Warning: This thread is very long and quite heavy reading, but hits some key points that Mindark need to address for this game to be more successful.
Intro
Entropia Universe has 3 major professions, Hunting, Mining and Crafting, however the real focal point of the game is the economy. All 3 professions + everything else in this game are tied to the economy. It is what drives the game; it’s the game’s Unique Selling Point (USP).This makes Crafting the most important profession in the game. Hunting and Mining are both “gatherer” professions. They loot materials and resources that the crafter buys and uses to create gear for the hunters and miners to use. The economy of the Hunter/Miners loot is completely driven by crafting. If a resource is produced faster than it is used, it has a low economy, if it is produced slower than it is consumed, it has a high economy.
(L) items are the most significant economy drivers because they break, and need to be rebought. They are a good invention, a (L) dominant economy has the potential to thrive and also gives more value to rarer UL items by comparison, however it is my belief that the current crafting trees are poorly designed. In general they do not create enough of a demand for resources. This is leading to a low economy in general. To demonstrate this I will follow the crafting tree of a Level 1 Amplifier (L) Blueprint.
The crafting tree
This post works off of the following assumptions. Some may disagree with these assumptions, but it important to understand that the assumptions are only in place so that maths can be demonstrated: the actual numbers do not need to be exact (for example you might think TT return is 80% or 95%, it won’t make too much difference to the point being made, so save that argument for another thread.)Assumptions:
• TT return is 90% of TT input.
• Product return from crafting is 45% of TT output.
• Residue Return from crafting is 45% of TT output.
• Excess Materials return from crafting is 10% of TT output.
Level 1 Finder Amplifier (L) Blueprint:
• 5.01 mining materials (Alice, Blaus, Gazz, Melchi –Specifics not important)
• 0.18 crafting materials (basic wires – stage one)
• 6.00 TT materials (Survey probes)
Basic Wires Blueprint
• 0.16 Mining Materials (Blaus, Melchi – Specifics not important)
Stage 1
For one click on the Level 1 Finder Amplifier (L) Blueprint, 0.18 worth of basic wires is required. Working off the assumptions above, this requires an average of 0.49 Input Costs by a miner, which results in a 0.44 input cost from a Crafter, as shown by this diagram:
Rounded up, the crafter has made 0.18 of Basic Wires from the initial 0.44 input by the minor.
Stage 2
Using the same process, however this time taking into consideration the other input.
Meaning/maths
In the crafting of the Basic Wires component, the miners input was 0.49, and the component output was 36.7% of the miners input. This would have been further slashed when the basic wires were used in the construction of the amp (45%*90%*0.18 = 0.0729) to 14.9%.
14.9% of the resources bought were transformed into the final product after 2 stages of crafting. This means that effectively the TT of the amp created through Basic Wires had to be mined 6.71 times. In a vacuum where only the resources for Basic Bearings were available and this was the only crafting tree, this would put the mark-up of the resources used at 671% because the rate in which the resource is being used to the rate in which it is being mined is 6.71:1. This does not happen because the amount of Basic Wires used for one click on an amp is a maximum of 1.6% of the cost (if a crafter uses residue, the % is even smaller).
The total input from the miner was 6.06 per click on a Level 1 Amp (L) Blueprint (5.57+0.49). For every 6.06 TT input by a miner, 4.53 ped of Amp was produced. This means 74.75% of the miners resources make it into the base of the amp, which in a vacuum would put the miners resources at 134% mark-up.
This would be great, however this isn’t what actually happens, because not only does the crafter use Residue to fill up the TT of the amp, the crafting process also PRODUCES residue. If the crafter opted to use NO other residue besides what was produced during this amp making process, he would use 0.18 (From stage 1) and 4.53 (from stage 2), resulting in 4.71 ped of residue per click. Meaning the Amp product is actually 152% of the miners input. In a vacuum, this would result in the mark up of the miners resources to be rated at 66%.
Essentially this means it is more worthwhile to sell the ores to the TT machine. When a crafter uses other residue, this further depreciated the value of the miners input.
Conclusion
• Creating end products from mostly base resources is unsuccessful, the more stages of crafting before an end product is created creates an item that impacts the economy more successfully.
• Crafted components add value to resources. It would be more successful for end products to be made from a higher proportion of crafted products
• The more crafted products are used to make up the cost of a click on an item = the more demand for base resources. The lower the % of the initial resource makes it into the final product the better.
To better the economy, crafting needs a major overhaul. Blueprint trees need to be analysed from start to finish, with an emphasis on crafted components being used in higher proportions and mined materials being used in less proportions for the final product.
In an ideal world, all hunting and mining resources would only be used in component blue prints. All final products would use 100% crafted components using components that use both hunting and crafting loot. Some rarer loots/ores/materials could be used in the final product blue print at a sufficiently low proportion.
Residue, although depreciating specific ore markup, also effectively lowers the markup of the end product so that it is eventually usable by hunters/miners. If end products were made entirely by crafted components, there would be overall more crafting taking place resulting in a higher production of residue.
This would mean residue is cheaper, mined and hunted resources are more expensive, crafted components are more expensive and have better sales volume. This would overall, if done carefully, still allow a crafter to profit using the correct blueprints due to cheaper residue, even if cost per click would be higher. This would probably increase the price of final products, however with the increased markup of loot/resources, it would be overall more balanced with many more market opportunities.
Furthermore, crafting professions should be more distinctly separated. A tools engineer should not be able to craft electronic components easily unless they have specifically skilled in electronics for example, this would create a bigger economy for specific crafting profession trees to supply each other with materials. An example of how this may work could be an Tool blue print using electronic components, mechanical components and a "tool component". The tool component would be part of the Tools profession tree, allowing for entry level skilling in tools crafting, but tools crafting skills would not give you any significant electronics crafting profession, so end products would still require you to source crafted components from other players.
The game would actually be a real economy, instead of a money sink for most with extremely few gaps in the market.
An aside: These changes would not decrease mindark profit as it says nothing about TT % return, it would only alter the economy, which would make the game more exciting and challenging, and give players at all levels opportunities to 'win' if they are smart enough.
This game is and always has been a poorly executed EXCELLENT concept. I hope one day Mindark work on it's two major failings that have always held this game back: Transparency and economy. Market the game with honesty and focus on managing the economy so that all levels of play have a competitive chance of utilizing markup to profit.
Do these two things and watch your player base grow exponentially.