The Market

[Juska]

I was just wondering how the market now currently works, seeing it has been changed from the base prom. code apparently, and can you sell food on the market? Because I'm looking and can't find any lol.

[Shadow]

you can sell food

i can anyways ^_^

you can only put a small percentage of your stuff on the market, and it does not add to your net worth while it is on. If you remove something from the market there is a 20% penalty. As you can see, it now shows who has what on the market, making it possible to do some fun market theft takedowns on specific people. The market plays a much smaller role in this game than it does in most promis since you cant use it to do a huge jump at the end of a set.

[Juska]

That's rather unfun, buying bits of the troops and clearing the market finding who's networth increased and then stealing everything was rather fun, now it's easy mode.

[Shadow]

oops my mistake - marketed stuff DOES add to your net. Actually I much prefer this way. Winning by storage was such a waste of space. Although the current setup does favor leaderers heavily, I think a balance is possible.

[wolf bite]

Maybe this is an excellent time to talk about whether the market change is a good thing or bad?

Props:
Your net worth is kept, so you can put a lot of stuff safe on the market and stay in the top ranks.
You can decide who to buy your food and army from.

Cons:
You can decide who NOT to buy your food and army from.
If you are not a leader player, you can't protect what you have on the market.
You can no longer use the market to keep a low net worth
All things put on the market at the same price are grouped together, thus you can't take back only some of it.


I was against the market change from the bargaining.  This is NOT because I am against change!  It is that it limits the strategies rather than increases them.  Before the program favored the leader players and the consensus of the players was that we needed to even out the strategies.  The change basically took away the safety of a non-leader player to even use the market, and at the same time allowed leader players to have unbelievable net worth that is protected.  Also the new players can't sell their goods because the old timers are only buying from their friends.  And even further, the strategy of dropping down in net to hide from a big person has been taken away.

Your thoughts on this?


Wolf Bite

[Peace Alliance]

Ya, there's lots to look over, from my observations over the last few weeks here's what i've noticed about those cons:

"If you are not a leader player, you can't protect what you have on the market."
Non-leader players have always had that risk. All you had to do was watch who's NW changed when you bought stuff, then you'd know who to steal your money back from.
Of course, the change makes this easier. However, i've thought about this quite recently, and it seems to me like the perfect counter to the rats industrial power. With the change to stoat made, i was worried that would make rat much too overpowered (regardless of it's vulnerabilities). But now i can see how leader races can exploit those vulnerabilities for their own means, like in this case. And it feels balanced to me. But only time will tell, as playing strats need to change and adapt to the new setup before i think we will know for sure what to tweak.

"All things put on the market at the same price are grouped together, thus you can't take back only some of it."
Grouping it all together could be a bit of a pain, i agree. Not sure how it got programmed that way either... But I'm hoping shael could adjust that, as well as one day figuring out a way to present things better (looks awful cluttered atm)

"You can no longer use the market to keep a low net worth"
As for the elimination of the strategy where you get to keep your NW down. Well, frankly, thats the entire purpose for the change. It's exactly what gives the Fox race merit. The ability to hide in the lower ranks now belongs to just one race, and thats because it's the main weapon the fox has.

[wolf bite]

Wolf, "If you are not a leader player, you can't protect what you have on the market."
Peace, "Non-leader players have always had that risk"

Wrong!  Non- leader players could not keep their food on them because a leader player could just poison it all.  So Non-leader players only option WAS to put it on the market for a high sum and hope that there was lowered valued food also on the market to keep their food safe.  An enemy would need to buy all the cheap food before getting to the non-Leader player.  Non-leader players now have NO way to protect their food, which makes their chance of gaining net almost impossible.  This heavily slants the game to leader players, who already had the upper hand.


Wolf, "You can no longer use the market to keep a low net worth"
Peace, "Well, frankly, that's the entire purpose for the change.  It's exactly what gives the Fox race merit."

So you are saying that we have destroyed a strategy that had multiple uses to make useful the newly invented super power of a race that is infrequently played?  Frankly, as the person that has worn down more emperors than anyone else, the lowering net strategy is a must.  When unclaned, an attacking player can jump up in net, take the emperor's land, and then jump down so the emperor takes losses trying to get their land back.  The attacker willingly takes the 20% loss each time as a penalty for doing this strategy.  The benefit of the fox is that it can do so with no penalty. 

-------------------------------------

Two days ago a Non-leader player got taken for over 7 billion food because of the market by a leader player.  This type of attack happens every week.  The non-leader players are being wiped out for all their goods and the leader players are using those goods to gain high rank.  This only needs to happen once before the non-leader players realize they have no chance unless they switch to be a leader player.

