So i was thinking that mabey MA has gotten quiet because of some events that have happened in the past.
For example. They gave us that list of what is in store for us on Sep 08, 6:53 2004
Add new functions to auction – adding functions like purchase orders of bulk items.
Add new functions to societies – society functions will be deepened and much more control will be issued.
Add new levels and professions for crafting.
Add stats to tools – tools will get the same amount of info as weapon and armor counter-parts, making it easier to assay them.
Advertising/Department stores – set up shop in a department store, advertise your stuff and become a successful retailer.
Bars – Bars will be places of relaxation and entertainment, everything a weary avatar needs.
Beauty/Body shops – Shops where you can alter the looks of your avatar, with completely new appearances and styles, including piercing and tattoos.
Bounty hunting system – are you annoyed that you getting killed by some bully? Set a contract on him and make him pay the consequences.
Carpentry – new crafting profession, making furniture and other similar items.
Crafters will be able to repair items – meaning you don’t have to run back to the imperial communal repair terminals.
Enhanced chat/messaging system – allowing for more advanced functions, like grouping, blocks and offline messaging.
Event tools – make tools available for Project Entropia participants to organize their own events, with ticket sales, area rentals and rules.
Food/Drinks – a new crafting profession, food and drinks will enhance the avatar abilities.
Huge Mindforce update – both the way Mindforce the interface works as well as numerous new powers.
Land management system – you want to enhance your lands with new creatures, or perhaps add new minerals to it? Go ahead.
New planets – what lies beyond Calypso?
Notary/Reputation system – are you good or evil? Can you be trusted or not? This system will help determine what kind of person the avatar is.
Space exploration/combat – discover new areas in space, mine asteroids, fight pirates, enhance your space ship with additional equipment, weapons and shields.
Taming system – ever wanted to own your pet Atrox and ride it off towards the sunset? This system makes it happen.
Update “Pre-Gold” items to “Ancient” status – some items are truly rare and respected.
Vehicles – be a bus driver or maybe a heavy machinery operator. Or make a living hauling large quantities of ore.
We havn’t seen any of these features FULLY implemented today. Yes we have food and whips but taminging and food doesn’t do ANYTHING right now.
At best 5 months later we will have only 3 of these (Food, Taming, and new Minde Force) with the comming VU.
They made a big hoopla about LandGrab and what has happened to it now. What looked to be the most interesting part of pe is now considered the most uninteresting as it seems that only like 10 soc’s have a chance at getting Land.
So my point is to be honest i think MA has said quite enough for now.
Its something like 70% of all software projects fail (~miss deadline, planned features, budget etc) .
Actually MA is quite different of many games in the amount they tell about their developing. They might as well just keep developing PE and talk about new features that are being developed without ever telling in which VU they will come. I guess some project manager at MA is unrealistically optimistic in resource management. Someone should tell him that common ratio between programmers time approximation and real life is about pi (~3.14).
Hmmm- some1 mentioned something quite interesting to me just moments ago that I think has something to it…
It is well known that “the other forum” does not view itself as a direct link/outlet to MA (and rightfully so). After much heated debate some weeks ago on that very topic, it can be noticed that Marco has since posted on that forum perhaps once or twice… perhaps as a direct consequence of what the members requested.
thus… is it the community that negligently asked for this treatment?? :dunce:
Just a thought
In any event, one thing I dislike about how MA runs its community relations is the fact that there is no direct link to them. If there was, we would never need to have this discussion.
Just a thought- let me know what u think
I agree Svet. On EP some ppl were begging for MA to stop posting as they thought this would cut down on the spam/support/whine threads. So I agree this may be one reason.
Another reason is that they would gain nothing and only lose if they started posting in EP. Imagine the chaos.
I believe they have made a concious descision that, as EP says, it is not the official MA page. MA has decided not to post there and instead is doing its communication through VU Listings and the Client loader. Which I would like to point out, they have been doing alot more of since Marco returned.
I do not see where ppl are so fired up. Sure they don’t have their own forum but they do attempt to keep us in the loop via the Client Loader, IRC and Support is much improved.
Additionally, I can assure you that Marco still reads EP. He just doesn’t comment. I think they have their finger on this more that ppl know or give them credit for.
well I for sure think the information we get is scarse and way to little..
what both ma and the comunity would win on is they get a official forum back..
lately mindark has stopped posting and do its information on ep of obvious reasons.. and lately not even been any mindark representative on irc.
there are a discussion going on abut this that most ppl have noticed I guess..
the reason why I participate in this and work for it is not bcs of money issue..
it is bcs I¨m getting scared of what pe might become.. pl qwuiting getting frustrated or dont play7deposit as much as they would (should? :P) bcs of this..
main issues is better comunication with ma.. this will hopefully in the long run result in bug fixes (frustration) more open information abut up coming features changes (gives players hope and interest in staying and keep on playing/depositing) ..
1s this is established I think most of the problems and irritation amongs players will settle and both ma and the comunity will gain from this in the end
I agree with you Ron 100% there. i posted in another thread that to me, the main issue is communication. I want an MA-run site again. I remember when they had one, and there were many issues they had to deal with… but I think MA has grown a little bit since then and it’s time for them to step up to the plate and deliver better communication.
Also, it’s really sad imo that our forums must be used to attract their attention. It’s as if MA is having EF and EP and others do their dirty work for them… :wise:
[QUOTE=RexDameon]
So i was thinking that mabey MA has gotten quiet because of some events that have happened in the past.
