It's a perpetual cycle that essentially is leading to the breakdown of the public market. New corp comes along, nothing on the market to buy in reliable amounts. Corp starts up own market and industry to supply it's members. Corp purchases outside of internal market to push forward research and buy raw materials to manufacture with, depending on their needs and own supply. Once the corp reaches a point where they can supply everything they need through their own tech tree, there's no real point to going to the public market aside to sell surplus. ( which doesn't happen often in an active enough PvP guild )

Over a looooooooooooong enough time, the market will open up for higher tier stuff, but that's only after a corp reaches the pinnacle of their research and have thoroughly saturated their own supplies. The public will basically get the excess... but again, who's going to be buying this stuff? Most other big corps who make it that far to have a reasonable wealth to demand t4 steadily will have their own supply they fostered with the initial buildup of their industry. So it will basically be slim pickings from new corps or members who don't have the tech yet. There's really not much of a middle ground. The existence of internal markets almost insures that the public market won't see much attention which will put people off it's desirability and on to establishing their own corps internal market. Ad nasuem.

Considering how much they have built off 'another' mmo, it's not really likely they could say that with much composure. ( So far anyway, I'll be happy when they can prove that wrong finally) Most of the things we've seen developed are largely fragmants of systems seen elsewhere. Those of which have then been tweaked and balanced a pile thanks to the communities ramblings and what have you. PO needs something in it's mechanics to define itself, to offer a unique system that would draw players in and keep them. Really right now we just have basic systems that have been well developed elsewhere. I'm sure in time we'll see something, but what that is, who knows. When is also a good question.

Maybe impose an overall corp cap to the amount of items that can be listed on an internal market? This would force people out of the internal markets largely as only important items would be posted so as to stay under the cap. You could also apply a tax to the internal markets and leave them open, but that would be a tad more finnicky as you'd then have to find a fair tax, but also one that would make the public market appealing again. Given the logistics headache and the fact that the open market would be a lot more competitive, the tax would likely have to be high to counter the glaring deterrents of a public market to a producer.

Yeah, it's easy to see how it's lucrative to make and use markets as such. But with all the quips about the markets being barren lately (and prior as well), it seems to be a bit of a predicament. Like I said, if they limited the internal market to make it viable, but not overly beneficial to using the public market the two could coincide. But as is, there's no real downfall to using the corp market and you even get the bonus of negating levied fees. It's almost as if AC wants us to use corp markets as opposed to the public market, which to me is largely detrimental to a game that needs a market that's player driven as everything is player made. It really has to suck for newer players when they try the game and cant even buy player orders and not only that, when they get subbed and find out the market pales in comparisson to what's likely subdivided amongst all the corp markets.

It's human nature to be lazy, which is what makes personal trading viable, but not readily used. The fact that people can post mass auctions internally and cheaper, means that there's not really an incentive to grow the public market when demand is being met internally by and largely by every other internal market. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy of the breakdown of public marketing. Limit internal so that private sales are still possible, but not a conduit to syphoning the public market appeal. It can be done, it just seems it was overlooked and so were the effects of internal markets.

That just shows an example of why I personally think corp markets should not have existed yet. The player base is too small to have a system like that which effectively seggregates and splinters the market. It leaves a lot of holes and makes the main market seem defficient. It's also kind of hard to see where demand lies if there's no supply and no way of really seeing who the sellers/suppliers are on the market. I also don't like how our market has been done 'elsewhere' and brought here like a carbon copy. The idea that you need skills to sell x amount of items or to reduce fees makes it a hinderance to the growth of the market. These sorts of things are usually governors for wild markets that could grow out of control, that's definitely not something we see in PO so these limits feel a bit questionable. Would the market go wild if these were removed? Not likely, even though the notion can't be dismissed. But I look at the current market model and it looks like it's better suited for a larger playerbase. If not because of the current state of the game, but also because of it's setup and restraints and fractioning with corp markets.

What I suggested wasn't my answer to 'the problem', they were just simple suggestions of what could be expanded to no end other than someone's creativity. And to be honest, what I've heard about lvl 3's dont encompass much of anything to do with what I suggested either, but that's not really a point for discussions as it's quite moot. The issue at hand is the way the content is presented right now, well, it's lacking. Sure, maybe they have an ingenious plan they're working on ( slowly as everyone likes to put it ) but we don't really know that. Which is why people constantly bring the current lackluster content to the table to discuss. It doesn't matter what ideas I bring up, or you or anyone. It's a matter of what AC devises and concocts for us. Whether they're listening on this apsect, we don't know. Like I said, they could have a plan and are just ignoring us or maybe they don't quite know what to do yet. The purpose though, to lay forward these discussions is to keep on them if it's important. Which it seems it is. So, we can just carry on saying the game needs whatever until they say something or do something about it.

