Too much trading, and not enough Combat:

[Yar Matey]

This is something I brought up a few times, but it has become an issue yet again...

There is a balance that needs to be maintained in a game like this between trading and PvE/PvP.  This patch has gone WAY too far with the trading required to enjoy the game.  For the last week since the patch has come out, 90% of my time has been spent trading and not enjoying the PvE and PvP aspects of the game (and all I wanted to do was sail my redeemable surprise).

What needs to happen to fix this current problem:

1)  Low tier cannons should be really cheap both to craft and buy

• Class 9:  10 gold per cannon
• Class 8:  20 
• Class 6:  50 
• Class 5:  100
• Class 4:  200
• Class 3:  300
• Class 2:  600
• Class 1:  1500 (36 lbs)
• Class 1:  2000 (42 lbs)

2)  Cannon material costs need to come WAY down!

• Class 9:  10 iron 5 coal for 10 cannons
• Class 8:  15 iron 7 coal
• Class 6:  20 iron 10 coal 
• Class 5:  25 iron 13 coal
• Class 4:  35 iron 18 coal
• Class 3:  45 iron 23 coal
• Class 2:  58 iron 30 coal
• Class 1:  65 iron 34 coal (36 lbs)
• class 1:   75 iron 40 coal (42 lbs)

3)  Rum, Hull Repairs, and Rig Repairs should be sold by NPC's in the shop at every port but crafting them should be a cheaper alternative to buying from the NPC shop.

4)  NPC ships should have better loot (more rum, hull repairs, rig repairs) and some random trade goods.  

These changes above will help players get into ships to join the action faster.  If the costs of outfitting ships is too expensive, then it adds to the time it takes to get into the action and enjoy the game.  Trading should be a minor part of the game and the combat should be a much bigger part of the game.

Assume your target audience has 1 hour of game time a night to play your game.  This means for a full week, 7 hours of playing (lets assume 8 hours for a week), 15-20% of that time should be spent trading and crafting and 80-85% of that time should be spent in combat.  This means 1.5 hours trading and 6.5 hours in combat.  

Edited June 1, 2017 by Yar Matey

[TimeForged]

YES! This is what I've been saying to myself for the past few days playing the new patch. As a player who has played since the game was released this patch is the least of my favorites and not because of the wipe but because of the same reasons you listed!

[Guest]

@Yar Matey Naval Action Legends is in development for those who want a quick fight 

[Remus]

Agree entirely with the thread title, not entirely sure about the proposed solution. Rather than make wholesale changes to crafting, I'd just increase gold rewards from combat and bring back gold for damage.

[shaeberle84]

18 minutes ago, Jœrnson said:

@Yar Matey Naval Action Legends is in development for those who want a quick fight 

That is not the point.

I dont necessarily want a quick fight. But in order to fight AT ALL we all need to spend too much time on crafting and trading. It is simply not possible or at least it is not rewarding enough to climb up the ladder of rank and ship size doing missions and pvp alone.

Missions are, while boring, not rewarding enough. And pvp is too dangerous, because if you lose your ship (theoretically on average every second fight), you are set back severly. 

[Guest]

Sure some things still need to be tweaked. But there are always those who like it and those who dislike it.

I for me do like all aspects of this game and enjoy to be part of this beautiful OW we have the ability to play in. When I'm bored of trading I'm doing some crafting. If I'm bored of crafting I'm doing some PvE, PvP, loot some wrecks from bottles that drop quite often or try to discover ways to get some (rare or new) ressources, &etc.  

[Leku]

Do about 10 missions on cutter or hunt some t. brigs/snows and soon you will be able to sail surprise. When you get it hunt lgvs. U get 17k gold and some goods from it.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Leku

[Sir Texas Sir]

1 hour ago, Leku said:

Do about 10 missions on cutter or hunt some t. brigs/snows and soon you will be able to sail surprise. When you get it hunt lgvs. U get 17k gold and some goods from it.

Have you even tried to produce Coal, Oak, Fir or Iron?   That little money is chump change if you have 5 production buildings up helping your builders out with stuff.   

I do agree right now to much tradeing/grinding and not enough fighting but it's only been a week.  Give it time in a week or even month from now more folks will be stable and free to be out there fighting all the time and only have to pop in to do a quick econ.  Though the Devs need to check there numbers.  They are all freaked out if you make over a million when some of there production takes almost that much to empty them all out at once.  We should be making enough that we can pay for our production either through grinding/combat or trading but many of us aren't.  I have two buildings almost full that I just take a little out at a time as I need cause I can't afford to produce a large amount at once and do other things.  I haven't ran out of labor hours either, it's not an issues it's the cash to get things going and than still have time to go out and PvP/raid.

