Ship Changes!

Skye

My knee jerk reaction to the prism was instant-dislike, but then I realised with a few tweaks it was still workable. I'm sorry that admin got forced to remove it.

Ships may be prismed to from the harbour... however. As some people pointed out, Targossas and Ashtan have city harbours which can be protected by guards. Supposing the same protection was afforded to people docked at the two (maybe three) major harbours (Thraasi, Tasur'ke, Zanzibaar). You already pay 2k to dock there, perhaps you could add on an optional 100 per achaean day upkeep cost as 'harbour insurance'.

Surely on such a well equipped harbour there'd be harbour guards and such who'd shoo you away if you attempt to break into a ship that's not yours.

Let's also not forget it's not hard to build additional cabins with additional perms and sigils to store your loot instead of just leaving it lying all over your crow's nest. The difference between that and a subdivision house is that if there's no one on the ship when the sigils decay, nobody's going to be able to break-in anyway. Items that go missing become subject to a very small list of suspects, unless you let everyone in the city onboard your ship.

Shirszae

@Skye That would just mean those harbours would fill instantly, and likely remain full forever or nearly so. 

Skye

Then that becomes a different problem to be solved.

Some people asked for a lifting of harbour limits before, which would have been a compromise. Bearing in mind that if everyone were docked at just those three harbours, then all pirates have to do is literally just dock there and wait for you to leave (not that they don't already but this narrows things down even more).

I do think that that along with the shipreturn change, a lot of people would've sold or just drydocked their ships though.

Kinilan

...What the hell just happened? Ugh what the fuck is in my mouth?

Ruth

A tentacle is in your mouth.

Kinilan

Ruth said:

There are some people like me who will sail out to distant harbours and walk to every mainland harbour to look at HARBOUR SHIPS (or get someone to do it for me. I like my minions.) Or track which harbour my person of interest went to, before he/she isn't able to be sensed. I like to know who's in what harbour so I can sail out for them if I hear that the count in a harbour has dropped. 

Prism will then be grief mode time for me.

Sometimes you make me want to come back to Mhaldor.

Tahquil

What do people think about re-instating the prismable thing, but also allowing  no-prism be upgrade to be purchased with the limitation of only in private room per ship?

Shirszae

I honestly would prefer something to disallow people from boarding ships if they've recently been involved in any manner of conflict, or something along those lines.

Salindera

Tahquil said:

What do people think about re-instating the prismable thing, but also allowing  no-prism be upgrade to be purchased with the limitation of only in private room per ship?

If privacy and safety are desirable features on ships for how some people play the game, then putting up a paywall for people to have it just seems onerous, to me.

Tahquil

Could use the 10 minute non-aggressive check for class change

Trevize

Salindera said:

Tahquil said:

What do people think about re-instating the prismable thing, but also allowing  no-prism be upgrade to be purchased with the limitation of only in private room per ship?

If privacy and safety are desirable features on ships for how some people play the game, then putting up a paywall for people to have it just seems onerous, to me.

The problem is privacy and safety are not an intended use of ships.

Ultimately, if this has a strong desire among the playerbase, it should be requested in a manner that suits, rather than abusing another mechanic to achieve it.

Greys

Is there really that many people who use ships to evade combat? Its hard for me to judge as the people I know are veiled with gems so I wouldn't know.

Alarke

Why? Why? Why?  do you always have to ruin the things I like about the game. Why can't there just be something you can enjoy? This might be it for me.

Kiet

Alarke said:

Why? Why? Why?  do you always have to ruin the things I like about the game. Why can't there just be something you can enjoy? This might be it for me.

It already got reverted, calm your horses

Elowin

@Alarke

Grandue said:

ANNOUNCE NEWS #4451                                     (11/05/2015 at 20:17)  

From   : Tecton the Terraformer

To     : Everyone

Subject: On seafaring changes

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As much as we play "Gods", we're far from infallible creatures. A couple of the ship changes we've 

recently put in were not well received, and as such, we're reverting them while we consider better 

ways to address the problem. That's not to say we won't be making adjustments in the future to these 

aspects of ships and seafaring, but these particular changes aren't the right ones. We apologise for 

any anguish or frustration caused by these changes, and we look forward to bringing you the our next 

batch of changes (which should have many more positive changes than negative!)

Details of the reverted changes:

* SHIPRETURN (Seafaring)

* PRISM (Tattoos)

Salindera

Trevize said:

The problem is privacy and safety are not an intended use of ships.

