Virtual Reality Public Transport IPO - Discussion

[Sionkiewicz]

Your Math is very valid and everything you point out will absolutely have to be taken into account.
However what also needs to be considered is that the entire economy might get a boost with this IPO if its handled correctly. Itis designed to attract significantly more users through the Jobs and Conscription which when combined with initiatives from MA to stimulate more crafting and demand for resources can have a dramatic impact on your overall numbers..

The Transport system and associated token costs will be balanced very carefully as will the other transport costs..

Yes if You take this on its own and out of context of it successfully bringing lots more users and tens or hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, then I see how bad it can look.

But Please look at the overall plan, its not just one thing.... Most importantly this is a high concept idea to underwrite the creation of jobs in VR.. I want to raise billions, I want to show the world we can have a massive VR RCE Market place.. (Ofc the platform will need to grow to accommodate millions of players, I also think a significant part of that user base would be utilizing APPs and other platforms to connect to the RCE.

The Reason that the balancing and dev of EU s not moving as fast as we would all like is because the platform needs to be growing at the same time to fund it.

I certainly am discussing with MA the general economy and am being assured steps are being taken to increase manufacturing and the demand for resources..

If the steps are not taken or not successful, I am able to challenge them on their choices. I can present ideas from the community. But I'm not the CEO of MA or chief balancing officer. As Prez of VR I am an outsider geared to creating initiatives to bridge worlds and to bring EU to the forefront of VR where it really should be given that it is an extraordinary RCE Universe. Yes the economy is out of whack and there are so many reasons why. Also there are internal politics at MA that have to be navigated to push for Dev...

I will do as much as I can, but we can see the Entropia Player base doesn't really want that from me. They would rather have someone they have confidence in to address MA regarding balancing and the economy... That's fine I didn't run for president of Entropia Universe. I wouldn't have... What's the point, I can already communicate with MA regarding these issues. I can pitch them ideas... I want to work to show the world the value of RCE worlds. I want to champion the best of EU.

I think now is a really good time for the community to find some player representatives, who they have faith in and charge them with the task of putting to together a priority list to present to MA. In my capacity i will support these reps in presenting these plans to MA.

I want the economy to be stronger for the Players. That's what I want. I know why things that seem to be obvious to the players are not being implemented.. I want to help facilitate the Dev we need to improve the overall balancing.
to do that I have to generate renewed interest in the platfom. Banner ads alone are not enough to fuel significant growth. We need initiatives. People talk about advertising, but there are many companies with deeper pockets than MA who are driving the cost of new user acquisition up.. if only it were as easy as putting an Ad on TV or in a magazine.. The numbers aren't there...

We have to re-invent and think outside the box...

But enough I don't want to sell you or anyone else on the initiative right now... I have put it out there, digest it, think about what I'm trying to do and I'll think about what everyone's saying...

MA is congress at the end of the day, my initiatives have to get past them.. I was warned that some of the existing Population would be up in arms... But I believe that there is a great opportunity here and I will continue to champion it...

to think I don't care about the players is unrealistic, if the players are not happy, I'm out of business. My planet will die.

The biggest reason this will not work and everyone will just leave this game is because NO ONE has any confidence in MA to complete the work necessary for it to be a sucess. MA is well known for putting in just enough in the beginning to start collecting funds and letting the rest fester till everyone either stops using or asking for it. You need to get that changed before putting something like this in place.

Name me one project they have completed in the last five years to what they promised when they started. Look at Taming.. Look at Space.. Hell, look at the huge list of bugs in the game which everyone knows about and probably would take five minutes to fix. They have a really bad track record and that is the Achilles heel to this plan. Everyone looks at this as a new tax on TPs and maybe in 3 years we may see the deeds come out.. then another three the job system will come out but with so many issues it will be unusable.

Put this on hold till you can get Taming and Space working as promised.. then people may trust in your plan to be what you are promising. Till then, it's a pipe dream and your Constituent Confidence index is shrinking.

[SpikeBlack]

When did you have this idea? Was it during or after your election campaign as although you mentioned job creation nothing was mentioned of this. When you said job creation I didn't think you meant creation of jobs with no real purpose.

Personally I believe the EU's economy is out of whack because of the cut and paste additions over the past few years - iron missions for one create an over supply of some loot types which resulted in MA screwing the loot system and the bulk production of certain items such as mining amps and the EP bp hasn't helped as it left vast amounts of resources unused. The constant release of new lootable L items giving fewer and fewer reasons for crafters to move away from the few BP's that are still craftable or sellable. Massive HP mobs designed purely as a way to take ped from players - might be popular but don't help the economy. I'd say we're rapidly moving away from an RCE to a freemium game.

