Captain Jack
Elite
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2010
- Posts
- 3,733
- Society
- Endgame
The words I originally were going to write to MindArk were much more brief and profane. I opted to write a thoughtful review of the event instead in hopes that it may actually benefit the company and the community in so doing.
Lets start with the positive.
Economic boost: The last two Mayhem events have caused the mobs to only drop shrapnel, output components, and the rare Mayhem item or ESI. This is great! People are spending LOADS of money on hunting these mobs, and consequently the markup of all crafting ingredients rises to profitable levels for the suppliers. Miners win, hunters going out for crafting ingredients win (look at Spleen oil), and savvy crafters win. I think having this significant economic boost quarterly will be highly beneficial for the community overall.
Revenue for the company: A quick glance at the ROI charts from Calypso Land Deeds indicates significantly increased ingame activity on Calypso, and a look at the numbers on EntropiaLife indicates that the increased activity was higher than off-season averages across the universe. This is good, as it provides for the financial stability of the company, and having a quarterly event like this will surely provide a nice boost.
A goal and purpose for the players: The new format for Mayhem rolled out with Easter Mayhem 2018 set a new precedent for the game's most successful event. This format enables nearly all players to have a reasonable shot at winning, and was reciprocated by significant interest and participation across the board. This gives players something to work toward, and a reason to increase in skills and gear. This is a good thing for the game as a whole.
Now lets take a look at what could improve...
Pre-event testing: I cannot overemphasize this one enough. This event was an absolute disaster which could have been effectively prevented by means of adequate testing. Clearly, your testing methods were entirely inadequate for this event. The bugs which made it through your testing processes cost an untold fortune to players across the community in various buffs and markup items which you refused to refund in any way. The timer bug cost me at least 1,000 points throughout my Mayhem, and I'm sure others suffered similarly.
Proposed solution: Develop the instance, complete the testing as best as you can, and then release it to the players for open player testing. Ensure it is very clearly labled as a test event to avoid confusion. Enable all aspects of the event, to include the timer, and allow participants to run the event in it's entirety.
To incentivise testing participation, increase Strongbox drop rates by 50% and all skillgains within the instance by 100%. I believe this would be sufficient incentive for most players to participate.
Communication: Again, this was an absolute disaster. You posted original event dates on the client loader, and then posted updated event dates again to the client loader, and then when your instance was still screwed up, you took the event down again and quietly posted the updated dates on the website and not the client loader. This led to significant confusion throughout the community.
Proposed solution: Conduct all communication regarding the event dates through the client loader as a minimum.
Time table: The original time stated allowed us 11 days to complete the instance, which I already felt was rather short. The updated time allowed was only 9 days. This is an unreasonable amount of time to knock out 20 hours of grinding for any average individual who has a job and a family - or pretty much anything going on in their life outside of Entropia. Ironically, a lot of the people (myself included) you screwed over by this mistake are your biggest depositors - who have the means to make such large deposits because of activities outside the Entropia Universe.
Proposed solution: Give us 2 weeks, minimum, to complete the quarterly events.
As a land area owner, I very well understand the strain it puts on certain individuals who lose the majority of hunting activity due to players opting for the instance rather than average game play. Perhaps you could give LA owners the ability to purchase Strongboxes to drop on their land areas at a nominal price to compensate for the loss of business. Either way, we need more time to complete 20 hours of this event.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Very respectfully,
- Captain "Lucky" Jack
Community input is welcome in this thread.
Lets start with the positive.
Economic boost: The last two Mayhem events have caused the mobs to only drop shrapnel, output components, and the rare Mayhem item or ESI. This is great! People are spending LOADS of money on hunting these mobs, and consequently the markup of all crafting ingredients rises to profitable levels for the suppliers. Miners win, hunters going out for crafting ingredients win (look at Spleen oil), and savvy crafters win. I think having this significant economic boost quarterly will be highly beneficial for the community overall.
Revenue for the company: A quick glance at the ROI charts from Calypso Land Deeds indicates significantly increased ingame activity on Calypso, and a look at the numbers on EntropiaLife indicates that the increased activity was higher than off-season averages across the universe. This is good, as it provides for the financial stability of the company, and having a quarterly event like this will surely provide a nice boost.
A goal and purpose for the players: The new format for Mayhem rolled out with Easter Mayhem 2018 set a new precedent for the game's most successful event. This format enables nearly all players to have a reasonable shot at winning, and was reciprocated by significant interest and participation across the board. This gives players something to work toward, and a reason to increase in skills and gear. This is a good thing for the game as a whole.
Now lets take a look at what could improve...
Pre-event testing: I cannot overemphasize this one enough. This event was an absolute disaster which could have been effectively prevented by means of adequate testing. Clearly, your testing methods were entirely inadequate for this event. The bugs which made it through your testing processes cost an untold fortune to players across the community in various buffs and markup items which you refused to refund in any way. The timer bug cost me at least 1,000 points throughout my Mayhem, and I'm sure others suffered similarly.
Proposed solution: Develop the instance, complete the testing as best as you can, and then release it to the players for open player testing. Ensure it is very clearly labled as a test event to avoid confusion. Enable all aspects of the event, to include the timer, and allow participants to run the event in it's entirety.
To incentivise testing participation, increase Strongbox drop rates by 50% and all skillgains within the instance by 100%. I believe this would be sufficient incentive for most players to participate.
Communication: Again, this was an absolute disaster. You posted original event dates on the client loader, and then posted updated event dates again to the client loader, and then when your instance was still screwed up, you took the event down again and quietly posted the updated dates on the website and not the client loader. This led to significant confusion throughout the community.
Proposed solution: Conduct all communication regarding the event dates through the client loader as a minimum.
Time table: The original time stated allowed us 11 days to complete the instance, which I already felt was rather short. The updated time allowed was only 9 days. This is an unreasonable amount of time to knock out 20 hours of grinding for any average individual who has a job and a family - or pretty much anything going on in their life outside of Entropia. Ironically, a lot of the people (myself included) you screwed over by this mistake are your biggest depositors - who have the means to make such large deposits because of activities outside the Entropia Universe.
Proposed solution: Give us 2 weeks, minimum, to complete the quarterly events.
As a land area owner, I very well understand the strain it puts on certain individuals who lose the majority of hunting activity due to players opting for the instance rather than average game play. Perhaps you could give LA owners the ability to purchase Strongboxes to drop on their land areas at a nominal price to compensate for the loss of business. Either way, we need more time to complete 20 hours of this event.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Very respectfully,
- Captain "Lucky" Jack
Community input is welcome in this thread.