Question: A deeper look into enhancers

[Huskie]

(No, this thread isn't about the UL tier upgrade ingredients. Also, long post ahead, trolls beware!)

Alright, now that we had our eagerly anticipated, undescribably brilliant VU with the tier upgrades, let's take a look at what we were so kindly and thoughtfully told by our dear buddys at MA/FPC back on it's announcement!

An enhancement chip can be connected to a socket. Chips have different functions (weapon chips may add damage, range, accuracy or durability, while armor chips add defense, and mining finder chips add range or search depth – to name but a few examples) and can be mixed in order for a player to create their own customized version of their favorite item – would you focus on maximizing your damage, or maybe add range and thus creating your own sniper rifle, or maybe be more economical and reduce ammo burn and deterioration? Or a mix – you decide! And if your current mix is unsatisfactory, you can always disconnect and connect other enhancement chips to the slots.

Well, that is surely one curious statement. Upon looking at the BP book for enhancers I did not find any durability enhancers for weapon, and most importantly no eco enhancers, or anything with a name that would suggest decreased ammo burn.

What happened to those? Were they discarded at last minute's notice, or was this announcement another one of MA's attempts at making a hype out of something that won't even exist?

Sure, one could argue that damage/range/accuracy enhancers might, as a side effect make for a more eco weapon, provided market value allows it and depending on the magnitude of the benefits of using those enhancers. Still, I am skeptical that is going to be the case, and is certainly not what I was expecting when I read that announcement.

I for one was enthusiastic, above all else at the prospect of perhaps being able to make my weapon more economical, should the market value on those eco enhancers allow. Unfortunately I did not expect them not to exist at all when they were clearly announced! Silly, silly me...

Enhancement chips manufacturing is a new branch in the crafting system. To create the actual enhancement chips, you need blueprints as well as ingredients. Using them, you can create the chips that you can use yourself or sell on to others.

And this part of the announcement brings me to the next surprise: have any of you looked at the BP book, and the levels of the BPs? Some basic tier one enhancers are a level 6 BP, which will mean their prices aren't going to make them widely accesible. Strangely, when I saw that there would be 10 tiers, and enhancers would be crafted, I for some very odd and unexplainable reason (I heard it's called "common sense") thought that tier 1 enhancers would be lvl 1 BPs, tier 2 enhancers would be lvl 2 BPs, and so on. Silly, silly me... again!

This addition to Planet Calypso will expand the usability of items, making them better and more dynamic than before, making it an easy system even for beginners. It also introduces a high level game to improve the best items to even higher levels, making the enhancement system something for both newcomers as well as veterans.

Well, I think we all know why this last part dismisses any comments. But apart from the obvious, I'd like to point out the bolded part. The whole process of: looting ingredients to manufacture enhancer components, to manufacture enhancers, that can only be used upon a chance-based upgrade process that requires more ingredients and has a chance to fail is anything but an easy system!

And that's not counting the insane cost to get an UL item to Tier 1 (hell, even an Opalo needs ingredients with the TT value of 10 Opalos)! I dread to imagine what the ingredients for the next tiers will be.

Also, have any of you read the in-game description of enhancers? It states that the stack of each enhancer attached randomly decreases upon the use of the item. I guess they mean it is not random as in ammount, but as in random chance for the stack to deteriorate. Which isn't good anyway.

I am one of those who likes to know exactly how much I'm spending on a hunt/mining trip beforehand, and using enhancers will make that just an estimate, because it randomly deteriorates.

It is very sad to see EU is shifting more and more towards randomly-based systems. I can only hope the chances of success on tier upgrading is somehow connected to skills and that the gambling control agency decides to take another peek at EU, soon, to maybe put MA back on track and rework this stupid random enhancer stack deterioration system.

Well, that's what I saw and think about this whole enhancer system. Tried to look past the UL upgrade madness and only found more disppointment.

Just a heads up, that there's a lot more to be unhappy about.

Discuss.

 

[SuperKanjo]

We don't know about the enhancher bp's(L) that might be discovered

 

[Kal]

And that's not counting the insane cost to get an UL item to Tier 1 (hell, even an Opalo needs ingredients with the TT value of 10 Opalos)! I dread to imagine what the ingredients for the next tiers will be.

This is incredibly disturbing. I had still at least entertained hopes of upgrading an Opalo (probably not the SGA edition I had to buy) but this pretty much destroys those hopes.

If even the lowly Opalo costs that much (+ MU!) to upgrade to tier 1 then this system truly is utterly worthless and an epic fail of grand proportions.

