Remove Crafting Condition

[Nanashana]

Didn't want to necro this: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...ndition-bar-from-the-crafting-machine.279137/ but feels like being on a path to UE5 is a good time to revive an older controversial topic.

Its no secret that there's a significant amount of PED that gets cycled through explosive, and recycle, gambling on a daily basis (And I'm not one to shy away from admitting to clicking my fair share of recycle).

However, with MA's plans to move towards UE5 and see, hopefully, a resurgence in popularity and player-base there's a very real risk that regulatory eyes may fall back on the game and look at things in a bit more detail (the world has moved on significantly since Finansinspektionen and Spelinspektionen would have reviewed the game's mechanics and mechanisms for players to cycle and interact with the economy. And having such mechanics available would only serve as ammunition for content creators to drag Mindark over the coals as predatory.

Anyone with half a brain can see the condition bar within a crafting terminal as a thinly veiled way of interacting more with a slot machine, and there have already been a number of players in the past who have seriously put their own lives and livelihoods at risk through unhealthy and destructive habits within the game.

The way I see it:

Mindark has a duty of care to ensure that players are afforded the same level of care and protections that other consumers are in the gambling space (i.e. https://www.spelpaus.se/), which promotes better healthy gaming habits, controls and monitoring and ways to self-exclude in the event someone wants to opt-out.

Sadly, this is less likely to happen as Mindark needs to make a very visible acknowledgement that the game can be used as a gambling platform—which they have no incentive to do.

In the absence of that, I'd like to see the UE5 version of the game have the condition mechanic removed entirely, with design thought about to mitigate the common pushback from other players (e.g., Residue). Ultimately, there's no real reason for the slider to be there from a functional perspective, only to sacrifice the crafted component at a higher chance of near successes and huge multipliers.

My proposal would be:

• Removal of all Crafting residues.
• Implementation of:
  • Manufactured Metal Residue BPs:
    • Take 10x ingots of ores and return Residue on a success; shrapnel would be the side-product.
  • Manufactured Metal Residue would then set an additional floor on mined material markups, providing more markup back to the wider game economy (such as the effect of Nanocubes).
• Removal of the condition bar.
• And as a stretch goal:
  • Different tiers of crafted crafting machines which allow players to craft in multiples for components and other stackable items:
  • I.e. Can chose to batch craft 10 enhancers a click
    • Averages 4-5 enhancers per success + partials.
  • This would allow players to optimise craft batches to return more valuable near-success materials (and mitigate some of the pain of crafting a lot of components).

Ultimately, are people playing the game happy, full of the knowledge that their game-time is potentially being funded, or the games development, by people with addictions, who might be destroying themselves, or their families or more just to get another run at the crafting terminal? There's often the statement thrown around that 'the crafters are generating too much of MA's income'.

 

[Rhode MassHole Karma]

good call i lost 10k ped in 24 hours ep4 conditions

 

[The Mind]

If old game is legal, new game, with the same mechanics, will be aswell.
Slider has a lot of value in crafting (not gambling). You just didnt find it.

 

[TheOneOmega]

I'm super against this sort of hard paternalism. I don't think there's one unique way to rank rights violations, but there's certainly a sense in which hard paternalism is quite high up on the list.

Stealing your friend's expensive item is a pretty bad property rights violation. Stealing your friend's inexpensive item is as well. In typical versions of each of these cases though, at least your gain is comparable in nature to your friend's loss.

In another category altogether is stealing your friend's autographed music CD as your friend is leaving town, while the band is still down the street handing them out for free. Here your friend's loss is the autographed CD; they won't notice it's missing until they're out of town, so they will not be able to get a replacement. But all you gain is the minor convenience of not having to take a short walk down the street to claim your own copy. Petitioning authorities to take an opportunity away from everyone just so the petitioner does not have to exercise self-control in declining that opportunity for their own life strikes me as a type of evil in this final category. Hard paternalism seems fundamentally inconsistent with recognizing the agency of others. Framing this as affording players "care" and "protection" seems like a euphemism for treating them as Sims instead of sentient humans.

