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palmz 
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 Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 22:40 |
 ajqtrz wrote:
ajqtrz wrote:
Malek wrote:
ajqtrz wrote:
Malek wrote:
You keep banging on about this concept of "pay to win". The only difference that has occurred now is that prestige can be traded. Previously, the rich players could allocate prestige to the alliance pool and go have at it. |
Actually, it's the relatively easy way they can supply anybody with prestige in exchange for gold that makes the difference. Before you bought prestige and it could be used to basic raise resources, increase van speeds, etc. It couldn't be used to pay for sov or anything requiring gold. Now it can. Now prestige is, in essence, an in game currency and can be easily exchanged for gold. By allowing this the devs enabled rich players to, in essence, print their own money...because they can easily convert RL money into in-game money.
Now since gold can be used to do anything in Illy that you need done, with the exception of speeding up research, it's obvious that "pay to win" is 80% there. And if you use your wealth to simply capture well developed cities (where the research is done already) in only a matter of months you can be a very large player. And if you have an alliance doing this you have "pay to win."
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..... you may say that Illyraid is nearly at the point where it is pay to win I reject this. I have played ture pay to win games and me=farm. However this game does not have a win scenario, if your goal is to be a city builder then yes it is can be a pay to win game as in your mind winning could be having the most citys.
Most would say pay to win is about using real money to have the best and most powerful armies in seconds, minutes, hours, or days. You pointed out how this could happen, others showed your arguments were flawed! Assuming you have seen this, you have chosen to ignore that this KEY POINT to your augment that has been shown as incorrect. 
ajqtrz wrote:
Malek wrote:
You are not considering the one important aspect of this. Illyriad can not be pay to win as you cannot buy gold through the shop, you cannot instabuild armies, you cannot prestige research, you cannot speed up armies past the 50% FM, you cannot queue more than 2 buildings per queue. Need I go on? |
You cannot buy gold directly but you can buy a much needed in-game asset, prestige. And that you can easily trade for gold.
You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov. (25x40 =1,000). You cannot speed up armies but you can capture cities across the map and reduce times to about 4 days max. And you can purchase the riding horses and equipment to go a bit faster than 50% (25% fm, 25% riding horse, 15% extra light armour, 15% extra light weapon = 80%). And if you have the gold to purchase all the gear needed and know that you can just replace it with more gold when you need it you will be more likely to use it.
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I would like to see some recent scouting reports showing someone doing this. Should someone be doing this I would have to say it would be pushing up the prices for crafters attacking troops only drop 30 of the equipment of what was on the dead if my knowledge is correct.
Seems like a lot of effort / money even for pay to win players.
ajqtrz wrote:
[Quote=Malek]
There is only a finite amount of gold in the server, it goes up and down depending on whats happening in game. Whilst there is only a finite amount of gold generated by the server this game cannot be a "play to win" game. If people are desperate to accumulate gold they will dilute the value of tomes and what not which in the end will see a stop trade on people selling prestige as they will perceive the return on investment in buying prestige will not be worth selling. |
I'm glad you noticed a possible self balancing feedback loop in the value of tomes. Unfortunately, the cost of prestige is 0 to those who pay to win. That's why it's so difficult to stop p2w. If you value prestige at 0 you can sell it as low as you want so long as you are generating the gold you need. Since prestige is far above 0 for the average player there will always be a market and thus the self balancing will not occur. Self-balancing only occurs when the actual perception of value is relatively normalizes. In Illy it's not, it's more of a polarized distribution along two axis. |
You are making the assumption that a rich player has unlimited funds and will be happy to use all of it in the game, or an amount that would be seen as virtually unlimited. While the price of prestige has dropped recently but so have the prices of many key goods like cows.
This suggests that these huge armies are not currently being built. I have not seen any reports of them running around killing anything in their path.
[Quote=ajqtrz][Quote=Malek]
I think in the long run, you stick to philosophy and preaching your intellectual superiority and stay away from game mechanics since you clearly do not understand them and simply spew forth the first thing that comes out of your mouth.
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I would humbly suggest you broaden your perspective past simple game mechanics and investigate basic economics, human behavior and other games like Illyriad where play to win has become dominant. I'm suggesting an improved game mechanics to keep the game away from p2w but understand that, as I've said before, "unintended consequences" are always lurking in the shadows.
Thanks for your comments. Most of what you say did well to stick to the topic, and I appreciate that.
