Info: Game Mechanics That Hurt the EU

After 11 years in EU (actually, 12 if you include closed beta when nothing worked well haha), I have seen every change this game has gone through, good and bad. After some chatting with friends and soc-mates, I decided to compile a list of game mechanics that changed or were added which contributed to issues within the EU. After the following list of problems, I'll also throw in some of the really positive changes

The Bad:

#1 Planet Partners: This has the biggest problem, in my opinion, for the Entropia Universe. I understand the need to expand the actual universe with more planets and space exploration. However, the novelty of having all kinds of whacky, themed worlds owned by people outside of the original company is just not realistic. We had a game of small popularity that tried to expand too quickly. The people who bought in as Planet Partners have mostly failed.

Why is this a problem? It creates a VERY bad image for new players who come in on failed planets. The advertising the Partners did reflects on the game as a whole, and when new players are seeing failures it creates a bad image for Planet Calypso.

MindArk, you want to expand the Universe and the player base? Do your OWN advertising and create your OWN Universe. We had CND, CP, and Planet Calypso, all developed initially by MA. They should have just developed more planets on their own with the care that was put into Planet Calypso. On top of that, their own high-quality advertising would have been sufficient for bringing in new players into a working system. All new players would have started on Calypso, and eventually could find their way to other MA-owned planets.

#2 Amped Mining: Honestly, I despise mining amps now. Why? It leads to ridiculous ATH finds (see the following section). The market becomes flooded by tens of thousands of PEDs worth of ONE ore in a short period of time, which creates a negative flux in market prices during that period of time. A new Chevy Corvette (in the US) costs $50,000. What happens if Chevy decides to manufacture hundreds of thousands more of these cars and they are just flooding the car lots? That price is going to get hacked to pieces.

FOMA/CND and Hell are fine. It's cool that finds are a bit harder to get, but they are usually a bit bigger than normal. Nothing wrong with that, but the scaling of FOMA/Hell with amps is outrageous.

What should we do for mining? Increase range and depth/rarity chances with amps (see why tiers are bad in section #4). Ugh, and separate finder types again (ores, enmat, treasure).

#3 Ridiculous ATHs: Of course we all hope that we'll be the next person to see 6-digits, but it's nearly impossible, and when it does happen we see the loot returns swing very low for most of us. What happens when a player, especially a new player, is lucky enough to pop huge swirlies? A large chunk is withdrawn (therefor removing PEDs from the system) and they go back to playing with very little. Later I'll go into past systems and why they were good.

#4 Tier System: Is having 20 more DPS or 300 more depth awesome? Yes, of course. Is the tier system the way to do it? No. We have amps and plating, leave it at that. As I said in section #2, mining amps should be for range and depth, not size. Tiering leads to lack of interest in higher-level items (not always of course). But without tiers, we could work on having more items to fill in empty areas between other items, and even higher level items past what we have. This would make medium level-gear more accessible and allow uber players to have new, higher level items that don't exist. 30,000+ PED for a level 50 UL/SIB handgun is... silly. I don't say this out of jealousy or anything, because I have owned a tier7 X5 at one point, so I've been there and done that. It's still ridiculous. This is not a complaint about the cost of actually tiering items.

Instead of items stalemating at a certain point on the higher-end, we should have item drops of stronger items for the higher end players to increase their DPS. This means that I'm not looting silly EC-100s from level 82 Vanguards (or Quasar for that matter. Why is a level 540 mob dropping an EC-100?). That doesn't mean every high level loot should have uber items either, of course.

#5 Removing PEDs from loot: This one, to this day, still bugs the hell out of me. Every loot is flooded with materials that aren't worth selling at 101%. This also hurts crafting. There is a recent post on these forums about how the crafting system is jacked up, so I won't go into it. But that thread is dead-on. Basically, as you go up into higher levels of crafting, less materials should be used and more assembled components need to be used. Add PEDs back into loot, make materials worthwhile in loot (they don't need to be 150% or anything crazy, but finding a way to make materials worth selling, even at 105-107% for basic materials would balance the go-between for the professions). HOWEVER, as I said with amped mining, we also shouldn't be getting tens of thousands of oil in an uber loot.

#6 Limited items: AHHHH! This is another awful system. Nothing wrong with SIB, but (L) is painful. I believe it was Kim who even agreed with this. Limited items were supposedly intended to be rare and strong. THIS makes complete sense if you ask me. Limited items would be strong for their level, and not a common sight in loot, which means the markup would be higher and give a boost to the economy. Hunters would find rare gear worth selling and buying for a fair markup and crafters would get the occasional (L) BP for mining and hunting gear. These would have higher crafting costs because of the strength-per-level of said item. With my previous views on UL items being more common (at the lowest level, but getting rarer at higher levels of course), this system of rare (L) items would work very well.

Let's say we're using level 50 weapons. On that same level: UL items < Rare, stronger UL items of the same level < Rarer, stronger L items of the same level.

