OTTD 14.0 - Removing the possibility to buy/sell company shares

[Argus]

Could you give an example? I understand, but shouting like this without giving a reason is also not good.
By the way, one of the developers' arguments was that the feature generated errors, according to the github thread. Perhaps we should also listen to their reasons.

[jfs]

I think everybody would agree with that. However, it looks like the developers are going to remove the buyout option altogether, with the sole exception of bankrupt companies.

This is not enough. I can think of situations (in the unmodified game, not even considering JGR or other patches), in which the impossibility to buy out an AI company would totally break the gameplay.

You should start by re-reading the previous posts in this thread and confirming which ones are actually by "the developers". (It's kind of demeaning to be referred to as if we're some kind of evil ruling council where nobody outside knows who are on it, and people seemingly think "they" are impossible to reach and speak to.)


The first thing is that the change has actually already been made, the commands to buy and sell shares have been removed from the current development version of OpenTTD.
However, there are currently also no plans for when version 14 will be released, and many things can change before then. Including, for example, someone adding a new alternative feature for buying ownership of competing companies.


Nobody have said that being able to buy out a company is in and of itself a bad thing.
All the reasoning has been about the specific way it has been implemented, and all the ways it is broken.

If someone will come up with a new scheme for company share ownership, or another mechanism for buying out companies or similar, and implement it for the game, there's a quite good chance it will be accepted in as a new (replacement) feature.
As far as I see it there are two criteria a new share ownership/buying-out feature will need:
1. Not exploitable/open for abuse the way the original method is.
2. The code/pull request has to be good quality.

A well-thought-out feature will probably be accepted in.

[andythenorth]

Decisions happen in the open: https://github.com/openTTD/openttd

Open discussions take place on GitHub, irc and Discord: https://wiki.openttd.org/en/Community/Community

There is very little back-channel smoke-and-mirrors stuff going on, it's very rare for decisions to be made in private conversations.

There is no entity "the developers".

• there are individual OpenTTD developers
• they all have names
• they are people (yes, no, really)
• they don't all agree
• often they don't agree at all

Volunteer project. When the fun stops, stop.

None of us here are perfect, but more progress is made when we're all civil.

Much as I like a good drama, and sometimes enjoying pouring petrol near naked flames, a rational discussion is better.

[odisseus]

From my point of view, the merging of pull request means that "the developers" as a collective have agreed upon making the change. I realise that the new release is not out yet, and that the agreement is still subject to change until that time; this is what I had in mind when I said that they are "going to" remove the buyout functionality.

(Just to be clear, I never implied that the developers have any evil intent. I'm just pointing out that this change is going to have consequences they probably haven't foreseen.)

If someone will come up with a new scheme for company share ownership, or another mechanism for buying out companies or similar, and implement it for the game, there's a quite good chance it will be accepted in as a new (replacement) feature.
As far as I see it there are two criteria a new share ownership/buying-out feature will need:
1. Not exploitable/open for abuse the way the original method is.
2. The code/pull request has to be good quality.

As far as I understand, the necessary change would have been quite small. Instead of removing the code that handles buying shares, just increase the buying step all the way to 100%. This would make it impossible to buy non-AI companies. The "stock fraud" trick would also become impossible, even if you can somehow control the AI.

Could you give an example? I understand, but shouting like this without giving a reason is also not good.

I would be happy to offer you an actual playable scenario, but unfortunately I'm not going to have the time until next week. All I can offer at the moment is a description of the idea.

Think of an AI company that owns a strategic asset: all the roads in a big city, a strip of land fencing off some high-production mines, a railroad causeway across an ocean... something that would be very expensive or outright impossible to bypass. If add-ons are allowed, the AI company could have a stockpile of superior vehicles that are expired and thus cannot be bought in the usual way. In order to eliminate the blockage or get access to the unique vehicles, the player would have to buy out the AI company, first amassing the necessary sum by exploiting the less lucrative options. The AI buyout would thus serve as a kind of threshold before advancing to the next level of the game.