This goes back to my complaints on the changes.  Rather than fixing problems and making the game "new player usable," we are making changes to "better" the game.  When those changes don't work, or don't work enough, we make new-new changes to the game.  Then as those new-new changes don't work, we need to make new-new-new changes.


Wolf Bite

[windhound]

Wolf, "If you are not a leader player, you can't protect what you have on the market."
Peace, "Non-leader players have always had that risk"

Wrong!  Non- leader players could not keep their food on them because a leader player could just poison it all.  So Non-leader players only option WAS to put it on the market for a high sum and hope that there was lowered valued food also on the market to keep their food safe.  An enemy would need to buy all the cheap food before getting to the non-Leader player.  Non-leader players now have NO way to protect their food, which makes their chance of gaining net almost impossible.  This heavily slants the game to leader players, who already had the upper hand.

There are two easy answers to this.
First, the player just keeps their defenses raised.  Shields up!
Second, prevent market theft.  Money gained from market purchases goes directly to the bank.
Basically, make it so people keep the profits of things being bought off the market.
The idea that you dont lose net when you put things on the market is helpful. 
You can put your food in a place it cant be poisoned and if it is bought and one of the first two suggestions is followed you keep the profits

Wolf, "You can no longer use the market to keep a low net worth"
Peace, "Well, frankly, that's the entire purpose for the change.  It's exactly what gives the Fox race merit."

So you are saying that we have destroyed a strategy that had multiple uses to make useful the newly invented super power of a race that is infrequently played?  Frankly, as the person that has worn down more emperors than anyone else, the lowering net strategy is a must.  When unclaned, an attacking player can jump up in net, take the emperor's land, and then jump down so the emperor takes losses trying to get their land back.  The attacker willingly takes the 20% loss each time as a penalty for doing this strategy.  The benefit of the fox is that it can do so with no penalty.

Coward's way of taking down an emp, to take all the land / murder / poison then drop out of reach
Its almost assumed that if you're taking down an emp, you're working in a group.  Send the stuff that made your net away to your allies and you dont incur the 20% loss.  Your allies should be taking your land anyways, spreading it out so the emp doesn't get it back immediately. 
Fox is fun, but unplayable in its current incarnation.  It just cant keep up with the other races.  You havnt used Fox if you say without penalty wolf.  Its annoying as heck to drop Fox's net.  The spell isnt all that expensive, but you have to do it 100x before any meaningful results are obtained and that's expensive in turns, loyalty, and resources.  Not to mention that you can still be hit by the big people you're hiding from.  Fox still needs to be tweaked imo, but its a good start.

Two days ago a Non-leader player got taken for over 7 billion food because of the market by a leader player.  This type of attack happens every week.  The non-leader players are being wiped out for all their goods and the leader players are using those goods to gain high rank.  This only needs to happen once before the non-leader players realize they have no chance unless they switch to be a leader player.

I watched Holby take 100 mil net worth of Food from a player that was market storing
See the first point I made, market theft should be limited if not stopped.

This goes back to my complaints on the changes.  Rather than fixing problems and making the game "new player usable," we are making changes to "better" the game.  When those changes don't work, or don't work enough, we make new-new changes to the game.  Then as those new-new changes don't work, we need to make new-new-new changes.

The problem is that the game is already into new-new-new-new-changes.
Many changes you like, such as the attack system, are as un-newbie friendly as can be and should be nuked immediately.
The race changes and market changes dont really effect true newbies, only those that understand the game already feel the changes

[Peace Alliance]

I just like to say that i am rather happy to see that we are debating the finer issues of the game. When i took over game development there was a LOT to do. Indy races were completely unplayable, there was only /one/ win-able strategy. And now we are working on refining the market. I am glad there are no longer any direly destructive unbalances.

[pippin the mighty]

The market comes to little use of me, i dont understand why we cant just use merce's at cheaper prices? it is so much easier. And why when i look there are only small amounts, only ranging from 10,000 (shadow) to 4-5m?

Thanks, LT

[wolf bite]

Thanks for your thoughts windy.

A few corrections:

Even if the non leader player could log in enough to keep their defenses up to save their food on hand (which a leader fighter does not need to do), they can still be poisoned 21 times which will take 20% of their food.  They need a way to protect it from the leader fighters, the market WAS their way.

In order to stop market theft, we will need to program in a new-new-new-new feature.

