Want to Improve Hunting Loot? Fix Crafting

[JohnCapital]

And MA needs to start letting good items drop more often and stop protecting the "investors" that paid for these items.

Increased item drops -> less reason to buy crafted items -> less reason to craft items -> less reason to buy materials -> lower avg. MU returns on stackables

Which is the whole reason for this post to begin with.

Just like any investment, there is a risk that the price could go down. It shouldn't be up to MA to decide what these items are worth. Let the market decide.

MA has never decided that the IMK.II or other items was worth the crap-ton folks pay for them. That was "the market" you refer to. And yes investors have lost plenty on some of those investments because they bought WAY too high.

And in terms of RCE, it makes perfect sense to keep high level items rare. Imagine the price of any items if Mod Mercs and imp faps were as common as, say Gremlin armor.

 

[DoubleWolf]

Increased item drops -> less reason to buy crafted items -> less reason to craft items -> less reason to buy materials -> lower avg. MU returns on stackables

Which is the whole reason for this post to begin with.

In my earlier posts I outlined a system that would still require a need for UL items to be circulating and put into use in the economy. It's not possible for us players to determine appropriate drop rates as we don't have any of the metrics that MA has access to. But I'm not taking this idea to the extreme by saying mod faps and IMK2s should be as common as Gremlin either. There will be stuff that remains uber and rare. For those people that can't afford to buy the UL versions, there should be equivalent crafted L versions that people can buy and use on hunting expeditions to try to find the UL stuff. And this stuff would be very expensive to craft in TT value, which would use up plenty of resources in the production process.

 

[Svena]

No one would care if TT returns were a steady 50% return, if all loot sold for over 200% MU.

Common John, I don't think you are that clueless

MU is simply a game of musical chairs. Sure one person can win it big, but eventually someone has to pay. If materials all sold for 200%, crafted items would sell for 400% or something proportionally more expensive.

The real loss to the economy, and from that the activity level in game, comes from three sources:

1. MA/PPs taking their cut of "decay"
2. Taxes to LA owners
3. People withdrawing ped

Point 3 could be curtailed by a more active involved game that keeps people wanting to play.

Point 2 has long been recognized as a big drain on the game, but MA has deemed the initial price paid by the investors worth the loss of future revenue, and there is little that can be done about that besides not playing on that taxed area.

Point 3 is where the meat is at. We all know MA needs to be paid for the entertainment they provide. However, I believe they are taking too much for the game to ever move out of the niche sector. Even if everyone was able to achieve the fabled "90% tt return" it would still be an absurd amount past anything but tt gear level.

Point 3 is one MA HAS to work on if they ever hope to get a large player base. I think they may be stuck though. They have increased the cost of running the game through high end gfx engines, more partners that take a cut, excessive development on new systems, etc, that I worry they can't lower the cost enough to attract a large player base without collapsing.



The use of events, special L or unL items, or other such things are only a temporary boost, and each use must be extreme than the last. It is like a drug, only a temporary effect at a high cost.

True widespread economic growth can only be achieved though a large active player base, which can only be attracted by cheap and entertaining game play competitive with other MMOs available.

 

[JohnCapital]

No one would care if TT returns were a steady 50% return, if all loot sold for over 200% MU.

Common John, I don't think you are that clueless

You aren't the only one to bring this up. I should have replied about this sooner.

I wrote that part to simply make a very extreme example. Of course the game could never work if the average return was only 50%. However the point is that while we may complain about the TT return, the truth is that eventually averages out, and where folks truly have problems is in the average MU of their loot.

John, you missed the tiering and enhancer products as well,...

Yes, I also failed to mention the boards (which I believe may be the most neglected stackable in the game) and also skipped the blazars, novas, zombie legs, NI crystals, etc. etc. etc. However, despite the fact my list wasn't 100% comprehensive, hopefully the point was made. The vast majority of stackable loot is heavily under-utilized and the only fix for that is to improve the crafting system to use them more.

 

[Divinity]

+ Rep. I agree.

