Wait, why do you even need Sunlight when you can sell coffee for oodles of money on the surface?
Why do I get the feeling that I’m biting a cleverly disguised troll-bait on this one? (keep reading for an answer…)
OP, you’ve said it yourself - "you’re not a typical gamer" "you prefer to be heavily invested in a story, and watch it grow and develop over time" (and let me take a second to disagree with the half-claim that "looking for cheats, exploits and bugs" has anything to do with being a typical gamer). And if you are not into enjoying the game the way it was intended to be than you may as well edit it AKA go for a rule override AKA cheat a single player game’s rules. Whatever qualms you have about it, are in conflict with the above claim. If you do care about enjoying the game the way it was meant to be then try to appreciate it "as it is", if you don’t than there’s really nothing wrong in appreciating it "as it isn’t".
Besides this I’ve got four more statements to make.
[ul][li]I’ve got several frigates without selling a single box of sunlight. Wasn’t a slow grind. Did it though questing and exploring. Those are profitable to the intended extent. You’re either having an excessively low patience or not doing it right.
[/li][li]The sunlight trade IS out of whack. Even now. Trust us, the "typical" gamers on this one. We aren’t looking for bugs and exploits, but we sure do "look out" for them. And that one made so many "spidey senses" tingle that only the titans (like skyrim’s "fortify you-know-what" exploit) can overshadow it.
[/li][li]There’s always the merciful mode. That is if you DO care about staying "in/with the game". This one is actually a developer-made override. And your refusal to use any overrides at all makes this whole thread look like an old and well know "hardest mode is too hard" trolling bait. I’m not saying that you intended it that way, but is sure looks that way regardless of what you intended. The "It was fun, and now it’s not. So I’m leaving, but I’ll stick around this thread." is another behavior pattern that isn’t speaking in your favour. I’m probably not the most well suited person to be telling this to anybody (since I’m regularly being perceived as a trolling person), but if you indeed didn’t intend it that way, then you might benefit from analysing your thought and behaviour patterns on this one. The position you’re taking is notably desynchronized with logic and common sense (which is exactly why it works so well as a troll bait - the issues are so glaringly obvious to a lot of people that it gets difficult to not point them out).[/li][li]I’ve played SR extensively, and it’s NOT the same genre as SS. There’s a whole lot of skin-deep similarities, but the cores are vastly different. To keep it short - SR is a game of fighting, questing and trading (more or less in that order). NOT surviving and NOT exploring either. SS is a game of exploring, questing and surviving (yep, mostly in that order). NOT trading and NOT fighting. There are SOME elements of those "excluded by my claim" things in those games but their impact on the game process is supplementary at best.[/li][/ul]In any event, I hope I’m not coming around as aggressive/offensive again. I didn’t mean to insult/irritate anyone or to pick a fight.
edited by Red-XIII on 3/3/2015
I’m not sure why the OP is having such a hard time of it.
I’ve never smuggled sunlight and have been amassing thousands of credits simply by exploring, doing missions and figuring out profitable routes to take based on objectives you can achieve there. It is a slow grind in the beginning with almost no profit margin but, eventually, once you realize which ports have objectives that give supplies, fuel, reduce terror, give fragments, give echoes or give skill points, and what locations tend to have enemy vessels and zee monsters to either avoid or engage for additional loot you can plan routes accordingly so that you spend almost nothing on fuel or supplies doing a large loop ending up in London with a lot of port reports for free fuel and echoes and other items to sell in there.
Because it’s largely based on the above you don’t need a large ship to eventually make a decent profit. I’ve only upgraded to a Corsair but since I don’t really engage in trading, storage isn’t an issue and fuel and supply costs are minimal compared to the larger ships.
I think you’re all preaching to the choir at this point, and sort of entirely the missing the point.
