Mindarks todo list/fix list 2021

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There are certain things Mindark still needs to do. Promises were made, so promises have to be kept. Besides that, there is soo much stuff half working or currently broken, that it needs a fix.

CLD estate + political systems

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...ds/state-of-the-universe-address-2013.206983/

Back in 2013 you said: “ Once the design plans are finalized, actual development of the estate and political systems is scheduled to begin after the summer. We are very excited about the potential of the political system especially, and look forward to working together with the community to make it something truly amazing and unique in the computer game industry. “

There is currently no political system tied to CLD. You promised it. Implement it or abandon it and let us know.

From: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/.../first-phase-of-the-cld-estate-system.236126/
and https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/cld-estate-plots.236747/

In 2015 you showed us pictures of the CLD estate system. One of the estates had two stories, one estate was extra wide in size. I would be nice to implement this.
Also you promised that CLD estates would get shop functionality in a future update.

From: https://www.planetcalypso.com/opportunities/land-plots/index.xml?#building

In 2015 you said: “ Village Development
As a Property Owner you are also a citizen of a village and the development of ‘village life’ will be the focus of future releases.”

Its been 6 years. This is from your own website, still active today. You promised. Implement it.

Harvesting

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/harvesting-tool-update.236811/

yes we can collect wood. But its use is limited, please expand on it. Don’t leave this new profession out to rot.


Account liquidation and effects

Right now there are a lot of estates, like shops, appartments and landareas owned by Mindark Official Annex.

index.php


These are non-maintained estates and have severe effects on the economy. Why not do another account liquidation, you have done this in the past, where you free up these landareas shops and appartments and resell them to participating players?

https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/account-liquidation-auctions.220565/

If not possible, why not add some fertiliser to these landareas.. since officially you annexed these lands? This would make it easier for us to actually do the codex on these mobs. Fix it



Problems landing on Toulan

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/problems-landing-on-planet-toulan.222915/

In 2014 you wrote: “Please note that to land on the new planet Toulan via space, you need to go north of the Toulan space station. This will trigger the Landing Confirmation window and you should arrive on the planet. If you fly to where the planet is located on the map you may get the "You cannot enter deep space" message, however if you follow the above instructions you should arrive as intended. “

It is still very hard to land on Toulan. Fix it

Taming

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...communication-and-development-roadmap.225501/

In 2014 you wrote: “Taming Stage 3 - (Planned for Early 2015 Release) Battle Arenas will be introduced which will allow tamed creatures to battle one another. Each battle will be unique, with a wide range of offensive and defensive pet buffs and upgrades along with customisable attack and defense profiles.”

Taming could use an update. You promised the abovementioned feature, time to implement? It’s only been 7 years.
Another thing that’s been on many players minds would be riding. If not possible to implement, why not create an NPC that turns a big pet into a vehicle? Then we have Pets to ride on.


Space

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/whats-under-the-veil.230550/

In 2014 you teased the ferrari under the interceptors. Since then there were no new spaceships.
Time to implement one? It’s only been 7 years. Like a four person one, one pilot, one gunner, two repairers, good for transporting goods which brings me to:

From: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...ds/state-of-the-universe-address-2015.233605/ and https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...developer-notes-10-galactic-transport.230089/

In 2015 you said: “The first stage of the Galactic Transport system will likely be included in the Version Update currently planned for June, and will offer transport missions with rewards drawn from the Galactic Transport pool that is funded by auction transfer fees.

To create the potential for more exciting and rewarding PVP activity in space, there are plans to refine the balancing of spaceships and spaceship weaponry in order. Along with that rebalancing, additional PVE space content is planned for Q3/Q4 2015. “
It’s been 6 years. You “likely” promised it. Time to implement.

Rings transformation system

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...ansformation-system-buff-stack-system.237137/

In 2015 you wrote:”A system in which a number of rings (and other items) can be combined and transformed into something else, for example one superior ring, is currently in development. The system is intended not just to provide a use for lesser rings; it will be an exciting new feature in its own right. “
You promised , its been 6 years, time to implement.
 