I can probably get behind a self-exclusion option if it's a temporary thing and built well. Even this isn't as obvious a choice as it might at first seem. The paper Self-Command in Practice, in Policy, and in a Theory of Rational Choice by Thomas Schelling might be an interesting read for anyone who thinks it obvious.

Finally, the premise that there's no strategic benefit to the slider was already shown to be false in the linked post.

 

[The Mind]

which allow players to craft in multiples for components and other stackable items:

Here we go again. Please. Stop.
We already had 20 threads about this. It is a horrible idea. Its not good except for a handful of people who keep pushing it for their own selfish convenience.

 

[Nanashana]

If old game is legal, new game, with the same mechanics, will be aswell.
Slider has a lot of value in crafting (not gambling). You just didnt find it.

But consider lootboxes and gacha mechanics were legal and unregulated till they weren't.

In my mind the slider has 3 values which are:

• Optimising for residue
• Optimising for near success returns and stackable #s (which honestly in extensive testing myself doesn't seem like its as valuable as people keep hinting at, the trade off in volatility you take eliminates any short term gains)
• For items (L) where the end result is worth less than the markup of the input items or residue.

All of these are symptomatic of bad game and economy design, MA has shown that they're capable of making larger impact economy changes (nanocubes) they should take the time to consider the future of crafting alongside the UE5 update and how they can build a healthier system without it just being a thinly veiled gambling simulator.

If there's any other strategic benefit, id love for someone to actually go into detail as right now it mainly seems like the main objection is foot stamping and "not my slider!" responses without any meaningful objections.

 

[Vill]

We already have blueprints to craft reside, they are called enhancer blueprints

 

[Fanan]

That's the main source of income for MA, when no Mayhems going on, and you asking them to remove it??? Naughty naughty!!!

 

[Nanashana]

That's the main source of income for MA, when no Mayhems going on, and you asking them to remove it??? Naughty naughty!!!

And again therin lies the problem, if MA is fully dependant on such a mechanic for revenue purposes, they really need to dig deep and look to the future of the game if they are looking to remarket and grow the game in the current landscape of gaming. They have all the tools available to them to move things in a better direction for themselves, the game and the community. They just need to stop being beholden to the wallets of these gamblers.

 

[Deepa2]

I do support idea. but..
I lost around 50k USD on gambling explo and shrap. And another 50k USD on mining gambling.
MA and all PE players greatly benefitted from it.
You want to remove gambling? It will destroy this "game"

 

[San]

I don't think we have to remind MA to watch out for changes to gambling regulations, they had to deal with it already. While the screws are tightening around us, I hope that at least a majority of the playerbase does not wish to live under a digital nannystate even in their virtual life and make things worse than they have to be. People spend silly amounts of money for nothing alright but that's nothing more than an opinion.

 

[SoberPhil]

This idea is okay. Another way of dealing with it is to reduce the risk factor by limiting how far you can drag the slider, say to 50% of what can be achieved currently. By reducing the risk you can still allow for quick residue production without taking extreme risks.

Another thing I always wanted to know is if there's people who purposefully roll on condition to produce residue. This seems like a really bad idea with where returns are currently, don't think anyone's viewing it like that anymore. Max crafting multipliers where nerfed a few years ago, TT returns got even worse after Twen at least in crafting, the game doesn't seem to return losses like it used to before, so you need to be extra careful with every move unless you're in it for the adrenaline.

 

[The Mind]

Optimising for near success returns and stackable #s (which honestly in extensive testing myself doesn't seem like its as valuable as people keep hinting at, the trade off in volatility you take eliminates any short term gains)

Its because you failed to properly evaluate those tests.

If there's any other strategic benefit, id love for someone to actually go into detail as right now it mainly seems like the main objection is foot stamping and "not my slider!" responses without any meaningful objections.

Nobody is going to share specific data with you. Because its another edge that makes a difference between crafters and clickers.
You already have a hint on where to look (which is more than some of us had). Youll have to discover the rest for yourself.

