FYI: Why Entropia's Economy has fallen deeper than the IRL economy

[Stutoman]

So lets start with events which have occurred in the past couple of years.

2009: IRL: The economy has fallen and people are being made redundant, many are now in this time and still today looking for jobs but also have plenty of free time on their hands and many still have reasonable amounts of cash going.

2009: Ingame: People have been waiting on a much overdue update to the Cryengine 2. MindArk for the past year has been teasing us with beautiful screenshots of this new graphics update. August: the new platform releases with many rushing to download it. The community in general had since the update was announced believed and even been directly told that their beloved planet would be re-created. What a bunch of lies this turned out to be. Everything was blown out of proportion, infact the only thing which was the same about any of Calypso were the place names, but these had been made unrecogniseable to what they were well known for.

What had infact been done was seemingly an automatic button had been pressed, shaped into something similar to the previous continent shapes and locations and then hurridly covered in vegetation. For many, this new platform didn't run on their PCs, I for one had trouble when I could easily run other games with the same graphics engine on higher settings.

Instead of importing the old game and then giving graphical updates with the cryengine which could easily have been done with a custom made program to import the old game files, which would have saved at least a years worth of production time and we'd also have the same Calypso we knew and loved.

So now this was only the first straw. Lets say out of 100 this got rid of about 30% of the players, I still have people on my friends list who were regular players and never logged in again after that update.

So after all the hype had died very quickly, MindArk and FPC staff seemed to dissapear for quite a while and communication to the community was minimal, I think we all know why this was, and not to do with a shortage of staff. Even the guides were nowhere to be seen and still today do not stand around the newbie area like they used to do everyday for several hours.

The event Second Golden age was the next big thing. Perhaps seen as a 'welcome back to your burnt down house' type of gift. This was received with yet more hype from the community, which once again was a big let down. Many people received SGA items, infact many received more than one SGA item, but others didn't even after trying just as hard and spending just as much cash. It didn't help either when one of the best guns ingame was looted by someone who had looted one a year before aswell. That was another 5% of the passive community gone.

2010: IRL: Governments are making as many cuts as possible to reduce debts. Tax is remaining at a fair level. Governments are trying to reduce the wide gap between the poor people and the rich people.

2010: Ingame: THE EXACT OPPOSITE. ATHs are now more common than they ever have been before, sometimes several are won in the space of a month. Where is all this money coming from? The same old people, lets call them the 'poor ones' for now. 'Poor ones' go hunting but the returns are the lowest ever recorded in entropia history. The 'rich ones' (mainly ubers) are also experiencing not so good returns, however have about 10000 times the chance of getting an uber loot or an ATH than any other player. Ofcourse there are lucky noobs who sometimes strike lucky but when comparing this to real life it is obvious to the number of players that those odds are about the same as being a lottery winner.

Overall instead of trying to close the gap between rich and poor, they are being forced wider apart due to a completely unbalanced loot system. Whoever is in charge of the loot system needs to stop smoking dope and review this system immediately.

Now because of the bad loots lets assume another 20% have left. So overall thats 55% less players compared to this same time last year.

Obviously only MindArk has the actual figures, but it takes no genius to travel around the major areas ingame to see how many less people there are.

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Now some of you will say that your loot is the same as before etc etc. This may be the case, but when people start considering bad loot is the drop in market value.

What causes the drop in market value?
The drop in market value is caused by a high item to population ratio. The population of Entropia has declined dramatically due to the reasons stated above and this has left too many items ingame. The demand for items is low, meaning if someone is selling out and doesn't care what price they get for the item they'll put it up for sale again and again for a lower price each time until it does go. This drives down the market value, which buyers look to as a price guideline. Just because one or two people have sold an item at a low price it now means that buyers will refuse to pay more than the new market value which has just been created by sellers who wouldn't care for an economy they are leaving.

What MindArk can do to stop this
Market Value:
Ingame people base their market values majorly off the daily value. This value varies way too much and changes way too quickly. A monthly market value should be the bare minimum. What would this do? This would mean that if someone sold at a low price it would have less affect on the general value of an item. Why should one impatient person be able to bring an item value down as much as they like and have a long-term effect on the value? Showing only the monthly value means that people selling out won't put the ingame economy at as much risk as they do at the moment, and if anyone is intentionally trying to manipulate the value they wouldn't be able to do it in the space of a single day.

