A Player’s Notes Vol. 5: Quality of Life - Time Wasters and Social Aspects

Stefan 008 Bond

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Besides Loot and your luck with it in game, there are other factors which can contribute to a player’s overall experience and happiness. While I could have split these 2 topics into separate posts, I decided to leave them together because I feel together with loot they round out the overall player experience…

Time (L)

The Average gamer plays for an amount of time, not an amount of objectives. On top of that, most will not even know how long they will have to play. Life can come calling at a moment’s notice. Understandably then, gamers want minimum fuss where it isn’t necessary.

Sometimes, it is the smallest of things that can add up tremendously over time or in large numbers. As Entropians, we all understand this in terms of Eco, but we rarely speak of this in terms of time. Entropia’s population is not huge by any stretch, nonetheless, we have thousands of users. Dedicated, heavily invested users playing this game with real money. The pathway to activity needs to be hassle free and aiming to be one step ahead of what the user needs.

I am not speaking of immersion breaking conveniences, rather the simple things we all do everyday in game that if were improved on, could save the community untold collective hours of time. We all know what Time =

The list that follows is most assuredly not complete! I highly urge you to add your thoughts and ideas in comments!

Time(L) Saving Ideas:

Armor Plating Sets: - Right, so I’m a hunter so I may be a bit biased but this goes right to the top of the list for me personally. If I want to switch plates on a set of armor I am wearing, and those plates happen to be on another set of my armor, a ridiculous amount of clicking scrolling and dragging ensues. Not only is it agitating but I feel one of the top collective time waters in game all time since its inception.

Equipped Armor Tab in Repair Terminal: - Everyday all active hunters are repairing their UL armors between and after hunts. Everyday we hit the “Equipped” tab and then proceed to drag our clothing, implants, and now, rings out of the repair window. A large % of the population uses UL armor and plates.

Dedicated Vehicle Spawn Pads at Every TP and OP - Since Vehicles were introduced, this might be a new contender for most time wasted all time. A lot if not all of the frustration is terrain based. It would be a worthy effort for MA to go as far as implementing this as a rule for all future development.

Fix Service Containers that Exit Players out into a Corner/Wrong Way - This happens to players more than you might think. It adds up.(I’m looking at you Ft. Zeus and A.R.C. Staging)

Auction Improvements - this is a RCE auction based game, we need more time saving features

“Watching/Following” Function - Players routinely go to auction and retype in the same search for the same items they have been watching and searching for days/weeks. This needs to be more efficient. You should be able to follow and monitor items as a whole as well as individual specific auctions. Players re-typing in the same search they already did 5x today alone is probably also right up there with one of the all-timers.

“Go to My Listing” Function - brought directly to your listing in its section from your My Offers tab. This would make it very easy and quick to check your listings vs the market.

Time and collective time sinks that are unproductive or down right frustrating in game should not be underestimated in their impact.

Social Features:

The Fun factor, the friends, the experiences you share...
The majority of my Player’s Note’s Series focuses on broad stroke ideas and thoughts that can improve the player experience and the economy. I intentionally do not dive into specific systems with in-depth ideas. But since this is a wide-open area and Mindark does have a yet mostly unused “Social” buff modifier, we can have a little fun here

Team Hunt Missions - Team hunting has been in a sad state of affairs ever since iron missions came. Most people love iron missions, but it really made team hunting bad strategy. Mindark has to find a way to bring this back, If not retroactively, then moving forward. It’s easy enough to see mission points in some form or another can be split up between team members.

Enhance or Incentivize Team Instances - Everyone knows since instances have return, they feature notably poor returns. This needs to be looked over, as I’m sure a lot of wonderful content and dev time are going to waste. Loot apparently need to b better here but also perhaps the addition of missions on mob inside instances and or mission tokens or rank ups for running them in team could help

Team Buff Weapons - part of a larger idea for new crafted items that have buffs. This will encourage social activity

Small social buffs for visiting estates or gathering areas - One of the drawbacks of all the conveniences we have today in EU is the loss of the “gathering place” feel. New custom game wide trade channels and vehicles are great but we have lost something too. This could be a fun way to bring it back as well as finally have a reason to have your friends over your apartment for a few minutes.

