Swap transactions in Albion Online

Gold also plays an indirect role in so called swap transactions, depending on the gold/silver exchange rate in the player-driven market. These work as follows:
For certain in-game expenses, we will be introducing a player market driven swap mechanism that will give discounts on silver prices if there is too much gold in the game. You will get the discount whether you have gold or not.

The mechanism works in the following way:
Assume that the gold/silver rate set by the game is 100 to 1 (last alpha, it was 10 to 1)

Assume that a certain action such as repairing Albion Online Items would normally cost you 1.000 silver

Now, if the gold/silver rate in the player market is lower than 100, say it is 80, you will actually get a discount on the repair: instead of paying 1.000 silver, you will only pay 800 silver.

In general, the discount on your silver costs is the same as the percentage that the player driven gold/silver rate trades below the reference rate.

If, on the other hand, the gold/silver rate in the player market is higher than 100, then you will still pay 1.000 silver – you will not have to pay more. So, in a nutshell, if there is too much gold in the world, the silver cost for doing certain activities will decrease.
This is how the mechanism will work from a player point of view. What our system will do “in the background” – but only if the gold/silver rate is smaller than 100 – is the following: it will take the silver you paid. It will use that silver to buy gold from the player market. It will take that gold out of the game. If the gold/silver rate is higher than 100, than nothing special will happen, the expense will simply be taken in silver. From an economic point of view, what this does is the following: if there is too much gold in the game, everybody will benefit as the silver prices for certain activities will come down. On top of that, if there is too much gold in the game such that the gold/silver ratio is higher than 100, it will act as a gold sink, which will help our business model. We believe that this creates a really cool win-win-win situation between us as a developer, people who do not mind spending some money on the game and people who want to play entirely for free.

I believe that Albion is a great game

It’s very good if you like a sandbox game that won’t hold your hand and in which you will have to set up your own goals.

While playing this game you have to remember that it’s not a race to the “endgame”, and you should approach any level/gear advancements calmly and patiently.

Especially in Albion, advancement is a GRIND, you will spend hours to get to another tier of items, and if you’re a harvester it’s even more ridiculous because resources are scattered all over the huge world, they’re very limited, there’s a lot of other players looking for it, and you get overweight easily, so you’ll have to run back to bank a lot. If you’re a crafter then after hitting T3 you’ll see that you have to choose what you want to craft, because exp gained from crafting will count only towards this item – as in I can only craft T4 leather hoods, and thats’ it, can’t craft the chest (seperate exp bar) or boots

Nonetheless, I believe that Albion is a GREAT game for old school sandbox MMORPG fans, however it is not a story-driven themepark MMO that we’ve been getting for the past ~13 years.

To be honest, Albion Online Gold is important in the game, if you want to be strong and powerful, then you may need a huge amount of golds.

Also playing in a guild (and a party at 90% of the time) is HIGHLY recommended.
but also I have to agree with /u/a99980 that founder packs are never worth it, if you’re patient wait for release, if you just want to play something now, and you’re fine with your characters being wiped and with what I mentioned above – go for it.

The Different Materials in Albion Online

If we define materials returned from craft as the market value of the crafted item divided by the market value of the materials required to craft that item, then it’s important that the fame from dissecting exceeds the material returned from craft times the fame earned from craft, or the incentive will be to not use this new function.

Since the prices on the market fluctuate, this feature will be hard to balance and depending on how much PvP is done in the world and how large the continously incoming playerbase passing by the tier of the given items are Albion Online Gold, it might just end up unused. If it’s balanced to ensure that it will not be unused, we might instead end up with a playerbase unable to buy the gear and being forced into crafting.

Overall, the issue of too-much-gear-on-the-market is a low-priority and a problem that’s not that bad too have.

You should’ve looked into other ways to make crafters valuable, such as locking the re-roll function to the crafters of the items and make it cost materials. That would solve the same issue but wouldn’t introduce unnecessary P2W functions and the equal artificial low demand from making players chose not to sell their gear since they might want the fame instead.

Quality of gear is the factor that should matter, not quantity. It’s great to have a market with lots of lowquality gear that is che@p due to Buy Albion Online Gold, but limit the high quality gear to expensive prices.

