Recruiting For A Player-Developed Partner Planet Project

[J. Mandrake]

Actually, Sky, I am fully aware of what MA is looking for, they want us to find our own playerbase and advertise for ourselves. And I plan on doing just that. I'll post more on that note when I get some more input from the rest of the team.

 

[sky west]

Im sorry Mandrake, this wasnt aimed at you or the initiative.

I just get really cynical when I read stuff like that. It just grinds my gears that MA is unable to attrackt new players to the game and then thinks up something like this.

For god sake you even have to do your own end user support.....wtf MA?
Better of making a whole new game and get it right the first time around, instead of being forced to work with what they made up.

They hammer on about adding something unique and different, what in heavens name do you have to come up with here? It just going to more of same with a different theme.

Bah, I done. My appologies again.

 

[J. Mandrake]

Im sorry Mandrake, this wasnt aimed at you or the initiative.

I just get really cynical when I read stuff like that. It just grinds my gears that MA is unable to attrackt new players to the game and then thinks up something like this.

For god sake you even have to do your own end user support.....wtf MA?
Better of making a whole new game and get it right the first time around, instead of being forced to work with what they made up.

They hammer on about adding something unique and different, what in heavens name do you have to come up with here? It just going to more of same with a different theme.

Bah, I done. My appologies again.

Yeah, I know, it's a strange and somewhat annoying strategy for them to be using, but all in all, I see how it could work. I mean, they will essentially control a network of MMOs, get half the funds, and do nothing Genius, if you ask me It is effective for the Partners too; if MA was doing all the advertising, players could come for FPC, end up on Rocktropia, and think "wtf, did I go to the wrong site?" Since the planets are going to be a bit diverse, it is good to market them individually. All I hope is that they don't try to restrict us too much, since we'll be the ones spending the money.

 

[sky west]

But there's a crux. Do you think MA likes handing out 50% of any potential income? No, ofcourse they dont.
If anything it's a good measure of how deperate MA is to attrackt new players.

If MA is so convinced of the potential this platform has, why havent they introduced any new planets?

For that matter, what good is a complete galaxy of MMO planets if no-one is playing?

A game's succes depends on the amount of players playing that game. It's extremely hard to attrackt new players to a new game, and it get's even harder if you have to this with an exsisting game.

And if MA isn't able to attrackt new players to their platform then who is?
I think thats the million dollar question. And the million dollar answer is : no one.

 

[J. Mandrake]

I think you overestimate MA's capabilities to attract new players. If you saw their last financial report, you know that they're not in a real position to go on a huge marketing campaign. They started with a long-term goal of developing the EU platform to be ahead of it's time in MMO terms (and it really is unique,) the fact that they have made it as far as they have amazes me. I know it's easy to get pissed when loot has sucked for years, the CE2 conversion took the time it did, and they haven't really brought many players in. But it isn't like they're swimming in an ocean of cash, it's just that they have focused more on development than advertising and player service, hopefully that will pay off and things will look up for the whole platform. And when it does pay off, I'd like to see a Planet put up there by some of us, and I think it is possible to do so.

That is, by the way, the nicest thing that anyone has said about MA here in a few years, I think. If you think I sound more positive about them than I used to, damn straight I do, I haven't been playing for months!

Don't worry about a lack of service with us, at this point, I believe our team wants to focus on allowing people to play the game cheaper than they have in the past, and bringing more people in to balance it out. We might not control loot, but I think we control the TT. We'll be speaking with MA about that soon.

 

[Nirfu]

I think you overestimate MA's capabilities to attract new players. If you saw their last financial report, you know that they're not in a real position to go on a huge marketing campaign. They started with a long-term goal of developing the EU platform to be ahead of it's time in MMO terms (and it really is unique,) the fact that they have made it as far as they have amazes me. I know it's easy to get pissed when loot has sucked for years, the CE2 conversion took the time it did, and they haven't really brought many players in. But it isn't like they're swimming in an ocean of cash, it's just that they have focused more on development than advertising and player service, hopefully that will pay off and things will look up for the whole platform. And when it does pay off, I'd like to see a Planet put up there by some of us, and I think it is possible to do so.

That is, by the way, the nicest thing that anyone has said about MA here in a few years, I think. If you think I sound more positive about them than I used to, damn straight I do, I haven't been playing for months

Don't worry about a lack of service with us, at this point, I believe our team wants to focus on allowing people to play the game cheaper than they have in the past, and bringing more people in to balance it out. We might not control loot, but I think we control the TT. We'll be speaking with MA about that soon.

