Retention rate

I think all points in this post are fair and valid, but one crucial thing has been overlooked. The number of new players will continue to suck since there are so few entering the funnel at the top. I mean what the hell happened to the $6 million dollars from CLD's that was specified for advertising the game ? Not one tv advert .. pop up or banner ever came from that. I just dont get it. Its clearly an obvious choice from MA no to actively market the game externally. I only wish that if they wanted organic internal growth as is current (word of mouth from current players) then why not directly financially incentive's current players to bring in new guys. ?

I would could happily spend alot of my time recruiting new people to play the game so say 5-10% of the new avatars decay bill( could be paid weekly like deeds). Would this not prove extremely easy to implement and virtually free for MA to do ? ( would be 5% of currently non existent business resulting in an overall + for the economy). This way mentors would get paid for their contributions so to speak and new people would have a strong irl shoulder to lean on. After all Eu players often love the $ side of the game so why not make the direct link ?

Supajosh said:

......

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Adverts you asked?

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?230025-Entropia-Universe-Advertisement

Look there. XD

And as far as I know, I don't think it was ever stated that all 6 million would be used for adverts....only a portion of it would be.

you shoulkd have added cost of play

The game is not for those with a short attention span or who lack intelligence (or peds to make up for it).

So it's not a good game for most people on earth.

DavinFelth said:

When I read these comments - which have been great - I have to think and compare to other MMOs or games that I have played. This is the only way I can think of it to say "why does that game work and this doesn't" type of idea. No big answer comes to mind.
I play Minecraft - which is very popular. People stay there because : it's free (once you buy a copy for $20 or something) constant development of VUs and conent - with EXTENSIVE release notes and bug report/fixes, somewhat simplistic learning curve, and variety of user plugins - mods.
I play Lord of the Rings online and that has free weekly "samples" of things you can buy in game, ways to earn points that allows you to "buy" more content, frequent company sponsored events where you can earn items/emotes/clothes, vast quest system and integrated storyline.
When I first played EU I found it very interesting and really liked it. I also found it very complicated, difficult, and had a big learning curve. What saved me was the community - help and guidance. I think a lot of the initial hardships have been addressed well by MA, with tutorials, mentorships, etc.
I voted about the economy because most of life boils down to money. I often want to walk away because I look at it and say... why do I spend $200 + a month on a VIDEO GAME. I could be buying a PS4 and bunch of games every month with the money I spend - but I choose to play just this one game.
I gave up with mentorship for the same reason - too many questions and time spent then people just gone.

I cannot offer a great reason, I just know there are 1 million games out there and who knows how many people try 1000 of them before they find a couple they really like. I played WoW and it didn't take me long to feel like there was no point and I gave up. I can't even say what got me hooked on EU other than I'm an addictive person and liked to gamble!! (shhh don't tell MA)

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points from this ( and several other ) post(s).

I don't play as much of a grinder, just try too survive on 10-15 dollars a month and have fun. Ok now for points lol.

A) EU is hard too learn, really hard, I remember I lost a lot in first days trying too mine with f-101 without any skills. then good friend Antares came along and gave me the right tools, taught me how too mine better, and gave me about 10 PED.

B) This is why I probably stuck around, Antares was a really good friend and I usually got too heal him on runs and he took me for tp runs. Too this day I will occasionally help a newbie, take them too PA, give them basic information, hand out those cheap newbie finders Antares gave me ( don't ask but they're 6 pec each ). The small things really made me stick around...



C) money money money, first deposit ever was pretty much WASTED, no freebies either, newbies learn that MA is an absolute tyrant sometimes ( Mercy, Kim!) with puny loots and at first a hard game. Pay too win!

D) last thing that made me stick around was my newbie uber, still amazed looking back, no Hofs since lol. Newbies should really get some better loot, my first Dakiba swirl got me all pumped up

So basically I'm saying, help noobies, MA should improve loot, and make it funner.


FYI I'm still a big fat noob lol, nearly a year and only proff. Lvl 14.

