To MindArk, a review of Summer Mayhem 2018.

Captain Jack

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The words I originally were going to write to MindArk were much more brief and profane. I opted to write a thoughtful review of the event instead in hopes that it may actually benefit the company and the community in so doing.

Lets start with the positive.

Economic boost:
The last two Mayhem events have caused the mobs to only drop shrapnel, output components, and the rare Mayhem item or ESI. This is great! People are spending LOADS of money on hunting these mobs, and consequently the markup of all crafting ingredients rises to profitable levels for the suppliers. Miners win, hunters going out for crafting ingredients win (look at Spleen oil), and savvy crafters win. I think having this significant economic boost quarterly will be highly beneficial for the community overall.

Revenue for the company: A quick glance at the ROI charts from Calypso Land Deeds indicates significantly increased ingame activity on Calypso, and a look at the numbers on EntropiaLife indicates that the increased activity was higher than off-season averages across the universe. This is good, as it provides for the financial stability of the company, and having a quarterly event like this will surely provide a nice boost.


A goal and purpose for the players: The new format for Mayhem rolled out with Easter Mayhem 2018 set a new precedent for the game's most successful event. This format enables nearly all players to have a reasonable shot at winning, and was reciprocated by significant interest and participation across the board. This gives players something to work toward, and a reason to increase in skills and gear. This is a good thing for the game as a whole.


Now lets take a look at what could improve...


Pre-event testing: I cannot overemphasize this one enough. This event was an absolute disaster which could have been effectively prevented by means of adequate testing. Clearly, your testing methods were entirely inadequate for this event. The bugs which made it through your testing processes cost an untold fortune to players across the community in various buffs and markup items which you refused to refund in any way. The timer bug cost me at least 1,000 points throughout my Mayhem, and I'm sure others suffered similarly.
Proposed solution: Develop the instance, complete the testing as best as you can, and then release it to the players for open player testing. Ensure it is very clearly labled as a test event to avoid confusion. Enable all aspects of the event, to include the timer, and allow participants to run the event in it's entirety.
To incentivise testing participation, increase Strongbox drop rates by 50% and all skillgains within the instance by 100%. I believe this would be sufficient incentive for most players to participate.


Communication: Again, this was an absolute disaster. You posted original event dates on the client loader, and then posted updated event dates again to the client loader, and then when your instance was still screwed up, you took the event down again and quietly posted the updated dates on the website and not the client loader. This led to significant confusion throughout the community.
Proposed solution: Conduct all communication regarding the event dates through the client loader as a minimum.


Time table: The original time stated allowed us 11 days to complete the instance, which I already felt was rather short. The updated time allowed was only 9 days. This is an unreasonable amount of time to knock out 20 hours of grinding for any average individual who has a job and a family - or pretty much anything going on in their life outside of Entropia. Ironically, a lot of the people (myself included) you screwed over by this mistake are your biggest depositors - who have the means to make such large deposits because of activities outside the Entropia Universe.
Proposed solution: Give us 2 weeks, minimum, to complete the quarterly events.
As a land area owner, I very well understand the strain it puts on certain individuals who lose the majority of hunting activity due to players opting for the instance rather than average game play. Perhaps you could give LA owners the ability to purchase Strongboxes to drop on their land areas at a nominal price to compensate for the loss of business. Either way, we need more time to complete 20 hours of this event.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.


Very respectfully,


- Captain "Lucky" Jack


Community input is welcome in this thread.
 
You always came whit nice ideas in weekends . I just really hope MA stop listen sweaters and LA owners then changing core mechanics of the game :) cheers

we mid level players suffer enought this year ... let us have some better migration and thats all :)
 
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You always came whit nice ideas in weekends . I just really hope MA stop listen sweaters and LA owners then changing core mechanics of the game :) cheers

we mid level players suffer enought this year ... let us have some better migration and thats all :)

I'm not sure what you're saying mate. Would you mind elaborating?
 
Nicely said Captain Jack. I would say that the Mayhem is very interesting in the current format. Gives me a reason to optimize my equipment.

As a negative i would say that 9 days were extremely short. I can play 1h-2h per weekday, not more. So for 20h, for me, would be necessary 10 weekdays and 2 weekends.