Personally I still think PE was better than the current EU - it left us alone to get on with it, we set the rules and the objectives. We'd grind mobs or mine in specific areas because they either dropped something we needed or someone else needed.

The economy needs addressing first but not by assuming an IPO will fix everything and if MA aren't willing to talk about fixing the players issues then they're not going to get players on their side which is further harmed as currently the Calypso team has all but vanished from their own official forum - AGAIN. So much for MA's latest CEO's goal of increased communication.

[Andy]

Biggest promised (in State of the Universe Address) and abandoned projects:

- Space transport missions (not released) - all cash pool just go into MA pockets, ahh, ok let it be so, there is also exploit which I reported by myself to MA, still not fixed, I checked 1-2 month ago, with possibility to not pay transport fee, hehe

- Taming & Stables (released partially) - stables did not recieved all offered functions

- CLD Estate (Estates are abandoned, but cash for plots taken by MA) and Political Systems (not released, MA was used Facebook (what is it?) for President elections with 30-50 fake voters)

- Affiliate System (my SC still open after one answer recieved 29 feb 2016) - It would bring a lot of new players with money, but they probably do not need. I personally can attract them, but not for free!

- Premium Accounts (Just forgotten) - This would give extra money for MA, but maybe too hard to manage or just do not need.

And now, when offered so significant change, it will look something like this:
- Deeds will be released in the amount of $ 10 million and of course sold to greedy investors
- Introduced the payment for teleportation, since it is very simple (as with all these bananas, just for all TP's
Then we will pay for TP, Deed owners will receive 1 PEC (at best every week, in bad times once a month), with a hidden mechanism of allocation of funds under the full control of the MA. Another, transparent system is implemented only for AUD's.
After that...we will see nothing else, no jobs (except new BP's for manufacturers), no TP to other games (haha!), nothing, because this is just new tax introducion without any further (atleast in 1-3 years) development.

Why do we have to believe that it bring health to game economy? This is not true. I agree that it bring health to MA company, but let's not get into our pockets as deep as at this time, okay? IPO - let it be, ok. Paid TP let it be, ok. But cheaper please! And all will be fine! Be honest, and people will trust you too!

[matthew]

Yes the economy is out of whack and there are so many reasons why. Also there are internal politics at MA that have to be navigated to push for Dev...

If I might suggest, and I mean this as a constructive comment, I feel that at least part of the issue with the current economy is due to lack of confidence in MA's ability to manage the universe...

Consistently MA under deliver or fail to deliver on promises and announcements. Some times these deliveries take years longer that expected, all the while holding onto the investors funds with little communication, eventually when the product is delivered it is only half of what is promised.

Even in the announcements regarding this election was filled with items that were misleading and/or never delivered.

Further to this MA persistently ignore participant's concerns and questions, opting for a method of silence rather than communication. When people have thousands of dollars tied up in an investment such as the CLDs it would be nice to have some communication and answers to future questions.

in my opinion anyone should have the right to know exactly what is planned. MA do not talk about future updates but when those updates concern thousands of dollars I think there is some right to know if feature X is ever planned.

Lets get some MA/community conversations going. Lets get that optimism of the early days back into the universe again . The economy needs some really strong road maps which points the way for 1 year, 5 years, even 10 years .

[soreal]

This is nuts.

ND you would garner so much more respect from the playerbase if you championed getting all promised updates sorted out first before leading MA ( or are they the ones wagging your tail ? ) into a percieved cash cow.

I'm not going to go into the economics here but you mention about millions or billions of TP uses that will drive the economy this is obviously based off the current usage , you do have these numbers ? right ?
Those numbers are irrelavent at the point that charges are made to the TP system as as this point you are no longer supplying a free game feature , you are selling a product. Which most will not use for various reasons.
So this needs to be re evaulated, at best scrap the idea as it will not earn close to what you think it will.

Next we have these two beauties from your FAQ , here http://www.presidentofvirtualreality.com/:


Q. Will all teleporters require the same number of tokens?
A. Teleporter Fees will be balanced in such a way as not undermine other forms of transport.

Q. Will I be able to carry items on an interplanetary Teleporter?
A. Items transported instantly at this time will require an additional Fee which will be applied to Shipping for Space delivery missions

This will totally undermine the current owners of privateers , motherships and Equus warp ships
You say transported fees will be balanced NOT to undermine other forms of transport.
Now unless your going to charge substantially more to TP to a planet , so 50 , 75 , 100 PED for example how can this do anything else but undermine the existing space travel businesses but wait there is more, if you do set a crazy high price on interplanetary TPing then no one will use them anyway they will just get a warp , so your not going to make any money off them , if you make it cheap then your putting existing space businesses at risk.

