Craftards rejoice! Pirates of the Burning Sea

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

http://www.flyinglab.com/pirates/logs.php?log_select=378

The Player-Owned Economy
One of the things we've never been entirely satisfied with has been our economy. Our original plan called for a complex supply and demand model based on the nature and size of every port. While this model was sophisticated and interesting, it suffered from one minor and one major flaw. The minor flaw was that players were not as involved in the process as we would have liked; much of the activity of the economy happened 'off-stage'. The major flaw was that the system would require a small army of designers and several years to create all the content, and then the whole thing would still need tuning. For a small company, this was not an option.

So we wrote an economy that, at the time, I called the 'Simple Economy'. It was a very basic supply and demand model; the more of a good you supplied to a port, the less it wanted that good; the more of a good you bought from a port, the less of that good they would sell you. The goods were meaningless, just period labels slapped on an array of dynamic numbers. Nobody wanted 'sugar' for any particular reason; they just generically demanded it across the Caribbean. The benefit of this system was that it was easy to put into place, and could be globally tuned. The drawback, of course, is that it was boring. Even as I was writing it, I was planning the next step up.

I called that next step the 'Player-Owned Economy'. Confession time: I'm a die-hard libertarian. I looked at attempts to manage and control game economies, saw them failing, and thought 'duh, of course they fail. You can't make a planned economy work.' Games are pretty far from real life, of course, which means it isn't as simple as tossing a bunch of resources into the world and letting people sort it out, but there were still many applicable lessons to be taken.

The basic principles of the economy, then, came down to three things. One: Players, not game systems, should determine the value of an object. Items should be worth what players are willing to pay for them, not worth what A_Bag_Merchant_01 is willing to pay for them. Two: All players should be participants in the economy. This is inevitably true anyway; I just wanted to make it explicit. If you want goods, with only a few exceptions you buy them from another player. Every item in the world, again with a few exceptions, is in the world because another player made it -- from wood planks to ships of the line, from loaves of bread to architectural plans. (And everything I just mentioned is actually in the current version of the game, and can be produced by players.) Three: PvP should determine control of vital resources, and strongly impact the economy, but in a way that does not destroy the mercantile gameplay of a PvE merchant. If a foreign power takes over your home port, I want you to still be able to play, but I want you to be sending strongly-worded letters to your local uberguild, demanding they retake the port.

Informing all these design goals was a negative: No crafting grind. So many games fall down when they put together an economy because they strive for an unrealistic goal: they try to limit the number of people acting as economic participants, typically by making it dull and shockingly unprofitable to participate in their economies. This approach fails to see the bigger picture: in the real world, we're all participants. Why doesn't the real world economy fall apart? The answer is specialization. You can only do so many things in a day; you have to focus on a few things to do well, and rely on other people for the things you can't do. I decided it was a problem of scale: if I can cut down trees, drag them to a mill, saw them into planks, then draw up plans for a shipyard, use the planks to build the shipyard, and use the leftovers to build a ship... the scale is too broad. One person couldn't do all that. I needed a way to break these out into separate tasks, so that I could cut down the trees OR saw them into planks OR draw up plans OR build a ship. I needed a way to get people to cooperate, but in the same kind of convenient impersonal way we cooperate in the real world.

Having set the stage, I'll briefly outline how the economy actually works. Every player has a finite number of lots -- right now that number is 10, but it might be larger or smaller in the final release. Lots are an abstraction of how much property you can own, and are tracked on an account-wide basis. They're not tied to any specific port, but instead represent a global amount of real estate you can own and manage.

Players build structures in their lots. Structures are things like logging camps, mines, and plantations; they also include things like forges, lumber mills, weavers, and shipyards. Most structures use 1 lot, but some huge structures, like the largest shipyards, can use 2 or more. Structures are located in specific ports -- if you build an iron mine in Tampico, your mine is actually located in Tampico. To use it, you have to be in Tampico.

Structures can't be built unless some basic requirements are met. First, you have to be well-liked enough by the nation that owns the port that they'll allow you to build there. You don't have to be allied with them, or even very friendly, but you can't be hated. The British Navy isn't going to be operating tobacco plantations in pirate-controlled ports, for instance. Second, you have to own a warehouse in the port. Warehouses are a special kind of structure that does nothing except provide local storage space, and allow you to build additional structures. Third, you have to have the materials on-hand to construct the building -- they typically require various types of wood, stone, gravel, and other raw materials. Finally, the port has to have the proper resources for the structure you're building.

