Suggestion: Open letter to MindArk: Fix Entropia Universe

Azgarot

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Attere Azgarot Dominatum
I am writing this as a last resort and I hope MindArk representatives present here on PCF don’t just dismiss it or take it lightly because of my lack of privileges. This comes from a player who is invested in your game in every way imaginable and who wants to see Entropia Universe thrive and live up to see its 40th anniversary.

MindArk has been deliberately changing Entropia Universe during the last few years in a way that suits their immediate financial goals without any regard to the long term state of the game and the economy in it. These decisions brought Entropia to the place where it is today and quite frankly, I don't believe Entropia was ever in a worse situation than it is now. The current state of the game is a direct consequence of MindArk's lack of vision for the game, lack of fundamental understanding of what a sandbox is, complete disregard for the wellbeing of the game, its playerbase and more than anything else, greed. I don't know how else to explain how we got here but that greed has played a major part in it. There is a thin line between ambition and greed. Below is the breakdown of what, in my eyes, showed that the driving force for MindArk has been greed over the course of the last few years.


ALL OF BAD CHOICES & DECISIONS:

- DECISION #1: Introduction of the infamous (or famous) interact action button, commonly known as “FFF” in our community;

MindArk realized that by adding the interact action to Entropia Universe it would make one of the most popular professions, hunting, extremely easy to automate. It doesn’t require any scripting knowledge to automate, all it takes is just a keyboard or a mouse that supports macros. This was done so that the turnover in hunting would increase exponentially and since MindArk makes profit from TT losses of the players, this worked very well for them. This was essentially enabling and encouraging botting in their own game for financial gain BUT at the expense of the entire community as this drove all markups to the ground. Every single game on planet Earth is trying to battle the bots because of what botting does to the economy of a game, yet MindArk does the opposite. They turn a blind eye to botting, not a single macro user was banned and we are at a point where very, very, VERY few people are not macro users so banning them at this point would be a devastating blow to the community. They must have known exactly how this will play out and even if they didn’t, welcome to 2025th, all that you need to do today is to just take a mere glance at the Auction House. Instead of improving the game and growing the playerbase, MindArk took the easy way out and gave our same old small playerbase a way to grind even while we sleep, work, go on a vacation, you name it. For them, it makes zero difference whether there is a 100 players cycling 60k today or one single player. A cut is a cut for them but to get 100 players, you must offer some quality. It was easier to just allow botting to the existing playerbase and be done with it. Worst of all is the fact that they intentionally put the decent player in a disadvantageous position unless they jumped on the bot train themselves, thus forcing the majority of players to start participating.

Botting alone is the direct cause of why all average markups are extremely low.

I believe that you at MindArk saw this coming/happening, this was probably a huge part of the reason why you introduced the Nanocubes and the Explosive Projectile blueprints into the game. Your best hope was for there to be more gamblers than there were hunting botters in Entropia. Sadly, today, no amount of gamblers can consume the amount of materials being accumulated through botting, MindArk.

MindArk, if you want Entropia to have any future, you need to put an end to this. At all costs, no middle ground, no bullshit excuses, this must end. For Christ's sake, find a way to clean it up.

We (the players) just want the game back on track. If you continue with all this, you will lose your source of income and as a consequence of your greed and ignorance, we will lose the game we love for good.


- DECISION #2: Introduction of one deed after the other;

Ever since Calypso Land Deeds were introduced more than a decade ago, we have seen more and more deeds enter the game. These were nothing but a quick cash grab for MindArk. Just another lazy way to make some quick cash instead of trying to improve their game and as a result of that improvement, increase the playerbase.

EDIT (02/16/2025): A step in the right direction was taken in this regard, more on this below. Thank you, MindArk.


- DECISION #3:
Turning the game into a tokenfest;

This goes hand in hand with my first point: botting. Once you have allowed bots, having token pull based events only made sense. This way, the army of bots has something to turn the macro on for and everything was fine until it wasn’t. The macro grinding has gone too far and way too much gear entered the economy way too fast. You had to keep restocking to keep people botting but that bubble has burst. Gear prices dropped extremely quickly and caused huge distrust from the players towards the game, MindArk and MindArk's ability to run this game for much longer.

There are ways to have tokens in the game, more on this later but the way you did it, you only did it for your own personal gain with complete disregard for the economy of the game and the playerbase.

EDIT (03/04/2025): A step in the right direction was taken in this regard, more on this below. Thank you, MindArk.

- DECISION #4: Resource Mayhem;

Introducing the Resource Mayhem event after the TWEN hype died down was a desperate move of the company to once again incite cycling, make as much money off the TT losses as quickly as possible and give people hope that there is still markup to be had in the game. Whoever came up with the idea to basically hand out an unlimited amount (figuratively speaking) of Mayhem Tokens through this new Resource Mayhem should never be tasked with any innovation that requires balancing in the future. If anything, this event should have had its own tokens, I genuinely don’t understand how on Earth did anyone at MindArk believe that implementing this event the way it was implemented would make sense? The only thing that it did is it oversaturated the already oversaturated (by botting) market with even more tokens. Once you realized what you did, you started increasing the prices of the items in the Mayhem Vendor. Some of the items' prices were increased without the items ever even being restocked. The next desperate move was introducing that the Mayhem limited items. That was a disgrace, another desperate band-aid attempt to fix the mess, as if this could ever use up the insane amount of tokens you introduced to the game. This did nothing but bring the value of existing unlimited items further down which in result caused even more distrust.

EDIT (03/04/2025): A step in the right direction was taken in this regard, more on this below. Thank you, MindArk.

- DECISION #5:
Space Mining resources;

This was the most recent one, yet another cash grab. This was implemented with a new looter profession behind it, meaning that the TT losses will be very high for the foreseeable future. The lure to have people start grinding space mining was needed and you used rare ores and gems from planetside for this. The choice of ores and gems looted through space mining resulted in planetside mining and crafting being nothing but collateral damage. Instead of developing meaningful content for the space resources, MindArk implemented this horrible mining system in space that completely destroyed planetside mining. Planetside mining is now an obsolete system and only a moron would even bother trying to mine anywhere but in space. Rare ores from mining and gems from crafting were placed in Tailings which are a common drop in space. You recycle them into these valuable resources that planetside miners and crafters would have to grind and cycle for weeks and months to accumulate anywhere near the amount that a player with TT gear can grind in one day in space. Yet another source of markup completely destroyed and not only that but planetside mining required miners to know their profession well in order to be able to target the said resources. Crafters had to craft high TT consuming blueprints to hope to get an Opal, Emerald, Ruby, Diamond.