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Taming

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...communication-and-development-roadmap.225501/

In 2014 you wrote: “Taming Stage 3 - (Planned for Early 2015 Release) Battle Arenas will be introduced which will allow tamed creatures to battle one another. Each battle will be unique, with a wide range of offensive and defensive pet buffs and upgrades along with customisable attack and defense profiles.”

index.php


They tried it with Compet, saw how (un)popular it was and probably didn't implement it into Entropia on the basis of that.


Space

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/whats-under-the-veil.230550/

In 2014 you teased the ferrari under the interceptors. Since then there were no new spaceships.

There was a new one in 2017:

 
Gonna refer to rings only, they are already too powerfull, making new ones even more powerfull will destabilize the game.

Yeah well, not my idea.. Mindark said they would implement it.
 
 
 
Well, instead of these 'big' steps, I imagine we can only hope to get 'baby' steps on anything tbh. But are any steps of whatever size actually going anywhere?
For space we now have a mob mission that I believe drops bps for a wider range of rk repair tools, but is there any interest really in any of those? Space flight was rather screwed up with that notorious 'camera' update - and still sucks imho.
With harvesting there is now a bp that uses all board types and the wood shavings, but what is that bp mat actually used in, or going to be used in?

On pets and land plots, which are two large areas, I can't think of any additions whatsoever recently, apart from the Ascarious pet, and nothing on functionality. It seems that the land plot areas have even been given an overgrown look now by some graphics guy, which is taking the 'p' in a similar vein as saying their balancing manager is a dog...

Only the codex has spread its wings a bit wider to other planets it seems, and been given some bonus rewards. But, there is no bonus for repeat missions and repeats still cost more and more for the same rewards - the law of diminishing returns?

Good luck with this thread, but people will be living on Mars before we see space mining and other stuff from way back actually implemented by MA. ...
 
Besides that, there is soo much stuff half working or currently broken, that it needs a fix.
This, I think, is one of the most important things for MA to be focusing on.
It is careless to add more half assed features, until they fix what they have broken and finish what they have started.

Couple examples of things MA broke and have not fixed:

- Setting Waypoints to target locations are broken and do not account for the target’s Z axis, but rather uses your current one.
This is super frustrating in space when trying to locate a ship, space station or training grounds etc. Including trying to warp to a target location or waypoint!

- Graphics, physics, lighting and such need to be fixed since the DirectX and graphical update so they are rendered property

- A lot of Furniture is not functioning properly anymore, such as chairs and other seats. (This may be Planet Partner specific. But it was MA that broke them with an update) I believe it was the camera and control update?

There are many, many more.
If anyone has any other examples, please share!
 
I don't care for anything at the moment before we know what's the deal with #cyrenegate. I expressed my sentiments here, here and here. This is a dealbreaker. For the past 6 weeks or so I haven't done much in the game at all and nearly lost interest in it for the time being. This business behaviour is simply inacceptable. It was looking hopeful that we're finally headed for betterment but with this you've just made all your worst critics go "told you so", and there isn't much to argue with that. I'm not saying "please yadayada" now, just observing. Because I seriously don't understand you guys.
 
I like this, an annual reminder of thing MA devs can do to continue to make this game better.

I believe, it would be so much better and a lot less work for the devs if they allow player created contents.
Just have a customization menu similar to the avatar creation menu. But for items like vehicles, clothing, etc.
Once the player has created the item, it gets submitted to MA for approval. If it is approved, this item can be crafted and traded in game.
the item customization item should also be a crafted item limited use item to reduce spamming of player created items to MA.
MA can always reject the player designs if it violates copyright, offensive human anatomy resemblance looking things, or if it just looks bad.

MA has really cool looking items, but I really believe that players can also contribute to the game. Especially if it is a visual cosmetic item with no affects to game mechanics.
 
MA can always reject the player designs if it violates copyright, offensive human anatomy resemblance looking things, or if it just looks bad.
don't think they care about copyright or trademarks much... hence why we get so much stuff in game that resembles other stuff... seen any car logos on space ships lately? How many copyrights were obtained for each song streamed on Monria, Rocktropia, etc.
 
