RIP 
Currently 5,616 food is wasted every day due to nothing to use the resource on, in the literal sense that there is nothing to use food on at all after the food deal dies within a few minutes.
If basing its value off of 200 food = 50 honor = 50 gems worth of keys, every end game player is losing 1,404 gems worth of food every day the game doesn’t have a solution for it.
The game will be in a rather devastating state if next patch doesn’t have anything to address the food dead currency issue, as it could be months for a solution if next patch doesn’t implement it.
1 Like
A lot of gold wasted also, although that is somehow less obnoxious. Probably because you can spend gold on a little trickle of things at least. So its slightly less dead. 
I’d be less annoyed by the food glut if ore wasn’t a reverse situation. I can manage my ore, by simply not crafting all that much (yay?) But you can’t prevent getting unusable food (and gold) for loot. We are supposed to be excited about opening chests (I assume.) When the first two items in the chest, vaporize upon opening? Bleh.
My personal fix would be to 1) open up storage on food and gold. It’s not going to harm server performance. Unless databases have changed dramatically since I last tinkered… 1 food or 1 billion food is the same in terms of performance. It’s an integer. 2) Change kingdom bazaar offers to make sense. 3) Let use exchange food, gold, and ore. Even at a loss.
It makes no sense whatsoever that we have guild members competing with each other for these offers. “Hey team spirit! We are one! F you guys!” lol Its just so weird. Limit the upgrade number fine. But but redeeming that level should not be limited. Or… I guess limiting it per member would still be ok.
An area to convert food, gold or ore to ore, gold or food, even with a sink involved would help.
1 Like
Truth. I usually log on about a half hour before and then play reset roulette. Orrr if I can’t do that I just don’t try. Today I tried to log in at reset. hahaha It didn’t happen. I’ve come to refer to reset as lag o’clock.
1 Like
The food glut is a problem but I disagree with this analysis. The loss of something where an exchange doesn’t exist is not an actual loss. Food as a dead currency was inevitable even in the short term. The fact that they increased the food rate simply accelerated the pace of arriving at that point since there are no sufficient uses of food (like there is for honor and ore) beyond the food deal.
Should there be additional uses of Food? Probably, but absent the Food Deal issue, we would all be in the same boat of having maxed food, and only the occasional food expenditure as a new follower level becomes available from the crystal “drip”.
For me, the real issue is the structure of the Food Deal and the Kingdom Bazaar generally. Regarding the Kingdom Bazaar itself, at a high level it should represent an opportunity for members of a kingdom to benefit in a way that they would not otherwise if they were not in a kingdom. Additionally, I think most people would assume that a kingdom with a highly active member base would benefit more than a kingdom with fewer members or a full member complement that is much less active. This itself in theory creates another incentive for “daily” play, which I assume is what the developers would prefer. Does it accomplish its goal? Generally no, and it deserves more discussion but what I want to really critique is the Food Deal.
Currently the Food Deal is poison and is the antithesis to good design. Due to the increase in food and the lack of other available food expenditure options, as few as 3 members can buy out the Daily Food Deal VII. With no kingdom management tools (no purchase visibility by member, no control over deal access), it’s a free-for-all. We have seen this play out already and daily reset is now a comical exercise in players selfishly buying out the food deal in a gaming version of the Tragedy of the Commons. Even more insidious is the fact that players are actively choosing to not be in the most active guilds because they have even less opportunity to utilize food on the Food Deal. This is the worst type of perverse incentive and should be a priority for developers to rectify.
2 Likes
Many people spent 1,000s of honor on food, some 10,000s, leading up to these changes. I just took the value of the honor and converted it to its key value based on the current best value that honor can be used on.
1 Like
I understand but that’s a market choice; Honor could have been spent on Ore or Keys instead. Based on the information available many people decided that they were better off spending the honor on food. That’s an opportunity cost choice based on the best available information at the time. But Food has never been able to be spent in reverse order on any of the other market choices (you can’t spend food on Honor, or Ore, or Keys) so the fact that you continue to gain Food (or effectively gain no Food because of the lack of other options to spend it on) is not a loss of a currency (Honor, Ore, Gems, Keys, etc.) that you otherwise would not have been able to attain.
It is technically possible to spend food, ore, and keys on honor by upgrading and using the locksmith. Food makes it higher level, ore makes it craft, keys give both those resources as drops. All the tickets give more exp which gets the player higher level that gets the player closer to 5% more honor via guild.
Ok, but that is different from saying this:
I think there are two different issues: the first issue is what you alluded to before:
So from my perspective, the issue here is again a matter of choice. Based on the information that we had at the time, we determined we were better off if we were able to level our followers faster to have access to better crafting options. So people spent their Honor on Food (mainly to bypass pre-0.35 Auri cap) so that they could have better options sooner from their followers. Then 0.35 changes came out and the caps were raised and the amount of food and ore gained were increased. It therefore diminished in value the strategy of using Honor for Food (although it can still have value if the worth of the increased level of the follower is more valuable than any other option in the Honor exchange). So to recap, the losses that people experienced were the result of past decisons based on the supply and constraints of around Food being changed.
