Fixing The Labour Hour Debate

[JJWolf]

Since there is currently a massive issue surrounding labour hours, costs, crafting, and multiple characters, I'd like to put forward a public vote on several options that could fix a lot of the issues.

 

Question 1 surrounds the ability to craft in any port, I'm proposing it be only available in ports with Outposts constructed, regardless of nationality. This can lead to increasing cost for Outposts in ports to balance with the second part proposal. It does bring in the inherent danger that if the port is lost, a Captain would need to construct a new outpost elsewhere, hence the slightly more versatile option of restricting to only Nation ports.

 

Question 2 is with regards to cost, I'm proposing the removal of labour hours as such, replace it with set timers to craft and a cost associated with the craft request. The number of consecutive craft requests could be limited to 2 (increases based on say every 5 levels in crafting to a max of 12 consecutively at level 50). This removes the abuse of multiple characters accruing free labour hours by forcing a cost to be associated with crafting along with hard limits on craftable product per request.

 

At the end of the day what I am looking to achieve is to find a solution for the Developers to increase the number of characters per account (nation restricted or time restricted for differing nationalities, whatever they choose) and alter the manufacturing economy to prevent the exploit of 'free hours'. Sure a labour hours pool per account might work but then it still doesn't address those sharing an account with family. I'm sure there are many parents/siblings out there who want to share the game with family but don't want them touching their captain come hell or high water!

 

Cheers

JJ

 

EDIT: Formatting

 

Edit2: *snippet to further explain Q2* What I'm advocating with the change from free labour hours to a cost based system but it also needs to go hand in hand reducing the amount of materials required in crafting to keep the cost at it's current level. e.g: change the Iron Fittings recipe to require 4 instead of 6 Iron ingots, reduce carriages from 3/5/7 to require 2/4/6 iron fittings respectively. Reduce ship recipes to halve the number of fittings. etc. etc.

Edited January 24, 2016 by JJWolf

[Reckless Jack]

well just an outpost so people actually spread over the map instead of buying everything they need in the nearest port and thus making it more expensive.
The cost of making a ship is allready high. you still need to gather resources and craft the items you need. extra costs will only make it an extra painfull grind.

[JJWolf]

well just an outpost so people actually spread over the map instead of buying everything they need in the nearest port and thus making it more expensive.

The cost of making a ship is allready high. you still need to gather resources and craft the items you need. extra costs will only make it an extra painfull grind.

 

The painful cost of ship making is appropriate, it shouldn't be cheap by any measure, the immediate problems in cost I see are twofold. Firstly the current supply/demand amounts can't keep up with the population leading to massive shortages and over supply in some ports, secondly selling those crafted ships to players is just not profitable or as to compete with the NPC price leaves almost no margin if you used resources purchased at the lowest prices.

Edited January 23, 2016 by JJWolf

[Jord]

At the very least I feel like you should own an outpost in a port to be able to craft there to give an incentive to players to establish their own bases of operation.

[Stix]

NPC's need to stop selling ships, period!  Ships have such little value in this game and there are very few gold sinks (Always kills a game long term).  Stop NPC's selling ships and let the money flow through supply demand of crafters/traders.  If a crafter can get 300K gold for a brig good on him!  Reward the time and effort, open up the game and make ship losses really hurt. 

[JJWolf]

NPC's need to stop selling ships, period!  Ships have such little value in this game and there are very few gold sinks (Always kills a game long term).  Stop NPC's selling ships and let the money flow through supply demand of crafters/traders.  If a crafter can get 300K gold for a brig good on him!  Reward the time and effort, open up the game and make ship losses really hurt. 

 

Disagree, NPS ship sales should provide a ceiling price for basic ships at something like 50-100% markup to prevent price gouging, this is an even more acute problem in smaller nations. The NPC ships also provide a baseline of ships available to purchase without the massive economy larger nations have. If NPC ships remain as basic builds and someone can get 300K for an exceptional Brig all the power to them for providing a rare vessel and the price will adjust to reflect it.