 

[Joat]

I think MA needs to get players more active from what we actualy do
get in loot, so here are some more thoughts about it, based on
my p.o.v of the subject.

One thing that needs to be fixed is the auction.
Way to much of small amount of resources and material are stored in
storage, no point of selling something where auctionfee gonna
eat up the small MU we get.
System can handle 0.00001ped or so, but only 1ped in auction?
Thats kind of pathetic imo.
Some say "-Go out and sell at the street."
That will just not happen, maybe time for MA to accept that majority
log in to play the freakin' game???

The excuse with auctionfee were that they didn't want to much
of crap stored in AH. Imo, the reason were to get auctionfees.
There were soultions to get microtrades done, one is to allow
players to have certain amount of slots in AH, where fixed fee were
0, and only have fee based on percentage of what was sold.

Another solution could be that the shopkeeper also buys stuff,
similar to Orders in AH.

No matter if we get good MU on stuff if we can't sell it.
I've only heard a minimum of people that think "selling at the street"
is a fun concept. Vast majority want stuff sold so they can keep
playing the game.
MA has improved on several things last year/s, maybe this issue can
be adressed too, quite soon.

 

[Dr.D.C.]

the auction?????? the auction is actually the hidden tax of entropia!!!!!!!! it s the place where MA make one of his major income without any complain from players. I really don t think they will change the auction (it took 6 years to have the search option in auction and they copied this from entropiabay.com) and in any case i don t think auction is the problem.
I can speak just from my point of view: why i don t play anymore entropia so much? why i don t deposit anymore??? why i m not more in love with this game????

----I m upset about loot. I see my money go away super fast, i don t like it.
----I don t enjoy the exploring part anymore. Yes new landscapes on calyspo and other planets.... but after all????? There is nothing to discover, some that make sense, some that need that you use of your brain and not just your wallet. Or some that can popup out there like a queen egg......a surprise, build the planet history.....found stuffs that FINALLY HAve A F^&*sense sense, do you remember the logs???? the Orbit??? the EGGS?????
----bugs,bugs,bugs,bugs,bugs....... clear right?
----we are not part of the universe. You log, you deposit , you loose the money. That is all. There is nothing that you do that can influence the universe. In other game is not the case. In some few other games you are not just a cc number, actually you re making "the history" of that game. Here the only ones that made the history are who have a large wallet to buy asteroids, planets, space stations, mall etcetc.......so crappy.


But in any case this is a loot thread!!!!! loot need to be fixed. This is clearly the priority. I don t understand what in the MA offices happen the whole day.

DC

 

[remontoire]

The dropping of unlimited bps of unlimited sib melee weapons seems to go on the other way though - in the way of destroying the markups and whole markets. Way to go, balancing team, if you actually exist.

 

[Rapido]

Perhaps

Removing residue complete from crafting and let us chose other stuff instead, hides, tooths, bones, oil or whatever to its tt-value. And if we put in to much, just give it back or put a gauge so we can se when BP (gun, rifle...) reach is full value.

Rapido

 

[remontoire]

Removing residue complete from crafting and let us chose other stuff instead, hides, tooths, bones, oil or whatever to its tt-value. And if we put in to much, just give it back or put a gauge so we can se when BP (gun, rifle...) reach is full value.

Rapido

Why would this make things better? At least some of wools and hides go into texture crafting which is only possible because of residue, as the textures don't sell or pay enough. If there was no residue, nobody would do this.

 

[billairboy]

The key is to have a big enough avarage tt loot return to make the players satisfied and at the same time have resources and items with some mu. But, the markup on resources can't be too high, if you have a 200 % markup on resources used in crafting, the end product will be sold with a high mu too and make them too expansive compared to unlimited non-crafted items. So a combination of higher avarage loot in hunting and more tt value return in the crafted items instead of residues would be a good solution. Just "pumping up the mu" would not solve anything.

 

[Joat]

the auction?????? the auction is actually the hidden tax of entropia!!!!!!!! it s the place where MA make one of his major income without any complain from players. I really don t think they will change the auction (it took 6 years to have the search option in auction and they copied this from entropiabay.com) and in any case i don t think auction is the problem.
I can speak just from my point of view: why i don t play anymore entropia so much? why i don t deposit anymore??? why i m not more in love with this game????