Archer is representative of a (large?) number of players of this game. Even if all these walls of text were to convince him to stay, and do things differently, it doesn’t matter. You should look at his post not as a chance to explain how many other ways there are to make money, or how you never needed sunlight, but that this game is too “hard”/“boring”/“not fun” for a lot of people, without a mechanism to ease the suffering that is the general slog. Not everyone is a masochist, and some people just want to enjoy their game time, explore the amazing writing, and not feel like everything they do is going to inevitably lead towards death, and therefore replaying the same early stories again and again.
But you don’t have to play the same stories again and again. In point of fact some of the best revenue generating stories are finite by design. For whatever reason the game doesn’t convey well that exploration is the simplest and an efficient way to progress in the game and that trading is not the traditional way to progress in the game. However it should do it the game needs to drill this into players’ heads. I got it by reading the forums thoroughly but a lot if not most players don’t read game forums so maybe they need to put in mechanics in game that drill this concept into players.
I really recommend savefile editing, after you’ve played a few times. My first captain, still in Beta times, saw most of the ports that were around before the game launched officially, did pretty much all the quests. Then, a month or so after launch, another captain did everything that was around then.
And now? I’m really not motivated to go through all those stories again. I have no interest in carrying souls for the blind bruiser, or to get more port reports and intelligence for the admiralty. Did that too many times, coudl probably quote most of the text by heart.
So save file editing it is. Give myself 100’000 echoes or more, so I can get a faster engine and go directly to where I need to go for the new legacies or or whatever new questline catches my fancy.
edited by Eldan on 3/3/2015
I’ll post this last reply and leave the rest of you to it, and I hope that some of this actually manages to answer some questions.
Why did I decide to post and then “stick around this thread”? For the simple reason that I’m not a gamer. But for a few moments (actually 80 some hours much to my surprise and satisfaction), I actually ENJOYED a game! That’s sort of a big deal for a guy like me. I found something that seemed to deliver on its claims of being story-centered, which encouraged exploration and discovery. I was thoroughly enjoying uncovering secrets, making mistakes, learning how to deal with the inevitable death that was part of the game.
And then I get punished for discovering something. What had made it not “easy”, but “easier”, was now announced to be a bug. For someone like me…that seems to be awfully close to a slap-in-the-face act of trolling.
Guess what? The game that you bought that you thought was hard…is now going to get that much harder.
Forget about advancing the story. Forget about following all those quests you’d uncovered and gotten excited about. Now you need to figure out a base system of play that will just keep you alive long enough to worry about the next disaster that’s floating out there.
I’ve not posted about things I thought were annoyances, like the UI covering up screen real estate that suddenly turns out to be Mt. Nomad or a Lorn Fluke when I’m crawling along with less than 50% of my hull and my crew numbers knocked down because whoops I made a difficult decision at that last port that now has me putting along in low gear, and still half-a-map-away from Fallen London.
I took those things as all just part of the challenges of the game. The death that was a very real possibility was still a heart-stopping clencher of a moment. I still suffered from the dev’s planned anxiety and fear. And I had FUN with it.
But it’s NOT FUN when that death now comes automatically equipped with the built-in slog I’ve already done eight times before. The map changes…I can deal with it. I lose half my money and get to keep a few veils…I’m good with it. I get to choose only one of the items I worked HARD to collect…I’m good with it.
But when I have to work my ass off in repeating the steps I’ve already taken over and over again, spend a substantial number of HOURS in nothing more than a repetition of things that lost their appeal several captains ago…then there’s a problem.
Ultimately it comes to this…I was thoroughly enjoying the game. I was willing to accept my failures and deaths. I took each one of them as a challenge and a learning experience. And thanks to the ability to stockpile echoes through sunlight smuggling, the time it took me to recover…and ultimately move on with the story (the most interesting part of the game for me)…has now increased exponentially.
The point is this…for the first time in literally decades I found myself really sucked into the enjoyment of a game. A thing that just doesn’t happen to me often at all. I thought, “hey, here’s a game with a really cool and interesting story that doesn’t rely on how quickly I can click the mouse button over and over again”.
