Grinding Evolved: The Impact of Missions on Hunting Loot

Hello Everyone!

It's been a while since I posted a discussion blog - and for that I'm sorry. However, as I pointed out in my last post, I feel it's important that I make sure the quality of these posts up to the standards that I have set, and I really wasn't satisfied with the post I had prepared for last weekend - so that post is going to be aired next week. Instead, I have taken a lot of time with this next post, and I think it's something that everyone is talking about.

Loot. 

Yes, I said it - and it's a word that I almost never mention on this blog, because....well, we can't really control it. 

I have traditionally taken the stance of "the more players we get in the game, the better our loot will be", but last weekend while I was on world, something hit me, and made me stop and look around. The thought that struck me was:|

"I see a lot of yellow jump suits".

And as excited as I was... this disturbed me a little bit - because, from what I can tell, our numbers are beginning to climb. MindArk has been making a stronger and stronger advertising push. Other societies like this one have been straining harder and harder to keep people in the game... and I do believe that it's working. However, there is one thing that hasn't changed: loot.

Why are our numbers coming up, but our loot is just as bad as ever? 

To discover the answer, I went back to half moon bay, and I started to do the missions there. I was a player before those missions existed, and as a result I never did them. After all, when those missions were released, I wasn't really a newbie anymore. But, I figured that if I was going to get to the bottom of this, I should start at the top - so I pretended I was a brand new colonist for a few days. After grinding away at some of the missions (and falling asleep at my keyboard twice in the process) I think I found the answer: our new player experience costs a ton of money, and that cost is being passed on to the players through reduced loot.

Let me expand on this a bit.

In a traditional sense, the way to get "loot" in Entropia Universe is to hunt, or to mine. Those two activities result in loot being obtained, and those two things are what players use to acquire raw materials, which crafters use to make their goods. With that in mind, hunting and mining can both be said to serve one central purpose, which is to exchange your PED (through ammo usage and decay) for raw materials. Those raw materials can either be sold back to the Trade Terminal (for their "TT" value) or to crafters for their "TT" value plus a little bit of markup (or "MU"). Those crafters then in turn use those materials to make a good such as clothing or weponry, which is sold to the players for "TT" value plus a MU that covers the cost of their matierals, plus a little extra for their efforts.

When selling to TT in an ideal world (and in the Universe that existed a few years ago) you should get about a 90% return on your investment. This means that in order for the "bottom level" (Which we would consider to be hunters and miners) to make a profit from their goods (or at least break even) when selling to a crafter, they would have to sell with a 10% MU or better.

...

If we stop right there, any experienced player can see that math and say "110% on most things that come from a mob or from the ground is way too high" - and they would be right. Even in the world a few years ago, where hunters and miners had to turn a 10% MU or better to make a profit, life was hard. However, it was not impossible and this was due in part to other functions of the game, such as globals. If a miner hit a few globals or one Hall of Fame claim in a run, they could sell their goods for 2% markup and still turn a profit... which sounds a little more reasonable to the experienced player.

That was the way the world was for a long time, and most players were okay with it. Hunters and miners played for entertainment and skilling, while striving to break even and have their in-game activities pay for themselves. Meanwhile, crafters in the world were going into business for themselves, buying off of their hunters and miners for a little Markup, competing against one another, and slowly turning a profit by selling clothes and guns in the game. MindArk, in turn, did a good job of keeping this market booming with events such as fashion shows, the boxing tournaments, and new PVP areas. These things kept the markup on "top level" products high, which kept money in the crafter's pockets, and then worked its way down to the hunters and the miners.

What I have just listed above is a balanced economy of consumers and providers. It worked.
So what changed?

Let's go back to my journey to half moon bay for a moment. I got there, and was immediately charged with killing some mobs. To do this, I was given a gun and some ammo. Okay. I did the mission, and was rewarded with a few pec in anatomy skills. Okay.

I took a few days and stepped through several missions. As I did this, I noticed something important - the missions paid for themselves and even then some on occasion. I was consistently breaking even or actually turning a very small profit doing the newbie missions - and this theme didn't quit.

I ventured forth and experienced several missions. I went into the gauntlet and got an s10. I collected a piece of CDF Scout armor in the newbie missions, received weapons, ammo, and skills. I even discovered that on Monria I can do a mission daily and receive 75 pec of engineering skill on its completion... every single day.

 So what does all of that mean?  

What it means is that loot may not have gotten worse after all. There might just be a new way we have to go about getting to our 90%. 

With all of these new missions in place, the money that's being shelled out to ensure that new players get the best experience possible must be astounding. With that said, there's only one logical place that this money is being siphoned from - the money set aside for our loot.

Which sounds like it sucks, doesn't it?

....okay, yeah. It sucks. I can't wrap that in anything kind, or easy-to-say. It sucks.

But there is something to be done about it. 

Always be on a mission. 

As vet players, we have to evolve a little bit and recognize that MindArk's idea of a solid new player experience is missions - and who can blame them? Questing is part of what made the MMO such a famous genre and part of what has defined it for years. It's only logical that they would want to align Entropia more closely with modern MMOs and make it more recognizable to the everyday MMO player. I see the logic behind that - but what it means for us is that we have to change the way we hunt.

Instead of hunting a specific mob... hunt what's mission-related for you. If you have an iron mission for 5,000 Kerberos.... you're hunting Kerbs. 1,000 Atrox? Then you are now officially doing your part to reduce the Atrox population, because at the end of that you're going to get a mission token or a reward - and now that gets factored into your loot. It may not (and probably won't) get you all the way back to your 90% mark, but doing things this way might help make up just enough of a difference to make the game a whole lot less frustrating.

And, hey - every extra PED you keep is an extra PED in the economy... so by all us being as eco as we can (not just in our decay but also in our hunting and mining methods) we can keep some money in the game and help do our part in bringing down the overall cost to play.

So there you have it. The moral of this post is pretty simple: us vets need to evolve. This is MindArk's universe and if we want to succeed in it, we need to play by their rules. Hunters and Miners out there... pick up a mission and run it. Work your data sheets around the missions and change your approach. it might just help you pick up another 10% on your returns. 

I hope this has been insightful for everyone out there. Next week... we're going to continue this stream of thought. I have been running a lot of numbers on world to help develop some new ways for those people in game to maintain their profitability and keep their return numbers as high as possible - and I think that one of the places we have room to improve in is in the decay we experience passively... such as in armor, vehicles, and clothes. 

That's it for this week. Good Luck Out There,
-Faucon