You want to call it a universe, then give us a universe!

Open letter to MindArk/PE

Ok first of all i wanna state i love Entropia Universe, yet i'm very concerned about its future. In my humble opinion its going to hell in a handbasket and it is doing that fast.

Please don't respond to me by saying i should search another game and quit my whining. I intend this to be constructive criticism not a rant about how bad things are. I will also try to explain how and why things should change.

I'll start by introducing myself quickly. I'am 29 years old from Holland, with a masters degree in marketing and law. I wrote my final thesis on online marketing and it's implications for the businessworld.

My problems at the moment with EU come largely from it's current businessmodel and marketing strategy. MindArk is very much focused on bringing in large amounts of new customers. They do this mostly by using the Public relations tool. Free publicity is a large part of this. Hence they pre-release an ATM card and throw $15.000 someones way when a film crew happens to be in the area. (i'm sorry I can't and won't believe this was a coincidence). The new players and most of the older players were attracted by MindArk with one single competitive advantage: Real Cash economy.
Now anyone who knows something about marketing will tell you one thing:

Sustainable advantages lead to sustainable growth!!!

Now i think we can all agree that the Real Cash economy is not a sustainable advantage. Actually it could be quite easily copied into another game/universe.
By using money as a pulling factor MindArk takes another risk: if people dont make any they tend to lose interest and quit. Remember i am talking about the masses, not the few die-hards and lucky people.
I think everyone who has played for some time agrees that after a major publicity stunt (the sale of ND/TI for example) a great influx of new players occurs, which after 2/3 months are nowwhere to be found. Thus creating the need for another publicity stunt, greate then the previous one. I will enhance on why these people leave a little later.

The second big rule of marketing is the 1:5 rule. This states that retaining a customer is 5 times cheaper then acquiring a new customer.

So i have now arrived at the heart of the problem: people leave EU for a variety of reasons, these are replaced by new customers, which are very expensive. A solid business model therefor would try to retain customers first. If 90% of the players stay for a year or longer, the need for new customers would diminish and smaller publicity stunts could still provide the same growth.

So why do so many players leave? Well first of all the game is all money focussed. For myself i know that i would find EU very boring if not for the thrill of real money involved. The entertainment factor of several other games is quite a lot higher. I will not get into details of other games since MB specifically doesnt want that on these boards, and i respect his opinion.
What are specific factors why people leave:

1. Purpose?
What is the purpose of EU other then it being a place with a lot of resources and mobs? There is no history, no background, no quests, and no storylines.
We have some events but the storylines are weak, information is little and player-involvement low. (anyone remember the mineral gathering argonauts? whatever happened to them?)
Take for example the drone event we recently had. I actually thought it had potential. Most players can kill drones in one of its forms, therefor participation could have been very high. Sadly the event was nothing more then a few spawn spots for drones. Now I am aware that criticising is easy, therefor i will explain how i would have done it.

1. Map on clientloader with the fiercest battles going on.
2. Death count for colonists and drones on clientloader.
3. Daily EBN updates
4. System messages like: a large robot force at nate valleys is trying to destroy the TP/ service center. If they are not fought off both will be lost.
5. If the colonists dont respond, destroy the TP!!! you can always put it back a few weeks later!

2. Advancement
With current economy its almost impossible for regular players to advance past a certain point. Gear is way too expensive. At some point you are stuck.
Now some players will be content with killing the same mob 1 million times, but most wont be. Without improvement people tend to lose interest, they want to hunt the bigger mobs, but are unable to do so.

3. Support
The support department only rephrases to us what we already know, they don't solve anything.
Take for example the recent scams/hackings that occured. Support answer: you should have bought a gold gard.
I actually thought that made sense so i bought one the end of februari. Halfway through april i send in a support case when i was actually gonna get it.
Support answer: we understand that you are concerned about security but if you follow these and these steps (virusscanner, spyware, firewall and so on) then you are already pretty safe. HOLD ON HERE So you tell people that are hacked to improve their security that they need a goldcard and the ones that havent been hacked that no goldcard is needed cause they are already pretty safe?

4. Finish first then release!
We constantly get an unfinished product. The concept might be good but because it is unfinished it dies before it reaches its potential
exmples:
1. Taming. Great concept! but we dont wanna make snables jump, we want to ride atrox and have snargs as hunting companions. People were very excited and started tamin, only to realize that very little could be done with it, it wasnt finished, and they quit doing it.
2. New Oxford City. Unlike taming i was excited about this. Only to find out that yet again it wasnt finished. I loved my 10 minutes of viewing paintings, too bad i spend the other 50 minutes i was there, roaming empty halls trying to find the paintings. The place should have been bursting with paintings, lectures and real life shops before it was released.

