MindArk Blog | Proposal for Limited & Unlimited Items

Information Dev's Corner
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[COLOR=rgb(84, 172, 210)]The following post is from Jonas, our Head of Content at MindArk.

Greetings Entropians,

We’ve got a couple of changes we want to run by you. This is just a proposal for now, nothing is finalized yet. We understand that the changes are pretty foundational and that this area is very sensitive, which is why we want your input before doing anything with it. The goal is to make sure we’ve looked at it from all angles before deciding whether to move ahead or make any adjustments to the design.
[HEADING=1]Unlimited[/HEADING]
The economy is arguably the most critical and unique part of the game, and the problem with Unlimited items is that once you’ve got one, the balance is thrown off for good. You stop buying new L-items and resources, which means demand drops across the entire resource chain. At the same time, you keep feeding the market with resources and L-items, which creates oversupply and pushes prices down.

What we’re proposing is a change to the Repair Terminal: instead of using pure PEDs, it would use Nanocubes as input. We propose using Nanocubes because they’re flexible, almost anything can be converted into them, there’s a good supply, and the most important aspect is that they’re still part of the broader economy.

[HEADING=1]Limited[/HEADING]
For Limited items, the proposal is to add a system that allows players to Combine items of the same type into a single item. While Limited items remain limited with this change, there are some design issues with how they currently work. Items with very low TT value left are generally not appealing and often end up being useless. Even if they are still usable, carrying around 10 items at 10% each is not a great experience compared to using one item at 100%.

The most important and game-changing aspect is related to the loot. Dropping items with less than 50% TT, or even 75%, causes problems, mainly due to the reason above. It results in inventories being filled with “broken” items that will be difficult to both sell and use. If this limitation was removed, it would be possible to increase the number of item drops without increasing the total TT value dropped of each specific item type. While this update won’t bring a general overhaul of all the loot lists, it will give us more options for the future.

Being able to combine items would also open up some new possibilities in the construction system. The quantity and quality settings could be used more strategically. One example is that you could be focusing on quantity to produce more items with higher Tier Increase Rates. It would also reduce the necessity of using Residue.

The image below shows a prototype of how the interface for this system could look.

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?media/unnamed-jpg.346232/full

The main item is placed in the smaller box on the left, and all items to be merged into it go into the larger box on the right.

To keep the unlocked Tiers of the main item, the corresponding Tier Components need to be added in the smaller boxes at the bottom. These can be left empty, but doing so will reset the Tiers during the combining process.

The resulting Tier Increase Rate is calculated as a weighted average, based on the TT values of the main item and all input items. The main item has a higher weight in this calculation.

[HEADING=1]Share Your Thoughts[/HEADING]
To wrap up, this is just a proposal, and we’re looking to gather feedback before making any decisions. These are important systems, and we want to make sure any changes we make are in the best interest of both the game and the community.

Take your time, think about it, let it sink in, and then let us know what you think. Your input will help guide the path forward!

// Jonas, Head of Content

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Delete

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What happened to UE5?

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Damn.

I’m really starting to like this new Mindark.

More uses for nanocubes means more MU for everyone so that’s a small win for sure.

Combine L sounds like a good idea, what happens if you have an excess of L inputs though, where’s that additional ped go?

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W for both

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limited:

ability to keep very high tir item… possibly forever?

could have negative impacts (i.e. defeating the purpose of tiering ul items, mind you tiering ul item is not necessarily cheap)

unlimited:

nanocubes in order to repair anything..

I suppose it could be good, as long as there’s no more free nanocube glitches.

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You will get a overwhelming “YES” for the UL stuff since people are people and want to play Robin Hood with other people’s money. A no from me. UL items do contribute to economy by existing. The more they are worth, the bigger the carrot. I wouldn’t have been as happy with migration if the C80 sold for 1.7k rather than 17k.

Counter suggestion: Add a second layer of tiers with additional benefits. Let the people with big pockets empty them faster. For armors, let us prestige and start over but now be able to fit some limited plates on the second row or something.

The L stuff sounds like a good idea in my head. On top of that you could raise maximum TT of low level weapons so they can be sold on auction. Being capped below 10ped TT is beneficial to no one.

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A logistical note for the UL proposal, this would especially penalize those using decay-only weapons moreso than those who use weapons with ammo. I use an Omegaton Mayhem Power Claw Cleaver, Modified that has 1000 TT. When you use an amp for melee, it is also all decay. Personally I use decay-only so I don’t use unlimited ammo while hunting so I can save it for mining, but outside of my niche use, other more full-time hunters could be disproportionately affected.

Mining is where I really thought about this for UL though. Finders are one thing as for the most part, decay isn’t a huge cost. For UL amplifiers it is though. Sometimes you are frequently making repairs during runs depending on the amp you have. If you’re not on Caly, there may not be much of a nanocube market either. At least for those with UL items, it really seems to be taking the carrot away if they are going to less traveled planets (and compounding the problem).

