Info: MindArk Blog | Proposal for Limited & Unlimited Items

[Bones]

I can list probably 10 reasons that some people might grind, and really that's the sort of thing that should be polled, but here's some ideas:

1. A pet mount

2. An apartment estate at Port Atlantis (seriously, how come these don't exist yet?)

3. An exclusive (L) vehicle (the witches broom was tremendously popular and I've seen peeps offer 1000 ped for one. The UFO still costs about 800, something could be done here for an exclusive, limited run vehicle)

4. Mission chains that reward with really nice, exclusive outfits (many to choose from)

5. Deeds (it could make sense for a high level of activity in a specific location to yield deeds for that location)

6. Land Plot buildings (MA obviously lacks vision with this one, so much potential totally wasted)

7. New profession unlocks

8. Vanity/Status, there's lots of that in this game. Time to overhaul the HoF board and include new categories or even some rankings, such as "completed missions", "Highest HP avatars", "mob kills", "dropped probes", "monthly/yearly turnover"... Entropia Life has some that could inspire this.

9. To unlock new missions or areas (IFN/Smuggler style)

10. To discover new mobs (some fun was had with this a long time ago, there was a contest, etc... Figure out a way to get people grinding for a new mob again).

In the end, this is a game about making money and what people will always grind for is profits, so the more popular ideas above will be ones that people can see as being converted into profits most easily.

There some other ideas which are kinda crazy but that are worth looking at:

1. Being able to buy NPCs. I would love to be able to own an NPCs that hands out missions which I could place in a shop or estate that I own. Land Area owners should be most interested in this sort of thing, but shop owners too if there's a way to coordinate the NPC's purpose with the purpose of the shop.

2. Owning a team instance/raid, something like RDI. It could be done like on Ark and RT, with the "keys" being crafted and sold at a profit, or the instance just having a tax like OLA.

Nice list.

 

[Orion]

Limited​

[...]
The most important and game-changing aspect is related to the loot. Dropping items with less than 50% TT, or even 75%, causes problems, mainly due to the reason above. It results in inventories being filled with "broken" items that will be difficult to both sell and use. If this limitation was removed, it would be possible to increase the number of item drops without increasing the total TT value dropped of each specific item type.

// Jonas, Head of Content

So why does MA drop broken (L) items in loot at all?

Instead of dropping 5 pieces of Gun 123 (L) with 20% TT spread over 5 drops of meaningless size, better drop only one single (L)-item at full 100% TT in a global of reasonable size.

Ta-daah! Problem solved!

1: The total TT value of Gun 123 (L) dropped has not changed at all
2: The item with 100% TT value has a chance in trade or auction
3: MA doesn't need to introduce another weird mechanic
4: I hate globals of pure crapnel
5: I love globals with useful items inside

 

[Andreso]

I like the idea with L weapons but in same time it makes UL less value,
The only think i need is more stable returns, i dont want cyckle 1M peds to get "mine" and the MU and looking for it just leave as it is, looking for it is part of fun.
Also more stable returns would hold more casual players, so they would get more game play for buck

 

[WhiningSkeptic]

I like the idea with L weapons but in same time it makes UL less value,
The only think i need is more stable returns, i dont want cyckle 1M peds to get "mine" and the MU and looking for it just leave as it is, looking for it is part of fun.
Also more stable returns would hold more casual players, so they would get more game play for buck

More stable returns are up to the players. If you don't want to cycle a million, the dont shoot 20 ped mobs. Less variance to accommodate for the lack of patience, discipline and willingness to listen to old players would mean that the hof board would be so boring that people would stop hunting big because there is nothing to hit.

Figure out what you are willing to lose in a month and go from there.

 

[Andreso]

More stable returns are up to the players. If you don't want to cycle a million, the dont shoot 20 ped mobs. Less variance to accommodate for the lack of patience, discipline and willingness to listen to old players would mean that the hof board would be so boring that people would stop hunting big because there is nothing to hit.

Figure out what you are willing to lose in a month and go from there.

More stable returns are up to the players. If you don't want to cycle a million, the dont shoot 20 ped mobs. Less variance to accommodate for the lack of patience, discipline and willingness to listen to old players would mean that the hof board would be so boring that people would stop hunting big because there is nothing to hit.

Figure out what you are willing to lose in a month and go from there.

small mobs, big mobs all is boring, and when you track you returns, hofs are boring too, less variance would keep casual players, i dont think anything more will hold new players, decent returns is base for rest

 

[WhiningSkeptic]

small mobs, big mobs all is boring, and when you track you returns, hofs are boring too, less variance would keep casual players, i dont think anything more will hold new players, decent returns is base for rest

Returns are decent, just that people don't understand them. If you play with an expected loss and regular deposits. If you expect 90% returns and adjust your cycle according to counter that then you will have much more fun. If you want consistent 95% day in and day out, the game is dead.

I had plenty of fun hofs this year and I am a casual player.

 

[Andreso]

Returns are decent, just that people don't understand them. If you play with an expected loss and regular deposits. If you expect 90% returns and adjust your cycle according to counter that then you will have much more fun. If you want consistent 95% day in and day out, the game is dead.

