Outraged By that scam artist. Not My Pesident.

Hmmm, I'm curious if anyone knows what other virtual reality game platforum's (besides EU/MA) got involved and informed their players to vote?
(A few off the top of my head: Second Life, Eve, Onverse, IMVU, Twinity, Active Worlds, Kaneva, Habbo, SmallWorlds, Blue Mars, Moove, vSide, There, Minecraft, WoW, MWO, Vendetta Online, etc.)

Was the voting mentioned/advocated by any VR hardware manufacturer's beforehand?
(ie. Oculus, PlayStation VR, HTC Vive, Google Cardboard, Web3D Consortium)

 

I think they should have made it in game, what ever reason Is supplied they can see where all the traffic is and they chose to do it in the least civilian used route. Or even use both on the web and in game to reach the most people for fair elections.

I agree with the above statement that ND is creative and can add value to this game, but this election should have been run differently.

 

ND is an "official" MA employee (official US spokesman), owns shares in MA etc.

You think there was more voting action because of letting it happen on facebook ?
That must explain why Star has won the forum vote within 1 week and fb was full of fake accounts and official results got never published. (and Star knew he wouldnt have any special abilities when handing 1000$ to MA...we all knew that...he just tested a forum vote)

But I guess you dont care for official results. ND won because of 3 or 5 votes, some even voted B and C (like me) and many many didnt even vote...or werent even aware of a voting process...with so many changes during it...and you say they did it outside of EU to reach a bigger audience, because its the "President of Virtual Reality" and because other games are involved ? Or at least you belive that, because they said so. Be careful.

Let me tell you this and we talk again in 1-3 years. There are no other games that will join. There is no president.

As others already pointed out, you are too new for Entropia. You will SEE the bigger picture asap...or in terms of MA...never.
As you will probably steadily fall for new announcements, that will distract you from the non-fullfilled past.

I will stop here as it wont make any sense explaining it to you any further. You will SEE and realize what I wrote here soon enough.

ND is a charismatic talker since day 1. Always promoting Entropia...always on places noone ever heard of Entropia.
It never brought in the expected 1 mio. concurrent players. It never made Entropia grow. Never.

We always have been a very small "active" community of about 2000-5000 players. Since 2004. Since 12 years.
Of which only several dozens are hardcore active.

MA stopped publishing the numbers of total registered accounts. Feel free to have a look here :

http://www.entropiaplanets.com/threads/active-players-accounts-forum-accounts-all-data-here.11667/

I dont want to discourage you from playing or hoping. Do whatever you want.
But maybe my words will reach you one day. Maybe not.
Many of us followed this PR-gag of broken promises and lies since day 1, in the year of the lord 2000.

Im still here as well. To put it in the words of MepH "To simply enjoy the show".

Mc

 

I can't talk about other people, but I'll show you just a short quote from a chat I had with a friend from a previous game back in my first days here (me being Arya in this chat log):

<Ryan> so what have you been up to
<Ryan> haven't seen you much laterly
<Arya> Well, start playing a new game and it eats most of my time - lol
<Ryan> wut game
<Arya> Entropia Universe, the old Entropia Project if you ever heard of it
<Arya> It's also a sandbox game, sci-fi so kinda meh, but I like it
<Ryan> wait
<Ryan> isnt that the game where that crazy neverdie guy sold his house to buy some ingame property of sorts
<Arya> LOL; yeah, that's exactly the one, although I think he didn't sold it, but just mortgaged it or something like that.

So that friend of mine (46 years old, US if you care about demographics) knew about EU only because of Neverdie; so yeah, I would say that, for sure, at least his promotion functions. And no, I'm not ND's fan girl (and the best prove for this is that I'm on Ark, not on RT); is just that I try to keep an open mind, not just negatively criticize everything that I don't seem to like - give them the benefit of doubt.

 

This reminds me of an episode in school, was in 10th grade I believe. We were tought about dialectics. An exercise repeated several times was to try and, in a discussion, adopt the opposite of your own viewpoint and defend it. Of course I didn't understand the full implications back then, but in hindsight it was a very valuable lesson as it helps making your stand stronger by making you go out of your way and actually understand your opponent. Keep practicing.