Item Supply:
Lets give an example with an unlimited supply item, vibrant sweat. Sweat takes time to harvest but there is an endless amount of it, when there is too much sweat it is hard to sell, which means sellers will try and sell it for less to get a quick profit instead of waiting for a price rise again. Unfortunately once several sellers start to sell at a lower price, the buyers won't buy it for any more than the new price. The people who DO want to buy it at the old price because they believe it's fair can no longer do this because they would end up being unable to resell at that price otherwise they'd make a loss.

To stop this MindArk could put a cap on the amount of an item at any time ingame. Meaning if the cap is reached i'd not be able to find any more of lets say force nexus until it had been processed. In old Project Entropia there used to be a sweat cap for the number of bottles one could get per day; this looks like a very reasonable way of price control with such an uncontrolable system at the moment. It's like selling water to people, free to collect, takes time too. But the only way the economy in Entropia can continue to work in a fair way is if it is compared to the real life version. For example: If you sell water you can only sell it as long as your lake is full. If you sell all your water then you'll have none left. This control makes people careful about how they use resources, which isn't applied anywhere in Entropia.

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This message has been repeated many times and in many different forms on this forum, this is just all of it summarised and typed out again in an attempt to get MindArk to actually listen for once. You see now things are different, because players are leaving in high numbers, just like people had predicted before MindArk started to listen.

Sounds harsh. Sounds like i'm ranting because things aren't going my way. The only difference here is that this is the truth. I'm sure I speak for the majority of this community with this message.

Entropia Universe was something respectable, worked the way most players wanted it to, had a good number of players in it's niche market. Then it tried to go for the big time, and failed epically. I do believe the game had potential, but the transformation was done poorly and we now have a game I wouldn't want to recognise as Entropia, if I were the head developer i'd be ashamed to give this game the same name as the great game it used to be over a year ago.

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MindArk must get this message, if more than one person copies this into a support case then maybe they will.

For your information: I stopped playing in February after the small amount of reselling I was doing to only be able to afford the smallest things in the game collapsed because of market value, I'm not ranting as a current player, these are the reasons I left. I only return once in a while to check the market values to see what I can sell, but these are still falling and with such a small value compared to a year ago (a 70%-80% drop on many of my items) that I may aswell just abandon them altogether.

Thank you for taking time to read this. Have a nice day.

[I took about an hour to write this so your constructive feedback would be much appreciated.]

 

[Stutoman]

@Dreicc

Please don't abuse the poll I made. I posted that article under minute before you voted, there is no way you could read that in such a small amount of time.

 

[davidgr1200]

Governments are trying to reduce the wide gap between the poor people and the rich people.

Which government is that? This is news to me. Most governments seem to be doing the opposite, clamping down on the poorer people and decreasing taxes for the rich.

 

[Stutoman]

Which government is that? This is news to me. Most governments seem to be doing the opposite, clamping down on the poorer people and decreasing taxes for the rich.

I'm referring to the British government, but this was also something Obama was using to win the American election.

 

[psychnosiz]

2010: IRL: Governments are making as many cuts as possible to reduce debts. Tax is remaining at a fair level. Governments are trying to reduce the wide gap between the poor people and the rich people.

This purely depends where you live m8. Tax is way out of control where I live, goes way over 50%. And of that >50% a large part is spent again on highly taxed goods.

 

[Alcante Residus]

Where's my Daiki..? [d4mn]

The good choice could be an ability switch to old good PE server
for those whose computers sucks after VU 10.0 on basis of sort
automatic benchmark mechanism, but more realistic approach

would be learning everything from scratch after MF & Taming,
all ol' thingies will be implemented again. Otherwise too much
of inconsistency makes too shaky ground for experimentation.

 

[SpikeBlack]

Unfortunately your talking to people who aren't interested provided they're ok.

