Systems for the future

kill tons of mob X are more endurance (and decay) than a mission to me. I'd rather be challenged by an NPC that goes on follow mode, and your task is to lead (not chase) the NPC through a dense area of hostiles with your skill and wits and maybe your savvy about splitting aggro radii and finding alternate routes, than trying to keep a suicidal NPC alive who can't see the beast he is walking towards while you're still dealing with his last accidental encounter.

 

Hi, me again :)

Gretchen, thank you for your great post! It made me remembering of the good old times ;-) I've played quite some games, too, and the part concerning EQ was very similar to something I experienced in another MMORPG.

But there are resemblances to EU too. I started this back in the autumn of 2005, short after the CND deal. The name was Planet Entropia then, the graphics was strange (to say it politely ...), and the movement was nasty. But there were a lot of participants, you'd find a few players even in the most remote areas. There was a lot of communication in game, the social aspects was what caught me quite fast.

Not uncommon to die somewhere in the wilderness, getting teleported to a cursed revival terminal at an outpost sieged by huge, invincible monsters. Sitting there for hours, trying to escape over and over, MindEssence getting low, and then, finally, a green dot appearing on the radar. Only to become a white dot quickly, and to revive next to you. Well, at least now we wasn't alone in our prison anymore ...

This was major fun. We found new friends nearly daily, and even if I'm a born hermit I played with other people and chatted the most time of my days. The trading towns usually was this full with people that we often had a slide show for some minute when exiting the teleporter, and then we'd usually carefully avoid any not necessary movement not to get the slide show again.

There was no vehicles, no missions, Amenthera wasn't fully implemented yet, but there was a lot of people, a lot of communication, drama, fun, excitement. And this was what made the game unique.

Things have changed. We have vehicles now, and should I get caught in any outpost, I just fly out. The way the mobs are designed have changed, instead of mobs with comparable low HP and huge damage now mobs with insane HP & regeneration, but ridiculous low damage are the flavor of the decade.
Hunting has become a boring grind, tag a mob, kick in the auto-tool, watch a movie until it is finished. Loot, rinse, repeat.
For sure, not all mobs are this way, there's some old-school mobs left, but any shiny loot comes from the new boring HP monsters.

So most people are hunting them mainly. And not in a team usually, because it's not necessary anymore. The challenge isn't the threat of the mob anymore, it's the carefully calculated way how to kill as many of them with the least PED burned. Always hoping that the dice will fall nicely, and that the bells and whistles will play.

I feel like in a single player game quite often, these days. Due to my motorized toys I'm not dependent of others anymore at all. I've skipped hunting almost completely, no fun anymore. I'm mining, and what I cannot sell for adequate MU, I'm crafting. TT is my friend.

Cannot complain, I'm doing well. My value is rising. I'll never be more then the advanced nOOb that I am, can and will not spent the crazy amounts of money needed to advance.

I'm ritually checking some new player areas every day I'm playing. Usually they are empty. I rarely see a trader anymore, and if, it's the 2 or 3 that I know to offer insulting prices. The few ppl from my FL that are still active are online not often, a small chat every now and then, that's it.

And now we should get more "content". NPC's roaming the lands, cool. When there's no people anymore to talk to, let's talk to NPC's?

I cannot help but feeling that this is the completely wrong approach. Instead of doing anything to attract new players, to fill the lands with green dots again, more "single player content". To make it even more easy for individuals or small groups to exclude themselves from the community.

This is not WoW. This is a sandbox game with real money. It's impossible to offer shiny phat loot for quests or instances, all loot has to be payed for at first. Does it really make sense to spent insanely much costly development time into features that don't offer a real reward to the players? That become a boring grind quickly, like the Iron Challenge Missions? Yes, they offer stats as a reward. And this makes them mandatory for anybody aiming to advance it's avatar. Killing bazillions of this mob, then killing bazillions of that mob, what a fun & enjoyment!

Do I feel jaded? Yes, I do, in a certain way. I still play this game, but I don't play it for the fun and the excitement anymore. I play it to preserve my "investment", and to improve my PED cards stats. I'm close to give up hope that this game ever will become again what it once was.

Have a good time!

PS: Let's be constructive. I now imagine I'd be the head of MA. What would I do?