I’m not saying this UL proposal is dead in the water, but I’d encourage MA to think about how this would work on other planets and not just through the lens of a typical hunter on Caly. I think they’d get more traction with the player base and with actual results by improving the L market and incentives to have good crafting demand that uses more resources. That should be a first priority for hopefully bigger impacts that should have fewer downsides.

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It means less for UL users

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(L) items should not drop in loot, to begin with, should only be crafted. Maybe make an exception for event ones, like ELM, increasing at the same time the appeal of events.

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Really good shout

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UL to repair with Nanocubes is a bad idea kinda shitting on the people that you already punched in their face really hard over and over. Rather than hurting people again that believe in you and the game i think a much smarter way to approach the fix for “everyone use UL if he can” by adding L options that are better and more superior to the UL options this fixes definitly the demand issue as everyone would definitly get the better options in multiple cases other than daily random grind.

If you wanna make changes regarding that whole system i rather finish the UE5, then think about drastic changes like that as this would look and feel better with the new engine. All the new better Limited Items definitly should also be linked to crafting aka only able to make with Limited Blueprints and use ressources that usually lack any useful meaning.

Regarding the Limited change idea with the possibility to combine i think that might be something that could work if numbers and structure of said feature makes sense. If you wanna keep gun at T10 obviously respectivly the cost must be a lot higher than T5. Otherwise you would hurt the market of high TIR weapons again as those in some cases the only reason certain weapon beeing crafted and have mu.

Overall i would say i love to hear from CEO making a proposal and asking the community first before making such drastic change that might make the last remaining believers quit.

cheers

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nice ideas but possibly add a new level of say tier 10-20 for UL , if L items can keep their tiers it would make sense to give UL some kind of carrot to keep grinding for , at least add (C) to UL or something

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Don’t like the UL system.
If i’m out hunting with a amp that needs repair every 20 min i’m now forced to carry cubes with me.
I’m a bit of a min/maxer and paying more for repairs then standard is also not a good way to go imo.

The Limited system suggested seems ok to me. I’m not a L user so i might be overlooking things.

Edit : I love that your asking the players before making sutch a gamechanging change. More of this pls.

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I say 100% do NOT change UL items. Instead, make L items BETTER so people with UL items may want to use L. Having UL items with 90 efficiency and L with 60 is not the way to go. It should be the other way around. L should have more efficiency, more dps.

Exceptional items were a good start, it just needs to be expanded upon

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Great ideas, can we add on Making defense enhancers give 10 or 20% more defense per tier as well?

Right now Tiering armor is borderline useless (80 defense versus 90 defense means jack shit)

For example having ghost be like 18 impact, and then 18.9 at tier 1, 19.8 at tier 2 etc. Why would I use resources to tier that?

Now if I could get to say 25-28 impact now with around tier5, I’m probably going to tier that and use resources instead of buying a new armor until I’m ready for an even bigger jump.

Now aug/perf gorgon goes from about 80-100 impact to 80-160 or 80-240 impact.

Now I’m tiering my armor! That’s a huge difference where I can now kill mobs I wouldn’t kill (cycle more) or I would take hits I would normally die on. (Cycle More)

WE ALSO NEED MORE UPGRADE MISSIONS FOR THE CALY ARMORS AND GUNS. We need those items to go back into the loot pool. They aren’t and that’s why cycling is so not fun.

Make UL gear go up to tier 20 as well. Sure do L gear also.

These ideas alone will very much help the economy for both limited AND unlimited weapons and armors.

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You can’t remove efficiency from the big UL 2.0 weapons, but instead I agree, double the dps of all L variants. and each dmg end gives 20% more dmg instead of 10%.

Make people WANT or NEED to use L weapons during events, and let them use their fancy UL weapons for regular/casual grinding.

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What? We did this? We as playbase? we?
I’m sorry but I used L stuff most of my play, because my goal was to use ULstuff, I climed this ladder to get my now- usless and worthless skill points, which can now be devaluate?
I’m sorry you really fu-ed up.
This is really bad idea as a whole.
Please tell us here that you messed up really bad this time.

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I don’t mind both ideas as long as there is some type of portable nanocube converter/repair and (L) combine tool to go along with it.

I still think adding multi-layer options to modify existing unlimited items would generate more churn for the economy than just adding (L) direct competitors to loot. Certain limited items like enhancers and mining amps are successful IMO. Engaging the entire blueprint library to create options for the unlimited gear would be engaging whether it be things that are used like enhancers or items that need to be crafted to customize gear.

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Some time ago, in a post, I suggested combining broken L items into complete items. It’s a great idea…

One detail: the combination of X% should result in 100% + remainder…

I mean: if I combine three items at 30% and one at 20% of their value, it should result in one at 100% and another at 10%, which I can use later…

If you penalize us by eliminating the remainder, we’re in trouble…

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