Right now, Entropias economy is at its lowest..

We were all so ferociously against ND's craftable teleporter tokens but IMO he was on the right track with this train of thought.

Convenience is something that will always be in demand, so what better way to create organic markup than introducing convenient (L) gear/consumables?

I'm assuming this was the idea behind the (L) Portable terminals. A few dozen more ideas like that and we can get the economy running a bit smoother.

ZPF said:

We were all so ferociously against ND's craftable teleporter tokens but IMO he was on the right track with this train of thought.

Convenience is something that will always be in demand, so what better way to create organic markup than introducing convenient (L) gear/consumables?

I'm assuming this was the idea behind the (L) Portable terminals. A few dozen more ideas like that and we can get the economy running a bit smoother.

Click to expand...

Right track but still wrong idea...he wanted to make us pay to use what we already have....a better idea would have been to make craft-able teleporters (like the (L) Portable terminals) so that you could use one where ever you are without having to run to a teleport or use a TP chip. But those that don't want to use them can still use the normal ones at no cost. But then people prob still wouldn't use them unless they were cheaper than TP chips.

No, the point is, we have TPs, and they are free to use, and I know its a simple matter of adding the planets to the destination list to make it so we can go from point a on one planet to point b on another planet. That is all I want them to do. Fuck paying for TPs to ANYWHERE in game, and fuck space in its current design, or the lack therof.

I think the economy struggles because too much of it is based on random luck which makes it very hard to create any form of enterprise within the three main professions, but especially crafting. For example if I need 50 pieces of hide to do some crafting then I (or someone else) have to go away and kill an unknown number of mobs (and so enduring an unknown cost) in the hope of randomly looting enough pieces which makes it. This makes it very difficult to put a value on that item, especially if I want to make something to order. On top of this I might collect enough pieces and then have my crafting attempt arbitrarily fail, loosing 100% of the materials. This is some what frustrating and doesn't allow for a particularly well rounded economy imo.

Offering some sort of fixed basic loot based on mod type and skills/equipment would be useful. For example if an exa's skin contains 25 pieces of hide and I kill the exa in 5 shots then I should be guaranteed 5 damaged hides and 20 undamaged hides. To add an additional dynamic maybe if I have a low "hunter" skill then the process of looting could further damage some of the "undamaged" hides but eventually with enough skills I should receive the correct number (i.e. no luck component on the basic loot if i'm hunting mobs of the correct level for me). This basic loot could be perhaps 10% of approximately how much it costs the average player to kill the mob with the rest of the return being made up of the current random loot.

I would rather see a basic return from every mob (of around 10%) which allows for some level of further thinking/planning/strategy, than have 10K + ped loots.

matthew said:

I think the economy struggles because too much of it is based on random luck which makes it very hard to create any form of enterprise within the three main professions, but especially crafting. For example if I need 50 pieces of hide to do some crafting then I (or someone else) have to go away and kill an unknown number of mobs (and so enduring an unknown cost) in the hope of randomly looting enough pieces which makes it. This makes it very difficult to put a value on that item, especially if I want to make something to order. On top of this I might collect enough pieces and then have my crafting attempt arbitrarily fail, loosing 100% of the materials. This is some what frustrating and doesn't allow for a particularly well rounded economy imo.

Offering some sort of fixed basic loot based on mod type and skills/equipment would be useful. For example if an exa's skin contains 25 pieces of hide and I kill the exa in 5 shots then I should be guaranteed 5 damaged hides and 20 undamaged hides. To add an additional dynamic maybe if I have a low "hunter" skill then the process of looting could further damage some of the "undamaged" hides but eventually with enough skills I should receive the correct number (i.e. no luck component on the basic loot if i'm hunting mobs of the correct level for me). This basic loot could be perhaps 10% of approximately how much it costs the average player to kill the mob with the rest of the return being made up of the current random loot.

I would rather see a basic return from every mob (of around 10%) which allows for some level of further thinking/planning/strategy, than have 10K + ped loots.

Click to expand...

It's a good idea, but effectively on a "macro" scale you can already do this. I know for example, approximately what proportion of my loot will be oil, hide, wool, components, and ammo/shrapnel on a certain mob if I hunt it enough. This is the skill of a good EU hunter (or, the skill is exploiting this information).