I had plenty of fun hofs this year and I am a casual player.

mayby it would be a good to make planet with more flat returns just for test purpose, that would show if players like that or not

 

[slick27]

mayby it would be a good to make planet with more flat returns just for test purpose, that would show if players like that or not

You really don't want to go down that route mining unamped is pretty much like that and it's very boring. The only perks is occasionally a global after 1k ped cycled and few rare finds.

Also be no mu which means a lot players won't go their unless for skilling, which if your looking for skilling try arret Instance on Cyrene with frontier hunting rifle or adjusted.

On another note they really need to sort out the L weapons bps and in world drops completely outdated to today's 2.0 standards.

You could go further and add some more ul weapons but to get these you need to recycle old ul weapons into parts like the energy amps. This would remove some ul stuff.

 

[Andreso]

You really don't want to go down that route mining unamped is pretty much like that and it's very boring. The only perks is occasionally a global after 1k ped cycled and few rare finds.

thats why it would be good to make new planet/instance with that kind of loot balance, if it dont work, delete it

 

[WhiningSkeptic]

thats why it would be good to make new planet/instance with that kind of loot balance, if it dont work, delete it

Would be a waste of resources.

Tell me exactly what you are going to do on this planet? Walking around with no chance for multies and guaranteed loss.

 

[Andreso]

Walking around with no chance for multies and guaranteed loss

thats what i have right now

 

[slick27]

thats why it would be good to make new planet/instance with that kind of loot balance, if it dont work, delete it

It's expensive to plan build and test new instances let alone a whole planet I'd rather they just sort out the existing planets reduce massively unless stuff and get more focus and movement on stuff people use and materials.

I mean literally it's got that bad now people are making videos of brand new items going to the TT bin after a hof discovery. I totally laughed at it but honestly you think a new instance or planet would fix things when literally rest of game is a mess and unbalanced.

 

[Andreso]

I mean literally it's got that bad now people are making videos of brand new items going to the TT bin after a hof discovery

seen that and it acctually show what hof are worth these days

I totally laughed at it but honestly you think a new instance or planet would fix things when literally rest of game is a mess and unbalanced.

i dont know if that would help and i dont know how much work it is, but just changing iteams is not helping, adding new iteams help just for shor time if they are atractive, so mayby they should try something else

 

[WhiningSkeptic]

thats what i have right now

They could make a hunting simulator.

Go to some town. Pay 50 ped per hour to play in an instance with whatever mob and gear you want. Leave with nothing

 

[Kristoliquid]

After playing for 20 years, yeah, shake it up a little bit.

 

[Rocket192]

UL changes would require dozens/hundreds of weapons be reworked to use more UA and less TT decay.

This also makes melee weapons that do not use UA completely worthless as the cost of usign them with the shrapnel penalty would be massive.

 

[OHYZD]

-

 

[OHYZD]

UL changes would require dozens/hundreds of weapons be reworked to use more UA and less TT decay.

This also makes melee weapons that do not use UA completely worthless as the cost of usign them with the shrapnel penalty would be massive.

I think it's already been mentioned here and it's quite logical. I won't go into it all again (maybe it wasn't just in my head), but it's an important observation.

In general, I don't prefer things with high decay (I'll leave the exact calculations to someone more precise)

 

[Msturlese]

i think this thread already demonstrated that this is a weird solution for a non-existent problem, i will unsubscribe this

 

[WhiningSkeptic]

I think it's already been mentioned here and it's quite logical. I won't go into it all again (maybe it wasn't just in my head), but it's an important observation.

In general, I don't prefer things with high decay (I'll leave the exact calculations to someone more precise)

Yeah it was one of the early concerns in here.

High decay for weapons that use UA means less shrapnel to convert and as such a slightly lower DPP if one goes through the effort of buying it. It also gets annoying when they break mid boss fight.

 

[King Noob]

As a whole I like this idea if for no other reason than it shows MA is at least thinking about the economy. I am currently working on a comprehensive economy overhaul suggestion post that I hope to put up soon so it can be ignored by MA. When it is finished I will edit this post with a link. Regarding this suggestions I would suggest a couple tweaks:

1. Regardless of doomsday naysayers the vast majority of loot is already converted to nanocubes so requiring UL items to use them for repair is not that big of a change for a player other than charging them the lost MU they may have received for otherwise selling said nanocubes on the market or the lost opportunity cost of using them elsewhere. It would however lead to a small reduction in the number of cubes being introduced into the market daily and this is absoultely a good thing from an economic perspective. I think this is a good first step along a long path.
2. The combining of Limited items in order to repair is very interesting. I would strongly urge you to not allow tier rate increases from the combinations though. For the first point: A player who has invested into maintaining a tier 5 limited weapon who suddenly comes across a new weapon with a higher TIR should be forced to ponder the choice of starting over in the process with the new weapon or continuing with the one he/she already has invested in. This is a GAME choice and should not be eliminated. The player who chooses to start over is simply removing yet more resources from a flooded economy and the one who chooses to continue with the "Sunk cost" they have already put in are both doing what they feel is best for them without a really obvious "best choice" this is to be encouraged as game choice is in essence gaming.
3. Maintaining tier level of a limited weapon should cost roughly 1/10th of the component value of raising the same type of weapon to said tier. The effect of this is getting a limited weapon to tier 10 will at first be much cheaper than raising an unlimited counterpart but ultimately be much more expensive (over a longer period) to maintain than an unlimited weapon. This is how you balance the values.