New player industry and its issues

@CCP_Rattati

I will write to you how it is done in other games.

First, you need to distinguish between new players crafting for themselves and then crafting for existing players.

The first one is doable, the second one is not. F2P games that have two types of subscribers - alpha/omega clones - like for example Archeage (they have patrons/non-patrons) failed in trying to make possible crafting between them - because patrons could just make non-patron accounts.

Subscription based games tried to make low level players useful for high level players (like Manor system in Lineage 2), but that didn’t work either. The idea was to make the low level gathering as mundane as possible so it was only rewarding for the low level players. The problem was that in a lack of low level players, which occurrs at some point, it made crafting impossible as no high-level player wanted to do it - this happened in Dofus and also in Archeage with basic trade packs.

Crafting for themselves is possible due to game mechanics that rise the price. Like for example traveling costs. Traveling is a money sink in many games and when you want to buy an item you need to calculate also the cost to travel to the auction house.

Usually games have multiple types of crafted items - permanent ones (like equipment) and items with one time use - consumables. The permanent ones are usually done by dedicated players and the equipment crafting is mostly considered as an end-game PVE content - in F2P games it is usually behind a paywall. But consumables are crafted by everybody - potions, food, antidotes, dyes, … The reason is that you need them constantly and is impractical to travel to get them.

In some games crafting has additional uses like for example repairing or enchanting which requires a crafting skill - you can only repair/enchant an item you are able to craft.

Some games have a mastery system - the crafted item (like a sword) knows who crafted it - and if the equipment is used by that person, it gets additional bonuses.

Some games have daily crafting quests. You craft an arbitrary item for which you need to get resources. For example in Aion Online you first need to get the material from an NPC (a distribution mission) somewhere in the region (on lower levels the NPC is closer to your place) or gather it from a specific place (a mining mission) and then craft it. In subscription based games this is usually done to raise your crafting level (as crafting on lower levels and trying to sell the items ends in a loss), in F2P games you usually get points (something like LP) that you can redeem in that specific crafting department shop.

Mostly games use some kind of a leveling system that makes for the lower level items the difference between new crafters and skilled crafters diminishable, meaning on lower levels the difference in crafting costs is minimal. This is also coupled with the gathering system - meaning an experienced gathered and a new gatherer gather the same amount of the low level material (like copper ore) in the same time.

In real life you have empire trade wars (like between USA and China), so you have subsidies and region market protection (custom duties, tolls, trade restrictions). In RL Gallente, Minmatar and especially Amarr wouldn’t just sit there and watch Caldari getting rich on taxes in Jita.

If you want to ask about a specific thing, I can provide you with more details and give you an example how it works.

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But that is not a sustainable business model for CCP. If everyone was able to PLEX their account that easily then the game will fail due to lack of funding.

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Not necessarily.

T1 would be ‘all rounders’ like T2.

‘compact’ and ‘restrained’ could have weaker stats to make up for their easy use.

‘enduring’ ‘precise’ and ‘scoped’ could have slightly higher fitting cost.

Your fighting an uphill battle.

Plex in game don’t come from thin air. No matter how you get sub it cost $

The metaplasmid idea has merit. That said I think some things are being overlooked here.

  1. To be competitive in the market generally requires maxed cost reduction trading skills. Most new players are not going to want to spend time training skills that can only be used when they get to level V.

  2. Hauling. I start sweating when I’m undocking a DST with a couple hundred mil in the fleet hold. Simply moving a useful quantity of anything in a T1 Industrial is daunting. If you wanted to make Industrials safer, allow players to rig the cargo to blow if the ship gets popped so that no loot drops (maybe a module that drops EHP by 50% but means no loot).

  3. Did I mention the large volumes of trit and other base mats required for T1 production.

  4. The market again. Most modules will sell for less than 10% + some value of system index. If anyone can just pickup an unresearched BPO and start making isk, the value of the item will be competed to zero.

  5. Research times (does not apply to T2 invention). It take around 15 days to research either ME or TE to max on a medium rig BPO with maxed research skills and a 5% implant. New players only have one research slot.

Sure you can have fake (loot based) industry. For example take the Gnosis. Since it takes no skills to build, building one is basically a step in processing a piece of loot. The price on contracts is normally either no profit, or profit that vanishes if you have to do even one relist.

Everyone’s tried to remake industry into something more approachable. That’s why we have T1 BPOs, T2 BPOs, Invention, T3 (try this modified take on invention), (reworked invention), loot BPCs, LP store BPCs and player made capship meta items.

The truth of the matter is that unless CCP is ready to make a bunch of fake industry where what you are doing is really loot processing or introduce NPC buy orders, the market is simply going to compete the profit in any item without higher barriers to entry out of existence.

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All I’m reading is “everyone who joined the game after I did is dumb and wrong” which is a massive cognitive dissonance stemming from some sort of feeling of superiority, this whole idea that you need to be super smarts to play EVE and in some ways that is true due to the level of intricacy and planning.

On the other hand I see a lot of people do dumb things and state dumb things so apparently it’s not THAT true and it’s mostly just a feeling of superiority. It’s like calling people whom you just killed in a shooter “kids”, it’s dumb and telling.

What are your thoughts on getting rid of the meta items during the invention step ? Was that good or bad ? It simplified the invention to a degree. But overall ?

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