Attracting new users

I recently invited a new friend and active gamer to play EU via Planet Calypso.

I explained to him how the game worked and how I had found success here, and by the time he got home to his computer he was super excited to play.

This is a paraphrase of his experience after finally installing and downloading...

1) He had several timeouts trying to log in.

2) "The title screen is all pixelated with a white stripe on the left side. I hope the actual game has more polish than this crap" I remember him saying that clearly.

3) He really struggled with the interface In so many ways. He was confused by the message center and the action library being different. He wanted to move those buttons around. He had numerous complaints about the interface, chat, and actions. I struggle to recall and recount them all. Suffice to say, he felt overwhelmed by all the different ways in which the interface works inconsistently.

4) He CTD'd several times, and even BSOD'd. That could be his system, but he plays many other games and claims not to have had any stability issues recently. I don't know.

5) he gave up, extremely frustrated. Angry even. Pissed at me for suggesting he play this game.


All of this occurred with assistance from me, an experienced player talking him through the process over teamspeak.

I have had a similar experience to this .
Guy I was showing CTD'd twice in the space of 10 minutes . I wont repeat his words but his next action was to uninstall , he has never returned.

He uses an I7 high spec PC and is a gamer spending a good proportion of money on his games.
I wonder how many other folks out there have this experience and are lost forever.

Every game takes time to learn, but yeah EU interface is not that much consistent and might be harder to learn but when you get around you find it quite functional

I don't CTD or crash that much, maybe once/ twice a week? So it's not like the game crash constantly for everybody..

If he went angry after that, then yeah, EU is not for him

PW3CK002 said:

If he went angry after that, then yeah, EU is not for him

Click to expand...

EU should be accessible for everyone, especially active pc gamers.

truantduck said:

EU should be accessible for everyone, especially active pc gamers.

Click to expand...

Yeah, and Rei for sure as an old player knowes what he's talking about.

I'll only say that 95% of the disciples I took were completly brand new players,
yet only 1 graduated. All others never came back online.
The other graduations I had were old/semi-old active players.

As long as the deposits remain steady, shareholders happy.

Yes the CTD's come in waves. Haven't had it some days then yesterday to have it like 3 times in a row around the same area. The login failure claiming EU is down for maintenance occurs as well sometimes.

Installing EU on a new Win7 system can already be a problem, as in getting the clientloader to actually start downloading instead of shutting down immediately.

If the basics are not covered it will be a bad start for many. We have all just gotten used to it.

Same as that lag where you cannot equip items or unequip at times, place a vehicle or check the auction without it timing out or any other terminal. Dragging stuff into the refiner when nothing happens the text is red and the ingredients are not dropped succesfully. Taking the TP and sometimes having to wait for over a minute for something to happen. Or when leaving space towards a planet.

Even after switching ISP's and PC these things still occur.

How about when you are typing and suddenly the lag has passed opening auction and focus suddenly changes there popping up 5 windows.

I don't play other games anymore but in the time I did I never experienced such issues.

CTD are a scourge.
If Mindark and it's developers cannot keep up with windows service packs and shifts in Direct X + C++ and whatever enables game play then it's a 1/2 arse attempt or contempt.
I'm fed up with having to clean install Windows 7 just to play...they'll know that given the amount of play I have forgone over the past 6 months given I'm not willing to fresh install and fuck about with settings.
Get your act together MA
Partners need to go on the attack as I presume customer base is compromised.

As for the society I am akin, you have the reason....cheers.

This thread just attracts whiners

I will give you example from TES Online -

- Wanted to try out the game, the installer instructions tells you it needs 40 GBs.
- I have only something around 70 GBs SSD drives, so I cleaned up well over 50 GBs and proceed with install.
- My internet line is slow, and there is no way to pause or re-assume the download.
- After I managed to download 40 GBs with portion of luck of no interruption (took night and working day and pissed girlfriend as she could not use the internet) I proceed to install, to my surprise it started unpacking those 40 GBs and quickly it run out of space and gave me the error message.
- Now the best part, you close the error message and guess what? The game wiped the installer and started to download 40 GBs again
- All this from a gigantic development studio with 10 times more money behind then MindArk
- Did I ever had similar problem with installing EU? No way!!! I can even stagger the download and download just parts and I can anytime reassume!

