- Joined
- Nov 12, 2018
- Posts
- 80
WoW, GW2, Lineage 2, Eve, Warframe and many other... when I was young Ultima and even some Metin. I guess I can consider myself a MMO veteran.
Inspired by family member I was checking out MMO I have merely read about once or twice on some MMO related websites. What was the most interesting for me at the beginning was of course the real cash economy aspect, what absolutely stunned me was the info that 15 years old MMO is not available on Steam or any other similar platform. Yes, I know it's a niche but Steam is full of indie, niche projects. I am curious why this community is so hermetic - the advertisement is very little or none-existent. What I know for sure - game that has been around for 15 year must have that something in it. Something I needed to check. But let's move to the game itself, here are some of my very first impressions after about 100h in-game:
Technology & Gameplay
It seems that game is running on CryEngine2 but does not use it's full potential. Engine is old when it comes to comparison with other engines but it's good and can still look pretty nice. Just look at Crysis - it can still look beautiful and for now I see zero reasons why EU does not look like that. Graphics are crucial part of the gaming experience (although it's not the most important imho). Entropia looks simply bad and outdated. Graphics look like taken from 2006 indie/student unfinished project. In plus I can only say that pets are looking sweet and nice although they seem to me pretty useless.
When it comes to more gameplay related technological aspects, I can only cry, unfortunately. When I first heard that EU has both melee and ranged weapons I was happy because melee is my favorite combat style and to be honest I was expecting something similar to Warframe melee combat. The experience was truly disappointing. Shooting was more or less fine and met my expectations but in general combat can be only described as a point-and-click on a mob and then wait until HP bar goes to zero. It's not dynamic, not fun at all - I could just say straightforward that combat related activities are boring as hell. It's as interesting as standing in queue outside to cinema during rain to watch The Emoji movie. Again, it all looks like designed by part-time employees or interns/students who did not have enough time/resources to finish their job. Again, I cannot believe this game has been developed for 15 years. It looks more like 15 weeks or so.
What's in plus for EU gameplay is mining. I cannot remember how many times I was tearing my shirt apart in front of my commuter when I was playing futuristic MMO with ships/laser guns/robots but when I had to mine some minerals developers where handing me a pickaxe... and forced me to mine things manually... Really? The mechanics of mining in EU are truly unique and interesting. Scanning the ground for minerals, claim markers, extractors, refining, various resources types are something I demand when playing futuristic MMO. Stop the pickaxe bullshit when you design sci-fi MMO - be like Entropia!
Crafting - well I tried some basic crafting, did couple of thousand attempts on some components, ammo and even tried to craft some weapons. But should it be really called crafting? It felt more like school party 1 USD ticket lottery. Unfortunately, collecting ingredients and then standing in front of some machine waiting for the outcome - again, point-and-click and then wait. No fun, no idea behind this mechanic. Only the QR idea was a bit interesting but nothing new, nothing that could hook me up for a longer than couple of hours. It's also outrageous that this activity can be done entirely afk. That's not the spirit, that's not gaming.
Bugs - my God, how many of them. Sometimes it felt like alpha version. I cannot remember how many times I stuck in the mountain, wall or under the teleport (teleport stuck seems to be unique for Next Island though). There are plenty of bugs in combat area, I could swear that those mobs had 100% of their health when I was killing them but I was not able to loot them because "Loot cannot be claimed because it belongs to someone else" Who is that "someone else"? I thought I just killed that mob. Many times my attempt to shoot some mob "Failed" for no clear reason but the mob was still able to hit me or even kill me. I could not kill the mob even if I shot it straight between the eyes because my shooting "Failed" or mob simply becomes "Unreachable".
I could write the whole article about poor view distance, graphic bugs, extremely poor AI, poor vehicle driving experience, massive lags, ninja spawns, poor descriptions and dialogues, poorly designed and bugged quests. Most of the bugs could be fixed in no-time and deployed with one single hotfix. EU is for sure not a complete product. When playing Entropia, it was kinda Fallout 76 experience. And again, it's been 15 years...
Avatar Development
Skill tree - nothing will go beyond the skill tree in Path of Exile in which I spent so much time. EU does not look bad when it comes to skills/professions. There seems to be three major professions and some other like beauty or sweat gatherer. Everyone will find something interesting here. There are also professions that do not have skill-bar and can be entirely discovered by you because game gives you here some opportunities. It was fun for me to play as a trader, re-sell some goods or just fool around as a taxi driver giving some players a ride from Icarus to Atlantis.
Game offers various possibilities to make your avatar look unique and fancy. Some clothes, armors, beauty services - everyone want to have good looking avatar. The avatar creation process seems to offer minimum standards, there is basically nothing to comment here. It's hard to make your ava look good when graphics are prehistoric.
