A Player’s Notes, Vol. 2 - Cyrene Edition: Bringing the Planet to Life - Thoughts, Concerns & Ideas

[008]

A Player’s Notes, Vol. 2 - Cyrene Edition: Bringing the Planet to Life - Thoughts, Concerns and Ideas


Hello everyone, it has been a long time since I have written something like this. Please grab yourself a cup of coffee or crack a cold one, because this post is not intended to be short (Edit: ok, its a text wall!) For those interested: My previous efforts to engage the community and developers together in thought and discussion was concerning the loot mechanics in play at the time (vol. 1) and can be found in the PCF loot theories section, Here


I would like to start off by saying something that I mean from the bottom of my heart:

I love this planet and this game. Anything I say here is purely from the motivations of wanting to see it continue to evolve and become better than it already is. Ideas, thoughts and criticism are meant to be a constructive tool here, that said, I will not shy away from calling a spade a spade.


I believe that you cannot unhear (or unread) a thought: a new perspective, the simplest out of the box notion can spawn whole new avenues of thought for everyone, everywhere. As such, this is merely my attempt at throwing all my thoughts out on the table. I do not expect or assume any of these things to be directly implemented nor do I feel that there aren’t better variations of these ideas now, or in the future.


Concerning the future efforts of the developers and the direction of both planet Cyrene and Entropia Universe as a whole, I have felt for awhile that the foundation “the playground” is well set. By this, I mean that I feel Cyrene, as well nearly all the other planets boast wonderful, diverse and most importantly unique and original landscapes as well as flora and fauna! Cyrene in particular has designed some really good looking creatures. I often comment how nearly all Cyrene mobs would be cool pets lol. Even Cyrene’s new map is more than acceptable (for the time being, You guys DO have the original map saved away on someone’s thumb stick right? right?!)


With that said, the first thought i want to share is that if anything can be put on autopilot for the time being it’s development on new mobs and scenery. For Cyrene this is especially true: You already have some of the game’s best looking mobs and are literally sitting on a whole larger planet map (Right?!!) in your back pocket. There is no reason to devote your development time to things that are already acceptable (for now)


We need to bring this planet to life. To me there are three key components to this:

1. The Player’s “Quality of Life” including things like solid mission engagement with desirable and fair rewards, as well as time efficiencies as far as mission running and turn-ins are involved
   
   
2. The Health of the Economy - got to have mu%, we got supply, no demand
   
   
3. The Devs need to make profit - We need more turnover, everyone wants it
   

The following is a list of ideas, concerns and thoughts for the present and future of Cyrene:

I hate to start off with some of the negatives, but these are of paramount importance to player retention both on planet and in game, as well as Cyrene’s reputation in the Universe.


Righting the Wrongs - A Story of how Dopamine and his Carrot and Stick lost their way

1. Fix the mission counters - Devs, and I am serious, if you are reading this, please stop here and make an office competition to figure out how to get this done soon. I know it is fixed now, but the large majority of the most important player base, i.e. veteran planet hopping players that came here to support this planet early are left with tons of broken mission counters for long 3k-6k kill or more mission chains that as a whole, on average, will never be overcome. No one should be dismissive of this problem, if you are, you are greatly underestimating the power of Dopamine in gaming. It is often the “incremental” progress and rewards that are the most powerful. Many players will stay on planet just a little bit longer if they can see that they only have 500 more tideclaw to go to finish the 5k. Visible mission progress also has the effect of softening the blow of poor loot returns. “Hey Joe, how was the hunt? Joe: Pretty crappy, I lost 100 ped on Tideclaw, but I am 4700/5k now Me: Grz! Joe: Ty .... Fix these counters please, I cannot stress this enough. It is hurting your planet far more than you realise
   
   
2. Vendor Stock: I know there has been a lot of progress in this area lately but it is not complete. Things that were on offer for mission tokens are still missing. I know offhand that the Zyn campfires are still missing completely and there is barely any armor molds etc. you would be surprised how these little things turn players off. It causes trust issues. If you need to remove anything you write it into storyline, and if possible replace it with something better or equivalent. Please make sure every single thing that used to be available is again from these vendors
   
   
3. Finish the rest of the ARC Stage vendors: More on this below, but this is a classic case of removing the carrot from the stick. At the very least get something up for rank 3-5 as a placeholder. There was a lot of momentum for this going and it totally lost steam because there isn’t anything to strive for past rank 2. On top of that you have players turned off because you set 1200 badge goals etc. and didn’t follow through. Throw something in there, anything for now
   

Things that were going right, then went wrong: “Sharpening the Long Hook”

1. Epic Mission Chains Rebalance - It is basically common knowledge and advice that both of the epic chains here are currently not worth doing. These topics have been covered elsewhere on here by players with more knowledge of the situation but it needs to be mentioned. Me? I lost interest when my counter for the very first stage on the 10k points zeladoth broke (and is still) and then I heard the prototype gun rewarded was worse than the x3 currently dropping on panelons lol….These epic missions as well as your “iron style” hunting and mining missions are your long hook. The efforts need to be worth it and there are plenty of ways you can amend the already distributed rewards via short upgrade paths. Any and all longer mission chains that keep players on planet for longer periods of time are of upmost importance to be running smoothly and as advertised. These concern not only your most loyal and active Cyrene player base, but the “big fish” as well.
   
   
2. ARC Faction Mission Line: Probably the most exciting and popular mission set at inception has stalled. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the faction series, please don’t let a few mishaps concerning things that everyone got TOO excited for, slow you down from seeing the series out.. As mentioned above at the very least put the carrot back on the stick, get some kind of rewards/gear access/mission access, something up for rank 3-5. Players have lost the motivation to continue. This has already been successful, put the air back in the tires and let’s roll..
   
3. Seasonal Gifts and Hunting Spawn - this is another area where there was good activity initially but over the years lost its steam and i believe, some mistakes were made. The first year was great: holiday jellies were cool and accessible for all, on top of that they were looting nice UL holiday coats and hats. The coats looked great, were holding good markup and could be looted if you grind hard enough. everyone was happy, lots of activity. Fast forward to next year and they drop the same coat again, completely tanking not only the markup but the nostalgia of that first event as now the coats are indistinguishable between the 2 years. Fast forward another year and there is no spawn, breaking tradition, and instead, we get to summon a mob most can’t kill. Things like this help create history for Cyrene, the next year’s coats should have been green or a different pattern or at least labeled 2015 or something. These changes are quick and easy and have lasting impact in both markup and lore. Please consider this in the future.
   

