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    Your Elvenar Team

Funneling under-produced resources out of your Fellowship...

Laftar

New Member
What are your thoughts on this? I've been playing for about five years and have never seen this as normal or even a good idea (let alone at all). But, there are players that are taking resources known to be scarce within a Fellowship and then funneling them out of the Fellowship. That just seems like a terrible idea to me and not nice/friendly/helpful to fellow members at all, especially when a Fellowship has so many members struggling in Tournament, Spire, and province catering because they simply don't have those under-produced resources. I produce a ton of all three of these needed resources, and trades were taken...and then immediately offered to people outside the Fellowship despite the need for all of them to stay within the Fellowship. Thank goodness I caught the [MOD EDIT] person immediately and picked all the trades back up, but still. I was even more surprised to see a few members with no problem with the funneling behavior. Does anyone else think that's odd as hell? I guess I'm just a Fellowship First type of person. So many years of playing, and I've never seen a Fellowship so determined to screw over its players smh. Never.

[MOD EDIT] edited for content
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Alram

Flippers just flip
Maybe they picked up your trades just to help you out and then put them back up because they didn't need anything.
 

Laftar

New Member
Maybe they picked up your trades just to help you out and then put them back up because they didn't need anything.
No, they told me beforehand they needed it. And then turned it around and tried to dump all of it elsewhere. All of it.
 

Aerondil

New Member
I can't help but feel like you're mischaracterizng the situation. Every single trade posted has the potential to "funnel" those goods out of the fellowship. Maybe they have a real life friend or relative not in the fellowship they were trying to help. Maybe they have a second account that needed those particular goods.
Unless they're sniping trades that other members have specifically requested, I don't see a problem. If trading those goods away helps them improve their city, that in turn improves the entire fellowship.
 

Laftar

New Member
They're taking away resources they know are needed within the Fellowship (known problems with tourney and spire output and a known resource shortage) and then placing them back onto the trade boards far out of reach for smaller accounts to pick up (100k is too much for small players to pick up). So I disagree that serving themselves and undermining needs of the Fellowship helps the entire Fellowship. And they specifically asked for a resource claiming (lying) they needed that particular resource...and then ending up not actually using it. And I thought alt/push accounts within a realm were frowned upon and forbidden in most Fellowships?
 

Aerondil

New Member
I get that it really bothers you, but you asked for everyone else's thoughts on the matter, and I was just sharing why it doesn't bother me at all. If this were a competitive game rather than a cooperative one, I may feel very differently about it.
 

Laftar

New Member
Not a problem. Not looking for an echo chamber. Just curious. And looking for like-minded individuals should my current situation not pan out. Those players left but some of the sentiment is still there, so I'm just feeling things out in General Discussions and keeping my options open.
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
IMO you can tell your FS that you wont be making the supportive trades any more, that should solve the problem.

Ed
 

Laftar

New Member
IMO you can tell your FS that you wont be making the supportive trades any more, that should solve the problem.

Ed
I sent a mass message letting everyone know I am only doing trades through a request line (and at the time excluded the problem players but those two have left anyway). And no matter what I would be watching the trade boards more closely from now on.
 

StarLoad

Well-Known Member
I sent a mass message letting everyone know I am only doing trades through a request line (and at the time excluded the problem players but those two have left anyway). And no matter what I would be watching the trade boards more closely from now on.
Sorry to hear it came down to that, take the fun out of the game a bit and makes more work for no reason.

Ed
 

Yavimaya

Scroll-Keeper
Very sorry you ran into this issue! I'm wondering why they asked for it then posted it....odd. I'm wondering if they were wanting it to grab another players trade posted that they needed in return? No idea to be honest. Doesn't really make sense to me the saying they need it then just posting it back away. (I personally would have been irritated or would have at least wanted to know what the change was about)
 

Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
Ugh, OP was edited, so it's hard to know the original issue, however...

You as Archmage cannot tell a player how big or small their trades have to be. That is outrageous. My mentor and I left my original home FS on EN2 over exactly this issue.
 

SoggyShorts

Mathematician par Excellence
Were the trades even? Any trade that is same-tier 1:1 should be easily reversible so it wouldn't matter if someone takes it.
Any time you want/need to give resources to smaller struggling players the only effective way to do it is to have them place requests because if you post offers anyone can take it.
 

ajqtrz

Chef - loquacious Old Dog
Were the trades even? Any trade that is same-tier 1:1 should be easily reversible so it wouldn't matter if someone takes it.
Any time you want/need to give resources to smaller struggling players the only effective way to do it is to have them place requests because if you post offers anyone can take it.

As usual, the fog of 1:1 as "fair" clouds the judgment. ("reversible" here being a substitute for "fair.") The thing is, people don't trade 1:1 all the time and thus, "same-tier 1:1" isn't a viable answer. After all, the only thing this OP said was that the trades that were being taken and re-posted were NOT being posted to the advantage of the fellowship. To me that means they could have been 1:1 same tier trades since if a good is scarce all the trades posted might be 1:1.1 rather than 1:1. Posting a 1:1 trade in a trading environment where all other trades of the same type are 1:1.1 means you don't get your trades taken....or you get them taken by players willing to lose the profit of the 1:1.1 trade. In my experience, people willing to do that are rare. So the issue would not have been solved by a 1:1 posting alone and the problem seems to have been that the trades were being posted in larger quantities, thus making them out of reach for smaller players in the fs. Even if the trades re-posted were of the same tier 1:1 type, it's not the type of trade, but it's size, apparently, that is the problem. The same problem would be there if the trade were cross-tier or otherwise different from the 1:1 type.

The magic formula of reversibility doesn't work here if the trades weren't same tier 1:1, no matter what the size. The reason the ratio of the trade goes away from 1:1 is because there is a perceived change in value in the good. The cause of that change can be an actual production loss caused by the game mechanics, or a psychological change in the individual's perception in response to changes in his/her desires. All very complicated and very human.

I do agree that one thing you can do to at least reduce the problem is get smaller payers to post what they want rather than always looking for it.

The only thing I think can be done is for the AM to clearly state to all the players what are the limits of trading. If size matters then it should be stated and why and how it matters with it. Get feed back, discuss it, and when somebody doesn't post trades in the manner described, ask why. Sometimes there are reasons, even if the reasons sound a bit fishy. But if we at least understand them, we can better deal with the situation.

AJ
 

Lelanya

Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
Hmm, a player in Dwarf chapter told a player in Orcs chapter to reduce his trades in my situation, don't know about the OP.
 
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