Cheers
 
the only negative thing imo is the m-tokens are earned too slowly. for example someone winnign cat 1 or 2 has to win it like 6 to 10 times to get a decent enough amount of m-tokens to buy anything worthwhile. and then he got 4 to 8 placement tokens as leftover...
id say either increase droprate on mobs or even better up the amount of tokens gained via daily by x3
 
My points were horrible, but my loot was good.
Apart from the 2 restarts my only complaint is the spawning of the boss. Since I usually can't play for long times, I was forced to leave the instance before the boss spawned, therefore missing out on a lot of points!
Imo, the boss spawn counter should not be reset each time you leave the instance.
 
the only negative thing imo is the m-tokens are earned too slowly. for example someone winnign cat 1 or 2 has to win it like 6 to 10 times to get a decent enough amount of m-tokens to buy anything worthwhile. and then he got 4 to 8 placement tokens as leftover...
id say either increase droprate on mobs or even better up the amount of tokens gained via daily by x3

Who the fuck wins cat 1 ten times??? Its like three years between that many events and by then hed prolly be a cat higher or two?? :D

Imo the value in gaining levels is obvious and the reasons for it too
 
Only did practise instance (5-7) and it's the first time since 2.0 intro that i took some enjoyment from this game.

It's been the boxes that made loot acceptable. That's assuming I can get a decent price for them once migration starts.

However I am also a lil bit vary of MA now sort of including/assuming MU in their loot distribution. Don't know how to express this properly but what if they get the drop rate totally mismatched with demand for boxes. If the box price was to drop to 1 or 2 then my loot would be totally shit. If it goes up to 10 i'd make to kick ass profit for the first time.

Shouldn't MA stick to only looking at TT returns? It's a slippery slope no?
 
Who the fuck wins cat 1 ten times??? Its like three years between that many events and by then hed prolly be a cat higher or two?? :D

Imo the value in gaining levels is obvious and the reasons for it too

well i bet there are dozens of people who rather chip out and compete in a lower cat more times as its more affordable for them over time. i was just pointing out the relation between category m-token prizes and possible UL gear reward thats designed for that category.
 
Only did practise instance (5-7) and it's the first time since 2.0 intro that i took some enjoyment from this game.

It's been the boxes that made loot acceptable. That's assuming I can get a decent price for them once migration starts.

However I am also a lil bit vary of MA now sort of including/assuming MU in their loot distribution. Don't know how to express this properly but what if they get the drop rate totally mismatched with demand for boxes. If the box price was to drop to 1 or 2 then my loot would be totally shit. If it goes up to 10 i'd make to kick ass profit for the first time.

Shouldn't MA stick to only looking at TT returns? It's a slippery slope no?

you are assuming that the drop rate changes and with it the price but the amount of boxes you loot would be the same. that cant be. assume you get 5 peds per box now and loot one every 100 peds. if they would be worth 10 peds each it would be most likely that they only drop once every 200 peds. so your overall MU would stay the same.
 
the only negative thing imo is the m-tokens are earned too slowly. for example someone winnign cat 1 or 2 has to win it like 6 to 10 times to get a decent enough amount of m-tokens to buy anything worthwhile. and then he got 4 to 8 placement tokens as leftover...
id say either increase droprate on mobs or even better up the amount of tokens gained via daily by x3

i didn't expect anything else, ppls from cat 1 would like to win at cat 10 weapon :laugh:
 
the only negative thing imo is the m-tokens are earned too slowly. for example someone winnign cat 1 or 2 has to win it like 6 to 10 times to get a decent enough amount of m-tokens to buy anything worthwhile. and then he got 4 to 8 placement tokens as leftover...
id say either increase droprate on mobs or even better up the amount of tokens gained via daily by x3

I think they have done an excellent job with m token distribution. Currently it’s the only thing incentivizing leveling up. Cat 1 rewards less points because you are spending a fraction of the cost of the higher levels. If look at the dps requirements for the cats u can roughly see how much more is being spent in higher cats. In cat 7 the dps is what? 5times cat 1? That’s equates to minimum 5times the amount of peds spent.

Good post jack. Time frame is a little tight I would agree. I have a job. That takes up about 10hrs of my day minimum. Doesn’t leave much time to grind an event. Also I need the job to be able to afford the grind ?

The shrapnel only loot I also agree with, as it is stimulating mu in many other items as ppl grind out the event.

Overall I think ma has actually introduced something good. Now we simply need some fine tuning.
 
