Please Hotfix Trading

[Anolytic]

There are a lot of great new mechanics being tested on the testbed. Including new trading. But my impression is that the changes to the damage model might still be undergoing some fine-tuning before making it to the live server.

In the meantime, I would suggest either hotfixing the trading mechanics to bring them back to the state they were prior to December, or implementing the trading changes that are on the testbed while leaving the combat changes for later.

 

Since patch 29, in the beginning of December, when all the trade goods stocks in all ports were reset, most ports have been spawning practically no trade resources. There are some ports in Cuba that spawn a nice load of trade goods occasionally, while other ports, despite having trading post upgraded to level 2, does not spawn anything at all, or maybe 10-20 of a single resource in a week. Not enough to fill even a single Indiaman.

 

Between October 31st (Patch 27) and December 11 (Patch 29) any port you visited would have about 2-3k units of medium to highly expensive trade goods, typically divided between two of them. And if all of them were bought from the stock, the port stock would refill within 1-2 weeks. Since December 11, some of the same ports have stocked about 100-200 units of trade goods in a 2 & 1/2 month period. 

In the first period I could over a time of one week empty out of Saint George's Town, or Flatts, about 2000 Oregon Beaver Coats and 1000 Indigo or China Tea. Within 5 days there would be another 1000 at least of each of these trade goods in the port respectively. Since December 11 I have been able to buy 11 Indigo in Flatts. That is all. It's not even worth the 2 hour trip to move them out.

 

I posted about this previously:

And got the answer that nothing was changed in December about trading. But either you changed something by accident, or something was changed in November that only came to light when the trade-goods stocks were wiped in december. In any case something changed between the beginning of November and the end of December that destroyed trading completely on the live server.

 

I am not the only one to have noticed this. I’ve been talking to a lot of people about it in-game, in global chat, and on Teamspeak, and others have also posted about it in the forum:

Following the tendencies in @qw569s spreadsheet ( https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AlmRPa7687Tp7m2KcdKqfrDWgNF0YsyfX8keu6J81Jw/edit#gid=1893672317 ) overall port profits are waaay down since November. Before December, any port could easily be quite profitable, if the owning clan just bothered trading from it. Now port ownership is a vaste, RvR is useless, and almost every clan that owns ports is loosing money. 

As I understand it, in the new economy since the change to reals from gold, the game is not supposed to be about just one thing. You can't really make money on PvE or PvP, so you have to do at least some trading on the side. This is fine. But since December there is no trading to be done, anywhere.

Unless you plan to release the new trading system this week, could we please have the old trading back as a short term fix?

Edited February 25, 2019 by Anolytic

[Holm Hansen]

With the bot distibution on the OW is it similiar. We need NPC on the PVE server. There are already some new players who have not even gotten to know the times in there are NPC (and not just fleets of 10+) on the OW. Where should they level, especially in the level range where they can only sail the small frigates / corvettes? Some of them have already stopped playing.

The new patch promise the solution, with an revised bot distribution, but where is this?

Please bring these changes to the live server. after that, you can relaxed test and tune the new damage model.

[Neads O'Tune]

I'd say we also need another reliable source of income for reals as not all of us have the time nor the will to sail for 2-3 hours moving goods around. Especially when that system doesnt work as it should.

Currently you can get more doubloons from 5 AI traders than you can from and entire day's worth of PvP. (Which is wrong) Yet actual "money" is painfully slow and grindy to come by. PvP used to pay for itself mostly, now you have to engage in this boring stuff.

[Anolytic]

8 minutes ago, Neads O'Tune said:

I'd say we also need another reliable source of income for reals as not all of us have the time nor the will to sail for 2-3 hours moving goods around. Especially when that system doesnt work as it should.

Currently you can get more doubloons from 5 AI traders than you can from and entire day's worth of PvP. (Which is wrong) Yet actual "money" is painfully slow and grindy to come by. PvP used to pay for itself mostly, now you have to engage in this boring stuff.

