Well, the title is the gist of it, as well as those things I'll say being a win-win situation for both MA and the players.
So, where to start?
First of all I want to point out: All game mechanics seem very static, there is no life in the market, no randomization in the output of crafted or dropped loot and the buff system is extremely basic.
Remedying it is actually quite easy, and doesn't need a lot of effort, but the rewards for it would be great.
So first of all how to make the market more fluid? We need a way to make all the materials of all the planets useful, 2 solutions are coming to mind, one which I'll post in perspective with another important change which has been addressed in part already. Also at the end I'll talk about implemented systems which have either been done at the wrong time, or simply failed.
So the first thing is missions which need randomized materials for some sort of reward. Those could basically be anything. Either returning skills in specific areas, or items, or even deeds for turning in a specific TT value of items. Those need to be randomly generated out of a list of all planets, excluding rare drops which are very hard to obtain. It could be hides (giving them proper MU again), general crafting materials, crafted materials, residue, you name it, it can be inside.
This would make people want to go to different planets and use unused mobs and places in the game, spreading out the population a lot more. Also it would make the market change steadily since different materials are needed each day, giving options for actual traders to... well... trade properly.
The second is interwoven with the UL versus L item problem. Right now even if it has been adressed, many UL items are either still superior to their L counterparts, or even if not, the MU of the respective L items diminish their usefulness enough to make them a viable option still. This stops crafters from selling their items and lowers MU once more. So, making those items useless would be bad as many players are pissed off - for a reason - then. So a system to make it more interesting to own those actually is possible.
How would it look like? One thing coming to mind would be UL items actually having an integrated timer, after it runs out it needs maintenance. Needing maintenance drops the dpp and effectiveness, therefore making them clearly worse to use. Doing maintenance though can rise them back up, or even make them clearly superior to an L gun for a specific amount of time. Once more it can need a vast array of items there, preferably randomly generated and set on TT value, one which is set for how effective it would be in medium after maintaining it, as well as the dps-output. It makes the whole system more interesting since you can have bad luck and have to wait a specific timeframe to redo the process for a better outcome, or actually make it your main item to use for the set frame.
About randomization: Right now we have a very large array of crafted guns, miners, extractors, faps, and so on. All of them coming with a specific effectiveness rating which can only be altered by amps and similar items. Adjusting this to a system like some other games like diable, Path of Exile, Wurm online or similar games have would remedy this. Instead of a gun which was formerly set to an effective rating of let's say 60% coming out, it can instead come out in a range of 55-65%, giving an incentive for crafters to actually craft different items. Also this would make many 'outdated' or 'ineffective' blueprints once more attractive instead of being simple dead weight.
Also, this randomization system can be implemented in a small form for pets, vehicles, generally everything which can be made better or worse. Handled in the same way as a global, a good craft can make it therefore a mastercrafted gun, handling better then a normal one, or a shoddy one, underperforming.
As for the buffs, with those extended generation systems for items, small buffs could be applied to any of them in certain circumstances, making it far more interesting and enticing to create them, as well as giving shops an actual meaning again as they could act as a good way to sell those high-quality items then.
All those ideas wouldn't in any way touch the TT value of existing items and keep the basic systems intact, also they balance out respectively with all existing items, as well as newly crafted ones, where the old ones either have a full timer from the start, or are the exact middle-ground from what can be achieved in a crafting process. Implementing them wouldn't cost many resources and it gives people a lot more to be happy about besides the now dwindled globals, turning them back in importance to a degree.
With this I want to come to the systems which I've spoken about, first of all loot 2.0
It was a good idea, it keeps less knowledgeable people in the game longer and doesn't punish them as much. Together with the ArMatrix series of weapons some materials have actually gotten at least basic MU, but it mostly shifted the problems around instead of solving them. Since the market has adapted to it mostly, with some minor shifts still happening, the outcome is the same as before, now with high-risk hunting being worse in return since effectiveness dwindles down the impact of very good equipment by a lot, but also with much less risk since you won't return with 40% TT. All in all it has taken out the volatility of the game, which can be seen as good or bad, depending on which side of the scale you personally were, especially equipment wise.
