Thoughts from an Old STE Player

[MTKnife]

Actually, this occurs to me: I've been able to find full guides for most of the common starting professions, but not for smugglers. That may be an indicator of something.

[Cory Trese]

Noted. I will make sure Smuggler guides are a priority for the future.

Thanks again for the feedback, I am sorry for the negative experience.

[fallen]

Nov 30, 2019 20:50:45 GMT -5 daveal said:

It's not that I dislike the system, it's just that I feel the max recruitable level is too low. Thanks for explaining how you can get up to level 18, but that requires two big coincidences to happen at the same time. I would need a contact with the faction where I have high rank, and that contact has the right traits, and the right rumor comes in that quadrant. If I have level 30 crew, even recruiting a level 18 is too low. Is it possible to add, say, captain level / 4 to the recruit level? That would make conscription much less of an "obvious right answer". I always feel weird when I attack a faction I hate, for conscription, and wind up taking this hated enemy crewman to be my primary pilot or something.

Thanks for the feedback. We're making some big changes for the next update to help!

[MTKnife]

Dec 2, 2019 14:19:48 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

Noted. I will make sure Smuggler guides are a priority for the future.

Thanks again for the feedback, I am sorry for the negative experience.

I'd certainly appreciate that. My point, though, was not to ask for a guide, but to suggest we may lack an existing guide because hardly anyone is playing the profession as intended. The Slippery Trait is available only with Smuggler as a starting profession, and having Cunning Slip or Hideout available on day 1, even with a level 1 captain, is very useful. At higher ranks, Forged Permit, Garbled Identity, and Slippery Trader are also Talents useful to practically any captain. Thus, there's ample reason for many players to be playing "smugglers" even if few of them are making significant income moving illegal goods.

Now that I'm on a proper keyboard rather than my phone, I'd like to offer a detailed practical suggestion.

If I were doing things from the ground up, I'd create a new "Smuggler" or "Criminal" rep that cuts across faction lines--preferably with contacts allowed to have both a faction and a Smuggler/Criminal alignment and Influences to match. Thus, some underworld types might be in league with (corrupt) authorities, while some others would operate mostly in the shadows. You could even have separate reps for different types of goods (weapons, spice, electronics, etc.) However, that would require some serious coding.

Instead, let me suggest something that would require as little work as possible. First, it looks like it would be relatively easy to create a "universal" entry point to the Black Market. While I haven't seen your codebase, you obviously have a card game module that's shared to some extent by the Exploration, Patrol, Blockade, Salvage, and Black Market subsystems--and furthermore, you've already got code for conditional access to a card game, for the Salvage subsystem. It should therefore be simple to create a conditional Black Market entry point directly within the planetary interface, either in the starport services cluster, or as a pop-up alongside the contacts and missions (the latter would be least disruptive, as it would require zero change to the GUI structure).

The only other piece of the puzzle would be setting the conditions for the conditional entry point. Allowing Black Market access on any planet/orbital of the same faction as a contact that offers Black Market access would work mechanically, following essentially the same pattern as a Trade Permit (I wouldn't require the captain to pay one time for a "permit", though--having to go through the card game serves as an equivalent barrier). However...I think it would be much cooler to make access depend on geography rather than faction--that is, give access to all planets/orbitals in the same quadrant with a contact that offers Black Market access. You could also put a cherry on top by making it especially likely for underworld contacts to offer introductions to other underworld contacts in nearby systems (if that's not already the case).

That's simple, and interesting, and gives smuggling a different flavor than legal trading, while making them mechanically similar enough to create rough balance between the two.

[Cory Trese]

I'm sorry that you aren't enjoying that play style, but that does not mean that many other people aren't playing it.

I appreciate the feedback, but "hardly anyone is playing" is not accurate or helpful. I am, again, sad to hear you don't like it.

We will keep working to improve, and listening to players on the forum, Discord, email and also by watching the metrics and data from different platforms.

I appreciate the suggestions and am always happy to try to incorporate them into future patches or the next game.

I hope you are able to find some play-styles that suit you. Thanks again!

[MTKnife]

Dec 2, 2019 23:08:42 GMT -5 Cory Trese said:

I'm sorry that you aren't enjoying that play style, but that does not mean that many other people aren't playing it.

