Financially, no. When CryEngine was introduced 10 years ago, MA provoked an inflation of skills, respectively SGA came packed with, if I remember correctly, a couple of months at (not sure on the number anymore) 300% skillgain.
For me it is difficult to not interpret some changes in a negative manner. Over the years, MA has done everything possible to destroy the profit possibilities. Sweating skill used to be capped (very fast, sweat a few days and shoot a few berys and bam you couldn't sweat anymore), so sweat was, when I started (jul 2005), 3 pec a bottle. You could round up a few hundreds to start with if you stayed only with sweating. This had also downsides, namely flocks of sweating bots, but I always wondered what MA was aiming when removing the cap, destroying bots or destroying wallets? Initially they said that the purpose was making MF more affordable (which did happened), but putting syntethic MF in TT showed that there were other ways available.
Skilling itself used to be tough. In one year of playing pretty hardcore, with available weapons of those times, you could maybe reach lvl30 in a best case scenario. So farming skills was a thing, chipping out completely at lvl20 at some point netted me 5k and not only once.
Mining had no amps, so skilling in mining was even slower than hunting. Mineral Sense (lvl30 prospecting pros) was the thing for the ubers (like, 10 people ingame in 2006), and chipping out at lvl10 prospecting (lol memory, 12ish), when unlocking CGA, was roughly 3k.
All skills back then used to ACTUALLY have a value. Before the introduction of critical hits, mobs were always hitting for maximum value and alot faster (like is Cyrene nowadays), armours had higher decay (ghost or jaguar were for insane jetspenders), so evade-related skills were pure gold. Did I mentioned that extracting skills used to give you more from same deposit? Claims had a quasi-static number of pulls, and it was your mining skills deciding wether a "great" is less or more than 50 ped (and consecutively a global). Yes, "great" back then was 50ish max, abundant 30ish max etc.
We had no "SIB" bullshit, all weapons had permanent skill requirement maximized at 100. So going from jester d-1 to justifier mk2 was really a thing requiring effort and careful picking of mobs, worth maybe a couple of months of shooting. Nowadays you can be in 2 weeks lvl20 or something.
The game was alot more rough and more expensive, but it had meaning. There was a meaning hunting for almost every material, there was scarcity and actual trading, not some ignorants staying in Twin and putting prices from their backs.
What MA achieved is killing off almost completely the economic meaning of their initial proposal: an alien planet open to the daring, willing to put in effort and to think. They slowly dissipated this into two branches: pure gambling and useless grinding, with some carrot hanging in front of the nose that sometime maybe you will win a mayhem and sell a gun which in itself has no discernable purpose save for a short-term vicious circle. But after 10 years of Mayhems, what's the plan, what these weapons will do?
By creating skill inflation, they made readily available very high turnover, which is very two-sided: it is not possible anymore to lose 100$ in a month shooting with something like ArMatrix 5 (if such thing would even exist). But in same time, the base game and setup helps you with nothing. One week of grinding molisks meant 5-700 ped in MU only from teeth (aside from hides, wools and paints). Nowadays, one week of grinding molisks means the extraordinary chance to "win" the shrapnel conversion.
You don't pay as much anymore for the same level of turnover, but people are pushed into levels of turnover which are extreme. Already at level 30 nowadays you can shoot some $ per day which were simply impossible 10 years+ ago.
Opportunities for profit (I mean PROFIT, the one which you can withdraw to your bank) are meaningless compared to 10-15 years ago even at uber level, costs at same level of skill are a small fraction of what them used to be and so on. It's sort of a waste of time, which has the formal excuse that you could potentially at some point make a $, but is laughable compared to what was happening with a fraction of the population, servers, systems etc
Do skill serve a purpose? Yes, within the system itself of course they do, it is obvious. Depending on your level, ok, messi is at the top, but already starting at lvl60 or so you can do pretty much whatever you like wherever you like without the concern that this mob might trash you.
Does this freedom has anymore real economic meaning, does it really open opportunities for actual profit? Not so much.
For anybody who witnessed Entropia for more than a few years, it should be obvious that the paradigm 10+ years ago was "how to profit". Nowadays is "how to minimise your costs".
For me it is sad, but I will never quit Entropia. MindArk minimised costs, destroyed almost all profit venues and left in place a system where people to waste their time for cents instead of competing for $. For them is win-win, the ideal player is the one constantly paying something similar to a MMO subscription, but without any kind of profit chance.
I will still be here even when they will plug off, always hoping that at some point they will actually deliver an economic biosphere with meaning, at least a part of the meaning it had 14 years ago, instead of the glorified social media it's currently.