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Some lessons to be taken away from the recent official field chip fiasco...

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John B Knight

John B Knight

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John Black Knight
Please add your constructive ideas how Mindark can improve the system to reduce the risk of potential 'fraud' or the appearance of it - to keep the perception of a fair system as high as possible.

Here is some ideas:

There is no need for official avatar items to be tradeable, make them avatar bound.

If there is actually a reason to have official items that can be passed around between different official avatars of planet partners then why do they have to consume a ressource that is available to players - you can issue the item you can issue a ressource that can only come in 'issued' form directly from mindark and not from the ingame economy (eg. dont use light mind essence or similar).
Mindark also can make sure that all official items use a required profession only availabe to official avatars and are therefor unuseable for players who can not obtain the official profession.
Mindark can ensure that official items can not give any skillgains, why should they ?
Mindark can ensure that official items dont take loot/item drops out of the life system, there is no need for this in fact it shifts the balance and what can drop, when it can drop and where it can drop and directly interferes with players who actually plan their hunting and aim to predict where hunting will yield best prospects.
Im sure you can monitor what players are looting for every mob, there is no need to 'test' with an official imbalanced gun combination that players can not use anyway.
Mindark can ensure that each use of an official item sents a system message that is flagged as 'official' and therefor easily traceable accross the universe with user and timestamp/location.
This message does not have to be visible to players, its ment for the database to keep official avatar actions transparent.

Now to the things that i hope mindark will not do and to which you can add as well:
Please dont let these issues be a reason to cut down on communication or official/player/planetpartner interaction - some of the organized events by official avatars in game have been amazing and are always something special, they make people talk and word of mouth still remains the strongest form of advertisement for entropia universe.
 
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A simple timer could perhaps be set as the item is handed to the player. The item then auto returns to MA/PP once timer ends. This could be a few hours for a specific event or maybe a day, with re-issue if needed where weekend events happen.
They could also be planet bound.
 
Good points John, and I will add that in a RCE game like this, the very same existence of such items can undermine the trust in the game, if not handled transparently.

We are all aware of past alleged malpractices, where "friends" down the road were getting "timely tips" and other similar urban legends about "inner circles" and what not.

The problem with these "super" items is even higher though, because how will we ever know how many are actually in game, and who's using them? Imagine a "Marco" type gun inadvertently lent for "help with events"! We can't simply rely on the investigative initiatives of players to prove and disclose each abuse. For each case caught, there might be hundreds on-going.

In truth, we need a clear statement from MA about their policies concerning the creation and handling of extraordinary items. In an ideal world, even maintain a public database of those items, at least those in the hands of non-MA staff, i.e. PP devs, which MA after all can't directly control. Trust is sadly in very short supply and similar clarifications can go a long way to rebuild it. Until the next scandal, of course.
 
Given that MA can print, er, spawn as much ammo as it wants, there's no need for official items to have out-of-line efficiency/economy.

The prototype chip has 1300+ heal/PEC, at least five times that of a mod fap. If it had heal/PEC of a trade terminal Vivo (around 10), people would think twice before using it.
 
Official items should have no decay and no ammo cost, giving no skill and also no loot at all.

Also, since official avatars are already marked (that yellow star over their head) they should be the only type of player able to use them.
 
Remove all the damn 'official' avatars and replace them all with 'official npc mobs'... something similar to the creature control capsules... DO THIS FOR EVERY DAMN AVATAR THAT ALL PLANET PARTNERS AND MINDARK HAVE CONTROL OVER.... Get rid of the 'official items' so that there's no issue... the mob controls should handle it all as far as attack and defense help goes, etc. Far too long have Planet Partner and Mindark hidden and not so hidden avatars and items been impacting the economy...

Monria is always doing events with all those creature control things... and many planets support those 'field trips' with creature controlled event mobs, etc... that should be the way all planet avatars and events work.. with a few tweaks.
 
Take all the official items out of the game.
 
Angel O2 Mercer said:
Also, since official avatars are already marked (that yellow star over their head) they should be the only type of player able to use them.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly, all MA officials and PP officials are (or should be) "marked" in some way in the database. Make it so they are the only ones that can hold/see/use this type of items.
 
It just seems to me silly that these chips give any skill at all. What is the need for that?
 
Angel O2 Mercer said:
Official items should have no decay and no ammo cost, giving no skill and also no loot at all.

Also, since official avatars are already marked (that yellow star over their head) they should be the only type of player able to use them.
Click to expand...

Makes sense that any official item has no skill gain, and perhaps something like 500k skills in that profession to use as a safety net.... so they can’t be used by any normal player
 
Alainax said:
It just seems to me silly that these chips give any skill at all. What is the need for that?
Click to expand...

I suspect it's as simple as that introducing a "no-skill-gain" stat on items would be an additional feature that they've never seen the purpose of implementing. And there would be no purpose, had such items not somehow fallen into non-official hands.
 
Great post, John.

A question it brings up is:

* The Mindark official advisers you see in game also have their 'unofficial old avatars or new ones ' they use, are they able to use these tools with or trade to their non-official avatars?

* When they are no longer an "Official" MA or Calypso avatar or other PP, do they return such items or what is that protocol? ( I would hate to these items are just floating around )

* Is this just planet specific with tradable "official" items ( Arkadia ) and do other planets have theirs locked to that avatar?
 
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Of course after that they're going to make this kind of item untradable, but that's not really the problem, or rather it's only one problem among many...

There's cheating of all kinds. More and more. Why ?
Because people are feeling the impunity.

Collusion, hunt-bot, Sleip-hunt, aim-bot in PvP, cheat radar, I've even seen recently that people can move around in PvP faster than with TP-chip but without TP-chip..
And I'm sure I'm forgetting many more here.


What MA has to do is extremely simple:

1/ Fight ACTIVELY against any kind of cheating.
2/ Really severely punish cheaters.


There are rules, which every player ACCEPTS at each connection.
Anyone who breaks any of these rules must be BANNED.
END OF STORY.

When people will realize that a lot of players have been banned for the slightest rule violation (and it doesn't matter if they are big depositors or not, if they played for 15 years or 6 months, everyone must be equal regarding the rules).
Then no doubt people will think twice before cheating... :wise:
 
I don't think it matters, MA doesn't care and nothing will really change.

Still have the lag and infrastructure problems introduced by recent VU - any other MMO would have fixed by now b/c they would have been hemorrhaging players. Still have annoying red text everywhere that everyone complains about but would be trivial to remove. Still have broken promises, incomplete systems, no communication, and what can only be described as severe apathy from MA. Things that would have killed any other game... yet here we are.

Problem is the only thing players do here is come to the forums and cry their heads off about shit, but never actually vote with their wallets.

EU is like that bad takeout restaurant that is utter garbage but it's the only one open at 3am so they don't have to be good. As long as they keep getting that steady crowd of drunks after the club closes, they are in the green and don't have to do anything to improve.

So what if one or two pissed off players leaves? It's never anybody important. You think MA cares if someone midlevel player who depos a few hundred or even thousand a year runs off? Fuck no.

Open question to any of the big depositors (I mean the whales, not the "investors") -- has this "fiasco" changed your deposit habits in any way?

*crickets*
Won't get an answer b/c they are too busy burning paper on EPIV to come read dumb shit on the forums.
 
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