 

[The Mind]

Another thing I always wanted to know is if there's people who purposefully roll on condition to produce residue. This seems like a really bad idea with where returns are currently, don't think anyone's viewing it like that anymore. Max crafting multipliers where nerfed a few years ago, TT returns got even worse after Twen at least in crafting, the game doesn't seem to return losses like it used to before, so you need to be extra careful with every move unless you're in it for the adrenaline.

I can corroborate about the returns. Last 6 months have been a steady drawdown without any light on sight. Its... hard rn.

 

[Sulje]

I suggest adding some christmas bulbs around crafting machine as soon as you start crafting on condition, to make it feel like las vegas casino.

 

[Alina]

Problem is people dont understand the actual cost of crafting any BPs. EP4 = 1 ped loss per click ( and u recover very little from explo/residue).

 

[thisEUplayer]

I do support idea. but..
I lost around 50k USD on gambling explo and shrap. And another 50k USD on mining gambling.
MA and all PE players greatly benefitted from it.
You want to remove gambling? It will destroy this "game"

you should update your signature

 

[Deepa2]

you should update your signature

Not worth it

 

[The Great Adventurer]

I hope that at least a majority of the playerbase does not wish to live under a digital nannystate even in their virtual life and make things worse than they have to be.

Have you ever read the forum rules or eula?

 

[Fanan]

I do support idea. but..
I lost around 50k USD on gambling explo and shrap. And another 50k USD on mining gambling.
MA and all PE players greatly benefitted from it.
You want to remove gambling? It will destroy this "game"

The ones really benefiting from it are the true investors of Mindark, and I'm not talking about the shares/deeds ingame, I'm talking about the real life company shares holders (1.5/2 millions USD profit for 2023 alone) read the annual reports if you don't believe me.

Been there done that, in 2023 decided to play with EP4 BP (pre nanocubes change, so no MU payed), maybe I was bored in RL I don't know but ended up losing a decent ATH. Now I'm really on the mindset to don't depo again for a good while even if I need to mine unamped or to hunt puny mobs, I don't really care anymore. The amount of people quitting the game because of poor returns is huge! We would be better just playing slots.

What irritate me the most is that the system don't care if you lost 100 ped, 10.000 ped or 100.000 ped and I'm not talking about markup paid out because that goes to other player not to MA, the system will just keep sucking everything you put in.

Stop depo so they can understand that you are not happy with the game anymore.

 

[Ivo Jahrumble]

Maybe providing some utility for the "gambling" bps would help a lot more those guys that you are concerned about.

Like maybe I dunno.. repair terminals use EP instead of PED... replace "Empty enhancer component" for the correspondent tier "tech gizmo" in enhancers bps.

That way they would be integrated in the economy at base high cycling level, as in the old days i might add, and MA would not have to remove the fun part of their gameplay as you suggest.

Like make it a game you know.. instead of slot machines run on a pyramid scheme.

You see, most of the "poor" part of the depositing playerbase realized that they cannot afford a big toy and that running L is no good. So what would you do if you were in their shoes?

 

[TheOneOmega]

If there's any other strategic benefit, id love for someone to actually go into detail as right now it mainly seems like the main objection is foot stamping and "not my slider!" responses without any meaningful objections.

Alright, let's start with a couple of fairly specific examples and then try to abstract to some more broadly-applicable conclusions.

Typically, Alice Chalice McPalacen exhibits a slightly risk-adverse utility function, and chooses pure Quantity on the crafting slider. However, there is currently an item on the auction which she values far above the buyout price and wishes to purchase (it may be listed far below Market Value, or she may have personal reasons for valuing it far above Market Value). She comes up short of finding the needed PED/TT food, but has enough ingredients for a single click of an unusual and often-overlooked blueprint in her blueprint book. If she can just land a 4 X multiplier or better, then she could afford the item. A confident believer in an I.I.D. theory of loot events (no waves, personal loot pools, etc.), she consults sampling distribution data parameterized by slider position from her past crafting runs. The relevant statistic, 1 - the Cumulative Distribution Function evaluated at the 4 X multiplier input, appears to monotonically increase (modulo smoothing out the cyclic behavior shown in the next paragraph) as the slider moves toward pure Condition. Desiring to maximize the probability of affording the item, she drags the slider all the way over, clicks, hits her multiplier, and purchases the item! Yay! Or if the happy ending strikes you as too contrived, she misses her multiplier, but at least knows that she made the optimal decision ex ante, given her valuation of the auction item and the potential risk. Or if you want motivation for utilizing the interior of the slider, she balances her typical risk-aversion against the increasing probability of affording the item, drags the slider to her most preferred position somewhere in the middle, and succeeds or fails as you like.