Neverdie has my sympathy, president of 13 sqm of stinging nettles complete with anthill or not. But I think the numbers he is tossing are way out of touch with reality, even a virtual one. However, you will likely reach a little further by aiming high than by being meek. Every visionary has been called crazy at first, and I'll be more than happy to eat every joke or word of criticism I've said before if something good comes out of it. If not, we're still good because nothing happens without trying. Thomas Edison had this to say about his frustrations before the final breakthrough: "I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that don't work." Science is built on exactly this way of thinking. Only if we're to be involved as guinea pigs, everybody has their own limit of tolerance. He'll have to tread a bit carefully with that if he wants to keep the lights on.

As for MA's fictional release notes and other communication issues, I think this is a topic for a different forum. Actually I see a president's function as to address exactly things like that. We should hold him to it... and them. At least as minimum price for trying out 'disruptive' measures nobody asked for. We will, er, see...

 

I try to avoid the temptation to pick a side to defend or advocate for. I'm not interested in debates. I think they lead to hyperbole, conflict, and a motivation to try to win rather than to consider the merits of the issue being examined. It's leads to the forum warrior archetype and that's quite destructive.

I'd rather have a discussion that explores the issue so that perhaps I learn something and maybe we find some common ground.

 

Yes 5 years back I myself join the game because of Neverdie when I heard about the game on CNN! Why at first I fully supported Neverdie because he was trying. I took in this new stunt as being a great idea and even talked to him about it. It was a great fun stunt to try and get more people in.

My support stopped the day I learned that he was in this more than just a stunt but working with MA to bring us this new TP Tax. I had so much high hopes for this. It could have been fun. But ND being, well ND ( you need to be in game longer) he killed it. So yes new player of the unknowing of EU please go on and tell us how we are wrong.

No again you are way to new. This is how MA sells us on ideas. Not saying it's bad, but proving that this is not ND here but indeed MA.

 

That is right and is the reason why I keep trying to be objective; that's, for example, the reason why I made the following post on PCF.

On the other hand, I think that when some people are so blinded of their hate (for a person or an idea) that they stop being objective and fall in a extreme, there is need for some other people to jump (so an action they do being full aware, in opposition with the fall of the others) in the other extreme, just to maintain a balance. In this specific case, considering that some people rallied up with forks and knives against ND and against his idea, if the rest of us we would have all kept an open minded, but reserved / prudent position, the outside image (for possible journalists checking the forum to see player base reaction) would be that everyone is against. So yeah, in this specific case I did took this jump (at the risk of hurting my own image/reputation), just to try to compensate for those people who were blindly negating any merits of the idea, so in case outside people (journalists, possible investors) check the forums to see that there are both pro and con people. And, since you mentioned the "common ground", yeah, sometimes when you see that the other one is not willing to offer anything, you just have to ask more, so you have some room for negotiation, or, as you say it, come to a "common ground".

And now, back to the objective post, where I tried to show that even a tuned down version of ND's plan could still bring benefits and it would most probably not have any dramatic effects on the playerbase.

---

NDs numbers are way off, I think we all agree with this.

But let's tune them down and see if they can make sense.

1) Teleporters are currently used almost 10,000,000 times per year; I won't presume like ND that this number will increase to 10 billions by 2020 and 100 billions by 2030, but I'll presume they will stay about the same (there will be some decrease from current players using them less, there will be some increase from some reasonable player base increase, so I think we can safely assume they will stay about the same).

2) I also think that the initial IPO should drop from $10,000,0000 to $5,000,000 and it should be a fixed number of deeds (so no infinite number of deeds diluting the value of each one). I also presume that all money from the initial IPO would go to MA for improving their stability and liquidity; no jobs or anything at this point.

3) Now, at $0.10 (1 PED) per teleport use, and 10,000,000 uses per year, that will mean $1,000,000 income per year; let's presume this would be split like it follows: 50% towards deed owners (similar to how CLD owners get 50% of profit from PC), 25% towards jobs and 25% towards MA.

4) For investors (who could even be investors outside the game, not players) that would mean a 10% annual ROI ($500,000 / year at a total investment of $5,000,000), which beats not only both CLDs and AUDs ROI, but also any IRL bank rates or something like that - so the investors should be happy.

5) For MA, on top of the initial cash influx from the IPO, they will still get $250,000 / year from something they didn't got anything far now; may not be a lot, but would sure help them keep the servers alive.

6) For jobs, dropping the $2.5, $5 and $10 jobs and sticking with the conscript jobs only (for now), the $250,000 / year could finance $250,000 / (15 * 12) = 1,388 jobs - not a huge number, but still a decent one to act as a good promotional tool.

