Cougar's Diary

[Cougar]

[wrap=left]https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/gallery/files/5/3/4/5/tp.gif[/wrap]


Welcome to Cougar's Diary​

Somehow in the other day i found a screenshot stored among other thousands of screenshots from PE an EU that i had on a dvd.

I do not actually remember why the hell i took this screenie but here it is (don't mind the mess on my desktop):

[br]Click to enlarge[/br]

This image dates from Jan 23, 2006, one year ago.

Looking at it i can remember the time of my life it relates to, as you can see i was playing another MMORPG at that time, which had a nice community as well and nice events by the holidays, but it was something completely different from EU.
I was also playing BF2 a lot by that time. Among others you can see Q4, FEAR, NFS:MW.
Also among lots of BF2 fan videos you can see that while waiting for the download i had already watched Dub & McCormick' video and the PE trailer.


So after looking back at what has happened during the last year, reading the rules MB posted on the sticky before advancing to create this thread i decided to create my own diary here on EF, to share my views, knowledge and everything i learned about EU.

And all the tales and stories lived by my avatar in the planet Calypso.

Prologue:
I got the first contact with EU when a portuguese computer games magazine published an article about Project Entropia and distributed the client on a cd a few months after gold.
March 2003 is what i read on the label as i hold the cd for reference.
(Damn if i started back then , but well this is not about that)

It was the VU 4.2 back then (492MB installer), i remember i tried it out but somehow i didn't got used to the game.
I don't remember much about that first time, but i remember sweating and walking for what looked to me at that time like an eternity.
I think it lasted 3 days that time.

I tried PE a few more times until, one year ago, after a large (XII) experience of other MMORPG i found PE more interesting and appealing than before.

So i got more involved, tried it out again and registered here at EF a few days after seeking knowledge and advice.

This time was for real, this was the "game" i wanted to play.

The last Year:
So as i was saying i registered here a few days after downloading PE, i lurked around and never posted, read lots of posts and learned more about what i was getting into.

A few weeks later i was sweating in the area East of Port Atlantis, near the turrets as i was an helpless noob i was, and then there was another fellow entropian, dressed in black, helping us out by tanking the mobs, killing them when they were dry and healing us.

He helped us in that day and in the following days, answered to some of our questions, and then i accepted him as my mentor.

Many of you know him, Fritz Trust Mclord. (now he got me loging in as i was looking at his profile for confirmation of his full name and noticed he misspelled it).

We spoke a bit over the next days, he offered himself to answer my questions anytime he was online and to help me.
Although as i like to investigate things for myself i never bothered him a lot and we haven't talked for a quite a while.

I thank him a lot for helping me and others on our first days, but i soon reached the point where i really didn't needed a mentor as i learned a lot from this forum.

Less than a month later i had one of the best experiences i had here on EU, i entered the "Fieldtrip #1: TI.C - MI" organized by sob to help some noobs to get a few TPs on amethera.
To make it short, you can read my experience and view my first posts here on EF at this thread:
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17374


Another month passed and i was again going to an exciting event: "getting killed a lot at the LG"
I was very excited by that time, it was my first LG ever, and although i couldn't compete for the land i had lots of fun watching.
Here is the LG report by our Miss Reporter Skam.

Another month and i joined my first soc (and only to the moment): TuSaLuSa.
It is a society of fellow Portuguese players, with which i had lots of fun since then and where i learned a few things and taught a few other.

Shortly after joining my society, i completed my quest for all the TPs in Calypso.
This quest provided me lots of fun and challenge as i got myself killed many times and stuck at some hard Outposts.
I posted the adventures of collecting the last TPs on Pe-Wiki but i am putting them here as well:

All Teleporters: (04/04/2006)
Finnaly got all teleporters both in Eudoria and Amethera.
In this last run there were only two missing, both in Eudoria, those were Fort Zeus and Fort Argus.
In the previous day i have logged out at Fort Caravan, after another run from Minopolis.

After reaching Fort Zeus there was only one TP between me and my goal, so i used the teleport to get to Atlas Island North. There i traveled north, after a while i was killed and revived at that outpost half-way between Atlas Island North and Fort Argus, there i was, right in the middle of nowhere.

After some attempts of resuming my journey, and being completely rapped by an huge herd of Maffoid's, i managed to reach Roge Plains South and from there to Fort Argus.