AJ
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"basic economics", If you know anything useful about economics you would know that in real life basic economics = nothing. For you to misrepresent economics like this shows that any understanding you have of economics is rudimentary at best while you can define what some words mean and you can understand supply and demand graph.
If you do not understand something please do not try to misrepresent it in the hopes no one will call you out on it. Unless I feel are using your understanding of economics, all arguments using it as a base will be considered plagiarised and ignored.
Now to google Ajqtrz and while I am at it can you please stop posting two or more times in a row it makes me want to disregard everything in those posts.
Really sorry about the wall of text everyone.
Edited by palmz - 02 Mar 2016 at 22:41
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ajqtrz
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Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 23:49 |
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Palmz
I thank you for your opinion. It was well expressed. Sadly though I'm having a difficult time telling with what exactly you disagree. You are correct that my knowledge of economic theory is less than other areas of study and thus I can probably make huge mistakes. However, given that, I would truly appreciate a corrective instruction in what I said that was fundamentally incorrect. And since you obviously have the economic background wouldn't it be nice to have a post on in what ways the introduction of increased trade options (meaning the ability to trade prestige for gold) into this economic system of Illy might effect the long term outlook? At least that's as far as my limited study of economics has led me to believe.
Really, put something together for us who struggle with all things economic.
AJ
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ajqtrz
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Posted: 02 Mar 2016 at 23:53 |
Sun Tzu wrote:
no need to be skeptical. when your opponent loses the skill and work ethic required and can only manage a few hundred troops at a time. for a majority of time elite divisions were all that was necessary. he did all the damage to himself, at first without meaning to, then as time went on when the fever took ahold, started razing himself. That is why BB left him in the pathetic mess that he created, HE WASNT/ISNT WORTH TO FIGHT US. Couldve been a fun little war, at that time more than reasonable surrender terms from our end, instead turned into us questioning his sanity. if thats a win for ajq then I pat him on the back of his straight jacket and send him on his way. |
Thank you for your opinion. You have expressed it as well as it can be expressed. Now if I could just find out why it's pertinent to the subject at hand. AJ
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ajqtrz
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 00:00 |
Brandmeister wrote:
ajqtrz wrote:
You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov. (25x40 =1,000). |
You cannot have 40 sov squares. Your grasp of the game mechanics is flawed. Trying to run production sov V on 20 squares would give a basic 500%, and would consume 48000 resources per hour. It would take enormous effort to keep one city running at that level without a breakdown, let alone 8-10. You can't buy basic resources directly with prestige, so you would either need to run multiple supply accounts non-stop or purchase and shuttle huge volumes of resources from the hubs. A single successful troop or thief attack on your city would cause an instant collapse.
For fast production, I run four Sov IV and sixteen Sov III, and that requires a specially built production template that doesn't use a 7 food square.
For about the tenth time, please learn how to use the quote tags properly. |
And where are the instructions on how to use the quote tags properly? Since I keep making mistakes ... though things often look right to me ... it would be nice if you did more than complain. I'm willing to learn, how about a nice posted lesson? Just a thought. AJ
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Brandmeister
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 00:46 |
A fine demonstration of how to use BB Codes and nested quotes. Read the very top section and then search box for the word Quotes. Are you even going to acknowledge to anyone that your understanding of sovereignty was wrong, and that your predictions of extreme troop production speed are completely unfounded? This avoidance is what undermines your credibility. Several posters have pointed out a major flaw in your reasoning. You have posted several times, and yet have carefully avoided acknowledging your error. It seems unusual that you are nitpicking other people's posts, and yet as the original author have not taken a moment to address the very on-topic, completely factual refutations of your pet Pay-To-Win theory. Is this thread really a discussion about your ideas on Illyriad P2W, where you provide an impartial tone based on logic, or is it just another opportunity to give people a hard time for educating you about the game?
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Malek
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 01:18 |
ajqtrz wrote:
ajqtrz wrote:
Be all that what it may, it's nice to know you will look past my weaknesses and take the time to consider and respond to my ideas. I guess not all is lost.
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Not going to look past your weaknesses, primarily as you dont look past those of others.
ajqtrz wrote:
Actually a (sort of ) good point. My 45k is pretty much irrelevant though since whatever number you place there will have the same ratio between cav and other forces. Right now many players favor plains to get that bonus, but their are similar bonuses for other types of troops on other terrain. More to the point, if you are building a spear city on the plains, you might like to reconsider your strategy. The same error might be as much building a cav city in a forest where cav doesn't do well and infantry does. I the end it's what you build and where you build it that determines what size an army is needed to overcome your defenses. And if you have more gold than the other guy (see above responses) you can have more troops, all other considerations being equal. Right now the size of armies is limited only by the gold you are able to generate...a distinct advantage to those able to purchase prestige and sell it for gold.
