Is crowfall fundamentally boring?

[PopeUrban 2,038]

3 minutes ago, Jah said:

Expecting to see trade EKs "explode" 2-3 days after they were introduced, and 2-3 days after a full wipe of inventories and spirit banks seems unrealistic to me. Especially with just 100 to 200 people actively playing in pre-alpha. People have been waiting for a fix to the msg spike problems, and on Friday night that actually looked worse than before. There was a hotfix that resolved that, but a lot of people had already decided to go do something else and may not even be aware of the hotfix yet.

Vendor upkeep is not the only sink for gold coins. They will also be used to pay maintenance for other structures and thralls at minimum. And they can be used to level vessels. It is perfectly reasonable to expect that gold will have more sinks as well, so I think it is a mistake to assume they are "just for paying vendors."

Further, the main reason a seller will want gold is to buy things other people sell. Few people will be able, or want to, acquire everything they want by themselves. A Blacksmith will want things that a Jeweler makes. He'll sell his wares for gold, and use that gold to buy Jewelry. Its the same reason we want money in real life-- not because we can eat or wear the money, but because we can use it to buy stuff we want.

Gold may benefit from being propped up with more built-in utility. But it is also possible that it could work as currency with the backing that we already know is planned for it.

Entirely possible, absolutely, and I'll be ecstatic if I see these EK shops really start taking off in the coming weeks.

My point is simply that vendors alone don't seem enough to do it and additional necessary sinks must be implemented before it has value, though I am aware that several systems are yet to be implemented.

[Jah 6,725]

11 minutes ago, PopeUrban said:

My point is simply that vendors alone don't seem enough to do it and additional necessary sinks must be implemented before it has value, though I am aware that several systems are yet to be implemented.

There are no built-in sinks to prop up the value of real life crypto-currencies. People value them because other people value them. People accept them as a currency because other people accept them as currency.

The same is largely true of the US dollar. It isn't backed by the old 'gold standard' anymore, where you could trade dollars to the government for a set amount of gold. The closest thing there is to a built-in sink, like you suggest is necessary, is the fact that the US government will accept them as payment for things such as taxes. Other than that, everyone wants money because everyone else does.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Jah

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

24 minutes ago, PopeUrban said:

I'm fine with a strict delineation of currencies in this manner and I'll try to explain why.

You have harvesters gaining dust, and mob farmers or dudes killing guard to take forts with no harvesting skills are also gaining dust as loot, you have no economic interplay between the two. They have nothing of value to trade one another because only the crafters can utilize the dust, drops, and harvested mats. Thus every economic interaction between a harvester and a combatant must first go through a middle man. Further, if you double down on dust in this way it seems to follow that you must also ratchet up the dust cost of crafting to sink it out of that economy.

On top of that you run up against a problematic question: If harvesting and combat both provide dust, then isn't the optimal economic engine always to do whichever provides the most? You may end up in an EVE-Like situation in this case, where one of these activities is a clearly inferior earner. In The case of EVE, Combat is the clearly inferior earner, but it could easily swing the other way.

Regardless, you can't equitably balance income from hitting inanimate objects with mobs that hit back. One is inherently more risky even if it is theoretically possible to perfectly balance out their dust gain per hour. This creates a situation where the player that wants to earn optimally but prefers the less valuable activity is forced in to doing both roles whether they like to or not.

When you split the currencies down the middle, and have compelling and necessary sinks for both, you end up with naturally fluctuating exchange rate in which players are encouraged to specialize in, and adequately rewarded for a single activity. Because harvesting pops dust, and killing pops gold, you avoid needing to balance the activities against one another because they're codependent as long as all players have some intrinsic need for both currencies.

I just plain old don't agree with this assessment.  At some level there will be an exchange value of these currencies. That exchange rate will be largely set but sometimes fluctuate in value between the two. Either the productivity will be equal and balanced within that exchange, or it won't be. The same way you describe but segregate into two currencies, the activities will be still be imbalanced. 

The way to fix the imbalance would be at the source, in the drop rate, not by splitting the currencies.

21 minutes ago, Jah said:

I don't think I would call Dust a currency any more than Wood, Stone, and Ore are currencies. It is a raw resource that is used for crafting.

It was originally inserted as the precursor to currency, which is why it was added to every type of harvesting, with the future plans to give players the ability to craft it into coin.  It also used to appear in the loot of killed critters before you could start to harvest them. I had bags of the stuff from that in early testing.