Another piece of content that was made almost 100% redundant with the introduction of gems in Tailings is RDI. Guys, RDI! This incredibly well done instance, possibly the best piece of content in the entire game was made redundant. Why would anyone run RDI now?

MindArk, where does this stop? Does it ever? Does anyone in the company know what they are doing? Or are you doing this intentionally?


SOLUTIONS TO THE DECISIONS YOU HAVE MADE IN THE PAST:

- DECISION #1: Introduction of the infamous (or famous) interact action button, commonly known as “FFF” in our community;

This is probably the most important one and most complicated one. This alone is the reason for the average markup in the game being at an all-time low. You must stop this because if you ever intend to grow this game and its playerbase, botting has to stop immediately. I would never advise anyone to touch Entropia Universe before this is put to an end. Botting must be an offense that gets people banned. Whether you can or can not ban people who botted in the past is beyond me. The problem is that 95% of the top players will end up being banned in this scenario, I don’t know if Entropia could recover from this but if you believe that it could, pull the trigger. The reason why doing this is problematic is because you condoned it, MindArk, you allowed it and encouraged it, made it more convenient with new content that you introduced. To ban everyone now would be nothing short of entrapment. What must be done however is the following:

  • Remove the interact action from the game, majority of the people who say that they use it while watching Netflix are just being dishonest about it. 99.9999% of them are lying and you know it;
  • Make a formal announcement that anyone caught doing any sort of automated gameplay, be it through macros or another software will be banned and as of that moment start enforcing the new policy indiscriminately. Anyone caught doing it, should get a ban. After a couple of bans, botting will stop altogether because the moment the community understands that you are serious about your rules, people simply won't risk their gear and avatars;
  • The ban structure doesn’t have to be an immediate permanent ban. You can set it up any way you like, for example: 1st offense – 1 month hold on the account, 2nd offense - three months hold on the account and 3rd offense – permanent ban. Records must be kept, of course, to be able to punish repetitive abusive behavior.

I can already see the arguments of certain people how this would be unfair to the new players, how these old players already have an advantage over them, an advantage that they obtained through botting. There are several ways to fix this, all of them will be unpopular in certain demographics but you should choose your poison and fix your mess:

  • Take retroactive actions and reset the skills and Codex progress of every botter to zero – this will be very popular with the people inclined to witch hunts, yet it will probably drive a lot of big players away from the game and with good reason. You put them in this situation, MindArk, you allowed and encouraged them to bot for years. Regardless, it’s their knowledge that will allow them to quickly rise to the top again. This is what most people don’t understand, skills are a minor part of the equation, it’s the knowledge that matters more;
  • Take no retroactive actions – this will be very unpopular with the people inclined to witch hunts but the markups will rise and hunting will make sense for the first time in a very long time. The game will be in a much better state for everyone regardless.

If you care for Entropia Universe, if you have any desire for it to live on and to continue to grow, botting must stop. Tell this to your board of directors, they may not be happy with the significant temporary decrease in income but if you do this, the markups will go up and activity in general will increase and so will the playerbase and the overall deposits into the game. At this point, new players will without a doubt have a better experience and a possibility to progress and grow their avatars at a much lower cost. The biggest problem the economy has right now is the oversupply of materials produced by botting. Shortly after, a redistribution of oils and materials should be done to fit the mob level / difficulty. This would ensure that each level of player (medium, low, high) will have their own source of markup. Right now, we have certain mobs that drop up to five different oil types. This is just a tiny reason in a sea of reasons why you need a balancing manager!

The opposite of this is do nothing and watch Entropia die. It’s as simple as that. You completely messed up the game and the economy for quick and/or easy cash.

Everything I say after this point, I will say with a premise that you intend to do the only sensible thing to do: REMOVE BOTTING PERMANENTLY.


- DECISION #2:
Introduction of one deed after the other;

The damage is done on this one, there is nothing you can do to fix it other than buying back the deeds which we all know will never happen. Increasing the playerbase will in turn increase the total turnover across the universe and may, some day, justify the existence of these deeds.

EDIT (02/16/2025): You have proven me wrong on this one, by introducing the new AI NPCs and their missions, you brought a lot of traction to some of the areas covered by the deeds which will result in higher deed payouts. Kudos to you for this, MindArk. This is one of those situations where you do something great and you make me believe, at least for a moment, that you will get things right. Keep up the good work, Entropia was built on an amazing premise, only you can put things in the the right order. You do that and the players will be there.


- DECISION #3: Turning the game into a tokenfest;

I am not saying delete the Mayhem vendor or delete people’s Mayhem tokens but the format of Mayhem should change for good. You designed it for bots, you didn’t design it for players. As long as you continue to run it as is, it will not work. Mayhem should be re-invented in the form of introducing brand new tokens for the future Mayhem event and a brand new vendor associated with it. But first, you must deplete the economy of existing tokens. You can do this in variety of different ways, some of which I posted in a different thread that was created by Image ZZ Marshall here on PCF. There were many suggestions in that thread and you can draw inspiration from a number of them but the point is that the market should be depleted of the current tokens. In short, depleting the economy of the existing tokens shouldn't mean some trivial compensation in the form of pills only or something like that, you know exactly how many tokens are in circulation, come up with creative and worthwhile items that can be pulled so that the old tokens can be used up before you take a new direction with Mayhem. Anything short of that will only cause an even greater distrust from the playerbase. A wise man once said, trust is the main currency in Entropia (pun intended).

On the subject of the new format for Mayhem, you have different options:
  • Create a brand new engaging instance;
Something like RDI or Spina (of course, adjust the difficulty for team vs solo etc.);
  • Keep the current instance;
However, since botting is no longer allowed and people have real lives, make it manageable for a human being. Instead of having Merry Mayhem that runs for a month 24/7 and then starts next year, if you want to have 30 days of 24/7 grind in the instance make it so that each avatar has a total limit of 720 hours in the instance but keep the instance available for three months. This way, people can do it by grinding 8 hours a day for three months, the most dedicated surely will and they actually deserve the biggest rewards anyway. The rest will definitely have enough time to finish Redulite or whatever missions they go after. Do the same for the other Mayhems (Easter and Halloween).