 

[Miles]

Rush to Judgment

Some time please.

This rush to judgment is ill suited to understanding a complex system that involves every aspect of the game. It will take some time to see what the effect of different enhancements are, where the true values lie.

There are many possible ways this can be used, and one is not at all, so there is no rush. This is the very beginning of a new system. There are always snags, there are always bugs, there are always people freakin' out.

Now is not the time to pass judgment, now is the time to discover, test, and learn. There are a wide variety of possible implications, and it will take some time to see how things work out.

If we already knew everything about tiers and enhancers, complete with a manual, and every possibility and effect they would have, and all of the economic implications, after just one day - that would be an "epic" fail.



Miles

 

[Kal]

It's not a rush to judgment. What we allready know about tiers looks pretty grim, given MA's history it's extremely likely that the enhancers themselves will be par for the course.

 

[Commodore]

Some time please.

Yeah, what about BP book.... #2!

What about maybe, god forbid, MA/FPC thought what it would mean if they made a new system that could be crafted by noobs, using items that would fall out of snables arses and cost nothing to do.....







....Oh yeah of course, every mofo would have a level 10 opalo and it'd all be a frakin waste of time!

This is going to be like textures for guns, etc. The diversity is impressive, note that I say diversity. Just as you don't see people walking around in spider or longtooth skin textured clothes, your not likely to see many tier 10 uber guns, blah blah blah. Diversity is about randomizing the general order of things so that more thought is required to achieve the best setup - it's not about slapping +10 onto everything.

This is a really exciting development, and I'm really impressed that it's happened so fast since VU 10 came out. This is showing us that they're serious about development and the talk of CryEngine dev wasn't an excuse for lack of new functionality.

 

[John Silver]

hmm and about the accuracy i thought that had to do with your own aiming so we going to miss more now and need chips to fix it ?

 

[Huskie]

Lol, gotta love it how some people feel the need to extrapolate things to ridiculous extents and put words on other's mouths to try and make their own statements more credible.

I never said achieving maximum tier should be extremely cheap, quick and easy. It just seemed bloody obvious and more balanced by far if the lvl of the enhancer's BP corresponded to the tier it fits in.

Like with skills, I also thought the first 2 or 3 tiers would be easily achievable with the difficulty in time and investment needed getting steeper with each new tier, not that unlocking the first one already would be an effing triplet childbirth! (Cost-wise, because at least it seems getting the item progress to unlock tiers is relatively fast)!

And all of this for an upgrade we can't even know reliably how long will last. Neither do we know by how much it is improved yet, which makes it even less attractive to risk.

Not to mention the missing upgrades. If it does happen, like suggested that eco enhancers do exist but will come from (L) BPs it will just have beat it's own purpose right there, because past experience from market behaviour suggests they'll already be priced much higher than the others, rendering them absolutely useless due to markup.

 

[Miles]

Questions

To me it is the questions that are most interesting.

How hot could a tier ten Opalo be? What would it be worth?0

What about a real set of "Mod" Pixie? How many resources would be needed and consumed to make one?

I expect they will be pretty sweet - but hard to create - valuable. And they could be created by a new player it, building in value as they skill up. It will certainly take time.

Will the second item be consumed, but the TT value of the item be increased?

Or, will more UL items drop to spur tiering?

Will items gain more value in use than in storage?

What are extra-nice markup stackables?

Crafters need skills, BP's, and Materials. Experiments must be carried out by hunters and miners - by us - to see what works best. We discovered it - whatever 'it' is. We're the ones learning how to use it. We will determine what it is all worth. The Traders and AH will see to that.

All is as it should be (which is not the same thing as perfect).



Miles

 

[SteveAzrael]

Something else that seems to be an issue here to me:

OK, Let's assume what Mindark are saying is broadly true and it will be possible to significantly enhance the efficiency of hunting by using the enhancers.... OK, well that would mean that thousands of mid-level players who are doing OK at the moment will do better, possibly enough to break-even or even profit. MA clearly can't allow that to happen at their expense, so they'll have to decrease loots in order to rebalance the system back to where it was, so......

If you're a noob you're F&!£ed cause the enhancers add to items based on %age, so their effects on weaker equipment will far too weak to justify their costs so you're faced with enhancers you can't use and loots that're dropped

If you're uber you're F&!£ed cause you're using almost entirely UL equipment and will wind up having to risk hundreds of thousands of ped upgrading your items just to get back to where you were

If you're mid-level, you're gonna have to spent a load of cash on enhancers just to get back to where you were before all this started.