Dailies: Cleaning up the mess and stepping up the game


Cyrene has a lot of great daily activities, A LOT! So many it’s often very easy for anyone but the most astute and active locals to forget where the guy who want green is and where are the 2 difft drill bot dailies and how many blue crystals was it? etc etc Maybe this is part of the charm, but even in practice its an awful lot of hustle bustle every day. Some running around is just fine, a lot of repetitive running that everyone has to do every day just turns, collectively into a giant time waster, time that could be spent cycling peds. I have a couple ideas to help streamline the process without ruining the experience.

1. All ARC dailies should auto-complete. Like on Calypso, as soon as you kill the last mutated dire weed, or panelon old, you get the badge in a loot window. There is no need to have us all running back to the terminal to collect the badge and reset the timer. This collectively would save loads of gaming time. You’ll still get the experience to run over there and pick it up.
   
   
2. Move all ARC mission givers and vendors to one location. This should be obvious. At the moment the stage 1, stage 2, and reward vendors are all in different places. We currently have a problem with camping upsetting the playerbase anyways so lets get the vendors up planetside. The Hub’s unequip “feature” isn’t helping this either as players will be inclined to stay “just a little longer to camp” because it literally costs you to go down there. Might as well get your money’s worth. In addition, this is another carrot and stick, new players and tourists should be able to see the rank 2 npc they can’t talk to, and the vendors they can’t access right there where the rank 1 terminal is… its motivating. The rank 2 npc being located at 0x0 supply isn’t helping anyone either. It’s annoying and out of the way now, where it could be convenient and serving as motivational carrot standing next to rank 1 terminal.
   
   
3. Rank 2 ARC missions need to have their crafting options enabled - this is going to play into the larger picture of bringing life to the Cyrene economy. I cannot fathom what the holdup is on this, it can be flexible and wouldn’t even be a big deal to alter or change later as they are just dailies (it could even be a seasonal feature). Please consider getting these crafting dailies back in for stage 2 and beyond..
   
   
4. The Hub is a hurting yet unique gaming system on Cyrene, as are the MARIO platformers, Eve’s underwater pvp playground, and the Maze. Maybe it isn’t a bad idea to move these all together into the Hub Possibly some good can come from streamlining these alternative activities together?
   
   
5. Stepping up the game: I think we should look at possibly adding the ability to get Rank 2 dailies and/or the ability to unlock Weekly and Monthlies. Not only is this a great new way to tack onto already existing popular Cyrene activities, it has the potential to impact turnover and market activity. This could impact all of the daily turn ins for various crystals as well as the current crafting dailies (possibly unlocking new things to craft) Similarly, why not add the ability to turn in a weeks worth of blue or yellow crystal via a weekly or a rank 2 option. In all cases, the smaller cheaper options should remain, but newer higher level, turnover options with increased rewards as well. Even the die hard daily mission runners on Cyrene will bemoan needing a break once in awhile, I think they need a way to accomplish more, faster. A certain number of successful turn ins could count towards something..
   
   
6. In addition to looking at Weeklies and Rank 2 dailies, I think another option to help bolster activity is an overarching Daily “Daily”. Basically in an effort to help players keep track of all the available turn in options, perhaps we can roll them up into a single mission that lists all the dudes and bots needing crytals that day.. Possibly completing them all will get you a bonus token or two. More importantly the mission list will give the coords and info of needed mats. This gives players direction and purpose, if you add a bonus for completing them all, I guarantee even some of the less popular turn ins will be active again.. Give that a Rank 2 as well.. Then make another for all the Zyn activities and turn ins and do the same..
   
   
7. Step up those ARC missions and bring on the start of the other factions: This doesn’t need to be about the grand plan, or final payouts, just adding more easily consumed content.. Basically just add Rank 3-5 activities. In case you haven’t noticed, any badge missions you add to mobs that already have long iron missions plays very well. It is essentially all you need to do. (and maybe add some more iron missions, (points style only though!))
   

The Economy Isn’t Dead,... It’s Just Sleeping!


Breathing life into the Cyrene economy is a multifaceted effort both big and small. I have a lot of ideas for a crafting revamp/evolution for the game as a whole that will be a separate post over on PCF soon. I will not go into great detail on how this can work but i will leave the basic ideas here because I believe they are specifically important for planet partners.


Ideas that can drive turnover:

All Planet Partner Loot, especially loot of rare or unknown use should be extremely low tt. This is a constant barrier on all “foreign” planets for a player who wants to stay, and wants to stack this “exotic” loot because it may be someday useful or valuable, but inevitably runs into a situation where it ties up too much ped for their comfort. This leads to a variety of mostly unfortunate situations, someone regretfully tting it all, losing all their effort just to get ped back, others just leave the planet altogether, not tting but not wanting to “invest” further, others, massively undercut what little mu% there is on auction just to get out of there..If all the new loot was super low tt, we can happily stack it all, in addition, super low tt mats in demand can carry very high mu% easily.


One of the biggest concepts for my big crafting post is that it has been consistently proven that easily accessible as well as cheap clicks are both very effective bp designs. Everyone focuses on the big ATH and HOF of the Explosive Projectile Blueprints, but there is more to the story of its runaway success than just the big gambling swirls…


Like many popular bps before it, the mats to click were easily attainable by all and were very cheap to run the lowest lvl which is always great for skilling and bp collecting. Sometimes it feels like the most clicked bps in the history of the game are some of the smallest: basic filters and standard dampers, gen leather texture, basic screws, simple conductors, even some oddball bps that contain easily obtained mats remain popular such as the lysterium power container, it is effectively, a way to churn through large amounts of lyst. If there were lysterium power container bps 1 - 4 they all would be used. The lesson here is if people can click, they will click.


This concept can also be applied to planet partner loot. In an ideal world, I would be able to click everything i came back from a hunt with if I wanted, no matter how small… got 10 flesh from that last hunt? Run it through the 1x flesh bp see if you can pull a mini or new bp,, got 6000 low grade scrap? Better use the lvl 3 scrap bp that takes 20 x scrap a click instead of the lvl 1 that uses only 2x scrap… This idea may be a bit extreme, but the idea is that not only are the mats easily acquired, they are cheap clicks (proper crafting runs take alot of clicks anyways) and can be expandable to higher lvl versions that consume more material. People will click those bps, even if the product is nothing useful for now. Especially if you can manage the product to be a super low tt stackable with the rest as residue return. This would further enhance turnover. If the product was super low tt, everyone can stack again, and await its future uses at little tt cost tied up, but only after cycling through economy 2x (hunting or mining, then crafting). The rest of the return comes out as residue which is easily turned over..