Community
Community seems to be mature (well, game is allowed from age 16 up I guess) and most players are friendly. There is possibility to join some society or create you own but that's all. Societies cannot own a land and share any profits. They can only do team-hunts, participate events or do some missions.
What seemed strange to me, some people offered me some *free* skills but required to bring some items first *empty skill implant* or just asked me to borrow them some money. There are always scammers in every community but here we are speaking about real money and it makes thing a bit more complicated. Those players should be banned asap and all scams investigated.
Economy
EU seems to be a monopolist here, it is only released and maintained MMO which has fixed rate between US dollar and in-game currency Project Entropia Dollar. This experience is unique and makes EU special. Every item released in game has real value, including skills. Item prices can vary, they are subject to supply/demand economy mechanism. Items have additional value (reffered as TT+ X PED) or just use Markup mechanism. Prices are entirely created by players but it seems to me that economy should be more stimulated by developers.
The chain seems to be simple, hunters and miners acquire materials, crafters create the items which can be used by everyone. Money flows, price are alive and change over time. Players can own Lands and tax the activities there or buy Deeds and participate in the revenue of an entire planet. There could be many ways in which in-game economy could be better. It seems to me that most crafters are focused on Explosive ammo crafting and some acquired items during hunting/mining seems to be useless, so are blueprints related to them but the economy experience here seems to be very unique.
Theoretically, Entropia is free to play although without any PED's on your card the experience is very limited. You can gather some free items like sweat, fruits or dung but collecting them is time consuming and not very profitable. To make the most of Entropia, depositing seem to be only option. Price to play is entirely up to you. You can hunt low level mobs, go for low stakes and survive month on 35 USD or deposit 500 USD, go for extreme mining and loose it all during one gaming session.
Discussions about return-to-player rates are very intensive. In long term, most of players should be around 95% return although many claim that this amount is hard to achieve. Also, similarities to online casinos are widely discussed. Technically, EU is a MMO game with real cash economy, but when it comes to gaming experience, especially crafting, it can feel a little like slot machine playing. Some claim, that it does not matter what gear you use, what skills you have, what is your cost to play per hour - in long term you will always end up with your 90-95% return.
Most of MMO's require no more that 30USD/month to experience all aspects and have access to all stuff that it offers. Entropia is different - to experience it fully, sometimes you must be ready to put a serious amount of money. Some players claim that they don't pay, they invest.
New Player Experience - Summary
Entropia Community is a mystery box to me. They seem to accept bad-looking game full of bugs, boring gameplay and extremely slow development in exchange for 'casino-thrill' experience and participation in real cash economy in a 3D world. The golden swirls and 'you have just won something' sounds give some pleasure and nice adrenaline shot, which by the way, can be very addictive.
New Player will experience huge world, many planets, mostly pretty empty as the playerbase is low - but stable. Couple of thousand players will dig stuff, kill mobs and craft items at the same time creating the only so far real cash in-game economy with item value related to value of US dollar.
New player experience is a bit chaotic, there is plenty of room for improvements, especially in the area of explanation how economy works and what game offers in the long run.
Inflow of new players, if there is any, will stay low as long as advertisement does not exist. There is no marketing, it looks like devs don't want their game to be played by more than 10-12k active players. Most of new players, including me, will play for 50-100 hours and leave. Reasons were described in this article. In my opinion, real cash experience is not worth the struggle. And yes, except mining, all the gaming experience was a struggle, a true and real pain in the ass.
In total, I would rate Entropia Universe 3,5/10 - for following reasons:
Pluses
- Unique Real Cash experience - as long as you loose acceptable amount of money you can have some fun knowing that all you items an possible wins have real value - trading them with other players is also fun.
- Mining - in my opinion design of mining is fine, better than in other MMO's, you can mine on low stakes or go full retard and use level 13 amp on asteroid.
- Community, as I said is a mystery box but people are mature and most of them are kind and helpful.
Minuses
- This game is in alpha/beta stage - full of bugs (some of them seem to cost real money), old looking and in many aspects very inconsistent. Community try to cooperate with devs here but devs are extremely slow or do not deliver at all. It seems that they have no idea what to do with their product. I cannot believe that it has been 15 years in development.
- Can be very addictive - we are talking real money here and some activities in game are closely related to Casino-way-of-playing in my opinion, especially crafting.
- Gameplay is badly designed, in long term all activities can become very boring/repetitive.
- Low playerbase - mostly due to chaotic new player experience and no advertisement at all. I'm afraid that in current state most new players will leave the game pretty fast. Devs must work harder to make player retention better.
