Crafters need more love, not less

I was responding to a post, but it's honestly off topic from the original thread so branching out here.

Aio said:

I personally think it would be a very bad idea to give complete control to one group of both the purchasing from and sales to every other group.

If I, as a hunter or miner, am selling my loot to the same crafters who are selling me tools, how would I ever make any profit (even with the best tools and skills) unless I made that profit from MA.

You effectively kill the idea of profitability for all but one profession... what profession are you going to choose to invest in?

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MA has a history of trying it both ways already, both completely eliminating and requiring crafters. Consider:

*Feff -> Korss H400 (L) in every global. Crafters need not apply.
And in the other corner:
*GeoTrek LP485 Apis (L). Crafted from many players (bps were not that rare) using both mined & hunted parts. Parts offering plenty of MU. Want one? Gotta buy or make it yourself. Can't be looted.

Both guns had high MU, and were still used by a huge portion of the population in their time. Seeing other weapons used at the time these were ingame was simply a rarity.

Ironically both weapons worked for hunters and still MA decided to kill them from the game.

The case of the Apis is almost exactly the scenario you are worried about, Aio. Be honest, most miners, crafters and hunters were happy with the situation.

And I've made previous threads begging for that Apis way-of-life (good crafted weapons made from mined+hunted loot) and folks keep trying to say "if no guns/armor can be looted, than this game will be ruined". I say the exact opposite is happening. guns/armor is looting AND the game is being ruined as we speak.

Imagine if lots of quality weapons/gear in every category was craftable, with plenty of BPs floating around, and almost no weapons/armor/etc. were looted. Would it really be so bad?

But, if you'd rather completely kill the crafting part of the game and have to TT the stackable portion of your loot and try to live off the MU of the 1(2?3?) guns you loot in a run, assuming you don't have to use them yourself, well ok then. Very shortly loot on every mob will be exactly what is is during mayhem: shrapnel, ammo and the occasional gun. You want that? On every hunt? Every planet? At all times?

And yes, I'm not exaggerating when I say kill crafting. For some idiotic reason, MA has NEVER let the best weapons/armor/etc. be crafted. The best stats have always been on looted guns/armor/etc. A minor argument can be made for ghost (in terms of stats, availability & overall MU), but with the supply of grem so high, it's a hard argument. So MA has to make quality items craftable, because this current situation isn't viable long-term.

I mean seriously, do hunters not realize who buys the vast majority their loot?

The repetition of posts/replies like this is getting to be too much lately.

I've all but given up hoping MA will create a profession-dependent economy. The best times economically were when hunters and miners both sold loot to crafters who then crafted equipment for hunters and miners to use. I'm really not sure how that was such a bad thing and why MA needed to neglect crafting, destroy mining, and put all of their efforts into hunting.

I understand they need to make money here, but they also need players and a game in order to make money. I'm trying to shield myself from this lately because it's depressing. New players can't appreciate how good it was before EP bps looted weapons/armors. And most can't understand that looting a few 110% guns is less lucrative than being able to sell stackables for 110%.

I've been advocating for a crafting overhaul since 2012, yet all we've gotten was EP bps. Maybe it'll get better in the future, but I most likely won't be playing EU 5-6 years from now if it still exists.. So I guess it doesn't matter? I'll just do what I can to profit and then pull it all out when the day comes for me to end my EU experience.

Still... I'd love to leave the game seeing a healthy and thriving economy dependent on a cycle between all 3 professions.

Right now mining is the only profession dependent on crafting.. Hunting has become self sufficient.. And that's an issue.

JohnCapital said:

I was responding to a post, but it's honestly off topic from the original thread so branching out here.



MA has a history of trying it both ways already, both completely eliminating and requiring crafters. Consider:

*Feff -> Korss H400 (L) in every global. Crafters need not apply.
And in the other corner:
*GeoTrek LP485 Apis (L). Crafted from many players (bps were not that rare) using both mined & hunted parts. Parts offering plenty of MU. Want one? Gotta buy or make it yourself. Can't be looted.

Both guns had high MU, and were still used by a huge portion of the population in their time. Seeing other weapons used at the time these were ingame was simply a rarity.

Ironically both weapons worked for hunters and still MA decided to kill them from the game.

The case of the Apis is almost exactly the scenario you are worried about, Aio. Be honest, most miners, crafters and hunters were happy with the situation.

