Avatar Statue Results

I'm just goin g to speak up a little sheepishly on this one. I have no dog in this particular fight and wasn't around when these were sold so I've just been observing on this one.

I was just having "shower thoughts" moment and I wonder if they are working on something (as JBK says "a system") for this.

I mean, as far as I can tell they basically offered a statue of an avatar (there were two or three styles right?) with a name plaque on it.

But somehow there's all this questions about a million things. John you have some great ideas but maybe a little too much for this thing?

Now it seems people havve hopes for so many things it should be an estate with some sort of "manageable" statue where an avatar can equip/dequip actual items and maybe a shopkeeper too if you can't use the area as a proper little estate itself. User equipable/modifiable (PC) signage.

I'm not even sure what else has been posited in these threads and some of the letters to MA. It seems they're really in a bind now. If MA sold you a manageable estate with all this functionality in the middle of twins for 5k ped a lot of people are going to be pissed. None of this was mentioned or even so much as hinted at in anything I saw about this sale or the statues.

That brings us to the problem of MA communications again, this could be cleared up either way. But honestly I wonder at this point if they're not actually working on some sort of compromise solution that will consider this.

I am sort of sorry in an altruistic way that if there isn't some way to manage this nicely these statues will basically be poles covered up in big garish (PC) signs all the time. It would perhaps be wiser to build one in and try to make it tasteful. And as it turns out none of the buyers seem interested in what was basically a simple vanity item but of course (MA has bred this attitude for years) to get some business edge or profit directly from it.

I hear you talking about the deeds like it might be sellable or tradeable. What?

So before this seems personal let me just point out that JBK is very vocal and clear in his interests and how to express them. Plus he has a lot of "interesting" ideas which he presents well. All noted to point out this isn't meant as any attack or even argument really. Much less me defending MA who REALLY NEEDS to just say something, anything at all.

But maybe this is parked while they sort out some sort of middle ground?

Personally I think they should just put up the hunter/miner/whatever avatar that was supposed to be selectable and close the book on this one. They've bungled it along too far. But who knows, maybe they're actually trying to do something nice with it for the few that actually decided to get involved.

Got my fingers crossed that you guys (and the ark land plots, and etc...) start seeing some satisfaction soon.

It's really, really hard to love an abuser.

The impression i got from the sale was you got a style and message of your choice, no shopkeepers, slots for items and no ownership of the statue (MA are adding it as a landmark, not property)
 
Nobody. I mean nobody. In the social media world cares about MA or Entropia. 99.99% of "gamers" don't care about MA or Entropia.

The only people who care are current players.

The only way they can protest is by not playing.

And they can't do that if they're hooked in.

100% correct i think.

Google isn't busy showing EU ads to EU players (well really calypso really in my demographic/location/whatever I don't ever recall stumbling on an ad from another planet) because they don't understand how advertising works.

Caly keeps advertising, and google keeps showing them to established players, and it reminds them to come back.

There's not many MMO still going this long. There aren't many people even mildly interested in any sort of MMORPG that dont' find out about entropia universe through one planet or another in pretty short order.

Then it sucks (it's hard/expensive/not very rewarding), and they leave. The few that figure there must be something that keeps it going maybe try and come here and the various other forums.

Then another percentage of them leave with their initial feelings confirmed at the forum :laugh:

MA stays alive with a unique and cumbersome aspect to their offering and it's clearly attracting a core of interested people over the years

But there's a lot of talk like they could just do some things "right" and take off like a rocket but really, they're not starting from zero they have a well established reputation with what amounts to well over a decade of pretty consistent performance.

I love this game but it would take more than a couple of tweaks for EU to ever really "go viral".

Change for the positive definitely begins with communications and trying to establish some basic good habits.

If they're seeking an investment of even a few thousand dollars directly from their most avid players and supporters, they could dedicate a half a day of any employee's time to just posting answers to a few really basic questions.

My point earlier as well isn't that any of the things mentioned are right or wrong but a bit of clarity from the beginning and this whole thing could have gone completely differently.

And it definitely isn't just this issue, and it definitely isn't a new behavior from them. Not every bit of every aspect of customer relations can be easily scrubbed under "vital to protecting the RCE".

Who knows, I guess the commercial agreements are clear on this because any planet partner could probably offload a ton of grief if they would just finally admit the point when "this issue is 100% pending on MA" with or even without reason from MA themselves.

That would focus too much heat directly on MA and it's covered by some sort of NDA or cooperation clause in the contract directly is my current assumption regarding that.