What that means is that you can't build a logging camp to harvest oak trees if the island doesn't have oak as a resource. You can't build a sugar plantation on an infertile island, and you can't mine gold from an island with no gold deposits. (My favorite: you can't collect cochineal beetles without the proper soil for raising prickly pear cacti.)

Once you've got a structure, you next need a recipe. Recipes are simple descriptions of how one or more things are turned into one or more other things, how long that takes, and how much it costs. For instance, I might have a recipe that has an input of one unit of iron, and an output of 100 units of nails; it takes one hour to complete, and costs 100 doubloons to execute. Recipes can be used in any structure of the correct type; a recipe to saw oak into ship timbers can be used in any lumber mill, as can a recipe to saw the same oak logs into planks.

It's not a whole lot of fun to sit and wait for an hour after you use a recipe to collect your goods, though. What's more, that penalizes players who can't log on every hour to use their recipes. Instead, we use the concept of stored labor to represent time expenditure. If a recipe requires an hour of labor to complete, we don't make you wait an hour. In fact, you get the output of the recipe immediately; it shows up in your warehouse as soon as you click the button. At the same time, it consumes 3600 seconds of stored labor from the structure. If the structure doesn't have 3600 seconds saved up, though, the recipe can't be used there.

Stored labor accumulates at a rate of 1 second per real-world second passing; you can store a maximum of 72 hours of labor in each structure. This means if you can't play for a few days, you won't fall behind in the economic game. You'll come back to buildings that are full to capacity with labor, and ready to work. It also means you don't have to babysit your structures when you log on. You can go out adventuring and sailing, and you won't be losing any labor on your structures; it's saved up for when you return.

Structures aren't free, though. To keep one operating, you have to pay upkeep, which takes the form of both doubloons and goods. This upkeep is paid in week-long blocks, although you can pay as much as you like in advance. It's not the end of the world if you fail to pay your upkeep, though; it just shuts down your structure temporarily, until you pay again. This means you can let structures you're not using currently go 'offline' with no penalty and no real cost.

I may be a libertarian, but the governments of the period weren't. We don't have permadeath, so the only real certainty in our game is taxes. Taxes are determined between the port's owning nation and your nation. If they're the same -- you're English in an English port -- the tax rate is likely to be low. If you're English in a Spanish port, the tax rate is likely to be high. If (somehow) you're a pirate in a Spanish port, the tax rate may be crippling. This tax is paid on every recipe you use, every time you use it. If a recipe costs 100 doubloons to use, and you're paying 10 percent taxes, you'll pay 110 doubloons. The rates are adjustable for every combination of nations -- we can decide that the French particularly hate the Spanish, and tax them at 50 percent. Ports that are friendly to your nation are going to make you more efficient; ports that hate your nation are going to make you less efficient.

Thus far, we've talked about all the items in the game in purely abstract terms. When I say 100 'units' of wood, though, I'm talking about 100 tons of wood. Moving that around isn't something you do through email attachments. Some ship has to load that wood up, haul it to a destination, and unload it. This process is handled through two related systems: the auction house and the local market. The auction house functions much as you might expect from other games; the actual model for it is the Auction House from Final Fantasy XI. There are a small number of these, located in large (and unconquerable) capital ports. Currently I'm planning for 2 per nation, one pirate auction house, and one Dutch auction house. Each auction house's prices will float independent of the others.

More immediately interesting, though, is the local market. It's like a small, limited auction house in every port in the game. As a producer in a port, you can offer goods out of your warehouse for sale at whatever price you like per unit, or place a buy order to purchase an item at whatever price you're willing to pay per unit. As a trader, you can visit ports, fulfilling buy orders and buying the products of the local merchants. From the perspective of, say, a logging baron -- someone purely interested in felling oak trees for sale -- this allows you to dump all your goods in a convenient and accessible place, and let traders do the work of buying and transporting them. After all, you may be generating thousands of tons of wood, and moving that around is not really the gameplay you're looking for. From the perspective of a trader, this allows you to travel the Caribbean, learning the local prices for goods and looking for asymmetries, where someone is selling for less than a buy order you know about. From the perspective of a player who just wants to buy some cannons and kick butt, the local markets can be ignored; traders will deliver the goods you need to the major auction houses, where you can buy it. There's a markup, of course, but that's the price paid for convenience.

Before I go into the implications of the system, I'll give you a few examples. I should note that while these examples are derived from actual content that's in the game right now, they're subject to change without notice, as we tinker and tune.

