Foraging!

Israyhl

I've been looking over all the ideas and some of the feedback with foraging, and figured it could use its own thread! 

What do people think so far? Do people like it? What needs improved? 

My thoughts: Wood is not spawning nearly enough. I am getting maybe 300-600 per IG year (12.5 days) at most. The commodity market has been drained pretty dry. As of this writing, there is a total of 10,106 wood total on CM LIST. A list of things that take wood:

Room credits (200 wood per, 10 room credits per room = 2000 wood per room In-subs)

Ships (1 Shipwood = 50 wood + 10 iron.  Windcutter = 200 shipwood = 10,000 wood)

Furnishing (Ranging from 100-ish wood to 1000+ wood per item)

While it can be argued these numbers are hyperbole to prove a point, the point I am trying to make is with the current wood production, many of these items went from somewhat hard to obtain to incredibly hard or bordering on prohibitive. 

Mroxyl

I think fibre is reasonably balanced, but wood availability is low to get foraged. With the new things introduced using so much wood, plus the older things such as housing, supply should be increased by 50-100%. That would still give the function of being a gold sink, while lowering some of the frustration of not being able to get things.

Taryius

Mroxyl said:

That would still give the function of being a gold sink.

Part of the problem is it is no longer really a gold sink, while also being heavily time gated now. Even if the yearly amount of wood being generated is the same as the old comm shop systems, its being spread much much thinner around the game, throttling individual generation and forcing people to pay others for their time.

It costs me <1g per wood to forage it up, though I'm only able to earn about 20-30 per hour while supplies last. It is as if comm shops had their prices reduced to 1 gold per wood, but people could only buy 30 wood an hour, until stock ran out. Everyone is going to flood in, buy their daily wood for practically zero cost, effort or risk, even if it isn't going to be used, and because it costs 1g per there is no reason not to resell it. The people that actually need or want more than 30 wood per hour need to pay whatever prices others are selling at, and demand is high, so prices are high.

It'd be less impactful if more could be foraged by an individual, had a gold cost that dissuaded mindless participation, or aggressive foraging methods were more impactful and could actually kill foraging parties of people.  

Makarios

We're definitely open to some of these suggestions.

We'll talk about wood production, but I do think the scale of participation has made our numbers a little conservative when it comes to forager battles. Now that we have some data to work with we can definitely adjust those upwards to make that more viable.

Increased gold costs, possibly something we can do. We set these low initially to avoid punishing people with early-release mistakes, it may be worth reevaluating at this juncture.

Vhaith

I tried foraging, totally forgot I'd tried it, and then was confused when I had a message about it.
That 14 wood though.

Reyson

I think the proportions are just way off. As it stands, foraging enough to buy an 80 room credit upgrade kind of makes me stare blankly at my screen. 

Shipfitting I'm sure is even more nuts.

And that's not counting casks and whatnot. 

When production is so far outstripped by the costs of things, it gets a little ridiculous, and having at least two high-expenditure activities (housing, shipfitting) tied to one very limited resource is punishing on the player. Frankly, I'd rather not have to forage for a couple RL months to be able to build my house in a game.

Adrik

Don't forget most cities spend 250 wood PER MONTH.

I started foraging the Northern Ithmia as soon as Winter started. I finished in 24 hours to it being completely dry. I said to myself "No way everywhere else is dry!"

I then checked. "This area is devoid of resources." For every single area.

I tried to do offensive forager stuff, since i had level 4 gobbos. Took 30 damage within 1 hour to one of my goblins and 2 others took 20. I'm a bit unsure why two took no damage, but it reallllyyy feels like i should absolutely NEVER send my guys on the offensive unless i am staring at my screen and know when to foragers recall. (Since you get nothing unless you full wipe an enemy squad).

Krizal

I'd prefer for (wood) foraging to be more of a gold sink in return for getting more wood out of it. Previously the cheapest wood was 26gp, but people happily paid 40-50g per wood on CM. Now it seems everyone can forage for practically no cost, but it's much harder for anyone get meaningful quantities of wood. Even before the foraging system was introduced, people who wanted to build huge houses had trouble getting wood in quantity because of the 2k commodity limit on village commshops and 5k limit on CM, so it seems like the change has made that worse while -also- making wood production less of a gold sink.