#7 ESI's/Selling Skills: Just... bad. But why? New players who come into the game, drop insane money into the game, and eat their way up to the ladder from one person's skill sell-out. This is perhaps a personal issue when it comes to games, but it becomes a very "Pay-2-Win" format. But on top of that, I think that having a player who is interested in the game deposit slowly over time is better than a quick influx of money. HOWEVER, the idea of looting ESI's is not a bad plan... BUT what if they weren't ESI's? What if the chips that dropped were skill chips? Kill a Prot, and boom, 10 PED of Rifle! These could still be sold. Same for mining and crafting, their loot could also include the occasional skill chip, allowing them to add into the economy of skill sales.

For those who wish to "sell-out" could do so through a MindArk sanctioned avatar sale. This keeps shady business from being done out-of-game where unknown people are quietly selling avatars and buying avatars. MindArk could also post avatar sales so that we know, as a community, that a new person is now controlling whichever avatar. This, in the past, had create ways for people to scam because people on their friends list didn't know it was a new player.

#8 CLDs: Not much to say here, but I think this was a bad idea. It gave MA a huge, initial influx of cash, but the people who bought them and are idly collecting PEDs without paying back into the game are taking money from the game. I can't say I know the small details of how this system works, but it just doesn't seem like it was the best course of action. I could be wrong on this one.

#9 Miscellaneous: Not sticking with the roadmap, adding new features before fixing old features, server instability still an issue after so many years (client-side vs server-side tool function, creating fails), increased creature evade on top of misses, poor advertising, and ABSENTEE LA-OWNERSHIP, shared loot (really bothers me that most ubers recently have gone towards shared loot), etc.

The Good:

#1 Events: Events are a great addition to the game over the years. Shared loot is fine in this case, but only within events. SGA and TEN were solid as one-time events.

#2 Missions: Another fine content addon. It also benefits players off all levels. I would like to see all missions updated to kill-points instead of kill numbers (like some of the original missions). It's quicker for me to blast through 10,000 Atrox Young, but I don't particularly want to kill the smallest maturity to burn through a kill number.

#3 Cryengine: I don't think I need to explain how awesome it is that EU still has some of the best graphics I've ever seen in any MMO.

#4 Custom Social Interface: The new UI with custom social interface is great. Being able to filter chats, create new windows for specific uses, the player registry, etc... awesome.

#5 SIB: A great way to help with skills but also a good way to measure what level you should be at.


The Conclusion:

There have been some very good changes to the game, I won't deny that. But there are a lot of looming issues that spawned from poor mechanic implementations. I come from a time when average loot return was fair, and HOFs in the several hundreds were a sight to behold and ubers (upwards of 2-3,000) were amazing. This was, of course, in TT value. But items were more common in loot, and the economy was far more stable. Loot was also better scaled compared to mob levels and player levels. I don't care about chasing some 6-digit ATH and would be more satisfied with average loot being stronger and items being more meaningful, yet accessible (to a degree). Withdrawing was less common 7-10 years ago because people kept their earned PEDs and worked towards moving up.

It felt more like a game and less like a gamble. For those of you who are familiar with casinos and slot machines (yes, that tired equivocation)... EU went from being a penny-slot to being a $5 Progressive Jackpot slot. And for those of you who do understand what that means, it's not good. Regular gamblers know that Progressive slots are the WORST thing you can do. More people play penny slots than Progressive slots, and overtime, that leads to more money spent and more people spending their time in those chairs.

11 years of money put in and taken out, ammo burned, and trades made. I have PEDs on my card and gear that I'm satisfied with. I'm not speaking as a man on the end of my rope. I just miss PROJECT ENTROPIA and would love to see us return to a version of it with what it used to represent.

I hope you're listening Mindark/First Planet Calypso.

pssst, Corvette's are made by Chevy, not Dodge. Just an FYI :<

but I agree with most of your points here.. especially point #1. Too big of a game for too small of a player base. Bring the planets closer, let them restructure servers (See RT and Cyrene), make the community feel bigger and more alive, and then start to expand again when it becomes crowded.

liek dis if u cry evrytim

Hypnotyk said:

pssst, Corvette's are made by Chevy, not Dodge. Just an FYI :<

but I agree with most of your points here.. especially point #1. Too big of a game for too small of a player base. Bring the planets closer, let them restructure servers (See RT and Cyrene), make the community feel bigger and more alive, and then start to expand again when it becomes crowded.

Click to expand...

Wow, thanks for that catch. I guess TV ads work, because there was a commercial on for Dodge on while I was typing

What is this a "I am smarter than a developer who has made succesful MMORPG game thats has survived in very tough competition" week?
Will update this post with comments on your claims.

The Bad:

#1 Planet Partners: This has the biggest problem, in my opinion, for the Entropia Universe. I understand the need to expand the actual universe with more planets and space exploration. However, the novelty of having all kinds of whacky, themed worlds owned by people outside of the original company is just not realistic. We had a game of small popularity that tried to expand too quickly. The people who bought in as Planet Partners have mostly failed.

