Dear MindArk Representant,
you wrote:
It is not the armor per se, but the new ability to quickly change a lot of parts during a short time frame.
I surely understand that it is your job to spin this, but please don't insult my intelligence any further (but please read on):
I'll describe what i experience for my avatar, it's not ment to be universally correct for any other avatar (so others please restrain from flaming 'no me' stuff).
Before the VU i was able to change a
complete set or armor by dragging it from the inventory onto the avatar display window
in about 3 seconds -
while shooting or fapping using hotkeys.
So i was able to change armor quickly (eg. from ghost to vigilante) and keep me alive (whith a high-decay fap) in cases when i eg. was shooting atrox NW of orthos and your server decided to spawn a Warrior 05 on me.
After this VU i can use hotkeys (great) to change armor pieces
but i have to wait 1 to 1.5 seconds (percieved time the very few times i tried it, not willing to measure it as long as it costs me pec) until i can change the next one,
without being able to do something else, and additionally and needless you charge 2 pec per piece equipped.
So let's see what we have so far:
Time needed to change armor set: factor 2 to 3
Unable to shoot or fap while on it: mob regenerates / armor decay + health lost
Mob will be able to attack 2 to 3 times as often: decay on armor + health lost
Armor equip tax: 12 PEC gone
Result of the changes:
Tussi dead in wilderness, feeling forsaken and ripped off.
Now you come with:
The 2 PEC deterioration of 'Limited' armor parts when equipping them has been removed. This will encourage the use of this armor type even more.
So far, so good.
Irrelevant for me because i use unlimited armor, but good for others that don't.
The deterioration of 'Unlimited' armor parts has been reduced to 1 PEC per equip.
1/2 of the equip decay issue gone.
Not unexpected (see post above with the prophecy about this), but still far away from good.
The rest of the problems persists.. or better - gets worse:
As the fee has now been reduced, an increased delay of 0.5 seconds is included when equipping armors.
So let's see what we'll have tomorrow:
Time needed to change armor set: factor 3 to 4
Unable to shoot or fap while on it: mob regenerates / armor decay + health lost
Mob will be able to attack 3 to 4 times as often: decay on armor + health lost
Armor equip tax: 6 PEC gone
Result of the new changes:
Tussi still dead in wilderness, still feeling forsaken and ripped off.
Soon will come the need for foot-guards. We'll have then:
Cost for footguards (ghost+vigilante) + plates: estimated 300 PED
Time needed to change armor set: factor 3.5 to 4.6
Unable to shoot or fap while on it: mob regenerates / armor decay + health lost
Mob will be able to attack 3.5 to 4.6 times as often: decay on armor + health lost
Armor equip tax: 7 PEC gone
Result of the changes then:
Tussi still dead in wilderness, feeling even more forsaken and ripped off.
Sidenote: I'll leave the calculation of the additional decay taken caused by the slower armor change and the inability to perform other actions therewhile to players who like to play with numbers. Personally i think that the example is obvious enough and seeing the additional decay will only make me cry.
So, what have you done so far:
You basically limited the amount of item changes on an avatar (taking my example from above) by factor between 2 and 4.8, charge your customers with armor equip tax for this
plus additional decay taken by forced inactivity. And as cherry on top you tell your players a story that's so thin that it should be better called transparent.
It created a massive uproar in your user base and now with 1/2 of the initial tax and an additional nerf everything will be fine again?
Now you (= your product) unequips clothing when equipping armor to force (and annoy through this) people to equip the clothing again after putting away their armor - so more decay. Forced decay. Annoyed customers.
Solution of quite some players i talked about is to never ever take off their armor again, or never put any clothes on again (dosn't look that good to people coming into the universe if you ask me) - or to sell out...
A suggestion on how to recover from this without causing irreversible damage
- Publically admit that you (=your company) made a mistake.
The community already knows it, so there's nothing to be gained in not doing it.
And it's monetarily free but priceless for your further existance.
