thestupidone
Young
- Joined
- May 13, 2015
- Posts
- 18
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- Norway
- Avatar Name
- The Stupid One
Utilization of index fund to make an secondary loot cycle with a positive feedback loop
A rework of an previous idea
TLDR: Area where only (L) items is allowed, use TT losses to invest in index funds, use the cashflow from theese investents to increase value from hunting here.
Pre-words and assumptions
This is a document of a merger of ideas I’ve had regarding the health of Entropian economy over the last decade or so.
And no, I’ve never wished that entropia should be a place where everyone can profit and we’ll all go rich over night.
But what I’ve seen is that entropia is caught in a negative feedback loop, and as it stands right now, looking long term (20+ years) at the economy I got a hard time seeing how MA is going to maintain the game interesting without simply making new better and better UL items which in turn would kill MU on old items.
I don’t say what MA is doing is wrong, for they’ve already managed to keep us going in this loop for almost 20 years and in the last few years I think they’ve started to work on some of the issues; sometimes in ways that are discreet (Armatrix) and some ways that are more straightforward ways of saying that they want to maintain MU on items with incentives like the Omegaton Export Initiative.
Why they do this should be fairly obvious as a lot of low level oils are reaching the point where a lot of hunters would just prefer to get extra shrapnel instead, which is rather bad for new player retention.
Another thing I’ve started to see is people actually giving away the lower value skills for ESI price, or in some cases even taking a loss so they can partake in a lower level competition category, which just crush the dream some people have had of making a big withdrawal the day they want to chip out.
I’ve had a more basic idea of it on the forum already and have taken the feedback in mind and put another 2 years of thinking of how to implement this; while seeing the corona boom of entropia affect the ingame economy as well as the outside, watching a possible competitor starting to pop up on the horizon and to see the current crypto boom spike and crash in what feels like every two weeks.
So this system is aimed to implement the following ideas in a synergy that will amplify the regular gameplay of entropia, allowing us to help the economy rather than asking MA to fix it for us.
Something to keep in mind are:
The four powers
So the idea is basically to make an area where only (L) items are allowed, while giving incentives to hunt there, taking MU out of the other areas of the game, while only dropping crafting material to work in tandem with old items (more info in the crafting material section).
Doing this is of course hard since to do this we would have to find a way to give them back MU in new ways, not just saying “Go here and lose money”.
First of any TT losses here, should not be taken out by MA/PP, their profits are already generated hunting/mining/crafting for the (L) items used to hunt on the planet, and an increased MU would for them mean higher turnovers in the other planets as players have a higher liquidity and lower loss margins, leading to a better new player retention and allowing the player base to grow.
The TT losses should instead be rolled over into the deeds section (more info there).
So to give the area a decent MU we’ll use four distinct loots all explained in detail in their own section:
Except for these only Filler (Shrap) should loot in these areas, so maintaining MU on these items is crucial if we want people to actually hunt here. And utilizing index funds combined with some other ideas is how we’re going to do this.
Once we’ve gotten the snowball rolling on the deeds/crypto this will all be self-regulating in a positive feedback loop.
To get this rolling we’ll be using crafting materials, keys and unique codex missions as incentives to hunt here.
My suggestion is basically to have a loot split of:
Crafting material
This one is kind of self explanatory.
Either have new items using these materials to craft along with stuff from the other planets, or just a way to augment other (L) items already in existence in ways that are not too OP.
In the end this is completely up to MA on how to implement but I’ll toss in a few ideas as examples of how it could be possibly done:
Crypto
This part is probably the part I doubt the most myself, considering laws and future doubts surrounding the crypto space.
But there is no possible way to ignore that there is a huge interest both in and out of the game surrounding crypto, and implementing it in some way to support entropia would no doubt boost the popularity of entropia.
If skipped you can just move all the crypto loot to the Deeds.
Let’s call the crypto PET (Project Entropia Token) and the ingame item PETS (PET Share) for now.
The mobs on the planet would drop PETS, an normal ingame item having a TT of
1 pec each, they are traded regularly ingame like any other item.
