Will MA stand for another 10 years

[Condor]

Short bout me, ive been playing PE / EU since around 2005 or so. My gameplay has been everything to pure gambling to slow slow slow grinding depending on pedcard and current IGM situation. I take pride in the fact that im able to adjust to most situations and thou I always loose in the long run I do not deposit more then I feel I can afford. I have gotten a few hundred globals and a few HoFs during my years of playing.

Al in al this text is written in somewhat frustration and some part sadness as I c no way in hell that MA will survive another 10 years going the path they are going now. More and more games are working the cash market every day and the biggest one atm is prolly D3. I do belive that D3 is a test for upcomming projekt titan and I do belive when that projekt launches that we stand the biggest test of EU history and with some bad luck even the one piece that will finish EU off for good.

This might seem like another doom post maybe it is who knows I just feel I need to get this off my chest as its been nagging on me for quite some time. So what has happend during these years that makes me feel MA is going down the wrong path.

Trust : MA has over the years meet several big situations that they deal with in different manners. Ive seen them deal with situations in a good honoroble way three times during these years. Ive seen them drop the ball easily 10 times that. SEE and Husk beeing the two big ones here that springs to mind first hand.

Dropping the Ball: MA is well known to be uber ball droppers a few things comes to mind straight off the bat. Taming, QA, (thinking we will be able to ad newsletter here shortly), IGM bugs, IGM exploits just to name a few. To add some bigger we have SEE and now recently NI. Biggest issue with NI imo is that its been almost 2 months and the only thing MA has done to chill speculation is to say "we are looking into it". Remember turn off ATH anyone?

Dealing with customers: In here I do belive we will find MAs number 1 flaw. They stand to learn so much from Ateam for example. In seven years their approach to customers has acctualy only gotten worse at the same rate as their profits it seems.

Customer support is known to be rude not reading support cases more then 1 line then auto answer. Some cases are well repported to have been up for review over a year without beeing dealt with.

Customer realations. Unless it stands to cost MA money they really dont give a damn. Buggs that are obviosly there fault are either not at al paid back or just to a degree. Beacon bugg, Arkadia instance bugg are 2 that MA acctualy dealt with but instead of paying back full only some compensation was given which is quite sad TBH. Oh and do anyone remeber the threat from MA towards a university teacher and the ones vs the players when ppl got feed up on MA and went out and said we wont play untill U fix sweat instead .

Loot: another hot zone for MA as this is basicly the bread and butter for us al. In this I wont speak on anything but my own thoughts on this. I dont mind at al loosing money hunting really nor crafting nor mining. I do however belive the looses are far to high to be ok from time to time. For example killing feffs costs bout 3ped per kill. My avarage return on my latest 500 feff kills are 1,9 ped. Now thats an intresting return to say the least considering that eaisly renders me 500 ped loss straight of the batt hunting in ECO or so MA says. Hunting Eco is NOTHING but the means to hunt for a longer period of time hence therefore have a bigger chance to hit a HoF. Its basicly the same as in any other gambling way. Hunting persistant on high MU mob slowly slowly grinding will not give U a bigger chance of earning ped throwing skills into the mix here and U quite soon realise that thoose dont really help with ANYTHING besides helps U to grind at a higher lv such preparing U to loose more peds. Al in al doing anything in EU atm goes with a fear of loosing every ped U have in 1 run. That fear will keep ppl from enjoying the game.
Financial plan: MA has always suprised me here. They never EVER seem to have the bigger picture in mind. Always the fast cash in no matter the effect in the longer run. The SEE affair is the biggest one here. That failure costed MA some cash but instead of soaking the loss replaning the gave the players the oppertunity to buy for the same amount. This however has a price as 1. MA still has to run the planet 2. Players will now take a part of MAs already draining profit. So now they still have the expense to run the planet. That got a few mill for that but now they have lowerd their long time profit from here.