Player Instanced Housing - they can be simple, and only achievable after a certain time on planet or mission completion. Let the players have something to call home even if it’s not in the game. It can drive parts of the market and make all sorts of loot interesting and fun.

Society Features - There are a lot of really great threads on forum regarding this already. Terminal options and maybe society missions would be nice additions.

There are many more thoughts and ideas out there, I am very interested in highlighting any other major unnecessary time wasters in game in particular. Please share your thoughts

Additional Time-Wasting Concerns Brought Up by the Community:


"Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game." ~ Slither

"Standing for 20-30 minutes glaring at unsorted belongings in the storage,...Why not have an inventory list ingame at least, showing belongings and where they are." ~ Pretto Loco



Thank You for reading,
Good Hunting!

~008 :cool:
 
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Very nice post! My irony on this: good on trying to see more 'society' but given MA's record also a waste of 'time'...
 
Thanks for sharing and all Of The effort you put into your ideas, really enjoy and appreciate them. I hope MA takes note of these threads.

Cheers,
Max
 
As one who is primarily interested in the hunting profession, my biggest waste of time is moving from spawn to spawn through space, so I rarely do it. I want a free tp between planets so I don't waste time going through "space" to get to my next spawn.
 
Team Hunt Missions - Team hunting has been in a sad state of affairs ever since iron missions came. Most people love iron missions, but it really made team hunting bad strategy. Mindark has to find a way to bring this back, If not retroactively, then moving forward. It’s easy enough to see mission points in some form or another can be split up between team members.


Some very good points made in this volume , but the one on team hunting , in particular the ability to split the kill between team members for the iron missions is a great idea and needed.
 
Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game.
 
Standing for 20-30 minutes glaring at unsorted belongings in the storage, asking yourself, has any of this shit gained any better MU since last time i checked my storage? Why not have an inventory list ingame at least, showing belongings and where they are.
 
So many great suggestions in this thread!

Hopefully MA or our new community liaison takes a peek ;)
 
Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game.

Standing for 20-30 minutes glaring at unsorted belongings in the storage, asking yourself, has any of this shit gained any better MU since last time i checked my storage? Why not have an inventory list ingame at least, showing belongings and where they are.

Thanks guys, these are excellent and exactly what I was looking for. These are both unnecessary roadblocks to the player's next gaming activity.

A player searching endlessly to locate their own belongings is something I'm sure almost every player has experienced. Absolutely, we should have a "My Items" list in game. Simple, easy, huge time savings. Bonus points if the List in game could also display current mu%!

A player, as in Slither's case, should also not have any frustration nor be having of his time wasted simply sorting out his pets post-activity. I am not familiar with the situation, but it sounds like something that could be fixed easily

I'm going to add these suggestions/problems to the OP as well as any others brought up.

@ the (free) tp to other planets crowd, I am not ignoring it, its a big time waster no doubt, but its a different beast. Until we acknowledge that there needs to be a compromise, I can't rightfully support it and put on the list. For now we can toss that in the immersion breaking bin. Its about pure time wasters here, ones where there are no reasons for it and ones that likely have easy fixes.

Keep em coming! :)
 
Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game.

This goes together with applying textures and painting, but then may be that's why MU on those skills is high...
 
Actually teleporting one planet to another can be implemented now without any development time as there is already teleporting between some worlds it just needs to include all of the planets. Seems a very easy fix that can be done anytime if Mind Ark chooses to.














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Yoshii Yoshii Lem chat name: VaryagDelivers

Have ingots to increase ship SI but your VSE is too low? Ask me to drop them in for you no charge for this service.
 
Housing is cheap enough with 400 ped apartments and the new snug houses no need for instanced housing. Just put the unused apartments for sale in the webshop and bam.
 
Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game.

This. I pay noobs to do it for me it's so tedious.
 
Housing is cheap enough with 400 ped apartments and the new snug houses no need for instanced housing. Just put the unused apartments for sale in the webshop and bam.

With all due respect, Apartments are neither 400 ped nor cheap enough. You would be lucky after searching for some time to get one under 600 (the cheapest on auction atm is 749).