I think they have done an excellent job with m token distribution. Currently it’s the only thing incentivizing leveling up. Cat 1 rewards less points because you are spending a fraction of the cost of the higher levels. If look at the dps requirements for the cats u can roughly see how much more is being spent in higher cats. In cat 7 the dps is what? 5times cat 1? That’s equates to minimum 5times the amount of peds spent.

Good post jack. Time frame is a little tight I would agree. I have a job. That takes up about 10hrs of my day minimum. Doesn’t leave much time to grind an event. Also I need the job to be able to afford the grind ?

The shrapnel only loot I also agree with, as it is stimulating mu in many other items as ppl grind out the event.

Overall I think ma has actually introduced something good. Now we simply need some fine tuning.

actually you are making my point.

cat 7 is around 3 times the dps of cat 1 and it rewards 9 times the m-tokens. isnt that a bit unfair?
 
i didn't expect anything else, ppls from cat 1 would like to win at cat 10 weapon :laugh:

its not about a cat 10 weapon. if you wouldve read carefully you wouldve seen it. for example the bc30 is an adequate weapon for a cat 1 winner and costs the equivalent of 13 times cat 1 win. now look up the cost for a cat 10 weapon and the amount rewarded for cat 10 winner. you will see that there is a huge difference thats not fitting the difference in dps.
for example cat 10 rewards 15 times the amount of m-tokens so by logic it would be required to have 15 times the dps which would equate to a (MA) base dps of 510, unamped. show me a weapon thats coming anywhere close to that. even half of that would be insane.
 
Lets start with the positive.

Economic boost:
The last two Mayhem events have caused the mobs to only drop shrapnel, output components, and the rare Mayhem item or ESI. This is great! People are spending LOADS of money on hunting these mobs, and consequently the markup of all crafting ingredients rises to profitable levels for the suppliers. Miners win, hunters going out for crafting ingredients win (look at Spleen oil), and savvy crafters win. I think having this significant economic boost quarterly will be highly beneficial for the community overall.

The spike in Spleen was more likely caused by the introduction of new blueprints (ArMatrix amplifiers) in a line where gizmos already existed. At least it was certainly not a result of supply shortage (look at the volume chart).

No, I like this; but I strongly doubt this is possible on a quarterly basis.
 
actually you are making my point.

cat 7 is around 3 times the dps of cat 1 and it rewards 9 times the m-tokens. isnt that a bit unfair?


I think it’s plenty fair. How much have you spent to reach cat1? How much peds needs to be cycled to reach cat 7?

How much does it cost to buy a weapon for cat 1? What is the cost to buy a weapon for cat 7?

I bet the vivo s10 is more then enough fap for cat 1.

I think it’s fair to say I’ve spent more then 9 times what you have to reach cat 7. Yes or no? Probably more.

Chipping tool says u need 89kped to go from level 1 to 85.
For level 1 to 25 it cost 1300peds.

Looks like I need to spend 90 times as much.
 
Thank you for the feedback! I have forwarded this thread to the dev team, and they are looking into it.

If anyone has any further feedback regarding this event (or Mayhem events in general), please post it in this thread, as we will continue to monitor it.
 
Heya NightHawk!

Post the results! :lolup::lolup::lolup: Taking too long!
 
Thank you for the feedback! I have forwarded this thread to the dev team, and they are looking into it.

If anyone has any further feedback regarding this event (or Mayhem events in general), please post it in this thread, as we will continue to monitor it.

Thank you for forwarding this, inviting further comment, and most importantly, communicating with us! I greatly appreciate it.
 
The words I originally were going to write to MindArk were much more brief and profane. I opted to write a thoughtful review of the event instead in hopes that it may actually benefit the company and the community in so doing.
...

And Then:

Thank you for the feedback! I have forwarded this thread to the dev team, and they are looking into it.

If anyone has any further feedback regarding this event (or Mayhem events in general), please post it in this thread, as we will continue to monitor it.

Well that paid off :)


I went into these events more than any previous mayhem. The practice events though. My skills have me in a trap the level I would have had to compete at would have been a severe waste of my time and money.

I did ok loot-wise when I fought at my competition bracket, but taking something like 1:30 per kill was too much. It's just due to having my highest combat skill being MF which would have been useless, so I couldn't use my pistols in the bracket they would have been appropriate for.