Ideas that can drive MU%


One of the most consistent times I have seen a boon in mu% is when in various situations you are required to turn in materials that require effort, knowledge and most importantly, time to hunt/gather. Items involving Ancient Greece access and materials for the gear and quests there, low grade power supplies here for the Spear, bones and meat for the fap, materials needed for viceroy armor on Ark and robot loot needed for weapon and armor upgrades on Calypso are some prime examples. This concept has never really been tried on a grander scale and I feel that a host of new missions designed in this way could really get interesting.


Requiring easily crafted low level crafting product in lieu of shrapnel for vendor rewards, this can scale easily as well creating many interdependencies. Also, how about featuring some of the combines we have here? Make some combines turn ins for dailies or arc or future factions.. Again make them scale.. You want eventually people need 100 motherboards to turn in not just 1 as exmpl. Using those L bps such as ferguson’s stuff would be nice too..


Dailies. Weeklies, Monthlies, requiring increasing amounts of crafted goods and mats. We need demand: ranking up to gain access to new areas, missions or gear, or acquiring more tokens to buy that cool beetle armor is more than enough incentive to drive the demand. Bring more crafting dailies online and let them evolve, have some that eventually require larger runs to stimulate market activity


Ok well I can stop there as this post is already insanely long enough (believe it or not I tried to keep this short-ish)! But, honestly there wasn’t a way for me to do this right without going into some detail. This wasn’t easy for me to toss all my thoughts out on the table and I’m sure everyone won’t agree with everything I say, I only hope to contribute and perhaps help spawn the next great ideas..


I sincerely thank you for your time in reading this

Happy Holidays!


~008

 

[San]

I haven't yet managed to read and digest all of it, but kudos for the effort and passion at first.

 

[mastermesh]

All Planet Partner Loot, especially loot of rare or unknown use should be extremely low tt. This is a constant barrier on all “foreign” planets for a player who wants to stay, and wants to stack this “exotic” loot because it may be someday useful or valuable, but inevitably runs into a situation where it ties up too much ped for their comfort. This leads to a variety of mostly unfortunate situations, someone regretfully tting it all, losing all their effort just to get ped back, others just leave the planet altogether, not tting but not wanting to “invest” further, others, massively undercut what little mu% there is on auction just to get out of there..If all the new loot was super low tt, we can happily stack it all, in addition, super low tt mats in demand can carry very high mu% easily.

One major exception to this should be usable items, weapons, etc. It's always a major pain when you loot some L item and it can't be repaired and has low tt value...

Also, GET MA to change the bp looting system... really pain when on a PP and all you are looting as crafter is Calypso standard BPs 90% of the time.

 

[jetsina]

It seems to me that every single time something new is introduced it simply means one more thing which needs to be fixed. I have ended up having very little trust in anything, thus very little motivation to do anything more than some daily missions, if that even. What is the effective point in having tokens or badges, for example? Maybe it's a secret - too many secrets...
Heck, even many of my own mission counters are still kept a secret from me (as mentioned by OP). How am I supposed to know if killing a particular mob even counts? With my trust so low, if I can't see something then I have extremely little faith in it being bug-free!

As someone else has pointed out elsewhere, there are likely to be vested interests amongst some players who like things the way they are: some things work well (or are unintended, but work well - 'cough'), but almost nobody knows about them or what to do to gain 'access'. And higher up, I'm not convinced of how much sloppy CRM towards PPs at MA is incompetence and how much is intentional. Almost nobody is a true friend - if you don't manage to keep things clean, there are those who revel in the dirt.

Still, it's great to see people like the OP putting in the effort to try and improve things. Good luck with that, especially the thoughts you have on crafting!!! As with most things, skill and cooperation should be important for better outcomes. Cyrene has loads of unique materials, with a high number easily accessible but requiring time to build up stacks. That is typical low-skilled worker daily stuff to support a crafting base, but the crafting then needs to be worthwhile on top and require higher skill levels. Cooperation needs to supply a good end result, either (L) in a fairly steady-state economy, or possibly UNL in a slowly changing environment of better stats.
I don't see any of Cyrene's action chains currently meeting that, however. Maybe in individual loots, ok, but not from cooperation. But then again, I don't know enough hidden stuff apparently, even if I do watch the waves come and go on the shoreline!

 

[Hec]

008 it's an interesting read with good points.

I don't mind the few daily NPC's that are actually next to the spawn, and revisiting those NPCs afterwards.
For example West North West of ARC Immigration TP: Scout Bots, Crystal Pede, Tree Dragons, and Pleak.
BUT I won't cry if all missions are in a handful NPCs all at one location finally!

I'd like mission names shortened/changed so I don't have to click all mission names to find out mob it is.
I'll admit to not tracking or bothering to look at missions for awhile because its time consuming.
Or give us a way to sort missions by mob and also by mission name...

 

[008]

Just a little bump

This was just the tip of the iceberg, focusing mainly on easily implemented changes concerning content already in game. There is a a lot that can be done that does not require mountains of coding and development time.

Down the road, in future content development, it essential to focus on the economy here on Cyrene. I have a lot of ideas concerning a new way for crafting that I will write up soon on PCF. Hint: a big part of it focuses on easily accessible blueprint designs both in recipe and cost

There must be some other thoughts out there..

~008

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to say that I've read and am writing a reply to this post as I believe it fosters good discussion and constructive criticism.

Cheers,
Kris

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hello everyone,

I didn't have enough time to properly reply to this post by 008, but it was not over looked.

Sorry for my late reply, a lot of different things going on here that also required my attention, so without further ado:

Hello everyone, it has been a long time since I have written something like this. Please grab yourself a cup of coffee or crack a cold one, because this post is not intended to be short

(Edit: ok, its a text wall!) For those interested: My previous efforts to engage the community and developers together in thought and discussion was concerning the loot mechanics in play at the time (vol. 1) and can be found in the PCF loot theories section,Here

For the record, I think that it's broken up nicely into easily digestible bits.

Although I had thought there would be more discussion on this thread ><

I would like to start off by saying something that I mean from the bottom of my heart:

I love this planet and this game. Anything I say here is purely from the motivations of wanting to see it continue to evolve and become better than it already is. Ideas, thoughts and criticism are meant to be a constructive tool here, that said, I will not shy away from calling a spade a spade.