I think the game is perfect the way it is.... HOF in 3...2....1...
 
CLD estate + political systems

from: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...ds/state-of-the-universe-address-2013.206983/

Back in 2013 you said: “ Once the design plans are finalized, actual development of the estate and political systems is scheduled to begin after the summer. We are very excited about the potential of the political system especially, and look forward to working together with the community to make it something truly amazing and unique in the computer game industry. “

There is currently no political system tied to CLD. You promised it. Implement it or abandon it and let us know.

From: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/.../first-phase-of-the-cld-estate-system.236126/
and https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?threads/cld-estate-plots.236747/

In 2015 you showed us pictures of the CLD estate system. One of the estates had two stories, one estate was extra wide in size. I would be nice to implement this.
Also you promised that CLD estates would get shop functionality in a future update.

From: https://www.planetcalypso.com/opportunities/land-plots/index.xml?#building

In 2015 you said: “ Village Development
As a Property Owner you are also a citizen of a village and the development of ‘village life’ will be the focus of future releases.”

Its been 6 years. This is from your own website, still active today. You promised. Implement it.


In the 2020 AMA MindArk said they were not going to develop the Land Plot System for now. I don't know if that also refers to the political system.
 
I too have bought into MA's promises, and while I do support this post (because I believe MA should be held to account for past promises made that have gone unfulfilled), I feel that this post is entirely one sided and omits entirely all the positive things MA has done over the last couple years and focuses instead only on the negative.

So for that reason I feel I need to bring some balance here, not to defend MA, but to make sure that people reading this don't just see doom and gloom but are aware of the good things that have been done/introduced by MA. I mean it's not like they haven't been doing anything at all, they have done some pretty cool stuff, but when I read this post I'm left thinking that MA hasn't done squat in 6 - 7 years...

Also, I feel that quite often, what a lot of 'investors' fail to recognize is that without a strong player base, their investments (Deeds, Shares, LA, Motherships, their Shop(s) or their uber gear) wouldn't be worth anything, so the fact that MA has been focusing on improving the game for 90% of the player base (hunting) is totally spot on and the right thing to do if you want everyone to benefit rather than just a small segment.

First I want to recap your OP because it's very long, and although there is a lot of pertinent info in there and links, it could just be summed up like this:

Promises still not delivered on by MindArk in 2021:

1. CLD estate + political systems
2. Land Plot development
3. Resource Harvesting development
4. MA owned LAs and Shops
5. Landing on Toulan
6. Taming & Pet battle arenas
7. New Spaceships
8. Space Transport system
9. Upgrade-able Rings

These you claim were all promised by MA. I would argue that it is true that most of these were promised, but some of them not. For example #4 and #5 were never promised by MindArk, though there has been many complaints on this from the community.

The 2 things that stand out the most for me are #1 and #2 which MindArk promised back in 2015 when Land Plots were released, and #7 and #8 which was promised when MindArk released Motherships. It's rather easy to see what has happened here: MindArk created some virtual assets for people to 'invest' into, speculated about the future 'worth' of these assets so that people would be willing to pay a 'fair price' for them.

Later when MindArk drew up their priority list, they realized that the only way for everyone to benefit from their development efforts is to focus on the activity that more than 90% of players do, i.e. hunting (and also fixing UIs, which is coming this year). I don't hold this against them really, but little things like introducing gardening to then 'break' it only a year later, that really pisses me off. Why would you spend so much resources on developing a whole new system, then break it and leave it for dead for the next five years when really, it would be pretty easy to fix and take almost no development resources at all on your part? That's just stupidity I think.

But anyway you make a few mistakes I think in your OP:

Also you promised that CLD estates would get shop functionality in a future update.

This is actually incorrect. What MindArk promised was "potential commercial functions (such as shopping and more)", this is different. The only thing that MA has done to add said "commercial functions" since the introduction of Land Plots is to add gardening, which was broken soon after Loot 2.0 when the blueprints that use the Transgen Fruit stopped dropping (the Adapted Isis series of level 10 guns). So in any case, you are right that this hasn't been delivered as promised, but I felt it was important to point out the subtle difference here because if the gardening system was working, this could be considered a promise kept.

