weird theory of Mindark pushing us towards specific places...

weird theory of Mindark pushing us towards specific places...(favored planet theory)

Watching forums the last few months (years, over a decade, lol) has me wondering if Mindark isn't trying to push players towards specific planets, moons, etc. for particular reasons at specific times?...

Is it really incompetence, or are the specific 'big things' that put people off of wanting to go to one planet vs another being masterminded by someone higher up that is pulling the community around like puppets on strings?

When each planet 'started out' it seemed to get more attention than the other planets... first 6 months or so of each planet especially...

Then it kinda went meh across the board... then...

A few years back Rocktropia seemed to be the 'hot spot' for many updates, globals, etc. The whole crab incident drove people here by the dozens daily...

For a while Arkadia was the 'big deal' for many with Gold Rush etc. The delay in releasing the plot winnings has made many irritated with Ark... Back in the days when Ark was a 'big deal' we say Arkadia PP being highly responsive to the community demands, requests, wishes...

Monria recently went big with new pets... the ol St. Patrick's day annual rush to make them number 1, etc.

These days Cyrene seems to be starting to take Ark's place in that highlight, and lots of planet changes are happening across the board based on community wish lists, forum threads, etc. Hate to look gift horses in the mouth, but noticed this personally when I saw what I'll just call the 'Maria Vu' for Cyrene happen... at least 4 big changes happened based on some sort of threads I had on cyrene's forum right before that vu... That's awesome if every planet would do that level of development more often, but I have a funny suspicion it just happened because Cyrene's is somehow in Mindark's 'special' list for now for some reason as they are about to do some major upgrades, server updates or something in the background in the coming days, so Mindark's trying to make Cyrene a happy place that all of the planets should be ultimately, but that Mindark doesn't have the resources to do all of the time for everyone as they should?..

What do you think? Are some Planets 'favored' at times by Mindark, and what do you think is causing it, or not causing it? Is it Devs from the PPs pushing harder than others at specific times when annual contracts need to be signed but dotted line signatures aren't on paper yet (and we'll be back the 'meh' after those signatures or in), or is it something else?

Theories about 'favored players' have been out there for years, but not a lot of theories about 'favored planets.' Is there a 'favored planet' and some way to detect when that favoritism is coming?... Mayhem used to seem to favor Calypso, but then they made it a global event accessible on all planets, etc. (is it known publicly somewhere when each PP's annual contract, if such a thing exists, is due for signing? Pretty sure that something like this exists since otherwise the monthly (or annual?) server rent on Rocktropia and Cyrene due from the PP wouldn't have caused them to downsize the servers a while back...)

For the record , Monria's popularity has nothing to do with pets and everything to do with the community effort by the Monria team and those loyal to keep it thriving.

Bones said:

For the record , Monria's popularity has nothing to do with pets and everything to do with the community effort by the Monria team and those loyal to keep it thriving.

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Even though I’m not really knowledgeable in Monria, I do agree that it is a reflection of the staff / dev / team ( whatever you want to call it ) and their involvement in the gaming community.

Put in effort towards gameplay , entertainment and customer service / focus and you will thrive

Mindark isnt favor a specific planet, they get their cut no matter what planet we are and the planets dont work together but they compete against each other over us the participants. If a planet is "hot" it just means they managed to get something right and sucessfully grabbed attention.

If mindark would favor a specific planet *cough calypso cough* , no seriously if they would do so a shitstorm from the other planet partners would overcome them and they would demand equal treatment. But maybe the things mindark does for a pp depend on the ammount of money thats flowing into their direction.

I think it's simply how it goes with work in a lot of companies. You focus on something, then focus on something else. The feel I get is that Mindark is severely understaffed to cater for all the developments they have going, which is why almost everything feels half-done. They keep moving to something new, and forget they had something that was only half finished.

mastermesh said:

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Quickly! Put your tinfoil hat back on!!!

Spawn said:

I think it's simply how it goes with work in a lot of companies. You focus on something, then focus on something else. The feel I get is that Mindark is severely understaffed to cater for all the developments they have going, which is why almost everything feels half-done. They keep moving to something new, and forget they had something that was only half finished.

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They keep polishing those new "halfassed" systems. New looter profession, new type of mayhems, changes to old ones (mostly good ones). Yea they had many DOA systems, but even those could be revived if they wished to do so

There is a certain influence, but OP has it backwards. It is people following what people like and conglomerating around the most popular thing of the day, nothing else. But MA's balance management will try and prevent a planet from pulling the rug out from under all the other ones. (Now there is a tinfoil hat thought: What if the blocking of Arkadia's land plots has to do with that? If true it would be evil since they must have been initially approved.)

For sure MA doesn't treat planet partners equally. We know MA is understaffed (too many bosses deciding what they want done and not enough people actually working to follow through). Also I think they have issues with leadership changing the roadmap frequently.

MA and its personal planets get priority, if for no other reason than that Caly (and Monria) devs can just walk down the hall and talk to the MA devs who are getting implementing their stuff... that's if they aren't the same people, which they might be. Arkadia with their focus on pushing fully formed bug free content, have been plagued from day one by MA's super slow response time. Recent example is the land plots mentioned above. Also the amount MA charges the other planet partners to rent server space is VERY expensive. There was a cost increase several years ago that impacted Arkadia much more than the others due to its size, and them being the only one who decided not to shrink their planet to compensate. So Arkadia costs 10x more than Cyrene to run, and 5x more than RT to run even with no development. Cyrene has always made a priority to make at least small updates, even if they're buggy, and shrinking down to one server freed up a lot more funds for development. And of course ND being treated differently from everyone else is well known....

But yeah... players are always attracted to anything "new" in game... for some just because it's new but for others because it's usually easier to profit from new things than from old things.