So just stop telling how EU is bad, there are ten time worse games with ten time more budget then MA has.

I too tried to bring some friends to play, basically explaining the RCE concept and stuff.

Soon they managed to log, their blaims wasn't that economy wasn't working, the MU went down the trash or not exciting loot anymore. It was just one thing, the graphics are outdated and so the game is really ugly. Won't play it period.

Got to says it's hard to beat some of the new games, better graphics, easier to start and even the free to play version (sweating in EU) gives us a great experience.

It's just sad to see the game I enjoy coming to this point.
Hope MA comes out with something really good, instead of messing loot algorithm for the sake of the economies balance. Check where did that brought us.

Alfadur said:

I too tried to bring some friends to play, basically explaining the RCE concept and stuff.

Soon they managed to log, their blaims wasn't that economy wasn't working, the MU went down the trash or not exciting loot anymore. It was just one thing, the graphics are outdated and so the game is really ugly. Won't play it period.

Got to says it's hard to beat some of the new games, better graphics, easier to start and even the free to play version (sweating in EU) gives us a great experience.

It's just sad to see the game I enjoy coming to this point.
Hope MA comes out with something really good, instead of messing loot algorithm for the sake of the economies balance. Check where did that brought us.

Click to expand...

It's hard to me to believe the game looks bad, all the new arrivals locations are just freaking redone and great. The newbies have quests, they receive so much free stuff, like cars, armors, guns, now even a freaking decent FAP..

The newbie experience was never ever better before :0

I would love to see what those guys would say when they would start in OJs in Port Atlantis, without anything, but anything.. In the old Project Entropia..

People are just pussyes I am sorry.. Those kind of guys really better go to play some stupid f2p MMO, where you find yourself maxed within a month and the only thing left to do is either farm some end game gear (that takes years) or to dump hundreds of dollars that you have no way to ever legally convert back...

Like you never played any F2P mmo...

Just again, if you play hard, F2P mmos are fun for 2 months maximum, after that it's stupid endless grind or money pit. Good old Entropia I can tell you

PW3CKA said:

It's hard to me to believe the game looks bad, all the new arrivals locations are just freaking redone and great. The newbies have quests, they receive so much free stuff, like cars, armors, guns, now even a freaking decent FAP..

The newbie experience was never ever better before :0

I would love to see what those guys would say when they would start in OJs in Port Atlantis, without anything, but anything.. In the old Project Entropia..

People are just pussyes I am sorry.. Those kind of guys really better go to play some stupid f2p MMO, where you find yourself maxed within a month and the only thing left to do is either farm some end game gear (that takes years) or to dump hundreds of dollars that you have no way to ever legally convert back...

Like you never played any F2P mmo...

Just again, if you play hard, F2P mmos are fun for 2 months maximum, after that it's stupid endless grind or money pit. Good old Entropia I can tell you

Click to expand...

You talk a lot of fluffy
Discuss stability as you may seem on my post the platform requires some measure of control.
Cheers

xaph said:

You talk a lot of fluffy
Discuss stability as you may seem on my post the platform requires some measure of control.
Cheers

Click to expand...

What?

You guys complain about stability, problems with installation and that the game sux.. But that's just whining from my point of view. Compare to any other F2P game out there and you find out they are just much worse in many aspects. Including the cost to play actually!

Just give me one name of one F2P mmo that you think is that great. I will give you ten reasons why it's worse then EU

PW3CKA said:

It's hard to me to believe the game looks bad, all the new arrivals locations are just freaking redone and great. The newbies have quests, they receive so much free stuff, like cars, armors, guns, now even a freaking decent FAP..