In 2014 you teased the ferrari under the interceptors. Since then there were no new spaceships.
Time to implement one? It’s only been 7 years. Like a four person one, one pilot, one gunner, two repairers, good for transporting goods which brings me to:

There was a new ship introduced in 2017 or 2018: a limited edition Arkadia ship. So when you say "In 2014 you teased... since then there has been no new spaceships", that isn't entirely correct.

And

To create the potential for more exciting and rewarding PVP activity in space, there are plans to refine the balancing of spaceships and spaceship weaponry in order. Along with that rebalancing, additional PVE space content is planned for Q3/Q4 2015.

The September VU brought us an entirely new PVE encounter in space along with new missions and new blueprints for spaceship tools and attachments. So I believe that one is a promise kept, albeit very late (but as they say: better late than never).

And now I want to talk about the stuff that MindArk actually DID, because there's a lot of cool stuff there and people tend to forget about all the good stuff they actually did do. I'm not going to go back in time very far, I'll just focus on the last couple of years:


Cool new gaming content created by MindArk:
- Arkadia Moon (to be further developped...)
- Awesome new Wave event and Armor upgrade missions in Ancient Greece (Gorgon)
- RDI Secret Lab
- Robot Incursions in Space
- Awesome new Armor upgrade missions on Cyrene (sadly disabled for the moment)


List of changes requested by the community and implemented by MA:
- Making Viceroy armor tt'able
- Protect items so they cannot be TT'ed by mistake
- Compet Deeds buy-back
- Naming rights on Shared mobs killed solo
- Waypoint for Death location
- Non-PvP space around Ark Moon
- Eliminating Planet entry fee
- Making Mayhem Event accessible from other planets
- Customizing/naming waypoints
- Removed Quad-wing speed exploit in space
- Sharing of creature kill points in team hunts (introduced with Codex)
- Drag and drop enhancers
- Loot sharing no longer based on damage dealt (exploitable using pill buffs)
- Making it possible to stack limited blueprints together
- Adding loot to creatures killed by turrets
- Adding less-than-one-pec returns to crafting of 1 pec crafts
- Enabling sell orders for AG shares despite initial offering not sold out yet
- Added Attribute rewards to Codex
... etc

These are just some of the things that had been requested by the community for a long time which MindArk has implemented in the last couple of years. There are many other things I'm sure but I just wanted to show that MindArk has been listening and paying attention to what the players want, and doing their best when it is possible to do so to make the improvements requested.


Changes MA did to put more PEDs back in player's pockets:
December 2019: Overhauled the tier-upgrade system to make it less expensive to tier up items by returning the TT value of the components and resources used. This included the removal of the Tiering profession and therefore the chance of failure. Subsequently, MA caused the markup of items like Opals to drop significantly, making tiering even more affordable.

December 2019: Overhauled Enhancers making them break less often and in linear fashion as opposed to randomly, as well as standardizing (increasing) the benefits they provide before breaking, and returning the TT value in Shrapnel when they do break, putting more ped back in players' pockets.

June 2020: Introduced Shrapnel to crafting for returns less than 1 pec. This effectively put some ped back into crafters' pockets (it might not sound like much but I tested this and found that if you craft 8 hours/day it will add up to about 150 ped/week)

December 2020: Missed shots (including in PvP and Space) no longer consume ammo or cause weapons to decay, saving players more ped.

------------ TL;DR
When you look at this I hope that you realize that MindArk has the difficult task of prioritizing and allocating their resources in the best way that they can so as to benefit the largest number of people and that they have undoubtedly done a good job of this.

I said it earlier in this post and I'll say it again: quite often, what a lot of 'investors' fail to recognize is that without a strong player base, their investments (Deeds, Shares, LAs, Motherships, Shop(s) or uber gear) wouldn't be worth anything, so the fact that MA has been focusing on improving the game for 90% of the player base (hunting) is totally spot on and the right thing to do. By doing so, everyone benefits, investors included.

