Balancing the Balance

[Death]

We've adjusted the processing rate of composters in an attempt to find a meaningful way to nerf scrap farming while also improving server performance. We've not seen any noticeable improvement in performance as of yet.

The dilemma currently is there are only 2 routes to go about squashing the pickle meta due to how the margins of profit are right on the line of either being profitable or not at all. This is because in order to produce 2 fertilizers, you need 12 pickles which costs 2 scrap. You then sell the 2 fertilizers for 3 scrap, yielding a single scrap in profit.

Because of that, there's absolutely no way of nerfing that. The only solution would be to average out the margin to make pickle farming no longer profitable but still have an option to turn pickles found out in the wild into fertilizer for profit by increasing the price to buy pickles, thus forcing players to break even instead of profiting.

The alternative is to nerf the composter processing rate like it is now to reduce potential profit over a period of time. The problem is, doing so may encourage players to build larger farms to compensate for the change, but I strongly feel that doing so would make it far too cumbersome and make it a far less efficient method of farming scrap.

Before going any further, I'd like to get your opinion and to see whether or not you utilize this method of farming and gather ideas to destroy the endless scrap farming meta without entirely killing your experience. If you vote, please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

 

TL;DR

Pickle farming is fucked. It allows players to easily farm millions of scrap per week with minimal effort, which has a huge impact on both the player's progression, the progression of the server, and the player economy. If you vote, please let me know your thoughts in the comments!

[poppasPENGUIN]

any amount of nerfing will just lead to mass farms, the one and only way to balance this is to make it break even. Farms are bad enough without 15 floors of composters XD

 

[Postanou]

Doubling the composter processing rate will only mean pickle farmers will build double the already ridiculous number of composters they already have.

[Stee]

Rather than nerfing fert processing rate, you could just put a cooldown back on the exchange for fertilizer if it's that big of a deal. Sounds like a much easier solution than pushing people into giant composter farms

[floatingpilot]

i like the first option or just make vending stocks for pickles vanilla 

[MrAnderson]

As someone who didn't know this was an option, I simply voted for it to break even unless you find pickles in the wild so that it introduces meaningful gameplay into the loop, rather than running to bandit with 500 scrap and buying all the pickles the poor bandit managed to find!

I don't think making it take longer is a true solution because in my years of playing MMO's and other similar games, if there is something that works, but is inconvenient, players will just find a way to make it convenient by making a larger farm for it.

[Alexa_NanoCat]

If the time it takes for pickles were increased, I would still be constantly considering farming pickles
I would rather they not be profitable because then I don't have to think about it, less stressful I guess
also I'm pretty sure people would still do it but just use more composters like you said, and maybe make the performance issue worse, especially for people trying to fly over huge pickle farms

[CypherXP]

If these are the only options then price increase is the sane option.  Hopefully it doesn't affect people too much that use them for bait or to feed horses.

[Snuggles80]

Is it possible to limit composter purchase amount? For example : person A. is limited to 10 composters (due to items being tied to an id on the player) lift the restriction on stack height and increase composter processing rate? That way they are still retaining some meaningful scrap generation while limiting total entity count? Eliminating pickle farming just bottlenecks people into sitting there and baby sitting crops which not everyone has the time to sit there for multiple hours turning over crops...

 

[black_cat218]

3 minutes ago, Stee said:

Rather than nerfing fert processing rate, you could just put a cooldown back on the exchange for fertilizer if it's that big of a deal. Sounds like a much easier solution than pushing people into giant composter farms

I like this idea. I personally use a small amount of composters right at the beginning to get scrap to get the workbenches without having to spend hours trolling all over busting barrels etc

[Orangella]

Make players break even. Force them to get out and get that scrap like the rest of us and quit finding loop holes to cheat the system. 

[allmightyal]

While we are at it remove the sam sites from the black market. It allows players to gain tons of HQM and then turn that into scrap also. The 1st option is best in my opinion.

[Speciekuip]

Limit the ammount of composters players can use to 100 or something like that.

There are many other good method to get a lot of NW.

 

[floatingpilot]

4 minutes ago, allmightyal said:

While we are at it remove the sam sites from the black market. It allows players to gain tons of HQM and then turn that into scrap also. The 1st option is best in my opinion.

i dont think you can make any profit from this method the last time i checked, in fact i think you lose a lot of credit, i think this method is helpful for people who dont want to spend irl money for pumpjacks

[Death]

Bringing back vanilla sell orders for pickles was considered, however, in doing so would cause the vendor to be constantly out of stock causing issues, as well as allowing a small group of players to continue to profit by continuing to buy out all of the stock.

[The_UnderMiner]

I would ask, what is the real goal? Server performance improvement, or scrap farming? Or is it both? If you nerf the pickle farmers, it's just like horses. You could add a 10 story horse farm and be profitable with 200 or more horses. Or you could have PJ's running 24/7 convert to diesel and run Giant Ex non stop. If you want to make scrap hard to come by, you would need to nerf scrap period and have an ecosystem scrap free. 