MA are unwilling to change the way EU works because they know if they did people who have large amounts of ped invested will withdraw it leading to other people trying withdraw their stake and starting a run http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_run which would leave MA without cash and collapsing.

If there was a cap on loot, why bother investing in bigger and better equipment to kill bigger and harder mobs knowing you've got the same maximum loot as a noob killing chirpies so MA keep giving out ATH's to give people hope and to give them a reason to keep spending.

 

[Futurama]

The IRL comparison with EU regarding cost reduction and ATHs doesn`t mean anything. Those are two completely uncomparable things...


As for the high item to population ratio i agree partly - but loads of items were not really used, just bought to resell later or sitting in storage. So the prices now reflects more the real demand.

 

[Stutoman]

Unfortunately your talking to people who aren't interested provided they're ok.

MA are unwilling to change the way EU works because they know if they did people who have large amounts of ped invested will withdraw it leading to other people trying withdraw their stake and starting a run http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_run which would leave MA without cash and collapsing.

If there was a cap on loot, why bother investing in bigger and better equipment to kill bigger and harder mobs knowing you've got the same maximum loot as a noob killing chirpies so MA keep giving out ATH's to give people hope and to give them a reason to keep spending.

There wouldn't be a cap on loot, just on individual items. In a sense there already is, since you don't loot high end faps any more and by removing clothes from loot it made the value rocket. The point is, people are less willing to pay more, so people stock up until they find a buyer at a good price. If this is done a lot and all is sold in one go then it's back to square one. I'm saying that loot should be actually more dynamic. At the moment MindArk use the word 'dynamic' as a replacement for the word 'random'. I'm suggesting the amount of ores you find should be based on how much is on the market at that time and if theres less on the market and in carried inventories then there should be more available to find. This wouldn't bring uber's loot levels down to newbie levels at all, infact I have no idea how you interpreted this in that way. Ofcourse there are other items to loot which would stay limitless such as ammo.

If you add it together it does make sense believe me.

The IRL comparison with EU regarding cost reduction and ATHs doesn`t mean anything. Those are two completely uncomparable things...

It is very much alike. This is all about how the money is distributed, and as I mentioned, the gap betweek rich and poor. For example: Say you had a scratch card. The odds on a scratch card are more favourable than if you played the lottery.

Now this is how this relates to the loot system: Lets say 1ped is a ticket on the lottery. The more tickets you buy then the more chance you have at winning (looting big, ATH...) An uber can afford more tickets than an average player can (may I remind you all that the majority of players are average). This doesn't mean they will automatically win, but it does mean they have a higher chance.

Now lets say the system was like i propose it to be: scratchcards. The odds are lower and even though the maximum prize is lower, winning is more frequent. 1ped per ticket means that ubers will still win more than average players, BUT average players won't need to pump more cash through for a chance to win and will overall have better returns.

If you play a scratchcard you are more likely to win back your £1 fee or whatever it costs than you are to win the lowest prize on the lottery.

Now apply this to Entropia. Winning a scratchcard jackpot is more likely and is also more likely to happen to you more than once. Winning the lottery is never likely to happen to you, infact you're more likely to be hit by a bus in the middle of the desert. The big jackpot makes us dream and hope for that big win, this takes advantage of human greed. But honestly think to yourself, would you want to hope for something or work with something you can sustainably use for longer.

How this would benifit MindArk, yes thats right, MindArk would benifit!
If someone could cycle their deposit for longer it means they can carry out ingame activities for longer. This means that they will be using an item which decays such as armour and weapons for hunting. This means that BOTH MindArk will receive a higher percentage of each deposit made and we will ALL get better value for our money.

This makes complete sense and I'm pretty sure if as little as 10 of the highest depositing people sold out and moved on it would have a devastating effect on MindArk's income, this reliability on such a few people is unstable and the sooner more people can deposit and enjoy playing for a reasonable amount of time on that deposit then the less MindArk would need to rely on several rich players for their hard earned cash. (Maybe a few more than 10, but it is definately where the money comes from. From helping out a lot of new players I definately know 80% of the time they pack up and leave after a single deposit)

 

[Stutoman]

Not that i'm making any criticism here. Analysing the poll so far it is very obvious that the richer seeming players disagree and the average players tend to agree with some or all points made.

