Forums Home Forum Rules Achaea.com Lore Wiki Vote for Achaea! IronRealms.com
Home› Everything Achaea› North of Thera

Seamonstering changes?

1246

Comments

  • EndrynEndryn
    Thaisen said:
    You should have hunted to the gold cap all those days instead....you would have had 3.5 million and been able to keep it!
    I think Tarvius was also hunting the gold cap all those days, and he took a much larger hit than the rest of us.
  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    This is really just another example of how the Seafaring plane is this weird place that operates by different rules and standards than the rest of the game. Either apply the gold cap globally or remove it all together. Otherwise it doesn't really make sense.

    While we're at it, bring Seafaring plane into line with the same PvP rules and conditions in regards to bounties, being able to take transgressions from sea to land, etc. 


  • GlathnaGlathna
    This may or may not be the best place for this. I think a whole new topic might be better, but since I know for sure admin has their eyes on this thread, I'll post this here. I'm sure it'll be torn apart, and people will do their best to make me feel like a heel for even suggesting it, but it's something I firmly believe in.

    The ocean being open PK presents unique issues over the lawlessness of Annwyn or the Underworld. In order to sail, you must have the Seafaring skill. TO learn the Seafaring skill requires 1737 lessons, which translates to about 290 credits. To buy a ship costs 2.5 to 10 million gold, or 180 credits to 715 credits. If one wishes to hunt sea monsters, a ship requires 1 to 6 weapons, depending on the size of the fish, which requires shipwood, shipiron, and shiplines. In short, the cost in gold, credits, and real-world cash can be extensive, even if you outfit your ship to the least possible degree to be effective. To go to Annwyn or the Underworld just requires the knowhow, and 400cr for the cloaking gem, if you wish to hunt there a little longer. Not visiting Annwyn or the Underworld, other than missing out on the exploration of an entirely new area, which, granted, is a ton of fun, does not effectively impact your interaction with Achaea.

    Sea fishing is a unique experience to fishing in the tree, or in a regular river; sailing is a unique experience to traveling in the wilderness, and opens up the ability to explore islands that can only be gotten to via ships; sea monster hunting is a unique experience over regular hunting; sea voyages are a unique questing mechanic over simple questing; and ship trades are a unique experience over simply using one's tradeskills. If a person does not have the ability to learn how to do ship combat due to real world limitations, or wishes to roleplay a peaceful character, or just wants to do ship trades in a cutter has this massive aspect/gameplay experience taken from them by the mere addition of pirates to the equation.

    I am not suggesting pirates should be removed from the game. I understand that this is a huge motivator for some sailing individuals. However, on the land, there are enough mechanics in place that people who wish to be lawless can be lawless without interfering with other players who wish to be peaceful or defensive in nature. In short, on the land, there is enough there for everyone to get what they want, and I am suggesting that this philosophy and consideration be extended to the ocean as well. 

    Some solutions:
    1. New areas be created along the chops that are considered pirate zones. High-level rewards, adventures, experience can be added to incentivize people to engage with these zones.
    2. Level 1 and level 2 sea monster areas are pirate free zones as well as ship trade paths and harbours. Harbours that are designated as requisition harbours cannot be blocked by pirates.
    3. In non-specific sea monster areas where people can deep sea fish, a new type of sea monster be created that randomly path these areas. These monsters would be very weak, and more serve a similar purpose to rats in the tree for tree fishing, I.E. make sure people are staying on their toes while fishing these areas.
    4. Make it so ships can challenge each other, and these challenges will send them to the ship arena. They can challenge each other in various ways, such as to the death, party, practice, similar to the arena for regular combat. Upon a victory, the ship would be returned to where they initially issued the challenge, and the loser would also be returned to the same area they issued but sunk. The ocean as a whole could then be made similar to the land in that a ship or captain can have a certain flag or tag or character marker that designates them as part of a lawless organization, or one that makes them analogous to having no infamy built up.