I did a several hours in the practice level below. Certainly the most I've grinded in 2018 and most of 2017. I budgeted a bankroll, cycled it completely 3 or 4 times total, and came within a few ped of breakeven, and I still have a few (less than 10 each) boxes and outputs left.

Fun and profitable (still probably less than 105% after all said) played in 2 practice levels and less than half an hour in the actual competition instance. Maybe 4-6 hours total.

I have also something like 43 m-tokens. I was surprised to get them in the practice instances, a little bit, but I'm ok with that. Since I'm not usually competitive here I'm not sure how some of you might feel, or if you realized/cared that you could farm them at any level for as long as you want in the practice instances.

I mean I know the facts were out there but, if you're trying to get one of the more costly prizes or something there was what, at least two weeks of looting the tokens with no level restrictions even though the event ended up being only 9 days. I'm sure there were players who put that together and used it to augment what they could get with any placement tokens. I didn't realize there was such a curve in the output/token ratio or I might have spent more time in the higher instance.

Anyways I never play in these events, and there no way I could have made the hours on the original schedule. 20 hours in less than 10 days? Congrats to those that had the time and got it done.

I had some fun, I'm glad for the 'extras' this time around. Can't really speak to the competitive stuff but from someone who normally just ignores these events the easy access and extras did bring me to log in, and cycle, more than usual.

The fact that I could grind in an instance that was comfortable/efficient for my actual "daily carry" gear and not just "signed up to lose but maybe get some loot" was nice.
 
My feedback is that the time frame was too short IMO, and too much reliance on 5K pointers to get a top placement. A competition like this should be about player skill and gear, not how lucky they are.

It is also too easy to kill mobs without getting hit at higher level categories with high dps and high range guns, you should not be able to do category 10 in earth shock trooper armour without some decay on it to boost your DPS. Maybe vastly increase the hp at higher categories or increase their move speed by 2x. Guns and buffs should only be half the requirement for top placing, armour and fap should also be required. Maybe also increase the level cap for higher categories or add a category 11, there is a huge difference between level 105 and 225...
 
A competition like this should be about player skill and gear, not how lucky they are.

I totally agree, if, all gear used during event is locked to avatar before event start and cannot be passed around for the entire duration of the event.
How could it work: every player has to "mark" the UL items that will be used during an event, and no other UL items can be used, unless previously marked. All marked gear cannot be traded for the duration of the event. While at it, also restrict pills entirely so that players don't stack the buffs.

Can you imagine UL gear rise to power again? :D
Items would keep their price and some will even increase. How awesome would that be, for all of us??
 
I totally agree, if, all gear used during event is locked to avatar before event start and cannot be passed around for the entire duration of the event.
How could it work: every player has to "mark" the UL items that will be used during an event, and no other UL items can be used, unless previously marked. All marked gear cannot be traded for the duration of the event. While at it, also restrict pills entirely so that players don't stack the buffs.

Can you imagine UL gear rise to power again? :D
Items would keep their price and some will even increase. How awesome would that be, for all of us??

Its a bad ideea. Whats the points of the pills if you cant use them. Nobody forces you to use them or not.
And with the avatar bind item during event (?????). Why?
 
Its a bad ideea. Whats the points of the pills if you cant use them. Nobody forces you to use them or not.
And with the avatar bind item during event (?????). Why?

Well, I was replying to Hijacker27 :)
If the events should be based only on skills and gear with no luck factor invoked (or less luck involved) - they should be about player's skill and gear, they should be about player's gear, not borrowed gear, don't you think? Also, some people were lucky and after re logging managed to stack pills which normally shouldn't stack...
I like using pills, but stacking and re logging to use an exploit was a very bad thing for the easter event. Either have them removed or only allow the 5/10/15 mg ones? :D
 
The random factor makes the entire event fair for everyone wishing to do it. Without the random points, whoever spends the most will win. No casino works that way. Perhaps the random point spread could be looked at, but i suspect that is controlled somewhat in whatever formula is used to assign the points.
 
I totally agree, if, all gear used during event is locked to avatar before event start and cannot be passed around for the entire duration of the event.
How could it work: every player has to "mark" the UL items that will be used during an event, and no other UL items can be used, unless previously marked. All marked gear cannot be traded for the duration of the event. While at it, also restrict pills entirely so that players don't stack the buffs.

