If the PP system fails.. Then what?

Kitch

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So I was pretty excited about planet "Toulan"? and the other planet that was in the pipeline. But whats going on there? Did they pull out?

And who would really want to invest realistically seeing the relative failure of the other PP's thus far..

So my question is how much is the future of the platform, MA and EU generally linked to the success of the PP system going forward?

Or could it recover in future as the RL economy situation brightens in coming years?

Or am I totally misreading things and actually its all going great really? (economics is not my strong suit)

thanks!
 
If they remove space and enable teleportes I'm sure the PPs would work slot better :)
 
If PP stopped launching so early with little to no content maybe they would stop failing so much :confused:
 
If PP stopped launching so early with little to no content maybe they would stop failing so much :confused:

Nah space is still there. Arkadia has a lot of content but because of the hassle of having to go back to caly to sell stuff most dont bother to go.
 
If they remove space and enable teleportes I'm sure the PPs would work slot better :)

This..

Next island was such a long fight I didnt even bother..

Rocktropia and ark are also to far. Especially since I would have to come back to caly to sell loot...

I just stay on caly now. Not because I like it more, but because its easy having everything in one place.
 
We all in soc looked forward for the new planets , But Ma killed it as 40 peds to jump with interplanetary Tps killed the spontaneous travels .

Now its even worse . M-s and what not . Times to plan a travel or a slow travel by oneself and all soc just vanished cos of spread out or even logged off due to no team hunts etc , the soc died so did the planets
 
I'd rather pay 40ped than waste 40mins flying
Rather pay 40 than pay for a warp figjt too. I dont enjoy cheatinf the syste.
 
This..

Next island was such a long fight I didnt even bother..

Rocktropia and ark are also to far. Especially since I would have to come back to caly to sell loot...

I just stay on caly now. Not because I like it more, but because its easy having everything in one place.

agreed...the only thing is I enjoy skilling treasure and can't do that on Calypso
 
So my question is how much is the future of the platform, MA and EU generally linked to the success of the PP system going forward?
100%, and it's vital.

More than one currently active PP have lost credibility, money, customers and hope from MA dragging their heels (or even actively opposing?) system changes/additions requested by PP's.

From that perspective, it's vital for EU.

Then, of course, everything is run by an iron fist by MA, so the only entity able to actually affect outcome is MA. When a PP fails it's 100% MA's fault. This became especially clear when the "pilot", Calypso itself, was sold and failed so catastrophically that MA repossessed it. That is strong proof that the PP system did at the time not work. Currently, CLD payouts is the only immediate indicator we have, and that too displays "not a success (yet?)".
 
If PP stopped launching so early with little to no content maybe they would stop failing so much :confused:

They'd also need a huge bank roll to allow them to do it. Most game now cost millions to develop so they take the approach of launch with a limited content and then build as they go to reduce start up costs otherwise they'd be crippled with debt for years. It's how Calypso was built after all.

The bigger problems they have are

  1. They have to compete against the platform provider.
  2. It takes months get to content into the game.
  3. Content can get pulled by MA with no notice and they have to wait months for another attempt or for MA to redevelop the system - Arkoin brokers for instance and the Cyrene Ten non-event which still hasn't happened.
  4. They're reliant on MA for anything platform related.
  5. They're having to work within a system that's designed for an established planet. Look at how much effort it took for the RT crafting stuff to work, it took an event to get players crafting enough to get bp's to drop. As well as MA limiting the number of shops and apartments driving the price way out of reach of most new players they might attract.
 
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They'd also need a huge bank roll to allow them to do it. Most game now cost millions to develop so they take the approach of launch with a limited content and then build as they go to reduce start up costs otherwise they'd be crippled with debt for years.