I already had about half of the Amethera TP's because i took part in the Treasure Island - Memorial Island FieldTrip organized by sob to help some newbies to get some TP's in Amethera.

The run for the last TP in Amethera took place about one week before, after getting to Sakura City in a run from Wolverine Hope to Sakura City, collecting all the TP's along the way, and dodging a lot of bots, i was only missing Oyster Isle and Myrene Island.

Getting to Oyster Isle was easy, but going to Myrene Island proved to be a lot harder. After being killed and ending up at Island Girl LA, i had an hard work getting out of there, some attempts later i finally got trough the Kingfisher's and some RipperSnapper's in the water and swam for about 15min without finding any red dot.

Finally reached the coast of Myrene Island, and headed to the TP, always going by the shore because of the Mermoth's roaming around.

Just a few days later (April 11, 2006) PE becomes EU.

"After several years of existence, Project Entropia is ready to take the evolutionary step in becoming Entropia Universe", MindArk's Director of Community Relations Marco Behrmann raves. "MindArk, developer of Entropia Universe, along with the vibrant community that has dedicated time and energy to the game, have together created a virtual universe that is now ready to stand apart from other MMORPG’s. In 2006, we will see more added features that close the gap between real and virtual, from entertainment to e-commerce."

Some weeks later New Oxford came, the city of culture bringing us art and fashion.

After that MA makes the ATM card available, something i didn't really needed but that allowed those who seek to make business within Entropia Universe to have a fast way of withdrawing the peds.

Then a few more things happened, we finally pushed the robots offensive back, a new Atrox menace appears, the Atrox Queen makes her appearance and is promptly slaughtered by some grinning colonists equipped with top equipment.

Her egg is stolen by the feffoids, and the colonists are set on a mission to recover it.

New lands are open and a new part of Amethera is open for exploration, new Land Areas are made available for purchase and the sales net $213,784 .

We get a new and cool keyboard mapping interface.

The egg is finally retrieved and is acquired by NEVERDIE.

Later the eomons make a brief comeback, followed by the Boorums.

And recently we got 3 new Malls who sold for a lot of $ as well.

And it is today, i had lots of fun, overall it was an awesome experience and i think many people don't realize that between some nasty bugs MA did a nice job and gave us a lot of content, IMHO more than in many other MMORPGs.

So after the balance of this year MA.

It was an awesome year, EU still has my preference and i hope to be around for the years to come.


I'm of to bed now cya ppl. o/

ps. Thanks for those who reached here without falling asleep.
I will post something here about my future, share my views on the EU's economical system, loot theories and some little things i am doing about EU.

ps2. after all it took longer than i thought to make this post and we are at 24 Jan now.

 

[Cougar]

Lootius Hates You!

So remember to pray to the Holy Snablesnot before each hunt!

ps. this is a modified image from the "Martin the Satanic Racoon" comics, not advisable to sensitive people.

 

[Cougar]

However, an important reason that some mobs don't carry loot, or that loot size varies, is that higher loots are essential for securing a frequent loot of items. Some items, such as limited weapons, are useless if looted broken.

I would like to focus a bit over this statement from MA and share with you some insight on this matter.

First something i would also like to say is: to gain a fair amount of knowledge about EU you need to pay attention at every clue MA lets slip about their system, many do this but sometimes fail to see what really is in front of them. Think about it, relate with what you already know and deduct.
Now, this does not includes present and future information only, it also includes information MA has revealed in the past.

Another thing to do is to not limit yourself to what info the system gives you, think about what causes the effect you see.

IMHO statistical analysis, although being useful to give a good overview about the info outputted by the system does not give much information about the inner workings of it. I am not saying that knowing what results we should expect from the system is not important, it is just that i give more value to really knowing what is going on at every time. Although statistics also give some good info about the system and are the only approach possible on some situations, but i see some relying only on it and making some not so good conclusions.

There is many information available, there is only needed time and effort.



So... lets start, i will include a bit of PE/EU history as it relates in a very important way to the interpretation of this statement.

On the first times of PE, items where looted at full TT, also mobs always looted.

The fact that mobs always looted made the system retain few peds, so the value of a single loot was low.
This implied that high TT items were only looted on high TT loots (it was the single loot value (and we know that this value is 50% luck) that was having a big impact on the item drop frequency instead of the MA's defined drop rate), so there was a need for high single loot value.