Take a step back and get this idea out of your head, its flawed in so many ways.

Fix the system first , supply all promised and long over due updates then maybe move onto some crazy ideas but you must listen to the player base as a first instance and the player base is rejecting this idea and you into the bargain.

[Ahrotahn]

In business perception is reality. I came to EU a while back before auto action, and couldn't deal with hitting sweat over and over. I came back and found auto use was created, deposited some $ and began playing on Calypso.

From the start it was obvious that no matter what I did as a new player other than collect sweat for pennies an hour, I was not going to be profitable from mining or hunting or crafting. So much (L) weapons drop that even lots of them have no value, much less something a beginner or mid-level crafter might be able to make. So I traded some, did missions, lost a good amount of PED in exchange for skills basically.

The perception from a new player is that the game developers make the game prohibitively expensive to play for a new player. The Auction House costs WAY too much for a brand new player to save up stacks large enough to sell at auction before he/she runs out of PED. I don't mind playing for games, I have done for 12 years. But I couldn't afford to list items, so I had to yell in trade chat all day to sell things. Of course I could TT them and lose far more PED.

I wanted to try crafting, only to find out that EP is the only reasonable way to go. Which is (of course) parts purchased from the TT (MA direct fund). The mobs on Caly are not reasonable to swunt for noobs, even punies hit too hard. So I went to Ark. A less "established" player base and less trade volume, but far better mobs for new players.

I wanted to go to RT to do new player quests and try it out. Have been told by players in game that RT is not a viable option because Thing is bugged (again) despite finding on Google that it should be working fine. Well, I would have to pay 2 PED to land plus whatever it costs to get there, or a 7 PED TP fee to the ground. To go to a new planet that I know is bugged and try it out.

There is a very weak economy for newer hunters (like me) because nobody crafts hardly anything that uses lower level stuff. Because everyone can loot better stuff anyhow, and everyone only crafts EPs to level.

The problem is perception. I am happy to walk/run/ride to wherever, but I am not a "power" player or an "UBER." But I am the future of the game: a new player. And currently the perception is that developers are not nearly as interested in having a good game as they are in pulling as much $ as possible out of the game that they already have while building a new game that could go viral.

I like the TP idea in that it will create virtual jobs, I have thought a ton about it and had lots of discussions. I can see that VR gaming with RCE would possibly create an industry standard for coding and avatar usage. But considering the prohibitive costs as-is for a new player, the way to make it work would be for new players to be conscripted immediately as part of their "new player experience."

Another issue is the nearly completely inactive forums from several different planets. I understand they were sold to planet partners (again MA perceived greed), but its extremely difficult for new players to get info on this game, which planet to start on, how to do anything. That hurts the game immensely, which is why the push for Compet. Its easy, an app, and new players can play it without reading 1000000 lines of guides.

Why not have MA stop the perceived cash-grab that is EP crafting from TT items, and make crafting actually viable at lower levels, have the economy running smoother, lower AH min costs. This all will increase the velocity of PED (read money) in game and will help new players. New blood is the only thing that will keep this game & MA alive without Compets.

Perception is reality. MA's failures in many ways make this SEEM like another MA cash grab, even though I can see totally where you are going with the idea NEVERDIE.

Thanks,
Ahrotahn

[San]

Very little out there has RCE at this time, ...

Second Life. Not sure how to compare it with Entropia though, since it's not a game or VR per se, but just a platform and infrastructure. All content is created by users. It is more like a 3D version of the www, with the added bonus that the means for money transfers are already built in. It has a thriving economy, people make all kinds of things to sell and other people buy them. There are jobs and services and whatnot. About the only thing you can't really charge for is... transport (but access to a parcel, if so desired). You can teleport from and to any location, your avatar can even fly freely. Without this freedom, the content creators wouldn't get customers so easily. Removing the real-world restrictions of logistics in the simulated world is what enables its social function on a very basic level.

Back to Entropia. There were no vehicles and fewer teleporters in the beginning, and some people bemoan that things have gotten too easy. On the other hand, getting from A to B quickly and without artificially inflated cost (since everything is artificial in VR) enables gatherings in the same way as described above. If that is changed simply for the reason of providing income for some other group which currently doesn't exist, I don't know... I lack the imagination to see how this could benefit anyone except just a different favoured group.