Can you imagine UL gear rise to power again? :D
Items would keep their price and some will even increase. How awesome would that be, for all of us??

I totally agree on binding gear. Alot of people want a bigger timeframe. I agree on that too, since most of us need 2 weeks to grind 20 hours.

BUT: What would happen ? Lets say they give the 3 weeks... the Terminator (or equal weapons) would be used by at least 10 people... same in each lower cat with other weapons. That way, place 1 - 10 would go to one gun in the end. Either u have that gun, and would get placement + alot of peds by renting it out. Or you dont own it... then you are screwed.

My opinion is, that the biggest UL gear (or all of it) should be useable by a maximum of two people. This would raise the Value of UL gear, and in addition also the Value of L gear (cause you have a chance on placement again with that)
 
Can you imagine UL gear rise to power again? :D
Items would keep their price and some will even increase. How awesome would that be, for all of us??

I've had access to a confidential analytical report by Uppenbar S.A., a little-known consulting company based on a remote tropical island, that explores this very scenario.

I'm not allowed to quote it literally, but their conclusion was that it would be awesome for potential sellers (of which there are plenty), awful for potential buyers, and not of much importance for everyone else (all five remaining people, that is). For this reason, Uppenbar find the likelihood of this scenario to be e-e-extremely low.
 
All MA need to do now is move migration to instances, and then they can turn off the whole planet completely.;)

MA seem to have taken this bizarre road of not only boxing up items, but boxing up players in boxed up events as well, and now forcing players to hunt in their own boxes based on their skills. Maybe all this in-vouge diversity politics bull of boxing everything and everyone up in categories has gone to MA's heads......................laughing.

Why do we need the planet anymore??????

I find needing to win 2 events to get enough tokens to then select a winning item quite hilarious actually, as for most winning one event would be incredibly rare.

Personally; I still refuse to pay a fortune for new expensive armor to be able to hunt the category MA are “forcing” me into should I wish to take part, let’s not forget our skills have been so nerfed a puny can kill us with no Armor even with well over 300K skills.

So if MA are going down this path of only instances matter to them and insist we compete in their mini-generated casino booths, THEN LOAD US UP WITH ARMOR AND WEAPON ON ENTRY to the damn instance then we can all shoot what they want us to shoot. After all MA can always argue any items we own are planet side items…..then you don’t need to buy the fruit machine to pay to play the fruit machine. All you need to do is buy the boxes to get some winning items with some MU…..hahaha.

Who would thought all those years ago, when traders used to say in old twin; trading item “at boxes”….that 15 years on, boxes would’ve taken over the game. :laugh:

Always thinking.

Rick

ps: I did quite a few runs on those mulls in practice mode, I really have no interest in those tokens though.
 
If you want the instances to be purely DPS based and not luck based, you'd get almost no participation aside from those assured to win due to the DPS of their setup that they had the funds to purchase, and those who can either buy/rent/borrow that gear.

Points introduce a randomness that gives sub-optimal dps players a chance so they participate. It is not in MA's interest to have an event only a few will join in. It is also not in the playerbase's interest in general as it concentrates the wealth of the system (event rewards) in the hands of the few who can afford it, essentially enriching those who can throw money at the game.

Obviously higher DPS still has an advantage, but the other players have a small chance and therefore can also participate. So it is like poker in a sense. You can play well, but you also have to get the good hands to make it to the top.
 
I totally agree on binding gear. Alot of people want a bigger timeframe. I agree on that too, since most of us need 2 weeks to grind 20 hours.

BUT: What would happen ? Lets say they give the 3 weeks... the Terminator (or equal weapons) would be used by at least 10 people... same in each lower cat with other weapons. That way, place 1 - 10 would go to one gun in the end. Either u have that gun, and would get placement + alot of peds by renting it out. Or you dont own it... then you are screwed.

My opinion is, that the biggest UL gear (or all of it) should be useable by a maximum of two people. This would raise the Value of UL gear, and in addition also the Value of L gear (cause you have a chance on placement again with that)

Not sure how MA would introduce this. I'm worried about this seeming like it might be a good thing on the surface, but will just backfire in the end.

For example, this would literally kill the Terminator as it currently is, which is a shared funded weapon for events. The sharing system is based on the fact that trading weapons is freely possible and at any time. Can MA really renege on that? How do you factor in the possibility of such a change then when you go out and buy yourself an UL weapon.
 
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