This is what we try to tell you, even though you just the nice guy putting up a forum, you at the same time became the front figure. The problem we see for you and your team is that there is lot's of stuff missing in the plan. And what you say is that your plan is to create something that't better for the playerbase. You forget that the blancing of loot will be in MA's hands, you only create content. A planet is like a big LA where you yourself manage the looks of everything. Yet we haven't seen one single planetowner unique terminal or feature, it's just Calypso in new clothes.
What many say is if your aim is to create a game where people play for less money, create a full new game, stay out of Entropia Universe. EU is for design studios with money. Or we can put it like this, it's a place for investors not indie game creators.

Even though I sound negative I wish you all luck and hopefully we'll in 2-4 years of hard work from your team will render in something fun and usefull.

Just to share some hard earned knowledge: Never ever expect something back for all the time you put in to a project. Just cause you worked hard with it it's not gonna be a success.

 

[J. Mandrake]

This is what we try to tell you, even though you just the nice guy putting up a forum, you at the same time became the front figure. The problem we see for you and your team is that there is lot's of stuff missing in the plan. And what you say is that your plan is to create something that't better for the playerbase. You forget that the blancing of loot will be in MA's hands, you only create content. A planet is like a big LA where you yourself manage the looks of everything. Yet we haven't seen one single planetowner unique terminal or feature, it's just Calypso in new clothes.
What many say is if your aim is to create a game where people play for less money, create a full new game, stay out of Entropia Universe. EU is for design studios with money. Or we can put it like this, it's a place for investors not indie game creators.

Even though I sound negative I wish you all luck and hopefully we'll in 2-4 years of hard work from your team will render in something fun and usefull.

Just to share some hard earned knowledge: Never ever expect something back for all the time you put in to a project. Just cause you worked hard with it it's not gonna be a success.

I didn't forget that we didn't control loot, I actually mentioned that! I believe we do control prices in the TT, but I will check on that with MA before we release any official plans.

 

[Nirfu]

I didn't forget that we didn't control loot, I actually mentioned that! I believe we do control prices in the TT, but I will check on that with MA before we release any official plans.

Just pop over to RT and you will see that stuff in that world has the same TT as here. Remeber that you can bring stuff betwean planets. At least so far. We only have RT to compare with and that is just like CND or any other LA.

What is important as a Planet Partner is to get the ingame economy to work. How do you get the looted stuff to gain markup so that people actually can get something back.

Economy is a hard thing to battle. What drives people do deposit? What drives non depositors to grind? How can the two groups live together without hating each other? Is the non depositor a leach or not? Somewher the earning for MA and the proposed Planet Partner must get their income from, and that's the depositors. With a game where you can play for less there would be less income too. Micropayments is an interesting area and full of questions and sollutions.
Then we have the playerbase. I just divided them in two groups, nondepositors and depositors. You can also divide in another way, skill. We basically have three skill type of players:

Uberskilled
Midlvlskilled
Noob.

How do you please these three groups without stepping on one of them? This is hard managemnt things, we see this at every VU, people from different parts start whining. Maybe you nerfed heal speed for one groups mob to please the other. Or you implement increadible armour or weapon making another group suddenly able to target the mob aimed for ubers. You add speed (vehicles) to a group(PKrs) of players that attack another group(miners) that can't contribute from that speed.

All of this has impact on ingame market, TT value is of no importance, the markup of stuff has. High markup can be good for one group and bad for the other. Balancing is the hard thing. You have to check how you can balance markup. Markup is something the Planet partner don't have to pay for, markup drives the economy.
Examples:

You loot X.
X has no markup, you TT it.

You loot Y.
Y has markup cause of demand.
You sell your Y and for the money you earn you buy something another player crafted. Your Y loot with markup got the wheels of ingame economy to turn. Some one sometime did pore money in to that machinery, you helped to move it.

 

[MarieWoodell]

Just pop over to RT and you will see that stuff in that world has the same TT as here. Remeber that you can bring stuff betwean planets. At least so far. We only have RT to compare with and that is just like CND or any other LA.

What is important as a Planet Partner is to get the ingame economy to work. How do you get the looted stuff to gain markup so that people actually can get something back.

Economy is a hard thing to battle. What drives people do deposit? What drives non depositors to grind? How can the two groups live together without hating each other? Is the non depositor a leach or not? Somewher the earning for MA and the proposed Planet Partner must get their income from, and that's the depositors. With a game where you can play for less there would be less income too. Micropayments is an interesting area and full of questions and sollutions.
Then we have the playerbase. I just divided them in two groups, nondepositors and depositors. You can also divide in another way, skill. We basically have three skill type of players:

Uberskilled
Midlvlskilled
Noob.

How do you please these three groups without stepping on one of them? This is hard managemnt things, we see this at every VU, people from different parts start whining. Maybe you nerfed heal speed for one groups mob to please the other. Or you implement increadible armour or weapon making another group suddenly able to target the mob aimed for ubers. You add speed (vehicles) to a group(PKrs) of players that attack another group(miners) that can't contribute from that speed.