And finaly the biggest question of them al here. Ive been working first hand with customers the last 10 years. And I always have a plan NEVER EVER let a customer leave in a bad mood in ANY WAY. This has created a situation were friends to customer on a daily basis return to our esablishment. And when someone leaves our place they recomend it to someone else and we get a new customer. In EU the situation seems the quite oposite alot of ppl leaves this game pissed of with a feeling of beeing punched in the stomach hence telling other ppl this. In the long run this cannot be good for buissness.

Can MA save EU and keep going for alot more years?
By god I hope so al in al I dont like MA but I love the game. A-team so far has shown how to treat a customer maybe MA will learn from that, that would help a GREAT deal towards happines in the community. There are a few more things I belive would be necessery thou.

1. Rigg the loot a lill more stable. When MU is dead return cannot be 1 ped loss per mob when killing 500 of em at 3 ped a pop. Rather remove ATHs

2. Regain the players / investors trust. Putting taming back in be keeping the newsletter going and having extra staff onboard when launching a VU + compensate ppl FULLY WHEN U FUCK UP. Make sure ppl dont dislike the word entropia.

3. When U start something FINISH IT OFF BEFORE GONING IN TEN NEW DIRECTIONS hence creating MORE problems before solving the old ones.

4. Get a more stable plan for eco that DOES NOT KILL THE PLAYER FUN. for example instead of using oil in cars U could have built gas stations that has a set value for gas still cheap as hell to use but the money would go directly to U. That would be a fee ppl can ENJOY. Atm your fees aint to bright clothes and armor fee????? that only makes ppl less hesitant to buy clothing and armor for show hence they invest less on such matters igm.
And if anyone acctualy has gotten this far I ty for reading my ramblings.


Look at the thread from the guy that asked if he could get rich here that leaves so many hints of the current state of EU.

[Fred Zed Gerard]

In my opinion EU could only last up to more than 10 years from now if it could maintain and keep its loyal players surviving around in a somewhat like a give and take relation with them so that EU and its players are dependent on each other to survive. Profiting in the game loots is becoming so slim to sustain the players to stay alive same with EU itself which it has to sacrifice most of its profit instead controlling it so as to give some sort of ease to the player at the cost of sacrificing by cutting a big portion of its profit.

There are two major types of players coming to EU. The first one is the players with a big dream of gaining big to become rich and the other just to come to play for amusement and entertainment. The diversity of this player in mind would be hard for EU to serve if they go much for profit gaining; because for each type will also have its role in the flow of infusing money to the game. The gambler type players, will have the big possibility of infusing big amounts to the game even at the cost of putting their life at stake which is advantageous for MA for a short period only but will backfire against after these players realized that they are broke and failed while the winners are happy as long as the payout is good. The balance would then be shaken if MA would not give attention to each type of players, but how? If there are say a million players and MA don’t have built-in program to sort out the different type of player sentiments to prioritize and serve and those who has felt the loses will in the end become an enemy to MA. They will not blame the winning players it is MA who they will blame. An environment of a player to player based has lost its real sense.

The second one are the good type of player and if there will be lot of this type will come, it will be good for EU and it will open doors for many possibilities in the future. I believe a good design game with great story lines where more people will be attracted to play at a very low cost at start, where bigger dreams will follow in the future o.o.

[Condor]

I agree its a hard mix to get working well togheter but currently I dont even c MA trying to make an effort.
Look at Arkadia as an example. Currently things are fucked there cause to many Acoins out hence the instances is worse then 70% return or so with no chance on MU. This happend cause MA pulled the breaks on brokers MINUTES before they were meant to go live. How the HELL can they not spot this earlier hence delaying everything making sure players have more fun in the long run.

This could have been avoided if MA did the jobb they get paid to do. Ateam is one of the few teams currently that acctualy makes me think there is hope here. But over and over MA screw things up for them making sure the Ateam in time will get the same piss poor rep that MA has. And the odd thing out they do not seem to give a damn.