That's one possible example of a use case for the slider. A second, discussed in the linked thread, is that long-run proportions of item/returned ingredients/residue do not actually vary continuously as the slider is nudged, but are quantized in light of the discrete unit values of the crafted item and ingredients. It is thus feasible to finely tune the slider, optimizing for the crafter's preferred output composition, including possibly increasing the long-run item proportion beyond what pure Quantity would produce. This might be the use case you hinted at by saying...

Optimising for...stackable #s (which honestly in extensive testing myself doesn't seem like its as valuable as people keep hinting at, the trade off in volatility you take eliminates any short term gains)

...but if so, then this response seems mistaken. Tuning the slider in the above fashion actually affects expected post-markup returns, not just short term outcomes. Volatility is concerned with short term outcomes, and while it is relevant to risk of ruin analysis, the Alice Chalice McPalacen example, etc., volatility can never eliminate differences in expected returns in any sort of universally-applicable sense. Players with convex or even linear utility functions should prefer the higher expected returns no matter how much volatility comes coupled with it, and the rest of us should manage volatility risk based on player-and-situation-relative factors, such as the ratio of our total budgets to cost-per-click, the steepness of our utility functions, the amount of risk undertaken in our other activities, etc.

Perhaps more broadly concerning is the idea...

Ultimately, there's no real reason for the slider to be there from a functional perspective, only to sacrifice the crafted component at a higher chance of near successes and huge multipliers.

The implication seems to be that if you, or perhaps the majority of players, cannot or do not publicly articulate reasons to use a feature, then there probably are no such reasons, and the feature should not exist. But such a game design methodology puts players in the horrible catch-22 position of having to begrudgingly reveal strategic information, which could otherwise constitute some of Entropia's most important avenues for skill differentiation, just to prevent those very features from being abolished! Players should feel at liberty to choose between keeping strategic information private, and sharing it with the community. There are plenty of healthy motivations players may have to share at least some of their insights, but surely the perpetual fear that any systems they use may be upended or nerfed out of ignorance of their use cases is a manifestly unhealthy one. I personally don't mind publicizing the two above examples, but a methodology for judging the functionality of game features needs to account for the hidden affordances which lie outside of mainstream perception. The absence of publicized evidence for a use case should not be interpreted as evidence of its absence.

So is there any way we can critically analyze game systems and features, while respecting the unknown unknowns of their present and potential networks of affordances? I think we can, but we must take a more oblique approach. Instead of asking what use cases are known, we should focus on what design principles concordant with Entropia's fundamental value proposition are applicable. A holistic survey is far beyond the scope of this post, but I will highlight one example of such a design principle, composability. Composability within an Entropian's action space describes the degree to which afforded actions can be granularly and independently selected, and interoperate when combined to satisfy the novel requirements and situational use cases. Clearly this design principle has deep concord with the foundations of a sandbox platform centered around empowering players to set their own goals and craft their own user experiences.