Even if they were 400 ped, $40 US dollars for a simple "visual storage" is ludicrous en masse. I am not looking to devalue any existing in-game estates, I own an apartment myself for some years.

At almost any price, housing cannot be enjoyed by all. They serve no real purpose in game other than enjoyment and storage. With all the other things to invest into in game, a useless apartment isn't even on the list for most players, but I'm sure everyone would like one.

A place to call your own is simply fun and immersive. Its about doing back flips when you loot a random potted plant or table ;) Its about player experience and the economy.
 
With all due respect, Apartments are neither 400 ped nor cheap enough. You would be lucky after searching for some time to get one under 600 (the cheapest on auction atm is 749).

Even if they were 400 ped, $40 US dollars for a simple "visual storage" is ludicrous en masse. I am not looking to devalue any existing in-game estates, I own an apartment myself for some years.

At almost any price, housing cannot be enjoyed by all. They serve no real purpose in game other than enjoyment and storage. With all the other things to invest into in game, a useless apartment isn't even on the list for most players, but I'm sure everyone would like one.

A place to call your own is simply fun and immersive. Its about doing back flips when you loot a random potted plant or table ;) Its about player experience and the economy.

I've bought many for 400, even 350 PED, that is the going price on them. I hate when people quote live still going auctions... If you see it in auction, that means the price is too high because it hasn't sold...

I know many avatars that have dozens of apartments for BP storage. The going rate is 400 ped for the crappiest ones.

If you feel they are worth 600, I know some people who might like to unload many apartments onto you.
 
With all due respect, Apartments are neither 400 ped nor cheap enough. You would be lucky after searching for some time to get one under 600 (the cheapest on auction atm is 749).

Even if they were 400 ped, $40 US dollars for a simple "visual storage" is ludicrous en masse. I am not looking to devalue any existing in-game estates, I own an apartment myself for some years.

At almost any price, housing cannot be enjoyed by all. They serve no real purpose in game other than enjoyment and storage. With all the other things to invest into in game, a useless apartment isn't even on the list for most players, but I'm sure everyone would like one.

A place to call your own is simply fun and immersive. Its about doing back flips when you loot a random potted plant or table ;) Its about player experience and the economy.

I think certain teleport chips also have a "TP to home" feature or something like that? :scratch2:

It's a neat little feature to have, I suppose.
 
I think certain teleport chips also have a "TP to home" feature or something like that? :scratch2:

It's a neat little feature to have, I suppose.

Level 3 chips and up yea
 
Semantics...400, 600 doesn't matter. Its still far too costly for what amounts to visual storage. Which is why a large % of the player base do not own one. Again, I am not trying to devalue existing estates, simply stating instanced housing could help kick start some economies as well as enhance player experience..
 
"Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game." ~ Slither


no clue what you mean here since extracting tamings is just another part of the process of taming. actually, compared to other games, there is very very little time-wasting in entropia. seriously...
 
Semantics...400, 600 doesn't matter. Its still far too costly for what amounts to visual storage. Which is why a large % of the player base do not own one. Again, I am not trying to devalue existing estates, simply stating instanced housing could help kick start some economies as well as enhance player experience..

And make all apartments useless and valueless. Why go through the effort of going to the apartment when you can 1 click to your instanced house? Why buy an apartment when you can have a free instanced house? It'd make them worthless.
 
And make all apartments useless and valueless.

They already are. A very few are made into veritable exhibitions or shops, but the ridiculous price for shopkeepers and absence of in-game discovery options for their stock make the whole thing pointless for the average player e.g. for selling their loot. This is a long-standing source of frustration.

It would work better if shopkeepers were craftable or a craftable alternative to them existed to bring the price down to, say, 100-200 ped maximum. And then a shopping directory needs to be created, e.g. as a terminal at least in a few city locations. Ideally the auction interface is used for that, it is familiar and is the least effort to implement. Instead of the purchase widget it just gives a waypoint to your appartment shopkeeper or the item in your shop.
 
