Spreading out too thinly (to extinction?) and limited availabilities

[San]

Solution is to award owners of "old" bp's with same quality "new" ones, and then remove old ones. If MA don;t want on marked some kind of crafted weapon ( which itself is stupid - there are better ways of balancing ) instead of removing some component from loot and making some BP's useless to force usage of new ones it can simply trade with crafters, not making them feel fools.

I disagree. While it indeed feels like being made a fool for sitting on a bp which is no longer operable (esp. if you've raised it to a high QR), simply changing it by force majeure is even worse. Much worse. Don't go that route. Ever.

Actually the only correct way is by letting the better outmode the good. Apis & co. are (were) great, but plenty of even better items exist now. It would do no harm if they could continue to be crafted when someone wants them for nostalgic or whatever reasons. Their worth would simply go down as the market moves on to other favourites.

I suggest to rather introduce new blueprints for crafting the now missing components like Basic Target Assessment Unit etc., if for any reason they don't want to bring them back in the loot. This way you can create new interest without hurting the old.

 

[jetsina]

well, light isn't always a good thing to head for... but you know what I mean

shoti: Solution is to award owners of "old" bp's with same quality "new" ones, and then remove old ones.

San: Don't go that route. Ever....
Actually the only correct way is by letting the better outmode the good.

I think clutter needs to be removed, and if MA makes something old unviable or uneconomic compared to new stuff, then it is very unlikely that people will knowingly want to craft more of them. So I say provide a bp exchange, but with the ability to make INFORMED choices, MA!
It doesn't have to be terribly fast, but work to make the situation slowly better than slowly worse!

I also realise that people do not like changes being made. Most of these seem to be nerfs, so I can understand that. I do not think that any investment should hold true for ever - and is why I agree about the better outmoding the good.
However, if MA is going to act as its own used car dealer (erm I mean bp dealer), then I would want to see better deals being offered than .... well, you know....

 

[Aio]

well, light isn't always a good thing to head for... but you know what I mean





I think clutter needs to be removed, and if MA makes something old unviable or uneconomic compared to new stuff, then it is very unlikely that people will knowingly want to craft more of them. So I say provide a bp exchange, but with the ability to make INFORMED choices, MA!
It doesn't have to be terribly fast, but work to make the situation slowly better than slowly worse!

I also realise that people do not like changes being made. Most of these seem to be nerfs, so I can understand that. I do not think that any investment should hold true for ever - and is why I agree about the better outmoding the good.
However, if MA is going to act as its own used car dealer (erm I mean bp dealer), then I would want to see better deals being offered than .... well, you know....

Two issues here:

1. You cannot automatically (or through a hand-in) exchange old for new. This would enable a single player to monopolise the system - Once they have collected the top level BPs, they know when superceded they will get an equivalent top level BP. So no need to stay current or add future investment.

2. People are nostalgic / lazy / dicks. Any type of hand-in to make old items and BPs redundant will not work as there will be museums, old storages etc. If just 1 copy of an old item exists, then the database cleaning exercise has failed.

It is for this reason the jumpsuits were introduced - replace 3 items, multiplied by every account created, to just a single item multiplied by every current active account. Fast and effective, but easy to do with a free item (no-one can realistically complain). But what happens with items which have real or perceived value? Much more difficult.

 

[Norbert]

Two issues here:

1. You cannot automatically (or through a hand-in) exchange old for new. This would enable a single player to monopolise the system - Once they have collected the top level BPs, they know when superceded they will get an equivalent top level BP. So no need to stay current or add future investment.

But we have upgrade missions for faps , weapons, armour so why could it not work with bp's in some way? Especially all the old original PE prints for weapons such as jester etc etc they are simply outdated.

Doing something along these lines would allow people the choice of doing away with old prints for new, maybe incur a 50% reduction of QR plus mats needed to complete the transaction.

 

[Kerham]

They did changed crafting once and offered, if I remember correctly, some compensation. The big difference is then they revamped the system completely, so hard to compare.