Adam, a Spaniard, owns the deed to an Iron Mine. He places it in Port-of-Spain, on the coast of South America -- a region he spends most of his gameplay time in. He's already built a Warehouse there, so he has storage available. To build this mine requires 20 units of Granite, 60 units of Common Wood, 40 units of Oak (for structural support), and 20 units of Iron (for the tools, carts, and so forth). This is all pretty abstract, but makes the process of building a structure not utterly horrific (when I wrote it originally, it was far less abstract, and almost unusable). Adam's already purchased these goods and moved them laboriously from around the region to his warehouse. He could have just bought them all at the large regional auction house, but he's trying to save some money. The mine takes 1 hour to construct, so he starts the construction and goes off to do some missions. The time requirement is to prevent large Societies from being able to build an instantaneous production line when a port is threatened by enemies.

Adam's mine is completed, and he returns to start mining. He owns a single recipe, 'Iron Mining'. It uses 1 hour of stored labor, costs 400 doubloons, and produces one unit of Iron Ore. The mine starts out with a single stored hour, but Adam took a break for lunch, so he currently has 4 hours stored up. He uses the recipe four times, consuming all his stored labor and 1600 doubloons, and puts his ore on the local market at a price of 600 doubloons per unit of ore. He knows this is the going rate because he's checked the region for other prices. In fact, the high margin is why he got into the iron business; the demand for iron is far higher than the current supply.

Beth owns a Forge. She mostly processes ore for other people; while she owns a single iron mine, it's not her main business. She sees Adam's units of iron ore go up, and realizes Adam hasn't seen the prices of ore today, which have risen by almost 50 doubloons. She quickly buys his ore before he changes the price; since her forge is in the same port, Port-of-Spain, the iron is delivered immediately into her warehouse. If she'd been one port over, she would have had to transport the iron herself. 4 units isn't much to transport, but she usually operates in bulk, which is why she placed her Forge in a port that has iron deposits. She wants to use her recipe, 'Iron Smelting', which consumes 2 units of Ore and one unit of Limestone -- but Port-of-Spain has no limestone. The closest Limestone is in the port of Santa Marta. She could place a buy order in Port-of-Spain, but she doesn't want to wait, so she sails to Santa Marta and buys four units of Limestone. Santa Marta is currently a PvP zone, so she has to dodge an English patrol, but for a cargo this small she's taken her fastest ship, a schooner. She bought four units just so she wouldn't have to make another trip immediately if more ore showed up.

Back in port, Beth smelts Adam's iron ore into a total of two Iron Ingots. She has no immediate need for them, so she puts them up on the local market for 1700 doubloons each. This is a little high, but she knows that the shipwrights of the region buy in bulk to make all the nails and fittings they need for the demands of the major Spanish Societies operating in the area. They'll sell at 1700; it just may take a few hours. She logs off.

Chris is a trader, sailing a massive merchant galleon with his hired escort, a privateer named Diana. Chris arrives in Port-of-Spain and buys all the iron he sees; he knows Port-of-Spain has iron as a resource, and regularly sweeps the port of all its iron ingots. He's paying a premium, 1800 per unit, but he wants everything available. His hold full, he and Diana sail off towards the auction house of Havana -- the center of the Spanish mercantile world. Everyone who needs goods comes to Havana first, so the current price of the (relatively scarce) iron ingots is 2000 doubloons in Havana. Chris buys 300 units of iron, but has to pay off a pirate along the way; he gives the pirate 20 ingots, and the pirate wisely accepts, knowing he may not be able to beat Diana's small but powerful cutter. Chris lists 280 units of iron in Havana at 1900. This costs him a 190 doubloon listing fee, but he's confident they'll sell.

Eric, a weaponsmith for a major Society, needs iron badly, for shot and cannons. He checks Havana's auction house, decides he can't wait any longer, and buys 500 units of iron for 2000 doubloons each -- including Chris's iron. He passes the iron out to his Society-mates, and they convoy it back to their home port. There aren't any good nearby sources of iron in the hotly-contested region in which they live, but there are plenty of gold mines and sugar plantations, so they're able to afford to import iron. Eric owns 5 Weaponsmithies, and his Society demands chain shot. Lots and lots of chain shot. His recipe, costs 200 doubloons to execute, requires 1 unit of iron, and uses 2 hours of stored labor. He's been waiting for iron prices to drop, so his structures have almost 20 hours of stored labor. He uses it all up, in 5 parallel runs -- 45 executions of the recipe total, for 22,500 units of chain shot. He delivers 10,000 of them to his Society's Quartermaster, and puts the rest up for sale on the local market. His enemies, the dastardly French Society Les Francophones, may also buy them there, but he's priced them so high that the profits will easily pay for the 10,000 he's given to his Society for free. If the French want to put money in his Society's pockets, it's fine by him.