To improve the game economy is quite simple: DEPO MORE ! WAGER MORE !
- more loot pool, faster spending - faster selling/buying . Simple ....
All we need to do is keep depo and hunt/craft/mine, then all the MU will fluctuate in a positive way and everyone will be happy.... STOP SWEATING ALL THE TIME !

1 pec rare (without hof ) buff shietz in loot on all mobs, ppl would buy n use them so low lvl ppl could have MU too, and higher lvl ones could profit from this system also.. i mean we are far from the max amount of buffs that buffbar tells us is max

Piotr said:

1 pec rare (without hof ) buff shietz in loot on all mobs, ppl would buy n use them so low lvl ppl could have MU too, and higher lvl ones could profit from this system also.. i mean we are far from the max amount of buffs that buffbar tells us is max

Click to expand...

Like this idea. Could also be expanded to different effects - temporary divine chip effect for example, or maybe if they managed to fix the skill mod, temporary level 100.

Why do people leave, mostly cost to play.
solution, add more cost to playing with paying for TP? really?


since CLD was released we have lost about 33%~ of total cycle on Calypso. (more or less in game)
MA need to cut there cost at office and give more to players to keep them, they can still earn the same amount of money but dont waste so much money.

Xpl0jd said:

Why do people leave, mostly cost to play.
solution, add more cost to playing with paying for TP? really?


since CLD was released we have lost about 33%~ of total cycle on Calypso. (more or less in game)
MA need to cut there cost at office and give more to players to keep them, they can still earn the same amount of money but dont waste so much money.

Click to expand...

I really don't think they can cut to less than 30 people.

Best way to decrease cost to play, is to increase paying customers. Advertising, marketing, and continued improvements on new player experiences are the way to go.

Aio said:

I really don't think they can cut to less than 30 people.

Best way to decrease cost to play, is to increase paying customers. Advertising, marketing, and continued improvements on new player experiences are the way to go.

Click to expand...

They did try that, clearly do not work.
Its time they do something about it or not do anything at all.

Xpl0jd said:

Why do people leave, mostly cost to play.
solution, add more cost to playing with paying for TP? really?

Click to expand...

Free to play games have been charging for convenience since the beginning of time. Lumping "convenience" under "cost to play" is a silly way to look at it.

Is portable repair terminal also increasing your "cost to play"? Nope... it's an "extra" "convenience".

People were only upset because the TP is free now, so it's like an "extra" fee. If TPs didn't exist before, no one would be angry if the "new TPs" cost money to use. For the most part I think the community's knee-jerk response was very immature.

Don't get me wrong, I think TP fees were a bad idea simply because it was too difficult to implement and had too much potential to damage the economy (slower turnover, etc). However charging players for extra convenience was a smart strategy to increase markup and we should give ND credit for that.

The only solution is trying to attract new players. Most gamers still have never heard of it.

Ancient said:

The only solution is trying to attract new players. Most gamers still have never heard of it.

Click to expand...

New players do often come to game, but the problem is keeping the players and even harder to get them deposit money. Then you have the problem of keeping the already playerbase happy and getting them to deposit aswell. We have seen a number of older player getting more and more pissed with their investments going down plug hole. More broken promises from MA and lack of creativty from them. We all know the game has so much protential, but MA keeps giving a big, song and dance routine over the next big thing then runs of with the money.

Bringing in new players? Implement referral system (they mentioned it somewhere a while ago). Ppl would go and advertise if getting revenue after their invitees, at least i know i would.

Piotr said:

Bringing in new players? Implement referral system (they mentioned it somewhere a while ago). Ppl would go and advertise if getting revenue after their invitees, at least i know i would.

Click to expand...

Yup.

I think they talked about personally generating a revenue from the referee's actions but it wouldn't even need to be that complicated. 50ped when the avatar has completed their mentorship period, say, would be a big incentive to recruit new players (and lucrative for the best recruiters - 200 players passing their mentorships = 10kped).

And it could even be paid in UA!

Man, but there is a big problem with crafters making profit, and that is human psychology.