And I've made previous threads begging for that Apis way-of-life (good crafted weapons made from mined+hunted loot) and folks keep trying to say "if no guns/armor can be looted, than this game will be ruined". I say the exact opposite is happening. guns/armor is looting AND the game is being ruined as we speak.

Imagine if lots of quality weapons/gear in every category was craftable, with plenty of BPs floating around, and almost no weapons/armor/etc. were looted. Would it really be so bad?

But, if you'd rather completely kill the crafting part of the game and have to TT the stackable portion of your loot and try to live off the MU of the 1(2?3?) guns you loot in a run, assuming you don't have to use them yourself, well ok then. Very shortly loot on every mob will be exactly what is is during mayhem: shrapnel, ammo and the occasional gun. You want that? On every hunt? Every planet? At all times?

And yes, I'm not exaggerating when I say kill crafting. For some idiotic reason, MA has NEVER let the best weapons/armor/etc. be crafted. The best stats have always been on looted guns/armor/etc. A minor argument can be made for ghost (in terms of stats, availability & overall MU), but with the supply of grem so high, it's a hard argument. So MA has to make quality items craftable, because this current situation isn't viable long-term.

I mean seriously, do hunters not realize who buys the vast majority their loot?

Click to expand...

A lot of this makes sense, but only in a world which is not EU.

Lets do a gedankenexperiment on the effects of three professions. Lets start this experiment on a clean slate - there are 2 craftable things - Gun and Tool. Gun is used for hunting, and Tool is used for mining. It is only possible to loot 1 thing in hunting - a stackable Oil. It is only possible to loot 1 thing in mining - Ore.

We can set the "return" or "rake" (1/inversions) that MA applies to any amount, but lets make it 90% (10%) for easiness.

So hunter goes out and spends the full TT of Gun, which is 100ped* (and uses 900ped ammo (irrelevant MU reducer)). Miner goes out and spends the full TT of Tool (same values as above).

*at 100% MU. We will return to this.

Hunter = 900ped Oil.
Miner = 900ped Ore.

In either case, the user has lost 100ped. In a proper economy driven situation, they would sell their returns to make a "profit" (which would actually just be a fee for their time spent), but lets say in this experiment they just want to break even. So they would need to set a MU on their items of:

100*(1000/900) = 111%.

So now we turn to crafter. Crafter buys Oil and Ore at 111%; lets say he buys 1000ped of them. He also has a 90% return remember. Then he uses them all up and:

(1000*0.9) - (1000*1.11) = 900ped tt @ -210ped. How does crafter get this ped back? MU. To regain 210ped from 900ped TT =

100*(1110/900) = 123.33%.

So lets feed this back into the Hunter / Miner costs...

100TT * 1.2333 + 900 = 1023.33.
100*(1023.33/900) = 113.73% average loot sale value.

And the cycle continues.

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Now, thought experiment aside, you say this will not be the case as the BPs are not rare (and therefore there will be some kind of pseudo free market).

If this is the case - i.e., everyone has the same BP, the same weapon, the same fap, the same mining device, and everyone is pulling the same returns from MA... why would anyone, and I mean this seriously, play? Yes, there's a chance of a big TT HOF - but in the long run this is just a slot machine gamble (without a chance of a HOF with MU - looted gun, rare BP) and there are far better ways to gamble in this life we all have.

Crafters need exclusive BPs which basically print money. Hunters need IMK2s which basically print money. Miners need unL OA13s which basically print money - and all three professions need variety (and losses) contained in their own systems.

I re-iterate what I said in the original quote of me - I think it would be a very bad idea to allow a single profession to have complete control of the system. If miners and hunters are wholly dependant on crafters for the purchasing of hunting/mining loot, and the sale of hunting/mining tools, you will have a very sudden grinding halt of the whole system.


_________________________


Here's two improvement methods (neither of which I am a fan of, as I like hunting and looting items as my entertainment but...):

- Introduce a variant dependant system on all three professions. If hunters are reliant on crafters for their weapons, then they should be able to loot mining tools. Then miners are reliant on hunters for their tools, who loot ores, which are the only constituents of crafted items.

or

- All weapons/tools are crafted and (L). However, improvements could be found while using the weapons/tools (think of this like a tiering system) where a new "blueprint" can be derived. Example:

Buy a Gun. Shoot it 10000 times and you "level" it into Gun MK.2. When it is empty of TT, you can refine the gun into a blueprint for Gun MK.2 (L), which has a limited amount of uses, and can be sold to the crafter.

