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Is it time for MA to be transparent with player costs/expected values?

Is it time for MA to be transparent with player costs/expected values?

  • Total voters
    104
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Jhereg

Jhereg

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Feng Huan SecretAznMan Zho
MA currently has a built in distribution function that applies multipliers to returns in order to create a casino-like mechanism within Entropia. This has been the reality for the game ever since the birth of Planet Calypso.

One main reason for having this type of system is promote player activity (hits provide a gambling-like aspect to the game that results in dopamine and the need to continue the activity). Whether EU qualifies as casino gambling is not the topic of this post however, but is an important question for MA to tackle for the safety and survival of the game.

The second reason, which I think is just as if not more problematic, is that this allows MA to hide actual player costs to play, i.e. MA's rake. Recently there has been regulations that force casinos and video games to post odds/EVs of their games publicly. Casinos that are properly regulated are made to be transparent about EVs to their players. Yet EU still is not transparent about actual player costs.

Consider a mental experiment: Would EU work if the multiplier system is taken away, and you get exactly what your expected value is for each mob? Yes it would, but MA would be forced to display to the player what their cost to play is.

Whatever the reason is for MA to continue to hide their fee/rake from the individual player, I question whether this obfuscation is ethical.

Some possible solutions would be to display expected value to individual players/MA's rake, or just remove the multiplier system altogether.
 
i vote no

while i would be the first to like seeing the exact expected return values, i find great satisfaction in finding ways to "beat the system" and improve my avatar

EU has always been about exploration, testing different strategies and adapting to the different outcomes. its all in the name: entropia, entropy, or a measure of randomness or chaos. the more you take that randomness away the more you take away what made EU so unique in the first place

so yeah i might be the minority here but i vote a strong no, let the players figure it out for themselves.
 
nightbloom said:
i vote no

while i would be the first to like seeing the exact expected return values, i find great satisfaction in finding ways to "beat the system" and improve my avatar

EU has always been about exploration, testing different strategies and adapting to the different outcomes. its all in the name: entropia, entropy, or a measure of randomness or chaos. the more you take that randomness away the more you take away what made EU so unique in the first place

so yeah i might be the minority here but i vote a strong no, let the players figure it out for themselves.
Click to expand...
How do you know when MA makes a change to the system and your past outcomes are invalid? Currently there is no transparency if MA decides to make changes to returns for the playerbase.
 
Jhereg said:
How do you know when MA makes a change to the system and your past outcomes are invalid? Currently there is no transparency if MA decides to make changes to returns for the playerbase.
Click to expand...
simple, i dont.

images
 
MindArk has ALL the statistics available...

Your loot distribution per mob per maturity.
Hit rate per weapon per mob per maturity.
Your hit rate on minerals per finder with amp or without.
Your overall success rate crafting...
Your Markup Purchase vs Markup sold totals...

The issue is likely costs associated with running all those requests to the database. Added computational costs mean more rake needed to pay for them.

Catch-22 situation while MindArk remains under this business model.
 
nightbloom said:
so yeah i might be the minority here but i vote a strong no, let the players figure it out for themselves.
Click to expand...
You're a little late to the party if you believe that. Everything has been figured out and leveraged many times - it's just difficult to see unless you have multiple perspectives.

Transparency surrounding multi's, whatever "loot wave" nonsense is happening this month, and the "dynamic" loot drops that all happen at the same time, to the same players - yes. MA needs to be transparent about the rest if they desire any real player retention.
 
The Great Adventurer said:
The issue is likely costs associated with running all those requests to the database. Added computational costs mean more rake needed to pay for them.
Click to expand...
all those requests are already running, they would just have to display the data. it wouldnt require any additional costs lol
 
nightbloom said:
all those requests are already running, they would just have to display the data. it wouldnt require any additional costs lol
Click to expand...
Those calls are not running. The data is just being logged to the database. An additional call for each metric would be required and that gets computationally intensive the more data you're trying to display for a report.
 
i want to vote for mindark to give us the source code so we know exactly everything in advance without doing any research, test, investment, work, etc.
 
Transparency is actually required in some countries and will be further required to continue to operate.