I could go on for a long time but i think i have covered the basics. In my view MindArk should create something more then a real cash economy to keep customers interested. If not someone else will use the real cash thing, and create a more interesting experience, in which case EU will die out. Something i hope will not be the case.

I know i will never ever get a comment from MindArk on this. I just hope that the CEO Welter is as quick as he was with the business professor and reads it, maybe just maybe he can do something with it.

PS i apologize for the length of this POST (thanks to dante

wow some post +Rep!

Wow, nice post, very well writen +rep

just for debate.
think about how many people love this place....... the nuber of people that spend roughly $10 bucks a week, instead of a pizza out....thats like almost $50 a month....thats what some ISP's charge per month....and ISP's have more techs and equipment to pay for then MA i would think (think MA's bills plus vans/trucks and techs)........so $50 can be quite a descent chunk of change with enough people monthly. I am going to stand on a ledge and assume that MA tweaks the economy and the system to never pay out the "books" into the red, always keep a profit. Is it possible they could survive with enough people that actually do enjoy the community and just enjoy things how they are, as long as they see some progression?

You are right that if someone "copys" PE and manages to get a close similarity, MA will have major competition worries on their minds

In some parts I agree but others I disagree..

For start I came here Oct last year mainly due to my bro telling me about it so we dl'd straight away.

I think that in some cases they should let us know first eg the ATM cards (we heard about this from outside news stories I believe) This should change... MA should let the existing players know of the upcoming feature first imo but at least we heard it..

with some good marketing the 'future' enhacnements will bring ppl in but they should know that these things are not available 'yet'

Dont know why im mumbling on but your post got me thinking. I wont leave EU by a long stretch I'm here to stay but I think that some things would be a good investment in time to keep players that come in due to these PR stunts..

Mumbling again

Rip

What u state is true and is very well written and recieves a +rep.

The thing is MA is so closed and they are acting pretty weird imo if u take a look to things that can be improved easily but are not.
Its just that i dont understand what they want and what there priorities are.

nice post +rep!!

I've been here for almost 2 years now and this thing we are participating in is in my eyes a big downward spiral... I wish the economy was the way it was 2 years ago. It was good and you were excited to get a 50 ped global! Now when i get a 200 ped hof i'm like FFS it doesnt even make me break even!


btw:
edit one of these parts please lol

begin_of_post said:

I intend this to be constructive criticism not a rant

Click to expand...

end_of_post said:

PS i apologize for the length of this rant

Click to expand...

PS sorry for being a pain in the ass, just noticed it ^^

Status said:

Is it possible they could survive with enough people that actually do enjoy the community and just enjoy things how they are, as long as they see some progression?

You are right that if someone "copys" PE and manages to get a close similarity, MA will have major competition worries on their minds

Click to expand...

That is in fact very possible, it is called a niche strategy. Some comapnies are profitable because they are very large, other companies are profitable because they stay small and cater the need of a very specific group of customers. I however dont think that MindArk employs that, everything points at the fact that they are aiming on growth.

Dante that last rant comment was more or less a synical remark aimed at myself i have a hard time always to keep things short lol

Thanks everyone for the nice comments in my rep department. I was afraid no one would read this due to its length, i guess i underestimated you people, so thanks again

Blackblood said:

That is in fact very possible, it is called a niche strategy. Some comapnies are profitable because they are very large, other companies are profitable because they stay small and cater the need of a very specific group of customers. I however dont think that MindArk employs that, everything points at the fact that they are aiming on growth.

Click to expand...

I see your point
So they are a niche company aiming on growth trying to expose their niche to a wider user base

They have alot of things they need to improve upon, like you said in your original post. If they did eventually see a point when they run more professinoally, they could end up maintaining more player base and thus become successfull. Problem is that time is of the essence and growing faster then their capability can be a bad thing. Am I still on track

I need to say one thing: About the goldcard: LOL!!! Is this a joke? very wierd delay for me

amazing post Blackblood this is i wanted to say for long time

grats you had balls.

+rep

You've pointed out several large problems that will keep EU from growing until they are seriously addressed. The cash economy is the only interesting aspect of EU. As for everything else, there are other games that do it better and are more entertaining. Sooner or later, there will be competitors and EU as it currently is will not be able to fight them off despite have a several year headstart. Why wait until competition starts? Start growing deep roots now and laugh at the saplings later.

Excellent post! Too bad we can't +rep in this category :\

To me it does not seems like MA are aiming at the crowds though. They seem to want the few rich people that don't mind putting in 2k$ when they join and loose it.
As it is now I look at EU as a set of slot machines in disguise with fancy(or less so) animations.
Oh and ofc.. if you deposit 10k$ for skills or a eco-gun you can acctually play for free after that..

