Also; if any of you need a free VPN to make use of any online platforms, I suggest Windscribe, its free, you get up to 10 gigs of data for free per month, which has been plenty using it only when I need to use it. I did not provide a link I will just let you search for it, its easy enough to find on your favorite search engine.
Now, I only have some observations, which disgust me really. 1. I do not know a single person who has looted a ring from the mayhem boxes. 2. I do not know a single person who has looted a Mayhem amplifier from the mayhem boxes. (Or event boxes, either way. Potato Potahto.) This is problematic for obvious reasons, MA for whatever reason thought it was a good idea to nerf one of their biggest rackets. Supposedly now we have to really work to earn the Mayhem amplifiers, I know they are OP, but they were costly enough just grinding boxes to get them nevermind having to do what, a mission chain now to get one?
As for loot... Think back a year, or two or three. Remember how there were always hofs popping? EP, Shrapnel, etc.... Constantly. I know a lot of people who been trying to do shrapnel and EP crafting even with the loot so bad as it is; and let me tell you, there is no way you would ever know anyone still does them a lot judging by the loot ticker. They weren't making anything then, imagine how little they make now that there isn't much activity on the ticker when they are clicking like mad. 100 clicks without a success or partial is now a routine occurrence... And yes, the slider does not appear to even change this. Oh, you get a few more partials but theres still nearly no successes. Nothing commensurate to what is being spent on the attempts.
"Focus on markup" lol, it doesn't matter when there is nothing to mark up. You get 25% hunting runs like I do, 105% on oils, 110% on robot stuff, that isn't going to make up for the other 75%. In my 14 years, MA has never dropped a good UL item on me at all, and the ESI's have been so rare I don't even imagine I can loot one, yet I know people who grind about as much as I have and filled their storage with them.
It is pretty sad when you can hardly find a mining tower on the HOF board... Or an Atrox uber... Remember when there was always a four digit Trox on the board every day at the minimum and often enough a five digit? Whatever MA broke, they might want to consider fixing and letting people have a chance at some loot. The lack of multipliers has driven a lot of big spenders to quit. It isn't fun knowing every run is going to be less than even with no chance of anything good. When you lose more in a day than the typical daily hofs run, and you haven't hoffed in years, why would you even keep going? And that is whats happening. Its ok to take some, but all at once and break your golden goose before it can even lay an egg? Bad business model. If loot were fairer, there would be more profit in it for everyone. Why? Because the pie is never a fixed size. It is always changing in the real world, and it should be allowed to in a digital world. Currently I see no evidence of what we put in say, today, changes what comes out of it at the end of today.
What I would hope to see for the future of the game, if anyone at Mindark manages to see this, I agree, you guys are not operating as a Casino. You can't operate as a casino. Your implementation of the game does not fit any of the classifications of casino. You are running some black-box hybrid system that for all I know theres some Merlin the magician in your basement waving a wand to see what pops up in our loot. Or theres a blind monkey pushing buttons attached to the loot server and if he gives too much loot he gets shocked. Seriously though. You need to consider that 1. the internet has changed a LOT in the last decade and nearly two since your game was released. 2. Your game has not changed in any major way, just cosmetically, and a few tweaks to loot. 3. You may not be a casino, but you are competing for the same disposable income that online casinos are after.
Many of my decisions not to deposit, were based on the fact that I might get two or three days out of a deposit if I am luck; if I am lucky and I win, its up to three or for months to get any money back out, and by the time I decide I can't wait that long, I've failed to cash out and lost it all back in anyways. So, I typically just go for the online casino. I can play video poker for a 99.54% return on full pay jacks or better, or, Aces & Eights and All American have over 100% long term return if you master the strategy and if the paytables aren't nerfed which, is easy enough to check by looking at the paytables.
Then consider, Entropia is the only game I know of in the modern era, to still not have adopted the use of cryptocurrency for deposits and withdrawals. It doesn't matter if you were to go to a stablecoin or your own free-market coin, or a combination of both. Being able to instantly put in and take out would do a LOT to convince people to stick around. Unless of course you aren't running honest books and are paying withdrawals from half a year ago out of todays deposits? And I am sorry but I just have to... Is it not possible the loot is so bad today because we are still paying for that expensive castle you guys bought so long ago??? Oh what a fun forum thread that is to read if you can find it.
But at the end of the day, we don't know what MA is capable of. Just, it usually isn't good for us. They screwed the planet partners at every turn, they screwed the hangar owners when they upgraded to Cryengine 2 and destroyed the old Calypso. Statistically a person would expect MA might even by accident do something that helps us all instead of taking something away from the game.
