Why MA is not able to attract more players?

[Dr.D.C.]

Cryengine 2, new Planets, Space, The Thing, Transformers, Land Ownership................... but nothing, despite all that the base player of the whole Entropia Universe don t increase. Why in your opinion?



http://www.entropiabay.com/auctiondata.asp

 

[mastermesh]

you are measuring auctions, and not the buyouts.... Not everyone uses auctions, and many that do always use buyout... so the data does not relate to the real population in a direct way, or at least not in as direct of a way as you are implying it does.

However, I do agree, there is not a lot of newer players. The reasons vary a lot as to why that is, but I suspect one of the main reason is that the general population sees it all as a scam. Look at how many various articles on numerous sites there are about Entropia. If there is a comments section on those articles they almost always will have a bunch of people posting instantly as soon as article is up that dis the heck out of EU.

Way back in 2007 after Neverdie/Deathifier became news for earning back their peds on Treasure Island and CND, things were different and there was hope. Then that level of roi never came to the general populace, so many became disillusioned and still are today. MA has burned many pocketbooks of the n00bs for years so they came, they left, and now they speak out any time anyone brings up what they relate to as a bad memory. The whole concept of a virtual world tied to a real world economy registers as a huge scam to many, both those who have played as well as those that have never downloaded the client...

Then along came promises and more promises from Marco and Co., and then vu 10 hit and just about every promise made was smashed and bashed. Some are starting to come to realization, but many more are not yet. A LOT will have to happen to make this all change and thus change the public perception. Some steps are starting in that direction but many, many, many, many more are needed ASAP if MA really wants to advertise heavily and have that advertisement actually draw in people that will play and stay.

Some may call me a bit of a hypocrite since I've posted about the broken promises here and elsewhere before, but I don't care. I do like the company and think they do what they can with what they have, but think they overhyped the hell out of things in the past and that hype is biting them in the butt, and they really need to do something about that NOW before they do anything else if they want customers to appreciate what they are doing, and come and stay being customers.

If a company is going to make a promise, they NEED to keep that promise. Until they make the promises of the past a reality or heavily publicize that the promises and hints given in the past about the future will NEVER become a reality, and say that over and over and over again, for each and every one of the promises that will never become a reality, not just mention it somewhere in the forums on some random post that few will read, there's still a lot that needs to change.

I could go on here a lot about the various promises of the past, but think most here know them well. Best summary of them is over at: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...co-said-....&p=2597728&viewfull=1#post2597728

 

[Legion]

That list could probably be made a mile long.

Some of the answers are these.

Long long bad rep from a long time ago, and it's still hurting. Mainly due to that MA is not doing anything to remedy it. As master said, if you make a promise as a company you better damn keep it.
NO PR!!! MA has "never" made any PR, except for overhyped crap. They have NO commrep except kim and some other guy posting on and off. They have a crappy Facebook page where they dont engage with the users. MA needs to hire a pr person and especially someone who know social media. And to fix all them old bugs and promises they made so long ago.

What i think is the thing MA is doing wrong is they are thinking short term, ie oh lets do this and we will make a shitload of money.. and sure they do, but then it fails or the players get upset because they havent thought it through properly longterm and voila more bad rep and so on.

 

[billairboy]

To little marketing and still too expensive for a lot of players. More marketing and cheaper gameplay are needed.

 

[SpikeBlack]

It mainly comes down to money. If you want to go for the big mobs and get the exciting loot you have to pay the big bucks. In other games you can work your way up to them in EU you have to pay your way up to them.

For many of us who've been around for a good few years we've been the frog in cold water, the new players are the ones in boiling water. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

New players don't understand that one day you can get big loots and make a tt profit and the next get blazers and no loots from the same mob (like I did this morning and just logged out knowing it wasn't my day for loot). We've just learned to accept it because "EU is dynamic".

 

[Magyar_Republic]

To little marketing and still too expensive for a lot of players. More marketing and cheaper gameplay are needed.

