Seamonstering changes?

Keorin

I think you're severely underestimating the amount of meta knowledge that a player who isn't keeping up with forums/discord/other OOC sources is going to get. I played this game for years with no knowledge of average gold income or intended profitability of different activities, and I've only learned that by reading the forums a bit much in the years since.

It's one thing to be able to work out whether what you're doing is unusually profitable (though even that depends on the number of ships and number of people on each ship). But knowing that what you're doing is -wrong-, that it's so profitable that it's bad for the game or likely a bug, even though the mechanics are fundamentally the same as anywhere else, is another matter entirely.

Most people work with the reasonable assumption that activities are designed to work as intended, and that once mechanics have been around for over a year they're probably not bugged. Presuming that every player has the same knowledge as you do is pretty silly.

Accipiter

It doesn't take much meta knowledge to see one activity is vastly better at gaining gold. Even the most adamant RP-Only player will have to interact with gold-generation at some point or another. The rate of generation here was an order of magnitude more than the benchmark, every single person you can credit naivete to should have had the reaction 'this is more profitable than anything I have ever done'.

Not sure why people are so defensive though, the admin saw it was a problem and fixed the issue. They couldn't leave the gold because the gold was the problem, so all anyone lost currently is time.

Akri

Keorin said:

I think you're severely underestimating the amount of meta knowledge that a player who isn't keeping up with forums/discord/other OOC sources is going to get. I played this game for years with no knowledge of average gold income or intended profitability of different activities, and I've only learned that by reading the forums a bit much in the years since.

It's one thing to be able to work out whether what you're doing is unusually profitable (though even that depends on the number of ships and number of people on each ship). But knowing that what you're doing is -wrong-, that it's so profitable that it's bad for the game or likely a bug, even though the mechanics are fundamentally the same as anywhere else, is another matter entirely.

Most people work with the reasonable assumption that activities are designed to work as intended, and that once mechanics have been around for over a year they're probably not bugged. Presuming that every player has the same knowledge as you do is pretty silly.

I don't agree with this. You don't need any kind of meta knowledge to figure out if something is far more profitable than bashing or questing, which are the 'main' methods for most individual players. I have no idea what the gold cap for bashing even is, as I've never reached it. But I do know that everything that's vastly above that method of income usually has some kind of limitation, or it's probably sketchy. The most profitable activity that brings gold INTO the economy I can think of is voyages, but those have a hard cooldown of once per RL day, and even doing all of them won't earn you the amount earned with seamonstering like that.

I think the moment something earns you ten times or more the amount of gold bashing can make you in the same amount of time, with either no cooldown or a cooldown you can bypass, you absolutely should probably stop and think, or use ISSUE ME to ask. Especially if you are trying a new method that hasn't been done before.

In the end, nobody was even punished, it seems like, and I think that's fine. But I absolutely don't agree that you need some kind of meta knowledge to know "Hey, this is vastly more profitable than anything else I could do, with little to no risk!". 

Rackham

So, I'm like 2 pages late to this party but I felt the need to say it.

Totally agree that the rewards for sailing things need to be relatively high to compensate for costs and penalties.

Salvage, tokens, stores (possibly crew replacement, yikes) are expensive. Ammo is expensive, ships are expensive (even more so now that wood is worth double it's weight in gold and shipfitting is a thing for weapons). Splitting the gold with the 2-3 other guys on your ship minimizes seamonster returns. Big big investments, big big losses..... So it makes sense that the profits should be big too yeah?

On the other hand, this crap about 'the pirates should have stopped us if there was that much gold on the line' is a bit irritating. You think the pirates get a cut of 'un-harvested seamonsters' or something stupid like that? Here's how it goes....

Somebody says 'yo there's like 5 galleys out grouped and mass producing seamonster parts, do we have enough people to take em down?'.

Then everybody sits there and thinks 'what do I get for attempting to sink 5 galleys?' Best case scenario, some fun, couple deathsights with your name on them, and a bunch of angry people and enemy statuses. Worst case? You get sunk, have to eat those big big seafaring costs, and that's it. At no point during that is there profit for me to do it.

I'm not here to police how much gold you make. You, and the admins, do that. Looks like they did! Now if somebody wants to start paying me to be the fuckin port authority, or a fish and game warden, then I'll go out and deal with it. But for now, unless I'm doing it for fun, it doesn't benefit me to go stop you making gold.

But wow I wish I could have made ~200 -extra- credits over the last couple of weeks. That sounds great.