"The idea you don't lose net with stuff on the market is helpful" ... only to leader fighters that can't be stolen from.

It is not a cowered way of fighting someone 3 times their size by dropping net and forcing them to take loses, however it is a coward's way of fighting to steal all someone's goods in 40 turns used.  That non-leader we are talking about lost 150,000,000 net worth in one minute!  They had no way to defend against it, and they have no way to keep a high net in their current strategy.  The Leader strategy is now dead!

Remember, I designed a new-new-new-new change to a percentage of net from the market based on the sales price.  This would have kept both strategies.  It was turned down.

I don't recall me saying I really liked the attack system, but felt some people would want to keep it. I had recommended to have it default minimized.  Again, this new person assisting change was turned down in favor of making more funzy changes.


*  Peace posted before I could post, so I add this:

Yes it is good to debate the pros and cons of changes.  However after the changes has been made is not the time to do it.  All players have changes they think they would like, maybe 25% of the input is actually workable.  The staff is supposed to look over those suggestions and work out the bugs.  However when it is a member of the staff that is totally in favor of a change, and push that change to the game despite other staff members noticing problems with the change, we ... ah ... end up trying to fix that change after the fact, like we are now.  I believe this market change did more harm than for the little good that it was meant for.  Yes, some arguments for it exist.  However the negatives it has caused, and the number of new-new-new-new changes that will need to be done to make it workable is only taking from the time to fix preexisting problems.

My intent is not to start a fight over changes, but to point out to the leader players who are legally using the changes that they have diminished their competition.  Without competitive strategies, victory has no glory!


Wolf Bite

[windhound]

A few corrections:

Even if the non leader player could log in enough to keep their defenses up to save their food on hand (which a leader fighter does not need to do), they can still be poisoned 21 times which will take 20% of their food.  They need a way to protect it from the leader fighters, the market WAS their way.

Um.  You dont have to constantly login to raise defenses.  A popular strategy is to raise defenses while healing.  You attack, construct with the land, and then raise defences till you're at full health.  Even a non-leader player should have the few huts and leaders needed to raise defences
An indy can also sack a leader player 21x, which does make a dent /and/ takes land

The problem here is that you're talking like this happens all the time.
Holby can be a dirty player, 's why I keep him on my side  :P

In order to stop market theft, we will need to program in a new-new-new-new feature.

Er.  yes.
A fix to an old problem is a new feature.  I like to call it progress.
If we just rolled back to the old code every time we hit a hitch we'd go 3 steps forward 2 steps back and never get anywhere

"The idea you don't lose net with stuff on the market is helpful" ... only to leader fighters that can't be stolen from.

Sack much?
Indy players choose their strat knowing the other exists.
And why is storing stuff on the market only helpful to leader players?
Like I said, if market theft was limited or stopped its a very safe place for both Indy and Leader players to safely store net

It is not a cowered way of fighting someone 3 times their size by dropping net and forcing them to take loses, however it is a coward's way of fighting to steal all someone's goods in 40 turns used.  That non-leader we are talking about lost 150,000,000 net worth in one minute!  They had no way to defend against it, and they have no way to keep a high net in their current strategy.  The Leader strategy is now dead!

I meant dropping the net for the sake of dropping it, taking a 20% loss to do so
Sending out your stuff doesnt take but a few turns and that 20% is preserved for others to use..  but does the same thing otherwise
I've discussed ways of preventing market theft, you've discussed putting the market back to the original form which doesn't solve market theft.  An observant player, as mentioned, can watch the scores and see who has an influx of net and know exactly who to steal from.

Remember, I designed a new-new-new-new change to a percentage of net from the market based on the sales price.  This would have kept both strategies.  It was turned down.

I missed that discussion, but it seems odd to have a halfway in this case
Either the troops waiting around in stalls with price tags hanging around their neck count towards your net or they dont

I don't recall me saying I really liked the attack system, but felt some people would want to keep it. I had recommended to have it default minimized.  Again, this new person assisting change was turned down in favor of making more funzy changes.

Actually, my idea was to have it as a switch in Manage Army.  There was some muttered general consent, but nothing was done
...

My intent is not to start a fight over changes, but to point out to the leader players who are legally using the changes that they have diminished their competition.  Without competitive strategies, victory has no glory!

I'm just stating what I think, not trying to fight
Leader players have always had a giant advantage, its just that noone figured out how to use them till recently.  Beatles was one of the first true leader players I believe

Its also just recently that we had to discuss what happens when someone is maxed with a certain attack
Not even during war did this happen in the beginning, common enough now

[Peace Alliance]

"My intent is not to start a fight over changes"

Regardless of your intent, that is exactly the tone you are setting here.