The best thing to do is to make suggestions of simple fixes or improvements where there are large gains to be made with little effort, I think they will always be very appreciative of anyone doing this.

Cheers,
Legends
 
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I used to deposit large sums of PED per fortnight. Over the years this has become zero. I now deposit in the stock market, my money grows and I get good returns. This game used to be an investment, now nothing changes year after year! Spawn, I have known you in-game for a very long time, you know MA will never fix anything, they never will.

Coming up...Easter Mayhem 2021, a rehash of Easter Mayhem 2020....same shit, different year!
 
Well, on the one hand, they sometimes don't even manage to change the annual texts correctly....
on the other, some changes for the better have been made.
However, the timelines are a biggie. It's almost as if MA has a fully equipped kitchen but can only produce 5 cups of coffee a day (and provide a dog biscuit). Sometimes, you ask if they can do you a cup of tea, but it fails to get past the appraisal stage. Some of the stuff we would like fixed (or actually done) would take a matter of hours not months. On a fix/do list covering a whole year, what is a fair expectation level?
 

^ The players perspective. ;)

Perhaps it is time to revive :revive:the State of The Universe Address?




 
Nice thread.
Sadly from the last AMA it seems CLD estate + political systems is not something we can expect soon :cry:
 
fix mining, not everyone likes to hunt.
 
Nice thread.
Sadly from the last AMA it seems CLD estate + political systems is not something we can expect soon :cry:

Didn't MindArk got their CEO changed a couple of times this last years? That doesn't help either.

Different CEO's means different strategies and also different priorities. I m not defending them, but I would not continue develop something that I would not agree with, just because old CEO left it undone.
 
I would not continue develop something that I would not agree with, just because old CEO left it undone.
..but you'd have to disagree with quite a lot to not wish to develop (or correct) stuff such as land plots, space, pets etc etc and introduce other stuff such as the codex and new instances instead. Ok, so space has a new mission at Caly which I've hardly tried so far due to being very tired two Sundays in a row (the only day there appears to be action there), but nothing newly introduced looks like being a winner so far.
Meanwhile, other pps that have been given the go-ahead on their plans have had the implementations taken away again (see Cyrene or the new skyrimmer at NI), as well as even having had normal specific loots removed).
I would love to do the old beacons again, or even the solo robot instances that have been removed. I'd love to see a working fort event take place again, but without the problems that caused them to die after a relatively short time years ago already. Did pp instance loots on Ark ever get fixed so that they made at least some sense and were not a massive cost factor?
How much of EU code is sitting there theoretically in use, but nobody goes anywhere near it? Will new stuff fall away from attraction even faster because it's bugged in various places and nobody gives a damn because the rewards aren't likely to be worth it anyway?
Bah...
 
index.php


They tried it with Compet, saw how (un)popular it was and probably didn't implement it into Entropia on the basis of that.

No, they failed with compet but they NEVER implemented in game pet battles. Had they made a system in game for pet battles BEFORE compet they might have had success with implementing compet!!!
 
Yeah, compet with zero integration with EU was something like 99% f2p I guess, as it simply didn't provide an environment worthy of depositing to. If it had been tied to EU and in-game peds it would have achieved loads of micro-revenue, maybe enough to have made it successful.
The playerbase did take compet to higher levels, however, where skill imbalances became much more apparent. MA then repeatedly tried to change the balances, but repeatedly made things worse in my opinion. I do feel a reworked compet in game would stand a chance, but even though I usually believe in my own abilities more than those of the devs, I will admit that I see this as a hard task to get right over a sustained pet development period. Unfortunately this is probably better left untouched in my opinion; certainly I would prefer to see changes to land plots and space first! (and general fixes to stuff all over the place)
 
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Unfortunately this is probably better left untouched in my opinion; certainly I would prefer to see changes to land plots and space first! (and general fixes to stuff all over the place)
nah, work it all together. Farm animal pets need lands to graze in. Space Dragons need zones to fight in.
 
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