So why should others do it to help you out? I'm still not following you here ^^
You didn't read my entire sentence; I'll spell it out for you:
What's the point in saving money IRL for something that you want and not play actively for one or several years?
When it comes to the kind of gear the high end players have, I guess it's in the long run barter trades: I give you my mm in exchange for your land area.
There are a few players who have done alot to really support the game, in time and/or PEDs, and those I admire. For a long time I thought that Buzz was a leach more or less, but he gained my respect paying 3M PEDs for CP. And Deathifier and other land owners who supported the game by buying servicestations and teleporters to their land areas - and then, in case of Deatifier, goes beyond Calypso and engages in other planets. And even Neverdie (though you can say what you want) do have ideas and are active ingame - consider for instance that he has Rocktropians and Zombies, while Calypso still hasn't got back Umbranoids and Calamusoids (which should be easy to do if you just put the idea with "armor protection" on hold until the system for that is ready).
This is beside business oriented people, who barely show up in events, who never does anything for other people (not in same soc), and is "on top of the foodchain". Though Star is on top of Food chain, actually I've seen star show up ingame and helping out in big battles, having the live stream to give some entertainment, so nothing bad about Star since Star often gives back.
And things that puzzles me is people I've never heard of suddently get mining ATHs (while I keep on depositing ofc), people I've never heard of buying and selling land areas, and people selling "sheds"/"shop" on land areas where I would expect a different owner (and here I don't mean that Digital story). People selling high-end items in auction, kind of items that I've seen for instance in a castle that used to belong to a high end player - or name that reminds me of a VU 9 hangar owner avatar.)
I did one kind of investment though but it's nothing that is noticed ingame - I bought a new computer to be able to do things like opening my inventory/storage and not having to wait 1 minute for each avatar to render - but yeah I know it's probably not what you ment. Entropia VU 10.9+ is more or less all I needed a new computer for; I don't play any other graphic intensive games. (Even 5 second/avatar in rendering time sucks if you're on a place with 50 other peoples around - most of them shooting at a big regen mob - but you have 1-2 douchbags that starts pk:ing [I now mean 5+ kills in a row, not occasional "friendly fire" that happens if someone just happens to jump in front of a hunter], it's like the "detective" game where people around you fall dead down and you need to find the secret killer before you're down yourself).
(I'm one of those suckers who usually have under 1 ped on my card at end of day so stopping to deposit would effectively stop to play, at least beyond things like chatting.)
Another thing is that lot of the things I've bought over time is useless nowdays. The regen mobs took away the use of my plasma rifle (I had just invested in bravo ME when that VU came), it took away use for my Justifier MK2 (not IMK2), it took away the use of my Determination sword where most of the money spent was for skilling it up (and now good (L) longblades are scarse). When the footguard VU came, I had to pay as much or more in markup for my ghost footguards than I had paid for the entire armor set (though, yes, I know owner of highend armors, except PoE, also got trapped by the footguards). To make a long story short: Value of mid-level gear has gone down (I don't complain, I think it's good for new players) while value for high end gear has gone up (since I joined).
Good news is you are not the only one. 99% of playerbase are basicly ignored.
