Q&A Answers (Aug-Sep 06)

[Epictetus]

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* Will Fishing be made a profession in the near future? What will these fishes be used for, if so?

Fishing is cool. ,-)

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WOOT! Bring it on Marco, I'm gonna catch the biggest mutant alien fish ever found on Calypso!

 

[muttley]

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* Will Fishing be made a profession in the near future? What will these fishes be used for, if so?

Fishing is cool. ,-)

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WOOT! Bring it on Marco, I'm gonna catch the biggest mutant alien fish ever found on Calypso!

imagine, use fish as food, as a professionand as a weapon,

FISH SLAPPING ...

...and add an amp so it spits scales at you

 

[dr_udi]

Say it loud, say it proud: I R TROUT !!!

 

[tiebender]

Sounds alot like a support ticket to me, but, Marco, thank you so much for your effort. Just the fact that you interacted with the community in this scale is gigantic step towards better customer communications relations, i.e. YOUR JOB DESCRIPTION.

As for improvements to make your job easier, yes, 1 question per user is good, but how about trying to ask the correct inhouse department at Mindark HQ to get a detailed response? I would really like to see an answer such as "so and so department says "perhaps"", rather than "I cannot discuss such issues." Offcourse you cannot discuss an issue you have no concept about.
From this view, yes, more time would be required, more resources that is, in your language, but a really good question could get a really good answer from the correct terminal, even if the answer takes 2 weeks to get through.

Giving good answers or in the least a constructive ambivalent response gives hope to the interested party in question, rather than an evasive statement leaving the questionare no further than the entry point, albeit disillusioned and/or invalidated as a valued customer.

Does this make any sense to your corporate lingo filter?


All the same, thank you for responding and interacting with your customers.
Tie

 

[ForrestPark]

Half the answers were great, half of them were rubbish - but this is a good deal better than having no answers at all.

Well done, Marco.

 

[Sirhc]

Thanks Marco.

That question list was quite an undertaking. Although alot of the questions are proprietary and you can't go into any details on balancing I hope it puts a bug in the balancing manager and dev teams ear on items and the such.

My favorite answer and I think I will keep this somewhere on my hard drive so I can copy paste it into the new reseller threads of the future is:

"With a system as open as the Entropia Universe you are going to experience the full range of human behaviour. Resellers and the like are able to exist because people allow them to exist and provide them with the means to exist."

I look forward to further productive Q&A in the future.

 

[Vedder]

...
Sorry, but do you imply that introducing operational leasing to the real economy in 20th century created monopolies ?

In the 20th century, there wasn't a fixed number of rare items to 'monopolize'.

I think what MA is afraid of is that some rich dude, buys (nearly) all the (a)imk2's in EU, and start renting them out. (For instance)

That would suck.

 

[Skam]

In the 20th century, there wasn't a fixed number of rare items to 'monopolize'.

I think what MA is afraid of is that some rich dude, buys (nearly) all the (a)imk2's in EU, and start renting them out. (For instance)

That would suck.

yea, and I didnt think of that before I saw that answer.. It would indeed suck..

 

[AkiranBlade]

Maybe utilising the objects rarity properties (the figures which determine an item's rarity) you could define a maximum item ownership, so for something Like a Mod Merc, the most anyone one person could own is two. As an example.

 

[SB2]

In the 20th century, there wasn't a fixed number of rare items to 'monopolize'.

I think what MA is afraid of is that some rich dude, buys (nearly) all the (a)imk2's in EU, and start renting them out. (For instance)

That would suck.

BUT....

Those items would see more use. Therefore MA receives the benefit of increased decay $$ on the item, the economy is boosted by the ammo purchases and more players can experience the item first-hand to determine if it is right for them. I still believe that a leasing system adds to the overall reality of the RCE rather than detracts from it.

How many items right now never even see the light of day because they are in storage?

 

[Lem]

Maybe utilising the objects rarity properties (the figures which determine an item's rarity) you could define a maximum item ownership, so for something Like a Mod Merc, the most anyone one person could own is two. As an example.

Might not work so well if you owned a shop trying to sell them though? But maybe thats a good thing??

 

[AkiranBlade]

Might not work so well if you owned a shop trying to sell them though? But maybe thats a good thing??

über items are such for a reason

 

[Pirx Danford]

I see it this way. Why would you need to buy an imk2, when you can lend one and go hunt for 24hour and make proffit with it ....?

Lending system = less money deposited... aka not good for the business

As MA controls the amount of rare and especially cost effective items I really doubt that as reason.
These items may be very cost efficient, but I very much doubt that the little money lost here would be of any impact.