    I have heard many people complain about pirates and how it affects their engagement with the sea. Some of the suggestions above are sourced from them. I present this for them, but I have a selfish reason as well. I am one of those people whose real-world disabilities make it so that how I use seafaring is just slower and more methodical, which does not lend itself well for a lawless ocean. I understand this is not the first time lawlessness and the ocean has not been brought up, but I hope some of the ideas above, and some of the issues described are unique and convincing enough to at least consider making changes that allow for fuller engagement in such a massive aspect of Achaea gameplay.

  • GlathnaGlathna
    In regards to the gold gain, here is a sample message this situation reminds me of. Imagine you received this from a local business.

    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Due to no fault of your own, and due only to an oversight in our system and by our admin staff, we have given you too much pizza. We have determined you received 2 extra pizzas and have removed the $60 from your bank account.

    How angry would you be?

    I would be over the top angry. Should I have said something about the extra pizza? Maybe, but it's a tough call. What if I was eating a lot of pizza, and I just thought, hey, I've given this pizza place so much money and business that maybe I'm just being rewarded.

    The real question is: whose responsibility is it to see that a business is functioning properly? The customers, or the staff and owner? I know which I believe to be responsible, and a business that shifts the consequences of their mistakes to the customer does not sit well with me.

    It is reasonable for Gribbit and the others to believe they were not abusing a bug. Monsters have worked that way for RL years now. Gallies and maintaining them is very expensive. The risk of sinking to pirates or the monster is fairly high, and being sunk is costly. If a ship has more than one person on it, the gain in gold is not much higher than the gold cap. And, monster hunting for 5+ hours is painfully, painfully boring.

    Another concern I have is that some individuals felt scared to defend their actions because they worried about being shrubbed. A business place that has fearful customers...I don't know. I don't like it. Not at all
  • SaonjiSaonji
    Lol.    

    Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.


    smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.

  • IaxusIaxus
    Ignorance, willful or not, of the rules does not make them inapplicable. Y'all should really be thankful you're not shrubbed, not bitching that your gold/credits got taken. I strongly believe everyone who abused this mechanic to the tune of 3 MILLION gold (or more) over a reasonable player should be shrubbed, and I'm certain I'm not the only one. Taking the "I didn't know lol gimme my money back" stance only makes you look even worse.

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

  • AdrikAdrik
    If your misrepresentation of this is "We accidentally gave you 2 extra pizzas. We charged your bank $60 to compensate us." and "You got too much gold from something that would work completely into helping ruin the economy more than it already is. We've removed the excess of gold past the gold cap from your character. (which in this case turned out to be unbound credits that you bought off of the market, house creditsale, city creditsale, etc)."

    You did not spend IRL money on those credits. Someone else did. You did not 'lose time' and you are not, whatsoever, liable to get a 'reimbursement' for time wasted.

    You did something, admins said "Hey no that's bad. WE're not gonna super punish you, but we are gonna take some of that gold back so the economy isn't super wacko."

    Now you're whining that you got punished totally not knowingly abusing something. Also, if you think for even a second that I have been told "Hey, this medical treatment will cost X because of your insurance." Only to be told by mail 4 weeks later "EY YO PUNK. PAY UP, OR ELSE." and have to pay $400 because my fiance thought our insurance was going to cover foot surgery and the dumb girl at the front desk thought "the copay was just all you had to pay for surgery. idk my parents always paid those bills for me. :)" then you are dead-ass wrong.

    People can/will bill you for stuff that is a fuck up on their part. You can either pay up, or pay up for lawyers and try to win a legal case (which is expensive in it's own right).
  • SaonjiSaonji
    edited July 2020
    Definitely wrong. No surgery in America is only gonna be $400. Maybe add another two zeroes on the end.

    pepeLaugh

    Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.


    smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.

  • AdrikAdrik
    Saonji said:
    Definitely wrong. No surgery in America is only gonna be $400. Maybe add another two zeroes on the end.

    pepeLaugh
    Well yes. It was minor foot surgery (ingrown toenail). It actually was about $500 in total, but this girl was DEAD set that it was, in fact, only $35 because of our insurance.
  • TahquilTahquil
    edited July 2020
    You know what would be kinda cool?

    Sadim's curse.