The newbie experience was never ever better before :0

I would love to see what those guys would say when they would start in OJs in Port Atlantis, without anything, but anything.. In the old Project Entropia..

People are just pussyes I am sorry.. Those kind of guys really better go to play some stupid f2p MMO, where you find yourself maxed within a month and the only thing left to do is either farm some end game gear (that takes years) or to dump hundreds of dollars that you have no way to ever legally convert back...

Like you never played any F2P mmo...

Just again, if you play hard, F2P mmos are fun for 2 months maximum, after that it's stupid endless grind or money pit. Good old Entropia I can tell you

Click to expand...

take a tour of the tps of Cyrene, rock, Next, Monria, Toulan, ark, all virtually empty ..... only calypso Port atlantis, Twins and Icarus.

that is the reality, it is clear that something is wrong and we must find solutions.

PW3CKA said:

This thread just attracts whiners

I will give you example from TES Online -

- Wanted to try out the game, the installer instructions tells you it needs 40 GBs.
- I have only something around 70 GBs SSD drives, so I cleaned up well over 50 GBs and proceed with install.
- My internet line is slow, and there is no way to pause or re-assume the download.
- After I managed to download 40 GBs with portion of luck of no interruption (took night and working day and pissed girlfriend as she could not use the internet) I proceed to install, to my surprise it started unpacking those 40 GBs and quickly it run out of space and gave me the error message.
- Now the best part, you close the error message and guess what? The game wiped the installer and started to download 40 GBs again
- All this from a gigantic development studio with 10 times more money behind then MindArk
- Did I ever had similar problem with installing EU? No way!!! I can even stagger the download and download just parts and I can anytime reassume!

So just stop telling how EU is bad, there are ten time worse games with ten time more budget then MA has.

Click to expand...

Other games having problems is not an excuse to have problems of your own.

EU will never look "as good" as the pre-made photorealistic games that aren't meant to outlast one season… Why? Because in those games you have basically one path to follow and the devs can make it all look perfect. They do not have to model an actual universe that interacts in novel ways as time goes on.

I've never run across any installation problems… maybe instead of just complaining they should details about hardware and OS.

Pretty sad to see stories like this.

Everyone at work asks me what game i play, i always just reply with "it's too complicated to explain".

As for stability issues, have had no issues with Windows 7 or 8.1 and play on both platforms daily.

Luckycharm said:

...
Installing EU on a new Win7 system can already be a problem, as in getting the clientloader to actually start downloading instead of shutting down immediately.

If the basics are not covered it will be a bad start for many. We have all just gotten used to it.
...

Click to expand...

I was reading the thread and remembering exactly that! When I tried to install EU on my new computer (win7 64 bits) on the last December. If it was not for the fact that I have a ava with 250k skills and quite a few bucks invested in the game, I would had given up!

had never had any problem on installign , reisntalling Eu game ever,
none had my friends, brother, sister or brothers wife.

when you want something - you find opertunities
when you dont want something - you get reasons not to do it

ktpsmf said:

had never had any problem on installign , reisntalling Eu game ever,
none had my friends, brother, sister or brothers wife.

when you want something - you find opertunities
when you dont want something - you get reasons not to do it

Click to expand...

How can you want something if you don't know what that something is?!


A new player have no idea what this game is!
And yes we are losing tones of potential new players...

This is exactly what happened to a couple of my friends.
First one gave up after a few failed logins
One actually got to play and thought the graphics were awesome, and the planet "super cool" but I cant accept him as a friend, even after meeting him in game.
In order to talk to him I was on the phone, because he cant figure out the whisper BS.

Fanan said:

If it was not for the fact that I have a ava with 250k skills and quite a few bucks invested in the game, I would had given up!

Click to expand...

This is exactly how I feel every time it takes me 15 attempts to log in my account.
So if I didnt have much invested, I would not come back.

I pay to play and the only thing I ask for, is to be able to play when I want

ktpsmf said:

had never had any problem on installign , reisntalling Eu game ever,
none had my friends, brother, sister or brothers wife.