What is far more important and what I believe to be MAs reason for that decision is, that it would be a resellers dream come true.
Look at it that way: if today a reseller manages to get hold of a large stock of rare items (maybe even all of one sort) he has a short amount of time in which prices will rise very much.
After that time prices will surely sink very much again as at some point people will lose interest in items that are a pure "myth" - at some stage questions like "are these stats on pewiki for real? never have seen such an item" and such would start to happen.
So the reseller cannot hold on to items for too long.
Buying and hogging all Mod. FAPs for example would be crazy - it would be dead capital with a probable huge loss after some time.

But with a lending system in place it would be sensible to get a hold on all rare items of a type at nearly any costs.
It would even make sense to try and buy not so rare items and make them become rare, even if nobody would pay the huge markup you could just loan out and with the profit of that you fund to put the stuff on auction for month after month at silly markup rates.
Imagine someone holding all Mod. FAPs and just lending them out.
What then? Should MA just "drop" some more? Or just "take them away" from the player?
It would take any control from MA about it and ALSO any control from it that the market currently has.

Reseller is a swearword already, but I would predict that "Loaner" would become the swearword to top reseller in no time.

At first I thought about how cool a lending system would be,
but now I am happy they decided like they did.


But while writing all this...
what would happen if such a system would be only available at certain timeframes?
Maybe like active for one month and then again inactive for one month?
This could maybe be a very cool control mechanism for the market.
But as MA has very limited resources as it seems this will not happen as it just would be an experimental thing and for such its not sensible to use up development time with it.

Edit:Someone was faster than me. *g*

 

[NoBion]

I fail to understand MA's logic on this point also

You understand it wrong..

What marco meens, are that some ppl will buy up all the imk2's or most of the ML-35, and as he got the most. ppl is needed to lend it to get to use one..

its kinda realistic.

 

[DarkFire]

You understand it wrong..

What marco meens, are that some ppl will buy up all the imk2's or most of the ML-35, and as he got the most. ppl is needed to lend it to get to use one..

its kinda realistic.

or not. if you owned an imk2, would you sell it?

 

[Vedder]

or not. if you owned an imk2, would you sell it?

I *think* that would depend on the price

 

[NoBion]

or not. if you owned an imk2, would you sell it?

Nevar! The message you have entered is too short. Please lengthen your message to at least 10 characters.

 

[DarkFire]

I *think* that would depend on the price

it wouldn't for me. well, maybe if i was offered enough to buy myself a nice little house in greece and retire for the rest of my life

to put it into perspective, take land areas: there is only a limited number of them, and they are "rented" out to hunters and miners. monopolising them is just as possible as monopolising imk2s


Edit: and to make further arguments for lending system, would you lend out your imk2 just on trust? would you lend it out if the system was in place? i think it would be great for the community

 

[hooters]

Well, i read it all and most of the stuff had nothing surprising, but their was still some good information in there.

Thanks a lot Marco and hope their will be another Q&A session in the near future!

 

[Cameron Vayle]

* How many real active players do we really have ingame?

We don't publish that figure for business confidentiality reasons.

How very interesting that you DO post uch a number on your home page for EU. So you are stating that this number is in fact a lie?

Also...nice job on being so evasive on so many of the questions. I really like the one that you stated "I don't know". If you don't know then the logical thing would be to find someone that does. That is generally how it works in customer service.


Please note Darkfire showed me the error of my ways The number on the site is not for active but overall accounts. OK...how about we get this number changed to reflect reality Marco?

 

[Lykke]

My plan is to have the next one in a month or so. And then it will be one Q per person. ,-)

OH great but maybe then you could also work on some of the questions which you cannot answer now? (Of those which IS possible and allowed to answer of course )

*<,-)3<[

 

[DarkFire]

How very interesting that you DO post uch a number on your home page for EU. So you are stating that this number is in fact a lie?

registered accounts and active users are two different numbers...

 

[Konve]

MA owns the virtual items, but the participants own the value of them.

Thank you. Now go tell support about this because I tried to ask them and they gave all fishy answears.

* Can we Know how exactly work the advert system for the loot ( does it increase all loot , only create special loot ...)

The information stated in the VU Content List explains this.

No, it doesn't. I looked in the news archive:
2006-07-04 (VU 8.5) Ads are added and if you enable them you have higher loots...

So how does it work? Can we now get mob HP*50(+1 with ads) as a maximum loot?

It is clearly stated in the EULA and you all know that MindArk do not endorse the use of any Third Party software in connection with the Entropia Universe. All external software is prohibited on the basis of fairness of experience. Software that may offer a participant an unfair advantage over any other participant is in contradiction of the EULA. The discovery of such software may result in the locking or closing of a participants account.