Thaisen

The problem is that it will never be a gold sink if pricing is left up to players because nobody values their time... the number of people obviously selling comms at a loss is astounding to me.

Aegoth

Thaisen said:

The problem is that it will never be a gold sink if pricing is left up to players because nobody values their time... the number of people obviously selling comms at a loss is astounding to me.

How is selling comms at a net loss not a gold sink?

Adrik

Because i can sell 1 wood for 200g to pay my forager fees and still have 500 wood left over for that season.

Vandred

By making foraging a time sink instead of a gold sink, it introduces an interesting change in the mechanic that should not be overlooked. It makes it harder for single individuals to large income to grab the lion's share of resources and instead allows it to spread out over the whole population. I think this change in the meta is worthwhile enough to continue trying, if only to see the effects on the player economy since it carries potential benefits such as a more defined choice for buyers to choose between spending gold or time to acquire the goods they are looking for.

However, wood/fibre commodities should spawn over the course of the entire season, not just in specific predictable times. Scouting could then be changed to show the regeneration/growth rate in that area for the commodity in question instead of the current amount available within it. Additionally, I'm a big fan of players affecting the game environment around them. What if any room that was exterminated in that month would produce coal instead of wood. Likewise, reclaimed rooms in a forest would produce fibre instead of wood. For balance-sake, I imagine this wouldn't produce fibre comms in areas that don't already do so (like you couldn't collect fibre from a road that was reclaimed, etc.)

That said, forager combat definitely needs to be boosted some, right now it feels like they're hitting each other with wet noodles and no one gets anywhere - it needs to be more deadly but in the same hand not punish level 1 foragers too severely (as deadly fights inevitably lead to more level 1 groups being around).

Mroxyl

I'm not sure how changing the forager combat system improves things. If you want to steal other people's stuff, sure. I'd much rather see the quantity available addressed first, so there's actually something there to squabble over.

Vandred

Well, from what I understand, the quantity is roughly the same as it was before the system was introduced. It's just that it's spread over more players now instead of being readily available at the shop. I am of the opposite opinion, however, I do not think the quantity needs to be modified significantly, rather there should be more compelling reasons for players whom are gathering it to sell.

Mroxyl

I'm foraging for my own usage, because I'm not paying the crazy prices out there for what little is available on the market. To me, it's not worth paying it out. Once I have sufficient for my own uses, then I'll end up selling off excess. 

Reyson

Vandred said:

Well, from what I understand, the quantity is roughly the same as it was before the system was introduced. It's just that it's spread over more players now instead of being readily available at the shop. I am of the opposite opinion, however, I do not think the quantity needs to be modified significantly, rather there should be more compelling reasons for players whom are gathering it to sell.

Do you know how long it'd take you to save up 80 room credits at the rate you gather at? 

There's no way to get some things if you're not going to buy it from others, and since the admins won't step in to regulate markets, the situation you get is a complete and utter mess. 

As I said before, I definitely don't want to wait to save up 16,000 wood to get an upgrade at, what, 500 wood per month if I'm extremely lucky and never have a bad foraging day?

No, thank you. 

Vandred

Sure, we can do this math:

Let's assume wood cost, on average, 40g per before the changes. 16,000 wood would be needed for 80 room credits, which would mean an initial layout of 640,000 gold for the commodities, not counting the stone required.

Since foraging is currently a time-sink and not a gold sink, we can assume that you would be spending the gold towards buying wood on the market over the course of time it takes to forage. For argument's sake, we'll say this is 380g per wood since at the time of this post, that seems to be the average price of the available wood on the market. Though, it's very likely higher than what the actual cost would end up to be. This gives you a bit over 1,600 wood with the remaining gold left over to use in foraging the remaining 14,400 wood.

Now would can be collected during 6 months of every year but let's assume you are only able to collect for 2/3 of that, or 4 months out of the year at 500 wood per month. This would translate into roughly 7.2 game years worth of foraging, or roughly 4 months real time. During this time, you would be spending somewhere along the lines of 3 minutes (to scout/send foragers) out of your day for 4 days out of every 12 that passes so your actual time investment is fairly small (on the order of something like an hour an a half of your time) but the gratification would be delayed somewhat.

