My two-quids worth on post VU.10

It's been a while again since I posted a new thread, mainly because I've been tied up with RL things comming out of the blue and my new systems build that's still not yet ready as a result (yep - still, still not ready), so I'm 'still not back in EU'.

Anyway, this is my two-quids worth take on where EU seems to be going since VU.10 - sry if some of this is boring;).
Going by post-VU.10 screenshots I've seen on EuC and other places, my impression is that the graphics are really good and AV's look really believable and almost lifelike, so MA have done well here. Have no idea though if the loot situation has changed from how it was before VU.10 - is it better, worse, or fairly much the same?
It seems, going by posts on the forums, that it hasn't changed much and that there is still this annoying factor of players not getting loot values reflecting their skill level or the difficulty of mob they've killed, or the complexity of item that is being made. I know I experienced this all the time. It annoyed the 'ell out of me and many colonists, that you'd get say 20-30 peds worth of loot for say an atrox provider when someone else would get hundreds of PEDs worth for say a berycled or something - so I really feel that MA should at least think about redressing the loot distribution so that it is more based on actual merit (skill level, level of armour/weapon used, etc) and less on what seems to be pot-luck.
MA would not 'lose out' as the overall loot levels would not change, it would just be redistributed more fairly. MA consistantly say or imply, that greater skills, weapons, etc, used will increase your chances of getting higher loot, so isn't it about time that this was more evident?
Since the new VU, there has been an explosion of MA/FPC initiated events, and whilst this may be well intentioned on their part, there must be many colonists that do not like this. I mean, how irksome must it be if you've spent weeks and weeks planning and promoting an event, only for MA/FPC to announce something very similar of their own. Which one will the vast majority of colonists attend, especially those that have just signed-up to EU? They will go to MA/FPC's one. Running events is a lifeline for many soc's and freelancers, so shouldn't most events be done by PED-paying colonists?
The new planets obviousely haven't arrived yet - and so far, doesn't look like they will before Christmas or New Years. Ok, I'm not really surprised, but the emoticon breaks this up a bit... Why? Why haven't they arrived yet? Was this really just a clever marketting ploy after all? Hardly, as this would be tantemount to lying. I honestly do believe that MA does want to introduce new planets, but many wonder if the strategy used or put forward for getting these new planets was or is the right one?
Does a 50/50% share of revenues via so-called micro payments sound attractive to new planet-partners when they will have invested many thousands ($/£/€) in setting up server networks, operating staff, etc? Owing to the very few planet-partners that have allegedly come forward, the answer seems to be no. Now, if the percentage was 60/40% or even 75/35% in favour of the planet-partner, then maybe new planets would be in Entropia already, and this would have gained MA possibly thousands and thousands of more participants. 750,000+ colonists is alot of people, and this has to be commended, but it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the many millions of players in other MMORPGs, virual worlds, etc.

Well, that was my two-quids worth...

 

The clue is in the name... Mmmm - yer! You get entroped or entraped with it:D I guess you sort of get hooked on it. You know you shouldn't, but somehow it's something you can't leave alone...

I certainly know what you mean by 'If they implemented only 10% of the good ideas for new concepts here and in the other forums they would have a game worth reckoning with' and 'For now though, it seems once players are bitten by the MMORPG 'bug' they get a subscription to a more satisfying game like WoW or EVE.'
For me Entropia still has the potential to better than all of these, if only MA would stick to their original concept for an 'ever expanding and dynamic participant-driven virtual universe', instead of adopting the MMORPG route which is what they seem to have been doing recently.
But for all that, I'll probably play it for another three years after I get back in...

 

This sounds very true...

If MA allowed much more participant-generated-content; and by that I don't just mean participant generated ads, then this would help things. Then it wouldn't matter if they were in Hawaii or wherever they were - the colonists would run it for them :D.

Maybe they don't want to do this because they're worried that they would be accused by another place of copying, which is really unlikely as EU predates this other place by quite a few years. But if they did allow p-g-content, then this would bring tens of thousands more ppl into EU.

 

Those miss rates ring a bell - before the typhon levelled everything I lodged a case about missing 3 out of every 5 shots day-in day-out, and all MA could reply with was that we've never promissed a 100% hit rate even on a maxed out wpn, so what can you do.
And the chats ok until the demographics something or other decides for no apparant reason that two AV's shouldn't be PM'ing somewhere and puts you into slow motion mode when you're in the middle of herds of corns not far from North Space Base ;)