Fargo
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Posts posted by Fargo
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1 hour ago, admin said:
What you don't understand is that player who does not find friends or fleet to sail with drops from the game extremely fast. We will guide them to fun by gentle touch.
What you don't understand is what the reasons are for this... And that if you won't figure this out and improve the actual game, nothing you can do will be able to keep new players in the game.
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6 hours ago, AngryPanCake said:
I feel the community will determine the Value of the Doubloon overtime.
Ofcourse, but it most likely wont be an exchange. Doubloons are no currency like reals are.
Doubloons are more a material like teak logs. Port drop/trader loot vs. amount of reals earned results in a certain value of teak logs. But did players exchange teak logs for gold/reals? No, because everyone needs them to craft good ships. Even if you had more than enough, you would stockpile them. Just try to buy teak logs, or doubloons. Doubloons sell for 500+ reals currently. 4mio reals for a first rate just for doubloons. 100mio. gold. Ofcourse other than logs not everyone demands doubloons for large ships, but the majority probably does.
When crafting an item consumes 5 different "currencies", over time 4/5 of those most likely loose value, unless the game is balanced perfectly. Without teak logs, you alteast are able to use different logs. Without doubloons/marks/permits, the production stops. Resources (so labor and reals) that cant be consumed anymore, inflate. Fixed exchange rates would balance it, but this would remove the purpose of having different currencies. What even is the purpose of doubloons, when they are earned in the same ways reals are earned?
The point is, is nobody realising how stupid this is? How difficult this is to balance? That either labor is the limiting factor and all these extra currencies become "redundant", or labor becomes redundant? Well its just labor isnt it... No, make labor redundant and you can remove labor and all crafting from the game. Local markets aswell, that are all about trading labor. You could just make the admiralty sell ships for only doubloons or reals. If we want meaningful crafting and player trade, labor needs to be the limiting factor of prodution.
8 hours ago, AngryPanCake said:As the Red Duke mentioned, people are already willing to place contracts and others fill them. I placed a contract to purchase 1000 D's, it was filled within 2 hours. So, I was willing to pay a certain amount and another player was willing to take my price for his hard (or not so hard) won D's.
When i sell my doubloons to the lone contract that buys 500 D's for 15 reals in gustavia, because i dont care, this isnt proof that exchange is happening. If exchange happened, there would be competition.
When contracts asking for 300 and less reals are filled, probably because newer and unexperienced players not owning redundant amounts of reals yet dont know what theyre doing. Otherwise they would place sell contracts, test what D's sell for, and triple the profit. When lots of players would sell D's, there would be lots of sell contracts. Idk, maybe thats the case in neutral ports?!
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4 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:
What is your preffered method ?
When doubloons are supposed to be a currency, first of all let players place contracs in doubloons and reals...
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44 minutes ago, Cetric de Cornusiac said:
To spice this thing here a bit up: labor contracts could be put on the market by anyone, not like it used to be those with a 'labor office', by cutting down your own regenerative labor hours.
Once again, labor must not be tradable! The production capacity of each person needs to be limited.
1 hour ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:... i saw someone wanting to exchange reals for dubloons by means of the market...
aka - "I give X reals for each of your dubloons!"
Is there anything else i need to understand ?
That even if this guy is a dedicated trader, he cannot determine the value of doubloons. And that he wont ask a fair price if competition isnt forcing him to do so.
Also that reals and the whole economy are probably redundant for you, so you just filled that contracte because you had enough doubloons you wont need... Just tell me what the price was, and we can test it.
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3 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:
Saw macjimm wanting dubloons, he place a contract for them ( i won't disclose the price in reals he was paying ).
Knowing him as a dedicated trader, i had absolutely no problem in fulfilling his contract for 200(?) dubloons in exchange for his Reals.
Worked perfect.
What price?
You seem to not understand how this works. The market isnt working based on honest people figuring out fair prices. Prices develop based on competition. No matter how experienced you are, you cant just figure out what a reasonable price is. When there are no contracts/competition, all you can do is set the first price very low/high. So you probably made a bad deal there.
That there is zero competition on local markts has several reasons. From inflation (why sell something today thats worth 10% more tomorrow?), over contract fee (up to10% fee each time you need to adjust a contract price), to bad design (few professions allowing easy self supply, etc.).