That calculation assumes fairly average values and could certainly be made faster with more involvement in the system and some luck but it should be fairly representative of the average experience.

Given the time-investment to achieve other things in the game world, I don't find this terribly out of whack. What it does hurt are impulse or emergency purchases but actual time and gold spent is actually fairly comparable to the previous system (just spread over a longer stretch of time).

Adrik

I can bash 600k in 5 days or so.

The gold was never really the issue.  People who want to make a home, or GOD FORBID, use a tradeskill or keep city improvements up have a huge uphill battle.

Also your assessment is off. As i said above. Winter started. I foraged one area in 24 hours to the point it was depleted.

I tried to scout directly after they came back. Every forest/jungle area was "devoid of resources."

So, it's more like you get 1000 a year, IF you're lucky maybe 1500.

Taryius

Vandred said:

Sure, we can do this math:

Let's assume wood cost, on average, 40g per before the changes. 16,000 wood would be needed for 80 room credits, which would mean an initial layout of 640,000 gold for the commodities, not counting the stone required.

Since foraging is currently a time-sink and not a gold sink, we can assume that you would be spending the gold towards buying wood on the market over the course of time it takes to forage. For argument's sake, we'll say this is 380g per wood since at the time of this post, that seems to be the average price of the available wood on the market. Though, it's very likely higher than what the actual cost would end up to be. This gives you a bit over 1,600 wood with the remaining gold left over to use in foraging the remaining 14,400 wood.

Now would can be collected during 6 months of every year but let's assume you are only able to collect for 2/3 of that, or 4 months out of the year at 500 wood per month. This would translate into roughly 7.2 game years worth of foraging, or roughly 4 months real time. During this time, you would be spending somewhere along the lines of 3 minutes (to scout/send foragers) out of your day for 4 days out of every 12 that passes so your actual time investment is fairly small (on the order of something like an hour an a half of your time) but the gratification would be delayed somewhat.

That calculation assumes fairly average values and could certainly be made faster with more involvement in the system and some luck but it should be fairly representative of the average experience.

Given the time-investment to achieve other things in the game world, I don't find this terribly out of whack. What it does hurt are impulse or emergency purchases but actual time and gold spent is actually fairly comparable to the previous system (just spread over a longer stretch of time).

If you can get 2 full 24 hours foraging trips per spawn, you're extremely lucky. Its more likely that you'll get 1 foraging trip at start of autumn and start of winter when they spawn, every trip I've sent after my first for each season has only netted me about 100-200 wood, if I'm lucky.

That's 15 IG years, or a chill 6 RL months. Now, I'd personally disagree that adding on a massive time requirement like that onto something that didn't require it isn't out of whack. But what you can't say is that the time -and- gold spent are fairly comparable when you need to wait several RL months to get the same amount of wood as you'd get in the old system, with the same amount of gold spent.

I used to be able to get a few thousand wood by just casually checking in on comm shops once a day or so, there is no possible way for me to actually earn anything near that amount anymore. Instead I would have to shell out large amounts of gold to other people for their time, putting a greater stress on the credit market because my gold isn't vanishing.

Maybe we should be able to decide how much we want to pay our foragers, and if they had a higher wage they'd forage better and draw from a pool of wood/fibre that non-paying foragers didn't have access to (because unpaid foragers are just going to pick up whats easily available, better paid foragers dig deep into the bushes and dirt to get every chunk of wood available.). 

Stheno

Anything that alleviates the housing crisis would be good. I just want to spend time and gold on nice things.

Tashar

My experience so far is that two days after a new season starts for wood, all forests will be depleted. I got lucky once sending out on the first day, but the following day it was a failure. Before that, I'd sent out with either nothing or just sixty-six wood every single time, no matter how early or later I waited.

ETA: I mean RL days. So like, two months in to a full season.

Vandred

Adrik said:

I can bash 600k in 5 days or so.

The gold was never really the issue.  People who want to make a home, or GOD FORBID, use a tradeskill or keep city improvements up have a huge uphill battle.