For example. They gave us that list of what is in store for us on Sep 08, 6:53 2004
We havn’t seen any of these features FULLY implemented today. Yes we have food and whips but taminging and food doesn’t do ANYTHING right now.
At best 5 months later we will have only 3 of these (Food, Taming, and new Minde Force) with the comming VU.
They made a big hoopla about LandGrab and what has happened to it now. What looked to be the most interesting part of pe is now considered the most uninteresting as it seems that only like 10 soc’s have a chance at getting Land.
So my point is to be honest i think MA has said quite enough for now.
[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Essi]
Its something like 70% of all software projects fail (~miss deadline, planned features, budget etc) .
Actually MA is quite different of many games in the amount they tell about their developing.
[/QUOTE]
I have to disagree. Most other MMORPGs give a lot more information to their player base. Including what is being tested on test servers and bugs that are being worked on.
[QUOTE=thoreau]
I have to disagree. Most other MMORPGs give a lot more information to their player base. Including what is being tested on test servers and bugs that are being worked on.
[/QUOTE]
and on eve , player can test on the test server the futur feature and say what they think about it.
it happen , after the player test phase , a feature is pospone because it need to be “re-think” , som get tweaked …
ps: arent we a bit digging up som old stuff here ?
I think MA is quiet because they are working on a big campaign, aslo that they may be impementing a few other things into game play. They seem to do this a couple times a year. Don’t be surprised if this next VU isn’t packed full of new changes and updates like the one a little while back (not sure which number is was)
[QUOTE=The Goat]
I think MA is quiet because they are working on a big campaign, aslo that they may be impementing a few other things into game play. They seem to do this a couple times a year. Don’t be surprised if this next VU isn’t packed full of new changes and updates like the one a little while back (not sure which number is was)
[/QUOTE]
Why not freeze everything for a bit? Yes, you heard me right. NO new content. NO changing the text you get in chat windows to something new which does not affect gameplay in any way, but apparently some enlightened dude at MA fellt was worthy wasting time on. NO spending some hours to change the animation you see when you FAP.
And instead, focus on this. Get a DBA in, and normalise the database. Get a REAL coder and solve bugs. Every single time you add new stuff to your house, it gets that much harder to solve that wee little loose brick in one of the walls, since that brick might now be carrying more weight than before. And if that brick is ignored, that brick will shatter at some point. And by then it is not a single wall that will collapse.
[size=1](I use the metaphore of comparing a software project to a house a lot in my work. Usually the only skill a manager has is to read 2D graphs (and even in that they sometimes miserably fail), and they have absolutely no clue whatsoever what programming involves. Comparing a software development project gives them something that they can identify with without having to REALLY think about things and possibly lose control over such vital organs as the sphincter :D)[/size]
MA is a small shop, with an overworked team who have no problem coming up with nice ideas, but have trouble visualizing how long they will take to implement.
PE has grown faster than planned in the last year. CND brought a deluge of new players (compared with the normal rate of growth). This must have been a major challenge for the guy (forgot his name, but he is the magazine)in charge of balancing the PE economy. In meetings of the MA braintrust I can picture this “balancing” manager telling Marco how regular communication with the community is risky, in that a certain emphasis on something, or even a particular phrase, positive or negative, might send a message to players. Lets face it, we do have a tendency to over-analyze events and new features, trying to find patterns or ways to gain an advantage.
The area that MA could really improve on is commucation regarding the storyline. Little sub plots such as the sad saga of Prof Barton, could be thought up and tied into the developement plans quite easily. Every 2 days there could be an update with a sentence or two on the CL. It would keep us from whinging so much about the normal things we whing on about, as we would be distracted about the “secret” meaning of such plot lines. In the end if it never develops (like that DR. Matasky woman - What ever happened to her???), there is no big deal.
MA is a small shop, with an overworked team who have no problem coming up with nice ideas, but have trouble visualizing how long they will take to implement.
PE has grown faster than planned in the last year. CND brought a deluge of new players (compared with the normal rate of growth). This must have been a major challenge for the guy (forgot his name, but he is the magazine)in charge of balancing the PE economy.
[/QUOTE]
Or put another, marketing/sales overruling the devs/ops teams. Happens all the time, witness the constant “improvement” of major software products and the way they are constantly, year after year, released with bugs in the latest feature that was promised. Its not the size of the team that matters, its who gets final say and usually that is a manager from a sales or marketing background so they listen to those argument more.
[QUOTE=Etopia]
and on eve , player can test on the test server the futur feature and say what they think about it.
it happen , after the player test phase , a feature is pospone because it need to be “re-think” , som get tweaked …
ps: arent we a bit digging up som old stuff here ?
[/QUOTE]
I loved the new AMD64 servers they just got and did a beta test with about 3000 players, and there were stations hosting more than 100 players, all with the best they could get in terms of battlecruisers, along with the devs, pk-ing around like mad and actually chatting along. The lag was felt only on the client side.
However, the other game has a one hour maintenance period. They update the servers with new dynamic data, check logs, backup, update content. The advantage is that they can fix bugs in 23 hours max, they can work any new feature fast, the market can be controlled. The bad part is that all players take a break. They do not need critical timed events such as auctions and mining claims. Then again, there is no real currency used ingame…
