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Seamonstering changes?

ZbacoZbaco
in North of Thera
Rumor has it that seamonster hunting got a major beating from the Nerf bat lately. Instead of monsters spawning once per ship every ten minutes, they now spawn once every fifteen minutes, period, regardless of the number of ships in the zone.

Is this true? If so, what brought about this major change?

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Comments

  • ZadkielZadkiel
    The recent changes have brought seamonster hunting to a halt. As of yesterday this was not a rumor but truth. Tapoa, Phereklos, Zanzi, areas were checked and one monster popped per area every 15 minutes, I am sad that this has happened as it was what I enjoyed most in the game. It gave me the opportunity to progress and help others. Trades were nerfed, Tapoa was nerfed a while back, then random monsters began popping (which was fun). But this last change was beyond a doubt a game change for many.  
  • AegothAegoth
    edited July 2020
    No wonder Keorin could make a 20mil+ bid without breaking a sweat, even though she does 0 bashing or merchanting herself, and has puny arties (so little credit investment). hmm hmm
  • AstarodAstarod
    I think the changes shouldn't punish group play as much as they do. Perhaps everyone that hits the monster, with a cap at 2-3, gets a trophy? There's realistically absolutely no reason to hit anything below T4s now. 
    The Divine voice of Twilight echoes in your head, "See that it is. I espy a tithe of potential in your mortal soul, Astarod Blackstone. Let us hope that it flourishes and does not falter as so many do."

    Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
  • AdrikAdrik
    Astarod said:
    I think the changes shouldn't punish group play as much as they do. Perhaps everyone that hits the monster, with a cap at 2-3, gets a trophy? There's realistically absolutely no reason to hit anything below T4s now. 
    Right now, and previously, only the killing shot got the trophy. It was the fact that multiple ships could spawn multiple monsters in a zone. If they all spawned seamonsters at the same time, rather than not spawning if they were anchor-down, that'd be one thing. but. Move one tile, anchor down, 10 ships fire on 1 for three rounds.. seamonster dead. Another ship moves, rinse. repeat.

    Seamonstering shouldn't be a way to generate massive amounts of gold, and in fact was changed from what it was to what it was before this update to help combat that. Then people were caught abusing it for gold, and it got changed again (either due to an issue that was overlooked the first time, or what have you).
  • StefanaStefana
    Thaisen said:
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen Keorin on a ship though.
    CYRENE BAD. You must be new.



    But I don’t think this change should have been extended to level 2 and 3 zones where trophies are worth +/- 20% of level 4 trophies.


  • AstarodAstarod
    Adrik said:
    Astarod said:
    I think the changes shouldn't punish group play as much as they do. Perhaps everyone that hits the monster, with a cap at 2-3, gets a trophy? There's realistically absolutely no reason to hit anything below T4s now. 
    Right now, and previously, only the killing shot got the trophy. It was the fact that multiple ships could spawn multiple monsters in a zone. If they all spawned seamonsters at the same time, rather than not spawning if they were anchor-down, that'd be one thing. but. Move one tile, anchor down, 10 ships fire on 1 for three rounds.. seamonster dead. Another ship moves, rinse. repeat.

    Seamonstering shouldn't be a way to generate massive amounts of gold, and in fact was changed from what it was to what it was before this update to help combat that. Then people were caught abusing it for gold, and it got changed again (either due to an issue that was overlooked the first time, or what have you).

    If you do a normal zone with 6 people now, normal being 15,000 gold or less, then you're looking at a cap of 90,000 per hour. I'm not saying people should be able to make millions in a couple of hours, but splitting 90,000 between people isn't going to cut it, unless you're alone in the nest now, which presents other issues. 
    The Divine voice of Twilight echoes in your head, "See that it is. I espy a tithe of potential in your mortal soul, Astarod Blackstone. Let us hope that it flourishes and does not falter as so many do."

    Aegis, God of War says, "You are dismissed from My demense, Astarod. Go forth and fight well. Bleed fiercely, and climb the purpose you have sought to chase for."
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    Not sure how recent this was, but I wanna say I was out a couple of days ago and didn't notice this at all. If it's more recent than that, I would try putting in a bug ticket first.


  • StefanaStefana
    It is very recent @Kresslack, check announce news.


  • AdrikAdrik
    The fact that people generated "up to ten million gold in the span of a couple of hours on a near-daily basis" and people didn't get fucking shrubbed is god damn laughable.

    Also, @Kresslack you of all people should know to be wary of gold generation bugs from seafaring.
  • MinifieMinifie
    People were generating up to 10 million gold in the span of a few hours and no punishments got handed out? Wonder if they'll roll back the gold earned then.
  • PrythePrythe
    Thaisen said:
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen Keorin on a ship though.
    Don't confuse people with facts when they are bashing Cyrene. It annoys them.

    (Maybe she absconded with City credits, sold them on market at a loss, and that's how she had the gold?)

    I KID! I KID!

    - To love another person is to see the face of G/d
    - Let me get my hat and my knife
    - It's your apple, take a bite
    - Don't dream it ... be it


  • KogKog
    edited July 2020
    Prythe said:
    Thaisen said:
    I don’t think I’ve ever seen Keorin on a ship though.
    Don't confuse people with facts when they are bashing Cyrene. It annoys them.

