Whiskey_Jack: forum

Background.
With the addition of the lingerie store perk providing free business-class ticket travel WLT has become dead content. Even prior to the buff to lingerie stores WLT was extremely underutilized.

New players trying to make money by traveling can not afford the steep $6b entry into WLT.

Established players are unwilling to tie up $6b for multiple reasons.
1. They no longer travel to make money and WLT does not provide enough ROI to make traveling worthwhile.
2. You can not sell stocks when traveling.
3. Business class tickets are faster for rehab.
4. Traveling is not a viable option to avoid being attacked during wars due to the risk of flight delays.


Suggested rebalance.

Make 2 tiers of WLT stock benefits.

Tier 1
Shares: 2,000,000
Benefit: Reduced travel time (current benefit)
Estimated cost: $2b
Reason: Lowers the entry barrier to a level where new players could reasonably work towards acquiring the block while traveling is still a large part of their play style.

Tier 2
Shares 4,000,000
Benefit: Provides protection from flight delays.
Estimated cost: $4b
Reason: Gives established players a reason to own WLT by providing an alternative to self-hospitalizing during wars.

Balance
Owning both tiers would cost the same as the current WLT block but provide new and established players with a reason to own it. Business class tickets still provide superior travel time but come with risk of flight delays.


Edit:
After Halloween 2024 I believe flight delay protection as an added benefit it 100% the way to go. If it is not possible to add an additional tier with a different bonus simply leave WLT as is and add the flight delay protection to the basic block.

This suggestion is so simple that it’s hard to understand how this is being treated as intentional design rather than a bug or oversight with the new OC system.

On at least four separate occasions, this exact type of problem has already been addressed:

• The Utility Armory was created specifically so factions could loan items required for OCs.

• Medical items required for OCs were made loanable when they originally couldn't be loaned.

• Drugs required for OCs were made loanable when they originally couldn't be loaned.

• Loaned temporary items were changed so they could be used for OCs after they originally had to be physically on hand.

Yet we now have OC-required items classified in categories that the faction armory cannot accept or loan.

Whether that behavior is technically "intentional" doesn't change the underlying problem. The OC system requires an item, factions are clearly intended to be able to supply required OC items through the armory, but the item's classification prevents the armory from doing exactly that.

The solution is simple: if an item can be required for an OC, it should be possible for a faction to loan that item through the faction armory.

Either make every OC-required item loanable through the appropriate existing armory category, add the necessary category to the armory, or reclassify the affected items.

We've already fixed this problem multiple times for other item types. There is no good reason to keep recreating the same problem every time a new OC item falls outside the existing armory classifications.


This suggestion is being made in response to  my recent bug report and the frankly abysmal customer service that followed it.

Got it. Forced to switch to Chat 3.0 even though, after all this time, it still has performance issues and makes the game practically unplayable with multiple tabs open, and now shitty design decisions around OCs that serve no purpose other than making the process needlessly inconvenient.

You just lost a subscription that has been active since I started playing the game over 10 years ago.

18:56:03 - 02/10/26 You canceled your monthly PayPal subscription

Yes, I read that. The issue is that this breaks a game feature that three previous changes were made to correct, so it should be escalated as a bug/issue.

The Utilities Armory and the later changes allowing Medical items and Drugs to be loaned established that OC-required items should be loanable through the faction armory rather than sent individually.

Requiring a single Red Rose while Flowers cannot be loaned recreates the exact problem those changes fixed.
Sending the Rose is a workaround, not a solution. “Working as intended” is not a reasonable resolution when three previous fixes addressed this exact issue and established how OC-required items are supposed to be handled.

Edit: 4 changes.. I forgot about loaned temps not being able to be used for OCs at first also.

The purpose of the Utilities Armory was to allow factions to loan members items required for Organized Crimes. However, some OCs are now being designed to require items that cannot be loaned through the armory.

This issue was raised previously, and it was part of the reason Medical and Drug items were changed so they could be loaned from the armory rather than only used directly from faction supplies. If an item is required for an OC, the faction needs a way to loan that item to the member assigned to use it.

We now have the same problem again with the single Red Rose. A Red Rose is classified as a Flower, so it cannot be placed in the Utilities Armory and loaned to the member who needs it for the crime.

This reintroduces a problem that was already addressed by the previous armory changes.

There are several straightforward solutions: reclassify the Red Rose so it can be loaned through the Utilities Armory, add a Flower section to the faction armory that allows flowers to be loaned, or remove the Red Rose from the list of required OC items.

Whichever solution is used, any item required for an OC should have a way to be loaned by the faction to the member who needs it.

https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=19&t=16462593&b=0&a=0

Pretty sure it is the same issues from this report, Found it after I posted here. 

Can confirm this is still a problem after being force-switched to 3.0. Back to 2.0 we go. Even with the persistent ghost chats popping up in 2.0 now, it still performs better than 3.0.

Confirmed. I was also still using 2.0 because of the lag issues with 3.0.

I was actually about to bug report that 2.0 is having an issue with ghost chats. Chats I’ve already closed keep popping back up over and over. Then I saw the announcement saying 2.0 is no longer supported.