Now this has to be followed up since it lets fever people profit, but also fever people loose out massively. Good or bad? Well, depends if you formerly had a surplus or were widely in the minus. People with surplus and reinvesting it in the game are unhappy with the state of it, the others are happy with it, but in general it has led to fever people wanting to hunt large sized mobs in general, at least as much as I've seen, so it could be wrong. Some other form of system needs to be put inside the game therefore which 'shifts' the playing field steadily. Today Feffox are good mobs, tomorrow Ambulimax and the next day Kerberos for some reason, people who build knowledge and put in effort need rewards, others shouldn't be punished in any form, this is done by implementing either the suggested systems above, or something else roughly in a direction which does the same.
The next are buffs. With the system right now, crit can actually be a detriment, while actively leading to more chances of loot events, the net return from the resolving overkill can make you get more shrapnel. This happens if you have the 'perfect' equipment for a mob which lets you kill it quickly, therefore making crits a danger to overkill suddenly in far larger amounts then needed. This needs to be addressed. If someone does a critical strike, the person usually sees it as a good thing, 'wow, I did more damage, wohoo!' while actually ruining the loot composition in return under these circumstances. A quick fix for it is to separate the calculation for buff related crit damage or crit chance with the inherit crit stats of a weapon. If the system triggers a 'normal' one, it gets handled as overkill, if it is triggered by a buff, the extra damage caused just by this value can't be handled as overkill. Easy fix while never allowing a buff to be a negative. It's called a buff for a reason after all, not a debuff.
Next one is the market fee. I know it's an important part of the income for MA, and that is why it shouldn't be removed, but still there can be something done which would actually lead to more income instead of less. By seeing the auction not as an institute but a service, shifting the fees from listing to actually selling only would alleviate this. Not only would the market come alive with several more listings, but since 'street-sales' would dwindle to a large degree this way - no more risk after all - it would mean more items being sold over the auction.
This doesn't affect shops either as long as market listings have a hard-cap on listings, with each extra one costing an extra fee to actually list then, stopping people from inputting 'meaningless' listings. Also, stopping a listing halfway would occur a penalty then as the contract for the auction house wasn't upheld, so no loss there either.
For the beginning those are the things coming to mind immediately, they are definitely not perfect in every way, but the core ideas are something which I think will be useful, all of those systems are cost-effective to implement, have a large impact on liquidity on the market and therefore a large impact on making the market an actual real-life example instead of a static unchanging system. It offers more chances to profit - and loose - which will definitely bring in - or back - players because the game once more offers a place to earn in more different ways, which in return brings in more money.
So, where to start?
First of all I want to point out: All game mechanics seem very static, there is no life in the market, no randomization in the output of crafted or dropped loot and the buff system is extremely basic.
Remedying it is actually quite easy, and doesn't need a lot of effort, but the rewards for it would be great.
So first of all how to make the market more fluid? We need a way to make all the materials of all the planets useful, 2 solutions are coming to mind, one which I'll post in perspective with another important change which has been addressed in part already. Also at the end I'll talk about implemented systems which have either been done at the wrong time, or simply failed.
So the first thing is missions which need randomized materials for some sort of reward. Those could basically be anything. Either returning skills in specific areas, or items, or even deeds for turning in a specific TT value of items. Those need to be randomly generated out of a list of all planets, excluding rare drops which are very hard to obtain. It could be hides (giving them proper MU again), general crafting materials, crafted materials, residue, you name it, it can be inside.
This would make people want to go to different planets and use unused mobs and places in the game, spreading out the population a lot more. Also it would make the market change steadily since different materials are needed each day, giving options for actual traders to... well... trade properly.
The second is interwoven with the UL versus L item problem. Right now even if it has been adressed, many UL items are either still superior to their L counterparts, or even if not, the MU of the respective L items diminish their usefulness enough to make them a viable option still. This stops crafters from selling their items and lowers MU once more. So, making those items useless would be bad as many players are pissed off - for a reason - then. So a system to make it more interesting to own those actually is possible.
How would it look like? One thing coming to mind would be UL items actually having an integrated timer, after it runs out it needs maintenance. Needing maintenance drops the dpp and effectiveness, therefore making them clearly worse to use. Doing maintenance though can rise them back up, or even make them clearly superior to an L gun for a specific amount of time. Once more it can need a vast array of items there, preferably randomly generated and set on TT value, one which is set for how effective it would be in medium after maintaining it, as well as the dps-output. It makes the whole system more interesting since you can have bad luck and have to wait a specific timeframe to redo the process for a better outcome, or actually make it your main item to use for the set frame.
