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Info: Semai's Analysis - Semi Annual Report January -June 2010

I share DoubleWolf's arguments but this is nothing new. I have raised this several times, long time ago... people have been withdrawing before...

Player retention has never been a big aim for MA... Hop on, deposit and do whatever you want.

Problem is that people don't want to deposit 50 USD and play one evening and be left with nothing.

If you can play any other MMORPG for much less, then that is a problem.

That does not mean that it needs to contradict the RCE concept. If you want to spend 10000 that's ok but there needs to be a certain "fun factor" and progress left playing with 10 USD... and that has simply gone.

The thing is that the game can not live with only exclusive high depositers players. What generates income is not 1000 people depositing 1000 USD but 1 000 000 players depositing 50 USD... And people are only prepared to pay 50 USD if they see that this allows them to have FUN !

A game is not a hardship replication of RL. We come here to be "entertained", not to struggle. So it does not matter how hard the game is, how "challenging" the game is... if you can't have fun anymore, other than sweating and shooting daikibas... then you simply get bored as you don't progress.

A customer who's desinterested will not sell the game to his friends... would you recommend such a game ?

There have been efforts to make the introduction to the game easier for new players, these are good steps in the right direction. But MA and FPC have to think further.

What happens when a player deposits 10 USD for a start. For someone who is new to a game. 10 USD is a lot of bucks... If that money is gone in no time... that is discouraging. It's not an incentive to make me stick around and to deposit another 10 USD, is it ?

The cost of this game is simply to high for what you get... it's nothing new.

Then there is progression ingame. I have said again and again, the game needs to be adjusted "upwards". The game has a population of mobs from 1 HP to 500 HP (relative example NOT real). Instead of making the players progress and develop and instead of introducing new mobs with 1000 HP and better armour and better guns, we have just been nerfing the existing span of 1 HP to 500 HP mobs. That means the more skills we cumulate ingame, the harder it becomes to move up as the Best skilled player is still stuck in the economic framework for 1-500 HP mobs... That is counterproductive.... There is no scope for growth and progression. Visible progress becomes less and less and there are no new aims and goals to aspire to.

Take my Avatar for example. I know that with my gear and my skills and in team i can hunt every mob ingame somehow. I have no incentive to do any skilling anymore as my skills move at snailspace. And even if I buy skills, what is it gonna get me ? Other than a small increase in firepower ? I have no incentive to deposit to skill...

The funny thing is that it's not so much only about the money for a proportion of the players. I could well deposit 1000 USD if I wanted to... but what's the point ??? I see no benefit ...

What makes me sad that it's just like playing the same old tune all the time over and over again. I have been preaching the same stuff 2 years ago, before it all went into decline... and now I see that MA is struggling and all I can think of are the same arguments as before...

I really hope that maybe one day FPC or MA will have a crisis meeting and discuss some of this... what we are writing here is not bullXXX !!! It's recommendations, it's player's opinions...

Just maybe try to listen.... listening to customers is worth millions !!!

And the most dramatic thing is that all the people here love this game and all of us are happy to provide feedback and ideas and hints and help and support and still, nobody is listening to us because Mr Timkrans who is a great computer gamer seems to understand the gaming market dynamics better than we do...

Why doesnt Marco just take some of the feedback on this forum and puts it on MR Timkrans desk ? It wouldn't be the worst idea...
 
GradenFoss said:
Analysis seems to be missing out on following statement: »Forecast for Second Year of 2010 The trend with decreasing net contributions has been broken for the continuous operations during the third quarter. For the third quarter, the forecast amounts to approximately 13 million SEK. The profit for the coming six months is expected to be better than the previous ones.«
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because lots of people deposited to buy the wheeled vehicles and again for the vtols? As that covers most of the quarter.

May be thats why they're concentrating on new features rather than bringing back the old ones. New features get people depositing whereas some of the old features wouldn't.
 
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I 100% agree on the loots being 95% of the issue atm. I drop $50 in the other day came back with well less than 1/2 that after 1 hunt. Who wants to spend $25 per hunt as a full loss? I do get a gain here and their but minimal gains at that just enough to feed a bit of the next hunt. You will probably start seeing some of my better gear for sale at twin mall floor 2 shop #3.
 