It was for example always about knowing the labor value in gold. You could find this out by looking at actual market prices, and see that e.g. ships usually sold for about 100 gold/LH. Then you could figure out what a reasonable price would be for every single labor based good. What was important when you tried to buy/sell something for that competition was very low, like materials, cannons or other ships. Otherwise you would pay the fee each time you need to adjust the price. What you could do constantly without contract fees to figure out when a good starts selling, or players start selling to you.
Again doubloons are mainly a crafting material, not a currency. And because local trade has so many issues, people mostly supply themselfes, and stockpile materials. If you could buy the ship you need from the market for reals, you could sell your doubloons. But you cant, so people dont sell them. A major reason that you cant sell anything for profit is that people dont rely on your labor/goods, as long as they have labor contracts. When they dont like the market price, they can use labor contracts to craft it themselfes. And they can even trade the contracts to their friend if they arent a shipbuilder themselfes. So prices drop until it becomes impossible to sell anything with any margin. The effect of labor inflation caused by labor contracts, that didnt get wiped.
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6 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:
Correct. Captains already selling dubloons on the market by the hundreds and thousands, for reals.
So, captains that want to exchange reals for dubloons can buy them, and if you want reals you can sell them.
Havent seen this yet. Hundreds to thousands also isnt much. When just a few players want to buy doubloons for the next 1-2 ships, we are talking about 100k demand already.
The point is that players still own the inflated gold/reals. Why should they sell any valuable materials for reals. And doubloons are as much a currency as teak logs are. Both is mainly a crafting material. Why arent players selling teak logs? Or are they? In general such materials are stockpiled, not sold.
I guess for newer players its profitable to sell their doubloon for lots of reals, cause they dont own 500k reals from prepatch. Or when you dont need doubloon stuff, cause youre just using 5th rates nevertheless, you would probably sell them. What price are those doubloons selling for?
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4 hours ago, Hethwill the Red Duke said:
In Market players can buy and sell dubloons, theoretically exchanging them.
Players cant print them. Npcs can.
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8 hours ago, Macjimm said:
Not my idea of fun. But I would appreciate a game where denying the enemy cargo could benefit my nation.
Sure it would be nice to have this option in case you really care about your nation or your cargo is super important. But then dumping cargo needs to be a decision you really need to think about. Like in RL, where you wouldnt have been treated very friendly after dumping enemy treasure. Even then it might not work, when the chance of no reward is still high enough to scare off the majority of players.
We dont care about our lifes, thats the issue. It would be cool though if we did. You could make cargo dumping work, as well as surrendering in a very realistic way. If someone surrenders you could let the player decide to kill him or not, depending on the person, his previous actions, and how moral you want to be. Moral decisions that would have concequences and would define who you are, instead of just choosing pirates to be the bad guy. Just slaughter everyone, and you are likely to get killed aswell.
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1 hour ago, Macjimm said:
"Fun" depends on your viewpoint.
Mechanics have to work, and nobody would ever design a game that lets players fool around with each other. Because this is simply not fun.
Sure it might be fun for someone to piss off someone else by dumping the cargo. But when every trader/ship would just dump its cargo to piss off the enemy, players would just stop hunting traders/players for their cargo. No satisfaction anymore for him, less gameplay options for the others.
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38 minutes ago, admin said:
Every ship you see in the open world (even NPCs) could carry something valuable and is worth trying to attack.
Why do you need to place loot in cargo to achieve this?
When you want randomness in loot, you can do it either way.
Sure its realistic to loot the cargo. But realism isnt focussed on anywhere else. Why here, at huge quality of life cost for the player, and tribunal effort for you?
Whats the reasoning behind it besides realism?
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3 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:
The consequence in days of old was how pissed off the captors would get if you threw away all their hard earned loot. That could make a major difference in how you are treated as a prisoner. Realistically, they didn't haul the heavy cargo out of the hold and toss it at all. We do it because its consequence free.
And sailors would probably care about there lifes much more than about cargo they dont even own. But its hard to represent this somehow in game.
An idea could be to give your sailors a chance to protest. So your ship could just stop and cargo dumping fails. But still you would push that button every single time after the point of no escape is reached...
