T1 fuel market effect opinions.

[Novidian]

2 hours ago, Cergorach said:

But you can't generate 12 mining charges per day on a single account. ~7/day with max skills.

Alt Universe, mirite?

 

But yeah, sometimes I forget my erratic playing habits cover up for charge deficiencies. I’ll play 2-3 days and then take a day off to recharge, literally and figuratively. I’m honestly surprised I play that much, all things considered…

[Pleione]

11 minutes ago, Novidian said:

I started back right before they killed the bots, so I haven’t even considered expanding operations, yet. That’s a fair point. If I didn’t oopsie invest tons of TP into it when I got back, I’d probably be doing something else at this point.

 

Honestly, they could just make HQ tiles (or your first 3-5) tax free and it’d still be a big boost without over compensating. They killed 60% of the value of ore overnight, a few tax free tiles is nothing in comparison.

 

Can't argue that point, but NQ has shown no indication they plan on reducing taxes in any way, shape, or form.

[Novean-61657]

On 1/1/2023 at 12:09 AM, Pleione said:

Can't argue that point, but NQ has shown no indication they plan on reducing taxes in any way, shape, or form.

And they shouldn't! The tax is just a measurement on when automining is profitable (or not) and an exit of quanta from the economy. You have three HQ tiles per account and a starter moon tile per account. That should be more then enough for building stuff for most people.

 

The problem here is not NQ (in this case), it's all the people that are still automining when it's not profitable enough. "But I want to automine!" is not a good reason if you're complaining about viability... There are other ways of making quanta besides automining and running missions...

 

I stopped doing automining a while back, as it took way too much time vs. the rewards. I started loosing interest in DU due to the work involved and that resulted in even less rewards and eventually forcing me to run missions to pay for the taxes (as I was using the ore and not directly selling it). Eventually I completely broke down the mining operation. Since then I haven't done (auto)mining or mission running and my operation has become more profitable because of it!

[Novidian]

11 hours ago, Cergorach said:

And they shouldn't! The tax is just a measurement on when automining is profitable (or not) and an exit of quanta from the economy. You have three HQ tiles per account and a starter moon tile per account. That should be more then enough for building stuff for most people.

 

The problem here is not NQ (in this case), it's all the people that are still automining when it's not profitable enough. "But I want to automine!" is not a good reason if you're complaining about viability... There are other ways of making quanta besides automining and running missions...

 

I stopped doing automining a while back, as it took way too much time vs. the rewards. I started loosing interest in DU due to the work involved and that resulted in even less rewards and eventually forcing me to run missions to pay for the taxes (as I was using the ore and not directly selling it). Eventually I completely broke down the mining operation. Since then I haven't done (auto)mining or mission running and my operation has become more profitable because of it!

Yeah, I’m gonna have to disagree here. “Do something else” should never be the solution when something becomes too burdensome, especially when it’s a result of a development decision. Blaming the players on any level is ridiculous.
 

That’s like someone rolling a character in a traditional MMO, and rather than balancing the class to be viable again, someone just says to just reroll another toon, instead. It’s not a solution, and it won’t fix itself.

 

Never mind the fact that people like myself have invested MILLIONS of TP into MU output and surface harvesting. The game literally introduces you into it during the tutorial, and nothing else. (As an aside, there should be bases with different types of start up emphasis, like industry). It would take weeks/months to get skills to a comparable level doing something else, and then you have all new start up costs associated with that.

 

Not everyone wants to get into industry, either. If everyone switched to roids, it’d be slim pickings at the rates they respawn. Imagine schematics became more expensive and you need twice the input mats for your BPs. (I use that as an example, because you could do all your industry on one tile, so even taxes wouldn’t be as much a burden) It’s all good, just do something else? Ah well, not viable.

 

Not giving NQ any fault for it is what flabbergasts me. They literally balanced things and introduced taxes in beta with market bots as the model. If it was the plan to remove them all along, it should have been done in beta so they could see the impact, examine margins, and make adjustments before launch. It is completely their fault, no one else’s.

 

Not saying bots should have been there at launch, mind you. But removing them without knowing the market consequences, and not having a plan to keep that “class/profession” viable was a mistake.

 

Also, yeah builders have HQ tiles. Not even the issue. Kind of odd though, that only miners have to pay taxes…

[Neirin]

8 hours ago, Novidian said:

Also, yeah builders have HQ tiles. Not even the issue. Kind of odd though, that only miners have to pay taxes…

 

If tiles did not require tax, your ore would be completely worthless, because every tile would be mined.

The taxes actually help miners by encouraging non-miners to pay for ore instead of mining it themselves.

