Avon(AJ)Jerrix
Guardian
- Joined
- Jan 15, 2010
- Posts
- 240
In America in the 1920s, over-speculation in the market led to an overheated economy that seemed healthy on the surface because of the activity, but in reality was unsustainable and terribly vulnerable to a crash. In Entropia Universe (EU) the economy has always been driven by players that used crafting as a medium to gamble, leading to an overheated economy driven by artificially inflated markup (MV). Rather than hunters and miners gathering mats for crafters to produce tools for hunters and miners to gather mats for crafters to produce tools, and so on, the reality was that hunters and miners and crafters gathered mats for crafters to gamble and dump the results onto the market or into the Trade Terminal (TT). The EU economy may have seemed healthy as long as MV was high, but was in fact unsustainable if only because the parent company MindArk (MA) was losing money year after year. Whether it was a plan or a series of unrelated steps, in 2012/2013 MA began making adjustments meant to reduce volatility in the marketplace and to grow the playerbase.
Crafting
Around VU14, crafting returns were adjusted such that a larger percentage of returns were migrated from Success to Near Success. Trade Terminal returns remained constant over the long term, but with little to no MV gained from near successes, crafting with even moderate MV mats was disincentivized, with the result of depressing all crafting across the board, cooling down the overheated economy, and lowering MV. At the same time, with a general decline in crafting, those items still being crafted should have seen some increase in demand. Thus, the big-gambling sector of the profession should have contracted, while the crafting-to-sell sector increased. This is in keeping with what seems to be MA's present strategy of increasing ease of play for new and lower-level players.
It is possible that this adjustment worked, but not as well as MA had hoped, and the economy remained overheated, driven by MV paid by big-gambling crafters. MA took a decisive step in VU15.1.1 which introduced Explosive Projectile blueprints (EP BPs) I through IV, and nanocubes. Rather than disincentivize gamblers from paying MV for mats, EP crafting incentivized buying a mat that had no MV...carrot rather than stick. Rather than attempt to forcibly isolate gamblers from the in-game economy, MA successfully convinced gamblers to voluntarily isolate themselves. The game has even seen some movement of big-gambling hunters and miners to EP crafting. Instead of the gamblers being driven out of the game, they have been placated and their decay is not lost. The rise of EP crafting and the earlier modifications have definitely cooled down the economy, and may have opened up the crafting profession by producing a split between gamblers and crafters. For most practical purposes, gambling has become a crafting sub-profession, in the manner of tailoring.
The emerging new conditions in crafting are lowered MV of mats, decreased competition from overproduction, and cheap metal residue, hopefully coupled with an influx of new players and a more stable, predictable economy. This will lower the threshold of entry into the profession. If crafting for personal use, lower MV will allow increased cycling through smaller, faster, runs until successful. If crafting for profit, BPs with lower MV mats will be cheaper to click, and crafted items will be easier to sell without competition from gamblers--each run made on EPs is a run not made on level 5 amps or plastic ruds. While EP gamblers try to feel out when a HOF is ripe, crafters will need to carefully study market conditions to determine whether the MV in, MV out, and success/near success will balance favorably. This also follows the seeming present MA pattern of emphasizing real-world skills over artificial in-game skills in gameplay. Of course, non-EP gambling has not been eliminated entirely, and likely never will be. Gamblers will still take breaks from EP crafting to click their other BPs, and gamblers and crafters will both continue to craft for rare BP drops and click "boosted" BPs. But, for gamblers overall, it is difficult for even low-MV mats to compete with non-MV mats, and non-EP crafting has certainly declined dramatically in the game. And if crafters, rather than gamblers, choose to gamble, it could be well-thoughtout gambles on rare item BPs, which a more predictable economy and lower MVs might make more viable. Gamblers can gamble, and crafters can craft.