If you take these to an NPC he will convert 100 PETS for one PET in your game account bound blockchain wallet, it has no TT and can never be taken into the game again. Make it possible to trade the PET you have in this wallet in the share center.
You can then just download a separate wallet on the site, not connected to your ingame account. And make it possible to send PET from your game-tied account to an un-tied wallet via the account management site (And of course the other way would work too, and between other wallets aswell, just normal crypto stuff.).
This means they have a TT cost of 1 PED to create, never changing (except for the MU just as any other item of course). We take the TT loss of this and put it into a distributing global index fund, and take the net (after a small management fee and taxes) distributions from this to rebuy and burn the PET from the ingame market (MA should never touch the outside market, ensuring all the money goes into the game).
And being a crypto of course have an outside burner fee for all transactions made in PET. If they want to have some extra early demand for the token they could make the token proof of stake where half of the transaction fee is split between stakers.
The price on this would (once the snowball has started) be self regulating:
Deeds
Yes, it’s another deed. No this one will not suck (long term, short term I’d have very low expectations.).
These would work in a similar manner to the crypto in that it is being dropped in small shares ingame and then being taken out of the game to be invested in global index funds, but that’s where the similarities end.
Instead of being turned into a crypto, it would be turned into ingame deeds with a TT cost to create of let’s say 10 ped.
Have the deed function slightly different then other in that it will pay back in UA, and have it pay out every hour/day.
The deed should have something similar to this as a payout scheme of their net earnings:
Except for the TT of the items put into this, all the TT loss from hunting on the planet should be invested alongside with these shares.
These would have the same self regulating effect as the crypto while also boosting the game in many different ways.
Also, as time goes on these would end up with a lot of invested capital behind each share and something to maybe have in mind is to maybe have it do a 1:5 split if the weekly/monthly average trading price goes above 100 ped per share, rewarding players who have held them for long periods at a time.
Another way to split it would be to make the TT lost from hunting and split out among the shares weekly like CLDs and just invest the TT from the share “turn in”.
Keys
All right, so the final part and the part to tie it all together is of course the one that will be hardest to explain.
This is where we will look at increasing the value of skills, not emptying the game of all the ped in the game to investments and spice it up with the idea that would keep the planet being hunted at.
In the four powers section I mentioned a suggested loot amount split, and in this suggestion the Deeds+Crypto parts should have an equal value to the keys. There is a reason for this, the keys are to get more money into the game by giving value to depositors. And how do we do this? A new type of loot box!
This one would be different tough, what’s being dropped is keys, which should be crafted or refined into instance keys valued at a multiplier of 10 ped.
Like the instances on RT (maybe the others as well? Only tried the RT ones) this value should be added to the end of the instance, but here in the form of loot boxes with a TT of 10 ped, simple stuff, 10 ped key in, 10 ped loot box out. (Still use the keys from the webshop to open them)
Opening these should be like opening a normal webshop box and one unique (20 ped total loot). These would focus on the (L) theme of the rest of the planet as well and I have 2 suggestions on what we could drop in these except maybe some pills and stuff.
1: In the deeds section I mentioned 10% of it going to “skills”. This would be used by MA to buy the skill implants with the lowest MU on AH and emptying the implant to and re-add the ESI to the loot table of the loot boxes, preferably in stacks of 100 ped.
2: 1/10 Ring gem part with 100% drop chance, 1 ped TT each
Yes we’re going the (L) ring way.
Have there be four parts to make copies of UL rings you have, but have them decay over 100 hours equipped and have fairly high TT.
So to craft a ring you’d need a:
Making them fairly expensive to use and give people who have rings a chance to make a few extra ped by copying rings and selling them.
Having the amount of boxes dropped be equal to deeds/crypto allows us not to decrease the amount of ped in circulation by giving players who hunt here and elsewhere a stronger incentive to deposit.
Something to think about if you want to maintain valuation on rings is to maybe have each ring only be able to be copied once every 24-100 hours, so that even the rings that are not best in slot have the possibilities of catching some of this profit.