The (L) era or, more precisely, the SIB era began very abrupt: overnight the TT weapon became Opalo which had SIB and no other weapon ingame had SIB. That means, nobody under lvl 80 was eco. Just overnight with an update. Everyone and their mother (me included) switched to opalo amped, tt hg or opalo+A106 being a good choice. If you could afford the absurd prices of 106. To stop this, at community request, amp compatibility was introduced, with 50% dmg limit.

Then (L) bonanza came, with Korss H400 (L) and his smaller brothers being the stars. People would even pay 200% on one full TT (like 4x A104 to finish one? not sure right now) and it was worthy. In paralel, L bps started to drop and all L crafted had MU. Because there was no alternative. This got maybe the hottest with Apis (L), with raging prices like 180% per gun at incredible turnovers and even 30 ped/click of L bp, aside from materials. I was a lucky bastard then and was selling like crazy L clicks to uber crafters. Too bad I didn't had the brains to use this period properly.

Also in whole this 3-4 year period hunting amps reached hysterical prices and UL SIB guns even more hysterical. Something like 15 dps UL could easily cost thousands.

So the community moaned. That % on guns is too high, damn crafters etc.

You can't have fluid economy without crafters. We cannot have as individuals high incomes/decent expectation of profit without paying at our turn MU. Is very basic simple economy.

Problem is this state of things, coupled with HoF system leaning toward daily 10-20k on troxes-like mobs and towers in mining (which I see is getting back in place) created an extreme volatility. Few wrong steps (and I don't mean crafting attachements on condition) could evaporate thousands of peds in days, even on troxes, not on LTs.

Be VERY careful what you wish for.

There's a few very simple reasons to why EU doesn't attract new player base.

1: It's 2016 now, and the game looks and feels like a game from 2005-2006

2: Game performance is awful considering it's lack of graphical experience.

3: Learning curve is extremely steep due to poor or complete lack of proper tutorial.

4: Cost to play or "entertainment value" for beginners is beaten by any other game on the market.

5: Very few new players will be thrilled with the idea that it will cost you around $10-20K USD to reach "mid game"

e-lite said:

There's a few very simple reasons to why EU doesn't attract new player base.

1: It's 2016 now, and the game looks and feels like a game from 2005-2006

2: Game performance is awful considering it's lack of graphical experience.

3: Learning curve is extremely steep due to poor or complete lack of proper tutorial.

4: Cost to play or "entertainment value" for beginners is beaten by any other game on the market.

5: Very few new players will be thrilled with the idea that it will cost you around $10-20K USD to reach "mid game"

Click to expand...

feels good when someone post what you think when you are too lazy to write down your ideas.
+rep

e-lite said:

There's a few very simple reasons to why EU doesn't attract new player base.

1: It's 2016 now, and the game looks and feels like a game from 2005-2006

2: Game performance is awful considering it's lack of graphical experience.

3: Learning curve is extremely steep due to poor or complete lack of proper tutorial.

4: Cost to play or "entertainment value" for beginners is beaten by any other game on the market.

5: Very few new players will be thrilled with the idea that it will cost you around $10-20K USD to reach "mid game"

Click to expand...

1 + 2) Agreed, caly/cyrene/RT looks very old graphic wise (except cape conrith redo) and even with a GTX 970 and i7-4870K i struggle with 60fps constant, i could buy a new game today like Doom and max or near max it 60fps constant, However i think keeping data on server and not pc is partly to blame, whenever you hit a uncached area the fps drops and textures reload.

3) The Learning curve is very steep, can't imagine a single person progressed EU without a noobie error down the line, with Entropedia falling further and further behind and nothing coming up in its place will hurt, but the increase in streamers and youtubers is good, well done to the streamers.

5) The RCE is both EU's appeal and put off, too many players come with the wrong impression of the game and leave shortly after, they think free play will work and its easy, but it aint. A path for the free players would be good, maybe a zone where your costs are 1/10th and your skill gains and loot is 1/10th, play would last longer and you wouldn't gain an advantage, i'm not sure players would be interested in such a low stake game but at least you could learn the game first instead of broken gun in 5 minutes

ZPF said:

Free to play games have been charging for convenience since the beginning of time. Lumping "convenience" under "cost to play" is a silly way to look at it.