Agree with all of these statements. Mastermesh was spot on here. I quoted this one because I feel that the token system could be used to help remedy the cheaper gameplay by providing tokens in lieu of PED value bearing items for activities that require minimal decay.

Then the players goal is to trade the tokens or the items gained from the tokens for something more tangible.

 

[Dan59]

Well things are mowing.
They will get huge input for marketing from selling land loot shares.
I hope they are not going to burn part of it in "evry day causal noob get super ath" marketing style.

 

[melander]

In my mind Marketing is the main problem, in the competetive MMO market one cant simply rellay only on word of mouth and youtube videos for new players have to be a proffesional PR person who knows what he's doing.

Best regards
Zweshi

 

[Magyar_Republic]

Well things are mowing.
They will get huge input for marketing from selling land loot shares.
I hope they are not going to burn part of it in "evry day causal noob get super ath" marketing style.

Same. I dont normally like to comment on the loots people get, but I am really sick of the ATH's every few days. I'm not upset that someone made a good deal of change back. But there's no excitement in seeing someone's ATH anymore. I used to congratulate people if I knew them who got something like that. Now its rather humdrum and meaningless.

There are too many ATH's being processed through the system.

 

[SpikeBlack]

No they'll burn it doing advertising but leave everything as is. Why spend a huge amount of cash on advertising but only get a few to stick around and deposit.

The goal of any advertising is to get people spending on your product, increase market share and to increase revenue. Now they could go for the high rollers (some would argue thats what they're doing now) or they can retarget EU to the $50 / month player. Considering the success of Farmville and such games its pretty obvious where the big money is, catering for the $50/ month players as there are vastly more of them.

But as we've said the past the group of players willing to bring even more in are the newbies, not the veterans as we know what EU is like.

Getting MA to see that is another matter. They're stuck in their ways, refuse point blank to see any other path of action. Get short of cash and they pull out an investment opportunity, planets, LA, deeds or space ships, give it six months it will be the space stations. Rather than face up to the fact they've screwed things up in the last few years and it's not the players fault for not getting their vision.

When the board mutinied and tried to bring in some fresh blood to lead MA it could have been a fresh start, to bad it didn't work.

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

How I would try to improve this game:
1) Rebalacing loot (less ups and downs on a personal level, less giant ATHs and more smaller globals on an overall level)
2) Adding more low level mobs and gear - Let lower level mobs drop more useful newbie items.
3) Many more easy-to-find newbie missions around the swamp area. In fact, build it like a progressing "PA > South Swamp > North Swamp > Old Swamp > One of the other outposts" with slightly more difficult stuff, enough to keep a newbie busy for a week or two without having to sweat only (could have repeatable sweating and scouting missions).
4) Advertising (as they are planning on doing)
5) Involve the players as much as possible in the development and ask them often what they want/need (as Kim has been doing a bit)



The problem many newbies I have spoken to seems to have is that the game is too hard to get into... as long as you can get them to stay long enough to learn a bit more about the game they'll be more likely to stay later - even if it is harder then.

 

[Chrome]

Why MA is not able to attract more players?

I was about to read this entire thread and respond, but I see that the most simple (and in my opinon, correct) answer to this question has already been provided:

To little marketing and still too expensive for a lot of players.

More marketing and cheaper gameplay are needed.

 

[Magyar_Republic]

I'm going to add to NH's list. Not that its wrong. It isnt. But its lacking.

As a player of PvP/PvE MMORPG's for the last 14 years the EU engine is sluggish and tedious. I'll quote my girlfriend here, who after a few hours playing EU said "Other than being able to tame animals I cant get into this game. It's boring." On a combat mechanics level she's right. There are not enough actual combat abilities, and as a result combat is not engaging. I'd like to amend the combat system so that should the user choose they could have a very engaging combat experience.