This made MA introduce and evil thing, the no loots

This made the system retain more peds, as there is no return on a no loot, this made the value of each single loot rise up quite a bit, and under certain circumstances it would rise a lot. So with the higher loots more items could drop. Although the full TT still limited item drops a little bit.

Then, next thing, MA decided that the items would no longer drop with full TT, as an unlimited item is a much useful if looted with 0 TT as with full TT.

This in turn made the item drop rely majorly* in the drop rates defined by MA

You could say that no loots are no longer needed. I say maybe, but maybe MA decided that it would be more fun and appealing to have some high value loots to show.

Now we come to the quoted statement:

As we are entering an (L)imited item "age" it is becoming useful again that items drop with full TT again.


So... this brings back the necessity for no loots for the obvious reasons.

*It also seems that the item drop frequency is still connected to loot values.
Maybe the loot value also enters as a multiplier to decide the chance of an item dropping.


PS. MA have tested, are testing and will alway be testing their economical model and will adjust it accordingly (aka as they see fit ).

PS2. About why MA had items drop at full TT back them:
Just big speculation, but they might have done it because of a few things, an full TT item encourages usage more that a low TT one, also more loot value would go to the items, and considering that once the loot went to the items it would be "stuck" there, it would only be possible to:
1) use the item (and we know where decay ends up)
2) TT it to get the TT back, but this would make us lose the markup
3) Trade it.

There are 3 options, but overall this would generate more use and decay.
MA ended up abandoning this approach, maybe because this reduced the "liquidity" in the system as much more value would be attached to items.
Ofc that by then Mod faps where TT'ed as animal oils are nowadays and ped availability might have not been that much of a problem

 

[Cougar]

So..., afaik this is the third time since gold that MA upgrades their server park.

First at VU 5.6 (2004-03-05)

Server upgrades
A server crash issue has been eliminated. The entire Project Entropia universe server park is upgraded with new hardware to meet the ever-increasing number of Project Entropia participants. The new system will reduce "lag" and latency issues, as well as some disconnect issues.

This was a rather interesting VU, mentoring was implemented, gold cards appeared, and many visual enhancements took place.

Second at 10 Feb 2005

Thank you for a happy ending of 2004 and a strong beginning of the new year.

As you may have noticed Project Entropia has been expanding at an impressive rate since December.
The ever-increasing number of participants has already substantially increased the economy of Project Entropia.
This has in turn enabled us to upgrade, modernize and expand our server park, switches and routers.
Initially this was intended to be a gradual process over the whole of 2005 but we are happy to say that the upgrades are now already completed.

In practical terms this means the following:

• Downloading patches will be swifter (no more clogging up of the ftp servers)
• More people can be online simultaneously with less lag
• Downtime for maintenance will be shorter and less frequent

And they are upgrading them again.

MA's servers are hosted at a Telia's server park in Stockholm, being the internet access also provided by Telia. (if nothing changed)

Telia has a Tier 1 carrier status and (IMHO) is the best choice MA could have done.
Although the first choice of many pro whiners is to blame bandwidth, etc, i think we are served very well.

You can check this map to see their network (in flash):
http://www.teliasoneraic.com/files/...l Carrier/Articles/Flash map/IP_backbone.html


Despite the upgrade, there won't be many noticeable changes in performance,
most "lag" is not caused by the delay in the server-client communication, it is caused on the client side.

EU and every single online game can't avoid the lag caused by the delay in the transmissions between the servers and the clients, due to distance, number of nodes between client and server, etc, many factors contribute to this.

This i a problem none of the single player games face, that why they can increase the graphics quality without affecting performance.

EU also requires many resources client-side.
Many complain this is caused by poor programing (and many of them speak without knowledge), but although some bottlenecks in the code can be perceived, the game itself needs a lot of computing power to make it run seamlessly.


I could go all night long explaining how the EU client software works, how everything is loaded in real time and in a streamed way in EU, etc, etc...

But i have neither the patience, nor i am going to bother considering the narrow mind of some of the audience.


I would like to just point some of my experience:

I love when i arrive at PA to see what the guides are up to and as soon as the screen fades in, i start running to the new arrivals area, even before the whole PA loading up, just seeing the ground and a couple of avatars and knowing where the walls are, and i love seeing PA loading while i run and not even rubber banding or lagging one single time.