Is portable repair terminal also increasing your "cost to play"? Nope... it's an "extra" "convenience".

People were only upset because the TP is free now, so it's like an "extra" fee. If TPs didn't exist before, no one would be angry if the "new TPs" cost money to use. For the most part I think the community's knee-jerk response was very immature.

Don't get me wrong, I think TP fees were a bad idea simply because it was too difficult to implement and had too much potential to damage the economy (slower turnover, etc). However charging players for extra convenience was a smart strategy to increase markup and we should give ND credit for that.

Click to expand...

not correct. portable repair terminal increases cost to play as a normal repair terminal doesnt decay on use.

ZPF said:

Free to play games have been charging for convenience since the beginning of time. Lumping "convenience" under "cost to play" is a silly way to look at it.

Is portable repair terminal also increasing your "cost to play"? Nope... it's an "extra" "convenience".

People were only upset because the TP is free now, so it's like an "extra" fee. If TPs didn't exist before, no one would be angry if the "new TPs" cost money to use. For the most part I think the community's knee-jerk response was very immature.

Don't get me wrong, I think TP fees were a bad idea simply because it was too difficult to implement and had too much potential to damage the economy (slower turnover, etc). However charging players for extra convenience was a smart strategy to increase markup and we should give ND credit for that.

Click to expand...

No the response was accurate for the cost proposed and the exaggerated rainbows and kittens presentation neverdie gave. 10 pec and not 1 ped or 10ped would be more palatable if they were wanting to do something with tps.

They also could do interplanetary TPs and charge 50ped... those funds go to space missions whenever they are implemented. I don't know how you can complain with that. Equus and privateers can go for cheaper.. scheduled flights still work. Maybe pirates will complain but who cares about that.

Me Really Never said:

not correct. portable repair terminal increases cost to play as a normal repair terminal doesnt decay on use.

Click to expand...

It doesnt. It's an increase for convenience. You're not forced to use it.

e-lite said:

There's a few very simple reasons to why EU doesn't attract new player base.

1: It's 2016 now, and the game looks and feels like a game from 2005-2006

2: Game performance is awful considering it's lack of graphical experience.

3: Learning curve is extremely steep due to poor or complete lack of proper tutorial.

4: Cost to play or "entertainment value" for beginners is beaten by any other game on the market.

5: Very few new players will be thrilled with the idea that it will cost you around $10-20K USD to reach "mid game"

Click to expand...

well for me the biggest thrill was that you could hit a 200k hof on mining without amps (as they were not introduced yet) and same goes for the daily 10k+ argos that noobs could hunt. now all of that is gone. u dont have the opportunity to hit big anymore. and that sucks the fun out of the game. that change is the biggest reason for me why entropia got a boring grind fest. if you cant get a lucky hit in 1k mobs you gotta do 100k mobs with very eco setup to profit... and its also impossible nowadays to hit an ath or maybe even a tower on unamped mining. and with those ressource prices mining is a dead profession for me with zero fun as you cant hit big with it anyway. dont get me wrong though... i dont want everyone to hit aths and so on... but the problem is that it is not even possible anymore. a small chance gives hope, thrill and fun but with zero chance like now its pretty much like work while chatting with friends...

atomicstorm said:

It doesnt. It's an increase for convenience. You're not forced to use it.

Click to expand...

then i maybe misunderstood it. i thought he meant using it isnt increasing cost to play. disregard that comment!

bigdaddy trim said:

New players do often come to game, but the problem is keeping the players and even harder to get them deposit money. Then you have the problem of keeping the already playerbase happy and getting them to deposit aswell. We have seen a number of older player getting more and more pissed with their investments going down plug hole. More broken promises from MA and lack of creativty from them. We all know the game has so much protential, but MA keeps giving a big, song and dance routine over the next big thing then runs of with the money.

Click to expand...

I feel that most participants would be willing to deposit eventually but there is simply not enough fun professions to engage them until they reach that point. At the moment my sense from listening in on Rookie chat is that within a few hours/days the "insert credit card to continue" point is reached whereas in reality this point might be more comfortably reached 6-12 months down the road. For one thing some people are naturally wary about putting there card details into something they have probably only just heard about and rightly so. Younger participants (who will eventually become older participants) might also not be in a position to deposit straight away and must be retained until either they become old enough to get a card or have been ingame long enough to convince their parents to use theirs...