About randomization: Right now we have a very large array of crafted guns, miners, extractors, faps, and so on. All of them coming with a specific effectiveness rating which can only be altered by amps and similar items. Adjusting this to a system like some other games like diable, Path of Exile, Wurm online or similar games have would remedy this. Instead of a gun which was formerly set to an effective rating of let's say 60% coming out, it can instead come out in a range of 55-65%, giving an incentive for crafters to actually craft different items. Also this would make many 'outdated' or 'ineffective' blueprints once more attractive instead of being simple dead weight.
Also, this randomization system can be implemented in a small form for pets, vehicles, generally everything which can be made better or worse. Handled in the same way as a global, a good craft can make it therefore a mastercrafted gun, handling better then a normal one, or a shoddy one, underperforming.
As for the buffs, with those extended generation systems for items, small buffs could be applied to any of them in certain circumstances, making it far more interesting and enticing to create them, as well as giving shops an actual meaning again as they could act as a good way to sell those high-quality items then.
All those ideas wouldn't in any way touch the TT value of existing items and keep the basic systems intact, also they balance out respectively with all existing items, as well as newly crafted ones, where the old ones either have a full timer from the start, or are the exact middle-ground from what can be achieved in a crafting process. Implementing them wouldn't cost many resources and it gives people a lot more to be happy about besides the now dwindled globals, turning them back in importance to a degree.
With this I want to come to the systems which I've spoken about, first of all loot 2.0
It was a good idea, it keeps less knowledgeable people in the game longer and doesn't punish them as much. Together with the ArMatrix series of weapons some materials have actually gotten at least basic MU, but it mostly shifted the problems around instead of solving them. Since the market has adapted to it mostly, with some minor shifts still happening, the outcome is the same as before, now with high-risk hunting being worse in return since effectiveness dwindles down the impact of very good equipment by a lot, but also with much less risk since you won't return with 40% TT. All in all it has taken out the volatility of the game, which can be seen as good or bad, depending on which side of the scale you personally were, especially equipment wise.
Now this has to be followed up since it lets fever people profit, but also fever people loose out massively. Good or bad? Well, depends if you formerly had a surplus or were widely in the minus. People with surplus and reinvesting it in the game are unhappy with the state of it, the others are happy with it, but in general it has led to fever people wanting to hunt large sized mobs in general, at least as much as I've seen, so it could be wrong. Some other form of system needs to be put inside the game therefore which 'shifts' the playing field steadily. Today Feffox are good mobs, tomorrow Ambulimax and the next day Kerberos for some reason, people who build knowledge and put in effort need rewards, others shouldn't be punished in any form, this is done by implementing either the suggested systems above, or something else roughly in a direction which does the same.
The next are buffs. With the system right now, crit can actually be a detriment, while actively leading to more chances of loot events, the net return from the resolving overkill can make you get more shrapnel. This happens if you have the 'perfect' equipment for a mob which lets you kill it quickly, therefore making crits a danger to overkill suddenly in far larger amounts then needed. This needs to be addressed. If someone does a critical strike, the person usually sees it as a good thing, 'wow, I did more damage, wohoo!' while actually ruining the loot composition in return under these circumstances. A quick fix for it is to separate the calculation for buff related crit damage or crit chance with the inherit crit stats of a weapon. If the system triggers a 'normal' one, it gets handled as overkill, if it is triggered by a buff, the extra damage caused just by this value can't be handled as overkill. Easy fix while never allowing a buff to be a negative. It's called a buff for a reason after all, not a debuff.
Next one is the market fee. I know it's an important part of the income for MA, and that is why it shouldn't be removed, but still there can be something done which would actually lead to more income instead of less. By seeing the auction not as an institute but a service, shifting the fees from listing to actually selling only would alleviate this. Not only would the market come alive with several more listings, but since 'street-sales' would dwindle to a large degree this way - no more risk after all - it would mean more items being sold over the auction.
This doesn't affect shops either as long as market listings have a hard-cap on listings, with each extra one costing an extra fee to actually list then, stopping people from inputting 'meaningless' listings. Also, stopping a listing halfway would occur a penalty then as the contract for the auction house wasn't upheld, so no loss there either.
For the beginning those are the things coming to mind immediately, they are definitely not perfect in every way, but the core ideas are something which I think will be useful, all of those systems are cost-effective to implement, have a large impact on liquidity on the market and therefore a large impact on making the market an actual real-life example instead of a static unchanging system. It offers more chances to profit - and loose - which will definitely bring in - or back - players because the game once more offers a place to earn in more different ways, which in return brings in more money.