Improve melee. Add combat stances that unlock at set skill levels. Examples:

• Defensive (cuts rate of attack by 1/2, but improves evade/dodge to 125% of current values.
• Offensive (Improves rate of attack by 20%, but cuts defense by 60%).
• Kick (allows a user with armor/footgear to perform a kick attack that decays the footwear and performs an attack. Both attack damage and decay are based off relative strength of the user. Decay on the item is further calculated by a multiplier every item has based off materials used to construct it, its defensive capabilities, and its TT cost. Thus higher cost/value items would decay less per use to achieve the same damage as lower cost items. This would address someone running around killing Atrox in a suit of Settler while spamming food to keep stamina up.
• Crouch (allows a user to reduce the size of their avatar's hitbox while holding the button. reduces all offensive combat abilities by 80%)
• Roll (allows a user to quickly get the hell out of the way of an oncoming projectile or attack by rolling in the direction the direction indicated by using WASD.)
• Dual Wield (improves rate of attack by 80% but reduces accuracy in the main hand by 20% and in the off hand by 40%)
• Arc (allows an avatar to swing a broad weapon in a 180 degree arc damaging more than 1 mob at a time. Decay on the weapon is increased)

Improve combat fluidity.

• Implement an Energy attribute. Energy is directly tied to Stamina and Strength. Energy effects how long you can hold your breath, how long you can run at top speed, and how many specialty moves you can perform in a given period. Energy can be regained by eating food (implemented by a food system) or simply not doing any strenuous activity for a minute or two. Strenuous activity is counted as any sort of combat or running. A character with 0 energy remaining can only perform basic combat tasks, and run as the system defines these attributes now. Energy is measured much in the same way hitpoints are now, via a meter on the HUD.
• Sprint. Have a sprint key usable by holding it down. Sprinting characters move forward at +30%(current run speed+agility). Sprinting consumes energy.
• Have agility and strength be able to effect weapon rate of fire once maxed, improving it by a set % per rank.

Improve the usefulness of support skills and items.

• Mindforce needs attention. Mindforce is an excellent example of a support skill that could be used to add alot of breadth to combat.
• Grenades, Rockets, etc need some review in how they function. Basic AOE is cool, but it isnt enough. Perhaps the AOE could knock a character off their feet for a few moments, with reduction in time down based on that characters intelligence and agility.
• Vehicles should be solid, and have practical application as cover during PvP combat. Players should be able to duck behind them, for example, and avoid fire by having the vehicle take the damage.

The point of amending these systems is that players like my girlfriend want to be entertained. She has no problem paying for her entertainment. In 3 months on Perfect World she blew close to $1200 USD because she enjoyed watching her character "blow shit up." Another guildmate of mine in that game blew a whopping $14,000 USD in the same time period! I brought him to EU and he just didnt find the gameplay appealing, and left. The difference between PWI and EU really isnt the cost. Its the level of engagement you receive for that cost.

Some players, mostly us right now, are engaged by the economy and the social ramifications of EU. Others simply want to blow shit up. Most gamers are in that second category. If you want to increase the appeal of this product the appeal needs to be directly made to them.

 

[fluske]

i think this forum is the main reason,there is so much negativity inhere..even from people that have not played in months/years but still post negative things constantly.
if i was an new player and looked into forum for more info id be hesitant to deposit or start this game

 

[Xavier_Jr]

A matter of image. and from a downward spiral.

Entropia Universe is known not only for us. but also by other Gamers.

However, what they know is this game costs too much and many believe that if they come then will be cheated.

Then, how to change the image of the game? Giving ATHs to newbies? No. thats will serve to reinforce in this.

With a game responding basically to the knowledges and skills? That could be. But not if it is selective. This is if occurs extremely lucky rarities and oddities of extremely bad luck in some players.

Mindark must change the current image of the game for another of a completely fair and clean game. This must be projected outward. While outsiders do not think thats is true; simply, no will exist possibility even to start advertising.

