Want to Improve Hunting Loot? Fix Crafting

[JohnCapital]

Sometimes the truth is so simple it's either invisible, or hurts too much to admit it.

So many folks complain about bad hunting (or mining) loot, but almost no one is complaining about the real problem. We speak about average TT returns, improving eco, etc. etc. blah, blah....

But here's a plain simple truth: No one would care if TT returns were a steady 50% return, if all loot sold for over 200% MU. But why would that happen? Let's explore the truth about hunting loot.

Note: For this, we will discuss only stackable hunting loot, not items. While items are nice, the true weakness in loot is the market for stackables.

We want to sell our stackable hunting loot. So who are our customers? Other hunters? No. Miners? No. Only crafters want our hides, wools, oils, etc. They are our only source. If no crafters buys certain stackables, even resellers would avoid them. No crafter buys they don't want, and they only want things they can use. That means they only want the materials needed to click their blueprints.

So what blueprints are they clicking, and more importantly, why?

There's only 5 reasons to craft:

1. Make/loot items to sell
2. Loot other blueprints
3. Increase crafting skills
4. Try to make more TT than you spend
5. To burn away materials

However, let's look closer at this list. Reasons #2 & 3 are precursors to reason #1. There's no reason to loot other BPs if you can't profit with them, either by selling what they make or selling the BP itself. But if no other crafter thinks they can profit from them, and no one wants what the BP makes, your market dies and you quickly no longer want to loot that BP. There's no reason to increase crafting skills if you can't profit with them either by crafting BPs more efficiently, or selling the skills. However, if no one wants what you can make, and no one wants your skills, your market dies.

Reason #4 dies quickly, based on every single long term test ever publicly done.

Reason #5 is another short term reason. One that does not account for enough clicked materials over the long run.

So in the end, the only reason crafters are willing to buy your stackable loot and click it away is: Make/loot items to sell.

It doesn't really matter what these items are, so long as they fit one criteria: Players are willing to buy them. Clothes, enhancers, amps, guns, armor, tents, etc., etc. Where demand lay, clicks will follow and by extension, so will the loot you wish to sell.

So let's look at a lot of the currently looted stackables and see if they are used to make items that might sell.

• Oils: Lots of uses and often leading to wanted items. However, they're also high qty. so MU stays low.
• Hides/Wools: Mostly clothing. Very low demand these days for various reasons. (In short: Too much supply, poor/old selection, too expensive) a few armors requiring hides were tried, but didn't sell.
• Extractors: Only make textures for clothing, vehicles, etc. And each extractor is used for only a very small # of specific textures. Only interest in vehicles are keeping these items even semi-wanted.
• Skins: See extractors.
• Paint: Painting/texturing is a sub-sect of crafting. Generally relies on colorable items made, such as clothing, vehicles. One(two?) colorable lootable armors have been tried, but the market for those are lacking.
• Makeup: Most folks would rather loot ammo.
• Components: Basic/advanced/enhanced sensors, processors, memories, etc. Each are used for only a handful of specific BPs. Often only 4 or 5 and out of those, most the items aren't wanted. So each of those rely on one BP that may only need 5 or 10 per click.
• Alien/robot parts: See components

And we begin to see a pattern to the true problem. Most hunting stackables are only useful for a small # of BPs. And of those, often only one is worth clicking a lot.

Lack of useful items to craft -> lack of reasons to buy something -> low MU -> poor overall returns -> complaints -> unhappy customers

Make more BPs using the items already ingame in fun, exciting ways. Yes (L) items are fine if customers can justify buying them. (Read: What benefit?)

Want to improve hunting (and mining)? Increase demand in crafted items and make those items use what's already looted.

 

[Hijacker27]

Making all those components in the component books actually useful would help a TON as well.

 

[Kim|MindArk]

Thank you for this excellent post and I agree with the statements you make. I've been thinking about ways to attack these issues for quiet some time now and hopefully we will have time to get serious about it after the summer.

 

[hoolioz]

Judging by the Normandie Interview, Kim is on our side on this issue and loot table is going to change sooner or later.
The thing is, it looks like he is the only guy there, enthusiastic enough to start working on new table.. I imagine it`s a hell of a work with loads of data to get to better working loot market.

Lets hope the stagnation is going to end.

 

[Cerberus]

I imagine it`s a hell of a work with loads of data to get to better working loot market.

1) Remove muscle oil from general loot, put ammo instead
2) Pick six mobs at random that drop muscle oil
3) Repeat ad infinitum

or

1) Make a new item with ok stats
2) Pick 1-2 useless components and 2-3 useless loots to be in the recipe
3) Repeat ad infinitum.

The worst that could happen is that the entire lootsystem gets completely boned for a week, and that's usually what happens when MA introduces new drops. We're used to it.