It’s no longer that. And I’m simply unwilling to plow in another dozen hours of time, just to claw my way back to taking another small baby-step forward. I feel a bit sad that I’m not going to be able to play things through to conclusion, but honestly, I feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth. I’ve spent a lot more to enjoy 80 hours of something that wasn’t as enjoyable. I just wish it would have lasted a bit longer.
I’m honest in my congratulations to Failbetter for creating something so compelling that it managed to not only catch my particular attention, but managed to keep it for 80 hours. If more games took that approach, I might be willing to spend my money on them.
Good luck to everyone else, and thanks to those who’ve offered all sorts of assistance and help. I got flamed a lot less than I anticipated. You’re a good bunch.
I hesitate to even mention this, but it’s laughably easy to edit the save file and give yourself as much money as you want. >.>
[quote=SporksAreGoodForYou]I think you’re all preaching to the choir at this point, and sort of entirely the missing the point.
Archer is representative of a (large?) number of players of this game. Even if all these walls of text were to convince him to stay, and do things differently, it doesn’t matter. You should look at his post not as a chance to explain how many other ways there are to make money, or how you never needed sunlight, but that this game is too "hard"/"boring"/"not fun" for a lot of people, without a mechanism to ease the suffering that is the general slog. Not everyone is a masochist, and some people just want to enjoy their game time, explore the amazing writing, and not feel like everything they do is going to inevitably lead towards death, and therefore replaying the same early stories again and again.[/quote]
But isn’t that, and what Archer said in his last post, a COMPLETELY different issue?
I’ve discussed the very same issue in other threads. There is a fundamental tonal conflict between the totally linear narrative elements of this game - which are basically only at their best once, the first time you get to experience them - and the mechanics of the sea and legacies - which heavily encourage replayability.
But that has nothing to do with the Sunlight trade, or the nerfing thereof.
That’s like saying that you didn’t like The Avengers because the movie theater raised its prices on popcorn the week it came out.
If you don’t like The Avengers, that’s fine. Because it’s assumed you didn’t like it because of some quality of the film’s content. And it’s OK to not like the movie theater jacking up the prices of popcorn too. But the two things are not directly related to each other. Tangentially? Possibly. Maybe the movie theater realized that the theaters would be packed with pre-ordered tickets, so in raising their prices they took advantage of that fact. But the extra $4 on the popped corn isn’t the fault of Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson or Joss Whedon.
Blaming the "nerfed" Sunlight farming for the Narrative-Mechanics conflict is completely nonsensical.
More to the issue, while I get why some of the veteran members of this forum are trying to be magnanimous and attempt to justify this OP, a lot of this really feels like trolling. I’m more in agreement with Red’s surmise on this at this point. The logic in the argument is all confused and expressed so poorly and vaguely and with a written tone that comes across as manipulatively antagonizing and very "Martyr-y". It’s a tone asking to be abused by fans angered by what he’s trying to complain about, not one of constructive criticism or trying to start an actual discussion. It’s a tone that really sets my spidey sense tingling, because it’s one of a person putting a "Kick Me!" sign on their own back, so they can see what people will do, and perfectly designed so that when that happens, they’ll look like the victim while protesting "I have no idea how that got there, Principal Skinner".
Look at the flow of posts -
"Oh, I tried. I’m so beleaguered and this one specific thing is to blame! But I really tried. And now it’s ruined. Ruined! You’ll never have me to kick around any more!"
Then sticking around to push the same complaint forward until people start talking about it, despite the protestations at the start.
Then saying nothing to see if the antagonizing worked to start arguments amongst the pre-existing community after the complaint had been planted and the flames fanned.
People suggest compromises (modding the game files if it really bothers you, other ways to make money), better deny that really quick. That would be reasonable!
THEN, when none of that really worked turning around "At the end" and saying, "Oh, but it was this other issue that was really the problem that I totally never mentioned before, and only mentioned it specifically after Sporks laid out the more agreeable complaint." - see the post I’m quoting above where Sporks lays out the last thing Archer says but with fewer words - followed by "but I really liked it guise. Super seriously. That’s why I have to stop playing it forever."
