Lots of good stuff to respond to.
First, a meta comment on the thread: Clearly we are talking about parallel related topics: Tanneries specifically relative to other workshops, workshops in general, workshop income as a function of passive income, and overall income, i.e. passive sources vs. active sources. That kind of parallel but relevant topic discussion is exactly what forums are for, of course. Otherwise ... why forums? Other venues and formats would of course be better and more efficient for addressing rigidly narrow topics.(To be fair, there is always room for finding a relativistic middle ground in forum topic curation, but rigid topic allocation misses the whole point of forum discussions, IMHO.)
More specifically: The disproportionately good performance of Tanneries vs. other workshops is interesting to so many precisely because so many people think that workshop income, and more generally passive income, is under-powered. Thus, abusing Tanneries has for many become a way to (partially) exploit their way, for now, out of a passive income situation that they view as basically broken in general. Thus, the anger about re-calibrating Tanneries. For many on here, it's not really about the mechanics of Tanneries per se (see my past posts, Bannerman man's posts, and many others about possible issues with supply/demand game-math mechanics for possible answers there). Then, given the clear controversy about passive vs. active income sources, combined with the dev's recent track record of making big (e.g. 95%) nerfs/buffs, the issue of likely economic re-balances and the dev's balancing approach presents itself.
Now, clarifications on balancing (
@Badcritter,
@eddiemccandless,
@Bannerman Man): While I do think that my core thesis in my post still stands largely uncontested, I agree that semantics a la 'pendulum swings' are getting in the way. To be clear, I don't have an issue with the slight over-shoot / slight under-shoot triangulation/calibration methodology that you're describing per se. However, that methodology presupposes two things: a) that you're already pretty close, and you are just trying to make small adjustments and b) that the variable that you are trying to target can be isolated. It's clear to me, reading back over my post, that my post is premised on the opposite propositions: 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. To invoke the pendulum analogy: That's fine as long as the pendulum back-and-forth movements are those little ones near the nadir of the pendulum's arc. But I think that's not what is colloquially understood to be the meaning of 'pendulum
swings'. 'Swing' indicates the big disruptive change.
In that context, I think your responses, while thoughtful, fall down in two areas:
1) Many signs indicate that the devs really are not that close yet. See again the 95% nerf to prisoner influence value. See
xdj1nn's posts about his experience with very different gameplay patch to patch. See Bannerman man's own post about the less-than-fully-implemented workshop level system. Of course, we can't read the dev's minds, but available evidence suggests to me that they know they are not yet close to the final balance stasis for the game.
2) Your responses fail to account for my core point about unintended second order consequences - especially when those second order consequences recursively impact the originally intended balance target. That is to say: Even if they were close, and I'm off on (1) - I saw Bannerman man speculate that they may be pretty solid on 90% of these things via internal testing, so let's just accept that and ignore (1) for the sake of argument - big fat nerfs and buffs all at once (vs. the incremental approach) would have 2nd order effects that would undermine those pre-established certainties about 90% of the balance dynamics from internal testing. E.g. Let's say that they think they've had the gameplay flow of war, enemy parties hunting each other, etc. figured out for a long time via internal testing. If they make a huge all-at-once nerf to passive income, they would risk driving the player into unexpected enemy party farming (loot farming = party farming) behavior that might radically change what they thought they had already figured about about how parties move on the map. And, even worse, if the make the big balance change all at once, it's more likely that they will fail to understand that this 2nd order effect, disrupting their prior certitudes, has even happened. In this way, big all-at-once nerfs and buffs might actually create net regression vs. net progression towards the desired balance goal.
So it's not really about the current player experience. I agree that current beta players like me need to suck it up a little bit. But even if the goal is the dev's long term objective to achieve balance for the future player experience, big fact all-at-once changes are counter-productive. To reiterate: Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.