Why the hell is the Tannery so overpowered?

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a) The dev's clearly aren't all that close with any of this; they have shown a willingness to make massive swings and b) the variables can't be isolated, especially when making big all-at-once rebalance choices.
Sorry, I did not mean to imply that they should be making large balance changes across the board all at once, or even just to passive income. I was originally only addressing the point of black_bulldog by saying that developers in general aren't just folding to the blowback from the player base complaining about an overly harsh nerf, but are actually following a logically sound balancing process. You or him may beg to differ, but I have no problem with that.

Even though I was speaking about the practice of using triangulation to balance in general, my later response to you was aimed specifically at finding the balance point of tanneries (and any other workshops which they deem in need of a nerf/buff). I think there was just some slight confusion surrounding the subject matter. That's my fault because I did not make that clear.

Correct me if I'm wrong though; the vast majority of workshops have not been majorly nerfed at an individual level. Mostly, it's just been wood workshops and a few others who have gotten special treatment. That means they already have a general number in mind for what kind of income a Level 1 workshop should be generating. We may have gotten a sneak-peek at this target number shortly after release when they capped the workshop income to 200 per day while they reeled in wood workshops.

So if they are only looking to bring tanneries in line with the rest of the workshops, then they don't generally have to consider the effects their changes have to other mechanics down stream, or as you put it "unintended second order consequences," because they'll be moving on to them next. They were able to dial back wood workshops without totally destabilizing the economy, so it should be achievable with tanneries too, right?

In my example I'll admit that I over simplified the actual process by boiling it down to altering a single parameter. In reality, there are a number of things they have to consider when adjusting tannery income, such as: intrinsic value of leather and hides, workshop production rates, input and output ratios, slaughter rate of cattle, consumption rates of goods, and other things. They may have tinkered with these numbers already behind the scenes, but the game is very chaotic, and eventually they will have to put the change out into the wild so that they can get more data on what happens and how players react to it.

That's all I was saying. They need to overshoot the target at least once before they can be sure they've gone far enough. You're right though, it's bad practice to change too many variables at once, because then you can't pick out cause and effect.
 
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Sorry, I did not mean to imply that they should be making large balance changes across the board all at once, or even just to passive income. I was originally only addressing the point of black_bulldog by saying that developers in general aren't just folding to the blowback from the player base complaining about an overly harsh nerf, but are actually following a logically sound balancing process. You or him may beg to differ, but I have no problem with that.

Even though I was speaking about the practice of using triangulation to balance in general, my later response to you was aimed specifically at finding the balance point of tanneries (and any other workshops which they deem in need of a nerf/buff). I think there was just some slight confusion surrounding the subject matter. That's my fault because I did not make that clear.

Correct me if I'm wrong though; the vast majority of workshops have not been majorly nerfed at an individual level. Mostly, it's just been wood workshops and a few others who have gotten special treatment. That means they already have a general number in mind for what kind of income a Level 1 workshop should be generating. We may have gotten a sneak-peek at this target number shortly after release when they capped the workshop income to 200 per day while they reeled in wood workshops.

So if they are only looking to bring tanneries in line with the rest of the workshops, then they don't generally have to consider the effects their changes have to other mechanics down stream, or as you put it "unintended second order consequences," because they'll be moving on to them next. They were able to dial back wood workshops without totally destabilizing the economy, so it should be achievable with tanneries too, right?

In my example I'll admit that I over simplified the actual process by boiling it down to altering a single parameter. In reality, there are a number of things they have to consider when adjusting tannery income, such as: intrinsic value of leather and hides, workshop production rates, input and output ratios, slaughter rate of cattle, consumption rates of goods, and other things. They may have tinkered with these numbers already behind the scenes, but the game is very chaotic, and eventually they will have to put the change out into the wild so that they can get more data on what happens and how players react to it.

That's all I was saying. They need to overshoot the target at least once before they can be sure they've gone far enough. You're right though, it's bad practice to change too many variables at once, because then you can't pick out cause and effect.

No apologies needed. I think that's a great summary of good balance practice for something like tanneries - presuming that they already have the workshop income levels set, such that they are just trying to bring tanneries in line with other workshops.