We will always welcome constructive criticism and ideas that can help Planet Cyrene be a better planet, not just for our dedicated players, but all players in the Entropia Universe.

I believe that you cannot unhear (or unread) a thought: a new perspective, the simplest out of the box notion can spawn whole new avenues of thought for everyone, everywhere. As such, this is merely my attempt at throwing all my thoughts out on the table. I do not expect or assume any of these things to be directly implemented nor do I feel that there aren’t better variations of these ideas now, or in the future.

That's not to say that good ideas or alternative solutions can't spring from ideas that were brought forth here. Good ideas come from all over, sometimes they are a bit raw but they can be refined into something fair and useable.

Concerning the future efforts of the developers and the direction of both planet Cyrene and Entropia Universe as a whole, I have felt for awhile that the foundation “the playground” is well set. By this, I mean that I feel Cyrene, as well nearly all the other planets boast wonderful, diverse and most importantly unique and original landscapes as well as flora and fauna! Cyrene in particular has designed some really good looking creatures. I often comment how nearly all Cyrene mobs would be cool pets lol. Even Cyrene’s new map is more than acceptable (for the time being, You guys DO have the original map saved away on someone’s thumb stick right? right?!)

We put a lot of time and effort into our creatures and terrain, we did a lot of preproduction as well. There's a whole book of it, in fact.

Of course, we use subversion software and everything has backups and old revisions, etc. Nothing is ever truly lost / forgotten / removed.

With that said, the first thought i want to share is that if anything can be put on autopilot for the time being it’s development on new mobs and scenery. For Cyrene this is especially true: You already have some of the game’s best looking mobs and are literally sitting on a whole larger planet map (Right?!!) in your back pocket. There is no reason to devote your development time to things that are already acceptable (for now)

There aren't any plans for any new mobs in the near future, however there is an event only mob planned for the next release.

There are a number of particles I'd like have redone but they are also not on the radar.

There are a few more mobs that haven't been seen on live servers as well that we've had for quite some time, some have been shown on the forum though, but not all of them.

Yes, the other 3 removed areas are 'in our back pocket' but of course they aren't the same as they were before.

We need to bring this planet to life. To me there are three key components to this:

1. The Player’s “Quality of Life” including things like solid mission engagement with desirable and fair rewards, as well as time efficiencies as far as mission running and turn-ins are involved
2. The Health of the Economy - got to have mu%, we got supply, no demand
3. The Devs need to make profit - We need more turnover, everyone wants it

The following is a list of ideas, concerns and thoughts for the present and future of Cyrene:

I hate to start off with some of the negatives, but these are of paramount importance to player retention both on planet and in game, as well as Cyrene’s reputation in the Universe.

All of these are important to us as well, Quality of Life is huge, especially in a game like Entropia Universe. The economy is lacking and it's one of the major hurdles that we need to overcome for Hard Launch to be successful. Of course we want Cyrene to be successful, we want Hard Launch to happen and be well received, and we want to start seriously marketing, we want to have turnover.

Righting the Wrongs - A Story of how Dopamine and his Carrot and Stick lost their way

1. Fix the mission counters - Devs, and I am serious, if you are reading this, please stop here and make an office competition to figure out how to get this done soon. I know it is fixed now, but the large majority of the most important player base, i.e. veteran planet hopping players that came here to support this planet early are left with tons of broken mission counters for long 3k-6k kill or more mission chains that as a whole, on average, will never be overcome. No one should be dismissive of this problem, if you are, you are greatly underestimating the power of Dopamine in gaming. It is often the “incremental” progress and rewards that are the most powerful. Many players will stay on planet just a little bit longer if they can see that they only have 500 more tideclaw to go to finish the 5k. Visible mission progress also has the effect of softening the blow of poor loot returns. “Hey Joe, how was the hunt? Joe: Pretty crappy, I lost 100 ped on Tideclaw, but I am 4700/5k now
   
   Me: Grz!
   
   Joe: Ty
   
   .... Fix these counters please, I cannot stress this enough. It is hurting your planet far more than you realise

Alright, I was already working on this for the last PP VU. While we were not able to recreate this on the test server for the best way to trouble shoot and resolve this, We'll be rolling out a test fix for the Dire Weed Mission Chain:

1) This chain mission has been moved to a new Kill Point Mission Terminal that has 15 locations over the whole of Planet Cyrene.

2) If you are currently on this mission but your objectives are not shown, you should be able to interact with this terminal and flag them as active.

3) When you kill your last creature or get your last kill point, the mission should complete in the field and allow you to pick up the next mission from any Kill Point Mission Terminal.

Right now it's still a work in progress, but I'm hopeful that we'll have a resolution for this soon.

*this excludes the Stage 1 Epic mission that involves killing an unknown number of Merfolken.

1. Vendor Stock: I know there has been a lot of progress in this area lately but it is not complete. Things that were on offer for mission tokens are still missing. I know offhand that the Zyn campfires are still missing completely and there is barely any armor molds etc. you would be surprised how these little things turn players off. It causes trust issues. If you need to remove anything you write it into storyline, and if possible replace it with something better or equivalent. Please make sure every single thing that used to be available is again from these vendors

100% in agreement with this, there has been progress, and no, it is not complete yet. At this time we're still discussing about the A.R.C. Vendors, not only the Rank 1, 2, and 3, but future ranks as well.

As far Zyn Campfires, the item cost needed to be adjusted and then they should have been turned back on. I just double checked with MA before posting this and everything should be up and running with those again.

With the vendor stock, it's something I'm constantly discussing with MindArk, but it's something that we do not have any direct control over.

1. Finish the rest of the ARC Stage vendors: More on this below, but this is a classic case of removing the carrot from the stick. At the very least get something up for rank 3-5 as a placeholder. There was a lot of momentum for this going and it totally lost steam because there isn’t anything to strive for past rank 2. On top of that you have players turned off because you set 1200 badge goals etc. and didn’t follow through. Throw something in there, anything for now

I believe that it's more important to have good rewards, and it's difficult to add new rewards while current rewards are in limbo.

That being said, what sort of items would be in the vendors that would be acceptable for the time being?