While EP BPs produced a major shift in the crafting profession and the EU economy, and while further tweaking will certainly continue, major changes could also be still forthcoming. Specifically, MA seems to be using a combination of market forces and game mechanics to discourage large crafting runs, other than for EPs, in order to limit overproduction. But there have always been big crafters who preferred crafting on quantity to gambling, and if these players determine that if by selling a little under MV they can profit more on 6k clicks of sheet metal rather than 1k clicks of EP BP III, then they will continue to do so. If MA does want to limit overproduction of crafted items, it would not be a surprise to see them eventually take some further actions, such as an overall rebalance of BPs or removing the AFK feature from all crafting other than EPs.
For many years, the most cogent advice for new players who wanted to start crafting in EU was, Don't. Crafting has always been the most costly profession to learn, skill, and pursue. Eventual success required an exorbitant amount of research, abundant funds, and a commitment to lose early. This made crafting unappealing for a new or lower-level player. Hopefully, the recent changes will lower the barrier to entry and allow more players to enjoy crafting in EU.
Hunting
Hunting is the main profession in EU, and in their effort to recruit and retain new players, MA seems to have committed to making hunting the focus of the game going forward. Since the years 2013/2014, hunting has undergone several modifications in four main areas--variance, loot balance, skills, and ease-of-entry--with the twin aims of flattening the economy and simplifying gameplay for new and low-level players. Adjusting the variance of hunting returns has been ongoing since the game's beginnings, MA trying with indifferent success to find a balance between high-variance (exciting) and low-variance (sustainable) returns that would be acceptable to the hunting community, and this adjustment process will never really end. However, if MA has committed to aligning the game to newer and lower-level players in order to grow the playerbase, then the balance will have to remain weighted toward sustainability, fewer HOFs, more minis, as it is at present.
Loot on Planet Calypso was rebalanced by VU15 so that shrapnel largely took the place of oils and some other mats in large globals and HOFs, so that mobs dropped fewer types of mats, and so that what oils and mats did drop was normalized across mob maturities. Combined with earlier adjustments that lowered mats and introduced, and then increased, ammunition in loots (MV plus to MV neutral), this mirrored crafting's shift from MV returns (success) to TT returns (near-success), and facilitated low-level grinding. The elimination of "oil HOFs" reduced market volatility, the concentration of loot types made it easier to target MV mobs, and more stable TT returns allowed more cycling of peds. Again, this emphasized real-world skill in deciding which mobs to hunt. But, while this is a valid strategy to promote new-player participation, it opens the real danger of leaving no rationale for hunting high-level mobs, and so disincentivizing high-level hunters and landowners.
VU8.8 changed skill advancement from linear to progressive and created a gulf between Uber and Other that has existed since. While the definition of Uber has always been somewhat amorphous, for EU in this context, Uber may be said to be having a chance to win one of the annual Planet Calypso hunting events. Early players, and beta players before them, gained high professional levels at a low cost. Coupled with high-eco, non-SIB unlimited equipment, some have charged that those players now have a permanent and unfair advantage in the game. The skill gain changes had to be made, but the charges of unfairness were not without merit. MA has taken some action over the years to help mid-level skill advancement, first bonus skill-gain periods, then the first mission rewards, but a new focus on hunting in order to grow the playerbase makes the issue acute. Many MMO players today join a game with the goal of reaching end-game content as quickly as possible, a process which they are willing to pay for. In EU, end-game means high-level hunting. For those new players and for existing mid-level hunters, MA started to build a new road to Uber around skill boosting pills, combat buffs from pills, rings, and armor sets, and modified and tiered weapons, faps, and armor, bringing higher level mobs within the reach of more hunters. Some of those new buff items are available from the webshop, a resource new players will expect, accept, and use, while others originate in-game, providing new sources of MV. While there are valid concerns that this process might be "raising the bar" rather than "closing the gap", thus increasing cost-to-play with no benefit, certainly new players do now have options if they wish to be hunting aurli within a year of beginning play.