I just think we are talking past each other a little bit because we are talking about different topics. See my post #112 in this thread for context, but in summary: Notwithstanding the OP's intent and title, the thread has become less about tanneries per se and more about passive income vs. active income writ large. In other words, I don't think people have responded so much - 125 posts deep! - because they have an intrinsic interest in the supply and demand mechanics of leather production. Maybe I'm just speaking for myself here, and there's just a huge overlap between MB2BL players and leather-working hobbyists :smile: - but probably not. Rather, I think this thread generated so much heat across so many responses because a lot of us are fundamentally dissatisfied about passive income vs. active income balance calibration in the game. That is to say, a lot of us think the devs have not considered the ways in which limited avenues for passive income (vs. active income) shape and needlessly limit potential avenues of game-play. Tanneries are a trigger point for that precisely because they are not in line with the devs current target for workshop production - because a lot of people clearly think that workshop income should be higher (and maybe other sources of income lower) vs. the devs current target levels. In the status quo, then, Tanneries allow many players to exploit their way out of a balance scheme that they think is broken anyway.

Probably, when the dust settles, this particular argument about Tanneries won't matter, but the question of passive vs. active income balance is always going to matter.

Given that context I made all of my points about passive vs. active income balancing writ large - and more generally about balancing methodology and philosophy. To recap briefly: Lots of signs indicate that there is a long way to go with balancing this game. E.g. your observation that they haven't even introduced their workshop level feature. Regardless of what one thinks about past dev balance choices, lots of information suggests that there will be tons more balances and re-balances across all of the interacting currencies of the game. Thus, I think there is limited value in talking about tanneries vs. regular workshop income - because they are surely going to change all of that several times over, directly and indirectly.

What's more useful, by contrast, is feedback about balancing strategy in general, not just tanneries. Right now, balancing strategy and philosophy matters way more than the state of any one feature of the game - because they're going to add more features, which will have massive ripple affects and will force all kinds of re-balancing later anyway! Giving feedback about how to balance, presuming that a lot of balancing is still to come, maybe goes further than any specific detail on any one feature.

All of this leads me to be concerned. Maybe I'm giving too much weight to too few data points; I am persuadable on this point for sure. But there have been a few balancing choices with recent patches - I can't stop thinking about the 95% all at once nerf to prisoner influence value - that make me wonder if they will apply a measured approach to future re-balances - an approach that considers possible unintended 2nd order consequences. These potential wild-pendulum swing choices would have bigger and bigger unintended side effects the closer those balances would land to the economy, which consists of so many interacting variables. So a potential perfect storm of balance mess: A willingness (occasional? pervasive?) to swing the pendulum wildly + an economy that will need lots of balances now and in the future (at least because of new incoming features). Could be a cluster - thus my feedback. Which I'm sure will totally revolutionize the dev's whole philosophy :smile: .
 
@xdj1nn we might not agree with @Dabos37 but calling him an idiot does not accomplish anything except turning the discussion sour. Please let's not turn this into kindergarten.

Dabos has been dragging this thread through the mud with his behavior, so I think you shouldn't be so inclined to caution the person who got fed up at them for being condescending and mocking to everyone and maybe caution the person who is dragging the entire tone down.
 
That's all I was saying. They need to overshoot the target at least once before they can be sure they've gone far enough. You're right though, it's bad practice to change too many variables at once, because then you can't pick out cause and effect.
The truism "you learn more from your mistakes" is applicable to the principle of overshooting the target.

@TheShermanator you are very right about the negatives to twiddling too many knobs at the same time. The breadth and magnitude of balancing changes are quite different. Changing too many things at once creates unintended consequences which can't be effectively traced to their source. Large magnitude changes on a single metric can create unintended consequences too, but you are much more able to isolate the cause, so you learn something from it. I'm not advocating large magnitude changes just for the sake of it, I'm always in favour of using a combination of hard data and intuition to estimate to the ballpark that will give the result you want. But an overshoot is better than an undershoot, all else being equal.

I haven't upgraded to 1.4.0 yet so I haven't experienced the prisoner influence nerf. But it is obvious even without playing it that nerfing to 1/20th is too much, because that makes it more rewarding to cash prisoners with the ransom broker instead in all cases. On the up side, it is only a single variable change to the influence economy, so even a balance designer who lacks intuition or doesn't really understand the experience of playing the game (a terrible circumstance, but it does happen) can read the data and understand that they've gone too far with that change when they notice people stop donating prisoners.
 
Tanneries are an anomaly among workshops, there is something wrong with them because they outperform other workshops in basically every circumstance. That seems like something that needs to be fixed.

The usefulness of how much workshops make in general compared to the rest of the game is a separate issue. I agree workshops are now useless and need to be more profitable, with the possible exception of Tanneries which appear to only be as profitable as they are because of a flawed ratio of production and consumption in their supply chain.
So buff the other workshops maybe? I can't think workshops are working as intended right now as it is. If they're supposed to be equivalent with caravans right now, and based on the clues in the design of the game it looks like they are, then they're failing spectacularly and badly need a buff.
 
