Looking good for 2012
I think MA have become more professional over the last year or so. They’ve had to be, as planet partners with big investments would expect that and demand better PR. This is a good cultural shift for the long term and for the community, it means MA has to manage its business better, which also means the longer term outlook is probably more stable and forecasted better.
I also think MA have attempted to even out ava’s personal loot pools, so your loot swings match your expenditure as it reduces. Rather than cleaning you out in a couple hunts.
If this has had an effect on big uber hunting drops is debateable, it might just mean it takes longer to build a big one..who knows? I’m still waiting for mine, but believe it will come one day.
We’ve come a long way in the last two years, Cryengine was a massive transition. Obviously there're licence feees to run it, but against development costs to build on their own platform it’s probably cheaper in the long term.
Agree you can’t hit a mob with CLD, but I’m a big fan. I think it’s great the online community were given the opportunity to buy into something involved with, rather than MA trying to rasie revenue via another business. I think three or four years down the line, people will be pleased they bought into it. Sure some will say we were only given that opportunity because the sale to another company failed. Then I say “LUCKY US”, and good foresight from MA to believe the community would want it, and could potentially buy Caly.
If anything the business is getting bigger, with more planet partners coming online. This means cost and investment is shared. The business expands faster without all the costs pushed at us little avas. The worry for partners is new people starting on new planets tend to drift to caly. I think the answer is rather than to restrict travel to planets access needs to become more easy not harder. That way the universe as a whole will be used more...but that’s just my opinion. I'm sure as we all get used to the wider environment it will be used much more.
MU on limited items was becoming ridiculous for sure, prices had to fall sometime. I feel genuine sorrow for people who hold items for lower MU than they paid. Often 1000’s of peds lower, even 10’000’s.
Older avas all lost invested money in something, apart from those lucky few who looted the things in the first place.
Hell I lost money on unl IV Fire chip, after MF update for example (sold it at big loss, didnt like the long cool down)
That said I wouldn’t want to go back to old style MF (mindforce), cost far too much to skill it.
I love guns and melee too, and hear good things are in the pipeline for melee. With SIB on items up to level 100 coming.
The RT mess on rare scanner drops was a pain last year, I feel RT was personally reasonable for killing off scanning skilling. Which was something I enjoyed when low on peds. Now it feels it’s hardly worth pulling out a scanner to gain skills. So planet partners as well as MA need to become more responsible and think of the impact across the whole universe before playing games with peoples investments and real money.
That said there have been more improvements in-game than the occasional bad ones. Overall I think the universe has moved on tons. I'm sure EU will be around for a very long time, and if some people could just be a bit more careful how they develop their avatars then maybe in-world experience might be a little happier. I got caught in the trap of spending more than I could afford once...but it was my choice I guess to spend. It was MA choice to pay. I guess the choice to “chase the loot” is our own.
We all love EU, and at times that’s why we moan and curse when we might not feel the love back. But on those very special days, it can feel we are on-top of the world.
Let’s hope that as the community grows the cost per person is less to run the business, and we can all stretch our peds that bit further.
Take care out there folks. May the loot be with you.
Rick England