Why is this a problem? It creates a VERY bad image for new players who come in on failed planets. The advertising the Partners did reflects on the game as a whole, and when new players are seeing failures it creates a bad image for Planet Calypso.

MindArk, you want to expand the Universe and the player base? Do your OWN advertising and create your OWN Universe. We had CND, CP, and Planet Calypso, all developed initially by MA. They should have just developed more planets on their own with the care that was put into Planet Calypso. On top of that, their own high-quality advertising would have been sufficient for bringing in new players into a working system. All new players would have started on Calypso, and eventually could find their way to other MA-owned planets.

Click to expand...

No one forces the planet partners to join, MA is giving them option to become popular planets or fail hard, it is their choice.
About it making noobs quit, i doubt. Most of them join, hear about other planets being better and leave the planet and not game.

#2 Amped Mining: Honestly, I despise mining amps now. Why? It leads to ridiculous ATH finds (see the following section). The market becomes flooded by tens of thousands of PEDs worth of ONE ore in a short period of time, which creates a negative flux in market prices during that period of time. A new Chevy Corvette (in the US) costs $50,000. What happens if Chevy decides to manufacture hundreds of thousands more of these cars and they are just flooding the car lots? That price is going to get hacked to pieces.

FOMA/CND and Hell are fine. It's cool that finds are a bit harder to get, but they are usually a bit bigger than normal. Nothing wrong with that, but the scaling of FOMA/Hell with amps is outrageous.

What should do for mining? Increase range and depth/rarity chances (see why tiers are bad in section #4). Ugh, and separate finder types again (ores, enmat, treasure).

Click to expand...

Dont force everyone to play on 1penny slot machine, some ppl like to spin 100 dollar per spin machine. It is already impossible to loot certain ores with amps (Rugaritz for example cant be find with amps higher than level 5? (not sure about level) )

#3 Ridiculous ATHs: Of course we all hope that we'll be the next person to see 6-digits, but it's nearly impossible, and when it does happen we see the loot returns swing very low for most of us. What happens when a player, especially a new player, is lucky enough to pop huge swirlies? A large chunk is withdrawn (therefor removing PEDs from the system) and they go back to playing with very little. Later I'll go into past systems and why they were good.

Click to expand...

Today there was a thread about complaining just the opposite of this (no chance of big hofs anymore). MA cant satisfy everyone. You just have to adapt.

#4 Tier System: Is having 20 more DPS or 300 more depth awesome? Yes, of course. Is the tier system the way to do it? No. We have amps and plating, leave it at that. As I said in section #2, mining amps should be for range and depth, not size. Tiering leads to lack of interest in higher-level items (not always of course). But without tiers, we could work on having more items to fill in empty areas between other items, and even higher level items past what we have. This would make medium level-gear more accessible and allow uber players to have new, higher level items that don't exist. 30,000+ PED for a level 50 UL/SIB handgun is... silly. I don't say this out of jealousy or anything, because I have owned a tier7 X5 at one point, so I've been there and done that. It's still ridiculous.

Instead of items stalemating at a certain point on the higher-end, we should have item drops of stronger items for the higher end players to increase their DPS. This means that I'm not looting silly EC-100s from level 82 Vanguards (or Quasar for that matter. Why is a level 540 mob dropping an EC-100?). That doesn't mean every high level loot should have uber items either, of course.

Click to expand...

It is open market, everyone pays and sells whatever they want for. Tiering costs money that travels to game operator, otherwise it would be taken from the loots. If you cant afford tiers, fine dont use em, if you can ,then go ahead and tier up.

#5 Removing PEDs from loot: This one, to this day, still bugs the hell out of me. Every loot is flooded with materials that aren't worth selling at 101%. This also hurts crafting. There is a recent post on these forums about how the crafting system is jacked up, so I won't go into it. But that thread is dead-on. Basically, as you go up into higher levels of crafting, less materials should be used and more assembled components need to be used. Add PEDs back into loot, make materials worthwhile in loot (they don't need to be 150% or anything crazy, but finding a way to make materials worth selling, even at 105-107% for basic materials would balance the go-between for the professions). HOWEVER, as I said with amped mining, we also shouldn't be getting tens of thousands of oil in an uber loot.

Click to expand...

First you complain about low markup of ores and now want to replace low markup oils with no markup peds?

#6 Limited items: AHHHH! This is another awful system. Nothing wrong with SIB, but (L) is painful. I believe it was Kim who even agreed with this. Limited items were supposedly intended to be rare and strong. THIS makes complete sense if you ask me. Limited items would be strong for their level, and not a common sight in loot, which means the markup would be higher and give a boost to the economy. Hunters would find rare gear worth selling and buying for a fair markup and crafters would get the occasional (L) BP for mining and hunting gear. These would have higher crafting costs because of the strength-per-level of said item. With my previous views on UL items being more common (at the lowest level, but getting rarer at higher levels of course), this system of rare (L) items would work very well.

Click to expand...

Limited items is best way to keep economy running and stop the inflation (if only UL items would drop every single UL item price would drop).

