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Why doesn't Mindark advertise when it is essentially free to do so?

David Joker Potanus

David Joker Potanus

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Joined
Jan 24, 2022
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455
I can't help but wonder how many more players and investors in this game we would have if Mindark would take the time to advertise their product.

This day and age with YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Tiktok advertising is free and it only takes the time and effort of people who care. So why don't we have any from Mindark? I can't help but think of indie game studios who even though small love their game enough to put out effort and make videos about what they are working on, game changes and progress etc.

Hell, even I have a YouTube channel to advertise Entropia and Mindark doesn't or at least utilize one if they do. It just seems odd that even someone like myself who makes barely over minimum wage manages to get a multi-million dollar game onto an international news spotlight and they can't. Am I wrong in thinking this?

This has got to be one of their biggest mistakes in stopping Entropia from growing as a game and investment platform.

@Ludvig|MindArk
 
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They do advertise but 99% of people who click, signup and join get a week into their journey, run out of ammo/probes, spend the next week trying to sell junk on trade chat because the auction fee is so high for small stacks, end up sweating and realizing it costs more in electricity than you can sell that resource, deposit $20, get another week and the cycle repeats until they eventually go "wtf am I doing wasting my time here" and leave.

They can pay $15/month and get a far better immersive experience than Entropia provides. Storyline, cutscenes, 100x the population to socialize with and more...

Now, that's not to say MindArk hasn't built in systems into the game for the players and partners to built out their multi-level marketing scheme. Mentoring, Affiliates, Planet Partners, etc are all designed to allow these individuals the ability to earn based on their contribution to the game's population but it's a hard sell telling someone they need to invest the amount of money needed to make the time/cost feasible to get the skills and gear in order to compete on even the mid level of play. Let's not forget the fact it takes years to build your skills up to be at that level. Yes, they're trying to dump skill boosts like crazy in game right now to speed that process up (still super expensive) but that also just widens the skill gap and creates massive power creep when they keep feeding the top level addicts more gear. They can't not do this or they'll lose the players who keep the development cycle going. The game is stuck between a rock and a hard place because they are too focused on player retention and not enough on player recruitment. It may change in UE5 but until then I think they need all the money they can squeeze out of the ubers until they decide to rip off the band-aid and piss them off.
 
Platform simply cant hold more people. There is already a planet wide lag at most events. And investment portion of the capital is, probably, dedicated to migration to a new platform, instead of the increments of capacity.
 
The Great Adventurer said:
... they are too focused on player retention ...
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What? When, where, how?
That's like saying ... I'm really really foc - oh, what's that shiny thing?

That's not to say I know what I'd want to do in that area if I were in charge; I don't. Would it be free guided tours or Q+A sessions in-game on a different aspect each week and a free makko-trainer or whatever? What would retention efforts actually look like?

I agree that a problem is the growing skills gap. It is lessened by faster skilling in that the curve is steepest early on and flattens off, and skill pills are now more available from the pps' events and some missions, yes.
But higher players also turn over much more per hour under each pill they take, so that negates some of the flattening curve effect, or even possibly widens the gap - dunno.
I'd like to see more by MA on the issue of the much longer term as a retention concept, but I haven't noticed it thus far.
 
I would have never known about Mindark if I hadn't seen an article about Project Entropia in a magazine way back the in day. I piqued my interest at the time but even back then advertising was a bit low-key aside from news about TI and CND which did bring a lot of people in. PPs were given some of the responsibility to promote their own planets and there are other affiliate programs out there so that makes me think that MA is willing to offload that work in a way. After UE5 is implemented and some what stable I think we will see an uptick in marketing but the game in its current state is rather niche and word of mouth.

I've been asked about EU many times and it's difficult to define. What might be fun to me, might be mind-numbingly boring to someone else. PE/EU used to be something novel in terms of digital items carrying real world value but these days with digital currency, NFTs, and other similar things it might have to focus on other aspects of the game to attract and retain players.

MA has always been rather conservative on promoting PE/EU for whatever reason. Is it cultural or something that doesn't have good ROI for them? I'm not sure.
 
Well, yeah two main reasons as people said above.

1) no capacity for more players. Engine and hardware will crash as soon as +10% people start to play.
Moreover I suspect economy will crash too. We already have all mu vacuum cleaned by top 100 players (not blaming them!). And it will make a huge problems for manual finetuning (as I assume they do every day) balance of rares including mining ores.

