Letter from the CEO

atomicstorm said:

Think financial report included 47 including sex women or something like that.

Also I expect the AMA to be more of a q&a. Itll be impotant to do it live but there will be a lot of trolls.

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If it's not live then it'll be impotent

Step in the right direction, happy to hear some communication with MA. It always helps with investor confidence to know MA is still out there and have some plans for the future.

I'm happy to see that there will be focus on existing system, although i hope this focuses on systems which really do need developing rather than trying to fix things which arn't broken.


Interesting the plan ahead doesn't involve anything to do with cryptocurrencies (thankfully). And an AMA will be fantastic, reminds me of the good times when there were semi-frequent AMAs which always exciting the community.


Good job MA new CEO, keep up the comms

Do it live on twitch with a camera Mr.CEO i'd like to see the facial reactions

Thank you Sir for showing a sign of life. Plan sounds solid.

Seems like a pack of hungry wolves lol.

Keep the actual communication coming and responses from the community will be less like starving animals waiting to pounce on prey.

Thanks for the note. I'm a fairly early EU player (NOT PE) and have never seen a time when Mindark was interactive or it felt like staff/management were "part of the community".

Engagment with representatives, community managers and the like have been up and down. If you can engage directly enough with this community that we get past the stage of dozens of people lined up with long lists of 'concerns' and 'problems' to the point that it even feels like you are trying to listen, that would be wonderful.

As for going from zero to full public engagement. Good luck. There are literally people lined up ready to hit you with cut/paste list of every minor issue they've encountered for X or XX years. The are long, thoroughly curated lists of actual concerns and questions.

This is ignoring the emotional abandonment issues that some major players (and ex players) will instantly grab any opportunity to bring to the fore. It's been a downhill slide for so long, there's a real uphill battle ahead if you want to be the CEO of a game company with a happily engaged community.

TBF if you guys had a meeting where you sat down over a couple of those lists and just tagged each item with some status it would be frickin amazing. "On a List/being prioitized", "Already targeted", "Not In Line With Current Plans". A nod to the fact that "player concerns" are real entropia player issues, not general things that some hobbit gamers would randomly like to see out in the tech world from the latest issue of basement dweller monthly.

That's not who plays EU for the most part.

The letter is nice, quite frankly as good or better than most state of the universe have been, without being more or less useful. A review and no specific promises. Business or politics the forms are important. Get on those lists of existing issues.

A letter every couple of years and maybe a canned AMA is not how you "engage with the community". If you're not actually a redditor just be warned that an AMA with a controversial issue, or one who isn't prepared to be asked ANYTHING frequently go poorly, and are not forgotten.

That sort of public "appearance" is not going to be full of fanbois ready to cheer you on, at this time.

Get it together. Get out here in the mud. Meet some people and talk to us. It doesn't have to be the CEO every day.

After all this time it's good to get some announcement, nice to hear it. Here's looking forward to many more

Atrax said:

Seems like a pack of hungry wolves lol.

Keep the actual communication coming and responses from the community will be less like starving animals waiting to pounce on prey.

Thanks for the note. I'm a fairly early EU player (NOT PE) and have never seen a time when Mindark was interactive or it felt like staff/management were "part of the community".

Engagment with representatives, community managers and the like have been up and down. If you can engage directly enough with this community that we get past the stage of dozens of people lined up with long lists of 'concerns' and 'problems' to the point that it even feels like you are trying to listen, that would be wonderful.

As for going from zero to full public engagement. Good luck. There are literally people lined up ready to hit you with cut/paste list of every minor issue they've encountered for X or XX years. The are long, thoroughly curated lists of actual concerns and questions.

This is ignoring the emotional abandonment issues that some major players (and ex players) will instantly grab any opportunity to bring to the fore. It's been a downhill slide for so long, there's a real uphill battle ahead if you want to be the CEO of a game company with a happily engaged community.