#7 ESI's/Selling Skills: Just... bad. But why? New players who come into the game, drop insane money into the game, and eat their way up to the ladder from one person's skill sell-out. This is perhaps a personal issue when it comes to games, but it becomes a very "Pay-2-Win" format. But on top of that, I think that having a player who is interested in the game deposit slowly over time is better than a quick influx of money. HOWEVER, the idea of looting ESI's is not a bad plan... BUT what if they weren't ESI's? What if the chips that dropped were skill chips? Kill a Prot, and boom, 10 PED of Rifle! These could still be sold. Same for mining and crafting, their loot could also include the occasional skill chip, allowing them to add into the economy of skill sales.

For those who wish to "sell-out" could do so through a MindArk sanctioned avatar sale. This keeps shady business from being done out-of-game where unknown people are quietly selling avatars and buying avatars. MindArk could also post avatar sales so that we know, as a community, that a new person is now controlling whichever avatar. This, in the past, had create ways for people to scam because people on their friends list didn't know it was a new player.

Click to expand...

Lets ruin the current players skill prices hell yeah. Why fix something that isnt broken?

#8 Miscellaneous: Not sticking with the roadmap, adding new features before fixing old features, server instability still an issue after so many years (client-side vs server-side tool function, creating fails), increased creature evade on top of misses, poor advertising, and ABSENTEE LA-OWNERSHIP, shared loot (really bothers me that most ubers recently have gone towards shared loot), etc.

Click to expand...

Yeah lets delete the space and vehicles until taming is back implemented. some features are easier to implement than others, thats it.

11 years of money put in and taken out, ammo burned, and trades made. I have PEDs on my card and gear that I'm satisfied with. I'm not speaking as a man on the end of my rope. I just miss PROJECT ENTROPIA and would love to see us return to a version of it with what it used to represent.

Click to expand...

You cant stick with what you have, you have to evolve, otherwise someone else will and take your clients.

Mindark has done great job over the last decade, and i hope they keep up their hard work. Maybe bit more advertising.

whiteknut said:

What is this a "I am smarter than a developer who has made succesful MMORPG game thats has survived in very tough competition" week?
Will update this post with comments on your claims.

Click to expand...

And your claim is that its impossible for other people to have strong ideas? And what competition? Kim has even admitted to certain systems not working as intended.

But, as a player who has literally been in the game from start to now, I have a good of how to compare past and present systems.

It also doesn't take a game developer to understand economics. But people who have studied economics may have strong suggestions for making an economy work.

MA has certainly the old planet ( Projekt Entropia ) saved on a backup it is just to reintroduce it as an additional planet in this universe with those parameters which they had then " type VU 6.0 " and let players show what they think about this.


I am convinced that the majority of players who have experience of the game would find a home there.

valentin said:

MA has certainly the old planet ( Projekt Entropia ) saved on a backup it is just to reintroduce it as an additional planet in this universe with those parameters which they had then " type VU 6.0 " and let players show what they think about this.

Click to expand...

Well, that would be fun haha. Although, there was still much to be worked on then too

whiteknut said:

What is this a "I am smarter than a developer who has made succesful MMORPG game thats has survived in very tough competition" week?
Will update this post with comments on your claims.
****
No one forces the planet partners to join, MA is giving them option to become popular planets or fail hard, it is their choice.
About it making noobs quit, i doubt. Most of them join, hear about other planets being better and leave the planet and not game.
****
Dont force everyone to play on 1penny slot machine, some ppl like to spin 100 dollar per spin machine. It is already impossible to loot certain ores with amps (Rugaritz for example cant be find with amps higher than level 5? (not sure about level) )
*****
Today there was a thread about complaining just the opposite of this (no chance of big hofs anymore). MA cant satisfy everyone. You just have to adapt.
*****
It is open market, everyone pays and sells whatever they want for. Tiering costs money that travels to game operator, otherwise it would be taken from the loots. If you cant afford tiers, fine dont use em, if you can ,then go ahead and tier up.
*****
First you complain about low markup of ores and now want to replace low markup oils with no markup peds?
*****
Limited items is best way to keep economy running and stop the inflation (if only UL items would drop every single UL item price would drop).
*****
Lets ruin the current players skill prices hell yeah. Why fix something that isnt broken?
*****
Yeah lets delete the space and vehicles until taming is back implemented. some features are easier to implement than others, thats it.
*****
You cant stick with what you have, you have to evolve, otherwise someone else will and take your clients.

Mindark has done great job over the last decade, and i hope they keep up their hard work. Maybe bit more advertising.

Click to expand...

I don't know you, but you seem to really have trouble with reading comprehension. You've picked out certain things and ignored the balances I suggested for them, or the issues within them.

The issue with Planet Partners is that they are leaving black marks on the game. It has nothing to do with their choice to join and fail/succeed.

There are options for big hitters, like the boss mobs, slayer maturities, etc.

Big HOFs are still possible, that complaint thread was silly. And I still say giant ubers need to go away and average loot needs to be stronger.