Let's look at the implications of the system. First, and most obviously: it's large and complex enough to let you find a niche for yourself, doing whatever you want to do. In our example, everyone is pretty specialized, but you could just as easily diversify, owning structures in multiple ports, or owning a larger slice of the production chain yourself. You could own a few mines, a forge, and your own weaponsmithy, and produce deeply discounted ammunition and cannon. Or you could specialize even further, making only a single recipe in vast quantities to take over the market for that item.

It means that player skill is rewarded -- in this case, the player skill of learning the market, learning where goods are expensive and where they're cheap, and why. A trader who just buys low and sells high will make decent money; a trader who can anticipate an upcoming war between two Societies, and buy up all kinds of critical supplies so he can relist them when their prices rise will become fabulously wealthy. Flexibility and agility, as well as knowledge and instinct, will all play a role in manipulating and responding to the market.

It means that taking over a port is more than just scoring a point in a big game of port-football. Ports have resources, and if you can seize them, you can exclude your enemies -- or at least make their production facilities too expensive to compete effectively in the market. If you can grab a local source of iron, or of oak, you can install your own Society members in production facilities and generate vast quantities of cheap goods for your own use. And if you're a merchant, keeping your taxes low provides an excellent reason to fund your friendly local PvP Society to defend the port where all your structures live.

It means that there aren't artificial pressures on you when you decide what to build. If you make items, you're making them for a market price determined solely by other players. There's a reason for every item; when items sell, it's because someone needs them. Conversely, everything you need comes from other players. You may not be able to get that great consumable item, or that great piece of outfitting, because it may not be profitable enough for anyone to list one.

It means that pirates have real impact on the world. If a pirate seizes the cargo of a player merchant, that cargo is a total loss to the merchant -- and may resurface in a different nation's market entirely. A concerted effort by pirates could turn the tide against a nation relying on cargo being delivered through a PvP+ area. It means that blockades evolve naturally; if you can field enough ships, and sink incoming player merchants, you can deny goods to your enemies. And piracy keeps wealth moving around the economy, as any merchant might lose his precious cargo of rare goods, allowing some unscrupulous trader to buy them from the pirate auction house.

It rewards players at every level of the economy. If all you want to do is make a little money on the side, you can produce and sell simple goods like wood and gravel, and make a profit from their sales to players higher up in the production chain. If you want to be a full-on producer merchant, you can generate goods in volume, and market them to your fellow players. And if your whole Society wants to be an economic powerhouse, you can organize and assign economic roles so that the Society can, assembly-line style, produce cannons, ammunition, or ships entirely in-Society.

It gives adventurers a distinct advantage in trading and producing gameplay. Adventurers have the easiest time being liked by other nations and factions, so they have the most possible markets from which to choose when looking for goods at decent prices. Adventurers can move goods that are common in English territory to Spanish territory, where they're rare. Adventurers can build structures in ports of other nations, where important resources are located, and move the products of those resources out to friendly territory, while dutifully paying their taxes to their foreign landlords.

It removes any concept of grinding for crafting skill. In ship combat, we don't make you fire each gun; you're playing the captain, and your crew handles the moment-to-moment tasks. In the economy, we do the same: you're the owner. Your employees and foremen handle the moment-to-moment tasks. You don't have to pour molten iron into a mold; you just tell your foreman 'Make me a cannon' and he implements your orders.

To wrap up, I'll give you a sense of the scale of the economy. Here are a pair of recipes that are currently available in the game. One of them produces a tiny little ship hull -- something like a small schooner. The other produces a hull for a 50-gun ship of the line.


Construct Small Scout Hull
Cost: 5000 doubloons
Labor: 24 hours

Inputs
Keel, Small (1)

Stem (1)

Frame Timber, Small (2)

Beam, Small (6)

Planks, Oak (10)

Strakes, Oak (6)

Filling-frame, Small (2)

Iron Fittings (1)

Nails (1)

Transom, Small (1)


Outputs
Scout Hull, Small (1)


Construct Huge Dreadnought Hull
Cost: 115000 doubloons
Labor: 72 hours

Inputs
Keel, Large (2)

Stem (2)

Frame Timber, Large (15)

Frame Timber, Small (2)

Transom, Large (10)

Beam, Large (80)

Beam, Small (10)

Planks, Oak (130)

Strakes, Oak (74)

Filling-frame, Large (42)

Filling-frame, Small (2)

Iron Fittings (24)

Nails (23)

Transom, Small (4)


Outputs
Dreadnought Hull, Huge (1)

To give you some idea of what these quantities mean, the estimate for the minimum possible price for the larger hulls is 330,000 doubloons -- that's assuming no markup, no taxes, and perfect efficiency. The minimum possible time in which it could be constructed is a little more than 3 days, assuming everything is set up, in the right ports, and ready to go before the process begins. And that's just the hull; it doesn't include the masts, rigging, sails -- not to mention the guns, ammunition, and provisions. All told, a 50-gun ship of the line could be more than 2 million doubloons to create. But at the other end, a small, one-man operation could easily generate a nice, healthy profit creating supplies for that same ship.

