean by they are profiting more from looting? How is that data collected and interpreted? Like, Elster dishing out more gralats than previous years would just correlate to more players looting or players spending more time looting. Aren't the rates at which gralats are earned more important than the raw amount of gralats received?

We work with the data we have, and like I said it's a process. We can't make adjustments without collecting data. There are a multitude of changes that can occur but we need data to determine the best way to approach this.

No one said this was final, and I already posted prices may be raised back up.  

Well you could have warned us to sell our stashes

Kinda greasy right before graaloween and I'm sure many had planned to sell their hoards for uploads next month

You can just ask us to buy gralat packs. Most of us love graal and if you guys need a few bucks just say so

I'm being pissy I guess

I just think enconomy changes should wait for January when we blow all our gralats and everyone is rebuilding loot stashes. Not right now while everyone has piles of loot  

noxious is right. you would get around 100 loot per hour in the larger bodies of water (compared to 60-80 in smaller bodies) with the average price of each loot piece being ~15 gralats, making it 1500 gralats per hour at best. did that warrant a nerf? was looting simply not meant to be a main gralat earning method, so you made the choice of nerfing it regardless of the super low gralats/hour it provides you with? I understand you would look at how to earn more money from people purchasing gralat packs, but nerfing almost every single gralat farming method, without any solution provided when halloween and christmas are coming in the next couple of months, it's a bit too harsh on the community.  

Posted by Dusty

We work with the data we have, and like I said it's a process. We can't make adjustments without collecting data. There are a multitude of changes that can occur but we need data to determine the best way to approach this.

No one said this was final, and I already posted prices may be raised back up.

this always happens in Classic. i remember a few years back when you made 'adjustments' to farming, and its never been the same ever again.

like what's the point of adding all these new content of gaining gralats then eventually making 'adjustments' so we don't earn as much gralats as you guys want us to earn?

remember when you changed the prices for bugs (was it the grasshoppers?, cant remember) because too many bugs spawned and apparently that put the game into a disadvantage because it was so easy to make gralats off it.

why even bother releasing all these new content when you're eventually gonna change it? y'all so greedy over there. idk who it is making all these decision, but its just unfair. i've never played a game where they made so many changes in the way players can make in-game money

edit:

like come on, man. if you keep saying that looting, and those other things you've changed in the past, are gonna go through some "balancing", then why not make it so that every item in graal are also price-adjusted to these changes? what i mean by this is making price adjustments suitable to these changes you make. e.g. decreasing prices of every item in graal by a certain percentage.

its bs how you change these money making methods but the prices of items remain the same. at least consider making adjustments to the prices of items too

y'all didn't even warn us about these changes. y'all so scummy sometimes over there.. so greedy tsk tsk..

must be fun earning so much from kids buying those gralat packs though, amirite? y'all always making changes to suit you but you never make changes to put players in a good position.

like, i dont even know why y'all gotta be so worried about loosing money over these in-game money methods. i'm assuming Classic can easily earn well above 500k per year, and since y'all don't have that many staff that you need to pay salary to and only have server costs to worry about, y'all already making a good profit margin. why so greedy, man?. i get that companies always aim to profit-maxmise and all that crap, but y'all already making a good margin with the current amount you're earning, so why do you always have to keep making adjustments and worry about nothing?

Spoiler

scum

 

Posted by Sir Travis

Well you could have warned us to sell our stashes

Kinda greasy right before graaloween and I'm sure many had planned to sell their hoards for uploads next month

You can just ask us to buy gralat packs. Most of us love graal and if you guys need a few bucks just say so

I'm being pissy I guess

I just think enconomy changes should wait for January when we blow all our gralats and everyone is rebuilding loot stashes. Not right now while everyone has piles of loot

Yeah some indication would be nice of adjustments. I don't see how they got the figure of reducing by 50% I think that's pretty high reduction imo. When they do changes like this with no announcement it hurts the players who have been looting for a while and building up stash. If it's true the reduction is 50% then I am done looting for good.

I also do think it's ridiculous because looting wasn't some simple method of getting gralats, you had to put time into it.  

We should all go on strike. Lets all link arms and stand around the graal bank in protest due to the fact the bank manager has way too much gralats.

If you get some pretty basic loot items, 100 loot is equal to about 1000 gralats. At a 50% decrease in sell price this would mean 100 loot items is about 500 gralats. This is BS and its pretty clear they want more of our real money.  

I lost 4k. Taken to piracy. I swear I've made almost as much in 1 day of murder as in 1 week of looting (prior to the reduction).  

Posted by Sir Travis

Well you could have warned us to sell our stashes

Kinda greasy right before graaloween and I'm sure many had planned to sell their hoards for uploads next month

You can just ask us to buy gralat packs. Most of us love graal and if you guys need a few bucks just say so

I'm being pissy I guess

I just think enconomy changes should wait for January when we blow all our gralats and everyone is rebuilding loot stashes. Not right now while everyone has piles of loot

That doesn't make sense though? If we feel something isn't balanced why would we warn players so they can quickly milk what we're trying to fix before we fix it? It's not like bugs, we didn't force you to sell them. If you saw you weren't going to make as much you can simply not sell.

Posted by iChronic

this always happens in Classic. i remember a few years back when you made 'adjustments' to farming, and its never been the same ever again.

like what's the point of adding all these new content of gaining gralats then eventually making 'adjustments' so we don't earn as much gralats as you guys want us to earn?

remember when you changed the prices for bugs (was it the grasshoppers?, cant remember) because too many bugs spawned and apparently that put the game into a disadvantage because it was so easy to make gralats off it.

why even bother releasing all these new content when you're eventually gonna change it? y'all so greedy over there. idk who it is making all these decision, but its just unfair. i've never played a game where they made so many changes in the way players can make in-game money

edit:

like come on, man. if you say that looting, and those other things you've changed in the past, are going through some "balancing", then why not make it so that every item in graal is also price-adjusted to these changes? what i mean by this is making price adjustments suitable to these changes you make. e.g. decreasing prices of every item in graal by a certain percentage.

Because Graal is an ever-changing environment. It's not a static game where you introduce something once and it stays balanced since nothing changes.

Looting was released with a goal in mind, and it was balanced in the beginning. You complain now that things are being "tweaked" but no one complained when prices were drastically raised after initial release. Why not then? Oh right, because it was in the favor of the players. Looting has diverted from the original goal because of the additions of larger bodies of water.

Bug catching got nerfed for obvious reasons, and now they're back to their original prices. Not sure why that's relevant though... guess we should have let players keep making millions off those mantises and ladybugs though! Because that makes players happy right? And making players happy is the absolutely only thing that ever needs to be taken into consideration? Guess we should just give players 10,000 gralats every day as well 'cause that would make them happy as well.

Posted by iChronic

i've never played a game where they made so many changes in the way players can make in-game money

How many mobile games do you know that offer the freedom of gameplay that Graal does with absolutely no need to pay a single dime? Classic does not impose hardly any limitations to players who do not pay for anything. You can still spar, you can still PK, you can still buy every item and participate in events and complete every quest and every job. It's not pay2win and the most your gralats go to is making your character look cooler. Hell, you don't even get ads.

But go ahead and keep saying Graal is the greediest game ever.  

Only valid job on Graal now is as a housewife flashing your husband's credit card every 5 minutes. Housewives of Graal City reality TV show coming this fall.