I appreciate the feedback, but "hardly anyone is playing" is not accurate or helpful. I am, again, sad to hear you don't like it.

We will keep working to improve, and listening to players on the forum, Discord, email and also by watching the metrics and data from different platforms.

I appreciate the suggestions and am always happy to try to incorporate them into future patches or the next game.

I hope you are able to find some play-styles that suit you. Thanks again!

This isn't a problem with "play style": I really do want to smuggle goods, I want to play the Black Market, and I like the card game; in fact, I feel a little like you're trivializing my point by trying to make it a matter of preference. The problem, for me, is that the math doesn't work.

Today, I did some searching both on here and an Steam for topics on the Black Market. These are the ones I found that most directly address the issue:

steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/search/?q=%22black+market%22&gidforum=1520386297704699186&include_deleted=1&p=2
steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/1744468917520442419/
steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/0/1700541698679780928/
startradersrpg.proboards.com/thread/15598/blackmarket-basics
steamcommunity.com/app/335620/discussions/1/1679189548069853306/

I've seen similar comments in other threads to which the Black Market is tangential. I've also seen at least one comment by a person who did seem to make regular use of it.

All of this, of course, is anecdotal, and I respect that, as developers, you have access to more systematic data than I do: you've seen saved games I haven't. However, I've noticed that Black Market access and trades don't show up in the log, so I'm not sure how you can verify from saved games that people have been using this feature--or does the game keep a more detailed log than it shows to the player?

Even if many people use the Black Market, I'm not sure that would prove that it's as viable, profit-wise, as legitimate trade. I really want to play a smuggler, but I'd like to be able to play a smuggler who does it for rational reasons. I'd also like to be able to do it alongside the storyline and other missions, like I can with normal trade, rather than having to hyperspecialize (admittedly, in real life, smugglers do probably specialize in very narrowly defined routes, but that doesn't make for an interesting game).

(BTW, for what it's worth--and I'm not sure it matters in the game--in real black markets, people who sell into them get much lower prices than they would on the street, while buyers face higher prices, with the huge difference being accounted for by the sizeable risks and substantial legwork on the part of the "market makers"--in STF terms, the Black Market itself--who connect sellers and buyers. Sure, there are circumstances where you can actually get better prices in a black market, most notably, when the legal market has a lot of taxes, but if that's what's going on in STF, some color text in the lorebook would be good--and that equation generally only applies to legal goods sold illegally--aka, the "gray market"--as opposed to illegal goods. Black markets are also typically more sensitive to supply and demand than legal markets, because they're "thinner"--that is, there are fewer buyers and sellers involved.)

[fallen]

Thanks for all the feedback! We'll keep working to improve.

[MTKnife]

Guys, I really appreciate that you bend over backward to respond to everyone, and to do so in a non-confrontational manner to boot. However, in this case, I'd kind of like to be confronted, because I don't feel like I'm being taken seriously. Looking at those past threads, you've given the same answers to each of the several people who've made similar complaints, but the arguments amount to assertions, and I think we might benefit from more hard data.

So, when you look at game saves, do you have access to more extensive logs than players see? That is, can you actually tell whether players are going to the Black Market, or do you just see what Jobs and Talents they've chosen? (Personally, I keep choosing the Black Market Talents, but I hardly ever use them.)

Might it be useful to do a poll to ask people how much they use the Black Market in their games?


(BTW, I can think if another instance, in real life, where selling into a black market gets higher prices: when you can sell the same good legally somewhere nearby, people will be willing to pay you extra for selling into an illegal market; that doesn't apply, however, to goods that are legal in the place where you're selling, which is why people fencing stolen merchandise sell at a steep discount.)

[fallen]

MTKnife - I do appreciate the request to keep discussing it. Yes, we have additional data not visible to players.

We'll keep doing our best to improve the game! We disagree about the Black Market, but if its not for you, then hopefully you can find other systems within the game that you like. I talk to plenty of players who dislike explorer, spy, missions, combat and don't engage in it, and on down the list.

Feel encouraged to make a poll to see how the player community here uses the Black Market!

[MTKnife]

I saw the adjustment to recruit levels in the latest update. Thanks!