Note (edit): Several people seem to have understood this as a limitation of Mayhem playtime. Mayhem is a time-limited event as it is, the instance is only available for X amount of days. This is not imposing any additional limitations. In other words, right now, we have a Merry Mayhem event that runs for X amount of days, thus this is the time limit for it. What I am suggesting here is to have that same time limit in terms of how much time a player can spend in the instance (playtime), not changed, exactly the same. The only difference is that the instance is available three times longer than the playtime limit. This is to ensure that human beings can use the allotted time, the way it is now, only the bots are taking full advantage of Mayhem events. Humans can't grind 24/7 for a month.
  • Do something else entirely, be creative;
Just keep the economy in mind and the fact that it’s human beings playing the game, not your standard macro user grinder that can grind even when they are current 100 kilometers away from their PC.

New Mayhem Vendor – I would suggest several hard rules on this one to ensure long term transparency:
  • Decide the item stats before introducing the items to the vendor and don’t change them afterwards - do your due diligence, never repeat the Swine TWEN situation;
  • Decide the amount of each specific item that you want to enter the economy through the vendor – once the stock has been emptied, never restock the said item again;
  • Introduce new items slowly and carefully over time as the playerbase increases and the demand for such items is actually there – you have the statistics, you can easily determine this;
  • Have some kind of a token sink in the form of pills as we had in the past, just introduce other pills such as skill gain, 5 Mg and 15 Mg ones, new buff pills, (L) buff items, (L) items with reasonable durability and not copies of the UL items from the vendor etc.
This will ensure that there is no broken promises because the only thing that is promised is what is in the vendor. Nothing more, nothing less. So if you choose to never restock that vendor again, it is what it is, nobody can be feel cheated because of it.

One more thing, Mayhem is a hunters’ event, keep it so, you have a way to create something similar to this for crafters and miners, you called it Resource Mayhem, you just executed it poorly beyond measure. The Mayhem vendor should have hunting gear, no mining, no crafting, no spaceships, no nothing, just hunting. It can be any and all hunting gear but don’t mix apples and oranges. Crafters and miners CAN NOT compete with hunters here. You will just put them in a position where they must buy their BiS items from the hunters because they will never be able to obtain them through competition.

EDIT (04/03/2025): The recent announcement (LINK) about changing the format of Easter Mayhem this year gives me great hope that Entropia may finally be moving into a better direction. This is not only significant for Mayhem itself as one of the most popular events in the game but this also mitigates some of the damage from rampant botting. If MindArk were to continue to move the endgame in this direction, we could arrive to a point where botting can be part of our game, albeit useful for levelling only while content that is actually worthwhile must be played manually. This would be a possible state of equilibrium and an ideal scenario in the long run so, A HUGE THANK YOU, MINDARK!

- DECISION #4:
Resource Mayhem;

Just never do anything so stupid again! To this day, I can’t believe you put Mayhem Tokens in this event. This event could have been great but it should have been a crafter / miner event in terms of items that can be pulled from the associated vendor. This means that you should either further refine the event in such a way that miners could be competitive with crafters with the turn-ins or create another version specifically for miners. The associated vendor should have only items for the respective profession. Consider how to limit the possible number of turn-ins and whether to limit it or not. Again, consider the economy not your desire to make a quick buck. This solves the issue of the resource mayhem. Bear in mind, use the same principles for the vendor and item restocks in this.

EDIT (04/03/2025):
The announcement mentioned above (LINK) also addressed the Resource Mayhem and related issue so once again, I can only salute you for the change, MindArk. Thank you!

DECISION #5:
Space Mining resources;

This is mining, in space, but mining. Why on Earth did you implement it the way you did? This should be an extension of the mining profession. You created a completely unnecessary system that is more hunting than mining. On top of that, you screwed up the economy completely, I truly hope you can see that. Mining was the last straw in this game, you broke hunting by enabling and encouraging botting, now every single miner has been screwed. First and foremost, rare resources were made too easy to obtain, you damaged the economy in a tremendous way. Second of all, gems have absolutely no place being in the loot table of Tailings. You must change these things as soon as humanly possible. I don’t understand how can you be so detached from the game that you own and run?

If you took your game as a whole into consideration, you never would have come up with rare planetside ores and gems in Tailings. Please cap the rare ores and remove gems from this process entirely. I am not demanding this, I am asking you for the sake of the game, consider this please, don't be stubborn. RDI has been made redundant because of this. Instead of getting rid of RDI in such a disgraceful way, you should consider building on it and expanding it. You created something amazing, it deserves more attention, polishing and development. Look at what you did to the markups of gems (the pictures were taken on 02/16/2025):

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Don't neglect this, act on this, we can all make mistakes when we make changes but show us that you are not oblivious to the damage this has done to the game. Show us that you can do better with space mining. Gems were never obtainable through mining, no reason for them to be obtainable now. This is a crafter's playfield, not a miner's, space or otherwise.

This is what mining and space mining should and could be:

Adding a mining looter profession was a good idea (not three different ones (ore, energy matter, treasure) but one is enough for mining);

Mining looter should influence every type of mining in Entropia Universe, planetside and space. Make it so that the skills have a more significant overlap between the two and just add more skills for space.
  • Adding Codex was a good idea, add it for planetside mining as well, you can do it per resource;
  • Completely re-work space mining loot tables. Keep shrapnel and introduce new resources found exclusively in space and POSSIBLY even keep some of the planetside fillers in the asteroids;
Make sure these new resources are not TT food like a lot of the resources from other planets. You are MindArk, you own Entropia Universe and you own Calypso. Add these resources to a new series of blueprints for all professions (new series of guns (like ArMatrix with +10% to +15% efficiency), different mining amps, craftable limited armors (with certain buffs) and so on) and most importantly include them in every single blueprint for the space mining equipment. On top of that, rework the blueprints for all existing space-related things and include these resources. They are mined in space, they should absolutely be used in space. Create new guns for our spaceships and have those blueprints also use these resources.
  • Rework the Tailings loot table urgently;
Add Scottium to the loot table and a range of other rare and uncommon space-exclusive ores and cap them! Don’t mix apples and oranges, planetside rare resources and gems have no reason to be in this loot table. You messed up, the sooner this mess is cleaned up, the better.


