Ultra rares again?

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Patel
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Patel » Sun Nov 24, 2019 9:46 pm

TL;DR at bottom.
@Rapsey
I don't think we can go for "fair", but depending on how it works it can be met with varying degrees of scrutiny. Y'all have some great logs. This would definitely need to be a group effort, but identifying alts across multiple IPs wasn't that difficult with moderator logs back when they were still on the client. All you needed were a few good inferences. Nowadays there's a box that allows for matching same ips and whatnot. And I know you guys have only made the logs more robust since then. I imagine anyone putting in effort could easily check ticket entries for multiples... but I also understand that it's a little bit of work. This is why the multi-tiered golden ticket thing works best IMO. We can simply say that 1 person is only allowed 1 golden ticket, and checking whether or not 10 players are the same person is trivial. If you're not the best at putting luck in your favor, then you can be the best at pking, you can no-life NPCs, and you can do a lot of other things to try and get a golden ticket.
It may be a strange comparison but I hope you can see what I'm getting at. Giving a random OSRS player a 1M XP lamp would be a hugely nice gift. Giving them all 99's is such a big gift that it actually spoils the game for them. That's kinda how I feel about taking someone who's only ever had 100B and suddenly giving them 3T.
I agree it's not necessarily a good thing or in any way "ideal". That's also why I'm insistent on this being infrequent and more of an "event" that brings the community together. It's not about the individual's wealth, it's about the reason people play the server in the first place.

Hear me out here... This may tie into a larger idea that deserves its own thread, but the ability to pursue irrationally large amounts of wealth and fame are inherently necessary for captivating players to engage in much of the content in the game to begin with. The duel arena would be dead if not for the faintest allure of unimaginable wealth. Hell, this idea underlies the very concept of an RSPS itself! Private servers make getting all of the things that are difficult to obtain in the actual game much easier. This includes becoming wealthy, being notable, having a community presence, becoming a moderator, influencing the game, etc.

With regards to the wealth, I agree that most people aren't equipped to deal with a rapid increase in bank value. This is why lottery winners IRL often go bankrupt. But the attention a lottery generates (especially when the pot is high [pun intended]) brings people together. IRL, It allows them to engage with an interesting and fleeting aspect of their lives, but also draws them into whats going on around them. On PkHonor, the direct effect of this is way easier to characterize because we deal with a few hundred players online at most. Players joke and communicate on yell, in CCs, ingame, and make friends. This is true for the lottery guy at home and for people at the duel arena. The sheer craziness of having players walk around with 10s of trillions is enough to generate buzz that gets people talking, which in turn allows them to make connections that make the game slightly harder to leave behind. People are drawn to wealth and inevitably meet each other. Some are given loans by the rich players and thus a bond develops between the two. Sometimes losers bond over not having made the cut and might go PVMing or make their own group that shit talks those who let them down. People talking in general gets them to engage with each other and play the game in new and interesting ways. Having crazy shit like ultra rich players and lotteries are some of the reasons that people become attached to one another on the game. Wealth also causes beef, which causes people to takes sides sure, but also brings people on those sides together.

The larger discussion that this would've tied into is whether or not we've gone too far into ensuring that people don't can't cause any ruckus; I asked this very question a few years back. I read that post now and shit man, some of it was straight up prophetic. I mean, shit, look at this and tell me most of it didn't happen:
Spoiler: show
I'm not claiming that PkHonor is an ideal server. I'm saying that it strives too much to have an ideal community. A community is composed of individuals, and you cannot control what kind of person each individual is. There was a point where each individual contributed healthy discussion and there was always a sense of adventure in the gameplay, but this was largely due to how new the server was, how new the players were, and how imperfect the game was back then. There was so much to do. Mike has done a great job with updates lately, but there comes a point where no number of updates can spark interest. Other people have to spark interest. People who others idolize have to start doing activities to garner attention. Someone has to do something stupid so the rest of the community can laugh, learn, and move on. Someone has to find some sort of injustice and create a huge discussion over it. If we're perfect then there's only a game to play... but if the game has been played, then what's left to do? This isn't real life where you can sit and talk all day. You can't get drunk and let time fly by. You can't have sex. You're limited to what exists in the game and what exists in the community. If interesting people are uninterested in the server, then people won't feel the need to stay or be interesting themselves. It's a cyclical, degenerative process.


Sure, drama is annoying, and we're all supposed to be adults. But "tea" is something that captivates just about every person I've ever met (by "tea" I mean drama, the talk of the town, etc.). Having some sort of shit going on that people can just kick back and eat some popcorn to might actually have been necessary to keep people engaged. I'm not saying we need a repeat of 2010-2015, but perhaps a happy medium needs to be found. Maybe people spectating reports and staff reports isn't terrible. I know the job analogy came up when this was discussed a few years back, but I think of it more like a national court trial. That's always televised, people care and should be allowed to influence decisions like those. And we have a community where absolute truth (logs) exists and is available to every jury (moderators+), so it's not like OJ Simpson is gonna happen on PkHonor. I think it sometimes tended to get too chaotic before, but that enough time has passed where it can be given another go.