Because now i will have to dispell some images you have painted over top of our discussion (blurring the subject matter entirely)
The market change was made long before your suggestion that we hide the attack system came forward. So this is /not/ an issue related to MY priority scheme.
Either way, i never intentionally prioritized one over the other. Shael often looks at what she has TIME to program, what she understands, and only THEN she looks at what I, peace alliance the dull witted, deem priority.

As for the changes, there is /always/ required after thought to ANY change that is made to the game. That is because as changes are made, strategies change. If you, retto, boze or any other God of RWL past is able to fathom every potential strategy for every potential aspect of this game. Then i give ALL of you fair enough time to come forth and speak. Otherwise, i go with my well thought out changes, and minor adjustments get made later.

Right now your pros and cons list is a bit off, here's mine:

Pros
- More then one viable strat (formerly food market strat was the only winable strat)
- Fox is now a useful race
- market appears to be MORE popular then before (according to the brief times i looked at the market on the DB before the change)
- gives both indy and leader races a permanent method of keeping their NW up, making it so long-term hard work pays off (i see plenty of indy races using the market too)
- is more fair
- is more fun? debatable....

cons
- Hard for newbs to understand
- bunches up the produce (something that happened in programming, not design)
- makes it harder to starve an emp... which happens.... heck, has that happened since ereptor took emp more then 2 years ago?

Pro's outweigh the cons.

I am, as always, excited to begin talking about the finer details of the changes, and how we can improve them.

few other details,
21 attacks taking 1% isn't 20% (ask shade for the real math on this)

also, if the market still hid NW, and somebody bought out that guys stuff... he still would have lost 150 mil NW, so my change doesn't effect that.

[wolf bite]

Windy, I agree with most of your points, however I believe you are giving too much positives to one side and not seeing the other.

Even if an experienced non leader player can raise their defenses for days by using a lot of turns, the leader fighter does not always need to and can "earn" their healing, so the leader fighter has an advantage.

Indy, market, and leader fighters can sack, only leader fighters can steal and poisons, thus the leaders have something the non leader does not.  With each downfall there must be a positive, in this case, the non leaders positive was they could hide stuff on the market.  That is now gone.

Storing on the market is only helpful to leader fighters because non leader players can't defend it as easy as a leader fighter can.

I agree with you that if the market is kept the way it is, then a new-new-new way must be built in to stop the leader thefts and a way to drop net (like I proposed before).  I don't think I said we should dump the market, I said that these problems should have been worked out before it was added, and if they can not be worked out, then it should never have been added. 

I am well aware that market theft could have been done as the market used to be, I believe I was the first one to use it. Hehe.  However, I would buy 10 food to see who it belonged to, I would then check if the person was an ally, if not, then take a shot to see if they were a non leader player and if their shields were up.  It was random and I could rarely do it because the lowest amount of food may not have had the quantity and I would need to buy out a lot of low sums before I could find a high amount.  But now a person can single out non leader players and go for the kill.

Unless I am wrong, I am the first person to go to a workable all hut strategy in the beginning of the 2nd era, I was poisoning Beatles at the time, so I know he was not in one.



Peace,

Geezzzz.  Just because someone disagrees with one of your ideas does not make it a personal attack.  But trying to claim my intention is anything but honorable is an attack meant to discredit my opinion. Can we PLEASE not go there?

Yes, your plan for the market did come before my plan to minimize the attack system, but even the invention of the fox race was way after I requested things like the HELP files to be put back in.  Many things of greater priority was (and still is) on the table before the market idea.  Right now that is really not material since we have the semi working market we now must deal with.

Ah, as far as foresight of the prom Gods whether there would be troubles with the new market, I informed you before it was put into effect.  These problems were known to you.  these problems can not be classified as a surprise adjustment we overlooked.

Pros
- More then one viable strat (formerly food market strat was the only winable strat)
More strats have been harmed by the new market than it created
- Fox is now a useful race
And this is important because?
- market appears to be MORE popular then before
Yes, there is over 30 billion in food on it right now, mostly at over 24 bucks each. This is because people can use it for their net, but have no intent to actually sell any.  Becoming a all net game rather than a fighting game is good because?
- gives both indy and leader races a permanent method of keeping their NW up, making it so long-term hard work pays off
As stated above, the non leader players have no safe way to put anything on the market until there is a new addtion programmed in.
- is more fair
That is a conclusion not a fact.
- is more fun? debatable....



