Drug Balancing Discussion

[Fredy]

Hi everyone,
We are currently working on the next update, which has taken a long time, but it will also be very extensive.
One of the major aspects will be adding new drugs that can be grown/made, which will also require some drug balancing.
As changes to drugs are quite delicate, we wanted to ask the community for feedback before releasing the update.

Our main issue with the current state is that the two growable drugs (weed, cocaine) seem unbalanced for the effort required.

• Weed takes 19 minutes to grow, and yields ~$80k per hour
• Cocaine takes 38 minutes to grow, and yields ~$140k per hour

While the process for Cocaine is definitely more involved than for Weed, and there is more risk due to it taking longer, almost no one would want to miss out on such a stark difference in profit. This is also one of the reasons bigger orgs almost exclusively grow Cocaine over Weed.

Our plan for the coming update is to balance drugs so that there will be more variety in the drugs being grown.

The first change will be to balance drugs more closely:

• Drugs should be balanced according to their profit per hour, which should be similar for all of them.
• Drugs that take longer to grow should gain a slight boost to their profit per hour.
• Drugs that take more effort/interactivity to produce should gain a slight boost to their profit per hour.

So, for example, if we follow these rules, it would be more reasonable to put Weed at $100k per hour and Cocaine at $120k per hour.


The second change that we want to use to encourage more variety will be a drug market.
The drug market tracks the amount of drugs being produced by players and will boost the price of drugs that are not being produced a lot.
We are aiming for a ~10–20% boost for drugs that are produced the least, which is not an overpowering boost, but definitely worth considering.
Additionally, we also want to prevent the hoarding of drugs while waiting for the price to be "right."
Tying it to produced drugs, rather than sold drugs, should definitely help a bit, but it might not be enough.


We would like to hear your opinion on these proposed changes, as well as if you maybe have some additional ideas.


Please note: the prices of the drugs will not be changed, the balancing change will be done using the yield, so no point hoarding drugs because of this.

 

[IKEA monkey]

will meth be buffed? if i remember correctly it makes around 80k an hour for the amount of effort it takes

 

[jimb0]

is meth getting buff its shit money but i still do it also when is 9it possibly coming out? and what new drugs?

 

[Fredy]

will meth be buffed? if i remember correctly it makes around 80k an hour for the amount of effort it takes

It will also be balanced in this update. We are not sure about the exact profits yet, it will also depend on the outcomes of this discussion.

what new drugs?

There will be several new ones based on the poppy plant amongst others.

 

[Goblin]

For the cocaine you need to keep in mind the cost to do cocaine lye, news paper and propane tank which you lose decent money doing so, if you make weed 100k per hour and cocaine 120k it'd just be worth doing weed no point doing cocaine for extra 5-10k

 

[Creepis]

Any plans for magic mushrooms? These have always been pretty underwhelming and only see these being planted by new players for missions and not really being used by anyone that's experienced. Would be cool if you could do something with it if added to meth or for a future cooking update while still having some kind of profitable aspect to it as it's out in the public and accessible by anyone that finds them which makes them far riskier.

 

[Fredy]

it'd just be worth doing weed no point doing cocaine for extra 5-10k

Yes, of course we only take the profit into account, so in the example it would be a 20k higher profit compared to weed, which is significant.

 

[T1M3_L1N3]

I like the ideas. However I feel that a 20k difference is too little, seeing as coke takes longer to grow and needs more effort for a finished product.
Could just be me, though.

 

[Goblin]

Yes, of course we only take the profit into account, so in the example it would be a 20k higher profit compared to weed, which is significant.

the thing with cocaine, is you have to be active there while drying it, with weed you can just place it somewhere in the map and forget about it, the profit to cost is not fair with cocaine, cocaine should give much more money rather than buffing weed

 

[MJ.]

the thing with cocaine, is you have to be active there while drying it, with weed you can just place it somewhere in the map and forget about it, the profit to cost is not fair with cocaine, cocaine should give much more money rather than buffing weed

Idk me personally I found drying cocaine to be really mundane at times just clicking buttons in base and thats all but maybe thats me

 

[Fredy]

cocaine should give much more money rather than buffing weed

We are trying to find the right values, maybe $30k difference is more reasonable. I just think that the current difference of almost $60k is too much.

 

[Illusion™]

I don't know if this is possible, but I wonder if the way to combat hoarding drugs to wait for the market to be "right" for your hoarded drug is to have drug quality degrade over time. For example, when you first harvest the drugs, their quality is at 100%, yielding you maximum profits if you sell immediately. However, over the course of maybe 2-3 days, the quality reduces by ~30%, so you get less profit when you sell. This discourages hoarding drugs to wait for the market to be right and encourages players to sell immediately, adding more action at the drug dealer.

Thinking about it now though, this would be bad for casual players who don't play every day. If they grow drugs and don't sell, by the time they're on next, their drugs would be worth nothing. Maybe this is a bad idea, I don't know.

 

[Goblin]

Idk me personally I found drying cocaine to be really mundane at times just clicking buttons in base and thats all but maybe thats me

then weed should get buffed because you got bored of cocaine?

 

[exrobite]

I'd like to see some consideration put towards limiting the availability of meth ingredients. Currently both weed and coke serve a purpose, weed is easy and quick and coke is long and therefore more profitable. Meth however is more involved (and probably more profitable (?)) yet still very much neglected by criminals.

Having a daily mission or something that lets you obtain some special precursor for meth that makes it significantly more profitable would be cool. (perhaps you get enough for 2 batches, cooking the first one and dropping it off covers the suppliers costs then you have the remaining amount to cook yourself?). Meth could serve as a high risk, highly involved thing that you can only make sometimes when you have the time-gated ingredients to do so.

 

[sait]

pls dont fuck me over

 

[T1M3_L1N3]

Has there ever been a suggestion for weed involving rolling. I like the idea of using some paper and weed to create joints. You could create packs/boxes for more money, maybe?

 

[Foga]

Weed vs coke dosent purely have to be a cost thing you could also tweek the xp from it.

Also coke is very little extra activity compared to weed

 

[Blizz]

there will be new drugs? tuff

 

[Hutch]

Add fent for my hood

 

[Steve Phromkraft]

will there be more topical drugs like fent or just the classics?