A response to all the complaining about the recent economy changes

[Earth Dragon]

This is why I hate YouTube gaming. It showcases all the broken busted ways to approach a game, and since that was the developers intent, they balance it, then all the crybabies who have to watch a “how to play” video before they do anything themselves have a meltdown down because it no longer works.

 

[SmattlePattle]

This is why I hate YouTube gaming. It showcases all the broken busted ways to approach a game, and since that was the developers intent, they balance it, then all the crybabies who have to watch a “how to play” video before they do anything themselves have a meltdown down because it no longer works.

It must be nice to be able to ignore what people are legitimately describing in terms of non-functional mechanics and changes being pushed to live directly past beta and just respond to your own made up phantom about "youtube gaming". 9/10 missing some millenial/zoomer complaints for a perfect 10/10

 

[peenerz]

First of all, Reddit is not something that you should take seriously. It is full of crying kids that know little to none about the games that they are criticising 90% of the time. I say that from experience of being a long time hardcore player from other games which i do not want to promote here but i can say that Reddit overreacts because nowadays it is often full of casual players. But i did read the full post and all i can say is that it is missing the main point of complaints just like the people before me said. Yes, the caravans are giving too much gold but rolling the changes without betatesting is wrong. And also tweaking it without adding the new ways of earning money is a little waste of time because, again, as someone before me said they will have to rebalance it again. To sum it up: The Reddit post is not entirely wrong but it is not something that you should consider bulletproof truth that should be indoctrinated as it is not covering the whole problem. It seems like someone just tried to shine on the internet with It without doing proper research or playing enough to understand the problem.

I can say the opposite, the mount and blade sub on reddit is way more mature than all the crying I see here. The fact a bunch of these people just cover their ears and say "I WONT READ IT" to actual constructive criticism proves so.

No. This is like having a half-finished wood frame which might support a roof one day and haphazardly putting up some plastic where the rain happened to hit the hardest that day. The rest of the house still gets soaked. Instead, you should put a plastic tarp over the roof - finish up the structure, then finish the roof, then worry about spot-checking for leaks. Fixing the roof before the rest of the structure is complete is nonsense.
The plastic tarp in this case is analogous to having a working economy of some kind which enables play-testing the rest of the game.

The base game is already like a tarp, its playable, not fully fleshed out but doable. The economy has never crashed the only thing that is a "problem" is how expensive late game items are, but everyone here seems to think that is absolutely game breaking, much like how caravans are actually balanced now

 

[Tobi7043]

It's perfectly fine to complain, as addressed multiple times in the post. There is a difference between constructive criticism and crying because your favorite exploit does not work anymore. See point number 4, a bunch of the posts I see on these forums has inspired me to post this because he makes a really good point about this

(Reposted from Reddit with permission)

This was very much needed thank you!

 

[Tobi7043]

I think people are upset because the developers are focusing on the wrong things. They are trying to balance an incomplete feature so it doesnt make sense. Nerfing the caravan only delays players getting super rich, but the problem is that the player will still reach that point with relative ease eventually. There are much bigger issues than balancing caravans imo.

You cant see what they are doing so how can you even make such a stupid statement? They are of course working on alot of things behind the curtains as alot of comments from developers have shown...

 

[Timberwolf]

I'm not even going to read past the first paragraph. If this was posted by a developer, then shame on them. Is this an official Taleworlds release from an employee? If so, I wouldn't mind starting some serious anti-Taleworlds Internet campaign over it. Let's get it on.

You don't belittle your customer base. Period. Disney learned this when they let their director of Star Wars compare the audience to Nazis. If you're going to call us all stupid for "complaining" about things that were supposed to be working and are not, then maybe you shouldn't have an open-registration forum.

Note: If this is NOT an employee of Taleworlds, piss off. Who gives a **** about your opinion?

 

[xdj1nn]

balancing by nerf is always the worst choice, like it or not, the complaining is grounded, how people are complaining though is a different beast altogether.

Btw, this nerf doesn't even make sense given 90% of the correlated features are not even in the game yet, so we can't know for sure if it's really an issue. It is for the EA without stuff, the broken state of the game currently, later on this nerf could be harming, too harming. It already destroys early game options, you are forced into more narrow playstyles, which is bad on in itself. Losing a caravan at day gazillion trillion is one thing, losing your first caravan when you've just went bankrupt sitting on 200 gold is another thing. So if it makes less money, and can get wrecked fast, it's a trap for early-game, consequently narrowing the playstyle options. In fact, it's already narrowed by the simple fact that Companions available may or may not have trading skills at the beginning, if you roll without a single one, you are already stuck and will be forced to level up clan to get the next tier spawn... If you are really unlucky, you may even not find a single ****er who can trade for the entirety of the playthrough.
Which reminds me of another point: too much RNG, this needs to change ASAP....