I could spend days just talking about all the things that could be improved, that were done bad in the past and so on but just handling these five things is a HUGE start and will get the game fundamentally back on track. You fix these issues (not even necessarily with the methods I suggested here, it's your game, I am sure you have a much better view of the whole picture than a player) and you will see nothing but praise, growth and overall positive effect on the game. You ignore this plea and sadly, I am sure that our beloved game will continue to sink until it dies. It really is just a matter of time, look at the number of liquidation threads on PCF and look at the prices. Everyone is running for the gates, wake up. It’s not hard, just starting doing things right and with each step, things will improve.

I am having a really hard time justifying playing Entropia unless these issues are addressed. Most of all, the botting. I am sure I am not alone in this sentiment. I don’t mean this as a threat to MindArk, this is my personal choice so I don’t want anyone in the comments to take it as such. However, the fact remains, actions must be taken to fix Entropia and these issues that I am describing here are some fundamental issues that can't be fixed by adding “immersive NPCs” or even Unreal Engine 5. Neither of these things will fix the core problems that we are facing today because and only you, MindArk, can fix this. I would rather play a bot-free Cry Engine Entropia forever than a bot-infested Unreal Engine 5 Entropia.


TLDR


  • Remove botting from Entropia – BIGGEST FOR THE ECONOMY;
  • Rework Mayhem and be more transparent with items in the vendor;
  • Rework Resource Mayhem and run it as a different event entirely, unrelated to the hunting Mayhem;
  • Fix space mining and remove rare planetside ores and gems that come through crafting from it – DO THIS, PLEASE! WHEN I WAS COMPETING IN THE PROSPECTOR RUSH EVENT, I DIDN'T SIGN UP TO BE COMPLICIT IN BUTCHERING MINING IN ENTROPIA!


EDIT (02/16/2025):
* Reformatted the post and removed all (or at least most) offensive language from the it. The point of this thread is not to bash MindArk, though some bashing is surely deserved, but to try and hopefully steer this amazing game in a better direction. In addition to that, I personally don't want this thread to be read by possible newcomers and have them believe that Entropia is not worth their time because this game has so much promise, just MindArk really need to get their act together;

* Added additional information on the immersive AI NPCs and how they had a positive effect on the game overall as well as one of the issues brought up in this thread (deeds);

* Added additional information on how much space mining damaged mining, crafting and RDI.


EDIT (04/03/2025):
* Added additional information regarding issues #3 and #4 in the thread. In my honest opinion, MindArk deserved nothing but praise for the changes they are making. I strongly feel that this should be recognized and applauded.
 
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first! I didn't have to read every word to know I agree. It does seem you are mostly focused on anti-botting and so some of the other points may get overshadowed.
One of my main concerns is MU it just keeps getting lower and lower. I also am bothered by the continued addition of more forms of deeds. They seem like obvious ped grabs and money sinks - fine if you want to invest in them, but I don't see the positive return to the quality of the game. Initial form of CLD was supposed to go into ads and other promotion to increase players and I never saw that happen or if it did then it had poor effect.
I appreciate your passion and feedback- dunno what else to say - I feel like we can be blue in the face until they actually listen.
 
I don know man, I like where the game is now, weapons and items are becoming more and more affordable, we have more content than ever, etc. Furthermore, you and you alone are responsible for your investment no matter how big or small, if the game takes a turn that you didn't expect and it affects prices and markups, then its not MA fault, it is your own. They are trying to make it affordable for every player and also to avoid bankrupting themselves, thats how you make it to 40th aniversary. Mindark, just stay on course, if a handful of players cry out it doesn't mean every player is unhappy.
 
I agree with almost everything.
If I wanted a chance of 96% returns with no chance of making it back by playing with knowledge of the game I would log into LeoVegas and play slots.

I actually just logged in and checked auction and then dropped 20 probes. Now im gonna make a withdrawal because i fail to see the point in filling my storage with more 101-103% stuff. Spacemining is a good addition to the game but is also without hope with current outcome of TT stuff.

I hope this thread gets somee MA attention

Cheers
 
I don know man, I like where the game is now, weapons and items are becoming more and more affordable, we have more content than ever, etc. Furthermore, you and you alone are responsible for your investment no matter how big or small, if the game takes a turn that you didn't expect and it affects prices and markups, then its not MA fault, it is your own. They are trying to make it affordable for every player and also to avoid bankrupting themselves, thats how you make it to 40th aniversary. Mindark, just stay on course, if a handful of players cry out it doesn't mean every player is unhappy.
Well, im not one of the unhappy ones but if the Mindark's course is that more and more materials are nanofood then it gets a bit boring. Doesn't it?
 
I don know man, I like where the game is now, weapons and items are becoming more and more affordable, we have more content than ever, etc. Furthermore, you and you alone are responsible for your investment no matter how big or small, if the game takes a turn that you didn't expect and it affects prices and markups, then its not MA fault, it is your own. They are trying to make it affordable for every player and also to avoid bankrupting themselves, thats how you make it to 40th aniversary. Mindark, just stay on course, if a handful of players cry out it doesn't mean every player is unhappy.
When items did have a high price, people complain about is not so cheap to own something. MA offer a very easy way to flood the market and make them cheap.
Still people dont jump to buy and use them because :
1 - is cheap but there is no MU left to fight for it.
2 - not that is way more low now but some will love to have them for free.