----I m upset about loot. I see my money go away super fast, i don t like it.
----I don t enjoy the exploring part anymore. Yes new landscapes on calyspo and other planets.... but after all????? There is nothing to discover, some that make sense, some that need that you use of your brain and not just your wallet. Or some that can popup out there like a queen egg......a surprise, build the planet history.....found stuffs that FINALLY HAve A F^&*sense sense, do you remember the logs???? the Orbit??? the EGGS?????
----bugs,bugs,bugs,bugs,bugs....... clear right?
----we are not part of the universe. You log, you deposit , you loose the money. That is all. There is nothing that you do that can influence the universe. In other game is not the case. In some few other games you are not just a cc number, actually you re making "the history" of that game. Here the only ones that made the history are who have a large wallet to buy asteroids, planets, space stations, mall etcetc.......so crappy.


But in any case this is a loot thread!!!!! loot need to be fixed. This is clearly the priority. I don t understand what in the MA offices happen the whole day.

DC

Auctionfee goes back to the system, didn't you know this already?
It's one part that is used for ATHs and similar.
I guess you show one reason why EU doesn't work properly, MA aren't
clear enough how system works.
There are ways to find this out thou', but do we really need to
go thru' their patents (I have) of how EU is built up? Imo, no. This should
MA be more clear about, on their website even.
But on the other hand, that might scare everyone who think EU works
in a way it surely doesn't.

Btw, if you had read all in my post you had seen why auction doesn't work atm.

 

[minim]

The dropping of unlimited bps of unlimited sib melee weapons seems to go on the other way though - in the way of destroying the markups and whole markets. Way to go, balancing team, if you actually exist.

Yeah lets have much more of this so it kills the market for crafting L weapons completly (not the first weeks ofc but it will). I really dont get why this was done and thing this is just a epic fail.

 

[mike jones]

oh fucking great now my p5a will cost me 150% my apis will cost 200% and the xt 300% fucking fail oh but at least i move my oil for 110%

 

[Dr.D.C.]

Auctionfee goes back to the system, didn't you know this already?

not to mine at least, and after all miy loot return is the only loot return i care about (you care about your loot return, he cares about his loot return, they care about their loot return etcetc)

 

[Joat]

not to mine at least, and after all miy loot return is the only loot return i care about (you care about your loot return, he cares about his loot return, they care about their loot return etcetc)

You care about your lootreturn because you want to play longer, just as I.
This is why auctionfee has to be changed, if I get stuff in loot that has a
MU, I want to sell it, but not with a fee that can end up way higher then 50%
of what I sell it for.

Changes to auctionfee came when they boosted ATHs, this to have something
to show off with, and get new players. Hyping stuff in EU were way more
importent then to get a good, solid and well working gamemechanism.
Hopefully this has changed lately, since it's quite obvious that it doesn't
work in long-term perspectiv.

If all these small amounts of resources/material get sold, crafters can
craft rare stuff way more often. They might have to lower MU since more
items are crafted, but a lower MU is better than no MU at all.
So, basicly, the more values that cycle, the better.

 

[Matho]

Big problem of hunting in eu is % equality of return on many different groups of mobs.
Its ok to achieve 90% tt return on molisks or daikis, where after all you loose few 10´s of peds.
Its absolutely unacceptable when you achieve 90% tt return on prots, levis or even on feffs, when you suddenly loose thousands of peds.

Higher and tougher mobs simply must have tt return above 90% to make losses acceptable.

Whats the point of skilling up hunting skills when all you get in return is much higher loss?

 

[xillonz]

I've always thought it bizarre that people don't consider a 6th reason to craft that should be the case - because it's fun. Clearly the current method of crafting has almost zero gameplay (you can make a sandwich at the same time on the other side of the house).

Why isn't there an effort to make crafting an enjoyable experience in some way (even if it's just leading up to the clicks which is enjoyable).

