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Lower fire dust cost

Joel Crestello

Graduate
Minecraft IGN: Joelowo
Honeybadger Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix Vampire Werewolf SPEW
#1
Right now fire dust costs:
1 = 20g
5 = 100g
10 = 200g

From Hogsworth, the most expensive fire dust options are 6 fire dust (120g).

I suggest cutting these prices down to:

1 = 5g
5 = 25g
10 = 50g

This would make it much more affordable, people are already spending a lot of gold on gear and brooms so making travel a bit cheaper could help those who don't have much gold.
 

Magma

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: MagmaC4
Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix Raven Vampire Werewolf SPEW
#2
I agree with this 100%

If there won't be changes to warpkey bags then this is the best compromise for everyone. The players are happy that they can be able to explore without be punished for it, and the staff are happy that players continue to play on their server. The high firedust cost does everything but encourage exploration. All travel right now is flying up to max height and tuning out of the game while you watch youtube or do anything else to take your mind off playing the game. It's extremely boring and not fun at all. If you had actually stayed low to the ground and explored you would find next to nothing beneficial, maybe one out of ten times you would spot something of interest. In those nine other times you would find a mob that's too low level to even drop useful gear, or a mob too high level that's extremely difficult to kill with your current gear. A year 3-4 would have to fly more than 6000 blocks to get back to Hogsworth just so they can put 10 ac into xp to level up. Keep in mind that they would only have a Briskbranch at the time. I would be very surprised if they would want to play after that. Sure they could go to the train station and go to hogsend, or go through the vanishing cabinet. But they would save only a minute or two. You still would have to go to london, go to the cauldron inn/kings cross, find the cabinet/train, and then go all the way to the trophy room. PW could potentially lose a lot of players if they don't make the right choices. I get that traveling matters but why are you sacrificing actual enjoyment of the game for a sense of "balance". Also I don't see how this would make it unfair to those who bought and used firedust before a change. No way should you decline this because a handful of players would be pouty, this is better for the longevity of the server.
 

luckiestblock

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: luckiestblock
Honeybadger
#3
Yeah, I am a relatively well off player (I have like 20k right now, not amazing but good) and even I would never dream of spending 100+ gold to travel across the map one time. Before floo was so cheap it essentially did not matter and now the exact opposite is true; it is so expensive to buy that no one would ever want to use it.
 

nathan1e

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: nathan1e
Honeybadger Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix Vampire Werewolf SPEW
#5
I don't know whether I agree with this suggestion completely or not, and I'll try to explain why in this response as there's quite a lot to my current opinion.
I think the idea of fire dust could potentially work. The idea is that players only use it when they need to get somewhere in a hurry and don't want to fly there, so instead they sacrifise some of their gold.
Purchasing fire dust isn't the only way to obtain it, however. Over the last few days I've been able to get a few pieces through hidden chests.
On the other hand, Magma's points regarding current travel totally nailed it in my opinion. Flying from one town to the next isn't interesting, I don't necessarily care about what passes me on my way and I'll just be looking at social media while holding my W key.
I find that the problem described is very real and very present, however I simply do not believe that the proposed solution is the best. Even if fire dust was to be lowered in price, I do not believe that students would actually use the system more easily than now.

In this respect, I am a slightly bigger fan of the other suggestion where more alternative ways of travel are added to the map which I think would solve the travel problem in a better way than this proposed idea. Then again, that's just my opinion.
 

Lizzie

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: Rhines
Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix Raven Vampire
#6
While I do loathe the current fire dust prices, and personally agree with the idea that it might be expensive, I do understand why this system was most likely put in place/implemented.

For the vast majority of my time playing on the server (before fire dust was created), it encouraged me to explore areas of the server I'd never have been to if it was always in the game. It encouraged me to grind out for a broom and try to make it so that I could traverse the world easier. However, when fire dust was implemented, I switched to just constantly fast traveling and barely exploring at all. While this may not be the case for everyone, I do know that I barely knew half of the world's layout due to the instant skip of exploration. It limited me from wanting to look around and getting to know the world because it was just too accessible and easily obtained and removed any desire I had to purchase things such as brooms.

While the 20g price for single fire dust might be a bit too much in my opinion, I feel like putting a mental restraint on people attempting to breeze through locations and travel might be needed. Do I want to fly for 30 minutes across England? Absolutely not. But do I support expensive fire dust? To an extent, yes.

