More of the same "new" content with a different bow? I will give more of the "same" towards my gem accumulation.
Thanks for all your input and ideas.
I certainly wasn't trying to stir a hornets nest...... You're all good folks here.
And I knew it was a possibility that this may have been discussed before... but just wasn't sure.
It just seems that there must be some way to make these items (high level weapons buildings) "useful and meaningful" again.
As it is, I've sent out a guild letter to all my fellow guildies to don't bother wasting your time and hard earned resources to build any of the expert buildings other than the three I mentioned in the original post.
Just seems a shame to see what could be such a major part of the game (building high level weapons) as just wasted and meaningless afterthought.
How about this using Crossbows as an example: The way I see it.... the resources needed to make crossbows is grossly to high!
16 Exo Logs + 6 Titanium Bars = 1 Crossbow
What would happen to the game if the amount needed to make crossbows was changed to this:
1 Exo Log + 1 Titanium Bar = 2 Crossbows
If the cost in the TO for 1000 exo logs was 300 coin and the cost for 1000 titanium Bars was 1000 coin, the cost of 2000 Crossbows produced would be 1300 coin "unbuffed", or 650 coin per 1000 crossbows unbuffed.
Buffed with irmas, the cost of Crossbows would drop in half to 325 coin / K ......... plus the cost of the irma's.
Something like this would make the crossbowsmith relevant again without changing the other important aspects of the game.
Doing this, brings the cost of producing Crossbows much more in line with the current cost of Crossbows in the TO without having to change or tamper with the Adventure drop rate of high level weapons!
The same "resource tweeking" could be applied to Damacene Swords and Cannon as well.
I'm no game developer, but this seems like an extremely easy fix. Just changing the (value) numbers in an existing line of code for 1 production building!
Am I missing anything?????
Very true - players are quite flexible on methods around the caps they try to impose upon us. The only way to counter that would be to completely rework how trades worked - go directly to your storehouses and simply get a mail regarding the transaction. Given that is probably some core coding of the game, I think the bugs that would inevitably occur from them trying such a change would be highly annoying.
More of the same "new" content with a different bow? I will give more of the "same" towards my gem accumulation.
You are talking about reducing supply. The other way to remedy the problem is to increase demand.
Cannons, Elites, and Crossbows rarely die.
Now .... the solution proposed a long time ago to increase demand:
Have the barracks have 3 separate queues. 1 for intermediate resource troops (Recruits / Bowmen). 1 for advanced resource troops (Militia / Soldier / Cavalry / Longbow). 1 for expert resource troops (Xbows / Elites / Cannons).
Allowing players to boost their barracks output .... if they tune their adventures to consume Xbows and Elites (higher level troops).
Do that, and the expert weapons finally find balance.
Never fails to happen: problem that isn't a problem tries to be solved, and the solutions are worse than the original problem. Problem: these buildings aren't worth building; Solution: don't build them until they are. Advs providing materials is a (and I don't say nice things about BB lightly) good thing and only really muppets with the market b/c we're able to run so many advs a day/week/month, but there's nothing wrong with that either. There's nothing AT ALL wrong with people playing a game differently than the designers intended it, the key to a good development house is to enhance what players like and move away from what they eschew -- doubly so in a free-to-play/micro-transaction game.
If you really want to make them advantageous to own, come up with something worth-the-effort of making those high-end items (i.e., a quest) that requires them to be created on the island. This is playing with the players not against the players, which is what all of the suggestions here amount to. "Play the game my day, **** you!" is an extremely destructive approach for developers to take.
ADD to the game to make things useful, not take away.
The other issue is that the adventures designed to consume weapons (Fairy-Tale Adventures) produce beans -- which have a limited number of uses in the shop.
If the epic items section of the shop expanded to include some epic items (other than the Major General -- the only useful epic item), then people would be motivated to collect beans to purchase epic items, which would start to consume more of the weapons produced by the other adventures.
So, the other solution to increasing weapon demand -- is to add some 'epic items' to the epic item section of the shop (and not do something ridiculous and stupid like add something like grout to some other obscure new system)
The training time of expert units is also a barrier to demand. If they re-balanced the training time of the units, then losing elites, crossbows and cannons starts to become useful and efficient more often. As it stands, weapon prices have to drop below the lesser weapons in order to balance out the training time -- Just as we witnessed when longbow cost dropped below bow cost and they started being useful.