TBF if you guys had a meeting where you sat down over a couple of those lists and just tagged each item with some status it would be frickin amazing. "On a List/being prioitized", "Already targeted", "Not In Line With Current Plans". A nod to the fact that "player concerns" are real entropia player issues, not general things that some hobbit gamers would randomly like to see out in the tech world from the latest issue of basement dweller monthly.

That's not who plays EU for the most part.

The letter is nice, quite frankly as good or better than most state of the universe have been, without being more or less useful. A review and no specific promises. Business or politics the forms are important. Get on those lists of existing issues.

A letter every couple of years and maybe a canned AMA is not how you "engage with the community". If you're not actually a redditor just be warned that an AMA with a controversial issue, or one who isn't prepared to be asked ANYTHING frequently go poorly, and are not forgotten.

That sort of public "appearance" is not going to be full of fanbois ready to cheer you on, at this time.

Get it together. Get out here in the mud. Meet some people and talk to us. It doesn't have to be the CEO every day.

After all this time it's good to get some announcement, nice to hear it. Here's looking forward to many more

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This.

But please dont tell me that space has been forgotten again, its a slap in the face when making an announcement with a (space) vehicle and not once mentioning the word or refer to it - at least to us 'spacers'.

Comunication is good, tha question is how hard you value it.
10 ppl to test a camera system.. idk, just implement it & see how ppl reply in support cases
I don't have the money to go to Sweden nor the time, but I have been around for 12 years

very conservative message, very defensively, nothing new, ordinary stuff, no extraordinary future, no big words, develop and maintain usual stuff etc. Its more like an insurer or chief financial officer message then of a CEO. Dunno what to say. Quite scary in my eyes.. Entropia alwais need a good story of the future with tones of imaginative and future SF stuff. It is a virtual world after all. My opinion ofcourse.

The reality is if MA had anything meaningful to say, it would've been said today.

We become cynical as we age, because of wisdom gained from life experience, so I'm not really interested with this Q&A or AMA bull.

If I ask; What are your plans for EU pets, stables and rarity now that compet is dead.

I'd expect a typical generic answer like "all systems within the universe are important to us, and pets is one of those. We're considering our options after a detailed review".

Or what are your plans for space; "we have made many adjustments to space, even including more planets to visit, and recently added a new moon, Space is more diverse with planets than ever before, and now with no entry fees".

Or real questions like: Can the community trust you to deliver on promises you sell in advance, and why don't you appear to care after you take the cash and make the community pay for your mistakes? "Our resources often get diverted to reactionary issues that need addressing, therefore delivery is often delayed, we are attempting to find a balance between overheads to minimise costs to our valued community".

You think the CEO is going to open up and give us anything? and even if he did do we believe it, and "when" will it happen?

My message is; make it I meaningful or don't bother.

Rick

Maybe i should give up my ava & volonteer

Looking forward to the AMA.

I belive that what he wanted to say is that they realized that EU in se is the only thing from what they can profit for a long time. BUT , only if they will continue to make progress on the game and not on side stuff , apps tokens and other shit , i belive that in future the token thing will be slowly erased from their plans.

You should read the forum. There are countless threads/posts about what needs to be fixed, what could be improved, what new stuff there could be. I don't remember anyone complaining about the camera system or suggesting an improvement. Not that it won't be good, there are just so many other things. Existing systems was mentioned so once again we will wait and see...

~ Cirrus ~ said:

Dear CEO,

You said that your priorities was to improve communication between MA and community.

But you didn't do it yet, cause you have met "intensively" whith MA's employees, for the last 9 months... (MA is about 10K employees I guess)

To improve communication whith community don't means only to talk to them. (especially whith this kind of vague post)
It means to really LISTEN to them.

You can find tons of threads on this forum where people tell you what they want, and how frustrated they are that you never "understand" what their need is.

Just for an example; I'd like to hear about a single player thinking that a new camera system is a prioritie.

Fix bugs FIRST please.

You really want to please most of players ? Bring back voting booths !

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It was nice to hear something from the ceo, but the knowledge gained from that letter wasn't too exhausting.

Didn't he just said they keep focus on legacy stuff and old systems wich includes most likely bug fixing ?