Who knows it's all speculation. And I'm biased, not out of belief but just a silly bit of hope. I do still remember that in the end it's a game, and I want it to succeed at least enough to keep ticking on.

I guess my only point here is that this has gotten crazy, just for how wildly out of proportion it is. There's an established lists of desires and questions at this point and though they've lost the goodwill they could have had with a few early interactions they could still clean this up quite a bit with an investment of something on the order of 1-2 hours of employee time.

And this definitely isn't the only issue in a similar state.
 
The impression i got from the sale was you got a style and message of your choice, no shopkeepers, slots for items and no ownership of the statue (MA are adding it as a landmark, not property)

Right me too. I thought the statues were done, it was going to be something you could look at, and the deed was something you bought/held until you cave them your message and they put it up.

Then it would be something you could walk by and look at just like anyone else.

A little vanity buy, at $500 each not super out of proportion to the economy. It wasn't for me I didn't dig any deeper as I was not active in EU at the time and wasn't interested after i read the newsfeed blurb...

If they had been announced as estates, or even manageable mannequins/shopkeepers in any way, there would have been a mad rush for them. Also the notion that the deeds might persist as tradeable items after the statues are erected. Speculators would have had them faster than apartments is my guess.

In the mean time, any claim that there's a technical issue (other than that they are re-developing the notion or a system for some of these ideas) is pure baloney.

Selling a $500 item to (any percentage of your) actual, business-level investors and then pissing them off over it is just ridiculous.
 
Before you indirectly give mindark the reasons to underdeliver on something were 5k was the startbid and the salesprice likely was expected to be higher and therefor gave an impression of the value they themselfs thought their grand opportunity would have once finished - please let me remind you that i only asked questions at the start and started giving ideas after i was ignored for half a year.

Lets imagine anyone would have bought a statue for 10k+ ,would you still think that it was only supposed to be a standard landmark with no options to resell it after the delivered product doesnt meet expectations ?
 
Before you indirectly give mindark the reasons to underdeliver on something were 5k was the startbid and the salesprice likely was expected to be higher and therefor gave an impression of the value they themselfs thought their grand opportunity would have once finished - please let me remind you that i only asked questions at the start and started giving ideas after i was ignored for half a year.

Lets imagine anyone would have bought a statue for 10k+ ,would you still think that it was only supposed to be a standard landmark with no options to resell it after the delivered product doesnt meet expectations ?

Well what I really think is that they should have taken ten minutes to answer your questions before you put your money on the table.

*POOF* a year's worth of frustration and strained customer relations, all gone.

Otherwise sitting here reading this thread from the sidelines honestly I think you should get a statue and probably be able to put stuff on it and really, john, I don't care personally if it's a straight up booth with a bust on it any more. I'm tired of hearing about it,and so are a ton of other people that really would have never cared.

I'm not trying to attack you or pointing at any of "your" ideas at this point because I think you're wrong. You're involved and articulate and stay on task and so have pretty much cultivated the list of questions that are basically "Being asked by the community" at this time. On this and other issues so not to pander to you but your posts and conversational points are easy to reference.

And the amount of money that you have in this game (I'm not even guessing at a number) is more in one item than I may ever have here. Not every player in that statue list but you and a couple others, MA could do with giving you guys a big public "Thanks and we're sorry" right now.

So yeah I did have the actual initial impression that this was a vanity buy, and a one-off. I was surprised they didn't all sell but also didn't ever actually try and find a deed or log in to see what the placeholders looked like.

Frankly "JBK" in particular is practically an EU brand and an investment of that amount that would sort of memorialize and sort of advertise your services for as long as they exist didn't seem unreasonable. I was never judging anybody.

So there would be no situation with 30 minutes spent answering support tickets when they were put out. Etierh some folks would have bought them or some wouldn't. The quality of the idea or investment aside, there's nothing that should be a year-long issue here and in that I actually support every minute that a couple of dedicated people have put into keeping attention on it.

As far as underdelivering, I thought it was pretty clear that's what it was, but I honestly didn't care to dig any deeper. After literally having conversations on it since I can tell you others thought the same. The questions you were asking never crossed my mind.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't have asked and with those questions on the table prior to any actual sale, it's obvious they should have been answered immediately. If multiple people sent them these questions (and obviously they did) MA sat there with their mouth shut, took people's money (Actually having a list of what those buyers were hoping for) and let an ill-considered sale go on with no clarification.

I don't think that any player has done anything wrong in this situation. MA decided to do this. An obvious, actual, we had a meeting about this, business decision.