Recap:
The ability to have an impact, wealth, and importance is amplified by virtue of being on an RSPS. Giving people more opportunities to realize this ability can only be good for the server, as it directly complements the purpose for which they play the server in the first place. With regards to the topic, this means giving players a chance to compete for an undeservedly expensive item. Sure, some aspects cannot be made foolproof, but I'm beginning to think of that as a virtue. Imagine if someone managed to 'cheat' their way into a golden ticket, and then got lucky and won. They'd easily be the most hated person on PkHonor. Having that sort of event in the community would get people to interact with each other and see the game as the place where they have to do it - they'd bond over their mutual distaste for the player. It'd keep them on and engaged. We are not creating a system that gets exploited, we are creating a system that exploits human nature and people's shortcomings for the good of the server. And hey, if the winner happens to be level headed, we'll try again in 6 months.
Tl;dr:
The lottery isn't for the item, it's for the friends we made along the way.
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Will be ok2
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Will be ok2 » Wed Nov 27, 2019 6:36 am

I think this Friday being the American thanks giving would be a great time for the item to be added :zoidberg: @Rapsey
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Fungamer
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Fungamer » Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:01 pm

Will be ok2 wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 6:36 am I think this Friday being the American thanks giving would be a great time for the item to be added :zoidberg: @Rapsey
Hell no. If it happens it should be with sinterklaas, and Mike has to dress as Zwarte Piet and Rapsey as Sinterklaas.
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Will be ok2
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Will be ok2 » Wed Nov 27, 2019 7:13 pm

Lieven wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 4:01 pm
Will be ok2 wrote: Wed Nov 27, 2019 6:36 am I think this Friday being the American thanks giving would be a great time for the item to be added :zoidberg: @Rapsey
Hell no. If it happens it should be with sinterklaas, and Mike has to dress as Zwarte Piet and Rapsey as Sinterklaas.
Yaaaaaa, this Friday is better :D lol
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Iron blazin
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Iron blazin » Thu Nov 28, 2019 10:21 am

I would honestly drop a view bucks just to help the server grow.
This friday is “black friday”, why not do a store action? I don’t really care for a lower price but maybe add some nice items to the shop, maybe some new customs, who knows.

Will be ok2
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Will be ok2 » Thu Nov 28, 2019 4:00 pm

Iron blazin wrote: Thu Nov 28, 2019 10:21 am I would honestly drop a view bucks just to help the server grow.
This friday is “black friday”, why not do a store action? I don’t really care for a lower price but maybe add some nice items to the shop, maybe some new customs, who knows.
Excellent point!
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Will be ok2 » Tue Dec 03, 2019 7:02 pm

Bump
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Rapsey » Fri Dec 20, 2019 5:34 pm

Alright so, for now we're gonna stick to a regular old sale. We're still open to exploring alternative methods of introducing rares though.

We're planning to sell the following (with their approximate in-game value based on the current credit prices of 4-5M/cr):

10 wooden shields @ 75K credits (300-375B)
5 grains @ 100K credits (400-500B)
10 legends capes @ 150K credits (600-750B)

As usual the pricing was chosen to provide a good deal without going too far below the value of these items. With legends in particular this was a tricky balancing act, since 150K for one item is already a ridiculous pricetag but still far below their value in the economy. We were initially planning to sell only 5 of these but we upped it to 10 because people have so many credits stacked up we predict the 5 would be sold out almost instantly (which would be a total bummer for anyone who wasn't there the moment the sale went live).

We were hoping to kick this off in a few hours, so if you have any last comments now is the time. (Might take a bit longer, I'm not familiar with the new stock-limited sale system so idk if we'll have to roll out a server update to start the sale. Trying to figure that out now.)

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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Will be ok2 » Fri Dec 20, 2019 5:39 pm

I think 10 of each is way to many, 5 of each is plenty @Rapsey
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Re: Ultra rares again?

Post by Rapsey » Fri Dec 20, 2019 5:44 pm

Will be ok2 wrote: Fri Dec 20, 2019 5:39 pm I think 10 of each is way to many, 5 of each is plenty @Rapsey
I made a mistake with the grains actually, we're only going to sell 5 of those.

The amounts are purely based on how many credits are currently stacked up on active accounts. If we only sold 5 of each they would likely all be sold within an hour of the sale starting. That's also why we're spreading it out over 3 items.

EDIT: lowering legends back down to 5 is still possible, but I still predict they would all be sold within the first few hours of the sale. And that's not taking into account any further donations, just with the credits people are already waiting to spend.

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