Question: What's the reason behind...

[sawachika]

Since I know MA would hardly answer such a question, hence I've decided to try it out by asking fellow players instead....or at least just satisfy my curiosity (once again). So thank you very much before I proceed with the questions.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now I've always been wanting to ask why is it that MA have to create certain crafting BPs with the condition that it has at least "1" controllable material in it? And yet some other BPs do not appear to need them? (I know that this fact of needing a control material is true because of a post stated by one of the PPs somewhere in one of the posts that I've read before...just can't remember which one)

But anyway, why is such a condition necessary? Is it due to the possibility that the item itself might be "unbalanced" in some way? So much so that there needs to be some sort of control material to artificially inflate its crafting costs and thereby its MU and hence its eco (for example on weapons)?

And then onto my next question...

Even if that is the case, why is there a need to "artificially" or "forcibly" remove the usage of such crafting BPs? Never to be crafted again and only to be left rotting and gathering cobwebs in a player's BP bookcase (serving as a pretty decoration)...only to have them replaced with brand new BPs that require new additional materials and new "control" materials but serves somewhat the same functions as the old, now obsolete BPs.

Hmmmm....maybe some sort of examples would be in order in case that you don't get what I'm talking about....

For one, we have all those crafting BPs that require Dunkel Plastix as one of its crafting ingredients. And now we have those which requires like Basic Target Assessment Unit and Advanced Target Assessment Unit (which does appear to be heading for the same dead end). Then we also have certain series in the Geotrek weapons family being replaced with other newer ones, like maybe Apis being replaced by stuff like Aves, Whirlwind and Evil. And what about the Loughlin series of melee weapons, the Kesmeks and the Rutics? Will they also be replaced eventually with newer ones?

(I'm sorry if it appears to be all weapon examples, but those are the ones I could state offhand...)

So what's the reason behind doing this then? If the BPs or the items itself is the problem, why can't you just alter it or tweak it so that they become useful or reasonable again? Why do you need to go to the extra lengths of abandoning on them and then create more new items, materials and bps in order to "fix" them (if fixing was the original intention i presume...but is it?)?

Is it to avoid having a backlash from the community if you unnecessarily tweaked or altered the stats or materials needed? Though I highly doubt so since there was the case of you doing a mass replacement of finders and refiners when the mining system was revamped so if it was really necessary, such a deed would not be impossible for you to do.

So why?

 

[RickEngland]

In essence it's because the game evolves, strategy changes, new management come in with new ideas. Players attitudes change, they want different things. New crafted items might not be a success if the old is not removed, but players retain those old BP's, they did skill them after all, and sometimes materials do drop in small quantities to allow rare crafts. Maybe also it's a view into the past.

It would be nice to clean it up at times, but maybe EU management decided it is better to allow things to fade away rather than risk upsetting players by removal of BP's, or maybe it's just a legacy of the past to look back in fondness.

Some like the changes some don't, it's an ever moving beast, where eventually all will be replaced with new, over and over again and provide fresh reasons to hunt craft and mine for those interested.

EU has never stood still.

Rick

 

[mastermesh]

it's called a balancing manager that doesn't know what the hell he's doing... ho hum, let's create new shit this month so that it seems exciting... oh, wait, what you mean we have that same thing with a different name we released 3 years ago... hmm... oh, ok, I guess we can put material for it in the vu coming up in 5 years after taming...

 

[sawachika]

@RickEngland

I truly wished that it were really that simple...but if that were to be the case, then wouldn't there be too many items and stuff created eventually...so much so that the servers become unnecessarily burdened or perhaps the game client getting too huge in filesize and deters people from downloading it?

So hence, my "fantasy" or "conspiracy-centric" mind seems to hint to me that the reasons they're doing this inspite of that may be something else entirely though...

Can't help but quote the vid Mac posted for the dramatic effect...

@mastermesh

If you were to ask me...the balancing manager definitely knows what he's doing imho and he knows fully well the associated implications as well.

But then of course, it might just be my crazy mind running wild.....

Anyway, thanks for the input so far.

So anyone else care to feed me some other logical reasons why this might be happening? (Before I go too far off into "lala" land and can no longer be rescued...)