How does the composability design principle bear on our analysis of the slider as a feature in the crafting system? In contrast to the residue blueprint alternative, the crafting slider allows players to control which blueprint they click and which multiplier distribution/loot composition they target independently and with much greater granularity, resulting in a far richer action space spanning all possible combinations of blueprints and slider positions. This allows individuals to more effectively tailor their strategies to their personal preferences and specific circumstances, a case study of which we saw in the Alice Chalice McPalacen example. If loot is not I.I.D. (i.e., there are waves or personal loot pools), then individuals can further tailor their slider positions to this periodicity. The slider can also be expected to interoperate more effectively with future composable systems and features, and so can be said to have greater potential for participating in future strategies. For example, your idea to have different tiers of crafting machines (perhaps with some substantial penalty/trade off imposed for obtaining faster crafting speeds or other bonuses) could be an excellent complement to the current crafting system, allowing players to choose their blueprint, slider position, and crafting machine, thus enriching their action space further. Contrast this with, say, a mission, which imposes a singular, rigidly pre-defined objective and reward in the form of "Do X, Get Y." Perhaps it offers a small selection of rewards, but it does not exemplify the rich composability afforded by a feature like the slider. It's kind of just a thin layer of "something to do" floating atop the core Entropian user experience, whereas composability-oriented features like the slider tend to exemplify deep concord with, and contribution to, that foundational core. Judged in light of this design principle, at least, the crafting slider can be thus identified as a good feature.

Of course, if MindArk actually receives bearish legal counsel, a cease-and-desist, or anything of the like, then obviously things could have to change. My only objection would be to the whitewashing of this paternalistic coercion as "care" and "protection," not just for the sake of the slider, but for the sake of Entropian design discourse more broadly. It's not that I don't care about the quasi-hyperbolic discounting pyromaniac who habitually buys nice things to use, but in a later moment decides it would be more fun to set them on fire. There is the very interesting question Schelling raises of whether I ought to care about his earlier self who buys the items to use or his later self who prefers the light show. But when that pyromaniac decides to petition for banning the sale of all matches, lighters, and flammable objects because he finds this easier than engaging with personal growth or commitment devices, then he's pressing the matter beyond this question, and attempting to pry options away from people who do not at any stage of their intertemporal choice desire to have those options removed, turning his present bias into everyone else's problem. I think that warrants calling out.

One of the most important maxims in Entropia is, "Don't deposit more than you can afford to lose!" If there is some reasonable vector for light-handed nudging toward responsible engagement, it should be located at the point of converting USD into PED. The systems in place already have certain deposit limits. I think another good idea would be to decouple the avatar creation room bonus from the starter packs, and maybe not call them starter packs, to align better with the sage wisdom of learning a bit about Entropia, and perhaps relevant to the case of quasi-hyperbolic discounting, a bit about oneself, before deciding whether or not to invest real cash, and if so, at what amount or rate. If an Entropian is in a position to be destroyed in real life over poor crafting results, then their mistake is not in their crafting strategy, but in their account balance. Entropia is committed to granting players radical freedom to explore rich action spaces which meaningfully impact on outcomes. The sheer magnitude of these spaces will necessarily lead to some possible courses of action being not great. It is up to the Entropian to accept the responsibility coupled with this power.

 

[Sulje]

Alright, let's start with a couple of fairly specific examples and then try to abstract to some more broadly-applicable conclusions.

Typically, Alice Chalice McPalacen exhibits a slightly risk-adverse utility function, and chooses pure Quantity on the crafting slider. However, there is currently an item on the auction which she values far above the buyout price and wishes to purchase (it may be listed far below Market Value, or she may have personal reasons for valuing it far above Market Value). She comes up short of finding the needed PED/TT food, but has enough ingredients for a single click of an unusual and often-overlooked blueprint in her blueprint book. If she can just land a 4 X multiplier or better, then she could afford the item. A confident believer in an I.I.D. theory of loot events (no waves, personal loot pools, etc.), she consults sampling distribution data parameterized by slider position from her past crafting runs. The relevant statistic, 1 - the Cumulative Distribution Function evaluated at the 4 X multiplier input, appears to monotonically increase (modulo smoothing out the cyclic behavior shown in the next paragraph) as the slider moves toward pure Condition. Desiring to maximize the probability of affording the item, she drags the slider all the way over, clicks, hits her multiplier, and purchases the item! Yay! Or if the happy ending strikes you as too contrived, she misses her multiplier, but at least knows that she made the optimal decision ex ante, given her valuation of the auction item and the potential risk. Or if you want motivation for utilizing the interior of the slider, she balances her typical risk-aversion against the increasing probability of affording the item, drags the slider to her most preferred position somewhere in the middle, and succeeds or fails as you like.