What i am wondering about is if the planet partners have or will have any option to choice "loot strategy" on their own planet. MA controls the overall econonmy of the planets, but it would be a good idea to give the planets the ability to set their own avarage cost/hour for the players. In the end we are now the customers of FPC and Rocktropia, should they not have the abilty to decide how much their customers should pay for the gameing time?

MA could have a "standard" avarage cost and each planet partner could then adjust it for their planet. Lets say they choice 25 % of the standard avarage cost, the loot/return will be adjusted to give an avarage cost/hour to that level, but at the same time the skill and attribute gains are lowered with the same amount, because otherwise it would give a benefit that would destroy the balance of the econmy. They should also have the option to select how many and how big globals/hofs the planet should have, of cource with some limits to avoid planets being to much "gambling".

With options like this we could have the possibilty to test diffrent planets with diffrent loot set up and select the one we like best.
 
billairboy said:
What i am wondering about is if the planet partners have or will have any option to choice "loot strategy" on their own planet. MA controls the overall econonmy of the planets, but it would be a good idea to give the planets the ability to set their own avarage cost/hour for the players. In the end we are now the customers of FPC and Rocktropia, should they not have the abilty to decide how much their customers should pay for the gameing time?

MA could have a "standard" avarage cost and each planet partner could then adjust it for their planet. Lets say they choice 25 % of the standard avarage cost, the loot/return will be adjusted to give an avarage cost/hour to that level, but at the same time the skill and attribute gains are lowered with the same amount, because otherwise it would give a benefit that would destroy the balance of the econmy. They should also have the option to select how many and how big globals/hofs the planet should have, of cource with some limits to avoid planets being to much "gambling".

With options like this we could have the possibilty to test diffrent planets with diffrent loot set up and select the one we like best.
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Well that is an interesting question but I doubt that this is possible. I think the balance mechanics are one for all... Everything works on an income basis for MA which is a percentage. I think the planets are just competing by story, environment and content. The loot and economy are one...
 
One way that it could be done is to completely isolate the economy on that planet and not allow any items or skills to transfer to it from the others.

Why anyone from the other planets would go there though is another question. If it made EU were more enjoyable then it would be far more compeling then just deposits lasting longer. But again your running into the situation where one planet and its players being treated differently to the others.

Certainly mistakes have been made in the past regarding the skill, mob and loot nerfing but it's whether or not MA learns from the results is anyones guess.
 
AJack10600 said:
I share DoubleWolf's arguments but this is nothing new. I have raised this several times, long time ago... people have been withdrawing before...

Player retention has never been a big aim for MA... Hop on, deposit and do whatever you want.
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Totally agree with you here and i have also been preaching the same darn thing for YEARS but as usuall as you say MR timkrans knows best... eeer ya right.

I have said it time and time again how this game could become a lot better but MA has only ears for their own words.

Oh well, i'm starting my own game company so hopefully in a couple of years we can hope i made a ton of cash and i'll make a new PROPER RCE, WITH a funfactor :)
 
Some bits of new info but nothing new overall. Not all platform systems are back and functional yet(expected to be ready this year) and there`s still 2 planets to be launched by the end of the year. Time to ripe the investment rewards is not yet upon us thus checking their annual or quarterly reports is not relevant at this juncture.
Cyrene should have a big impact on earnings once it goes live(this could be a big game changer). I expect same thing to happen after Calypso is completely taken over by the new owner. Rocktropia is still in infancy but could be a success story in few years. Next Island could have a more immediate success with their planned professional marketing service.

The next 1-2 years should also bring even more planets to sustain the viability of the platform. This planet MJ got a very big media attention, bigger than anything Entropia has managed so far. This is a very positive sign as we should expect some real growth in the near future.

*If Neverdie made any big withdrawal was for sole purpose to pump it in his dev studio which sends it back as investment into the platform basically which is good.
 
This thread has got me thinking a little more about the reasoning behind some of Mindark's decisions.

