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Seafaring Trades Changes?
@TectonNot that it's really what anybody's attention is on right now, but did something change with Seafaring trades or is it just the RNG being evil again? There used to be a decent trade (i.e. 25cr or Crown) at least once every other RL week or so. But I've been checking every day and haven't seen either of these for over a RL month (not exaggerating).
I know as soon as seafaring gets brought up it goes into how it needs a whole overhaul, blah, blah - but I'm just asking specifically about those trades. I would think that wouldn't require hardly anything to put back or tweak. Because seriously, who's going to pay 50+k in freight and docking fees for 5 bound credits? If somebody would do that I'd like to meet them as I have some things to sell them, too....
Comments
Ok, tks. RNG strikes again!
Couple things here.
60 deals? What? Morale, 65k gold 75k gold 100k gold, the hat, the rum, morale, crew experience, the birds which i guess you can count twice becaue there are 2 types, the griffen, the giraffe, The crown, the silver token that hasn't shown up in like a year and I think that's it, unless you're counting variations in things like where you accept/deliver and the end product needed like gems over spice.
Then there is the fun bit where most of the deals aren't worth it, you lose money on the 65k deal the 75k deal you make a profit but your time would be better spent bashing. The crew experience is so little it may as well be nothing, morale you may as well just find someone with a bait bucket and pay them for their bait instead of wasting your time and gold on sailing and doking fees and the one time I did the ammo deal I got 16 flares 1 dart and 1 starshot. That's not even 5k worth of ammo. Oh and The rum? It falls from your inv on qq.
Sorry, bit of a rant. Trade deals piss me off though. It is a terrible confusing system and when there are crappy deals people don't do them and when people don't do deals I have nobody to sink and when I have nobody to sink I get cranky.
Obviously there shouldn't be amazing deals every day, crowns and tokens and "easy" gold every day aren't good for the game, but most of the deals aren't worth your time let alone your gold.
Yeah, I'm not sure where the 60 assorted trade thing comes in either. The only ones I've seen are hat, barrel of rum, ammo, 65k, 5 bound credits, 100k, 75k, gryphon, caged bird, morale, and maybe some others. There would usually be either a 100k or a crown deal at least every other week, and honestly these are the only ones most people even bother with since most trades require an initial investment of 35k-48k for the first batch of trade goods.
In the last month and a half, I noticed that the crown deals have been completely absent, so have just waited for the more lucrative ones (and by that I really just mean the 100k mostly) because one can make more from hunting in the same amount of time they'd spend sailing around doing the trades, and that's only for roughly half of the original payout when you subtract your initial starting cost for cargo as well as port fees.
Still, it's better than nothing, but I thought the crown deals and the 100k deals would be semi-frequently if nothing else, as the rest of the trades are just not that enticing for the time and gold needed to be invested for them.
I was actually under the impression that the Crown and Token deals had been rescinded entirely, as were many, if not most people in The Mariner's Guild (because that's where I asked). Only today did it come out that those things do technically still exist as possibilities, as now even the 25 bound credit deals seem quite rare and we were discussing those.
Probably doubles/triples in the list to adjust the rarity of things.
I remember that there was a Mayan Crown deal on the day before the most recent Mayan Crown credit promotion happened, then it got removed before the next Serenade. That always made me laugh.
Ya 8pm EST the day the new SoW items were announced like only a few hours earlier. Pretty sure the only people able to accept the deal before it got pulled were Ashtani and PoM because everyone else wanted to wait until there were fewer sharks on the water. Good times
I was so pissed when that happened.
But then @Kross made things better, so everything went better than expected.
That love soon might end You are unbreaking
And be known in its aching Though quaking
Shown in this shaking Though crazy
Lately of my wasteland, baby That's just wasteland, baby
@Kross makes everything better, he's the official Snugglebunny of Achaea. Srsly, ask him for a snuggle next time you see him IG, you won't be disappointed.
The issue isn't the lack of rewards, it is rewards like 5 bound credits for about 36,000 in trade goods plus docking fees which vary by the routes you can take and your time. It's not worth the time and effort. Or deals like the ammo one that give you about 6,000 gold worth of ammo for a similar investment of time and gold. Or the 65,000 and 75,000 gold trade deals requiring the same amount of trade goods as the 100,000 deal.
The only deals worth putting the time and gold into after accouting for the initial investment in cargo, plus your time (and risk for some) are the two 100k deals, the crown and the 25 bound credits. The bird carge, with two possible pets and the two mounts and the hat (it is a striking sea captain's hat by the way, not a kick ass pirate hat) can also be worth it if you want that sort of thing but in terms of making gold of the market, not so much. They are old and the market is flooded now. As mentioned there is also the Silver token deal but that hasn't been seen in over a year. But that's understandable at least. Each token means an investment of admin time on customisations.