Alas, this idea is going to become impossible once the version 14.0 is released.

By the way, one of the developers' arguments was that the feature generated errors, according to the github thread. Perhaps we should also listen to their reasons.

I wonder what those errors are, as the Github discussion doesn't mention any of them. For what it's worth, I've been playing OpenTTD since version 0.8.0, and I have never encountered any error related to this particular feature, neither in singleplayer nor in multiplayer. The financial inconsistencies (stock fraud, unreasonable pricing etc.) are a whole different story: those are design flaws, not game errors.

[Argus]

I see. I play with the setting that the vehicles will never become obsolete and their production will never stop.
I've only used this feature as a cosmetic division of a subsidiary from a competing company, in conjunction with IdleAI, when switching between companies.
Therefore, I would not like the option to immediately buy out the company if I wanted to keep it as a branch.

[goodgame]

If the main issue is how exploitable buying shares is, then just having it as a cheat is probably the best idea in this whole thread. That's just my opinion of course, if there's any reason it's a bad idea then let me know.

[Eddi]

if there's any reason it's a bad idea then let me know.

it's not really about bad and good ideas. because we have plenty of ideas floating around. just we're lacking people who put the ideas into actual code.

[LaChupacabra]

If the main issue is how exploitable buying shares is, then just having it as a cheat is probably the best idea in this whole thread. That's just my opinion of course, if there's any reason it's a bad idea then let me know.

No, that doesn't make sense. It is enough that this option is disabled by default. The exploit is not trivial, very few players know about it, and in addition it is only possible in online games, where this option is almost everywhere turned off anyway, so it is a purely theoretical problem in practice. Perhaps someone sometime somewhere has done it, but the scale of it is rather marginal, especially compared to, for example, intentional destruction of vehicles on level crossing, which is very common, and against which there is still no solution.

I think everybody needs to take a step back and look at this from the developer side. This is NOT about forcing people to change their gameplay. It's very basic.

What you're saying is just ridiculous. Rather, developers should try to look at the game from the player's point of view, not the other way around. It is very basic and here is the real problem. If you look at the conversation in the PR for the change, neither TrueBrain (change author) nor 2TallTyler (reviewer, approver) saw any need to keep this feature. They considered it useless. The problem is that developers do not know what players expect and do not verify whether their ideas are good.

From that PR Remove: buying/selling/owning company shares #10709 about shares feature:

Now, what does it add to the player?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

To add to your point that this is a useless feature for players ...

...............................

1. This feature is BROKEN. It doesn't work for many players because it doesn't work as intended or as players expect

That's right. This feature is not working as it should. The same can be said for a lot of game elements, such as Cargodist. This does not change anything for passengers - you can still take them wherever you want, and if someone tries to create a more extensive network, instead of earning more, he will only lose. Using this for other cargoes distribution is a nightmare because cargoes, especially supplies, are never sent to where they are most scarce. Does this mean that Cargodist should be removed for this reason? That's the direction you want the game to go? Removing everything one by one instead of fixing, improving and adding?

... no matter how many times the devs have tried to fix it.

Show me these many fix attempts. Show me at least one or two.

2. The devs receive constant complaints about this non-working feature.

First: Show me those constant complaints.
Second: Consider whether removing a key function for some players will prevent these complaints.

3. None of the devs are able to fix it in its current state.

Nonsense. They most certainly can. At most, the subject of finance is not in the area of ​​the main interests of any of the developers. But that makes it all the more likely that the new share feature may never materialize.

4. Nobody else has stepped up to fix it in its current state.

That's not true. Recently (December 2021) there was at least one declaration of the possibility of implementing a change that could fix the function of shares to the most significant extent. It is about changing the way of valuing a company, which is now based on the amount of money held instead of the generated profits / profit forecast. This is a necessary change to eliminate the possibility of exploits and the nonsense of the current form, and this applies to both the current form of the function and any other form. If this change were implemented, half of the share issues would be resolved.