Aio said:

Lets do a gedankenexperiment on the effects of three professions....

Click to expand...

Well your math looks perfect.

IF there were only 1 miner, 1 hunter and 1 crafter. Which there isn't.



There will always be hunters & miners who sell too low and pay too much.
There will always be crafters who pay too much and sell too low.

There is no way, and never will be a way, for all players and MA to profit. Someone (I.E. most customers) must foot MAs bills (by depositing more than they can withdraw.) I'm sorry Aio but the dream you seem to point toward in your experiment (some way for all to profit) can't happen. But there is plenty of room for some in every category to profit, and it doesn't have to be hunter/miner vs crafter as you think.

As I and others like Rocket192 have already said, the system we want already happened. We liked it. For some reason, MA left it.

I get that MA can't do "item upgrade" things as crafting due to failure rate. (They tried a sample of that in the 1st tiering system and kicked a mutated hornets nest.)

But for all regular UL and (L) items, they should be crafted, using hunted and mined material and fairly readily available BPs. (not 3 copies of XXX BP 1 person owns.)

JohnCapital said:

There is no way, and never will be a way, for all players and MA to profit. Someone (I.E. most customers) must foot MAs bills (by depositing more than they can withdraw.) I'm sorry Aio but the dream you seem to point toward in your experiment (some way for all to profit) can't happen. But there is plenty of room for some in every category to profit, and it doesn't have to be hunter/miner vs crafter as you think.

Click to expand...

No, what I said was this:

Crafters need exclusive BPs which basically print money. Hunters need IMK2s which basically print money. Miners need unL OA13s which basically print money - and all three professions need variety (and losses) contained in their own systems.

Click to expand...

And yes, that is a thought experiment simplified heavily. But it was done to highlight if crafters have full control, everyone loses using their gear. Everyone apart from the crafters. Yes there will be variation if you plug in 10000 players, but the average will be the same.

With your suggested system (crafters make everything), you either doom the game to loss for everyone (C,H,M) or loss for H&M but gain for C. Excluding the already looted items (imk2, modmerc etc) no future new player could make a profitable system outside of the crafting sphere. Unless, they bought a pre-existing item.

Or worse, MA releases an unL gun BP (which as you say, should be freely available) which has 4.0dpp average, obsoleting all previous weapons, raises the dpp average, and no hunter can ever profit. Ever.

I liked $5 idea of creating some new weapon/armor/tool bps and then eliminating virtually all UL SIB items from hunting loot and turn it into extremely rare loots you'll get from crafting.


We don't even need new bps.. just create ones for the LLC/LLB/etc. series that MA already has in game. the stats would be the same as the hunted items.

People craft, crafted and looted items are just as good, prosperity for all.

ive always like the idea of weapon parts, allow guns to still loot, but only low eco ones, then the rest are crafted using ie, Isis LLC weapon parts, these parts can be used to make any version of the LLC range, just requires more mat

I've been thinking further and I do have more to add.

Everyone seems to think that the pre-EP crafting was bliss, and EP crafting ruined everything.

This just is not the case. Before EP crafting, you had a core of "good" crafters. People (I'll use you as an example here Auk, soz) like Auktuma who curated a well-founded business inside Entropia. His business is still going strong now - I can't think of anywhere else I would go to for armour or plates other than Auk's shops. There's another chap (sorry, I forgot your name) who owns a shop in Twin mall, for enhancers. I now don't go anywhere other than his shop when I need restocking (unless you're out of stock!).

So the core crafters are the same. I have many more names to point to.

What you also had in the mix were gamble crafters. These were people crafting Amps & high TT attachments (cinclar, elkarr etc) in the hopes for a TT ATH. These people have not changed with the introduction of EP4, they have continued. However, what MA have done is close the loop between the other professions and this form of gamble crafting. Now, it's nanocubes in -> EP out, at a .95 or lower return.

This is a good thing. Artificial mineral MU caused by gamble crafters is bad for the economy - Avon Jerrix made a very good post on this in his economy analysis (I suggest you all read it).

Finally, Apis were removed because the whole hunting set ups were improved eco-wise. Apis has a zero-MU dpp of 2.869 - but with 125% this drops to just 2.741. At this MU (which was the regular MU, if not higher) even with a Dante amp the dpp is just 2.84 - at a DPS rate of 60, and maxed at level 30 - this was too accessible for every hunter to lose their ass using it.