That's one possible example of a use case for the slider. A second, discussed in the linked thread, is that long-run proportions of item/returned ingredients/residue do not actually vary continuously as the slider is nudged, but are quantized in light of the discrete unit values of the crafted item and ingredients. It is thus feasible to finely tune the slider, optimizing for the crafter's preferred output composition, including possibly increasing the long-run item proportion beyond what pure Quantity would produce. This might be the use case you hinted at by saying...

...but if so, then this response seems mistaken. Tuning the slider in the above fashion actually affects expected post-markup returns, not just short term outcomes. Volatility is concerned with short term outcomes, and while it is relevant to risk of ruin analysis, the Alice Chalice McPalacen example, etc., volatility can never eliminate differences in expected returns in any sort of universally-applicable sense. Players with convex or even linear utility functions should prefer the higher expected returns no matter how much volatility comes coupled with it, and the rest of us should manage volatility risk based on player-and-situation-relative factors, such as the ratio of our total budgets to cost-per-click, the steepness of our utility functions, the amount of risk undertaken in our other activities, etc.

Perhaps more broadly concerning is the idea...

The implication seems to be that if you, or perhaps the majority of players, cannot or do not publicly articulate reasons to use a feature, then there probably are no such reasons, and the feature should not exist. But such a game design methodology puts players in the horrible catch-22 position of having to begrudgingly reveal strategic information, which could otherwise constitute some of Entropia's most important avenues for skill differentiation, just to prevent those very features from being abolished! Players should feel at liberty to choose between keeping strategic information private, and sharing it with the community. There are plenty of healthy motivations players may have to share at least some of their insights, but surely the perpetual fear that any systems they use may be upended or nerfed out of ignorance of their use cases is a manifestly unhealthy one. I personally don't mind publicizing the two above examples, but a methodology for judging the functionality of game features needs to account for the hidden affordances which lie outside of mainstream perception. The absence of publicized evidence for a use case should not be interpreted as evidence of its absence.

So is there any way we can critically analyze game systems and features, while respecting the unknown unknowns of their present and potential networks of affordances? I think we can, but we must take a more oblique approach. Instead of asking what use cases are known, we should focus on what design principles concordant with Entropia's fundamental value proposition are applicable. A holistic survey is far beyond the scope of this post, but I will highlight one example of such a design principle, composability. Composability within an Entropian's action space describes the degree to which afforded actions can be granularly and independently selected, and interoperate when combined to satisfy the novel requirements and situational use cases. Clearly this design principle has deep concord with the foundations of a sandbox platform centered around empowering players to set their own goals and craft their own user experiences.

How does the composability design principle bear on our analysis of the slider as a feature in the crafting system? In contrast to the residue blueprint alternative, the crafting slider allows players to control which blueprint they click and which multiplier distribution/loot composition they target independently and with much greater granularity, resulting in a far richer action space spanning all possible combinations of blueprints and slider positions. This allows individuals to more effectively tailor their strategies to their personal preferences and specific circumstances, a case study of which we saw in the Alice Chalice McPalacen example. If loot is not I.I.D. (i.e., there are waves or personal loot pools), then individuals can further tailor their slider positions to this periodicity. The slider can also be expected to interoperate more effectively with future composable systems and features, and so can be said to have greater potential for participating in future strategies. For example, your idea to have different tiers of crafting machines (perhaps with some substantial penalty/trade off imposed for obtaining faster crafting speeds or other bonuses) could be an excellent complement to the current crafting system, allowing players to choose their blueprint, slider position, and crafting machine, thus enriching their action space further. Contrast this with, say, a mission, which imposes a singular, rigidly pre-defined objective and reward in the form of "Do X, Get Y." Perhaps it offers a small selection of rewards, but it does not exemplify the rich composability afforded by a feature like the slider. It's kind of just a thin layer of "something to do" floating atop the core Entropian user experience, whereas composability-oriented features like the slider tend to exemplify deep concord with, and contribution to, that foundational core. Judged in light of this design principle, at least, the crafting slider can be thus identified as a good feature.