So buff the other workshops maybe? I can't think workshops are working as intended right now as it is. If they're supposed to be equivalent with caravans right now, and based on the clues in the design of the game it looks like they are, then they're failing spectacularly and badly need a buff.
Caravans should outperform workshops, because caravans cost a companion and their risk of loss is higher.
 
So buff the other workshops maybe? I can't think workshops are working as intended right now as it is. If they're supposed to be equivalent with caravans right now, and based on the clues in the design of the game it looks like they are, then they're failing spectacularly and badly need a buff.

I'm with you on this, but I am starting to think that, as many have said before, that workshops are not fully/properly implemented. There is nothing but conjecture at the moment, but with the workshops having possible Levels to advance, they probably don't intend for Lv 1 workshops to be on par with caravans, especially as workshops are generally safer in terms of potentially controllable loss. I imagine these higher levels will come with some kind of increase, as @Badcritter said, the caravans will still likely outperform workshops due to the higher risk factor.
 
Given that context I made all of my points about passive vs. active income balancing writ large - and more generally about balancing methodology and philosophy. To recap briefly: Lots of signs indicate that there is a long way to go with balancing this game. E.g. your observation that they haven't even introduced their workshop level feature. Regardless of what one thinks about past dev balance choices, lots of information suggests that there will be tons more balances and re-balances across all of the interacting currencies of the game. Thus, I think there is limited value in talking about tanneries vs. regular workshop income - because they are surely going to change all of that several times over, directly and indirectly.
Yeah, I get it. People just want to be heard; and they're afraid that if they let someone else get the last word then that's who the devs will choose to listen to. But I think the devs have their own grand vision for the game, and aren't as easily swayed by opinion here on the forums as people might be inclined to think. I myself am pretty indifferent about the actual numbers involved in the balance changes, simply because I don't know what the game will look like in 6 months.

I just have to shake my head a little when people imply that they understand the complexities of this game better than the guys who wrote it.

Edit: Also, I know I keep refering to them as "the devs," but I'd like to point out that the developers are not in unanimous agreement about every detail in the game. They have their own differences in opinion just like the rest of us, and have probably had many of the same discussions as we have, but much more in depth and over a longer period of time.

Dabos has been dragging this thread through the mud with his behavior, so I think you shouldn't be so inclined to caution the person who got fed up at them for being condescending and mocking to everyone and maybe caution the person who is dragging the entire tone down.
Can you point out which comments of Dabos' you take issue with? I count one instance of him accusing someone of lying and one instance of calling people blind. That's hardly egregious.
 
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This thread feels like pure provocation. I am already tired to watch for towns with supply of hides to buy tannery for it is only shop I can get around 400 dennars per day regularly. With shop number dependant on your clan level it is just enough to have wages of your party if you are not trying to have just recruits or T2 units. I have to disband garison of castle even clan lvl 4 with 4 tanneries for I have 120 party of high tier for enemy is not about recruits too hoping my militia will grow fast enough or I have to patrol around that long time until militias is in sufficient number there. Forget to buy any armor, best way seems like tournaments I prefer in same culture to get "lore friendly" gear.

I just remember very well how it was in MB where number of shops were one per town unlike here so reading this funny "income stats" I never saw such income from 541 hours of SP play is just provocation. And if this is because of some mod then let mod players have their own thread marked with mod name instead of to provoke vanilla players with bs like 2k per day when I see always around 400.
Agree have never seen 2k a day, or even 1k a day. Highest I've seen thus far is 400. Not making squat off of my workshops, not enough to fund my army at any rate. I have to constantly battle to keep the money flowing.

1k - 2k a day is not something I've seen, ever, in 477 hours of play time. Wow, I need a life.
 
Agree have never seen 2k a day, or even 1k a day. Highest I've seen thus far is 400. Not making squat off of my workshops, not enough to fund my army at any rate. I have to constantly battle to keep the money flowing.

1k - 2k a day is not something I've seen, ever, in 477 hours of play time. Wow, I need a life.

Well, I am currently getting +800 daily from 1 Tannery in a Vlandia town but the average is 400-600 for most of tanneries. I personally think that 200-400 (400 as maximum) is what we should get from tanneries and other workshops. They would still be useful and not OP. Getting 3500K weekly from only one workshop passively is too much and getting 21k from 6 tanneries weekly (3K daily) is too high, especially if we think that AI is not allowed to buy them.