MindArk and Planet Calypso have also made changes to increase ease-of-entry into the game. Specifically, they are removing the provision of hunting tools from the crafters, while the tutorial and beginner missions funnel novices into the laser professions, simplifying gameplay significantly for new hunters. Rather than research for hours what weapon they should buy, a new player on Calypso receives their first weapon from the tutorial on Thule. Their second is probably looted from a puny. Their third comes from the TT. Their fourth comes from the daily mission broker. And, increasingly, the ones after that are looted by other hunters. Migration drops half a year's supply. This reduces much of a new player's frustration with the steep learning curve of the game, but eliminates arguably the largest market for crafters at the same time that MA is encouraging crafters to produce small amounts of items for actual player use. If the playerbase does expand, however, then the market for other crafted items, and even some niche guns and other weapons, will expand with it. Entropia Universe has long been complex, confusing, and somewhat intimidating for newcomers. With these changes to simplify early gameplay, and with flattened but no longer volatile MV, and with variance weighted toward sustainability, MA's ambition seems to be a sustainable model requiring less of a time/research commitment in order to play, wherein an average hunter can play steadily with a small monthly deposit, or play part-time, entering, leaving, and reentering the game easily and as often as they wish. Such streamlining of the hunting profession is justified in order to facilitate new-player growth, but hopefully not to the extent that the other professions become marginalized.
Mining
Mining over the years has experienced the most major variance swings of any profession in EU, being adjusted from "exciting" to "sustainable" and back many times, as well as seeing changes in distribution mechanics, and in resource caps. As with hunting returns, the continued fine-tuning of mining will be an ongoing process, but the recent modifications are in line with those of hunting and crafting, intended to reduce market volatility by increasing the ratio of TT to MV returns in mining overall, both by reducing variance to "sustainable" levels, and by reducing the chance of high-MV mats in towers. MA is trying to migrate MV away from high-amped indoor mining to unamped planetside mining. There have always been miners that preferred to hunt out low-volume, high-MV ores, the ruga hunters, and with a more predictable market it will be easier for MA to use game mechanics to promote this style of mining, using MV to reward exploration and dropping in new areas, drawing and redrawing personal resource maps, rather than big amp mining. It would not be a surprise if in the future the game saw more rare mats that cannot be amped when found.
The current adjustments are beneficial in that they promote a stable economy, and help MA prevent market crashes, but they also represent a danger to mining. Traditionally, mining has been considered the easiest profession in which to break-even or profit. Even for new players, the threshold for entry was not steep. Of the three professions, success in mining is the least dependent on in-game skill progression. Hunting is the most skill-dependent, with multiple weapon-paths and the persistent value of defense skills. Skills are valuable in crafting until target BPs are maxed. But many miners believe it is not even necessary to max finders, so long as target depths are in reach. More important is personal experience, firm grasp of market conditions, working knowledge of the prevailing distribution mechanics, and luck. In the past, a new player could sell even starting ores for some MV while learning the terrain, and sometimes find higher level ores and enmats. This scaled up to mid-level miners, who could make steady profits, and to high-level miners who could aspire to, and even expect to, hit high-MV towers. But the mining profession is the most vulnerable to marginalization in the present climate. Miners sell to crafters, and flattened MV has depressed mining at all levels. This could be partially mitigated by the introduction of more mined resources that are used directly or semi-directly, in the manner of oil, force nexus, and sweetstuff. At the same time, as with hunting high-level mobs, high-level mining loses much of its appeal without the chance of high MV on top of a HOF. Perhaps MA could find alternative incentives for such high level activities, such as ultra-rare mats that could only be found in tiny quantities when using high-level amps. In any case, it will take careful management by MA to keep the mining profession viable and healthy.
Vulnerabilities
In 1920s America, not all parts of the United States were prospering. A weak textile market, a slow mining industry, and low farm prices, left the southern, western, and mid western economies depressed. These weaknesses could be ignored as long as the stock market was booming. When the Depression started, these depressed regions became millstones hanging around the neck of an already crippled national economy. Similarly, the three most vital of EU's underutilized sectors are Space, PvP, and Tailoring. While the EU market was overheated and MV was high, this situation could be ignored. But with MV no longer artificially boosted, and an attempt in place to create a stable economic environment, it now becomes critical. These should all be vibrant sectors of the EU economy, but more importantly, MA's new target audience, players attracted to a science fiction combat MMO, will expect space content and will want viable PvP. If these are absent, then new players are less likely to stay on in the game. Unresolved issues with something as basic as player clothing go even further, projecting an unprofessional image. It all makes EU less attractive for a new player, and harms retention. Space should continue to be used as a barrier to the free flow of goods as long as the Planet Partners wish, but it also needs to be more. And other games will always have better PvP mechanics, but EU has a built in advantage, the Real Cash Economy (RCE). It should be a major draw to the game that PvP in EU can earn money, or at least recoup losses, and PvP and Landgrab need to be overhauled.