Of course, these money would have to come from somewhere; ND may not agree with this, but this is indeed a tax, but for reasons I'll continue to explain I doubt many people would quit over this tax or anything like that.





I will look at some historical data, from another game, but one quite similar with this one (about same age, also Swedish company, not really RCE, but pretty close - you could buy in-game currency from shop and you can and are encourage to sell currency/avatars/deeds/items to other players for RL$ via official site).

On May 2nd 2013, the cost-to-play in said game raised with 60% (subscription raised from 10 to 16 euros, price for 10 silver raised from 10 to 16 euros); that was definitely not something optional or which one could adapt to, but an unavoidable huge price hike. I think I don't have to tell you how many cries there were over it - people threatening to quit, predicting the apocalypse and everything else I saw here, just at a much bigger scale.

Here's the graph with what happen with population (before and after said event):



Population indeed dropped by about 10% (mostly alts, since alts were allowed in that game) in the first two months, then reached a top bottom of about 15% loss during summer (although the trend was already there, so we can't say how much of the drop was because of the price increase, how much because of the season and how much was deemed to happen any way).

After 8 months the population was back to old values; after 14 months, following the connecting of a new server, population reached an all time peak; even after the excitement of the new area worn off, the population was still higher than before the price increase.

And we talk about an unavoidable, 60% increase in cost-to-play; how many of you could realistically say that the TP cost will increase your cost to play with even 10%?

That's one of the facts on which I base my estimation that most people that cry to quit and predict EU death if this is implementing right now, will just swallow it, adapt and move on if it actually happens. I'm not worried at all about these apocalyptic scenarios, just like I was not worried at all about the end of WURM on that May 2nd or the end of the world on December 12, 2012.

---

 

I could care less about the costs.
Charging for TP usage is merely another divider between P2P and F2P.

But I am throughly against conscription of any kind.
Next we'll find out ND wants to move MA's HQ to communist North Korea!!!

 

One candidate cannot an election make. Simple, straight forward.. The vote was basically to have ND as president or not have an EU president.. Besides do u not think the President of Virtual Reality is not as good a fit as President of Entropia..? Is the EUverse being sold out again.. and they already told us so? Is ND just trying to become partners with Occulus?
>>>>"Wanto Know More? Sign up .. become a Citizen and Join Starship Troopers"
Opps sry there.. bender cpu implant on the fritz ever since.. well u know.. USof A (Atlantic City) and the other EU.. really hard to stop this rambling.. so bid u adieu with Godspeed

 

If We Indeed have a Say​

Mobile computing rules the economy (even beyond the tech industry) and mobile gaming is a cash cow. However Entropia Universe is not Farmville. We are more then a Virtual community, we are a global culture in a stage of infancy. Real money, investments, hard work, and maybe even proffessional business.

- Teleport Tax > instead let us focus on being the source, the resources, for EU mobile apps like Compet
- Create jobs through the taxation (or other financial model) of mobile apps > don't cut off the life blood of the EU population
- Investor Visibility - Encourage Entropians to support EU mobiles apps > let EU fame be spearheaded through mobile gaming, rather than, investors requiring 'tedious' game play​

 

I don't mind ND being president, he's really good at PR and if it brings in people then all good .

I kinda question the tp IPO thing, but see if it happens or if it indeed does how it's implimented.

Gave me a chuckle anyway .

 

Daughter of Anarchy, I have two main objections to the whole proposal:
1) As I've mentioned previously, looking strictly at the website it seems that us arguing about it is really pointless, as reading the website it seems that it's already been determined. And yes, I know government websites etc have fully developed plans before anything is discussed but they also throw the word "proposed" in there like fifty million times.
2) Ignoring that, I think his numbers and even yours are off, and I don't think any of it is going to work as intended. Honestly, if this is going to do anything it's going to decrease teleporter use, because I think whatever increase in player base there is will not be using teleporters at all and will simply be there to farm ped to withdraw. I don't think this will be good for the culture of the game or the economy of the game as a whole. Personally I'm not really opposed to some teleporter tax (although I think 1 ped is a bit much), but I think the "jobs" side of things is going to have a disastrous effect on the game overall.
But hey, what do I know, I could be completely wrong.

 

So, you think I just hate MA and ND everytime they announce something ? Me not beeing objective ?
I tried my best to explain to you how they lied to us and broke many many promises over the last decade.
This presidential thing is nothing different. History repeating.