There are "modern" alternatives which can be crafted. Here's a good example; Isis LLP 30 (L) vs Breer h31a (L). They are both comparable (approx 38dps, 2.88 vs 2.84 dpp). But the looted gun will always be more popular because you can obtain it more cheaply. OK, the h31a has an inflated price at the moment due to its use in Adj EP41, but before you could get them at 115% - while the LLP is 109%. This makes their respective DPP 2.77 vs 2.84.

The reason for this? Hunters are happy (and used) to make losses on hunts. Crafters will not (logically) craft premium sale items for a loss.

The only way a balanced system would appear is if there are a range of crafting abilities, giving a range of prices. But with blueprints, everyone hits a terminal profit/loss system. Once that is hit (immediately), then there is no market competition anymore (no-one can make items cheaper than others in the long term) and therefore the whole system is balanced for just one profession.

A lot of players appear addicted to the in game drugs, and demand every more pills.

Maybe a new crafting profession: Alchemist

Maybe someone will open the first EU Pharmacist, maybe MA will sell Pharmacist shop like stables so the Alchemist has to sell to a pharmacist.

You could get players snorting powder I guess in your local pharmacist, pre hunt, so they're drugged up to the hilt. before shooting at Eo Stalkers.

I do have to smile.

Rick

RickEngland said:

A lot of players appear addicted to the in game drugs, and demand every more pills.

Maybe a new crafting profession: Alchemist

Maybe someone will open the first EU Pharmacist, maybe MA will sell Pharmacist shop like stables so the Alchemist has to sell to a pharmacist.

You could get players snorting powder I guess in your local pharmacist, pre hunt, so they're drugged up to the hilt. before shooting at Eo Stalkers.

I do have to smile.

Rick

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Dibs on Mindalk, i do see this happening tho, once(if) the farming work goes ahead on the new plots, they will be used to make new Pet food & Pills

Aio said:

So the core crafters are the same. I have many more names to point to.

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Yep, kind of my point: No one player controls all crafting, even in today's version of EU. And when there is no monopoly possible, customers benefit. So multiple players are enjoying your business while you enjoy their prices. But somehow you dislike this and want less of it, not more.

Aio said:

This is a good thing. Artificial mineral MU caused by gamble crafters is bad for the economy

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Wait, did you just try to argue that having more players wanting to buy your loot is a bad thing? In a game designed to encourage buying/selling? Do you honestly think that only having 1 "serious" buyer is the best scenario? Just because some buyers don't sell everything they craft?

I.... Wow. Just. Wow.

Aio said:

Finally, Apis were removed because the whole hunting set ups were improved eco-wise.

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OK, now you're just trying to troll me aren't you? Apis was "removed for not being eco-enough". Ok so, by your point, I should be able to go to Entropedia weapons page, set source = craft, and sort by dmg/pec and every single crafted weapon with worse dmg/pec below what you mentioned is no longer available, due to bps and/or control ingrediants no longer dropping, right?

They also removed Korss(L) guns, some of the most eco choices even by today's standards (and dropped from hunting, just like you want). They also removed too-eco old school weapons, yet bps for powerfists, cleric daggers, etc. still drop, despite being the least eco weapons ingame. Ever.

Aio said:

The reason for this? Hunters are happy (and used) to make losses on hunts. Crafters will not (logically) craft premium sale items for a loss.

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And herein you have succinctly described the very foundation of where you are wrong. Players happily lose money for entertainment in all ingame activities, not just hunting.


EDIT:
Almost forgot.

Rocket192 said:

I liked $5 idea of creating some new weapon/armor/tool bps and then eliminating virtually all UL SIB items from hunting loot and turn it into extremely rare loots you'll get from crafting.

Click to expand...

No offense. $5's cool and all, but me and many others have been pushing this same point since before that ava was ever ingame.

You could do alright with Apis + Dante because back then mobs had... wait for it... more markup in loot! Some of which was used by gambling crafters...

If Crafters only build explosive projectiles using materials from TT (nanocubes) and then these explosives are thrown away, then the economy will collapse and the real cash economy will disappear.

Because currently Miners and Hunters are using tools, weapons and armors with MU to get loot without MU. (real loosers)

Then finally all we will be crafters of explosive projectiles and Entropia Universe will be just the Casino that always denied being.

I think MindArk must disappear BPs that only uses materials from TT (Or compensate us, through selling every tools, weapons, and armors using the terminals of trade)