The 50 designs and inability to better manage what I keep craftable on hand vs upload/download for temporary use greatly diminishes what kinds of things I'm willing to use my limited space for. I would love to do special awards, limited edition runs, fun thematic things for RP, let alone all of the multiple pieces that go into my own and others' outfits for character design. It would be helpful if we had a better idea on how the system is imagined to work so we can adapt to it, since it is so different from other IRE.
I think the admins have said the 50-limit is only temporary and more of a bandaid fix, and that they'll get around to implementing a more elegant solution Soon (tm) after the class pass.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
Two lefts don't make a right. I mean, IRE can charge whatever they want, but it's pretty obvious that they're trying to milk more out of crafters with this, which is kinda gross and probably counterproductive. I'm sure they'll get buy-ins and people who don't care about spending retirement creds, but the following is a pretty common reaction when people figure out the pricing on tradeskills here, so you have to wonder about their belief that lower demand means you have to up the pricing of your ethereal goods:
1. We've already discussed that the design tradeskills are not that much more expensive, if at all, than the other IRE games and why there is a gate to them. Not going to rehash it.
2. They're still trying to establish design standards into a final form and building more lore around materials. If designers are already hitting 50 designs, that's a lot of reading for a small crew who are also already working on building new areas for the next expansion, fixing current quests/areas, and a myriad of other things. Give them a chance to breathe a bit and be understanding that SM is still in early beta phase.
3. The mod market, currently, is entirely guided by players. The prices that are being paid for mods are the prices certain people are willing to pay. While there is a natural scarcity, the admin have already mentioned that it is probably wise to hold off on mod trades until that market is evened out and the mod drop rate is finalized.
1. lol. A - No, 200c+130c of lessons is not a minor or nonexistent increase over 100c+110c of lessons (or just 110c of lessons for the first one now, in Imperian), especially not with the push for continuous microtransactions on permissions (far more than the design decay that can be refreshed with gold). B - I can 'rehash' it if I want. You don't have to respond. Woo personal freedoms.
2. "It's beta" doesn't mean "Sit down and shut up over obvious issues," and "Think about their schedules!" gets a big womp-womp from me. If anything, I am going to be louder about this now before it gets rooted in stone. The only movement in 2 weeks has been the release of 10c per additional design slot, and they could easily do a 'one line fix' to up the design cap more.
But please, tell me more how $100 to end up paying $3+ per piece of content you produce for a game is reasonable.
10c per additional design slot is really insulting, when we do not have a way to manage our active design inventory beyond things downloaded from the public market. There is absolutely no reason to make a design public. 125 marks per download (with infinite uses) and the risk that you'll get undersold on your own product, + it staying locked in your own databank so it doesn't free up space, is not an appealing system. What it does is mean any design over 50 is 10cr+5k marks+fabrication. That is not sustainable.
1. lol. A - No, 200c+130c of lessons is not a minor or nonexistent increase over 100c+110c of lessons (or just 110c of lessons for the first one now, in Imperian), especially not with the push for continuous microtransactions on permissions (far more than the design decay that can be refreshed with gold). B - I can 'rehash' it if I want. You don't have to respond. Woo personal freedoms.
2. "It's beta" doesn't mean "Sit down and shut up over obvious issues," and "Think about their schedules!" gets a big womp-womp from me. If anything, I am going to be louder about this now before it gets rooted in stone. The only movement in 2 weeks has been the release of 10c per additional design slot, and they could easily do a 'one line fix' to up the design cap more.
But please, tell me more how $100 to end up paying $3+ per piece of content you produce for a game is reasonable.
1. A. Imperian is not a good example as it's in completely free state with Lusternia soon on the way. Achaea would be more accurate and the price is the same. B. You're correct that I don't have to respond.
2. It won't be rooted in stone by any means. Eventually, they'll have a crew of people that are working to approve designs which will take the load off of them. Right now, as far as they've made us aware, it's just the current admin doing it. I'd say they're doing well considering how fast the turn around is but adding more load onto them now is just going to burn them out. So yes, you should relax a little. You have the right to express your opinion but people need to calm down a bit and let them work.