I tried 3.0 again, and the ghost chat issue is gone, but the lag spikes and slow typing are still a problem.

That does not explain 155/150 from the refill?  Was it timing? The life tick after the energy was used for the attack then the revit refunded it up to 155?

He is doing just fine on his own. In fact, he's mugged more money in a year and a half than you've accumulated in over 18 years of playing Torn. 

There is a pretty simple compromise.

Only allow the 60-second protection to trigger when the hospital time was caused by an attack, whether it was an inside or outside hit.

The protection should then be voided if the player uses medical items, a revive, or Early Discharge to reduce their hospital time.

This would still protect factions from having to compete with mercs for offline farming targets, which was the original purpose of both the 60-second protection and Early Discharge. If the player is online and plans to med out, they can already coordinate with a merc and join a wall to bypass the protection. Nothing really changes if they coordinate before medding out, except this removes the need to abuse the wall mechanic in a way it was never intended to be used.

This would allow both mechanics to function closer to intended while removing the parts currently being abused for mug and bounty protection.

The built-in payout system is 100% broken for a number of reasons, but no one is forcing factions to use it. There isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. If the built-in system doesn't work for your faction, you can always create one that better fits your needs. We created our own payout system over a year ago and haven't had any issues accounting for the additional value from item rewards after they're sold or pawned.

That said, I think item rewards are a fun concept, but they add an unnecessary administrative burden and overcomplicate crime payouts for the many factions that would rather rely on the built-in system. This could be solved in one of two simple ways:

1. Switch crime rewards to cash only.
2.  Add a built-in sellback option for item rewards, with payouts based on a system-defined value.

An idea that could make the second option far more interesting would be a dedicated "Fence" with its own supply-and-demand economy.

Rather than instantly converting items into cash with the pawn shop at a fixed value, factions could sell crime rewards to the Fence. Those items would then become available for purchase by other players. Prices would fluctuate based on supply and demand, similar to Torn's Price Index mechanics. As more of a particular item is sold to the Fence, its stock increases and the buyback value decreases. As players purchase those items, stock falls and prices gradually recover. 

I know this thread is about WOO, but Cestium is still the most broken item when it comes to market fluctuations, so it's a good example. A system like this would go a long way toward making MC-CR worth running while keeping Cestium circulating in the economy instead of simply disappearing if a Pawn Shop sellback option were added.

Example pricing model:

Base buyback price: $600,000,000 with 0 in stock.
Buyback price decreases by 1% for every Cestium currently in stock.
Purchase price is always 10% above the current buyback price.

Examples:

0 in stock

Buyback: $600,000,000
Purchase: $660,000,000

10 in stock

Buyback: $540,000,000
Purchase: $594,000,000

50 in stock

Buyback: $300,000,000
Purchase: $330,000,000

This creates a true supply-and-demand sink. If lots of Cestium enters the game, its value naturally falls, encouraging players to buy and consume it.

As stock is depleted through bomb building, prices recover automatically, making MC-CR more attractive to run again without requiring developers to constantly rebalance fixed values.

More importantly, this would provide a fair and transparent way to value item rewards for factions that want to use the built-in payout system, while still maintaining a controlled, player-driven market that benefits both buyers and sellers. Factions that prefer custom payout systems can continue using them, while everyone else gets a simple solution that requires virtually no additional bookkeeping.

It could also serve as an alternative to turning items directly into points. Players could purchase items from the Fence and sell them to the Pawn Shop for points when it is profitable to do so. This would create interesting trading opportunities while acting as small cash sink, since money would be removed from the economy whenever players buy items from the Fence.

Hope this makes you feel better :)

02:41:03 - 18/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $3,046,434 (chain #3) [view]

03:23:55 - 18/06/26 You used 25 energy attacking SnorlaxPerry (with 1 other) and mugged them for $228,665,000 (chain #1) [view]

15:37:26 - 18/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $275,423,794 (chain #3) [view]

15:42:36 - 18/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $168,903,266 (chain #1) [view]

00:06:03 - 20/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $33,621,199 [view]

00:27:45 - 20/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $43,000,000 [view]

00:34:01 - 20/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $71,139,900 [view]

00:45:15 - 20/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $54,312,591 [view]

01:50:42 - 20/06/26 You used 25 energy anonymously attacking SnorlaxPerry and mugged them for $48,834,375 (chain #45) [view]

Truly amazing achievements. I believe Kasto is correct that 100k is more than enough to get a foot in the door at any company. 100k also seems to be the point where the CPR gains from working stats begin to flatline, although that is still mostly speculation.

IMO, you are at the point where you should start thinking of the company more as something that supplements your playstyle rather than as a means of raising working stats. Once you have the merits, raising them higher will provide less benefit, and other factors should be given more consideration.

Anyway, I don't want to turn your achievement post into an off-topic discussion on the pros and cons of buying trains. Feel free to hit me up privately if you want to talk more about it, and again, congrats on the amazing progress.