Things that were going right, then went wrong: “Sharpening the Long Hook”

1. Epic Mission Chains Rebalance - It is basically common knowledge and advice that both of the epic chains here are currently not worth doing. These topics have been covered elsewhere on here by players with more knowledge of the situation but it needs to be mentioned. Me? I lost interest when my counter for the very first stage on the 10k points zeladoth broke (and is still) and then I heard the prototype gun rewarded was worse than the x3 currently dropping on panelons lol….These epic missions as well as your “iron style” hunting and mining missions are your long hook. The efforts need to be worth it and there are plenty of ways you can amend the already distributed rewards via short upgrade paths. Any and all longer mission chains that keep players on planet for longer periods of time are of upmost importance to be running smoothly and as advertised. These concern not only your most loyal and active Cyrene player base, but the “big fish” as well.

While I believe there has been some controversy around the Stage 2 Epic Mission Chain rewards, however, there is merit to this rebalance.

This is something that I'll bring up the next time I chat with MA.

1. ARC Faction Mission Line: Probably the most exciting and popular mission set at inception has stalled. There was a lot of enthusiasm for the faction series, please don’t let a few mishaps concerning things that everyone got TOO excited for, slow you down from seeing the series out.. As mentioned above at the very least put the carrot back on the stick, get some kind of rewards/gear access/mission access, something up for rank 3-5. Players have lost the motivation to continue. This has already been successful, put the air back in the tires and let’s roll..

Hmm, this is sort of responded to further up =)

1. Seasonal Gifts and Hunting Spawn - this is another area where there was good activity initially but over the years lost its steam and i believe, some mistakes were made. The first year was great: holiday jellies were cool and accessible for all, on top of that they were looting nice UL holiday coats and hats. The coats looked great, were holding good markup and could be looted if you grind hard enough. everyone was happy, lots of activity. Fast forward to next year and they drop the same coat again, completely tanking not only the markup but the nostalgia of that first event as now the coats are indistinguishable between the 2 years. Fast forward another year and there is no spawn, breaking tradition, and instead, we get to summon a mob most can’t kill. Things like this help create history for Cyrene, the next year’s coats should have been green or a different pattern or at least labeled 2015 or something. These changes are quick and easy and have lasting impact in both markup and lore. Please consider this in the future.

I have to agree that the ball was dropped in regards to the holiday event last year.

We did learn our lesson from and this year's holiday spawn should have been a bit more accessible to all players involved.

In the future for all holiday/event items that are created specifically to be used within it will have a proper naming convention and labeling.

Do you feel it would be worth wile to retroactively adjust the current item descriptions to fit within this new schema?

Dailies: Cleaning up the mess and stepping up the game

Cyrene has a lot of great daily activities, A LOT! So many it’s often very easy for anyone but the most astute and active locals to forget where the guy who want green is and where are the 2 difft drill bot dailies and how many blue crystals was it? etc etc Maybe this is part of the charm, but even in practice its an awful lot of hustle bustle every day. Some running around is just fine, a lot of repetitive running that everyone has to do every day just turns, collectively into a giant time waster, time that could be spent cycling peds. I have a couple ideas to help streamline the process without ruining the experience.

A fair point. It's something that we'll be working towards in future VUs.

1. All ARC dailies should auto-complete. Like on Calypso, as soon as you kill the last mutated dire weed, or panelon old, you get the badge in a loot window. There is no need to have us all running back to the terminal to collect the badge and reset the timer. This collectively would save loads of gaming time. You’ll still get the experience to run over there and pick it up.

We are actively working towards this with many of our current missions, and to adjust many current missions to this format.

1. Move all ARC mission givers and vendors to one location. This should be obvious. At the moment the stage 1, stage 2, and reward vendors are all in different places. We currently have a problem with camping upsetting the playerbase anyways so lets get the vendors up planetside. The Hub’s unequip “feature” isn’t helping this either as players will be inclined to stay “just a little longer to camp” because it literally costs you to go down there. Might as well get your money’s worth. In addition, this is another carrot and stick, new players and tourists should be able to see the rank 2 npc they can’t talk to, and the vendors they can’t access right there where the rank 1 terminal is… its motivating. The rank 2 npc being located at 0x0 supply isn’t helping anyone either. It’s annoying and out of the way now, where it could be convenient and serving as motivational carrot standing next to rank 1 terminal.

A couple of points about this particular suggestion:

I agree that, yes, all the A.R.C. NPCs should be grouped in the same area, in fact I think their island should be adjusted a bit to reflect all of the hard work players have done currying favor with them.

As far as putting the vendors Planet-side is more of a hurdle. One of the reasons why the vendors are where they are is that it's much more difficult for players to try and glitch into where the vendors are. If and when there is a safe way to move the vendors in an easier to access space then we'll move it =)

1. Rank 2 ARC missions need to have their crafting options enabled - this is going to play into the larger picture of bringing life to the Cyrene economy. I cannot fathom what the holdup is on this, it can be flexible and wouldn’t even be a big deal to alter or change later as they are just dailies (it could even be a seasonal feature). Please consider getting these crafting dailies back in for stage 2 and beyond..

I'll see what we can do about this, even if it's making them into separate missions.

1. The Hub is a hurting yet unique gaming system on Cyrene, as are the MARIO platformers, Eve’s underwater pvp playground, and the Maze. Maybe it isn’t a bad idea to move these all together into the Hub Possibly some good can come from streamlining these alternative activities together?

I'm not opposed to that, it could be something that we end up doing in the future. I looked back over a few months worth of reports and the Maze as well as the platformer instances do have a small following of players that consistently do them.

We're also looking at rebalancing the cost / rewards for these to make it a bit more appealing for players to want to do this (at least once a day).

1. Stepping up the game: I think we should look at possibly adding the ability to get Rank 2 dailies and/or the ability to unlock Weekly and Monthlies. Not only is this a great new way to tack onto already existing popular Cyrene activities, it has the potential to impact turnover and market activity. This could impact all of the daily turn ins for various crystals as well as the current crafting dailies (possibly unlocking new things to craft) Similarly, why not add the ability to turn in a weeks worth of blue or yellow crystal via a weekly or a rank 2 option. In all cases, the smaller cheaper options should remain, but newer higher level, turnover options with increased rewards as well. Even the die hard daily mission runners on Cyrene will bemoan needing a break once in awhile, I think they need a way to accomplish more, faster. A certain number of successful turn ins could count towards something..

This is a really interesting idea actually.

The only foreseeable issue right off the bat is the unlocking of the rank 2. As of this posting, there wasn't any tracking of which players did what daily, for however many days, etc. It's not difficult to setup a way to unlock it, but it would be impossible to do retroactively.

Another one of these issues would be with overlap: but as long as it was setup so that you couldn't do both the daily and the weekly/monthly at the same time it shouldn't be a big deal.