Now my questios is ; will you buy and farm like before is there is no MU and everything is put in nanocube?
Do you enjoy to spend your time and money only for nanocube?
 
it will not happen.
1. FFF produces income, instances on various planet are made for this. instead vegataion should not block avatars so even more cycle is done
2. space mining is an issue to the extend that crafters dont need to craft amps as before (we already lost most of armatrix market)
3. crafting is reduced to enhaners so pyrite is farmed and also outputs, dragging mu to low levels
4. AFK crafting (you forgot it in the list) sinks all if there is someone that uses the resources.

as a professional trader i understand MA behaviour

a. seniorage of PEDs is 80m per year and brings 4m eur in profit to the company
b. calypso is company playground so they want to lure players on the zone, sacrificing planet partners
c. "investment" in your avatar is a LIE, a big one, because every action that destroy item value is impacting to the people that "invested"

Effects already seen
1. high end players "rent" items because the market value is 50% of "utility value" if properly used
2. land areas have less and less return (well people is greedy and charge 5% tax tso it is correct that players dont want to loose their ass and move to map spawns, BIG selling areas is quite representative
3. TJ selling all enhaners actitivity was representative of "end of COVID" effect and reduced market volumes

the real problem is explained easy on ENTROPIALIFE... too few active players
company now squeezes 2% for activity tax (98% return as per 2017 statistics)
with 10.000 players globaling (double) has same level of profit with 1% tax (99%)
with 20.000 players it would have same return with 99.50%
at those levels just recycle of shrapnels would make ppl game for free and item value rise

company has desperte need of game designers that go beyoond "kill 100 of this 100 of that as a mission.
the "cristalline cave opening" (cyclop depths) was primitive but interesting. imagine it in a world without flying vehicles.
 
first! I didn't have to read every word to know I agree. It does seem you are mostly focused on anti-botting and so some of the other points may get overshadowed.
One of my main concerns is MU it just keeps getting lower and lower. I also am bothered by the continued addition of more forms of deeds. They seem like obvious ped grabs and money sinks - fine if you want to invest in them, but I don't see the positive return to the quality of the game. Initial form of CLD was supposed to go into ads and other promotion to increase players and I never saw that happen or if it did then it had poor effect.
I appreciate your passion and feedback- dunno what else to say - I feel like we can be blue in the face until they actually listen.
I get advertisements for this game on both Reddit and YouTube so they’re trying, player conversion is just extremely difficult when it comes to MMOs.

The main problem with the economy and MU being at an all-time low is a combination of factors, but one that you overlooked is new player retention. The new player experience is beyond terrible, even by niche MMO standards.

I cannot count how many times I've seen players do the new player missions on Caly, run out of ammo midway through, immediately ask "what now?" and having to face the reality that they'll either have to sweat or throw in a couple of bucks.

Other miscellaneous issues I've seen include but are not limited to

- Rookie quitting the game because he kept hitting one game breaking bug after another. Bugged Quest chains, being locked out of logging in completely for days because of the dumbass "protective measures" regarding IP Addresses. QUESTS functioning is the absolute bare minimum of MMO design, mission chains like the Arkadia Beginner quest should not be bugged for months without a fix.

-Rookies wasting time/resources going towards things they can't do (The "Robot Incursion" mission in space is a big one that everyone sees when they leave Calypso), imagine killing Kerbs for the new dailies and then realizing it's impossible to finish until you've played for months minimum lol. Arkadia Dailies are absolutely daunting with the amount of Gallards/Caraboks you have to kill.

-Mentors ghosting after literally the first day 99% of the time, or giving god awful advice like hunting with a Ozpyn BP S1X1 as a brand new player

Mentoring should be reworked but I don't really have enough ideas on how.


Teaching proper resource management in the beginning would work wonders. They tried doing this with the "adaptive AI NPCS" but they still need a LOT of work to be useful.

As much as y'all hate Neverdie, fundamentally giving players some ammo and a gun with the opportunity to "earn 2 PED a day" relatively easily is a step in the right direction.

Thule was a great idea in concept, but it could use a complete revamp that focuses on keeping the player's attention first-and-foremost. Voiced cutscenes for even the first 5-15 minutes would go a long way (PLEASE just hire VAs off Fiver for this, AI voices are the biggest turn off to the average gamer)

Removing auto-tool will NOT fix the bot issues though. If you've seen bots in WoW or FFXIV for instance, they can get very complex. Auto-aim shooting would probably be the easiest thing to program even if they have to do it manually. Every MMO with RMT (even against ToS) has a bot problem and it's a never-ending arms race. Entropia just doesn't have enough players beyond bots/ubers to be sustainable.
 
it will not happen.
1. FFF produces income, instances on various planet are made for this. instead vegataion should not block avatars so even more cycle is done
2. space mining is an issue to the extend that crafters dont need to craft amps as before (we already lost most of armatrix market)
3. crafting is reduced to enhaners so pyrite is farmed and also outputs, dragging mu to low levels
4. AFK crafting (you forgot it in the list) sinks all if there is someone that uses the resources.

as a professional trader i understand MA behaviour

a. seniorage of PEDs is 80m per year and brings 4m eur in profit to the company
b. calypso is company playground so they want to lure players on the zone, sacrificing planet partners
c. "investment" in your avatar is a LIE, a big one, because every action that destroy item value is impacting to the people that "invested"

Effects already seen
1. high end players "rent" items because the market value is 50% of "utility value" if properly used
2. land areas have less and less return (well people is greedy and charge 5% tax tso it is correct that players dont want to loose their ass and move to map spawns, BIG selling areas is quite representative
3. TJ selling all enhaners actitivity was representative of "end of COVID" effect and reduced market volumes

the real problem is explained easy on ENTROPIALIFE... too few active players
company now squeezes 2% for activity tax (98% return as per 2017 statistics)
with 10.000 players globaling (double) has same level of profit with 1% tax (99%)
with 20.000 players it would have same return with 99.50%
at those levels just recycle of shrapnels would make ppl game for free and item value rise

company has desperte need of game designers that go beyoond "kill 100 of this 100 of that as a mission.
the "cristalline cave opening" (cyclop depths) was primitive but interesting. imagine it in a world without flying vehicles.
Completely agree with what you said, especially the game designer and land area parts.

Among countless system reworks, I've love to see a rework to land areas that can make events more dynamic and interesting for everyone involved. They're so static and boring that most players don't even bother hosting them, let alone attending.
 
We are doomed. Only thing that can maybe help is that UE5 update and lots of new players.
But who with clear mind want play completely boring game, compete with bots 24/7, dump XYZ thousands of USD here and start chasing other players with 10-20 years head start? All of that for not enough MU to at least even out, let alone profit in foreseeable future? Not many I think. At least equipment prices went down, but it's still pretty expensive for what you get. Or better, for what you don't get (MU).
For me interesting part of Entropia was always profit opportunity, while I don't see it, I don't want spend time, let alone money here. I think I'm not the only one.

Now even mining is destroyed. Was always boring, but there was profit. Now you can stand still on one spot in your rocket and shoot pieces of rock with low looter level. Awesome, that's so creative content and it's so much fun. I think this will bring tens of thousands of new players that we desperately need, surely, lol.