Some of the lagging is impossible to avoid, like the one when you enter the malls for the first time in a session, the only way to avoid this would be to have loading screens for some areas, so you don't see the client freezing.

We already have the white screen effect that appears every time there is a big change in location.
While walking, everything is streamed (as in from the HD to the RAM) and as not much needs to be loaded up, the performance does not degrade while things load.
Now when there is the need to load a whole new area, the client show us the white screen while the basics load up.

But i love the fact that EU has no loadings (per se) and no instancing like other games do.
In EU there isn't crowd control, the number of people in one place is unlimited, while other games start creating multiple instances of one location to accommodate everybody so the clients don't lag.

Remember that there are no miracles and whenever you compare EU to any other games, do it objectively and take in consideration the differences between EU and the other games, because EU has a so much different implementation and features than any other MMORPG.


For those wondering (nothing out of the extraordinary):

• CPU: P4 3.0GHz
• RAM: 4 * 512MB
• GFX: ATI RADEON 9600 pro 256MB
• CONNECTION: ADSL [4Mbit(down)/256Kbit(up)]

 

[Cougar]

Some conspiracy fuel

I was searching for some stuff and came across this "pearl" in MA's prospect (even after having seen this pdf so many times in the past only today i noticed this paragraph):

In addition to the support department in Gothenburg there is also a support center consisting of three staff in Colombo in Sri Lanka.
The costs for this support center amounts to approximately 400 000 SEK per year.

As you can see, not even those are paid in rice.

 

[Cougar]

Bah, sadly i haven't been able to be on EU very much lately, i just don't have time to do it.

Ok, but let's talk about what i was going to post here, someone posted a link to an announcement of PE in 2000, the fact that it linked to IGN made a spark in my head and remembered of another interesting article i had seen before:

The title reads:
Alternative Massively Multiplayer Revenue Models
http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/552/552153p1.html

And it is an article on the "non-standard revenue models" that three games use, and one of those is.... Project Entropia, the others are Second Life and Z-Opolis.

And considereing that we are talking about revenue models, it seen that only Z-Opolis didn't succeeded in that area.


It is an interesting read, Marco is there representing PE and talks about the revenue model and many interesting things.

I would like to copy the first paragraph:

The revenue model
This business model was the vision from the start, and everything in Project Entropia is designed around it. The revenue for MindArk's PE AB, the company developing and maintaining Project Entropia, comes from item decay within the virtual universe, meaning that, like in the real world, when tools, armor, weapons, etc. are used, they decay somewhat. In order to bring items back into shape, they need to be repaired. This model is still the same as originally envisioned almost 10 years ago.

The sentence i bolded, is pretty much what is needed to understand EU's economic workings, because once one fits in his head that everything in EU is designed around this revenue model things become clear.
And no, with this i don't mean that everything was designed with the intention of creating revenue, just that everything was created having in consideration how the revenue model works (more on this follows).

The part i underlined is also an essential one, because it describes how the revenue model works.

Ofc that this part is not new to anyone who has been around for a while, and many say it can't be, that it is impossible, whatever.




On another note, and following the wave of bad loot and the discussions about inflation in EU (2 things that seem to have no relation), something came to my mind while thinking on how RL governments deal with inflation.

Has anyone ever though that MA might be lowering loot returns on pourpose so that the amount of money available to avatar lowers too, in a way of fighting inflation?

In RL, governments raise the "cost of money", by raising the interest rates in loans and some other measures.

In EU, as it is always possible to deposit more money into EU, it is hard to control cash availability and therefore inflation.

This is one point in which the SL's economy is better, because if too much money becomes available ingame, the effective rate of converting RL money into ingame money reduces considerably, regulating inflation.


If MA changed drop rates on items, my guess is that it wouldn't make much of a difference.

But maybe MA will change them after they "soften" the players ped card a bit, so that when more items are available, the money isn't and therefore if the sellers want to sell, they will have to lower prices.

ofc that many players mentality is also a a big bonus to the inflation, so it is hard to predict the effects of any measures due to the random human factor.

Also during all this maneuvers the might be "crashes" and big price drops, cataclysms, etc.

I would also like to add that the above is pure speculation.