Not that this is the only instance of it, but this sort of attitude is pretty frustrating, IMO. People play this game in different ways for different reasons, and trying to claim some sort of essentialism where things are supposed to be a certain way and people that enjoy different things are in the wrong.

If there's one thing this thread really seems to display, is that people enjoy features of this game for different reasons. As long as people's fun isn't seriously infringing on your fun, why get upset about it?

Trevize

Salindera said:

Trevize said:

The problem is privacy and safety are not an intended use of ships.

Not that this is the only instance of it, but this sort of attitude is pretty frustrating, IMO. People play this game in different ways for different reasons, and trying to claim some sort of essentialism where things are supposed to be a certain way and people that enjoy different things are in the wrong.

If there's one thing this thread really seems to display, is that people enjoy features of this game for different reasons. As long as people's fun isn't seriously infringing on your fun, why get upset about it?

Being creative is one thing. I applaud that. Abusing a mechanic and getting it taken away/changed as a result is another, and I dislike that.

edit: To be clear: I am not against people getting privacy/safety. Others I have talked to have said they don't care if it's another method aside from ships, they just want the aforementioned benefits. Using ships in an unintended way to get it has clearly placed ship mechanics such as they are on the plate to be nerfed.

Thus, abuse of an unintended mechanic is likely to make things more difficult. That is my objection. The requested goal (privacy/safety) is something I have no feelings towards one way or the other.

Aerek

Making shipreturn take figurehead energy (not a huge amount) seems like it'd solve the worst abuses of ships-as-portals while not taking away the functionality of shipreturn. Folks would at least have to sail about a bit to recharge their stuff after using it as a portal target. I think that's fair.

Prism is trickier. While, yes, you can always stop prisming in by moving, that does put all the power into the hands of the prism'er. Once they know you're in harbour, as long as they keep trying to prism, whatever meeting/interaction you were having is over. You just have to keep moving around your ship until the other guy gets bored, but I suppose you can always sail out of the harbour. Allowing prism to reach ships in harbour, but allowing non-prism to be installed on ships, seems fair to me. You could pay booku to make (the cabin) saferooms again, but that's not different from regular housing.

I don't think the 10-minute thing for combat would really matter, because the worst abuses of ships-as-saferooms isn't when someone is jumped and flees, it's when someone knows a faction WILL be after them and beats them to the ship. (Like the Conclave event, or if someone stole your org's cash and made a beeline for a ship). The 10-minute thing wouldn't really solve those cases.

Eld

Tharvis said:

Eld said:

Razzlo said:

Oh, I think housing is unsafe too...which is why I preferred ships until today. It just makes sense to stop ships from being fortresses of solitude for the case of running from conflict and such. I think the changes went too far and so did the administration it looks like. I think that there is a happy medium in there where ships are no longer complete places of safety while in dock and one where ships are no longer a portal to be used to outside islands all willy nilly like.

I would suggest making gare from far out in the wilderness not possible (to force people to use expensive tokens) . Making ship return cost an arm and a leg or limit it per month or something like that so people don't just park for comms and hunting spots.

As far as the fortress thing. I am not sure how to balance that out. I think if they want to keep going down that path...nonprisming being allowed for cabin housing and some added defense against intruders would be a good start.

Gare already doesn't work from the outer islands (i.e., any you can't reach by ferry). You can get basically the same functionality with the bronze token from the SoW, but with a 1-hour cooldown between uses.

@Eld gare works from the outer islands wilderness, which is actually quite actively used by the people that figured it out

Oh, huh. I'm a little surprised a bug like that hasn't been fixed in 2 years (unless it somehow reappeared after the outer islands changes came in), but also doesn't sound too hard to just fix it and move on.

Sarapis

Just to be clear, we don't view people using ships as safehouses or teleport devices as abusing anything. If we did, it'd have been changed a long time ago. It's true that the original intention of ships wasn't to have them used in those particular ways, but that's ok - one of the hallmarks of interesting games with long-term appeal are emergent play patterns the developers didn't explicitly plan for. Some of those are good, some aren't. (For instance, "Time 'Til Penis" refers to how long it'll take users that have any control over the environment to use that control to make a penis...that tends to be viewed as not-exactly-a-great emergent phenomena.)

I'm not closely involved in the ship changes so I can't comment on Tecton's view or what's likely to happen, but I suspect that some middle ground will be found, or some change will be made that makes this not an issue one way or another. We shall see!