Also, you can't accurately correlate design fees to credit values as they fluxuate based on the availability of marks in the system and demand from the players. If you're paying for designs with credit sales, that seems a bit short sighted. It's quicker, sure, but they're trying spread mark sinks around so that there isn't an over-saturation of game generated currency. Use marks from hunting/incursions/commissions to design.
1. The price was 100c for the license and just under 700 lessons to trans long before it went f2p.
2. Upping the design limit doesn't up the number of designs submitted at once. Dropping the entry price would, though. Submission limits would actually do what you're trying to suggest is the reasoning here. As it stands, they'll have to issue refunds soon to anyone going over 50 designs because they put an arti out for it. Not unprecedented and it's a low enough value that it wouldn't hurt too bad. I also don't have to be any calmer than it takes to follow forum rules.
Also, the +$3 is the 10c flat fee for any design over 50 (purchased in increments of $15). I used a very generous 30c price per credit. If you're doing any custom work, you should probably be starting your pricing above that right now or you're underselling yourself later (assuming you haven't hit the cap).
I know that the staff is overworked and I'm not crying for faster approval times or whatever, I know from experience how tedious it is to go over dozens of designs from all types of people, understand their style and approve or reject them, but the system here is very punishing at it is already. It costs 5k to submit a design and some of the people who took up the RP tradeskills (as in, any non-modding skill) aren't really the best bashers, so while 5k is not a lot for high-level, it is a lot for a person who wants to play a different kind of game that doesn't rely on bashing to cover the cost of your 350cr tradeskill. Double this with the counter-intuitive fact that once a design gets rejected it costs another 2500 marks to resubmit and crafting really isn't that cheap a skill ( I don't know why that cost is there in the first place, it wasn't like that in some other IRE I played, though I don't know about Achaea/Lusty).
On the topic of re-submission costs, if the staff is adamant about keep it, it would've been great if it were introduced once all Crafting Guidelines are in place. It's really not fun to use a term in a design, have it approved and then the next time it is submitted have it be rejected and you eat the cost. Or, have a design rejected on grounds of capitalizing/non-capitalizing a certain term, when that term is present in the game-world itself in both capitalized and non-capitalized forms... Or getting a design rejected because you reference 'forearms', considering all playable races have forearms...I don't expect the Vonikin Krel or the Cleax to buy from my shops...
And yeah, having a design cap is really not-fun. I've spent somewhere close to 300k marks to get to 50 designs and would like to spend more as my RP revolves around this business. I'd even buy an artie that permanently makes my design database unlimited, but paying for X more slots every time is kinda silly...
I've been that kind of person on other IREs who has to have every tradeskill. I've always loved designing items and by the same token I've also done building work both on IREs and other MU*s.
Being a designer/crafter on Starmourn was one of the things I was most looking forward to. I baked it into my character concept and had grand plans for it.
I'm not short on cash or credits; my character's sitting on enough to buy and trans a tradeskill right now, I have an Iron Elite membership, and I'm expecting a heap of retirement credits to come in once those are released.
However the problems with the system that have been outlined by others in this thread and elsewhere have led me to decide that being a crafter/designer on Starmourn just isn't worth it.
I'm not willing to pay 300+ credits just to get a tradeskill that will cost me even more in the long run, with a 50 limit on designs (no doubt due in future to be unlocked with yet more credits/fees), each costing 5k to submit (250k for all 50!), and then having to own multiple shops on the trade terminals just to hold the full range of items I want to sell and make them available to a wider audience. The shop layouts are not attractive, with no categories, and no physical presence in the gameworld that I could use to generate RP.
I'm massively, massively disappointed in staff's decision to not include beverages in the cuisine tradeskill, which they indicated would be the case in their dev posts prior to launch. I'm not going to take it just to have to then take beverages on top as a separate tradeskill, thereby locking myself into a second tradeskill choice, without even knowing what other tradeskills may be released at the same time and what the cap on our allotted tradeskills will be in future.
The devs said they want to facilitate the player economy, yet all of these features are prohibitive to doing so. Crafting and designing is not profitable in Starmourn and by the looks of things it doesn't appear intended to be. It's a massive gold sink for the designer, and comparatively much cheaper for anyone else to buy what they need from others putting in the hard work/credits.