Oh yea and that Hof? Wasted in 2 weeks 8) at least I have 500 PED being cycled in and out of deeds and stuff.

Oh yea this is off topic but... I found it a bit funny...



Thought it compared too a newbie

Last five words say it all...

Neil Stockton said:

Most new players have no understanding that loot returns are really bad until they max their first weapon, and that if they cycle enough to kill a few hundred mobs they'll get a decent loot return. This basic info is not provided to new players via the starter missions on any planet that I'm aware of. If this could be overcome I think we'd see higher retention.

One way to do it would be provide them with a starter weapon (max dmg 3) that is maxed at level 0. Then provide a way for them to cycle through a few hundred mobs or a few hundred rookie mining drops without an initial investment. The starter pack does this by providing universal ammo which can't be TT'd, but they still provide an unmaxed weapon, and of course requires the player to make an initial investment.

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what the man said

My disciples situation is even worse as shown bellow:



The ones with highest progress (94, 80, 72, 74, 70%) didnt logged in in the last 10-12 months

I stopped taking disciples aswell. I invested time and patience in this and for nothing.

Help your disciples to get anatomy (or geology or engineering) reward missions and they will graduate faster. From info from one of my recent disciples, it took about 10 ped TT skill to graduate. (Mission rewards cause the % to go up, chipping in does not). Of course, they have to log in to do that.

I wish there were an "inactive" disciples list you could bump those players to, to take on new active disciples. Many of those old disciples will return eventually....

People will pay if they are entertained. They will pay in money, time, or both.

If they are not entertained then the allure fades quickly.

Magyar_Republic said:

People will pay if they are entertained. They will pay in money, time, or both.

If they are not entertained then the allure fades quickly.

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You need to spend a lot of time in this universe. Some don't have that luxury in RL.

all of them my friends are mostly multi accounters just making accounts to get as much peds possible out of their mentors mostly those that give up after like 5 10 % there is rare 10 % who actually finish it and spend playing this game for real now those people i take hat off(and guess we were all amongst that 10 % or even less )

My soc leader and I recruited maybe ~30 friends or more from another game we play (end-game heavy grinders) and maybe 5 or 6 actually played to graduation. Those 30 are people I know who have the patience to play, if there was something to hold their interest.

Most of my previous disciples couldn't graduate if I handed them a gun and unlimited ammo. They just don't play that often, and most quit before 10 percent. I have had a few exceptional disciples, but the majority of them ask questions that were covered in the newbie area. Did they read it? Of course not, they usually tell me they just clicked through it hoping to get through it as quickly as possible I always try to help, but some don't even respond to a hello, and drop their mentorship after a day or 2. I'm guessing those are the multi accounts who figured out that I wasn't giving away free stuff Giving them free items is just throwing peds down the toilet, or feeding scam accounts.

Run them through missions or TP runs, provide alternative methods of progression to sweating, it doesn't matter how you play it; most seem to lose interest quickly. No matter whether you provide them the most efficient method to graduation, they don't want a mentor, they want a miracle worker.

There was a time when I had a lot of new players(mostly mining-beginners)in my friend-list, I explained everything they had to know and at least half of em where my disciples(the others had mentors that didnt login anymore).

Anyway I spent hours and hours of travelling so they get some better mining areas/routes and the questions where mind-blowing from time to time, but we had fun.

End of story: 90% didnt login anymore after ~1 week - month.

So after those failures I took only newbies who were willing to deposit at least once cause
as soon as their own money was involved they couldnt step back as easy - not very noble, right

(U can imagine there arent that many guys willing to spend money for a "free to play game at first sight" if you dont promise em internent-fame and a cash-cow)

Game is about money. People come in to play this game for money.

Lowering treshold for globals (I mean 5 ped? wtf) and capping loot on certain mobs ESP for newcomers was a very nice gesture into getting more people to play this game. *clap clap* it's like removing the carrot from the donkey and just dangling a chewed up piece of potatoe instead.