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I really dont think you should be speaking about strategy especially me. I am yet to see you actually do anything of note (razing your own city does not count).
ajqtrz wrote:
Well, at least you put in "or RL money" so I guess you do agree that RL money can help you in your goals. As it stands now people don't risk their towns and most of Illy is pretty calm. But that's their choice. My point is that if I don't wish to risk my towns and my neighbor has the RL money to rebuild his any time he wishes he will probably be less intimidated by the idea of attacking me. As for a lot of time and investment, that's true of anything for normal people, but there is little that can't be bought if your piggy bank is big enough, and bought fast. There is the throttle of the research and I'm quite certain that's a good thing to have, but once you get to a certain size you can just capture the cities that have the research done as you need them. Again, unlimited gold beats limited gold every time, no matter how high you put the "limit" on the limited gold.
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Building cities fast only gets you so far. You cannot speed up the build speed of troops and sov only goes so far. Which makes you point worthless, you could have a small tuned town and take out your very large neighbour quite easily.
ajqtrz wrote:
You have a very good point. If you limit the troops then the crafted gear becomes the next thing the player "pays [for] to win." But of course, if he or she does that then he or she stimulates the creating of the crafted items and the gathering of the resources etc...with which to make them and instead of the player stimulating wars only they stimulate the economy as people rush to fulfill the need for gathered and crafted items. At that point it's difficult to say what would happen. Maybe their would be a real benefit to traders, gatherers, and crafters...not a bad scenario.
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Limiting troops is nonsense, I am not going to ever going to bother poking holes in a limiting troop numbers scenario.
ajqtrz wrote:
Not sure why you can't produce troops why your army is in motion. Seems to me I've done that a time or two. As for commanders, yes you can send all five if you wish, but if you send two with 100,000 troops you would still have three at home while you used your 150 squares of sov to pump out 2000 per day or more...
As for the distances, if you have unlimited funds a couple of cities here and a couple of cities there, each with 200k troops or so should cover a lot of ground. Again, it's the unlimited, or nearly unlimited resources that make the problem.
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You are misconstruing my words to fit your narrative. According to the AJ Plan, if you can only have x troops, you cant make anymore even when on the move until they die, thats your theory, hence frozen production which makes limited troops more unrealistic.
Not going to cover the 150 sov thing, I dont need to make you look more stupid about it than what you have already done yourself.
ajqtrz wrote:
Actually, it's the relatively easy way they can supply anybody with prestige in exchange for gold that makes the difference. Before you bought prestige and it could be used to basic raise resources, increase van speeds, etc. It couldn't be used to pay for sov or anything requiring gold. Now it can. Now prestige is, in essence, an in game currency and can be easily exchanged for gold. By allowing this the devs enabled rich players to, in essence, print their own money...because they can easily convert RL money into in-game money.
Now since gold can be used to do anything in Illy that you need done, with the exception of speeding up research, it's obvious that "pay to win" is 80% there. And if you use your wealth to simply capture well developed cities (where the research is done already) in only a matter of months you can be a very large player. And if you have an alliance doing this you have "pay to win."
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You cant speed up troops or diplos, so having large amounts of prestige and gold, only gets you so far in this game. Not being able to speed those really degrades your premise of a P2W scenario. You could build a nice pretty 30k-40k town in a day, I could take it back in less than a day through various methods.
ajqtrz wrote:
You cannot buy gold directly but you can buy a much needed in-game asset, prestige. And that you can easily trade for gold.
You cannot Insta-build armies but you can get pretty close with 1000% - 2000% sov. (25x40 =1,000). You cannot speed up armies but you can capture cities across the map and reduce times to about 4 days max. And you can purchase the riding horses and equipment to go a bit faster than 50% (25% fm, 25% riding horse, 15% extra light armour, 15% extra light weapon = 80%). And if you have the gold to purchase all the gear needed and know that you can just replace it with more gold when you need it you will be more likely to use it.
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You really are proving you have absolutely no clue how this game actually works, I feel sorry for how lowly educated you are.