Sounds like you have a great some (censored by LC) idea to replace it.

I believe a change in the method of valuation is necessary in every case. The rest may look different. I believe that the simplest changes would be the best, i.e. modifying the current function in several consecutive steps. This is not fully thought out, can have traps and may be partially (or entirely) nonsensical from a programmer's point of view, but a possible fix I would see it this way:
After changing the method of company valuation (this could be an option), the next, second step should be to remove money grabs when companies are merged. The third step should be to add a dividend element, which in theory should be fairly simple (subtract X% of profits each month and transfer it to the account of the holder of X% of shares). The fourth step should be to transfer the decision to sell the company's shares to the owner of the company, because the player should decide whether he wants to sell his shares and how much he wants to sell. The fifth step should be to redirect the payment for shares in the company to this company. The next steps would be optional. So, the sixth step could be to add conditions for the sale of shares that the player could specify, i.e. how much he wants to sell his shares for, who will be able to buy them and after what time will he be able to buy them back. The seventh step could be to add icons for buying / selling shares to the list of online players or creating a separate "Stock market" window for managing own and purchased shares. The eighth step, last and also optional that comes to my mind would be to add dedicated lines in the finance window.

This way, in 5-8 small* steps, is possible to fix the current share feature and make it a really functional and interesting game feature that would work both offline and online.
I don't know what's the point of writing everything from scratch, since with less* work it is possible to improve what is currently and, following this path, do not deprive anyone of an important function or expose to hate from players.

it's not really about bad and good ideas. because we have plenty of ideas floating around. just we're lacking people who put the ideas into actual code.

And this is one of the strongest arguments against removing this feature even in its current broken form. Because as I wrote at the beginning, removing it will most likely mean that this feature will never come back to the game. While it was and is possible to fix it...

[jfs]

If you know what the solution is, please contribute a patch.

[pickpacket]

Isn't it very odd already that someone relies on this system to buy out AI companies but is not at risk of being bought out by the AI in the same way?

There's always a relevant XKCD for every discussion, of course (and I don't mean for this to be dismissive, merely illustrate my point in a humorous way):

[Pyoro]

If you know what the solution is, please contribute a patch.

"There's no such thing as 'the developers', we're all just individuals, and all talk is in the open for anyone to contribute ..."
"Also, if you say anything, do it with a finished patch are we will ignore you."

"I can't imagine where this rift is coming from and why players react so negatively!"

... this topic as usual is just frustrating to follow.

[kamnet]

It's easy to sit behind a keyboard and give developers flack for the choices they make on improving the game, but how many people here who are giving them the tongue lashing now are people who also help contribute to the code to help improve the game themselves?

That's where your rift is at, and honestly it's why most of the developers stopped interacting with users here years ago.

File under, "no good deed goes unpunished."

[pickpacket]

I'm an open source dev on other projects and I can tell you this:

When devs for these projects say "if you have a suggestion then submit a patch" it's not to gatekeep in any way. It's because the actual full answer is "When I've used this thing I've really felt like X should be changed. Since this is something I feel should be changed, that motivates me to spend my time and energy on it. I only have so much time, energy, and motivation. The thing you're talking about just doesn't tickle my fancy enough to re-prioritize and thus someone else will have to do it."

Us dev people are fully aware that far from everyone has the skills to contribute. But skill only gets us so far. Most of us have day jobs that burn through our energy reserves for abstract thinking and problem solving. When we sit down to do some programming in our spare time it just needs to be fun.

I wrote a NewGRF to add tea, because I wanted it. Now I'm trying to figure out how to add beards to CEOs. Which absolutely nobody has requested and may be a too difficult introduction to the code. But I mean; beards.

[peter1138]

You don't need to create a patch to contribute. A well thought-out concrete proposal on how something should work can go a long way.

[andythenorth]

You don't need to create a patch to contribute. A well thought-out concrete proposal on how something should work can go a long way.