200-300 sounds much more reasonable for me, and some few key workshops could give 400 or so.

Anyway, It is just my opinion and I do not want to initiate silly discussions again. Sorry if I have sound rude before, but it is hard to be polite when people are insulting or saying dusgusting commentaries about me.
 
Nobody is talking about nerfing tanneries into the ground, but they are currently giving too much money. They should give 200-300 daily IMO, and they would still be pretty useful.

200 - 300 Is not enough, not to have fun, even on easiest settings, you have to bandit party grind, tournament grind, trade desert horses grind just to be able to afford your troops to be able to do these things. with 200 - 300 you can't get to the stable income allowing you to roleplay whatever story you have in mind unless that roleplay is: join faction asap and fight fight fight. Before the latest beta you also had the age limit of getting married as a sword of Damocles hanging over your head and you still have the 10 year banner quest limit looming in the background, in my funnest sandbox role playing playthrough in an older version I got completely blindsided by the banner quest 10 year period expiring and reaching the age limit of being able to marry by the time I had a decent amount of money from workshops and caravans and bandit farming.

eventually I deleted the save file in frustration


One last point I'd like to make is that Bannerlord workshops pay out much less than Warband workshops where the profits where really good
 
Money in Warband never was a big deal and money does not need to be an issue in Bannerlord. This games not about money. Making early game money grind longer does not add anything valuable to gaming experience. Workshops need to be balanced between themselves and buffed.

Maybe we need to have economic difficulty setting, just like Battle Brothers have? It will solve some issues with different playstyles having different views on money making.
 
Money in Warband never was a big deal and money does not need to be an issue in Bannerlord. This games not about money.
I disagree with you 100%, MB is a war game, war is fought and lost by money and supply management, MB is about money. I think thats the most important element that BL needs to balance out and make the player practice sound financial decisions to fund their army properly. The game is too washed out if money is just inflated, and vise versa it would be a grind wall if the value of things were too incredibly high.

Oddly enough, BL successfully has both. Gamey mechanics to completely spoil the player that money isn't a issue in late game. While also making armor and weapons outlandishedly priced that even with your saturated coin purse, buying non-essential things is a huge purchase.
 
Yeah, I get it. People just want to be heard; and they're afraid that if they let someone else get the last word then that's who the devs will choose to listen to. But I think the devs have their own grand vision for the game, and aren't as easily swayed by opinion here on the forums as people might be inclined to think. I myself am pretty indifferent about the actual numbers involved in the balance changes, simply because I don't know what the game will look like in 6 months.

I just have to shake my head a little when people imply that they understand the complexities of this game better than the guys who wrote it.

... They have their own differences in opinion just like the rest of us, and have probably had many of the same discussions as we have, but much more in depth and over a longer period of time.


Can you point out which comments of Dabos' you take issue with? I count one instance of him accusing someone of lying and one instance of calling people blind. That's hardly egregious.

Sure, and I'm all about deferring to the dev's vision for various reasons: Devs have inside info that players lack, devs are pre-committted to the holistic game experience, whereas each player may fixate on their 2-3 pet issues, etc. Certainly, no dev should bend their neck towards any one player's squawking feedback.

However, the wisdom of the crowd is also a thing - and I think that, given the sheer # of people continuing to comment on passive vs. active income calibration, in this and other threads, I don't think it should be casually dismissed. Wisdom of the crowd: Basically, the aggregate of the many, many data inputs that a crowd produces can provide value that a single top-down calculation can't. Classic analogy for wisdom of the crowd, and what it is vs. what it isn't, is the jelly bean jar: You put out a big glass jar of jelly beans, and you have bunch of people guess how many beans are in the jar based on a quick 10 second viewing of the jar. Now, you bring in a mathematician to make a similar guess. Odds are, the mathematician's guess will be better than any one guess from a random crowd member. And even if you take 10 random crowd members and average their answer together, the mathematician is still probably better. But if you keep increasing the crowd of guessers (the sample size of inputs, essentially), eventually, the data reaches an inflection point at which the average of all inputs is increasingly very close to the real # of jelly beans. As such, when the sample size of guesses passes that inflection point, the crowd is likely to, in aggregate, have better knowledge than the expert.

