As part of a recent release, the number of recipes that can be bought from Basil was limited to one copy per player per terminal.
While I can almost understand the desire for a vague limit, I'd like to make a few points in hopes of convincing interested parties that one copy per player is far too low a limit. The short version: please either abolish vendor purchase limits, or raise them to a more realistic cap of 3-4 copies per player. Giving vendors larger inventories would also help: I've seen some vendors that sell only 7-8 recipes at a time, while others sell 22.
Some reasons are listed below.
- This is a social game- this is not the most important point, but I'm putting it first as a disclaimer: I sell a lot of recipes. In addition to the fun that can be had wherever a player economy exists, playing with your friends often requires ensuring that they, too, have good gear. Being able to pick up 2-3 extra copies of a good recipe helps to build the social aspects of the game.
- There are other barriers to crafting- Just signing up and buying recipes will get you nowhere; you also need energy, materials, and heat. The latter can not be purchased, and many 4* items take a week or more of casual play to level up. Just selling recipes does not make players instant supermen; it just reduces the artificial grind, and encourages people to make a wider variety of items.
- New players aren't the target market- To follow up on the last point: if this change was meant to keep new players from getting an early advantage, it's worth noting that very few of my customers (less than 15%) are new players with energy-fueled riches. Most recipe buyers are experienced players with a clear idea of what they want to make. They want to experiment, and they want to spend energy crafting expensive things... if the recipe system will let them.
- Finding recipes is a painful experience*- For the past three weeks, I've had half a dozen friends on the lookout for the Volcanic Demo Suit. None of us have found it, despite hundreds to thousands of energy units spent on runs to tier 3 terminals. There is a very good reason why spare copies of recipes are valuable.
- The value of one recipe depends on the availability of others- Items like the 2* vaporizer bomb are useful only for their upgrade potential. This means that I am far more likely to buy a recipe if I think that the other pieces can be found in a reasonable timeframe. (say, 1-2 weeks of my own gameplay) A healthy recipe resale market encourages crafting (and reduces grind) by helping people to find the missing links in the chain.
* Here's a homework question for the stats-minded among you: as the number of tier 3 runs increases, you should asymptotically encounter the full list of possible recipes. How many runs does it require to see 95% of all 4-5* recipes? I'd suspect the answer is much higher than you'd expect from #possible recipes/avg vendor inventory size.... and that would be true even if inventory size were increased.
I half agree with what they have done to the recipe vendor. Half only because 1 per person is a little harsh. I'd think that 2 would be a more fair number to set up as maximum stock for everyone that goes down there. Sure its not unlimited like it was, but its better than 1 per person.