Or proposal containing a number of valid options, which are easy to understand and evaluate.

https://theleanway.net/Enhancing-A3-Pro ... Technology

Avoids the discussion getting pinned to a single solution, which can lead to unproductive argument as it becomes 0 or 1, and people get emotionally attached to a single solution, or feel threatened by it.

[andythenorth]

"There's no such thing as 'the developers', we're all just individuals, and all talk is in the open for anyone to contribute ..."
"Also, if you say anything, do it with a finished patch are we will ignore you."

This seems to put together 2 + 2 and come out with 5?

An individual contributor to OpenTTD has suggested that someone else contribute a patch.

How do you read that? As we obviously differ

[LaChupacabra]

There's always a relevant XKCD for every discussion, of course (and I don't mean for this to be dismissive, merely illustrate my point in a humorous way):

Very popular, but definitely not the right XKCD. The situation here is the opposite of that described. The players had an option. Whoever wanted to could use it, if someone thought it was defective, they could just not use it. It has now been removed for no reason. This change, instead of solving the problem, created it.
Importantly, removing features is clearly inconsistent with the goals of the OTTD project:

• Stay faithful to the original gameplay from TTD
• Take into account different playing styles

This change removes an element that has always been present in this game and that for some players was an important part of the gameplay.

It's easy to sit behind a keyboard and give developers flack for the choices they make on improving the game, but how many people here who are giving them the tongue lashing now are people who also help contribute to the code to help improve the game themselves?

What you write fits very well with what Pyoro wrote. Write a patch, create a new NewGRF if you see a problem, dedicate your life to the game, otherwise your contribution means nothing and we can ignore you.

Just to be clear, if an experienced programmer who knows the game's code could take 5 hours to solve a problem, it could take a non-programmer who doesn't know the game's code 500 hours to solve, including learning how to code. Expecting someone to spend 5 hours on solving a problem they don't identify with is not right to say the least. But expecting someone to put in 500 hours knowing that it would take someone else much less time is just sick.

That's where your rift is at, and honestly it's why most of the developers stopped interacting with users here years ago.

Have you ever asked yourself why JGR is able to discuss here with players about changes to his Patch Pack???

In the case of the development of the basic game version, there is often no space for discussion with the developers at all. A lot of PR from the developers, and especially from TrueBrain, are practically acts done that are not subject to discussion, much less criticism. You can make comments that will confirm the rightness of the change or will facilitate its final implementation, but you have no right to question the sense of making this change! If you do, your comment will be devalued to a single player voice, and if it will be a threat to implement the change, it will be censored and hidden. Moreover, this propensity to censor content that may prove inconvenient goes so far that sometimes even very neutral comments are censored for making remarks, which are later used anyway.

So, the negative perception of the developers of this game does not come from nowhere. Not all developers are responsible for this, but some in particular.

I've seen the PR for deletion of shares, but I didn't see any point in making any comments or suggestions there. To be honest, I don't know what's the point of getting involved in the development of this game. I could detail the idea for a repair or for a new share item (I have 2, 3 concepts). Just what for? This is not the only change destroying the current gameplay coming to the game. What is happening now is a plague. One change worse than the other. With this level of ignorance and rule-breaking by developers, it just doesn't make sense.

[andythenorth]

With this level of ignorance and rule-breaking by developers, it just doesn't make sense.

The what now? By rule-breaking you mean the stated project goals? Or something else?

[odisseus]

I think what he had in mind is that the developers tend to ignore the contrary opinions, and that they sometimes choose to disobey the long-term rules of the project. Although it would be utterly unfair to extend these accusations over all developers in all cases, in this particular case this is exactly what's happening.

[WolfRamXx]

Reading thru this was... interesting...

I think it would be rather wise to just leave it be until there would be few solutions to pick from. Then chose whats in general the best option and once new solution is ready to implement just switch them...?

Then again, i dont even know how to code a road vehicle, let alone how to fix broken(?) economy feature...