If/when trading is fixed, then traders will be able to (and need to) buy doubloons, which both PvE-ers and PvP-ers will have in excess and can sell to traders in order to make their PvE/PvP profitable. That is how it worked back in October/November. Although not perfectly, since it was not that well balanced and PvE quickly became way too profitable and PvP way too unprofitable.

[Teutonic]

I must be honest, I haven't seen these affects happen.

I wonder if the trade good spawns are affected the same way that rare resources are - with trade ships from the OW going to that port.

[qw569😳]

1 hour ago, Anolytic said:

Now port ownership is a vaste, RvR is useless, and almost every clan that owns ports is loosing money.

Most ports are not profitable in design. There are ports that constantly generate revenue, but the battle for them is rare.

But for some reason, clans continue to fight for unprofitable ports (screenshot of calendar from Mishka) .

 

[Anolytic]

4 minutes ago, qw569 said:

Most ports are not profitable in design. There are ports that constantly generate revenue, but the battle for them is rare.

After Patch 27 most ports were not profitable, but all ports had the potential and could be profitable, if their owners traded from them. REDS made a profit by making an effort to use our ports and trade from them. Since patch 29 that became impossible. 

Ports don't need to make profit by themselves, but there should at least be the opportunity for clans to make profit on their own ports if they invest in it. It seemed like we were heading in the right direction with patch 27, but then the system broke and nothing was done to fix it.

[Jan van Santen]

Availability of trade opportunities, ai targets and missions ...

Right now the life server (PvE) lacks all 3 of them and is starving. 

I've sailed 1 hr now w/o seeing a single target or finding a mission w 1st rate target or seeing trade goods in harbor. (And that in an area that both historically (windward channel) and according to the dev map should have lots of targets...)

Edited February 25, 2019 by Jan van Santen
typo

[qw569😳]

11 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

Ports don't need to make profit by themselves, but there should at least be the opportunity for clans to make profit on their own ports if they invest in it. It seemed like we were heading in the right direction with patch 27, but then the system broke and nothing was done to fix it.

I am sure that the opportunity exists.

How about capture all ports which produce teak (16) or white oak (13) or Cartagena tar (1)?

I am sure that money is not a problem if the clans have agreed to own not profitable ports.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, qw569 said:

I am sure that the opportunity exists.

How about capture all ports which produce teak (16) or white oak (13) or Cartagena tar (1)?

I am sure that money is not a problem if the clans have agreed to own not profitable ports.

Except teak doesn't drop.. I've had the largest contract for teak at Fajardo for the past 4 days and not one teak has dropped..

EDIT: After the conversion I have about 15 million in my personal warehouse not including goods.. I guess a lot of clans are drawing on surplus generated before trading broke.. And I know from buying rare books that clans are becoming more willing to sell at reasonable prices.. i.e. they are getting desperate to pay for ports while I've been hoarding books for better days.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Guest

[Draymoor]

Another issue I've seen is sometimes random goods drop at random ports, instead of at the ports where they are supposed to drop. 

[qw569😳]

1 minute ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Except teak doesn't drop.. I've had the largest contract for teak at Fajardo for the past 4 days and not one teak has dropped..

If you settled contracts in one port then chance to get teak is too low.

Just now, Draymoor said:

Another issue I've seen is sometimes random goods drop at random ports, instead of at the ports where they are supposed to drop. 

Perhaps this was the result of a hidden function.

[admin]

56 minutes ago, Anolytic said:

After Patch 27 most ports were not profitable, but all ports had the potential and could be profitable, if their owners traded from them. REDS made a profit by making an effort to use our ports and trade from them. Since patch 29 that became impossible. 

Ports don't need to make profit by themselves, but there should at least be the opportunity for clans to make profit on their own ports if they invest in it. It seemed like we were heading in the right direction with patch 27, but then the system broke and nothing was done to fix it.

 

36 minutes ago, Jan van Santen said:

Availability of trade opportunities, ai targets and missions ...

Right now the life server (PvE) lacks all 3 of them and is starving. 