1. Immediately stop any work on missions, NPCs, instances, Space, new features.
   .
2. Creating a task force group to optimize the game engine - less hardware requirements, faster control responsiveness, better animations.
   .
3. Kicking the balance teams cute behinds until they came up with a new loot distribution, less Uber loots, more common loot. And items drops adjusted so that they'd be a reason to be happy for the players, any mob should loot the items used to kill the next mob on the ladder.
   .
4. Creating another task force that implements the lost/ missing features as fast as possible. Should it not be possible in a decent frame of time, skip it, and compensate.
   .
5. Create a possibility for the planet partners to work with external Ad customers. Make it suiting the game - I'd not mind receiving a HoF "sponsored by Flooxie Cola", but I'd mind seeing "Flooxie Cola Ad screens" all over the place ... As soon as this is done, HoF's and ATH's are payed from this budget exclusively.
   .
6. And when this is done, it's time for another marketing stunt like CND. Sell MA to Lady Gaga, have NeverDie be kidnapped by an North Korean command, have Deathifier buy California and make it an EU theme park, or drop me a ModFap, an Improved Nano-Dai Katana (UL) and a full set of ModShadow (F, UL). From a young male SnableSnot. ;-)

 

I like 3. particularly. I like that, for example, Papoos on Next Island drop Pixie armor parts. And at least Shogun foot guards. I think this is an encouraging thing, it allows people to get some armor better than Settler from the TT, and it doesn't just give them a 13 ped piece of loot because you get it almost destroyed and need to fix it. So part of the drop is the tiny value of the highly damaged item, but the opportunity to spend PED to fix and wear a gear upgrade.

I have to keep remembering to bear in mind that some people sell things entirely fixed, and some highly damaged, so the cheap item may not be a bargain because it's less than the expensive item.

I want to start skilling up manufacturing of some kind but NI only has about 2-3 blueprints that can be made with local drops. Get some stacks together, do a manufacturing run, get a skillup or two and maybe some residue. That feels like the biggest PED suck around. Off to gather a couple hundred eye and muscle oil!

Loot frequency, I've been spending my noob time tracking the drops from the very few kinds of creatures I've fought on Next Island and Ancient Greece. I've been filling in missing items in the Entropedia charts, even discovered a crystal (more likely, hundreds had it drop and TTed it, dozens got it and stuck it away, but nobody bothered to check if it was listed. So no one will rename Phenacite Crystal in my honor.) But there seems to be a lot of information on drops that is not listed in the wikis. Shogun Footguards, for instance, weren't on the Papoo tables. A nice person on my friendslist left me Shogun Footguards (F) as a gift, then later I had the (M) drop, and then saw they weren't listed. But the loot frequency table definitions on Entropedia stun me. Common, the definition of Common (if I recall, I'm at work and it's blocked) is that you could reasonably expect to have 1 of the item drop for every 100 PED spent hunting. That doesn't sound too common to me!

In Everquest, grass snakes dropped snake skins and rusty daggers and maybe a copper or two. They were the perhaps, Young Male Snablesnot of Everquest (assuming Xandra's reference to imply they are lowly to get godly dream lootz from.) Every grass snake would drop snake skins. Some two. Bats would drop bat wings. Inexplicably, some bats would drop 4 or 5 bat wings (I guess they carried spares.) That is Common loot frequency.

I have to spend $10 to expect something to drop once? That is not common.

I would feel happier to have my time engaged in something that feels like moving forward. Add a refining skill. Have the refiner give skillups and return more refined material with higher skill. Even something like that. Refining with the refining tool seems like the only thing that uses decay and gives no skill for its use (and requires no skill to use perfectly.)

Give me a reason to have 40 stacks of green, blue, red, maroon, yellow, orange refined crystals in my storage. And all those Papoo feet and tails and palms and teeth and eyes and hearts.

I am not hypnotized by the HoFs and Globals that spam my chat window. I have no illusions that I will make money playing in the Entropia Universe. It's really a game called leaky bucket. I pour money in and it is a challenge of wits and patience to let it leak out as slowly as possible. I know for a fact I will be paying more per month into PED than I would even consider putting into a monthly fee in a standard MMORPG. And those standard monthly fee MMORPGs show people a heck of a good time for $15 a month.

For $15 a month, a game with an entire continent (equivalent to a planet in the EU sense) containing 1 quest chain, 1 fighting quest, and special area with 1 more quest chain, and 1 high level fighting quest, and that's it...crafting that you can't do to any extent on your continent of origin, farming and pets announced but not implemented, how many $15 monthly subscribers would cancel?

If I was a Tauren in WoW, and the vast lovely areas of Tauren lands had quests for immersion completable in an hour. And then two quests to kill 1000 creature X and 999 creature Y. And that was the sum total of being a proud noble Tauren brave. That would really suck ;)

 

Looks nice to me :)

And this means you can never die?
Probably they meant 95% of the max hp. But the way they put it, you can never die.

 

"Hussk will do this 95% of current hp damage attack to everyone within the attack radius and then its up to player to heal as fast as they can before his other attacks begin killing you off."

I don't think this is a (half way to the wall)^infinity situation. You'd die :) I think the clarification was for whatever complaints were being posted that a 95% hit wouldn't take 95% of the condition of your armor parts rendering them almost destroyed along with you. If I'm understanding it correctly from what was pasted.

 

hey if nothing else, this alleviates some of the feeling that nothing is being worked on ;)

 

After reading it again, I think they did mean it will hit you for 95% of your current hp, after which he starts doing normal attacks. So someone with 100 hp will have 5 left, someone with 10hp will have .5 left. And I wasn't really talking about armor and stuff ;)