 

[ZAN ZAN]

Its good to know, that someone is finally looking into why so many people have abandoned hunting over the years, with all the current consequences.

Thank you for this excellent post and I agree with the statements you make. I've been thinking about ways to attack these issues for quiet some time now and hopefully we will have time to get serious about it after the summer.

 

[Ionar]

But here's a plain simple truth: No one would care if TT returns were a steady 50% return, if all loot sold for over 200% MU.

That only holds true if the hunting equipment (weapons, armor, faps) doesn't allso have the 200% MU... An unlikley story IMHO

Other than that, great post and I totaly agrea.

Making all those components in the component books actually useful would help a TON as well.

This.
I can't understand why so many components have been aloved to exist for so long without any use for them what so ever.

It gives me some hope though to see that Kim seems to be not only aware of the problem but allso willing to try and do something about it

 

[Futurama]

A serious problem is that most of the BPs (not sure about Arkadia bps, talking about calypso atm) for items are totally shitty. There are countless weapons that are never made or sold max a few of them a week only because it could be used as a starter pk weapon for example. Armours are even worse - at the moment I can't think of any armour that is actually crafted in decent amounts lately (again talking about calypso, other planets could be better).

Why? Well, just look at some mob hunting statistics - It's the huge supply of stuff like hl8, hl11 etc. People grinding 2k hp (or more in case of big scips) mobs non-stop... Many years ago the ped cycle used to be A LOT lower, so there was more markup. Same goes for mining as well - huge turnovers, last big mining update has crashed almost all materials (besides few mass production ones which remain at 120-130%). So who will buy hl8, hl11 or whatever at 150-200% if you can get an apis for 120%?

There is just too many items in the loot, too much turnover, too much dps if you ask me...

 

[dr3w]

There is just too many items in the loot, too much turnover, too much dps if you ask me...

Too much investors, too much resellers, too much players... oh wait (running in the bushes)

 

[dr3w]

Seriously, I can't see there any other scenario like "someone sux, someone wins". All that system is balanced currently, it's like...

When you have morning erection, for example, your whole blanket go up. Last "morning erection" was in last summer, called "Spaaaaace". When a lot of good guys bought quads for 3k+, etc. When there was some insane clickage in craft, when 90% of ores/enmatt was in range 125%-150%. As soon, as there is fresh, massive content - it happens.

 

[remontoire]

Regarding components - I think a recourse to having more of components used would be to make sure more of weapons using these could be made. This would mean more of hansidian and angel scales dropping (or being for sale for tokens or something). The drastic reduction in the drops that came with beacons is really messing things up. Beacon drops should be in addition to SOOTO, or there must be an additional source for hansidian and angel scales, otherwise Geotrek crafting and Omegaton melee weapons crafting are pretty much dead.

You need to make miners happy here to make crafters happy to make hunters happy.

 

[Lucky_A]

Excelent post OP +rep

Crafting is the engine driving the EU economy, yet was the most ignored part of EU in the last years imho. Too many items in EU - and more & more flowing in via PPs lately, devs with no real understanding of EU and/or crafting system (see NI), CLD system blocking huge amounts of PED in people pockets ... and many many other aspects impacted this profession lately...

Hope Kim and any other devs will look into it soon ... what's the point in adding countless mobs and items in the database if those loose their economic sense once the novelty runs out ? Address the root issues - build up a sustainable crafting system and that will automatically solve many headaches in hunting and mining - my 2c

... and for goodness sake, make at last a clear split of what's planet/PP specific and what's generic loot in terms of all items (BPs included)

 

[ZAN ZAN]

"Drastic reduction" is a drastic understatement. Complete removal from sooto drops is more precise

Regarding components - I think a recourse to having more of components used would be to make sure more of weapons using these could be made. This would mean more of hansidian and angel scales dropping (or being for sale for tokens or something). The drastic reduction in the drops that came with beacons is really messing things up. Beacon drops should be in addition to SOOTO, or there must be an additional source for hansidian and angel scales, otherwise Geotrek crafting and Omegaton melee weapons crafting are pretty much dead.

You need to make miners happy here to make crafters happy to make hunters happy.

 

[Oleg]

Thank you for this excellent post and I agree with the statements you make. I've been thinking about ways to attack these issues for quiet some time now and hopefully we will have time to get serious about it after the summer.

So why on earth did you introduce about 10 new robot components to drop in beacons? If anything we should have fewer resource types, e.g. by consolidating extractor types, not more.

1) Remove muscle oil from general loot, put ammo instead
2) Pick six mobs at random that drop muscle oil
3) Repeat ad infinitum

Simply moving the loot around by changing the loot tables in this way does not address the problem. All it does is piss off those of us who pay attention to, and make records of, our loot. There has already been one very substantial change in Calypso loot tables at the end of 2011, which was extremely annoying and which (as per my point above) made almost no difference to markups other than some minor changes in paint and extractor values.

