What's happened to the earthenware windowboxes?

[ichi]

Suddenly my earthenware windowboxes are much less efficient. Did I miss an announcement about this?

[EchoMan]

Yes, things have changed with windowboxes, flowerpots and herb gardens, as well as some basic gathering rates of herbs. I'm trying to figure out the changes and put them on the wiki. I don't know if this has been communicated somewhere before, sorry.

[SekoETC]

I think changes like this are major enough to call for an announcement.

[Piscator]

The performance parameters of windowboxes, flowerpots and herb gardens have been altered to remove the great imbalances that have existed since the introduction of the earthenware items. In order to approximate the efficiencies to each other, the water demand of windowboxes and flowerpots had to be increased drastically. On the upside, outputs and fertilizer/water demand of the herb gardens have become more favourable. The projects should now also work automatically with manual assistance. Additionally, the natural gathering rates of all herbs and flowers have been increased drastically.

edit: I didn't make an announcement before the change to avoid panical starting of 80 day projects. I can make an in-game announcement when we updated the wiki, so everybody can see for themself.

[redRob]

Definitely not a fan of this change, especially, as mentioned before, having no preparation to deal with the changes this will cause is now a pain in the ass....Some characters have entire businesses based around windowboxes and producing various herbs....

Was there really that great an "imbalance"? I've -never- heard anyone complain about it, even if there is...

[Doug R.]

I've -never- heard anyone complain about it, even if there is...

Of course not, who's going to complain about getting lots of something from nearly nothing?

[Miri]

I have really no idea about windowboxes or any other form of growing plant, as none of my characters ever had to do it, ever, but...
...couldn't that change be announced a bit earlier? Even a day or two would do. Getting to officially know about a change just after it actually happened is not really what common users like the most

[Doug R.]

Piscator's stated reason for not making a prior announcement is completely valid. The window boxes were so unbalanced that it bordered on an exploit (one day's automated work returned about 10X your input). People would have maxxed out their window boxes before the change. I know this, because I would have done it myself.

As for dealing with the effect in-game, you can pretend there was some kind of climate change or something.

[Rebma]

Now I'm scared to see what it's changed to...

[Piscator]

I can imagine that this change will not be among the most popular ones to say the least, but so far windowboxes generated herbs practically for free. I understand why nobody complains about a bug that gives him a ton of free stuff, but in the long run such a thing is hurtful for the game and needs to be fixed.

[Cogliostro]

Man, guys. What the -hell- are you doing?

A few months ago you arbitrarily increased the gathering rates for cotton 2X; without any explanation or even announcement. This seems harmless enough, but that means that hundreds of thousands of real life days spent by actual players on actual cotton gathering projects cumulatively, are now worth 1/2 of what they all put into it. Oops! I mean, you fret over the smallest things - so called "imbalances" but then you hit players with stuff like this, indiscriminately? Some people's entire trading businesses depend on gathering resources like cotton (lightweight and hard to gather) and then shipping them. You can't just pull stuff like this on a living game world, it's cruel economic vivisection.

I have no idea what the reasoning is behind this earthenware nerf, it sure would be nice if you let players see the numbers and hold an open discussion about it first, and not just hit fast and hard, in the dark, where it hurts most - the water requirements. They're already crazy for these earthenware things, and now they seem to have become more than crazy, actually prohibitive.

Thanks team, for continuously nerfing everything that still works in Cantr.

[Piscator]

Well, it didn't. I'm sorry that the bug was in the game long enough for people to build businesses around it, but that's the most I can say.

I agree though that the water requirements for the earthenware items were completely crazy.

[Rebma]

Am I the only one who used the windowboxes not complaining? xD It's just a game, not like your government just issued conscription people..

I always thought that the small amounts needed to start the project were like "seeds" and ... yeah the small amount of water was always kinda weird to me, but it matched the "seeds" kinda..sorta...

[Cogliostro]

Yeah, I get it. Now it's "a bug".

I mean look at all the suggestions (filed in the appropriate forum) from multiple people, including even myself, begging you to do something about the messed up, prohibitively low water gathering rates across the board in the Cantr world. Did you just get together last night and go "Hmm, if that's what players want, let's ridiculously jack up the water requirements for all plants. Urgent overnight style! That'll show them!"

[SekoETC]

Oh Cogliostro, I bet most of the cotton, as well as most of other stuff, in the game was gathered by dead people so we're all exploiters and benefiters of other people's demise. And people won't complain if for example knit items got their production times increased, because people will just sell them as if they were made with the slower production times, although they were produced with the old faster rates, so people can make a profit. As for cotton, not everybody is lame enough to have their characters learn about the change OOC, so you can try to continue selling with 100 grams a day while it's still possible. Some might sell for higher than that, but unless everybody uses OOC information about the change and starts demanding 200, it will take time before the trade rates reach 200. And if you hire newspawns to gather cotton, most of them will die before they get to spend what ever you pay them with, so you can make a profit. Let them gather 200 grams a day and continue selling for less than 200 grams a day for as long as everyone else is selling for less than 200 grams a day, and make a profit.

Also I think it's cool that the water requirements were increased. I was worried it would take fertilizer since you couldn't make that on a ship, but now we're all saved, hooray! Who cares if it takes ten times as much as water as it used to, as long as we won't be forced to buy fertilizer, since I don't even know how that is made. I could check the wiki but I don't want to learn everything unless I have to. I only have one character who uses windowboxes and flowerpots and he'd be just happy to be able to spend more.

Although it would be nice if water gathering rates were more reasonable, but maybe if water consumption in all projects gets increased, then gathering rates could also be multiplied by 10 and water would only be effectively heavier.