7 minutes ago, Angus MacDuff said:How about just removing the ability to toss anything that weighs 100 tones?
Same, you would just push that button every single time you can.
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So you could steal your allies loot, and when he attacks after 3 warnings you can sink and loot him aswell? There might be no need for actual enemies anymore then.
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2 hours ago, Powderhorn said:
while also rewarding those who are alert
How are you rewarded as the merchant by dumping your cargo? For you its no difference, youre loosing the cargo so or so.
A mechanics that just frustrates other players and does nothing else, is very bad game design.
A mechanic that players use every single time in a certain situation without thinking, is bad game design.
If they want this in the game, dumping cargo should have a serious drawback, so it wouldnt happen very often and players would need to actually make decisions. Something like reduced reputation, if there was reputation. Or reduced crew capacity for the next 24 hours, but traders probably wouldnt care. I dont think there are good ways to balance this, so it should be removed. You could slow it down extremely so players would atleast need to evaluate the point of no escape right, but they would still use it every single time.
2 hours ago, Powderhorn said:I would further suggest that dumped cargo remain on the open world for looting for two minutes.
I think it should float inside the instance then, because it makes no sense that you need to leave the instance to loot what the trader just dumped right infront of you.
But thats a good idea, making the hunter choose between ship and cargo, and the trader needs to dump early enough. If he doesnt though the chase just takes much longer.
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11 hours ago, Macjimm said:
I've been thinking, dreaming, about content since I read about the proposed game, years ago.
But almost everything seems to be focused on battles, combat, fighting or making ships. Now there is a big effort on the appearance of the UI.
I'd be very pleased if the content was created before release, or after release.
Its a sandbox game! Meaning there is no need for artificial content youre having in mind.
"Making ships" means complex and dynamic economy."Fighting" means dynamic conquest. Player made content, thats all content it needs. And still both isnt working, possibly because people having no idea what theyre talking about are complaining about "additional content" all the time.
They didnt focus on that since years. All the time additional content is tested. New missions, new events, new ships and upgrades, new perks, new currencies, new mechanics like fishing or bottles, etc. Im not saying all this is bad in general, but it wont do much if the foundation isnt there. Also lots of stuff would just become redundant if economy for example would work properly. Wasted resources in multiple ways.
Then what additional content are people thinking about. Either it contradicts "sandbox", or it would be redundant with functional core mechanics, or the effect would be minor compared to the work they would need to put into it. There arent many options. Possible ideas for example include complex AI. AI cant even handle larger ships and only follows fixed OW routes, so what effort would it take to make complex AI scenarios work. Exploration would make sense, but how do it without on land mechanics, and without lots of handmade stuff to not make it repetitive?! Impossible for such a small team.
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On 9/28/2018 at 11:35 PM, admin said:
We are actually thinking of removing the LH limits completely (remove free hours - remove ceilings - if you have gold doubloons - you can buy workforce).
A limited amount of labour/production per day is what would make players trade and interact with each other. Current economy would be all about trading labour, unless you drastically change and restrict the amount of different goods a player is allowed to craft and produce. (More professions would be a very good thing in general)
And still this wouldnt work... The great thing about limited labour/production capacity is that everyone has similar power and everyone can be important. No matter how rich you are, how casual you are, how much you grind, and how new you are. Your are important for others, and others always remain important for you. It should be more than obvious what happens without such limits. And we saw it to some extend, just that eco was broken already when you introduced labour for marks. Think about what happens when single players are able to supply a whole nation, and why this is incredibly bad game design.
Also it is independent from currency inflation, that otherwise directly makes materials and ships redundant. And currency is difficult to balance. Labour balancing is much easier, because you can define accurately the amount that players generate.
Maybe you can elaborate what your alternative plan is for economy, maybe its genius... But if you want to make the current eco idea work, as a very first step labour contracts for marks/in general would need to be removed again.
On 9/28/2018 at 11:35 PM, admin said:Whats the point except to delay the player?
An important difference (especially for you) is that with production over time players need to log in more often to get the maximum out of their production capacity, instead of just logging in one time each two days. For the player this would mean that they need to manage production and plan for the future. Thats fun, adds depth and difficulty.