Click to expand...

I am thinking of creating a " sister" or a " brother" too, im hopping she/he has more luck than me

I suppose any thread like this is gonna attract whiners, but I'd prefer this be a thread about what a new player experiences in their first few hours of gameplay. I'm much more interested in hearing about your experiences as you recommend this game to your friends.

In response to some of the comments, I'd like to say:

1) I think the graphics in EU in most areas are passable to kinda awesome. Sadly, I'm forced to play with object quality totally off, which makes them less great. Despite the fact that my avatar is as tall as possible, plants and rocks and over-sized mushrooms block my view when trying to shoot mobs. Also the old style calypso service centers with the wood floor and the weird semi transparent glitchy looking moire effect ceiling just look terrible. Many users spend a lot of time in those centers, including me, and therefore, a lot of time looking at something that looks like a set from a 70's porno.

2) Re-installing windows as a solution to problems in EU is most likely a fools errand akin to resetting your router whenever one encounters "lag."

3) That hourly problem where there was a delay in all things related to the economy was the single worst problem I've ever seen in a mmorpg. I watched, stunned, as relatively intelligent people would do all kinds of non-intelligent things to try to "fix" an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with their computer or network. The problem must end up getting reported as a million different bugs. Since the EU servers seem to recover or finish whatever maintenance job they run every hour in 2-3 minutes, whatever users were doing (relogging, voodoo dancing, etc) seemed like it was a solution. I can't imagine how many users cut short play time or quit all together because of that issue.

4) While the evolving interface makes sense to people familiar to the game, anecdotal evidence suggests it is overly confusing to new users. Glitches (like losing focus in chat for all kinds of reasons) and different conventions for buttons, actions and windows complicates an already complicated game.

5) beer.

6) because of my experience as I posted originally, I will be extremely reluctant to recommend this game again. That makes me really sad, and was my reason for posting in the first place.

qamori said:

I am thinking of creating a " sister" or a " brother" too, im hopping she/he has more luck than me

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Creating a new account because of a perception that your current account is "unlucky" is an extremely short-sighted, and are I say, stupid idea. You want skills. Skills are very good to have. Don't throw away skills.

You shall not complain..
You shall not complain..
You shall not complain..
You shall not complain..
You shall not complain..

I'm done recommending EU to friends, all rl friends who started playing with me left..
Why attract new players if you can't keep your old ones?

truantduck said:

Creating a new account because of a perception that your current account is "unlucky" is an extremely short-sighted, and are I say, stupid idea. You want skills. Skills are very good to have. Don't throw away skills.

Click to expand...

That was obviously a joke to the person that made a thread saying loot is related to a avatar when he/she is created.

My real complain was on the post above, about being able to play when I want for as long as I want, that is a reason why alot of new players leave.

qamori said:

That was obviously a joke to the person that made a thread saying loot is related to a avatar when he/she is created.

Click to expand...

Roger that. However, others have actually done this.

Some diferent points of view in here.

About others being to lame to give EU a try, to me is not a good consideration.
The player base is clearly in a down hill.

In less then 2 months, auction pages went don't from 1k to less the 800 in Calypso and keeps droping.
After this I could start a nice discussion about a sinking economy.

But from the majority of the posts here, somethings is really wrong with the platform itself.
Graphics, stability, hard to start, whatever, the fact is we need more players.

I've been embarrassed for years to invite RL people to give it a go. It's a like a dirty little secret hobby. So much is wrong with what, at it's core (i.e. Calypso, and the basic concept) is a wonderful idea with a rich history. Unfortunately MA + PP's seem happy with releasing new content and events constantly while glossing over the myriad of broken, sub-standard, shoddy bits which just rot away at the core. How they've managed to run the economy for so long with virtually no markup in 99.999% of items is unbelieveable.

Deffo hit a chord with that comment about the intro screen. I'm stunned that literally a .jpg hasn't been fixed in so long.