Edited October 2, 2022 by The_UnderMiner

[Death]

2 minutes ago, The_UnderMiner said:

I would ask, what is the real goal? Server performance improvement, or scrap farming? Or is it both? If you nerf the pickle farmers, it's just like horses. You could add a 10 story horse farm and be profitable with 200 or more horses. Or you could have PJ's running 24/7 convert to diesel and run Giant Ex non stop. If you want to make scrap hard to come by, you would need to nerf scrap period and have an ecosystem scrap free. 

Even if you combine doing all of those things, it would never come close to the yield from composter farming. You can have a 200 horse farm sure, but the tax of having to maintain the horses and collecting the dung actually encourages playing the game, whereas with pickles it's mostly set and forget.

[san]

I agree with the sentiment that slowing composter time will just lead to bigger farms. Break even is the best option. 

[Stee]

32 minutes ago, Death said:

Bringing back vanilla sell orders for pickles was considered, however, in doing so would cause the vendor to be constantly out of stock causing issues, as well as allowing a small group of players to continue to profit by continuing to buy out all of the stock.

You would have to sit there non-stop, waiting for the cooldown to sell a little bit of fert. It's just not worth it for a bit of scrap when other methods would be more profitable. If that's still a problem maybe make instances for cooldown if thats possible? I think at that point, if you're willing to sit there all day to sell fert, good luck to you. You won't be making millions of scrap from it a week, that's for sure

[waskely]

single wipe played on server, so grain of salt and all that.

I will end this wipe with 3 million net worth. I worked for it, but not too hard that I didn't have fun. Economy became the main drive to continue beyond vanilla rust progression, due to limited roleplaying opportunities. I was server conscious in all my farms, using windowless HQM buildings behind double garage doors to prevent assets from being loaded by travelers, even included simple lights since they do not cast shadows. My net worth gain has not negatively impacted anyone.

Not everyone was so kind in their greed. My question is, why is economy balance a concern over the things that do negatively impact other peoples gameplay experience.

If the argument is that too much inflation invalidates the effort put in by those in previous wipes, I cannot get behind this, because to have this train of thought, I would have to be a Karen. I am not a Karen, and I would hope that more people could have the self awareness and maturity to see the Karen in themselves.

Either way, I play games to have fun. If migration is required in pursuit of this, no hard feelings. <3

[Stanx]

Here's my question.. who's making millions of net worth off composting pickles? I do 150 composters once a day since it's been slowed down. I get 43.5k scrap from selling fertilizer. After buying more pickles, I have 19k scrap left over. 19k / 50 * 1000 = 380k stone. Selling stone to server, 380k * 0.04 = 15.2k net worth. x30 days = 456k. Even before the slowdown, it's not even 1 million a month. So, again, who's making millions a week? It has to be a very small fraction of players.

Edited October 2, 2022 by Stanx

[j4ckwr4th]

Make pickles MORE expensive. Not break even. And further more why have a limit to the 10 million stone in outpost but I can spam hqm in bandit all day. Even if there's a limit it's not low enough. Personal PJs 》Diesel 》GE for HQM is a much worse scrap problem than the 40 story fert farms. The fert farms harm lag but the ge doesn't,  so it doesn't get nerfed, but the title of this thread is scrap market is fucked....help me?

[Missy Krissy]

honestly i think the best option if possible is to set a cap daily amount so if people want to be able to make ferts for farming etc. can still do so wether its server daily or rl daily amounts would still allow others to use ferts as it was attended i am struggling to make ferts without pickle farming, you could then have horses pooping normal also so they cant be over used selling for scrap but others can use it as intended? thats my thoughts on it if you can understand and if thats even possible. 

[Syntax_Errors]

Personally id like to see it set to break even, it would be nice to see more people out in the world, playing the game rather than it be just a farming simulator. Scrap isn't an issue tunnel runs earn a load of scrap. i do them regularly, all in all there's plenty of ways to get enough scrap without having to put up with huge farms.

[Lazy Lion]

Honestly I left the server because most of the EZ gameplay is pickle rotting.  I've had my pickle fert wipes but it was more of a join em or get left behind mentality.  Pickles should just be for horse food so "make it break even" is the best choice.  GE is better for credit and resources anyways. Maybe make a wooden easy tier garrison with high % chance of pickle/noob loot or have zombie loot have a higher pickle loot chance?

 

What I love on other servers and would love an EZ version of is a quest giver npc at outpost or wherever that gives players missions (kill x zombies, mine x stone, catch 5 sharks ect) and reward them with pickles or whatever when they turn in the quests if that's what'll make em play the game for it instead of rewarding those that camp bandit with auto clickers. 

 

idk the 1's and 0's to make this happen but a place item limit for each player on the resource heavy items like furnaces, planters, and comps would help lower the lag.   When people can't profit from the pickles they'll make giant ass farms growing corn or potatoes.  I don't like to hinder peoples builds but there should be a line in the sand for max size farm. 

 

Thank you for everything you do, the new zombie emoting when biting is a nice touch btw.  I hope to be playing blackjack on a long train with y'all next wipe. 
Edit: windmills are an issue on all pve servers and although selling test generators helps cover server costs, making them cheaper or a reward for a really hard quest or 0.1% chance in the hqm garrison loot table would be awesome.  Nerfing pickles is buffing farming enjoyers so lets lower the windmills and get more test gens in the wild. 

Edited October 3, 2022 by Lazy Lion