Perhaps this could suggest that those richer players are at the top end of the loot system, and as explained in my last post, the ones who are generally able to cycle more ped.

 

[Kerham]

For me is obvious that you don't have any idea about how "ubers" are looting. And I am in no way rich, lost alot to EU (after my standards), I'm not even a medium player but I have plenty of friends and I know how their game is.

If average player would have the ubers' average ROI ppl would quit en masse.

The real problem of EU is MA's push toward gambling, but that's obvious what players want (see Protheron then Leviathan popularity, OA 101 clicking on condition, mining with 109). Those are NOT activities accesible only to ubers usually are not eco as % balancing and are popular for one reason: players want to gamble.

 

[Hagbard Celine]

The demand for items is low, meaning if someone is selling out and doesn't care what price they get for the item they'll put it up for sale again and again for a lower price each time until it does go. This drives down the market value, which buyers look to as a price guideline. Just because one or two people have sold an item at a low price it now means that buyers will refuse to pay more than the new market value which has just been created by sellers who wouldn't care for an economy they are leaving.

I voted no mostly because what you are describing here is in my view a natural reduction of an artificially-inflated market-value that was bound to happen sooner or later. And another thing, while reading up on Entropia-history in the forum I find a lot of older posts complaining that the steep progress curve that was made even slower at the higher levels on one ore more occasions would destroy the skilling-motivation of noobs and middle-level players, and thereby hurt player-retention. I wonder how many players have given up on Entropia due to the insane markups on hi-end gear?

 

[Max Flash]

Entropia Tracker calculates hunting rank based on the number of globals each avatar has gotten vs. the amount all avatars have gotten duribg the last 30 days. Last Feburary the number of avatars scoring at least one global during the 30 day period was something in excess of 6,000. These days I have seen that number top 10,000. Doesn't seem that the hunting population is in decline.

 

[Trina Xenophage]

Not that i'm making any criticism here. Analysing the poll so far it is very obvious that the richer seeming players disagree and the average players tend to agree with some or all points made.

Perhaps this could suggest that those richer players are at the top end of the loot system, and as explained in my last post, the ones who are generally able to cycle more ped.

This is how its always been dude..

Those who are doing OK and feel they are treated fair defend what MA does..

Those that are not being treted fair tend to flame MA and the economy / game.

The difference being there have been more switching to the against side as the cost vs return gets further outta whack. Many that defended MA even a year ago have either quit or started speaking what they feel now they are on the losing side.

This list will get bigger and bigger as time goes by as MA keeps adding things that only take and not enhance the game in anyway.

Its just that simple.

 

[Profit]

Bubble -> Burst

 

[kosmos]

i think a good question to ask is this.

was most of the market value based on ped trades or item 2 item trades?

also, how much of the market value was "real"?

kosmos

 

[lilac]

Market value is falling because:

• Many people selling out are oldschool players who have more crap than the new players coming in can afford to buy... It was easier to get skills and UL items back when they started. People quitting after a few years is natural in ANY game.
• There is no longer the incentive just to hold stuff nor the perception that value wil keep going up...
• There is probably more UL crafted stuff in game (like plates) than anyone will ever use... crafters have smaller profit margins and less incentive to pay MU

 

[malasuerte]

Resellers inflated the prices for years, maybe now things will go back to rational levels.

Paying the price of a small vehicle for a gun made of pixels is ridiculous.

 

[Robin]

It seemed accurate enough in your explanation.....I noticed a huge drop in crafting on and off...this affects what I do in game and that's because I mine. MA trys to give injections of players with new enticing events,adding old familiar skills and new ones, missions and now car giveaways...One problem with this is players come on again to try out the new skills or stuff or to loot or win these items or hope that they will receive a large uber only to be let down again and again so they eventually get tired of it and give up permenantly.

 

[Inifus]

One thing that you neglect to consider in your posts is the impact of the currency that the PED is married to - the USD. The USD fell quite a bit in value between 2004 and 2008, making PED worth less than it had been when the game initially launched. The only players who had the same value for their money were those who lived in countries that used the USD as their official currency - others received a far more favorable conversion rate than they had before and that led to an influx of PED into the market.