2) Game price per hour is INSANE. even hunting punies. There are indeed millions of much more interesting and modern games around, which are free.
 
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The whole purpose of PP's and the moon was to offload the marketing so that MA can concentrate solely on development. In that sense that failed as none of the PP's did any meaningful marketing.

The only PP that could come to life and start a substantial marketing campaign is Cyrene. Cyrene still has not officially launched, they won't launch or do any marketing until they have their planet concept realised i.e. mechs. In a way its admirable that Cyrene team have stayed true to their vision of Cyrene. It's possible that in UE5 we may have mechs. This would mean Cyrene will save the day and start a real marketing campaign.

The problem I foresee for this to happen is that MA may use some kind of democratic development i.e. they may take all PP's ideas of what they should develop or develop for their planet equally into account when drawing up a priority list of what to develop. Some PP's may hence indirectly "block" mech development for Cyrene by concentrating on some development for their own planet. If PP's and MA were clever they would be wise to promote mech development for Cyrene as that would be most beneficial for all of EU.
 
GeorgeSkywalker said:
[Cyrene]... they won't launch or do any marketing until they have their planet concept realised i.e. mechs. In a way its admirable that Cyrene team have stayed true to their vision of Cyrene. It's possible that in UE5 we may have mechs.
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Is there a saying in anybody's language that the stupid are so much more patient (or stubborn) than the clever? I only know a somewhat sexist one about blondes (German), but yes, kudos for Cyrene to sticking to this if it is indeed why they refuse to officially launch after so long.
UE5 may remove the so-called excuse by MA (heresay [edit: hearsay]) that hunting from vehicles / the mechanics of legged vehicles is too much for Cryengine to handle.

On word of mouth advertising: I've only read, written and heard about how people DO NOT tell friends about EU because of, among other things, embarassment (I accept there is streaming and maybe 3rd-party stuff out there that reaches ppl). Nobody I have contact with in RL has ever mentioned EU to me, nor me to them - in about 16 years! I came across EU back then at a major games exhibition (at a time when castles were being painted pink... ).

edit: spelling error noticed when it was quoted below. Ok George, maybe I should upgrade excuse to reason given. It still seems a bit strange to me, as vehicles can sport weapons and avatars too. We can also become creatures using control pills if the leggy thing won't work with vehicles, so it'd be something like owning a mech vehicle allows us to spawn as one acting as a creature, like using a pill. How much is it a lack of creativity to try and get a pp wish working for all this time? Thanks ...
 
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jetsina said:
UE5 may remove the so-called excuse by MA (heresay) that hunting from vehicles / the mechanics of legged vehicles is too much for Cryengine to handle.
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I looked into that and MA are right it's difficult to do in Cryengine. There are games that have done it and they used a hack in a way to do it which would be non standard and may cause possible problems in the future.
 
Advertising is free on youtube? I uploaded 15 game videos and got 2-3 views per video.

Tell me method for getting free advertising on youtube or facebook except comment spamming on facebook. Anyways social media like facebook or twitter are very toxic for using them since 2018.
 
Game sales proposition by MA is delusionary
"invest in your avatar" is simply misleading.
game itself is presented as different. after some million ped shot every mid level player realize that EU is just a "trading simulator". in the mid term fluctuations of TT stabilize and the MU extractiona nd loss transfer is the key.
This leads to the real way to market all this

"can yo be the GOAT?"
"MA is like a virtual stock exchange... procure low sell high... are you good enough?"
"you cant beat the game... but you can beat the gamers.. go to make em poor, become a SF tycoon"

this will ask ppl to try to boost their ego
whales will come (we confuse ubers and whales anytime)
a whale is a player that to satisfy his ego puts a large amount of money into a game to be the biggest fish in a small pond
an uber can be silently rise stat and we dont even know what their levels are

marketing a game is not "show the name" it is finding a "selling proposition".

selling proposition is "this is a high competitive environment where like in real life stocfk market all compete for other people resources and money. Watch out.. when money is there also your best friend can become a foe... who can you trust? .....just yourself ... monster want to kill you, players want to make you poor to get rich. are you brave enough? sign here".

in this economic PVP game, getting 500.000 gamers means rising total paybackl of game to 99.5% making it basically free to play and getting MA 10x actual profit....

i will explore a concept in another thread, maybe
 
We do advertise already, and have been working to gain a larger presence on social media over the past few months. We are also constantly working on expanding and improving upon this, so if you have any specific suggestions on this topic, feel free to send a suggestion to me or My!