[Inkompetent]

NPC's need to stop selling ships, period!  Ships have such little value in this game and there are very few gold sinks (Always kills a game long term).  Stop NPC's selling ships and let the money flow through supply demand of crafters/traders.  If a crafter can get 300K gold for a brig good on him!  Reward the time and effort, open up the game and make ship losses really hurt. 

 

Absolutely don't remove the stock ships from the ports! Doing that would mean that especially Sweden would never ever ever ever get anywhere since it's squeezed in between Denmark and France with horribly poor supplies to craft ships from. There simply doesn't exist enough crafting material in that region to supply people with player-made ships. Worst suggestion ever.

[Siegfried]

And if you make the ship high cost, then the loss feeling will make the people run even more from PvP.

 

peopl run with free ships now, imagine sailing a 300k price Brig.

[Voi_Ta]

I think ships are not cheap at all. It depends on how much time you can play. I can play 1-2 hours a day max and since the start (5 days) i managed to accumulate 30k gold. I don't like the idea that i would have to grind for more then a month to fight in a brig five times. The pvp goes this way: If i have to grind for the ship 5 hours (week) and then have 5 lives (weekend fun), i will probably don't worry to lose it and enjoy it all. If it is 50 hours (month or two of grind) I will be cautious or not play at all. Losing ship is not always based on your skill, like you have to go to battle for your clan or get ganked by superior numbers. So you will always lose ships.

 

I know it is difficult to balance the game between hardcore players who play all day and people with jobs or other responsibilities. That is one reason how free to play works. People with time buy for ingame money, people with jobs pay with real money to get things faster. In the end free players are making the community and the developers and servers are paid with people who pay the real money. Usually the second group doesn't have time to write about things on forums so they are not so vocal. But without them the game dies.

[JJWolf]

I think ships are not cheap at all. It depends on how much time you can play. I can play 1-2 hours a day max and since the start (5 days) i managed to accumulate 30k gold. I don't like the idea that i would have to grind for more then a month to fight in a brig five times. The pvp goes this way: If i have to grind for the ship 5 hours (week) and then have 5 lives (weekend fun), i will probably don't worry to lose it and enjoy it all. If it is 50 hours (month or two of grind) I will be cautious or not play at all. Losing ship is not always based on your skill, like you have to go to battle for your clan or get ganked by superior numbers. So you will always lose ships.

 

I know it is difficult to balance the game between hardcore players who play all day and people with jobs or other responsibilities. That is one reason how free to play works. People with time buy for ingame money, people with jobs pay with real money to get things faster. In the end free players are making the community and the developers and servers are paid with people who pay the real money. Usually the second group doesn't have time to write about things on forums so they are not so vocal. But without them the game dies.

 

I'm pretty certain most people who play this game have jobs and don't have huge amounts of hours to spend playing, it's even worse for those of us in Aussie/NZ who lose 45-120 minutes to maintenance during our prime time.

 

Let's look at grinding for a Brig (NPC price = 46k) as an example of ship cost. Your first two ranks will likely be while sailing a basic cutter so there will be no cost incurred for repair or replacement. To reach the third rank requires 2000 XP, so if we conservatively base Gold and XP earned in battle on the same ratio as missions award (2k, 50XP) then in the time it takes to earn the XP to fully crew a Brig you will have earned approximately 80K or more. That's not including any goods or ships you may acquire in the process or any trading or crafting.

 

What I'm advocating with the change from free labour hours to a cost based system (oh no increased cost) but it also needs to go hand in hand reducing the amount of materials required in crafting to keep the cost at it's current level. e.g: change the Iron Fittings recipe to require 4 instead of 6 Iron ingots, reduce carriages from 3/5/7 to require 2/4/6 iron fittings respectively. Reduce ship recipes to halve the number of fittings. etc. etc.