Sure this wouldnt bring those players out to the sea directly, but it increases the probability that they would join someone asking for help, or that they decide to keep playing.
Besides i would argue for the player it "feels" better and more real to craft something over time.
On 9/29/2018 at 3:59 AM, Teutonic said:It could and would certainly help to "fight" alts. Your limiting factor would be doubloons (essentially combat marks...right?) so you'd have to go out and farm them from sinking AI or completing missions. I only know of a few people who can effective multi-box and even then it would become tedious.
When the problem is that alts provide economic advantages, removing economy is not a solution... Economy needs players to be limited by production capacity and professions. Therefore there most likely isnt a way to fight eco alts. Cause of the problem is that alts got accepted as part of an economic game, and thats now one of the downsides we have to live with. I know you dont want to remove anything, but making something redundant is basically the same, and even worse cause it eats resources and might be annoying.
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So is anyone paying for the insurance, or is it a gold print?
If its printing gold it wouldnt really do anything. If you add another gold source you would need to adjust others, ergo ships would need to become accordingly more expensive to produce. To combine insurance and economy you somehow need make the guy never loosing ships pay for the players loosing more often.
In general how is the material cost determined, that depends on the current labour value, that depends on current inflation? Or is it the resource cost?
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On 8/27/2018 at 3:38 PM, Wraith said:
Why not just make area control work all the time, chasers or no? If the intent is grief, then players will be running ships that have control anyway. Having control allows for much better tactical decisions when chasing and it doesn't make any sense as a "magic" feature that changes the engagement.
This would make most sense... but probably suggested 10 times already. Maybe this time were atleast going to get some reasoning. It makes zero sense to balance something with different rule sets, so this would be interesting to hear.
Give people one general rule set that makes sense and reflects realism and doesnt change. Spawn distance is a very similar thing. While after years we slowly understood that escaping 10 meters infront of someone is bad even if we ignore the realism aspects, why allow spawns so close?! Or so far that defensive tagging is an option. Whats bad about a fixed spawn distance, that could depend on calliber/effective cannon range? We should atleast test stuff like this... Most restrictions are only needed because such basic mechanics arent working properly.
Its stupid to change fundamental mechanics. Besides the argument of realism what nobody wants to hear anymore, it makes the game more complicated, in a bad way. In the end youre going to need a manual explaining what youre not allowed to do with what ship under what circumstances, etc., explaining all the restrictions, different zones, different timers, different mechanics... for a sandbox style game.
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Diplomacy would also be necessary for proper trade between nations. This could only work with trade agreements, properly implemented with mechanics that inform and punish violation.
When RvR works some diplomacy would probably happen between clans nevertheless. Not including it in the game just makes it more complicated/annoying and excludes many players. Goal should really be nation vs nation, not totally clan based RvR. Sure limited slot PBs will always be clan based and organised, but there is so much more to it.
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5 hours ago, maturin said:
Also, starting at fight from 3 shiplengths away is cancer.
You can spawn ships at the distance you want. For example at 700m barely inside control range.
I dont get your points why it shoudnt be possible. When a ship appears infront of you and he has the wind, then thats how it is. Why should you magically get behind him?! You can manouver as much as you want, when you get within effective cannon range combat starts as it would in reality. Battles arent fought at 700m, there is plenty of room to manouver. You can also increase control + spawn range for more room, at cost of longer lasting chases.
Engine limitations?! We only change the condition for the instance to open.
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1 hour ago, Jon Snow lets go said:
They tried after wipe, people hated it.
Basic production is cheap because majority doesnt want to afk sail around for hours just to get one ship.
Im all for a dynamic nice economy, I played games like Path of Exile only for that reason. But I think it doesnt work in this game because it seems to be impossible to have a global market with dynamic bidding from players. Probably because either the engine they use is very static (thats why new ressources "spawn" in specific intervalls) or because the servers are from the last century or so and they need maintenance to move stuff from port to port (look at tow to port). Or Both.
And the way it is right now its not really trading, its sitting in port 24/7 to put the highest price up and hope for a drop.
Im just talking about balancing and there is no reason this should not be possible. You could keep npc goods. But these dont justify labour and gold inflation.