The point about perceived value is that a theoretical UL bp with 100 qr is useful as long as ingredients drop AND there is a reason to click (demand for item/skilling/fishing for bps). If it just stays there and impossible to use, it has no more value. Just how the mining finders were devalued, with introducing deeper L options, the old MD series is as good as a pickaxe.

 

[Aio]

They did changed crafting once and offered, if I remember correctly, some compensation. The big difference is then they revamped the system completely, so hard to compare.

The point about perceived value is that a theoretical UL bp with 100 qr is useful as long as ingredients drop AND there is a reason to click (demand for item/skilling/fishing for bps). If it just stays there and impossible to use, it has no more value. Just how the mining finders were devalued, with introducing deeper L options, the old MD series is as good as a pickaxe.

Yes, they removed A20X crafting BPs, and gave direct replacement BPs in the form of E-Amp (worthwhile modernisation? )

The point is, if they cannot remove all instances of a certain item, then it is better to not remove any instances of a certain item.

There could be potential for a "shrapnel hand-in" but even that would increase MA's liabilities by 1%.

 

[jetsina]

The point is, if they cannot remove all instances of a certain item, then it is better to not remove any instances of a certain item.

You mean from a database point of view decluttering needs to be all instances of a certain item? Removing (or reallocating) bps would not change the crafted items being out there, though. I don't know how much of a problem it is to have thousands of items per avatar, but in my case I have hundreds of never spawned pets waiting for something better than essence destruction and probably a few hundred of those old 5 pec eco-faps sitting in underground storage.
It's all part of this thinly spread and forgotten places universe we are in..... still, we are covering a wide range of stuff here; I like it!

 

[Aio]

You mean from a database point of view decluttering needs to be all instances of a certain item? Removing (or reallocating) bps would not change the crafted items being out there, though. I don't know how much of a problem it is to have thousands of items per avatar, but in my case I have hundreds of never spawned pets waiting for something better than essence destruction and probably a few hundred of those old 5 pec eco-faps sitting in underground storage.
It's all part of this thinly spread and forgotten places universe we are in..... still, we are covering a wide range of stuff here; I like it!

Yeah from a database point of view, and also a game data point of view. You have to have all the graphics files of every item created on your computer, just in case you come across an avatar who has that item. What happens in another 15 years of Entropia when the database is (at minimum) twice as big and there are many, many more graphics files?

 

[jetsina]

What happens in another 15 years of Entropia when the database is (at minimum) twice as big and there are many, many more graphics files?

It would make quite a difference on the initial download, yes, but relative to bandwidth by then, maybe not. Also maybe not really in terms of total game size either. With a gap of just over 10 years I bought a 64Mb usb stick and a 64Gb usb stick for almost the same price.

However, I imagine server costs run differently to ownership costs, so I'm not disagreeing. But MA developers are making much bigger mistakes in the overall picture, aren't they?

That's why I'm trying to get some insight into some of the underlying stuff. Hiring a good economist was mentioned, but I'd be wary of what sort of consultant they would end up with.....

 

[jetsina]

The latest example of this thin spreading would seem to be the gardening.
In one way it looks like a pyramid structure (geometrically) that will have fewer and fewer players at each height level.

The levels so far are: owning a new land plot in a settlement, building a snug there, building a fruit box and finally growing the exotic new fruit.

The mats and mus do not make this look like a hobby which many people will be doing!

Not that the new fruit and "impure water?" have a use yet apparently. Said in the info to be used in industry, this may well require a player in the future to build a factory on one of the bigger plots for whatever gains?! that may bring, and use those mats. Except that anyone with those levels of peds will probably be able to grow their own fruit (see how a lot of the new Hestia plots have been bought by one avatar).

So, at some point in the future gardeners will be able to take part in a process which they probably won't be able to finish themselves, in a market which won't need them.

A current example would be, I suspect, harvesting lvl 1 trees with a tt harvester ph-1. Anyone harvesting lvl2 and lvl3 trees will have more than enough opportunity to get the short moonleaf boards themselves.

Is this me being over-pessimistic, or is it highly likely that I am right in my assessment so far?

(and this is new development, which has already seen stupid bugs and possibly an ongoing one about not even getting fruit at the end of it.)