There's a difference between being transparent about rakes vs. drops and from where. But see, contrarians know this, but just rather be dense.

And no, "keep depositing and you will get it". Avoid this advice. It is false. They simply won't.
 
I have been treating it as it is for some time now, a piece of shit casino. End of discussion.
 
Jhereg said:
MA currently has a built in distribution function that applies multipliers to returns in order to create a casino-like mechanism within Entropia. This has been the reality for the game ever since the birth of Planet Calypso.

One main reason for having this type of system is promote player activity (hits provide a gambling-like aspect to the game that results in dopamine and the need to continue the activity). Whether EU qualifies as casino gambling is not the topic of this post however, but is an important question for MA to tackle for the safety and survival of the game.

The second reason, which I think is just as if not more problematic, is that this allows MA to hide actual player costs to play, i.e. MA's rake. Recently there has been regulations that force casinos and video games to post odds/EVs of their games publicly. Casinos that are properly regulated are made to be transparent about EVs to their players. Yet EU still is not transparent about actual player costs.

Consider a mental experiment: Would EU work if the multiplier system is taken away, and you get exactly what your expected value is for each mob? Yes it would, but MA would be forced to display to the player what their cost to play is.

Whatever the reason is for MA to continue to hide their fee/rake from the individual player, I question whether this obfuscation is ethical.

Some possible solutions would be to display expected value to individual players/MA's rake, or just remove the multiplier system altogether.
Click to expand...

I have always been of the opinion that we do build-up a personal damage bank (via hunting) which is converted to ped at some point. Over the years I played it often felt like any triggers to empty that bank were 'manually' triggered. Makes sense how they can set you on below cost returns and release a stack of peds at some point.

I felt my personal damage bank (if it did exist) starting dropped on shared mobs. I was never quite sure if that meant the 'entire' loot was from my bank, or simply the amount of loot I received was part of my bank build.

I started to get very paranoid about it to be honest... to the point I wondered if a balancing manager had the power to empty (zero out) my built-up damage bank under the hood, if they had the hump with me. We can get very tuned in to how the system behaves over time, and if it doesn't feel right.... it probably isn't right.

That aside it's pretty obvious MA would move the goal posts with efficient weapons. How they wrap up returns has likely changed alot regardless what you're running. Perception rules here. Hence why I don't see huge value in a 350k ped gun over a 5k ped gun. But that's me, I'm not after a fight.

As long as you're having fun and enjoying it, keep shooting.

Rick.
 
The Great Adventurer said:
Don't make me pull an Elon, buy the company and release all the dirty secrets!
Click to expand...

You could buy enough shares on the publically traded firm (MA), to demand a seat on the board I guess.

I suspect your entire net worth, is fully invested in game though. What a nice chap. 🤣
 
I think what is missing from the picture drawn above is that this game is really played on the market. What makes this difficult is that you're forced to compete with participants who don't think economically, at least not in regards to their activity within the game. That a casino-like structure is a core mechanism doesn't make it a "proper" casino imo, since that's only part of what it means to exist here.

Instead of a casino, you can also call it a simulation of nature, where the same thing happens at the microscopic level: countless individual events, collisions, interactions each with a random chance to turn out one way or another, but which collectively exhibit a statistical behaviour which reliably produces the laws of physics we can observe on the macroscopic level. I would imagine that the name "Entropia" has something to do with this conception.

Whether any of this matters if MA were challenged by authorities or otherwise, I don't know. They already have gone through some such procedures. One of these days, it may mean the sudden end of it all. Bureaucracy is stubbornly ignorant of intricate systems.

Edit: This doesn't mean that I'm unsympathetic to calls for more transparency. I just think we don't -- we shouldn't! -- really want it thrown under the bus of casino legislation. This wouldn't do it justice.
 
The Great Adventurer said:
MindArk has ALL the statistics available...

Your loot distribution per mob per maturity.
Hit rate per weapon per mob per maturity.
Your hit rate on minerals per finder with amp or without.
Your overall success rate crafting...
Your Markup Purchase vs Markup sold totals...

The issue is likely costs associated with running all those requests to the database. Added computational costs mean more rake needed to pay for them.

