Encouraging new players to play - Market change

[Gideon77]

PROBLEM:

This is an empire building game, yet currently all new players are strongly encouraged not to build anything. They are told in general chat and lots of YouTube videos very plainly not to mine because the passive mining will give them all the ore they need, and not to build anything because it is cheaper to sell the ore and buy whatever you want than to build it yourself, and if you want a ship, just buy one instead of learning how to make your own. This removes the new players from all building aspects of this empire building game, from building factories, from building ships, and from mining since it is now passive. And with the current skill and market pricing, since players can't complete in the markets until after they have gained the skills for a couple of years (they need to get mining, piloting, inventory, and other skills first), this also results in the older veterans using the new players as "mining slaves" (their words not mine) by insisting that they don't do anything but mine and sell them the ore. This also tells new players to queue up skill to learn, and then go play some other game for a couple of years until your skills allow you to compete. Telling a player to go find a different game to play is the worse possible message for any game to tell to their new players.

SOLUTION:

The market should have the NPC buy all products that are priced low enough as to prevent new (unskilled) players from being able to make a profit from their factories while they still have real low skill levels. Picking a number out of the air in order to show an illustration, if with real low skills, refining 100 units of coal produces 100 units of silicon, and coal sells for a minimum of 25 Quanta per unit, then Silicon should sell for a minimum of 30 Quanta (or whatever is decided that still allows the new player enough profit to make it wise for them to refine their ores), and NPC should immediately buy anything that is sold cheaper than that. The same for all levels of the market. This would immediately encourage all new players to start building factories. And as long as they have something that they are encouraged to build, then they have a reason to continue playing this game.

 

This will have the side effect of giving the older veteran players more Quanta, but that shouldn't hurt anything since they are already getting more Quanta than they can spend anyway.

[Zeddrick]

What would happen if you tried this is the same thing that happened when the bot orders were buying voxel at a high price.  Experienced players with high manufacturing skills would buy up all the ore in order to manufacture the items and sell direct to NPC orders for a profit.  Since they can do this as much as possible, and they can have as many machines as they want, the experienced players would buy up as much ore as they can in order to do this, creating shortages and pushing up prices.  Fairly quickly the ore would be priced so high that the newer players are now unable to make a profit manufacturing items.  At that point you have to put up the price of the bot orders, which will keep driving price inflation forever, or leave them alone in which case you're back where you started.

 

IMO the 'use less material for manufacture' skills are bad and cause this sort of problem.  I think they should be 'make these things faster' skills instead, except that with the ability to run an infinite number of machines nobody really cares how fast they can make things (with the exception of things with an expensive schematic).  They can just use more machines to make things faster.

[Gideon77]

There are many ways to prevent what you say. But allowing the experienced players to chase away the new players shouldn't be one of them.

 

For instance the game could limit how much ore a single player could buy per day (perhaps 1k or 5k per ore type per day), and have NPC supply enough ore to keep the ore price stable. Whatever is done, the game needs to enable the new players to play it or else it will die for all players.

 

By the way, I totally agree that the 'use less material for manufacture' skills are real bad and are most of what cause this sort of problem. I personally would like to see all those type skills go away. But even if they did, the game would still have to use the NPC to stabilize the market prices to keep the game going. Otherwise no matter what else is done the experienced players will always flood the market with goods. That in itself is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. What is bad is allowing that flood to kill the market mechanics, and with it the ability for new players to play the game. NPC HAVE to stabilize prices, and all prices HAVE to be profitable for ALL players.

[Owl_Superb]

2 hours ago, Gideon77 said:

This removes the new players from all building aspects of this empire building game, from building factories, from building ships, and from mining since it is now passive.

It does not remove them, it simply tells them how to spend their time in-game efficiently.

If you need to get to another side of Alioth: you can walk, you can run, you can jet-pack-run, you can use pocket hover-craft, you can use pocket winged craft, or you can use a space ship to get to a 7km orbit and fly at ~4,000km/h to get to the destination the fastest. All options are on the table, but not using the Orbit direction is vastly time-inefficient.

Edited April 5, 2022 by Owl_Superb

[CousinSal]

4 hours ago, Zeddrick said:

What would happen if you tried this is the same thing that happened when the bot orders were buying voxel at a high price.  Experienced players with high manufacturing skills would buy up all the ore in order to manufacture the items and sell direct to NPC orders for a profit.  Since they can do this as much as possible, and they can have as many machines as they want, the experienced players would buy up as much ore as they can in order to do this, creating shortages and pushing up prices.  Fairly quickly the ore would be priced so high that the newer players are now unable to make a profit manufacturing items.  At that point you have to put up the price of the bot orders, which will keep driving price inflation forever, or leave them alone in which case you're back where you started.

 

IMO the 'use less material for manufacture' skills are bad and cause this sort of problem.  I think they should be 'make these things faster' skills instead, except that with the ability to run an infinite number of machines nobody really cares how fast they can make things (with the exception of things with an expensive schematic).  They can just use more machines to make things faster.

 

It should be about efficiency mainly. The ore material reduction seems to cause lots of problems. 

[Gideon77]

11 hours ago, Owl_Superb said:

It does not remove them, it simply tells them how to spend their time in-game efficiently.

If you need to get to another side of Alioth: you can walk, you can run, you can jet-pack-run, you can use pocket hover-craft, you can use pocket winged craft, or you can use a space ship to get to a 7km orbit and fly at ~4,000km/h to get to the destination the fastest. All options are on the table, but not using the Orbit direction is vastly time-inefficient.