Either that or make the products of crafting usable for something enjoyable. I don't mind losing PEDs if I lose them doing something fun. But that excludes hunting, mining and crafting, because currently these are all extremely boring activities (the only enjoyable bit of it is the chance of profiting - but clearly that's beside the point here).

 

[SpikeBlack]

You mean like adding a sub-game that runs while crafting or if it played music. But it would soon be tiresome.

People like the fire and forgot approach to auto crafting and if you made them interact with the crafting process then I think many would stop.

Whats the point of skilling up hunting skills when all you get in return is much higher loss?

atm you'll often get the same loot from a high maturity as a low one. As you said, it's pointless to skill up if you're going to the same loot resulting in a loss. You could give the same return on all the mobs if the type of stackables making it up were dependent on the maturity.

It would give the newbies a market for their low end stacks as higher up players would be building stacks of other materials.

 

[mastermesh]

You mean like adding a sub-game that runs while crafting or if it played music. But it would soon be tiresome.

People like the fire and forgot approach to auto crafting and if you made them interact with the crafting process then I think many would stop.

Having fewer crafters would not necessarily be a bad thing... at least in perspective of the discussion in this thread... Fewer crafters = less supply. Less Supply = higher cost on the crafted items. This in turn would result in higher cost of the ingredients going in to the crafted goods, including those in hunting loots... Yes, I agree, probably not the best thing in the world for the economy in game, but it might be good in some weird way.

Right now, you are right, crafters like to auto craft and don't care much about some of the 'skilling' stuff they make, so they tt it, etc.

Remember Zynga games? Mafia Wars and games like that on facebook used to be a breeze... buy x amount of businesses and they automatically created income for you without you having to log in to those games. Right now, in EU, the CLDs are the closest thing to that, with the auto crafting being second closest... Zynga changed the way that game works so now you have to log in to collect your incomes from those businesses daily or something like that... and I think they max at a certain amount of hours income or something (been a long time since I played one of those games if you can't tell by reading this, lol)... If crafting required crafter to be there, it'd be something similar to the changes zynga did to get people more involved in playing the game... However, on the other hand, auto crafting just got here not long ago, so I doubt Mindark would want to kill off an entire system they put so much time in to making, especially since they made that system by ignoring other systems, such as taming for so long.

 

[remontoire]

You mean like adding a sub-game that runs while crafting or if it played music. But it would soon be tiresome.

People like the fire and forgot approach to auto crafting and if you made them interact with the crafting process then I think many would stop.

Only if you were forced to do it, that is, the mini game was not optional.

 

[Shadowsong]

...

Let the reason we hunt be to loot rare and valuable items that players will deposit and pay for, not to maybe hit some lucky TT HOF full of oils. No one wants a big 10k loot full of oils, no one wants to sell 10k worth of oils, and no one wants buy 10k worth of oils. Everyone would much rather see a badass gun or an awesome piece of armor in their loot.

....

Not to diminish the rest of DW's excellent post, but I must highlight and agree with this part.
This should be on a banner in the office of whoever manages the loot.

 

[Joat]

Not to diminish the rest of DW's excellent post, but I must highlight and agree with this part.
This should be on a banner in the office of whoever manages the loot.

But who should NOT get that bad ass loot then?
Everyone can't obviously get it since then the market should be flooded
with these items, and if you get one really good item, then what?
Can't get one every other day either, same result.
There is a reason why it's balanced, even thou' it might look bad,
it could really get worse, ending up with everything having a low MU...

 

[SpikeBlack]

Well if the baddass loots weren't quite so frequent then the market wouldn't be flooded

 

[Huskie]

But who should NOT get that bad ass loot then?
Everyone can't obviously get it since then the market should be flooded
with these items, and if you get one really good item, then what?
Can't get one every other day either, same result.
There is a reason why it's balanced, even thou' it might look bad,
it could really get worse, ending up with everything having a low MU...

