David Post: diary of a launch – Next Island

I started on Next Island after randomly following some Facebook person's game list post, for some other game with similar name, so I googled it and found Next Island, but the front page was so absent of information that I downloaded it just to see what it was and now...everyone is stuck with me. I've been on Next Island maybe...a bit over 2 weeks? And following 2 forums. Some initial thoughts re: your Priority 1's.

NI front page is being revamped apparently and that's a good thing. The flash slideshow conveyed almost no hard info about what game was being promoted. Better bait on the hook, good. I think that is pertaining to Priority 1(a) "Buzz." Not everyone will try a game just to see what is up with that guy in the green hair on the flash slideshow. I am daft enough to do so but I am easily amused.

Priority 1(b,c,e) I'm no business person who all that wheeling dealing stuff, glad it's you and not me.

Priority 1(d) MMO and "The Vision" (hey, I thought that was Verant's in pre-SOE Everquest and later, pre-SOE Vanguard Saga of Heroes, do you pay royalties??)(beware of Sony Online Entertainment, they are the Borg.)(yeah, I've been online gaming for that long.)

So if your vision was of a lovely tropical setting, check. I love the lush places around Crystal settlement and that's about as far as I've explored before the trampling of boar hooves sends my newbie butt back to revive. I have yet to see the mountains to the north, or the plains/desert to the west, or the party island across the water, or the much talked about Ancient Greece, which will be soon as I am working on longblade skills first.

Content seems to be what I hear more experienced players and visitors from other established planets bemoan. Aside from the storyline to go to Ancient Greece for clues about first wave, there's...hunting 250*4 papoos. Is that it? Also, I am accumulating a lovely spectrum of dozens of refined crystals and papoo parts who supposedly will someday maybe have a role in eventual blueprints but who knows. Not enough blueprints that use local materials, materials with no known use, lack of quests, endless monkeys, early promotional materials that promised farming, taming and more than one time destination, and not enough commerce to call an economy are frequent complaints I read. People come to NI or start on NI, find it lovely but empty, and leave for/return to Calypso/Arkadia. I don't know if finishing more content is waiting for more settlers, but I'm not sure you are going to get a large number of non-momentary settlers without some more content commitment. Again, as with 1(a,) better bait on a better hook.

My stock of nutrio bars and enriched fertilizer is piling up. I have enough monkey parts to raise a terrifying zombie papoo army. I am resisting TT-ing it all, because I believe they will have a use eventually, along with my rows of pretty refined crystals.

Show me your Vision. I like what I see so far, I really do. Other people do too, even if they only sniff the flowers and return to orbit. Let it bloom. More people will come to admire it. And maybe stick around.

 

Oh, and the ingame map blows. Hard. But that may be an EU-imposed game mechanic common to all planets and the map may blow, hard, on all planets. Map tells me whether I'm going towards or away from features measured in 100 meter scales, other than that, mighty useless. Crystal resort is ringed with trails leading up down and around the elevated central utilities tents, and all are reduced to a smudge around 2 blue dots on the map. Useless. I may just go ahead and put up my own vague map of the area if I get sufficiently frustrated.

Also, guides and the wiki. I had a ton of noob questions for both forums in my first week, from this or that I had read in this pdf or that official wiki, and the responses usually could be typified as:

1. oh, that. they took that feature out in June.
2. oh, that. it hasn't been implemented yet.
3. oh, that. the guide/pdf/wiki info is flat out wrong and no one has bothered to fix it.

You want Buzz to encourage new players or experienced players looking for new places to visit, update Entrepedia and the guides and stuff with real maps, guides and info that represent what is on Next Island today, right now, accurate as of the last patch. And if a later patch changes things, update the information again. And so on.

There is no real info out there aside from advice from long term players that's more than just a ghostly outline of the Next Island reality. It's an oral tradition. Make an official wiki. Or something. Something that's reliable and CURRENT. Players serious enough to want to stick around and play with real cash want real information not rumor.

There should be a map of the central newbie grounds and welcoming area, not as seen from orbit, I shouldn't have to make one and put it on the wiki as a NI noob. Frankly.

Buzz. Usually implies buzz created by the people hoping to gain business from it. Players making their own buzz? It's your Priority 1(a.)

 

in clarification my reflections on the wiki were to Entropedia. It has charts and things about stuff like NI creatures but a lot of blank fields. A lot of guides for Arkadia and Calypso but not much about NI. Missions info for a lot of quests that have been removed, like Tank and Frank and the 3 Papoo council members or whoever. Wikicriticism not directed to the entropiaplanets wiki, just to be clear.

 

His Priorities are flawed. I am deeply disappointed at what I just read. I fill like I am on the Titanic! :(

 

might be that priority 1(a) is to attract new players, and the person with the Vision is asking the players how to do that. If this were the Titanic, it would be like the Captain asking the passengers how to steer.

The rest of it seems oriented to money raising. Which I get, projects take money, but like Oz some of that needs to be "behind the curtain" in my opinion. It reminds players perhaps not to get too emotionally attached to Next Island, because there are money troubles, so the project whose goals are already delayed might end at any time.

This is true of course of any game. But don't tell the players about it in your list of big concerns, sharing is nice, but I don't want to know that necessarily. Not in a way I am encouraged to think about it.