Wrong, actually (in the first sentance). All third party software that interacts with Entropia is prohibited. I don't know what the second sentance mean and the third and fourth are fair (with a warning, not instant permanent ban unless it's a cheat - ie not something you could have done yourself).
(Oh and by the way, the question wanted an unevasive answear and what he or she got was a very evasive one. Are auto-clickers allowed, ever? (By this I mean does it make a diffrence if you're watching the crafting process or not?)

* Will there be improvements to the beacon system? like, more different tt beacons?

Development of Existing Systems.

What does that answear mean? I saw other, similar answears and I just don't know what it mean. "We will do it." or "System is in place, we change nothing!"

 

[Cameron Vayle]

registered accounts and active users are two different numbers...

You are correct on this and I am not. Be best though if they made that the active accounts as I bet a good % of people assume when they see that number that are brand new players think, WOW this is great. Then reality sets in once they d/l the game and log in.

 

[Jake Rogue]

Further insight into the future plans of Mindark and more answers from Marco to questions from the community can be found here:

http://e-pec.info/forum/index.php?showtopic=3076

Some of the more interesting answers include:

Is there any concern about speculation and the volatility of some markets within game?

Marco|MindArk: The market will always rise and fall and rise again. What is important to understand is that we need an economy that caters to every level in Entropia Universe. From the participants with a budget of a few PED's, to those with millions of PED's on their PED Cards. We also need to address some imbalances in the economy, like the lack of a BLP and Plasma Opalo counterpart. The mining system needs ways to expand the amount of ore and EnMatters available over time, the crafting system needs more options – maybe add-ons that reduce the time per attempt and the ability to automate some manufacturing. We have a lot of exciting ideas (actually, we have an Idea-file which has several thousand entries). Taming, Mindforce and Beauty need attention. New backbone systems in Entropia Universe like the new physics engine will go live shortly, which enables us to add vehicles. Who will own the first auto manufacturing plant? ,-).

After the introduction of some new professions (Taming, Land Management, Carpentry), should we expect to see additional professions within the coming year? If so, what lines?

Marco|MindArk: Industrialists and bankers. Maybe politicians, we have to see.

Finally, from a personal perspective, what is the one thing that you are most excited to see come to fruition in the coming months?

Marco|MindArk: I really like the concept behind the factories and the ability to actually employ other people to work for you. It is really cool. There is no ETA on it yet though.

 

[NanoTech]

Yes, MindArk already have the greatest respect for the player base and pay attention to all feedback and suggestions. Unfortunately the staff here cannot instantly implement all the wishes and suggestions that come in from such a large player base. We are forced to sort and prioritize community wishes. We will never be able to accommodate every wish and have to reflect upon every idea in light of the greater good and how such suggestions will affect the virtual universe itself.

Having more In-World support is a good suggestion and will be discussed further.

Me (Marco) and Frank make official statements to the community when they are needed.

And my favorite

I cannot comment on In-World balancing matters. It has been the policy for years and it still stands, sorry.

Its awesome how much time could a person invest in empty phrases.
But unlike us hes get paid for this.

ONLY PRESSURE MAKE COAL BECOMES DIAMOND

 

[Frigid]

Interesting, but no real meat. The most direct answer to future content was this:

Yes we are still planning for vehicles. A more accurate date is probably mid-2007 I guess.

And this date was bumped back from the end of 2006. So...another year, though the "I guess" absolves anything difinitive on this ETA. There was a mention of flying to other planets which I figured on, but not holding my breath.

Always the potential..."in the pipeline", "yes", "we are planning.." or "unable to comment, sorry."

I was expecting much, but I did expect a little more than this . At least now I have a document summing up a majority of problems and potential with a timestamp on it, which I did not have before.

Still, he did take the time to sum-up and address them...and even cutting and pasting does take some effort

Thanks, Marco

I'll be waiting patiently for these things to materialize...

 

[Numa]

Interesting, but no real meat.

Still, he did take the time to sum-up and address them...and even cutting and pasting does take some effort

Thanks, Marco

I'll be waiting patiently for these things to materialize...

Seems like, going on other implementations, could be a few years down the road before anything substantial comes around, so you may be waiting a while.

I have a feeling that these Q&A sessions may be pointless, if all we ever get are, I don't knows, Can't answer that, Can't comment due to balancing etc etc.

Seriously, I think MA would be better in creating there own Q&A, giving us something they know they can answer, otherwise it may be a waste of time even coming up with questions.

 

[Vinni]

Thanks Marco for the answers!

 

[Dino]

Geeze, that Marco guy is such a spammer



*goes off to skill Fishing skill*