Caspian requested screenshots last night. This is what was found in response. There may be more, but I was tired.

Posted By fierywind at 12:20 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

Why the claim that it was due to community feedback? Was that also a miscommunication?

It was communicated to us after the post that the info conflicted with what was previously said, hence the mistake.

That is the feedback we are referring to.

Posted By Serpentius at 12:17 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

We've been asked to clarify the D&SS IP lock rules.

Previously we posted a forum message and sent out a tweet regarding locking influence prior to domain and settlement selection. This was a miscommunication between the Outreach and Design teams. After realizing our mistake, we removed the messages to avoid further confusion.

To be clear: Influence during Domain and Settlement Selection will be the same as it was for Surname reservations. It will not be locked, it will be open to change throughout the event. This means it is possible to move your reservation earlier. If your influence changes during D&SS, it will adjust your pick time slightly.

Note: This does not affect the start time of other users as it is not a queue.

We hope this clears up any confusion, thank you.

I'm not sure how that can even work for kingdoms. If a king moves up, wouldn't that mean that two kings select at the same time -- or if a new slot if created for the higher IP king, couldn't that just create a race in which all the kings other than the first one all select at the same time (assuming that the no one is given the selection order until the time for the highest IP king has started)?

There is probably a similar, but less pronounced, problem for dukes. Less of one for counts. Probably no problem for mayors. But, except on those servers where (1) there is an agreement and (2) everyone is going to strictly honor it, the "move up but don't move back" solution could play merry hell with kingdom selection.

So in light of the clarification, what was the point of hiding the IP chart, and for that matter, what is the point of even having time slots if people can simply change their selection position?

To be candid, this rule transforms the IP based selection queue many of us were expecting (including members of the studio, apparently) into a vending machine. To say that this is a disappointing development is a profound understatement.

WELCOME TO THE NEW SPENDING CONTEST! SEE YOU ON THE WALLET WARRIOR BATTLEFIELD GUYS!

Posted By Hieronymus at 4:22 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

So in light of the clarification, what was the point of hiding the IP chart, and for that matter, what is the point of even having time slots if people can simply change their selection position?

To be candid, this rule transforms the IP based selection queue many of us were expecting (including members of the studio, apparently) into a vending machine. To say that this is a disappointing development is a profound understatement.

I still dont see the issue. Whether they passed for 59 seconds before domain selection or 5 minutes after, what is difference? You are never going to know.

Furthermore, Asking why the IP chart was removed implying this change defeats that purpose that is illogical. Go to ebay. They show you the current bid you can target a point and snipe it. Have you ever tried to bid on an ebay product that has no current price or bid on it? How much do you put in? $1? $10? $10000? How are you outbidding? What's your target? The IP Chart is your current bid target. Without it, you have no point of reference.

I don't understand the implication that people are going to be bid sniping. I really encourage anyone who thinks that, to go on Ebay, find an item, black out where it shows the current bid and price with black tape or something, then proceed to try to win the bid within the bid range. It's just not going to happen.

Posted By Serpentius at 12:17 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

We hope this clears up any confusion, thank you.

To be frank, it does not. What the Outreach team communicated was in line with the expectation set over the 3 intervening years since Kickstarter: that IP would be locked prior to domain selections.

While I don’t expect that this change will be significant in the context of D&SS, it is nevertheless a change, and I remain confused about why this change is necessary. I think this thread is a reflection of a lot of consternation over this change, and I don’t think that the official response really clarified anything there.

Posted By Takeda_Shinukage at 7:25 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

Posted By Hieronymus at 4:22 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

So in light of the clarification, what was the point of hiding the IP chart, and for that matter, what is the point of even having time slots if people can simply change their selection position?

To be candid, this rule transforms the IP based selection queue many of us were expecting (including members of the studio, apparently) into a vending machine. To say that this is a disappointing development is a profound understatement.

I still dont see the issue. Whether they passed for 59 seconds before domain selection or 5 minutes after, what is difference? You are never going to know.

Furthermore, Asking why the IP chart was removed implying this change defeats that purpose that is illogical. Go to ebay. They show you the current bid you can target a point and snipe it. Have you ever tried to bid on an ebay product that has no current price or bid on it? How much do you put in? $1? $10? $10000? How are you outbidding? What's your target? The IP Chart is your current bid target. Without it, you have no point of reference.

I don't understand the implication that people are going to be bid sniping. I really encourage anyone who thinks that, to go on Ebay, find an item, black out where it shows the current bid and price with black tape or something, then proceed to try to win the bid within the bid range. It's just not going to happen.

You are a rank 10 mayor (as seen by those who post on the website). You have a decent idea of the IP of those who are rank 9 and below.