Since it is trivial to add new crafting recipes, and they have not done so with the introduction and change to coin drops instead of dust, I can only surmise that ACE has pulled back from that idea for some reason.  I just don't think it's a useful change, so much as an addition of complexity for complexity sake. 

The only thing I can think of is that dust is part of the training trees, and monster drop values are not.  But even that could have still worked without the need to make a new, second, currency. 

Even if it is basically crafting fuel, people are going to trade in dust, even if it's not supported directly in the shops yet. Crafters are going to need to buy it, and factor it into costs as much as all other materials, so again, a somewhat pointless complication if it isn't currency. 

Since it's ubiquitous to all harvesting.

If dust is in abundance compared to the other materials, it will form a glut in the economy and it will be without value.

If it is scarce, then the other materials will form the glut, and they will be without value. 

About the only thing that will balance it all out, is people will sacrifice whatever is in surplus for XP.

Edited March 26, 2018 by KrakkenSmacken

[Jah 6,725]

Dust can be farmed in safety in EKs. Gold cannot. That is a fairly big difference, and it may be one of the reasons that gold is the currency and dust is not. This difference alone makes gold less likely to suffer from inflation than dust would.

I honestly don't think gold was added for the sake of complexity.

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

6 minutes ago, Jah said:

Dust can be farmed in safety in EKs. Gold cannot. That is a fairly big difference, and it may be one of the reasons that gold is the currency and dust is not. This difference alone makes gold less likely to suffer from inflation than dust would.

I honestly don't think gold was added for the sake of complexity.

They are adding boars to EK's so basic hide can be gathered are they not? I guess they could strip the gold drops from the EK version.

Given that, it would be a valuable distinction. They would need to make it so dust was one thing you could never import into campaign.  That would definitely give it distinction, especially if it became more and more scarce as the hunger advanced.

That said, if you could import dust in the thousands given the current stack size, eventually it would be valueless because of EK farming. 

 

Wow we seriously dragged this thread off topic.

Edited March 26, 2018 by KrakkenSmacken

[Jah 6,725]

Just now, KrakkenSmacken said:

They are adding boars to EK's so basic hide can be gathered are they not? I guess they could strip the gold drops from the EK version.

I am pretty sure they have mentioned that boars are not going to continue dropping gold.

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

1 minute ago, Jah said:

I am pretty sure they have mentioned that boars are not going to continue dropping gold.

So much for my idea to let new players hunt boars to get currency, to buy basic materials (slag/knott/cobble/hide) from an NPC vendor, without needing to train stuff (harvesting/exploration) they didn't want.

Sigh.

[Jah 6,725]

4 minutes ago, KrakkenSmacken said:

So much for my idea to let new players hunt boars to get currency, to buy basic materials (slag/knott/cobble/hide) from an NPC vendor, without needing to train stuff (harvesting/exploration) they didn't want.

Sigh.

There will be other things to kill for gold. Probably not in a safezone, though.

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

17 minutes ago, Jah said:

There will be other things to kill for gold. Probably not in a safezone, though.

Well they need something to solve the "new players can't do squat" problem without them needing to train things,create social connections, or spend hours punching trees first.  

[PopeUrban 2,038]

2 hours ago, KrakkenSmacken said:

I just plain old don't agree with this assessment.  At some level there will be an exchange value of these currencies. That exchange rate will be largely set but sometimes fluctuate in value between the two. Either the productivity will be equal and balanced within that exchange, or it won't be. The same way you describe but segregate into two currencies, the activities will be still be imbalanced. 

The way to fix the imbalance would be at the source, in the drop rate, not by splitting the currencies.

See my problem with this statement is that when you have two currencies as such the exchange rate isn't "set" at a systemic level. It fluctuates naturally as a result of supply and demand. If either outpaces the other in value, it quickly stabilizes again as those players tracking this attempt to capitalize on it gravitate more heavily to that source and pushes it back again toward equilibrium. As there's no systemic set value like an NPC that collects 10 dust to spit out 10 gold, the free market becomes the factor that determines that exchange rate as the rate is simply determined by how much players value dust versus how much they value gold and the prices they set for buy and sell order.

