FYI: A Player’s Notes Vol. 4 - Crafting 2.0! Explosive BP’s For the Rest of Us!

Stefan 008 Bond

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Stefan 008 Bond
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“What if I told you, despite all the hate, Mindark, is actually on the right track with Explosive Projectile Blueprints??”

Shrapnel in loot, crafting residue to 101%, as well as nanocubes.at TT..

In actuality, these all facilitate one very important thing. Turnover.
Easily accessible and readily available turnover..


Turnover, or “clicks” is what everyone involved ultimately wants. Mindark wants it, player activity is their income source. Deed holders want it for the same reason, Planet Partners NEED it to survive and develop Most importantly, it’s at the heart of what the players crave.. Something to do, and then something to do after that, and so on..

My main focus with all of my notes and ideas concern two major factors. Improving the Economy and Improving the player experience. This particular topic and set of ideas is at the center of both and as such, I feel of most importance.

By now, we know the story: “Explosive Projectile Blueprints have ruined the economy!” More accurately, some say that these bp’s were yet just another nail in the coffin for crafting and in turn the economy. A lot of people have correctly pointed to other factors such as too much good UL gear in game now, Mindark beginning to sell upgrades and gear directly, as well as the player base being spread out across 6 planets and a couple of moons now. Token guns, ELM guns, Vendor Guns. Buffs etc.

All of these concerns are valid, but we can’t go back. So what do we do? I have some thoughts…

Although, Explosive Projectile BP IV gets most of the attention for its 20 ped a click price, it’s huge ATH and HOF board dominance as well as non stop global spam, there is another factor contributing to the runaway success of this series of bps..

Easily accessible, readily available turnover.
I am tempted to think that if I were to guess at what the top 10 or 20 most clicked blueprints all time in game were, almost all of them would fit this criteria. They would have recipes that are both cheap (easily accessible), and low mu% (readily available)

Basic Filters, Standard Dampers, Generic Leather Texture, Basic Screws (1x Iron!), Simple Conductors, even oddball bps such as the lysterium power container remain in popularity because it only uses Lyst and offers a nice way to “burn through” a stack… Crafting, in general, is expensive in the eyes of the average player. It has been shown though, if you give them something easy and cheap they will partake, similarly if you give them a chance to “burn through” a stack they have.. they will. It is, in essence, something to do.

My Ideas to help crafting and the economy have 2 big main points, they can be looked at individually or in tandem for maximum effect.


Crafting and the Overall Economy are both, in simplest terms, all about Supply and Demand.
At the moment, we have issues on both ends. The market is oversaturated with supply and on top of that, nobody wants to click anything. And down and down it goes.. Mindark has made some changes in recent years, introducing shrapnel and cutting stackables in loot quite a bit. It hasn’t really made an impact. There still isn’t any demand, it’s only a stop gap, they raised the dam... Well I want to break the dam down :)

Version Update: Crafting 1.5

All common stackable loot and crafting product will now have a series of “refinement” blueprints similar to the Explosive Projectile Series: Lvl 1 using quantities of only 1-2 pieces, up to a lvl 4 requiring stacks up to 30 ped (see what i did there? ;))

Examples: Refined Eye Oil - Lvl 1 - 1x eye oil, --- lvl, 4 - 600 x eye oil

Polished Lysterium - Lvl 1 - 1x Lyst Ingot --- lvl. 4 100 x Lyst Ingot

Fortified Basic Filters - Lvl 1- 1x Basic Filters --- lvl, 4 - 3,000 x Basic Filters

This is the concept, not to be taken literally. Additionally, it can be implemented in a number of different ways, I’m not here to expand on in depth ideas but will say it could be in the form of just a slew of new bps to loot all the way up to a full blown new sub crafting profession where everyone gets instant access to the lvl 1 versions and can rank up to higher lvls, maybe a factory terminal ;)
None of that is really what is important though, only the core concept, it just highlights some of the fun you could have with it… just bring the bps

Why This Works:

Most importantly, it gives the players more to do, more options and more immediate access to doing something productive with their loot besides selling to tt, stacking in storage or waiting on auctions. It facilitates turnover which is good for everyone

Economically -

It implements a permanent resource drain - high lvl versions offer a big-time mechanism to drain the resource pool. I can go into detail and point to in game auctions where you can clearly see absolutely gigantic stacks from big time players unloading at near tt prices, in turn crushing in game mu% for the rest. It’s not their fault though, they have nothing else to do with it..

It implements a permanent new demand for all common materials, a new player in the market, yourself! In theory, other crafters will have to compete now to pry your loot from you as you now have another productive source of activity with it. This should increase competition and demand = mu%.

I believe this concept is especially crucial for our Planet Partners. There should be absolutely no roadblocks to further cycling their planet’s specialty loots. It can be a real problem on those places as players want to stack this new loot, yet there is no demand and not many uses for it yet, so they stack in storage,but it starts to add up. Psychologically, a lot of players want to do SOMETHING with it, and are caught between a rock and a hard place (your storage value and your ped card). Players on these planets have a variety of reactions none of them good: some just get frustrated and tt all and leave planet, some keep all but leave planet to not further “invest”, and some will stay and undercut what little mu% there is just to get something, anything for their efforts. All of these hurt that planet’s economy..

