Note: the original "Solutions" section of this post has been updated with more information. The changes described in this post have now been made and the details are listed in a separate forum post.
Executive Summary
In a few days we are going to make a change to the shucking behaviour of certain herbs and/or alter some herb and seed prices. What follows is a long explanation of why and a short description of some of the alternatives we are considering.[1] Feedback is welcome.
The Problem
Right now you can take a single yellow crumb flower and, given the right upgrades, shuck it to produce, on average, 2.66 yellow crumb flower seeds.
The flower and the seeds both have a base cost of 66 currants — but since one flower nets you 2.66 seeds, the act of shucking turns your initial 66 currants into 176 currants instantly. As The Rube would say: “Great deal, great deal”.
(The same is true of Purple Flower and Silvertongue, just with different base costs.)
It is fun to make lots and lots of money quickly (or lots and lots of favor, or lots and lots of iMG, or, in general, to watch your numbers go up quickly), but it is not a good thing for the game in the long term: inflation makes the game much harder for new players and renders whole other parts of the system useless because the “return” on other activities is so poor in comparison (which, in turn, reduces the choices available to return-minded players of all levels — it is harder to justify the actions/strategies that they more genuinely enjoy if something else is so over-powered.)
Background
There are two general classes of herbs: the first class (Gandlevery, Rubeweed, Rookswort, Hairball Flower) grow one herb per garden plot. Shucking any of these for seeds will always produce two seeds for each herb shucked. (For simplicity, I’m ignoring the effect of any upgrades, higher level skills, etc., and just talking about the base behaviour.)
The second class of herbs (Yellow Crumb Flower, Purple Flower, Silvertongue) grow three-per-plot and shucking these herbs for seeds is a more delicate operation: each time you shuck you have a chance of getting 2 seeds, a chance of getting one seed and a chance of getting nothing … the seeds are smaller and more delicate and harder to extract.
The odds for getting seeds from shucking the herbs in the second group were supposed to work with two random “dice rolls”, each with a 33% chance of producing a seed (and a 66% chance of producing nothing). Those two rolls together meant you had a 66% chance of getting a seed each time you shucked (really 66.6666…% — if you shucked a million seeds, you’d get 666,667 seeds, or very close).
However, when we set everything up to introduce herbs in the first place, the shucking odds were reversed and each dice roll had a 66% chance of producing a seed, instead of a 33% chance. This went unnoticed for a really long time (more than a year!) until we decided to look into what made Yellow Crumb farming so profitable and popular.
(You can see plainly how Class One herbs and Class Two herbs are totally out of balance when it comes to prices, shucking, and seeds by comparing the results of shucking: again assuming no higher level skills or upgrades, a sprig of Gandlevery, worth 40 currants, will produce 2 Gandlevery Seeds worth 13 currants each / 26 total: a 35% loss; one Rubeweed worth 55 currants will produce 2 Rubeweed Seeds worth 20 currants each / 40 total: a 27% loss, etc. Each of the Class Two herbs, on the other hand, will produce a 33% gain when shucked. With all the upgrades it is profitable to shuck all herbs from both classes: it is just much, much, much more profitable to shuck Class Two herbs.)
[Updated] Solutions
Note: the changes described here have now been made and the details are listed in a separate forum post.
We are going to be reducing the base cost of the seeds by half. (Contrary to what some players have said in the comments, this effects both the number of currants the vendors will give you for them AND the amount of favor produced when they are donated.)
This change will be made on Monday the 17th.
In addition, we will also be making changes to the base cost of tinctures (all of them will be increased) and to both the cost and ingredients required for nearly all potions (in all cases the prices will go up and the number of ingredients required will go down). This will make tincture and potion-making profitable and provide another avenue for herb usage aside from shucking and selling/donating seeds. The specifics on those changes will be announced when the change is live.
The original "Solutions" section follows, in italics:
There are two solutions we’re considering and they are both pretty straightforward: the first is fixing the bug and thereby reducing the number of seeds produced by shucking; the second is reducing the base cost of the seeds (which will make them worth less at vendors or when donated to shrines).
Even with this change, it will still be profitable to simply shuck herbs (once you have all the right skills/upgrades) so we will also be rebalancing the base costs for tinctures and potions to make it worth at least as much to create a tincture (or use the herbs for other purposes) as it would be shuck the equivalent number of herbs. That could mean some improvement/boost in the herbs’ “functionality” as well.
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[1] In the past we've only announced changes at the time we made the change because we figured that was the fairest thing for everyone (people who missed the announcement were not at a disadvantage and everyone felt the effects at the same time). But when we made the change to upgrade tickets earlier this week there were many requests for advanced notice and so we’re trying that, as an experiment.