Hope this article will help devs to make this gaming experience better because the whole project is unique and has huge potential.
Regards,
Boring_player
Inspired by family member I was checking out MMO I have merely read about once or twice on some MMO related websites. What was the most interesting for me at the beginning was of course the real cash economy aspect, what absolutely stunned me was the info that 15 years old MMO is not available on Steam or any other similar platform. Yes, I know it's a niche but Steam is full of indie, niche projects. I am curious why this community is so hermetic - the advertisement is very little or none-existent. What I know for sure - game that has been around for 15 year must have that something in it. Something I needed to check. But let's move to the game itself, here are some of my very first impressions after about 100h in-game:
Technology & Gameplay
It seems that game is running on CryEngine2 but does not use it's full potential. Engine is old when it comes to comparison with other engines but it's good and can still look pretty nice. Just look at Crysis - it can still look beautiful and for now I see zero reasons why EU does not look like that. Graphics are crucial part of the gaming experience (although it's not the most important imho). Entropia looks simply bad and outdated. Graphics look like taken from 2006 indie/student unfinished project. In plus I can only say that pets are looking sweet and nice although they seem to me pretty useless.
When it comes to more gameplay related technological aspects, I can only cry, unfortunately. When I first heard that EU has both melee and ranged weapons I was happy because melee is my favorite combat style and to be honest I was expecting something similar to Warframe melee combat. The experience was truly disappointing. Shooting was more or less fine and met my expectations but in general combat can be only described as a point-and-click on a mob and then wait until HP bar goes to zero. It's not dynamic, not fun at all - I could just say straightforward that combat related activities are boring as hell. It's as interesting as standing in queue outside to cinema during rain to watch The Emoji movie. Again, it all looks like designed by part-time employees or interns/students who did not have enough time/resources to finish their job. Again, I cannot believe this game has been developed for 15 years. It looks more like 15 weeks or so.
What's in plus for EU gameplay is mining. I cannot remember how many times I was tearing my shirt apart in front of my commuter when I was playing futuristic MMO with ships/laser guns/robots but when I had to mine some minerals developers where handing me a pickaxe... and forced me to mine things manually... Really? The mechanics of mining in EU are truly unique and interesting. Scanning the ground for minerals, claim markers, extractors, refining, various resources types are something I demand when playing futuristic MMO. Stop the pickaxe bullshit when you design sci-fi MMO - be like Entropia!
Crafting - well I tried some basic crafting, did couple of thousand attempts on some components, ammo and even tried to craft some weapons. But should it be really called crafting? It felt more like school party 1 USD ticket lottery. Unfortunately, collecting ingredients and then standing in front of some machine waiting for the outcome - again, point-and-click and then wait. No fun, no idea behind this mechanic. Only the QR idea was a bit interesting but nothing new, nothing that could hook me up for a longer than couple of hours. It's also outrageous that this activity can be done entirely afk. That's not the spirit, that's not gaming.
Bugs - my God, how many of them. Sometimes it felt like alpha version. I cannot remember how many times I stuck in the mountain, wall or under the teleport (teleport stuck seems to be unique for Next Island though). There are plenty of bugs in combat area, I could swear that those mobs had 100% of their health when I was killing them but I was not able to loot them because "Loot cannot be claimed because it belongs to someone else" Who is that "someone else"? I thought I just killed that mob. Many times my attempt to shoot some mob "Failed" for no clear reason but the mob was still able to hit me or even kill me. I could not kill the mob even if I shot it straight between the eyes because my shooting "Failed" or mob simply becomes "Unreachable".
I could write the whole article about poor view distance, graphic bugs, extremely poor AI, poor vehicle driving experience, massive lags, ninja spawns, poor descriptions and dialogues, poorly designed and bugged quests. Most of the bugs could be fixed in no-time and deployed with one single hotfix. EU is for sure not a complete product. When playing Entropia, it was kinda Fallout 76 experience. And again, it's been 15 years...
Avatar Development
Skill tree - nothing will go beyond the skill tree in Path of Exile in which I spent so much time. EU does not look bad when it comes to skills/professions. There seems to be three major professions and some other like beauty or sweat gatherer. Everyone will find something interesting here. There are also professions that do not have skill-bar and can be entirely discovered by you because game gives you here some opportunities. It was fun for me to play as a trader, re-sell some goods or just fool around as a taxi driver giving some players a ride from Icarus to Atlantis.
Game offers various possibilities to make your avatar look unique and fancy. Some clothes, armors, beauty services - everyone want to have good looking avatar. The avatar creation process seems to offer minimum standards, there is basically nothing to comment here. It's hard to make your ava look good when graphics are prehistoric.