It's probably obvious, but I'm really excited about this system. It makes me happy as an MMO player, because I love crafting but hate crafting grinds. It makes me happy as a free-market wonk, because it puts the system complexity where it belongs: on the interactions of the players. And it makes me really, really happy as a designer, because it's built on very simple concepts, so it's easy to tune, easy to expand, and easy to conceptualize. If I want to add a new item, or a new structure, or a new recipe, or a new resource, it's trivial to do so. In fact, it takes longer for the artists to create the artwork for a new item than it does for me to add it to the game.

I've been enthusiastic about the beta testers seeing other features before, but the last week or so since the economy actually made it into our internal builds have felt like the buildup to Christmas when I was 10 years old. I hope that you'll enjoy using it as much as I've enjoyed designing it. 

[Samwise]

I only skimmed it, I admit, but what I got was that it's a bit like SWG's crafting system but without mind-numbing grind as a primary gameplay element.  That's good enough for me to at least try it out.

[schild]

Someone sum that shit up.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Crafting without a "grind to master"

Resource gathering and the ability to be a real part of the economy.

Player controlled economy.

I have no idea about the combat part of this new game, but the crafting/resource part as described is as close to perfect as I have read, and no grinding sounds great.

The 2 paragraphs that best sum it up:
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It means that player skill is rewarded -- in this case, the player skill of learning the market, learning where goods are expensive and where they're cheap, and why. A trader who just buys low and sells high will make decent money; a trader who can anticipate an upcoming war between two Societies, and buy up all kinds of critical supplies so he can relist them when their prices rise will become fabulously wealthy. Flexibility and agility, as well as knowledge and instinct, will all play a role in manipulating and responding to the market.

It means that taking over a port is more than just scoring a point in a big game of port-football. Ports have resources, and if you can seize them, you can exclude your enemies -- or at least make their production facilities too expensive to compete effectively in the market. If you can grab a local source of iron, or of oak, you can install your own Society members in production facilities and generate vast quantities of cheap goods for your own use. And if you're a merchant, keeping your taxes low provides an excellent reason to fund your friendly local PvP Society to defend the port where all your structures live.

[Yegolev]

What's the fucking name of this game?

Nevermind, I'm subbed to EVE.

[Nebu]

My gut response is "so what?".

After a point in nearly every game money is meaningless. So you're able to dominate the economy?  What keeps that fun after your first gadzillion dollars?  Having money in the early stages has a profound effect on the arms race.  After a certain standard is reached, the market adjusts and inflation takes over as the never-ending money supply continues to grow with time.  Now I can see how this is a nice improvement in the current crafting systems, but playing the economics game only stays fun for so long... and I love guns vs. butter sims.

[Mr_PeaCH]

That was actually very well written and somewhat entertaining to read.  It's gotten me a bit excited about... whatever it was again.

I would sum it up by saying it sounds like the economy of all things will be providing the impetus for acts of piracy, sacking of towns, blockades and such and that the economy will be available to any and all whether you're an uber guild trying to cover all the bases or just a one-man-show trying to fill a niche.  Without grinding.

[CmdrSlack]

It also sounds like perhaps one way to get high-efficiency access to rare resources may be to capture ports in some kind of nation vs nation PvP.

I dunno, it sounds strangely tempting, and pirates are pretty darn nifty...

I'll have to keep an eye out for this.

[Trippy]

The game is Pirates of the Burning Sea. PowerPoint summary:

• Player-owned economy - Every item in the game with a few exceptions is player-made
• No crafting grind - No "skilling" or "leveling" required
• Because there is no grind, to prevent crafters from doing everything (end-to-end production for lots of different item types) caps are placed on the number of production structures an account can support and also the amount of production labor each structure can store
• Production labor is part of the cost of creating an item. Production structures accumulate labor at a fixed rate on and offline and there's a cap. This means you don't have to constantly log on to make sure you are using your production facilities at maximum efficiency.
• Goods produced have to be transported by players if they are not put on sale locally
• The game is PvP so PvP can have a major impact on the transportation of goods
• It also gives a purpose to PvP -- controlling the ports with the important resources and trade routes

Edit: added link to game

[Lantyssa]

Ten lots.  Where have I heard that before and why does it make me cringe?