I didn't say anything about the tiering being expensive. And to go with your next paragraph... removing tiers and adding new UL items (at all levels, including uber level items that don't exist yet), while making L items rarer and better, all works together in conjunction.

I didn't say take away oils and materials. I said make them less common (NOT in place of PEDs) so they have value.

I never said we should delete any content and then add old stuff. This is not something that can be fixed now, but they should have stuck to old systems first. Look at the useless hangars.

The skill thing isn't a huge issue at this point, would be hard to fix that system.

Obviously you have to evolve, but there are better ways to evolve.

Please, reread EVERYTHING and you'll see how things go together from my suggestions. Don't look at the economic issues separately.

I love this game, so I'm not just hate-bashing it. I am taking a logical look at it, bias aside.

To further explain what I mean about the UL/L item issues:

UL items become more common, as they were back in the day, and the concern is that the market prices will plummet. BUT, now that we have SIB, we can have UL items more common within a specific SIB range. But to create items of value, there will be rare UL drops within that SIB range that have bonuses over the common drops. This allows player at any given level to create market demand for the stronger, rarer items. This will allow some items to retain good market value.

The limited item drops are also rare, and stronger per their SIB range. This means that players can look for these rarer UL items or L items to have an edge up on other players on their level during events (as an example). This is where your market comes from. But it allows players to progress through levels without being stuck with lower level gear.

This can also apply to armor, now that we've seen armor sets with bonuses like metabolic rate increase. This means armors of a certain level (let's say... Nemesis) that have 15/15/15 C/S/I will have rare versions that increase movement speed, regeneration speed, heal bonuses (ie: you take 5 more heal from a heal tool than someone with the standard armor version).

This creates accessibility at every level while also allowing a market for valuable items to exist.

Basic UL item < Rare UL item< Rarer L item.

What's the point of looting L items with 103% MU. A lot of L item drops I get from high level mobs have almost no markup. It's backwards.

We've come TT-value hunters instead of item hunters. The game used to function based off of player-value of loots, but now its become "I need to get a bunch of TT oils". A proper RCE should function based primarily off the players and the market they create.

The Bad:

#1 Planet Partners:
This bring variety, although more serious guideline to stay coherent within the universe, no transformer masks please.

#2 Amped Mining: Mining markup is dynamic, opportunity for crafters, loss for resellers, with balancing it should recobver by itself.

#3 Ridiculous ATHs: ATH are part of the thrill, the main issue is balancing.

#4 Tier System: Let amplifier amplify and tier enhancing the base item.

#5 Removing PEDs from loot: This leads to widely available items with little to no markup(TT), your choice, and cheap material as part of bp balancing.

#6 Limited items: They are fine. Kim was young and in the end screwed the crafting on calypso by removing component for let's say apis.

#7 ESI's/Selling Skills: ESI system is good, if people things they are held in hostages by the long time it may take to do so, it's cause the demand isn't here. Self balancing economy. As for skills in mobs, they are in missions rewards.

#8 Miscellaneous: Lots of fuk up yes, but this is due to the length of the release cycle,yes you can blame both PPs and MA on that, their dynamic content through update is rather static.

The Good:

#1 Events: Shared is fun, SGA and TEN, well, haven't looted anything so i wasn't part of them i would guess.

#2 Missions: I agree on the kill point. Hover changing existing missions will need a rebalancing were one could be fucked for his time to do it. All new missions from now on should be ill point instead of kill. It seems however some PPs have got it by now (mainly arkadia & calypso).
I would add a wish though, shared kill point. If you are in team, killpoints are given do teammeber based on damage inflicted. It would lead people to have good time grinding in team or solo as they wish.

#3 Cryengine: Well.. They still have to figure how to use most feature offered by this engine but i can't complain on this choice.

#4 Custom Social Interface: The new UI yes, although it still need more polishing. However the interface.. typing command should be replaced by toolbar, listchannel should be rpalaced by a new windows with a search like the group search of SL fo example ( see basic description, number of members, description, etc)

#5 SIB: No comment



In the end, i strongly disageree with most of what you say. Improve the universe, don't nerf it.
You don't talk about space, LA business model , etc..

Xian, I agree that Planet Partners should have far more rigid requirements. I don't mind the concept at all, but it has not worked as intended. Arkadia and Calypso are quite good, Cyrene is okay (and being revamped). But the rest has failed miserable and is NOT good for the Universe as a whole.

Sure, the ATHs create thrills... but for very, very few people. And the rest of us pay for it.

The "BP Balancing" was completely done wrong. Not to mention, a lot of crafters are just hunting for big uber drops. Crafting, and the materials involved from mining and hunting, needs a proper rehaul.

that is funny, some of your good points are on my bad points list and vice versa

Harmony. said:

that is funny, some of your good points are on my bad points list and vice versa

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We can't all agree

Missions are ok if they were used correctly but I now believe that the grinding type have led us to the messed up loot tables we've got and the reduced item drop rate especially at low levels.

SpikeBlack said:

Missions are ok if they were used correctly but I now believe that the grinding type have led us to the messed up loot tables we've got and the reduced item drop rate especially at low levels.