 

[billairboy]

Something else that seems to be an issue here to me:

OK, Let's assume what Mindark are saying is broadly true and it will be possible to significantly enhance the efficiency of hunting by using the enhancers.... OK, well that would mean that thousands of mid-level players who are doing OK at the moment will do better, possibly enough to break-even or even profit. MA clearly can't allow that to happen at their expense, so they'll have to decrease loots in order to rebalance the system back to where it was, so......

If you're a noob you're F&!£ed cause the enhancers add to items based on %age, so their effects on weaker equipment will far too weak to justify their costs so you're faced with enhancers you can't use and loots that're dropped

If you're uber you're F&!£ed cause you're using almost entirely UL equipment and will wind up having to risk hundreds of thousands of ped upgrading your items just to get back to where you were

If you're mid-level, you're gonna have to spent a load of cash on enhancers just to get back to where you were before all this started.

In the end, the markup on the enhancer will deside everything, will it be worth the money?
MA can make the enhancer more effective then ordinary damage/pec and still "win". Most weapon have a damage/pec of 2,7-3,0 i think? So lets say the enhancers is made to give an extra 5 damage/pec tt value of the enhancer. Do they loose on this? Probably not, because the enhancers most be crafted. So what they "loose" in the hunting they can gain in an increase in the need to craft and to craft you need oreds/enmatters where they can take a bit more. So from MA:s points of view is a diffrent if the damage comes from items bought/repair at terminals or from stuff crafted. Crafted could be allowed do be more effective without cause any "loos" for MA.

 

[Witte]

In the end, the markup on the enhancer will deside everything, will it be worth the money?

It normally is the other way around. The usefulness will decide the markup.

I think that once the dust is settled, everyone will use the enhancers at some point and life goes on as it was. Some enhancers may be crap, others may be nice, just like with all other stuff in EU. If people will not use them I am sure MA will "rebalance" them, although I doubt it will happen.

 

[billairboy]

It normally is the other way around. The usefulness will decide the markup.

I think that once the dust is settled, everyone will use the enhancers at some point and life goes on as it was. Some enhancers may be crap, others may be nice, just like with all other stuff in EU. If people will not use them I am sure MA will "rebalance" them, although I doubt it will happen.

yes, you are right, the usefulness decide the markup but sometimes i wonder if it work like that way in this game
I think MA have a markup price they will "target" and try to balance it to reach that point.

 

[Huskie]

Another worrying fact: just read on Auktuma's thread on the discovery of a certain enhancer, that said enhancer also increases the decay by the same amount as the benefit it grants. Sure that was just one type of enhancer, but I don't suppose MA would make only that one type of enhancer also increase the item's decay.

This not only makes enhancers unreasonably more expensive:

(cost to craft/buy + added decay) / unknown amount of uses = something worse than before

It also completely nullifies the possibility of enhancers making the item more eco, with the markup on them being low enough to have the benefits granted overcome the market value (provided an average number of uses is set, if possible).

Enhancers just lost that one last bit of hope I had on them, when I saw that.

 

[raybrad]

Another worrying fact: just read on Auktuma's thread on the discovery of a certain enhancer, that said enhancer also increases the decay by the same amount as the benefit it grants. Sure that was just one type of enhancer, but I don't suppose MA would make only that one type of enhancer also increase the item's decay.

This not only makes enhancers unreasonably more expensive:

(cost to craft/buy + added decay) / unknown amount of uses = something worse than before

It also completely nullifies the possibility of enhancers making the item more eco, with the markup on them being low enough to have the benefits granted overcome the market value (provided an average number of uses is set, if possible).

Enhancers just lost that one last bit of hope I had on them, when I saw that.

someone in MA is really stupid or they think we are, is the only logic conclussion, unless this is being all revised and the whole tier system fixed soon

 

[Cuga]

Simple PED sink. Why do you people even think this might be worth anything?

 

[njburges]

Hmmm

Lets consider maybe (loot) proprtionate to (amount enhanced)... Amps on mining finders have this effect. If (loot) is proprtionate to (amount enhanced) then balance accures for MA.. basically you get what you put in..

I just started back playing and I strugle with understanding this teir system. I bought the enhancer (dmg) tier 1 for my taurus. I cant even get the thing to go on..go figure.

But like mining amps I think I will wait till the sun breaks through the clouds before I start looking around for a profit..