 

[Futurama]

Too much investors, too much resellers, too much players... oh wait (running in the bushes)

I know, I know, Entropia needs more players, more ped deposited, more ped cycled. It's just the RCE model... In regular MMOs yo create money out of thin air, so the demand for stuff is endless really, but here - it's not.

I'm just being selfish and saying that for me it would be better that people cycle less ped on average and have higher markups.

 

[Cail]

That only holds true if the hunting equipment (weapons, armor, faps) doesn't allso have the 200% MU... An unlikley story IMHO

Just make the end product have higher TT, residue cost will balance it down.

 

[remontoire]

Just make the end product have higher TT, residue cost will balance it down.

If all guns cost 2000 ped to buy, then even if these lasted for a long time, there would not be many buyers.

 

[Sloan]

dont let mega claims /loots crash the market.
make it 40kped gazzu 60k normal tt peds on 100k hofs.
same for hunting.
so people with less good return might get a few extra peds

 

[Cerberus]

Simply moving the loot around by changing the loot tables in this way does not address the problem. All it does is piss off those of us who pay attention to, and make records of, our loot. There has already been one very substantial change in Calypso loot tables at the end of 2011, which was extremely annoying and which (as per my point above) made almost no difference to markups other than some minor changes in paint and extractor values.

It's not moving loot around, it's abolishing the word generic from the current generic loot. It's not a coincidence that stackables that are unique to a few mobs are also the ones with highest markup.

 

[Cail]

If all guns cost 2000 ped to buy, then even if these lasted for a long time, there would not be many buyers.

There is already a wide range of weapons with low TT and affordable MU, i was refering more onto upcoming weapons, of course, you don't have to make them ALL with high TT, that's just one way to combat end product having lower MU, even though components would have 200% on them.

 

[slasha]

dont let mega claims /loots crash the market.
make it 40kped gazzu 60k normal tt peds on 100k hofs.
same for hunting.
so people with less good return might get a few extra peds

thats a good idea . or more item drops in mining to soak up some of that TT .

 

[Oleg]

It's not moving loot around, it's abolishing the word generic from the current generic loot. It's not a coincidence that stackables that are unique to a few mobs are also the ones with highest markup.

Unless you're also going to substantially reduce the total amount looted, you're still just moving things around, and it will have no significant effect on the markup. If, on the other hand, you do reduce the total amount, then the amount of other items will have to increase to fill the gap, which is going to reduce markup on those, so the whole thing is counterproductive.

The distribution of the loot itself is not the problem.

 

[dr3w]

dont let mega claims /loots crash the market.make it 40kped gazzu 60k normal tt peds on 100k hofs.same for hunting.so people with less good return might get a few extra peds

Seems like you don't know, that "drilling" 100k tower will take 100k/5k (avg batch in 24h) = 20 days. Happy "crashing" with 5k ores daily.
Seems like you don't know, what happening before/after getting those "mega" claims.
Seems like you don't understand importance of MU, in other case you would not propose divide "mega" claim to 40k of MU-stuff with 60k of "normal" TT-shit.

 

[SpikeBlack]

If all guns cost 2000 ped to buy, then even if these lasted for a long time, there would not be many buyers.

more than 4x maximum deposit for a newbie and anyone not using an EU authenticated credit card.


If the high cost crafted L weapons and armors had a smaller tt but decayed at the same rate atleast they'd be easier to buy for the players on a smaller budget. You'd just need to buy more of them.

 

[das]

Thank you for this excellent post and I agree with the statements you make. I've been thinking about ways to attack these issues for quiet some time now and hopefully we will have time to get serious about it after the summer.

That reminds me of someone playing with martial droprates to keep the mu up & make UL armors competitive..
Have you ever checked up what happened to those mu's?

 

[jetsina]

Very good thread!!!
We all know that basically, players in total must make a loss to feed MA and PPs.

If great gameplay can be provided within that context, then a lot of players would continue depositing on and on in slow but steady amounts.

Other players, however, have particular aims, such as hoping for an ath, being skilled enough to play at break-even at some point, or even to start profiting.

MA needs lots of active players, so it must also encourage these types. This is why things are set up so that players can get a boost to the tt loss through mu gain. There must be an advantage to buying items with mu, either to improve gameplay for the 'happy regular depositors', or for the other category in some way.

I wonder if an 'ath improvement enhancer' would have good mu. It would, at least, be a clear sign of having ath hopefuls being active. Ok, I guess these are called mining amps, but I don't see anything in hunting that is clearly labelled!!!

Other mu can be justified if the additional cost helps advancement. It is then people investing in raising their avatar to the switching point from loss to profit.