In conclusion, I mainly feel as though the intent of this is to encourage players to use other means of travel to get from point A to point B. The best broom is extremely expensive, most likely due to inflation, and if fire dust was cheap, you'd never have an incentive to try to obtain it, unless you are a collector or wanted an extra 3 m/s for whatever reason, seeing as how in this scenario, there'd be no point in flying a 48k broom across the map if you could purchase all the fire dust you needed in under 1000g. Along with this, the current situation results in players straying away from dependency on the system to be able to explore the world, as opposed to heavily banking all travel on a single means of travel.

To be honest, fire dust does need to change in prices, but I feel as though five gold for one fire dust is extremely drastic. We already know that you can obtain 75k gold just from quests alone, and the economy will most likely have some inflation happening, if not already. That being said, this is just my opinion, so it should be taken with a grain of salt. Thank you!
 

Magma

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: MagmaC4
Auralock Dark Follower Phoenix Raven Vampire Werewolf SPEW
#7
I understand now that decreasing the firedust cost isn't going to solve all the problems here. But I still think that traveling and exploring rewards you in no way. There's just no point in traveling at all except to get to your destination. Memorizing the locations of mob nests and towns is pointless since there's a whole map online. Herbs clog your inventory and you only seek them out when you need them, and you can get them very quick by focusing on collecting them. Chests are only in towns or sometimes *very rarely* out in the wilderness randomly. Even then chests are still useless unless you're in the level range. And they clog your inventory regardless. There's just no positive to traveling. It's boring. But in the end as a grad you get all this gold and traveling isn't much of a problem. Having just recently finishing all quests I can say I barely used firedust at all. But I can tell you I traveled via broom A LOT and its was mind numbingly boring and tedious.

Right now a lot of people (including me at first) were kinda mad when seeing these high costs for firedust since everyone thought they would be using this system all the time, as we were used to Prevelius. There are two problems with quests contributing to all this hate towards the limited travel system.

1. Quests make you go unusually long distances or make you wander for a half hour to look for a building / person "nearby". They just feel so tedious, slow, and a chore to do sometimes. This especially applies to the first couple of Years. Like people have said before, Hogwarts is a maze. Having an NPC tell you to find the Library without giving you any direction or any sense of its whereabouts is just not good, especially if its one of the newcomer quests. They don't even give you coordinates, so its all just "wander about until you find it!". Previously anyone could just instantly go to the Library, Greenhouses, Groundskeeper Hut, etc... But since this update took that ability away from players and told them to go find it, its going to cause people to get mad. I get why, after the 10th minute of looking for the Library I get really desperate to just finish the quest and start a new one because its just not fun.

2. Quests don't give enough gold at lower levels. You barely get any good amount of gold until about Year 5+. Its just being constantly poor until that level, then you get more gold than you realistically need. People doing the first 9 quests are gonna be mad at seeing that high firedust cost when you get only about 100 gold per quest. Then comes this extremely easy 10 minute quest that gives you literally 3k at Year 6. They really need to smooth out that gold curve. A lot of essential things like that every player needs is adjusted for a Graduate's balance.

Honestly I don't know if there's a way to be able to solve all these problems. You can't really solve quests making you fly 2000 blocks to a mob location and back without completely redoing the entire quest. Maybe a potential solution is making the new brooms waaaaaaaaaaay more faster. But that still doesn't solve the "nearby" quests and gold curve. Whatever the GD chooses to do now will affect the server for a while.

Also if this thread ever goes under review, please look at each reply's stance on the subject.
 

Aurora

Potterworld Legend
Staff
Minecraft IGN: Invisibilia
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Raven Vampire Werewolf Wizencouncil Class Helper SPEW Sr. Prefect
#8
Hello everyone who has commented on this thread!
Thanks for making a suggestion and leaving your feedback on it here. This is something we really appreciate.
I will now bring up your idea to the rest of the Poltergeist Team (and we will be reading through everyone's replies, don't worry). We will then discuss it and get back to you with a response!
Have a magical day everyone!
 

