New Horizons - R/P additions

[GB.]

Here are my proposals to create a more realistic 1720's Age of Sail mmorpg:

• AH Trading needs to be seen as more profitable than grinding dailies which currently reward more than a massive 100k. Daily rewards need to be reduced.
• Incentives must be introduced to haul goods in the red zones.

FLS assumes that everyone likes to play the economy by making everyone dependent on it. PvP is being held back by the enormous time & resources it takes societies to construct Lsbs. This also prohibits players listing on the AH as they prefer to stockpile goods & make their dbls on dailies.
R1.12 goes some way to solve this but there will still be a monopoly of large eco-societies that may limit opportunities for newbies & casual players.

• 1st rate Sols are supposed to be rare so another way to make them rare is needed that does not tie up a societies production for weeks or use up nearly all the games resources.
• Fall back ships do not provide competitive PvP, there is still fear of risking ships that can not be easily replaced with dbls alone; by increasing the duro on some deeds will go a long way to reduce the fear of loss & provide more PvP opportunities.

/discuss

[Havohej]

Originally Posted by GB AH Trading needs to be made more profitable than grinding dailies which currently reward more than a massive 100k. Daily rewards need to be reduced. Incentives must be introduced to haul goods in the red zones.

Every 3 days, I can take 1000 tons of (not telling you what I trade) into MT and make 600k on a 100k investment. 600k in three days is better than 390k in three days from dailies. So point one is already in-game.

MT is almost always in the red. So point 2 is already in-game.

EDIT: before you say "Yeah but that's only at MT", no, it isn't. Similar products are just as profitable in places like TB, Bridgetown, St. Johns, Cayo de Marquis, Havana, Grenville, all of which are often in the red.

Originally Posted by GB FLS assumes that everyone likes to play the economy by making everyone dependent on it. PvP is being held back by the enormous time & resources it takes societies to construct Lsbs.

If you don't wanna make bundles, you don't HAVE to sail bundleboats. Sail vanilla boats, non-bundle MC/Sleek/Heavy boats and MoV/MoT refits. You can go through the whole game never sailing a bundle ship and be plenty competitive on the OS and still be useful in PBs.

Originally Posted by GB R1.12 goes some way to solve this but there will still be a monopoly of large eco-societies that may limit opportunities of casual players. 1st rate Sols are supposed to be rare so another way to make them rare is needed that does not tie up a societies production for weeks or use up nearly all the games resources. Fall back ships do not provide competitive PvP, there is still fear of risking ships that can not be easily replaced with dbls alone; by increasing the duro on some deeds will go a long way to reduce the fear of loss & provide more PvP opportunities. /discuss

Durability and Insurance already makes PvP very low risk, especially bundleboats and particularly for societies where members don't have to pay 30k for a Huge Double-Planked Armor or Huge Runner's Rig, etc. The bundle insurance nerf will partially correct that problem. We don't need MORE Durability or MORE insurance, we need LESS, LESS, LESS.

As to ships of the line needing to be gated in some manner OTHER than LSBs, I actually do agree with that. Personally, I favor the suggestion people have made to make LSBs a MoV turnin reward rather than something players create out of their own econ/labor. This would unfortunately still make them grindable (since MoVs can be bought on the AH for cash) but would free up all that econ for production of more "normal" ships and more outfittings, and that increased supply MAY serve to drive AH prices down... maybe. Though it might drive MoV prices UP

[GB.]

Originally Posted by Havohej If you don't wanna make bundles, you don't HAVE to sail bundleboats. Sail vanilla boats, non-bundle MC/Sleek/Heavy boats and MoV/MoT refits. You can go through the whole game never sailing a bundle ship and be plenty competitive on the OS and still be useful in PBs.

For Pirates perhaps but NO's ambition is to sail Sols in PBs & there is no way of obtaining them cheaply without involvement in a closed eco-society that may not want you there if you only want to casual PvP.

Thank you for your constructive reply, I intend to let the thread run now so others can add any comments without me interfering.

[Spinnaker Sam]

Since the AH is based upon what other player's are willing to pay for something, I see no way of being able to guarantee that trading on the AH will produce the same income as dailies. It is also a matter of scale. You put more on the AH for sale, the more money you make. Someone can go into a daily and do very little work, but reap the same rewards as everyone else that is there. The same cannot be applied to the AH. You can only profit based upon how much work you put in. I just don't think the AH is the right place to provide alternatives to dailies.