I don't think you are understanding the problem here based on your statement.

"if the market still hid NW, and somebody bought out that guys stuff... he still would have lost 150 mil NW, so my change doesn't effect that."

The difference is that someone spotted that a known non leader player had 7 billion food on the market, bought that food for 125 billion, then stole back all 125 billion cash.  Sure, the player should have had their shields up. In the old market, that player's food would not have been seen because there was cheaper food on the market.  But just because someone's shields ran out should not allow someone else to gain that much!  This is NOT the first time this has happened, it is about once a week that a leader fighter wipes everything a non leader player has from the new market on reg. 

(Now everyone can see the discussions that were once kept exclusively in the staff development forum)


Wolf Bite
edit: numbers are only approx

[Peace Alliance]

"I am well aware that market theft could have been done as the market used to be, I believe I was the first one to use it. Hehe.  However, I would buy 10 food to see who it belonged to, I would then check if the person was an ally, if not, then take a shot to see if they were a non leader player and if their shields were up.  It was random and I could rarely do it because the lowest amount of food may not have had the quantity and I would need to buy out a lot of low sums before I could find a high amount.  But now a person can single out non leader players and go for the kill."

Maybe thats how /you/ did it the first time. But even with the old market, wolf snare managed to ruin redan dash more then one round on turbo using market theft. This setup for the market simply makes that easier.

One thing you're forgetting is the attack power for indy races. It's much much easier for a rat or a lizard to gain land. It's easier to obtain troops, and easier to keep obtaining them as you attack. Also rat has the attack bonus, and both of them have offensive bonuses.

That means, that indy races have the added advantage when it comes to attack power, and that is why they can use sack and capture and chaos more then leader races can. Because if a leader race does his entire run set to sack, he won't get NEARLY enough land, and it won't come NEARLY fast enough. Since leader races need to get their land fast so that they can get their leaders up fast and produce stuff.

Also, leader races can "earn" their health back, which is super beneficial. But other then forage (which is only beneficial if indiers have farms, which often indiers have few of if they're going all out attack power) there isn't anything for indy players to "burn" their turns on, like there is for leaders. This opens up a lot of opportunity to use those turns raising defenses.... But even that said, i have a hard time believing it's hard to keep your defenses raised almost all the time. The first cast is for 12 hours, then cast 3 more times and you're at 18 hours... pretty much means you just have to log on tomorrow and cast it again. Sometimes there will be a gap in between, but thats not a big enough gap for people to be able to bank on you not having your defenses raised.

"The difference is that someone spotted that a known non leader player had 7 billion food on the market, bought that food for 125 billion, then stole back all 125 billion cash.  Sure, the player should have had their shields up. In the old market, that player's food would not have been seen because there was cheaper food on the market.  But just because someone's shields ran out should not allow someone else to gain that much!  This is NOT the first time this has happened, it is about once a week that a leader fighter wipes everything a non leader player has from the new market on reg. "

Well, firstly the issue here is that the old market made it strategically beneficial to have your food up for a higher price. I know that i often put my stores at a price thats JUST above the mercinary prices, that way if they buy them, it's actually beneficial for me because i can buy out more troops from the mercs... Thats kinda how a market /should/ work. I set out to make the market active, as before it was just a storage tool. Now it is both!

"Geezzzz.  Just because someone disagrees with one of your ideas does not make it a personal attack.  But trying to claim my intention is anything but honorable is an attack meant to discredit my opinion. Can we PLEASE not go there?"
"(Now everyone can see the discussions that were once kept exclusively in the staff development forum)"

I never said you made any personal attacks. I said that if you intent isn't to start a fight then you are doing a poor job at it. Especially when you keep throwing out false accusations, and misinformation regarding mine and shaels priorities.



None of these arguments have made me rethink the market. Firstly, I don't ever plan on making it so that everyone can store their NW like that again. That is a legitimate strategy, and i will leave it to foxes to play that strat to it's finest. the "food market storing" strat was unbeatable, unfair, and worst of all EASY! It's WAY too easy to go all round putting your food safely on the market, then taking it off and winning. The only way to beat that strategy is to do the SAME strategy but better. Thus we'd only have one viable strategy to the game... and fox would be useless once again.

Also, this discussion belongs out here because we can have a lot more input, although it's mostly been staff, i think thats because we staff are a lot more invested in these kinda things. There's no reason we can't discuss these aspects of the game without accusations and anger.