Game needs huge overhaul, but with MA in charge it's sci-fi, they can't even roll simple updates without problems.
Bubble created in COVID and fueled with TWEN is busting and that can also be the end.
From the bright side, it's really good for me, at least I don't even think about depositing more 😅
 
I can agree to a lot, but also see that some of your conclusions are a bit too narrow minded.

Remove botting, yes quite obvious one. But how do you find them? If it had been easy it had already been done.
Seen several ideas from people here and there and those aren't realistic to use for 100% monitoring entire
player base, most are based on their perception of people who might use it, and not from a game mechanics p.o.v
Most are based on an emotional personal p.o.v and not from a pure technical p.o.v.
If they gonna police this to 100% then they must be able to find everyone doing it.
Imagine if they ban a person who doesn't use bots but is banned due to wrong conclusion, but let a high profile players stay,
that do use botting. If that comes out imagine the shitstorm that will follow, and even trust will drop even more.

The real problem isn't MA here, it's that part of player base who don't get the EULA.
No matter what MA do they will always find a new solution to take an unfair advantage.
I know I'm a bit lazy and group these people in the category "narcissistic c***s", all aren't but I can almost
garantuee they have a bit too many narcissistic traits though. One is the inability to stick to rules, always bend them
for their advantage, no matter how obvious the rule is.
Looking at EULA its super easy to understand the "No cheat" section:
If a macro/feature/software isn't provided by MA it isn't allowed to be used!

Here comes another problem with this, we who have physical issues/problems due to whatever reason.
My is quite "simple" I have worn out shoulders due to work. F helps out quite a lot, but it doesn't automate
my gameplay more than reducing amount key strokes, still combine F with several keys, e.g extra keys on mouse
to be able to switch between gear all the time.

I played with striking keys for +12yrs in every single action, and it isn't good. Only choice I had when it were
as worst was to reduce gameplay. So I'm glad I have F today, but for me it doesn't increase the amount of
materials and resources I get per hour, and I know others are in same position.
So removing F will mostly impact on those who do follow rules and so on, and not so much for the other,
since they will find a new solution and keep going with "business as usual".

As a company they have to find solutions for those who have physical disadvantages that are more permanently,
and that isn't easy since some of those who don't have them will "exploit" this for their advantage.
 
TLDR

  • Remove botting from Entropia – BIGGEST FOR THE ECONOMY;
I liked your idea of adding a time limit (total instance time) for mayhems for each player but giving them 3 months to complete it. This should be most beneficial for players who don't bot and it will set a cap on amount of tokens/boxes people can get.

You have some good ideas in here but the thing is MA needs botting to stay afloat, they wouldn't have added it otherwise. And the game is too niche and barely gets any new players that stay long enough to make an impact. These new immersive daily npcs is a great step towards improving player retention, if they can refine it some more to cater to all player levels/bankroll.

The biggest problem with botting is that there's no CAP on it. The universal loot table hasn't been balanced to handle botting. For example a player can go grind 24/7 on molochs and get 20k PED spleen in few days.

I've said in the past, they need to increase the % ratio of shrapnel we get from mobs and lower the amount of oils/misc (especially on instance mobs). Higher shrapnel ratio will make it easier to keep hunting for players with lower bankroll, giving them time to build up a stack of oils and allowing them to keep hunting until they can sell.

They also need to add more resource sink for using oils/nanocube/output (so there's always demand).

They should get rid of the old armatrix guns and create new 75%-80% eff (L) craftable gear to increase demand. This will be nice for lower bankroll players who play casually.

Now there's another step that could be done. If they add a time limit for every player (how long they can hunt total before starting getting side effects, debuffs). This would lower some of the side effects botting has on the economy even further.

Example of side effects:
Side effects can be at random one of these, every hour after you been hunting over the the time limit.

Skill debuff for hunting related skills (after certain amount of time, you can't eat skill pills and every hour you will get 10% less skill gain, even up to 90% less skill gain).

Crit % debuff, you will get a debuff -X% crit - affecting your dpp (increasing cost to kill)

HP % debuff, you will get progressively capped on your hp. (making it more likely you'll die).

Avatar critical % hit from mobs debuff: A debuff that will make your avatar take more crits % from mobs.

Finally, as last resort. Debuff for changing your hit rate with your weapon causing you to MISS (losing ped). This last one will for certain make most botters log off and come back when their "time" has been replenished.

For example in some games they have a "STAMINA" bar which has 60 hours, the only way it can replenish is if you log out. After certain amount of hours online you will start to get less exp (skill gain). There's also a buff of exp during the first 2 hours.

In MA's case they could make the beds we currently have and allow us to "sleep" on them in order to more quickly recover our "stamina bar". Adding new beds which will further increase the recovery time and maybe even add some other buffs for the first few hours of when you log in. Creating demand for crafting the beds. These should of course decay per use but be good enough to be worth it.

Logging out/sleeping on bed doesn't have to be the only to replace the stamina bar. They could also make it replenish the "stamina bar" by doing other activities, like mining/crafting/space mining (encouraging players to do more besides hunting).
 
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I think botting wont work if:
-> remove Operate action (next target), you have to manually target the mob ( click and
-> replace Auto Loot buff with other buff to compensate
 
I think botting wont work if:
-> remove Operate action (next target), you have to manually target the mob ( click and
-> replace Auto Loot buff with other buff to compensate
Why they should replace autoloot buffs?
It will still loot for you, so you don't have to click for it.
Yes, value will go down, but that's the story of most items anyways.
 
If you gonna come up with ideas to improve game don't use so much punishments, create ideas to make
people actually play the game instead.
E.g instances should be more like Aakas, with a fixed amount of mobs and you have to move and progress.
 
I can agree to a lot, but also see that some of your conclusions are a bit too narrow minded.

Remove botting, yes quite obvious one. But how do you find them? If it had been easy it had already been done.

I don't know what your professional background is but technically speaking, there are ways to separate the bots from genuine players with 100% certainty. This is not even debatable. The problem is not the technical solution, the problem is that MindArk sees bots as a positive thing for their income and they allow and encourage them to stay.

If you gonna come up with ideas to improve game don't use so much punishments, create ideas to make
people actually play the game instead.
E.g instances should be more like Aakas, with a fixed amount of mobs and you have to move and progress.

