Few things I've come to realize with 2x prod bonus

This is going to be negative, if you dont want to hear negative you might want to skip this post.

I have been farming yellow lines since 2x prod started. If you read my post a week ago about how much I have saved up for an event like this, you will see that I have accumulated a lot of stuff since persistence.

As a player, I do think Im their target demographic, I call myself "hard core casual" which means I work my 50 hours a week, spend time with my kids then I play this game as much as I can. Im adv lvl ~107 and now prd lvl 80. I was a duke pledge with 5 figures in the game. You know, the vast majority of possible players in the demographic we have.

In my chests are things like 5,000 wolf heads, 15,000 hides (I actually sol 10,000 a month ago), thousands of thousands of everything (and yes, I sell every suit, beetle, skel bone, etc... that I get for gold). Ive been grinding on them since Thursday and I still have massive numbers of them. What I have realized is the imbalance of time expectations in this game. I have all this stuff because I simply have not had time to use it.

I'll most def will not have time to finish grinding these in 2 weeks. I def wont be able to afford it since now Im running out of stored crafting mats (wax, salt, etc...) so Im having to buy them and at that, Im running out of gold. I pulled a good 2 mil xp out of wolf heads but I only used half of them,

Simply put, the time expectation on crafting and truly collecting gold (dont get me wrong, I have tons of vendor access and do sell a ton of stuff but still cant keep up), its just to insane in this game unless you have 18 hours a day to play.

I personally feel one of the things that makes new players quit is when they see someone like me who is a casual hard core, and they probably know they cant even put as much time in the game as I, which means they are 2 years from having xp pools like me... However, then they see that I'm probably 10 years away from being behind hard core players in this game (people who play 24x7 at 18 hours a day)... so they see no future and quit. Just my opinion.... but I think its a pretty big problem.

 

TLDR; Crafting is far too expensive - to the point that it's completely prohibitive to new players. Making profit on crafted items is so hard that it rarely seems worthwhile.

I agree completely. I've really only pursued crafting myself because it's rather difficult to find the exact gear I want, so I try to make it myself. Consumables are about the only thing really worth crafting yourself versus just buying from someone else.

I think the team just really needs to review the recipes requirements at the different level tiers. Lower level tier recipes should probably use fewer ingredients, and those ingredients should be more abundant. Higher tier recipes should be using rare ingredients that are harder to obtain. This seems to be the intent, but I'd say the execution is presently rather poor. A little time and love given to balancing the recipes would go a long way towards getting people more excited about crafting in my opinion.

 

I did not find the post really negative but more of a comment about an issue.
I posted in another thread about producer XP not being exciting to me.
I'm a lower level than you and play less but decided to try crafting during this period.
I have to admit I'm a little disappointed but not enraged about it.

Just my observation.

Best way to maximize producer XP?

 

You're always going to have some players who rarely play, those who do nothing but play, and everyone else in-between. The only option that I see to solve the problem would be to make every player equal, which wouldn't be very much fun. This type of game shouldn't have a goal of getting everyone maxed out on everything as quick as possible. If you want the game to have playability over long periods of time then you need to have things take a long time to master. There are players who are way ahead of me and I accept this, as there is always going to be someone with more GM's, higher crafting skills, higher Adventure/Producer Levels, etc.

 

I agree, but wish to expound a bit:

Equal-opportunity = free-market capitalist, democratic society
Equal-outcome = communist or socialist society

If you restrict reward to enforce equal outcome, then you will inevitably end up with no one putting forth more than the minimal effort required. To those players who have the time and desire to put forth extra effort, they will simply leave if they are not rewarded for that hard work because that is where they find their fun.

For example, perhaps the biggest turn off for new players in the EVE universe is the time-based skill training. It doesn't reward you for effort, and thus gives you no reason to invest additional effort beyond what is required to skill up. The beginning of that game is basically just a waiting game until you are skilled up enough to compete. You log-in, set skills to train, and log-out. The PVE content isn't exciting enough to keep you playing continuously before you are strong enough to really enjoy the end-game stuff and PVP. (disclaimer: I haven't played EVE in a few years)

People generally like being rewarded proportionally to the effort they invest. It can be understandably irritating when real life limits the amount of time you have to invest compared to someone else, but it is important to not lose sight of what is really causing the perceived inequality of opportunity - your own life circumstances. It would be equally unfair for you to restrict the unimpeded player with artificial limits that cater more to your availability.

The desire to enforce equal-outcome is usually born out of the anti-virtue envy.

 

People who have more time to play a game than you do will ALWAYS have more success. It's simply a matter of time spent vs. what you can physically do in that time. If they make it so more casual players can be more productive, then the hardcore players will just be that more productive too. I can't think of any way to correct this other than implementing time restrictions on how often certain things can be crafted (and I'm not a fan of those kinds of restrictions personally.)

That said, there are ways you can make gold via crafting even with limited play time. You just need to find the more desirable items to make and sell them at a fair price... then you invest some of your profit into crafting more of the same items and selling in quantity.

For instance, you can grow a few of the reagent crops and as long as you are able to make each watering deadline you will yield the most from each seed you plant and maximize your investment. Then sell the harvested reagents for about 1/2 the price an NPC merchant sells them for. You won't make a ton of gold off of each batch, but even if you buy your water instead of getting it from a well... you will still make a profit.

Reinvest your profit into more seeds for the next batch, rinse, repeat. If you pick a popular shopping spot for where you vendor them, you should have no trouble selling them within a week. Just don't get greedy and charge a lot more. If you have great prices and keep the vendor stocked, you will get repeat customers that will keep you in business.

- If you are able to play fairly often, consider using greenhouses or homes with accelerated growth rates so you can plant more often (and sell more often).
- If you can't play a lot, consider just using planting beds outdoors on your lot to have slower growth rates and make it easier to make each watering cycle.
- If you need even more time between waterings, consider planting your seeds inside a house or in a basement where growth rates are slowest (and time between watering deadlines is longest).

There is a viable option for just about any play schedule. You just need to find the one that fits you best.

Also, with the new agriculture skills... planting, watering, and harvesting sessions only take a few minutes with the proper layout and practice. So you don't need to invest much time into doing this either.

 

I have no issue at all with the people who put vast quantities of time into the game, they deserve what they get for their time.

My concern is with the VAST (as in almost the size of the universe) amount of time that it takes to be even marginally good at crafting in this game. Im 10 years out from matching some of those people with 120 skill in say Enchanting (Im like 88 now after 2 years).

Here's the skinny, Im using all my prod XP right now to just try and get all the direct mining and refining skills up to 100. I dont think I will even be able to touch the two main skills I want (enchanting a crafting of chain armor ONLY).

Remember, I have 5000 wolf heads in my chest which is a result of killing probably 15,000+ wolves over the past 2 years and even that barely gets me to 2 GM skills in 2 minor resource gathering skills.

INSANE!!!!

 

I agree with everything you say. But again, the key is that it will still take me probably 10 years to be able to get to the point where I can actually craft great gear.

 

80 is probably good enough for the gathering and refining skills.

It costs about 1 million XP to go from 80 to 100 - the success chance for nodes only goes up 2% for a Tier 5 node.

The extra XP is probably worth it for the production skills though - higher chance of exceptional crafts, better bonuses on enchants, masterworks, etc.