So, What are these new bps going to do???

Interestingly, initially, it doesn’t even matter lol!
They can literally be useless bps (im not saying they should be tho! Just an interesting thought)

Did I forget to mention that estimated list I made at the top of the post of the most all time clicked bps contain a lot of bps that players always tt the results??

But we don’t really want more useless bps we don’t want to just mindlessly tt results, and this is where my second independent idea comes in...

Version Update: Crafting 2.0

A New Additional Crafting Payout System Mechanic Has Been Introduced!

In an effort to improve the player’s experience through expanded options and enhanced ability for quick turnover for their hard earned loots, all blueprints in the new 2.0 line will feature an altered form of crafting production:

Products from the crafting 2.0 sub-component line will now feature extremely low tt product. In some cases stacks of large numbers valuing less than 1 pec. The rest of the cost of the recipe will be returned to you in the form of residue to facilitate quicker turnover and gameplay. In this way, we can have a fluid economy and yet production is not lost. These new super low tt product can be easily stacked in storage by all players without fear of tying up too much ped.. This will clearly help Planet Partners. These new super low tt product can carry much higher mu% without affecting the end product markup.

Example: Without proposing a strict recipe, because i am neither an experienced crafter nor economist, let’s just say in practice: You do a 100 ped run on Refined Eye Oil, you would receive maybe 1 ped or less of actual product, and the rest, 89-99 peds of your recipe ingredients and residue. This 1 ped or less of product can still be for example, 500-1,000 units of refined eye oil.
Now the player can “burn through” that stack, keep the product and happily move on to next activity by selling the residue.

End Products form the new Crafting 2.0 line will use a variety of the new 2.0 subcomponents in large #s as well as chunks of Nanocubes and Residue. By using readily available and 0% mu items in the recipe we can easily allow that to far outweigh the high mu% player crafted subcomponents. This helps to keep the end product down.

Example: Again not a strict recipe just the notion that a 10 ped click for a new 2.0 weapon would be about 9 peds or more of nanocubes and a variety of the super low tt subcomponents. Residue can be used as normal for tt values of end product. As this post is already extremely long, I will not extrapolate much on this as again I’m not a crafter or economist, this is where i hope some others can chime in! It seems like it could work better than what we have now at least, to me.

I want to highlight, how important this feature could be for Planet Partners. In tandem with crafting 1.5, which allows players easy access to do something with their loot, 2.0 crafting product can be stacked safely at low investment (tt value) ending the frustrations of living on and “investing” in a new planet.

How Do We Make Crafting End Products Relevant Again?

Right, so we still haven’t gotten to the final part, making crafted product attractive again

Thankfully, for the readers who have made it this far, this part is actually quite easy!!

Since Mindark is quite literally “Handing Out Buffs Like Candy” I think the solution here is clear and i want to add a small wrinkle for fun:

All 2.0 End Product Crafted Equipment will have active Buffs. These Buffs will have a small varying range of effect, based on the quality of the craft which is variable and slightly influenced by skill and blueprint quality rating.

Seriously, it is that simple. There are a number of softer buffs that can be freely handed out in small % on weapons, tools, and clothing at this point.. Things like small acceleration boosts, regen boosts, skill boosts all play well here even in small effect.

Taking this a bit further you can even explore some interesting ideas such as Social Buffs.. Weapons that give small buff when hunting in team of same weapons. Taking some small buffs to the clothing as well should not be overlooked, this is how L clothing can work…

Ok.. I think that’s all I got!!! I hope some of you enjoyed the read. As always, feel free to criticise Add and expand on, twist, poke holes in :)


~008
 
Very good suggestions that are worth being considered by the game development company.

In my opinion one should not forget about the most important positive effect of the explosives blueprints: it quite possibly creates the crafting elite of tomorrow. It might close the gap.

Everyone ranting should ask themselves the following questions: what is my highest profession level and what is my highest crafting profession level? Would you work on your skills paying markup?

Cheers,

Perry
 
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With all the excitement about the Loot 2.0 announcement, I thought it would be a good time to bump this post for some more feedback...

While the Loot 2.0 announcement seems to have even the most grisled veterans amongst us at least cautiously optimistic, I think a a lot of the veterans here also know that without added layers of economic demand, the loot payout reshuffling could fall short of the mark.

Sure, removing wave timers and possibly the ammo from loot would be a nice start, but as many have pointed out its still a zero sum gain when looked at from the perspective of you vs the house. This is why we need demand for loot and crafted products/components... endless insatiable demand.

In these players notes, I offer one possible pathway to this type of economy, I am interested to see what everyone thinks and can add in light of this big Loot 2.0 announcement!

008
 
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