Conclusion
This whole idea is centered around creating an output of loot around Entropia universe in a way that would be good for the players long term, while ensuring that we can prosper with a bigger and bigger audience.
And to act as a countercyclical way to keep markets engaged in the game during periods of player base stagnation or even in periods when it shrinks.
This will also allow MA to leverage it’s bigger audience as a competitive edge over competitors if they ever make it to the market.
I should also add that I do think that if they choose to go this route it should be written somewhere that if the capital investment should ever be liquidated 100% of the profit should go to the deed holders and not MA to give players some safety.
If you want to have a discussion about it feel free to send me a discord pm, would love to hear feedback and I’m usually online at least 3-5 times per week.
Discord: Varlentus Ambraelle#9490
I guess you could also either contact me here or in entropia, but taking a break atm so not too active.
A rework of an previous idea
TLDR: Area where only (L) items is allowed, use TT losses to invest in index funds, use the cashflow from theese investents to increase value from hunting here.
Pre-words and assumptions
This is a document of a merger of ideas I’ve had regarding the health of Entropian economy over the last decade or so.
And no, I’ve never wished that entropia should be a place where everyone can profit and we’ll all go rich over night.
But what I’ve seen is that entropia is caught in a negative feedback loop, and as it stands right now, looking long term (20+ years) at the economy I got a hard time seeing how MA is going to maintain the game interesting without simply making new better and better UL items which in turn would kill MU on old items.
I don’t say what MA is doing is wrong, for they’ve already managed to keep us going in this loop for almost 20 years and in the last few years I think they’ve started to work on some of the issues; sometimes in ways that are discreet (Armatrix) and some ways that are more straightforward ways of saying that they want to maintain MU on items with incentives like the Omegaton Export Initiative.
Why they do this should be fairly obvious as a lot of low level oils are reaching the point where a lot of hunters would just prefer to get extra shrapnel instead, which is rather bad for new player retention.
Another thing I’ve started to see is people actually giving away the lower value skills for ESI price, or in some cases even taking a loss so they can partake in a lower level competition category, which just crush the dream some people have had of making a big withdrawal the day they want to chip out.
I’ve had a more basic idea of it on the forum already and have taken the feedback in mind and put another 2 years of thinking of how to implement this; while seeing the corona boom of entropia affect the ingame economy as well as the outside, watching a possible competitor starting to pop up on the horizon and to see the current crypto boom spike and crash in what feels like every two weeks.
So this system is aimed to implement the following ideas in a synergy that will amplify the regular gameplay of entropia, allowing us to help the economy rather than asking MA to fix it for us.
Something to keep in mind are:
- All of these ideas are modular, and any single part could be split away from the idea as a whole.
- Any specific numbers in the paper is more placeholders, noone but MA will have the final word on these
- I’ll work under the assumption that it is a planet, but might as well be split between instances or LA’s.
- This is written under the pretense that MA wants to keep MU on items reasonable; this is simply a necessity to keep them from being labeled as a gambling company.
- We will try to improve life for people not utilizing this game loop, and in as few ways as possible affect them in a negative way.
- This is not meant to rework the game or to instantly turn the game into a profit machine for everyone, just tilt the economy slightly in a way to benefit the player base over the long time.
The four powers
So the idea is basically to make an area where only (L) items are allowed, while giving incentives to hunt there, taking MU out of the other areas of the game, while only dropping crafting material to work in tandem with old items (more info in the crafting material section).
Doing this is of course hard since to do this we would have to find a way to give them back MU in new ways, not just saying “Go here and lose money”.
First of any TT losses here, should not be taken out by MA/PP, their profits are already generated hunting/mining/crafting for the (L) items used to hunt on the planet, and an increased MU would for them mean higher turnovers in the other planets as players have a higher liquidity and lower loss margins, leading to a better new player retention and allowing the player base to grow.
The TT losses should instead be rolled over into the deeds section (more info there).
