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
- 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
.