[SeamanStaines]

Cost of cannon and repairs is very hard on junior ranks at present. Having a redeemable rank, I can switch to a frigate to grind and make money in order to finance the small ship grind. But if I had to do it without these injections of cash it would be much tougher.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Repairs are player made, meaning it is on the players to put the prices.

Medium cannons, NPC stock, could see a small drop, I agree, but I see Longs and Carronades already being sold under NPC prices and mediums way below NPC prices.

So I guess it comes down the players to regulate the prices ? 

[shaeberle84]

7 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Repairs are player made, meaning it is on the players to put the prices.

Medium cannons, NPC stock, could see a small drop, I agree, but I see Longs and Carronades already being sold under NPC prices and mediums way below NPC prices.

So I guess it comes down the players to regulate the prices ? 

There is a natural minimum price, which is ressource costs (for instance 80g on iron ore), below which cannons and repairs will never drop. It is even higher because of contract costs and mark-ups for labour hours invested.

If you consider these minimum prices, cannons and repairs are still unreasonably high.

ON TOP OF THAT:

If players produce cannons and repairs, there will be no labour hours left to produces ships. So after while some players will change from crafting cannons and repairs to ships again. Then, prices will even go up.

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Yes, maybe you have it right.

I did state a fact, it wasn't a assumption. Prices I do see in the server I play ( global ) are undercutting NPC store prices.

As an assumption I'd say the profit margins, even if meeting NPC store prices are very high. So there's even more room for profit while being a arms dealer or a repairs supplier.

 

[Powderhorn]

If your cannons are costing more than 1500 each, someone is making 100% profit on them.  You should consider competing with them and drive the price down.

If your concern is that too many people are trading and you're not getting enough PvP...  go hunt the traders...?  I promise you, people will come out to fight you.

[Fargo]

Keep in mind that most players are just starting to build up a basic existence.

You can stack lots of materials for example, but there are not enough shipbuilders ready to buy yet. Im also still on my way to shipyard level 2, until ill start buying materials. 

When more gold gets into the market after some time, you will earn more gold by selling materials. Fixed costs like buildings become relatively cheaper with growing inflation.

This is why i dont think we can say much about cost/income balancing yet.

14 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Repairs are player made, meaning it is on the players to put the prices.

Medium cannons, NPC stock, could see a small drop, I agree, but I see Longs and Carronades already being sold under NPC prices and mediums way below NPC prices.

So I guess it comes down the players to regulate the prices ? 

Repairs seem to be just very expensive. A fair hull repair price is about 1,2k. Repairs 100 hulldamage. 12k to repair 1k hull. 

The problem with npc prices as far as i can tell is that they mostly ignore labour. Therefore you cant compete as a player. All ships sold by npcs are 3-4 times cheaper than you could sell it as a player without loosing money. Tar e.g. uses lots of labour and should cost about 400 gold, while npcs sell it for 60 gold. 

For cannons they did it right and made npc cannons expensive. A fair price e.g. for medium 6 pd is about 1,3k. Npc price is about twice as high. Looks good, and again this means with time cannons become cheaper when more people start to supply the cannon market. 

 

[Hethwill, the Red Duke]

Player made ships have preferred characteristics built in that is worth above NPC prices for sure.

 

[victor]

The higher the costs for crafting things, the less the goods on the market, the higher the prices on everything.

If Devs lower (let's say of 50%) the price of harvesing resources, this single change will boost the whole market in just a few days.

They decided instead to boost the price of IA sold ships, so crafted ones will cost even more now.

 

Edited June 1, 2017 by victor

[Fargo]

25 minutes ago, The Red Duke said:

Player made ships have preferred characteristics built in that is worth above NPC prices for sure.

They probably wont be a huge problem, but those prices are confusing players. E.g. in gustavia someone is selling a crafted pickle for 19k. This guy is loosing money. Or people wont buy your tar because they think 60 is a good price. 

[admin]

Just now, Fargo said:

They probably wont be a huge problem, but those prices are confusing players. E.g. in gustavia someone is selling a crafted pickle for 19k. This guy is loosing money. Or people wont buy your tar because they think 60 is a good price. 

he is probably selling a gifted pickle from redeemables. Those redeemables ships will have a low price for a while (all accounts received them and we have 50000 accounts on pvp eu for example)

[Fargo]

21 minutes ago, admin said:

he is probably selling a gifted pickle from redeemables. Those redeemables ships will have a low price for a while (all accounts received them and we have 50000 accounts on pvp eu for example)

Definitely crafted.

