Besides Loot and your luck with it in game, there are other factors which can contribute to a player’s overall experience and happiness. While I could have split these 2 topics into separate posts, I decided to leave them together because I feel together with loot they round out the overall player experience…
Time (L)
The Average gamer plays for an amount of time, not an amount of objectives. On top of that, most will not even know how long they will have to play. Life can come calling at a moment’s notice. Understandably then, gamers want minimum fuss where it isn’t necessary.
Sometimes, it is the smallest of things that can add up tremendously over time or in large numbers. As Entropians, we all understand this in terms of Eco, but we rarely speak of this in terms of time. Entropia’s population is not huge by any stretch, nonetheless, we have thousands of users. Dedicated, heavily invested users playing this game with real money. The pathway to activity needs to be hassle free and aiming to be one step ahead of what the user needs.
I am not speaking of immersion breaking conveniences, rather the simple things we all do everyday in game that if were improved on, could save the community untold collective hours of time. We all know what Time =
The list that follows is most assuredly not complete! I highly urge you to add your thoughts and ideas in comments!
Time(L) Saving Ideas:
Armor Plating Sets: - Right, so I’m a hunter so I may be a bit biased but this goes right to the top of the list for me personally. If I want to switch plates on a set of armor I am wearing, and those plates happen to be on another set of my armor, a ridiculous amount of clicking scrolling and dragging ensues. Not only is it agitating but I feel one of the top collective time waters in game all time since its inception.
Equipped Armor Tab in Repair Terminal: - Everyday all active hunters are repairing their UL armors between and after hunts. Everyday we hit the “Equipped” tab and then proceed to drag our clothing, implants, and now, rings out of the repair window. A large % of the population uses UL armor and plates.
Dedicated Vehicle Spawn Pads at Every TP and OP - Since Vehicles were introduced, this might be a new contender for most time wasted all time. A lot if not all of the frustration is terrain based. It would be a worthy effort for MA to go as far as implementing this as a rule for all future development.
Fix Service Containers that Exit Players out into a Corner/Wrong Way - This happens to players more than you might think. It adds up.(I’m looking at you Ft. Zeus and A.R.C. Staging)
Auction Improvements - this is a RCE auction based game, we need more time saving features
“Watching/Following” Function - Players routinely go to auction and retype in the same search for the same items they have been watching and searching for days/weeks. This needs to be more efficient. You should be able to follow and monitor items as a whole as well as individual specific auctions. Players re-typing in the same search they already did 5x today alone is probably also right up there with one of the all-timers.
“Go to My Listing” Function - brought directly to your listing in its section from your My Offers tab. This would make it very easy and quick to check your listings vs the market.
Time and collective time sinks that are unproductive or down right frustrating in game should not be underestimated in their impact.
Social Features:
The Fun factor, the friends, the experiences you share…
The majority of my Player’s Note’s Series focuses on broad stroke ideas and thoughts that can improve the player experience and the economy. I intentionally do not dive into specific systems with in-depth ideas. But since this is a wide-open area and Mindark does have a yet mostly unused “Social” buff modifier, we can have a little fun here
Team Hunt Missions - Team hunting has been in a sad state of affairs ever since iron missions came. Most people love iron missions, but it really made team hunting bad strategy. Mindark has to find a way to bring this back, If not retroactively, then moving forward. It’s easy enough to see mission points in some form or another can be split up between team members.
Enhance or Incentivize Team Instances - Everyone knows since instances have return, they feature notably poor returns. This needs to be looked over, as I’m sure a lot of wonderful content and dev time are going to waste. Loot apparently need to b better here but also perhaps the addition of missions on mob inside instances and or mission tokens or rank ups for running them in team could help
Team Buff Weapons - part of a larger idea for new crafted items that have buffs. This will encourage social activity
Small social buffs for visiting estates or gathering areas - One of the drawbacks of all the conveniences we have today in EU is the loss of the “gathering place” feel. New custom game wide trade channels and vehicles are great but we have lost something too. This could be a fun way to bring it back as well as finally have a reason to have your friends over your apartment for a few minutes.
Player Instanced Housing - they can be simple, and only achievable after a certain time on planet or mission completion. Let the players have something to call home even if it’s not in the game. It can drive parts of the market and make all sorts of loot interesting and fun.
Society Features - There are a lot of really great threads on forum regarding this already. Terminal options and maybe society missions would be nice additions.
There are many more thoughts and ideas out there, I am very interested in highlighting any other major unnecessary time wasters in game in particular. Please share your thoughts
Additional Time-Wasting Concerns Brought Up by the Community:
“Dumping all your pets into a stable one at a time after a taming run is the absolute worst time wasting experience in the game.” ~ Slither
“Standing for 20-30 minutes glaring at unsorted belongings in the storage,…Why not have an inventory list ingame at least, showing belongings and where they are.” ~ Pretto Loco
Thank You for reading,
Good Hunting!
~008 