I've sailed 1 hr now w/o seeing a single target or finding a mission w 1st rate target or seeing trade goods in harbor. (And that in an area that both historically (windward channel) and according to the dev map should have lots of targets...)

We are investigating trading and will report the findings 

In terms of NPC and missions it is going to be a lot better once patch is deployed. 

[Neads O'Tune]

17 minutes ago, admin said:

 

We are investigating trading and will report the findings 

In terms of NPC and missions it is going to be a lot better once patch is deployed. 

Does this include opportunities for making reals without long time consuming trade runs?

[Tom Farseer]

28 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

Except teak doesn't drop.. I've had the largest contract for teak at Fajardo for the past 4 days and not one teak has dropped..

Either every AI trader bound for Fajardo has been destroyed, which I find unlikely or there is a different problem here.
Maybe this problem is in the AI Trader spawn and movement patterns because in the Teak ports I regularly visit (being Little Cayman and Nassau) contracts are still being fullfilled. Trading resources above 1k buying price though have been next to nowhere to be found.

[Neads O'Tune]

Wait, do teak contracts only get filled if the AI carrying it makes it to port?

[Vernon Merrill]

4 minutes ago, Neads O'Tune said:

Wait, do teak contracts only get filled if the AI carrying it makes it to port?

Yes....  AI  brings goods to ports now....   its not magically "dropped".

[Neads O'Tune]

1 minute ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Yes....  AI  brings goods to ports now....   its not magically "dropped".

Exclusively? So in theory you could blockade an enemy's port and tag every trader and prevent any teak being dropped (if you had the time and ships of course)

[Vernon Merrill]

Just now, Neads O'Tune said:

Exclusively? So in theory you could blockade an enemy's port and tag every trader and prevent any teak being dropped (if you had the time and ships of course)

Yes...  but supposedly its randomly-generated how much of the allotment comes in at any given time by any given AI trader...

[Neads O'Tune]

1 minute ago, Vernon Merrill said:

Yes...  but supposedly its randomly-generated how much of the allotment comes in at any given time by any given AI trader...

But a trader NPC heading towards Little Cayman for example would have a high likelyhood of carrying teak?

 

[Vernon Merrill]

1 minute ago, Neads O'Tune said:

But a trader NPC heading towards Little Cayman for example would have a high likelyhood of carrying teak?

 

In theory, yes....  Or, at least a "higher" likelyhood than ones going to other ports....

[Holm Hansen]

1 hour ago, admin said:

 

...

In terms of NPC and missions it is going to be a lot better once patch is deployed. 

Thats clear, but what not clear is: when the patch will deployed?

Due the lack of NPC, we have a high rate of new players who stop the game after a short time. We dont need the changes only on testserver, we need it on the live servers.

What I can not understand is, why the new damage model can not be separated from the previously planned changes and can be separately tested and tuned. And then relaxed, when the live servers are back in good playable condition.

[Meraun]

11 minutes ago, Holm Hansen said:

Thats clear, but what not clear is: when the patch will deployed?

Due the lack of NPC, we have a high rate of new players who stop the game after a short time. We dont need the changes only on testserver, we need it on the live servers.

What I can not understand is, why the new damage model can not be separated from the previously planned changes and can be separately tested and tuned. And then relaxed, when the live servers are back in good playable condition.

Do we have an ETA on taht Patch yet?

[Holm Hansen]

4 minutes ago, Meraun said:

Do we have an ETA on taht Patch yet?

I have not found any statements about it yet.

But i´m afraid that it is planned to integrate the new damage model there, which would mean, due to the amount of changes and the required fine tunes, it will delayed for a longer time.

[Galt]

I feel like a simple solution to this would be to either increase the amount of goods AI ships carry into ports or increase the amount of AI going to each individual port throughout the day. I really like the current system of AI stocking the ports but if scarcity is the issue (and with a low pop that is trying to turn into a high pop) you would need to resolve that issue for people to be able to make a living.