Archaeon

Pom now officially achaean coast guard

Caelan

Archaeon said:

Pom now officially achaean coast guard

Ironically..  even in Achaea, STILL not a member of the military. 

Gallida

To be coasties, PoM would have to be able to walk back to shore if they sink.

Paux

I have been playing for over a decade and have no idea what the gold cap amount is.

Thaisen

Paux said:

I have been playing for over a decade and have no idea what the gold cap amount is.

Well then, prepare to be shrubbed.

Jonathin

Paux said:

I have been playing for over a decade and have no idea what the gold cap amount is.

Don't feel bad, homie. I heard it's like 250k or some shit like that. Even after 20 years, I still haven't come close in a single sitting.

Sobriquet

I don't hunt some of the higher gold generating areas that are open PK, but it's taken me around 3000cr worth of Arties to start reliably hitting the gold cap per day. Sped up at times by larger groups doing the Foray's, but personally think that amount of gold generation is fine.

Caelan

Paux said:

I have been playing for over a decade and have no idea what the gold cap amount is.

Jonathin said:

Paux said:

I have been playing for over a decade and have no idea what the gold cap amount is.

Don't feel bad, homie. I heard it's like 250k or some shit like that. Even after 20 years, I still haven't come close in a single sitting.

Yep.  I don't give a fark what the cap is because I just do me and not worry about it.   I know it's under a milli though, so if I start reliably hitting 1,000,000gp per day, some shit is up.

Penwize

To clarify, the gold cap begins at 150k.  Many people will hit it without even realizing it, because unless you're tracking your gold drops per area very carefully you're not going to really notice 10% less, 20% less gold.  It increases exponentially the more gold you generate from hunting, making it take very, very long to reach 250k gold in a day, and nigh impossible to reach 300k in a day.  It's also every 25 hours, not 24, as it's tied to the in-game month.

As to the idea that ships generating that much gold is okay because of the required investment, even a cursory glance at how many credits you have to invest to bash fast enough to even generate 100k gold/hour should illustrate why the relatively small investment in ships compared to their relatively high gold/hour generation is a problem.

Cooper

For those that don't know, here is approximately what you need to have to generate 100k gold per hour as a serpent.

Everything is assumed level 3.

Lash - 1600
Dex - 2500
Sip - 2000
Bracelet - 1400
Regen - 850
Cape - 1500
Lily - 200
Crit - 1200
Maya - 2500
Lucky elixir - 1cr per
Wings - 800
Pebble - 6 crowns
Rondel - 850
Both bashing paragons - 2000

Over 15,000 credits invested so we can bash 100k gold an hour.

So your "expensive" ship is actually incredibly cheap.

Penwize

Cooper said:

For those that don't know, here is approximately what you need to have to generate 100k gold per hour as a serpent.

Minor clarification: 100k gold per hour, for one hour a day.  Less the second hour.  Significantly less the third hour.

Jinsun

I've held off on comment. I don't like the changes because it does destroy incentive for people to undertake investment to sail even if it's incongruous to investing in being a master hunter. 

After hits to voyages this change is not a positive one because it goes too far. Limiting pool spawns to one per timer makes the pools useless. Say you get on a ship and sail out 30 minutes and there's already people there, in the past you had options, sink them, work together etc etc. Now your best option is to sink in them and camp the neat yourself and even then it is a ton of effort/risk for marginal gold. Ships can be such a fun and rich facet of the game but the investment/risk will always hurt peoples' motivation. I would have like to have seen either trophy caps on individuals or some other method that punishes a single person over profiting vs punishing all sailors.

as to everyone saying Cyrene should be ruthlessly punishes for this, I disagree wholeheartedly and here's why. The timers and swapping out ships to reset them has been a metric and a respected method since seamonster hunting became a thing. Were the rewards more than we should be expect as players? Of course buts it's just the next step up from what every city has done in the other seamonster pools. We've been doing it in lvl 2-3 pools for years and no one thought it was some sort of bug. When you understand a recognized mechanic you're going to use the most efficient route within the mechanics. That's all they did and they shouldn't be expected to guess that the admin would be upset that someone -finally- figured out how to turn good profit on the level 4 pools.

i can't think of any other game that punishes players for using mechanics as designed and it's always disheartening when I see it.

Iaxus

If the only incentive to go sailing for most people is a broken mechanic that awards way too much gold if manipulated properly, that may be a sign to have a closer look at Seafaring (and Shipfitting) entirely. 