 

I own a single tile that isn't super high value (23 L/h chromite, 400 L/h coal), and It's currently making around 3 mil profit/wk after taxes for a few hours work.

If you're not getting similar return-on-investment, you might want to look closer at your operation instead of blaming everything on taxes.

 

[CptLoRes]

22 hours ago, Cergorach said:

The problem here is not NQ (in this case), it's all the people that are still automining when it's not profitable enough. "But I want to automine!" is not a good reason if you're complaining about viability... There are other ways of making quanta besides automining and running missions...

I think you are missing the point.

 

Auto mining is one of the two official ways to generate quanta in this game. So if auto mining does not generate a sensible profit in relation to effort, then the game is broken. Anything else would be the same as if grinding monsters in a fantasy MMO suddenly started giving you less and less money to the point where you no longer could afford to maintain weapons... i.e. broken.

 

So while it is great that some players are being creative and able to find alternative income, there must ALWAYS be a for sure way to generate quanta for everyone. And not only that, but it must also be fun and engaging if the company plan on having players staying for a while..

[ColonkinYT]

14 minutes ago, CptLoRes said:

...

 

Auto mining is one of the two official ways to generate quanta in this game. ...

I do not agree with this statement.
Automining generates ore (goods) and does not introduce quants into the game. Through ore, quants could only be entered into the game by bots to buy ore. This remark may seem unimportant, but it is not.
After all, ore can be dug on asteroids and collected on the surface.
In fact, none of these actions give you money directly. As a consequence, if ore prices fall, then all of the above activities suffer, not just auto-mining.
Now only these direct actions give money in the game:
1. Daily entrance to the game.
2. Completing missions.
3. Complete daily missions in the surrogate station.

[Novean-61657]

3 hours ago, CptLoRes said:

Auto mining is one of the two official ways to generate quanta in this game.

I also don't agree with that.

 

If you mean bringing quanta into the game, then this is no longer the case. Only missions and daily logins do that these days.

 

If you mean earn quanta, then you're disregarding ALL the other ways to earn quanta. And this is not an 'alternative' way to earn quanta, these are pretty much essential ways of earning quanta in any player driven (market) MMO!

 

The only way that I can see your point is earning quanta from scratch as a new player. And even then, harvesting (rocks) and mining (asteroids) are also options to get you into the other ways of making quanta.

 

As for it not being profitable enough. Don't blame DU/NQ for that, blame the other fools automining for 'profit'. When you have a player driven market, you get this kind of BS due to other player actions.

 

But don't worry, the folks doing the automining aren't the only ones screwing us all over, it's also the folks doing the missions, as that drastically increases the amount of quanta in the game and is what's currently pushing up the T1 ore prices...

[Novean-61657]

14 hours ago, Novidian said:

Yeah, I’m gonna have to disagree here. “Do something else” should never be the solution when something becomes too burdensome, especially when it’s a result of a development decision. Blaming the players on any level is ridiculous.
 

That’s like someone rolling a character in a traditional MMO, and rather than balancing the class to be viable again, someone just says to just reroll another toon, instead. It’s not a solution, and it won’t fix itself.

 

Never mind the fact that people like myself have invested MILLIONS of TP into MU output and surface harvesting. The game literally introduces you into it during the tutorial, and nothing else. (As an aside, there should be bases with different types of start up emphasis, like industry). It would take weeks/months to get skills to a comparable level doing something else, and then you have all new start up costs associated with that.

 

Not everyone wants to get into industry, either. If everyone switched to roids, it’d be slim pickings at the rates they respawn. Imagine schematics became more expensive and you need twice the input mats for your BPs. (I use that as an example, because you could do all your industry on one tile, so even taxes wouldn’t be as much a burden) It’s all good, just do something else? Ah well, not viable.

 

Not giving NQ any fault for it is what flabbergasts me. They literally balanced things and introduced taxes in beta with market bots as the model. If it was the plan to remove them all along, it should have been done in beta so they could see the impact, examine margins, and make adjustments before launch. It is completely their fault, no one else’s.

 

Not saying bots should have been there at launch, mind you. But removing them without knowing the market consequences, and not having a plan to keep that “class/profession” viable was a mistake.

 

Also, yeah builders have HQ tiles. Not even the issue. Kind of odd though, that only miners have to pay taxes…

This is not a character class in an MMORPG, this is a set of skills that you (and I) choose to specialize in. I have four characters that have all the (Improved) Mining Unit Manager talents learned to level 5 (except Volume and Handling talents), one character has all the Mining Unit Manager Handling talents learned to level 5. And one character has all the harvesting talents to level 5. So I also have many, many millions of TP invested in those talents.