Conclusions
The EU economy is undergoing a fundamental change. Since the years 2012/2013, MA has attempted to halt the artificial inflation of MV and to limit over-production of mats and crafted goods. It did the first by removing the economic impact of big gamblers, unsuccessfully at first by disincentivizion, then successfully by isolation. It did the second by removing MV from large-run crafting, high-mob grinding, and big-amp mining, to smaller, more targeted activities. Thus, fewer successes and more near-successes in crafting, no oil-HOFS in hunting, and no ruga towers in mining. Markup is rarer now, and has to be more actively pursued. Players today can grind MV at low levels, but the higher they wish to play, the smarter they need to play. Or they can craft EP.
MindArk is promoting hunting as the main profession in EU. With Planet Calypso, they have greatly improved the new-player experience and essentially made play through the first ten levels free through mission rewards of universal ammunition. They have made adjustments they feel necessary to provide a stable game economy, reducing volatility and variance, so far somewhat successfully, for example, reducing the demand for mats through the introduction of EP BPs while at the same time reducing the supply dropped in loots, so that they retain a modest MV. They are shifting importance from in-game skills to real-life skills. They have introduced item buffs. The pieces are in place to inaugurate a period of gradual and steady growth. The overall focus of EU is shifting from small numbers of higher-level players to large numbers of lower- and mid-level players. The gamble is whether those large numbers will exist.
There remain, of course, areas of concern. MindArk's advertising has been dismal, although Compets, while very much a gamble, can be seen somewhat as advertising, since every participant will at least be made aware of EU. There are underutilized sectors of the game, more than the three discussed, the unrealized potential of Societies, for example. The effect on all levels of traders, the unofficial fourth profession, is unclear. High level hunting and mining have been somewhat disincentivized, which risks alienating high-level players. Mining overall is especially vulnerable to these changes, and ways to promote mining should be explored, such as events and a reevaluation of SOOTO. Without question, the ongoing and future changes being made will drive some players out of EU, but hopefully enough new players will be attracted to more than make up for that loss. All major economic shifts create problems, but, looking at these changes overall, there is reason for cautious optimism for the future of the game.
Crafting
Around VU14, crafting returns were adjusted such that a larger percentage of returns were migrated from Success to Near Success. Trade Terminal returns remained constant over the long term, but with little to no MV gained from near successes, crafting with even moderate MV mats was disincentivized, with the result of depressing all crafting across the board, cooling down the overheated economy, and lowering MV. At the same time, with a general decline in crafting, those items still being crafted should have seen some increase in demand. Thus, the big-gambling sector of the profession should have contracted, while the crafting-to-sell sector increased. This is in keeping with what seems to be MA's present strategy of increasing ease of play for new and lower-level players.
It is possible that this adjustment worked, but not as well as MA had hoped, and the economy remained overheated, driven by MV paid by big-gambling crafters. MA took a decisive step in VU15.1.1 which introduced Explosive Projectile blueprints (EP BPs) I through IV, and nanocubes. Rather than disincentivize gamblers from paying MV for mats, EP crafting incentivized buying a mat that had no MV...carrot rather than stick. Rather than attempt to forcibly isolate gamblers from the in-game economy, MA successfully convinced gamblers to voluntarily isolate themselves. The game has even seen some movement of big-gambling hunters and miners to EP crafting. Instead of the gamblers being driven out of the game, they have been placated and their decay is not lost. The rise of EP crafting and the earlier modifications have definitely cooled down the economy, and may have opened up the crafting profession by producing a split between gamblers and crafters. For most practical purposes, gambling has become a crafting sub-profession, in the manner of tailoring.