 
Ludvig|MindArk said:
We also have a new video coming soon, which will be used for advertising and posted on our Youtube channel!
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While you are on this topic, could you post on SoundCloud latest VU soundtracks? People liek to stream using those sounds and because in game music is buggy, SoundCloud is way better option :)
 
Ludvig|MindArk said:
We do advertise already, and have been working to gain a larger presence on social media over the past few months. We are also constantly working on expanding and improving upon this, so if you have any specific suggestions on this topic, feel free to send a suggestion to me or My!

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Ok I give you suggestion.

Make first promotion to players ingame. Everyone who goes through link and follow / subscribe twitter, insta, tiktok, youtube etc Entropia universe social media accounts you give them ped, or gift or whatever.
 
Chiee said:
Ok I give you suggestion.

Make first promotion to players ingame. Everyone who goes through link and follow / subscribe twitter, insta, tiktok, youtube etc Entropia universe social media accounts you give them ped, or gift or whatever.
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They would have to be careful with something like that because from past experience players in game may abuse it with one person making thousands of multiple accounts. This repeated by thousands of other players would be a big drain on peds and could potentially bankrupt MA.
 
Thank you to everyone who has been sending me various suggestions via PM!

Evey said:
While you are on this topic, could you post on SoundCloud latest VU soundtracks? People liek to stream using those sounds and because in game music is buggy, SoundCloud is way better option :)
Click to expand...

I'll ask someone to look into that.
 
GeorgeSkywalker said:
They would have to be careful with something like that because from past experience players in game may abuse it with one person making thousands of multiple accounts. This repeated by thousands of other players would be a big drain on peds and could potentially bankrupt MA.
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The better solution will be like recomendation system when someone is creating Entropia account using yours link and then if that person play the game (hunt, mine, craft) and get some sort level of skills then the person who recomends him get the reward( similar to disciple)
 
Chiee said:
Ok I give you suggestion.

Make first promotion to players ingame. Everyone who goes through link and follow / subscribe twitter, insta, tiktok, youtube etc Entropia universe social media accounts you give them ped, or gift or whatever.
Click to expand...
would absolutely be abused if they give free stuff that can be traded or sold. needs to be non-tradable stuff.
 
Ludvig|MindArk said:
Thank you to everyone who has been sending me various suggestions via PM!



I'll ask someone to look into that.
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can you push Virtualsense to release there new soundtracks on spotify or something? I don’t want to have to be on DSEC during stream during a non event just to show off their music.

I get the idea, but I’d rather just credit where the music is from then be forced somewhere I don’t want ti be
 
Ludvig|MindArk said:
We do advertise already, and have been working to gain a larger presence on social media over the past few months. We are also constantly working on expanding and improving upon this, so if you have any specific suggestions on this topic, feel free to send a suggestion to me or My!

Click to expand...
Would love to see you intentionally work more with streamers and "Content Creators."
 
Iceman2003 said:
The better solution will be like recomendation system when someone is creating Entropia account using yours link and then if that person play the game (hunt, mine, craft) and get some sort level of skills then the person who recomends him get the reward( similar to disciple)
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NOPE.... for that you must pay 2 ETH of an egg :p
 
Pi- said:
The spam and abuse in rookie chat has no doubt deterred many would-be investors from playing the game seriously.

After all, how serious can a company be about a real cash economy while allowing trolls and political toxicity publicly in a channel labeled for new players for over 7 years.
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OT_ as a mentor i ask all people to detach rookie channel.. its toxic

back to topic.. to create more playerbase quest system muyst be expanded.
having in game 122323443 quest each including "kill some 12232334 of this monster" is an important retainer

HINT: look "zeladoth pandemic", "zorra", "neff stim pack" quest chains... they produce a sense of achievement.

The great adventurere proposed "add quest to bring your initial bukin knife to perfected (he proposed 300 dps.. but it can become planet bound like a 150 level cyrene item. well not 300 dps but 120 MA Dps like a gold rush blade, 57 eff.. why not?
briung back the bukin knife, make it upgradable to perfected, let people hunt with some achievement sense, not just to hpope to make some ped...

there is not just RDI and Spina.. ppl want also to solo around...
 
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