The bigger problems they have are

  1. They have to compete against the platform provider.
  2. It takes months get to content into the game.
  3. Content can get pulled by MA with no notice and they have to wait months for another attempt or for MA to redevelop the system - Arkoin brokers for instance and the Cyrene Ten non-event which still hasn't happened.
  4. They're reliant on MA for anything platform related.
  5. They're having to work within a system that's designed for an established planet. Look at how much effort it took for the RT crafting stuff to work, it took an event to get players crafting enough to get bp's to drop. As well as MA limiting the number of shops and apartments driving the price way out of reach of most new players they might attract.

Yeah some of these were big reasons for me deciding not to continue in a PP project. The PP are at the mercy of MA for everything and yet get relatively little in return for their efforts. Adding insult to injury, MA expects millions up front in capital but is unreliable about a timeline for releases.
 
I am often at Arkadia for buying clothes and furnitur, or just sitting at Moonshine Bar and I'm occacionlly at Next Island / Ancient Greece for vacation and relaxing. I love them both. TBH I have no clue what Rocktropia and Cyrene are good for ... but that's just me I think.
 
Toulan is due the end of this year. Their success will depend on how they launch. Arkadia launched well and has been very successful. RT is grumbling along but lack of new content seems to be stalling things there. NI is dead in the water as you know. Cyrene made the mistake of launching too early with no content. Again it is just keeping its head above water. As for a new PP, they should know what they are getting themselves into. We all know the playerbase is roughly 3000-5000 active players based on EntropiaLife stats. Further to this is the fact that less than 500 players play at a high Ped turnover level. Split these players between Caly/Ark and RT is hard, now a another PP in the mix, they will have to either draw a huge playerbase from local marketing or need and amazing premise to draw players of other planets. No doubt Toulan will have a lot of interest in the first week as well all check it out and try and loot some rare high end item. Sustainability is the key to success.
Now what is vital for MA is to get a new PP to take over and develop space. Only with space developed can things improve and space is currently a barren place.
 
global fucking auction house!!! ppl keep on whining about the planets that need their own economy.. WRONG!!.. it kills the other planets.. if u really need to fly to other planets to sell 80% of ur loot.. how is that good?

if no global auction... make a teleport with small fee..
 
global fucking auction house!!! ppl keep on whining about the planets that need their own economy.. WRONG!!.. it kills the other planets.. if u really need to fly to other planets to sell 80% of ur loot.. how is that good?

if no global auction... make a teleport with small fee..

NOOP! Fly the loot back to Calypso by yourself. There is no serious risk if you act correct. Takes kinda 35 or 40 mins. What's the problem?
 
RT is grumbling along but lack of new content seems to be stalling things there.

on RT Forum (which is not official forum any more?!?) ND mentioned something 'big' about an upcoming December VU. I think this might possibly be something similar to a Mayhem for PPs and the Halloween one is a 'test' for that new 'system' but only time will tell if this is just speculation...

May just be something RT specific instead, like fixes to crafting, etc.?
 
RT problem... Damn so long this PP VU? Was end of September ? Was in first week of October? Was on 29th October!?
4 months waiting for vinyls to drop!!! (is a new item used to craft weapons designed to be TT food- uneco )
So who controls the drops? MA!!
Question is It will be kind MA to let us craft uneco weapons on 5th November!
 
global fucking auction house!!! ppl keep on whining about the planets that need their own economy.. WRONG!!.. it kills the other planets.. if u really need to fly to other planets to sell 80% of ur loot.. how is that good?

if no global auction... make a teleport with small fee..

Spot on. Before mindark realize this, PPs won't success. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to get this so I wonder when they will realize it.


NOOP! Fly the loot back to Calypso by yourself. There is no serious risk if you act correct. Takes kinda 35 or 40 mins. What's the problem?

If your turnover is 40ped/day sure.. Would you do it if I tell you that many players turnover 10000ped/day or more? Imagine playing Russian roulette flying trough a buggy space in a quad after staying a week or two on ark and returning to caly with loot since auction on Arkadia is useless (the most successful PP has years after release a obsolete auction, yay the separate economies work..lol..).
 
When a PP fails it's 100% MA's fault.

i dont think this is true at all, although i agree that MA is not exactly helping the PP's by some of its choices.