The emerging new conditions in crafting are lowered MV of mats, decreased competition from overproduction, and cheap metal residue, hopefully coupled with an influx of new players and a more stable, predictable economy. This will lower the threshold of entry into the profession. If crafting for personal use, lower MV will allow increased cycling through smaller, faster, runs until successful. If crafting for profit, BPs with lower MV mats will be cheaper to click, and crafted items will be easier to sell without competition from gamblers--each run made on EPs is a run not made on level 5 amps or plastic ruds. While EP gamblers try to feel out when a HOF is ripe, crafters will need to carefully study market conditions to determine whether the MV in, MV out, and success/near success will balance favorably. This also follows the seeming present MA pattern of emphasizing real-world skills over artificial in-game skills in gameplay. Of course, non-EP gambling has not been eliminated entirely, and likely never will be. Gamblers will still take breaks from EP crafting to click their other BPs, and gamblers and crafters will both continue to craft for rare BP drops and click "boosted" BPs. But, for gamblers overall, it is difficult for even low-MV mats to compete with non-MV mats, and non-EP crafting has certainly declined dramatically in the game. And if crafters, rather than gamblers, choose to gamble, it could be well-thoughtout gambles on rare item BPs, which a more predictable economy and lower MVs might make more viable. Gamblers can gamble, and crafters can craft.
While EP BPs produced a major shift in the crafting profession and the EU economy, and while further tweaking will certainly continue, major changes could also be still forthcoming. Specifically, MA seems to be using a combination of market forces and game mechanics to discourage large crafting runs, other than for EPs, in order to limit overproduction. But there have always been big crafters who preferred crafting on quantity to gambling, and if these players determine that if by selling a little under MV they can profit more on 6k clicks of sheet metal rather than 1k clicks of EP BP III, then they will continue to do so. If MA does want to limit overproduction of crafted items, it would not be a surprise to see them eventually take some further actions, such as an overall rebalance of BPs or removing the AFK feature from all crafting other than EPs.
For many years, the most cogent advice for new players who wanted to start crafting in EU was, Don't. Crafting has always been the most costly profession to learn, skill, and pursue. Eventual success required an exorbitant amount of research, abundant funds, and a commitment to lose early. This made crafting unappealing for a new or lower-level player. Hopefully, the recent changes will lower the barrier to entry and allow more players to enjoy crafting in EU.
Hunting
Hunting is the main profession in EU, and in their effort to recruit and retain new players, MA seems to have committed to making hunting the focus of the game going forward. Since the years 2013/2014, hunting has undergone several modifications in four main areas--variance, loot balance, skills, and ease-of-entry--with the twin aims of flattening the economy and simplifying gameplay for new and low-level players. Adjusting the variance of hunting returns has been ongoing since the game's beginnings, MA trying with indifferent success to find a balance between high-variance (exciting) and low-variance (sustainable) returns that would be acceptable to the hunting community, and this adjustment process will never really end. However, if MA has committed to aligning the game to newer and lower-level players in order to grow the playerbase, then the balance will have to remain weighted toward sustainability, fewer HOFs, more minis, as it is at present.
Loot on Planet Calypso was rebalanced by VU15 so that shrapnel largely took the place of oils and some other mats in large globals and HOFs, so that mobs dropped fewer types of mats, and so that what oils and mats did drop was normalized across mob maturities. Combined with earlier adjustments that lowered mats and introduced, and then increased, ammunition in loots (MV plus to MV neutral), this mirrored crafting's shift from MV returns (success) to TT returns (near-success), and facilitated low-level grinding. The elimination of "oil HOFs" reduced market volatility, the concentration of loot types made it easier to target MV mobs, and more stable TT returns allowed more cycling of peds. Again, this emphasized real-world skill in deciding which mobs to hunt. But, while this is a valid strategy to promote new-player participation, it opens the real danger of leaving no rationale for hunting high-level mobs, and so disincentivizing high-level hunters and landowners.