Im just asking for the purpose of those cheap npc ships and materials. Nobody is going to use the ships, or they become a problem for the player market. The amount of npc materials seems negligibly low. Depending on inflation/labour value, fixed prices are always either too cheap or too expensive. I would either get rid of npcs selling mats, or make them sell expensive as you did it with cannons. I would make npcs only buy mats and this for resource cost, to show players the lowest possible price.

Its all random now and confusing. When a material buy price is below resource cost, what is the purpose?! Thats an useless offer and a trap for new or careless palyers.

[Blackbrook]

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

They probably wont be a huge problem, but those prices are confusing players. E.g. in gustavia someone is selling a crafted pickle for 19k. This guy is loosing money. Or people wont buy your tar because they think 60 is a good price. 

It may be mine. I know I'm loosing money. I sold the redeemable pickle because it was too slow and crafted another. I have now three slots open in pickle and I don't need it anymore, so I crafted a privateer, which I'm sailing now. I would like to keep the pickle, but there was no space in my harbour, and I have to sell it. 

Edited June 1, 2017 by Blackbrook

[Blackbrook]

1 hour ago, Fargo said:

They probably wont be a huge problem, but those prices are confusing players. E.g. in gustavia someone is selling a crafted pickle for 19k. This guy is loosing money. Or people wont buy your tar because they think 60 is a good price. 

It is not difficult to calculate good prices. The problem is that the economy is still spinning up and people are not willing to pay much, because they don't have money or there are too many people selling or crafting materials to get money. But it seems that there are many players who don't set a value for labour hours. And probably they forget the contract "tax" also which should be in included if you want to make profit.

Edited June 1, 2017 by Blackbrook

[Vllad]

 

I think the harder economy actually does create more fights. More trading = more people at sea. That means more PVP. Making the econ hard keeps people active and in the water and creates more opportunities and more motivation for greater RvR. 

 

You don't need millions of dollars to sail small ships and do battle. 

 

I think the players need to forget what the game was and start thinking about what it is now and change their play style accordingly. Their is more open world PVP then their was before so in my opinion the new changes are moving the game in the right direction. 

 

[Ned Low]

31 minutes ago, Vllad said:

 

I think the harder economy actually does create more fights. More trading = more people at sea. That means more PVP. Making the econ hard keeps people active and in the water and creates more opportunities and more motivation for greater RvR. 

 

You don't need millions of dollars to sail small ships and do battle. 

 

I think the players need to forget what the game was and start thinking about what it is now and change their play style accordingly. Their is more open world PVP then their was before so in my opinion the new changes are moving the game in the right direction. 

 

Think logically, 

-Player grinds for 5 hours to save for his Trader Brig

-He Finally starts sailing it and hauling goods, on his last run for the day with full load of expensive cargo he gets sunk. 

-Player is put back into the starting place with all money lost, where 50% will not return to the game because it takes too much time and money to play it. 

-Same with frigate groups, it took players 1 day to grind money and get into Trincs, later they were ambushed by a larger group and all sunk. You won't see them on OS for another 4-5 days. Where is the promised Action here? This game is a grind fest and needs so much work. 

Edited June 1, 2017 by Ned Low

[Fargo]

7 minutes ago, Blackbrook said:

It is not difficult to calculate good prices.

Ofcourse, but reality shows that most people are not doing it. The majority is placing contracts based on other contracts, no matter how bad those are.

Skully once calculated labour values for all markets and all materials. The spread reached from negative values to more than 1k charged per LH. 

Or in times of stiffness people were selling good ships below value, because they based prices on trash ship prices, instead of doing the math. We resold about 25 5th rates for about twice its original price this time, trying to show people what those ships are worth.

With not enough people competing to form fair stable prices for everything, we need to inform people about fair prices, and weird npc prices are not helpful with that. 

[Blackbrook]

16 minutes ago, Fargo said:

Ofcourse, but reality shows that most people are not doing it. The majority is placing contracts based on other contracts, no matter how bad those are.

Maybe we need a trader tool (in game or in the net) which you can use to calculate decent prices (resources, materials, ships, modules).  Default values could be based on level 1 buildings and default for labour hours could be 100g/h.