[Samwise]

Ten lots.  Where have I heard that before and why does it make me cringe?

That's part of why I said it reminded me of SWG right off.  But the fact that "NO GRIND" was one of their major goals gives me joy and hope.  My biggest problem with SWG's crafting system (apart from those that were a side effect of the broken combat system) was the gigantic grind cockblock.

[Evangolis]

How are they dealing with macroing, farming, exploits, and outright duping?  I admit to not reading more than a few lines there, but I have to get to work early and prove I'm worth keeping.

Still, even if I had read the whole thing, that would be my question.  This is the stuff that has killed every game economy in existence, so avoiding it is very much a 'Show Me' proposition.  But if they can succeed, it would be important.

[Trippy]

How are they dealing with macroing, farming, exploits, and outright duping?  I admit to not reading more than a few lines there, but I have to get to work early and prove I'm worth keeping.

The benefits to macroing are capped given the cap and "recharge rate" on production labor. I'm not sure what farming means in this context since this is resource gathering/crafting not mob killing. And I'm not sure what to say about exploits and duping other than to say they will presumably try and prevent them.

[Venkman]

This actually sounds very much like Eve. Only in the 1800s. Very interesting.

[Samwise]

IMO if farming, simple macroing, or anything resembling them is something that you need to actively prevent in your game, you have already failed.  

If the optimal path to success involves performing a single action over and over, with enough mind-numbing repetition that it's worthwhile to write a looping macro or hire Korean teenagers to do it for you, the core gameplay is shitty.  It's a sad state of affairs that we now take for granted that farming and macroing will be profitable activities in any given MMOG.

[Tige]

Dammit!  Yet another mmog trying to apply logic to a illogical situation.  Everything sounds peachy keen until 8-12 months after release and inflation created by the "I live in my mom's basement brigade"  puts 2/3s of the game out of reach for the rest of us.

Sinking too much development time/money into crafting and economy for a mmog is time/money ill spent.  There is no satisfactory way to even attempt to keep inflation in check if players are the only manufacturers.  Having a live team continually changing prices on npc vendors, selling the same products that players can make, is the only way to keep player crafters in check. 

So much time and effort has gone into thwarting farmers and campers in mmogs but crafters spin games out of control time and time again just as bad.

 

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

There is a 31 page thread on the games forums "EVE players coming to PotBS", so I assume there is enough interest from that corner. I for one am happy to see a game go for a intellectual and strategic gameplay as well as tactical elements. And a game that is not set in the traditional fantasy setting looks like a nice change.

And pirates are cool.

[Trippy]

IMO if farming, simple macroing, or anything resembling them is something that you need to actively prevent in your game, you have already failed.  

If the optimal path to success involves performing a single action over and over, with enough mind-numbing repetition that it's worthwhile to write a looping macro or hire Korean teenagers to do it for you, the core gameplay is shitty.  It's a sad state of affairs that we now take for granted that farming and macroing will be profitable activities in any given MMOG.

You can't perform crafting rapidly over and over because each production run takes a certain of time in real-time (like an hour, see the original quote) so macroing serves no purpose, and given that you store up production labor even while offline (though there's a cap) there's minimal advantage to having a crafting bot running 24/7.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

A good overview of the gameplay style taking into account the whole game from a dev:

For PvPers, we offer a PvP game that allows the players to control the scope and location of the conflict, and has actual meaning in the larger game world. Not only can you reach a victory condition, conquering enough ports to force the European powers to the treaty table, but control of ports also means control of strategic resources like iron, gold, and oak. Pirates who prey on merchants can become wealthy, and have a real impact on the nation vs. nation warfare, by denying much-needed resources to attackers or defenders. We don't like pointless PvP; we like PvP that has long-term impact.

For PvE players, we offer an extensive and ongoing storyline of missions that delve into the history of the period, with a complex conspiratorial plot laden with twists and turns. We've got a staff of content creators working day and night to implement PvE content. We want the PvE experience to be comparable to an action-filled, romantic pirate epic, and we keep coming back to classic pirate movies and literature for inspiration.

We don't have crafting in the sense you may be thinking - grinding skill points by making wooden spoons that no-one wants, so that someday you can make a wooden fork that no-one wants. We have extensive Producer and Merchant gameplay, instead, envisioned as distinct economic roles. The Producer harvests raw materials, or processes raw materials into usable goods. The Merchant moves raw materials and usable goods around the world, taking items from where they're produced to regional marketplaces. I'll go into more detail about this system in a devlog soon, but that's the basic thumbnail sketch. Since everything in the world, with a few exceptions, is player-created, everyone has an important place in the economic system. In this way, the system is deeply connected to the PvP game, as well: it's hard to fight a war without ships and supplies for those ships.