I agree with you on the Aakas part but I completely disagree with you regarding the rules. Would you apply the same logic to !!!! and murder in real life? Instead of having punishments, let's make it more logistically difficult for the rapist and/or murderer to commit the crimes?

Side note:
Something that I have read time and again on PCF regarding botting, people seem to justify MindArk's tolerance to it and encouraging it by saying MindArk needs the income. This is bullshit, if they can't keep the game afloat without enabling abuse, maybe they should consider selling the company to someone more competent both in terms of development and marketing. Again, we can use a similar analogy to the above: let's pardon the rapist or the murderer, they had to do it, they have urges. Or maybe a robber who maimed an old woman on the street, he needed the money, let's let him off the hook. No, this is bullshit!

I don know man, I like where the game is now, weapons and items are becoming more and more affordable, we have more content than ever, etc. Furthermore, you and you alone are responsible for your investment no matter how big or small, if the game takes a turn that you didn't expect and it affects prices and markups, then its not MA fault, it is your own. They are trying to make it affordable for every player and also to avoid bankrupting themselves, thats how you make it to 40th aniversary. Mindark, just stay on course, if a handful of players cry out it doesn't mean every player is unhappy.

Let me ask you, would you be willing to list your setup here for us? If the prices are so great right now, you must already have an amazing setup that you use as a tool to generate markup and profit in this game. And if not, how low would be acceptable for you to buy yourself that shiny Mod-Nano or maybe a LP-120 Perfected? And how big will your bankroll be for your new toy? You do understand that the loot swings these weapons have are nor for the faint of heart, right?

What exactly do you like about the game right now?
- Is it the fact that even Spleen Oil is often converted to Nanocubes and sold at ~100.5%?
- Is it that Heart Oil has reached an all time low at 102%?
- Is it that Brain Oil can consistently be bought at 115%?
- Is it maybe that mining is now being royally fucked and that the markups have been cut in half in less than two weeks since the Space Mining update? MindArk added rare planetside resources to it and even gems on top of it all.

Also, you don't get to put words in my mouth, of course I am responsible for my time and money investment, I am not "crying" about my gear prices as you so nicely put it in your reply, my gear is not for sale... I am complaining about them doing everything in their power to drag the average markup of stackable items to the ground. They literally have control over it, it's not supply and demand, they control the supply, you don't even need to be smart to understand this. So many people complaining about the new players not having any markup in their loot, well how could they have markup? A bot can farm in an hour an amount that dozens of noobs using TT weapons couldn't in five hours.

I do agree with you that we have more content than ever, that the game is in a position where it could be amazing. I believe that RDI being further developed would be great for Entropia, that the Spina Queen was a great addition but despite all of this, botting is a huge problem and it needs to be addressed.

Besides, what you don't seem to be able to comprehend, big part of the reason why the prices of items skyrocketed (beside Covid) was the fact that people were willing to pay a shitload for these items to be able to bot with them. If you goal is to bring the item prices down further, than removing bots will surely work in your favor, not the other way around.
 
The game has been killing its playerbase for greed.. purposely or not it's a fact. With top end hunting gear most can't break even.. theyre killing miners now.. its wild. Love how so many players who got most of their skills botting call for it to end. 🤣
 
A lot of valid points.

1.
One important point we cannot ignore; Mayhem tokens are basically the efforts and investments of players.
You could re-name Mayhem tokens to "The efforts and Investments of Players". Some players have been grinding these for years. Some spent 10K $. Some much more.

Whatever changes you do to the Mayhem format/vendor, you need to take into account that Tokens are essentially a loan. A loan from the players, to Mindark. For that reason, you cannot simply "deplete" Mayhem tokens. Offering Token-owners a handful of (L) guns and a bunch of pills is going to make half of the remaining player-base quit the game.

There is an expression: A card laid, is a card played.
MA offered people those tokens. And people have cycled and paid to acquire said tokens.

I agree - Re-structure Mayhems, offer a larger variety of items, introduce new vendors, introduce new Resource Mayhem Vendors, or Space Vendors.
But - Let people pull. Its their efforts, and their tokens.

2.

Having exclusive hunting-gear as rewards in mining events is not a bad idea. It will stimulate players to engage in several
professions, rather than segmenting the game.
 
Well, im not one of the unhappy ones but if the Mindark's course is that more and more materials are nanofood then it gets a bit boring. Doesn't it?

I beg to differ, for the real lovers of the game, the ones that don't mind gambling a bit, it won't matter. Lets just hope there is more of them that we can imagine so the game carries on. Myself included.😂
 
When items did have a high price, people complain about is not so cheap to own something. MA offer a very easy way to flood the market and make them cheap.
Still people dont jump to buy and use them because :
1 - is cheap but there is no MU left to fight for it.
2 - not that is way more low now but some will love to have them for free.

Now my questios is ; will you buy and farm like before is there is no MU and everything is put in nanocube?
Do you enjoy to spend your time and money only for nanocube?

My guy, my only purposes in this game are as follows: gamble, make friends and sustain those friendships, skill my avatar until there is no more skill to get, enjoy the thrill of such a vast and diverse universe. I was never here for the profit, hence I don't care about where MU goes. 👻
 
I don't know what your professional background is but technically speaking, there are ways to separate the bots from genuine players with 100% certainty. This is not even debatable. The problem is not the technical solution, the problem is that MindArk sees bots as a positive thing for their income and they allow and encourage them to stay.
What I do and what I know are different things, and this goes for everyone. Non are their work, it's all about capacity of understanding
things that matter.
If we turn it around, everyone doing mistakes in code, graphics and so on are all working professionaly, for me it just shows one
should never make conclusions just based on what people do at their work.
As a hobby I can mention I used to create 3D, playing around with different game dev tools like Unreal, CE2Editor, Unity and
also creating maps for e.g Battlefield 1942 and others games in that series. 1942 was most fun though.

Luckily I have relatives and friends who work professionaly with game dev so when I don't know something about certain
topics or details I annoy them with my questions. :D
So when you say it's 100% possible to find them I wonder what knowledge, and more importantly understanding do you have
about this?
You obviously don't know what som game devs comes up with in their research department, they create their own bots and so on
just to be able to detect others. So the 100% certainty can be ditched from a general p.o.v imo, in specific it could be different though.