Community
Community seems to be mature (well, game is allowed from age 16 up I guess) and most players are friendly. There is possibility to join some society or create you own but that's all. Societies cannot own a land and share any profits. They can only do team-hunts, participate events or do some missions.
What seemed strange to me, some people offered me some *free* skills but required to bring some items first *empty skill implant* or just asked me to borrow them some money. There are always scammers in every community but here we are speaking about real money and it makes thing a bit more complicated. Those players should be banned asap and all scams investigated.
Economy
EU seems to be a monopolist here, it is only released and maintained MMO which has fixed rate between US dollar and in-game currency Project Entropia Dollar. This experience is unique and makes EU special. Every item released in game has real value, including skills. Item prices can vary, they are subject to supply/demand economy mechanism. Items have additional value (reffered as TT+ X PED) or just use Markup mechanism. Prices are entirely created by players but it seems to me that economy should be more stimulated by developers.
The chain seems to be simple, hunters and miners acquire materials, crafters create the items which can be used by everyone. Money flows, price are alive and change over time. Players can own Lands and tax the activities there or buy Deeds and participate in the revenue of an entire planet. There could be many ways in which in-game economy could be better. It seems to me that most crafters are focused on Explosive ammo crafting and some acquired items during hunting/mining seems to be useless, so are blueprints related to them but the economy experience here seems to be very unique.
Theoretically, Entropia is free to play although without any PED's on your card the experience is very limited. You can gather some free items like sweat, fruits or dung but collecting them is time consuming and not very profitable. To make the most of Entropia, depositing seem to be only option. Price to play is entirely up to you. You can hunt low level mobs, go for low stakes and survive month on 35 USD or deposit 500 USD, go for extreme mining and loose it all during one gaming session.
Discussions about return-to-player rates are very intensive. In long term, most of players should be around 95% return although many claim that this amount is hard to achieve. Also, similarities to online casinos are widely discussed. Technically, EU is a MMO game with real cash economy, but when it comes to gaming experience, especially crafting, it can feel a little like slot machine playing. Some claim, that it does not matter what gear you use, what skills you have, what is your cost to play per hour - in long term you will always end up with your 90-95% return.
Most of MMO's require no more that 30USD/month to experience all aspects and have access to all stuff that it offers. Entropia is different - to experience it fully, sometimes you must be ready to put a serious amount of money. Some players claim that they don't pay, they invest.
New Player Experience - Summary
Entropia Community is a mystery box to me. They seem to accept bad-looking game full of bugs, boring gameplay and extremely slow development in exchange for 'casino-thrill' experience and participation in real cash economy in a 3D world. The golden swirls and 'you have just won something' sounds give some pleasure and nice adrenaline shot, which by the way, can be very addictive.
New Player will experience huge world, many planets, mostly pretty empty as the playerbase is low - but stable. Couple of thousand players will dig stuff, kill mobs and craft items at the same time creating the only so far real cash in-game economy with item value related to value of US dollar.
New player experience is a bit chaotic, there is plenty of room for improvements, especially in the area of explanation how economy works and what game offers in the long run.
Inflow of new players, if there is any, will stay low as long as advertisement does not exist. There is no marketing, it looks like devs don't want their game to be played by more than 10-12k active players. Most of new players, including me, will play for 50-100 hours and leave. Reasons were described in this article. In my opinion, real cash experience is not worth the struggle. And yes, except mining, all the gaming experience was a struggle, a true and real pain in the ass.
In total, I would rate Entropia Universe 3,5/10 - for following reasons:
Pluses
- Unique Real Cash experience - as long as you loose acceptable amount of money you can have some fun knowing that all you items an possible wins have real value - trading them with other players is also fun.
- Mining - in my opinion design of mining is fine, better than in other MMO's, you can mine on low stakes or go full retard and use level 13 amp on asteroid.
- Community, as I said is a mystery box but people are mature and most of them are kind and helpful.
Minuses
- This game is in alpha/beta stage - full of bugs (some of them seem to cost real money), old looking and in many aspects very inconsistent. Community try to cooperate with devs here but devs are extremely slow or do not deliver at all. It seems that they have no idea what to do with their product. I cannot believe that it has been 15 years in development.
- Can be very addictive - we are talking real money here and some activities in game are closely related to Casino-way-of-playing in my opinion, especially crafting.
- Gameplay is badly designed, in long term all activities can become very boring/repetitive.
- Low playerbase - mostly due to chaotic new player experience and no advertisement at all. I'm afraid that in current state most new players will leave the game pretty fast. Devs must work harder to make player retention better.
Hope this article will help devs to make this gaming experience better because the whole project is unique and has huge potential.
Regards,
Boring_player
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