Next, there was also the addition of the auctions into the game back in 2003. Prior to the additions of the auctions, item values had values that were well established and didn't vary much - even high end gear. Once the auctions were in place, the market began to inflate, as demand for certain items led to bidding wars. Think about it - if a store has one of a specific item, the first person with money for it gets it, but if they set a base price and let everyone that wants it state their best offer, that item will increase in price based upon what people prove they are WILLING to spend.

Now, couple these two things together - items are worth what people are willing to spend and the USD begins to rebound in value. As far more players use non-USD currency, their money no longer buys as much PED for the same amount. They now have less PED and, as a result, are less willing to spend as much money on items. The sellers, wanting to move their wares, begin to lower price little-by-little until buyers are willing to purchase again. This has been further propagated by the real world recession, as people are less willing to spend money on non-essentials. That is why the EU economy has fallen farther - the real life economy has hit it, as well as the resurgence of the USD, and then it is all a player-driven economy in which items are only as valuable as people are willing to make them.

Markets go up and down, that is natural. I find it absurd that people keep bitching about the current economy going down - it was massively inflated anyhow. No matter how hard it is hit, this economy will never fall to the level it was at back in 2002-2004. This game has had a massively inflated economy for YEARS now and it is still massively inflated to this day. Take a look - an average gamer has little to no chance of EVER reaching beyond mid level play unless they drop more money into this game than many people make for a living.

Resellers inflated the prices for years, maybe now things will go back to rational levels.

Paying the price of a small vehicle for a gun made of pixels is ridiculous.

I just bought a Mitsubishi GTO VR-4, a brand new motor, and brand new transmission - I still spent less than it would cost me for a MM, imp2870, or iMK2. This game will never go back to rational levels - I used to know average people that could afford to play this game and have fun with it, it just inflated to the point where it was too expensive for them to play more than an hour or two from time to time. Greed has made this game very prohibitive to the vast majority of people who would probably enjoy it otherwise.

 

[SpikeBlack]

We're unlikely to see prices drop massively (especially in the uber item category) as many are unwilling to sell things below the amount they paid for them, even if that was hugely over the top.

Unless a lot more of the same items come on to the market either through crafting or MA allow a lot more to drop in loot (although this only seems to happen at the low end of the market) people will just put them into storage until the day they can find someone to buy them.

MA have been doing their best (and failing some would say) to devalue the market with the L sib and tiering to allow people to upgrade or use items more efficiently at lower skill levels. The problem is most of us still covet the un-L items and are willing to pay.

When CKI launch I'm hoping they don't allow any skills or items to transfer, atleast one planet might be able to build their economy in a more stable manner.

 

[JingyiDai]

Why life sux? wel it just does

Loot sux and MV goes down, it been like this for years now, dont say you didnt notice it from the end of 2008

The bubble has been bursting since I've entered the game. In all these years my good loot days are like hair on Jan's head.

Bad loot days are proably like the flea's on his...

A better question should be what will be the bottom of all this crap

That may really help ourself out .

 

[valentin]

The only thing that MA has failed is to recruit new players and do so they stay here and it is because of there greed by only making a lot off nerf because all players wants some kind off stability but this kind off stability uses to lead slowly and surely straight down so no wounder they have not been able get more players to stay.

 

[ZippO]