A 1600 credits artifact to boost your shop front by 16% is also an absolute joke, when you could spent 16% more marks to do the exact same. It will never be worth the money, and who would spend that money just to make comparatively much less? It defeats the entire purpose of even wanting to boost your shop front in the first place.
Final gripe: I speak British English and I should be allowed to submit designs in British English. No one is confused by my use of a 'u' in colour. It doesn't create inconsistency in the game world. You know perfectly well what it says. It is not a spelling error. No player is going to be shocked and appalled by the existence of both British and American spellings in a multiplayer game.
And all of these factors are reasons why I have not purchased a tradeskill and will not in the foreseeable future, despite being able to afford it, despite having done so gladly and eagerly on every other IRE game I've played. I'm sorry but the system feels exploitative. Crafters and designers provide a massive service to these games and they pay for the privilege of doing so. The squeeze, shakedown and arbitrary limitations placed on them for being gullible enough to allow it is, as someone said above, gross.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
It might help if crafters don't just 'charge the submission fee' on commissions. There are some who do, but there are also a good number who don't. Whenever I ask someone to craft me this or that, I almost always throw in an extra 5k on top of the 5k submission because 1) I can afford it (as a filthy basher!) and 2) it's a service that can and should make a profit for the designer.
Mereas Eyrlock "They're excited, but poor." - Ilyos (August 2019)
I think the main issue with Starmourn is that we are comparing vastly different economies in vastly different games. We have to realize that it is highly doubtful that this is the final draft of the trade/store set-up. Patience is needed until we get to a more final state.
That said, I don't disagree with all of the complaints. What I try to resist is the way people like to throw crazy accusations around without understanding how every system interacts.
So, my 2 marks.
As an American, I didn't get to gripe over being forced to use British spelling in every other IRE. That said, I am not sure I remember how to design WITHOUT British spelling.
One thing I do agree with is the shopfront artifact. I am not convinced it would be useful in any way.
Considering that shops are 50 marks to open, why not just categorize that way? I imagine trade terminals as crazy, jumbled chaos with all kinds of advertising and lights and noise. I feel like it was intentionally designed to feel like a dystopian/late capitalism type of booth that you see in a lot sci fi movies. Even the way wares are delivered is fantastic. Again, we are used to other styles of shopkeeping, we need to adjust to a new way.
I really enjoy not having to inevitably lose in a shop auction. I no longer have to negotiate with terrorists just to sell a few designs in a shop owned by that one person who owns half the shops in the game.
A fun feature would be letting shopkeepers color their listing on TT. Just to make terminals more crazy and garish.
I don't see custom design tradespeople as doing the game a service either. This is coming from someone that has been involved in trades in every mud I have played. I was also an admin for a small MUD and worked exclusively with trades.
They could easily just eliminate tge custom design portion and save themselves a lot of hassle and extra work. Out of every 100 designs, maybe 5-7 are going to be generic and cool enough to sell more than 20 times over a period of a real life year. Most designs are custom work for one individual.
Case in point, I see people reselling the stock designs from denizen shops. In talking with the people doing it, they sell a ton of them for a "convenience fee" of like 15-50 marks. Crazy as it sounds, it seems to be profitable for them.
Now imagine having to go through each design multiple times, interpret what they are intending, ensure it fits within the established confines, then inevitably have to deal with the arguments when people don't like your rejections. All that on top of finding, organizing and keeping motivated a crew of volunteers who need to be double checked on every decision they make for the sake of the game... It is a lot of work. I appreciate that you want to write and I think it is valuable for the community but it isn't a massive service by any means. People will still play the game without a bunch of custom designs.
That isn't to diminish designers. I love doing it and getting to make my mark on the community.
I see it as a privilege, not a right that I get to take up a staffer's limited time to proofread my contribution to the community. I can't get that kind of service from an editor for that cheap. $50 (if you are smart and do two months of iron elite or catch a sale) for a lifetime of editing is pretty damn good.
@Minion All of the above is fair except I am pretty sure that, at least for this point in the game, everyone (or almost everyone) bought the tradeskills and lessons with credits or membership credits that they bought with money. So y’know, we are paying for that staff’s time, because that is what they offered in exchange for the purchase of said tradeskill
As an American, I didn't get to gripe over being forced to use British spelling in every other IRE. That said, I am not sure I remember how to design WITHOUT British spelling.