 

I totally agree that NQ F-upped the bot orders 'issue' after launch. NQ-Deckard is even caught on stream saying that the T1 ore NPC buy orders not refreshing was a bug. Which they never fixed and then did a 180. This is totally NQs operating procedure! And that is indeed shame on NQ.

 

What isn't 'shame on NQ' is that this happened months ago at this point and people are still automining and not catching on that this just is incredibly labor intensive vs actual profit. and that is 'shame on the player'. There is still a profit to be made, but you need good talents and a good infrastructure setup, both of which many of these players don't have.

 

If you want to compare this to a classic fantasy MMORPG, this is the equivalent of specializing in leather boots because they are the most profitable, then being surprised that every other player did the same and now there's so much leather boots on the market that you can't sell them for a decent price.

 

We're actually seeing that the T1 ore market is slowly correcting itself, after seeing a very low point during the holidays of 5-6 quanta per liter, some of the T1 ore is now sitting at around 10 quanta per liter. And I'm wondering if that will collapse again if it continues going up. But I suspect it will collapse again, because players suddenly see that in their particular case they can make a profit again and they jump on it again, thus outstripping demand again by a large margin...

 

During beta there was a period that if you wanted to manufacture using machines in your static construct, you had to pay taxes. #1 you only really needed that on one tile and that was easily made back. #2 many of us moved to Space Cores for manufacturing, no taxes in space... So that wasn't a really big issue either.

 

NQ's 'balance' in DU isn't great, I'll admit that without contest. BUT let's say in RL someone builds a perfectly balanced boat, but even that perfectly balanced boat can't contend with all the passengers moving all their stuff to one side, including themselves and jumping up and down on that side... This is what's happening with way too many players in DU. You can't fix stupid, nor can you 'balance' a game for it... Now, if automining is your passion and you get a kick out of the calibration minigame at 50 times/week/character, then glory to you! But don't complain about profitability either. If your about just profit, then you made a bad choice, just like many other players. And don't tell me that what NQ surprised you, you've been here since Alpha for crying out loud! You should know all about the untrustworthiness of NQ statements and their janky directions. Their beta was an alpha and their 'launch' is pretty much a beta... They even left the door open for another wipe!

 

My main, having learned all the automining talents to 5 (except volume and handling), all the harvesting talents to 5, having perfect T1 productivity talents, is now learning asteroid mining talents (I miss the ZEN of the classic mining). I don't see the automining talents as a waste, as I did profit from it at the start as it was then way more efficient to automine T1 ore yourself. And it might be useful again in the future, either T1 prices correct , T2+ tiles that are actually worthwhile show up on other (new) planets, or I move to another planet an couldn't be bothered with hauling T1 ore from Alioth M6...

[Kezzle]

2 hours ago, Cergorach said:

But I suspect it will collapse again, because players suddenly see that in their particular case they can make a profit again and they jump on it again, thus outstripping demand again by a large margin...

Aye. Spikes/canyons like this are pretty much unavoidable when the market is as small as the DU one is. Just the nature of the numbers.

 

2 hours ago, Cergorach said:

Their beta was an alpha and their 'launch' is pretty much a beta...

I'd contend that it's still not out of alpha. 

 

[blundertwink]

2 hours ago, Cergorach said:

This is what's happening with way too many players in DU. You can't fix stupid, nor can you 'balance' a game for it..

 

There's a very timeless and wise adage about game design that's very relevant for NQ: nothing is ever the player's fault. 

 

Designers that fight against this ideal invariably make unpopular games.

 

I'm not talking about dumbing things down to the point where there's no complexity, I'm talking about good design through UI, UX, feedbacks, affordances, and (to a lesser extent) tutorials.

 

There's a world of difference between stupidity and ignorance, and it's really unwise to assume that a given player even cares enough to find the "right way to do something" when the game is so disengaging overall. It's DU's job to motivate players to find engaging gameplay and tell players how to advance.

 

If players don't understand how to play the game in a way that gives them the means to advance, that's objectively bad design.

 

Honestly, most people don't give two shits about the economy in an MMO, they care about markets -- because they want to buy things to advance in the game, not to get rich for its own sake. 

 

The vast majority of MMO players engage with the economy as a means to an end -- profit isn't the main driver for most players,  gameplay is. 

 

2 hours ago, Cergorach said:

And don't tell me that what NQ surprised you, you've been here since Alpha for crying out loud!

 

Which is a big part of the problem, that the only people still playing have been playing since Alpha...

 

If that's the only crowd around, the economy will never reach any point of balance or fun because there's simply not enough players.

 

The issue of balance can't be solved when the design assumes a level of scale that will never, ever materialize. And that scale won't materialize if NQ believes things are fine, but people are just playing the game wrong. 