20 Sov sq's, secondly speeding up those units takes away attack %. You should look at the effect that light gear has on a t2 cav unit. Especially an elven t2 cav, who move faster but with a lower attack score than a human knight.
ajqtrz wrote:
Your raise some interesting and provocative points. Yet, you miss the fundamental problem in that once you allow the inflow of unlimited wealth you allow unlimited purchasing. And once you allow unlimited purchasing you allow pay to win. It's not so much about the game mechanics but a fundamental flow of wealth into the game at a potential rate that makes it pay to win.
On the more positive side you do present a good case for the rate of the flow into the game being slow enough that it might not actually develop into a pay to win, but I'm not happy with taking the wait and see route when some sort of limit on army size would put into place a throttle on the war side, which is usually where you find the pay to win crowd.
Of course that last statement may not be true. My 10 years of playing online games like Illyriad says it is, but there are thousands of games I've never even heard of and thus it's only my impression. Maybe there's pay to win in Farmland too. I don't really know. All I do know is that in the games I've played where that became an option it wasn't long before it was the only option.
I would humbly suggest you broaden your perspective past simple game mechanics and investigate basic economics, human behavior and other games like Illyriad where play to win has become dominant. I'm suggesting an improved game mechanics to keep the game away from p2w but understand that, as I've said before, "unintended consequences" are always lurking in the shadows.
Thanks for your comments. Most of what you say did well to stick to the topic, and I appreciate that.
AJ
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I skipped a few of your other parts mainly because, there is only so much of your postings I can read without alcohol.
The only fundamental thing here that has been missed is your posting on how the game actually works. I cannot debate anything practically with a person whose base understanding of game mechanics is non functional. The majority of your argument on P2W is based on made up game mechanics. Instead playing the "wait and see route" try the explore and discover route first.
You never humbly suggest, that is a thinly veiled turn of phrase that you use to try and make yourself look smarter. I am fully conversant and experienced in all aspects of this game and know how to use the economies of Illy and human behaviour? Not really going to bother with that, I have my method of using behaviours which will differ from everyone elses. As for trying other games? Why? I have been here nearly 5 years, why would I go elsewhere, the slow pace of the game is what keeps me here.
We all know that you cannot admit that you were 100% in the wrong and will seek to shift the focus elsewhere. So unless you dont want to admit you do not know how the game works properly then "I humbly suggest" to not bother making an effort to continue this pointless thread as you have based it on a complete lack of knowledge of how the game works in its most basic form.
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Rill
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 02:11 |
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just because aj made an error in his understanding of sovereignty doesn't negate his concerns regarding the possible consequences of prestige sales. Rather than derailing the discussion with personal attacks, I suggest that folks meaningfully engage in the conversation or step back and let others say their piece(s).
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Malek
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 02:49 |
Rill wrote:
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just because aj made an error in his understanding of sovereignty doesn't negate his concerns regarding the possible consequences of prestige sales. Rather than derailing the discussion with personal attacks, I suggest that folks meaningfully engage in the conversation or step back and let others say their piece(s). |
Seriously? AJ belittles everyone based on his supposed intellectual superiority. AJ is not a stopped clock, his logic on this topic is akin to a clock that cannot keep time and hence is never right.
If prestige sales were an issue for a P2W scenario, don't you think that issue would have raised its head by now? Also, prestige sales were not uncommon before this anyway, it just made it a more legitimate way of purchasing tomes etc. Prior to this and since the inception of the game, Prestige could be bought for a person by making them a sitter and processing the transaction as a sitter in return for in game benefits. This also had no effect on the game. To date there has been no P2W scenario that has occurred. Due to the avoidance of the majority of the community to anything resembling PvP, I dont think there will be. Too many players are attached to their cities and until that changes any discussion for a P2W scenario is not worth mentioning.
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ajqtrz
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 03:51 |
Brandmeister wrote:
When prestige trading was first implemented, I worried that Illyriad would become P2W. Since then I have seen that my concerns have never come to pass.
Permasat accounts produce more gold and resources than most battle accounts can use. That was true long before prestige could be bought or sold. As others have pointed out, the limiting factor is production time. Even unlimited gold and 0 taxes can only drive up the production speed so far. A true P2W regime would allow the instant completion of troops in exchange for money (represented by virtual currency that can only be acquired in bulk with cash), and the instant acquisition of troop materials for currency.
This game has always had a natural balance between large cities that allow the acquisition of 10 cities (now limitless), and smaller cities that efficiently produce troops or advanced materials. Putting all the emphasis on big cities will just cause even more conflicts over good food locations. That's just as pseudo-P2W as selling prestige for gold, because as we have already seen, the big prestige buyers will just build bigger cities.
