This post on www.nextislandlife.com made me think about how to treat BP's. If we see planets as different entities, MA has do decide what BP's is universal and what BP's is local. Now we have a lot of old Calypso BP's and many of the things they produce is used on all available planets (except NI sub part Ancient Greece). The players now have the oppinion that all these BP's shall work on all planet. IMO, BP's should be local. Why should a Calypso shirt be able to craft on another planet? If a planetpartner drops a new BP it should be their own right to decide if it should be able to use on a universal level or just a local level. Soon we will see local BP's, I think mid April for RT and mid June for NI. (I might remember things wrong). We allready have some local BP's like the time travel crystal at NI. Must a planet provide resources for all BP's? IMO no. Must all BP's be usable on all planets? should you be able to buy BP in auction from another planet and then buy all resources and then you craft on your own planet? I think NI shows the future way of how planets will work and how they was planned to work with their implementation of Ancient greek. Now with to soon released planets like RT and NI people got used to how it works even though in the future there will be more and more diversity on how things work. It was easy for RT and NI to allow all Calypso weapons to work but this was not the intention with the Entropia Universe platform.
Interesting that you post this since I almost started a thread about this here yesterday but couldn't make what I was thinking understandable. I think the idea to have BP's that can only be crafted on their planet of origin is a very sound one. Not all BP's, but some. This would create a truly seperate marketplace for each planet. If they don't do this, I think a large majority of the playerbase will end up on one planet - just like it is now - similar to Twin Peaks being where all the traders are on Calypso. In other games with multiple servers, a lot of people will transfer their characters to other servers even at a high cost in real dollars - if they decide the population is better there. If MA doesn't make each planets economy truly sustainable through unique items which are only produced on that planet (and which people actually want to use), they run the risk of Twin Peaks on a larger scale. I think they fubared that by allowing Rocktropia and NI to launch prematurely though and the only way to fix it would be to introduce a fully working crafting economy on those planets before going any further with development elsewhere in the system. I don't think they will do it and the opportunity will be missed. Also they need to justify it somehow in a universal storyline (which seems to have been abandoned completely now by EU). Unique BP's would provide interstellar trading/shipping opportunities and also offer the chance that businesses (SFE comes to mind) would need/want to open branch offices on other planets. This would promote the feeling that the Universe is really connected and not just a bunch of glorified land ares each existing in their own pocket universe. I can think of many ways to justify the uniquiness of some BP's to their own planets. No one at MA must read much science fiction. Also, I notice you say the time travel cystals are local BP's - does that mean the BP's won't work in a crafting machine not located on NI?
If there is to be separation in BPs then each planet needs to have some basic skilling BPs of the kind that people use to skill cheaply at low levels and, crucially, loot other BPs. BPs like Jester D-1, Generic Leather Texture, Settler Shins. Until the new planets have equivalents to these, crafting can't be fully separated or it will just become almost impossible to craft due to the lack of BPs available. Once such BPs are available the separation would be possible, though I would also note that while some existing BPs should clearly 'belong' to Calypso for storyline/immersion purposes (weapons being the most obvious example) I don't see any reason why BPs that make more generic items such as simple components or wool-based textures shouldn't be universal.
From what I have observed and researched I think that, All pre-existing blueprints are Universal. Pitbull bps are Planet Specific to Calypso. Juelz, Dragon Plates, Creative Juice & the new furniture are Planet Specific to Rocktropia. Time Travel Crystal bps are Planet Specific to Next Island. I believe that Planet Specific Blueprints mean they can only be looted or received on that planet but that they can still be crafted at any terminal. I believe that most Planet Partners will include Planet Specific resources or loots in the ingredient lists of Planet Specific Blueprints. The fact that the resources and the blueprints can only be looted or found on a Specific Planet will in effect limit some of its economy to that planet without eliminating the possibility for free (taxed with travel and auction fees) trade. Really it seems like a good system to me. narfi
Thx for the good answers on this matter. I just hope someone responsible at MA and the planet partners read this. IMO SEE would protect the Calypso BPs and maybe we should just agree that everything in the Component books is truely universal but the rest isn't. It might sound a bit hard, but no one expect a Combibo or Aurli to spawn on one of the other planets so why should anyone craft a Calypso Toxido? In this way we should protect the markup of the existing products and at the same time do the same for future local BPs. IMO the ingame economy is the most important thing in this game and has allways been the thing that atracted me the most. In retrospective there is 100+ mobs that is local on Calypso and the BPs should be treated the same way. I hope that we one day will see a RT that focus on music and creation of music related stuff with hunting and mining as a second hand thing. Same with NI there we can focus on exploring new worlds though time travel. A Arkadia where digging in to old stuff and do archological excavations is the main focus. And even a planet Michael where we can dance, scream WHOO and hug any type of human being at a way that makes our skills rice at the same time as wi gather resources for crafting. Damn! A few glasses of a 10 year old Tallisker makes me feel vey poetic.
