Suggestion: Remove the 200 million mana soft cap

[Native1854]

The 200 million mana soft cap needs to be removed from the game. The system currently in place serves to artificially create a wealth gap, whereby hindering income mobility and slowing in-game progress for those dedicated players who seek to advance.

Needless to say, the only way in which a player might surpass the mana soft cap is by utilizing in-game trading shops. In theory, this sounds as though it would be easy to do and would benefit the game in general, as it would encourage player trading. In practice, however, it precludes those players who cannot sell the best-of-the-best gear from effectively trading in good faith. The rationale behind my assertion, is that those who do not have end game or near end game gear (by contemporary standards), are left being unable to attain valuable gear to sell to others because they are not well geared enough to advance to the appropriate waves to farm said gear, nor are they able to purchase/trade for it, as they cannot garner enough mana to pay for the necessary upgrades. This is a catch 22, and one that damages the integrity of the game.

Furthermore, this also limits the trading market to only those players that are rather inexperienced and are just looking to purchase/trade for gear of less than desirable quality (sometimes using actual currency), to those who are already well geared and have the financial earnings to support themselves, and to cheaters and hackers. Surely, that cannot be the purpose behind the mana soft cap?

I have struggled to determine any real reason behind the mana soft cap. I know that it has been discussed in other threads and that I am far from being the first person to gripe about its existence. I do understand that removing the soft cap would be akin to inflationary banking, such that with more disposable capital, people would be willing to pay more in trades. This arguably would be somewhat detrimental, although I posture that it would not be game breaking.

Thus, I strongly encourage you, the developers, to please consider removing the soft cap. It will only encourage more players to trade, further in-game advancements, and allow for players to have greater income mobility. Thank you for your consideration.

-I.F.

[GrimSkellington]

/sign

As someone stuck in that catch 22, it sucks rather largely. I can't even grind once I reach the 200M mark and have to slowly slowly widdle my way up the food chain. It isn't fun when it feels like the amount of work inputted is not akin to the amount of work received. If I have 200M mana and do a high level NM, I should still get the mana I worked for in those waves. Otherwise I just don't feel like playing once I reach that cap. The things I want are 400M-500M and doing those difficult levels will only give me half my reward (The 4-5 decentish items that I can sell from the whole level sans my earned mana from the dropped loot). I can understand wanting to limit players from skyrocketing to the top, but do it in another way, blindly cutting their rewards at a certain point is just frustrating, not challenging, it encourages circumvention, not loyalty.

[sandbagr]

I agree. The cap is counter-productive and irritating. Please remove it

[TapSkill]

I haven't even reached NM status, but I think I would agree that having such a low maximum capacity for mana is a bad idea. Trendy really isn't thinking when they implement their game ideas. They keep having to adjust small details like this. I cannot wait until Guild Wars 2 comes along to pull me away from this game.

[Rorschach]

Well as far as im concerened they can keep the cap in BUT they should finally include a token system to save mana.

Lets face it, if we move the softcap further up we are going to land at the hardcap very soon. The hardcap CAN NOT be surmounted short of reprogramming the entire game so we will face the "introduce some sort of token system" question sooner or later. So why not introduce it right now?
I know the arguments are somewhere along the line of lazy game design choice blablabla but the tokens could have further uses than just storing mana. When Blizzard introduced Runes into Diablo2 everyone was omg awesome runewords 4tw but runes were actually a way to allow players to store their items worth without having to maintain 4 dozen mule accounts (one rune = 1 space unit in you heros chest, whereas items could range from 1-8 space units with standard weapons and armor taking 6 space units; for those of you who never played diablo2 :o). Pretty much right from the beginning high level runes where accepted as the new currency.

Ok to illustrate my point some ideas what tokens could also be used for, just from the top of my head:

1. Upgrades: Buy a 100 mil token, redeem it for weapon upgrades, all you need to add for this to work is to enable the shift/strg left click combo, this would also save us the treadmill of executing the same 2klick combo 200 hundred time to upgrade this new staffs damage.

2. Emergency Repairs: Granted, at a steep price but why not. It doesnt have to be 100 mil tokens, maybe introduce 10 mil ones you can use during battles to instantly repair some/all/area of effect defenses on the map. (Make diffrent token "sizes" have diffrent effects, e.g. 10 mil = instarepair one tower, 50 mil = instarepair with an aoe, 100 mil = instarepair entire map)

3. Save function for survival: We all know this, your heading for a giraffe, are on wave 22 and then trendynet disconects you/ steam gets the hicups/ your router cuts out. Congratulations, you just wasted another 8 hours of your life. Make tokens redeemable for build mana during build phase in survival, lets say it drops you 25 2000 mana crystals you can use to build and upgrade and start again from wave 22 so you dont have to grind everything you already did for hours again to reach the point were you already were [Survival would have to be changed first tough, so you have to unlock the waves by playing them regularly so you just cant start at wave 24 and make farming giraffes a joke; also a max wavenumber you can still redeem the token (20 maybe?) would be needed so you just cant repeat wave 24 once you did it and flood the market with giraffes]

4.Buffs: Apply token on tower for special effects (the possibilitys on this one are basically endless; more dmg, more range, faster attackspeed, hp regeneration, turning the tower into an repair hub that doesnt attack itself but maintains other turrets around it, diffrent bonus effects like splash dmg, debuffs, combo debuffs [a MM hits an enemy with a debuff to fire resistance so a FB does more dmg to it; a slow aura applies a debuff that increases proximity mines dmg, a gas trap could be "ignited" by a FB dealing aoe damage over time in addition to stopping mobs] As i said, endless posiblitys on this one.

And thats just from the top of my head...

So if we cant avoid the token system, lets at least have fun with it :p

[FruitLord]

Reprogramming the entire game is necessary to go past 2B mana? Doesn't make sense to me.

Would love to see a TE response to this thread. Why is there a soft cap in the first place?

Also, the cap of 200M in the shop also hinders those getting drops worth more than 200M. Heck, some people get drops worth more than 2B. I don't understand why there are such easily obtainable caps in place to begin with.

[Rorschach]

2 Billion is an unsurmountable hardcap because thats the maximum number you are able to store in a signed 32-bit integer (its 2,1 or 2,2 bil actually but thats besides the point)

To go above that, you'd need to rewrite the entire game with 64-bit integers. And thats not gona happen anytime soon, trust me.

And we are already at a point where items are traded for 2 billion ingame and upgrading stuff above 200^ costs more than can be physicaly stored. Heck, there are threads on this very forum in this very moment describing what items you use best to store all that mana in.

So yeah, either Trendy introduces a mana token system or the economy is screwed...

PS: Im with you on the removal of the softcap though, thats realy silly. I cant farm NM Glitter to get pets from tavernkeep for more than 3 consecutive runs without having to spend another 200 mil on upgrades.

[Native1854]

While I understand the qualms with the 2 billion mana hard cap, I feel that the removal of the soft cap is more realistically easy to do and has more potential benefits. That is why I really encourage the developers to at least consider the removal of the soft cap in the near term.

[zingfharn]

Uhhh Ok.

I have (largely) only ever sold items below 100 ups*, and I make 300-500m most nights I leave my AFK shop open.
It's not magic or rocket science, it's just fair pricing. Don't charge 50m mana for anything. Be reasonable, not a ****. Stuff will sell fast. Who cares if it's someone else buying it for resale? I can farm 10-20 pieces of 50 ups in a single run. Do that a couple of times before bed, and you're laughing.

Also, never leave the tav with more than 150m in your bank.


*armour, really. Assault and SV weapons excluded. But they never sell, so, you know.