Of course, if MindArk actually receives bearish legal counsel, a cease-and-desist, or anything of the like, then obviously things could have to change. My only objection would be to the whitewashing of this paternalistic coercion as "care" and "protection," not just for the sake of the slider, but for the sake of Entropian design discourse more broadly. It's not that I don't care about the quasi-hyperbolic discounting pyromaniac who habitually buys nice things to use, but in a later moment decides it would be more fun to set them on fire. There is the very interesting question Schelling raises of whether I ought to care about his earlier self who buys the items to use or his later self who prefers the light show. But when that pyromaniac decides to petition for banning the sale of all matches, lighters, and flammable objects because he finds this easier than engaging with personal growth or commitment devices, then he's pressing the matter beyond this question, and attempting to pry options away from people who do not at any stage of their intertemporal choice desire to have those options removed, turning his present bias into everyone else's problem. I think that warrants calling out.

One of the most important maxims in Entropia is, "Don't deposit more than you can afford to lose!" If there is some reasonable vector for light-handed nudging toward responsible engagement, it should be located at the point of converting USD into PED. The systems in place already have certain deposit limits. I think another good idea would be to decouple the avatar creation room bonus from the starter packs, and maybe not call them starter packs, to align better with the sage wisdom of learning a bit about Entropia, and perhaps relevant to the case of quasi-hyperbolic discounting, a bit about oneself, before deciding whether or not to invest real cash, and if so, at what amount or rate. If an Entropian is in a position to be destroyed in real life over poor crafting results, then their mistake is not in their crafting strategy, but in their account balance. Entropia is committed to granting players radical freedom to explore rich action spaces which meaningfully impact on outcomes. The sheer magnitude of these spaces will necessarily lead to some possible courses of action being not great. It is up to the Entropian to accept the responsibility coupled with this power.

Nobody will read all that. Can you summarize in 2 sentences?

 

[JohnCapital]

NO!

Just.

No.

 

[ysabel]

Nobody will read all that. Can you summarize in 2 sentences?

I read it; was a very detailed and thoughtful reply to Nana's Q.

idea: if you choose not to read it, get chat gpt to summarize - they already put in enough effort on their reply.

 

[Crabby]

But consider lootboxes and gacha mechanics were legal and unregulated till they weren't.

Loot box cost 1$... you get 10 ped back in game value. You can convert that 10 ped back to real money (if you have 1000 of them ofc). You're pretty much guaranteed 1$ for your 1$ not including potential MU. I wouldn't say its fair to compare EU's loot boxes to those of other games.


I know some smartass gonna bring up refiner losses, losses cycling uni ammo, withdraw fees.. Yes I know. But in essence you get your 1$ value back in game for you to decide what to do with it. Yeah we buy them hoping to get some expensive ring, but we already know what we're most likely gonna end up with. Uni ammo, pills, fireworks, and animals to grind up.

 

[TheOneOmega]

Nobody will read all that. Can you summarize in 2 sentences?

First I explain two existing strategic benefits of the slider, as per request. Then I offer an argument for why that framing is too narrow, restate the question and a very partial sketch of an answer in terms of design principles (focusing on composability) instead of specific known benefits, and conclude with a healthy dose of skepticism toward uncritical invocations of paternalism.

 

[TheOneOmega]

I read it; was a very detailed and thoughtful reply to Nana's Q.

idea: if you choose not to read it, get chat gpt to summarize - they already put in enough effort on their reply.

Thanks for the kind words! This was my first reaction, but I decided to accept his two sentence challenge.

 

[The Mind]

I read it; was a very detailed and thoughtful reply to Nana's Q.

idea: if you choose not to read it, get chat gpt to summarize - they already put in enough effort on their reply.

Overcomplicated forms that dont add any quality to its core content. Its not just useless, but counterproductive effort.
Ability to express yourself in a clear and concise manner, is a skill, that can be developed by everyone.

 

[ysabel]

Overcomplicated forms that dont add any quality to its core content. Its not just useless, but counterproductive effort.
Ability to express yourself in a clear and concise manner, is a skill, that can be developed by everyone.

Thanks for your opinion.
As for myself, I enjoyed reading it.