    Instead of taking the gold a credits away the player gets cursed. The player gets a brand/item with a number (these cases the 3.2 mill) that stocks with them. Any gold they generate from the game systems like hunting, turning in fish, questing etc. Is automatically absorbed by the brand and it ticks down until it reaches 0 and normal gold generation can happen again. No gold or credits have to be tracked and reverted as it'll eventually be paid off in the players own time.

    And I dunno... randomly afflicts generosity or something. Something.

    Edit: Sadim's curse is cool but totally if you implement it you can name it after me. I need some sorta recognizable legacy other than upcoming.
  • GribbitGribbit
    Adrik said:
    If your misrepresentation of this is "We accidentally gave you 2 extra pizzas. We charged your bank $60 to compensate us." and "You got too much gold from something that would work completely into helping ruin the economy more than it already is. We've removed the excess of gold past the gold cap from your character. (which in this case turned out to be unbound credits that you bought off of the market, house creditsale, city creditsale, etc)."

    You did not spend IRL money on those credits. Someone else did. You did not 'lose time' and you are not, whatsoever, liable to get a 'reimbursement' for time wasted.

    You did something, admins said "Hey no that's bad. WE're not gonna super punish you, but we are gonna take some of that gold back so the economy isn't super wacko."

    Now you're whining that you got punished totally not knowingly abusing something. Also, if you think for even a second that I have been told "Hey, this medical treatment will cost X because of your insurance." Only to be told by mail 4 weeks later "EY YO PUNK. PAY UP, OR ELSE." and have to pay $400 because my fiance thought our insurance was going to cover foot surgery and the dumb girl at the front desk thought "the copay was just all you had to pay for surgery. idk my parents always paid those bills for me. :)" then you are dead-ass wrong.

    People can/will bill you for stuff that is a fuck up on their part. You can either pay up, or pay up for lawyers and try to win a legal case (which is expensive in it's own right).
    Message #191        Sent by Anytus
    2020/7/17/21:53 Greetings, after conducting a thorough investigation into gold generated by the mass
    slaying of seamonsters, something we have now addressed, we have calculated that your character 
    earned 3.2 million gold above and beyond the benchmarks we set for reasonable expectations of 
    earnings over the period of time commencing July 1st and ending July 15th. While we do not believe 
    any bugs or mechanics were specifically abused and will therefore not be administering any admin 
    punishments, these funds must nevertheless be recovered for the better of Achaea's economy. To that 
    end, we have removed 237 unbound credits from your character (Gribbit), which equates to the same 
    amount of gold spent on market purchases throughout this period. Thank you for your understanding.

    I disagree with both analogies. This is more like the government knocking down your door because you found a niche that made 'a little' to much. And thank you for recognizing this is a punishment. That is my major sticking point. 'You did nothing wrong.....but we are punishing you.' Good games reward clever players, bad games punish players for being clever with working mechanics.
  • CooperCooper
    The entitlement from the people caught abusing this mechanic is astounding.

    Every one of you is extremely lucky to not be shrubbed right now.

    The admins are giving you a free pass due to the backlash previous punishments have received. This was absolutely exploitation/abuse and every person involved knows that or is lying about it.

    Stop bitching and start being thankful you weren't actually punished.

  • SobriquetSobriquet
    Cooper said:
    The entitlement from the people caught abusing this mechanic is astounding.

    Every one of you is extremely lucky to not be shrubbed right now.

    The admins are giving you a free pass due to the backlash previous punishments have received. This was absolutely exploitation/abuse and every person involved knows that or is lying about it.

    Stop bitching and start being thankful you weren't actually punished.
    While I agree 100%, the messages from the Admin seem to contradict this by saying there was no bug or mechanics abused. So this situation doesn't clear up anything with regards to actions and consequences, it just muddies them. 

    (Party): Mezghar says, "Stop."
  • SaonjiSaonji
    Regardless of Anytus' messages, taking advantage of a mechanic for your own (rather enormous) advantage, is the textbook definition of abuse. 

    Disappearing from Achaea for now. See you, space cowboy.


    smileyface#8048 if you wanna chat.

