But there is a missing link. I want and wish MA to add some sort of guideline on some basic stuff so that newcommers wont get astray. Right now is hard to convince any newbie to grind, unless they depo. And depo big perhaps...
Not gonna happen because every 2-4 years Mindark upsets the entire system by introducing more random system or add-on, some of which players asked for, but most of which is just stuff someone at Mindark wanted to add in to throw everything off from the way it was... so some major newbie guide isn't ever going to happen because it'll be outdated as fast as it is written (I did contemplate writing a book or something many years ago and have a few old emails from Mindark about it, but gave up this idea once I realized this issue)...
Lets look a bit at history....
a guide before the way amps worked would be outdated... (remember a104 on TT guns?)
a guide before L items existed would be outdated...a guide before SIB existed would be outdated...
a guide to crafting before explosives existed in blueprint form would be outdated... (remember getting explosives in loot from hunting?)... (remember when you had to have bp books in inventory when crafting)
a guide to the old taming system was outdated when the new taming system came out...
a guide before Loot 2.0 would be outdated...
The list goes on and on, and will forever... Any time Mindark adjusts something major every guide up to that point becomes invalid... so it is with this real crash economy that we have...
Studying the history of things is interesting, but it does probably put off some potential players when they see how many things change over time...
especially when you start studying all the laziness or just idiotic maneuvers that every big change actually causes due to Mindark not preparing enough for such change.... look at how many events have been altered after they started due to something they didn't foresee... how many estates stopped working when new continents or planets got introduced, sometimes for many months in a row... the list just goes on and on and on... just read the VU notes, all of them, and you'll start seeing the trends...
and yes, big spenders loosing big is where most of the 'great loot' comes from... if folks are tightening their spending it's understandable... also, it's sort of an annual tradition. Some folks just come in to do what they do during Mayhem and that's it... once that's done they leave til next year... or forever... especially if they are getting burned harder and harder every time they come back to test things out...