Catch-22 situation while MindArk remains under this business model.
Click to expand...
Yet I can buy any tycoon type game on the market, such as say rollercoaster tycoon and it has absolutely no issues calculating profit and loss on every ride with absolute ease over millions of virtual riders. Including how virtual hotdogs I sold.🤣 The data exists for sure in micro detail, probably can tune a mob or player return on the fly instantly with easy.
 
RickEngland said:
Yet I can buy any tycoon type game on the market, such as say rollercoaster tycoon and it has absolutely no issues calculating profit and loss on every ride with absolute ease over millions of virtual riders. Including how virtual hotdogs I sold.🤣 The data exists for sure in micro detail, probably can tune a mob or player return on the fly instantly with easy.
Click to expand...
This is past performance at every turn, of course this can be calculated and could as well in Entropia. Whether this is an indicator of what to expect for your next move, depends on the underlying system. Some games may be made that way. In the real world there is no connection, hence the investor's mantra: Past performance is no indication of future results.
 
sorinel89 said:
I have been treating it as it is for some time now, a piece of shit casino. End of discussion.
Click to expand...

Give us some arguments why you call it casino.
 
I remember reading that Entropia has been checked by european regulators and they did not qualify it as a casino. One key difference here is that in a casino you actually own the chips, like physically.

It would be nice, however, to have some more indepth avatar stats available, at least on the website next to the "my items". Imagine logging into EL and under you globals in every profession it would indicate you return % as well, monthly and overall, as well as a total figure for all the TT you cycled and how much you got back. That would be cool.

As for future returns projection, expected returns, idk how they could manage that since the loot is dynamic, some days it's is good, sometimes it's bad or just meh. If you miss the good loot window one week it's not an issue, you can make up for it later, but what if you (not you) stopped playing after a bad run, say 80% or even less? Or do something extremely risky and fail? Then what? What if the guy doesn't want to play anymore and starts demanding his expected returns?

They did provide some numbers for hunting some years ago, could be outdated by now, idk.
 
I wouldn't be as interested if there were no multipliers, but what holds me back is not only how much it costs to play at certain levels and frequency, is how volatile and low it continues to be.
In my humble opinion one ideal would be that you ALMOST always, with "normal" activity get back whatever % return they claim.
So you "always" get say 95% unless you do things like use items you are way below the skill level or craft on max quantity when you are lvl 1 etc. Then multipliers may occur to take you to 100% or 105%, with MA making most of their money from decay, auction fees, etc.
That still may not be exciting enough, but I imagine how many new players come in, drop 50 bucks and after playing a few hours have 25 or 30 left and go 'f-this!" because modern economy people can't afford that in general.
Hard to compete with pay $60 for a live service game that you own and gets updated for years or never costs you another dime vs. deposit $60 a month to play 6-10 hours before you are broke.
 
DavinFelth said:
That still may not be exciting enough, but I imagine how many new players come in, drop 50 bucks and after playing a few hours have 25 or 30 left and go 'f-this!" because modern economy people can't afford that in general.
Hard to compete with pay $60 for a live service game that you own and gets updated for years or never costs you another dime vs. deposit $60 a month to play 6-10 hours before you are broke.
Click to expand...

You’re forgetting a new player comes in buys starter pack and has 400something Ped left in ammo to shoot through a barbarella. I’m guessing it takes a damn long time to cycle that through a barbarella.

I’m sure someone knows how long it is to cycle 100peds through barbarella.
 
@ zho
As for player costs/ rake. I thought your loot chart for expected returns kind of determined the expected outcomes. Which I will say looks like a really good chart with actual good info on it. Im not sure why you are asking this question to be honest. For the most part I find almost all your posts informative. This one is confusing.
 
thee pepe said:
You’re forgetting a new player comes in buys starter pack and has 400something Ped left in ammo to shoot through a barbarella. I’m guessing it takes a damn long time to cycle that through a barbarella.

I’m sure someone knows how long it is to cycle 100peds through barbarella.
Click to expand...
surprisingly not that long, I can easily cycle over 200p a day hunting with the barbarella
 
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