HeyJared

Magician
Minecraft IGN: HeyJared
Auralock Griffin Phoenix Werewolf SPEW
#10
I agree, I think lowering fire dust will encourage a lot of players to resume exploring. With the brooms having an inflated cost as well, having easier access to fire dust will help with exploring and aid newer players who don't have a lot of gold.
 

luckiestblock

Animorphus
Minecraft IGN: luckiestblock
Honeybadger
#11
I wanted to say that I agree on almost everything that Magma said and I wanted to build of it. Magma said that they need to smooth out the gold curve for the quests, and I resoundingly agree. To my knowledge you get 70k from doing all the quests (don't quote me on that). In my opinion for grads who have done all the quests there is not a real way to get gold after, that even compares to quests. What do you do other then sell rare items or farm mobs/chests?

Either they need to nerf the gold from late year quests and the costs for brooms and fire dust or buff these other methods of gold collecting to counter balance. Magma also said that travel both in normal play and in quests is slow and irritating which I also agree with. They should really add more direction other then "This character is on this side of town, check the remaining 30 homes to find them". I understand that in theory fast travel is restricted to encourage exploration but in practice I am just flying at y level 200 unable to see anything. Even if I was off a broom it would be just as uninteresting because to be brutally honest the devs focused on the areas around towns (which they should of) with the sacrifice of the areas that are not near towns meaning the areas you travel through between towns are uninteresting and frankly boring to traverse. If they made brooms faster or made the warp key bag have a few more warps many of these problems would be alleviated (Personally I wish there would be more methods of "cannonical" transportation such as the train or vanishing cabinet but making those takes a lot of time). Making fire dust cheaper is 100% a good idea but it is a bandage to a gaping wound.

EDIT: I realize rereading this I was fairly negative and I wanted to say that I really do like the update and appreciate the work of the devs have done <3. Part of the reason why I am so negative is that many parts of the update only require quick fixes to be made 100 times better (such as the change of fire dust cost) which is more frustrating then an update I hate and I can write off as irreversibly bad. The majority of the changes that are needed are very much surface level and I hope they can be resolved because I truly love Potterworld and want to see it be better.
 

dorothycheung

Magician
Minecraft IGN: dorothycheung
Raven
#12
As a year 4 without a broom I completely agree with Magma especially 'A year 3-4 would have to fly more than 6000 blocks to get back to Hogsworth just so they can put 10 ac into xp to level up. '
I don't dare to venture out too much due to worrying I cant get back. Portstead is my limit and broom is too expensive and the mob in the broomstix quest is too hard to kill. Not only me but also two people who ask me to bring them to the mob instantly die. Its hard for people with broom and even harder for people who have to work to get a broom and Then work to travel. This really deters me from exploring actually due to the worry I cant get back.
I also agree with other posts to have 2 warp points, one for the new place you are exploring and one for the original place you came from. I suggest both warp points can be set by the player Since everyone is exploring at different areas
 

Aurora

Potterworld Legend
Staff
Minecraft IGN: Invisibilia
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Raven Vampire Werewolf Wizencouncil Class Helper SPEW Sr. Prefect
#13
Hello again!
Once more, thanks a lot for making a suggestion for Potterworld! We love players making suggestions and leaving feedback as it allows us to see what you think and what we can improve.
Unfortunately, we will be declining your suggestion. The economy was obviously going to be affected by the update so we want to give it time to settle before changing things like these, Right now gold isn't easily obtainable by doing certain tasks repeatedly but we are looking to change that in the future and that will certainly affect the economy. Furthermore, the firedust price is currently fairly high on purpose as we would like players to use the fire dust network, their brooms and their warps wisely.
Once again, thank you and have a great day!
 

Aurora

Potterworld Legend
Staff
Minecraft IGN: Invisibilia
Auralock Dark Follower Staff Phoenix Raven Vampire Werewolf Wizencouncil Class Helper SPEW Sr. Prefect
#15
Hello again,

We are very happy to inform you that we have reevaluated our decision due to popular demand and to make travelling a bit easier while we work on finalising travel methods. With the recent gameplay update 1.2.0 (found here) we've lowered the fire dust price to 8 gold each, so it's somewhat a compromise. We didn't go as low as 5 gold per unit, but we've still substantially lowered the price. We hope this will aid players in travelling across the map and encourage exploration a bit more, especially for lower levels who might not have as much gold.
We are also working on other ways to improve travel, so check out other forum suggestions and the aforementioned gameplay update for more information. Feel free to also leave more suggestions and feedback on these forums. We do truly appreciate it!

Have a wonderful day!