I mean, if the gold wasn't an issue before, it's not going to be an issue now.

Taryius said:

If you can get 2 full 24 hours foraging trips per spawn, you're extremely lucky. Its more likely that you'll get 1 foraging trip at start of autumn and start of winter when they spawn, every trip I've sent after my first for each season has only netted me about 100-200 wood, if I'm lucky.

That's 15 IG years, or a chill 6 RL months. Now, I'd personally disagree that adding on a massive time requirement like that onto something that didn't require it isn't out of whack. But what you can't say is that the time -and- gold spent are fairly comparable when you need to wait several RL months to get the same amount of wood as you'd get in the old system, with the same amount of gold spent.

I used to be able to get a few thousand wood by just casually checking in on comm shops once a day or so, there is no possible way for me to actually earn anything near that amount anymore. Instead I would have to shell out large amounts of gold to other people for their time, putting a greater stress on the credit market because my gold isn't vanishing.

Maybe we should be able to decide how much we want to pay our foragers, and if they had a higher wage they'd forage better and draw from a pool of wood/fibre that non-paying foragers didn't have access to (because unpaid foragers are just going to pick up whats easily available, better paid foragers dig deep into the bushes and dirt to get every chunk of wood available.). 

I can say here that comms should spawn across the whole season instead of all dropping at specific times. By doing so, it keeps foragers out for longer and lets more people take part regardless of when they send out their foragers during the season. I'd say that your estimate of 6 RL months is very conservative though given my own experience with the system thus far.

The reason I'm saying that the time investment is fairly comparable is because the effort required to send out foragers is very minimal. You're essentially playing an idle game that you barely have to pay attention to while your foragers are out doing whatever it is they do and more or less don't need to pay significant/any attention to them during that period. The main thing that has changed it the delay between when you pay and when you receive the goods.

I can't comment broadly on whether this has or had a significant impact on the credit market but at the least it has seemed that the average credit price hasn't really budged very much since the system's introduction. Whether that remains to be true will need to be seen.

That said, I'm cool with being able to pay and/or equip foragers with better gear to facilitate more efficient gathering. Being able to customize in the system and/or employ a measure of tactics is missing in the system that is present in more established stuff. I'd daresay that forcing your foragers to sweep a forest for every last log of wood should come with an increased chance of accidents in their reckless fervor to collect every last scrap for you though.

Israyhl

Customisation into the system could be a good thing. In the short term, however, I think many (myself included) are reeling from the sudden shortage of wood available. If the costs of wood for certain ventures were not so high in comparison to the current personal production, I do not think there would be as much concern. But, as pointed out, when someone requires 16k wood for ONE Housing upgrade (not counting the multiples that many people want), then there is a considerable more concern. 

Reyson

I dont feel like I should wait a week to spend my character's money or my own to get something in my text-house, let alone months. Thanks, but I've already got a job.

Cooper

Pretty much all of your expectations are horribly wrong.

It is not intended for you to forage enough to build houses within RL days. What in the hell would make you think that was intended? You will either have to put in a lot of time, or buy comms from the market.

The reason that the market is so high right now is because in general people who play Achaea have no clue how economies work, or how new features work. It will cool off in a few weeks when most people give up. 

Selanar

Cooper said:

Pretty much all of your expectations are horribly wrong.

It is not intended for you to forage enough to build houses within RL days. What in the hell would make you think that was intended? You will either have to put in a lot of time, or buy comms from the market.

The reason that the market is so high right now is because in general people who play Achaea have no clue how economies work, or how new features work. It will cool off in a few weeks when most people give up. 

Why would anyone give up? The time and gold investment to forage is extremely minimal. Right now the market is so high because the wood supply is divided among many people, each of whom are trying to gather enough to achieve what they need to (housing upgrade, shipfitting, etc...). Or they move the wood to the market at an incredibly profitable price. Even if all you gather is a few dozen wood, selling that will net a good profit currently.