VU8.8 changed skill advancement from linear to progressive and created a gulf between Uber and Other that has existed since. While the definition of Uber has always been somewhat amorphous, for EU in this context, Uber may be said to be having a chance to win one of the annual Planet Calypso hunting events. Early players, and beta players before them, gained high professional levels at a low cost. Coupled with high-eco, non-SIB unlimited equipment, some have charged that those players now have a permanent and unfair advantage in the game. The skill gain changes had to be made, but the charges of unfairness were not without merit. MA has taken some action over the years to help mid-level skill advancement, first bonus skill-gain periods, then the first mission rewards, but a new focus on hunting in order to grow the playerbase makes the issue acute. Many MMO players today join a game with the goal of reaching end-game content as quickly as possible, a process which they are willing to pay for. In EU, end-game means high-level hunting. For those new players and for existing mid-level hunters, MA started to build a new road to Uber around skill boosting pills, combat buffs from pills, rings, and armor sets, and modified and tiered weapons, faps, and armor, bringing higher level mobs within the reach of more hunters. Some of those new buff items are available from the webshop, a resource new players will expect, accept, and use, while others originate in-game, providing new sources of MV. While there are valid concerns that this process might be "raising the bar" rather than "closing the gap", thus increasing cost-to-play with no benefit, certainly new players do now have options if they wish to be hunting aurli within a year of beginning play.
MindArk and Planet Calypso have also made changes to increase ease-of-entry into the game. Specifically, they are removing the provision of hunting tools from the crafters, while the tutorial and beginner missions funnel novices into the laser professions, simplifying gameplay significantly for new hunters. Rather than research for hours what weapon they should buy, a new player on Calypso receives their first weapon from the tutorial on Thule. Their second is probably looted from a puny. Their third comes from the TT. Their fourth comes from the daily mission broker. And, increasingly, the ones after that are looted by other hunters. Migration drops half a year's supply. This reduces much of a new player's frustration with the steep learning curve of the game, but eliminates arguably the largest market for crafters at the same time that MA is encouraging crafters to produce small amounts of items for actual player use. If the playerbase does expand, however, then the market for other crafted items, and even some niche guns and other weapons, will expand with it. Entropia Universe has long been complex, confusing, and somewhat intimidating for newcomers. With these changes to simplify early gameplay, and with flattened but no longer volatile MV, and with variance weighted toward sustainability, MA's ambition seems to be a sustainable model requiring less of a time/research commitment in order to play, wherein an average hunter can play steadily with a small monthly deposit, or play part-time, entering, leaving, and reentering the game easily and as often as they wish. Such streamlining of the hunting profession is justified in order to facilitate new-player growth, but hopefully not to the extent that the other professions become marginalized.
Mining
Mining over the years has experienced the most major variance swings of any profession in EU, being adjusted from "exciting" to "sustainable" and back many times, as well as seeing changes in distribution mechanics, and in resource caps. As with hunting returns, the continued fine-tuning of mining will be an ongoing process, but the recent modifications are in line with those of hunting and crafting, intended to reduce market volatility by increasing the ratio of TT to MV returns in mining overall, both by reducing variance to "sustainable" levels, and by reducing the chance of high-MV mats in towers. MA is trying to migrate MV away from high-amped indoor mining to unamped planetside mining. There have always been miners that preferred to hunt out low-volume, high-MV ores, the ruga hunters, and with a more predictable market it will be easier for MA to use game mechanics to promote this style of mining, using MV to reward exploration and dropping in new areas, drawing and redrawing personal resource maps, rather than big amp mining. It would not be a surprise if in the future the game saw more rare mats that cannot be amped when found.