So to give the area a decent MU we’ll use four distinct loots all explained in detail in their own section:
- Crypto
- Deeds
- Crafting material
- Keys
Except for these only Filler (Shrap) should loot in these areas, so maintaining MU on these items is crucial if we want people to actually hunt here. And utilizing index funds combined with some other ideas is how we’re going to do this.
Once we’ve gotten the snowball rolling on the deeds/crypto this will all be self-regulating in a positive feedback loop.
To get this rolling we’ll be using crafting materials, keys and unique codex missions as incentives to hunt here.
My suggestion is basically to have a loot split of:
- 40% Filler (Shrap)
- 15% Crafting material
- 20% Keys
- 10% Deeds
- 10% Crypto
- 5% TT loss (or w/e number we currently have)
Crafting material
This one is kind of self explanatory.
Either have new items using these materials to craft along with stuff from the other planets, or just a way to augment other (L) items already in existence in ways that are not too OP.
In the end this is completely up to MA on how to implement but I’ll toss in a few ideas as examples of how it could be possibly done:
- ArMatrix augmented. Use a full TT ArMatrix item, with an equal amount of crafting material, The new item has twice the TT, maybe one reduced level requirement or an extra attack per minute or something else not too significant.
- Augmented portable TT/Rep unit, Full TT item with equal amounts crafting mats,
Has the same TT as normal units, but half the decay.
- (L) rings (more info in the Keys section)
- A (L) item to let people with UL items repair the UL items with shrap @101% or alternative an extender to add to UL weapons that moves decay to UA
- One of the ingredients of making armatrix xxx-110->300 items.
- Improve a lot of the dropped weapons (especially melee weapons) to use more ammo, bringing them more in line to armatrix in decay/ammo split while not affecting other stats.
- New armors/plates? Or ways to augment existing ones
- Portable storage unit, 1 ped decay on use and not usable in pvp zones
Crypto
This part is probably the part I doubt the most myself, considering laws and future doubts surrounding the crypto space.
But there is no possible way to ignore that there is a huge interest both in and out of the game surrounding crypto, and implementing it in some way to support entropia would no doubt boost the popularity of entropia.
If skipped you can just move all the crypto loot to the Deeds.
Let’s call the crypto PET (Project Entropia Token) and the ingame item PETS (PET Share) for now.
The mobs on the planet would drop PETS, an normal ingame item having a TT of
1 pec each, they are traded regularly ingame like any other item.
If you take these to an NPC he will convert 100 PETS for one PET in your game account bound blockchain wallet, it has no TT and can never be taken into the game again. Make it possible to trade the PET you have in this wallet in the share center.
You can then just download a separate wallet on the site, not connected to your ingame account. And make it possible to send PET from your game-tied account to an un-tied wallet via the account management site (And of course the other way would work too, and between other wallets aswell, just normal crypto stuff.).
This means they have a TT cost of 1 PED to create, never changing (except for the MU just as any other item of course). We take the TT loss of this and put it into a distributing global index fund, and take the net (after a small management fee and taxes) distributions from this to rebuy and burn the PET from the ingame market (MA should never touch the outside market, ensuring all the money goes into the game).
And being a crypto of course have an outside burner fee for all transactions made in PET. If they want to have some extra early demand for the token they could make the token proof of stake where half of the transaction fee is split between stakers.
The price on this would (once the snowball has started) be self regulating:
- Any time we have a decline in active hunters on the planet we’ll see a decline in the amount of tokens in circulation due to buybacks, slowly working up the value of the tokens.
- Any time the value of the tokens rise, we’ll see more hunters chase for the MU of the tokens, slowly bringing price down while raising the future possibilities of buybacks.
Deeds
Yes, it’s another deed. No this one will not suck (long term, short term I’d have very low expectations.).
These would work in a similar manner to the crypto in that it is being dropped in small shares ingame and then being taken out of the game to be invested in global index funds, but that’s where the similarities end.
Instead of being turned into a crypto, it would be turned into ingame deeds with a TT cost to create of let’s say 10 ped.
