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Cargo Ships and Twiddling Thumbs
This post probably belongs in the feedback section, but I don't think it'll do any good there. I just need to vent about the waiting times for the new ports.
With good luck, I can board the ship, just before it leaves. Waiting 4 minutes to cross is reasonable. But with bad luck, I find out that I just missed the ship. I then have to wait 5 minutes on the next one to arrive. Then wait 6 minutes for departure. Then 4 minutes to cross. That's 15 minutes doing nothing but wait.
Now don't get me wrong, I can appreciate the realism of having to wait to board a ship, for it to depart, and then arrive. Back in the old days when it was common for players to walk from Tir to Port Ceann to board a ship for Qilla (yes, that was a thing and I was among those players), I appreciated the realism of travel by foot. As time-consuming as it was, it caused me to submerse myself into Erinn. It was somehow simultaneously annoying and pleasurable. But at least when I walked that long distance, I was playing the game. Waiting 15 minutes to change continents with a load of cargo is wasting time.
I suspect that after the novelty of commerce in Iria wears off, fewer people will be engaged in commerce and more likely to avoid these ships altogether (I've already noticed a decline in fellow passengers). These waiting times need to be reduced. Halving them would be reasonable. Sure, 7-8 minutes in a worst-case scenario would still be annoying, but it would be tolerable.
Comments
Just to be devil's advocate, there have times where a longer waiting time has been beneficial for me, especially when it comes to trading limited items. The longer I wait, the better the profits become for towns farther away, for example Filia might initially have the highest profits, but with an influx of people going , it drops (we all know that feeling); However the profits of Cor then rises and it's greater than Filia's.
You certainly cannot «waste time» with this schedule-oriented/action-oriented/something-oriented approach...
It's a computer game, the size of the boat is just theatre, that it's a boat is what matters. What I'm trying to say is that there should be just many more of the boats we already have. If providing an "accurate" experience is important then merchants waiting, as they do, provides incentive for shipping companies to expand their fleets to meet demand, so that would cover any canonical discomfort about the increased supply of large ships.
In the real world, it used to be that ships would leave when they were full. Then, sometime in the nineteenth century, American shipping companies switched to regular schedules, regardless of how full the ship was. This let clients plan THEIR shipping schedules rather than having the random element of ship departure times. Over time, the frequency was finagled to best meet demand cycles and the result was even more profits for the shipping companies. Since there seems to be demand for more shipping, in game, then more frequent departures would be reasonable.
In the mean time, and please forgive my ignorance, I'm the one who hasn't tried the new commerce yet, but before those eleven minutes expire, in maybe some cases, would it be possible to get to another port and cut, at least, a couple three minutes off? I've been fishing in Port Cobh lately and it looks like these new transports are pretty fast! Is the schedule regular, can you, theoretically, plan for boarding times based on travel times to the port before you even stock up and start your run? If there are regular times maybe the Wiki can have such a table added to the commerce article, if it doesn't already.
Finally, and this might upset folks, it is not my intention to do so, but the present, inconvenient, shipping schedule does have one benefit: it does help prices to recover. Price recovery is probably the most important thing about the commerce system, as a whole, is it not? ON THE OTHER HAND, price recovery, vis-a-vis human character, acts as a limiting function for how many players will bother to be actively involved in constant consistent commercing. So, if they increased the shipping schedule and price recovery rate, then more people will commerce more constantly and consistently. That would be a good thing wouldn't it; more people happy to be playing the game rather than just AFKing? Of course, this would mean an expansion of the money supply which leads to the dreaded INFLATION but, come on and if you'll pardon the pun, the SS Inflation sailed loooong ago.
I swear, I don't constantly play mabi qwq. I can still tell the difference between reality and a game
They might be fairly fast, but Iria is huge. And by the time you get to a new port, you probably won't have saved much time, if any (perhaps lost), and then you could still face the possibility of playing the waiting game. Oh, and don't forget, you're dodging bandits.
Now if you want to go to another port on the same continent, sure, that's an option. And I've turned around to take that option a few times. But when the only profitable option is to change continents, you could be in for a delay.
On the plus side, I have been able to make the best of things from time to time. Replan my route, plan what I want to do after my current run, etc. And it has paid off occasionally. But other times, I see a juicy profit at a trading post across the sea, it stays up while I wait and wait, and then just as I arrive at port, it drops.
I promise you, I was not trying to get a laugh at your expense. If it came across that way then I apologise.
Yeah, that's sensible. Knowing the departure times and travel times between all nodes, in the commerce network, would make the planning of such impromptu activities more efficient as well.
But it's at the cost of merchant-exp I think
Stowaway Ticket
I had one of those. Then I read the cost. A drop of 20k commerce rating at ALL ports. Mine expired and I dropped it on the ground. Someone burning items ran over to me, grabbed it, and burned it. I wonder what exp I missed out on.
No need to apologize. I think I'm just overly sensitive because I've had some very caring people in my life worrying about me developing an addiction to this game and gambling.
Miranda, if you're reading this, I do not have any addictions. I am perfectly capable of pulling myself away from the game. I just choose not to.
I'm reminded of when commerce was new and restricted to Uladh. I made a nodal mesh map of the entire commerce network and then ran each segment while wearing back pack, recording the time took (provided I was NOT jumped on the segment). At this stage, the actual times were not as important as the relative times taken. The slower I went, to measure the times, the more accurate my ratios would be. This made route planning more effective. Once all the relative times were known, it was just a matter of timing the speed difference between Elephant and Wagon and Back Pack, when trips, to and from Belfast were concerned, since ships times are fixed. Despite my obvious but yet undiagnosed OCD, it never occurred to me to make a shipping schedule. So, for wait times, I just used an average.