This is all trolling 101. Nothing follows, the reasoning shifts to suit the intent of the troll, compromise or moderation is ignored. I’m expecting the next post to be "Hah! I was totally trolling you! Look at my le epic Troll face and links to Rick Astley! Got you!"
And seriously look at the arguments:
Sunlight wasn’t even that nerfed. Money wise, it wasn’t nerfed at all. It didn’t get its payout cut down. Mirror-catch boxes didn’t go up in cost. You can go and collect lots of boxes really quickly and make several thousand echo in a single or multiple runs. And recieve few and really, quite manageable ill-effects as long as you just don’t do it and only it 100 times in quick succession. In fact, the added "ill effect" actually helps to unlock new content.
Sunlight trading now functions in a way that makes it give a boost to a player’s bank balance, but isn’t a free money machine that makes more money that make even more baby money in an infinite loop like it was. It does make the game "easier", but not "easy" in its current iteration. Which is what the OP claims to have wanted.
And if the issue is "really" about replaying stories, then having a lot of money doesn’t resolve that issue. Lots of stuff you need for stories can’t be bought, can’t be found in any other way other than doing other stories. And for the stuff you can buy, limited hold space means you can’t carry everything all at once, so you’re still going to be sailing around to map to procure stuff you need with your Scrooge McDuck vault full of Echoes. And you’re still going to playing the stories again!
It isn’t really a super speed catch up technique because you’re going to spend a whole bunch of the time you could be doing stories to progress selling sunlight instead. It’s just replacing one kind of grind with another - an even grindier grind that’s less variable and more profitable.
None of these arguments make actual sense with the actual changes that have occurred.
This is either total trolling, or someone so bad at expressing themselves that they come off like they’re a total troll.
Either way, congratulations Archer, you got me to write another post.
[color=#990000]Hey folks - just a reminder to stay friendly/polite. No lines have been crossed, but I’d rather wander in now (and test out my new colour) and stretch in an obvious fashion than have to actually return to being a moderator.
Sometimes people are wrong on the internet. There’s no need to persuade people to like the game, or that they’re wrong for liking the game for whatever reason. If people ask for advice it’s lovely when people can help with gameplay suggestions, but generally ‘I’m quitting because Y’ threads don’t end in good places.
So … No. I think that’s my point. :-) [/color]
MisterGone, with all the love in the world, I think you’re reading way too much into this. I just saw a very thoughtful guy saying he enjoyed a game for the first time in a long time, because of the narrative. He didn’t enjoy scraping cash together, and sunlight meant he could not worry about money at all and just explore the beautiful, strange, delicious world. Money problems? Spend 30 mins running sunlight. Go explore. Repeat.
The “nerf” has prevented that, and he doesn’t have the time/inclination to work around it, because that’s not how he plays the game. Doing it his way, you can run some sunlight, play around with the different ships and engines and weapons and not worry about fuel or supplies and progress the stories in a very linear fashion, taking one island at a time, and enjoying each experience as a standalone story. “Today, Matthew, I’m going to be A Scourge of Spiders.”* Whereas playing “traditionally”, means you have to juggle multiple threads just to survive. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And hacking game files isn’t either. I can identify with that. And I think it’s ok. And very, very far from trolling.
Personally, I agree 100% that the sunlight exploit wasn’t fixed early enough, and whether for good or bad, people have now come to rely on it as part of the core experience. You take that away, and you’ll see people be upset. That’s ok, too. Perhaps before the DLC comes out, they’ll smooth the introductory experience, so that more people feel they have a fighting chance, and they’re on the cusp of survival, rather than prolonged death spirals. Or they could just add a “storytelling mode” where all requirements drop massively (less terror/fuel&supply use, speed is faster or perhaps just quadruple the money you make from everything), so that people who want to get to the end can do so. Then, when you feel ready for a real challenge, you can stick it on regular mode. And then extreme is invictus, plus half money and double terror. Or something. I thought FTL handled that really nicely. Let the player set the challenge and explore the world as they will.
*name that reference!