He means five people, each making 100k an hour, for a total of 500k.

Right, either way as I said bad logic because the 5 person team still splits 5 ways for 20k/hr per individual

No, if you get 500k in total, each person will get their 100k share. And as he says, that's not really plausible. Though I'm not saying that aetherspace gold is enough or anything. I haven't ever done it to tell.

I have to jump on the bandwagon, here. I never, ever, ever trade dust. I did it when it first came out, but it was waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too boring. First, you have to spend an hour gathering the dust. Then you have to spend another hour finding all the gnome ships and RECORD what the prices are. Then you have to go BACK to all the ships and trade for the best deals. It's a HUGE pain in the butt to do this. How about making it easier to convert the dust to gold?

The problem is that the system isn't doable solo, honestly. There are very popular browser games based on the concept of mining and trading materials in different sectors and making those runs over and over again. You could manage it here too, but only if you allow it to be done solo.

Allow a Mining Spec, that allows you to mine dust/resources from Vortexes. Add in passenger missions, carrying NPCs from one bubble to another bubble, like scholars and pilgrims.

Add NPC crewmates that can man modules at a lesser capability. You have to give them orders, they have slower balance, but at least you can heal/defend yourself somewhat while alone.

I know you guys want this to be all complicated and involving multiple people, but the fact is that the game just doesn't have the player-base for that. If you want aetherspace to be utilized, you need to open it up to the individuals as well as the groups. Make it more effective for groups, sure, but don't exclude the individual, or you get things like this, where people just don't find it worth the effort.

When its open to individuals, people will do it even if it is the less effective option--that's why people still influence. They'll build roleplay and characters around it, and they may even meet up and then form a working crew. But so long as it requires a full crew just to get started, you won't find it being used nearly as much as you want.

I think the solution is, besides just raising gold and xp amounts, is to allow a gradual entrance. Allow individuals and small-ships to have their places, allow people to be able to make enough money running the small errands to slowly but surely upgrade their ships and access the bigger and grander possibilities that are available.

But really, really, really..you need to open it up to individuals.

I was saying, as the number (Revan?) was using was 100k/hour for a ship - so likewise I was comparing to 100k for a group of five people. That's 20k a person. While this might be feasible one on one, I can't think of too many quests with that amount of output that 5 people could reliably go about and separately earn 20k gold an hour. Most especially as , which Revan was claiming they could. As an individual basis it might be on-par or sub-par, but as a whole I think it has a far greater gold income potential than bashing.

Reminds me of when astral links dropped gold.

Could be wrong though! It's not like I hijack aetherships to go romping through Aetherspace with Fain and Lisaera.

Maybe you should. Maybe it would give you all a better idea of what the players are talking about?

Some valid points here. I've have agreed or at least implied agreement that it is great for lower levels. But I was specific in saying that 80+ the appeal significantly drops. In both experience terms and gold drops. I can name several places for 5 people to separately earn 20k gold in at the same time. I admit, that it takes more knowlege of the land, but it's also just easier to take the time to learn something once rather than taking hours to turn in dust numerous times.

I say all this as I continue to use aetherspace even with Morgfyre's changes and make my own judgements on the subject.

There's also something to keep in mind when you consider the benefits of aetherspace for the lower level population. This is something that I feel people forget about as well. This is that those at lower levels tend to not have the lessons/credits to learn much aethercraft because they are so focused on their guilds already. Most also do not have the gold for ships.

While this works fine with the current system. If the goal is to integrate this more into the entire community and even make aethercombat a more regular thing, it will be focused on those with specializations. This tends to be the higher end of the population level wise, which is why the incentive for participating in the aetherspace should not significantly drop at level 80. In fact, it shouldn't drop at all.

I've updated the XP formula a bit. The XP gain will now flatten out at level 80 rather than 50. The XP gain above level 80 will be greater than before.

I've also made some aether monsters tougher than before (notably dragons, tendrils of Kethuru) and thus better xp. They will also be more rare to prevent them swarming you and killing your ship pretty unavoidably.

Yay Morgfyre!

I can't wait to see what else you might do with Aetherspace!

Morgfyre, you are my rave and I put it here

Thumbs up to the massive xp gain.

Thumbs down to supersonic dragons

Oh Morgfyre, one more suggestion! Not sure if you can do this, but perhaps some kind of marker on the aetherspace map for where dust is in aetherspace? This could include dust and auronidion particles, but it's more of a convienient change than anything.

If this might contribute to too much lag, have it be markers for specific amounts of dust/ particles.
Could start at 1 ton = __ (random symbol)
10-20 tons = ___

so forth

Maybe, for where dust and stuff is, give it like a * ? Or something. Just knowing where dust is after blowing stuff to smitherines(sp?) I think is good enough.

Any word on possible future changes about trading too? This is really big for many people, even Catarin and Vesar have mentioned this on their own and agreed about it. I hate to keep reiterating it if there's already plans to change or a decision not to change, but we haven't heard anything about it.

Here's an easy thing that would help make aetherspace more widely used: powerlogs for ships. Those who own ships would be a lot more willing to let larger groups of people use them, if they could figure out who's the one leaving the ship drained and not filling the tank when they're done. If more people could share their ships, more people could get out and use them.


+1

+2

Incidentally, were creatures on aetherbubbles affected by this change? Because I find it harder to influence a 'seems strong and confident' snowboy from Frosticia than a 'is quite powerful' monk in Tosha.

No, not at all. This only affects ship-based combat.

Is this a good thing?

Hopefully, when all the aetherspace changes set in stone for awhile, we'll do a whole aetherspace combat focus. But probably not until it gets integrated to become more frequent. I can't wait for some of those.