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It's possible, but I think the idea was to help spread the 'loot pool' around to various mobs. Not to mention, the skills you get in return to add a bit more turn. But I do like the idea of getting a bit more on top of the loot.

Yes but you also get the removal some stackables from mobs because suddenly you've got a huge number of players hunting them and to stop it becoming tt fodder it's removed or the drop rate is massively reduced, for instance Iron stone from Argo.

And when many have finished the mission or gone as far as they want the mobs are left with a boring loot selection for the players just joining.

In fact I predict we'll see a drop in players personal global, hof and item drop rates in Hogglo and Kerberos when they're missions are added.

SpikeBlack said:

Yes but you also get the removal some stackables from mobs because suddenly you've got a huge number of players hunting them and to stop it becoming tt fodder it's removed or the drop rate is massively reduced, for instance Iron stone from Argo.

And when many have finished the mission or gone as far as they want the mobs are left with a boring loot selection for the players just joining.

In fact I predict we'll see a drop in players personal global, hof and item drop rates in Hogglo and Kerberos when they're missions are added.

Click to expand...

Well, that goes hand-in-hand with my section about re-adding PEDs back to the loots so that materials are a bit more uncommon, boosting the MU. But, Hogglo suck as is right now anyways, so you're probably right

Rave said:

To further explain what I mean about the UL/L item issues:

UL items become more common, as they were back in the day, and the concern is that the market prices will plummet. BUT, now that we have SIB, we can have UL items more common within a specific SIB range. But to create items of value, there will be rare UL drops within that SIB range that have bonuses over the common drops. This allows player at any given level to create market demand for the stronger, rarer items. This will allow some items to retain good market value.

Click to expand...

If everyone will start using UL iteams who will buy loot and what for?

Id like to add one change I always thought was really bad for the game, making it lose some of its fun factor and social openness and almost killed off an entire profession, (Tailoring).

When the equipment fee was introduced many people stopped expressing them selfs through clothing.
Before when you entered a town you met happy colorful people talking and jumping around, afterward it became quiet and people stood hidden in their armor.

I Think this was bad for the economy because in time people became less inclined to spend Peds on anything that was not a tool or a weapon.

Andreso said:

If everyone will start using UL iteams who will buy loot and what for?

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If you read through the thread, you'll see my answer for that.

When the equipment fee was introduced many people stopped expressing them selfs through clothing.

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Yeah, it was a ridiculous and greedy change.



As a sidenote, for those who were not around prior to the (L) item system (or not around for very long before it), there was never an issue with over-supply of UL items. And there were far less players. The ratio of players to UL items now is a lot smaller. I'm also not suggesting that every loot has a UL item in it. I used to go on plenty of hunts without finding UL items, but you could expect at some point to find some fun stuff.

I am often bemused by the posts of players that have a long history in the game. Rave clearly has many years of experience in EU but experience does not always lead to understanding or well founded arguments.

1. Planet Partners. Rave's perception of the planet partner situation is incorrect. Of the new planets that actually launched (including soft launch), we have one that failed (NI) and one that is clearly in trouble (RT). That's two problem children out of 7 current planets - I class Monria as a separate planet, albeit cut down in size. Cyrene is about to move to hard launch and I don't see the changes planned for next release as being any sort of indictment on their work so far. SEE had a lot of wacky concepts but as they never got anywhere close to delivery I don't think there is any image problems associated with that. I absolutely acknowledge the problems associated with people starting on NI and, really, MA have not adequately dealt with the failure of NI. I suspect there are legal issues between the PP and MA that are blocking resolution. Frankly I think NI was flawed from the start EU would be better off if it hadn't launched but that doesn't mean the PP concept is bad.

But here is what the PP model is doing for EU in a positive way.

Firstly, it has increased the marketing going on, focussing on new demographics. And this has, (based on information from the PPs) increased the active player base. MA is shit at marketing. The PPs are doing a better job than MA have ever done. Arkadia, Cyrene, Toulan all target different demographics as their main market.

Secondly it is increasing innovation and service delivery through competition and knowledge sharing. I think that Arkadia was a wake up call for MA and the part of the business that runs Caly and they have lifted their game in response. Two way communication between the companies and the players is on the rise. There are more events. There is so much going on that I have to choose what to miss out on. I love that that's a choice. People often say that Planet X is stealing an idea from Planet Y and that's unfair but it see it as the PPs and MA seeing what is working and choosing to build on concepts that are proven to be successful. That's great for us the players.

Thirdly the PP model injects capital and spreads risk. These are both good for the long term survival of MA and MA's survival is absolutely essential for this game to continue.

2. Mining. I'm not a miner. Staying out of this one.

3. Ridiculous ATHs. Personally I like the large ATH and the chance of getting one. In four years of playing, I've managed around 20 hunting and crafting ubers (none over 10k) and its a great feeling. I think it would feel even greater if one of those was humungous. I don't plan on it but the chance of a huge payout is a definite positive for me. The downside is people get miffed if it isn't them. I have no tolerance for that sort of mean spirited response but that's just me. Rave argues that there is an immediate negative impact on the loot of everyone else. I say that's a perception issue and would like to see data to support that argument. Rave also talks about the impact of an ATH being withdrawn. If you look at the amount of peds being cycled daily, the volume of peds in the system is so large that the impact withdrawal of these rare ATHs can only be minor.