You want a temperate coastal town. You look at the map from map voting and using speculation from any number of sources figure there may be only 1 or 2 actual coastal towns fitting that description. The others would be villages or hamlets not what you want. But you are rank 10 so you figure you’re safe. You check you time and go to bed. 6am will come early but your ready.

You wake up and find that 4-5 other mayors who read your idea and story on the website or recruitment post on discord realized they have the same general plans and need a town ranked settlement on the coast as well. They spend enough to push their rank to 10 and spend a little extra and end up with a 5:30am time.

You wake up ready to pick your town and find they have all been picked. Your plan so carefully setup EP purchased to build your perfect town are now worthless and you have to rebuild your idea and tell the shipwrights guild who wanted to settle with you and all the others you recruited that you cannot provide what you promised.

It doesn’t effect me personally but there are already dukes and the like leaving kingdoms and such because of how it appears they will pick and what is a available.

The reason the charts were hidden was to prevent people spending money for a higher place on the chart. Given unless you are in a group of rank 12’s you can very easily assume the IP of those around you. We now have a new IP arms race as people feel the need to better their position so they can keep their communities together.

In short it looks like sbs has decided that an IP war isn’t a bad thing even though they specifically said hiding the charts was to prevent this very thing.

Not to even mention the problem of now having 4-6 people all picking a settlement at the same time when sbs May have only had 1-2 originally at that time. Technical problems will happen with DSS and allowing a dynamic number of people to pick at the same time... will only make things that much worse.

The above is my opinion alone and does not reflect that of my duchy or kingdom.

Posted By Takeda_Shinukage at 7:25 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

I still dont see the issue. Whether they passed for 59 seconds before domain selection or 5 minutes after, what is difference? You are literally never going to know.

The problem isn't difficult to understand, frankly. From the moment you learn what your time slot is, you can gauge where you are and then have the choice to advance ahead, if you so choose.

Furthermore, Asking why the IP chart was removed implying this change defeats that purpose that is illogical.

Revealing our relative IP positions vis a vis a timer while allowing players to bid up invites a bidding war. Just keep putting money in until you advance your timer to 0s. I am not debating the feasibility of what we are being told just the impact of such a system as I understand it. So if the underlying reason for hiding the IP chart was to prevent a bidding war, then it certainly begs the question - why hide the chart in the first place only to allow a bidding war in the midst of selection?

Go to ebay. They show you the current bid you can target a point and snipe it. Have you ever tried to bid on an ebay product that has no current price or bid on it? How much do you put in? $1? $10? $10000? How are you outbidding? What's your target? The IP Chart is your current bid target. Without it, you have no point of reference.

The point of reference is your timer. So it is not a blind auction. And if you counter with "just spend more", that brings us back to what I said previously; That D&SS has turned into a vending machine. If it is the intention to use this event to continue to raise money, I think you can get the temperature of the community to the idea from this thread. It's rare in a community as diverse as this one for us to ever reach consensus or near consensus on anything. This is one of those times.

But don't take my word for it. If this change would have no effect on the outcome, then they'd just lock IP because, you know, there'd be no difference. But of course, that's not true. There is a difference.

@Malais heres the thing, that can still happen regardless. They spend enough to get rank 10 5 second before IP locks and now they get it. That's why I don't understand. That big scenario you made literally applies just the same whether IP is locked or not. Then again anyone trying to get something where only a couple are available should be expected to have second choices.

@Hieronymus So what happens when you spend 50 bucks, your timer doesn't move because the closest is actually 100 bucks ahead.. your just gonna keep dumping until your timer moves? Who's the real loser there? You're spending money on the chance it will move you up and won't know until the money is gone. Then again, the only tier this is truly really relevant at ius the mayor tier, this tier ALSO has the most options on the entire map. The sheer odds that the person you just passed wanted your settlement just dont match up... The odds that the 5 ppl who just passed you wanted your exact settlement out of literal thousands of options. Like cmon. We can't be pretending like these are decent odds right? Unless your literally trying to get the golden mecca of CoE. and even then at that point you should expect to get outbid and have a back-up.

Also your "consensus" theory is a long shot. Not only do people posting for and against both have their share of upvotes, Almost every change they have made to DSS since like 2016 has had loud people yelling on threads about it. No one wants the system to change for better or worse because they are TERRIFIED of not getting their pefect world.

I call BS on the “miscommunication”. You’re grabbing that anxiety cash as fast as you can. Pretty disengenius in my view.

Posted By Takeda_Shinukage at 8:19 PM - Mon Apr 15 2019

@Hieronymus So what happens when you spend 50 bucks, your timer doesn't move because the closest is actually 100 bucks ahead.. your just gonna keep dumping until your timer moves? Who's the real loser there?