For socializers, we hope to create enough interesting pirate-era environments that players will have many places to roleplay, interact, and hang out. One of my goals for the near future, though not currently planned for the initial release of the game, is player-owned social spaces. The obvious spaces are taverns, but I have a dream of letting players build, own, and operate theaters. We've also got about ten tons of period and near-period costuming choices, so that you can visit a tailor and look like whatever character you want to roleplay.
For casual players, we've got gameplay that is accessible early, and comes in manageable lengths. Our goal is to make a 30 to 45 minute play session productive and interesting. We all hate it when a game can only be played if you can commit to a 6 hour long session. We also hate it when a game doesn't become fun until you've played for three months. We think you should be involved in the fun from your first day, so we're tuning our game systems to give players of all skill levels and game experience important roles to play. If we have something in the game that's fun, we want it to be fun for everyone who plays, not just the high-end players: the economy, PvP, merchant trading, port conquest, missions and quests, and player-created content are all being built to be inclusive, not exclusive.

For hardcore players, we've got deep, powerful tactical combat, where player skill - and above all, organization - is rewarded as much or more than character skill. We've got the long-term PvP game, where the hardcore can conquer ports via fleet battles and claim their resources - not to mention their gold - for their own nation. We've got economic systems that require the organization and coordination that only guilds are typically able to provide. We've got systems to reward the best PvP players, and we've got challenging 'raid-style' gameplay for the best PvE players. In many ways, the truly hardcore endgame players are steering the course of the war for their nation, picking targets for attack and defense, choosing where to focus expansion and where to sacrifice ports in the short-term for a long-term victory.

[Morat20]

My gut response is "so what?".

After a point in nearly every game money is meaningless. So you're able to dominate the economy?  What keeps that fun after your first gadzillion dollars?  Having money in the early stages has a profound effect on the arms race.  After a certain standard is reached, the market adjusts and inflation takes over as the never-ending money supply continues to grow with time.  Now I can see how this is a nice improvement in the current crafting systems, but playing the economics game only stays fun for so long... and I love guns vs. butter sims.

I'm guessing the folks that get stiffies over that wonder what the hell you (generic you, since I have no idea if you like PvP or not) get out of ganking the same guy for the tenth time that day. I'm not big on the economic minigames, but a friend of mine is just as thrilled to find someone selling low, buy him out, and then relist for a nice 15% profit as he is at downing some elite mob.

[Samwise]

IMO if farming, simple macroing, or anything resembling them is something that you need to actively prevent in your game, you have already failed.  

If the optimal path to success involves performing a single action over and over, with enough mind-numbing repetition that it's worthwhile to write a looping macro or hire Korean teenagers to do it for you, the core gameplay is shitty.  It's a sad state of affairs that we now take for granted that farming and macroing will be profitable activities in any given MMOG.

You can't perform crafting rapidly over and over because each production run takes a certain of time in real-time (like an hour, see the original quote) so macroing serves no purpose, and given that you store up production labor even while offline (though there's a cap) there's minimal advantage to having a crafting bot running 24/7.

Yeah, I got that, and I'm cautiously optimistic about PotBS.  I was just saying that "what will you do about macroing" is the wrong question to ask - the question to ask is "does your game encourage or demand macroing by its very nature?"  And it sounds like it doesn't, which (if true) makes the first question irrelevant.   

[Roac]

I've been keeping tabs on PotBS for several years now, and am looking forward to it.  I like how they've limited scope to a more realistic point, and are looking to make what requirements they are hitting do well.  I like PvP aspects of the game of course, and am hoping that being both a pirate and pirate hunter are profitable. 

Now, damnit, release and deliver :P

[Sparky]

This actually sounds very much like Eve. Only in the 1800s. Very interesting.

I know loads of EVE subscribers are watching this one very closely.  It does sounds a lot like that game, but with parrots and more meaningful PVE.  Despite my better judgement I'm pretty hyped.  Assuming they deliver it could be the next "best MMO no-one has ever heard of" a la EVE.   

[Soln]

Ok this sounds good but somehow something still worries me.  Blazingly obvious note taking follows....

Is the real-time component plus artificial cap sufficient?  They control the real-time-pooling investment by controlling the cap, so they control the money supply...  need to do that to stop farmers/boters....