EDITED PS:
Oh, and to me, allowing "cheaty" and "cheesy" gameplay is always better for testing. Give the players ground for their creativity and they'll find bugs and issues nobody could even imagine existed. Given those points, the nerf is double-stupid.

 

[Timberwolf]

Reported this on Reddit under the hostility clause.

 

[Twitch/Pappus]

Is it though? There is another thread here that has people up in arms that looters now kill their units due to a bug fix. Many want the bug back so that they can spam autoresolve vs. looters. (And I agree that autoresolve is broken, but the idea that a bug should remain in the game because people actually went around pressing autoresolve vs. looters enough to complain is -- as someone else put it -- demented.)

They don't care if it was a bug or not, they want the free xp. Not like anything happens if you go into the fight. You press f6 and win without moving, without losses. Thus the old autoresolve gave you a worse result faster. 100 men vs 20 looters isn't a fight, it is a waste of time you partake to level your troops.

If a reasonable way is implemented to level your troops, then killing looters will become a thing of the past right there and then.

Well the fighting needs a massive overhaul anyway it is complete garbage to begin with. Either you have a landslide victory or no chance. Randomly, every 200 battles and out of the blue a battle down to the wire happens with a lackluster result, cause the game is a winner takes all type of thing.

Looters should not become immobile after they are like 40 and actively band together (or grow) and hunt at the very minimum.

 

[COOMER]

Thanks for reminding us again that the game is "still in Early Access".
Truly, were would we all be without your guidance?

 

[Tozze101]

Not really sure why there is talk about caravans being broken and/or economy. My caravans in latest beta earn me between 1-3k with random days of a couple of hundred in the negative. The only thing i've noticed is that the spicetrader companion is missing. Might just be that she shows up later but to be fair i noticed ANY companion seem to do almost as well.

Hey, if you're having trouble making money then there's an easy way for early game before you join an empire.
Do trading across the bordertowns on the map and make sure you buy stuff in villages and not towns unless they have very low prices and a huge stock.
Buy olives below 20, hogs below 30 and hardwood below 30 in Vlandia
Buy hogs and hardwood in Battania as you pass through
Buy cows below 100 in Sturgia
Buy sheep around 30 and steppehorses below 100 in Khuzait
Buy desert horses below 150 and asari horses below 1000 in Aseri

Repeat and sell stuff as you go around if the price is double of what you paid for it. Keep in mind that prices may fluctuate and sometimes you can get them much cheaper and other times a sneaky merchant got there just before you did.
Using this method i earn around 50-100k for each lap. Only issue is random wars and if i overfeed the towns which pushes demand down and in the beginning i usually only can afford the olives but you quickly snowball into major profits.

With the economy i noticed that the AI lords don't give a damn about building up towns/castles which causes towns in Sturgia to forever have low prosperity. As soon as i own those towns and start building stuff it skyrockets. I pushed "Vagiroving" (i think that's what the town is called) from 2000 prosperity to 5000 by building 3 buildings. Almost 12 hours into this playthrough but still no spicevendor though..

Oh and honestly i'm not that fond of caravans having to be led by a companion. I would rather have a cap depending on clan level like with workshops OR have a higher companion cap with companions still leading caravans and make more use of the tradeskill like putting trade companions as foremen in workshops to boost the productivity/profits etc.

Anyways, that's my opinion but so far the game still works fine except being early access so alot of features are missing (like diplomacy).

Edit: Oh and about the whole early access thing. Feedback is always good especially if they make changes that break the game but so far i've only noticed improvements like no more crashing and better performance in MOST battles. Still getting random battles that are very choppy for some reason. The thing with not being able to autoresolve looter battles anymore is kinda annoying though. So tired of doing 50 battles against looters just to level my guys up without losing high tier units (first world problems..i know)

 

[Zinras]

The problem here is that the caravan nerf isn't supported by the necessary framework for it to make sense. In the larger economy, a change to make caravans more vulnerable needs to be accompanied by lords or their mercenaries having a much stronger focus on keeping their trade routes clear. Trade has always been the primary source of wealth and power in a nation, which the game can and should respect. It could also help solve the infinite deathballs of recruits by tasking lords to fight looters/bandits to upgrade their troops, just like we do, as part of that process.

Beyond such issues, it's not only an issue of "can I still make money?", it's an issue of now being forced into a playstyle you might not care about to do so. There are a surprising amount of people out there who absolutely don't care about owning the entire map and winning every war: And I know that because I used to be one of them. Some of us just find it fun to do our own thing but that usually requires a somewhat independant economy with workshops and caravans. Now that caravans are somewhat out of the picture in terms of profitability, it leaves workshops that can be a pretty dodgy investment since it isn't always immediately clear what is needed where.