All of this has impact on ingame market, TT value is of no importance, the markup of stuff has. High markup can be good for one group and bad for the other. Balancing is the hard thing. You have to check how you can balance markup. Markup is something the Planet partner don't have to pay for, markup drives the economy.
Examples:

You loot X.
X has no markup, you TT it.

You loot Y.
Y has markup cause of demand.
You sell your Y and for the money you earn you buy something another player crafted. Your Y loot with markup got the wheels of ingame economy to turn. Some one sometime did pore money in to that machinery, you helped to move it.

Just in defence here a little without giveing too much away. I appreciate that you are trying to help here but These are the kinds of things we are beginning to hash out on the forum. We are talking about who we want to aim it to how much control we think we are going to have. What we need to ask MA to clarify for us; all the kind of stuff that would go into a sound business model for a planet. It's just needed a few more heads than the guy starting the thread.

Now obviously we don't have all the answers to the questions you've asked here yet and even if we did we might not be sharing them just yet. Give it a little while and we will see what comes out of this.

 

[remontoire]

But there's a crux. Do you think MA likes handing out 50% of any potential income? No, ofcourse they dont.
If anything it's a good measure of how deperate MA is to attrackt new players.

If MA is so convinced of the potential this platform has, why havent they introduced any new planets?

So you totally missed Rocktropia? And by 2011 there will most likely be two more planets.

For that matter, what good is a complete galaxy of MMO planets if no-one is playing?

A game's succes depends on the amount of players playing that game. It's extremely hard to attrackt new players to a new game, and it get's even harder if you have to this with an exsisting game.

And if MA isn't able to attrackt new players to their platform then who is?
I think thats the million dollar question. And the million dollar answer is : no one.

Players don't care about platforms - they care about games and game worlds. You can't attract players to a platform any more than you can attract drinkers to a beer recipe. Players want games, beer drinkers want beer ... not platforms or recipes.

 

[sky west]

So you totally missed Rocktropia? And by 2011 there will most likely be two more planets.

Yes I missed Rocktropia, and so did everybody else...... But that was not the point. The point was that RT is not from MA and RT is not bringing in any new players.

Players don't care about platforms - they care about games and game worlds. You can't attract players to a platform any more than you can attract drinkers to a beer recipe. Players want games, beer drinkers want beer ... not platforms or recipes.

Where exactly do you see me saying that players are interested in platforms?
Again, the point was and still is: MA is unable to attrackt new players, and if they have a hard time doing so what makes us think anybody else will succeed in doing so?

 

[Nirfu]

Just in defence here a little without giveing too much away. I appreciate that you are trying to help here but These are the kinds of things we are beginning to hash out on the forum. We are talking about who we want to aim it to how much control we think we are going to have. What we need to ask MA to clarify for us; all the kind of stuff that would go into a sound business model for a planet. It's just needed a few more heads than the guy starting the thread.

Now obviously we don't have all the answers to the questions you've asked here yet and even if we did we might not be sharing them just yet. Give it a little while and we will see what comes out of this.

nO NEAd to defence anything. I think all you read in here is constructive thoughts. Maybe the belong on your forum. But some of us is not that interested in your project but still we have thoughts to share. Me myself have been working on another project for years now with the aim for a similar thing as EU but with palyer experience in focus. So here I share what I have learned on the way.
Everything you read, you read with subjective eyes.

 

[slasha]

here's my current CV
im creative , imaginative and have long term "time on my hands" (unemployable lol), can use photoshop-esque software effectively ,i have As level art, i could have a bash at modeling (3d or nude) , i can smoke most people under the table , i have waves of enlightened clarity mixed with maddnes , i have some programming knowledge and experience (using editors not proper languages), where do u need me?

 

[sky west]

i can smoke most people under the table

If Im correct that is not an english proverb/saying.

Vrind hou op met die onzin, en ga wat nuttigs doen.

 

[Nirfu]

here's my current CV
im creative , imaginative and have long term "time on my hands" (unemployable lol), can use photoshop-esque software effectively ,i have As level art, i could have a bash at modeling (3d or nude) , i can smoke most people under the table , i have waves of enlightened clarity mixed with maddnes , i have some programming knowledge and experience (using editors not proper languages), where do u need me?

to short

 

[slasha]

Vrind hou op met die onzin, en ga wat nuttigs doen.

you do what u like , ill do what i have too.

ok heres one for you, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.

 

[Xandra]

Hi,

greatly appreciate this, registered.

No idea what you're going for yet, but it sounds reasonable. My help is already offered in the forum, hope you'll find a way to make use of my limited skills.

My best wishes, and have fun!

 

[sky west]

you do what u like , ill do what i have too.

ok heres one for you, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.

Fine by me Jack, just remember next time you want to get somewhere not to take to much pride in your THC taking abilities.