 

[Lerp]

Online games are not as new anylonger.
There are only so many gamers willing to pay out large amounts of cash to play a game online.
95% of the adults I know dont even play video games.

Entropia had a great start but then was shut down by the goverment and had to restart.
This threw off a great number of players who did not see this as a game but an investment in a real life built by pixels.
The ones who were not serious just did not want to play because of the expence and the fact that the whole game was shut down for months on end. They went on to other games.

At times it only takes one mistake to end a life. Entropia was hurt bad by its mistake with the stolen graphics and has not been able to gather a player base again. Its sad. Entropia is one of a kind and was started at just the correct time.
Now its playing catch up with an idea that has been tainted.

In the end Entropia will make it. I dont know what it will look like but it will not die.
Unless they sell off all the deeds then cancel the game. Its legal for them to do this.
A company will not run a game that does not pay. Online sims died and that name was huge.

 

[SnowLeopard]

People don't know Entropia exists. When (if) more players come, cheaper gameplay will follow, since operating-costs are not directly proportional to player numbers but rather tend to decrease (cost-per-player) as more players join.

5 years ago, Second Life was getting hyped to no end and Entropia managed to ride it's coat-tails just for also being a RCE game.

MindArk has relied of word-of-mouth and viral-marketing which only really works if it gains enough momentum. They tried to keep up that momentum with trade shows and a few press releases, but it was not sufficient.

The big game titles by big publishers all get massive TELEVISION advertising campaigns. That puts the titles in peoples' minds -- even non-gamers. Then when something "special" happens, such as a movie tie-in like The Thing, or most-expensive-virtual-item-world-record, people will have some clue as to what is involved.

Consider this:

gamer_A: Did you hear about the MMO with a tie-in to The Thing movie?
gamer_B: No.
(end of conversation)
​

OR

gamer_A: Did you know that game advertised during the UFC event of FOX-TV has a tie-in to The Thing movie?
gamer_B: Really? We should check it out.​

 

[ilike money]

I believe that the game could be more profitable in the long term if return rates for the different activities were higher.
Right now the thought is that you(MA) take 40% of everything cycled and give 60% back as loot.
This makes it very difficult for players to play very long on their deposits and most people get frustrated and quit. It is just too hard to make up 10% loss in markup for most activities.
If you changed this to 90/10 instead of 60/40 I believe you could double your player base within a year or two, probably even more.
With 2x or more players you would actually be making more money and the players would be happier. This would be a continuing trend and growth would become exponential.
In order to do this though you have to accept the lower income for now to invest in the future growth of the game.
Thanks considering this option to make this game even better than it is,

ILikeMoney

 

[Grower]

there is not enough loot return so its to expensive to play, i think its as simple as that..

 

[Xavier_Jr]

People don't know Entropia exists.

I do not believe that. People knows about EU. However, They do not know something good. Look at this: Number of visitants of this video. However, Mindark have not ask to youtube for eliminate that malicious advertisment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqJvtAMtkdk

(In fact this video have 4 years old. And is the more visited in youtube from all videos about EU. Then what people knows about EU is not what we would like)

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

I do not believe that. People knows about EU. However, They do not know something good. Look at this: Number of visitants of this video. However, Mindark have not ask to youtube for eliminate that malicious advertisment.

What I find interesting is people going nuts over "how can people spend so much money on virtual items???" about Entropia but no one cares about people spending almost as much (or more) on browser games and such where ya can not get the money back...

 

[Magyar_Republic]

What I find interesting is people going nuts over "how can people spend so much money on virtual items???" about Entropia but no one cares about people spending almost as much (or more) on browser games and such where ya can not get the money back...

Spending money on virtual items with a proposed minimum value or speculated actual value is no different than spending money on stock. If you make the correct choice then you have something valuable. Make the wrong choice and you end up with less than you started with.

If MA and EU are around 20 years from now this is an excellent decision. If they fold in less than 5 then its a poor choice.

