Hi,
didn't read all, so maybe I'm repeating what another person wrote before.
Why do I play close to no more anymore? Why do other players leave?
Well, lemme show you what my last short hunt looked like. I came online after a few weeks of not playing, and decided to whack a few mobs:
See what I mean? This was about 10 - 20 bigger Snables, killed with cheapest weapons and w/o armor.
No difference if I used maxed weapons (here: CB5 (L) and TT sword) or old style stuff (here: A&P Brave ME and Maddox I) - misses over misses. And loot to vomit - low value TT fodder, or stuff where I'd need to collect insane amounts to be able to sell for a MU at all. If loot at all - a very high amount of no looters again.
Friends and neighbors, this is not what is considered fun and entertainment, and it doesn't make me want to deposit anymore.
I'm playing for 5 years now, and it has become worse & worse. PE back then wasn't a cheap game, it was necessary to use a serious buck to have fun, a lot more compared to other games. But it has changed over time - the amount of money necessary to actually play this game has multiplied. The "loop holes" that made it possible to survive with a low budget have been successively closed.
It has become more gambling than ever. The loot distribution has shifted - where it once was possible to survive, and to have fun, with small to medium sized mobs (when hunting) this doesn't make any sense anymore. Without hitting serious globals any hunt is doomed, and it has become the flavor of the game to go for insanely expensive mobs, rolling huge dices.
There, at the huge, expensive mobs, or at mining with huge, expensive gear, there's the money today, there's where the returns are given. Huge stakes, huge ATH's, huge chances for serious losses. The people rolling smaller dices rarely see anything of value in loot anymore, they're looting TT fodder or stuff that doesn't have any PED value at all. If they don't suffer huge numbers of empty mobs.
Medium gear is losing it's value very fast, the stuff once bought for serious money has become a failed investment - too much once expensive stuff has been devaluated with the new (L) gears, and it has been missed to balance this change. The (L) gear (and especially the UL equivalents) isn't available in the loot for the ones that would need it, it drops for the ones that already have by far better gear. BP's for the gear that has demand are looted rarely, and when, by the few remaining high skill crafters.
Friends and neighbors, this is not what is considered fun and entertainment, and it doesn't make me want to deposit anymore.
Besides all of this nothing has really changed. EU still plays as clumsy as ever, game controls still are working like in an 80's game, unresponsive, laggy, and for this we suffer insane hardware requirements that repel quite some new players - sandbox games like this one are living from constant participation, from the possibility to log in often to keep social contacts, & to watch the auctions. EU today doesn't run on a typical business machine anymore, we'd need at least a small gamer computer, and this makes it impossible to chat with the Soc, or to check the auction, during our noon break at the office.
Is it really "good programming" to release such a beast? Even on a machine that runs Crysis smoothly in high details EU feels like a snail in concrete ...
PE once had a "special offer" - strange ppl running around in a strange world, fighting strange monsters. This has gone with the Barbiesation of characters. Now something-similar- to-RL Barbie & Ken clones are duking it out, in a world full of hills, cliffs & obstacles.
Not exactly what provides fun & entertainment, right?
And to come to an end, current EU has moved to a place where it caters just the few remaining, high skilled members anymore. IMHO.
Any newcomers, or medium skilled avatars are left out. Loot is at Leviathans, Proterons and such - cannot kill? Eat dirt. All serious loot is distributed in them exclusively, with very few exceptions.
Friends and neighbors, this is not what is considered fun and entertainment, and it doesn't make me want to deposit anymore.
Finally:
There was ages when humans wrote books. Right, books - thick, heavy, long, really "walls of text". It was seen in this times to be a particular feature of education to be able to read, and to understand these. What you describe as "walls of text" or "novels" today isn't more but a short letter - have we really already lost the capability of understanding more but a 2min youtube clip?
Have fun!
may this would help to stay a bit longer.