    (Maybe she absconded with City credits, sold them on market at a loss, and that's how she had the gold?)

    I KID! I KID!
    I guess I just figured the Aegis order member used Aegean funds to buy the Aegean warhorn stolen from Aegis, but I recognize this is a crazy conspiracy theory with no evidence to back it up.

    Also yeah seafaring is way too good- you could also knock out a ton of adventures, people were capping renown in a few hours. I only manage that when it's foray season. :(
  • StefanaStefana
    I generally think that “punishment” for exploiting mechanics like these should cap at loss of the assets generated by it. I know there’s precedent to the contrary and I find that really unfortunate, because while I agree that people should use their own judgement to recognize massive gold factories as errors, the responsibility for those errors ultimately falls on admin and not the players.


  • MinifieMinifie
    Stefana said:
    I generally think that “punishment” for exploiting mechanics like these should cap at loss of the assets generated by it. I know there’s precedent to the contrary and I find that really unfortunate, because while I agree that people should use their own judgement to recognize massive gold factories as errors, the responsibility for those errors ultimately falls on admin and not the players.
    There's precedent? I thought they just made Mak throw a dart at a dartboard and that was the response to these exploits.
  • AdrikAdrik
    Now. I don't have exact numbers. So take my math with a grain of salt...

    From the ships listed on RANKINGS SEAMONSTERS... On the first two pages... Tarvius has just shy of 23k seamonster kills (Note: Seamonster kills listed in RANKINGS SEAMONSTERS are tied to actual kills your ship got. Not any assists).  Extrapolating trophy rewards.. level 2 zones are 10k each, level 4s are 50k each. Assuming he has a nice balance in between, or isn't too skewed in one-way-or-the-other... That leaves 30,000 gold per kill. So.. 23,000 seamonsters times 30,000 gold.

    Know how much gold that is?

    690,000,000.. 690 million.  Yes, seamonstering got nerfed. Boohoo. That much gold is still more than I think all cities combined have in their treasury.  Did he make all of that exclusively from this oversight? Probably not.

    Did certain people make tens of millions of gold off of this oversight with nothing done about it?  Yes. I'm kind of furious for the sheer fact that people got away with this and got to fucking keep their ill-gotten gains from the look of it. Maybe they didn't get to keep it, maybe they did. I don't know, but considering I searched through the list of rankings for shrubbed folks and didn't find anyone that was readily known for abusing this oversight?

    I'm assuming they got a slap on the wrist and maybe a true disfavour.
  • SiduriSiduri
    With this changed, can we please restore the value of level 1 and 2 monsters to fixed amounts that are not subjected to some invisible world cap?

    I don't care for fast spawns and kills, I care for spending hours out there and coming back to see someone sniped all the gold.

    image
  • ThaisenThaisen
    Adrik said:

    690,000,000.. 690 million.  Yes, seamonstering got nerfed. Boohoo. That much gold is still more than I think all cities combined have in their treasury.  Did he make all of that exclusively from this oversight? Probably not.

    Between Cyrene and Hashan it should be covered....I mean...you guys got at least 10 mil to your name right?  ;)
  • AdrikAdrik
    Stefana said:
    @Adrik while I do agree that the level 4 zone needed some kind of adjustment to what was going on, a HUGE grain of salt like a whole mine of it is needed for those numbers. Tarvius’ ships have been on the seas for real life years and killing seamonsters through multiple generations of sailing adjustments. I would bet there’s an enormous discrepancy in favour of level 2 and 3 monsters compared to level 4s in his kills, and the vast majority of them occurred when trophy rewards for lwvel 3s and 4s were significantly lower.
    Even with 10k per kill, that still puts it at 230 million. 5k per? 135 million. Etc. It's still an obscene amount, but more reasonable, I guess. (Even if that's somewhere in the range of 10k cr now-a-days).

    Either way, level 4s should've been hit, and the people who were abusing it to make a shitton of galleys should've had all of those galleys destroyed / repo'd. Either way, I'm convinced that since the last like 3 or 4 gold generation 'issues' were seafaring, we should just delete seafaring. All in favour?
  • StefanaStefana
    230 million over like 10 real-life years so ~290 in-game years? Yeah that sounds pretty reasonable to me.


  • IaxusIaxus
    Clearly there's only one solution to this "so-and-so made all this gold and got to keep it/what they bought with it!" issue. Delete all gold or gold bought things from the game and restart the economy. Yes, that includes your ships, CFS credits, minerals, comms, etc. Just nuke it all and restart. 

    Or... stop trying to take away everyone's gold. Is making millions of gold in a week fucked? Yes, absolutely. But by this point, assuming Tarvius didn't kill all 23k of those seamonsters in the past week, that 690m gold has been spread out to literally all corners of the game. Trying to recover that loss is asinine. Should people who abused this bug be shrubbed? Yeah, I think so. "If it's too good to be true" or whatever. The gold is gone, though. Maybe take what they have in their inv/bank at most, but I highly doubt these people were gaining millions a week to hoard it in a bank. Living economies make it so taking away all the gold these abusers made is going to hurt a lot more people than just the ones who abused the bug.