But ok, you will realize that later then me. I didnt start Entropia in 2004 beeing all negative about it.
I learned over the years what a fucked up "team" is behind this project.

If you realize that MindArk never did any (mass) advertisements over the last 10 years,
because they didnt want to, as they simply cant handle millions of users...you cheer for ND luring your friend into here ?

While your friend heard of EU, installed it and played it for at least 1 year, maybe 500 others did that as well.
In the meantime 9,6 million people installed, played and payed for World of Warcraft.

Feel free to have a look here :
http://www.entropiaplanets.com/threads/google-results-on-mmos-where-is-entropia.11334/

They had 16 years. MA only needs those dozens of hardcore addicts. They dont want your friend that is spending 10$ or 50$.
They want the old hardcore players or your friend spending 5000$. Millions of "testers" would only fuck with the servers and mess up the experience of the few hardcore depositors. MA does not want to loose these guys and gals.

They dont want sweaters or testers that quit after 2 months because they didnt make
the "promsied money". Imagine 9,6 million players inside of EU...9,59 million wouldnt be able to login because of a "the server is full message".

And how many of the 900k registered EU accounts do YOU think are active here ?

But ya, thanks to ND your friend has heard of EU. If thats your understanding of good PR and how to do mass advertisements, be it so.

I would agree that Treasure Island was a nice advertisement for EU and it actually still works. But thats it.
This will never happen again. And I already feel sorry for Cyrene and Toulan beeing the next on the "list".

Feel free to read the above as well. There wont be "more people".
(that you hope will fund your gameplay)
That never was the plan.

 

I see that they made a lot of steps towards increasing new players retention and lowering cost to play for low-mid level hunters, but we are on too opposite positions to be able to meet on a common ground, so let's just agree to disagree.

 

Lots of opinions flying around, but the biggest that I don't get is when people say that new players will just farm the TP to withdraw.

That would be 100 hours of play time, so roughly 6.5 months of playing before that "tester account new player" would be able to withdraw.

I doubt even new players looking to make a fortune would see withdrawing $100 per 6.5 months as much. Not to mention the work required in game to earn those PED will likely incur other costs (ammo, crafting, etc) that will stretch that out to probably more like a year. It's not some kind of get rich quick scheme by working as a conscript.

 

Why will MA sell TP deeds and who will buy them if we know on start that ppl will avoid TP's as much as possible?
Yes we can be scared if it is implemented because MA will force us to use TP with some nerfs or environment changes.
Just remember - all wanted space and nobody had in mind PVP space.
Ma wanted to make some money and create possibility of some "jobs"
So in order to make spaceships profitable we got pvp turned on in space.
So they fucked entire player base with space lootable and with removing interplanetary TP's just to make few ten thousands $ and to make spaceships profitable.
So announcing possibility of TP deeds/shares and TP fee look like top of an iceberg with most part not visible now.
Worse things have to come latter to make things work.

 

On top of it all, remember all, MA does not really need the funds for this project since the system is still here. All MA really has to do is turn it back on. The only system that will need to be funded is the planet side TP -- maybe. But my guess as well is that when MA made space with the TP fee they did it to all the TPs with an empty field in the database stating the cost.

At end end, if anything what the Deeds will be paying for is this 'gateway' to other games. A lot may not understand this and will say that we can not link other games to EU. Yes they are very right, but this I do not think is what MA is thinking. These other games MA is talking about are games which will be using the EU platform MA is selling off to other companies. My guess is MA wants to link up with the Casino and any future company. From this I'm guessing MA is moving away form the PP idea sad to say.

 

Just guessing a great number of players will avoid using toll-TPs irregardless of how much ped they have.
No doubt TP usage would increase eventually, but I highly doubt the TP use would ever recover to current levels.

If TP's get switched to toll based, then does anyone know if the Ark Devs have plans to add cave entrances around Arkadia to allow access to the underground on the day the toll-TP switcharoo happens???

 

I'm probably naïve but I find it difficult to believe that an update like this (TP fee) would actually be implemented when so many have voiced their opinion against the idea. But then, what do I know. I came from another game that gradually changed from Pay-To-Play to Pay-To-Win despite an onslaught of protests.

I personally will move to a place either by Sleipnir or TP and stay there for a veeeeery loooong time to avoid this BS. It will definitely hurt trading though because not everyone want, or can, stay too long at Quarry, which means meeting up elsewhere - which means using a TP.