 

[Mac]

Love dramatic ground hog btw

I don't know what the answer is, but its really annoying to search and find a crafted weapon I would like to use while I'm in a particular skill level range only to find it can no longer be made because some particular material doesn't drop.

 

[sawachika]

@Mac

Yea, I can't really find a sensible answer to it either.

I mean, most of the other MMOs or games that I've come across wouldn't have such a system put in place...but instead would have something where the ingredients you would need to craft low level items would be found from low level monsters while high level items would be found in high level mobs. Furthermore, there would be no reason that anything like a recipe that is found within the game cannot be used to craft the item.

But in our case, this clearly isn't so. Materials we need to craft low level or high level BPs would require hunting and mining materials from all over the place...like there's no order to it or something. What's more, some of the materials would be used in multiple or many BPs while some are totally not used at all.

However I do know that in regular MMOs, there are classifications of rarity though, so much so that recipes to craft "Purple" items (Legendary) would require very rare and costly ingredients while common recipes would require less rare (common) ingredients.....so perhaps MA should code the BPs in such a color system too? So that we would know what BPs are considered "rare" to them and what aren't?

Anyway, from my point of view, what they're doing now is almost like making what used to be a "common" recipe suddenly become a "Purple" recipe via altering the rarity of the materials used to craft the item.

 

[Fifth]

I don't know the answer for "why move to new PB's and leave old ones behind?"... (besides, maybe to give a new generation of crafters a fighting chance?), but as i'm bored @ work (again), i'd add a few loosely related observations.

Comparing Class/Level based games with Sandbox-type Open World games. This is sooo ungrateful work!
The built-in basic principle of free decision requires there's as little "pre-colored item classes" as possible. The players are supposed to make their own classes, and those classes are supposed to change over time. Which sounds all nice and dandy, althou in practice too much freedom is pain in the... something, to manage. For the players and for the balancing managers.

Which is prolly one of the reasons why most of the Brave New Worlds (PP's) are so enthusiastically experimenting with strictly defined mining areas. Need ore X goto area Y - and u get other ores as little as "systemly" possible. Mining made easy, mining like shopping.
Same thing with mob loot tables.
The latest fashion for all PP's seems to be striving towards as little variance as possible. Extreme example was NI with it's "Only hunting loot, no ores"-crafting system. Ya generalizing a little here, there actually was some ores in some BP's, but u get the idea.

I would say that's nothing less than uprising against the "classical" (read: old Calypso) crafting system. The pendulum moves to another extreme, and it's already predictable it starts moving back soon.

 

[Kerham]

I'm ok with balancing, but some of them are silly.

While at dunkel, iirc we have excavator 4 and transformer 4? Karma killer seems ok to require xere, but the whole gloves and lots of other pistols have same problem of "unjustified rare ore for what the item actually is".

Also it was a problem for some geotrek bps, like Lupus, which requires/d a component crafted with hansidian. Srsly? Why?

Or why would old useless items (like the whole pletora of EP guns, protector, guard, vanguard etc.) would still be around? I know them don't drop anymore, but you can place order on auc, so the item still holds a place in database. Why?

I don't know myself the answer. I'd asume the amount of items and connections is so freaking huge that no team has the time/resources to go through it all and clean the debris.

 

[sawachika]

@Fifth

Thanks for your input. But in my opinion, being a sandbox type game doesn't mean that it shouldn't have some order and logic to stuff though.

@Kerham

Yea, I agree with you on that. The balancing of drop rate of stuff might be okay, but the way those stuff are used and needed for crafting isn't....or at least isn't well implemented to make things sensible. Furthermore, those obsolete stuff not being removed from the system makes it such that anyone without ample, up-to-date knowledge of how the ingame stuff are linked and related may be prone to accidentally buy up something that cannot be used.

A tiny example might be someone who just returned to the game and saw maybe lets say an Apis BP up on auction that he thought is cheap now and he can craft the guns and use for himself, might suddenly find that its no longer possible to use it since one of the ingredient just went from uncommon to very rare....or something like that. Or maybe he had paid a pretty penny for the BP in the past before going off on a long vacation, only to return and find that the bp has become relatively useless now.

And if you asked me, the only logical reason I can think of as to why these situations are happening is on the premise that MA has a direct hand in the bigger picture....so much so that they have something to gain from doing this....