[Sir Richard Bolitho]

I'm pretty certain most people who play this game have jobs and don't have huge amounts of hours to spend playing, it's even worse for those of us in Aussie/NZ who lose 45-120 minutes to maintenance during our prime time.

 

 

 

Here, here my good man!    Last night for instance (Saturday). Settling in for a good night....sorry 2 hrs. later, too late in the evening.. No matter what game it is we get shafted like this. Guess that's the price for living in the lucky country.

[Ser Davos Seaworth]

I agree with this: I really don't like instacrafting!

 

"Question 2 is with regards to cost, I'm proposing the removal of labour hours as such, replace it with set timers to craft and a cost associated with the craft request. The number of consecutive craft requests could be limited to 2 (increases based on say every 5 levels in crafting to a max of 12 consecutively at level 50). This removes the abuse of multiple characters accruing free labour hours by forcing a cost to be associated with crafting along with hard limits on craftable product per request."

Edited January 25, 2016 by Ser Davos Seaworth

[Dwerth]

I would agree with Ser Davos  on this, although my preference would be for the crafting system to make you choose perks along the path.  There would be, lets say 100 different perks you could choose from, many with multiple levels.  This would allow your character to not get everything, but potentially specialize in canon casting lets say. 

[gozer]

 

"Question 2 is with regards to cost, I'm proposing the removal of labour hours as such, replace it with set timers to craft and a cost associated with the craft request. The number of consecutive craft requests could be limited to 2 (increases based on say every 5 levels in crafting to a max of 12 consecutively at level 50). This removes the abuse of multiple characters accruing free labour hours by forcing a cost to be associated with crafting along with hard limits on craftable product per request."

 

 

I don't know about crafting timers in this game ... there is really A LOT of different things you need to craft if you want to make a ship for example and even 12 consecutive production runs wouldn't get you very far (and would be even bigger problem before you'd get crafting high enough to get the 12max). In some cases you craft end-product directly, for many things you nees one or more middle steps, with many of those mid-products not only needed as resource for further part production, but also needed directly for ship production. Just look at the eighth circle of hell that is crafting anything needing iron ingots / iron fittings, if you want to build even a small ship it is crazy how many production runs you'd need before you manufacture just the items that need iron somewhere in the production chain. And in this game players spend lots of time sailing somewhere far away from their outpost / prouduction center and then they can't really manage production without having to spend a lot of time having to run back to their production harbor (or teleporting).

 

 

maybe having timers for big things like ship construction or ship upgrades, but leaving the "small item" production as instant crafting ... 

[randommexi]

I don't like the idea of making ships cost an arm and a leg to build.  I kinda support the current system but It would need several tweeks to make it work.

 

the real problem I have with making a brig cost 300k to build would be, no one would pvp in anything but a free ship.  makes the game kinda boring imo.

 

if anything, we should reduce the cost of ships to make it so anyone could afford them and make the upgrades cost an arm and a leg.

 

however, I think it should cost a lot of labor hours or real hours, depending on how you want to look at it to build ships.  as it sits, it seems like it does take a lot of time to build a decently sized ship and upgrade it past basic.

[JJWolf]

I don't like the idea of making ships cost an arm and a leg to build.  I kinda support the current system but It would need several tweeks to make it work.

 

the real problem I have with making a brig cost 300k to build would be, no one would pvp in anything but a free ship.  makes the game kinda boring imo.

 

if anything, we should reduce the cost of ships to make it so anyone could afford them and make the upgrades cost an arm and a leg.

 

however, I think it should cost a lot of labor hours or real hours, depending on how you want to look at it to build ships.  as it sits, it seems like it does take a lot of time to build a decently sized ship and upgrade it past basic.

 

If you read my original post I'm articulating to removing the limitation on craft hours and charging fees instead to craft, that can be balanced by reducing required materials or reducing recipe ingrediants, whatever means necessary, it will force those with Alts to have to pay for all crafting and prevent them from having the double or triple free hours they get over the people with a single account.