  • KillianKillian
    Adrik said:
    If your misrepresentation of this is "We accidentally gave you 2 extra pizzas. We charged your bank $60 to compensate us." and "You got too much gold from something that would work completely into helping ruin the economy more than it already is. We've removed the excess of gold past the gold cap from your character. (which in this case turned out to be unbound credits that you bought off of the market, house creditsale, city creditsale, etc)."

    Whose job is it to safeguard Achaean economy? 
    This is not a change that happened yesterday, this is a mechanic that's been in place for a year. Why didn't we realize that we were supposed to test something that was implemented when we weren't even playing, against a purpose that we were supposed to guess? ...yeah, our bad.

    Adrik said:
    You did not spend IRL money on those credits. Someone else did. You did not 'lose time' and you are not, whatsoever, liable to get a 'reimbursement' for time wasted.

    Who paid RL money on credits is besides the point, -we- didn't take anyone's credits, those people got the gold they wanted for them. 
    You got liability reversed there, so I agree: we shouldn't be liable for a mechanic that didn't quite work as expected because players didn't contest us for the spots. Yes. You could have invested all the time we did in lower level areas, built better ships, motivated people to join you, and presented a challenge for us. Yes, we spent time, effort and gold to optimize seamonstering. Oh, too much work for you? It's okay, you can just bitch on the forums later and demand someone be punished. Don't even bother getting facts or math straight, just spam 50 posts that really only convey the message that you're bitter and frustrated. Credit prices were wacko long before us, but who cares that you weren't even affected by this, you just go ahead and demand justice, you special snowflake, you  ;) 

    Adrik said:
    Now you're whining that you got punished totally not knowingly abusing something. Also, if you think for even a second that I have been told "Hey, this medical treatment will cost X because of your insurance." Only to be told by mail 4 weeks later "EY YO PUNK. PAY UP, OR ELSE." and have to pay $400 because my fiance thought our insurance was going to cover foot surgery and the dumb girl at the front desk thought "the copay was just all you had to pay for surgery. idk my parents always paid those bills for me. :)" then you are dead-ass wrong.

    People can/will bill you for stuff that is a fuck up on their part. You can either pay up, or pay up for lawyers and try to win a legal case (which is expensive in it's own right).

    Hm. Okay so your argument is that because injustice happens in the world, it shouldn't be contested? Or.. I'm gonna go with the ingrown toenail being an explanation why you're so hateful.. Sorry man. Hit me up in game, I'll take you out seamonstering to let some of that anger out. Oh, wait..

    For anyone else:

    Please try to envision this theory: 
    They're paying up to 100k gold for a big fish seamonster trophy. It's a "high risk = high reward" scenario, that requires an astonishing initial investment (talking ships, comms, ammo, artefacts etc) - so yay gold sink for "end game" content! This is a lawless plane, so ANYBODY can attack you. More gold means more motivation for them to do so. Yay conflict! 

    - Does that not sound plausible and fun? 
         -> Hell no, you should come up with other theories, which we won't confirm or deny, but just slap you on the wrist for not guessing right.
    - Doesn't the fact that it's been working this way for a long LONG time mean it's stable and worth the investment?
         -> Pssh no. We'll absolutely ignore a mechanic we implemented and expect people who are playing our game to report when they feel all their investments are worth it - cause we can't have that. I mean, we're non-profit, so let the community do all of our work for free. Maybe we can even charge them later. 

    TL;DR
    I'm hard-pressed to call this abuse or even misuse. It was just plain use of a mechanic. It was a time and gold sink for me, and in the end I got to be trashed by people just love witch hunts and have no idea what they're talking about, I got gold that I was collecting from people for an event taken from me BY ADMINS that I now need to somehow get back, and I got the added responsibility of testing the game for them. I guess every day that I don't make 1 mil gold I can invoice IRE for safeguarding their game's economy..

    In all this shit though, I found such awesome people that it's almost worth it. I love you all and thank you for that. Even Adick.
  • TahquilTahquil
    Holy shit you made 1 mill in a day?
  • ArchaeonArchaeon Ur mums house lol
    Wtf do you spend that on
  • ErylEryl
    edited July 2020
    Edit: I said mean things that weren’t helpful or constructive.
  • MinifieMinifie
    Out of all of this, I really wish this shit had a set procedure that is transparent to players for the sake of consistency. I’m not sure if judgment and decisions being passed are from careful arbitration or spinning the wheel of misfortune.
  • MinifieMinifie
    Tesha said:
    Cooper said:
    I really doubt they would lie about that in an announce post.