Attempting to balance the drop rate would be functionally impossible as you'd have to constantly adjust those rates based upon tracking how many players are gathering how much and from what constantly, what the game's concurrent population is, etc. etc. That's a massive amount of either man hours to track and adjust those metrics manually or engineering effort to algorithmically adjust it when you could just do what they've done and create a system that simply uses natural free market forces to do it the same way that many games with multiple currencies do it. Most of these models are free to play economies, but the principal remains the same. ISK in EVE fluctuates based on free market forces, as does Platinum in Warframe or Gems in Guild Wars 2. In all of these markets the currency exchange rates remain relatively stable with a reasonable amount of inflation and fluctuation as a result of player production, desire, and consumption of said currencies. In this case its just relating gold and dust rather than currency earned ingame versus currency bought from a cash shop.

Not to mention rapidly fluctuating drop rates have a really bad "game feel" in a system like Crowfall's as players rely on a certain mathematical average gain for reasonably common RNG items to make long term plans.

Jah is correct that Dust isn't a currency in name, but in function it has all the common characteristics of a currency. It is highly portable, universally valuable at a roughly equal assessment to the entire player base regardless of build or play pattern, practically functional to store in large quantities, and easily used as a representation of abstract value because of these factors so I feel that in a discussion about economics its appropriate to treat it as such.

In fact, with the systems currently online, dust is a more performant currency than gold for player to player trading, which is why you tend to see more people in chat willing to trade dust for items than gold.

Edited March 26, 2018 by PopeUrban

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

1 minute ago, PopeUrban said:

See my problem with this statement is that when you have two currencies as such the exchange rate isn't "set" at a systemic level. It fluctuates naturally as a result of supply and demand. If either outpaces the other in value, it quickly stabilizes again as those players tracking this attempt to capitalize on it gravitate more heavily to that source and pushes it back again toward equilibrium. As there's no systemic set value like an NPC that collects 10 dust to spit out 10 gold, the free market becomes the factor that determines that exchange rate as the rate is simply determined by how much players value dust versus how much they value gold and the prices they set for buy and sell order.

Attempting to balance the drop rate would be functionally impossible as you'd have to constantly adjust those rates based upon tracking how many players are gathering how much and from what constantly, what the game's concurrent population is, etc. etc. That's a massive amount of either man hours to track and adjust those metrics manually or engineering effort to algorithmically adjust it when you could just do what they've done and create a system that simply uses natural free market forces to do it the same way that many games with multiple currencies do it. Most of these models are free to play economies, but the principal remains the same. ISK in EVE fluctuates based on free market forces, as does Platinum in Warframe or Gems in Guild Wars 2. In all of these markets the currency exchange rates remain relatively stable with a reasonable amount of inflation and fluctuation as a result of player production, desire, and consumption of said currencies. In this case its just relating gold and dust rather than currency earned ingame versus currency bought from a cash shop.

Jah is correct that Dust isn't a currency in name, but in function it has all the common characteristics of a currency. It is highly portable, universally valuable to the entire player base regardless of build or play pattern, practically functional to store in large quantities, and easily used as a representation of abstract value because of these factors so I feel that in a discussion about economics its appropriate to treat it as such.

Why would you want to balance anything other than income per whatever unit you use (usually time to acquire)?  

Why the social engineering attempt to get people to play the game in a way they just don't want to, or drive them to activities other than those they enjoy.  It's this further stepping away from the idea that I get to play the game I want to play,  rather than the game the developers are essentially making me play, that is bothersome. 

Making two currencies,  one for combat players through loot drops, and one for harvesters through dust, has the potential for the scales to tip even more in the direction that certain activities like harvesting, are made what I would call "artificially" more valuable than others. 

I really don't like how ACE handled the entire basic gear issue of "nobody's crafting because the other parts are too fun, so we will FORCE them".  If it turns out people hate harvesting, and do so little of it as to starve out the crafters, I just hate the idea that ACE would try to FORCE players into harvesting by other means (currency requirement and shortage), rather than adjusting the real problems with the system. 

Whatever is the most efficient way to win the game, is what players will do, even if that way is not fun, or even intuitive to the game design.

The moment you start to force players to do what you want, rather than making them enjoy doing that naturally, you are heading down a path of alienation of your players, and a ghost town of a game. 

 

Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win

 

 

[PopeUrban 2,038]

6 minutes ago, KrakkenSmacken said:

Why would you want to balance anything other than income per whatever unit you use (usually time to acquire)?  