Shit that has happend with ND no statement from MA.
Shit that has happend on ark no statement from MA
Shit that has happend on / with Next Island no statement from MA.

I honesltly dont get how they think when running a buissness like this.

[Dave Stevens]

Will MA stand another 10 years?

Yes

[mastermesh]

MA will be here in another 50 years or more because they have 6 million dollars now sitting in a bank - 7 million if you count the SDS cash that was handed over prior to the CLD Sale- and are only going to use the interest made on that to supplement the 'as is' functionality they had up til cld sale... In prior years they were in the red a bit...that little add on now will fix that problem in future years I suspect.

[Roni]

Originally Posted by Condor

I agree its a hard mix to get working well togheter but currently I dont even c MA trying to make an effort.
Look at Arkadia as an example. Currently things are fucked there cause to many Acoins out hence the instances is worse then 70% return or so with no chance on MU. This happend cause MA pulled the breaks on brokers MINUTES before they were meant to go live. How the HELL can they not spot this earlier hence delaying everything making sure players have more fun in the long run.

This could have been avoided if MA did the jobb they get paid to do. Ateam is one of the few teams currently that acctualy makes me think there is hope here. But over and over MA screw things up for them making sure the Ateam in time will get the same piss poor rep that MA has. And the odd thing out they do not seem to give a damn.

Shit that has happend with ND no statement from MA.
Shit that has happend on ark no statement from MA
Shit that has happend on / with Next Island no statement from MA.

I honesltly dont get how they think when running a buissness like this.

I dont know about the ND and Ark situation, but MA did a statement on the NI issue:

MindArk, can we have an official statement about Next Island?

Regards, Roni

[Atzkin]

D3 has failed badly just weeks after the game came out. Gold prices in their AH rise faster than I am able to farm it, and nothing is being bought in the RMAH because everyone knows, it has no value. people would only pay for a really uber item - and then its like 50 bucks or so. EU has nothing to fear.

I dont see how EU could possibly end any time soon, but it is also impossible to tell whats going on 10 years from now. Game companies usually come and go in that timescale, but Mindark aint just another gaming company. Besides, Im still a noob and need time to grow out of my pixie suit. ^^

As long as they are making money, and people continue to play it - why stop?

[Condor]

Even thou D3 in itself wasnt my main issue I have still earned more in d3 then here and thats before the pvp update. When that arrives things will get better again I assume .

On the other hand I dont play alot of d3 anymore mainly cause I find it kinda boring :P. But that might change with PvP. The reason for naming D3 is that it is the first time for blizz playing with this. They have likely earned and then some on this so I would assume we will c a followup in the next blizz MMO. If my predictions are right we will c that around 2016 or so.

[Atzkin]

D3 is boring. Id rather farm merps with my opalo than to see act 2 one more time.. =)

And if my prediction is right, then WoW will not stand for another 10 years. Somehow I cant imagine playing a level 160 Murloc that may have become a playable class by 2014

But concerning some other points you made, well I havent been around to comment on some of your thoughts, but concerning loot I have also been wondering why I should risk more hunting bigger mobs in order to risk loosing more peds faster. I realize that EU is a slot machine in MMO disguise, but you've got to see some loot for your investment to keep you running, just like a slot machine keeps you inserting coins by giving some wins, or chances to wins anyways. With them you always think you're about to score and in EU I miss that feeling. The bigger the mob, the more you need that global to break even rather than winning something. I'd rather have a series of minor losses and small wins then losing big on a couple of runs to have a HOF or global at the end.

Running around perfectly Eco after hours of research, using the appropriate armor, gun, amp, and finisher and still paying for other peoples globals seem like a slap in the face at times... Yeah, I know they may not make a profit with their globals.

Well, its adicting either way. Just like my private slot machine in the basement.

[The NN]

One of the better changes, is that loot has been adjusted now, and in the upcomming future we may see some radical changes. as for the time table, well it only took them 10 years to figure this part out, but here we are

The NN.