They never properly tested anything... And if people hate that they dont get free first rates anymore we shouldnt care at all. If it turns out that low and medium ranks have problems to get ships thats completely different, but no reason to cause inflation. We could make small and medium ships ridiculously cheap, if just other ships become more expensive accordingly, without effecting inflation. Infinite possibilities to set this up. They not tried one, and if you ask devs they dont care about inflation at all.
Dynamic trade between nations or just production port and capital is a more complicated topic. But if players would just trade their labour on the market, it would already improve alot.
What has afk sail to do with economic balancing?!
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1 hour ago, Jon Snow lets go said:
We have enough cheap and common ressources, leave the few rare resources the way they are.
Why.... Why make 80% of resources, the whole player production worthless and 20%, npc goods artificially made rare, extremely valuable?!
Why refuse to fix labour and gold inflation?! Why not just balance labour, gold and production rates to balance player production / to make all produced resources valuable? Keep npc goods, but they arent necessary and bad for several reasons.
Why not vary production rate and labour cost to make special resources more valuable and rare, while prices remain dynamic?
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Seems were back where we started. Poor screening guys have to beg for marks / nations need to organise mark distribution by themselfes.
50 minutes ago, admin said:There must be a way to gain hostility if defenders do not come. Thus NPCs are needed in all battles.
Issue with npcs: If npcs are freekill, thats just annoying grind. If npcs are challenging, youre just loosing against any players joining. You get gameplay thats either annoying or frustrating.
19 minutes ago, Wraith said:I'd suggest that hostility accrues for a player in the region by the BR of the ship they are sailing and the number of minutes they are in the attacker circle zone of the port they want, a blockade if you will.
The problem might be kiting, outside or inside the instance.
Maybe hostility just isnt a good mechanic. Wasnt it ment to simulate front lines? Atleast thats how i remember it. The question then should be if it achieves that goal.
If the frontline part isnt working, whats so bad about flags. The time between flag and attack can be set how we want it to be. It could e.g. provide enough time to tow defensive ships to where theyre needed. Buying flags atleast seems a good way to consume crafted materials, war supplies are in the game already. When people buy lots of fake flags they just seem too cheap to craft.
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1 hour ago, Jon Snow lets go said:
The 1st try was to do it through higher crafting costs, but people just grinded more and everyone had tons of 1st rates again. It didnt work.
It didnt work because once you got a large ship your grind income increased exponentially. Also conquest wasnt working, people had just all time to grind for the largest possible ships. When no ships need to be replaced, you can make ships as expensive as you want without effect.
Those ships need upkeep/repair cost that results in similar or even less income than mid lvl captains earn. Balancing in general becomes impossible. You cant make mid lvl ships well accessable for mid level captains and at the same time still valuable for high rank captains like this.
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3 hours ago, admin said:
Captains .Please review and suggest improvements
What is the goal?! Good sense of realism, ergo large ships feeling heavy etc.? All ships handling well? Balancing in terms of competetive play/fairness? Something else?
If you just ask people like you did you'll only get subjective opinions, people telling you to buff their favourite ships etc. Many went offtopic already discussing about BR, thickness, Mast HP etc.
Just saying.
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Operations: Welcome to the Caribbean - suggestions
in Current Feature Improvement Suggestions
Posted
The point is you are wasting not only your time, but everyones time, by adding, changing or removing features, based on a broken core game. Everything you add, this included, might be redundant once you fixed basic mechanics after a full wipe. And this is not just since today, but for a whole year now.
It makes no sense to care about new players, but ignore inflation that especially affects new players. It is a joke to claim that materials are redundant while every single good is inflated since month... Everything you did against ganking didnt solve the cause of the issue, and becomes redundant the moment you achieve that. BR restrictions, everything you did to reduce 1st rate PBs becomes redundant once you reduced 1st rate production naturally. Etc.
We might like a features that might not work with existent features, and even make an existent feature redundant. You are responsible to make everything that gets added to the game work. Could you confirm that? Then look at the game please. Im just working on a topic pointing out once again how you made crafting and local trade redundant, and how poorly this is designed.
Dont you want us to help you engineering the most perfect game possible? Or what is the goal. Making a game that not everyone hates? Thats a pretty good description of current NA...