Whether you say you are "telling them how to spend their time in-game efficiently" because they can't build "efficiently" or some other choice of wording, the result is still the same. You are removing them from the whole building part of the game.

 

CousinSaul said "The ore material reduction seems to cause lots of problems." Perhaps then you would rather limit ore buying, by a person not being able to buy more quanta worth of ore than they sell. Thus if they sell 100 mil quanta worth of ore, then they can only buy upto 100 mil quanta worth of ore. This way the ore is not limited, yet the experienced players are still prevented from turning the new players into their "mining slaves", and prevented from destroying the market mechanics of the game. Because the experienced players will only be able to produce as much in their factories as they themselves mine.

 

We have to fix the problem somehow. If you don't like my suggestions, then please make some of your own. After all, the problem is obvious, and definitely needs to be fixed. So we need to figure out the best way to fix it. We can't just continue to chase new players away from the game.

[Owl_Superb]

8 hours ago, Gideon77 said:

We have to fix the problem somehow.

There is no problem at all. Its literally a post-scarcity market utopia when the costs of manufactured goods is less than the cost of materials. It just can't get any better than that.

[Novean-61657]

What you want is:

I buy sand or pick it up from the beach, I make sandcastles, no one wants to buy them at sand price +20%, so I now demand that the government that they buy all my sandcastles for sandprice +20%. I could ramp up that production up to virtually infinite capacity...

[Knight-Sevy]

Delete All Aphelia market 

 

Thanks

[Yoarii]

3 hours ago, Knight-Sevy said:

Delete All Aphelia market 

 

Thanks

Yes, including the new space market. Give some love to dispensers.

[SweatyGopher]

My idea suggestion that you should be able to boost parts with accelerators that are generated using scrap parts (not scrap, ore, or refinement) was one solution.

 

you create a new item called accelerators or performance enhancers.  They are made using only crafted parts consumed in a recycler.  The enhancers basically improve parts like engines so they get modifiers for better performance.  
 

Essentially they are garbage pits to reduce market flooding that everyone wants because they improve things like fuel performance, cargo total hold, weapons etc.

 

How I envision it (subject to change) is you take all those excess airplane parts and run them through the recycler, out churns enhancers that are like a fuel source.  Whenever a ship part is damaged/destroyed, it requires additional enhancers to get the same benefit.  The enhancer chips themselves can also be part dumps, with a chance every time you recycle into it that it goes up a tier in benefits.   Two fold dump mechanics - one for the fuel, one for the chips that insert into the parts and give a % benefit.

 

This helps circumvent the issue of +1 to speed, +2 to speed, etc flooding the market and making it impossible to navigate.  They're just basic enhancers and different tiers, that give different benefits depending on the part you put them into.

 

You could make it part specific if you wanted to go in depth - such as an engine enhancer requires engines to be recycled

Edited April 12, 2022 by SweatyGopher

[RugesV]

9 hours ago, SweatyGopher said:

My idea suggestion that you should be able to boost parts with accelerators that are generated using scrap parts (not scrap, ore, or refinement) was one solution.

 

you create a new item called accelerators or performance enhancers.  They are made using only crafted parts consumed in a recycler.  The enhancers basically improve parts like engines so they get modifiers for better performance.  
 

Essentially they are garbage pits to reduce market flooding that everyone wants because they improve things like fuel performance, cargo total hold, weapons etc.

 

How I envision it (subject to change) is you take all those excess airplane parts and run them through the recycler, out churns enhancers that are like a fuel source.  Whenever a ship part is damaged/destroyed, it requires additional enhancers to get the same benefit.  The enhancer chips themselves can also be part dumps, with a chance every time you recycle into it that it goes up a tier in benefits.   Two fold dump mechanics - one for the fuel, one for the chips that insert into the parts and give a % benefit.

 

This helps circumvent the issue of +1 to speed, +2 to speed, etc flooding the market and making it impossible to navigate.  They're just basic enhancers and different tiers, that give different benefits depending on the part you put them into.

 

You could make it part specific if you wanted to go in depth - such as an engine enhancer requires engines to be recycled

And then 6 months down the line the market will be flooded with these things from mega factories. (although it would take allot of ore out of the world). 

 

@OP. Setting an NPC buy order for every type of item. would not benefit new players. If the buy price is set higher then the max skill in ore to make that item. then mega factories will just buy up all the ore at a price less then these prices And that would become the new defacto price for ore. 

 

And personally I find it false that a new player cannot get into industry. I mean maybe if they are trying to do it all themselves with no outside influence (IE paying someone to buff there factory). then sure a new player is going to take a loss in selling an element instead of selling the ore.  But this is a multiplayer game. and you can hire other players to help you get setup.

 

Players interested in industry also need to do allot of research. You cannot just decide, hey I am going to make XXX. Because some items sell for less then they are worth.  For instance Nitron Fuel. So many people make it, the profit margins on it are so slim, it would not be worth getting into. but some items sell for several times the ore value. Going to have to play around with allot of spreadsheets to figure out whats right for you. Because not only do you need to find a good item to sale, but you also need to find an item that you can get the ore to produce. 

 

Another thing about industry in DU. You might not sell something for 2 months. But then you cannot keep it stocked fast enough for the next month. Remember DU is a long game, not so much for instant gratification.