Trevize

My personal opinion is that the problem isn't in the singular motion of dragon garing back, but the potential yo-yo of gare/shipreturn negating the need to sail somewhere completely.

If there was a solution to the yo-yo effect while retaining the gare from island ability, that would be my preference. I'm not sure precisely how that could be reasonably worked, though.

Trevize

Sarapis said:

Just to be clear, we don't view people using ships as safehouses or teleport devices as abusing anything. If we did, it'd have been changed a long time ago. 

Interesting.

Stuff was changed in that regard, though, (gare not working on islands) and the recent changes (reversed though they were due to backlash) seem to further the concept that it was not desired and was considered some form of abuse. I'm curious what the intent was of the previous/current changes, if not that.

Skye

Just wanna check because I'm not sure if it's my client or just an oversight to the crew endurance removal...

But my ship prompt looks a bit strange.

outship prompt normal
Ship configured for normal prompt.
= [Sail Furled] [Hull] [Wind: SE@19 kts] [Crs/Spd: W@0] [Seas: Whitecapped]
(ex) {7700hp|7040mp|33900e|30900wp}{cdbk|} |nil ()| 0.5%XP (09:50:08.925) ship prompt battle
Ship configured for battle prompt.
= Sl Furl - hp 98%,Hl: 98%,,Wd SE@19kts,Cr/Sp W@0,Sea Whitecapped
(ex) {7700hp|7040mp|33900e|30900wp}{cdbk|} |nil ()| 0.5%XP (09:50:15.004)
ship prompt cryptic
Ship configured for cryptic prompt.
= S--@h98,H98,,W<-SE@19kts,C/S->W@0,V
(ex) {7700hp|7040mp|33900e|30900wp}{cdbk|} |nil ()| 0.5%XP (09:50:26.968)

bolded for your reference. There's like an extra comma there. 

Elowin

Yeah, I'm getting that, too. Just ignored it.

Ruth

Read @Sarapis' response. Even though serious subject is serious, can't help laughing at the time till penis analogy. Halp.

Krypton

Sarapis said:

For instance, "Time 'Til Penis" refers to how long it'll take users that have any control over the environment to use that control to make a penis...that tends to be viewed as not-exactly-a-great emergent phenomena.

Well, I don't know about Achaean "Time 'Til Penis," but Achaean "Time 'Til Vagina" is roughly two hours.

Antidas

Disclaimer: I didn't read the entire thread.

That being said, I'm sad admins opted not to stick to their guns and keep the prism change. I'm not a fan of any sort of impervious room in Achaea - such things aren't conducive to an active and alive world. If you want to sit and afk and be safe, log off. There's no reason why docked ships should be impervious fortresses like they are currently.

In regards to the shipreturn change, I agree that maybe there's a better way of handling the problem. However, in regards to all the complaints about getting marooned on islands...seriously? How hard is it to journal or QQ on your ship if you decide to sail to some island? None of the places, with the exception of Meropis, are so large that it would take you more than 30 seconds of walking to get back to your ship, and presto! No more change of being marooned. And of course in the case of Meropis, if you do happen to get marooned, you can always take the Tears of Sarapis/ferry back. I mean, come on people. Lazy much?

tl/dr bring back the changes, they were good, people were just crying because things were made a tiny bit more difficult for them.

Sarathai

Trevize said:

My personal opinion is that the problem isn't in the singular motion of dragon garing back, but the potential yo-yo of gare/shipreturn negating the need to sail somewhere completely.

If there was a solution to the yo-yo effect while retaining the gare from island ability, that would be my preference. I'm not sure precisely how that could be reasonably worked, though.

On the other hand, the people who do that spent plenty of time bashing all the way to dragon, then spent quite a few credits on crowns on a bronze token explicitly so they could multi-shipreturn, on top of having a ship (also a gold sink, assuming self-owned; if not, they can't change their shipreturn location and have their ship "locked" to one island for as long as they want to do it). It's not something that's strictly simple, it's a combination of factors, several of them expensive/time-intensive. If people put in that effort for all those things and want to do that, I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to do so.

Kyrra

The one time my ship sank in Zaphar harbour, I just walked from Zanzibaar to Zaphar with a Transoceanic Orb. Those things are just magic.

Kiet

That's the same argument that had 'well they put in all the effort, why shouldn't people get to be dragon occultist/monk?'

Things need to be balanced around what's best for the game, and shipreturn taxi systems make it impossible to up rewards on remote islands without screwing things up, which makes it not really all that worth it for people who actually have to sail.