Welding wire is at about 200% and lots of people are happy to just repair motherships with it!
It is clear that this type of mu spending is for skill gains, either for happier gameplay (being better defenders in the future) or as a crafting skill investment for better returns.

However, through time, more people skill up, and MA does need to keep the tipping point balanced somewhere. It does unfortunately, almost automatically increase the divide between nuber and uber! BUT, MA mustn't worsen a noob's position too much - it is better to have masses spending small amounts, but with enough time to discover the universe's variety.

This does not mean that new players should get masses of stuff with mu in theory (blazers etc), that just annoy them in practice. MA should be flattening the loot multipliers on low mobs, maybe reducing skill gains a bit, and increasing tt return a bit even.

And yes, the drops need to be made more mob-specific so that new players will want to advance to them for all the reasons at the top of my post!
And yes, the crafting chains need to be redone as a priority, so that useful stuff can and will be crafted at mu and the mats bought at mu too!

Hope the reading was ok - I wanted to write most of that for some time lol

Edit: oh, new players should also have the opportunity to 'work' (i.e. spend time) on gaining useful materials which other players want, but don't want to waste time on, or can't get enough of themselves (e.g. sweat and tokens). I find it VERY good that the amount of tokens a new player can get (non-repeatable missions) is limited. I'm not so sure about being able to get 5 tokens in under 15 mins off 15 feffs, though. If the demand for tokens can be kept very high, then fine!
In a sense, the token system avoids the crafting system, as the sales reps are like high-grade purchasing machines. There thus also needs to be a balance between what is available from them and from crafting in the long term!

 

[JohnCapital]

It seems some folks missed the point I was trying to make so here's the short version:

Hunting loot only has MU based on its usefulness in crafting. Any truly useful long-term improvement must be based on that fact.

To everyone else, thanks for your input and feedback. Perhaps I'LL reply to specific posts later. Gotta head to work.

Happy hoffing.

 

[jetsina]

> Hunting loot only has MU based on its usefulness in crafting.

The non-items, yes. (Looting a gun or an ESI etc is useful for mu itself if it has direct market mu!)
Also, explosives are not used in crafting afaik , but are desired by some players at a small mu!

I didn't mean to go off-topic, just expand a little on what mu 'does', or is justified by.

You are absolutley right that the usefulness in crafting is almost 100% the bottom line though, and crafting must be made to reflect that!

 

[Huskie]

1) Remove muscle oil from general loot, put ammo instead
2) Pick six mobs at random that drop muscle oil
3) Repeat ad infinitum

That would actually be terrible. You're suggesting removing a stackable that can be sold for markup, tiny as it may be, that can be got from almost all mobs, just to be replaced with something that is complete TT food, like ammo.

I know that was just an example, but that would be the wrong way to go about it IMO. Don't replace any stackables with ammo, just reduce the amount of different stackables every mob can drop to 10-15 different stackables each AND remove ammo drops completely (other than explosives).

1) Make a new item with ok stats
2) Pick 1-2 useless components and 2-3 useless loots to be in the recipe
3) Repeat ad infinitum.

The worst that could happen is that the entire lootsystem gets completely boned for a week, and that's usually what happens when MA introduces new drops. We're used to it.

This part I do agree with.


And back on-topic: a big problem is also that MA keeps making more and more different stackable types, while leaving a very large portion of the already existant ones remain completely useless. They could easily remove 2/3 of the existing stackable types and it would not have a significant bearing on EU's economy at all. Stop adding new crap, make new BPs use what already exists.

 

[DoubleWolf]

John, you missed the tiering and enhancer products as well, which some use but have died down considerably after the introduction since most unlimited items in the game have been tiered up a few times by this point. Enhancers still get used, but I don't believe the market for them is quite as great in comparison to the amount of the stuff we get in loot.

But I do think the crafting system needs a dramatic overhaul. I always thought having a system with a ~40% chance of creating the item you're crafting seemed silly. In any other game or even the real world, if you are 100% skilled at creating something, your success at creating that thing should also be near 100%.

My thought is to eliminate residue altogether. If the TT value of an item at full condition is 200 ped, then make it require 200 ped worth of resources to click. If you want long term returns to be ~90% TT value, then give a 100% skilled crafter at that item a 90% success rate and you will achieve that over time. Eliminating residue however may make it difficult to hit a big jackpot loot. They would have to come up with some other type of item to throw in, or keep the residue in and make it like looting ammo, or straight up peds like back in the day.

But frankly, I could care less about jackpot loots anyways. I'm not here to gamble and I would much rather have a game where getting ahead meant playing smart and being smart with your money as opposed to hitting a big lucky loot on occasion. Make the big lucky loots about looting rare items, not about giving direct ped value.