++real-time pooling = investment fawcet
++investment has an artifical managed cap, so forced delay and forced scarcity
++pool is stored until used
++pool refreshed with more real-time pooling, so forced delay and forced scarcity
++lots so limited access, so forced delay and forced scarcity
++structures decay == maint, a sink
++structures can be destroyed  == sink
++no skill crafting grind, so no skill scarcity

-->are resource nodes unlimited or have a use limit?  are they random distributed?  if they have a fixed resource limit, what's their frequency of respawn?
-->can you learn any craft or are you limited to an area of specialization?  they mentioned something between trader/harvester/producer, but are any of those roles limited?  Can you do them all?

I just wonder (1) if the real-time delay is sufficient to cause enough scarcity in production, and (2) what the access to the raw materials will be like, since it sounds like access to skills is not a problem

[Edit] is there item and ship decay? 

/ramble_off

[CadetUmfer]

Aaaand that's why this has been my #1 to-watch MMO for the past 6 months.

[5150]

I skimmed the last couple of replies so apologies if this has been said

The most notable think that was I got from the original post was that capturing a port wiped out enemy player structures located there

So, in reply to the earlier comment about macroers et al. assuming that all ports can be captured and/or that no port has a finite amount of lots and/or resources (which is kinda unfair on late arrivals to the game...) these structures come across as almost as temp. as harvesters were in SWG

Of course the original post says very little about PvP so its hard to say if player structures will be being burned to the ground frequently or not.... I'd guess that the nations capital has infinite lots available but only finite resources, so while its a safe bet for a starting crafter you need to be an early mover to capitalise on those markets - otherwise youre looking at building in capturable ports to get the rare stuff everyone needs - sure you can make a killing but how long will it be before someone arrives to take the whole lot off you.....

[HaemishM]

This actually sounds very much like Eve. Only in the 1800s. Very interesting.

That's what I was thinking as well. I probably won't take much part in the economy game, but if the combat/PVP aspect is just as in-depth, then Avast, Bitches.

[Soln]

Yeah I just hope they've thought about avoiding stuff like this this.  The urban sprawl around starport cities and fields on fields of harvesters bugged me in SWG.  Also, I hope they've thought out the uberguild effect -- hopefully there won't be too much control and conspiracies of ports and resources.  Hopefully the resources and building lots will be highly available.

[WayAbvPar]

Yep, sounds very EVE-y, which makes me nipples hard, yarrrrr.

Getting in at the ground floor instead of 2.5 years after release might make it worth checking out. Anyone know what the character advancement is like? Please tell me it is not level based. That would totally fuck everything up.

[Roac]

Yeah I just hope they've thought about avoiding stuff like this this.  The urban sprawl around starport cities and fields on fields of harvesters bugged me in SWG.  Also, I hope they've thought out the uberguild effect -- hopefully there won't be too much control and conspiracies of ports and resources.  Hopefully the resources and building lots will be highly available.

At one point the devs were advocating a lack of an avatar, due to time constraints, but that it would be built into a phase 2.  Or at least, you have an avatar but there are limited things you can do with it.  In port you'd get an interface, you can't fight one on with with your avatar, etc.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

Having read more, you will have a highly customised avatar (tons of clothes, jewelry, peg leg, hook for a hand options and more). Also the port conflict (strategic conflict) runs on a 6 week cycle so there is a "winner". The devs said after the end of the 6 week cycle the major powers sign a treaty and the ports revert to the original configuration.

[Yegolev]

Some of these later concerns can be reduced or eliminated by allowing players to wantonly destroy buildings and ships, I think.  I understand the need behind EVE's noob areas but they are relative safe havens for farmers.  I guess I'll be watching this too.  I'm starting to hate you guys.

The six-week reset mechanic has my misenmast at full sail.  I am eager to see how that works out in a modern MOG.

[Sunbury]

From reading all that I'm pretty sure the lots and warehouses are not rendered in 3d on the landscape.   You sail into port with the stuff to make your structure, and open up a GUI, and tell it to make it.  After the time delay, you open another GUI element and see all your lots.  If you want to shop the local market, you sail into the port, and open up the UI element "Local Market" and look down the list.

They didn't mention any limits on lots/warehouses per port, just 10 per account globally, and a port has a list of resouces it can generate, so you can only built lots for those.   Again, I'd bet its all non-3d data.

Since there are no individual avatars, I'm guessing sailing into a port just turns on a 'User A is in Port B' filter on all the UI / database logic.

[Gutboy Barrelhouse]

There are individual avatars, in fact you can get off your ship and walk around the various citys/ports. After the first release the devs say they will be adding player avatar conflict. One other nice thing is that the game will have regular monthly content additions and they are not doing the pay-for-expansion.

[Yegolev]

A 3D-rendered landscape would just attract an unsavory element.