That's ridiculous. The market for fancy items would barely suffer at all if MA let just a single one of them drop per year and it would be much more exciting going out to hunt knowing that you actually have a chance at getting those items. And if you add just one more instance of each item that no longer drops to be dropped once per year, that'd be plenty of chances for everyone to get something without affecting the market.

Why does everyone always have to extrapolate what others write? I'm sure DoubleWolf wasn't meaning there to be an item drop galore where every hunt you go you can expect to loot a great UL item or high MU L item.

 

[Charlie Gloom]

Unlimited hunting and mining equipment, all affects the mu in a negative way. New planets not bringing in a lot of new people, but they still drop those unl items.

 

[Shadowsong]

That's ridiculous. The market for fancy items would barely suffer at all if MA let just a single one of them drop per year and it would be much more exciting going out to hunt knowing that you actually have a chance at getting those items. And if you add just one more instance of each item that no longer drops to be dropped once per year, that'd be plenty of chances for everyone to get something without affecting the market.

Why does everyone always have to extrapolate what others write? I'm sure DoubleWolf wasn't meaning there to be an item drop galore where every hunt you go you can expect to loot a great UL item or high MU L item.

There ya go... that's the middle ground that would do wonders.

Nobody is suggesting a rain of top-end kit, but rather a droprate that at least makes the pursuit rational. The current crapshoot is not a good motivator. Just an opinion.

 

[Joat]

That's ridiculous. The market for fancy items would barely suffer at all if MA let just a single one of them drop per year and it would be much more exciting going out to hunt knowing that you actually have a chance at getting those items. And if you add just one more instance of each item that no longer drops to be dropped once per year, that'd be plenty of chances for everyone to get something without affecting the market.

Why does everyone always have to extrapolate what others write? I'm sure DoubleWolf wasn't meaning there to be an item drop galore where every hunt you go you can expect to loot a great UL item or high MU L item.

Market should most probably not suffer at all, as you mentioned.
Depends of what you mean with good items too, some still drop, but not
all are mentioned at the forums. I didn't mentioned my last good UL-item,
same with my skilltriggering, I don't mention those things anymore.
I highly doubt I'm alone...

I were sarcastic over a unbalanced drop, but ok, not all got that.
No, I doubt he want a drop-galore, but I didn't write that to exaggerate
what he wrote, I did it to point out unbalanced drop don't work in EU,
but I could have done it more serious, so everyone got it. My fault.
As with any idea for development, always exclude yourself, and try to
find a solution that works in a bigger perspective. Easy? Far from it,
but the closer a working solution the idea is, the more we prove that we do
understand how the system works, in a bigger p.o.v...

 

[DoubleWolf]

Why does everyone always have to extrapolate what others write? I'm sure DoubleWolf wasn't meaning there to be an item drop galore where every hunt you go you can expect to loot a great UL item or high MU L item.

I certainly wasn't looking for an item drop galore. 10k HOFs aren't all that common, especially it seems here lately. Why can't we just bring the TT value of the HOF down to ordinary loot levels but put a nice piece of equipment in there instead? But seeing as how some items have not dropped in YEARS, what would be the harm in releasing one per year (good suggestion btw Huskie). Sure, you can reference SGA (which I still don't see the point... why not just release more of the original model when people would've been happy with that?), but that was 2 or 3 years ago now. If markup on items have gone down, it's because there is fewer people willing to buy them, not an increased supply.

It's hard to know what's going on behind the scenes there at MA. Does the switch for some of these items get flipped on and off, or is the drop rate tied to the number of active players? The latter would seem the correct way to do it so that as the player base grows, so does the number of items.

This is kind of getting off topic talking about drop rates, but I think it is an important aspect because if you fix crafting, people will have to buy those crafted goods to use for some purpose. What would be the motivating factor to use those goods?

 

[Shadowsong]

...
Depends of what you mean with good items too, some still drop, but not
all are mentioned at the forums....

Valid point.. could be things are dropping more frequently than we are aware. I guess maybe it comes down to managing expectations, both from MA and player side. As a player, if I expect interesting loot, I'll be more inclined to spend resources and time chasing it, if I expect boring loot, I'll rather not waste the time or ped.