Immersion / Logic wise it would make more sense to actually allow people to learn / get fame by training on other people’s swords first, until say 50% and then they have to continue crafting the swords yourself.

It’s naturally much easier to take something apart and learn from it than actually build something from scratch.

So I’d suggest allowing training on other people’s products until the threshold. I’d also say don’t make it completely stop giving fame at a certain perc

Daggers are useless at this moment

I will try explain. All Types of Daggers:
1. Has no sufficient CC. It has ability “Infiltration”, which should, quote: “stuns any enemy target in the area”. What we really have? No stun – only non-targeted sleep (if you lucky guy). As we know, sleep will be disturbed by any incoming damage. This quite useless in mass pvp fight. There is should be better REAL STUN, atleast for one target (and, of course, blink).
2. “Sunder Armor” ability does almost nothing for additional damage without huge number of Albion Online Silver. I mean, debuff Armor and Magic Resistance for -14 at T4.1 and -18 at T8.5 is useless. We have tested it.

About Daggers Pair.
3. “Slit Throat” seems to be nice damage skill. But let’s compare the Daggers Pair and Cursed Staff.

3.1. Passive skills: Daggers Pair have +10% to auto-attack damage – useless for “Slit Throat” skill based weapon because of Daggers Pair has no poison like one-handed Dagger. And additional generating energy. Cursed Staff is one-handed weapon, so it can be used with any off-hand equipment, which can give one of next passives: Increase cast speed by 10%, Reduce all cooldowns by 10%, Reduce by 30% CC (shield). Should I comment this? Cursed Staff wins this.

3.2. Cursed Staff’s third ability almost same as Dagger’s Pair. But Cursed Staff use it from distance. IMO Cursed Staff wins this.

3.3. Let’s talk about first ability. Player who plays with daggers should rush in the enemies and only from melee distance use skills. At this time he can be stunned, knocked, sleeped, silenced. Any of this CC effects equal of death. Because of Immunity from CC won’t save player from knock-back effect (and maybe many another). It will only reduce length of fly. Cursed Staff’s first ability has DOT effect, which prevents casting enemy. Daggers cannot do this. Any range DD player can use knock-back from equipment and, while you in air, start using channeling ability. At this time you CANNOT even hide by invisibility – any DOT or channel ability immediately show you. And you will die. Cleanse will not clear your DOT’s. So, Cursed Staff again wins.

4. Also light heavy helmet gives you additional magical damage up to +50% (and more?) and decrease moving speed. Moving speed for mages? They standing whole casting time! Again, mages win free Albion Online Gold. You wanna say about “Berserk”? Okay, +37% physical damage and decrease from -40 to -50 armor resitance. So you decided decrease moving speed for ranged players and decrease armor for melee players? Not a wise, strongly in my opinion.

About Claws: I will say shortly. Rooted enemy can use any ability. And it will interrupt this channel ability. Useless.

Combat progression speed in Albion Online

This is a cross-post from another thread that might be of interest to you:

To bring an entire set of gear (boots, chest, helmet, 2h weapon or 1h+oh) from 3.1 to 8.6, you would need

Without LP:
106.376.215 fame
This corresponds to around 1.900 hours played w/o premium and 1266 with premium
Assuming that you power grind (no break!) for 4 hours per day, including weekends, it will take you 322 days

With LP
You need 3400 LP to get one full set from 3.1 to 8.6
As you get 20 LP per day, the LP would take 170 days to generate
LP would reduce your grind requirements from 1266 hours to 313 hours.
So, if you do pure grind for 2 hours per day, 5 days per week, it would take you 31 weeks, i.e. 217 days, to get one gear set to 8.6

Is that too easy? Judge for yourself
Currently, there are 45 different weapons in the game. With our enchanting rework, all of them will go to tier 8.6
Maxing out all of them, assuming no LP, will take 39 years of grind if you grind for 4 hours per day

With LP, to max out all of them, you would need 76,500 LP. It would take you more than 10 years to get that amount of LP. On top of that, you would have to Buy Albion Online Gold, each day, during those 10 years on top of that

For armors, as there are 9 different ones (which will become truly different after the rework), it would be “just” 8 years of grind without LP and 2 years with LP, provided that you grind for 4 hours per day, each day, during those 2 years

The above assumes that you use 0 LP for gathering, refining and crafting.
It also assumes that there is enough mobs, ranging from power level 4 to power level 12

Albion Online: Casual United

You might have seen the name drop, or seen us running past you during the alpha’s.
You might be a casual, solo or new player yourself and wonder if we are “yet another casual guild”
No matter the reason, you are still reading. So let me tell you what we are about.