The second issue is:
To me that is an entirely different issue. Let’s say the 0.35 changes had not been made. We would have arrived at the same place. Both pre- and post-update there was nothing to use food on beyond levelling followers and the Food Deal. All that happened with the update is that we arrived at that point faster. That is certainly something of an issue as I described, but I do not believe you can express that issue in terms of lost currency as you formulaically described. That metric was never attainable.
Just as a further thought, let’s say that they introduce a new way to spend Honor that is somehow determined to be of better value than the current uses of Honor. Those that saved their Honor would in theory be better off than those that used their Honor to buy, let’s say Ruby Keys, from the Honor Deal. That’s the possible outcome when we make choices based on information subject to change in the future.
But even if they were to do that, there are still plenty of uses for Honor, even if some of the uses are deemed to be less valuable than others. Then people would be competing to use their Honor in that way (assuming it was a limited purchase option like the Bazaar) and others would be worse off using their Honor for the less valuable option. That would be more akin to the Food Deal situation we have now in that people either get the better option (Food Deal purchases!) or the worse option (nothing!)
Our team is aware of the player sentiment regarding the use of Food as a currency. There will be further use for it in the future, and this is something we have looked into. (I can’t say what this is yet, but this feedback was passed on by me some time ago and our team is aware of it and working on it.)
3 Likes
Glad to hear.
Though, the other issue is there are literally so many people rushing to the guild menu at reset time that it isn’t accessible for like 15 minutes from the amount of lag.
1 Like
This has been noticeable heavily recently. The kingdom tab becomes a sideshow at reset.
I hope to have both issues resolved, bazaar and more uses for food
I wonder if it would help if they instituted a 1x buy limit per kingdom member for say, the first 12 hours after a reset. . That way everyone would get a chance to get at least one food deal buy per reset, as long as they logged in within 12 hours after the daily reset, and might reduce the “mad rush” at reset time. I guess that’s more of a band-aid type fix, but it might be something to consider until the food economy gets balanced again.
This! And also it’s like totally gone by reset +1 or 2 min (literally lag dependant!!!) But the real issue, @Salty is that guild…kingdom mates are competing for limited resources. That’s weird and off. I’ve been seeing kingdom recruitment chat advertising low participation as a plus. I cant believe that is intended.
1 Like
I’ve had two great potential recruits essentially turn down joining an active guild because they preferred being able to monopolize the food deal in an inactive kingdom to farm marks. Honestly it’s hard to blame them as they are not forgoing much. Ore can be used on useful follower crafting. The keys you get from Kingdom Crests are pretty limited and many kingdoms are not utilizing the Honor Deal (and you can trade Honor for Ore for more follower crafting). It’s very hard to pitch the idea currently that players are better off in an active kingdom.
2 Likes
I am worried that players are actually better off in an empty kingdom at the moment…they can get all of the bonuses available and empty most of the deals
Right. The tangible benefits of being in a kingdom (at all…active or not) right now are very limited.
1)Keys and gold from weekly crests. Not enough keys from crests to be a big deal, and gold is worthless atm.
2)The 3 Master title bonuses, one of which is worthless atm.
3)The 3 bazaar deals
Number 1 does require an active guild, but doesn’t pay out enough to really matter.
Number 2 is set up to where the best scenario would be a solo kingdom. Heh. In any other scenario you are competing for the titles. So a tangible benefit that you can’t really count on.
Number 3 does benefit active guilds in terms of being able to keep all 3 deals at maxed tier. But if you can’t log in precisely at reset, it doesn’t matter if all tiers are maxed, because you can’t use the deals. In an inactive guild, you can at least run the food deal.
The entire kingdom system is weirdly competitive instead of co-operative. I hope they address that soon. I personally enjoy being in an active group. I like the intangibles. But I can totally see why people don’t want to be competing for those tangible things.
2 Likes
I think you just hit the nail on the head here. It’s currently competitive instead of feeling like the group is working together.
Prior to .35 it did feel somewhat cooperative with trying to get 1 or 2 deals filled, but that is gone now
1 Like
Just a quick note here as the interminable wait for 0.36 continues, for the love of [insert preferred deity here] and all things that are holy, please let there be a fix to the Food Deal situation included in the update. I will be happy with virtually any choice (Limit it to one a day per person, add temporary or permanent food sinks, increase the amount of allowable kingdom daily purchases, etc). I will even accept turning it off; anything other than nothing. If active kingdoms mean anything to the health of the game, please just make sure some action is taken. Thank you.
Signed,
A broken shell of a man / active kingdom leader
4 Likes