1. In addition to looking at Weeklies and Rank 2 dailies, I think another option to help bolster activity is an overarching Daily “Daily”. Basically in an effort to help players keep track of all the available turn in options, perhaps we can roll them up into a single mission that lists all the dudes and bots needing crytals that day.. Possibly completing them all will get you a bonus token or two. More importantly the mission list will give the coords and info of needed mats. This gives players direction and purpose, if you add a bonus for completing them all, I guarantee even some of the less popular turn ins will be active again.. Give that a Rank 2 as well.. Then make another for all the Zyn activities and turn ins and do the same..

Oh I like this, sort of like a "meta" quest to for turning in or killing or crafting for whatever daily requirements are needed.

The difficult part is finding a proper reward schema.

It's something we can try and structure and talk to MA about for the future.

1. Step up those ARC missions and bring on the start of the other factions: This doesn’t need to be about the grand plan, or final payouts, just adding more easily consumed content.. Basically just add Rank 3-5 activities. In case you haven’t noticed, any badge missions you add to mobs that already have long iron missions plays very well. It is essentially all you need to do. (and maybe add some more iron missions, (points style only though!))

This isn't something that I had considered. As I had mentioned previously in several posts to us here it didn't seem right to add more missions with the previous rank rewards being correct. It's sort of part and parcel.

As for bringing the other factions, but we would need full cooperation from MA about making sure that we have everything in place. I don't that we should let anything more forward with another faction until we can make sure that everything works correctly and rewards are structured in a way they can be doled out without the current issues we're having.

The Economy Isn’t Dead,... It’s Just Sleeping!

Breathing life into the Cyrene economy is a multifaceted effort both big and small. I have a lot of ideas for a crafting revamp/evolution for the game as a whole that will be a separate post over on PCF soon. I will not go into great detail on how this can work but i will leave the basic ideas here because I believe they are specifically important for planet partners.

I don't know if this is written or not but I'm looking forward to reading it.

Ideas that can drive turnover:

All Planet Partner Loot, especially loot of rare or unknown use should be extremely low tt. This is a constant barrier on all “foreign” planets for a player who wants to stay, and wants to stack this “exotic” loot because it may be someday useful or valuable, but inevitably runs into a situation where it ties up too much ped for their comfort. This leads to a variety of mostly unfortunate situations, someone regretfully tting it all, losing all their effort just to get ped back, others just leave the planet altogether, not tting but not wanting to “invest” further, others, massively undercut what little mu% there is on auction just to get out of there..If all the new loot was super low tt, we can happily stack it all, in addition, super low tt mats in demand can carry very high mu% easily.

But what about the old, current loot. I'm thinking out loud here but: what if took all the current high TT loot, Strong Sinew comes to mind right away. So instead of creatures dropping Strong Sinew, they drop a Piece of Strong Sinew, at 1/100th of the Strong SInew TT cost. That way, we can keep Strong Sinew and let it become a higher tier component.

I just think that if we can add value, to the loot we already have in the pool and not basically consider it wasted or not useable.

Is that crazy?

One of the biggest concepts for my big crafting post is that it has been consistently proven that easily accessible as well as cheap clicks are both very effective bp designs. Everyone focuses on the big ATH and HOF of the Explosive Projectile Blueprints, but there is more to the story of its runaway success than just the big gambling swirls…

I think that everyone, players and developers, want this to happen.

It's not enough to just have cheap clicks bps, it has to lead somewhere and to have a solid blueprint that people would want to make big clicks of these parts.

This year, crafting is something that I have stated here, as well as told MA that Cyrene wants to focus on.

Like many popular bps before it, the mats to click were easily attainable by all and were very cheap to run the lowest lvl which is always great for skilling and bp collecting. Sometimes it feels like the most clicked bps in the history of the game are some of the smallest: basic filters and standard dampers, gen leather texture, basic screws, simple conductors, even some oddball bps that contain easily obtained mats remain popular such as the lysterium power container, it is effectively, a way to churn through large amounts of lyst. If there were lysterium power container bps 1 - 4 they all would be used. The lesson here is if people can click, they will click.

Basic Filters: used in 11 bps
Standard Dampeners: used in
Gen Leather Textures: a cosmetic blueprint
Basic Screws: used in 14 bps
Simple Conductors: used in 20 bps
Lysterium Power Container: used in 1 bp and 1 quest

Please forgive me in case I over or under represented the number of bps that these are used in, I don't know all the in's and out's of Calypso crafting.

That being said, I think that yes, it's important to have low TT items to click, but they need to serve a higher purpose, these simple blueprints need to be used to craft items that are important and wanted by the players.

This concept can also be applied to planet partner loot. In an ideal world, I would be able to click everything i came back from a hunt with if I wanted, no matter how small… got 10 flesh from that last hunt? Run it through the 1x flesh bp see if you can pull a mini or new bp,, got 6000 low grade scrap? Better use the lvl 3 scrap bp that takes 20 x scrap a click instead of the lvl 1 that uses only 2x scrap… This idea may be a bit extreme, but the idea is that not only are the mats easily acquired, they are cheap clicks (proper crafting runs take alot of clicks anyways) and can be expandable to higher lvl versions that consume more material. People will click those bps, even if the product is nothing useful for now. Especially if you can manage the product to be a super low tt stackable with the rest as residue return. This would further enhance turnover. If the product was super low tt, everyone can stack again, and await its future uses at little tt cost tied up, but only after cycling through economy 2x (hunting or mining, then crafting). The rest of the return comes out as residue which is easily turned over..

I believe that this is the ultimate goal here. Everything that is looted and mined on Cyrene should be used for something. Back from the start of the development of loot, almost 80% of the loot that was created is used in blueprints.

As far as clicking the bps even if they aren't useful, I'm not so sure. Although to be fair I don't know how if the fact that they were so cheap that might change that.

To quote Jetsina:

Cyrene has loads of unique materials, with a high number easily accessible but requiring time to build up stacks. That is typical low-skilled worker daily stuff to support a crafting base, but the crafting then needs to be worthwhile on top and require higher skill levels. Cooperation needs to supply a good end result, either (L) in a fairly steady-state economy, or possibly UNL in a slowly changing environment of better stats.

I don't see any of Cyrene's action chains currently meeting that, however. Maybe in individual loots,

Of course, not all materials can be acquired so easily, and some crafting drops are intended to be rare.

2017 will have Cyrene be focused on crafting, and this is something that the team and I will talk about and consider the best way to approach this with MindArk.

