@punchytootle So to understand this, basically for anyone who works and has an actual life, not only are they insulted with endless time sensitive content they often lose out on due to not being able to be on 24/7/365, on top of any such content released earlier in the game's life/earlier events etc.. that most of the day 1ers surely have and newer players can never get, and/or all the twitch drops they miss, every day, but there needs to also be more cosmetic items in game that cost exponentially more than their worth(simply because people who've done nothing but play for years had nothing left to spend their money on..) and which players who aren't able to commit that amount of time into the game will probably never see..? I may just start only playing during G&G weekends and turning in during gold rush because otherwise the economy is just 100% broken. Buy a full cannonball crate for 5k, sell it back for 500.. why didn't they do something about that..? Why is an empty storage crate 17.5k? Finally adding actual useful items to spend gold on is great, but add more instead of just inflating the prices on the few items they decided to make available.. but they seem to just want people doing the same old grinds, which boil down to hrs played.. smdh.. we already bought the game, we'll keep playing as long as the content warrants it, but nerfing this after a week when it was just starting to become interesting "as the trade routes have become busier", with people just figuring out the new prime targets were merch5s, and with the barell to hide at outposts, this could have remained an epic aspect of the game and encouraged more pvp and an actual purpose for merchant to even exist and now it's just another pointless grind. And for it to FORCE you to raise Emissary and grade up to now get barely any return at all vs risk/investment is a bit ludicrous. And still have the nerve to say sold for a high profit? Buying for 1600 and selling for 2200 isn't even worth the time for the sail from the one outpost that has it to another that doesn't, even with grade 5 it's a joke now.. Nerf it a little, sure, 1/4 or even 1/3 and I could understand that, it was slightly OP, but nerf it 2/3 and just wtef..? If they're gonna do that they should adjust everyone who exploited it's gold by cutting their last weeks merch profits accordingly. I mean, when they don't payout right during special events they give everyone a stimulus check, they either need to reclaim some of the gold earned this past week through merchant or just award everyone else a few mill to balance it out. One guy saying he made 20-30 million the first week just going in circles.. You mentioned time and effort, I see it as Time vs effort. The two are not the same. Plenty of people put in exponentially more effort in less time and still struggle financially in game. The only real way to turn less/limited time into more money is to thieve heavily(or luck into a FoF maybe), which I'm all about but it's not for everyone. Especially if, god forbid, you dont have 2-3 friends to play with.. With the trade routes, a solo slooper finally had just as much chance to make a mil or a few mil in a session as the 4 man galleon of double gunning reaper sweat server hoppers who simply pop in and out til they find a server wherein people have already been putting in the time and effort for them so all they have to do is grade up, find them, sink them, sell, hop/
rinse/repeat.. It wouldn't annoy me so much if I didnt feel this was planned by Rare from the start, get people hyped then nerf something, it's kinda been their MO with SoT for at least as long as I've been playing and longer from what I've heard. Also for a sandbox type game it really just seems they want you to play how they want you to play and to hull with anyone who wants to do anything else. Ie - now that they've had everyone check out and become invested in the trade routes, they need you to forget about them for a little while because too many people were enjoying(or at least profiting from) it and the day ones and sweats just couldn't stand the thought of mere merchants turning these kinds of payouts, formerly reserved only for them.. even though it's just a form of merchant stacking, just like stacking vaults.. but no, they needed more barell hiding, FoF contestations, and of course people to focus on the Reapers vs World event which conveniently enough also started today as well.. ugh what can you do though, modern gaming eh. I guess the TL;DR version of this would be that they could have went about this in a better way and hopefully future updates will focus more on ACTUALLY balancing the economy and game in general.