Fairly simple to me at least.. Definitely the RL economy has impacted the game as it is bound to when such things happen especially with the ingame currency tied to RL.. Beyond that i blame the company itself because of its strategy, its poor performance that doesn't hold players interest very well, a continual campaign of misinformation that players soon realise isn't the golden goose the game is described as being, a shitload of reoccuring bugs that cost you money (make no mistakes folks its the lower economy smaller players that really take damage from this), poor marketing, poor communication with customer base that has alienated a whole host of different players through the last 8 years (player retention anyone?). They like to go for instant payoffs that hold the players interest just well enough through the VU's (CE2 really was the make or break for me and apparently a fair amount of other players) utilizing humans love for quick gratification until they become bored again and ask about all the things that were on the roadmap 7 years in the past. Definitely the gambling aspect with the lottery payout has kept many around as well (i mean hell if i hit one i probably would not be so pissy). Who doesn't want to spend 12 hours a day in this game hunting mobs and or mining to be able to actually turn over a profit (i think most of these guys need to go out and hike a bit in the sunlight to appreciate all of the life they are burning out of themselves). Things were definitely inflated due to a sizable number of high profile resellers but you can't blame them for wanting to turn an easy profit on people that were willing to pay so much for items that would make them decent continual cash forever or so they thought (some still do)/(reselling has also always been a part of this game(and of games of this sort) so the market is bound to reach a high point and then crash just as any realistic market would).. If i can play this game at all anymore it will need to come in small amounts because anything more than that will either cost too much or lead me to believe i am a masochist unless i just decide to become a reseller as well (there are definitely not enough of those around).

I definitely am bitter at this game so don't call me out as being so as i feel i have thrown enough hours in the mix to be able to shout out my own opinion about the matter.

I look at old pictures every once in a while to be reminded about the way that i once felt about Project Entropia and always come to the same conclusion that i no longer am in love in the slightest (but perhaps still with the idea). Don't get me wrong there are many awesome things that Entropia still offers such as the WOF, and there are also still many amazing people that i love to call my friends (the community is what powers this game).

I will be coming back ingame soon to hang and possibly sell some stuff so look forward to seein ya all

 

[LeWolf86]

1. I think price of items is comming down because less people want to pay mega high prices for gear... you have to think cost benefit... I haven't done math on any uber items... but Im sure most of them need to be used A LOT before they begin to save money compared to crafted alternatives.... Im not a hunter so dont know examples...

I always advocate against high priced shops... which I think are soooo expensive.... $500-$1000 for a shop that the savings are pretty minimal due to having to compete against auction.... I guess if your plan is long long term, and you expect property to have a stable or inflating price its not bad...


2. As for items like sweat your example... I think thats an awful idea... this is just basic economics.... excessive supply without adequate demand causes price decrease.... As I say many times... price of APIS has gone down from 130% to like 124% over 1-2 months... which is a huge reduction... cost of supplies has remained constant or even gone up I believe... this is simply because to much supply for demand which leads to lower prices etc etc.

 

[Nirfu]

The biggest problem is lack of adverticing. You can read the 2009 financial statement and youget black on white that they didn't do any marketing.

I have recycled my peds for months now by sticking to mining. Mining loot still have fair markup, hunting loot doesn't. If u compare hunting loot whining with mining loot whining you see that here is 100:1 ratio here.

U'r right in the amount of items, this is easily fixed by stop dropping (UL) stuff and only allow (L). We could even take a big step and only let items crafted be (L), only with (L) BP's you should be able to craft (UL) stuff. And these (L) BP's should drop very rarely.

We need ways to increase markup on hunting loot.

 

[Dreicc]

@Dreicc

Please don't abuse the poll I made. I posted that article under minute before you voted, there is no way you could read that in such a small amount of time.

abuse ?
i read your post and i'm not agree so if u can't accept that people is not agree with u don't make pool.

 

[juicy001]

Which government is that? This is news to me. Most governments seem to be doing the opposite, clamping down on the poorer people and decreasing taxes for the rich.

lol , in germany its working that way
rich ppl pay now 50% less tax on the high profits ... but the poor get less social service + pay a extra fee for the medical insurance soon...
its time to ATH and get rich aswell

 

[ermik]

"Why Entropia's Economy has fallen deeper than the IRL economy"

Pretty simple actually , the EU economy grew more than IRL economy during the good times , therefor it should fall harder than IRL economy when bad times roll in.

for those who were there in 2006-2007 you guys know what im talking about.

people assumed it was impossible to loose money , all you had to do was to buy gear, and if you sold whatever you bought 1 week later , you would have made 2-500 ped easy...

thing will even out and find a resonable level once irl recovers fully , but the gold digging days are over imo , atleast for now.

cheers

ermik

 

[Uni]

c'mon

did u ever ask a player who got ATH how much did he spend before????