4. Tier system. The tier system increases the complexity of decision making when playing, and I like that. When hunting for MU one targets specific mobs at different times, depending on the market. To hunt a given mob there is probably an ideal dps and enhancers provide us with more options on how to get there. And depending on your loot theory you might want to tweak your dpp one way or the other, and enhancers can help with that. So I can choose to spend shitloads on a UL weapon that may not be optimum for all the mobs I want to hunt. Or i can keep buying L weapons appropriate for each mob (assuming I can source them), or I can use a weapon that I can customise to suit the job at hand. So many choices. I love it. Similar weapons can vary in value depending on tier level and I can leverage that as an opportunity to profit. People need to craft enhancers and that produces demand for loot. So many upsides.

Not that I am opposed to a few more uber items dropping but enhancers are not solely for boosting high level weapons.

5. Peds in loot. Peds are the ultimate TT food and are effectively synonymous with ammo. I think the OP argument is that by increasing the volume of TT food in loot, the supply of other loot will decrease, pushing up MU. The question I have is whether the overall MU of your loot then goes up. I'm not convinced. Rave talks about loot that isn't worth selling. There is very little of my hunting loot that I TT. I craft or sell the vast majority of it. The exceptions are Enhancer sockets, Tier components and some of the various caly looted components that have low turnover. Plus ofc novas and blazers that aren't even worth TTing - but that also means fragments have little impact on returns.

I would prefer to see no peds, less ammo in loot. I want stuff I can sell for mu, even if the MU is low.

6. L items. I fundamentally disagree with OP on this one. There is an inherent limit on the number of sellable UL items that is relative to the size of the player base. L items are a boon to crafting and in my view, crafting is the bedrock of the EU economy. Perhaps I am biased as crafting of L weapons is my primary profession But I think that without L items, crafter demand for looted and mined materials would plummet and that would be a real problem for hunters and miners.

7. Skills. OP talks about pay-to-win. I am not sure if win is valid concept in this game. But invest-to-increase-opportunity certainly is, and skills as a commodity are part of that concept. I don't see any upside to preventing me from selling my crafting skills and reinvesting in mining skills.

8. CLDs. AUDs. Love them. It encourages players to feel attachment to the game, to promote the game. It generates capital for MA and PPs. It adds to the complexity of the economy with the option of passive investments. It gives people who aren't playing the option of keeping their peds in the economy instead of withdrawing. I understand that some may be sitting on the investment and simply withdrawing, but I suspect that many, like me, use them as a ped sink to hold peds that are not currently in use while still continuing to play. we don't really have an objective profile of the deed owners so its all speculation really.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

I appreciate your views as a 'newer' player, and I can see how you are looking at it. But you haven't experienced both sides of the coin. Your views on tiers, limited items, and loot content are only based on your experience with them, and not without them.

As far as Planet Partners, I've already said the concept is solid but that the execution has been poor. There hasn't been enough time with Toulan or Monria for us to speak on the quality of them. However, the disappointment with RT and NI do expose flaws in the system. I also recognized the revamp of Cyrene.

I've also said I can't fully speak to the quality of the CLD system, but you're right, a lot of it is speculation. But the option of passively removing PEDs from the game over time is suspect.

Again, I have played in a system without tiers, limited items, and massive amounts of materials in loot... and that system worked. The economy was tighter and our PEDs extended for much longer than they do now. This is especially important when trying to draw new players into the game.

You've been in the game for 1/3 of the time that I have, and I understand how you view the system - but I've seen an old system that, in my opinion, was much more sound. You've stated how you are surprised by the comments of old players, and can't understand why we can agree on the initial points made. Take that into consideration, there may be a reason that a lot of old players favor older systems and economic flow.

Hi Rave,

I respect your long years of experience but I've never been a fan of Argument from Authority. I've explained in my previous post how and why I disagree with your position on these aspects of the game. I appreciate I don't have experience of the game before I started playing but I do have sufficient successful experience to assess the current situation. You and I are clearly streets apart in our respective assessments.

Perhaps the good old days were better. I wasn't there. You were. At the end of the day I look at what the current situation is, how things work now, and what would be the impact of any proposed changes. Because we can only move forward.

For most of the issues you discuss, we simply disagree as to the impact but its not a big deal if Peds are added, no more PPs happen, loot variability is changed again. I don't think it would be helpful but it's not the end of the world.

However, abolition of tiering would be a terrible mistake. There would be a huge outcry from players who owned weapons that were expensive to tier. There would be a significant impact on crafting which would have a flow on impact to the other main professions.

