After taking an extended 6-month break from EU (logged on once a month to check the game), I was hoping to come back this fall and see some improvements/balancing made regarding the damage the explosives have done to the markup and the economy...
To put it bluntly I was sort of disgusted that the economy was allowed to erode even further.. mining used to be ~1-1.5mil on the tracker, now hovering around 500k week to week. Hunting has declined by a few hundred thousand as well for the monthly stats, but crafting seems to still be doing alright..
Here's what I found most alarming, as a summary of events:
1) BPs introduce -> hunting/mining markup crashes exponentially
2) Shrapnel introduced to increase the markup of generic/common hunting resources to make them actually worth selling on auction after fees. (this worked well, for a while eye/muscle oil was around 110-114%)
3) further decline of markup on hunting resources from gamblers deciding to switch their routine over to crafting explosive bps...
This would be fine if there were enough crafters crafting usable items outside of the gamblers, but there just isn't... crafting is very expensive to do, and offers some of the lowest potential ROI of any activity in game.. So while hunters and miners remained relatively constant, crafters were cut in half, resulting in the oversaturation we see now.
I fully understand that MA needs to make money, and high markup output hinders that ability... but they really do need a balance, or else spending time on core-gameplay loses its draw..
I know very very few players who would hunt/mine knowing that the best they'll do on average is 105% markup. I personally know it's possible to do better than this, but odds are 90% of players won't.
So I think we've just seen less people playing, but that could also be due to the summer holiday months, but when the full swing of fall/winter comes I think MA will be alarmed at the dismal state of their quarterly reports.
I just have no interest in attempting to hunt or mine right now, I pretty much sit in game on chat or doing soc stuff while I collect revenue from CLDs. Everytime I get the incentive to start an iron mission or start mining again I lose that draw immediately after my first run when I see that there is no chance for me to recuperate my costs without beating the system TT-wise or finding some 1/100000 chance UL item.
It's just downright depressing because I want to play, but the game isn't entertaining enough for me to want to sit there and grind away peds for 90% return and 104% markup.
Hopefully we see improvement in the coming future of EU, and if not then it's time to find a new hobby for the winter.