Have the deed function slightly different then other in that it will pay back in UA, and have it pay out every hour/day.
The deed should have something similar to this as a payout scheme of their net earnings:
- 40% Distributions
- 40% Buybacks
- 10% Skills (More in the keys section)
- 5% Global pvp rewards
- 5% Split between MA management fee and further development of the planet.
Except for the TT of the items put into this, all the TT loss from hunting on the planet should be invested alongside with these shares.
These would have the same self regulating effect as the crypto while also boosting the game in many different ways.
Also, as time goes on these would end up with a lot of invested capital behind each share and something to maybe have in mind is to maybe have it do a 1:5 split if the weekly/monthly average trading price goes above 100 ped per share, rewarding players who have held them for long periods at a time.
Another way to split it would be to make the TT lost from hunting and split out among the shares weekly like CLDs and just invest the TT from the share “turn in”.
Keys
All right, so the final part and the part to tie it all together is of course the one that will be hardest to explain.
This is where we will look at increasing the value of skills, not emptying the game of all the ped in the game to investments and spice it up with the idea that would keep the planet being hunted at.
In the four powers section I mentioned a suggested loot amount split, and in this suggestion the Deeds+Crypto parts should have an equal value to the keys. There is a reason for this, the keys are to get more money into the game by giving value to depositors. And how do we do this? A new type of loot box!
This one would be different tough, what’s being dropped is keys, which should be crafted or refined into instance keys valued at a multiplier of 10 ped.
Like the instances on RT (maybe the others as well? Only tried the RT ones) this value should be added to the end of the instance, but here in the form of loot boxes with a TT of 10 ped, simple stuff, 10 ped key in, 10 ped loot box out. (Still use the keys from the webshop to open them)
Opening these should be like opening a normal webshop box and one unique (20 ped total loot). These would focus on the (L) theme of the rest of the planet as well and I have 2 suggestions on what we could drop in these except maybe some pills and stuff.
1: In the deeds section I mentioned 10% of it going to “skills”. This would be used by MA to buy the skill implants with the lowest MU on AH and emptying the implant to and re-add the ESI to the loot table of the loot boxes, preferably in stacks of 100 ped.
2: 1/10 Ring gem part with 100% drop chance, 1 ped TT each
Yes we’re going the (L) ring way.
Have there be four parts to make copies of UL rings you have, but have them decay over 100 hours equipped and have fairly high TT.
So to craft a ring you’d need a:
- Ringless gem (parts dropped from 10 loot boxes, ensuring at least 100 ped is deposited to the game for each ring)
- Gemless ring, take any ring (probably a cheap one) and disassemble. (this would give MA the chance to maybe increase the drop chance on (L) rings in boxes again, increasing the incentive to deposit.)
- Crafting material
- A ring to copy.
Making them fairly expensive to use and give people who have rings a chance to make a few extra ped by copying rings and selling them.
Having the amount of boxes dropped be equal to deeds/crypto allows us not to decrease the amount of ped in circulation by giving players who hunt here and elsewhere a stronger incentive to deposit.
Something to think about if you want to maintain valuation on rings is to maybe have each ring only be able to be copied once every 24-100 hours, so that even the rings that are not best in slot have the possibilities of catching some of this profit.
Conclusion
This whole idea is centered around creating an output of loot around Entropia universe in a way that would be good for the players long term, while ensuring that we can prosper with a bigger and bigger audience.
And to act as a countercyclical way to keep markets engaged in the game during periods of player base stagnation or even in periods when it shrinks.
This will also allow MA to leverage it’s bigger audience as a competitive edge over competitors if they ever make it to the market.
I should also add that I do think that if they choose to go this route it should be written somewhere that if the capital investment should ever be liquidated 100% of the profit should go to the deed holders and not MA to give players some safety.
If you want to have a discussion about it feel free to send me a discord pm, would love to hear feedback and I’m usually online at least 3-5 times per week.
Discord: Varlentus Ambraelle#9490
I guess you could also either contact me here or in entropia, but taking a break atm so not too active.
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