Similarly the impact of nearly abolishing L weapons (changing to rare) would be devastating to crafting. And demand for looted stackables would plummet. Now that's ok if you just want to loot your own gear and depend on TT return to help fund ongoing playing. But if you are actually playing the economic game then a reversion to a primarily UL based system would be a huge problem.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

Rave said:

As far as Planet Partners, I've already said the concept is solid but that the execution has been poor. There hasn't been enough time with Toulan or Monria for us to speak on the quality of them. However, the disappointment with RT and NI do expose flaws in the system. I also recognized the revamp of Cyrene.

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Regarding the PPs... NI and RT being the first PPs, were something of an experiment and MA allowed them to do things that other PPs would never be allowed to do today. So, MA is already exerting tighter regulation over the PPs and RT and NI are not good examples of current PPs.

Don't ignore the contributions that PPs have made to EU. Just one example you speak of new players... but our current expectations for the "new player experience" was an invention of the Arkadia team. Other planets followed the example and now it's an accepted thing that new players should have a path to guide them and set them up with starter equipment as they begin. Another is texturing... remember before we had Arkadian textures? Not a whole lot of variety back then, and the other new planets followed suit and contributed various different textures to make the game more interesting. Many other things have changed over the last 3 years (for the good)... and it's because the other planet partners compete against each other. It also provides extra niches and opportunities to make game play interesting for the players.

Perhaps there are some nostalgic feelings that make changes (good and bad) all seem bad... so having an "old" perspective doesn't necessarily allow you to see better what's good for the game.

Rave said:

If you read through the thread, you'll see my answer for that.



Yeah, it was a ridiculous and greedy change.



As a sidenote, for those who were not around prior to the (L) item system (or not around for very long before it), there was never an issue with over-supply of UL items. And there were far less players. The ratio of players to UL items now is a lot smaller. I'm also not suggesting that every loot has a UL item in it. I used to go on plenty of hunts without finding UL items, but you could expect at some point to find some fun stuff.

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i readed through the thread and i still dont see answer, and some point market would be flooded with UL-staff, thats why they introduced L

Andreso said:

i readed through the thread and i still dont see answer, and some point market would be flooded with UL-staff, thats why they introduced L

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The standard UL stuff would not be a detriment to the market simply because the rarer-UL-per-level would create the market demand, and the demand for the even better versions of L items would increase the MU of said items.



For the other comments, I'm not saying that I have any conceptual idea of how to back track on current systems (limited, tiering, etc), I'm merely stating what would have been better evolutions to old systems. But these systems were changed once before, and it doesn't mean its impossible to create a strong change again. People were concerned about the (L) system ruining the existing market at the time, just as your concerns for reverting exist. There are always proper ways to create change.

This thread isn't asking of an overhaul of current systems, I'm merely stating what I believe were poor implementations from past systems.

for cld the bad part is mA has to give there profit for the rest of the life of the game too holders its not the same as a land deed poeple have to go hunt there and loose a part of there loot for tax

the more profit they give away the more expensive the game gets

they should have sold the cld whit a time limit and get X amount back

JD RACING said:

for cld the bad part is mA has to give there profit for the rest of the life of the game too holders its not the same as a land deed poeple have to go hunt there and loose a part of there loot for tax

the more profit they give away the more expensive the game gets

they should have sold the cld whit a time limit and get X amount back

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Well CLD deeds are only 25 % integrated of the idea behind what the use of CLD was for. Claiming land areas for "houses" was the idea with a voting system behind on how the future of Caly would progress. And that u needed atleast 9 deeds to claim the smallest area.

People also forgot to mention one game "mechanic" that ruined alot of the gameplay was MA idea to boost HP of every new mob out there and regen ofc (miss old molisk). Rather than how the HP on oldschool mobs were. This is one crucial error that makes old school UL guns not worth it when u calculate dps.

MA / PP should really consider making certain mobs extinct. Rather than keep adding more and more.

Just look at how many starter areas and sweating camps MA tried to add. Yet they keep adding new ones making the old ones abandoned.

Do people still visit the "sweat" camp North of PA? Remember it when missions got introduced.

Rave said:

The standard UL stuff would not be a detriment to the market simply because the rarer-UL-per-level would create the market demand, and the demand for the even better versions of L items would increase the MU of said items.

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But then you would have the same as now, ppl insted of L iteams would loot UL staff that is common, and nice rarer-UL staff would be as its today, one lucky got it and the rest still get nothing, i really dont see difrence beside names in looted staff.

" rarer-UL-per-level would create the market demand"- its limited demand per number of players that is now in game, once you fill it its gone, whats then? what crafter will do?

Back in the days ppl was TT-ing a104 (thats what i hear) and propoblly lots of others things too that today actually have some MU, so i dont really see any diffrance

Lots of iteams X in loot = iteam X is TT food - ppl get them often but so what? they still get TT
Few iteams X in Loot =iteam X has nice MU - ppl dont get them to often but when they get it they also get MU

You want more iteams in loot? they have to be used up
UL iteams are pernament, dont require any staff from loot to be repaired, and price of them will drop after each looted

marked will be flooded with ul iteams no matter what you will do