My main IRE game before Starmourn was MKO, so yeah, I get to gripe. American spelling was enforced there too for the arbitrary reason that Feist (who wrote the Midkemia books) is American.
As for the problem with categorising things via terminals, for one thing, it's ugly. Speaking from the perspective of someone who really wanted to take Cuisine (I had Big Plans for it that I raved about here) and could easily afford to but decided it's just not worth my money, the idea of trying to open up a restaurant and having to put up each menu category (starters, main dishes, sides, desserts?!) as a different shop is daft. And since it's digital, the best I can offer is a delivery service, which largely defeats the purpose of buying food: facilitating RP. It's not like we eat on this game for sustenance; we do it to be social. We have NPC bars and clothing stores; why not player ones? Give us the option to choose. I'm sure that Trade Terminals would have an easier time selling most goods by virtue of convenience and being able to reach a wider audience, but many of us would rather have a physical shop we can manage and facilitate RP from, even if it means having less reach and making less marks. There's something fundamentally different about being able to play a watchmaker in a cluttered trinket store, a fashion designer in a colourful boutique, a bartender serving up beer, compared to having everything accessible with 0 interaction between the trader and customer. Some people might prefer that, but for others, give us a choice.
@Tecton, @Aurelius and team: I will never, ever pay 1600 credits to boost my shop front by 16% (which I don't have, because problems with the existing system dissuaded me from taking a tradeskill). But I would gladly pay 2000 credits for an artifact shop with a custom, subject-to-approval location (like auction shops from other games). In my case that would no doubt be the Litharge, Omni Station or Kovalar. I would gather people to RP there and host regular events that energise the playerbase: this is good for player-retention.
"They are elect to whom beautiful things mean only Beauty." — Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before." — Margaret Atwood
While I do agree that it would be nice to not be policed for designing purely out of convenience, if I were making a game from words I would want the words to be consistently styled. Particularly if people are paying me to play with my words.
I don't think that terminals are intended to be the only way to have a storefront. They are super convenient though. I would be willing to bet that as things get established, we will get the chance to get actual stores.
What IS going to make for a super rich RP environment are places like @Kestrel is describing. I hope I get to visit it eventually.
To be honest I took Armormodding with the RP in mind. Because even the practical skillsets can be integrated properly into someone's backstory, RP aspiration or emotes. But it is currently in a very impractical state due to lacking flexibility in its design. So while I started the below thread for brainstorming on Armormodding ideas, most of those can be applied to all modding skillsets.
So as modders of Starmourn, let us come together and share ideas on what would make us excited about modding skillsets both practically and RPwise. Enough feedback will give a better idea and perhaps it can make positive impact on bootstrapping the mod economy.
Comments
- Ilyos (August 2019)
People have burnt through over 200 credits in getting the skill and now trying to source parts is quite expensive. Try asking any modder
2. They're still trying to establish design standards into a final form and building more lore around materials. If designers are already hitting 50 designs, that's a lot of reading for a small crew who are also already working on building new areas for the next expansion, fixing current quests/areas, and a myriad of other things. Give them a chance to breathe a bit and be understanding that SM is still in early beta phase.
3. The mod market, currently, is entirely guided by players. The prices that are being paid for mods are the prices certain people are willing to pay. While there is a natural scarcity, the admin have already mentioned that it is probably wise to hold off on mod trades until that market is evened out and the mod drop rate is finalized.
2. "It's beta" doesn't mean "Sit down and shut up over obvious issues," and "Think about their schedules!" gets a big womp-womp from me. If anything, I am going to be louder about this now before it gets rooted in stone. The only movement in 2 weeks has been the release of 10c per additional design slot, and they could easily do a 'one line fix' to up the design cap more.
But please, tell me more how $100 to end up paying $3+ per piece of content you produce for a game is reasonable.
2. It won't be rooted in stone by any means. Eventually, they'll have a crew of people that are working to approve designs which will take the load off of them. Right now, as far as they've made us aware, it's just the current admin doing it. I'd say they're doing well considering how fast the turn around is but adding more load onto them now is just going to burn them out. So yes, you should relax a little. You have the right to express your opinion but people need to calm down a bit and let them work.