I agree with you on the Aakas part but I completely disagree with you regarding the rules. Would you apply the same logic to !!!! and murder in real life? Instead of having punishments, let's make it more logistically difficult for the rapist and/or murderer to commit the crimes?
When I talk about punishments in solutions its about things like limit time to play, limit skillgain and so on.
Solutions should be to have a game play that forces you to be active, where bots will have it really hard time to do the job.
Sadly when there is a potential to get RL money from something same type of individuals shows up, only looking
for personal gains and low insterest in the product itself.

Please don't use that narcissistic bullshit tactic to try give more power in your answer, thats just an illusion that works in your head.
For me that have study narcissism enough that just made me red flag you as person that might have these traits when using rapists
and murderers as an analogy.
You used another tactic earlier also, when you said its not debatable, that is a tactic they use when they don't like
what they see or hear and just want their opinion and no one elses. I really hope though that you are not a narcissistic individual.
Side note:
Something that I have read time and again on PCF regarding botting, people seem to justify MindArk's tolerance to it and encouraging it by saying MindArk needs the income. This is bullshit, if they can't keep the game afloat without enabling abuse, maybe they should consider selling the company to someone more competent both in terms of development and marketing. Again, we can use a similar analogy to the above: let's pardon the rapist or the murderer, they had to do it, they have urges. Or maybe a robber who maimed an old woman on the street, he needed the money, let's let him off the hook. No, this is bullshit!
I agree on the bullshit about certain excuses about the income, for me its quite simple, when the value of a deposit have
reached the avatar, MA have already got their RL income/revenue. What happens ingame is to create a need for deposits,
but it doesn't create a income from what happens ingame.
There might be a loss though if they are able to withdraw what they have gained from unrealistic time of interactions,
and this is where they should react and do a bit more about it.

I guess we all use a really bad practice to use our own thoughts and fantasies as fact occasionly, but some do this all the
time, and really don't care about the facts either. This is the reason we see so much shit everwhere, too often also.
Saying MA do this and that based on this is just ridicoulus imo, but understandable when people are upset and frustrated,
and need to have a rant. :D
No need to make a big thing out of it, all we have to do is to ask ourselves "Is this based on someone elses facts
or is it just my thoughts?" and be honest to ourselves if the answer is our own thoughts, and stop there and then
try to find facts about it. Can be hard though since our emotions might have other ideas. ;)

No we can't use that analogy, it doesn't work, due to reason already mentioned.
Better to use an anology that fits the subject and that is not abstract, better to go for an anology that fits the subject
and that can also be expanded into what we want to be changed or fixed.
 
well..
maybe increase tt return , of course that they will make less..bu at this point it´s alarming that players with 90+eff gear, insane dps and dpp are not cycling at all.
if you cant raise mu , at least raise tt, so people want and can still play.
make 1 time a year untradable itens , something like cyrene backpack and monria horns, not guns or tools, maybe some clothing with buffs, or a armour , that takes 1 year per piece, might not even need much grind , but a 7 years "commitment", mostly think longterm and retention.
the loyalty mining program:
mine 2k peds lyst
mine 2k peds nac
etc etc etc
recive MLP Shirt 2025 - 5% skilgain , untradable
 
Well playerbase can always stage a couple of ingame walks as protests maybe that will make MA wake up but i doubt it . I believe in Entropia and the game community but it takes for MA to strech an arm to the playerbase maybe not everything will happen and the game wont change all of a sudden but they need to show to the playerbase some steps are being taken . Instead of keeping silent!
 
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well..
maybe increase tt return , of course that they will make less..bu at this point it´s alarming that players with 90+eff gear, insane dps and dpp are not cycling at all.
if you cant raise mu , at least raise tt, so people want and can still play.
make 1 time a year untradable itens , something like cyrene backpack and monria horns, not guns or tools, maybe some clothing with buffs, or a armour , that takes 1 year per piece, might not even need much grind , but a 7 years "commitment", mostly think longterm and retention.
the loyalty mining program:
mine 2k peds lyst
mine 2k peds nac
etc etc etc
recive MLP Shirt 2025 - 5% skilgain , untradable
1. What about mining missions

Weekly and monthly missions on mining.


2. Make options to clothes that you can buy buffs on them with different recources.

You could build it in a way like DNA's are made.

Insert example shirt or shoes to the refiner and add different compinations of recources to find right formula to make buffs.
They could be permanent buffs or limited or both.

That way would be fun to try to find new stuff etc.

Add 10k lyst, 10k chalmon, 10k sweat, 10k nova and get 5 agility points more on your shirt or something like this heheh.
 
Excellent read and agree. Mindark has very blatantly been about short term gains for the last couple of years and me as well as many others have stated it over and over again. The writing was on the wall when they announced that there would be at least 1 new deed every year moving forward.
 
EU is an "economic PVP" disguised with activities.
once a player cycles more than 300.000 ped per month it is perfectly visible that randomnes does not exist but return are mean reverting.
i come from WOW, Thang, D3, Cabal.

ideas to sink are easy.. we have in game code for SI increase of ships....
Want a lore for armor? 1 minute
"RDI Scientist have found a way to increase armor stats, deliver 3 rat tails, 4 rat theet and 1 rat eye to the ratmaster and your piece of armor will increase 1 stat of the desidered stat.
It can also be refined up to Perfected, each of adj, iomp, mod, aug, perf will decrease decay, add avoidance, critical rate, critical damage, decrease critical, block depending on level.... here it is 1 year grinding, just let one piece per week upgrade.. voila 7 weeks, upgrade capability will ahve a "service value".

same for pistols, let them be upgraded in pwoer, same tiers, each increase eff and damage or fire rate (better, so more amps are destroyed).

we have shitty melee items (cleric series, and such, let them be converted and upgrades... i want a "perfected Katsuichi"

add to armatrix craft a random "refinement" bonus, chance to craft mod, aug, perf that have 75/85/95% eff

so much to play with actuals to revive interest.

as per attracting players, well we need a NON GAMBLER service, maybe a planet with a monthly deposit that allow to grind, but profit made on that zone can not be withdrawn, i dont have a clear idea, but i think about some place with a 15 eur per month like WOW where people can skill, get SOULBOUND items that just work on that planetm create a non withdrawal economy of LOCAL resources, 100% return, where friends can "boost" friends,
as you exit the KINDERGARTEN, actual rules apply....
 
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