Now you're just being argumentative.

No one wants the system to change for better or worse because they are TERRIFIED of not getting their pefect world.

No, I think people just want the studio to fulfill the expectations they set.

Look. When design decisions are made, and promises are made, and funding follows based on those decisions and promises, do you think it's inappropriate that people would get concerned and indeed upset when the things on which they premised their financial support suddenly change?

For my part, I've largely withheld public criticism about a lot of things I'm not thrilled about, but there is a very unsettling pattern of saying one thing and then doing another, which genuinely undermines the credibility of the studio on everything that follows. This is just the latest and arguably most serious of the changes, in my view. But it is not my intention to attack anyone with my line of questioning here, just to understand and hopefully influence decision making insofar as I can.

@Takeda_Shinukage

As I said I don’t have a dog in the fight as first or last pick I’m safe in my duchy and will adjust my county based on where I end up. So I couldn’t care about perfect world or whatever.

I do care that this will generate negative press there are more mayors at this point that nobility of all tiers combined. They talk and they post and guess what they post and talk on other sites as well. Remember how just about every other post used to be about pay to win? This is a firestorm waiting to happen because of how many perceive it. Doesn’t matter what you or I think, doesn’t matter what sbs thinks or what their intention was it appears they want people to spend more money in order to hold on to their communities.

In addition all those mayors deciding they want to spend more moves their times and generates technical issues. You are utterly blind if you fail to see that.

So by changing (or as the official post stated correcting) their position sbs has moved in a direction that was unexpected by a majority of the community, further muddied the waters by statements made on discord and in general has stirred the pot before arguably one of the most important signposts before exposition.

I came to CoE because of change. A little chaos generated by the players of an otherwise static genre. Not to have the rules changed by the studio either adhoc or by mistake or misinformation.

The above is my opinion alone and does not reflect that of my duchy or kingdom.

this is so bad i dont even know how to respond.

to f'in say not intended and to say serps team is to blame is complete, complete BS, these statements have been said for 3+ years from the mouths of devs since the beginning before serp or his team existed, grow a backbone caspian.

everything that has already been said in this thread.

the close the gap portion infuriates me, i know there are huge disparities in IP for mayors, the timer is split evenly, lets look at the last "Crazy mayor" in w/e list sbs has and compare the difference from him to the next mayor on the "list" if any one of those has a huge disparity in ip between them you just devalued the higher ip pick by a ton, since the lower ip person could reduce that timer majorly with much less ip and also majorly increase their chances of picking before someone who they never should have been able to pick before.

I agree with many of the sentiments here.

That said it would seem that we have not even been given enough information to even respond in an informed fashion. Serp stated it will adjust your pick time "slightly". However, this is a relative term. There is so much information about how this will work that we don't have.

Now the simple assumption is that if we gain enough IP to put us over some that were above us before, we will now be able to pick before them. This "slightly" term almost makes seem like a more complex algorithm may be used. This makes me wonder if IP gains during DSS will directly increase your timer relative to others based directly on IP changes or will it move up your timer at some other predetermined rate?

Edit: Also have to add that while this move is not ruining the game by any means, this is already being widely seen as a last minute reversal on monetization. SBS's honesty and refusal to engage in typical industry monetization practices is an asset that has made it millions of dollars. With this move I would expect many to begin to have doubts that what has been said about buying in game advantages stopping after launch will remain the case when we reach that point. While this change is a small ding, it shows that when it comes to money sticking by what you say is easier said then done, and it raises a question for the future that I'm sure will have us all paying close attention to what its answer will be.

Posted By Serpentius at 05:17 AM - Tue Apr 16 2019

To be clear: Influence during Domain and Settlement Selection will be the same as it was for Surname reservations. It will not be locked, it will be open to change throughout the event.

I am 100% sure it was said years back, it would be locked beforehand. Unless myself and basically everyone I have talked about this, over the years, have all been misinformed and all got the wrong info from gods knows where.

I thought that was the whole reason the IP charts were taken down. So you couldn't see your IP before the locking and then up it at the last second. To where now it's naturally all a mystery.

Now if I'm understanding it right now. While IP can be upped during DSS happening, you can't jump anyone in the line? Is that right? Which if that's the case, when is this soft locking happening? Meaning, what date is the line getting created? So to speak.

Or it is, everything can change? So my timer may read "15 days 12hrs" then change to "15 days 18hrs". Because few/many people suddenly have more IP than me and times are changed to reflect that.

DSS only being a few weeks out. This whole thing shouldn't be this confusing. The DSS detailed post, should have been bloody detailed. I have no idea why you guys love to leave things in the dark. It seems so many people are just utterly confused. If that doesn't tell you there is a problem.. well more shitstorms to come.