The slot machine comparison is excellent Akoz , cause it seems that is exactly how loot division works.

It could very well be that MA is aiming at the rich gamers, but even most rich people demand entertainment value for their money. They won't just throw it down a bottomless pit.

I think even for rich players most of my points hold, except the advancement point, since well clearly they have the money for the expensive items.

Very well written intro. I do feel blocked, would not like to pay
300USD for mk5 for example. And newbies come in big floods,
and nobody has resources (and this time only few had even
interest) to introduce them to the game. The treatment
of the newbies (or lack of it) is quite bad...

MA's odd-looking maneuvres are since they are sucked
themselves too (?), the investors want high returns?

The game lives and dies through social induction (old
players mentioning it to their friends) unless good
tutorial scene (newbie isle or such) to the game is
introduced. The newbie isle could also have some instanced parts.

I would like to see the average costs of the game to be reduced
50%, for example if a newbie has 30% returns from hunting,
he would have 65% and so on (me: 80% --> 90%). The same
way the profiting players should have the cut (example 120% --> 110%).
This should be something quite easy to do. Now we pull a heavy plough here.

Who..Me?

Has no one devoured the published cash flow statement?

The supposed amount thats returned to users?

The shareholder alotment?

I crave intellgent analysis of this stuff:

http://www.mindark.com/docs/pr/mindark_prospekt_en.pdf

Check it out. Draw some logical conclusions and tell me how it is.

I've tried, but am only one alky in a big virtual world.

Hmmm that prospectus is an interesting read. Need a little bit more time before i can give a better analysis, but....
they are very interested in strengthening bonds with existing clients, cause it leads to people being more active and great ideas for the further development of EU.

Ok then why do i have 10+ comments of even high profile players in my rep page that state : they dont listen to us???


Maybe i should buy some shares and make my ideas heard, gotta figure out first if they have voting rights though

Blackblood said:

The slot machine comparison is excellent Akoz , cause it seems that is exactly how loot division works.

It could very well be that MA is aiming at the rich gamers, but even most rich people demand entertainment value for their money. They won't just throw it down a bottomless pit.

Click to expand...

The slot machine thing is close, but PE/EU is not just a pop quarters in and pull method, this is a very complex and deep slot machine do to the "openess" of it I do work for casinos, Ive seen the "heards" of people playing (like us), and I couldnt sit at a slot machine the way I can infront of PE/EU

And as far as entertainment for the money, alot of that is an opinion.....im sure the minority are the happy ones that feel entertained for their money...majority wich is what matters, prolly think not.......but this is all personal perspective. And remember, even broke people throw money down bottomless pits if it gives them their fix

I would just love to see the tru number of active players and an average daily deposit and withdraw ammount of PE/EU

All just my

very well written post - alot of points that have been on my mind for a while also.

and as for the "then give us a universe" lol i hope that opening up the galaxy for flight isnt too far away

+ rep

Agreed!

Agreed!

-Necromancer strikes again!

Holy Necro-Post Batman!

Well, well ... know what? ... as necro as this is, the OP content still applies ... fancy that.

MindStar9 said:

Well, well ... know what? ... as necro as this is, the OP content still applies ... fancy that.

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true, so true.

yeah saddly still apply in 2010...

they dont understand the meaning of PLAYER RETENTION

SWE's are creative but lack marketing basics

Wow. Nail -> Head. I can't really add anything that hasn't been said, so I'll just say good post! and hope that someone at MA/FPC is paying attention.

lol for once i didnt check when the post was made but as it says the topic is still valid.

As some might know i'm writing my thesis on making a real cash loot-system. So that has led me and my handler to discus balancing, and MA's balancing aswell.

We have come to the conclusion that MA's balance sort of suck. If the cost to play the game would go down, more ppl would come AND stay, and then also produce more decay for MA as they would use up more guns etc, which is what ma is earning their money on.

Picture that instead of 40k active players EU would have 150k that plays longer due to a bit bigger income, thus using more eq and thus also producing more money for ma as their items decay.

I totally agree MA need to work on player retention. I started playing in 2006 and played about 2 years, and then felt like the game had peaked, no new content and skill gain was becoming slow.

exactly what i have thougt also !

MindStar9 said:

Well, well ... know what? ... as necro as this is, the OP content still applies ... fancy that.

Click to expand...

see in title

I approve this post necro. Every point he made is valid today.

its shameful that after 4 years and a major overhaul to the system, that points like this ARE still valid. Seriously MA/FPC, you really need to take notice of this and DO SOMETHING constructive. How many times does it have to be raised before you actually realise that people are serious?

i must agree... trully is shameful

When i read the OP i thought it was posted these days, i noticed the date only on first reply. Everything said in OP is true for today to and thats sad.