Who wants to come into this game 2day and grind their way to mid lvl? Not like you can loot a biggie anymore. So where is the excitement?

Skillgains are nerfed, so newcomers will have fun to a certain point. And go wtf? Why so slow all of a sudden? (This is from lvl 10+)

Remember the times newcomers would come into this game with apollo, and getting a 900 ped daika young, so the ava could now buy a better items and move on to harder hitting mobs. (If they bought a good armor, I can assure you they would much rather depo for a better gun / fap. Can they 2day? ofc not.

You can have more fun going outside picking up tincans for scapmetal rather starting from zero in EU 2day.

Unless MA switches out that chewed up potato and brings back the carrot again. We will see no more growth in EU (But atleast multi accounters make it look like we got alot of fresh takers)

1.This game isn't for everyone (like any game).
2.Most young people don't want to spent even 1$ on a video game.

And it isn't polite to tell to new players "If you don't deposit I wont take you as disciple" and you take nondepositors / uninterested players that play until they have free ammo.

But life is just unfair - get used to it. If you don't believe me wish in one hand, shit in the other. See which one gets filled first.

sawachika said:

Adverts you asked?

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?230025-Entropia-Universe-Advertisement

Look there. XD

And as far as I know, I don't think it was ever stated that all 6 million would be used for adverts....only a portion of it would be.

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rofl was that for real? At least we know the 6mill was well spent

Neil Stockton said:

Help your disciples to get anatomy (or geology or engineering) reward missions and they will graduate faster.

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I do I let them fap me, also give them an finder and probes then tell them mine and give me the loot (an idea I got from you)

They do make good progress when they grind but still...

MeanMachine said:

all of them my friends are mostly multi accounters just making accounts to get as much peds possible out of their mentors

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nice well thats depressing as fvk lol

Guarana said:

it's like removing the carrot from the donkey and just dangling a chewed up piece of potatoe instead.

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yeah I agree with most of what you said, but its mainly to do with expectations. I mean who joins here expecting a noob hof? Most wont even know what a hof is

the advertising isn't attracting enough gamblers

Skilling is too slow. They removed all the fun ways to skill too, like socially in the ring. Those were the best days, just hanging around at billys or later new places when there were more rings. Chatting in the ring skilling, occasionally a fight would break out. I loved that. As a noob I was drawn to the skilling crowd and wanted to get ped to join them.

Peds and items taken out of loot and replaced with "brown stuff" (just generic boring items) and ammo. Hard to calculate hunts anymore with the ammo coming back in loot.

10 years ago you'd hunt and get peds/pecs, occasionally something nice and colourful. Getting a global meant a lot more having a higher threshold.

The game feels just as buggy today as it was 11 years ago. Maybe there are less bugs but there is a higher expectation of no bugs. I feel if MA cut the budget from graphics/map "improvements" and just spent their time fixing bugs, they would have had a really solid game that felt polished.

Seems like a good few features were removed because they couldn't be bothered to fix the bugs with them too. E.g. the loot window, holding all your items in the loot window before populating inventory. Sitting/laying down.

Like look at the action bars. You can't just drag and drop on and off them. You drag off the action bar now and the key is gone. Action bars used to work.

When they brought out this new quasi mmorpg interface it left a bit of a stain. It was no longer an fps but a half fps/rpg controlled game. Just has a weird interface now tbh.

The new (L) items are just crap you're going to throw away. Like your gun doesn't mean anything to you anymore, unless you get an unlimited which are at this point so ridiculously priced.

For returning players it is just a huge shock. I can't get back 1% of what I had before because the prices are now astronomical. I miss the former experience.

Years ago as a newbie you didn't really have to "grind to mid level" if you didn't want to. I wanted to get out killing trox etc as soon as I got a gun, and it worked. It's strange how angel and shadow seem to be more common than nemesis now. Where has the nemesis gone? Bring back nemesis.