Why the social engineering attempt to get people to play the game in a way they just don't want to, or drive them to activities other than those they enjoy.  It's this further stepping away from the idea that I get to play the game I want to play,  rather than the game the developers are essentially making me play, that is bothersome. 

Making two currencies,  one for combat players through loot drops, and one for harvesters through dust, has the potential for the scales to tip even more in the direction that certain activities like harvesting, are made what I would call "artificially" more valuable than others. 

I really don't like how ACE handled the entire basic gear issue of "nobody's crafting because the other parts are too fun, so we will FORCE them".  If it turns out people hate harvesting, and do so little of it as to starve out the crafters, I just hate the idea that ACE would try to FORCE players into harvesting by other means (currency requirement and shortage), rather than adjusting the real problems with the system. 

Whatever is the most efficient way to win the game, is what players will do, even if that way is not fun, or even intuitive to the game design.

The moment you start to force players to do what you want, rather than making them enjoy doing that naturally, you are heading down a path of alienation of your players, and a ghost town of a game. 

 

Lesson #13: Make the fun part also the correct strategy to win

 

 

I feel you've missed my point.

Attempting to constantly tweak dust payouts for harvesting versus killing mobs is attempting to directly modify player behavior to artificially stage the economy. Allowing dust/gold to naturally develop exchange rates from a one-off "set and forget" drop rate as the result of free market forces is the opposite. Player action determines their value in this case as relative to one another organically as a result of players doing whatever it is they find fun.

Edited March 26, 2018 by PopeUrban

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

1 hour ago, PopeUrban said:

I feel you've missed my point.

Attempting to constantly tweak dust payouts for harvesting versus killing mobs is attempting to directly modify player behavior to artificially stage the economy. Allowing dust/gold to naturally develop exchange rates from a one-off "set and forget" drop rate as the result of free market forces is the opposite. Player action determines their value in this case as relative to one another organically as a result of players doing whatever it is they find fun.

I kinda feel you have missed my point.  Let me circle back a bit.

4 hours ago, PopeUrban said:

I'm fine with a strict delineation of currencies in this manner and I'll try to explain why.

You have harvesters gaining dust, and mob farmers or dudes killing guard to take forts with no harvesting skills are also gaining dust as loot, you have no economic interplay between the two. They have nothing of value to trade one another because only the crafters can utilize the dust, drops, and harvested mats.

 

This is where I have issue. 

I don't see any reason for there to be drivers for interplay between harvesters and combatants. They both occupy the same position in the supply chain. They both gather items to supply to the crafters, who make things, who sell those finished things. There is no difference in need, as both have to get product to the crafter, to make things out of.   The combat guy has the advantage though, that he has one less step, that of acquiring gold to run his shop, because that comes from drops directly, where the harvester has to convert something into gold before they can open the shop, or bypass it altogether and sell direct to crafters, if/when ACE lets people put buy orders on their stores. 

What I see happening, is that ONLY the crafters will have stores, that both buy and sell what they need and make.  Everyone else will just trade directly with the crafter. An ore harvester will not be for the most part be shopping at tree harvester shops, if they can just go to the crafter and pick up the finished goods, any more than a harvester will go to a combatants shop to pick up a thrall spirit to take to a crafter. 

The crafter is the center, and the center now needs two different currencies.  Dust to make things, and gold to put them in their shop. So step one will be to sell dust along with other materials to crafters, to get gold, to buy goods, while the guy who has been getting gold, and materials from drops, will just have to sell the materials. Harvesters won't actually use the dust, so it simply becomes a somewhat needless complication.

Jah's point about dust being the only thing of real value that can be harvested without risk in an EK or even around the starting temples, does create a distinction. It has the potential to make it almost absolutely worthless as the gold farmers can harvest it endlessly without interruption until it is so inflated as a currency as to be meaningless.

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by KrakkenSmacken

[cloudfly 40]

I bought into this game in hopes it would be a mix of shadowbane pvp, full open skill training where i can be stupid op or break my character, and the pve of something like shadowbane or UO, and the combat of something akin to dungeons and dragons online or even tab targeting. even though they said they were doing action combat and the crafting of SWG.

 

but seeing what the game is in it's current state, it looks more like it's trying to be an esport meets some bastard child of the other mmorpgs i mentioned.

 

the skill training feels boring because it isn't interactive really. it's strictly a time sink in the most boring way it can be. by just clicking on it and clicking train then going afk. ive literally played maybe an hour or 2 at most in 2 months and have merc and barb maxed out and i didnt do anything except login to see how much time was in my time bank..