The "tons of threads" on this forum are always from the same people, most player dont post here. While there are some good reads on the forum, we can not claim to speak for the entropia playerbase because wer are too few and our needs and playstyles might not reflect the majority. There is also the gap between what would mindark like to do and what they actually CAN do with the money and ressources on hands.

On top of that ressources are distributed between entropia and their other project. If the ceo would go more into detail we would fry him later for every diversion from the exact letter of what he said, because thats how we are these days.

Foremost his job isn't to listen to us or keep us updated, its to run mindark as a buissnes. I'd never expect a ceo to read this forum on a regular scedule but i'd appreciate if he would strengthen the community manager role like it was around 2005 with marco behrman.

The one ting i miss is a vision how entropia look like in 5 years. I guess except from deep token they not plan ahead that far :/

I'm glad to finally see something from the elusive CEO. Looking forward to increased communication moving forward.

Empty words.....
just my feel about it

i hope when you play entropia , you play with our universe with noobish guns and make you way to top to discovery why people are upset with this game after all ,,, deposit in you own game is doable rigth?

I think (or I hope) that the primary reason for the improvements to the 'camera system' ("Some of you may have noticed that we are inviting a group of participants to MindArk headquarters to help test and provide feedback for some of the upcoming improvements to the client camera system.") is to fix the 'falling through floors' bug that has been going on for years now.

If I'm right, I applaud this endeavor and I can't wait for the implementation

To all those who like to do a life Ama session:

I would prefer to do that Ama at this forum, because:

It will be a flood of questions where many things mentioned are old promises befor he even became Ceo or even older when he wasn´t part of MA, so he surely will be unprepaird and therefor cant give a good answer in a life chat.
To such questions, a live answer will just be some politicial speak around without proper information.

If he got the time to speak with his developers and marketing crews and whatever other emplyees, then take his time around 1-2 days befor giving an answer, I expect much better informational answers than it would happen in a life stream.

It doesn´t help me to see his surprised face in a life chat, when confronted with a question he isn´t prepared.
I want him to think about this question, get his facts and then give a good informational answer about the issue.

Release more land plots and make that voting system.
Other than that I am happy Elon Musk is not the CEO, the prices of CLD will fall with every tweet he makes

Hello dear Henrik! One my friend (Invisible Andre Junior) have been banned more than 4 mounth already w/o any progress. The "investigation" is still going on, I think this is unacceptably long. Could you please improve your support communication and time for resolve cases like that? Thank you in advance!

make slot machine grate again.

Bertha Bot said:

[h=3]Letter from the CEO[/h]


Entropians,
...
I realized the incredible potential of Entropia Universe immediately upon creating my avatar and logging in for the first time.
Saying this means things which take more time to appreciate than logging in the first time are not even part of this incredible potential you see. Was this your first time in an immersive world?
...
There are many different communication channels where we plan to be more active, including community forums, Discord, and possibly Reddit.
I'd have thought EU itself should provide the means for great and "selective" communication. "Chat rooms" would become visual virtual rooms with all sorts of potential for text, audio and video.

...
A similar overhaul will be performed for the various user interfaces, where the aim is to create a more visually appealing, unified and responsive experience. This will be an iterative process to ensure that we are moving in the right direction.
I somehow doubt that "visually appealing" etc is what players are looking for. Good working functions please, not dev time wasted on visually different but still functionally questionable.

Moving forward, I will share periodic Development Manifestos like this one on the Entropia Universe Buzz page to keep the community informed of MindArk’s design philosophies, decision-making process, future plans, and more.
Ok, thanks, yes

Finally, I am planning to do an AMA (Ask Me Anything) sometime in the near future, either on the Entropia Universe subreddit or on PlanetCalypsoForum.com. More detailed info to come soon!
On the forum please!

Kind regards,
Henrik Nel
CEO, MindArk PE AB



Originally Posted Here

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err. my actual reply bit required? ok now?

jetsina said:

I'd have thought EU itself should provide the means for great and "selective" communication. "Chat rooms" would become visual virtual rooms with all sorts of potential for text, audio and video.