[NEVERDIE]

Second Life. Not sure how to compare it with Entropia though, since it's not a game or VR per se, but just a platform and infrastructure. All content is created by users. It is more like a 3D version of the www, with the added bonus that the means for money transfers are already built in. It has a thriving economy, people make all kinds of things to sell and other people buy them. There are jobs and services and whatnot. About the only thing you can't really charge for is... transport (but access to a parcel, if so desired). You can teleport from and to any location, your avatar can even fly freely. Without this freedom, the content creators wouldn't get customers so easily. Removing the real-world restrictions of logistics in the simulated world is what enables its social function on a very basic level.

Back to Entropia. There were no vehicles and fewer teleporters in the beginning, and some people bemoan that things have gotten too easy. On the other hand, getting from A to B quickly and without artificially inflated cost (since everything is artificial in VR) enables gatherings in the same way as described above. If that is changed simply for the reason of providing income for some other group which currently doesn't exist, I don't know... I lack the imagination to see how this could benefit anyone except just a different favoured group.

The Monetizing of the TP system is designed to Stimulate the economy on many different levels, its not conceived to be of benefit to a small group..

There will be a lot of consideration to which TP's would be Monetized, some TP's may not be monetized.
TP Tokens may end up having a value as low as a few Pec and the amount of tokens required to Teleport may be based on distance...

The exact formula is yet to be determined and is open for feedback...

[NEVERDIE]

This is nuts.

ND you would garner so much more respect from the playerbase if you championed getting all promised updates sorted out first before leading MA ( or are they the ones wagging your tail ? ) into a percieved cash cow.

I'm not going to go into the economics here but you mention about millions or billions of TP uses that will drive the economy this is obviously based off the current usage , you do have these numbers ? right ?
Those numbers are irrelavent at the point that charges are made to the TP system as as this point you are no longer supplying a free game feature , you are selling a product. Which most will not use for various reasons.
So this needs to be re evaulated, at best scrap the idea as it will not earn close to what you think it will.

Next we have these two beauties from your FAQ , here http://www.presidentofvirtualreality.com/:


Q. Will all teleporters require the same number of tokens?
A. Teleporter Fees will be balanced in such a way as not undermine other forms of transport.

Q. Will I be able to carry items on an interplanetary Teleporter?
A. Items transported instantly at this time will require an additional Fee which will be applied to Shipping for Space delivery missions

This will totally undermine the current owners of privateers , motherships and Equus warp ships
You say transported fees will be balanced NOT to undermine other forms of transport.
Now unless your going to charge substantially more to TP to a planet , so 50 , 75 , 100 PED for example how can this do anything else but undermine the existing space travel businesses but wait there is more, if you do set a crazy high price on interplanetary TPing then no one will use them anyway they will just get a warp , so your not going to make any money off them , if you make it cheap then your putting existing space businesses at risk.

Take a step back and get this idea out of your head, its flawed in so many ways.

Fix the system first , supply all promised and long over due updates then maybe move onto some crazy ideas but you must listen to the player base as a first instance and the player base is rejecting this idea and you into the bargain.

Teleporting between planets isn't required for the System, if it is added I would think it would be around 100 Ped as VIP flights are around 50 ped..

also at some point Mindark will be introducing the Space Transport Mission system, which are funded by the Interplanetary auction fees.. I would imagine weight restrictions would have to be factored into interplanetary teleportation

There are so Many balancing issues that the players want addressed, in my initial discussions with Mindark. Most of these issues are being considered and are in the pipeline.. I would like to see the in world Voting system in place this will help..

I think we should create a priority list for MA

[Sionkiewicz]

Sorry, could not resist..

Teleporting between planets isn't required for the System, if it is added I would think it would be around 100 Ped as VIP flights are around 50 ped..

VIP Flights are more around 20-30 ped. Daily flights are around 7-10 ped if you can wait for the schedule. BUT I think 100 Ped is the right number since it would eliminate all risk of Pirates.

also at some point Mindark will be introducing the Space Transport Mission system, which are funded by the Interplanetary auction fees.. I would imagine weight restrictions would have to be factored into interplanetary teleportation

Ok, MA put the Interplanetary Auction fees in place When? And we are still waiting on the Space Transport Mission System since? Maybe you can understand why there is no confidence in MA to complete your proposal to the point where jobs are available.

There are so Many balancing issues that the players want addressed, in my initial discussions with Mindark. Most of these issues are being considered and are in the pipeline.. I would like to see the in world Voting system in place this will help..

I think we should create a priority list for MA

And I'm sorry but TP Fees would be at the bottom of that list. The last thing this game needs is another "money suck" project when they have several they have started and not finished.