I think a lot of it comes down to server space. If you figure there's maybe 1 million accounts created at this point, I highly doubt that the Calypso servers could handle all those accounts at the same time. If the loot system was more favorable, and there were more players capable of profiting off of other participants, it's not likely that anyone would ever leave. The system would continue to grow and there wouldn't be room for everyone. They may have changed the loot system to keep some players away and reduce the server load. For the time being, they may have found a loot setting that keeps the active player base at a desired level. Something where they can collect a lot of money from a small player base by appealing to the gamblers.

Well if server load is a problem, it would make it tough to really grow without more servers. This game is different from any other MMO as the entire world plays on the same virtual server. But each actual server is a different piece of land, so to add more servers would mean adding more land. And they would need funding for these new server areas. In comes the idea for new planets, and requiring a buy-in from the planet partners. With the profit sharing model that encourages them to try hard to get players to come to their particular planet, it should do a reasonable job of spreading out the player base across all servers.

So the fact that they are losing money right now may very well have been part of the plan, or at least expected at this stage of the game as the planet partners start coming on line. It'll be curious to see what happens once we have a few planets up and running strong and seeing some real competition start happening. Mindark might be waiting for this as well, so they can change the loot to a more favorable system that will attract and keep lots of players.

I'm trying to remain positive about this... ;)
 
We only have to worry if MA runs out of credit.

We'll really now the state of the situation in Feb / Mar 2011 when the two other planets have launched and have had time to attract new players. If MA's financials are still the same then we'll see MA taken some action.
 
It doesn't matter how fantastic future cash flows are if you run out of cash on the way there. I sure want to believe MA has the potential to make good bucks from their planet partner but as it stands, we are years into the planning and we have 2 planets.... i.e. one new one which is clearly not bringing in the big cash flow.

So as much as i want to believe in the future, I know how long everything MA do is taking and I just hope they got the breath to keep it going. From what MA are doing, they also seem to be knowing ( or hoping ) that some future cash will come in at some point and they want to bridge the cash flow hole in the medium term. Let's see if it works out...
 
AJack10600 said:
(...)
A game is not a hardship replication of RL. We come here to be "entertained", not to struggle. So it does not matter how hard the game is, how "challenging" the game is... if you can't have fun anymore, other than sweating and shooting daikibas... then you simply get bored as you don't progress.
(...)
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What he says!
 
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ehh if i owned the joint i would drop a lot of different one off item and instead of 10 dollar flat withdrawal fee i would set fee as a percentage of the amount withdrawn like 3%- or 5% as long as the rare was kept in game it cost me only the 100 bucks to draw it and spec it but as soon as someone sells and withdraws profit i make my cut that way.. i profit from tt and markup.. everyone wins this way till the plug is pulled
 
TheOneOmega said:
I wonder if there is anything we can do to help, specifically those of us who are not in a position where it would be wise to deposit. Perhaps a representative from MA could post some ideas in this thread for ways we could help bring in new players.
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I think NOT creating such threads might be a pretty good start actually.
Well personaly I think that ND just did a shitty job in creating his planets since he isn't even connected to that kind of business. Now once the professionals take over with their planets such as Cyrene or Arkadia the playerbase and thus income is indeed going to increase because those planets will actually be worth creating an account for.
 
Anyone watch the television lately? Wow commercials on multiple channels in all time slots. If MA wants to survive they better start marketing!!! Maybe buy some spots during the Texas hold'em shows. Lmao
 
XeroX2 said:
I think NOT creating such threads might be a pretty good start actually.
Well personaly I think that ND just did a shitty job in creating his planets since he isn't even connected to that kind of business. Now once the professionals take over with their planets such as Cyrene or Arkadia the playerbase and thus income is indeed going to increase because those planets will actually be worth creating an account for.
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Your so f'n right. Arkadia is going to rock. its going to get a lot of people.
 
I think both cryene and arkadia are going to be good cool. Have you seen the verichle transport at cryene . One thing i dont understand is the MA and FPC and next island and rocktropia relationship what rights do FPC have with the engine and platform Same as rocktropia and next island if some one can put it in detail for me i could understand better. The buyout or what ever it is with FPC and MA
 
They have exactly the same rights as the other PP's.

They get to use it to operate a planet and to use all of the features the engine allows. They do not have the right to the codebase and they do not have the right to go it alone using the engine.
 
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