Ideas that can drive MU%

One of the most consistent times I have seen a boon in mu% is when in various situations you are required to turn in materials that require effort, knowledge and most importantly, time to hunt/gather. Items involving Ancient Greece access and materials for the gear and quests there, low grade power supplies here for the Spear, bones and meat for the fap, materials needed for viceroy armor on Ark and robot loot needed for weapon and armor upgrades on Calypso are some prime examples. This concept has never really been tried on a grander scale and I feel that a host of new missions designed in this way could really get interesting.

This sounds really cool, like some fun hunter / tracker missions, where you have to know where to find certain creatures to get the specific items from them which will let you turn into the NPC to get some interesting items.

Requiring easily crafted low level crafting product in lieu of shrapnel for vendor rewards, this can scale easily as well creating many interdependencies. Also, how about featuring some of the combines we have here? Make some combines turn ins for dailies or arc or future factions.. Again make them scale.. You want eventually people need 100 motherboards to turn in not just 1 as exmpl. Using those L bps such as ferguson’s stuff would be nice too..

So there's 2 points here:

1) Initially it was hoped that key cubes would fill this role, either components or Imperium Key Cubes. This didn't really pan out, so I think a new, simple component for vendor currency can be created.

2) Sort of circling back to adding more A.R.C. dailies, it's something that will come once all the issues with the rewards are sorted out. I do think that turn in dailies for maybe some special crafting components or some kind of blueprint roulette for example. We can look into it, but the balancing for turn ins isn't so cut and dry.

Dailies. Weeklies, Monthlies, requiring increasing amounts of crafted goods and mats. We need demand: ranking up to gain access to new areas, missions or gear, or acquiring more tokens to buy that cool beetle armor is more than enough incentive to drive the demand. Bring more crafting dailies online and let them evolve, have some that eventually require larger runs to stimulate market activity

The first bolded part again I think circles back to the last reply. The second bolded part could be really great for Cyrene, provided that it's combined with the other crafting suggestions above.

Ok well I can stop there as this post is already insanely long enough (believe it or not I tried to keep this short-ish)! But, honestly there wasn’t a way for me to do this right without going into some detail. This wasn’t easy for me to toss all my thoughts out on the table and I’m sure everyone won’t agree with everything I say, I only hope to contribute and perhaps help spawn the next great ideas..

I don't believe that one bit =p

I do believe that you have contributed to the future of Cyrene more than you think.

I sincerely thank you for your time in reading this

Honestly, thank you for taking the time to write up such a concise and well thought out problems and solutions post.

One major exception to this should be usable items, weapons, etc. It's always a major pain when you loot some L item and it can't be repaired and has low tt value...

Also, GET MA to change the bp looting system... really pain when on a PP and all you are looting as crafter is Calypso standard BPs 90% of the time.

It's on the docket to discuss with them along with many of the other crafting ideas from this post.

It seems to me that every single time something new is introduced it simply means one more thing which needs to be fixed. I have ended up having very little trust in anything, thus very little motivation to do anything more than some daily missions, if that even. What is the effective point in having tokens or badges, for example? Maybe it's a secret - too many secrets...

Heck, even many of my own mission counters are still kept a secret from me (as mentioned by OP). How am I supposed to know if killing a particular mob even counts? With my trust so low, if I can't see something then I have extremely little faith in it being bug-free!

A fair point, and one that we're working on resolving. It's a big part as why not only has the A.R.C. faction missions haven't produced anything new as well.

Have to focus on fixing the broken stuff first before rolling out new stuff. To break of course =p

Still, it's great to see people like the OP putting in the effort to try and improve things. Good luck with that, especially the thoughts you have on crafting!!! As with most things, skill and cooperation should be important for better outcomes. Cyrene has loads of unique materials, with a high number easily accessible but requiring time to build up stacks. That is typical low-skilled worker daily stuff to support a crafting base, but the crafting then needs to be worthwhile on top and require higher skill levels. Cooperation needs to supply a good end result, either (L) in a fairly steady-state economy, or possibly UNL in a slowly changing environment of better stats.

I don't see any of Cyrene's action chains currently meeting that, however. Maybe in individual loots, ok, but not from cooperation. But then again, I don't know enough hidden stuff apparently, even if I do watch the waves come and go on the shoreline!

Me neither, but I think we're on the same wavelength (see quote above)

I don't mind the few daily NPC's that are actually next to the spawn, and revisiting those NPCs afterwards.

For example West North West of ARC Immigration TP: Scout Bots, Crystal Pede, Tree Dragons, and Pleak.

BUT I won't cry if all missions are in a handful NPCs all at one location finally!

I'd like mission names shortened/changed so I don't have to click all mission names to find out mob it is.

I'll admit to not tracking or bothering to look at missions for awhile because its time consuming.

Or give us a way to sort missions by mob and also by mission name...

Master Chief has really been on me about this, it's on the roadmap once we can get the issue of the mission counters resolved.

Just a little bump

This was just the tip of the iceberg, focusing mainly on easily implemented changes concerning content already in game. There is a a lot that can be done that does not require mountains of coding and development time.

Down the road, in future content development, it essential to focus on the economy here on Cyrene. I have a lot of ideas concerning a new way for crafting that I will write up soon on PCF. Hint: a big part of it focuses on easily accessible blueprint designs both in recipe and cost

I can't wait for the next one.

Again, I know this was a long wait, but I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone on the forums that give us feedback, input on what's happening (both good and bad), ideas to make Cyrene better, bug reports, everything that's put on here is read by a person and not overlooked.

Thanks for playing and thanks for helping Planet Cyrene.

Cheers,
Kris

 

[harmony]

Although I had thought there would be more discussion on this thread Cheers,
Kris

I had planned to discuss some things after I first saw this thread. But the post was just too long, and now you've made it even longer Kris
We Do have to spend some time ingame as well

 

[Hec]

I have to agree that the ball was dropped in regards to the holiday event last year.

We did learn our lesson from and this year's holiday spawn should have been a bit more accessible to all players involved.

This years should've been more accessible???
The only thing I heard/read about this year's holiday event was that MA didn't activate it or something.
And then everyone just given up nagging after a few weeks.
http://cyreneforum.com/threads/a-little-bit-late-now.7491/
http://cyreneforum.com/threads/holi...ene-mini-patch-notes-december-13th-2016.7489/

In the future for all holiday/event items that are created specifically to be used within it will have a proper naming convention and labeling.

Do you feel it would be worth wile to retroactively adjust the current item descriptions to fit within this new schema?