    It is far more likely that you haven't spoken to everyone who took part, or even that people are lying so they don't get shunned like people who previously abused seafaring bugs to generate gold.
    I imagine the announce post specifically refers to a period after the initial fix, which was bugged to not have any cooldown in the zone at all. This was used by a few people and I could certainly see how that could generate 10 million gold in 2 hours.

    Prior to that with the 10 minute per ship cooldown, I'd estimate it was somewhere around 8 million in 5 hours, but I'm not sure.

    I think this would have been avoided with some transparency about how systems are intended to work. This causes a hit to immersion, but the alternative is players figuring stuff like this out and then forcing a reaction. I stopped going and asked two separate admin on July 3rd if this was intended to work this way and got no response, so I eventually elected to participate in it again. I would have really preferred a response to the two messages saying "oh that sounds suspicious we're looking into it" or something rather than radio silence, which I took as "we're aware of this and it's okay" after talking with some other people to learn that this is what it has been nerfed to.

    I think my biggest disappointment with this is seamonstering felt like a rewarding activity, and Achaea currently feels severely lacking in those. Sure, it was too rewarding, but when other options require you to have started a rl year ago (Foraging), have significant gold to get started/lose gold to level (mining), or takes at least a few hours to hit gold cap (bashing) it sort of sucks to see something reduced to barely-worth-doing. Even moreso if you've invested a lot of gold/credits to be able to do this (people who bought multiple galleys). They have a right to be disappointed.

    I'd love some new seafaring forays - that could be really cool and right up there with forays in terms of reward for the time invested. Achaea definitely needs more activities like forays that feel rewarding (except for the wilderness part). Making quests reward decent renown and un-nerfing the gold would also be a step in the right direction; make quest gold contribute to bashing gold cap if that's a concern. I was really disappointed to see corpse handin quests nuked.

    Overall, my conclusion from all this is people are starving for rewarding activities in Achaea. 
    A lot of things that award gold could just start awarding bound credits at a rate of 10k per. It lessens how much you can earn because of how strong malleable currency is, but these things can easily be resolved with "whoops, that was unintended, as such we'll be putting your account into (x) to return the bound credits to the ethereal", and if it was a really massive oversight on the devs, they can easily lessen the amount taken to compensate for how obvious the mistake was.

    If healthy gold sinks aren't going to be added except for odd spurts with auctions, then more faucets need to be tightened until the economy re-stabilises. 
  • KeorinKeorin
    edited July 2020
    Not being in any of these developer/balance clans I'm not sure who all you mean, but it seems like a good number of the people involved (and a good number of the people getting a lot of ire thrown at them here) are not at all part of those groups.

    If you took part in this knowing that it was clearly unbalanced and bad for the health of the game economy and you didn't point anything out to the admin, then yes, you should probably feel bad. But the existence of some people who may legitimately deserve blame doesn't justify a whole thread's worth of toxicity and witch-hunting, and shouldn't absolve people from showing basic decency to other parts of the playerbase.

    "It's okay to be nasty to a whole group of people and throw accusations around at the ones you personally like least because a few of them might deserve it" is just toxic logic.
  • SantarSantar
    edited July 2020
    Keorin said:
    Not being in any of these developer/balance clans I'm not sure who all you mean, but it seems like a good number of the people involved (and a good number of the people getting a lot of ire thrown at them here) are not at all part of those groups.

    If you took part in this knowing that it was clearly unbalanced and bad for the health of the game economy and you didn't point anything out to the admin, then yes, you should probably feel bad. But the existence of some people who may legitimately deserve blame doesn't justify a whole thread's worth of toxicity and witch-hunting, and shouldn't absolve people from showing basic decency to other parts of the playerbase.

    "It's okay to be nasty to a whole group of people and throw accusations around at the ones you personally like least because a few of them might deserve it" is just toxic logic.

    Seems like everything that needs to be done has already been done, and people have been held accountable for their part in it through the refunded gold.