Also, crafted items are profitable and cost effective. I am one of the biggest crafters in the game, and it makes gold far higher than the opportunity cost. Your assertions otherwise show a complete lack of understanding of the crafting, equipment, and trade aspects of this game.
I'm honestly not sure what aspects of the game you are proficient at, but it definitely isn't military, trade, or manufacturing. |
Let's see. To craft enough items to support sov of the proper amounts you would have to craft and sell about four million gold a day. Does our crafting do that? Not that it matters much in this as it takes almost 0 time to crafts a scroll and it can sell in an instant as well. Thus, I get millions for a couple minutes work at most and you get - .what...hmm...thousands? So yes, you CAN raise millions by crafting, but can you do it at 4 million a day? I think not. A single Tome sale could raise 1/2 Billion...500 million, enough to fund a 100k army for a number of months. Have to wonder how many forest spears you have to produce to raise that kind of gold. Please do the math for me as I don't understand crafting enough and can't figure out if taking a month to raise a couple of million is equal to taking five minutes to raise a half a billion. Or maybe you don't understand how gold is the basis of the Illy economy and with enough of it you can do pretty much as you please. Now do correct me if you do think you can keep up with the tome traders by crafting, gathering and trading. It may be possible in some way of which I've not thought. How about backing up the claim with some hard evicence? The difference between what I'm saying and what you are is that I put examples and numbers with mine, you just make bold claims without the least concern with actually making an argument. Not sure how much gold a city can produce in a day. Gold is 4 x pop so a 20k city could produce 80k of gold an hour or 24 x 80,000 -- 1.92 million a day. 10 cities at 1.9 million a day is a LOT of gold, and it's enough to support 100,000 troops. But it's also good for only 90 days and takes some work transporting all that gold, but still doable. On the other hand, 560 million in five minutes generates a lot more gold a lot faster and thus could support 500k of troops in five cities. As for the balance of the city sizes I think you are probably right. But if you have unlimited resources you can have both large armies in some of our cities and large cities nearby for their pop. A 30k city next to a 10k city is pretty good combination especially if the 10k has 100k troops in it. You are correct that a "true" P2W game would be more P2W if you could just win instantly. But time is relative and if I can win in Illy by becoming dominant in a year that sure beats the many, many years it would being a proficient trader, crafter and gatherer and then military expert. P2W is done to shorten the time to winning not eliminate it. For if you take some time to win you give yourself the illusion that it was you skill rather than your money. At least that's what I think drives the p2w crowd. AJ
Edited by ajqtrz - 03 Mar 2016 at 04:02
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ajqtrz
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Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 04:13 |
Malek wrote:
Rill wrote:
Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Just because aj made an error in his understanding of sovereignty doesn't negate his concerns regarding the possible consequences of prestige sales. Rather than derailing the discussion with personal attacks, I suggest that folks meaningfully engage in the conversation or step back and let others say their piece(s). |
Seriously? AJ belittles everyone based on his supposed intellectual superiority. AJ is not a stopped clock, his logic on this topic is akin to a clock that cannot keep time and hence is never right.
If prestige sales were an issue for a P2W scenario, don't you think that issue would have raised its head by now? Also, prestige sales were not uncommon before this anyway, it just made it a more legitimate way of purchasing tomes etc. Prior to this and since the inception of the game, Prestige could be bought for a person by making them a sitter and processing the transaction as a sitter in return for in game benefits. This also had no effect on the game. To date there has been no P2W scenario that has occurred. Due to the avoidance of the majority of the community to anything resembling PvP, I dont think there will be. Too many players are attached to their cities and until that changes any discussion for a P2W scenario is not worth mentioning. |
A couple of questions. Ignoring the personal attacks for the moment, how do you know that no P2W isn't occurring right now? There are a lot of players and there are a lot of players generating very large armies. Even the fastest p2w strategy takes some time. So how is it you know this "fact?" And if prestige sales were "not uncommon" can you tell me how common they were exactly? Are there statistics on such things? Personal experience maybe? I would honestly be interesed in this unknown part of my own analysis. Since I've not been here long enough to have experienced the "not uncommon" sales of prestige it would be fascinating to compare the changes to see if there are more now or fewer. Do try to contribute some information so we can all do a better job at addressing the question raised. Thanks, AJ
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