[Novean-61657]

3 hours ago, blundertwink said:

There's a very timeless and wise adage about game design that's very relevant for NQ: nothing is ever the player's fault.

This is imho as much hyperbole as the old adage "The customer is always right!" or "The customer is king!"... The customer isn't always right (hell no!), nor is (s)he a King or Queen. NQ needs to learn a lot about (game) design, but that doesn't suddenly indemnify the players from all responsibility.

 

And we're not talking here about UI, UX, feedbacks, affordances, and (to a lesser extent) tutorials, etc. But specifically about the automining.

 

 

3 hours ago, blundertwink said:

There's a world of difference between stupidity and ignorance, and it's really unwise to assume that a given player even cares enough to find the "right way to do something" when the game is so disengaging overall. It's DU's job to motivate players to find engaging gameplay and tell players how to advance.

Of course there is a difference between stupid and ignorance. But again that's not the issue here, while I agree that if people don't care enough to find out a more profitable en devour, that is ignorance. But when they do care enough to complain about it on the forums, I will call them stupid. If you love the gameplay automining loop, then you're doing that for that for other reasons then profit, so don't complain about it on the forums.

 

While I agree that the tutorials need to be more diverse and better. The game nor NQ should be telling anyone how to 'advance', this is a sandbox game, part of that experience is finding out how to 'advance'.

 

If your looking for engaging gameplay, please move along, DU isn't for you! 😉 Over the last 2.5 years NQ has squeezed out most (if not all) the fun out of the DU 'gameplay' loops. But that's not what we're talking about either.

 

What you're saying is that people don't care about how their stuff gets there, as long as it gets there NOW! Sorry, a player driven economy in a sandbox game don't work that way. Especially NOT three months after launch and especially not with so few people working 'logically', which is an issue with every player driven economy/market sandbox MMO. And yes the game is much, much older then three months, but that happens with a wipe... I am doing my part of providing people who have earned that quanta to buy some of what they want. As those that are running autominers are, but as there are so many of them, I can set a relatively low price and it still gets fulfilled. I could be building Basic Container L, and I have, but I'm not currently selling them because the profit margin on them is abysmal because everyone was doing that. I only build them for my own use and when some go on sale for under the price it costs me to build, I often buy them up...

 

And I agree with you, it's often difficult to care enough to do certain things in DU, but that's more due to the last 2.5 years of NQ (mis)management and disappointments galore. It's the reason why I still fly a bloody UEF Ronin and I'm rebuilding my factory for the fifth or sixth time since launch... I still haven't build the assembly lines to start building ships and space elevators, even though I bought the BPCs for those a month or two ago... Why? Because in the back of my mind there's a little voice that keeps whispering, this is all useless they'll either wipe again or they'll fold. And that voice is put the with the compliments of NQ!

[Novidian]

On 1/3/2023 at 7:13 AM, Cergorach said:

This is not a character class in an MMORPG, this is a set of skills that you (and I) choose to specialize in. 

 

I totally agree that NQ F-upped the bot orders 'issue' after launch. NQ-Deckard is even caught on stream saying that the T1 ore NPC buy orders not refreshing was a bug. Which they never fixed and then did a 180. This is totally NQs operating procedure! And that is indeed shame on NQ.

 

What isn't 'shame on NQ' is that this happened months ago at this point and people are still automining and not catching on that this just is incredibly labor intensive vs actual profit. and that is 'shame on the player'. There is still a profit to be made, but you need good talents and a good infrastructure setup, both of which many of these players don't have.

And don't tell me that what NQ surprised you, you've been here since Alpha for crying out loud! You should know all about the untrustworthiness of NQ statements and their janky directions. Their beta was an alpha and their 'launch' is pretty much a beta... They even left the door open for another wipe!

lol, can’t disagree with any of that. Though specialization IS kind of like classes/sub classes, but more the FFXIV sense. I can do something else, but if the rug gets pulled out from under me or something isn’t viable, it’ll be a while before I’ll be effective at the new thing. It’s not back breaking, just inconvenient.

 

Honestly, I miss old school mining too. It’s cathartic in a way, and more challenging than calibrating. I’ve only got 6-700k in the pool, but I was going to dump some into classic mining and try some roids eventually, myself.  Still finishing up T5 flight element talents and building a 400L/1.8kt mission hauler now, so I’m just not at a point financially to assume the risk. Soon, though.

 

I haven’t been in an (non-self) org since alpha 1/2, maybe now is the time to find one and do some roids. I’ve only been back a month and a half, and shuttling rocks around all by my lonesome is getting pretty boring. Maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

 

I still haven’t figured out what keeps me coming back to this damn game, but here I am.