Was the spawn rate for elaborate spawns changed back to 50/50 and not announced, did I miss the anouncement, or is this just rng and small sample size for June? Just weird that it suddenly went back to 50/50.

@Staff Was the spawn rate changed back or just bad rng this month? 

That is the fringe case Air was talking about earlier. Cherry-picking the 0.0001% of people who have the funds to make that work does not mean Sure Shot is some OP god-tier bonus.

Like I have said multiple times, in my opinion, it means there should be a special that does the same thing for defense.

Also, Realist’s speed is 28b. That alone puts him around the top 300 or so now. I imagine he started SEing speed because he got tired of stalemating people with a fraction of his total stats.

For the sake of the argument, let’s define “leaving a stat behind” as keeping it under roughly 4–5b, meaning below the point where most people would realistically start using SEs on it.

You are right that surviving long enough to land a Sure Shot proc matters.

That is exactly why the “just leave speed behind” argument is bad.

If the other person has a three-stat build, not a one-stat potato build with no offense, then good luck surviving long enough in a 1v1 for a 5–11% proc to matter. You do not get unlimited free rolls. You still have to live through their attacks, avoid getting shredded, and land something useful, not some shitty limb shot.

And no, a group fight from two years ago with Distraction involved does not prove anything about Sure Shot in a 1v1.

Distraction was the reason that fight lasted. Remove Distraction and you lose in the first few rounds. That is not Sure Shot making low speed viable. That is Distraction cutting down the defender’s ability to respond. With two attackers, the defender only has a 50% chance to take a turn against each attacker. Add more attackers and that gets even worse. So using that as proof that Sure Shot lets people ignore speed is misleading at best. Sure Shot does not replace speed. It gives a small chance to land a hit. 

Sure, I get some lucky one-shot crits. I am not denying that.

But that is RNG, and like it or not, RNG is part of Torn. I do not even particularly like how much RNG exists, but it is baked into almost every part of the game.

The difference is that the number of fights I actually win that way is not meaningful. Sure, it is annoying for them when it happens, but it is not happening often enough to pretend Sure Shot is some end-all mechanic. That is the part people keep exaggerating. 

A lucky Sure Shot crit can steal a fight once in a while. It does not make low speed competitive. It does not replace speed. It does not suddenly turn a bad matchup into a reliable win condition.Trying to act like it does is clueless.

There is a huge difference between “this mechanic occasionally creates an annoying upset” and “this mechanic invalidates an entire stat.” Sure Shot does the first. It does not do the second.

There is no realistic situation where Sure Shot makes you competitive if you leave speed behind. Acting like a max 11% proc replaces an entire battle stat is not a serious argument. It does not let you consistently hit. It does not let you pressure someone across a fight. It does not make a trash-speed build viable. 

I am not saying stats should not matter. I am saying no single-stat or heavily lopsided build should be able to become effectively immune with no meaningful counterplay.

If the argument is that battle stats should only be countered by battle stats, then that needs to apply consistently. That would mean EOD, Parry, Strip, Distraction, and a bunch of other mechanics all need to be looked at under the same standard.

Parry is actually a perfect example of this. Someone with effectively no defense and no dex can still have an 80%+ chance to parry melee attacks from someone with 1q strength and speed. That is a direct non-stat counter to an otherwise massive stat advantage.

So the idea that Sure Shot is uniquely bad because it can bypass a stat check does not really hold up unless we are applying that same standard to everything else.

Sure Shot does not make dex useless. It gives a low chance to land a hit while forcing the user to give up a better damage bonus in most fights. That matters. Against the majority of targets, Sure Shot is worse than double damage, Puncture, or other damage-based bonuses. It is only valuable against a specific subset of players who would otherwise be unhittable.That is why I do not see it as “invalidating” dex. I see it as a narrow counter to extreme dex stacking when the target leaves defense behind.

Now people are acting like Sure Shot means you can just leave speed behind too, which is laughable. Go ahead and leave speed under 1b like most three-stat builds and see how many fights you actually win. Sure Shot might give you a chance to land a hit, but it does not magically make you competitive across an entire fight, especially if your build is still full of holes.

That comparison is not realistic. A low-speed Sure Shot build relying on a 5–11% proc will still lose most matchups because you cannot consistently hit targets. That is not the same as being able to ignore defense or dex and become functionally unkillable.

If someone cannot see the difference between “I have a small chance to land a hit” and “you cannot realistically kill me at all,” then I do not know what to tell them.

The same logic is why I think Deadly should be changed to properly bypass defense. If defense-heavy builds can become functionally unkillable with no dex, then there should be a counter to that too.

My position is simple: balanced builds should be the hardest to counter. Lopsided builds should have exploitable weaknesses. If someone wants to be nearly untouchable, they should have to build toward that across multiple stats, not just dump everything into one stat and expect the rest of the game’s counterplay to be removed.

You are missing my point while simultaneously supporting it.

We have four stats for a reason. If you intentionally leave one or more of them behind, you should be penalized for that. Thinking you should be able to become nearly unhittable just by pumping one stat is dumb.

Deadly should bypass defense. And, in your own words, Sure Shot already has a counter. It is called boxing gloves...