Imo don't bother changing them, just move forward with the new stuff.

 

[Kris | Cyrene]

Hey guys,

We Do have to spend some time ingame as well

I've been trying to get on more, it just depends on the speed of the VUs really to how much time I can dedicate to being on live servers to communicate and not checking on things that are happening.

This years should've been more accessible???
The only thing I heard/read about this year's holiday event was that MA didn't activate it or something.
And then everyone just given up nagging after a few weeks.
http://cyreneforum.com/threads/a-little-bit-late-now.7491/
http://cyreneforum.com/threads/holi...ene-mini-patch-notes-december-13th-2016.7489/

This is about context, specifically in relation to the 2015 holiday event, where you had to spawn the creatures via a quest turn in (Christmas totems) where you had to wait to spawn and the mobs weren't shared loot etc.

The plan for the 2016 event was an event spawn of large HP shared holiday mobs with special holiday drops.

You're exactly right about what happened with it though, where MA didn't activate the event spawn during the proper time, so we ended up not having a 2016 event.

Cheers,
Kris

 

[San]

Was going to post this in the other thread which got closed, think it fits here too at least to add a little upbeat. This brief visit yielded 3 globals on Mutated Dire Plant out of only 12 kills (!), only two of which got captured and this one below which also eluded detection. On the way there I passed a Rocktropian institution pumping rounds into Rhino Beetles. YouTube and Twitch carry evidence the game's highest skilled players fancy big Tide Claws quite a bit. No, Cyrene isn't dead. I'll be back for more.

 

[Erza]

Was going to post this in the other thread which got closed, think it fits here too at least to add a little upbeat. This brief visit yielded 3 globals on Mutated Dire Plant out of only 12 kills (!), only two of which got captured and this one below which also eluded detection. On the way there I passed a Rocktropian institution pumping rounds into Rhino Beetles. YouTube and Twitch carry evidence the game's highest skilled players fancy big Tide Claws quite a bit. No, Cyrene isn't dead. I'll be back for more.

On Cyrene i noticed also that you don't have to do long boring runs before getting some nice globals
Of course not every run is like that but most are and that is what i've noticed which is cool since i don't really hunt for longer than 1 to 1.5 hours or so and if i hunt longer i always take a few breaks other wise i just can't stay focused.lol
And that is also a reason that i can't do the dailys everyday since sometimes when i logon i just want to hunt something else
Playing randomly and instinctive is my kinda thing to keep me motivated and awake.lol

 

[jetsina]

Kris: >2017 will have Cyrene be focused on crafting, and this is something that the team and I will talk about and consider the best way to approach this with MindArk.

Thanks for your recent long answer which included the above.
Crafting is an area which seems to have massive problems right now. Ultimately some desirable product will have to come out at the end of whatever chain is followed, but the question of balance is extremely important and MA wants to be able to maintain control so that it can step in if it needs to, I understand that.
I also understand that not every crafted item can be the best in its class - they cannot all be winners, thus not everything that can be crafted would necessarily be worth crafting. As I understand it, there are all sorts of little potential bonuses which can be added into otherwise poor bps, such as specific other bp drops linked to the bp.

I personally dislike secrets all over the place, especially if the frequency comes and goes (I hope you know what I mean). I would prefer required skill levels to make it clearer that a bp class is more worthwhile than a lesser bp class, and that the use of each bp is clearer to generally identify.

I actually quite like the key cube concept - lots of ingredients closing in on a target end result. But the balancing of what you can then do with the key cubes MUST be good if you can do different things with them. AND the activity must be worth some intrinsic mu also going to players involved in the making of those cubes.

Anyway, good luck, and I hope you find a clear way of presenting the future structure you agree on with MA.

 

[Erza]

Kris: >2017 will have Cyrene be focused on crafting, and this is something that the team and I will talk about and consider the best way to approach this with MindArk.

Thanks for your recent long answer which included the above.
Crafting is an area which seems to have massive problems right now. Ultimately some desirable product will have to come out at the end of whatever chain is followed, but the question of balance is extremely important and MA wants to be able to maintain control so that it can step in if it needs to, I understand that.
I also understand that not every crafted item can be the best in its class - they cannot all be winners, thus not everything that can be crafted would necessarily be worth crafting. As I understand it, there are all sorts of little potential bonuses which can be added into otherwise poor bps, such as specific other bp drops linked to the bp.

I personally dislike secrets all over the place, especially if the frequency comes and goes (I hope you know what I mean). I would prefer required skill levels to make it clearer that a bp class is more worthwhile than a lesser bp class, and that the use of each bp is clearer to generally identify.

I actually quite like the key cube concept - lots of ingredients closing in on a target end result. But the balancing of what you can then do with the key cubes MUST be good if you can do different things with them. AND the activity must be worth some intrinsic mu also going to players involved in the making of those cubes.

Anyway, good luck, and I hope you find a clear way of presenting the future structure you agree on with MA.

"I personally dislike secrets all over the place"
I see no reason for secrets in online game but according to my 2 sons it is how it has always been in games
People like to monopolize everything they can for an edge or in EU case a profit and that is the main reason for all the secrets and what not

 

[jetsina]

Yes, ok. I guess what I mean is the "gaining access" type of stuff behind "closed doors" type of secrets. This is different from exploring and finding clues, like tablets of wisdom, or so, where there is no big barrier completely shielding all information about what is on the other side unless a player with access decides to pass the information on.

It also cannot be good for the expansion prospects of a game where even two people knowing something starts to erode the value of the knowledge. There are instance caves on another planet where there is literally only room for one player at a time to get a good run on the mobs inside. More than that (i.e. 2 people) and the spawn rate is too slow. Then there are other instances which put you inside solo and in parallel instances to others, so it doesn't matter so much if more people are doing the same activity. That is much better...

It would also be crazy if a particular loot is hidden so well that not even one person has so far found it and we just all assume the blueprint or whatever requires that item/stackable is just wildly imbalanced like lots of stuff is. It is also crazy that bugged stuff may be fixed without any announcement, but nobody notices for ages because those that tried a few times at intervals of a few months simply gave up trying, and any hint of the feature is now buried so far in past vu notes that no newer players will even discover that something exists. Those things are not even secrets; they are simply forgotten!

On a final note for now - I've been thinking about what I would even try to stock if I had a shop or a booth... Cyrene minerals, specific mob loot, weaps, armour? I realise that I have almost no idea right now. Sigh (but I would like one Kris!)