The current adjustments are beneficial in that they promote a stable economy, and help MA prevent market crashes, but they also represent a danger to mining. Traditionally, mining has been considered the easiest profession in which to break-even or profit. Even for new players, the threshold for entry was not steep. Of the three professions, success in mining is the least dependent on in-game skill progression. Hunting is the most skill-dependent, with multiple weapon-paths and the persistent value of defense skills. Skills are valuable in crafting until target BPs are maxed. But many miners believe it is not even necessary to max finders, so long as target depths are in reach. More important is personal experience, firm grasp of market conditions, working knowledge of the prevailing distribution mechanics, and luck. In the past, a new player could sell even starting ores for some MV while learning the terrain, and sometimes find higher level ores and enmats. This scaled up to mid-level miners, who could make steady profits, and to high-level miners who could aspire to, and even expect to, hit high-MV towers. But the mining profession is the most vulnerable to marginalization in the present climate. Miners sell to crafters, and flattened MV has depressed mining at all levels. This could be partially mitigated by the introduction of more mined resources that are used directly or semi-directly, in the manner of oil, force nexus, and sweetstuff. At the same time, as with hunting high-level mobs, high-level mining loses much of its appeal without the chance of high MV on top of a HOF. Perhaps MA could find alternative incentives for such high level activities, such as ultra-rare mats that could only be found in tiny quantities when using high-level amps. In any case, it will take careful management by MA to keep the mining profession viable and healthy.
Vulnerabilities
In 1920s America, not all parts of the United States were prospering. A weak textile market, a slow mining industry, and low farm prices, left the southern, western, and mid western economies depressed. These weaknesses could be ignored as long as the stock market was booming. When the Depression started, these depressed regions became millstones hanging around the neck of an already crippled national economy. Similarly, the three most vital of EU's underutilized sectors are Space, PvP, and Tailoring. While the EU market was overheated and MV was high, this situation could be ignored. But with MV no longer artificially boosted, and an attempt in place to create a stable economic environment, it now becomes critical. These should all be vibrant sectors of the EU economy, but more importantly, MA's new target audience, players attracted to a science fiction combat MMO, will expect space content and will want viable PvP. If these are absent, then new players are less likely to stay on in the game. Unresolved issues with something as basic as player clothing go even further, projecting an unprofessional image. It all makes EU less attractive for a new player, and harms retention. Space should continue to be used as a barrier to the free flow of goods as long as the Planet Partners wish, but it also needs to be more. And other games will always have better PvP mechanics, but EU has a built in advantage, the Real Cash Economy (RCE). It should be a major draw to the game that PvP in EU can earn money, or at least recoup losses, and PvP and Landgrab need to be overhauled.
Conclusions
The EU economy is undergoing a fundamental change. Since the years 2012/2013, MA has attempted to halt the artificial inflation of MV and to limit over-production of mats and crafted goods. It did the first by removing the economic impact of big gamblers, unsuccessfully at first by disincentivizion, then successfully by isolation. It did the second by removing MV from large-run crafting, high-mob grinding, and big-amp mining, to smaller, more targeted activities. Thus, fewer successes and more near-successes in crafting, no oil-HOFS in hunting, and no ruga towers in mining. Markup is rarer now, and has to be more actively pursued. Players today can grind MV at low levels, but the higher they wish to play, the smarter they need to play. Or they can craft EP.
MindArk is promoting hunting as the main profession in EU. With Planet Calypso, they have greatly improved the new-player experience and essentially made play through the first ten levels free through mission rewards of universal ammunition. They have made adjustments they feel necessary to provide a stable game economy, reducing volatility and variance, so far somewhat successfully, for example, reducing the demand for mats through the introduction of EP BPs while at the same time reducing the supply dropped in loots, so that they retain a modest MV. They are shifting importance from in-game skills to real-life skills. They have introduced item buffs. The pieces are in place to inaugurate a period of gradual and steady growth. The overall focus of EU is shifting from small numbers of higher-level players to large numbers of lower- and mid-level players. The gamble is whether those large numbers will exist.
There remain, of course, areas of concern. MindArk's advertising has been dismal, although Compets, while very much a gamble, can be seen somewhat as advertising, since every participant will at least be made aware of EU. There are underutilized sectors of the game, more than the three discussed, the unrealized potential of Societies, for example. The effect on all levels of traders, the unofficial fourth profession, is unclear. High level hunting and mining have been somewhat disincentivized, which risks alienating high-level players. Mining overall is especially vulnerable to these changes, and ways to promote mining should be explored, such as events and a reevaluation of SOOTO. Without question, the ongoing and future changes being made will drive some players out of EU, but hopefully enough new players will be attracted to more than make up for that loss. All major economic shifts create problems, but, looking at these changes overall, there is reason for cautious optimism for the future of the game.