Shirszae

All ship-rrlated prices need to go the fuck down for one. 

Keorin

Serious question: why the heck didn't they just drop the gold gain on level four monstering areas? Or change the mechanics solely for those areas? Or just stuck a cap on it like they did with hunting?

I'm not a sailor, I may well be missing something, but it sounds like this was a mechanic that was well established and worked just fine in most instances but went too far when mixed with a dramatic increase to rewards in the hardest places.Was there a reason that the whole mechanic needed to be tossed, dramatically changing seamonstering writ large, instead of just changing the thing that was a problem?

Jinsun

That's kind of where I'm dumbfounded is that the solution isn't remotely commiserate to the problem. 

@Iaxus I have complained about seafaring motivations and risk for years and years and years 

Jinsun

Also to everyone saying "well it takes 10000 credits to make 100k an hour hunting." Cool story? No one is sailors should make a ton more than you. As a dragon I can pull about 50k with lvl 1 arties and sip ring with minimal effort. Currently there's like what 6-7 pools? They'd already nerfed lvl 2s to about 60ish k per hour assuming you sail alone with single spawns. Plus sailing has been built to encourage group sailing. Imagine spending 10million +gold on a ship to hunt 60k an hour and still having the risk of 1. Not being able to hunt 2. Being sank to the tune of 50-100k setting you back hours with yearly gold costs of about 30k a year -plus- you're out the time it take you to sail to each of the handful of pools and see if you can be the one person lucky enough to sail it. They're apples and oranges 

Cooper

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

Jinsun

Cooper said:

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

You're right the solution to a mechanic having negative rewards is to nuke a high clan and a conflict avenue instead of just fixing the overly punitive aspects of the mechanic. My bad lemme just get on that. 

Thaisen

Jinsun said:

Cooper said:

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

You're right the solution to a mechanic having negative rewards is to nuke a high clan and a conflict avenue instead of just fixing the overly punitive aspects of the mechanic. My bad lemme just get on that. 

No take backs

Jinsun

Thaisen said:

Jinsun said:

Cooper said:

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

You're right the solution to a mechanic having negative rewards is to nuke a high clan and a conflict avenue instead of just fixing the overly punitive aspects of the mechanic. My bad lemme just get on that. 

No take backs

Lol I actually tried once to shut it down and the admin wouldn't respond, I'm glad they didn't as ive had so many fond memories since 

Thaisen

Jinsun said:

Thaisen said:

Jinsun said:

Cooper said:

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

You're right the solution to a mechanic having negative rewards is to nuke a high clan and a conflict avenue instead of just fixing the overly punitive aspects of the mechanic. My bad lemme just get on that. 

No take backs

Lol I actually tried once to shut it down and the admin wouldn't respond, I'm glad they didn't as ive had so many fond memories since 

don't give up on my dreams

Jinsun

Thaisen said:

Jinsun said:

Thaisen said:

Jinsun said:

Cooper said:

I agree, ship sinking is also a bad mechanic and needs changed. Nothing else punishes you so hard for trying to participate.

You could start by not organizing a group of people that love to sink other ships.

You're right the solution to a mechanic having negative rewards is to nuke a high clan and a conflict avenue instead of just fixing the overly punitive aspects of the mechanic. My bad lemme just get on that. 

No take backs

Lol I actually tried once to shut it down and the admin wouldn't respond, I'm glad they didn't as ive had so many fond memories since 

don't give up on my dreams

Join us bby

Gribbit

I think this just boils down to a difference of philosophy. Call me entitled or whatever, I did not sign-up to beta test a game. I thought I was playing finished product. We used a mechanic that had been the way it is for over a year. Was the gold good? Yes. Was it more than the gold cap? Yes. Do I care it was more than the gold cap? No. Do I care that an 'average' player has to sink more credits to do that? No. I do not play a game to be 'average.'

We found a way to make more than the average player. It should be tuned and move on. The gold influx was so little that giving us a speeding ticket for it was inane. This is the first game I have ever been given a not-a-punishment for being to good at it. 

I do not think it should be up to the players to police the economy. I do not think it should be up to the pirates to make seafaring risky. And I think, especially with the seamonstering change, the cost vs reward of seafaring is just not worth it.

Saonji

Yikes.

Shirszae

Every other argument aside, achaea has an unfortunate habit of 'fixing' things simply by making them not worth doing, and this is another example of that.