PP's were supposed to bring their own players yet PP's seemed to focus on high end mobs and luring existing players for the most part.
where is their advertising budget, their marketing plan?

MA's biggest mistake was letting all these amateurs start PP's, although for the most part all they have to do is level design, skinning of mobs, gameplay concepts, and marketing the first three have failed spectacularly at these simple tasks.
RT is/was a complete disaster from the start, ND's warped fantasies and persecution complex do not make a compelling game and the list of bugged out and badly designed items and environments are too many to mention.
RT also failed completely at marketing itself to new players.
NI was a good idea, with what appeared to be a talented staff let down by a owner who did not understand the market and failed to advertise to outside players.
Arkadia had a few good things going to it but failed miserably when it came to balancing the economy, for example making the stupid mistake of having crafted weapons in loot and in some cases in the TT, the PP also seem to focus too much on attempting to cannibalise the existing player base and appeared greedy with all the high HP mobs and insane hitrate on even the tiniest creatures, and bizarre TT returns on its version of the instances. as with all the other PP's failed in its primary function, to bring new players, by a lack of a concerted marketing and advertising plan.

i personally think MA made a huge mistake diluting its IP and share of profits in this way and would of done a lot better if they had spent all this time and effort on hiring its own competent game designers and marketing team, be it internal or external.
MA should reposes PP's that fail to meet up to the conditions agreed to before they are allowed to damage the core of the game any more in the feeble attempts to keep themselves afloat.
 
So I think the consensus is that the PP system is failing, and possible that total or partial failure is imminent?

So what will happen then, will the whole thing go down the pan?

I'd love to see success and more integration between planets, like missions spanning several different planets. I would love for cyrene to keep going and do well and ark which I also am fond of. But I basically feel that in this case, a lack of obvious success = failure


So is EU doomed should the PP's fail. Thats my quesiton
 
i dont think this is true at all, although i agree that MA is not exactly helping the PP's by some of its choices.

PP's were supposed to bring their own players yet PP's seemed to focus on high end mobs and luring existing players for the most part.
where is their advertising budget, their marketing plan?

MA's biggest mistake was letting all these amateurs start PP's, although for the most part all they have to do is level design, skinning of mobs, gameplay concepts, and marketing the first three have failed spectacularly at these simple tasks.
RT is/was a complete disaster from the start, ND's warped fantasies and persecution complex do not make a compelling game and the list of bugged out and badly designed items and environments are too many to mention.
RT also failed completely at marketing itself to new players.
NI was a good idea, with what appeared to be a talented staff let down by a owner who did not understand the market and failed to advertise to outside players.
Arkadia had a few good things going to it but failed miserably when it came to balancing the economy, for example making the stupid mistake of having crafted weapons in loot and in some cases in the TT, the PP also seem to focus too much on attempting to cannibalise the existing player base and appeared greedy with all the high HP mobs and insane hitrate on even the tiniest creatures, and bizarre TT returns on its version of the instances. as with all the other PP's failed in its primary function, to bring new players, by a lack of a concerted marketing and advertising plan.

i personally think MA made a huge mistake diluting its IP and share of profits in this way and would of done a lot better if they had spent all this time and effort on hiring its own competent game designers and marketing team, be it internal or external.
MA should reposes PP's that fail to meet up to the conditions agreed to before they are allowed to damage the core of the game any more in the feeble attempts to keep themselves afloat.


Spot on - saved me the effort of typing it all :)

i personally think MA made a huge mistake diluting its IP and share of profits in this way and would of done a lot better if they had spent all this time and effort on hiring its own competent game designers and marketing team, be it internal or external.

Well that depends we only say that now because existing PP's have failed to do any real external marketing. What if at least one of these amateur PP's did some real marketing? i.e. did what they said they would do? We would then not be saying PP's are a failure.

So all MA need to do is make PP do what they promised they would do. How? Well caning is banned in schools these days but I think there is a good case for using it on these adults :whip: :)

Seriously though MA made a big mistake trusting these existing PP's. They need to do something about that maybe alter their contract but I doubt PP would agree to any such changes.
 