    To reiterate, because people only read what they want to: should offenders be punished? Yes. Should the offenders wake up to an empty bank and inventory? Yes. Should all the gold made during this (or any other exploit) be revoked? No.

    Jumpy said:
    The membership is already such a good deal that there is no way we can reduce the cost. 

  • SobriquetSobriquet
    Adrik said:
    Zbaco said:
    Rumor has it that seamonster hunting got a major beating from the Nerf bat lately. Instead of monsters spawning once per ship every ten minutes, they now spawn once every fifteen minutes, period, regardless of the number of ships in the zone.

    Is this true? If so, what brought about this major change?
    Probably the Cyrenians abusing this in level 4 zones to get millions of gold with next to no risk to themselves and a minimal time investment.

    I mean. You send out 8 ships... you can gun down a level 4 in.. less than a minute? Maybe Quicker. Another ship moves. Another minute of murder. You cycle through all of the ships and now you have 8 level 4 trophies in 10 minutes, with your quickest timer (assuming 1 minute of gunning them down) soon to be back up.  I don't remember the exact number for what level 4 trophies give.. but it should go without saying...

    If you are making more gold than the gold cap in significantly less time... There is probably a bug and you should BUG it.

    I bugged it after hearing someone go "I spent 3-4 hours with 4-5 other people and made 700k gold." (Which is, at 5 people, 3.5 million gold in 3-4 hours). It should have been incredibly obvious, and the fact that no one was questioning why/how Cyrenians were literally pulling War galleys out of thin air is pretty telling. Also the fact that Tarvius (just recently) made a market "SELLING WORTHLESS WAR GALLEYS!" implies that you guys were probably using the money generated from the seamonstering.. to buy more ships.. to make the seamonstering much more efficient... So 9~10 ships would be the most 'efficient' probably, though more ships = more people firing = quicker kills, so you could really just take probably up to 10 ships out at once to go merk a seamonster zone (Which.. we have seen Cyrene do...) to quickly make millions of gold.. to make more ships.. to do it more efficiently.

    The fact that no one got shrubbed over this is honestly kind of baffling.

    Edit: If your entire playing experience is based around "I like to make millions of gold / have the potential to make millions of gold with a week of doing something" then maybe you should re-evaluate things lmao.

    Given what Accipter got shrubbed for, the fact no one has been made leafy for this is a baffling inconsistency. 

    To quote the post:

    ANNOUNCE NEWS #5239                                     (07/17/2020 at 16:16)  
    From   : Nicola
    To     : Everyone
    Subject: Seamonsters!
    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As some of you may have already noticed, we've recently fixed an unintended mechanic with seamonster
    zones, so that seamonster cooldowns are per-zone, rather than on a per-ship basis. The cooldown 
    times themselves have not changed. This change was primarily due to groups who could very easily 
    generate upwards of ten million gold in the span of a couple hours (and did so on a near-daily 
    basis), with very little risk or effort involved.
     
    Rather than lowering rewards and punishing smaller crews by making their efforts less valuable,
    we've made this change to keep seamonster hunting a worthwhile investment of your time, while 
    preventing absurd amounts of gold being generated on a daily basis. Seamonster hunting is still far 
    and above more profitable than hunting and other methods of gold generation, and still not subject 
    to the gold cap, this change just introduces a bit more competition to the sport.
     
    Happy hunting!


    How the hell are they not shrubbed??


    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • AdrikAdrik
    Idea: A new form of god punishment that eats all gold that touches your hand, eroding it instantly and lowering the counter on a piece of paper you have down by that much gold. Once at 0 gold, it finally flies away and you are relieved of the curse of Prospero's Greed. You're able to hold onto your money once again, and do not (lose it immediately/have it disappear before your very eyes/turn to rust) etc.
  • KogKog
    Adrik said:
    All in favour?
    Delete boats, let me turn the wood into room credits so I can build my house again please.

    Also, yeah, anything with a 'millions' plural attached to it over the course of a few hours is under that umbrella of 'too good to be true'. Not going to weigh in on the right call to make punishment-wise, but I bet Accipiter is going to flip out (and justifiably so) if no punishments come down. Maybe give her like a 'get out of shrubbery free' card or something.
  • TreyTrey
    I really don't know why anyone thought this was ok. Someone brought this up to me in game as having heard about their citymates earning a shitton of gold per day, and the amount was silly (6 million in around 4 hours). I rightly told them to stay the fuck away from it. If it's too good to be true, it probably is.

  • ThaisenThaisen
    edited July 2020
    Let's say even with 10k per...when were seamonsters introduced? 4 years ago....so like 48 months? So that's 4.7 million a RL month...quite a bit to be sure, but the bashing cap is roughly 4.5 million per RL month  And that's not even considering all the times he brings out other people and splits it or when other people use his ships.

    And the bashing cap has been set on a pseudo pedestal as the approved maximum you are allowed to earn over time...so...  

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


    To be clear about my position in all of this, I agree with @Laedha above...
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