How it started
Before winter alpha, just like most of you, I was stranded looking for a game to enjoy. The “free to play” usually meant exactly the opposite.
And here was a game ready to break the tradition of low difficulty, energy based, carebear games.
But hardcore gamers where all the Albion Online Gold, I noted that guilds had harsh requirements that most casuals cant provide.
So I started pondering, and came up with the following:

Together with a small amount of players we headed towards trying this concept. We knew bloody well how hard this would be.
you can read more about it here : a guild for casual solo players

Then what happened?
The unexpected.
We went and survived the first week, then we thrived, then we grew bigger and bigger.
The island had to be rebuild halfway because we became much bigger then expected.
More and more people apparently where stuck playing solo, or feeling left behind because they where not able to play all the time.

The goal was never to let this grow out of proportions. Being casual myself. But that is where we are now.
Together with a student group of socio-logics, psychologist, historians and cooks (never underestimate the cooks) we started brainstorming about what it meant to be casual.
And how guild foundations should be cast to make this guild run its self!

So what was the result?
Many fights, debates, coffee and cookies later we decided on some guidelines.

There had to be no more then 5 laws. (study showed most people don’t remember more then 4, gamers get to 7 easy… think about that)
The laws had to be naturally accepted without need to Buy Albion Online Gold or doctrine. (if they fight the gamers nature, they create friction, friction is bad)
It needs a currency that is not affected by the world around it. ( Casual United debate : Favor points )
Participation effort should be minimal and easily achieved. (the requirements to join would thus be minimalism)
The most precious resource should always be time. (because that is what most people don’t have)

Some Changes in Albion Online

Destiny Board Rework
Re-Worked Destiny Board fame requirements and fame gained from actions. Progression beyond T4 should now be significantly easier. Also reworked the structure of the gathering and refining trees. Any fame gained towards your achievements will be converted into the new system.

Mob Fame Rework
Mob fame no longer depends on how long mobs were alive with Albion Online Gold. Mobs now always give the same fame based on their type.
Improved Hellgate Rewards
Mobs in Hellgates now yield significantly more fame than regular mobs (4x for red / 2x for yellow).
Mobs in Hellgates now drop significantly more silver (+66%).

Improved Treasure Chest Rewards
Relic lockers now drop between 37,500 and 52,500 silver. They also drop T4 gems.
Relic chests now drop between 180,000 and 270,000 silver. They also drop T5 gems.
Relic coffers now drop between 900,000 and 1,500,000 silver. They also drop T6 gems.

Adjusted Spawn Rates
Set the spawn rate of T5 mobs and resources to 300%
Set the spawn rate of T6 mobs and resources to 300%
Set the spawn rate of T7+ mobs and resources to 200%

Fast Travel Costs Rework
Significantly increased fast travel cost by increasing the baggage fees to 20% of item value (was 5%).
Increase cost factor of travelling through yellow and red zones even further.

Other Changes
Small changes to button labels in gold market to differentiate between gold buying and gold trading (English only until the next major update in January).
Spawn protection buffs now make you immune to stacked up buffs & debuffs to prevent exploits.
Significantly reduced refining times (up to 90%).
When building, repairing or upgrading buildings you can now install up to 30 resources per click.
Improved the description texts of farming and crafting achievements.
Reduced Transmutation times by 90%.