They already are. A very few are made into veritable exhibitions or shops, but the ridiculous price for shopkeepers and absence of in-game discovery options for their stock make the whole thing pointless for the average player e.g. for selling their loot. This is a long-standing source of frustration.

It would work better if shopkeepers were craftable or a craftable alternative to them existed to bring the price down to, say, 100-200 ped maximum. And then a shopping directory needs to be created, e.g. as a terminal at least in a few city locations. Ideally the auction interface is used for that, it is familiar and is the least effort to implement. Instead of the purchase widget it just gives a waypoint to your appartment shopkeeper or the item in your shop.

Sounds more to me you wish ped was worth 10x less which is a personal issue not a game issue. The value of shops and keepers makes it more exclusive and easier for owners to sell stuff. If every player had a shop even wig a search function there would be to much undercutting and over completion. No one would sell anything.
 
If every player had a shop even wig a search function there would be to much undercutting and over completion. No one would sell anything.

No one but a few is selling anything now and undercutting is going on all the time. It being an exclusive club while everybody is lured here with the promise of being able to do business is the reason so few stay. The personal issue of budget is very well a game issue because of this. Naturally, those of the exclusive club are screaming everytime someone suggests to chip away at their exclusivity. This is why all the imaginable profanity is quite deserved.

Even to current shop owners it's unfair that customers can check auction prices for every item, but not the other way around. It's the equivalent of the modern shopper who trolls through the downtown stores to see and try stuff while buying it for the cheapest price online with his smartphone. Hence businesses actually should be highly interested in getting network exposure.
 
Semantics...400, 600 doesn't matter. Its still far too costly for what amounts to visual storage. Which is why a large % of the player base do not own one. Again, I am not trying to devalue existing estates, simply stating instanced housing could help kick start some economies as well as enhance player experience..

Neverdie's started selling off instances to folks that have a blueprint for that instance, and the instances are all in doors scattered throughout the planet on RT... Would love to see something like this on Calypso too... Come on up to my closet full of monsters to get the treasure! :)
 
And make all apartments useless and valueless. Why go through the effort of going to the apartment when you can 1 click to your instanced house? Why buy an apartment when you can have a free instanced house? It'd make them worthless.

Who said anything about 1 click instant tp to instanced housing? There are other ways to make that work.

Perhaps you missed the part where I mentioned we could "sweeten the pot" for existing Estates in game via Social Buffs gained by visiting for a short time? Surely something like this could actually increase the value of estates.

At any rate, I fail to see the positive side of leaving the player housing system as it is. Can you explain to me how leaving it as it is, is a better option for the economy and player experience than allowing access to instanced housing after a mission chain?

I hate to say it, but I do not feel like you would not have the same opinion if you did not own any estates.
 
As one who is primarily interested in the hunting profession, my biggest waste of time is moving from spawn to spawn through space, so I rarely do it. I want a free tp between planets so I don't waste time going through "space" to get to my next spawn.
Signed :wise:
 
Fix Service Containers that Exit Players out into a Corner/Wrong Way - This happens to players more than you might think. It adds up.(I’m looking at you Ft. Zeus and A.R.C. Staging)
I'm looking at most of the firebases.
And those service containers with two exits, one of which only looks like an exit but lacks a door? No. Just no. Change the model used at Billy's and remove the back hallway entirely.
 
And two more from me

"Sort By" function for contents of inventory, storage, and containers (I've spent tons of time manually sorting by market value, time which isn't getting MA any dollars)

Auction function to browse+search all auctions concurrently (without changing the existing system for bidding on off-planet auctions). Comparing auctions manually between planets is a headache and a half.
 
Reliable location listings of spawns of specific species of mobs which are easily accessible from specific TP's (so much time wasted checking the locations listed in mission texts only to select a location not listed in mission text but listed in this forum's Creatures section and/or Nisha's locations thread)

... Examples of what I'm talking about:
- Gradivore SW of Rei's: This is in fact the best such spot I know of, but it's also one of far too many spawns that are isolated from their TP by a pack of L17 Argonauts
- Exarosaur S of Twin Peaks: An egregious example. There are in fact Exarosaur south of Twin Peaks, but access to them is blocked by a considerable spawn of L24 Warriors.
 
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