Bring back clothes in the loot, guns, armour, ped. They should make it how it was when it hooked the core players that make up this game. As if ruining the map wasn't bad enough.

There's just so much frustrating about this game now. I'm trying to get back into it but it's difficult.

My 2 pecs.

PS@MA, rollback to pregold

Sierra said:

PS@MA, rollback to pregold

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And please make us 5 years younger please, 5 kg lighter and 5 teet more in the mounth

Arch said:

the advertising isn't attracting enough gamblers

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What advertising?

A banner here and there is not really advertising. It's a proven fact that marketing works. If MA's marketing director worked on commission, we might see some actual marketing.

Sierra said:

Skilling is too slow. They removed all the fun ways to skill too, like socially in the ring. Those were the best days, just hanging around at billys or later new places when there were more rings. Chatting in the ring skilling, occasionally a fight would break out. I loved that. As a noob I was drawn to the skilling crowd and wanted to get ped to join them.

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Well i can't speak for ancient times, but at least for anything after 2009. With the mission rewards, puny mobs and new low level gear skilling is incredibly fast compared to when i started playing in 03/2009. So it has been adressed.

Sierra said:

The game feels just as buggy today as it was 11 years ago. Maybe there are less bugs but there is a higher expectation of no bugs. I feel if MA cut the budget from graphics/map "improvements" and just spent their time fixing bugs, they would have had a really solid game that felt polished.

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While i do agree that bugfixing should be high priority it is mostly not related to changes in 3d models and maps etc. The work is simply not done by the same people. And there is no need for a 3d artist to idle just to wait for the coders to fix stuff that need to be fixed by them.

Sierra said:

Seems like a good few features were removed because they couldn't be bothered to fix the bugs with them too. E.g. the loot window, holding all your items in the loot window before populating inventory. Sitting/laying down.

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Although loot goes directly to inventory, last time i chaecked it was still possible in the settings to turn the classic lootwindow on. I personally do not like it much as it is pretty much annoying to have a window popping up just to close it.

Sierra said:

The new (L) items are just crap you're going to throw away. Like your gun doesn't mean anything to you anymore, unless you get an unlimited which are at this point so ridiculously priced.

For returning players it is just a huge shock. I can't get back 1% of what I had before because the prices are now astronomical. I miss the former experience.

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I don't know where you have been the last years, but since 2009/2010 there had been a steady decline in prices of ul gear. Nowadays you can easily obtain 50 dps ( acg dps not max ) dirt cheap. Beside that you have gear which is eco. And there are a lot of good (L) weapons as well. Far away from being crap imho

Sierra said:

Years ago as a newbie you didn't really have to "grind to mid level" if you didn't want to. I wanted to get out killing trox etc as soon as I got a gun, and it worked. It's strange how angel and shadow seem to be more common than nemesis now. Where has the nemesis gone? Bring back nemesis.

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You still just can take a cheap UL oldschool gun as a newbie, and do that. It is just that it will be expensive. Btw how is Shadow more common than Nemesis, i think i missed that. Buying Full set of Shadow 1kped @Balcony

Sierra said:

Bring back clothes in the loot, guns, armour, ped. They should make it how it was when it hooked the core players that make up this game. As if ruining the map wasn't bad enough.

There's just so much frustrating about this game now. I'm trying to get back into it but it's difficult.

My 2 pecs.

PS@MA, rollback to pregold

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There are many frustrating points in EU, and i understand it is easy to take the sentimental route to look at things of the past. But my guess is whithout the game evolving it would die pretty quickly. Not everything is bad at least not compared to when i started. A lot of things are better now imho ( Planets, Instances, Missions, Vehicles, Cheap SIB gear ... to name a few ). There are however points where i can understand frustration. Release quality, lag ... But to put it the way that everything what changed since pregold is a bad change is simply not true for every single player. There are a lot who like changes occured over time. Even when not every single one of them.

BR

You don't know man.. you weren't there.

Sierra said:

You don't know man.. you weren't there.