 

i feel like mmorpgs today do not want to reward no lifers. you can see this in the restrictions they implement. by no lifers i just mean people who literally wake and play the game for 8+ hours a day. crowfall needs to fix skill training. either by gaining skill points via xp or some other way. there needs to be incentive to play other than crafting and just i want to login and see how i can increase my twitch hand. action combat will ruin this game. not because action combat is bad, but because it has been badly implemented. ive tried to enjoy the game with the updates and i know it's alpha but theres nothing i hate more than logging in spending 45 minutes crafting items that i dont want to craft in order to play the game. because crafting to me isn't enjoyable and never has been. having said that, having a set of starter gear would benefit the game alot more. i mean complete basic set of starter armor and weapons, if you want to craft then go craft your axe/pick/knife/hammer and go craft. but for people like me who want to go out and fight or explore around, i hate having to do all that before i can go do what i want to do. i've now just stopped crafting the armor and now i just make my weapons and go out.

 

anyways, problems: skill training. there is no depth. i mean i thought the previous skill training was semi cool atleast. i thought there were going to be branched off stuff specific to your class? what happened to creating your own class? archetypes are fine if i can be an assassin that uses a shield and a pistol that can drop healing orbs and such, etc. obviously im making that up, but still....what happened to the idea of making my own class or at the very least, EXTREME in depth character advancement? there is none.

 

if you think an extra 1% damage and 5% organic armor is in depth, you're insane imo.

 

rant over.

 

fix this poorly made socks.

[samiotis 0]

5 minutes ago, cloudfly said:

I bought into this game in hopes it would be a mix of shadowbane pvp, full open skill training where i can be stupid op or break my character, and the pve of something like shadowbane or UO, and the combat of something akin to dungeons and dragons online or even tab targeting. even though they said they were doing action combat and the crafting of SWG.

 

but seeing what the game is in it's current state, it looks more like it's trying to be an esport meets some bastard child of the other mmorpgs i mentioned.

 

the skill training feels boring because it isn't interactive really. it's strictly a time sink in the most boring way it can be. by just clicking on it and clicking train then going afk. ive literally played maybe an hour or 2 at most in 2 months and have merc and barb maxed out and i didnt do anything except login to see how much time was in my time bank..

 

i feel like mmorpgs today do not want to reward no lifers. you can see this in the restrictions they implement. by no lifers i just mean people who literally wake and play the game for 8+ hours a day. crowfall needs to fix skill training. either by gaining skill points via xp or some other way. there needs to be incentive to play other than crafting and just i want to login and see how i can increase my twitch hand. action combat will ruin this game. not because action combat is bad, but because it has been badly implemented. ive tried to enjoy the game with the updates and i know it's alpha but theres nothing i hate more than logging in spending 45 minutes crafting items that i dont want to craft in order to play the game. because crafting to me isn't enjoyable and never has been. having said that, having a set of starter gear would benefit the game alot more. i mean complete basic set of starter armor and weapons, if you want to craft then go craft your axe/pick/knife/hammer and go craft. but for people like me who want to go out and fight or explore around, i hate having to do all that before i can go do what i want to do. i've now just stopped crafting the armor and now i just make my weapons and go out.

 

anyways, problems: skill training. there is no depth. i mean i thought the previous skill training was semi cool atleast. i thought there were going to be branched off stuff specific to your class? what happened to creating your own class? archetypes are fine if i can be an assassin that uses a shield and a pistol that can drop healing orbs and such, etc. obviously im making that up, but still....what happened to the idea of making my own class or at the very least, EXTREME in depth character advancement? there is none.

 

if you think an extra 1% damage and 5% organic armor is in depth, you're insane imo.

 

rant over.

 

fix this poorly made socks.

i've never played a game where i can just log in and go out and explore or pvp at least without dying,  except one game which is GW2 where i can go pvp. if you want to be able to do anything in GW2 at least for wvw you need levels and gear. i remember in shadowbane i tried to venture outside on my little fury and got 2 shotted by someone higher level and geared, eventually i got to that level. any mmorpg game, has some sort of time sink to be viable, this game has crafting. like you i hate crafting, i just want to pvp, but i've had to do my share of grinding in any game i've played. i do agree the skill system needs some work. but all in all those little things you train in eventually make a huge difference. 