In the end all value of any luxury item we have, whether its stocks, gemstones, pearls, art, vacation packages, etc all is determined by what someone else will pay for them. That's all there is to it. Virtual goods are just another variety of luxury item. The newest variety on the market.

 

[Calin]

ROI


And lack respect for players. And what everyone else said. But mainly...


ROI

 

[mastermesh]

i think this forum is the main reason,there is so much negativity inhere..even from people that have not played in months/years but still post negative things constantly.
if i was an new player and looked into forum for more info id be hesitant to deposit or start this game

under current circumstances, is thinking twice before you deposit really a bad thing? This is REAL money after all.

 

[Cani Ostro]

Can give only my reasons why I stopped almost totally playing:

1. No gear in loot. I don't find it very exciting to hunt different kind of mobs and find the same loot over and over. Items in loot to upgrade my avatar is the top no 1 reason for me. And having finished 5k Argonauts without a single FreanD Alpha gun in loot, they can't tell me lootdrops haven't changed.

2. Space fuck up. I don't want to spend my playtime -travelling- for ages to get somewhere where I want to spend my money. I would not care if this was a 15 a buck or free MMO, but if I go somewhere to spend 100 bucks in couple of hours I don't want to spend a fucking minute with useless bullshit.

3. Returns have grown way too much of gambling type results. You can got out and come back with 200% win, 50% loss or anything in between. It doesn't matter.

4. The total lack of a solid theme. I don't like playing a Sci Fi Planet and seeing Beachbuggy driving by. At least a little more creativity would be much appreciated.

5. Total nonsense of new systems and lack of simplicity to use. 250 different extractors? Even stuff that is worth shit gets separated (Nova and Blazar Fragments).

 

[Ludvig|MindArk]

4. The total lack of a solid theme. I don't like playing a Sci Fi Planet and seeing Beachbuggy driving by. At least a little more creativity would be much appreciated.

I really can not agree with this completely... Almost all sci-fi I have read or seen or played has some type of older type vehicles (buggies, jeeps, whatever)... even Star Wars and Star Trek.. and I believe that people will always want to have some old stuff (like cars) to drive around in as well

 

[RexDameon]

i know being a mentor i feel like i'm constantly begging people to stay. And telling them it's going to get better but it's been 8 years an it's getting tiresome.

 

[Centech]

Cryengine 2, new Planets, Space, The Thing, Transformers, Land Ownership................... but nothing, despite all that the base player of the whole Entropia Universe don t increase. Why in your opinion?

Most MMOs give you unlimited play for $15-$20 a month.

EU gives you about 5 minutes of play for $15-$20. I don't know if MA or anyone else has noticed, but there is a bit of a global economic crisis going on. Not everyone can afford to pour hundreds or thousands of dollars a month into a video game. Many of those who can afford it also realize its insane. Leaves a small market.

 

[Dan59]

I really can not agree with this completely... Almost all sci-fi I have read or seen or played has some type of older type vehicles (buggies, jeeps, whatever)... even Star Wars and Star Trek.. and I believe that people will always want to have some old stuff (like cars) to drive around in as well

Agre, cars , but do it on roads not in hunting zones or in trade areas.
Im going pissed when on hunt have constantly some vtol or quad on my head.
And to be in sci-fi i want personal automatic turret wich will f... anyone with vheicle who cross radar boundaries in huning zone - non pvp as well.
Same for twin and similar places.

 

[Klod]

People reading about or hearing about Entropia are often struck by the thought its a scam. Entropia is pioneering the entertainment industry. Breakning through peoples reluctancy to "new things" is hard, especially since the game it self isnt really intended for youths eager to be pioneers.

In time, if Entropia manage to stay alive and not over extend it self it will be a boom. Im convinced this will happen, others may not be.

Mindark could have done it better Im sure, but they havent done a bad job either. We are still here, after 9 years?