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I haven't been in a war either and this is not neccessary to know i do not like it. But i won't push you into thinking in other categories as the ones you knew back then. Some ppl adapt and some won't. A free world to choose

Jennson said:

I haven't been in a war either and this is not neccessary to know i do not like it. But i won't push you into thinking in other categories as the ones you knew back then. Some ppl adapt and some won't. A free world to choose

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Learn to agree to disagree without trying to be utterly patronising and passive aggressive.

Sierra said:

Learn to agree to disagree without trying to be utterly patronising and passive aggressive.

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I have not a problem with you disagreeing, i accept that you liked how EU was ten years ago. However there are a few things and i particularly comented on these which are simply false statements. Beside that i postulated when EU had not evolved over the years i would be dead by now.

The argument: "You don'T know you haven't been there" however is a void one, as i have an understanding about changes over the years. And i do not agree that every change was a good one. But that does not mean that every change was bad.

Beside that the topic is why do we have a bad retention rate and i do not think it would be better when we had PE2003. Expectations of gamers changed. Games changed. And an MMO which is on the market as long as EU is needs to adapt to the changing market conditions.

Entropia's unique selling point is it's RCE aspect. When i see the state of the game mechanics today it never has been complexity of the gameplay itself. All complexity in EU arises from it'S RCE and the conditions it creates. That includes excitement when having a good loot, that includes plaing market.

But even when it is the unique selling point it does not mean that it should stay the same forever. If it does it will die someday as the market conditions for MMO change over time. Players change - new generations need to be attracted. And new generations of players come with different expectations.

It is hard to attract new folks in general. The RCE aspect as it's unique selling point is a big con for a lot of people as well. So how can we at least keep more of the ones we are attracting. When i read comments on review articles of former years then there is a lot of criticism in the old posts. Like: you cannot start without depositing, no missions. Crappy graphics (...). A lot of these issues have been resolved over the years. And if they wouldn't have adressed it it would probably be even harder just to get people to try Entropia. At least with the changes we sre able to attract a broader audience of modern players. But look around what you can get in other MMOs for free. The whole storyline for example ( like in SWTOR ). Have a look at Sart citizen for example.

Nowadays the is competition in the MMO market which creates expectations what a game should deliver to it's players. And this is what has changed compared to 2003. These surroundings created a different crowd of players. One can ask if we really want to attract them. But in fact even with Entropia's exciting elements it will be hard to keep everyone playing for decades. People's life change. Some get different jobs where they need to invest more time in order to be successful, some get kids which also limits time available for a game, some simply get bored over time. And these people will take breaks or eventually quit.

This is not unusual among gaming. That means to replace the churn you need to attract and keep new players. Could Entropia attract people in it's former state ? Could Entropia attract people when it would be 2003 PE ? Check out Screenshots of the mentioned games and add some more MMOs and ask yourself if wou were in the position to decide which new game you want to try if by reviews, screenshots and videos you see, Project Entropia pregold would have been the one you would try today.

Maybe old PE would be able to keep more of the old players, but without the ability to attract new ones it will die sooner or later.

if they made a poll what like the better 9 or 10 i think the mass poeple that were here a few year in 9 Over haft of the poeple would vote for 9

yes now there better graphic but me i can see them i see i have angel on and every one else because evey one is white

from what i remember there was a few problem but not like now

when i started i would pay 140% for guns but i would sell my looted guns also for good markup what i can see when i started there was only a few event a year now its almost every week more stuff looted bringing the mu down

if they could have 2 sever one like now and the old one i would go the old one and never look back at this one

ONe of the major flaw they want poeple to invest invest in this invest in that there too much investment for the poeple spending that only to go so far the the bubble burst

I just got my boyfriend to start playing now as an experiment, to see why he stops playing (if he stops!)

So far the controls are totally unintuitive, the "tutorial" is just a wall of text which he skipped.

Sierra said:

So far the controls are totally unintuitive, the "tutorial" is just a wall of text which he skipped.

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Those two things may be related lol.