 

I find his approach pretty refreshing and its obvious that David Post is still learning what the difficulties in providing and improving a gaming environment requires.
Its fun to watch and at his current learning rate I am very optimistic that when I visit Next Island in about 3-4 years I will have good fun :)

 

At what point did the planet economies get isolated each from the others? I wasn't here for that history. There's a blank "transportation fee" field on every auction item, and an old pdf that talks about the Auction that you used to be able to order anything from anyplace.

Very little besides local materials and the rare imported goods can be bought from the surface of Next Island, there are only 2 blueprints on the Technician NPC that can be made with local materials, you can make fertilizer for farming that isn't implemented, you can make Nutri Bars for taming that isn't implemented, I have an enormous collection of animal parts and refined crystals for (presumably) some blueprint or other use that may be someday implemented. So...I can do the main quest and go see Ancient Greece, I can kill 1000 Papoos for a skill reward, I can produce vibrant sweat, get lots of shooting and longblade practice, and maybe make enough of 2 different items in the hope of getting a further useful blueprint byproduct.

At that point, I can either keep sweating, or like so many others, go to another planet with more things to do. As I'm a dabbler and explorer, that list of activities might keep me busy for a while, however long that might be.

Did I read somewhere that planet partners get a stream of the PED purchase profit from people who started on their planets, even when those people move to other planets? Does that reduce the incentive to try to get people to stay...(this last bit may not be true, not everything you read on forums is fact.)

 

.
I have asked all of these questions Tass, and directly to the horse's mouth so to speak, without success of getting any definitive answers. In the interview I did with Harold Sipe for the June issue of the EntropiaTimes, he gave the following responses to a few direct questions.
.

.

.

.
I can also share with you that I have directly asked about the development team via email and in Skype chats with Meg, and I got the same response each time, which is – they have been instructed not to talk about the development team. I found this rather unusual since no other PP has reserved general information. I wasn't asking for names, or any personal information, but rather general information as to what the development team was comprised of, but still given the same response.

The only other team member that has come to light is one person who has been hired to do testing (QA), which has been talked about in Meg's blog, but that's it. There has been nothing in print anywhere (that I know of) regarding the NI development team after they transferred the development process "in-house."

Therefore, outside of what David Post writes in his personal/developer's blog, I doubt that you will get any information. It's unfortunate that SoftHart and some of the others who have been die-hard NI supporters are becoming increasingly frustrated.

I truly enjoyed my trip to NI when I did the series and wrote about it, and I would like to see the planet succeed, so I hope somehow the elements needed to make this happen are put into place soon, because posting at the NI forum shows more people becoming restless, and that's not a good thing.

 

I believe you answered the question for me :) Content first, getting players second. Stop wasting time and money trying to get players that will just leave because they have storage full of crap that is of no use, limited access to armor, weapons, and other equipment.

I thought that with all the comments that have been made on his facebook account that he understood what is needed from all the players there. But after reading the OP I see all that we have been saying for months hasn't made an impact on his decisions. Which is really sad.

 

I started like most in monthly fee games (Everquest in the mid 90s) and was in the habit of subscribing the longest term possible to reduce the cost per month. Much later I tried some of the "Free to Play" cash shop patterned games coming over in localized versions from Korea and such, like DOMO and Trickster and iRO and Perfectworld...and they can be fun (Perfectworld in particular is rather pretty) but as you say, while you can play the grey vanilla free version it's dull, slow and sometimes level capped, and once you buy some coins for the cash shop, it was entirely true I found myself spending more for shiny swords, adorable pets and bunny ears (don't question it!) than I ever would have contemplated as a monthly fee for an "all included in the monthly fee" game.

The best pdf guide I've found has hints for being more "eco" in EU and the flat no-cash advice for starters is to sweat your way to 1000 sweat and sell it to another player, and somehow raise enough for a starter weapon, and so forth. I did not have the patience to sweat until killed over and over. And you're totally right, in less than a month I've bought $80 worth of PED, geared up as well as one can on Next Island, dabbled in mining and crafting, had a lot of fun, have maybe spent $50 or $60 of that PED for that gear and keeping it repaired...but if this was a monthly fee game, I'd be choking on my breakfast at the concept of paying more than $13 to $17 a month on a 6 or 12 month recurring fee for a game that provided all needed materials ingame to play and hunt and craft up a storm using only ingame materials and currency one raised during play. And no, I don't see needing to pump that much cash into my activities after the initial gear-up at the start. But yeah, when you step back and do some frank accounting in a "free" game you realize they are anything but.

Now as an adult with a fulltime job, I recognize there is a value to being entertained and that is worth some money. I am not morally outraged at having to pay to have fun. But when I've seen NI and have had what fun there is to be had, I'll be leaving NI to find the fun on other planets. I'm done with all but the 250 grey papoos on the kill papoos quest, I'm done with the storyline quest up to the point of going to see Ancient Greece, which I will do once my sword skills are up a bit, after that it's collecting the rest of the island's teleports, and hunting random monsters in the field. I will be done with the quest content in about a month. And hey, if I've moved on to another planet and a year from now, they patch in more to do on NI, I will think about coming back, as you always kind of like the place you're from.

I am from Next Island. It's pretty, and pretty empty.