On this one I'd agree with you. What you don't seem to understand is the separation of SDS and MA. One of the consequences if you like of the separation is anything that MA release is universal i.e. available to all planet partners. Like all the generic vehicles so far with the exception of pitbull are MA platform based so available to all planet partners. The pitbull is created by SDS so available only to calypso. Now with many of the old items that your familiar with on calypso are likely to have become MA platform based hence available to all planet partners. Somewhere down the line we'll probably start seeing Calypso specific items which SDS create but so far they seem to be busy with planet michael so we haven't seen anything new... The generic items by MA are essentially the old calypso items your familar with. This is a good thing because having generic items available for all planet partners ensures some consistency. Now each planet is welcome to create new items. It will be interesting to see what items SDS create which will be specifically for Calypso so far I think we only have the pitbull.
I think you're right that in general the generic + specific system is a good basis for the crafting system. But there are two problems with this as it stands now. Firstly the system is rather undeveloped, with so few planet-specific BPs so far. Of course we can expect that to improve over time but I would have liked to see more RT and NI BPs being introduced at an earlier stage. The second problem is to do with storyline/lore. At the moment we have, for example, the Geotrek weapons which are connected with a Calypso corporation and part of ther Calypso storyline (admittedly in a quite superficial way). It makes no sense for these items/BPs to be generic.
This is exactly my point. Storyline. How does Calypso items fit in to the other planets storyline. How on earth(or other planet) can the clothing on the different planets be the same? How does a VTOL fit in to NI storyline. Same as I say about he the 100+ mobs available on Calypso is treated as Calypso mobs, the same way, storylinewise should the Item BP's (not components). BTW, how can I find Caroot and Paploons at NI? A planet on the other side of the univers has the same fruits. (maybe the seeds where stuck under a colonists boot? Same with sweating. I thought sweat and Mind Force was something that mankind found at Calypso.
There are many ways to explain company products - for instance Omegaton - on more than one world. Interstellar trade - smugglers - Multiplanetary Corporations - War booty - Galactic Fashion houses - people coming to the new world and going broke and having to sell the stuff they brought with them - tourists getting mugged - interstellar black market arms dealers - etc. They would actually need a coherent storyline though unlike the mess that Calypso was stuck with at the beginning. It would really make sense for them to re-write the EU origin history (now! before it becomes totally irrelevant) starting from Earth and laying a framework for interstellar colonization; leaving it somewhat open ended to allow for new worlds to be included with the PP's writing their own history - tying into the main EU history. I know this won't be done though, MA isn't involved with the end users now and the PP's can't just do it by themselves.
I think the problem is not so much that there is a separation in crafting (and that there should be) but that like with other things, there is no actual knowledge which ones are shared platform features and which are not. And it is fairly expensive to find out, as the only way is to craft blueprints on other planets and see if you get a drop after a potentially very long time. It would make sense if the Omegaton powerclaws that only come in (l)(l) bps would be Calypso specific, same for the armors that are available only in (l)(l). Test would be to craft whatever drops predator parts on another planet. Another example of probably largely calypso specific blueprints is the textures blueprint book. Because the mobs that give resource for most of these are Calypso only.
Totally agree there. One hypothesis could be BP's that use planet specific ingredients are planet specific e.g. basic shirt uses molisk tooth so is likely to be specific to Calypso...