To your latter point, the market is high due to the extremely basic economical principle of supply versus demand. Demand is higher than before due to shipfitting and beverages, while supply at least appears far lower because it is divided among several people, many of whom are in the process of gathering more, not selling. You can see this in the way cloth and fibre are far more stable. Demand is far, far lower. People are more willing to sell fibre, while fewer are buying. 

Reyson

Cooper said:

Pretty much all of your expectations are horribly wrong.

It is not intended for you to forage enough to build houses within RL days. What in the hell would make you think that was intended? You will either have to put in a lot of time, or buy comms from the market.

The reason that the market is so high right now is because in general people who play Achaea have no clue how economies work, or how new features work. It will cool off in a few weeks when most people give up. 

I know what the intent was. I just don't like it.

I don't want (more) arbitrary waiting periods imposed upon me to enjoy another aspect of the game.

Atalkez

Time sinks to this extent adversely affect the casual player that only plays 2-3 days a week. They shouldn’t be gated out of housing/tradeskills because of it, or be forced to spend 2-3x the amount of gold they were before casually buying wood from the comm shop. That said, Cooper is right about economics and player understanding of new systems. Things will level out soon - I’m still concerned the time sink expectation is entirely too harsh.

Adrik

So. Just tried a 'run' with Foragers. Ran into a group while aggressively standing around.  Had two friends bring their aggressive goblins (lvl 4 both of them) around to play.

Now.. either something's fucky, or this damage to damage ratio is horrendously skewed.

I have 1 forager at 81hp, 1 at 72hp, 1 at 53hp, 1 at 35hp, and 1 at 25hp.

Now, there's a few explanations for what the shit happened:

A) The person saw they got hit once and immediately began the recall process (4 hours, so I think 3 more ticks to actually be hit)... and they somehow survived said process with 15 foragers bearing down on them.

'Allied' Foragers (Same-City) do not work, and we're all just pummeling the shit out of eachother.

C) They were on diplomatic and told my foragers to just not fucking attack. Except the one at 25hp. He got fucked.

I'd really, really rather foragers attack as a somewhat single cohesive unit, instead of one of my foragers being at 90% hp, and another one of mine being at 30%ish.

As it stands right now, if a group of 15 forager goblins all set to aggressive cannot take out an entire squad (which is what is needed to take their wood gathered. If even a single one escapes, he brings all the wood back to the owner of that squad)... And people can immediately recall the second they see their foragers HP go down. It's kind of skewed too heavily to the Defender.

ESPECIALLY given that if you think you can survive 3 hits after recall... and you know the aggressive foragers also take as much, if not more damage from it... if their owner isn't around (for whatever reason).. you can literally just fucking recall, get your foragers back (instant heal back to full), and then immediately send them back to the same area. Which means you can get those aggressive foragers to, quite literally, kill themselves.

Compounding this, you don't know if your forager actually has found some people to attack, what their current HP is at, and there's no way to tell foragers to not-fucking-kill-themselves over picking a fight.

I like the concept, mostly because I like idle games. However, I think there's a few things that need to be looked over.

A ) Aggressive should not mean "Time to fucking kill myself." There should be a threshold at which if they know they would not survive an attack, they stop. Self Preservation > the piddly amount of gold they get paid.

B ) Let me spend gold to give health sips to my foragers. Let's Pokemon Go this shit.

C ) Recalling needs to be adjusted so that you cannot send your foragers back to the same area they were just at for at least another little while.

Dominius

I think if you exterminate another foraging group you should get extra stuff!

But seriously.. feels like a lot of areas are not really throwing out anything? I've sent mine in lots of forest and plain areas where it seems like they are always devoid. Can't go scouting the world everytime so I just send them to places as well, can't imagine it all being empty all the time though. Admins, give us more wood and fibre so we can grow rich and fat!

Vinzent

I think the price of wood is more likely to level out after some Admin intervention, in whatever form that may take. It is simply needed by too many people and sold by too few, as those who need it get it the most since they forage for it first. As @Selanar said, fibre doesn't have this problem. I put an offer at 65gp on the first batch I got and within a couple days the price was down to about 55gp, and now it's hanging around 45gp. When your commodity directly converts into two others, if you're not paying less for the base commodity, you have no reason to be buying it. Cloth and rope help equalize that price. Wood does not have that.