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While they definitely should be more active in EU's chats, those lack persistence. If you weren't online (or just in the particular chat room) when it happened you can only hope that someone posts the log to a forum (and hopefully you use that particular forum). Good thing about Discord is you can scroll and search over the whole history even before your time.

I doubt that ingame chats need more visualization. Lootius bless the developers for not adding animated emoticons

thank you for your deeptokens

Svarog said:

While they definitely should be more active in EU's chats, those lack persistence. If you weren't online (or just in the particular chat room) when it happened you can only hope that someone posts the log to a forum (and hopefully you use that particular forum). Good thing about Discord is you can scroll and search over the whole history even before your time.

I doubt that ingame chats need more visualization. Lootius bless the developers for not adding animated emoticons

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I don't wish to go off-topic, but pretty much all branching off from the CEO's letter will do that. Just quickly, logs are going to be, well, logged, so why not enable access to them from a particular room (or elsewhere)? It's a function. If the super new 'camera' system allows me to take 'snapshots' of conversations or events I wasn't even part of, but which have been saved, then great!

I would like to see EU use its strengths (potential for use) expanded greatly with as little effort as possible. If friends hire a virtual meeting room for a chat, even micropayments for the privilege may bring cheap added potential for MindArk. It's a bit disheartening that I watched art videos at New Oxford all those years ago, but we haven't moved on at all since then. Yes, ok, maybe this is some of what the CEO means in his letter to us? ...

Bla bla bla and we all stay the same. Nothing new said. Only vague promises.



Why don't you and your team go play the game actually? During 3-5 days at a 3 hour session per day and you must engage in activities against the house (hunt/mining/craft). Deposite 50 euros in every employee that goes on this, then after one week ask them how much time their ped card survive and if they really had fun doing so.

Ask them if at any point they though/hoped that those 50 euros deposite could produce a big loot worth 5000 ped or close to that (the answer to this question is where your problem dwell).

Personally, since I have been here from 2007 I can say I am less and less impressed, i hoped for so much more from a new CEO but its obvious that the community will not see what they really want, I wished for so much more in this game and that it would be so much more affordable for people to play, or at least make it so peds can last so much longer...

It's obvious we're not going to see what we used to see, the game got to big (bank wise) for the average gamer and way too expensive for the average gamer... You watch the ubers playing on twitch and all they do is moan about the awful loot and watch their 5000 ped balance vanish in one good grind... its a joke... (for MA not those gamers)

I see a few posts above me getting excited over a 5 minute write up from the CEO but its going to take me personally a lot more than that to get excited over anything right now..

Before people ask me this is what I would do as CEO not only to boost the econamy and player base but the excitment we would get from the game year in and year out again...

• Improve Loot Again... Make the returns so you can enjoy your 10-50-100$ for longer = longer game play = more players having fun + wanting to stay in game... (skills obviously are not worth anything these days so it wont effect that)
• Introduce new items, not 1-2 i mean hundreds or even upto thousands... a year... make the game exciting with new stuff... sure its heavy on the system but thats why you make old items valuable drop only 2-3 of them and then delete them... just like some of the old school guns...
• Bring back miners being useful... 80% of the stuff you mine is not worth selling so a lot of people just TT it...
• To compensate for any loss to MA why not just implement a monthly subscription system (keeping the current system of course) give people something for it and a little more chance at better items looted (not general loot)
• Improve the animations and make combat more exciting (with the options to turn it off for the lazy gamers)
• Allow noobs to gain nice loot again... little argo drops some uber gear? so what if its super rare, good on him and another happy guy that will tell all his mates he looted 500 dollars of armor off a basic mob... advertising... or make it limited if you have to so it wont stay around in game...
• Improve space and its combat, its too expensive, too many taxes etc... make it more available and make more to do withthin space...
• Make a miners auction, seperated from the general one, something that can really bring selling mats from mining valuable again and not just TT'd
• Remove Explosive projectiles from the game, they are stupid and have no use in game... and again ruined mining... or at least make it so the mats have to be mined (basic like lyst and oil?) wow look imagine that...