[chokai]

Originally Posted by GB AH Trading needs to be seen as more profitable than grinding dailies which currently reward more than a massive 100k. Daily rewards need to be reduced.

I'm with Havohej, it already is, the failure of players to get involved is a communication issue. What is needed is a good solid tutorial and training mechanism to reduce the learning curve of the econ for new players. The simplification will help greatly.

Honestly my personal opinion is that the dailies are "easy to learn" and so people chose them over the econ, even though they take more time in the end. The up front time to get going on and fully understand the economy is very intimidating to many players.

The AH shouldn't be something that generates the same degree of income as the dailies but with even less time on the players part right? It should be equal to. We shouldn't favor econ players over combat focused players or else someone will end up feeling slighted.

The dailies take what 45 minutes to run per day? I'm a solo econ player spending only a bit more than an hour in game per *week* right now and am earning about 2/3rds of what the dailies would give me. If I spent 45 minutes per day I would *far* exceed what the dailies pay me.

[charliem]

Why don't one of you give us an example of how a new player can make 1,500,000 db per week?

[Havohej]

Originally Posted by charliem Why don't one of you give us an example of how a new player can make 1,500,000 db per week?

If I were willing to do my econ every three days instead of once every 6 or 9 days, I could make 1.5M in a week (that is, before 1.12, I don't know what the price of my item is going to be now, though I do believe that since I'll be producing double volume, even if the price is halved, I won't be losing any money - so when you read the following, read it with that understanding).

I have my econ set up with 2 limestone quarries, one iron mine, one silver mine, one copper mine and five forges.

The bulk of my income is from iron ingots and silver ingots, the copper I was giving to someone as part of a seperate deal and selling only a little bit on the AH at Matthew Town.

Iron ingots fluctuated between 300/ea. and 500/ea. Silver ingots hovered around 1000/ea. Every three days, for a clickcost of just over 100k, I would sail my product to Matthew Town, put it up for list prices a little below the last recorded sell price and within 24 hours have anywhere from 450k to 650k more doubloons in my wallet. Now, I was lazy, I didn't do it every three days. If I HAD done it every 3 days, though, I'd be a millionaire a dozen times over by now.

It's not HARD to do it, you just have to be willing to put in the time of hauling stuff around. I got rid of my captured Leviathan Bark (over 2000 cargo capacity) just 'cause I wanted something faster - a vanilla San Mateo which hauls a lot less (only 1400 cargo capacity) but gets it done quicker. Now that the new patch doubles production, that will mean more hauling. The new patch's downward pressure on prices, though, will be only temporary because the cash faucets are still running (dailies and insurance). Because more cash is coming into the system than is going out, prices will fall, stabilize then rise again so theoretically it's even possible for prices to reach pre-1.12 levels even though there's twice as much supply now - give it a few months then if it happens say, "Havo was right."

A new player could choose any number of raw material or low-tier manufactured good. Hemp products (very easy to set up in New Orleans if you're French 'cause the Fir for the woodtar is right there), Leather, the Limestone itself generally pulled 100/ea, zinc ore similar price...

Another thing new players could make are speed outfittings. Lightweight guns, streamlined hulls (the best for a given ship size, for small it's 6, medium is 5, large is 4, huge is 3, colossal is 2 but I think colossal speed mods don't really sell so stick to Huge size), Runner's Rig, racebuilt hulls, Speed Rig, that sort of thing. You'll also find tank mods like Double-Planked hulls profitable. These things cost like, 1 or 2k to make, but you can sell them on the Auction House for over 20k. At one point, Runner's Rigs hit 40k!!!! And people with too much cash on their hands were happily paying it. These outfittings aren't hard to produce either, easily done by a solo player. The only thing is, to make green outfittings, you'll need to find or buy the recipe books (Cryptonauticon, there are several volumes, each volume has a different set of recipes).

If your a national player and your nation's econ is pretty tight and you can't make your profit at your own nation's trade hub, take it to Matthew Town. We're used to seeing foreign freetraders standing at our auctioneer getting rich.

Especially when it's in the red - you'd be surprised how few pirates wanna sail their haulers through because they're using cap'd San Mateo Trader's galleons which we can't make in our careening camp and which only Freetraders can sail meaning they can only get them by catching an FT in one in the red and that doesn't happen often... due to this rarity of the ship, they don't like to risk them. That creates 3 days' worth of prime time for Freetraders to come milk us for our ill-gotten pirate cash.

