Why balancing the crabs, is obvious for me.
There exist a lot of mobs that cost 10-20 PED to kill at each of the planets.
The only differnce that crabs offer, is: artificaly no DMG, no regen
This set Rock into a unfair advantage vs
ALL other planets.
Why hunt big mobs at Ark, Toulan, Cyrene, where you need fair skills to do it, when you can do it at RT with artifically no defence skills, at lower costs for FAPing and Armor decay ?
Personally I wouldn´t care that much, but obviously other PP and MA cares, so the crabs have been adjusted.
That is just speculation, it could also be simply a bug, who knows.
Maybe some other reason for the adjustment, only MA or involved PP can know that.
Beside that comparing a 20 PED to kill mob with EP IV is completely fail.
If you want something similar to EP IV in hunting, then you would need a weapon that shoots/decay 10 PED / shot,strike with 30 attacks/min.
At a dpp of 2.5 that would be 5000 dps, at eco 3.0 dpp it would be 6000 dps.
In fact that would mean 2 shots to kill Big Bulk, Eomons or Dasps.
With such weapon, you really could cycle PED as fast as with Explo, at same speed of loot events.
Guess what, it would be even for TT if its the ammo blown at very low weapon decay.
Thats what ND originally wanted with the introduction of crabs, but to have something similar to EP IV in hunting, it does not need new mob, it needs new weapon
In mining it would be:
Finder decay + Amp decay + probes = 20 PED / drop
VRX3000 + D Class = 9 PED decay - don´t know how many probes that needs, but comes close.
Do search for ore+enmatter voila - met the Explo IV turnover
Be on ark, search for ore+enmatter+artefacts - well that even beats Explo IV turnover.
So damn stop complaining about Explo IV, it is not any issue for EU.
Only problem that really exist in crafting, that there is artifically no market for crafted Guns/Armors, and that is why crafters prefer clicking Explo vs TT instead paying MU to craft Items vs TT.
If there would be option to sell items for MU in crafting, this items would be crafted.
Actually some crafters still do crafting to sell to players instead selling to TT, but that is a small niche covered by a handful of crafters. Most crafters are forced to gamble vs TT while skilling, so they do it with explo.