- Drop the item equip fee (for all items)...
Now!
- Maybe make the equipment delay for armors proportional to the total protection offered, but in any case not to long. People have the need to change armors quicky, waiting for that while in need for a change in battle is annoying and unneeded (and you'll get more decay from the right armor because it absorbs more).
- Implement clothing decay (which is as far as i have talked to other participants understandable in the principle, you need to take money from the participants to keep your company going which is understood by all here) time based. Charge a % of maximum TT per hour equipped and avatar online.
Since i'm unsure about the most expensive piece of clothing ingame, a quick search on peauction brought me to Pleat Coat with 699 PED TT (maybe there's something more expensive in max tt - anyway i'll go with that item):
Let's say you charge 0.1% per hour for an example. So mentioned clothing would last 1000 hours from full tt to none and cost ~ 70 PEC per hour to wear. To try it on a minute would cost the player ~ 1.2 PEC.
Surely here will come the uproar, many will now say 'way to much'. I don't think so - clothing is a luxury. How many people ran around in pink coats just because they were this way able to present the most advanced type of coloring available? To show their wealth? Enough will pay. There are people who have had the lordliness to buy clothing for several hundred dollard for a virtual game just to show off. Additionally you'll have the benefit of people binding PED in the TT value of the clothes to make them look nice (where you gain interest from).
Other examples:
Multi-Pattern pants (48 PED tt): 4.8 PEC per hour
Colonist standard pants (1 PED tt): 0.1 PEC per hour
You only have to calculate it whenever an avatar unequips a piece of cloting, looks at the info while it's equipped (which happens not that often i guess), and on avatar logoff. Server load should be quite minimal through this, and you'll have the decay to fuel your company.
With this you'll have a wide range of choice for your users - and it's like in RL: the more you want to show off the more expensive it'll be.
- Grep every now and then through your logs to see if someone abuses the idea to change items in general and ban them for a while.
That should solve your problem without telling your customers storys that are thin, unbeliveable and insulting.
- Listen to your user base. They are not that stupid and unreasonable as you seem to treat them in the last time.
- Reopen the voting boothes. OK, maybe not for the chinese deal - but please see that your customers come mostly from democratic systems and like the illusion of having a choice. Sure, 'users' always have a biased view on the product, but they are the ones who have to like it or your company will suffer.
Please think about that for a moment. Some of your users are already liquidating their assets to turn their backs on your product forever. What they will do the moment their withdraw is complete (and thus they're free from the damocles sword of an account lock and loosing access to their assets) is unforseeable, will they just be glad that they are over with it, or will they still be outraged by the way they got treated? One thing is for sure: they'll never recommend your product to anyone else - and that's the case where you would get lucky, because in the age of internet sometimes a single person can create major havoc for a product or a company...
Please don't let it come that far, because i like your product - else i wouldn't have taken the hours to formulate this post.
Sorry, there are many nice features in 9.0, but from the impact of the drawbacks (not the mention the technical problems like CTD) on me it's neither close nor a cigar.
Tussi
MindArk Customer
PS: As a sidenote - Make a test server where a representative part of your userbase can try new features in advance and comment on them. You could for example handle this like an event, and give tickets to test server sessions (eg. time based ones, non-tradeable, tt=0) as items looted from special events, or even in normal loot! Test server usage should be without charges for your users (they do work for you there!), maybe with a copy of the current avatar incl. storage and a TT which gives the needed resources for free to test the features you want them to test?
Whey they are satisfied with what they see there and ingame then they'll then do the hyping for you - completely free. Should you look back from time to time then you'll maybe notice that your dedicated customers have made the marketing for you for a long long time.
But you won't get that any much longer should you keep disappointing them like this current situation on a regular basis.
Marco is back!! Now he can go to our defense against the evil MA overlords....
Just keep your eyes open... as the native americans used to say ..."Marco speaks with forked tongue..."... 
but you will only get ->
