Gold sink idea re botting

[kerowa]

Instead of removing skill % etc, what about the idea of spending alot of money (sort of like a prac) to get skills to 75%. And the amount of money (50-100k) could be dependent on the characters int/wis, reflecting the time it would take to bot.

[anhegofcherek]

I like it. Hits two things at once:

• Reduces need to bot (which is good, botting isn't "fun")
• Costs gold

Any feels for price?

[anhegofcherek]

Immediate pricing thoughts:

• Currently an aq prac is 200aqp
• General exchange rate used to be around 100-200k gold : 200 aqp : 1 qp
• So with the pre-existing system, "buying a practice for gold" cost around 100-200k
• That's some amount of markup for liquidity (of the aqp)
• 50k or so? Less than "doing it the hard way", still a nontrivial amount of cash

The other consideration is, it doesn't necessarily need to be a "lot" of gold.

Given that right now:

1. Botting is ~free cost-wise (either through a hostel room or abundance of clan spaces)
2. Botting's only cost is time, and not in a particularly "valuable"/"meaningful" way (as in, it's not a way of spending time I'd like to preserve, vs levelling or eq farming)

In that sense I almost want it to be cheap enough that people generally opt to buy rather than bot.... so 10k?

[prophnoran]

I'm not opposed but I don't think it's in any sense a replacement for #43. With prices like that, it'll be a gold sink for players leveling new alts (and that's good; gold sinks are probably good). But for a new player, farming up that much gold probably takes just as long/longer as botting.

[anhegofcherek]

Looking at another approach to the maths (thanks Sokderl for providing some data):

• Level ~75 warrior
• ~50 skills and spells
• ~30k gold accumulated through levelling so far

Assuming those are representative (and I don't think they're especially unrepresentative) then to say "an average player should be able to casually afford to buy one practice for everything" means pricing it at about 1k per prac

[anhegofcherek]

@prophnoran Fair points, thanks - I didn't mean to suggest it was a replacement, but it does feel like an easy thing that would be a partial step in a similar direction - I'd like to do #43 too, but I'm not yet sure we have a good solution for ensuring the transition works out properly

[prophnoran]

Maybe the cost could go up with character level, that makes it a bit better for new players...

[grekan]

What happens to the existing practices? Do we still roll them into gain convert and then bot or buy specific practices? I would gladly pay to avoid some botting. Botting some things is harder than others.

[anhegofcherek]

What happens to the existing practices?

Nothing