Also, you can't accurately correlate design fees to credit values as they fluxuate based on the availability of marks in the system and demand from the players. If you're paying for designs with credit sales, that seems a bit short sighted. It's quicker, sure, but they're trying spread mark sinks around so that there isn't an over-saturation of game generated currency. Use marks from hunting/incursions/commissions to design.
2. Upping the design limit doesn't up the number of designs submitted at once. Dropping the entry price would, though. Submission limits would actually do what you're trying to suggest is the reasoning here. As it stands, they'll have to issue refunds soon to anyone going over 50 designs because they put an arti out for it. Not unprecedented and it's a low enough value that it wouldn't hurt too bad. I also don't have to be any calmer than it takes to follow forum rules.
Also, the +$3 is the 10c flat fee for any design over 50 (purchased in increments of $15). I used a very generous 30c price per credit. If you're doing any custom work, you should probably be starting your pricing above that right now or you're underselling yourself later (assuming you haven't hit the cap).
Being a designer/crafter on Starmourn was one of the things I was most looking forward to. I baked it into my character concept and had grand plans for it.
I'm not short on cash or credits; my character's sitting on enough to buy and trans a tradeskill right now, I have an Iron Elite membership, and I'm expecting a heap of retirement credits to come in once those are released.
However the problems with the system that have been outlined by others in this thread and elsewhere have led me to decide that being a crafter/designer on Starmourn just isn't worth it.
I'm not willing to pay 300+ credits just to get a tradeskill that will cost me even more in the long run, with a 50 limit on designs (no doubt due in future to be unlocked with yet more credits/fees), each costing 5k to submit (250k for all 50!), and then having to own multiple shops on the trade terminals just to hold the full range of items I want to sell and make them available to a wider audience. The shop layouts are not attractive, with no categories, and no physical presence in the gameworld that I could use to generate RP.
I'm massively, massively disappointed in staff's decision to not include beverages in the cuisine tradeskill, which they indicated would be the case in their dev posts prior to launch. I'm not going to take it just to have to then take beverages on top as a separate tradeskill, thereby locking myself into a second tradeskill choice, without even knowing what other tradeskills may be released at the same time and what the cap on our allotted tradeskills will be in future.
The devs said they want to facilitate the player economy, yet all of these features are prohibitive to doing so. Crafting and designing is not profitable in Starmourn and by the looks of things it doesn't appear intended to be. It's a massive gold sink for the designer, and comparatively much cheaper for anyone else to buy what they need from others putting in the hard work/credits.
A 1600 credits artifact to boost your shop front by 16% is also an absolute joke, when you could spent 16% more marks to do the exact same. It will never be worth the money, and who would spend that money just to make comparatively much less? It defeats the entire purpose of even wanting to boost your shop front in the first place.
Final gripe: I speak British English and I should be allowed to submit designs in British English. No one is confused by my use of a 'u' in colour. It doesn't create inconsistency in the game world. You know perfectly well what it says. It is not a spelling error. No player is going to be shocked and appalled by the existence of both British and American spellings in a multiplayer game.
And all of these factors are reasons why I have not purchased a tradeskill and will not in the foreseeable future, despite being able to afford it, despite having done so gladly and eagerly on every other IRE game I've played. I'm sorry but the system feels exploitative. Crafters and designers provide a massive service to these games and they pay for the privilege of doing so. The squeeze, shakedown and arbitrary limitations placed on them for being gullible enough to allow it is, as someone said above, gross.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
- Ilyos (August 2019)
That said, I don't disagree with all of the complaints. What I try to resist is the way people like to throw crazy accusations around without understanding how every system interacts.
So, my 2 marks.
As an American, I didn't get to gripe over being forced to use British spelling in every other IRE. That said, I am not sure I remember how to design WITHOUT British spelling.
One thing I do agree with is the shopfront artifact. I am not convinced it would be useful in any way.