Like I said they could give you guys booths with CND-style holo-giants and flashing billboards right now and frankly, I don't think many players would complain, except to wish they had bought one when they were offered.

Seriously, this comes up at meetings, by now there's probably been more than one meeting about it.

And obviously yes, I have too much time on my hands today.
 
Before you indirectly give mindark the reasons to underdeliver on something were 5k was the startbid and the salesprice likely was expected to be higher and therefor gave an impression of the value they themselfs thought their grand opportunity would have once finished - please let me remind you that i only asked questions at the start and started giving ideas after i was ignored for half a year.

Lets imagine anyone would have bought a statue for 10k+ ,would you still think that it was only supposed to be a standard landmark with no options to resell it after the delivered product doesnt meet expectations ?

Just rechecked - mindarks buyout value for the statue deeds was 50kpeds - so its reasonable to expect the startbid of 5k to be a 'good deal' in any case of interpretation.
 
Its insane that Mindark cannot deliver 5 statues or some ark landplots, but a complete new moon in 3 quarters of a year while launching deeptoken and 3 new types of events is no problem at all.
 
avatar_statue_delay.jpg


I'm just going to let the picture explain the delay.
 
Its insane that Mindark cannot deliver 5 statues or some ark landplots, but a complete new moon in 3 quarters of a year while launching deeptoken and 3 new types of events is no problem at all.

Actually, I was going to comment on the ark landplots, but there's not really a point.
 
My guess is that they were waiting until all statues were sold before implementing.
I inquired about a statue that was listed as Not Sold not too long ago.
The response i got from Support was that it had since been Sold.
I would imagine that for the remaining statues they may of found other companies to use the space for their own advertisements.
 
These should really be implemented ASAP, they already seem to be mostly implemented, and the insane amount of time that it has taken so far really does nothing to help the reputation of the game for any current or future player who is thinking of investing in some similar offering or even just expensive item when they see how poorly these people are being treated.

This isn't the first case like this either, but with the position you guys are in currently the best thing to do from here on out would just be to deliver as much as you can and show the playerbase, especially those willing to pay large amounts for items like this, that they're valued and respected, rather than neglecting them and procrastinating and trying to pretend things like this aren't a problem.
 
I have finally received answers to my questions from mindark and more answers to come (i also got permission to publish the answers which i received from Ulf in support case):

Q:Will the final appearance be a 3D avatar statue like can be seen at celeste habour on arkadia or will the appearance stay the same as current one with 4 sides just showing a facial impression ?

A: Statue will look like the deed holder in the pose and outfit they selected. We will set up a time where we will ask you to have your chosen outfit on and then we will use your avatar to take the needed "measurements" to make the statue in your liking.

Q: Will it only be avatars that can be displayed or could there be a spaceship/mothership with respective message about its crew/service as well ?

A: This will unfortunately not be available, the statue will represent you and as such you are welcome to emotionally include your crew in you as their captain.

Q: Will the message and 3D object be adjustable at a later point in time ? eg. graphics engine change or avatar appearance change?

A: Should the graphical engine get changed there will of course be a consideration to all in-game assets including your statue.

Q: Will it be possible to purchase additional features to the statue ? eg. 1-3 itempoints to mount a pc content sign on to it?

A: No, this will not be part of the statue deed.

Q: Will the deeds remain in player possession after the statues have been customized and be tradeable ?

A: You will have the deed for the statue in your possession as a proof of ownership (which still is obvious as it is in your likeness) but you will not be able to trade this deed.

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more questions/answers to come.
 
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A: You will have the deed for the statue in your possession as a proof of ownership (which still is obvious as it is in your likeness) but you will not be able to trade this deed.

-------------------------
more questions/answers to come.

What if u log out forever? Will statue stay in place if u pass away i.r.l. ... i.e. is it really the prepaid tombstone it seems to be?
 
What if u log out forever? Will statue stay in place if u pass away i.r.l. ... i.e. is it really the prepaid tombstone it seems to be?

I guess so, but my main concern for which im still waiting on an answer is the option to 'update' the statue (for a fee) at an later point in time, since there is potential graphics engine changes or my avatar appearance might change over the years for example beautician/new clothes that come out and i might end up not looking at all like the statue.
So far such an option has not been confirmed (only very vague for the gfx engine change).
 
Every statue says the same thing:

"The deed for this Avatar Statue will be auctioned starting in mid-December. Check the Estates section of the Planet Calypso auction to place your bid."

Can you even imagine the confusion it causes newer players? At least put the owners name in them! If that's too hard, add which year the auction will start... :poke:
 
sigh... yeh...
 
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