So is EU doomed should the PP's fail. Thats my quesiton
worst case for MA is they could pick up some cheap content from these glorified land owners :p
but more seriously i dont think that MA's success is tied to the success of the PP's all that much, MA has control of the platform and has quite a few options still open to it, including hiring (expensive) professionals to do the marketing the way other companies do, by dedicating +/- 10% of their gross revenue to this vital part of their business, and do this year in year out.
 
I think MA mentioned something about they taking over and running failed planets / PPs at one time, long ago?

Isn't that how Calypso returned to MA again or something? (I don't always follow such news as long as the game keeps on working).

I know there was at least some marketing to external new players when various PPs launched, and after that not too much follow ups. Although I think Arkadia has been advertising every now and then to get more newbies to play in their planet.

Right now we got PPs from US / EU / Asia.

With the new planet, targeting the Middle Eastern market, that will be a new region with potentially more people being exposed to the game.

As for PP updates being delayed, I think that is MA's fault, since they are the ones who control when updates are released. It probably did not help that the previous infrastructure update was a major fubar for a while. That probably introduced issues that the PP update had to work around / fix, hence the delay. If it was not MA's fault, all MA has to do is give a PP update submission cut off date, and any PPs which got delayed, do not make it into the next update. I should hopefully have a better idea soon regarding why the PP updates got delayed.
 
The biggest problems EU faces are the same problems it has always faced. Learning curve and player retention.

A new player to the game will be fine until it comes time to upgrade gear or to choose what mob to hunt next, there is no clear progression path.

A normal gamer aged 30-45 will have no problem dropping $50 to get started and after a month another $100 or so, but when he sees that $100 starts lasts less and less, then they quickly leave the game. Return needs to be more consistent, even with eco gear on the right mob some players are getting as low as 60% or less return consistently.

Dont even talk about mining. All MU on mobs and mining has been systematically destroyed, so before even on a 60% run you could still see 80-90%, now you see 63% hunting if your lucky and 70% depending where you mine.

Yes there are better spots with higher MU to mine, but if you like me play many hours a day, you can only hit those spots so often before you are forced to try lower MU areas to keep playing, You should not be forced to choose between MU or logging off.

While I am enjoying my time back, I can see things have changed and not all for the better. Having to depo $100 every week is not sustainable for the average gamer and certainly not for me. I am going to have to re-evaluate if I want to continue to play at this high cost, or just go back to a game where I can play and not have to worry about large Depo's.

The game is just to random, you should see consistent returns through every VU with a decent MU. That will lead to a healthy economy and people turning over more ped which leads to MA and PP making more money.

You should not see thousands of peds played just to be lost with no real return while one guy gets a 33k uber. Better to have 10 guys get a 3k to bump them back to 90% return, then to have 1 get 33k and the rest leave.
 
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I have to agree with the last few post, what is really needed for PP's and EU as a whole to really thrive is new players. How do you get new players? Marketing! Warcraft has millions of people paying $15 a month to play, EU has 5,000(?) people paying what ~$200 a month average? Blizzard takes in $30M, EU gets $1M, and they only get to keep what we don't withdraw (decay / fees). PP's and MA need to quit going after the big spenders and bring in the millions that are willing to play a game for $15 / month. A real story line, more group content (EU raids? o_O), and more for people on a limited budget to do are crucial.

Another aspect that needs work are societies. Ok, you can join a group of people and chat with them, awesome. Beyond that what purpose to soc's really serve? How about instanced society properties? (weekly?) events or mobs that societies have access to, etc.

There is so much potential in EU, sad to see such a small active player base. Don't get me wrong though, I love it here and I'm not going anywhere =)




TL;DR: EU needs to bring more content for and advertise to the $10-$15 a month crowd.
 
