I will firstly quickly address your ill-concealed jibes about "supporters" and "PLAYING" the game. I do play the game, I choose not to reveal my in game name because I prefer anonymity because of threads exactly like this. I am much more analytical when posting in the forum as this entertains me (maybe I am weird, I like this type of discussion.).
Fwiw, I have played this game for 6~ years now, I know you have made several comments about me playing for a few months, which I opted to ignore. I profit. I don't deposit. I do this through mostly uncreative tried and tested ways that stay the same for years at a time (mining, mostly, and as you said opportunist moments, like that time I made 4k ped in 2 days on the release of blazar fragments.)
The problem with this is, besides opportune moments, the game is stilted and has no appeal for new players and the more exciting aspects of this game generally create unreasonable losses for a game - I argue the USP of this game is the economy, and this is not optimized for a healthy experience at all levels of play across a diverse range of activities.
This thread was meant to be a good natured hypothetical look at an alternative model, as the current one does not work for ALL levels of play and there are tons of bad and useless items in the game. This thread is not an argument with yourself where I have "supporters" and you have "supporters". It's a completely hypothetical situation, and you already swayed me away from 100% components, I am a reasonable person, but I still think my basic concept is correct.
Let me make this REALLY simple for you:
The ammount of stuff that is TT'd in this game is staggering. The ammount of crafters in this game is excessively low. This is because crafting IS not penetrable for an average player (as mentioned several times above, low level BPs are mostly useless, with the few good ones having low volume - the only one with decent volume at an affordable price for an average player is Basic Sheet Metal and I believe this is not profitable .. at the moment anyway).
This creates an awkward system where total resources used<total resources produced by a lot, and furthermore, the majority of the few resources that do have an adequate demand are gathered from mining, not an equal distribution. This is simply poor game design. This doesn't even touch on the monopoly of good blueprints and the investments they require.
Now as I said, I profit. Do I have fun playing anymore? No. Not really, I just do it in the hope that there will be a boom of new players one day, and so as I said, I generally go away for longer periods now and come back dismayed.
Good morning ppl in this thread
To make it easy to see, you recommend more links in the chain, lets go crazy lets let it be 9 links before end user.
So 100tt x 90% x 90% .... x 90% = 38,7% So every item should have markup of atleast 300%.
While at current 81% should only be bit over 120% to be worth doing.
In your version : less TT ingame for players and more markup
In my version: More TT ingame and less markup
You can debate which is better, but most of the players surely prefer their items having higher solid ped tt value, just incase the dynamic system screws the markup which would cause the 300% markup to drop to pretty much tt price.
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This is actually the crux of the argument.
I will try to highlight the bits you are missing:
Current system
Player X is an average player, he hunts.
Player X TT return = 90%. Player X makes virtually no markup on the majority of his items and either stores or TT's 50% of his loot (realistically.. more).
45% of his loot finds it way into the auction, some of which does not sell. Lets say 40% of his loot ends up in a crafters hands. Most of the time, about 50% of the 90% the crafters loot will also be TT'd. Residue will be stacked and sold, some products will be sold.
So at the end of that chain: 10% of initial hunters loot went to MA, 45% to the TT machine, 40% to a crafter, who gave 10% of that to MA, leaving 36% in total crafted loot, 50% of which is TTable.
So just 18% of the original TT makes it into usable, salable items whilst 63% makes it into a TT machine.
Result
When an average player TT's something, they are effectively recycling it: it has an expected value of 90% because often they will just use it on an in game activity.
So effectively Mindark are taking 10% of the original TT and 10% of the 63% that finds its way to a TT machine
My point here is that just becuase something is not used in a crafting train, doesn't mean it isn't depreciating, it STILL has a 90% expected return whatever it is used in.
Your low markup, more TT used by players theory only works in a 100% return system. Because as it is, low markup still results in less TT usable for players.
A different system
A lower ammount of TTable items = a higher markup.
So although yes, you are correct, each layer of the chain results in a 90% TT return, each player has a genuine opportunity to recover some of that loss through markup. The same total TT would be in the system, but it will be being used over a wider spread of activities. The aim would be to make crafting more accessible and hunting eventually more worthwhile.
The main point here is that when somebody sells something for markup, or buys something for markup, the markup retains 100% of it's value, it is just transferred to another player. There is no depreciation in selling items to a player, but there is in selling things to a TT machine.
The general aim of the balance team should be to make hunting/mining/crafting equally rewarding, accessible and entertaining. At the moment, hunting wins in entertainment and accessibility, mining wins in accessibility and reward and crafting loses in just about all 3: except for a very select few (but i talk about average players).
Appeal to the masses and gain.. masses. Player base needs to increase for the survival of this game and that includes for the survival of the currently successful players.
Edit: An important note to clarify here is that I do NOT think profiting should be easy, for exactly the reason you stated. But profiting should be possible across all levels in a range of activities. More new players and more sales volumes make this achievable. You get more sales volumes by decreasing the ammount of items TT'd (The volume is there: its just not being traded). You get more players by having a more accessible and rewarding game.