All the other deals however are a waste of gold. You can get the rewards they offer far faster and far cheaper without even owning a ship.
There's also the pirate factor. The ideal situation is that Mariners (i.e. Targossian, Eleusian, and Cyrenian sailors) will start to get a bit more competent and fight back, but that actually means the seas will become more of a gold sink than they are (and it seems like they're a very good gold sink). It's really hard to get excited about these mostly very anemic trade deals in and of themselves in that environment.
I'm also confused at what is meant by some sort of distinction between deals and rewards, and how or whether that distinction matters.
She means there are variations in the trade deals, like 100k gold for 5 spices or 100k for 5 gems. So there are two different 100k trade deals.
No, of course not. It makes sense IC and OOC of course you don't want crowns and credits and gold flowing into the economy every day. But there is a line between not-so-good and pointless and most of the deals are on the wrong side of that line to the detriment of seafaring conflict. trades being the only thing that makes people move ships around, instead of beaching a ship to use for island bashing access or sitting somewhere to fish or dive which I've seen less and less of lately but that's probably pom/Ashtan's fault. Because we're nasty bullies like that.
Well can tell you at least on the Targossas end, that will not be happening. Pretty much most of our ships are probably going to be drydocked from lack of use.
Fair enough. I definitely understand dormancy. That said, we're hoping to do another mini-exercise at the arena shortly after the Reckoning ends. It will be advertised on Mariners again.
They are. But while getting sunk is exciting in a way, there's a definitely chilling effect (when you actually get sunk). I was very lucky mine was close to shore (it's actually a good thing this is a favorite tactic, as a loss far from shore can be pretty devastating). I think you need a certain level of justified confidence in your skills, and you also need to not be sailing alone (things I think you've already got covered).
Yeah, if I'm not in the right harbour to accept a good deal, I normally won't bother, and I won't try to actually complete it until things have hopefully cooled off, usually in legs. I feel the same way about the pirates (very mixed; is it exciting or a fun crushing pain in the ass?). The set-up means the oceans are the one place you have non-comms meeting comms as the default. It's hard for me to imagine no pirates, however. Talk about boring as shit.
er, coms...
Pirates can do that exactly because the good deals are infrequent. If there were 3-4 different worthwhile trade deals at any given time, there would always be a reason for people to be out trading, there wouldn't be any specific point where the pirates can go "there's a good trade deal now, so we can catch the ships following that one predictable route".
^I bought Jarrod's (I think it was him) Strade thingy, because screw that. But yes, really?
What? 4 months? Girl, slip the PoM 20k and you're safe for 6 days, plenty of time to knock out a single trade deal. Shameless plug, I know but keeping people off the water completely isn't what we want as an organization or as players.
The worst are routes that leave you with extra bits just sitting in your hold. Wasted gold that you don't get anything from until you've done the route so many times that all the leftovers add up to a completed deal. Not to mention the fact that you can lose some trade goods when you get sunk (so I've been told) so even id you do try to save them up you could just end up losing that much more.
To me the ideal system would be something that has people wanting to move from harbour to harbour every day, not just when there is a great deal on the table which would mean more people on the water at any given time instead of a once weekly/monthly rush. There would also need to be more routes or at least delivery points. If someone really wanted to they could just blockade Tasur'ke or Thraasi. It takes nothing to sit inside a harbour, wait for a ship to show up, jump out of the harbour and fire a boarding deck/grapple/be an asshole. The greatest strength to seafaring as it's own system and not just a way to access semi-private bashing areas or easy gold through fishing is ship trade and the unique items the system has or had to offer with most of that being the crowns which translate into either gold/credits through the market or the SoW inventory which otherwise could only really be accessed during the month of a corwn promotion which now seems far and away less successful than the new talisman promos.
Ainia's probably high profile enough that paying off PoM feels awkward. I'd feel awkward because I accepted a maritime aide position, which I'd never have done if it weren't a house req, but glad I did. All in all, though, more people should try the whole "pay off the dirty pirates" thing.
Not sure if Cyrene has rules against it, either. Hopefully we don't.
We only recently started to keep a record of the expired contracts, most of those are "low profile" characters. But we've had a few from CTN and Mariners guild members, those made me chuckle. we're not in the business of dragging people's names though the mud though. Your secret is safe with us.
Paying off the pirates? I'd hope not. I mean I've never heard anything like that but that would be one shit law. "You're not allowed to pay off the pirates, you shut your Gods damned mouth and let your ship sink if they catch you and you'd damn well better go down with your ship or it's a CDF for you!" heh
It might fall under trading/doing business with city enemies, and it might depend on who you talk to in city leadership. I'm going to see if I can get an authoritative answer, but yes, it would be shitty.