A split of both solo and group content is fine. I think it's just the matter of how they present it. If the depth of flavor is just by adding more mobs to a crowd or tougher mobs, well that really isn't much to do with depth so much as it's just throwing in more bodies to emulate difficulty. Which to a degree it does add difficulty, but it's not very tactful nor fun. I'm sure they could make random spawn camps of unique mobs, perhaps npc outposts or forward bases. I mean after all, we've been on this alien planet for a while now, you'd thing they'd establish a spearhead. What about the aliens OP's and their homelands? We're basically running around in open plains and mountains with next to no points of interest, aside again, varying sizes in spawns.

I would hope that with their new story writers they also implement something that makes this game more defined as I've pointed out this game needing about a billion times now. As it is, we're just a bunch of people running around on an alien planet blowing up the aliens only so that we can get better tech to kill each other more proficiently. It's as if the aliens are a side quotient, as opposed to the focus. This in itself is why the game feels so lacking. There's no real structure defining the NPC factions, they're basically just there for us to harvest.

Part of the reason why the market is dragging is because of the amount of time it takes to get in to making higher tier stuff steadily. The other part is the amount of churn in this game. It takes a lot of time and effort from a decent group of people to build up the NIC and kernels, not to mention get beta access for resources or some sort of supply deal. A lot of corps dissolve before they can really delve too deep in to this market. The few corps that have been here for larger sums of time are PvP corps and their interest in public industry and markets is likely minimal. If they do get high enough to make T4 in steady batches, why would they need the NIC, what else could they really need the cash for? They already have the most sought after items, there'd be no point in putting it on the market to possibly supply adversaries aside to maybe sell off something they have way too much of. ( which wont last long given the nature of pew pew pvp corps ) With the current model of this games research and manufacturing, we'd need to see a lot more emphasis on keeping indy folks long enough to actually setup a market and who knows how long that will take or what it will take. The changes to T1 were nice for entry level indy, but the high end will still remain a beta thing and right now that's just a seriously flustered subject.

I was one of those combat haulers. I think it's kind of an odd shuffle where T1 no longer requires high end minerals, yet they just added high end minerals to alpha mining. We could already get high end minerals in combat hauling, but now, it's shifted to mining and combat hauling is likely to become obsolete as I highly doubt most modules would outweigh plasma and other goodies you could get grinding. If you have multiple accounts and a hauler, well sure, why not. But if you don't, hauling back modules is likely to be taboo now thanks to the likely drop in prices.

For the record I accidently reported this post. I thought I was writing a reply, yet ended up writing a report instead. Hooray for the effects of long work days! Lol

Anyway, what I was generally saying ( as my brain has pretty much already forgotten ) however many OP's that are vacant right now is really a moot point. If you want to make a point to enforcing OP's being appealing at the moment you'd have to look at how many have actually changed hands due to people contending for them. Sitting on an OP because no one else cares to fight you for it and the actual contention of the land for beneficial perks are two very different situations... and I'm leaning on our situation as being the former.

Broccoli bots are awesome simply because you can run in to combat screaming " FIRE ZE MISSILES! "

There are a lot of things that could be done with PO. The best thing that could be said to sum up my opinion is that the game needs more content to engage people. Sandbox's are great because of the freedom you get, to do what you like and have no pre-defined theme park mmo style path to follow. PO doesn't really offer much yet though. Sure you can do what you want, but when you have nothing of greater importance to do, that freedom doesn't really seem as rewarding. It's like putting someone in an empty room and telling them they can do absolutely anything they please. You can see how moot freedom becomes when there's no content to interact with.

Currently in game you can artifact scan, run assignments, hunt npc's, mine and produce. I won't include roaming/intrusions because you can't do that when you want, that's a concept driven by the players for roaming and a set schedule for intrusions. At any rate, the game needs more flavor. The end game was highly over looked. I'm doing now what I could do as a newbie. For a sandbox, that's somewhat expected. But in our case, there's no 'newer' system you can engage in as a vet that a new player can't do. So essentially, from day one you're really seeing all the content the game has to offer. The main difference between day one and somewhere down the road is what tier of gear you're fitting . There's no interesting concepts that define PO. You have all the basics of crafting, questing and farming as in any other game.  PO has a good foundation for growing, but it's not going to grow if all that's being done is random balances and changes to the already existing content sets.

The change to outposts is interesting at most, but again why have them? To buff your members so they can partake in content that's already there? Where's this game going? Where's terraforming and player built structures? What systems are the PO team developing that will actually define PO and keep people playing? All I've really heard about is more weapons and paint and basically things that aren't really going to do anything aside change how people interact with current systems. Without new systems, this game is not going to grow. Where's this game heading and when are we going to start seeing new systems to play with?