There are also other large economy-related issues like how wars barely seem to cost money and the main difficulty for the AI is maintaining food supplies and cohesion. Population gain also seems way too high and while I understand that's probably to make sure the player can always resupply their troops, the underlying consequence of that priority is infinite recruits for lords. While I certainly don't disagree that caravans were way too profitable and safe, I'd rather have gone with an upgraded quality of troop for a higher salary and reduced profitability that way as an option. Basic caravans could run a higher profit margin but get attacked more often, while safer caravans would have lower margins but won't get defeated as easily.

I also have to agree that while different teams work on different things at different paces, the economy doesn't seem to be the most immediate problem to solve. It's already far too easy for the player to farm money and influence from deathballs of looters and lords with their recruits than it ever was to make caravans. Saving up 18k for a caravan takes significantly longer than getting a reasonable tier 3-4 army going and once you've merc'd it up, you can easily earn 10k by clapping a small enemy army.

 

[stevehoos]

"snowball into major profits."

This is what is wrong with trading in this game. It's too easy.

 

[Tozze101]

"snowball into major profits."

This is what is wrong with trading in this game. It's too easy.

Oh yah and the fact that 4-5 rounds like that and you get the magical perk of being able to buy towns for 100-400k. 4-5 more rounds and you can buy an empire

 

[Earth Dragon]

Nonsense. If this were closer to feature-complete and release I agree. However, as it stands the game is a shell with a LOT of missing content (that we know exists in some form). Who cares about endless economy changes in EA, we need broken features so we can help the developers implement and fix them.

Economic and system stability are the metrics you need in place to ensure everything else is working properly. It’s what controls advancement, game flow, character and story progression, and the ability to use any further systems.

It’s extremely short-sited to feel the game economy shouldn’t be working first and foremost. It causes major problems if players have too much or not enough access to other features

 

[ppc]

Economic and system stability are the metrics you need in place to ensure everything else is working properly. It’s what controls advancement, game flow, character and story progression, and the ability to use any further systems.

It’s extremely short-sited to feel the game economy shouldn’t be working first and foremost. It causes major problems if players have too much or not enough access to other features

I suppose it really is a chicken and egg type of problem - attempt to fix the economy without other major features in or add all features and then try to balance as a whole. Tbh I really hope TW has some sort of internal development plan. I think a big part of why people are frustrated is the lack of clear communication of what to expect.

 

[Tobi7043]

I suppose it really is a chicken and egg type of problem - attempt to fix the economy without other major features in or add all features and then try to balance as a whole. Tbh I really hope TW has some sort of internal development plan. I think a big part of why people are frustrated is the lack of clear communication of what to expect.

They said they would stop making the dev blogs here in the start of EA at least to get the game working properly as main focus

 

[babelfisch]

I'm not even going to read past the first paragraph. If this was posted by a developer, then shame on them. Is this an official Taleworlds release from an employee? If so, I wouldn't mind starting some serious anti-Taleworlds Internet campaign over it. Let's get it on.

You don't belittle your customer base. Period. Disney learned this when they let their director of Star Wars compare the audience to Nazis. If you're going to call us all stupid for "complaining" about things that were supposed to be working and are not, then maybe you shouldn't have an open-registration forum.

Note: If this is NOT an employee of Taleworlds, piss off. Who gives a **** about your opinion?

It wasn't a Taleworlds employee and now please piss off because nobody gives a **** about your opinion. ?

 

[radiant9000]

You cant see what they are doing so how can you even make such a stupid statement? They are of course working on alot of things behind the curtains as alot of comments from developers have shown...

What are you smoking? We can't see what they are doing? The new patches show what they have been doing or do you think that patches come from thin air with no work? It's pretty ironic considering you saying my comment is stupid and then we have this comment from you.

Obviously they aren't going to announce everything to us and they are probably working on something bigger in the background. It still doesnt change the fact that these changes are kind of pointless atm, but this is an opinion so don't take it that seriously.

You also realize not everyone browses everywhere on this forum right and some people don't even go to the forum. These comments are not easy to find and obviously isn't the best way to communicate with the player base. They should make a road map/dev blog to update the player base.

 

[Tobi7043]

What are you smoking? We can't see what they are doing? The new patches show what they have been doing or do you think that patches come from thin air with no work? It's pretty ironic considering you saying my comment is stupid and then we have this comment from you.

Obviously they aren't going to announce everything to us and they are probably working on something bigger in the background. It still doesnt change the fact that these changes are kind of pointless atm, but this is an opinion so don't take it that seriously.

You also realize not everyone browses everywhere on this forum right and some people don't even go to the forum. These comments are not easy to find and obviously isn't the best way to communicate with the player base. They should make a road map/dev blog to update the player base.

They are making hot fixes and bundling the larger updates into larger bundles so with all due respect you can't see what they are doing....

2nd off yes I semi agree with you that they should make a road map or something, but they said when they released the game that they would focus on fixing the important parts first instead of Dev blogs, but we could hope we could make them change their mind...