Scouts in Albion Online

Briefly, yes scouts are frustrating. But if there is incentive for a player to make an offshore account strictly to help their guild, then that is an indication to me that there is an underlying problem with the current build of the game. Zone-based games will always have scouts. With larger zones and more entrance points, scouts became way less of a necessity and more of a burden. We have to understand that like the real world, players will always be one step ahead of the developers when it comes to balancing.

Take away zone counters all together also. That is just silly. Also, take away zone entry bubbles that last for more than 5 seconds in full-PvP lands and hardcore lands. Enter at your own Albion Online Items. You wont find me gate camping, ever, because that is boring and requires zero skill. Again, with larger zones and more entry points, this is less of an issue.

No arenas or anything that takes away from the MMO feel
I am entirely against having any other PvP system that outside open world PvP, and guild vs. guild PvP. Even the idea of creating other systems for players who want to PvP, only point to the fact that obviously there is a current flaw within the game. What is needed is to create more incentive for players to engage themselves in open world PvP. This is Albion Online, not Path of Exile. Continue reading…

Guild Territories and Castles (like in Darkfall Online)
What made Darkfall Online successful in its own right, and is why it is still my most favorite title of all time, is because of the fact that guilds could thrive and prosper together. The guild castle system was incredible. They were constant hotspots for PvP and could be attacked at anytime, and sieged at anytime with advanced notice. When a guild castle was sieged, an extremely large PvP battle followed that sometimes lasted hours.

Guilds worked so hard for their castles, that they defended them at all costs. Mostly by creating mega alliances that inevitably brought in-game politics to a whole new light. If the hardcore lands in the new continents are actually implemented, such a scenario is possible. Even if the zones aren’t larger, it is still feasible. Each zone would have one guild castle that would require resources to build and upgrade. It would be large enough to have every refining and crafting station built. The walls and towers can be built and upgraded and yes, ultimately destroyed at a tremendous cost.

I was quite disappointed in AO that my guildmates and I could not just venture on to a guild’s territory and create havoc. There was absolutely no incentive for this either. Having six or eight guild territories in one zone is pointless. There isn’t any room to add points of interests like raid bosses and dungeons with the help of Albion Online Power Leveling. Adding points of interest encourage guilds to move in, which encourage other guilds to siege it so they can have it instead.

Addictive PvP is about warfare and conflict. Not trolling around the lands looking for people to gank. If I want to fight, I am either going to look for a fight or create one. I would really like to see this implemented, although I do understand it may not be in the direction of SI. The current castle system is currently interesting. But time will tell. It is certainly going to take more than a one month alpha to find the right fit.

Starting Zones of Albion Online

The initial feel was so-so. I played AO without any prior knowledge of the game. I did not spend time reading guides or reviews that spoke of how to start a fresh character, simply because I wanted to do it myself and with a new player mentality. I will not lie, even a player as myself did have some difficulty becoming acclimated to the game. Being it is a free to play game; I feel the game needs to really nurture a new player for the first three to five hours of game time. This is where AO fell short but is, however, a simple fix.

I would like to see more prompts or perhaps an in game guide that helps direct a player around the starting town and first few zones. Do note that all themepark games offer this and a majority of players may expect to Buy Albion Online Gold. The skill board UI is great for more advanced players. But even I found it difficult to navigate and understand at first. New players will have to have their hand held a little bit more. A simple prompt system to help players get through the starter zones and craft tier two sets is crucial.

For example: ‘kill 6 rabbits.’ ‘Good Job! Now skin them for ten hides, then go bank on rocks and chop on trees for ten of each resource.’ ‘Good Job! Now go craft your first tier one set of your choosing, plate, leather or cloth. Let me explain the premise of plate, leather and cloth so you may choose which style fits you… etc.’ ‘Good job! Now go into a tier one green zone and kill 20 tier two mobs so that you can accumulate 2,000 fame. You will need fame to further your character in Albion.’ ‘Good job! Now go bank on rocks, trees, etc…’ You get the picture by now I am sure. Once a player is up to tier three, they should have a pretty strong grasp of the game.

I found the difficulty in PvE to be fair. I did not have too difficult of a time or too easy of a time farming silver in the PvP-free zones. However, for a new player to the sandbox mmo, that is a different story. I bought an epic starter pack for my girlfriend’s younger brother (in high school) who is growing up in the Angry Birds/Minecraft gaming scene. These darn kids just aren’t growing up with real games anymore. AO was his first real game.

