I found your response to be so refreshing. Most people find my hard edges uncomfortable. I value direct and open communication above all else but for many people my bluntness comes across as aggression or anger(or that I'm being an arsehole) and stop engaging. I do try to buffer my approach but I suck at social nuance. Sometimes I get stuck in the black and white, fixated on defining and refining the rules that define them that I forget about all the colours needed to paint the full picture. So thank you for bringing more colours, for pushing back on my edges and keeping the dialogue open.
Getting back to the topic, I know it may seem like I'm minimising the experiences of scroll boosted players but I'm not. Your experiences are unique to you just as everyone's are so how can I or anyone say they are more or less valid? What I am contesting is whether those experiences on their own are enough to present a full and accurate picture of the problem. Without accurately identifying the problem we can't possibly hope for successful solution. The devs are going to bow to community pressure once that pressure becomes a sufficient barrier to profits. They won't care whether it actually solves the problem or not because their focus is on balancing the happiness of the players and their profit margin. If people keep blaming moonstone libraries for scroll imbalances we could lose a great resource and still have a goods imbalance.
There's 3 points I want to make:
1) I believe that if there is an imbalance caused by the moonstone libraries that Inno knows about it and has put measures in place to equalise things.
There's ample evidence to support the idea that everything Inno does is purposeful - part of a well thought out game strategy. Given this, it is unreasonable to expect they would introduce buildings that give free goods and not anticipate the impact this would have on the trading environment. They could easily remedy any potential imbalance by increasing the amount and frequency of quests and negotiations that ask for scrolls. Inno has proven they often give with one hand whilst taking away with the other; The AW MM offers a fighting boost but also gives a fighting burden in a different way. In fact, the entire game is framed in this way. Remember that it's Inno's algorithm that determines a new players boosted goods so it's reasonable to believe that Inno may be limiting the number of new players who get scrolls boosted.
2) I don't think our personal experiences are a reliable source of information for forming an accurate understanding of the problem. If we believe there's a problem we will see proof of that - our brains will literally filter out information that doesn't fit our beliefs. This doesn't mean that we're imagining a problem but simply that without corroborating data our experiences must be weighed with caution. Given that the evidence against moonstone buildings is almost entirely anecdotal we need to look at other variables to support or dismiss that claim.
3) If there is an imbalance (and I do believe there is) we can't assume that this trading imbalance means scroll players are disadvantaged over other boosted goods players. I've shown before that steel production in human cities is far more profitable than it is in elven cities when all other factors are equal. Does this mean human cities have an advantage over elven cities? No. Human cities pay for their increased production rates in other ways like bigger housing and longer upgrade costs and time. So it's reasonable to expect that if the imbalance causes a disadvantage in trading that it also gives an advantage in some other way to scroll boosted players.
When I said the ground is wet and you're assuming it rained I meant that correlation is not causation - just because there are buildings that make scrolls and people experience an excess of scrolls doesn't mean that one caused the other - simply that they have something in common and we need far more than that before we draw conclusions.
As far as point one, goes, that there is "ample" evidence that "everything" Inno does is thoughtful and purposeful ... if this were true, then Inno would not backtrack and change things when they goof up ... and they do. They goofed up when first implementing the new tourney. They goofed up when implementing the new FA. They goofed up on countless other things. Every month they post "fixes" to problems they caused. I'm not saying they don't try hard. They do, and most of the time, they get it right. It's a good company and a lovely game. But there is not "ample" evidence that "everything" they do is thoughtful and purposeful, except in the matter of trying to make money.
Ergo, since not everything is thoughtful and done after taking in all different sides and getting input from a variety of opinions, then by the same token, you can't "assume" that Inno has compensated fully for the imbalance of scrolls. Maybe they are spending too many years "studying" the problem, as you suggested, or maybe they're working on other things and have this on a back burner until they can figure out a good approach. Someone (probably the creator) may like the idea of "scrolls" in a "library," and may not like the idea of putting less appropriate things in there. Hence the debate. Who knows? We cannot assume they are fixing it in a thoughtful and purposeful way, at least not currently. Maybe their spire change was a way to test it out and see what would happen. Maybe they didn't want to abruptly end something that people (especially those not boosted in scrolls) love. Who knows?
As far as point two goes, there are times when people spend years (as I said above) "studying" a problem while many people are hurting from that problem. How many times have we said "We need a Marshall Plan for the Third World," but no one does anything about it because they are "studying" the problem. So year after year, people languish. We can't know that isn't what's happening here. How long should we avoid listening to people saying, "We're hungry" and saying "Well, that's only your opinion. We need hard data that you're actually hungry, and that will take many medical tests and then spending months crunching the data before we really know." ? That doesn't make sense to me.
As far as point three goes, let's use another analogy. Say there are three items that everyone needs ... fuel, food, and shelter. Everyone has the ability to provide one of these items and trades the other two for the rest. This works fine until everyone has a home. They don't need another one. So the home builders cannot trade for food and fuel, so they starve. Now you may say that just because there are so many homes doesn't mean that the home builders go hungry. They simply can offer bigger houses (more scrolls) for smaller amounts of food (say crystal). You may think that doesn't harm them, but it does. They've spent more time gathering the resources to make those bigger houses and now they're getting less than the others do. They didn't ask to be homebuilders, and it wasn't something they got into willingly. I know this isn't a perfect analogy, but it doesn't take a genius to understand that if you have an abundance of one item, the ones who only have that item as their boost are being harmed. Why make things more complicated by saying you have to spend forever studying the issue? Inno should have been studying this all along ... and maybe they are. Maybe they have several Eudaemonias on their staff, lol.
As far as "When I said the ground is wet and you're assuming it rained I meant that correlation is not causation" that is rather silly in this particular context (although it would be logical in a different context.) I had to laugh because you sound so much like my son. He graduated summa cum laude with a math and comp sci degree ... a real geeky engineer type. I'll never forget the time when the jam jar was empty and put back in the fridge. We were the only ones living in the house at the time, and no one had visited recently. I asked him "Why did you put the empty jam jar back in the fridge?" and he asked me, "Why would you assume it was me?" I said, "Because it wasn't me and you're the only one here." And he fired back with "What evidence do you have for using that as a basis for proof? It's not proof. No one saw me do it." I laughed then, too (and he started laughing because he knew how silly it was).
I'm glad you are able to debate so forcefully; I'm the type who can enjoy such a challenge and hold no grudges. I do think that Inno has had more than enough time to study this problem and come up with a better solution than a temporary 6 week change in the spire. Hopefully that is only the first step, and that step two will come in a more timely manner than step one did.
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