Anyway, banter over... dissapointing post

Fiona Simmons said:

It was nice to hear something from the ceo, but the knowledge gained from that letter wasn't too exhausting.

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We agree on this.

Didn't he just said they keep focus on legacy stuff and old systems wich includes most likely bug fixing ?

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Didn't MA said a lot of things that they finally never did ?
And they didn't talk about bugs fixing here, so better to make sure.

Foremost his job isn't to listen to us or keep us updated, its to run mindark as a buissnes.

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The CEO himself said his priority was to improve communication between MA and communitie.
The fact he said he wants to improve it, means he knows there is a lack of it, and that's a good point.

The "tons of threads" on this forum are always from the same people, most player dont post here. While there are some good reads on the forum, we can not claim to speak for the entropia playerbase because wer are too few and our needs and playstyles might not reflect the majority.

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First, the playerbase of Entropia is very small.
Secondly, communication is something that needs two parts... How would they communicate with those who remain silent ?..

And I don't think that so much more of the people who don't speak here will speak more on another media.
But they would probably easily give their opinion ingame, and that's why I said it would be nice to bring back voting booths.

There is also the gap between what would mindark like to do and what they actually CAN do with the money and ressources on hands.

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Human resources can work on fixing bugs the same way that they would work on the new camera system for example.

On top of that ressources are distributed between entropia and their other project.

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And that is something most of the "speaking" playerbase deplore...

I'd never expect a ceo to read this forum on a regular scedule but i'd appreciate if he would strengthen the community manager role like it was around 2005 with marco behrman.

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Indeed a community manager will probably do the job.
The post is called "Letter from the CEO", so I simply answered to the CEO..

Anyway... let's wait and see...

Dear Henrik Nel,
You have a problem of trust. The main thing EU sells is the fact that it is RCE. For this reason, the features based on look and feel are not of such high importance as the aspects of the economy that are impacted. People care less about how things look and more about the impact on the pedcard.
Loot 2.0 is a nice change, in the sense that it removed the variation from loot, but a side effect of that change is that it made it clear that with whatever setup you play, you will always lose unless you hit some nice markup. And because the economy is not properly designed, the probability to get enough markup is rather low. For this reason, the price on most items dropped lately, as people don't trust they can be successful with them anymore. Crafting and mining are 2 important systems in EU that needs careful strategic design. Making those work is more important than any feature you plan to release.
Again, EU players are usually not naive and they understand that for playing the game, one must pay. Any profit one manages to make, is from other players, not from beating the system. For this reason, there has to be a way for players to find things other people need. As it is, no one needs much from what other players can offer. Except for healers, maybe...
IMO, EU could be more successful if the cost of play would be lower and people would be encouraged to play for longer with the same amount of cash. You did that with loot 2.0. But the game is still expensive for what it offers.
In reality you offer time on your servers. You put a price on that. You could choose to sell more time for less, rather than selling less time for more. That way, you can have more players around and people would have more opportunities to interact with each other. In exchange for that, more people could become paying customers. If you think about it, a player that plays on a budget, it will play until that budget is spent, and then stop. If one has to stop long before he expects, the probability to come back, will drop.
A game such as EU needs genuine success stories. I do not feel that such stories can happen with this system, because there is no obvious success path that one could take, and decide to invest in game and trust in the fact that it will be successful. I know that "EU is dynamic" and we can work with this, but if this dynamic nature is like a hurricane, is just chaos. A level of chaos is always good, but if there is nothing but that, it will hurt the trust of the player base, and in the end, it will hurt the bottom line of the company.
It is frustrating that in EU skills do not seem to be as important as they could be. I will not insist on this topic. They do help, but when you have them, you do not feel that they do much for you. With the new loot system, where the loot is more based on expenses and less on mob type/level, you could make it that at higher skill levels, things can become more spectacular in some way...
Good luck with your new job.

{REMOVED DELETED QUOTE}

have some hope, get over it and see what happens.

or STFU and leave the game.