In depth look at economy and crafting and why it's failing.

I think I stated at least 50 times that somebody has to lose in every chain: and I didn't mean MA.

The basic principle of this game is you get 90% TT back.

That means MU has to be 111%+ on basically anything to even begin considering that you can break even/profit.

The majority of MU's in hunting loot and a lot of crafting is less than this, and automatically loses:. I think inflated prices across the board is only a benefit because it creates more opportunity in different areas, instead of just a few things being statically good to do: stale gameplay.

Obviously cost per click = higher end cost resource, but not proportionally: An increase of 20% MU cost per click is not an increase of 20% cost per sell, because residue is not "cost per click", residue is literally just a conversion of MU at no loss.

Yes + 60 ped per click would mean +60 ped output cost, but that 60ped will be a massive % of input MU compared to output MU. To make this clearer: here is an example (lazy example with non accurate MU, but to show a profitable BP):

GeoTrek AL29 Felis (L) Blueprint: markup - lets say 150% and residue is 107%

60.82 TT per click

MU per click: ~135%

82.11 Total per click or 21.29

Max TT of item: 569.

For breakdown - you can skip this small text:

AVG residue per success: 500~

Your return per click over time looks something like this: 24.63 product, 24.63 residue, 5.47 excess materials.

Your output markup looks like this: 12.31 product, 1.72 res, 1.91 excess.

If COS% is 40%, your output markup increase from residue input = 86 ped per click

That's roughly +75 ped a click
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If you increased input MU by +30% your cost per click would be 100.35: an additional 18.24 ped per click.

18.24 ped is 3.2% of the output product.

Basically: residue input has a much larger impact on output MU than the cost per click, because residue input and max TT accounts for the majority of whether a product is profitable or not.


In this example, we increased cost of input by 30% whilst only increasing output cost by 3%, which is not even a 3% increase on hunter input MU, because ammo balances this even further.

All it really does is potentially raise the MU of the input product: which is essentially the hunter and component crafters output (or at least stops them TTing so much stuff) which as explained at the start of this post could only be a good thing. It does not mean everybody wins, but it gives a more diverse range of activities that are worth doing = more fun for the average player = more people playing the game = more volume sales = everybody's happy.

Hunters would prefer to have 90% of loot be TT food and 10% high MU stuff. That way they can recycle their peds quickly instead of waiting a week to sell all their loot at 110%.

Neil Stockton said:

Hunters would prefer to have 90% of loot be TT food and 10% high MU stuff. That way they can recycle their peds quickly instead of waiting a week to sell all their loot at 110%.

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Not me.

I understand not everyone plays the same way but I'd be willing to keep a certain 'float' to keep me going whilst things sell and I think thats the way it should be.
A few extra ped in MU for those willing to make that effort but for those that just want to go and shoot well you get to TT it and get only 90% and there are plenty of people on both sides of that coin.

As it is now I TT anything with MU less than 110% because too much comes back unsold below that.

Neil Stockton said:

Hunters would prefer to have 90% of loot be TT food and 10% high MU stuff. That way they can recycle their peds quickly instead of waiting a week to sell all their loot at 110%.

Click to expand...

Very subjective argument, but probably valid in a lot of cases, players like that will always exist: and always lose.

Spinage said:

GeoTrek AL29 Felis (L) Blueprint: markup - lets say 150% and residue is 107%

Click to expand...

Nice example, but where do you get the Gec Spur Gears 5k, if you don´t have the BP yourself
Where do you get the Gec Coil Springs 2M if you don´t have the BP yourself

Beside that you need chalmon, Enhanced Scanning Sensors and other things that don´t drop at every corner, to go through that chain.

Your math looks fine, but this gun isn´t crafted on daily base, because the materials needed for it have to be considered rar!

Next example please with something that uses Ruga or Dunkle

Spinage said:

The system should reward people with ULTRA rare Unl Items, of course, but not the base UnL items.

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You mean like the "terminator" (as in "event Winner"), or high level mining amps (where one of the most famous one helped the owner collect Resources enough to buy domes at old CND)?

I wonder if the story would had been different if the terminator would had been account bound.

One easy Think MA could do, would be to return the generic Components into loot. Weapons crafted with those weren't the most eco ingame, but in things like events then crafters would have the option of crafting "event weapons". Or to say it in Another way, that while looted weapons keep the cost down for the Daily hunting, the niche for crafted weapons could be that they simply are better in some way (but still affordable to use). And for that, make sure that in that class there *only* are (L)'s, to keep it fair.

Spinage said:

Very subjective argument, but probably valid in a lot of cases, players like that will always exist: and always lose.

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Well, as the overwhelming majority are hunters, there's no way to make most hunters "win". Hunting is a pay to play profession in EU.

As to the topic, there is only one reason why crafting would be "failing" and that is insufficient demand for the crafted products. Since you are focusing on hunting, the problem would be the overabundance of high eco looted weapons. For mining items, the reason amp crafting is reduced is because amped mining does not produce many multipliers in the current mining system. Same for gamble crafting... the multipliers are not frequent enough for most people to be willing do it. These are the reasons that crafting is down compared to two years ago.

No calculations needed. If you want to increase crafting, simply get MA to make the changes above and it would be done.

GoNi said:

Nice example, but where do you get the Gec Spur Gears 5k, if you don´t have the BP yourself
Where do you get the Gec Coil Springs 2M if you don´t have the BP yourself

Beside that you need chalmon, Enhanced Scanning Sensors and other things that don´t drop at every corner, to go through that chain.

Your math looks fine, but this gun isn´t crafted on daily base, because the materials needed for it have to be considered rar!

Next example please with something that uses Ruga or Dunkle

Click to expand...

Lol, the BP was picked randomly. It was just to show MUin isn't MUout % because max TT and residue use - which is the same concept in every BP; really doesn't matter about the specifics for the example, run the maths on any bp you choose, its a really simple concept: 1 ped is a higher % of a TT cost per click than the max max TT item. Don't think there are any blue prints where cost per click is greater than residue used.


__________

After looking at Arc BPs, I can see that the game is actually already heading in the direction of my original post, which almost makes me feel like I wasted a lot of time, but at the same time it's reassuring to see that they must of saw what I saw for them to make this decision . it's a shame it's unrealistic to expect them to change all existing BP trees, but at least the future is brighter. Maybe I will make a thread to compare Arc BP trees to Caly ones if I have time to highlight this change for anyone interested when I have time. Peace.

Spinage said:

Lol, the BP was picked randomly. It was just to show MUin isn't MUout % because max TT and residue use - which is the same concept in every BP; really doesn't matter about the specifics for the example, run the maths on any bp you choose, its a really simple concept: 1 ped is a higher % of a TT cost per click than the max max TT item. Don't think there are any blue prints where cost per click is greater than residue used.

Click to expand...

Well thats true, for the math it doesn´t matter.
Crafters know it already, and many items can be crafted at a profit using residue.
The problem with these BPs is the availability of the materials needed.
If it needs something rar or extremely rar, the markup of the product stays at a level you may profit (for this the Felis is a nice example).

Anything else that uses common materials, is mainly skilling BPs, where products markup is down to nearly TT food. No need to use residue there, as you dump most items into TT anyways, and the few globals you hit on the run, give the full TT ones you sell at auction. Example: LVL2 amp

It doesn´t really matter if this skilling is done with ore/enmatter, hunting loot or components.
The crafters use the materials available, thats all about it.