    The couple veterans involved who knew better were no doubt deliberately keeping it quiet from the administration, since they knew that if it came to light, it would be instantly fixed. Definitely shitty on their part, but that's the way greed works. They're not the first people to hide something like this.

    image

  • TeshaTesha
    I literally messaged two admin directly about it two weeks ago. There were no efforts to keep this quiet from the administration.

     i'm a rebel

  • SantarSantar
    Ah, that's fair. I missed that. My apologies then. Sounds like you did everything a reasonable player should've done, then. (Just re-read your long post from earlier)

    image

  • PenwizePenwize
    I kinda wish people came to this level of defense for me when the bashing gold cap was introduced. :(

    I guess I'll just repeat the sentiment that was given to me: I've literally never seamonstered up that much gold in a day, so I'm totally fine with this change!
  • CooperCooper
    Keorin said:
    If you took part in this knowing that it was clearly unbalanced and bad for the health of the game economy and you didn't point anything out to the admin, then yes, you should probably feel bad. But the existence of some people who may legitimately deserve blame doesn't justify a whole thread's worth of toxicity and witch-hunting, and shouldn't absolve people from showing basic decency to other parts of the playerbase.
    Everyone* who wasn't a true new player - like less than 6 RL months - has no legitimate reason to not understand what they were doing was wrong. *The only people who have an excuse are the couple of people who reported it and didn't get a response in a timely fashion.

    Admin definitely need to make these rules more clear and written down but that does not excuse players pretending they don't understand when they are doing something wrong.

    I think my biggest disappointment with this is seamonstering felt like a rewarding activity, and Achaea currently feels severely lacking in those.

    @Tesha - have you forgotten about adventures and renown? Mhaldor does multiple forays every day, usually 1-2 honours denizens, and other miscellaneous stuff to make sure anyone who wants to max renown can. It usually takes 45 minutes to max renown if you have someone who has arties and knows what they are doing. 


  • KresslackKresslack Florida, United States
    Cooper said:
    Keorin said:
    If you took part in this knowing that it was clearly unbalanced and bad for the health of the game economy and you didn't point anything out to the admin, then yes, you should probably feel bad. But the existence of some people who may legitimately deserve blame doesn't justify a whole thread's worth of toxicity and witch-hunting, and shouldn't absolve people from showing basic decency to other parts of the playerbase.
    Everyone* who wasn't a true new player - like less than 6 RL months - has no legitimate reason to not understand what they were doing was wrong. *The only people who have an excuse are the couple of people who reported it and didn't get a response in a timely fashion.

    Admin definitely need to make these rules more clear and written down but that does not excuse players pretending they don't understand when they are doing something wrong.

    I think my biggest disappointment with this is seamonstering felt like a rewarding activity, and Achaea currently feels severely lacking in those.

    @Tesha - have you forgotten about adventures and renown? Mhaldor does multiple forays every day, usually 1-2 honours denizens, and other miscellaneous stuff to make sure anyone who wants to max renown can. It usually takes 45 minutes to max renown if you have someone who has arties and knows what they are doing. 

    I don't agree with that at all. Haven't just returned from probably a 6 month break I popped in one day and was asked if I wanted to go on a seamonster hunt, so I said sure. Got on the ship, we went out to a zone I'd never been to before, and other ships starting filing in over time. After a couple of monsters were killed I realized that instead of each ship killing it's own pull, all ships were just killing the monster and then splitting the reward evenly afterwards. Sounded practical to me. A couple of people were keeping track of the totals earned per ship, the ship I was on having one other person and earning around 400k over about four hours worth of hunting, split between the two of us.

    I didn't receive any message from the admins or have anything taken from me. I think if there's going to be a gold cap on one source of gold income then it should apply across the board or be done away with. These higher level seamonster zones were made to be a challenge, and for one or two ships on their own they certain are, which is likely what lead people to try grouping up to take them on and see if it was a viable option. Seafaring is and always has been pitched as a group activity. I think one change that can be made to balance things a bit is to take away the repair bonus a ship gets for being anchored, and change it to where this can only be done under perhaps a specific maneuver. 


Sign In or Register to comment.