Any analogy breaks down with too much prodding, but still, game balancing works with very similar dynamics. The small dev team, per person, is way smarter and more knowledgeable than any one of us schmucks. And they even have their own experiences play-testing the game. But because the dev team is smaller than the player base, the player base, in aggregate, simply has a much larger sample size of playing-experience inputs. Thus, I think it's worth commenting on just how many people are reporting similar dissatisfaction with the balance between passive vs. active income sources in constituting total player income. Now that's not a given: If lots of other people report the oposite input, then that should be assessed too. (And, apparently, it's hard to get totally rigorous and comprehensive data based on player inputs.) Thus, forums.

None of this means that devs should just bend over and accept a player consensus on passive vs. active income distribution. The prior points about their unique perspective and goals still has bearing. But if a consensus does emerge based on a whole lot of player experiences - more than they could ever have themselves - they'd be fools not to at least add in that player input as a factor in their ongoing decision making.
 
Well, I am currently getting +800 daily from 1 Tannery in a Vlandia town but the average is 400-600 for most of tanneries. I personally think that 200-400 (400 as maximum) is what we should get from tanneries and other workshops. They would still be useful and not OP. Getting 3500K weekly from only one workshop passively is too much and getting 21k from 6 tanneries weekly (3K daily) is too high, especially if we think that AI is not allowed to buy them.

200-300 sounds much more reasonable for me, and some few key workshops could give 400 or so.

Anyway, It is just my opinion and I do not want to initiate silly discussions again. Sorry if I have sound rude before, but it is hard to be polite when people are insulting or saying dusgusting commentaries about me.
400 seems fair to me. I'd like to be able to fund my army without having to fight constantly. Similar to Warband/VC. Get your 14 workshops and bet relatively good on money. If they have to increase the price of Workshops, thats fine by me.

What Vlandian town yields 800?
 
Maybe we need to have economic difficulty setting, just like Battle Brothers have? It will solve some issues with different playstyles having different views on money making.

Yep, would be nice to get a campaign difficulty setting.
400 seems fair to me. I'd like to be able to fund my army without having to fight constantly. Similar to Warband/VC. Get your 14 workshops and bet relatively good on money. If they have to increase the price of Workshops, thats fine by me.

What Vlandian town yields 800?

Pravend.


Concerning Warband, there are big differeces compared to Bannerlord. You can have 14 workshops but you usually will receive profit from 10-11 (due to wars). You have to wait 20 weeks until you get back your investment for dyeworks (just 4 weeks to get back your money with tanneries), so it is not as easy to become rich like in Bannerlord. Plus take in mind that you can get 10k weekly as much in Warband if you have all possible workshops, while in Bannerlord you get +21K weekly from 6 tanneries.

Yes, wages are also daily in Bannerlord but then you compare weekly wages in Bannerlord with weekly wages in Warband, and you will notice that the different is much smaller than money ingress difference.

I disagree with you 100%, MB is a war game, war is fought and lost by money and supply management, MB is about money. I think thats the most important element that BL needs to balance out and make the player practice sound financial decisions to fund their army properly. The game is too washed out if money is just inflated, and vise versa it would be a grind wall if the value of things were too incredibly high.

Oddly enough, BL successfully has both. Gamey mechanics to completely spoil the player that money isn't a issue in late game. While also making armor and weapons outlandishedly priced that even with your saturated coin purse, buying non-essential things is a huge purchase.

Totally agree with this.


My actual problem with Tannery Workshops is that they are profitable everywhere and you do not even need to check the near villages production.

I know that I simply could not use tanneries but It is just about giving feedback to balance the game. An easy game usually means that people get bored faster because they are able to explore every single aspect of the game with easy and It really kills replayability.
 
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Tannery must be profitable in every city at this era. Horse harnesses, many pieces of armor and boots, some shields, all done with extensive use of leather. Only question - how much profit it can do. Same goes for Smithies, they just can't be non-profitable at this age. Same for Breweries and so on.

As for replayability - making early game too hard and too long will hurt whole replayability much more than easy start.
 
Tannery must be profitable in every city at this era. Horse harnesses, many pieces of armor and boots, some shields, all done with extensive use of leather. Only question - how much profit it can do. Same goes for Smithies, they just can't be non-profitable at this age. Same for Breweries and so on.

As for replayability - making early game too hard and too long will hurt whole replayability much more than easy start.
You highlight a very important element that workshops don't consider; supply, demand, and space availability.

But dam I forget i play with mods haha so what's the maximum amount of workshops we're allowed to have in vanilla?
 
You highlight a very important element that workshops don't consider; supply, demand, and space availability.

But dam I forget i play with mods haha so what's the maximum amount of workshops we're allowed to have in vanilla?

Most I had was 3, maybe more was allowed on high clan levels, but at this point workshops meager income was not relevant anymore.
 
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