[David Rivard]

Now that we have a great explanation as to HOW you can make money off the AH, let's assume now that there's a LOT of people out here (including me), that don't want to make money for the sake of making money. Money means something in this game, but ONLY if you're producing/buying something out of it. As it was stated in another post, if I were to ask to buy a SOL in Nation Chat, I'd get laughed at. Why? Because frankly, nobody wants to sell a SOL to you directly, so what good is my money then? I'd have to spend it on some other person's SUPER HIGH price on the AH, and call myself "SUCKER". Why would I want that, when I can make 600k off of Dailies on my four lvl 50's per day, while focusing on making what I (Repeat) "I" want to sail.. not what everyone else wants me to sail. If I want a 1st rate, it should be attainable to me, and for it's price - worth every cent paid to create it. The moment FLS or anyone else trys to tell me that I should sail only 4th rates or lower, that comes close to crossing a line into controlling how I should have fun while playing this game... and isn't that up to me???

As for the Auction Hall for making money... I've used it before, but what I found was that your income was never certain, and not steady. For those who mass produce 2-3 Items, and make nothing else but money.. that's good if you enjoy it (tips hat). With only 10 structure slots, my putting items on the AH only limits what I can build for my own enjoyment or that of my society members... unless I just build ships. The Auction Hall IS a good income source if you have a huge stock-pile of goods that you have/can produce quickly, and you don't mind a good wait for the return on your investment. Should I be penalized for doing Dailies because I enjoy making Super Heavies with my 10 lots, instead of posting a lot of smaller items on the AH? I don't think so.

[Havohej]

If you want lineships without a 9001% mark-up, learn to play well with others and join a society with a lineship production line.

Beware: this may require you to be a competitive, skilled Naval Officer who will be useful to his society's (and even more importantly, his nation's) RvR efforts. Balancing RvR flag ships and their attainability with casual and/or willfully solo players in mind would do nothing to improve the state of any aspect of the game.

By "willfully solo," I am referring to players who choose not to participate in societies. If one chooses to go about things like getting lineships the hard way (that is, by grinding raw doubloons and paying 9001% over cost for a Prince or Invincible 1st Rate) then that's what one chooses to do.

If one chooses to make super-heavy ships all by his/her little old lonesome, they're not being punished, they are choosing to do something difficult and need to stop crying about it - especially when everybody and their deckhand will tell that person how much easier it is to build super-heavies as a productive member of a society. Children can't get mad when they burn their hand on the stove after their mother told them not to do so because it would be hot. Likewise, I-refuse-to-do-things-the-way-the-game-was-designed-because-I-don't-know-maybe-I'm-a-maverick-or-something type players can't get mad when it's hard to build bundleboats alone with just a single account worth of lots and lot swaps.

EDIT: Look, I broke the forum

[GB.]

Originally Posted by Havohej If you want lineships without a 9001% mark-up, learn to play well with others and join a society with a lineship production line. Beware: this may require you to be a competitive, skilled Naval Officer who will be useful to his society's (and even more importantly, his nation's) RvR efforts. Balancing RvR flag ships and their attainability with casual and/or willfully solo players in mind would do nothing to improve the state of any aspect of the game. By "willfully solo," I am referring to players who choose not to participate in societies. If one chooses to go about things like getting lineships the hard way (that is, by grinding raw doubloons and paying 9001% over cost for a Prince or Invincible 1st Rate) then that's what one chooses to do. If one chooses to make super-heavy ships all by his/her little old lonesome, they're not being punished, they are choosing to do something difficult and need to stop crying about it - especially when everybody and their deckhand will tell that person how much easier it is to build super-heavies as a productive member of a society. Children can't get mad when they burn their hand on the stove after their mother told them not to do so because it would be hot. Likewise, I-refuse-to-do-things-the-way-the-game-was-designed-because-I-don't-know-maybe-I'm-a-maverick-or-something type players can't get mad when it's hard to build bundleboats alone with just a single account worth of lots and lot swaps. EDIT: Look, I broke the forum

You still have not understood that there are many casual players that don't enjoy spending hours building ships which is what Part 2 addresses with civi ships.
Before you start posting & loling at things it would be wise if you tried to understand the issue beforehand.