I Hate Food

[vonGenf]

An assumption that everyone's making is that a critical number of realms are starving due to inept Lords never bothering to sell their food. I'm guessing that this problem is exaggerated and that if we actually compiled a list of realms that this is happening in, we'd find that it is a very minor problem.

Very few realms are starving because starvation is devastating and everybody knows what to do to avoid it.

However, what this involves is making certain you are able to come back to a market place every week. This makes war difficult and ultimately leads to a less entertaining game.

The problem is not that realms starve. The problem is that the play style that leads to realms not starving is less entertaining than it could be.

[Dante Silverfire]

I think part of the problem, Tom, is that a lot of rural Lords consider it to be "not their problem."

They'd rather just say "screw it" and let the food rot and the cities starve, because it doesn't affect them in any way.

Should city lords then MAKE it the problem of the rural lords?

[vonGenf]

Should city lords then MAKE it the problem of the rural lords?

Yes. This is exactly the kind of interaction food brings.

But once again, the current solution is to force the rural lords to be at a market place on a regular basis, which is not fun. That's the issue. With things like auto-orders the city lords can forcefully make it the problem of the rural lord once, and if they succeed at it then they are set. They don't have to do it again every week.

[Indirik]

Yes. This is exactly the kind of interaction food brings.

While it is an interaction, in most cases it is not a welcome, or beneficial interaction. It is one in which neither side desires to engage. Forcing it accomplishes nothing useful from a player standpoint.

[Anaris]

Yes. This is exactly the kind of interaction food brings.

But once again, the current solution is to force the rural lords to be at a market place on a regular basis, which is not fun. That's the issue. With things like auto-orders the city lords can forcefully make it the problem of the rural lord once, and if they succeed at it then they are set. They don't have to do it again every week.

To add to what Indirik says, there's a good deal of evidence that this kind of forced intra-realm conflict is what has been losing us players.

If you can't trust the Lords of your food-producing regions to provide their food at a reasonable price to the starving cities, that destroys the "team" feeling. Similarly if you can't trust the Lords of the cities not to bring troops in to loot the food straight out of the regions. (And yes, I know that's not currently possible.)

[^ban^]

Askileon and Giask have both suffered starvation as a direct result of lords being lazy. This stopped being a regular occurrence only after I put forward immense effort to see these lords punished, but so far as I can tell, they (and most of LN's other lords) still don't want to be responsible for selling food, and the same is true in BoM.

[Solari]

What a great, constructive thread this is becoming. Several good points have been made concerning what can/should be expected of a rural liege. Something to keep in mind is that frequently what should be expected and what people are actually willing to do aren't the same thing. Wherever possible, it's best to take the path of least resistance. This is (at least for me) the philosophy behind the complaint that food is vitally important and a bitch to get working reliably.

[vonGenf]

To add to what Indirik says, there's a good deal of evidence that this kind of forced intra-realm conflict is what has been losing us players.

There's nothing forced about it. If you want to ship your food to cities for 1 gold per 100 bushel, then you do it and that's it.

The forced part is only there because you have to do it every week. Automatic orders would take care of that. Cities would only starve if the automatic orders are willfully removed, and I don't see a problem with that.

[Solari]

Askileon and Giask have both suffered starvation as a direct result of lords being lazy. This stopped being a regular occurrence only after I put forward immense effort to see these lords punished, but so far as I can tell, they (and most of LN's other lords) still don't want to be responsible for selling food, and the same is true in BoM.

Because the question about the scope of this problem has come up, it's worth pointing out that the personal examples being presented are done so largely for the ease with which they can be related to the overall problem. One of the side-effects of working on the dev team is the "30,000 foot" view you get of the game. It reinforces just how similar realms are across continents, and how there are quite a few problems endemic to everywhere. Maybe not all the time, but they do pop up.

[Indirik]

There's nothing forced about it. If you want to ship your food to cities for 1 gold per 100 bushel, then you do it and that's it.

Unless you don't want to deal with it at all. You can't "do it once", you have to keep doing it, over and over and over again. And if you stop doing it, then game forces a negative interaction between players: "Do this or else". If the selling lord was actually doing this intentionally, then fine. But most of the time it's a scenario where neither the seller or the buyer actually want to deal with it, and just want to move on and do things they actually *want* to do. This is what I meant by forcing a negative interaction. It's something that neither of the two wants to do, something that the game could easily do for them, and for which there is no good reason that it can't be automated.

Cities would only starve if the automatic orders are willfully removed, and I don't see a problem with that.

I don't have a problem with that, either. If the lords want to gang together and purposely starve the city, that's a valid interaction.

[Azerax]

Let's nail down the scale of this issue.  Can we get some stats on how many regions are currently starving vs how many are not, across all islands?

[Indirik]

How many regions are starving is irrelevant. It's the amount of effort, on a repetitive basis, that is required to keep them from starving.

[vonGenf]

Unless you don't want to deal with it at all. You can't "do it once", you have to keep doing it, over and over and over again. And if you stop doing it, then game forces a negative interaction between players: "Do this or else". If the selling lord was actually doing this intentionally, then fine. But most of the time it's a scenario where neither the seller or the buyer actually want to deal with it, and just want to move on and do things they actually *want* to do. This is what I meant by forcing a negative interaction. It's something that neither of the two wants to do, something that the game could easily do for them, and for which there is no good reason that it can't be automated.
I don't have a problem with that, either. If the lords want to gang together and purposely starve the city, that's a valid interaction.

I must have expressed myself badly. I fully agree with what you said.

[Azerax]

How many regions are starving is irrelevant. It's the amount of effort, on a repetitive basis, that is required to keep them from starving.

I see that you can keep orders on the market for 14 days.  Would a valid stop-gap measure be upping this amount to 30 days immediately? This would off-load some of the stress while dev is done on the new market related features.  (Though, I don't see a single task done every 14 days to be one of great effort.)

[Kwanstein]

No; I don't believe anyone's making that assumption at all.

The problem is not so much that it's crippling realms by starving them. The problem is twofold: first, that it is causing many characters to have to stay either at or close to home in order to ensure that the appropriate orders are posted in a timely fashion (thus reducing the number of people available to go to war), and second, that largely because of this, the system itself is frustrating and should not require so much manual effort.

I was only responding to Chenier's claims that food should be removed outright, which he supported with the aforementioned assumption. I don't see any reason against food automation and/or selling food remotely.