 

p.s i remember you from GW2 when you were commanding  i ran a mesmer called yianni

[cloudfly 40]

9 minutes ago, samiotis said:

i've never played a game where i can just log in and go out and explore or pvp at least without dying,  except one game which is GW2 where i can go pvp. if you want to be able to do anything in GW2 at least for wvw you need levels and gear.

I have no problems with level or gear. its the means by which i aquire the gear that i hate. which is crafting it. 

 

Edited March 26, 2018 by cloudfly

[Jah 6,725]

26 minutes ago, cloudfly said:

what happened to creating your own class? archetypes are fine if i can be an assassin that uses a shield and a pistol that can drop healing orbs and such, etc. obviously im making that up, but still....what happened to the idea of making my own class or at the very least, EXTREME in depth character advancement? there is none.

Customizing your character comes largely from picking a Race and a Class, then adding 2 Major Disciplines, a Weapon Discipline, and 3 Minor Disciplines. You select which of the abilities granted from those sources you will slot into your ability trays. You can choose how to spend ability points earned by leveling your vessel, and crafted vessels can have all sorts of different abilities and stats. Then there is gear of various types, including armor, weapons, and jewelry, which can be crafted with different stats.

There is quite a bit of character customization in Crowfall. Its just not all in the skill training system.

Edited March 26, 2018 by Jah

[cloudfly 40]

14 minutes ago, samiotis said:

 any mmorpg game, has some sort of time sink to be viable, this game has crafting. like you i hate crafting, i just want to pvp, but i've had to do my share of grinding in any game i've played. i do agree the skill system needs some work. but all in all those little things you train in eventually make a huge difference. 

 

p.s i remember you from GW2 when you were commanding  i ran a mesmer called yianni

actually no it doesnt make a huge difference, they've already said they don't want people who have been playing for 2-3 years to be able to crap on someone who just logged into the game.

 

and crafting is a corner stone of this game, but also remember being told i wouldn't have to do that in the game if i didn't want to. while sure, i don't have to. just like if i login to wow, i don't have to level. i can sit at level 1 for eternity. but that isn't what they meant by i wouldnt have to craft to play the game. and while maybe later on that may be true, if there are crafters who will be handing out freebies to new players who are guildies. that isn't the case now. i did not buy this game to play albion online. if i want to craft every 5 seconds i can go play that.

Edited March 26, 2018 by cloudfly

[KrakkenSmacken 4,602]

5 minutes ago, cloudfly said:

actually no it doesnt make a huge difference, they've already said they don't want people who have been playing for 2-3 years to be able to poorly made socks on someone who just logged into the game.

 

and crafting is a corner stone of this game, but also remember being told i wouldn't have to do that in the game if i didn't want to. while sure, i don't have to. just like if i login to wow, i don't have to level. i can sit at level 1 for eternity. but that isn't what they meant by i wouldnt have to craft to play the game. and while maybe later on that may be true, if there are crafters who will be handing out freebies to new players who are guildies. that isn't the case now. i did not buy this game to play albion online. if i want to craft poorly made socks every 5 seconds i can go play that.

I think TBlair mentioned something about "watching an MMO game die" recently, and I suspect that was the game in question.

Hope that's the case, and I hope he learns some lessons from it and ACE has time to implement them. The first couple of hits on "Albion Dying" youtubes called out the grind to "get anything done", pretty much the same thing I'm mostly complaining about.

[DocHollidaze 667]

If there was a better system for people to exchange goods in game, then people who don't want to do the things like harvesting or crafting can buy their gear from other players.

Yes, this has already been mentioned.

The fact that there isn't a working in game economy is probably more a function of this being an unfinished pre-alpha game.

One thing that does need to be added is some kind of in-campaign marketplace for stuff that won't leave through export. I mean, it seems kind of obnoxious to me to have to go to EK's elsewhere to buy gear for a specific campaign, and will be terribly inconvenient if the campaign seriously caps imports.

The need for asynchronous trading (via vendors or a marketplace UI) can not be overstated.

I'm currently not playing with 5.5 because I don't feel like harvesting to try and make gear, and I can't ever log on at that same time as the people I play with in order to schedule trading, and you also cannot reliably find EK vendors because the in-game UI is barebones.

Either way, not having any kind of marketplace inside a campaign to asynchronously trade with same-faction players will suck really hard.