Considering that shops are 50 marks to open, why not just categorize that way? I imagine trade terminals as crazy, jumbled chaos with all kinds of advertising and lights and noise. I feel like it was intentionally designed to feel like a dystopian/late capitalism type of booth that you see in a lot sci fi movies. Even the way wares are delivered is fantastic. Again, we are used to other styles of shopkeeping, we need to adjust to a new way.
I really enjoy not having to inevitably lose in a shop auction. I no longer have to negotiate with terrorists just to sell a few designs in a shop owned by that one person who owns half the shops in the game.
A fun feature would be letting shopkeepers color their listing on TT. Just to make terminals more crazy and garish.
They could easily just eliminate tge custom design portion and save themselves a lot of hassle and extra work. Out of every 100 designs, maybe 5-7 are going to be generic and cool enough to sell more than 20 times over a period of a real life year. Most designs are custom work for one individual.
Case in point, I see people reselling the stock designs from denizen shops. In talking with the people doing it, they sell a ton of them for a "convenience fee" of like 15-50 marks. Crazy as it sounds, it seems to be profitable for them.
Now imagine having to go through each design multiple times, interpret what they are intending, ensure it fits within the established confines, then inevitably have to deal with the arguments when people don't like your rejections. All that on top of finding, organizing and keeping motivated a crew of volunteers who need to be double checked on every decision they make for the sake of the game... It is a lot of work. I appreciate that you want to write and I think it is valuable for the community but it isn't a massive service by any means. People will still play the game without a bunch of custom designs.
That isn't to diminish designers. I love doing it and getting to make my mark on the community.
I see it as a privilege, not a right that I get to take up a staffer's limited time to proofread my contribution to the community. I can't get that kind of service from an editor for that cheap. $50 (if you are smart and do two months of iron elite or catch a sale) for a lifetime of editing is pretty damn good.
I think style-policing is a generally pretty shit practice for any game to adopt. If what's being written is correct and legible enough to be read without confusion, then who f-ing cares whether you write 'armour' with a 'u' or not. Other games shouldn't do it either and I said exactly the same thing on the Aetolia forums. As @kamyr said, two lefts don't make a right.
As for the problem with categorising things via terminals, for one thing, it's ugly. Speaking from the perspective of someone who really wanted to take Cuisine (I had Big Plans for it that I raved about here) and could easily afford to but decided it's just not worth my money, the idea of trying to open up a restaurant and having to put up each menu category (starters, main dishes, sides, desserts?!) as a different shop is daft. And since it's digital, the best I can offer is a delivery service, which largely defeats the purpose of buying food: facilitating RP. It's not like we eat on this game for sustenance; we do it to be social. We have NPC bars and clothing stores; why not player ones? Give us the option to choose. I'm sure that Trade Terminals would have an easier time selling most goods by virtue of convenience and being able to reach a wider audience, but many of us would rather have a physical shop we can manage and facilitate RP from, even if it means having less reach and making less marks. There's something fundamentally different about being able to play a watchmaker in a cluttered trinket store, a fashion designer in a colourful boutique, a bartender serving up beer, compared to having everything accessible with 0 interaction between the trader and customer. Some people might prefer that, but for others, give us a choice.
@Tecton, @Aurelius and team: I will never, ever pay 1600 credits to boost my shop front by 16% (which I don't have, because problems with the existing system dissuaded me from taking a tradeskill). But I would gladly pay 2000 credits for an artifact shop with a custom, subject-to-approval location (like auction shops from other games). In my case that would no doubt be the Litharge, Omni Station or Kovalar. I would gather people to RP there and host regular events that energise the playerbase: this is good for player-retention.
— Oscar Wilde
"I'll take care of it, Luke said. And because he said it instead of her, I knew he meant kill. That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before."
— Margaret Atwood
I don't think that terminals are intended to be the only way to have a storefront. They are super convenient though. I would be willing to bet that as things get established, we will get the chance to get actual stores.
What IS going to make for a super rich RP environment are places like @Kestrel is describing. I hope I get to visit it eventually.
https://forums.starmourn.com/discussion/713/armormodding-corner
So as modders of Starmourn, let us come together and share ideas on what would make us excited about modding skillsets both practically and RPwise. Enough feedback will give a better idea and perhaps it can make positive impact on bootstrapping the mod economy.