Arkadia had a few good things going to it but failed miserably when it came to balancing the economy, for example making the stupid mistake of having crafted weapons in loot and in some cases in the TT, the PP also seem to focus too much on attempting to cannibalise the existing player base and appeared greedy with all the high HP mobs and insane hitrate on even the tiniest creatures, and bizarre TT returns on its version of the instances. as with all the other PP's failed in its primary function, to bring new players, by a lack of a concerted marketing and advertising plan.


You are a little mis-informed. So firstly, Arkadia is marketing strongly to Asia Pacific region including partnering up with sponsers such as Skullcandy, Dell, and the glasses people. Secondly, they are getting a lot of new players in. Whether or not these new players are being retained for a reasonable period of time is an open question though. Finally, the issue of crafted weapons in loot is likely to be dealt with in the next release.
 
I agree with FallenAngel, some of the planet partners are just too small and have too little resources.

Some of the problems:

  • The planet partners don't have the money to be able to develop and marketing their planet as they should.
  • The huge majority of the players are still on Calypso, it's like a magnet for all other players.
  • An overall too low addition and retain rate of new players in the game. It's too expansive too play. That makes the growth of the player base on the new planets slowwww.......
  • Planet partners have and are too limited with their customization of their planets.


Maybe MA should change the profit sharing agreement. Split 60 % to MA and 40 % to the PP, but instead offer to pay half of all the marketing cost for the planet, or something else to force the PP to be a bit more active in the marketing.

I also believe it's a bit of "getting used to more planets". Calypso is still the king. We need some more planets to reach a "critical mass" of players and development that will break this "one planet domination" of the universe. I think this critical mass is somewhere around twice the size of Arkadia today/a third of Calypso. When we have at least three planets with this size I think it also think it will be of benefit for other smaller planets.

More development of the space is also something that could help the planet partners, make it more fun in the space. I think the space and separation of the planets is a good think, but I also could agree on that they could speed up the space travel a bit, half the space travel time would be preferred. 20 min instead of 40 min travel makes a big different.

I don't think the PP have or will failed, but it's not a success. The best solution for the problem, make the game cheaper to play. If MA made the average return better, lower the cost to allow us to play more hours for the same money, more players would stay longer and in the end help the planets.
 
Most of what ails EU is the result of a chicken and egg problem. PPs need greater resources and (some argue) greater expertise to succeed and grow EU for the better, but MA, in their eagerness to get new PPs, has not maintained consistent or high standards: they couldn't, with their own house in poor condition, and actually get any significant number of PPs. So they cut a deal with egomaniacs like NEVERDIE and then, well, have to spend a year or two putting out fires and trying to clean up the mess.

MA needs more resources (active players, mainly, but perhaps they've poorly prioritized a lot--it's really hard to objectively judge these things from where we sit) to better meet its commitments and provide PPs with adequate support for their planned developments. PPs spend a lot of time waiting for MA to implement something that will allow them to distinguish themselves from FPC, and being at the mercy of a company as unreliable on delivery as MA has historically been makes for similarly unreliable partners and failures.
 
You are a little mis-informed. So firstly, Arkadia is marketing strongly to Asia Pacific region including partnering up with sponsers such as Skullcandy, Dell, and the glasses people.

I don't see the connection between Arkadia partnering up with organisations like Skullcandy, Dell, glassess people and external marketing. Partnering with such organisations is more internal marketing to entice players for goodies.

Basically how is any in game item/freebie going to market the game externally? it's not unless they actually do some kind of external marketing linked to it.

I don't think the PP have or will failed, but it's not a success. The best solution for the problem, make the game cheaper to play. If MA made the average return better, lower the cost to allow us to play more hours for the same money, more players would stay longer and in the end help the planets.

I like this way of looking at it, they are not a success that's for sure. Lowering cost to play is not entirely an MA issue e.g. PP design mobs such that they hit more, cause more decay from low to high hp this increases cost to play. If someone does a comparison between equivalent mobs on different planets it'll show Calypso is still cheaper.

Basically I'm sure PP could design mobs such that they decrease cost to play but they can't and won't do that because they don't have sufficient funding. So they are caught up in a catch 22 situation.
 
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