I've been in MMOs before EU that had at least 10 non-member (free to play) professions and then 10+ members only professions. One could enjoy the game for a good year or more and at which point having invested a lot of time into the account would feel comfortable paying in order to progress to the mid and higher stages rather that quiting. The difference being that the player feels like they have made a free choice, in their own time, rather than being forced as with EU. The free to play players still made up a large part of the community and provided valuable services to the members and the overall enjoyment for everyone.

I could quite easily imagine a handful of "zero sum" professions being introduced for new players that return only as much as they cost (or a return comparable to the current sweat value) and are fun and engaging to do, providing some skills as well. I hope this is where MA is going with the harvesting profession if this ever takes off.

My point being is to grow the community and therefore the economy there needs to be engaging activities for everyone on any budget and there needs to be more activities which sit outside the current pot luck loot pool genre. People will deposit when they are good and ready to engage in the more expensive loot pool activities but in the meantime they should be able to enjoy the universe and have a lot of fun at very little cost but also very little return.

when economy sucks and markup is low... NOW is the time to deposit and buy everything in sight before markup climbs again.

Me Really Never said:

well for me the biggest thrill was that you could hit a 200k hof on mining without amps (as they were not introduced yet) and same goes for the daily 10k+ argos that noobs could hunt. now all of that is gone. u dont have the opportunity to hit big anymore. and that sucks the fun out of the game. that change is the biggest reason for me why entropia got a boring grind fest. if you cant get a lucky hit in 1k mobs you gotta do 100k mobs with very eco setup to profit... and its also impossible nowadays to hit an ath or maybe even a tower on unamped mining. and with those ressource prices mining is a dead profession for me with zero fun as you cant hit big with it anyway. dont get me wrong though... i dont want everyone to hit aths and so on... but the problem is that it is not even possible anymore. a small chance gives hope, thrill and fun but with zero chance like now its pretty much like work while chatting with friends...

Click to expand...

The hunting hits still exist. Yesterday was a 20k on a 5 ped mob.. trooper gen 10. Fifth got a big one on sumima.. quite a few big Kerbs etc. They're not going to happen too often just because people aren't taking as big of losses as they did years ago. You can't have it both ways.... either stable returns or deep droughts with big hits. Pick one.

As for item markups.. it's supply and demand. Stackables are easily overfarmed.. mindark saw that and scattered the resources across the universe. Want thyroid oil? Gotta leave calypso. This is good for the game. What is wrong now is upgrade path items like nanos have short demand cycles. Mu doesn't last long. Then stackables like oils and ore crash because people are morons and undercut by major % just to be desperate to sell. The role of resellers were to limit that impact.

atomicstorm said:

The hunting hits still exist. Yesterday was a 20k on a 5 ped mob.. trooper gen 10. Fifth got a big one on sumima.. quite a few big Kerbs etc. They're not going to happen too often just because people aren't taking as big of losses as they did years ago. You can't have it both ways.... either stable returns or deep droughts with big hits. Pick one.

As for item markups.. it's supply and demand. Stackables are easily overfarmed.. mindark saw that and scattered the resources across the universe. Want thyroid oil? Gotta leave calypso. This is good for the game. What is wrong now is upgrade path items like nanos have short demand cycles. Mu doesn't last long. Then stackables like oils and ore crash because people are morons and undercut by major % just to be desperate to sell. The role of resellers were to limit that impact.

Click to expand...

yeah they are still there on hunting, up to 10k x multiplier eventually... but mining got fucked hard with not really more than 3k per unamped ore drop... and that is far too boring imo. and i was a 100% miner before 2011 :/ good ol times :/

Xpl0jd said:

Why do people leave, mostly cost to play.
solution, add more cost to playing with paying for TP? really?


since CLD was released we have lost about 33%~ of total cycle on Calypso. (more or less in game)
MA need to cut there cost at office and give more to players to keep them, they can still earn the same amount of money but dont waste so much money.

Click to expand...

I should think boredom is another factor.