He struggled. Rather than helping him, I just watched because I wanted to see what a fresh player would experience and I was there to be a supportive cushion. Although I did have to help him get through the initial starting of the game due to the lack of an in-game guide system discussed above. Once he got into a tier three plate set, it was like watching sand being slowly poured into a large bucket of fail. He died to tier three skeletons and humanoids in Silvermeadow and Whitecliff, and died to tier four giants in Giants Ring constantly. Where I think I may have died once, the entire time.

Luckily I was there to supply him with enough gear and silver to keep trying. Eventually, he figured it out and became self-sufficient. I ask myself, what would happen to a new player if they didn’t have a supportive cushion? The durability loss on lower tiered items is too high. I think it was about 33 durability lost per death. That is ok at higher tiers for experienced players, but detrimental to new players. Again, long term feasibility with Cheap Albion Online Gold. New players should not have to repair, in my honest option. Let them focus on learning the game and genre, rather than repairing or losing their gear and becoming frustrated.

There are a few solutions that come to mind. No durability loss up to tier three – which may not be feasible, create a ruleset in start zones that halve durability loss – certainly feasible, or create a timer that gives a player a one to two week grace period – certainly feasible.

Albion Online: Main Arguments in the P2W Debate

1. The “Indirect advantage via trade argument” (Pro P2W)
The argument says that you get an advantage by doing the following: Buy gold with real money. Trade that gold away to other players for items and/or silver. Therefore, indirectly, you have just bought yourself an advantage.

The counterargument does states that while you do obtain items or silver in this way, it is not an issue because i) Another player has gotten the benefits for your trade, in terms of the gold you paid him. So it is not just you who “wins”, it is the other player or other players as well you have a lot of Albion Online Silver. So you could call it “pay for others to win”. This is very similar to the Plex system in Eve Online, that is widely considered not be to Pay to Win.

2. The “Reduced Need for Silver Farming” argument (Pro P2W)
The argument says that if you obtain gold via real money, you can progress in the game without having to worry about earning silver that much. As a result, you can advance faster.
The counter-argument states that while this is true, it should rather be called “pay to save time” or “pay to farm less” or “pay to play less”. It also states that to build and craft, currency alone is not enough as you will still need the ressources from the world. Or, in order to progress in general, you will still need to collect fame&experience via the destiny board, which you cannot buy with gold.

3. The “Full Loot argument” argument (Contra P2W)
The argument highlights that given that PvP is full loot, if a player with lower skill try to PvP in high end gear, he will simply get killed and looted by more skilled players, so it might as well be called “others pay for you to win” if you are a skilled player.
The counter argument states that while this is true, there could also be skilled players who try and get an advantage via the gold system. The reply to this is that – based on testing so far – high end players usually have no problems in obtaining silver, it is rather ressources that become rare. (as intended by the game’s design)

4. The “Shared Benefits” Argument (Contra Pw2)
The argument states that as silver yields in Albion Online are essentially capped, everytime that somebody pays for an expense such as crafting or upkeep with Gold instead of Silver, reducing his need to farm, it means that it becomes easier for everybody else to farm silver. The counter argument states that while this is nice, it does not change their arguments above.

5. The “Gold for Free” Argument (Contra P2W)
The argument states that as gold can be freely traded between players, it is quite easy for you to obtain gold without spending any real money. Either because you play more and trade away your extra gains, or because you have a special skill or control a certain territory which means you can obtain a lot of gold from other players via trade with Albion Online Gold. This will then allow you to obtain the premium status or all vanity items without investing real money. The counter argument states that while this is nice, it does not change their main arguments above

6. Shared Benefits of Swap transactions (Contra P2W)
The argument says that if there is too much gold being offered in the player driven gold/silver market, the game is going to give a discount on silver prices for certain activities such as repairing items. In this way, if a lot of people buy gold for real money in order to trade it away for silver with others players such that the gold/silver rate drops below the reference rate of 100, everybody benefits.